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“It’s a good gift, ’Liza. No more suspenders.” He smiled.
“We’re not turning back, darlin’. We’re startin’ everything new. Even how I hold up my pants.”

The next morning I headed west on the trail so many other immigrants were taking west, bone weary from their journeys as they embarked on one last section of the trip. Wagons could take the Barlow Trail, a roadway made in 1845, with each new traveler gradually chopping out the overgrowth of trees and shrubs, paying a toll at the other end. A terrible mountain crossing called Laurel Hill took three hours per wagon to lower with ropes down over the rocky ridge. We would take the boat, portage as we needed, then I’d drive the oxen the four days it would take to pull up in front of our old home. I felt strong, stronger than I ever had. The thundering falls of The Dalles a backdrop to my confidence.

“Sister! Pull up!”

I turned and squinted.
Millie?
What was she doing here? And did Father know?

“Millie? What’s happened? Are Father and Rachel all right?”

“They’re fine. I’m going back to Brownsville with you.”

“Father allowed it?”

“Never.” She leaned forward, patted her animal’s sweaty neck. “Please don’t send me back. In the end, he’ll know I found you. We’ll write him a letter.”

She didn’t look disheveled even after what had to have been a two-day hard ride. The horse looked winded though. “You slept out alone?”

“I stayed far enough behind you that you couldn’t see but I knew where you were. ‘Just find Eliza and you’ll be fine.’ That’s what I told my horse.” She smiled. “And Timothy rode with me for a ways so I was safe. He headed back several miles ago.”

It was all a game to her. I envied her.

“And here we are. I looove adventure.” She dismounted and whisked Lizzie into her arms, snuggling her toddler neck.

“Auntie Millie!” America Jane scampered from around the wagon, hugged my sister. Yaka trotted up then, distracted by a rabbit, I guessed.

“You brought Father’s dog too?”

“He followed me.” Millie shrugged.

My hands gripped the goad used to keep the oxen on a steady trail and I squinted at her. I’d given myself the task of making my way alone with my girls, to test myself. Her presence interrupted it. I had to decide if the responsible thing to do was to make her go back, take her back, or let her come with us. I weighed the options.

“You’ll write him a letter.” I couldn’t take the time to go back.

“I will. But don’t you think it’s providential that I caught up with you?”

“Providential? I was just thinking it was an inconvenience having to decide whether to send you back or take you back.”

“And you’ve decided well.” She grinned, dimples deepening. “Sometimes providential masquerades as inconvenience, but it all works out in the end.”

Millie proved to be an expert with the animals as well as with the children. The oxen were like pets to her, standing on the barge we took down the Columbia, letting her hobble them each evening so we wouldn’t have to chase them in the morning. And her chatter made the miles go easier as she filled me in on news of life in Brownsville after we had left. “And John Brown, the one who directed you to your Indian driver, he’s very nice to me. He remembers I like hard candies and always gives me one when I come into the store.”

“He’s a bit older than you are.”

“Boys my age don’t interest me. John likes nice things and he has money to get them.”

“And Father’s aware of your interest in Mr. Brown?”

“I never told him, of course. I saw what happened with Martha and Bill. No, I just keep it to myself.”

He’d be furious with her for leaving Touchet. I looked back several times expecting him to be riding on a raft behind us. He’d have words for me whenever he did catch up and I knew he would. He’d never let his favorite be away from him for long.

Pulling up in front of our old cabin, grateful I was that it had never sold. Grass had grown up around the steps and a portion of the porch roof looked like an old man needing a cane. America Jane jumped down and Lizzie, two and a half, squirmed until I lifted her down to Millie already standing beside the wagon.

“No one’s been here for a while.”

Inside, the only thing left was the wood cookstove. It had waited for me, that metaphor of my marriage. Solid, holding heat when tended.

I didn’t even mind that Mr. Warren had taken another route and wasn’t yet home. I could make it on my own, be a partner to him. I didn’t just respond to what he presented; I could initiate and we could work together. Our time in Touchet brought me that. A certain scent told me there was a packrat somewhere near, and when I bent down to close the open oven door I saw the nest. Such flotsam would have sent me railing before Touchet. Now, it seemed perfectly understandable. Ignore what matters and scratchy things take over.

“Eew,” Millie said. She’d just bent to the oven.

“We’ll have cleaning to do before we do much else. Go get the broom from the wagon. We’ll unload that first.” She groaned.
“And I guess you were right, Millie.” I was as cheerful as she’d been when she caught up with me in The Dalles. “Your chasing us and inconveniencing me was definitely providential.”

