by Win Blevins
It turned out that the Amber Eyes family thought the creamed soup strange. The pudding, on the other hand, was an even bigger hit than the sugary coffee—they scraped their bowls clean and looked disappointed that there wasn’t more.
While they ate, Amber Eyes heard voices outside, jumped up, went out, and came back with three men. “My friend the leader of the Nez Percés is here. May he come in?”
“Sure,” said Sam.
Three Nez Percés ducked in, and Amber Eyes introduced the leader, a tall, crane-like man named Ball, and two of his sons. Sam saw the look of immense intelligence in Ball’s eyes and knew that he would be a leader of whatever people he was born among. “Join us for coffee,” said Sam.
Ball told them that his small band was erecting lodges up the stream from the Cayuses. They had come for a visit with their friends.
“They often come to see us before the cold gets hard,” said Amber Eyes, “and stay a couple of weeks.”
Sam, Hannibal, and Flat Dog looked at each other with the same thoughts in their minds. What a stroke of luck. Trade, trade, trade.
WHEN THE CAYUSES and Nez Percés had gone back to their camps and the children were asleep, the adults huddled around the inside fire against the crisp autumn night.
Hannibal made his case. “A week over to the Nez Percé village, a week back—we can’t afford the time. We need to be working with the new horses.”
“So the problem,” said Jay, “is how to get them to make the ride back and forth and bring the ponies to us.”
Sam looked at him. Jay was acting more like a real member of the outfit recently.
“People say the Nez Percé horses are better,” said Esperanza.
Sometimes she spoke up just like a man. Sam wondered if that was his fault or to his credit.
“They are better,” said Hannibal. “Better breeders.” He was the only one of them who’d ever been to the Nez Percé home at Lapwai.
“How can we get this done?” repeated Flat Dog.
“Won’t pay to give them enough trade goods to make it worth their while.”
They stared into the fire, stumped.
“Easy,” said Jay.
Everyone looked and waited.
“Have Esperanza give them a show. Demonstrate liberty training, just like she’s been practicing. Here’s my bet—they’ll want to learn it.”
Esperanza squealed with pleasure.
Sam jumped in. “They’ll be so bamboozled they’ll ask us to teach some of their young men the techniques.”
“They’ll stay for weeks,” said Jay.
“We’ll take payment in horses,” said Hannibal.
“Damn right,” said Flat Dog.
Thirty-four
ESPERANZA SAT TO the side of the lodge, half in shadow, dyeing the strands of rawhide on the hatband that was Papa Sam’s annual present. She should have had it ready by rendezvous, but she just couldn’t put her mind to it. The only good thing about it was that when she did a chore, any chore, her mother left her alone.
Julia was building up the fire in the center of the tipi. The autumn day was crisp enough to make the fire feel good. She started chopping carrots for dinner. Now that they were in civilization, or halfway in, she had a cutting board for this kind of work, which felt good.
She checked the water in the pot that hung over the fire and saw that it wasn’t enough.
“Esperanza, will you go to the river and get us more water?” Two kettles sat by the door flap.
“Mom, I’m busy.”
“Esperanza!”
The girl-woman threw down the strand she was working on, got up stomping, and huffed out of the lodge with the kettles.
While she was gone, Julia started chopping potatoes. They were a luxury—so many years with just wild onions and Jerusalem artichokes—and she relished every kind of vegetable.
Esperanza trudged back in, set one kettle by the door and the other next to her mother, and headed back to her private place.
“Esperanza, would you chunk that deer meat? I’m running late.”
Esperanza just kept rubbing the blue dye, which she’d made by crushing berries, onto the strip of leather. The work calmed her hands.
“Esperanza?”
“Mother, I’m busy. Get Jay to do it.”
“Jay already has a chore. You’re a member of this family, too.”
Esperanza sighed, came to the fire, and reached for one of the long strips of loin. Her mother handed her the cutting board.
“Why are you so moody?” asked Julia.
