The Snake River Read online

  By turn-in time, the hole was the size of a big closet. All the Arapahos but one were passed out—hangovers did that to you. Flare set the jug in the middle of the bottom, showed the last fellow where it was, and motioned that he intended to put the dirt back into the hole. The Arapaho nodded sullenly. While Dan distracted the fellow Flare moved the jug to a corner of the hole and got all the men to push dirt back in fast.

  “They’ll just dig it up and come after us,” said Dr. Full, puffing. Flare supposed his idea of high station didn’t let him get much exercise.

  “Aye, they were talking about that, you bet. In discouraged terms, I must say.”

  “Talking about it? Why did you use signs to them if you speak their language?”

  “Don’t speak it much. Understand it middling well.” Flare added with a grin, “Never pays to tip your hand at cards.”

  The dirt was back in the hole. At last everyone could go to sleep. Flare took all the watches himself. Too much danger too close. With the luck of the Irish, they’d get away with it.

  At dawn they bade good-bye to their Arapaho friends and kindly left them one of the two shovels.

  Chapter Three

  The insubordination broke out that evening. Dr. Full could feel it coming. Dan and Miss Jewel started it with their hero-worshiping talk about Mr. O’Flaherty.

  Actually, Dr. Full found himself more amused by than offended by the guide. Mr. O’Flaherty used his charm instead of his authority, which showed him to be subtle. His regimen was hard—up before dawn and the men taking turns on watch all night, a big meal and a nap at midday to make up for it. Ten miles or so before nooning, another ten or so after. But Mr. O’Flaherty persuaded people to follow his regimen willingly, and take pride in their toughness. Even today, when they’d gone hard all day without a nooning, trying to leave the savages far behind, no one had complained.

  While Mr. O’Flaherty slept, dead under his blankets, Dan got started and wouldn’t quit. The boy went on and on: Mr. O’Flaherty saved them from the fire, Mr. O’Flaherty powwowed with the Injuns, Mr. O’Flaherty fooled them good, Mr. O’Flaherty saved our skins—all the while, Dr. Full noticed, giving his stepfather sidelong looks. Finally the boy said in awe that Mr. O’Flaherty was a real man, and Miss Jewel agreed with him. That was too much, too damned much.

  “Mr. O’Flaherty can truck with savages and a godforsaken land, of course,” snapped Dr. Full. “He is a savage, worse than a savage. He has forsaken God.”

  Thus started, Dr. Full didn’t want to stop. Mr. O’Flaherty’s insubordination before God and God’s authority—these were sure signs of his lack of grace. Dr. Full would use Mr. O’Flaherty gladly and get rid of him at the earliest possible convenience. Such a man had no place around a mission.

  The man had roamed this wilderness for twenty years. In that time he probably had not darkened the door of even one of his papist churches, though he wore one of their crucifixes around his neck. He surely had lain with Indian women. He was a drunk and a mad gambler. He indulged his appetites wantonly, and lived for no more than the pleasure of the day. If you thought man was an animal, he might be a real man, but not if you thought man had a soul.

  “Oh, Samuel, you’re intolerable,” said Miss Jewel calmly.

  “Dr. Full,” he corrected her sharply.

  She rolled her eyes.

  The silence around the campfire was embarrassed. Dr. Full noticed more sidelong looks toward the sagebrush, lots of them, to make sure Mr. O’Flaherty hadn’t woken and heard.

  Actually, Mr. O’Flaherty thought the whole thing was rather a hoot.

  Sweeter far to have Miss Jewel on your side than Dr. Full. You bet.

  He was careful not to stir and alert them.

  In fact, the better he knew Miss Jewel, the more he admired her. She stood up to men. Stood up to everyone, for that matter, firmly but with grace. She loved music, and sang prettily. She had wit, in both senses—humor and intelligence. She had sand in her craw, and did what was needed without complaint or hesitation. She even rode astride, not sidesaddle.

  The way she rode astride was a tickle. Before this trip she’d never sat a horse. Now she rode with fierce enthusiasm, even recklessness, but as yet little balance. And she had an oosick quirt she used with a will.

