Apparition Trail, The (22 page)

Potts climbed back on his horse without answering. He turned his horse in the direction that Chambers had run, after I’d frightened him with my revolver shot. Realizing that Potts was already on the trail, I kicked my horse forward.

The tracks circled back to the creek again, then crossed it. I got a second soaking from my mare as she splashed her way across. We rode in silence for several miles, heading due east across the open prairie.

By mid-afternoon, I found myself wondering if Chambers had walked all the way back to Regina, to scratch out a plea for help in front of Steele himself. On several occasions the hoof prints disappeared, but Potts always picked up the trail. We rode on through the afternoon, past prickly pear cactus in full yellow bloom and clumps of pungent sage. We startled an elk that was grazing — when I saw it my heart leapt, mistaking its dark shape for a buffalo and thinking we’d found Chambers at last — and for a while we were followed by a curious coyote. But there was no sign of any buffalo.

By sunset, when we stopped to water the horses and have another quick meal of biscuits and pemmican, I estimated that we’d ridden nearly forty miles. Potts was his usual taciturn self as we unsaddled and hobbled the horses. Watching him as he made a small fire to boil water for tea, I couldn’t tell if he was getting restless or not. I decided not to ask if he’d rather turn back; I didn’t want to put any ideas in his head. Instead I wanted to give him an incentive to stay.

As we unrolled our blankets in silence, listening to the coyotes yip in the distance, I offered Potts my spare bottle of Pinkham’s. He pulled the cork and threw it away, then drained one-third of the bottle in a long swallow. Wiping his drooping moustache, he gave the briefest of appreciatory nods.

“Tastes good,” he said.

I supposed it did to a man who was used to the “firewater” the traders brewed up for the Indians. That was vile stuff indeed. It contained enough red pepper and vitriol to give a man a stomach ache worse than my own, and enough iodine, “for colour,” to stain a man’s moustache a bright red.

As Potts drank the painkiller down, I took a swallow from my remaining bottle to quell the pain in my stomach. The biscuit and tea weren’t sitting well; cramps gripped my guts like a vice. The arrow wound in my thigh was also stinging; although the arrowhead hadn’t done more than tear open the skin, the day’s ride had caused the shallow wound to begin seeping blood. I was gambling that we’d find Chambers and get back to the fort tomorrow; there wasn’t enough painkiller left to see me through more than one more day.

Potts wasn’t one for conversation, and so I sat and stared at the tiny fire, lost in my own thoughts. I wondered if Superintendent Cotton had sent a patrol out to arrest Wandering Spirit this morning, and how those men had fared. I also wondered if Superintendent Steele had responded yet to my aerograph message. I knew I should have waited for his reply, or at the very least sent further word of my discoveries to Steele, but some compulsion was forcing me to chase after Chambers instead. I couldn’t say why, but searching for him seemed more urgent and important than waiting for Steele’s orders.

I heard a clink, and looked up to see that Potts had finished his own bottle and had cast it aside. I quickly tucked my own bottle away in my saddlebag. When Potts pulled out his revolver, my eyes widened.

“Potts,” I said slowly. “I can only give you the one bottle of painkiller. I need this one for—”

My words choked in my throat as Potts’s revolver belched flame, but it wasn’t me he was shooting at. Instead, his bullet shattered the empty bottle he’d just tossed aside. I swallowed down my relief as he squinted an unsteady smile at me.

“I can shoot,” he told me. “Even drunk.” He squinted at my face. “If you had a moustache, I’d trim it with a bullet.”

I’d heard of this game: it was one Potts used to play when he was south of the border to test the mettle of the Montana gunslingers. I ran a hand nervously across my upper lip, glad for once that I was incapable of growing a proper beard. Even though it had been more than a day since I had shaved — nearly three weeks, if the days that sped by magically while I was underground were to be counted — I had only a patch or two of stubble on my face.

“Thanks, Potts,” I said in a careful voice. “But I’m tired. I’m going to turn in.”

I lay down on the ground, resting my head on the saddlebag that held my remaining bottle of painkiller. After staggering off to relieve himself, Potts also stretched out. As the sky darkened and the stars twinkled overhead, I heard him begin to snore.

