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spirits and strengthen him. In the last light he doffed his boots and waded the slough, intending to camp on its far side and start off in the morning with dry clothing. He found a much-used campsite there, probably because of the geese and ducks in the slough, and rolled up in his sailcloth. Sleep came hard; he had never gotten used to sleeping on the earth.
    A cold drizzle awakened him in the night. Miserably, he sat up, donned his skullcap and pea jacket, pulled the sailcloth cape over his head, and waited for better times. Sharp gusts of wind drove rain into his tiny shelter. In that brutal cold, his spirits slid to their lowest ebb. He was alone in a black and bitter night, wincing at every volley of icy rain, without a friend in the world, without anyone to love, without the ordinary comforts. He rummaged about in his mind, looking for succor against this bitter moment and finding none—except the long-remembered, half-blurred prayers recited from a church pew in his youth. He stumbled through these fragments, feeling hollow, and then enduring the numbing night.
    Something came to him then, something important that he had ignored from the beginning. He didn’t know how to survive alone. He could not live long on his own, without help. He could not count upon a stray carcass or the occasional catch of a fish whose habits he didn’t know, or a diet of roots. He could survive only if he approached other people, trusted them, made friends, sought their help, learned their ways, and gave something in return. In short, he could not live a hermit’s life. If he did not starve to death, he would go mad with loneliness. Only these tribesmen could show him how to garner food, or supply the companionship he craved, or shelter him from the elements. His God was telling him he wasn’t alone in the world, and he should not be afraid.

Chapter 5
    At first light Dr. John McLoughlin walked through the great gate of Fort Vancouver and instructed his men to bar it after him and defend the post if they must. He walked majestically down to the riverfront, where the Jaguar lay anchored in navigable waters twenty yards off. The crew was unfurling sail to take advantage of a freshening southeasterly breeze. Sailing a three-masted, fully rigged frigate down the Columbia against prevailing westerly winds would be a tricky business.
    He stood silently on the bank, waiting for Commodore Priestley to notice him, but for the moment the ship’s master was overseeing his junior officers. Then at last Priestley observed the white-haired Hudson’s Bay factor.
    â€œWhere are your men?” he shouted across the turbid water.
    â€œDefending my post.”
    Unfurling sail high above caught the eddying breeze and flapped. The ship strained against its leash.
    Priestly laughed. The commodore’s threat to press an HBC man had dissolved in the night, as McLoughlin knew it would if he resisted.
    â€œNot much of a hail and farewell,” Priestley said. “The Royal Navy has a long memory.”
    The factor stood like a rock, silent and unbudging.
    â€œBring us Skye, McLoughlin.”
    â€œPermission to weigh anchor, sir,” bawled a junior officer.
    Priestley nodded. A crew turned the squeaking capstan, water dripped from the rising anchor cable, and suddenly the ship sprang free, heeling away from the wind and sliding down the half-mile-wide river, running like its namesake. In minutes it rounded a bend and disappeared.
    McLoughlin returned to his gloomy office and lit a lamp. The Jaguar had reprovisioned at Fort Vancouver, taking on firewood, sugar, flour, tea, dried apples and vegetables, tobacco, whiskey, and sundries. Priestley had expressed outrage at the prices, never pausing to consider the pounds and pence of bringing such goods to a wilderness post. McLoughlin totted up the charges, drafted an invoice, and set it aside for the next express to his superiors. It would be a long time, if ever, before HBC