Across the Great Barrier

CHAPTER 13

ST. JACQUES DU FLEUVE WAS ONE OF THE EARLIEST SETTLEMENTS founded so far west. It started as a camp for the Gaulish fur trappers back before the Secession War. The trappers worked all winter, and in the spring they came south along the river to trade their furs for money and supplies. At first, the settlement was a temporary camp that was only set up in the spring and early summer, but after the war when the Frontier Management Department in Washington started trying to get people to move west into the territories, the Homestead Claims and Settlement Office made St. Jacques a year-round settlement.

The palisade at St. Jacques du Fleuve enclosed a lot more space than usual, because every spring the trappers still brought their furs to trade, and they needed space to stay for a few weeks. The north end of the settlement had three long warehouses near the river landings, a couple of rooming houses, and a big empty patch for tents. There was a large corral for the oxen that hauled the fur carts from St. Jacques east to the Mammoth River, two saloons, and a general store with a big cast-iron tub at the back behind a curtain and a sign that said BATH, 5 CENTS; HOT WATER, 15 CENTS and under it the same message in Gaulish. There was also a settlement branch office, so we could collect mail and send off our letters and reports. I had four fat letters from Mama, and a thin one each from Lan and William.

Professor Torgeson and Wash had mail, too. Most of the professor’s was from the college; I recognized the seal on the paper. Wash had one letter that he tucked straight into an inside pocket without looking at, and a folded-over note that he opened right there in the front room of the Settlement Office. When he was done reading it, he frowned.

“Professor,” he said, “would you object to making a small change in our travel plans?”

“How small, when, and for what reason?” Professor Torgeson asked.

“Three or four days,” Wash replied. “If you and Eff wouldn’t mind staying in St. Jacques. The Settlement Office wants me to look in at the Promised Land settlement.”

Professor Torgeson raised her eyebrows. “What seems to be the problem?”

“The note doesn’t say, just that word came from the settlement magician that they’d like a circuit magician to come by as soon as may be.” Wash shrugged. “This is still my circuit —”

“And the Northern Plains Riverbank College has an agreement with the Settlement Office,” the professor said firmly. “Magicians who teach at the college may be asked to assist with wildlife control or other settlement emergencies.”

“I don’t rightly know that it’s an emergency,” Wash said.

“It could be, by the time you get there, even if it isn’t one now,” the professor pointed out. “And that could stretch your ‘three or four days’ out to a week, if there’s anything actually wrong. We can’t spare that kind of time, Mr. Morris; you know that as well as I do. How much time would it add if all three of us go off to this settlement together, instead of having you ride out and back?”

Wash thought for a minute. “It’s maybe half a day out of our way.”

“Half a day plus whatever time it takes to look in,” the professor said. “That’s much better than three or four. We’ll make the detour. Eff and I can work on the plant and animal survey while you’re doing whatever needs doing.”

“The Settlement Office will be right happy to learn you’re agreeable,” Wash said easily.

The professor made a skeptical-sounding noise, and Wash laughed. The Settlement Office man who’d given us our mail gave us a funny look, and the professor narrowed her eyes at him. “I don’t suppose you know what this is about,” she said, waving a hand at Wash’s letter.

“No, ma’am,” the man replied. “I’m just looking out for things for Mr. Saddler for a few hours. He’ll be back late this afternoon, if you’re wishing to speak with him.”

The professor shook her head, thanked him, and started for the door. As we left the Settlement Office, Wash raised an eyebrow at her. Professor Torgeson smiled slightly.

“Right now, we’re looking at going a day or two out of our way,” she explained. “But if I come back to talk to this Mr. Saddler, we’ll be lucky if we don’t have a mountain of paperwork and three more stops to make by the time we get away from him again.”

Wash laughed again. “I see you’re familiar with the way the Settlement Office works.”

“No, but I’ve dealt with college administrators, and one thing I learned from them long ago: Never give a bureaucrat a chance to hand you more work.”

We walked up the street to the more respectable of the rooming houses. I was looking forward to sleeping in a real bed again after so long, and even more to reading my mail.

Mama’s letters were mostly family news and fussing about me eating right and behaving like a lady. She said Professor Jeffries sent his regards, and Professor Graham had been ill but was feeling better.

