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Short Stories & Tall Tales
The Mountie and Black Theo D’Antoine
Tom Sheehan
Joe Debner plied the canoe through the waters of the Milk River, the sun nearly igniting the backs of him and his son, Joe Jr., the night’s sleep and a good breakfast beside the river setting the morning on a pleasant start into Canada. Ahead of them several fish jumped out of water or showed themselves; a good-sized brown trout, followed by a voracious Northern pike bent on dominance. The boy, in the prow of the canoe, plying his paddle in similar fashion, smiled as he heard his father grunt, ably reading the elder’s thoughts. Above, in a brilliant blue sky where a single light gray cloud had dared enter, a pair of hawks or eagles floated wing-wide high in their circular endeavors. The paddlers, with the canoe moving as clean as a precious thought, were aimed toward the next quick turn in Alberta’s section of the Milk River. Suddenly, the reverberating sounds of rapid gunfire boomed to them down the tightness of the river, as if bouncing off the top of the placid water and the rocky high left side of the turn. The shots continued unabated for several minutes, perhaps death standing at attention in the air.
The father, at the aft end of the canoe, ducked quicker than the boy did, but his next deep grunt and a slap at the side of the craft, directed his son to crouch low. With a hesitation in the man’s paddling, the boy knew his father was determining some protective action for his only son, probably driving the canoe onto a bank to protect him.
The boy said, with some early survival experience tantamount in his education, “Someone’s in trouble, Pa. Let’s go!” For all he knew, there could be a disturbed or hungry bear prowling the edges of a campsite, or the gunshots came from some of the lawless breed that worked up and down the river, making their living off someone else’s hard work. One had to help their neighbors in this wide country bound by oceans on each end, often by snow and ice in winter and a literal vastness always on the north, and the wide U.S. border on the south. The simple truth said everybody was duly bound to help their neighbors; it was the code of the west, the code of the wild.
The man paddled deeply into the water and the canoe shot ahead, turned the bank, and they saw the sudden flash of red on a uniformed rider firing at three men who were shooting at a single man in a beached canoe. The canoe was piled with furs. The man, his rifle at work, ducked deeper behind the canoe and the furs at another fusillade of shots.
The flash of red the boy saw was a Canadian Mountie who shooed his horse behind good cover and charged at the men bent on stealing the furs. He ran straight at them, his rifle firing away until empty, one man falling and screaming, one man raising his hands after tossing away his smoking pistol, and a third man running into deep brush and a further clutch of young trees. With his pistol in hand, he yelled to the fur collector, “Keep your rifle on these two until I come back.”
The Mounty then noticed the Denby canoe on his side of the bend and yelled to the occupants, “Can you lend a hand here, Sir?”
Joe Denby raised high his rifle in answer. His son waved also, but with both hands, his excitement plainly visible.
With support coming from the newcomers, the Mountie took off into the brush and the clump of trees beyond the brush.
That dashing color of the constable’s tunic, swearing to himself that it was richer and redder than blood, further whipped the boy into a hungrier froth, reddened and fired up his own blood right then and there at his first sight of a Mountie in action. Recently he had heard stories about the new legal force assigned to the wide and wild frontier. This part of the Milk River carried them well into Alberta Province, and he could not stop marveling at the way the Mountie handled the renegades trying to steal another man’s property.
He wondered what kind of a man chose to wear such a bright red uniform, one that could be seen for miles and stood out as “official” against the wild, green forests of summer and the pure snows of winter.
Joe Denby, Jr., and Constable Colin MacKieran were at their initial meeting and that mad dash of red stayed in young Denby’s blood for a few years. When he turned 17, and the last member alive in his family except for a married sister, he headed to Canada to enlist in the RCMP.
He had seen the man in red leap over a log, duck his head at the sound of a rifle, roll onto the ground, rise to one knee, fire his rifle into a dense spot, roll again, and fire anew from a spot more than 20 feet from his previous shot. It showed good thinking, rapid response, and quick determinations. He never forgot the sight because the cry of pain of the pursued from beyond the dense brush was the sound of a quick victory. In similar responsible fashion the wounded prisoner was treated for the gunshot, bound securely on his horse and headed “off to the hoosegow, the calaboose,” as his father had put the new words in front of his most impressionable son.
It was 1876 and the Mounties had been established only for a few years. It might prove the place for young Joe Denby to spend his lifetime, to prove his worth, to make his name; boys’ dreams, many people realize, often last a lifetime. This new sight, a lawman in intrepid fashion, fearless to the minute, responses so quick to situations, found the boy endlessly marveling at them. They all created a yearning that beat within him like a pleasant torment, the kind some men can abide forever, like the continuity of their young dreams.
In the following two years young Joe Denby spent the time “organizing his life story.” His father had died and he had to prepare the way for his future. He lied about his age, his birthplace (“on the trail in Alberta”), his parentage, and his descendants. But he told, with authority, the tale about his introduction to Constable Colin MacKieran.
