Far Horizons (32 page)

He'd stopped listening to Semple and Grant's exchange, for other men were shouting as well. Then he saw the glint of the sun on silver, the metal of a rifle. He realised with an icy thrill of shock that both sides were armed and willing to shoot. He felt as if he were stuck in mud, unable to move or even think fast enough.

Then the shot of a rifle split the air, and there was a thud as Semple's body fell.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“Governor Semple's gone out to meet with the traders,” Katherine told Harriet. She took off her bonnet and laid her basket on the table. “People seem to think he'll deal with them quickly, but Lord knows they've burned the fort before. They might do it again.”

“Surely not.” Harriet looked around at the crude cabin she and Katherine had inhabited since arriving at Fort Douglas a few days ago. When they had time and resources, they would build their own, as others had. Yet they would spend the winter in this, which was cruder than the humblest croft back on Mull, no more than one room with rough log walls and a swept dirt floor.

Still the threat of its destruction chilled her. She didn’t want to be thrown out of another home, and this time she feared it would be far more ungentle. Perhaps the Métis would be violent, abusive. They had been so before.

“There's no point pretending it won’t happen,” Katherine said brusquely. “I've seen it before, haven't I, just a different time and place. Different people.” Harriet knew she was talking about the clearances.

“I'm sorry,” she said quietly. “What should we do?”

“Nothing, for now, I suppose. What can we do, but listen and wait? When Semple returns, perhaps then...” Katherine shook her head. “I don't know. Perhaps I'm worrying over nothing. It gets to me, this. It's so like before.”

Harriet put her arms around the older woman. “This is a new world,” she said softly, “with new opportunities. Surely Governor Semple will deal with these insurgents, and if he doesn't, there are enough of us to fight back. It's not one poor crofter and his family against a laird.”

Katherine drew a shuddering breath. “It might as well as be. If they burn the fort? What then?”

“We'll rebuild it,” Harriet said, more staunchly than she felt. “The settlers here did it before, didn't they? Why not again?”

Katherine shook her head. “I don't know if I have it in me, to start again. It took all my strength to make it this far, and losing Brian...”

For the first time, Harriet saw beyond the strong lines of Katherine's face, to the worry and fatigue beneath. “Let me make you a cup of tea,” she said. Tea, brought all the way from Pictou, was precious, yet now seemed as good a time as any to indulge in the small luxury.

She filled the kettle from the water pail and hung it over the fire. “You mustn't worry about what might happen, not yet. Wait until Governor Semple returns.”

But Semple did not return. As dusk fell, a messenger rode into the fort with news of the meeting at Seven Oaks.

“It was a massacre,” he said grimly. “I saw it, I was there. The Métis fired on Semple and his men... all dead except for me and one other.”

The settlers crowded around the man gasped with fear and some women fell to crying. Harriet clutched her shawl tighter around her, a chill spreading within her that had nothing to do with the frosty air. What now, she wondered. The governor dead!

“Worse than that,” the man continued, still trying to catch his breath from the harrowing ride. “The Métis are on their way here. We'll have to leave the fort, and quickly. I don't know what they plan to do, or if the fort will be burned. But now that Semple is dead, and the scent of blood is in the air, I warrant anything can happen.”

Harriet caught her breath and exchanged glances with Katherine. The older woman's face was grey with fear and pain.

“Flee now,” the man urged. “Take what you can, but leave the rest. You must leave, for your own safety.”

“Come.” Harriet put her arm around Katherine. They would have to return to the cabin and pack provisions for the trip. She didn't even know where they would go, or how, but she could see Katherine was not capable of making plans or decisions. This last blow had been too much for her, and she let Harriet lead her as if she were a child.

Katherine sat huddled by the fire and watched as Harriet gathered their warmest clothes and what little food they'd managed to gather. “You know,” she said softly, “when Brian died, some people were worried that I would be a drag on the settlement, an aging widow. They argued it was too harsh a land to take women, older women at that, without men to care for them. Perhaps they were right.”

