Skye sipped. The scotch was seducing him.
“Why aren’t you coming with me?” he asked.
“Because I’m still negotiating some territorial agreements with the Yanks. So far, it’s gone badly. We offered to stay out of the country east of the divide if they’d stay out of the west slope. But they have us there. Oregon country’s contested, and we can’t keep the Yanks out. We’re at a disadvantage. HBC won’t spill a drop of spirits to acquire a pelt from a savage. There are now two or three Yank companies competing with us, and some freelancers, too. What are we to do? Make alliances. I’m going to talk with Wyeth. He’s newest and easiest to deal with.”
“Nothing’ll come of it, mate. The Yanks go where they please and do what they please, and they don’t take kindly to HBC. They know you’ve been stirring up the Blackfeet against them, and arming them, too.”
“Well, that’s our trump. We could cut off the Blackfeet—if we get something in return.”
“Mr. Ogden, I wonder if you know the Yanks at all. They’re spoiling for fights, half of them.”
“So it seems,” Ogden said.
Doubts and details nagged at Skye. He needed an outfit. He was in debt to the Yank company. Who would supply him and Victoria with suitable attire for London?
He and Ogden dealt with these and other details, and within the space of an hour they had hammered things out. Skye would proceed down the Snake and Columbia rivers with saddle- and packhorses. HBC, in exchange for a term of service, would outfit the Skyes.
Then it was done. He rose stiffly, discovering that night had embraced them. A mountain breeze eddied cold air through the camp, bringing woodsmoke on its wings. Men were crawling into their robes. This rendezvous was growing long of tooth and most of the trappers had squandered a year’s income on wild times, whooping it up, outfitting themselves, and now they had little to do at night except play euchre or monte or spin tales.
In a week or so it would all be over, and then the lonelies would crawl into the belly of each man, and the mountaineers would silently pack up and leave. Now the lonelies struck Skye hard. He would be ditching all this, maybe forever.
He made his way past campfires, most of them little more than glowing coals, looking for a certain one. He found the fire he wanted, and spotted Tom Fitzpatrick, Bill Sublette, Davy Jackson, Jed Smith, Gabe Bridger, and others, talking quietly among themselves, no doubt planning the year’s campaign. He approached cautiously, top hat in hand, but old Broken Hand Fitzpatrick waved him in.
This was going to be hard.
“I guess I’ve come to say goodbye, gents,” he said.
“You goin’ somewheres?” Bridger asked.
“Probably home to England for a spell,” he said. “I’ve a chance to clear my name. I never figured jumping ship was wrong, not when I was pressed in and kept a slave, but the lords in the admiralty feel otherwise.”
Briefly, he described the news he had received from Ogden, and finally said that he might be working for HBC. They sat silently. HBC was the enemy, the supplier of the Blackfeet.
“Guess you want to see your family, Mister Skye,” said Jackson. “Now, out here, most of us coons, we don’t ever want to see our famblies.”
The laughter went thin. He could have announced his move to American Fur and they would have cheered him. But not HBC.
“I owe the store one hundred fifty-four dollars and some cents,” he said. “I’ve come to offer you a good packhorse, worth over a hundred, and my nine-pole lodge. Not many a man gets to stay in a tent with a fire inside it on a January night. It’s worth a piece. I figure the package, a good Crow-trained travois and packhorse, and the lodge, well, it comes to my debt.”
“Don’t know what the company’d do with a lodge,” Sublette said.
“Sell it,” Fitzpatrick said. “All right, Skye, I’ll go for it if the rest will.”
Skye saw the nods, lit by flickering flame.
“Done, then.” He saw the Yanks distancing themselves from him. “You’re good men. Took in a starving limey and let me make my way. Maybe, when I come back, I’ll see you. Maybe not. But as long as I live, I’ll remember you.”
These were great-hearted men and they put aside their differences, just as Skye had set aside his anger.
“You go tell that pa of yourn, and them proper sisters of yourn, how it be in the mountains, and fill ’em full of tall tales,” Bridger said.
