Deep Creek Read online

  Contents

  * * *

  Title Page

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Author's Note

  PART I

  Flood

  Witness

  Frost Moon

  Trackers

  Brightness

  Upriver

  Findings

  Victory Meat

  Elements

  White Ghosts

  Mission Boy

  Imbalance

  Mr. Salem

  Inner Box

  News

  Reward

  PART II

  Homecomings

  Independence

  Fit Company

  Hell Money

  Raptor Glance

  Upcountry

  Going In

  Crossriver

  Elsewhere

  Summer Family

  Our Disasters

  Camas Lily

  Big Hole

  Full Moon

  Deep Summer

  Vows

  PART III

  Beaded Sheath

  Facing South

  Respect

  Good Families

  Evergreen

  Long Night

  Reunited

  Red Ledger

  Tactics

  Objections

  Witnesses

  Secrets

  Compensation

  Free

  Wider Views

  Dug Bar

  AFTERWORD

  Appendix for Enhanced Digital Edition

  Snake River Country, 1887

  Table of Contents: Text

  Character Profiles

  Pronunciation Guide

  Author Profiles

  Dana Hand and Deep Creek

  Writing History as Fiction: A Note

  Questions for Reading Groups

  Excerpts from Major Reviews

  Historical Sources

  Copyright © 2010 by Dana Hand

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

  www.hmhco.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Hand, Dana.

  Deep Creek / Dana Hand.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-547-23748-0

  1. Snake River Massacre, 1887—Fiction. 2. Gold miners—Crimes against—

  Fiction. 3. Chinese—Crimes against—Fiction. 4. United States marshals—

  Fiction. 5. Mountaineering guides (Persons)—Fiction. 6. Métis—Fiction.

  7. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 8. Hells Canyon (Idaho and Or.)—

  Race relations—History— 19th century—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3608.A69845D44 2010

  813'.6—dc22 2009015395

  eISBN 978-0-547-48857-8

  v2.1117

  For the two Marys

  BASED ON

  ACTUAL EVENTS

  PART I

  Flood

  JUNE 3, 1887

  MAYBE I'LL CATCH a sturgeon," Nell Vincent told her father. "Maybe two."

  "Using what?"

  Nell held up a twist of frayed red yarn.

  "Good choice," said Joe. After five days of rain, the Snake River was running fast and high. The white sturgeon that trolled its depths grew eighteen feet long and could weigh a ton.

  Well, nothing beat experience. Nell was small for twelve but hardy, with straight brown braids that fell nearly to her sash and freckles no buttermilk wash could dim.

  "Or maybe I'll start with some trout, and work up."

  They smiled at each other. Half-dried mud covered the Vincents' best picnic spot, and over on the Washington shore, piles of brush and fencing clogged sandbar and cove. But Nell loved to fish, and Joe figured his youngest deserved a treat, even a medal. Her older brother Lon had spent the week of rainstorm sleeping, her sister Letty, sulking. Nell wanted to collect salt and turtle eggs and homestead in a cave, like the Swiss Family Robinson; she had it all planned.

  Beside a young cottonwood, his daughter spread their smuggled feast: six ham biscuits and a jar of lukewarm lemonade. Joe did his best, then stretched out in the patchy shade to recover. A pity he had not brought along some bismuth powder.

  Nell watched her father sleep. He was a neat, durable man with a shock of coarse gray-brown hair and a lined, clean-shaven face. At the moment he was snoring lightly. He would turn fifty-seven this year and needed his rest. Nell saw no reason to wake him and no reason to wait. She scrambled down the bank and threw out the silk line, swinging it toward open water. To the west, morning sun warmed the low dun hills to copper and gold.

  Joe lay on the carriage rug, keeping an eye on her out of habit, but Nell was old enough to cast unsupervised. He went back to sleep, for real this time. Tethered beside the buggy, his bay saddle mare, Trim, nosed at a stand of red willow.

  Ten minutes later, Nell felt the hook catch and tug. The rod bent low, then lower.

  "Pa, bring the net! I got a big one!"

