The Snake River Read online

  Lad was in rough shape. Flare took the float stick he’d brought back, hacked it in half with a few swings of his tomahawk, and handed the two pieces to Dr. Full for splints. Tore up the flour sack for ties—now the flour these pork-eaters brought along was paying its way, anyhow.

  Flare walked back to read the tracks. The boyo had dragged himself up the gully—plucky boyo, almost got up to his gear. Half mile uphill to here, tough going. Could have stayed alive for weeks up there, what with food and water. Didn’t make it, though, did he?

  Flare read the spot where it happened. Horse was walking, being led, broke into a run. Flare couldn’t see just what went wrong for the lad—it happened on a rock with a big crack. Maybe the boy stuck his foot in the crack and went over. Would fit his break, it would. Yes, blood on the uphill side of the crack.

  The lad’s crawl, and all his resting spots, were clear to those as had their eyes on earth. Flare followed the marks back up. In one place the feathery marks of owl wings brushing the sand—damned peculiar, must have been made before or after. Nothing else here but a tale of struggle and pain. A plucky boyo in truth.

  The boy was unchanged. Breathing easier, maybe. Dr. Full had the leg set. Looked reasonable enough. Nothing Flare couldn’t have done himself. The doctor was going on with his tongue, in his elaborate, Dr. Fullish way. He talked as a creek ran over a waterfall, because he had to.

  Flare looked at the sides of the gully. Not too bad, but…he looked up the boulder-strewn gully. Not a job for a horse.

  “Mr. O’Flaherty,” Dr. Full said, “I’d be obliged if you’d fetch the smith.” Muscles to heft the boy out of here.

  Flare squatted again. One of the reasons the missionaries thought he was a barbarian was that he squatted comfortable as an Injun. Well, he was a barbarian. Flare wet his handkerchief from his flask again and dribbled water into the lad’s mouth and onto his forehead. An Irishman didn’t hop to another man’s order too quick.

  Mind rose, and fell. Mu-qua-yizikanzi—soul fog flew up.

  Mind rose toward consciousness, and fell.

  Swayed, rose, drifted, drifted, swooned. Bumped.

  So. I have passed through a little death. Maybe the big death. But I have passed through the death Owl brought me. I am here.

  Where is here?

  Lie still, feeling. Mouth. Mouth hurts, tongue hurts. Head—move neck slightly. Okay. Trunk, okay. Arms—wiggle one finger—okay. Legs. Yes, the leg hurts. Won’t move that. The pain is there, waiting.

  Maybe I’ve passed through a little death. If it is the big death, leg would be perfect. It’s broken. I hope I am below the sky. I want to do as Owl told me.

  Let the eyes flick open, closed. Glare. See nothing but Apa the sun spirit, glaring.

  So, where am I? Beyond a little death.

  Bump!

  Ataa! Ouch! Where am I?

  Open yes. A horse’s behind. A woman. Unbelievably, a white woman. With red hair, the color of the sacred pipestone. Looking at me. Smiling at me.

  I am with white people.

  Mind-swoon.

  Miracle. Owl sends me through a death and brings me out with white people, my new people. Not after a moon of travel. Now. Owl my guardian makes miracles. Soul fog lifts.

  Lots of words. Booming. A man’s voice. Divo-taik-wag. White-man talk.

  Yes, know some English, a little, but mind won’t work those words now.

  A man rides into view, in front of the woman. The man has a big smile, too big. He is, he is…acting like my friend so he can talk me into something. Yes. Funny. He’s booming the words. He has on some sort of fancy black coat.

  A few of the words are understandable. The man is telling his name, Doctor Full. Too many words.

  Where am I? Who am I?

  Tired. Want to see more of the miracle, but very tired, very sleepy, and the words are very many….

  “Pehano.”

  The voice is male, gentle, soothing. “Hello, how are you?”

  Still in the Shoshone language: “You’re a brave boyo. You’re going to be all right.”

  I am Sima Numah-divo.

  I’m not as hot now. A man is speaking my language to me in a funny accent. Yes, one of those Americans, or Frenchmen. I passed through the little death and came out among the white people. Miracle from Owl.

