“I came here to ask directions. How do I get to the rendezvous of the Americans?”
“It’ll be good riddance putting you out of Crown lands, Skye. Go up the Walla Walla, cross the Blue Mountains at any pass you find, go down any drainage to the Snake, find the Shoshones before they go to the rendezvous, and let them take ye. And may the devil or some wild tribe destroy ye on the way.”
“Thank you.”
The factor walked Skye to the front gates and opened them. The night yawned ahead. “If I had my way, you’d be bound in irons and on the river to Fort Vancouver. Don’t ever set foot in Crown lands or I’ll come after ye. I’ll tell you something: it isn’t over. If you linger around the mountains, we’ll catch you and ship ye back to London. HBC sits like a spider in the web, the sovereign over an empire. John McLoughlin’s a great patriot, and he’d like na’ better’n to put a deserter in irons. Some time, when you least expect it, we’ll catch ye, Skye. So go to the Yanks to save your miserable life.”
“I plan to, Mr. McTavish. I’m going to Boston and start college.”
“You fooled Ogden, but you don’t fool me,” McTavish snapped.
Chapter 13
Skye found himself in a bountiful land as he hiked up the Walla Walla River, and his spirits matched the country. He had passed through fire and brimstone and had emerged from it alive and free. For the first time in memory, he lived each hour with sheer joy. This well-watered and mild country cried out to him.
The land! In his flight and hunger he had scarcely noticed the land. A childhood in London and a life in the prison of the sea had blinded him. But now, as he passed through a verdant and sweet country bursting with new life, the land bewitched him. Everything he beheld was a sweet mystery. He paused frequently, enchanted by the world about him. He marveled that he could name most of the plants and the creatures, and wondered where the knowledge came from. Poetry, perhaps. English poets had never ignored the land, and he had read them all.
Everything caught his eye and ear. The trill of a red-winged blackbird delighted him, and the whirring flight of a meadowlark. He paused to examine the fronds of weeping willows, and bent to inhale the acrid smell of a juniper. He lay for an hour on the grassy bank of the river, watching minnows dart, tadpoles swim, and a great humped turtle sun himself. He plucked the silvery sagebrush and rubbed its aromatic leaves upon his flesh. He watched squirrels, robins, raccoons, ants, red foxes, with eyes that had never beheld such wonders. He discovered that each creature had its own habits, and he could ferret them out. One dawn he discovered a doe with a newborn fawn at the river. The little creature wore white spots and stood on wobbly legs so thin he wondered how it could support itself. The doe picked up his scent and hurried her baby into red willow brush. Barnaby Skye smiled.
He absorbed this new world and loved it. Again and again he stopped to examine some new wonder, things as ordinary as a bee or a bright butterfly or a dragonfly. This was the good earth, and it awakened a new awareness in him. He wanted to walk this entire land, know it, possess it, nurture it even as it nurtured him. It dawned on him that he had been stunted and shriveled and warped by his sea-prison. The mortal soul needed the good earth and all upon it, just as much as any plant needed the good earth. He might have loved the ever-changing sea if he had not been a prisoner, and if it had not been a monstrous barrier against his liberty. But he could not put down roots into the sea. Here on this vast continent he could—and would.
Ever mindful that he needed to find the Americans in July, he continued eastward, but not in a rush, and always taking time to learn how to live upon the breast of the world. Bit by bit, he was becoming the master of his fate.
He experimented with various types of tinder for his fire steel, finding merit in the fibrous inner bark of dead cottonwoods. He learned to make his beds more comfortable by plucking away the smallest sticks and stones, and even to make a hollow for his hip bone. He practiced with his bow and arrows as he walked, knowing his skills were barely adequate. But one day he bagged a wild turkey, and several times he shot mallards, much to his astonishment. And he didn’t neglect the sparkling Walla Walla River and its salmon.
