McLoughlin bit back a retort, and saw the man off.
The Skyes would have a burden once again, but McLoughlin intended to make it up to them with a good outfit; a better outfit than their labors could purchase.
Later, McLoughlin found Nat Wyeth out in the shops, surrounded by cordage, weights, floats, pulley devices, and sketches tacked over a workbench. He was attempting to make a new sort of gill net with floats on top and weights at the bottom that would harvest salmon by the boatload and earn him several fortunes.
“See here, John, I’ve got this vee-shaped net, you see. It folds in on itself with a tug of the rope, and the salmon won’t be able to duck out. Oh, what a fortune, what an improvement in the ways we fish!”
“Nat, the Skyes are here. Returned last evening, worn out.”
“The Skyes? Did the Cadboro go down?”
“No, it’s a long and bloody mean story, and I’ll tell it in time. But they’re here, and they’ve agreed to take Professor Nutmeg with them to Fort Union in time to catch the AFC riverboat. So you’re free from that matter.”
“I always have been free. I absolutely refuse to shepherd a half mad fool through dangerous country again. I simply thought you’d pop him on the next brig to sail up the river.”
McLoughlin nodded. Nat Wyeth entertained his own grand vision of the world and its glowing opportunities, and would not, given his tinkering and enterprising nature, be inclined to help an innocent and somewhat daft professor from his home city if that meant slowing things up. Not that he didn’t like Wyeth, whose Promethean enthusiasms struck sparks and lit fires in every mortal who came into contact with him.
It had been a profitable morning, and he had resolved the matter of the fort loafers. He would mention it all in his regular reports to Governor Simpson, of course, but he would be a little vague about certain aspects of it. Such as the names of those who would take the professor to the Missouri River.
forty–seven
Barnaby Skye found pleasure in his daily toil. He graded pelts, and then pressed and baled them for shipment, a task that required muscle and patience.
After that he split cedar shakes from thick logs hauled and floated great distances by the post’s woodsmen. Like most seamen, he understood wood and how to shape it. With axe and wedges and maul, he snapped shingle after shingle free, and day by day built a great pile of them for Dr. McLoughlin’s perpetual building projects.
Once in a while the factor paused in the yard outside the post, watched him at work, and wandered silently away, making Skye wonder whether his work was adequate.
The skilled work heartened Skye, but even more pleasant was the knowledge that he was earning his keep, and maybe collecting some credit for an outfit. He saw little of the illustrious visitors. Professor Nutmeg had visited with Skye briefly but obviously was restless, preferring the company of better educated men, or at least idle men. Nutmeg and the post’s second in command, James Douglas, had become fast friends, each of them starved for the company of literate men.
Victoria had been working hard, too. A community of two hundred consumed clothing, and there were too few women at hand to mend the heaps of torn shirts and britches, and to transform all those bolts of English wool and linen and cotton into shirts and skirts and britches and gloves and underwear.
When the women weren’t sewing they were knitting, an art that totally eluded Victoria, and which fascinated her. First they ran sheep’s wool through a spinning wheel, and then knitted the yarn with a great clatter of needles, so fast that Victoria marveled. Out of all this effort rose a pile of stockings and some sweaters.
Skye watched the winter elide into spring, which came early in that mild land. Then, as March dwindled, he knew it was time to settle accounts with Dr. McLoughlin and go.
He found the factor out in a sunny field watching a Canadian plowman scratch the earth behind big mules.
“I’d like a word, sir. It’s nigh the time for us to leave and settle our accounts.”
“Of course, Mister Skye. I’ve been meaning to ask you about it.”
Skye followed the factor through the great gate of the post and into his study.
He opened a ledger book and examined it through oval wire-rimmed spectacles.
“You and Mrs. Skye have a credit of fifty pounds and a few pence,” he said.
“And what is the cost of our board, sir?”
“We haven’t charged Wyeth or Professor Nutmeg board, sir, so why should we charge you? There is ample.”
Skye twisted his hat around in his hands, scarcely knowing what to say.
“You’ll need some sort of outfit, I imagine.”
