The Third Riel Conspiracy

by Stephen Legault

  “Durrant,” said the superintendent, his eyes bright in the light of the lamp. Durrant stopped and looked back. “I’ll find a way to get you into this. I promise you that. It’s just not going to be with the Scouts.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “Don’t thank me, Sergeant. Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont are powerful, intelligent, and driven men, not to be trifled with. These ranchers and policemen I’ll be leading know this country, and are handy with their Winchesters, but the boys that are coming by train from Toronto, Montreal, and Halifax are not soldiers. Blood may well be spilled. I just hope that cooler heads prevail.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it, Superintendant.”

  “Nor would I, Durrant.”

  IT HAD TAKEN Steele just two days to assemble his Scouts, but he had to wait for General Strange to form up his regulars, so it was more than a week before the entire Alberta Field Force could march north to Fort Edmonton. Once they had left, there was only a handful of North West Mounted Police left to watch over the rough city.

  At long last the man Durrant had been waiting for emerged. He yelled a good night to his companions in the bar and staggered down the muddy street.

  Durrant watched a moment and then, his crutch under his right arm for support, stepped down into the road and carefully crossed to the wooden plank sidewalk on the far side. The mud pulled at his prosthetic and the rain threatened to flatten him, but he reached the other side.

  The man he was following turned into a boarding house at the end of Stephen Avenue. Durrant picked up his pace and reached the door of the two-storey building in time to observe the man tromping up the stairs.

  Durrant entered and made for the staircase. The crutch was a clumsy and noisy tool, so he set it by the door and limped carefully to the steps. Practice and patience had brought back much of his former mobility, and a recent visit to the NWMP hospital in Regina to have the prosthetic adjusted had given him more trust in the leg’s stability.

  As he mounted the stairs, he reached inside his dripping coat, retrieved his Enfield Mk II, and held it at his side. His thumb worried the hammer. He listened a moment and heard a door close. Quietly ascending the stairs, he peered down the long hallway that ran the length of the building. There were four doors on either side. Enough light reached the hallway through a window at the top of the stairs that Durrant could make out the muddy tracks left by the man.

  Durrant waited. He wanted to catch the man sleeping to avoid the possibility of a violent end to this pursuit. The fellow had arrived from Fort Benton, Montana, a week before with a string of horses to sell. He was known to have a reputation for settling his disputes with a pistol. There were rumours that he was also involved with selling illegal whiskey on the Blackfoot reserve. Drawing a silent breath, Durrant stepped noiselessly toward the closed door, his pistol still pointing at the floor as his right hand tried the door handle. To his surprise, it turned easily: he had expected to find the door locked. With minimal effort he pushed it open and scanned the room, the Enfield pistol levelled at the gloom.

  There was no one in the bed. Durrant could smell tobacco and the sweet stench of whiskey along with something else, a tang that caused him to catch his breath. The sparse room appeared empty. Durrant stepped inside and closed the door, checking to be sure his foe wasn’t hiding behind it. That’s when he saw the armoire resting behind the door, and he quickly brought his pistol back up. He carefully stepped to one side of its double doors and, fearing a blast of buckshot, flipped the latch on the closet and threw the doors open. It was empty.

  Behind him, the bed and its frame seemed to leap from the floor. The room filled with bedsheets, mattress, and steel frame, all colliding with Durrant. As he was thrown forward against the armoire, Durrant caught sight of the man leaping to his feet from beneath the bed and making for the door. The heavy mattress and frame momentarily pinned Durrant against the closet as the man fled, crashing down the hall toward the stairs. With his pistol held before him, Durrant rushed as quickly as he could to the stairs. He caught sight of the man jumping the last six steps and running for the exit door. The flight of stairs was difficult for Durrant and he felt his heart sink when he thought his prey might slip away into the storm.

  Cursing himself, he reached the parlour and hop-stepped for the door. He got there in time to see the pursued man slip in the mud and land on his back on Stephen Avenue. The man gripped a Colt pistol in his hand. Durrant stood in the door, his own pistol aimed at the prone figure.

  “Police! Drop the gun!” he commanded. The din of the rain swallowed up his words so he yelled, “You’re wanted for horse stealing. Drop it!”

