“Let the boy go and we’ll walk out of here. You might get off easy with the magistrate,” said Durrant.
Again, Dodds laughed. It sounded more like a bark. “Boy? Boy? Step aside, lads, and let Sergeant Wallace see his boy.”
The three men fanned out in a row, all now facing Durrant in the closed space. Durrant focused on Charlie. Something was terribly wrong. The lad was tied to a chair, his legs bound around the ankles to the chair’s legs, his arms knotted behind his back, and his head slumped forward. Where Durrant expected to see Charlie’s now trademark wool hat, a tangle of brown hair stood on end.
“There’s your boy,” said Dodds.
“Charlie?” Durrant asked, his pistol still pointed at Dodds. “Charlie, look at me.”
Charlie looked up. The dishevelled hair framed the familiar face with its soft complexion. The eyes were the same, but without the hat to conceal the fine features of the forehead, they were clearly the eyes of a young woman.
“Charlie?” Durrant said again.
The woman nodded.
“Got yourself fooled pretty good, didn’t you?” said Dodds. “Imagine our surprise when we get him up here and found out it was a little lady. I’ll tell you, it’s been a long winter at Holt City. I don’t mind telling you we were pretty pleased.”
Durrant looked at the young woman. Her left eye was black and she had a cut on her lip. A crust of blood had formed around her nose. “They hurt you, Charlie?” Durrant asked. The eyes bored back into him.
Durrant pulled his attention off Charlie and looked at Dodds. He drew a deep breath. “You’re under arrest for kidnapping,” he said. “You all are.”
As he spoke, the lid on the woodbox burst open. A cold gust of air swept into the room. The men turned toward the movement, three of them scrambling for their guns. Durrant quickly shifted his aim from Dodds to Griffin and squeezed the trigger of his Enfield twice, the bullets catching Griffin in the chest. The man’s body twisted and fell.
Garnet Moberly took them by surprise as he rose from the woodbox, the double-barrelled shotgun held at the ready. He fired at the nearest man. The force of the blast lifted Ralph Mahoney off his feet and flung him into the wall next to Durrant. Moberly fired a second time and Ralph’s body hit the floor.
Pete Mahoney turned back into the room to fire from the hip at the Mountie. Pete’s shot missed, but Durrant’s quick shot didn’t. The Mountie dropped his crutch and moved fast toward Charlie’s exposed position amid the swirl of bullets. He fired the remaining four rounds, one bullet twisting Pete sideways, then Durrant collided with Charlie’s chair and the two of them hit the ground together.
Dodds raised his weapon and fired at Moberly, hitting him in the left arm. He then spun to face Durrant, his face set with rage, and fired at the moving target, his bullets striking the wall just above Durrant’s shoulder. Moberly, stumbling from the woodbox and dropping the shotgun as his injured arm gave way, pulled out his twin Webley revolvers. With one, he sent a wild shot at Dodds, and with the other he shot Pete again, spinning him into a heap on the floor.
Dodds now turned and returned fire on Moberly, the two men less than fifteen feet apart. In the spray of bullets Moberly was thrown against the back wall of the cabin, bottles of moonshine exploding from the force of his body. Durrant dropped the spent Enfield where he lay, Charlie beneath him, and reached for his second pistol. The weapon came quickly to hand. As Dodds fired at Moberly, Durrant raised the short-barrelled Bulldog and shot Dodds in one swift motion.
The din of gunfire ceased. The room was blue with the smoke from the volley of rounds. Durrant pushed himself up and went to Moberly, his pistol still aimed at Dodds, who lay prone on the bunk.
“Garnet,” he said, hunching down as best he could to see if the man was still alive.
The gentleman looked up at him. “How’d we do?” he asked.
Durrant smiled. “Looks like very well. Charlie,” he said as he walked over to untie her. “You okay?”
Durrant wasn’t certain which surprised him more, that Charlie was a woman or that she answered. “I’m fine, Durrant.”
Durrant retrieved the Winchester and handed it to her. “Cover them,” he ordered. “If any of them make a move, shoot them.”
