The High Missouri (21 page)

At last he went into the ballroom where the music could inundate him. He found another glass of wine and downed it. He thought of the opiate in the wine, gave thanks for it, and drank a second glass. Saga and Caro came hand in hand out of the Captain’s room.

He went to her. It was as though no one else was in the room. He saw only her, not even Saga. He felt the music. He felt whatever was rising within him, a desire to master, to overpower, to humiliate.

Something in him writhed. Yes, he wanted to humiliate Caro, and the feeling was exultant and hideous.

He held her eyes. She looked back, a bird fascinated by a snake. A thought flicked briefly across his mind: This is how it feels to be Captain Chick. Ugly.

He gave her his arm, and her hand came to it, iron to a magnet. He looked once at Saga, and saw the Metis could not stand in his way. He led her simply toward the door, aware in the universe only of her touch, the music, and his potency.

Outside he immediately pushed her against a gallery post, raised her skirt, and leaned against her. That was when he felt her fumbling at his cod. He glared at her with contempt, and lust.

He lifted her against the post. She wrapped her legs around him, held to the handles of the knives on his back, and cocked her hips toward him. He jammed himself into her roughly and frigged her furiously, driving her hard against the post.

“Yes, yes,” she mewled.

He looked into space beyond the gallery rail, above the empty courtyard, and with each thrust threw himself vertiginously toward the fateful air, held away from death only by Caro’s body.

As his excitement mounted, in his fantasy he and Caro lifted off the gallery into the black night and tumbled endlessly through time. They flew from this gallery, they flew from high cliffs, they flew from the distant stars of black, cold, infinite space. They spun slowly through the air, linked obscenely at the groin. Joined also by their intertwined hands, and their tongues, and their hair, which was nastily entangled. They thrashed against each other in grotesque passion. They began to fall, slowly but fatefully. He knew that if he could get free of Caro, he could fly and be safe. But he was bound to her everywhere, writhe as he might, bound by his cod, his fingers, his tongue, even the hair of his head. Bound by his hideous desire.

They plummeted.

As he ejaculated, they crashed to earth with a whump, and all went black.

For a moment he was lost between time and eternity.

In the real world he lurched sideways to the rail, still joined to Caro, leaned over it and puked over her shoulder.

In his mind he saw black vultures fly out from his mouth and flap away.

She was not repelled by him. She stayed, held in sway. He had drunk too much? Was he all right now?

Dylan could not force the words out: Get away from me. He wanted to say it, yes, to his once-beloved Caro. Get away from me.

She held his face, looked into his eyes, brought him close. Making a declaration, she kissed with ardor the mouth that had puked.

She drew back, looked at him challengingly in the eyes, and said, “You’re splendid.” She ran her tongue along his twin scars, licking the beast within him. Then she whirled away and went back to the dance.

The band played on.

Dylan knew what he had to do.

He walked as though pulled by a hidden force. It was like a dream he had when he was canoeing every day, alone in a quickening current. He could hear the waterfall ahead, and told himself he should get to the shore and portage, but he was curiously, inexplicably, unable to paddle to shore. He put his paddle away and floated passively. The last thing he saw in the dream was the spray. He felt the stomach-lurching tilt of the canoe.

Now he walked toward the drum, drawn inexorably forward.

Dancers didn’t seem to notice him. He glided among them as though they were physical and he an airy spirit. He saw them, but they had no meaning for him, not even Saga, looking at him with hooded eyes. Saga didn’t matter. Without knowing quite how he got there, Dylan stood in front of the band. No one noticed him but Captain Chick. The band played on, and the Captain made the drumbeat throb relentlessly.

Dylan glared at Captain Chick.

Also entranced, the Captain stopped thumping the drum.

Dylan felt his liberation from the inexorable beat. The dancers stopped dancing, the band stopped. Dylan felt all eyes upon him. He supposed they included Caro’s, and he didn’t care.

Into this moment of perfect silence Dylan spoke. “You are evil.”

The Captain stood, his chest naked, a huge target.

The words came again louder. “You are evil.”

Captain Chick looked calmly at him. “You cannot do it,” he said simply. MacDougal, next to him with the bagpipe, inched away.

Now in a shout. “You are evil.”

Captain Chick shook his head slowly with a small smile. “You cannot do it.” He spread his military coat open with his hands to show his chest, broad and inviting.

Oh my father, cried Dylan inside himself. From this distance he could choose which rib, which access to the lifeblood.

