“It’s a fine day for fishing. Expect your father will bring home at least one trout for dinner.” Jessie folded her arm over the tablecloth and started for the house. “I’ve got lunch packed in the buckboard. When you’re changed, we can head out to join them.”
“Oh, I’m ready. I’ll just put these things back in my room.”
Jessie stopped in the doorway. A frown drew her mouth into a pout, pushing her face into a fair imitation of a fish. “You’re not going in those shoes, are you?”
Dawn looked down at her feet, then pulled them beneath the table. “Why, yes.”
“Those’ll be ruined for sure, soon as you step out of the wagon, you’re sure to step in something.”
Lena appeared in the doorway looking concerned. “Do you have cookies in the oven?”
“Oh, mercy!” Jessie pushed past Lena at a run. “Not again!”
Dawn fumbled with her correspondence case as she collected her writing materials.
“I think that’s the second batch today.” Lena crossed to her table and refilled Dawn’s teacup. “She’s a little nervous. Also, a little distracted. The twins, you see.”
Dawn moved her feet a little farther under the table and took a cautious sip from her cup.
“May I?” Lena nodded to the chair.
“Of course.”
Lena picked up an empty cup and slipped into the chair across from Dawn, pouring herself a cup. “It feels good to get off my feet.” She sat back with a soft sigh. “I never tire of that.” She lifted her cup, gesturing with it to the view beyond the porch railing.
Dawn followed her gaze. As lovely as the hills and fields bordering the river might be, the reality of living here was so foreign as to seem fictional. “It is, but doesn’t it get lonely?”
The older woman lifted a shoulder. “I was lonely in the city, surrounded by friends and acquaintances. Many of those I knew were married. My employer’s family was kind to me, and the child I served as nanny was so dear. . .”
Dawn caught the fleeting shadow drift across her eyes, a moment of hesitation that carried a weight of emotion.
“But she wasn’t mine, not in the way the twins are Jessie’s and Bart’s.” Lena gave a faint smile. “I don’t think loneliness is the same as being alone. I’ve learned to love the solitude of living here. Evan taught me, and time was a teacher too. I won’t say that it was an easy adjustment to move from Chicago to where I knew no one. No milkman or cabbie. I came here determined to settle in a place of my own.” She looked up, her face brightening. “Providence surprised me. The home came with new friends that quickly became family.” She tipped her head, a girlish twinkle in her eye. “And there was and is Evan.”
“You left everything familiar. I can’t imagine that.”
“The first year I was frightened. Up in Sawtooth City winters are . . . it’s not something I think I can describe. It’s more than the cold. It’s something that tests your limits. But I stayed.”
“Alone?”
Lena slowly shook her head as the smile returned. “We had a boarding house full of those who stayed behind. Evan provided the calm leadership we needed, and the wisdom. By April, we knew we’d weathered the worst.”
“That sounds like one of Miss Jane Austen’s novels, where every heroine wins her hero.” Dawn worried that her tone mirrored her dislike for the romantics.
“From this side of that winter, I suppose it does. But we were rather desperate at times when food ran short and snow fell for days in a row, blocking the door in drifts to the roof.”
“Why didn’t you leave before it became so bad?”
“Stubbornness,” Lena said dryly. “Mine alone. My foolishness nearly got Evan killed. But as he likes to remind me, it wasn’t in God’s plan to leave me alone to face the storms.”
Dawn considered the hills across the valley. They didn’t appear that intimidating.
Lena must have read her thoughts. “Those hills you’re looking at keep you from seeing the mountains farther north. As Bart likes to say, these are mere molehills compared to the Sawtooths.”
“Oh.” Something about Lena’s tone sent a shiver through Dawn. Their name, alone, was chilling.
“Are you ready to ride out and take some lunch to the fishermen? Bart’s gone off to the barn to hitch the horses to the buckboard.”
“I can be ready directly.” Dawn picked up her correspondence case and rose slowly to her feet.
