A Good Man (18 page)

It was about the time Madame Boisclair Stewart informed me that she was going to leave Toronto to live with a female cousin in Missouri that I last laid eyes on the Lugubrious Helmsman. Forlorn and heartsick at the prospect of her departure, I was pacing the lobby waiting for her to appear when I glimpsed the Helmsman buttonholing a little man with a Macassared kiss-curl pasted to his brow, a long scarf draped over his shoulder, and a violin case tucked under his arm. A picture of Bohemian poverty, shabby overcoat sprinkled with melting snow, trouser cuffs soggy with slush, shoes soaked, and miserably shivering.

But then I realized he wasn’t shivering; he was trembling with fear. The Helmsman was menacingly pressed up against him, had driven the little violinist backwards until his shoulder blades bumped hard against the wall, and was berating him in an urgent, scolding whisper. Suddenly he took him by the collar, turned him towards the saloon, and gave him a fierce shove. The musician stumbled, hesitated, glanced back over his shoulder at the Helmsman, and scooted into the bar. For a moment, the man in cap and pea jacket stood watching the door; then he swung round on his heels, strode past me, and shot out of the hotel.

Inquisitiveness led me to follow the man with the fiddle into the saloon. He had already posed himself near the counter, violin tucked under his chin, an embarrassed, self-conscious smile stuck to his face as he lightly ran his bow over the strings while he tuned his instrument. People seated close to him cast amused and puzzled looks. I lifted my eyes to the secessionists’ table at the very back of the room where a handful of regulars were in deep conversation. None of the Lilies was about.

The violinist struck up a tune that brought the Southerners’ heads up with a sudden jerk. The room went still. The fiddler mistook these reactions as signs of musical appreciation. The tip of his pink tongue licked his lips; his head began to weave from side to side; his kiss-curl gled and radiated oily confidence. He began to sing in a high, nasal voice as piercing as the noise his violin was making, and my eyes slunk off him, fastening on those wet trouser cuffs that draped his thin ankles. “John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave, / John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave, / But his soul goes marching on.”

I could not look at him. Then there came a sharp bang and clatter that swung me round to search its source. Postlethwaite was on his feet behind the trestle table, one hand clenching the lapel of his jacket in an orator’s pose, head flung back, eyes startled and staring. Overturned on the floor behind him lay his chair. His colleagues were slowly rising, dressing a line against the plaster wall. A ripple of uneasiness ran the length of the room; people shifted in their chairs, craned their necks, darted glances from the Confederates to the fiddler, who sensed something was wrong but could not divine what it was. Feeling himself losing his audience, he sang louder, sawed his fiddle harder, and grinned a wobbly, ingratiating smile. Postlethwaite was leading his men out in protest. With their canes held slanted across their chests, with the utmost gravitas they were moving through the other patrons, murmuring apologies whenever someone had to shift a chair to clear a path for them, dignifying their displeasure with the utmost courtesy. As they approached the door near which I was standing, I stepped aside to let them pass. At that very instant, I heard the violinist singing, “The stars above in Heaven now are looking kindly down.”

Perhaps Postlethwaite remembered what he could not bring himself to say to Madame Boisclair Stewart – his speech about the necessity of teaching the enemy a lesson. He veered away from the door. The other three shifted their shoulders and followed him, making for the fiddler, whose voice went even shriller with every step they made towards him. I suppose sheer terror kept him doing what he was doing, just as the mouse will keep nibbling on a seed as the snake glides towards it.

Only when the Confederates halted face to face with him did he finally stop, lift his bow from the strings, and timidly say, “Gentlemen?”

“You damned dirty dog,” said Postlethwaite quietly, and slashed his cane down on the little fellow’s collarbone. Then the others went at the man; walking sticks rose and fell, chopping him to his knees with meaty thuds and sharp cracks. Between the legs of his attackers, I glimpsed the musician’s lips, moving in a soundless, plaintive protest. A ring of bowed backs hid him from my sight and the beating went on. A walking stick snapped; the gold knob flew off, skittered across the floor, sizzling in the gas lamplight. I shouted something to them. Something about they must stop or they would kill him. As I did there came a shrieking of whistles, and nightstick-brandishing constables swept into the room.

From beginning to end, the attack could not have lasted more than a minute. The Southerners offered no resistance to arrest, meekly held out their wrists to be manacled. The constabulary showed no interest in the victim, who was creeping about the floor, bloodied and dazed. When I went to him, he seemed incapable of understanding that someone was trying to help him. His hands kept pawing, his knees jerking, as he scrambled about the floor. I had to take hold of his collar to stop him from going under a table. Feeling my knuckles touch the back of his neck, he gave a small incoherent cry, rolled over on his side, pulled his thighs up against his chest, and began to whimper something hrough his broken teeth. I had to put my ear to his mouth to hear what he was saying. “Done. Done. Bloody done,” he muttered, over and over. At the time I took him to mean he was done for, or done in.

It seems strange to me now that I gave so little thought to the exemplary speed with which the Toronto Police had arrived on the scene. But knowing what I know now, I see that they must have been standing at the ready, or perhaps been summoned by the Helmsman, who had left the hotel in such a hurry. After all, he had bought himself a fiddler, told him what to play, and knew what the consequences would be.

