Michael Schein

Excerpts: Bones Beneath Our Feet

Excerpts from Bones Beneath Our Feet

©2011 Michael Schein, all rights reserved

Chapter One

The Boy Listened

1

The boy listened with his ear against the door for the sound of his mother’s breathing. He didn’t dare to peek inside, for fear of inciting fresh rage. He didn’t dare to leave her, having seen before the effects of this deep melancholia. His father was out in the fields, and besides, what use was he? It was father’s fault that mother was in this condition. Hadn’t father held the reins that terrible night two years before when the carriage overturned and mother struck her head and the blood was unstoppable?

Mother, oh dear mother, how I miss you!

She was right there, behind the white door, but the haggard thing filling mother’s bedclothes was a cruel caricature of the mother of Isaac’s memory. How he clung to the image of an industrious, loving and cheerful woman, ready to solve any problem, heal any hurt. But at nine it is hard to hold on to the memories of a seven year old. Which was the true mother, which the imagined?

“No! NO!! You can’t fool me – I know what you’re up to!” came the guttural cry from within the closed chamber, and that was the real mother now, alternately sullen and apoplectic. Isaac heard a crash from within, the sound of breaking china. Swallowing hard, he tried the door. It was locked.

Moans like lava streamed from behind the door. Isaac pushed his shoulder against the barrier, but it would not budge. “NO – POISON!” his mother cried. Furniture scraped, then clunked against the door. Desperate, Isaac ran to fetch the stove ax, then flew back up the stairs, sisters in pursuit. Little Oliver, the toddler, exploded in tears. And where was that no-good servant Amy, whose job it was to care for their mother?

From inside the room came an eerie sound: sobs, interspersed with brittle sing-song, “Hannah Cummings, Cummings and Goings, Goings and Cummings, Hannah my dear!” Then more sobs, so violent they degenerated into clutching gasps for breath. “Goodbye Hannah, Daddy’s a Deacon, Deacon of Dying, Going to God.”

“Oh Isaac,” cried sister Elizabeth, “do something, quick!” as she too tried the door, but it would not budge. “Mother!” called the sisters in unison.

“Children, is that you?” came a voice from within, not quite their mother. A pause. “Children?” A very taut voice.

“Yes, mother,” replied Isaac, trying to stay calm. “Would you let us in, please?” Another pause, a long one, the children barely daring to breathe.

“SAVE YOURSELVES!” Glass shattering. Isaac swung the ax with a strength he’d never known, and the door split from top to bottom. Isaac and his sisters joined together to thrust away the remnants of white splinters and the rolltop desk jammed up tight. Scrambling through, Isaac was horrified to find his mother straddling the window casement, blood oozing from a dozen cuts inflicted by the jagged glass. In a single bound he was across the room as she pushed off with her trailing foot. He was just able to grab her arm as she fell, pinioning his legs against the moldings. She looked back into his eyes, no sign of recognition in her hateful gaze. “Be gone, ye creature of Satan!” she hissed, but he would not be gone. Though he feared to dislodge her shoulder he pulled for all he was worth. The months of barely pecking at her plate made her light, and he reeled her in like some strange sea creature, who flopped onto the glass-strewn floor, bleeding and unconscious.

Isaac Ingalls Stevens lay down beside his mother, heedless of the glass, trembling head to toe. His sisters stood silent, mouths agape; his little brother wailed. His father and Amy appeared at the doorway, blinking, disoriented, disheveled. Isaac shot his father a cold look. He did not permit himself tears until late that night, when he was alone.

2

The boy listened to the alien sounds coming from the stream bed just beyond the cedars. This was his first quest, to retrieve a medicine stick planted by his father next to the dead snag on She-nah-nam creek. Flushed with excitement, he had set out bravely, scampering as quickly as legs in their seventh summer could go. But now, creeping on his belly to the point where sheltering boughs brushed the crest of the bank above the dead snag, his quest seemed doomed to failure. With the tremulous caution of a doe, he parted the boughs a hand’s width, and gingerly peeked out.

What the boy saw was beyond all seeing. Ghost-cheeked men with hairy chins crawled along the creek. They smelled of death. Had some demon shape-shifted these creatures from dying wolves?

Leschi let the boughs fall closed, as he considered his next move. Of course he should turn and run back to the safety of the tribe. He remembered well the many times he had been cautioned against the dangers of the forest. The wolf, bear, cougar and wild boar were terrible, but more terrible still were the enchantments: dwarves who could steal a boy’s reason; stealthy, quick demons of the forest like Seatco, who could enslave a boy in squalor.

To turn back would disgrace his family. To earn a vision quest Leschi must first pass the smaller tests set by his father. Without a vision quest, he could never know his tamanous – his spirit guide. Without his tamanous he would be but a shadow, a nothing, worse than a slave.

Leschi again parted the curtain of cedar boughs. There were as many of the creatures as he had fingers on one hand. They were gutting and skinning otter, the blue-grey viscera disappearing silently in the creek’s hungry current. Leschi was afraid. He closed his eyes, conjuring up his father’s resonant voice: “Remember this well, children – in fear, there is no wisdom; only death and suffering.”

Steeling himself against fear, Leschi studied the grasses waving under the caress of Laliad, the wind spirit. He didn’t yet know how he would do it. All he knew was that it must be done. Somehow, he would find a way to creep undetected over open ground the length of a longhouse, retrieve the totem, and steal back to safety. All under the malevolent eyes of the monsters.

Leschi prayed to his mother for guidance, though she had perished bringing his sister Skai-kai into the world in his second summer. He could no longer picture his mother’s face, but she was with him. She was the breeze in the grass and a voice – a clear sweet song washing over the cradleboard as she bent to her work:

Spirit dances in the rain, in the wave, in the wind,

Spirit dances in rock and tree, you and me,

Our hearts drum the dance.

