Boston Jane

by Jennifer L. Holm

  Handsome Jim nodded sagely and said, “Memelose tillicums.”

  “Memelose tillicums are dead people,” Mr. Swan explained. “Spirits.”

  “How on earth do they keep track of each other if they change their names all the time?” I asked.

  “With their eyes, gal,” Mr. Russell said flatly.

  “Where you want this?” Handsome Jim asked, gesturing to the trunk in the doorway.

  “You may put my trunk there, for now,” I said, turning my attention back to the matters at hand. “Mr. Swan, I can’t possibly sleep here. You must see my position. It simply isn’t proper.”

  Mr. Swan scratched his head and said finally, “I suppose we could fix you up a tent.”

  “A tent?” The cabin suddenly had its attractions. At least it had a roof.

  Something small and furry scampered across the filthy dirt floor with a squeak, and I reconsidered.

  “A tent will have to do until William returns,” I said, resigned. I had never felt so utterly alone. I would have done anything to hear Papa’s voice telling me that I was his favorite daughter.

  Mr. Swan and Handsome Jim fitted up a small tent for me using a spare canvas sail. They flung the canvas over a sturdy-looking branch and secured it with wooden stakes. Handsome Jim gave me some mats woven from reeds to put on the ground. It seemed a very flimsy affair but would have to suffice for the time being.

  “I’ve spent many a night under that sail. It’s a good one,” Mr. Swan said, surveying their work.

  “I am in your debt, Mr. Swan.”

  “Miss Peck, are you certain that you really want to be sleeping out here?” They had set up the tent within plain sight of Mr. Russell’s cabin. “It’s much warmer in Mr. Russell’s cabin, you know. There’s plenty of room.” Mr. Swan paused meaningfully. “And the spring rains can be very terrible. It is still April yet.”

  “I’ll be perfectly fine. Thank you anyway,” I declined politely.

  “Thar’s the varmints,” Mr. Russell said. He had come outside, no doubt to spit at me.

  What about the varmints in his cabin? I shook my head firmly. I preferred to take my chances outside.

  Just then, a potbellied black dog raced up to us, took a flying leap in my direction, knocked me flat onto the ground, and set about licking my face enthusiastically.

  Mr. Swan smiled. “Miss Peck, may I introduce Brandywine?”

  I pushed the slobbering hound away.

  “Blasted beast!”

  My face was now sticky with dog drool and my dress covered with muddy paw prints and grass stains. All I could think was that I had to be clean that very instant.

  “Mr. Swan,” I asked, “could someone kindly draw me a warm bath?”

  “Draw ya a bath?” Mr. Russell hooted.

  “But surely one of the savages could—”

  Mr. Swan interrupted me gently. “They are not servants, Miss Peck. And you ought not to call them savages. They are friends. And I’m sorry to say that we have no bathtub.”

  I stared at him. No bathtub? It was little wonder the men were so utterly filthy.

  “But I’m sure the Indian women will be happy to conduct you to the spring to bathe. The Chinooks are great bathers, my dear. Much like the ancient Romans,” Mr. Swan said. “I’ll just go see.”

  I was rather surprised to hear that savage Indians bathed more often than white men, but upon closer inspection it appeared that they did. Mr. Russell looked downright greasy in his buckskins compared to Handsome Jim.

  Mr. Swan went over to where the women were congregated and brought back an extremely pretty one with almond eyes and long, straight black hair tied back in a braid. She was wearing one of the scandalous skirts. A young girl trailed behind her.

  “This is Suis. She is married to Chief Toke.”

  She seemed very young to be married to the older man, as she couldn’t be more than twenty-five. Her eyes lingered on my hair.

  “Is there no way to get some hot water for a bath?” I pleaded. “I haven’t had a proper bath in months.”

  “Ain’t news to me,” Mr. Russell guffawed.

  “You could greatly benefit from a bath yourself,” I said stiffly, my patience exhausted. I turned to Mr. Swan, drawing myself up. “I can’t go with them. It simply isn’t safe. What if they try to scalp me?”

  Mr. Swan chuckled. “They do seem to be rather taken with your red hair, don’t they?”

