by Gar LaSalle
The Brits were without warrant for him and, as thinly garrisoned as they were, had no time to hunt Cull in any case. They simply ignored the rumors.
No citizens would have been bold enough to bring any concerns forward because the frontier had just too many similar denizens, and the consequences of exercising one’s citizenship were precarious. Most knew that murderers like Cull and Marté were swift to deliver preemptive violence, and everyone knew about revenge as a prime motivator for those who lived on the periphery.
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Emmy realized to be in the debt of these men for the rescue from the bear was a horrible conundrum that further complicated her quest. Both she and Jojo knew their lives were in danger, particularly if it was true that Marté and Cull were slavers.
Enslavement was far worse than death, she had decided long ago.
That night she insisted that Jojo sleep in the same tent with the trading goods and with her and Sarah.
But only Sarah slept.
Jojo kept his muskets fully cocked, and Emmy loaded the pepperbox’s six barrels and capped the primers on the weapon’s nipples.
Emmy hadn’t lain this close to any man other than her husbands, and she would have been embarrassed in other circumstances. But she knew there was imminent danger from the new visitors, so she huddled close to Jojo and Sarah all night.
The warmth and their weapons helped, and Emmy nodded off.
In those few minutes, she plunged deeply into a dream and she was back on Whidbey in her own bed and the wind howled outside. She reached over with her foot feeling for Isaac’s warmth as she had when they first were married, and he would let her place her cold, small feet on the broad dorsum of his so she could push herself up high enough to kiss him.
But that had stopped when he returned from the Indian war, as had all of the tenderness in their intimate moments. She found herself during that brief dream longing for that. But she couldn’t find Isaac, and when she snagged her healing toe on a rent in one of the hides, the pain startled her.
She remembered where she was and stayed awake the rest of the night.
Morning finally came—another clear blue sky, unseasonably warm.
When they emerged from their tent, they saw Cull down by the river packing his canoes. One held several barrels of whiskey among other containers.
Marté was seated directly outside, waiting, smiling slyly at them as he drilled into a huge bear canine that would eventually become part of a necklace. His expression conveyed amusement, either for their precautions or for a projected intimacy between Emmy and Jojo. In either case, his tone barely concealed contempt.
“Madame would like the services of guardians into the gathering?” he asked.
Emmy waited.
Hearing no response, he went on, “I am told there will be many of the peoples of this region at this potlatch. I am told there will be visitors there who very well may have what you seek. I know them. I know them well.”
Emmy looked over at Jojo for some direction.
“We will speak directly with Ksi Amawaal,” Jojo said. His hand was on his knife. “He is expecting us,” he lied.
Marté considered this, sneered dismissively, and rose.
When Emmy did not correct Jojo’s assertion, Marté spat onto the ground.
“As you wish.” Marté walked down to the canoe and spoke briefly to Cull, then returned.
“You will have no objections if we move upriver to the potlatch with you? It is dangerous in these parts,” he said and laughed to himself. “Everyone comes to these potlatches looking for something. And everyone departs with something.”
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And so, they moved upstream, keeping Marté and Cull visible in front of them but far enough away that a musket shot from them would be difficult.
Jojo and Emmy both paddled, while Sarah sat in the second canoe and kept watch on the other tow-behind.
They were all nervous about their new company.
Emmy had concealed the gold in a small chest under several skins. The rest of the gifts—copper, iron, glass, several beautifully polished and semiprecious stones, fine lace, various small implements such as a large assortment of thimbles, and nails in gross bundles—were individually wrapped in linen or buckskin.
But it wasn’t their belongings that concerned them. Marté and Cull were desperate, despicable men, unpredictable and without honor.
Jojo told Emmy that, when they arrived at the Three Spirits Valley sometime next week, they must somehow find their way to Ksi Amawaal before Marté and Cull could mingle into the festivities. The two trappers would certainly expose their presence to the Northerners if they arrived first. Jojo knew he had to immediately invoke Ksi Amawaal’s protection for the two white females.
Emmy was exhausted from a sleepless night. While paddling, after seeing that Sarah had fallen asleep in the canoe behind and could not hear, she asked Jojo about Marté and Cull.
“I am told that Marté came from a place they call ’Keybeck,’ far east of here,” Jojo said. “He arrived in this region twelve years ago, and I remember seeing him when I was a little boy. He traded furs and other things to men on the ships, and my father said he always had information about every deal that went on all around. That’s what I remember.”
Jojo paddled for a while, then continued, “For a short time, he traveled with old Antoine Bill, a Suquamish Metís who translated for the King George Men. When Antoine Bill finally got himself killed because he lied one too many times, that Marté fella tried doing translation in Chinook. But he wasn’t very good at most of the people’s words. So I am told he went on to other things.
