Tisha (4 page)

“If he gives you any trouble after this, whack him on the neck. He’ll mind.”

I didn’t have to. All I had to do from then on was tap him and he did what he was supposed to do.

After that Mr. Strong became more friendly. Up to then I didn’t think he liked me, but after a while he even asked me where I’d come from and how I happened to come to Alaska.

I told him about how I’d been teaching in Forest Grove Elementary in Oregon when the territorial commissioner of education visited there last year. “He gave a lecture in the auditorium about teaching here, and he made it sound so exciting and adventurous that I made out an application. And here I am.”

“Where were you brought up?”

“In Colorado. My father was in the mining business,” I said. Somehow it sounded better than saying he’d just been a coal miner.

“You seem a little young to be out on your own.”

“I’m almost twenty,” I said.

“You don’t look it.”

I knew he was going to say that Just before I’d left Forest Grove I’d gone into a barbershop and had my hair bobbed. I’d figured that since I was going to be teaching somewhere in the wilds, it would be easier to take care of if it was short Up to then people always
took me for being older than I was, but from then on they kept telling me I looked like a kid.

“I meant no offense by that, madam,” he said. “I was twelve when I left home myself and the experience hasn’t hurt me yet.”

“I was an old woman compared to you. I was sixteen when I left Colorado and started teaching in Forest Grove.”

As we rode he told me a little about himself, of an unhappy childhood in North Carolina, then running away to go to California. He was in his late twenties when he came to Alaska to look for gold, and he’d been in the Forty Mile country for twenty-one years now. He was on the town council and was a member of the school board in Eagle.

The two of us having left home early gave us something in common. He didn’t stop calling me madam, but I could tell he felt kind of fatherly towards me. All the rest of that day, seeing how badly off I was, he helped me down and let me walk a little even when we weren’t going down a steep hill. It meant that the whole pack train had to slow up and I really appreciated it.

It was getting towards dark and I was thinking that we were never going to reach Steel Creek, when we came to the foot of the steepest trail we’d come across so far. The brush around it was so thick and high that it formed a tunnel. Even without packs it would have been a tough trail for the animals to climb. Now since it was the end of the day and they were tired, they balked at it and I didn’t blame them.

They weren’t the best animals to begin with—I’d seen finer horses pulling vegetable wagons—and they were overloaded. Besides that, most of the loads weren’t packed on them right and half of them had sores full of pus and blood where the loads were rubbing against them. One of the mules whose back was the worst of all kept trying to knock his pack off against every tree he passed. I mentioned it to Mr. Strong, but he said they’d be all right.

Now he kept smacking the lead animals on the rump with his coiled whip and yelling at them, but it didn’t do
any good. They were played out. I’d thought he was mad when he’d whipped Blossom earlier in the morning, but this time he went into a rage.

Dismounting, he searched around in the brush until he came up with a length of dead limb as thick as a two-by-four. Then helling and damning to beat the band, he clubbed the first few animals all over their bodies. I thought he’d gone crazy and was going to kill them, but they moved. One after the other they disappeared up into the tunnel of brush, dirt and rocks coming down behind them. When Mr. Strong reached me, he threw the limb aside and took Blossom’s reins.

Leading Blossom to his own horse, he mounted up. “This will be a tough climb, madam. You’re going to have to hold on.”

Before I could say anything, he’d spurred his horse forward, jerking Blossom’s reins, and the next thing I knew I was charging up through the tunnel after him. It was so steep I couldn’t see how we were going to make it to the top. I could barely see ahead with all the dust that had been raised, and a couple of times I was almost blinded by branches. It was a full five minutes before we broke out of it. When we did the horses and mules were dripping sweat onto the ground and breathing so hard they sounded like bellows. My backside was raw and I was all for just dropping off Blossom and giving up then and there, but when I asked Mr. Strong if I could get off, he shook his head, too winded to talk. It took him a minute before he could say, “Walk your horse over there.” He pointed to a spot about a hundred yards away and I nudged Blossom over to it.

