Marguerite rushed in, bearing hot tea and some scones.
“Here you are, and there’s more. And plenty of jams and jellies.”
Skye marveled, and was reminded again that this post operated farms and orchards and diaries. He ate greedily, scarcely believing the goodness of the scones. Victoria tasted them tentatively, and smiled.
Then, at last, he turned to the attack on the Yank brigantine, describing the swift assault and desperate defense that lasted but a few minutes, and the ultimate destruction of the entire ship and its contents, with a loss of twenty-seven men, including the two Mexican boys recruited in Monterey.
“Terrible, terrible,” McLoughlin muttered. “This must be dealt with. Do you know the tribe?”
“No, I don’t. Dickens showed us the Klamath River when we passed it, and we had sailed another day and into the evening when we spotted the bonfires and Dickens decided someone wanted to trade.”
“We’ll look into this! We’ll deal with it! HBC and the Yanks always stand together on matters like this! We have men in that country, trading along the coast just as the Yanks do, and we’ll find out! By God, this is insolence!”
And then, to the amazement of both Skye and Victoria, McLoughlin told them that Professor Nutmeg and Nat Wyeth and his men were there, at Fort Vancouver.
forty–five
Skye and Victoria listened incredulously to McLoughlin’s news. Nat Wyeth’s brig, the Sultana, had been lost at sea. The news reached Fort Vancouver shortly after the Skyes had sailed on the Cadboro, brought to the post by another Hudson’s Bay ship in from the Sandwich Islands.
Because of the disaster, Nutmeg had not returned to Boston, and Wyeth’s enterprise had foundered. All the equipment to preserve and pack salmon and send the casks east had perished. What’s more, most of Wyeth’s men had abandoned him, discovering choice farmland up the broad Willamette Valley. Skye and Victoria had unwittingly passed several rude farms operated by the Americans, and also a few run by Creoles retired from HBC service.
“And what are the professor’s plans?” Skye asked.
“He’s looking for a way east.”
“And what are Wyeth’s plans?”
McLoughlin smiled. “He’s a man of great enterprise. A setback merely spawns a dozen new ideas, so he runs hither and thither here, getting ideas. He talks now of visiting some of our fur posts, no doubt to master the business and compete with us. But withal, he is good company and I admire the man.”
Skye marveled. Here was a man who had lost everything, was a continent away from Boston, and yet brimmed with schemes to make his fortune some new way.
“I should like to see them both, if the hour is not too late. I scarcely know Wyeth, but Nutmeg, that’s quite another matter.”
“He’ll be pleased to see you, Mister Skye. He is worried about returning to his university.”
Skye sighed. “Perhaps he should sail out on the next brig.”
McLoughlin laughed. “That, sir, would deprive him of the chance to pluck up more plants and roots and butterflies.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
“And what of your plans, Mister Skye?”
Skye stared disconsolately into the fireplace, watching orange flame lick a log.
“Dr. McLoughlin, we will return to the mountains.”
McLoughlin pondered that. “HBC can employ you as a trapper, but not as a brigade leader. We’ve several men in our ranks who’ve eluded British justice, but they’re invisible and not even Simpson knows of them. I’ve quietly put them to work with traps at small posts. But we can’t put you in a visible position in HBC. You understand, of course. Simpson not only runs the company; he’s the king’s man.” He paused. “I still want you. You’ve rare skills and courage. This escape … this resourcefulness. We’ve few men of your caliber, Ogden, Ermatinger, one or two others. I say, Mister Skye, let me give some thought to this.”
“Things have changed, Doctor. Victoria and I and this yellow dog who’s been our companion and our help in time of need …”
Those great eyebrows frowned, and Skye felt the piercing stare of a powerful man.
“Mister Skye, a man’s name is of little account here. It’s of little account at the Yank rendezvous. I hear there’s men among the Yanks whose real name will never be known. There’s a career in Hudson’s Bay for, say, a man who bears any name other than Skye …”
The great factor waited expectantly, filling his parlor, so formidable that Skye quailed slightly before him. But Skye knew what he must answer.
