Where the Trail Ends: American Tapestries (9 page)

So McLoughlin gave him the only other position that was available, due to the fact that no one else—officer, tradesman, or laborer—wanted to teach the fort’s unruly children. They weren’t paying Calvert the fortune he had originally sought, but he was a fairly educated man—educated quite well by the standards of this district. McLoughlin was paying a modest salary out of his personal income for Calvert to show up at six o’clock, five mornings every week, to teach these children and teach them well.

“Should we go search for him?” a girl asked. He recognized her as the daughter of one of his British clerks. He wasn’t sure who her mother was.

A boy snickered. “You ain’t gonna find old Cal if he don’t wanna to be found.”

The girl’s short braids twirled when she turned toward the boy, her hands on her hips. “Maybe he’s hurt or something. He might be a-needing us to find him.”

Alex sighed. Calvert had obviously failed to teach those who spoke English to do so properly.

The young girl turned back, grinning up at Alex. “Maybe you could teach us?”

This time several of the boys snorted.

“We will find Calvert,” he said. And when he did, he’d tan the man.

Everett sat up straighter at his desk. “Can we go look for him with you?”

“No, you return home today.” With his wave, chairs grated across the wooden floor as the children sprang to their feet. Half of them were already through the door when he called out, “Tomorrow. We’ll have school tomorrow!”

If Calvert returned...

All twenty-three children were gone in less than a minute’s time. He wished he could motivate the men under him as quickly as he’d motivated these students. Of course, if he gave his men a day off from work, they’d evacuate just as fast.

Closing the schoolroom door, Alex marched across the piazza toward Bachelor’s Hall. He didn’t think living in the wilderness was good for children, but the governor disagreed. McLoughlin rarely got angry, but when he did, it was most disconcerting for all those who witnessed it. The disappearance of Calvert might be one of those times.

If Alex ran the fort, he’d find a way for all of them to go to school in the East, where they could receive a decent education. But he didn’t run the fort. Or at least, not when McLoughlin was here.

He strode up to the second floor of the hall and pounded on the fourth door to his left. When no one answered, he lifted the latch to Calvert’s room and pushed the door open. There were no clothes hanging from the pegs along the wall, no blankets on the narrow bed. But there was a note on the windowsill, and Alex read it quickly. Then he balled it up.

Calvert wasn’t coming back, and the schoolboy was right. It
would be useless to search for him. He had gone to live among the Indians, and Alex knew that they would be moving this time of year—hunting pelts and collecting food for the winter. If Calvert married the Chinook woman, her tribe would protect him.

McLoughlin was the only one who had any hope of retrieving Calvert—if he wanted the man to return. Some natives called McLoughlin “The White-Headed Eagle,” while others called him “King of the Columbia.” He was a peacemaker to them, and a
tilikum
—friend. He insisted that the clerks trade fairly with the Indians, and he even ransomed children the local tribes kept as slaves, offering eight to ten wool blankets in exchange for each one.

While the Indians were civil enough to Alex, he doubted they would ever refer to him as a friend.

He heard footsteps coming up the hall and turned to see Simon Gervais.

Simon scanned the empty room. “I heard Calvert’s missing.”

Alex tossed the note onto the bed. “And he does not plan to return.”

“The man was never cut out to be a teacher.”

“Sometimes we must do things we are not cut out to do,” Alex snapped.

Simon backed toward the door. “I don’t condone his leaving. I’m just speaking the truth.”

“McLoughlin will be furious.”

“It won’t be the first time.”

Alex studied his friend for a moment. Simon was responsible for training the new clerks assigned to the general store. He was as educated as most of the men. “You went to school, did you not?”

“Until the fifth grade. When I wasn’t working with my mother.”

“You could teach them, then. Just until we find a replacement.”

Simon’s laughter followed Alex into the hallway.

Alex shook his head. “I was not trying to be humorous.”

“I don’t know the first thing about teaching children,” Simon said, walking with him down the hall.

Alex shrugged. “It is much like training your clerks, I suppose.”

“You don’t know anything about teaching children either.”

“I am well aware of that.” Alex cleared his throat. “But it cannot be
that
difficult.”

Calvert had taught them, after all.

“I suppose it would be quite easy.” Simon laughed again. “As easy as taming a classroom full of wild horses.”

They stepped onto the first floor, into the great room where the men ate during the day and danced at night. Simon pointed toward the window. “Maybe she’d like to teach.”

Alex followed Simon’s finger, his eyes landing on the lovely Taini walking outside. It wasn’t a bad solution, except that she spoke more French than English. And they needed a man to control those children. “I would never subject a woman to that classroom.”

Without a teacher, he could not keep his word to McLoughlin to keep the children in school. But he certainly couldn’t educate them himself. He knew how to manage the clerks and the laborers at the fort, but he had no idea how to teach their children.

Before the day dawned, Boaz nudged Samantha’s arm. There was a scuffling sound outside their wagon, and she sat up in the darkness, listening to footsteps and hushed whispers.

“Good boy,” she whispered. Thank God, he hadn’t barked once during the night.

She listened for the familiarity of her father’s voice in the whispers outside, but she couldn’t tell who was speaking. She scooted toward the edge of the tent, hoping to understand what was being said.

“Papa,” she called out, and the voices stopped.

Her father replied, not at all in the groggy voice that usually greeted her this early in the morning. “What is it?”

“I just—” she stuttered, flustered at not knowing who else was outside their tent. “Is all well?”

“As well as it can be,” he said. “Go back to sleep.”

Minutes later the whispering ensued. She couldn’t drift back to sleep, no matter how tired she was from the short night. The dogs hadn’t kept them up, but the crying and arguing had echoed through the camp for hours.

