The High Missouri by Win Blevins Page A

this was their lot, and the High Missouri, wherever it was. He cursed the fur trade itself.
    Most particularly and bitterly he cursed his mentor, Morgan Griffiths Morgan Bleddyn, who claimed to think this test was good for him, and maybe even thought it was funny.
    He wanted to fail it. He wanted to go home. He wanted to eat his favorite dessert, syallabub, instead of sagamité . He wanted Claude and their rooms. He wanted a book to read. He even wanted the bank, and Mr. MacDonald. He wanted his father.
    No, goddamn it, as a matter of fact, his father was what he didn’t want. He was Dylan Davies now, and proud of it.
    He looked around. Time to do it. He got from his knees onto one foot, then the other, leaned his burden against the tree and pushed.
    Nothing. He couldn’t get the rest of the way up.
    Dylan fought back tears. He would become a real Nor’Wester.
    He centered his burden, the pièces , carefully on the tree. He squirmed his feet back under his bottom. He squeezed his thighs encouragingly with his hands.
    Now. He groaned as he pushed—a ferocious moment of pushing.
    Nothing.
    Idea. He would inchworm his way up the tree—first his bottom, then the top of the pièces .
    Bottom against tree—it worked. Felt like a corncob, but it worked. Now the top piece . He arched far back. Got the right angle. Pushed.
    Lost his balance. Pitched sideways. Toppled onto his face.
    He couldn’t breathe. He tried to suck and drew nothing. Desperate, he turned his face to the side, out of the damp muck of the leaves. Still nothing. He tried to draw in sweet air—wasn’t there a sky full of air?—and got nothing.
    Then, suddenly, his lungs heaved, and shuddered, and filled.
    Tears came.
    Lying in the muck, he wiped his face, and his hand came away bloody.
    He bled and cried lava flows into the fetid and fecund turf.
    Something touched his shoulder.
    He wrenched his body to roll over and went nowhere. The pièces lay on him like boulders, crushing him.
    He twisted his head sideways. Saga was poking him with a knife.
    So Saga was heading back for his second trip already. Dylan told himself that the knife meant nothing, it was just one of Saga’s standoffish ways. The half-breed didn’t shake hands either. Or talk to him.
    Dylan dry-heaved.
    He wanted to die.
    Dylan sobbed. He beat the earth with his fists.
    Saga slipped the tumpline off Dylan’s forehead. He rolled the pièces off onto the ground. He sat back on his haunches and watched Dylan.
    What a strange Englishman, thought Saga. His people called all white people Frenchmen, but this was an Englishman. Not a bad fellow, really. Eager, good-spirited, willing to learn. Then moody sometimes. And now self-pitying.
    Saga felt not quite right in the way he was treating this stranger, not talking to him. But the stranger wouldn’t accept that he was a stranger. He wanted to be a comrade from the start. He didn’t know the distance that must lie between a Metis, any Metis man, and an Englishman. He didn’t know about the longtime enmity. He assumed too much.
    And there was the matter of Dru’s attitude toward this Englishman. Saga remembered once standing in that garden with Dru and looking through the windows at this Dylan, this… Dru had acted foolish over him.
    Saga did not feel foolish. Monsieur Dylan Davies would have to earn his way, all of it. And if Saga’s silence bothered him, well, there was something for him to learn in it.
    For now, though, the Englishman needed a hand.
    For long moments Dylan lay still. He refused to look up at the half-breed. It seemed unbearable to accept a kindness from a man who didn’t even talk to you. Finally, Dylan rolled onto his side and drew his legs to his chest. Then he sat up. Looked Saga in the eyes.
    Amused. The bastard’s eyes looked amused.
    Saga lit his little white clay pipe, puffed, and watched Dylan. He didn’t offer a smoke.
    Dylan brushed himself off. He stood up. He had no idea what he would do now. He’d