A Sweetness to the Soul (33 page)

“Not to mention your own burying for a time,” I reminded him.

“That didn’t involve the string, fortunately. So Heppner is buying my good reputation along with my mules.”

With the string of forty mules, we had ridden out from The Dalles on the west side of the Deschutes, past Fifteen Mile Creek to the Tygh Ridge and down the ravine where men worked on our house. If we had not wanted to monitor the building progress, we might have taken the steep route that crossed the Deschutes at Nix’s new bridge a few miles south of The Dalles. “Bridge won’t last there,” Joseph said. “Another winter like ’61 and it’ll be gone. And the roads are no good to and from. That’s the key to a route that will last.” He didn’t tell me which route he thought would.

At our homesite, we spent scant moments, just enough to answer simple questions about the barn going up first, confirm where the house would rise. I could tell Joseph wanted to be there, building, but he kept his promise for our wedding trip.

With impatient animals and energetic men, we moved on down the ravine on the old trail to the Deschutes with the plan to take the skimpy bridge that Todd had built.

“First day out, Missus, is always worst,” Benito told me. “Get kinks out of ropes and how you say, ‘routines.’ ” Everyone seemed relieved when we reached the river and I felt my own excitement growing as I heard the roar of the falls and wondered if I’d see Sunmiet.

We made camp that night with the Indians nestled in the shadow of the rocks. The spring salmon run was on. Fish charged up the falls, leapt unknowingly into the nets dipped from the scaffoldings. Taking only a moment for a fond reunion with Joseph, Fish Man, in his element, returned to spear salmon from the slippery rocks. Joseph traded for wind-dried Chinook to take with us into the mines, talked with Peter and others about the trail, the weather, the
bridge. Benito directed the men to hobble the mules, unload and make camp, making plans for an early start in the morning.

Seeing Standing Tall, I assumed I’d find Sunmiet.

“She is still wearing her big stomach,” Bubbles told me from her squat in the shade of a juniper. She waved grasses to cool her chubby face though it seemed to me she had lost weight. “Kása says soon, very soon. The baby waits until he is ready to walk before he joins us.” She laughed. “He is not persuaded it is better here than there, that one.”

“Where is she?” I asked.

Bubbles shook her head. “She and Morning Dove stay at Simnasho. They will join us when the baby appears.” My face must have shown my disappointment, my wonder, too, at whether Mama would be with me at my first, whether Joseph would be like Standing Tall, not near his wife.

Bubbles shrugged her shoulders, scratched at her thick thigh. “I will say you asked of her,” she said. She noticed Joseph walking up behind me. “Ha!” she said, looking provocatively at him and then my flat stomach, slender hips. “And how goes your baby-making? Do I have something to tell Sunmiet when I see her?” Her grin was wicked.

“If it was your business to know I’d tell you,” I said, haughtily, hiding my own disappointment at having nothing to share even if it had been only two months. I turned my back on her to meet Joseph. He looked at Bubbles over the top of my head and at me with a question on his face.

“It’s nothing,” I lied.

In the morning, the June sun rose early on a hot, clear day. We took a trail along the east side of the river, south and then east, away from the water into the high, dry country. A slender line of green marked a stream in an area hot enough to bake bread on the rocks.

I wiped sweat from the band of the hat I had taken to wearing instead of my bonnet as we made our way up the single-lane road. It twisted and turned like a lazy snake and below us, we could watch
mules loaded with packed panniers led by men on horseback as we inched our way toward the top.

“Someday,” Joseph told me. “This road will be wide enough for wagons and stages. And they’ll stop at our rest stop, when we own the falls.”

I looked at him, askance. “Surely you jest,” I said, sounding as wise and old as I could to hide my disbelief.

“Nope. That’s the way it will be,” he said in a voice with no arguing.

When we reached Cross Hollows, a place where two dry ravines fed into each other, it was late and we camped immediately. “Named this myself,” Joseph told me. “First trip out. Be a good place for a stage stop, don’t you think?”

