They saw no game at all because this tangled forest crowded it out, and their tiny larder diminished alarmingly. Periodically Victoria paused in an open glade to let them escape the heavy weight on their shoulders, and absorb the fleeting sun while they could, and then she whittled fat for each of them, or mixed a mash of fishmeal. Even the dog seemed despondent.
At least it didn’t rain, Skye thought. A cold pelting rain just then would have sunk Skye’s spirits to the bottom of hell.
But then, as they wrestled across a slope cut by a brook, the dog drew himself up, peered about, and pointed downslope. Skye thought the dog smelled an animal below, and struggled onward. But No Name refused to budge, and stood there quivering and whining and yapping.
“Dammit, Skye, he’s telling us to go back,” Victoria said.
Skye, in a bad mood, refused, but when Victoria turned back he had no option but to follow along like some pack mule born to obey.
The dog waited until his companions had gathered, and then plunged straight down a terrible slope.
“We’ll just be trapped in brush down there,” Skye grumbled, but he let himself be led.
Victoria’s attitude changed radically. “The spirit-dog will lead us out,” she said resolutely.
Skye doubted it.
They skidded down mossy slopes, stumbled on debris, stepped over fallen slippery timber, dodged dense and prickly thickets, and then the land changed subtly and they found themselves on fairly level ground, still surrounded by green hell. Here the dog found a clear game trail, and big animals had obviously used it. Except to duck now and then, Skye had no trouble following it. The dog trotted ahead of them, his tail lifted, barely deigning to see whether his mortal friends were walking behind.
The filtering light brightened, and then the trail veered smack into a riverbank. They beheld a considerable stream glittering over rocks and splashing around a bend hellbent for the ocean. Foliage hugged its banks, but here was light and hope, and a path to somewhere. The dog marched upstream, following multiple game trails that braided the bankside, and they progressed easily that day, covering many miles.
Skye saw big, silvery salmon waggling just under the surface of the crystal water, and ached to catch them. He thought of the fowling net, and supposed its mesh was too large. But maybe not. They paused at a grassy park in an oxbow, and rested for a while in an idyllic and enclosed wild, a terrible distance from other mortals.
He unrolled his sealskin robe and extracted the net tucked in it. Victoria tied a tether to it, using the coil of cedarbark rope. And then he cast the circling net over the busy water. It settled and sank slowly, barely heavier than the water. Skye watched silver shadows vanish and supposed they had failed. But one didn’t vanish. It hung in the water with the net over it.
“Don’t pull it in,” Victoria commanded, as she pulled out of her skirts and moccasins and waded gingerly out on slimed rock. She slowly settled the net over the fish until it was well wrapped in cord, and pulled it out.
Skye swore the salmon was the size of a small shark. He could scarcely guess the weight, but it felt fat and meaty in his big hands.
“Aaiee!” she cried.
The dog sniffed and Skye watched a long canine tongue lick a chop.
While Victoria filleted the big fish, cussing at having to eat such a foul thing, Skye experimented with his broken musket. He pulled some fine inner bark from a dead tree and stuffed it where sparks would shower over it, pulled back the flint, and let it smack the frizzen. Soon he had a smoldering bit of tinder that he nursed along with soft breaths until a tiny flame erupted. Then he added the smallest imaginable sticks to build a lilliputian fire, which burned lazily, yielding no heat. Cooking that salmon would take a while.
They wrestled rock to the fire to make a firepit, and there they roasted the fillets, spread out on the encircling slabs of rock, while the cur munched cheerfully on the fishhead and offal. Dark clouds blotted the sun periodically, and Skye sensed they were in for a drenching, but he resolutely fed the hot little fire.
That’s when Victoria glanced up and muttered, “Sonofabitch!”
A silvertipped grizzly was standing on its hind legs, its little eyes staring at them, his nostrils sniffing his dinner and wondering what to eat first.
“Dammit,” she cried, and Skye heard terror.
