A Deeper Wild
by William L. Sullivan
Published by the Navillus Press
Smashwords edition
Copyright 2011 William L. Sullivan
A rollicking ssaga of the Oregon frontier, A Deeper Wild tracks the remarkable adventures and conflicting loves of Joaquin Miller as he galloped to world-wide fame as the “Poet of the Sierras.”
Praise for William L. Sullivan:
“An endearing, engageing writer . . . [Sullivan’s work has] the energy, the wonder, and sometimes the humor of Mark Twain’s Roughing It.”
-- The New York Times
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Introduction
Joaquin Miller, the American West’s first world-renowned writer, galloped to fame in the England of 1872 as the swashbuckling “Poet of the Sierras.”
Miller set the London literary scene on its ear by appearing for poetry readings outfitted with a sombrero and spurs, howling like a coyote. He amazed Browning and Tennyson with tales of dusky Indian maidens and lassoed bears. He was introduced to Queen Victoria as the frontier’s greatest writer of all time. His success set the stage for Mark Twain, Bret Harte, and others to try their literary luck abroad—and inspired Buffalo Bill Cody to capitalize on the public’s hunger for flamboyant frontiersmen.
The most astonishing thing about Miller is that he was not lying. He had in fact been an outlaw, pony express rider, gold miner, county judge, horse thief, Indian fighter, Civil War pacifist, newspaper editor, and renegade squaw man in the frontier West. And while this resumé bedazzled audiences in Europe, the West itself was in an uproar over a more serious scandal: Miller had married a popular Oregon poet without admitting he already had an Indian wife and daughter in the California wilderness. When his white wife found out, she joined forces with legendary woman’s rights activist Susan B. Anthony and denounced him from the stage—becoming the first white Oregon woman to lecture in public outside a church.
In writing this historical novel, I have followed the record as closely as possible. In general, where facts exist, the book is an accurate history. Where gaps in the record cry out for speculation, the book is a novel. The newspaper articles, legal documents, and poems quoted within the book are sometimes shortened, but are otherwise verbatim. Chapter-by-chapter notes in the appendix identify sources and separate historical fact from fiction.
My intent has been neither to write a vilification, as has been done by Miller’s more vindictive biographers, nor to compose a glorification, as has been attempted by Miller’s apologists.
I offer instead the story of a fascinating man and the women who molded his life.
—William L. Sullivan, Eugene, Oregon
PART ONE: PAQUITA
“Or why , or when, or whence I came;
mistaken and misunderstood,
I sought a deeper wild and wood.”
-- Joaquin Miller, Songs of the Sierras
Chapter 1
“Lonely as God, and white as a winter moon,
Mount Shasta starts up sudden and solitary
from the heart of the great black forests
of Northern California.”
—Joaquin Miller
Stars glimmered above Mt. Shasta’s ghost-like silhouette as Ned Miller rode to the edge of the raging Sacramento River. He frowned at the whitewater. He’d come so far that Mountain Joe’s log cabin should be close. But where the devil was the ford?
When the young man finally spotted the mouth of Soda Creek among the shadows of the far bank, he ran his hand over his smooth jaw. He had not lost the trail in the dusk after all. The river had shifted its channel over the winter. All trace of the old, easy ford was gone. Ahead, the current roared against boulders, turning up great waves of frothing white.
Reason told Ned to pitch camp so he could search for a better crossing in the morning. But the river spoke to him with a different voice, alive with danger and beauty. It glinted through the dark forest like a defiantly drawn saber.
In Ned’s seventeen years, he’d chosen more than his share of tough trails. He’d walked from Indiana to Oregon beside a covered wagon. He’d spent a year in the hardscrabble gold fields of the Northern California wilderness—a rough place in 1856, with the Gold Rush fading. Through it all, it seemed as if he’d always been overshadowed by other men. Sometimes he blamed his schoolboyish features—gray-blue eyes, a tall, earnest forehead, and wavy blond hair. Or perhaps it was his name. He’d been born Cincinnatus Hiner Miller. And although the frontier often recast such oddities into colorful nicknames, he had never yet been known by more than his plain boyhood handle, Ned—or worse, by his ungainly middle name, Hiner.
The thought steeled him. But he had never really considered turning back. He’d quit the mines to seek a different kind of fortune with Mountain Joe. Working with the old packer had never been just another job. Wherever Joe went, adventure wasn’t far behind.
Ned braced himself with a deep breath, rich with the scent of pines and the chill of twilit glaciers. He tucked the three precious books from his saddlebags firmly under his shirt. Then he tapped his spurs on the horse’s flanks.
The roan gelding took one step into the cold, rushing water and hesitated.
“Hyah!” He urged the horse on, spurring with more determination. The horse threw back its head with a defiant snort.
“Dammit, Pache, move!”
When the horse only braced its legs against the gravel, Ned pulled his rifle from behind the saddle and fired into the air. The blast boomed off the canyon walls and echoed high up into the granite spires of Castle Crags. “Hyah!”
The startled horse leaped headlong into the swirling water.
Ned just had time to clutch the mane. The horse lunged again and was swept off its feet into the churning dark. Icy water foamed over the saddle and sprayed Ned’s face with a chill shock. With a shot of fear Ned gripped the reins tighter and pulled back, as if to guide the horse through the dark. The wild rush of the river pulsed in his ears. But then he realized he had no choice but to trust his horse in this maelstrom. With an effort, he fought back the panic and opened his fist. Now it would be up to Pache.
The horse pawed onward through the waves, swimming with just its head and flared nostrils shining wet in the starlight. A black snag stabbed past in the dark. Sharp, barren branches raked the horse’s flank as they drifted past. Ned’s heart raced at the narrowness of the miss. “Come on, Pache,” he urged.
Suddenly a wagon-sized boulder loomed ahead, bucking the current into a glassy roll. Here the river suspended them for a moment, as if debating whether to dash them on into the rapids. Then, relenting, the waves shunted them aside into a bubbling plain in the shadows of the far shore.
When the horse found its footing Ned let out a whoop of success. “Good boy, Pache!” He shivered with the thrill of the ride, and felt the horse shivering too.
