Dreams Beneath Your Feet

by Win Blevins

  His performance here in the upper Snake River country was critical to the Company. True, the beaver were getting trapped out. The advantage of that was, the American trappers were disappearing along with the beaver.

  In a short time Ermatinger had increased the post’s annual fur shipment by severalfold. He’d gotten more and more trade from the Shoshone Indians and the Blackfeet as well. They brought in buffalo hides and ermine and river otters, peltries now more profitable than beaver. They traded him dried buffalo meat to send down to Vancouver. And Ermatinger got the trade of whatever trappers had not yet given up working the streams.

  It all added up to something important. This tough little man meant to keep the Indian tribes allied with Britain, not the United States. He intended to drive the American fur men out of the entire Oregon country. If Americans tried to emigrate to Oregon—so far only a handful of missionaries had made the attempt—he would welcome them, warn them of the dangers ahead, laugh mockingly at the idea of getting wagons across that rough trail, and turn them back.

  Yes, Oregon now belonged by treaty to both America and Britain. But Francis Ermatinger intended to rule it all someday.

  He took a last good look through the glass. Damnably few furs.

  “Tell the cook to prepare sufficient food,” the trader called down to Roller. “Then raise the colors.”

  He smiled to himself about that. The fort seldom flew the Union Jack, because the American trappers didn’t like to be reminded. Once in a while, in his opinion, a gesture of empire was a good touch.

  “IT’S AN INSULT,” said Joe. “Let’s tear the damn thing down. Goddamn Brits.”

  While the women put up the tipis, the men relaxed and took in the fine afternoon. Sam and Hannibal had decided that the chance of rain today on the Snake River plains was none. They would build their brush hut tomorrow, or perhaps never.

  Hannibal watched the missionaries put their three tents up. He noted with amusement that they took care to arrange the tents in a straight line. What, a thousand miles from anywhere, was the point of a straight line?

  “Hell,” said Joe, “let’s just shoot their damned Union Jack down.”

  Hannibal jumped up. “Hell, yes.” He called to the tents, “Mr. Littlejohn, Mr. Clark, Mr. Smith, we need a confab.” He always called the three preachers Mr. instead of Reverend, to keep the amount of ego in camp tamped down.

  The three ministers pulled long faces and rumbled over to the mountain men.

  “That flag,” Hannibal said, “is an affront to American sensibilities.” The Delaware was having fun.

  Joe Meek sidled over to Sam and whispered, “What does ‘affront to sensibilities’ mean?”

  “A slap in the face,” said Sam.

  “Let’s get ’em,” said Joe.

  Hannibal went on about treaties and legalities. Doc echoed his words, both acting like they were in high dudgeon.

  Littlejohn said, “What do you say, gentlemen?”

  The missionaries tugged at their beards and muttered low. They’d called each other Reverend and gentlemen all the way across the plains and mountains. Joe Meek had said more than once that the West had never seen a Reverend or a gentleman, excepting Captain William Drummond Stewart, who was gone back to Scotland to play the part of a lord.

  Now Joe piped up, “I don’t care about nothing but that Union Jack flying in my face. Let’s give ’em what for.”

  The missionaries nodded.

  “Joe,” Hannibal said at the end, “you will be our ambassador plenipotentiary.”

  “What do that mean?” said Joe.

  “I say,” said Littlejohn irritably. He was a British emigrant.

  “It means you will approach the fort with a formal diplomatic statement.”

  Joe looked sideways at Sam and grinned.

  “You must leave your rifle behind but carry a stick with a piece of white cloth tied to it.

  “I am plenty of whatever you want,” he said.

  “Hannibal, I want to go with Joe.”

  This was Esperanza. Sam hadn’t realized she’d walked up. She and Joe were buddies.

  “Unseemly,” said Littlejohn.

  “Exactly,” said Hannibal. “The presence of a woman will insult the Brits in a pointed way.”

  “I say,” repeated Littlejohn.

  “Now you’ve got to learn these words I’m going to give you to say,” said Hannibal. “But Joe must do the talking,” he told Esperanza. “He’s an American.”

  In a few minutes the two strode the bottomland to the bastion. As Esperanza whispered to him, Joe called out the message to Ermatinger.

