Apparition Trail, The (18 page)

Eventually, after walking for nearly three hours, my way was blocked by a creek. I scrambled down its bank and splashed its water over my head, then drank deeply. Thankful for its cool relief, I rose to my feet, shaking the water from my hair like a beast.

As I stood on the muddy bank, trying to decide which direction to go in, I had the distinct sensation that something or someone was behind me. Whirling around, I saw that, this time, it was no mere hallucination. Standing on the top of the bank was a great, shaggy beast: a buffalo. I hadn’t heard it approach; its heavy footsteps must have been masked by the gurgle of the creek.

Buffalo generally ignore humans; the more canny among them flee, fearing the hunter’s bullet. This one merely stood and stared at me. I saw then that it had a scrap of black cloth around its massive neck, and wondered if this was one of the few buffalo that had been domesticated. Yet it looked wild enough. Its great chest heaved, as if it had just run across the prairie, and there were sticks and burrs in its hair. Like the buffalo I had seen the Indians butchering, this one had hair that had a peculiar yellowish tinge, despite the fact that it was a full-grown male.

As I watched it, the beast let out a half-strangled bellow, then trotted down toward the creek, all the while fixing me with its large black eyes.

The creek was at my back, deep and swift enough to trip me. If the beast decided to charge, there was nowhere for me to go. I reached for my Enfield, thankful that I’d remembered to refill all six chambers with bullets.

As if it understood what a revolver was, the buffalo jerked to a stop. It stood, eyeing me warily from about thirty feet away. Even at that distance, I could smell its pungent pelt — and something sweet underneath that musky odour. Flies buzzed around its unprotected hindquarters; the buffalo kept flicking its tail, but the appendage was too short to provide any real deterrent to the insects. The buffalo looked at me with a strangely pleading expression; I had the distinct impression that it was asking me to end its torment. I understood its anguish; one of the flies had landed on my bare hand and taken a bite from it, leaving a small but bloody hole.

I decided to draw my revolver and fire it. With luck, the noise would frighten the buffalo away. I pulled the revolver from my holster — and in that same instant the buffalo gave another of its strange sounding bellows. As if struggling to get the noises out, the beast let out a series of long bellows and short grunts, punctuated by a furious pawing of one of its forefeet. Fearful that it was working up the nerve to charge, I raised my revolver and fired it into the air, then lowered the revolver at the ready, in case the buffalo thundered my way. The beast immediately turned and bolted away.

I climbed the bank cautiously, peeking over the ridge to see where the buffalo had gone. I could still hear its hoof beats, although it had disappeared behind another hill.

I holstered my revolver, looking down at the furrows the buffalo had dug in the ground with its hoof. Then I froze, unwilling to believe my eyes. These were not random scratches; they were deliberate marks. In clumsy block letters, they spelled out a single word: help.

As I stood, regarding this strange missive with wonder, I heard the sound of hoof beats. I looked up, expecting to see the buffalo, but instead was greeted with the sight of a North-West Mounted Police constable, galloping toward me.

“Hello there!” he called out over the sound of his horse’s pounding hooves. “I heard a shot. Is there any trouble?”

The fellow was about my age, with dark hair and a full beard. Like many members of our force, he wore a Stetson rather than the official pillbox hat, and his feet were clad in beaded moccasins instead of riding boots. He pulled his horse up next to me, unwittingly causing it to trample the letters the buffalo had scratched in the ground. I looked up at him, my mind was whirling as I struggled to make sense of what I had just seen. Had that really been a black silk tie around the buffalo’s neck — a tie identical to the one Chambers wore? The faintest hint of Brilliantine still hung in the air, confirming my suspicions.

“Who are you?” the constable asked. “And what are you doing out here on the prairie, on foot?”

“Corporal Marmaduke Grayburn,” I replied automatically. Then I added: “I’m lost. Can you tell me where the Victoria Mission settlement is?”

