Scalpdancers (21 page)

He watched darkness and dawn; he listened and the storms shared their truth. He saw Cold Maker come all wrapped in deep-blue sky and gunmetal clouds. He saw snowflakes upon the land while the grass turned yellow, then brown, and died, and wildflowers curled into the soil. Soon all the world was white. It was then he saw the great beast
Iniskim
, the white buffalo. The animal lay upon its side in the snow drenched with blood.

The dreamer cautiously drew near, for the sacred animal was not yet dead. Steam rushed from its flared nostrils and there was the power of death in its hooves and curved horns. The dying animal lay still and allowed the dreamer to come forward. Just as the child had stood before the man, now the dreamer stood before the dying buffalo, and the animal's large sad eyes beheld him and the dreamer began to understand something of change, of the sorrow of life and the joy of death.

The animal changed before his eyes into a pelt that covered a man. The man slowly stood and hid his nakedness in the skin of the beast.…

“White Buffalo,” the dreamer said.

The shaman extended his hands and arched his back. A cry rose from his throat and echoed over the lonely snow. As the dreamer watched, the snow turned red and the cry of the shaman rose in pitch and volume until it became unbearable. And the dreamer covered his ears, but the cry burrowed deep into his mind and would not release him, but rather it held him prisoner. Panic filled him. He had to escape. How? The voice of the shaman held him prisoner.

The cry reverberated in his skull. He felt himself slipping away—then he heard the song. It came from within. Perhaps it was his soul that sang. The dreamer had no knowledge of the source, he only knew that the song was within him, and his spirit song, though tremulous at first, gave him courage. He sang for the dying earth and for the earth reborn. Power filled him and he sang. Peace filled him and he sang. Strength was his, and wisdom.

Red snow melted into rivers of blood. But the rivers seeped into the land and the grasses sprang forth and the world blossomed and was healed. Bitterroots bloomed among the sun-bleached bones of the buffalo. Nature had reclaimed its own. The dreamer knew that as long as he sang, as long as someone knew the songs and sang them, the world would not die.

The dreamer awoke. He did not know how long he had slept. From his pallet he saw Sparrow seated near the mouth of the cave, watching moonbeams glitter on the falls. The dreamer rose from his blanket and padded soundlessly across the cave. He wore only a loincloth in the cool night air. He ignored discomfort and continued to the entrance. His touch startled Sparrow from her reverie.

Her eyes widened as if she were seeing a ghost. His hand upon her shoulder held her in place; otherwise she might have fled through the curtain of water. Then he knelt by her in the moonlight.

“Open your blanket,” he said. She complied and he sat beside her and shared her warmth.

“Your wound—” she began, touching his forehead.

“It will heal.”

She sensed something different about the man from the moment he sat within her blanket: the way he looked, his expression of awe, of childlike wonder. Suddenly he crawled from her blanket and gingerly made his way to the edge of the pool and stretched his hand out into Singing Woman Falls. The force of the stream pushed his hand down. Ignoring his bandaged head, he entered the falls.

“Living water,” he cried out as the stream pummeled him, bathing him in liquid moonlight. The bitter-cold shower took his breath away and left him gasping for air. He held himself in the falls, and beneath the noise of the plunging waters Sparrow heard a song.

When he emerged, he stumbled toward her and sank to the ground at her feet. She wrapped her blanket around him yet again.

“I have had my vision,” he said through chattering teeth. He looked into her almond eyes and told her the truth of what had been revealed to him. “I must be gone for a time to find the Great Water that has no end, where the sun sleeps. I must make this journey. Alone. It is my vision quest.”

“And I will wait here. You are not the only one who may be touched by magic,” Sparrow said, trying to hide her grief. “Tell me you will return,” she whispered, lying back and pulling him atop her.

“I will always return,” he said.

Three days passed. Singing Woman left the couple by themselves as much as possible. Indeed, she was busy with her own tasks. She had found a grove of box elder trees surging with sap, and spent these days tapping the trees. The sap became quite sweet when boiled and the shavings from the inner side of an elk hide solidified when added to the boiling sap, producing a plentiful supply of candy, enough to satisfy her sweet tooth.

