SOMEONE HAS BROUGHT IN a sampler, asking if I thought it was artistic enough for my exhibition. The lender, a small woman in her eighties, told me it had been stitched by her sister on a visit from her home in Ireland. It was surrounded with a gilt frame and arrived wrapped in several layers of tea towels, themselves worthy of display for their fabric — fine linen which the woman told me had come from Belfast in the year of her marriage to a local fisherman. She’d received a bolt of it, and it had lasted her until now; she simply cut a length of it as she needed new towels and then hemmed and ornamented them in some way, perfect edgings of cross-stitches or nosegays of flowers and a homily, Thou crownest the year with thy goodness, framed with a wreath of silvery willow leaves. The sampler itself was pleasant, a little harbour of fishing boats of the sort common in the thirties and forties, blue sea, trees on the shore, and a verse from John Masefield:

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea

   and the sky,

And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.

I assured her that the sampler was indeed artistic enough, but that I would also love to use her tea towels. She was quite skeptical about any museum that might want to display tea towels, but I explained my idea that history is contained in the small details, the homely objects, and by putting together a lot of them, we might be able to understand something about a community in a particular time and place.

“If you only saw armour or cannons, then those are the only activities you would think mattered. But what about the way people, maybe ordinary people, spent their days? Did they farm or cook or sew? Of course they did. I want to concentrate on textiles and fabrics because for so long they were the way that women explored their creativity, often unconsciously. These tea towels are such a wonderful example! If you were just thinking of them as purely practical, as cloths to wipe the dishes with, you probably wouldn’t have taken such care to make them pretty.”

“Aye,” she replied in her soft voice, a faint Irish brogue still discernable. “I used to look through my Bible for a verse that suited how I was feeling and then try to match it with flowers or some such. Well, if you’re serious about the tea towels, Anna, I can bring you lots of them.”

I told her I was very serious. We had a cup of tea together, and she told me that her father had worked in the linen mills as a weaver. He was very proud of the linen he wove and used to say that its softness came from the water of the creek harnessed for the washing and bleaching process. Soft northern Irish water and then line-drying in the soft air. The bolt of linen had come from her parents as a wedding gift after she’d left Ireland to come to Canada and this community as a young school teacher, met a local fisherman and decided to make her home with him. I told her I’d like to include a little of her story on a card which would be displayed with her tea towels and sampler, and she seemed very pleased. She left, assuring me that she would return with more of her fancy-work.

I spend some time photographing the items I’ll be using for the exhibit in order to archive them properly. Each object will be accompanied by a full description. But what it won’t say, could never say, is how the fabrics came to their softness, decades of carefully drying teacups and plates, the weight of sleeping lovers, the endless washing and hanging out in sunlight and fog, smoothing and folding, pressing with hot irons until they gave up their wrinkles and entered dark cupboards to wait, scented with lavender and the faint memory of wind.

And then I look at some of the photographs in Margaret’s box, trying to name each person from the references in the letters. Her grandmother, younger sisters and brother, only one of a couple that might be her parents, a young man hanging photographs on a line with clothes pegs as though they were the clothing of infants. And what photographs are they, hanging in the air like the shadows of shadows, souls on their way to the country in the west?

“What will we name her?” William asked, watching the new mare roll in the dust in the home corral. She had closed her eyes and was luxuriating in the dry dust, lingering for a moment to rub one shoulder, then the other. It had been her first night at Cottonwood, and Margaret had awoken several times to look out to make sure she was still there, not spirited away by the darkness. In the moonlight, the mare had been alert, listening to the other horses, nickering to them in return. After she grew accustomed to her new surroundings, she would be pastured with the saddle horses the family kept at the home ranch.

Margaret had already decided on a name. Riding the mare on the road south of Kamloops, she’d noticed again how the black forelock resembled a thistle. And when she’d stopped to let the mare crop at a rich patch of pink-blossoming sainfoin, she’d seen the horse nip off the tip of a blossoming thistle, a few mauve petals falling away as she chewed.

“I’ve already named her Thistle, Father. Do you think it suits her?”

“Well, now, I suppose I’d hoped for something more stately, to suit her role as our top brood mare. But Thistle, yes, it does suit her with that forelock. Thistle she is, then.”

According to records given them by the mare’s previous owner, they could expect a heat in the next few weeks. The plan was to breed Thistle to the ranch’s stud and begin to develop a quarter horse ideally suited to the Cottonwood’s range. Thistle’s broad chest and sound wind, the strong legs of the Bonny Prince — a legacy of his Clydesdale ancestors — and the cutting ability and endurance that came with both horses: William imagined generations of foals with this combination bringing in the cattle each fall and driving them high up the plateau each spring. Generation upon generation, the bay mare, the dark stallion, the dry air alive with their descendants in the fields of the valley and mountain.

“May I ride her to Spahomin tomorrow, Father? I’d like to spend a day or two with Grandmother Jackson and tell her about the concert. I’ve already made sure Mother doesn’t need me.”

