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 [Sequel to Birthright] COVENANT continues the story of Harry and Judith as they struggle to start over on a long-abandoned farm on the banks of the San Poil River on the Colville Indian reservation. This beautiful Valley of the Cliffs is the ancestral home of Judith's people. The family must live in a tipi and work the soil with Harry's grandfather's last draft horse, an ancient mare. Almost no one believes they will succeed. From skeptical neighbors to authorities outraged at their primitive living conditions, they meet resistance everywhere they turn. Only Walt and Frances, an elderly farm-couple facing their last days will help them.
The neighboring rancher wants their place as part of a development he is planning and will go to any lengths to get it. A group of survivalists, outsiders who have moved to the valley, form a militia group and see Harry and Judith as impediments to be removed. Local authorities have a list of crimes they accuse Harry of and soon he is the focus of a major investigation. They say he has led a plot to bomb Grand Coulee Dam. Again, the ending will surprise and shake you.
CHAPTER 1
Harry looked at his hands. The cold felt good to them, made them alive. He moved his fingers, felt the strength in them. His hands always had embarrassed him. Farmer's hands. They were too thick, the nails too tough, to be mistaken for a piano player's, or a banker's.
Long ago he had learned to hide his hands in his field jacket pockets or wear gloves or just keep them out of sight. It had begun in Junior High School when the worst, most degrading thing you could be called in the rural towns was "Farmer." It had replaced "moron" and "idiot" and "fool."
Now his future was certainly in these farmer's hands. He hoped they were as good as the old man's hands. With his own hands Harry's grandfather had built and nurtured an entire homestead after he had turned sixty.
Harry thought of Dad's sticky hand on the cold Beretta. He shivered and reached down to pat Reject and wondered if the dog remembered, too. Reject licked Harry's fingers, his tongue hot against the chilled skin.
Harry opened the pickup door for the dog, then followed him in. He started the engine and sat for a few minutes, watched the dawn lighten the snowy wheat fields on the heights far across the river. Below, it was dark where the walls of the great coulee broke in four-hundred-foot cliffs down to the still-shadowed Columbia.
He pulled onto the thick ice of the road and was pleased. Loaded as it was, the old International crept down the treacherous grade without a slip. Harry was glad he had switched the good winter tires from the Chevy the bank had sold at the auction. They owed him that much at least.
The San Poil River, too, was dark when he got to the bottom, but it was warmer here on the canyon floor, the highway nearly clear of snow. As he turned north, upriver, a large bird, a raven or owl or an eagle flapped quickly out of his headlight beams.
He drove more slowly, tried to make a plan, but everything tumbled into his mind at once. Judith and the kids. The old mare to move. He would need feed for her, and shelter. And shelter for himself, the pickup was a little cramped for a home. And he couldn't afford to eat in restaurants for long on the fifteen hundred dollars he had left.
Besides, he had ground to work. Soil and water and time seemed suddenly like blessings, although he had long taken them for granted. He had no machinery now, of course, and no tractor. That was all gone in the auction.
He did have the old mare, but some might say she never would pull again. He had heard of horses that had worked even older and she was the old man's mare, no one knew more about them or raised finer.
He remembered hayfields along the river when he and Judith were last there. He needed to meet the neighbors. "The whole world depends on neighbors," he heard the old man say in his mind. There had been a time, after the old man died, when Harry had been afraid that voice would go away. Now he was sure it never would leave him.
Daylight touched the tops of the tallest Ponderosa Pines and Black Cottonwoods and glowed from the fogbanks caught in the river bends. Already it felt a little like home. He thought of Judith's ancestors, his children's ancestors, who had walked and ridden and canoed this Valley of the Cliffs for many thousands of years. He always would be a newcomer.
The valley widened and yard lights shown from scattered farms. Eyes sparkled and he slowed. A doe bounded away, faded into the grayness. Harry could think only of Judith's eyes.
