The Snake River (2 page)

Part One

A BAND OF PILGRIMS

Chapter One

Michael Devin O’Flaherty stirred. In dream his mind roamed through green, sun-spangled fields of Erin. A voice barked his name gratingly.

He stirred. He sat up and quickly lay back down. He tried to clear his head. He’d sworn off drinking, so why did his head feel like it was about to bust? Neck hurt, too. When he twisted his neck, it felt like dry grasses cracking.

The voice came again. “Mr. O’Flaherty?”

Boots walked into his prone view, black boots. Flare hated boots. Whenever an Irishman saw boots, he thought of the British and the Year of the French at home and fancied the boots were about to crunch his neck. He’d been born the Year of the French, 1798, so naturally hatred of the Brits ran in his blood.

What kind of man would walk around to the front of a canvas lean-to, where he could peer in? Plenty of room at the back. More polite. A Brit would be impolite, to get the upper hand.

It was a big man, strapping, gussied up in a black frock coat. Which was strange enough, here at Fort Laramie, a thousand miles from the settlements. A man with a big, fine, leonine head of black hair in a pompadour. A man bristling with male vigor and authority. The sort of man Flare despised.

Michael Devin O’Flaherty divided malekind into two groups. The first was essentially Irish, men delighted by the world and its poesy and song and wanting nothing on earth but to enjoy nature and art and life. The second was essentially British, men whose only pleasure was in ruling, dominating, controlling other men, and as an afterthought women. They didn’t know what pleasure was. This bastard was a Brit in spirit.

“Mr. O’Flaherty?” the man said a third time.

“Right enough,” murmured Flare, sitting up.

“I’m Dr. Full, Samuel Full.” He made three very distinct syllables of “Samuel.”

“I’m sorry to wake you, but I was told you might be pulling out for rendezvous anytime. Are you up to a guiding job?” He looked around Flare’s low home and few blankets disapprovingly. “Mr. Robert Campbell recommended you.” He let his doubt show in his voice.

Flare knew the doubt and disapproval weren’t necessarily real. This sort of man would act that way just to throw you off balance. This Dr. Full missed his calling by being American instead of Brit.

“I’m leading a group of Christians to the Methodist Episcopal mission on the Willamette. Do you know where it is?”

“Aye.” Flare rose out of his blankets, nude except for the Celtic cross on a chain around his neck. It was a cross of an ancient style, the symbol of the crucifixion with a circle around it, like a halo.

Flare slipped on his moccasins first, letting his bare arse shine whitely at the interloper, then draped his breechcloth from a belt. The man stared at him. Rude bugger. Would he want to watch Flare squat, too?

“We need to travel fast, and will pay top dollar for a good man. You’re highly recommended. Are you interested?”

“I’ll talk about it if ye’ll give me coffee.”

“Coffee. Is that all you drink, Mr. O’Flaherty?”

Flare looked at him hard. “I swore off the whiskey. For good.”

“When?”

“Yesterday.”

It had been a six-day binge. For years he’d said an Irishman was not drunk as long as he could hold on to the spinning earth and not fall off. Then he got the letter. He was through with boozing, he swore, and he meant it.

The coffee was strong and bitter. Flare liked it with sugar boiled in, and plenty of it, but these Christians had no more sugar. Which only meant they wouldn’t pay Laramie prices for it.

They were a strange lot, as he knew they would be. He’d met Dr. Whitman at rendezvous a couple of summers ago, and the two missionaries and their wives last summer. He thought Americans were peculiar people. They had a grand country, wide open to all the adventuring a man might have in his heart. Yet a lot of them bid fair to be as priest-ridden as the Irish. Protestant priests, of course, which meant they didn’t have a thousand years’ experience crushing people’s spirit.

He drank his coffee and chatted amiably.

He made them out as two families and some strays: Dr. Full, his wife, a quiet woman who seemed older than he, near on forty, and her children. A blacksmith, Alan Wineson, who appeared overendowed with shoulders and biceps and underendowed with wit, and his wife and three unruly children.

The strays were an older man, perhaps sixty, with a round body and a beaver face, and a cheerful spirit. Name Parker Jones. They called him Parky, and it was impossible not to like him. Sheppers Smith, a younger Dr. Full, in training for bastardy but not yet fully accomplished. And three maiden ladies, of all things, two schoolteachers and one bound to join her intended.

