A Sweetness to the Soul (25 page)

“Some do not believe non-Indians should even witness our ceremonies,” he told me leaning back on his elbows, chewing a long strand of grass. “ ‘They will steal them as they have stolen our land’, they say.” He was thoughtful as we lounged on the striped wool blanket. His face was a sharp profile against the dusk, like it had been cut with Mama’s sharpest scissors. “You will dance?” he asked as people formed two circles. “An honor dance, to shake the hands of the family of Sunmiet and Standing Tall who are joined this day.”

He pulled me forward into the circle and led me, toe-heel, toe-heel. I hugged Sunmiet when I reached her in the inner circle, lingered in her embrace. She would go away now, to the lodge of Standing Tall’s family and I did not know how much more of her I’d see.

“Who can blame them?” George continued after the dance as though we had not interrupted our conversation. I fidgeted, wondering who might wish me gone from the circle. Standing Tall perhaps? He did not like how non-Indians were changing his world. “Sunmiet wished your presence,” George said as though reading my thoughts. “So you will always be welcome. It is why her father asked
the agent to speak with your father, to have you join her on this day of her beginning.”

It must have been quite a conversation. Mama told me later, when I came in from the potato field, that Sunmiet’s father and the Indian agent had been there, spoken with Papa. As she and I pulled weeds from the herb garden, she said: “The agent was headed to The Dalles, to the Fort I’d say, and stopped by as a favor to Eagle Speaker.” She brushed the hair from her eyes and left a smudge of garden dirt on her forehead. “So. You’ll attend Sunmiet’s wedding.” Her voice held a strange quality.

Anyway, you could have knocked me over with a whiff of basil so stunned I was to hear they would agree to such a thing since I had wounded Papa greatly with my sassy talk that day with Mr. Sherar. Mama said something about “teaching the heathens” and must have justified my going by assuming they would learn from me. Instead, I learned from them.

Now, in the midst of all the joy and learning as part of Sunmiet’s wedding, I decided I must have been forgiven for what had transpired those months before, when I first defied my father.

Joseph did not buy Puddin’ that day, of course, or any other. Papa would never have permitted that. Joseph would never have negotiated such a transaction “with a child.” But my offer, coming when it did, did the damage by itself, forcing my father to see me as something more than just his child.

“They all belong to me!” Papa bellowed that day. “I’ll not have a child of mine seize the moment to make herself above her elders!”

“He’s mine,” I said, and did not whine. “You gave him to me. I choose to sell him. Now.” A huge silence seemed to fill the air around our home, settling onto us like a scratchy, suffocating blanket.

Papa started toward me, enraged by the turn of events that day and by my defiance. I hunched my shoulders in anticipation of a blow almost deserved by my betrayal. I stood my ground, glaring at
him. Baby George looked up, his eyes big in question. He turned, as I did, and Mama and Papa too, when Joseph spoke.

“I’ll not buy from the child,” he said, speaking with his deep voice like a man who could bite rocks for breakfast. “You’ve no need to spend your anger on her.” He called the kelpie and the little dog left Baby George’s side, scurried to Joseph, and sat straight-backed in the dust before him. Joseph squatted as though idly patting the dog while keeping a wary eye on Papa.

Papa had halted mid-stride. I think he would have challenged Joseph, believing he would take my bait, but Joseph’s lowering himself and patting the dog took the edge off a moment stretched out with tension. Papa’s outrage exhaled to mere irritation.

Joseph stood to take the reins Benito offered him. “We’ll make other arrangements,” he said to Papa. Then of me he said, “Your daughter has a kind heart. I thank her for her wish to sweeten a deal gone sour.” He held the reins and swung his lanky body up onto the saddle with grace and agility rarely seen in so big a man. “Perhaps,” he added, patting his thigh for the kelpie to leap to, “when she is older, we will meet again. Under gentler terms. And I shall return the favor.”