He missed her and Rebecca and Little Joe more than he had admitted. As with a mortal wound,his mind had not accepted pain it could not bear. Now, here in their valley, eased by the hope of seeing them soon, he felt the loss, found himself crying. He looked in the rearview mirror and brushed away the tears, felt Reject lick the salt from his fingers.
The further up the valley he drove, the deeper the snow. He was more than two miles past the Cache Creek turnoff when he realized he had gone too far. He turned back but could not find a break in the banks thrown up by the snowplows. The road to the little bridge was just a faint depression alongside a field. It would not be passable until after breakup unless he could get it plowed. He remembered a store a few miles up the river.
The store still was dark and the sign said "Closed." He thought of driving all the way to Republic but decided it made more sense to wait. He saw a pay telephone and looked at his watch. 7:27. Judith might not be gone. He searched his pockets for change but came up with less than a dollar.
The operator would not let him bill the call to his parents' number because no one was there to confirm the charge. Finally he gave her Uncle Paul's number and after a brief silence she told him the charge was approved. The line rang several times then he heard Rebecca's voice but he could not make her understand who he was. Judith came on.
"Who is this?"
"Harry," he said and felt the constriction of his voice.
"Oh, Harry. What do you want?"
"Just to talk for a minute."
"We're almost late," I have to go."
"But last night you said..."
"This is morning,I have a job interview and kids to get to daycare."
He said nothing.
"Call me this evening," she said finally. "We'll be here by six-thirty."
He started to say something, stopped and hung up the receiver.
He sat in the pickup again and watched the snow fall through the bright circle cast by a single streetlight. He felt himself fall with the snow and half-expected to be buried by the storm. He shook himself awake and wished for coffee. Still no sign of life in the store.
He decided to call Uncle Paul. He hated to go back there where they all knew him and would ask about Mom and Dad and the auction and the funeral. But if anyone would help him it was Uncle Paul. He was the closest thing to the old man left alive.
As he walked back to the telephone, a log truck roared in from the north, it's trailer loaded piggyback. The truck stopped and the driver got out, left the engine racing, blowing out thick, half-burned diesel that swirled the snowflakes.
As Harry dialed, the driver stood near the telephone booth, watched him intently. Harry turned away and waited several rings until Uncle Paul answered.
"Harry. Where you at?"
"Some store up here on the river," Harry said. There's a lot of snow up here."
"The San Poil gets lots of water, at least compared to this desert."
"I don't know if I can find a place for the old mare up here. Or hay."
"You could bring her here, but that could cause trouble."
"I bought her fair and square," Harry said.
"You know the banker," Uncle Paul said. He laughed in his dry way and Harry thought of the scar across his uncle's eye that always made it seem like he was winking.
"What can he do? I have a bill of sale."
"You have to admit that the bill of sale was obtained through coercion. At least from the story you told me."
Harry laughed. "I didn't hurt him. I don't think he'd testify against me. By the time he heard the deputy ask about the body, he wasn't even going to remember where he was." Harry was surprised that already he could make a joke about his own father's body.
"They'd pay him off," Uncle Paul said, "just to get at you. They're still pissed-off about the trailer. They already called this mornin' to say they're goin' to pick it up today. 'Don't touch anything,' the banker said."
"That bastard. The bank will get their money, now, from Dad's insurance."
"But they don't have it yet, and until they do, they can try to collect from the survivors. And the insurance company will try to beat it, claim suicide isn't covered, or somethin'."
A movement caught Harry's eye and he turned to see the log truck driver dance in his shiny cowboy boots, impatient for the phone. Harry gave him a look that backed him off a little.
"Well," he said to Uncle Paul, "they won't get the old mare back. I need to move her out of there today, before that asshole finds out we got her back."
"You can use my truck. But you should find another place. Find a neighbor up there. Someone must have an extra stall and hay."
The truck driver managed to get Harry's attention again, knocked the snow from his wide hat and stamped his feet.
"I've got to go," Harry said. "I'll see what I can do up here. Can I store some stuff at your place? Judith's loom and grandma's cookstove and some other stuff I don't have shelter for?"