“Don’t need to, mate. The real tales are more than anyone in London’ll believe.”
“You taking Victoria?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s some. But not the first time. I heard tell, long time gone, some Iroquois shipped over there to France and half them Frenchies went mad just to get a look at ’em. You go run old Victoria down that Piccadilly Circus, and watch the dogs come sniffing!”
Skye didn’t like the vector of this. “She’s got courage. Imagine her pulling up from her village and coming with me. She’s never even seen a Yank village, much less a city. And the biggest boat she’s seen is a canoe. How do you think it’ll be to see a three-master?”
“She’s some, she is,” said Milt Sublette.
Fitzpatrick spoke for them all. “Sorry we couldn’t keep you on salary, Mister Skye. Thought you’d be happy enough as a free trapper, you and the missus. But you go on across the sea now, and get your name cleared. And watch out. There’s those in HBC that’d sooner skin you alive than call you an Englishman. Stuffy outfit. They won’t be calling you mister, like we do.” He laughed. “At least like we try to do.
“There’ll be those as have long knives out, those naval officers you told us about. And there’ll be those who’ll think you’re a rough man unfit for London. The mountains turn us all rough, and it won’t get you into tea parties. But seeing your father who thought ye dead and gone. Ah, there’ll be tears aplenty. And seeing the sisters, there’ll be tears of joy. You’ve got your chance, and you’re taking it, and there’s been no finer man in the mountains.”
One by one they stood to pump his hand, give him a bear hug, thump him on the back, and then the shyness came over them, and he wound his way back to his small lodge where Victoria lay in the robes awaiting his news.
“It’s all set,” he said. “We’ll be riding at dawn with just a packhorse. They’ll take the other nag and the lodge to clear my debts.”
“It’s a good lodge,” she said. “It has kept us warm and safe. It was given to us by the People.”
“They made us a fine lodge, but we made it a safe home,” he said. “Now we’ll walk into danger. You’re a brave woman, Victoria.”
“I am not afraid, dammit. I’m Skye’s woman, and you honor me by taking me to your people.”
Skye stared out the smoke hole at the bright stars, one of which was lying beside him.
seven
Skye and Victoria left the rendezvous at first light, following the Teton River northwest. At the edge of the great, somnolent encampment, Skye reined up, lifted his top hat, and settled it over his long hair. That was his farewell to the men of the mountains who had taken him in and made him part of their wild nation. His life with the Yanks was over. Their images came to him: Fitzpatrick, Bridger, Sublette, Smith, Jackson … Goodbye, goodbye, to them all.
“We’re hell and damn right all alone,” Victoria said. Skye nodded and touched heels to his thin, tough mustang, gotten from Victoria’s people. They were alone, and shifting from the protection of the rendezvous to danger. From now on they were prey.
It was his fate to be alone, without allegiances. But he was going home and that thought reached so deep into his heart that it lifted his sagging spirits. He was going home, but Victoria was traveling farther then ever from her home family. That’s how their marriage was, one outbound, one inbound, she never quite happy in the white men’s company, he never quite at home among her Crow people. He saw no help for it. And yet they had grown close to each other, a tiny nation of two, separate from the whole world.
She rode beside him along the icy river that deposited the snows of the Tetons into Henry’s Fork of the Snake, and ultimately into the Pacific Ocean some short distance beyond Fort Vancouver. It would be a long ride, but not so desperate as his odyssey six years earlier, as a seaman escaping the long arm of the navy.
Home to see his father, home to see his sisters and children he had never met. And his cousins, too. Home to the small vistas and towering majesty of the Island Kingdom. Home to the friends who would have been his classmates at Cambridge, men who would be shocked by him now. No doubt he would repel them, just as he most likely would repel his father and sister and all of his relatives. And if his roughness offended them, Victoria’s ways would appall them. But it had to be done.
A good name counted for much, and he wanted his good name and his citizenship back. Then he would be what he had been set upon the earth to be, a free and honorable Englishman.
