The Snake River (5 page)

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 with 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?

Chapter Four

It was an uneventful trip: up the Platte to the Sweetwater with the one episode of Indian trouble, up the Sweetwater to South Pass with good water, good grass all the way, no troubles. At Pacific Spring they celebrated their crossing of the continental divide. Miss Jewel and Miss Upping made lemonade from crystallized lemon they’d brought all the way from St. Louis. Flare had a yen to celebrate the crossing the way he usually did, whiskied up, but he drank the lemonade, without sugar, sour, like Miss Upping’s personality. He told himself it made him a new man.

It was Flare’s pride that it was an uneventful trip. The better he did his job, the less eventful it would be.

He rode out looking for Indian sign morning, noon, and night. Dan Full went along for a while, and learned something. Then Dr. Full decided he didn’t like his stepson aping a barbarian, and made the lad stay in camp.

At the Big Sandy Flare himself caused an event: He decided to try the short way to Fort Hall. It would save days—straight west to the Green, up LaBarge Creek and down John Grey’s River and through the mountains onto the Snake River. They might get to the fort by the time the Bay outfit took the furs down the Snake to Walla Walla.

If that happened, they could travel in safety. Maybe they would even be willing to travel without Michael Devin O’Flaherty, who was getting weary of pork-eaters, and felt his summer’s case of itchy feet coming on. And another itch, too, fleshly.

The only trouble was the forty miles between the Big Sandy and the Siskadee—no water. He told them how they would do it. Stay all day at the Big Sandy, get the people, horses, and mules well watered and fresh. Fill every keg, can, and bottle with liquid. Set out in the cool of the evening, ride through the night, get to the river before the heat of the day.

He watched them as they rode. The danger was the mind, not the body. You thought about the two or three hours until you could rest and sip out of a keg. Not long—the body could wait two or three hours easily. Did wait, when you knew water was plenty. Didn’t want to wait when you knew it wasn’t.

If you got to fretting, you made a problem. Went stiff in the saddle. Made your mount work harder. Made yourself work harder. Used up more energy. Sweated. Needed more water.

It could get worse. You looked out across the sagebrush flats and saw no end. Desert, you told yourself. Your mind tried not to remember the scare stories you’d heard about desert, desperate men, horrible deaths. You got panicky. Sang that to the horse right through your body, made him edgy. Burned horse and rider up.

Not that it was fantasy, entirely. Deserts were dangerous, you bet. Once, Flare had killed a horse to drink its blood. He’d heard stories of men who did that to their compañeros, but he didn’t believe them.

He needed to help the fantasies of the fearful. So Flare stopped and let people behind catch up, then rode ahead, stopped again, checking, chatting with each person, helping all relax.

He flirted with the women, all but Annie Lee Full, who was too sober-sided to enjoy it. He told the men jokes. He told one about ye olde sod several times.

An Irish rebel sneaked up on an English camp one dawn, looking for a shot. He saw the British general come out of his tent. The rebel drew a bead. But the general was admiring God’s dawn, and the rebel couldn’t shoot even a Brit at such a moment. The general walked toward the creek. The rebel drew a bead. But then the general dropped his drawers, and the rebel couldn’t shoot even a Brit at such a vulnerable moment. The general relieved himself. He stood, pulled his pants up. The rebel shot him dead. Bugger insulted ye olde sod.

They rested, drank, watered the animals. Went on.

Flare sang Irish songs to keep them easy:

’Tis the last rose of summer

Left blooming alone;

All her lovely companions

Are faded and gone;

No flow’r of her kindred,

No rosebud is nigh,

To reflect back her blushes

Or give sigh for sigh.

I’ll not leave thee, thou lone one,

To pine on the stem;

Since the lovely are sleeping,

Go, sleep thou with them.

Thus kindly I scatter

Thy leaves o’er that bed,

Where thy mates of the garden

Lie scentless and dead.

So soon may I follow

When friendship decay,

And from love’s shining circle

The gems drop away!

When true hearts lie wither’d

And fond ones are flown,

Oh, how would I inhabit

This bleak world alone.

Middle of the night now. They rested, drank, and watered the animals. Went on. They would do well enough as long as Flare kept them fighting real troubles and not imaginary ones.

When his fuzzy brain wouldn’t bring back any more fine Irish songs, he switched to a voyageur song or three, sprightly affairs, with a rhythm of paddles dripping, or hoofs clopping.

Joy to thee, my brave canoe,

There’s no wing so swift as you;

Right and left the bubbles rise—

Right and left the pine wood flies;

Birds and clouds and tide and wind,

We shall leave ye all behind.

(chorus)

Joy to thee, my brave canoe,

There’s no wing so swift as you,

Joy to thee, my brave canoe.

There’s no wing so swift as you.

Gently, now, my brave canoe,

Keep your footing sure and true,

For the rapid close beneath,

Leaps and shouts his song of death;

Now one plunge and all is done,

Now one plunge, the goal is won.

(chorus)

Joy to thee, my brave canoe,

There’s no wing so swift as you,

Joy to thee, my brave canoe,

There’s no wing so swift as you.

Finally, a little before dawn, they used the last of their water on themselves and the horses. They slept an hour or so, and ate a little. As they packed up, he spoke to them about not losing control of the animals. The horses and mules would smell the water well before they saw the river. And want to take off for blessed liquid. Horses suffering from lack of water were weak and didn’t look where they were going. Too often they fell—sometimes they broke their legs, or the bones of their riders. Don’t let them have their heads, truly.

Before they got within smelling distance, Flare tied the pack animals nose to tail and took the lead line himself.

