The Outlander (44 page)

“Well? What'll you do now?” asked the woman from the
hotel's porch. Her face triumphant, and her hand at her husband's shoulder
to hold him back, keep him from them. There was a smell of cooking in the air, bacon and
eggs, coffee, wafting out from the hotel's kitchen. Life going on regardless. Man
and woman looked down on the two brothers, who stepped and swayed in the street below.
They were addled and alarmed, exhausted. Their shirts were frayed, boots worn and nicked
and faded, their very hands and faces wrinkled. And in their eyes something awful, some
cognisance of a force more relentless than themselves. Weather. Rain. Nights spent
freezing. The trackless eternity of trees . . . Her.

“We'll get her,” said Julian. And his voice sounded
almost convinced. But still, they remained where they were, in the empty street.

“Why should we?” said Jude finally.

His brother turned and looked at him in disbelief. “Have you
forgotten? We have to.”

“Look at me. Look at us,” he said, sadly. “We've
done enough, Julian.” And with that came a rift between them, alarming and new.
The follower had ceased to follow.

“He won't understand.”

“I don't care what he wants. Not any more.”

They simply looked at each other, a ferocious communication running
between them, wordless and elemental, rushing onward. Which would it be: union or
dissolution? The watching couple held their breath, as people do at a play, each
wondering what the players will do next, and each with a different hope for the
outcome.

“Well?” said the man from his spot on the porch.
“What's happening?”

And it was a good question. But neither brother knew what was happening.
Not remotely. They turned on him two identical gazes of such grief and humiliation that
his eyes fell to the floor and he shuffled in shame.

AMONG THE WINDBLOWN
bushes the widow knelt, unmoving,
waiting as an animal waits and watches. She was up on a slight ridge behind
McEchern's trading post. She could hear the dwarf 's voice, an incessant
soprano cut by gusts of laughter. Overhead lay a sunset of intemperate beauty, a pink
and orange flush that refused to subside, its warmth caught among the shivering bushes
that ringed the widow like a living halo. She waited silently, crouched there. Never
again would she simply walk into a place without knowing what awaited her. The sick take
to their beds, prisoners wait, and the hunted must hide.

All that day she had ridden the horse with this one moment in mind. And
so, after galloping for a few miles, she had walked the horse, willing herself not to
look over her shoulder more than once every ten minutes, thinking, “This time,
when I look, they will be there, a dark spot in the distance.” But it had never
happened. The wind had risen and the air was bright. She went past that same racketing
palisade of aspens, the identical journey ravelling back onto the spool, the widow in
some ineffable way undoing the day. Her horse was blandly contented with her, or perhaps
with any
rider, the picture of animal equanimity, like a friendly
dog, faithless to its previous owner.

They had ascended into the hills that mid-morning and by noon were among
the pines, where the air was crisp and damp. Water pooled in the hollows, and the horse
bent and sucked noisily while she leant back in the saddle and held the reins loose so
it could reach. Then they had gone on, among crags and fissures, following the worn path
uphill. The widow running her fingers through the stiff mane before her, drowsy and
weary, for this was the time of day when the pregnancy weighed heavy and dazzling,
running like dope through her veins.

Gradually, a plan formed in her head. Or the beginnings of one. First was
a tent. Wire for snares. Furs to make a decent coat. Pans, a knife, a hatchet, flour,
lard, yeast cakes, matches . . . What else? She leaned and patted the animal's
muscular neck and spoke gently to it. For a while, she considered naming the horse but
could come up with nothing. It was as nameless to her as she was to it.

They went on across the alpine meadow on which the Cregans had camped, for
there were the fallen stays of their little corral, looking like artifacts from a past
millennium, a lost people. The end of the world, come and gone. She drifted past their
old fire, windblown leaves caught and eddying within the ring of cold stones. From
there, the path faded and broke apart, some tributaries going uphill, some downhill, and
from this she knew she was nearing the town of Frank. And so the widow steered them off
the meadow and into the trees, cutting downhill and away from the open ranges of the
landslide. Finally, she had dismounted, tethered the
horse to a
tree, and gone ahead on foot, making for the trading post.

