The Far West (3 page)

“The boys’ mother went red in the face and yelled at him that I’d been corrupting her sons and she didn’t want me in the settlement, wildlife or no wildlife. Quite a few folks had drifted off by then, but most of the ones who were left agreed with her. One of them called out that Brant should be ashamed to call himself a Rationalist, supporting a magician the way he had.

“Brant went real quiet for a minute, and then he said that he wasn’t ashamed to be a Rationalist, but he was sure as any
thing ashamed to belong to the Oak River settlement. Right about then, Mr. Lewis showed up.”

“And?”

“After he heard what happened, Mr. Lewis told everyone to go home while he had a talk with Brant and me.” Lan shook his head. “Brant said he didn’t have anything to hide, and went on some more about Rationalist philosophy. He finished up saying he and his family were leaving Oak River, and Mr. Lewis just looked …” He paused again. “Tired and stricken.”

“Brant is his nephew,” I said. “I always thought they were pretty close. He must feel like Mama felt when Rennie ran off, almost.”

Lan nodded, but he didn’t look as if he’d really thought on it much. “There was some more talk, and Brant and I went home. I apologized for putting him in such a situation, but he said he and Rennie had been talking about leaving the settlement since early spring, and it was better to go now than to wait and maybe get caught by an early winter. Rennie gave me one of her scolds, and we spent a couple of days packing up. Mr. Lewis came around and talked some more with Brant — I think that’s when they worked out how the settlement would buy out Brant’s share — and we left.”

I thanked Lan for telling me, and we agreed that neither of us would say anything to Rennie or Brant unless they brought it up first. I was pretty sure that Rennie was glad to be back, but I wondered how Brant felt, and about how my niece and nephews would feel when they saw the rest of the family using spells.

I was right to worry. The first couple of weeks were difficult. Seren Louise got terribly upset the first time she saw Nan use the dusting spell, and Albert lectured everyone about how wicked it was to use magic for anything until Brant told him it was bad manners. Rennie alternated between flinching whenever someone cast a spell, and using spells herself even for the littlest things. Brant just looked tired all the time, and a little sad whenever he saw Rennie doing spellwork.

The third week after Rennie came home, two more families arrived from Oak River. They’d left for the same reasons as Brant and Rennie, and they brought letters from Brant’s uncle. Having them around seemed to make Brant and Rennie feel better, though they didn’t spend a lot of time together that I knew of.

Gradually, things settled down. Albert and Seren Louise started at the day school, and Brant found a job at one of the riverboat companies. Rennie started acting more like her old self, and stopped making such a point of casting spells in front of Brant, though she didn’t hide that she was doing it.

The trouble was, I’d never much liked Rennie’s old self, and I liked her new-old self even less. She’d always tried to boss us younger ones, and as soon as she was back to feeling better, she started in trying it again. Having Rennie around made Allie’s bossing worse, too. Between the two of them, I wished more than once that I could move into Mrs. Jablonski’s rooming house just to get away from them, but I knew Mama and Papa would never allow it, even once I turned twenty-one come June.

I started staying as late as I could at work, though there wasn’t much to do. The Frontier Management Department had lied about getting started on the medusa lizard in November; by the end of the month, they didn’t even have a preliminary list of people who they thought would be good choices to study Lizzie, much less an actual schedule of folks to show up and do things.

By mid-December, winter had settled in for sure. With the ground frozen, work on the study center had stopped. Work on the medusa lizard still hadn’t started. I spent most of my time at the office sending letters to the Frontier Management Department asking when their so-called experts would arrive, or trudging back and forth through the snow to the Settlement Office to see if they had any news. At home, I watched the childings for Rennie and Brant and helped with the extra laundry and mending that came with having so many more people in the house.

And every night as I fell asleep, I wished I were back in settlement territory. Facing saber cats and medusa lizards might be a lot more dangerous than minding childings and writing cranky letters, but it was also a lot more interesting.

