The Outlander, page 33
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.
Acknowledgements
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.
The author acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council.
This is a work of the imagination. Although I refer to actual events and people, I have endeavoured to make this my own creation.
About the Publisher
House of Anansi Press was founded in 1967 with a mandate to publish Canadian-authored books, a mandate that continues to this day even as the list has branched out to include internationally acclaimed thinkers and writers. The press immediately gained attention for significant titles by notable writers such as Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, George Grant, and Northrop Frye. Since then, Anansi’s commitment to finding, publishing and promoting challenging, excellent writing has won it tremendous acclaim and solid staying power. Today Anansi is Canada’s pre-eminent independent press, and home to nationally and internationally bestselling and acclaimed authors such as Gil Adamson, Margaret Atwood, Ken Babstock, Peter Behrens, Rawi Hage, Misha Glenny, Jim Harrison, A. L. Kennedy, Pasha Malla, Lisa Moore, A. F. Moritz, Eric Siblin, Karen Solie, and Ronald Wright. Anansi is also proud to publish the award-winning nonfiction series The CBC Massey Lectures. In 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2011 Anansi was honoured by the Canadian Booksellers Association as “Publisher of the Year.”
The A List
Launched to mark our forty-fifth anniversary, the A List is a series of handsome new editions of classic Anansi titles. Encompassing fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, this collection includes some of the finest books we’ve published. We feel that these are great reads, and the series is an excellent introduction to the world of Canadian literature. The redesigned A List books will feature new cover art by noted Canadian illustrators, and each edition begins with a new introduction by a notable writer. We can think of no better way to celebrate forty-five years of great publishing than by bringing these books back into the spotlight. We hope you’ll agree.
The Outlander · Gil Adamson
The Circle Game · Margaret Atwood
Survival · Margaret Atwood
The Hockey Sweater and Other Stories · Roch Carrier
Five Legs · Graeme Gibson
De Niro’s Game · Rawi Hage
Kamouraska · Anne Hébert
Civil Elegies · Dennis Lee
The Selected Short Fiction of Lisa Moore · Lisa Moore
Poems For All the Annettes · Al Purdy
Gil Adamson, The Outlander
