by Win Blevins
“Let’s go, sweet pie,” said Joe.
SAM UNHOBBLED PALADIN and led her toward the ring Esperanza would use. She would want the more experienced mare as well as her own pony. Hannibal and Flat Dog fell in with him and strolled to the ring she had laid out, using willow branches. Esperanza waited, her pony, Vermilion, standing free. Jay and Joe Meek sat cross-legged and watched eagerly.
Sam looked from his daughter to the man-woman, and inside himself he shrugged. Ever since they left her home village, Esperanza had been moody. Sometimes she was cheerful and like a kid again. Most of the time she was irritable. At those times she wouldn’t talk to anyone but Jay the ba’te, and that helped, Sam didn’t know how. So Jay was fine with Sam.
He took the lead off Paladin and looked at Esperanza and declared, “Let the good times roll.”
Esperanza did a running vault onto her pony from behind. The difference was that she came to rest on her feet, not her bottom, and immediately stood up, hands held high. At a cluck Vermilion began to canter around the ring.
“Hot damn!” shouted Joe Meek. He whooped. He put two fingers in his mouth and whistled.
Esperanza glided by, balanced on the back of her loping horse. As she passed them, she made a curtsey to her small audience.
“I ain’t seen nothin’ like that afore,” said Joe.
Sam said, “These Indians haven’t, either.”
Thirty-one
“THREE, SEE,” JULIA said. The whole meadow was squishy with water and violet with flowers. “They’re camas, a kind of lily, and you can eat the bulb.” Mother, daughter, and Jay spread out, holding sacks to fill.
“Only the violet ones,” said Julia. “The ones with the white flowers, that’s the death camas.”
As she picked, Esperanza felt drawn to the few lilies with the white flowers. Squatting, she pulled a white-petaled plant with her right hand and a lilac-petaled one with her left hand. The bulbs looked just alike. Life and death, just alike.
She looked around and saw that her mother and Jay were stooped and picking well away, too far to see what Esperanza was doing.
Esperanza felt the allure. The bulbs that you boil or roast? Or the ones that end all troubles?
She had known for half a moon now. One morning, when she was lying flat on her stomach and letting her mother do the breakfast work by herself, she felt a flip-flop in her belly. Then it came again, a sensation just like a fish was wiggling inside her.
She knew what it was. She had put her hand on the bellies of several other young women carrying babies. She even knew the word for it in English—the baby was said to quicken. The difference was, the other young women were glad to be filled with child.
Esperanza was . . . she didn’t know what.
With child. One night with Prairie Chicken and now with child. But without husband.
Each morning, when the rising sun made the east side of the tipi glow, she felt the movement, lifted her blankets, and watched the skin of her belly make a wave.
With child, and with terror.
She let the death camas drop onto the mushy ground and put the other into her sack.
She looked long at the white one and then made herself look away.
I have to do something.
THE MEN WERE pitching in to help with the work, too. Sam and Hannibal helped build cabins—they felled logs, dragged them to the building sites, trimmed them with drawknives, and joined them at the corners.
Flat Dog found a piece of work he really liked. One of the missionaries, Barker, came up and said, “I had an indescribable accident on my mare.” He showed them his saddle, which was split lengthwise down the middle. You could fold it like a book.
“We’ll try to do som’p’n’ on it,” said Whitfield, a new comrade who was a practical man.
When Barker was out of hearing, Hannibal picked up the smashed saddle and inspected it. “He must be an indescribable rider,” Hannibal said.
None of them could guess exactly what had happened. “Some way that mare of his came down flat on her back,” said Flat Dog.
“Coulda broke him instead of the saddle,” said Whitfield with a sly smile. He didn’t appear to be as sincere in his Methodism as the others.
They knew he’d worked a little for a saddle maker. “I can’t carve a new saddle tree,” he said, “but I can take this’n apart ’n’ save the leathers. We take the rig over to the fort, it’ll be a whole lot less money than startin’ from scratch.”
