The Snake River

by Win Blevins

  That was the problem with Mr. O’Flaherty. The man was a wild hair. Dr. Full had a subtle eye for people, and he was seldom wrong about them. The man O’Flaherty would not bend.

  The question was: Did it matter?

  O’Flaherty would take them to the Willamette and be gone, gone to his Indian sluts or into his cups or taken by his juvenile yearning for adventure. Who cared where he went?

  If he wanted to struggle with Dr. Full for supremacy within the traveling band of the chosen, why not? It would be amusing. Maybe even an Irish sot could learn something.

  “No wagons.” Flare had to make sure of it.

  “Agreed,” said Dr. Full. “Will you help me trade them?”

  Flare nodded. “And I will be in charge.”

  “Yes.”

  “That means I choose the route, say when we set out and when we stop, choose the watches, choose the fords—the lot.”

  “Yes.” The fellow didn’t like having it put to him strong. Flare didn’t blame him.

  “Listen, man, when we deal with Indians, you and all your outfit must follow orders. If any man reaches for a weapon, a lot of hair might be lost.”

  “I understand.”

  “It’ll be a thousand dollars,” Flare said.

  “I’m prepared for that.”

  “I’ll need some in advance. Truth to tell, I’m flat broke.”

  “So we heard,” Dr. Full said.

  “Two hundred here, three hundred at Fort Hall, five hundred at the Willamette.”

  “At the mission,” Dr. Full corrected

  “Aye.” Flare held out a hand. “You bet.” They shook.

  That phrase, “you bet” was a fine American affirmative. Flare liked it.

  Dr. Full disappeared into a wagon and came back with a handful of gold coins. He handed them over.

  “I’ve business at the fort,” Flare said.

  “You won’t get drunk on us?” Dr. Full asked.

  “No more in this lifetime,” Flare said simply.

  Full just turned away.

  The trouble with one like that, Flare reflected, is that you can’t win. He’ll just come back meaner.

  Chapter Two

  “Would you like to hear the story of the putrefied forest?” asked Flare. The kids clamored for it. Miss Jewel rolled her eyes comically. “‘Putrefied’ is mountain-man funny for ‘petrified,’ children,” she said.

  “Mr. O’Flaherty,” said Dan doubtfully, “is this true?”

  “You bet,” said Flare.

  This was the time Flare liked. They’d made their miles. In fact, he had this greenhorn outfit whipped into pretty good shape, into the routine without complaint, and even with pride. So at night, before he took the first watch (he also took the last), they could enjoy the campfires and his yarns.

  What kind of mountain man would he be if he couldn’t stretch the kids’ ears with twenty years’ worth of tall tales? Even if they seemed a spiritless bunch of kids?

  “Us beavers was riding up on the Snake River, across that malpais. Lava-flow country, terrible stuff. Hit was summer, and we wuz froze for meat.” Flare liked to mimic American backwoods talk. He could mimic anybody’s words, or their walk. “Over there ain’t buffler country. You’ll see when we get thar. Old Gabe and me, there was, and Black Harris, and Mr. Skye, and three or four other hosses as know what way the stick floats.”

  He looked merrily at Miss Jewel. She got a kick out of good yarns.

  “Well, we rode up Henry’s Fork and into some mountains. If you went a long way on that ways, you came to whar was the boiling springs, as I told you about, and whar the water shoots into the sky and you can smell the sulfurs of hell down below.

  “As we come into these mountains, it turned peculiar, like you never see in that country. For half a day we rode in a fog, so’s we could scarce see whar we was headed. Finally we got to feeling lost and made camp.

  “When we woke in the mornin’, it was a puzzlement such as you never did see. We was in a hole, open meadows surrounded by forested hills, and this child noticed right off everthing was quiet-like, no sound at all. That’s onnatural in the woods. And it was onnatural still—seemed like the grasses didn’t wave nor the leaves flutter in the wind. But I thought nothing of it. Just ain’t no wind, I told myself.

  “This child walked down to the little crick to fetch water, and the water was froze. Not just ice on the surface but froze solid to the bottom. In the middle o’ August.

