The Third Riel Conspiracy (11 page)

“Truth is a matter of perspective. I'm not certain that the truth of what has happened here, and at Fish Creek, Duck Lake, and Cut Knife Hill, will ever really be known.”

“You are too young a man to be a cynic, Sergeant. I suspect you have come by your scars honestly, and that has sullied your perspective on mankind.”

Durrant regarded the newspaperman a moment. “You say that Mr. Wake was a prominent member of Regina society.”

“I said he was well known, not prominent. He owned a livery stable and so enjoyed a station in society on par with other businessmen of a certain class. He was known to be a member of several clubs in our fair city.”

“Was he well thought of?”

“I cannot say, Sergeant. I believe he has had his share of ups and downs in business, and as such may have made some enemies.”

“Might any of those have followed him here?”

“I can't see how they would. Look around you, sir. Do you see many men among these ruffians who might fall into the class of the business elite?”

“Present company excluded, Mr. Block?”

“I take offence to that!”

“In my experience, it is usually a sign that the arrow has found its mark.”

“Sergeant, what exactly is your purpose in levelling such accusations at me? I am here to report to the readers of my paper a first-hand account of the battle and subsequent apprehension of the criminals Dumont and Riel. Nothing more.”

“Mr. Block, you could have sent a mere scribe. I find your presence here among these . . .”—Durrant looked around him at the soldiers—“how did you put it? Ruffians? I find your presence here and interest in Mr. Wake and his alleged attacker Mr. La Biche curious to say the least.”

“Sir, you are out of line. Assistant Commissioner Crozier will hear my complaint about your accusations.”

“I report to Superintendant Steele. He's presently engaged hunting down the Willow Cree. I'm sure he will entertain your concerns when he returns from the wilderness. In the meantime, Mr. Block, know that I have my eye on you.”

Block puffed up his chest and made to adjust his perfect scarf before he strode off. Durrant watched him go, thinking that for the second time that day he had met a fox.

SAUL ARMATAGE AND
Garnet Moberly were waiting for Durrant. Saul offered him coffee. “How is the leg?”

“It's all right. Blasted thing came out of its socket when I was thrown.”

“Durrant, you're bleeding right through your trousers. For Christ's sake, let me look. I'm going to need to attend to this. You'll need stitches and I'll have to re-bandage the leg. You need to—”

Durrant cut him off. “Don't tell me to stay off of it, Saul. I won't. It's taken me five years to get back on a horse and earn the respect of Steele and the others. I won't play lame while there is important police work to be done.”

Saul set to work on the leg, taking what he needed from his haversack. “Tell us what you have learned.”

Durrant sat on a stump and drank his coffee and then accepted a plate of pork and beans while Saul cleaned and then stitched his leg. Durrant flinched only once and told them of the events of his conversation with Jasper Dire up to his confrontation with Stanley Block. “And what about you gentlemen?” Durrant asked. “What have you learned?”

Garnet spoke first. “I spent the best part of the morning inquiring after our gravediggers. None will attest to burying Reuben Wake or admit to knowing the whereabouts of his corpse. It seems as if he has been spirited from these parts. We shall have to turn our eyes farther afield, I fear.”

“If you wished to dispose of a body in these parts, Saul, as a medical doctor, where would you do it?” asked Durrant.

“I suppose the best way to take leave of such a thing would be to consign it to the Saskatchewan and let it drift downstream.”

“He could be halfway to Prince Albert by now, Durrant,” added Garnet.

“Speaking of the river,” said Saul, “upon making my rounds this morning I had a moment to speak with Jacques Lambert. At first the scouts who discovered this man felt that he, as others had, might have been trying to reach the zareba. Upon closer inspection they discovered that he was armed only with a knife, and that he had made cuts to his own wrists. The men quickly bandaged them and, with Lambert protesting, brought him to Middleton's doctor for care.

