Ice Princess Page 3

  "But she taught you Injun things," William said.

  "Not really. Oh, she taught me a little bit about yarbs, and how to treat broken bones and wounds, but those were not what you would call 'Indian' skills, but necessary ones. I learned more of living in the wilderness from my father."

  She looked back in her memory, thinking about her mother. Peaceful Woman had been a silent person. Her broken speech had been a mixture of English and Chinook trade jargon, with words borrowed from half a dozen other tribes. In a community of men from many European nations, women from half a hundred tribes, no single language reigned. "If my godfather had not insisted, I would not speak as I do," she said, thinking back to his lessons, his belief that she had to learn to speak well if she wanted to survive in a changing world.

  "He taught you good," William said. "You talk just about as fancy as my mist'ess done. 'Cept you sound different. She drawed her words out, like she didn't want to say 'em all at once, and you bite 'em off like you wants to get on to the next one."

  Flower hid her amusement. If anyone drew his words out as if reluctant to let them go, it was William, who spoke in a liquid, almost lazy cadence. She could listen to him all day long and never tire of it. "We speak like the people around us," she said. "Already you use words like Emmet does, and sometimes you sound almost like my father."

  "I reckon a man could do worse 'n sound like your pa. He was a smart ol' coon."

  Grief tightened her throat. In William's voice she heard an echo of her father's. How she had missed his wisdom, his solid common sense, this past winter. How she had longed for his unconditional love.

  "Was this godfather of yours kin?"

  "Oh, no. Just my father's partner." Then she paused, considering. "In some ways, I suppose that was closer than kin, for a trapper's partner is more than brother, probably more than wife. They depend on each other for survival, for success, and for fellowship. Many trappers leave their wives at the trading posts and winter alone with their partners."

  "Is that what you pa done?"

  "No, never. I lived with my father my whole life, until my mother died." And she missed her father so much more, for all that she had loved her mother. Buffalo had been the strong, dependable foundation of her life. When he had left her behind after Peaceful Woman's death, she had felt abandoned. "I never felt I belonged anywhere but with him."

  She worked in silence for several moments. There was one other place she belonged.

  "Everett told me that I would always have a home with him." She looked up at William, seeing something in his eyes that made her uneasy. He needs me, she thought.

  He must not, for I have nothing for him. I am frozen inside.

  Knowing that she would hurt him, yet unable to do aught else, Flower said, "I am going to England, William. To my godfather. Where I will be safe."

  He did not pause in his stroping. The big blade flashed in the pale sunlight. "When are we leavin?"

  Flower tried again. "William, you do not understand. I'm going to England. Around the world from here."

  "Don't reckon it's that much fu'ther than what I come."

  "But it is. England is so far that it will take me most of a year to get there."

  He shrugged. "Took me longer'n that to get here." Standing, he tossed the piece of wood aside. "Reckon I'll look around before beddin' down. Saw some cat sign down along the river this morning."

  He walked away. Let her stew on it for a spell, the idea of him goin' with her. Sooner or later she'd see that he was goin', no matter what she wanted, and she'd stop arguin'.

  Either that or she'd give up this fool idea and go back to Cherry Vale with him.

  "You are not going to Fort Vancouver with me," she told him that night as they sat on the bench before the cabin. The sky was cloudy, but a warm breeze came out of the south. It brought the sour odor of new cottonwood leaves and a faraway smell of sagebrush.

  "I ain't?"

  He kept on carving at the piece of cottonwood he'd took from the abandoned corral fence. It was well-cured and easy to shape. There was a spoon hidin' inside, one of those long handled ones like Hattie used in her big cook pot.

  Flower's glare was like something pokin' at him. William waited. He knew he'd not win in any argument with her.

  "I heard Emmet say you would be a fool to go to the settlements in the Willamette Valley. So many of the newcomers come from the southern states. You might be recognized."

