The Mystery of the Moonlight Murder Page 2

  “My uncle says Gabriel Dumont was one of the best fighters in the West,” said John. “We’ve met him, you know.” Ed gave an awkward smile.

  “Is that so?” said Sergeant English, raising an eyebrow

  dramatically. “I think your uncle’s right. Mr. Dumont was indeed an exceptional soldier for the Métis. I thought I had heard he visited you from time to time, back when you lived in Carlton.”

  There was a slight accusatory tone in the sergeant’s voice. William bristled. “Yes, and the Royal North West Mounted Police would visit us too. We’ve always opened our doors to everyone,” said William defensively. “You know that.”

  “Yes. Too bad Dumont was on the wrong side of the law,” the sergeant said.

  There was a tense silence before the sergeant continued. “Like I said, there were about five hundred of us and we marched up from Swift Current to Battleford to try and stop the raids. First we got the news from Duck Lake that nine civilians and three officers had been killed in March by Dumont and Indian rebels. Then we got word Chief Poundmaker had a bunch of his men on the move, ready to attack.

  “But Chief Poundmaker just wanted to talk, didn’t he?” pressed John. “He even sent a message ahead of him to say so. His tribe was hungry and they were angry that the government wasn’t helping them, like they had promised,” said John, always ready to defend the underdog.

  John’s mother looked like she was about to say something, but the sergeant caught her eye as if to say “Let it go.”

  “I can’t say things were perfect for the Indians,” replied Sergeant English, “but everyone was struggling. Most everyone’s still struggling.” He paused, as if attempting to figure out how to best tell his story.

  “You see, some of the Indians had begun to break into farm houses. They carted away supplies from the general stores, killed cattle and took folks’ horses. Now I have to admit, the Cree pretty much returned to their reservation. They had left Battleford before our force arrived. But some of them weren’t innocent and they continued to loot the towns. A few days later, we marched west up the Battle River in pursuit of the Cree, near their own camp.”

  “The battle of Cut Knife Hill,” said William quietly. “Exactly. I have to admit, they counter-attacked fairly well. We were ordered out of there.”

  John squirmed in his seat and looked at his father, who seemed to read his son’s mind.

  “And Chief Poundmaker gave the order not to give chase to the officers,” William added calmly. “Isn’t that right, Sergeant?” The sergeant looked annoyed, while John felt proud that his father had spoken up. From what John had understood Chief Poundmaker had never wanted to fight.

  “Anyway,” said Sergeant English. “Poundmaker’s dead now. So is Dumont. Or at least I thought he was.”

  Ed scrunched his forehead. “Dumont is dead. He died two years ago. Everyone knows that.”

  Sergeant English frowned and nodded. “I know it. But there’s a new problem, and it’s one that’s bringing back a lot of bad memories for me. There’s someone new in town, a young man who apparently just stepped off the train two weeks ago from Winnipeg. He’s been stirring up the Métis and some of the Indian tribes. Even some of the settlers around Borden. He’s got a powerful way with words and he’s already starting to gain a following.

  “What does that have to do with Gabriel Dumont?” asked William.

  “He’s André Dumont, Gabriel Dumont’s nephew,” the sergeant revealed. “And I’ve got a feeling he wants to finish off what his uncle started.”

  Chapter 3

  The Rawleigh’s Man

  There was nothing but moon and stars, layered by a blanket of darkness. A man paced back and forth beside a small tent.

  “He’s dead? What do you mean he’s dead?” the man asked in anger and disbelief.

  Another man, sitting on a large rock, looked sullen. “He surprised me. I didn’t expect him there, out in the fields like that. It just kind of… went off,” the sitting man answered. “When he already saw me, I didn’t want to let him see my face.” The man stopped his pacing for a moment and thought, listening for any noises above the sound of crickets. He removed his hat and ran his fingers through his hair, something he always did during times of high stress.

  “So you shot him. Now are there children in this family left behind? Will there be any children left alone because of what you’ve done?

