It was a nice day.In fact, it was too nice of a day to die, but when a 44 40 Winchester barks a bullet into your chest, you just do not have a Canadian say in the matter, especially if you are a yank.
It seemed all the pity really, as things had been going famously well for him as the gold fields had been kind, health had been kinder, and God had been kindest of all in John Keirnan had bought low, sold high, went in early, got out quick, and now had banging along in his bosom enough gold to retire and two horses that any cowboy would be proud to be aquatinted with.
Hell the sun had been shining, a chickadee singing "phoebe" on a branch and a warm south wind was caressing his face as he was riding home from Skagway to the Peace River, so who in the world gets shot off a good horse on a sunny day riding to a place called peace, but a Yank in the Canadian bush.
It happened though and there was no doubting about it happening. A full ball fired behind a dwarf spruce that hit him like a sledge and stopped his heart, but not before he heard that lightning electric crack of lead breaking the air.
It might have been idolatry mixed with religion which saved Keirnan as in his breast pocket he was carrying a big nugget which was the first gold he struck past the Klondike and nestled in his shirt was an epistle given by his Saintly Mother with orders to read often in order to keep him from immoral women in the territory, because sure as being shot, John Keirnan took the full load into that nugget, drove it into his little Bible and all the same the thump stopped his heart as certain if a mule kicked him there.
He didn't really know it was dying, as he thought he smelled Indian beans cooking. You know those lovely sweet earthy beans those Missouri River Indians boil up with some of that little black eared sweet corn, but that is what he was smelling as he found himself floating off his horse into the sky, now filled with Angelic light and that chickadee seemed to be playing pretty music now.
It all seemed wonderful until the floating stopped, as John was not on his way to heaven, but on his way down. No, it was not to hell, but it was to a gorge forty feet below.
That might sound not like such a good thing, but it was good. Sure I know you are thinking that John is dead, so what is a fall going to do but kill him twice, but for that Yank who just happened to be my Grandad and why I know this tale, it was a day of miracles as John Keirnan hit that shale and the impact started his heart as blessed as if it was CPR.
It hurt like hell, but when you get the wind knocked out of you twice, once by a bullet and the other by a mountain of shale, you don't have allot of breath to say, "Damnation that hurt!", as you just hiss in little breaths hoping you will die so it all goes away.
There was another miracle that day though in it kept him from moaning as the big Frenchman peered over the gorge at the lifeless Yank, as the Kabecker was heard muttering as he jacked another round into his Winchester, "Non, balle non de rebut sur l'homme mort. Laissez le loup l'enterrer."
Don't waste ammunition on shooting dead folks. The law of the frugal north.
Keirnan laid there with an ache all over he could not place. The wind was now hissing through the gorge in the trees and the day just did not seem all that bright any longer.
Then the Frenchman and a softer voice was heard, "Rien ! Il ont probablement le couteau et les choses, mais ne pas monter vers le bas cet endroit comme je pourrais obtenir tué. Nous prenons des chevaux et vivons bon."
Keirnan could not understand, but it was something about not climbing down to him and they would just take the horses and live good.
The soft voice said, "Le nom de Dieu, ont la pitié."
"Oui, yuz prays petit cherie for diable has us live high and we pays in hell later", the Frenchie said in broken English.
Keirnan laid there not thinking about anything except he felt broken from his ears to his toes. It felt like hell to move and it felt like hell to lay there with those rocks jamming into him, but somewhere in all that feeling it just felt numb and that was the only food his soul needed at the moment to keep him alive.
That had been fifty seven days before as the Yank crawled out of that gorge and somehow limped his way to an outpost where a Constable smoking his pipe had promised to look for a "frenchman and madam" after the got done smoking his pipe and eating his supper, but the problem seemed his pipe never went out and that plate of beans just kept growing.
In that the American had decided to follow the trail himself as justice was not pipe smoke and a plate of beans.
