Rendezvous (2 page)

Something had altered. Now, once again, the Royal Navy stood between him and his liberty, and he didn't know which way to turn. His only weapons were his belaying pin and his wits.

Chapter 2

Skye waited restlessly until the jury of his peers vanished upriver. Thirst deviled him but he chose to ignore it. As a last resort he could descend some cleft to the river, drink and retreat. Instead he continued eastward along the ridge, so effervescent with joy that he scarcely noticed the protests of his body. Never in his life had he felt such ecstasy. The very earth was his father and mother and brother and sister and friend. His protector, too, hiding him in its rocky fastnesses.

He hiked warily, wondering whether he would run into some jack nastyface, perhaps a salt he knew, probing the ravines or studying the bluffs for signs of passage. He crawled out on promontories and saw nothing below but the glinting river hurrying its burden to the sea. He paused, letting the majesty of the place seep through him. This was better than seeing the horizon from a swaying crow's nest.

Thirst savaged him, and he knew he would have to descend and take his chances. He turned into a pine-shot ravine, sliding downward to a grove of new-leafed trees, yews he guessed, but he knew so little of those things. And there he discovered a seep dribbling clear water down a rocky facade and into the grove. He cupped his hands and drank, learning something valuable from the moment: a burst of emerald foliage might be a sign of water. He would see the wilderness with wiser eyes henceforth. He had no doubt passed dozens of such springs.

He gnawed on hardtack, knowing it wouldn't last long or subdue the howl of his belly, and resumed his eastward journey. Eventually he reached a saddle divided by a tumbling creek that raced toward the Columbia far below. At the confluence of the creek and the Columbia stood a native village with some sort of fishing apparatus projecting into the river. From his vantage point he could make out brown natives wearing little more than loincloths—and the Royal Navy in blues among them, roasting what would no doubt be a salmon feast.

There they were, his shipmates, old hands, wolfishly hunting him down because they feared the lash. They were less than half a mile below, and all his leagues of walking had not freed him from the clutches of the King's avengers who wanted to make an example of him. He could not cross that arid saddle without being seen, and someone among them would raise the alarm. He pitied them. They wished him no harm but the Royal Navy knew how to bend humble men to its imperial will. Lads who had holystoned the teak deck beside him would be in that party below, balancing the harsh powers of royal officers against their rough sympathies. He studied them, discovering the unmistakable bulk of Smitty and the bent-over form of Hauk. Men he knew, set against him.

He peered about, looking for a way around. He discovered animals grazing above, and with them the possibility of village herders. To the north and east stretched treeless plains, offering little shelter.

He could not circle around by day. He could only wait or retreat. He edged back a hundred yards, making sure not to leave bootprints, and found an area of shelf rock veiled by brush where he could hide unless someone stumbled on the very spot. There he spent the rest of the afternoon, making occasional reconnoiters to a point where he could peer down upon the fishing village. The Royal Navy didn't budge. His shipmates had eaten, smoked, and were enjoying the sight of bare-breasted native women. Maybe that was all for the good, Skye thought. Their minds were on a different sort of chase.

He weighed his chances. He needed to eat and find a way past the tars. But what good could come from hastening upstream with the search party hot on his heels, guided by scouts who knew the country? He studied the fishery, a trap of poles that steered the salmon into seine nets. Beached on a gentle bank were several pirogues, dugout canoes, their paddles lying in them. With one, he could escape to the far shore—if he had the courage to walk through the village at night and take it. His instinct was to cross and then shove the dugout into the river so his passage would not be remarked.

He needed darkness. Moonlight would betray him. Give him the north star and he would navigate the inky river. He studied the village some more, noting a rack where salmon were being smoked. He waited impatiently for dusk—the itch to run, run, run mounting in him. But at twilight he was rewarded with information he needed: his erstwhile shipmates were settling down west of the fishery. The native huts clustered to the east. He spotted dogs, many of them gorging on the offal of the catch, and they shot fear through him. He didn't quite know when the moon would rise, only that in this phase it rose an hour or so later each night, and he would have to act early and fast after true darkness settled.