Lan’s letter was next. He was still complaining about Professor Warren. They’d rubbed each other wrong from the start, and Lan wasn’t too happy about having to work with him all summer on the spell classifications. He was particularly worked up about a Hijero-Cathayan spell for digging out a new lake that he and his friends thought should be like a standard Avrupan excavation spell, but that Professor Warren thought should be in the same class as the Major Spells, like calling a storm or calming the ocean. I still didn’t understand half what Lan said, but it was pretty clear he didn’t mean me to. He just wanted someone to grumble at who wouldn’t argue back.

I saved William’s letter for last. He said that building railroad cars was heavy work and he didn’t much like it, but it paid well enough, and after that he talked about all the studying he was doing evenings. He especially wanted to take a class that compared all the different types of magic, particularly the three main schools. Since he already knew a good bit of Avrupan magic and had a passing familiarity with Aphrikan, he was studying up on Hijero-Cathayan magic to get ready. He asked how I was liking the Far West and whether I’d seen any interesting critters or had any adventures yet. He didn’t ask if I’d heard anything from home.

After I read my mail, I added a bit to each of the letters I’d been writing in the evenings. I’d already told everyone about the saber cats (though when I’d written Mama and Lan, I’d made it sound a bit safer than it really was). I told Lan and William that they were both studying the same kind of magic and they should maybe talk to each other, and I told William what Mama had said about his father.

Then I sat and looked at my letter to Mama for a long time. I’d already said as much about the settlements and the survey as I thought she’d be interested in hearing, but I’d been puzzled as to what to say about Rennie, so I hadn’t yet said anything at all.

Mama had been prostrated when Rennie eloped, and they hadn’t seen each other since, because Rennie hadn’t been back to Mill City. Mama didn’t talk much about her, either, not even to worry about her living out in the settlements. They’d written letters, though, ever since little Albert was born. And Mama had quizzed Papa and me and Lan as much as she could manage when we came back from visiting Oak River last summer.

Finally, I started with the children. A year makes for a big change in childings, and I knew Mama would want to hear every detail, even if Rennie had already written her with all of them. When I finished, I thought some more.

Rennie looked tired, but otherwise well, I wrote at last. I think it wears on her that she hasn’t been away from Oak River for six years. I’d started to write since she was married, but I didn’t want to remind Mama of any unpleasantness. I certainly didn’t want to bring up the anti-magic notions that were growing in the settlement. Maybe we could invite them to visit in the fall, after they’re done with the harvesting? With the boys gone, we have lots of room for them to stay.

I signed my name and sealed up the letter without reading it over, then gave it to Wash to take to the settlement branch office before I could think better of it. I liked rattling around the big old house since everyone except me, Allie, and Robbie had gone. Sometimes, though, you have to do things for family, even if you’d rather not. I figured I could stand it for a month or so if Rennie came to visit. I just hoped that if it came to it, Mama would be happier for seeing Rennie face-to-face.

I expected to have a restless night, but I slept like a log. The next day, we took our return letters to the settlement branch office to send out, then spent the morning buying supplies. In the afternoon, the professor and I went down to the river to count plants and animals, and the day after, we left.

We followed the Red River north for a while, then cut east through a dead forest. A few of the trees had tufts of green leaves on one or two branches, but most of them had been killed outright by the grubs. “Keep an eye out,” Wash said, pointing to several of the trees that were leaning to one side or the other. “If one starts to go down, it’ll knock a string of others over.”

The professor and I nodded. We got a close-up look at what Wash meant a half hour later, when we had to find a way around a huge tangle of fallen trees. It took us an hour, and we hit two more before we got out of the forested area.

“It’s a good thing we’re past nesting season for cinderdwellers,” the professor said after we passed the second blow-down. “The last thing we need is a wildfire in a dead wood.”

“Cinderdwellers don’t go for the forests,” Wash said. “They’re a plains bird.”

“Grass fires spread. And this is nothing but a woodpile; all it would take is a spark.”

“Too true.” Wash nodded. “All we can do is hope for a string of wet summers, the next few years.”

“Wet enough for quickrot to get a good hold,” the professor agreed. “At least there’s been plenty of rain so far this summer.”

