The Earth Lords Read online

  The execution aroused violent feelings in eastern Canada. A military expedition was sent out, and it put down Riel’s party. Riel himself, and Lionel Dybig with him, decided to go into exile in the United States. And because his father was going, Bart went over the border into Dakota, and then to Montana. Bart stayed in the U.S. until his father’s death emphasized his sense of difference from those around him; then his loneliness drove him back to Canada, to try to find the relatives in the western mountains he had heard his father refer to on that one occasion. Surely, he thought, he had someone he belonged to.

  He knew that meanwhile, back up in Canada, a group of followers of the dead Thomas Scott had banded together, calling themselves Scottites; and apparently still dreamed of an armed control of the Canadian government, so as to run it their way. They were generally despised among the métis, but they survived. If Arthur had had his name associated with them, even by purely casual rumor, the eventual result could mean trouble for him—and for Emma.

  “I’ll be truthful Bart,” said Emma now, “Arthur does things he doesn’t tell me about. But as I say, the store is our living. I can’t believe he’d be foolish enough to get mixed up with the Scottites. If there was any rumor like that, one of them would have told me about it, and no one has.”

  “Good, then,” said Bart, relieved.

  They were almost back at the store. In part, the quickness of their return was caused by the shortness of the street itself; but it was also partly due to the silence between them that had followed Bart’s words—a companionable silence, however.

  It was strange, thought Bart, that after so long a time apart, they should need to talk so little, and be so comfortable without words needing to be spoken. No, he corrected himself, it was not strange at all. It was because they knew and understood each other so well.

  For the first time, the small coal of a dangerous anger kindled itself deep inside him. Why should Arthur be allowed to stand in the way of their being together, as surely all Emma’s instincts must tell her they should be?

  But to that, there was no good answer; and as long as Emma refused to change the situation, Bart himself was helpless. Abruptly now, he felt baffled. When the rebellion had been quashed and they had left Canada, Emma’s family had already left Sainte Anne, following the death of their only surviving parent—their father— eight months before. When Bart had followed Riel into exile, therefore, he was leaving a place where he felt he had no close ties to anyone; and he had given up hope of ever seeing Emma again. Now, this sudden rediscovery of her and the sudden rekindling of the hope that perhaps he might have her with him for the rest of his life, after all, had left him no longer sure that he wanted to continue searching for his lost relatives—or anything else except staying here and somehow forcing her to free herself of Arthur.

  However, to do that would be to force Emma against the grain of her conscience—and that he could not do.

  As if she had been able to read his thoughts, she suddenly took his hand in hers now as they walked—a shocking thing for a single woman to do in public in a small community of this time and place; but then Emma had always been a law unto herself. On the other hand, thought Bart, if there was anyone anywhere around that wanted to make some objection to what she had just done—Bart felt the sullen coal within him flicker with the first brightness of flame, and the heavy muscles across his stomach tightened. He looked deliberately up and down the street into the windows of the houses there, but there was no one to be seen looking out at them now, not even children.

  “Bart,” Emma said; and he thought he had never heard anything more soft and gentle than her voice when she lowered it as she did now to speak to him privately. “You know if it wasn’t for Arthur I’d follow you anywhere. Have faith, dear. God is always on the side of those who do right; and what’s right is for me to stay and help Arthur while you go search for your people. I’ll wait and hope, Bart. Can’t you do the same?”

  His hand closed around her much smaller one.

  “If that’s what it takes,” he said. “I’ll wait—”

  He broke off, for Arthur had just walked into sight around the farther front comer of the store. He was towing by a halter a heavy-headed, long-eared beast.

  “Look what I got you, Bart!” he called triumphantly. “You needed a horse. Well, here’s something better than a horse; especially up in the mountains where a horse might panic and go off the side of a cliff with you on him. A mule’s got too much sense for that; and here’s a mule for you.”

  Bart and Emma had come together with him by the time he had finished speaking, and they all stood together in front of the store.

  “Not that it’s for sale,” Arthur went on.

  Either the drinks he had had before dinner were still working in him, or he had had a few more. His gestures were a little loose and his face was flushed, his voice uncontrolled. He laughed now, and the laugh was louder than was called for by the situation. “It needs returning to the man who owns it; but you can use it along the way, since he’s where you want to go, anyway. I’ve got a map, too. I’ll show you.”

  “Arthur, what is all this?” demanded Emma. She had let go of Bart’s hand at the appearance of her brother.

  “Bart here wanted a bigger horse so he could pack more gear and supplies,” said Arthur to her. “Well, this is a mule that Guillaume Barre’s cousin borrowed from a man named Charles Waite, up at Shunthead; and that’s where you want to go from here, anyway. That’s the place where it’s most likely somebody might know where your relatives are.”

  He passed the rope from the mule’s halter into Bart’s hand.

  “You can peg him out back overnight and decide how you want to use him in the morning. Probably want to ride your horse until you hit the steep mountains; and until then, of course, there’s no better pack animal than a mule. After you peg him out, come on upstairs and I’ll give you the map Guillaume drew me.”

