“Don’t you even think of quittin’ on me, partner. I won’t abide it. You hang onto the horn and let me take the reins.”
“Ain’t nobody takin’ these reins. Not even you.”
John mounted his horse and the pair set off at a walk downriver. Anything faster and Duffy’s pain worsened. At this pace, they were a good hour and a quarter from the crossing, and John worried that his friend might not make it. They rode in silence, the only noises Duffy’s laboured breathing, the quiet thud of horse hooves on the soft ground, the creaking of leather, the animals snorting at the mosquitoes and flies, and the wind that arose from time to time to blow the insects away. John never took his eyes off Duffy, who seemed to be holding his own. Suddenly, Duffy cried, “Oh, shit! Shit!” He leaned onto his horse’s neck and fell from the saddle, hitting the ground with a cry of pain that made John shudder. He leaped down from his horse and rushed to Duffy, who was now curled into a fetal position.
“I can’t sit the horse no more, John,” he panted. “Pain’s way too bad. Better fetch the vet and a wagon.”
John hated to leave Duffy alone, fearing what he might find upon his return, but saw no other option. He got Duffy’s water canteen and left it by his side, then flew into the saddle and urged his horse to a full gallop. He didn’t slow until he reached the crossing and went immediately to the vet’s house on the far side of the community, praying the man was at home. John breathed a sigh of relief when the vet himself answered the door. Quick to respond to his visitor’s plea, the doctor grabbed his medical bag and some blankets. Hurrying outside, he and John hitched up a wagon, linked John’s horse to it, and drove off at a reckless pace.
Duffy had not moved. He was delirious, saying incomprehensible things. Dried tears streaked his face. John could only imagine the pain his friend was suffering, enough to make him cry, a thing that would have to remain unspoken between them. Duffy had also unbuttoned his pants to relieve the pressure on his stomach. His eyes were glassy, but John thought his friend recognized him. He took Duffy’s hand—it felt hot and dry. “You go easy, brother, you hear? Doc’s brought somethin’ to ease the pain. You’ll be fit in no time.”
The vet placed his hand on Duffy’s abdomen and felt around, applying moderate pressure. “He’s badly bloated.” He felt Duffy’s forehead. “He’s burning up, too. It could be anything, but my guess is it’s typhlitis or maybe his appendix. I’ve heard of them bursting, causing the level of pain he’s experiencing. We’d better get him to Doc Hanson in Calgary. Soak one of those blankets in the river and we’ll cool him down a little on the way. I’ll give him a dose of laudanum for the pain.”
John grabbed a blanket, ran to the river, and brought it back dripping wet. He and the vet made Duffy as comfortable as possible on the dry blankets in the back of the wagon and laid the wet one over him. He tied Duffy’s horse to the wagon and they set out on the thirty-mile journey, John driving and the vet administering to Duffy as best he could. The hard-baked ground seemed to be inching by when the vet startled him by tapping his shoulder. “Your friend has slipped into unconsciousness, John, but he’s still on fire. You can fly now. He won’t feel a thing.”
John looked back and his heart lurched to see how pale Duffy’s usually ruddy face was. He shook the reins and the horses broke into a fast trot, travelling as fast as the terrain would allow. Once they reached the road to Calgary, John whipped the horses into a gallop, but it was two hours before the town appeared on the horizon. Twenty minutes later, they arrived at the doctor’s office, which occupied the front room of his house. John jumped down from the driver’s seat, intending to carry Duffy in by himself because it would be quicker. But the look on the vet’s face brought him up short.
“I’m sorry,” he said, the words laden with sincerity. “Your friend’s gone. There was nothing I could do for him.”
•
Most of the crew at the Bar U who did not have duties to keep them away attended Duffy’s funeral, including Fred Stimson. Low scudding clouds and rain made the sombre affair even drearier. Stimson said a few words over the grave, as did John.
