Ice Princess Page 9

  William opened his mouth, but closed it again when Jacques said, "I see how it is. Because you have learned to fear all men, you cannot trust this one."

  "I do trust him--" Too late she saw the trap.

  "Well, then, you have no reason to fear him, do you?"

  "She don't fear me," William said. "She figures she don't need no man about her, 'cause she can whup her weight in wildcats."

  "That is not true!"

  William shrugged. "Looks that way to me. Don't it to you, Jacques?"

  Her friend--her friend!--nodded his agreement. "She is like her papa, stubborn and too certain she can command any situation she encounters." Shaking his head, he sighed. "So many times I told Buffalo he left her too free, more like a boy than a girl. Now she will not believe that she needs a man."

  Grief mingled with rage in Flower's chest, choking her. "He was there when they...he did nothing. Nothing!"

  William shook as if she had struck him.

  "Oh, William, I am sorry. I did not mean..."

  "Yes'm you did. And you're right. I didn't do nothin' to protect you when I ought, and you got no reason to think I can now." He turned, moving slowly as an old man would, and went through the open door.

  Flower stared after him, aghast at her words, but unable to call them back. And they were not a lie, she told herself in self-defense. He did not protect me.

  In the next instant, she admitted that he could not have protected her. By the time the renegades had captured her, William had been beaten badly and cruelly tied.

  "That was unkind," Marie said after silence had echoed around the cabin for several minutes. "I am disappointed in you, Fleur."

  "I am more than disappointed," Jacques said, his voice hard. "I am angry with you. That Guillaume, he is a good man. He would die for you. And you treat him like excrement."

  Flower turned to her friend, seeking understanding.

  But Marie would not meet her eyes. "It is late," she said. "I am going to bed."

  Flower followed. But tonight there were no smiles, no cuddling together and recalling childhood adventures. Marie lay silent on her side of the bed. After a while her breathing grew even and slow.

  Flower stared into the dark, remembering.

  And wishing she could forget.

  * * * *

  In the morning William was nowhere to be found.

  Neither was the dog.

  "You have your wish, it appears. He has gone back to Cherry Vale," Marie said, when Jacques returned from the barn with the news. She behaved this morning as if last night had never happened, but now Flower saw that she was still disappointed, still disapproving.

  "I never wanted him to come with me," Flower said, not willing to back down. It was not William's fault he could not protect me. I do not blame him. And I will be as safe without him. "Tomorrow I go," she told them, "I have delayed long enough." But part of her mourned the lost friendship.

  Even though she was as determined as ever to seek refuge in England, she hated going away from so many people she loved. Every time she said goodbye, she felt as if a little bit more of herself was being left behind.

  What a preposterous notion! Everett is in England. His family will welcome me, will replace all those whom I will never see again.

  Despite their mutual air of disapproval, both Jacques and Marie helped her prepare for departure. They both commented on how meager her possessions were. "What of all the books you had?" Jacques asked. "And your mother's collection of beadwork?"

  "Everything was stored at Fort Vancouver. With the changes there, I have no idea what has happened to it all." Surely Doctor McLoughlin had made some arrangements for all the goods left in storage at the fort.

  "Never fear, then, ma p'tite. The Great White Eagle, he will care for your things as for his own."

  "I hope so," Flower told him, wondering how she would ship it all to England. If she should. What good would a trunk full of exquisitely beaded pouches and moccasins be in a civilized country? And certainly the library at Everett's family estate would put her small assortment of beloved books to shame.

  Marie gave her a calico dress and an embroidered linen petticoat, saying, "You will not wish to wear buckskin on the ship, for you would never be dry." She picked up the shabby woolen coat that had served Flower all winter. "And this? Phew! It smells of rat and mildew." Tossing it aside, she knelt beside her bed.

  "What are you doing?"

  "Wait. You will see." Marie lay prone, reached under the bed. "Ah, There!" she reached farther, pulled and tugged until a scarred parfleche case slid out. "Here. These were Hilaire's. He will not mind that you take them."