“Gladly,” she said.
“Just a couple of holes in the shoulder and arm here,” said Moberly. “Nothing serious.”
Durrant returned to Moberly and tore up a rag to tie off the two wounds. He checked on Dodds, who had been shot in the leg and stomach and was glaring at Durrant. Ralph Mahoney was alive, but conscious. Pete Mahoney and Griffin were dead.
“So,” said Durrant. “Can the two of you make it down the mountain and see about getting some help for this lot?”
Moberly looked at Charlie. “I don’t see why not,” he said. He extended a hand to the young woman. “Garnet Moberly.”
She smiled. “Charlene,” she said. “Charlene Louise Mason.”
TWENTY-TWO
REVELATIONS
HE HAD FALLEN ASLEEP SITTING in a chair in the corner of the cabin as he waited.
“You’re going to be alright, Durrant,” a voice said. The snow fell gently down, landing on his eyelashes as he blinked up into the swirling grey sky, into the face that looked down at his. “You’re going to be alright.”
He blinked again and the faces came into focus. Patrick O’Connor and Tommy Provost from Fort Walsh.
“We’ve got a tourniquet on your leg, Wallace,” said Provost. “We need to get you to the Doc.”
“My horse . . .” said Durrant. He tried to lift his right hand to point. It was still clutching the Enfield. He could no longer feel his fingers.
“Mack is dead, Durrant. I’m sorry.”
“From the woods. It was an ambush.”
“You were close, Durrant. Very close. We know who they are. Salinger and Merry are following their tracks.”
“They knew who I was. They used my name.”
“Like I said, you were in close. We’ll get them.”
“My hand.”
“It’s pretty badly frostbitten. We need to get you to the Doc. Let’s see if we can’t get him up into the saddle,” said Patrick O’ Connor.
“I can’t ride,” said Durrant.
“You’ll be okay.”
“My leg. I can’t ride.” Durrant felt hot tears rolling down his face.
“It’s okay. You’re alive. It’s going to be okay.”
Durrant closed his eyes and felt the snow tickle his face, catch in the day’s growth of beard that had speckled his chin while he lay there on the frozen earth. He felt the men lift him and he pressed his eyes closed, felt his leg go limp and his hand lose its grip on the Enfield, felt it slip from his grasp and fall to the earth.
• • •
“Durrant,” said a voice he didn’t recognize. He opened his eyes and the pistol came up and pointed at Dodds and Pete Mahoney lying on the bunk. His eyes focused and he could see that they were as he had left them; bandaged, bleeding, and unconscious.
“Durrant,” the voice said again. He slowly took in the rest of the room. The walls were pocked with bullet holes. Broken glass from the tiny window and from the jugs of fractured moonshine was scattered across the floor; the room reeked of corn mash whiskey. He looked around and a woman he didn’t know was kneeling close to him.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
Charlie. Charlene. “I’m okay.”
She turned and nodded to a silhouette at the door. Moberly came in. His arm was in a sling. Saul Armatage followed, his eyes immediately on Durrant. Moberly turned and looked at the two injured men on the bed and the dead on the floor. “Constable, you can come and collect these men now,” he called.
Durrant stood up. He felt very old, and very tired. His leg pulsed; the left trouser leg was soaked through with blood.
“Durrant, you’re still bleeding,” said Charlie.
“It’s fine,” he said through gritted teeth.
&nbs
p; “It’s not fine.”
The first constable entered the room. He wore the greatcoat and sealskin hat, but Durrant could see the red serge beneath the coat and the black riding boots that clicked on the floor. The man turned to Durrant. Durrant didn’t recognize him.
“Corporal Deuer, sir,” he said, saluting Durrant. “What are your orders, sir?”
Durrant was momentarily dizzy. “These men need medical attention. They are to be transported back to Holt City, stabilized, and brought to Fort Calgary as soon as you are able to make arrangements on the eastbound freight. Can you look at their wounds, Saul?” Armatage turned and saw the two men bleeding on the bed for the first time. He hesitated. “They need attention more than I,” Durrant said. Armatage went to them.