“Certainly you may, but don’t forget we’ve planned to go to the Victoria Day celebrations down at Nicola Lake. So you’ll only be able to stay the one night. Ask your grandmother if she’d like to come with us on Thursday. August could bring her as far as the ranch on his way, or else we could meet there if August is taking his family.”

“I’ll ask, but she usually doesn’t like to go to things like that. There’s always drinking, and she doesn’t approve of Indians taking a drink. She never minds when you drink whiskey, Father, but she hates to see August drink, or anyone else from the Reserve. Why is that?”

“Oh, it’s a long story, Margaret. She’s seen a lot in her years, both good and bad, and she knows what life was like before the valley was settled by ranchers, although there would have been trappers in her childhood. She’s right to mistrust alcohol, it’s caused a lot of sorrow to her people.”

The next day saw Margaret riding towards Douglas Lake along the Nicola River. The sunflowers were in their prime, full and brilliant yellow, there were clusters of long-leaved phlox, and threaded through the willows on the riverbank, the buds of white clematis were just opening. Margaret loved clematis. For the next month, there’d be heavenly white clouds of it all along the river and the creek running through the home ranch, and then, until winter, fluffy seedheads would cling to the vines, some of them floating away on the wind to plant themselves in any cranny. Higher up, on the summer range, she’d found blue clematis and had tried bringing a root of it home to try by the veranda, but it had withered and died, longing for the high air of the mountains, or that was what she liked to imagine.

Fresh bear scat by the river spooked Thistle a little, and Margaret found it difficult to keep her down to a walk or a quick nervous trot. Yet she was not familiar enough with the mare’s habits to let her run. This was unfamiliar country to a horse raised on the banks of the Thompson River, where the hazards were rattlesnakes and small stinging cacti. It was gone noon by the time they reached the Reserve, and Margaret was glad to find her grandmother’s house full of the smell of frying trout.

Embracing her grandmother, she was startled to see a strange man sitting in the chair of woven willow and sinew on the other side of the stove. He leapt to his feet, striding across the room and holding out his hand to take hers in a firm handshake. He had very blue eyes and coppery hair, and he was wearing a pair of Grandmother’s moccasins, beaded and quilled.

“You must be Margaret. Your grandmother has been telling me about you. I’m Nicholas Byrne, how do you do?”

Grandmother Jackson handed him a plate of trout and bannock as if it was the most natural thing in the world to have a young man at her stove. She handed Margaret a plate, too. As they sat at the table to eat their lunch, the man explained that he was at Spahomin at the suggestion of James Teit of Spences Bridge.

“I’m translating his book on the Thompson people into French as a graduate project for Dr. Boas at Columbia University. Do you know his work?”

Dr. Boas? The only doctor the two women knew was Dr. Tuthill at Nicola Lake, though William spoke of Dr. Sutton, whom Margaret slightly remembered, and a Dr. Chipp, whom she’d never known at all. Dr. Tuthill’s work was mending broken bones, sewing up cuts, doctoring people who were down with influenza, and even tending to the man who was shot at Chapperon Lake. Why would a doctor need Mr. Teit’s book translated into French? Margaret said as much to Nicholas Byrne.

“Oh, I’m sorry, that’s not the kind of doctor I mean. Dr. Boas is a doctor of anthropology, he studies different cultures. I’m a student of his at Columbia, in New York City. Mr. Teit has been doing some work for Dr. Boas, gathering information about the Indian people of this area, and people in Europe are very interested. Dr. Boas has been translating it into German — he comes from Germany — and he suggested that I do the same into French. My mother is French, so I’ve been brought up to speak both English and French.”

Margaret knew Mr. Teit. He’d come to the valley before, often, and had spent time with her grandmother, asking her about how she made her baskets and even buying a few for a museum. He was a nice man, and Grandmother spoke highly of him, impressed that he was so interested in not just her baskets but in the stories of her people and her language, which he spoke quite well. Once he’d accompanied her on a plant-gathering trip and had written down the names of the plants she pointed out in the Thompson language, taking notes on what they were used for and how they were prepared. He’d come to the ranch, too, and had several meals with the Stuart family. His own first wife had been an Indian woman, Lucy Antko from Cook’s Ferry, and he was trusted by almost everyone.

“Are you staying with my grandmother?” asked Margaret, a little uncomfortable at the prospect of a stranger sleeping in the small cabin.

“No, with your uncle August and his family. But your grandmother has invited me to go for plants with her. I didn’t know you’d be visiting, and I don’t want to get in the way. Do you mind if I come along?”

“Of course not,” Margaret replied, but in fact she was a little shy in the company of this young man. He was unlike the cowhands and ranchers who formed her experience of masculine company. She wondered if she looked as untidy as she felt, her hair windblown. And what was he doing with moccasins on his feet? Her heart was beating a little faster than usual, it seemed, and she wondered if he could tell.

“Have you been at Spahomin long?” she asked.

“I came three days ago, just as all the excitement about capturing of the train robbers had begun to die down. Though I must admit it’s thrilling to think of such a dangerous gang at large in one’s own back yard, so to speak!”

