The Snake River

by Win Blevins

  Also, the party was late. They’d gotten off late from Missouri, and the Laramie outfit had been in no great hurry, having plenty of time to get out and back. Long way yet to the Willamette, and the middle of July already here.

  His main thought was that it was another party of missionaries, like Marcus Whitman brought before. Bloody nuisances. Flare thought he’d tell Full to stuff his bleeding job, even though the Irishman needed it.

  “More coffee, Mr. O’Flaherty?”

  It was the first time he’d really noticed her. He rose. From natural courtesy, though others would attribute his manners to Gaelic blarney. “Thank you, Miss…”

  “Jewel. Maggie Jewel,” she said with a fine smile.

  “Sure and you are a jewel,” he said as she poured. She gave him a merry come-off-it look and passed on to the next empty cup.

  A tall lass, with hair the rust color of pipestone, full in the bosom and bottom, as Flare liked them. Tall as himself, Flare would wager, and would go near Flare’s eight stone, he’d wager again. Flare was always hard and lean, and right now, hung over and broke and starved for a few days, he was gaunt. She was graceful with her fullness—tread lightly upon the earth. Beautiful, as Narcissa Whitman had been beautiful. He liked the look of her. But no schoolmarms for Michael Devin O’Flaherty, you can bet on that.

  “What about it, Mr. O’Flaherty, are you our man?” It was Dr. Full interrupting Flare’s fantasy of Miss Jewel.

  “Might be. Don’t know. What’ll ye pay?” Flare noticed that all eyes were on the two of them. But from the look of it, everyone took a back seat to Dr. Full, especially his mouse of a wife.

  “Five hundred dollars.”

  It was no fortune, truly. Three or four years ago a good trapper got three times that in wages from American Fur Company for a year’s work, and Flare, a brigade leader, made near double that again. But this wasn’t three or four years ago. Beaver had bottomed out, and a child could hardly make enough for lead, powder, and tobacco.

  “Don’t know,” said Flare softly.

  “Will we be able to get to Vancouver before the snows?”

  “Should do. You’ll be wanting to leave the wagons here.”

  “No, Mr. O’Flaherty. Those wagons are essential. We were told we could get them right through to the Willamette.”

  “Might do. Terrible risk. Slow you down. I wouldn’t chance it.” Flare had to smile at himself for saying that. There wasn’t a chance he wouldn’t take, the more fool he.

  “Do we not need the food?”

  “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They toil not, neither do they spin.” Flare spread his arms to the horizons. “Buffalo country.” Flare noticed Miss Jewel watching him with a saucy smile.

  “But man, those wagons bear our clothes, our silver and china, our furniture, our books—”

  “Everything that makes you civilized.”

  “Yes.”

  “To survive out here, you need to be uncivilized.”

  Miss Jewel was much amused.

  “Far from it,” said Dr. Full huffily.

  “Oh, Samuel,” she burst out, then corrected herself: “Dr. Full, Mr. O’Flaherty is just having some fun with you.”

  “Is that true?” Full demanded.

  “A bit of fun, perhaps. It’s true you want to leave the wagons here. The clerk will trade you some mules, and you’ll need them.” Flare didn’t add that the wagons would go cheap and mules would come high.

  “What else?”

  “We’d travel every day, rest when I say so.” Flare had heard about other missionaries demanding that every sabbath be spent resting…and praying and reading Scripture…and preaching. Flare wouldn’t be able to bear the preaching.

  “What else?”

  “I’d be in command and you’d take orders. All of you.” A fine test for Dr. Full. Bad enough to herd pork-eaters across the mountains, impossible if you weren’t in charge.

  “No, thanks, Mr. O’Flaherty.” He spoke decisively. Flare didn’t think he would pass the test. “We’ll apply elsewhere.”

  “Oh, Samuel…Dr. Full,” Miss Jewel put in, “you don’t hire an expert and then tell him how to do his job.”

  He ignored her.

  He said curtly, “Thanks for your time, O’Flaherty.”

  Keep your leprechaun spirits up after that set-to, laddie, he teased himself. He was chewing on pemmican at his lean-to. Out of fresh meat, he was, and out of nearly everything else. Hadn’t eaten for drinking in several days, didn’t have a day’s worth of pemmican left.

