Widow Walk

by Gar LaSalle

  He had not spoken a word to those men in his command who had descended briefly into the same savagery they were there to put an end to, once and for all. Their vicious solution, the cruelest form of eradicating an enemy, was as bad as the problem it was supposed to correct, just more disciplined in its process than the way the savages went about it.

  He sighed thinking about those sins and that awakened him to where he was. He could see his hands now, and then he became aware of something faintly moving in from the water line, a sound over the slight lapping of the gentle surf against the rocky shore.

  It was moving in from the right.

  He pulled back the hammer on his pinfire—slowly, slowly pulling it to avoid its click on the catch; quieting his breath; tightening his eardrums; peering into the fog thinning itself with the new light.

  The beach had expanded with a low tide in the night, and he could just make out traces of footsteps in the sand, heading away from his position. Sam’s! Had his companion left him?

  It came closer now, two distinct sounds from different positions on the water that he could not yet see. Couldn’t be Sam, he knew! It would take two shots. Impossible.

  Isaac flexed his right thigh to reassure himself that his knife was still there, hadn’t fallen out in the night, a quick pull for him in a desperate, last struggle.

  His heart was racing, pushing his pulse into his neck, roaring in his ears, loud enough, he was certain, to give away his position.

  Gulls started squawking at something in the distance off to the right somewhere in the fog. And then, another movement to the left, closer now, within a few yards of his position.

  He slowly swung his muzzle to the left, expecting the marauder would appear at him in a rush, or perhaps, alternatively, would just be standing there waiting for the fog to draw back and reveal Isaac’s hiding place. And that moment would be the bastard’s last because Isaac would not hesitate to strike him dead.

  And then the sound from the right again. More distinct, cautious, water dripping off something.

  Then the sun cracked through the thinning mist, and Isaac saw two brown eyes, then four. A mother and her fawn watching him on the beach.

  They turned and walked away, leaving hoof prints in a parallel track to those left by Sam. The gulls made a fuss again in the distance, and he could estimate how far away they were now. And then the sun came over the tallest tree on the shore and the rocks gleamed, and Isaac could see the water line below.

  More wildlife sounds now—a sea lion calling for companionship and the water lapping below—reminding him he was still alive.

  When enough light raked the beach, Isaac slowly placed the hammer back down and moved cautiously to hide behind the canoe. He hoped he would find Sam there, but he did not. The supplies were intact, and his powder was dry enough.

  He pulled a piece of salted pork and a rind of cheese and ate them quickly. Although he couldn’t see much behind him because of the brambles, he could watch the beach, and as the fog melted away as quietly as it had arrived, he could see for several hundred yards.

  He remembered to wind his watch so at least he would know how much time had passed. Likely it was at least six. After an hour, he quickly moved back to his position by the crest of the spit to look at the beach to the south, which was now visible in the distance. The long boat was gone. The cabins had burned to the ground, and he could see there was detritus on the beach below.

  Isaac waited for another hour, scanning the horizon up and down the waterline and into the tree line, watching for any movement. He saw from the footprints that Sam had moved off into the woods at the south end of the small beach. There was a hill beyond, and if Sam had survived his flight, he was likely watching the beach below from a safe perch.

  Isaac put himself in Sam’s mind and tried to understand why he would have run.

  He hadn’t expected much from Sam, so it didn’t surprise him when Sam met those low expectations. But he decided he would kill him if he ever again showed up on Whidbey.

  By ten o’clock, Isaac thought it safe enough to move down the beach to where the long boat had berthed. He kept his musket cocked and untied his side knife in its sheath.

  When he reached the smoking remains of the three cabins, he found broken furniture, a few overturned boxes and chests, smashed crockery, and mail-order catalogs from Chicago, all awash in the advancing tide.

  Two dogs lay clubbed-dead on the beach. Between the rock foundations of the second and third cabins, he found a path into the woods.

  He thought of Whidbey and Emmy and Sarah and Jacob, and knew he needed to head back southwest to the island in case the marauders had moved in that direction. He was comforted that his brother, Winfield and the Crocketts were close by and his home was on the opposite side of the most direct northward waterway route for the raiders’ long boat.

  But it was unusual for the Northerners to appear in single boats, he knew. There likely would be others or a larger group of boats somewhere in the vicinity.

  He thought about getting into his skiff and departing, but he had to know what was in the woods, and if there were victims, to bury them, or at least give them a prayer that they likely hadn’t had time for themselves. So he walked carefully down the path, his breathing quick and shallow.

  In a clearing, he found five men, two with bullets in their chests and bellies and three bludgeoned, their heads caved in.

  All were stripped naked and mutilated. And all were Negroes, likely freed or escaped slaves from the South. No women or children, except for one small boy, about seven or eight, who was cradled in one man’s arms.

  Isaac thought of his Jacob. Would his son run to him as this boy likely had during his final moments? What would his own thoughts be as he tried to defend his boy, his family? How many of the Indians would he take down with him before he succumbed?

  These poor Negro folk likely had not been armed, or at least not armed enough to leave evidence of fighting back, although the Indians seldom left their own dead at the scene of the fight.

