The End of the Line (3 page)

During the summer of 1883, construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway steamed west across Alberta and breached the mountains at Bow Gap, and Fort Calgary boomed. That year the original rough-hewn log battlements had been replaced with the Fort's modern buildings. Now a thousand souls called the town home. It boasted more than thirty buildings and hundreds of tents sprawled along the confluence of the two rivers.

Durrant regarded the town beyond the Fort with suspicion. He heard the retort of a long bore rifle to the north, toward the Bow River, and his hand reached into the pocket of his coat for the heavy reassurance of his Enfield.

Durrant had arrived just ahead of the railway, freshly outfitted with a prosthetic leg fashioned at the
NWMP
Hospital in Regina, where he had spent the better part of two years recovering. When the bloody American Civil War had ended in 1865, more than ten thousand men had needed artificial limbs, and Durrant had benefited from the research that had led to the appendage that he now wore. It had made his time recovering in Regina possible.

Recovering.

The doctors had spoken the word as if it was something that happened
to
you, as if delivered by the Grace of God himself. But Durrant didn't believe in the benediction of an Almighty. Recovery was something that you did
yourself
. Recovery was an act of rebellion against the God who had allowed murderous thugs to shoot your horse and leave you for dead on the hard earth of the Cypress Hills. Durrant was determined to recover. It was his personal rebellion.

Durrant angled north, past the Quartermaster's store, and made measured progress over the icy ruts along the bank of the Bow River. His right hand, twisted and deformed by the frostbite that had overtaken him while he lay clutching the pistol in the frigid Saskatchewan winter, held the polished handle of his crutch awkwardly.

After gaining what mobility he could in the corridor of Regina's small hospital, he taught himself to be a southpaw in the field behind the barracks of the North West Mounted Police in the “Dewdney Section” of the new Territorial capital. There, on the outskirts of the town, Durrant felt like the ten-year-old boy he once had been; hoisting his father's British Bulldog, the small, heavy-gauge pistol made by Webley and Son, and shooting tin cans and his mother's ceramic pots behind the family's weekend farm on the outskirts of Toronto. That had been more than twenty years ago. Now he had to learn again.

At thirty-three, learning to shoot while leaning on a crutch, he grew easily frustrated with his lack of progress. He had plenty of time, though, before he would be steady enough to travel west. He finally left Regina in the spring of 1883. At first, the notion of returning to duty with the
NWMP
, even if it was light duty, buoyed his flagging spirits. After traveling by wagon over the thawing prairie from Regina to Fort Calgary, while other Red Coats rode proudly out over the plains, Durrant slipped back into melancholia.

Another crack of a rifle brought Durrant back to the present. He passed the lee of the Fort's store, its white washed walls pale in the starlight. Durrant made his way toward a pair of boarding houses surrounded by white tepees and ramshackle cabins, whose occupants were notorious for their revelry.

Durrant muttered a curse into the night air, his words hanging like a frozen mist around his bearded face. The
NWMP
force was badly outnumbered at Fort Calgary. They faced competing demands: making peace with the mighty Blackfoot Nation that was growing increasingly restless along the Rocky Mountain Front, or quashing the production and trade in whiskey that threatened the speedy completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway. There was often nobody to mind the Fort but Durrant himself. When trouble arose, he was cursed to clomp along on the frozen ground, feeling every bit the fool.

The sound of merrymaking in the distance became clear. Durrant turned the corner of one of the boarding houses and saw the source of the mischief. Behind one of the buildings a group of figures huddled around a fire, the flames casting long shadows across the snowy field that danced on the whitewashed walls of the buildings. The firelight blinded the Mountie to a view of all but those within the lick of the flames. Myopic as his vision was, Durrant could see the bottles of whiskey passed between the estimated two dozen men.

He pushed forward through the snow, his crutch slipping on patches of ice. He crossed to within twenty paces of the men. One man held a rifle above his head and fired it again, then lowered the gun to reload. By its shape, Durrant recognized the rifle as a Sharps Silhouette, a single-shot long-bore rifle used by many ranchers and cattlemen for hunting.