He felt the tilt of the canoe, and reached for the right knife first.

He saw and felt it all as in a slow fall. Arm cocked, gripped, shooting forward, releasing, the arc of the knife past Captain Chick’s ear, and thunking into the wall, vibrating. The left arm in motion half a beat behind, flinging, the arc of the knife perfectly into the bag of the pipe, the whoosh of air, the look of shock on the face of MacDougal.

Captain Chick’s superior smile.

Dylan’s wail, which burst forth and died slowly, as though from a falling body.

His flight, wailing and wailing.

Chapter Nineteen

The guards found Dylan leaning idly against the wall in front of his room. They took him by the arms and escorted him to the front gate. He did not resist. The true life was already snuffed out in him, and he didn’t care whether he lived or died.

He was thinking about nothing, nothing at all, certainly not why he chose, when faced with the broad target of Captain Chick’s chest, to use his knife to pop a wheezing bag.

Bleu met them at the gate. “Captain Chick says tell you, Dylan Davies is banished from zis fort. As he is, wiz nothing. He hopes your death is comfortable, and reminds you that man say freezing to death is pleasant.”

Bleu reached forward and embraced Dylan formally, without affection. The big interpreter whispered into his ear, “Peecneec, tomorrow noon.” Stepping back, he left a blanket around Dylan’s shoulders.

Dylan looked at Bleu emptily. Then he gave a stupid titter. Picnic tomorrow, the first day of the new year, on the frozen wasteland of the Canadian interior? Another titter.

Bleu clapped his shoulders.

“Good-bye,” Dylan muttered.

“Just as you say,” Bleu chipped in. “Chin up, there’s a good fellow.” Bleu nodded vigorously, stepped back, smiled in encouragement.

The guards swung the gate open. Heedless hands pushed Dylan into the night. The gate creaked back away.

Bleu waved.

Dylan heard the great bolt bang into place.

He didn’t decide to live, or die, or do anything. He didn’t decide. He didn’t care. He sat against the gate of the fort, in the snow, leaning on it. After a while he realized he was sinking into the snow. His body heat was melting the snow underneath him, and he was sinking into its cold depths. That seemed as apropos as anything. Sink into the snow. Disappear until the spring thaw and return in ignoble form.

But not against the gate. They’d see you when they opened up. The guard might spot you from the blockhouse at first light. Your body would be in the way. They’d think you’d been trying to get back into the fort, which wasn’t true. There was nothing in the fort Dylan Davies wanted. No, not even Caro. Nothing in the fort he gave a damn about either way. No, bloody well not Captain Chick.

He’d started calling Captain Chick “the Chickadee” in his mind. For some reason he thought it was funny. Or it was stupid, and stupid was fine.

He sniggered softly. No, she didn’t want his sodding knives either, one stuck in a wall, the other buried in a bagpipe.

Besides, he was getting cold. The whiskey and opiate are wearing off, you idiot, and you can feel a little. Not with your heart, just your corpus. Corpse. He sniggered. He liked that. My corpse. Betrayed, it was now a corpse, even if it could move, more or less.

He decided to get up and move away from the gate, away from the fort. He didn’t know where. The only warmth, as far as he could think, was in the Indian village, and that was the last place he would go. He was a white man, not a sodding Indian. He wouldn’t go down there and—what abomination was left?—become a buggerer. He wouldn’t even go down there and frig their wives and worship false gods. Existing in a godless universe was not as bad as that. He wouldn’t go. He was a white man.

Lost. Lost beyond finding, beyond hope, like he’d slipped into another world, an upside-down fairy tale of a world, lightless, loveless, godless. But a white man in whatever world.

He staggered off. He would go down by the river. It was as good as anywhere, and there was a rocky place the sun would warm when it came up. He wanted to die in comfort. He sniffed out a laugh. He wanted to freeze to death in the warm sun, and other nonsense. He held the blanket tight at his neck.

He looked at the Big Dipper. The sun would rise soon. His debauchery had taken most of the night. He sniggered at himself. It had taken him all night to get lost. One night and lost forever.

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

Fool, he accused himself. Fool. He tramped on toward the river. No one ever worked harder to escape God than you did. Tramp. You came to the wilds. Tramp. You put yourself among benighted men. Tramp. You associated with savages. Tramp. You ignored the warnings of Mr. Stewart. Tramp. You let lust overcome you. Tramp. In your pride you tried to rise above God’s ways for man.

I love you, Childe Harold, his heart twanged. The joke was, he meant it.

