Dreams Beneath Your Feet (11 page)

Hannibal had led a vagabond life, and here he was vagabonding again. He'd been born without a decent world to live in, half white and half Indian in a society that didn't like breeds. He was vastly educated, in a country that was skeptical of book learning. He was alone—loneliness was the fate his parents gave him—in a culture where most people sought to bond to one another.

Because learning languages, getting along with different people, and making a buck by trading came naturally to him, he'd always survived, and he'd never been poor. He'd done a lot of thinking and had come to a personal motto that worked for
him—
rideo, ergo sum,
I laugh, therefore I am. Somehow, though, wisdom didn't have the power of bonding.

Now, wonder of wonders, he was playing with the faintest thought of getting married. He shook his head.
Now that,
he thought,
is something to laugh about.

Maybe California would be different. That idea had teased him since he first rode there with Sam in 1827. The races were mixing in the Golden Clime. A man could be accepted for who he was and what he could do, not for his family or race. Maybe he was letting hope get in the way of his mind, but Hannibal had hopes for California.

I probably have another thirty years to live. Why not?

 

 

 

L
EI KNEW SHE
had to time it exactly right.

Right now it was hell—she had to block out of her mind what was going on with the slaves. On the first night the six women got topped over and over, the rapists led by Boy himself. In camp the scene turned from ugly to a nightmare of evil. Drunk, the men flaunted their power over these human beings they claimed to own. Not only did they force sex on the women at will, day and night, they took pleasure in making it public. They reveled in humiliating the poor creatures. The women had no defenders—Boy's ruffians had killed the men and the older boys.

The worst was when a boy of about twelve lost control and fought for his mother. Two of Boy's men beat him senseless. Boy refused to let Lei take care of him, and sometime during the second night he died.

She fled into the bushes and threw up. Then she came back composed, pretending it didn't really matter.

The men let the body lie where it fell, and ravens flocked to it. Lei couldn't let herself look at the mother.

Lei waited about a week, until the moon was full. Her plan was simple and terrible.

The first trick was to get Boy so drunk that he passed out. She turned herself into a Delilah of seduction and inebriation and got it done.

When she couldn't even shake Boy awake, she took what little she dared. She tucked his pistol under her dress and secured it with her belt. Though she didn't know how to reload it, she knew how to cock and fire it—in desperate circumstances she could shoot once. She took her own belt knife and the small belt bag where she kept beauty items. Under her blanket she carried a sack of jerky. These few possessions would have to do.

She slipped out of the tipi, bridled her mount and Boy's, pulled their stakes, and led them to the river. The guards would think she was watering the animals.

Her plan was to ride Warrior as much as she could and give him a break sometimes by riding her mare, Kauai. Her grandfather, who gave the mare to Lei when she became a woman, named her after his island of birth. She was a beauty, an Appaloosa with leopard spots and a rear end that promised speed.

Lei carried no saddles—that would raise alarms. Learning to ride as a child, she never used a saddle.

When she got into the cottonwoods that lined the river, she jumped on Warrior's back in a flash and guided him softly through the trees. Once they got out of hearing of the camp, she eased him onto the sagebrush flat and kicked him with her moccasined heels. The stallion bolted to a gallop. He was a magnificent beast—Boy always bragged about Warrior's speed and endurance. His strength plus Lei's determination equaled freedom.

Fort Boise was two long days' ride at a normal pace. She would make it in a lot less, depending on how much she had to sleep.

What would happen when she got there? She would throw herself on the mercy of the chief trader and . . . She couldn't think about that now.

Eight hours' head start. It would have to do.

She slapped Warrior's hindquarters and rode like hell.

 

L
EI STOPPED AT
first light.

The night had been crazy. The moon turned the landscape into a strange, phantasmagoric place she didn't recognize. She had to pick her way when she wanted the horses to run. While she was steering Kauai down an embankment to the river for a drink, the mare slipped and crashed down on her left side. Lei barely got her leg out from under the horse and ended up sitting on the poor animal's flank.

