A Clearing in the Wild (37 page)

The men quenched their thirsts, then informed us of the failed treaty negotiations in this Washington Territory, as it was called now, and the government’s plan to get all the tribes to sign a new treaty that would place all Indians on land set aside for them. Reservations. “Even the Shoalwaters of this country resist. I guess cuz they weren’t named specific and given their own place.” Only the Nez Perce remained calm, they told us. “But don’t worry; they’ll war against Americans too. The Cayuse have already joined up. What horrors they heaped on those poor Whitmans. Don’t have to wonder what atrocities they’re capable of.”

I frowned. I hadn’t heard of the Whitmans’ trouble. I’d have to ask Sarah to see what she knew of them, but for now I could only imagine the trials being experienced by our colony heading west. What if they were attacked? What if they never arrived? Maybe it was good that my parents and brother weren’t coming west, but Christian’s brothers were, and Mary and Sebastian would be making their way.

The Yakima, the men told us in hurried conversation over a campfire, had killed a miner making his way from Puget Sound across the northern part of the Territory into Colville country. “Took all his gold,” they said. “Slaughtered him up and down. Then more Americans were found dead. Never Frenchies or Brits,” the men complained. “Watch your backs, you Germans, living out here close to Nisqually and those Hudson’s Bay folks. Those Brits don’t want others coming here either, messing up their trading. They’ll get those Indians riled as
they did back in New York years ago.” He patted his sidearm. “Be ready to shoot first.”

I remembered the Chehalis men who gave us the elk hide door, who’d roofed our very house. I’d seen a few Shoalwater people at Woodards’ who seemed friendly enough. In my halting English I suggested as much, but the Americans cut me off. No woman would have sway with them, I guessed, especially one who spoke with any kindness toward the natives. The men sat on mats of cedar bark that Indian women had shown me how to make. Cedar capes made from the pattern of a gift lay stacked ready for winter’s use. Surely these were peaceful people, even those charged with warring.

The Americans hitched a ride on the mail boat heading out from Woodard’s Landing toward the sea. At the Bay they planned to catch a ship back to the States, and if we were smart we’d do the same, they told us. Those were the last things they said before parting.

“Are you worried?” I asked Christian that night. A spider tickled a slender strand across my arm, and I brushed at it.

“Only about the colony. Here, we’re safe enough,” he said.

But something in the night must have caused Christian to reconsider the men’s words. He told Hans and Adam that he’d head to Woodards’ to see if any letters had arrived from the colony. I asked to go along, but he refused. “You’ll be safer here,” he said, so I knew something troubled him. Signs of autumn appeared in the foliage. Geese already flew south. While my pregnancy had been fine so far, my wrapper had to be extended farther than before, and when I walked, I floated like a boat shifting from side to side. I’d miss seeing Sarah, but today staying behind didn’t bother. Christian pushed the small boat with a sail into the water. He’d bought it on account. I didn’t mind not being on the Willapa, but I did miss my husband that night.

When he returned in the morning, he came with news that would
change our direction. He said an agent named Bolen, sent to investigate the miner’s murder, had been killed by Indians too. The Shoalwaters had been left out of the treaty and were using their hatchets and guns to protest. An outraged Governor Stevens called the Indians defiant and ordered the military to shoot to kill. Added to this, several of the plains-area Indians said they’d seen enough of wagons coming across their lands and wanted no part of this proposed federal treaty. That angered the governor even more so that he called for war against all Indians.

My palms grew wet as I wondered how our leader’s wagon train fared.

“They’ll come this way, too,” Christian said. “We’re on their land, even though we’ve gained it fair and square from the government. But it won’t be ours if we can’t hold it against an uprising.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t have claimed it,” I said.

He ignored me.

I thought about the words our leader said to us, that we would go west to find a place where the world could not encroach upon us, where we could take care of our own without harm to others and be able to give back in return. Give back on our terms. But there was no place like that.

“We’ll build a blockhouse to defend ourselves,” Christian told us. “We have no one here to protect us except us, except the work of our hands.”

“It’ll delay the hut-building even further,” Adam complained.

“
Ja
. But protection for the larger body will be necessary once they arrive. We must fortify now.” Christian put his little finger into his ear, thinking as he scratched it. “Maybe we were meant to do this now, to better prepare for the time when all will end.”

He hadn’t spoken much about the
last days
, not since we’d arrived.
I didn’t like talking about it now, but I did notice that when he did, when Christian asked us to think about our own possible deaths, that the scouts appeared more encouraged rather than fearful. They worked with greater enthusiasm. They questioned his decisions less. I wondered if that was something Wilhelm understood, that we follow a leader more faithfully when we’re reminded of encroaching death.

As though to prove me right, we woke with urgency. Christian said we’d build the stockade wall on top of the hill of the Giesy claim, near where we’d first built our completed log house. No one disagreed. Christian and Hans and Adam cut logs fifteen feet long while I dug at the trench as I could. After the others joined me, we dug the trench three feet deep in an area around the house and then wider—to encompass another house Christian said we’d need to build as soon as we finished the stockade.

I rubbed tallow onto my hands to counter the blisters, thinking how nice it would be when the others arrived with amenities we hadn’t had for so long. My lanolin and lemon were long used up. My hands were rough as cedar bark and nearly as red.
Ach!
I chided myself for longing for small bits of luxury in the midst of preparing a safe place for others.

