Wilderness Days (11 page)

“Where did you get them?”

He looked a little shamefaced. “It’s communion wine.”

Poor Father Joseph was normally firm about Church doctrine, and I imagined that the bishop would not approve of doling out communion wine to men who broke their legs. I took the bottles.

“You shall be missed, Mademoiselle,” Father Joseph said, and then he gave me a great hug.

I hugged him back hard, the scratchy wool of his robe grating on my cheeks and soaking up my tears before he could notice them.

The day grew unseasonably warm and humid. By the time I reached M’Carty’s homestead, I was damp and uncomfortable. I took off my cape and carried it.

Jehu was perched on the roof, shirtless, his muscled back coated with a fine sheen of sweat.

“Boston Jane!” Keer-ukso called, walking toward me, carrying planks. He wasn’t wearing a shirt either! Was I destined to see the bare chest of every man on Shoalwater Bay?

Jehu heard Keer-ukso’s shout and peered at me. He scaled down to the ground.

“Something wrong back at the cabin?” he asked, wiping the hair from his forehead.

“Uh, no,” I stammered. “Everything’s fine.”

“What have you got there?”

I held the bottles of wine aloft. “I brought them for M’Carty. From Father Joseph.”

“That the only reason you came?” he asked quietly.

Before I could answer, Keer-ukso was at my side. He nodded at the roof, explaining, “We fix roof in Chinook way.”

The Chinook way was to use cedar planks, as I knew from helping Keer-ukso myself once. “It looks very good,” I assured him, as he and Jehu both retrieved their shirts to put on.

“Come meet Cocumb,” Keer-ukso said, taking me by the elbow and leading me into the log cabin.

The last time I had seen M’Carty he had looked strong and fit, even a little full at the belly. Now he was thin and drawn. His leg was propped up on a pile of pillows and secured by two thick
sticks bound with a bandage. A Chinook woman with a dark fall of hair was bending over him, her face turned away.

“Is that Miss Peck I see?” M’Carty joked, his smile strained.

The woman gave a firm tug on the bandage around his leg.

“Cocumb!” he barked in pain, struggling to sit up.

But his wife pushed him back to the pillows. M’Carty reached for a whiskey bottle on the side table, but Cocumb beat him to it, swatting his hand away. M’Carty groaned dramatically. Cocumb shook her head, as if scolding a belligerent schoolboy, and turned to us with a sigh.

“Boston Jane,” Keer-ukso said, introducing me.

“I’m very pleased to finally meet you,” I said, extending my hand.

Cocumb shook it firmly. “I have heard much about you.” Like many of the Chinook, she spoke very good English.

I pressed the wine into her hand. “From Father Joseph.”

“Good man,” M’Carty called from the bed. “I’m nearly plumb out of whiskey.”

Cocumb sniffed in disapproval and then turned to me. “Come and have some tea,” she offered.

“Thank you very much. That would be lovely.”

Cocumb set out tea and freshly made biscuits. I eyed M’Carty’s miserable form on the bed. “How did M’Carty break his leg?”

M’Carty groaned dramatically.

Cocumb rolled her eyes. “My husband wanted to fix roof himself.”

“I could do it, too!” he complained from the bed.

She and I exchanged a meaningful glance and laughed.

“I wanted you to meet my daughter,” Cocumb said. “But I sent her to stay at my father’s lodge because my husband is so much work,” she finished, with a rueful glance at M’Carty.

“What brings you out here, Miss Peck?” M’Carty asked. “Looking to hire another schooner? ’Cause I don’t recommend waiting much longer if you’ve got oysters to send to San Francisco. I’ve got a feeling that winter’s gonna come early this year. Now, it’s just a feeling, mind you, but I’m usually right about these sorts of things.”

Jehu’s figure suddenly filled the doorway, and I remembered why I had come.

“Actually,” I said, marshaling my voice. “Actually, I won’t be requiring a schooner.” I swallowed hard. “I came to say good-bye.”

“Good-bye?” Keer-ukso repeated.

