Dreams Beneath Your Feet (10 page)

Lei wanted to stand well off herself, even though she lived with them. She wished—she'd wished over and over—that she could stay in camp, too, that . . .

This wasn't a roundabout, which worried her. They had brought whiskey only to drink, not to trade. And they didn't ride down the Owyhee, in their usual way, toward the Snake River and the villages of Nez Percé, Walla, and Cayuse that scattered beyond. They rode straight up into the Owyhee Mountains, which she disliked. These were not the pine-forested, snowcapped majesties she'd grown up around, just high, knuckly outcroppings
too poor even to support much game. There were only a few springs where Digger Indians camped.

From what Lei had seen of Diggers she didn't want anything to do with them. They were the poorest Indians anyone knew of. They lived in brush huts, had no horses, and only the most primitive weapons. For most of the year the men went naked and the women wore only a kind of apron. People said they lived on rabbits, grasshoppers, and seeds.

When she asked where the devil they were going, Kanaka Boy gave her his sly smile and said, “You'll see.”

 

T
HE NEXT MORNING
the Sam Morgan–Flat Dog family, plus Uncle Hannibal, walked through the gate of Fort Hall, their children gawking.

“That's a cannon,” said Sam.

The boys ran to it and started climbing all over it. Esperanza gave Sam a questioning look.

“It's a huge gun—it shoots these balls.” He pointed to the pyramid of ammunition next to the cannon.

“What's it for?”

“Just to scare the Indians, really. In case of bad trouble, to shoot at them.”

“Wonderful,” said his daughter.

Julia looked at Sam, and the papa half-hid a smile. Sam wasn't used to fathering, and Julia was tickled at watching him learn to cope with a headstrong teenage girl in a pissy mood.

Julia didn't blame her. They'd jerked her out of the only life she had known, torn her away from the young man she fantasized about, made her leave her grandparents and all her friends. Not to mention the stinky rendezvous.

At the entrance to the trading room Julia reached out and showed Esperanza how to operate the door handle. It was a simple, blacksmithed latch, but she had never seen one before. In fact, she hadn't seen a wooden door until now. Only yesterday afternoon,
when they made camp outside the fort and made a mock attack, had she first seen a building, much less a walled fort with a bastion.

Julia looked back at Azul and Rojo, running around the cannon and yelling, “Boom! Boom! Boom!”

Esperanza worked the latch twice and made an expression that said she wasn't impressed. They stepped in.

Sam smiled across the room at Bardolf and then reminded himself to call the trader Mr. Ermatinger. Ermatinger would be grumpy enough without Sam calling him Bardolf. Sometimes he acted jovial, but Sam knew him for a bitter and acerbic man.

“This place smells bad,” Esperanza said.

Funny, the smells were what Sam liked about trading rooms, the aromas of big twists of tobacco, coffee beans, horehound candy, and pemmican, all swirled together. But strange to Esperanza, for sure.

She stood in the middle of the room, far from the displays of goods that she coveted—bolts of cotton and wool, ribbons, beads, everything to help a young girl look beautiful.

Hannibal said, “Look at this glass.” She went to him—Hannibal was the one person in the party she was speaking to in a good spirit. He tapped it with a fingernail, and she did too, and then felt its smoothness with her forefinger. “Lets lots of light in, and lets you see out. But fragile. You can just push with your hand and it will break into sharp pieces. Cut your hand, too.”

Azul and Rojo came bounding in.

Julia walked around and felt of the fabrics. Aside from trading their fur, they wouldn't do much trading here. They had Sam's letter of credit from American Fur for a good amount, profit from a herd of horses he'd brought from California, but they all knew prices would be better at the main Hudson's Bay place of business, Fort Vancouver. Julia could wait.

“Are you bound for Oregon, Morgan?” asked Ermatinger.

“Sure enough,” Sam said. “The trapping life is done.” Flat Dog and Hannibal came up next to Sam.

“The Oregon road will be well-worn this year,” said Ermatinger. “More missionaries and their wives, I see. Joining their comrades among the Spokanes, I believe. You guiding them?”

“Not a chance,” said Sam.

Like many men in the mountains, Ermatinger made no secret of his distaste for the preaching breed.