The post was a good lesson which he now carried with him from post to post, as Keirnan retrieved little things of his after a beginning lengthy legal dispute as those Canadians sure could buy stolen property cheap from the Frenchman and his wife, but seemed to have glue on their fingers in giving them up.
A judge of some sort finally just to get rid of Keirnan wrote up a paper about the crime and what was stolen, and if John Keirnan could prove the things were his on this trail, then the Hudson Bay factors would having to be giving it up as stolen is stolen even when it comes to Yanks in Canada.
That is what brought Gramps to the end of the road outpost and looking fondly at a horse he was well familiar with. A Nez Peirce appaloosa, ugly brown grey, but a loud blanket on the rump, still wearing all the jewelry the American had bestowed on the animal.
Keirnan looked at the horse and slid his hand onto his pistol, expecting to meet the Frenchman. Instead out stepped Constable Frobisher R. Chutney of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, attempting to mount his new horse.
"Hi", Keirnan greeted the Mountie. The Mountie in typical non emotion simply studied the stranger as some new criminal to arrest.
About this time the factor of the company stepped out with the priest in those parts, an Artimore Snuff and Pere Morrell or the blackrobe as the breeds called him.
Keirnan met their stares and started up, "Pere, I would like to introduce you to me, a man about to perform a Catholic miracle in I bet with two words I can make this horse throw up his head, whinny and come to me".
"Sacre bleu," the priest scoffed as the factor tapped out his pipe on the porch post studying it all.
"Whiskey Jack," Keirnan called out and the horse with Mountie attached spun to the owner and nose bumped the Yank's chest.
"Sacre bleu," the pere frowned again.
"I'll do one better blackrobe", Keirnan said smiling, "I predict under this saddle is carved the name John Keirnan and this Mountie bought this horse from a murdering Frenchman, and there was a little paint mare somewhere trailing along too."
"Who are you?," The Mountie sternly inquired.
"Prince Albert," Keirnan shot back.
Sometimes I think if you melted down the glacier of a Mountie, you would find in that little puddle a smear of emotion on the surface, like a scum on an over brewed tea. In Canada to be a Mountie you just have to not be alive or have had all hope extinguished sometime around your fifth birthday.
That is the way it is, as all those Ottawa liberal writers all make it that way in stories. Mounties are always emotional retards, women are suffering busy bodies, factors are always company men, Scot bookkeepers are always cheating the Indians and Metis breeds out of everything, Indians are always idiots and breeds are always cut throats and Frenchmen.........well they always star in tales as something the world should have drown at birth in bullying the English.
Then there is the rest of Canada, which I swear, those liberal writers want all aborted from life, as in every damn story you read, they always got some woman betraying her husband, some guy freezing to death and the whole lot killing each other in the last sentence.
Those liberals in Ottawa must be thee most suicidal cowards in the world, as they want the rest of Canada dead in a snow bank with wolverines pissing and chewing on them, as the elites live in their little city watching America as their pastime in forever thinking they can do it better.
I have yet to meet one of these Canucks with keyboard or a mic who didn't think they were Barack Obama with a halo around their every thought.
I don't think there is a Canadian though who ever thought of anything, but when you put a legal paper in front of them they would dance on their heads if it ordered them to.
That was the paper which the American had do his talking for him. There is something about fair play which vaporizes in a Canadian's soul when he is bested in a good criminal deal by having to have his sticky fingers unglued from horses and several sable pelts that happened to be discovered on the books that the Frenchman unloaded.
Keirnan learned more from the Metis breeds than the white breeds in the log huts, because Keirnan was taking things from the whites and the breeds were willing to give a whole lot more as it seemed the Frenchie, now named Tweet LaMarue had in wrestling broke the back of two of the breeds all in good fun.
The cripples did not find much humor in it, nor in losing the money they didn't have to lose that the factor only had on the books, as only white folks had things like money.
LaMarue had made a mistake while drinking the diable brew of the Jamaica in he was heading east now to get into his country soon as possible in Quebec, as knew of some Montangie caches he meant to live high off of, as he had sold about everything from "his great northern prosperity" as he called it.