The result of it all was that Lei was exhausted. The horses needed grass and rest, and she had to sleep. If she didn't, she would pass out, fall off, and maybe lose the horses.

She didn't bother with a hidden camp. If Boy was somehow close enough to see her, she had no chance anyway. She tied the horses to limbs and rolled up in her blanket.
I'm going to sleep the sleep of the dead,
she thought. She smiled to herself. She tried to remember the story the missionaries had made her listen to, about the man-god who was raised from the dead. She couldn't bring the story back, but she told herself,
I will go down and then be resurrected by the sun.

 

S
HE WOKE WITH
a start. The sun was maybe an hour above the horizon. The horses were grazing peacefully. No reason for alarm. Time to go.

She watered them, jumped back onto Warrior, and kicked him for speed.

She rode until midday and took a break in the shade of some cottonwoods. She felt like she could keep going, but she wanted
to maintain the horses' strength—
they are bringing me back from the dead.

She was making good time, she knew, and might even reach the fort tonight. But she was edgy and kept the break short.

 

L
ATE IN THE
afternoon she left the Owyhee and crossed some low hills to the Snake River. Now she was on the last lap, about ten miles from the fort.

At the river she rode into the shallows, jumped off to drink upstream of the horses, and filled her belly. Then she splashed water on her face and dunked her long black hair into the stream. She had learned that her hair was a sponge for liquid that would keep her cool. Dropping the hair down inside the back of her dress, purely by chance, she saw it.

At first she didn't believe it. On the ridge behind her, about a half a mile back, the sun glinted off . . .

She knew damn well what it was—she'd seen it scores of times. Kanaka Boy's field glass, reflecting sunlight.

How?

I don't know and it doesn't matter.

She led the horses back out of the river fast.

What was left now was a horse race to the fort.

 

S
HE SLAPPED
W
ARRIOR
, she hollered, and she kicked him. She did everything she knew to make that horse run.

She dropped Kauai's lead—Warrior would run easier and freer without Kauai. One big worry. Boy and his men loved to race their horses, and she knew from competing that she wasn't as fast. But she also had one great comfort. Boy wouldn't risk a long shot, for fear of injuring Warrior.

She ran, she ran, she ran.

She turned Warrior to shortcut a bend in the river. The best ford was downstream from the mouth of the Boise River. This
was the time of low water, though, and beyond the bend was a place Warrior could get across and save some distance—one mile could mean survival or death.

At the bank she risked her first look back. Four riders, Boy the biggest, no more than two hundred paces behind her.

She blasted Warrior into the water at full speed. She wanted him to understand what they absolutely had to have—she wanted him to charge across this goddamn river.

Warrior's hoofs slipped on the slippery rocks. He didn't like the footing at all. He fought the reins, but she held his head down and kicked him straight. He staggered and went down on one hind leg.

“Up!” she shouted. “Go!”

He got up and went. The bottom turned to mud, slower but more secure. When she got to the other side, they faced a low-cut bank. Warrior stopped, looking at it wildly.

“Jump!” Lei shouted. At that moment her right leg erupted into fire.

Warrior reared, staggered on his hind legs, and toppled backward into the river and on top of Lei.

 

 

 

H
ER EYES FLUTTERED
open. She looked into Kanaka Boy's large brown eyes and sugary smile. He cooed sweetly, “I have saved your life, Magpie.” His lips smacked open wide and his white teeth gleamed. “Now I can kill you in a more intimate way.” His eyes laughed. “As a good wife deserves.”

Lei shook with cold. She was lying in several inches of water.

Delly said, “Boy, let's get out of here. Someone might come.”

Nell and an Indian named Turno stood and stared down at her.

“Maybe I would in my great mercy spare your life, but you forced me to hurt Warrior. My shot, it went through your lovely thigh and into his flank.”

Yes, there was burn and cold just above her knee, from the bullet and from the river.

