The End of the Line Read online

  Mack went down heavily beside him, legs thrashing, knocking Durrant to the ground with a violent blow to his chest from the animal’s winter-shod hooves. The Winchester was kicked from Durrant’s hands, its wooden stock shattering.

  Durrant fell on his side, his lungs screaming for air from the blow to the chest as gunfire ricocheted off rocks and into snow all around him. Prone, he reached into his coat and fumbled for his Enfield Mk II revolver, and rising onto his right knee, he aimed into the woods where the gunfire continued. He fired twice left and then twice right, the whir of bullets spinning past his ears. The gunfire created a funnel of sound that seemed to stop time and narrowed his sight into a dark corridor between him and his hidden assailants.

  In the passage of a split second, Durrant became aware of his precarious position. He was alone, miles from Fort Walsh, caught in the open, his attackers concealed by the cover of the hilltop’s dark forest and undergrowth. He fired the Enfield’s final two rounds into the woods, and then worked the pistol’s awkward self-extracting cylinder to eject the spent shells.

  While he fumbled with the chamber in the frozen air, the fateful bullet found its mark. It might have been his heart if the shot had been a little higher, but instead, the bullet bore into his shin, shattering his tibia two inches below the knee. The force of the blow spun him sideways, his busted leg collapsing, and he fell, face forward, onto the ground. Lying on his side, Durrant fired the two rounds he had managed to load into his pistol towards the woods before the world went dim. He slumped onto his back, his right hand gripping the well-worn handle of the Enfield, his mouth opening and closing as if trying to express the white-hot agony that shot up from his ruined leg.

  The gunfire stopped and was replaced by laughter. Good riddance, Durrant Wallace.

  The world seemed to disintegrate around him. He would die beside his horse on the barren earth of the Cypress Hills.

  • • •

  The dream was always the same. Durrant woke; the Enfield was in his left hand, his face flushed despite the cold, sweat stinging his eyes. He leveled the pistol into the darkness, the hammer back, ready to fire.

  Gunfire.

  He blinked the sweat from his eyes. The dream was over. He was awake. With his game right hand he wiped the perspiration from his forehead, his left hand still holding the pistol before him. He was in his bunk. This wasn’t the Cypress Hills. Not Saskatchewan, but the Alberta Territory. Not 1881, but 1884. Not Fort Walsh: this was Fort Calgary.

  He heard more shots. Not an ambush; revellers, drunk on illegal whiskey, bored with the interminable winter of the Alberta foothills.

  Durrant lowered the pistol and reached for the lamp beside his bed, his right hand fumbling with the trim wheel while he struck a match with his left. The yellow flame flickered as he adjusted the wick and then a pale glow was cast across the stark room. Bare board walls measuring twelve feet by ten, a rough hewn plank floor, and a single small window shuttered against the unremitting winds and piercing cold; these were the parameters of Durrant Wallace’s world.

  The table at his bedside held the single lamp, a prized golden locket, and a few well-worn books. On a low bench against the wall adjacent to his bed was his prosthetic leg. He released the hammer and put the Enfield down on the table next to the lamp and reached for the artificial limb. There would be no returning to the temporary sanctuary of a dream-plagued sleep for Durrant this night. The gunfire and the nightmare ensured that he would lay awake until dawn. Come the rising of the sun, his day would begin, almost as bleak as his night.

  Durrant used the limb’s suction socket to attach it and then reached for his trousers and heavy winter coat. He stood, somewhat awkwardly, and took up his single crutch. He extinguished the lamp, then took the Enfield in his left hand and tramped for the door. Before he reached it, he turned and limped back to his table. He opened the tiny drawer and took a second pistol from it and tucked it into the breast pocket of his coat. Durrant had sworn never to be caught reloading again.

  Bracing himself for the cold, Durrant opened the door and felt the icy chill slap him in the face. He stepped from his room into the darkness of the night. It was cloudless above and the stars seemed to rest only a few feet above the Mountie’s head, their twinkling undisturbed by campfire, torch or lantern light.