  “We, being citizens of the United States of America, declare to you that this is American soil.”

  That was close enough. Everyone but Ermatinger knew that when the division was officially made, the Snake River would be part of the States.

  “We are therefore . . .” Joe stopped and listened to Esperanza. He wanted to strike just the right tone. “We therefore demand that you lower the flag of Great Britain.”

  “Go to hell,” yelled Ermatinger.

  Joe was undaunted. He had a backup position.

  “In case of your refusal we demand that the American flag be raised to fly beside it.” Joe paused. “Indeed, above it.” This was his own addition, and he was proud of the word “indeed.”

  “You and your strumpet both go to hell,” said Ermatinger.

  “Trumpet?” said Joe.

  “Strumpet,” shouted Ermatinger.

  Joe and Esperanza looked at each other and shrugged. Neither of them knew what it meant.

  Joe and Esperanza returned to his comrades and consulted with them. Then they marched back to the bastion. Joe weaved as he went. If he couldn’t be drunk, he could at least pretend.

  Joe announced, “We mountain men and this mountain woman, citizens of the United States, hereby formally give you notice. If you do not comply with our wishes within ten minutes, we will take the Union Jack down by force.”

  “I’ll see you in hell first,” said Ermatinger. “Walker,” he called across the courtyard, “close and bar the gate.”

  Now, being forced into military mode, the trappers named Hannibal their general and Sam their captain.

  “I say,” protested Littlejohn. He brandished a smoothbore. “We of the cloth are able to fight.” The others had gotten out rifles they didn’t maintain or practice with.

  “Oh, you men of God,” said Hannibal, “on the battlefield God’s representative is the general. He plans things out—he being me—and a captain leads the attacks.”

  “We do not appreciate your mocking tone, Sir,” said Littlejohn.

  “Having observed the battlefield,” said Hannibal, “I declare that no planning is necessary. Captain Morgan, lead the attack.”

  Sam said, “Let’s go.” He, Flat Dog, Joe, and Esperanza straggled in a decidedly unmilitary formation toward the fort and the flagpole.

  Easing alongside Hannibal, Julia said, “Is this all right?”

  Hannibal said, “Azul and Rojo, follow Captain Morgan.”

  The boys sprinted forward, laughing and brandishing their bows.

  The British staff of Fort Hall assembled on the ramparts, all six of them, and held their rifles at port arms, or whatever it was called.

  “Reverend,” Sam said to Littlejohn, “can you hit anything with that thing?”

  “Decidedly, Sir.”

  “Ready, aim, fire!” said Sam merrily.

  Littlejohn peppered the Union Jack with buckshot. It tattered nicely.

  They glared at their opponents on the ramparts. These men had been friends for several years, drinking together, eating together, camping together. Everyone but Ermatinger was a good companion.

  “Fire!” cried Ermatinger.

  The British lifted their rifles to the sky and shot holes in the air.

  “Azul, Rojo,” cried Sam, “the flag.” The boys aimed their arrows. “Ready, aim, fire.”

  After the
arrows cut their holes, there wasn’t enough of the Union Jack left to keep Ermatinger’s wife decent. Joe knew her to favor indecency anyway.

  “Men and woman,” cried Sam, “it’s time for the assault. Charge!” All the men rushed the gate. They laid their shoulders to it with a will, and the thing splintered. It had only been built for show anyway.

  Ermatinger called a retreat, and the entire fort staff skedaddled to the trading room.

  The mountain men charged up the ramparts, and Joe Meek shinnied up the pole. He had a little American flag he wore as a hatband, because he liked to make a show of being American when he went to Taos or up to the Hudson’s Bay post at Flathead Lake.

  At the top he stripped the Union Jack off its rope, spat on it, and hurled it to the ground. Then, with some reverence, he established Old Glory in its place. When the wind caught the Stars and Stripes, the attacking force fired their rifles into the air and shouted their triumph.

  Joe leaped off the top of the pole, caught the ramparts with his feet, did a somersault, hit the floor of the plaza rolling, and stood up with a big grin.

  “We’re not finished,” said Sam.