I didn’t know what to expect, but what I saw made me forget every ache and pain I had. The sun was below the distant mountains, and the land in between was covered with a strange veil of gray. Pine and spruce loomed up from the slopes below me, and beyond there was so much land, all of it bursting with spruce and tamarack, that I felt like a speck of dust that could be swept away in a second. Winding through it for as far as I could see were the waters of the Forty Mile River. And directly below, on the other side of the river, looking almost unreal, were twenty acres of tilled farm
land. A big red barn was set to one side of them, and near that was a log building with bright patches of flowers all around it. Another half acre, directly behind the building, was lined with the orderly green rows of a vegetable garden.

“Steel Creek,” Mr. Strong said, riding up beside me. “That’s the creek, branching into the river down there. And that’s the Prentiss roadhouse.”

There was no problem getting the pack animals down to the river. Once they saw what was below they came to life, knowing that feed and a warm stall were waiting. They were so anxious that Mr. Strong had to keep holding the lead horse back, afraid that once the animals started to move fast there’d be no stopping them. If one of them was to fall he was liable to drag all the rest down. I knew how they felt. I couldn’t wait to get there myself. Mr. Strong had told me I’d be able to take a hot bath when we reached Steel Creek.

As we kept going down and drawing near the river, I wondered how we were going to cross. The river wasn’t high, but it was flowing pretty fast. When we reached the bank I was glad to see a thick cable stretched across the water. It was anchored to the cliff face on this side and to a big iron tripod on the other. There was a raft pulled up on the opposite shore that had a line attached to the cable.

No sooner did we arrive at the river than about a half a dozen people appeared on the other bank. Except for a girl in bib overalls, they were all men. One of them hallooed and yelled a question, but what with the rushing water and the animals milling around, I couldn’t hear. Mr. Strong understood. He shook his head violently from side to side and waved a hand to make sure they understood he was saying no.

Almost as soon as we were at the bank, Blossom began to give me trouble for the first time all day. He kept heading for the water, and each time I turned him away from it he’d try again. He’d been so good that I’d dropped the switch a long way back. Now I wished I had it.

Mr. Strong dismounted, and I thought he was going to grab Blossom and help me down. Instead, he started
untethering the pack animals. As each one was untied it splashed into the waist-deep water. After the third one went in Blossom was so mad at my holding him back that he started trying to bite my foot again, his teeth clicking evilly.

“Mr. Strong, can you help me? I can’t hold Blossom!”

“Give him his head, madam. He knows what to do.”

“You mean let him go in the river?”

“That is correct.”

“Can’t we use that raft?”

“We don’t need it. Rest assured, madam, it’s not necessary. I’ve been doing this for years.”

You may have, I thought, but I haven’t, and I wished I had the courage to tell him that. The lead animals had reached the middle. Almost up to their haunches, they had to fight to keep their feet in the powerful current. I couldn’t swim, but even if I could cross the Channel like the champion Gertrude Ederle I still wouldn’t be too anxious to do it with Blossom. But I took a deep breath, eased my hold on the reins and let Blossom go. Hungry and bad-tempered, he plunged right in.

To my surprise, it was easy. Once I stopped caring about getting splashed, I began to enjoy it. I’d seen cowboys cross rivers in picture shows and they’d done it in deeper water than this. I was feeling so good that I even waved once to everyone on the opposite bank.

Then Blossom slipped.

He went down on his hind legs and I almost slid off. While he was down the water hit us in the side with so much force that we almost went over. Blossom held his feet, but he started losing ground. The current was pushing us into deeper water. As hard as he tried, Blossom couldn’t hold out against it. He slipped again, and I felt the shock of cold water up to my waist. I began to panic. With Blossom not able to get any purchase on the slippery bottom, it was only a matter of time before we’d be swept away.

He knew we were in trouble and fought harder than ever to make it to the opposite bank. If I wasn’t so busy just holding on, I’d have had the sense to point
him downriver and ease him over to the bank gradually, but I was too scared to think. Suddenly he stumbled. His forelegs went down and I was pitched forward at the same time that his head snapped back and it cracked against my forehead. Dazed, I hardly knew what was happening after that All I knew was that I couldn’t faint and I had to hold on.

