He found the opposite bank too sheer to land, so he paddled upstream, fighting the muscle of the giant river, looking for a place to beach the canoe. A while later a beach hove into view, and he dragged the pirogue well up the gravel and out of harm’s way. Once again, he felt ecstasy as he stood on dry land, his chances better now. And there to light his path was the lamp of the moon peeking over the mountaintops. He hiked eastward again, confident that he had given his pursuers the dodge, his kit slung over his back, and fifteen or twenty pounds of smoked salmon strung over his kit—enough to feed him for a while.
His body felt light and supple, his legs springy, his muscles fueled by his wild joy. Could any mortal experience such exultation as this? He laughed, a big, booming eruption of delight that billowed out of his frame, and trotted upstream on a well-defined trace. At dawn he found himself in much more open country, the arid bluffs farther back and lower, the barren hills beyond them not much higher than the river. He paused to study this new world, look for signs of pursuit on land and water. But the gray light revealed nothing amiss. He needed rest, so he turned up a gully that descended out of the south and found a grove of evergreens a half mile in. The generous pungence of pines filtered through the quiet air. Here he would eat and rest. Here he would take stock.
He found a small ell of rock and decided to build a fire there. He had trouble with the flint and striker, having barely used the device before, but in time he set some tinder smoldering, and with a few gentle breaths he brought a tiny flame to life. He had chosen the site well. The fire could not be seen from any angle. The smoke would dissipate in the surrounding pines. He kept the fire small and let it burn hot while he filleted a salmon and ran the flesh onto a wooden spit that he held over the hot coals.
The half-smoked fish didn’t taste good, but he devoured it as if it were a palace delicacy. Henceforth he would live on salmon. He wouldn’t have much else. He lacked the weapons to kill game, and April wasn’t the time to find wild fruits and berries. But he had hooks and a line and a river full of a legendary fish that fed whole tribes.
He lay back in the grass, satisfied for the moment. He needed sleep. But he needed something else, intangible but insistent in his mind: a future. Where would he go, and what would he do, and what did he want to be? He scraped dirt over the remaining coals, packed his kit in readiness for a hasty retreat if he had to, and then let his mind wander like a homeless ghost in the cemetery of his life.
Long ago, he had been destined for Cambridge, where his father had been schooled in political economy before turning to the overseas trade. The boy, Barnaby Skye, had a lively interest in English literature and poetry and in his family’s Anglican religion. He had entertained the thought of becoming a dominie if he didn’t choose his father’s profession. Then, in one dark moment on an overcast day in London, all his dreams were shattered and he no longer owned his own life.
Now he would fulfill his dream. He intended to cross this wild American continent, find his way to a comparable university on the Atlantic seaboard—Harvard came to mind—and achieve what had been his original goal. He knew little about the American college, except that it was respected and that it was located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, nearby Boston. The thought appealed to him. He had planned to go to Cambridge, England, but would settle for Cambridge, Massachusetts. He could pick up where he had left off seven years ago, work through college somehow, settle in Boston, and start a business. He had sustained himself with that dream, and now it was becoming reality.
But the thought left him restless. He was no longer that boy and wasn’t so sure what he wanted now that he had, in a fashion, seen the world, if only from ’tween decks. The newly pressed seaman, Barnaby Skye, had fought bitterly in the bowels of the frigate just to survive, just to wolf his ration of gruel each day, just to win a little purchase on life. The boy had learnt well, fought the bullies, learned to give more than he took. But it had cost him a broken nose and numerous scars, the punishment meted out by harder, crueller, older men who built ruthless jack-tar empires ’tween decks, out of sight of bosuns and midshipmen.
He didn’t know what he would do. Freedom bewildered him. For the first time in his life, he had no one over him, no one telling him how to spend his every hour. He ached with the burden of choice, ached to find someone he could share his dream with, anyone who might help him decide what to do with his life.
He dozed well into the morning, bolting awake with every shift of the breeze or catcall of a crow, and then settling back into the benevolent grass again while his heart steadied. No one came. He possessed the earth—and himself. That was it: for the first time in his young life, he owned himself.
