TOM FLYNN AND I traveled by coach to St. Anthony, where we boarded a steamer heading north. Two days later we were in St. Cloud, a poor cousin to St. Paul, but its streets were busy with people and wagons. We took rooms in a small hotel, all paid for by the White Bear Company. At dinner we sat at a table and ate buffalo. Flynn finished his before I was half done and ordered another plate. He dug into that one as though it were his first.
For all his appetite, Tom Flynn was only a little heavy in the belly. His face was heavy too with scars from years of scraping it with a blade. This was his third trip since spring to Kandiyohi, and he’d been there twice the year before. He said he was from Ohio and had come to St. Paul when it was still called Pig’s Eye.
“Nobody back home thought Tom Flynn would amount to nothin’,” he said, pointing his fork. “Someday, when this is done, I just might pay their fare so they can come out and see.”
“See what?” I said, thinking I might get Flynn to tell me what I’d been hired to guard. He smiled and said nothing. Just then, something touched my leg. I looked down to see a scrawny, three-colored cat making a sad appeal for food. I slipped her a piece of buffalo, and she ate it in a single swallow. Then I heard a sharp yell, and the cat ran for the door. The hotel keeper came over. “She won’t stay out of here,” he said by way of apology. “I’m gonna have to shoot her.”
Five minutes later the cat was at my feet again. I looked at Flynn. “Can I take her?” He raised his eyes as though I were a soft-hearted fool. I took that for a yes and carried the cat to my room. I put her on the bed, and she lay with her paws outstretched. I named her Cleopatra.
In the morning, Flynn and I met up with two men and a heavily loaded wagon. We headed out of St. Cloud on the rough road that went south, my bag and rifle on the wagon, as was Cleo, who, already certain of my devotion, watched as Flynn and I walked behind. Until this moment, my travels in Minnesota had been on the river. Now I was walking through new land and breathing its ripe smells. It was an odd patchwork of woods and grassland, the forest and prairie, meeting and claiming what they could, the swamps taking the rest. The trees were familiar, maple and ash, oak and cherry, but there were no sudden rocky rises like there were in New York. And other than the ruts in the road, there was no sign that men, white men, had yet lived on this land—and they hadn’t, because until recently it had all been Indian land. There had been a treaty—some sort of payment. But had everyone agreed? Were there savages still out there? Flynn’s men had their rifles loaded and within reach.
At midday we stopped to rest. I sat on a log next to Flynn and told him it was time. What was this about?
Tom Flynn gave a boyish smile and replied with a question. “Well, are you ready to be the very first citizen of the future capital of all the Northwest?” I didn’t know what he was talking about.
“Next month,” he continued, “White Bear will file a plan for a new city. It’s to be called Kandiyohi, after the county it’s in. When Minnesota becomes a state, it’ll need a new capital—something in the center, not over by Wisconsin. If the lines get drawn the way we think, Kandiyohi will be sittin’ pretty.”
I wasn’t sure I had heard him right. “And you’ll own all the land?”
Flynn shook his head. “We’ve given a lot of it away already, or rather promised it. But there’s plenty to go around.”
My employer was clearly pleased with himself, and I was not put off. I liked this scheme. It gave me confidence that we would be well supplied. The capital of all the Northwest. It had a ring to it, and I’d be the mayor of the place, at least for the winter. In that moment, my dream of raising horses fell away, and I imagined myself an important person in this new city. Maybe in a few years, I too would be inviting people to come out and see it. And I liked that I wasn’t going to be guarding gold or something that people might want to take from me. Who would want to steal some plain, ordinary land when you couldn’t take it anywhere, and there was so much of it to start with? When I asked this of Flynn, he said that his company had spent a lot of money on this city already, and he didn’t want to come out in spring and find someone else on the land. It was my job, mine and my partner’s, to make sure that didn’t happen.
We headed south again in the afternoon. And spending every hour with Flynn and company introduced a new problem. Certainly, I could find the time and place to relieve myself in private, but I soon saw that simply peeing in private wasn’t enough. Once out of town, men peed quite casually in the presence of one another, usually just turning and facing a tree or a bush. If I didn’t do this, it would, after a time, appear strange.
And so that afternoon I began to pretend to pee like a man, something I never had to do in Honesdale. I would stop on the trail when Flynn was a short distance ahead, turn my back and face a tree. I would spread my legs, throw back my shoulders, and engage my hands, the left holding my trousers, the right feigning the more specific task. I was amused by the playacting and wished, not for the first time, that I had a hose for this purpose, it being opportune.