The Frenchie mentioned a white rock area of hissing streams and one of the Metis knew the haunted area and gladly directed the American into the devil's lair with this French caracajou lurking there to have the Yank do the deed, because the Yank fully intended to do the deed.
Keirnan had dug out the bullet from his Bible, had it recast over a trapper's fire, and loaded it into his own 44 40 cartridge as he fully intended to deliver it to the Frenchman and follow it up with a round to that she bitch in her nom de Deiu.
As he loped along, he let his mind wander about the vista ahead. Wilderness is a living demon he thought, always foreboding and looking to possess your soul by murder.
The Indians all had stories about her from the lower states to the territories. They all told of the little people there, the great white killer, the Sasquatch all there lurking to explain why so many of their kind disappeared and why that madness which seizes all that venture there in the haunting moans of no explanation there sent a shiver up the spine on lonely nights when you considered going back there.
He had been in the wilderness and skirted the end of the road posts, but was now fascinated to touch the stampede, the last plains in Canada now opening to those wretched masses from somewhere now ploughing the land before him literally.
Keirnan had found the Frenchman's trail two weeks before. He slid his hands in the round hoof prints of the mules he and his wife were legal owners of. Nel had a loose shoe, and the Yank cursed the Frenchie saying, "I will kill that bastard if he ruins that mare", and then, he mused that he was intent on killing that bastard for more serious reasons, but then, could there be more serious reasons for killing a man than his ruining a good horse.
The name though LaMarue went through his head like a song which would not quit. Over and over he heard the melody to the steady beat of Whiskey Jack's hoofs muffled on the prairie sod.
The Yank found himself saying it as the plunge of the horse brought it in gasps from his mouth.
"Talking to yourself now", he smirked at himself, and then the word, "LaMarue" rolled from him again in a comforting note.
It was a pretty name really he thought. Asses should have Dickens names like "Pecksniff" or something off of old crusted tombstones. LaMarue flowed though like a warm wind melting the snow after a too long winter. The kind of day you woke cold and stiff, but the sun warmed you and the next thing you knew a robin was singing and the little springs were running happily over the creek beds bringing them to life.
"LaMarue", he said again and the word warmed him in it's warmth. Then he thought of the murderer feeling the first bullet to his gut from the Winchester and Keirnan smiled again warmly.
He knew that the tracks were growing steadily fresher from the ones he had found on the trail. Three weeks old were now maybe a week old and he studied in his mind the time it would take to reach the place the Metis laid out with sticks to the southeast. There were 12 sticks marking 12 rivers and streams he had to cross. Seven were behind him, and the Frenchman must have been close to putting up camp in the devils lair and it would take him a few days to scout and start breaking into the Indian caches there raiding traps, stoves and whatever other plunder he could carry away to Quebec and barter away for whatever Frenchmen barter for.
The American sat in the hollow of a sand bluff unseen. He watched a Doukhobors immigrant behind a plough being pulled by 13 of their women. Each pushing on a neck yoke in pairs.
Saving the horses or too tight to buy them, but making the women pull the plough.
A woman's place was in the home, and these women would have been happy to have been there barefoot and pregnant, instead of hooked to a plough.
Keirnan put the sites of his Winchester on the man. It would have done the women a favor to pull the trigger, but then white men in Canada have their females pull ploughs, red men sell them for goods, but if that is what women put up with, it wasn't his responsibility to set them free.
They could pull their own triggers.
He crossed the twelfth divide two days later and slowed his pace. The tracks were worn from a rain, but he knew by the lay of the land before him where anyone would go. They would follow that caribou trail right to that woods looming like a black shroud as any predator would.
Whatever catches the eye is what catches the wolf and that is the chain of nature's seeing is believing.
The waters there really did hiss, but it wasn't from demons. It was from falling fast and hard over little falls.
