The Loathsome Trail
It was an unfavourable path that pulled Devil Brigham and Rascal far outside their jurisdiction, drawn through the winding maze of mountain trails toward an undesired lodestone - a fugitive he didn't want to catch.
Rascal had no opinion on the matter, and just slogged along wherever Devil aimed him. But Rascal had caught Devil's dour mood like it was a common cold and – uncharacteristic for a stallion – paced along the trails with his head hung low, the iron shoes on his hooves scraping the rocks at times. He didn't even have the desire to fight Devil to try for the tall grasses that grew on the sides of sunny sections of trail. Both stallion and rider were sullen and uninspired as they wove through the mountain glens and plateaus, in no hurry to catch up to their prey, even though they could accomplish it in a hour's good gallop.
Rascal missed his barn, his pasture, and the sweet water of his natural spring that burbled up through the split rocks in a copse of trees at home. He even missed the mixed wolf and dog Chance that shared the Lazy B ranch with him. But he knew Devil couldn't risk bringing Chance along for this far ride, for she'd surely be tempted to match skill and savagery with her wild kin that Rascal had been smelling and hearing since yesterday morning.
There was a wolf pack out there paralleling them through the woods. Rascal knew they were just curious, for no pack – no matter their number – would dare come close to Devil or even Rascal himself. They feared the rifle that rested in its long leather case under Devil's right leg and the sawed-off shotgun in its holster hanging from Devil's belt. Rascal had seen what both guns could do to living flesh and it was a horror that most wolves had seen as well. Rascal also knew that the wolves feared his hooves that could crush a ribcage or skull with a single kick. Nothing in these mountains frightened Rascal, nor Devil he supposed.
Devil had been tracking the small party for three days and two nights, east from Arawana and up into the high saddles of the Monashee Mountains. The party they followed were moderately skilled at hiding their trail by avoiding soft soil and trampable grass, but the small pony they had with them wasn't. Most times the pony's hoof prints told Devil that they were using it as a pack animal, but occasionally its prints were slightly deeper, telling him that during those times his main fugitive was riding atop the packs while the rest walked.
When he ran the bitter difficulties of the dilemma he was waist deep in through his mind, he understood the problem was that the moment he went from being the Arawana Chief of Police to being a Detective Corporal in the British Columbia Provincial Police, his jurisdiction expanded to include the entire province and at the same time his autonomy had shrivelled to a dried-out crust of what it once was. Where he once was the final arbiter of the application of law in his jurisdiction, he was now just an arm of a large police force whose hierarchy decided who was a criminal and who was not, and he was sworn to pursue the wanted no matter his personal opinion.
This whole sordid episode began with a priest laid up in the Penticton hospital with a gunshot wound in his ample left buttock cheek and the order came down through Constable Bill Brightworth of the Penticton detachment.
Through Brightworth, Detective Sergeant Locke, the head of BCPP's Boundary Division, had set Devil on the trail of the suspects because he was an experienced horseman and tracker, and the runaways had taken to the vast forests to the east of the Okanagan valley.
The trouble was, Devil didn't believe the people Locke had named were responsible for the shooting, especially not the person whose name appeared at the top of the warrant list; William Youngblood - an eleven year old boy who had run from his Residential School to live with his grandfather and cousin off the reservation near Naramata.
Devil understood the boy's desire to escape the Catholic run Residential School he'd been forced to attend, having faced the same cruelty and nonsensical rigid teachings himself during his time at a Catholic orphanage. Like William, he had escaped in his eleventh year, yet unlike William he had no family to run to, so took his chances on the streets as a petty thief and beggar. William had the luxury of a family, a powerless one, but family non-the-less.
With Devil, the priests and nuns tried to beat the sin out of him for being born a bastard and branded with a heretical name. With William they were trying to beat the indian out of him for being born Syilx on the Penticton reserve. Being an indian was near as not to being illegal, and the federal government had passed laws to turn them all white.
Devil recalled reading a tale of a knight's quest as a youngster that began; 'Beyond seven mountain ranges, beyond seven rivers ...' and later learned that the phrase was an eastern European version of 'Once upon a time'. But though it felt as though he had followed his quarry over seven mountain ranges and seven rivers, this was no fairytale quest of a knight-errant in search of virtuous adventure, this was a moral crime in Devil's reckoning, and he was ordered to hold to his oath as a lawman and commit it.
"You're kidding." Devil had said when Brightworth had delivered the news.
"I wish I was." Brightworth had said, knowing Devil's nature about laws made to oppress powerless people, but he was firmly pressed into the same mould of obedience as Devil in the Provincial Police.
"Who got shot?"
"Father McClure."
"The fat one."
"Yeah."
"Bald as a boiled onion."
"That's the one."
"I'd like to shoot him in the other cheek." Devil had muttered and Brightworth pretended not to hear.
"So the boy is to be arrested for playing hooky, and his cousin Ruff for shooting the Priest."
"And their Grandfather for aiding and abetting."
"Dammit."
Devil had leaned back in his chair, staring at the wall.
"Ruff didn't shoot that priest. He's too smart for that."
"You know him?"
"I do. Run into him a few times. Ruff's bright and has never broken the law. His grandpa Jack raised him to follow the white man's law, knowing if it was broken by a Syilx there'd be hell to pay for the whole band."
"You'll need these." Brightworth had said as he set a pair of miniature handcuffs on the desk.
"Are these a joke? Some kind of novelty?"
"No." Brightworth had said, lowering his eyes to avoid the shame, "They're child handcuffs for Residential School runaways."
Devil had picked them up and dropped them into a waste bin, keys and all.
"Tell Locke to go fuck himself."
"I'm not going to do that, Devil."
Despite how he felt about the task assigned him, Devil had left Chance with his neighbour and fellow rancher Herb Donaldson, and set out with Rascal to take his time and think the entire situation through before he decided if he was going to arrest an eleven year old for truancy and his teen cousin for attempted murder.
As they rode, Devil tried to render a time that was simpler and filled with a gentle joy. He still possessing his fresh years then, astride a mare that was obedient and calm. He wasn't experienced enough for a stallion yet, that mastery wouldn't seep into his nature for a few years yet.
Young Devil's segmented fishing pole was tucked safely in the empty rifle case under his leg, a small creel holding his rigging and reel hanging from his belt where one day would hang a sawed-off shotgun. The frying pan that hung from the saddle horn tapped a regular rhythm that marked time on their way to Devil's favourite spot above the Lazy B.
Once there the mare set to exploring and sampling the exotic grasses of the meadow as Devil teased a brown trout out of a pond. Then the trout fried until the skin was crisp as a potato chip and the bright meat was dulled to the soft pink of bubble gum.
But that was another time. A time before the war and the horror and blood while he was still learning his craft as horseman and tracker under the tutelage of Justice Brigham. Now he was astride a stallion that needed a sharp rider lest he forget his mission and ignore his rider. The landscape they travelled so different from home, threading through a forest of strangers, far from the ranch and following the trail of a boy, his cousin, his grandpa and a pony.
There was yet another misery that had driven Devil out of Arawana. He'd been doing his ham-handed best at courting Hattie Mason and had completely buggered it up.
If he was going to be miserable, he might as well do it far from other people.