Victoria snatched her bow, and attempted to string it but found it too strong for her. Skye barely managed, and his respect for the coastal warrior who owned it leapt. He handed the strung bow to Victoria, who nocked an arrow. She would not use it except in desperation. Only an arrow straight to the heart, missing the ribs, would stop that humped brown monster from doing whatever it chose.
The grizzly sniffed, studied the scene, lowered himself on all fours and padded swiftly toward Skye and Victoria. The dog snarled. Skye and Victoria eased back, back, into the rocky bank, and then into the cold tugging stream. The bear halted at the firepit, swatted the sizzling fish off the rock with claws as long as human fingers, and sniffed the salmon lying in the grass. It was too hot, so the big bear settled on its haunches and waited, while Skye and Victoria cooled their heels in the ice water of the big river.
No Name watched, crept forward by wiggling along the grass, heading straight for the grizzly, until Skye thought the mutt was daft. One swipe of a claw would shred him and make another meal for the hairy brown giant. The bear sighed, slobbered, and began nipping at the still-hot fillet, tearing it apart with its deadly black claws and feeding small steaming pieces to himself.
That’s when the cur nabbed the other fillet, which was lying on the grass a few yards from the bear, and raced away. The grizzly paid no heed, enjoying his feast.
Victoria cursed mightily. Bears scared her. Skye was sweating, in spite of the brutal cold water reaching high up his thighs. The water was poor protection. That bear could splash in, not even feeling the cold under its shaggy pelt, and land on them long before they made the opposite shore.
But it didn’t.
The dog dropped the hot fillet, whined, picked it up and carried it to the riverbank, and waited.
The bear ate, poked around, sniffed the Skyes’ gear, tore at it with its paws, while Victoria cussed it in English and trapper tongues, invoked her deities, and threatened to puncture the beast with arrows.
About the time Skye’s feet were losing all sensation, the bear shuffled away.
Skye and Victoria made haste back to their camp, rebuilt the dying fire, dried themselves, and then, at last, shared the fat fillet with No Name.
Skye laughed, a big and hearty thunder rising within him. Bears were good news. This was game country. The menacing beast had left them alone.
Victoria looked at him soberly. “You got bear medicine,” she said. “All the rest of your life, you and bears are brothers. I have spoken this.”
“Aw, Victoria …”
“I have spoken!” she snapped.
Skye had always wondered how she knew these metaphysical things, but she seemed absolutely certain. The beliefs of the Plains tribes had always been a great mystery to him. How did she know that No Name was a spirit-dog destined to look after him and his family?
They devoured the whole fillet. Suddenly the world was a better place. This great ripping river poured out of the continent. It had cut through the coastal range en route to the sea. They would work upstream, find abundant game in this sunnier and grassier country, and at last head for home.
The scattered clouds thickened and joined until a gray ceiling hung low upon them, sawing off mountaintops and shooting cold through them. But the rain held off. Skye began hunting hard for a place to hole up, but this valley offered little to anyone escaping a storm.
They hastened along the river, sometimes along its bank, sometimes distant, and then they rounded a bend and beheld a fishing village: bark houses, an elaborate pole trestle over the rushing water where spearmen could harpoon the salmon, great drying racks, and piles of fish offal. Not a soul stirred
. This was a site used seasonally by some tribe or clan, and then abandoned to sleep as it did now.
They reached the first of the bark-clad houses just as fat cold drops of rain splattered on them. They stepped into a gloomy interior, spared the rain by a deftly shingled bark roof and walls, and welcomed the gloomy refuge as the storm swept over them, rattling rain and hail on their shelter. An icy wind eddied through the building, and Skye knew that it would be none too pleasant within even though mostly dry. The accommodations might be primitive, but the hand of man gladdened him. He had been half mad for other company in that silent, treacherous woods.
“The one I shall not name brought us here,” Victoria said.
