A Dark and Promised Land Read online

  “It is not I who is gay, but you who is morose. You have a weight upon you, my brother.”

  “The only weight upon my soul is your song, Jacque. I believe it is melting the snow for ten paces about my horse, for which no doubt he thanks you. Indeed, his stride has increased now that the way is easier. Pray do not cease, I have plenty of gun cotton for my own poor ears.”

  “The Half-caste has no love of art.”

  “And the bois-brûle have a love of hideous noise. Indeed, only yesterday, I saw one of your clan driving a cart with an ox, and the infernal device made a racket like a hundred rutting toms all shrieking with one voice. I daresay it cleared the country of game for a hundred miles.”

  “A hundred rutting toms? All pricks and fight? Mother of God, I cannot think of a better description of myself!”

  “The noise part anyway,” Alexander replies. “But come, my friend, where is this water you promised? I see nothing but withered grass and snow, and my horse is thirsty.”

  “Why, it is just below us. Where are your eyes? See down there, in the willows?” Without answering, Alexander turns his horse and walks into the coulee. The willows at the bottom are thick and tangled, and, as he enters, the silver branches clutch at him and catch in his gear. The night’s dew has collected on every branch tip and soon his clothes and his mount are dark with wet. He sees a spider’s web strung with the tiniest of diamonds, refracting the morning sun into glorious colour. The web moves to and fro as the prairie breathes, and the colours shift and flow up and down the threads. He reaches out a finger; it folds, and the light vanishes. He feels suddenly ashamed.

  A drift of white petals covers the soft ground and once through the willows, they cling to his wet horse as white spots bright against the darker wetness of its fur. He is almost at the bottom of the draw when his horse stops and lifts his head. Alexander reaches down and strokes the animal on the neck.

  “What is the matter, lad?” he murmurs in its ear. The horse tosses its head and its nostrils flare as it takes an elusive scent.

  “What is going on up there?” Jacque calls from behind. “Are you shitting yourself, by God?”

  “There is something in this wood.”

  “Indeed, it is called water. If you must fornicate yourself, at least move aside and let a man through.” Without waiting for a response, Jacque knees his horse and passes alongside. Uncertain and wary, Alexander follows.

  When he arrives at the edge of the tiny creek, Jacque already has a pipe lit and his horse is drinking deeply, the contractions running up her smooth neck. Alexander moves beside his friend, and his own horse lowers its head to drink. He reaches into the octopus bag tied to his sash and pulls out his own pipe and tobacco tin. Placing a piece of char cloth on the pan of his carbine, he dry-fires and the flare of sparks catch on the cloth. Cupping it with some tinder, he swings his hand back and forth as if preparing a throw of dice and smoke soon dribbles from between his fingers. He takes the tinder and holds it against the tobacco. Smoke trails from the pipe and he lifts it to his lips. Jacque watches without comment.

  When the horses have drunk their fill, the men check their flints and proceed along the swamp at the edge of the creek, keeping an eye out for tracks. Mosquitoes swirl about them, heedless of the building warmth of day. The breeze along the creek follows them, announcing their presence to whatever hides in the brush ahead, and Alexander has little hope of catching game at unawares. He relaxes on his blanket, resting his gloved hands on his horse’s neck.

  Jacque rides ahead on his Indian horse, an almost-white pinto mare with a solitary black mark covering her hindquarters, as if she had sat in a barrel of printer’s ink. He too rides without a saddle, although unlike Alexander, who rides without tack of any kind, Jacque’s bridle is a colourful affair, with bright ribbons and feather plumes and beadwork that his wife has sewn onto it. Alexander thinks the horse a lovely animal, and so does his own, a fine sixteen-hand stallion. Whenever they ride with Jacque, Alexander constantly has to remind his horse of his proper business. Although normally a wise and phlegmatic animal, when the mare came into heat the stallion became an ill-tempered imbecilic fool, a state Alexander could sympathize with.

  He is contemplating on the sorry state that the male can be reduced to in the pursuit of love, when he sees it out of the corner of his eye: a long, tawny shape whisking across their shadows, right under the nose of Jacque’s horse. The pinto rears and neighs, almost throwing Jacque into the muskeg. Alexander’s own horse capers about, rolling its eyes and tossing its head. The reek of cat fills the clearing.