Lena glanced down at the exposed toe of Dawn’s shoe. “Those are lovely shoes. I wouldn’t want to see them ruined. I can loan you a pair, if you like. And if mine aren’t a good fit, Jessie probably has some boots.” She picked up her teacup and started for the door.
“I really don’t mind if they’re soiled. They aren’t that special.”
Lena surveyed her face for a moment. Some intuition perhaps stopped her from pressing Dawn further. “Well. . . all right, then. Let’s get you and Jessie on your way.”
“You aren’t coming?”
“I’m in charge of the twins today. Besides, Jessie really needs the break.”
“Bart says Tariff is raring to go.” Jessie met them at the door, her face flushed. “Well, not raring really. That wouldn’t be good, but he’s prancing anxious-like.”
“I’ll just put my things in the room and pick up my jacket.” Dawn only took a step before Jessie clapped the palm of her hand to her forehead.
“I think my brain’s just plain addlepated. Those two are sucking every ounce of memory out of it.” She reached into her apron pocket and pulled out a folded envelope along with a dishtowel. She smoothed the envelope, then handed it to Dawn with a rueful grin. “Bart brought this from town this morning with the rest of the mail. I plumb forgot.”
Dawn glanced down at the feminine handwriting and stiffened. “Thank you. I’ll take it to our room.”
She entered their suite and closed the door quietly behind her. Her tongue flickered out over dry lips before she lifted the envelope and read the now familiar return address. One more to add to the beribboned stack in her father’s trunk. She lay the letter on her father’s pillow, then stepped back staring at it with confusion and disbelief.
She backed from the room with her hand pressed to her chest, then turned, picked up the jacket from the back of the chair and fled the suite. As she closed the door behind her, she let out a long, slow breath.
He would explain. He had to explain.
This weight bearing down on her was something so foreign she hadn’t a word for it, unless, it was the one she’d used to describe the fear of living here in this wilderness, all alone. In all her years with her father doting on her, his only daughter, and she his constant companion, she’d never known this. And it felt empty and cold.
Dawn pulled herself into the wagon and settled her skirts close to her ankles. Jessie leaned down, allowing Bart to peck her cheek with a kiss.
“Keep nothing less than two pounds.” Bart said as he grinned and stepped back, with fair-haired Rowena clinging to his neck. The child’s blue eyes were on her brother, his fist wrapped tightly around a fold of Lena’s skirt. Both children seemed more interested in the buttered slice of bread they were eating than in their mother’s departure.
Jessie called back to Lena, “Don’t forget to put the rolls in the oven. They’ll collapse into flapjacks if you wait more than an hour.”
“Don’t worry!” Lena called out. “Have fun, but remember, we’re counting on you to bring home dinner.”
Jessie leaned over to Dawn. “I feel just awful leaving Bart behind.” She tightened her grip on the reins, wiggling herself into a more comfortable position on the hardwood bench. “Truth is, Bart doesn’t have the patience for fishing. He’s just awful.” She scrunched her lips. “I suppose, I’m not much better, but it’s fun. You fish?”
Dawn nodded absently. As a child she’d accompanied her father when he could still carry her piggyback from the horse to the river’s edge. But with her entrance into womanho
od came concerns of propriety and finding a way to make it a modest occasion brought added complications.
“I can hardly wait to bring the children along. I can tell you that getting them more certain on their feet brings mixed blessings. Can’t take my eyes off them now. They’d likely fall in if they came along, or I’d have to tie Tommy to a tree.”
As Jessie chattered on about the trials and tribulations of child rearing, Dawn allowed the landscape to distract her. Even after hearing Lena talk of her acceptance of this wilderness, Dawn marveled at those who stayed. The parks about New York offered enough natural adventure to please her.
“You see that wooded slope over there?”
Dawn followed the direction to which Jessie pointed.