“Nonsense,” Harriet said with a briskness she didn't feel. “You're worth two of many of the people here, Katherine. Now I've gathered what we'll need... for however long we're gone.” Harriet swallowed the fear that threatened to rise and choke her. How long would they be gone, she wondered, and would there be anything to come back to? Was there even anything to
go
to? The colony was built on a huge plain, and Harriet knew the next settlement was over fifteen miles away.

Many of the settlers had gathered by the gates of the fort, armed only with blankets and baskets, the few horses they had pawing the ground as if they could smell the fear.

Dusk had fallen, and the stars glittering coldly in a midnight sky as Harriet and Katherine left the fort, led by Mr. Ferry. They were heading to the unknown... please God, Harriet thought, it would be to safety.

The worst had come to pass, she knew, and they stood to lose everything... even their lives.

No one spoke as they started out into the black night, but the fear was palpable, crackling in the very air as if before a storm. All around them the plains grass rustled in a dry wind, and Harriet followed the lantern of the people in front of her, no more than a bobbing light in a sea of black. She kept her arm around Katherine, urging her forward, but after less than an hour of walking she knew the older woman was flagging. The lantern ahead of them was growing smaller as they slowly but surely fell behind.

“I can't go any further.”

Harriet's breath caught in her throat as next to her Katherine stumbled to her knees.

“You can, Katherine,” she urged, desperation edging her voice as she tried to raise her to her feet once more. “You must.”

“It’s too far...”

Harriet didn’t know how far they’d travelled, but it couldn’t be much more than a mile. It was fifteen miles to the nearest settlement. It was too far.

“Please, Katherine,” she said, her voice no more than a whisper. “We can’t stay here.” Harriet had to force herself not to think of the terror behind them. Was the messenger from Seven Oaks right, and the traders were now violent, ready for an even greater victory? Harriet didn't know. All she knew was they had to keep going, one foot in front of the other...

Katherine was still on her knees, her breathing laboured, her voice choked. “I'm too tired. You'll have to go on without me.”

“And leave you here? Nonsense. You can lean on me, Katherine. Come, now.” She struggled to raise Katherine to her feet, as the voices of the settlers ahead of them began to grow faint.

Fear roughened her voice as she half-dragged Katherine along. “We need to catch up with the others, Katherine. I don't know the way to go by myself.”

Ahead she could see the swinging pinpoint of light that was someone's lantern, and it was getting fainter. “Come on!” Harriet nearly shouted, but any further rebuke died on her lips as she saw Katherine's grey face. The older woman was not just fatigued, she was ill, seriously so.

Katherine sagged back on the ground, her eyes closing.

“God help us,” Harriet whispered. She dropped her basket and knelt by Katherine, cradling her head. “Perhaps if we rest for a few minutes...” she said, although she knew inside that a few minutes wouldn't do Katherine much good. There was no point going on. She would never make it.

The air was sharp with cold, and Harriet pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders. She watched with a strange sense of detachment as the last pinpoint of light faded to nothing. They'd been left behind, as simple as that, she saw dully. Left in the cold and the dark, in a foreign land, with who knew what on their scent.

She took a deep breath to steady herself. She would not die here, she resolved. After all she'd been through to come to this country, to find Allan, and now to start a new life... she wasn't willing to give up yet. She'd had too many dreams broken to allow fate to cruelly snatch her last few faded hopes.

“Stay here,” she whispered to Katherine, although the older woman was not likely to go anywhere in her condition. Harriet took off her shawl and laid it over Katherine, bundling some extra clothes for a pillow for her head. “I'm going to look around and see if there's any shelter. I'll be back soon, I promise.”

The moon was a medallion of silver in the night sky, and Harriet was grateful for the light it provided, bathing the prairie in an eerie, ghostly light. 

There wasn't much to see in the flat prairie, and Harriet wondered what they would do for shelter. Hide in the tall grasses? It would be little protection against the cold, or other, worse possibilities.

She squinted her eyes and saw the land roll gently downwards in a hill some yards away, and a sudden, fierce hope lit her soul. She hurried towards the change in landscape.

