The Man Called Teacher Read online

  The Man Called Teacher

  By David A. Poulsen

  Digital ISBNs

  EPUB 9780228611561

  Kindle 9780228611578

  WEB 9780228611585

  Print ISBNs

  BWL Print 9780228611554

  Amazon Print 9780228611592

  LSI Print 9780228611608

  Copyright 2020 by David Poulsen

  Cover art by Michelle Lee

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book

  Dedication

  To the memory of my father, Lawrence A. Poulsen (Larry) who loved the life of the cowboy, and to Wayne Lucas, who lived the life of the cowboy.

  Acknowledgments

  BWL Publishing Inc. acknowledges the Province of Alberta for their Provincial Operating Grant for Publishers, for its financial support,

  Prologue

  There’s not much there now. They didn’t rebuild the school after it burned down the second time. All you’d see, if you happened to go by the place, is the wood and stone cross Archie Cuddy made. I think he did a good job of it. It’s pretty well understood that the cross is meant to honour only two of the people who died there and that it has nothing to do with the other five who also ended their lives that day. I don’t know how I feel about that. It seems like even bad people ought to have a cross or something to remember them by.

  Sometimes on a peaceful afternoon I still like to ride out there and sit and think about that day and the ones that led up to it.

  Chapter One

  It’s because so many people have asked about it, and told me I should write it all down, that I finally decided to do this. Of course, it all took place almost four years ago now. I’m not sure I’ll remember everything exactly the way it was, but between what gets set down here and what you already know about it, I expect the story will be mighty close to complete. When I think about it, I suppose I am the best one to tell it all right, just because I was there. Everyone else who was in the school during those four days in October of ‘96 is either dead or has gone away somewhere. My name, by the way, is William Dearing.

  The thing that’s hard is knowing just where to start. You’d probably think I should begin with Teacher himself, I mean the first time I saw him. But that wouldn’t be right. Not exactly. Because if anybody should ever read this that isn’t from around here, or never heard of the Kecking Horse School Trouble, they’d naturally have questions. Such as how it came about that somebody like me, a clerk in J. Harper Westover’s General Store, should have been mixed up in the thing at all.

  The Kecking Horse School Trouble — that’s what the newspaper people called it when they wrote it up. I heard it even made the papers as far away as Denver and St. Louis, but I can’t say for sure since I never saw the stories myself. I guess that’s something I should explain right off — the thing about Kecking Horse. It’s pretty obvious that the name should be Kicking Horse with an ‘i’. But it’s been this way for thirty years or so now and I don’t know if it’ll ever be changed.

  The blame can be placed squarely on two Texans, one called L. B. Kirby and the other a man named Block. I never heard his first name. They were cowboys, pure and simple. They came up as part of the David Shirk cattle drive of 1871 that drove Texas Longhorn cattle from Fort Worth to the Owyhee Mountains in Idaho for the silver miners there. Then they must’ve tired of cowboy life and headed northeast until they stopped just about where I’m sitting as I write this. Kirby built a feed store and Block started a saloon, ran it out of a tent at first, then eventually put up a building. And that was the start of the town.

  Of course, neither of those buildings are here anymore. Well, that’s not entirely accurate; I guess a small piece of what was the feed store is now the storage part of Archie Cuddy’s livery. The saloon, it burned down close to ten years ago. Kirby and Block had been gone for quite a while by then. Went down Oregon way and held up the stage right outside a stop called Jesse Robinson’s Store. They were caught and then strung up outside the courthouse at Crutcher’s Crossing three months later.

  But their big mistake — I grant you getting yourself hung constitutes a sizable error in itself — was saddling this community with a name that makes it look like we’re all uneducated people. Shortly after those two Texans settled here and a few other folks joined them, Block decided the place needed a name. He figured Kicking Horse was appropriate since right at that moment, Kirby was laid up from being kicked square in the middle of the back by a stud horse named Bob.

  So, Block rode off to the state legislature to get the name recorded. But don’t forget, both men were Texans which means their version of spoken English wasn’t like that of a lot of folks. When Block, who couldn’t read or write any better than a poplar stump, pronounced the name for the government clerk fella, he said Kecking Horace. The clerk repeated it and Block said, “Yep, that’s it. “

  And that’s how it was written down. It was just luck that another clerk came along and changed Horace to Horse, but I guess nobody noticed the Kecking part. Which, if you ask me, says something about government clerks and Texans. And we’re still Kecking Horse to this day.

  To return to the business of where and when I should start the story, I’ve thought long and hard about it, and to me, it makes sense to begin with Marcus Warren, who I guess was the closest thing to a Judge that there was around here at that time. He’d also got himself appointed as the Superintendent of Education or some such title. It was Mr. Warren (nobody called him Judge, not even when he was officiating over legal business) who came to me and asked if I’d be willing to put up the new teacher. My answer was to say I didn’t know right off. He said I was the logical one since I lived in the nicest house in Kecking Horse and even though I was a bachelor, nobody would question the arrangement since my mother was under the same roof.