Andy found all the activity joyous, climbing down into the trench and walking his way along it, his towhead like a dandelion floating on a sea of dirt.

“Keep him out of there,” Christian shouted to me. “The sides could cave in, and we don’t know where he is when we bring the logs to stand.”

I pulled him up and then found myself accomplishing no work at all until he slept, for he headed for the trench each time I loosed his hand. I wondered why it is we are pulled to that which is dangerous, to places we should best leave alone. As I watched Andy return time after
time to the trench, then look back to see if I would catch him before he jumped in, I wondered about this challenging nature we were born with and what kind of God kept calling us back when we were wayward so often.

On September 12, 1855, we heard voices and the sounds of animals crashing through the timber. Christian shouted, “To the stockade!” and ran toward me. I grabbed Andy and scooped him into my arms, lumbering like an old boat. The stockade remained unfinished, but at least there were three sides completed. My heart pounded. The sounds couldn’t come from the Bethel group. It was too early. We didn’t expect them until late October, maybe even in November. We mustn’t panic. Perhaps another group of Americans headed toward the Bay to leave this territory behind. I’d think it was that, hoped only good would soon charge through that brush.

And then I heard German. Was it?
Ja!
And the cries of a child, and then through the openings of the timber and the vines came Peter Klein, a Bethelite, and a dozen others, twenty-five in all, men, women and children weighted down with packs on their backs and driving a few cows before them.

“From what George told us, I knew we couldn’t make the trail with wagons,” Peter said. He laughed and his eyes sparkled. “But the cows helped thrash it down for us—those we didn’t lose.”

I named the people who’d come, hugging the women and children, getting their stories of when they’d left, the trials they’d had along the way. Andy clutched my knees as I walked, and I realized he hadn’t ever seen children before, had never gazed into the eyes of one his size.

My greatest joy was when I reached Mary Giesy. I held her in my arms with just the hint of guilt that I had a child of my own and would soon produce another, when last I’d seen her, she grieved the loss of her son.

“Did you have trouble? With Indians?”

Mary shook her head. “No. It was almost … boring,” she said. “Day after day of walking, sleeping out under the stars. We were just anxious to leave Bethel, and with Willie turning ill, the rest of the party decided to wait for him to improve. We came on ahead. Michael Schaefer Sr. drew maps and told stories until we felt we’d been with you all coming across.”

“Willie’s ill? Something bad?”

“The malaria. He gets it every year, remember? It’s one reason
Herr
Kiel wants to come west, to have his children in a healthy place.”

“Except for mosquitoes, spiders, and an occasional bear, this is a heavenly place,” I said. I hugged her again. “I’m so glad you came with Peter’s group, before all the rest.”

“
Ja
, me, too,” she whispered in my ear. “I wanted my baby to be born in this Washington Territory and not somewhere along the way.”

Her dark eyes danced with her news. She hardly looked pregnant, and when I stood back to gaze at her, she giggled. “We have until next year to prepare,” she said. “The baby isn’t due until January.”

I calculated.

Mary smiled. “
Ja
, the first week away from Bethel I conceived. On the trail.”

“Is it sacrilege,” I whispered, leaning in to her, “to think we all might do better away from our leader?”

Her eyes grew large and then she laughed. “At least you haven’t changed,” she said. “That’s comforting when everything else surely has.”

But I had changed, at least inside. I was stronger and more aware of my husband, more willing to help him succeed. And one way was to celebrate the arrival of this first group. He’d pay attention to the task, but joy fueled the laborers. Oh, how we sang and celebrated in the September air so crisp, with the spruce trees in their prime, of full brush of branches arching out over the forest floor. The hemlock and fir, even a tree Christian called yew, stood in their glory, piercing the perfect blue sky. I loved the looks of the children as they eyed those massive trees, saw the thickness of such timber; ignored the catch in my stomach as the women looked upward, shaking their heads at the treetops. Mary nearly fell over backward trying to see the top. I caught her before she fell.

“It can be tamed,” I told Mary when she said she’d never seen anything so dense, so foreboding.

I took in with good cheer the approval of Peter’s wife and some young girls as they noted my pregnancy and patted my Andy’s head as I held him on my hip.

“
Ja
, it is good to be here,” they told me.

“What is the three-sided yard?” one asked.

“Part of a stockade,” I said. “Just a precaution. Against Indian trouble.”

They looked with judging eyes at the log house with its pitiful canvas roof. They didn’t seem pleased at the height of the riverbanks where we’d have to slide down to pull up buckets of water. The amenities they’d left behind loomed larger. I knew those looks. Yes, they were grateful to be at the end of their journey, but alarmed perhaps at what this next step in the journey entailed. I tried not to dwell on their expressions, the looks that said, “Where are we? And what have we done?”

“They left Bethel early,” Christian told me that evening. He wasn’t
telling me anything Mary hadn’t already said. As we talked, he walked with me to the river, reached down, and pulled up the bucket with corn juice from where I tied it to keep cool. We didn’t purchase much corn, just enough to make the drink that I swirled round with my long burl spoon. I imagined how many new things I’d have once Christian’s parents arrived with our trunks. “They came overland,” Christian said. “Wilhelm is but a few weeks behind. We’ll need to send Hans or Adam out to meet him and bring him on up.”