Margaret was so irritated to hear his version of the story that she forgot she wasn’t going to speak about the capture. “You don’t know much if you think of them as dangerous. We all knew George Edwards, the man they’re saying is really Bill Miner. He lived and worked here for a few years, and he came to all sorts of social events. The dangerous ones, if you ask me, were the police who were shooting at everything that moved when they cornered Mr. Edwards and his friends last week. They were sitting by a campfire, doing nothing more dangerous than making lunch, when the policeman accused them of robbing a mail train.”

“You sound as though you were there. Can that be possible?” Mr. Byrne sounded more surprised than shocked.

“I’d rather not talk about it any longer.” Margaret got up and poured strong tea into mugs for the three of them and brought a bowl of sugar to the table. Then she went out to the covered box in the shallows of the creek where her grandmother kept the milk. It was foolish to be upset with someone who was a stranger to the country and its happenings, she thought, and anyway it wasn’t like her to fly off the handle. He seemed quite nice, and Grandmother obviously liked him enough to feed him and invite him on plant trips. She returned to the kitchen and drank her tea, listening to the young man describe his journey across America by train to Seattle and then his meeting with Mr. Teit at Spences Bridge.

“He is a knowledgeable man, I can see why Dr. Boas likes him so well. He says he takes out hunters who visit from all parts of the continent and he helps to run his father-in-law’s orchard at Nine Mile Ranch. He told me all about the irrigation system they have for their trees. I wouldn’t have believed apples could produce so abundantly in that dry country, but he says the soil is ideal, they only have to supply the water.”

“Yes,” Margaret replied. “We trade beef for Spences Bridge apples. My father knows the Smith family, and we get boxes of their apples. And they’re wonderful, especially the Grimes Goldens. Mrs. Smith wins prizes for them. Last year she won a silver medal for apples she sent to the Colonial Fruit Show at the Royal Horticultural Society in London, England. It was on the front page of our newspaper. I like to think of her apples travelling across the ocean to win prizes!”

“Mrs. Smith is marvellous. I met the family while I was with Mr. Teit, and I was impressed with Mrs. Smith’s dedication to her orchards,” Nicholas responded. “It’s only a year since her husband died, Mr. Teit told me, and she’s determined to carry on his work. The orchards were lovely, too. I think there’s no flower more perfect than a branch of apple blossom. My mother has an apple tree that she’s coddled along in our garden in New York. It’s called Seek-No-Further. I can’t imagine a better name for anything. But the trouble is, although it’s covered with blossoms each spring, there are only ever a few apples. I don’t suppose there’s another tree nearby to pollinate it.”

They finished their tea and then gathered some of Grandmother’s baskets together to take on their hunt for plants. Margaret’s favourite was a berry basket of split cedar root with a design of natural red and dyed-black bitter cherry bark. It had two soft deerskin straps so that it could be worn on the back, leaving the hands free for picking. Grandmother had made it as a young woman, excited by all possibilities of design, and had used a complex pattern of deer hoof and entrail. There had been another colour, sun-bleached stems of reed grass, but over the years the basket itself had faded and become soiled from use, and now the grass stems were indistinguishable from the rest of the roots.

“This is very beautiful,” said Nicholas, looking at the basket’s intricate pattern. He ran a finger along the design to feel the texture of the imbrication.

“My grandmother is really an expert basket-maker,” Margaret told him. “The one you’re using is a shape she adapted from the fish baskets to be used as a saddlebag. See, it’s got a flat side so it can sit against the horse’s flank. That design is meant to be summer lightning, something you’ll see quite a lot of if you stay around this area for long. And the basket Grandmother is using is a more typical shape, sort of conical.”

“Do you make many of them, Mrs. Jackson?”

“I have what I can use for now. Some of the ladies make them to sell to whites, but I don’t want to spend so much time on a basket and then not know where it’s going. I give a few away — to Margaret’s family, of course, and the priest has one, and Mr. Teit bought some for a museum, some that I had and wasn’t using, some that were done completely in the old way, one or two even that my mother had made. He told me it was important that they be saved to show how we did things before the whites came.”

Nicholas nodded. “I agree with him. I’ve seen some of the Coast Salish baskets in the Smithsonian Institution, and all sorts of other things, too. So many people have no idea about native cultures, and the museums are one way to educate them. Not the best, I’m afraid. The artifacts always look out of place, somehow, even when they try to give them a context.”

They were walking in back of the Reserve towards the small sloughs that dotted the higher fields. Margaret was looking for nodding onions, which her grandmother liked to use to flavour meat. The bulbs themselves were pretty to look at, pink and elongated, and they tasted delicious. They were eaten fresh, but some were dried for winter, tied into bunches. Soaking the dried bulbs in water for a few minutes made them taste almost fresh in the winter soup pots. They were also looking for the pale mauve lilies which could be found under pines as soon as the snow melted. These were a favourite spring food.

(I want to hold the girl, smooth her hair, tell her that whatever happens, I’m waiting in time to trace the lines of memory caught in a basket of coiled root, fine imbrications of cherry bark and reeds. Her hands with their long fingers, the slight bones of her ankles, the cup of her throat. Thinking of her, my own throat tightens.)