  I hastily tucked my hair under my bonnet and secured it tightly.

  “Miss Peck,” Mr. Swan laughed, his belly rolling. “The Chinooks do not scalp. At least these don’t. You’ll be quite safe.”

  “But they’re savage Indians!” I said, my voice rising.

  He peered at me through his spectacles. “Not savages, my dear, but Indians, certainly.”

  “You make no sense!” I cried wildly. “How can they be safe?” Mr. Swan winked. “When in Indian country, it is always safest to travel with Indians.”

  I clutched a passably clean towel and the last bar of lavender soap from my trunk and viewed the two women with trepidation. We stood there for a moment, studying each other. Suis looked very much as if she wanted to yank my hair.

  “I am Miss Jane Peck,” I said with a slight curtsy, wondering why I even bothered. I entertained little hope of proper conversation from such ignorant creatures. They didn’t even have enough sense not to go around half-naked.

  “I am Suis. Come,” the woman said, to my astonishment.

  “You speak English?” I asked.

  She nodded simply. “I speak English, Chinook, and Jargon.”

  Suis started down a narrow path into the dark, thick woods, and the younger girl followed her. Her head was round, not slanted like Suis’s, and her ankles were swollen like those of the girls who worked in the factories in Philadelphia.

  I tried to keep up with Suis, but my shoes sank in the muddy trail, and I tripped on my petticoats no matter how high I held them. Miss Hepplewhite would have been very upset to see such draggled petticoats.

  Suis stopped abruptly in front of a sparkling clear spring that looked altogether inviting after the long months at sea. The young girl joined her, and the two of them sat down on a log. For a long moment I stood there, clutching my soap and towel. Was I really to bathe under their watchful eyes? The only people who had ever seen me naked were Mary and Mrs. Parker.

  “Thank you,” I said with a tight smile. “You can go back now. I’ll be fine. Really.”

  But Suis and the girl just sat there and stared at me. Clearly they had no intention of leaving.

  Seeing that I had little option if I wanted a bath, I went behind a thick bush and took off my muddy dress and petticoats. I decided it was best to leave on my corset and pantaloons, for modesty’s sake. I also left on my bonnet as a precaution.

  When I reappeared from behind the bush Suis’s eyes went wide. She removed one of the elaborate shell necklaces adorning her neck and held it out in offering.

  “You want trade?” she asked, pointing at my corset.

  “You want my corset?”

  “I trade hiqua for colset,” she said, saying the new word almost perfectly except for the r.

  I hesitated.

  “Trade?” Suis demanded.

  I did not want to give offense. She was married to the chief, after all. But I needed the corset. It was the only one I had packed. “A respectable young lady never goes out without a corset,” Miss Hepplewhite had advised. It was no trifling matter to give it up. Still I couldn’t help but hear Papa’s voice. “There is nothing fashionable about crushed organs, Janey,” he had said.

  “Trade?” Suis repeated.

  “No, thank you,” I said in a polite but firm voice.

  Disappointment flashed across Suis’s face. She grabbed the young girl and shoved her forward. “Dolly, take Dolly!”

  The poor girl staggered to a stop in front of me, her eyes full of fear, her limbs shaking.

  “What?”

  “I
trade Dolly for colset. She is good slave, Dolly!” Suis insisted.

  “She’s a slave?”

  “I have many slaves. Very rich,” she said, touching her chest proudly.

  I was appalled. Indians owned slaves, too! Papa had very firm ideas about slavery. He was completely opposed to the practice and had raised me to believe the same. “It’s indecent to own another human being, Janey,” he always said.

  “I’m terribly sorry, but I can’t,” I said.

  Suis flushed red and then proceeded to yell at me in Chinook, no doubt something very disagreeable. Then she yelled at Dolly and stomped off in a huff, leaving the two of us to stare at her departing furious figure.

  “Perhaps I should have given her the corset,” I whispered.

  Dolly said nothing, but her eyes seemed to agree with me.

  By the time the sun was sinking over the mountains, my spirits were much improved.

  I had bathed. I had brushed and pinned up my hair. I had secured sleeping accommodations. Best of all, I had washed all my dresses and hung them to dry on the laundry line behind Mr. Russell’s cabin. I would be able to put on a clean dress in the morning. I could hardly wait.