Listening closely, he could hear her song even now.

With a clarity before unknown to him, Leschi peered across the expanse of osoberry, horsetail, rushes, cattails, plantain, nettle. Are we not the People of the River Grass? asked his father’s voice. The grasses beckoned to him, pointing the way with filial fingers. Breathing deeply to fill his lungs, Leschi bent low then slipped from hiding to scamper around the edge of the demons’ camp. His light copper skin melded with straw-colored stems and ochre-brown blades shifting in the wind. The padding of his bare feet harmonized with the susurrus of the grass. Just short of his goal, Leschi dropped to his belly, still as a fallen log.

The snag was surrounded by a circle of matted straw; no cover for the length of a stone’s throw. Leschi could see the talisman, a pointed stick carved with the face of Raven, the trickster, stuck in the ground by the tree. He looked to the creatures, who appeared to be absorbed in their work. He was downwind, and their scent soured his nostrils like the hamma hamma – rotting fish carcasses that littered the beach. He paused to ask the Creator, Sah-hah-lee Tyee, to make him invisible. Then he bolted across the open space and grabbed the medicine stick just as one of the monsters gave a cry, followed by a great babble rising behind him as he flew back to the welcoming grasses. Weaving through and back into the cover of the cedar forest, running like the Cayuse ponies whose hooves barely touch the ground, Leschi heard the demon gibberish fade in the distance, and he gave thanks to his mother and to all the spirits who had guided him through his moment of peril.

That night, safe in the longhouse at Muck Creek, the first rains came. Soon it would be time to follow the salmon upriver for winter. Leschi inhaled the warm smell of cedar logs, woven grasses, skins and dried salmon, wet dogs trotting in and out. Clutching the raven totem close to his heart, he burrowed deep into the mound of sleeping boys under a bearskin blanket. His eyes grew heavy; his breaths merged with the rain and ancient forest and teeming Nisqually River; with the powerful salmon, sweet crab and musky clams; with the blue, salmon, thimble, black, straw, elder, salal, goose, and huckleberries of Tenalquot, the Happy Land, the land of more than enough.

* * *

Chapter Six

Polaklie Illahee

1.

Just below the rocky slough where She-nah-nam – Medicine Creek – emerges from wooded hills to coil its way towards Whulge’s briny oblivion, like a snake with its head in a snare, the great dead snag of Leschi’s youthful first quest stands alone, stark against the backdrop of the Nisqually delta. All around this snag, grasses and low shrubs dot the broad earthen floor on both sides of the creek’s undulating scrawl. The walls of cedar, hemlock, spruce, fir, and distant shining mountains, hold up a ceiling of tumbling clouds. It is as majestic a meeting hall as any back in Washington City. To this spot the tribes of the South Sound were summoned on Christmas Eve, 1854, for the first great treaty council with the new Governor.

Leschi and Quiemuth came downriver by canoe to the spot, with Sluggia, Quiemuth’s son George, and their wives. Upon arrival, the women built wikiups for shelter, covering them with cedar bark and boughs against the winter rains, and fronting them with fire pits to repel the chill. Leschi was proud to see the numbers of his people, and of the neighboring tribes, pouring in to the council grounds. All the many Nisqually villages were represented, as well as Puyallups, Klickitats, Tulalips, Duwamish, and Squaxons. Necklaces of speckled hiqua, bear claw, and mother-of-pearl, added a festive air to the momentous gathering. Swimming their ponies across She-nah-nam, the people were like a plentiful run of Chinook, shimmering in midday mist.

A man the size of a bear rose up out of the fog to clasp Leschi to his breast. “Cousin, it is good to see you again,” boomed Kanasket, Chief of the Klickitats, a band of Yakamas that had been forced by war over the mountains from the east, into the rugged highlands of the upper Green and White Rivers. Leschi remembered fondly Kanasket’s annual summer visits to the Nisqually delta. Even when testing themselves against one another in the hot blood of youth, Kanasket had never used his enormous strength to intimidate. Conscious of his strength, he was slow to take offense, even slower to anger. He was also one of the few Natives for whom Leschi had to look up to meet his eyes, and when he did so on this day he found unexpected lines of worry.

“My friend,” said Leschi, “it pleases me greatly to see you again. I hope your belly is full, and your village peaceful.”

Kanasket grasped each of Leschi’s forearms and held him fast. “These are strange times, cousin, strange times,” he muttered, shaking his head.

“There have been many changes brought by the white man,” replied Leschi. “Their ways are different from ours. But,” he added, “ways are only ways. It is heart that matters. Are their hearts so different?”

Kanasket looked long at his dear friend. “Let us hope not,” he said at last.

“It is true,” acknowledged Leschi, eyeing the small crowd gathering about to hear the two Tyees, “that we have all felt the encroachments of the Bostons on our lands. But this council is proof that the Boston Tyee has heard of our troubles, and wishes to make amends. Now he will tell us, for all time, what land belongs to the Indian, and what land belongs to the white man.”

“There was a time, not many summers ago, when you would not have known what it means to own the earth itself,” chided Kanasket. He was a simple man, who took change hard.

“We do not claim it as our own like the white man, or write it on a talking paper,” agreed Leschi, “but we have always known what land our tribes could hunt and fish, and where our villages and summer camps could stand. Your own fathers learned the hard way what it means to lose your land – not at the hand of the Bostons, but of the Cayuse.”

“It is true,” replied Kanasket.

“The Bostons could perhaps destroy us all, yet they choose instead to offer gifts and talk peace,” said Leschi. “This council is a chance for your tribe to once again have a place it can call its own. I think we should listen with open minds.”

“Yes,” agreed Kanasket. “As usual, cousin, you speak with wisdom.” His face relaxed into its more accustomed calm, and he smiled. “Besides, I have heard that you might soon have a Boston son-in-law. Is this true?”

