No Safe Anchorage

by Liz Macrae Shaw

  The first band they encountered were from the Sarcee tribe. A group of them lived in cabins on a settlement around a mission church. Dressed in shabby European clothes, they were hunched around a fire in the compound, scarcely glancing up as they approached. An angular man emerged from the church and strode toward Tom and Silent Owl. He scowled at Silent Owl in his doeskin tunic and introduced himself as Reverend Matheson.

  “They’re all women and children here. Where are their men?” Tom asked.

  “They’re not permitted to stay here. Once they’ve been paid for their buffalo skins, they drown themselves in whisky. Last time we hid all their weapons, but they fought each other with poles from their wigwams.”

  Silent Owl grinned.

  “White men never get drunk? It’s the traders who poison them.” Tom said.

  “That’s why we offer the women sanctuary here.”

  “But they have to give up their customs.”

  “In return they receive salvation through God’s love. And the benefits of civilisation.”

  Now Silent Owl’s eyes were spitting fire. Tom shook his head and said, “We also want to help them. I take photographs to raise money for native tribes.”

  “I save souls as well as bodies.”

  “We too act out of concern for our fellow man.”

  “Well, you may take a picture or two if you make a donation to our funds. I’ll gather them together.”

  “Do they have their own clothes to wear?”

  Matheson recoiled. “No. They put on civilized garments to mark their new lives.”

  “Then we will not shame them by photographing them as beggars.”

  Tom turned on his heel and saw that Silent Owl had already stalked off. Tom ran to catch up with him. When they unhitched and mounted the horses, Silent Owl rode in front with his eyes fixed ahead, refusing to speak. The seething silence continued as they made camp until Tom could bear it no longer. Throwing down the sticks he was gathering for the fire he asked, “Why make me suffer for the faults of other men? That minister was bigoted but he offered them help. He didn’t cheat them or shoot them like vermin.”

  Silent Owl still kept his back turned until Tom walked up to him and put his hands around his waist. “I might be the palest of pale faces but I would be happy to devote my life to helping your people.”

  Silent Owl turned, his eyes awash with unshed tears. “I know. You’re different from most white men but the bad ones will win. I can’t see a future for my own people or any other tribes. First they slaughter the beaver, the otter, and the buffalo. Then for us only a slow death of shame and despair.”

  “I don’t know what will happen but we mustn’t let hope slip through our fingers.”

  Later Tom woke in the night and lay on his back in his deer skin, watching the stars thrown across the sky like shining, frozen pebbles. He listened to the snuffling of the horses, standing asleep with drooping heads. Life was fragile, a pinprick of light soon snuffed out, but at that moment he felt held in a web of contentment. He rolled onto his side and trickled his hands down Silent Owl’s back. How smooth and warm his flesh felt. How had he managed to stay so hot when the night air had turned so cool? Tom sighed and fell asleep again.

  Chapter 45

  The Prairie, Summer 1868

  They rode west toward the Rockies. The mountains were scored against the vivid blue sky. An ocean of prairie land rippled southward. They had followed the winding route of a coulee, its bed cracked dry in the sun. Now they climbed through pines growing thick as quills on the high ridge known as the Porcupine Tail. Tom had smiled when he first heard the name. How different this was from his old ship. Was there any sadness left still in his heart to bail out? Very little. He felt content in this empty land of wide horizons. The next day they traced the wandering track of the Oldman River. Toward noon, they reached a canyon where the thick pelt of trees thinned a little. It was warm and they allowed the horses to amble along the river at their own pace. Stopping at a group of flat rocks for a rest Tom opened one of the saddlebags to get some oatmeal and pemmican. Silent Owl padded down to the water’s edge, looking for pools where fish might be lurking. As always, Tom felt wonder at how his companion, absorbed in his task, seemed so much part of the natural world, woven into the weft of trees, river, and fish.