To tell the truth, a slight outfit to be traveling from here to the Pacific Coast. They’d come this far with one of Sublette and Campbell’s trains supplying Laramie, which was well enough. But they had only four grown men, two of them preachers, and the others likely more practiced at praying than shooting. The Indians didn’t care a farthing if the Christians passed through, but might prefer that they left their horses. As a toll, or tribute.

Also, the party was late. They’d gotten off late from Missouri, and the Laramie outfit had been in no great hurry, having plenty of time to get out and back. Long way yet to the Willamette, and the middle of July already here.

His main thought was that it was another party of missionaries, like Marcus Whitman brought before. Bloody nuisances. Flare thought he’d tell Full to stuff his bleeding job, even though the Irishman needed it.

“More coffee, Mr. O’Flaherty?”

It was the first time he’d really noticed her. He rose. From natural courtesy, though others would attribute his manners to Gaelic blarney. “Thank you, Miss…”

“Jewel. Maggie Jewel,” she said with a fine smile.

“Sure and you are a jewel,” he said as she poured. She gave him a merry come-off-it look and passed on to the next empty cup.

A tall lass, with hair the rust color of pipestone, full in the bosom and bottom, as Flare liked them. Tall as himself, Flare would wager, and would go near Flare’s eight stone, he’d wager again. Flare was always hard and lean, and right now, hung over and broke and starved for a few days, he was gaunt. She was graceful with her fullness—tread lightly upon the earth. Beautiful, as Narcissa Whitman had been beautiful. He liked the look of her. But no schoolmarms for Michael Devin O’Flaherty, you can bet on that.

“What about it, Mr. O’Flaherty, are you our man?” It was Dr. Full interrupting Flare’s fantasy of Miss Jewel.

“Might be. Don’t know. What’ll ye pay?” Flare noticed that all eyes were on the two of them. But from the look of it, everyone took a back seat to Dr. Full, especially his mouse of a wife.

“Five hundred dollars.”

It was no fortune, truly. Three or four years ago a good trapper got three times that in wages from American Fur Company for a year’s work, and Flare, a brigade leader, made near double that again. But this wasn’t three or four years ago. Beaver had bottomed out, and a child could hardly make enough for lead, powder, and tobacco.

“Don’t know,” said Flare softly.

“Will we be able to get to Vancouver before the snows?”

“Should do. You’ll be wanting to leave the wagons here.”

“No, Mr. O’Flaherty. Those wagons are essential. We were told we could get them right through to the Willamette.”

“Might do. Terrible risk. Slow you down. I wouldn’t chance it.” Flare had to smile at himself for saying that. There wasn’t a chance he wouldn’t take, the more fool he.

“Do we not need the food?”

“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They toil not, neither do they spin.” Flare spread his arms to the horizons. “Buffalo country.” Flare noticed Miss Jewel watching him with a saucy smile.

“But man, those wagons bear our clothes, our silver and china, our furniture, our books—”

“Everything that makes you civilized.”

“Yes.”

“To survive out here, you need to be uncivilized.”

Miss Jewel was much amused.

“Far from it,” said Dr. Full huffily.

“Oh, Samuel,” she burst out, then corrected herself: “Dr. Full, Mr. O’Flaherty is just having some fun with you.”

“Is that true?” Full demanded.

“A bit of fun, perhaps. It’s true you want to leave the wagons here. The clerk will trade you some mules, and you’ll need them.” Flare didn’t add that the wagons would go cheap and mules would come high.

“What else?”

“We’d travel every day, rest when I say so.” Flare had heard about other missionaries demanding that every sabbath be spent resting…and praying and reading Scripture…and preaching. Flare wouldn’t be able to bear the preaching.

“What else?”

“I’d be in command and you’d take orders. All of you.” A fine test for Dr. Full. Bad enough to herd pork-eaters across the mountains, impossible if you weren’t in charge.

“No, thanks, Mr. O’Flaherty.” He spoke decisively. Flare didn’t think he would pass the test. “We’ll apply elsewhere.”

“Oh, Samuel…Dr. Full,” Miss Jewel put in, “you don’t hire an expert and then tell him how to do his job.”

He ignored her.

He said curtly, “Thanks for your time, O’Flaherty.”

Keep your leprechaun spirits up after that set-to, laddie, he teased himself. He was chewing on pemmican at his lean-to. Out of fresh meat, he was, and out of nearly everything else. Hadn’t eaten for drinking in several days, didn’t have a day’s worth of pemmican left.