  Curious now, Flower opened the case. Inside was a heavy wool sweater knit in an intricate pattern, and under it was an assortment of clothing, all faded but still wearable. One by one she lifted the garments out. "I cannot take his clothing," she protested, but knowing she only needed to be persuaded a little to accept the sweater.

  "Why not? He will never wear it again." Marie held up a pair of canvas pants with many pockets. "I told you he had grown tall. He makes Papa look small and dainty."

  At Flower's raised eyebrow, Marie laughed. "Well, perhaps not dainty, but he is bigger than Papa. He could not get even one leg into these pants."

  Standing, Flower took them and held them up to herself. They were a trifle long, but looked as if they would fit around her hips. She untied her leggings and slipped them off, slid her legs into the pants.

  "They fit perfectly," said Marie when she had them on. "Just a little loose, which is good. You don't want to be giving the sailors ideas."

  "No," was all Flower could say. The thought of any man having ideas about her sickened her. She felt her fingers contract into claws, as if around the handle of a knife. But she would take the pants, because they would be warm under her skirts when weather at sea grew cold and rainy.

  Rain was falling again the next morning, a light summer drizzle. Flower strapped the leather bags across the mule's back, wishing she had one of the pack saddles her father had used, wooden frames that held odd-shaped bundles and boxes so that they would not bounce when the animal trotted. All too soon she was ready to say goodbye once more.

  "Be wary, ma Fleur," Jacques said, holding her tight for a moment. "You go to places you do not know, to people you do not understand. Civilization is very different from what you are used to. And not always good." He released her. "Just because a man looks civilized, do not assume he is. Even England has snakes."

  "I will be careful," Flower choked out. "Oh, Jacques, I will miss you!" She went back into his arms for a moment. It was like saying goodbye to her father once more, for she knew she would never see Jacques again.

  "Be happy," she said to Marie. "And write to me, when you and Auguste are married. Tell me of your children."

  "And you, be happy as well. And safe." There were tears in Marie's eyes when they parted. And in Flower's.

  You are a crazy woman, a small inner voice told her as she rode away from the cabin. Jacques would have given you a home. Safety. No man goes against Jacques LaJeunesse unless he wishes to die.

  "Jacques will not be here forever," she said aloud. "And he is only one man, against a horde of land-hungry, woman-hungry Americans." Their wagon wheels were already cutting deep tracks into the soil. Hundreds of wagons had come, and each year would bring more. But they would not bring civilization with them. Hattie had told her many of the emigrants were escaping the strictures of civilization, the bounds and laws that separated it from barbarism.

  "I am going to England," she said aloud.

  Windchaser flicked her ears, but not even the wind answered.

  * * * *

  "There she go," William said to the pup. They were sitting high on a hillside above the river, where it flowed out of a narrow canyon into the Grande Ronde Valley. Jacques had drawn him a map on a piece of hide, and said this was the most likely way she'd travel. "There are other ways across the mountains," the old t
rapper had said, "but none so agreeable. Along this route there are many places for her to camp, out of sight of other travelers."

  He had a feeling Jacques knew what he was planning, and he'd been hoping the old man wouldn't say anything to Flower. "Don't look like he did." He donned his pack and picked up the dog's lead. "Let's go. I want to keep her in sight."

  The pup just sat there until he got dragged a foot or two. "Yeah, I knows you don't like that line," he said, "but I don't want you to be catchin' up with her. We got to be sneaky, you and me, 'til we're a long ways from here."

  William trailed along behind Flower all the way across the mountains. She'd left the wagon road once they on the down side, slipping and sliding down a faint trail into a narrow, shrub-choked ravine. Then she'd made her way up and down hill for days--he'd lost track of how many--until they emerged onto this gently rolling country south of the big river--the Columbia, Jacques had called it.

