Chapter Thirty-Eight
The next morning, when Hearn visits Norton in his apartments to discuss the business of the day, he explains that yesterday’s visitors brought marten and fox furs and two dozen beaver skins all clean and of good quality and received in return a gallon of brandy, five pounds of tobacco, and a quarter barrel of black powder.
There is nothing significant or unusual about the trade, and Norton merely nods and tells John Easty the clerk to write down the details in the ledger and then the conversation moves on to other, more pressing matters.
Hearn knows he will need to visit the warehouse soon and relabel some of the bales to conceal his trickery, but he doubts that will be difficult to achieve, and when he steps back out into the yard half an hour later, he feels confident that whatever dangers Mackachy’s unexpected visit may have posed have been neatly avoided.
The rest of that morning and the whole of the afternoon is spent checking the food stores, overseeing a repair to the cookhouse chimney, and dealing with various small disagreements and complaints among the men.
It is dusk again when he goes up to the top of the northwest bastion and sees to his dismay that the Indians’ tent is still as it was.
He immediately goes down to the gatehouse and asks Haycock if he’s seen or heard anything from the two visitors, and Haycock says they were knocking on the gate only an hour earlier shouting Hearn’s name, but he sent them away.
“I could tell they’d been hard at the brandy sir,” he says. “And I didn’t want to trouble you.”
“How drunk are they?”
“Brim-full of it, I’d say. Spoony and stumbling.”
He says it with a knowing smile, and when Hearn doesn’t smile back, he looks surprised and a touch offended.
“I need to talk to them. I can’t have them roaming around causing any more mischief.”
Haycock shrugs.
“I’m not sure talking will have very much effect on men in their condition. When Mr. Shaw was still alive, if any visiting Indians got drunk or overstayed their welcome, him and I would generally go out there with our truncheons and drive them off.”
Until now, Hearn, unlike his predecessor, has tried to rule the Fort by persuasion and encouragement rather than force, but the thought of what these Indians might do or say if they remain here much longer makes him nervous enough to think that, on this occasion at least, John Shaw’s more direct methods might be worthy of emulation.
Haycock is a sizable fellow, broad-chested, thick in neck and thigh, and of a fierce and fistic disposition.
Hearn can easily imagine that the mere sight of him with a club in his hand might be enough to make Ministik’s father and his friend think twice about loitering.
“I trust that they’ll listen to reason,” he says. “But if not, I can see that some show of force might also be useful.”
Haycock grins and takes his bludgeon out from the drawer to show it off.
“Most times, just the threat will suffice,” he says. “No need to break any bones.”
As they pass through the stone arch, the peat-black sky is strewn with stars, and pale, moonlit flakes of snow sway and stagger like specks of dust in the slowly shifting air.
When they reach the Indians’ tent, Hearn hears from inside the muffled sounds of rowdiness and merriment, and when he opens the flap and raises his lantern to peer within, the hot stench of drunkenness hits him full in the face.
Mackachy and Oule-Eye are sitting by a small fire, puffing on their white clay pipes and drinking brandy out of a shared wooden cup.
When they see his illumined face, they sway a little and squint their reddened eyes, then look again and snigger, as though his appearance is an unexpected joke.
Mackachy invites him to come inside and share a drink with them, but Hearn explains that he hasn’t come to make merry, and it is better if they speak out in the open.
While they wait, he reminds Haycock to stay back and follow his commands, and Haycock smiles at him and nods.
“I gave you fine gifts,” Hearn says to Mackachy when the two visitors eventually emerge, grinning and unsteady, “and you promised to leave right away. So why do you insult me now by staying here and causing trouble? I heard you were banging on the gate like madmen, shouting to be let inside.”
“We wanted some company, that’s all,” Mackachy says with a shrug. “We were getting lonely out here all on our own.”
He glances across at Oule-Eye, and they both look at Hearn and start to laugh. When he tells them he’s losing patience, they laugh even more.
“You made an agreement with Shaw,” he says, “and that agreement has been honored now, so you should leave. Go to Goose Lake, as I said. You have no reason to remain, no reason at all.”