“Thanks be!” There, huddled in a creek bottom, was an old trapper's cabin, now half-falling down but at least with a passable roof and walls.

Picking up her skirts, Harriet hurried back to Katherine, half-stumbling in her haste.

Katherine was half-unconscious on the ground when Harriet returned. Gently Harriet touched her fingertips to the woman's cheek. Her face was cold, but there was a pulse, and Harriet could still hear her laboured breathing.

“Katherine, can you hear me? I've found a place. If we can just make it a little while longer...”

Katherine stirred, and her eyes opened. “What did you say?”

“Can you walk for just a little bit, if I help?” Harriet asked. “There's a trapper's cabin down the hill from here. It's not much, but it's shelter for the night. Perhaps tomorrow...” She trailed off, not wanting to think of tomorrow, or the troubles it would bring. Where would they find food? How would they get to the fort, or even back to Fort Douglas, if there was anything left? The future seemed full of insurmountable obstacles.

Katherine struggled to a half sitting position. “I can do it.”

Later, Harriet wasn't sure how they made it back to the cabin. The short walk was a blur, with the cold and the darkness, and Katherine's weight sagging against her own.

Finally, they stumbled into the crude, one room dwelling. It smelled musty and old, but at least it provided some escape from the cold wind, and, please God, the dangers of the men on their trail.

Harriet positioned Katherine as comfortably as possible against the far wall. “I'd make you some tea, but I'm afraid to light a fire,” she confessed quietly.

“Never mind.” Katherine smiled weakly. “You're good to me, to keep me like this. You could've left me, gone off with the others to safety.”

“Never,” Harriet exclaimed, horrified. “You were the one who made it possible for me to come West. I'd hardly abandon you now.”

“And was it such a good idea?” Katherine coughed, her shoulders racked by the movement. “We've had nothing but trouble it seems since we started. And who knows what has happened back at the settlement... there may be nothing left.”

“Let's not think of that. Besides, I don't regret coming with you, Katherine.” Harriet gazed into the darkness, thinking of Sandy and Betty, of Rupert, back on Prince Edward Island, and then of her own father and sister on Mull. She'd left so many people, so many dreams behind. Where did her future lie? “There was nothing for me back East,” she said quietly.

“What about a young man?” Katherine's faint smile gleamed in the darkness. “You're a pretty lass. I'm sure the young gentlemen wanted to call on you.”

Harriet shook her head. “There was one,” she admitted quietly, “but I betrayed him... and he died.”

Katherine did not reply, but her hand found Harriet's in the darkness and clasped it. Harriet realised she was crying. She could feel the cold tears slip silently down her face. She held Katherine's hand, grateful for the comfort, and wondered what she was crying for... the past or the future.

The hours passed slowly. Katherine drifted back into unconsciousness. Harriet sat next to her on the dirt floor, cold and cramped. She dozed, haunted by dreams of fire and gun shots, only to wake suddenly, aching and tired. The cold, grey light of dawn was stealing across the earthen floor when Harriet heard rustling from outside.

She tensed, waiting. Surely it was just an animal, a deer or at worse, a bear...

Then she heard laboured breathing, the tearing gasp of someone who had been running for a long while. Katherine stirred, and then her eyes opened suddenly, alert and watchful.

“Someone's here,” Harriet whispered, her voice barely more than a breath.

“The gun.” Katherine fumbled in the basket, and Harriet remembered that she had brought her husband's gun, an old rifle. “Do you know how to use it?”

Harriet shook her head.

“Still, it's something.”

The gasping had subsided, but Harriet knew there was someone outside the door, most likely sitting against it, catching his breath. A man, alone, but he was a settler or a trapper, friend or foe? What would he do when he saw them, for surely he planned to come inside and find shelter for himself?

With shaking hands she fumbled for the rifle. The man was moving now, standing probably, and then the door latch shook, now the door was opening...

Harriet stood and aimed the rifle at the door. She didn't think she could fire it, and she certainly couldn’t load it again, but he wouldn't know that.

The door opened, and a man stood there, limping slightly. His fur cap and bushy beard told her he was a fur trader, and he stank.