Dreams Beneath Your Feet (18 page)

Sam and Julia jumped up together. It wouldn't be Esperanza—she wouldn't scratch—but at this time of morning it must be news. She'd been missing for two nights.

Sam opened the door and saw the mousy face of one of the Frenchies from Fort Walla Walla, Remoulet. “I am sorry to come so early,” he said in his reedy voice and Frenchy accent, “but . . . You must be anxious.” He held an envelope in his hand.

“Come in, please,” said Julia.

“They made me promise to wait until today. Zis may be early, but it ees today.”

He handed Julia the envelope. “I t'ink they ask Madame Whitman and she write ze words for them.”

“Jay, would you make some coffee for our guest?” said Julia.

Sam watched Julia slip a finger under the flap and open the container slowly. He had a terrible sense of dread.

“Dear Mother, Papa Flat Dog, and Papa Sam—,” Julia read in Spanish.

I am gone to Oregon City to be Joe Meek's wife.

“I'll kill the son of a bitch,” said Sam.

“Sam,” said Julia.

“They could have told me!”

“Sam! Listen to the rest.”

He hung his head.

The bateaux carrying the Hudson's Bay men from the upriver forts and the Newell party had sailed from Fort Walla Walla yesterday. By now the boats would already be past the great rapids, and in three more days at Fort Vancouver. And every night Esperanza and Joe would be rolled up in the blankets together.

I love Joe, and he loves me. We would have told you, but you all want to keep me under your thumb. Please understand. Joe and I will be glad to see all of you in the spring.

“It's signed ‘Esperanza.' ”

Sam and Flat Dog traded disgruntled looks.

“There's another letter.”

Dear Sam—

I love your daughter and will take good of her. I will also be a good father to her child.

“Child?!” exclaimed Sam.

Sam, we have been friends for a long time, and I ask you to
trust me. Do not follow us to Oregon City now. I warn you, do not. Next spring will be the right time.

Then we'll hand you your first grandchild.

—your friend, Joe Meek

“It's a damned outrage,” said Sam. He stood up and paced.

“Let me know when you want me to speak,” said Julia.

“California, we were going to make a home in California.”

“Are you ready?”

“It was all working out!” He whirled on Julia. “Did you know she was with child?”

“Yes.”

“I am betrayed!” shouted Sam.

“Here's your coffee,” said Jay, and thrust a cup into Sam's hand.

“Listen to me!” Julia grabbed his hand. “Grow up.”

“Grow up? She's the one needs to—”

“Sam,” Julia said, pulling him toward her. “She is grown-up. She's about to be a mother. She's going to make the home she wants. Whatever home she wants. Not yours, not Flat Dog's, and not mine.”

“I ain't easy with this,” said Flat Dog. He stared into his own cup and then sipped the steaming brew.

Julia gave both of them a stern eye.

“Then she has two fathers who need to grow up.”

Silence held them together and pushed them apart.

“Monsieur Remoulet,” said Julia, “would you like some more sugar?”

The Frenchy held out his cup. “I be sorry I bring such news,” he said.

“It was very kind of you,” Julia answered.

Sam and Flat Dog held each other's eyes hard. Stymied.

Julia studied her husband's face and worried more.

 

 

 

I
T WAS A
bleak winter at the mission at Wailatpu. Narcissa Whitman kept Alice's bed made perfectly and her clothes untouched in the closet and the drawers. Her two dolls rested against her small pillow. The grieving mother seldom stirred out of the house. Julia spent only an occasional moment with her.

Narcissa also withdrew from contact with the Indian people she had come to save. Instead she threw herself into her correspondence with her fellow missionaries in Oregon and her family back in the States. Her words about her charges were impatient. She wrote her mother:

They are an exceedingly proud, haughty and insolent people, and keep us constantly upon the stretch after patience and forbearance. We feed them far more than any of our associates do their people, yet they will not be satisfied.

