Across the Great Barrier

CHAPTER 7

NEXT MORNING, WE SET OUT AGAIN, AND AFTER AN EASY DAY’S RIDE we came up on the Puerta del Oeste settlement. Puerta del Oeste was one of the older settlements west of the Mammoth River. The core had been built right after the Secession War, a tiny thing compared to a modern settlement, but in the years since it had been founded, it had grown three big loops off the original log wall, enough to house a passel of new folks from the Eastern states, Acadia, Vinland, and even all the way from Avrupa. Now they had three settlement magicians and a full-time doctor, and the North Plains Territory had just opened a branch of the Homestead Claims and Settlement Office there.

That branch office was the main reason we stopped at the settlement instead of going straight on to the wagonrest. Even though he was acting as our guide, Wash was still a circuit-rider, and he wanted to check on the news that had come in from farther along our route.

The other reason was that Professor Torgeson wanted to recruit an official observer to send information back to the college on a regular schedule. She’d spent the last month looking over all Professor Jeffries’s old records, and then she and Professor Jeffries had spent every spare minute for two days holed up in his office, coming up with a list of things they wanted to know and a form for reporting them.

So while Wash went off to the branch office, Professor Torgeson and I headed for the general store. It wasn’t too hard to find; it was one of the biggest buildings in the oldest part of the settlement. The professor said that it was the most likely place to find a bunch of different folks all at once, and if none of them was willing to help out, they might still know someone who would be.

At least a dozen people were crammed in between the barrels and boxes that filled Code’s General Store, examining tins and tools and fabric while they waited for the proprietor to get around to them. A tall woman in a blue calico dress looked up as we came in and gave a startled exclamation. A minute later, everyone in the store was looking at us.

“Settling out?” a girl asked. “Where?”

“Maury!” the tall woman said. “Mind your manners!”

“But it’s what everyone wants to know,” the girl said. “Why waste a lot of time asking how they are and how their trip has been so far in order to work up to it?”

“We are from the Northern Plains Riverbank College,” Professor Torgeson said. There was a little stir at that, and all the people who’d been pretending not to listen stopped pretending. Most times, when someone from the college was west of the river, it was because one of the settlements was having a problem with the wildlife that the settlement magicians couldn’t handle on their own.

“We’re doing a survey of the wildlife farther out,” I said quickly. “For research.”

Everyone relaxed. “I don’t suppose you folks brought along any newspapers?” one of the men asked.

Professor Torgeson smiled. “I have three,” she said, much to my surprise. “The New Amsterdam International Weekly, the Washington Times, and the Long Lake City Tribune. Also the most recent issue of the Ladies’ Fashion Monthly from Albion.”

There was a hubbub as the professor pulled the papers from her carrypack and distributed them. I found out later that Wash had recommended bringing them. Half of the men bent over the New Amsterdam International first of all, shaking their heads over the one-sided battle between the Cathayan Confederacy and the Albion warships and the argument over sending the few survivors back to Albion. The other half went straight to the Long Lake City Tribune, looking for news of the national baseball league that somebody had proposed starting up. The ladies all crowded around the Fashion Monthly to see what sort of sleeves and necklines they should be having on their Sunday-best dresses. Nobody seemed much interested in what was going on in Washington.

Even the store owner paused to look over the Tribune headlines. Then he turned to look at Professor Torgeson. “I assume you ladies didn’t stop in just to bring us the news,” he said.

“You are right, I confess,” Professor Torgeson said. “I’m hoping to persuade someone here to do some work for the college. Or if not, I’m hoping you’ll know someone in the settlement who’d be willing.”

“What sort of work?”

The professor explained what she wanted, and two men and a woman were interested enough to ask questions. One of the men lost interest once he got it clear that there was no money in it, but the other two didn’t seem to mind. In the end, Professor Torgeson decided that having two observers in the same place would be a useful double check, so she gave each of them one of her forms and showed them how to fill it out.

I stood back out of the way while they talked, and just watched. After a bit, I noticed a man in the corner, watching the professor and turning his hat over and over in his hands. He’d come in just after Professor Torgeson started passing out the newspapers, and he looked like he was barely holding himself back from bulling right into the professor’s conversation. The longer he waited, the darker his face got. A woman in a poke bonnet next to him put a hand on his arm, but it didn’t seem to make much difference. I edged around to the far side of the group. I didn’t want to be near anyone who had that much trouble making himself be civil.