“As for Cull, I don’t know much about that man except that he carries two big knives and eats his meat raw. He is mean like a poked dog. You saw him last night. I know about two gold diggers from a place called LaBama who argued with him one night. They both disappeared a few days later. They never came back for their grubstakes, so many thought he killed them. If so, nobody ever found their bodies. Some say he ate them.”
Emmy shuddered.
She felt for the pepperbox in her cloak, hoped the powder was dry. Furious at the inept, rule-bound Brit captain who had refused to send men, she ran her thumb over the hammer, seeking some assurance from the weapon.
She had come to understand the Americans’ reasons for declining. They might be facing down the Brits right now. Maybe that’s why the Brits hadn’t returned to their post at Fort Simpson.
She also thought about the first time she saw Pickett, and it strangely stirred her— but she could not afford to hold on to that thought . . . dismissed it with the feeling that she was stronger than him . . . but knew, insecure as she sensed he was at his core, that he was probably an efficient killer like so many of the military she had met over the years . . . and wished that she could have had George Pickett with them right now.
In the presence of killers, it didn’t matter if someone who was on your side was a good person, just that he was calm and competent.
She wished that Isaac had not gotten himself killed. That thought made her angry with him, and then, holding back a shiv-like piercing that went to her chest and caught her breath, she was angry with herself.
Isaac always had been so noble and so foolish—and so taken with her as he was that he always did what he thought she wanted. But he had not understood her, and that had kept her isolated in a way that added a blue dimension to everything she did, all year round, an enveloping wrap that couldn’t be broken by comforts or reassurances.
She thought about the conundrum that comes when one has reached the thin boundary between love and hatred, and how impatience bridged the gap between those two very deep emotions. She thought to herself how swiftly a person moved from the blindness of love and admiration to the clouded emotions of contempt and hatred.
She had never crossed over into hatred for Isaac in the way she had with her first husband. She just had grown tired of reassuring Isaac constantly and picking up after his messes, quietly accepting the societal dictum that gave all credit to the male in the relationship.
They had created an unacknowledged partnership, but he had never really given her equality in it. His pride had been too great to acknowledge it, even in private with her, and that, in its finality, was what she resented most in him.
She had accepted that with equanimity but, by the time he had left to fight Indians east of the mountains, she had come to an uneasy conclusion about the fairness of their relationship.
And when she was given the opportunity to manage the estate, she embraced it with a hungry vengeance, and it all prospered as it never had before.
She had been disappointed, she realized, when Isaac had returned. And things were different ever after that.
She thought about cowards like Tom Iserson, who had jumped out of the window that night, naked, leaving everyone behind. Fitting it was, that naked state, for the imbecile he was. Then he had the gall to tell people that he had “held the door to keep the killers at bay” while everyone else escaped.
She felt herself getting hot, and then the cold breeze evaporated the fluster. So many men were cowards like that—pathetic partners to women who had even less backbone. Fortunately, most of those partnerships did not survive for long out here, unprotected by the well-meaning conventions of a civilized society that believed there was a place for everyone.
As she paddled quietly, Emmy thought about this foolish fix she had gotten herself and Sarah into.
She watched Jojo and hoped he was as smart and skillful as he seemed. He was earnest and wise, far beyond his years, and had a keen instinct that allowed him to assess every situation quickly and correctly, yet he also had the manners to allow her to retain a sense of control.
She had learned by watching him and how he approached each decision and crisis, saw how he anticipated problems and found alternatives that averted crisis in the first place. She knew she could enhance that skill in herself and, if she survived, carry it forward in whatever new life she would create for herself afterward. After she achieved her driven mission to find Jacob before he was destroyed—and if she survived.
She thought about the last time she had seen Jacob, running from the savages, the same ones she was hoping to meet up with somehow. To make a fair trade . . . if they understood that.
She was applying a very quaint interpretation to that concept, she realized, and the reality was that it would be defined in the end by something deep down that most did not understand, an instinct that ran through everything around her—survival, with all negotiations bound together by hope on both sides of the bargain.
Understanding what the other side needed was the real problem.
And in this situation, she had brought material goods and gold, but doubted that was what the aborigines really were after. Was it hope for something beyond material gain? What was it they really wanted?
She shook her head and realized that a very simple set of hopes was the only bright thing that Marté had brought—with word that Jacob really might be at Three Spirits. For that, at least, she was thankful.
For a brief night, it had allowed her to nod asleep in an exhausted heap, briefly, but deeply with dreams about finding her family, as perfectly imperfect as they were together, the way they were the day before it was destroyed.
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Jojo knew she was worried.
“These two have not made a move, Missus Evers. Yet. But Marté is thinking about it.”
“Do you believe they will rob us?” Emmy asked.
“No. They don’t know what we carry. Marté thinks we are more valuable to them just as we are because he will try to become an adviser to the Northerners if they are there—to give them an advantage.”
“What type of advantage, Jojo?”
