Far From Home

by Val Wood

  ‘Do you know what I’m thinking of, Wilhelm?’ She put her head back and laughed. ‘I’m thinking of my cousin May. I haven’t considered her for such a long time, but she came into my thoughts only a few days ago when I was speaking to Nellie O’Neil. Do you remember, when she said she would like a piano in the saloon?’

  He nodded. ‘I said I would bring one back on our next journey from Philadelphia.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And I said I would play it. And at the time I reflected on how I used to play the piano in my uncle’s house. I told you that he was my guardian during my childhood? And I pondered on what he would think of me playing a piano in a saloon! And just now I speculated on May’s reaction if she could only see me, sitting under the stars outside a saloon, beneath the mountains in the wilderness, watching the waters of the creek running by, and holding hands with my very dear friend!’

  He gave a sudden intake of breath. ‘What would she think?’ he said softly.

  ‘She would be quite amazed.’ She smiled. ‘And totally confused. She would probably think that I had taken leave of my senses.’ And perhaps I have, she mused, for I know for sure that all reasoning and wisdom left me when I was with Lake.

  She squeezed Wilhelm’s hand, which was still clasping hers. ‘And I regret nothing. Nothing at all!’

  Lake came back once more before the winter and in time for Kitty and Ted’s wedding. Wilhelm was Ted’s best man and Isaac gave Kitty away, and said with tears in his eyes that she was just the kind of daughter that he would have wanted. ‘One that can cook,’ he’d added.

  It was such a joyful occasion. Georgiana and Kitty had sewn a wedding dress, and on the wedding day all the men washed, shaved and brushed down their clothes. They took off their battered hats as they entered the newly built wooden church. After the ceremony, somebody played the fiddle, Isaac put his mouth organ to his lips and everyone danced, the men with each other when Kitty, Georgiana and Nellie were already taken.

  Later that evening, Georgiana rode with Lake into the mountains and he told her that he would leave the following morning and come back in the spring. ‘Where do you go?’ she asked. ‘Why don’t you stay with us at Dreumel’s Creek until winter is over?’ But she knew as she said it that she was asking the impossible. The life he led was the one he had chosen. She must be content that he would come back when he was ready.

  ‘Let me tell you of my life,’ he murmured. ‘Then you will understand why I cannot ask you to share it. You have seen my possessions. I have two, sometimes three, horses. A rifle, a knife, hatchet, axe, two blankets and a kettle for the fire.’ He ran his fingers through her thick hair and kissed her cheek. ‘When I find a good place to hunt or trap I build a log shelter where I can sleep. If there is beaver about, then I set my traps by the rivers and streams. Sometimes I must build a canoe and travel along the banks in search of them.

  ‘You would not like to see what I do next. You are a woman who has not been brought up to know this way of life.’

  ‘Tell me,’ she urged. ‘So that I know.’

  He nodded. ‘When I have caught and killed beaver I take it back to my lair. I skin it, stretch the skin out to dry, roast and eat the flesh. That keeps me alive throughout the winter.’

  She shuddered. It was true, she could not live that kind of life.

  ‘Some trappers are hunted and killed by the Indians,’ he continued. ‘They are taking the Indians’ source of food and trade, and they also steal their women.’

  ‘But they don’t attack you, because you are part Iroquois?’

  He smiled. ‘That’s so. I trade with the Iroquois and I don’t take their women, though Dekan and Horse try to persuade me to marry one of their maidens and come back to their settlement. I will never do that.’ He drew her close to him. ‘Especially not now.’

  Pike urged the men not to decimate the tree line when they were felling timber for the cabins. ‘Thin the trees out. Leave enough to break the snow when it comes, or I’m telling you we’ll have an avalanche, for sure,’ he warned, but some of the men, and there were many who were arriving now from Philadelphia, were in a hurry to have shelter before the winter and ignored what he said.

  First came the rain which swelled the hillside streams. Without the trees to break their progress, they came rushing down into the valley. The track outside the cabins was awash and boards were put down to walk on. The women’s skirts were constantly mud-splashed, and their boots had to be dried every evening.