If this was a paradise, it was also a land of unknown tribes, some of which might be dangerous. He found ample evidence of them: hoof and moccasin prints, and campsites. His Creole moccasins blended with these signs of passage and concealed his journey from knowing eyes. One day he found a discarded moccasin and put it in his kit as a pattern. He learned what he could of the ways the Indians fed themselves, noting what roots and bulbs they dug up, what trees and bushes showed signs of being disturbed, and what firewoods they used. Just by being observant, he learned the lore of the natives. The Indians had collected a tall herb with a cluster of half-inch-thick roots that he found edible. And they had dug up a low plant with bright white blossoms. This plant had a root that tasted bitter raw, but when he sliced and boiled the root in his tin cup, the white root tasted better. He discovered wild onions, and a small lily with purplish white blossoms that offered up a valuable root.
But the plant obviously prized by the local Indians grew everywhere and had blue blossoms on foot-high stalks. Its bulbous root, the size of a small onion, proved to be without taste but filling and edible raw as well as cooked. Skye collected the bulbs and stuffed them in his kit. Nature was providing a bounty as the warm season progressed, and he stopped worrying about feeding himself. He didn’t know the name of any of these foodstuffs, and vowed he would find out when he reached the Yanks. Names were important. He wanted to know the name of everything around him.
An occasional cold, rainy day taught him to study the land for shelter as he passed through, and to thatch brush huts from boughs cut with his hatchet. He learned to build a fire near a rock escarpment that caught the heat and radiated it back upon him. Windy days he had simply to endure, because there was little refuge in nature from the blasts of air that plucked at his flesh.
He experimented with his trap, chaining it down, baiting it with meat, and setting it two or three hundred yards from his campsites. He caught nothing, and wondered why. Perhaps it was his scent. He scrubbed the trap in the river, using a root that yielded a frothy substance like soap. The next morning a foul odor permeated the entire area, and he found a dead skunk in the jaws. He wondered if he could endure its flesh, decided he could not, washed the trap in the river, and fled the area.
He walked up the broad valley through golden days, seeing not a soul and glad of it. He wanted to be alone. His ordeal at Fort Nez Perces had scarred his soul, left a rancid memory of a fur company’s arrogance, and deepened his hunger to reach the Americans. The river swung south through mounting slopes and east again, into foothill canyons. He was nearing the Blue Mountains.
He followed the diminished river ever upward through private canyons and hidden glens. The river turned into a tumbling torrent, icy with snowmelt, sometimes hidden from the surrounding slopes by its log-choked canyons. He came upon large swampy plateaus chocked with wildlife, moose and elk as well as deer. One day a huge brown bear with a cub scared him witless, and he backed away from the creek while she stood on her hind legs and snorted. After that, he habitually noted trees he could climb and lines of retreat. He had not won his liberty only to let himself be butchered by a wild animal.
He arrived at the headwaters of the Walla Walla, a mass of springs and soggy turf. From now on he would travel without a reliable source of water, and it worried him. He would need to keep his eye peeled for springs and seeps. He hiked the rest of that day through chill mountain air, finding no sign of a spring, and feared he might have to retreat to the headwaters. Some unknown distance ahead he would reach a summit and enter the Snake River drainage.
The pungence of pines intoxicated his senses; he had never smelled anything like it. But his quest for water preoccupied him, and he feared he would make a dry camp that night and hope his body would endure the drought. Then, as he wound his way around a steep north slope, he fou
nd the rotted remains of a snowbank, mottled with dirt and bark on its glistening surface. Meltwater leaked from its lowest point and he drank it, gasping at its cold. After that he hacked out several pounds of the dripping snow and packed it into his poncho.
He camped that night high in the Blue Mountains, warding off an icy breeze with a crackling fire of knotty pine, and satisfying his thirst with the decaying snow. That night he slept cold even though it was the end of May, and finally built up his dying fire and sat in the pine-scented night, waiting for the sun.