He was troubled by a sadness that lay just below his wild delight in being free. He didn’t know what he would do, or be, but he supposed the next months would teach him. He had never imagined that liberty could be such a burden.
Chapter 3
Dr. John McLoughlin had had more than his fill of his demanding guest, Commodore Sir Josiah Priestley, but there wasn’t much he could do except wait out the visit.
Priestley had all the hallmarks of his class: a fine wit, a scorn for commoners, a loyalty to the Crown that was more rhetorical than real, a smidgeon of learning in most of the branches of knowledge, and an assumption that all the world should treat him with the deference demanded by his station.
The commodore, in command of a small Pacific squadron consisting of three twenty-four-gun frigates, relics of the Napoleonic Wars, was paying a courtesy call to the new Hudson’s Bay post, Fort Vancouver. There McLoughlin presided over a fur trading empire that stretched from Mexican possessions in California northward, and from the Pacific to the Continental Divide at the apex of the Rocky Mountains. Priestley had sailed up the treacherous Columbia with only his flagship, the Jaguar, leaving the two remaining frigates to display the war muscle of King George IV to the dissolute Mexicans farther south and then meet him in the bay of San Francisco.
The giant McLoughlin, born of Irish and French parents in Quebec, could be an accommodating host, and indeed had at first welcomed the visitors, sharing whatever luxuries and wines he had in his yet-unfinished fort on a flat north of the Columbia. He had more urgent things to do, chief among them putting the new Hudson’s Bay Company division on a profitable footing. He presided over an area so vast it defied the imagination; an area largely unexplored, although his best brigade leader, Peter Skene Ogden, was swiftly mastering the country and locating the prime beaver-trapping areas.
On a less lofty level, McLoughlin was overseeing the planting of crops that would supply the post with its grain and vegetables, and was building the corner bastions of his fort along with comfortable residences for his chief men within it. He was also overseeing the post store and its profitable trade in peltries, all the while dealing as diplomatically as possible with his bullheaded and demanding superior, Sir George Simpson.
McLoughlin, a commoner and licensed physician who had spent years in the fur trade, mostly with the North West Company, had little use for titled nobles with all their conceits and blindnesses, but they governed his world and he had no help for it. And if he was a cynical adherent of the Crown, he nonetheless did his duty whenever called upon.
But now his sense of obligation grew thin. Priestley had intended to sail earlier. McLoughlin listened impatiently as Priestley explained in detail, with that nasal and shrill Hampshire voice of his, why his departure had been delayed.
“I should have hanged that wretch long ago. Pity I didn’t. He’s costing the Royal Navy a pretty penny, I say. Straight out of Billingsgate and with a coarseness to match. Troublemaker from the start, this Skye. Pressed in seven years ago, and refused to serve the Crown. Skulking brute with the mind of an ape and the habits of a pit bull. He’s been the joke of squadron, you know. ‘Oh,’ they say, ‘you get Skye this tour, Priestley. If he acts up, quarter him and feed him to the sharks.’ Good advice, but out of the kindness of my heart I spared the dev
il his due. And now how am I repaid? He went over the rail! Over the rail! And I’m shorthanded. I’ll give that watch a whipping when we’re at sea. That Bosun McGivers! Right before the man’s sleepy eyes Skye gave me the slip.”
McLoughlin was hearing this the tenth or eleventh time. “I presume the navy’ll fetch him back ‘ere long,” he replied, as he already had.
“Of course we will. That brute’s scarcely set foot on land since we pressed him and doesn’t know a thing. He won’t get far.”
“You were saying that some days ago. The party you sent downriver hasn’t returned.”
“McLoughlin, where can a man go? Up the river, that’s where. Or out to sea, that’s where.”
McLoughlin disagreed. A deserter could go anywhere and lose himself in an unexplored wilderness. “He might strike overland—up the Willamette to the Mexican country, my lord. If I were in Skye’s shoes, I’d make it my first business to escape the Crown’s territories.”