  Water dribbled into his mouth. Sweet, cooling water, wonderful water.

  I will open my eyes in a moment and see where I am, beyond the little death, what country, and whether fair or foul to the eye.

  Now am I truly Sima Numah-divo, the first Shoshone white man.

  “I’ve brought him some broth.”

  I am a new person, beyond the little death.

  A woman’s voice. Speaking English. I will have to learn this language, really learn it.

  “Sikkih, tain-apa tekkah.” Here, boyo, eat.

  Let eyes open. Flutter. Close. Sweet darkness. Open again.

  Twilight. Faces close. Beyond, a camp with a few trees. Pleasant shade. Long shadows. A lovely scene. I want to draw it. With my colored pencils. Bright. New world.

  Faces of a man and a woman.

  “Sikkih, tain-apa tekkah.”

  The man is smiling a little. His face looks like…He wears a circled cross. Miracle. Circled cross. Red road, black road, wholeness…

  Bowl against my hands. Grasp. Smell of meat soup.

  The woman is a vision. She has bright, bright pipe-stone hair. More strange, it’s piled on top of her head. Strange new world, where women do such things. She’s beaming. My new people like me. Love me.

  Soup. Spoon. Take it and eat. Am lying down.

  Look at the faces. Oh. The tastes in this new world are wonderful.

  “You’ve had a bad time,” says the woman. “You’re going to be all right.”

  Am lying on a travois.

  “Hi-na en-nan-i-hai, tua.” What’s your name, lad?

  First, My name is First.

  Throat doesn’t work.

  Swallow some more soup. Swallow a couple of times.

  Look into the faces.

  “Sima.” My voice rasps. Say it clearly to these creatures. “My name is Sima Numah-divo.”

  Chapter Ten

  Sima’s English improved faster than his leg.

  “Urinate,” he said.

  Miss Jewel heard and came to help him. He was leaning against the travois, as he had been for the last week. He rode there, tied to the lodgepoles so he couldn’t fall out and mess his leg up.

  He wouldn’t be able to ride anyway. He wasn’t up to Messenger for a while. Owl, the messenger of death, had scared the horse named Messenger of Death. Had broken Sima’s leg. Had sent Sima through death, the little death. Had used Messenger to bring Sima back to life, to bring the white people to Sima in a miracle. Though he could not ride for a while, he was glad Owl had used Messenger.

  For now his life was the travois. He ate there and slept there. He rested on it in camp, the poles propped against a tree, as they were now. His only relief from the travois was when someone helped him away to urinate or defecate. His tasks: Heal, walk, prepare, trap an owl.

  Miss Jewel pulled him up on his good leg, got her arm around his waist, and walked him toward a cedar to stand behind. She was tall, almost too tall for him to get a good grip on her shoulder, and strong for a woman.

  Urinate and defecate. These were new English words he learned from Miss Jewel, who helped him with his English. Flare thought this was funny, and offered different words for the same things, but Dr. Full forbade Sima to use Flare’s words. Which made Sima think English was a weird language. Why have good words and bad words for the same thing? Did people on the red road speak good words, and people on the black road speak bad ones?

  The whites shortened his name to Sima. Like Flare shortened his real name, O’Flaherty, to Flare. They liked to shorten names. That was okay. He liked Sima. The First.

  Everyone but Flare and Miss Jewel found Sima’s need to go to the bushes embar
rassing. They pretended not to hear, or were too busy to help. Dr. Full clearly thought it was beneath his dignity. Sima knew grown-up Shoshones who were too good for things, and was amused by them, too. Now he waited until Flare or Miss Jewel was nearby to say his new English words, and they helped him gladly.

  Now Miss Jewel let him go, he got balanced, and she turned her back while he splashed. After growing up in one family after another, and more brothers than she could remember, she said, she had no delicate sensibilities. Sima like to have her help him. She always seemed tickled at the others’ embarrassment.

  He liked Flare to be around him because they spoke Shoshone. But when Dr. Full caught them, he would correct them. Only English, he said sternly. The way from barbarism to civilization is to learn to speak English.

  Sima didn’t know what barbarism was, but he wanted to learn English, and he wanted to be civilized. Flare called this a dubious proposition, but Sima didn’t understand.

