Free A Good Man by Guy Vanderhaeghe Page A

illuminated side of Front Street, stands Fort Benton’s commercial district. Every third false-fronted establishment is a saloon blaring a fearsome hubbub – the wheeze of concertinas, the jangle of pianos, the squeals of hurdy-gurdy girls, the whoops and curses of roustabouts, mule skinners, and bullwhackers. Drunks piss in the streets, whores toss chamber pot slops from second-storey windows and shout down to potential customers graphically detailed descriptions of pleasures on offer. Nightly, violence erupts over gambling losses, insults real and imagined, and sporting women. These disputes are most commonly settled by brawls of the eye-gouging, ear-biting variety, but occasionally knives are drawn, shots are fired, and a corpse results.
    However, in the last few years Front Street has been easing its way towards respectability. Ideas of law and order might be notional and shaky, but Benton is tipping into the future, into what town boosters call progress. The men who lived the old wild life are withering on the vine. Up north, the North-West Mounted Police have lowered the whiskey trade into the ground and shovelled dirt on the coffin. The trappers who established the town as a fur-trading centre are long gone. Most of the beaver were trapped out years ago, and there is no market for the few who are still left slapping the water. The trade in buffalo hides rattles along, but each year the take of robes is a little less. It’s clear to everyone that the days of the buffalo, like the beaver before them, are numbered.
    There isn’t much money to be had by striking off into the wilderness. Enterprise has polished its shoes, put on a frock coat, and set up shop in town. Real wealth comes to those who have cornered the market in supplying the NWMP posts in Canada, or distributing goods shipped by steamer to Fort Benton from the great world beyond. The town is the commercial hub of Montana, and expectations run high that when settlers start arriving in the Canadian North-West, Benton will play the same role there. Everybody confidently predicts it will be the next Chicago. Michael Dunne hopes that’s true. Chicago was good to him, and he wasn’t even in on the ground floor of the boom. It was good to Randolph Tarr too, until he got carried away with speculating.
    Wedged in among saloons with names like the Jungle, the Extradition, and the Occident are new businesses catering to a more solid class of citizen. A black barber has opened Foster’s Tonsorial Palace, which provides hot and cold baths, shampooing, the latest in hairstyles, and beard-dyeing, black or brown. Patrons of the Overland Hotel are assured that accommodation suitable for ladies and families is available. Mrs. E. Smith has set up shop in the same hotel, offering accomplished and fashionable dressmaking for gentlewomen. Cabinetmaker A.M. Stork promises plans and specifications drawn to customer approval. W.S. Wetzel’s store lists everything necessary to provision a cozy home: shoes, clothing, staple and fancy groceries, dry goods, cigars, shelf hardware, toys, glassware, notions, toilet articles, drugs, patent medicines, paints, oils, tin ware, crockery, tools, as well as fine wines and champagne. The members of the Benton bourgeoisie are beginning to turn their noses up at the old stand-bys of merriment: gin, beer, Hostetter’s and Plantation Bitters, Shawhan, O.K., and Eldorado whiskey, or that most potent frolic-promoter and sorrow-killer of all, pure grain alcohol.
    Buds of civilization are showing everywhere, but the side of the road that Dunne travels tells a different story. The Benton levee is stacked high with barrels, crates, and bales of goods intended for every town in Montana, but freighters now judge it too risky to attempt to deliver them. The Red Cloud discharged its cargo yesterday and lies ready to embark passengers tomorrow morning for Bismarck – if there are any takers. River passage is not an inviting proposition. The wood-hawks