The small heart-shaped bauble glowed faintly as it gently swayed from Eva´s thin wrist. Her dance pole lit in its soft golden glow. "Dance pole" she´d correct people. "I´m a dancer. Stripping is done by carpenters and meat cutters". The musky velvet walls of "The Northern Neon" flickered in strobes and rotating mirror balls as serpentine shadows danced over lusty booze soaked oil workers. Big Indian Oil, the biggest operation West of the Big Horn patch. The brain child of one Tycho Brahe McLeod an Eatersn native who found wealth and power working on the Turner Valley pipeline in late 1920s.
"Take it off baby!!!" a man yells from the tables , mouth open , tongue dancing over his gap toothed smile like hands over a piano keys . He rubs his hands as his feverish eyes dance up and down taking in Eva´s beautiful half naked body. He combs his greasy grey hair back with his hands and looking around he jumps on stage making a run at Eva. She lets out a scream and as the drunks hands are about to grab her , a giant log of an arm clotheslines the man out of nowwhere, slamming onto the stage. Luke Black-Elk , bouncer, stands over the crumpled drunk, arms folded over his massive steamer-trunk chest. The drunk contorts writhing in pain on the stage clutching his throat. Eva picks up her silk robe and stands behind Luke who grabs the man by the seat of his pants and collar and tosses him off the stage like a bail of hay. The drunk flies head first like a rag doll into the middle of a poker game, smashing the table in two as he lands.He slowly raises his head, blood and teeth now pouring out of his mouth. He slowly turns onto his back amid the broken table, shards of glass, whiskey and poker chips :"I´m gonna kill you!!!" he gurgles, spitting out a gob of blood.Drunk reaches for a gun pocketed in his snake skin boot but Luke´s bowie knife flies across the room like steel lightning pinning the man´s hand to the hardboard floor clean. Instantly the room is filled with screams , the screech of sliding chairs and the sound of breaking glass as everyone makes a desperate dash for the exit out into the howling blizzard.Luke slowly walks up to the drunk, now screaming like a madman from the pain . Black-Elk ties back his long jet black hair and slowly bends to unlodge his knife from the boards. Cleaning the blood off the blade on his shirt sleeve he utters."You tell Ty Mcleod I ain´t ever gonna sell, y´ hear.? NEVER!!! "
------------------------------------------------------------------------
" It wasn't that Eva was moody or anything like that" Jazzmin reassured detective Lt. Bobby Racine, RCMP.
" No, she just wasn't used to being out of touch with people and things that she was accustomed to in the cities." - She lights another in a long string of cigarettes sitting in an old beat up couch in what they call The Fantasy Room at the "Lucky Stud". " Wood Buffalo ain´t exactly Reno y´know!" She stops for second , opens her eyes wide in amazement "Hey Lieutenant! That rhymes!!! ¨Wood Buffalo, ain´t Reno...Y´know!!!!¨" Let´s out hysterical laughter. A loud voice from the back office shouts back : "Shut up in there!!! I´m trying ta count!!!"
"Oh be quiet ya ol fart!!!" Jazzmin yells back . "Bosses...pffff! the world would be such a better place"
Lt. Racine taps his little notebook impatiently looking at the girl.
"Oh right! Sorry Lieuteant...where was I ? Oh yeah ! Luke Black Elk was the opposite. He kind of liked the loneliness. Ya ask me ? It was that Cree blood. Howz the saying go again ? "You can get a Cree out of the prarie but not the other way around". As a matter of fact, now that I think about it they were a pretty strange couple to hit it off the way they did." - she looks at her watch.
" Jazz!!!! ya got 2 minutes ta get yer butt out there..." booms the voice form the office room.
" Ooops!!!gotta go Mr. officer".
She stands up. Pauses. Looks at detective as she crushes her cigarette almost resentfully in a heart-shaped ash tray.