“He will live, but you caused him great pain, and this I cannot forgive.”

“Boy!” said Delly.

“Yes, my friend is right.” He scooped his arms under her and hoisted her out of the water.

Agony bolted from knee to toe to skull.

He threw her onto a saddle belly down. Pain thunderclapped her consciousness.

“Tie her on and take her back to where the cattails are. Keep her out of sight. Nell, stay with me.”

 

D
ELLY LIFTED
L
EI
off the horse, held her waist high, and dropped her.

The earth knocked her consciousness topsy-turvy.

After a few moments or eternities she swam through flights of quicksilver birds back to the world.

She felt her sopping-wet hide dress being jerked off her arms and shoulders.

A thought crossed her mind—
he's going to dress my wound
. Then she thought,
No, I'm tit side up
. Then she realized how stupid the whole idea was and started laughing. She couldn't help herself.

Delly realized he'd almost forgotten the laudanum. He stopped his hand just short of Lei's crotch. He'd thought about her privates for a long time, and now he meant to have some sport.

“You'll be a lot more fun with some of this,” he said.

He screwed the top off Boy's flask. Opium, Boy said, mixed with alcohol. Delly knew Boy kept it around for bad pain. Now he said it also made people fly sky-high.

The bitch was cackling—she'd already lost it. He held the flask to her lips. “Swig on this,” he said.

She shook her head wildly, left-right, left-right, and cackled louder.

Delly slapped her as hard as he could. That put an end to the shaking and laughing. He put the flask back to her lips. “Drink this,” he said, “or I'll beat you so you'll never forget it.”

She swallowed. He made her swallow again.

Then Delly put his hand on her privates and groped her roughly. He saw the fear and revulsion in her eyes and grinned.
No, sister, what I'm gonna do ain't love.

He pulled her knees apart, knelt between them, and dropped his breechcloth.

He leaned forward and snarled, “Look at me.”

She did, and he saw wild fear in her eyes.

That was what he wanted. Before she started flying, he wanted her to know she was being raped good and hard and he, Delly, was the bastard doing it.

 

 

 

S
AM AND
F
LAT
Dog looked at each other and listened to the shot echo through the cottonwoods. They slipped to the edge of the trees. Beyond a curve in the river a wisp of white smoke jiggered on the breeze.

They saddled up, mounted, and gingerly walked their horses toward the smoke. Good to check things out, bad to ride toward a gunshot in a hurry. It was probably no business of theirs.

Sam saw two strangers, a man and a woman in their twenties. Holding his rifle casually, the man touched the woman's neck lightly with his other hand. She let both their horses water. As Sam and Flat Dog rode close, the man smiled broadly at the riders and led the woman and the horses out of the river.

Boy looked at the white-haired American and the stocky Indian and wondered whether they'd seen Delly and Turno carry
Lei off. Probably not. Still, he said, “One of our hunters got lucky on a doe.”

Sam thought the woman looked Indian, the man Owyhee, and their broad smiles spoke an intention of friendship. Sam introduced Flat Dog and himself. The Owyhee said his name was Kanaka Boy, the Indian woman's Nell. She was probably his wife.

“May we offer you a cup of coffee?” said Sam. “Our camp is around the next bend.”

Boy breathed out his relief. They hadn't seen anything. He said, “Capital.”

 

E
SPERANZA AND
J
ULIA
sat by the fire stitching new pairs of moccasins for themselves. Just then Esperanza's two papas walked up with a strange man and woman. The man was huge, with a head and chest like a whale's, and he radiated masculine energy. The woman was small and ugly, not worth noticing.

Sam introduced the entire family, Julia first. Boy made a little bow and said to each woman, “Enchanted to meet you.” She looked around for her two brothers and Uncle Hannibal, then remembered they'd gone hunting.

Flat Dog poured the coffee.

“What does ‘Kanaka' mean?” asked Sam.

Boy spoke a word that sounded like burbling water. “The people of Hawaii, our name for ourselves in our own language.”