By the time they got the wagon hitched and the sow hogtied and settled and Reilly into a good warm coat, the eastern heavens were showing early light.
“Shovels, axes, hammers, nails, canvas, a couple of tin stoves, some pipe,” Dirk said.
“I’m going to spend every cent on ale, damn you, Skye. I’m going to drown in ale as soon as the saloon opens its doors. I’m going to tell them I got evicted from my own house.”
With that, Reilly smacked his lines over the croup of the dray, and it tugged the wagon through the frost, while the bacon oinked and whined.
Dirk watched him go and soon the dawn light swallowed him. Reilly didn’t know how lucky he was. He’d inherited some skilled labor, the most valuable commodity in the territory. There were ranchers across the whole area who dreamed of building homes or barns, dreamed of having skilled ranch hands, skilled gardeners, skilled cooks and wheelwrights and millers and harness makers and saddlers. But here he was, getting these riches for the price of a little food and shelter. It was better than a gold mine—if Reilly would figure it out.
But the man was just boneheaded enough so it might elude him. Either that or Reilly just didn’t want to try anything out for size.
Dirk found the newcomers collapsed in corners of the room, lying everywhere but on Reilly’s bunk, which remained property beyond their reach. Marie and Josephine were serving the newcomers any way they could, but most of these exhausted and half-frozen people wanted only to curl up in a robe and rest. The room couldn’t hold them all, and the air was increasingly fetid. Marie handed Dirk a bowl of the stew, which tasted just fine as the new day brightened outside. He ate gratefully and weighed what he might do. He wanted to saddle up and head for Miles City, as he had intended. But there was trouble here, and he alone could mediate between Reilly and these worn and desperate people. Dirk decided to stay another day.
He heard the sound of chopping outside and realized that Pierre and Antony were already busy cutting wood for the hearth and stove. The old man was falling asleep. The two younger ones were propped up against a log wall, staring mutely into the smoky room, too worn to talk.
Dirk squatted next to the one who looked the most able to talk.
“I’m Dirk Skye,” he said in French. “And you?”
The Métis stared, and then talked slowly in that tongue Dirk had so much trouble grasping.
“Alain Boulez,” the man said. “All Boulez. Saskatchewan. Our maman, she is mort.”
“Last night?”
“Oui. She saw the fire burn all we had, sat down in the snow, and perished.”
“I am sorry. She was the spouse of him?” Dirk pointed to the old man.
“Oui. Now the wolves will have her.”
“I’ll go get her. I’ll need to know where she is.”
“Follow our tracks, monsieur. We walked all the way through snow.”
Dirk got their story, bit by bit. These people were newcomers, refugees from the Northwest Territories, hoping to find the Métis who had settled earlier. It was their sole hope for surviving the winter. They were camped in a pine glade near a creek, their Red River cart laden with all they possessed, their two oxen finding a little grass through the crusted snow. And then the night riders had come, men on horses, men wearing slouch hats, chaps, thick leather coats, boots—and six-guns.
“What did they say?” Dirk asked.
“Who knows? They talked Anglais; we could not understand. But they made themselves clear, monsieur. The made us get away from our fire. Then they pitched everything we possessed into the fire. We watched our clothing burn. Our tents, our tools. We watched our venison turn to ash. Our few sacks of roots. And then they tipped the cart onto the fire, and the flames went high into the night, and the wheels burned, and the shafts and the axles and the wooden sides, and it was warm for a little while. Then they found our oxen and took them away so we would not have them to eat, and the Anglais-speakers, they rode away driving the oxen before them. And it was very quiet and soon very cold, and maman, she lay on the snow, her life taken from her, and we could do nothing. We could not carry her. We could not cover her. And soon it was dark and cold and bitter, and all life was bitter, and we would soon join maman unless we found refuge.”