With yet another whoop, he rode the dripping horse up the bank. From here the welcome glow of a campfire flickered through the trees in the direction of Joe’s cabin.
But as soon as he saw the hut—its single window dark, its rock chimney smokeless—he knew there had been trouble. Spilling from the open door was a shambles of looted supply sacks and cooking gear.
Alarmed, he spun in his saddle toward the light.
There, in the shadows behind the campfire, stood an enormous, buckskin-clad Indian, leveling a long hunting rifle at him.
Ned’s mouth was suddenly dry, his voice gone.
The Indian clicked back the gun’s hammer.
Ned silently cursed his carelessness in firing his own rifle by the river. It would be useless without reloading. Nor was there hope of escape from the giant Indian at this range. Grimly, Ned dropped his weapon to the ground.
At the same moment a cracked voice cried from a shed by the corral, “Bandits! You hold `em, Charley, I’m—I’m—“ and an old, long-haired mountain man stumbled out, pulling a fringed buckskin jacket onto one arm and holding a pistol with the other.
“Mountain Joe!” Ned cried, flush with relief.
“The hell—“ The old man stopped. “Ned Miller?” He squinted, scratching his bushy, white-streaked beard. “What the Sam Hill you doin’ howlin’ through the woods like some kind of Joaquin?”
When the strange Indian lowered the gun, Ned hazarded a smile. He wiped the river spray from his brow. “Reckon I’m looking for a job. For a minute there I thought you’d been ambushed, Joe.”
“I did too.” Joe grunted and spat to one side. “Damn. Coulda stood a good bandit.” He took the heavy, octagonal-barreled rifle from the big Indian and lumbered off toward the log cabin muttering, “Give Charley your mount. I’ll scare up some grub. We’ll jawbone about jobs tomorrow.”
“Joe—“ Ned began. But the old man was already gone.
Ned let out a long breath. He eased down from his horse, aware that his every move was still being watched by the Indian.
Ned had seen Indians before in the boomtowns of Northern California, but none had been permitted to carry a gun. They were short, with pointed hook noses and almond-shaped eyes—not at all like this commanding man. This Indian stood even taller than Ned, with a broad nose and a strangely familiar, haunted look in his dark eyes.
Ned took off the horse’s wet saddle. The Indian waited, motionless. This might be one of the volatile Modocs Ned had heard about. Still, all the Indians he had known could speak Chinook jargon. He ransacked his memory for a Chinook greeting.
“Klahowya,” Ned ventured, holding out the horse’s reins.
Charley took the reins. Before turning toward the dark corrals, he replied, “Pleased to meet you, Ned.”
* * *
When Joe returned from the log cabin Ned demanded, “Who is this Indian?”
The old man handed him a hunk of dried meat and squatted by the fire on short, springy legs. He took a swig from a flask hidden in his shirt and wiped his mouth with a buckskin sleeve. “Take a drink?”
“But why’ve you got an Indian here?”
Joe aimed the flask at him. “I said, Take a drink?”
Ned sighed. The man could not be hurried. He tipped back the whiskey for a fiery gulp.
The old man nodded approvingly and pushed back his broad-brimmed felt hat. “I got reasons for Charley. Now you tell me how come you’re hootin’ in here like a locoed coyote. Last I seen, you was all fired up ‘bout the gold mines.”
Ned shook his head. “I finally threw in my pick and rode off.”
“Partner troubles?”
“Not so much that. I just had to try something else, do something grander—I don’t know what. It’s like there’s something gets a hold of me.”
Joe stroked his beard and smiled into the fire. “Maybe it’s ‘Joaquin’ after all.” He drawled the name quietly until it was “Wah-keen.”
“What do you mean by that?” Ned shivered in his wet clothes. He’d heard Joe tell his hair-raising campfire tales about Joaquin Murietta, the long-dead Mexican bandit who haunted American miners as the “Ghost of the Sonora.” But if there was a connection between this vengeful ghost of Old California and his own restlessness, Ned couldn’t see it.
Joe took an ornate gold watch from his ragged buckskin jacket and began winding it thoughtfully. “Oh, I reckon you’re not the only one gits that ‘Joaquin’ itch. You just git it more reg’lar than most. Like in Oregon, when I found you high-tailin’ it from your pa’s homestead.”
“All I had then was gold fever.” Ned laughed, but the memory of his Oregon boyhood was unsettling. He’d hung so eagerly on the words of the farmers who’d returned from the ‘49 Gold Rush. He’d thrilled to their stories of easy wealth. By the time he really reached California the first flush of adventure was gone and the easy gold had been panned out. The mines that remained were hellish camps hacked into the canyons, squalid ore factories blighting the wilderness.
“You never had gold fever,” Mountain Joe scoffed.
Ned looked into the fire, realizing that Joe was right. It hadn’t been the gold that had drawn him away from Oregon. There had been a deeper call. What he’d really loved was the lure of adventure itself, and the wild beauty of the unsettled frontier. It was a giant land, where greatness could grow. The moguls of the mining camps held the keys to metal wealth, but Joe was the unlikely guardian of the frontier’s deeper treasure: adventure and fame.
Ned nodded toward the cabin. “Come on, let’s go in so I can dry my gear.”
“Hell, Ned, I never do a campfire in a shack. Too much trash in there anyway.”
“What did we build the cabin for if you’re going to live outside?”
The old man grunted. “I git too damn cooped up in houses. After all them years trailin’ pack stock up from Arizona, I gotta see stars at night.”
Ned sighed and pulled off his wet boots. “Next you’ll be telling me you’re already tired of running a horse ranch.”
“Tired?” Joe raised his bushy eyebrows. “Ranchin’s like gittin’ a foot caught in a short-chained beaver trap. No tired to it. But a man’d chew his goddam leg off to git loose.”
Ned was propping up his boots to dry by the fire when he saw a stony face in the flickering shadows between the trees: the Indian. The uneasiness he had felt before crept back. He shot a glance to Joe.
“Don’t git your fur up over Charley,” Joe said. “Best vaquero I ever found. Understands animals like nobody else.”
Ned lowered his voice. “Where did you run across him?”
“Oh, he’s usually up around Shasta somewhere, with the Wintus.” Joe spat away from the fire. “Digger Injuns, folks call ‘em.”