The old woman knew there was magic afoot and that the wounded young man had been touched by the All-Father and given sight beyond sight.

So it was no surprise when the young man of dreams announced he must follow his vision to where the sun sleeps. He readied his weapons and packed a little food, though in the end the land itself must nourish him if he were to survive. Sparrow remained quiet, withdrawn into herself and her own worries and speculations. There simply wasn't any more to be said.

And on the fourth morning the young man draped a blanket across the gray and slipped the hackamore over the animal's head. He allowed the mare a final drink from the pool at the foot of Singing Woman Falls. While the animal slaked its thirst, he nourished his own aching heart in Sparrow's embrace. His black hair hung long and unbound and blew across his face.

“Your dreams have taken you away from me,” Sparrow whispered. “My love will bring you back.” She opened her arms and retreated a step. How grand he looked in his buckskin shirt and leggings, his eyes aglow with life and vision in a bluntly handsome, scarred face.

He called out and the gray obediently abandoned the pool and trotted over to the young man. He leapt astride the mare. He heard a ghostly singing; an old woman's voice filtered through the falls, emanating from the earth and the forested ridge.

“Peace before him.

Peace behind him.

Let peace be under his feet.

May he follow a true path.

May this lone walker listen

With open heart.

May this lone walker see with new eyes

The spirit in all things.

Peace before him.

Peace behind him.

Let peace be under his feet.”

“Who are you?” Sparrow asked, voicing the medicine woman's question of a few days past.

The young man was caught off guard. He glanced quizzically at the young woman and started to answer “Lost Eyes,” but the name died on his lips.

He lifted his eyes to the west and in his mind pictured the solitary journey that lay ahead, the journey he had already begun in his dreams. A name sounded in his heart, put there by a sacred song.

“I am Lone Walker.”

PART III

Journeys

12

June 1814

Thunder rolled and shook the rafters of the Sea Spray Inn, but the storm Reap McCorkle feared most was the tempest brewing within his own walls. Thirty feet from front door to bar and seventy feet from west wall to east the Sea Spray Inn boasted the best rooms and the finest tavern in all of Astoria—indeed the
only
rooms and tavern in Astoria and for that matter in all of the Pacific Northwest. Reap McCorkle had gone to a lot of trouble; he'd cut the wood for every hand-hewn chair and table, he'd trimmed every white pine log and nailed every red cedar shingle into place. He'd personally hung the walls with ceremonial masks and fitted every lantern. The Sea Spray Inn had been a dream brought to fruition by the sweat of his brow and the money of John Jacob Astor himself. Reap didn't want his dream damaged, not one splinter of it. So he sat enthroned behind the spruce wood bar and rested his grizzled chin upon his entwined fingers and kept vigil, a wooden bung starter close at hand. If Captain Penmerry had trouble in mind, friend or no, Reap McCorkle intended to end it.

Morgan Penmerry stared into the pewter mug at his own image reflected on the last few swallows of rum. He looked much the same as when he had fled Macao eight weeks past. His chestnut hair was just as unruly, his nose as askew and chin as squared; a close-trimmed black beard covered the lower half of his face now and added a touch of maturity to his features.

But Temp Rawlings, who knew Morgan better than any man alive, had only to look into his young friend's eyes to see the changes eight weeks had wrought. Temp was no fool and kept his observations to himself. He knew trouble when he saw it and he could read storm warnings better than most. So he sat quietly and nursed his mug of rum and savored the fire at his backside. Here along the south bank of the Columbia, only twelve miles in from the mighty Pacific's rocky coast, a blazing hearth felt good and lightened a man's spirits.

Morgan ignored him. His rum-soaked thoughts were of the high seas and the eight weeks in which he'd been a “perfect gentleman” while bright-eyed Julia Emerson stood on the deck of the
Magdalene
with her auburn hair streaming in the wind and her cream-colored skin darkening in the sun. Her emerald eyes mocked his discomfort, playfully so, especially every time she'd bested him at chess, a game for which she had a great knack. He complained that a missionary's daughter had no business being a master strategist. She countered, citing the war for a man's soul was fought on the most treacherous battlefield of all. She laughed and he would have to share her good humor.