"No problem," Uncle Paul said.
The truck driver glared at Harry and Harry glared back at him, made a little mock-bow as he left the telephone booth. He heard the door slam. He hoped that wasn't one of the neighbors.
The snowfall lessened and he turned off the windshield wipers, watched for the farmhouse just below his turnoff. The house sat back from the road at least two hundred feet, but the drive was well plowed. The house was old, made of logs with a stone porch. It was spacious, as though it once had been a hunting-lodge or rich man's retreat. There was a large steel machine-shed and beyond it a classic board-and-bat barn with a high loft and wide overhangs. Cows with new calves ate hay from a wooden feeder along one side of a large pole corral.
Harry parked and looked for someone. Two dogs charged at the pickup and Reject barked at them. Harry soothed him and got out, held him in while he closed the door. One of the dogs nipped at his leg and he kicked at it. These were not the usual farm-dogs, all noise. These two were stocky with large heads and clearly did not like strangers. Some German breed, Harry thought. He watched them closely as he walked towards the house.
He heard a voice and turned. A large red-faced man in a cowboy hat hailed him from the door of the steel building. Harry walked towards him and the dogs growled on each side of him. The man chewed a toothpick at Harry for a moment then said,"Come inside here. I got this cow down with a breech calf."
Harry followed him in and saw the cow in question. She lay on the floor, halter-tied to a post. The legs of a calf protruded from under her tail and she was in great distress. The rancher had hung a block-and-tackle from another post and hooked it onto the calf's legs with a slipknot. He pulled out the slack and gave it another pull. The cow bawled and struggled. He held the rope and poked her in the ribs with the toe of his boot and she wobbled to her feet. He pulled again and the cow nearly went down.
The rancher was covered with sweat, looked at Harry. "Give me a hand, here, son," he said and held out the free end of the rope.
Harry looked at the cow and the upward angle of the calf's legs. "You'll have an easier time if you slack off and turn the calf."
"You ever pulled a calf?"
"Quite a few," Harry said. "Without killin' the cow."
The rancher slacked the rope. "Be my guest."
Harry touched the cow on the hip and she trembled. He stroked her until she quieted a little, then he talked to her. "Take it easy, girl. We'll take care of you."
He took hold of the calf's legs and pushed it gently back into the cow. She had a contraction and it pushed against him and he held the calf still until it was over. He could feel faint movements in the tiny legs as the calf struggled for birth. He pushed again, tried to turn it but could not.
He worked one of his hands into the birth canal and held against another contraction and tried again. The third time he felt it turn, then more, but could only turn it halfway. He remembered a time the old man had a similar problem.
"Give a pull," Harry said, "but get rid of that come-along."
The rancher unhooked the rope and pulled the calf's legs.
"Easy." Harry said.
As the rancher pulled, he turned and the calf began to slide out. They gained more with a new contraction and in the lull, Harry managed to turn it a little further. On the next contraction the cow gave a great bawl and the calf came out with a rush, nearly sprawled them in the bloody straw.
The rancher looked at Harry. "Thanks. You're pretty good at that. You a vet or somethin'?"
"No," Harry said. "Just what my granddad taught me. He was a farmer."
The rancher dug in his overalls, came out with a dented flask, held it out to Harry. "Old Granddad. Have a nip."
"No, thanks," Harry said. "It's a little early for me."
"Suit yourself." He unscrewed the cap, tipped up the flask and swallowed a couple of times. He waved the flask towards the cow. "I just don't have the time to baby 'em like that. I yank 'em out and take my chances. I got two more waitin' out there that may need help, too."
"How many head you got?"
"Four hundred. Takes that many to make any money anymore."
"That's a lot of cows. You got any help?"
"Just my kid, and he's pretty much worthless. Can't afford no hired help. What brings you out here anyway?"
"Lookin' for hay," Harry said. "And a place for a horse."
"Way out here? This somebody else's horse?"
"No, she's mine. I've got a bill-of-sale."
"So why do you want your horse way out here?"
