Where the Trail Ends: American Tapestries (4 page)

“Nearly four years now.” He held up his white-and-blue plate, and the servant slid a serving of duck and then cabbage on it. The salty steam from the food made his stomach growl. Until that moment he hadn’t quite realized how hungry he was, but he would wait until everyone was served before he lifted his fork.

Instead of following protocol, Kneedler picked up his fork and took a bite of his duck moments after the servant put it on his plate. He didn’t even seem to realize his mistake, chewing and swallowing it before he continued talking. “Doctor John has been very helpful to all of us who arrived here last year.”

McLoughlin took a bite of his duck, and Alex followed suit. The meat was moist and tasted of untamed rivers and trees and everything he loved about this country. “Quite so,” Alex said. “Yet there are those in London who find him to be perhaps
too
helpful.”

The man’s eyebrows climbed. “You don’t approve of Americans coming here?”

The shake of his head was brief but clear. “I admire you and your countrymen for your courage but perhaps not your wisdom.”

Kneedler sipped his wine. “What do you consider unwise?”

“Coming to a new land, and a dangerous one at that, without a viable means to support your family.”

Kneedler set down his goblet. “Fourteen of us came last year, and we’ve all started farms.”

“I find no fault with you personally, Mr. Kneedler,” Alex said,
studying the man. “I only wonder why Americans want to come to this new territory when there is so much good land and water east of the Rocky Mountains.”

Kneedler shrugged. “There are some who want the adventure, I suppose, but most of us came looking for the Promised Land.”

Alex slowly smiled. “How much milk and honey have you found here?”

Kneedler chuckled. “Not much, I suppose, but there is plenty of good soil and more than enough water to make just about any crop grow. Until this summer I never dreamed I’d be able to farm, but I’ve already harvested enough food to put away for the winter—with some left over for my parents when they arrive. There may not be much milk and honey, but the land is just as promising.”

Alex pushed the meat across his plate. This was what he feared most—what everyone at the table feared. Everyone but the American. The small successes, the promise of opportunity, would drive a whole swarm of Americans over the mountains, and then Fort Vancouver would be expected to provide the seeds of the opportunity for all of them.

When Kneedler and his fellow travelers arrived at the fort last fall, they were half-starved and without any place to live through winter, since they had abandoned nearly all their belongings and tools on the trail. Their enthusiasm for settling in this new country had been greatly diminished—until McLoughlin provided food and supplies for them.

What if Kneedler’s relatives did try to follow? And more people with them? They might start their journey full of grand ideas, but the hard reality of trail life was certain to deflate both their spirits and their supplies. Hudson’s Bay Company wasn’t running a poorhouse for the Colonies. They were running a business.

He glanced across the table again, at the governor laughing
with the man next to him. McLoughlin was an excellent leader and manager, fair to his workers and respected by the company’s London committee. Alex’s only criticism of the man was that he sometimes ran the trading post like a charity instead of a company.

Lord Neville Clarke and the others on the committee had heard rumors about the breadth of the governor’s charity before Alex left England, but if they knew how much McLoughlin helped the Americans who’d arrived from over the Rockies last year, they would certainly remove him from his post. Hudson’s Bay Company didn’t want people to tame the land and build houses along the creeks. They wanted the rivers and forests to remain unspoiled so they could continue hunting fur.

Alex knew well McLoughlin’s opinion on the subject of these Americans, or
Bostons
as some of the men called them. Not only did McLoughlin think they had a right to live in this land, he thought he had a responsibility before God to feed and clothe them in their need. When Kneedler’s party arrived last year, McLoughlin supplemented their food supplies from the fort’s root cellar and gave them horses and other help to settle in the Willamette.

Alex knew exactly what his uncle would say once Lord Clarke learned of this charity. If they didn’t feed the Americans, they would effectively send the message that the Columbia District—or Oregon Country, as the Americans called it—was not a safe place for newcomers. This would deter all who thought they could build new homes in the West.

