Where the Trail Ends: American Tapestries (36 page)

She guided Micah away from the garden, and they followed the woman’s directions to a cabin fifty yards away from the river. A pelt hung in the doorway in lieu of a door, and there was a small window in the front, its shutters folded back.

“Hello?” she called into the front room.

“I’ll be right there!” Lucille’s voice called back to her.

Lucille glanced out the window and shrieked when she saw Samantha and Micah. She ran outside and wrapped her arms around them both, hugging them tightly.

“You’re here.” Lucille held on to Samantha’s hands as she looked at her. “I can’t believe you’re finally here.”

Samantha smiled at her friend’s enthusiasm. Perhaps she and Micah weren’t so alone.

“Oh, we have to tell my parents and the Kneedlers and Jack and Ali—” She stopped, seemingly horrified at her own words.

“It’s all right,” Samantha said. “I assumed Jack was going to marry.”

“He seems quite happy.” Lucille paused. “Did you know I married as well?”

Samantha smiled again. “I figured it out.”

Lucille pulled back a long pelt and welcomed them into her home.

A crudely carved table sat in the front room, and a fire smoldered in the hearth. The room was sparsely decorated, with only tin dishes lining a shelf along the wall and gingham curtains framing the windows. Katherine had been playing on the swept dirt floor with a corncob doll, but when she saw Samantha and Micah, she rushed to Lucille and clung to her skirt.

“Titus is out planting a field with my father. They both work from sunup to sundown, but Katherine, here, keeps me good company and sometimes my parents let Shep come visit us too.” She pulled the girl even closer to her, and Katherine beamed. “Jack told us you stayed at the fort, and he told us about your father. I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you.”

“I wanted to come visit you at the fort, but we haven’t stopped working since we arrived. I kept praying that you’d make it here safely.” Lucille studied her a moment longer. “You look exhausted.”

“I haven’t had much sleep lately.”

“I’m afraid there’s not much sleep to be had here either.”

Samantha glanced around her friend’s new home again. She hated to admit it, but now she was the jealous one.

“You have a lovely home.”

“It’s all temporary,” Lucille explained as she looked with Samantha around the room. “Just until Titus can build us a better house this summer, with a real parlor and a front door and maybe four or five rooms instead of two.”

“It’s a much better place to live than a tent.”

Lucille laughed as she reached out and took her hands. “I haven’t
missed my tent, but I’ve sure missed you, Samantha. You always make me laugh.”

It had been a long time since she’d laughed, as well.

As the woman talked, Micah knelt on the floor beside Katherine and opened up his knapsack. He pulled out his wooden animals, and Katherine squealed like her mother had minutes before, diving for a lion. When Micah made it roar, she laughed with delight.

Lucille nodded toward the children playing. “I sure wish you were here to stay.”

Samantha hesitated, trying to muster enthusiasm in her words. “We are here to stay.”

Lucille clapped her hands. “Katherine and I will both have friends.”

Samantha smiled. She was grateful for her friend, but the thought of this new life felt empty without Alex. Would it ever feel like home without him?

As the children played, Lucille made dandelion tea for her on the cookstove that was dented from the trip. “Titus is going to get me a real stove as soon as he is able.”

“He sounds like he is a good husband to you.”

Lucille nodded, the familiar smile easing across her face, both calm and warm. “He treats Katherine and me like royalty.”

She added a spoonful of honey to sweeten the tea then handed a tin mug to Samantha. “Titus bought the honey from another family, but he said we can keep bees next year.”

Samantha sipped her tea. “Are you glad you came?”

“Sometimes I long for the familiar.” Lucille’s voice grew wistful. “But we knew that nothing would ever be the same again when we first crossed the Missouri River, didn’t we?”

Samantha nodded. She supposed they did.

“Our neighbor said the warm sun will come again soon, and when it does, it will stay for months.”

Samantha looked back out at the late afternoon sky speckled with clouds, and then she glanced back down at the children. “You’re a good mother to Katherine, I can tell.”