I had difficulty imagining a stage arriving on the road we’d just mastered.

The sunset on this high plateau was extravagant. Spears of light radiated from the fluffy clouds that hovered like dumplings over the mountain peaks on the horizon. Joseph took time from the string to walk with me in the dusk. White mountains dotted the horizon, as bright and brilliant as a necklace of pearls against a dark blue sea. Joseph pointed out the mountain’s names, gave words to the vast expanse that led from California to the lands north, toward the Columbia. A chill wind rose over our camp. By nine o’clock, dusk still hanging on to daylight, the two of us curled under blankets, savoring this bridal trip as my first real taste of being grown.

In the morning we headed toward a place Joseph called Antelope for the beige and white striped animals that roamed the area. That road was not for indecisive people as it permitted few changes in plans. With few turnouts, it offered limited places to pull aside to let another pass. We’d gotten an early start, hoping to reach the bottom before anyone else started up. Then at a particularly narrow section, just as the thought entered my head that we were fortunate to be the only pack string on the road, I noticed dust below us, coming our way. We had listened for the bells and heard nothing before
we started out. I shouted to Joseph who had already seen the cloud of dust and signaled a halt to the string down the line, voices in English and Spanish rippling down the ridge like echoes. We waited, checking packs and cinches, our animals twisting their necks, biting at flies, stomping their impatience.

Finally, the dust below us coughed up one man and team in one unloaded wagon who pulled up facing the string.

The driver, wiry and worn, wiped his face with his bright-colored neck scarf. “This is a pickle,” he said.

Joseph nodded his agreement.

No one could turn around. Fortunately, the freighter was a single wagon with only one team instead of the usual six or eight horses. Still, the wagon could not be backed up far enough to reach a turn out. There was no going around him or him bypassing the string. Benito made his way on foot toward the front of the line, weaving in and out beneath the necks of the mules to reach the front. No one seemed distressed though I couldn’t see a solution.

Finally, Benito signaled in Spanish and several hands made their way with effort through the ropes of mules and men to the front, listened carefully, and then spread out around the wagon where they promptly took it apart!

Perhaps the packers were pleased by the diversion though I wondered what might have happened if the mules had chosen that moment to protest. But they didn’t. Even the team of big horses with their bearded hoofs allowed themselves to be unhitched and led away from the wagon. The wagon dismantled, its parts stacked close to the inside bank, our string moved on down the road, inching past the wagon’s team where we stopped again, sending men back up the line to put the wagon back together.

“All in the day’s work,” Joseph mused as we continued and the hours wore on. “It’s exactly why the road is so critical, why what we build will bring them in. We’ll have wide turnouts and a solid base and people will choose to cross on our bridge, you wait and see.”

For me, it was watching the impossible become probable. The only ingredients needed were ingenuity, shared energy, and time.

A Brent’s Pony Express rider passed us not far from Canyon City. The rider waved, the only attention he paid us, so serious did he take his work. “Perhaps he carries some news written line by line then turned upside down,” I said.

“And more written between the lines and then diagonally, making three pages on a single side. Probably so important it will change a life,” Joseph said, just joking, not knowing. “Everyone now has news that can’t wait a week or two. Used to be we waited months. Even years! Now, got to be a day or two. World is moving faster, Janie,” he said, “we’ll have to get on board.”

Only later did we learn how Joseph spoke the truth without his knowing. For the rider carried with him a letter from my Mama, responding to J. W.’s inquiry about her willingness to help a family who had lost their mother in childbirth.

Mama was always willing to help another. That’s what J. W. told the grieving widower seeking good homes for his children. Just two more days, and Joseph and I would have been there, would have known of the letter he’d sent asking our help. Just two more days and the widower Archibald Turner would have turned to us in his sorrow instead of who he did.

