Soldier of the Horse (6 page)

Tom's boss turned in his swivel chair and held out a hand. Tom gave him the package. “He says you owe him.”

Zink raised an eyebrow, bent to open a bottom drawer in his desk and dropped the box into it. He seemed buoyed by Tom's arrival, sitting straighter, looking pleased with himself. “Leave him to me,” he said with a chuckle. Tom glanced at Evans, who looked as though he'd rather be anywhere else. Inkmann was cleaning his nails with a penknife. “We're talking to Kravenko again at nine o'clock tomorrow morning at the jail. Be there. He's getting restless, the jailers tell me.”

Tom figured Zink had to be at least half drunk, judging by the condition of the rye bottle Bernie had supplied. Evans told Zink he had an evening engagement and picked up his hat.

“Leave, then, and you can go, too,” he thrust his chin at Tom.

Tom silently followed John Evans down to the street, where the older man offered him a ride. Tom declined, as his home was in the opposite direction. Later, riding in the streetcar toward East Kildonan, he wondered what would happen next.

♦  ♦  ♦

So now, Tom was in the army, Zink and Bernie Inkmann were in jail, and John Evans was safe at home with the lovely Ellen. Once more, Tom was waiting for a streetcar, having survived another brush with Bernie's older and far more powerful brother. He'd be a lot happier if he never had to see Cedric again.

♦  ♦  ♦

Damn the army. Tom rolled out of his bunk before the last notes of reveille sounded and stumbled to the washroom. A quick shave, throw on uniform and boots, stumble off to the stables. Damn again—forgot his puttees. Run back, grab them, wind them from just below the knees down, long cotton strips wrapped to cover trousers and boot tops,
not
from the bottoms up, because that's how the despised infantry wore theirs. Feed and water Rusty. Clean his stall. Wash, line up at the mess hall for breakfast of porridge, eggs, bacon, and burned toast. Back to the stables, throw on Rusty's blanket and saddle. Off halter, on bridle. Lead him out; mount up. Fall in. Wait for Quartermain.

Tom and his fellow recruits had heard a lot about Lord Strathcona's Horse in the few days they had been in the army. The original regiment by that name had carried the imprint of Lord Strathcona, the man behind the Canadian Pacific Railway, who raised a regiment in the west to fight in the Boer War. In 1914, when the Canadian Expeditionary Force was first mustered in Valcartier, Quebec, to train and travel to Europe, the Strathconas, now a regular regiment in the Canadian army, along with the Royal Canadian Dragoons and part of the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery, had been the first to arrive. As regular force regiments, they were instrumental in setting up the camp and getting the volunteers into some semblance of order. The Straths had then shipped to England on board the
SS
Bermudian
. Quartermain had been sent back, in spite of his vigorous objections, and was now the senior noncommissioned officer responsible for bringing the recruits up to Strathcona standards.

The men sat in their saddles, facing the rising sun. The horses pranced and tossed their heads, their pent-up energy mirrored by at least some of their young riders.

“So where's our bloody Sergeant Quartermain, then?” asked Bruce Johanson.

“Don't look now,” Tom told him, “but he's been sitting his horse at the other end of the parade ground the whole time. God knows when he gets up.”

“Maybe he doesn't sleep,” said someone farther down the line.

Albert Nickerson, who had been roaring drunk when he came back to barracks at curfew the night before, belched loudly. “Let's just get this over with. If we do a bunch of trotting again, I'll be puking all over the parade ground. I should have gone to sick parade.”

“What a bunch of whiners,” Johanson, the former cowboy, threw in. “I'm just sick of trotting in circles. When the hell are we going to do some real riding?”

Tom's hands were steady on the reins, but he felt a quiver at the pit of his stomach. He had heard stories from other recruits about the equestrian skills of the Straths, and he didn't want to get bucked off Rusty and make a fool of himself. Or, heaven forbid, get banished to the infantry. He felt like telling his friend Johanson to pipe down and stop baiting the sergeant. Over the chatter of the men and the jangling of bits, he heard slow, controlled hoofbeats approaching from behind.

“Quiet in the ranks.” Quartermain walked his big bay around the end of the line and slowly passed along in front. “Nice to see such keen riders so bright and early.” He leaned forward in his saddle, peering intently at the men. “It beats me how young bucks like you lot can't grow a decent mustache.”

