A Good Man by Guy Vanderhaeghe

called the Great Disruption – a phrase that always capitalized itself in my boy’s mind as the title of a mysteriously arcane book whose meaning I could not grasp. But when I was five or six years old, long before the Great Disruption, long before Father flung himself at the feet of the scullery maid, every Saturday morning he and I would stroll down Ottawa’s streets to, as he put it, “take a look at the accounts” at Case’s Merchandise, son and heir, hand in hand. By then, Father’s business concerns had expanded beyond logging. The Merchandise was only one of his many enterprises and a very minor cog in his money-making apparatus, but to me it seemed his crowning achievement. Other boys may have dreamed of being Captain Cook, Francis Drake, or General Wolfe, but I can remember only one overweening ambition – to succeed lucky Mr. Tunbridge and to someday manage the Merchandise and take charge of that treasure house of mints, harnesses, oranges, enamelled pans, nuts, shovels, dates, shotguns, bolts of cloth, and gingersnaps. I wandered up and down the aisles touching and smelling all the wares, stood gazing up at the stamped-tin ceiling, mesmerized by the play of sunlight on its shiny surface while Mr. Tunbridge and Father examined the ledgers in a backroom. On those Saturdays I felt a happiness that seemed inextinguishable.
    When I told Wetzel’s cordial clerk that I was looking for a box of cigars for the commander of the garrison, he was delighted to inform me the Major was a regular customer and to point me to Ilges’s favourite brand, manufactured by Kennedy Bros. of Canaan, Indiana. With the box tucked under my arm, I proceeded through the town. Fort Benton has suddenly become a gloomy place now, displays little of the rollicking high spirits I remember from my last visit here. Out-of-work river rats and freighters hang about on corners, hands stuffed in empty pockets, mourning the whores and whiskey a shortage of funds puts out of their reach. Poke-bonneted countrywomen eye the prices in shop windows, hands folded up in their aprons, calculating how to feed their families on a thin dime. All were so wrapped up in doleful thoughts that I did not merit so much as a glance as I made my way down Front Street – except one from a billy goat perched on a hogshead, chewing on an old flour sack.
    Near the post I passed an encampment of soldiers, reinforcements in transit to face the Sioux. They are bivouacked hard by an alkali flat, and when a wind comes up, it raises a blizzard of dust. That afternoon it was blowing, and a spectral picket line of horses powdered in bitter white alkali was standing there, heads hung low in the heat. The soldiers sat drooped on campstools, or wandered about with a haunted, aimless air, their blue uniforms turned ashen. They looked to be at the end of a long campaign rather than at the beginning of one.
    I gave the officer of the day Walsh’s letter of introduction, requested him to give it to the commander, and asked him to inquire whether Major Ilges would be so good as to grant me an interview. After a short wait, I was ushered into his office, a large, airy room spartanly furnished with a few cane chairs and an oak filing cabinet. Ilges was seated behind a baize-covered desk, a big map of Montana Territory on the wall behind him. He was wearing a green eyeshade and was toying with the letter he had just been given. When he stood to shakemy hand the room suddenly seemed to shrink, the ceiling to lower. The man dwarfed everything in sight.
    Although his manner was professionally amiable it was also distinctly wary. His English is fluent with only a slight trace of the Deutsch. We passed a few pleasantries and managed to achieve an absolute unanimity of opinion on the weather: hot and with little prospect of rain. I gave him the cigars, accompanied with the white lie that they came with the compliments of Major Walsh. Ilges’s eyebrows gave a skeptical bob when he heard that,