Read Apparition Trail, The for Free Online

right culprit.
    I glanced sidelong at the Sergeant as we rode, and revised that last thought. Some of us believed in conducting an investigation more thoroughly than others.
    The sun was warm on our backs by the time we reached the end of the line. I knew we were getting close when I saw a train engine and four flatbed cars, piled high with steel rails, just ahead on the track. The engine was powered by one of the new magnetic perpetual motion devices: in the place where a coal car would normally be was a flatcar on which was mounted an upright beam of wood like a ship’s mast. A gigantic magnet, suspended from the mast on a wire, swung slowly back and forth, causing a curved steel beam below it to rock, and thus to power pistons below it. When engaged by gears, the pistons drove the wheels. The steady metallic ticking noise the device produced was a far cry from the steam trains of my youth, with their billowing clouds of smoke and chuffing engines. It had the added advantage over a steam train of not emitting burning embers that set the dry prairie grass on fire.
    I expected to hear the pounding of sledgehammers and the rasp of saws cutting wood as we drew closer, but the work site was still. Instead of the sounds of men going industriously about their labour we heard the beating of an Indian drum.
    The railway navvies — a crew of blond, burly Swedes — stood in a huddled group, drawing on pipes and talking in nervous voices while their foreman cast dark glances at a circle of a dozen tepees that had been erected on the railway’s right of way. The edge of one of the tepees — a rude shelter of buffalo hide painted with crimson figures that seemed half man and half beast — was only a few inches away from where the unfinished tracks stopped, blocking the line completely. The drumming came from inside it.
    The Sergeant and I reined our horses to a halt and stared at the wild scene before us. Piapot’s braves — several dozen of them — were all mounted on their ponies, rifles in hand. Many had daubed their faces with paint, and several were wearing their eagle-feather bonnets and painted war shirts. They rode back and forth across the prairie, every now and again swooping toward the halted train. Each time they did, the navvies stepped back a pace or two as the Indians got uncomfortably close.
    Upon spotting our red coats, one of the warriors let out a whoop. Several fired their rifles in the air, and the smell of gunpowder drifted toward us. I winced slightly, but kept my composure. The Indians loathe a coward.
    I didn’t see any women or children in the Cree camp. I could only assume they were inside their tepees.
    The foreman of the railway gang was a short, wiry Englishman who wore a red flannel shirt with sleeves rolled up and a cloth cap pushed back to expose his high forehead. He mopped his brow with a handkerchief and shouted at us over the din of whoops and rifle shots.
    “We’ve been having a bit of trouble with the Indians these past two days,” he said with typical English understatement as a bullet from one of the brave’s rifles zinged off the steel side of the train engine. Inside it, the engineer and mechanic ducked.
    The navvies fell back into the dubious shelter of the railway cars, and the foreman glanced back over his shoulder, his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously. “I’m hoping you can settle the Indians down and get them to move on.”
    “We’ll settle things, sure enough,” Sergeant Wilde grumbled, looking over the head of the foreman at the paint-daubed warriors. Then he leaned over to open his saddlebag, and pulled a piece of paper from it — the same one he’d waved at me that morning. He straightened in his saddle, and held the paper out in front of him.
    “Chief Piapot!” he shouted. “I have here a written order for you and your band to quit this location. You are to take the northward trail to your reserve at once.”
    The Indians had halted their whooping to listen to