  Ted built a temporary cabin for him and Kitty, for he was still intent on moving to the next valley when the road was finally pushed through. It was taking longer than they had imagined: first they had to build another bridge, which they named the Western Bridge, to take them and their equipment across the waters of the creek.

  ‘Do you realize, Georgiana,’ Wilhelm said as they were sitting, as was now their custom, outside the saloon, ‘that we two are the only people without a home of our own! Everyone else has their own cabin.’

  Georgiana was wrapped in her beaver cape, a shawl around her head and a blanket over her knees, for there was a crisp frost on the ground. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘If we each had a cabin we could invite the other to sit in comfort by a warm fire, instead of out here in the cold.’

  Georgiana was occupying the cabin she and Kitty had shared when they first came to Dreumel’s Creek, but it was draughty and not homely, and Wilhelm still shared with some of the other men.

  ‘In the spring,’ he declared, ‘we will build you a log house of your own.’

  She felt suddenly sad. And no-one to share it with, she reflected. Now that Kitty has married and Lake has gone, I’m a woman quite alone.

  The snow started to fall one night, and they awoke to a thin white covering over the boardwalks, the bridge, the meadows and the mountain tops. Wilhelm called an emergency meeting of the committee. ‘Can we make one last attempt to blast through the rock?’ he asked. ‘We shall soon be closed in for the winter and won’t be able to cross the mountain to the mine. I’d like to think that we can blast out part of the road so that we are ready for the spring thaw.’

  It was agreed and everything was set. They crossed the Western Bridge with their equipment and cleared a trail for the explosive. Pike and Jason were to lay the gunpowder and Jason said he would light it. Pike overruled him as he hadn’t enough experience, and said he would do it. Everyone in the valley was warned to keep away, for this was to be a big charge. The men watched from a distance and saw Pike kneel and then run back behind a rock. But there was no sizzle, no flame leaping down the black trail. He got up and went towards it again.

  ‘No!’ Dreumel and Ted shouted simultaneously. ‘Get back. Wait!’

  But he didn’t hear them and went on further down the trail, towards the rock face, bending to light the powder again. They watched in horror as it suddenly ignited, gathering speed behind him, then overtaking him. He looked up and started to run back, but the flame ran faster and reached the rock face. The detonation ripped the rock apart, exploding a mass of earth, boulders and debris into the air and hurling Pike with it. As the men rushed towards him they saw the gaping hole and through it the snow-covered valley at the other side.

  Sprinting across the boulder-strewn valley, Ted reached Pike first, then Jason, followed by Wilhelm. ‘He’s dead,’ Ted choked. ‘Stone dead!’

  Jason stared down at Pike. ‘It could have been me,’ he whispered.

  ‘Fetch the parson,’ Wilhelm said to Ellis, who had come up behind them.

  ‘He’s coming,’ Ellis said quietly. ‘Everybody’s coming.’

  The whole community were hurrying down the valley towards the bridge, some running, some riding, just as they had when Ted was injured.

  The cleric cantered on his pony up the valley and across the bridge, pushed his way forward and knelt beside Pike. Jason turned away and crossed the bridge, unable to stay or watch or listen as Francis Birchfield closed Pike’s eyes and said a quiet prayer. Then the parson stoo
d up and returned down the valley to prepare his church for Dreumel’s Creek’s first funeral.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  The winter was long and hard and although the building of cabins went ahead, the men couldn’t work outside for long because of the intense biting cold. Georgiana huddled against her smoky stove, wrapped in blankets, shawls and her fur, and wished for a smaller cabin with fewer draughts, for these walls were roughly hewn and daylight showed between the logs. At night she slept on one of the topmost bunks and piled every piece of clothing or blanket over her in an attempt to keep warm, and frequently climbed out of bed to feed the stove with wood.

  Jason knocked on her door one day. He had been silent and morose since Pike’s death, and was often to be seen staring up the valley at the place where Pike had been killed.

  ‘Can I talk to you, Miz Gianna?’ he asked. ‘I want to get something off my chest.’

  ‘Of course you can,’ she said. ‘Come on in. Will you have some hot soup?’

  He nodded his thanks and sat down by the stove. ‘I’ve bin thinking,’ he began, ‘’bout going home.’

