The planks beneath my feet began to vibrate. The spectators stamped their feet in a precise three-beat rhythm—blam blam blam, blam blam blam—like fists beating a drum, only amplified by the number of beaters and with the inescapably eerie effect of a hundred people acting in unison without a signal and without one foot missing the beat. It made my scalp move.

  While this was going on, the women in white gyrated to the rhythm, twisting their torsos and snaking their arms about their head, but without moving their feet, which were bare and like Babel’s fixed to the floor. The dance itself looked joyful, but whenever I glimpsed their faces, they were glued into the motionless empty grin of the skull on the cloth and the skull on the floor. The room began to fill with the heat of overactive bodies and the thick musk of sweat. I began to feel woozy, and wondered if the breakfast I’d eaten had contained some kind of drug. I was pretty sure it didn’t, and that the ceremony was not meant to upset me before the fight. It all had the feeling of something that had been done many times before, that no longer needed rehearsal. For all I knew, they did it before every event, even the ordinary ones, like Christians saying grace before eating.

  Some, I noticed, did not take part in the stamping. These included Brother Hebron and the members of the Committee of Public Vigilance, who stood in one corner with their arms folded and their eyes on Brother Babel and me. I couldn’t tell whether they disapproved of the ceremony or were indifferent to it, or if they were just waiting for the fun to start. Enoch especially looked eager, tapping one foot out of rhythm with the stamping and unfolding his arms to flick at his face from time to time in a nervous tic. Despite what Hebron had said he looked like a man who had a bet down on the outcome.

  I have no idea how long the dancing and the stamping went on. It couldn’t have been as long as it seemed. When it stopped, all at once so that the silence boxed my ears, the two women were wet and gleaming and their sheets were plastered to their flesh, showing their nipples, navels, and pubic mounds as clearly as if they were naked. Their heavy breathing was the only sound in a room that rang with silence like the inside of a great bell.

  I didn’t let them distract me. I had eyes only for Babel, who sank into a crouch the instant the stamping stopped. That was my signal; I charged him, intending to catch him off balance. But a stone wall is always balanced, and he didn’t budge an inch as I hit him with all my weight behind my right shoulder. His long arms closed around me in a bear hug that would have ended the fight there and then if I didn’t bend my knees and duck out from under, driving my bootheel into his bare instep as I backpedaled.

  That part of the foot is one of the four or five most painful places you can hit a man, but he showed no reaction. Instead, he lunged and backhanded me with a long sweep of his right arm. His knuckles struck the right side of my head like a tree limb; a blue-white light burst inside my skull, and I went down on one knee. He was still coming and I hung on to enough sense to throw myself to the side and roll and come up outside his tremendous reach.

  He had fast reflexes for a man his size; for a man of any size. He pivoted just as I let go with a right that I had brought up with me from the floor, shifting his chin so that my knuckles raked his jaw without making square contact. I was still dizzy from the blow to the head, and off balance. He stepped aside, something struck me in the small of my back, and I sprawled headlong to the floor.

  I had reason then to thank Hope Weathersill, the madwoman on the Saskatchewan. The buckskin Chief Piapot’s Cree had wrapped around my trunk to heal the ribs the woman’s bullet had broken had dried as hard as boilerplate. Babel’s kick to my back might have cracked my spine if I hadn’t still been wearing it. When I scrambled to my feet and turned to meet him again, he was hopping around in a limping circle, trying to walk off the pain of a broken toe. I butted him in the sternum, hard enough to sprain my neck and knock the wind out of a man of normal proportions and take him off his feet. Babel, however, just backed up a step. But it was enough for me to throw both arms around him and snap my head up hard under his chin, colliding with a crack I felt all the way to the ground.

  Once again I backpedaled before he could close his arms around me. He blinked, shook his head, spat out a tooth, and went into a fighter’s crouch, rocking on the balls of his feet with his big, half-closed fists out in front of him. He knew something of the science of boxing, which made him as dangerous as any man or beast this side of a bull elephant. I feinted with my right, then ducked left, his own left whistling past my ear. I jabbed with my left, but he blocked it with his right and followed through with a blow that caught me in the chest and paralyzed me to the waist. I scissored my knee up into his crotch, but his was higher than most men’s, and the pain wasn’t enough to slow down his momentum. His looping left fist had by this time completed its circle and caught me behind the neck. My knees buckled, but the blood returned to my head before I finished falling. I dove between his knees, got my shoulder up into his crotch, and lifted with all my strength. Log bridges don’t lift, stone viaducts don’t give. He was rooted there. One of his hands closed around my belt in back and he pulled me out from between his legs and lifted me off my feet and threw me away. I had a sensation of flying, of the whites of eyes as the spectators in my path recognized the danger and got out of my way, and then I piled up against the base of a trestle table stacked against the wall.

  This was no ordinary fight in as many ways as I could count. There should have been cheering and shouting, but the great hall might have been empty for all anyone raised his or her voice for Babel or against me. In that gulf of silence I found enough of my wind to stand and turn again just as the big man bore down on me in his closed crouch.

