Wilderness Days

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  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A lot of very kind people helped Jane find her way in the wilderness.

  I would like to thank Gary Johnson, chairman of the Chinook Tribe, for his continued support and advice. His suggestions have made this a better book and me a better writer. Likewise, I’d like to thank David Youckton, chairman of the Chehalis Tribe, for his invaluable counsel, as well as Trudy Marcellay and Hazel Pete for their generous assistance with Chehalis history. Also, James A. Hanson, Ph.D., historian at the Museum of the Fur Trade, helped me add flavor and twang to Mr. Russell’s story.

  A big shout out to the usual suspects—my brother Matt; my husband, Jonathan; my agent, Jill Grinberg; my folks; Paul and Ginny Merz; my uncle Tommy Hearn—the most encouraging librarian ever; the fabulous Kristin Marang; and especially the fellow authors who’ve kept me going—particularly Brian Selznick, Shana Corey, and Audrey Couloumbis.

  For my brother Matt—

  If he were lost in the wilderness,

  he’d probably just build a tree fort.

  There is great danger of the young and ardent doing injustice to their companions by magnifying trifles, drawing large conclusions from small premises, and judging from a partial knowledge of facts.

  —THE YOUNG LADY’S FRIEND (1836), By a Lady

  Contents

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Acknowledgments

  Dedication

  Chapter One or The Luckiest Girl

  Chapter Two or All Alone in the World

  Chapter Three or The Most Disagreeable Man in the Territory

  Chapter Four or Mr. Swan’s Gamble

  Chapter Five or A Lady at Last

  Chapter Six or The Charming Mrs. Frink

  Chapter Seven or An Unexpected Guest

  Chapter Eight or A Gentleman Arrives on the Bay

  Chapter Nine or A Startling Announcement

  Chapter Ten or M’Carty’s Strange Story

  Chapter Eleven or Jane Peck’s Amazing Tonic

  Chapter Twelve or A Powerful Smell

  Chapter Thirteen or Introducing Mr. Hairy

  Chapter Fourteen or Memelose Stories

  Chapter Fifteen or Into the Wilderness

  Chapter Sixteen or A Girl like Jane

  Chapter Seventeen or The Rendezvous

  Chapter Eighteen or A Patch of Land

  Author’s Note

  Resources

  About the Author

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  or,

  The Luckiest Girl

  It was a sweet September day on the beach, much like the day I’d first sailed into Shoalwater Bay that April. The sun was skipping across the water, and the sky was a bright arc of blue racing to impossibly tall green trees. And for the first time since arriving on this wild stretch of wilderness, I felt lucky again.

  You see, I had survived these many months in the company of rough men and Chinook Indians, not to mention a flea-ridden hound, and while it was true that my wardrobe had suffered greatly, one might say that my person had thrived. I had made friends. I had started an oyster business. I had survived endless calamity: six months of seasickness on the voyage from Philadelphia, a near-drowning, a fall from a cliff, and a smallpox outbreak. What was there to stop me now?

  Although a life on the rugged frontier of the Washington Territory was not recommended for a proper young lady of sixteen, especially in the absence of a suitable chaperone, I intended to try it.

  After all, I did make the best pies on Shoalwater Bay. And striding up the beach toward me was a man who appreciated them.

  “Jane!”

  He had the bluest eyes I had ever seen, bluer than the water of the bay behind him. A schooner, the Hetty, was anchored not far out, and it was the reason I had packed all my belongings and was standing beside my trunk. The same schooner had brought Jehu Scudder back to the bay after a prolonged absence. Indeed, when Jehu left, I had doubted that I would ever see him again.

  “Jane,” Jehu said gruffly, his thick black hair brushing his shoulders, his eyes glowing in his tanned face. I had last seen him nearly two months ago, at which time I had hurt his feelings, and sailor that he was, he had vowed to sail as far away as China to be rid of me.

  “Jehu,” I replied, nervously pushing a sticky tangle of red curls off my cheeks.

  He shook his head. “You’re looking well, Miss Peck.”

  “As are you, Mr. Scudder,” I replied, my voice light.

  We stood there for a moment just looking at each other, the soft bay air brushing between us like a ribbon. Without thinking, I took a step forward, toward him, until I was so close that I breathed the scent of the saltwater on his skin. And all at once I remembered that night, those stars, his cheek close to mine.

  “Boston Jane! Boston Jane!” a small voice behind me cried.

