Ice Princess Page 10

  "Hush!" She led Windchaser into the water, bracing herself against the current, which came well above her knees. The mule fought William for a moment, then yielded to the tug on his lead line.

  A dog barked in the village, and the pup yipped a reply. Quickly William caught his muzzle in one hand and prevented a canine conversation. Flower held her breath, but the Wasco village slept on, undisturbed.

  At last they stood on the ridge west of the river. "We must follow the wagon tracks from here on, but I want to stay as far off of them as possible, The closer we come to The Dalles, the greater the likelihood we will encounter other travelers."

  "That ain't all bad," William muttered, but he followed her.

  "You do not know what you say," she retorted. The Methodist mission at The Dalles had been newly established when she last passed through with her parents. Back then there had been the Wasco village near the mouth of Chenoweth creek, and a small settlement of whites farther east where another creek emptied into the river. They had been a worthless lot, according to Buffalo, men who had jumped ship and come inland intending on robbing the Indians. Others had found the trapper's life too arduous and decided preying on the occasional traveler was more to their liking. Jacques had warned her about the settlement, saying it was, if anything more dangerous and ungoverned than before, the ranks of the corrupt swelled by newcomers from the wagon trains.

  The sort of men who had destroyed her life.

  Late that night they found a camp in a hollow, sheltered by the stark skeleton of a dead cedar. William insisted on standing watch. "Pup here, he still ain't figured out that he's supposed to be watchin' who comes close. He figures everybody's his friend."

  "I told you he was worthless," Flower grumbled, as the dog chewed on one of her preciously hoarded strips of jerky. She would have to buy more in The Dalles, and cornmeal as well. The journey had taken much longer than she'd expected, due to her insistence on staying well off the emigrants' road.

  It had been worth the delay, though. They had seen no one, except at a distance. She was safe.

  So far.

  William relaxed against the dead tree trunk, watching Flower as she slept. She seemed different somehow. The first nights he had shared her camp, she had slept in a curled ball, arms tightly wrapped about herself, legs drawn up tight against her chest. As if she was protecting herself from hurt even in her slumber.

  Tonight she almost sprawled, her face turned up to the sky. Like she wasn't scairt no more.

  He knew that wasn't so. Just look at how she'd come near panic when the pup jumped on her. She just wasn't scairt of him no more.

  He came near laughing at himself. If there was anybody Flower should be scairt of, it was him. Just thinkin' about what he wanted to do with her made him hard as a rock.

  He couldn't see her much, now it was full dark, but the waning moon gave enough light that her face was a pale shape in the darkness. Besides, he didn't need light to see her face. It was graven on his mind, so deep he'd see it 'til the day he died.

  He'd never even kissed her, but he knew that her mouth was soft, her breath sweet. Her eyelashes lay in rich, dark fans on her cheeks, and delicate tendrils of smoky hair waved across her forehead. In the daylight, it would gleam with hidden fire, but tonight it was a black cloud around her head.

  Why'd she have to go and cut it, anyhow? The first thing he'd ever noticed about her was the cape of black hair she wore like a garment. Even when she'd tied it back in a long braid down her back, it had made him want to feel its slippery silkiness. Now it stuck out in tufts, like she'd shaved her head with a rusty knife.

  Never mind. She'd be beautiful if she was baldheaded.

  The pup lifted his head, ears cocked.

  William slowed his breath, held dead still.

  A rustle in the grass down toward the mouth of the hollow grew louder, then stopped.

  Both William and the pup waited, still and listening.

  A sudden scuffle. A squeak, cut off short. Then a sound of tiny bones being chomped. The pup sniffed, licked his chops, and lay his head back on crossed forepaws.

  "You'd like to be out there huntin', wouldn't you?" William said in a low whisper. He'd kept the pup on a line at nights since that time up in the mountains when he'd run off, chasing some critter, and hadn't come back 'til near morning.

  The pup sighed.

  "Yeah, me too. Well, we can't always have what we want, and you might as well get used to it," he said, as much to himself as to the pup.

