Apparition Trail, The Read Online Free Page A

Apparition Trail, The
Book: Apparition Trail, The Read Online Free
Author: Lisa Smedman
Pages:
Go to
wall beside the Union Jack, as if chastising me for mucking up the clock’s mechanism. Then the door opened.
    I snapped to attention, then blinked in surprise when Superintendent Sam Steele entered the room. I’d gotten to know Steele back in the spring of 1879 when I first joined the force; he was the Inspector that accompanied myself and the other new recruits on the long journey from Ottawa to Winnipeg, via Dakota Territory. Steele was fair-haired and every bit as slim as I; he had impressed me with his knowledge of the West, his riding skills and his tireless endurance. He was one of the “old originals” who had signed up when the force was first created in 1873, and had risen rapidly through the ranks since then.
    Just thirty-four years old, Steele had neatly parted hair and a trim moustache that curved up at either side of his mouth. He strode into the room, one hand clutching the Stetson that was the unofficial headgear of the mounted police. He stared at me with a look of such penetrating intensity that my hands began to tremble. In that instant, I was certain that he, too, had learned my secret. I clenched my fists until the leather of my white dress gauntlets creaked, and I willed my hands to stay still.
    Commissioner Irvine followed Steele into the room. He stared at me with a curious, measuring look. He wore his reddish beard neatly trimmed, and had a thick moustache that completely covered both upper and lower lip. His face was narrow and rectangular, and his nose long. There was a worried look in his keen grey eyes.
    The Commissioner seated himself behind the table as Steele closed the door. I waited for someone to speak, every nerve at attention. At last, the Superintendent cleared his throat.
    “At your ease, Corporal,” Steele said.
    I moved my left foot a fraction apart from the right, and slid my hands behind my back. Trying to disguise the tension in my shoulders, I grasped one hand tightly in the other.
    The Commissioner laid a dun-coloured folder on the desk and sat forward in his chair. “Do you know why you’ve been called to headquarters, Corporal Grayburn?” he asked.
    “No sir,” I said. Then, realizing that my voice had been somewhat hoarse, I cleared my throat and added in a louder tone: “I do not.”
    It was a lie, of course. Another falsehood, laid upon the rest.
    The truth was that Marmaduke Grayburn, the name I had answered to for the past five years, was not my own. The real Marmaduke Grayburn was still in Ontario, living under another name. He was an old friend of mine — one who had known me long enough to trust my strange “hunches” and premonitions. When I’d told him that death would swiftly find him in the North-West Territories, were he to travel west with the other new police recruits, he’d readily believed me, and asked with a pale countenance what he should do. That was when I suggested that I go in his place.
    Swapping places with Marmaduke had been more than an act of mere altruism. It seemed my one and only chance to escape the dreariness of working in the tobacco shop, and of marrying a woman I didn’t love. It was also a chance to prove my moral fibre, by meeting head-on the rigours of life on the frontier.
    Marmaduke at first declined my offer, but was at last persuaded by my gift of the one hundred and sixty-three dollars I’d withdrawn from my savings account. He handed his uniform to me — fortunately it fit well and required no tailoring — and I mustered with the other recruits for the trip west, to pursue a life of adventure under an assumed identity. I was the only man among them who had bypassed the North-West Mounted Police medical exam.
    The Commissioner pulled several sheets of paper from the folder and smoothed them with his hand. Peeping out from under them was a photograph. I had a wild thought that these papers might include the letter of character and other documents that the real Marmaduke Grayburn had provided upon his enlistment. But
Go to

Readers choose