  Sootie, a Chinook girl who had become dear to me, came rushing down the beach, little legs pumping, her feet wet from the tide pool in which she had been playing. She was waving a particularly large clamshell at me, of the sort the Chinook children often fashioned into dolls.

  “Look what I found!” she said, eyeing Jehu.

  “Sootie,” I said, smoothing back her thick black hair. “You remember Captain Scudder? He was the first mate on the Lady Luck, the ship that brought me here from Philadelphia.”

  Sootie clutched the skirts of my blue calico dress and hid behind them shyly, peeking out at Jehu with her bright brown eyes. Her mother, my friend Suis, had died in the summer smallpox outbreak, and since then Sootie had spent a great deal of time in my company.

  Jehu crouched down next to her, admiring her find. “That’s a real nice shell you have there.”

  She grinned flirtatiously at him, exposing a gap where one of her new front teeth was coming in.

  Jehu grinned right back and squinted up at me from where he knelt. “I see you took my advice about wearing blue. Although I did like that Chinook skirt of yours,” he teased, his Boston accent dry as a burr.

  The cedar bark skirt in question, while very comfortable, had left my legs quite bare. “That skirt was hardly proper, Jehu,” I rebuked him gently.

  At this, his lips tightened and a shuttered look came across his face. The thick angry scar on his cheek twitched in a familiar way. He hunched his shoulders forward and stood up, deliberately looking somewhere over my shoulder. “Ah, yes, proper.”

  I bit my lip and stepped back. I had little doubt as to what was causing this sudden transformation. I had rejected his affections, as I had been engaged to another man.

  “So tell me, how is your new husband?” he asked in a clipped voice.

  “Jehu,” I said quickly.

  He turned from me and stared angrily out at the smooth bay. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got supplies to deliver,” he s
aid tersely, and then he turned on his booted heel and strode quickly down the beach away from me.

  I took a step forward, Sootie’s arms tight around my legs. What was I to do? Miss Hepplewhite, my instructor at the Young Ladies Academy in Philadelphia, had a great number of opinions on the proper behavior of a young lady. I had discovered, however, that many of her careful instructions were sorely lacking when it came to surviving on the frontier. There was not much call for pouring tea or embroidering handkerchiefs in the wilds of Shoalwater Bay. And I certainly didn’t recall any helpful hints on how to prevent the only man one had ever kissed from storming away for the second time in one’s life. So I did something that I was sure would have shocked my old teacher.

  I shouted.

  “I didn’t marry him!”

  He froze and then turned back toward me, walking fast. He grabbed my shoulders and looked down into my eyes.

  “You didn’t?” Something indefinable flickered across his face.

  “It seems that Mr. Baldt already had a wife.”

  Jehu slapped his thigh triumphantly. “I knew he was no good!”

  The difficulties of this year, 1854, had culminated in the sad discovery that the man I had sailed around two continents to marry, William Baldt, had married another before I could arrive. Papa would not have been surprised. Like Jehu, he had a very poor opinion of William Baldt.

  “Janey,” my white-bearded papa had told me firmly when I declared my intention to accept Mr. Baldt’s proposal, “you are transfixed with William for the wrong reasons. There’s nothing for you out on that frontier. It’s dangerous. There are plenty of eligible young bachelors right here in Philadelphia. There’s no call to follow one out west, especially one with no sense.”

  I confess that I couldn’t help but wonder what Papa would think of Jehu. My sweet surgeon father had always been fond of sailors. Why, they were generally his best clients, considering the number of cracked heads that required stitching from drunken bar brawls.

  “You’re leaving then?” Jehu asked quietly, gesturing to my trunk on the beach.

  That morning upon waking I’d had every intention of leaving Shoalwater Bay and all of its inhabitants behind me. After my engagement to William Baldt had fallen apart two weeks earlier, I had arranged for passage back to San Francisco on the schooner Hetty, which was due to arrive with supplies. I had bidden my farewells and taken my trunk down to the beach that morning fully expecting to depart the shores of the bay forever.

  But as I had watched the Hetty sail in, and considered all I had been through—and survived—I had realized that I could follow my sweet papa’s advice, and make my own luck right here in Shoalwater Bay.

  “Are you going away, Boston Jane?” Sootie asked anxiously, clutching me fiercely around the legs, as if by force alone she could prevent my departure.

  Speak up, Janey. Say what’s on your mind, Papa always said.

