The Daily Novel

Chapter 15 – The Devil’s Own Bargain

There was a wax flower arrangement under a glass dome on a table between a pair of tall windows in Captain Sutter’s office, the only touch of bright color in an austere room with pale, rough-plastered walls. The windows were narrow and un-curtained, but there was glass in them, and frames and shutters painted a dull indigo color. John, Stephens, and Old Murphy sat in crude chairs, leather roughly sewn over a wood frame, lined up in front of an ornate inlaid desk trimmed with brass and ebony, like a trio of bad schoolboys called before the headmaster.

Ragged and filthy with trail dirt, unkempt and unshaven, he couldn’t help but think they were being deliberately put at a disadvantage. He did not like to think of young Bidwell being a party to this; he seemed barely older than Moses, as if he had grown that beard of his in order to seem older and more responsible.

Liz. He had come back into this world, from their embrace to hear Bidwell urging them toward the big house and saying

“Captain Sutter gave particular orders that he meet with you at once, upon your arrival.”

He still had the feel of her bones impressed upon him, and she had smelt of soap and rosewater, of starched linen, and he wanted nothing more than to go apart with her alone, and pull the pins out of her hair and hold her close again, while he looked for ways to say how much he had missed her and to work around to a way to tell her that her little brother was left behind, high in the mountains. But instead, she had loosened her arms and stepped back a little, laughing breathlessly as she said, “Dearest, we rode out every day along the river, hoping we should see you! Captain Sutter and Mr. Bidwell assured us frequently that you must have been able to cross with safety….”

“I arrived with an emigrant company myself, three years ago,” Bidwell added cheerily, “We barely scraped through ourselves, but I had some idea of how much can be accomplished by sheer determination. We expressed every hope that we had for your safety to Mrs. Townsend and Miss Murphy.”

“Mr. Bidwell and Captain Sutter have been kindness itself,” Elizabeth exclaimed, “And Captain Sutter’s generosity is a legend.”

“It is also his greatest weakness,” Bidwell added, with wry affection. “With him, it is enough that a man wants employment, not that Captain Sutter can afford—or even needs—his particular skills. Which is, I think, why his enterprises here now include a brewery, a bakery, and the weaving of blankets. But as it now happens,” Bidwell added, with a serious face, “he may have need of your own several skills,. And that is why he wished to meet with the officers of your party at once.”

Good lord, all he wanted was a few more moments with his wife. At his back, Helen Murphy asked excitedly about Mary-Bee’s baby. A girl, was it? How sweet! How far back were they camped?

Stephens himself looked more like an unhappy gargoyle than ever, and John sighed again. “Mr. Bidwell, we have left the women and children of our party a week’s journey away, camped in the mountains and awaiting our help…and allow me to be the first to assure yourself and Captain Sutter that they have first call on our services.”

“And rightfully so, of course,” answered Bidwell frankly. “But Captain Sutter will explain himself the nature of the service he requires. It’s not for me to anticipate.”

“Well, sonny,” Old Hitchcock rumbled, “since you’re his foreman, I have an idee there are things you can do on your own hook? Like send a messenger to Samuel Patterson’s rancho, telling him that his two sons are safe here, but his wife and other children are marooned in the mountains?”

“Yes, of course, I know of him. Governor Micheltorena granted him lands, near San Jose.” Bidwell sounded distressed, and for once, rather younger. “I’ll be happy to send a message… and we had arranged quarters for you all. I shall take you to them, as soon as I have conducted your officers to Captain Sutter’s office. Do you know there is not an inn or hostelry anywhere the length and breadth of this country? Travelers stay with friends or friends of friends…and sometimes even strangers.”

Bidwell had walked John, Old Martin, and Stephens to the stairs of the big house by now, and they followed him inside, Stephens bidding Dog to stay by the doorway. Elizabeth murmured, “Dearest, Helen and I will wait for you and Mr. Murphy in the parlor.” She looked up at him with a slight frown. “Where is Moses? I haven’t seen him?”

“He stayed to guard the wagons, Liz,” John stammered. It was out, then, but Liz didn’t seem fearful, only rather fondly annoyed, and he realized that she must think Moses had stayed at the winter camp with the women. She kissed him again, and she and Helen slipped into a doorway they passed as they followed Bidwell down the hallway to another room, the room where they sat now, and waited for Sutter, the master of all they had yet surveyed.