Sure enough, the minute the professor finished her talking, he stepped up and cleared his throat. “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said, though he didn’t sound at all apologetic. “I couldn’t help —”

“Professor,” Professor Torgeson snapped.

The man looked at her with a bewildered expression The man looked at her with a bewildered expression. “Beg pardon?”

“Professor, not ma’am,” she repeated, sounding a bit less cross.

“Professor? You’ll be from the college in Mill City, then?” The man sounded like he wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or sorry.

“I am.”

“I don’t suppose — that is, my name’s Carpenter, Giles Carpenter. My family and I are trying to get out to Kinderwald settlement, and they tell me we must have a guide or a spell caster to go any farther.”

“That you do, unless you’re one of them crazy Rationalists,” the storekeeper said.

“We’ve been waiting at this wagonrest for a solid week!” Mr. Carpenter went on. “And I’ll tell you straight, ma’ — Professor, I’m getting desperate. Could we travel with you? I can pay a little….”

“You will have to discuss that with our guide,” Professor Torgeson said. “You are staying at the wagonrest? We will be there ourselves tonight; perhaps he can advise you then.”

“The only advice he’s like to get is to keep waiting,” one of the other men called, and several people laughed. It sounded like a sympathetic sort of laughing to me, not like making fun, but Mr. Carpenter’s face darkened.

“Easy for you all to say!” he growled, and for a moment he looked downright dangerous.

“Who’s your guide, ladies?” another man called. “If you’re heading farther west, you need a good one.”

“I believe Mr. Morris is quite competent,” Professor Torgeson said in a dry tone.

“That’d be Wash Morris?” the man asked.

Professor Torgeson nodded, and someone in the back gave a low whistle. “Can’t get much better than that,” the first of the onlookers said, nodding.

“Perhaps we’ll see you this evening, Mr. Carpenter,” Professor Torgeson said, and motioned me to leave with her. As we left, I could hear the local men razzing Mr. Carpenter like a batch of schoolboys ragging on a new one, and I wondered what he’d done to set their backs up like that.

I didn’t think on it much, because we ran across Wash on our way back to the town gates, and the first thing he said was, “You have mail.” That was enough to knock everything else out of my head, just like that.

I had a fat letter from Mama, and Professor Torgeson had a thin, official-looking one from the college. She opened hers right off and glanced it over, then smiled and said, “Nothing that can’t wait. Miss Rothmer?”

I fingered the envelope. I couldn’t think why Mama would write so much, so soon, unless it was a lot of good advice she’d forgotten to give me before I left, and right then, I wasn’t too keen on advice. But I couldn’t hold everyone else up while I dithered, so I tore the envelope open.

Two smaller envelopes and a sheet of paper fell out, and I felt very foolish. The single page was a note from Mama saying they missed me already but she was sure I was working hard, and that she was sending along the letters from Lan and William that had come just too late for me to get at home.

I thought for a minute, then tucked the letters away in my saddlebag. I couldn’t see holding Wash and the professor up, and I figured I’d have time to read them after we got camp made at the wagonrest.

When I finally did get to the letters, I was glad I’d waited. I opened Lan’s first. “If you’re so determined not to come East for school, why don’t you try for one of the ones nearer the border?” was the first thing he said. Then he had a whole list of suggestions, from the Northern Plains Riverbank College where Papa taught to the University of New Orleans at the other end of the Mammoth River. I sighed. I should have known Lan wouldn’t give up his notions without arguing.

He didn’t say much else about my job with the college, except that he hoped I would have fun and to come back safe. The rest of his letter was about how much fun he was having at Simon Magus. Well, that and complaining about one of his professors, who he said was an idiot who thought he knew four times as much as he really did and what he really did know was wrong. I couldn’t follow all of it, because Lan started in on magical theory almost right away, telling me all the arguments he’d have liked to use on his professor.

The last thing he said was that he wouldn’t be home for the summer again this year. I wasn’t too surprised. He’d only been home about one year in four since he went off to boarding school, and even then, he only stayed for a month or two at most.

This summer, he and three of his friends were working with two of the professors, classifying a batch of new spells the college had imported from the Cathayan Confederacy and trying to develop Avrupan-style spells to do the same things.