“Are they at war?”
Joe shook his head, frowning. “Folks say Diggers’re too lazy to fight. Truth is, there’s nobody to fight with up there yet. No gold on Mt. Shasta, so white men mostly steer clear of it.”
“But if the tribe’s so isolated, how’d he learn to speak English?”
Joe turned to the face in the shadows.
The big man hesitated, then stepped forward into the firelight. Long, black braids fell over his broad chest. For a moment his lips only tightened. Then he lowered his eyes. “I am not of the tribe. I am not an Indian.”
Ned stared at him in astonishment. “You’re what?”
Mountain Joe put his hand on Ned’s shoulder. “Charley’s pa was from Scotland. Hell of a Hudson’s Bay man, he was. Old man McCloud packed enough bales of beaver pelts out of these mountains to put a stovepipe hat on every liar in England. Got a squaw from the Puyshoos—that’s Charley’s band of Wintus up on the McCloud River.”
“What happened to him?”
Joe pulled at his big beard. “Reckon he moved on. Named the river after himself ‘fore he pulled up stakes, though.”
“Why aren’t you one of the tribe, then?” Ned asked the big man. “You sure look Indian enough.”
Charley replied, “To whites, yes. But look at me, Ned.” He straightened himself to his full height. He was every inch of six foot four. “The Wintu are short and dark. To them I am white.”
Ned looked again at the young man. Now he recognized the strangely familiar look in Charley’s mild eyes: the shadow of loneliness. And he thought he understood why Mountain Joe had taken in both Charley and him. They were each riding trails on the edges of their worlds.
Chapter 2
“An Indian girl with ornaments of shell
Began to sing . . . . There fell
A sweet enchantment that possess’d me as a spell.”
—Joaquin Miller
Dawn had scarcely lit the window of the one-room log cabin the next morning when the sound of boots broke into Ned’s dreams.
Joe was pacing the dirt floor, scowling out the window with each circuit of the room. “Summer pasture’s what we need, Ned,” he exclaimed.
“How’s that?” Ned rolled his head groggily. He caught sight of the huge Indian sitting across from him and was suddenly awake, remembering the night before.
“Pasture!” Joe said. “Stock’ve been bottled up in this canyon all winter pickin’ the range to the bone.”
Charley stopped lacing his tall, beaded moccasins, and looked up thoughtfully. “The snow should be off Now-ow-wa, the valley between here and the McCloud. It has deep grass. The Puyshoos might not be too angry if you put only a few horses there for the summer.”
“Injun land?” Joe moved his jaw as though chewing the thought. “Hell, it’s worth scoutin’ out. If we get crackin’, we can ride to the pass on Shasta ‘fore breakfast.” He grabbed some saddlebags off a wall peg and kicked open the door. “Comin’, ‘Joaquin?’ Or ain’t explorin’ Injun territory the kind of job you had in mind?”
To Ned, this sounded like the trumpet call of adventure he’d ridden so far to hear. He threw off his blankets and began pulling on his tall miners’ boots. “Round up Pache, old-timer.”
* * *
The morning fog swirled across the steep ridge, leaving the three riders afloat in clouds. Joe’s black mare rose above the misty manzanita chaparral, his .50 caliber Hawken across the saddle. Gnarled madrone trees sank into the fog behind the gray outline of Charley and his horse.
It seemed to Ned that the shadows of the land about them were drifting—but that he, for once, was on a steady path. With each step of the horses he felt more distant from the shabby mining camps and closer to the heroic frontier world that lived in Mountain Joe’s campfire tales.
As they rode upward into the wilderness, the fog thinned overhead. The low sun appeared as a faint red disk through the mysterious white. Then the fog melted and the red ball flashed in Ned’s face. To the south, seething, pink-struck cloudtops filled the Sacramento River canyon like drifted snow on a frozen sea. The shadowed spires of the Castle Crags and the thousand black ridges of the Klamath Mountains sailed like distant ships above the billows. Ned was just turning to Joe to exclaim at the scene when he saw the mountain.
The great cone towered into the sky, its writhing, broken glaciers turned to rivers of fire by the sun. Overhead, crimson cloud banners and belts of gold streamed from the summit.
“Shasta,” Charley said.
The mountain took up half the sky. Ned felt as though it could crush him, or exalt him, at will.
Joe swung down from his saddle and tied his mare to a stunted fir in the alpine meadow. “Grandest damn volcano in the West.”
Ned dismounted as if in a trance. Charley, who had been watching him, now crouched beside him amongst the meadow flowers. The big man spoke in a low, earnest tone very different from his usual aloof manner. “Here the spirit’s power is very strong.”
Ned looked up, eyes narrowed. The mountain’s beauty had in fact struck a strange chord within him, and this made Charley’s tone all the more disturbing. “What spirit is that?”
“Kusku. My mother’s tribe says this is where he created the world.”
“And how do they say the world began?” Ned asked.
Charley slowly moved his hands before him in a circle, as if for an incantation. “They say Kusku used a rock to grind a hole in the sky. He pushed snow and ice through the hole until he built up the mountain. Then he climbed down and planted trees all around by putting his finger on the ground. The sun melted some of the snow, and water ran down to make the rivers. After that he made fish for the rivers out of the small end of his walking stick.”
Mountain Joe hunkered across from them, listening.
Charley picked up a handful of dry fir needles and let them fall. “They say Kusku made the birds by picking up leaves from below the trees and blowing them into the air. Then he made the other animals out of the rest of his walking stick, saving the big end for the wemir—the grizzly bear—the biggest of all. Back then the wemir was so strong that even Kusku was afraid of him. So Kusku hollowed out the mountain to make a safe wigwam. He built a fire inside. That’s what heats the mountain’s hot springs. Sometimes you can even see its smoke blowing from the mountain’s top.”
Charley looked down at his hands. “At least that’s what the Puyshoos say.”
Mountain Joe spat to one side. “Beats hell out of a lot of stories I’ve heard.”
Ned looked at him. “I thought you said Mt. Shasta was just a volcano.”
“Oh, I reckon there’s somethin’ to the old tales, too. Nothin’ you could stake down an’ stare in the eyeball, you understand. Just somethin’.” The old man opened his gold watch thoughtfully and heaved a sigh.