  Alexander reins in his horse and pulls up next to Jacque; their eyes meet and with simultaneous whoops, they whack their horse’s flanks and charge through the willows. They burst out of the brush just in time to see the mountain lion disappear over the top of the coulee.

  Alexander reaches into his shot bag and tosses a handful of balls into his mouth. As he pounds up the steep slope of the coulee, he pulls his carbine from its scabbard and pours in a measure of powder from his horn. He spits in a ball and whacks the stock against his leg to settle the charge. Both men goad their horses on and Alexander pulls away, tossing great divots into Jacque’s face while a string of shouted obscenities lights up his horse’s backside.

  As he nears their quarry — running flat out, stretching as tight as a fiddle string in its bounds — Alexander takes a bead on the cat’s shoulder and fires.

  A flash and smoke and a great clod bursts out of the prairie just beside the cat. Alexander curses around the balls in his mouth, spits in another and urges his mount to greater speed. Jacque has veered off to intercept the dodging cat; he too fires and misses.

  The cat whisks into another draw and Alexander exhorts the stallion to even greater speed; it leaps from the edge of the coulee, dropping down, down. The wind whistles in Alexander’s ears and foam from his horse blows into his face.

  They land with a great thud, dirt and turf flying in all directions, and Alexander is almost flung over his horse’s neck. He squeezes his knees with all his strength and holds tightly on to the mane, his heart soaring with the pounding of his horse’s hooves. He feels drunk on prairie, sky, and the smell of his horse, his senses focused by the ecstasy of the hunt.

  Without breaking stride, the stallion surges forward, and Alexander can feel the massive shoulder muscles pumping between his legs, the animal’s sweat soaking into his breeches. This coulee is much larger, and a tangle of willow and buck brush fills the valley bottom. Once the cat find its way in there, it will be gone for good; it will be impossible and even dangerous to follow.

  It is almost there, dodging and weaving its way over and around the folds of the coulee and Alexander leads it with his gun, guessing its next move. When the smoke has blown clear, he can see the cat on the ground, twisting and leaping and clawing at something unseen. He yanks his horse to a halt; in one smooth motion slides off, spits in a ball, kneels, and fires.

  It lies at the bottom of the coulee, ten yards from the brush. Alexander walks forward, loosening his knife in its sheath. As he nears, he can see that the cat is still breathing, with long pauses between breaths. It has been hit in the shoulder and neck, and blood darkens the ochre soil beneath it. A convulsion and it slowly stretches out, limbs quivering. At last it lies still.

  With a feeling of triumph, Alexander kneels besides the animal. Except for the tip of its tail, ears, and muzzle, which are charcoal, its pelt is the colour of fall grass, and is in prime condition after a winter of feeding on weak and starving deer. With one deft movement, he cuts its throat. Waiting for it to bleed, he stands up and looks for the arrival of his friend, a few choice words on his lips.

  This is home, he thinks, staring up at the spring-blue sky overhead, warm and flawless. The pounding of his heart is now a memory, but he feels as if his moccasins are incapable of bending a blade of grass. The kill is a fine one, and the cat’s hide will bring a good price. The miserable weeks of portaging and lining boa
ts, of dealing with ill-equipped and sullen colonists — the betrayal and loss have become a distant memory, with a long and challenging winter of trapping and hunting between himself and the river.

  He had been melancholy for weeks after leaving the brigade, with many a night passed in rum’s dulling embrace. But with the challenges of simple survival always at hand, he had found himself thinking less and less of her, and over time his old spirit returned. He exulted in his reclaimed life — one of wind and freedom and prairie. He swore he would never again place his heart in another’s keeping.

  By the time he has smoked a pipe and thrown the lion over his horse’s back, Jacque still has not appeared. Alexander follows back along his trail, giving his horse its head, surprised to see just how far they had run. No wonder the stallion had felt so hot beneath him. He sees Jacque long before he catches up to him, a dark image on the horizon, and he is on foot.

