River With No Bridge

by Karen Wills

  “You there. Yes, you. Follow me.” A tall, heavy-featured young trooper in an Army uniform held a bayonet-mounted rifle on Bat.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Move.” A rough prod in the back accompanied the order.

  At the touch of the bayonet, Bat’s calf muscle twitched against the Bowie knife sheathed in his boot.

  “Stop here.”

  They’d come to a pile of bodies. Bodies of every size: burned, crushed, bloodied, reeking of death, waited to be loaded onto wagons pulled by exhausted draft horses. Bat retched and glowered at the trooper.

  By the time the last corpses lay stacked on wagons pulled off by half-dead horses, the smoke-filled square sat all but deserted. Only troopers shouted and prodded at remaining conscripted civilians. The soldier who’d forced Bat to load the dead separated from the others for a moment.

  “My God,” he said. “Look at that.”

  He pointed his gun at a small dog dragging a singed rat bigger than its nemesis, the dog’s teeth sunk into its throat. His young captor’s attention diverted, in one swift, practiced movement Bat pulled the Bowie up and threw it. The blade lodged in the trooper’s back. Bat retrieved the knife and wiped it off on the dead soldier’s uniform.

  Bat picked up the gun next. He moved to an alley from which he saw that by some miracle the St. Francis Hotel still stood. Bat stared at it. Lou. Had they found her? Was Lou’s body in some charred pile? Sinking to the ground, he rolled to his side, slipped out his bottle of laudanum, and swallowed. He drifted into black, dreamless oblivion.

  Disgusted shouts of dismay woke him. Bat hung back long enough to watch the St. Francis Hotel burn at last. Then he ran. At the Ferry Building, he found boats making profitable trips across the Bay to Oakland where refugee camps sheltered the dispossessed. Bat Moriarty, stinking of sweat and ashes, decided to be among them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Bat lived by gambling for days until the Southern Pacific offered to provide a ride anywhere in North America for earthquake refugees. Within twenty-four hours, Bat Moriarty found a seat on a coach headed for Kalispell, Montana. He’d told the young woman assigning seats that he intended to join his sister at her ranch.

  By the time he stepped off the train into the cool mountain air of that raw settlers’ town, he was gray-skinned, hollow-eyed, and shaking. In a foul humor, he pushed open the doors of the Kalispell Saloon. Within an hour, a sad-eyed upstairs girl named Patsy had given him a half-full bottle of her roommate’s laudanum. In six hours he’d won a small stake, and in twelve hours he’d bathed, shaved, and lay in comfort, asleep in Patsy’s bed.

  In their secluded world, Michael watched Dawn Mist develop from a lovely, child-like girl into a beautiful, thoughtful one going on sixteen. Everything about her seemed straight. Her black hair hung straight down her erect and graceful back, and once she’d conquered her shyness and accepted Michael as part of life, her look when they spoke went straight into his answering one.

  He loved her for her straight heart as well. She showered affection on Nora and Jim. As the two youngest members of the household matured, it became as inevitable as seasons that Dawn returned Michael’s love.

  In the beginning his adoration had a sort of bewildered fierceness, so unbearable that at times it drove him away from the ranch up into the high country. Michael had been raised by his father to believe Celestials and Indians inferior beings, best kept outside the circle of light cast by decent Irish parlor lamps. He had to distill his amazing, disconcerting love from embedded childhood hatreds. These people were clean, worked hard, and expressed themselves with dignity and humor. Dawn Mist seemed filled with an energy he hadn’t seen in most women of Butte.

  Instead of celebrations dictated by dates on a calendar, in the mountains every day served as an excuse to go berry picking, have a picnic, or ski on winter nights with the mottled white disc of moon gleaming over new snow, shadows of leaf-stripped berry bushes and willows cast across to the black-trunked forest sentinels. Gray chimney smoke signaled home.

  Finally, on one of those nights Michael stopped caring about what folks in Butte would think and took Dawn Mist in his arms. Above them an occasional shooting star tore unforeseen among suspended constellations, falling toward the earth to vanish in some unfathomable country beyond the wilderness. It didn’t matter where.

