The End of the Line (37 page)

Durrant came around. He blinked into the white earth and the world wheeled into focus. The first thing he saw was Wilcox cracking the breech on the double-barrelled shotgun and loading another shell in the firing chamber. He then flipped the breech shut and turned, smiling at Durrant.

The Mountie was sitting in the snow next to the buckboard wagon, leaning against one of its runners. His prosthetic leg was missing. His hands were roughly bound in his lap with some bailing twine. A trickle of blood worried his left eye. Durrant looked around him. O'Brian was conscious and staring glassy-eyed at him. His face was as pale as the snow; his hair fell in tattered strands into his eyes. He hung against the heavy ropes that secured him to the tree. Lying in the snow at the far side of the clearing was the body of Devon Paine.

“What have you done?” Durrant said to Wilcox. Wilcox said nothing but turned his attention to O'Brian.

“What have you done?” Durrant roared.

“Please, Mr. Wallace, I'm working here,” said Wilcox, the shotgun held lightly in his right hand. He stepped towards the
MP
and pulled the man's chin up so he could look into his face.

“Nobody,” he hissed, “backs out of a deal with me.” He spat into the
MP
's face. The man closed his eyes and shook his head.

“Nothing to say for yourself, O'Brian?”

“Not to the likes of you.”

Wilcox puckered his lips and nodded. “Very well then.” He strode back to the wagon and pulled back the tarp. “Have you ever primed a cartridge of dynamite, Mr. Wallace? Oh, pardon me,
Sergeant
Wallace?”

“You're going to pay for what you've done here, Wilcox.”

“It's rather a simple operation, really. The whole thing, however, is very volatile. Not so much as nitroglycerine, mind you. But then, you've already discovered that, haven't you?” The man laughed, “That's why Mr. Nobel patented this less temperamental form of explosive.”

Durrant now realized it had been Wilcox and not Dodds who had set the explosives next to his and Charlie's cabin.

“Ah, the penny drops,” said Wilcox, smiled as he removed three sticks of dynamite from a box on the back of the wagon. “How perfect that you should have had that boy of yours carry that pail of explosives so far into the woods and destroy Dodds' whiskey operation. How perfect!”

He hunched down by Durrant. The Mountie looked him in the eye. The man seemed to have completely lost control of his faculties. His eyes seemed both vacant and wild at the same time.

“So here's how this works. First, we secure the charges together like this,” he said, wrapping the explosives with a thick adhesive paper. “Next, we set the fuse. You need to use a tool that won't create a spark when you do this, or you'll blow yourself to Kingdom Come. It happens. Not as much as with the liquid form, but it happens.” He removed a long, narrow tool from his pocket and pressed it carefully into the centre of one of the sticks of dynamite.

“There,” he said, putting the tool back into his pocket. “Next, the fuse itself.” He inserted a long black piece of cable into the opening of the cartridge of dynamite. “Now, we're all set.” He said, smiling and standing up.

Durrant pulled at his hands as Wilcox walked to O'Brian's side. The
MP
watched him the whole way.

“Mr. O'Brian,” said Wilcox. “It was such a good plan, wasn't it? Engineer a catastrophe here at Kicking Horse Pass. The first train to pull into the siding here would be loaded with raw materials for the munitions factory. There would be a terrible accident. The Canada Company's plant would be destroyed and its defective explosives would be to blame. The Northumberland company would then get its due. So much money at stake,” said Wilcox, turning to Durrant, who had stopped pulling at his hands. “So much money, maybe as much as a million and a half dollars' worth of work. Do you have any idea how much money that is, Sergeant?”

Durrant sat motionless, his hands crossed.

“It's more than you or I could ever dream of. Mr. O'Brian here got careless. His aide in Ottawa intercepted a wire, one not sent in code. This fool here ruined everything,” said Wilcox, suddenly surging with anger. He pointed the shotgun into O'Brian's face. He pressed the barrel into the man's eye; Durrant watched the
MP
wince in pain.

“So now . . . now we've got to clean up the mess here,” he said, lowering the shot gun. He tucked the weapon under his arm and then pulled at the ropes that bound O'Brian. He tucked the three sticks of dynamite into the ropes and let the long fuse trail down the man's chest. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a box of safety matches.