There was a footstep in the hall, and the door opened. “Welcome, gentlemen, all,” said Captain Sutter, “Welcome to New Helvetia, and to California, and to my home. John Augustus Sutter, at your service.”

The magnate of New Helvetia proved to be a sleek though stocky man of middle years, smartly turned out in a coat of vaguely military appearance that strained a little around his belly. He was slightly balding, and his features described an amiable oval, supporting an immaculately barbered mustache and goatee and an expression of gentle enthusiasm and sympathy. He had a slight accent, not quite French but not entirely German.

“Doctor John Townsend, late of St. Joseph, Missouri, our Captain, Elisha Stephens.” John shook Sutter’s extended hand and performed the introductions.

“Of nowhere in particular,” Stephens inserted, dryly.

“…and Mr. Martin Murphy, Senior, formerly of Missouri…”

“And Canada, Ireland and everywhere in between.” Old Martin added, and Sutter shook his hand, saying, “A citizen of the world you are indeed, Mr. Murphy; a citizen of the world, as am I, but lately come to make my fortune in this most blessed country on the face of the earth, as I believe. And through many hardships and toils, you have come to join us in our endeavors.”

“Our hardships and toils ain’t over, yet.” Stephens sounded particularly ungracious, and John sighed inwardly. Really, he wondered how Stephens would get on here in California, if he himself were not there to intercede, to smooth over, and to apply the necessary diplomacy on his friend’s behalf. Make enemies right and left, no doubt, unless he went and lived like a hermit in a cave.

He said, “You must understand, Captain Sutter, most of the men who came with us have left their wives and children in the mountains. We set up a winter camp and slaughtered the rest of our oxen for food, to leave with them. Two of our number stayed behind to guard them through the winter, but our intention now is to mount a rescue expedition, to return as swiftly as possible. We were seven days, following the river down to your… establishment, only two days of it struggling in the snow. Our guides, Mr. Greenwood and Mr. Hitchcock, were of the opinion that if we returned with pack animals at all speed, we would have an excellent chance of winning through to them. But for this, we need your help, and we need it now.”

“Alas,” Sutter mournfully shook his head, “I regret such a daring plan is already not possible. The snows of winter in the mountains are already too deep. This is the middle of December, my friends. You were fortunate to escape the storms of winter by departing when you did.”

The expression of Sutter’s face was sympathetic, regretful, but John noticed that it did not reach to his eyes. They were opaque, like pebbles, calculating and watchful.

“No!” Old Martin started up from his chair, “I canna sit still and hear this! Man, these are my own children and grandchildren, the wives of my sons! You tell us there is nothing to be done? They are stranded in those mountains until spring, and meanwhile, we are able to go outside in our shirtsleeves?”

“It is indeed as mild as summer in most other places, here at the confluence of rivers,” Sutter replied, his voice warm, soothing. “But the mountains are…well, you have seen, seen a little of what the snow in them is like, and I can assure you that it becomes much, much worse, and with suddenness. I have been here nearly ten years, long enough to know that what trails exist are impassible. Even the deer and the Indians abandon the high country in winter. Your own General Fremont passed through here last year, and even he admitted defeat at a winter crossing.”

“So, you’ll do nothing?” Old Martin asked bitterly, and Sutter lifted his hands in an apologetic gesture,

“I regret most sincerely, gentlemen, there is nothing that I can do for your families until spring, except offer my prayers for their continued well-being. I take that you left them with sufficient food, enough to last until spring? And two men, to hunt for them, and guard over them? But of course, you would have taken every possible care…”

Sutter was all warm regard, and in that instant John conceived both a violent loathing of him and the knowledge that he must keep that antipathy well-hidden, as Old Martin answered stoutly, “We left them practically every scrap we had, and all but two of the cattle.”

“We ain’t improvident folk.” Stephens stirred himself and spoke, and it seemed that Sutter flinched slightly.

“Then, assuredly, they will be safe until the snow melts in spring…bored, perhaps, and longing to see their husbands and papas and brothers….” Sutter made an expansive gesture toward the windows. “In the spring, when the paths are open, you may then make free of my stables and stores. I put no limits on my hospitality….”

“So we are told,” John answered, neutrally, and Old Martin, added, “And grateful we are, Captain Sutter, grateful we are. My daughter has told of how she and her brothers have been received….”

“Miss Murphy is a charming young lady,” Captain Sutter seemed much amused. “She already has been the focus of romantic attentions from some of the other American settlers here. As her father, you should be forewarned, perhaps.”