“Yes,” I said quickly, before my courage disappeared. “There’s a schooner leaving this afternoon bound for San Francisco. I’m going home.”

“But how can you pay the fare?” Jehu asked bluntly.

He was so irritating. “My financial affairs are none of your concern.”

“Everyone knows Swan gambled away your money.”

“This is how I’m paying for my fare,” I said in frustration, thrusting out the watch.

Jehu snatched it out of my hand, inspecting it closely. “Who gave this to you?”

“A gentleman gave it to me.”

He took a step forward, his eyes turning dark, like the sky over the bay before a storm. “There aren’t any gentlemen out here.”

“You are most certainly correct on that count, Mr. Scudder,” I said, glaring right back at him. “But I assure you, Mr. Abraham Black was a gentleman in all respects.”

“Abraham Black?” M’Carty croaked hoarsely from his bed.

“Oh, then you are acquainted with Mr. Black?” I asked eagerly. “Isn’t he perfectly charming? It was so refreshing—”

“Where is he now?” M’Carty demanded, pulling himself up and hobbling over using a thick cane, pain etched on his face from the effort.

“Why, I have no idea. He left yesterday.”

“Did he say where he was from?” he asked anxiously.

“California, I believe.”

“What did he look like?”

“Well, he was about your height, with trim gray hair. He wore a neat black suit.”

“Jane,” M’Carty asked urgently, “did you tell him where Russell went?”

I didn’t understand why M’Carty was so upset. “I told him that Mr. Russell and Mr. Swan had gone to the rendezvous with Governor Stevens.”

“Oh Lordy.”

“What?”

M’Carty slumped against the wall, his face white. “He’s going to kill Russell,” he whispered.

After his startling announcement
, M’Carty promptly collapsed on the cabin floor with a groan.

Cocumb shook her head at him. “Bed,” she said firmly. She waved an imperious hand, and Keer-ukso and Jehu hauled M’Carty up and carried him to the bed between them.

“What do you mean, he’s going to kill Mr. Russell?” I asked, joining the crowd over at the bed.

“Help me sit up, woman,” M’Carty groaned to Cocumb, his face strained with pain.

“You are more stubborn than a dog stuck in mud,” she said, propping pillows behind him.

M’Carty breathed hard from the exertion of sitting up.

“Mr. Black didn’t even know who Mr. Russell was,” I said.

M’Carty eyed me sharply. “Oh, he knows Russell, all right. Believe you me. He knows Russell.”

“But how?”

“Cause he was one of ’em.”

“One what?”

“A Silencer.”

The cabin was quiet for a moment. Finally Keer-ukso asked the question all of us were thinking. “What is a Silencer?”

“It’s a mountain man, of course. A trapper. One of the most famous ones.”

I had never given any consideration to what Mr. Russell had done prior to coming to Shoalwater Bay. Fur trapper. He surely dressed the part, with his buckskins and rifle.

“Russell worked for the Rocky Mountain Fur Company years ago. Trapped for them. Beaver. Otter. You name it. If it had a hide, he killed it.”

It was easy to picture Mr. Russell trekking through the snowy, windswept mountains, carefully tracking animals. Living a life of solitude, with only his horse for company.

As if he knew what I was thinking, M’Carty said, “Russell worked with four other men.”

“I thought all mountain men trapped alone.”

“That’s just talk. Ain’t too many men fool enough to live in the wilderness by themselves. If an animal don’t get you or a storm don’t kill you, your own mind’ll turn on you for lack of someone to talk to.”

“What about the others?” Jehu asked.

“Well, the other men Russell trapped with were Elijah Barnett, Toby Winston, Jack Meares, and a fellow named Abe Black.”

“My Mr. Black?” I asked.

“Your
Mr. Black?” Jehu demanded.

“I hardly think that you are in a position to say anything. At least Mr. Black’s a gentleman. At least he wasn’t trying to trick me into—”

M’Carty held up a hand for silence.

Jehu and I stared at each other furiously.