  * * * *

  Three days later they stood on the bluff overlooking The Dalles, the warm afternoon sun bringing out the smell of the tall sagebrush surrounding them. What passed for a town was little more than a cluster of rough-built cabins and tents, huddled at the bottom of the slope. "Don't look like much to me," William said. "And it sure don't look like a place you wants to go."

  Flower shivered beside him, for all that the breeze was warm. "I do not want to," she admitted, "but I must. The only way down the river from here on is by boat."

  "Woman, you are plumb crazy! There ain't no way in Hell you're gonna get on a boat and float down that river." He pointed. After boiling through a place so narrow it looked like he could jump across, the river turned north and disappeared between steep hills, its surface white with rapids. "You'd get drownded for sure."

  "Boats go regularly from here to the mouth of the Willamette," she said, but her tone told him she wasn't too fond of the idea. "And it is the best way, so I must."

  "What about that there road Jacques told us about? The one over the mountain?" He looked again at the huge, pointy-topped mountain that towered over them. It made him feel little and no-account, just looking at it. "Seems to me you'd be a lot better off goin' that way."

  "The road goes high, along the shoulder of Hood, and there could still be snow. On a boat I can be certain I will reach Oregon City in a week. On the road, I might have to wait a long time for the snow to melt."

  William put as much scorn in his voice as he knew how. "And you're gonna go down there and hire yourself a ride on a boat? You can hardly look me in the eye, and you're gonna dicker with some stranger over ridin' his boat with a mess of men?"

  Flower stared down at the settlement a long time, not saying anything. At last she sighed. "I do what I must," she said.

  It sounded to William like she was trying to convince herself, not him.

  "Well, then you'd better change your clothes," he said, turning aside and tugging on the pup's line. "Let's get on back to camp, so's we can figure out what we're takin' and what we're leavin' behind. We'll need to repack all our gear so's we can carry it. I don't reckon we'll be takin' the stock with us."

  "Of course I wi--William, you are not going any farther with me!"

  "Yes'm, I is." Ignoring her sputters of protest, he headed back down the other side of the bluff. Their camp was a good two hour's walk, down in that hidden canyon, and he wanted to be back there by sunset so he could check the snares he'd set this morning.

  For a few minutes, he didn't think she'd follow him. Some of the things she did was just plain crazy, and he half-expected her to march down there into that town and wave one of her gold coins around. She'd think them renegade bassards was pure gentlemen, if she done that.

  He turned, opened his mouth to tell her he'd go into town for her. She was lagging far behind him, her head lowered, her steps slow.

  Sometime he got so mad with her he could shake her till her teeth rattled. He'd come along with her this far because he'd been hopin' she'd come to her senses and go back with him to Cherry Vale. Today, standing up there and seeing the scabby little settlement, he'd finally come to accept that she wasn't goin' anywheres but that England she thought was so fine.

  "Huh!" he muttered. "She makes it sound like it's better 'n heaven. I reckon it's just a place like any other." That time his marse had took him and some of the other boys down to Mobile, they'd drove through town. He'd made up his mind right then tha
t he was better off on the plantation, no matter what, than livin' in the filthy, crowded shacks he'd seen there.

  He'd bet one of the gold coins he still had sewn into his coat that England wasn't all that different from Mobile. But if the Earl she was goin' to stay with was as mighty as she said, maybe she'd never see those parts of town.

  He wondered once again what an Earl was and why he was so particular fine.

  The campsite they'd chosen was sheltered and hidden, at the head of a narrow, twisting branch of a deep stream-cut ravine. Flower felt they could safely have a fire, which was welcome. This afternoon's balmy breeze had turned cold as soon as the sun set, and now cut through her buckskin clothing like an icy knife.

  One of William's snares yielded a cottontail, the other a jackrabbit. She gutted the jack and gave the offal and the head to the pup, but cut the rest into pieces and set it to stew with some of the wild onions and yampah she'd dug today. The plump cottontail she skewered and set above the fire to roast.