He touched his hat to Papa, Mama, with barely a glance. Then he looked at me, took his hat off, held it to his chest for just a heartbeat, smiled and nodded once in my direction and then rode out.

I heard what he said, watched what he did, and believed, young and inexperienced as I was, that he had spoken to my soul.

Mama and Papa had their own words after Joseph and Benito left. A kind of seething expectation descended on our home, like the rattle on a wet snake. I learned in bits and pieces that the mules had been committed in a card game or somehow mortgaged; Papa had never found a way to tell my Mama. He hoped Joseph would simply not return and thus avoid the confrontation.

J. W., old enough to be my Papa, arrived one fine morning that same week to “smile at a grasshopper” he teased, and take the mules off. Mama, furious, kept a cool distance from my father for some
days thereafter. She had counted on the sale more than the integrity of her commitment to Joseph; and with Papa’s choices, had lost both on one spring morning. I learned something about the strain of business deals bogged down in the muck of poor decisions and the accompanying boil that could split a union if allowed to fester.

Joseph was fairly well occupied after he left us, changing his life.

“The Army, um. It has need for cattle,” French Louie told Joseph and Benito when they arrived back in The Dalles. They stood together in front of the livery, desperately watching another pack string make its way to the Deschutes.

“They’ve a wait,” Joseph said of the string. “At least we have the high water going for us. We’re all stuck for a while yet.” He cursed himself for not bringing more mules from California, wondered how quickly he could get the word to those left south, perhaps to Philamon, to buy up more and head north. This whole adventure was curdling like sour milk before his eyes as he tried to recall the strong feeling that had initially led him to commit to all these changes.

“You do not listen, my friend,” French Louie persisted. “The Army. Needs cattle. Will buy. My sources, they say the Indian agent, he makes the trip for fresh beef in few weeks. The tribes, um, do not eat well this winter. Many cattle die. Deer, elk, too, are thin. High water hurts the spring run of the Chinook. So they look for beef soon.” He picked at his fingernails with the knife as he talked, popping little pieces of nail onto the boards in front of the livery office.

“It will bring some cash?” Benito asked.

“Oh, yes,” Louie said. “Or maybe some Army script. For trade.” He pushed the knife back into his leg sheath.

“Only trade I’d be looking for is beef for mules,” Joseph said listening to the hammering of a building going up down the street. “Do they have mules, Louie? That would make your sources worth their weight in dust.”

The Frenchman grinned. “I see some fine animals in the paddocks, my friend. You want I should explore?”

“I want,” Joseph said.

And thus was the pack string of Joseph Sherar put together that spring of 1862. It began a year of lucrative activity for Joseph. His crew of men already knew and trusted each other which gave his venture a head start even with skinny, unknown animals and the other packers leaving first. Half the success of any venture is finding people to share it with you, willing to ride the roads of peaks and valleys that come with great ideas. Joseph had that in Benito and his family and he was adding men like French Louie as he moved.

The Army mules rounded out the string of forty mules, two lead men, and one cook, Benito’s Anna, who rode a gray bell mare. They set off to Canyon City in early May. At the mouth of the Deschutes, they loaded their supplies of pickaxes, beans, flour, shoes and shirts, and even wheelbarrows onto rafts manned sometimes by the Celillo band of Indians who fished on the Columbia. They swam the mules across. Joseph kept an eye out for the bell mare, not just for Anna’s protection. The tinkling bell on that gray horse would lure the herd-bound mules. And keep the cook happy.

Reloaded, they headed south, following The Dalles’ military road, or trail, such as it was, making their way to the Strawberry Mountains, Canyon City, the gulches, gold fields, mines, and men.

It took little for people to see the quality Joseph packed with him. He sold his goods for top prices and carried gold dust out promising security by his demeanor and air of integrity. He learned of other stringers’ problems: skirmishes with Indians, incompetent handlers, lost animals and packs, and highway men without conscience. He even encountered J. W. once and thought he recognized Jackson, one of our old mules, our last encounter drifting gently to his mind.

