Across the Great Barrier

CHAPTER 6

WEST LANDING WAS THE OLDEST SETTLEMENT ON THE WEST BANK of the Mammoth — at this end of the river, anyway. It was founded right before the Secession War, though back then it was just a couple of big warehouses built of mortared fieldstone, meant to make it easier to catch the free timber that floated downriver from the lumber camps up North. The settlement had hung on through the war, just barely, and then started growing fast when the war was over and all the Homestead Claims and Settlement Offices started working at getting the Western Territories settled before anybody else laid claim to them.

Riding through the town settled me down even more. I liked the feel of West Landing, from the double-wide dirt streets to the people in their long tan dusters and home-sewn calico. A lot of the folks recognized Wash and waved when they saw him. One man yelled to him that it was about time he got out on circuit.

“Take it up with the Settlement Office, Lathrop!” Wash yelled, and the man made a show of rolling his eyes, then grinned back.

A few of the men on horseback turned to come along with us for a little way, so they could ask Wash about what was happening farther out in settlement country or back at the Settlement Office in Mill City. Some just wanted to complain about the way the North Plains Territory Homestead Claims and Settlement Office was handling everything from the mirror bug problem to the freeze on new settlements. One or two had information to pass along.

“There’s a pack of prairie wolves causing trouble down by Swan Prairie,” one man told us. “Watch your horses, if you’re heading that way.”

Wash nodded. “Thanks for the tip.”

“You’re welcome. Safe journey, Wash, ladies.” The man touched his hat brim to Professor Torgeson and me and rode off. A large young man on a chestnut horse took his place almost immediately. He asked about our route, and looked put out when Wash said we were swinging south to the Oak River settlement before we headed back west and north.

“Blast it, I was hoping you were heading straight for the Raptor Bay settlement,” he said. “Isn’t that normally your first stop?”

“Not this year,” Wash said. “We’re for Oak River first, then west and north until we get to St. Jacques.”

“Ah.” The rider frowned, then hesitated. “So you won’t be passing near Raptor Bay at all?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Wash drawled. “I think we’ll be near enough to drop a letter by, though perhaps not as soon as you’d like.”

The young man flushed slightly. “Would you? There’s supposed to be a supply carrier going out in another week, but you know what they’re like — it’d take a message weeks to arrive, if the wagon master even remembers to deliver it. And if I leave without sending word, it could be months before I get another chance.”

Wash laughed. “Shipping barges do make stops,” he said. “And even if your captain is in a tearing hurry, he’ll overnight in St. Louis.”

“Well, I know, but —”

“Give me the letters, Charlie, and I’ll see that your parents and your girl get them in as reasonable an amount of time as I can manage,” Wash said.

“Thanks, Wash!” The young man pulled some folded-over papers out of his pocket and handed them over. Then he bobbed his head at Professor Torgeson and me, and rode off.

“Wash! Mr. Morris!”

A little shiver went down my spine, and I felt a cool spot against my chest. I turned to see a pretty black woman standing on the boardwalk, waving. She was a few years older than me, with warm brown skin the color of the smooth bark on a young maple tree. Like most of the folks in West Landing, she wore a tan duster buttoned up close. Three inches of calico ruffle and a pair of neat high-button boots showed at the bottom. The tall black man next to her made a what-can-you-do-with-her? motion. He had left his duster open, and I could make out a gray work jacket and trousers under it.

Wash’s mouth quirked, and he rode over. “Morning, Miss Porter, George.”

“This is a nice surprise,” the woman said. “You usually come through West Landing in March. Or have you been gone and come back once already this year?”

“No, ma’am,” Wash said. “It’s an unusual year.”

“How long will you be in town?”

“I’m afraid we’re leaving this morning.” Wash made a little movement with his free hand to indicate the professor and me.

“Then I shouldn’t keep you. Safe journey — but next time you’re through town, try to make time to visit us.”

“Mother would love to see you,” the man with her said, nodding. “But not if she finds out Elizabeth has been accosting you on the street like a fancy woman.”

“George! I did no such thing,” Miss Porter said. “Besides, Mother won’t mind if it’s Mr. Morris.”

George and Wash exchanged a look over her head, then Wash touched his hat and rode back to us.

It kept on like that all the way through West Landing. Some of the folks who came over to chat with Wash asked to be introduced to the professor and me, but most of them just tipped their hats to us before they rode off. It took us nearly an hour to get through the main part of town.

Once we got out of West Landing at last, Wash and Professor Torgeson started up a conversation about how to manage the survey we were supposed to be doing. The professor wanted to stop and take samples right off, but Wash pointed out that most of the things this close to the Mammoth River had already been collected. Also, if we did too much stopping and starting, we wouldn’t make it to the first wagonrest by nightfall.

