?—?She says she made it for your wife. Something about putting some egg-shells into it, Mr. Troyer said.
It is a basket made of birch bark & spruce root, much like the one I have seen Indian women use to hold food. This one, though, is small enough to fit into the palm of my hand.
August 17
We sat up late into the night, Mr. Troyer & I. By dinner, we were forced to light the lamps, as summer’s midnight sun has left this land. A strong rainstorm had moved in from the Bering Sea, so that the wind beat against the side of the house in the darkness. There are no trees or hills to slow storms on this barren island. For once I was willing to be confined indoors.
When we finished eating, Mr. Troyer opened a fine bottle of Glenlivet. Perhaps it was the whiskey at work, but I was willing to sit through his talk. Mr. Troyer offered up his thoughts on death & mourning, how we suffer more because we have done away with the rituals that might otherwise comfort us. He is interested in the burial habits of the Innuits, the shaman practices of the Indians. He wanted to know more of what I had seen amongst the Wolverine tribes, so I told him best I could. I even described the infant I had cut from the bloody roots of a spruce tree.
?—?My God! To witness such epiphanies! he said.
He begged for as much detail as I would give, only to spend far too much time speculating aloud about the birth, what it might signify, who the child might be. A pointless endeavor. I said as much.
?—?Yet you must desire to make some sense of it? he said. —?An event of that magnitude must mean something.
His zeal brushed me wrong.
?—?Tell me this, Mr. Troyer, what meaning do you find in the death of Sgt. Bradley Tillman? An event of some magnitude, I’d say. You were witness to it as much as I. You tell me, what significance shall we take from it? What great knowledge does it bring us to watch him be shot dead by a drunken fool?
I saw then just how young Mr. Troyer is, for I had startled & shamed him.
?—?You’re right, he said. —?There is nothing decent to be taken from that.
He was quiet for a time, though not long enough to suit me.
?—?But don’t you think, Colonel, that soldiers are strengthened by such grief? You all have been tested in battle. You’ve lived by your own wit & hands.
?—?How old are you, Mr. Troyer?
?—?26 come December.
I could not help but laugh. I could be his father.
?—?So you have not seen war.
?—?No, sir.
?—?I would be careful, then. It is all too easy to love a thing you’ve never had to live with.
Still, he would not leave it be. I was sorry to find he is a maudlin drunk.
?—?You’re a great, great man, Colonel. I wish I could see the things you have seen. Surely you’ve learned so much from your journey.
?—?Nothing I didn’t already suspect, I said.
?—?What is that? What did you already know?
?—?That it’s a d?——?d hard life.
?—?For the Wolverine Indians?
?—?For any of us.
August 18
I cannot stop thinking on it. The day Mr. Troyer & I carried Tillman’s body into the old Russian church, a raven flew overhead as we walked. As we neared the church doors, the bird landed to perch overhead on the tallest cross. It turned its head down towards us, opened its black beak. Its sounds were uncanny, a gurgling, humanlike croak that rose & rose to a shrill cry.
I am certain?—?in that bird’s strange call, I heard the voice of the Old Man. Yet I could not make out its meaning. Was it the sound of weeping? Or of laugher? Or was it only a raven’s cry for its next meal?
Vancouver Barracks
July 29, 1885
My dearest Allen,
It with great and perhaps unreasonable optimism that I send this letter north in hopes that it, and the enclosed photograph, will reach you. I feel I might as well have corked it into a bottle and tossed it into the Columbia River, yet General Haywood has promised to dispatch it to Sitka on the very next mail ship, and from there he says there is a possibility it will find its way to the USS Corwin. I suppose I will not know for weeks, months perhaps, whether you have received it.
I am armed, however, with renewed good cheer. Word came to Vancouver Barracks this week, on a long route among Indians and traders from what I understand, that you had passed safely into the Wolverine Mountains in June. If it is true, the general says there is some chance you will arrive at the coast by the end of August, just a month from now, and be home before winter! Oh please let it be true! I know the general was hesitant to say so much but wanted to give me some peace of mind, for I become more and more anxious about your welfare as the weeks go by.