Lynching - Annick Press

Copyright Annick Press 2012
“Quiet!” he hissed.
“We have to tell them,” I whispered in his ear.
“It’s too late. They won’t listen.”
“But—”
“Enough!”
When my father says “enough,” that’s the end of
it. I held my tongue, but my brain would not stop
thinking. Everything had seemed so certain on the
ride north. Now nothing was. Riding ahead of me in
the darkness was the boy who murdered Mr. Bell, but
maybe he didn’t. If justice was what we were after,
then surely justice meant knowing without a doubt
that he was guilty. I took my father’s point, though.
Emotions were running high. My father was already
suspected of soft resolve. This was not the time to
mount a defense of Louie Sam, especially not coming
from us Gillies. I decided that once we got Louie Sam
back to the jail in Nooksack, I would go to Sheriff
Leckie and tell him about the suspenders.
But after riding for not even an hour, the posse
stopped in a clearing. We were less than halfway
home. It seemed odd to me that the men would want
to take a break, considering the seriousness of their
business. Then a rider—the same Jack Simpson who’d
entered Mr. York’s house as our spy—came galloping
past us in the opposite direction, going back up the
Whatcom Trail from where we’d just come. Word
filtered back through the ranks that Mr. Osterman
and Mr. Moultray had sent him on a scouting mission,
worried that maybe we were being followed by the
Sumas—that they were riled that we’d taken one of
their own, like Mr. York said they would be. If that
was the case, we knew that every last man jack of us
was in trouble, because the Canadian Indians were
sure to outnumber us in a fight.
The men—including Father—checked that their
firearms were loaded. I saw Pete nearby. I slipped off
of Mae.
“George!” Father shouted.
“I’ll be right back!” I told him.
I went over to Pete.
“I got something to tell you.”
“What might that be?”
He was acting huffy, looking down on me from his
borrowed saddle.
“I’m not sure that Louie Sam’s the one that left
that trail, the one we followed through the swamp.”
“What are you talking about? Anybody with eyes
can see that Indian is guilty as sin, Gillies.”
The way Pete said our family name made me mad,
like he thought we were less than other people—
especially his people. To get back at him, I said,
“What were you so scared of him for when you saw
him on the Lynden road? He’s only a boy.”
Pete was about to spew something back at me, but
at that moment Jack Simpson came galloping back
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