  Now all I needed to do was find William.

  Mr. Swan, Mr. Russell, Jehu, Captain Johnson, Father Joseph, and I gathered in the horrible little cabin at the rickety sawbuck table for supper. There was a bright fire in the hearth, and its warmth spread through my muscles, relaxing me. Mr. Swan ladled out a stew prepared by Mr. Russell. The stew contained potatoes, onions, and some sort of fish, and it was surprisingly agreeable. Then again, after the long weeks at sea, anything not full of weevils would have tasted agreeable to me.

  Brandywine circled the table, wagging his tail and whining piteously for food. The wretched hound was not any kind of guard dog. By the sag of his plump belly, it was clear that he preferred eating to any kind of patrolling. “Here, beast,” Mr. Russell said, tossing Brandywine a scrap.

  Mr. Swan smiled fondly at the hound. “Brandywine feels obliged to eat as often as possible. He was the only survivor of the sloop Brandywine. She wrecked off the coast. We found him wandering the beach, thin and hungry.”

  “Life is short. Eat whenever you can, I always say,” Jehu said. “There’s nothing worse than an empty belly.”

  “We eat well here, my good man,” Mr. Swan said. “The Chinooks are great traders and often trade with us for all manner of foodstuffs.”

  I remembered Dolly.

  “Mr. Swan,” I asked. “These Indians trade slaves?”

  “Oh yes, indeed. Although dentalia is the principal currency.”

  “Dentalia?“I asked, trying the word out on my tongue.

  “Shells. They use them in necklaces and such. The Chinooks call them hiqua.” I recalled Suis’s necklace.

  “They enslave their own people?” Father Joseph asked in a shocked-sounding voice.

  “No, my good man. They trade with other Indians along the coast. And of course they take slaves in battle or as blood prices for slain family members. Wealth is a sign of status, so owning slaves is a very serious business. The tyee is generally the wealthiest one in a particular village and so often owns the most slaves. The slaves are the ones with the round heads. The Chinooks have the flattened heads. You see—”

  I was starting to think that Mr. Swan had flattened his head, the way he yammered on forever.

  “Mr. Swan,” I interrupted. “Where is William? I still don’t understand why he isn’t here.”

  “William is presently on a mission for Governor Stevens. He is involved in negotiating land treaties with the Indians of the territory.”

  “Territory?”

  “Yes, my dear. We are our own territory now. The land north of the Columbia River has been declared the great Washington Territory.”

  “I see. But why is William involved with the Indians?” I asked. “He wrote me that he had secured land here in Shoalwater Bay. I understood he was endeavoring to start a timber business?”

  Mr. Swan sighed and removed his spectacles. He started to clean them with a grubby square of cloth that I supposed was his pocket-handkerchief. “Well, William had a bit of a problem with his claim.”

  “A problem?”

  “I’m not exactly sure of the details. In any event William sought the advice of Governor Stevens, and the governor took a shine to your betrothed and hired him. The governor is trying to broker an agreement with the various tribes. A tricky proposition.”

  “Do you know where William is right now?”

  “Generally, yes.” He blinked owlishly at me.

  “Where?”

  “Somewhere to the north, I believe.” A pause. “Or perhaps it was somewhere in the east? I’m afraid I don’t quite remember,” Mr. Swan said with an apologetic smile. “Have no fear. He’ll turn up eventually. Everyone,” he said expansively, “turns up eventually.”

  Captain Johnson belched loudly, interrupting. “Speaking of Indians, can I hire them on to help with the timber?”

  Mr. Swan took a long draught of whiskey. “Oh yes, my good man. You’ll have to stake a claim, of course.”

  That gave me an idea.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Swan, about William—” But he was deep in conversation with Captain Johnson about hiring Indians to fell trees.

  It was most frustrating. These men were clearly not used to the presence of a young lady. They could have all stood to read Rules of Conversation (Chapter Two), not to mention Deportment at the Dinner Table (Chapter Seven). Mr. Russell, in particular, was using his knife to pick his teeth in a most disgusting way and kept flicking little bits of food across the table.