“We’ve commandeered half a dozen men from the camp, sir. Mr. Pen said they are all good men,” said Corporal Deuer.
“Pen’s a good man, too. Very well, get a move on, Corporal,” said Durrant.
The Mountie nodded and yelled for his colleagues to join him. Before the room became crowded with activity, Durrant pushed past Charlie and Moberly and stepped out into the morning. Dawn had broken. He walked a few paces along the path, with Moberly and Charlie behind him, and then stopped on the shore to regard the new day.
The peaks of the Great Divide were set on fire with a ragged light. The face of the farthest peak beyond the Lake of Little Fishes stood in sharp relief; its glacier clad summit bore a rosy glow. All around it, peaks jutted into the azure sky of dawn. Durrant drew a deep breath and marvelled that all of this splendour sat on the edge of the broad valley where the steel road would soon pass, bearing with it commerce and men and woman and children, all bound for places yet unknown, altogether comprising the pulse of a brand new nation. He sighed deeply.
“What is it?” asked Charlie. He looked at her. He did not know this person.
“Nothing. Nothing at all,” he said.
She nodded.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“For what?”
“For deceiving you.”
He nodded. “I almost got you killed,” he said.
She shrugged. It made Durrant smile to see this stranger take on the characteristics of the boy he thought he knew.
“This is beautiful,” Charlene said.
“The Canadian Pacific brass built that little cabin back there so that big bellies on the railroad could come up here and appreciate the grandeur,” said Moberly. “I visited it once last fall, and was relegated to stocking the woodbin for some section manager. Glad I did. That’s how I knew that the woodbox had two hatches.”
“Took you long enough to show your face,” smiled Durrant.
Moberly looked at him askance, but his frown soon faded to a broad grin. “Well, I had to get all the damned wood out before I could make my entrance!”
“We made a bit of a mess of the CPR’s little cabin,” said Durrant.
“I expect they will rebuild.”
Durrant nodded. “If they’re going to make a tourist attraction out of this place, they’re going to need a better name. Lake of Little Fishes doesn’t do it justice.”
“Don’t forget, young Tom Wilson called it Emerald Lake.”
Durrant nodded. “Think that will stick?”
“I don’t know.”
“I was thinking Lake Charlene,” Durrant finally said.
The girl smiled.
“Lake Charlene Louise . . .”
• • •
With a billow of black coal smoke and a great frayed balloon of steam the eastbound train slowly pulled from the station. Two days had passed since the rescue on the shores of the lake. Durrant sat on a padded bench next to a window in the caboose of the freight. He stared out the porthole at the snowy forest that rose up in swells toward the peaks above.
The three men he and Moberly had captured alive—including the sentry who had simply stumbled back to Holt City with an aching head—had been taken by freight to Fort Calgary. According to a wire from Sub-Inspector Dewalt, received on a replacement telegraph machine found in the stores at Holt City, the men were all still alive. Frank Dodds was nearest to death, his body riddled with bullets. Even the Fort’s doctor was astonished that he had survived. The bodies of Devon Paine, Deek Penner, Pete Mahoney, and John Christianson had also been dispatched to the Fort for burial in the spring. Durrant vowed to attend the interment of Paine and Penner.
The MP Blake O’Brian and the spy Patrick Carriere had been dispatched to Regina. They would appear before a magistrate and be charged with various crimes, but not before Durrant had questioned them.
Hep Wilcox had also been dispatched to Regina to await arraignment on charges of murder, attempted murder, and conspiracy. In all, six men had been taken alive at the end of the line. Four more were transported enclosed in rough-hewn pine boxes, constructed from wood fittingly cut on the slopes of Dodds Peak, for burial at Fort Calgary.
Durrant watched as the valley of the Bow River slipped past. The train began to pick up speed on its way to Donald Siding and then Castle Mountain.
“A penny for your thoughts?”
Durrant snapped out of his reverie and looked at Charlie sitting across from him. Her hair had been washed and brushed and no longer stuck straight up like a wire brush. Instead it lay soft and flat around the curve of her face. She wore a heavy skirt borrowed from Evelyn Armatage. Durrant regarded her a minute. He could see, with her hair always under the heavy wool cap, and without recourse to hearing her soft feminine voice, how he could have been fooled. Some investigator, he thought, smiling.