“What kind of grass are we walking on?” Nicholas asked.

“Oh, this is mostly bunchgrass, the best grass for horses and cattle,” Margaret told him. “Our cattle feed most of the year on this, all the cattle in the valley do, and they make the best beef. Even the wild game in the valley tastes better than anywhere else because of the air and this forage.”

By now Grandmother Jackson had dug up many of the pretty green onion plants, their flowers still furled in the tight green sepals. She was careful not to take too many from any one place, and she shook the dirt from each loosened clump, mindful of the tiny bulblets that were too small to take; these she tucked carefully back into the soil. In a grove of pines they found lots of mariposa lilies, and Margaret explained that they ate many kinds of lilies, but this was usually the first in the spring to be ready, and its season was quite long. Many of the others were dug after they’d flowered, the blue camas and orange tiger, for instance, but these ones were a spring treat, eaten raw or else steamed if you could find enough to take home.

They came to one of the little sloughs and sat on the shore to rest. Bulrushes surrounded the slough, and Margaret pointed out a yellow-headed blackbird nest, fastened to a clump of bulrushes like a tiny basket. “Look, there’s the male, see, he’s got white patches on his wings. He’s nervous because we’re here. There must be a red-winged pair nesting around here, too, because you hear them whistling. Do you hear, just there?”

Nicholas looked at her in surprise. “How do you know this?”

“You mean, about the birds?”

“No, I mean all of it! The plants, the baskets, and yes, the birds, too. I hear the sound, of course, but it just sounds like, well, birds.” Nicholas smiled. “I guess I’ve always imagined myself to be an outdoorsman because my family has a summer camp in the Adirondacks, in upstate New York. But I couldn’t tell you what birds were there, or plants, for that matter, apart from roses. My mother loves roses and is always pointing out the best features of her moss roses and her bourbons. And I guess I know a bit about insects from fly-fishing, because you have to know what flies are active before you choose your fly to cast.”

“Well, that’s only how I know anything, really. You’ve seen that my grandmother knows about plants, and she takes me with her when I come to visit. And I ride with my father as often as I can, when I’m not helping my mother or at school, and he loves birds. Anyway, how could you live here and not notice the blackbird’s whistle and want to know what bird makes that sound? It’s one of the first signs of spring, especially at home, because a creek runs through our home ranch, and lots of blackbirds nest there. I love to lie in my bed in the morning and hear them calling back and forth to one another. Father says the spring song is all about territory, but I think it sounds joyous, like music.”

“I’d like to meet your father. Would that be possible?”

Margaret was suddenly tongue-tied. She tried to imagine this unusual young man in her family home, talking to her father. Would her father like him? And why did it matter? He was looking at her so intently that she swallowed quickly and found her voice.

“I’m sure you’d be welcome at the ranch anytime. Perhaps you’ll call on us for Sunday dinner?”

Her grandmother encouraged the young man to talk about his work. They learned he was twenty-two and had completed a university degree the previous year. Although he had intended to read law, as his father had, he had become interested in the anthropology course he’d taken in his second year of studies. Encouraged by Dr. Boas, he pursued a degree in this field and had assisted his mentor in preparing monographs on the Indians of the west coast for the American Museum of Natural History. But it was the monograph written by Mr. Teit that had really captured his attention, and Dr. Boas had suggested that he make the translation to partly fulfill the requirements for a further degree.

That night, over a supper of lily bulbs and more of the sweet fried trout, Margaret told her grandmother about the concert in Kamloops. She tried to describe her feelings as she listened to the unfamiliar music, which spoke to her as clearly as a well-loved person might, spoke of life’s changes and deep love of country and home with such yearning and emotion. She spoke of meeting Madame Albani at the Slavin house and of riding Thistle down the deserted morning street with its shadows and phantom carriage tracks telling a strange tale of the evening before. Her grandmother listened, saying little, wondering at this girl, beloved and yet mysterious. She had felt helpless when her own daughter had gone to live with the priest, wearing a severe black dress, but she had not felt that her daughter contained depths she was incapable of knowing. Jenny had been swept up in the tide of Christianity that had been too overwhelming at the time to resist. So much had come with it, been tied to it and lost by it. It took Mrs. Jackson some time to find a way to live her own life comfortably in the face of such alien authority. And she discovered it wasn’t the gods or spirits who had changed. They could be found still in their old haunts, in the sky and water, living in the body of an animal, asking nothing more or less than they had always expected. This other god that the priests worshipped and encouraged the Indians to worship — there was no more sign of him than of any other Great Spirit, though the priests said he was all-seeing and all-knowing and could number the hairs on a person’s head, such was the greatness of his love. Mrs. Jackson felt this was not of much use to a person and that a god as powerful as the priests said he was ought to have done something worthwhile, like curing the terrible outbreaks of smallpox or other diseases brought by the whites. In the house the priests had built for this god at Douglas Lake, you could look through the high windows during Mass and see hawks or ospreys teaching their young to fish. The shadows of clouds moved across the hills like herds of foraging cattle in the early morning light, and this was something to think on while the priest spoke dramatically in a language the Indians had never heard before.