They bundled up in what little they had and started walking, not knowing how to get to Lewistown. They had only a creek to guide them. Travel down a creek and it would take them somewhere. For much of a bitter night they walked, stumbling through the inkiness, no moon to help them, and then one of the men smelled smoke, and his keen nose led them to Reilly’s doorstep.
The cowboys probably assumed these people would be dead by now, lost in some obscure pine forest, never to be seen again. And their ranch would be richer by two oxen.
The story galled Dirk.
“You people rest. I will go for your mother when I am able,” he said.
“The wolves,” said the man. “Go quickly.”
They simply stared at him, so worn by the night wandering the wilderness that they could do no more. Marie and Josephine were toiling quietly at the stove. So many mouths, so much work to feed them all.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he said.
He dressed as warmly as he could. He was ill-dressed for winter, but the days were still mild. The cabin was as silent as death, but the people were watching him, those who could keep their eyes open.
He stepped into a sharp cold. Pierre and Antony were over at the lambing shed, shoveling the manure from it, leveling the ground. Dirk realized suddenly that they were starting to turn the sheds into a shelter, eventually a bunkhouse, a refuge for these people against the terrible winter that would soon be upon them.
He saddled his buckskin, found a hatchet and some twine, and headed out, the blood-specked trail in the patched snow easy to follow. Those people had stumbled and crawled, gotten up and stumbled on through the night. Dirk saw resolution in each step. The trail led slowly down to a creek flowing out of the Moccasin Mountains, and then to a thick pine woods.
The old woman was lying in the patchy snow, her face eaten away. Dirk was too late. Even as he approached, raptors flapped upward and brown animals streaked away. She faced upward, her face gone, her clothing the subdued and modest attire an old Métis woman might wear. A crucifix hung from her neck. Thousands of footprints dimpled the soiled snow around her.
He took off his hat, feeling the bitter air eddy through his own dark hair.
“This is where life ended for you, mother,” he said.
Nearby was a mound of ash, gray and black, some small bits of iron lying about. A family’s entire wealth reduced to nothing. It was as they had told him: the prints of shod horses told the story as much as the softer prints of moccasins and boots. This was murder. Not with a six-gun or knife, but with fire and ice.
He tried to lift her and found she was frozen tightly to the ground. He managed to pull her loose, bit by bit, tugging on her calf-high moccasins, until he freed her. But she was frozen stiff, awkward. He had hoped to carry her back to her people, but knew he couldn’t. He needed to do something else that would honor and respect her. There were willows along the creek, and he knew he would honor her as her Cree ancestors might have. He would give her to the sun and the wind and the heavens.
She was very light but awkward to carry. The creek wasn’t far, and he would find a place for her in the willows. He made his way to a noble willow with two horizontal limbs spreading out like wagon spokes. It would be her grave. He set her down gently and hunted for saplings, which grew abundantly there. These would give him the thin poles he needed to build a scaffold. Reilly’s hatchet was dull, and it was hard work, but eventually he felled a few saplings and limbed them. The miserable hatchet sometimes bounced back rather than bit into wood. He tied two of the saplings to the willow limbs, as crosspieces, and the rest of the saplings he arranged in a row. Here she would lie until the sun and the wind and the snows and the eternal world took her home.
It too
k longer and wearied him more than he had expected, but the moment came when he had a scaffold. He lifted her gently and arranged her there, and wrapped twine over her to hold her there. Then he lifted his cap.
“Grandmother, this is your resting place. It is the way of our ancestors. I don’t know your name but maybe you are related to Therese, and maybe you might have been my own grandmother by marriage. So I will grieve for you as I would one of my family. That is what you are, one of my family, the family of people of two bloods. And so I give you to God. I will tell your husband and your family that you are buried the ancient way, and you are not alone. You will never be alone.”
He couldn’t think of anything more, so he collected his hatchet and climbed onto the buckskin and rode through an utterly quiet autumnal morning.