Durrant took the opportunity and raised the Enfield and leveled his aim above the rifleman's head. When the Sharps was raised again, Durrant drew and released a long breath, closed one eye, and fired. The flash from his muzzle and the new gunfire stopped the revelry flat. His shot found its mark, though not dead on, and the rifle leaped from the man's hand to land in the snow behind him.

“Evening, gents,” Durrant said in the silence that followed the crack of his pistol. The rifleman stepped from his circle of comrades as if to advance on Durrant. Durrant cocked the Enfield. “Stand your ground, friend,” he said.

“I ain't your friend, mister.”

“Seems like you fellas have gotten into some whiskey tonight. Care to share?”

“We're just having a little fire is all. No harm done.”

“Discharging a rifle inside the town. Drinking whiskey within ten miles of the
CPR
. This ain't Fort Benton, this is Dominion Territory.”

“Harmless fun is all. You could have shot my arm off.” The man took another step and Durrant aimed the Enfield high and fired again, the rifleman dropping to a crouch. Several of his friends laughed.

“You think that's funny?” he growled, standing, and turning on his friends. Then he looked back at Durrant. “Why don't you go and sort some post, Red Coat.”

“You making a crack?” Durrant took a step forward and re-cocked the Enfield.

“Ain't making no crack about anything. But I'm telling you to leave well enough alone and go back and parley with the red skins or the like,” the rifleman said, his voice laced with malice.

“You sure? It sounded to me like maybe you were having a little fun at my expense.” Durrant took another step, the crutch catching on a spot of ice, and he slipped forward. Several men winced at the thought of the Mountie falling, the Enfield discharging in their direction as he did.

“Put that goddammed thing away before you take off my head. My rifle's smashed on the ground there,” the man said. “There ain't no reason for waving a pistol around.”

Durrant held the pistol level. “Who's making the whiskey?” he demanded.

The men were silent, their faces dark, backs to the fire, facing down the lone questioner.

“Pass it forward,” Durrant said. “Empty the bottles out and pass them here into the snow. Gently now.”

Several men emptied bottles and tossed them into the snow between themselves and Durrant.

“That all of them? Don't make me strip you down to your skivvies.”

“That's it,” the rifleman said. “That's all we got.”

“Who's making it?”

“Who ain't?” said a voice from the circle of dark bodies.

“Yeah, who ain't?” repeated the rifleman. “It's just whiskey.”

“It ain't
just
whiskey. It's goin' to be the end of the line for this railroad and that's a fact. Too much whiskey, not enough work from you navvies, and Ottawa is fed up with it.”

“It's the middle of the bleeding winter,” said a voice from the circle.

“Why don't you get on back to your post, cripple,” said another voice.

Durrant raised the Enfield and fired over their heads.

All the men ducked this time. Several cursed him. Durrant took a few steps forward and his face became plain to the men, the light of the fire illuminating it for the first time. Behind the beard, below his eyes and across the bridge of his nose were the scars of his long night on the frozen earth in the Cypress Hills.

Durrant held the Enfield level not ten paces from the nearest man.

“Listen here . . .” he started, teeth gritted, his breath coming in heavy clouds in the frozen air.

There was the sound of horses in the night and two Mounties rode into the circle of firelight. The revellers almost looked relieved.

“What's all this shooting about?” the first asked. Durrant saw it was Sub-Inspector Dewalt, Deputy Commander of Fort Calgary.

“This Red Coat's gone mad,” the rifleman barked. “Aiming to kill us all over a little harmless fun,” he spat as he yelled.

The officer rode around the front of the crowd, the horse pawing the ground. He saw the whiskey bottles and the ruined rifle on the ground. “Doesn't look so harmless to me. Durrant?”

Durrant took a deep breath and blew a thick stream of mist between pursed lips. Already there was frost forming on his beard. “Fellas here thought drinking and shooting up the night was a good way to pass the time. I thought otherwise. The law is the law.”

“You're just a goddamned postman here!” shouted a man from the crowd.