Two musical provocations in two saloons, both of which offended the sentiments of the South. Seeing Dunne hunched over Ada Tarr like a black bird of prey summoned the image of the cringing fiddler. Bloody Dunne. Keeping close watch on the Confederate table for weeks had made him familiar with all the Lilies. Perhaps our friendliness with the secession men had made us subjects of suspicion for whomever Dunne was working for – the Police, maybe Union agents. He may even have been charged to make inquiries about us. I certainly had no interest in him. Until the night Pudge held the Lugubrious Helmsman up to public ridicule I had paid him no more notice than I did the chairs and tables that I walked by in the saloon bar of the Queen’s.

Pudge Wilson and Michael Dunne, two figures from the past, linked in my mind by the former’s humiliation of the latter. Michael Dunne, no stranger to the auction block, paid to provoke the secession men, eager to sell himself to Walsh, owned at present by Randolph Tarr. So contemptible a creature he doesn’t merit a second thought.

Pudge Wilson is a different matter. If I refuse to think of him by day, he visits me in my sleep. All these years he has burrowed himself deeper and deeper inside me. There seems to be no ridding myself of my malignancy until some surgeon inhabiting my nightmares miraculously cuts it out of me, or I do it myself.

August 11, 1876

Fort Benton

My dear Walsh:

Your initiative in sending Cpl. Rampton and Sub-Const. Charles to deliver mail to Fort Benton has caused astonishment in the town, seeing as overland postal delivery here on the American side is still suspended, it being considered too risky a venture with the Sioux still at large. Rampton and Charles’s arrival is a fortunate circumstance for me since I have recently met with Ilges, and am pleased to report he appears ready to cooperate in every way with the proposal I put to him on your behalf. You will see evidence of that in what follows.

The latest news has come to him via two half-breed scouts, Baptiste Pourier and Frank Grouard, who until lately were attached to Gen. Crook’s force on the south fork of Goose Creek. They rode into Fort Benton a few days ago. Grouard was granted leave to receive treatment for a venereal complaint that had rendered him unfit for duties. Pourier accompanied him because Grouard was judged incapable of making the journey alone.

These men told Ilges that Crookas avoided pursuing the Sioux ever since he engaged the Indians at Rosebud Creek six weeks ago. The only step he took to prosecute a campaign was to send out a large reconnaissance party of what he described as “hand-picked men,” led by a green young officer, Lt. Sibley. Grouard and Pourier were Sibley’s civilian scouts. Pourier said that not long into the mission he spotted Sioux on their trail and informed the Lieutenant they were being followed. Sibley dismissed his warning and halted his troop so he could brew himself a pot of coffee. The coffee had scarcely begun to boil when the Sioux attacked and drove the soldiers to take refuge in thick timber. Pourier was certain the Indians would set fire to the tinder-dry woods and burn them out. He managed to convince the Lieutenant that their only chance of escape was to leave their horses and make their way on foot through the forest. It was a catastrophic retreat. Carbines were lost fording streams; men discarded their ammunition to lighten their flight. The half-breeds report that one exhausted soldier who couldn’t keep pace was abandoned and that Grouard, incapacitated by his disease, would have met the same fate if Pourier had not carried him on his back. The scouts related to Ilges a litany of hardships they had suffered: days of heavy rain succeeded by freezing nights, a starvation diet of wild turnip augmented by a few fledgling ground birds the troopers captured by hand. If one of Crook’s civilian packers had not stumbled on them, they maintain the entire party would have perished from hunger.

A correspondent from the
Chicago Times
, John Finerty, was a member of this sorry expedition. You can be sure his account of it will be cast as a tale of heroic survival rather than the debacle it was. I advise you to present the full details of this fiasco to Secretary Scott to drive home to him that the American troops in the field show few signs of adapting themselves to war as it is fought by the Indian. No doubt Scott is receiving optimistic assurances from American sources as to the progress of the campaign. Military leaders will always assure their political masters of a sunny outcome – it is what their bosses desire to hear. But it is better that Scott hears the truth. (I suggest you say that this information came to you from your Métis scouts who in turn received it from their kinsmen Grouard and Pourier.) There is a bad smell about this business and it is wiser to accustom Scott’s nose to it by degrees than have the stench break full force in his nostrils at some later date.

It is Ilges’s opinion that the only chance the Americans have of crushing the Sioux before winter comes rests with Gen. Crook and Terry who, after many weeks of delay, are finally preparing to launch a campaign in the Rosebud–Powder River country. They have four thousand men at their disposal. However, Ilges confided to me that he is not optimistic about their chances of success. He judges such a large force too difficult to supply in the wilderness, too slow and cumbersome to pursue a well-mounted foe. What’s more, Terry and Crook share joint command and Ilges says that may prove a recipe for disaster. Every officer in the West is aware of the personal antipathy that exists between the two generals and their long-standing professional jealousy.

The bad relations that exist between Terry and Crook is, I suggest, not a point you should raise with the Minister, but I think you might offer Ilges’s opinion of the military situation as your own – that such a large force is not suited to the hit-and-run style of fighting favoured by Indians. On the other hand, the Army’s likely inability to come to grips with the Sioux does have a silver lining – for the time being the Sioux will feel no need to seek sanctuary in Canada.

I would advise that you also send a copy of whatever report that you render to the Secretary of State to Commissioner Macleod. Make it a
ditto
. Two identical copies of a report in two different sets of files provide you with a record of diligence that cannot be disputed.

Sincerely yours,