  Flare didn’t know about Owl. No one would know about Owl.

  Miss Jewel helped Sima back toward the travois.

  She and Flare were the damnedest pair. He was short, wiry, and a wit. Also a skeptic about everything. You had to watch his lively eyes, which spoke—roared—passions he’d never own up to.

  Miss Jewel was tall and had that attention-getting hair. She wore it high, and artfully arranged, like a headdress she’d grown herself. It shone beautifully in the sun, like the wire of a copper bracelet, and made her look even taller than she was. (She spent a lot of time fixing it in the morning—he’d seen that.) With her hair up, she looked taller than Flare.

  The odd thing was the way the two of them acted around each other. Not only did he think she was some punkins—that was his own phrase—she also noticed it, liked it, watched him back like she had the same thing on her mind, and teased him about it. No Shoshone woman would have been so brazen. From the look of the other women, they wouldn’t, either. Just Miss Jewel.

  But Miss Jewel wasn’t Flare’s woman. No, he said, she was a schoolteacher. Lots of times it was hard to ask anything—the white-man way seemed to be to figure things out without asking.

  That schoolteacher business bothered Sima. He’d noticed the three women teachers slept together in one tent, without men, like women separated in a taboo. They couldn’t all be bleeding with the moon all the time. He wondered if teacher meant a woman who had never started bleeding, or at least a woman who had no man. If they’d started bleeding, why would they have no men?

  At least Miss Jewel wasn’t scrawny and dried-up-looking, and sour, like Miss Upping.

  Miss Jewel helped him lower himself onto the travois. “Talk?” he asked.

  She leaned against the tree next to him. They often practiced his English after she helped him. Today he was going to take advantage, just a little, of his right to ask anything.

  “Why you say the devil is in Flare?”

  She took a minute to speak.

  Sima had lots of things about it figured out. The devil was a bad spirit. He’d heard a lot about the devil in the past week. But what did the devil have to do with Flare, who was a good man?

  “Flare isn’t wicked,” Miss Jewel said, “he’s good. When we say the devil’s in someone, sometimes we really mean he’s bad, and sometimes we mean he’s full of fun. It’s really hard to tell what we mean, Sima, I know.”

  She hesitated, and for a moment Sima thought she wouldn’t go on. But this was a woman to say what should stay unsaid. “If I were to speak seriously about Flare, I’d say he doesn’t know God. I’d say he’s as fine a man as nature can make.”

  She chewed a lip. “What I want to do with my life is rise above my nature. I ask God to bring out my higher nature.”

  Sima didn’t understand that at all.

  “But,” Miss Jewel went on, “that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy the juices of life. With discretion. Even if this bunch of sticks in the mud disapproves.” She drew the word out mockingly.

  Sima smiled at her and touched her arm in thanks. Listening to English wore him out. She put a hand on his shoulder, and they enjoyed the evening in silence.

  “Why don’t they think you act right?”

  “I’m not demure,” she said, “or shy, or deferential.” She spoke with a hint of resentment. “I’m not what the ladies’ magazines call a True Woman. The four virtues of a True Woman are purity, piety, domesticity, and submissiveness. I fail on the last.” She searched for better words. “Among the Shoshones, do women keep their eyes down, not look men in the face, not speak up about what they think in public, not speak in council, and not let on which man they’re interested in?”

  Sima nodded.

  “Well, white people do, too. And I don’t care—I won’t live that way. God made woman the equal of man. Which this bunch of lamebrains hasn’t figured out. They’re too busy disapproving.” She emphasized the word with her voice, and her merry eyes.

  “Miss Jewel,” called Dr. Full. She snatched her hand away from Sima’s shoulder and went to Full. Sima thought one of the things Dr. Full disapproved of was their touching.

  Sima wondered why Miss Jewel said Flare knew nothing of God. He wore the circle cross around his neck. That was an ancient symbol among many Indian people. The two bars of the cross meant the good red road against the turbulent black road, light against dark, good against evil, east-west against north-south. The circle resolved all the conflicts in the wholeness of life. It was the symbol of a man of spirit power.