He stood and held his hat over his heart. He wished he had the skills to write a fine speech that the men here would talk about whenever Duffy’s name was mentioned. But all he had were the words on the tip of his tongue. “Some things are worth holdin’ on to in a man’s memory and Duffy’s one of them. I rode with him for eight years and he was straight up all the time, as good a friend and brother as a body could want. We talked some about God and Heaven and Hell, and Duffy didn’t believe in any of that. He said he was taught to believe in them, but after seein’ what slave owners got away with and his bein’ in the war and all, he come to believe all those things were nothin’ but ‘silly-ass ideas.’ So I don’t know where Duffy’s gone, but I can tell you this much. It’s a big hole that’s been tore in this world with him gone. In me, too, I gotta say.”
That was all that came out, none of it expressing the true depth of the sorrow he felt.
TWELVE
Go home, child.
John lost his motivation to work on the cabin. He missed his friend, which made him think too much of another lost companion—Emmett. For a black man, white friends were hard to come by, and he had had two of the best. Now they were both gone and he was still here, with a dozen acquaintances and no one to call a real friend. On the bright side, ever since the Fort McLeod newspaper had run that glowing article on him and his skills as a horseman, no one referred to him as “Nigger” John Ware anymore, at least not that he was aware of. It was now just plain John Ware, because everyone knew who he was.
Wanting a change of scenery that wouldn’t remind him of Duffy, he left his cattle to mingle with the Bar U herds and set off for Calgary to look for work. His spirits were down around his spurs, but at least he had hopes of finding a job: Fred Stimson had put in a good word for him at the I.G. Baker Company.
Along the way, he passed the headquarters of the Quorn Ranch, on the banks of the Sheep River, and stopped in, knowing he’d be fed lunch. Owned by English aristocrats, the Quorn took its name from a town in Leicestershire renowned for its fox hunting. It was being set up as both a cattle ranch and a breeding ranch for thoroughbred studs and native mares, to provide the British cavalry with sturdy mounts. He met the manager, a larger-than-life, pleasant-faced, grey-goateed Irishman named John J. Barter, called “J.J.” by those who knew him. The pair had never met but had heard of each other. Indeed, Barter offered John a job on the spot, but John was keen to pursue work in Calgary. He needed something different for a while.
“Well,” said Barter, “when the frantic pace of city life starts wearin’ thin, there’ll be a job waitin’ for ye here if ye’re interested. About lunch then. Surely ye wouldn’t be declinin’ that now, would ye?”
Later that afternoon, John reached Calgary and liveried his horse. He hadn’t expected the townsfolk to greet him with open arms, but it seemed that a year had not been long enough to stop the frigid stares and equally frigid treatment. Yet he was determined not to leave unless it proved impossible to find work, and he planned to devote every ounce of his energy to that task. He went straight to I.G. Baker, a mercantile and grocery outfit on the southeast corner of McTavish and Centre. John guessed that Stimson had neglected to mention his skin colour, because the manager was clearly not comfortable with a black man on the premises.
“There’s nothing for you in the store,” he told John, “but Fred Stimson is a good man and wouldn’t steer me wrong, so I can offer you work in the warehouse.”
John got the picture. The man might as well have added, “Where our customers can’t see you.” He felt insulted, but at the same time knew that he probably would not get as good an offer anywhere else. He accepted.
Almost every item that came off the trains and onto the wagons destined for the I.G. Baker warehouse was awkward or heavy, sometimes both. Indeed, John only got the job because the man he replaced had hurt his back. Kegs of na
ils, bags of flour, wooden containers of sweets, the list went on and on, each piece having its way of raising calluses on top of calluses on a man’s hands and moulding his back into the shape of a bent nail. It did not require brains or any of the skill and knowledge necessary to work with horses and cattle, but it was work a man could throw himself into and drown in a river of sweat.
For the rest of the summer, John worked alongside a white man with little to say to a black man; he eventually fell victim to the hard work and left with a strained Achilles tendon. A drunk replaced him, but as winter approached, the new man decided that he would much rather spend it indoors, preferably in a bar. The latest hire was a young man who had stopped off to winter in Calgary before heading to his home in Victoria. He was sandy haired and handsome, with a scar across his right cheek. A strapping lad, he was ideally suited for the heavy work of loading and unloading the wagons, and never shied away from it. John liked that about his new partner and enjoyed working with him. His name was Jack Strong and, among other things, he said he had been at Frog Lake during the massacre and that he had ridden alongside Sam Steele, of the North West Mounted Police, during the hunt for the Cree Chief Big Bear. He said he received the scar on his cheek from a bullet during the Battle of Loon Lake. John had no reason to disbelieve him, for he was not a braggart and his stories rang with authenticity.
