Where the Trail Ends: American Tapestries (35 page)

The journey across the river was nothing like their first trip. Alex had been so brave back in November, coming after them in that horrible storm. She would never forget his reaching for Micah, risking his life to pull her brother out of the river. Then he’d carried her all the way back to the fort.

Tears filled her eyes at memories both beautiful and agonizing. She wasn’t leaving Alex, she reminded herself. He was leaving her.

She shouldn’t be angry with him for fulfilling his promise, but she was angry with him anyway. In his honor, he was choosing to leave her and Micah behind.

Micah turned around twice in the boat, his gaze questioning her. She smiled to reassure him even though she didn’t feel the least bit assured that she was doing the right thing for them. But she couldn’t go back. Fort Vancouver was just a resting place. It was time for her and Micah to finish this journey.

The bateau slid onto the bank, and Huey hopped out before Samantha, helping her to the ground. His hand clutched hers for a moment longer as he searched her face. “You sure you won’t marry me?”

She arched up on her toes and kissed his coarse beard before she stepped back. “My heart belongs to someone else.”

“I understand,” he replied before he tipped his hat. Then he turned quickly to row the boat back across the river.

As she and Micah stood on the shore, her brother’s hand in hers, they looked at the ship as it prepared to leave port. They would walk slowly today, following the Willamette River south. Home. Alex had said it was less than a day’s journey to the settlement.

Micah tugged her hand. “I want to watch him leave.”

“I can’t.”

“Please,” he begged.

Perhaps she could watch from afar, where Alex couldn’t see her. Where she couldn’t see him waving good-bye.

She unrolled a red-and-green wool blanket from her pack, one she’d bought with her teaching wages. Then she spread it on the ground.

Micah sat beside her, snuggling up against her arm. Boaz lay down on the grass beside them. “Can we go visit Alex someday?”

“You’d have to swim.”

He lifted his head. “I can swim.”

“A very long way.” She put her arm around her brother. “Alex said you were very brave when the Indians took you.”

“They fed me.”

“What did you eat?”

“Cooked moss and acorns.”

He followed her gaze to the ship.

“You are a true explorer, Micah.” Her brother had overcome tougher challenges in his seven years than most men did in a lifetime, and yet he was resilient. Nothing, it seemed, would stop him.

Papa would be proud.

He sat a bit taller. “An explorer and a gentleman.”

She laughed. “I believe you are.”

“I’m sorry I left without telling you,” he said.

“I almost died of fright.”

“I didn’t mean to scare you.” He reached out to pet Boaz. “I couldn’t lose him too.”

“I understand, Micah, but the next time you want to search for him, we’ll do it together. I can’t lose you either.”

He nodded. “Next time we’ll go together.”

She hugged him. “Do you still like it in Oregon Country?”

His head pumped up and down. “Very much.”

“Because we could go back East in the spring.”

This time his head went side to side. “I want to stay here, in case Alex returns.”

She couldn’t bear to tell him yet that Alex wouldn’t be returning, at least not as the same man they knew and loved. London would probably change him. Marriage certainly would.

The ship moved forward, slowly cruising toward the ocean. She and Micah sat quietly as it sailed toward the river’s bend.

“Good-bye, Alex,” she whispered.

Go with God
.

Her legs trembled as she stood, but she refused to collapse. Alex had made his choice to begin a new journey, and she must choose to do so as well.

If only there was a way she could live in the Willamette without having to marry. She and Micah could learn to make it on their own.

The crowd on the wharf cheered after the ship departed. The pelts were out of the fort’s warehouses, on their way to London, and men and women alike would celebrate for the rest of the day before they began their work anew, trading and storing the furs for next year.

Alex didn’t move from the landing until the ship carrying Lady
Judith, Lord Stanley, and Lady Stanley was beyond the bend. If he moved, he feared his heart might burst with joy.

For the first time in his life, he was as free as the Americans who traveled West. Free to work where he chose. Free to marry whom he chose. He no longer had to hide his feelings from Miss Waldron—from
Samantha
—though, admittedly, he’d done a poor job of hiding his affection last night. But he no longer had to pretend. If she would have him, he would take her in his arms as he had when she collapsed at the riverbank. Except this time he wanted to tell her that he loved her.

Alex raced from the river, toward the big house, to find Samantha.

When Judith finally absorbed the news that he’d lost his fortune along with his title, that he was nothing but the illegitimate son of a street performer, she left without another word to him. Lord Stanley explained the next morning that while Judith’s father still held his title, his fortune was nearly gone. Judith desperately needed to marry someone who could provide for herself and her family.

Alex felt sorry for her for the pressure she faced to care for her family. Perhaps Lord Dodds was unmarried. Then she could still be the wife of the committee’s president.

Alex may no longer be addressed as “lord,” but he had no intention of changing his surname to Knox. The Americans in the Willamette wouldn’t care about his name. He could choose to be Clark, without the “e,” if he wanted. He could choose to be a farmer as well.

He pounded on Samantha’s door. When no one answered, he hurried out to the gardens.

Judith’s maid had refused to go back to London with her mistress. Apparently Miriam wasn’t so enthusiastic about another five months on the ship...and Daniel, the night watchman, had asked for her hand in marriage.

Judith had seemed more distraught about the loss of her maid than she had about the loss of her prospective husband. Alex had
heard her pleading with Miriam, offering her all sorts of promises if she would board the ship, but like Samantha, Miriam never showed up for the departure of the boat. Daniel seemed to be missing as well.

Perhaps Lady Judith and Lady Stanley could take turns as maid.

Alex didn’t find Samantha and Micah in the garden so he went to the schoolhouse, but it was empty as well.

Strange
.