  When he walks up, his friend is headed the other way, his tack carried under his arm. Looking out over the prairie with his hand shielding his eyes, Alexander sees a couple of crows perched on something in the distance.

  They walk together for a while. “What happened?” he asks at last.

  “Prairie dog hole,” Jacque replies. Alexander nods. He had not heard the shot, but had been down in the coulee and caught up in the chase. God could have farted, and he probably would have missed it.

  “Give you a ride, my friend?” Alexander lowers a hand. Jacque turns toward him, his face covered in dust and two telltale tracks line his cheeks. He takes the hand and swings up onto the stallion behind Alexander. The horse gives a mournful sigh and heads off.

  The sun is low and cold begins to creep out of the ground. The line of dark clouds that had spent the afternoon hugging the southern horizon now roll toward the zenith, all saffron and lavender, their edges burning with a final caress from the setting sun. The air is still and silent, and the sound of the horse pulling at the new grass carries a long way. Coyotes yap in the distance.

  Jacque examines the sky a moment, sniffs, and frowns. “You better hobble that horse. By the smell of the air and the look of the sky, I will wager my left testicle that it will be an ugly night.”

  Using his knife, Alexander quarters a skinned and gutted jackrabbit and impales the meat on willow sticks, jamming an end into the sod so that the meat leans over the buffalo-flap fire. The rabbit is fat with spring grass, and the pieces drip hissing into the flames. The smell is glorious.

  He glances up at the sky. “It is strange, is not — this time of year for a storm? I would swear by your mother’s tit that it is nowhere hot enough.”

  “You are right, Alex, and I think those bastards hold more than rain to piss upon us. This early in the year — Mother of God, if there is not a blizzard hiding behind those pretty colours, I will tongue a priest’s anus. We are fools to be caught out in the open like this.”

  “It is not far to your house.”

  Jacque shakes his head. “We have walked many miles on top of that spavined turd you call a horse, and he is well spent. I remember that there is no shelter, no coulee for many miles around. We can do nothing but see what the night brings. I am worried for your horse.”

  “He will carry us to the ends of the earth if that is your need. However, have a smoke and a bite of rabbit. There is rum in that pannier; fetch it will you?”

  The lightning cuts a jagged swath across the night sky, for the briefest of moments illuminating the silhouette of two riders on a solitary horse. The thunder is an almost constant cannonade, filling the gaps between the blinding flashes. A cold wind roars across the prairie, flattening the grass and forcing the riders to hold dearly to their horse — hats long since lost. Another flash, much closer, and Jacque breaks out laughing.

  “What is it, you ass?” Alexander says, in no mood for humour.

  “Your hair … it stands as if you have seen a ghost.” He is laughing deep and full, slapping his breeches.

  Alexander frowns and turns toward his friend. Another flash and he sees Jacque’s long hair also standing on end, reaching for the heavens. With a cry he knees his horse, and it leaps forward with a lurch, almost dropping Jacque onto the prairie. They thunder along, the sound of their footfalls utterly lost in that immensity of sound and noise. The air about them sparks and crackles, crawling with fairy-light.

  “Merde!” cries Jacque, clinging to Alexander’s jacket and wondering what the hell is happening. The horse pounds along zigzagging this way and that, throwing great divots from its hooves. Alexander is terrified that they will step into a gopher hole in the darkness.

  But the lightning illuminates the valley of the Assiniboine River and the belt of trees growing along its bank. With a great, stomach-churning crash that rolls and tumbles and flattens the very grass, and compels the now thoroughly frightened Jacque into crossing himself, they charge into the valley and the safety of the trees, lightning flicking their mount’s streaming tail.

  They give the weary horse its head as it picks its way through the cottonwoods. It knows the area well, and soon they find their way to a small cabin and corral, not a stone’s throw from the river. Pulling up to the gate, Alexander strokes his horse on the neck and dismounts, Jacque following.

  “What was that all about?” the big man grumbles, rubbing his buttocks.

  Alexander turns to him in the dark. “Lightning. If we had stood there another moment we would have been blasted to hell.”