“Skye wouldn’t be so smart. He hasn’t the slightest knowledge of the local terrain. He’s been below decks. How would he even know of the Willamette? Don’t give him credit, McLoughlin. The man’s an ape. And besides, he speaks only English, and barely that. Why would he go to Mexico? He couldn’t even ask them for a cup of grog.”
“Perhaps because you wouldn’t expect him to go there, my lord.”
“Ah, you mock me, McLoughlin. Insolence, insolence. But I’ll let it pass. I wish to enlist you against this freebooter, this traitor to the crown. He’s no ordinary deserter; he’s arguably the worst man in the Royal Navy, incorrigible, reluctant to perform his duties, given to brawling, sullen and contemptuous of his betters. I want him back. On the small chance that my search parties don’t haul him in, I’m charging Hudson’s Bay with the responsibility of catching him, putting him in irons, and sending him to London for his hanging.”
“We’ll do our best, my lord.”
“Of course you will. Anything less than your best will result in a report to the Admiralty and the Colonial Office. Catch him. I’m putting a ten-pound price on his head, dead or alive. It’s to your advantage, of course. You don’t want this murderous, ruthless brute loose in your country.”
“He’s murderous?”
“Why, I imagine he’d murder a thousand if he could. We prevent it by keeping him behind iron strap when he provocates.”
“But he’s killed no man?”
“What difference does it make? He has the penchant. He has that low brow, the mean cunning of the criminal class.”
McLoughlin smiled. “Very well. I’ll post the award. You’ll give me a description, of course. If you don’t catch Skye, he’ll show up eventually at one of our posts. We have our ways, in HBC. I can enlist a dozen tribes, for starters. I can alert every factor at every trading post.”
“That’s not enough. I want more. I want an expedition to go after him if the navy fails.”
McLoughlin poured some more darjeeling and arched a brow. “And who’ll pay?”
“You will, of course. It’s your duty to the Crown.”
“I see,” said McLoughlin. “You’ll need to put this in writing, and I’ll send it along to George Simpson for approval. I don’t have the authority—”
“Tut tut, McLoughlin. Just do it.”
“—to spend resources that are not included in company objectives. But we’ll catch the devil if we can.”
Commodore Sir Josiah Priestley’s response was thwarted by the appearance of McLoughlin’s clerk. “Excuse me, sirs, but Mr. Carp requests the commodore’s attention.”
“Ah, McLoughlin, news at last. I’ll wager they have the bugger, or at least his head. Send him in directly.”
A smooth-cheeked youth barely in his majority stepped in, saluted smartly, and addressed the commodore. “With permission, sir—”
“Yes, yes, have you got the devil?”
“No, he gave us the slip. Not a trace. We penetrated several leagues upriver, as far as a native village. No luck. But one small clue, sir. The villagers lost a pirogue that night—maybe a mishap, maybe not.”
“And you failed to follow up.”
“Your pardon, sir, we looked up and down the river. It moves right along, you know.”
“So you failed, Carp. I seem to have misplaced my trust. Or perhaps I overestimated your abilities.”
The young man, holding the juniormost officer’s rank in the Royal Navy, stood silently.
“It’s all politics, McLoughlin. These useless sons of knights and barons get preferred over men of ability. Go, my boy. Tell Lieutenant Wickham we’ll sail at dawn before we’re fighting a headwind and rowing our way out.”
“Very good, sir. I—I’m sorry. It’s a huge country, sir—”
“Excuses.”
The youth fled.
“So, my crew couldn’t round up a common oaf. If the Admiralty’d give me a few good men, I’d have strung up the blackguard long since. Now, thanks to them, I’ll look bad. Very well, McLoughlin. I’m expressly placing this matter in your hands. Hudson’s Bay will pursue this Skye by all available means and report to the Admiralty.”
“What does Skye look like, my lord?”
