Cowboys and Indians, sometimes one and the same, occupy the rugged landscape of the late nineteenth-century British Columbia interior in George Bowering's Shoot! Meet the McLean Gang — brothers Allan, Charlie, and Archie — and their sidekick Alex Hare. Halfbreeds who grew up bitter outcasts, rejected by both white and Indian worlds, they roam the ranch country around Kamloops on a wild spree of cattle rustling, robbery, and mayhem. Until the day they go too far and kill two men in cold blood, one of whom is the local sheriff. Tracked and captured by a posse of over a hundred men, the McLean Gang — the youngest a boy of fourteen — were tried, convicted and hanged in short order.
Originally published in 1994, Shoot! is a compassionate tale of race relations in the interior of British Columbia in the 1800s. Told with humour and sensitivity, George Bowering's imaginative re-creation of the world of the real-life McLean Gang soars into the realm of exhilarating speculation.
With an Afterword by Sherrill Grace.
EXCERPT:
Chapter 1
THERE WERE THREE BROTHERS walking around the dry country, doing their best to change things. The sun was beating on their heads, but they had a job to do. The sky was wide and blue, just as it is today. Red willows grew beside the river. There was not much in the way of green, except high on the hill where the pine trees stood apart from one another. In a few months there would be a lot of white on practically everything.
The three brothers were changing things so that the new people could live there.
The country was full of people-killers, so Thlee-sa and his brothers had to be sharp. If the new people were going to make a go of it, they could not always be looking over their shoulders for people-killers.
Ike Willard said that in those days Rabbit was a people-killer. Ground Hog was a people killer. Thlee-sa and his brothers fixed things so that when the new people came they could kill rabbits to make tobacco pouches for themselves and meat for their dogs. They fixed things so that their dogs would chase ground hogs into their holes.
Ike Willard knew what he was talking about.
Thlee-sa and his two brothers spent the last part of their lives putting things in order for the new people. When they werent working they were camped at Kamloops, because tobacco grew there. They would sit and smoke their pipes and cook fish because that is where they kept their fire.
They were always working, changing things for the new people who would not be animals at all.
ARCHIE MCLEAN WAS FIFTEEN years old, he figured, and he was sitting in a jail cell, waiting to get hanged. He wasnt old enough to be anything but tough. It took a lot of guns to get him here, a lot of guns and a government. The government was made of rich men with names something like his. He was famous.
But he was shut up in the Provincial Gaol in New Westminster. Allan had a plan. Allan was able to see things, he said, and who wouldnt believe him? Right now, Allan, what does the river look like? What colour are the aspens? Who are you talking to?
Allan McLean was sitting in his own cell with his jacket buttoned, and there was a young woman sitting on a kitchen chair outside his cell, reading the paper to him. The paper is all about how outraged the citizens are that those outlaws are getting a new trial. She's the same age as Allan, about, but she's married to her husband, so her name is Mary Anne Moresby. Moresby is the warden of the Provincial Jail in New Westminster.
Mary Anne Moresby is the first woman who ever sang songs for Archie...