Tramp-tramp. Stomp Byron out. Tramp-tramp. Stomp Caro out. Tramp-tramp. Stomp yourself out. Tramp-tramp.

Dylan took his fingers alternately away from the blanket and shook them. He was getting cold, damnably cold. It was a mild night, for winter, but he was in danger of getting frosted.

Freeze like an icicle, laddo, and crack yourself into pieces. That’s one way to disappear. One way to get rid of this nuisance, life.

Tramp, tramp.

Laddo. The word made him think of Dru. He wouldn’t ever see Dru again. He had failed Dru.

Tramp, tramp.

That made him mad. He was willing to die—glad to die—but not to fail Dru. He tried to think what he could do to show that he was a man who had learned his woodcraft from the druid master.

He knew. He would build a fire by the river. He would survive until dawn, until noon, until tomorrow or the day after. Just to show he could do it. Maybe, if he was willing to eat, he would even make a snare like Fore showed him and set it and catch one of winter’s small animals. Then, his belly defiantly full, he would go to the fort and let the frigging Chickadee shoot him.

“Almost I think you are not here,” said Bleu.

Dylan started. He’d been asleep.

He heard the interpreter scrambling down.

Dylan was stretched out under an overhang in the rimrock above the river, invisible from above. “How’d you find me?”

Bleu pointed to the fire, then to his nose.

He swung a possibles sack down beside Dylan. “Good
ideé
the fire like this,” Bleu said.

Dylan had finally gotten cold enough to do something to get warm. He crawled into this overhang, some would have called it a cave, where there was no wind, got into a low place against the back wall, and built a fire of sagebrush and buffalo chips lengthwise, parallel to the rock and to his blanket. It served well. Since he had to keep feeding it, he could only sleep in patches.

Bleu pointed to the possibles sack, and Dylan opened it. His blanket coat, mukluks, his other shirt, his extra moccasins, his journal, his other small belongings, and a hunk of pemmican the size of his thumb. He held it up to Bleu, this deliberate mockery. The interpreter gave one of his Gallic shrugs.

“Is zis where you had Caro?” Bleu asked in a matter-of-fact tone.

Dylan looked at him, mystified.

“Peecneec,” said Bleu.

So that’s what Bleu meant last night. Meet me where you picnicked with Caro. Dylan was lucky they met up. “We picnicked just above,” he said.

He sorted through the items. “This is not all,” Dylan said.

“All you get,” Bleu answered easily. “Almost.” He reached inside his capote and handed over Dylan’s knives. “Captain Chick agree to this—you are harmless wiz knives, he say. He not give you back rifle. Maybe you shoot him coward from far, Captain say.” Bleu shrugged.

So the Captain was having fun, handing out an insult and at the same time confiscating his fine Henry. Dylan didn’t give a damn about the rifle—he cared nothing for himself—but he wished the Chickadee hadn’t gotten it.

“What about my horse?”

“No good anyhow. He say, you want go Fort Augustus now, must snowshoe. If by horse, man and beast die.” Confiscating the horse too, then.

Dylan didn’t mention that he had no snowshoes and no way to make any. Bleu knew that—maybe that was why he was smiling wickedly.

“Captain Chick give Bleu the
permis
help you, ask only Bleu keep quiet. He ask me say one zing more.” Bleu gave one of his eloquent looks of helplessness, a sort of this-is-the-way-it-is Gallic fatalism. “The Captain say, if you go”—Bleu made a broad gesture including the whole world—“go. If you come back to fort, he blow your brains out.” With a wide-eyed smile, the interpreter put a finger to his temple, cocked his thumb, and clicked the hammer down.

Dylan nodded and smiled. Yes, the Chickadee would. Offer the means of survival, barely, and as an alternative, execution. Survival if Dylan was expert enough. And if he gave a bloody farthing about surviving. Which he didn’t.

“You young bull,” said Bleu. “Captain Chick he not old bull yet. Very strong.”

Yes, the time-honored struggle, the interpreter was hinting. Was Dylan supposed to give way gently because of that? If he got a chance, he’d quench the thirst of his daggers in the Captain’s blood.

Dylan sniffed out a laugh at his own expense. Dip your dagger deep this time, would you, laddo? Then why didn’t you when you had the chance?

He offered Bleu his hand.

The interpreter touched it briefly, looked at Dylan curiously. With a
humph
of lifting his bulk, he got up to go. Then he turned back. Hesitated. Finally spoke. “She-Wolf be at the village. She help.”