He would start for Miles City now. He was done here. He had helped these people. He had his own life to look after. He headed back to Reilly’s haphazard settlement, intending to return the hatchet and say good-bye. Reilly would soon come around to welcoming these people, and these people would in turn offer Reilly the labor that was required to make a home and an enterprise out of a patch of foothill land. Dirk was not needed here anymore.
twenty-seven
Dirk was being shadowed. A rider was following, maybe a third of a mile back, and making no secret of his presence. It boded ill. Dirk was unarmed. Still, the rider was making no effort to catch up, and that counted for something.
Dirk stopped a while at a creek, but the rider never approached. Dirk rode on, and the rider reappeared. Dirk was heading toward Reilly’s foothill hog ranch and wondered whether he should head that way or head straight for Lewistown. He decided to continue back to Reilly’s place, collect his stuff, and leave.
This was lonely country. Reilly was situated in a land of long gulches that other ranch outfits didn’t much care for, which was a reason no one bothered him. Dirk knew there would be no help if he should need it. This was one of those corners of the territory that embraced a lot of nothing.
But then, when Dirk reached a two-rut road heading out of Lewistown, he spotted the black carriage, its hood up, the trotters quiet in their harness. Waiting, waiting, waiting for him. It didn’t surprise him. Harley Bain ghosted across this country, choosing the places he wanted to be and the times he wanted to be there. And now Bain was ahead, and Bain’s business would be with Dirk Skye.
Dirk continued. The man behind was following along, keeping his distance. Bain’s man.
He rode closer to the ebony carriage and could see Bain sitting patiently, dressed in a gray alpaca coat. Dirk steered his horse straight toward the carriage and then tugged on the reins.
“You want something from me?” he asked.
“Come sit in here,” Bain replied.
“I’d rather not.”
“I would like you to. My voice doesn’t carry and I don’t like to shout. I don’t even like to speak up. It’s not my nature.”
“Do we have business?” Dirk asked.
“We do.”
“Then I’ll dismount and talk to you. Provided you tell your man out there to steer clear.”
“He already knows that.” Bain did have a soft voice, so soft that Dirk could barely hear him. Bain slowly surveyed Dirk, as if he were a piece of beef. “Yes, you’re the one,” he said. “I believe we’ve met. Not once but twice. Most recently, a few days ago on the Judith River. I’ve made some additional inquiries about you. You’re Dirk Skye, translator for the army until Captain Brewer sacked you out in the field.”
Dirk nodded.
“Ah, they tell me it was because you were exceeding your office.”
“Captain Brewer was not pleased,” Dirk said.
“And it was because you were siding with the quarry.”
“The what?”
“The partridges and pheasants and prairie fowl.”
Dirk had no idea what Bain was saying.
“All those Métis invaders the army was moving out of the area.”
“Pheasants?”
“Game birds, Skye. The army sent out beaters to scare up the birds so they could be shot.”
“What is your business? If this is it, I’ll be on my way now,” Dirk said.
“You’re a mixed-blood yourself, Skye. Shoshone mother, British father, a deserter I’m told. Not much of an inheritance for you.”
“I don’t think we have any business, Mr. Bain.”
Skye turned toward his buckskin, intending to ride away.
“Wait. I’m offering you a job. I’ve ridden all this way to employ you.”
“I don’t think I want that job.”
“Hear me out, Skye. This whole business of driving the flotsam and jetsam of life away from here is melancholic, is it not? It is. I am saddened by it. My riders are instructed not to take life if they don’t have to. But winter finishes off the very people whose lives I have spared. It killed the old woman you just buried. I use the term loosely. The old woman bearing a crucifix that you buried savage-style on a scaffold. She would have preferred a priest and a funeral, I’m sure. But she had to settle for you. Now, Skye, you don’t see my men abusing these illegals. You see them merely building fires here and there and burning their possessions, which means they have nothing at all with which to establish themselves in the States. That’s all I can manage. The army tried humanely to drive them back to Canada, but the army lacked the manpower, and these illegal half-breeds settled into the Missouri Breaks and now they’re swarming my land once again. That’s where you come in.”