“It is,” confirmed Leschi, beaming with pride, and he accepted the congratulations of Kanasket and the old Duwamish Chief Se-alth.

But the Suquamish Chief, Kitsap, a barrel-chested youngster with a scar across his left cheek, was not in a congratulatory mood. “So tell me, Leschi,” he asked, when the others were through, “will you be getting any special reward for giving away the land of our ancestors to your new tribe?”

Leschi tasted anger’s bile, though he had no desire to fight this hot-blooded young man. Everyone knew well that the Duwamish warrior who’d left his mark on Kitsap’s cheek now dwelled in Otlas-Skio. But it would not do for Leschi to let the insult pass. “Perhaps you did not hear me, young pup,” he barked, head held high. “I said we should listen with open minds, not that we should give away our lands. This I pledge above all else: My people shall have land enough to live. Without that, there can be no treaty.”

2.

As the early dusk of Christmas Eve fell over the treaty grounds, a commotion arose at the western bank of the rain-swollen creek. It was the Governor and his entourage, canoeing up from the steamer Major Tompkins, that had whisked them from Olympia to the delta in only two hours. Moving with the efficiency of ants, the Bostons unloaded mountains of supplies, setting up two large white canvas tents, each the size of hunting camps. On tables that had been constructed for this purpose, they piled great platters of beef, mutton, venison, elk, goose, duck and salmon, along with carrots and potatoes, all still steaming from the shipboard ovens.

The Governor quickly disappeared into a tent, but Leschi was gratified to see his old friend Mike Simmons emerge through the darkening air, his formerly flame-red beard now tangled with grey. Though Mike was strong as ever, Leschi noticed the creeping paunch around his middle, a sign not merely of age but of new-found prosperity. “Mike Simmons!” he called, and Mike came right over and extended a big, calloused hand.

“Leschi! Klahowya?” was all Mike could say, his Chinook being somewhat limited, “Klahowya? klahowya?” – “How are you? how are you?” – and he pulled Leschi in to his chest and pounded him on the back.

“Muck-a-muck?” asked Leschi, hungrily eyeing the mounds of food.

“Wake” – “No” – answered Mike, shaking his head and waving Ben Shaw over to interpret. “Before we feast,” he began, his drawl clipped by Shaw’s Northern chirp, “there is much to do. Since the first day we met, I have always wanted to repay the favor you did us, Leschi. Now, I can do so. I am joined with the greatest Tyee in the West, Isaac Stevens. It pleases him to use his power to help the Indians, and this pleases me too, because of our long friendship.” After pausing to allow Shaw to interpret his words, Mike held up a paper covered in ornate black scrawls. “This, Leschi, is an important paper that I have gotten for you. It is a commission signed by the Governor himself, appointing you as one of the Chiefs of the Nisquallies. With this paper, the Great Father in Washington City will recognize you as a big man with the power to sign a treaty for all of your tribe. This paper is strong medicine; guard it carefully, and keep it always safe.” Mike held out the paper to Leschi, who took it proudly, and displayed it about for his family and tribesmen to see.

“Quiemuth,” called Mike, and Quiemuth stepped forward. Speaking through Shaw, Mike bestowed upon him with equal ceremony, another commission as a Chief of the Nisquallies. Quiemuth held it out from his face, as if it might bite. The paper felt dry, a thing of death. It had no scent. He had no place to keep such a totem; he handed it to Moonya with instructions to place it between two mats, roll it up, put it inside a bearskin pouch, and carry it straight to the Medicine Man to be examined for evil tamanous.

Mike distributed several more commissions to other Nisqually head men, including John Hiton of Olympia, and Wahoolit of Yelm Prairie. To Leschi’s dismay, Mike also handed a commission to Wyamooch, who glowed with pleasure at the recognition denied by his own tribe.

Then Mike held up another even larger paper. “This paper,” he said through Shaw, “contains on it the outline of Whulge, all the land from the ocean to the tops of the Cascade Mountains, and from the Columbia River to the tip of Vancouver’s Island. For reference, we’ve drawn the principal lakes and rivers, as best as we could do it. Using these pencils that I will give you –” and he held up sticks, pointed like small black-tipped arrows – “the Governor orders the Chiefs to draw out the full area of land which has been claimed by your tribe in the past. This is not the land you will get when we make our treaty, but the lands you now claim, including the lands you will sell to us so that all of us, and our children, may forever live together in peace. Do you understand?”

Leschi nodded though his head was spinning, for it would not do for a great Tyee to betray any sign of weakness. Mike handed over the paper with an eager flash of his green eyes. “Kloshe, kloshe,” he said without Shaw’s aid – “Good, good.” Leschi, Quiemuth, and their fellow Chiefs spread the large map on a table furnished by Simmons, and huddled by the light of the Bostons’ oil lanterns. The paper was filled with squiggly black lines, but no matter how long they discussed it, they could not fathom how this paper related to their river with its still pools, narrow rapids, broad rocky crossings and meanderings. They and their ancestors wandered far and wide, as did the people of the neighboring tribes; what were they to say about the overlap in their lands? And what of the places where only spirits could go – if they were to mark those down upon the white man’s talking paper, would the spirits be angered? They stared and stared but could not see Ta-co-bet’s shimmering snowfields on the paper, or the soft limbs of the red alder glowing in late autumn sunshine, or the splashing smaller creeks like Muck and Tanwax and Ohop, or the spike and bright yellow spathe of the skunk cabbage in spring, or the quiet marshes where the great blue heron stands still as death, waiting for the silver flash of a fish, or even Laliad, spirit of the wind, which every fool knows is everywhere.

When Mike returned but a short time later, he was annoyed to find that they had marked nothing on their paper. Pulling a watch from his pocket he exploded with a long string of angry words. Shaw sought in vain a translation for “hour,” then whittled it down to one bland question: “It has been an hour – what have you been doing?”

