Sundance 19 Page 5

  “Do I get to keep my weapons?” Sundance asked Riel, nodding toward the pistol, knife, and hatchet on the table.

  “You won’t need them for the moment,” Riel answered. “If I decide you can stay, you’ll get them back. Nothing will be stolen from you here. There will be food and a warm place to sleep. Do not attempt to leave the camp at any time, even to walk over to the village. The sentries will shoot if you do. Their orders are firm. Other than that, you may move freely about the camp”—Riel smiled—”since nothing you see can ever be reported. N ow Gabriel will show you where you are to be billeted. I will talk to you again tomorrow.”

  The snow had stopped by the time Sundance and Dumont left the cabin. Hardesty stayed behind to talk to Riel. Stars were beginning to appear in the deep black sky; the wind whipped through the pines, knifing through their clothes. Now it was possible, to see what the camp looked like. Except that the buildings were all made of rough-hewn logs, it didn’t look much different from an army encampment. There were barracks on three sides and a wide space in the center. Several hundred yards away was the beginning of the village of Batoche. It was late, and no lights showed in the windows. A frozen river gleamed in the moonlight; the snow under their feet already had a crust on it. In the village, a dog barked furiously and then was joined by another dog. They both stopped. The only sound was the wind howling down from the Arctic wastes.

  “Look where you’re going,” Dumont yelled above the sound of the wind; “Those are trenches.”

  Sundance looked and saw the outlines of long rows of trenches, now completely filled with snow. In the barracks on the north side, only one light was burning.

  Sundance was still chilled, even after the food and coffee. The thought of rolling up in thick blankets looked better every time he braced himself against a fresh blast of wind.

  “Your horse is all right,” Dumont said, plodding through deep snow with the patience of a man who has lived with it all his life. “Warm, well looked after—a fine animal.”

  Nothing else was said until they were close to the barracks. “You will sleep in my cabin,” Dumont said. “There is another bunk. You would like something else to eat? There was not much stew.”

  “I could use it,” Sundance said. “Anything—not necessarily something hot.”

  “You would eat a bear steak raw?”

  “Not unless I had to. I’ve seen it done.”

  Leading the way to his quarters, Dumont said, “That was a Gatling gun you were looking at back there. Soon we will have others.”

  Sundance had seen the rapid fire gun, a hump in the snow wrapped in blankets and covered with tarpaulin covers. He had wondered why nobody was guarding it. A rapid fire gun was worth an additional thirty men. Then he knew the reason it wasn’t guarded. Batoche was two hundred miles north of Regina; no force of Mounties would travel more than a few miles without being spotted by unseen lookouts.

  “We will soon have more Gatling guns and many more men,” Dumont said, opening the door of the warm cabin. He banged the door against the wind and barred it, then placed a stack of logs on the fire. The seasoned wood took hold immediately, sending sparks flying up the massive stone chimney. Dumont turned up the wick of the lamp, revealing a long, cluttered, low-ceilinged room. Rifles and bayonets, even sabers and daggers, hung from pegs driven into the walls. A skinny dog stretched lazily in front of the fire. There was a smell of sweat and cooking. In this cabin there were no books; Riel’s cabin had been littered with them.

  ‘That is my bunk,” Dumont said, pointing to a roughly built platform covered with a buffalo robe. “Yours is there. Put on more blankets if you are cold. But it won’t be cold. The métis know how to keep out the cold. Do you want a drink of whiskey?”

  Sundance said yes.

  “I would like to drink whiskey, but I dare not,” Dumont said. “Now that I am a leader, I dare not. Whiskey does something to my head. At first for a while I am happy, then a rage takes possession of me. So I dare not drink. But when this war is over, I am going to go far north to a cabin I once built, and there I will be drunk for a month or until the whiskey is gone. Up there I will bother no one; hurt no one, except the bears.”

  Sundance decided that Dumont looked more like a bear than a man. He was built like a grizzly, was barrel chested, and had a big shaggy head set squarely on a short, thick neck—obviously a man of tremendous strength. A brute, but an intelligent brute.

