A Sweetness to the Soul (15 page)

Sunmiet walked quickly, her long legs taking her swaying away from the river and the camp. I hurried to keep up. The wind blew down the canyon and we made no attempt to talk until we reached the opening where a trail and a stream cut a ravine before pouring itself into the river. In a few steps, the ravine opened up like a lily and a second stream flowed into the first creating a Y, like the crotch of a tree. A cleared area separated the two streams where a choke cherry tree cast an afternoon shadow. We brushed away fallen berries, made sure no stinging nettles lurched in the weeds before we sat. “Wait!” I told Sunmiet. “There!”

A fat snake eased its way into the weeds beside the creek where Sunmiet planned to sit. Its rattles made no noise as it slipped into the cool water, swam across and out of sight on the other side. “I forgot to talk to them,” I said, “warn them we were coming. I thought the frost would speak loudest to them.”

Sunmiet paid no attention to my attempts at lightness. She plopped down heavily, away from the activity of the camp, out of the wind. We sat a long time just being quiet. I liked that I had learned to let the silence between friends just be, had lost my need to fill it
as I often did at home, nervous that the silence would expose my thoughts.

“His words create a fire in me,” Sunmiet said finally. She hugged her knees, rested her chin on them. “Because I am not sure I want to leave my father and mother and live with Standing Tall all the rest of my days. Because I am not ready yet to be a wife.” She threw a stick at the little stream and we watched it disappear, heading into the folds of the adjoining stream to rush on to the Deschutes.

“Is there someone else you’d rather marry?” I asked.

“No!” she said, surprised at my question. “There is no one.” She was thoughtful. “Koosh is kinder to me. At least sometimes. And George thinks better, studies, wants to learn the non-Indian ways, unlike Standing Tall.” She sighed. “Trouble seeks him out. He could hide from it and doesn’t. Every day at school he did foolish things. He would not wear the shoes without a tussle. When he spoke Sahaptin or Wasco, they finally just cut his braids.” She was quiet. “I am glad he will not go back this year, if only so I will not have to worry over his shame.”

A meadowlark warbled in the quiet. “My pain comes most with how I feel when he pretends he is my father,” she said sadly.

I thought about my own father, his teaching me and his loudness after he returned from his meetings. I thought about the tightness in my stomach when he and Mama argued, when he acted in ways that Mama said were “puffed up.” I wondered if that was how Standing Tall was with Sunmiet, changing, sweet then strange.

“Standing Tall will be kind, bring a basket he has traded for, tell me of his efforts and how he battled the disasters, just for me,” Sunmiet said.

“To apologize?”

She looked at me, surprised, then remembered I was not of her people. “Oh, no,” she said. “He does not apologize.” She instructed me then. “The words would be dishonorable. He gives a gift, in hopes he’ll be forgiven his shame for having offended. And as a promise he will make efforts to not repeat his offense.”

I had to think on that.

“He is sad for his behavior,” she continued, “when he brings his gift. I believe his promise.” She threw another twig to watch it twirl and swirl in the current. “He can be so gentle. Touch my face and look into my eyes and I feel warm.”

She turned to me, her voice lowered. “But sometimes, he takes my arm and does not know his strength. I feel my chest hurt, then, and I cannot breathe. He pulls on me as though only he can keep me from danger.” She looked away, embarrassed.

“He hurts you?” I asked, a thought that entered my mind as something new.

She shrugged her shoulders. A curlew pierced the hot stillness with its forlorn call. “He just does not see me as I am,” she said, her words thick in her throat. “He thinks I am someone he can weave into a basket of his design. He doesn’t know I am my own basket.”

“Will you marry him next year?” I asked.

She was quiet. We could hear voices from the camp lifting in the wind, coming to us in drifts and drops. “It is what my family wishes,” she said. “And this basket,” she touched her heart, “is blended from their material and design so I will do as they wish.”

The wind brought louder voices.

“We should go back,” she said, standing.

We walked down the steep path following the little stream and entered the cool shadows of the rimrocks beside the river, surprised at the level of activity beyond us at the camp.

People moved frantically near the water, brought ropes toward the scaffoldings rather than away. I heard shouting. My eyes searched for Bubbles. Voices of alarm pierced the wind. I caught a glimpse of someone running toward the water. Bubbles? Was that Bubbles running to the river?