Marcus Whitman kept to himself and his medical books. Though Hannibal visited him from time to time, for the moment the pleasure was gone from the friendship. Which was too bad, because Hannibal thought Whitman was a good man.

Sam, Hannibal, and Esperanza worked hard at trading for horses, training them, and teaching both Cayuses and Nez Percés how to train their best mounts to respond to hand signals and voice commands. Flat Dog rode several times over to Fort Walla Walla and helped the saddle maker there, learning all he could. But everyone watched the lower slopes of Mount Hood for the day when the snows would be melted enough and they could get started for the American settlement at Oregon City.

On a bright spring morning Sam had had enough.
Sometimes,
he thought,
what's needed is action
. “Time's a-wasting,” he said. “Life is waiting for us in California. We start tomorrow morning.”

Everyone was relieved.

That evening Hannibal wrote a letter to his friend.

Dear Marcus—

Tomorrow we leave, and I don't know when I'll be back to this good place, or when we'll get to share coffee and conversation again.

I am leaving with words clanking around in my head unspoken, words I have been too shy to utter to you directly. I mean them as kind, helpful to you. Certainly they are intended in the spirit of friendship, so I give them to you in this letter.

I believe that the religion of the Cayuses and the Nez Percés is as good for them as yours is for you. In fact, I might say better.

You worship the Lord of all Creation. They worship creation itself. Your Lord is an angry God, full of demands and threats of retribution if obedience is not forthcoming. Their Mother Earth is the essence of nurturing. She brings forth each spring
the bountiful life upon this planet. She provides sunlight and the water that living things need, indeed the very air we breathe. She is truly the most loving of all possible mothers.

My fear at this moment is that you will think I am saying that your mission is a vain one. Not at all. I believe it to be thoroughly worthy. In my opinion, what you have to give to the Native people is not Jehovah or his divine son. It is the vast knowledge of Western civilization. Medicine, agriculture, science, mechanics—all these and much more you can give them, and they will love you for it. You will be delighted with yourself for your good deeds.

I do not believe they will love you for your preaching of Jehovah. Indeed, I fear that they may come to hate you for it.

I write these words hesitantly. Please believe that they bear a message from a true friend.

Yours truly,

Hannibal MacKye

In the morning Hannibal reread his letter and tore it up.

 

R
EMOULET LED
S
AM
, Hannibal, and Flat Dog to a good spot to see The Dalles. They made such a nasty froth and roar that the horses pulled back against the hands that held their reins. The walls of the Columbia River narrowed and plunged over a falls. Beyond the falls the water turned from a current to a torrent. Waves stood taller than a man and curled back upstream, like lascivious tongues. “Man-eaters,” said Flat Dog.

“No place for the herd,” said Sam.

“Jay was right,” put in Hannibal.

“The Company, it take ze men and furs through in those bateaux,” said Remoulet. Sam and Hannibal had hired him to help take the herd around the mountain. “And they have sometimes to portage.”

“Oh my God!” said Sam.

What made him cuss right then was a salmon hurtling up the falls right next to them.

“I bet that fish goes forty or fifty pounds,” said Hannibal. “I've seen plenty that do.”

“Every time it make my bones go willy,” said Remoulet.

“The Indians like them fine,” said Hannibal.

The Indian men were fishing on the other side of the river now. They lived on the salmon that came up the Columbia during this spring run. They caught the fish any way they could and dried the meat on racks over a low fire, just as the Indians of the plains dried buffalo meat. Salmon were the buffalo of the Northwest.

Sam turned backward and looked up at Mount Hood. “One hell of a mountain to go around.” The volcano blotted out the entire southern sky.

“Bigger zan a thousand grizzly bear,” said Remoulet. “Also, must I say to you, ten times so mean.”

“A bitch,” said Hannibal.

“I'll be . . . ,” said Sam.

The others saw the same gaped-mouth expression.

All of them saw another one fling itself straight up the falls.

“Oh my God!”

“Save that prayer for Mount Hood,” said Hannibal.

