THE TRICKSTER

by Muriel Gray

  There were two miserable-looking clients waiting on the metal-backed chairs, one with a mewling kitten in a basket and the other without an animal, presumably, like herself, waiting to pick one up.

  The receptionist was doing that really annoying thing of not looking up from the form she was filling in even though Katie was standing right in front of her. Don’t push me, honey, thought Katie, not today.

  “Bart Hunt. Husky. Here to pick him up.”

  The woman looked up surprised that she’d been addressed without permission. She was about to give this uppity blond bitch a hard time when she realized it was the owner of that dog. Dr. Adler had told her he wanted to talk to her himself.

  “Take a seat.”

  Katie looked at her coldly and replied as though the receptionist were four years old. “You mean take a seat, please.”

  The woman flushed, glancing sideways to see if the other two clients had heard her admonishment. Sure they had. They’d loved it.

  “Please.”

  Katie nodded and sat beside the fat woman without the animal as the red-faced receptionist punched the phone through to her boss. Katie closed her eyes. Where was he now, her Sam? Waiting for them at home, or gone for another walk around the block?

  “Mrs. Hunt?”

  She opened her eyes. It was the vet, poking the top half of his body around his surgery door, in his white coat and holding a clipboard.

  “Yo!”

  “Would you like to come in for a second, please?”

  Oh no. Not Bart. Please no doggie deaths, she prayed. It would kill Billy right now. But what else could it mean? They usually just led the dog out, gave you your bill, and you never even saw the guy who’d done whatever it was that just cost you a small fortune. This time she was going in to see him. Not good.

  In his room there was a parrot in a big cage sitting on his table like an ornament instead of a patient. The fat woman’s pet, she guessed. No Bart.

  “Where is he? Is he dead?” Her voice was steady. Her hands were not. She put them in her pockets to stop them from trembling. The vet shook his head. There was nowhere to sit, so he didn’t offer.

  “No. No, he’s OK, Mrs. Hunt. He’s sedated.”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Nothing physically. We sedated him because we thought he might harm himself.”

  She looked at him quizzically, bewildered. The vet pursed his lips. “I can’t find what’s up with him other than a psychological disorder. Now, that means you can either risk taking him home and live with the consequences of that, or… and I only suggest this because of the nature of his disorder, you have him put to sleep.”

  Katie was dumbfounded. “What do you mean, psychological disorder? What’s he been doing, for Christ’s sake?”

  The vet ran a hand over his mouth, banging the clipboard against his thigh with the other hand. “Uh, he seems to want to tear his own heart out.”

  Katie’s mouth fell open. “Bart?”

  “Can’t describe it any other way. To put it in layman’s terms, I think your dog’s flipped.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Through here.”

  He pushed open the door to a corridorlike room lined with big cages. There were a few animals yapping and mewing and sleeping, and there was Bart in the middle, lying in his favorite pose, like a sphinx. He saw her and got up drunkenly but excitedly. His curly, erect tail wagged like it was going to fall off, and he tried to jump up to her, laying his big paws on the cage.

  “Bart, my sweet thing! What’s up, boy?” She knelt to the wire. He tried to lick her through it. She put a loving finger through the wire to his tongue, and turned to the vet. “He seems OK now.”

  The man shrugged. “Can’t guarantee what he’ll be like when the injection wears off, though.”

  “And you say there’s nothing physically wrong with him.”

  “Apart from the damage he did himself, no.”

  “What did he do, exactly?”

  “I can’t explain it, really. He sort of turned on himself. Started snapping at his own neck and shoulders, as if he were attacking a foe. He only sustained minor cuts before we grabbed him and gave him a shot.”

  “What would you suggest?”

  “Do you have young children, Mrs. Hunt?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then I wouldn’t risk it. I’d put him to sleep.”

