She had given up wearing her sun bonnet and a flush of colour had stained her pale cheeks.
‘The tripman, Angus, has a feverish condition of the brain,’ she said. ‘He was in distress on our first evening at Norway House; this much I saw when I met him on my evening stroll. Later, at dinner, I arranged with Doctor Munroe that he should assess Angus the following morning. First, however, I wanted to make sure that Foxfire was adequately stabled. That was when I saw you riding the Jesuit’s horses. As we watched you, Angus asked who you were, and when I told him your name he responded that he had once known your father, as he later told you himself.’
‘But I need to know more!’ I released Orchid’s arm as Pierre carried Eva through the shallows and lifted her over the gunwale. She seated herself beside Orchid after flashing Pierre a glance from under fluttering black lashes. He winked in return, pulled himself aboard, and stepped past us to take up the long steering oar. With a heave and a shout, our boat was pushed into deeper water, and already Norway House fort was hidden from view behind the swell of land.
‘What else do you know?’ I asked Orchid.
‘Angus is no longer rowing with this brigade, for the doctor judged him too unwell for the rigours of the journey,’ she said.
‘Not with us? But – but I need to talk to him – I need to ask him more about my father!’
Orchid shook her head. ‘It will not be possible. He has a nervous condition that causes convulsions.’
‘He is turning Witiko. His heart is turning to ice,’ I said. ‘He has eaten human flesh in a starving moon, or been visited by the Witiko in his vision quest, or maybe was predestined to become a sorcerer.’
Orchid stared at me with her bright blue gaze as sharp as a knife blade, but after a moment she laughed. ‘What superstitious stories,’ she said, bending over to pull her sketching paper from her leather satchel. ‘The poor man is simply ill.’ She selected a pencil and began to sketch a bunch of feathers she had collected onshore: a grey jay’s wing feather, a down feather from a goose breast.
‘There was such a man of my acquaintance in Norfolk. He did no one any harm, and was perfectly sane between his periods of brain fever.’
‘He uses hunting medicine to master his cat.’
Orchid stared for a moment, looking puzzled. ‘Ah! In the pouch!’ she realised, and began to smile. ‘No, it is merely a dried plant, called catnip. Its smell is pleasurable to cats, and in England it is often grown in gardens.’
I pressed my lips together in frustration, and turned my face southwards, towards the mighty sheet of Lake Winnipeg that stretched ahead of us for about three hundred miles. The wind lifted the curls that escaped from Orchid’s braid, and blew them back over her shoulders, and sent the stallion’s red mane flickering around his neck. The men, rested now, were in high spirits. They broke into song as the sky suddenly stretched huge above us and the shorelines fell away; the mighty lake shimmered from horizon to horizon, a heaving mass of waves where cloud reflections floated and fish jumped. I felt the open space and the wind swirl round me like a loud shout; it was like being home on the bay again and, despite my troubled thoughts, a smile lifted the corners of my mouth as my eyes ran to and fro over that expanse of fresh water.
When we met another brigade, the tripmen shouted challenges across the water and the boats were lined up alongside each other, the men whooping and yelling insults. Then, on a signal, oars dug into the water and the boats surged forward, racing south while arms and backs strained and the waves sloshed against our hull with the speed of our passage. On the following day, the wind swung into the north and the men raised the canvas sails, flapping at first so that Foxfire snorted nervously and shied, banging his hooves against the sides of his stall. As the sail filled with wind and grew taut, the flapping ceased and the stallion stilled again. Now the men lay on their backs on the benches or propped themselves against the bales of trade goods, smoking their pipes or sleeping, or telling stories about bear attacks and gambling debts. Eva moved to sit in the stern with Pierre, repairing a tear in his jacket with a deer’s sinew, and talking to him in a low tone that the wind whipped away so that only he knew what he smiled about, twisting his earrings while he listened. I began to embroider the toe of the second of my pair of new moccasins, threading my needle through the blue beads. Fa-ther, the waves slapped against the hull. Light-foot. Fa-ther.