Right before Christmas, a man came up from the Society of Progressive Rationalists in Long Lake City to talk to Brant and the others who’d left Oak River. The Long Lake City branch of the society were the ones who’d provided a lot of the people and money to start up the Oak River settlement in the first place. Mr. Lewis had been sending them progress reports for years, and the Long Lake City Rationalists were very unhappy about the turn the settlement had taken. The man they sent up to Mill City spent a week talking to all three of the families who’d left the settlement and then spent another couple of days talking to Mr. Parsons at the Settlement Office, and he wasn’t any happier when he left than when he’d come.

Rennie and Brant stayed on at the house after Christmas, though Brant had been with the riverboat company for over two months and they’d gotten their settlement buyout. I didn’t bother asking why. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. I felt snappish all the time, the way the golden firefoxes at the menagerie acted when we had to put them in the small cages in order to clean out their usual pen.

Even the Frontier Management Department deciding to let us start dissecting Lizzie at last didn’t help, though at least
I finally had something to do at work besides write letters. Actually, it made things even harder. I’d spend my day taking notes and making sketches while Professor Torgeson and Professor Jeffries eased the preservation spells back from one bit of the medusa lizard or another so they could work on it. We’d talk and speculate about the lizard’s magic and development, and I’d help write up the report of their findings.

And then I’d go home to Rennie’s childings and Mama’s chores and Allie trying to make rules for everything and everybody. Lan was the only one who ever asked about the medusa lizard or the menagerie. Robbie and my sisters weren’t interested, and Papa didn’t have to ask me because he and Professor Jeffries and Professor Graham always got together to talk at the end of the day, so he’d already heard. And if Mama or Brant wanted to know, they talked to Papa. It was like I was still thirteen and too young to know what I was doing.

Early in February, the first batch of experts from the Frontier Management Department came out to look at the medusa lizard. There were so many that they couldn’t all fit in Professor Torgeson’s laboratory at the same time, and a lot of them didn’t have anything useful to say. As far as I could see, most of them had talked their way onto the list just so they’d be able to tell folks back home they’d actually seen the lizard.

“Good riddance,” Professor Torgeson said when they left a week later. “Eff, we’re taking the morning off.”

“We are? But —”

“I have an important letter to write. You’re helping.”

It took us most of the morning to put together the letter she sent to the Frontier Management Department, and I
learned a lot about how to be frigidly polite and still leave somebody feeling like they’d been spanked.

That was Thursday. On Friday, Roger Boden arrived back from Albion. I’d met Roger a little over a year before, when he’d started coming around to help out at the menagerie after taking one of Professor Jeffries’s fall classes. We’d gotten to know each other pretty well, but then he’d had an offer to study advanced magic in Albion that was too good for him not to take. We’d been exchanging letters for the past year, and I’d been looking forward to seeing him again.

Roger stopped by the house on Saturday afternoon and Mama invited him to stay and have tea. I introduced him to Lan, who’d been away from home when we got acquainted, and to Brant and Rennie and the childings. Lan asked about his studies in Albion and they ended up having a long, energetic talk with Papa and Robbie about magical theory. I was especially glad to see Lan getting all emphatic and waving his arms around to make a point. He hadn’t been that excited about anything in months.

I wasn’t so sure what to think about Roger. His red-blond hair was a little longer than it had been, and he’d grown a small mustache that made him look older. He’d always seemed solid and reliable, but he was more sure of himself now, and less quiet than he had been. He’d picked up just a hint of an Albion accent, too. He didn’t flirt or pay me any more attention than was courteous, but every so often during that tea, I felt his blue eyes following me for just a little longer than they followed anyone else.

Mama and Allie must have noticed that extra bit of looking, because the minute he got up to leave, Mama said, “It’s so good to see you again, Mr. Boden, and we haven’t come anywhere near catching up yet. Won’t you stay for supper?”

“Yes, do,” Allie put in. “You can’t go back to a rooming house meal on your first night home! Tell him, Eff!”

Rennie frowned slightly, looking from Allie to me and back. I shot Allie a glare, but I didn’t say anything.