  Durrant was neither a commissioned officer nor a mounted horseman; Durrant served the North West Mounted Police in a sort of constabulary purgatory. While some Mounties were pensioned off or put on the dole after being zinged, Durrant had chosen “light duty” instead, and suffered both the insolence of the civilians he tried to police and the unendurable pity of those he served with.

  The expanded Fort was only a year old but Durrant knew it well. He’d spent nearly every day of that year confined to its parameters. Durrant’s colleagues were gone for weeks at a time riding the rugged foothills, talking with the Blackfoot Nation, or breaking up illegal whiskey and rum operations up and down the Bow and Elbow Rivers. Durrant Wallace, however, veteran of the March West and decorated member of the North West Mounted Police, sorted the mail, sent telegraphs, collected customs from the I.G. Baker Company, and attended to the administrative aspects of the enrolment and discharge of prisoners at the Fort’s guard rooms. He hadn’t sat a horse since February of 1881: more than three years. What good was a mounted policeman if he couldn’t sit a horse, Durrant wondered for the thousandth time, as he made his way through the pallid darkness of the barracks.

  Durrant crossed the parade ground, pulling his coat up around his chin. For once the night was still, the temperature a numbing ten degrees below zero Fahrenheit. He slipped the Enfield into his pocket and fitted the regulation seal skin cap on his head, pulling the flaps down over his stinging ears. He stood a moment at the centre of the grounds and contemplated the scene before him.

  Fort Calgary was built at the confluence of the Elbow and the Bow Rivers. It had been constructed in 1875 when members of the original NWMP’s “F” company had been dispatched under the command of Inspector Brisbois to break up the whiskey trade which had spread malignantly into Blackfoot territory.

  During the Fort’s early days, the little settlement had grown slowly, and was nothing but a few log buildings chinked with mud that all but disintegrated into the prairie sod during the spring rains. In 1881, when the first cattle were herded along “Stephen Avenue”—then just a dirt track through the centre of mud-splattered tents—the town was still little more than tepees and temporary huts.

  During the summer of 1883, construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway steamed west across Alberta and breached the mountains at Bow Gap, and Fort Calgary boomed. That year the original rough-hewn log battlements had been replaced with the Fort’s modern buildings. Now a thousand souls called the town home. It boasted more than thirty buildings and hundreds of tents sprawled along the confluence of the two rivers.

  Durrant regarded the town beyond the Fort with suspicion. He heard the retort of a long bore rifle to the north, toward the Bow River, and his hand reached into the pocket of his coat for the heavy reassurance of his Enfield.

  Durrant had arrived just ahead of the railway, freshly outfitted with a prosthetic leg fashioned at the NWMP Hospital in Regina, where he had spent the better part of two years recovering. When the bloody American Civil War had ended in 1865, more than ten thousand men had needed artificial limbs, and Durrant had benefited from the research that had led to the appendage that he now wore. It had made his time recovering in Regina possible.

  Recovering.

  The doctors had spoken the word as if it was something that happened to you, as if delivered by the Grace of God himself. But Durrant didn’t believe in the benediction of an Almighty. Recovery was something that you did yourself. Recovery was an act of rebellion against the God who had allowed murderous thugs to shoot your horse and leave you for dead on the hard earth of the Cypress Hills. Durrant was determined to recover. It was his personal rebellion.

  Durra
nt angled north, past the Quartermaster’s store, and made measured progress over the icy ruts along the bank of the Bow River. His right hand, twisted and deformed by the frostbite that had overtaken him while he lay clutching the pistol in the frigid Saskatchewan winter, held the polished handle of his crutch awkwardly.

  After gaining what mobility he could in the corridor of Regina’s small hospital, he taught himself to be a southpaw in the field behind the barracks of the North West Mounted Police in the “Dewdney Section” of the new Territorial capital. There, on the outskirts of the town, Durrant felt like the ten-year-old boy he once had been; hoisting his father’s British Bulldog, the small, heavy-gauge pistol made by Webley and Son, and shooting tin cans and his mother’s ceramic pots behind the family’s weekend farm on the outskirts of Toronto. That had been more than twenty years ago. Now he had to learn again.

