Ice Princess Page 8

  Remembering the frequent exhortations she had been subject to by Dr. Spaulding, concerning the fate of her eternal soul, Flower had to agree.

  "You said you came to say farewell, Flower," Marie said. "Where are you bound? And why?"

  "Do you remember Everett Hetherington? The Englishman who was my father's partner for several years?"

  They both nodded.

  "He often said that he believed I would be happier in England than in America, particularly once more settlers came to the Northwest." Biting her lip, Flower knew she had to be honest with these people. To warn Marie, if for no other reason. "Last summer I was captured. By renegades. Wicked, vicious men. They...they hurt me. Badly. Now I cannot look at a man, cannot speak to a man, without freezing with fear." She struck her breasts with her closed fists. "Here. In my heart!"

  "Oh, Flower," Marie whispered, her voice breaking, "did they...did they--"

  Flower nodded. "Many times."

  Jacques cursed, foully.

  "It is done, my friend. But I am no longer the woman I was before...before they did this to me. Now I live in fear. And so I must go to a place where there are laws protecting the helpless, and strong men who enforce them."

  "No place is so perfect as that," Jacques growled. "Not anywhere in the wide world."

  "Oh, but there is. Everett always said that England was the most civilized country in the world. Surely civilization means that the weak and the helpless are protected."

  "You dream, P'tite Fleur. Better you stay in this place you said your friends found, this Cherry Vale. You will be as safe there as you will in England." He cocked his head at her. "Perhaps you should go to Paris, instead. As a child I was told that it was almost as extraordinary as heaven."

  "No. I will go to England," she said. "I have decided."

  "As you will," Jacques said, but he looked unconvinced of her wisdom.

  The subject of William's suitability as her traveling companion never arose again. Flower was pleased to see Jacques speaking to him in a civil manner the next morning. The two men rode off together, William sitting awkwardly astride her mule, bareback.

  * * * *

  "Why do you travel with Fleur?" Jacques said to William when they were a ways from the cabin. "I have spoken with Americans, heard of how they treat those of your color. You can only bring more danger to her."

  Easing himself astride the mule's bony back, William stared across at the mountains to the north. He sure wished he could see the answers writ in the snow on their tops. Even though Hattie had taught him his letters, he still wasn't real good with words, not when he felt strong about something.

  "Eh! What say you?"

  "I don't know," he said. "I ain't got any choice, I guess. Seems like life wouldn't be worth much, if I wasn't with her."

  "You love her, hein?"

  William nodded glumly. "Not that it's gonna do me any good."

  "Have you told her you love her?"

  "I told her I wants her to be my woman." Once more he shifted. He'd choose to walk any day, but Jacques had insisted he ride. Tomorrow I'll be so crippled up I won't be able to move.

  "Pah! Women, they like the poetry. The kisses. The caresses." He squinted at William. "Have you kissed her?"

  "Nossir. I dasn't." The very thought made his insides shiver. "She's mighty skittish, a man comes even close to her."

  "Ah, oui. Perhaps you are wise. But do not delay too long, young Guillaume. There is a saying--'in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.' You would be wise to heed it. Do not be afraid to tell her of your love, and do not wait until it is too late to do so."

  "Nossir, I won't." Once more he shifted, wondering if he'd have any skin left on his arse when this day was over.

  They had delivered the food Marie had sent to an old woman, had picked up some small varmit skins--Jacques called them conies, but William knew a rabbit hide when he saw one--from another cabin, and were heading back the way they'd come when Jacques suddenly drew his horse up. "Hah! I have it!"

  Nearly sliding from the mule's back when he half-reared, William fought to stay astride. He managed, but only by the skin of his teeth. "What you got?" he said, wishing Jacques was a little less noisy.

  "I have the way you can endear your self to our p'tite Fleur. I think you are not certain you can protect her from the bad men you will meet--ah, oui, mon ami, you will meet many bad men, and some of them will want to take Fleur from you."

  "I knows that." The thought had kept him awake more than one night.