  While two big bear steaks were frying in skillets, Dumont gathered all the weapons from the walls and locked them in a long box that looked like a coffin. “So you will not be tempted,” he said, turning the steaks and adding seasoning.

  He pointed. “The whiskey and glasses are in the cupboard. Drink as much as you like, but please do not make sounds of enjoyment. It would sadden me if you did.”

  Sundance got the whiskey and a glass. He uncorked the bottle. The whiskey had a strong smell and no color, moonshine. He poured a glass and drank it carefully. It was easy not to make sounds of enjoyment. What wasn’t easy was to get it down.

  Dumont speared the bear steaks and served them up smoking hot. The look and smell of the properly seasoned meat made Sundance forget the foul taste of the whiskey, because when bear meat is aged and cooked just right, there is nothing else as good. This steak was tender enough for Sundance to cut it with the side of his fork.

  They ate in silence for a while. Now and then, Dumont wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. When he finished, he threw scraps of meat to the dog, then put the plates in a tin basin of soapy water. Later he climbed into his bunk after lighting a long clay pipe. Sundance was already covered up by five blankets, a great weariness creeping over him. It had been one hell of a trip from Regina.

  Dumont asked, “Was the whiskey to your liking? And the steak?”

  “Everything was fine,” Sundance answered, opening his eyes to look at the other man. There was neither friendship nor hostility in the halfbreed’s eyes. He just wanted to be sure Sundance had enjoyed his meal.

  Maybe my last meal, Sundance thought sleepily. In the morning, Dumont might have to kill him.

  Eight

  Dumont was brewing strong tea when Sundance woke up in the morning. It was the smell of the tea that woke him more than anything else. The halfbreed had made two pots, one for Sundance, one for himself. The fire had been built up again, and the cabin was warm; the windows were clear of snow.

  Sundance pulled on his shirt and pants and watched impassively while Dumont cut slices of black-plug tobacco and dropped them into the already boiled black tea. He had heard of this custom, which was said to exist among the hermit trappers of the North West and Alaska, but he had always thought it was just another tall tale from remote places.

  Sundance’s own black tea was ready to drink; he didn’t add sugar or milk, as was the custom in the north. He didn’t much like any kind of tea, but it was a cold morning and the tea was hot.

  “You have never tried this?” Dumont said, putting the metal pot back on the bed of coals at the front of the fire. Immediately, it began to bubble, and the smell was no longer that of tea.

  “No,” Sundance said, adding that he wasn’t ready to try.

  “You have to get used to it,” Dumont explained, stirring the awful-looking mixture, “and you must have a strong heart. I have known of men with weak hearts who were killed by it.” The big halfbreed thumped his barrel-shaped chest. “I have a heart like a bull buffalo. It gives me great energy, but my heart remains steady. Once, when I was badly injured in the woods and couldn’t hunt, I lived on it for ten days. In all that time, I never felt hunger. If you drink enough of it, you can go without sleep for days.”

  Dumont paused. “It can also make a man crazy. One time in the Yukon, I came across an old hunter running naked in the snow. It was a bitter cold day with a strong wind. I grabbed him and dragged him back to his cabin before he froze to death. Beside the fire was a whole bucket of this tea. There was snuff in it, too. I had to tie
him to his bunk to keep him from running out again. He kept saying his body was on fire, and the only way to cool off was to run in the snow. It took him two days before he was able to recognize me. An old man like that should never drink it.”

  “Is there any special name for it?”

  “Just tea,” Dumont said with no attempt at humor. “I drink it only in the morning or when I am on a long, hard journey and must go without sleep. There is plenty of bear meat left, plus bacon and duck eggs. We may go hungry before this trouble is over, but it hasn’t happened yet. What would you like?”

  Hardesty came in without knocking. For a moment, his lanky frame was outlined in the cold bright sunshine that came in the doorway. The earflaps of a beaver hat were pulled down over his ears, and his red face was raw from the wind. He clapped his gloved hands together and stomped the snow from his knee-high laced boots.

  He was in better humor than he had been the night before. He had probably decided to take a new tack, but Sundance felt the enmity in the man.

