Scalpdancers (29 page)

He tripped over the kindling and landed on his rump in the dirt.

“By heaven, you are quick-tempered. You show more sparks than a mountain of flint.” She didn't respond but looked past him as a shadow fell across the man sprawled upon the ground. Morgan scrambled to his feet, dusted himself off, and faced the Indian on horseback who had ridden up to the summer kitchen.

“This is becoming a habit with you,” Morgan said. The Blackfoot might not fully understand the words, but the white man's expression and tone of voice carried enough meaning.

“Go from this place.” Lone Walker walked the gray mare almost under the cedar roof. He slashed the air with his elkhorn bow. “No good here. Leave!”

Julia gasped. She took the man's gestures as a threat. Morgan caught the horsehair reins and forced the mare back onto the grass out from the shaded ground.

“Leave! I have spoken!” Lone Walker repeated. He tugged free of Morgan's grasp.

“No,” Julia said, shaken.

“This is her home, you crazy red stick! Mine too!” Lone Walker tried to ride around him. Morgan blocked his path.

The brave raised his bow as if to strike him. Morgan tugged a knife from his boot top.

“Just you try it, laddie buck, and I'll carve you from nose to toe,” Morgan threatened.

The two men confronted each other across a gulf of silence and sudden suspicion, the pragmatic sea captain and the Blackfoot warrior and spirit singer.

Lone Walker whirled his mount and showered Morgan with a spray of dirt and grass kicked up by the hooves of the mare. Morgan dusted the debris from his clothes as the Indian galloped off toward the river trail. Was he riding to the sun once again? Morgan felt a chill creep along his spine. Julia quickly warmed him, standing near enough so her breath tickled the back of his neck.

“By my eyes that's one heathen who's been to the sun once too often,” Morgan said, returning the knife to his boot top.

“My gosh, I thought he might attack you. Why did he want us to leave?”

“Maybe he wanted to convert you to his ‘heathen' ways,” Morgan said. “Maybe he just saw something yesterday in the woods, something he liked, and wanted to take you back to his village as his squaw.”

“Don't make fun,” she chided.

Morgan lifted her into his arms and carried her toward the cabin. “Come to think of it, I saw something in the woods I liked,” he said.

“Morgan—no,” she protested, but her heart wasn't in it.

“The good reverend is gone to read from the Good Book at the Sea Spray Inn. If those godless trappers won't come to church, he'll go to them.” Morgan carried Julia out from the shadows of the summer kitchen and never broke stride as he made his way up to the cabin door.

“What of Mr. Reasoner?” Julia blurted out the name in a last-ditch effort to dissuade. Quite by chance and completely on cue Boudins Reasoner's voice reverberated within the confines of the church as he mutilated one liturgical hymn after another.

“I left a bottle of McCorkle's brew near the stew pot,” Morgan admitted. “And Boudins is a man with a thirst.” He glowered menacingly at the girl in his arms. “Now before I step one foot across the threshold of this cabin door, you name your objections, Julia Ruth Emerson.” He held her in his arms and waited in silence, unwilling to proceed unless she wished it so.

“You're a rake and a rambler, I fear, Morgan Penmerry, and like as not you'll be breaking my heart, but I love you.” Julia's eyes no longer teased, they sparkled. “Objections? None, my love, my own dear—none.”

By midafternoon Lone Walker had developed quite a thirst. Where he sat atop Cape Disappointment, a strip of land jutting out into the mouth of the Columbia River, he had the roiling wind-whipped swells of the Pacific on his left and the churning current of the Columbia on his right, where freshwater battered the incoming tides.

From his vantage point he watched seabirds dive and swoop down the face of the cliffs to become glimmering blurs of snowy plumage before rising on the wings of the wind like prayers to the All-Father.

Lone Walker listened with his ears and with his heart and heard the wind and the ocean speak. Even the willful sun revealed its secrets to this young spirit singer. He laughed at the antics of three young otters frolicking along the banks of the river.

He thought of the young white man, “Mor-gan,” and his woman. What did he know of them? Nothing. Yet they had come to represent himself and Sparrow. Lone Walker needed no translation. But they could not see beyond seeing. They were white-faced ones whose god had died long ago and no longer spoke to them in the wind and the rain and in the silence atop the Backbone of the World.

