0800722329 (24 page)

And that the Lord goes with them, into whatever darkness or light they walk, especially if they go in reply to his call. And he does call them to amazing things if they allow. I think S has taught me that, living out his dreams, bigger than either of us. He didn’t convert everyone as he once proposed in those years we were at school, but he brought more than six hundred Nimíipuu to the Lord. Imagine! And the Mission Board whisked it all away. My heart aches to go back to Lapwai.

17
The Choice

“I never want to go back to Waiilatpu, ever. Or to Lapwai. Or your Touchet dream. I want to stay right here in Brownsville, where Mama is buried. Do you hear that, Mr. Warren?” That familiar “Andrew” would not fall across my tongue again. He’d be Mr. Warren, the “man of the house.” He Who Decides, as the Nez Perce might put it. And he would father no more children, at least not with me.

“I hear you, darlin’. And you don’t have to go. Stay rooted if you want. I’ve got a plan to do and be something bigger. I thought you’d like to be a part of it, keep your family together, but it’s your doin’.” We sat at the table. He picked at candle wax drippings I’d failed to scrape up.

“You say I can’t go alone with the children through the mountains. You’d need to take us.”

He’d stood, taken a bun from the warming oven of the stove. “You’ve had plenty of time to prepare, ’Liza.” He downed a
large glass of milk, wiped his mustache of the foam. “If you’d made up your mind earlier I would have helped, but I’ve got drovers lined up and we need to head over the Cascades while the weather is good.” Warren Creek rose, marking snowmelt in the mountains. I heard it gurgle.

“Why can’t I take the wagon and just follow you? If we were to go, I mean.”

“For the tenth time, because there is no route through the mountains for wagons.” He brushed bread crumbs from his duck pants.

“Barlow built a road where people said none could go.”

“We’re going straight east from here, ‘Liza, across the Cascades, then up through the high desert, making our own trail. Daniel Waldo says there’s an Indian route to follow, that he’s taken it. No one believes him except Wiley and me. Wiley says he’s crossed it, but he’ll say anything to get investors to make a road.”

“You invested in a road?”

“I also put $100 toward the mill plans here.”

“Did you?”
A change
of subject.
“Then we should stay here, look over your investment.”

He shook his head, a smile that said he knew what I was doing. “’Liza, I’m going.” He’d finished his milk and now a fly buzzed around him. He swatted at it, and when it landed he whisked his hand and caught it and grinned. It wasn’t the first time. I marveled at his swiftness. “I want you along, but if you won’t go, that’s your choice.” He softened. “I need to do this. I . . . I don’t want to live an ordinary life, ’Liza, where every day’s predictable and I have no challenges to see how I’ll wrangle my way through. I . . . I owe it . . . to others, to you and my children to live a good life but to live it with, I don’t know the word. Gusto? Abundance, maybe? That’s a word in Scripture, right?”

I sensed that he laid bare his soul in those few words, perhaps more insight into who he was than I’d ever heard before. I might have envied a bit that clarity of passion.

“Look, ’Liza. You always said you missed the stories of overland travel in a wagon the way so many others came west, like Nancy Osborne and my family. Your parents. This is a way to get a . . . feel for it, something you were deprived of, you being born in Oregon Country. Think of it as an adventure.”

“I didn’t think I’d have to experience it alone!”

“I can’t wait for you. The passes won’t be open for long. We’ll meet up at the Columbia River, near The Dalles and head east together from there. That is, if you decide to come.”

“My mother took a wagon where they said none could go. She and my father. And the Whitmans. I bet we could get a wagon over the Cascades.”

He sighed. “They didn’t have much of a wagon left though, did they? And they traveled with a trapping party for a good part of that way so they weren’t alone. You cannot follow me and the herd. If you’re coming, you could take Barlow’s trail or head farther north to Portland and take the river route. Either way, meet me in The Dalles. But I won’t wait for you. I’ll have to keep the stock moving.”

“It’s inhumane to leave without these things settled,” I wailed. “What kind of husband and father would do such a thing?”

“Your father, for one. Things weren’t all that settled before they left to come west, as I recall him saying more than once in his preaching, reminding us all that God’s in control. They ‘happened’ onto the last steamship heading upriver. They ‘happened’ onto that trapping party. ‘The Lord was with us.’ So he’ll be with you too. Things don’t always get settled in your good timing, Eliza. You can’t control the stream. And—” He lifted my chin, his brown eyes soft and loving. “You don’t have to go.”

His words stunned me. I’d been trying to make him do things. Make him stay. Make him let us take the wagon and follow him. I liked him better when he accommodated because of his guilt. He wasn’t feeling guilty now, and was much surer of himself. Whether I followed him or not was of less concern than that he be on his way as soon as the mountain thaws happened. He really would go without us.

“Touchet will be a new start for us.” His warm fingers pushed errant hair from my damp forehead. “Better grazing for the cattle, wider vistas, fewer people encroaching, less harping about cows getting through fences. And no state bearing down saying ‘do this or that.’ No taxes in Touchet.”

“It’s two-sea.”

He lifted his eyebrows.