Skye gazed gently at No Name, who lay contentedly at the door, keeping watch.
forty–four
They stood in the twilight of a winter’s day at the end of a year beside the Columbia, staring across a misty sweep of water to a shrouded island. Beyond stood Fort Vancouver, which lay hidden from them even though they knew it was there across the father of western waters.
For weeks they had toiled over the mountains of the Oregon country. One day they reached a divide, and beyond it water trickled east, and after that they descended into a long valley with a river running north.
The Willamette.
Now, near the confluence, they stood gratefully, so gaunt and worn that they scarcely fit the rags they wore. The dog’s ribs poked through his yellow hair, and a hollow had formed behind his ribs. Winter had taken its toll even in that mild land. Game had been scarce, and often they had paused to hunt or fish. Victoria’s bow and the fowling net were all that stood between them and starvation.
Skye marveled that they had come this far, after so many disasters and so much trouble. He would have died but for Victoria, and the dog. Often it had pointed toward game or frozen before bobbing ducks on water. The salmon had come and gone, and when they left so did their meals.
Silently Victoria gathered dry wood, what little she could find, for a signal fire while Skye peeled back dead bark and scraped the soft fibers within. Once again he would have to build a fire. He doubted that the post would see the bonfire while veiled by the fog, but the fire would warm them.
Fort Vancouver probably lay a little to the east, and it would be quite possible that no one would come when summoned.
The old flintlock was worn, and Skye was having more and more trouble striking flint to steel, but he managed this one last time, after a heart-stopping moment when a piece of the old flint shattered away.
At least there was no wind to thwart his every effort. Wearily he added sticks, and then branches, until the smoky fire rose well into the evening. He saw no lamplight on the far bank as dusk settled.
There was little to do but wait. They had no food. Victoria had turned dour these last weeks, as much because the sun came and vanished swiftly as because they were starving to death. But they had made it here, somewhere around the first of January by Skye’s dubious reckoning.
The warmth felt good, and stayed the damp cold. They sat on the bank, huddled together with the dog, and waited. But nothing happened and Skye resolved himself to spending the night there, awaiting the time when the fog would lift. He scratched around for deadwood and debris to keep the fire going, not an easy task without so much as a hatchet, and built up a pile of wood to warm them during a hard night.
Then he and Victoria, worn with cares and exhausted by months of barest survival and threat, dozed lightly in their battered sealskin robes.
“Allo, allo!” came the voice.
Skye awakened with a start, and rolled away from the fire.
“Allo,” came the voice again, from the riverbank.
“Here,” said Skye.
Moments later two dark figures emerged from the fog.
“We are make come by ze bourgeois, McLoughlin,” said one. “It is a signal, oui?”
Voyageurs. “Yes, a signal, and you are welcome, friends,” he said. “Can you take us across?”
“We ’ave a petit bateau. You ’ave horse?”
“A man, a woman, and a dog.”
“Ah! Bien. Allors. Gaston,” he said, pointing at his chest. “This is Honore, oui?”
The pair of them, stocky Canadians, squatted at the fire, examining the Skyes.
“I see you before, le nom est …”
“Mister Skye …”
“Ah! Mon Dieu!” Gaston, the one addressing the Skyes stared at them as if examining ghosts. And then he stared at the dog and made the sign of the cross.
“We had trouble,” Skye said, “but by the grace of God, we’re here alive and together.”
“Sacre bleu!”
They led the Skyes down to the shore, where a rowboat was beached.
Skye was uneasy. “How are you going to find your way across and not just be swept downriver?”
The voyageurs laughed, which didn’t comfort Skye any. But one of them cupped a hand to his ear, and they stood silently for a while. Then, faintly, the sound of a distant gong, muffled by mist, reached them.
Skye nodded. Away from the fire the blackness cloaked them so that he could not even see the faces of his company in that small, wet-bottomed rowboat. But the voyageurs set out upon the river with confidence, and rowed steadily, guided only by the distant gong, which rang every two or three minutes. It seemed a poor device by which to navigate, and Skye wondered whether they would end up far downstream.