I stared at them for a minute, then looked at the forest with new eyes. All the dead trees would be drying out more and more as time went by, and there were so many of them…. There’d be no stopping a fire, once one got started. Fire protection spells were difficult and draining, so a lot of people didn’t bother with trying to find someone to cast them on their homes or even just their roof. Also, the spells only helped keep a fire from starting — they weren’t much good against something that was already burning. I wondered what the settlements would do if the forest around them caught fire.

Suddenly, Wash pulled his horse to a stop. His eyes were fixed on the upper branches of a tree about thirty feet in front of us. Near the top was a big untidy mess of old leaves, like an extra-large squirrel’s nest. “Razorquarls,” he told the professor and me without looking at us. “Back up.”

I swallowed hard. Razorquarls were nearly as bad as swarming weasels, and a lot more mobile. Their teeth and claws were bigger and sharper than weasels’, and their legs were longer. They had a fold of skin that they could stretch out between their front and back legs to make a kind of wing, so that they could even fly short distances. They looked a little like misshapen black squirrels, and about the only halfway good thing about them was that there weren’t ever very many of them. Still, even three or four was too many.

The professor looked up at the tree, nodded once, and then realized Wash wasn’t looking at her. “Right,” she said in a low voice.

The two of us backed our horses a few steps, then turned them and rode slowly away. I heard Wash start a sort of muttering, half chant and half hum, and I felt the prickle of magic down my arms. “How far?” I said softly to the professor.

“Here,” she said, reining in. “Any more and we’ll ride out of the travel protection spells. I don’t think that would be a good idea just now.”

We waited. After about ten minutes, the feel of magic lessened and Wash rode back to join us. He gave us each an approving nod and said, “They’ll sleep for two hours, if nothing rouses them. We’ll take the long way around.”

As we went farther into the forest, the trees started looking less and less dead. It only took me a little while to figure out why. It was just like Oak River — the grubs had been attracted to magic, and the settlement protection spells were the strongest magic around. Wherever there was enough space between settlements, the grubs had been drawn away and hadn’t done as much damage.

What with avoiding the razorquarls and all the blow-downs, we hadn’t gotten anywhere near the Promised Land settlement by nightfall and we had to camp in the forest. It was the first time on the trip that we’d spent the night outside a wagonrest or settlement, but it didn’t feel too different, except that we didn’t dare start a cookfire in case a spark got into all the dead wood. We made do with jerky and dried apples, and Wash didn’t even grumble about having no coffee. He and the professor set extra-strong spells around our camp, and we took turns watching all night, just in case something nasty came along, anyway. I had the last watch, but all I saw was a white-tailed deer, just before dawn, that bounded away when I moved too suddenly.

We finally reached Promised Land at mid-morning. From the moment we rode out of the forest into the cleared fields, I knew it wasn’t the same as the other settlements we’d seen. It felt different, for one thing. I’d gotten used to the cold feeling of the grub-ravaged settlements; it leaked through even when I wasn’t doing any world-sensing. But Promised Land felt different — not normal and warm, exactly, but not so bitterly cold as the other places we’d been.

As Wash led us around the fields, I looked for the settlement itself. It took me a minute to find it. Most settlements are on top of a hill, with a high log wall around them and all the houses crowded inside. Promised Land was spread out on flat ground at the far edge of the fields. There was a log wall around part of it, but it only came up about as high as my shoulder. The houses looked short, too, and they weren’t made of logs or boards like the ones I was used to seeing. Their walls looked like bushes, all bare and twiggy. People were moving among them, and there were several folk on the far side of the fields with hoes. The whole place was a lot bigger than I was expecting.

“Looks like an interesting place,” Professor Torgeson commented with a sidelong look at Wash. “Well established.”

I didn’t blame the professor for sounding surprised. Except for a few trading towns like St. Jacques du Fleuve, I’d thought all the settlements this far west were only a year old, two at most. The first settlers to come west of the Great Barrier Spell had mostly stuck close to the Mammoth River, so they could get back to safety quick and easy if there was need. The rest of the North Plains Territory had been slowly filling up from there. Nobody wanted to go too far if they didn’t have to, on account of so many people not coming back.

“Promised Land was settled shortly after the war,” Wash said. “Officially.”

“Officially?” I asked.

Wash tipped his hat back and looked out over the fields. “Unofficially, this was one of the latest and last endpoints of the Underground Railroad.”