For an instant the sunlight touched the back of the watch, highlighting an elaborate engraving. Ned caught the old man’s ragged buckskin sleeve. “Is that a picture of Shasta?”
Mountain Joe held out the gold timepiece. “Reckon so.”
Ned read a small inscription below the etching of the mountain and whistled. “Captain John C. Frémont. How—“
Joe closed the watch in his weathered hand. “Me an’ Kit Carson joined on as scouts for Frémont’s expedition back in ‘43. We got almost to Shasta ‘fore the Modocs attacked, buzzin’ up out of hidden lava caves like yellowjackets. We lost some good men in that fight. I led the ones that were left ‘cross the Sierras in snow so deep we damn near had to tunnel through. When we got to San Francisco Frémont told me, ‘Joe, no man alive knows more about the mountains than you. This watch has been with me through all my expeditions, an’ now I’m givin’ it to you so it can stay in the mountains with the man who knows ‘em best.’”
A wind off the mountain blew back the meadow’s larkspur and anemones. A hawk wheeling overhead screamed.
Ned thought: then the tallest of all Joe’s tales was true. Had Charley sensed that, too, with his talk of spirits? Could it be that the three of them were even now being moved by the same unseen force?
Joe cleared his throat and began tightening his saddlebags. “Better git ready for ambushes east of the pass, ‘Joaquin.’”
* * *
The three horsemen rode on through the pass to Now-ow-wa, a valley more beautiful and silent than any Ned had ever seen. Dark floes of pines swept down from the slopes of the mountain, gradually thinning into green meadows. A silver creek meandered lazily across the grasslands and disappeared into a cleft in the jumble of foothills that rimmed the valley on three sides.
As the three rode down through the pines, ruffed grouse suddenly started out of the brush, beating the air with brown wings. Mule deer bounded stiff-legged before them, turning to snuff the air, long ears pricked, before fleeing into the woods. As the riders neared the valley’s floor, warmer breezes carried the sweet fragrance of sunny pine boughs and wildflowers.
Ned closed his eyes and filled his lungs with the perfumed air. Floating across the stillness, he imagined he could even hear the music of a distant song. Almost involuntarily he reined in his horse. The others stopped too, as if they also had to listen. To Ned’s surprise, the enchanting voice was now even clearer.
Gradually Charley smiled. “The Puyshoos are in Now-ow-wa,” he said. “I should have known. It’s early camas-time.”
Charley’s pony led them out of the forest into a broad meadow. There, a dozen dark-haired Indian women bent hip-deep in lush grass and blue, star-like camas blossoms. An Indian warrior put down his bow when he saw Charley and spoke a salutation in a language Ned could not understand. When Charley dismounted and the two solemnly embraced, Ned was struck by how different they were: while Charley was tall and broad as an oak trunk, the other was short and sinewy, with angular bones and a hardened expression.
After the two had talked in their Wintu tongue, Charley turned back to Ned and Mountain Joe. “This is Akitot, my mother’s nephew. He has come with the women from the McCloud camp this morning to watch them during the first harvest of new camas bulbs.”
Ned was only able to mutter a distracted reply. His attention had long since strayed to the little band of women and girls shyly grouped about their camas baskets. One dark-eyed young girl in particular—perhaps the one who had been singing?—had ventured to cast Ned a fleeting smile that had caught him by surprise and sped his heart. She was small like the others, not even five feet tall, but with full, jet-black hair that fell in two thick braids over her fringed deerskin dress to a thin sash at her waist. But what sent a flame of desire through him was the astonishing sight of her slender legs—smooth brown skin bare all the way up to the knees. None of the Wintu women seemed to know or care about the floor-length Victorian fashions of white society. The wild freedom of the girl was almost as intoxicating to Ned as her beauty. She lifted her face again: a full mouth, high cheekbones, and mysterious dark eyes.
Ned hardly heard the discussion Charley interpreted between Mountain Joe and Akitot. When he fully returned to his senses, the little band of Indians was drifting across the meadow to the east and Mountain Joe was saying he’d like to bring a dozen horses up to Now-ow-wa for the summer, if only there were a way to keep an eye on them.
“I’ll do it,” Ned volunteered.
“How’s that again?”
He had wanted adventure, and now here it was. “I’ll watch the stock here for the summer if you want. I said I was looking for a job.”
“But this here could be risky, picketing stock on Injun land. I was figgering you’d ruther work down in Soda with Charley an’ me.”
“We’ll keep in touch.” Ned smiled across the meadow. “Have you ever seen such a good place to build a little cabin?”
The old mountain man scratched his head. “Well, if that don’t beat all.”
* * *
The memory of the dark-eyed Wintu girl haunted Ned during the weeks that followed. When he returned to the summer pasture at Now-ow-wa with the string of horses, the wind in the trees seemed to sing the enchanting Indian melody he had heard before. After he had begun felling and barking trees for the small cabin, he found himself sitting on a log for hours at a time, gazing across the wildflower meadows, picturing the girl with such clarity that he was able to recall even the details of her dress: the red leather ties on her braids, the white shell earrings against her brown skin.
The memory made him ache with desire. He found himself wanting to know all about her—how she lived, what she thought, how she spoke—and most of all, if she’d been struck by the sight of him, too. How different, he thought, the Wintus’ fragile, unspoiled life must be from the gritty, gold-grubbing routine in the mining camps! Like a wild bird’s song drifting above the clamor of a busy city, she seemed to be calling him to a purer, better world, folded in the arms of the mountain wilderness.
More than once he saddled his horse and rode up into the scrub-covered foothills towards the McCloud River. Each time, however, he stopped at the summit of the ridge. From there he could see the winding channel four miles beyond, where the McCloud cut into the forests fanning out below Mt. Shasta. At the edge of that plain, where the river entered the narrow chasm that led it through the foothills, was the Wintu village: a clearing in a sharp bend of the river, overhung with a wisp of blue smoke.
But how could he go there? What would he be able to say when the warriors came out to meet him? Charley had made it clear that none of the Puyshoos band spoke English, or even Chinook jargon. Besides, he didn’t know the girl’s name. All he knew about her was what he had read in her dark eyes.