The youngster became brawny, strong-boned, a marvel with horses trained or untrained, bore a keen eye with several weapons, and was accepted as a Canadian whose ancestors had landed in Newfoundland many years earlier. He trained as a recruit, a most impressive tutelage, and served with distinction at Fort Calgary and Fort Walsh in his early assignments, and then the Saskatchewan Valley and, finally, in the hectic, unbearable push for treasure and riches beyond a man’s dreams in the Yukon during the days of the Gold Rush.
His learning was never over and done with, and life’s awful lessons kept up their barrage on him as he proudly wore the red tunic uniform of the RCMP.
It was in the Yukon when he next met MacKieran, now an RCMP inspector who was his unit leader. They got along famously, each man dedicated, though for different reasons. For MacKieran, the flag was most important; “Canada forever,” his watchword, his motto, and those who had come to know him, by action or spirit or the carried word, would stand by him through any kind of argument, depending on the odds, of course, or the type of opposition.
Some folks, of course, stood their ground, guns and bullets be damned. MacKieran saw the whole, vast spread of the country being overseen by a legal force protecting all innocents … all innocents, and that meant to him every single Intuit, Indian, alien, searcher or explorer, settler, hunter, gold seeker, teacher; that meant everybody in the country of close to four million square miles … an enormous task in an enormous country with sides, sects, tribes, and the coteries of foreign people that came in huge numbers from all over Europe, Asia and all the known places on the globe.
Inspector MacKieran felt lucky that he quickly gained friendship with a lot of people in any new assignment because he was a mixer and brandished his willingness to spread himself thin. He occasionally depended on a single warning from a friendly source in any foreboding affair or situation: a word beforehand was significant in the wilds, and he remembered every time that such a grace came his way. Such a log he maintained in the back of his mind, always ready to be lit up, or called upon if needed in a new situation. Names, faces, deeds, talents off all sorts comprised his log of memories.
Meanwhile, adventure and excitement had lit up Denby’s insides since he was a boy, always attributing it to the time he saw MacKieran do his will on that small band of thieves. But there was another factor underneath that often failed to appear when his conscience went looking for it, when he really tried to find himself, find what made him tick as a person running around ready to use a gun at a moment’s notice. Even if the target was a legitimate target, the reason fully legal.
It was something that just called for an outing, a change, a confrontation.
Many of us realize a man’s search of himself is often the most difficult of explorations, so far, so wide, and so deep. Some men cannot withstand the ultimate, transparent results, the hidden truths bared to the searcher’s soul. Some men, however, feed on the discoveries. And it usually happens when there is such an upheaval, such an incident, which had so come to Denby.
It was the prime moment in the two attached lives of Inspector Colin MacKieran and Sgt. Joe Denby.
The gold strike caused an early requirement for more men in the wake of gold discoveries. It was necessary to control the various river locations, their stop-over places and portage points, which included Fortymile River. A considerable amount of the Northwest Mounties, as they were now known, were needed to patrol and control the wide area: that force in an area might consist of one or two officers, a doctor but preferably a surgeon for obvious reasons, and a few sergeants and corporals for lower command of the force’s basic constables.
Men selected for the Northwest assignments required Mounties who’d garnered two years’ service under their belts. Specific requirements also stipulated that the men assigned to the gold strike areas must be strong, be men of size with a powerful build, with these attributes readily obvious for the coming task. In addition, each assignee could not favor consumption of alcohol. To be a non-drinker was a must. The abominable twists and turns of alcohol had long been noted for men in the wilds. Those stipulations stand to this day in the ranks of that police force.
One scan of the area, at any season, provided so much challenge for any force, and when Mounties took to the trail much of their ammunition was good sense, fair justice and a quickness to act in a judicious manner to all events occurring around them, though they often stood apart, if not alone.
It was into this area that Inspector Colin MacKieran arrived along with Sergeant Joe Denby and the full initial cohort. It was 1896 and Denby was 35 years old with 17 years of service. They built the first the very first Mounties post in the Yukon Territory, Fort Constantine.
In one of his escapades, Denby was escorting a prisoner from the Fortymile River gold strike in 1896 to Fort Cudahy near Fortymile. The prisoner was a self-proclaimed Pirate Captain of the River, Black Theo D’Antoine, thief, liar, irritant, bombastic arguer, full of claims and few excuses for failure, who swung his cutlass too free or fired his pistol too quickly at the first word of impatience in a gang member. Their motto was “Kill before being killed, or shoot anyone with crossedeyes, a snotty sneer or a look you can’t stand or understand.”
He would add, “That’s how my ship will be run, tight to the Cap’n’s watch.”
