The First Dance

by Richard S. Wheeler

  “It’s the first Michif I’ve ever heard, sir.”

  Brewer nodded curtly. The command watched the Métis families slowly hike northeast, their carts creaking and groaning.

  “We should follow along behind, just in case,” the lieutenant said. “Like a whip ready to strike.”

  “Nah, my boy, they’re on their way. Those red buggers took a long look at our repeaters and got religion,” Brewer said.

  “Yes, sir, you’re right, sir,” the lieutenant said.

  “You sure can hear those carts squeal,” Captain Brewer said. “You’d think they’d know enough to apply a little tallow.”

  “The axles and hubs are wood, Captain,” Dirk said. “You apply grease and they soon pick up grit and wear down the axles and the hubs. Grease ruins them.”

  “Well, they’re too dumb to use iron,” Brewer said.

  “They would if they could, Captain.”

  “What makes you such an expert, Skye? Did I hear you conversing with that bunch?”

  Thus dismissed, Dirk sat in his saddle and watched the weary immigrants whip their oxen north, back to nowhere. He doubted the old ones would make it, but the younger ones might. Then again, this bunch might break apart and drift in various directions, none of them north. That’s why the commander at Fort Maginnis had asked for reinforcements. There were thousands of square miles to hide the immigrants, and bands could slip into any gulch and stay more or less invisible.

  The captain formed his company into twos and headed westerly, toward Ford’s Creek and the nearby fort. This was handsome country, well watered by creeks springing from the Snowies and the Judith Mountains. Every watershed had a lush bottomland, with red willow brush, cottonwoods, chokecherries, and buffalo berries lining the creek. It would be a good place to settle down, raise some crops and a few animals, and add a little game for the dining table.

  The forty-seven mounted infantrymen relaxed in their McClellan saddles. They had seen how easy it was to turn these half-breeds away. The whole operation was going to be easy, and no one would get hurt, at least if the other bands were as easily cowed as this one. And tonight they’d be in barracks or tents, well fed and resting up. Easy duty! Even with Captain Brewer in command, this would be a lark.

  Dirk wasn’t so sure. He thought the Métis might scatter, and not even their squealing carts would betray them. He also suspected the only way to drive them back would be to gather them by the hundreds and then escort them to the Canadian line. The thought sent a bleakness through him. Those people wanted nothing but the means to survive.

  Not ten miles from the fort, a man in a black buggy, drawn by two trotters, blocked the two-rut road. He didn’t move and didn’t rein the trotters to one side. Brewer halted the column and eyed the man, who was plainly a rancher.

  “You took long enough,” the man said.

  “Who are you, sir?” Brewer asked.

  “Harley Bain,” the man said. He waved a languid hand. “My land. In fact, the military reservation was my land too.”

  “Your land, sir? Not public land?”

  “Prior rights,” Bain said. “Here first.”

  “Well, that’s fine, sir, but if you have no further business with us, we will proceed,” Brewer said.

  “Oh, but I do,” Bain said. “I’m requiring the army to fulfill its mission. The United States is intended for the use of its citizens. Keep it that way.”

  “Oh, that’s what the army is here for, Mr. Bain.”

  “No, you’ve failed miserably, and your little command won’t help much. The Department of War has failed me. Failed my friends. Failed the settlers. We were here first, you know. I have a herd here, another in the Judith Basin, and a third in the Fort Benton area, all on range that I claimed first. The army’s delinquent. That’s the word. It’s done nothing to protect me from these worms and grubs crawling in.”

  “I assure you, Mr. Bain, that will change swiftly,” Brewer said.

  “No, it won’t. You need a thousand men for this job, and you don’t have two hundred.”

  “Let us show you what the army can do for you,” Brewer said.

  “You already have. These gents are off the immigrant boats and haven’t fired ten rounds. And you call them mounted infantry.”

  Brewer reddened.

  “Actually,” Bain said, “I’ll do most of the job for you. I have riders.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Bain, but this is a task for the army, not your riders.”