  The man was getting to his feet, his body soaked with rain and dripping with mud, but he made no move to throw down his weapon.

  “Last chance. Drop the gun. I’ve got you dead to rights.” His left hand level with his eye, Durrant stared down the steel barrel of the Enfield, its forward sight aimed squarely at the man’s heaving chest.

  The man made as if to raise his pistol, and Durrant shifted his sight and pulled the trigger. The Enfield’s explosion was consumed by the storm. Wallace’s shot found its mark on the man’s right arm and his pistol dropped into the muddy street. The man bent and gripped his wound.

  “Welcome to the Dominion of Canada. You’re under arrest.”

  THERE WAS THE expected confrontation at the North West Mounted Police fort. Durrant stood in the lockup, his prisoner behind bars in the adjoining room and his supervisor, his uniform hastily pulled on, standing before him. Sub-Inspector Raymond Dewalt had been sleeping when Durrant rode into the compound of the fort. Durrant’s prisoner was in shackles and was led by a short rope tethered to the pommel of his saddle. The constable on night watch had roused Dewalt, and once the prisoner was behind bars the sub-inspector confronted Durrant. “What were you doing going after this man alone, Wallace?” Dewalt hissed.

  “I saw my chance and I took it, sir.”

  “You could have gotten yourself killed! Or worse, you could have killed a civilian with your reckless behaviour. I thought you and I were clear that there was to be no discharge of a firearm within the limits of the town of Calgary.”

  Durrant broke open the rotating cylinder of the Colt pistol he had taken from his prisoner and emptied the cartridges from it onto the table. “Someone forgot to tell that to our man back there.”

  “Don’t play smart with me, Sergeant. We’re not on the open range here; it would have been just as easy for you to wait until morning when we could have sent constables to arrest your man as he took his breakfast.”

  Durrant snapped the cylinder closed. “Inspector, our men here in Calgary are stretched thin. Nobody knows that better than you. With the rebellion and fears that the Cree might strike along the frontier, our constables are at their wits’ end trying to cover the territory and keep the peace in this town. If I’d waited for there to be a contingent of men, this ruffian might have slipped back across the border. He might see that Calgary is an easy place to profit from thievery and moonshining. I saw the chance and I took it.”

  Dewalt watched the sergeant lock the pistol in a desk drawer and wipe his hands on his coat. “You could have been killed,” the sub-inspector protested weakly. “How would I explain that?”

  “Your troubles with me would have been over.”

  DURRANT STOOD IN the fort’s jail. The doctor had just left and the prisoner was looking angrily at the sergeant, cradling his bandaged right arm with his left hand. “What’s your name?” Durrant asked.

  “I ain’t telling you a goddamned thing.”

  Durrant looked around as if to inspect the cell. “Who are you stealing horses with?” The prisoner sat staring at Durrant through the bars. “You come up from Fort Benton country. We’ve got a report from Fort Macleod that you trailed twenty head of horses through there ten days ago. We’ve got half a dozen men in this area who say that you sold them horses under false pretenses. Forged papers from a breeder in Pi
ncher Creek.”

  “You got nothing to hold me on. And you shot up my arm!”

  Durrant continued. “There’s a bunch of men in this town that are pretty riled up about parting with their cash and getting stolen horses in return. Buck Stilton is one of them. Maybe you don’t know Buck, but he’s one tough customer. Last year he punched a man in a bar fight so hard that he split the man’s skull right open. Buck doesn’t like to be messed with. I’ve told Mr. Stilton that you’re here and he’s wondering if he might see you about those horses you sold him. Mr. Stilton says he’d like to have a conversation about getting his money back.”

  Durrant stepped closer to the bars and dangled a set of keys. He slid one of them into the lock of the cell door and opened it.

  “What are you doing?” asked the prisoner.

  “You said I got nothing to hold you on.”

  “Yeah?”

  “So I figured I’d let you go.”

  “What the . . .” The prisoner sat down on his bunk.

  “Don’t you want to go?”

  The man looked pale as a winter day. “My name is Bud Ensley. I got a right to a lawyer in the Dominion Territory, I think.”