  The man on the rock shook his head. “No, he was old, remember? And they didn’t have kids. What’s gotten into you?”

  The other man hesitated, and drew a deep breath. “You were there for one simple reason,” he stated, stopping to stare at the man who sat still on a large rock. “And now everything has gotten out of control.”

  “I didn’t mean to. Look, what’s wrong with you?” the man on the rock demanded.

  The standing man glared. “I have an important path, one I should have taken long ago. Now tell me, did you at least finish what you started to do?” The man on the rock nodded. “Good.”

  And with that the standing man swung his leg over his horse and looked down. He was about to say something else but instead simply nodded and rode down the trail, leaving the other man to brood under the waning moon.

  ***

  William stood after milking the family’s two cows and stretched his stiff back. He walked to the barn doorway with Tip, the black and white family dog. Morning had just started to break across the Saskatchewan sky and it was a time of day he rarely missed seeing.

  It felt good to be healthy, William decided, which only someone who had been terribly ill could understand. After

  serious bouts of tuberculosis in Ontario, a doctor recommended the dry air of the prairies to calm his respiratory problems down. Once he got to Saskatchewan, all those breathing problems had gone away. He was a different man here.

  John, who was piling wood in preparation for winter, now three months away, and Elmer, who was feeding the chickens, both stopped to watch the morning unfold, too. Soft daylight began to flood across the prairie, turning light bronze wheat fields into blankets of golden crimson. In a few weeks, the swaying wheat would be harvested. Selling the crop would make the months of hard work pay off—at least, if they could get a good price.

  “Elmer Diefenbaker!” Mary was standing in the doorway. She had obviously been admiring the sunrise, too, but was also watching the way Elmer—his face turned up to the sky—was absent-mindedly pouring chicken grain all over his feet.

  “If you can’t watch what you’re doing, I can find another job for you. And I can guarantee that it won’t be as pleasant as this one,” she warned sternly, implying that an extra turn cleaning out the cow paddocks was on Elmer’s horizon if he wasn’t careful.

  “Sorry, Mother,” Elmer replied, doing his best to spread the small mountain of chicken grain more evenly around the yard. The chickens swarmed around him, their heads jerking forward and back.

  “And when you’re done with that,” she called out again, “you can help your brother stack wood. If we work on it a little bit each day we might just survive the winter.”

  Mary Diefenbaker liked to make everything a high stakes game. Life was all about surviving and it certainly wasn’t a game of chance or a game for fools. Life was about being prepared and it was as simple as that.

  William, on the other hand, had a bit of the dreamer in him. It was the other part of the reason that had led them to board the train west to Saskatchewan in the first place, aside from drier air for his lungs. This was far from the civilized roads and tall buildings of Ontario and into the empty nothingness the Canadian government liked to call ‘The Last Best West.’ It was where idealists, like William, believed small paradises might be found. Mind you, because of the terrible conditions of the train ride, half way there he wanted to turn around and go back. But Mary wouldn’t hear of it. You don’t start something and then not finish it, no matter how hard things get.

  People like William Diefenbaker had the courage t
o go west. People like Mary Diefenbaker had the courage to stay. Somewhere in between, couples like this completed each other across the empty stretches of land and made the West what it was—a dream that could only unfold one field at a time.

  As Ed returned from the north field, where he had just finished mending a hole in the fence, John saw him disappear into

  his tiny one-room house built on an adjoining quarter section of land south of his brother’s. Uncle Ed had his own place but everyone generally ate supper together. It was at his uncle’s house where John slept, too, since the three-room homestead was so cramped with the rest of the family. In fact, Elmer had to sleep in the kitchen each night. Although there was no doubt that the Diefenbakers were poor, they worked the two quarter sections of land as a team and survived by sticking together.

  William joined his boys at the woodpile, taking in the work that had so far been done. The high puff of dark hair on his head moved up and down as he walked. John noticed his father looked like he was lost in thought.