A wolf, one of those big white buffalo wolves or caribou wolves padded across his path. Instinctively the Winchester came up and instinctively the rifle came down. Keirnan would have loved to have killed that assassin. Too many times he had listened at night to packs killing dogs, killing moose, killing horses, killing deer, killing just for the fun of it, with the morning revealing bones, bits of hair and that smudge of death spread over a living room size area of what was life.
Sending wolves to be trim on Arctic parkas was always a pleasure. Keirnan hoped for a second chance when the world was balanced with one dead French couple or I guess there would not be any shot if it was one dead Yank.
He moved silently on the Appaloosa and the horse showed no signs of anything in danger, but then Keirnan had no signs when he took a bullet in his Bible months before. He lingered by a clump of aspens not willing in the light to cross the open, in case, the Frenchman was watching his back trail.
So he sat watching, listening to the black duck and widgeon flap upon the waters of a pool unseen. The mosquito hum of life looking to suck at his being in survival, and that wolf, howled in the distance now when wolves did not howl in the day.
Probably some old dog looking for a mate in challenging new territory, as why else would he betray his position.
Sleep found him awaking to the twilight and he took out his pack to munch some hardtack and moose jerky. Whiskey Jack on his picket had been grazing noiselessly and the man hoped for a night where he could cross the open unseen and then see to finding the Frenchman and wife in the night by their fires.
He crossed it noiselessly at 11 that night. Expecting a bullet to find him somewhere out of the darkness, but none came. There were no fires, no sounds but that of an owl speaking to the night.
Daylight found him with a sound he knew as he spoke to the wild language of the animals. A crow was talking in a refrain of contempt that it spoke of humans. The man had not found the Frenchman, but the crow had.
Soon enough, there came to him that nasal bray of a mule cutting through the morning chill with a welcome warmth.
By reflex his rifle was in hand and he was moving like a mist through the trees. The mules would be close to camp and so would Nel. The camp would be on the water, just above it on a bank, open enough for a breeze to keep the gnats and mosquitos away.
Keirnan circled wide of the mules as mules would warn of him worse than the crow, and easy as finding a blood trail, he spied the white of a tarp which would be the Frenchman's camp, and in that the American found a comfortable patch of brush to watch from to let the event unfold.
The camp was empty and he wondered as the hairs on the back of his neck rose if somehow he had blundered and the Frenchman was warned and was now circling him. He shook it off in telling himself that he had been too careful, but still it nagged at him.
Over an hour and nothing moved. Was it the Frenchman's camp? Had he fled? Was he just out raiding caches early with the wife and that is all it was?
Then he saw her, she was dragging something back to camp. It was a bear skin. The Frenchman had shot himself a black bear and had her scraping the membrane off of it down by the shore.
It took him by surprise when she stood and stretched, and pulled off her dress leaving her naked as she started her absolutions in washing off the bear fat and smell.
He watched her as he had never seen a woman naked in his life and he puzzled over how appealing she was, but then he wondered in revulsion how this beauty could be so ugly in the life she led.
She shivered as she got out of the water and stood by the fire drying herself still nude. He never felt shame in watching her and it never occurred to her. Apparently his murder was a license to look.
He did look and that look was for the next three days as he studied her from her rising to her rolling into her blankets, always making certain that the rabbit robe was tucked back not to be in her face.
It was on day two that he had moved closer and heard her exclaim before she disrobed, "Le nom de Dieu, me livrent de cette vie pendant que je sin pas."
Keirnan pondered the words. It was said so fast he didn't catch it all, but it was something about calling to God to deliver her as she was not a sinner.
He laughed in revulsion to the dichotomy of it all, as murder and robbery was hardly casting a first prayer without sin. The hypocrisy of it all made him want to shoot her and send her to hell right there as fury grew in him, but what stopped him was he wanted that Frenchman, Monseiur LaMarue. If he shot her now, he might end up as dead as she was in alerting her beau.
