Going Home

by Richard S. Wheeler

  Those were gentle words and arrived unaccustomed.

  And so the professor found himself periodically sitting on Skye’s horse, conserving his energy. From that high vantage point he saw occasional flora he would have missed, and Skye always obliged him while he plucked up something or other and made some notes and a swift sketch.

  Nutmeg had come to admire Skye. The man never complained, never relaxed his vigilance, looked constantly for hiding places now that they were virtually defenseless, and most importantly, tried to accommodate the professor’s every botanical need. The more Nutmeg talked to Skye, the more he discovered an emerald waiting for a good cutting and polishing. This was no ordinary wilderness ruffian but a man who might yet serve the Crown and bring glory to himself and to his native England.

  Nothing more had been said about Nutmeg’s proposal, but Nutmeg knew that Skye was weighing it as an option if the Hudson’s Bay arrangement fell through. Nutmeg began to see his guide as a junior partner, a man who, with a few books and some field observation, might make a first-rate naturalist.

  Whenever the well-worn trail departed from the river, Victoria patrolled close to the water where game might be. But she found nothing. She tried her luck on a hare, but it fled too fast for her arrows, and she made no meat that day. That bad day she lost two arrows.

  They were in serious trouble and weakening daily. Were it not for the strong horses they might have no hope at all.

  Then one morning they discovered Victoria sitting her horse dead ahead, waiting for them. When they reached her she pointed.

  A mile or so ahead they saw the faintest plume of smoke. It apparently rose from the south bank but they could not say for sure. Maybe succor, maybe trouble.

  “I will go look,” she said. “You come a little way and wait.”

  She rode ahead, gaining ground on them while they walked slowly behind. Nutmeg was on foot, although he no longer had the strength to walk much at all. Skye had let him put his backpack on the packhorse, perched on a mound of equipment, but he preferred that the professor hike if at all possible.

  Skye settled them in thick reeds close to the river and waited.

  “Sorry, mate. I’m unarmed and all we can do is hide,” he said. “That’s the first rule anyway. Never confront if you can hide.”

  Dolly sat down beside him, panting and gaunt. Skye’s yellow cur settled a yard from Skye and stared. The cur had an odd quality about him: he rarely took his gaze away from Skye, but seemed to focus on the man constantly. So far, no one had named him, and Skye simply called him the mutt.

  Victoria materialized from the riverbank.

  “It is a fishing village,” she said. “Across the river. A stream comes in there from the south. They saw me and some are coming now. We go meet them, yes?”

  There would be food if all went well.

  Skye brightened visibly. He mounted slowly, while the professor collected his walking stick. They started down the trail once again. Before them, half a mile off, a party of the Shoshones awaited them. Water dripped from their ponies, and that suggested a ford, probably just upstream from the village and the confluence.

  A dozen honey-fleshed men on horseback watched them. They were nearly naked, wearing only breechclouts. But they bristled with bows and arrows, lances, war clubs, hatchets, and one of them had a musket and powder horn.

  Skye lifted his hand and they lifted theirs. He rode right up to them, and then his fingers began to work. Nutmeg wondered how a few signs could convey much, but apparently they did. One of the Shoshones addressed Victoria, and she responded in her own tongue. Skye dismounted, went back to his packhorse, dug out a twist of tobacco and some jingle bells, and handed the twist to the headman and a jingle bell to each of the others. They smiled and escorted the Skyes and Nutmeg to the village. They crossed a shallow ford at a wide point, and then splashed across the small tributary, and walked in. One of the Indians gave Nutmeg a lift over both fords and deposited him on the far banks where a great crowd of silent Shoshones had congregated. The camp was located in a ravine where a river debouched into the Snake.

  “I told ’em we’re hungry and would trade some good things. They have plenty of salmon. Told ’em we’re all going to Fort Vancouver. Told ’em you’re a great wise man among the whites and a healer with herbs. They’ll want to see your samples. Probably bring you some.”

  “But Mister Skye, I’m not a healer.”

  “It’s the closest thing I could think of to say about you, mate.”

  “They’ll want me to heal them!”

  “No, you tell ’em you want to learn their secrets.”