Insulted, Leschi tried to explain. “This oow of which you speak, it is nothing. We have wandered this land since Whulge was new.”

Mike just scowled, and grabbed the map away. “Tell me, what is the farthest south your people range?”

“To the Skookumchuk,” replied Leschi, referring to the fast-running river that flows into the land of the Chehalis.

“And the furthest north?”

“The T’kope,” replied Leschi, referring to the river that joins the Puyallup, then empties into Commencement Bay by the growing town of Tacoma.

“OK,” said Mike. “And we’ll assume you go all the way from Sound to Mountains – right?” No answer. So he made two big slashes on the talking paper. “There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” he asked with an unfriendly grin. “Now you can muck-a-muck,” he added as an afterthought. Gathering up the pencils and the map, he rushed off to the next table, where the Puyallups stood puzzling over their own strange talking paper, to do the same for them.

The Nisquallies shuffled off to the feasting tables, but the food was cold.

* * *

Chapter Nine

The Wedding

* * *

3

The long trip south on a ship that swallows trees in its boiler belly and spits steam was astonishing enough, but now Patkanim could not believe the evidence of his senses. Bobbing in the harbor before him was a forest of masts, thick as any Pacific Northwest stand of Douglas fir. Beyond it lay a village that went on forever, wood, brick and stone lodges, warehouses, hotels, gambling dens, theaters, saloons, and beached abandoned sailing vessels, piled one upon another to the smoky horizon atop Telegraph Hill, where a stone tower capped the whole seething mess.

Tony Rabbeson threw his arm around Patkanim’s frock-coated shoulders. “There she be, Chief,” he said, “San-Fran-Cisco, one juicy whore of a city, and she’s all ours!” So it wasn’t just a tale told to frighten their people, this San Francisco. The Bostons’ giant paradise was real, and you didn’t even have to die to see it. San Francisco was all Patkanim had heard about for several years, as he patiently learned English from the sea captains sailing past his summer lodge on Whidbey’s Island. San Francisco, they’d told him, where one Doug fir is worth a thousand bucks, a city growing so big so fast that they build thirty new buildings a day, a place so rough they drink in five hundred different bars, gamble in a thousand dens, commit seven murders a week, and lynch twice that number.

“You heard of th’ gold standard fer money?” said Tony. “Here you wipe yer ass with gold, and they’re on the whiskey ‘n pussy standard!” He might have been joking, but he so rarely smiled that it was hard to tell.

Everything about San Francisco that Patkanim had heard was so far beyond his experience, that it was impossible to tell where the truth left off and fantasy began. That was why Patkanim had decided he had to see this wonder for himself. If it really existed, and was as big as they all said, then he knew it would be impossible to defeat the Bostons. What was it to kill ten tens of Bostons, or even twice that number, if they had a city from which they could send more men than anyone could possibly kill? If there really was a San Francisco, Patkanim knew whose side he wanted to be on. So he insisted on one special condition to the treaty Stevens handed him: send him down to San Francisco for a week. Well, here he was, and here it was, the thrilling stink wrapping itself about them like – well, Tony had said it best, like whore’s thighs.

As they disembarked, Tony grabbed that great big wicker cage of stray cats he’d hauled down from Portland, and set them out on the wharf. Patkanim had thought him crazy, but when Tony promised him five dollars a cat, he’d personally caught fifteen himself. Within minutes a crowd had gathered to check out the newly arrived goods from the ship. Before Patkanim could take in the vista of unbelievable abundance stacked against glass-windowed warehouses towering three stories high, Tony had sold all twenty-five hissing critters to the denizens of this rat-gnawed paradise for ten dollars apiece.

Then they plunged into the amazing streets, swept along through muck and manure by crowds of Chinamen, Mexicans, grubby miners, bar girls, pompadoured gentlemen, and crinoline-and-lace ladies. Out front of a general store, they saw a great stack of prospecting pans, next to which was a sign: $2 ea. “Get out,” said Tony. “Them pans useta go fer ten cents.” The proprietor emerged, and scooped up a shovelful of dirt right out of the street. Patkanim and Tony joined the crowd to watch him carefully wash out the dirt in one of his pans. There, at the bottom of the pan – GOLD! – plain as day, sparkling in the June sunshine. Within minutes the entire stock of pans was sold out, and men were down on their knees, digging up the street. Patkanim would have bought one, had Tony not pulled him aside. “Don’t be a rube,” he said. “I seen that trick before, when Charlie and me was down here. The feller planted that gold dust last night.”

Fortunately the Governor had given Tony enough of an expense account so they could afford the hundred-dollar-a-night Oriental Hotel, with plenty left over for amusement. Prominently displayed in the ornate lobby was a garish poster:

War! War! War!

The celabrated Bull-killing Bear

GENERALL SCOTT

will fite a Bull on Saturday the 9th inst. at 6 PM

at Hall of Comparitive Ovashuns.

PUBLICK is corduly invited.

Tony insisted they attend this great cultural event. When they arrived, they found themselves on the grounds of the E. Clampus Vitus Society, a fraternal order the nature of which was obscure even to a well-traveled rascal such as Mr. Rabbeson. It was not long before they made the acquaintance of a stout gentleman wearing a red union suit glittering with tin-can badges, who was pleased to explain the society to a real Indian Chief.

“Greetings, fellow Chief,” he intoned with excessive solemnity. “I am Edwin H. Van Decor, Noble Grand Humbug of the San Francisco Lodge, order of E. Clampus Vitus, at your service.” As he bowed, his tin-can badges jingled and flashed. “We are an ancient order, dating back to 4004 B.C., dedicated to the comforting of orphans and widows, especially,” he cleared his throat and gave a lascivious appraisal of a particularly shapely young lady, “the latter.” Wink, wink, broad grin.