“He is thinking that when all offers have been put on the table, if an exchange does occur, if Jacob is there, he can find us for the Northerners and they can take Jacob back, kill me, and take you and Sarah.”
Emmy was quiet.
Jojo continued, “Marté is thinking he will get something from this and maybe it is safer to wait to see. Besides, he has whiskey to sell, and that will take up much of his time. It is after the exchange that will be the most dangerous. Getting you all back alive.”
They spoke no more for several hours.
Late that afternoon they were joined by a party in three other small cedar dugouts.
“Tsimshian,” said Jojo, who spoke to them briefly as they moved alongside and kept pace for a short distance before peeling off into a tributary.
Because he had wrapped Emmy and Sarah in blankets, covered their heads with reed knit hats, and darkened their faces with mud, they were not noticed, or at least the other canoeists paid no attention to them.
“They said Three Spirits is only a long half-day from here,” Jojo said, watching Marté and Cull pull to shore, presumably to camp. “We will be there in the morning if we make our camp here, but if we keep moving, we will be there after dark tonight.
Emmy watched Marté and Cull far up ahead. Jojo turned to her.
“That is what I think we should do,” he said. “Let Marté think we are camping downstream and then move ahead in the dark.”
He looked up into the sky.
“No moon tonight. That is good, but we will need to be careful.”
They pulled ashore and started as if to make camp.
Five hours later, quietly, carefully still-paddling against a slowly moving current, Jojo, Emmy, and Sarah passed the sleeping killers and moved upstream.
Within five more hours, they could see campfires and massive long houses.
They had entered Three Spirits.
Chapter Thirty-Five
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Anah and Jacob
Jacob tried to move, but when he did, the ropes that cinched his hands and feet together behind his back just got tighter, hurting him more.
He did not know where he was, and the cold ground seemed to move under him, undulating so that he felt like he would fall from the floor into the sky above.
As he opened his eyes, he saw objects lying next to him. They were familiar, but he did not know why. Was that his eagle’s beak? His ball of string? He heard barking and curse words and a coarse rattle.
Then his father came to him. He saw his shadow go by, and he held his breath. He wanted to call out for Isaac, but Isaac’s shadow just stayed there, behind him, shouting, out of reach.
And then his father was gone.
And when Jacob opened his eyes again, the things he had seen next to his face were gone too.
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Anticipating that Jacob would resist traveling, Klixuatan had again drugged the boy. Even then, perhaps because of a tenacious determination to remain in control, Jacob had resisted the drowsy submission that occurred with most captives when given the concoction. Instead, the drug made him delirious and combative.
Anah had Klixuatan bind the boy but would not let him increase the dose because he had seen other captives stop breathing when so treated. As he was, powerful as a little defiant wolverine, Jacob was too valuable as a possible source of power to waste.
So they kept him tightly bound again. And after the shaman and his woman tied Jacob’s feet and then his hands behind his back, Anah came to him with something to counter the boy’s own magic.
They spread out the contents that Jacob had in his pockets the night they had captured him. They had intentionally allowed him to keep these objects, watching for when he became dependent on them as grounding memories— and when they knew the boy was going to them to find reassurance, they stole them away.
&nb
sp; Then, when they knew he was in the murky depths of his drugged delirium, they laid the objects out again next to his face.
Next, they brought out the spirit to break him, if they could.
Anah had skinned and tanned the face and scalp of Isaac and wore it now as a mask. Standing behind the boy, he gestured for Klixuatan to keep the boy turned away. And then he began gesturing with big, bold, sweeping movements—a caricature of what Anah presumed would have been those of the boy’s father.
The cool leather of the bearded mask and hair formed to his face easily, and as soon as he put it on, Anah felt powerful. He knew that some of the magic of the white tyee was here for him now.
He sang and bellowed out white tyee words: “Hey!” “Me!” “You!” “Me-you!” “Mine” “Bastard” “Keep” “Me” “Powder” for several minutes and then stopped, hovering over the boy.
Then he backed out of the shelter.
Klixuatan watched Jacob that night. He told Anah that Jacob lay motionless but with a rapid pulse that told the shaman they had found the way to control him.
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They traveled in four small Kwakiutl canoes carrying their slaves south along the inland coast to the mouth of the river that would bring them east toward the Tsimshian. Except for Jacob, who remained bound, drugged, and hidden, each canoe held two warriors and two captives, all paddling so they moved swiftly.
On the second day upriver, they passed the totems of Ksi Amawaal’s summer camp, and by the fourth day, they saw signs of Three Spirits where the Tsimshian stayed during the winter.
The camp was filled with people, and Anah knew that most were not Tsimshian. Many were drunk. The trading would be easy, he thought. And he wanted to see this Ksi Amawaal and how he got his way.
Chapter Thirty-Six
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Pickett
The British have not yet dispositioned their forces, but my sources tell me that their move is imminent. Per your orders, we are now moved and are ensconcing into the best and highest ground available.
