The Far West (34 page)

“It remains to be seen whether we can,” Roger said. “Until then —”

“Don’t be a wet blanket,” Lan said, and gave him a shove as if they were both ten years old.

“That’s enough coffee for you,” Sergeant Amy told Lan. “Anybody else who wants some, speak now. This is the last of the pot, and tomorrow we’re back to regular strength.”

There were groans of dismay, and Lan made a face, but most of the grumbling was good-natured. The soldiers who were going on night watch got first crack at the last of the coffee, and Adept Alikaket and Roger and Bronwyn split what was left. The rest of us nursed our cups for a while longer, then slowly drifted off to our tents.

We stayed camped where we were for another two days, so that Roger and Elizabet could check the ambient magic levels again, and so Wash and Professor Ochiba and Adept Alikaket could double-check the soundness of the dam. The extra time gave Dr. Lefevre and Professor Ochiba and Professor Torgeson a chance to do some more studying on the rock dragons we’d killed, so William and I were busy taking notes and packing samples until almost the last minute.

We left on July 17. We hadn’t made it all the way to the Rocky Mountains, quite, but between the giant invisible foxes and the rock dragons, we had a pretty good notion why nobody else had, either. We were also pretty sure that there wouldn’t be as much dangerous wildlife following the magic down the Grand Bow — at least, not for quite some time.

Even though Roger had told everyone that the dam worked just the way we’d wanted, it was a relief to get back to the river and see that there was still water in it, though it was considerably lower than it had been. Roger pointed out that the dam only blocked the main river, and there were a lot of tributaries still bringing water in. The main thing, though, was that the ambient magic levels were noticeably down; my
skin didn’t prickle with it the way it had, and some of the drifts of blinkflowers and sandwort along the riverbanks already looked wilted.

As soon as she saw the sandwort, Professor Torgeson started muttering about changing the balance of the wildlife and unforeseen consequences, but Dr. Lefevre pointed out that it was putting up the Great Barrier Spell in the first place that had created such unnaturally high magic levels to begin with, so from one point of view we’d just put things back the way they were supposed to be. Professor Torgeson retorted that we’d only lowered the magic levels temporarily, and we didn’t know what effects such an abrupt up-and-down change would cause. They argued over it most of the way back to St. Jacques du Fleuve, when they weren’t complaining about the speed-travel spells making it hard to collect samples.

Since we knew exactly where we were going and what was there, it didn’t take us nearly as long to get back to settlement territory as it had to get out to the Far West, even with picking up samples of plants and wildlife along the way. We had another run-in with the giant invisible foxes in late July, a Priscilla hawk went after one of the prairie dogs we’d caught to take back for the menagerie, and we had to chase off some prairie wolves, but otherwise there wasn’t a lot of excitement. Which was fine by pretty near everyone; we’d had all the excitement any of us wanted.

A week out of St. Jacques, we ran across the first person we’d seen besides other expedition members in over a year. He was a trapper, heading out to get his cabin and trapline in repair, and he was happy to spend the evening telling us all the news.

We had a new president, as Mr. Johann Bryce had beaten out President Trent when he tried for a second term. That got everyone excited right off, as nearly everyone had an opinion about President Bryce, or about his vice president, Mr. Abraham Lincoln. Captain Velasquez said that the important thing was that they both understood military matters, since they’d both fought in the Secession War almost thirty years ago; Mr. Corvales snorted and said that the important thing was that President Bryce knew how to make good decisions.

Then the trapper said that President Bryce and Vice President Lincoln had cooked up a scheme to divide up the Northern and Middle Plains Territories and let some of the more settled parts into the Union as states, even though they were on the far side of the Great Barrier Spell. That got everyone excited again, since so many expedition members were from the territories, and someone wanted to know why they weren’t doing the same for the South Plains Territory. The trapper said it was because we might have new neighbors to the south soon, as the Ottoman colonies along the Gulf of Amerigo were negotiating for independence with their new sultan, and President Bryce wanted to be sure everybody agreed about where the country borders were before he started carving out states.