As the sky lightened behind the eastern mountains, he and Victoria wound their way along grassy parks dotted with mottes of aspen or cottonwood, past long slopes of lodgepole pine, the grades gentle and easy on their horses and the surly packhorse behind them. That beast was not heavily laden. The Skyes could travel light, and on this trip they chose to: at Fort Vancouver, they would shed everything they owned for a very different sort of attire.
Skye paused repeatedly to examine the world behind him.
That was an ironclad rule in the mountains: know what lay before, and what lay behind. He squinted sharply into the dull light, the sun still canceled by the blue mountains, and discovered motion, something yellow and low, probably a coyote.
He nodded to Victoria and pointed. But the movement had ceased, and whatever creature lay a hundred yards back would not reveal itself. He reined the mustang around and headed downstream again, leading the packhorse while Victoria kept to the rear.
Over the next miles they spotted the animal trailing behind, and knew it was either a stalking coyote or a dog. Then, mid-morning, when they paused at streambank to water the horses and rest, they beheld a yellow dog on its haunches watching them; some mutt from one of the tribal encampments.
“I hope he goes back,” Skye said. “I don’t want a dog.”
“The sonofabitch isn’t gonna get close, anyway,” she said.
When Skye concluded, from a ridge, that the land was open and level enough, he cut west, straight for Henry’s Fork, abandoning the north-trending Teton River. They rode through lodgepole forests and open grassy parks, across a vast country in which a man couldn’t see far because of the trees. But they were far off any trails and didn’t expect to run into any trouble except perhaps for a bear.
The yellow dog followed, now approaching to within fifty yards.
“I’ll shoot it,” Skye growled.
“Dammit, Skye, just leave it.”
A few mountaineers put much store in dogs, arguing that they warned their masters of approaching enemies. But most of them found, to their sorrow, that it was the other way around. A barking mutt led stalkers straight into camp, and the dog-lovers lost their scalps and their lives and their mutts.
All that quiet day the cur crawled along behind them, sitting, watching, squirming, hiding in grasses, running through concealing shadows. Skye watched warily, looking for a clear shot.
Victoria disapproved. There were usually dogs in Indian camps, and they were useful, cleaning up offal and guarding against horse raids. For some of the peoples, they were also a handy source of food.
“Maybe he is a goddam spirit-dog,” she said. “Medicine dog, come to help us.”
“He’s just looking for some vittles,” Skye replied. He would not let his woman soften his decision. Dogs were dangerous and a burden to feed. A he-dog got into scraps and had to be doctored.
A she-dog caused more trouble, stirring up all sorts of headaches, whelping and confronting its owner with pups.
“Horseapples,” she said.
Victoria had picked up the trappers’ rough lingo in the brigades, year after year, and had no idea that there was such a thing as polite society and that such words were simply unacceptable to them. Skye wondered how he could prepare her for London, for European ways, and knew he couldn’t. This was her version of English, and that was how it would be, whether in a Mayfair drawing room or in the camps of the mountain men. But at least he would tell her what words to avoid.
They reached Henry’s Fork late in the day and camped in a leafy bower well back from the trails tracing its banks. This was a sweet land, with stretching vistas and snowcapped mountains poking through the distant haze. The yellow dog made itself at home just one rifleshot away. Skye didn’t much care. The mutt wasn’t slinking in, and disappeared for long periods, no doubt hunting.
He was more concerned about Indians. This was savannah country, with plenty of cover for stalking war parties. It was best to dodge them all, even the friendly ones. The loss of one horse would plunge them into trouble. He had ridden over rock and hard ground, walked down rivulets and creeks, hidden their passage to all but the most observant eye. But it was never enough, and luck usually decided who went under and who lived. This was Bannock country, or so he had heard, traversed by Flatheads and Shoshones and Nez Perce. But it was not unknown to the adventuresome Blackfeet, either, and it wouldn’t help him an iota to be in the company of a Crow woman.
