THE IMPERIAL ENGINEER (49 page)

"I am. Are you?"

"I think they're perfect. Open the door."

The whole family poured into the room, led by Lulu's parents and Silas and
Soomey. They clustered at the foot of the bed and around the walls until the room was full.
Even Xi Xin and Ru Nan were there, over by the door with Abel and Mrs. Petrie.

Tony picked up his daughter, held her so everyone could see the tiny face, still red
and scrunched from its ordeal. He walked to the woman who was the only mother he'd ever
known. "Soomey, this is my daughter, Hope Su Mei Dewitt. I ask you and Mamma Flower
and Aunt Hattie to help us teach her to be the woman she can be, one like you and like her
mother." When he handed the babe to Soomey, there were tears in her eyes, something he
had never thought to see. She held the babe close for a long time, then passed her to her
other grandmother, who kissed the now squalling infant and gave her to Aunt Hattie.

He returned to sit beside Lulu, who held up their son. "Pappa, Uncle Emmet,
Father Silas, this is my son, William Tao Ni Dewitt. I want him to grow to be brave and
strong and kind as you are. Will you help us teach him?"

"We will," they answered with one voice. In turn the three older men came and
laid hands on the tiny boy's head.

"Poor little tykes." Micah's voice came from the back of the crowd. "They ain't
gonna get away with nothin' nohow."

Laughter filled the room.

As the level of sound rose with everyone talking at once, Tony sat next to Lulu
and slipped his arm around her. "Have I thanked you for my son and my daughter?"

"No more than I've thanked you. Oh, Tony, we are so blessed!"

"That we are," he said, his voice breaking as joy flooded his entire being.

THE END

Hailey, Idaho, was an important place in the early 1880s: a major lead and silver
mining center, the terminus, for a time, of the Oregon Short Line's Wood River Branch, the
place where Idaho's first telephones were installed, and the only western town of any
importance where the Chinese weren't driven out.

In writing
The Imperial Engineer
, I took liberties with the calendar,
condensing the events of almost four years into one. The last spike of the railroad was
driven on May 7, 1883. The first telephones went into service on October 1, 1883, and the
blizzard that isolated Hailey for the better part of two weeks happened in February, 1884.
The Chinese issue, simmering ever since the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in
1882, didn't come to a full boil until 1885, so Hailey's Anti-Chinese League actually wasn't
organized until early January, 1886.

The news, opinions, advertisements and notices attributed to the
Wood River
Times
and the
Wood River News-Miner
really appeared in those newspapers.
All but one of them...

The cover illustration is taken from a panoramic map. Look closely to see a train
coming in from Shoshone, and a line of telephone poles along Fourth Avenue. The color
lithograph bears the legend:

WOOD RIVER VALLEY
with HAILEY in the FOREGROUND
1884.

Among her varied careers are a couple Judith B. Glad actually chose, rather than
falling into. With her children in school, she decided it was time for her to follow her own
dreams, so she went back to school and studied botany. After completing her M.S., she
became a botanical consultant, and spent the next twenty-odd years picking flowers for a
living. Well, it was a little more complicated than that, but she picked enough flowers to
keep her happy.

Consulting is not always steady work, so one slow winter Judith decided to spend
a little time at her second career choice. Now she'd done a lot of writing as a consultant,
but somehow describing proposed mine sites and interpreting statistical data wasn't the
kind of writing she wanted to do. So she wrote a book. And another, and... Before she
knew it, she was spending more time writing than picking flowers.

Judith lives in Portland, Oregon, where her garden blooms all year 'round and the
long, rainy winters give her lots of time for writing. Visit her website
(www.judithbglad.com) for samples of her stories.

* * * *

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