Soon the mounts began to act up. In a couple of minutes, one by one, every rider but Flare lost control of his horse. Pell-mell they went for the river.

Flare let his animals come up to a trot but kept tight rein. Until he heard the screams from the river.

He dropped the lead line and put the spurs to his horse. Mad you are, lad, he thought, eyes on rough, stony desert ground and mind trying to shut off the screams.

They were by the near bank and…and it was over. The screams stopped.

Thanks to Dr. Full.

Annie Lee Full stood there in the water waist deep, her skirts floating around her like flower petals. Her horse was standing, drinking, at the far bank. Dr. Full had hold of his wife’s hand. She was gasping and wheezing like she’d never get air again. But her hair wasn’t even wet.

Flare counted mounts and riders and got the right number.

Not hard to figure out what happened. The horse, out of control, jumped in where it happened to hit the bank, which was where the river happened to be deep. Mrs. Full, her leg wrapped around that silly sidesaddle horn, lost her seat. The horse blithely swam itself to shallower water and started drinking.

Mrs. Full, for the moment, was held up by her skirts. When they got soaked, they would drag her under, whether she could swim or not. So she screamed and screamed. Funny how quiet, controlled ones shattered when trouble hit them.

Dr. Full went off the bank some way below Mrs. Full, no telling how far. Took him a minute or so to swim the horse upstream to near where she was. At that point his horse got its footing and stood. Mrs. Full did the same.

“All safe, then,” he said.

Dr. Full continued to murmur gently to his wife. But he was looking triumphantly at Flare.

“Well done, Dr. Full,” Flare said pleasantly.

The power-hungry of the world don’t lack for nerve, he thought.

The last night before Fort Hall, Flare had to make his try. He wasn’t a lad afraid of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. And to have one white woman, well, it seemed a temptation.

If he couldn’t put it off on drink, he could blame it on restless balls. He was naught but an animal anyway, the way they saw it.

He and Miss Jewel had developed a custom of walking a little after dinner. He suspected both of them took pleasure not only in the other’s company, but also in tweaking Dr. Full.

This evening he took her arm, lest she step into a crack in the lava rock. “Nasty stuff,” he said, “a bloody nuisance.”

“I’ve been thinking you might like to hear some songs in Gaelic,” he said. “’Tis a lovely language, and a language of love.”

“Wonderful,” she said. He’d recited Thomas Moore poems to her, and sung the grand songs Moore had made from Gaelic tunes and English words. Now something new. He held her hand while she sat on a boulder. He always stood while he sang.

He sang softly of a lass calling her lover back to her, in a world that one day, inevitably, takes the lover away forever. Michael Devin O’Flaherty let his light, graceful tenor spin the words ethereally into the last light in the plum-colored sky.

Is go dee tu mavourneen slaun

Shule, shule, shule, aroon

Shule go suckir agus shule go une

Shule go deen aurrus aguseilig lume

Is go de tu mavourneen slaun.

Then he sang it once more in English:

I wish I were on yonder hill,

’Tis there I’d set and cry my fill,

Till every tear would turn a mill.

(chorus)

And safe for aye, my darling be.

Come, come, come, oh, love.

Come quickly and softly,

Come to the door and away we’ll go,

And safe for aye, my darling be.

I’ll sell my rock, I’ll sell my reel,

I’ll sell my only spinning wheel,

To buy for my love a sword of steel.

(chorus)

And safe for aye, my darling be.

Come, come, come, oh, love,

Come quickly and softly,

Come to the door and away we’ll go,

And safe for aye, my darling be.

I’ll dye my petticoats, I’ll dye them red,

And round the world, I’ll beg my bread,

Until my parents shall wish me dead.

(chorus)

And safe for aye, my darling be,

Come, come, come, oh, love,

Come quickly and softly,

Come to the door and away we’ll go,

And safe for aye, my darling be.

When he finished, he could see her eyes gleaming wet.

He lifted her chin gently and kissed her.

She turned away, pushed him away.

“No, Mr. O’Flaherty.” It was a gentle rebuke, not stern. But a rebuke.

“I’m drawn to you, Miss Jewel,” he said. He’d never felt so witless.

“Yes. I’m attracted to you,” she answered softly, gently, yet forthrightly. “I’m not going to pursue it.”

She reached and took his hand.

“May I tell you why?”

“Add to my torment, lass?”

“You’re a man of the world, Mr. O’Flaherty,” she said throatily, and smiling. “You’re a fine man. I’ve known you wanted us to be lovers. I can’t, and it’s not just a matter of wedlock. I’d like you really to understand me.

She gripped his hand in both of hers. “You’re as fine a man as…as a man can become on his own, without God’s grace.”

“Unredeemed Man,” Flare murmured.

“Yes, exactly. That’s not enough,” she asserted. “Only God can lift us up to be…more than human, can remake us like Him. That’s the kind of man I want.

“But I treasure you,” she went on. “I treasure your company. I like flirting with you, and I mean to flaunt it in front of them all the way to the mission…and then say a fond good-bye.”

Flare withdrew his hand. “It may be there’s a brigade going from Fort Hall down the Snake soon. In that case, the good-bye might be sooner.”

In the moonlight he saw the hurt on her face. “So…you see what I mean by unredeemed?” She tried to recover her sense of humor, tried to chuckle. “This was love ’em and leave ’em.”

But they were too late at Fort Hall. The outfit had gone to Walla, and the clerk had no plans to send another one soon. It was strictly buy beans and flour, trade worn-out horseflesh for fresh, and hit the trail.

Miss Jewel told Flare how glad she was. Now they’d get to flirt all the way to the Willamette.