Now, as she waited, crouched downwind among the bright bushes, she became
aware that she could no longer hear McEchern's voice. The tent wowed and ruffled
in the breeze, but there was no more talking. She needed food. She could not wait much
longer, and might have to simply walk in there and face it. But just then the dwarf
emerged onto the platform, a small dark form that hopped down nimbly and went among the
blowing bushes and stood there for a moment having a piss, his hat tilted back. He
whistled. When he turned and began to make his way inside, the widow leaped up and skied
in her boots down the embankment in a slide of pine needles. She trotted to a stop
before him.

He was speechless for a moment, his white face crumbling into annoyed
relief.

“Jesus fuckin' Christ!”

“Shh!” she said, stifling a laugh.

“I thought you were a cougar!”

“Oh, Mac, I'm sorry.”

“First him and now you. People jumping out at me from all
sides!”

He released a long sigh, coming back to himself after the fright. Then a
joyful smile spread over his face — suddenly he realized how extraordinary it was
that she stood before him. The widow went down on one knee and he walked into her arms,
and she held him as one holds a child, as one presses one's face against the
solid, warm head and feels the small returning embrace.

“I thought you were dead,” he said to her shoulder.

“So did I.”

Then he stood back from her. She saw the fine white hairs in his
moustache, and saw her own dim shape reflected in the clear pools of his eyes, one in
each, twin spectres floating there in another world.

“Come on,” he said, “there's someone inside
you'll want to see.”

THE WIDOW WOKE
at dawn to the sound of some low, deep
exhalation, a sigh that she assumed had come from the Ridgerunner, who lay beside her.
But after a moment she realized it could not have come from him. It must have come from
her dreams. She sat up and gazed at his face. It amazed her how much more beautiful he
was than in her imagination. The closed, serene eyes, the lips parted slightly, not a
trace of tension in his brow, his unguarded face dazzling to her. She resisted the
temptation to kiss him. As she had the night before. Straddling him, allowing him to
enter her. Now there was no point in being careful, so they had dashed themselves with
joy against each other, and then collapsed. She had told him her condition. At first, he
had only been interested in how his prophylactic method had failed. Otherwise, and
because it meant they could have sex as they wished, he had accepted it lightly, as one
does who does not fully apprehend the future. No matter, she thought. That was one thing
they shared: not knowing.

Don't kiss him, she told herself. She backed silently out of the
tent they shared, naked, clutching her parcel of clothes, and looked up at the listing
peak of McEchern's tent. No smoke yet. So the dwarf was also asleep.

AN HOUR LATER
, Charlie McEchern was stoking his stove, a
pot of coffee beginning to warm on its top, when he looked up to see the widow standing
at the back doorflap of his tent. A queer look on her face. She giggled and skipped
about the store, girlish and giddy, then hurried to the front doorflap to check that
Moreland had not yet risen from his tent.

“What's with you?” he said.

“Nothing.”

She was peeking out the door, smiling. McEchern came and stood by her,
looking up at her earnestly.

“You're leaving, aren't you?”

Of course, he must have seen her tending to the horse out back, which was
now saddled and heavily packed, almost expertly, with all the provisions he had given
her, or loaned to her on the promise of payment that both of them knew could never be
made. The widow nodded. She was indeed leaving.

The dwarf didn't know what to make of the sly smile on her face. He
scowled and put his hands on his hips. “Well, I'm leaving too, you
know?”

She let the canvas flap drop. “What! Why?”

“What'd'ya mean why? I can't sell whisky to the
goddamn trees, Mary. There's nothing left for me here. Soon as those Cregans take
off, the place'll be as deserted as a church. Frankly, it gives me the creeps,
already. I figure it's time to go.”

“But where?” She sounded bereft, which seemed to please
him.

“Yukon,” he said. “Lots of people there, mining,
drinking, all that. I hear they even have a library. I was going to ask you
to come with me . . .” He reddened. “But I suppose you
have whatshisname there to look after you.”

“I don't need looking after, Mac.”

The dwarf looked dubious but didn't argue. There was a brief
silence, a little seam of cool through the warm.

