?—?They look hard up for food, he said.
?—?I think you might be a bit gamey for their taste, Samuelson replied.
Tillman said he didn’t find that much amusing.
Samuelson advises me to pay my respects to this Trail River tyone. Though it will require us to travel out of our way in search of the village, I agree. Perhaps we will be able to employ him as a guide through the mountain passes or at least obtain some helpful information about the route.
61°28’ N
144°26’ W
38°F, exposed bulb
31°F, wet bulb
Barometer: 29.20
Dew point: 17
Relative humidity: 41
Clear.
Oh, fearsome land. I enter the forge of ancient gods: vapors and glaciers and molten rock and time cleaved asunder. Any man would walk this world in awe, yet I am unaffected. I command you?—?shudder beneath my feet! Rain ice and broken rock down upon my broken head!
And I, tin soldier that I am, will remain cold and unmoved.
Sulphuret of copper and iron, veins of cold water quartz, green hornblende, sandstone and galena and felspathic granite.
With black wing, beat down the subterranean flames, whisk away ash, bare the dead black in our hearts and the mad glint in our irises: copper knives, flakes of gold, bullets, and brass buttons. Do you not see? Savage white man and Indian alike, our eyes are agleam with it.
The earth shook and trembled. Smoke out of his nostrils, fire out of his mouth devoured. He bowed the heavens; darkness was beneath his feet. He rode upon a cherub, and did fly yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind.
I would know this place, sudden and pure and without need of conscience or thought, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. World without end. I would weep from this longing to know. Instead, I can speak only to the commonest of sins?—?greed and cowardice, lust and wrath. I speak to them alone because they are written beneath my skin.
Midnoosky Copper Blade
Sophie Forrester
Vancouver Barracks
April 23, 1885
I wish Evelyn had told me none of it, for it is an unsettling revelation. I fear it explains something of Mr Pruitt. I try not to let it make me anxious for Allen, as surely he has led all sorts of men and knows Mr Pruitt far better than any barracks gossip can reveal, and more to the point, I am helpless in the face of it.
It had been some time since I had a visit from Evelyn. She was gone to Portland for a shopping excursion for several days (the town of Vancouver, she says, offers nothing in the way of fashion, and all in the way of dust, saloons, and rowdy men.) When she returned, I was bed-ridden. She came by the house, but when Charlotte told her my condition, Evelyn promised to come another day. I cannot think she was respecting my privacy, but rather that she’s squeamish and did not care to sit at my bedside.
Today, however, she found me in the sitting room, fully washed and clothed, and she expressed relief to see me presentable at last. Charlotte brought us tea, and we talked lightly for a while, but at last my irritation overcame my politeness. I asked her outright if she had told Mrs Connor of my pregnancy. “Well of course,” she said. She seemed bored by the conversation. “Surely everyone will know eventually. You can’t keep a baby hidden in your skirts forever. Why bother with all this secrecy?”
Because I had asked for her confidence, as a friend, and because one should respect other people’s privacy. I daresay she puts no stock in these concerns. “Yes, yes, I am all apologies,” she said. “You can be so prickly, Sophie. But enough of all of this. I have heard some interesting news I’ve been dying to share”?—?and here she gave a dramatic pause and then?—?“about your Mr Pruitt.”
“My” Mr Pruitt? Why would she refer to him in such a way?
“Because he was clearly smitten with you at the dance. You must have noticed how he watched you all the night.”
I have no idea what she was talking about, and offered that Mr Pruitt found me tiresome instead. Evelyn waved it off, eager to share her gossip.
“Mr Pruitt was at Elk Creek.”
The place name meant nothing to me. Evelyn was disbelieving. How could I not know? She was more than willing to educate me.
It is a terrible, terrible affair. Hundreds of Indians, mostly women and children guarded by a few warriors, slain on a winter’s night. Most were killed before they left their teepees.
“The rest were hunted through the snow, like deer,” Evelyn said. “Do you know what they do, when the soldiers bear down on them? The squaws rip open their clothes to show their breasts, in hopes that they will be spared, but these men were not so particular.”