I saw someone in the river, a thin rope stretched taut between the person and a cluster of people on the bank. They pulled on the hemp line, wrestling a man from the depths, like raising an anchor against the raging falls. We picked up our pace, running now too.
But I had time to wonder in my racing: was my healing summer now to end with the return of something bad? Something bad I’d caused by my leaving with Sunmiet?

At the very same time, Joseph picked a trail that forked south and he found himself skirting the edge of the Strawberry Mountains, past granite peaks with tints of red topped by snow as white as thick cream. Deep valleys cut up from a river said to be named John Day’s. Beautiful country of rushing water and steep, timbered ridges dotted with rock cliffs and slides. “Gold country,” he told Bandit, talking with the dog like the companion he was.

A fat deer with a huge rack bounded through the pines while the sun was high overhead and Joseph shot it. It was the first game he’d seen in several days. He spent the next two days, there, in the shade of the pines, drying the meat in the heat of afternoon sun. At his campfire he remembered that the layers of white fat beneath the animal’s hide were thicker than any he’d seen in the California country, ever.

He liked the pausing time of drying venison. “More time for thinking,” he told the kelpie then pulled one of the books Philamon had exchanged with him from his pack.
The Song of Hiawatha
, he said and began reading out loud to the dog.

He had just finished when he heard the voice.

“Got any extra?”

A man’s words, coming from the ravine, materializing so quickly neither Joseph nor the kelpie noticed until he spoke. The kelpie rolled his lips back and emitted a low growl at the voice. Joseph reached for his Sharp’s.

The voice was attached to a blond man who reminded Joseph of the milk toast his mother cooked him when he was ill. He wore lightweight pants, a threadbare long-sleeved shirt, and a dirty leather vest. His boots were tied with old rags to keep the soles on. His eyes were two black raisins in a rice-white face dominated by a large nose. Oddly, he carried no weapon, at least none Joseph could see.

“A friend is welcome at the fire,” Joseph said, standing, as did the kelpie, both on guard.

“I be that, or would be if you’ve meat to spare.” The blond man eyed the venison hungrily then looked sheepish, embarrassed, or perhaps defeated.

Joseph leaned his Sharp’s against the tree and began immediately to lift the strips of venison from his makeshift drying rack, handing several to the man who introduced himself as Archibald Turner. Too busy tearing at the venison, he merely nodded to Joseph’s introduction.

“Just had no luck shooting,” Archibald Turner said in a pause of chewing. His hunger satisfied, he began packing meat into a small bag he removed from his back. “Think I’d have it down by now living out here for half a year or more.” He accepted more venison as he talked. “This’ll make quite a difference for me and my wife.”

“You’ve a woman here?” Joseph asked, surprised.

“And our brood,” Archibald said. “Two boys and two girls; youngest, Ella, is five. She’d like your dog.”

“And children!” Joseph shook his head in wonder as he stacked the strips.

“We’re expecting,” Archibald said proudly. “We hoped to pan enough by now to trade for ammunition, food at least. Good country for gold. We seen a lot a strikes. Just ain’t been a good fall for us, so far.” He shifted uneasily as he talked, swallowing. “Don’t have much to trade, but could give you shelter for the night. Some dried fruit. Cabin’s not far from here, just up that ravine a spell.” He pointed toward a timber-covered ridge marred with marble-like rocks.

Joseph shook his head. “No, I’d planned to make a few miles yet today. I was just about to do that when you arrived. I thank you for the offer.”

“Little enough for a man who gives up his food,” Turner said, eyes shifting downward as he ripped off another hunk of lean meat, chewed.

“Anything else you might need?” Joseph asked, hoping not to compound the man’s obvious humiliation. “Some powder, maybe?”

Turner shook his head. “ ‘Less you got a steady hand to loan.” He held his hand straight out in front and watched it tremble. “A good meal’ll fix that, sure. We’ll get by with this,” he nodded toward the pack. A smile appeared through his skimpy beard and mustache. “Move into Canyon City for the winter. I got blacksmith work lined up and then head back out to the gold fields next spring. Lots of lucky people in the fields. If you’re ever back this way,” he said, “consider our home yours. I know Francis would want that.”