“Lambert tells me that he was recruited to fight for Dumont; he left his farm in the care of his wife and two teenaged children. A boy not more than eleven, the girl just fourteen. Word travelled to Lambert's ears that the farm lay in the path of the advancing army of Middleton, and that some of the men had taken to looting. He discovered on the first day of the battle that several men had looted his wares and burned his farm to the ground. And, as you have heard, his daughter was raped.”

“Blue Jesus,” said Durrant. “I don't suppose this Lambert heard the name of the lout who committed this foul deed.”

“I'm afraid he did. He knew that the man who committed these atrocities was Reuben Wake.”

ELEVEN

JACQUES LAMBERT LAY WITH ANOTHER
man in the back of a wagon, a thin wool blanket pulled up around his chin. His face carried the countenance of the defeated. Durrant watched him from a distance. “Can he be moved?” he asked Saul.

“There's really very little wrong with him. His wounds are healing well. He's only spoken to
me
since arriving, and just those few words at that. I fear that maybe the mental trauma he has suffered has robbed him of his faculties.”

“What say we take him to the church and provide him the comfort he needs to tell his tale?”

“Very well, we can ask.” Saul led Durrant to the wagon and introduced him to the infirm man. “This man is Durrant Wallace,” said the doctor. “He's a Mounted Police officer, and has been asked to investigate what happened on your farm.” Saul saw Durrant look at him and then back at Lambert. “He would like to talk with you. What do you say we take a little walk over to the rectory and you can tell him what you told me?” Saul helped Lambert stand. “Let me give you a hand.”

Lambert hadn't walked in four days, so they started slowly. Saul gave him one of the cook's biscuits and a cup of tea, which revitalized him. “You're looking into the trouble at my farm?” asked Lambert.

“We're looking into it. We're going to do what we can.”

“If you don't have an objection, I will tell it from the start. The context is important to what I've got to tell.” Lambert spoke in easy English, and Durrant detected the diction of a man who had been schooled in Ontario as Durrant himself had. “After the fighting at Fish Creek, General Dumont pulled his men back to Batoche. We thought for sure that Middleton would push through, but instead he camped out for two weeks. It gave us a lot of time to get the town ready. We knew that Middleton would come up the Humboldt Trail, and attack us here, along the Mission Ridge.” Lambert pointed a finger toward where the land dropped down to the town of Batoche. “Dumont didn't want Middleton to gain the height of land above the town, so we aimed to make our stand here. We'd seen the four field guns that he had with him when we clashed at Fish Creek and we didn't want to give him a clear shot, so we dug in. We had rifle pits throughout the woods around the church and to where the St. Laurent Road crosses La Jolie Prairie. And there, along the cemetery.” Lambert pointed and started to walk in that direction. Durrant and Saul followed.

“That's where I was, the cemetery. We waited for two weeks. We knew that Middleton was taking his time. We had our scouts out along the Humboldt Trail and that's how it came to pass that I learned about my farm.

“On the morning of the ninth of May, around seven o'clock, we got word that the field force was sending a steamer up the river.”

“That would be the
Northcote
,” said Durrant.

“The steamer was supposed to pass by Batoche at the same moment that Middleton's ground forces came upon us from the east. The men were late in arriving, but eventually his mounted soldiers and riflemen were able to fight their way past the church and the rectory. Our lads scrambled back to their rifle pits in time to keep them from taking the Mission Ridge.”

The three men reached the cemetery. “We got back in time to put up quite the fight,” Lambert continued. “It was at times close quarters. We were just fifty yards from one another. They even managed to get their field guns up to the crest of the ridge and fire down onto the town. We had the advantage of cover, while they were mostly lined up in the open. That's the way it went for several hours. Middleton would press any advantage he could find, and we'd fend off his advances.

“Around three o'clock, General Dumont decided to try and circle around the soldiers on the north flank. They had that Gatling gun on loan from the Yanks, and put it to good use. Dumont ordered that a brush fire be set and we would advance on their border through the smoke. It would have worked. We might have surrounded them, had they not turned that gun on us. It held us at bay.