“More Americans will be coming soon,” Kneedler said.

One of the officers lifted his cup. “If the good queen would send a shipload of families our way, we could stake claim to the entire country before your fellow countrymen do.”

“It would be a rare lady who would cross the ocean to live in this wilderness,” another officer said.

“It will be many years before either the Americans or the British send enough people to claim this country,” Alex said before he took another bite of duck.

Kneedler grinned. “You underestimate the will and strength of our United States.”

Alex set down his fork. It took a lot of nerve for Kneedler to talk about how his countrymen might live on the lands where Hudson’s Bay Company worked, right in front of the man who’d cared for him and his sick wife. “I’ve yet to see much strength in your countrymen.”

“You will, my friend.” Kneedler glanced around the table, his voice confident. “And you’ll see it as my countrymen come in droves.”

The laughter around the table sounded more anxious than amused. None of them wanted to think about more Americans coming into the country that had been occupied jointly by the Great Britain and the United States since Spain bowed out in 1819. It made Alex want to stay here just so they could have one more Brit calling it home.

He took a long drink from his goblet. He could never admit it to anyone, even the governor, but he was a bit envious of Kneedler’s freedom to come to this new land and build a home and farm for his family. The thought of going back to the drudgery of London with all its ridiculous pomp and circumstance was daunting to Alex.

Here in Fort Vancouver, the lines between laborer and officer blurred—or so it seemed to him—but in London there would be no such blurring. Nor would there be freedom to choose how he wanted to live his life. The expectations on his time would be great: long dinners, committee meetings, social events, and hours spent with his uncle at the office on Oxford Street.

Kneedler began talking to the man on the other side of him, and Alex resumed eating his cabbage.

The prevailing thought around the table was that whichever
country sent the most people here would claim the land as its own. Until last summer, none of them doubted that one day this land would be owned by the Crown. After all, the British owned all the forts, and hundreds of British men worked in trading posts across the territory.

But these Americans—

They kept coming, and no one was stopping them.

Chapter Three

Silvery moonlight slipped through the tent and spilled across the quilt Grandma Emma had patched before they left Ohio. Samantha savored the coolness of the night, almost as much as she would savor sip after sip of cold water when their company found another stream.

It was their second night of staying in what the captain called a “dry camp.” She called it misery. In the aftermath of the stampede, Papa had forgotten to fill the barrel that hung on the side of their wagon, and she’d forgotten to remind him. Jack gave them some of the water that he’d replenished before the stampede, and they rationed sips in a futile attempt to quench their thirst, but they couldn’t waste any on rinsing food off their dishes or the dust from their skin.

Pressing her parched lips together, she rolled over carefully so she wouldn’t disturb Micah, asleep on the feather tick beside her. Even though she was exhausted, sleep evaded her. She had to think about something, anything, besides water.

Their company had left behind the Snake River three days ago. Thank God, she’d found Micah in the midst of the chaos, clutching Boaz’s fur behind a rock. But not all of them had survived the stampede. Titus Morrison lost his wife along with his wagon when their oxen ran off a cliff and into the canyon.

Gerty had been twenty-four years old.

There had been no time to stop and grieve his loss—their loss.

They’d all started this journey back in Missouri as strangers, but after almost five months of travel, their party had become like a
family—laughing, bickering, and overlooking flaws that had rubbed them raw the first few weeks of travel. Over the hundreds of miles, they’d learned that even if they might not like every person in the caravan, they needed one another. Desperately.

Whenever someone died along the trail, the captain said they “met the elephant.” Unfortunately, “the elephant” had visited their company three times now since they’d set out from Independence, Missouri, leaving the United States behind them. Samantha prayed it was the last time. She didn’t know if she could bear losing another member of their community.

The company also lost seven oxen in the stampede, including one of the Waldrons’ three. The men butchered the animals that didn’t go over the cliffs; the women dried the meat under the hot western sun. The meat would help sustain them, but losing an ox was devastating for all of them. They had all brought extra oxen in case one died, but it meant they wouldn’t be able to carry their entire load over the Blue Mountains. Later they would have to decide what to leave behind.