  Durrant’s face grew dour. “I know that name—Ensley. You and me, I believe we got history.”

  THE SUN ROSE over the NWMP barracks and Durrant Wallace was still sitting in the guardroom. When Durrant had been stationed at Fort Walsh in the late ’70s, Jeb Ensley was a notorious whiskey runner who had been running contraband up from Fort Benton, Montana, through the Wild Horse and Onefour region along the Medicine Line and up into the Cypress Hills. Ensley was part of a gang of outlaws, retired Civil War vets, and hired killers. After the arrival of the Mounted Police in 1874, the gang had fled back across the border but hadn’t abandoned the lucrative trade in whiskey with the Indians of the Dominion. Bud Ensley, now in Fort Calgary’s lock-up, was Jeb’s kid brother.

  In the winter of 1881, Jeb Ensley and several other men had been trying to take whiskey and rum and other contraband to the Indians throughout the North West Territories. They had already killed one man—a Hudson’s Bay Company factor—when he refused to trade with them. The North West Mounted Police were tracking Jeb across the Cypress Hills. Durrant Wallace was closing in and in his customary fashion had thrown caution to the wind in order to pursue his quarry. Ensley and his gang had ambushed him, shooting his horse and wounding Durrant in the gun battle. It had nearly cost him his life; instead, he’d lost his left leg and much of the use of his right hand. Ensley and the others had disappeared after that. It was thought they had left Montana and headed south for Oklahoma, or even Texas. Now Durrant had his best lead in almost five years as to the whereabouts of the man who had attempted to kill him.

  There was a knock, and the door pushed open. Durrant saw young John, who had replaced him in attending to the post and wire service. “Sergeant Wallace?”

  “What is it, John?”

  “A wire for you. From Superintendent Steele.”

  “Bring it here, son.” The boy looked at Durrant’s hand on his pistol, and Durrant lifted it and waved him over. John crossed the floor and handed Durrant the cable.

  “There’s been a fight at Fish Creek, sir. Have you heard?”

  “Yes, read it in the papers yesterday.”

  “Ten men killed and forty-three wounded! Middleton hisself nearly got shot!”

  “Middleton walked right into it. If the Métis hadn’t run out of ammunition, it would have been far worse.”

  “What do you think will happen?”

  “Middleton’s got good men under his command. He got beat at Fish Creek. It won’t happen again, so long as he doesn’t split his forces and walk into another ambush.”

  “You want me to wait for a reply from you to Superintendant Steele?” the boy asked.

  “No, if a response is needed, I’ll send it myself.”

  “Thank you again, Sergeant Wallace.”

  “Everything is going to be okay, John. You’ll see. Hell, Steele’s Scouts will have restored some peace to the territories before June arrives.”

  “Yes, sir!” The boy seemed to brighten. He turned and left, closing the door behind him.

  Durrant watched him go and then unfolded the wire correspondence. He decoded it as he read:

  To Sergeant Durrant Wallace.

  From Sam Steele, Commanding, via Fort Edmonton.

  Urgent.

  Sergeant Wallace, havoc on the trail to Batoche. Disaster at Fish Creek has resulted in delays. Forces stretched thin. In need of men who can parley with Cree. Proceed at once to intercept Middleton’s forces to aid in the restoration of peace.

  Steele had kept his promise.

  DURRANT WAS STANDING before Sub-Inspector Dewalt. “He hasn’t told me where his older brother Jeb is now,” said Durrant. “He has told me enough that I can deduce he’s back in Montana, either in Fort Benton or down in the Judith Basin.”

  The deputy commander of the fort had shaved and straightened his uniform and was sitting at his desk with a cup of black coffee, regarding Wallace with a weary expression. “You don’t expect me to license a trip across the Medicine Line now so you can track down this phantom, do you?”

  Durrant felt his pulse quicken. “No, sir—”

  “Good.” Dewalt cut him off. “You said it yourself last night. We’re stretched thin.”

  “Yes, sir.” Durrant was holding the cable from Steele in his hands.

  “Then what do you want, Sergeant?”

