The End of the Line

by Stephen Legault

  He took a deep breath. “The first tunnel will be about seven miles in, but before that, it’s a ramp carved into the side of the mountain all the way down, for miles and miles. This, Sergeant Wallace, is just the first month’s worth of explosives.

  “I overheard Hep talking with Deek and saying that there was some discussion about which company might supply the remainder of the nitro. And once we get down the Big Hill, we still have to push on down the Lower Canyon of the Kicking Horse, which as I understand is worse still. That’s where all the tunnels will be.”

  “What makes a man want to do this work?” asked Durrant.

  McPherson looked thoughtful a moment. “It pays pretty good,” he said. “Working with this stuff comes with a premium in pay.”

  “Not much good if you’re scattered to Kingdom Come.”

  “You ever met a man who was aiming to get himself blown up, Sergeant?”

  Durrant shook his head. “What about qualifications?”

  McPherson smiled, shook his head, and looked around. “Well, that fella there used some dynamite to blow up a beaver dam on his daddy’s place back in Wisconsin a few years back. I think that makes him the most qualified of the lot.”

  “What about you, Mr. McPherson?”

  “I come by this honestly. Before the CPR hired me I was working for the Canada Explosives Company. They currently have the contract for the explosives. I was packing this stuff for them out of their Montreal operation.”

  “Is that where you’re from?”

  “Do I sound French? No, I’m from Nova Scotia. Cape Breton to be precise, sir. It’s been some time. I’ve mostly had factory jobs in Toronto; did a spell in Buffalo. I was riding along with the last shipments of the year up through the mountains last fall. Deek’s number two man had enough, and so I stayed on for the winter. Like I said, I mostly worked for Dodds, but Deek promised me good work come the spring. Now I guess I’ll be on for the summer season too.”

  “How much money is in this room right now, Mr. McPherson?”

  McPherson rubbed his hands on his rag and looked around as if totalling up the inventory. “I’d say one hundred thousand dollars’ worth.”

  Durrant stared at the man. “Yes, that’s about right,” McPherson said nervously.

  “You said the Canada Explosives Company currently holds the contract?”

  “That’s right. They’re headquartered in Mount Saint-Hilaire, but they’ve got operations all over the place.”

  “You said current supplier?”

  “There’s a lot of competition.”

  “Is the contract set?”

  “I believe for the Big Hill. I don’t know about the Lower Canyon.”

  “Who would know?”

  “Deek would have, and the men he worked for, but they are all in Winnipeg. Hep somehow got himself in on that business too, so he likely would be able to say.”

  “I can have someone speak with them there. The NWMP have a sizeable detachment in that city.”

  Durrant switched tracks. “Deek Penner was pretty well liked, wasn’t he?”

  “He was a fair man to work for. Never raised his voice or his hand to a man, despite being one of the biggest fellas in the camp. I’d say he was well liked.”

  “Did you like him?”

  “We were friends. He was my boss, but we was friends, yes.”

  “His was a plum job, wasn’t it?”

  “I don’t take your meaning.”

  “His was a good job, well paid.”

  “We never spoke of it.”

  “Next to Mr. Wilcox, and maybe Mr. Holt, I’d guess that Mr. Penner was the best paid man in the camp, wouldn’t you?”

  “I don’t rightly know.”

  “With Mr. Penner dead, who will run the blasting operation down the Big Hill come the spring?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose the contractor will have to hire a foreman to replace Deek.”

  “But with less than two months to go before the spring work is to start, and with the logistical preparations already underway, it doesn’t leave much time.”

  “We’ve just begun to haul material over the sled road up to the Kicking Horse Summit. I understand construction on the munitions plant there will get underway as soon as Bob Pen allocates some labour. The lumber is already cut for the job.”

  “The Canadian Pacific men and Parliament are putting a great deal of pressure on this operation to complete the railway, and soon.”

  “I don’t know about the politics of things, Sergeant.”

