Soldier of the Horse
Read Soldier of the Horse Online
Authors: Robert W. Mackay
Soldier of the Horse
Robert W. Mackay
Soldier of the Horse
is dedicated to the memory of my father, Tom Mackay, who was there, and to all those veterans of Canada's armed forces who served with and after him.
CONTENTS
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A CAREER AT RISK
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Something was wrong. Tom Macrae couldn't hear the frogs ratcheting away by the Red River. They would quiet down if a creature entered their space: a dog, say, or a man. All was silent except for the even breathing of his younger brother, Alec, asleep in the other bed. Tom pushed back his covers and stood up, pulling on his trousers.
A scraping sound from outside the farmhouse made him stop and stand still, muscles tensing. Then came a stifled curse. He pulled on a shirt and half ran down the hall in his bare feet. He tapped on his parents' bedroom door.
“Dad,” he said. “Dad. There's someone prowling around outside.”
He eased the door open. His father, Bill, stopped snoring for a second, then started up again.
Tom crept down the stairs. There had been a series of burglaries in East Kildonan in the last few weeks of the autumn of 1914. As he passed the gun rack he picked up a bolt-action .22 rifle and carried it to the front door.
He crouched by the left side of the door, the rifle's stock in his left hand. A muffled whisper came from outside. He jerked the door open and darted out. There was a blinding flash, and the world went black.
As Tom swam up through layers of consciousness, a shimmering white light blinded him, and an ache in his head became a throb. He was lying on his right side, across his front steps. Through narrowed eyes he identified the blazing headlights of an automobile parked a few feet away, facing him. Its engine noise was muffled, as if his ears were full of cotton batting. The wooden steps dug into his upper arm. He tried to move but couldn't; his hands were bound behind him. He felt something run down his face and saw blood, scarlet in the white light, drip to the tread beneath him.
“He's awake.” The voice came from his left. He cautiously turned his head to see a uniformed figure. A policeman. He heard a thud from behind him, as though something heavy had been slammed against a wall.
His dad's voice, low and intense, snarled, “Get your paws off me, you four-flushers.”
“Let him through,” said another voice. The speaker stood in front of Tom, a burly figure in a rumpled suit and bowler hat.
Bill Macrae came down the stairs and knelt in front of Tom. He helped his son sit up, then pulled out a handkerchief and mopped Tom's face. It came away bloody.
Tom's head was spinning, but he mumbled, “You okay, Dad? What did they do to you?”
“Never mind about me, son. What the hell goes on here?” Bill demanded.
“Where's that rifle?” asked the man in the bowler.
A uniformed man stepped forward. “Here, Inspector,” he said, and handed him Tom's .22.
The inspector opened the bolt and, turning away, shook the rifle until a cartridge fell into his hand. He held the bullet up to the light, then dropped it into his pocket. “Resisting arrest. Armed. Loaded rifle. Threatening.” He looked down at Tom. “Deeper and deeper, boyo. You'll do time for this.”
A wave of nausea squeezed Tom's guts. He gritted his teeth, almost choked, and vomited. He leaned forward, spraying puke on his own feet and the policeman's shoes.
The inspector grimaced. “Get him out of here.” He turned to leave. “Take him to the cells. Then we'll see.” Two oversized policemen yanked Tom upright and pushed him into the back of the idling automobile.
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Tom Macrae, twenty-year-old student-at-law articled to Henry Zink of the Manitoba bar, sat in the ten-by-twelve-foot interview room in Winnipeg's Central Police Station and fingered the top of his head. The skin had split open in a three-pronged pattern, and the doctor summoned by the police had closed it with six stitches. He had a blinding headache and still felt nauseated, though his stomach had long since come up dry. A series of shivers racked his body.
He had been in this room before, with its greenish walls, its oiled, dark wooden floor, the reek of sweat and stale vomit. Zink had him sit in when clients were being interviewed by the police. It looked and felt very different from this side of the scarred wooden table.
Tom heard the bolt slide back. The inspector entered, followed by a constable who closed the door and leaned against it. They filled the room.
The inspector had taken off his hat but still wore the rumpled suit. Iron-grey hair cut short defined his large head. He pulled up a chair to sit opposite Tom and stared through low-lidded eyes, his hands folded on the table in front of him. “My name is Boyle. I've got some questions for you.”
“I know who you are.” Tom had seen Inspector Boyle cross-examined in court by Henry Zink. There was no love lost between the inspector and the legal community. He was reputed to invent evidence once he had made up his mind a suspect was guiltyâor at least, guilty or not, deserved to go to jail.
“Good. Then you'll know I mean business.” He unfolded his hands and bent forward across the table, his face inches from Tom's. “I've got you for resisting arrest, and assault with intent to injure. You came at us with a loaded rifle, mister.”
What? Resisting arrest? Arrest for what? Tom tried to organize his thoughts. His head throbbed.
“I wasn't resisting arrest. I was in my own home! I thought you were burglars, trying to break in. But that was kind of stupid of meâburglars wouldn't stumble around the way you did.”
Boyle's eyes never left Tom's face. “I'd keep a civil tone if I were in your shoes, Macrae.” He paused. “Where's Jack Kravenko?” he demanded.