Mostly, he heaved sighs of satisfaction each night he and Benito and the kelpie shared the lush aroma of Anna’s tortillas on the trail.

He helped make Brayman a wealthier man.

He helped himself to that condition making several trips that summer and fall: into the gold fields as far as Idaho, back out to The Dalles. I kept hoping to see him the few times I rode with Papa to The Dalles. I never did.

Joseph said he spent the seasons hoping for a shorter, better route between The Dalles and Canyon City, one with less difficulty in crossing at the mouth, one that would take less time. He thought that finding one would finally grant him the restless peace that escaped him. He thought, too, of the falls, he told me. Too late, he learned that John Todd, owner of the land beside the Deschutes had sold it to Lodenma’s brother-in-law, Robert Mays. Mays hoped to build again across the river, his efforts leaving Joseph wistful.

On each packing trip, he’d vary his route a bit, take scouting forays he said, looking for that perfect route though I suspect it was variety, avoiding boredom, that truly moved him. He’d ride through painted sand country south of an area known as Black Rock where the hills wore rainbows of color. Often, he loaded his packs with rocks with imprints of leaves, ran his wide fingers over the image of tiny animals somehow left there. “Fossils,” he called them. Led to many a lively discussion in the saloons and later, with Pastor Condon in The Dalles who shared Joseph’s special interest in the rocks.

Frankly, it seemed to me he inhaled the scent of wild roses and sage in places that did not promise a shorter, safer road. Instead, they promised intrigue and interest and substance for his sketch book. And new paths.

Joseph might have stayed at packing, still searching, I suspect if it had not been for that one scouting trip near Canyon City and the events that ultimately changed his lifecourse, as surely as Sunmiet had just changed hers.

C
ELEBRATION

B
andit!” Joseph called. “Here, Bandit!” He kicked the big gelding closer to the fracas but the horse was edgy, didn’t want to approach. “What snakes is that dog wakin’ anyway?” he said to his horse as much as to himself, a wary relief at hearing anything from the dog at all. He could hear the ruckus beyond the thick undergrowth, the single bark in spurts and the snapping jaws of the kelpie coming up against some other guttural, feral sound.

He stepped off his horse, pulled his rifle from the scabbard and waited, isolating the noises. He pushed back the branches of the buckbrush, searching. A light breeze billowed out the striped sleeves of his shirt, ruffed the wool of his brocade vest.

A few hours before, Joseph had planned to head back into Canyon City, the afternoon wearing hot under the October sky, the evening promising to come on cool as it did in the high country. He had ridden along the top of a rocky ridge of white stones that seemed to typify the Strawberry Mountains. Tiny clusters of red lichen chiseled their way through the stony ground like the fine cracks in Philamon’s old ironstone plates. Joseph wondered if the ground was as brittle.

As he rode, he picked up signs of little used trails and understood why they were abandoned when they ended in deep ravines and ledges dropping away to boulders and brush below.

The afternoon brought no new insights to a shorter route. He’d not even stopped to sketch. Something about the area seemed vaguely familiar. He hadn’t ridden that way before, he was sure. And would not be likely to again.

Instead, he’d planned to head back.

Then the kelpie disappeared.

He and Bandit had ridden inland, away from the edge of the ridge, away from the rocky ledges. And then Bandit simply vanished, leaving no sounds of his panting, no rustle in the brush. Joseph had called and called, listened for the stir of the kelpie wrestling through the snags and tangles of branches, hoped to hear his sharp bark, surprised at how attached he’d come to the little dog, how dislodged the dog’s disappearance made him feel.

He’d called until his voice was hoarse, then listened to the hot stillness. Nothing. He’d called until the late afternoon wind came up, then listened to the breeze in the pines and the junipers. Nothing. He called until the night breeze ceased and his eyes looked into a silent dusk before he admitted that the kelpie was lost.