He lifted his gaze to the horizon, where gray clouds billowed, formed and re-formed against the cobalt sky. Lone Walker watched the turbulent forces of nature at work against a seemingly limitless expanse until sea and sky and earth became one unbroken pattern of energy flowing into and through every living thing.

“All-Father,

I am here among the white faces.

Their ways are strange to me.

Yet I am drawn to them and do not know why.

What must I do among them?

Show me the path I must walk.

Do not keep me here. My heart

Longs for Sparrow.

The way behind me is long;

The way before me is long.

That is the way of the Great Circle.

It is the way of living.

I sing for the journey.”

His voice carried to the whirling gulls and echoed down the broken hills. The crashing waves added their chorus, and the wind swept it all away.

His vision cleared, the world slipped into definition, became an increasingly storm-laden sky. A shadow-patched sea dashed itself against lichen-spattered boulders with increasing intensity. Seaweed, sodden leavings abandoned by the foam-flecked waves, was strewn along every clear interval of moist dark sand.

A three-masted bark rounded Cape Disappointment and entered the mouth of the Columbia. It was a sleek, deep-drafted vessel, its mainsail unfurled to take advantage of the oncoming storm. Lone Walker had seen the
Magdalene
—now called the H.M.S.
Cornwall
—anchored offshore. To watch one of the vessels glide silently across the water filled the young shaman with awe. Its sails were like the wings of a soaring eagle. The ship cut through the current as if it were alive. Its bow rose and fell as it rode the turbulent waters toward Astoria harbor.

As Lone Walker sat in solitude, the river itself darkened. A dense cloud-bank overtook the sun and obscured its solar energy. The darkness seemed to spread out from the boat in the river and took in the riverbank and the steep promontory where the Indian kept his vigil.

A “civilized” man might have declared the approaching storm a natural phenomenon, especially here along the Pacific coast. But Lone Walker read a warning in the night-shrouded air and the suddenly ominous presence of the craft.

It was none of his concern. Let the white-faced man and woman take care of themselves without his help. And what of the vision he had received? The All-Father would not let him turn away. Mor-gan was a big, strong man, larger and more powerfully built than Lone Walker. He certainly appeared capable of handling himself no matter what.

The Blackfoot might have dismissed his worries had he not turned and in that moment found a dead gull near a basalt outcrop in the tall grass at the edge of the cliff where a portion of the hillside had slid into the sea. The bird had been dead for hours, its mottled wings outstretched. The gull's beak lay open as if to add its own raucous melody to the smiling, soaring symphony of the birds. But this gull was dead. Ants had eaten the eyes and tongue from the carcass. The meat had begun to rot.

Lone Walker knelt by the gull; his fingers probed the bird's lifeless form. Suddenly he straightened, recognition in his eyes. The warrior called softly and the gray mare abandoned its grazing. Lone Walker grabbed the animal's mane as the mare broke into a run. The animal's momentum swung the Indian up onto its back. Lone Walker clung to the animal's back and urged the horse on to even greater effort. He was racing the storm now and couldn't afford to lose. It was a matter of life and death.

“Do you know the legend of St. George and the dragon?” Emile Emerson asked Temp Rawlins and his mates over a pewter cup of rice wine. He refilled his cup, emptying the contents from a clay bottle—one of the bottles he had loaded in Macao and traded to McCorkle for lodging and the amenities to make an adequate household for himself and his daughter. Emerson had built up considerable credit waiting for the supply ship from New York, which was long overdue. Then again, the British might well confiscate everything aboard. A Hudson Bay Company supply boat was also scheduled to arrive. And though Reap McCorkle desperately needed to replenish his stores, the trader would have to resign himself to bartering at a disadvantage. The Hudson Bay Company, under the protection of the English occupation, paid a third of what the furs were valued. Reap was given a commission for storing and baling the pelts and preparing them for shipment.

Tim Britchetto and his two partners, all of them former members of Morgan's crew, sat in sullen silence as Reap tabulated their furs and prepared to quote them the Hudson Bay price.

