Free Kanata by Don Gillmor

Cree woman he had left had borne a child, a boy, that his name was Tristan, and that she was variable in her attentions. He appealed to a friend to try to take the child from its mother and to send him to the trading post at Fort Augustus, where Thompson would claim him. Thompson thought about him nightly, a salted wound. A boy conceived in sin and left to fate.
    Meat was scarce, but Ignace found a dead horse in the forest. There were hundreds of wild horses in the mountains, their owners dead from smallpox. They banded together, ghostly herds that had lost any taste for servitude. The horse gave off a foul smell and they boiled the meat for an hour, but it made them all sick anyway.
    A week later Thompson shot a whitetail deer. Ignace immediately cut off its head with his long knife, and the deer suddenly stood up, headless and awful, blood spouting from its neck. It remained standing for almost a minute, a visceral reprimand, then fell over.
    â€œIt’s the devil,” said Ignace, who was an occasional and confused Christian.
    â€œIt’s only muscle and instinct,” Thompson said, observing the body. “The devil is elsewhere.”
    â€œIf you eat that meat, the devil will find his way inside you,” Ignace said.
    Thompson cut off a piece of its haunch, roasted it, and then ate it. The men regarded him with horror and suspicion. Ignace built up the coals and threw the carcass onto them.
    â€œYou can’t burn the devil,” Thompson said.
    I n the spring, Thompson left Charlotte and his family at Boggy Hall and tried to cross the mountains. A small band of Indians approached from the south. When they got closer, Thompson saw that it was Kootenae Appee, the Peigan war chief. He was still magnificent, a foot taller than Thompson, lean, his face dabbed in colour, a small mirror hanging from a leather strap around his neck so that his enemies could see themselves before they died.
    â€œKoo Koo Sint,” he said to Thompson, using his Indian name, and unfolding the smile that conveyed both friendship and menace. “The mountains are not yours.”
    â€œThey aren’t anyone’s now,” Thompson replied.
    Kootenae Appee’s world was shrinking. Like Napoleon, he was fighting wars on every front, stretched thin, his empire no longer easily defined and impossible to defend. His enemies had guns. The Kootenay, the Flathead, the Snake. Appee was fighting the North Westers and to the south, the Americans. He had sent a small party out to meet the explorers Lewis and Clark. In the raid, one Peigan was shot in the stomach by Lewis and another stabbed in the heart.
    â€œHow is Saukamappee?” Thompson asked.
    â€œDead,” Kootenae Appee said. He had a rifle in a sheath. His men were armed. Thompson had armed the Snake Indians, enemy to the Peigan. He was arming everyone, partly the result of simple trade, but also to keep the plains in balance, to prevent unchristian slaughter. But he knew the plains were becoming unbalanced in new ways, that traders were pushing farther west, and the Indians were no longer as accommodating.
    No one had accumulated as much knowledge of the terrain or the Indians as Thompson had. And this had given him a curious power, one he was increasingly aware of. Theterritory was held in a delicate balance and he worried that it wouldn’t hold. When Fort Augustus had been attacked, Thompson had arrived there to find a man standing naked and bootless, a larval spectre squinting into the afternoon sun. A group of Blood Indians led by the brother of Old White Swan cleaned out everything: clothing, tobacco, guns, and shot. Thompson heard that the brother of Old White Swan used his new arsenal to make war upon the Crow Mountain Indians. He killed several men with his gun, but when it jammed he was set upon by a Crow with breath like lamp oil who cut off his ears and dug out his heart.
    â€œThe mountains are a dangerous place,” Kootenae Appee said