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and now he is suffering the consequences, chills, a loss of appetite, fatigue, aching joints.
    Lately, it has been impossible to remain tranquille : his stay in Hot Springs spoiled by rows with his wife, followed by a dressing-down from the minister of the interior, then Dunne had come wriggling into his brain like a greasy worm.
    News of Custer’s defeat had reached Hot Springs on July 6. The telegram from Minister Scott ordering him to Ottawa arrived the next day. He had read that as a very good sign, recognition of his accomplishments. After all, he had graduated from Kingston’s School of Cavalry with a first-class certificate. He had seen what the Commandant had entered into his official record. “Walsh is the smartest and most efficient officer that has yet passed through the school. He is a good rider and particularly quick and confident at drill. I thoroughly recommend him to the attention of the Adjutant General.” Surely this file must have been brought to the attention of Secretary Scott; surely the minister had recognized the cut of his jib and realized that a man with his military skills was best suitedeal with the possibility of a Sioux attack. So without a moment’s hesitation, Walsh had fired off his reply in a telegram to the Department of the Interior. “Will depart within 24 hours.”
    Knowing the storm this decision would cause, he had not consulted Mary in making it. From the moment they and their young daughter had taken up residence in Hot Springs’ most stylish and fashionable spa hotel, his wife had launched her campaign to get him out of the North-West Mounted Police. Mary wanted an ordinary husband, cozily camped in her parlour behind a newspaper, and she immediately went to work to drag him home to Prescott, tamed and in chains. It didn’t matter a whit to her that he had proved unsuitable for every other job he had ever had, discharged as a locomotive engineer for “running the rails recklessly,” a failure as a mechanic, then his disastrous stint as an irascible hotel manager.
    Their trunks were barely unpacked, he was preparing himself to go off to a bathing cabin to take the waters, when she said, “I have spoken to Jenkins and he is willing to give you another chance at running the North American Hotel. Of course, you would be on trial , Jimmy darling, but if you would buckle down all would be well. We could resume family life in Prescott and repair your fragile health.”
    She always called him Jimmy darling when she had a scheme up her sleeve. Turning to her, bath towel slung over his shoulder, he said, “If you think I’ll return to that, then you must be mad, Mrs. Walsh. Listening to old spinster ladies complain about drafts, and flies in their water pitchers, grinning docilely at two-bit peddlers of dry goods while they bitch about lumpy mattresses, I’d sooner put a goddamn pistol to my head and scatter my brains over the walls. Never. And do not return to this topic again.” That had set off the hysterics, the crying fits, the accusations that all he wanted was to get back to his “copper-skinned sluts.” Walsh was susceptible to women and women to Walsh. Mary knew that from her own experience; she had gone to the wedding altar big as a house.
    Walsh often muses that if ever there was a skirt he shouldn’t have lifted, it was Mary’s. And the timing of his marriage couldn’t have been more unfortunate because five months after the knot had been tied with his pregnant bride, the militia was called out to put down Louis Riel’s insurrection on the Red River. And he had had to stay behind, sand a cradle, and curse his luck. His wife had robbed him of his crack at glory. By God, she wasn’t going to do it again.
    When he told her he was off for Ottawa, that he was leaving the next day, Mary flung herself down on the bed and sobbed herself into a migraine. A little later, Cora sombrely crept into the room where her father sat with a railway timetable open on his knees,