Restlessly, he bided time until he could no longer see the last band of blue in the west. The cookfires had dimmed. Midshipman Cornwall Carp—Skye recognized the choleric officer commanding this detail—would post a watch and the village mutts would form another sort of watch. Skye wondered what he would do if the mutts howled. Run for the pirogues, he supposed. But would he be strong enough to drag a heavy dugout into the river and escape?

He weighed, one last time, the alternative: hike around the village by night and continue up the Columbia on its right bank, a fox running ahead of the hounds. That made sense, too. And yet … the crossing appealed to him. The thought of some smoked salmon did, too. He wrestled back his terror and set out, retracing his way to the saddle and then cautiously working down it in taut darkness, his senses raw. The flutter of a night bird startled him. The scurry of an animal froze him. He reached the edge of the village, wary of the dogs, and studied the gloom for the Royal Navy's watch, but he saw nothing. His pulse lifted. The place was redolent of fish and smoke. He waited a long while, his gaze seeking the glow in the east that would signal the rising moon. He listened to the rhythms of the night, eyed the hulking native huts and fish trap, his senses filtering the shifting darkness that would tell him of the approach of a man.

Nothing.

It was time. He edged out onto the flat scarcely twenty yards from the bivouac, discerned the fish processing area but could make out no fish. He finally found some on a wooden rack, lifted two, and eased toward the river. It reflected pinpoints of starlight off its ebony surface. He chose the nearest pirogue, carefully lowered his kit and the fish into it, felt about until he grasped a paddle and another and another. He lifted the stern of the vessel, found it heavy, and pushed hard. It slid a few inches, scraping loudly. His pulse catapulted. He tried again, and it slid some more. He peered about him, ducked behind the pirogue when he thought he saw a shadow emerge. But the shadow was only in his fevered imagination. He pushed and tugged some more, wild to break free, and at last eased the craft into the sucking water and hopped in just before losing it to the swift current, which caught it and drew it west. He settled himself, staying low, looking for signs of alarm and finding none. Then, safely away, he slid a paddle into the river and began his crossing, keeping the north star at his back.

He found the opposite bank too sheer to land, so he paddled upstream, fighting the muscle of the giant river, looking for a place to beach the canoe. A while later a beach hove into view, and he dragged the pirogue well up the gravel and out of harm's way. Once again, he felt ecstasy as he stood on dry land, his chances better now. And there to light his path was the lamp of the moon peeking over the mountaintops. He hiked eastward again, confident that he had given his pursuers the dodge, his kit slung over his back, and fifteen or twenty pounds of smoked salmon strung over his kit—enough to feed him for a while.

His body felt light and supple, his legs springy, his muscles fueled by his wild joy. Could any mortal experience such exultation as this? He laughed, a big, booming eruption of delight that billowed out of his frame, and trotted upstream on a well-defined trace. At dawn he found himself in much more open country, the arid bluffs farther back and lower, the barren hills beyond them not much higher than the river. He paused to study this new world, look for signs of pursuit on land and water. But the gray light revealed nothing amiss. He needed rest, so he turned up a gully that descended out of the south and found a grove of evergreens a half mile in. The generous pungence of pines filtered through the quiet air. Here he would eat and rest. Here he would take stock.

He found a small ell of rock and decided to build a fire there. He had trouble with the flint and striker, having barely used the device before, but in time he set some tinder smoldering, and with a few gentle breaths he brought a tiny flame to life. He had chosen the site well. The fire could not be seen from any angle. The smoke would dissipate in the surrounding pines. He kept the fire small and let it burn hot while he filleted a salmon and ran the flesh onto a wooden spit that he held over the hot coals.

The half-smoked fish didn't taste good, but he devoured it as if it were a palace delicacy. Henceforth he would live on salmon. He wouldn't have much else. He lacked the weapons to kill game, and April wasn't the time to find wild fruits and berries. But he had hooks and a line and a river full of a legendary fish that fed whole tribes.

