Going Home

by Richard S. Wheeler

  Some evenings Nutmeg deliberately focused on Victoria, but she was shy as a field mouse around him and regarded him as some sort of rival, taking Skye into realms of science and white men’s learning of which she hadn’t the faintest comprehension. But his patience eventually prevailed, and she warmed to him.

  She had taken over the task of feeding Dolly and that strange yellow mutt, and that was no easy burden in a land increasingly harsh and volcanic. Yet, by day’s end, she usually had speared or shot some sort of vile meat: snakes, fowl, lizards, hares, chucks, once a kit fox, once a wounded coyote, and these morsels she divided between the dogs.

  Skye had stopped trying to chase off the yellow dog even though he ritually warned Victoria that the miserable beast would get them into trouble.

  “He’s a spirit-dog,” was all she ever said, and that shut him up properly.

  “When we get to Fort Vancouver, that’s the end of him,” he grumbled. “He does nothing but exploit you. At least Dolly, there, carries a pack for the professor. But that ribby devil’s nothing more than a parasite, taking what it can and giving nothing. I’ve met a few men in the mountains like that and usually they don’t last long or win any friends. I’ve seen trapping brigades drive such men out.”

  “He’s looking out for us,” she insisted.

  “He’ll betray us,” he retorted.

  Then one day the yellow dog went hunting and returned dragging a three-month-old antelope it had killed up on a bench somewhere above the Snake. This he laid at Victoria’s feet, circling wide around Skye, who watched hard-eyed and cold.

  The ugly, battle-scarred mutt had not ripped one bite out of the antelope but presented it whole to the Crow woman.

  She lifted her arms skyward and sang a warbling song of thanksgiving and praise, her back arched, her fingertips touching the sky, and Nutmeg knew she was blessing the yellow cur and thanking her gods.

  Then she reached out to touch the mutt, but it crabbed back violently and watched her with unblinking brown eyes.

  They were camping in a wash draining out of the north, with a few scrub cottonwoods in it and she hung the baby antelope from a limb and butchered it. Nutmeg doubted that there was more than ten pounds of usable meat in it. Victoria first fed the yellow dog, cutting prime flank meat for him, and then gave Dolly a good feed, and finally cooked the last of it for the three mortals present at that campfire.

  That night the mutt wiggled closer to the camp than it had ever done before. Dolly drifted over for a sniff and the two didn’t fight, so Nutmeg let them make their rapprochement. The Skyes had, willy-nilly, acquired a dog. That amused the professor. Skye was a force of nature, but he proved to be the loser of this contest.

  As the August days and weeks rolled by uneventfully except for an odd storm that boiled out of the north, an idea began to take form in Professor Nutmeg’s mind. The more he shaped it and tested it and argued it, the better he liked it.

  “Mister Skye,” he said. “I’ve been observing you almost as closely as I’ve been observing the flora and fauna here. I hope you don’t mind. What I see is just the sort of man and woman I need as assistants. You are naturalists without even knowing it. I have a great enterprise before me, and need help. I think I can arrange some funds from the estate of my friend Smithson. What I propose, sir, is that you become my guides and assistants. Together, sir, we shall advance science.”

  Skye stared at him, and then at unseen shores.

  twelve

  Skye did not say no, although that was what he was thinking.

  All that remained of the fire was a circle of embers and an occasional sniff of acrid cottonwood smoke. Below, trapped in a dark deep canyon, the Snake was sawing through volcanic rock. It was like the river of his own life, trapped between walls of black rock. He did not like this country. He didn’t much care for the west slope of the Rockies, or the arid lands stretching to the coastal ranges.

  The yellow mutt was out patrolling, sniffing the night winds, and Skye grudgingly admitted to himself that maybe the thing was performing a service after all.

  “You’re a man of exceptional ability,” Nutmeg said. “I saw that at once. Your American friends saw it, too, and promoted you. Hudson’s Bay Company sees it, and wants you. It’s gone to great lengths to get you.

  “You have intelligence and will and courage. There’s nothing to stop you if you wish to make something of your life. The Royal Navy only delayed the bloom. I suppose what I’m doing here is lifting your sights a bit. Showing you what lies beyond your horizons.