"I've got a little place," Harry said. "It belongs to some relatives. Just up the river."
"Where's that?" the rancher looked at him closely. "How far up the river."
"Across from your hayfield there, where that little bridge crosses."
"How big of a place did you say it was?"
Harry laughed. "I didn't. It's a hundred and sixty acres."
The rancher studied him. "You talkin' about that Indian place?"
"They're Colvilles," Harry said.
"You're not Indian."
"No. My wife is."
"Oh," the rancher said. "I thought they were all dead and gone." He shook his head. "Well I got no place to keep horses. Don't care for 'em much. When I was a kid I had to feed the horses before I could eat. Kind of soured me on 'em."
"I might be able to rig a pen, over on my place, if I could buy some hay."
"Can't help you. I may be truckin' in feed myself before spring."
"You know any other neighbors might help me?"
"Nope. Well there's some hippies up a mile that used to have some horses. I think they still have a corral and kind of a shed."
"Well, thanks. I'm Harry Isaacson." He held out his hand.
"Carlson," the rancher said and briefly shook his hand. "John Carlson." He held the door open and Harry went out.
The two dogs harassed Reject who barked furiously in the pickup's windshield. "Shut up," Harry said to the one on the driver's side. It backed away, head down. He got in and it barked again as he pulled away.
He looked for the place a mile up the river and didn't find it at first. Finally he saw a small A-frame cabin back in a thick patch of scrub pine. The driveway was blocked but the snowplow had turned around there and cleared a place wide enough to park off the road.
Harry climbed over the snowbank and walked towards the cabin. There was a thin drift of woodsmoke from a metal chimney and he saw a long gray bus with no wheels on the far side of the small clearing. There was an old Volvo, covered with snow, and a van someone had swept part of the snow from.
A German Shepherd-looking dog bounded out to meet him, growled and barked playfully, then escorted him to the door.
Harry knocked, but there was no sound. He waited, knocked again. He thought he heard movement and tried again.
Finally, as he walked away, the door cracked open and a woman's voice asked, "Who are you?"
"Hi," Harry said. "I'm a new neighbor." He saw a face appear between dirty curtains on the window in the door. She wiped a hole in the film of condensation and he saw that she tried to look beyond him.
"Who are you?" she asked again.
"I'm moving in. Down below Cache Creek."
"Carlson's?" she asked suspiciously.
"Across the road," Harry said.
"There's no house there," she said, tried to wipe a larger peephole.
"There will be. Can I come in?"
The curtains closed together and he heard her call to someone. "It's some guy. Says he's movin' in down by Carlson's. He ain't from Welfare."
Harry heard a male voice answer gruffly. After a few minutes the door opened slightly and an eye peered through. Then it opened wider.
"What do you want?" the male voice asked.
"I'm moving in down the river a ways. Carlson said you might be able to keep a horse for me for a while."
"You a friend of Carlson's" The door opened a little wider and Harry could see two eyes and a scruffy beard.
"No," Harry said. "Just met him. Helped him pull a calf. It's a little cold out here."
The door opened hesitantly.
"Come in," the guy said, seemed reluctant. He was tall and gangly, dressed in jeans and a thermal underwear top. The woman disappeared into the back.
Harry noticed several marijuana roaches in an ugly clay ashtray and some empty beer bottles nearby. He looked for a place to sit, gave up.
"I've got a place across the road from Carlson's hayfield. I need someone to keep a horse for me for a while. I can pay something and buy some hay."
"That Indian place? You don't look Indian."
"My wife is," Harry said.
"We ain't got no place for no horse. Besides we're goin' to Seattle. Soon as she gets her check. Shoulda been here last week."
"Anyone else in the area?" Harry asked. "It's just one old draft horse."
"Naw." He shook his head. Then he looked at Harry. "Well, there's Eliot. I think he's back already. Always spends the winter back east or California or somewhere. He's got his racehorses. You can't see the place from the road."
"Eliot. That his first name or last?"
"I don't know. Just Eliot."
"How do I find Eliot?"