He lay back in the grass, satisfied for the moment. He needed sleep. But he needed something else, intangible but insistent in his mind: a future. Where would he go, and what would he do, and what did he want to be? He scraped dirt over the remaining coals, packed his kit in readiness for a hasty retreat if he had to, and then let his mind wander like a homeless ghost in the cemetery of his life.

Long ago, he had been destined for Cambridge, where his father had been schooled in political economy before turning to the overseas trade. The boy, Barnaby Skye, had a lively interest in English literature and poetry and in his family's Anglican religion. He had entertained the thought of becoming a dominie if he didn't choose his father's profession. Then, in one dark moment on an overcast day in London, all his dreams were shattered and he no longer owned his own life.

Now he would fulfill his dream. He intended to cross this wild American continent, find his way to a comparable university on the Atlantic seaboard—Harvard came to mind—and achieve what had been his original goal. He knew little about the American college, except that it was respected and that it was located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, nearby Boston. The thought appealed to him. He had planned to go to Cambridge, England, but would settle for Cambridge, Massachusetts. He could pick up where he had left off seven years ago, work through college somehow, settle in Boston, and start a business. He had sustained himself with that dream, and now it was becoming reality.

But the thought left him restless. He was no longer that boy and wasn't so sure what he wanted now that he had, in a fashion, seen the world, if only from 'tween decks. The newly pressed seaman, Barnaby Skye, had fought bitterly in the bowels of the frigate just to survive, just to wolf his ration of gruel each day, just to win a little purchase on life. The boy had learnt well, fought the bullies, learned to give more than he took. But it had cost him a broken nose and numerous scars, the punishment meted out by harder, crueller, older men who built ruthless jack-tar empires 'tween decks, out of sight of bosuns and midshipmen.

He didn't know what he would do. Freedom bewildered him. For the first time in his life, he had no one over him, no one telling him how to spend his every hour. He ached with the burden of choice, ached to find someone he could share his dream with, anyone who might help him decide what to do with his life.

He dozed well into the morning, bolting awake with every shift of the breeze or catcall of a crow, and then settling back into the benevolent grass again while his heart steadied. No one came. He possessed the earth—and himself. That was it: for the first time in his young life, he owned himself.

He was troubled by a sadness that lay just below his wild delight in being free. He didn't know what he would do, or be, but he supposed the next months would teach him. He had never imagined that liberty could be such a burden.

Chapter 3

Dr. John McLoughlin had had more than his fill of his demanding guest, Commodore Sir Josiah Priestley, but there wasn't much he could do except wait out the visit.

Priestley had all the hallmarks of his class: a fine wit, a scorn for commoners, a loyalty to the Crown that was more rhetorical than real, a smidgeon of learning in most of the branches of knowledge, and an assumption that all the world should treat him with the deference demanded by his station.

The commodore, in command of a small Pacific squadron consisting of three twenty-four-gun frigates, relics of the Napoleonic Wars, was paying a courtesy call to the new Hudson's Bay post, Fort Vancouver. There McLoughlin presided over a fur trading empire that stretched from Mexican possessions in California northward, and from the Pacific to the Continental Divide at the apex of the Rocky Mountains. Priestley had sailed up the treacherous Columbia with only his flagship, the
Jaguar,
leaving the two remaining frigates to display the war muscle of King George IV to the dissolute Mexicans farther south and then meet him in the bay of San Francisco.

The giant McLoughlin, born of Irish and French parents in Quebec, could be an accommodating host, and indeed had at first welcomed the visitors, sharing whatever luxuries and wines he had in his yet-unfinished fort on a flat north of the Columbia. He had more urgent things to do, chief among them putting the new Hudson's Bay Company division on a profitable footing. He presided over an area so vast it defied the imagination; an area largely unexplored, although his best brigade leader, Peter Skene Ogden, was swiftly mastering the country and locating the prime beaver-trapping areas.

On a less lofty level, McLoughlin was overseeing the planting of crops that would supply the post with its grain and vegetables, and was building the corner bastions of his fort along with comfortable residences for his chief men within it. He was also overseeing the post store and its profitable trade in peltries, all the while dealing as diplomatically as possible with his bullheaded and demanding superior, Sir George Simpson.