  He envied Wolf Tone, picketed nearby, munching on grass. Wolf Tone was a handsome black stallion—black Irish, Flare liked to say. Not an Indian pony but an American horse, sixteen hands. While Flare was hungry, Wolf Tone had plenty to eat. Flare often wondered if he shouldn’t learn to eat grass and leaves and twigs, like the critters.

  Truly, he hadn’t had such a bad spring. He’d trapped with Barnaby Skye in North Park, and they’d come in to Laramie with a dozen packs of skins. When it came time to go on to rendezvous, Mr. Skye went. But Flare had got that letter, and went on another binge. Drank for six days and gambled at the hand game for the last three days while stuporous. Now he had nothing.

  The letter was from his oldest brother, Padraig, in County Galway. His old mother, God rest her soul, had passed on in her sleep. Seventy-five, she was. Mind not right in her last couple of years, she was, but talked often of Michael Devin, and hoped for a letter from him. Padraig listed all of Flare’s nephews and nieces, and two grandnieces, and said they all prayed for him. And truly hoped this letter reached him—it was being sent to American Fur Company, Michael Devin’s last known address.

  Padraig always called him Michael Devin, as his mother had. It was the American beaver men who gave him his odd nickname. They shortened his name successively to Flaherty and then Flare. Once a brigade clerk asked him how to spell it. When Flare gave the full version, the clerk asked for the short one. “F-l-a-i-r?” He suggested. “You do cut a fancy figure.”

  “No,” said Flare, “F-l-a-r-e. An Irishman’s life is brief enough, but bright and fiery.”

  All in all it was a nice letter Padraig wrote, such as made Flare feel shamed enough to get drunk. His eldest brother was almost as good as their mother, God rest her soul, at making Flare feel ashamed. Flare had loved his father, God rest his soul, dead twenty-five years, and despised his mother. Which he showed by a binge in her memory, and gambling away everything.

  Yes, Ma, I’m a drunk and a wastrel. And ashamed. Shame was very Irish. The Jews have guilt, a Jewish fur trader had told him in Montreal, and the Irish have shame.

  Truth is, lad, you need that job.

  Nursemaid bloody preachers.

  You’re flat broke, laddie. You’ve not supplies to get to rendezvous. If you get there, you’ve no plews to trade.

  This child has always survived.

  Oh, leave off with that. You’re a thirty-nine-year-old, worn-out, washed-up drunk and gambler. Maybe you cut a figure once, maybe you could have made something of yourself, but that’s behind you, laddie.

  Beaver’s bound to rise.

  The devil. It’s silk hats now, my friend. And black boots.

  I can guide someone other than a self-important ass. We’d be at each other’s throats.

  True enough, laddie. Going to try your credit again at the post?

  He listened to the footfalls on the other side of his lean-to. “Mr. O’Flaherty?” It was her. Usually he could tell, but it had been hard to hear her steps for sure around the campfire with others moving about.

  He stood so she could see him. “Aye, Miss Jewel. Will ye come and sit a bit with a wastrel? So my honored mother would warn you, God rest her soul.”

  She cocked her head and studied him. “You don’t have the face of a wastrel, Mr. O’Flaherty. An idealist, perhaps, and a little worn.”

  He chuckled. “Aye, lass, you bet, all the Irish are worn, and this one more than a little. Wou
ld ye share a bite with me?” He held out the last of his pemmican. “I’ve no coffee.”

  “No, thanks. Dr. Full has gone over to the fort to try to hire another guide. But the only man on Mr. Campbell’s list who’s at the fort now is you.”

  Flare let it sit.

  “Dr. Full says he heard over there yesterday that you need the money. Why don’t you take the job?”

  “It wasn’t offered, lass.”

  “Shaw,” she said. “I can get Samuel to offer it.”

  “I liked the way you put your oar boldly in. Got the impression he didn’t like it.”

  She grinned like a mischievous kid, which made her look marvelous. “Samuel thinks I’m too forward. He says I don’t honor the respective spheres God gave men and women in this world.”

  “Words of a man who would like any place, just so it’s on top.”

