The Lynching of Louie Sam (17 page)

“The handsaw!”

“What handsaw?”

“My father's. I left it. I have to go back.”

I struggle to get up on my feet.

“Stay put!” shouts Pete. He's working up a good speed, pushing hard on the pole. “You're in no shape to be hiking that trail in the dark.”

“He'll have my hide,” I say.

“My pa will have my ass for running the ferry so late!”

“Why are you?”

“Because you said you were coming back, and you didn't show up.”

It's taken me this long to realize that Pete could have left me on the far shore for the night, but instead he came looking for me down the trail. I'm still too put off with him to muster a thank you. Instead I say, “I have to get that saw.”

“I'll go look for it in the morning.”

“You've got school in the morning.”

“So I'll skip school,” he says, like I'm being dumb.

I lie back on some coils of rope on the floor of the scow. My need to sleep is taking over again.

“Your pa will be too glad to see you alive to tan you,” Pete says, by way of easing my worry. I'm glad to see a glimmer of the old Pete, my friend. “Do your folks know where you are?”

“They knew where I was going, but I was supposed to be back tonight.”

“You'll have to stay with us tonight. You can go home in the morning, if you're up to it. Otherwise, I'll get word to them.”

“Why are you doing this?” I say.

“Doing what?”

“Being nice.”

“You think you got the corner on being good, George?”

“I never said that.”

“That's how you act. Like you're better than me. That's how all you Gillies act. Superior.”

Well that takes all. I'm thinking of the night that Louie Sam died, when Pete and his pa were behaving like the biggest toads in the puddle, telling everybody what to do. Humiliating my father in front of the whole town.

“Seems to me you've got that the wrong way round, Pete.”

“How do you figure that?”

“You're the one who called me a …”

I can't say it. Pete has no such problem.

“An Indian lover? If the shoe fits, wear it.” I fall silent. Pete remarks, “I see you're not denying it.”

P
ETE'S PA IS NOT
pleased to see either one of us when at last Pete helps me to their cabin door. He's right about one thing—Mr. Harkness is all fired up about Pete taking the scow across the river in the dark. When Pete explains that he was worried something had happened to me, I get the feeling that in Dave Harkness's view, neither my life nor my limb qualifies as an emergency worth risking his ferry over.

Mrs. Bell calms Mr. Harkness down. She tells Jimmy to fetch some butter for the burn on my right hand, which has begun to throb something fierce, and she tells Pete to dish the two of us up some stew from the pot on the stove. She helps me off with my jacket and shirt so she can take a look at my injured left arm. She feels along my forearm, causing me to twinge.

“That's a break, right enough,” she says in her Aussie twang. “You'll have to get Doc Thompson to set it in plaster.”

“It can wait until the morning,” declares Mr. Harkness.

She doesn't disagree with him, but fetches some rags she ties together to make a sling for my arm. Telling me to sit at the table, she takes the butter that Jimmy has brought and lathers it on my right hand. Pete puts a bowl of stew down before me. I'm famished, but with one arm in the sling and the other hand greased up, I have no way to pick up the spoon. Mrs. Bell sees my predicament, and smiles.

“Let me help you, luv,” she says. She picks up the spoon and proceeds to feed me the stew. “Is that good?” she says, teasing me now. “Does Baby like his dinner?”

I am suddenly heated. I'm afraid I may be blushing. She smiles at the effect she's having on me.

“I think Baby likes it!” she declares in a sing-song voice.

She feeds me another spoonful, this time wiping gravy from my chin and licking it from her fingers. Now I feel stirrings in places one ought not to, especially not when those stirrings are caused by the more-or-less stepmother of your friend. I try to drive out the shameful thoughts she's started in me, to concentrate on the pain in my arm instead. I bow my head, praying that no one present will guess what's in my mind.

Pete gets up from the table, scraping his chair hard against the floor, breaking the spell she's cast over me.

“He can sleep upstairs in my bed,” says Pete. “I'll sleep down here.”

Mrs. Bell looks Pete in the eye, like she's amused by something.

“Don't worry, Pete,” she says. “I won't bite him.”

“He left the stew to burn!” Jimmy's suddenly shouting, his voice high and excited.

All eyes are on the stove now, where the big cast iron stew pot is sending up smoke. Mrs. Bell is across the room in half a second. She may be small, but she's strong—she grabs the handle with a cloth and swings the heavy pot onto the floor, all the while cursing Pete.

“Did you not think to add some water to it, you dimwit?!”

“He can't help it, Ma,” says Jimmy. “He's just slow.”

Pete looks like he'd like to drive his fist into Jimmy's plump, satisfied face. He answers back to Mrs. Bell, “Don't blame me! It was already burnt. Better to hide the taste!”

Mr. Harkness is across the room in a flash—cuffing Pete so hard against the side of his head that he sends him sprawling.

“Apologize to your mother!” he thunders.

Everybody's silent for a few seconds. It seems like nobody's even breathing. Pete's still on the floor from the blow he just took from his pa. Slowly he gets up.

I've never seen him like this—his face is red with fury, tears streaming down it.

“Goddamn you!” he says. He turns a look of pure hate on Mrs. Bell. “And goddamn her!”

Pete grabs his jacket from the hook and heads out into the night, slamming the door behind him. I'm sitting there wondering if I should follow him when Mrs. Bell turns to me and smiles.

“I reckon that settles it. You'll sleep in Pete's bed.”

“Wipe that smirk off your face, boy.” Mr. Harkness is speaking to Jimmy. “And don't you be calling Pete stupid.”

Jimmy cowers a little and sidles closer to his mam. Mrs. Bell lifts her chin and gives Mr. Harkness a look that tells him to watch his step. He'll have to come through
her
if he wants to get his hands on Jimmy. I've never seen Dave Harkness back down before, but he does now.