The constable’s eyes widened. Then he laughed. “You are lost, by God. Victoria Mission is three hundred miles to the north. The only settlement around here is Fort Macleod, six miles down the creek.”

Despite the fact that I’d slaked my thirst, I suddenly felt dizzy. Three hundred miles? Had I really traveled that far under the earth? It didn’t seem possible. The tunnel had seemed a mile long, at the very most.

“Do you want me to show you to the fort?” the constable asked.

I nodded mutely, then at last found my voice.

“I think I’d better speak to your commanding officer,” I said. “Something very odd has just happened.”

Chapter IV

A report disbelieved — Contacting Steele by aerograph — Unsettling news — A ghost story — Dreams of bones and birds — A chance meeting with Jerry Potts — On the buffalo trail — Another disappearance — My wild ride — Kidnapped!

Superintendent Cotton sat ramrod stiff in his chair, listening with a doubtful expression on his face as I made my report. He was every inch the officer, with moustache carefully groomed, hair neatly trimmed and combed flat against his head, and impeccable uniform. I could see that my account of settlers and missionaries being turned into buffalo, impossibly long tunnels through the earth, and invisible Indians was something he was hard-pressed to believe. I could hardly blame him — until the recent turn of events, I wouldn’t have believed it myself.

“That’s a fantastic tale, Corporal Grayburn,” he said. “It sounds like an Indian legend, which leads me to give you this caution: If the Indians are telling children’s stories about human beings turning into buffalo, you’d do better to ignore them. The love of notoriety is well developed in the Indian character — they’ll say anything to make themselves sound important. The Indians have an enormously exaggerated idea of their own supernatural powers, which are really nothing but parlour tricks, performed by amateur conjurers.”

“Superintendent,” I said slowly, reminding myself to keep my rising irritation in check. “I’m not repeating legends told around a tepee fire. These are things I saw with my own eyes. Special Constable Chambers—”

Cotton leaned forward to skewer me with a glare. “Where is your evidence?”

I glared at him, then realized that insubordination would not further my cause. I glanced ruefully down at my torn pocket, which had held the one piece of evidence I had collected. I had yet to mention the curious stone I’d found, and the chirping noises it had made. Like the tunnel in the earth from which I’d emerged, it too was gone — all I had left was the leather thong it had been wrapped in. The feathers attached to it had become quite mangled in my pocket, and the whole thing now looked like something a cat had shredded. The stone hardly seemed worth mentioning now, especially when I couldn’t really explain, in any logical fashion, my hunch that it was connected with the case.

“I have none, sir,” I replied with a sigh. I shifted on my chair, and felt the pull of the bandages the police surgeon had bound my wound with. “But Superintendent Steele can confirm that supernatural forces are indeed at work in the North-West Territories. That’s why he formed Q Division: to investigate the recent spate of disappearances, and other paranormal occurrences.”

Superintendent Cotton drummed his fingers on the table at which he sat. They were short and blunt, their squared tips matching the set of his shoulders.

“I’ve heard that Steele was setting up a new division — supposedly some crackerjack force of hand-picked men.” Cotton’s eyes lingered on my dirt-grimed jacket, and the torn, bloody hole in my riding breeches. “Judging by the wild tale that you’ve just told me, it sounds more like a crackpot division.”

I sat bolt upright in my chair, my face hot with anger. “But you’ve seen the evidence yourself!” I cried. “When the first Fort Macleod was washed away by that sudden deluge, and seven men died.”

“A flash flood. Nothing more.”

I glared at Cotton, seeing now that nothing I could say would convince him. He reminded me of my father: unwilling to believe in anything that didn’t fit his notion of the way the world was ordered. I ground my teeth. Cotton had obviously spent too many years in the militia; it had forced him to see only in neat little parade-square rows.

I could see that I was on the verge of angering the Superintendent, when what I needed was his assistance. To get it, I had to present him with something that he could set his sights upon.