One time when he rode up to the ridge crest a new and sobering thought struck him: Did he really want to fall in love with an Indian woman?
Even supposing that the insurmountable barriers of the village and the language were somehow lifted, what then? Would he take her home to Oregon? Ned’s lips tightened at the thought. He had only to picture walking her past the settlers in Eugene City to know how difficult that would be.
Or did he want to stay with the girl in the wilds, where public censure could not reach? Ned recalled that Charley’s own mother had married a Hudson’s Bay trapper. Such things were common among the mountain men who lived apart from civilization. And yet, lovely as this mountain valley was, he was reluctant to exile himself completely from the world below. When he had run away from his parents’ Oregon farm he’d dreamed of returning one day cloaked in fame—perhaps even to become a senator should Oregon win statehood. Those ambitions weren’t dead.
Had he imagined he could love her for a while and then simply leave her behind? He knew this unchivalrous behavior was also common among the mountain men. But the thought of cheapening his passion left him ashamed. He swore to himself that he was made of nobler stuff.
He gave a long sigh, realizing now what he had to do. This adventure was tempting him down a dangerous side road, far from his grander ambitions. He would have to put the girl out of his mind.
As he led his horse back down from the ridge, he wondered how emotions could have clouded his thinking for so long.
When he reached the meadow, Ned’s spirits rebounded a bit at the sight of Charley’s Indian pony tethered in front of his half-finished cabin. Here was the distraction he needed to take his thoughts off the girl. He galloped up to the fresh-cut log ends that marked the cabin’s door opening and swung down from the saddle.
The big half-Indian looked up from the embers of Ned’s morning fire. “Klahowya, Ned.”
“So what brings you up here, Charley?”
“Joe wanted to check on the vaquero he hired.” Charley’s look was solemn. “He won’t think you have built much in these two months.”
The tone wasn’t sharp, but it stung all the same. Ned sat in the window opening and looked out toward Mt. Shasta. Charley was right. Considering how little time it took to watch the horse herd he should have finished the log cabin long ago. He’d even decided to build it with a wigwam-style smoke hole in the roof so he wouldn’t have to stop to build a chimney. But how could he tell Charley about the longing that had tormented him? Joe would surely have no sympathy; he often said he’d rather be kicked about by mules than by women. Ned frowned, thinking again how foolish his distraction seemed.
“Joe sent supplies,” Charley said, nodding toward a leather pack beside the doorway.
“Did he?” Ned perked up. He had nearly run out of food. He opened the pack, but only saw pouches of gunpowder and bullets. “Where’s the food?”
Charley shrugged. “He thought you’d get meat by hunting.”
Ned dug deeper in the leather pack, hoping Joe had included at least a small sack of beans or flour. When he found one of Joe’s flasks at the bottom, he gave a wry smile. The old mountain man obviously considered whiskey more important than flour. Ned uncorked the bottle and took a dizzying drink for the old-timer’s sake. Whiskey, he thought, would probably be Joe’s prescription for woman troubles, too.
He handed the bottle to Charley. “Take a drink?” The strict laws against giving liquor to Indians and half-breeds mattered nothing to him here.
Charley turned the bottle over thoughtfully in his big hands. “Spirits,” he said quietly. “I wonder what the Puyshoos would say if I told them white men keep their spirits in bottles.”
Ned almost smiled again, but a chill wind blew through the cabin’s unchinked cracks, and he shivered.
“The Wintu tribes say the world is alive with spirits,” Charley continued, almost to himself. “But they say we can only see their masks. Every coyote is just another mask for the spirit of Coyote himself, every raven a mask for the spirit Raven. Trees, rivers—everything hides spirits.”
“Even Mt. Shasta,” Ned suggested, recalling the legend Charley had told.
Charley shot him a scrutinizing glance. “Even the masks of Kusku.” Then he looked into his hands. “The Puyshoos say the white man alone has no spirit. They say the things he makes are dead—the things he touches die.”
“And what do you think?” Ned asked. “You’re part white.”
Charley was silent a long time. Finally he said, “My spirit doesn’t live in either the red or white worlds. Still, I know the white world isn’t dead.”
“How can anyone know that?”
“You know it too, Ned. Today even I can feel your spirit struggling. I felt it ride all the way down from the ridge. I felt it cross the meadow.” Charley gave Ned an unblinking gaze. “The Indian never needs to question who he is or why. He learns of the real world in the masked spirit dances. But the white men are lost in a dance where even the masks are wearing masks. I know—“
Charley paused and lowered his eyes. “I know nothing, really. But I think most white men live only in a world of masks, unaware of the powerful spirits beyond. It’s just that you, Ned, are different.”
Ned turned his gray-blue eyes to the mountain framed by the window. Charley’s words rang through him like a bell. He had felt the pull of a spirit within him—hadn’t it been the drive that had guided him all his life, even to this lonely mountain valley? Perhaps it really was beckoning him to choose one of the many masks before him to play his part in its mysterious dance. But he wanted more than to dance through life to an unseen musician’s tune!
Charley drank from the bottle and handed it back. Ned set the flask on the only shelf he had yet built in the cabin, beside the three books he kept there. The books.
He ran his hand along the leather backs. If there was a spirit waiting for him, he thought, it spoke to him also in the words of poets. Even on the darkest days in the mines he had been able to find some bright scene in the two thin volumes of Browning and Byron—the only books he had taken from his father’s bookshelf in Oregon. But why did the magnitude of the beauty in poems fall so far short of the glory he could feel radiating from Mt. Shasta?
Charley’s voice came from behind, as if it were his own thought: “Most white men are afraid to learn the power of the world’s spirits.”
Ned’s hand stopped on the third book—the ledger where he secretly worked on his own poems. Now he realized his goal must be greater even than to describe the mask of the spirit that had drawn him into the frontier.
He wanted to find and know the spirit itself. If he could do that, the world would be at his feet.