“You just don’t understand.” Esperanza’s hands were trembling so much that she didn’t dare start cutting.
“What don’t I understand?”
Esperanza raised her butcher knife high and drove it hard into the board. She jumped up and headed for the door.
“You don’t know anything about me!”
“I know,” said Julia, in a tone that stopped Esperanza, “that when your baby is born, you’ll have to start thinking about someone other than yourself.”
Esperanza fled.
THE NEXT MORNING Esperanza got up before anyone stirred and slipped out of the lodge. She unstaked Vermilion and led him to the river for water. At least here no one would bother her.
The recollection of Alice Clarissa made her thoughts sink into the darkness at the bottom of the river. No, she told herself, it’s not that. Whenever I’m alone, whenever I have time to think, I get down. So why do I sit around with my chin in my hand and make things worse? She let Vermilion splash into the shallows without a lead. He would come to her whistle.
These days she talked to no one, she avoided doing tasks, she didn’t even play with Paloma. When Azul and Rojo suggested doing something together, she ignored them.
After Vermilion had some water but not too much, she led him to the practice ring. The ring was a sanctuary. The only time she wasn’t down on herself was when she was practicing for her horse show. Joe helped her with that, and he made it even more fun. He would be along soon.
“REMINDER. IT’S THE first step you have to be ready for,” Esperanza told him. “After that, it’s just like riding. Get in the rhythm and stay there.”
Joe started from the ground again, leaped to a sitting position on Vermilion, and stood up. Esperanza gave the hand signal, the horse went into a lope, and Joe kept his balance again.
“You’ve got it. You’ve really got it.”
She’d started teaching him at rendezvous. Joe was a gifted athlete and learned fast. Now they were working up a surprise not only for the audience but for her teachers, Papa Sam and Uncle Hannibal.
“Now I’m going to add Paladin, so you can get used to her and the sound of her hoofs doesn’t confuse you.” She motioned Paladin into position behind Vermilion and gave both horses the signal to lope. They did, and Joe kept his balance. He even showed off by turning, facing backward, and sticking his tongue out at Esperanza.
“Great!” she shouted.
They did another dozen repetitions and quit.
They walked Vermilion and Paladin to the creek. The horses would drink and the riders would wash them down. The animals liked being rubbed with wet hides.
Esperanza felt herself slipping toward the blackness again.
Stop it! she told herself.
“You sure have been a pick-me-up,” said Joe. “You brighten my day.” He hadn’t noticed her change of mood, hadn’t even stopped chattering. “I’d be feeling low down if it wasn’t for us doing this together.”
Suddenly—didn’t such things always come suddenly?—the truth hit Esperanza hard in the face. She didn’t know why it hadn’t come to her before.
She looked at Joe Meek in a new way, not a kid at an older friend but a woman at a man. She liked what she saw.
Time to do something.
ONE BY ONE Julia, Esperanza, and Jay ducked their heads and came out of the tipi. They ambled off toward the river, each carrying a bucket. “The moon is so bright,” Esp
eranza said. “It’s easy to see.”
The nightly trip to the river made them uneasy, since Alice Clarissa’s death.
Jay decided he couldn’t wait any longer. “It’s so bright I can see your baby on the way.”
“What?”
“Soon even the men will notice,” said Julia.
They squatted on the bank and dipped their buckets full.
“When is the baby due?” said Jay.
Esperanza didn’t answer.
“Spring, from the look of you,” said Julia. “That means Prairie Chicken is the father.”
“Mother, mind your own business.”
They stood up and started back toward the tipi.
Jay put an arm around Esperanza awkwardly. “She’s trying to help you.”
Esperanza pulled away and looked at her mother in the moonlight. “And what’s your help?”
“Talk to Papa Flat Dog and Papa Sam. Tell them.” “Oh, sure.” Esperanza had no idea what either of them would say.
“Tell them the truth,” said Jay.
“I can take care of myself,” said Esperanza. She set her bucket by the tipi door and strode off in another direction.