He sat back with a sigh in his own chair, the other side of his grand desk, as Stephens watched with hooded eyes and a mien of stone. Oh, here it comes, now, John thought. The point Sutter has been moving toward; what he wants of us.

“You arrive most fortuitously in California,” Sutter ventured at last, making a steeple of his fingers over the gleaming surface of the desk in front of him.

Stephens and John remained silent; Old Martin said only, “Aye? So you have been saying. The snows and all.”

“I meant politically,” Sutter replied. “Do you know much about California and its governance by Mexico? Their governor is appointed from Mexico City. At present, he’s a man named Micheltorena; he’s the finest of men, and a good friend to me, as well as kindly disposed to Americans. He has given out many fine grants of land….and that displeases some of the local grandees. They have raised a small army, and a rebellion against his authority.”

“And that has…what to do with us?” John asked, and he thought he saw a flash of impatience in those pebble eyes. “It is, after all, a Mexican affair.”

“It has much to do with you, gentlemen, whether you know or not. Should Micheltorena be overthrown, Pico or Castro, or whoever they might put forward as governor will not be so kindly disposed toward Americans. Your bright future here would be in jeopardy…so I have a proposal to secure it for us all. I am raising a company for Micheltorena. He is my friend, and I could do no less for him. March with us to Monterey, gentlemen, and join with me in assisting the governor in putting down this ridiculous little charade of an uprising. I would be indebted to you for your help, Governor Micheltorena would be grateful…and it would well serve your own interests. That is my offer to you and your men, Captain Stephens.”

He looked at them over the desk, and they looked back for a long moment, until Stephens answered mildly, “I’d have to talk it over with the others. Prolly vote on it, too.”

Old Martin scowled, and added, “How long would this business take, hey? Seems to me that fifteen men would be neither here nor there.”

“It will all be over well before spring; these little farces never go on for very long, more like an organized brawl, and then everyone dusts themselves off and goes back to fandangos and bear hunts,” Sutter replied airily.

“And fifteen armed men, just come from the trail, who would be reliable…you would be a very great part of my company indeed, and Doctor Townsend would be the battalion surgeon.”

“As a rule, we Americans are more inclined to side with rebels against an appointed governor,” John felt obliged to point out.

“As you wish, gentlemen, as you wish,” and Sutter seemed about to dismiss them, but for Stephens abruptly rising.

“We’ll talk it over, Captain Sutter.” John inwardly sighed again as Stephens strode toward the door; all the tact and polish of one of his own oxen.

He and Old Martin lingered for a moment as John said, “We will let you know of our decision on this matter, Captain Sutter.”

“Don’t linger too long over it,” Sutter answered, suavely.

“In any case, we would like to render our thanks again for the care of Miss Murphy and Mrs. Townsend…we are in your debt in that regard alone,” John owned honestly; he disliked the man, but he had to be fair.

Sutter smiled warmly. “It was our pleasure, as a host. They have been most enjoyable company. I presume that you would prefer to stay in the same rooms as your wife? I shall see that arrangements are made,”

“Again, our thanks,” John answered, and he and Old Martin followed after Stephens, their feet thudding on the wooden floor. Elizabeth popped out of the parlor door as he passed. “We have to talk to the others,” he whispered. “I’ll have another one of those kisses, Dearest, to tide me over.”

“He put it to you to ride with his company?” she whispered in reply and reached up to his face. “Darling, you’re all bristly. You appear quite ferocious.”

“You knew about this?”

“I guessed. They talk of nothing else but the governor and Castro and Pico coming out against him.”

“You’ll have to tell me who all these people are!” He hurriedly tore himself away. “Soon, before I make a fool of myself!”

“Tonight!” she whispered, and he hurried down the stairs after Old Murphy and Stephens. The other men had gone off toward the stable block and the corrals, and the three of them held a hasty consultation.

“Tell you what, Doc, I don’t like it at all.” Stephens shook his head. “Not just giving us no help until spring but wanting us to ride off on this jaunt of his? Smells like an over-full privy on a hot summer day.”

“I wish we knew truly about winter conditions in the mountains.” John rubbed his face. By god, he was bristly. “For all we know, he might have been exaggerating.”

“Wanting us to think there was really nothing we could do until spring?” Old Martin shook his head; shrewd and stoical as ever, “Faith an’ I little like the thought of dancing to another’s tune…but he’s the laird of these parts. A good friend to be having, but a worse enemy; I like it as little as you both, but I think we may have no other choice than do as he wishes.”