Someone snickered. The instructors had ordered the reinforcements to grow mustaches, which were much the style in the regular army. The recruits had other priorities—they shaved clean before going off the base at night, then left their upper lips unshaved in the morning. Tom doubted that the barely discernible half-day growth fooled anyone.

“Well, maybe you can't grow facial hair. Can you ride, or is that too much to hope for?” Quartermain turned his horse to face Johanson. “So we have some riders here, do we?”

Johanson sat rigidly. “Yes, sir.”

“Don't call me sir, Private. You call officers sir. I am a sergeant, and don't you bloody forget it.” The way he said it left no doubt about the relative importance of officers and sergeants.

“Yes, Sergeant.”

Quartermain backed his horse so they could all see him clearly. “Pay attention. Take your feet out of your stirrups. Cross your leathers.” Suiting his actions to his words he reached down, pulled up his stirrups, and dropped them on opposite sides of the pommel of his saddle.

Tom kicked his boots free of his stirrups and followed Quartermain's example. Rusty danced sideways, bumping Johanson's horse, which tossed its head. Tom grabbed leather to steady himself.

“Let go of that saddle,” Quartermain shouted. “Follow me. WALK—march!”

He turned his horse and started a slow walk around the perimeter of the parade square. Rusty and Tom followed. Tom felt shaky without stirrups but had no real problem at this pace. He could have sworn Rusty twisted his head to give him a once-over as they made the first turn to the left.

After the second turn Quartermain reined his horse to one side. “Carry on,” he said as Tom went by.

“No stirrups—big deal,” Johanson muttered from behind Tom.

Tom glanced at Quartermain to see if he had heard. The sergeant had a sardonic grin on his face. “TROT—march!” he ordered.

Tom brushed Rusty with his spurs so he'd increase the pace but kept the reins taut to hold him back from a canter. He began to bounce in the saddle, so he held on with his knees and thighs and cheated a bit by grabbing what he could of Rusty's close-clipped mane. Rusty turned at the next corner and followed the line of the fence.

As someone behind groaned with every bounce, Tom gritted his teeth and posted, lifting his rump off the saddle as best he could to ease the pain that was building in his thighs. There was a curse and a thump as a body hit the ground. Tom turned and saw Nickerson stumble to his feet, his horse pulling hard, trying to get away. Pale-faced, Nickerson fell again, flat on his belly, but he managed to keep a death-grip on the reins.

“Keep on, you men,” shouted Quartermain. He looked at Nickerson. “You—who told you to dismount? Get back on your horse.”

Tom kept going, inwardly furious with Johanson and the others in the troop who had been riding all their lives and made it look so easy. He could feel his breakfast sloshing around in his stomach, and within minutes the pain in his guts more than matched his burning thigh muscles. He was able to hang on, though, as two more riders hit the dirt. With each one Quartermain bellowed, “Who told you to dismount?”

Tom reached the stage where he was too tired and sore to grip the saddle with his legs anymore, but he was able to balance, and bounce, in a fashion that kept him—barely—in the saddle. As they rounded the paddock again Rusty came to the open gate that led to the stables. Without warning he plunged sideways, and Tom fell headlong over his withers. He hit the ground hard and gasped for air, his wind knocked out. Rusty ripped the reins from his hand and galloped off. A watching corporal slammed the gate shut before he got through it, and Rusty headed around the parade ground, kicking and bucking, stirrups flying. Tom stood up, doubled over, and tried to breathe, spitting dirt while the laughter of his troopmates rang in his ears.

Quartermain snorted. “God give me strength.” He spurred his horse away, his stirrup leathers still crossed, and cantered after Rusty. He and his horse looked as if they were one being, centaur-like. The sergeant cornered Rusty, leaned to grasp the trailing reins, and led him back.

Without saying a word he brought his horse to a halt in front of Tom, who grasped Rusty's reins and pulled his head around so he could look him in the eyes. Rusty had no choice but to stand still and not jerk away. Still holding the reins taut Tom gripped the saddle with both hands, vaulted, and swung his right leg across Rusty's back. Pain shot through his thighs.