  The fine part was, she didn’t know what an oosick was. A beau had given it to her as a souvenir, she said. He was a whaling fellow out of Nantucket and brought it back from Esquimaux country.

  Clearly, he’d never told her an oosick is the penis bone of a walrus. So she stitched some rawhide to it and in lovely ignorance used it to flail her mount.

  Ah, if only the missionary men knew, wouldn’t they take that as fraught with meaning?

  He shifted in his blankets and looked up at the stars. That scientist Nutting had said they were seven thousand feet high here. Sure and you saw more stars from up high, far more. More all of nature. Why did the white people see God’s nature as something to be controlled and reduced? Why not simply enjoyed?

  He’d never seen a lady ride astride before. Indian women did it, with high horns and full skirts to protect their modesty, but white women never. Miss Jewel had split her skirts up the middle and stitched them into legs. When she stood, they looked like skirts. When she wanted, they divided like pants.

  The other women, especially Dr. Full’s wife, Annie Lee, thought Miss Jewel had her nerve. Which made Flare like her the more.

  And made him uneasy. He didn’t feel attracted to women he admired—he simply didn’t. He wasn’t interested in white women. Among his scores of lovers was nary a one. He wasn’t interested in more than feeling hot as a poker and getting a nice douse. He knew himself.

  So, why, laddie, are ye turnin’ soft over a lass that don’t know where it is or what’s it for? Nigh thirty years old and never been touched. Her Puritan religion has dried it up forever. Nothing there for the likes of you, laddie.

  Besides, she wouldn’t have ye. When all is said and done, she don’t want a man with spirit but one with a soul. Like Shep Smith, working to become a martinet for the Lord. Or Alan Wineson, with the wit of a tree stump. Aye, a man with a soul, you bet. Funny how spirit is fine and high, but soul is hangdog.

  She’d scream and run from you like you were something nasty that lives in dirty hair. You bet.

  And who’d want her, what wouldn’t give a man comfort between the blankets until she checked with the Almighty? Who would make her say no anyway.

  Besides, it ain’t so much that you have that lovely wantin’ for her, is it? Different kind of a feeling, isn’t it?

  If you mean to turn sentimental like this, better you should go back to drink.

  Flare was right. She wouldn’t have him. She was telling Dr. Full something like that at the moment.

  “Yes,” she said hotly, “I find him attractive. And no, I’m not going to come-hither him. And what business is it of yours?”

  “I’m your spiritual counselor, Maggie.”

  “Well, Samuel…” She wished he’d said he was her brother. But he’d never do that.

  “Samuel, I know body from soul and earth from heaven. I know what comes from God’s grace and from man’s unaided struggles.”

  She let it sit.

  “Then perhaps you won’t act so enamored of him.”

  “I’ll think on that.”

  “Maggie,” said Dr. Full, “Oregon will be a great growth for you. Keep faith with God and he’ll keep faith with you.” Which was just his way of telling her a man would be waiting for her in Oregon, the sort of man he thought she ought to have, one who would use a strong hand.

  He didn’t know she’d decided never to marry. Her engagement had ended in bitterness, and she would now devote her life to Indian children.

  He touched her shoulder. She shrugged it off. He walked off into the darkness.

  Funny, she felt uncomfortable now calling him Samuel. Dr. Full felt more natural. Wasn’t that queer? For your brother?

  They
were taking their noon meal together, as they usually did. She didn’t give a care whether Samuel liked it or not.

  “What’s a fine lass like you doing in…a wilderness like this?”

  She thought with amusement that he’d been about to say “in company like this.”

  “I’ve been called,” she said.

  “Called, is it?”

  “When I was a child, near Pittsburgh, people were full of Indian-fighting stories and horrific tales about Indians. You know the kind. Save your last bullet for your wife, and keep her from a fate worse than death.”

  “Aye. The people who tell those stories might want to save you from the likes o’me.”