  “Oh, Samuel, Dr. Full, is a good man. I just know him too well.”

  “Well enough to fight like brother and sister,” Flare said with a smile.

  “We are, sort of. But he doesn’t like to admit that. His mother and father raised me from the time I was thirteen. He wasn’t there much—he was apprenticed to a physician. He’s a medical doctor. And an ordained minister.”

  “Why is it that you switch between his Christian name and his family name?”

  “He’s asked even his family to call him Dr. Full except when we’re entirely alone. He says us treating him with respect will show others they must. And he addresses us formally.”

  “Out here, lass, a man who doesn’t know poor bull from fat cow won’t get much respect.”

  “I think a man of God is always due respect,” she said with a hint of heat.

  “I left civilization behind, not God, musha colleen og” (dear little girl), Flare said quietly. “An Irishman can run, but he can’t leave God behind.”

  She eyed him, hesitated, then blurted, “I think you’re a good man.”

  “I think you’re a winsome lass,” he answered.

  “I want you to guide us.”

  “Dr. Full doesn’t want me.”

  She pursed her lips, wagged her head. “He can be persuaded. Come at noon.” She got up, grinned back at him, and walked off.

  Sure and you’re heading for trouble, Flare said to himself. You like her too much, which will never shine in her crowd.

  Well, he’d taken jobs for worse reasons.

  Dr. Samuel Full rode away from the Laramie stockade irked. The clerk, one Vernon Scharp, would recommend no guide handy at the post now. He said he needed his employees, and the free trappers were gone to rendezvous on Green River. The man didn’t even speak heartily for Mr. O’Flaherty. A good man, said Scharp, but into his cups, far into his cups. But who said Scharp was an honest man?

  Dr. Full needed to think, and he needed horseflesh under him while he thought. Being high, having a sense of sovereignty and domain always made him think better. He would walk his horse slowly back to camp.

  It all started when he cornered Jameson LaLane after the fool’s sermon at the church in Philadelphia. LaLane was squirming, and Dr. Full had no idea why. Lalane was the head of the Oregon mission, the man given the job Dr. Samuel Full and other every enthusiastic minister of God of the Methodist Episcopal Church coveted. He was the object of everyone’s envy. And the fool was unsure of himself.

  Dr. Full said nothing. He watched LaLane feint, duck, and dodge—when there was nothing to dodge. He was the guest of honor. The church women were treating him with respect, even awe. The man had the world in his hand. Why all the fancy footwork?

  Dr. Full waited until the women were gone. He was taking LaLane home for Sunday dinner, but that could wait. LaLane looked at Dr. Full sheepishly. Dr. Full looked back. And looked and looked.

  When the question came, it came whole, polished, a gleaming gift from God. True, it was an insane question—rude, confrontational, wildly out of order. But gloriously on target.

  “How many Indians have you converted?”

  Jameson LaLane did not hesitate, feint, or dodge. He blurted it out, a man flinging his burden to the ground: “None.”

  None! In four long years in the wilderness? None?

  The sacrifice of Christ had balmed not a single savage soul in Oregon? Dr. Full couldn’t believe it. Yet LaLane’s eyes told the truth. They were direct—shamed, but direct and open, confessional. The man had gone to Oregon to convert the heathen, spent three years at his labor, and accomplished nothing.

  Now he was touring the United States to tell of his effort, of his desperate need for more money, more Christians, more help. He was come to sing the necessity of bringing the Gospel to the heathen. And on all his tour, no one had dared ask the man of God a simple question: How many savages have you brought to Christ?

  None.

  Yes, the man had accomplished something physically—buildings built, crops in, a working wilderness post. But nothing toward the goal he was sent for.

  Dr. Full saw his great fortune.

  Then the excuses began. At first they were general. LaLane knew Indians were children of darkness—the Scripture tells us that—but he had not realized how benighted they were. The most terrible curse of all was not to dwell in darkness but to be blind, unable to see the light when it shone forth all about you. Jameson LaLane had held high his beacon, and no one had seen it.