  "So you need a helper. Someone to assist you. And me, I know just where to find this helper." He turned his horse off the trail and spurred it into a trot.

  With a death grip on the mule's mane, William followed. "I ain't gonna like this," he muttered.

  * * * *

  Once they were alone, Marie confided to Flower that she had chosen her future husband. "But it wouldn't do to let Papa know, not until Auguste has formally asked his permission."

  The sun shone against the wall of the cabin that morning, and they sat in its warmth. Hides in their stretchers were piled in front of them, waiting to be softened so they could be made into clothing. Marie handed Flower one of the hoops holding a stretched deerskin, still stiff and hard, and took one herself.

  Flower started removing the lacings holding the skin to the frame. "Auguste? Are you talking about little Auguste Entremont? With the freckles?" She dipped her cupped hand into the pot of warm water between them and moistened the stiff hide she held. Once it was moistened, she would work it between her hands until it was soft, a task she had learned as a child and one that never failed to soothe her.

  "The very one." Marie giggled. "But not so little now. And his freckles have grown so big that they almost cover his face. But he is still very handsome. He and his brother have built a home down south of here, in the Ochoco Mountains. They hope to raise horses to sell to the American settlers."

  "When will you marry?" Oh, how she envied Marie her future happiness. Flower fought back the tears that burned at the backs of her eyes, as she thought about the home and the babies she would never have.

  "Auguste will ask Papa in the fall, after he has sold horses to this year's settlers." Marie's smile was sweetly romantic. "We will marry in the winter."

  They worked quietly, reminiscing of their childhoods, sharing news of events in their lives since they'd last been together. Flower found a contentment she had not felt for many months in the shared work, the mostly happy memories.

  "Do you remember when Auguste and Hilaire caught the skunk in their trap?"

  Flower laughed. "Oh, yes. And how furious your papa was when they brought the skin in with his pelts. Did he ever get the smell out of them?"

  "Not entirely, but he sold them to an American trader, who did not seem to care that they smelled of roses." She giggled. "Papa soaked them in the French perfume he bought for Maman."

  "I remember when he gave it to her," Flower said, also laughing. "She told my mother that a woman should smell of cedar and sunlight, not of stale and dusty flowers from a foreign land."

  "I still have the bottle," Marie said, her voice pensive. "So pretty. I like the smell, even if Maman did not."

  Flower rose and laid the hide she'd been working on across the fence rail. It was soft now, and thoroughly damp. Tomorrow it would be dry and she would rub it with rendered bear fat. "Of course you do. You have always been more French than Wasco."

  "And you have always seemed more Nez Perce than American," Marie responded, as Flower sat and began loosening another hide from its stretcher. "Isn't it strange how we are like one parent or the other? Look at my brother. Hilaire looks like Maman, and cares nothing for his French heritage."

  "And Auguste? What of him?"

  Marie laughed. "Oh, that one! He says he will be an American, now that the question of who controls Oregon has been settled."

  "It does not bother him that they will see him as half-breed, beneath contempt?"

&nb
sp; "Auguste? Nothing bothers him. And who will know, anyway? With his red hair and freckles, he does not look Indian."

  "Neither do you. So perhaps the Americans will accept you both."

  Marie nodded. "Perhaps." Her hands slowed at their task, and soon they were lying quietly atop the softened hide. "Flower, you do not really look Indian, but you do resemble your mother more than your father. Except for your eyes. The color of rain, Hilaire called them. They are lovely."

  "I look enough Indian that I am called half-breed. And worse," Flower said, bitterly. "And treated no better."

  "Do you think it will be any different in England?" Marie's tone said she already knew the answer.

  "Everett is powerful. And rich. He is a nobleman, and if he says I am to be accepted, I will be," Flower said. But a niggling little voice inside her head whispered, and do you still believe there are fairies hiding under mushrooms, too?

  "Perhaps the English will see you as exotic, rather than Indian. You can tell them that you are the princess of a distant land. Somewhere far to the East."