Lucille smiled again. “I love her like she’s my own daughter.”

Samantha nodded. “I understand.”

The women talked about their journey and how the Loewe party had traveled east to the Whitman Mission before they went west. At The Dalles, they hired rafts to travel down the Columbia. Lucille said that the last portion of their journey was the hardest.

Two more people had died before they got to the Willamette—Marcia Kohler drank bad water, and little Charlie Hamlin fell off a wagon and was run over by a wheel. Charlie had often followed Micah around their camp when they stopped on Sunday afternoons, as Micah had done with Alex. Charlie and his dog.

Perhaps Alex was right; this was no journey for a child. The adults took the risks willingly, but the children did not.

Samantha told her about losing Papa and then about how they’d lost most of their things in the river. She told her about the McLoughlins and her work as a schoolteacher, but she didn’t say anything about Alex.

“What are you going to do now?” Lucille asked.

“I’m not sure.”

“Titus will let you live with us.”

“Thank you,” she said. The cabin was comfortable but too small for her and Micah to join them. “But we couldn’t impose on your new family.”

“I wish you could live with my parents, but their home is even smaller than ours.”

“Maybe I could stay with the Kneedlers....”

Lucille shook her head. “They are living with their son and his family until he can build them a separate house.”

Samantha took a deep breath, exhaustion weighing down her spirits.

She couldn’t build a house on her own. Even if some of the men did offer to help, she didn’t have any money to her name for supplies.

Lucille patted her hand. “You can stay here until you decide where you’ll go next. The Rochesters and the Oxfords are preparing to go back East with Captain Loewe in the next week.”

“But they just arrived!”

“It’s been a long winter for several of the families,” Lucille said. “A few people have asked to purchase their homes, but maybe one of them would sell their house to you and Micah.”

Samantha looked back out the open window, at the falls crashing into the river. She had no money with which to buy a home—or anything to put in it if she did.

“Is there work here for women?”

“Oh, there’s plenty of work, but no one has much money to pay for it. I wash Lesley Duncan’s clothes every week, and he’s paid me with these three chairs.”

“Maybe I could teach school.”

“A school is a wonderful idea,” Lucille replied. “But I think Micah is the only child of school age.”

“What about mending clothing?” she asked, thinking of the women at Fort Vancouver.

Lucille sighed. “Mrs. Rochester has been taking in clothing to mend, but she rarely has work. That’s why they are returning East. Doctor Rochester doesn’t have enough patients to keep him employed either.”

“But there will be more people coming,” Samantha said. One day the doctor would have enough patients to tend to. One day there would be enough children for a school.

“The doctor doesn’t think it will be soon enough. He says they can’t afford to wait another year,” Lucille said. “But Jack has decided he
wants to be a doctor instead of a farmer—I suppose in part because we lost so many people on the journey. Rochester is training him to take his place.”

Perhaps she should turn around and go back East with the captain. She wanted to be here, but she was fooling herself to think that she and Micah could make it without help. She’d wanted so badly to be independent, but now that she was, she didn’t know how she could support herself and Micah.

Panic surged through Samantha’s chest, and for a moment it felt like she couldn’t breathe. Perhaps she could go and beg Captain Loewe to let her and Micah return with him. She cringed at the thought of being with the captain for the next six months, but she would do what she must. They might be able to stop and get her cart—if it was still there—but she would still need money to purchase oxen and food. It had taken Papa a lifetime of savings to bring them here. The little she’d earned was back at the fort in the form of store credit, and even if she returned for supplies, she had already promised the credit to Huey. Perhaps when they got back, Grandma Emma would reimburse the captain. Boaz might have to stay here, but Lucille and Katherine could care for him.

“Do you have any other ideas?” Lucille asked.

“I could start a garden with Papa’s seeds.” She took out the small bag and put them on the table. “But I don’t even know what they are.”

Lucille smiled. “Maybe they’re cherry trees.”

It would be
years
before she could harvest cherries—if they even grew in this country.

She thought for a moment, her smile matching Lucille’s. “Maybe they’re something even more exotic, like oranges.”