  She looked at him in astonishment. ‘Really? But you’re going to strike another shaft as soon as winter is over!’

  ‘I know.’

  He looked as if he was about to cry and she sat down beside him. ‘You’re still upset about Pike, aren’t you?’ she said softly.

  He nodded and rubbed his nose. ‘He was like a father to me,’ he croaked. ‘We travelled together, you see, and he was always on at me that I should let my folks know that I was all right.’

  ‘Did Pike have any family?’ It hadn’t occurred to her that anyone should be informed of Pike’s death. Most of the men here had been rovers, travelling on when the mood suited them.

  ‘He said he hadn’t, said he’d been a loner since he was a boy.’ He heaved a deep sigh. ‘It’s since he’s been gone that I started thinking about Ma and Pa and whether they were worrying ’bout me.’

  ‘Couldn’t you write to them?’

  ‘No, ma’am. I can’t write and they can’t read. Besides which there ain’t no mail delivered up where I come from.’

  ‘What? Nowhere? Because I could write for you if you thought a letter would get there, and,’ she added hastily, ‘if there was someone who could read it to them.’

  He thought seriously about this suggestion. ‘There’s a trading store ’bout twenty miles from home. Fella who runs it can read. Yeh!’ He gazed at her with a brighter light in his eyes than she had seen for some weeks. ‘Pa calls in there for supplies every couple o’ months. Guess a letter might get to him.’

  ‘Well, why don’t we do that, Jason,’ she proposed. ‘As soon as the thaw comes we’ll ask Wilhelm to take your letter to Philadelphia to catch the mail coach.’

  ‘Thanks, Miz Gianna. I’m really grateful.’ He beamed at her. ‘I feel better just fer talking ’bout it. Tell the truth,’ he gave a little shrug, ‘I didn’t really want to go. I guess they’d want me to stay on the farm if I went back.’

  ‘And you want to stay to work the shaft?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeh! But not only that,’ he said. ‘You know the carpenter who fetched his family here?’

  ‘Ah!’ she said knowingly. ‘Yes!’ The carpenter had brought his wife, his son and daughter, and the daughter, Rose, was a pretty seventeen-year-old.

  Jason blushed. ‘Rose and me kinda get on well. And besides, I’ve got a stake in the mine. Bill Dreumel promised me.’

  A few days later Ellis called in and asked her if she would write a letter to his wife. Jason had told him of his own letter to his parents.

  ‘Your wife!’ she said in surprise. ‘Does she not know where you are?’

  ‘Nope. I set off from New England fer Californy in search of gold. That was in ’49. I had trouble all along. Lost my mare, my money, every darn thing. I was on my way home when I met up with Dreumel.’

  It was the longest speech she had heard Ellis make. I trust his wife’s still waiting, Georgiana mused as she prepared the letters, and thought how strange it was that everyone seemed to have met up with Wilhelm when they were at their lowest ebb. He’s given everybody some hope, something to grasp onto. Even me.

  When the thaw came there was an avalanche as Pike had predicted, though he wasn’t there to see it. Thick blocks of snow fell from the mountainside and left great drifts piled up at the sides and sometimes over the tops of the cabins. When the snowdrifts melted they ran down the meadowland and into the creek, swelling it so high that the bridges were impassable.

  Kitty gave birth to a red-haired daughter, whom she named Caitlin after her own mother. ‘So now we have a little piece of old Ireland here,’ she said. ‘Even though I’ve never been there.’

  Lake returned in the spring. Georgiana had watched for him constantly and saw him early one morning etched against the backdrop of the mountain. She felt a lifting of her spirits and wanted to run to greet him, yet old propriety and convention held her back.

  Wilhelm saw him too as he came out of his door, and he also saw Georgiana watching. He called to her. ‘Georgiana! Go!’

  She turned towards him. ‘Should I?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, of course.’ He smiled at her, though he had a wistful expression. ‘You must do what your heart tells you.’

  Quickly she fetched Hetty. She had learned to ride without a saddle, and astride the mare she cantered to meet Lake as he came over the bridge.