Since the day that Margaret had arrived with the crane’s bone and asked to be told about the ceremonies of the young women, the old woman had treasured the times the girl came to her, eager to learn about plants, about baskets, about her own girlhood before the ranches had filled the valley with fences and cattle. She marvelled at the girl’s ability with horses, her boundless energy, her willingness to do any task her grandmother set out for her. A few times they participated in the women’s sweat baths, and it was comforting to sit in the small lodge with the girl beside her, waiting for the heated rocks to be brought in. On the floor, fresh fir boughs and juniper they had cut earlier in the day. Margaret had almost fainted the first time, squatting with the three other women in the intense heat, but her grandmother held her arm and helped her to breathe deeply. After, they had plunged into the creek and scrubbed themselves with branches of fir. The old woman’s sadness at her own daughter’s early departure to the priests was soothed by her daughter’s child.

Lying in bed that night, Margaret heard Thistle stirring outside the window. The horse, tethered to a fence, whickered nervously as coyotes called to one another in the far hills. Margaret got up and looked out. There was a high three-quarter moon, and the yard was silver with its light. She felt excited, although she wasn’t sure why. Watching her horse in the starry yard, she felt an urge to go out quickly and ride in the moonlight. Making sure her grandmother was asleep, she quietly left the cabin, wearing only her light cotton nightdress. Approaching Thistle, she spoke to the horse softly, so as not to startle her. She untethered her, vaulting onto the mare’s back, and using her hand on Thistle’s neck to guide her, she directed her to the trail leading up behind the cabin to the moon-burnished hill. What was this feeling of wanting to enter the night? And how could you, in your mortal form? To disappear into blackness, the place where you stood in the dust untouched by your footsteps, hearing the coyote’s cry as a part of yourself, a thrilling cry from your heart’s own centre, wanting to share the riddle of this darkness, punctuated by stars, Oh, but with whom? Thistle was reluctant to leave the safety of the trail, and Margaret could feel her tremble when the coyotes yipped, a little nearer by now, so she turned back on the trail and returned to the yard.

From the window of his room in August Jackson’s cabin, Nicholas Byrne, also sleepless, was startled to see a horse coming down the hill, and on its back a girl dressed in starlight. He wondered if he was dreaming until the girl slid off the horse and he realized it was Margaret Stuart. She was wearing a nightdress, he could see, and he could also see the shape of her body through the thin fabric. Apart from paintings and the sculptures in the New York museums, he’d never seen a girl dressed in so little. The sight was otherworldly, the horse with its nostrils flaring, the girl, nearly naked, stroking its dark neck under those extraordinary stars. What a place this was, he thought, and returned to his bed, eager for the morning.

At the fete at Nicola Lake on Victoria Day, Margaret participated in the Ladies’ Race and came second. After the ribbons were presented, she came to her family with her eyes shining and her cheeks flushed, the rosette of blue satin pinned to her blouse. She’d loved the excitement of running in the warm May air, past the crowds of cheering spectators, her legs feeling powerful and strong as she raced for the finish line. She wished they had thought to bring a saddle horse so she could enter the Hurdles; the team that drew their buggy were broken to saddle, but they certainly weren’t jumpers.

“I feel so lucky I could even win the Cowboy Race,” she announced. In previous years, she had stood with her mother, watching everything but not willing to run or ride in the gymkhana events, always uncertain whether to enter the regular races or the Indian ones. The Quarter Mile Pony, for which the prizes were a cup for first and ten dollars for second place, or the half-mile dash, Klootchman, which rewarded the winner with ten dollars, and five for the one who came second. She wondered if she’d be challenged if she tried to enter the wrong race or simply steered to the one the organizers thought appropriate. This year, after her race, she was happy to take her sisters to greet families they knew, to picnic under a Lombardy poplar on a clean white cloth, to gather with others to watch the Nicola Polo Club, with her father on a horse brought for him from a neighbouring ranch, beat the Quilchena Club handily. The cyclists came in, one by one, from the Challenge Cup race, and the winner drank from the silver cup in great, thirsty gulps. It was a wonderful day, from the parade in the morning, which the Stuarts had watched from the porch of Tom Carrington’s store, to the drive home under stars with the horses trotting alertly along the moonlit road while bats flitted under cottonwoods and coyotes yipped beyond the shoulder of hill rising from the road.

Three days after Victoria Day, Nicholas headed to the Cottonwood Ranch with one of August’s children, who had agreed to ride halfway with him and direct him. He was becoming accustomed to the western style of riding, with a longer stirrup, the saddle with its high horn and cantle, the way one had to hold the reins in one hand and direct the horse by pressing them against the animal’s neck. It was certainly beautiful country to ride in, and he knew now why people spoke of a big sky. He’d never seen anything like it, apart from his views of the American plains from the train, and he marvelled at the way it went on forever in every direction. You could feel your head clear as you rode under it. He also understood now why one of his Columbia classmates had often spoken longingly of the open spaces of his home state, Montana. This must have been how Peter felt, riding on his home ranch near Helena, as though anything was possible under such a sky. There was no sense of constriction, of a vista cut off by mountains or buildings. He could see mountains, yes, but beyond them as well. His feeling that he was riding on the spine of the earth was part of his intense elation as he rode toward the Cottonwood Ranch, saying farewell to Davey with the ranch in sight in the distance.