  Flare seemed like he was walking the good red road. Maybe Miss Jewel said that because Flare was what Dr. Full called a papist, which was another kind of Christian. But wasn’t Christian all the same white-man spirit power? If you had one kind of power (poha), guidance from the eagle, perhaps, or the kit fox, why did that make wrong someone else’s power, maybe the poha of the owl? Why should two kinds of Christians be mad at each other?

  Whether it made sense or not, Sima was determined to learn it.

  Miss Jewel had asked him about his religion, too. Sima said honestly he didn’t have any. Asked what he believed, he said at first, “Nothing.” When he understood better, he said he didn’t believe—he saw. Saw the power (poha) of the sun, of the thunder and the water, the four-leggeds, wingeds, and rooteds. And, of course, he honored these things, as was plain good sense. Many of his people could do more—ask for such powers to be theirs, ask for poha. And have the request granted. He didn’t mention Owl.

  Sima did say he’d sought a vision with no success. Though he prepared himself, and made the sacrifice, no vision power came.

  Miss Jewel kept her lip buttoned, but Sima could see she didn’t like hearing about the powers he saw. Well, he might add some white-man powers for himself. But they would be added. He had Owl. He had Apa. And others anyone could see plainly.

  Dr. Full wanted to teach Sima the white-man powers. If these powers could be understood only in English, that made sense. He would learn excellent English. He would say his Scriptures in excellent English. He would tell his father, Goddamn Hairy, in excellent English what an ass he was. Or he would say something else to his father—he hadn’t thought that out.

  But he would definitely learn about the white-man powers. With Shoshone powers you could make the thick rawhide of a war shield hard like metal. You could make your arrows fly straight. You could bring food to the people. You could see at night, evade the enemy’s Wows, and chase away ghosts. And you could have your eyes cleared, to see the good, red road for yourself and for the people.

  But with white-man powers you could make metal, which was a great medicine. And from the metal you could make guns, knives, kettles. You could make blankets, find lots of tobacco—so much you traveled with it in big ropes—whiskey. His father’s compass. You held it in your hand, and a stick inside pointed to the direction where the white buffalo lives, which the white men called north. Even in the dark. Sima didn’t know why you would want such a machine, but it was a wonder.

  They wer
e odd, white people. Most of them didn’t see the red road. They lived quarrelsomely, with no attention to the common good. They even killed each other sometimes, and acted like it was no great matter, or actually congratulated one another on murder. Sima had seen it.

  But that didn’t matter. Sima wanted to get the power to make wonders. He wanted his father’s power. And then? He didn’t know. Could you live among the white people and still walk the red road?

  “Miraclee?” Sima repeated, testing the word. He looked at the writing paper he held and pronounced the last syllable, klee, as it looked to him.

  They were passing the miles on horseback. The good Lord knew, Dr. Full thought, there had been many miles to pass in this mad country. They’d been spending it teaching Sima to spell.

  “Mirakuhl,” emphasized Dr. Full. “Like the virgin birth,” he said again. Dr. Full had told the story of Christ Jesus’s coming to earth by a virgin several times. If he weren’t feeling so good, he would have been frustrated with his first savage pupil. The boy didn’t get the Christian meaning of miracle—something divine, something done by God, not by nature. Something not in the ordinary scheme of things. But the boy couldn’t make the separation. He had some funny heathen notion of what a miracle was, and kept saying the hand of Spirit was in everything, and nature was Spirit.

  Sima’s face lit up. “Like you find me dead,” he exclaimed.

  “No,” said Flare, chuckling, “that was not a miracle.”

  “I think maybe it was,” said Miss Jewel. “I see the hand of God bringing Sima to us.”

  Dr. Full motioned with his hands for them to keep it up. The boy was intelligent, and would profit from a discussion like this.

  “It wasn’t even that much of an accident,” Flare protested. “You were lying within less than a mile of the Oregon road. I saw your horse and followed him to you. Because I was looking, not by accident.” He cast a mirthful eye at Dr. Full and Miss Jewel. “If one of you priests had seen it, that would have been an accident.” He loved to call them priests, because it tweaked their blue noses. “You don’t look.”