Thirty-five
“SHOWMANSHIP,” SAID HANNIBAL. He knew something about that—circus work will teach you to please a crowd. That was where he got the skill of trick riding and learned to train liberty horses. Audiences were always amazed by it—you freed the horses of saddle and rein and directed them with hand signals. Hannibal had added a refinement, whistling to get them to come to the bridle. That would be impressive enough, and Hannibal was making it showier. He and Esperanza tied ribbons and bells in the manes and tails of the two liberty horses, Sam’s Paladin and her pony, Vermilion.
Sam and Flat Dog circulated among the Nez Percés and Cayuses and tipped everyone off about the big show down near the river. Soon a score of each were gathered around the ring, waiting.
Amber Eyes said to Sam, “No telling what you crazy white people will do.” Sam considered it a weird comment, considering that Hannibal the ringmaster was half white and half Delaware and Esperanza, the star performer, was half white and half Crow.
Hannibal cried out in the Nez Percé language, “Ladies and gentlemen, here come the medicine horses.”
Esperanza looked at the cluster of horses grazing fifty paces away. She put her fingers to her mouth and screeched out two earsplitting whistles, each entirely different. Two horses, Paladin and Vermilion, immediately pranced toward her. People gasped at how beautiful they looked in their regalia. The two horses loped into the ring at the east entrance, as was proper, and at her hand signal began to canter around the ring.
Sam watched the crowd instead of the show. “Notice,” called Hannibal, “that she can call the mounts to her from a distance. Think how useful that would be if you got knocked off your pony in a buffalo hunt. Or if your enemy was stealing your horse.” Everyone laughed, and Sam could see that the men were really impressed with this idea.
Esperanza lowered her hand and drew a circle in the air next to her feet. Paladin and Vermilion came to the center and bowed to her. She jumped onto Vermilion and began to circle the ring bareback. Then she stood up. Even such expert horsemen as the Cayuses and Nez Percés had never seen such a stunt. The men gaped, and the women trilled.
Hannibal called out, “You can even go to war with a horse like this.”
Joe Meek stepped into the ring, carrying a stone-headed club. Sam knew Esperanza and Joe had been working on something, but he didn’t know what. Joe raised his club fiercely. Still standing, Esperanza rode Vermilion hard at Joe and brushed his shoulder. He faked falling down. Everyone laughed. Esperanza made a tight circle, jumped off the horse, and landed astride Joe, her fists in his face. The crowd hooted.
Like a flash Joe slipped out of his deerskin shirt and dashed to one side.
“The horse will even fight for you.”
At Esperanza’s hand signal Vermilion reared and then attacked Joe’s shirt with his hoofs. He beat it into the dirt convincingly.
“One more amazing trick,” called Hannibal.
Though Sam could hardly believe it, Joe jumped onto Vermilion. At Esperanza’s signal the pony began to circle the ring. Paladin fell in close behind.
“I give you,” boomed Hannibal, “the master clown Joe Meek! There’s no man like Joe!”
As Vermilion kept cantering, Joe stood up on him. Sam didn’t know Joe had learned this skill. They passed under a big cottonwood limb. Joe grabbed it, vaulted completely over it, and as he headed for the earth dropped toward Paladin’s back. Except that he missed and banged his rump onto the ground.
People roared with laughter. Joe used his forefingers to make pretend tears coming down his cheeks.
They laughed harder.
Esperanza beamed at Sam, and he gave her a thumbs-up.
“Here’s the best news,” Hannibal shouted. “We can teach you this trick of calling your horses to come to you from a distance. We can even teach you to ride them standing up. We’ll be here all winter, ready to give you this medicine. In exchange for horses.”
They spent the rest of the day making promises and bargains.
That evening Sam wrote briefly to Grumble, informing his friend that the entire family was on the way, the horse-gathering enterprise was going very well, and they would all arrive in Monterey some time next summer. “I don’t know that we will be new men, in your words Adam and Eve on a new continent,” Sam wrote, “but we are ready to be Californios.”
