Guy Vanderhaeghe - The Englishman’s Boy

“I ain’t never heard tell of Whoop-Up country.”

“You’re in it, citizen. Whoop-Up country runs a hundred-and-sixty-mile stretch between Fort Benton and the meeting of the St. Mary and Oldman rivers north of here. Once you cross the Milk River, you leave the States and John Law behind. Out here nobody can touch you. Indian agents, sheriffs, U.S. Marshals, their jurisdiction stops at the Medicine Line and north of the Medicine Line the treaties say you’re in Canada, but they’re dead wrong. You’re in Whoop-Up country. Up here the Democrats and Republicans are the T.C. Power Company and I.G. Baker Company, clawing each other for booty, clawing to carry off every pelt of fur, every buffalo hide they can lay hands on. As you might guess, it don’t make them the best of friends.” He plucked a stalk of grass and chewed it. “Hardwick’s taking us to a Power post and all these are dyed-in-the-wool Baker men. They get goods from Baker on credit or they work for him as freighters. He’s got them in his pocket. A year ago they were the next thing to being at war with Power.” He tilted his head toward Evans who was laying out a game of solitaire on a blanket. “Just over there you have Mr. John Evans – Grand Panjandrum and Chief of the Spitzee Cavalry himself.”

“Spitzee Cavalry?”

“You haven’t heard of the famous Spitzee Cavalry?” said Grace, scratching his head through the bandanna. “There’s innocence. Last year Evans and Kamoose Taylor got it in their pointy heads they were going to regulate trade in these parts because guns were being sold to the Blackfoot. So they put together a posse of regulators and started to lean on anybody trading firearms to the tribe. They said it wasn’t healthy for white men if guns got into the wrong hands. Now the trouble with their regulating was the only people they regulated were traders who bought supplies from T.C. Power. It was a put-up job to drive Baker’s competition from the field. Fifteen or twenty of them would ride into some post and threaten the factor that if he didn’t sign a pledge to stop trading guns they’d burn him out, or worse. Most of the little outfits signed. They didn’t have a choice but to knuckle under.

“Where they put their foot in the pisspot was when they tried to shake down Johnny Healy in Fort Whoop-Up. Healy had had the sand to go deep into Blackfoot territory and risk his skin with those white-hating heathen when nobody else would. His first kick at the cat he knocked together a few log cabins and a picket fence that a crew of drunk Blackfoot burned to the ground. The next time he built, he did himself proud. He raised a square timber fort, quarters with dirt roofs so they couldn’t be fired by hostiles, put iron grates on the windows and in the chimneys so unfriendly red monkeys couldn’t come climbing into his front parlour, hung oak gates and put brass cannon on the walls.

“Then one fine day the Spitzee Cavalry came riding up to Fort Whoop-Up to lay down the law like the lords of creation. If old Johnny Healy had a mind to it he could have stood on his strong walls and pissed down on their hats, but he had more style than that. No, sir, he invited them in for a good sit-down meal and a palaver. After they’d eaten hearty of all John’s good food, one of the Spitzee boys stood up at table and read a charge they’d written out against him for trading guns to the Blackfeet and asked him how he pled, guilty or not guilty. They say Healy just tipped his chair back on its hind legs, took a long look at this dirty, jumped-up prosecutor wearing his rags and his stink like glory, and laughed in all their faces. He said it’d be a frosty Friday in hell the day he recognized the right of I.G. Baker to hold court on his doings and judge him with a jury of yellow, contemptible cowards the likes of them. It wasn’t his habit to confess to anybody but a priest, and since he hadn’t bent the ear of one of them for a good five years maybe he’d lost the knack of it entirely. He believed he had. No, the only thing they were going to get from him was what they already had – full bellies at his expense and forbearance for their damnable impertinence.

“Now the Spitzee Cavalry had come to take their make-believe lawyer papers and themselves so serious – dropping “whereas” and “How do you plead?” and “I charge you” like so much pig shit in the pea patch – that they rose up full of wrath at being told to go piss up a rope by the likes of Johnny Healy. Evans pulled his pistol first and the rest unholstered too, covering Healy in his chair where he was sitting unarmed in his suspenders. ‘If you hold us so cheap,’ says Evans, ‘we’ll return the favour and send you to the Devil. You can kiss his arse for me.’

“Healy didn’t turn a hair, just sang out in a loud voice, ‘Mr. Reese, if you please!’ and the kitchen door flew open and the Spitzee Cavalry got a tooth-puller’s look into the mouth of one of Johnny Healy’s brass cannon, Mr. Reese standing over the wick with a staff of burning pitch pine in his hand. ‘Now, gentlemen,’ Healy said, ‘that cannon has three coal shovels of nails and a good sample of river pebbles crammed down its craw. It is primed with powder and sports a fuse shorter than John Evans’s little dick. And I’m prepared to kiss the Devil’s arse if you send me to him, but just remember, I’ll be standing in line behind the rest of you to do it. Now you can listen to reason, or you can listen to my cannon’s roar. Which is it?’ ”

The Englishman’s boy laughed appreciatively.

“That turned the mood of the jury fast; they voted to a man for acquittal on all counts. Healy thanked them for their wise decision and commended them for their interest in seeing justice done. He said if they ever cared to hold court in front of Judge Brass again, Judge Brass would be pleased to accommodate them. They weren’t eager to take him up on his offer. The Spitzee Cavalry disbanded shortly after. Healy was the end of them.”

The Englishman’s boy had taken his knife out of his boot and was jabbing it in the sod. He looked up at Grace. “What you telling me? You don’t like being left with Evans in command?”

“Hell, no. At least Evans showed some sense faced with a cannon. All winter I’ve been listening to Hardwick rag him about turning tail. He says the foreman of the jury ought to have seen to a guilty verdict – Judge Brass or no Judge Brass. Shoot the bastard where he sat, Hardwick says.”

“And get blowed to scraps?”

“Hardwick does things hot-iron,” was all Grace said.

The Englishman’s boy twisted his knife in the earth. “So what is it you saying?”

Grace glanced around him to make sure nobody was listening, tapped the boy on the knee. “What I’m saying is that you and me are like that half-breed – he isn’t white and he isn’t Indian. It’s a tough place, betwixt and between. I’m not a Baker man and nor are you. Maybe we’re going to get caught in the middle at Farwell’s post,” he said significantly. “The only reason I’m here with this godforsaken crew is to protect my share of the money from those wolf skins. You’re here because Fort Benton’s too hot for you. Neither of us has any reason to get shot for I.G. Baker. I’m not a man who has a taste for blood. Hardwick is.”

The Englishman’s boy wiped the knife blade on his pants.

“We could light out tonight,” said Grace urgently, “when Hardwick’s gone. Evans won’t follow us.”

“You do what you like,” said the Englishman’s boy.

“There’s no point going on my own. In this country, a man needs someone watching his back. Two repeating rifles are better than one.”

“And where we going to go? I ain’t welcome in Fort Benton.”

“There’s whisky forts spotted all over this country. We could make for Fort Kipp, Fort Slideout, Fort Conrad, Fort Whisky Gap, the Robbers’ Roost – you name it.”