  "Ain't nobody likely to recognize me," he said. "I been a boy when I left, and I be a man now. 'Sides, they think me lost in the hurricane."

  She was curious, he could see. He'd never told anyone but Mist' Em how he'd managed to escape without pursuit.

  "I waited 'til the wind was so strong it was blowin' trees every which way. Some of the boys--the field hands--was hidin' in a big dry ditch, prayin' that none of the trees would come down on 'em. Pretty soon water commenced runnin' along the bottom of the ditch, and it just kept gettin' deeper and deeper. We hung on to the sides, barely keepin' our heads above the water, while the trees kept a'fallin' and the wind kept a'blowin'. Some of the boys, they lost their hold and went floatin' away, yellin' and callin' for help. But nobody was goin' to let hisself go to help 'em. And that's when I got me the idea that maybe they'd never see 'em again-- if I floated away, nobody'd ever see me again, neither."

  He remembered the horror of that night, the belly-clenching terror he'd felt when he let go the fat root that kept him from being carried away. More than once he'd swum in the river that ran alongside the cotton fields, but its usual sluggish current had been nothing like the roiling, sucking flood he'd found himself caught in. "I floated a long ways before I ended up clear out in the river. Probably be floatin' yet but for a big tree that I grabbed on to. I rode it for a long time, 'til the next night, then I let go and swum to shore."

  "You were in the water overnight?"

  "Shore was. From long about dinnertime one day 'til full dark the next. When I got out, I felt like one of them sponge things, needin' squoze to get rid of all the water." He shook himself, as he had that night, as if he would never be dry again.

  "And then you came west?"

  "I didn't know where West was, but I knowed...knew I had to stay away from folks. And I'd heard tell of a place where every man was like to a king. Made up my mind that's where I wanted to be. So I come...came."

  "You're not telling me the whole story, are you? It wasn't that easy. Hattie said it took you more than two years."

  "Took me a long time, that's for sure. I had to figure out where that place was--folks I listened in on talked about Oregon, but nobody said where it was. So I walked the way they was travelin' but a little bit off from the road. Got lost a few times, too, 'cause some of them wagons were headin' for a place called Santy-something. It's a long ways south."

  "Where did you find Dawg?"

  He wondered if Dawg missed him the way he missed the mutt. But Mist' Em and Hattie needed 'em a dog a lot worse than he did, that was for certain. "That ol' hound, he find me. I reckon he followed me a far ways before I knew he was behind me. Then one day I caught me a fish and he was settin' right there whilst I cleaned it, his tongue hangin' out and his eyes beggin' for a bite. And speakin' of fish, we'll want to dry some more. There ain't near enough to get us 'cross the mountains."

  Immediately she sat straighter and frowned. "You are not going with me."

  "I sure is," he said. "Now that big ol' dawg, he was nothin' but a rack of bones with hide stretched over it. Was a wonder he could keep goin'. So I..."

  "William, you cannot go to the Willamette Valley. You...you would not be safe."

  "You change your mind?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "If you go, I go. If you don't, then I won't neither." He shrugged. It seemed plain as pie to him. He hoped it did to her. Even if he could let her walk away from him again, he wouldn't. No matter how dangerous it was for him.

  "Reckon I'll be goin' to the Injun village pret
ty soon," he said the next morning, as they returned from checking the fish traps. "We'll need us some horses or mules, and a bit of flour or meal wouldn't be amiss."

  "One horse is enough," she said, "to carry everything I own."

  "Can't carry you and enough gear for both of us," William said, his voice carefully mild, his tone offhand a'purpose. Without giving her a chance to object, he strode off, leaving her standing at the corner of the neglected corral. "I'll be back 'long about suppertime," he called over his shoulder. There wasn't anything he had to do today, but he reckoned she'd do better left by her own self for awhile.

  He heard her sputtering behind him, but he pretended he did not. One thing he'd noticed about Flower, she was right stubborn. But long as he didn't give her a choice, she handled a lot easier.