Margaret was helping her mother with the dinner preparations. Her father had been curious about Nicholas Byrne, having heard about him from other ranchers and from August, who had come over for advice on a horse a day or two after the Stuarts had returned from Kamloops. August’s impression had been favourable, and he’d told William that the young man had tried to buy a pair of Mrs. Jackson’s moccasins to wear because he said they made his feet feel as though they’d come home. She had smiled and refused his money, saying he was welcome to the shoes as long as he wore them with respect. William had tried to question Margaret about Nicholas, but she only blushed and said he’d see for himself. That told him something he wasn’t sure he wanted to know, though seeing her at the Slavin house on the night of the concert in Kamloops told him something was developing he wasn’t quite prepared for. He was so accustomed to her company, so convinced of her good sense and judgment, that he hadn’t much thought of her as young or old, just Margaret. But seeing her in that rose dress with the little string of pearls around her throat, he realized that she’d become a lovely young woman. One day a child on a pony, long braids flying behind her, the next, well, this beauty. And if he noticed, he felt certain others would as well.

When Nicholas Byrne came riding down the dirt lane into the ranch yard, announced by the dogs, Margaret was waiting on the porch; she had seen the puffs of dust from the horse’s hooves on the dry lane before she saw anything else. William came out of the barn, introduced himself, and led Nicholas’s horse away to be unsaddled and turned out in a corral. And then Margaret greeted the young man and offered him a seat on the porch, but he told her he’d rather see the ranch buildings, if that was possible.

“I’ll just introduce you to my mother and ask if she needs me for anything before dinner.”

The kitchen was at the back of the house, and Margaret wondered what Nicholas’s impression was as she led him through the front room — no parlour here, just a comfortable room with big armchairs and lots of books on pine shelves made from trees on their own land, trees that William had cut and planed for the house he had built in the fourth year of his marriage. A table with a chess set on top, anticipating the next move, against a wall under a low window looking out on the garden. A hearth of stones selected from the Nicola River. A battered violin case on the floor, a needlepoint frame with the beginnings of a sampler. Some of Grandmother Jackson’s baskets on shelves, one on the hearth holding kindling. She wondered if his home in New York was anything like the Slavin house in Kamloops, which was now her idea of how people in cities and towns must live. The kitchen was fragrant with roasting meat and a pie made from the last of the dried apples. Cream from the Jersey cow had been whipped and sweetened and sat waiting on the deep windowsill. Jenny Stuart wiped her hands on her apron and stepped forward to shake Nicholas’s outstretched hand and welcome him to the ranch.

“It’s very nice of you to let me come for dinner,” he responded. “Your mother has been so good to me, too, and your brother, taking pity on me when they saw my tent and offering me a bed, making meals for me. I hadn’t expected to be treated so well, being a stranger to you all.”

“Strangers are welcome here,” Jenny replied in her low voice. “We just don’t have the opportunity to meet many or to give them dinner.” She smiled at Nicholas and turned to the work table, where she was chopping the first scallions from the garden to brighten the mashed potatoes and turnips.

Margaret and Nicholas went out to the barn, where William was watering the Bonny Prince and putting fresh straw in his box stall. The stallion came to the half-door of his stall and allowed them to pat his neck and admire him. Then they walked up the spacious middle aisle of the barn, William explaining about the bawling cow in one stall, a lame horse in another. Nicholas’s horse loudly rattled his bucket of oats. The smell of dry hay was sweet, and the midday sunlight shone in shafts through the open door and windows, illuminating the dust motes that hung in the air like gilded insects. Barn swallows were building their nests on the high beams, flying in from the creek with pellets of mud, plucking straw from the unused stalls. One flew back and forth from the coyote skull over the harness room door, tucking mud and straw into the fractured cheek. The two men and the girl walked out into the yard, a few horses in the home corrals watching with mild curiosity, Daisy coming to the fence when she saw Margaret with the men. Nicholas asked about the growing season, the weather, the beef market. “We take our cattle to Kamloops now, it used to be Fort Hope, over the Coquihalla Pass, and that was a journey, I tell you, having done it myself the first year I had cattle to ship. But soon there’ll be a rail line all the way to Nicola Lake from Spences Bridge, they hope to extend it as far as Coutlee by this summer, Nicola itself by next spring. We’ll be able to ship the cattle much more efficiently, not so much weight loss and loss of condition as there is now.” When the dinner bell rang, the two men were talking easily together, and Margaret ran ahead to wash and to make sure the table was ready.