“You wouldn’t know it from here, but there’s the prettiest little hot spring up there. Those trees give just enough privacy for us girls to take a dip without worrying we’d be scandalizing the neighbors. Course, the nearest neighbors live over that hill there about five miles away, and we’d see them coming from two miles out.” Jessie turned to Dawn and scrunched her nose. “I’m not talking about bathing down to your skin, although you surely could if you wanted. But I do like to take things down to my petticoats. That way the water purely soaks into my bones.”
Trees pressed in closer as they neared the river where the trail hugged the flank of the hill. Dawn couldn’t recall trees this tall in any park back home. Even with her head tipped back, the treetops remained obscured by the lower branches. These might even rival the height of the New York brownstones. And yet, Trinity Church in Manhattan impressed her more, and when Mr. Pulitzer completed his building, they said that the world would stand amazed. She found more in the achievements of man’s engineering to intrigue her.
“Do you think Lena’s right?”
Dawn snapped her head around to meet Jessie’s inquisitive expression. Moments ago, she’d been talking about her children, but Dawn couldn’t recall the direction of her monologue. “In what way?” she asked.
“Like I said, I feel like I’m going to ruin my babies. They come into the world so perfect, and pretty as a shiny new coin. Every time I have to correct them, I wonder if I’m doing it right. I don’t want to sit on them like some mean old, peevish mother hen, but I don’t want them raising, you-know-what, when they’re too old to paddle or I’m too old to catch them.” She let out a noisy sigh.
“Lena says I worry too much. She also says my babies weren’t so perfect when they came into this world. She says I didn’t have to teach them to pull each other’s hair or sneak into the sugar jar or pull the cat’s tail or climb out of bed when I put them down for a nap or—” She blew out a ragged breath. “I just kinda’ thought they were going to be like those new chalk slates we used to carry to school, with no marks on them, you know the ones, right? But that’s scary when you think about it. And I do! I could be the one to ruin them.” She frowned at the rump of the plodding horse. With a slap of the reins, the mare picked up her pace. “Lena thinks we come with some of the Almighty’s fingerprints on us already.”
Dawn was listening now. When she was born, she’d been given no opportunity to choose a different way to live, a way without physical hindrance. Such were God’s fingerprints on her. For a time, she did question the justice of it, but no longer. Her father had shown her how she was unique in other ways—ways that mattered—ways that proved her value. She had a purpose and identity unaffected by the disproportionate length of her legs.
“But we gotta have choices, right? Maybe the chalk slate comes with some marks on it.” Jessie tugged at a strand of her hair and grinned. “Like red hair. I’d choose that differently, for sure. Or short tempers.” Her expression grew thoughtful. “When I came here, I was sure starting with a pretty clean slate. Sure, I had a family back east, a mom and dad and brothers. But when I got off that wagon in Sawtooth City, I didn’t know anyone. Bart and I had written, but we didn’t have a face-to-face kind of knowing. That’s different.” She tapped a finger to her temple. “I’m not as smart as Lena, but I’m smarter than I was before I met her and we all started reading the books she brought with her. But I’ve been thinking that life is like a book. Sometimes we get to turn the page, or life does it for us, and there we are, everything new.”
Everything new. The idea burned like a hot coal inside her temple, unwelcome and painful. Adventure. Changes. These were things she avoided. Dawn pressed her hands into the pockets of her skirt, and dropped her gaze to the lazy current as it coursed around boulders and fallen logs, drawn south to the wide Snake River. There were constants, like gravity and time that couldn’t be changed. Her attitude, when she was young, had changed how she thought of herself, and life had improved. She could even recall the day and nearly the hour it had happened. The day the young man came calling.
He was a junior law clerk in her father’s office, and he was all bright expectations and eager to please everyone. But he’d shown her special attention and asked if he might come calling. He’d take her on a carriage ride, with a chaperone. One day, he’d come as promised, the chaperone being his older sister. Dawn had been so excited.