* * *
The next day Ned fried up the last of his flour as a small, doughy biscuit. He ate it hungrily and then sat by the cabin’s empty window, trying to sketch Mt. Shasta in his poetry journal. It was the first entry he had made in a month. He frowned at the scratchy lines. The demon in the mountain obviously would not let itself be caught in a trap made of paper. His drawing looked like two mountains instead of one; the steep cone of Shastina, a butte high on Shasta’s western shoulder, was somehow out of proportion. And now clouds were blowing in from the west to obscure the view. In frustration he tore out the page and threw it into the fire smoldering in the middle of the cabin floor.
As he watched the fire, the memory of the beautiful girl began creeping back unbidden, like the gnawing of his hunger. Ned paced the unfinished cabin, alarmed by the drift of his thoughts. The remedy, it seemed, was to keep his mind busy elsewhere.
He decided to hunt for a deer. Taking up his hat, rifle, and powder pouch, he ducked out the doorway. He jumped the creek and strode off quickly into the foothills toward the McCloud. He had long avoided hunting in that direction. The deer would have had time to collect there, imagining themselves safe.
Only after Ned was well on his way did he have second thoughts. A faint wind had sprung up behind him from the west, and he feared it might betray him by carrying his scent ahead.
Soon his suspicion proved correct. A doe bolted from a cluster of cottonwoods just out of range, lifting her nose toward Ned and trotting up toward the ridge indifferently.
“Damn!” Ned said. Still, it looked like a good deer, and she wasn’t moving fast. He decided to follow, hoping she would stop at the bunchgrass just over the ridge.
Ned crested the windy summit in time to see a flash of the deer’s black-tipped tail disappearing into the forest at the head of a gulch. Damn it all! But now that he had come so far, he wasn’t going to turn back.
Now Ned began to hunt in earnest, creeping silently down toward the McCloud, sneaking ahead of the deer to try to cut her off. But each time he thought the deer would surely be in his sights, she bounded ahead over the dry brush and turned, just out of range, as if waiting for Ned to continue his pursuit.
By this time he was close to the McCloud itself, so he decided on a new strategy. Stealthily, he climbed to a rocky point overlooking the larger canyon. Here he crawled to the edge of the cliff and rested his rifle barrel on the rock, sighting in on the field below, where the creek he had been following entered the canyon. Anything coming out of the canyon would have to pass before his gun.
He did not have to wait long. The deer ventured out and stopped in full view, with her ears pricked toward a new sound.
But Ned’s finger hesitated on the trigger. He had heard the sound as well: the clear tones of the Indian song that had been echoing in his memory all summer. Ned scarcely noticed when the deer bounded across the canyon, for walking along a narrow trail beneath him was the Indian girl, singing her enchanting melody while an older woman tapped the rhythm against a basket.
Lithe and graceful as the deer he had hunted, the girl dipped in mid-song to catch up some pine cones alongside the trail and drop them into a basket on her hip. Then she tossed a cone toward the woman’s basket, missed, and flashed a smile framed by long, black braids.
“Paquita!” the woman chided as they walked out of sight down the canyon.
Ned closed his eyes to hold the vision fast. She was more beautiful, more alluring even than he recalled.
Ned covered his face with his hands. The old doubts and arguments flew past him like shadowy night birds: the bonds to his family in Oregon, his dreams of fame and fortune.
Then he opened his eyes again. A conviction was growing within him, like a wind gathering to a storm. He felt it lift him above the wild canyons, bracing him with the power to bridge worlds. On the frontier, the path to greatness was never straight, nor well traveled.
Had he ever really tried to escape the girl’s dark spell? Wasn’t she the one he had been hunting after all?
Chapter 3
“An Indian summer-time it was, long past,
. . . and God had cast
Us heaven’s stillness.”
—Joaquin Miller
In the lingering Indian summer of that year, dogwoods and maples speckled the forests about Now-ow-wa with their crimson fire. Black bears grew fat and lazy eating huckleberries in the high meadows. It was a season when all of nature seemed to be holding its breath in anticipation of the winter storms to come.
Ned drove the horses back down to Soda Springs with his emotions and plans still in turmoil. He arrived just ahead of Charley, who swung down from his Indian pony and told Joe, “I’ve just been to the Puyshoos’ village.”
Ned raised his eyebrows. “You have?”
Charley continued to the old mountain man, “The chief wants to meet with you during the tribe’s autumn festival tomorrow. Worrotatot didn’t say what he wants to talk about, but it must be serious. They rarely have whites at the festival.”
“Fair ‘nough. Sounds right neighborly of him,” Mountain Joe replied.
The news left Ned uncertain, but his voice spoke out with surprising conviction, as if with a will of its own. “Could I come with you?”
Charley cast him such a penetrating and inquisitive look that Ned distractedly began rubbing a spot on his sleeve.
“I suppose you could come. You have also been their neighbor.”
* * *
Ned didn’t know what to expect from the autumn festival, but in the morning he took care to look his best. He polished his tall black boots, put on a clean cream-colored shirt—left open at the collar—, and combed the blond locks that now fell nearly to his shoulders. Charley, too, brushed down his buckskins and plucked the few whiskers growing on his big, square chin. In Indian fashion he scorned a razor and instead used two small, flat rocks as tweezers to pull out the hairs. Only Mountain Joe made no noticeable preparations, other than to slip a flask of whiskey into his saddlebag.
On the way they stopped at Now-ow-wa to unpack the flour, beans, and other supplies Ned had insisted on tying to the backs of their saddles. “Beats me what the hell you’re goin’ to do up here all winter,” Mountain Joe muttered and rode his horse ahead, splashing across the creek.
Ned knew how little Mountain Joe concerned himself with women. Instead, he fell back beside Charley, who would have to translate for him if he ever hoped to meet the Indian girl.
“Charley?” he asked.
“Yes?”
Ned cleared his throat. “Have you ever heard of a Wintu name that sounds like ‘Paquita?’”
“It’s the name of my mother’s niece. How do you know it?”
Ned told him about the deer he had hunted toward the McCloud River, and of the woman he had overheard talking to a dark-eyed girl—the same girl they had seen earlier digging camas. When he finished, Charley looked at him evenly.
“So that’s why you’re staying at Now-ow-wa.”
A part of him still wanted to deny it. But it wasn’t the part that controlled his voice. “Yes, it is.”
“As far as I know Paquita isn’t married—that’s lucky for you. On the other hand, she’s one of Chief Worrotatot’s granddaughters.”