  They sat in silence while the meat sizzled over the fire. At last she could bear it no longer. "You are not going to Oregon City with me, William. It is time for you to return to Cherry Vale."

  "Ain't nothin' for me back there," he said, avoiding her eyes. He was half-reclining, his long legs stretched out toward her. Although it was not yet full dark, she could not see his face, except for the flash of his teeth, the gleam of his eyes.

  And his hands. Strong hands. Gentle hands. They were seldom idle, and now were honing the blade of the long knife he carried, the whisper of steel against stone the only sound audible above the gentle clatter of wind-blown sagebrush.

  "Oh, William, but there is. You have land. And friends. A home!"

  A home such as she might never have again. For much as she loved Everett Hetherington, much as she expected to be welcomed into his family, she knew England could never replace all that she was leaving. I have no choice, she told herself once again. I must go where I will be safe.

  "I will not claim you," she threatened, remembering he'd proposed traveling as her servant. "I will tell them I have never seen you before you started following me. That I fear you."

  She saw his shoulders move in a small shrug. "I got to take my chances, I reckon. Just goin' into town is a risk for me, even if you do say I's your slave. I still got my brand."

  "Your brand? What do you mean?"

  "All slaves got brands, least they do where I come from. My marse, he had me marked when he bought me." He touched his thigh, luring her gaze once more to the lean strength of it. "Long as it don't have the right mark through it, anybody could take me, send me back for the reward."

  "They tattooed you?" Many of her childhood friends had been tattooed, marks of membership into tribal clans or as devices to enhance personal beauty. Flower had always been thankful that her mother had been determined that she would have nothing ineradicable to mark her as Nez Perce. In England such a mark would define her as foreign, exotic. Perhaps less acceptable to polite society.

  She wanted to be recognized there as an American, not as Nez Perce. Not as half-breed!

  William had not answered her, she realized. Perhaps his tattoo was ugly, and he was ashamed of it.

  Something he had said earlier came back to her in the silence. "What did you mean, I should change my clothing?"

  He sat up, slipped his knife into its sheath and the stone into the possibles bag he wore at his waist. "Look at you," he said, a note of something--derision?--in his voice. "You looks Injun. What was it that feller at Fort Boise called you? Dirty fisheater? I ain't surprised."

  Flower had to hold herself in tight check to keep from leaping at him, fists clenched and ready to pound. "Indians are not dirty! We are cleaner than whites. They stink of sweat and sour clothing. And you--" she all but sputtered. "What would he have called you, had Mr. Craigie not intervened? A Nigger? Isn't that the word the Americans use?"

  "I been called worse." His voice was mild. "But that wasn't what I meant."

  "Then supposed you tell me your meaning," she snapped. "And do not stoop to more insult, if you value your skin."

  There was the barest hint of laughter in his voice when he said, "Mighty ferocious, ain't you?"

  "William!"

  "All I meant was that you look like a Injun, dressed the way you are. And white folks put a lot of store in looks."

  Looking down at her clothing, Flower saw what he meant. Anyone might wear moccasins such as hers, but no white woman would appear in public wearing buckskin. Her dress was decorated with beadwork and quills, her leggings fringed. They were styled in the Nez Perce manner, unmistakably of Indian make. I am not ashamed of them!

  Before she could argue with him, he said, "Now you put on that pretty calico dress Marie give you, and wrap that shawl around yourself, and you'll look white as most anybody. Nobody'll call you Injun then, and they'll treat you polite."

  "You are right." Much as I hate to admit it. "Tomorrow I will change before I go to town."

  "I got me some pants and a raggedy shirt I can wear. And I reckon I'll go barefoot. Not too many slaves got shoes." He rolled to his feet, poked at the dying fire to expose unburned wood. "Just you be sure you treat me like I be no 'count. No white woman would act nice like you do to a Nigra."

  "I will not. That would be cruel."