Once they got that settled, the trapper went on. Gold and silver had been discovered in the mountains of South Columbia, and a lot of folks had rushed out to get rich and been killed by the wildlife. There’d been considerable speculation over whether we’d bring back news of similar riches in the Far West. I frowned, thinking of the map Roger and Elizabet
and Bronwyn had made. I hoped no one would go rushing out after gold and get killed by rock dragons, but I supposed that if people wanted to be stupid, I couldn’t stop them.

The Long Lake Northern Railroad Company and the Atlantic St. Louis Railroad had gotten together and agreed to build railroad bridges across the Mammoth River at Mill City and St. Louis so that both railroads could expand into the West. And the baseball league was spreading; there were new teams in Washington and New Amsterdam.

After hearing all that, we made quick time to St. Jacques. The town had a celebration when we arrived, which mainly amounted to nearly everyone in town heading down to the saloons for three days running. Professor Torgeson said that was just what you’d expect from a trapper town. Most of the men from the expedition joined the rowdy celebrations, but it wasn’t as bad as on the way out, because everyone was more interested in getting a hot bath in the tub at the general store, or in reading the piles of mail we had waiting, than in staying up all night drinking.

Lan’s stack of mail was twice as tall as mine; he had letters from nearly everyone he’d ever met, including all the men who’d been at Simon Magus with him. I had three from Professor Jeffries and a couple from my friends from upper school, but all the rest were from family. I was surprised to see a few from my cousins and aunts and uncles back East; I suppose going off on a big expedition was enough to overcome the fact that none of them had seen me in years, and none of them had liked me particularly well before that. I set those aside and started with the ones from Mama and Papa.

Mama’s letters were mostly family news: Nan had had another baby, a girl this time, and Rennie’d had another boy. Allie’d left her job at the day school and taken another one helping outfit new settlers, and she was keeping company with an older gentleman who’d come to Mill City to build a carriage factory. Brant and Rennie had signed on with another settlement group; Mama spent two solid pages not liking it one bit, but after that she allowed as how it would probably work out better than the all-Rationalist settlement at Oak River. She said Jack had come home for most of last winter, and gone back to his settlement with a nice girl, but Robbie was still flirting with nearly anything in a skirt. He’d been talking about moving to St. Louis; she hoped he’d still be in Mill City when we got back.

Rennie’s letters were mostly about the childings (she and Nan both sent letters from my nephews and nieces; even the ones who couldn’t write yet had sent drawings or scribbles), and a little about the new settlement she and Brant had joined. After the way Oak River turned out, the Rationalists in Long Lake City had decided not to try sending another group that was nothing but strict Rationalists. Instead, they were sponsoring three mixed settlements that would be half Rationalists and half other folks, so there’d be some magicians around and people wouldn’t get so nervy and cross about magic.

I spent most of a day answering all those letters, though I knew they probably wouldn’t get to Mill City much before we did. Most everyone in the expedition did the same, so it was a real quiet day. Late in the afternoon, I came out to find
William sitting on a big log by the cookfire, staring into the flames and turning a letter over and over in his hands.

I went and sat down next to him. “Bad news?” I asked after a while.

“No. Not exactly.” He went silent again. I waited. Finally he said, “My father wants to see me when we get back.”

I nodded. After the way Professor Graham had acted those last few days before the expedition left, I wasn’t really surprised. I didn’t think William would be, either, so I figured there was more to it than that. I waited some more.

“He wants me to come home. To stay there.”

“Will you?”

“I —” William took a deep breath. “Not right away, I think. Maybe after we’ve talked. If he’ll talk to me once he finds out I’m not doing exactly what he wants. Again.”

“If you write him and tell him now, he’ll probably have at least a few days to get accustomed to the idea.”

“I suppose it’d be better than showing up and having him slam the door in my face,” William said. He rubbed his nose like something had actually hit it.

“I don’t think Professor Graham would do that,” I said. “Not without a whole lot of yelling first, anyway, which would give you plenty of time to get out of the way.”

William looked at me and grinned suddenly. “He would yell, wouldn’t he? Even if people could hear him six houses away. My father has never cared much what other people think of his behavior.” He sounded almost proud.

“Not when he’s fussed about anything that’s important to him,” I agreed.

William looked down at the letter, then folded it up and tucked it in his shirt pocket. His grin had faded, but he was still smiling, and he looked a lot more relaxed than he had. “I’ll write him later tonight,” he said. “Once I think how to put what I want to say.”