  Nutmeg thought Skye had pushed truth beyond its limits but remained silent about that. What would these people know of academics and naturalists and science?

  Their escorts led them through a large village, mostly consisting of buffalohide lodges, but there were other lodges of thatched reeds as well. These were people of medium build and height, many of the women dressed in traders’ cloth.

  “I’d guess these are the Malad River Snakes—one of two bands south of the Snake River,” Skye said. “And I’d guess this is the Bruneau, up from the south. It cuts through some canyons to get here.”

  For once Nutmeg didn’t much care.

  “I need food,” he muttered.

  “We’ll get it. Some ceremony first. They’ll welcome us and after that I’ll dicker.”

  The Snakes weren’t strong on ceremony. A headman spoke to the assembled villagers. At one point their gazes all rested on Nutmeg, and he wondered what was being said about them.

  Victoria responded in her Absaroka tongue, which was translated to the Snake tongue.

  “Crows and Snakes are mostly old friends,” Skye explained. “Some Crow women live here. It’s hard to describe Snakes. They’re always shifting around, switching bands. Some are like Plains Indians, living on buffalo, some not. These are mostly fishing people.”

  The sight of thousands of salmon drying on makeshift racks, and the smell of salmon stew in dozens of kettles dizzied the professor.

  “Food, Mister Skye, before I faint.”

  “They’ll feed us in their own good time, mate. I told ’em you’re looking for herbs that heal, and I imagine you’ll be hearing from plenty of ’em.”

  “Food, Mister Skye.”

  Dolly and the yellow cur stole fish from the racks, but the Snakes just laughed.

  “You tell them what a fine people they are and how you want to learn from them,” Skye said.

  Nutmeg did, while Victoria and others transformed his thoughts into things the Snakes would understand.

  Then the guests were led to a salmon feast and Nutmeg abandoned spiritual pleasures for the sensual.

  sixteen

  Skye, Victoria, and Professor Nutmeg tarried for two days in the Snake village. The Skyes had endured starving times in the mountains during the terrible winters, but Nutmeg hadn’t, and now he could scarcely stop wolfing any food at hand.

  Their hosts fed them bountifully, and with each meal Skye reciprocated with gifts from his trading supplies, mercifully plentiful in the wake of the rendezvous. He had knives, awls, fire steels and flints, vermilion and foofaraw for the women. With each exchange, the potlatch grew more lavish: Skye’s larder swelled to include pine nuts traded from the Paiutes to the south, a fish-type pemmican, mounds of sun-dried salmon shredded and sealed in gut; yucca fruit, wild onions, jerky from the meat of mountain sheep, antelope fat rendered and packed in gut, and all sorts of desiccated roots and berries, the half of which he didn’t know, all of which lifted Victoria’s spirits.

  Skye loaded these gustatory treasures into his panniers knowing how fast they would vanish. His burdens had expanded to include two mutts and a pilgrim, five mouths in all. He ached for a beaver trap, just one, knowing that it could be used to catch all sorts of cur cuisine and stewpot meat while he slept, but he could not talk any of the Snake men out of theirs. So he faced six hundred miles of travel with mou
ths to feed and no way, save for Victoria’s arrows, to make meat.

  But Skye was not the cynosure of the village. From the time Professor Nutmeg greeted the day by scraping away his blond beard to the time he rolled into his stained blankets, the Snakes crowded about him as if he had descended from Valhalla. They came to behold his leaf collection and his sketches, and he patiently turned one page after another, showing them well-wrought drawings of plants they instantly recognized. He showed them his samples, carefully pressed between absorbent pages, and they marveled at this amazing and novel sight.

  Then undreamed-of fortune fell to him. Shyly at first, the Snake women and children presented various species to him. Many were items he could but little use, having been torn from the earth in pieces and without any caring about their location or the neighboring species. But then a matron presented him with a whole yucca that was new to him, and showed him how they made soap from its roots. With Victoria’s help he managed to learn where it grew. He sketched it while the Snakes watched diligently, seeing the graphite pencil miraculously reproduce the yucca on paper. Then he measured the plant, took notes, and pressed one of its spiky leaves between his papers to preserve it, but with little success.