Thirty-six
AT FIRST LIGHT someone scratched on the flap of the lodge.
Sam and Julia jumped up together. It wouldn’t be Esperanza—she wouldn’t scratch—but at this time of morning it must be news. She’d been missing for two nights.
Sam opened the door and saw the mousy face of one of the Frenchies from Fort Walla Walla, Remoulet. “I am sorry to come so early,” he said in his reedy voice and Frenchy accent, “but . . . You must be anxious.” He held an envelope in his hand.
“Come in, please,” said Julia.
“They made me promise to wait until today. Zis may be early, but it ees today.”
He handed Julia the envelope. “I t’ink they ask Madame Whitman and she write ze words for them.”
“Jay, would you make some coffee for our guest?” said Julia.
Sam watched Julia slip a finger under the flap and open the container slowly. He had a terrible sense of dread.
“Dear Mother, Papa Flat Dog, and Papa Sam—,” Julia read in Spanish.
I am gone to Oregon City to be Joe Meek’s wife.
“I’ll kill the son of a bitch,” said Sam.
“Sam,” said Julia.
“They could have told me!”
“Sam! Listen to the rest.”
He hung his head.
The bateaux carrying the Hudson’s Bay men from the upriver forts and the Newell party had sailed from Fort Walla Walla yesterday. By now the boats would already be past the great rapids, and in three more days at Fort Vancouver. And every night Esperanza and Joe would be rolled up in the blankets together.
I love Joe, and he loves me. We would have told you, but you all want to keep me under your thumb. Please understand. Joe and I will be glad to see all of you in the spring.
“It’s signed ‘Esperanza.’ ”
Sam and Flat Dog traded disgruntled looks.
“There’s another letter.”
Dear Sam—
I love your daughter and will take good of her. I will also be a good father to her child.
“Child?!” exclaimed Sam.
Sam, we have been friends for a long time, and I ask you to trust me. Do not follow us to Oregon City now. I warn you, do not. Next spring will be the right time.
Then we’ll hand you your first grandchild.
—your friend, Joe Meek
“It’s a damned outrage,” said Sam. He stood up and paced.
“Let me know when you want me to spe
ak,” said Julia.
“California, we were going to make a home in California.”
“Are you ready?”
“It was all working out!” He whirled on Julia. “Did you know she was with child?”
“Yes.”
“I am betrayed!” shouted Sam.
“Here’s your coffee,” said Jay, and thrust a cup into Sam’s hand.
“Listen to me!” Julia grabbed his hand. “Grow up.”
“Grow up? She’s the one needs to—”
“Sam,” Julia said, pulling him toward her. “She is grown-up. She’s about to be a mother. She’s going to make the home she wants. Whatever home she wants. Not yours, not Flat Dog’s, and not mine.”
“I ain’t easy with this,” said Flat Dog. He stared into his own cup and then sipped the steaming brew.
Julia gave both of them a stern eye.
“Then she has two fathers who need to grow up.”
Silence held them together and pushed them apart.
“Monsieur Remoulet,” said Julia, “would you like some more sugar?”
The Frenchy held out his cup. “I be sorry I bring such news,” he said.
“It was very kind of you,” Julia answered.
Sam and Flat Dog held each other’s eyes hard. Stymied.
Julia studied her husband’s face and worried more.
Thirty-seven
IT WAS A bleak winter at the mission at Wailatpu. Narcissa Whitman kept Alice’s bed made perfectly and her clothes untouched in the closet and the drawers. Her two dolls rested against her small pillow. The grieving mother seldom stirred out of the house. Julia spent only an occasional moment with her.
Narcissa also withdrew from contact with the Indian people she had come to save. Instead she threw herself into her correspondence with her fellow missionaries in Oregon and her family back in the States. Her words about her charges were impatient. She wrote her mother:
They are an exceedingly proud, haughty and insolent people, and keep us constantly upon the stretch after patience and forbearance. We feed them far more than any of our associates do their people, yet they will not be satisfied.