Day after day we travelled southwards on that expanse, the wind and the sunlight always pressing against us, the sky a vast bowl overhead. The smell of algae and pipe tobacco filled my nostrils while gulls slipstreamed overhead with their harsh, keening cries. The men fished as we travelled. In the evenings we camped onshore and fried their catches in flat pans over the fire and ate them with our bannock and our drink of weak tea made with sugar but no milk.
One morning, when we were only – so Pierre said – about twenty miles north of the lake’s end and the mouth of the Red River, we awoke early to a wind blowing from the west. Its gusts lifted the shallow lake into heaving waves, thick and soupy with mud from the bottom. Briefly, the men conferred about remaining in camp until the weather improved, but they were anxious to reach the Red River and decided to set sail despite the squall. As our boat bashed southwards in the cresting waves, the men reefed the straining sail to make its canvas surface smaller. Still the wind rose. Eventually, the men took the sail down and ran out the oars. The boat rocked and jumped like a frightened horse itself so that Foxfire scrabbled in his stall, sliding, shifting. He strained for purchase on the tilting boards, and his eyes rolled white. Orchid and I balanced beside him, flung to and fro, gripping his halter and trying to soothe him. Waves splashed over the gunwales, soaking my moccasins and leggings, dashing against the stallion’s red flanks so that he shied and flinched in fear, even rearing half up against the rope that held him. Soon, he was fetlock deep in water.
‘We must get ashore!’ Orchid cried commandingly to Pierre.
‘Oui, j’y vais.’ He swung his full weight upon the creaking oar, and the boat swung slowly into the wind so that we were heading straight into the waves, our bow swinging up, up, up into the scudding clouds and then plunging down, down, down into the next wall of rushing water. White crests formed on the waves, strangely pale in the yellow haze, and streaks of foam flew past. The wind blew hot and then cold, sending chills over me even as I broke into a sweat, struggling with the terrified horse.
‘If we capsize, he will swim!’ Orchid reminded me.
‘But we are still far from shore!’ I worried, then asked the question that I had been wondering for many days. ‘Do all horses – like the water – as much?’
‘Some are frightened of it! Some indifferent!’ she shouted over the wind and the stallion’s tossing neck. ‘Foxfire learned to swim young – in the marshes of the Norfolk Broads. He has always – loved water!’
The shoreline came closer, low and flat, covered with a mixture of coniferous and deciduous trees including elm and ash. We cleared a headland to see, on its far side, a thin strip of sandy beach. ‘Make for there!’ the bows man cried and the men bent, windtorn and desperate, over the oars. Their tamarack shafts groaned in the wooden oarlocks, and the boat’s hull creaked and moaned as the waves twisted it. As we ran into the lee of the shore, the wind and waves subsided slightly. Gazing towards land, I noticed the tipis, covered in hides and in sheets of pale bark, and huddled amongst the trees a few hundred yards back from the beach.
‘A camp!’ I cried, and around me the men strained to see it. Smoke rising from fires inside the tipis was snatched away in the wind. Now I saw figures moving, and as we came closer I heard the shrieking laughter of children playing in the shallows and jumping the waves.
‘It is a camp of the Métis, the half-bloods,’ Pierre said behind me. ‘They trade, bringing goods from Red River peut-être. Here they look for the Salteaux and the Cree who trap the beavers and muskrats. Here, west of Lake Winnipeg, are many swamps.’
In the shallows,
the men jumped overboard and began to unload the York boats while the Métis people gathered onshore, watching us curiously. The women’s brilliantly coloured calico dresses and the men’s neckerchiefs were like flags in the wind. Suddenly, the stallion flung up his head and gave a shrill neigh; when I followed the line of his gaze, I glimpsed horses and oxen inside the circle formed by wooden carts with two high wheels and platforms of boards.
Samuel and another man lowered the tamarack planks into the sand in the shallows with a splash, then struggled to rest their other ends on the boat’s heaving gunwale while I untied Foxfire.
‘He will never walk down those,’ one of the men objected, standing thigh deep in water as waves sloshed up to his waist.
‘Hold the boat!’ the bows man yelled. ‘HOLD her steady, I said!’
The crew, all down in the water, threw their shoulders against the hull, and Pierre strained at the oar as the boat rocked in the wash of waves. I gripped the stallion’s lead rope with white knuckles. ‘Walk on, heart of a bear,’ I crooned. ‘Walk on now.’