  "Perhaps." She worked the deer hide for a few minutes, silently. Thinking. At last she said, "You said I am more Nez Perce than American, but I am not. You knew that my mother was captured by the Bannock when she was still a child?"

  Marie nodded.

  "She lived with them for many years, learning their customs and beliefs, but she once told me that sometimes she felt like a stranger, because of her life before. Then when she married my father, she had to learn still more new customs and rules, especially when we lived at Fort Vancouver. It was a relief to her when we moved here. She could make her own customs, she said, and her own rules."

  "But she knew so much of her people's herbal medicine," Marie said. "She must have learned--"

  "What she knew was a little of this and a little of that. She learned from whoever would teach her. Even Everett taught her how the English used plants." Sighing, Flower let her hands go idle again and stared off at the mountains to the south. "I wish I had learned more from her when she wanted to teach me. But no. I was more interested in Everett's books and his traveler's tales. His stories of faraway places were so much more appealing than learning about weeds."

  "And now you go to those faraway places. Are you excited?"

  Biting her lip, Flower stared again at the mountains. "No," she admitted at last. "I am frightened. I never felt as if I belonged with the other children at Fort Vancouver--"

  "You were too quiet, too well-behaved," Marie giggled. "What a rowdy lot we were!"

  "I did not feel a part of the Nez Perce, when I lived at Lapwai," she said, ignoring Marie's comment. "Mrs. Spaulding was happy to have me teach the children English, but Dr. Spaulding never let me forget I was an Indian, and somehow less respectable than he."

  "Papa says that too often the missionaries love us philosophically, but in reality they think of us still as ignorant, savage and pagan."

  "Your father is a wise man," Flower said, holding up the hide and inspecting it. There! A stiff patch, in the lower corner. She attacked it. "Has it never bothered you that you belong neither one place or the other?"

  "Me? No. I belong here, with my Papa, and soon I will belong with Auguste. I have Wasco cousins, and I have friends who are Clatsop and Salish, Chinook and Nez Perce." She caught Flower's hand and squeezed it. "Americans and English as well-- we visited the White Eagle last year and he tried to get Papa to come back to the Company. And now a black man will be my friend, too. I do not worry about what I cannot change." She sobered. "But Hilaire, he does. My brother is more like you, wanting to know exactly who he is and where he belongs. Did I tell you he is with the Wasco now, fishing at Chenoweth?"

  Flower nodded, thinking that perhaps she would stop and visit Hilaire on her way--no! He will be with many others and I am not ready to face their questions. And their sly glances. The lust in their eyes.

  "He has taken a name. Skwiskwis. It means squirrel." Once more Marie giggled.

  So did Flower. Hilaire had been tall and wide-shouldered the last time she had seen him, and he had still been a youth. He had promised to be even bigger than his father. Squirrel was not the image she had of him in her mind.

  "Did Jacques tell you where they were going?" she asked Marie, as they gathered the still damp hides from the fence rails.

  "No, but he said they would not return until late. I think he wants to get to know your man, so that he can tell you if he approves."

  "He is not my man," Flower protested.

  "He looks at you as if you are his woman," Marie said.

  "That does not matter. He is not my man."

  * * * *

  The low clouds made it hard to tell when the sun had set, but it was nearly full dark when Jacques and William returned to the cabin. He felt a shiver of need in his belly at the sight of the warm, yellow light shining through the single window.

  That's what I want. My woman inside a cabin of our own, with supper sittin' ready on the hearth. Maybe even a youngster or two playin' on the floor.

  He took a tighter hold on his wiggling burden and pushed the thought to the back of his mind. It don't do no good cryin' for what you ain't got, he told himself. Jest be happy you got as much as you does.

  Jacques showed William where to put the gift they had brought to Flower, then they turned the horses into the corral and brushed them down. They were not friends yet, him and Jacques, but they'd come to an understanding. The old man knew he'd do his best to protect Flower.

  "Papa, we had about decided you were not coming home tonight," Marie teased, when Jacques entered. William, still in the doorway, looked over the big trapper's shoulder, to where Flower knelt by the hearth. Was that a smile on her face? Was she happy to see him?