Although I was bone weary and drowsy with painkiller, I slept fitfully. I dreamed that I stood on a wide expanse of prairie, lost and alone, shivering in a cold wind. All around me the yellow grass was bent, rippling like waves as the wind shifted it this way and that. Every now and then I caught sight of footprints as the grass parted. I saw the small, bare footprint of a human child, and then the grass covered it again. The grass parted, and I saw the heavy indentation of a buffalo hoof. Then the grass shifted and it was gone.

Tracks were all around me, hidden by the grass. I knew that all of them were heading in the same direction, but I couldn’t tell which. The wind was a multitude of voices, whispering in chorus for me to follow this invisible trail.

I dropped to my knees and searched, but each time I parted the grass to look at a footprint I had seen only a second ago, it had already disappeared.

I imagined I heard Chambers calling out to me, and the sound of a lost girl crying. I don’t know whether it was a dream or reality, but I vaguely remember waking up and looking out across the moonlit prairie, and seeing a small white shape moving through the grass. It might have been a small white buffalo, it might have been a cloud on the horizon, or it might have been a ghost, haunting my dreams.

When I woke up the next morning, Potts was gone. So was my horse. I scrambled out of the blankets, cursing the half-breed scout, certain I had been abandoned now that he’d gotten the liquor I’d promised. At least he’d left my saddle, rifle, and saddle bags behind, although I was damned if I knew how I’d carry them all. Strangely, Potts had also left his own saddle and tack behind. I supposed he must have been too drunk to saddle up.

I pulled on my boots, picked up my Winchester, and slung my saddlebags over my shoulder. I stared ruefully at the saddle and tack, which I’d have to leave behind. I was miles from the nearest police detachment — it was going to be a long, hot walk back.

Then I heard the sound of pounding hooves coming from the west. I looked up and after a moment recognized the rider: Potts, galloping furiously. Just behind him, being led by a rope, was another horse, which I recognized as my grey mare. In the distance behind them were smaller clouds of dust: more riders.

I stared, wondering what was going on. What trouble had Potts gotten himself into during the night? Waving my Winchester in the air, I signalled to him. No need — he was riding straight for me.

Potts yanked his horse to a stop a yard or two in front of me. He was riding it bareback, guiding it with his knees. He held its mane in one hand and the lead rope that was around the neck of my horse in the other hand. His face was covered with a sheen of sweat and blotched by dust; under it, he looked a little green from the drink he’d had the night before. As his horse stood, flanks heaving, he glanced back over his shoulder — not nervously, but with the wary look of a cat that a dog is trying to tree.

“Potts!” I yelled. “What’s happened?”

“Cree stole our horses,” he said. “I got ’em back.”

I stared at Potts, incredulous. All of the Indian tribes are notorious horse thieves; we police have the hardest time convincing them that stealing horses is a crime. The Cree must have crept into our camp last night while we slept. Perhaps they’d heard Potts’s pistol shot and come to see who we were, then decided to relieve us of our horses. I’d been sleeping lightly, and yet I hadn’t heard a thing. How had Potts, in his inebriated state, been so alert?

Something on Potts’s belt fluttered in the morning breeze. I looked closer, and saw a fresh scalp dripping blood onto his leg. Potts must have spotted the look of revulsion that crossed my face; he gave me a grim look, as if deciding whether to add my unruly red-blond locks to the grisly trophy at his belt.

The riders who had been following Potts were closer now; already I could hear the drumming of their horses’ hooves. I squinted, and the clouds of dust resolved themselves into more than a dozen dark shapes. A chill swept through me as I realized that an entire war party must be on Potts’s trail. After what Potts had done — at least one man must be dead, judging by the scalp on his belt — they wouldn’t be in the mood to listen to reason, even from a North-West Mounted Policeman. I could try to pacify them by arresting Potts and announcing that I was charging him with murder, but it probably would do no good — and Potts wasn’t the sort of man to submit meekly to the law. He’d rather be taken dead than alive.

I turned and grabbed my saddle.

“No time,” Potts gritted.