“There is still the matter of Wandering Spirit’s assault on me,” I said in a steadier voice, gesturing at my bandaged thigh. “And the disappearance of Mr. Chambers. I would request, sir, permission to set out with a patrol at first light, to arrest Wandering Spirit and to search for our special constable.”

The Superintendent’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t need to be told my job, Corporal. A crime has been committed, and an arrest shall be made. A patrol will be sent out — but one of our own men will lead it. We’re quite capable of bringing our Indians to justice without the aid of Q Division.”

“But sir!” I protested. “You don’t realize what you’re—”

“Corporal Grayburn!” Cotton shouted. “That’s enough!”

I sat on the edge of my seat, fists balled in my lap in frustration. How could anyone possibly arrest a man who was impervious to bullets, and who could kill with the touch of a coup stick? I considered myself quite adept at dealing with Indians, and yet I’d only escaped death by a hair’s breadth. I shuddered at the thought of what might befall a less experienced policeman. Yet I could see by the flinty look in Cotton’s eye that further protests would do more harm than good. I sat in silence for a moment, listening to the faint
clatter-clack-clacking
of the perpetual motion wheels that generated power for the electric bulbs illuminating the office, and trying to ignore the ache in my stomach.

A thought occurred to me: perhaps if Steele intervened….

“Sir?” I asked.

“What is it now, Corporal?”

Cotton’s patience had almost reached the end of its tether. I chose my words carefully. “I would also request that I be allowed to use one of the fort’s aerographs to relay a message to Regina. My Superintendent will be wondering why I didn’t respond to his telegram this morning.” I glanced outside the window of Cotton’s office. It had been dusk by the time the constable and I had ridden the six miles back to the fort on his horse, and now it was fully dark. The moon was round and full; a perfect night for sending an aerograph.

Cotton’s shoulders relaxed a little. “Very well. I’ll get Constable Browne to show you to the aerograph operator. When you’re done, you can bunk down in the men’s barracks. I believe there’s a spare bed; see the quartermaster for a blanket.”

I stood and saluted while the Superintendent called the constable to his office.

Constable Browne led me out of the building that housed the Superintendent’s office and past the recreation room, where I heard the clacking of billiard balls. I glanced in and saw men drinking cold cider and smoking their pipes, and heard the buzz of male voices raised in companionable conversation. While Browne collected the civilian who operated the fort’s aerographs, I bought tobacco at the bar and sat down with my pipe to write my report to Steele. I wrote slowly, composing my message with care. The aerograph was a much more secure way of sending messages than the telegraph, but sometimes aerographs went astray. Just in case this one did, I couched my report in language that only Steele would understand. I didn’t want a lost report to be the basis for alarm.

As I wrote the message and enjoyed my first decent smoke in weeks — the bar sold Capstan Full Flavoured by the tin — a wagon pulled up outside. A teamster with a mailbag over his shoulder strode into the room, and there followed the usual hubbub and excitement that follows the arrival of the mail.

After a few minutes, Browne returned with the aerograph operator, a young fellow by the name of Bertrand whose portly girth and thick-lensed spectacles would have rendered him medically unfit for service as a policeman. I decided that he must be a civilian employee of the force.

I nodded hello. “I’ve just about finished my report. Won’t be a minute.”

Bertrand gave me the kind of look an officer gives a recruit who is late for picquet duty. “You interrupted my reading,” he said in a petulant voice. Then he glanced down at my report and added: “I’ve better things to do than wait for constables who spell
buffalo
with an
e
on the end of the word.”

I felt an angry flush spring to my cheeks, but didn’t give him the satisfaction of a response. Instead, I crooked an arm around the paper I was writing on and finished my report to Steele. Bertrand, meanwhile, looked around the room with an air of smug superiority, all the while uttering several loud complaints about being made to stand and wait.

I folded the paper in two and rose to my feet. “Done.”

Bertrand reached out to take it, but I jerked the paper back. “Sorry,” I said. “This report is for the eyes of my Superintendent only. I’ll have to place it inside the aerograph myself, Bertrand, so you’d best show me to it.”