  “Do you remember when we first found this land?” William asked them.

  “Hard to believe,” he continued, “that it was three years ago. At one point, all we had was a stake in the ground. Section Eight, Township 418. That’s what was printed on it, remember? That’s all we had. And now look what we’ve done,” he declared proudly, his hand sweeping across the sprawling landscape.

  John scratched his thick, wavy black hair and looked at the small thatched-roof barn where a handful of pigs snuffled the ground outside. The chicken coop, where Elmer had busied himself earlier, was alive with the sounds of clucking and grain-eating hens. He saw their own modest house, which was the centre of their lives, especially in winter. And then there

  was the land itself. The fields, once torn as the rich dark earth was overturned, were now bursting with wheat that would soon be ready to harvest. John knew his father was hoping for fairer wheat prices this year from the big grain companies. The family worked so hard for the money they earned.

  All across the Canadian prairies, the stories of homesteaders were stories of the countries of the world. For instance, although the Diefenbakers were originally German, they had been in Canada for a while. But the Schneiders next door only arrived from Germany six years ago. Other homesteaders in the province arrived from Norway, Sweden, the Ukraine, Russia, Poland, England, France, and Italy. And some were from other Canadian provinces and the United States where both white and black settlers had moved to take advantage of free land from the government.

  “We’ve done a lot of work, Father,” John had to admit. “We’re lucky, aren’t we?”

  “We sure are,” his father agreed quietly, and then he immediately looked wistful.

  “You know, I don’t know if I said this to you boys earlier, what with everything going on, but I’m real happy you’re both safe. John, that was a lot for you to see…a lot for you to deal with. But Mrs. Schneider was sure thankful you were there with Skipper.”

  John nodded. He was glad that he and Elmer had taught

  themselves to ride bareback. Their father had never gotten the hang of it and their mother was never interested. John and Elmer were both lean, which the horses probably appreciated, although John was a bit stockier than his younger brother. John’s dark, tight wavy hair contrasted with Elmer’s brown, straight hair.

  John had to admit the image of Hans Schneider just lying there, dead, was not something he could shake from his mind. He stacked four logs of wood neatly onto the pile as his mind raced backward to the events after he had found Gertrude Schneider cradling her dying husband in her arms. John had stayed only an extra moment and then rode Skipper as hard and fast as he could back home to let his father, mother, and uncle know, as Mrs. Schneider had asked. William left Mary with a loaded shotgun, and then ran to be with Gertrude. Mary barricaded the only door to the homestead with the wooden hutch just in case the shooter came to the Diefenbaker farm. Meanwhile, Uncle Ed quickly hitched up the horse team and travelled straight to the police station to report the tragedy.

  Now two days later, it was time to bury Hans Schneider on his farm, in a hole that neighbours, including William, had earlier helped dig. Gertrude Schneider was now a widow, with no children to help her.

  “Who do you think did it, Father?” asked John. “Who would do such a thing to Mr. Schneider?”

  William shook his head and watched the sun inch higher in its daily pact with the sky.

  “I don’t know, son. If I knew, I would have told Sergeant English yesterday. It doesn’t make any sense to me,” he added. “But you don’t think it was Summer’s father, right?” John pressed.

  “Of course not. That doesn’t make any sense either,” his father answered quickly, reaching over to straighten a corner of the wood pile.

  John was happy to hear that his father still believed in the innocence of River’s Voice. It was a special day whenever he visited and brought Summer with him, who was eleven, just a year younger than John. It felt like they had grown up together, even though it had only been about three years. Summer would often help John do his chores. This provided an endless source of fascination for her, seeing what was involved in feeding pigs, cows, and chickens. Although her family had done some farming on the reservation where she lived, it had not been very successful. Instead, her father did a great deal of trapping in neighbouring woods in order to provide for them.

  “What do you think River’s Voice and Mr. Schneider were arguing about, Father?” asked John.