“Yes, sir. And something for the professor.”
“He’s made his arrangements with us. We’ll outfit him and he’ll send a draft to our secretary in London.”
That was good news. Skye didn’t know how he could afford to outfit the botanist.
“The horses we bought from you are fat and sound, and you may have them again,” McLoughlin said. “We’ll add a greenbroke pack animal and you can break him on the trail.”
That pleased Skye.
“Come along, now. We’ll go to the store.”
Skye always relished the sights and smells of that place. He drank in the pungent scent of leather, the scents of bolts of woolen cloth, the scents of blankets and dried fruits and the iron scent of traps and axes, and the scent of a well-oiled rifle.
The factor found the clerk at a desk.
“Mr. Rutgers, I’ll want you to outfit the Skyes. They’ll be wanting saddles and tack, including a packsaddle; two pairs of four-point blankets, flint and steel, an axe, a good rifle, powder, powder flask, bullet mold, lead, and spare flints; a cookpot and a few kitchen utensils, some cord suitable for picketing horses, and whatever else …”
Skye objected. “I can’t afford all that, sir. I have no means to repay.”
McLoughlin stared down upon Skye from his Olympian height.
“Your sole obligation is to treat our HBC men fairly out in the trapping country. Ogden despises the Yanks who tricked him and failed to keep their word. You’re an Englishman. That’s all I require.”
Skye was so gladdened that he fairly danced. “You have that promise, sir.”
“Very well, then. Get everything together, and I’ll get the professor started. When do you wish to leave?”
“As soon as possible.”
“Tomorrow, then. We’ll miss you, Skye. It will be my regret that we couldn’t employ you. I’ve never seen a better man to help us along.”
Skye marveled at the compliment.
That fine fat afternoon Skye selected his equipment, testing each item piece by piece. He decided on a good English military rifle converted to mountain use with a shorter barrel. He selected a pound of precast balls, wadding, powder, a flint and steel in a leather pouch, two pairs of thick, heavy, well-carded Hudson’s Bay blankets, gray with black stripes so as not to advertise their presence.
He chose two used English saddles, a sawbuck packframe, three saddle blankets made of unmarketable pelts, three halters, fish hooks and line, two bridles and bits, picket ropes, a light copper cookpot, two metal ladles, two bowls, a fine-edged steel axe made in Manchester, an awl, patch leather for boots and moccasins, sugar, coffee, beans, flour, tea, a ball of real soap, a big belt knife and two smaller knives, some metal arrow points for Victoria, two used blanket capotes for rough weather, and an oilcloth cover for emergencies.
That was a fine outfit, and its price ran twenty pounds higher than the credit. He owed McLoughlin all that the man had asked: proper treatment of HBC brigades in the wilds.
He had learned, over the long visit, something about wilderness war from McLoughlin and Douglas. Bridger and his men had played a deadly trick on the newer American Fur Company men by leading them into Blackfoot country and setting the rivals up for an Indian ambush. In fact, the Blackfeet did attack the American Fur brigade, killing its partisan, William Vanderburgh, a
West Point man who had made a fine name for himself in the fur trade.
It was true, McLoughlin added, that the American Fur brigade dogged the steps of the Bridger outfit, homing in on the beaver grounds. But the result was very close to being murder and certainly was an act of putting the rivals in harm’s way.
The news shocked Skye. Would the fur brigades resort to extremes in the course of their rivalry? His opinion of the men in the Rocky Mountain Fur Company diminished sharply on that news, and that was a very good reason to find his employment elsewhere. No commerce was worth such a price and he vowed then and there that he would never, for as long as he lived, work for any firm that behaved in such a fashion.
That meant saying goodbye to old friends: Jim Bridger, Tom Fitzpatrick, Milt Sublette, Henry Fraeb, and Baptiste Gervais. As individuals, he treasured them all. But as a company, they had crossed the borders of honor. He knew they would try to justify themselves to him; tell him that American Fur’s Vanderburgh and Drips were homing in and following them. Argue that in the wilds, a savage law prevailed and had to be heeded or the company would go under. But none of those arguments sufficed to justify what Bridger and his colleagues had done. They had sullied their souls. A man had to draw a line somewhere, and Skye drew it right there.