“There’s always a choice,” Stephens answered. “What do you advise, Doc?”

“Stall,” John replied, “Stall, and find out as much as we can.”

“You’ll get nothing much from Bidwell,” Old Martin added. “Nice lad he is, but the way he goes on, he seems to think the sun shines out of Sutter’s arse. Any else we’re likely to speak to, they work for him, or are of his party.”

From Dr. Townsend’s Diary;

“Capt. Stephens and I made the others aware of Capt. Sutter’s offer, and they liked it as little as we, feeling that we are being maneuvered into taking his part against our own best interests. And he is a fair and well-thought of man, held in high esteem by all. Being newly come to this place, we do not wish to offend anyone, but there is somewhat of a bad taste resulting from his haste to recruit us to his ranks.”

“I am afraid I do not know very much,” Elizabeth sighed, late that evening, after an interminable dinner shared with Sutter and Bidwell and a number of other guests, including Old Martin and his sons and Miss Helen. Decency and a fairly late hour had finally allowed them to retire for the night in the room that Elizabeth had been allotted.

“I have only been here a week myself and have not met any of these people, but I have heard of them. Juan Castro and Pio Pico are the two most set against Governor Micheltorena, but they can hardly stand each other. There are Americans here and there, some who have been here for years, and from what I can see, most of them do as they please and humor the Mexican administrators. Is that what you needed to know, Dearest?”

“Liz, you make an admirable spy.” John kissed her again.

“You seem very pleased tonight,” she murmured, and he answered, “I am clean, shaved, and sharing a bed indoors with my own wife—who’d not be pleased?” But he looked at the ceiling over their heads and sighed. “I fear for the others. I don’t think I’ll sleep entirely sound until they are all brought safe down from the mountains.”

She took his hand and brought it to her cheek and said, calmly, “I know about Moses, you know. He is not at the winter camp with the others. Helen’s brother Bernard told me, while you were in with Captain Sutter.”

“I had meant to say, Dearest. There was never the right time, until we were alone.”

“I know. Bernard told us how Moses was quite set upon remaining, when you and Mr. Stephens and Mr. Foster all decided to leave your wagons.”

“I couldn’t talk him out of it, Liz.”

“Nor could I have, Dearest. I think,” she added firmly, “that Moses is probably enjoying himself very much, hunting with Allen and Mr. Foster, rather than looking after all the babies and little children. He has no patience with apron strings…so I have known since that time when he went off to hunt buffalo. You were so very wise on that, Dearest…that I should not fuss over him—he would be able to look after himself and be safe.”

She burrowed into his arms then, with a sigh of complete contentment, and John thought on his last sight of Moses, walking down the pass after Allen and Joseph, and hoped she was right; or if not, could go on believing so.

Three days later, while Stephens and John were still stalling on Sutter’s offer, he and Old Martin were gloomily looking over the corralled stock and discussing the chances of an expedition of their own. Elizabeth and Helen had continued the habit of a daily ride and had ridden away some time before.

“It’s not the finances, mind,” Old Martin remarked, frowning, “We have some funds between us, but most of it was put into our gear, stock, and supplies for the journey. We would be hard put to realize the value of the wagons in cash.”

“Besides my own wagon and goods,” John sighed, “I have some two hundred in gold coins and a letter of credit from my bank in St. Joseph. it would take time to raise cash with that, even assuming I would know whom to take it to, outside of our kindly host.”

“And it would come back to buying the animals and equipment from him. Holy Mary Mother….” Old Martin’s gaze went beyond John, toward the fort gates. “Is that not Allen Montgomery and young Foster, that we left at the lake!?”

A pair of bearded and trail-worn men, with packs and rifles slung on their shoulders, had just entered the compound and stood in evident puzzlement, looking around at the heart of Captain Sutter’s busy and bustling kingdom.

One of the sentries approached them, and exchanged a few words. The sentry turned and pointed at Old Martin and John, who were already hurrying toward the gate. John was looking beyond; surely there should be one more? Elizabeth would be so pleased to know that Moses was safe, now. But there was no one else with them, just the two, no one of Moses’s gawky frame and light hair anywhere to be seen, and John’s heart was already cold. Allen and Joseph looked fit and well, even though dirty, but they looked at John as if they had bad news to break.