  “I goes back to tell Old Gabe, and I sees that hoss holding offhand on somethin’. There’s the elk, right close, only a couple of hundred steps away and in the open, an easy mark for Old Gabe. He let fly with Old Bullthrower, and right back comes the loudest THOCK! you ever did hear, like an ax hitting a tree. Echoed everwhere. The elk just stood there like nothing happened.

  “‘Old Bullthrower don’t miss,’ said Gabe suspiciously. He throwed down and nailed that elk agin. THOCK! Echoes. Elk standing up handsome. Gabe began to look around like the place was full o’ haunts.

  “Right then Mr. Skye hollered out from the edge of the woods. He’d walked up there and took his wiping stick in case he saw a fool hen, and he did see one, and whacked it, and it broke the stick. Oh, was he a-hollerin’.

  “Gabe and this child and another’n or two run over there, and you wouldn’t believe it if’n you didn’t see it. Mr. Skye, with the biggest chest and arms I ever saw, was whomping and whomping away, till his wiping stick was splinters. That fool hen was stone, solid stone.”

  Miss Jewel put in, “That’s what petrified means, children, turned to stone.”

  “And hit really do happen, don’t it, Miss Jewel?”

  “Certainly,” she said.

  “Wall, then all us hosses begun to look around good. Everthing was putrefied. The trees was stone, their leaves was stone. That elk was putrefied solid, you could’ve broke your head on it. The birds was putrefied. Finally I figured out that even their songs were putrefied, and that’s why it was so onnatural silent.

  “Now Old Gabe, he’s some, he’s seen everthing and remembered it all, but he’s superstitious-like. So that hoss says, ‘Boys, let’s get out’n this queer place.’

  “We was packed and saddled and ridin’ before Gabe could cuss at us. But we couldn’t see how we come in through the fog, on account of the putrefied ground showed no trail. So we headed for the divide on the north. When we got to the crest, there was a chasm half a mile wide, with a river far down in the bottom. We rode east and west and all around, and everwhere was that chasm. Seemed that river run in a circle, penning us in that putrefied forest.

  “This nigger was about to say there was some way out, we damn well got in, when Old Gave said he had an idea.

  “He backed his horse up a little and galloped straight toward the chasm. We thought he was gone loco. Comin’ to the edge, he spurred good, and horse and rider just flew over the chasm like a kite in a fine wind. Clear on across. And then waved to us to come on over.

  “Well, we did. Never had such a feelin’, afore or since. Mountain men soarin’ like eagles.

  “As we rode off, this child says to Gabe, ‘How’d you know?’

  “‘Figgered it out,’ he says. ‘The law of gravity was putrefied, too.’

  “You bet.”

  At first Miss Jewel thought fleetingly it was the glow of the sun setting. She looked up at the real sun, still two hours high. She turned every which way. And saw.

  The fiery glow on the crest of the hill ahead wasn’t the sun. It was flickering, crawling down the wind like a red worm, bright and malignant.

  “Prairie fire,” Mr. O’Flaherty said softly.

  Cold went through her like lightening.

  She looked sideways at him. Mr. O’ Flaherty stared hard at the flames, in good view now on the crest of the hill and sweeping this way. He looked to the right into other hills, to the left toward the Platte, back toward the flames. He was erect, motionless, seemingly calm. She could see calculations runn
ing through his eyes.

  “The river!” he shouted, and started loping downhill. Following his example, the rest of them kept their horses to a canter, in no great hurry.

  At the river he rode forward toward a bend, but also toward the flames. In faith, Miss Jewel followed.

  Below the bend stretched a gravel bar. Mr. O’Flaherty went onto it, into the shallow water downstream of it, and splashed his horse all the way across the river, knee deep to the rider. As the others crossed, he rode back and yelled at the packhorses to make them move along.

  On the far bank Miss Jewel suddenly discovered she’d been holding her breath. She exploded it out, and a tear or two almost came with it. She’d been badly frightened.

  Riding up, Mr. O’ Flaherty gave her one of his mad Irish grins.

  “Are prairie fires common?” she huffed.

  “Sure and they are when Indians set ’em, you bet.”

  “Indians?” sputtered Dr. Full.

  “Indians,” Flare repeated quietly. “Let’s camp on that bench!” he hollered to everyone, pointing just above.