  “Mr. McPherson, I think you do. I think you know enough. Enough to know that with Deek Penner dead, the company men will need to fill his position fast, and with someone who knows the operation; someone who can get the job done without an interruption in the construction schedule. One more question,” said Durrant. McPherson seemed worn thin. “Where is your coat?”

  “Come again, sir?”

  “Your coat? Where is it?”

  McPherson looked down as if he’d never seen the garment before. “It’s back yonder . . .”

  “Let’s go and fetch it, shall we?”

  “What’s this got to do with . . .”

  Durrant pushed himself to standing. “I get to decide, Mr. McPherson, what’s relevant here.”

  “Fine,” McPherson said, standing up. They walked to the back of the warehouse.

  “You don’t have another one?” McPherson shook his head no. “Have you had this one to the laundry in the last four days?”

  Again he looked at it. “No, why?”

  Durrant took the coat from him and looked it over carefully. He could find no sign of blood on the coat. He held it to his nose. It smelled fresh. “Mr. McPherson, I believe that excepting Frank Dodds, you are the man in Holt City who stands to gain the most with Deek Penner out of the way.”

  EIGHT

  AT WORK IN THE WOODS

  DURRANT TOOK HIS NOON MEAL in the mess tent, where it wasn’t difficult to find a place to sit with a good deal of elbow room. Word had spread through the camp that the one-legged Mountie was on the warpath, and men were giving him a wider berth than they had just the day before. Nobody, it seemed, wanted to be seen talking with the Red Coat for fear that word would get back to Dodds, or so he imagined.

  Durrant ate hash, canned peaches, and hard biscuits. A mangy dog made its way up and down the rows of tables begging for scraps, and Durrant gave it one of his biscuits, which the mutt chewed on for a full five minutes, breaking it into manageable nuggets that he could then swallow. Durrant patted the cur’s bony head before it skulked off to the next table. Durrant noticed two men at the next table watching him as he scratched the mutt behind its frostbitten ears. One of the men touched his cap when he stood and nodded at Durrant. He nodded back.

  It was early afternoon when Durrant slowly made his way from the small camp that was huddled at the confluence of the Bow and the Pipestone Rivers. The crews were cutting timber on the low flank of a summit capped with a white horn that the navvies called Dodds Peak. Though the distance was just over a mile, the going was slow for the one-legged man. The road that wound through the lodgepole pines up the grade to where the cutting was taking place was well established through heavy use and daily icing. Despite the hard-packed road, Durrant found the walk to the timber operation to be considerable work. He was twenty minutes into his climb when he heard a noise behind him, and putting his hand on the worn grip of his British Bulldog nestled in his coat pocket, turned to see a team of horses pulling a sled used for hauling cordwood slowly approaching from the camp. When the driver saw him he called to his team to stop and the sled came to rest alongside Durrant.

  “Ah, it’s you, Sergeant,” the teamster said by way of greeting.

  “It is,” replied Durrant curtly.

  “Where are you heading?”

  “Just out for a walk,” Durrant said, his voice clipped.

  “You making your way up to the cutting site?”

  “I was thinking I
might stop in.”

  The man driving the team looked up the road towards the logging operation. Durrant could read his weathered face, half hidden by a long, grey tattered scarf that bunched up beneath the man’s red nose. He’s wondering what kind of hell he’ll catch from Dodds if he offers me a ride, thought Durrant. The man studied the dark pine forest on either side of the road, calculating.

  “Don’t suppose you’d care for a lift, would you?”

  “You going to get yacked if you give one?”

  “Maybe I’ll drop you just this side of the site . . .”

  Durrant grinned. “Fine then,” he said, stepping forward on the road and grabbed the rail of the buck board and hauled his bulk up onto the seat. The two men rode the remainder of the way to the logging operation in silence. True to his word, when the operation came into view, the teamster slowed the horses.

  “Hope you don’t mind . . .” He said apologetically.

  “Don’t want there to be any unnecessary trouble,” Durrant grinned, easing himself down from the seat, extending his crutch for balance.