"And when you got seven months to spend alone with another man, you gotta be sure of each other. And she thought she was. Really!!!" She fixes her hair as she looks at her jaded reflection in a small broken wall mirror. " Y´know somethin´? The day The Northern Neon burned down, we all stood outside in the snow watching" She still recalls the embers glowing and the wisps of smoke rising into the cold Arctic sky. " And nobody did nuthin´"
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ty Macleod came over the mountains to the Watchatee Valley a long time ago - . He didn't come here smooth and easy the way most folks did - No, It took him a long time to arrive, - a summer and a winter creakin' along, job after job, paycheck after paycheck - lookin' - lookin' all the time for a place to make a home . When at last he found it Ty dug into the ground and made his first house here out of the stones and dirt. He made the walls thick, and that was a good thing, because hardly before he was done, the winds started coming up ... Winds and snow and sleet that do more than tear at a man's house - they tear at his heart and when he's tired and trail-worn and hungry - like hell-bent vultures, they come for his life.
The summer of ´27 had found him both discharged from the Army and discharged from the mafia gang ways of the East. Nothing could stop him now... During the 1920s, driven by the growth of the automobile industry, total U.S. pipeline mileage grew to over 115,000 miles.
" Know that guy drivin´ in ? "" Never seen that Roundabout in these neck of the woods Morty"" Good pick tho"" Yup"
The Morgan brothers follow the little ´21 Ford from their porch as it rolls up to their gas station. A young Tycho Mcleod pulls the brake bringing the pick up to a jolting stop. Like a lazy lizard crawling out of a tin can he steps out. One long leg at a time. Stretches his skinny frame reaching for the clear blue skies. Looks up, way up, holding his cowboy hat as he takes in the majestic Caribou Mountains. Row after row of gargantuan stone peaks enclosing the Watchatee Valley.
Morty gets up off his rocking chair and slowly walks up to the pick up.
" Hi there stranger, welcome to Smokey River" holds out his hand. Tycho looks around and dusts off his jeans. Ty looks at the gas station sign over their small house.
" You folks the "Morgan Brothers" ? "" In the flesh, this here is m´ brother Dusty, I´m Morty"
Dusty tips his hat from the porch.
" I want some gas, which pump old fella" snaps Tycho" If you ask politely..." shouts Dusty from the porch narrowing his eyes." Now, now Dusty, the young fella ain´t lookin for trouble just wants a lil´ gas" Morty smiles. His "Coolidge 4 President" pin fastened to his overalls.
" Well if he asks nicely he´ll get it" grumbles Dusty from the porch.
Tycho freezes on the spot as if 10 million volts shot thru him. He stares at the old man. Cocks his head as if staring at some oddity in a petting zoo.
"I know ya didn´t just say that ol timer" moans Tycho as he slowly walks to the porch and up the steps, hands on his hips, defiant. " I know ya didn´t say THAT. Now why did ya hafta go and say sumpin´ stupid like that" He cooly tips back his tattered straw hat.
"Oh, I ain´t been polite enough fer ya ? Maybe I should change my ways just for a couple of old faggots in the middle of nowhere"
" Why you no good..." Dusty reaches for his shotgun next to his rocking chair" Dusty no" screams Morty raising his hand.
The gunshot blast echoes through the valley, over the trees, across the river, up into the mountains. Dusty slumps over, falls off his rockin chair. A hole where his tired wrinkled heart use to be. Ty slips his .22 back into his boot and lazily walks over to Morty, shoves him back in his chair "Morty is it ? Well Mor-Teee" sniffs looking around
"You heard of self-defense right old feller ?"Morty nods his face twisted his lips shaking in anger-sorrow." Well if ya haven´t that was it right there...Heck the ol man´s got his very own finger prints on his shotgun and everythin´" he lets out a chuckle shaking his head in amazement " n finger prints are nine tenths of the law, granpaw"
Tychos eyes widen in amusement " Ha! That even rhymes!!!Nine tenths o the law, granpaw!"