“Where is Yukon?” Mary said finally.

“North of here. A long way north. And west. ”

“Isn't it cold?”

“About the same as winter here,” he said, “but
year-round.” They both laughed.

“Have I ever thanked you?” the widow said.

The dwarf made as if pondering for a moment, stroking his moustache.
“Nope,” he said.

She nodded. “Interesting,” she said.

He snorted. “Think you're cute, don't ya?”

THE RIDGERUNNER
half-woke to see that the light in the
tent was high and cool, a squirrel chittering to his left, and the hiss of wind through
trees — all of it bespoke a late rising, midday. . . . He had slept in! He sat
bolt upright in a tumble of blankets and, like a blind man, groped about the empty tent
for her, his hands patting the blankets as if the widow might have shrunk in her sleep
and was lying unseen and nut-sized among them. Then he scratched his back and waited for
his head to clear. In his mind they were still in the mountains and alone, and she was
surely just outside smoking her pipe, awaiting him. He was still half asleep,
dream-addled. He sighed and ran a hand over his face. Alone again and just imagining
her? Still, the body radiates contentment, release. His unhurried mind ran back to the
night, the tent, the blankets, and her — suddenly there was a cavalcade of
salacious
scenes, ruinously beautiful, and . . . He rubbed his eyes
. . . True! He'd found her! Or she'd found him. He wasn't sure
which.

Suddenly, he remembered everything.

McEchern telling him, “Drop it. She's done. Who knows who they
were. Who knows where they took her. And even if you knew”— he spread his
small hands out —“what could you do? Are you Sam Steele?” The two of
them drunk for two days, until the Ridgerunner could drink no more, and merely sat
holding his head. Then a long, sorry, sober night during which the dwarf had chattered
to stave off his companion's unnerving silence, telling story after story, every
one about her. Wondering at the particulars of her past, the whiff of crime, her
dreadful pursuers, recounting the incredible fact of her firing upon them. Questions
that were unanswered and unanswerable. It had been a wake. They the mourners, and Mary
Boulton the corpse.

And then she had walked in. Dressed like an Indian. She had walked right
in and stood smiling at William Moreland.

He had scrounged excitedly round the tent and struggled with the opening.
She had looked different, somehow. Was it in her gait or her voice . . . her eyes? He
wasn't sure. But it was familiar, a thing he'd only seen in certain men.

“Mary!” he called out. He heard only the wind in the trees. At
that moment his hand strayed across something that crinkled and folded against his
fingers. A piece of paper. The Ridgerunner held it to his sleepy eyes and read it, and
there he saw what he could not have known were the first two words the widow had ever
written.

Find me.

LOVE AND GRATITUDE
to Kevin Connolly, for pretty much
everything. Thanks to my editor Lynn Henry, Sarah MacLachlan, Laura Repas, and the folks
at House of Anansi for their warmth and incredible energy — and to Ken Babstock
for bringing me in to Anansi. To Elyse Friedman for being honest and kind — a rare
combo. To Ingrid Paulson and Heather Sangster for making this novel look and sound far
more beautiful than I could have imagined. To Carmine Starnino and Alix Bortolotti for
Italian translations, Del Shinkopf for German translations, and Stuart von Wolff for
Swedish. To Jack Brink, Curator of Archaeology at the Royal Alberta Museum, for
information on the Peigan people in 1903. Any historical inaccuracies regarding
Aboriginal life and customs are mine. To Rauleigh Webb and Sam Webb for their
information on carbide mining lamps. William Moreland's collection of newspaper
clippings were cadged from
Wisconsin Death Trip
, though their texts have been
altered; his diary entries are slightly altered from his actual diary, quoted in
Conley's
Idaho Loners.

The following books were central to the writing of this novel: J. Frank
Dobie,
Cow People
, University of Texas Press, 1964; Michael Lesy,
Wisconsin
Death Trip
, University of New
Mexico Press, 1973; Eliot
Wigginton, The Foxfire series, Anchor Books, various dates; Cort Conley,
Idaho
Loners
, Backeddy Books, 1994;
The Book of Common Prayer
, 1662.