The Third Riel Conspiracy (2 page)

Wake paused and leaned on a nearby wagon to adjust his sling. He could hear Van Straubenzie explain that with the wind he had not heard the sound of the Gatling gun. Van Straubenzie asked what the general's orders for the field force were for the rest of the day. “Take them as far as you please,” said Middleton, dismissing the colonel with a wave of his hand. Van Straubenzie marched toward the company of foot soldiers gathered at the entrance of the zareba. Wake followed.

All might not be lost. Wake might yet get a chance to kill a half-breed in this battle. He simply needed to get out of the zareba and look for his chance. He'd already had an opportunity once on this campaign and had made good use of it. But killing one half-breed wasn't enough for Reuben Wake. He wanted more. Given the opening, he would try for the greatest prize in this war: the so-called prophet himself.

At the compound gate where Van Straubenzie's officers were gathered, the colonel was issuing hurried orders. A great hurrah went up from the men. Several hundred of them mounted their horses and charged out of the zareba, heading toward the Métis skirmish line at the top of the hill above Batoche. In the distance, the Winnipeg Field Battery opened fire again.

Men raced for their horses, and Wake, not wanting to be caught standing still, ran against the surge toward the corral to muster the mounts. Nobody wanted to miss the action. Near the centre of the camp, the kitchen was in chaos. Men dropped their tin plates and grabbed their Winchesters, making for the Mission Ridge. In no time, the men who had retreated from La Jolie Prairie that morning had regrouped and were charging across the open ground between the encampment and the village of Batoche.

That's when Middleton appeared, calling for his horse. Wake found the mare and snatched the reins from the stableboy's hands in time to present them to the commander himself. And with that the general was gone. Wake stood again in the relative quiet of the zareba. To hell with the doctor's orders. This would be his last chance to kill a dirty Indian, and he wasn't going to be sitting on his ass while the others had all the fun. He would retrieve his pistol from where he had stowed it while in hospital and get in on the action. And should Riel be captured alive, Wake still had a job to do.

TWO

APRIL 29, 1885. CALGARY, NWT.

Durrant Wallace stood in the rain, a stream of water pouring from his hat's curled brim. It spilled down onto the front of his heavy oilskin coat. The dim flicker of oil lamps cast the only illumination on muddy Stephen Avenue, Calgary's main street. Durrant receded like a shadow into a doorway next to the Stockman's Bar and watched the entrace of the busy saloon.

The night had started off with sleet driving in from the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Around midnight the North West Mounted Police sergeant felt the temperature shift, and the ice turned to rain. It was all the same to Durrant Wallace. Wet was wet and cold was cold. The ache that had settled into his game left leg and burned in his right hand felt as if it might paralyze him. In the ten months since Durrant Wallace had returned from Holt City, Calgary had grown by more than five hundred souls, and more were arriving on the banks of the Bow and Elbow Rivers daily. What had started as a crossroads on the cattle trail from Fort Benton, Montana, in 1881 had grown into a sprawling town of tents, tipis, clapboard shacks, and even a few streets boasting wooden homes with porches.

While Calgary had selected its first chief of police that very year, the Mounted Police still kept the peace along the Canadian Pacific Railway, intercepting illegal whiskey and upholding the laws of the Dominion of Canada. With the outbreak of war in the North West Territories, more settlers and farmers were crowding into the city's confines.

Durrant Wallace, a veteran of the celebrated March West in 1874, was among those who had been left behind at the outbreak of war. It came as no surprise to him.

Superintendent Sam Steele, now a major in the militia of General Strange, had delivered the news personally. When the tensions between the half-French, half-Indian Métis and a handful of full-blood Indian bands loyal to Riel had erupted into violence on March 19, Steele had been called away from his post near Golden, British Columbia. Riel had declared a provisional government in the Saskatchewan Territory. He had written to the Government of Canada and threatened to “commence without delay a war of extermination upon all those who have shown themselves hostile to our rights.”