  "Take your time," Joe said, watching a jay stalk the last biscuit. Nell's estimates ran high. Then he heard her agonized whisper.

  "Pa!"

  He sat up and stared at her catch: an arm rising in the water. He floundered into the shallows to seize the small, bloated body at shoulder and thigh. Long black hair, unbound, trailed over his hands like river weed. Poor lady, poor lady. He turned the corpse over, then saw a gunshot wound in the upper chest, the face chopped like cabbage, the genitals hacked away. Nell had thrown in a line and caught a man.

  Joe's best fishing rod floated nearby, still hooked to one ear. Upstream he glimpsed another figure lodged in driftwood, pale among pale logs, and ten yards beyond, a third dark head. That victim might never come to shore. Joe saw the north-running current find and take it. Behind him, Nell moaned.

  "Get back to the rig, Nellie. Now."

  Two hours later, Lewiston deputies had dragged ashore six flayed and battered corpses, all male, all Chinese. Joe looked away as Marshal Harry Akers bent over, hands braced on thighs, breathing hard. The deputies were country-bred, and Joe a Union veteran, but Akers was a town man.

  "Judge, can you take this over? I got a lot to do. A lot."

  Joe nodded. He was police judge now, and the Chinese case would land with him anyway. He left a silent Nell at her grandparents' tall brick house on Main Street, then sent a deputy to find the local doctor who doubled as town coroner. Decades ago Henry Stanton, an ex—Royal Navy surgeon, came inland from Vancouver to practice in Idaho's gold country. His neat full beard was gray now, the genial face grim. Joe held open the leather satchel as his friend laid forceps and tenon saw beside the first victim.

  "Throat cut," said Henry. "Very slowly. It's butchery."

  "Massacre," said Joe.

  Three of the Chinese dead were naked and bound hand and foot, faces ripped by animal bites. Maybe canine, maybe feline; the wilder reaches of the Snake River above Lewiston still harbored puma and wolf. All the men pulled from the Snake were shot, though some backs and skulls also bore deep ax wounds. One victim was beheaded, the ghastly cranium wrapped in a ragged blue coat and tied to the waist. The rest were castrated. Two were gutted like deer. A skillful job, said Henry, when pressed.

  "Poor devils, poor sad bastards," Joe murmured as he walked the line of shrouded bodies. He knew a crew of Chinese gold miners had wintered up the Snake. He'd even talked to a couple, the morning they left. September of '86? October? His town logs would say. Twelve clothbound ledgers still sat on Joe's desk, one for each year spent as Lewiston's marshal. He sho
uld have given the whole set to Akers back in November, as a post-election courtesy, but Joe wasn't that sure his successor could read.

  My fault, Joe thought. A river full of dead men. My mistake. He pulled the vinegar-soaked bandana back over nose and mouth, then turned a notebook page, slapping away flies. The battlefield stink was getting worse. Beside him the doctor probed and measured, his bare arms dark to the elbow with river mud and human rot.

  Once they tried to sit beside the Snake and rest, but moments later Henry was wading out again. The deputies had missed one. Joe gave the doctor a hand back to shore, then hauled the dead man halfway up the slope. Maggots, pale and writhing, webbed the nostrils and open mouth.

  "Corneas slit," said Henry.

  "Before death or after?" Joe asked.

  "Before, I suspect."

  Together they heaved the sodden weight toward their riverbank morgue.

  At sunset Joe crossed Tammany Creek and turned his mare toward the big shingled and turreted house on the hill. He sat on the stable mounting block to pull off his boots, which smelled of corpse. Likely they always would. He glanced up and saw lamplight in Nell's room. His father-in-law, Alonzo Leland, the town newspaper publisher, must have brought her home.

  The front door was locked, so Joe went around to the kitchen. The Vincents had lived in this new house only since Christmas. A dozen packing crates still sat in the parlor, leaking straw, and once again the whole downstairs smelled of fresh paint. Lib and the man from Hale & Cooper were deadlocked over the merits of ivory versus cream.

  Alonzo waylaid him in the hallway, hungry for a Teller exclusive.