Henry’s Fork teemed with trout, but Victoria wouldn’t touch them. Demons from under the waters she called them and always watched dourly when white men caught and cooked them. It surprised her that they didn’t die on the spot. But she always said that they sickened after eating underwater things; she could see it.
They hadn’t hunted this day and now Victoria pulled parched corn from the packstores, built a tiny fire against a low bank, and boiled the corn into mush in her kettle. They would eat simply.
“It is lonely, Skye,” she said, after scouring the pot and dousing the tiny fire. “One day we are with friends. The next day we are two and a dog.”
“Just two. I’m thinking to run that dog off.”
“Let us see. It is a spirit-dog.”
“It’s a mutt.”
Skye rose, restlessly, and looked to the horses. He had picketed them close to camp on good grass. Later, when he was ready for the robes, he would bring them in and tie them to the aspen a few feet from his bed.
Some coyotes gossiped somewhere over the horizon and Skye waited for the damned mutt to howl, but it didn’t. It lay there, out in the darkness, silent and full of its own purposes.
He had never owned a dog, didn’t know whether he wanted one.
The mountaineers argued dogs in camp, often with such heat that men got into brawls. Some claimed that a man and dog made a family, if not an entire nation. Others cursed dogs and said the redskins should eat the whole dog nation for the sake of the world. Skye didn’t much care.
After he’d had his pipe of the precious leaf, he knocked out the dottle, tied the horses close, and drew his robes around him against the high country chill. The ground was always hard and his head never enjoyed a pillow and he had never gotten used to the privation.
She joined him. She had always come to him in the night, if only to be held or to hold her man. She held him now, and no word passed between them. He felt the wash of tenderness again, knowing that this union was more important than going home to England. Much would depend on what McLoughlin had to say. But whatever his fate, it would be Victoria’s fate as well. He didn’t know why that was so. They hadn’t spoken of it or pledged it to each other. Perhaps she was his only nation, his only people, and the two of them, molded by danger and hardship into one heart.
He awakened at first light and everything was all right. He could always tell. Some intuitive understanding, honed from years of danger in strange places, told him when things were amiss at the first gray coloration of the eastern sky. His hip was bruised where he had slept on a rock, but that was all.
She slept. He wonde
red why they had bred no children, but neither of them knew. Something in her slender form, or maybe within him, made her barren. He didn’t know whether to regret it. The wilderness was not a place to rear a family. She would disagree with him. She never understood the white men’s idea of wilderness, a place apart from civilization. The whole land was her home and the home of her people, so why not an infant in a cradleboard?
The horses stood stock-still, dozing. All was well.
The outfit snugged beside him, untouched. His Hawken lay in its quilled and fringed sheath within reach, covered with dew. His flint and striker lay beside him, his powder horn next to the rest. Moisture lay thick over everything, including his blankets.
The dog lay ten yards distant, staring directly at him. Ugly yellow thing, big scar over one eye, half an ear off, distrustful and ready to bolt. Skye hunted for a rock to pitch, but the dog crawled back and waited.
“Skye, dammit, let it be,” she said. “I got feelings about that dog. It’s a he-dog, and he’s watching us.”
“Put an arrow through him,” Skye said.
She stared, stonily. He knew she would not reach for her bow and quiver.
The dog stood, stretched, front legs first, and then rear, and waited.
“Well, don’t feed him,” he said, not yet surrendering.
“He’ll quit us if we don’t.”
But his instincts told him that wasn’t true.
eight
They spotted game all the next day: an antelope, mallards bobbing on an estuary, a mule deer, beaver, but Skye would not make meat, and he stayed Victoria every time she strung her bow. She complied, but sullenly.
He was not going to surrender to that yellow dog. There would be no offal, no bones, no scraps, no hide for that hideous creature to gnaw on and thus lay claim upon the House of Skye.
No! But the starved and ribby beast never quit, sulking along behind, and then to one flank or the other, sometimes disappearing. They passed an ancient deer carcass, nothing but bone and hide, and the mutt lingered. Skye hoped that foul pile would poison the beast and they would never see him again.
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