  “I thought you had more balls than that, my pale friend. And your horse — I was certain he would step in a hole, and we would have our necks broken. Ah, my poor little Marie.” He shakes his head.

  “I have seen it before,” Alexander says. “On a buffalo hunt. The man, Pardie, was sitting alone at a fire while the storm banged around us. I was checking my horse’s hooves, and when I looked up Pardie’s hair was all on end. We were all laughing at him when a great crash flung us about like dolls. Pardie’s hair was all scorched, and he was gibbering like an idiot. All his clothes were burnt off. He lived, but was never right in the head after that. Whenever we visited an Indian camp, he would tear off his clothes and chase the women. The Indians thought he was possessed by a demon, so they didn’t kill him, but our trade suffered.”

  Jacque whistles, and spits. “Piss!” he says, shaking his head again, and then after a moment’s thought, crosses himself. The door to the cabin opens and a small figure stands in the doorway, lit from behind by warm firelight.

  “Who is there?” a woman calls.

  They let the horse into the corral and walk to the cabin. They see that she carries a fowling piece and lifts it toward them as they approach.

  “Oh, my little pig!” Jacque cries, spreading his arms. “It is your husband, home at last.”

  “Jacque! I was wondering what had happened to you, great fool.” She steps from the doorway and wraps her arms around her husband, who bends over her and kisses her long and deeply while Alexander takes great interest in a rusty plough leaning against the house.

  When the couple at last pause for a breath, she scolds Jacque for being away so long, then sees Alexander standing in the shadows, his eyes watching her with great affection. He reaches for the brim of his cap, and then remembers it is somewhere out on the prairie.

  “Hello, Elise,” he says.

  “Dear Alexander, I did not know you were to come. Jacque say nothing to me. Welcome, dearest friend,” she says, taking his hand and Alexander bends over, giving her a light kiss.

  “No, no, wretched woman, keep thy tongue in thy mouth,” Jacque says. “And for the disgusting fire in your loins, Alex, we have a goat in the back, a good prime goat I save for you and any other English or damned Half-caste.”

  “A godly man never sets his eye upon a friend’s true love,” Alexander replies.

  The men stomp into the house, throwing down their gear and tracking in grass and mud onto the sawn-wood floor. There is a birch fire burning on the stone hearth, and it is warm in the
tiny room. Alexander sits at the table while Jacque retrieves a jug and two tin cups. He fills them both brimming.

  “And what about me?” Elise asks, her hands on her hips.

  “Food, little pig. Food first, then you will drink. We have ridden hard and long under the very bolts of Thor himself, and only escaped with our necks by a cunt-hair, praise God. Fleeing is difficult work, and at this moment, I believe I could eat a skunk’s asshole.”

  “I think I do much better than a skunk’s asshole,” says Elise smiling and lifting a heavy frying pan from a hook on the wall.

  As he drinks his rum, Alexander watches Elise prepare a meal of buffalo tongue and bannock. She is a slight Cree woman from a tribe near Cumberland House. She had married Jacque earlier in the year, à la façon du pays, and once as slight as a slip of thread-paper, she already shows a swelling belly. Her Cree name had been Pinackopicim, roughly translated as “autumn moon,” a name given to her for her fair skin and reddish-dark hair, the result of some forgotten liaison with a fur trader somewhere in her ancestry. Alex thinks her Indian name is beautiful, but she insists that only her French name be used. Watching her movements, he feels a stirring in his breeches and is immediately reminded of Rose.

  “Drink, drink, my friend,” shouts Jacque in his ear. “You look a man sentenced to hang, not one who has escaped the gallows. Drink!”

  They drink, all three, until late into the evening. They are accustomed to the vicious solvent that Jacque nursed in his barn, though an outsider would be startled by the sheer quantity of liquor a native of the country will consume and still be able to carry on an intelligible if not respectable conversation.

  Somewhere along the way, however, the mood changed; about the time Elise mentioned in passing that Cuthbert Grant had stopped by, seeking Jacque.

  “Cuthbert Grant! What the hell does that pig turd want?”

  “He would not say. Something to do with colony, the new people at the Forks.”