Joseph wondered if they’d still be here should he ever ride back into these mountains but he didn’t say it. Instead he added some baking powder, flour, a small bag of salt, and some brown clump sugar to the pack. “Thank you,” Turner said, “God’ll bless you, sure.”

“And you for your offer,” Joseph said as he wished him well. Joseph packed up and headed southwest, never imagining how both would be blessed by the Turner encounter.

After several days of following the now wide and meandering John Day’s river, Joseph rode up on the grassy breaks, crossed different country, flats of green, rolling hills of grass. For the past day, he’d ridden over treeless hills covered with grass so high and thick his horse had brushed it with its belly, the feathery strands of green growing from a center clump like a hand-held bouquet. The kelpie tired bounding through it. He finally succumbed by jumping into Joseph’s arms to lie across the pommel of the saddle watching hawks and eagles dip over the sea of green. There were few trees on the breaks. Joseph could see the high ridges of what must be a massive canyon some distance ahead. Some snowcapped mountains broke the horizon and he headed west, toward them and the deep canyon he’d have to cross to reach them.

He followed a ridge. “Can see Mt. Hood just beyond,” a prospector had told him some miles back. “Looks close but it ain’t. Along the top’s an old trail. Goes down a steep, rockless slope into a side canyon. Got a spattering of junipers, big pines, some aspens, and a good size stream. Big boulders clumped around like a herd of sheep mark the trail. And a mountain beyond. Once in the canyon, look for the
watersnakes eating the fish comin’ upstream and you’ve got Buck Creek. Just follow that stream to a flat flowing falls. Like nothing you ever seen,” he’d added, “and you’ve reached the Deschutes.”

Joseph followed that stream now though he saw no watersnakes. He was glad to be at the bottom of the steep point leading off the ridge. Skid marks and juniper logs to hold back wagons marked his descent to the creek which dropped quickly. Joseph found himself soon looking up at tall rocks the color of the kelpie on either side of him with dozens of dry ravines opening into the canyon. The kelpie trotted and chased rabbits but rarely moved beyond Joseph’s vision. It was warmer beside the stream, the rocks holding the heat. It felt less like an early winter. But the way was rocky and his horse and the pack mule moved slowly.

Rimrocks shaded the canyon and Joseph considered making an early camp, to take advantage of the trees that seemed to be dribbling away to a sparse few. He rounded a bend looking for a likely tree and was surprised instead by a grassy, treeless flat flooded with sunlight. His eyes adjusted to the glare and then he noticed it: a single tule-covered structure nestled at the edge of the rocks.

This couldn’t be the camp Fish Man spoke of! He wasn’t that close to the river. At least, he couldn’t hear any rushing water. Only wind in the trees. Except there weren’t enough trees, he realized. What he heard had to be the music of a larger river, perhaps a pounding falls.

The kelpie whined and Joseph slapped his thigh. The dog joined him at the saddle.

“Hello-o-o-,” Joseph called as he neared the lodge, hearing his echo answer. He rode closer, noticing the flattened grass where a ring of several teepees once set. Matted grass, fish bones, and dirt revealed the paths most used. This had been a camp, and recently too. “Hello-o-, Fish Ma-a-n,” he yelled, hoping to bring some recognition.

From the corner of his eye he noticed movement and tensed. Two horses with riders approached.

We have spoken often, my husband and I, about that next encounter. That he should have found on the same occasion the falls of his future vision and the man so vital to its fruition seemed providential.

The riders said nothing until they were within speaking distance. “Fish Man goes to The Dalles, north, on
Chewana
, the big river,” the taller of the two men said, nodding his head in the direction of the Columbia. Joseph was startled by the correct English of the man riding the spotted horse. He had made a poor judgment based on the darkness of the man’s skin.

The speaker was stately, confident. His checked shirt was sweat-stained at the collar as was the rim of his hat that shaded his bronzed face. A necklace of small white shells circled his throat. His hair was cut to the length of Joseph’s, black and straight to the collar. An eagle feather stuck out from his hat. “Then Fish Man goes south, to the Hupas,” the Indian said. He seemed to bear no question in his voice, about who Joseph was or why he looked for Fish Man.

Joseph reached his hand out then, said his name. The Indian hesitated at first then reached and barely squeezed the fingers of Joseph’s hand, lifting his hand once before he released his fingers. “Peter Lahomesh,” he said introducing himself. “This is my son, George Peters.”