  Whatever he lacked by way of knowledge of the Snakes, he made up for with innate courtesy and good cheer, so that much of the daily life of the village slowed and people gathered about him.

  That suited Skye fine. It was time for a rest. The horses cropped good grass with the Snake herd. The dogs gorged themselves and snoozed. The yellow cur stole fish, ate until bloat set in, and then rolled onto his back, four paws aimed toward the four winds of heaven. But whenever the cur awakened, it followed Skye as if it were heaven-sent to guard him, his new benefactor.

  Skye scarcely knew what to make of that. Dogs were new to him. His London family had none. The Royal Navy had none that he knew of, though an occasional admiral might own one. And his entire experience with dogs was confined to those wretches that lived off the bands of Plains tribes, gorging offal during hunting times and starving the rest.

  There were fat dogs running with the Snakes and maybe some of them ended up in the cooking kettles, though he wasn’t sure of it. Some tribes were dog-eaters; many weren’t, and these despised the ones that did break the neck of a puppy now and then and drop it into the stew.

  But Skye knew time was flying and he had to hurry west for his appointment with destiny.

  “Professor,” he said after a day of feasting and trading and gift-giving, “you know, this is paradise for you and Dolly. Wyeth should be along in a week or two, and you could rest here, fatten up, collect new species, entertain these people, and then rejoin Wyeth’s party.”

  “But, Skye, don’t you want me to accompany you?” Nutmeg looked dismayed.

  “Of course I do. But I’m always thinking ahead. We have food for a couple of weeks, but we’re still six weeks from Fort Vancouver and bloody likely to starve again. With Wyeth you wouldn’t have to worry about your meals or Dolly’s. And I would have fewer mouths to feed. This has nothing to do with you personally. It’s simply a matter of survival. If you choose to stay, I’ll give you a few trading items to bargain for food.”

  “I see,” he said. He looked crestfallen and Skye felt as if he were the spoiler of good times. “But what if Wyeth doesn’t make it?”

  “These are friendly people. You could make a temporary home with them.”

  Nutmeg sighed. “This is the end, eh? You’re rejecting me?”

  “Mate, I’ve got business to attend.”

  “Very well, then.”

  Nutmeg turned desolately to his papers, and Skye felt bad. But the wilderness was a hard master and it wasn’t as if Skye were abandoning the man to his fate. The village was fat. And Wyeth would be along in a week or two.

  That soft August evening, a delegation of the Snakes came to Skye, along with Victoria.

  “They gonna talk,” she said. “This is Pokotel, Yan Maow … that’s Big Nose, Tisidimit, and Taihi. These are all headmen, but there ain’t no big chiefs among these people. They say they gonna go to Fort Walla Walla, that’s some Hudson’s Bay fort long way away, over the mountains even, and trade. We go with them.”

  Skye was surprised. “Escort us?”

  “Yeah, go on big trip, see the world, go visit friends, all that.”

  Skye couldn’t quite imagine why, but Victoria clarified that at once. “Professor Nutmeg. They think him big medicine. They gonna go with him, show him new plants he never seen. They gonna teach him Snake mysteries, tell him Snake stories, and maybe he make pictures for them.”

  A trip to Fort Walla Walla, at the confluence of the Walla Walla River and the Columbia. Skye remembered the place bitterly. He had barely escaped with his life from there, long ago, when he had struggled into the interior after escaping the Royal Navy.

  He had learned, since, that he had gone out of his way that first trip. The Umatilla River would have taken him eastward faster. But what was a witless limey to know?

  The Snake leaders were waiting for a reply, gathered about him. They were a formidable bunch, stocky, rawboned, long-haired, and well-armed.

  “What do you think, Victoria?” he asked.

  “Dammit, Skye, you are slower than a turtle.”

  “I just told Nutmeg I’d rather he wait here for Wyeth.”

  She squinted at him, reading his face. They were all reading his face. Even the yellow mutt was staring up at him. He lifted his top hat and ran weathered fingers through his matted hair.

  “I guess I can back up. I know when I’m whipped. But they got to do something for me.”