“Your friends Meek and Newell are giving up the life as well?” His lips lingered over the phrase, relishing the implication of failure.

“Yes,” said Hannibal.

“Hard to picture Joe Meek giving up a beaver trap for a plow,” said Flat Dog.

“There's a delicious bit there,” Ermatinger went on. “Newell told me this morning he and Joe are taking two wagons.”

“Wagons to Oregon?” said Hannibal. He didn't add, “And Joe Meek going along?”

“Indeed. He has in mind to prove it can be done.” Now Ermatinger's tone was pure mockery.

Sam bought Esperanza a couple of doodads and got the family out of the range of Ermatinger's mood.

That evening the night sky was fully dark, the mountain air cool enough for them to use blankets, sitting around the fire. The season was changing, and the first frost wasn't far off. They chased the cold away with coffee they'd just bought from Ermatinger. The evening would have been perfect if Doc Newell wasn't trying to twist their arms.

“It's safer with a big party,” said Doc. Joe Meek sat cross-legged next to Doc, but he was drinking more than talking.

Sam, Hannibal, and Flat Dog eyed each other. After they got the word from Ermatinger, they had talked it over and decided.

“Doc,” said Sam, “you're a friend. And there's no man like Joe. But the Snake River plains? You're going to be sorry you ever heard a wheel squeak.”

“You're just not thinking big,” said Newell. “We could be first. Wagons to the Pacific Coast of Oregon!”

“No,” said Hannibal.

“Hell, no,” said Flat Dog.

“Joe,” asked Sam, “you really all right with this?”

“I guess,” said Joe. “But my wife, Rain, she has her doubts.”

“A squaw's opinion,” said Newell, “is of no value.”

Joe swigged and looked sidelong at Doc.

“How long to the next post?” asked Julia.

“Fort Boise,” said Hannibal. “About three weeks.”

“Safer together,” said Doc.

“We already told you no,” said Flat Dog.

 

 

 

T
HE THREE OF
them climbed up a low ridge, leaving the horses and men out of sight below. From this distance, though, Lei could see nothing. Dark bushes clustered at the foot of the slope, and the plants might mean a spring. Whatever Kanaka Boy was studying through his field glass, she couldn't make it out.

“I want to look,” said Nell. She was one of the loose Kanaka-Indian women Boy kept around camp. Lei knew he had sex with her when he wanted to. Lei dealt with it by ignoring her.

Now Boy ignored Nell by handing Lei the field glass. He was proud of that piece of equipment—to him it represented leadership. He'd traded for it at Fort Boise, near the place where the Owyhee River flowed into the Snake.

Lei adjusted the focus a little for her eyes. “I only see bushes,” she said.

Peering intently, she still saw nothing. Then a movement
caught her eye. A child, yes, a toddler, darting out of a bush—no, a low, domed hut woven from branches.

A woman stood up abruptly into the circle of Lei's vision, a Digger, naked to the waist.

Boy said, “This will be lovely.”

“Let me see,” said Nell.

Lei handed the glass to Boy and started back down the rise.

At the bottom Boy directed a half-dozen men to lead their horses off to the north and ascend the slope beyond the visible ridge and another half-dozen to do the same to the south. “Stay low,” he said. “No riding. Get above the hut so you can charge down. Don't let them see you or they'll scatter.”

“How we know when?” said Delly. He spoke a sort of Pidgin English that Lei didn't like.

“At sundown, when they're all back in camp. The signal will be my gunshot. When you hear that, ride.”

Lei wanted to ask what on earth Boy wanted with the Diggers. They didn't possess anything of use to anyone. But Boy was being coy about this—he strode around like a man executing a fine plan—and she knew he wouldn't tell. She could only dread.

She lay down and took a nap on her saddle blanket. As she drifted off, her last thought was,
What has my life become?

Kanaka Boy woke her with a shake. “We're heading in,” he said. His eyes were alive with excitement. “You want to go?”

“No,” said Lei.

“I do,” said Nell.

“Good,” Boy told her.

Nell flashed Lei a look of superiority.

Lei knew Nell, in fact all the women, scorned her because she refused to participate in dirty deeds. Or maybe they envied her because Boy treated her special. She didn't care which.