“How long would you say this fuse is, O'Brian?” O'Brian looked down. “Not long enough?” Wilcox said.

He struck a match on his thumb and lit the fuse. It sparked to life and immediately the tail of long black cord began to burn away.

“Two feet,” Wilcox said. “I'd say . . .” and he stopped and looked pensive, “about a minute.”

Wilcox turned away from O'Brian, the shotgun tucked under his arm, and began to walk across the clearing to where Paine's body lay face down. Durrant detected motion out of his peripheral vision. He turned and through the blood in his left eye could make out a dark shadow in the trees. Though the scene was nearly black and white, the motion seemed to blaze with color. It was a man, moving fast and low through the trees, a long wool coat trailing out behind him. Durrant struggled with the twine of his wrists.

Wilcox detected the motion too, and wheeled, the shotgun dropping from under his arms into his waiting hands. His right finger found the trigger guard and slid into place.

The man in the trees suddenly had two pistols in his hands. He seemed to float across the top of the heavy snow.

The fuse burned down.

The shotgun exploded and a heavy round of buckshot burst into the trees where the man dodged through the woods. Snow fell to the ground and the green spruce boughs were shredded by a thousand razor-like ball bearings.

Durrant wrestled awkwardly with the twine, pulling with all his might.

Wilcox stepped back and as he did his finger found the second trigger and the shotgun blazed again. The man in the trees raised both pistols, and still running in the deep snow, fired both at the same time. Durrant looked to see the shoulder of Wilcox's coat suddenly dance with frayed fabric. The general manager, his face awash in panic, stopped and dropped to one knee. The man in the trees fired again, and Wilcox's hat flew off his head. His face registered terror. The breech of the shotgun snapped open; Durrant watched as the man in the trees ran into the clearing, both pistols still held straight out in front of him.

The fuse burned down. Less than a foot remained.

It was Garnet Moberly who had appeared from the darkness of the woods. His coat flew out behind him like a cape; his face bore a look of resolute determination. He closed the distance to O'Brian and fired both pistols again, the shots missing their mark but forcing Wilcox to stumble back in the deep snow.

Wilcox chambered two rounds and snapped the shotgun closed. With Wilcox only forty feet away, the shotgun reloaded and pointed at him, Moberly
stopped
shooting. He looked away from Wilcox, took both pistols in his left hand, and grabbed the clutch of dynamite from O'Brian's chest. Durrant's left hand, now free, found the British Bulldog. Durrant and Wilcox raised their weapons at the same time, but Durrant fired first—two rounds as quickly as his thumb could work the double-action hammer—and the left shoulder and arm of Wilcox's coat bloomed with bright red blood. At the same time, Moberly freed the dynamite from its ropes around O'Brian's body.

Wilcox staggered back, the shotgun still in his hands, and Durrant fired a third time, hitting the man in the right shoulder. The third shot took him off his feet and he landed, eyes open, in the snow.

Moberly threw the dynamite as hard as he could; the charge exploded fifty feet from him still high in the air, out over the raging Sherbrook Creek. The concussion from the explosion knocked the man to the ground. He shook his head, took the pistol from his left hand, and with both revolvers now held before him advanced on Wilcox. For the first time Durrant could see that the man wore babiche sticks on his feet—the webbed snowshoes so widely used by the Cree and other northern Indians.

“This one's still alive, Sergeant,” he said, looking down on Wilcox, his three bullet wounds coloring the snow beneath him. Moberly raised both pistols and took aim at Hep Wilcox's head.

“That's how he'll stay, Mr. Moberly. This is Dominion country.”

Moberly holstered his twin Webley revolvers under his long coat and picked up the shotgun and checked the action. He then went to Paine and knelt beside him.

Durrant reached up to the sled and hoisted himself upright. “Is he alive?”

Garnet looked back and shook his head.

•  •  •

By the time Durrant had affixed his prosthetic, a dozen or more men had arrived from the operation at Kicking Horse Lake. Moberly had untied O'Brian and propped him up against the sled where he sat with his head in his hands. Moberly then rounded up a crew and had them unload the dynamite and pile it inside the shed that stood back in the trees. While that operation was underway, he turned to Wilcox, who lay on his back bleeding into the snow, and dressed his wounds using burlap from the load of dynamite.