Flat Dog spoke loud and clear. “Let me help. I want to learn.”
They found some tools and a worktable in a shed. Then Flat Dog learned more than he bargained for.
“There is more’n fifty pieces of leather in a saddle,” said Whitfield. Carefully, together, they began to detach the stirrups, stirrup leathers and fenders, jockeys, cinches, skirts, and pieces Flat Dog hadn’t even heard of. Sometimes stitching had to be cut, other times lacing undone. He realized what an ignoramus he was when Whitfield had to explain that the tree, the wooden frame everything depended on, was carved from a single piece of wood covered with wet rawhide, which shrank as it dried to make a tight surface.
“This tree is hardwood,” said Whitfield. “Cain’t get nothin’ like that here. The saddler’ll probably make it out’n fir.”
The way the many pieces of leather fit together was damned clever—Flat Dog had never realized. Before the afternoon was gone, he was beginning to think how much he liked this work and how well it went with breeding horses.
He kept his discovery to himself.
JAY FOUND HIS own special work to do. He was comfortable being viewed as ba’te, and as everyone knew, one skill of ba’tes was art. So Jay got an idea to help beautify the main house.
At first he borrowed paper, pen, and ink from Dr. Whitman, and the Whitmans acted thrilled with the little sketches Jay did of mission life. Narcissa had several framed and hung on the parlor walls.
But Jay wasn’t happy with the work—it wasn’t his kind of thing. When he discovered that Dr. Whitman also had colored pencils, Jay struck out in a new direction. He filled pages with plants—a whole page of willow branches in leaf, for instance, and not just in the realistic colors of red-brown and green. He made the leaves every color in the rainbow. And his plants weren’t separate, as they actually grew along the river, but all swirled together like one gigantic, growing thing, a world of limbs and leaves without earth or air.
Everyone loved them.
Jay proceeded to draw entire pages of blossoms of every color, an interconnected design that omitted stems and leaves. Once he made pages of horses’ heads, except that the heads were tiny and the manes huge—the page seemed like a storm of hair.
Marcus and Narcissa started giving Jay coins for the drawings, and he was grateful. In a pinch, coins might mean freedom.
NARCISSA HEARD STEPS and then a knock. She could see out the window that it was Hannibal. He came to the main house toward the end of every day and spent an hour drinking coffee and talking to Dr. Whitman. She approved—they were the only two really educated men at Wailatpu. Narcissa thought Hannibal’s education had made him too smart for his own good—or at least for his immortal soul—but she was glad her husband had this companionship.
Husband and wife put down their books, Marcus’s a medical text and Narcissa’s the New Testament. “I’ll bring some coffee,” she said, and stepped toward the kitchen.
“Hello, Alicia Clarisia,” said Hannibal. This was his pet name for the girl.
“Hello, Hannibalee Smanabalee.” She was playing on the floor with the two dolls he’d made her. He saw that her mother had stitched together a pair of dresses from scraps of cloth, probably to keep them decent.
Narcissa came back with two cups of steaming brew.
“I’ll help finish up supper,” she said.
“Ha, he,” Alice Clarissa said, “supper ’most ready. Alice help Mama, go get some water,” said the child, and trotted off behind her mother.
Marcu
s leaped into the subject of the mission’s struggles with the Cayuse people. Not Hannibal’s favorite topic, but these days Marcus could think of nothing else. “It’s hard,” said Marcus. “We told them it would be good for them to put several lodges together for a place to attend worship out of the open air.”
Hannibal thought that the only place he ever felt an impulse to worship was in the open air, but he just smiled at his friend.
“They said they wouldn’t do it—they wanted to worship in our new house. We said no. Having them in the house drives Narcissa crazy.”
“I know it does.” Hannibal had lived with Indian people for twenty years in perfect comfort. On the other hand, he’d grown up in the cabin his white father and Delaware mother kept next-to-godliness clean.
