Читать книгу The Trickster - Muriel Gray, Muriel Gray - Страница 17

‘Well? Are they going to move?’

Angus McEwan looked up from his makeshift table in the centre of the cabin, glaring past the man who stood in front of him as though speaking to a ghost at his side.

‘I fear it is more complex than that, Mr McEwan.’

McEwan allowed his eyes, raising them slowly and insolently, to find the face of the speaker. What an absurd figure the Reverend Henderson made. His considerable height, twinned with a slight build, made a mockery of the sombre black clothes he wore. He had the appearance of a gangly adolescent forced into ill-fitting Sunday best for a relative’s funeral, the white dog-collar rendering him almost comic, aided in its farce by a nose and cheeks turned purple by the cold. But he spoke these savages’ language, and the man was indispensable.

‘Complex in what respect, Reverend?’

Henderson stamped his great feet in a vain attempt to keep warm, and cleared his throat.

‘I have already explained their campaign to you. That is unchanged. I think it unlikely they will move at all. Not without force that is, and that would clearly be inadvisable, not to mention illegal.’

Angus McEwan paused to consider why he disliked this man so much. They were both from Scotland, albeit different parts of the country. Henderson was an east coast Church of Scotland minister, and McEwan was a west coast engineer. But there was little patriotic bonding between them, even though some such comfort would have been welcome in this distant, alien continent in which they both found themselves. It was Henderson’s stubborn and naïve allegiance to these base heathens that irritated McEwan so deeply. Any Christian man could see the Indians were not civilized beings, not fit to be treated as equals, and yet this ridiculous man treated them as though they were Lords.

To see a white man, a Scot, so humbled before savages, was disgusting to McEwan.

‘If we are to discuss legality, perhaps you would care to mention to your new flock that their forebears signed a treaty concerning this railroad and its building many decades ago. Mention that approximately ten minutes from now, when we kick their bloody behinds off the mountain.’

Henderson flushed slightly, giving new life to the broken purple veins the frost had drawn on his cheeks. McEwan often cursed to rile him. Not this time though. This time there was too much at stake.

‘I’m afraid I cannot allow you to do that, Mr McEwan.’

McEwan looked interested, and mildly excited.

‘And how do you propose to stop me?’

‘I will have words with the men. If they are for me, who will do your kicking of behinds?’

McEwan rose from the table and walked to the small pot-bellied stove at the back of the cabin. Turning his back to the minister, he knelt down, opened the door and threw in a log. Facing the wall, he spoke in a low voice.

‘You underestimate these men. They want this job finished as much as you and me. The weather is against you, Henderson.’

It was true. The blizzard that had been raging for over three weeks now, had cut off Siding Twenty-three from the world. No trains had been through since the snow built an impenetrable barrier at the top of Wolf Pass, and McEwan had been there when a futile attempt was made to break through with a snowplough on the engine, bearing witness that passage was now quite impossible.

But with or without communication, they would have to begin the initial blasting of this tunnelling operation immediately, or the whole project would be in jeopardy. But it was not the snow holding them back; it was a band of thirty-two Kinchuinick Indians, taking it in shifts to squat night and day on top of the very rock that had been drilled, ready to receive the dynamite.

When McEwan turned round to receive the minister’s response, Henderson had gone. He smiled. Well let him try, he thought. There were nearly fifty cold, homesick railroadmen out there. Christians or not, they would not take kindly to being kept away from their families an extra month or more by a bunch of unwashed barbarians. Henderson would soon see how much authority his God had, over men who dreamed nightly of their homes, tossing in their bunks and calling out the names of their wives.

Through the tiny ice-coated window he could see Henderson stumbling through the snow to the gang of men hacking at rocks with picks, the wind tugging at his black coat as he went.

McEwan resumed his seat at the table and flattened out the crumpled plans in front of him, the creases throwing flickering shadows in the light of a guttering lamp. Henderson could do as he wished.

They would blast tomorrow.

The man was coming again. Chief Hunting Wolf pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders and composed himself. His warriors said nothing as they watched the tall man in the flapping black clothes scramble up the rocks towards them, but Hunting Wolf sensed them shift uneasily beside him in anticipation.

When the Reverend James Henderson reached the small group of natives, he was battling for breath, sweating with the exertion of the climb.

‘Big walk I do,’ he gasped.

Hunting Wolf laughed internally. This man’s command of their tongue was quite preposterous.

‘Sit down then, Henderson. You will not regain your breath by remaining on your feet.’

The Reverend made a small and silly bow with his head and joined them in the shelter of a rock, where six of them were squatting in the snow. Despite being out of the wind, the temperature on the mountainside was unbearable. Henderson could never get used to this dry, biting cold, not after so many years in the wet and windy land where he grew to manhood.

He looked at the six dark men, sitting calmly in the snow with nothing more than buckskin and wool to keep them warm, and wondered at their constitution.

‘And is there news from the man McEwan?’

Hunting Wolf fixed him with his deep black eyes.

‘He big trouble with me. I no can tell him you think. He take rock tomorrow. Men come.’