Durrant, meanwhile, went to Paine and looked down at the man. His leg would not allow him to kneel. Paine's chest had a rent in it a foot wide where he had been shot at point-blank range. He had given up his gun and been shot with it. Durrant stashed that in his memory bank as a lesson.

•  •  •

Garnet Moberly drove the buckboard, and O'Brian sat beside him in the middle of the seat. Durrant, his Enfield in his left hand, sat on the outside. It was getting dark when they set off for Holt City. The two horses from Devon Paine's stables trailed behind on long lead ropes. Wilcox was wrapped in a blanket on the bed of the wagon, and he drifted in and out of consciousness. Paine's body was wrapped in a tarpaulin next to him.

The sunset was gaudy: a broad smear of purples and crimson across the western sky beyond the valley of the Kicking Horse River.

Durrant finally had a moment to collect his thoughts. “I thought you'd gone down the Kicking Horse.”

“I was going to give it a day to settle down. There's a nasty piece of business down a ways called the Golden Stairs that's near impossible to negotiate in deep snow, in particular with a heavy load.

“I was at the company office when your man Paine came in,” continued Moberly. “I don't think he recognized me. He was just asking about Hep there, and this fellow . . .” he nodded at O'Brian. “I came out and saw two riders heading toward the pass and I knew there was trouble. I was halfway to the clearing when I heard the shotgun blast. I couldn't even be certain it was you, not till I got to the clearing and saw you on the ground.”

“You saved us all.”

“Maybe . . . you
might
have got that little Bulldog out in time. As it turns out you, saved me.”

Durrant smiled, “Maybe. I would never have gotten to O'Brian here. Not with one leg.”

“So what's going to happen to these lads?” Moberly asked.

“Well, as soon as a freight comes in from Fort Calgary, there will be a couple of constables on board that can take them back to the barracks there. If Mr. Wilcox lives, that is.”

“It could have been fixed that he didn't,” said Moberly. “Still could.”

“I'm pretty tempted by what he did to Mr. Paine, but no, we need him alive. At least, if at all possible, he needs to stand trial.”

“The Queen's laws shall reach to every corner of the Empire,” said Moberly, his voice taking on an exaggerated accent.

“Something like that,” said Durrant.

“And what about this rascal?” said Moberly, nodding at O'Brian again.

“He'll be up on conspiracy charges, in all likelihood.”

O'Brian opened his mouth to speak.

“You've got something you want to say?” said Moberly.

The
MP
made a sound in his throat. “My family has the best lawyers in the Dominion at their service,” he said. “We'll see about those charges.”

“We could always dispose of them both,” said Moberly with a smile.

The
MP
made the sound in his throat again.

Durrant just nodded solemnly.

“And what of you, Sergeant Wallace?” asked Moberly.

“Back to Fort Calgary, after a day or so wrapping things up at Holt City . . . at The Summit. I'll find that truant lad Charlie and head home.”

“Home?”

Durrant felt his body deflate a little at the word. He had never once felt at home at Fort Calgary, and wondered if he ever would. He had proven he could ride now, but it seemed unlikely that Dewalt would take him on as a regular in his constabulatory. With the mystery of Deek Penner's death all but wrapped up, he felt a sudden wave of fear come over him. He could not go back to sorting the mail or sending and receiving wire correspondence. He had been zinged and zipped, but not zeroed, as the Mounties would say. Wounded and sidelined, but still alive. He was still capable and able to defend the right of the Dominion.

“You should sign on with the
CPR
.”

“What would I do?” Durrant asked.

“Anything you want.”

“I want to be a Mounted Police officer.”

“Then that is what you must do,” said Moberly.

IT WAS AN HOUR PAST
dark when Durrant, Moberly and their buckboard arrived back in Holt City. The sky was clear and a new moon balanced on the top of the white-horned mountain and stars beyond counting filled the horizon. They drove the wagon first to the station where they found a cadre of men to attend to Hep Wilcox. Durrant dispatched one of the men to find Doc Armatage, and when he returned Durrant instructed him to do what he could to keep Wilcox alive. Durrant put Bob Pen in charge of the man's security while he attended to his two prisoners and to Devon Paine's remains.