He still fondled his firearm muttering about "name of God" and "sin" and picturing plugging her as she worked on that bear skin, thinking what a great shroud it would make until that white wolf turned her into shit.
"What the hell?", he thought as he watched her now kneeling by the chopping block and praying with those same words coming to him, "Nom de Deiu", and other nonsense about begging God for forgiveness as He knew she was a good girl, but was traded to the Frenchman two years ago by her poor father as the Monseiur had paid off his company debts.
"Excuses", Keirnan huffed in contempt and watched as she walked to Nel and rubbed her sore leg.
"Her shoe is loose you bitch, "Keirnan scowled, "Pull the damn shoes off and don't push her too hard and she will not need you rubbing on her.
Been loose for weeks and you could have cared less".
That night the same prayers rose to his ears starting out with "Nom de Dieu".
As she worked on the hide the next morning, a "Halo" broke the silence and made her start. It was the bonjour of her husband as he pulled into camp a mule loaded with traps stolen from the Indian caches.
Keirnan jumped with glee as he remembered that voice deep in his brain as it figured on his being dead months ago. It was not a voice which was going to die and eagerly without remorse Keirnan moved rapidly to close the distance as he wanted this close and personal.
He heard the woman scream in a start as he stopped in shock to see the Frenchman pull hard at her and lift her dress over her head, and then shove her hard over a log.
Keirnan felt like something of his had been violate as he had found comfort in watching this naked form for days as his personal repayment for what they had done to him, and now that serenity of her bathing, drying by the fire, and her damn "nom de Dieu", had the Frenchman stripping himself, exposing that big belly, that flat ass, all pasty white and covered with black hair, proceeding like an animal in rut.
The Frenchman drove into his wife hard and made her scream, and then rode her into the bark of the tree was bent over.
The Yank was breathlessly fixated as he strode deliberately to the scene. There was the reason for killing the Frenchman which brought him here, but now the purpose for shooting him was what was going on before him.
It reminded him of the way a stud horse would take over a herd and rape the mares savagely to make them abort the bastards of the former stud. How a tom cat with that prickly shaft tortures a she. How a boar pig squeals and corkscrews it home to a sow just enduring the coitus.
There was nothing but animal in what that song of LaMarue was doing to that woman.
It was such a perfect target John Keirnan thought as he watched the asshole glide forward and back as the body slid over this petite woman. He slid the chamber open slightly to check the brass was there as he had a hundred times the past days, and from half cock, he went to full cock and smoothly shouldered the Winchester.
The sites came up to that dark hole and for a moment he calculated about "What if the bullet blew through and hit the woman, but he was more figuring on if the bullet tearing through his ass would blow right up into the chest and deprive Keirnan the satisfaction of standing over the Frenchman and telling him why he was about to die.
With that, Keirnan shifted a few inches right and fired.
Shit flew, but bloodied mist flew too as well as bone. Keirnan's aim was crippling on and not dead on as intended. The lead bullet shattered the pelvic bone just to the right of the spine which sent a paralyzing shockwave through the Frenchman, and Monsieur collapsed as his former crying wife in pain was now desperately screaming about suffocating weight and que s'est produit.
What had happened.
Keirnan loaded another round and closed the distance as the wife struggling got enough leverage to scrape herself out from under the paralyzed hulk pinning her.
She was bleeding from the rough bark as she turned and her wide eyes met Keirnan's. Her husband from weight now rolled off the tree and landed sitting up, his legs splayed useless, but arms propping him as he glared at the man with the Winchester before him.
It was all in slow motion and Keirnan heard himself say, "Bonjour" and the French hulk swore at him.
"That is my mare over there Monsieur LaMarue," the Yank nodded to the horse and then said in French, "mine de cheval, vous étole".
LaMarue called back in broken English, "I steal no horse. Trade her up on the fort from Chootney".
"When you steal horses Frenchie, don't sell them to the Mounties as I got that geld back too," Keirnan replied.
