Free Dreams Beneath Your Feet by Win Blevins

western rim of America.
    The outfit plodded down a long hill and through some cottonwoods until the fort came into view. Hannibal was the one who spotted it first. He grinned and said at large, “They’re running up a welcome.”
    Up the flagpole slid a big declaration in red, white, and blue—the national flag of Great Britain. A political statement.
    Sam thought,
Now this may kick up even more fun.
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    â€œB ARDOLF ,” R OLLER CALLED down, “there’s visitors.”
    Frank Ermatinger climbed the stairs to the fort’s bastion and pointed his field glass where Roller had been looking.
    The nickname Bardolf was an irritant. When Ermatinger took the post’s furs downriver to Fort Vancouver the last time, he took his one American employee, Roller, along for help, plus the two Owyhees—Hawaiians made first-rate laborers. On their arrival Dr. John McLoughlin welcomed them with a glass of rum. Though McLoughlin was the muckety-muck of all of Hudson’s Bay Company’s operations in Oregon Territory, and Ermatinger’s supervisor, Ermatinger despised him. Knowing that, McLoughlin twitted Ermatinger whenever he had the chance. This time he had a little fun by calling Ermatinger Bardolf.
    A backwoods American, Roller hadn’t understood about Bardolf. McLoughlin explained that this was a drunken fool from some of Shakespeare’s plays—“with a nose made red and bulbous by drink,” added the doctor.
    Ermatinger unconsciously covered his nose with one hand. It had been big and pink even when he was a child. “I am no drunk, Sir.”
    â€œWe know you for a good and sober man, Bardolf.”
    Actually, Ermatinger did like his tot of rum.
    Roller thought all this was a hoot and especially liked the idea of addressing his boss without the “Mr.” Soon half the staff at Fort Vancouver called Ermatinger just plain Bardolf, and now all the staff at Fort Hall did. Luckily, the employees were only Walker, Roller, the Owyhees, and a German. The German, heir to a more formal culture, called him Herr Bardolf.
    Now Ermatinger had the party riding toward the fort into focus. It was Morgan, with the other Americans and some Crows.
    Ermatinger knew Sam Morgan, Joe Meek, Doc Newell, and the half-breed Hannibal MacKye well enough. Whatever beaver they took on the spring hunt was due to his generosity. Relying on their character, he supplied them on credit. The deal was, they would bring their furs to him and not take them to rendezvous, where the American Fur Company would be buying and selling. Ermatinger wanted to get a leg up on the Americans at every opportunity.
    This time, from what he could see, it wasn’t going to be much of a leg up. The packhorses bore only a meager number of furs.
    Ermatinger snorted. He wondered if he’d ever get out of this country. He hated this post, the most remote in all of Oregon Territory. The supposed majesty of the Tetons meant nothing to him, and he had never seen the wonders his men described in the Yellowstone country. He hated the Snake River plains to the west. Somehow the plains had gotten the idea of growing lava rocks instead of grasses. Nor did he give a fig for the Indians he traded with, mostly Shoshones. He was not even deeply attached, if truth be told, to his attractive wife, Mary, and their daughter, a two-year-old everyone else found adorable.
    In the center of his heart he held an ambition, hot as a dry leaf under a magnifying glass. He wanted a high position at Fort Vancouver. He believed he could get it, and to hell with however McLoughlin felt about him.
    His performance here in the upper Snake River country wascritical to the Company. True, the beaver were getting trapped out. The advantage of that was, the American trappers were disappearing along with the beaver.
    In a short time Ermatinger had increased the post’s annual fur shipment by severalfold. He’d gotten more and more trade from the