  Suddenly the air was shredded by sharp cries. Tom leapt to his feet and ran toward Silent Owl who pointed upstream. A bend in the river stopped them from seeing the source of the noise. Then something spun into view. Something red and sodden swirling in the water. A whimper from inside it, a flailing arm. Silent Owl unhitched a rope from one of the horses. Tom was tugging off his moccasins and shirt. “Tie it round a rock.” He tightened the knot around his waist and lowered himself into the water, gasping at the heart stopping chill. Before plunging in he scanned the flow of the current, hoping to intercept the bundle as it floated closer. But the waterlogged cloth sank under the water. He struck upstream and dived below the surface. The current buffeted him and rocks scraped the skin from his legs but he hardly noticed as he pushed on. Finally his bursting lungs forced him to surface. The rope was almost played out to its limit. Something brushed against his foot and he reached down, grabbing a leg. His numb fingers hauled the small body clear. It slumped in his arms. Holding it close he chafed its back with trembling hands. A splutter. The hands fluttered and nipped his face.

  “I’m here.”

  Silent Owl had waded out to a flat rock and was perched there, a bedraggled diving bird, arms outstretched. Tom floated on his back, clasping the squirming child to his chest. Almost there. He reached out but the current was too fierce and tossed him sideways. He grasped the cloth with his teeth so that he could stretch out both his arms but as he did so he was flung back against half-submerged rocks. The back of his head struck a jutting edge. He groaned as tongues of pain licked across his skull. Blackness swallowed him.

  Chapter 46

  The Prairie, Summer 1868

  Branches stretched upward like ribs, joining together above his head. Was he back in the forest? Everything was foggy. Where was that musty animal smell coming from? Was it tanned skins? No sound though. He must be on his own. He inched his head up.

  “Keep still.”

  Firm hands pressed him back onto the furs. A long braid of hair brushed his forehead. He blinked, trying to focus.

  “Spring Thaw, is it you?” No, the color was wrong, not ravenwing black but glowing russet. He reached out to touch it. “Richard?”

  “No,” It was a woman’s voice.

  There was that red fabric again. He tugged at the plaid shawl covering the hair and peered into the green eyes.

  “It’s you! Am I dead or mad?”

  “Neither. You split your head open and have lain insensible for two days.”

  “The child?”

  “My son’s safe and no worse for falling in. How can I thank you? And your friend too. He’s been pacing around like a hungry bear. I was so scared you had been killed.” Her tears dripped down onto Tom’s face.

  Tom shivered.

  “I’ve as many lives as the ship’s cat. I can’t believe I’ve found you here, living in the wilderness.”

  “In a tepee with savages, you mean?”

  “I’d given up all hope of finding you. But I kept the sketch I drew of you.”

  “Why? We only met once and never even spoke.”

  “But you recognized me when you saw me again?”

  “Of course I did. You stared at me like a man bewitched.”

  “I believe I was. I loved Richard and he had killed himself. I didn’t know why. Then you appeared and I knew you must have the answer.”

  “It was the sins of the fathers that decided Richard’s fate, and mine.”

  She told him the story of her life, with many pauses and sighs. “But I wouldn’t accept my fate. I kept searching until I found a man and his people who didn’t turn up their noses or talk about me behind their hands.”

&n
bsp; She smoothed her hand over his brow and left. Over the next few days Tom stumbled through his own story, his throbbing head making it hard to concentrate. He made light of his setbacks, thinking that she had suffered far more than he.

  “It’s odd how I went to sea to find adventure, but it was only when I left that I found it. Far more than I wanted.”

  Afterward, he lay back, eyes closed and mind empty, beyond thought or speech.

  The next morning when he woke he raked through the embers of his conversation. She had been nameless for so long. “Catriona.” He mouthed her name. Their lives were so far apart but for a brief, wild moment the same beat had linked them and they had stepped together into the dance. She had swung away from him but now they were back facing each other again.

  “Don’t you ever miss the company of your own kind?” Tom asked her, when she reappeared.