  "What's this about dead Chinks in the Snake?"

  Joe put one hand on the banister. "Can't tell you anything, Lon."

  "I've got a deadline, J. K.," said Alonzo behind him.

  Trousers soaked, back aching, Joe Vincent climbed on.

  Witness

  JUNE 4, 1887

  Lewiston, Idaho in 1887–89. Nez Perce County Historical Society.

  AS JOE RODE PAST the brick storefronts of downtown Lewiston, he saw the glint of standing water, block after block. He could put a name and history to each drowned yard and lot. Telegraph and gasworks were still out, cordwood littered every boardwalk, and at the crossroads near the Unitarian church horses splashed knee-deep. The Sparbers' big chicken coop was gone, swept away. Old Mr. Sparber waved down Joe to complain, forgetting that he was no longer marshal.

  In town the daily round had resumed: Joe saw the cart from Alleman's Dairy cut past a line of hay wagons, while at riverside, dockworkers unloaded the Portland overnight, the first steamer in days to brave the swollen Snake. Akers was indeed behind on every one of his duties: getting medicine to outlying families, feed to cut-off stock, notices to the Teller, cats out of trees. Pleas for aid were still coming in from all over Nez Perce County.

  Not my worry. Joe turned onto a deserted, muddy A Street and hitched Trim to the porch rail of the one-story Beuk Aie Temple, listening to the nasal clatter of Cantonese within. The caretaker led him down the dim, narrow room. Along the gilded altar stood incense burners and porcelain wine cups, plus five sets of chopsticks, one for each temple deity. A dozen thin, tired, wary Chinese watched Joe approach. Nearby stood a C Street grain merchant, ready to translate, but the lead miner spoke fair English.

  Lee She, Joe wrote. Occupation: junior boss, gold-mining crew. Born: Canton. Probably in his early twenties, if that; manner composed, eyes lightless.

  "How big was your group?" Joe asked.

  "Forty-four, sir."

  The merchant flinched, just a hair. Joe wondered why.

  "All from around here?"

  "Yes, sir."

  The mining-camp survivors waited near Lee She, taking care to look away from the da bidze judge. Young, slight, and wiry, most of them. So foreign, with those long rattail queues and shaved foreheads, but tough enough to take eight bad months up the Snake.

  "Where was your camp?" Joe asked Lee She.

  "Deep Creek, for sleeping, sir. Robinson Gulch, for the work."

  Six weeks ago the Chinese expedition leader had sent this smaller party to prospect farther south. Chea Po, Joe wrote. Senior boss. Home: Canton. On returning to Deep Creek, Lee She and his men found only burned wreckage and murdered compatriots, too mutilated to recognize. The miners' largest craft lay stranded on the rocky shore, oars broken, bottom chopped out. A half-mile away, Robinson Gulch was a charnel house. Fourteen miners lay buried upriver, Lee She told Joe. Hacked, bludgeoned, castrated, faceless. The missing: probably thrown into the Snake.

  Joe added a row of stars to his notebook page. That timing fitted the flood dates and condition of bodies recovered at Lewiston all too well. He did recall that the Deep Creek crew included two boys, unusual in an over-winter camp, and asked about them.

  "Gone."

  Joe looked at the young man's clenched and callused hands and changed the subject. Their venture's backer was...?

  "The Sam Yup Company. In San Francisco," the translator told him. Joe knew it, dimly, as one of several big Chinese labor exchanges there.

  "A benevolent society," said the translator, not elaborating.

  Lewiston barbershop and tavern talk about the Snake River dead seesawed daily, and the favored line was, Well, at least they ain't from around here. But Chea Po's mining crew was local. Joe was stuck and he knew it. As police judge he could rule on civil and criminal cases within his jurisdiction, which in practice meant all of Nez Perce County. A few years back the territorial legislature in Boise trimmed down Nez Perce; it was still larger than Rhode Island.

