here might serve as an instance in the disputes the policy was causing. The establishment must see that settling the Indians in peace -- and dignity -- was in their and the settlers’ best interests, too. How else did they expect to go forward in this region, for example, with all the plans for development? Draining lands and diverting rivers and designing settlements was easy enough to caucus about at a distance, but how did they expect to put their plans through unless the Indians would cooperate?
And where they were concerned, would they prefer extermination? He did not think so, so the president’s policy must work. He had made his Big Talks with them, and they were learning what they must change to turn their Indian hearts into white ones.
It was as if lines of convergence had brought everything to this point: the settlers surging here from all directions, by every means that could be imagined. Foot, beast, wagon, ship, now train. Every one and all things were in motion toward this moment of time. To create something out of the dreams that had held the seekers through every dismal moment to bring them here. He did not believe in predestination, but he could understand its appeal. The evidence sometimes seemed so clearly to point toward it, as it did now, in this wide-open space.
If it was not too predestinarian of him, he saw smaller patterns of convergence, too: of himself and Knapp, of them and the Applegates, of all of them with the settlers and the Indians. It was indeed as if some giant plan were being unfolded over the face of the land, with each one finding his appointed place in it, as he had found his. A tapestry was being woven. In his enthusiasm for this life he had been given he was growing metaphorical, but how else could he express it -- to anyone, including himself?
He tipped his hat back on and touched his heels to the bay’s flanks, glad to be out on a morning such as this in the new year, headed for Orpha and home. The horse skittered, as if surprised to be summoned from wherever its horse-dreams had taken it, but eager and willing, pleased to be called on to plunge forward. His bay stepped quickly in the bright morning, as glad as he was to have his head set toward home. High time! he seemed to be saying. Meacham took off his hat and set a new crease in the crown of it. He ran his hand through his thinning hair, feeling the sun through his coat on his shoulders.
It was deeply satisfying, Meacham said to himself, to find oneself finally brought to a life of service.
Chapter 5: Settling In
#37
Louisa Boddy sank down in her chair by the window for a moment, just long enough to catch her breath. She watched the goose swing around in a half circle out over the lake, dropping down toward the water’s edge until it just let go and settled. Once it hit the water, it folded its wings tidily onto its back.
“You’re late!” she announced, thinking of the storm of last week.
“What’s that you said?” Her daughter looked up from her mending.
“Nothing,” she said. “I wasn’t talking to you.”
“Who then?” Kate asked, smiling at her mother’s absentmindedness.
“That goose out there. She shouldn’t be here! At least not so late. She’s going to be left behind for the winter if she doesn’t hurry up!” The freezing had just commenced in their northeastern bay of lakewater, and the bird could still negotiate its way between fingers of ice that reached out here and there from the shore.
Her daughter didn’t respond but turned back to her work, not bothering to stop smiling. Louisa Boddy knew what she was thinking: that being out here alone had gotten to her. Now she would even talk to a goose.
“You don’t have to worry about me,” Mrs. Boddy said. “Not until the goose starts answering back.
She turned in her chair and looked out the north-facing window, leaving the goose to solve its own problems. She was welcome to stay here and freeze with them, get trapped in the ice if she wanted. The woman was relieved that her husband and son-in-law and the boys were not yet in sight. They must still be up in the woods working. It would take them twenty minutes or more to get back down the track to the house, and she would be able to see them coming the whole time. Soon enough then to set the dinner on the table. But for now, there was no sign of them.
They should all fly south, she supposed, but she didn’t want to mention it. No point in reminding her daughter that she would soon want to be off with her Nicholas, setting up things for themselves. Maybe if nothing got said about their going the youngsters would see their way clear to stay here, get their names on the land-lists for something nearby. Maybe over by Henry Miller’s.
It was more than she would let herself hope for. Another disappointment to face if it didn’t come true, which it wouldn’t. Things did tend to be like that, didn’t they? Well, then, that was all right, too. Not much point wishing for the children to sink roots here when she couldn’t be sure how long William would stay put, couldn’t tell when that burr under his saddle would start him kicking to be loose again.
She had thought the rising lake waters might have floated him free, but they hadn’t. He had just salvaged what he could of their original cabin and relocated to higher ground and set up again. The new window -- real glass, not just oilskin -- was his way of saying it wasn’t time yet. They would still hang on here a while. It was as if the rising lake waters trying to drive him on again had just bowed his neck, made him stubborn.
It was far from Australia. Between here and there, she had reason to know, was this lake, then more mountains than she would care to traverse again, then the coastal schooner to San Francisco, then the wide, wide sea stretching over the horizon past Hawaii, beyond all reckoning of time and distance to home. To once-home, but no longer. She figured she could never find her way back there again.
She had prayed a long while for the heat in William’s head to burn itself out so they could finally stop roaming. What a strange way to answer prayers, to have it happen here, in this wild and beautiful and god-forsaken place with so few about, no real neighbors to speak of, only women enough to use up a hand’s worth of fingers, should she count them. She regarded the red and swollen knuckles as her hands cradled one another in her lap. She had prayed for William to stop, and he had done it. Now, when she was tempted to pray to keep her daughter near her, she was afraid to let herself do it, for fear she would be answered without knowing the consequences again.
The goose, which had steered itself out of sight, came back into view, gliding out from the tules and down toward the point, dabbling its beak in the water as it went, avoiding the ice, in no particular hurry to go anywhere.
“Well, Mrs. Schirra,” Louisa Boddy said to her daughter, shaking off her thoughts and pushing herself onto her feet, “Look at me sitting here and dreaming! They’ll be coming. And there’s dinner to think on, isn’t there?”
#38
“Maul rings. Cross-cut saws. Wedges. That’s it? Guess you Modocs didn’t hear: Christmas is past.”
“What you say, boss?”
“Tell him chopping axes.”
“You already got those,” Knapp said after Scarfaced Charley