The Frenchman's eyes narrowed black with murder, but added, "You shoot wrong. I no steal. You in big trouble with Mountie now".
"Well that bullet I just put in you is the one you put in me, so I was just returning your property," Keirnan noted, and then added, "but if it isn't your bullet, I guess I better take it back the hard way," and with that he sat down his rifle and drew his hunting knife from his belt.
All the while the naked wife watched and listened, eyes darting from her husband to Keirnan. Keirnan noted a fear in her eyes and a relief as she was now looking at a husband who would not be capable to follow her with retribution now if she fled, providing she was not executed in this hand of God sentence.
Keirnan stepped forward and the Frenchman barked at his wife, "Get pistol", as the Yank moved from his gun.
Keirnan knew the Frenchman dropped his belt with his clothes and where it lay a few feet off. The wife jumped as if to obey, but she herself was gambling now for her own life in weighing if this stranger would do the deed to rescue her and if she helped by not getting the pistol, then perhaps she might live, as after all in chivalry she was a woman and she might be spared.
The American calmly said, "Nom de Deiu, deliver the pistol to your husband as you are not a sinner."
The woman flicked her eyes over Keirnan as she calculated her prayer recited back to her. A prayer recited naked before God, but heard by this stranger, a man who could have came and taken her, and yet he had not.
That was at least self control and a something she could trust as he knew her words and had spoken them to her.
She chose to die then if death is what it would be, than to be raped later if she was wrong. She picked up her dress and walked to the pistol.
"Rapide", her husband urged her to give him his weapon as he would make this American pay with his life.
The wife picked up the pistol, and looking at her husband, and then back at Keirnan, she tossed it further away.
Furious the Frenchman grunted, "Putain déloyale", "I kill you slow."
A traitorous whore and Keirnan just had her as his best ally in the Canadian wilds.
"Does not appear like you are going to be murdering anyone soon," the Yank taunted, and then threw the knife, sinking it into the Frenchman's groin, with, "It is not a pistol, but it might do in a pinch".
It was strange to behold this from the American's eyes, as the Frenchman recoiled as he was concerned about the wound, as if having his nut sack cut off now would make a difference with his being dead in a few minutes.
"You take me back to trial Yankee. Obey law," the Frenchman was now reasoning knowing about American fair play.
"You had your trial Frenchman, "Keirnan growled, " and the jury of your wife just sentenced you".
"You murderer," LaMarue now judged.
"No LaMarue, it is mercy, as hauling you 400 miles to a post on a travois, you would go septic in a day with all that shit leaking in you, and it is kindness to not torture you and leave you here", Keirnan factually stated.
"You bastard," the Frenchman spit.
"Bang" the Winchester went and a 44 size hold blew through the top of the Frenchman's foot.
LaMarue jumped not from any pain as he was beyond feeling below the belt, but just the horror of being violated in a part of his murderous body being blown away.
"Fight me Yank bastard!", he spat a brown streak of chaw at Keirnan and followed with, "I cut your tits off and make a cuny of your ball sack!"
"That is mighty bold talk for a dead man," Keirnan spat back.
Silence ensued over that forested nook of Ontario encroaching upon the liberty of the coming of the plains of Manitoba. LaMarue's name did fit him, but it wasn't like a spring wind. No, LaMarue was that sound, that groan from a large bear when they are down and know they are dead, but damned if they would worry you slowly and slam you around for a few days just to get a good kill on you for showing them they aren't the lord of the plain, but just another breeding louse that dies with the flick of God's hand.
LaMarue so soft in fur and so deadly in fang, if he could just get a hold of you one more murderous time.
"I don't know the Catholic, but Hail Mary and God have mercy on you as this is your last rights you murderous thieving excuse," Keirnan judged and pulled the trigger sending a 44 into the heart of the criminal.
Executions are not pretty, but then the pretty is in the justice in knowing that a murderer isn't going to be murdering some other poor miscreant riding along on a summer day listening to chickadees with a Bible in his shirt.