  She smiled at him. He was intuitive. “I didn’t believe those stories. It seemed to me that Indians are God’s creatures, just like the rest of us. And the ones I saw around me were not bloodthirsty or rapacious. Just ordinary and beaten down. And we were killing them every chance we got.”

  “This is heresy, lass.” She wondered what he would really say in their defense. Poor, defeated creatures.

  “They live in darkness,” she hurried to add. “They were dirty and diseased. They couldn’t read or write. They had no art or beauty in their lives. They didn’t know God.”

  She saw that Mr. O’Flaherty was fidgeting, but she wanted him to know her mind on this. And if the boot fit, let him wear it.

  “Then it came to me, simply and beautifully. Indians are what man is without God’s grace. Without His light in one’s life. What we Methodists called Unredeemed Man.” She looked him full in the face. “With that understanding came the call. God wants me to teach them.” She brightened. “I went to the Wilbraham Academy in Massachusetts and learned to teach them. It’s difficult, but very worthwhile. And when they’ve learned from me, they can learn from Dr. Full.”

  Holy mother of God, ye’ve found the answer, Michael Devin. Talk to her about her religion. That conversation will wither the most rambunctious pecker, you bet.

  Change of subject: “How is it Dr. Full is your sort of brother, as you put it?”

  “I never knew my father. I’m an only child. My mother died of smallpox when I was ten. I got passed around from house to house, and then Reverend Full, Dr. Full’s father, took me in. I moved in when I was thirteen, and Dr. Full was funny about it.”

  She mused on it a moment. “I’ve never quite understood. He didn’t accept me as part of the family. He was the oldest, sixteen, and very much the leader.”

  Flare could well imagine that.

  “I was unruly, I guess, and hoydenish, and…he thought I needed to learn a female’s place.” She grinned. “He still does.”

  She seemed lost in thought for a moment. “Anyway, he insisted the family introduce me as Maggie Jewel, not Maggie Full, and he treated me differently. I asked him once to call me his sister, and he said, ‘Maggie, you are my sister in Christ, but not in the flesh.’

  “That time in my life taught me something great, and even Samuel’s contrariness helped. I went to camp meeting and was saved. My mother taught me to pray but never took me to church. She thought church wasn’t for the poor, the likes of us. When I was saved, I felt God’s presence in my heart for the first time. And when I joined the church, I learned what it means to belong to something larger than yourself, to be part of a community.”

  She brightened. “So it didn’t matter if Samuel treated me like a lost waif. Besides, in less than a year he was gone off, apprenticed to Dr. Chambers. Dr. Chambers was a very fine physician. After that, we saw Dr. Full only on holidays. Then he studied the Gospel. He’s an accomplished man.”

  She smiled in a brittle way at Flare.

  “Miss JOO-wuhl.” It was Annie Lee Full, calling her pot-scrubbing assistant. Mrs. Full never failed to call Miss Jewel to her duty. Seemed to Flare Mrs. Full didn’t see much in life but duty.

  Miss Jewel shrugged helplessly and went off.

  Holy mother of God, but didn’t people spoil it? Bloody people.

  Flare had turned them out in the dark as always and set them on the way before first light and sunrise. The way was unmistakable along the narrow Sweetwater River, and he could leave them to it an hour or so. He told Dr. Full the savages would surely not come after them, but he needed to ride out and check for sign. Which was true enough. He also needed to get clear of human beings for a while.

  How they scratched and clawed at one another! A lad wouldn’t call an adopted child “sister.” Fifteen years gone and her still wanting.

  He remembered as he rode, eyes in the present, mind in the past. His eyes took in all, from long habit, restlessly checking out hilltops, the shadows in coulees, the edges of tree lines, the myriad signs of life of the high plains.

  Flare had never been more right than in running off from home. Nothing for him there. His father owned a printing shop, and there was a living in it. Not enough for five sons, however, and certainly not for the last of them, Michael Devin. So he traded his birthright to his eldest brother for the traditional mess of pottage, in this case a berth to the New World.