  He reckoned she was doing her best to miss those Indian villages Jacques' map showed along the wagon road between the mountains and the Columbia. She'd said something about paying a visit to Jacques' boy, but now it looked like she'd changed her mind. He was somewheres along the river, and she was heading away from it.

  He tugged on the pup's line, pulling him away from the dried-up cowpie he was sniffing. "She ain't stopped long enough to hunt since she left Grande Ronde. Reckon she'll be right happy to see some meat tonight." Yesterday evening, along about sundown, he'd caught a young buck drinking at the creek. It was the first time he'd made a kill with his spear. "Pure luck," he told the pup, "but I ain't complainin'."

  Swinging the tied-together deer haunches over his shoulder, he strode out, moving faster than he'd done for days. "Let's go, pup. My mouth's all set for fried venison."

  Flower would be sure enough surprised when he walked into her camp this evening. And she'd likely be mad clear through.

  * * * *

  Flower was tired. After four days of uphill and downhill travel across the Blue Mountains, then two more spent fighting her way through the brushy thickets that clogged the bottoms of the ravines leading off the uplands, she felt as if she'd been, as her father would have put it, 'drug through a splintery knothole bassackwards.' She certainly had no energy to cook, and would chew on a strip of dried salmon, eat the scant handful of early raspberries she had found along Birch Creek.

  At least she hoped it had been Birch Creek. Her father's map did not show all the minor drainages on this route.

  The mule had been limping when she had finally found this hidden campsite, screened by a dense stand of cedar. She found a small, sharp stone wedged under the shoe of his off forefoot. He needs to be reshod. I hope he does not throw a shoe before we get to The Dalles.

  Once she had brushed both animals, she staked them where the grass grew most thickly and threw herself onto her bedroll. Perhaps she would not even eat. The thought of all that chewing increased her exhaustion.

  She relaxed, listening to the sound of the wind among the cedars, a soft whisper. Their sweet-sour scent came to her faintly, coupled with that of dusty horse and distant sagebrush. Windchaser would give warning if anything larger than a jackrabbit tried to approach.

  After a while the silence palled. All winter she had longed for the sound of another human voice. Now that same yearning curled in her belly like the ache of hunger. "If only you could speak," she said to Windchaser, who had drifted close in her grazing.

  The horse whuffled softly in reply.

  "That is not enough," Flower told her. "I need a person to speak to. Someone to listen to." She rolled over, linked her hands behind her head, and stared up into the deep blue of the evening sky. A few pink wisps drifted across, glowing in the sun's last rays. "Someone to listen to me." Hard as she found the admission, she wished William was here. She had grown used to his company.

  A star became visible, in the darkening east. She wondered which it was. Her father had taught her the constellations when she was a child, but she remembered few of them. She could find the North Star, the Great and Little Bears, and the big W that had a Greek name, but little else. Everett had told her that wishes on the first star of the night often came true.

  "I wish..."

  No! Wishes do not come true and prayers are never answered. How painful had been the learning of those lessons. She closed her eyes, did her best to banish from her mind the ugly images that demanded attention.

  The next thing she knew, something cold and wet was poking at her cheek.

  She came awake fighting. "Aieee!" And smelled the unmistakable odor of wet dog.

  Before she could catch him, the dog swiped his wet tongue across her cheek and open mouth. "Paw!" She caught him, held him so he could not lick her again.

  It was the young half-wolf William had brought to her. "Where did you come from?" she asked, holding even tighter as the dog wriggled wildly. "You didn't follow--"

  "Nope. Not exactly. I brung him." William stepped through the screen of cedars.

  It seemed to her he almost smiled.

  "Or he brung me. I don't know which. He followed your scent halfway across them mountains, and I followed your tracks the rest."

  "I left no tracks!" She had been so careful, walking whenever possible upon thick layers of pine needles or on rock.

  "Pup, he don't need tracks. He's got a nose." He let his pack slip to the ground next to hers. "Lawd a'mighty, woman. You must be part goat. I never seed...saw such country you led me through."