She-Wolf? Who in hell was She-Wolf?

“She-Wolf, she help. Glad. You live. Why not go to her? Her tipi off to side. She live alone.” He seemed to know that Dylan wouldn’t go to the village, wouldn’t accept any Indian’s help. The interpreter really seemed to want to know why.

How do you tell a man whose life is purely of the body and not the spirit that you care not for such a life?

Dylan stuck out his hand again. Bleu touched it passingly, half willingly, still studying Dylan.

“Good-bye, my friend,” said Dylan.

“Au revoir,”
said the interpreter. He fished in his mind for the right English words. “Excuse me, there’s a good lad.”

On the sixth day the dilemma was becoming clear to Dylan. He could go back to the fort, where the Chickadee would shoot him. Probably the guards would shoot him on sight, or the Captain might hang him. He could go to the village and ask She-Wolf, whoever she might be, for help. Or he could starve to death.

Starving to death was becoming unacceptable. Dylan hated it. He ate the thumb’s worth of pemmican on the night of the first day all at once, with water from the river. Since pemmican swells in your belly, it gave him some feeling of satiation. He hadn’t had the feeling since.

Not that he’d starved absolutely. He’d walked out and found rose hips and eaten them, pulpy things, tasteless, a tease to his stomach. He wished he’d learned more about wild plants to feed on.

Setting snares wasn’t going to work. The last two days he tried over and over to braid twine from strings he stripped from the runners of potentilla, strawberry plants. His hands were willing, but his mind wasn’t. He would do a few braids, and then he would get savagely irritable and tear at the work and throw it away.

The problem wasn’t dying, it was starving. His innards gnawed at him all the time. Yesterday his body began to feel achy. He was constantly peevish. Though once in a while he would drift into a pleasant, half-awake, dreamlike state, he was mostly damned uncomfortable.

Even at night he was miserable. His six-foot-long fire kept him warm, and the rock of the low cave warm. Feeding it a half-dozen times a night wasn’t too bad. But he couldn’t sleep without dreaming, and he could only dream of food. He wanted to envision his family, Montreal, the parish he grew up in, his friends, Dru, the trip out here—but all he could see was food, huge quantities of food, turning past him on a round table that rotated endlessly, a never-ending parade of viands, sauces, fruits, vegetables, breads, butter…

Sometimes he dreamed of the great feast he’d shared with Mr. Stewart, and beneath the procession of dishes, which in dream he only watched and never partook of, he would hear Mr. Stewart’s voice, remembering the wilds, and warning him that to go among the Indians was to lose your soul.

Which was true enough. And in the dream he would accept losing his soul if he could get something to eat.

The waking Dylan was willing to die, but not to surrender his soul among the Indians.

It was curious. He knew that he had forfeited both this life and everlasting life at the throne of God. But he would not go further than he had gone. He had traveled here, and now he saw that he had gone deeper into corruption with every step, fornication, violence, loss of self in his infatuation with Caro, knives thrown at Captain Chick with murderous intent. Yet fate had refused him. Whether in divine or demonic guidance, he knew not.

Maybe something in his soul was still uncorrupted. Not pure enough, surely—he chuckled sardonically at that idea. But enough to keep him from going to the Indians merely to save his physical life. He would not surrender the rest of his soul to benightedness. He knew how terrible the darkness was.

Caro, he said to himself, I’m sorry.

In horror, he suppressed memories of trying to rape her.

If she had encouraged him and delighted in his perversion, did that not merely indicate how depraved each of them was, and how they defiled each other?

Now he was at last willing to die.

This morning he had made up his mind to go back to the fort and put an end to it. A good, quick end.

The Chickadee would not give him a chance, not again. The men in the blockhouse would have orders to shoot Dylan Davies on sight, no questions asked, no quarter given. If he did get to see the Captain, it would be with hands bound, and the audience would be brief. The Chickadee would not give Dylan another opportunity with his knives. The bastard better not.

Maybe the Chickadee would hang him. That prospect bothered Dylan. He didn’t want to wait and have the fear mount him, shake him, jam him up his arse like an icicle, turn him finally into a sniveler, make him cry out for mercy. Especially in front of the Chickadee and Saga and Caro. Then take the long drop and have your head bent fatally and your tongue out like a purple eel and your pants full of shit, and finally your body hanging there for days before the Chickadee cut you down, hanging there long enough to let everybody know that there was nothing to you but what rots and stinks.