Hunting Wolf took time to decipher this jumble of words from the frowning Scot, then spoke slowly and as simply as he could to help this white man’s poor comprehension. It was like dealing with a child.

‘This is very bad, Henderson. You realize that we cannot allow the mountain to be opened. I have explained. We will remain here. You must tell him that. We will remain.’

Henderson sighed, the cold hacking at him through his coat.

‘No more I do. Men with man McEwan. Danger for you. Please to come with me now.’

Fishtail and Powderhand exchanged looks of mirth, crushed quickly by a glance from their chief.

‘I am sorry, Henderson. We will remain. There is more danger for you if we do not. If we let you open the mountain, you will all die. This way, we save many lives. Not merely our own.’

Henderson looked deep into Hunting Wolf’s eyes.

‘You not change story? Trickster still?’

It was Hunting Wolf’s turn to sigh.

‘Yes. The Trickster, Henderson. We have told you plainly, many times.’

‘Think you about Great Spirit I tell you. Good Lord Jesus Christ?’

‘Of course. We have thought a great deal about your spirit and his teachings, as you asked us to. We do not believe this.’

Henderson looked as if he might cry.

‘Is truth. Is only truth. Jesus Christ your great Spirit. He bring love to you. You have must to him love. He save you. Save you from Trickster also. Trickster not true.’

Powderhand gave a snort and crossed his arms beneath his blanket, fishing under one armpit for a mite he could feel shifting in the warmth.

This time, he was not reprimanded by Hunting Wolf. Hunting Wolf was growing tired of the well-meaning foolish white man.

‘We thank you, Henderson, for your kindness and concern, but you must understand that we are well aware of what is and is not true. You should explain these things we know to be true to the man McEwan again. We will remain.’

The seven men squatted silently for a few minutes while Henderson wondered what he should do. He was a failure. A spectacular failure. Was God testing him? All he longed for in this life was to save more souls, gather more precious gifts for his Lord Jesus Christ. He knew he could save these people if they would just listen, just believe the words of joy he had to share with them. He’d learned the complex rudiments of Siouan, slowly and painfully from a logger in Montreal, in preparation for his task ahead. The task of bringing these people to Jesus.

But he was failing. It was James Henderson at fault, not the natives. An English Catholic had saved an entire band of Blackfoot Indians a few hundred miles away, building a mission school and converting every last one to Christianity. The Catholics were good at it. They used the weapon of fear, something these natives seemed to understand.

Henderson’s weapon of love was going nowhere.

No, it was Henderson’s own failure that was condemning these people to Hell, and he was finding it hard to live with.

Meg was right. Her words had been in anger and through tears, but she correctly predicted that he would achieve nothing here. Perhaps he should have listened to her and not to God, when she insisted he stay in Edinburgh, ministering to the souls as much in need there as here. But if she loved him she must have known how it was suffocating him, killing the spirit in him a little more every day, with the smothering middle-class indifference his parishioners had to the word of God and His purpose.

She had refused to come with him. A chance to do missionary work in the new world and she had refused. James thought of Meg, forever taking tea in Jenner’s on Princes Street with the ladies of the parish, gossiping over fine china and fresh cream confections, and admitted to himself for the first time that she did not love God in the way he did. He was quite certain now she did not love him either. If he were honest, he’d always known she had married him because he ministered in a fine part of the city, to people who had money and what Meg constantly referred to as ‘respectability’. She kept three servants busy maintaining their respectability, putting a strain on James’s church stipend, but she regarded it as a major part of being a minister’s wife. No wonder her world had been shattered when he had rushed home that breezy April day, cheeks burning with fervour, to hold both her hands in his and tell her of his plans to work for God and Canadian Pacific Railways. She pulled her hands out from his large fists and put them to her cheeks in horror. He had looked at her for the first time then. Really looked at her. Dressed in her heavy expensive skirts, her hair tied in a fashionable twist, her face lightly powdered and rouged, she was in every way a model of those hideous Edinburgh women who loved nothing but themselves and their position in some imagined pecking order of that ‘respectability’ James was not privy to.

So he had left without her. And now here he was, squatting on a mountain with six Indians, who not only refused to accept Christ as their saviour, but also harboured some insane superstition that was bound to result in violence. He had lost the love of Meg, and now it seemed he had lost the love of God.

Hunting Wolf spoke first, breaking the silence above the soul-chilling howl of the blizzard.

‘You should go now, Henderson. Night is falling. There is nothing you can do.’

Henderson looked tragic. ‘You pray with I?’

The chief smiled and looked to his warriors. They returned his gaze impassively. He looked back at the minister, huddling in the snow. He was like a crow that had been broken and smashed against the rock, the dark fabric of his big coat spread crazily around him.

Hunting Wolf spoke gently. ‘Can your prayers protect you? Do they have power against great and terrible evil?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then let us hear them, Henderson. We will join you.’

James Henderson stood up, raised his right hand, held his coat shut with his left, and closed his eyes. He spoke in English this time. What did it matter if these men understood him or not? He was praying for them, not with them. It was all he could do.

‘Almighty Father …’