  The driver seemed to smile beneath his threadbare scarf, for Durrant saw the lines at the corners of the man’s eyes tighten. “Little late for that, wouldn’t you say, Sergeant?”

  Durrant laughed and shook his head, “Well, yes, a little late . . .”

  The man said a word to the horses and the team started down the road again, leaving Durrant standing in the sweet-smelling pine forest. Though the trees around him were yet standing, their boughs made heavy with pillows of snow, he could see not far off where the woods had been felled, and the clearings running up the steep slopes of Dodds Peak. The syrupy fragrance of the pines was tempered with the not unpleasant odour of wood smoke from fires built to burn slash and limbs too small to be used as fuel or cross-ties.

  Across the clearing Durrant could see that the mill was a simple steam-powered operation that was designed for speed and efficiency at cutting the squared-off timbers for the cross-ties. A group of men used pike poles to angle logs onto the skid of the mill and someone hitched a heavy hook onto the trunk of the timber, which then was set in motion by the mill operator. The outcome of the day’s work was laid out next to the mill: hundreds of sleepers neatly stacked along side the steaming building waiting to be transported back down to the staging area next to the railway along the Bow.

  Durrant started across the clearing and soon honed in on a place adjacent to the mill where a large fire burned. The smoke from this fire rose up thirty feet and then seemed to flatten out as if it had hit some invisible ceiling that forced it to dissipate like water flowing across a flat rock. He could see a dozen or more men huddled there, warming their hands, smoking pipes or hand rolled tobacco, and drinking from tin cups. When Durrant stepped into the circle of men standing around the fire, their hands stuffed deep into pockets of worn overcoats, the conversation stopped as if a snake had slid amongst a knot of frogs. One man threw the contents of his cup into the fire.

  “Good afternoon,” Durrant said, making his way carefully around the fire to a place out of the drifting smoke. He could see that none of those he sought was among them.

  “Frank Dodds ain’t here,” said one man.

  “Ain’t looking for Frank right now,” Durrant said. “I’m looking for the Mahoney boys.”

  The men mumbled among themselves.

  “What do you want with them?” asked the same man.

  “It’s none of your damned business,” said Durrant.

  The color drained out of the man’s face. “Well, I’m the section hand here . . . name’s Jameson. I look out for the operation when Frank or his number two ain’t around. Those men are working for me this afternoon.”

  “Well Mr. Jameson, my name is Sergeant Durrant Wallace of the North West Mounted Police. I’m here investigating a murder, and I can talk to anybody I bloody well please, so if you’d be so good as to point me to where the Mahoney boys is working, I’ll be on my way.”

  “They are working towards the Pipestone,” said Jameson, “about five hundred yards that way,” he pointed.

  “Very well,” said Durrant. He turned to set off.

  “Sergeant . . .” Durrant turned. “It’s rough-going in there . . .” Durrant levelled his gaze at him. “It’s just that they are cutting by hand and there haven’t been many sleds in and out. It’s pretty tough going, well, even for a man with both his legs. The snow’s up over your head, you see . . .”

  Durrant could feel the heat seeping up his neck like acid. He drew a long slow breath of the cool afternoon air. The men around the fire were silent.

  “No disrespect,” said Jameson. “Maybe it would be best if I went and collected the boys for you.”

  Durrant let his breath out between clenched teeth. He knew that he needed to catch the Mahoney brothers off guard in order to question them to the greatest effect, but if he ended up chest deep in the snow and unable to move, he would loose all authority with his witnesses, and with the whole camp for that matter. He calculated the risk.

  “Go and fetch those two boys, sir,” he finally said, “while I take advantage of the hospitality of this here fire.”

  By the time Jameson returned, flanked by the Mahoney brothers, Durrant was alone. One by one the loggers and millers had taken their leave of the fire, tossing their coffee and other elixirs into the flames and muttering about getting back to work.

  “Sergeant Wallace?” said Jameson, stepped forward.

  “Thank you, Mr. Jameson. Would you tell me, please, where I might find Mr. Thompson Griffin today?”