  The twilight had been fading steadily. But there was enough light left for Bart to see that Arthur had found him a good, healthy animal of generous size.

  “I’ll do that,” he said, and started leading the mule arouncfthe back of the store. “Thanks, Arthur.”

  “Think nothing of it,” said Arthur, and laughed again a little too loudly. As he went around the comer of the store, Bart heard Emma behind him, speaking to her brother.

  “Shunthead?” she was saying. “I never heard of it.”

  “Why should you,” said her brother, “you’re only a woman!”

  The daylight was almost gone. Bart found a sledgehammer in the store and a decent piece of wood out back for a stake and drove it into the ground too far for the mule to jerk it out. Then he ran his hands completely over the animal’s body; and, as far as eyes and touch could tell him, there were no galls or sores and the mule was in fine condition.

  He went back into the store to put the sledgehammer back where he had found it, and found himself wondering at Arthur’s efforts to help him out. Of course, Arthur would want to see him gone as soon as possible. The whole world might trust Emma to keep her word and stay with her brother; but that brother had no faith in himself and therefore little faith in others.

  By the time Bart got back upstairs Arthur had gone to bed and the snoring of someone heavy with drink could be heard coming from the larger, front bedroom. A map drawn in ink on the back of a public notice sign lay on the kitchen table. Bart looked at it and put it in a breast pocket of the shirt inside his jacket. He looked toward the sound from the front bedroom.

  “Does he do this often?” Bart asked Emma, who was finishing up the washing of the dishes.

  “Almost never.” She frowned. “He gets terrible hangovers if he drinks at all; and he usually stays clear of it.”

  “Is this Guillaume Barre a drinker?” Bart asked. “If he is, he could have led Arthur into it, tonight. We had a couple of drinks before dinner, but the food should have taken care of that.”

  Emma shook her head
.

  “I don’t really know Guillaume Barre,” she said. “He came in with a load of prime pelts only a few weeks ago, and he’s been around ever since, though he’s gone days, hunting I guess. I suppose he drinks. Most trappers drink themselves insensible whenever they come out of the woods and get their hands on a bottle. In fact, they buy their needs for next winter, drink until the money left over runs out, and that’s the last we see of them until next year. He’s staying with the Pinaud family—that’s two houses down on the right.”

  “I think I might drop down there,” mused Bart. “Barre could tell me a little more about this Shunthead place and the way to it; and I could thank him for letting me take the mule back.”

  He stood next to her at the sink, hesitating.

  “Unless,” he said tentatively, “you’ve got some time to just sit and talk . . .”

  She turned to face him.

  “No, Bart,” she said, “I’m going to bed now; and so should you, as soon as possible. We both have to get up early if we’re going to get in a good day.”

  “Yes,” he said emptily. The urge to put his arms around her was almost overpowering, but his early upbringing and hers, as well as her attitude, made an invisible wall around her. “Then . . . I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “In the morning, Bart dear,” she said.

  He turned and left her, going down the stairs out of the door and into the settlement street. He found the house she had spoken of, but its windows were dark. In itself, this was not surprising. Most people out here went to bed right after dinner and rose with the dawn or before it; and most of the other houses along the street were also already dark.

  Bart knocked on the door anyway, and when there was no answer, opened the door which custom would naturally have left unlocked, and stepped into the darkness within.

  There was no light within the house whatsoever, not even that from the coals of a fire in a fireplace just used for cooking or banked against the owner’s return. Bart searched in one capacious side pocket of his long leather jacket until he found a wooden match, struck its head with his thumbnail as he held it up in his right hand, and looked around in its sudden, yellow light as the head burst into flame.

  It was an ordinary cabin, untidy and dirty as such a cabin could be when its occupant had no interest in keeping it clean. There were a couple of stools, a table, a fireplace with nothing but some cold burnt ends of logs and white ash in it, and a bunk against one wall beyond the fireplace, with the blankets half out of it and spilled on to the floor. No one had been here for hours, nor was there any sign that anyone was likely to return here soon.

  The match burned dangerously low toward the skin of the fingers with which Bart was holding it. He shook it out, turned to the door and went out again, back to the store.

  Inside, in the back room there, he found a parafin lamp burning on a flour barrel, beside a bunk fastened to a wall by the foot of the stairs. Blankets that had been washed and aired recently had been neatly spread on it to make up a bed. Bart smiled, for Emma’s hand was as visible here as if he had seen her making the bed ready herself.

  He glanced up the stairs, but everything was quiet and dark above. He shrugged, took off his outer clothes and went to bed—but from old habit he put his revolver and knife under the flour-sack pillow.

  He woke instantly to the sound of movement overhead but, realizing he had roused at the first noise, lay still and waited while Emma—it must be Emma—completed her getting up and walked into the kitchen area. His senses told him that while it was not yet dawn, sunrise could not be far off. Probably the dark sky was lightening a bit in the east, but he of course could not see that from here in the back room. He continued to wait while Emma moved about the kitchen for fifteen minutes or so, then rose silently and dressed, putting his knife and pistol back in place at his belt.

  Then he went upstairs.