When they all took their places, Jane and Mary seated on either side of Nicholas, Margaret thought how nice the room looked in the May light. The best tablecloth dressed the table, a white damask edged with Honiton lace, a gift from Aunt Elizabeth one Christmas. There was a fine rib roast, bowls of the last of the winter vegetables mashed with butter and flecked with spring onion, cut glass dishes of serviceberry relish and green tomato pickle, a little pot of shredded horseradish mellowed with thick cream, and jugs of icy spring water and fresh milk. A basket of coiled cedar root was filled with biscuits covered with a linen cloth. In the middle of the table, a blue willow vase held the first sweet peas of the year from the vines trained on netting against the eastern wall of the house.

“Ah, this looks good, Jenny, my love.” William stood at the end of the table, carving thick slices of beef, the ones close to the middle of the joint nicely pink in their centres. Margaret took the platter of meat around the table, helping each person to the slice he or she chose. Her mother served vegetables and gravy, and Jane took the bowls of condiments to those who asked for them. William said a brief grace, and everyone began to eat. For the first part of the meal there was little conversation. But as first servings disappeared and those wanting seconds were helped to meat or vegetables or another high golden biscuit, William began to ask Nicholas about his work.

“Well, I understand that you know Mr. Teit, sir. You know then, of course, that he has published several monographs on the Indian people here in the Nicola Valley as well as on the tribes at Lillooet and some others. I’ve been studying under Dr. Franz Boas at Columbia University, and he is a great admirer of Mr. Teit’s work. In fact, he commissioned much of the research that Mr. Teit has undertaken. I’m working on my master’s degree, and Dr. Boas suggested that I should translate the monograph on the Thompson Indians into French, because there is great interest in this material in Europe. I began the work this winter, and I was enchanted, I suppose you could say, by the descriptions of the Thompson people and their lives. I wanted to see it all for myself though I know that much of what Teit describes — the religious ceremonies and the hunting and fishing rituals, for instance — is no longer the usual practise. And I’ve been trying to visit each village, from the small ones below Lytton to Slaz, near the Cornwall ranch, to Quilchena, which I gather is the last real Thompson village before the Okanagans begin. Though Mr. Teit told me that Spahomin is as much Thompson as Okanagan, and I’ve been hearing both languages about equally. He felt I should meet Mrs. Stuart’s mother to see the finest baskets around and to talk to her about her knowledge of medicines and plants.”

“You are certainly right to do that. Jenny’s mother, of all the elders at Spahomin, has an amazing memory, and, more than that, she continues many of the traditional ways and knows why they’re important.”

“Yes, she’s a wonderful woman. I’ve been talking to her about baskets, and she’s given me a wealth of information. She even has me making a little coiled basket though I’m all thumbs. But she says the only way to really know is to do. So I’m doing, or trying at least!”

Margaret smiled. When her grandmother had begun to teach her to make baskets, she, too, had five thumbs on each hand. She cried when the split root refused to coil evenly, and her first imbrications were untidy and irregular. Now she could make a passable basket, but nothing like what her grandmother could do with her eyes closed. And often it seemed as if that was how she was making them, because she could coil perfectly without even looking at the emerging basket on her lap, her hands and fingers working as though of their own accord. Fly patterns, arrows, nets . . . she would reach for strands of bitter cherry, pale grasses, and the design would emerge from the surface of the basket.

After dinner, Margaret cleared the table and drew a jug of hot water from the reservoir on the stove to add to the cold water she had pumped into the sink. She began to wash the dishes and was startled to hear Nicholas ask where he might find a tea towel to begin the drying.

“Oh, you don’t have to help. You’re a guest! Why don’t you sit on the porch in the shade?”

“I’d like to help,” he answered. “I’m perfectly capable of drying dishes, and it’s nice to be in this kitchen. Anyway, I have a motive. If I help, you’ll be finished that much quicker, and I’d hoped you could ride part way back with me. I noticed some unusual pink flowers, well, maybe they’re very ordinary, but I’ve never seen them before. Anyway, they’re blooming by the road about a mile from here, and I know you’ll be able to tell me what they are.”

He stacked the dried dishes on the worktable, and Margaret put them away after she’d finished washing the pots and scalding the dishcloth. She could smell him there by the sink, a nice smell, like her father after a bath — some sort of soap, and damp hair. When his arm brushed hers, a thin flame of lightning ran up her spine and spread out along her shoulder blades. When she tried to speak after that, her words were thick in her mouth. She wondered if he could tell. Did she want to accompany him part way home? She nodded a wordless yes.

(Whatever happens, I am waiting. The cup of her throat, her small breasts . . .)

Margaret’s parents were agreeable to her escorting Nicholas part of the way back to Spahomin, and so, after making arrangements for the young man to return to spend a day or two in the high country in the next week, they said their goodbyes. Nicholas and Margaret, who had changed into her riding pants, went out to saddle the horses. Margaret decided to take Daisy, who had not been ridden since Thistle had been brought home to the ranch; she brought out her saddle, struggling with the cinch as Daisy moved about as far as her rope would allow her. Nicholas’s borrowed horse, a dun gelding, waited patiently while Margaret settled Daisy, who pranced and sidestepped excitedly. Then they rode out to the road and headed toward Douglas Lake.