All winter, rumours had been spreading up and down the North West Territories that such an act was inevitable. When it finally happened, Steele and the other men of the North West Mounted Police were called together to serve as scouts for a company of men that would march north from Calgary and then east from Fort Edmonton to confront the rebels. Steele had stepped off the train at Calgary's new station to a cheering crowd. Durrant had approached him late that evening at the barracks in Fort Calgary. Now, standing in the driving rain, he recalled the meeting with his superior.

“YOU ASKED TO
see me, sir?” Durrant held his sealskin hat in his left hand, his deformed, frostbitten right hand leaning on his silver-handled cane. He was dressed in the scarlet serge he rarely wore during regular undertakings. Durrant reported daily to Sub-Inspector Dewalt, Fort Calgary's deputy commander, but it was to Steele that Durrant owed his allegiance.

“Good of you to come, Sergeant. Sit if you like. I see you've given up with the crutch.”

“Yes, sir, except in the worst weather.”

“And the cane?”

“A gift from Garnet Moberly. He came by it after our time in Holt City. It seems that its previous owner felt a certain indebtedness to Mr. Moberly, who had no need for it.”

“Indeed.” Steele stood and placed his reading glasses on the ledger laid open on the desk. He trimmed the wick on the oil lamp, and the sparse room brightened. Steele could see the scars that marred Durrant's countenance, a grim reminder of his having been left for dead on the prairie during the bitter winter of 1881.

“I can't take you with me, Durrant.”

Durrant tried not to betray his disappointment.

“General Strange, who is leading the Alberta Field Force, will have nothing to do with it and Sub-Inspector Dewalt says he can't spare you. I know that you and Dewalt have never seen eye to eye,” continued Steele.

“He did everything in his power to
prevent
my reinstatement after my . . . 
convalescence
,” Durrant said. “If he had had his way, I'd still be collecting the post and taking the census. I'd be an errand boy.”

“
I
ruled that day, and the decision to reinstate was mine. You earned it. But he's your superior officer at Fort Calgary. If General Strange was on side, it would be another matter. He doesn't know you as I do, Durrant.”

“I understand. Thank you for delivering the news in person, sir. Better to hear it from you than from Dewalt.” Durrant stood and turned to go.

“Durrant,” said the superintendent, his eyes bright in the light of the lamp. Durrant stopped and looked back. “I'll find a way to get you into this. I promise you that. It's just not going to be with the Scouts.”

“I appreciate that.”

“Don't thank me, Sergeant. Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont are powerful, intelligent, and driven men, not to be trifled with. These ranchers and policemen I'll be leading know this country, and are handy with their Winchesters, but the boys that are coming by train from Toronto, Montreal, and Halifax are not soldiers. Blood may well be spilled. I just hope that cooler heads prevail.”

“I wouldn't count on it, Superintendant.”

“Nor would I, Durrant.”

IT HAD TAKEN
Steele just two days to assemble his Scouts, but he had to wait for General Strange to form up his regulars, so it was more than a week before the entire Alberta Field Force could march north to Fort Edmonton. Once they had left, there was only a handful of North West Mounted Police left to watch over the rough city.

At long last the man Durrant had been waiting for emerged. He yelled a good night to his companions in the bar and staggered down the muddy street.

Durrant watched a moment and then, his crutch under his right arm for support, stepped down into the road and carefully crossed to the wooden plank sidewalk on the far side. The mud pulled at his prosthetic and the rain threatened to flatten him, but he reached the other side.

The man he was following turned into a boarding house at the end of Stephen Avenue. Durrant picked up his pace and reached the door of the two-storey building in time to observe the man tromping up the stairs.

Durrant entered and made for the staircase. The crutch was a clumsy and noisy tool, so he set it by the door and limped carefully to the steps. Practice and patience had brought back much of his former mobility, and a recent visit to the
NWMP
hospital in Regina to have the prosthetic adjusted had given him more trust in the leg's stability.

As he mounted the stairs, he reached inside his dripping coat, retrieved his Enfield Mk II, and held it at his side. His thumb worried the hammer. He listened a moment and heard a door close. Quietly ascending the stairs, he peered down the long hallway that ran the length of the building. There were four doors on either side. Enough light reached the hallway through a window at the top of the stairs that Durrant could make out the muddy tracks left by the man.