  On a May morning in 1906, Michael stepped from the barn’s dim animal warmth. Cold, dazzling sunlight peered over snow-draped mountains, still captive to winter’s pastels.

  Michael went back in and climbed to the loft. He finished forking hay down to the milk cow before hearing the familiar sound of Dawn closing the cabin door and stepping off the porch. Her everyday clothes had been washed until the blue faded and her green apron muted to the color of lichen. Dawn herself was vivid. Snapping black eyes, shining black hair, an apricot sheen in her tan cheeks, wild rose lips. She’d tied her hair back with a blue ribbon. He raced down to greet her.

  When she reached him, he took her hand and they turned like dance partners tracing familiar steps. In the barn, he held the hand she raised to his cheek. He kissed her fingertips and pulled her to him, feeling her soft breasts, breathing her scent.

  “I couldn’t sleep last night for thinking of you, waiting for Dawn,” he murmured.

  Dawn ruffled his hair. “Which dawn?” She teased, the game part of their morning ritual.

  “The only one I care about is Dawn who brings her own light to warm me.” He pulled her to him again. His hand caressed her breast.

  “No. I have to hurry. I’m supposed to finish a lesson. You know how Papa is.”

  Michael groaned. “I know how Jim is. I know how Mother is. I know how Beartracks is. And I know what I want.”

  She snuggled against his shirt’s rough wool. “We only have to wait until Papa says no more lessons.”

  “Sometimes I wish I didn’t respect him so much.” Michael sighed and released her.

  Jim Li had become massive, looking these days like a Mongolian bandit in furs, leggings, and buckskin shirts. After the day he found Nora, Michael gained respect for Jim in many ways. The man from China could outwork any Michael ever saw. Jim could also be patient. He taught Michael ranch work, how to construct outbuildings, break horses, hunt, check sets on the trapline, hay, break ground, deliver calves, and brand cattle. He taught with precise care as though preparing his student for a great responsibility.

  Michael took off to check traplines or hunt when he reached the point where the curve of Dawn’s breast or a glimpse of bare leg drove him to wakeful nights and irritable days. This last season of waiting promised to be hardest. To do things right, to marry Dawn, he had to ask Dawn and then Nora, Jim, and probably Beartracks Benton. They would give their blessing. However, they would want them to wait at least a year, then have a real wedding with a priest to keep Nora happy. Dawn’s Catholicism mixed with Blackfeet spirituality. Jim remained a believer in gods, spirits, and immortals. Michael knew it cost Jim Li a piece of his heart whenever he crossed the North Fork. The older man had a true fear of water spirits.

  But with Dawn, Michael always found new delights. As well as he knew Dawn, moods came on her that mystified him. He would never finish exploring the country here or his Dawn Mist, never know everything about either. And that gave him pleasure.

  And she loved him. His friend. His girl. He slipped her silky hair through his fingers. She turned to the mundane work of milking, her cheek against the cow’s flank. She shot a stream of milk to the one-eyed cat, barely missing the boy who wanted her so much.

  For now Michael tossed and turned at night, damning the slow swing of the winter sun and slow arrival of long rains to melt winter’s snow. Those same rains swelled the runoff that turned the river into a raging milk-and-coffee torrent.

  A week later, Michael had just finished chores when he heard Nora. “Michael, we’re going to Belton.”

  He waited in the kitchen while Nora spooned sourdough batter for panc
akes. Dawn sat near him, poring over her lesson. Jim had gone to check traps. “Why Belton today?” Michael finally asked.

  Nora turned from the stove. “Our butter is plentiful, and we can trade. Besides, we’ve been hearing more about them opening the North Fork for homesteading. We’ve already done everything settlers must to prove up a claim. If we find out what’s involved in this filing, we can finally own the land outright. Well, I can. The law still won’t treat Jim right.”

  “But you can’t file in Belton, can you?” Michael stabbed at a pancake.

  “No. I just want to hear what people are saying, pick up a newspaper. We have to be first to file before any upstart challenges us.” Urgency laced her tone.

  Michael laughed. “Nobody would dare challenge us. Even the rangers let us be.”

