July 28
We left the Lowes’ home this late morning. The children ran about shouting, helping to dismantle the wall-tent & load the skin boat. The baby cried in her arms. Once we were on the river, it took much effort on my part to not look back for her.
Just before Nulato we came upon Mr. Lowe at an Indian camp. He waved to our boat when he saw that we were white men. I would have preferred to float past, but it would have seemed markedly unfriendly, so we stopped.
The man is cheerful, friendly, quick to shake our hands & bless us. He said he was glad to know we had found rest & food at his home. He asked briefly how his family fared. I fought the urge to pummel him. When he began to introduce us to the natives in his company, Tillman interrupted, said that we must be going if we hope to meet up with the steamboat.
Mr. Lowe seemed surprised by our abrupt departure, but not in the least put out. He waved happily from shore as we rounded the next bend in the river.
We sleep tonight in an abandoned trapper’s cabin well below Nulato. No sign of the steamboat, though it is expected any day now.
We landed only briefly at the village, but found the Indians in a state of unrest. They have heard that the Alaska Commercial Co. will close down its Nulato station. Anvik has already been abandoned. Several Russian-Indian creoles have stirred the hostility by explaining to the natives what poor terms they have been receiving on their trade. They get less than half the San Francisco value for their furs, but are charged 25 per cent more for goods.
The Indians wait for the steamboat with rifles in arms. All in all, this cabin downstream seemed a better place to spend the night. It holds no food or supplies. It does, however, provide comfortable enough quarters. It is a quiet & picturesque spot, with a creek running nearby.
Pruitt was the first to notice the large tusk lying in the creek bed, just a foot or so beneath the clear running water. Wooly mammoth, he says, from thousands of years ago. It is the same as the ones we saw in the mountain pass.
July 29
Pruitt today asked me if he might find some peace along this creek. It struck me as odd. All that we have seen & endured in this territory, peace was not among them. I said as much.
?—?There is a certain stillness at the center of it, he said. —?You must feel it, too?
I looked where he did, down where the clear water washed over the mammoth tusk. He said that it was perhaps the creek. I could not follow all he said, as his speech had a rambling quality to it, but he talked about the immensity of it, drop by drop down the mountain valleys, then this rush out to sea.
?—?That is a comfort, isn’t it? he said. —?Each day, we rise. Wash in cold water. Gather wood for the fire. Eat to stay alive. The next day, do the same again. Maybe it can be simple enough when so reduced.
There’s also rain & mosquitoes & rotten salmon & walking for days on end while your boots rot off your feet, I offered, but he was too focused on his own philosophy to see my humor.
Elemental. That is the word he used again & again. Hunger, sun, cold. Pure unto themselves. No false veil between a man & the world around him, he said. No pretenses. Nothing to hide behind.
I supposed that is what a man like Samuelson finds in this country.
Pruitt then told me he would like to spend his last days here.
It took me aback. Did he mean to kill himself?
?—?I think I would like to live here alone for a time, he said.
Just then a group of ducks floated down the stream. We watched as they bobbed in the current near the far bank.
?—?At Elk Creek, sir, I was no bystander or deserter.
We were both of us quiet for some time.
?—?That might have been tolerable, he went on. —?To have watched & done nothing & live with that shame alone. To have fled & been shot. That would have been a relief. I might have wished for it even.
Men who are afraid often make poor choices, I said.
?—?That cannot explain the capability, he said. —?Don’t you think evil itself must exist already inside of a man for him to commit such acts?
I could not give him an answer except to say that for all creation men have done such things, the strong misusing the weak. Every civilization has its own versions of cruelty.
?—?I’ve spent the past three years telling myself that, but it does me no good, Colonel. It’s as if that day I entered hell itself, &, God help me, I cannot find my way back out again.
He began, then, to weep openly.
?—?Forgive me, Colonel. Forgive me, he said.
It is not for me to forgive him. Who on earth can? A boy like him was never suited for war. It saddens me, to think of the young Andrew Pruitt, intelligent yet so feeble-hearted. Had he been a school teacher or a lecturer, he never would have been tested so, never would have faced his own moral deficiency.
?—?Do you read the Bible, Colonel? he asked.