I grabbed a handful of mane and had a quick flash of the people on the opposite bank whirling away from us. Then they were gone. A big blood-red blotch kept coming between me and everything else. I heard Blossom blowing and snorting, and once I felt the two of us being pulled down, only to be pushed right back up again.

I couldn’t tell how long it was before I realized that Blossom had calmed down. The red blotch in front of my eyes had disappeared and left me with a headache, but somehow I was still in the saddle. Blossom was swimining. Moving along smoothly, he was heading for the bank. I felt him touch bottom, and a few seconds later he heaved himself up out of the water. Once we were on dry land he shook himself so hard that even if I’d wanted to I couldn’t have stayed on him. I slid to the ground and landed hard.

It took me a minute before I started telling myself that I’d better get up. I was shivering with cold, but didn’t have the strength to move.

I’d finally managed to sit up when I heard someone coming. It was a girl. Breathing hard from running, she leaned down, one of her braids dangling in front of me.

“You all right, ma’am?”

I managed a nod.

“Can you walk if I help you?”

She got me to my feet and we were making our way along tibie bank when Mr. Strong came riding up. He wanted to put me up on his horse, but I wouldn’t let him. I didn’t want to look at another horse right then. Between the two of them they brought me to the Prentiss roadhouse.

Inside, a stocky woman with gray hair and a bossy manner took me in charge right away. Holding me away from her so she wouldn’t get wet, she told the girl to
unfold the canvas tub, and then ushered me into a room. There she told me to take off my wet clothes, and dry myself off. She came back with an old flannel bathrobe a few minutes later, steered me into a bathing room and eased me into a portable tub that was full of steaming water. It burned me where I was raw, but it felt wonderful everyplace else. She was furious at Mr. Strong. “That old tight-fisted sonofabitch,” she said, when I leaned back against the wooden frame of the tub, “—it was his fault you went in. If he’d of let us send the raft over it wouldn’t of happened. But he wanted to save the money.”

The girl came in then carrying a big copper kettle. “This is my daughter Nancy,” the woman said. “I’m Mrs. Prentiss. This isn’t the first time this kind of thing’s happened.” She turned to her daughter, “You remember when he lost those two mules loaded down with parcel post?”

“Yes’m.” The girl let the hot water into the tub slowly.

“You stay here with her. I got supper to make and I don’t want her falling asleep in there. Be a hell of a thing if she ended up drowning in
here
after all that.”

She left. Nancy finished pouring the water and sat down in a homemade chair. I slid further down along the smooth rubber lining and let my head rest against the frame. I’d rather have been left alone, but Mrs. Prentiss wasn’t the kind of person you argued with. Nancy was uncomfortable. Her green eyes kept looking everyplace but at me.

“Thanks for helping me,” I said.

She made a little motion with her head to say it was nothing, then looked down at her fingers. She had on an old middy blouse under her overalls and her fingernails were bitten down to the quick. She could have been pretty if she didn’t keep her mouth pursed so tight.

“We didn’t think you were gonna make it.”

“Neither did I.”

“Everybody figured Chicken was gonna have to do without a teacher for another year.”

When she saw me smile she grinned, trying to hide
the cavities in her front teeth. I told her she didn’t have to stay. “I won’t fall asleep.”

“You sure?”

“Positive. It feels too good.”

I stayed in the tub for another hour, until Mrs. Prentiss came for me and brought me back into the room. She’d already laid out bandages on the top tier of a bunk bed and made me lie down on my stomach on the bottom tier. Then, even though I told her I could do it myself, she insisted on bandaging all the places where I was raw. “I’ve raised eight kids,” she said. “You don’t have anything they don’t. In some places they got more, so settle down. You got two more days before you reach Chicken. You won’t make it with a raw behind.”

She was none too gentle, but she was thorough. After she finished, she handed me a suit of boy’s Stanfield underwear. “It’s scratchy,” she said, “but it’s warm.”

She ordered me to stay awake until she brought me some dinner. I found out later that the meat was bear cub, but it tasted like pork and it was delicious. No sooner had I finished it than I fell asleep.