The horse pawed at the gunwale. A wave slapped the hull and flew upwards, splattering the stallion’s chest so that he snorted and flung up his head. I stepped on to a slick plank and slid one foot along it.
‘Attention!’ hollered Pierre above and behind me with a note of alarm, and simultaneously I felt the rush and the power of the stallion as he leaped over the gunwale. In a blur he was past me, his hooves ringing once on the planks before he jumped off them. I flew through the air, still gripping the rope, and the water hit me with a warm slap. My mouth filled with sand. Foxfire surged shorewards, his feet finding the sandy bottom and heaving him upwards on to the beach where I stumbled, dripping but unhurt, into the circle of incredulous Métis faces. Their hubbub of voices rose into the air as they cried and exclaimed over the stallion’s huge size and strength, over his colour, over his leap from the boat, and as other voices asked after my well-being in a mixture of English, French, and a tongue that sounded like Cree and yet that I couldn’t understand. Women rubbed my arms and chafed my hands in their own, and offered me hot rabbit soup with berries, and a warm fire.
‘Soon,’ I agreed over and over. ‘Soon, but first I must care for the horse.’
A voice spoke at my shoulder in the Cree that I couldn’t understand.
I swung around. And there he was, standing on the pale beach in the hot brassy light of that wild morning: the most beautiful young man I had ever seen. A flush ran over my face and my eyes fell down the length of the stallion’s legs to where his hooves pressed into the broken shells.
‘Do you need help?’ he repeated, this time in English.
‘I am fine.’
‘This horse is yours?’
I shook my head. ‘No, he belongs to the white woman who travels with us. But I take care of him.’
‘I am Gabriel Gunner. I have mustangs.’
My eyes rose slowly, rose over the restless shift of the stallion’s shoulder, and glanced at last at the young man’s face. It was all smooth brown skin and hard planes. His black eyes seemed to read every mile that I had travelled to reach this moment. Those eyes were filled with the silence of forests, the flare of campfires. They were framed by loose strands of hair, threaded through brass pipes and dentalia shells, and by two long braids. These hung down the front of his fringed buckskin coat; the fringes were decorated with orange and yellow beads, and the fire pouch hanging over his shoulder was bright with yellow beaded flowers. Hot gusts of wind lifted the black hair on his forehead, and the fringes of the red woven sash knotted at his waist.
A smile tugged the corners of his wide mouth.
‘You have mustangs?’ my small voice asked at last.
‘They are here, grazing while my little brother keeps guard. Come, bring your red stallion and tie him up, then I will show you.’
The crowd of Métis parted as we moved up the shingle slope; children ran ahead and behind, laughing. When I glanced back, I saw that Charlotte and Orchid were already seated on the beach on a flapping blanket spread beside the piles of trade goods. Samuel Beaver leaned into the wind, bringing Orchid a handful of coloured stones to sketch later, whenever the storm blew itself out. The other tripmen used ropes and harnesses, as though they were sled dogs, to drag the York boats higher on to the shore. Orchid caught my glance and waved cheerfully.
I turned around then and stepped from the beach on to the grass, leading Foxfire and following the tall, lithe wiriness of the beautiful Gabriel Gunner, owner of mustangs.
Chapter 11
I stood still at the edge of a natural clearing awash in fine yellow grass and surrounded by thrashing poplar trees. Sucking in a mouthful of windy air, I held it in my chest. A smile of delight stretched my cheeks as I gazed at Gabriel’s two grazing mustangs. Each wore a black halter of braided rope, and the lead line of each one was tied to a foreleg so that the horses were hobbled. At our approach, they tossed up their heads as far as they were able to, and gazed at us from beneath the beaded leather fringes that hung over their eyes. A nicker of welcome fluttered their black nostrils.
When Kicimanitow made these horses, I thought, he shaped them from brown soil. Then he dipped them in wild golden honey, and then stood them by a smoking fire until a drift of mottled grey had smudged itself over their brown and honey hides.
I let my breath out again in slow wonder.
‘They are called Hard Twist and Smoke Eyes,’ said Gabriel, motionless at my shoulder.
‘What is their colour called?’
‘Grulla,’ he replied. ‘It is a word from the Spanish nation.’