Black Theo wore the single black eye patch that many pirates had worn in the days of open sea commandeering of ships of any nation, under the guns, grapple and cutlasses of the sea pirates openly at war with all traders. And Black Theo proudly wore the mark of the pirate burnt on the skin of one cheek, the cheek below the eye patch. With his sea hat, trimmed beard, eye patch and the burnt skull and cross bones, he was feared on sight by men and coveted by many ladies along the rivers.
Posters of Black Theo began to circulate when he reportedly, and alone, killed off a family of boat traders at the Ile St. Martin fording when the head of the family refused a trade. The lone witness was a boy who had hidden under a partly rebuilt boat when Black Leo started an argument, was thwarted in his trade offer, and proceeded to kill all members of the family … all but the boy under the partly rebuilt boat. His description fit Black Theo to the “T” and he helped an artist draw the poster.
It was the poster that Joe Denby saw on a boat remnant that had beached near his latest search for another criminal he cornered and had to shoot in self-defense. The burial was simple, a cross made and out in place, and the proper entry made in his log. The details of Black Theo’s latest acts, listed on the poster, sank deep into Denby, and his anger began its old froth and heartbeat. He made his way toward the Ile St. Martin fording, a small collection of three buildings in the middle of the Milk River. He had been there before and knew the family.
While still some miles from the fording, he smelled the smoke of a morning fire, caught the scent of bacon in it, and then saw the wisps of smoke rising well off the trail he was on. With great caution he made his approach to the source of the smoke and saw three men sitting around a fire, one of them was without doubt Black Theo D’Antoine. All the men were armed with side arms, including Black Theo, who also wore a cutlass in a scabbard on his belt. He was scarily overdressed in the wilds, almost a pauper in silky royal garb. Denby later termed his clothing too ornate for the river life or life in the saddle.
And their horses were tied off a ways from the fire.
The well-prepared constable immediately took from his saddle bag the stuffed skin of a dead rattlesnake, doused it with a fluid from a smelly container and headed for the horses of Black Theo and his men. He had used this ruse twice before, once with poor results and once with a sudden bolting of horses that had pulled down a fence to get away from the snake flung onto the back of one of them. He was aiming to do the same trick again.
He was close to the horses, yet still out of sight, and could hear them nicker and heard the voice of one of the men, soon identified by Black Theo himself, “Them horses get too nervy for me, Hooker, so go quiet them down.”
“Yes, sir, Cap’n Theo,” came the reply. “Be right back. But don’t you gents eat my fare of bacon and beans. I’m dang hungry this morning.” The tone of his voice was most conciliatory, not a syllable of threat in it, from the low end of the totem pole, and Denby was willing to bet that one of the two men would eat Hooker’s share of beans and bacon … if he ever got back to the campfire.
Hooker plodded away from the campfire and, fully surprised, walked into the bore end of Denby’s pistol at his forehead. He sat down at a whisper, the red uniform striking fear into him and going totally mute even when questions were asked of him. Bound quickly with his own rope, and his neckerchief stuffed in his mouth, he stayed prone as directed, down and quiet, not a muscle moving, possibly more fearful of the red uniform than the black eye patch and the burnt cheek back at the campfire.
With amazing skill at his approach, Denby got near enough to fling the stuffed snakeskin directly onto the back of one horse. The uproarious result was three horses breaking free and bolting in a mad rush, the crashing sounds of broken limbs following their flight into the forest.
Denby’s opponents now were down to two men, one being Black Theo. The odds were better, and the prey at hand, the real prey. The pair came rushing to see what had gone wrong with the horses, Black Theo yelling out for Hooker and getting no answer.
Sergeant Joe Denby, resplendent in red, his chevrons making a statement of additional authority, stood in front of the final two opponents in the wrong. One man went for his pistol, has hand too slow for the Mountie, and he was shot dead on the spot.
When Black Theo went for his pistol, Denby shot it out of his hand, and then shot the scabbard free of his belt. Black Theo felt the singular pain as the bullet hit him at the hipline, the metallic scabbard and cutlass coming asunder in pieces.
Denby tied Black Theo securely, buried the dead man, put up a cross, entered a note in his log, and went to look for their horses, which he found less than a mile away.
On the way to Fort Cudahy, Hooker did not utter a single comment, which irritated Black Theo the whole route, and him never shutting his mouth about it.
He said to Denby, “You’ll not get me into the brig any which way, mister. My men will know about this and hang you from the nearest yardarm afore we get to that brig you have in mind.”
He nodded at Hooker and said, “That’s where my coward shipmate there, Mr. Hooker, will get his final wishes, at the point of a stiletto sharp as a witch’s nails or maybe he’ll walk the plank right off the wall.”
“Oh,” Denby had to say at one point, something internal making him say it, “is that from the wall of the brig we’ll never get to because your men will rescue you before we get there? Is that the one you’re talking about, Cap’n?”
Black Theo never said another word, nor did the Mountie until he turned him over to Inspector Colin MacKieran at Fort Cudahy in their most current meeting, the first one still vividly in place every time they met.
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