“The pronunciation. It’s not French.”

He shook his head, a smile on his face, then pulled me to him. Though my arms were stiff beside my body, he still held me, his voice like low strains on a violin. “I want you with me, you and the girls. I want you there. But I’m going. Has to be this way. It’s a better life for us. And who is to say this isn’t the Lord working his way in our lives. I haven’t had a drop to drink since I told you about Jeremiah and claimed the land.”

“You won the land in a card game.”

“No, I didn’t, Eliza. My cattle business has been successful. In Touchet—two-sea—I’ll be free of ‘bad friends,’ as you call them. We’ll start over. I’ll keep my promise not to drink.”

“I didn’t hear that promise.”

“It wasn’t made to you.”

I cried then, hiccuping sobs. He patted my back. “I don’t want to go. I don’t want you to go. There’s no one there I can count on. I’ll be alone with the children. My sisters, left here. Nancy . . .” I understood for the first time how Matilda Sager
must have felt when my parents sent her away but a few months after the massacre she’d survived with me. She was just a child and she had cried so hard, begged to stay with us. Her tears brought nothing, no change to my father’s mind about her leaving. My tears had no effect on Mr. Warren either.

“And then there’s the closeness to Waiilatpu, to all that . . . what happened. I can’t go back there.”

“Maybe this is the Lord’s way of helping you put all that behind you. Behind us.”

Could that be? I felt myself lean into him, soften my stiff bed-board resistance.

“Life is uncertain. You can’t line it up the way Nancy does.”

“I know.”

“And memories aren’t real, ’Liza. We mix them with who we are now.” He held me away from him, hands on my shoulders, his brown eyes gazing into mine, that shock of dark hair pulling forward as he spoke with kindness laced with resolution. “You can do this, Eliza. You’re strong, smart, enterprising. You’ve been good for me. You’ve helped your sisters, your dad. Use some of that stashed cash you’ve got and buy a solid wagon. Our oxen are seasoned.”

“You know about my stash?”

“My mama didn’t raise no dumb kids.” He grinned.

Can I do this
? He believed I could. A zest surged through me. A possibility. “I might need you to sweeten the pot with a little cash,” I said. “I’ll have to find someone willing to abandon ship here and head east with me.”

“Now you’re talking. Leave the stove here, though. Too heavy to cart. I’ll get one brought for you. If you get an offer on the farm that sounds good, take it.” He wiped my eyes with his thumbs, his calloused hands warm against my chin. “You always
said you wished you had stories to tell of coming along the trail, overland. Here’s your chance. Our chance.”

“Only I’m going in the opposite direction of your coming from Missouri.”

“You’re doing it the Spalding way. Contrary.”

I actually laughed at that. I blew my nose. Was that what I was being? I didn’t want stubborn to be the legacy I gave my girls or my sisters. I wanted them to see strength in their heritage, to learn that they could grow from challenges they faced. Yes, I could tell a travel story, of my escape from terrible harm. But was that the only story I wanted to be remembered for? No, I wanted them to remember their grandmother’s courage, and see a bit of that inside of me and themselves. This time I had the option of choosing to go. And we weren’t running from an uprising, worrying even as we hostages were taken downriver with our British rescuer, abandoned by the Nez Perce. Rain pummeled our shake roof. I disappeared back . . .

Tap-tap.
Is it gunfire? No, hail dropping against the tent canvas covering our bateau. We’re huddled together, we hostages. I startle at each unfamiliar sound. For more than four weeks we wondered day by day if we would see the next. One of the children, I can’t remember who, swings her arms like a windmill and stands up, clawing for air, pushes her face out, lifting the bateau cover. Along the shore, Indians ride! Someone shouts, “Heathens!” Captain Ogden orders, “Get your head down!” I know then we aren’t yet safe, might still die at the hands of angry Indians chasing after, the Columbia River be our wet grave. I burrow beneath the Hudson’s Bay blanket, covet safety as I shiver.

“Eliza? You all right?” Mr. Warren squeezed my shoulders, took a stumbled step to hold me, a residual from his injury.

“Yes. I’m fine.”

“You went away again.” He kept one hand on me while he reached for a jug of water, giving me a drink. “Maybe you’ll do that less when we’re in Touchet.” He took the handkerchief from my hands and dabbed at the edge of my eyes. “Take what you need from my purse,” he said then. “You’ll be fair about it. Get the best wagon you can and load. I’ll see you in a few months.” He kissed me hard then, almost skipped out the door.

If I joined him, left familiar fields and streams, I’d be alone often in Touchet while he rode with the cattle. If I didn’t join him, my marriage would be over. I remembered my mother speaking of the times when she’d be left behind with four children, for days, while my father was off at meetings or arranging for shipments at the fort. I have only two to contend with, but my youngest is a baby only four months old. Little Lizzie. America Jane won’t be three for months, each needing tending while I work. How would I manage walking beside an ox team celebrating my fifth anniversary alone with two babies? I shivered. I wasn’t skilled enough to take them safely to Touchet nor stable enough to make sure my mind didn’t drift leaving them in danger and alone.