So, maybe this time he would not go to rendezvous. It was something to think about.
The next morning he and Victoria said their goodbyes to Dr. McLoughlin, collected their ward—for that was what he seemed to be—and began the long trek up the Columbia River. They crossed new-plowed fields, splashed along a muddy trail, and soon left the brooding Hudson’s Bay imperial city behind them, slumbering in a tender sun.
The season at Fort Vancouver had repaired their bodies, allowed them to live in comfort, and restored their outfit, and thus their chances of surviving and earning a living. Skye knew that the wilds would shock his body and mind, but he also knew Victoria would slide easily into living in nature and probably be happier away from the great post than within it.
He let Professor Nutmeg catch up and ride beside him.
“Well, Professor, we’ll get you to Fort Union safely—if you wish to get there and you wish to be safe.”
“How do you mean that, Mister Skye?”
“If your passion for collecting samples overcomes your common sense, you are likely to lose not only your samples and notes, but also your life. This time, it will be up to you. That is a decision that you, as an adult man, must come to.”
“Why, forgive my wanderings, my dear Mister Skye. I never really saw the harm in them.”
Skye didn’t reply, for there was nothing more to say.
forty–eight
They pierced inland without trouble, following the right bank of the Columbia. Professor Nutmeg was never so happy as when he could capture new-minted leaves and twigs, or sketch an odd plant. Skye didn’t mind so long as the naturalist stayed in sight and used ordinary cautions. There were so many ways to get into trouble.
Maybe the professor was going to do better.
They passed occasional fishing villages and from these the Skyes obtained dried salmon for the larder, with a few treats for No Name. They were in no rush: it would not be until May that they could negotiate the snowbound continental divide and enter the Missouri watershed.
Within two weeks they had reached Fort Walla Walla, and enjoyed the hospitality of its factor, Pierre Pambrun. Skye remembered the post all too well; he had come within an inch of losing his life there during his desperate flight from the Royal Navy. But that was another factor and another time.
At a hearty salmon feast that night, Pambrun questioned the naturalist closely.
“Monsieur, does your lovely wife suffer from your long absences?”
“No, no really,” Nutmeg replied. “The old dear’s used to it, and anyway she considers me a nuisance about the house.”
“But surely you’re eager to resume lecturing at Harvard.”
“No, I can barely stand those musty amphitheaters and bottles of formaldehyde and alcohol. No, my good man, what makes my heart sing is simply wandering, free as a meadowlark, plucking up whatever strikes my fancy.”
“But where will it all lead, monsieur?”
“To a cataloguing of all that grows in North America.”
“And what good is that? Will it earn anyone a living?”
Nutmeg gazed at the factor as if he were a freshman. “My dear man, it’s for the sake of knowledge. There may be some slight practical advantage in it—a new medicinal herb, or a decorative new bloom for a garden, or maybe even a new tuber or nut for food. But that’s not it. It’s the glory of getting the natural world straightened out and understandable.”
“Ah, food. Yes, we’ve sampled every berry here. I look for purgatives, you know. The banks of the Walla Walla River lack digestive aids, which is a great lack for me. But maybe you’ll find one. Do you know of any?”
“I can’t say that I do, Mr. Pambrun. My task is to advance science.”
The factor was not quite satisfied with all that and regarded Professor Nutmeg as an odd gent, but Nutmeg didn’t seem to mind. His thoughts were always elsewhere, as if mere mortals didn’t much matter in the natural world he was cataloguing.
They proceeded up the Walla Walla River in a tumult of spring, with flowers rioting at every hand. Now Skye found himself being slowed by the professor, who abandoned all thought of catching the riverboat that would carry him home. He took to ignoring his horse, leaving its management to Victoria while he dashed here and there, up slopes, down to the river, examining everything from thistles to cattails, and never forgetting a tree, many of which the dog had already marked.