Durrant waited. He wanted to catch the man sleeping to avoid the possibility of a violent end to this pursuit. The fellow had arrived from Fort Benton, Montana, a week before with a string of horses to sell. He was known to have a reputation for settling his disputes with a pistol. There were rumours that he was also involved with selling illegal whiskey on the Blackfoot reserve. Drawing a silent breath, Durrant stepped noiselessly toward the closed door, his pistol still pointing at the floor as his right hand tried the door handle. To his surprise, it turned easily: he had expected to find the door locked. With minimal effort he pushed it open and scanned the room, the Enfield pistol levelled at the gloom.

There was no one in the bed. Durrant could smell tobacco and the sweet stench of whiskey along with something else, a tang that caused him to catch his breath. The sparse room appeared empty. Durrant stepped inside and closed the door, checking to be sure his foe wasn't hiding behind it. That's when he saw the armoire resting behind the door, and he quickly brought his pistol back up. He carefully stepped to one side of its double doors and, fearing a blast of buckshot, flipped the latch on the closet and threw the doors open. It was empty.

Behind him, the bed and its frame seemed to leap from the floor. The room filled with bedsheets, mattress, and steel frame, all colliding with Durrant. As he was thrown forward against the armoire, Durrant caught sight of the man leaping to his feet from beneath the bed and making for the door. The heavy mattress and frame momentarily pinned Durrant against the closet as the man fled, crashing down the hall toward the stairs. With his pistol held before him, Durrant rushed as quickly as he could to the stairs. He caught sight of the man jumping the last six steps and running for the exit door. The flight of stairs was difficult for Durrant and he felt his heart sink when he thought his prey might slip away into the storm.

Cursing himself, he reached the parlour and hop-stepped for the door. He got there in time to see the pursued man slip in the mud and land on his back on Stephen Avenue. The man gripped a Colt pistol in his hand. Durrant stood in the door, his own pistol aimed at the prone figure.

“Police! Drop the gun!” he commanded. The din of the rain swallowed up his words so he yelled, “You're wanted for horse stealing. Drop it!”

The man was getting to his feet, his body soaked with rain and dripping with mud, but he made no move to throw down his weapon.

“Last chance. Drop the gun. I've got you dead to rights.” His left hand level with his eye, Durrant stared down the steel barrel of the Enfield, its forward sight aimed squarely at the man's heaving chest.

The man made as if to raise his pistol, and Durrant shifted his sight and pulled the trigger. The Enfield's explosion was consumed by the storm. Wallace's shot found its mark on the man's right arm and his pistol dropped into the muddy street. The man bent and gripped his wound.

“Welcome to the Dominion of Canada. You're under arrest.”

THERE WAS THE
expected confrontation at the North West Mounted Police fort. Durrant stood in the lockup, his prisoner behind bars in the adjoining room and his supervisor, his uniform hastily pulled on, standing before him. Sub-Inspector Raymond Dewalt had been sleeping when Durrant rode into the compound of the fort. Durrant's prisoner was in shackles and was led by a short rope tethered to the pommel of his saddle. The constable on night watch had roused Dewalt, and once the prisoner was behind bars the sub-inspector confronted Durrant. “What were you doing going after this man alone, Wallace?” Dewalt hissed.

“I saw my chance and I took it, sir.”

“You could have gotten yourself killed! Or worse, you could have killed a civilian with your reckless behaviour. I thought you and I were clear that there was to be no discharge of a firearm within the limits of the town of Calgary.”

Durrant broke open the rotating cylinder of the Colt pistol he had taken from his prisoner and emptied the cartridges from it onto the table. “Someone forgot to tell that to our man back there.”

“Don't play smart with me, Sergeant. We're not on the open range here; it would have been just as easy for you to wait until morning when we could have sent constables to arrest your man as he took his breakfast.”

Durrant snapped the cylinder closed. “Inspector, our men here in Calgary are stretched thin. Nobody knows that better than you. With the rebellion and fears that the Cree might strike along the frontier, our constables are at their wits' end trying to cover the territory and keep the peace in this town. If I'd waited for there to be a contingent of men, this ruffian might have slipped back across the border. He might see that Calgary is an easy place to profit from thievery and moonshining. I saw the chance and I took it.”