“They came up with a good one. They asked us if there aren’t houses in heaven to worship in. That stumped me.”
Since Hannibal thought Marcus’s religion was castles in air, that is, metaphoric castles, he had nothing to say.
“We told them our house was to live in and we can’t have them worship there for they would make it so dirty and fill it so full of lice that we could not live in it.”
“I have an idea,” said Hannibal. “You could start dwelling in a tipi and move it once a week a or so, leaving the lice behind.”
“Your sense of humor is wicked, my friend. Anyway, when we couldn’t agree, they started in again about us paying them for their land we live on. And they complained that we don’t feed them more, and let them run all over the house, et cetera, et cetera.”
“Tell them,” Hannibal said, “that you are paying them with food, and by teaching them to grow food.” He more or less believed this.
“I didn’t know this would be such a hard life. More so, Narcissa didn’t know it. These people, well, their Nez Percé cousins, sent a delegation all the way to St. Louis to ask to learn the Bible.”
“I knew those Indians,” Hannibal said. He had hinted at this but now decided to tell his friend the whole truth. “That was a big misunderstanding. The Indians thought that the white man’s God had powerful medicine, to be able to give white people guns and pots and wheeled wagons and thousands of beads and mirrors and far-seeing telescopes and other wonders. They wanted to get such great medicine for themselves. What they were after was material, not spiritual.”
Marcus considered these words. “I don’t believe that. God works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform. He was simply using material goods to open their minds.”
Hannibal said nothing.
“Not that their minds seem open. We thought they would welcome the Gospel—the good news!—with open hearts.”
Hannibal nodded in a kindly way.
Through the closed kitchen door they heard the women who’d been gathering camas bring in their vegetables. Julia and Esperanza poked their heads in to say hello to the men.
Esperanza said, “Where’s Alice Clarissa?”
“Helping her mother,” said Marcus.
“She’s not in the kitchen,” said Julia.
A moment’s conference showed that no one knew where Alice Clarissa could have gone. A cabinet door stood open. “I saw her climb up there,” said a serving woman, “and take two cups.”
“She said she was going to get water,” said Narcissa.
“From the river?” Esperanza said, her throat tightening.
“No, she’s afraid of the water. Probably from the barrels outside.”
Esperanza stuck her head out the door and said, “I don’t see her.”
“She’s really afraid of the water,” said Narcissa. The words scratched her throat.
Esperanza ran toward the nearest spot on the riverbank. Why she ran she didn’t know. The others walked along piecemeal, Marcus and Hannibal straggling behind.
Two cups floated in the eddy.
Esperanza jumped into the slow water. She swam back and forth. She sat on the bottom and peered around underwater.
The other women huddled on the bank and quailed.
When Hannibal and Marcus saw the cups, they dived in.
“Where would the eddy take her?” said Hannibal loudly.
Esperanza looked at the current, saw where, and waded straight toward a shadowed spot under the highest part of the bank.
When she got there, she dipped beneath the water and rose up with Alice Clarissa, limp in her arms.
They did what they knew to do. They pushed the water out of her lungs. They pressed on her chest to simulate breathing. Then they did those things over and over.
Narcissa wept quietly. Julia held her.
Esperanza sat and looked into the girl’s eyes. The moment she saw the eyes, she knew Alice Clarissa was dead.
She put both her hands on her belly. She held life in her hands, death in her eyes.
Thirty-two
NARCISSA WROTE TO her sister:
Your letter I received but a few days ago, or it would have been answered much sooner. You make some important inquiries concerning my treatment of my precious child, Alice Clarissa, now laying by me a lifeless lump of clay. Yes, of her I loved and watched so tenderly, I am bereaved. My Jesus in love to her and us has taken her to himself.