Much to his amazement they had become friends, a title he had never given to a woman before.

Not that he was getting religion. Morgan Penmerry considered the angels a dull lot, good for nothing but hosannas and platitudes. The devil set a better table with tankards of his brimstone brew and women whose lips were hot enough to melt lead, whose kisses sucked a man's breath away. A man could dance with the devil and forget about tomorrow because today had no end.

No end … and yet they'd sailed past Cape Disappointment and right up the mighty Columbia and brought the journey to an end. As the inlet opened itself to the
Magdalene
cutting effortlessly through the water, Morgan had experienced such a sinking of spirit. He would miss young Julia in a way he had never missed a woman before.

Morgan raised the tankard to his lips and drank deeply, not for the taste but for the effect. He wanted to get “blind-stinking-fell-down-and-forget-it-ever-happened” drunk. He wanted to forget the wreckage he had left behind in Macao: Chiang Lu and the Portuguese officer and Demetrius Vlad and the smoldering hull of the
Hotspur
. Oh yes, forget Macao, after all, he could never return. He wanted to forget the crossing and the sound of a young woman's laughter and the gentle way she had of leading him to question his life.

There was one thing more—he wanted to forget he was a captain without a ship. Morgan lifted his gaze to the window behind him. He stood and walked unsteadily to the shutters. He peered out at the night through a firing port, a slit large enough to admit a rifle barrel.

Lightning flashed and in the lurid glare of ionized air he glimpsed the
Magdalene
anchored fifty feet offshore, lifeless and dark, its sail furled.

A second ship rode the troubled waters alongside the
Magdalene
. This was the H.M.S.
Raccoon
, under the command of Captain William Black. The British warship had docked at the settlement on the thirteenth of December. British troops had disembarked and taken Fort Astoria without firing a shot.

Morgan shifted his stance as another flash of lightning illuminated the stockade itself, Fort Astoria now called Fort George. The Union Jack fluttered in the wind gusting over the walls. Morgan Penmerry closed his eyes and tried to blot out the memory of this day's landing, how a contingent of British soldiers had met the johnboat as it came ashore. The scene played over and over in his head and try as he might he could not alter the outcome.

“The
Magdalene
is my ship. You can't just take it!” Morgan protested.

Captain William Black was an astute and utterly polite gentleman in his early thirties. Splendidly attired in scarlet coat and white breeches, he doffed his black leather hat and bowed to the Emersons. The officer positively beamed at the sight of a woman so fair.

“I have already done it,” he said, answering Morgan at last. He indicated his soldiers with a wave of his hand. A half-dozen marines were already boarding the
Magdalene
out in the river. “We are at war. I don't like it but—”

“I'm not,” Morgan retorted. “I haven't an enemy in the world.”

Julia had to turn away before the captain saw her choke.

Black turned and looked toward the ship. The English marines were already lowering the American flag. “I don't like it, either, but there you are.”

Morgan fumed. War was for generals and admirals. His sole interest was in turning the debacle in Macao into a profit and he couldn't do that without a ship.

“I am not without compassion,” Black continued. “Your men are free to come and go in the settlement. But that ship will fly the Union Jack and carry an English crew.” He smiled toward Julia. He did not know how long he would be stationed in this godforsaken land far from home and the bosom of his loving wife and family. “My dear Miss Emerson, is it? You are a fair flower to this shore. I am totally at your service.”

“We intend to bring the word of God and the peace of Christ to the savage tribes,” Emile Emerson managed to interject. The soldiers made him a trifle nervous and the more rattled his nerves, the more pompous he tended to become. It was a fault he often regretted.

“Allow me to offer escort to you both,” the captain said.

“About the
Magdalene
,” Morgan interrupted. “Maybe we could work out some kind of arrangement.” He was desperate now. He needed that damn ship.