  Tears came to her eyes as she turned back to the big beautiful husky, panting now in his joy to see her face. Was it a risk? Bart would never harm anyone. But if he was trying to harm himself, then who knows? But what about Billy? How could she tell Billy? The vet said there was nothing physically wrong. Surely he’d be all right? What if there was a chance he might get better? Maybe he was just freaked to be in here. Who wouldn’t be? They could keep him outside until they saw what was up with him. Yes, that would do, surely. No risk then. She stood up. “I can’t do that. I’m going to take him home.”

  The vet shook his head, clearly disapproving. “Up to you. But I’d watch him carefully, Mrs. Hunt. He was wild with it. I mean really wild.”

  Katie waited silently while the vet opened the cage and grabbed Bart out by the collar. She clipped on his lead, and the vet showed her out into the waiting room.

  The woman behind the desk clicked her computer while Katie waited.

  “Thirty-seven dollars.” She looked up.

  “Please.”

  Katie paid her, patted the panting, woozy Bart and led him unsteadily out of the surgery to the car. Great. Thirty-seven dollars to be told your dog’s a loony. This was all she needed. But she couldn’t have him put down. No way. Not without even discussing it with Sam. God. So much to discuss with Sam. Where to begin?

  Billy went wild and so did Bart. Didn’t look to her like a dog that wanted to kill itself. She moved off, stopping abruptly to let pass three speeding police cars with lights flashing and sirens going, heading out of town toward the river. Her heart was in her mouth as she started to move off again in their noisy wake.

  What now? In God’s name, what now?

  Craig looked across at the white-faced man who had headed seventeen murder investigations and knew he was defeated. Becker was going to have to declare an emergency, get some more serious police help. So he and Craig were equal now. Neither had ever had to do that.

  The mess was unreal. Broad daylight, and it looked like a regiment of samurai soldiers had waded into these guys. And then there was Wilber. The parts had fucked each other like he’d feared. And there was a cat this time, twisted and misshapen, its spewed guts lying around it on the hood of the car like an offering.

  And what could they do now, these policemen with their guns and radios and cars, that couldn’t keep Wilber alive?

  They could roll tanks down Main Street if they wanted, but Craig knew it wouldn’t stop whatever did this. Above them the chopper thundered back and forth in the thick snow clouds in its fruitless search for a culprit, and the roadblocks were up again like a sick practical joke on the public.

  He didn’t need to ask the tail on Hunt where he was. He knew he’d have been somewhere else when these choice cuts were happening.

  He bent down and clasped his hands across his knees. How do you tail a man’s soul? thought Craig. He was glad no one could read the crazy question in his mind.

  45

  Alberta 1907

  Siding Twenty-three

  Hunting Wolf would come no farther. Henderson stopped, surprised. He beckoned to the man who had paused in the snow behind him, his eyes fixing on the railway encampment like a hawk fixing on a rat.

  “Come. Fear nothing.”

  But it was not as Henderson thought. It was not the retribution of the white men that Hunting Wolf feared. It was the man the minister had described as being in their midst. Singing Tree had all but swooned when Henderson pronounced their dead child’s name. Snowchild. Born to his wife in the snows of winter, crying by the fire or nursing at her breast as the w
ind howled outside and the animals pawed the ground and starved for want of food. The sweet Snowchild who survived the crudest of biting cold and then saw but one more winter because of his carelessness.

  Henderson walked back to him, turning his face from the snow-filled wind that stung him. He touched the chief’s arm under his blanket, trying to see into his black eyes beneath the huge-brimmed wool hat he wore with an eagle feather stuck in its headband like a jest.

  “They must see you not the man kill McEwan. We tell them.”

  Hunting Wolf would not move. The scheme was foolish. How could he stand among them and let them examine his heart, when he himself did not know the contents of it? He was drawn only by the name of his child, and now he wished to go back. His wife was unsure of his heart also. He saw it in her eyes. Her suspicion was that he had killed a man. He could not tell her the blood that spattered his clothes and face and body when they found him in a trance was from the creatures that had died before him like actors. He scarce believed what he had seen himself. But he made himself believe. He had been warned. All his life warned, and now was the time.