Last Sabbath, blooming in health, cheerful, and happy in herself and in the society of her much loved parents, yet in one moment she disappeared, went to the river with two cups to get some water for the table, fell in and was drowned. Mysterious event! We can in no way account for the circumstances connected with it, otherwise than that the Lord meant it should be so.
Here she recounted details of the realization and the search, then went on:
I had never known her to go to the river or to appear at all venturesome until within a week past. Previous to this she has been much afraid to go near the water anywhere, for her father had once put her in, which so effectually frightened her that we had lost that feeling of anxiety for her in a measure on its account. But she had gone; yes, and because my Saviour would have it so. He saw it necessary to afflict us, and has taken her away. Now we see how much we loved her, and you know the blessed Saviour will not have His children bestow an undue attachment upon creature objects without reminding us of His own superior claim upon affections. Take warning, dear sister, by our bereavement that you do not let your dear babe get between your heart and the Saviour, for you, like us, are solitary and alone and in almost the dangerous necessity of loving too ardently the precious gift, to the neglect of the giver.
Thirty-three
“WHY WOULD I want to trade you horses, white man?” Amber Eyes smiled wickedly.
Sam looked at him and arranged his lips into a smile, more for himself than the Cayuse chief. This was a game, though Sam probably wouldn’t enjoy it as much as Amber Eyes did. Sam wondered where the name came from. The eyes of the red-tailed hawk? Maybe that was his spirit animal. Sam would never know.
“I do not think you can afford our horses. The Cayuse people own the best horses in the world.”
Actually, the Nez Percés had the biggest reputation for Appaloosas, but . . .
Sam said, “And you like to trade them for rifles, blankets, axes, cloth . . .”
“Sometimes,” said Amber Eyes.
Sam did think Appaloosas were the best. They were perfectly conformed, their markings beautiful. Most of them were short bodied and stocky, built for bursts of speed, which made them the ultimate buffalo runners. They had lots of bottom and could go at an easy pace all day. Sam had ridden his mare Paladin, an Appaloosa with the markings called medicine hat, for a decade and a half and would have no other mount.
Sipping, Amber Eyes looked across his coffee cup at Hannibal, who was silent. They’d agreed to let Sam start the negotiations.
It would take hours, perhaps days. But this was their chance. Several days ago the two rode over to Fort Walla Walla and used their letters of credit from American Fur to get all the trade goods they could, especially those favored by the Cayuses, the tribe that lived near the Whitman
mission. This was the time to trade, and the stakes were high. These horses were the foundation of their new life in California.
“Perhaps you would like to walk out and see the herd,” said Amber Eyes, setting his cup down.
They mingled with the beautiful animals. They talked with Amber Eyes about the conformation of this horse and that one. Hannibal lifted the front hoof of a limping pony and flicked a pebble out of the tender place. Soon Amber Eyes understood that he could not play the con artist with these men—they knew horses. When he said, “Good evening,” he’d lost some of his cockiness.
As the two walked back to camp, Hannibal told Sam, “Lots of people have been eyeing our trade goods.” During the day they kept the merchandise spread out under canvas near the tipi, minded by Flat Dog.
“Yeah,” said Sam. “We’re going to get a lot of horses.”
“And train a lot of horses,” said Hannibal, “sell them, and show up in California flush.” They all dreamed of California more and more these days. It had become their word for hope.
“You know what else makes me feel good about California? Good, but strange?”
Hannibal watched his partner.
“For nearly twenty years we’ve been riding land that is free. The buffalo graze on it, everybody hunts on it, the water belongs to everyone same, your horses can get whatever grass they want. But in California we’re going to have a piece of ground we own.”
“You feel good about that?”
“Real good.”
They took a few steps together while Sam thought. He said, “Let’s invite Amber Eyes, his wife, and his children to dinner with our family.”
Immediately Julia proposed to make something the Cayuses had probably never tasted, a creamed soup of carrots, potatoes, and onions, plus broiled deer meat, then a surprise to cap the evening—pudding.
“The wonders of civilization,” said Sam.