“Kravenko? Kravenko's in jail.”
“No, my boy, you're the one in jail.”
So Bloody Jack Kravenko was on the loose again. Bloody Jack, subject of no end of newspaper stories poking fun at the police, because it had taken them months to catch the bank robber and murderer. Henry Zink was Kravenko's lawyer; Zink was not popular with the police.
“Let's try another one. Where is Henry Zink?”
“He's at home, I assume. Where else would he be?”
“Think again, Macrae. He's not at home. And he's not in his office, either.”
Boyle sat back in his chair, pulling a worn metal case from an inside suit pocket to produce a small cigar. After careful examination he bit off one end and spat it on the floor. He rummaged in a vest pocket for a match, which he ignited with his thumbnail. When the cigar glowed an angry red, he pulled it from his lips and blew a cloud of smoke across the table.
Tom watched Boyle the way a gopher watches a coyote. The inspector's face slowly hardened, as a thick layer of cigar smoke filled the air. Tom felt his pulse pounding in his head. The walls weaved in and out and he couldn't breathe. He needed out of there. What would Zink do in a situation like this?
“Am I under arrest?” he croaked, his mouth dry as a prairie wind in August.
“You're assisting with inquiries,” Boyle smirked. “Where was Zink when you saw him last?”
“At his office.”
“When?”
“Yesterday afternoon.”
“Who was there?”
“Just Zink and me and John . . .”
“John who?”
Tom straightened up, clamping his mouth shut. Zink wouldn't let a client answer questions like this.
“Do you own a gun?”
Tom blinked. “Sure. You took it when you arrested me.”
“I don't mean a rifleâI mean a handgun!” Boyle thundered, smacking his fist on the table in front of him.
“No, I don't own a handgun. I've had enough of this. I don't know what you're up to but I know my rights. Tell me what this is all about or let me out of here.”
“You'll get out when I say so,” Boyle growled, his face now a mottled red. “When did you last see Jack Kravenko?”
Tom didn't answer, and Boyle continued. “I'll tell you when you last saw him. Two days ago. Two days before he got away, that's when. You smuggled a gun in to him. Which he used to escape.”
Tom's jaw dropped. Boyle puffed on his cigar, nodding. It was true that Tom, Zink, and John Evans had been in the jail, meeting with Kravenko to get instructions, two days earlier. Tom knew he had not smuggled in a gun or anything else, but the mention of one made him uneasy. He suddenly felt protective of Zink and Evans, concerned that they, too, would be unfairly targeted by Boyle.
Tom leaned back and folded his arms. “I'm finished answering questions.”
Boyle lurched to his feet, knocking his chair over. He swayed forward, his weight on his straightened arms, knuckles on the scarred tabletop. “I'll just give you a chance to think that over, mister. One of your pals has given us a helpful statement. He'll get special consideration at trial. You'd be smart to do the same.” He shook his head as if in sorrow, and turned to the door.
“What pal? What are you talking about?” Tom asked.
Boyle didn't even turn around. The constable yanked the door open. Boyle stomped out and the policeman followed, the door slamming behind him as the bolt rattled home.
An hour later the door opened and two policemen came in. They handcuffed Tom and clamped on leg irons with a half-inch-thick bar between his ankles, added a chain for good measure, and dragged him down the stairs to Courtroom One.
The chain that ran from his leg irons to the handcuffs was short, so Tom had to stoop as he stood in the dock. The cop had given the manacles an extra squeeze, and his hands were turning blue. Tom wondered how long it would take until they fell off, like a bullock's testicles tourniqued with a rubber band.
He flexed his wrists, and the pain that stabbed into his forearms made him collapse against the solid, stained wooden enclosure. He pulled himself back upright, as anger at the police rippled through his brain. What the hell was he, an articled student of the law, an apprentice lawyer for God's sake, doing in the prisoner's dock? He should be sitting at the counsel table.
Tom turned to see his mother, sitting beside his father in the front row. She tried to smile when she saw him looking and Tom's heart sank. His father handed her a handkerchief and she dabbed at her eyes. Isobel Macrae's strong face reflected the emotional scars from the loss of Tom's youngest brother, Ray, who had drowned two years before. Tom wished there was something he could do to ease her latest burden. Bill Macrae took his wife's hand and gave her a concerned glance.
Tom took in the small courtroom on the second floor of the police station from an unfamiliar angle. It looked like a church, complete with a choir stall for the jury and a bar to keep the rabble in the pews, but prayer was unlikely to affect these proceedings. He held out hope, though, that his standing in the community as an articled student would at least allow him his freedom while all this was sorted out.
“Order in court,” intoned the clerk, as Judge Ezekiel Dansing entered the room and climbed to the bench. Good old Ezekiel. Tom had been in front of Dansing only once before. Henry Zink had produced a legal argument that gave the judge and jury no option but to acquit their client, and Tom, as Zink's articled student, had sat beside him at the counsel table, feeling smug. He didn't feel so smug now.
“Yes, Mr. Clerk?” said the judge. But his gimlet-eyed gaze was fixed on Tom.