Temperance Creek. Pamela Royes
“so busy with the things of this world that they are unable to perceive things at any distance.” I could feel the roaring in my own ears and the burden of responsibility that prevented me from experiencing life in new ways.
I heard my dad’s voice, “Just finish your education, one more year and then see what happens.” And Mom’s, wondering when I’d buckle down and see something through. I couldn’t help what I felt . . . the yearning, the longing for something more.
As Annie continued to read, Little Mouse received a new name, and I closed my eyes and dreamt a dream of what could be. Feathers, quills, bone, teeth. Dreams of this new tribe.
“When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not with your brain.”
—MARK TWAIN
My heart, like the circling hawk, rode the prevailing air currents in and out of sheltered draws and across open, grassy slopes. From Cow Creek, Annie and I followed the green, coursing Imnaha once again to the distant Snake. It was the middle of March and the eve of my twenty-first birthday. I’d quit college (disappointing no one but my parents, as far as I could tell), and moved into the Minam Schoolhouse. I was unemployed and unattached.
We reached the confluence of the Snake River late morning and picked up the trail to Eureka Bar. Ahead, on a wide grassy flat, we were surprised to see two horses, a bay and a buckskin. The bay was picketed by a foot to a long rope, the buckskin tied to a wizened hackberry tree and dozing in the sun, no one in sight. A bell around the bay’s neck clanged when she swung her head in our direction, announcing our presence. The sight of them gave me a breathless, sudden moment of joy. Horses.
Beyond the horses we followed the smell of frying fish and campfire woodsmoke. Above us, a canyon wren sang, and in the tuck of the next draw, pitched in a small grove of hackberry trees, we spotted a lean-to canvas tent painted with bold and colorful Native American designs. Before a dying campfire, a young man was relishing the last bites of an early morning catch from a well-greased skillet. From his squat position he straightened, beaming with pleasure as we approached.
“Annie,” he said.
“Hey there, Skip.” His was a strong-featured face, open and intelligent. He’d been eating with his fingers, and now he paused to pour a little water from a canteen into a basin, wet his hands, and then wipe them on his blue jeans. Totally at ease. Small-framed and muscular, he wore moccasins laced to the calves, button-up Levis (only one or two of the buttons secured), and a moss-green, tie-dyed long underwear shirt pushed up at the elbows. His wavy, shoulder-length hair was held back by a dark blue bandana and tied around the forehead. His bushy beard glinted red. Annie introduced us, and his hand, when I took it, was dry and rough and worn like a cedar plank. The kind of wood that endured wind and water and didn’t burr up. Stained and authentic, he was just the sort of man my father would disapprove of. The kind who wore his shirts untucked and tilted his chair back on two legs.
“I’d offer you breakfast, but I finished just as you were walking up. The fishing’s been outrageous. Been living on steelhead the last two weeks.”
“Darn. Bad timing,” I said, thinking of our meager rations. Annie and I dropped our packs to the ground.
“What are your plans?” Annie asked. “Where do you go from here?”
Skip poured a little water into the skillet and set it on the coals. “I’m looking to pick up some work. Ranching, packing, shoeing horses, that kind of thing, but definitely stay in the mountains, keep moving.” He threw us a Peter Fonda Easy Rider grin, crescent green eyes crinkling deeply at the corners. I tried not to stare, but I was mesmerized. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I couldn’t think of what to say that didn’t sound naive or ridiculous.
“How did you get here?” I blurted.
He opened his hands, looking past me to the opaque Snake River rolling in the background, then back to us. “On a horse.”
We laughed, and when he didn’t offer more, Annie and I talked of other things.
Taking the skillet by the handle, he stepped away from the fire and flung the water in a high arc into the tall grass. He stooped and with a little sand scoured the bottom. Rinsing with fresh water from the canteen, he set it momentarily back on the coals to dry and sat down beside us. My gaze fell on a fishing pole leaning against a nearby tree. I envisioned pulling in a Very. Big. Fish. And eating it.
By now, Skip was telling a hilarious account of our friend Glen-boy riding the Snake River rapids with Styrofoam pontoons strapped on his feet. “It was miraculous, he was walking on water. He looked just like Jesus . . .”
We laughed, and when a silence fell again, I leaned forward. “Do you think I could borrow your fishing pole, Skip? I mean, I understand if you say no.”
“You fish?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied, though I had never fished a river.
“Okay. But you’ll have to walk back to the mouth of the Imnaha to catch a steelhead. You’ll never get one to bite in the Snake, water’s too murky. What will you use for bait?”
I knew he was testing me, but the only logical answer was, “Worms?”
“Won’t need anything but the spinner, already on the pole.”
The river mouth was about a mile back. I looked at Annie, who’d removed her boots and sat propped against her backpack. She laughed, saying not to worry about her, to just catch one. I jumped up, grabbed the pole, and was walking away when I remembered the horses dozing in the thin spring sun, and I turned. “Would it be all right to borrow one of your horses?”
Then, he really looked at me. Maybe for the first time.
“Do you ride?” he asked.
“Yes,” I answered with confidence, betting it wouldn’t be easy to give his horse to this stranger who already stood clutching his fishing pole.
“You’ll have to ride bareback with a halter.”
I nodded.
“Okay, take Candy, the buckskin.”
“Really? Far out.”
“I’ll walk with you as far as the horses. I’ll need to tie Bonnie Bay up when you leave.”
My guess was he’d decided there’d be no way I could handle a horse bareback and hold onto a fishing pole, therefore making it possible to retract his offer. I watched his moccasin-clad feet moving on the trail ahead of me. Toes pointed slightly outward, his walk a rolling, confident extension of the terrain. His natural athleticism and exuberance was reminiscent of a hometown hockey player. What we would call a scrapper.
Once we got to the horses, I jumped from the uphill side and was able to swing onto Candy with pole in hand. I shouted thanks over my shoulder, found the trail, and rode out of sight. “Bet he didn’t expect that,” I said under my breath as I pulled the mare up and leaned forward to stroke her sleek, golden neck and breathe in her smell, all the stolen moments of pleasure associated with horses flooding back.
On the banks of the Imnaha I tied Candy to a small bush. I crouched on the boulder-strewn bank, hoping to glimpse a steel-head, and wondered at the ancient memory that drew them to run the gauntlet of dams and hooks, to return to spawn so far from their adulthoods in the Pacific Ocean. I imagined my flashing spinner in the water. Turning, I saw Skip. He’d followed me on the bay, now tied next to the buckskin. Over the rush of the river I called out, a little self-consciously, “I used to fish when I was kid. On a lake. With corn and marshmallows, a worm if I could find one.” He moved to stand near me, making it easier to converse. “I’d get up in the dark and row out, alone. I wouldn’t stop until my arms got tired. Early in the morning, the lake was so still.”
“Where?”
“Ottertail, Minnesota. We rented