  “Do you ever ask that question of your daughter-in-law?”

  “No.”

  “Because she had so much to gain by marrying Iain? And for me it’s different because I gave up civilized life? Did you know that when the first settlers came they felt honored to marry the daughter of an Indian chief?”

  Tom nodded, ashamed. As he recovered he saw more of how she lived. She bargained with the fur traders, insisting on a fair exchange. Thanks to her skill the tribe was paid in tools, woolen cloth, farming implements and seed, not in strong drink and shoddy trinkets. She showed her band how to cultivate crops so that they weren’t hungry in the winter. At the same time she had learned all the skills of an Indian wife, healing her children with herbal potions and learning the tales handed down from the past. He could see why she was given her new name of Beaver Mother.

  “My family here are like the Gaels back home,” she told him. “We treasure the land and love stories.” He asked her about a carved buffalo horn that hung from the roof poles.

  “This holds the power of the buffalo and brings good fortune to us. The Blood people’s story about the horn is not so different from the tales about the selkies who could change their form from seal to human.”

  “Tell me while I rest my eyes.”

  “Long ago, a man married a buffalo who had taken on the form of a woman. She bore a son and told her husband that he must never threaten her with fire. One evening though he was angry and forgetting her warning he picked up a blazing stick and struck her with it. At once she and their son vanished. In desperation he sought them until he found her herd. The leading bull looked toward a group of calves that were dancing and playing together, “If you can pick out your son from among them four times, your family will be given back to you.”

  The man looked hard at the calves and noticed that one of them held his tail high in the air. So he chose that one and he was right. The calves galloped around him a second time and the man chose the calf that had closed one of his eyes. Again he chose right. The third time his son let one ear hang down so that his father could recognize him.

  The man dared to hope because he had to guess right only once more. This time his son held up one of his forelegs but a second calf was watching and thought that this was a fine new game. So he held up a leg too. What could the man do? Praying that he was right he chose one of the two calves.”

  “And was he right this time?”

  “No, his luck ran out and the herd trampled him to death. The cow buffalo and her calf were left to mourn over his body.”

  “Is that the end of the story?”

  “No, there is always hope left at the end of a tale. An old bull buffalo took away one of the broken bones into a sweat lodge and brought the man back to life. Then he restored the cow and calf to their human state once more and taught the family the mysteries of the Horn Society. We still follow them. They help us with hunting and save us in times of peril.” She squeezed Tom’s hand. “It was the Horn that brought you here to save my son’s life.”

  Tom nodded but he couldn’t meet her gaze. He was thinking of how this sanctuary would be invaded by hordes of traders and farmers. He remembered the stacks of buffalo hides piled high at the trading forts and the heaps of carcasses left to rot in the prairie.

  But he held on to the tiller of hope. He told her how he raised money through his work and she nodded in agreement. So once his head cleared he began a frenzy of painting and photography. Everyone and everything. Individuals, family groups, and the whole band together. Tepees, horses, tools and the sacred horns. He was struck at how his Indian subjects sat for him. They were at ease with themselves unlike his white customers with their stiff shoulders, fretting in their Sunday best. The warriors calmly readied themselves. First they greased their long hair, arranging it so that a shorter strip pressed forward against the centre of their foreheads. Next, they threaded rows of beads through the sides and smoothed on red and black face paint. Each man had a different pattern, a text describing his prowess in hunting and fighting. The women lacked facial adornments but like the men wore tunics decorated with quills and beads. Tom took special care with his painting of Beaver Mother. She was still beautiful in a way that clutched at his heart although her hard life had scored her face.

  Tom decided to leave before the winter so that the band wouldn’t have to feed him and Silent Owl through the hollow months. He drew Beaver Mother aside to show her all the photographs and portraits of her family again. Her husband Brown Bear, her son Young Cub and his older sister Clear Stream. The gray tones of the photographs disguised the glowing russet hair, light eyes, and freckled skin of the children and their mother but they were revealed in the paintings.