“Professor, we’ll need to move fast now. I’ll want you on your horse and keeping up. We’ve an appointment in early June, and we’re slipping behind.”
“Yes, of course, my dear Skye. We’ll carry on, eh? March, march, march.”
But it did little good. Skye realized that he could really not influence the trajectories of his naturalist friend any more than he could command the dog to heel. Not any more now than on the trail going west. This man’s vision was not focused on anything but the leaf or root in hand. He was in his own Eden: gentians, buck beans, marsh felwort, milfoil, mares-tail, mulberry, four-o’clock, white water lilies, evening primrose, juneberry, silverweed, blue-eyed Mary, Queen Anne’s lace, oxeye daisy … each day a dozen new treasures for the naturalist.
Increasingly, Nutmeg vanished from sight, over the brow of a hill or around a bend, often with No Name watching over him. (Nutmeg had left his dog Dolly at Fort Vancouver.) Sometimes he vanished for hours on end, leaving Skye and Victoria uneasy. Even in that warm valley dangers lurked at every hand.
At dinner one evening, as they were penetrating the Blue Mountains, Skye decided enough was enough.
“Professor, tomorrow I’ll want you on your horse, and from now on Victoria will lead it.”
Nutmeg was aghast. “But that would keep me from my work!”
Skye didn’t respond. They had been through all this a dozen times.
The next morning, after rolling up their blankets and saddling the horses, Skye silently led Nutmeg’s nag to him and waited. Nutmeg sighed, put a foot in a stirrup, and hoisted himself upward.
They made good progress that morning, but Nutmeg sank into reproachful silence. At one point he did cry out, so Victoria let him dismount, dig up a reed growing alongside the Grande Ronde River, and scribble some notes. Sullenly he mounted again after discovering that the Skyes would not permit him to walk.
Skye worried plenty now. He figured they had six weeks to reach Fort Union, and that wasn’t time enough unless they could persuade the professor to abandon his researches altogether.
“Mr. Nutmeg,” he said, as they sat under a makeshift shelter that turned away a drizzle, “beginning in the morning, we’re going to make a dash. We’ve got to make thirty or more miles a day up the Snake, over the divide to the Three Forks. We’re st
opping for nothing.”
“But—”
“Next time, Professor. Do it next time. Consider traveling with the army’s mapping parties. They send out topographical outfits all over the American West, and you’d be safe and at your leisure. Part of Captain Bonneville’s business is reconnoitering the West.”
The professor nodded curtly and turned to his blankets.
The silence that followed stretched into the next day and the next. But at least the professor was obediently getting aboard his horse and letting himself be drawn up the Snake River with all the speed Skye could muster. By the beginning of May Skye was working up Henry’s Fork toward the Missouri headwaters, and he was thinking that, with luck, he could make it. The professor had fallen into perpetual anguish, and began complaining constantly.
They crossed a snow-patched divide into the Missouri drainage, followed the Gallatin River and plunged into the vast, rolling intermontane basin where the Gallatin, Jefferson, and Madison rivers formed into the great Missouri. But this verdant grassland was prized Blackfoot country, and Skye knew he would need to be cautious. Puffball clouds scraped shadows across the hills making it difficult to spot the ancient enemies of the trappers, and even hard to spot game because the whole world seethed.
Skye kept his party low, reconnoitered from ridgetops, and raced ever eastward to Jim Bridger’s pass to the Yellowstone. They made few fires, shot no game, rode apart from visible trails, and never moved without examining their flanks, rear, and what lay ahead. The dog stood guard, roaming out on the flanks to detect trouble, and watching the shadows of the night with such acuity that Skye came to feel safe in the dog’s custody.
They reached some steaming hot springs, the banks white-rimed with minerals, the odorous water draining through pools into a small marsh alive with cattails and sedges and lilies. Stately cottonwoods, in new leaf, guarded the oasis. The dog sniffed suspiciously, detecting the faint spoor of ancient enemies. Skye watched the dog, every sense alert.
“I should like to stop here for a while,” the professor said. “Unique, you know. There’ll be a dozen variants or new species here, and I’ve never had a chance—”
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