Blood leaked from the Frenchman's mouth, and from his chest frothy air bubbled, and while no breath was left there, Keirnan fired another round into the Frenchman as he was not going to be murdered again in someone raising from the dead in the way the American had.
"Making certain," he said to the widow almost apologetic and went to pick up his mare.
The woman looked bewildered, lost in her liberty and like all beaten folks not knowing what to do with freedom they yearn for when it comes answered in a prayer.
She followed Keirnan and blurted out, "You hear my prayer".
He stopped and then moved on.
She followed and closed, "You hear my prayer".
"Oui," he said as he picked up the pack saddle and moved to Nel.
He fished out the hammer, hoof pincher and nails, and went to work in fixing the loose shoe. The woman came closer and said, "Are you good man?"
"Who the hell is good as bad men will lie to you and tell you they are good," he replied trying to act busier to ignore this woman.
"I not sinner. You know," she blurted out in tears.
"Look lady, I'm not going to kill you so, go and sin no more," Keirnan heard himself saying while he thought, "Leave me to hell alone".
"I know," she replied and sat down on the ground, and added, "I sorry, really sorry, sorry for you shot, sorry for all this".
Keirnan worked on in silence.
The woman sat for some time studying him and then started up again with, "Nom de Dieu, you hear my prayer. You see me. See naked and you not like him in.........." she trailed off.
"No not like him," he looked over at the sagging body of the murderer.
"You for prayer or you for him?", she asked.
Keirnan stopped and could not figure out what she asking and asked, "Que voulez-vous dire ? "
"You not take me because prayer or because you hunt him?," she explained.
"Both," he answered, "Prayer saved you from a bullet in that gun and getting him was what would settle the balance book".
"Oui", she said thoughtfully, "You no sinner. You honest too."
At that point he hit his thumb hammering a nail and he cussed, "Damn!".
"You go direction south?," she asked.
"That's where Yanks live," he replied.
"I go with you south and I not get violate by bad men", she studied him.
"I'll head you to Quebec oui, get you started. You get to your people and you no violate", he counseled.
"Non," she countered, "Papa sell me for debt, will sell again."
"You must have money from all that stealing," Keirnan countered.
"Not mine," she plead, "I no sinner".
"Well it ain't going to do any good to leave it all lying around here for some sinner to pick up. You didn't steal it, so you just make good with it, and then no one is selling you to anyone", Keirnan reasoned.
"Non," she countered, "I no sinner".
"Well give it to the church," Keirnan retorted and said, "Look I'll stake you a hundred dollars, no two hundred dollars, you can get a farm by the pere, a cow, and be watched over".
"Nom de Deiu," she repeated again earnestly, "You hear my prayer, no violate, tell true, I know trust you".
Keirnan had no idea what to do. He started loading the pack. He didn't sign on for any of this.
"How the hell did this turn from an "eye for an eye" to "widow to wife" talk being hinted at," he thought.
"I prove you trust me," she said as she started saddling a mule. "I throw pistol away. I no shoot, stab or kill you ever. I pay. I work go with you. Cook. Find horse lost. Set tent. Wash cloth. Sit watch while you sleep."
Keirnan just looked at her and shook his head as there was no arguing with no woman once she got something in her head. He whistled up Whiskey Jack, mounted him and had company in tow he never figured on.
No sir, that widow never shot, stabbed or killed John Keirnan ever. Sometimes though when you are out for justice, other things get in the way. No one can ever measure those Indian trappers getting their property back, that Pierre down on Lac La Homme that never got shot by LaMarue two years later over a fancy Savage rifle or him becoming a widower five years later as that wife just gave up in all that hopelessness.
Measure it by me though, because I am here, the product of those two as Gram sort of wore on that American and ended up convincing Grampa they both could trust each other in a good parle, somewhere south of the Saskatchewan in that in between land where the Missouri flows.
It was all in that nom de Dieu thing.
Nom de Dieu.
agtG
all rights reserved Lame Cherry