  “You go on, Henderson. I have changed my mind. They will not believe me, for I have nothing to tell. But I would see this trapper. I will wait here, and watch.”

  The Reverend Henderson looked into the chief’s eyes and tried to read them. They were closed to him. Henderson swallowed and blinked against the snow. He had to ask. He had assumed, but now he could not assume.

  “Hunting Wolf. You kill man McEwan?”

  Hunting Wolf looked beyond Henderson to the cabins, their smoke rising from the metal chimneys. He spoke in a dream.

  “I do not know. In truth, I do not know.”

  Singing Tree huddled beneath the lodgepole pine gazing through the falling snow to the mountains. Snowchild. Sometimes she thought in her sleep that she was with her yet. Wriggling beneath her arm, warm and plump, shifting in a child’s sleep. And then she would wake and know that it was not true. She had blamed no one but herself for her child’s death. But it had made her doubt her husband in a small way. If he were such a great shaman, how could he not have foreseen such an event?

  She would not let herself believe that Hunting Wolf had killed the white man. Such folly, such evil, would be unthinkable. And yet what was she to think? Powderhand had whispered of it as if he were glad. But she was not glad. She wished to be home, on the reservation in their cabin, away from all this madness and magic and fear.

  She knew the spirits came to her husband. That much she believed, although her bitterness over their silence on her child’s death was profound. But evil spirits could come too, and they may use a man if that man is not strong, not pure in his heart.

  The wind swung her braids and she shivered. Snowchild. Dearest Snowchild. The trapper who had returned for his evil contraption that summer had been surprised to see their camp, and devastated to know the truth of what prey he had caught. A tall, white-haired man from the north lands across the sea with eyes as blue as ice. He had wept. She remembered that. But none could bear to look at him or speak with him and he had left, leaving behind the pelts of mink and otter and wolf as his offering. She had burned them. That her child’s life could be bought for a few pelts sickened her.

  They found his body half-eaten by animals in a small, lonely camp that fall when they dismantled the tepees and headed back to their cabins. He had been drunk and taken his own life, had blown his head apart with his gun. An earthenware jug lay by his side, the evidence of some foul brew he had fermented himself and drunk in his loneliness and guilt.

  The men wanted to take his gun and belongings, but Hunting Wolf would not allow it. He said the evil spirits had already visited this man, attracted by the act of his suicide and despair, and he was defiled now. He said he could smell them on his body, as though the dark ones had been examining, searching, studying.

  She was glad. How could she have stood the pain, to have that man’s things about her as a reminder of what his trapping had done? She was sometimes afraid of what had been with him after he died, the things that had visited, that made Hunting Wolf shout those crisp, angry warnings not to touch him. She prayed often that they would never encounter such dark things when they were abroad on the night air, and that there would be no such despair for those fiends to feed upon in their simple lives.

  And of course she prayed for her tiny girl of shining hair and sparkling eyes.

  She sighed. Oh, Snowchild. Where are you now, my love?

  Singing Tree put her head on her knees and wept.

  “Mr. Sitconski thinks we should act now.”

  The tall man nodded sagely at Henderson, his blue eyes looking sincere and concerned. His voice was odd, strangely stilted, yet correct in its language. “I was telling Mr. Muir and the men that I have seen these savages turn this murderous way before. It must be stopped.”

  James Henderson did not reply. He looked around to find one of the men who had taken care of McEwan’s remains, and saw George McKay sitting against the wall.

  “George. We will make the grave by the other men. I will conduct the funeral tomorrow at noon. Perhaps you could ask some men to dig the hole in the morning.”

  George nodded and bowed his head slightly.

  “Did you not hear us, Reverend? Mr. Sitconski says…”

  “I do not care to hear what Mr. Sitconski thinks, Mr. Muir. You may take it from me, you are in no danger. The Kinchuinicks are as horrified as you that our engineer has met with such a disgusting and mysterious death.”