They took a last look at the Indians dotting the north side of the river. They used nets. They had traps. Where they had built small fences to coop up the fish, they prowled with cocked spears. They showed no interest in the strangers. Their focus was the fish and food enough to last until the next salmon run.

There were Indians, people said, who would build a raft and float you through the mighty waters. But you could never float a herd of seventy-seven horses through.

“We're leaving the river tomorrow morning?” asked Hannibal.

“Yeah,” said Sam, mesmerized by something in the stream.

He dived into the torrent and immediately stood halfway up with a mammoth salmon in his arms.

The huge fish wriggled and flicked Sam away like a fly. He fell backward over a boulder. Then the salmon circled in the pool and made the upward leap.

Hannibal, Flat Dog, and Remoulet were so astonished by the fish that they lost track of Sam for a moment. His holler caught their attention.

Sam's tumble had taken him from the pool into the current. Now he was bouncing downstream like flotsam. They saw him rise up one of the tall waves and get flipped backward. On the second try he swam hard and kicked his way through it. He fended off a boulder with one stiff leg and swept around it. For a moment he was caught in the eddy on the back side, but he got both feet on the rock, gave a mighty shove, and splashed back into the current.

They were dashing alongside the river now, keeping Sam in sight.

He washed straight over a big rock headfirst—no, he didn't wash over, he beached!

Sam waved his hat at them and dived as far as he could downstream. The rapid turned from a rock garden into big waves alone, waves that lifted Sam like a dinghy of human bark, dropped him into the troughs behind, and flung him into the sky again.

Hannibal tried to figure out what else he was seeing and realized it was that foolish hat, zigzagging in the air.

The rapid turned to duck feathers and then pooled out in a big eddy. By the time Hannibal, Flat Dog, and Remoulet arrived, Sam was standing in the shallows.

“Still got my hat,” he yelled over the roar of the rapids, grinning. He clambered onto the bank.

“How come you do such a crazy t'ing?” said Remoulet.

Sam looked at him funny and answered, “To catch the fish!”

“We Frenchmen of the canoes,” said Remoulet, “we do not swim.” His tone added, “nor want to.”

“Let's go see if we've still got horses,” said Sam.

They trotted back upstream. The way was so rough that Hannibal was surprised they'd been able to run it without thought.

All four mounts stood calmly where they'd left them, no Indian nearby. With Sam's mare Paladin and Hannibal's gelding Brownie this was no surprise. That pair was trained to ground tie—you could just drop the reins and the horse would stand still as if it was staked.

The others apparently liked equine company.

“We leave the river tomorrow,” repeated Hannibal, “if we're all still alive.”

 

“L
ET'S EAT THE
horseflesh,” said Flat Dog.

Everybody laughed, and laughter was a good thing, a healing and relief.

They had labored their way across the southeastern slopes of Mount Hood for several days. The old Indian trail was good for a few hunters or warriors but not for a herd of loose horses, plus pack animals, two horses dragging travois, and ten riders. It was narrow, steep, and blocked by thick stands of evergreens. In places you had to pick your way through downed timber. All too often the slope angled up forever and a day. The horses kept trying to turn back, and the people felt like doing the same.

Then they came into a pleasant valley called Tygh where some Chinook Indians lived. They spent two days resting the horses on good grass and doing a little trading.

After they turned west from the Tygh Valley the southern slopes of Mount Hood got steeper, and they learned to believe what the Chinooks had signed to them—snow ahead.

The horses sank above their knees. The riders climbed off and led their mounts. The people had to stovepipe it, pick up each leg, one at a time, slide it forward on the snow, and plunk it straight down into the cold, white stuff one meager step ahead. The horses
had almost as much trouble. It was slow going, and the steepness made it much worse. The animals were on the edge of turning surly. Some of the human animals were beyond that edge.

“I was in too much of a rush,” said Sam. “It's too early in the season.”

“That's why we should stop and eat them,” said Flat Dog again.