When he hadn’t seen Samantha at the landing, he’d assumed that she and Micah were resting after their exhausting day yesterday. Perhaps Simon had seen her.

He walked toward the Sale Shop, but before he opened the door, he heard one of the laborers arguing with Simon inside.

“She said I could have her credit,” the man spouted.

“I don’t care what she told
you
,” Simon replied. “I need her to tell me.”

“But she’s gone.”

Alex pushed open the door and stepped inside. Huey Osant, one of their carpenters, was standing across the counter from Simon with both fists on the countertop.

Alex stepped forward. “Who is gone?”

Both men turned, and Huey’s eyes filled with surprise. And then fear.

“Who is gone?” he repeated.

Huey cleared his throat. “Samantha and the boy.”

Alex clutched his fists. “Where did they go?”

“Across the river.”

Alex grabbed the man’s collar, pushing him up against the wall. “What do you mean, they went across the river?”

“I told her you wouldn’t like it if she left.”

“Told her?” Alex raged. “Why didn’t you
stop
her?”

“I couldn’t. She insisted on paddling herself across the river.”

He shook his head. Samantha had almost drowned on that river. Why would she insist on leaving on her own? He relaxed his grip on Huey’s collar. “What did she say when you told her I wouldn’t like it?”

“She said it didn’t matter, that you were leaving first.”

Simon’s hand was on Alex’s shoulder; he released Huey’s collar. He brushed his hands on his pants. “Did you take her across?”

Huey nodded. “I didn’t think you or McLoughlin would want her to go alone.”

“And because she offered him her store credit in return,” Simon said.

Huey shrugged. “I needed a few things.”

Alex wanted to strike something—Huey Osant, in particular—but hitting this man wouldn’t help him find Samantha.

What if another Indian tribe decided they wanted both the son and the daughter of a god? What if another wolverine tried to attack them? As far as he knew, Samantha no longer had a gun to protect herself or Micah. If an Indian tribe took them away, he’d never be able to follow their tracks.

Why did she have to run?

“I asked her to marry me,” Huey continued, staring at Alex. “But she said her heart belonged to someone else.”

The man’s words emboldened him, calming his fury. Perhaps she had run for the same reason he’d decided to stay. Perhaps she did love him as much as he loved her.

His heart raced. “What did they take with them?”

“They both had packs...and their dog was carrying supplies on his back too.”

At least they had Boaz.

He turned away from Huey, toward Simon. “I must buy another gun.”

“What’s wrong with yours?”

“I traded it.”

“Wasn’t that your uncle’s gun?”

He shrugged.

“You must have traded it for something special.”

Alex flashed back to yesterday, to Micah looking up at him in the midst of the Indians as if he fully trusted that Alex knew what to do to rescue him. He would have done anything to keep Micah safe. “It was worth the trade.”

Simon shooed Huey out of the store, and then he helped Alex find a rifle.

“I’m going to need some other supplies too,” Alex said. “For a journey.”

Simon’s eyebrows arched. “Where are you going?”

He felt almost guilty saying it. “To the Willamette.”

Simon threw his head back and laughed. “I believe you might be turning into an American.”

Alex stiffened at first, and then he joined his friend in the laughter.

Simon handed him sea biscuits to eat, candles, an extra blanket, and a twist of tobacco.

“I don’t chew tobacco.”

“But it’s better to trade tobacco than your new gun,” Simon said with a wink. “Who’s going to be in charge while you’re gone?”

Alex took the bundle into his arms. “I am no longer an employee of the company.”

Simon eyed him. “What do you mean?”

“When McLoughlin returns from his trip, he’ll discover that I am a free man.”

“You’re even talking like an American.”

He laughed again. “I suppose I am.”

Simon siphoned black powder into a horn for him and handed it over the counter. “Now all you need is an American wife.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

Tears of joy trickled down Samantha’s cheeks when she saw the chinked cabins clustered together at the base of the Willamette Falls. She and Micah had done it. A year after leaving Ohio, a year of walking and waiting and not knowing what would happen next, they had reached the end of their pilgrimage.

She stopped for a moment by the river, surveying the beautiful paradise in front of her. The valley was lush with green from the winter and spring rains, a blue ribbon of river cutting through it. The mammoth waterfall bent like a horseshoe, white mist spraying overhead. To her left, a sea of vibrant blue and violet flowers mixed with orange blossoms, and beyond, as in a perfect landscape painting, dark forest blended with the flowers and grass.

In the distance, she could see the snowy peak of Mount Hood. The giant, overseeing it all.

Papa would have liked it here.

There were about thirty homes in the valley near the falls. Some of the houses looked like makeshift shelters, while others looked permanent with fences and gardens. There were no palisades around the homes, as at Fort Vancouver. Perhaps the valley was a safe place for her and Micah to live.

They walked past a woman tending her garden, and Samantha stopped to speak with her. The woman couldn’t have been more than twenty-two, and she wore a brown dress, her hair tangled in the sweat on her face.

The woman studied her for a moment. “Where did you come from?”

“Ohio—almost six months ago. I’ve been living at Fort Vancouver.”

The woman stuck out her stained hand. “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Samantha shook her hand. “Do you know Lucille McLean?”

“No, I don’t.”

Samantha’s heart started to plunge again. Perhaps Lucille hadn’t made it the entire way to the Willamette after all.

“I only know one Lucille, honey,” the woman continued, “but her last name’s not McLean.”

Samantha caught her breath. “What is it?’

“Morrison.”

Samantha clapped her hands together as she thanked the woman. This must be what Lucille was hinting at in the letter. Lucille had not only survived the journey, but perhaps Katherine had a beautiful mama now—and Titus a wife.