Caprice

It's the mid 1890s in Kamloops, British Columbia. Two men argue over a bottle of whisky and in the struggle Frank Spencer, an American outlaw-turned-farmhand, kills Pete Foster, a French-Canadian and fellow farmhand.

Enter Caprice: a vision and a brain. Almost six feet tall, with flaming red hair and long legs, and toting a lethal bullwhip, she sets out to avenge her brother's murder. Travelling with her beloved black Spanish stallion, Caprice trails her brother's murderer to Mexico and back. Determined and headstrong as she is smart, she leaves an impression on the people she encounters in her journey: Gert, the whore with a heart of gold; Gert's son, for whom she provides affi rmation, and not the least Frank Smith, her lover, a teacher and amateur baseball player who wants her to leave the law enforcement to the professionals and marry him.

Caprice finally comes face to face with her brother's murderer at Deadman's Falls.

First published in 1987 and based on actual events in BC's history, Caprice is a witty, adventurous and colourful recreation of a Canadian heroine's quest in avenging her brother's murder, a woman well ahead of her times, who refused to be pigeonholed into a stereotype, who questioned authority and did so with unflinching resolve.

Caprice is a companion to Bowering's Burning Water and Shoot!, reissued by New Star in 2007 and 2008.

With a foreword by Aritha Van Herk.

EXCERPT

Section One

IF YOU HAD ORDINARY English eyes, you would have seen late-morning sunlight flooding the light brown of the wide grassy valley and making giant knife shadows where the ridges slid down the hillsides, free of trees, wrinkles made in a wide land that didnt seem to be in that much of a hurry. As usual in the summer there wasnt a cloud in the sky, and you could not be sure where the sun was because you didnt dare look up at that half of the sky. You paid attention to shadows, to know what time it was, and because any animal with any sense was resting where it was darker.

But if you had those famous Indian eyes you could look down into the wide valley and see something moving, maybe a lot of things moving, but especially one black or at least dark horse, which meant probably a rider too, and in a little while a rider for certain. Coming from the east, walking so slowly that the puffs of dust rose no higher than the animal's knees.

There were two men halfway up one of those ridges, or rather the cleft between two of them, because there was a little stream that ran down the cleft, and once in a while a fish about the length of a baby's forearm would be seen lying still in a shadow where the stream found it possible to slow down for a while. These two men had long sticks with points on the end, and it was their job to stick fish whenever they could. Sometimes, when their families and friends were particularly insistent about fish, they would go down to the river and get wet while sinking nets on the ends of poles, but when the days were a little more relaxed, they liked to come here to the stream, because spearing was more enjoyable than netting, and the view was terrific. Sometimes you could be the first people to see someone new.

Actually one of the Indians could remember seeing a lot better than he could see, but he could also pretend he could see a lot better than he could see.

"Is it anyone we know?" he asked.

"I have never seen that horse before," said the second Indian.

"I was not inquiring about our familiarity with horses," said the first Indian. "Our familiarity with horses has not been in question for the past five generations at least."

"I know that it is customary for a young man to respect his elders," said the second Indian. "But that does not mean that I have to double over with laughter at your corny jokes."

The first Indian liked that. It made the joke worthw

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