“I was thinking about something that O’Brian told me before we sent him away in shackles.”
“What was that?”
“How easy it had been to come within a hair of engineering such a catastrophic accident.”
“But they didn’t. You stopped them.”
“We,” he said. “We stopped them. You and Mr. Moberly get as much credit for that as any.” Charlie blushed and looked down at her hands folded on her skirt. “He said that if it wasn’t for Bill Kauffman tipping off Deek Penner, they would have pulled it off. An explosion at the plant might have killed dozens of men, maybe more. That would have set off a firestorm of debate in Parliament. I think O’Brian would have ended up being the hero. He could have stepped up with a solution—the Northumberland company takes over the explosives contract—and history would have been changed. The Kicking Horse would be known not for the extraordinary effort of men forging a path through the most rugged wilderness in this new land, but for a terrible tragedy.”
“You’re starting to sound like Mr. Moberly. Have you heard how his surgery went?” Charlie asked.
Durrant nodded. “I got a wire this morning. Two slugs dug out of his arm and shoulder. Said he would add them to his collection.”
“That does sound like Mr. Moberly.”
They sat quietly awhile.
“You know what bothers me the most about all of this?” he asked after a spell. “That Deek Penner had to die. I think that he was the kind of man that I would have respected and liked very much. Honest, hard working. A good man. And that John Christianson got so entangled in this.”
“He was a killer.”
“Yes, he was. He was also a victim. He paid the ultimate price for allowing himself to become trapped by greed and by the passions of men who had long ago learned to manipulate others to their will. He had a mania to him, but so do many men. He simply could not control his, but instead allowed others to control it for their own will.”
“I wouldn’t spend too much time grieving for John Christianson,” Charlie said.
“Maybe you’re right,” said Durrant.
“Of course I am.” She smiled and looked out the window.
The train slipped down the wintery valley. They passed Castle Mountain and then made the long turn in the transect that brought Mount Rundle into view. The train began to slow for Banff Station.
“Did you hear that t
hey have discovered hot springs here?” Charlie said as the train ground to a halt at the tiny station.
“Is that right?”
“Three men, two of them brothers, up in the woods there, just above the river, in a cave.”
“I suppose you’ll be wanting a bath then,” he said.
She smiled. “Oh, to dream,” Charlene said.
The train started again and followed the river towards the station and roundhouse at the newly renamed siding of Canmore. They slipped the bonds of the mountains and were steaming towards Fort Calgary. Durrant felt the change in him, and in Charlie. In Charlene.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
She sat motionless a while, watching the peaks slip away behind the train through the greasy soot stained window. Finally she said, “I don’t know.”
“You won’t go back. Not to the ranch. Not to him. I won’t allow it.”
“Of course I won’t. I don’t need you not to allow it. I left because if I stayed there, in that bleak place, with that monster of a man, I would likely be dead by now. I ran away, changed everything about my life, so I would not have to endure the horror of life with him. He tried to kill me once. If I was to return, I know he would try again. No, I won’t go back to that place, or to that man.”
Durrant felt a hot ember kindle deep in his heart. God have mercy on the soul of that man should Durrant ever meet him. “I just don’t think that I can go back to work in the stables now,” continued Charlene.
“I doubt they’d have me. There really isn’t much work for a young woman to do in Fort Calgary now. Not that’s proper, at least.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked after a time. They had crossed near the Morley Ranch and were steaming past the confluence of the Bow with the Ghost River.
He didn’t answer. “Durrant?”
He shook his head. “I guess that’s going to be up to Steele.”
“Have you heard word?”
“Nothing yet, but I know this: I can’t go back to sorting the post. I can’t sit at the Fort and send and receive cables. I can’t take the census. I’m a North West Mounted Police officer. I may not be able to ride like I used to, but I can police. I think I’ve damn well proven myself.”
The End of the Line Page 31