  He was leaner than when she had last seen him, his cheekbones stood out prominently, and his hands grasping the reins were bony. He gave her his peculiar lopsided grin as she greeted him, but he didn’t ask how she was as a cultured man might have done, simply saying, ‘You look good, Gianna.’ They didn’t kiss. He held out his hand and she took it. They cantered side by side along the creek towards the settlement, and she felt her heart swelling with contentment.

  On one of his visits he asked her to go with him on an expedition. ‘Three days we will be away,’ he said. ‘Tell Kitty and Wilhelm. I will show you what kind of life I lead.’

  This time she didn’t hesitate, but packed a few things into a saddlebag and rode up behind him. She turned around and saw Kitty with Caitlin in her arms watching them. Wilhelm wasn’t there, although she had told him she was going.

  They took a different trail from the one she was familiar with, coming down that evening on the other side of the mountain range into an elevated valley with a stream running through it. Here they made camp within the shelter of pine trees. Lake lit a fire, then went in the direction of the stream whilst Georgiana cooked beans in a pot. She watched him as he strode lithely towards the water and lay down on his stomach beside it. When she looked up again he was beside her with a struggling silver fish in his hand.

  ‘Supper,’ he murmured, and bashed the fish against a tree. She watched silently as he gutted it, wrapped it in a large leaf and placed it over the fire. It was, she thought later, the best food she had ever eaten.

  Georgiana awoke sometime during the night and saw Lake standing by a tree staring up at the dark sky. She lifted her eyes too and saw a myriad stars glinting and flickering, and held her breath as she saw one shooting earthwards.

  ‘Did you see it?’ he asked, without turning around.

  ‘Yes,’ she murmured. ‘How did you know I was awake?’

  He came towards her and she heard the smile in his voice as he answered. ‘I knew, that’s all. And I heard you move.’

  How sharp his senses are, she thought, and leant her head on his shoulder when he came to sit beside her. ‘You haven’t been to sleep,’ she said. ‘Is it because of me?’

  ‘Yes.’ He looked down at her. ‘There are many dangers prowling at night.’

  Though the fire was flickering she could barely see him. She touched his face with her fingers and felt his cheeks crease as he murmured, ‘I mustn’t be distracted again.’

  They moved off early the next morning and Georgiana’s body ached from lying on
the rough ground, even though Lake had given her his blanket and a fur pelt to lie on. They travelled until noon, following a tributary stream through narrow gorges, and halted in another lower valley where a swift river rushed alongside a forested area.

  ‘There’s beaver here.’ Lake looked around him. ‘We’ll build a shelter.’

  They moved back into a clearing with the protection of trees around it. Whilst Georgiana unfastened the packs, Lake built a crude shelter of brushwood and branches and lit a small fire. He then disappeared for a while, and returned dragging a cottonwood tree.

  She didn’t ask what the purpose was, for this was his world and she didn’t want to intrude with meaningless questions, but she watched as with his hatchet, knife and awl he dug out a hollow in the centre of the tree. It’s a canoe, she realized, and shifting her eyes to the river below them, wondered if she would have the courage to go in it, if he should ask her.

  ‘You must stay here,’ he said, as he finished it, and she felt a sense of uneasy relief. ‘There is only room for one and the beaver. I will be away for several hours.’ He gave her a sudden intense glance. ‘You will be all right. You have a knife and I’ll leave you my rifle. If you are in trouble fire it and I will come.’

  It was lonely without him and she kept to the shelter, venturing out only to feed the fire with twigs and branches, and twice to look downriver, hoping to see him returning. There were unfamiliar rustlings from the forest floor and screechings from the tree tops, and from time to time she clanked a tin spoon against the bean pot to warn off any wandering bear.

  He returned as the light began to fade, carrying the bodies of two beaver. Georgiana averted her eyes as he threw them down and proceeded to skin them. ‘Build up the fire,’ he said, ‘and look for some long branches to make a frame.’

  She did as she was bid without query. When he had skinned the animals he built up the branches over the fire and tied the bodies over it, where they swung and roasted.

  ‘I’m not sure I can eat it,’ she said, putting her hand over her mouth as he sliced off a piece of the roasted meat.