  All the trapper soldiers, with Esperanza in the throng, marched to the trading room. “Bardolf,” cried Sam, “come out!”

  “Go to hell,” said Ermatinger.

  “Come out, or I’ll shoot this lock and we’ll come in.”

  “Bugger off.”

  “Bardolf, if we have to come in, we’ll take everything in the trading room, down to the last coffee bean.”

  Silence.

  “We’ll make a nice profit, selling all your goods to the Shoshones.”

  Finally John Roller cracked the door open. “What do you want?”

  “Come on out.”

  Roller was a friendly man, endowed with a goofy gap-toothed grin. The men knew him well and liked him.

  “What do you want?”

  “One keg of your finest rum,” said Sam, “and all sins are forgotten.”

  “Stick a toothpick up your arse,” yelled Ermatinger from inside.

  “A keg,” said Joe Meek, and cocked and aimed a threat bigger than a toothpick.

  “Bardolf, give way, or we’ll strip this place clean.” Sam grinned at Meek. “I can’t control Joe for long.”

  Roller stood in front of them and fidgeted. The poor man couldn’t do a thing but gap-grin. Finally, the door cracked open again. Anonymous hands pushed a keg out. The mountain men seized it.

  Roller said, “Mind if I join in?”

  In less than an hour all ten mountain-man soldiers, plus eight wives, were sitting in front of a big campfire, pleasantly soused. Most of them hadn’t tasted a proper rum before, for the traders usually kept that for themselves.

  Sam noticed that Meek and Doc were dipping into one of their quarrels. Doc said, “I want to take wagons to Oregon, be the first to do it.”

  Joe gave him a queer look. “It can’t be done.”

  “I’ve thought on it considerably,” said Doc. “We can accomplish it.”

  “Doc,” said Joe, “you got me to nursemaid the missionaries, but I’ll be damned if I’ll give suck to wagons.”

  “By God, Meek, listen.” Doc, with his smidgeon of book learning, had developed the conviction that he could control life. Sam scooted out of that conversation as fast as he could.

  He found a boulder and tootled on his Irish whistle. Esperanza, Azul, and Rojo did silly dances to his tunes. The twilight lingered long. It was a good evening.

  “Esperanza,” Sam called, “you were a good soldier. I’m going to play a march in your honor.”

  He piped it out, and Esperanza did a mock soldier step. Joe Meek even joined her.

  Again, Sam thought, Maybe it’s all going to work out.

  Eighteen

  KANAKA BOY TOOK a score of men and left a handful behind to mind the camp and the stills. He liked to travel with an overpowering force. Anyone who saw the rifles, pistols, tomahawks, and belt knives these men carried would stand well off.

  Lei wanted to stand well off herself, even though she lived with them. She wished—she’d wished over and over—that she could stay in camp, too, that . . .

  This wasn’t a roundabout, which worried her. They had brought whiskey only to drink, not to trade. And they didn’t ride down the Owyhee, in their usual way, toward the Snake River and the villages of Nez Percé, Walla, and Cayuse that scattered beyond. They rode straight up into the Owyhee Mountains, which she disliked. These were not the pine-forested, snowcapped majesties she’d grown up around, just high, knuckly outcroppings too poor even to support much game. There were only a few springs where Digger Indians camped.

  From what Lei had seen of Diggers she didn’t want anything to do with them. They were the poorest Indians anyone knew of. They lived in brush huts, had no horses, and only the most primitive weapons. For most of the year the men went naked and the women wore only a kind of apron. People said they lived on rabbits, grasshoppers, and seeds.

  When she asked where the devil they were going, Kanaka Boy gave her his sly smile and said, “You’ll see.”

  THE NEXT MORNING the Sam Morgan–Flat Dog family, plus Uncle Hannibal, walked through the gate of Fort Hall, their children gawking.

  “That’s a cannon,” said Sam.

  The boys ran to it and started climbing all over it. Esperanza gave Sam a questioning look.

  “It’s a huge gun—it shoots these balls.” He pointed to the pyramid of ammunition next to the cannon.

  “What’s it for?”

  “Just to scare the Indians, really. In case of bad trouble, to shoot at them.”

  “Wonderful,” said his daughter.