Boy handed Lei the field glass. “Watch if you want.”

She climbed the rise again, and for a while she could see the action with the naked eye. Boy and his gang fanned out parallel to one another, their horses maybe ten yards apart. They rode
openly and steadily toward the camp several hundred yards away. Lei suddenly thought that they were doing it in the style of a rabbit drive. They must not want to let anyone—

Shouts and screams came from the Digger camp. She could see figures stirring.

Boy spurred his horse to a gallop. He rode an enormous Appaloosa stallion he called Warrior, seventeen hands high, black with white spots like snowflakes—an easy horse to spot at a distance. From a long way out Boy fired, making the huge noise she would never get used to and sending up an eruption of white smoke.

Now Lei could see riders charging down the hill toward the camp from two sides.

As Boy rode into the camp, Lei raised the field glass and focused on him and Warrior. A Digger man ran straight at them, brandishing a club. Boy swung his tomahawk once, and the man crumpled.

Other riders charged across her field of vision. Some shot people with rifle or pistol, and some just trampled Diggers with their mounts.

Lei lowered the field glass. She shuddered. Why on earth did Boy want to kill these people?

Mesmerized, she couldn't turn her face away. Horses darted back and forth among the huts. White smoke formed a cloud above the camp. Indians scurried around, looking for a way out.

She turned her back to the scene and crumpled to her knees.

 

F
OR SOME REASON
Boy and the men didn't come back for a long time, maybe an hour. Lei sat wrapped in her saddle blanket, shivering, though not from the cold. When they came, they brought six women and ten children between the ages of about six and twelve. All had their heads down, their hands tied, and their feet hobbled.

Boy swung off Warrior and swaggered toward her. He was intoxicated with violence.

Lei knew the men's fate. She stared for a long while at the captives and finally asked, “What happened to the small children?” Like the toddler. “The old people?”

He gave a twisted smile and said, “They couldn't walk to California.”

Lei started to speak, stopped, and told herself,
Don't stutter, you idiot.
Then she spoke one word: “Why?”

Kanaka Boy shrugged easily.

“Californios want slaves.”

 

 

 

T
RAVEL, AFTER A
long while, is not a matter of going somewhere. It is a way of life.

The whole Sam–Hannibal–Flat Dog–Julia crew hated the lava plains of the Snake River. Even as summer wagon-spoked toward fall, the days were blazing hot, beaten by a relentless sun. The horses had to pick hoof placements through black lava rock where there should have been soft earth and grass.

The family's days were simple. Get up at first light, make coffee, gnaw on pemmican, load the packhorses, and ride. Take a long nooner somewhere with water and shade. Ride again until the sun is mostly gone and you see a decent camping place. Unload. Eat. Drink coffee—Sam was glad he'd spend the rest of his life where he could get coffee beans. And sleep, because you're too tired to do anything else.

That anything else, fortunately, included Esperanza acting pissy.

Tonight, after three weeks on the trail and just an hour or two from Fort Boise, Hannibal wished someone would bicker. Supper was done. Flat Dog and Sam were leading the horses, one by each hand, over to the river for the last drink of the day. Esperanza sat off by herself braiding and unbraiding her hair. Though she still thought about how Prairie Chicken did her wrong, she was too tired to muster any hatred. Julia was playing cat's cradle with the boys, who were at least honest enough to grumble at each other. Baby Paloma hung from a cottonwood limb in her cradleboard, whimpering.

Sam and Flat Dog hobbled the last four horses and came back to the fire for one more cup of coffee. Sam glanced over at Esperanza unhappily, wishing for the hundredth time that she'd act like she was glad, finally, to be with her father. Flat Dog stared morosely into his cup, thinking how, halfway to his allotted three score and ten, he had abandoned an entire life.

Hannibal took his rifle and walked away from camp to the boulder he picked out for his watch. The last of the light was on the river now. The waters were dark where the trees cast shadows upon them, and silver-lavender where they rocked the last light in the sky. It was Hannibal's favorite time of day.

What none of the others knew was, Hannibal was half-jealous of them. True, right now they were mostly unhappy. Still, they formed a net of connection. They mattered to each other, for hurt or for joy. Even annoyance was connection.