  Wasn’t his financial prospects that drove him off, though—rather his prospects in spirit. He’d seen that in his father, God rest his soul.

  Liam O’Flaherty had been a good enough sort of man. Good to his five sons and two daughters, taught them to love above all things song and poetry and Ireland. Taught them to love drink without wanting to, and to love his weakness.

  At the time Flare only knew he had to get out to save his spirit. Not the soul the priests talked about, the spirit. Later he-figured it out.

  Liam O’Flaherty was a trapped man. In his spirit was adventure, as in every man’s spirit. To roam the fine world God gave us, to brave its difficulties, conquer its obstacles, love its maidens. But the only maiden he ever got to love was Flare’s mother, God rest her gaol of a soul.

  They married early. And it was probably early on she learned to keep him bloody well obedient. He went to the shop he would one day inherit from his father. He went to Mass. He confessed. He brought his wages home. Sure and he had the occasional aberration, especially at the nearest pub, where he sang the songs of his heart with his mates and staggered home at an indecent hour. When he did that, he slept on the floor.

  Aye, she punished him by holding out. So Liam O’Flaherty became a well-behaved man. Except for spending more and more time in the pubs. And slinking home. Still she held out. And he tried to be more obedient yet.

  He died of the cold one winter night, lying drunk in a gutter. Why did God permit the Irish to invent whiskey? he’d asked his sons ritually. And they answered, ritually, to keep them from ruling the world.

  Flare’s brothers took over the business.

  Flare left for America.

  Occasionally, through the Northwest Company or Hudson’s Bay or America Fur, he got a letter from his eldest brother, Padraig. News—mostly the names of new nephews and nieces. Hints that he should write more often and come home soon—your indifference is killing our mother. The Irish dollop of shame in every dram. Flare wrote every two or three years, but never spoke of coming home.

  He had learned the lesson well from his mother. Never give a woman the chance to have that kind of sway over you. Country matters, as the Bard called it.

  Flare had been…as he could not help but be. From the start he loved the fair earth, and especially the sky, the region of dreams.

  this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire.

  Skies gave him itchy feet. Horizons looked grand to him. Sunsets stirred his heart. He’d wanted to see where the sun went down, and now had gone as far as a man could go without becoming a sailor.

  He’d dipped his wick. Aye, plenty, and with hot lust, you bet. He loved women, and liked ’em, too. Liked their company, their laughter, even their tears. Didn’t just like to frig ’em. Liked to hold them, talk to them, sing a song and hear one back, ride fast against the wind w
ith them.

  True, he’d kept to red women.

  And he’d kept in mind the lesson of his father. There’s always a fair land over the horizon. And a fair face as well, and a willing body.

  He urged his horse up to nearly the top of a butte, got off, dropped the reins, walked near the summit, crawled the rest of the way. He took his time and looked good. Must have spent a quarter of an hour watching for motion, or the unnatural lack of it. Nothing. The Arapahos probably thought their chances for more awerdenty were better back toward Laramie.

  He’d paid for his freedom. He’d given up his home. He thought about that during the cold nights in the north country when he couldn’t sleep. He had no home. No father, no mother, no brothers and sisters. No wife and no children. When none could claim ye, you had a claim on none. He simply moved along, restless, you bet. Like a bit of water that melted on the three Tetons and dribbled into a rivulet and ran into a creek and then flowed into the Snake River, then the Columbia, then the mighty Pacific. And was raised into a cloud and headed back for the Tetons. Repeated the journey again and again. Sometimes it felt pointless, bloody pointless.

  It had its compensations. The grand one was that he loved the West—forests, mountains, plains, deserts. And he relished it. Riding across the cold river in high water. Climbing the mountains. Outwitting the Indians. Crossing the deserts thirsty. Eating hump ribs. Riding among the herds of buffalo on a rampage. This is what men did before rules and religion and self-doubt spoiled it.

  Eventually, people would spoil it.

  The missionaries would spoil it.

  Their ways would spoil it, even if they didn’t mean them to.

  Even Miss Jewel would spoil it.

  And then where would Flare go?