  “I have a grand passion, the botanical cataloging of this continent. I lecture at Harvard as a means to stay here, take time off now and then to plunge in again. But as hard as I might struggle, I’ll achieve in my lifetime only a fraction of what needs doing. I’ve been looking for a man to follow me; a man I can train in the field, an intelligent man, able and strong. A man to continue when I no longer can. I’ve been watching you, Mister Skye, and I think you’re the chap.”

  “I’m not educated.”

  “Oh, yes you are. You’re a man acquainted with books, comfortable with ideas, but practical. You’ll take over from me some day, sir, and there’ll be some royal recognition: Order of the Garter, maybe knighthood. You have all that in you, and all it takes is a nudge from someone to awaken you to it.”

  Skye eyed Victoria, her face lit by the last orange glow of the coals, caught in a darkness of knowledge. She sat crosslegged beside him, listening to things of which she had no grasp. There were chasms between her world and the world Nutmeg was opening to them around a faltering fire this nippy August night. He wondered whether she could bridge that chasm. Whether she would be miserable in England and pine away until she died. For now, she was keeping silent. Sometime soon she would pepper questions at him, but he knew he couldn’t really explain much to a woman who had never seen a white man’s city and could not grasp what lay within a library.

  “All that’s fine, Professor,” he said. “But not bloody likely.”

  He deliberately used the vulgarity to emphasize the gulf that lay between them. Professor Nutmeg seemed to ignore it, but Skye knew he had drawn the linguistic line between the professor’s gentility and whatever it was that Skye had become.

  Nutmeg shifted to another tack. “You know, my friend, I need someone to keep me out of trouble. Botany is my passion, and I sometimes forget all else and ignore the dangers of the wilds, and the tribesmen, and the weather. That’s why I need you. It’s a blindness in me. You’re an experienced man in this unsettled land, but at the same time you’ve a keen intelligence and a grasp of what I’m about.

  “I think I can get some funds. My old friend James Smithson died a few years ago, and gave his considerable fortune to his nephew. But he also gave me a letter urging the nephew, Henry Hungerford, to fund any worthwhile project. Quite a man, Smithson. Oxford, best chemist and mineralogist in Europe. A passion for science.”

  Skye did not share that passion, nor did he intend to work for any man without wilderness sense. He would make a poor botanist, anyway. He was not a sorter by nature, nor a collector, nor organizer. The things that awakened his interests were more spiritual and even aesthetic. There had been sunrises, quiet and still and sublime, that he would never forget, craggy mountain prospects that were etched in his soul, moments when he sensed he was not alone and not abandoned, and seemed to hike effortlessly a foot above the earth. He hadn’t a single file drawer in his mind, but sometimes he had a yen to paint. Could he ever capture the ephemera of the wilds on canvas?

  “I appreciate your interest, mate,” he rumbled. “I’ve other plans. Visit my family, then come back here and work for a fur company. That’s what I want to do.”

  Nutmeg absorbed that for a moment. “If you should change your mind …”

  “Time to crawl between my robes,” Skye said.

  They began their evening ritual. Nutmeg always unrolled blankets at some distance from the Skyes—too far, Skye thought, but it
was a sensitive gesture. This man was not so naive after all. Skye and Victoria were given the privacy they sometimes needed. Dolly had taken to shuttling from one bed to the other, and sometimes Skye found himself pinned in, or the dog lying on his ever-ready Hawken beside him. The yellow cur never came close.

  There was no such thing as safety in the wilds, and Skye slept lightly, a part of his mind sorting out the faint night-whispers.

  Victoria said nothing. Tomorrow, when Nutmeg drifted out of earshot in hot pursuit of a burning bush or the Ten Commandments graven on a petal, she would approach Skye crossly, wrestling with the pain of her ignorance and afraid of losing him if he drifted back to his own world. And then he would reassure her that he had no plan to do that.