Mr. Van Decor led the two visitors to a box overlooking a fenced amphitheater. In the center was a grizzly bear, firmly staked to the ground with a chain attached to his collar. The agitated beast stood on his hind legs, displaying his full bulk in a show of menace.  He snarled and pawed at the ground, digging a hole from which to defend himself. Men with muzzle-loading rifles stood about the ring, keeping a watchful eye on the bear. Patkanim felt a pang of disgust. Such a magnificent animal should be treated with respect. The bear’s spirit was huge; Patkanim could feel it pressing at his own chest from a ship’s length away. Yet the Bostons seemed not to feel it; they gambled and smoked and drank their whiskey, delighting not in the grizzly’s power, but its subjugation.

What followed was the most incomprehensible procession Patkanim had ever witnessed. A gaggle of Clampers – for such they were called – in identical red union suits, bedecked by tin-can medals, led a hoop-skirted billy goat wearing a gold necklace and a top hat around the outer ring of the arena. They were careful to keep well away from the bear, so the goat did not bolt. They carried flags made of hoop skirts of all colors, a giant musket with a two-inch bore labeled, “Blunderbusket,” and the sacred seven-foot long Sword of Justice and Mercy. All around the arena they saluted their fellow Clampers by raising their thumbs to their ears, wiggling fingers, and chanting the Clamper motto, Quia Credo Absurdium, which Mr. Van Decor translated as, “I Believe because it is Absurd.” Having completed three such circuits around the ring, the marchers came to a halt before the box occupied by Tony, Patkanim, and Mr. Van Decor, the latter of whom stood.

“Clampatriarch and Roisteruos Scutis, you have done well,” shouted Mr. Van Decor.

“Damn you, Noble Grand Humbug,” replied the two he’d addressed, bowing their heads in unison.

“Give me the Sword of Justice and Mercy,” commanded the Grand Humbug.

“Never!” they cried, and they did.

“Bring me the poor defenseless goat.”

“Over our grandmothers’ graves!” they protested, and they led the goat before him.

Mr. Van Decor raised the huge sword over the goat’s head. “Brother Clampers, shall I smite him?” cried the Humbug.

“No!” came the roar from the assembled Clampers. With a mighty blow, he split the goat’s top hat and head, and the poor creature’s bloody brains ran hot on the ground.

“Let the games begin!” commanded Van Decor, as the goat convulsed his last. “Watch closely,” he said to his guests. “A perfectly wild, young Spanish-born bull, will now be released into the ring. His horns are of natural length, not sawed off.”

The gleam in the Humbug’s eye was reflected in Tony’s craggy face, as a young bull emerged from the cage in which he’d been held, paused and pawed the ground, then charged straight at the chained grizzly. The grizzly pivoted in a dark blur and the horns glanced off his side, the bull’s neck exposed as it twisted to gore upward into the bear’s tender gut. The bear lunged spinning, striking for the neck, but caught the bull’s nose instead, and they stood there locked for a desperate interval, their powerful muscles rippling as they tore up the gritty battlefield. At last, the bull literally ripped his own nose away, gushing blood over the path of his retreat. He circled for a few moments in a daze, then charged again, but this time the bear made short work of him, raking aside the onslaught with his razor claws and clamping huge jaws down over the back of the bull’s neck, forcing him to a dirty death, pressed to earth.

“That’s the way they do it,” said Mr. Van Decor. “If the bull gets the bear up, he’ll win, but once the bear gets the bull down, its all over for him. Take a letter, Roisteruos Scutis,” he hollered to one of the Clampers who’d accompanied the goat to his doom. Roisteruos Scrutis produced an extravagant striped feather quill, that wriggled as he wrote, and began to take dictation on his starched cuff. “Dear Wall Street bigwigs: You may hereafter call upward trending markets bull markets, downward trending markets bear markets. Yours in Ridiculousity, Noble Grand Humbug, et cetera, et cetera.”

Van Decor turned back to his guests. “Gentlemen, this is all very thirsty work. Please, do me the honor of accompanying me to one of San Francisco’s most genteel establishments.”

Though Patkanim barely understood a word uttered by this incomprehensible man, he knew they’d just been invited out drinking. Off they went to John Henry Brown’s Saloon, an opulent palace with bullet holes in the floor. There, pretty ladies with painted faces danced to strange music played on a box of bones, kicking up their heels so far, you could almost glimpse their cootchies.

A drunken miner stood up on the bar and announced he was going to ride his horse right in through the plate-glass window that was as long as a war canoe and as tall as two men.

“You do that,” warned Mr. Brown from behind his handlebar mustache, “and it will be the most expensive bloody ride you’ve ever taken.”

“How much?” asked the miner.

“One thousand dollars.”

The miner tossed him a sack of gold. “Keep the change, Mr. Limey, and buy a round fer the house!” he hollered, as he staggered outside. Everyone cheered, but no one expected to see him back again.

White-gowned senoritas sat on the bar puffing cigaritas, their midnight locks styled in cascading ringlets. Suitors plied them with fifty dollar bottles of brandy deliberately overspilled into tiny wineglasses, which they quaffed in dainty, self-satisfied sips.

The piano player stopped his plinking, and the dancing girls made a quick exit. The lanterns in the hall were dimmed, as men scurried to illuminate the stage with lime flairs. A massively muscled bald-headed impresario emerged from the wings. “Ladies, Gentlemen, an’ th’ rest o’ you scallywags!” he cried. “John Henry Brown’s is proud to present, all the way from Barcelona via Bavaria, that internationally famous entertainer of the crown princes of Europe, Miss Lola Montez!” Wild cheers, foot stomping and the sound of beer steins smashing down on the tables greeted the alleged Spaniard, Miss Montez. Her enticing flash of emerald behind a black veil betrayed her cheap Limerick birth, even as the pancake makeup papered over the worry lines from being run out of Austria for bigamy, and from throwing her fourth husband down a flight of stairs after catching him in flagrante delicto with the floozy she’d called her lady in waiting. Still, as she hovered amidst the faux silken cobwebs in her low cut gown, the four extra appendages of her arachnid costume vibrating about her ever so slightly, Lola Montez already held the crowd entranced by her famous Bailar de la Arafia – the Spider Dance.

