A Clearing in the Wild

by Jane Kirkpatrick

  Major Rains, the commander of the fort, had a doctor at his disposal. A family doctor also served the town, and in the morning, Christian insisted that I let myself be examined by Dr. C. W. Shaug, though I felt fine. The bruise that had spread like spilled ink across my back from when Opal upended me lingered. I still ached some at my lower back, but I decided it might be the baby protesting the long hours of riding even on a soft-gaited mule.

  Dr. Shaug proved to be a big man, kindly, and he did all his examinations with a nurse present and with my wrapper on. Christian stayed to translate.

  “I would say late November,” he said. “Judging from the infant’s size. Is this your calculation too?”

  “No,” I said, understanding the English name for the month. “October.”

  “The infant is small if it’s to arrive a month away. Have you eaten well?”

  “I’ve been in good health,” I said. “Just one mishap on the trail, but otherwise enough to eat to fill me and not even sickness in the mornings, as I’ve heard can happen.”

  “Indeed,” he said. “Well”—he put the end of his stethoscope into the pocket of his vest—“I’d suggest a physician be present. It could be your baby will need quick, professional decision-making when he arrives. Where do you intend to be in October? That’s what you said, October?”

  “We’ve yet to decide,” Christian told him. “In the Willamette area. From what we’ve heard there is still good land available there.”

  “You’re farmers? Yes? Well, that is rich soil country. How many sections are you hoping to file on?”

  “Many,” Christian told him. “We’re the foot soldiers who make way for a large colony that will come out as soon as we get word back to them.”

  “Foot soldiers. Pioneers. From the Latin pedant. Well, then, Godspeed to you. There are good physicians there. Some in the French Prairie country, though little land’s available there to claim. But make sure you winter near a doctor.”

  It was an unpleasant thought. I decided to pitch it.

  We took a steamer downriver to Fort Vancouver. John Genger again said we could pay. It pushed its way along through pouring rain. Misty fog hugged the shoreline, forcing us to imagine the scenery, but I knew there must be high rocks and trees. I felt cold to the bone, my teeth chattering from the elements more than from the dizzying water. By the time we reached the landing at the former Hudson’s Bay Company fort, my throat felt scratchy and I sneezed. I could see the buildings up a grassy slope. Here the men hoped they’d get good information about whether to go north or south to form the new colony. I hoped I’d find dryness and warmth.

  Ulysses S. Grant, the senior officer who managed the well-laid-out fort, complained that high water would keep them from harvesting the potatoes that year. “But then, everyone appears to be raising potatoes around here to send to the California gold fields.”

  “At least the floodwaters have kept you from the labor of digging the potatoes up,” Christian said. “Otherwise, you’d have watched them rot for lack of sales.”

  Grant laughed. “Good one,” he said. “The silver lining in the darkest of clouds. You’ll stay for supper,” he ordered more than invited, clicking his heels and bending at his waist toward me. “I’ll ask the fort physician to give you something for that cough.”

  Christian said the invitation would likely not have come without a woman present. I was pleased I could bring some respite to the scouts, who sat at the long table along with senior officers stationed at the fort. The conversation proved lively, and I could understand the hospitableness, if not all of the words.

  I loved the lavishly painted dishes, the candelabra, and long-stemmed glassware that looked fit for a queen. Grant commented on the crystal goblets he said he always carried with him from fort to fort. “Something of my own to make a place like home,” he told us. The food steamed with freshness, and my mouth watered just watching the platter of corn beef and cabbage move slowly toward my place, served by men with military precision. I wondered where the officers’ wives might be, then heard women’s chatter from an adjoining room. This would be what our life would be like if we were not bound to the colony. A life filled with worldly things, singular treasures, abundance, men perhaps waiting on women, and sometimes women sitting down beside men. Hadn’t the Lord promised us such abundance?

  I wondered if Christian might not entertain that idea too as he ran his finger around the lip of the crystal before bringing it to his mouth.

  “Perhaps you should winter near here,” Grant suggested. “Make your journey to mark land in the spring when the floodwaters recede and you can better see what you’ll be getting.”

  “Indeed. Your suggestion bears some consideration,” my husband said, then politely changed the subject. He told me later he didn’t want to disagree with the commander, but he wanted to secure our site yet this fall so at the first sign of weather breaking, scouts could return to prepare the main party to come out.

  “This might be a good place to winter, though,” I offered.

  “It would be easier for you and for the child.”

  “You could stay here too, make forays out north and south but come back here. The colony doesn’t expect you to live in hardship. You were never asked to do so when you traveled into Kentucky, ja?” He nodded agreement. “You stayed as a guest, the way the disciples were told to receive what others offered, to take nothing with them. The commander offers us a place to winter. Is it not divine intervention?”

  “Nein. Any area close to here will be too populated.” He pulled on his reddish beard. “But you could stay, and in the spring, when the scouts head back, I could come to get you and bring you to wherever we have found a site.”

  A winter with a bed and roof did invite. But if I remained, Christian would miss the birth of his child. “I’m not staying here without you. I’m one of the scouts. I’ll go where you go, as Ruth did.” I wiped at my nose. “In sickness and in health,” I reminded him.