  Hardesty sniffed the air in the cabin. “Taking your morning medicine, are you, Gabriel?”

  “Shut the door,” Dumont growled and drank a full cup of the bad smelling concoction. Quickly, he drank a second cup. “Did you come here on business?”

  “That I did, so let your breakfast wait till later. Louis wants you to come over right away. Bring the prisoner, he says.”

  “Did Nolin arrive?”

  “Nolin’s here. Got here early this morning. So did Ouellette, Duman and Isbister. There won’t be any backing off now. I tell you, I feel good this morning.”

  To Sundance the names meant nothing, but to the métis they were names from the past, from the days of Riel’s first rebellion. Hardesty went out whistling; Dumont looked after him with a sour expression. “We’d better go,” he said.

  After they had bundled up and walked over to Riel’s cabin, Hardesty had left. Riel, wearing a shaggy fur coat that fell to his ankles, sat by the fire, drinking coffee. Under his eyes there were dark rings that looked like bruises. Sundance wondered if he had slept at all since the night before. Except for two empty egg shells on the table, there was no sign he had eaten.

  Dumont looked around. “Where are they? The Irishman said Nolin and the others were here?”

  Riel said, “They have gone to the Lindsay schoolhouse south of Prince Charles. It is the best place to hold a meeting. More people than we knew of will be coming. Such a response encourages and yet saddens me. Ah, well, we shall see what happens.”

  Sundance found Riel staring at him. After a long silence, Riel said, “I have decided. You can stay. Hardesty is still against letting you join us. He does not want you in his ranks, so you will go with Gabriel. Is that all right with you, Gabriel?”

  Dumont shrugged. “I don’t mind.”

  Riel said, “I am trusting you, Sundance. I hope there will be no cause to regret it.” He smiled. “You would be paid if you served with Hardesty. He has money to pay his men. The rest of us, the halfbreeds”—suddenly they all smiled—“must soldier without pay. We fight for food and freedom. Soon there may not be much of either. Now let us ride and listen to the speeches.” Riel looked from Dumont to Sundance. “Gabriel hates speeches.”

  “What is there to speech about, Louis? We’re gathering to fight. So do we fight or make speeches? If we wait too long, we’ll still be making speeches when the Mounties and the militia march in on us. Regina is where the Canadians will group their forces, because the railroad from the east comes through there. But don’t forget, there are Mountie barracks in Prince Albert, Battleford, and Fort Pitt. There are few men, but they are there.”

  Riel’s escort of one hundred half-breeds was drawn up in the wide space between the barracks. A ragtag army, by the standards of any country, just like the Confederates, the worst disciplined soldiers in the world. As they rode along in front of the ranked horsemen, Sundance realized for the first time how much of a fight the Canadians were in for. In all the faces, young and old, there was the same go-to-hell look of defiance; they sat their horses with careless ease. One and all, they were halfbreeds, and they ranged from almost full-blooded Indians to blue-eyed men like Sundance himself. If they had officers of any kind, it didn’t show; nobody wore a uniform or insignia. Nobody saluted anyone else.

  When they reached the head of the column, all Dumont did was raise his hand and they moved out to the north. Sundance could see that, unlike the others, Riel was not a very good horseman. He sat the animal properly enough, but there was none of the grace that belonged to Dumont and the others.

  Their breath steamed in the morning cold; there had been an ice storm recently, and the trees were still sheathed in ice, some of the branches broken by the weight.

  The village of Batoche, mostly cabins, straggled for a mile or two along the river. At the center of the settlement was a ferry, known as Batoche Crossing. Here, a few stores of log and frame hugged the riverbank. From the ferry, a path about a mile long ted up to the crest of the river valley. That crest was crowned by the church, with the parish house across from it. Six miles upstream there was another ferry.

  “Gabriel owns that ferry,” Riel said. “It is even named after him. After that, it isn’t too long to ride to the Lindsay schoolhouse. I chose it for two reasons. It is centrally placed, and there are many English halfbreeds in the Prince Albert region. They are fine people in their own way, but like all people they are different. Like us, they want to be left in peace. We are stronger than they are, so they know that if we are defeated, they might as well move beyond the maps. There will be no hope for them. They are inclined to make common cause with us, but they aren’t sure they can trust us. They are Protestant and we are Catholic. Religious .rivalry has always been the curse of the Territories, as it has in Canada.”