  He had heard that the Indians were even more vicious against Negroes, more likely to rob them when they attempted to settle. Perhaps it was because they were easy victims, who hadn’t learned to defend themselves very well. Or perhaps it was because they tended to live isolated from a supportive community, like the one he had established in Whidbey, where folks came together to help one another in times of need.

  He pulled the bodies together in one group, a gruesome task, reminding him of some of the things he had done in eastern Washington. The woods were wet from the constant drizzle and the fires he had seen the day before all but burned out, so a funeral pyre would be useless.

  He began piling rocks and wood debris over the bodies to delay the depredation for a while and keep the birds away at least.

  That took several hours, but it was only decent. And then he set out.

  As he pushed his way back across the sound in the late afternoon, he thought about the irony of the massacre, that the victims had likely escaped somehow from a life of slavery only to find death and new captivity here in the Northwest from new oppressors. He wondered whether, if left alone, they might have made a go of it in this fertile land.

  He was grateful for what God had given him and his family, grateful and relieved the weather had remained calm, allowing for a safe crossing—a good blessing in a dire situation. He would need to stop to rest at intervals over the nine hours it likely would take for him to cross against the tide and a mild southerly.

  Caught, as he was, between hope and fear, he would need to watch for any activity that might indicate a ship that could carry him. Or a Northerner long boat that could catch up with him.

  He would return with a militia detail to bury the settlers. When it was safe. But knowing somewhere out there was a long boat, likely with some new slaves, and more like it, moving down int
o the Puget Straits, he had to get home.

  “Dear Jesus, Lord, give me the strength to endure this next travail. Let me see my porch and find my bed. Watch over the children and Emmy. I will do Thy will, but give me, Lord, this one last day.”

  He said that same prayer over and over again as he paddled slowly across the sound.

  Chapter Eight

  ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

  Emmy

  We shucked fourteen bushels of winter corn, cut four more cords of Alder. Easier chopping than cedar. Received correspondence from Cmdr. G. Pickett, inquiring re: provisions Isersons visiting from Port Townsend in a few weeks. Bracing myself for that. Heard rumors that long boats seen off Camano. No word from Isaac. Worried.It is raining for the 6th straight day. No let up.

  —Emmy Evers’ Diary, October 5th, 1857

  Her duties filled the full day and much of the evening before it was too dark to do much else than sleep, bone tired, on a hard but sufficient mattress.

  The big feather bed her father had sent them as a wedding gift never made it around the Horn. The clipper ship had been given up for lost. Other small amenities, sent by her family to them across the Rockies on the Oregon passage, were abandoned with many other things by Isaac’s brother, Winfield, in a horrible trek that nearly killed everyone in his party.

  For that decision, she couldn’t criticize Winfield, an amiable but emotionally labile redheaded young man, because he had arrived with himself intact, in the company of Isaac’s father, Benjamin, Isaac’s feeble-minded, lame, older sister, Corinne; the Crocketts; the Mastersons; and five other families, all with little remaining in the way of possessions but determined to make their passage worth it.

  The new settlers all had settled in quickly, making vigorous pursuit rebuilding their lives on Whidbey on, and in the near vicinity of the fertile plateau Isaac had surveyed and claimed in ’50. It was a splendid homestead, flat, with the richest soil they had ever seen and easy access to the beach.

  Isaac had built an unadorned but ample house with a porch, cedar roof shingles and siding cut at the Bellingham mill. When the family had moved up from Olympia, the children had a bedroom upstairs next to theirs, and the kitchen, next to the small parlor, was large enough to accommodate six people for dinner.

  Emmy was patient. She was also young enough that she understood Providence would provide for material comforts in due time, if she kept to her duties, loved her children, and obeyed her husband, although Isaac had made that very difficult many times.

  Loving her children was the easiest thing God had given her to do in this life. Each day was new with them, and that was how they each embraced it as well, especially Sarah, who Emmy had decided was much like herself, having a natural curiosity for the big and the small. As little more than a toddler, Sarah would sit for long stretches studying the ant piles near the woodshed. And Emmy had observed her walking around and around the deck of the British steam cutter during a visit to Port Townsend, touching every knob and dial in the engine room, following the straps and levers. Only after she had found questions she could not answer by deduction, did she render questions to the engineer, who delighted in the young girl’s precocious intelligence.

  Emmy wasn’t sure who Jacob resembled in disposition, except that his temper fits sometimes reminded her of Isaac’s brother, Winfield.

  Jacob was direct and always ran ahead. He needed to be watched and pulled back. More than once Isaac had to correct him and apologize for his son’s interruptions into adult conversations. But she also mused that at least on one occasion, the person with whom Isaac had been speaking turned to Jacob and thanked him for his passionate observation.

  Jacob would become a fine young man someday, if he survived. And someday, soon she expected, a delivery of books and a good slate board would arrive in Bellingham, and she could start teaching her children what they must learn if they were to prosper in this new land.

  Until then, she drilled them about rudimentary arithmetic and tested them daily on English grammar. On Saturday mornings, she used Dr. Roget’s book to help Sarah expand her vocabulary, and employed every appropriate opportunity to teach both children, but especially Jacob, about proper manners.

  ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

  Shortly after Isaac departed that week on yet another official trip, she received a letter directed to her from the Bellingham military commander, Captain Pickett, who inquired whether she could provide fresh beef for his forty-man garrison. He announced he would visit that week and, if she was amenable, wanted to inspect the cattle before consummating the order. He also wished to introduce himself and pay his respects.

  The order would be smaller by a third than the one they had negotiated last year with the Port Townsend fort commander, who had ordered four hundred pounds of prime beef each week. She had always been surprised that the small garrison in Port Townsend could consume so much meat. But as she reread the letter, she suddenly realized he had been receiving his fort’s allotment from the commander at Port Townsend, who was reselling it, likely at a significant markup, with some of the proceeds going into his own pocket.

  Captain Pickett had either discovered the little scam, or unwittingly found the supplier, but in either case was trying to reduce his cost.

  By his florid language, she realized he was an educated man, and from his looped and gentle script, she could tell he was a sensitive one.

  He chose sad, ornate phrases. One sentence she reread several times in his official communication was, “I beg your indulgence, madam, lest I create an importune imposition on loyal hardworking settlers like yourselves, most certainly beset by the arduous work and sometimes desperate difficulties of surviving in this hostile land.”

  He signed the letter, “Your most obedient servant, Captain George E. Pickett, Commandant, United States Army.”

  Thus bemused, she wrote back to him that she would be most pleased to sell him the beef and, without revealing that she surmised he was being swindled by his fellow officer in Port Townsend, offered a price five cents less per pound than what she was delivering to the cheat. She and Isaac could afford the few dollars a week that this was likely to cost them, if, as she suspected, Port Townsend subsequently cut back its order. And it made her smile at the propriety of such mischief.

  Chapter Nine

  ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

  Pickett

  We are exploring the region south of Bellingham Bay and bargaining with local suppliers in the area to better provision our troops for the upcoming winter.

  —1857 memo by Captain George E. Pickett to Lt. Colonel Rufus Ingalls, Quartermaster General, Oregon Territory

  He had heard she was comely, a looker, by the description of one of the grain merchants with whom his supply sergeant was bartering.

  The merchant, a dour, unctuous, pot-bellied man with a pock-marked face poorly covered by a gray-yellow stubble, also noted that Emmy Evers ran her husband’s business with a tightness that surprised anyone who casually might be taken in by her soft countenance. In his experience, the merchant said, if one tried to push past her civil and gentle demeanor, one found something quite durable, a “spirited filly,” not easily swept aside by casual assumptions.

  Most men in the region believed she was the perfect complement to her mate, Isaac Evers, a hardworking and honest dreamer who, until he had brought her to Whidbey, had little to show for all his ambitions. After she married ‘Ol’ Isaac’, the merchant said, things began to fall in their right place, and the entire Whidbey area started to prosper.

  George Pickett was intrigued by this banter, and as he listened to it, he thought about what another good mate would bring to the unique loneliness he felt here, so different from what he had experienced in the parched Southwest, where he had buried his first wife.

  The perpetual gray skies of this area, the inescapable drizzle during the winter months, overwhelmed every bit of di
sciplined fortitude he had at his personal command.

  He dreaded the oncoming winter and the gnawing boredom that drove everyone in the garrison to fits of mischief and frequent day-long drinking bouts with contraband whiskey obtained from local mill workers who helped load ships in the harbor. The last year had been particularly bleak, and he reprimanded himself for the example he set for his men.

  He had remorse for the punishment some of them endured because he believed, with some certainty, that he had contributed to their transgressions.

  He had built a home away from the post so he could find privacy and indulge himself without betraying the trust he was expected to build, but the whiskey did not cure the boredom.

  Now, with cold winds sweeping in from the Bellingham bay into the meager community, the locals were shuttering up the windows and themselves inside, bracing for another bitter winter. He kept himself busy, mostly by writing lengthy reports to General Harney about local hostiles and the likelihood of their renewing attacks on settler communities.

  Despite this, and over the next few months, curiosity turned to an obsessed daydream, and he found his thoughts tugged to an image of Emmy Evers, constructed from what he heard from the merchant.

  Did she resemble Morning Mist or Sally Vinge, his first wife?

  Was Emmy Evers’ reputed steely constitution discernible from a distance?

  How deep was the soft shell that supposedly lay on the surface?

  He decided to make an excursion south.

  Accompanied by his sergeant and armed appropriately for the hostile environs, he rode fifty miles along the coast, encountering both black bear and a small group of young aggressive Lummis.

  The bear turned and ran away at the sight of the mounted twosome, but Pickett had to draw his saber and then finally fire a warning shot to get the natives to clear off.

  Remembering a bad experience with the Apache in Texas, when a similar encounter had been followed by a nighttime attack that had nearly been disastrous, he and his sergeant traveled ten miles beyond the site of the confrontation to provide safe distance between themselves and the Lummi youth. He would have given himself even greater berth if he were in the Southwest or the Lummi were mounted, but these northwestern natives were likely more curious than truly dangerous, he reasoned.