“I have a good name in the mountains, no matter how matters rest in England and at the admiralty. That, Doctor, is worth my life. Beyond that, it wouldn’t take long for my true name to be revealed to Governor Simpson’s ears. I am not unknown, after six years in the wilderness.”
Simpson sighed. “You know, Mister Skye, the very nature of your response only adds to my esteem. I’m afraid your honor is Hudson’s Bay’s loss, but there is something in it: it is my gain, for I have found a man among men, a man I admire. And I wish to emphasize the esteem I hold for you, my dear Victoria, intrepid woman and able hunter and loyal consort.”
She smiled.
“You’ll be going to the Yanks, then, I suppose.”
“We plan to go back to the Americans, sir. The next rendezvous. Where is it, do you know?”
“At the head of the Green River, I hear. The Yank Captain Bonneville’s building a post there.”
Skye nodded. Once he got to the Seedskedee, as he preferred to call the Green, he’d find it.
Marguerite summoned them to her table. In the space of a few minutes she had loaded her table with cold beef, bread, potatoes, and beans.
“Please eat,” she said. “You look like you might need a bite.”
“Madam McLoughlin, that is an understatement,” Skye said.
He settled into a real chair at a real table, and Victoria joined him. This was no campfire meal, hastily swallowed while resting on their own heels, but a meal served on china.
Skye sighed, and dug in, pleasuring himself with real salt on his meat, and real butter and jam on the biscuits set before him. Victoria watched, swiftly copying his manners, and managed to feast with barely controlled haste.
He dosed the rib roast with salt and sliced off juicy pieces, and then slathered butter over a biscuit and felt it crumble under his touch. He sliced some boiled red potatoes in two, inundated them with butter and a little salt, and felt his teeth clamp the delicate red skin. He returned to the beef, sawing slice after slice, feeling them leak juices into his mouth. He spooned huckleberry jam over a muffin, and let the concoction settle on his tongue. It was too good to swallow. He beheld, before him, a goblet of ruby port, as clear as stained glass, and sipped delicately, and then quaffed mightily. Ah, the things that food and wine did to a man’s spirit!
Victoria smiled at him. When had they feasted like this? And rested in a safe, warm place like this?
He turned to the chief factor. “This is too good to be true,” he said. “Our diet has largely been whatever the dog dragged in.”
The thought galvanized him.
“Would it be possible to feed the pup?”
Marguerite smiled and pointed toward the door of the kitchen.
“He has a bone with lots of beef on it,” she said.
Skye could not remember the last time his belly felt comforted. They had eaten raw mallard, a goat, various seeds and nuts and roots Victoria had scrounged, a marmot, assorted fish, often raw and barely edible because they often could not start a fire.
McLoughlin sipped tea and waited for the Skyes to finish, but Skye knew he had much more to discuss.
“How are you going to the Rockies?” the doctor asked at last.
“I should like to work for you, sir, and earn enough for an outfit.”
“We’re always short of men. There’s plenty to do, especially for someone who knows about peltries. They need to be sorted and graded and baled. Yo
u up to it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What about me? I work,” said Victoria.
“There is work to be done, Mrs. Skye. Consider yourself employed by HBC.” He turned to Skye. “Now, the matter of Professor Nutmeg is much on our minds here. You see, Nat Wyeth absolutely refuses to take the man east. He says he lost days trying to find the wayward botanist, and sent search parties out in all directions, and finally supposed the man was dead until he stumbled on one of your messages. That suffices, in his mind, to refuse the naturalist. Nutmeg, of course, is most desirous of returning by any means. You willing to take him to rendezvous?”
Skye didn’t really want to, but nodded.
“There’s more, you know. He’s not, ah, welcome. What we hear is that the Yanks won’t take him back to St. Louis when their supply train leaves rendezvous. What’ll the professor do then, eh?”