Later...

A dog barked from inside their tight circle of sixteen wagons, and she forced her eyes closed and tried to sleep. Papa slept most nights under the wagon box while she and Micah slept in a canvas tent. Boaz was leashed on a rawhide strip between the wagon and their tent.

Once they arrived at their new home, she would no longer be sleeping in a tent. Instead, she might be resting on a newly carved bed beside Jack Doyle.

She rolled over, punching the lumpy pillow under her head. She wished she could muster more excitement at the thought.

Jack had been married before, when he was twenty-two, but his wife had died less than a year into their marriage. That was five years ago. Jack had told Samantha that he hadn’t considered remarrying until he met her. She figured that was pretty close to a proposal.

She hadn’t been sure she’d ever marry, and certainly not this soon. Before they left Ohio, Grandma Emma fretted that Samantha would not find an honorable bachelor in all of Oregon Country. Grandma wanted her to marry Reginald Poole, a man who’d once clerked in Papa’s office, but the man was terribly dull. When he became an attorney, he became irritable, as well, no longer smiling at her many attempts to amuse him when he came for supper or to sit on their front porch and sip lemonade.

Lemonade.

She shook her head, trying to erase the longing for a sweet, cool drink.

Reginald would never take a wagon out to Oregon—or at least that was what he’d said when Papa asked him to consider coming on this journey. She now laughed at the thought of Reginald fording a river on horseback or killing a buffalo. His idea of a grand adventure was to stand on the sidelines, watching a parade march by during the holidays.

Samantha never liked watching parades. She’d always wanted to be in them.

Now she had paraded for more than thirteen hundred miles. When they arrived in the Willamette, she wasn’t sure she’d ever want to walk anywhere again.

She’d met Jack the morning before they left Missouri. He was the charming farmer from Terre Haute, one of the two bachelors in their party if she didn’t include Papa. The other, Lesley Duncan, made it perfectly clear that he was seeking wealth in the West, not a wife.

Jack hadn’t officially proposed yet, but Papa thought he would once they finished their journey. The Loewe party had much to overcome before Jack and Samantha could seriously consider marriage. In the meantime, she hosted Jack most nights around their family’s campfire. He brought his harmonica with him, and Papa
and Micah harmonized on all manner of hymns and river songs before the accompaniment of the coyotes drowned out their singing. She never dared to sing with them, knowing her vocal inabilities might make Jack turn and run, but she enjoyed the concert each night.

While she loved adventure, she wasn’t completely certain about the marriage part. Papa wanted her to marry, to make sure she and Micah would be well cared for if something happened to him. And Grandma Emma had asked him to make sure that Samantha married someone with a bit of refinement. In Papa’s mind, Jack Doyle was the perfect answer to what he perceived to be a problem.

A light wind blew open the tent flap, and another dog barked. She rubbed the goose bumps on her arms. A dog or two sometimes barked during the night. It was nothing to worry about. At least, that’s what she told herself. They were simply barking at the wind.

The breeze drifted into the tent and she tugged her grandmother’s quilt up to her chin, trying to keep warm. When the dogs barked again, the horrible stories from the British fur traders back at Fort Hall began to play in her mind. Captain Loewe said the traders’ tales were tall ones meant to deter the Americans from settling the wilderness. Neither the British nor the Americans were thrilled with emigrants from the opposing country coming to settle the land, but still their company would try.

The traders’ warnings were so diverse, so absurd, even, that Samantha tried to force herself to stop listening. But in the darkest hours, she remembered them. There were stories about wolves and bears and hostile Indians, about bad water, lost pioneers, autumn snowstorms in the Blue Mountains, and a deadly disease called camp fever. They’d told them about deep canyons, volcanoes that towered in the sky, and the treacherous Columbia River that plunged over rocks and swirled in pools, trapping animals and people alike.