"It's about two more miles up. All you can see is the driveway. No mailbox or nothin'."
"So, two miles up." Which side?"
"Same side. There's just this driveway, winds around behind some rocks then up a ways. Big fuckin' house up on a ridge."
"Thanks," Harry said.
He drove the two miles upriver and found the nicely plowed driveway. He turned onto it and followed it around a couple of tight bends and up a steep grade. The house was huge, newly built, two stories with lots of glass and bright pine siding. Woodsmoke boiled from twin chimneys set at each end. There was a matching barn surrounded by neatly fenced paddocks. If there were horses there, they were inside, out of the cold.
Harry walked up the freshly swept stone steps and pushed the doorbell button. There was no answer but he felt he was watched. He heard Reject bark and turned to see a Doberman-Pinscher charge at him. The dog was silent, acted like he meant business. Harry turned to face the charge and the dog stopped at the bottom of the steps and growled softly. Harry kept an eye on the dog and pushed the doorbell again. He could hear chimes sound deep in the house.
Finally there were soft footsteps and the door opened. A rather short man about his own age stood there, dressed in jeans and cowboy boots with a work-shirt but Harry noticed that his hands were soft and white.
"Mr. Eliot?"
"Close enough," the man said and waited.
"Some people down the river sent me up," Harry explained. "I'm looking for a place to keep a horse for a while. While I get set up."
"Set up?"
"I've got a place on the river. My wife's family does. We're moving in."
"What place is that?"
"Across from Carlson's. The Indian place."
"I know the place. Nice spot. What kind of horse."
"An old mare. A Percheron. I'm planning to farm with her."
"That'd be a trick. I can't take in any strays. Those big horses just bulldoze through corrals and stuff. I've got a lot of money into this place."
"She's real gentle. My granddad worked her for almost twenty years."
"Sorry, can't help you," Eliot said, started to close the door.
"Do you know anyone else?"
"You talked to Carlson?"
Harry nodded.
"The only other people right around here... besides those hippies... are those old people." He thought for a minute. "Davis, I think their name is. But I don't know if you could even get in there. They don't come out in the winter. You might try up around Republic. There's a couple of Dude Ranches up there."
"These Davises. How do I find them?"
"They're right in there behind the place you're talking about, the Indian place," Eliot said. "You cross that little bridge and follow it in. No one else in there."
"I know the bridge," Harry said. "Thanks."
Eliot silently closed the door.
There wasn't enough room to get the pickup out of the driving lane where the road over the bridge left the highway so Harry took a run at it and got his right wheels well into the snowbank. Snow came up above the passenger side window. He hoped it wouldn't melt and leak inside. He might have to chain-up to get out again.
He whistled Reject out and locked the doors. He thought about taking a rifle along but decided against it. He checked the load in the back and locked the canopy. He climbed over the snowbank the plows had made and as he walked towards the bridge he thought about the stuff in the back of his pickup.
There was Judith's loom. He had so often watched her sing to herself as she wove on it, the children quietly at play near her. Her patterns seemed to emerge from nothingness, growing out of her mind. And there was Grandma's cookstove, a blue enameled Monarch that had come with them from Kansas. He couldn't begin to count the wonderful meals he had eaten that she had cooked on it or the number of times he'd warmed himself by it as he listened to the old man talk. And there was the old man's forge. He wished now that he'd paid more attention all the times he'd watched his grandfather heat and shape horseshoes or hammer out parts to repair his equipment.
Harry was determined to remember all that he could and find someone to teach him what he couldn't remember. He knew now that these few simple things were his real birthright, a legacy greater than the farm and all the equipment and tools sold at yesterday's auction. These things and the memories and skills that went with them.
He felt a little sorry for Mom, but he had begun to feel nothing but relief that the farm was gone with its mountain of debt. A new start was what he needed, no matter how small or difficult. Something he could do with his own hands. He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of the old man's black wool coat.
The little bridge was buried under the snow. It was as though he walked a snowbank across the sparkling little river. A light mist rose from the water and he noticed that the sky had lightened, the clouds might break.