A flamenco guitar cut the air as Lola tensed, then flung her arms over her head, releasing a spray of wire spiders into the air as she began to beat out the rhythm on six-inch silver spike heels. She spun and the skirt of her dress flew off, revealing a leotard with a black widow of cloth and wires attached to her rear. She wiggled lasciviously against a male dancer, who paid for his liberties in gruesome mock death.

“Watch this then,” said Van Decor, who obviously was a regular. The leotard vanished in a sudden upward swipe of Lola’s hand, leaving only the veil and three great hairy tarantulas adhered strategically to Lola’s otherwise nude torso. The limelight dimmed, the music moaned its sultriest trills, as Lola carefully reached up to remove the veil and the little velvet cap to which it was attached. Patkanim was astonished to see Lola shake four live tarantulas from the cap onto the stage. The great hairy critters landed scuttling in all directions, causing a few tough broncos to blanch despite themselves. They needn’t have feared; in a sudden final explosion of guitar and murderous staccato heels, Lola smashed each of the fleeing arachnids into the floorboards. The crowd stomped and whooped and shot their guns into the floor in approval, as Miss Montez took bow after bow amid the littered corpses, her breasts hanging heavy with every fresh curtain call.

“So tell me, Chief,” said Van Decor, when the noise had died down, “what brings you to our ‘burg?”

Before Patkanim could even figure out the question, Tony chimed in. “Chief here is a big man in Washington Territory. He’s a guest of the Gov’nor.”

“Big man, huh?” said Van Decor, in that way of his, both serious and mocking. “Big man oughta have a little lady, huh?” He made a sign to Mr. Brown, and within a minute three beauties sauntered up to their table. “Which one do you fancy, Chief?” asked Van Decor. “They’re all bona fide widows, and I reckon maybe that one’s an orphan to boot,” and he pointed at the blonde wearing a threadbare bustier over a plain muslin dress. Patkanim smiled agreeably. He wouldn’t mind a little tikegh with this white woman; the shame would be her’s and her family’s, not his. He reached out his hand and slid it across her rump. She slid right into it, no resistance whatsoever. But just as Patkanim closed his eyes to receive her wet kiss, he heard an ominous click. His eyes opened on the barrel of a gun where warm breasts should have been.

The man squinting at him from behind the six-shooter was just a hat over a beard, with hair sprouting out his ears, but he had that pistol sighted right square on the center of Patkanim’s chest, hammer cocked. His hawk-nosed buddy was covering Tony and Mr. Van Decor. The music and dancers stopped, cards were laid down, the din silenced. It was time for the other main attraction.

Obeying a jerk of the barrel, the girls skittered away. “I don’t like Injuns,” the squinter announced. “I ‘specially don’t like ‘em pawin’ up th’ white girls,” he added. “How ‘bout yew, Jed?”

“Me neither,” the hawk-nosed fellow divulged.

“Hey Chief,” said the squinter, motioning toward the floor, “step out there where I kin see ya.” Patkanim had seen these revolver guns before – they spit plenty of bullets. He had a knife in his belt and a derringer up his sleeve, but he knew the one-shot wonder was no match for the six-shooter. Slowly, watching carefully for any opening, Patkanim glided to the center of the floor.

“We come over on th’ train, Chief, in ’52, me ‘n my wife,” said the squinter, referring to a wagon train. “Out ta Chimney Rock we got us ambushed by redskins. Kilt my wife. That’s why I’m gonna kill you, Chief. I jest wanted you to know that.”

“Yeah, well, don’t let me pee on yer campfire, mister,” said Tony, his tone flat and his gaze even, “but them there Injuns was Flatheads. This here’s a Snoqualmie from up t’ Washington Territory. He warn’t anywhere’s within a thousand miles of Chimney Rock.”

“What are you, some kinda Injun lover?” spat the gunman with a sideways glance, but that was just the break needed as Patkanim jumped to the side so the first shot went wide and right into the belly of the naked lady painted up behind the bar. If there was a second shot no one heard it, because right then a mounted rider crashed through the plate glass window whooping and hollering, and galloped around the room trampling tables and chairs as Tony and Patkanim high-tailed it out of there.

Early the next morning, they were on the first ship they could find headed north. Patkanim was thankful he’d survived his visit. His last view of San Francisco caught through the morning fog was of two men hanging by the neck from the crow’s nest of a vessel. “What is that sign around their necks?” he asked Tony. “Cattle rustler?”

Tony peered into the fog. “Nope,” he replied. “Cat rustler.”

Patkanim swore to himself that he would never again make war against the pelton tamanous – demented spirits – of the sprawling Boston empire.

4

On the third morning of celebration, a glorious summer day that the Bostons called a Saturday in June, 1855, the marriage ceremony was held. It was attended by hundreds of natives from a half-dozen tribes, as well as the mixed families from Muck Creek, and many King George and Boston men from up and down the Sound. Jim and Martha McAllister made the upriver slog with their whole brood in tow: two boys including Jimmy, who was now taller than his father, and three girls including Ainsley, now a strawberry-blonde princess riding side-saddle in a green and white checked gingham dress. To Leschi’s delight, Dr. Tolmie himself came up from Fort Nisqually, in the company of his sturdy no-nonsense wife Jane, London-born daughter of the Chief Factor at Victoria. Dr. and Mrs. Tolmie were accompanied by a wiry Puyallup farmer named Ezra Meeker, and his wife and two young children. Even Doc Maynard showed up with his new bride, Catherine, all the way from Seattle.