  Bain grinned. “But we’ve already begun,” he said. “I was hoping we might finish the job before you arrived.”

  “Doing what?” Brewer asked.

  “Riding through the night, surprising trespassers in their beds, and persuading them to leave. It’s quite successful. An exodus, you might say. There is nothing like a band of armed men waving torches to convince people to go away while they can.”

  “Mr. Bain, I will tell you just once: that is army business, not yours, and you will desist.”

  Bain smiled. “That’s not what the command at Fort Maginnis says, Captain. They want all the help they can get. And I’m able to field about fifty men. I’d say my fifty are worth about three companies of regular army.”

  Brewer ignored the insult. “We won’t have night riders here,” Brewer said. “I’ll say that right now. And I am certain that Major Brevoort is in full agreement.”

  Dirk listened intently. As much as he disliked the captain, he had to agree that Brewer was taking a stand against something very dark.

  “It’s army business,” Brewer added.

  Bain smiled and nodded gently. Dirk thought that the man’s politeness simply concealed what he was really about.

  “I’ll be discussing the entire matter with the major this evening, sir,” Brewer said. “I should add that we appreciate your offer to help with this operation. Most kind of you.”

  Bain nodded. “Perhaps I’ve underestimated the army. Or perhaps I’m more aware of the size of this migration than the army is. Of course, if the army is able to drive these people out, my services won’t be needed.”

  “Mr. Bain, there are lawful and honorable ways of dealing with these migrants. The army intends to pursue them.”

  This was a side of Brewer that was new to Dirk. And not a bad side, either. Dirk had no use for this descendant of Mayflower Puritans, but he had less use for Bain. For once, Dirk was on the army’s side.

  Bain smiled again and reined his open carriage to one side, letting the command pass by. Dirk watched him, trying to get the measure of the man, and decided Bain was a rattlesnake. A very polite one.

  There was some good in it, Dirk thought. The cards were all faceup on the table.

  six

  Fort Maginnis’s white frame buildings were the only thing of interest in the valley of Ford’s Creek. Dirk knew instantly why the army had chosen this obscure place: it was superb hay meadow country. Indeed, for miles up the grassy valley, hay rose in stacks, ready for winter feed for the mounts at the post.

  Beyond that, it had nothing to recommend it. It wasn’t located on any strategic route to anywhere. The Judith Mountains were distantly visible, and so were the Little Snowies, but the soldiers at Maginnis would find nothing but grass to feast upon.

  Now the company of mounted infantry was riding into the quadrangle, and bored soldiers swarmed out of the buildings to see the new contingent. There would be action soon: a concerted effort to sweep the Canadian breeds back to where they came from.

  Sergeants soon directed the new troops to their tents, located in a long row behind the wooden barracks, while the officers vanished into the headquarters building, and the stable crews began to unsaddle, brush, inspect, water, and feed the weary mounts, which had borne troopers for three days.

  Dirk, a civilian at loose ends, was free to wander. This was a horse soldier post if ever there was one. The fort’s mission was to prevent the theft of stock and remove wandering Indians to their reservations. A political post, Dirk thought. It
served no strategic purpose. Some powerful ranchers, probably led by Bain, had talked the War Department into it. And now the soldiers here would fight the ranchers’ fight once more: drive away the breeds so the white men could get rich running cattle on public land.

  Dirk had no idea where he would be quartered. He led his buckskin and his reserve horse to the stables and began his own grooming and watering.

  “We’ll do that, sir,” said a ferrier sergeant.

  “I’m a civilian employee, so it’s up to me to care for my stock,” Dirk said.

  “We’ll do it, sir. Nice nags you have there.”

  “I wouldn’t know a fine horse from a bonehead,” Dirk said. “But I had a good trader pick these out for me. I told him I wanted sound mounts and left the rest to him.”

  “Well, the bloke did just fine, I’d say.” The sergeant was running a hand over pasterns looking for heat, and nodding. “You’ve got good saddlers here.”

  “No thanks to me,” Dirk said. “I’m a translator.”