  Julia looked at Sam, and the papa half-hid a smile. Sam wasn’t used to fathering, and Julia was tickled at watching him learn to cope with a headstrong teenage girl in a pissy mood.

  Julia didn’t blame her. They’d jerked her out of the only life she had known, torn her away from the young man she fantasized about, made her leave her grandparents and all her friends. Not to mention the stinky rendezvous.

  At the entrance to the trading room Julia reached out and showed Esperanza how to operate the door handle. It was a simple, blacksmithed latch, but she had never seen one before. In fact, she hadn’t seen a wooden door until now. Only yesterday afternoon, when they made camp outside the fort and made a mock attack, had she first seen a building, much less a walled fort with a bastion.

  Julia looked back at Azul and Rojo, running around the cannon and yelling, “Boom! Boom! Boom!”

  Esperanza worked the latch twice and made an expression that said she wasn’t impressed. They stepped in.

  Sam smiled across the room at Bardolf and then reminded himself to call the trader Mr. Ermatinger. Ermatinger would be grumpy enough without Sam calling him Bardolf. Sometimes he acted jovial, but Sam knew him for a bitter and acerbic man.

  “This place smells bad,” Esperanza said.

  Funny, the smells were what Sam liked about trading rooms, the aromas of big twists of tobacco, coffee beans, horehound candy, and pemmican, all swirled together. But strange to Esperanza, for sure.

  She stood in the middle of the room, far from the displays of goods that she coveted—bolts of cotton and wool, ribbons, beads, everything to help a young girl look beautiful.

  Hannibal said, “Look at this glass.” She went to him—Hannibal was the one person in the party she was speaking to in a good spirit. He tapped it with a fingernail, and she did too, and then felt its smoothness with her forefinger. “Lets lots of light in, and lets you see out. But fragile. You can just push with your hand and it will break into sharp pieces. Cut your hand, too.”

  Azul and Rojo came bounding in.

  Julia walked around and felt of the fabrics. Aside from trading their fur, they wouldn’t do much trading here. They had Sam’s letter of credit from American Fur for a good amount, profit from a herd of horses he’d brought from California, but they all knew prices would be
better at the main Hudson’s Bay place of business, Fort Vancouver. Julia could wait.

  “Are you bound for Oregon, Morgan?” asked Ermatinger.

  “Sure enough,” Sam said. “The trapping life is done.” Flat Dog and Hannibal came up next to Sam.

  “The Oregon road will be well-worn this year,” said Ermatinger. “More missionaries and their wives, I see. Joining their comrades among the Spokanes, I believe. You guiding them?”

  “Not a chance,” said Sam.

  Like many men in the mountains, Ermatinger made no secret of his distaste for the preaching breed.

  “Your friends Meek and Newell are giving up the life as well?” His lips lingered over the phrase, relishing the implication of failure.

  “Yes,” said Hannibal.

  “Hard to picture Joe Meek giving up a beaver trap for a plow,” said Flat Dog.

  “There’s a delicious bit there,” Ermatinger went on. “Newell told me this morning he and Joe are taking two wagons.”

  “Wagons to Oregon?” said Hannibal. He didn’t add, “And Joe Meek going along?”

  “Indeed. He has in mind to prove it can be done.” Now Ermatinger’s tone was pure mockery.

  Sam bought Esperanza a couple of doodads and got the family out of the range of Ermatinger’s mood.

  That evening the night sky was fully dark, the mountain air cool enough for them to use blankets, sitting around the fire. The season was changing, and the first frost wasn’t far off. They chased the cold away with coffee they’d just bought from Ermatinger. The evening would have been perfect if Doc Newell wasn’t trying to twist their arms.

  “It’s safer with a big party,” said Doc. Joe Meek sat cross-legged next to Doc, but he was drinking more than talking.

  Sam, Hannibal, and Flat Dog eyed each other. After they got the word from Ermatinger, they had talked it over and decided.

  “Doc,” said Sam, “you’re a friend. And there’s no man like Joe. But the Snake River plains? You’re going to be sorry you ever heard a wheel squeak.”

  “You’re just not thinking big,” said Newell. “We could be first. Wagons to the Pacific Coast of Oregon!”