“Look at that thunderhead! We often get storms after a hot day. They don’t last long, an hour or two at the most, but the sky is spectacular, even so.”

Nicholas looked to where Margaret pointed. A huge cloud formation filled the southwestern sky, lit from behind by the falling sun. They rode on, letting the horses lope a bit and reining them in by a low-growing clump of pink flowers.

“There! That’s the plant I meant. It looks almost like a cactus or succulent with its fat leaves.”

Margaret got off her horse and Nicholas followed. She bent to the clump of flowers and dug around with her fingers underneath. Pulling up a few white stringy bits of root, she said, “This is bitterroot, it’s one of the most important food plants of my grandmother’s people. They would dig big sacks of this in spring, earlier than now actually, this clump is a bit late. They’d peel the roots and dry them, and they’d use them all winter. Grandmother Jackson told me that bitterroot would be traded for dried salmon with the people over on the Fraser River and the lower Thompson. It was very good for you, although I thought the pudding my grandmother made so I could taste it was awfully bitter. No one had much sugar, so they’d use dried berries, I guess.”

“The flowers are lovely. I thought of you when I saw them.”

Margaret blushed, looking at the soft pink blooms. She got back on her horse and rode a little further, followed by Nicholas. By now, the thunderclouds were almost directly overhead and big drops of rain began to fall.

“We should get out of the open right away, because this storm is too close. See that stand of cottonwoods over there? We’ll head for that. It’s safer to wait it out under a group of trees than to stay in the open or near just one tree.”

As they reached the trees, a clap of thunder startled the horses. Margaret dismounted and pulled a rope out of her saddlebag, hobbling Daisy deftly. Nicholas watched as she did the same with his horse. Each time thunder rumbled around them, the horses would snort and lay back their ears, the whites of their eyes showing. But both showed the good sense to stay in the sheltered area, and anyway, hobbled, they couldn’t have run.

“Did I embarrass you with my comment about the flower? I’m sorry, but I got carried away. Your skin is so lovely, particularly when you blush.”

“No one speaks to me like that, I’m not used to it.” Margaret didn’t know how to have this kind of conversation, and she could only be honest. “Well, actually, one person did, but I thought she was just being kind.”

“I assure you it’s not kindness but the truth.”

Just then a brilliant flash of lightning articulated the sky to the west. Margaret counted to eight before the thunder sounded. “My father says you count the seconds between the lightning and the thunder and then divide by five. That tells you in miles how close the lightning is. Less than two miles away, right over that hill,” she said, pointing to a low rise on the other side of the road. “Exciting to have it so close, isn’t it?”

“I’m not really thinking about the lightning.” Nicholas looked at her blushing face, leaned over and kissed her mouth quickly. To his surprise, she returned the kiss with an ardour he hadn’t expected. He put his arms around her and kissed her again under the dripping cottonwoods while the horses huddled nervously together nearby.

When the storm had passed and they rode their horses onto the Douglas Lake road, Margaret felt as though she carried it all inside her — the pungent smell of damp rocks and sage, the flowering buckwheat, the blackbird’s shrill whistle, the warmth of the sun emerging from the back end of the thunderhead. Her mouth was remembering his mouth upon it, not like anything she’d ever known, yet she seemed to have waited her entire life to feel the texture of his lips, the pressure of his teeth. Nicholas was smiling at her, the blue of his eyes exactly like the bells of clematis that grew on the mountains.

She rode with him as far as the fork in the road where you could keep going to Douglas Lake or take a rougher trail up Hamilton Mountain. “You’ll be fine now,” she told him. “Just stay on the main road, and you’ll be there before dark.”

“Margaret!” He pulled his horse up beside hers and took one of her hands in his. “When will I see you next? Will you be able to ride with your father and me when he takes me to see the cattle?”

“I don’t know. I’ll see you when you come to meet with him, though.” She was wondering how she could ride with them and not touch Nicholas, not hold his hand as she was now, their fingers laced together, unwilling to become two hands again, rest on the horns of their saddles as they moved away in separate directions, each hand at a loss unknown to it before.

The tea towels arrive, and with them a carefully written account of their making and a brief description of the manufacture of linen. I keep them wrapped in their tissue and enter their arrival in my ledger. I think of the woman’s surprise at my welcoming such items for my exhibition and how little attention we pay to the archaeology of our own lives. Those reassembling our history will have such random scraps of our fabric. Photographs of isolated events, letters, a journal if we’ve been careful, a memory or two carried in the minds of our children.

When I travel to the Nicola Valley, it seems all of piece but protective of its stories. There are clues, of course — the community of graves in the Murray churchyard and the silent buildings in what’s left of the townsite. The museum in Merritt has exhibits that offer a glimpse into the mining history, the ranching history, and enough objects to make me spend hours looking into glass cases where beaded gloves and newspapers repose alongside fossils and old harnesses. And there are buildings in Merritt that were there a hundred years ago, still bearing their dry siding and windows of wavy glass, one with a copper cupola. If I stand on the sidewalk and unfocus my eyes until I can just see their shapes, it’s as if. As if.