Morty looks at his brother´s dead body laying on the porch.
"Look at me when I´m talkin to ya, ya old shit!" yanks the old man violently from his collar."Now you´re gonna sit yer ass down on that chair yonder, and watch me fill up with gas and take the money from yer register and then, and then blow yer brains out, got it ?" He lets out a bone chilling roar that echoes through the woods and down the roaring Smokey River.
"Man Murders Brother, Kills Self" Ty repeats as he cocks his .22. "Love the sound of it already"
A thunderous wave of industry was now rolling West again like a freight train. And Ty Mcleod on it like a bull rider.
The mighty roar of industry was now rolling like thunder West. And Ty Mcleod with it.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"In hunting the buffalo the Cree are wild with excitement, but no scene or incident seems to have such a maddening effect upon them as when the buffalo are succesfuly driven into the pound.(...) The herd once in the pund, a scene of diabolical butchery and excitement begins; men , women and children climb on the fence and shoot arrows or thrust spears at the bewilered buffalo, with shouts, screams and yells horrible to hear. "- Henry Youle Hind 1856
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The winter prairie sun lazily burned itself out disappearing in the West. Henry Hind had travelled 2500 miles with his assistant Simon Dawson to the middle of nowhere. They were both a long way from Trinity College back East. A long way from a warm meal and a soft bed. The British Geographical Society had sent Henry a letter last year explaining the need to "properly asses
the economic value of the Western territories for her majesty the Queen". He was the man for the job. A geographer, cartographer , educated at Cambridge and hired as headmaster at Trinity. Henry slowly scanned the horizon.The prarie landscape lay buried under a thick blanket of snow stretching to infinity. Henry checked his map and compass. "Simon, Fort Chipewyan should be on the other side of those hills!" The Scotsman was sitting in the snow resting "Bloody ´boot time!!! I coon feel me feet Henry!!!" .
John Palliser had been down this way two years ago. His expedition had never been found. Victim of the violence that was slowly creeping West with expansion.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"There would come a time, when the fish would die in the streams, the birds would fall from the air, the waters would be blackened, and the trees would no longer be, mankind as we would know it would all but cease to exist. There would come a time when the "keepers of the legend, stories, culture rituals, and myths, and all the Ancient Tribal Customs" would be needed to restore us to health. They would be mankinds’ key to survival " - Eyes of Fire - Cree Oracle (1846)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Sprinting across the prairie was always easy for Snowbird. Her long legs never failed to fling her farther and faster across the grassy plains of her home. Nestled in the foothills of the Caribou Mountains, her village sat on the prairie flat lands known as the Chipewyan Lands. Snowbird looked up at the sky, squinting, wrinkling her nose as she shielded her eyes from the bright sun. It was unusualy warm and sunny that day; a couple of clouds rolling by across the sky. She loved the way the sunlight sprinkled down through the clouds and bathed the fields in golden showers of brilliance. She imagined she was a mighty Cree warrior of the old lands as she ran pretending to dodge imaginary arrows shot from the bows of imaginary enemies. She ran with lightning speed across the plain, dodging this way and that to avoid fallen limbs and leaping over low places. She blended quite easily into her surroundings, even at such a fast sprint. Her tanned leather boots made no sound on the tall prairie grass and her long hair waved behind her like the tail of a deer. As she drew closer to the Hawkmoon River, she began to slow down, coming to a fast paced walk. Hoping to spend a few minutes in the warm sun, she slowly came to a rest comfortably on the grassy floor of a secluded clearing. Snowbird listened to the prairie whisper to her in the rustling of the grass, the chirping of birds, the crytsal chime of the Hawkmoon river.
Her peace was suddenly shattered by the sound of violent thunder ripping across the prairie. Confused, she stands up like a bolt.
- No rain falling ? No dark clouds in the sky. How ? - she thougt to herself.
Snowbird would learn to recognize the sounds of gunshots soon enough.