She waited until the first light slipped over the horizon, and then she brushed her hair and braided it quickly before covering her head with her bonnet. When she stood, Boaz joined her and they carefully slipped out of the tent, trying not to wake Micah. She wouldn’t wander too far away.

Fires were already smoldering inside the circle, coffeepots boiling on camp stoves and skillets bubbling with grease, but instead of the familiar morning activity, the camp was almost empty. And disturbingly quiet. Several women shuffled around the fires and stoves, but she didn’t see any of the men.

She and Boaz rounded the wagons until she heard Papa’s voice on the other side of one of the canopies, and she quickly crossed the circle to hear what he was saying.

“Many of us are angry right now, but we must be reasonable,” Papa said.

“We made a pact back in Missouri.” Captain Loewe’s voice sounded strained. “We all agreed to the rules.”

Someone else interrupted him. “Reasonable rules!”

“They were reasonable rules—
are
reasonable rules,” the captain said, correcting himself. “But now you want mutiny.”

“What we want is a new captain,” Mrs. Kneedler replied.

Samantha stepped closer, wondering how the captain would respond to the older woman. “I guess I should be glad the decision isn’t up to you,” he said.

“Arthur—”

“Perhaps we should have a new vote,” Mr. Kneedler said.

“You voted for me to be your captain, and I took and still take this role very seriously, but when people undermine me as they did yesterday...”

He didn’t mention Samantha’s name, but she knew he must be embarrassed, especially since the one doing the undermining had been a woman.

“It was a bad decision,” another man said.

“It was a decision you voted for,” the captain retorted.

“And now regret.”

“Regrets won’t get us to Oregon,” Loewe replied. “We have to rally and get moving this morning to get through the Blue Mountains before the snow comes.”

“We will move,” Mr. Kneedler replied. “Once we elect a new captain.”

“Wait a moment.” She recognized the voice of the doctor, George Rochester. “We voted for our captain back in Missouri, and we need to stick by him. He’s gotten us safely this far, and I, for one, have the confidence that he’ll get us all the way to the Willamette.”

“He hasn’t gotten all of us here safely,” Mr. Kneedler replied.

This time Jack spoke. “Those deaths weren’t Loewe’s fault.”

“Let’s not cast blame about the past,” Papa said. “We must determine how we proceed from here.”

Samantha shivered in the morning air and leaned back against the wagon, not wanting those on the other side to see her or Boaz.

Lucille slipped up beside her. “What are they talking about?” she whispered.

“Whether or not we should keep Loewe as our wagon master.”

“Of course they should—” Lucille began, but Samantha hushed
her. Sometimes Papa acted as if she were no older than Micah, as if he had to protect her from the reality of adulthood. He’d certainly send her away if he knew she was outside.

“We agreed to do as the majority voted,” the captain said.

Mrs. Kneedler spoke again. “The women should be included in the majority.”

“Most of the women would have voted with me,” he insisted. “Any decent mother would protect her children from the threat of another stampede, not to mention rabies.”

“I believe you just said that my wife isn’t a decent mother,” Mr. Kneedler retorted.

“We have to think rationally,” the captain continued. “We have to do what is best for everyone.”

“My wife and I refuse to go on with you as captain,” Mr. Kneedler said.

There was a long pause. “So be it,” the captain finally said.

Papa spoke again. “You can’t do this alone, Arthur.”

“We won’t be alone.”

Samantha imagined Mr. Kneedler pointing to the heavens with his words. He liked to remind them that no matter how lonely they might feel, they were never alone.

“The Good Lord gave us each other,” Papa said.

“He also warned us about bad counsel.”

“You think it’s been hard up until now,” Captain Loewe’s voice grew loud again. “It’s going to be a hundred times harder, getting through those mountains.”

“How would you know?” another man asked.

Lucille reached out and took Samantha’s hand. Since none of them had traveled through Oregon Country before, their party had just kept traveling west, trying to follow vague directions from the traders who knew this territory.

“Maybe we should go back to Fort Hall,” Titus Morrison said. “We could stay there for the winter.”

Everyone was silent, the recent death of his wife heavy upon all of them. Titus might want to return east with his daughter, but Samantha knew Papa and Jack wouldn’t. They’d signed up to go to the Willamette, and they wanted to be there before winter.

A drop of rain splattered on Samantha’s arm, and for the first time she noticed the darkening clouds in the sky. After such a hot day yesterday, the rain would feel good. But it was also a reminder that more storms would come with the autumn—unfamiliar weather like the hailstorm they’d had on the prairie and the winds from a waterspout that had overturned several of the wagons, tearing off two canvas covers and blowing them away.

The men and women began to debate, and the moment someone called for a vote, Samantha watched Micah and his buckskin trousers slip out of the tent.

“I’ve got to go,” she told Lucille before she hurried back across the circle, her eyes on her brother to make sure he didn’t wander away.

Would the Kneedlers really continue this journey alone, without their dog? Or would Titus and some of the others return back to Fort Hall?

Hopefully Papa would talk sense into all of them. If Papa was good at anything, he was good at talking sense into just about anyone. Except his daughter.

She found Micah hovered over his knapsack, sorting through his things.

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

He looked up at her. “For scrambled eggs.”

“Me too,” she said. “Why don’t we scramble our porridge today?”

She had breakfast prepared by the time Papa returned from the meeting. Micah picked at his scrambled porridge and drank only a
few sips of his coffee. Samantha told him he needed to eat more to keep up his strength for their long walk today, but he shook his head.

She hesitated, turning to Papa. “Did you fill up the water barrel?”

“I will before we leave.”

“Papa—”