“Where’s the lad?” Old Martin asked, quietly, when they were in hearing, and Joseph looked at them as if he would weep, and answered, “We had to leave him. I’m sorry Doc, so sorry.”

“Where?” John’s voice sounded harsh in his own ears, and Allen and Joseph both flinched.

“At the lake. He said goodbye to us at the top of the pass, and we went on and left him there, alone.”

Now Joseph was weeping, and his voice cracked—Joseph Foster, always so cheerful, who had never had a disheartened word to say, even when things had been truly dreadful.

“You’d best tell us then, boys.” Old Martin spoke in gentle but stern tones, and over their head, Elizabeth looked down from Beau’s saddle, like an avenging angel with the sun shining from behind her head.

“Yes,” she said, quietly. “Tell me what has happened to my little brother, and why you left him all alone, Allen, when you were the friend he looked up to?”

Elizabeth had learned much from Isabella, John decided then. She had that very tone in her voice, fair warning that no man or child should dare to cross, and Allen Montgomery looked fair to wilt.

“My dearest.” John cleared his throat carefully. “They have come a long way. It would only be fair to let them sit down, let them have something to eat and drink, and then they can tell us what has happened.”

Joseph’s look was piteous in its gratitude, but Allen said pleadingly, “He was alive, then, Mrs. Townsend. We left him by the fire. He said he was going to walk down to the cabin as soon as he had rested a little more. He was alive when we last had sight of him,  I swear it,” Elizabeth only looked at him, and John realized that the animus that he held toward Sutter was a pale shadow compared to what Elizabeth now bore toward Allen.

Elizabeth was partial to Sarah and took her part when Allen had treated her badly, but now Allen had let down Moses, who was all but Elizabeth’s own child. A wise man did not do harm, by commission or omission, to a woman’s cub, not if he put any particular value on his own skin, or make one of her particular friends unhappy, and now Allen had done both. No, Allen would not be welcome in any parlor that Elizabeth kept, and John did not blame her in the least. In spite of their long friendship, John would cheerfully knock Allen down if he had shown himself responsible for abandoning Moses in the wilderness.

Captain Sutter had given them several furnished rooms in his garrison quarters. The sleeping rooms opened into an opened arcade that served as a sitting room and dining room combined, furnished with tables and the same sort of comfortable rawhide chairs that he had in his office. The Martin boys, Dennis and Patrick, were taking their leisure there and welcomed Allen and Joseph happily, taking no apparent notice of John’s grim face.

“Allen, man, you lazy scamp, you were supposed to be in the mountains,” Patrick said, cheerily. “Set your traps down anywhere.

“And what would your old father say if he saw you boys lazing away the day?” Joseph answered, and Dennis said, “‘Move yourselves over, and pass me the pipe,’ that’s what he would say… you’ve just come from the women’s camp?”

Allen and Joseph set down their packs with expressions of profound relief. “A week ago…we’d just missed you, and your father and James said they were doing fine, and we should take ourselves after you, as soon as possible, before another storm hit.” Allen looked sideways at John. “Other than the snow being nearly up to the roof, everything seemed well for them.”

Old Martin had tactfully detoured to the kitchens and bakery and reappeared now with a tray bearing a couple of bowls of the good fortifying stew of beef and beans provided for the hands and local Indian workers, and a stack of thin bread. “Sorry, boys, and it’s all they had at the moment,” he said, apologetically. “But here’s a pitcher of the good ale they brew here. Drink up and tell us what happened now…how and why did you come, and what news have you to tell us?”

“But first, tell us what happened at the pass,” John said. “We left you there to guard the wagons. Are we to assume, then, they are left unguarded?”

“No,” replied Joseph. He had taken a cup of the ale that Old Martin had passed to him, and a bowl of the good red stew. He was gobbling it up, accompanied by handfuls of the thin folded bread made in the bakehouse for the workers around here. “At least, I think not. Moses was going back to the cabin, you see.”

“Tell us what happened,” John said through his teeth, and Allen replied.

“After we bid farewell to you, at the top of the pass… we all three went down again. We finished building the cabin in a couple of days. We used those two oxen to drag logs, and we had it all finished and tight, the weather was fine, and everything we needed moved into it, and then the storm set in, about four days after. We thought nothing of it. We were warm and sheltered, and thought how fine the hunting would be, when the storm was over.”

“Ah,” interjected Old Martin. “We were caught, just then, ourselves. Four days after crossing the high pass, that’s about right, the day when we packed it in and couldn’t go any farther.”