  That night as we slept on a feather bed at the fort, I wondered if I shouldn’t urge us all to remain through the winter. Christian might come to see the merits of living closer to the real world of people finely dressed, eating at well-apportioned tables, learning to use English all the time. Maybe he’d see that we could live safely in the world while not being of it, as Scripture ordained us to be.

  Here were many people who could be brought into our fold. Maybe we were being led to this place. Maybe we scouts needed to pay more attention to populated sites. Perhaps isolation shouldn’t be the most important factor to consider. I’d find a way to mention that to Christian.

  I watched the light flickering against the pewter and crystal, washing over the gray steins on the table. Our leader back in Missouri saw the heaviness of the world able to snuff out one’s light, leaving people lost and alone in the darkness, and so we were advised to look to the colony, return to the colony, trust only in the colony. Our leader would have us isolate ourselves as the true way to resist the world.

  But how could we light the world if we were so far from it? There were goodly people populating this country. The commander. The doctors we’d met. Even German women of negotiable affections provided assistance to us on our journey. What we needed had been provided. God was in the world. Surely God could look after us if we lived among others. Meanwhile, we scouts could offer another way to bring light to the wilderness, though it did require risk.

  That was the challenge, I supposed, as I watched my husband talk with those worldly men in their uniforms: to be willing to enter the darkness of the unknown wilderness, the outside world, hoping the light one brought would be bright enough and warm enough that it would overcome darkness, and more, encourage others to light a candle there too.

  13

  Into the Wilderness

  I woke up singing, as I understood Christian’s mission better than I ever had before. With a little effort on my part, I thought he’d accept my observations about lack of merits within isola
tion. How could we expand the colony without more people around? If we lived here or near this Columbia River, Christian wouldn’t have to travel as he had before to bring people in, as we’d be in the midst of people. All sorts of Volk, free and slaves, made their way here, and surely acts of charity toward them formed a part of our mission, to break the holds of bondage of all kinds while serving as the hands and feet of God within the world.

  As in St. Joseph, Missouri, I’d already heard French and Spanish, and even some German spoken, and a tongue with clicks and rolls that crusty old mountain men used to converse with natives. Hadn’t our Lord walked within the midst of common people? Didn’t He appear to His disciples after His death in everyday places where His friends ate together or where they worked beside their fishing boats? This was the goal, then, to be among people, even buxom women attracted to my husband, but to not allow them to lead us astray. Ja, I’d have to learn to live with the monster of envy, but isolation would make that lesson more difficult to learn and wouldn’t be any protection at all.

  Even I could see that this Fort Vancouver and the town of Portland across the river would be where emigrants would come and want to stay. Vistas of green slopes and oats growing high rolled up onto craggy rocks with waterfalls. The weather felt mild, almost warm, even last evening. Timber soared into the skyline in this Columbia country, so all the other criteria except isolation were met. Surely isolation shouldn’t be our chief desire. That’s what I’d have to convince Christian of, and I intended to begin that morning.

  But Christian had dressed early, and I never even heard his steady breathing as he did his pushing-ups. He left so quietly that I slept on. When he returned he expressed enthusiasm about a chance meeting that sealed our fate. Or perhaps where God’s concerned, there is no chance at all.

  “Get dressed,” Christian said. He brushed at his hat, tossing raindrops on the wood floor of the room we’d been given to sleep in at the fort. “We’ve found what we’ve been seeking.”

  “Near here? I’m so pleased,” I said, pulling on my wrapper against the morning dampness. I sent a prayer of thanksgiving upward.

  “No, not here. But not far away.”

  My husband had met an emigrant who’d come out from Iowa the year before, and the man, Ezra Meeker, said we should go north, farther north to a place of such mild weather, such beautiful meadows and prairies, that no one who ever saw it would ever choose to leave.

  The walk across the wet grass brought a fresh scent to my nose. Christian and Adam Schuele and Ezra Meeker himself now shared this news with all of us as we stood inside the sutler’s store, watching a drizzling rain fall across the door opening. The sharp scent of salted hides waiting transport lifted from the bales around us.

  “Emigrants from the Puget Sound Agricultural Company cleared land there and planted trees, had sheep and cattle, and did quite well. Some have been there since ’48. They’d have done better if they could have kept the increase of their herds, but they were indentured, almost, to the Hudson’s Bay Company. Now that they’ve sold out, those farms are available. The lands there are rich and fertile.”

  “Are there portions there for donation land claims?” asked Michael Schaefer Sr.

  “That and to buy,” Ezra Meeker told him. Christian raised his eyebrows. “Well, some are fixing to leave, so they’ll sell; but more will come, you mark my words. The best part of the Oregon Territory is north of the Columbia.”

  Meeker looked not much older than I, and he told us he’d come south this past week to stock up on things from the fort’s supply and to talk with emigrants recently arrived. He said he knew how hard it had been for him when his group reached Portland last November, trying to find the best place to settle. Meeker planned to head back, and we could travel with him if we wished. Or he’d give us good directions. He said he had intentions of returning east in the spring to guide other wagons out. “Puget Sound, part of the newly formed Washington Territory, that’s where I hope they’ll all settle.”