Dewalt turned his horse in the snow and bore down on him, “This man's every bit the law in this town as I am. Now put that fire out and head on in to bed or I'll have all you down to the guard room, with Sergeant Wallace here as sentry.”

The Mountie turned his horse towards Durrant as the group of men kicked snow onto the flames, which crackled and sizzled. Durrant lowered the Enfield.

Dewalt came up beside him. “You want an arm up?” he asked.

“I'll walk.”

“Hold up a minute,” said Dewalt. He swung a leg over his mount and dropped down next to Durrant. He was bundled in a greatcoat, its heavy cape reaching to the Sub-Inspector's waist. “Walk with me, Sergeant,” he said.

Durrant took a look back over his shoulder at the lone
NWMP
constable overseeing the fire being extinguished and then faced his superior officer.

“You aiming to call me on the carpet?”

“Walk with me, Sergeant.”

Durrant tucked his pistol into his pocket and started along the frozen ground.

“Things get a little out of hand here tonight?”

“Not as far as I saw it.”

“You didn't take things a little too far?”

“I don't think so.”

“Durrant, you were shooting over those men's heads.”

“I knew what I was doing. They were shooting too.”

“Listen, Sergeant, I can't have you picking fights with everybody who fires a rifle or raises a bottle of whiskey to his lips in this town. I just can't have that.”

“I thought our job was to put an end to the whiskey trade?”

“It is.”

“So I was doing my job.”

“Durrant, I don't want to sound like an ass, but it isn't
your
job.”

“It's my job long as I wear the serge.”

“Well, if you aren't more judicious, you won't be wearing it for long. You're causing more trouble than you solve.”

“I'm keeping the peace.”

“You're aiming to start a war. This is the Dominion of Canada. We don't ride in, guns blazing. You know that. You
were
one of the best. Time was, you could sit down and make the peace with just about any man, red or white.”

“Still can. But I am not going to sit in my bunk while this town gets overrun by whiskey.”

“We've got things under control.”

Durrant stopped and spat into the snow. “Due respect, sir, things aren't in control. In a couple of months there's going to be ten thousand men heading for the end of track at Holt City, and men like that bunch back there will be getting them drunk on whiskey before they reach Bow Gap. Our job's to stop it.”

“Don't try to tell me my job, Sergeant. I know what my work is.”

“Well then, do it!”

Dewalt stopped and through the darkness regarded Durrant. The horse moved behind him, and Durrant was aware of the animal's heat. “I've damn near had enough of you, Durrant. If it weren't for Steele himself taking a liking to you, I think I'd have your ass out of my barracks. But the old man seems to have taken a shine to you. Maybe it's because you're both proud, stubborn, hard-headed men. I can't say. But I don't have to put up with you if you are hell-bent to keep the peace with your pistol. You're not to intervene in any more such night-time goings on. Leave that to those of us whose main duty it is, and you keep to the activities of the barracks: the post, the census, and the like. Am I clear, Sergeant?”

Durrant levelled his gaze at him. “So all that back there about me being every bit the law as the next Mountie was just talk . . .”

“Well, there was no need to take your pride. You've given enough.”

Durrant felt a wave of humiliation wash over him as if all the snow on the plains that stretched for a thousand miles south and east had suddenly melted and drenched him with an icy tide.

“We clear, Sergeant?” said Dewalt.

“Clear,” he finally said, spitting again into the ground.

“Fine then. Now,” said Dewalt, fitting a boot into a stirrup, “can I give you an arm up?”

“I'm goin' to take a walk,” said Durrant, looking west into the darkness.

“Suit yourself,” said the Sub-Inspector, and Durrant thought he heard the man mutter “stubborn son-of-a-bitch” under his breath as he rode off toward the
NWMP
barracks. He left Durrant to contemplate the cruelty of an Almighty that took a man's leg but left him in a world that expected him to remain unchanged.

Durrant turned his back on the nearly extinguished bonfire and the icy rutted streets of Calgary and walked with his crutch west into the darkness.