  The next few days both of them worked from early to late, cleaning and preparing fish for drying. The snares caught two geese and a green-headed duck, and their meat joined the fish on the drying racks. Flower sorted the feathers and down, packing them in soft bags made of rabbit skins, intending to make winter moccasins for William before she sailed. Assuming that she could not talk him out of going to Fort Vancouver with her.

  She was still attempting to do so, but he was about as movable as the rimrock on the flat-topped butte above the cabin. None of her arguments made a dent in his determination.

  "William, I will be stopping at Grande Ronde to visit friends. From there one of them could see me safely to Fort Vancouver."

  "Not as good as me," he replied, not even pausing in his careful gutting of an enormous silver salmon.

  Another time, she tried appealing to his fear of re-enslavement. "What if someone believes you are an escaped slave? Would they try to send you back south?"

  "They got to catch me first," he said, "and I runs mighty fast."

  "Emmet said that he doubted Negroes would be welcome in American settlements," she said, remembering conversations she had overheard at Lapwai. "Do you want to be sent away and lose your place in Cherry Vale?"

  "Mist' Em, he already told me I probably can't lay claim to land hereabouts. So he's gonna do it for me, give it to my firstborn child." He stopped tying the willow withes together into another drying rack and leaned on the partly finished structure. "Reckon nobody gonna argue with a child who's born here about whether he belongs."

  Having experienced just a little of the prejudice and contempt that some whites felt toward people to whom they felt morally or physically superior, Flower could not share his confidence, but she had no heart for disillusioning him. She shook her head, wondering how she was going to convince him to leave her and go back to the valley where he could be safe and free.

  "You comin' with me?" William said one morning after they'd checked the snares and fish traps.

  "With you? Where?" Flower said, not really paying attention. She was wrapping dried fish in the tanned skin of a goose. The twisted grass twine she used to bind the packet was supple from being wetted and frozen so many times through the long winter.

  "To fetch us some horses. If we mean to head out pretty soon, we need to get 'em so's we can fix up some kind of packs."

  With each of his words, the icy ball in her middle grew, until she could hardly speak. Flower licked her lips, dry and stiff. She tried to force words through her throat, but they stuck somewhere in her chest. Closing her eyes, she wrapped her arms around herself and reached for calm, for a way out of the trap of panic that held her so tightly.

  His hands were gentle on her, but even so she screamed when he touched her.

  "Hey now, woman," he said, pulling his hands away. "I ain't gonna hurt you."

  Flower forced the images of hungry leers, of cruel smiles, back inside the dark place in her mind. She would expunge them entirely, if she could. But they stayed, and in the deepest part of the night, they crept out, to torment her with guilt, with shame.

  This was William. He meant her no harm, nor would he force her to...to...she tasted the blood from her bitten lip and it acted like a splash of icy water to her face.

  Taking a deep, steadying breath, she looked up at him and attempted a smile. From his stricken expression, she failed. "Sorry," she whispered, unable to find her voice. She swallowed. "I am sorry," she repeated, more loudly. "I was...remembering."

  "Aw, woman, why you have to do that?" He knelt beside her and reached out, but stopped just short of touching her cheek. "Can't you just put it all out of your head?"

  Another deep breath. "I wish...Oh, William, I wish I could, but I...just...cannot." Unable to prevent it, she spoke the last word in a wail.

  "Well, hell." Pulling his knife from its sheath, he used the long, sharp blade to dig at the soil before him. Flower wondered if he realized he was slashing and tearing at the muddy ground as if it were an enemy. "That's why you been so shy ain't it?"

  She didn't answer.

  He went on. "Goat Runner, he say you hide whenever him or any of his men come close. And the one time you come to the village, you only talked to the women. He said he wouldn't even have knowed...known you was there if his woman hadn't told him." He stopped the digging and began scraping the torn sod back into the hole he'd dug. "You're skairt of men, ain't you. Plumb skairt."