Late in the day we came upon a broad meadow where another track came in from the south. Already there, at the far end, was a great camp with a large circle of wagons. We set up on the near end, but I could hear the beat of drums and the notes of what I thought were flutes.
“What in heaven’s name is that?” I asked.
Flynn laughed. “The Bois Brûlés.”
“Who are the Bwaa Brulay?” I said, imitating the sound of his words.
“Go and find out. They’re friendly.”
Curiosity got to me, and I went over to their camp. A double circle of wagons, perhaps forty, formed the outer rim. I had never seen the like. They were carts, really, with only one axle and wheels taller than myself. The rails and spokes were made of bent wood. Not one piece of metal anywhere.
Inside the circle, men and women danced around a large fire. The men wore coarse blue jackets with brass buttons and red sashes. Their jaunty caps had tassels, and their leggings were decorated with beads and quills. The women wore similar decoration. They were every shade of brown, and among them were some of the most handsome people I had ever laid eyes on. They talked in a strange language and laughed loudly, which is pretty much the same everywhere.
The music came from mouth harps, flutes, and drums. It wasn’t so much a melody as a repetition of chords and rhythms. After nodding along for a while, I took out my violin and joined them, earning smiles all around. Later, waving, I bade them good night.
I returned to our camp and found Flynn by the fire. “So who are they?”
“The answer to that question,” he said, poking the coals, “will make some men rich. I plan to be one of them.” He kept me in the dark for another moment and then relented. “They come from Pembina, along the Manitoba border. They’re the descendants of fur trappers, Frenchies and Scots mostly with Cree and Ojibwa women. Beautiful to look at, wouldn’t you say?”
“They have their own tribe? How many are there?”
“Maybe four or five thousand.”
I looked at my employer in disbelief.
“Well, those old trappers were hardy fellows,” he said, “and they’d settle down for the winter with two or three wives. And that goes back a hundred years. So after a time, there were lots of these creatures, neither white nor Indian. They started making their own babies and talking this talk that’s half Cree, half Frenchie, and half whatever those Scotties talk. Once a year they make the trip to St. Paul to trade their hides and wheat. It’s like the circus comin’ to town.”
“And their name?”
“Bois Brûlés? Means burnt wood—refers to their color.”
“How will they make you rich?” I asked, fearing he planned to make slaves of them.
Flynn glanced about, as though the trees might steal his secret. “They will make me rich if they are real people, which I assert to you that they are.”
“They seemed quite real to me,” I said, not knowing how they could be otherwise.
Flynn put out his knobby hand and shook mine as though I had promised him my vote. “My friend,” he said, “I’m glad to hear you say that, for if the Bois Brûlés are real people, as I say they are and you do too, then Minnesota is near the number of souls it needs to become a state. Now remember Indians don’t count, but nothin’s been decided on the Bois Brûlés—after all, they’re part white. And since the sooner we become a state the better, folks have suddenly become open-minded on the question.”
Flynn let it lie there, while I tried to solve the riddle. I couldn’t.
“It’s a matter of simple geometry,” he said. “To count the Bois Brûlés, you have to draw the lines north to Pembina, and that makes a Minnesota with Kandiyohi smack in the middle. I’m very fond of these people.”
Tom Flynn was unabashed. If the Brois Brûlés were judged real then his plan would succeed. And was there anything wrong with this? I couldn’t see it if there were. I was sure that those with whom I’d just played music wished to be thought of as real. And right there, I began wishing for it too, thinking it might be good for me.
* * *
We reached Forest City late the following day. It wasn’t a city; it was barely a town. But it did have a small inn, and that’s where we stayed. At dinner that evening, Flynn and I shared a table with a young couple, Elijah and Loretta Woodcock. They had been married for a year but were only recently reunited, as Loretta had come west to join her husband in a cabin he had just finished.
Loretta Woodcock was plainly clothed but painfully beautiful. Her dark hair fell upon her shoulders in long curls, and I found myself stealing looks. Elijah Woodcock talked proudly about the land they were going to settle in a place called Green Lake. “There’ll be a town there someday soon,” he said, “and we’ll own some nice pieces as our pay for sitting it this winter.”