‘Are all mustangs this colour?’
‘No, a mustang can be any colour at all: brown, black, white. Maybe spotted or piebald. Buckskin. Sorrel or dappled.’
I took a step closer to Gabriel’s horses, my eyes running over their compact, muscular bodies. They were smaller than Foxfire, sinewy and strong. Their hard black hooves were unshod and their long black manes and tails were luxurious, and tangled in the wind’s snarl.
‘This is the gelding, Hard Twist,’ said Gabriel, stepping to the larger of the two mustangs and running the flat of his palm down the horse’s face. ‘This other is the mare, Smoke Eyes. They are brother and sister.’
I stood at the mare’s shoulder and let her sniff me; her black muzzle gave my arm a gentle nudge then ran across my shoulder where she breathed gustily into my hair. Her soft lips twitched against my cheek and a giggle burst from me. Down the front of her face ran a thin wavering line of white, like the foam on a wave’s crest, and between her nostrils she had a tiny white mark, shaped like a fire flint. I laid my forehead against hers, and felt the softness and the wildness of her spirit.
‘She will always be your friend now,’ Gabriel said, sounding surprised. ‘She has never laid her face against anyone’s chest before, except mine.’
I dropped my glance from Gabriel’s intent gaze, and fingered the halter’s braided straps. ‘What is this made from?’
‘Woven buffalo hair. And these fringes hanging from the band across her forehead keep the flies out of her eyes.’
I nodded, and ran my hands all over that mare, getting to know her; long after I had travelled on I wanted to be able to remember the hard bones of her black knees, the grey dapple of her belly, the golden flush on her flanks. I wanted to remember the thin, wavering whiteness of her facial pattern, the tight bend of her hocks, and the darkness of her eyes where fire smouldered, like flames beneath the softness of ashes. ‘Smoke Eyes,’ I whispered into the heavy fringing of her short, swivelling ears.
A sudden nudge against my shoulder made me straighten and turn; the gelding had stepped forward and pushed his muzzle against me. ‘He is jealous.’ Gabriel laughed. ‘You need to love him too.’
I stroked my hand along the crest of Hard Twist’s shaggy neck, over his low withers, down the slope of his croup. When the mare crowded in close, the gelding laid back his ears and thrust his nose towards
her so that she stepped away again. ‘He’s the captain and makes the rules,’ Gabriel said with a grin.
I glanced up in surprise. ‘I have only spent much time with one horse. I don’t know how they talk to each other.’
‘Watch these two. They talk to each other all day long with their ears and their heads, with their bodies. Everything a horse does has a meaning – a stamp, a snort, a twitch, a sideways look. In a herd, there is a lead mare who decides where the herd will wander, where it will graze. And there is a stallion who guards the rear from attack by wildcats. He rounds up the stragglers. And all the horses in the herd have more or less power than one another.’
I had thought myself clever until now, clever because I knew how to make the big red stallion contented, how to care for him according to Orchid’s instructions. Now I began to see that I knew nothing much about horses, perhaps only a tiny little pinch of everything that this smiling Métis knew. I didn’t even understand where all the horses in the grasslands had come from.
‘Did you buy your horses from a man of the Spanish nation?’ I asked.
‘No, they are from my father’s herd. The Spanish came a very long time ago, across the ocean. Their country is to the south of where the Scotsmen come from, further south than the land of the French. They sent their warriors across the sea. These men brought their horses with them, many head of horses. But gradually the horses escaped, or were stolen or traded for, and gradually they spread northwards over the land. Those horses were like a flood of water, always on the move, covering the grasslands. They grew strong and tough and wild; the mares dropped many foals. Then the nations of the grassland people began to catch them and ride them. It was like being given wings! The young warriors could fight and steal over a great territory, running fast, running hard!
‘The Comanche of the south had them, then their kinsmen the Shoshone to the north. The horses came east with the Mountain Crow and the River Crow. There was no name for horses in the languages of the nations; the Lakota called them Holy Dog. The Siksika called them Elk Dog. The Assiniboine called them Big Dog. In Cree too they are called mistatim, Big Dog. They are a sacred animal to all the peoples of the horse.’
Red River Stallion Page 15