He walked on, passed the spot where he and Judith had made love so long ago on a green summer day. He shook his head as he remembered how he had gotten depressed afterwards and left her to go back to the city, sure she never would marry him.
He thought of Judith as she had sounded this morning, harried, almost desperate, but doing her best to cope with the city and the children. Alone. He felt sick at the thought of the children in day-care, then school, and then day-care again as they waited for her. He had to get them, bring them here. Judith had said she had a job interview, as though she didn't believe their conversation last night when he'd said he would come for them. Well, he supposed she had good enough reason to doubt him. That would change.
The road almost was invisible, just a soft depression in the snow bounded by small pines. It wound through the flat river bottom then began to climb. He reached a cleared field and saw tracks, horse and human. A wisp of smoke rose from the trees beyond the field.
The little house made of silvered wood and covered with snow, blended into the background. The barn, too, seemed to have grown where it stood. Like the old man's house, it faced south. Harry smiled to himself. He was sure the floor plan would be the same, too, bedrooms on the east to catch the morning sun, livingroom on the west for evening light. He wondered if the cookstove was a Monarch.
Horses, big ones, munched hay in the pole corral, and Harry saw cattle along a feeder just beyond. Reject's ears went forward and the hair along his back bristled. Harry looked where the dog looked and saw a Border Collie charge towards them. He stopped and waited, Reject stopped beside him. The dog slowed as he neared them, then came nose to nose with Reject. They sniffed suspiciously, slowly relaxed.
Harry moved on, thought he saw someone near the barn. A man turned towards him. His black wool coat nearly matched the one Harry wore, the one he'd taken from the old man's house after the auction. Sparse gray hair showed beneath a battered Stetson. His eyes appraised Harry, then smiled in welcome.
"Don't get much company this time of year. How can I help you?"
Harry smiled back. "I'm plannin' to move in, on that place over by your bridge. I've got a horse I need to board for a while."
"What sort of a horse?"
"An old mare, a Percheron. She belonged to my Granddad."
The man looked at Harry with new interest. "What you doin' with a horse like that? Nobody has draft horses anymore except beer companies and crazy old coots like me."
"Well," Harry said with a grin, "I'm not from a beer company."
"You plannin' to work her?"
"I hope so. I want to learn how, if I can."
"Nothin' to it. So how long you need to board her?"
"I'm not sure. Until the weather breaks. I need to get a place built and get my wife and kids."
"New neighbors," the man said with obvious pleasure. "Come inside and meet the wife. By the way, my name is Davis, Walt Davis."
"Harry Isaacson," Harry said as they shook hands.
Harry was right about the floor plan. With a few differences it might have been his grandparents' house. And the cookstove was a Monarch, shiny chrome and green enamel. A Dripolator steamed with fresh coffee beneath the warming ovens.
"Frances, come meet our new neighbor," Walt said and she came in, wiped her hands on a gingham apron. "He's movin' in to the old McTavish place. Wife and kids, too."
"Bill and Martha would be happy to know there was young folks movin' in there." She shook hands with Harry and smiled sweetly. "I'll get you a cup of coffee. Cold out there this mornin'."
"Bill and Martha helped us get started here when we were just young folks," Walt said.
They sat at the kitchen table and Harry had a hard time concentrating on the conversation. Everything was so similar, so comforting, almost uncanny. Walt would be happy to keep the old mare for him, had plenty of hay. He offered to plow out the road with his drag.
"Don't usually bother with plowin' it this time of year. No reason to go to town anyway. And it keeps the hunters out."
When finally they went back outside it had cleared and the little farm sparkled under an intense sky. Harry hoped his new place would someday look as good. The brightness blinded him and he shaded his eyes as they talked. He said he would be back the next day or at worst the day after.
Reject had found a friend and the two dogs chased each other up and down the road. Harry had to whistle several times before Reject broke it off. He licked Harry's hands and danced around him. Harry led the way back towards the pickup with a brisker step and lighter heart.
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