But Pa came to get him at Fort Klamath—and he’d searched for Will before that. Mama told him she’d pushed Pa to go after Will, but they hadn’t known where to look. She’d said Pa stayed in Oregon to be there when Will returned, rather than go to Boston after his father’s death.
And after Will’s return from the reconnaissance expedition, he and Pa had vanquished Johnson. In that battle, they’d begun to forge a new path together as father and son. Pa was trying to build that path, and Will would try, too.
Yes, he’d go to Harvard. To make Pa happy. But even more importantly, because it would be another reconnaissance—this time into what Will could become as a man.
He took out his well-worn journal and wrote,
November 26, 1864. Pa gave me whiskey tonight and we talked. I will go to Harvard next fall. The prospect excites me.
Chapter 69: Heading East
Will stood on the deck of the steamship in Portland, Pa beside him. They were leaving for Boston. It was July 1865. The War was won, and President Lincoln was dead. As was Jacob Johnson—hung after a quick trial just weeks after the posse caught him.
Will waved to Mama below them on the dock. The whole family had traveled from Oregon City to Portland two days earlier to see Will and Pa off. The younger children had never been as far as Portland. It amused Will to watch Cal lord it over their younger siblings, pointing out various landmarks that Cal had only seen once before—when they’d made the trip with Pa to see the telegraph office.
Mama blew Will a kiss. He couldn’t blow a kiss back to his mother—no grown son would do that. But he felt his eyes glisten as he waved his arm wildly. He would miss her. She cried when she helped him pack his trunk.
Maria waved at him also. She had spent several months at Abigail Duniway’s school, but she grew homesick, and Mrs. Duniway had not had much need of her assistance. Maria came home for good in May, and she and Will spent many hours together during the weeks after her return, usually under the close watch of Mama or Pa.
But one evening the week before Will was to leave, he found Maria alone in the garden. Mama peered out the kitchen window, but she left the two of them to talk by themselves.
“Do you care for me?” Will asked Maria, as he had when he returned from the militia expedition last autumn.
“Of course, I do, Will.”
“Do you love me?” he asked. “As a woman loves a man?”
“Oh, William,” she said, with a wistful sigh. “I don’t know. I don’t know any life without you, so I don’t know how you will fit in my life ahead.”
“Do you think you might love me?” he asked.
She turned to him and touched his cheek. “I might.”
“Will you write to me while I’m away?” Will took her hand and pressed it to his lips.
She smiled then. “That I will certainly do.”
He’d extracted one promise from her. That was all he needed at this point. But he hoped for more promises someday.
The steamship chugged away from the dock and down the Columbia toward Astoria and beyond.
“Come, Will,” Pa said. “Let’s stand in the bow and watch where we’re heading.” He slung his arm around Will’s shoulders.
Will grinned at his father, and they walked forward together.
THE END
Find more books from Theresa Hupp at https://www.amazon.com/Theresa-Hupp/e/B009H8QIT8
Author’s Note
This novel relied more on specific history for its plot than my earlier books. Lieutenant Colonel Charles S. Drew commanded Company C of the First Oregon Cavalry Militia in 1864, and he led a military reconnaissance expedition through the Owyhee Basin. I have relied on Drew’s report to describe the events of that expedition. See Official Report of the Owyhee Reconnoissance [sic], made by Lieut. Colonel C. S. Drew, 1st Oregon Cavalry, in the summer of 1864, available at
https://ia800906.us.archive.org/9/items/officialreportof00unitrich/officialreportof00unitrich.pdf.
For more about the expedition, see also The Deadliest Indian War in the West: The Snake Conflict, 1864-1868, Chapter 6, by Gregory Michno (2007), available at
https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Deadliest_Indian_War_in_the_West/5ZExU-tGSz8C, and Bancroft, History of Oregon, available at https://www.google.com/books/edition/History_of_Oregon/l-gNAAAAIAAJ.
There is no evidence that Drew used a scribe, but I liked this as a plot device. I summarized and paraphrased Drew’s report in his dictation to Will, but I tried to be true to the attitudes Drew expressed in his report.
There is no clear explanation why Drew delayed in setting out on the expedition, though Michno indicates he wanted to keep his men safe, as well as the wagon trains once they joined him. I also did not find any clear rationale for why Drew did not rush back for the treaty negotiations (which he actually reached on October 15, 1864, on the Sprague River, the day the negotiations concluded). Bancroft states Drew did not believe the government would keep its treaty promises.