I'm wondering where Pete has gone, and whether he's coming back. I'm wishing I was with him—anywhere but here, there's such a bad feeling in the room.

“If it's all right, I think I'll get to bed,” I say. “Thank you for the stew, and for the sling.”

Mrs. Bell lets out a hard laugh.

“You're a bit of a stuffed shirt, Georgie, but you're all right.”

Chapter Nineteen

A
FTER BEING SO SLEEPY
out on the trail, I think I will never be able to fall asleep due to the throbbing from my arm and my hand. But I must sleep, because I wake up in darkness. At first I think I'm in my own bed at home, but then the ache from my arm makes me remember what happened. There's a curtain covering a window beside my head, under which I can see moonlight. I manage to shift enough to open the curtain a little and let in more light. Now I can see Jimmy sleeping in the other bed. I wonder if this is the room that Joe Hampton and his brother slept in when he lived here, before his father drowned. His father must have built this house. It's a nice room, with a window and all. The whole house is nice, nicer than ours. If Mr. Hampton built it and it belonged to him, I wonder why Agnes and her boys don't live here still.

I hear voices from downstairs—Mrs. Bell and Mr. Harkness, but I think I recognize Mr. Moultray's voice, too. I wonder if Mr. Moultray knows where Pete is. I ease myself out of bed and widen the crack in the open door just enough so I can slip through without waking Jimmy. The floorboards are cold against my stocking feet as I step to the top of the stairs. From here I can tell I was right—Mr. Moultray is in the parlor. He seems to be reading from a newspaper:

According to Indian agent Patrick McTiernan,
who attended the gathering, the Indian chiefs
hold William Osterman, a Nooksack man,
responsible for the murder for which Louie Sam
was lynched on the night of February 28.

The chiefs believe that Mr. Osterman, the local
telegraph operator, lured Louie Sam to Nooksack
on the pretext of employing him to repair the
telegraph line. He asked the young Indian to walk
with him toward the cabin of James Bell, the
murdered man, only to then change his mind and
tell him to ‘go away.'

According to the chiefs, once Mr. Osterman was
alone, he proceeded to the victim's cabin, committed
the crime and made his getaway, correctly assuming
that people would see Louie Sam near the cabin and
blame him for the murder.

My heart is pounding by the time Mr. Moultray stops reading. Are the chiefs right? Is it possible that Mr. Osterman is the murderer? But why? What did he have against Mr. Bell? I'm wondering why nobody is saying anything. Then Mr. Moultray speaks.

“You know how this looks, don't you? People are saying Jim Bell was planning on suing you.”

Mrs. Bell speaks up. “Jim Bell was deranged. He told folks a lot of things that weren't true—most of them about me.”

But it seems that Mr. Moultray meant the question for Mr. Harkness, not her.

“Dave,” he says, “everybody knows that Bill Osterman's your brother-in-law, and your friend. Do you know something you're not telling me? Bill didn't have anything to do with this, did he?”

“Listen to Annette,” says Mr. Harkness. “It's all lies. Those redskins are just looking for a reason to massacre us in our sleep.”

“Goddamn it, answer my question! The governor's put out an order to find us. Just today there was a carrot top by the name of Clark snooping around the store.” He must be talking about the red-headed man I saw at the hotel. “He was asking all sorts of questions about who led the posse, what I thought about the lynching …”

“What did you tell him?”

“As little as possible, which in and of itself was enough to tell him I was there.” Mr. Moultray pauses before he asks, “Did Louie Sam kill Jim Bell, or not?”

“Why are you asking us?” says Mrs. Bell.

“Because I'm beginning to think you know more than you're saying. If we hung the wrong man, this could turn into a full-out Indian War.”

“We did the right thing,” says Mr. Harkness. “And don't you worry about no Indian War. If those thieving redskins make trouble, folks will come from as far away as Seattle to kill every one of them they can get their hands on. They're itching for the chance.”

Says Mr. Moultray, “I'm the one who tightened the rope, goddammit!”

In my mind I'm back in that night, in that clearing. I see Mr. Moultray's startled look when Louie Sam recognizes him and speaks his name—I hear the slap he delivers to the pony's flank, sending it running. I see Louie Sam up in the air, legs kicking, fighting for his life to the very end.

Mrs. Bell speaks.

“That's right, Bill, you were the one—and don't you forget it. You've got a reputation to protect in this town. You've got ambitions. What's going to happen to your political career if you get arrested?”

“My question was for Dave, I'll thank you, Annette,” says Mr. Moultray, “and he still hasn't answered it. Did you or Bill Osterman have anything to do with the death of Jim Bell?”

But Mrs. Bell answers him, her voice like a coiled snake—hissing and ready to strike. “All you need to worry about,” she says, “is keeping your gob shut.”

“I'll take that as a yes,” replies Mr. Moultray. He adds, his voice thick with emotion, “We killed an innocent boy.”

Mrs. Bell hisses, “For God's sake, man. He was just an Indian.”

I don't go back to sleep. How can I when my head's swimming from the things I've heard, from the memory of that clearing in the woods, of that night?

A
T FIRST LIGHT
I get up from Pete's bed and find my boots. Jimmy's snoring softly, his mouth hanging open. Between my broken arm and the burn on my right hand, it's a trick carrying my boots, but I manage to get down the stairs without waking any of the sleeping bodies in the house. I find my jacket on the hook by the door. The best I can manage is to drape it over my shoulders, like a shawl. Outside, I stick my feet into my boots. I'll have to wear them loose, without tying the laces. It's cold, but even if I had a way to pull on my mittens, my right hand is blistering and oozing from the burn, greasy from the butter Mrs. Bell slathered on it. I tuck it inside my jacket and start down the path to the river.