As time passed, John noticed that whenever the new employee hired for inside the store was away, management always asked John’s partner to replace him, never John himself. He knew why but kept silent about it. Jack was onto it right away, though, and mentioned it one day. John laughed derisively and told him about not getting that job in the first place because of his colour.
Jack shook his head. “What a bunch of fools, but I guess it’s their loss, not yours.” Later, after thinking about it, he said, “You know, the next time they ask me to work in the store, why don’t I tell them I can’t and that they ought to ask you?”
“You don’t wanna do that, Jack. It’ll only get you in a mess of trouble and it ain’t worth it, not if you plan on workin’ in this town over the winter.”
Jack look frustrated. “If I’ve learned anything in the past year or so, it’s that the colour of a man’s skin is not where you begin making judgments about him.”
“Well, that don’t appear to be the case here, Jack. Be nice if it was, but you better let me handle this my own way. It’ll be best for both of us.”
•
When John arrived in town, he had taken a small room above the Turf Club, a lofty name for a rather seedy establishment that sat unobtrusively on the west side of McTavish Street, catty-corner from the I.G. Baker store. It had four rental rooms upstairs, two of which had full-time occupants. The club let the two other rooms by the hour over the winter months when business was slow. A set of stairs inside the saloon led to the rooms, as well as stairs outside in the alley behind the club. This was how a man paying to use a room for his carnal pleasures got a prostitute up there without putting himself on display. These men were generally rough-hewn and whisky-sodden, and the women were Indian prostitutes who worked the streets. Such a place had no reservations about accepting steady income from a black man.
As it turned out, Jack Strong knew the other full-time tenant at the Turf Club: Tom Fisk, a tall, lanky man whose movements seemed uncoordinated, as if he were about trip over himself, a trait that had earned him the nickname “Jumbo.” He was an easy man to like when he was sober. Good-natured and humorous, he would remain that way through his first few drinks. After that, he often became maudlin and was prone to complaining, and could go from that to mean-minded in the tossing back of a single drink. He had grown up in central Canada, where he trained as a blacksmith, but when he first came west in 1882, he was involved in the illegal whisky trade that plagued Alberta. He used his illicit gains to buy and train racehorses. This was inspired in part by a love for the animals but mostly by a passion for gambling. He made enough money to build the Turf Club but drank and gambled it away, so now he was a patron and tenant.
He had volunteered for Steele’s Scouts during the rebellion for two reasons: he hoped it would get him off the booze and that it would provide him with an opportunity to kill an Indian. Instead, he became even more of a drunkard and an Indian had almost killed him. His left little finger had been shot off on the trail to Loon Lake and he did not have full movement in his left elbow, where the same bullet had shattered the bone. Jack had ridden with Fisk that day and remembered how angry he had been when Steele sent him home with his goal unfulfilled.
The result was that Jumbo had no sympathy for “redskins,” as he called them. His brush with death had both scared him witless and angered him. He claimed to have recurring nightmares over it, and that was why he drank. Yet despite his professed loathing for Indians, from time to time John saw him bring an Indian prostitute up the back stairs to his room.
•
December passed and along with it Christmas, which went unobserved by John. He walked through the city often, trying to knit it into his bones, thinking that people would get used to seeing him and realize he meant no one any harm. He kept to the boardwalks where they existed, but otherwise followed the trampled-down tracks of horse-drawn sleighs plying the snowbound streets. He found the excursions pleasant, despite the occasional racist comment. He would usually smile and continue on his way.
One evening as he was nearing the train station, he saw three Indian women wrapped in blankets and scarves to protect them from the weather. They were just standing on the corner and would not have been there braving the cold if they were not prostitutes. John planned to ignore them, as the town authorities did, and walk on by, but he could not fail to notice that one was a young girl about fifteen or sixteen. Her beautiful brown eyes caught John’s and she stepped forward.