M’Carty shook his head. “Yes, Jane, I believe the man you met was the same man who trapped with Russell.” He swallowed hard. “Anyhow, the five of them trapped along the Snake River and into the mountains. They called themselves the Silencers on account of the fact that they didn’t leave so much as a rustle of an animal behind them.”

Keer-ukso cracked a smile.

“How long did they work together?” I asked.

“I reckon they trapped for near about four years before the accident. This was well over twenty years ago now. They were all young men back then, every one.”

“The accident?”

M’Carty’s face turned grim. “As Russell tells it, they were trapping along a river, high in the mountains. Now, rivers are where most trappers work ’cause that’s where beavers are found. The critters build their homes right in the water. You jest set your trap, put some scent on it, and if you wait long enough the animal will come on out and walk himself right into your trap.”

Jehu whistled admiringly.

“Sounds easy, but it was a hard way to make a living. Especially if you were a company man. All your equipment was
rented from the company, and so that came out of your pay. You had to work real hard, too, to turn a profit and make it pay off.” M’Carty took a breath. “And then of course there’s the grizzlies.”

“Grizzlies?”

“See, beavers like to live near the rivers. But so do the grizzly bears. They do their fishing there. Many a trapper’s been killed by a grizzly while trying to catch a beaver. On the day Abe Black died, they were along a river.”

“Died?” I whispered. “But he’s not dead! I ate supper with him, I tell you—”

M’Carty held up a finger for quiet. “And I tell you that Abe Black died that day in the mountains.”

I shook my head.

M’Carty’s voice was pitched low as he described the terrible day. “It was early spring, but there was still snow on the ground. The men had finished for the day and were setting up camp. Except for Abe Black. He said he was going to check one last time on the beaver traps he’d set earlier that day. He didn’t want no beaver getting trapped and then some other varmint coming along and eating it before he got to it. So there he was checking on his trap when all of a sudden a grizzly bear came behind him and slashed him across the back.”

I gasped, remembering Mr. Black’s scarred back.

“The grizzly musta smelled him, ’cause he came up from downriver. Abe grabbed that grizzly, and that grizzly grabbed him back, and its claws just slashed and slashed at his back. The men heard him screaming and came running and shot at the
beast, and the bear took off.” He took a long swallow of whiskey, draining the bottle. “But it was too late.”

“Too late?”

“Abe was dead,” M’Carty said with a wince, propping himself up on an elbow. “That grizzly had ripped apart his back and he’d lost a lot of blood. They buried him under some leaves, and took his gear and headed off.”

“They just left him there?”

“The ground was too frozen for a proper burial, and he was dead,” M’Carty said simply. “And they were in the mountains. They were weeks away from the nearest town, even if they had wanted to haul his body out.”

“Why’d they take his gear?”

“If they hadn’t taken it, the company would’ve charged them for it.” M’Carty breathed heavily, his face gray from the pain. “Russell was real broke up. He and Abe were like brothers. And then of course, he was the one who had to tell Abe’s wife the bad news. Russell says she took to her bed and was dead a week later … that Lucy died of pure heartbreak … that it was even sadder than Abe dying. Saddest thing he ever seen.”

“Lucy,” I whispered.

Was never a prettier girl than Lucinda
.

“Russell didn’t have the heart to trap after that. He spent some time leading pioneers across the mountains, and after a while he headed up here to the bay. And then a few years ago, the rumors started.”

“What kind of rumors?” Jehu asked.

“Rumors about a ghost.”

I shivered.

M’Carty eyed us appraisingly. “Takes time for stories to travel to these parts. They take their time, but they get here eventually. First we heard how Elijah Barnett went to sleep in his tent a breathing man and never woke up. His partner found him the next morning, his throat cut. He’d been murdered.”

Murdered
. The word hissed through the cabin.

“Whoever did it left a grizzly paw in his hand.”

We all looked at M’Carty.

“Elijah’s partner swore that they were the only ones within miles, that there weren’t even any Indians around. He was sleeping right next to him and never heard a sound. Never even woke up.”

Keer-ukso’s eyes widened.
“Memelose,”
he whispered.