  “We don’t want to camp with Indians close by,” said Dr. Full.

  “That’s just what we want to do,” said Flare. They needed to get set, and he had no time for fools.

  “But—”

  “Dr. Full,” Flare said menacingly, “get your mules unloaded, your horses picketed, and your tent up. Now!”

  The man’s face flushed ripe red, but to his credit he went and did it.

  Flare started getting the gear arranged in a line to lie down behind. A poor defense, but better than none.

  “Will we be able to hold ’em off, Mr. O’Flaherty?” It was Sheppers Smith, the fellow Flare thought of as Dr. Full the younger, sounding melodramatic. Flare nodded toward the gear to be stacked.

  “Won’t have to, lad. They’re playin’, not fightin’.”

  “That fire wasn’t any play!” He grabbed an armload and set to work.

  “Aye, lad, it was but play. They knew what we’d do when they set it. Big trouble, if they’d meant to make it, would have come quieter. Naturally, if we’d been foolish enough to let the mules run off, they’d have accepted the gift.”

  “So what now?” It was Alan Wineson, the addled blacksmith, pitching in, too. Dr. Full came up behind. Maybe the big man wasn’t ashamed to soil his fine clothes.

  “They’ll be along tonight or tomorrow morning. Expecting some presents.”

  “Swine,” said Dr. Full. “Thieves.”

  “Don’t know as I’d call ’em thieves,” said Mr. O’Flaherty. He lifted. Stacked. Lifted.

  “Maybe you wouldn’t.”

  Flare ignored the slight. “Dr. Full, you say your object is to create a colony at first, and then a real settlement, and finally to settle the Willamette valley thoroughly.”

  “It is. We will not merely preach the Gospel but teach the white way.”

  “Takes a lot of bodies and souls to do that.” Lift and stack. “The whole lot traipsing across this trail. Killing the game, drinking the water, burning the firewood.”

  He stopped and looked at Dr. Full. “This is their land, Dr. Full.”

  “They have no title,” he said.

  Flare suppressed a chuckle and surveyed the work. It would do. He didn’t expect to need it, and if he did, it would do. “No, Indians don’t deal in titles, Dr. Full. But it’s theirs. When we take a little, we’ll pay a little. And feel grateful for the bargain.”

  “Can we stand them off with this?” Full gestured at the barricade.

  “No. We’ll be outmanned.” Maybe not in raw numbers, but in numbers who could fight. “But they won’t attack a defended position. Unless they’re drunk.”

  Drunk was what they were. Drunk descending to hung over.

  They were Arapahos, eight of them, young men, surely out to steal horses from the Crows. That had more cachet than stealing horses from Americans, who were easy targets. But Americans would do, especially if the youths had gone against the Crows and were headed home empty-handed.

  They came a half hour before dark. Flare didn’t like it. Clearly they meant to camp with the whites, damned dangerous in their state of inebriation.

  “Disgusting,” Dr. Full said bitterly, like that was the worst of it.

  “Sit on my left,” said Flare. “Smoke the pipe when it’s passed to you. And no matter what happens, keep your mouth shut.”

  Flare got out his pipe, sat and invited his guests to sit, and took his time filling the bowl while he thought.

  Flare had a lifelong thirst himself, and fellow feeling for another man with thirst. But he didn’t believe the Indians and firewater mixed. He’d given Indians whiskey when he traded for the Northwest Company those first two years, but not when he traded for Hudson’s Bay Company. The Bay didn’t believe in it. Which was the only thing that bunch of Scottish and British bastards got right. Whiskey ruined Indians. Flare had seen brother kill brother, and father rape daughter, all because of drunkenness. A Flathead friend had even broken Flare’s nose in a drunken stupor.

  Ten years ago, drunk, he’d quit the Bay and come over to the Americans. Trouble was, the Americans gave Indians whiskey. Good way to compete with the Bay, they said. It was, if you didn’t give a damn for consequences. Some outfit had given these Arapahos whiskey yesterday, and today Flare and his lot were facing the consequences.

  Maybe after a generation the Americans would learn. It took the Bay longer than that. If the God-cursed fur trade lasted another generation.

  So he decided. He would give these Arapahos a little whiskey—there wasn’t any way out of it. But he had a little trick to make it safer.

