he was only a commonplace sort of man. His shrunken frame, his silence where music and song had been, awakened her pity, and she retreated, sick at heart. Martin took Andrew aside, and they argued. When Martin came back, he was shaking his head.
“They’re going,” he said. “I told him, at least get with a bigger group.”
Three days later, they reached the Hudspeth Cutoff, and the wagons veered apart—Andrew, Olivia, and the Edmistons in one, and Kate, Martin, Zachary, and the Spruills in the others, moving fast on a flat stretch. The two groups waved and hollered. The sounds were jubilant, but Kate couldn’t stand it. She leaped out and ran across the rutted earth.
Perched on the back of the wagon, Olivia didn’t budge. Kate kept running toward her until she eased down into the road. Kate clung to her, sobbing, while the wagons rolled away. Olivia’s neck and shoulder blades felt thin and knobby under Kate’s hands. Olivia wept too, but when the others slowed and came back, she went with the Edmistons.
* * *
IN November 1855, Kate, Martin, Zachary, Mrs. Spruill, and her four surviving children arrived in the Willamette Valley. Martin and Kate staked out a parcel of land, Zachary claimed land of his own, and he and Martin helped each other build houses. In the spring, they plowed and planted. Mrs. Spruill set up a lunchroom in Salem, and Kate and Martin ate there whenever they went into town.
Mail began to arrive, but none from Olivia. Kate wrote to newspapers and courthouses in San Francisco and Sacramento, to the makeshift post offices in the gold fields, to everyone she knew in Virginia, and to newspapers and churches in Kentucky, hoping to locate the Edmistons’ kin, but no one had heard anything. She put up a sign in Mrs. Spruill’s restaurant seeking word of Andrew and Olivia Sibley, James and Susan Edmiston, Hudspeth Cutoff, October 1855. There were many signs like that. Salem buzzed with tales of reunions. People might be lost or delayed for months, and then they’d show up somewhere. Kate tried to stay hopeful, but worry and guilt sickened her. She kept imagining Olivia, Andrew, James, and Susan lying in the snow.
At Christmastime, 1856, she had a baby boy. In the spring, she took him to Mrs. Spruill’s restaurant. Chicken pie, Beef steak, Corn fritters read the chalkboard outside. She pushed the door open. In the noisy, fragrant lunchroom, Billy and George were waiting tables, and Constance and Ella swept the floors, working the broom around diners’ feet.
“They’re city kids now,” Mrs. Spruill said. She reached for the baby and held him.
“I brought a new sign,” Kate said. She took the old tattered one down and tacked the new one on the wall. Mrs. Spruill eyed it.
“Olivia’s strong,” she said. “If they got over, it’s because of her.”
“She didn’t owe them that. She didn’t owe them her life.”
Billy dropped a tray, plates smashed, and customers looked up and boisterously cheered. The scene barely registered on Kate.
“Her and Andrew wasn’t well-matched,” Mrs. Spruill said. “A guiding light and a little puppy dog.”
Her face showed perception, and Kate grasped at that. “They had a chance to part ways.”
“Some people can take on others’ burdens. She knew you’d be all right, and you are.”
On their knees, Billy and George were picking up broken plates and cups and stacking the shards on the tray, while Constance and Ella mopped the floor. They were laughing, and the merriment deepened Kate’s grief. She might have been sleepwalking all those miles, for all she knew of what was in the others’ hearts.
“It didn’t mean she didn’t love you,” Mrs. Spruill said.
Billy hefted the full tray and went back to the kitchen, his brother and sisters joined hands and bowed, and the diners clapped. Mrs. Spruill watched her children steadily.
“They never talk about Hannah or their father,” she said.
* * *
KATE and Martin could hire a search party, but it would cost so much.
“We’ve got to,” he said one night when they’d tossed and turned.
“How would they know where to look?”
“They’d go up in the mountains, past that cutoff, and look for things we might recognize. They don’t bring back every busted wheel.”
Her misery flared. “My sister. Your brother. How could they?”
“They changed their minds,” he said. “Thought California’d be nicer.”
“They deserted us. For the Edmistons.”
“Don’t be so hard-hearted, Kate. They weren’t trying to get away from us. They wanted us to go with them.”
“If only we had.”
“And then we’d probably be dead.”
They were quiet for a long time. The suffering the others must have endured, the likelihood they were gone, shamed the anger out of her.
“Didn’t you feel some way about him?” he said. “James?”
“No.” She swallowed hard. I didn’t love him very long.
“I always thought you did.”
“No.” And whatever Olivia may have felt, or the others, I won’t blame them for it.
* * *
MARTIN found a tracker who had a good reputation, and he and Kate provided a description of Andrew, Olivia, the Edmistons, and their wagon. The tracker and his crew were gone for months. When they came back, they lugged three big crates into the parlor.
“From different spots in the mountains. Animals scattered the bones.”
Kate and Martin tore the crates open. Bridle, kettle, box of fishhooks. Gunstock, old boot, bent spoon, the ground-down detritus of the trail. Everything smelled of mud and char. Had the trackers just scavenged dumps and ditches around Salem? Dishonest searchers were known to do that. Yet the things did seem to give off the trail’s menace. As Martin examined a mashed saddle, dirt flaked off and stained the parlor rug.
“Nothing is theirs.” Kate allowed her dread to give way to a measure of relief.
Martin sorted through the last crate and lifted out a banjo.
“That was in a ravine,” the lead tracker said. “I clambered down for it.”
The strings were broken and curled. When Martin turned it over, a design flashed up on the back of the fingerboard. Kate gasped. He passed it to her, and it felt light and cold. She ran her fingertips over the shiny white flowers. Mother-of-pearl.
“It’s his, isn’t it?” Martin said.
He paid the men, and they left. Dry-mouthed, Kate sat down and cradled the banjo, picking at the strings. She could almost feel James’s fingers on hers.
“Well, now we know,”