  Instinct told me to get out of his way. Brother Hebron’s voice in my head was louder. Babel has long arms … . You want to get inside them if you plan to do any damage.

  This time I didn’t feint. I stuck my right in his face, and as he moved to block it and swoop his own right around, I ducked underneath inside the circle of his arms and hit him with a combination, left-right-left, treating his head like a light bag. That was when he closed his arms around me and squeezed. I heard the ribs Hope Weathersill had broken giving way again just before my lamp went out.

  PART THREE

  The Stronghold

  21

  “It is never a good idea, Deputy Marshal Murdock, to take advice from one’s enemy.”

  It seemed when I opened my eyes that this conversation had been going on for a while. I was looking up at the rafters of the great dining hall, and certain numb spots in my back told me I was stretched out atop one of the trestle tables. Something cool and damp touched my face; I turned my head just in time to see Fleurette take away the wet cloth and wring it out over a chipped enamel basin balanced on the edge of the table. I knew without turning my head that Philippe stood on the other side.

  I said, “Someone’s been talking in his sleep.” Taking in air to speak brought needles of pain to my injured side.

  “We French are not able tacticians,” he said. “It must not be forgotten that Napoleon was Italian. Still, it is no great revelation to determine that the logical direction to take in a fight with a man twice one’s size is away from him.”

  “I’m not prone to argue.”

  Fleurette laughed at that, proving that she did know some English. She had a light, musical titter.

  “Where’s Claude?” I asked.

  “I sent him for our horses. We are free to go as soon as you are ready to ride.”

  Fleurette said something, and the two conversed in French for a minute. He put an end to it with a harsh “Non!” To me: “You can ride, Deputy Marshal Murdock, yes?”

  “I can if it’s away from here. Are you sure I’m included? I lost the fight.”

  “You should have asked for an explanation of the rules of combat in Shulamite. It is not necessary that you win, merely that you survive. Evidently that is no small feat where Brother Babel is concerned.”

  “I had a little help.”

  “So I see.” He knocked a knuckle against the buckskin wrap, and I realized my shirt was spread open to expose it. “One would think you knew what was in store.”

  “One would be wrong. God must love a fool or there wouldn’t be so many of us my age.”

  “It was not just the hide. Queen Fidelity commanded Babel to stop when you were senseless. I gathered from the excitement that it is very rare for her to take a hand in such matters. You must have made a favorable impression upon her.”

  “I think she liked my name.”

  “A formidable woman. It is a shame that she must go to hell.”

  Fleurette crossed herself, then reapplied the damp cloth to my face. She had a sure and gentle touch. The various rebellions and buffalo hunts in which her man had taken part had made her an expert in tending to the sick and injured.

  “How far is Cree Lake from here?” I asked.

  “Two days in good weather,” Philippe said after a moment. “The Sioux stronghold is there. Many of them rode with Crazy Horse in the Little Big Horn fight. You will find the free African community of Shulamite a place of great warmth and hospitality once you approach the stronghold.”

  “Hebron says that’s where I’ll find Bliss and Whitelaw.”

  “Hebron said you would be wise to step inside the arms of Babel.”

  “He didn’t have any reason to lie to me about Bliss and Whitelaw if he expected Babel to kill me. They’re there, all right. You have your family to look after, so if you’ll direct me to the lake I’ll say good-bye. You’ve earned that second double eagle and a share of the reward as well.”

  “My family and I have nothing to fear from our brothers the Sioux. We will go with you. An American can lose himself in that country for a month.”

  I made a note to stop at Donalbain’s farm on my way home and set the old Scot straight about the Métis.

  Against Fleurette’s protests in rapid French, I sat up and buttoned my shirt. The pain in my ribs was as bad as it had been the first time they were broken, but I had survived it before, and anyway I was sore all over from the beating I had taken, so I just rolled it into the inventory. With Philippe’s assistance I got into my bearskin and we went out. The little snake-faced mustang, the gray, and King Henry were packed and waiting for us at the base of the steps. Brother Babel was holding them.

  The big man had his boots on now, along with a heavy canvas coat and his floppy hat. There was a purple swelling along the side of his jaw where my fist had raked it, but aside from that he didn’t look any the worse the wear for our fight, any more than a tree whose bark I’d nicked with my initials. When I appeared he showed a wealth of teeth—minus one—as crooked as neglected tombstones in what I took to be a grin of recognition from one combatant to another, although twenty-four hours earlier I might have seen it as a savage challenge. If the scar tissue on his face was any indication, I gathered that it was a rare thing when one of his opponents lived for him to grin at.

  The members of the Committee of Public Vigilance were standing nearby. The look on Brother Enoch’s gaunt face was no greeting. Gripping his Spencer tightly, he turned to say something to Brother Hebron, who shook his head and stepped forward. He didn’t offer his hand.

  “I didn’t mean to give you bad advice,” he said. “It was one thing no one ever tried and I was curious to see what would happen.”

  “No charge for settling the question,” I said.

  “Queen Fidelity is resting. She claims to be a hundred and ten, and she looks it, so I’m guessing she needs what she gets. She asked me to give you something.” He took a small leather pouch from his coat pocket and held it out.