  "That'd be safe," he countered. "Just you listen to me, woman. I been a slave a lot longer than I been free. I knows what I's talking about."

  "'I'm,' William. It is 'I'm', which is short for 'I am.'"

  "I knows that," he said, softly. "But as long as I's your slave, I better sound like one. Else some redneck bassard from down South might figure I's gettin' uppity and make up his mind to teach me a lesson."

  "You are neither slave nor servant, William. And you will not go into town with me. You told me yourself that you are in danger of capture."

  "Not near so much danger as you is," he said, once more stirring the fire. Only a few glowing embers remained, and she could not see his expression, even though he knelt close to them, turning the ashes with a stick.. "Long as I's here, I might as well go with you. You be a lot better off than if you go alone."

  "I will not argue with you, William," she said, determined to prevail. "You are not coming with me to Oregon City, and that is my final word."

  "Good. I was gettin' tired of arguin."

  * * * *

  More and more folks was on the trail as the weather got warmer. Muller did his best to get a look at each and every one of them, still convinced the tall trapper would appear sooner or later. The wagons wouldn't start coming through for three months or more, but other travelers, not held back by the obstacles that slowed the wagon trains, would trickle through The Dalles all summer. He could afford to wait, for this season, anyhow. Everybody who went west had to come by here.

  Even if the trapper failed to arrive, there were other opportunities for a man with enterprise and acumen. But deep in his gut he believed that he would have another chance at those fabulous golden coins.

  He'll turn up again. And when he does, I'll have that gold.

  One way or another.

  Chapter Seven

  Flower stood on the bluff overlooking the settlement at The Dalles. Behind her, William waited patiently. She had made him angry, telling him that she hated the sight of him. That he frightened her as badly as the renegades had, for he would not leave her alone.

  She had accused him of wanting to enslave her.

  Unforgivable words.

  Necessary words, for he was risking his life and his freedom out of a misguided belief that she needed him.

  I do, but he must never know that. It would not be fair to him, since I can never be his woman.

  And so she had done her best to drive him away.

  He had followed her, nonetheless.

  "I'll see you safe to town," had been his only words. He had avoided looking at her, keeping his face averted all the while they were packing their belonging
s, his mouth set and a muscle at the hinge of his jaw twitching.

  Someday, perhaps, he might forgive her.

  Now she chewed her lip, all too aware of the feel of soft linen petticoats against her legs, the flapping of her skirt in the stiff wind. In a few moments she would start down that hillside, would enter that town.

  She told her feet to move.

  Below, on the gently sloping ground where the cabins and tents clustered, men moved about, hurrying as if their days were full and busy. The mission, some distance uphill from the clustered dwellings, was surrounded by fenced gardens, their damp brown furrows still bare of green, but showing evidence of careful cultivation. Off in the distance she could see the long, bark-roofed houses of the Wasco village bordering the banks of Chenoweth Creek. Is Hilaire there? Will he be angry if I do not say farewell?

  Hilaire had chosen his path. He was Skwiskwis now--Squirrel-- had renounced his French heritage, as Flower was about to renounce her Nez Perce traditions, her American birthright. She would go to England and one day no one would remember that she was of mixed parentage.

  No one would call her half-breed.

  In a week or less she would be in Oregon City. And soon after that she would be at sea, on her way to safety.

  Again she commanded her feet to move, to take that first step down the hill.

  Sourness rose in her throat, threatening to choke her. She swallowed. I can do this.

  Her feet moved with difficulty, as if they were wading through some enormously thick, sticky mass. One step, then another.

  And at the third step, she fell on her knees, knowing she could not take a fourth.

  "I cannot. I cannot!" she wailed. "Oh, my God! I am doomed!"

  For the rest of her life she would be trapped in this untamed wilderness, easy prey for any man who sensed her weakness.

  Strong arms encircled her, gathering her against a hard chest. Big hands stroked her hair, held her face against warm buckskin. "Hush, woman. Hush. You don't have to be skairt no more. I'll get you to your ship. I'll see you to England safe and sound."