“Then it will be difficult to see her?”
“Not that. But she’ll be expensive.”
“Expensive! Can a chief’s granddaughter be bought?”
“You certainly can’t get her for nothing. I imagine Worrotatot himself would have to set the price. It’d be best to wait until the end of the festival to discuss it with him, though.”
Ned’s head reeled. He’d only wanted to meet the girl, and now suddenly Charley was suggesting she be bought. Indian courtship did not rely on romance as much as he had expected. The whole business seemed too quick—too callous. “Honestly, Charley. The girl’s only seen me once in her whole life. What if she doesn’t want to be sold?”
The horses reentered the pine forest and Charley pushed a branch aside. “That would be her concern, not yours. My mother Ahatnika told me she didn’t want to be sold to McCloud at first. Later, she learned to like the ways of the whites so much she wanted to raise me like one. If Worrotatot had listened to her at first, she wouldn’t have been happy later. It works best for the Wintu when men decide these things. How would a woman be able to bargain for a good price? How would a woman know when a man could afford a second wife?”
“You mean a man can buy all the wives he wants if he has enough money?”
“Not quite. The Puyshoos trade more freely with some tribes than others. Also, a man won’t sell a daughter to someone he believes is unworthy. That’s why I suggest you wait until the end of the festival. After the feast will come the competitions. If you can do well then, the chances are greater that Worrotatot will bargain reasonably.”
“Competitions?” Ned said. “What kind of competitions?”
Charley only replied, “You will see.”
* * *
A couple of half-wild Indian dogs raced up, snarling at the three riders before they had even come in sight of the village. A word from Charley, however, sent the dogs retreating with their ears back. When the horses reached the rimrock overlooking the river, Ned’s heart beat faster. Below, within a silvery bend of the stream, stood a cluster of about thirty dome-shaped bark-and-mat huts.
“Is that all the bigger it is?” Ned asked. In his imagination, the village had loomed much larger.
“Each family only needs one cawel,” Charley said.
To Ned the cluster of huts seemed a natural part of the river scene, as if the village had grown there on its own. The thought brought a different question to mind. “Charley, what does the tribe use for bargaining? Not gold, I suppose.”
“No, not gold.”
“Then what? Wampum?”
“Whatever they need.” Charley shrugged and turned his attention to the trail, leaving Ned to wonder just what kind of price he might be asked to pay—if he were allowed to bargain at all.
The horses picked their way down through a break in the cliffs and clopped toward a dusty open area in the middle of the village. Ned craned his neck, hoping to spot Paquita, but couldn’t see any girls her age. Ahead, several sharp-voiced old women were hurriedly driving a band of naked, wide-eyed children into a large central cawel. Finally the only tribespeople left in sight were a group of men, headed by a single old Indian. The old man was short and powerfully built, with shoulder-length black hair and a wrinkled face. He wore a mountain lion skin over his shoulders. Unlike any Indian Ned had ever seen, he had a thin black beard on the end of his chin.
Charley spoke in his Indian tongue with the old man. Then he announced, “This is Worrotatot, chief of the Puyshoos. He thanks you for accepting his invitation, and offers you places at the feast.”
“Tell the chief me an’ Ned are honored to share his grub as friends—an’ to parley with him if he ever gits ‘round to that too,” Mountain Joe said.
When Charley translated this, the bearded chief seemed satisfied. Ned and Joe gave their horses to a waiting man and followed the chief to a large circle of stones. There the chief sat cross-legged on the ground. Mountain Joe squatted on his springy legs. Ned tried twice to fold his long legs like the chief’s, knowing he should make a good impression on Paquita’s grandfather, but finally had to settle for pulling his knees up in front of him.
The men of the tribe joined them in a large ring on the ground. The group ranged from naked boys of ten or twelve to withered, white-haired men. Most wore only frayed strips of blankets like narrow skirts around their waists. Several had tight-fitting brimless basketwork caps to keep their shaggy black hair in order.
Ned whispered to Charley, “Where are the women?”
“Preparing the food,” Charley replied. “They’ll eat in the cawels with the children when we’re done.”
Ned’s face showed his disappointment. He had come to the festival to see Paquita. “It’s awful quiet for a festival. Not much laughing and dancing.”
“The dancing comes later. And as for laughing, everyone here is old enough they don’t have to show pleasure with laughter.” Charley tilted his head toward five old women approaching with heavy baskets. “The chief’s wives. Remember, Ned, accepting food is a sign of respect among the Puyshoos.”
The women, adorned with strings of beads and shells, walked around the ring, tipping their baskets to offer food to each of the men. The Indian men began eating as soon as their hands were full, grunting approvingly. A hunchbacked old woman held one of the thickly-woven baskets in front of Ned. Inside were a pile of white patties about the size of hands. Smiling, he took one and nodded. It had a texture like dried mush and was flecked with pieces of ash, but smelled somewhat like mashed potatoes. He saw Mountain Joe take a patty and bite into it hungrily.
“What is this?” Ned asked him.
“Camas cake, Ned. Fella gets to miss this stuff. Hell of a kind of grub to make without a squaw. Damn roots grow a foot and a half down, and you gotta bake ‘em three days in a fire pit. I was stakin’ the trip on gettin’ some of this, I reckon.”
Ned took a wary bite, and was just deciding it was rather starchy and bland, when another woman came by. This time he recognized the basket’s contents as dried fish—apparently sun-dried, with a dizzying smell that made him suspect it had rotted first. He took the smallest piece and set it beside him casually. However, a scrawny man across from him gave him a puzzled look, and held up a slab of the odoriferous fish, patting his stomach heartily. Ned flushed, remembering how important it was to show respect for the tribe’s food. He smiled, patted his stomach, and looked in desperation toward the next food basket.
The next basket held some little fruitcake-like loaves. They smelled delicious. To make up for his hesitation with the other foods, Ned tried a large mouthful. It was crunchy, with a wonderful nutty flavor he couldn’t place.
“Charley, this is really good,” he said.
“Yes, isn’t it? Acorn bread with dried grasshoppers.”