“Use your stirrups,” Quartermain ordered. “Now, TROT.” Tom got his feet into his stirrups and trotted after the boys. Quartermain might be a Limey son of a bitch, but the man could ride.

DOMESTIC AFFAIRS

♦   ♦   ♦

Determined to make use of whatever time he had left before boarding a train to start his journey to war, Tom had sent a note to Ellen with an invitation that she had, to his relief, accepted. In uniform, he arrived early at the restaurant in the Royal Alexandra Hotel adjacent to the Canadian Pacific Railway station. The maitre d' looked sideways at a mere private, but Tom slipped him a dollar and was led to a table for two by the window. A waiter pulled back his chair, and Tom eased himself down. His buttocks ached. A week of trotting with no stirrups was equestrian hell, but his body was hardening and the pain was less intense with each day.

Tom's uniform was brushed and pressed, his boots shined. He gave the waiter his cap to look after, thinking briefly of the lady on the streetcar who had looked down her nose at him, all those weeks ago. He would have her approval now, all right. But he was still mentally shaking his head at finding himself in uniform, his civilian life receding into the past.

He relaxed, revelling in the quiet background murmur of polite conversation, the muted scrape of silverware on china. The room, with its crystal chandeliers and golden-brown, embossed wallpaper, was oddly calming, though it catered to a higher stratum of society than he was used to. The startling contrast between life in barracks and lunch in the upper-class dining room made him wonder how much different the war zone would be from his present challenging but safe existence. That is, if he actually got to the war, a distant and hard-to-imagine circumstance.

The minutes dragged by. Tom's thoughts wandered, as they often did, to his family. He had four brothers and one sister—or, at least, he used to have; Ray had drowned in a canoeing accident on the Red River, and his mother had never recovered from it. She had lost weight and was constantly listless. His father all too often took refuge in the bottle. Tom would have given anything to have Ray back and his mother restored, but that was not how things worked. And now she had a fresh worry, with Tom in the army and destined to go overseas.

Tom looked out the window for the hundredth time. Would Ellen turn up at all? Suddenly she was there, on the opposite sidewalk, strolling with another young woman. Tom's reflective mood disappeared and he felt his heart race.

Tom saw her wave goodbye to her friend as she turned to cross the street. He lost sight of her as she approached the doorway, then found her again as she emerged into the room. As Tom stood, waved, then walked toward her, Ellen's face broke into a smile.

“Hello, Tom,” she said. “My, you do look different.”

“I feel different.”

Tom held her chair as she sat. She looked good, a vivacious young woman, dressed for lunch out on a sunny Winnipeg Saturday, in a long green dress with a narrow waist and a tight jacket.

“Glad you could make it,” he said, sounding stilted even to himself. His mouth felt dry.

“How could I not? A girl doesn't get to eat lunch in the Royal Alexandra with a handsome soldier every day of the week.” She smiled again. “How are you?”

“Well, to tell the truth, a lot has happened recently. But I expect you know most of it.”

“Daddy doesn't tell me very much,” Ellen said. She glanced at his uniform. “He said joining the army wasn't your first choice, but I knew that. But what's going to happen with that awful Mr. Zink? Oh—I'm sorry—perhaps I shouldn't be asking you about that.” She put her fingers over her mouth and blushed.

It occurred to Tom that she might think he
had
been involved in the jailbreak. “No harm in asking. I really don't know any more about it than what was in the papers.”

Recent newspaper reports had confirmed that Bloody Jack was still on the loose. Cartoonists made merciless fun of the forces of law and order, given Jack's colourful history and dramatic jailbreak. If he had still been in custody, his trial, presumably with conviction, would be over by now. In the meantime Zink remained in jail, as did Bernie Inkmann and a third man, a jailer. Their plight made the army look pretty good to Tom, sore buttocks and all.

“Penny for them,” said Ellen.

Tom came back to reality with a start. Wool-gathering was not going to impress a desirable young woman. “Sorry. I was just thinking how lucky I am to be sitting here having lunch with the most beautiful girl in town.”

Ellen blushed again, much to Tom's delight. Maybe all was not lost—out of law, into the army, but life carried on.

Later, as she ate, Ellen remembered her talk with her father shortly after Tom was implicated in the jailbreak.