R
EPUTATIONS

F
irecrackers exploded in bursts of sound and color. We celebrated the Fourth of July in Canyon City, the event and the day being hotter than a highjacker’s pistol. “Oom-pa” bands accompanied the festivities interrupted by political speeches to respectable people who now populated the remote area. Bits and pieces of conversations spoke of General Lee’s invasion of the North, President Lincoln’s plans for emancipation though the war seemed far from us. Food stands dotted the perimeter of the celebration grounds sending up a mix of fragrances to honor the varying tastes of visitors and locals. A pinkish man rolled pasties in a hut off to the side and Joseph whistled low under his breath as we strolled by. “I’ll be. O’Connors!” he said. “They’ve a reputation for always being where the boom is next.” His eyes searched quickly past the man. “Wonder where Eleanor is?” he said out loud, promising to answer the question in my eyes, later.

I could wait. People-watching, not eating near the pinkish man, consumed my time in Canyon City, such a mix of personalities displayed themselves that day. My ears picked up a dozen different languages spoken here and there: German, Irish, something that
sounded Greek which Joseph said probably was. Only those voices and the wind of the paper fans we carried broke the still July air.

Few Indians or dark-skinned people exposed themselves beneath the red, white, and blue bunting banners that hung like a necklace across the street. I noticed a fair speckling of Chinese. Joseph said the Chinese not only worked the mines, but performed much of the menial tasks the locals chose not to. As if to confirm his words, I watched several clean-shaven men appear in starched shirts from behind the Chinese store-fronts smelling of sweet scents, serving as ready advertising for the “baths and laundry, 10¢” signs that appeared at intervals along the boardwalks. Wearing silk pants and tops like soft pajamas, the Chinese seemed to hover on the sidelines like the flutter of hummingbirds near the bloom of wild roses; gentle, yet vibrant in their presence.

“Their doc, Dr. Hey, I think his name was, gave Francis herbs that kept my fever and infection down,” Joseph told me, noting my fascination with the foreigners. “Lots of tricks up those wide sleeves,” he said. “Good cooks, too, they say. Francis’ll tell you more when we see her tomorrow. Kind of thought we’d run into them today.” His eyes scanned the crowds fanning themselves like dozens of yellow jackets in the heat. “They don’t get out much,” he added idly.

We walked, my arm through his as a good wife, the kelpie trotting close at my feet. Joseph stopped often to introduce me as his “new bride.” I felt myself blush to the bare heads of men as they removed their hats; felt awkward to the looks of women. A few matrons smiled out in kindness from beneath their bonnets. Many more wore a haughty look. They glared at me—or perhaps the silver oval I wore at my neck—able to see another woman only as competition. Joseph talked of business to their husbands while they gave me the business with their eyes. It didn’t matter. I was as good as them, now. And it was my honeymoon trip and I adored it.

“We’ll meet with Mr. Heppner to finalize the sale tomorrow. Six thousand two dollars, cash,” Joseph said as we continued our promenade around the city’s commons. “It’s a good price, Janie. Heppner
says he likes the aura that goes with it, my reputation for luck.” Joseph hung his thumb in his watch pocket in exaggerated punctuation.

“You are a fortunate man, Joseph,” I said. “You captured me.”

“I believe Heppner referred to my business relations,” he said, laughing. “Hopefully, he’s not privy to my personal ones.” He patted my half-gloved hand resting over his arm.

Joseph and Robert Heppner had just finished arranging their meeting time when the first explosions of fireworks from the rimrocks above the creek lit the dusk sky. Applause, “oohs” and “aahs,” whooping and hollering, followed the rockets of light that burst in the air falling like waterfalls over the river canyon giving the city its name. Whiffs of sulfur drifted through the night heat as one arc of color followed another. Shouts from the ground greeted each burst of flame as men rushed with water buckets to put out the glowing embers, their faces a mixture of grimness and delight reflected in the firelight.