  “What do you think?” Christian asked the scouts as we stood inside the sutler’s store. “This Meeker is a kindly sort. Youngish.” He spoke in German in front of the man, and Meeker smiled as though accustomed to waiting through translations. Or perhaps he understood German. I couldn’t tell.

  “What’s in it for him?” John Genger asked. “What does he get for guiding us north?”

  “Nothing. Or at least he hasn’t asked for a guide fee,” Christian said. “He has a wife and baby girl, so he knows what a family would need.”

  “How do you know this about him?” Hans asked.

  “He told me so. I trust him.”

  “How do we travel?” John asked.

  “We could head on out to the mouth of the Columbia, catch a ship north that would drop us at Puget Sound. But it would be expensive.”

  The idea of an ocean voyage caused my stomach to flip. I swallowed and wrapped my mother’s cape around me closer. Her lavender scent on the wool had nearly vanished into the wisp of her memory. I rubbed my cheek against the cloth, taking in its comfort, then said, “The ocean voyage would be more expensive than following him back north.”

  “We’d have to sell the stock to do it,” Joe Knight said.

  “We might have to sell them anyway, from what Meeker says,” Christian told him.

  “What sense does that make? We need the mules for farming, the other stock, too. Why did we hang on to pack animals at the Dalles Landing when so many offered to buy if we’re only going to sell them now?” This from George Link, and I thoroughly agreed. I nodded my head.

  “Meeker says the land is good there, that it’s already been farmed in places,” Adam Schuele affirmed. “He’s introduced hops, so you know the soil is good. We can buy stock from those already there.” As the other fluent English speaker, he alone could verify Christian’s enthusiasm and assessment of Meeker’s words.

  I imagined having to part with Opal and didn’t like that thought at all.

  “Indeed,” said Christian. “If we can buy some of those established farms and lay claim to adjoining land, we can have all we need for the colony.”

  “There are neighbors near?” I asked.

  “Most of the travel is by walking or by boat,” Christian continued, as though I hadn’t spoken. “The woods are too tangled for wagons, but the rivers are perfect for bringing in supplies and for sending sold products out. We’d farm beside the rivers.” A gleam formed in Christian’s eyes.

  There’d be few families there if wagons couldn’t make it through the rough.

  “Timber everywhere and a ready market for it in California in the gold fields. Indeed. I believe the Lord has led this Meeker into our midst as a beacon, the directional light we need.”

  Travel by boat? Rivers? Timber without wide open spaces and not even the comfort of the mount my father picked for me? Where were the women? I felt my stomach lurch.

  “Wilhelm wanted separation,” Adam Schuele reminded. “But there’s a fort at Nisqually and another at a place called Steilacoom, so should there be Indian trouble we’d have a secure place to go to.”

  “Could we talk more about the need for separation?” I said. “Perhaps the way the colony is to grow isn’t through new recruiting from far away, but by living closer to people, where they can see the caring in our lives and want that for themselves. Maybe the Lord has led us here to this Vancouver to do things differently than before, and this Meeker is a … distraction.”

  Only the steady thumping of the rain on the log roof filled the silence. Men moved their eyes to Christian, then to the floor. I might have fine ideas, but today I appeared to be invisible and my words as silent as a preacher’s sin.

  Against my better judgment (not that anyone asked), we sold the stock. How I hated parting with Opal, who’d become more of a pet than a work animal, a confidante for my unspeakable woes. Her new owner, a Portland farmer, took Fred, too, but I spent most of my time with the man singing Opal’s virtues, including her gu
ardian tendencies. He smiled indulgently. At least he spoke German and so could communicate with the horses and mules.

  Within two days, we took a scow north on the Columbia River to a landing at Monticello, where once Hudson’s Bay people had a fur storage place. There, we were met by tall, somber men and their long cedar canoes. “Cowlitz Indians,” Meeker said. “Friendly. They speak some English. Their name means ‘seekers,’ I’m told. As in a spiritual sense.”

  “We have that in common,” Christian said, and he clicked his boots together and bent at his waist in recognition of their virtue.

  They had that curious sloped forehead I’d seen at the Dalles Landing, and I wondered what could cause this but didn’t know how to ask. Besides, I didn’t want to be rude.

  Meeker said we’d pay the Cowlitz in trade goods to take us all north, and I wondered what of our meager goods might appeal to these stately men or to the women who I noticed now sat in the bows of the crafts.

  We moved by canoe up the Cowlitz River into the new Washington Territory.

  Once again I watched the shoreline glide by, this time while seated with packs of our personal belongings like gray mushrooms at my feet. A Cowlitz woman and child were in our canoe, which held Christian and five other men besides the Cowlitz paddlers. A wooden cradle wrapped around one infant. A brace pressed against the infant’s head, answering my question about what made the sharp angle to the forehead. I wondered if it hurt and wished again that I could speak another language. The baby cooed and his mother smiled.

  Every now and then a woman reached into rectangular, oval-bottomed coiled baskets to give their babies something to chew. The honey-colored baskets were beautiful as well as practical. Whatever they held comforted the infants. It looked like thicknesses of fat.