He envied Wolf Tone, picketed nearby, munching on grass. Wolf Tone was a handsome black stallion—black Irish, Flare liked to say. Not an Indian pony but an American horse, sixteen hands. While Flare was hungry, Wolf Tone had plenty to eat. Flare often wondered if he shouldn’t learn to eat grass and leaves and twigs, like the critters.

Truly, he hadn’t had such a bad spring. He’d trapped with Barnaby Skye in North Park, and they’d come in to Laramie with a dozen packs of skins. When it came time to go on to rendezvous, Mr. Skye went. But Flare had got that letter, and went on another binge. Drank for six days and gambled at the hand game for the last three days while stuporous. Now he had nothing.

The letter was from his oldest brother, Padraig, in County Galway. His old mother, God rest her soul, had passed on in her sleep. Seventy-five, she was. Mind not right in her last couple of years, she was, but talked often of Michael Devin, and hoped for a letter from him. Padraig listed all of Flare’s nephews and nieces, and two grandnieces, and said they all prayed for him. And truly hoped this letter reached him—it was being sent to American Fur Company, Michael Devin’s last known address.

Padraig always called him Michael Devin, as his mother had. It was the American beaver men who gave him his odd nickname. They shortened his name successively to Flaherty and then Flare. Once a brigade clerk asked him how to spell it. When Flare gave the full version, the clerk asked for the short one. “F-l-a-i-r?” He suggested. “You do cut a fancy figure.”

“No,” said Flare, “F-l-a-r-e. An Irishman’s life is brief enough, but bright and fiery.”

All in all it was a nice letter Padraig wrote, such as made Flare feel shamed enough to get drunk. His eldest brother was almost as good as their mother, God rest her soul, at making Flare feel ashamed. Flare had loved his father, God rest his soul, dead twenty-five years, and despised his mother. Which he showed by a binge in her memory, and gambling away everything.

Yes, Ma, I’m a drunk and a wastrel. And ashamed. Shame was very Irish. The Jews have guilt, a Jewish fur trader had told him in Montreal, and the Irish have shame.

Truth is, lad, you need that job.

Nursemaid bloody preachers.

You’re flat broke, laddie. You’ve not supplies to get to rendezvous. If you get there, you’ve no plews to trade.

This child has always survived.

Oh, leave off with that. You’re a thirty-nine-year-old, worn-out, washed-up drunk and gambler. Maybe you cut a figure once, maybe you could have made something of yourself, but that’s behind you, laddie.

Beaver’s bound to rise.

The devil. It’s silk hats now, my friend. And black boots.

I can guide someone other than a self-important ass. We’d be at each other’s throats.

True enough, laddie. Going to try your credit again at the post?

He listened to the footfalls on the other side of his lean-to. “Mr. O’Flaherty?” It
was
her. Usually he could tell, but it had been hard to hear her steps for sure around the campfire with others moving about.

He stood so she could see him. “Aye, Miss Jewel. Will ye come and sit a bit with a wastrel? So my honored mother would warn you, God rest her soul.”

She cocked her head and studied him. “You don’t have the face of a wastrel, Mr. O’Flaherty. An idealist, perhaps, and a little worn.”

He chuckled. “Aye, lass, you bet, all the Irish are worn, and this one more than a little. Would ye share a bite with me?” He held out the last of his pemmican. “I’ve no coffee.”

“No, thanks. Dr. Full has gone over to the fort to try to hire another guide. But the only man on Mr. Campbell’s list who’s at the fort now is you.”

Flare let it sit.

“Dr. Full says he heard over there yesterday that you need the money. Why don’t you take the job?”

“It wasn’t offered, lass.”

“Shaw,” she said. “I can get Samuel to offer it.”

“I liked the way you put your oar boldly in. Got the impression he didn’t like it.”

She grinned like a mischievous kid, which made her look marvelous. “Samuel thinks I’m too forward. He says I don’t honor the respective spheres God gave men and women in this world.”

“Words of a man who would like any place, just so it’s on top.”

“Oh, Samuel, Dr. Full, is a good man. I just know him too well.”

“Well enough to fight like brother and sister,” Flare said with a smile.

“We are, sort of. But he doesn’t like to admit that. His mother and father raised me from the time I was thirteen. He wasn’t there much—he was apprenticed to a physician. He’s a medical doctor. And an ordained minister.”

“Why is it that you switch between his Christian name and his family name?”