“But—”

“Ride now or die.”

Potts dropped the lead rope and spurred his horse away. I started to saddle my horse, but she was nervous, and skittered away. Now I could hear the war whoops of the approaching Cree.

I was a seasoned rider, but I knew I’d never outrun the Indians if I had to ride bareback. “Damn you!” I cried, grabbing the horse’s lead rope. “Hold still.”

I heard the crack of a rifle. A bullet whizzed past me. Another slammed with a dull thud into the leather of my saddlebag. The mare shied away, and nearly tugged the lead rope from my hand. Giving up on my saddle, I threw it aside and scrambled awkwardly onto her bare back as more bullets buzzed past my ears like angry wasps. There was no time to pick up my saddlebags and rifle; I left them where they lay. I’d need both hands just to stay on the horse’s back.

There was no need to dig in my spurs. With the first touch of my heels, the mare leaped forward. She was sweaty from her gallop across the prairie, but at least she hadn’t had a man on her back. She still had some speed in her. As the Indians behind me whooped and howled like wolves that have scented blood, the mare shot forward like a cannon ball. I gripped as tightly as I could with my knees, clung onto her mane and the lead rope, and hunkered down low, praying that a bullet wouldn’t find my back.

I rode hard, keeping my eyes on Potts, who had drawn a good distance ahead and to the left of me while I had been frantically trying to saddle my horse. He rode up a rise that was dotted with trees, then disappeared down the other side. I twisted around, trying to see how close our pursuers were. Close!

I was just about over the rise when my horse shied violently as a bird flew up from a bush. Somehow, I managed to hang on. The mare topped the rise and charged down the other side toward a wide expanse of slow, deep water that I knew must be the Bow River. I clung to her for all I was worth, teeth rattling as I yanked on the rope around her neck, trying to stop her before she plunged into the river. Fording it would do no good; the water would slow us down, making me a perfect target. I caught just a glimpse of Potts — and wondered why he was riding the other way, up the bank — and then heard a ragged volley of gunshots behind me.

The mare skidded to a stop at the river’s edge and stood with flanks heaving. Behind me, hidden by the riverbank, a battle raged.

My mind raced as I tried to think what to do. My Winchester was gone but I still had my revolver, holstered at my hip. Potts was obviously making a show of it, probably using his favourite tactic of riding straight back at the enemy in an effort to startle them. My best chance would have been to ride as hard and fast as I could along the riverbank, and leave the half-breed to his fate — but that was the coward’s way out.

There was only one thing to do: turn around and brazen it out. Perhaps the Indians would respect the red tunic I wore and the revolver in my hand.

If not, my tunic would be even redder, soon enough.

I drew my revolver. Behind me was silence. Potts had either gotten away — or he was dead.

I yanked the mare’s lead rope to turn her, but she had other things in mind. She’d lowered her head to drink in the few seconds that I sat catching my breath, and now that she’d gotten over her fright, she got up to her old antics. She raised her forefoot and brought it down with a splash in the water, soaking my leg, then whinnied in delight.

I heard the sound of hooves on the riverbank above. Twisting to take a look, I saw the tips of a feathered war bonnet coming into view above the bank. Heart pounding, I spurred the mare and yanked the lead rope hard — but instead of turning she reared up on her hind legs and came down with both forelegs in the water, sending up an even larger splash than before.

It caught me by surprise. Bereft of a saddle and stirrups, and unable to steady myself, I toppled sideways. It probably saved my life. I heard the crack of a rifle shot as I tumbled from the mare’s back and heard the whiz of a bullet pass my ear. Then I fell headlong into the river. Water closed over my head.

I thrashed my way into a sitting position, wiping water from my eyes with one hand and feeling about in the muddy river bottom with the other. My revolver was gone. Something was splashing in the water next to me: it was the mare, still enjoying her game.

I heard the click of a rifle being cocked, and as the mare moved to the side, I at last saw the fate that awaited me. Standing on the shore next to their panting ponies were a dozen Indians, with rifles pointed at my chest and an angry look in their eyes. There was only one thing in my favour: they hadn’t shot me yet.