  She nodded, unable to deny it. Ashamed to admit it.

  "So how you figure to get yourself to wherever it is you'll catch that ship to England? You gonna sneak along all the way, like I done...did when I come away out here?"

  "I was going to stay well off the main trail," she said. "There are others."

  "And what was you gonna do for food all that way? Eat nothin' but the jerky and dried fish we been fixin'?"

  She had, but she would not tell him so. "I would not starve."

  He stood, towering above her. "Woman, I figured you was pretty smart, but I'm beginnin' to wonder. Even if you could sneak your way to that ship, you gotta get on it. And once you're there, what you gonna do? I seen me a ship one time, when Marse Yates had a passel of cotton all baled up and sent some of us boys along to take it downriver. It weren't all that big. Where you gonna hide?"

  Flower shook her head, not wanting to let him read the fear on her face. How many times had she asked herself the same question? She knew she would be safe in England, but how was she to get there, when the journey meant months in close quarters with a ship's crew? And there would be other passengers, too.

  Many of them would be men.

  One last deep breath. "I will manage," she said, not sounding like herself, but at least finally able to speak aloud.

  "Sure you will," he said. "Sure you will." His tone was unconvinced.

  William went alone to the Indian village. He brought back her horse, her gentle, strong-hearted Windchaser, and a big, rawboned mule that she recognized as her father's. "How?" she asked him, knowing full well that Goat Runner would almost as soon part with one of his wives as with one of his mules.

  "Like Mist' Em say, you give enough gold, you can buy most anything," William said, grinning. "That ol' Injun, he don't have much use for gold but he sure do like his tobacco. I told him how much tobacco he could buy with one of them gold coins Mist' Em make, and pretty soon he was ready to give me all his horses."

  "You have some of the coins?" She had not even considered that he might, although she knew that Emmet intended they should all share the gold they'd managed to bring out of the place they were calling Buff's Basin.

  "Got less of 'em than I did yesterday," he said, once more looking as if he might smile at any instant. "That Goat Runner, he drive a mean bargain."

  She was unsure what he meant. Either he had gotten the mule for a good price, or it had been far too dear. "Oh, no! You didn't pay for my horse, did you?"

  "I surely did. Hope she's worth it."

  Flower could not help but laugh. "Oh, William, she was not Goat Runner's to sell. Before we went to Buff's Basin last year, I gave him tobacco and salt to keep Windchaser until I should need her."

  William shrugge
d. "I didn't give but one coin for her." The smile finally materialized. "I wondered why that Injun wanted three coins for the mule, and only one for the horse. Now I knows."

  She bit her lip. "When you get back to Cherry Vale you must have Emmet give you my share of the gold. I cannot let you spend yours on me."

  He caught her face in his fingers, forced her to look up at him. His eyes were hot with anger as he glared down at her. "Woman, what's mine is yours. Don't you know that yet?"

  Chapter Three

  Making William do something he did not want to do was, as her father would have said, 'like tryin' to push a rope.' Flower finally gave up arguing and considered other ways to convince him not to go with her.

  The river was running full now, cold with snowmelt, dangerous with debris washed from crumbling banks upstream. Each morning Flower looked up at the mountains to the north, watching the retreat of the snow. She knew, from past years, that when only isolated patches clung to the highest slopes here, the Blues would be passable.

  In the meantime, she gathered what she would need to discourage William. One morning while he was hunting, she went to the Bannock village and waited until one of the women she knew emerged. For one bag of carefully cleaned down and a bundle of bright feathers for decoration, she was able to obtain the yarbs she needed. She was still not certain she should use them. What if the yarbs did not act as Laughs in Sunshine said they would? What if they did harm?

  When she returned to the cabin, it was empty and cold. The solitude that had been her solace before William's coming now seemed barren and desolate. Forcing her thoughts into more practical avenues, Flower set about her chores. There were still sturdy moccasins to be made, pelts and skins to pack for trading at Fort Vancouver.