Mr. Warren sold the cattle. We saw old friends those first weeks back and it was a bit like a honeymoon with my being less demanding of my husband and him being home and attentive with his daughters. I saw Nancy and congratulated her and Andrew Kees on their marriage. From travelers, I picked up news about the widening war back East. Things seemed calm enough in Brownsville, the weather mild. I took new interest in my mother’s seeds and drove for cuttings at my father’s old house. It had not sold either, so I made a point of keeping it swept of spiders. They might come back one day. I planted the lilac starts at the corners of our cabin. Mr. Warren purchased pigs we butchered and hung in the old smokehouse, the scent of cedar strong to my nose. He bought a couple of sheep for me, to replace the others we’d left with father and Rachel. And we had plenty of beef jerked and kept a few animals should we wish one day to start another herd. I couldn’t imagine that, but Mr. Warren was insistent and it was an easy compromise for me.

It was November and the chill mixed with the season’s steady drizzle. I’d just returned from a visit with the doctor telling me what I already knew, that we’d have a baby in the summer. We’d be closer to medical care even if Millie could midwife.

As I entered the cabin I heard my name shouted from behind me. I pulled my coat around me against the wind and turned. “There’s been an accident. Millie asked I come get you.” It was John Brown. He wasn’t riding really fast, but he did say there’d been an accident.

“Did you ride to the doctor first?”

“No, she said come here. She’s just down your lane.”

I shouted to Mr. Warren what had happened and for him to get the doctor. “Put the children in the buggy.”

“Best bring a wagon if you got it,” John said. “She’s in a terrible pain and isn’t getting up.”

“Bring the wagon instead,” I directed. I thought about having America Jane look after her sister but decided against it. “Bring a quilt for the girls.”

I ran down the lane behind him. The wind had turned and snow threatened. In the distance, I saw my sister’s form on the ground, her horse standing beside her.

“What happened?” I knelt beside her, wiped mud and rain from her face.

“It’s not the horse’s fault. Nor John’s. It’s not. She stepped in a mole hole and threw me, then rolled over on me, trying to get her balance.” Her face was white as oyster shells. “I can’t feel my legs. I can’t feel my legs, ’Liza.” She grabbed at my arms.

“Just be still.” I threw my coat over her as she began to shake. Ice pelted down, turning to snow. “Mr. Warren will be along any minute.” I wanted to send John for the doctor but thought we’d need him to lift Millie into the wagon. To John I said, “What happened here?”

“It’s like she said. We were riding along, well, racing along, and her horse tripped and tossed her, then stumbled right over her. Poor little thing.” He looked at the horse, not my sister, when he said that. Then back at Millie.

“Do you have a slicker you can tent over her? She’s getting soaked.”

“Oh. Sure enough.” He unrolled a slicker from behind his saddle and ambled over to us as though he headed toward a bill collector rather than a crisis. “This is sure awful. I had an
aunt once who was laid up for life after a horse fall. She never walked again, poor thing.”

“I’m not sure we need to hear about that right this minute. Can you hold that slicker wider? She’s getting soaked. She’ll go into shock.”

He maneuvered himself to be more helpful. Asked Millie how she was doing.

“Not so good.”

“Sure hope Warren gets here fast. My arms are getting tired holding this up.”

“Well, poor you,” I snapped. “My sister’s lying here injured and all you can think about is your aching arms?”

“Don’t, Eliza. He’s helping.”

She was right. We were all doing the best we could.

The wagon came into sight and Andrew had thought to put a loose board into the back. He pulled it out and as gentle as we could we rolled Millie to her side, trying not to hear her sobs. We pushed the board under her. I saw no blood, but her scream of pain when we touched her back told me more than I wanted to know. The three of us lifted her into the wagon bed. John tied his horse to the rig, then climbed in and continued to hold the slicker over us. The girls were huddled inside quilts at the front of the wagon. They looked like baby birds sticking their heads out from a nest. Andrew pulled his hat down against the sticking snow and drove into Brownsville.

I prayed over my sister then, for her recovery, for this injury to not be as bad as it looked, for it not to be permanent. And I prayed for myself. For when I’d have to tell my father that once again one of his daughters had come unto harm while under my tender care.

That storm began the worst winter we’d known since living on this side of the mountains. By mid-December nearly three feet of snow blanketed the Brownsville ground. One morning the sun shone and a thaw melted the top, but the next night, the temperature dropped below zero, leaving a sheet of hard ice covering everything like a frozen lake. We axed trails to the privy, chopped wood twice a day to keep the woodstove burning, sawed through ice at the spring to get water. The temperature plummeted to below zero and then stayed there for more than forty days. It had never happened before.