“I never heard of either of 'em,” Tim replied glumly and slid his chair back from the table. His two companions—men in their mid-twenties, quiet, earnest, plain-spoken souls who like Britchetto were attempting to learn the trapper's trade—followed Tim over to the bar, where Reap was judging the quality of the otter pelts the lads had brought him.

Emerson turned his attention toward Temp Rawlins, the last man at the table. Temp shook his head no and gnawed an antelope rib he'd snatched from a platter of ribs Reap's wife had intended for the newly arrived trappers. Faith had left them at the bar with a stern warning to her husband that Temp Rawlins needed to either work for his keep or eat and sleep elsewhere. She wasn't being unkind, only practical. With the current state of hostilities between England and America a wise person made a profit whenever possible. Faith McCorkle clung to a fragile optimism and prayed for better days.

Temp Rawlins munched contentedly and waited for Emerson's story; he knew one was sure to follow. He did glance up toward the stairs just once and spied Faith glaring at him from about midway up. She spun around and in a huff continued upstairs, her hands thrust into the pockets of her voluminous apron. Temp sighed. What did she want him to do, starve?

“I used to fancy myself a kind of St. George come to slay the dragon of faithlessness and paganism.”

Emerson rested his hand on the Bible he had not opened since morning on his way to the McCorkles' inn. He had lied about coming to win souls. It had been an excuse to leave his daughter and Morgan alone. All the previous night the two had not even so much as exchanged pleasantries but averted their eyes and avoided contact. Had they quarreled? No, this wasn't a hostile silence. It was more like two people with so much to share, they feared even the simplest exchange might unleash a flash flood of emotion. They both were striving to hold back and that made the reverend extremely suspicious. Better to let them work their problems out, Emerson had decided. His daughter, after all, was no longer a child. But leaving the mission site had been one of the hardest things he had ever done.

“Maybe life is meant to be a battle,” Emerson continued. “Sometimes we are St. George and at other times the dragon. The trick is knowing who we are and accepting it.” He added, contemplatively, “And who our children are and accepting them.” He tilted the cup to his lips and took a swallow of its bitter contents. “Do you, my good man, in some small measure, understand what I am saying?”

Temp nodded. “Sure, Dr. Emerson, you're telling me I've lost my boy. He's trimmed his sails and he'll not be slippin' out again.” Temp snorted in disgust. “Women. They'll do it every time.”

Aye, females had sunk more sailors than any squall that had ever blown. Women with their tricks and their wiles kept men land bound. He'd recognized the inevitability of such an outcome right from the start, from the way Morgan's eyes had danced with light when describing Julia a lifetime ago in Macao.

“I fear I've lost my shipmate,” Temp said.

“And I my daughter,” Emerson added, staring at his folded hands upon the tabletop. He started to laugh; it began deep in his chest and burst through his gloom. “Look at us, Mr. Rawlins, like two old mother hens fussing over our chicks.” Tears sprang to his eyes; his cheeks grew red. He struggled to breathe. His belly shook from the spasm as he tilted back in his chair. His humor was infectious, and soon he had Temp Rawlins in the same good humor.

“By heaven, Dr. Emerson. You're right,” Temp said. “Couple of maiden aunts, that's us.”

Reap McCorkle paused in his assessment of the pelts covering the bar top and studied Emerson and Temp.

“Maybe I underestimated that rice wine,” Reap said.

“You underestimate me if you think I'll give my pelts away,” Tim Britchetto grumbled. He'd quickly learned to set traps and where to look for fox and beaver. The past two months had proved fruitful and he wasn't about to be robbed. “I'd sooner burn them than have 'em stolen by such as you.”

Reap McCorkle's work-worn features darkened and his forehead became as furled as a new-plowed field. His frown silenced Tim's companions before they could add a similar sentiment.

“Burn them and be damned. Hudson Bay holds the purse strings, not I.” Reap shoved a mound of pelts onto the floor. Tim tried to stare the agent down, but it was he who backed off, his bluff called. Meekly now, he knelt and gathered the pelts and placed them back on the counter. “Stout, Bedlow, help Mr. McCorkle here carry the pelts below.” The men at the counter nodded glumly. “We'd be fools not to have something to show for our troubles.”