  “Because of Beartracks, the Hogans, and Pete Dumont. Now we’ll expand to 160 acres. We’ll be able to do more than hardscrabble.”

  After spending one night at Hogan’s they reached Belton, no longer the sorry camp Nora first visited as a newcomer. The store, hotel, saloon, and depot gave the town a permanent air. Nora bought a copy of Kalispell’s Daily Inter Lake. The Homestead Act would be made into law on June 16, 1906. They could file a claim at the Land Office in the Flathead County Courthouse.

  That night at Apgar, Nora grew pensive. She and Michael drank coffee by light from a coal oil lamp after supper. “Everything will change. The land-hungry will come in droves. Twenty-some parcels are to be offered. We homesteaders will bet the filing fee against Uncle Sam that we can make it. Some won’t.”

  Michael’s voice deepened with respect. “You already did the hard parts.”

  Nora shot him a tender smile. “I wasn’t alone. What Jim didn’t know, he figured out. Beartracks and the Hogans helped as well.”

  On their return, Jim pored over the paper and gathered information from neighbors and rangers. But as the time neared for their trip to Kalispell, he announced his decision to stay at Evening Star with Dawn. There would always be those angered by the sight of him with Nora, or both with their Blackfeet daughter.

  Nora meant everything to him in this strange country that he loved, but where he still couldn’t always feel at home. In the last year, he’d found himself never wanting to be apart from her, not even for short spans. However, Michael would be his mother’s companion in Kalispell.

  Michael pretended nonchalance about the trip. Butte was, after all, bigger, wilder, more of a cultural and political hotbed than Kalispell, but the night before starting out, he still couldn’t sleep. In summer, he slept in the barn loft, and tonight he looked out to the benediction of shimmering northern lights.

  Dawn Mist slipped out of the cabin and stopped below him, her hair a dark shawl over her white nightgown. “Michael? Wake up.”

  “I am awake. Can’t sleep for thinking about tomorrow. And the sky tonight. Come up? Just for a few minutes?”

  She hesitated, then pulled open the door below, latched it, and climbed the ladder. She knelt on his blankets. Together they faced the shifting curtains of prism-colored light.

  “I’ll miss you,” she said.

  “It won’t be for long now that the train runs from Belton.”

  “I wish I could go, too.” She lowered her head.

  “Next time.” He turned to her. “Next time we’ll go to be married. Will you marry me?”

  “Yes.” She entered his waiting arms.

  “Sure?”

  “Yes.” She looked up at him

  “Should I talk to the priest at St. Matthew’s?” Michael made a face, then grinned.

  “Of course.” She frowned a little. Nora would say even his question approached sacrilege.

  “When should I talk to Mother and Jim and—I suppose—Beartracks, too?”

  “Let me first. They’ll agree, but I want to soothe Mama. She’ll think I’m too young.”

  “Talk to Jim while we’re gone,” Michael said.

  She shifted and Michael felt her warmth through the muslin nightdress. He sought her mouth with his, and they sank back into blankets cushioned by sweet-smelling hay.

  “I know,” he sighed, anticipating her. “We have to wait.”

  “That’s what the priest would say. But I know better. I’ve been your wife since I first saw you.”

  “I’ve been your husband since I first saw you.”

  “Since you were born.”

  “Since I was born.”

  Michael slipped his hand to her thigh, and Dawn Mist stopped only long enough to pull her gown over her head. When she lay back, he was stunned by her beauty. Shaking, he pulled off his own clothes and covered her dark limbs with his blond ones. In the moonlight, they entwined, forming a braid of light and dark, joined taut and strong while unheeding colors rippled in the limitless sky.

  When June 15 finally arrived, Michael and Nora weren’t the only North Fork residents to board the train at Belton for Columbia Falls, there to change to the “Gallopin’ Goose” for the short run to Kalispell. The Hogans and others already seated greeted them. Michael sensed tension. Still, it turned into a kind of party descending from the mountains into the broad Flathead Valley.

  At the Grand Central Hotel, Nora started to register two rooms for her and Michael. “Not that we’ll spend much time in them,” she muttered. “We’ll have to be first in line. We’ll have to be up at 4:30—make that 4:00 a.m., Michael.”