The crossing seemed endless, but just when Skye started to despair, the voyageurs reached the opposite bank, and began rowing upstream so close to land that it lay barely beyond the oar. That leg of the journey seemed endless, too, and Skye realized that in spite of the bell, the rowboat had indeed been driven downstream.
But at last the faint lanternlight of the post blurred through the mist, and the voyageurs drove the little boat onto a sandy strand, then leapt out and dragged it with its passengers half out of water.
“Vancouver. The White Eagle awaits,” Gaston said.
“What time is it?”
“It makes huit …”
Eight. That early. It had darkened at five that time of year.
The dog leapt out easily, but the Skyes were slower gathering up their robes and truck. They plodded wearily through the opened double doors and into the post. Soft light glowed from several windows. The factor’s house had real glass windows, not thin-scraped hide or an open window shuttered at night. It amazed Skye to see yellow lamplight pierce through a window, after so many months in the wilds.
Gaston and Honore escorted them into McLoughlin’s home.
Warmth and light and comfort smacked Skye palpably, as if he were stepping into a new world.
The White Eagle, towering over them all with his crown of snowy hair and raptor’s nose, simply gaped, first at the Skyes and then at No Name, who settled comfortably on the polished plank floor.
“I am seeing ghosts, or am I mad?” he asked.
“We had trouble.”
Marguerite McLoughlin rushed into the bright room and gasped. For there were Victoria, wearing the same skirts that had been fashioned by Marguerite’s needle, but now in rags; and Skye, wearing a frock coat sewn together in that very post, but now unrecognizable, and the mark of starvation upon their gaunt and shrunken frames.
She clapped a hand to her mouth and cried.
“They are back, Marguerite, and now we shall hear their story,” the chief factor said. “But first, my friends, food and drink, eh?”
“That would comfort us, sir.”
At once, Marguerite hastened off to pull a meal together.
“The Cadboro—is it all right? Has there been a disaster?”
“The schooner’s fine, sir. Last we knew, anyway. We sailed as far as Monterey, Mexico, with Mr. Simpson, and there ran into a squadron of the Royal Navy. Why we’re not in the schooner, we’ll tell you in due course.”
“Ah! Already your story comes clear. And I rejoice that the Cadboro and Emilius Simpson
are preserved. Our whole annual take in furs was aboard. That dog,” said McLoughlin. “Start with the dog.”
Skye did not dare sit, knowing his filthy clothes would soil the good furniture, and so he stood wearily.
“Do sit down, Mister Skye, and you as well, Mrs. Skye. You’ll do this battered furniture no harm, and I fathom you’re at your wits’ end.”
Gratefully, Skye sank into a horsehair sofa, with Victoria beside him. He had not sat upon something soft for months.
“The dog, sir, ran beside the ship, hour upon hour, day upon day, down the river. Mr. Simpson kept assuring us that the mutt would give up at the rivers it had to swim, and go back. But it didn’t …”
The story of the heroic and indefatigable dog mesmerized McLoughlin. “We did our best to pen him before the Cadboro left, sir. But next we knew, he was gone, and I’ve heard no more since. But I told my people the dog and his master would be parted nonetheless, for what dog can walk on water? I seem to have been in error.”
Skye described the miraculous dog, and how its heroic chase finally persuaded the master, Emilius Simpson, to permit the creature to board at least as far as California.
Then Skye turned to the desperate events in Monterey, his discovery, the chase, the headlong flight, the difficulties in provisioning, the weary trek north, the two sets of bandits, the reception in Yerba Buena, the discovery of the Yank merchant trader heading north, and their signing on …
“Dickens. I know of him. He’s never brought that brig in here, but my people on the coast compete with him.”
“He suffered a lack of hands, sir. Lost some to scurvy and others deserted, so he was glad to take me on, if only for a way. He had two new Mexican boys aboard, and after delivering us to Astoria, he was headed for the Sandwich Islands to find some Kanakas. But we never made it.”
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