“Three feet of snow,” Joseph said. “Three feet, and it didn’t melt and pack down, but kept on snowing, until it was up to the level of the cabin roof. We killed the oxen…there was nothing left to feed them, anyway. We tried to go out hunting…we could barely go far enough to get firewood. There was nothing to hunt. So much for my plan to hunt for my supper—it was a bad one, as it turned out, but we didn’t know it for sure for another week or so.”

“We took hickory bows from my wagon.” Allen scraped a mouthful of good red stew on a fold of thin bread. “Joe said he could trim and bend them to shape; using the cowhide, he could make snowshoes of them, something that we could use and get around on the snow, better than we could in our boots. It worked, and we made three pair of them, so we could walk around on the snow with a bit of effort.”

He nudged his pack with his booted foot; a pair of hickory bentwood objects were strapped to the back of it, the insides of the teardrop-shaped frames filled in with a netting of oxhide strips, knotted together.

“Faith, you walked out on those?” Dennis commented. “Holy mother, I’ll bet you about killed yourselves. The frame of it don’t need to be all that heavy, you know.”

“We went out hunting,” Joseph continued. “So we did, and we did our best, but there wasn’t anything, anything at all, but tracks of foxes and coyotes. The deer had gone down to lower levels, the bear were all hibernating… even the fish in the lake were gone down, and then it froze entire…so what could we do? There wasn’t enough meat left from those oxen for all three of us to make it through to spring, and the snow was piling up higher than the cabin roof.”
“We talked it over then,” Allen continued. “And we agreed to try and walk out. We dried the beef, and each of us took some of it, and some blankets, and a rifle each, and we set out in the morning to try and catch up to you. It was hard going for us, even with the snowshoes, but we carried on. That night, we camped at the top of the pass. We had a fire, too, but we feared that it would go out, and it was bitter cold. We stayed awake all night to feed it.”

“What of the lad?” Old Martin asked softly, and Joseph answered.

“He carried on, as bravely as he could…but he kept having cramps in his legs, and he fell down in the snow many times. We’d wait for him, and he would get up and walk on a little way, but by the time we made camp for the night, he could go no more than fifty yards without resting. In the morning, he could barely move.”

“We couldn’t carry him, if he failed.” Allen looked pleadingly at Elizabeth and John. “He was well grown for a lad, even if he wasn’t as heavy as a man. We couldn’t return to the cabin—there was only enough food left behind for one, maybe—and we feared being caught out in the open in another storm.”

John was reminded piercingly of the story that Old Hitchcock had told as he and Moses and Stephens had watched the sunset on Scott’s Bluffs, and he remained silent but thinking. Dear God, Moses had remembered how Hiram Scott had bidden his friends to leave him, accepting his own death at the price of saving theirs.

“So that’s what he said,” Joseph continued. “He said he would go back to the cabin, alone, and live as long as he could on what was left. Perhaps he might try to walk out, later on, if he recovered his strength. He shook our hands, and we said, ‘Goodbye, Mose’. We left him by the fire; he said as soon as he was a little more rested, he would walk down. It had frozen overnight, so I think he would have been able to get along without the snowshoes. We promised to organize a relief party in the spring. It was all we could do for Mose, Mrs. Townsend. I’m so sorry. It was all we could do. He told us himself that he knew that whatever he did, he had to think of the others in the company as well as himself.”

“Ah,” said John. So Moses had remembered, also, the lecture John and Old Martin had given him about thinking things through, after the incident with the Indians at the sink so many months ago. With the gallantry of the very young he had decided to live up to it, courage and sacrifice and friendship, all at once, at the ice-water lake in the heart of the mountains.

“I am sure he is all right, Liz. I am sure of it. There was so much left with the wagons, and if the snow was frozen hard, and he could walk from the pass…it was not that far from the pass, to their camp.”

He took Elizabeth’s hand, as she sat with a still face and overflowing eyes. Dennis Martin took the other, saying, “Heart up, Mrs. Townsend. I’ll promise myself to go back in the spring for young Mose, with a better pair of snowshoes, yet. I’d think shame on myself if I couldn’t build a better pair, or teach him so as to get along without falling down,” and that coaxed a softening to her face, although she still looked bitterly toward Allen.

“We know about winter snow in the mountains, now.” Stephens materialized in the arcade; John had no notion of how long he had been there. “We’d best consider our answer to Captain Sutter now.”