  “Look, Mother, why even get me a room? Why don’t I just go to the courthouse around midnight? You can join me as early as you want after you catch a few hours’ rest.”

  She paused, then nodded. “That’s a grand idea.”

  Michael’s heart bounded. He could finagle one hour of freedom to taste a few of Kalispell’s forbidden treats, at least a cold beer in a saloon. He waited for Nora in the dining room and stood politely when she appeared a few moments later, dressed in a short blue jacket with a matching blouse and skirt.

  A second man pausing in the doorway of the hotel saloon caught his breath when Nora smiled at her son waiting in the high-ceilinged dining room. “Nora Larkin,” the man whispered. “Still lovely. How can that be?” He stepped out of the dim archway, pulling his hat at an angle, but sliding a glance after the woman being seated at a table set with crystal and fine china. Then Bat Moriarty noticed the striking young man flashing a white-toothed grin. Bat recognized the charm that comes from wearing physical beauty like a coat the wearer believes it would mean nothing to discard. He’d learned the falsity of that belief.

  Bat took in the breadth of the boy’s shoulders, the long, slim fingers picking up a glass. “He might have come back to her from Butte,” he murmured. “Could just be.” A smile skimmed over the gambler’s gaunt face, unguarded for a fleeting moment.

  He came to himself again when a group of raucous homesteaders herded through the lobby. He heard one call, “Nora. Michael. We thought you might be here.”

  “Is your mother keeping you on a short leash, boy?” A bearded man boomed.

  Bat swung away into the summer evening, his gloved hand smoothing the brim of his bowler. Horses, buggies, and the occasional horseless carriage passed on Main Street, but the gambler didn’t notice.

  Nora Larkin had walked within feet of him, and now dined with their son born of one night together. Strange, he never gave much thought to the brats left behind when he deserted Deirdre in Michigan. But since learning Nora had given birth to his child, Bat had often speculated about him, how he looked, how he might turn out, maybe only because he’d never laid eyes on him. Well, now he had. It didn’t change his mind about the score he’d come to settle. He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out the flask Patsy had filled with laudanum. She’d proved a loyal girl, but he’d be damned if anyone would control his doses as Lou had done.

  Bat turned toward the saloon where Patsy worked. Her face brightened when he pushed open the swinging doors and crooked his finger, motioning her to join him. Of course, she would.

  T
hey always did.

  He spoke to her, then left again to watch and wait.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Michael rushed downstairs to the lobby and out the hotel door, looking eagerly at the lights of Kalispell. Especially the lights of the saloon.

  Patsy faced the swinging doors Michael stepped through. He hesitated, then idly watched the pretty girl excuse herself from conversation with a plainly disappointed logger before she approached him. Poised with his bedroll against his hip, the rangy boy knew women noticed him, but had never been subject to such a brazen advance.

  “Hello. Like a little company?” He returned her smile, and noticed her sudden look of being off balance.

  “Guess I’ll have a beer.” He didn’t realize his voice, his smile, too, resembled those of another of the bar’s customers.

  “Buy me one, good lookin’, and I’ll protect you from the vultures.” She inclined her head.

  Michael observed a magenta-haired whore taking his measure, her scowl turning to a leer.

  “Why not? Just one, though. I have to be someplace pretty soon.”

  “Your girl’s place?”

  “No, the courthouse steps. I’m filing a claim as soon as they open up. Well, my mother is. We’ve got a place up on the North Fork.”

  “Up on the North Fork. That’s the end of the world. You live up there alone, just you and your mama and the grizzly bears?” Patsy motioned to the bartender who brought beers. They picked them up and moved to a table sticky with spilled beer and peanut shells.

  Michael laughed. “No. There are a few others.”

  “I heard there’s a Chinaman up there married to a white woman.”

  Michael shifted a little in his chair, then gave her a hard look. “That would be Jim Li. A good man.” He drank down his beer. “I’d best secure my spot, or my mother will give me a tongue-lashing that would silence even this place.”

  Patsy hoisted her unfinished glass.