  Again Flower pushed the dog aside. He seemed determined to wash her face. "My father sometimes came this way when he traveled. There used to be a band of outcasts who preyed on the trappers between the Umatilla River and the mountains. I have his map." She would never admit to him that she was not certain she had followed it accurately. The one time she had traveled this way with her parents, the journey had not seemed so arduous.

  "Where's your fire?"

  "I was too ti...I was not hungry, so I made none." Then she saw what else he had carried. "Venison? Oh, William! Fresh meat!"

  "I reckon we hadn't better light one this late, lest somebody sees it. But come morning, we'll have us some nice thick steaks." He tossed a line over a high branch on the largest cedar and used it to lift the tied-together hindquarters out of the reach of wolves and coyotes.

  "I saw some onions this afternoon. I will go out at sunrise and gather them. And perhaps there are raspberries along the creek."

  "That shines!"

  Her lips twitched as a smile struggled to be born. He sounded so much like her father. 'That shines' had been the highest praise Buffalo Jones could give. William often spoke of him with awe and affection.

  Flower supposed she should be angry that he had followed her, instead of going back to Cherry Vale. But she was vastly relieved. Not only was he someone to talk to, she felt...well, comfortable was the best word she could find. Yes, she felt comfortable with him.

  "I am happy you are here," she said, before she could think better of it.

  He stared at her. "You're happy? Happy I'm here?" Shaking his head, he said, "Woman, was I to live a hundred years, I never would figure you out. First you tell me I ain't worth the powder to blow me to hell, then you say you're glad to see me. Will you make up your mind?"

  "I never said you were worthless! "

  "Near as could be." His shrug was eloquent. He evidently thought she was lying to make him feel better.

  "You do not understand. I..."

  "You said that before. Lots of times. Well, let me tell you, there's a whole pile of stuff you don't understand either, and one of them things is me." He poked his chest with a thumb. "I ain't like them bastards done you harm. I'd never treat a woman that way, not even was she a whore. And a good woman, well, I'd want to kill any man treated a good woman the way they treated you."

  "Why didn't you?" Her words were almost lost in her wail. "Oh, William, why didn't you kill him? So I would not have to." The memory of that sound, as he
r knife slipped through the skin and gristle of his throat, still echoed in her mind. "The dreams...they come, almost every night. And they frighten me, because they make me want to kill again. Any man who looks at me in that way, as if he wants me--I want to kill him!" She flung herself down on her bedroll, buried her face in the soft wool of the sweater.

  After a moments, she felt a tentative touch on her back. She shrugged, wishing the dog would just go away.

  The touch turned into a caress and she knew it was not the dog who was touching her.

  It was William. A man was touching her.

  And she was comforted.

  * * * *

  The rest of the journey to The Dalles was easy by comparison. By the time William had caught up with her, Flower had traversed the worst of the many shrub-choked drainages that lay south of the Umatilla River.

  Unfortunately she had more than enough time alone with her thoughts. William, seemingly tireless, ranged far on either side of their route, his long legs carrying him twice as far in a day as her horses traveled. "Just makin' sure we're not watched," was the reason he gave.

  His touch had comforted her.

  And she had suffered no nightmares since.

  "But it is only because I know William will not harm me," she mused aloud. "A dangerous feeling. If I should come to depend on him, what then? After The Dalles I will never see him again."

  Once more she felt a wave of unutterable sadness. Why must she sacrifice so many she loved so that she could be safe?

  No, not love. So many I care for. I cannot love, for my heart is frozen.

  Their route joined the emigrants' road at the crossing of the John Day, and paralleled it thence to the mouth of the Deschutes. Flower insisted on camping well back from the river until she could find a route around the Wasco village there.

  "I don't know why you has to go past here at night. These Injuns are suppose to be Jacques' kin," William complained, as they crept down the hillside behind the village. The deeply cut wagon ruts made walking difficult, but they followed the only usable route that did not go directly through the village. A short distance upstream the canyon narrowed into impassability.