The next dawn he swallowed some of his hoarded jerky and boiled some of his carefully husbanded bulbs in his little cup, using the last of his snow, and then set out again. He topped a saddle midmorning and descended a dry watercourse, wondering whether he had reached the Snake drainage. That day he hiked across a broad alpine meadow berserk with flowers. That evening he set up camp beside a foot-wide rill, and swiftly drove an arrow into a small deer, which ran, shuddered, stopped, and sagged to the ground a hundred yards away. He had never killed a creature that large, and felt a certain sadness he could not explain. It was odd, he thought, that a man who had fought the bloody Kaffirs would feel despondent about taking the life of a deer. It was as if the deer were innocent and undeserving of its fate, while the two-footed demons deserved what they got.
He dragged the limp yearling buck toward his camp, then thought better of it. He would leave it well away from his campsite. He attacked the carcass clumsily, eventually gutting it, up to his elbows in blood and gore. After two hours of sawing with his dull knives, he quit. He took ten or fifteen pounds of venison back to his camp, built a fire, spitted some of the meat on green twigs, and roasted it. It had taken an amazing amount of bloody work to make meat. Thinking back, he realized he had used too light a hand: next time, he would take his hatchet to a carcass and make quicker work of it. But that experience, like so many others these sweet days, had taught him much.
That night an unearthly howling awakened him, and he knew at once he was hearing wolves. He crawled uneasily to the fire and found a few live coals, which he soon fed into a hot yellow flame. Out in the blackness orange eyes stared back at him, one pair, two, then five pair in all, some holding steady, others bobbing, catching and losing the firelight. The sight raised the hair on the nape of his neck. He had no idea whether wolves would attack a man—no doubt the scent of meat had drawn them—but he took no chances. He put on his moccasins, grabbed his hatchet in one hand and his belaying pin in the other, and ran toward one of those pairs of orange eyes, roaring like a mad bull. The eyes vanished.
When he returned to camp he discovered that the wolves had pilfered the leftover meat he had cut. Unthinkingly, he had stored it near the fire—and not far from his head. Some bold wolf had come within ten feet of him. That ruined his sleep for the night, and he sat at the fire, feeding dry wood into it now and then, his mind filled with images of wolf packs hamstringing their prey, clamping their long jaws over vulnerable throats, and ripping open bellies.
He stirred with the first grays of dawn, much more aware that wilderness was no Eden. He hiked to the place where his deer carcass lay—and found no sign of it. When at last he found the remains fifty yards distant—nothing but well-gnawed bones now—he knew a large animal had been at work, most likely a bear.
Skye had gotten only one meal out of an entire deer. That was something to think about. He glared into the surrounding brush, and discovered he wasn’t alone, even in the dawn light. A wolf stood watching, shaggy and feral, waiting to attack the well-gnawed carcass for whatever last bit of meat remained. It edged silently into shadow, sat on its haunches, and watched him. Skye had enough of wolves. He strung his bow, nocked an arrow, aimed, and let fly. The wolf exploded into the air, howled, and ran away with an arrow poking from its side. Skye followed the trail of blood but never saw the animal again. He had lost an arrow. He wanted a good warm wolf skin, and the next wolf to cross his path would donate it. He hated the wolves for reasons he couldn’t explain. The wolves had done nothing but be themselves and yet they prompted a dread and rage in him. The bear had been bad enough, the wolves worse.
The next two days he descended the east flanks of the Blue Mountains, following a cheerful creek that rushed down awesome canyons that boxed him into their bottoms. He was plunging into arid country again, filled with broken volcanic rock. Then one morning he reached a grassy flat and discovered it was where the creek debouched into a larger river. And it was also the site of a large Indian village consisting of conical lodges of animal skins, such as he had never before seen. He didn’t know who these people were or what his fate might be, but he had been discovered by bold half-naked children, and there would be no escape.
Chapter 14
Skye set down his heavy burden and waited. Children swarmed him, excited and curious, the boys slim and naked, the girls in leather skirts. Then men ran up, the women holding back. The men carried lances, bows, and arrows. He saw no firearms. These people were short, stocky, golden-fleshed, and had coarse black hair worn long. They stood erect and alert and conveyed a certain dignity. They studied Skye with obvious curiosity. He yearned to greet them but felt helpless. He could not speak to them, nor even let them know his intentions were peaceful. He held out a hand, but no one took it. They seemed to be waiting, and sure enough, emerging from the village was a gray-haired elder wearing ceremonial robes. A headman or chief of some sort.