  At thirty-three, learning to shoot while leaning on a crutch, he grew easily frustrated with his lack of progress. He had plenty of time, though, before he would be steady enough to travel west. He finally left Regina in the spring of 1883. At first, the notion of returning to duty with the NWMP, even if it was light duty, buoyed his flagging spirits. After traveling by wagon over the thawing prairie from Regina to Fort Calgary, while other Red Coats rode proudly out over the plains, Durrant slipped back into melancholia.

  Another crack of a rifle brought Durrant back to the present. He passed the lee of the Fort’s store, its white washed walls pale in the starlight. Durrant made his way toward a pair of boarding houses surrounded by white tepees and ramshackle cabins, whose occupants were notorious for their revelry.

  Durrant muttered a curse into the night air, his words hanging like a frozen mist around his bearded face. The NWMP force was badly outnumbered at Fort Calgary. They faced competing demands: making peace with the mighty Blackfoot Nation that was growing increasingly restless along the Rocky Mountain Front, or quashing the production and trade in whiskey that threatened the speedy completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway. There was often nobody to mind the Fort but Durrant himself. When trouble arose, he was cursed to clomp along on the frozen ground, feeling every bit the fool.

  The sound of merrymaking in the distance became clear. Durrant turned the corner of one of the boarding houses and saw the source of the mischief. Behind one of the buildings a group of figures huddled around a fire, the flames casting long shadows across the snowy field that danced on the whitewashed walls of the buildings. The firelight blinded the Mountie to a view of all but those within the lick of the flames. Myopic as his vision was, Durrant could see the bottles of whiskey passed between the estimated two dozen men.

  He pushed forward through the snow, his crutch slipping on patches of ice. He crossed to within twenty paces of the men. One man held a rifle above his head and fired it again, then lowered the gun to reload. By its shape, Durrant recognized the rifle as a Sharps Silhouette, a single-shot long-bore rifle used by many ranchers and cattlemen for hunting.

  Durrant took the opportunity and raised the Enfield and leveled his aim above the rifleman’s head. When the Sharps was raised again, Durrant drew and released a long breath, closed one eye, and fired. The flash from his muzzle and the new gunfire stopped the revelry flat. His shot found its mark, though not dead on, and the rifle leaped from the man’s hand to land in the snow behind him.

  “Evening, gents,” Durrant said in the silence that followed the crack of his pistol. The rifleman stepped from his circle of comrades as if to advance on Durrant. Durrant cocked the Enfield. “Stand your ground, friend,” he said.

  “I ain’t your friend, mister.”

  “Seems like you fellas have gotten into some whiskey tonight. Care to share?”

  “We’re just having a little fire is all. No harm done.”

  “Discharging a rifle inside the town. Drinking whiskey within ten miles of the CPR. This ain’t Fort Benton, this is Dominion Territory.”

  “Harmless fun is all. You could have shot my arm off.” The man took another step and Durrant aimed the Enfield high and fired again, the rifleman dropping to a crouch. Several of his friends laughed.

  “You think that’s funny?” he growled, standing, and turning on his friends. Then he looked back at Durrant. “Why don’t you go and sort some post, Red Coat.”

  “You making a crack?” Durrant took a step forward and re-cocked the Enfield.

  “Ain’t making no crack about anything. But I’m telling you to leave well enough alone and go back and parley with the red skins or the like,” the rifleman said, his voice laced with malice.

  “You sure? It sounded to me like maybe you were having a little fun at my expense.” Durrant took another step, the crutch catching on a spot of ice, and he slipped forward. Several men winced at the thought of the Mountie falling, the Enfield discharging in their direction as he did.

  “Put that goddammed thing away before you take off my head. My rifle’s smashed on the ground there,” the man said. “There ain’t no reason for waving a pistol around.”

  Durrant held the pistol level. “Who’s making the whiskey?” he demanded.

  The men were silent, their faces dark, backs to the fire, facing down the lone questioner.