  “You can speak this Métis?”

  “Some. The groups have their own dialects. We ran into some whose tongue I’d never heard. Called Michif. I didn’t understand a word.”

  “Well, every bloody tribe’s got its own ways, and them Canucks are just the same,” the sergeant said, loosening the girth strap. “Our tribe too. I got officers talking to me with a mouth full of marbles and I don’t know a thing they tell me.”

  “I found an old gent who could still talk Cree. Finally got word to the bunch to turn around.”

  “We’ll get these beasts well cared for, good and proper,” the stableman said.

  “I’ll be riding them hard over the next days,” Dirk said. “So anything you do to keep them fit would help.”

  “Count on the army, sir.”

  Dirk collected his kit from the second horse and drifted to the quadrangle. He’d have to find the Officer of the Day and get instructions.

  He hiked toward the headquarters, marked by gaudy regimental colors.

  The commanding officer, Major Brevoort, was hosting Captain Brewer and other officers in deck chairs on the shady verandah, and it was plain that their debate was vigorous. They were working out the operation that would probably begin in the morning. Dirk steered clear. If they wanted him, they would summon him.

  And they did. A Maginnis lieutenant corralled him later and led him to the half-dozen bearded officers lounging on the verandah.

  “Skye, this is Major Brevoort, commanding here,” Brewer said.

  “Skye, heard of you,” the major said. “Mountain man, guide in the old days.”

  “I’ve never been in the fur trade, sir.”

  “Well, whatever. You know the savage tongues. Or a few, anyway, Brewer said you didn’t fathom the tongue of a bunch of breeds.”

  “Correct, sir. They were talking Michif, which I’d never heard.”

  “We’re sending out patrols tomorrow, platoon strength, seven in all because we have a hundred forty able-bodied men. You’re the sole translator, and not much good it seems. We’ve got to tell them to turn their carts around and get across the border fast, or they’ll be in big trouble. How do we do that?”

  “Their grandfathers or fathers were French, sir. Try French on the oldest ones.”

  “You think they understand it?”

  “Some might.”

  Brevoort fingered his walrus mustache and pondered it. He turned to his aide. “Who speaks French?”

  A lieutenant lifted a hand. “A little, sir.”

  “Who else?”

  No one volunteered.

  “What about the noncoms?”

  “Irish, sir.”

  “Same as the enlisted men.”

  “You don’t need translators,” said Brewer. “They can be told where to go and how fast with a sword. I did it myself, just hours ago. The message was not lost on them.” He gestured toward Dirk. “Fact is, we don’t need him or anyone with those skills. Just ride down the immigrants and point north. And if they resist, the cocking of a few revolvers will suffice.”

  “What if they protest? What if they’ve something to say? What if there are difficulties? Misunderstandings?” Brevoort asked.

  “There won’t be. They will get the message in a pointed saber and the bore of a barrel aimed their way.”

  “Yes, but what if they’ve someone sick, or need to rest their oxen, or whatever?” the major asked.

  “They came here illegally and can leave the way they came,” Brewer said.

  “I don’t like it, Captain,” Brevoort said. “This is not war, and these people are not criminals and their exodus is hardly an invasion. They’re people in trouble.”

  “Foreigners, sir.”

  The debate depressed Dirk. The need for a translator with each patrol seemed so plain to him it was beyond argument. A translator could prevent violence. A translator could make sure the people being sent away were not American citizens. A translator could help negotiate issues, deal with illness or other emergencies, obtain agreements, achieve peaceful emigration.

  “What do you think, Skye?” Major Brevoort asked suddenly.

  “I think that translators should be with every patrol, sir. To prevent misunderstandings and trouble.”

  “He’s just protecting his civilian job,” Brewer said.

  The rest nodded. It was as if the views of a civilian counted for nothing. As if a group of West Pointers would not listen to anyone without their credentials.

  “They have a right to know why they are being ejected from the country, and a right to reply. Maybe some are citizens,” Dirk said. “Maybe some have broken carts that need repair.”