  “Are you happy for these pictures to be shown to the world?”

  She nodded. He gazed at her until she replied to the question that hung heavily between them. “No, do not take them to the widow’s house. If you do I will heap curses upon your head in our Blood tongue, Gaelic and English. You will turn into a pile of dust and be blown away on the winds.”

  Chapter 47

  New York, 1872

  Tom stood on the Manhattan shore looking out at the Statue of Liberty. How fortunate he had been to emigrate at a time when people were freely admitted. Would he have slipped through now, with clerks asking questions? It was a sticky July evening and he prised the collar of his shirt away from his sweating neck. The crowds around him sauntered. The humid weather had slowed down the Yankee bustle. He was content to be among his fellow men but separate from them while he savoured the unusual pleasure of being in a city with all its comforts.

  “Lieutenant Masters, as I live and breathe,” a booming voice rang out from behind him.

  At first Tom was too stunned to move. Was he dreaming? Had his imagination conjured up the voice? He spun around, glancing in both directions for escape routes. He might be in his middle years now, but his outdoor life had kept him light on his feet. Flight would be better than using his fists. He would have a fair chance of escaping through the throng. All these thoughts sped through his mind as his eyes searched for the owner of the voice. He had always believed such an encounter would happen one day and there was a strange sort of relief in knowing it had finally come.

  There he was, a narrow road’s distance away, unmoving. He too was dressed in a summer suit and appeared to be on his own. Older too and heavier. Tom decided he could risk coming closer. So he advanced, stiff legged and poised for escape.

  “It is you. You’ve kept that pale hair but it was your gait that I spotted. After years of living at close quarters I never forget a man’s way of walking.” The boom had softened. Tom had covered half the distance between them. He halted, his face expressionless.

  “You’ve nothing to fear. I give you my word.”

  Tom still waited, undecided. It was too late to deny his identity. A genuine stranger would have looked puzzled at once. He could still run, a loose thread unspooling among the strolling groups. No, it was time to drop anchor. He waited unable to speak.

  “Shall we walk a while?”

  “If you wish, Captain O
tter,” Tom managed to croak.

  “Not an active captain any longer. I’ve retired, and as an admiral, but I had a fancy to cross the Atlantic after the Porcupine did that deep water survey. You’ve worn well for a hunted man.”

  Tom was unable to stop the flush of shame swooping up his face. “I deeply regret betraying your trust.”

  “I’m sure you do. It was a terrible business Williams killing himself.”

  “But I shouldn’t have fled.”

  “No, you were a coward.” The captain’s voice was stern. He hadn’t changed much at all. His beard was white now, but he stood as foursquare as Tom remembered.

  “I can’t ask for your forgiveness. I betrayed the service but worse, I betrayed you and my shipmates. I heard you were reprimanded by the Admiralty for Richard’s suicide and my desertion.”

  “The captain has to answer for his ship and crew. I was too lenient with you. I knew you were too close to Williams. No, hear me out,” he added, seeing that Tom was about to protest. “I’m sure you weren’t guilty of any unnatural practices. Both of you had kept your innocence despite all the sodomy that goes on in the Navy. But you were miserable and drinking too much. I should have tackled you sooner.”

  “I wish I could make amends.”

  “Well, you can tell me about what you’ve been doing as we stroll along.”

  Tom felt a stab of regret. Those words transported him back to the Porcupine when he would report to the captain as they paced the deck together.

  “You look as if you’ve prospered. I was furious with you, of course. But when Rogers told me he had a whiff of your whereabouts I prayed he would fail to find you.”

  “He gave me a scare. He was snooping in Sydney while I was away on a trip upcountry.”

  “Hmm. He was planning to track you farther. That man was like a ferret but engine trouble put him into Montreal for repairs. I sowed the idea in his head that you were last seen in London as a penniless beggar. That news seemed to console him.” Captain Otter let out a rumbling laugh.