Kalakala was hidden deep in the longhouse, guarded by elder women, fasting in silence and darkness. She would be brought out only at the last minute; it would not do to risk sullying her just before the great event.

The groom made his appearance mid-morning by canoe, accompanied by Washington and Isobel Bush, and Ben and Jackson Moses. Tony had been invited, but declined. Under Isabel’s watchful eye, Ben and Jackson carried a large crate up to the site of the feast, and laid it before Leschi. The servants pried off the lid, and removed the very first butter-cream frosted triple-layer chocolate cake the Nisquallies had ever seen, miraculously intact. “It’s a plot to make your warriors fat,” warned Washington, but Leschi, fearless and jovial, devoured two slices on the spot.

“My friend,” said Washington, throwing his big arm over the Chief’s broad shoulders, “I am so sorry about Sara.”

Leschi winced to hear her name spoken. It was not right to speak the name of the dead; it could summon her back, and a spirit called against its will was a dangerous thing. But he forgave Washington, who did not know their ways, and thanked him for his concern.

“But I was overjoyed when I heard that the wedding was going forward,” continued Washington. “You had Isobel and me worried there for a bit, when we heard that you’d told the Governor your people would rather go to war than to the reservation.”

“I did not say we would go to war,” replied Leschi. “These are false rumors.”

“Good, that’s good, I’m relieved to hear it.”

“But, Washington,” continued Leschi, “have you seen the cultus illahee” – inferior land – “to which the Governor would send my people?”

Washington looked to the ground and pursed his lips. “Yes, Leschi, I’ve seen it, and I agree that it’s no good. But you have to be patient with the white man – and here, I speak as a klale tillicum” – black man. “Like you, my family came very close to losing all our land just this past year.”

Leschi reprimanded himself. So wrapped up had he been in his own problems, that he had not even noticed his friend’s. “I didn’t know,” he said. “I am sorry that I was not there to help you, Washington –”

“Don’t fret a minute, Leschi. I know that if there’s anything you can do, all I’ve got to do is ask. But this wasn’t something you could fix.”

“What happened?”

“Remember I told you about slavery, and about how the klale tillicum doesn’t have the same rights as the t’kope tillicum?” Leschi nodded. “The same bad laws that forced us to come up here in the first place, were put into effect north of the Columbia when Washington became a Territory. Under those laws, no black man or his wife could claim their acreage under the Donation Lands Act. So, even though Isobel and I got here first, and have worked our land from dawn to dusk every day but the Sabbath – and some of those, truth be told – suddenly we were just squatters on unclaimed land.”

Leschi’s jaw clenched. The white man’s laws seemed well suited to turn wrong into right.

“But, Leschi, you know how we’ve been feeding the newly arrived pioneers all these years; you think I’m just a nice fellow, huh?”

“You’re a very good man, Washington.”

“Yeah, well, a nigger like me gotta be twice as good or twice as bad just to get by. I ain’t much good at bad, so …”

“What is this word, ‘nigger’?”

“It’s like siwash, only for klale tillicum.” Leschi nodded grimly.

“I’ve got so many friends in this Territory,” continued Washington, “so many families that wouldn’t have made it through the winter if it wasn’t for me, that they got together and passed a special law granting us our land.” Washington smiled. “That’s the ticket for you, too, Leschi. Siwash and nigger – we gotta use our brains, my friend, not our guns. You be patient, you kiss their kimta –” rear end “– and in the end you get what you want.”

“I don’t know,” said Leschi, shaking his head. “Maybe that is the answer.”

“No ‘maybe’ about it,” warned Washington.  “You can’t fight them, Leschi. They’ll crush you.”

On this ominous note, the time had come for the ceremony. First, all the bride gifts were gathered: not the promised ten, but twenty fine quarter horses corralled together, the blankets neatly folded and stacked, the wool and cotton bolts and brass buttons laid over the blankets, a beautiful fresh-dug cedar canoe placed in front, the saddles lined up against its side, ten Hudson’s Bay muskets, with shot, polished and gleaming, and five stacks of gold coins laid carefully at the center. Kalakala was led forth from the longhouse, covered from head to toe in veils of softened cedar bark, so that no human form could be detected. A gentle mare was led out from among the horses into the midst of the piled treasure, and Kalakala was hoisted onto her back. Then, one by one, the veils were removed, revealing at last Kalakala’s elegant aquiline nose and high forehead, dark curled lashes under plucked brows, eyes pellucid and quick with excitement. She wore only the softest calf-length doeskin gown, with bright-colored beads worked into the bodice, belted with slick coral-and-gold snakeskin. In deference to her Boston husband-to-be, Kalakala had replaced the traditional otter-skin crown with a white ribbon headdress, trimmed in white and pink lace rosettes. From beneath the headdress, her raven tresses dressed in Queen Anne’s lace tumbled down across her breast. Moonstone earrings glowed from her lobes; her throat was adorned with a glistening hiqua and mother-of-pearl necklace that was a wedding gift from Ann.

Charlie, smart in a stiff white shirt with black tie and frock coat, puffed out his chest, astonished by his good fortune. If his father could see him now! A man of means, a Captain consulted by the Governor, he waited as Leschi had instructed on a stallion across the prairie, ready to take the most beautiful Indian princess in the Territory as his bride. Nisqually braves danced and sang in a circle around the piled treasure and the mounted bride. Then the signal was given, and Charlie dug his spurs into the animal’s powerful barrel. “Yaaahhhh!” he cried, and galloped across the prairie under wheeling blue sky and cotton clouds, all the new fresh earth of this paradise rising up to reveal its mysteries. “YAAAHHH!” he cried again and again, as the warriors parted to grant him his right. He swooped by and lifted the girl by her tiny starved waist. She was light as the wind as she swung her legs over the stallion’s croup and snuggled just behind his saddle, leaning into his back with her arms around his chest. The warriors held up their muskets and whooped and ran alongside, as he delivered Kalakala to where Leschi, Quiemuth, and old Sennatco sat, impassive, at the head of the feasting blankets. There, Charlie dismounted, and caught Kalakala as she slipped down off the horse. As he had been taught in the weeks leading to the wedding, Charlie knelt with his bride-to-be before her father.