That made me frown just a little. Lan had never really been interested in either of the other major schools of magic — the Aphrikan or the Hijero-Cathayan — though he didn’t scorn them the way Professor Graham did. But Lan and I had grown up hearing Papa tell his students that the point of getting college schooling was to stretch yourself in new directions, so maybe it wasn’t so surprising after all.

I set Lan’s letter aside and opened William’s. It was a lot shorter, though it covered nearly as much ground as Lan’s. William didn’t waste a lot of words. First he said congratulations on getting a position with the survey; then he said that he’d be staying in Belletriste for the summer, working for a company there that made railroad cars. He didn’t say anything about his father, but I knew William, and I knew that if he was staying in Belletriste, it meant that Professor Graham still hadn’t forgiven him.

Apart from that, I could tell that William liked Triskelion University every bit as much as Lan liked Simon Magus. He had a whole list of classes he wanted to take in the fall, and he was planning to study evenings all summer so as to convince the professors that he could handle some of the more advanced material.

I wrote Mama and Lan each a note, saying that nothing much eventful had happened and I was enjoying the work so far. I wrote more particulars to William, because I knew he’d be interested in the way the professor recorded all the little details, from types of plants to daily weather. I left all three letters unsealed. I wasn’t sure when we’d stop at a settlement where I could mail them, and in the meantime, I could keep adding things.

About the time I finished up my letters, just when the sun was going down, Mr. Carpenter showed up, looking for Wash. Not that he was hard to find; there were only three groups staying at the wagonrest that night. The wagonrest, like the settlement, had been expanded as the Western settlements grew, by adding two loops to the original log palisade, one on either side of the main circle. Mr. Carpenter’s group had made camp in one of the additions; we’d set up in the main circle, along with a family by the name of Bauer who’d come north from St. Louis, heading for some relatives up along the Red River.

Mr. Carpenter spotted Professor Torgeson and me right off. His face went kind of blank when the professor pointed out Wash, talking to the Bauers’ guide; then he put back his shoulders like he was giving a recitation in front of a whole school, teachers included, and walked over to join them.

I couldn’t hear their talk from where I was sitting, but it didn’t take many minutes before the Bauers’ guide threw his hands up in the air and walked off in as much of a huff as ever I’ve seen on anyone west of the Mammoth River. Wash talked with Mr. Carpenter a bit longer, arguing some, it looked like. Eventually Mr. Carpenter stomped off toward his camp and Wash came back to our fire, shaking his head.

“Is there a problem?” Professor Torgeson asked him, glancing after Mr. Carpenter.

“Not for us, Professor,” Wash said. “But I don’t know what the Settlement Office was thinking, letting that gentleman loose in the West.”

“He said he was heading for Kinderwald,” the professor replied. “Since the Frontier Management Department has temporarily suspended the building of new settlements, I assume he has family there, or perhaps has purchased an allotment.”

“He bought in,” Wash said. “And he’s in for a shock. For one thing, neither he nor anyone in his family speaks Prussian, and Kinderwald’s a pure immigrant settlement — their magician is the only one there who has any English at all. For another … well, he seems of the opinion that he can take on the wildlife with one hand tied behind his back, and no need for guides or protection spells.”

“He didn’t sound so unreasonable when we talked to him this afternoon,” the professor said.

Wash shrugged. “Possibly he’s not so plainspoken with ladies. From what he said to me, he wants to get where he’s going, and he’s not much accustomed to waiting. And he didn’t take kindly to being told he’s best off waiting here. There’s more traffic through Puerta del Oeste than there will be farther on.”

“Where is Kinderwald?” I asked.

“About a week south of Little Fog,” Wash said. “I told him that if he was dead set on it, he could come that far with us, but we couldn’t spare two weeks to get him all the way to Kinderwald and then get back to our route. He didn’t much like that, either. I gather he intends to pull out in the morning.”

“He’s a fool if he tries to make it alone,” Professor Torgeson said flatly.

Wash shrugged again. “I did my best. Possibly you can talk sense into him.”

The professor looked for a minute as if she’d like to try, but then shook her head and went back to her notes. Still, she did stop off at Mr. Carpenter’s camp next morning. She came back muttering about pigheaded, stubborn men. Mr. Carpenter’s wagon pulled out of the wagonrest about half an hour later, right after the Bauers’. Wash shook his head, and the professor pressed her lips together, but there wasn’t much either of them could do except watch him go.