  “Enough, Skye. We know all that,” Brewer said. “We’re done with you.”

  Brevoort nodded. Skye stared a moment at that bunch and drifted away, filled with foreboding about the morrow.

  It would all be so easy. Send out strong patrols, locate the immigrants, and start them north. What could go wrong?

  Dirk found himself eating at the enlisted men’s mess. Beef and beans, not bad fare for an isolated post, far from any depot. The soldiers eyed his bronze flesh and said little. He ate his beef and beans and retreated into the quiet parade ground. It was an odd moment. His abilities were deemed unnecessary; his mixed bloods withered friendship. He found himself alone once again, which had become the story of his life. He didn’t fit anywhere and his skills weren’t needed.

  He watched the fatigue details tote buckets and firewood to the barracks and officers’ quarters, while others of the troops were on kitchen duty, and still more were hoeing and watering the vast vegetable garden adjacent to the post. Most frontier duty was little more than farming, he thought. Herding horses, herding slaughter cattle, herding sheep, planting, hoeing, weeding, harvesting. For eleven dollars a month.

  No one showed up to offer him quarters, and he imagined the Officer of the Day may have been reluctant to billet a breed on the post. It didn’t matter. Dirk headed for the stables, where some of the post’s mounts were collected for service in the morning. Most of the horses would be pastured under guard on the surrounding grass.

  He liked stables. There would be plenty of places to bunk down. He liked the acrid smell of horses, and even the acrid smell of the horse apples. But this night, with any luck, he’d spread his bedroll in the hay barn, out of weather and with a mountain of hay under him for a mattress.

  “Thought you might show up here,” said the sergeant who’d cared for Dirk’s two horses.

  “Good place to bunk, if you’ve no objections.”

  “I do it myself. Can’t stand the noncom barracks, and no one objects if I spread out here.”

  “I’m Dirk Skye, sir.”

  “August Mack, laddie. A son of Ireland, and pining for it too.”

  “Where’s a good place to settle in?”

  “Anywhere the horse apples don’t land on you.”

  “Hay barn?”

  “Too warm for me, but
maybe right for you.”

  Dirk headed for some tall double doors and found a mountain of hay kept under roof there. The sweet smell of dried grasses caught in his nostrils. It would do.

  The sergeant was sitting on a split-log bench, eyeing the evening sky. “You going out tomorrow?” he asked.

  “They don’t want a translator. And there aren’t enough anyway. Seven patrols, all on extended duty.”

  The sergeant spat. “They’ll ruin most of my horses. Cavalrymen off the boats can’t ride, and the mounted infantry shouldn’t even try. How come you ain’t going?”

  “I’m in the way. If they don’t have to palaver with the Métis, they can just send them packing and look for the next bunch.”

  “They’re just gonna point and wave a few revolvers?”

  “I offered to translate.”

  “Skye, them Canucks are half-settled. They’ve been drifting in all summer. They got their farms staked out. They got sod houses up, and gardens going, and potato patches, and spring houses and root cellars built. And likely some hanging meat, and it ain’t all game, either.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of. This is a rancher deal, right?”

  “There’s a lot of Métis in the territory, they tell me. Not enough game left to feed a crowd like that. There’s bloody few deer or antelope around. So the patrols, they’ll find some beef hanging from the cottonwood limbs. And then there’ll be trouble, and no one can talk to the other.”

  “What’ll they do?”

  “The ranchers got night riders, they tell me. There’ll be a few necktie parties, and the army, it’ll look away and see not a damned thing. Actually, the army’s kept the lid on so far, but the ranchers are getting itchy and are primed to stretch some rope.”

  “Where are these Canadians?”

  “To hell and gone, up every draw, up in the hills, most hidden from sight. And the whole Canuck lot are trying to get fixed for winter. Stowing away the cabbages and potatoes, stowing the huckleberries, catching trout, jerking meat, hanging up onions, finishing up their cabins, putting roofs on, sewing up leather coats, cutting firewood, or scratching a little coal out of all them seams around here.”