“Maybe he should wait here for the next Yank trader, and go by sea.”
McLoughlin stared into space. “I like Professor Nutmeg and admire his great enterprise. Come, Mister Skye, let us find some way of getting the man safely back to Boston, eh? He has no funds here but eventually he’ll pay you, no doubt sending a credit out with the next supply train from Missouri.”
“If you’re thinking I should escort the professor clear back there, sir, I must respectfully decline. Mr. Nutmeg has means by sea.”
“And by river, Mister Skye. What I have in mind is taking him to that new American Fur post, Fort Union, at the confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri. From there, if you reach the post in time, the professor can go downriver on the fur company’s river packet, eh? Safe aboard, unless they let him loose and he wanders out of sight while they’re cutting wood, in which case it’s their own fault.”
“Have you proposed this to him, Dr. McLoughlin?”
“No, because there’s been no one to take him to Fort Union, and Nat Wyeth wants nothing to do with the man.”
Skye thought about that and liked it. He could drop the professor and then accompany the American Fur Company men to the rendezvous. And better still, he could talk to the factor there, and see about employment.
“The flower collector is a good man,” Victoria said. “I will keep an eye on him.”
Skye knew she was urging him to say yes. He grinned. A trip to Fort Union would take them right past her Kicked-in-the-Belly people, and there would be a joyous reunion.
“I like the idea,” he said. “But we’ll have to see if Professor Nutmeg likes it, too.”
forty–six
John McLoughlin liked to warm himself in the bright winter sunlight streaming into his office through small glass windows. Those windows were the only glass he knew of in the western half of the North American continent, and he considered them a luxury beyond price. What other room, in a thousand miles in any direction, possessed glass windows?
He spent some of that morning wrestling with the problem of guests. The post, an isolated island in a vast wild, offered succor to any passing white man. Nat Wyeth and his men, for instance. He arrived there only to discover that disaster attended his plans, and suddenly the Hudson’s Bay Company became his only refuge.
McLoughlin did not turn him—or any other Yank or Canadian or Englishman—away, no matter that the directors in London strictly forbade him to succor or cooperate with any of the company’s rivals, especially the Yanks. The Oregon question had not been settled and the company did not wish to act in any fashion that would deprive England of territory, or deprive itself of a secure and permanent monopoly of trade.
But what seemed logical in London was not feasible in the midst of a vast wild. Dr. McLoughlin had no intent of turning stray and desperate people away in their moment of need. So he had permitted Nat Wyeth to make himself at home, even though Wyeth’s plans for a salmon fishery and some trade in peltries ran against HBC’s own interests. Who could turn away a man who had lost a ship, and a dream, at sea?
So the post was burdened with several people who consumed its meat and produce and grains, burned its firewood, ate its fish, lived within its shelter, and earned HBC not a shilling. He liked Wyeth, and didn’t quite know why. The New Englander bubbled with enthusiasm and enterprise, throwing one or another wild idea into the air, striking sparks to McLoughlin’s imagination and setting the tinder aflame.
Skye was another sort. From the moment he arrived the previous evening, gaunt and worn and destitute, Skye had assumed that he had obligations. No sooner had he told his tale and eaten Marguerite’s swiftly wrought meal, than he offered to work for his living. And so did his lovely Victoria. He was not a man to accept endless hospitality and return nothing. Even now, as weary as he was, Skye was employed in the warehouse grading pelts with an expert eye, and helping with the pressing and baling. Victoria had given herself over to the women of the establishment, to mend and sew and make the rags they all wore about the post endure a while more.
Thus it was that Skye, from the day of his arrival, was contributing to the company, along with his good wife. There seemed to be not a thought in his keen mind that he should enjoy the hospitality of the company and return nothing.
To be sure, he and his lady needed an outfit, but McLoughlin would have provided one whether or not he worked for it. The factor had given numerous men, defeated by wilderness, an outfit sufficient to take them wherever they were headed. The outfits he gave away at a dead loss at least had the virtue of lessening the number of people dependent on the enterprises of Fort Vancouver.