“Don’t wait too long, or we’ll be back before the letter.”

“I know.” William slid down the log to sit on the ground, so he had something to lean against. We sat in companionable silence for a few minutes. Then he asked, “What about you, Eff? Have you thought about what you’re going to do when we get back?”

I shrugged. “I’ll probably go back to work at the college, if Professor Jeffries still has a place for me. It’s going to be hard, living at home again, but I certainly don’t want to move in with Nan or Allie. Allie’d nag me to death, and Nan’s got two childings now. I had enough of minding childings that last year when Rennie and Brant were living with us.”

William tilted his head to look up at me; the light reflecting on his glasses made his expression hard to read. “You could …” He broke off and looked away.

“I could what? If you have any ideas, I’d surely like to hear them.”

“When we get back, we’re both going to have nearly two years of expedition pay coming,” William said slowly. “That’s enough to get a good start pretty much anywhere, if we’re careful. Professor Ochiba thinks everyone who came will have a lot of offers. Positions and such.”

We?
I nodded slowly. “Professor Torgeson said the same thing. Lan’s been talking about going back to school, only at
Triskelion instead of Simon Magus. He wants to work out the theory behind all the spell tweaking and such that we’ve been doing.”

“I’ll have my degree, and I’m not looking for more than that, no matter what my father thinks,” William said. “Not yet, anyway. I’d like to do some practical work on the things we’ve found — the magic buildup and the spell tweaking and getting all the different types of magic to work together the way we did when we built the dam.”

“That sounds like you,” I said.

“Dr. Lefevre thinks that they’ll send another expedition out next year or the year after,” he went on. “Well, they’ll have to, if we’re going to do anything about that magic buildup on the Grand Bow. I don’t know that I’ll be ready to go back that soon, but I think I’d like to eventually. If that would be all right with you.”

I whipped my head around, but he was staring into the fire and I couldn’t read his expression. “All right with me?” I said cautiously.

William nodded.

“Why would I get a say in what you do?”

“I was hoping you’d come with me,” he said in a low voice.

“Come with — William Graham, is this your idea of a proposal of marriage?”

“I’m afraid so,” he said with a shadow of a smile. “Sorry. I’d intended to wait until we got back and do things properly, with a ring and everything, but then I got the letter.” He touched his pocket. “My father wrote something about all the fuss there’ll be when we get back, and I started thinking
about the way everyone was after the folks who went on the McNeil Expedition, and I figured I’d better say something before then.”

“Hmph,” I said. “It’d serve you right if I said yes and then threw you over for somebody else the minute we get home.”

“You wouldn’t do that,” William said seriously. “If you didn’t want to marry me, you’d tell me straight out, right off. Though I suppose you might throw a shoe at my head for going about this so badly. Will you?”

“Yes, I’ll marry you.” I didn’t have to think about it. I didn’t have any doubts, the way I’d had when Roger proposed. I felt warm and happy, and not just from being in front of the fire. I felt
right
. I didn’t have to worry that we’d disappoint each other when we got to know each other better. We’d already known each other for most of our lives.

More than that, I knew that with William, I’d never have to choose between being who I was and being who he wanted me to be. The only times he’d ever yelled at me were when I was trying to do things just because other folks thought I should, and not because I wanted them myself.

William curled his arm around my shoulders, and I leaned against him. We sat there for a while without saying much. Finally William stirred. “I suppose I’d better write that letter to my father,” he said. “At least now I have some good news to tell him; maybe it’ll be enough to make him forgive me for the rest.”

“He’ll think that the two of us getting married is good news?” I asked doubtfully.

“He likes you,” William said. “He thinks you’re level-headed.”

“He
does
?”

William grinned. “More level-headed than me, anyway. What about your family?”

“Papa and Mama will be pleased,” I said. “So will Lan, I think. Robbie and the rest of the boys probably won’t care, one way or another, so long as Papa and Mama think it’s all right, and the same for Nan. I think Allie will be unhappy, but mostly because it wasn’t her idea. Rennie — I don’t know what Rennie’ll think. I gave up on figuring what she’d think a long while back.”