“This whole time I was in this rifle pit.” Lambert carefully stepped down into the pit and leaned against the logs that had been stacked on its north wall to provide cover and a slit through which the Métis man could fire his weapon. “I was armed with an old single-shot Sharps Silhouette. It was my buffalo gun. I don't think you whites understand. We are starving. Our crops have failed, the buffalo are gone, and the food that Macdonald promised is being lorded over us by the Indian Agents. We have become beggars. It was the last straw of many, many insults. That's why Dumont told us to fight. That's why Riel returned. I sat in this pit and shot at Middleton's soldiers.”

“Did you shoot anybody?” asked Durrant.

“There was but one man dead from Middleton's forces that day, and it was out yonder, on the Mission Ridge. Fellow named Phillips gunned down when they tried to take the ridge early in the afternoon. We suffered our losses too. I might have zipped a few fellows, but I didn't kill a man.”

“Tell us about Rueben Wake,” Durrant said.

“I told you about our scouts and spies. We watched Middleton's advance up the Humboldt Trail. It turns out that those bastards took to looting as they went. I had left my family at my farm, believing that if this was to be a fair fight, they would be safe there. That was a mistake. Just about the time that the
Northcote
was steaming up toward Batoche, mon ami arrived to tell me the news. My friend told me that the night before, men had gone to my farm, just a mile off the road, and there found my wife and children. My friend, he watched much of this from the hill above my farm, but he was alone, and there were a dozen men. He said that they were the men who cared for the horses, coming along behind Middleton's forces. They took my family out of the house and took all of our stores and put them in a wagon. They torched the house and watched as it burned to the ground. Mon petit garçon—he is but eleven—he tried to stop him and they beat him. One of the men took my little girl away to the barn.”

“Did your friend see what happened next?”

Lambert pushed tears away from his face. “No, he did not. But what is a man to believe?”

“How do you know it was the man Reuben Wake?”

“My friend had seen this man before in Batoche. He had come often, with his horses and wagons, bringing supplies, trading. He had been here when Dumont went to bring our father Riel back.”

“You were told, just before the fighting, that your farm had been burned, and that your daughter may well have been hurt by the man Wake. What did you do?”

“What could I do? The fighting had started! When Middleton retreated to his compound that night, he posted men all along the bluffs and the river, and try as I might, I could not get past them. I slept that night just two hundred yards from your encampment. In the morning, I decided that for the honour of my family I must kill this man Reuben Wake.”

“Did you?” asked Durrant.

Lambert was sobbing now. “How could I? I could not get to him! I heard that on the second day he did not leave the enemy camp. On the third, he went with Middleton to La Jolie Prairie, and there he received a wound and once again hid in the compound. I broke ranks that day! God forgive me, but I saw how things might go for Dumont. We had nothing left. We were out of bullets. We were melting down lead balls pried from trees to make something to shoot. I went again to the compound to try and find Wake but could not, as there were too many soldiers, and in the afternoon there was a great charge, and the town fell. Dumont fled, and Riel hid, and the resistance came to an end.”

“You were found on the riverbank, near suppertime. Doctor Armatage tells me you tried to cut your wrists.”

“I had fired my last round. What could I do? If I had a single cartridge left, I would have taken my life with it, but all I had was my knife. I cut my wrists and waited to face the punishment of God for my sin. But instead—”

“Instead the soldiers found you and took you to the zareba.”

“That's where I saw Reuben Wake, already dead.”

“You saw him?” asked Durrant, his voice betraying his astonishment.

“I was put down on the ground to await the doctor just a few feet from where this devil lay!”

“How did you recognize him?” asked Durrant.

“I saw him when he was in our midst, under the guise of a friend. I will never forget him.”

“Did you see what happened to his body?”

“What do you mean?” asked Lambert.

“His body is missing. We can't find it.”

Lambert spat into the dirt at his feet. “That band of crows has come to peck out his eyes! Before I was taken to have my wounds dressed, I saw two men come and take the body away. I suppose they were to bury it. I wish that I had thrown the first shovel.”