  I said I still wasn’t altogether sure about the thing, which is when he brought up the matter of the twelve dollars a month. The sum I’d be paid for having the teacher in my home. Then he made some jokes about how maybe I’d even lose my bachelorhood if the teacher was pretty enough. I didn’t much care for those jokes, but I thought some more about that twelve dollars and figured the ‘arrangement’ — Mr. Warren called it that at least five times in the ten minutes we stood there talking — might not be so bad. Spending money was a little scarce back then, not that there was much to spend it on if you had some. I also felt having someone to talk to other than Mother, who mostly talked about religion, politics and the comings and goings of Nettie Whitman, might prove to be pleasurable.

  So, I agreed, but not before I asked Mr. Warren why it was we were bringing in a teacher when we’d never had one before.

  “Hell, it should be obvious,” he told me, “there’s more kids than there’s ever been, most of ‘em don’t know much more than their letters if they know that much. Even our town’s name is spelled wrong, that’s how wanting the whole education issue has been around here.”

  And that was it. It was decided. There was going to be a teacher; an ad had been placed in some big city papers; Miss T. I. Morgan had answered the ad and soon would be living in my house. I started watching the Tuesday and Friday stagecoach arrivals from the front window of the store. It was a Friday in the late summer when the leaves had just started to turn and things were getting mighty busy in the store business, what with people getting ready for winter, that I received the first and second biggest surprises of my life. The stage was late that day (that wasn’t one of the surprises; it was late most days) and there were only two people on it when it pulled in. One of them was our new school teacher. The other, I was to learn, was a man named Virgil Watts.

  The new teacher was the first surprise. You might’ve guessed by now, if you didn’t already know it, that T. I. Morgan wasn’t a “Miss” at all. In fact, pretty far from it. He stood about a head taller than me which would put him about a couple or three inches over six feet tall. Looked like he’d spent a lot of time in the sun. Not old, not young. He was a wide-set man, especially at the shoulders, and he was wearing a gun. Not exactly what I’d expected from someone who was going to be teaching letters and numbers and such to kids. Of course, at that point, I didn’t know that was what he was here to do. He looked like somebody who might break horses for a living or punch cows or something. Or maybe have something to do with the law, on one side or the other, just the way he walked and looked around. The other surprise was the man, Virgil Watts. He was black, the first black man I’d ever seen, since very few Negro people ever got up into this part of the country, a fact that hasn’t changed all that much right up to the present.

  I stepped away from the window because I didn’t want either of them to know I was watching them. When they walked into the store a few minutes later, I was trying to look like I was busy stacking some linens that had come in a week or so earlier.

  “I’m Teacher.” That was the first thing he said which is maybe why the name stuck the way it did. There were a few people in the store right then, and we talked about it afterwards. Everybody was pretty well agreed that he didn’t say the teacher. Just Teacher. Like it was his name. And from then on, it was the only name I ever heard him called by, including by h
imself. Until right near the end, that is.

  Once they were in the store, I had a chance to study on them a little further. Mostly I was staring at Teacher, all the time hoping it would look like I wasn’t really interested at all. He had a face that whenever I try to describe it, I find I can’t recall exact details. Oh, I can picture the simple things — tall man, big at the shoulder like I said, a lot of his clothes were black or at least dark, stuff like that. But the details are where I have trouble. You ever know someone like that?

  Except I remember the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, like he was somebody who laughed a lot. Which, of course, many of us were to find out later was absolutely factual. And he always looked like he needed a shave, even right after he’d had one. I didn’t notice his clothes much, except the part about them being mostly dark, but I do recall his hat, I guess because I liked it and wished I had one like it. It was black too with a wide brim and just a bit of curve to it. Real nice hat.

  “Yes, sir,” is what I think I said in answer to his introduction.

  “You are the gentleman who has a room for me?” Of course, when he said that, it occurred to me he was reporting for work as the school teacher for Kecking Horse District.

  He looked around the store a little then which gave me a bit of time to work on my reply.

  Not enough time though, which is why I just said “uh...”

  He smiled then, not a big smile but friendly enough. “Maybe I’m not quite what you expected”

  “Uh ... no, sir, not ... exactly.”

  “But you do have a place for me to stay.”

  Since it wasn’t actually a question, I didn’t have to think as hard about my answer. I nodded.

  “Good,” he said. “This is my friend, Virgil Watts,” he gestured in the direction of the black man who had taken off his hat when he’d entered the store. “We’d be obliged if you happened to have a room for him as well. He won’t be staying long since he’ll be catching on with one of the local ranches within a few days, but in the meantime ...”

  I was wishing Mr. Warren would just drop into the store right then as he often did, but those things never happen when you want them to. I was sure he would be quick to tell this man that his services wouldn’t be required, and while he was at it, he could also inform Mr. Virgil Watts that there wasn’t likely to be work on any of the ranches around Kecking Horse for a black cowboy.