But not Skye. That man, no matter that he was half sick from starvation, was earning his way in the world, and McLoughlin set him apart in his mind as a sterling Englishman who had been dealt one cruel blow after another by the nation he still called his own.
The Skyes would leave Fort Vancouver better off for their presence. Hudson’s Bay could use men like that, and it grieved the factor that Skye would not have a chance to contribute to the company. But Skye was doing the right thing. He would have a better chance among the Yanks than within the company, doomed to be an obscure trapper beyond the Cyclopean eye of George Simpson.
The doctor finished his eggs and breakfast kippers, and now it was time to invite Professor Alistair Nutmeg to a small but vital meeting of the minds.
The man was not lazy, but neither had he contributed to the company that succored him. He had drifted out upon the fields and forests day by day, plucking up his botanical specimens and beginning a new collection after losing the old, pressing his plants between precious papers he had begged. That was, indeed, a good thing for science and knowledge. It might even have the practical result of giving the world new herbs and medicines.
There had been several alarms when the good man had vanished for days at a time and was feared lost. But just about when McLoughlin was readying a search, the half-starved savant would drift in, utterly unaware of the mounting concern about him. A pleasant man he might be, and civilized, and a fine companion over dinner wine, but not a man to be let out of the academy, except with a warder. No wonder Wyeth, and every other son of the mountains, would have nothing to do with him.
McLoughlin summoned the man, and the professor duly appeared in the chambers, looking as gentle and distracted as always.
“Please sit down, Professor. We’ve a little something to discuss,” he said.
Nutmeg perched like a butterfly upon the edge of a wingchair, alighting for just as long as necessary before fluttering off.
“The Skyes are here,” he said.
“No! How could that be?”
“A long story, and you’ll learn it. I’ve taken the liberty of discussing your plans with them. I think we’ve found a means to restore you to Harvard College.”
“Oh, indeed, capital, capital.”
“Overland travel is pretty much confined to seasonable climates, but in the spring, at the appropriate time, they will take you east to the confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers. And from there, you’ll travel by river packet t
o St. Louis and civilization. After that, it will be up to you to arrange river passage up the Ohio and to New England.”
“Why, sir, that’s most kind, but I must resist. How am I to collect specimens and put this continent in botanical order from the confines of a riverboat?”
McLoughlin ignored that. “You have two choices, Professor. Leave here by sea, on the next coastal ship of any flag, or go with Mister Skye and Victoria.”
The professor blinked, not liking it. “All for nothing,” he muttered. “I can’t complete my work on a wooden deck.”
McLoughlin stared into the fireplace, where a thick log burned lazily. He decided not to respond, for anything he might say would seem a rebuke to the professor. He had never met a man so devoid of practical sense, and even the ordinary courtesy by which one makes commerce with others. There could be no arguing with a man oblivious to the strains he created upon all those who suddenly were forced to look after him.
“The Skyes have volunteered to take you,” McLoughlin said. “They’ll leave in early April, or maybe late March if the weather’s good. They need to make Fort Union, the new American Fur Company post there, before the riverboat turns around and heads for St. Louis in June or early July.”
“Is there no other choice, sir?”
“Mr. Wyeth has his own difficulties, and lacks the time or men to look after you when he heads for the Yanks’ rendezvous.”
“I see. Well, then, I shall go, and count it a loss, this wretched trip.”
“I think it’s really a great advance in your work, sir. You have in your head, and in the notes you’ve written here, a major start to a North American botany.”
But the professor was lost in his own world, so McLoughlin led him out of the study.
“Really, Professor, you ought to say hello to your companions. They’re about the post now, Skye in the warehouse, Victoria with the women, and the yellow dog somewhere. He and your mutt are friends, I take it.”
“Oh, the dog, too? Yes, rather. I shall welcome them. Thank you for reminding me. I admire the rough chap and his squaw.”
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