  The big river marked the border between Idaho Territory and the State of Oregon, and both Robinson Gulch and Deep Creek lay on the Snake's western bank. Maybe he could hand off these killings to Oregon authorities. But around four in the afternoon Henry Stanton came in, nodded to the Beuk Aie elders, and opened his hand to show Joe evidence from the final autopsies. In the rainbow light of a lantern hung with colored beads, Joe saw the lead gleam. Two dozen bullet rounds, more than enough to force an inquest.

  "That's it?"

  Henry shook his head. "That's one man."

  Three days later, Dr. Henry Stanton, coroner, and the Honorable Joseph Kimball Vincent, police judge, issued their ruling: mass murder. Joe still had no idea how to solve the legal puzzle of aliens residing in a territory yet killed in a state by persons unknown. A day spent reading case law showed only the extent of the maze. As a Lewiston magistrate, he seemed to have as much jurisdiction as anyone.

  The Beuk Aie elders wanted him to keep local Chinese safe. That much was clear. Yet when Joe went to tell Lee She that a court proceeding was under way, the Deep Creek miners had vanished, every one. Halfway to Canada, Joe figured. He ran over the count in his head. Lee She's burials upriver. Seven bodies recovered near Lewiston. Two washed ashore at the Almota steamboat landing; a frightened farmer rode in yesterday with the news. Marshal Akers sent him straight to Judge Vincent. The sheriff at Pen-a-wa-wa, forty miles off, reported four more. Joe began composing his telegram to the Sam Yup's head office.

  The reply was swift. A Company representative had left San Francisco to take a full report; please afford every assistance. The Imperial Chinese government planned to protest this outrage in the strongest terms and demand reparation from American authorities.

  At his office desk Joe turned the telegram over, then peered into the envelope. No follow-up, no softening addendum, no mention of paying expenses. Wonderful.

  Lewiston was no town for secrets. Lake's jewelry store housed a Bell telephone exchange, where service was so erratic that its twenty-eight subscribers usually sent a child down the street with a note, like everyone else. The Western Union clerk was a gossip, never more than when a silver dollar lay on the counter. Joe knew the man gave Alonzo Leland first crack at the juicier wire stories. Confidential public business was a lost cause. He opened the latest Teller, expecting a furious editorial on heathen meddling.

/>   The news columns yielded only one paragraph, a masterpiece of misdirection squeezed between an ad for John Carey's pack train and a report of amateur theatricals over at Pomeroy.

  A boatload of Chinamen came down Snake River on Saturday last and brought the news that another boat load of Chinese had been murdered about 150 miles above here by some unknown parties; they claim that the Chinamen, some ten in number, who were murdered had upward of $3000 on them, having been mining on the river this past year. They found their boat with blankets and provisions in, but three of the Chinamen have been found, and three in the river, two of whom were shot and the third could not be captured. Some think the Chinamen murdered them, while others think Indians or whites, but the mystery may never be solved.

  One hundred fifty miles? Sixty was more like it. And three thousand in gold dust? No survivor mentioned any such amount, nor would, not to a foreign devil judge. As usual, the Teller was best appreciated as fiction. One fact would not change: between Canton and Lewiston lay nine thousand miles. A long way to come to die.

  Henry Stanton stood in the doorway, waiting for a decision.

  "Flood or no flood, some evidence must survive," Joe said after a while. "I guess I could charter a boat and go see."

  Chatter. Under pressure, his Massachusetts accent turned more pronounced. The doctor had not heard it this strong in years.

  "No one rows up the Snake," Stanton said.

  Joe slung the broadsheet into his kindling box.

  "It's a drought year. At least we'll see the rocks we hit. Hand-line past the big rapids, chance the rest. Two, three weeks round-trip. I need a close-in look at whoever did it. I doubt they've gone far. It takes a fair-sized crew to slaughter so many. All else aside, murder on this scale is hard work."

  "Didn't stop your lot at Antietam," said Stanton. "Or mine ever, really." He paused. "Didn't stop you at Big Hole. So I hear."

  Joe was on his feet, not knowing how he got there.

  "Christ almighty, Henry, sometimes I don't understand you. You bring this up now, after ten years?"