Mrs. Woodcock tried to look happy as her husband described the new land, but behind her stiff smile was fear. And why not? What sensible woman would not be afraid of such isolation—more so if she were to become with child. “I didn’t think I’d be so well fed in the wilderness,” she said, trying to be polite.
“Well, this is the end of the line,” said Flynn. “It’s all heathen land from here on. You know what they say: No church west of St. Cloud. No God west of Forest City.” Everyone made an effort to laugh, but the best Loretta Woodcock could do was to hide a grimace. I wanted to kick Flynn under the table. In the silence that followed, I thought about the land before us and about those who had lived there. And about how all of us at the table were searching for our dreams on land that once held theirs.
We set out the next morning on a route that went west, then south. The track was crude and our progress slow. Late the following day, we came upon a newly built cabin in a grove of box elder. “This is Noah White’s place,” said Flynn as we stopped before it. “We’re nine miles further on.”
The door to the cabin opened, and Mr. White came out to greet us. He was a solid fellow with large preacher hands and an odd roll to his gait, as though one leg were shorter than the other. He and Flynn laughed and slapped each other on the back. Flynn had brought Mr. White some supplies, and for dinner we had new potatoes and cooked pork, fresh out of a barrel. During the meal Mr. White took to teasing Flynn about his venture. “Why is any senator going to vote to come to this wilderness? They like their whiskey and their women.”
Flynn laughed. “The great motivator,” he said, pointing toward the ceiling as though the motivator was God, though we all knew that it wasn’t.
“I suppose you’ll be running for Senate yourself next year.”
Flynn shook his head. “I’m going to do fine when the building starts,” he said. “Just about everything that comes out here will come on our wagons. And don’t give me that look, Noah. You’re makin’ the same bet, sitting here for some railroad.” Mr. White smiled and didn’t argue.
After the dinner I helped Mr. White wash the plates, while Flynn’s men went out to sleep under the wagon. Flynn and I were to sleep inside, but before I could put myself under a blanket, Noah asked if I would play a game of checkers, seeing as how we would be neighbors soon. I agreed and we sat at the table as Cleo looked on. Noah won the first game, but I fixed him good the second, having learned a few tricks from the Johnson boys in St. Paul.
Next to us on a shelf was a book that I first thought was the Bible. On closer look, I saw it was a book of essays by Mr. Emerson, a man I had heard of but never read. When I was in school, Mr. Emerson’s opinions were thought to be unsuited for young minds. I told this to Noah, and he offered to lend me the book.
“Won’t you miss it?”
“I know it by heart,” he answered. “Just promise that you’d walk across a frozen lake to return it.”
“Without fail,” I said. We stood and shook hands as though we had agreed to explore Manitoba together.
* * *
We left the cabin at first light and again headed south. The wind picked up, and leaves swirled about us like orange snow. Some hours later, we came out of the woods and stopped on the crest of a small hill.
“There,” said Flynn, pointing forward. Up ahead on a rise of its own stood a cabin and behind it, through the trees, a large lake. As we approached, I could see two men stacking wood. Another man came out of the cabin when we arrived. Flynn looked at me. “Joseph, meet your partner.”
“Well, I’ll be,” I said, looking at Owen Carter, whom I had not seen since he broke the mate’s nose in Galena. Owen looked at me and smiled as though we had a secret.
“So you two know each other,” said Flynn.
“Well, yes, we’ve met,” I said, not sure what I should or shouldn’t say. Flynn seemed satisfied, and he motioned proudly toward the cabin. The logs were of good size and well chinked, just as he said they would be. The roof, however, wasn’t done. Flynn saw my eye go there.
“You and Owen will finish it when we leave,” he said. “And the door.” I nodded, hoping that Owen had more skills with wood than I did.
The men then began to unload supplies: a small cask of nails, several others of wheat flour, lamp oil, corn meal, and sorghum blackstrap. There was a cask of pork and some sacks with dried beans, potatoes, and turnips. I went inside and found that the cabin had a plank floor and the promised iron stove. The two windows on the south side were covered by scraped deerskin.
Before dark, Tom Flynn and I walked up the knoll behind the cabin, stopping when we got to the top. “Guess where you are,” he said.
“In Kandiyohi,” I answered with new pride.
Flynn nodded. “Yes, but right now you’re standing in the rotunda of the statehouse. It will overlook Lake Kasota behind and the capital square in front. Beyond that are the lots themselves—some two thousand already mapped.”
I looked out upon this new city and saw not one thing made by man.