  Nutmeg’s proposition intrigued him. There was an income in it; a sense of building something enduring. But he would probably commit to Hudson’s Bay Company. He tossed in his blankets, knowing that the matter would not be settled until he had a long talk with the most formidable man in the Northwest, Dr. McLoughlin.

  “You gonna do this?” Victoria whispered.

  “I’m thinking on it.”

  “I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about.”

  “You’d pick it up fast in London.”

  “You do what you want. White man things. Maybe I’ll go visit my family.”

  Maybe she should. Maybe this would tear them apart. Their union might work in the wilderness, but would it survive in London? She would be treated as a great curiosity. She might have trouble finding friends there. On the other hand, maybe she would take London by storm. The trappers loved her; why not Englishmen? After he had completed his service to Hudson’s Bay, would she enjoy life in London, his home but not hers?

  The more he wrestled with it all, the more perplexed he became. Go back to the world he knew, and work as a trapper? Victoria would be happiest if he did that. Work for Hudson’s Bay? He could do that. She wouldn’t like it much. Work for Nutmeg? She would soon find herself excluded no matter how hard Skye tried to draw her into the botany.

  He had no answers and no wisdom to help him along. He’d never had an employment opportunity before; years of slavery aboard ships of war, then working in a trapping brigade, glad to find some way to feed and shelter himself. Now he felt bewildered.

  “You gonna flop around like a fish on the grass or let me sleep?”

  “Stuff on my mind.”

  “You want what I think?”

  “Yes.”

  She didn’t answer, but instead pulled herself close to him, and he felt her arms draw him tight, and then he felt her cheek and it was wet.

  “You go home,” she said. “You’re a man with no people. I got people, everyone else got people. You got to go back to the people who make you.”

  She was offering herself, and their love, as a sacrifice to him. He had no response except to hug her back. What she said was true. He needed his people. He desperately wanted to see his father. He was curious about that. What was his father like now? He remembered a demanding man who didn’t have enough time for a boy; a man sometimes testy and usually kinder to his sisters than to him. He remembered being anxious to please his father, and a little afraid, and often feeling he never could win the man’s esteem.

  But he also remembered his father’s confidence in him, and the paternal gaze that rested upon him with pride. His father had not been a harsh man, but not given to much affection, either. Now Skye was a man, inured to hardship, independent, bruised by a painful life. He would be a man visiting a man, not a dutiful son visiting a father …

  “You’re right,” he said. “A man needs a country.”

  He felt the hotness of her tears on his stubbled cheek and knew her anguish. She felt out of place in his world, the world of the English, the people across the Great Waters to the east. She understood the gulf and was immolating herself and her love so that he might return to his home.

  “Come with me and see my country,” he said. “They’ll not be friendly, but your people weren’t very friendly to me. That’s how the world works. Remember how it was for me in Rotten Belly’s village?”

  “Yes,” she said. Skye had been scorned by most, and derided by the young warriors. Only an old shaman granted him any honor.

  “It’ll be like that for you.”

  “I’ll go to this England if you want me to,” she whispered.

  The mutt had crept close, watching in the murky darkness, irritating Skye. Then it growled, so low that Skye could barely hear its throaty menace.

  “Sonofabitch,” Victoria said, throwing off the four-point blanket.

  “What?” said Skye, irked at the dog for wrecking this moment.

  Victoria grabbed her bow and strung it with one swift flex. Then she snatched an arrow from her quiver.

  The mutt growled again.

  “Goddammit, get up, Skye!”

  He wallowed around, finding his sheathed Hawken, and extracted it. Damned yellow dog, starting a ruckus.

  He heard a swift confusion of sound, a low voice, the snort of nervous horses, and then the sharp clatter of hooves. Skye sprang up, checked the load on his Hawken, peered into a thick gloom looking for a target.

  The rattle of hooves diminished. The horses were running straight back from the river and into the arid benches to the north.

  He ran after them, seeing nothing but smelling the dust driven into the air by the hooves.

  Some damned Indians had stolen the horses. He had watered them and then picketed them on some good bunch grass not ten yards from their camp. He found the place and found the butts of the picket ropes, which had been cut.

  “What was all that, eh?” asked Nutmeg.