  “Yes, Miss Peck?” Mr. Swan said at last.

  I leaned forward excitedly. “Would it be possible to hire an Indian, a messenger, to go and find William?”

  He scratched his beard. “I suppose that would be possible.”

  “Do you think it would be expensive?” I had some money with me. Ten silver dollars. Papa had deposited funds for me at a bank in San Francisco, but it would not be easy to obtain access to it out here in the wilderness.

  “The Chinooks live to trade, my dear, so I’m sure we’ll be able to work something out.”

  “Thank you very much, Mr. Swan.” I smiled at him in relief. There. It wasn’t so terrible. I would simply send word to William that I was here, and he would return. Everything was going to work out in the end.

  I sighed and leaned back in my chair. I gazed across the table, studying Jehu. He had a habit, I’d noticed, of crinkling his forehead when he was deep in thought.

  “Capital meal, Mr. Russell.” Mr. Swan added to this compliment a small burp and patted his round, full belly.

  “Yes, that was very nice,” I said, remembering my manners. “The fish stew was delicious.”

  “Wasn’t fish,” Mr. Russell said, continuing to pick his teeth with his knife.

  “It wasn’t? Then what was it?”

  “Gull.”

  I swallowed hard. Surely I’d misheard him. “Gull?”

  Mr. Russell glared at me. “Tasted good, dinnit?”

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  “Then what ya complainin’ about?”

  Need I say how difficult it is to fall asleep when you have gull in your stomach?

  Furthermore there was nothing soothing about the strange hoots and shrieks that echoed outside my tent. It was altogether different from the slapping sound of waves and creaking of the ship that had accompanied the nights at sea.

  Something howled in the distance. I peered out the tent flaps. What if there was a beast like the one that had been hanging from the rafters of Mr. Russell’s cabin waiting out there, ready to make a meal of a young girl?

  I lay awake for what seemed a very great while, and I had just finally drifted off when I heard Brandywine barking wildly. After a moment, a loud shot rang through the night.

  Someone was shooting right over my tent!

  I cowered, frightened. Were we
under attack by Indians? Was I going to be scalped after all?

  Jehu’s face appeared between the tent flaps.

  “Jane, are you all right?”

  I had never been so happy to see that scarred cheek.

  “Yes,” I whispered shakily, crawling out on hands and knees to see Handsome Jim aiming at the air above my tent with a rifle.

  “Memelose! Memelose!” Handsome Jim shouted, pointing with the rifle to the air above the tent. Mr. Swan was staring at Handsome Jim, a bemused expression on his face.

  “Mr. Swan, what is going on?” I demanded.

  Mr. Swan chortled and swayed a little. Clearly the man had been drinking.

  “Mr. Swan!”

  He burst out laughing, and then tried to control himself.

  Handsome Jim narrowed his eyes at Mr. Swan.

  Mr. Swan wiped a tear of laughter from his cheek. “I’m afraid Handsome Jim is very superstitious. And, you see, my dear, I’ve been winding him up all night about memeloses. When Brandywine began barking outside, at our resident raccoon no doubt, I told Jim here that there was a memelose above your tent.”

  “Not funny, Swan,” Handsome Jim growled, lowering his gun.

  “I agree completely,” I said, my eyes meeting Handsome Jim’s.

  Mr. Swan tried to look contrite. “I’m sorry, my dear. But we have so few amusements.”

  Handsome Jim glared at Mr. Swan and stalked off.

  “It is hardly amusing. And if there were any spirits, they have most certainly been scared away on account of the racket,” I muttered peevishly.

  “D’urn gal, I can’t speak for the spooks but you’d scare me straight to blazes and I ain’t even daid,” Mr. Russell snorted, whiskers twitching.

  “I didn’t ask for your opinion, Mr. Russell,” I said stiffly, putting a hand up to my unruly hair.

  “The backs of the leaves are showing, gal,” Mr. Russell declared cryptically. “You best come in the cabin now and not later.”

  I had no intention of listening to this overbearing, arrogant man. Miss Hepplewhite used to say that the only way to deal with men like him was to ignore them, and I intended to do just that.