  “Aye. Mysterious is the word, Reverend. If it was not the work of the heathens, then who?” Muir was adamant.

  Henderson looked directly at the trapper, who was watching the men with detached interest. The man’s face was as odd as his speech, but Henderson could not find a reason for his discomfort. He tore his eyes away and looked back at Muir. “We have been so befuddled by our own fevered imaginings, sickened by occult nonsense, perhaps we may never know. We are men of reason, Mr. Muir, and yet we have been talking of animals who speak and demons that live in rock. And I have suffered perhaps the worst of you all. But I am cured of my brain fever now, and we must start to reason like the civilized beings we are. After all, it may even be someone unknown to us. Mr. Sitconski has proved we are not alone out here as we thought. Perhaps a madman is loose in the wilderness, and the Indians are at as much risk as we.”

  Muir was not convinced and Sitconski sat with what Henderson could swear was an amused twinkle in his peculiar blue eyes.

  Henderson challenged the trapper. “You disagree, I see.”

  “I do, sir. I believe you should beat the truth out of the hound.”

  “So you would have us go to their camp and torture their chief until he confesses? Speaking now as a member of the church, we stopped such practices many centuries ago. We no longer burn witches, either, sir.”

  “But you still hang murderers.”

  “After it has been proved that they are guilty.”

  Sitconski shrugged in his big coat. “Do as you please. I would not sleep sound here.”

  “Then you do not have to.” Henderson turned and left the long, dark cabin. He could hear the murmur begin even as he pushed open the door to leave. This strange man was playing to the gallery of frightened and confused men, and for some reason Henderson could not bear to look at him further.

  James Henderson had lied to them. He was not entirely cured of his brain fever. For a moment, just then, when he had been reprimanding the blond man, he had sworn that it was not a human face he was regarding, but some badly made mask. But the illusion was gone as quickly as it came. It was the fever reclaiming him in his agitation, and it was why he had ended the discussion.

  Now he strode away from the canteen to his own abode, where he would have to think carefully and decide how best to proceed. He glanced up to the low hill above the cabins and knew that Hunting Wolf would still be there, crouching, waiting for a glimpse of this uninvited trap
per. Madness. It was all madness. He pulled his coat around him and headed into the wind.

  Hunting Wolf was nearer than Henderson thought. He lay only a few yards away from the door behind a great spruce. He was practically invisible, having dug himself into the snow, and staying so still that the birds hopped over him as they foraged in the undergrowth. This was not magic. It was a basic and mundane skill of any warrior, any hunter. He had thought briefly of using his magic to seek out and watch what he feared was here, but how could he shift into an animal after the display of yesterday? His nerve could not stand it. And it would take too long to find the right animal and ask its permission.

  So he waited like a hunter for what may not be his prey, but his tormentor. He did not have to wait long. After Henderson had emerged from the long building, a group of men had followed. Hunting Wolf searched their faces, but they were merely the sad, bitter faces of these northern men he had grown to know.

  Then the man Muir had appeared, and with him, oh Great Spirit, was the nightmare. His heart beat like a caged animal in his breast as he saw that face and knew it. And it knew him.

  The man, the thing that was not a man, that had inexpertly copied the form of one that would bedevil his keeper, stopped and looked directly at him. It smiled, and behind that row of white teeth Hunting Wolf could see the jaws. The black, icy, yawning jaws that were hungry and rabid and yearning for more flesh to destroy. Muir saw Mr. Sitconski smile with a merry twinkle at something behind a great Engelmann spruce, but he could see no reason for mirth. He looked at him quizzically.

  Sitconski turned to Muir with a pleasant smile. “I’m sorry, Mr. Muir. I have been so long trapping in this great wilderness I often smell a beast’s scent on the air like an animal itself. I must be wary of it when I return to civilized company. Christian men would not have me lifting my nose at every musky whiff that comes my way.”