  “Horses gone,” Skye said.

  “Stolen?”

  “They didn’t walk off by themselves.”

  “Long walk to Fort Vancouver,” Nutmeg said.

  “I’ll get our horses back,” Skye said. He had done it before and he would do it again. And maybe in ways that would shock the genteel professor.

  thirteen

  Skye plucked up the Hawken. The sooner he started after the thieves, the better.

  “Who were they?” Nutmeg asked.

  “Any damned one,” Skye replied. “This is Shoshone country. But this river, it could be anyone. Who knows?”

  Angrily he scanned the skies, seeing a quarter moon dodging silver-edged clouds. It wasn’t the blackest of nights, but there wasn’t enough moonlight to help him. It would be too gloomy to see hoofprints, moccasin prints, or much of anything else. He would have to track the thieves mostly by intuition and smell. Horses left an acrid odor and manure behind them.

  He reckoned it was still three hours to dawn.

  “I’ll go with you,” Nutmeg volunteered.

  “Professor, this is war. Stealing horses is a way of fighting enemies. You’d better let me handle it.”

  “How can one man deal with a war party?”

  “I’ll never know until I see what I’m up against.”

  “If you can’t recover the nags, you’ll not get to Fort Vancouver in time.”

  “Not before that ship sails,” Skye said.

  He watched Victoria tug the pack and gear under the lip of the ledge behind their camp. She would stay and take care of thirteen Nutmeg and guard their gear. She would know how to hide herself and Nutmeg if she had to.

  She turned to Skye, saying nothing, and touched his hand. That was her goodbye and blessing. They had long since come to the point where they didn’t need to say much to each other. He couldn’t tell her when he would be back. The thieves were only a few minutes ahead, but on horse, and minutes could be an eternity.

  “Professor, if Victoria asks you to do something, you do it. She’ll try to keep you safe.”

  “Oh, I’ll just be collecting samples.”

  Skye’s response was sharp. “If she says you can, mate.”

  There was no answer. He hiked into the gloom, across arid benchland on the right ba
nk of the Snake, directed more by intuition than sign. He would heed the old tracker’s wisdom: if there was no sign to guide you, think about where your quarry is going and head that way. Distant in the moonlight was a vague notch. He would go there.

  A mile out, he discovered the yellow mutt dragging along behind. A rage built in him and he hunted for rocks to throw, but he knew there was nothing he could do. The hound would simply follow just out of range of his arm. He knew he ought to be grateful: the damned dog had furtively awakened him, growling in his ear instead of barking, and that had given Skye the warning he should have heeded. But he couldn’t bring himself to thank the miserable cur.

  It would be tough without horses. He’d walked before and would walk again. But being put afoot by some damned savages in some damned wilderness, and being forced to abandon the gear needed to survive—that was hell.

  He trudged quietly through the pillowed darkness while the pale moon swung lower in the sky, and vanished behind the drifting night-clouds now and then, plunging him into utter gloom. Still he persevered, fueled by his own fury.

  After an hour he struck lava country and knew that unless he was careful, the knife-edged stone would slice his moccasins to bits. But he was hiking along a dry watercourse that had butchered its way through the black rock that tumbled upward on both sides of him, the jumbled volcanic debris spearing the black sky.

  This was ambush country, and Skye began to sweat. One warrior with a bow and arrow could wipe out pursuit. He wondered whether he would die suddenly in this remote place, his body never to be found by his wife or anyone else.

  But he abolished the thought from mind. He was frightened, yes, but he harnessed his fear to good purpose, studying the jumble of rock, his senses so whetted that he could almost peer around the next bend. He would not be a coward, dying a thousand times before his death.

  The cur stayed ten yards ahead. Skye raged at the mutt. The yellow dog would find something, bark, and give Skye away. Once in a while the dog paused, sniffed, and slowly slinked forward. He wasn’t a proper dog, slinking like some back-alley thug. He was a sneaking, rotten dog, ugly and scarred, with no manners. Skye knew he could probably kill the stalking animal with one good toss of his Bowie knife, but he didn’t do that, either.