“Why, you can’t possibly mistake him—the low cunning, the criminal brow, the wildness of eye—”
“Ah, my lord, is his hair brown or blond or black?”
“How should I know?”
“His age, then?”
“He’s been in service forever. I inherited him. Three commanders before me inherited him. Who knows?”
“His eyes—are they blue or brown or gray?”
“I never examine commoners closely.”
“His build, then.”
“A brute, McLoughlin, an ape. And yes, there is something. Skye has a battered nose, broken a dozen times in his brawls. Look for a man who’s all nose. That’s all you need.”
“Like me, I wager,” McLoughlin said, aware that he had a royal nose, a nose that dominated his face like a hogback.
“No, McLoughlin, twice your nose; grotesque, I’d say. The monster of degenerate parents. Look for a physical degenerate and you’ll have your man.”
“What is he wearing?”
“Sailcloth. I’ve learnt that much.”
“The charges, sir? Murder, theft, disobedience? Attacking an officer?”
“Worse than that. A habitual criminal, as devoid of civilization as the Arctic. A lone wolf. And desertion of course.”
McLoughlin had a sneaking suspicion he might like Skye. Or at least admire him. But he set that aside. “I’ll put out word. We’ll have scores of men looking for the man or his bones.”
“See to it,” Priestley said, rising. “You have your company on the wharf at dawn to see us off. I’m going to press one of your trappers. When you give us Skye, you’ll get your man back.”
“My trappers? But—”
“No buts. HBC owes me a man.”
“We owe you nothing of the sort.”
“McLoughlin, I’m an officer of the Crown. I’d press you if I had to. Thanks to HBC’s laxity, the ship’s company is even shorter. We lost four men to scurvy.”
McLoughlin knew better than to argue. He stood suddenly, stretching his six-foot, seven-inch frame, filling the primitive office with his presence.
“I will see you off in the morning,” he said in a way that brooked no further discussion.
Then he escorted the commodore to the gate and had his men bar it. If they wanted to press an HBC man, they would have to resort to the ship’s battery to do it, and then answer to the Admiralty and Home Office. Let that titled fool try.
Chapter 4
Rain, cold, starvation, and fear dogged Skye, sometimes all at once. A Pacific storm dropped snow on the mountains and a cruel drizzle on the Columbia, numbing him in spite of his woollen skullcap, pea jacket, and sailcloth cape. He lacked the skill to build a fire in wetness, and wished he had pocketed some dry tinder while he could. He regarded his ordeal as a lesson
in wilderness survival, and would remember.
The thought of pursuit tormented him: time and again, he climbed an outcrop or low rise to study his backtrail. If not the navy, then surely some HBC man, a veteran of the wilds, would pursue and capture him. He saw nothing, but that didn’t allay the imaginings of his fevered mind.
But worst of all was the hunger, which maddened him, reduced him to weakness. At times he even considered backtracking and turning himself in at Fort Vancouver. Anything for a belly full of hot food.
One desperate morning he whittled off a willow limb with his knife, grubbed about for worms, and rigged a fishing pole, using a navy hook he had pilfered from ship’s stores. But the salmon ignored his bait. Then he tried one of the navy’s ocean lures, thinking maybe salmon didn’t eat worms or bugs. Over and over he drew the bobbing wooden lure through the water, but he caught nothing. That day he trudged eastward on an empty belly, dizzy from the want of food and fearful he would starve. What did he know about catching fish or killing game? What good were these big hooks and lures, intended for ocean fish?
He tried again that warm evening, hoping a fish would strike at dusk. He baited his iron hook with a caterpillar, tossed it as far out as he could, and let it bob on the river supported by a stick he used as a float. Moments later a silvery fish struck, almost yanking his crude willow pole from his grasp. He dragged in a salmon that weighed several pounds. Madly, he gutted and filleted it, tempted to wolf it down raw, but instead he spitted the fillets and set them to cooking. That evening he filled his complaining belly and cooked enough more to sustain him for a while. But he was unable to catch another fish although he tried until night overtook him.
Rendezvous Page 2