They talked over various ways to go on, with me listening hard with both ears the whole time. I didn’t have much to add, but if I was going to help the professor, I had to know what I was supposed to do. Eventually, they settled on using the wagonrests as base camps, at least while we were still close to the Mammoth River. We’d stay for a day or two when the professor wanted to collect samples and make observations, and move on when she finished.

Once we got past the middle settlements, though, there wouldn’t be any wagonrests. “That,” said Wash, “is when things will get interesting.”

Professor Torgeson pursed her lips. “In Vinland, when we use the term interesting in connection with the mainland, it usually means something like ‘you’ll have to watch that a short-faced bear doesn’t get your supplies, and maybe you’ or ‘a pack of dire wolves was hunting a unicorn in that area last week; if they didn’t catch it, they’re probably hungry enough to go after you and your horses.’ Is it the same here?”

Wash laughed. “Pretty much, except it’s plains creatures we’ll need to keep an eye for.”

“Steam dragons and saber cats and so on,” the professor said, nodding. “I know them in theory, but I haven’t seen many in life, and I certainly haven’t met up with any in their natural environment.”

“If it’s all the same to you, Professor, I’d as soon we didn’t meet up with any of those particular critters this trip, either,” Wash said.

“If nobody ever gets a look at them, we’ll never find out what to do about them,” Professor Torgeson said tartly. “Look at what happened to that expedition back in 1850 — they’d all have been eaten by swarming weasels if that one fellow hadn’t gotten off a lucky shot and killed the swarm leaders. None of them knew that weasel swarms had leaders.”

“It wasn’t just luck!” I said before I thought. “Brant’s mother kept bees; he said the way the weasels moved reminded him of the bees, so he looked for something like a queen bee and shot that.”

“Eh?” Professor Torgeson looked at me. “And how do you know that, Miss Rothmer?”

“Brant Wilson married my sister Rennie,” I said. “Later on, I mean. He and Dr. McNeil came to our house after the expedition got back. My brothers were mad after stories about what they’d seen, so they told us all about it.”

“Pity the whole tale didn’t get into the journal accounts,” the professor said.

“Maybe Dr. McNeil thought it would mislead people,” I said. “Swarming weasels aren’t really that much like swarming bees, and the swarm leaders certainly aren’t queens.”

“Yes, but the similarity in movement may be important. Someone should look into the reason why, but if no one knows about it, no one will think to investigate.”

“It’s kind of hard to investigate a mob of critters that are trying to eat you,” Wash pointed out.

“Which is why the first thing we need to learn is how to keep them from getting interested in eating us,” the professor replied. “So that we can watch and learn. The magicians in New Asante have proven it can be done; if we apply their methods —”

“I can’t rightly claim to be up-to-date on exactly what the New Asante conjurefolk are doing, but Aphrikan ways of spell working don’t generally mix well or easily with Avrupan-style magic,” Wash said in a very dry tone.

“I’m sure that if —” Professor Torgeson broke off, looking at Wash as if it had only just occurred to her that he might know a bit more about Aphrikan magic than she did. “It never hurts to consider new methods,” she said after a moment.

“Now, that’s a true thing,” Wash said. “Though west of the Great Barrier, it’s best to be cautious about when you stop considering and start practicing. What will turn away one animal may call up a worse one. I speak from experience.”

“Oh?”

Wash shook his head ruefully. “During the war, when I was in the army, we had a little spell for keeping the flies off in summer. One of the men in my company said it made some kind of sound, up high where most folks can’t hear, that drove the bugs away.”

Professor Torgeson gave him a quizzical look. “I’ve heard of the spell, but … during the war? You mean the Secession War?”

“I do indeed, and I’ll take that skeptical tone as a compliment, ma’am,” Wash said with a grin. “I was a large lad, and like a good many others, I lied about my age to join up. That was the third year of the war, and by then the army wasn’t looking too hard at anyone willing to volunteer. I was seventeen when I was mustered out after the Southern states surrendered.”

I did some quick math in my head. The third year of the war was 1835. Wash must have joined the army at fourteen or fifteen, in order to have been seventeen when it ended in 1838. Lan and I had been born in 1838; everything I knew about the war, I knew from history class. It felt peculiar to think that Wash had actually fought in it when he was younger than I was now.

“Anyway, after the war, I had a hankering to see some places no one else ever had,” Wash went on. “So I lit out for the Far West. And naturally, I made use of that neat little spell for keeping the flies off.”

“What happened?”

“About a week west of the Mammoth, an arrow hawk dove at me. They don’t generally have much interest in people, but this one sliced a fair-sized hole through my sleeve and a bit of my arm. Next day there was another one, and two more the day after that. Took me four days to figure out that it was the spell for keeping off flies that was bringing them down on me.”