“You only gave us half of what we came for,” Mackachy answers, still smiling. “If you give us the rest, then we’ll happily leave.”
Hearn glances at Haycock, who reminds him in a whisper that all he has to do is make the signal.
“If you give them bastards an inch, they’ll surely take an ell,” he says. “That’s just what they’re like, Mr. Hearn. Better to be firm.”
“We’ll drive you out by force if we have to,” Hearn says to Mackachy, pointing back at Haycock. “Look, my friend here is already angry because he thinks I’m being too forbearing.”
Mackachy stops chuckling and frowns as if he’s just been reminded of some unhappy event.
“We’re not afraid of you, or your companion either. We’ll stay here as long as we want to.”
“I can’t allow that. You’re disturbing the business of the Fort.”
“If you won’t allow it, then I’ll speak to your chief and see what he says. I’ll tell him about our meeting with John Shaw. Perhaps he’ll reward us for speaking the truth.”
Hearn understands from the way he says it, supercilious and gleeful, that Mackachy has guessed somehow that their meeting with Norton is the thing Hearn most wants to avoid.
He begins to wonder if the Indian is really as drunk as he appears.
There’s something crisp and clear in the way he talks, as if beneath the balderdash and ribaldry there’s a part of him, a deeper part, that the brandy has hardly touched at all.
“The chief won’t see you. I’ll make sure of that.”
“You may try to stop me from meeting him, but I’ve been watching the gate. Men come and go through there all day long. Some of them will speak enough of my language and be happy to pass on my messages, I’m sure.”
He leans in with his hot, liquorous breath and gives Hearn a sly, contemptuous look, then laughs again.
Hearn knows that if Norton hears their story even secondhand, it’ll start him thinking, and once the thinking begins there’s only one place it will lead.
He senses his power and his confidence, so newly and strangely acquired, beginning to slip away already.
I can’t let these men get the better of me now, he thinks.
Not when my freedom and happiness are so close. I can’t allow it.
“You must leave here,” he says again, more forcefully. “Leave, just as you promised, and don’t come back.”
“We didn’t promise anything and we’ll do as we please.”
When Mackachy turns away, Hearn grabs his arm and yanks him backward, and when the Indian resists and tries to struggle free, Hearn drops the lantern and, filled with a sudden inarticulable rage, grips his throat with both hands and starts to squeeze.
Oule-Eye, on seeing that his friend is being assaulted, jumps in between them, and for a moment the three men, tangled together, tug and jostle, grunting and kicking up snow until, with a great roar and a volley of Billingsgate curses, Haycock descends upon them like a berserker, and with two dull, damp thuds like green wood splitting, cracks the Indians’ heads and knocks them both, tottering and senseless, to the ground.
Hearn, still panting from the melee, retrieves the toppled lantern, raises it, and, in the weak, shuddering candlelight, sees Oule-Eye on his knees clutching his bloodied head and moaning, and Mackachy sprawled where he fell, not moving at all.
“Are you injured, Mr. Hearn?” Haycock asks him. “Did they hurt you any?”
Hearn shakes his head. The blind rage as dense and inexplicable as lust that rose up and overpowered him only moments before has departed in an instant and left him empty and helpless in its melancholic aftermath.
“You went too far,” he says. “There was no need for that.”
“They might have killed you, Mr. Hearn,” Haycock counters with a look of wounded innocence on his swarthy pudding face. “I had to do it.”
Hearn rubs his forehead and stares up at the star-infested sky.
He would like to blame Haycock’s recklessness for this calamity but knows very well it was his own abrupt and ill-considered actions that most directly caused it.
I lost my head for just one moment, he thinks.
I let my wilder feelings overtake my reason, and this is my reward.
“We’ll have to take them back inside,” he says. “Hutchins will need to examine them.”
Haycock looks puzzled.
“I thought you wanted to drive the Indians away.”
“I did,” Hearn says. “I still do, but we can’t leave them out here alone with such injuries.”
Haycock shrugs and then shoulders the gaily painted shaft of his blood-stained truncheon.
“It’s a tenderness they hardly deserve,” he says. “But if you say so, Mr. Hearn.”