  Then, with prompting, the facts emerged. The Indians had moved away from the missionaries—they’d abandoned the traditional sites of their villages to get away from the whites. The first two years they lived nearby, and a few even let their children come to the mission school. When LaLane and others went among them to teach, they listened politely and sometimes asked questions, but the questions showed they understood nothing. “Nothing,” said LaLane bitterly, his mouth twisting at the memory. “They thought if they prayed, guns and whiskey would rain down upon them as manna from heaven.”

  He switched plans and tried to get them interested in farming. If they learned industry, diligence, and perhaps a little cleanliness, he thought, they might begin to get a glimmer of the light. At least farming would keep them from gallivanting about all the time, Lord knows where, sometimes in search of food, but often to perpetuate their abominable devil worship.

  They responded a little. Some could see the benefit of crops, though none was inclined actually to plow, plant, and hoe. But the country was forgiving—it would grow anything, and with the merest hint of effort.

  Then they began to get sick. Fevers, dysentery, agues—every plague known to man. The children, especially, sickened and often died.

  It was an old story. The mountain men had told LaLane of how white men brought diseases the Indians were not accustomed to, and how they seemed to die of any fever. LaLane heard, but he didn’t realize.

  By the end of the second summer the mission had no Indian neighbors. A few children stayed at the school, after elaborate, barbaric ceremonies to ward off evil spirits. The ceremonies disgusted LaLane utterly, but he saw no chance of talking the pagans out of them. He accepted the children. Otherwise they not only couldn’t convert the Indians, they couldn’t find them.

  If they left their children at the school, though, the savages would come back for them.

  “But not a single convert?” Dr. Full knew where his leverage was.

  LaLane gave an involuntary cry, half laugh, half wail. His face was the face of a man who had ventured forth into the darkness, gazed into its heart, and found despair. “The truth is,” he rasped hoarsely, “they are Indians.”

  It took Dr. Full no time at all. It was easy to persuade LaLane that the mission’s first need was now a doctor like himself: How could you save the Indians’ souls if you couldn’t keep them alive? The mission board, though it ignored most of LaLane’s urgings, quickly approved this proposal. Its other decisions fit nicely with Dr. Full’s plans. LaLane would stay in the States another year, traveling and lecturing with the two Indian boys he’d brought East as an appeal
to sympathy, visiting churches with hat in hand. The mission board itself had no way to give LaLane the funds he said he needed.

  Some of the board members saw that by sending the manly and energetic Dr. Full a year ahead of LaLane, they might be changing leadership. They didn’t care. LaLane saw it, too. He was too worn down to care.

  So Dr. Samuel Full got his due. Four years earlier, when Jameson LaLane was chosen head of the Oregon mission, the board passed over Samuel Full because he had less experience with congregations than LaLane. He had less experience because he’d apprenticed himself to a physician, learning to heal the body as well as the soul. Nearly two years he’d spent in that apprenticeship, and he had a touch for pulling teeth. The two years once seemed to cost him his ambition, the greatest opportunity for bringing lost souls to the Gospel since the early centuries of the Christian church. He wanted to sing out the Gospel in the darkness of the great American wilderness.

  And now he was justified. Now his knowledge of doctoring got him what he wanted.

  Last winter, in the East, he put together a small group of the faithful with the skills he wanted in Oregon. The mission had veered from its purpose. It had become too mindful of worldly matters, had sent back word to the States for carpenters, farmers, mechanics, blacksmiths.

  Samuel Full would continue to build the settlement, the outpost of civilization on the Pacific Coast. He would also return it to its high purpose. He would save Indian souls.

  To that end the assembled people who would be tools in his hand. Another minister, Parker Jones, an older man whose wife was dead and children grown, congenial, without personal ambition. A young Christian with understanding of account books and numbers, Sheppers Smith, and a particular admirer of Dr. Full. Another blacksmith, Wineson. A schoolteacher for the white children, Elvira Upping. And most crucially, a teacher for the Indian girls, Maggie Jewel.

  Aside from their skills, they all had a quality that would serve Dr. Full well: They were malleable, they could be forged into the shapes that his great purpose required. Sometimes he wasn’t sure of Miss Jewel, but she was especially well trained, his sister in Christ, and a woman. She would learn. His band of the called needed people with the self-discipline, the sense of station, to make good followers.