  “Pass it forward,” Durrant said. “Empty the bottles out and pass them here into the snow. Gently now.”

  Several men emptied bottles and tossed them into the snow between themselves and Durrant.

  “That all of them? Don’t make me strip you down to your skivvies.”

  “That’s it,” the rifleman said. “That’s all we got.”

  “Who’s making it?”

  “Who ain’t?” said a voice from the circle of dark bodies.

  “Yeah, who ain’t?” repeated the rifleman. “It’s just whiskey.”

  “It ain’t just whiskey. It’s goin’ to be the end of the line for this railroad and that’s a fact. Too much whiskey, not enough work from you navvies, and Ottawa is fed up with it.”

  “It’s the middle of the bleeding winter,” said a voice from the circle.

  “Why don’t you get on back to your post, cripple,” said another voice.

  Durrant raised the Enfield and fired over their heads.

  All the men ducked this time. Several cursed him. Durrant took a few steps forward and his face became plain to the men, the light of the fire illuminating it for the first time. Behind the beard, below his eyes and across the bridge of his nose were the scars of his long night on the frozen earth in the Cypress Hills.

  Durrant held the Enfield level not ten paces from the nearest man.

  “Listen here . . .” he started, teeth gritted, his breath coming in heavy clouds in the frozen air.

  There was the sound of horses in the night and two Mounties rode into the circle of firelight. The revellers almost looked relieved.

  “What’s all this shooting about?” the first asked. Durrant saw it was Sub-Inspector Dewalt, Deputy Commander of Fort Calgary.

  “This Red Coat’s gone mad,” the rifleman barked. “Aiming to kill us all over a little harmless fun,” he spat as he yelled.

  The officer rode around the front of the crowd, the horse pawing the ground. He saw the whiskey bottles and the ruined rifle on the ground. “Doesn’t look so harmless to me. Durrant?”

  Durrant took a deep breath and blew a thick stream of mist between pursed lips. Already there was frost forming on his beard. “Fellas here thought drinking and shooting up the night was a good way to pass the time. I thought otherwise. The law is the law.”

  “You’re just a goddamned postman here!” shouted a man from the crowd.

  Dewalt turned his horse in the snow and bore down on him, “This man’s every bit the law in this town as I am. Now put that fire out and head on in to bed or I’ll have all you down to the guard room, with Sergeant Wallace here as sentry.”

  The Mountie turned his horse towards Durrant as the group of men kicked snow onto the flames, which crackled and sizzled. Durrant lowered th
e Enfield.

  Dewalt came up beside him. “You want an arm up?” he asked.

  “I’ll walk.”

  “Hold up a minute,” said Dewalt. He swung a leg over his mount and dropped down next to Durrant. He was bundled in a greatcoat, its heavy cape reaching to the Sub-Inspector’s waist. “Walk with me, Sergeant,” he said.

  Durrant took a look back over his shoulder at the lone NWMP constable overseeing the fire being extinguished and then faced his superior officer.

  “You aiming to call me on the carpet?”

  “Walk with me, Sergeant.”

  Durrant tucked his pistol into his pocket and started along the frozen ground.

  “Things get a little out of hand here tonight?”

  “Not as far as I saw it.”

  “You didn’t take things a little too far?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Durrant, you were shooting over those men’s heads.”

  “I knew what I was doing. They were shooting too.”

  “Listen, Sergeant, I can’t have you picking fights with everybody who fires a rifle or raises a bottle of whiskey to his lips in this town. I just can’t have that.”

  “I thought our job was to put an end to the whiskey trade?”

  “It is.”

  “So I was doing my job.”

  “Durrant, I don’t want to sound like an ass, but it isn’t your job.”

  “It’s my job long as I wear the serge.”

  “Well, if you aren’t more judicious, you won’t be wearing it for long. You’re causing more trouble than you solve.”

  “I’m keeping the peace.”

  “You’re aiming to start a war. This is the Dominion of Canada. We don’t ride in, guns blazing. You know that. You were one of the best. Time was, you could sit down and make the peace with just about any man, red or white.”