The village lay alongside the Snake River on a grassy flat, in a mountain bowl. Out on the pasture oddly marked horses grazed, their rumps spotted, as if their maker had splattered white paint over them. But some lighter-tinted horses carried black or brown spots, and sometimes the spots covered the whole torso. Hundreds of these strange creatures dotted this basin, giving Skye the idea that this tribe knew horses well.
The headman wore a bonnet of eagle feathers that stood vertically, and also a white-man’s shirt cinched at the waist. He surveyed Skye with eyes that revealed neither hostility nor friendship, but did convey a profound authority. Skye desperately wished he knew the protocols for this sort of thing. All he could do was talk.
“I happened upon your village,” he said. “I don’t know who you are. I’m heading east, toward the rendezvous of the Americans, and hope you can tell me how to get there.”
No one understood. Skye stared at blank faces.
Maybe a gift. Skye swiftly considered the few items in his warbag, wondering which one he could do without, and finally settled on the canister of tea that Ogden had given him—something he treasured, but something not essential for his survival. He dug into his kit, found the enameled canister, and presented it to the headman, who accepted it without quite knowing what it was. He opened the canister, saw the tea, sniffed it, puzzled.
“I’ll show you how to make tea,” Skye said.
“Hudson Bayee,” the headman said.
“No, just a man passing through.”
Skye’s shake of the head was understood, if not his words.
“Americeen?”
“Rendezvous.”
“Ah.” The headman had some inkling of something, and so did Skye.
The village men crowded around, examining the canister, admiring it more than what it contained. Women edged in now, peeking shyly at Skye, studying his gift to the headman. The ladies wore soft doeskin dresses, although a few were decked out in traders’ calico, their dresses crudely cut but finely sewn.
The headman beckoned, and Skye picked up his kit and followed him into the village, which consisted of thirty or forty skin lodges, some brightly dyed with animal figures, all of them smoke-blackened at their apex. The village was redolent of salmon and meat and offal. The chief’s lodge loomed larger than the others, and seemed to have more poles supporting it. Several handsome young women, apparently the headman’s wives or daughters, stood about shyly. The headman spoke briefly to one, and she trotted away, vanishing among the lodges.
There they waited for what seemed a
long time. Skye relaxed a little; no one had manhandled him or threatened his life. His gift had cemented his status as a guest—for the moment. The headman’s woman reappeared, this time with an ancient white man in tow. The man seemed to be all or mostly blind, and stared out upon the world from milky eyes.
“Eh? Bonjour,” he muttered.
“Do you speak English?” Skye asked.
“Eh?”
Skye realized the old Creole was both blind and deaf. “English? Do you speak English?” he bellowed.
“Pierre Gallard, Nor’ West,” the man said, and slid into French again.
“Hudson’s Bay?” Skye bawled into the man’s ear.
“Eh? Non, non, Nord Ouest Compagnie.”
Skye understood: the North West Company, once a bitter and violent rival of Hudson’s Bay and now absorbed by it. A lovely young woman appeared beside the old man, and Skye realized she was his mate. She, it turned out, could communicate better than he.
“Nez Percés,” she said. “You Hudson’s Bay.”
“No, madam, I’m alone. I want to go to the rendezvous.”
“Ah, les Americains.”
“Yes.”
Swiftly she translated all this to the headman and villagers. It took effort, but in time she and he had exchanged information. He was in a Nez Percé village that had come here to fish. She was the wife of the honored white man, Gallard, from Montreal, and cared for him now that he was old and helpless. Gallard despised the English, and Hudson’s Bay Company, but not Americans. Last year’s rendezvous, the first, was the talk of all the tribes.
Skye asked for directions, and after much consultation, she told him not to follow the Snake because it ran through a terrible canyon, but to go around to the south of it for many days, and then pick up the Snake again where it came out of the canyon and ran through plains. The more she murmured, the better Skye understood her French. He dredged up words and phrases from his childhood, and from his occasional shipboard reading.
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