“Why would it do that?” I asked. I’d gotten so interested in Wash’s story that I’d forgotten we were only speaking in the way of business.

“I can’t say for sure,” Wash told us. “But have you ever seen a mob of sparrows drive off a hawk that came too close to where they were all nesting? Those hawks were acting the same way — like I was something they wanted dead or elsewhere in a right hurry.”

“You think there’s a hawk predator that makes the same noise as your spell for getting rid of flies,” Professor Torgeson said.

“Could be,” Wash said. “Or it could be something else about that spell that made them angry. All I know is that as soon as I quit using the spell, the arrow hawks lost interest in me.”

Professor Torgeson nodded thoughtfully. “Another thing that someone should investigate.” She made a frustrated noise. “There is so much that we don’t know, and all the research funds the department has can barely stretch to cover five months in the field for one junior professor and an untrained girl. It is very badly arranged.”

Neither Wash nor I had any argument with that. For the rest of the day, the professor alternated between questioning Wash about the wildlife he’d encountered during his travels in the West and watching the land around us. I didn’t know what she’d really been doing until we got to the wagonrest.

As soon as we had the horses tied up and watered, Wash went to talk to the other travelers who were sharing the wagonrest with us, to see about setting up a schedule for handling the protective spells overnight. Professor Torgeson pulled a pencil and a journal out of the supply pack and started listing all the different plants and birds and animals she’d seen on the day’s ride. Then she asked me to mark the ones I’d seen, too, and add any I’d seen that she hadn’t. As soon as Wash got back, she asked if he’d be willing to do the same, and he did. When we finished, the list took up two pages, at two columns a page in small, clear printing — everything from grasses and wild-flowers to birds and insects and even a white-tailed deer we’d startled out of a little copse of serviceberry bushes.

I’d only added five names at the end of the list, and marked less than half of the things the professor had put down. Wash had seen all but three of the things the professor listed, all of mine, and he still had a dozen more to add. Professor Torgeson stopped him when he started to write them. “I’ve seen the notes you’ve sent Professor Jeffries,” she said, “and I’d rather have no confusion. Let Miss Rothmer copy the names down for you.”

“Whatever you say, Professor,” Wash replied, but he didn’t grin the way he usually did.

We didn’t even start making camp until we finished with the professor’s journal, except for watering the horses, so it was getting dark by the time we finished eating. I was worn right out from riding so long, and I went to sleep as soon as we finished clearing up.

I maybe shouldn’t have been quite so eager to bed down, because the next morning I was so stiff and sore I could hardly move. But Professor Torgeson wasn’t much better off, and she was up at first light, taking notes on which birds started calling first.

We spent that second day at the wagonrest — or, rather, all around it. The professor said that with only two of us doing the survey and only a few months to do it in, I would need to do more than take notes and handle supplies, and I might as well start right off doing it.

So she spent the morning working her way around the north side of the wagonrest, showing me how to list the plants and insects I found, and mark the signs of animals and birds. She wanted a count of different kinds of things, and how many of each kind, and a bit about where each one was — in sun or shade, rocky ground or damp soil, near trees or in the open.

“If you have time, describe or sketch what you see,” she told me. “At the least, we’ll want to know what stage of growth the plants are at — whether they’re just germinating, in early growth, in bud, flowering, or going to seed. Especially if it’s something you’re not familiar with.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier just to pick a few for samples?” I asked.

“We won’t have room, if we start now,” she said. “Besides, we already know about most of these plants; I want the lists here mostly for comparison purposes. So we can see what changes as we get farther west.”

I thought about the bare wasteland we’d ridden through last summer, where the grubs and mirror bugs had eaten every growing thing there was. I’d been too busy then to think about exactly where the barren patch started and where it ended, but I was pretty sure the professor would mark it down to the nearest half inch, if she could.

So I spent the afternoon taking notes on a patch of earth near where the professor was working, measuring out a small square of ground and then listing every kind of plant in it and counting how many of them there were. The grasses were hard because they weren’t very tall yet, and it was hard to tell one flat, thin blade from another. Acadian thistles and dyeroot were easy. I made sketches of two plants and a butterfly I didn’t know the names of. The bugs were the hardest, because they kept moving around and I couldn’t be sure whether I’d counted them. I had to put a question mark next to two different beetles, and I gave up on the ants entirely.

In the evening, the professor went over everything I’d done and pointed out things I could do better next time. She even said I’d done very well with my sketches. By the time I curled up in my bedroll that night, I was feeling pretty good about what I’d done that day.

But I was too tired to do any magic practice that night, Aphrikan or Avrupan.