Then, her foot slipped on the carriage step. She fell to the sidewalk, exposing her clumsy shoe, the one she wore to correct the shorter leg. What she’d seen in his face—initial surprise, then the averted look of distaste, and at last his eyes meeting hers with that expression of abject pity—had changed everything. Although it hadn’t been the first experience, she’d let her guard down, believing he had a genuine interest in her and not just the favor he’d find in her father’s world. That’s what made it harder. Because in the next moment he’d recovered, pretending it didn’t matter. He was willing to overlook it, but not for her sake, but for what he stood to gain from his ability to get past her deformity.
It had felt like a page had turned that day and a new chapter had begun. She’d determined from that time forward to find her worth, not in a young man’s adoring looks, but what she believed was true of herself. But all that had shifted again, that certainty shaken by the discovery of what must certainly be love letters to her father. Within them were the words to a whole chapter of his life, words she hadn’t read.
Jessie’s voice tore through her heavy cloak of self-pity. “You know that hymn, the one about the Lord’s mercies being new every morning? It just seems he does give us chances to change things, even if it’s just the way we see things, you know?”
Chapter Eight
Pencil Sketches
“The greatest doer must also be a great dreamer.” Theodore Roosevelt
June 27, 1890
“Let him run with it. There! Give him more line. Wait! Not too much!” Edward paced just behind Luke. His voice conveyed his unharnessed excitement as Luke worked the trout tugging at the end of his line.
Luke took a careful step to his left, planting his foot on the pebbled river bed before shifting his weight. The fish was tiring, but so was Luke. He knew what he was doing despite what Mr. Fairburn seemed to think of his technique. The man hadn’t stopped offering suggestions since the fish had taken Luke’s bait.
“You might be in a better position a little higher on the bank. How can you see what he’s doing from down there?” Edward asked. He was scarcely minding his own rod as he took a step closer to Luke.
At the outset of their excursion, the older man’s enthusiasm had been entertaining and even enjoyable. At present, it was neither, and Luke wished the man would quiet so he could concentrate.
“Mr. Fairburn. Edward,” Evan called quietly to the man from a distance of fifteen feet or more upriver.
Luke risked a glance and saw Evan eyebrowing toward Edward’s taut line pulling in a desperate run upstream.
The older man’s eyes widened, and he turned so abruptly that he went down hard on one knee. “Tarnation!” He scrambled for footing and stumbled along with his line as the fish swam downstream.
Luke focused his attention back to his own line and gav
e a deft jerk, successfully setting the hook.
“Nicely done, Luke. Think you’ve done this a few times or you have uncanny beginner’s luck,” Evan said.
“A few times.” Luke stepped out of the river, reeling in his catch in an unhurried but deliberate manner that assured the fish would not slip from a slack line. Evan slipped a net beneath the trout, a beautiful creature, of a color Luke had never seen on a fish.
“Think it’s a keeper.” Evan carried it to the shore and attached it to the small string of fish caught earlier.
They watched Edward play his line out, as he muttered to himself and the fish. That he knew what he was doing, was evident in the number of fish already on the line ahead of Luke’s.
Evan reached in his saddlebag and pulled out two sandwiches, handing one to Luke and keeping one for himself. “Where’d you learn? Your father?”
Luke made a derisive snort. “No. Had a cousin back in Galway. He fished with his father since he was scarcely out of short pants. Learned everything from him, and my cousin taught me.”
“Well, if you ever wanted a job as a guide, you’d be welcome here. That is, if we grow the business like we hope, and if enough folks come out this way so we could hire more hands.” Evan tore off a crust of bread, chewing thoughtfully. “There are worse ways to make a living.”
Luke couldn’t argue that point. It would be far better than any job he’d worked when they’d first landed on the American shore. He’d obviously worked up an appetite because he was already down to licking his fingers. He made his way to the river’s edge and squatted on the shore, scooping water into his mouth. It was sweet and cold.
“What brought you here, Evan? Surely it wasn’t just for the fishing,” Luke said.
Evan grinned. “Nah. My brother had the wanderlust. Always did. He had the notion we’d make our fortunes here and then go into ranching. He wanted to breed horses. Found himself one to be the stud, name of Gambit.” He popped the last bite of his sandwich in his mouth and rubbed his hands along his pants.
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