  He lit the pipe. He watched the smoke rise. In English, translating into sign language, he offered the pipe to Mother Earth and Father Sky to the West, where the thunder lives, the North, from where the cleansing winds come, the East, home of the dawn, and the South, where we are always looking.

  This was always a solemn moment for Flare. He didn’t believe anything about it—those cursed with a Catholic education believe little they’re told ever again—but you didn’t have to believe in the earth and sky. They were terms of your life. And it was a ritual he used to say something. With smoke he honored the earth he walked on, the sky he lived under, the four directions in which he wandered. By sharing the pipe with fellow human beings he promised truthfulness and goodwill.

  Then he passed the pipe in the ritual manner, and each man smoked in silence. Flare hoped no one noticed the look of distaste on Dr. Full’s face when he put his mouth to the stem.

  When the smoke was done, Flare gave them a little tobacco, a few strands of beads, and some cloth. He spoke his friendship, of his appreciation for being able to cross the country of the Arapaho on his way to where the white people lived by the big water, of his pleasure in smoking with these men.

  The leader simply said, “Awerdenty.” It was the trapper and Indian mangling of the Taos word for whiskey.

  Flare was offended at the man’s bad manners, and distressed at his abasement. But it would not do to give any sign of unhappiness. Instead he told the man that this was a group of Christians who believed whiskey was bad for all men. He himself had given whiskey to many Indians, and his heart was low because it hurt his friends. He asked his new friends, these Arapahos, to drink no whiskey. He himself would drink no more whiskey as long as he walked the earth.

  “Awerdenty,” the man said, crudely, and perhaps dangerously.

  Flare would make one last try. He started out sincere and turned into a terrible hypocrite. As he spoke, Flare developed an epic thirst, the thirst of a sailor surrounded by water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink. Flare had tasted a dram or two before he left Ireland, 1814 it was, but he’d come to love drink in Montreal. Brandy in particular. And after he learned truly to love it, to take it to his bosom like the wife he never had, he was plenty fond of even Indian whiskey. He hated to think, even now, what ingredients he put into the trade whi
skey. Tobacco was the most pleasant, snakes’ heads the least.

  Now he could feel the glow in his veins, like letting a heavy glass with a candle inside warm your hands on a cold night. He imagined the brandy glass once more warm in his hand and lifted to his eyes, and the yellow light in its center like a will-o’-the-wisp. When you chased that will-o’-the-wisp, when you let the whiskey roar through your veins, you were witty, you were wise, you were strong and long-lived as gods, and damn all.

  Thirsting, he made himself finish his little preachment on temperance to these Indians, but couldn’t remember what he’d said. His palms were sweaty with want.

  “Awerdenty,” the leader said, and Flare knew that was the last time.

  “All right,” Flare said, “whiskey.”

  He had to give Dr. Full credit, the man didn’t open his mouth in front of the Indians, not even when Flare promised them whiskey. Sure and he took that as a privilege to go on and on about it now.

  “O’Flaherty, you’ll get us all killed!”

  That was merely the most moderate of Full’s statements. He mentioned that he didn’t know Flare had brought whiskey, as though it would be possible to get on without it. He insisted he would have forbidden it—he thought those kegs were water. He made dire predictions, caroming from rape to torture to postmortem mutilation in delicate areas.

  Wonderful how these pork-eaters believed their own scary stories. Wonderful how they kept their nerve except when they needed it. Their manners likewise.

  Flare had told the Arapahos naught but that they would get the whiskey in the morning, when the white people could get gone. They growled, but they understood. Indians regarded drunkenness as a license to do anything, anything at all, because they weren’t responsible. Nor would you get more than a sympathetic look when they sobered up and found out they’d maimed you or your son. They knew why Flare wanted to get clear first.

  They watched when Flare and Sheppers Smith began to dig. Flare told the others they’d have to trade off with the two—it would take hours into the night, and they had only the two shovels. He even made Dr. Full do his fair share. Parky Jones worked cheerfully, but tired fast. Sheppers pitched in, and Alan Wineson used the blacksmith muscles with a will. The three teenage lads did well, as much as they could, especially Dr. Full’s eldest stepson, Dan. Flare excused only the little boys.