  Victoria turned solemn. “Skye, dammit.”

  “They got to name this yellow mutt.”

  Victoria cackled and began a monologue at once in her Absaroka tongue, which Pokotel slowly translated. Then they were all grinning.

  “Tisidimit says, tonight they name the spirit-dog. Big meeting, big medicine.”

  They left it to Skye to find the professor. The man was, as usual, surrounded by Snakes, this time mostly shy children who peered at his drawings and squealed happily. They all had wilted leaves and stems to offer this strange white man, and he took each one, examined it, and usually flipped to a sketch of the plant.

  “Professor, you can come with us if you want.”

  “No, Mister Skye, I’ve learned to take life as it comes and I’ll be quite content among these delightful people.”

  Skye grinned. “A big party’s going to escort us to the Columbia just for a lark. It’s in your honor, you see. They think you’re some.”

  “Some? Some what?”

  “Something special. That’s Yank trapper talk. You’re some, all right, mate.”

  “They barbarize the mother tongue, eh?”

  “Well, so do the tars in the Royal Navy.”

  Nutmeg relaxed. “I’ll be ready, Mister Skye. I take it that this changes your plans with respect to me?”

  “Most likely. That’s a mighty bunch of warriors and hunters, and they’ll keep us from starving. We’re having a little ceremony tonight at dusk. Whole band’s saying goodbye and doing a little favor for me.”

  “A favor?”

  “I told them they could escort us if they bestow a name on this yellow mutt of mine. I’ve been half crazy trying to think of a name. Nothing works. He’s a sneaky, snaky dog creeping around, so I won’t call him King or Duke or Prince. He’s ugly as the devil, so I can’t call him Marmaduke. I was thinking of calling him Nutmeg, but you’d be insulted.”

  “I’d be honored, Mister Skye.”

  “I suppose it beats naming half a dozen reeds and grasses after yourself in Latin. No, Professor, I won’t name this beast. Tonight the Snakes’ll do it.”

  seventeen

  The Snakes escorted Skye to an elder, one Tixitl. Skye beheld an ancient man with a piercing stare and seamed countenance. He seemed fragile and half out of his body and into some other world.

  He handed th
e old man a plug of tobacco.

  “Grandfather, I have come to ask you to name my dog.”

  They translated this for the old shaman, who nodded. He spoke briefly to one of the Snake headmen.

  “Tixitl wants to see the dog, Mister Skye.”

  “I don’t know where he is.”

  The old man seemed to understand even without the translating. Then he spoke again.

  Victoria translated. “He says you have a dog that knows no laws. He will ask the winds for a name and tonight at dusk he will speak.”

  “Thank the grandfather for me.” Skye said.

  That evening they feasted again on a stew made of the flesh of the salmon, with many roots and nuts and stalks in it. He and Victoria packed their kit and prepared for an early departure at dawn. Nutmeg strapped his little leather harness over Dolly, and slid his notes and samples into a waterproof oilcloth satchel.

  At the appointed time, Skye ventured to the reed hut of the shaman and discovered most of the Snake village waiting raptly for him to appear. Even fragile grandmothers and new-boms had been carried to the place, and laid gently down upon soft robes. The yellow cur had vanished, which annoyed Skye. The miserable mutt refused to show up for his own christening.

  The Snakes waited eagerly. Skye realized a naming was an important event for them. A name established many things: kinship, natures, expectations, failings, dangers, virtues. So it was with all the tribes Skye knew of. It had overtones of religion, though the Shoshones cared less about such things than most tribes.

  The shaman took his time inside that dark hut, and the crowd waited patiently, knowing that the Mysteries could not be hurried, and that revealed knowledge would come in its own time and season. Maybe he was waiting for portents: comets, falling stars, a thunderclap in a cloudless heaven, the howl of a dragon.

  Skye settled on the clay before the silent hovel, and then moved a few feet when he found his legs teeming with black ants. The first stars poked through as the light narrowed to a band of blue in the northwest. And still Tixitl tarried. Skye grew restless. He had the white man’s itch for swift decisions in him, but Victoria had sunk into age-old watchfulness.