The Snake River by Win Blevins Read Free Book Online Page A

would one day inherit from his father. He went to Mass. He confessed. He brought his wages home. Sure and he had the occasional aberration, especially at the nearest pub, where he sang the songs of his heart with his mates and staggered home at an indecent hour. When he did that, he slept on the floor.
    Aye, she punished him by holding out. So Liam O’Flaherty became a well-behaved man. Except for spending more and more time in the pubs. And slinking home. Still she held out. And he tried to be more obedient yet.
    He died of the cold one winter night, lying drunk in a gutter. Why did God permit the Irish to invent whiskey? he’d asked his sons ritually. And they answered, ritually, to keep them from ruling the world.
    Flare’s brothers took over the business.
    Flare left for America.
    Occasionally, through the Northwest Company or Hudson’s Bay or America Fur, he got a letter from his eldest brother, Padraig. News—mostly the names of new nephews and nieces. Hints that he should write more often and come home soon—your indifference is killing our mother. The Irish dollop of shame in every dram. Flare wrote every two or three years, but never spoke of coming home.
    He had learned the lesson well from his mother. Never give a woman the chance to have that kind of sway over you. Country matters, as the Bard called it.
    Flare had been…as he could not help but be. From the start he loved the fair earth, and especially the sky, the region of dreams.
    this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire.
    Skies gave him itchy feet. Horizons looked grand to him. Sunsets stirred his heart. He’d wanted to see where the sun went down, and now had gone as far as a man could go without becoming a sailor.
    He’d dipped his wick. Aye, plenty, and with hot lust, you bet. He loved women, and liked ’em, too. Liked their company, their laughter, even their tears. Didn’t just like to frig ’em. Liked to hold them, talk to them, sing a song and hear one back, ride fast against the wind with them.
    True, he’d kept to red women.
    And he’d kept in mind the lesson of his father. There’s always a fair land over the horizon. And a fair face as well, and a willing body.
    He urged his horse up to nearly the top of a butte, got off, dropped the reins, walked near the summit, crawled the rest of the way. He took his time and looked good. Must have spent a quarter of an hour watching for motion, or the unnatural lack of it. Nothing. The Arapahos probably thought their chances for more awerdenty were better back toward Laramie.
    He’d paid for his freedom. He’d given up his home. He thought about that during the cold nights in the north country when he couldn’t sleep. He had no home. No father, no mother, no brothers and sisters. No wife and no children. When none could claim ye, you had a claim on none. He simply moved along, restless, you bet. Like a bit of water that melted on the three Tetons and dribbled into a rivulet and ran into a creek and then flowed into the Snake River, then the Columbia, then the mighty Pacific. And was raised into a cloud and headed back for the Tetons. Repeated the journey again and again. Sometimes it felt pointless, bloody pointless.
    It had its compensations. The grand one was that he loved the West—forests, mountains, plains, deserts. And he relished it. Riding across the cold river in high water. Climbing the mountains. Outwitting the Indians. Crossing the deserts thirsty. Eating hump ribs. Riding among the herds of buffalo on a rampage. This is what men did before rules and religion and self-doubt spoiled it.
    Eventually, people would spoil it.
    The missionaries would spoil it.
    Their ways would spoil it, even if they didn’t mean them to.
    Even Miss Jewel would spoil it.
    And then where would Flare go?

Chapter Four
    It was an uneventful trip: up the Platte to the Sweetwater with the one episode of Indian trouble,