  Since Mr. Warren wasn’t present, and wasn’t likely to be present in the next thirty seconds or so, which is about as long as I figured I could reasonably hold off on saying something, I had a feeling that whatever it was I said could have some considerable impact on the immediate future of our community. Of course, I had no way of knowing at that moment just how considerable that impact was to be. Or maybe things would have happened the way they did no matter what came out of my mouth just then. Anyway, I shrugged and said, “I’m sure Mother and I can find a place for Mr. Watts.”

  As I recall, I was looking at the gun in Teacher’s holster as I said it. It was a .44 caliber Smith and Wesson I found out later. It had a different look to it, the barrel and all, and the holster it sat in was tied around his leg. I seemed to have a recollection that a holster tied like that was the mark of a gunfighter, but I wasn’t about to ask about that. And I noticed the inside of the holster looked like it had been covered in some kind of animal fur — rabbit or some such I guessed, which I had an idea was the sort of thing a man would want if he needed his gun to leave its holster kind of quick and smooth. Something else we found out later was that that gun had taken at least four men’s lives…twice that many if you believe Cooper Raine’s ravings, which not many of us do.

  “I ... I can’t leave the store just now to take you there,” I hoped they wouldn’t offer to make their way on their own. I figured an unexpected visit from one man with a gun, and one who was not white, might provide the kind of shock to Mother’s nervous system that could shorten her life considerably.

  “Fine,” Teacher said, “we’ll just wander across the street to see if the livery has anything in the way of horses we might be able to afford. You’ll find us in the saloon when you close up shop.”

  “There isn’t one,” I said.

  “No livery? I thought we saw one just down the street as the stage was coming in.”

  “Yes, sir. We have a livery. There’s no saloon.”

  “No saloon?” Teacher looked surprised. A lot of people are when they hear that. “Where do folks refresh themselves?”

  “There’s a small bar at the hotel. It isn’t much more than a big room,” I said.

  “That’s where we’ll be.”

  I found them there later. Which, in itself, was another surprise. I never figured Jake Drury would allow a black man on the premises of the Independent Cities Hotel Bar, let alone serve him. But when I walked in, the two newcomers were leaning on the bar, each with a glass in his hand, and it looked like they were talking, though if they were, you couldn’t hear it because they were speaking so softly. Jake Drury didn’t look happy about the whole thing, but I figured he must have got a look at the .44 and decided against making an issue of it. I walked over to where Teacher and Virgil Watts were standing.

  “Drink?” Teacher looked at me.

  “No thanks. I just came to see if you wanted to have a look at your rooms.” I didn’t bother to tell them that I’d stopped by the house after I closed up the store. I’d thought it best to prepare Mother for our guests. She took it better than I thought she would.

  “Are they clean?” was all she said.

  I told her they were, even though, to tell the truth, the state of their cleanliness wasn’t something I had paid much attention to when Teacher and Watts walked into the store.

  Teacher nodded and swallowed the last of his drink.

  “Ready?” he asked Virgil Watts.

  “Uh-huh,” Watts said.

  Thirty seconds. That’s all it would have taken. If I’d got there thirty seconds earlier, we’d have been on our way to Mother’s roast of beef dinner and berry pie and Teacher’s first day in Kecking Horse would have passed without incident. But that isn’t at all the way things went. As we were starting for the door of the bar, it opened and in walked Joad Cook, Marty Waincastle and a man I didn’t know. The first two were hands from the Bar U, a big spread up in the Canadian territories, which is just a couple days’ ride north of here. The Bar U starts just over the border and stretches north a long way, almost to Calgary. I figured the third man must be a new rider for the same outfit. He was kind of in the shadows and I didn’t get a real good look at him. Besides, most of my attention was on the other two.

  A lot of the men from the Bar U came to the Independent Cities Hotel to drink when they had time off or when they were doing business around here. Still do, as a matter of fact. Most of them are all right. Cook and Waincastle weren’t. Especially Waincastle. He got in a lot of fights and didn’t pay his gambling debts, which started even more fights. One day he shot Cooper Raine’s favourite mule after he stepped in one of the mule’s plops, which since it was in the street, could hardly be blamed on the mule.

  It was the only time in my life I’d ever felt sorry for Cooper Raine who is a hard man to feel sorry for because he has a voice like a magpie and is a liar to boot. Still, when I saw him kneeling in the dust alongside that dying mule which turned out to be his favourite, and there were tears on his face and for once he wasn’t talking, I felt pretty bad for Cooper.

  When I saw those three come into the bar, I had an uncomfortable feeling. I started to get awful warm which is how I usually get when there’s unpleasantness in the air. I don’t think Teacher or Watts took any notice of the three, other than to see them come in, and were about to step around them and continue on out the door.

  “For Chrissake, Jake,” Joad Cook said real loud. “For Chrissake,” he said again, “what has become of your drinking establishment? Surely this isn’t a nigger I see?”