“Federal land, not your land.”
Bain smiled for the first time, a gentle shrug. “The land belongs to whoever is willful enough to hold it. I am, and I do. It is mine and will be in the foreseeable future.”
“You done? I’ll be on my way.”
“Not done, Skye. As I say, I am hiring you.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You haven’t heard my proposition. Aren’t you curious about what I would pay? And what you would do? I’ll start with the latter. I’m melancholic about all this. I don’t like to cause suffering, but I am forced to inflict it to protect my grazing land. So I thought to hire you. It will be your task to intercept these people, tell them to head for Canada. You’re a mixed-breed and they will listen. That would lift my sagging spirits, Skye. I am a sensitive man, you see. I really don’t wish to trouble those people. So I’ve thought of this approach as a way of relieving my pain. You will receive a bonus for each family or travel group you turn back to Canada.”
“Sorry, I’m on the other side. I’d like to see them settle here. They’re good, hardworking people.”
Bain smiled. “But you haven’t heard my proposition.”
“I don’t need to.”
“Yes, I’m afraid you do,” Bain said gently. “Your pay. Aren’t you curious about your pay?”
Dirk in fact was curious.
Bain nodded gently, stared up at the overcast. “Your pay will be life.”
“Your pay is life?”
Bain smiled blandly.
It took a while for Dirk to register it. Bain was reading him.
“You can start by evicting that crowd of Métis that Reilly’s got. Then you can evict the Métis in Lewistown, including the girl who’s started building a church. You will tell them to head north at once.”
“A church?”
“A Métis girl says her mission is to build a church, and this was handed down to her by some saint or another, and she’s stirring the pot there. Evict her.”
“I’m on my way to Miles City,” Dirk said.
“Then I can’t pay you,” Bain said softly. “Pity, now, isn’t it?”
“And what of the bonuses you are offering?”
“Two dollars for every Métis you persuade to head north, with no thought of remaining south of the border. You’re a half-breed and a translator. Ideal for the job.”
“Cattle are selling for more per hundredweight, Bain.”
> “Exactly. Cattle are worth more.”
“I’m on my way to Miles City.”
“What a pity.” He eyed Dirk carefully. “I can read you well. You’ve just decided to stay. You’re throwing everything away. You could winter here for a five-hundred-dollar profit.”
“I don’t buy or sell human beings, sir.”
The rancher smiled. “Well, then, till we meet again, eh?”
He slapped his lines over the croups of the trotters and the ebony carriage rolled away, swaying slightly in the rutted lane.
The outrider waited awhile, and then followed Bain westward.
So a hundred-pound Métis was worth two cents a pound. That was the price for breeds, apparently. Dirk figured he’d be worth three dollars in all.
It was very still. Midafternoon, actually. Time enough to make Reilly’s place before dark. Nonetheless he heeled the buckskin hard and put the horse into a mile-eating jog. He would alert those people to the threat. And he would ask them about Bain’s strange story of the Métis girl in Lewistown heeding a vision from a saint. Dirk had heard odd stories, but this was oddest of all.
What sort of man was Bain? A gentleman who spoke softly and found a way not to call murder what it was. And obviously, a man of iron who would impose his will upon the great basin, no matter the cost. And also a lonely man. There apparently were no women in his life, no mothers or daughters or sisters or a wife. There must have been once: he knew his manners and was unfailingly civil, even when he was threatening death.
“Pay me with life,” Dirk said to the buckskin. “They treat horses better.”
The return trip was uneventful although Dirk kept a sharp eye for trouble. He didn’t know what he would do since he was not armed. But nothing happened. He reached the long gulches of the Reilly place and followed one toward the home place, halfway up the foothills. He scared up some wild hogs, which bolted with surprising speed. Reilly was richer than he knew, after years of neglecting his livestock.
The First Dance Page 18