  “Hold him. Make sure he’s not allowed out on bail. The magistrate will surely see that this man is a flight risk. If he’s allowed to post a bond, he’ll be on the Macleod Trail before you can take the shackles off him.”

  “And just how long am I supposed to hold him?”

  “Until I get back,” Durrant said, his eyes betraying some mirth.

  Dewalt put his coffee down. “Back from where exactly, Sergeant?”

  Wallace stepped forward and handed the cable to his superior. “The Saskatchewan Territory, sir.”

  THE MORNING’S PROMISE was spoiled, as the afternoon began grey and threatened more rain. Durrant Wallace used the hated crutch to make his way through the streets toward a familiar address three blocks east of Stephen Avenue. He was anticipating the visit, but he wasn’t looking forward to the parting.

  He had already wired Steele, who was riding east with his Scouts and the Alberta Field Force for Fort Pitt. When he arrived, he would learn that Durrant was on his way to Batoche. Durrant guessed he could make double time if he travelled light and alone.

  Durrant was eager to be on his way. He’d won his assurance from Dewalt that Bud Ensley would be held for as long as was possible; that was the best he could hope for from the sub-inspector. Durrant felt the tear of priorities in his chest. While he wanted nothing more than to strike out immediately for Fort Benton in search of Jeb Ensley and his crew, he owed his service to the Crown and to the Dominion, and now he had been called back into action. He aimed to fulfill that duty.

  He came to a row of houses that bordered a broad woodland along the banks of the Bow River. The homes had been constructed in 1884, the year after the railway came through town. No tarpaper shacks or flophouses for navvies, these homes had porches and parlours and families living in them. He stood a moment on the street, regarding a yet unpainted house. He had to prepare his words carefully.

  “What are you doing standing out on the street, Sergeant Wallace?” His preparation was truncated by a voice from a second-storey window.

  Durrant looked up to see Charlene Louise Mason, a mischievous smile on her face, leaning on her arms and looking down at him. He recalled the first time he had seen her, disguised as a mute stableboy and hiding from her estranged and violent husband. Fooled by her masquerade, Durrant had taken her on as aide-de-camp when he had travelled to the end of steel the previous spring to investigate a murder there. Despite her deception, which had nearly cost both of their lives, they had bec
ome close in the intervening year.

  “Charlene, you are nothing but trouble to me.” His face betrayed a smile. “Come down here, please, and let me have a word with you.”

  She closed the window and a moment later was at the door. “Do come in, sir.” Her eyes were bright.

  “I’ve got mud on my boots,” Durrant pointed out.

  “Well, then, use the horn there to pull them off and be careful not to get any on your trousers.” Durrant did as he was told and stepped into the house. “Is Mr. Lloyd at home?” he asked.

  “He’s at the I.G. Baker Company store. I expect him home a little later in the afternoon.”

  “Very well, I’d like a word with him too—”

  “You’ll be having words with a great many people it seems,” Charlene laughed. “Would you like tea? Or shall I make you coffee?”

  “Coffee would be good, please. I haven’t slept yet.”

  “Durrant, I swear, you need someone just to make certain you remember to eat and sleep!”

  “Well, young John is a help, but he’s a poor substitute for my lad Charlie.”

  “Well, Charlie goes by Charlene these days, sir, and you’re the one who hired me off to the Lloyds to keep house. I would have been just as happy working for Paddy at the stables at the fort, like when you found me. At least then I could have looked in on you from time to time.”

  “Didn’t seem proper.” Durrant was still standing, watching Charlene grind coffee and put the pot on the stove.

  “What do you know of proper, Sergeant Wallace?” Charlene poured him a cup of coffee and offered it with a slice of bread and honey. “What is it that you’ve come to tell me, Durrant?”

  “Steele has sent a wire. I’m to leave for the Saskatchewan Territory tonight. I’ll be catching the 6:05 east train.”

  “I shall have to get packing!”

  Durrant sipped his coffee. “Not this time, Charlene. It’s to war I go.”

  THEY HAD ARGUED for nearly an hour. Argued as only Charlene Louise Mason could. She could be the most persistent, stubborn woman in the world, thought Durrant. In the end, by sheer force of his masculinity, he had carried the day, and when they parted she had been distant.