  “That’s not for us to worry about, John. It’s not our concern.” John wanted to say maybe it was because Mr. Schneider just didn’t like Indians, but he kept his mouth quiet. But the fact was

  John had overheard things. Like, when Mr. Schneider was complaining about other people to Uncle Ed or his father, especially about the Plains Cree Indians who lived in the area. He noticed his father would deflect any comments and just try to stick with topics that they could agree on. On the other hand, Mr. Schneider had been such a good neighbour to the Diefenbakers— helping them with the farm, being there if they needed anything. To John, it was strange that Mr. Schneider, an immigrant himself from Germany, had not been more tolerant of peoples’ differences.

  William took another glance at the work his boys were doing and then began to walk back to the house.

  “You boys finish your chores and then go get cleaned up. The service is at eleven this morning.”

  ***

  The short journey to the Schneider house was a silent affair in the Diefenbaker Schooner. That’s how everyone referred to their carriage. William and Ed’s brother Henry, a mechanic now living in Waukegan, Illinois, had modified their wagon by adding a canvas roof and two coal heaters inside. Then he had installed stovepipes rising several inches above the roof of the wagons. Winters were especially dangerous on the prairies. After John and his Uncle Ed nearly froze to death in a blizzard

  last winter, the family didn’t want to take any chances. Of course, it’s not as if the heaters needed to be on right now. William and Mary, dressed in their only church clothes, were already starting to break out into a sweat as the hot morning sun, so strong in August, beat down. It was only ten o’clock and the temperature was already eighty degrees Fahrenheit. They all stared straight ahead, lost in the circumstances that had brought them to their neighbour’s home.

  “There’s a storm brewing,” Mary stated, breaking the silence. Pointing to the western horizon she added, “It’ll hit tomorrow.” “That works out well. I’m going into Borden today to get supplies,” William commented.

  Although William couldn’t see anything himself, he trusted his wife’s instincts. She had always been the best weather vane he had ever laid eyes on.

  In the back of the covered wagon, Ed was quiet, staring off at the wisps of clouds scattered about the sky. John and Elmer relived the evening of two nights ago in their minds, although Elmer’s memory was of an awfully fast horse ride. Blue sure could go w
hen the spirit moved him. John’s mind kept flashing to the shadowy outline that had scurried into the forest and to poor Mr. Schneider, still as can be, in the arms of his distraught wife. He wondered if he should have given chase to the mysterious figure.

  “No one deserved what happened to Hans Schneider,”

  thought John. “It’s just not fair.”

  As the Diefenbaker wagon pulled up onto the long Schneider laneway, John fixed his intense, dark eyes on those who had already arrived. He saw about twelve people standing near Mrs. Schneider and recognized mostly everyone, including Pastor Mackenzie, who would be conducting the service. The boys frowned as they noticed the rectangular hole in the ground a few yards away with a mound of dirt beside it. John held his breath momentarily as he looked for signs of the body. He was certain that it must be in the wooden box under the large tarp he could see sitting on wooden slats.

  As the Diefenbakers got out of the carriage and began solemnly shaking hands with the others, John noticed that many pairs of eyes were fixated on him. He felt self-conscious but tried not to show it, staying in step with his parents and uncle who were making the rounds of saying hello to everyone. He could feel a trickle of sweat beading up on his scalp.

  Elmer nudged him. “Everyone’s staring at you, John,” he whispered. “You’re famous.”

  John hit him back, in the way brothers do. “I am not famous, Elmer. They’re just curious about what happened,” he countered, feeling very awkward.

  A few of the conversations seemed to be focused on Hans Schneider’s love of “the bottle,” as most of them called it. John knew that this meant whisky and alcohol in general. He didn’t

  know why some adults drank alcohol, but his mother believed that it was a serious sin.

  When another wagon, very different from the others, turned off the main trail and onto the lane that led to the farm house, it drew everyone’s gaze. The boys felt their stomachs flip in excitement. Mr. Wright!