  “Arthur?” he asked, to Emma’s back as she stood at the stove, frying what his nose told him was bacon.

  “Arthur’ll sleep late today,” she said. “He’ll feel too bad to get up until long after you’ve gone, Bart.”

  She turned to face him, and smiled at him. He smiled back, happily.

  “Emma,” he said, “I love you.”

  Abruptly, her face became serious.

  “You mustn’t say such things,” she said, “not until I’m free to hear them.”

  But then she smiled again.

  “I think of you always,” she said softly. “Now, sit down and have your breakfast.”

  She gave him the oatmeal they had both grown up on, with brown sugar syrup to pour on it, half a dozen eggs and possibly half a pound of bacon along with the better part of a loaf of bread and currant preserves, all washed down with freshly made black coffee in large amounts.

  “I haven’t eaten food this good in years,” he told her.

  She beamed at the compliment.

  “Would you like some more bacon and eggs?” she asked.

  He shook his head. She would be familiar with the need of travelers to load up at the beginning of the day, not knowing when their next real meal would be or what shape it might take; but she could not know the size of his adult appetite. He could have eaten another meal like the one she had just given him, and not been overfull; but there was no need for her to know that now, and it was another of the differences he was a bit shy about; but he had already eaten better than he had for a very long time.

  “I’ve had breakfast,” he said, “and I’ve got to start loading up ready to leave. Can I buy some things from the store downstairs?”

  “Of course.”

  She led him down into the front room. He picked out some sacks of flour, bacon, salt, matches, dried beans, extra tarps, blankets and a rain slicker; most of the homely necessities needed by a man alone in the wilderness—as well as a few little luxuries such as crackers and tinned peaches and sardines. From one of the match boxes he took a small handful of matches and put them in the side pocket of his jacket.

  “I always keep some there for emergencies,” he told her.

  “Emergencies?” she asked him. “You’ve got flint and steel, of course?”

  “Of course,” he said. “But sometimes a match is handier.”

  He paid her in American silver. She pushed the coins back across the counter at him.

  “You don’t have to do that,” she said. “We can carry you on the books the way we’d carry any trapper, until next spring—or forever, if it comes to that. There’s always those who don’t come back the following spring.”

  “I’ll be back,” he told her. pushing the money once more to her, “and besides I’ve got plenty of cash from working below the border.”

  She picked up the coins.

  “I’ll put you on the books anyway,” she said, “and keep this for you. If you ever need it, all you have to do is ask me for it.”

  “All right,” he said. “If that’s how you want it.”

  They went back upstairs, and she handed him a bag filled with lumpy objects, its opening closed with a drawstring, then further sealed with wax.

  “I made you some hardcakes,” she said. “Be sure you remelt the wax to seal it again after you’ve taken one out, or seal it again with something like pine resin. The cakes are loaded with dried blueberries and sweetening, and the flies will want to get to them, given half a chance.”

  Hardcakes were small, fried cakes in which cornmeal, or anything else available, essentially held together the greatest possible mixture of fat and sugar; the fat usually being animal fat and the sugar, out here, being anything from ordinary sugar to the dried blueberries she had mentioned, raisins or anything sweet. The hardcakes were treats. They also were a food that could be eaten without cooking, and were a source of quick energy for someone lacking the time or opportunity to stop and build a fire for a proper meal.

  “You think of everything,” he said, taking the bag from her. “How can I thank you for things like this?”
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  “You know I love doing it,” she said.

  He carried the sack of hardcakes, along with most of the items he had selected in the store below, out back to the mule. He would have carried the whole load himself if his arms had been long enough. As it was, Emma brought the smaller and lighter items behind him. It was a fresh, cool, bright morning, a little damp from a brief rainshower probably just before he had awakened; and the peaks of the mountains stood up on the western horizon. The mule took uncomplainingly to being packed with not only the things he had bought from the store, but some of the extras he had been packing on the pony. The horse would now find its load lightened by that much, at least.

  “Well,” he said finally, turning to Emma. The sun was just up over the far wall of the valley opposite the direction he must go, according to the map Arthur had left for him. “Goodbye for a little while, Emma.”

  She held out both hands to him. He took them . . . so small they were . . . in his own two hands. Again the urge was all but overpowering to put his arms around her, to kiss her—but he could feel that she did not want him to do more than hold her hands, for the moment.

  “For as long as it takes, Bart,” she said.

  Her eyes were very clear blue, looking up at him. He could hardly believe that she could look so lovingly at what he knew she must be seeing, the brows and cheekbones large and prominent under the densely black hair, tight-curled against his large skull. The beard, full and dark and thick, hiding a jaw as fiercely prominent as the cheekbones and forehead; hair and beard together framing eyes of a glinting, dark brown. A face to make people stand aside from it, not love its owner as she plainly loved him; for all that she would not give up her duty to Arthur and go away with him.

  But then, Emma had always seen more in people than others saw. His father, in particular, had given her credit for having unusual perception and intelligence; and when his father gave that sort of compliment . . .

  But none of it mattered now. It was time for him to go. He made himself let loose her hands, and they dropped to her sides like slain birds.