“You want to spend some time with me?” she asked, coyly.
John’s heart caught in his throat. She was very pretty, on the verge of womanhood, and there was a desperate shortage of women in his life. It was one thing to be on a ranch surrounded by men and quite another to be in a city where a multitude of women served as a daily reminder that he had none in his life. Part of him wanted to take this girl back to his room to satisfy the lust that arose in him at times, but he felt sorry for her. She was nothing like the prostitutes he had met in Dodge City or Virginia City, most of whom worked the trade because they chose to and were wise to the ways of the world. He suspected that this young girl was selling herself because she had to help feed her family. He shook his head and continued on his way. Several paces past them, he stopped and turned back. He gave the girl two dollars.
“Go home, child,” he said.
She didn’t, of course, and whenever John encountered her, he gave her a dollar or two. She always took the money and thanked him, sometimes followed by a diffident, “I go with you?” But she never looked him in the eye again. Life on the street seemed to be sucking out whatever pride she owned. John wondered if he was doing more harm than good by giving her money and considered stopping when he began to smell liquor on her breath. But he figured that drinking might be the only way she could deal with the course her life had taken.
Returning to his room one evening after a walk, he saw Jumbo Fisk leading the young Indian girl up the back stairs. He entertained thoughts of rescuing her but did nothing. It did not seem to be within his power, and he had to consider the possibility that the girl did not want rescuing.
John stewed in his room for about an hour. At one point, he swore he heard a commotion coming from Jumbo’s room. Then he heard the door open and close, followed by footsteps along the hall to the stairs leading to the bar. It had to be Fisk; the girl would have left using the stairs to the alley. A few minutes later, footsteps came up the stairs, accompanied by the voices of two men, one distinctly Jumbo’s, the other unrecognizable. He heard the door to Fisk’s room open, more voices, and the door closed. The voice he could not identify said, “Let�
�s go get something to eat.” The footsteps retreated down the stairs to the bar.
What was going on? John reckoned that perhaps the girl had passed out from too much liquor and Fisk would come back after he had filled his belly and take her again. John decided he would not let that happen. He would get the girl, and if she was awake, give her some money and try to talk her into leaving. If she was unconscious, he would bring her back to his room and when she was sober enough, he would give her money and she could go home. He fretted over the decision for a long time before making up his mind. He cracked open his door and peered down the lamp-lit hall.
Fisk’s room was on the side opposite to John’s, two doors down. He went quickly along the hall and knocked on the door. There was no answer. He put his ear to one of the panels but heard nothing. He tried the knob. The door was unlocked, which was not surprising, as few people in town ever locked their doors; indeed, most doors were not equipped with locks. He pushed it open and a shaft of yellow light from the hallway made a path into the room. He stood in the entrance, letting his eyes grow accustomed to the gloom. He could make out a figure on a bed to his left, its feet pointing toward the headboard. He was certain it was the girl; her torso appeared to be naked. The idea that he should mind his own business nagged at him, but he cast caution aside. To hell with it, he thought. Fisk would never guess that John had taken her. He would think she had got up on her own and left. He took a few tentative steps into the room.
The fire had gone out in the stove and the room was cool. The air reeked of alcohol and something else. That was when he saw the black blotches all over the girl’s face, chest, and stomach, and on the bed. He could even see some on the wall. He knew it was blood. His heart raced. He hurried to her side and recoiled in horror. Some of her insides had been ripped out and her once-pretty face was grossly disfigured, possibly by somebody’s fists. John wanted to vomit. His mind was a whirlpool of thoughts, mostly about the stark truth that he was a black man in a room with a dead girl. If someone came up the stairs and found him, he was certain to be the next black man hanged in Calgary. He had to resist an almost overwhelming desire to run, shut the door behind him, pretend he’d never seen anything, and let Jumbo deal with it. He pulled some matches from his pocket and struck one. Water in the basin on the washstand against the opposite wall was dark with blood and a knife lay next to it. On the wall, in between the bed and the washstand, as if a drunken man had lost his balance, was a perfect handprint formed in blood. It did not take any great detective to see that it was missing a little finger.
High Rider Page 15