Roger smiled at Mama. “Thank you kindly for the invitation, Mrs. Rothmer, but I really need to get back to my unpacking. I think the trunks must have multiplied on the journey — I swear there are twice as many as I remember sending off.”

“I’m glad you took the time to stop by,” Papa said. “I enjoyed the discussion.”

“I’ll admit to an ulterior motive, Professor,” Roger said. “I’m hoping you can make time on Monday to start assessing the work I did in Albion. I’d like to finish my degree this year, and the sooner I know what I still have to take —”

“Say no more,” Papa said, laughing. “I’ll be in my office at ten thirty in the morning. Bring your papers along then, and I’ll see what I can do.”

Roger nodded. “Thank you, sir. I’ll see you Monday.” He bade us all good evening and left in a flurry of good wishes.

The minute he was out the door, Allie pounced on me. “Eff! Why didn’t you help us persuade him to stay?”

“Because she didn’t want to help you make a spectacle of yourself,” Rennie said, frowning. “Honestly, Allie, you can’t run after a fellow so obviously and expect to get anywhere.”

Allie’s eyes went wide. “But … I’m not … It’s not me, it’s Eff!”

“What?” Rennie gave her a puzzled look.

“She thinks Mr. Boden’s sweet on Eff,” Robbie said, snatching the last two cookies from the platter on the table as he left to do his studying.

Lan paused in the doorway and gave me a startled look. Rennie studied me for a moment, then turned and frowned at Allie. “What were you trying to do, then, ruin her chances?”

“You can both stop that right this minute,” I said, alarmed. The last thing I needed was for Rennie to decide Roger Boden was courting me; whether she was for it or against it, she’d want to mix in and make things come out her way, and never mind what I thought of it. “Roger came to see Papa.”

“Right — that’s why
Roger
spent the whole afternoon staring at you,” Allie said scornfully. “And after a whole year of writing letters between you, too.”

“I’ve been writing to William for longer than that,” I said, feeling my face go hot. The thought flashed through my mind that if I did marry Roger, I wouldn’t have to come home to Allie’s nagging anymore, and if I could have gone any redder, I would have. “Mr. Boden is a friend, that’s all,” I snapped, hoping to make that picture go out of my head.

Lan was looking back and forth between us, like he wasn’t sure which of us had the right of things. “Eff, if you like Mr. —”

“You stay out of this!” I interrupted. “Whether I like him or not is my business, and what I choose to do about it — or
not to do about it — is even more my business. And that goes double for the two of you,” I added, turning to Allie and Rennie.

“‘Choose to do about it’?” Allie snorted. “You’re going to end up an old maid like that professor you work for if you dither around much longer.”

“There are worse things than being an old maid,” Rennie said softly.

Allie and I just stared at her for a minute. I remembered how unhappy Rennie had seemed both times I’d been in Oak River, and some of what she’d told me the one time we’d talked about why she ran off with Brant. Still, I’d never expected to have Rennie on my side in this kind of argument.

“I like Professor Torgeson,” I said finally. “I wouldn’t mind turning out like her. And anyway, I told you already that it’s my business.”

“Besides, isn’t that a bit of the pot calling the kettle black?” Lan put in, tilting his head to study Allie. “You’re three years older than we are. If anyone is getting long in the tooth —”

“I have plenty of prospects!”

“You do?” I said. “Well, I’ll certainly remember how to help you out if you ever bring one of them home.”

“I think you should leave each other alone,” Rennie said firmly. “Eff’s right; it’s her business.” Lan looked at me, then at Allie, and nodded.

Allie glared at us, but she knew better than to keep up arguing. “You just think hard about what you’re doing, Eff, that’s all,” she said, and went off, leaving Rennie and me to finish clearing up the tea things.

I was more annoyed with Allie than I’d let on. I’d known what she thought about Roger, but I’d been hoping that she’d forgotten in the year he’d been away. Now she’d gone and gotten Rennie and Lan interested, and even if they were on my side today, there was no saying how long they’d stay that way.

Sometimes I couldn’t help thinking that the unluckiest thing about being a thirteenth child was having all those older brothers and sisters telling me what to do.