“Or blueberries.”

Samantha licked her lips. It may take a few years, but it would be wonderful if her father did bring seeds for blueberry bushes.

Lucille brushed her hand over the bag. “If only you could grow gold with those seeds.”

She sighed. “If only—”

Micah looked up at them. “You can grow my gold seeds.”

Both the women laughed.

“Why are you laughing?” Micah asked.

She stopped her laughter. “I like that thought, being able to grow gold.”

Her brother shrugged and returned to his playing.

Lucille eyed the clouds building in the sky. “I’d better get my clothes off the line before it rains.”

Samantha stood up. “I’ll help you.”

Lucille patted her hand. “You stay right here and rest your legs.”

“I don’t mind helping.”

“It would be more helpful if you could keep an eye on Katherine.”

Samantha didn’t argue with her friend. She sat back on her chair, her eyes fighting to stay open as Katherine and Micah played. Micah reached into his weatherworn knapsack and pulled out his elephant. Katherine laughed when he made a trumpet sound.

Samantha’s gaze fastened on his knapsack.

Was it possible?

She looked back at her brother, the teasing gone from her voice. “What do you mean, you have gold seeds, Micah?”

He shrugged again. “The seeds that are in my pack.”

“When did you get gold seeds?”

“I helped you carry them, remember?”

Her mind flashed back to those moments before they’d crossed over the Columbia the first time. Micah had asked if he could help her carry something. She’d told him he could take the seeds, but he hadn’t had time to get anything out of her pack...had he?

Never once had she thought to ask if he’d taken something.

Her voice trembled. “Do you have the seeds in your knapsack?”

He nodded and hopped up to open his bag. He pulled out a small burlap bag almost identical to the one that held Papa’s seeds and cradled it for a moment. When he gave the bag to her, it sank in her hands.

No wonder Alex said the knapsack was heavy.

She slowly opened the tie, and there before her was Papa’s gold.

Her hands shook as she looked back at her brother. “Why didn’t you tell me you had this?”

“You told me to take the seeds.”

“I suppose I did.”

“But you never asked me to give them back.”

A laugh escaped from her lips, and she covered her mouth with her hands.

“Papa told me to help you.”

“You have been more of a help than you can imagine,” she said as she gathered him into her arms. Her heart felt as though it might burst with gratitude.

They wouldn’t have to return East. With the gold, she could hire some of the men to build them a home, and later she could start a school. Surely there would be more children coming West soon, and Katherine and the other little ones from their party would need to go to school one day.

Maybe she could even open her doors to some of the native children who didn’t have parents—or whose parents wanted them to go to school.

Maybe she and Micah could thrive out here on their own.

She laughed again, hope surging in the place of her panic.

Then Alex’s face slid back into her mind, his strong smile as he sailed out into the Pacific Ocean. He was starting a new life with the woman he’d marry. There was a grand wedding awaiting him on other side of the world. And an important position, as well, that
would impact all those who lived at Fort Vancouver and probably those who lived here in this valley.

She shook her head, trying to rid herself of the memory of his handsome face. It might take months for her heart to recover, but she couldn’t continue to torture herself with the memories.

She secured the bag of gold in her lap.

With God’s help, she and Micah would find their own way in this new country. When all seemed hopeless, He continued to provide for them.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Alex had wanted to leave for the Willamette the afternoon he’d found Samantha and Micah missing, but he had felt obligated to leave his former superior and post with professional dignity. He could no longer work for McLoughlin, but he wanted to wait and thank the governor for all he had done even as he passed the torch of his position to a successor.

Alex hadn’t earned much of a salary while he was at Fort Vancouver—he hadn’t needed much—but now he’d spent all of his and Samantha’s store credit on supplies for his new life. And he gave a little of his credit to Huey Osant in exchange for a gift he planned to bring with him. Simon allowed Alex to use Samantha’s credit but, with a wide smile on his tobacco-stained lips, made Alex promise that he would take the supplies to Samantha.