  I accepted it after a moment. It was tied with a cord and something made a whispery sound inside when I shifted it on my palm. It was barely heavier than air. I started to undo the cord.

  “Don’t open it. She says you’ll waste the magic. It’s just old bones. She said they belonged to an eagle her grandfather captured with his bare hands. Apparently you impressed her. She says he was a powerful chief.”

  “Everybody’s grandfather was.” But I left the knot alone. “Voodoo?”

  “She says it’s older than that. The magic belongs to the ancient gods, who died before the white man came. She says it will see you home safe.”

  “What do you say?”

  “I say bones are bones and there’s nothing saying those couldn’t have come from last week’s chicken. This is the magic I trust.” He drew my Deane-Adams from his belt and held it out butt first. “Your long guns are on your horses.”

  I inspected the loads in the cylinder and holstered the revolver. “I guess this makes me the first white man to leave Shulamite alive.”

  “That’s just a story the Mounties tell to scare the little Mounties. They wouldn’t let this settlement stand five minutes if we went around killing every pale-skinned American we saw.”

  “What made me a special case?”

  “Every now and then I have to throw one to the committee. It was just your bad luck to have come along at the end of a long dry spell.”

  I lowered my voice. “You want to watch your topknot around Enoch. He’s hungry.”

  “That’s why I made him number two man. If I learned anything in the army it’s to keep your enemies close.”

  “Indians don’t sneak up on that easy.”

  “I wasn’t talking about Indians.” He wasn’t smiling.

  Philippe gave me a boost into the saddle and I rode out in front with my right side on fire. I didn’t look back, and I never saw Shulamite or Brother Hebron again, although I heard a year later he came to a short end when one of his own fellow settlers shot him by accident while they were out hunting meat for the winter. There is close, and there is too close, when you do your measuring by the length of a Spencer’s barrel.

  22

  An hour out of Shulamite, the snow I’d been smelling all day came pouring out of the low clouds like bits of candy from a piñata.

  The flakes were big to start, floating like paper and melting with sizzling sounds where they landed on coat sleeves and the backs of gloves. They hung up on our eyelashes and left wet trails behind when they slithered down our faces. As the sun descended and the wind picked up, they became smaller and harder, bits of jagged granite rattling against our standing collars and welting our skin. The wind lifted the snow where it fell and threw it at us in buckets. Philippe gave Claude a hand up behind Fleurette and steered King Henry in close to the mustang to shout into my ear, but the wind snatched away his words at a distance of six inches. He jabbed a finger at a patch of shadow a hundred yards ahead. I nodded energetically and we made for the shadow.

  It belonged to a stand of virgin pine, the straight trunks so close together we had to go in single file, Philippe’s big dun leading the way. We rode for miles through that dense wood, the wind howling outside as around a stockade, before we found a clearing big enough to make camp. While gathering wood in the thickening dark, I stumbled over something and discovered it was the stone foundation of a cabin, the logs having long since burned or rotted away.

  “Coureur de bois,” said Philippe, once we had built a fire big enough to warm our hands. “One of the first, I should imagine. He must have been the only white man for a thousand miles. Perhaps he died of loneliness.”

  Fleurette said something.

  Her husband nodded. “Oui, ma petit. More likely he was eaten by a bear. You see what I mean, Deputy Marshal Murdock, about a man alone?”

  “You said an American.”

  “I intended no offense. You carved North America from the wilderness, killed the Indians and the buffalo and felled the trees to make room for your civilization. Here in Canada we did not conquer the wilderness, merely made our peace with it. But a truce with a bear is only valid until he hungers again.”

  “‘Grandmother’s land,’ the Indians call it,” I said. “After Victoria. But it’s no place for old ladies.”

  “My grandmother was a Cree, a fierce, white-haired woman who buried two husbands and once beat a puma to death with a piece of firewood. She would feed and shelter you if you loved her, but she never forgot a wrong, and she never slept. You must never think Canada is asleep, or that she has forgiven you your transgressions. Our coureur may have expired peacefully in his bed. It is more likely that he fell down a ravine and broke his neck. It would have been a ravine he had descended a thousand times without slipping and thought as safe as a pasture.”

  “Tell me about the stronghold.”

  “It is well named. Ten thousand years ago, the big ice that scooped out Cree Lake pushed a million tons of rock into a tower on its eastern shore. It sits like a lion upon its haunches and can only be scaled from the north, where one side of it was beaten into rubble by storms that would have destroyed our coureur’s cabin a hundred times a hundred. That side will be guarded heavily. We will not climb it without the permission of those who live on the crest.”

  “Tell me about them.”

  “They are Sioux from America. They came here with Sitting Bull after the Custer fight, as you know, and retreated to the stronghold when Sitting Bull agreed to return. They are led by a man called Wolf Shirt. His sister married Crazy Horse, who Wolf Shirt advised not to give himself up to General Crook. It was wise counsel, as history proved.”

  “I doubt he’s reasonable on the subject of white Americans.”

  “After Crazy Horse was murdered, his wife starved herself to death at the Red Cloud Agency. Peace with white Americans deprived him of his friend and his sister. He has reason to be unreasonable.”