  In the next instant he was convinced it had been his imagination.

  He stepped inside and laid the bundle of furs he carried onto the table. "Reckon I'll be gettin' my fire lit," he said, turning back toward the door. Tonight he didn't feel near as confined in the cabin. But he still wanted to sleep outdoors.

  "Wait!" Flower's hand quickly covered her mouth as if she was sorry she'd spoken.

  "Oh, no, please, you must eat with us," Marie said. "We have dried huckleberry pie and a ragout of elk and root vegetables. And Flower gathered greens for a salade!"

  "A feast!" Jacques said. "Sit you down, Guillaume. Tonight we celebrate. I have some wine, I think."

  Resisting the urge to bolt, William looked to Flower.

  She nodded. "Yes, please. Eat with us, William. It is so wet outside."

  He'd have been happier if she hadn't sounded so much like she pitied him sleeping in the rain. Like she'd just wanted his company.

  Sitting around the table felt so good it made him long for home. For Cherry Vale. William half-listened to the laughter and talk of the others, half-heard in his head the conversation last time he'd sat to table with Hattie and Mist' Em. That was the night he'd told them he was going after Flower. Wherever she was. And that he wouldn't be back 'til he found her...

  "What if you don't find her?" Hattie had asked.

  "Reckon I'll keep lookin' 'til I does," he'd said, knowing that he might be looking for the rest of his life.

  Hattie had kissed him goodbye, with tears in her eyes. Mist' Em had offered him the shotgun, but William had turned it down. He'd take his spear any day. It didn't make no noise, and when he wasn't huntin' it made a fine walking stick.

  Now it didn't look like he was goin' to get home anyhow. It sounded to him like England was so far away that he'd never get back to Cherry Vale.

  "Guillaume? Will you give Fleur her gift now?"

  "Huh?" He realized that all three of them were looking at him. Jacques' face was split by a wide grin, Flower and Marie looked excited and expectant.

  He hesitated, then at Jacques' impatient gesture, he stood. "Be right back."

  Before he went back in, he wiped the moisture from the pup's fur. "It don't matter whether or not she wa
nts you," he muttered to his struggling burden. "She needs you and that's all there is to it." He pushed the door open.

  "Oh, he is beautiful!" Marie cried as William set the half-grown dog on the floor.

  He paid her no attention. His gaze was on Flower's face.

  She said nothing for the longest time. At last she said, "It is a dog." From the tone of her voice, she might have been saying it is a rattlesnake.

  "He's part wolf," William told her, "but he's been hand-raised. He's tame as can be."

  "A dog? William, what will I do with a dog?" Her face had that set, closed-up look on it that she always got when she was tellin' him he couldn't go with her.

  "You can sleep at night," he snapped, tired of the way she didn't like nothin' he did. "He's not gonna let the boojums get you, that's for sure. Or anything else wants to harm you. He's not full-growed yet, but once he gets the idea he's your dog, he'll protect you real good."

  She shook her head. "No, William. No. He is not my dog. He is yours. I cannot take a dog to England with me."

  "Don't see why not. I'll take care of him."

  Chapter Six

  Flower stared at William. Had he heard nothing she had said to him these past weeks?

  His dark face wore a placid expression, as if there was no argument between them. As if his traveling with her was a given. "William, you do not understand. I cannot take a dog to England. Not even to Oregon City."

  "He is a good dog, ma fille," Jacques said. "He will not eat much. That lazy old Fish-killer, who raised him, taught him to hunt for himself."

  She spun to face Jacques. "You stay out of this! You know nothing of what William demands of me."

  His grin was wily. "Eh, oui, but I do. This man--" he shot William a look of pure approval. "He is a good man, wants to protect and defend you in your travels. He brings you this dog so that you may rest easily at night."

  "So let the dog be his. When he turns back at The Dalles--"

  William made a sound of denial.

  "When he turns back at The Dalles," Flower repeated, "he can take the dog with him. I will not accept it."