  “He’ll likely be down at the yard along the tracks right now.”

  “Very well, Mr. Jameson, that will be all for now.”

  Jameson looked at the brothers and then turned and retreated into the woods.

  “Ralph, would you please wait for me to be finished with your brother over by the sled road,” Durrant said without standing.

  Ralph looked at his brother Pete, and then with a sideways glace at the Mountie walked a hundred yards distant and sat down on a log waiting to be skidded into the camp. He watched them with interest.

  “Not sure what more I can tell you,” said Pete Mahoney. “I said all I know the other night.”

  “You didn’t say much of anything,” said Durrant.

  The man looked into the flames. “Well, I guess all that needed to be said was said . . .”

  “By your boss Dodds. You and I both know that’s not the truth,” said Durrant. Pete looked down at his gnarled hands. “How old are you, Pete?” asked Durrant.

  “I’m going to be twenty come June,” the man said.

  Durrant nodded. He could see that Pete’s hands were large and dark from hard work with hammer and saw and likely from a childhood of tough labour. “Your boss isn’t here, is he? Where is he?” asked Durrant.

  “He’s a foreman. He ain’t got to tell us where he’s at.” Durrant looked at the man for a long moment, letting the silence of the woods settle in. “His business takes him all over the slopes of this here mountain cruising timber and laying out plots for us to fell.”

  “So that’s where he’s at today?”

  “I reckon so.”

  “Not at his still?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I think you do, Pete.”

  “I don’t. Believe me or don’t, but that’s the God’s honest truth.” Mahoney looked down at his hands again. He could see his brother watching him from the corner of his eye.

  “You’re the younger of the two of you,” said Durrant, catching the boy by surprise.

  “Yeah, Ralph yonder is three years my senior.”

  “He look after you?”

  “I don’t need no looking after.”

  “I suppose not. But I imagine he sees it different.”

  “You’d have to ask him.”

  “I intend to. My point is this, Pete: A man is dead. You and your brother and a handful of ot
hers were the last to see him alive. My guess right now is that something happened at that card game that got your boss pretty riled. My guess is that Penner came down on your boss about whiskey. It’s just a hunch, but you and I both know that it’s only a matter of time before I find out about Dodds’ moonshining operation and find evidence that Penner was going to turn him in for making illegal whiskey. Your boss has already told me that you boys work for him and wouldn’t do anything without being told to. Now I wonder if that night after the card game broke up, Dodds didn’t tell one or the other of you to go and find Penner and bash his skull in.”

  Pete Mahoney looked up as if he’d been slapped. “We didn’t do that!” he shouted.

  “You telling me that the card game was all nicey-nicey and that Frank Dodds and Deek Penner didn’t have words?”

  “Frank and Deek was always at it. Nothing went on that would have led any man to want to kill ol’ Deek.”

  “That’s not the way I hear it.”

  “Well, whoever is telling lies should stop it.”

  “I hear things got out of hand.”

  “Well, it didn’t.”

  “You telling me that I’ve been lied to?”

  “Mister, I’m telling you that sure, Deek and Frank got under each other’s skin. Hell, we’ve been shut up here in this frozen hell for four months now. People is getting a little testy. It wasn’t nothing out of the ordinary.”

  “Something happened.”

  “Nothing happened,” said Pete emphatically.

  “You’re a liar,” said Durrant, looking the big man right in the eye. Pete Mahoney’s face was still soft; he had tried to grow a beard throughout the winter, but instead he had patches of downy black hair along his jawline and on his chin. Despite the man’s childish appearance, Durrant was aware he was dealing with a powerful man, thick in the arms and through the chest. He could see the man’s eyes start to darken when he called him a liar.

  The corners of Mahoney’s mouth pulled back and his eyes widened when he spoke. “You know who is a liar is that snivelling bastard Devon Paine. That’s who the liar is. He couldn’t keep his goddamned mouth shut about things he’s got no right talking about. He got what was coming to him.”