  Dumont had been listening. Now and then he looked at Sundance. When they were a mite from the second ferry, he sent a party of riders on ahead to look out for the possibility of an ambush.

  Riel asked, “Did you know that I want to start a new church in the Territories?” Suddenly he laughed. “I can see by your face that the answer is yes. And when you heard or read about it, you thought I was mad, a mad messiah with not only his own country but his own church. And if I had a crown, I could be king or emperor.”

  “Well,” Sundance said, “both churches you mentioned have been around for a long time. People are sort of attached to them.”

  “They have been around too long. Religion as we know it has caused the death of more people than all the plagues. Here in the Territories I am going to change that. I am going to try. Religion brings people together or tears them apart. Here in North America, the Catholics and Protestants have been at each other’s throats for more than a century. I see no hope for peace until there is one true church. A new church, a new country.”

  They reached the ferry and crossed the broad river. Sundance was thinking. When you began to know a man, many things you heard about him in the past and didn’t understand made sense. There was no way of knowing how this new church idea would work out, but it was a bold stroke. From a political viewpoint, it had some chance of success.

  On the other side of the river, they stopped at the snow covered cabin of an ancient halfbreed with a leathery face and no teeth. Bowing, he invited them to come in, but Dumont said there wasn’t time. The old halfbreed hurried into the cabin and came out with cups of bark tea. It was boiling hot and had a pleasant smell in the still air.

  The old man stood and waved after them until they were out of sight. Not much more than an hour later the tall, white painted frame budding of the Lindsay schoolhouse was in sight. The road leading to it was well guarded. The schoolhouse stood on a hill. On all sides of it were tethered horses, buckboards, spring wagons, and sleighs. Horses pawed the ground and half-wild dogs ran back and forth, barking with excitement. In the churchlike tower of the schoolhouse, a man with field glasses scanned the countryside. There were hundreds of people t
here, both inside and outside the school. Before long, the figure would pass a thousand and keep climbing. Still they kept coming, trailing down from the hills, from out of the frozen swamps, by dogsled on the ice-hard river. Among the crowd were Indians and a handful of whites, long settled in the Territories.

  Riel was smiling with satisfaction. “Look at them, Sundance,” he exulted. “My people are answering the call. This time it won’t be what it was in 1869. We were poorly organized then, no money, no friends. The halfbreeds are finally having their day. Don’t tell me you are not moved by it!”

  Sundance nodded. At the same time, he was thinking that these poor people, brave though they were, didn’t have a chance. Among them, there were many who had never seen a train. Most knew little of the outside world, the tricks of politicians, the deviousness of men like Colum Hardesty. They lived in a world where all that mattered was family and honor; where a promise once given had to be kept. Yes, he was moved by their faith. For the moment, that was all he knew.

  A loud cheer rang out when the crowd at the schoolhouse saw the column of horsemen coming along the south road. Hundreds of men snatched off their hats and caps and waved them in the air. A small band of musicians with miscellaneous instruments blared on the steps of the school. Riel’s bodyguard dropped away, and he rode in, a vulnerable looking figure in the full length fur coat. Children threw handmade paper flowers in front of his horse’s feet. The bell in the tower began to peal. Sundance looked up; the man with the field glasses had his hands pressed over his ears.

  Hardesty stood on the steps with another man, who looked Irish. General Crook had mentioned two other Irishmen, Cunningham and Lane, in his report, but there had been no descriptions. It could be either one. The Fenians were a dangerous bunch all right; their favorite sport was to kill prominent politicians who didn’t agree with them. They were mixed up in dirty business from Central America to Hudson Bay. In Mexico, they were giving aid to the rebels because President Diaz was too friendly with the powerful British mining companies. During the Civil War, they had tried to blow up Confederate warships being built in British seaports. Sundance knew the blood of innocent people had no meaning for them.