The bite stuck in Ned’s throat. With a weak smile he laid the loaf next to the dried fish. For a moment he debated what to do with the grasshopper parts still in his mouth. There was no polite way to spit them out. If he wanted to win Paquita, he could not insult the tribe. Clenching his hands about his knees, he forced the insects down.
Just when Ned was beginning to despair of finding enough to eat, the baskets of huckleberries and jerked elk meat came by, and he took handfuls of these familiar favorites. Then the women left the baskets in the middle of the ring and withdrew. Other than a few small boys who quickly finished the huckleberries, the men now seemed to be holding back, as if they were already anticipating some more important event.
Soon Worrotatot stood up and led the way to another small field near the river. This, Ned realized, would be the site of the afternoon’s competitions—where he would be expected to prove himself to the tribe. Colored feathers fluttered from short poles staked in the grassy field.
Ned still hadn’t seen Paquita. “Won’t the women at least get to watch the competitions?” he asked Charley.
Charley waved the question away. “They’re eating in the cawels.”
Three men, gaudily arrayed in masks and shell ornaments, began beating a deep, solemn rhythm on a log drum. The bearded chief raised his hands and spoke to the sky. Then, suddenly, the crowd of men erupted in shouts. They dashed into the field toward the poles, yanking them from the ground. The young warriors paired off, defiantly holding the poles crosswise between them. Everywhere they began a kind of one-on-one tug-of-war, straining and gritting their teeth until one or the other was thrown onto his back.
To Ned’s embarrassment, he and Joe were left with the old men. These obviously unathletic elders were lining up black and white sticks in the dust, as if for some kind of betting game.
Mountain Joe guffawed, “Well, I’ll be jiggered. These old guys play bones.” The old mountain man fell to the game, leaving Ned more frustrated than ever. He wanted to impress the tribe, but how?
Finally Charley returned from the tug-of-war competitions, accompanied by the same stern warrior Ned had seen guarding the camas gatherers that spring.
“Ned,” Charley said, “This is Paquita’s brother Akitot. He has asked to challenge you in the footrace.”
Ned sized up the lean young man by Charley’s side. He had an angular face with a stony expression, and a fire in his eyes that suggested this was no idle dare. But if Paquita’s brother had hoped to discredit him, Ned thought, he had chosen the wrong challenge. Ned had always been a good runner and had longer legs than any man in the tribe.
“A footrace?” Ned smiled. “Tell him that’s just what I need. Where should we run?”
“The race follows the river trail all the way around the village and returns to the race rock.” Charley pointed to a stone among a cluster of young men. “Worrotatot will drop a feather to signal the start.”
“I’ll be ready,” Ned smiled. He stripped off his shirt and warmed up by jogging in place. Several boys stopped to watch him, surprised perhaps by the whiteness of his pale chest. Ned made the most of the chance for an exhibition of high spirits, puffing out his chest and shaking down the muscles in his long legs. He enjoyed the thought that Paquita might be watching him as well, through the chinks of a cawel wall.
The dozen runners lined up, each backed by friends giving encouragement and making bets. Only Ned stood alone at the line. He smiled to Akitot, who answered with an earnest nod.
The tribe’s black-bearded chief dropped his feather and the runners took off toward the trail.
Ned estimated the course would be about a mile, and since he didn’t know the trail, he decided not to take advantage of his long stride to pull ahead right away. He felt sure he could pass the leaders when he chose. So he positioned himself behind Akitot, thumping loudly with each step of his tall boots while the other runners ran barefoot, and almost silently. The trail flashed by in a blur of willows, with the whitewater of the McCloud keeping pace. Ned rounded the first bend taking deep, even breaths. When he thought the others would surely begin to slow down, however, they showed no sign of tiring.
Ned was also surprised that so many logs lay across the trail. He hurdled the first awkwardly and wrenched his knee with a small stab of pain. He tried to keep his pace, but Akitot was already out of sight up the trail, and several others sprang past him, light-footed as deer.
The final stretch across the peninsula was a tiring uphill climb. The last of the other runners passed him by, seemingly without slackening pace at all. When at last the course turned downhill, Ned was too exhausted to stride out ahead as he had planned.
He arrived at the starting rock, panting and coughing, to find Akitot waiting with a faint smile on his lips. Although nothing was said, Ned felt the weight of humiliation as he stooped over to catch his breath. How was he going to impress the tribe if he finished last?
Then he had an idea. He waved Charley closer. “Tell me, Charley, does anyone in this tribe besides you know how to ride?”
“Of course. Many of the warriors have become good horsemen.”
“I haven’t seen their stock, though.”
Charley hesitated. “The Puyshoos have only had horses for a few years, since they first bought them from the Achomawis on the Pit River. Unfortunately, the last winters have been hard for the tribe and the snows have been deep.” His voice dropped. “The horses didn’t survive.”
Ned pressed on. “Then Akitot can ride?”
“Yes.”
“If you’d loan Akitot your pony, I’d challenge him to run that same course again on horseback.”
Charley nodded. “All right. I’ll tell him of the challenge.”
The race was quickly arranged. At Akitot’s request, the horses were to be raced bareback. Charley’s spotted pony and Ned’s roan gelding were brought to the field and unsaddled. Ned grabbed the mane with his left hand and swung his booted leg over the gelding’s tall back. “Ready when you are,” he told Akitot.
Akitot mounted almost as swiftly and brought the pony up even with Ned. Then Worrotatot slowly raised his arm and let the feather drop.
“Hyah!” Ned cried, digging into the horse’s flanks with his boot heels. The horse shook and bolted forward like a startled elk. This time Ned did not intend to trail Akitot at all. He had to win for Paquita. He pulled ahead and reached the river first. “Hyah!” he cried again, ducking the overhanging branches that whipped past like a gamut of willow switches. The hooves thundered around the bend in the river, leaving sparks and dust for Akitot’s pony, close behind.
Suddenly the first fallen log loomed ahead, broad as a barrel and waist high. Here the danger of falling would be great even with a saddle. Ned clutched the horse’s neck and dug in again with his heels. The horse sprang, flew a silent second, and then landed with a jolt. But the horse broke stride while Ned was struggling to keep his balance. Akitot’s pony leapt smoothly over the tree and took the lead.