Apparition Trail, The by Lisa Smedman Read Free Book Online Page A

couldn’t make out any of the words but the speech had a slow cadence, as if the language spoken were an Indian dialect. If it weren’t for the fact that we were completely alone in this desolate place, I would have sworn we’d ridden into an Indian encampment.
    I was just about to ask the Sergeant whether his senses were registering the same impressions when I saw the pipe lying on the trail. I recognized it at once: a tobacco-stained French briar whose mouthpiece bore the teeth marks of long and frequent use. It had belonged to Mary Smoke, the aged Cree woman formerly employed at Fort Walsh to clean the barracks. She’d had a penchant for smoking, and one fateful day her primitive impulses got the better of her. She was caught stealing tobacco from the men.
    Because I’d grown friendly toward her, over our many long chats, I’d tried to intervene on her behalf, explaining that she used the tobacco smoke to comfort her aching teeth, one of which was abscessed. The men, however, were too furious to listen. They would hear none of my pleas for mercy, and instead had charged Mary Smoke with theft and locked her in a cell.
    When they’d opened it the next morning, she was stone cold dead.
    I suspect it was a combination of her panic at being caught and her advanced age that killed Mary Smoke. The Indians have a morbid fear of the hangman’s noose, and it is possible that Mary Smoke, incapable of realizing that her theft was a petty crime that would result in only a fine, had died of fright.
    Her children came the next day and disposed of her body according to their own practices. Rather than burying their dead, the Cree lash them on platforms in trees, wrapping the body in a buffalo hide together with the earthly possessions that the departed soul had held most dear in life.
    Had someone robbed Mary Smoke’s bier, stealing her battered pipe and later losing it in this desolate place?
    Buck had stopped dead in his tracks in the same instant that I’d spotted Mary Smoke’s briar, but the Sergeant’s horse continued to move skittishly forward. One of its hoofs landed square on the pipe. I heard a loud snap as the stem broke, then saw it lying in pieces as the hoof lifted from it.
    As I stared at the broken pipe, transfixed, I thought I heard the aged crone’s voice: “Heya, samogoniss ,” it said, using the Cree word for mounted police. “Gotta smoke?”
    Something moved, just at the edge of my vision: a human figure, huddled in a blanket or robe. Startled, I twisted in my saddle, and thought I saw Mary Smoke. But as I looked at the figure full on, I saw that it was no more than a large boulder that had roughly the shape of a squatting figure.
    I allowed myself a nervous laugh and turned to the Sergeant to ask whether he’d imagined a figure there, too. Just as I looked in his direction a violent shudder passed through his horse. Then a shriek of utter terror erupted from its lips. The black horse reared up, lashing out with both forefeet at the empty air in front of it.
    Sergeant Wilde swore a violent oath and drew his revolver as a figure suddenly stepped in front of his panicked horse. No boulder this! It was an Indian brave in a feather bonnet, his entire body painted with ghostly white war paint.
    Buck whinnied in fear, and was proving difficult to control, but the Sergeant’s horse was far worse. Terrified at the Indian’s sudden appearance, seemingly from out of thin air, it bucked wildly, causing the sergeant to nearly fall from his saddle. Clinging to the pommel with one hand, Wilde drew his revolver and fired a shot at the Indian brave. The bullet missed, and kicked up a tuft in the sandy soil behind the Indian.
    The brave gave an unearthly wail and hurled a stone-bladed knife at the Sergeant’s chest. I could not see whether it struck the Sergeant, for my own mount shied violently to the side, but I did see Wilde’s horse kick violently, tossing him into the air. The Sergeant landed heavily on the