“Great – Chief,” said Charlie, in his halting Whulshootseed, “I – I – come to – to ask your – daughter.” Then, switching to Chinook, with which he was more comfortable, “I come to ask permission for the hand of your daughter in marriage. I will stay with her and give her children and fight and die for her, and if she dies before me I will dress her and launch her on the voyage to Otlas-Skio. For this honor I have brought you gifts.” Charlie proceeded nervously to detail the bride gifts in halting Chinook.

Leschi rose, Dr. Tolmie serving as interpreter. Charlie marveled to see just how big and powerful his prospective father-in-law was. “My son,” Leschi began warmly, but his smile was cold, “we of the Nisqually welcome you and all our Boston and King George friends on this great occasion. We are honored by your presence here. As you may know, my family is connected to many tribes. My grandfather was chief of the Yakamas. My first wife’s father was Chief of the Puyallups. My sister is married to the Snoqualmie Chief. I have cousins and uncles among the Klickitat, the Yakamas, the Puyallups, the Squaxons and the Skokomish.” Leschi impaled Charlie on the shaft of a sudden dark stare. “In all these connections with other tribes, with other peoples, we have never yet found it necessary to remind the groom of his bargain.” Charlie felt his stomach clench. Of course Leschi would notice the switch; he’d told Tony that over and over, but Tony said it would be fine if he threw in a few extra horses.

“The Bostons are a strange tribe, but men are men,” continued Leschi evenly. “When a man tells me he will give me a rifle that shoots straight and far, but instead he gives me a musket, it means that he fears me. Do you fear me, my son?”

Charlie stood, knees knocking confirmation, and suddenly the ceremonial warriors with their muskets did not appear festive, but very threatening. Leschi waited patiently for a response. “N-no, Sir,” Charlie lied, his ears burning, the stiff collar cutting into his neck as he gulped for air.

“Then would you please explain to me why you broke your solemn promise to bring me ten rifles, with ammunition?”

Governor’s orders, Tony’d said, but of course Charlie couldn’t say so here without violating his oath of secrecy. “I’m sorry, great Tyee, but they’re in short supply right now. I couldn’t get any. I-I brought muskets and ten extra horses instead – worth more than rifles.”

“I have plenty of muskets, plenty of horses, but not plenty of rifles,” said Leschi simply. “You have broken your word to me, Mr. Eaton. The wedding is off!”

“No, Father, NO!” screamed Kalakala, and Leschi’s blow was swift and she fell silenced, as was his right. Quickly, Ann and Moonya helped her up and led her away, muddied and quaking in silent agony, the ribbon headdress torn and dragging off her neck. Charlie just stood stunned as his whole world collapsed before him. His mouth worked to no effect, like a fish thrown in a canoe bottom. Face bright red, he turned to go.

“Stop right there, Challie Eaton!” commanded Leschi. As Charlie turned back, he saw Leschi’s warriors tightening their grip on their muskets. Fear flashed from pale face to pale face. “There is a tradition, Challie Eaton, among my people. The father of the bride is permitted to set a test for the groom. Only upon completion of the test, may the marriage go forward.”

“But, you said it was off!” said Charlie, finding his tongue at last.

“I said it was off; so, I could as easily say it was on again. All you need do is talk to your Govenol Stevens for me; tell him we want peace; tell him we must have some land by the river or we cannot live. Find the words to change his heart, so that he gives us back just a little of our land. If you do this, you shall have my daughter, and your bride gifts returned to you, doubled.”

Charlie was totally flummoxed. He had been told he could expect a test of physical prowess, such as fetching an eagle’s feather from a nest, or wrestling a warrior who, if the bride price was good, was under strict instructions to lose. But this? How was it that his simple desire for a pretty Indian girl had ground him like a stalk of wheat between the millstones of two such foes?

“Great Chief,” he said, “I am but a small man. I have no power over the Governor.”

“There are no small men,” replied Leschi. “There are only men who lack the courage to be big. Now go! Take my stallion!” Charlie did not argue; he mounted and galloped away, grateful to have escaped with his life, unsure what to make of this strange message for the Governor.

“My friends,” said Leschi, turning back to the astonished guests, “it is a shame to waste a wedding feast.” With a mischievous smile, he looked to Mary by his side, and she met his gaze with hungry eyes. “With John Hiton’s permission, this woman Mary shall become my second wife today!”

John Hiton rose. “I have waited long for such a day,” he said, tears filling his eyes. “I am honored, Chief Leschi.” Leschi remembered well the baby girl – Mary’s little sister – that the Haida invader had literally cut from John Hiton’s hand, that terrible day so long ago, and it filled him with gladness to see joy again on his old friend’s face.

The stunned murmurs of the white men were drowned as the Indians whooped and sang and shot their muskets into the air. The wedding of a Chief! John Hiton accepted Leschi’s pledges, and a gift of twenty horses. Then the young bride and the groom, who was old enough to be her father, ate from the same plate and drank from the same cup, while pledging themselves to one another.

Ben Moses and Ezra Meeker broke out their fiddles. At last the white folks opened their stiff collars and did a little whooping of their own, just happy to be alive. “Reminds me of the first time I came after you, my dear,” huffed Doc Maynard, kicking up his heels with Catherine. “Your brother chased me off with a shotgun.” Serves you right, she thought, proposing to me while still married to that lady back in Ohio! All cares forgotten, Dr. Tolmie and Jane, Quiemuth and Moonya, John Edgar and Betsy, and even Wahoolit and Ann, stepped out together, do-si-do-ing with the best of them.