  I looked into Jehu’s clear eyes, and said to Sootie, my voice shaking slightly, “No. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Papa, I thought, would be so proud of me.

  Jehu’s shoulders seemed to relax. Was that a hint of admiration in his eyes?

  Sootie smiled up at me. “Oh good! Now I can show you how to make me a dolly.” She tugged at my hand.

  Jehu snapped his fingers. “I almost forgot. I’ve got something for you,” he said, fishing in the leather satchel slung over his shoulder and pulling out a letter. The handwriting was familiar.

  “It’s a letter—” he began.

  “From Papa!” I cried, snatching it from his fingers.

  “Picked it up from a passing ship. Got a few letters for Swan, and one for Russell, too.”

  The mail was a random enterprise, with letters generally delivered by passing ships. I had not received a letter from Papa since arriving on Shoalwater Bay. Then again, I had not written Papa for several months now, and as I turned the letter over in my hand, I felt a rush of guilt.

  Although he had not prevented my trip, Papa had made it clear that he did not think highly of William Baldt, and I had delayed writing him from shame when William had not met me upon my arrival. I had intended to write him after William showed up and we were married. Then the engagement had been broken, and as I had thought to return home, there was no need for a letter. Now perhaps I would write and persuade Papa to join me. The settlement could most certainly use a proper physician.

  Papa. How I missed his booming laugh. His warm eyes. His ability to finish off one of Mrs. Parker’s cherry pies in a single sitting.

  I recalled the way his mustache turned up at the corners when he smiled, and how he never turned away patients, not even when they stumbled onto our doorstep in the middle of the night.

  And most of all, I recalled how when I was a little girl he would stand at the bottom of the stairs and call: “Where is my favorite daughter?”

  It was our little ritual. I would throw back the covers on my four-poster bed, rush down the hall in my bare feet, and peer down at him from the top of the stairs.

  “She is right here!” I would say. “And she is your only daughter!”

  He would shake his head at me, his eyes crinkling with amusement, and more often than not, he would roar with laughter at the picture I presented.

  “You’re not my Janey! My Janey never sleeps through breakfast! My Janey’s hair is never tangled.”

  It had always just been Papa and me. And, of course, Mrs. Parker, our kindly housekeeper, who had wiped away every childhood tear with her worn apron. They were all the family I had ever known.

  I took the letter and carefully, slowly unfolded it, intending to savor every word.

  February 15, 1854

  My sweet Janey,

  You cannot know how it pains me to write this letter. How I would wish, rather, for one last chance to tell you that you are my favorite daughter.

  I have been suffering from consumption these past months. Although it broke my heart to let you go, I knew that you would be safer away. I’m quite afraid that I could not bear the thought of you succumbing to this wretched illness as well. As such, I have left instructions for my solicitor, Mr. Edmonds, to send you this letter upon my death.

  It has been a great comfort to me to know that you have begun a new life with William, and I wish you every happiness, my dearest girl. It was selfish of me to stand in your way those last months you were at home. Please forgive an old man who could not bear to watch his little girl grow up and leave his house to start a home of her own. Your happiness is all I have ever longed for since you came into my life as a red-haired, smiling infant with a penchant for sucking on my thumb. Your bright face was the only thing that made life possible for me after your mother’s death.

  In regard to my estate, I have directed that Mr. Edmonds sell the house on Walnut Street and give a portion of the funds to Mrs. Parker, who may continue on as housekeeper for the new owner if she so wishes. The rest of the money shall be deposited in your account at the bank in San Francisco. I fear that I have not left you a fortune, my dear, but perhaps it will be enough to buy you some small thing that your heart desires.

  I have always loved you, Janey—both the little girl who ran around with a pie- stained apron and tangled hair, and the elegant young lady you have become.

  Take greatest care of yourself, my dearest daughter. Listen to your heart, and you will find your way.

  Remember—you make your own luck.

  Love, Papa

  When I looked up, Jehu was standing there, watching me carefully.

  “Bad news?”

  I shook my head wordlessly. Above us a gull squawked hoarsely, and as if it were yesterday I recalled the way Papa’s coughing had filled the house at night, and how he had at first forbidden me to travel west to marry William. What horrible fights we had had! And then I recalled how, the morning after a visit by a fellow physician, Papa’s resistance had abruptly evaporated, and he had given me his permission to marry.

  He
had known he was dying! That was why he had let me go.

  I felt a pain deep in my stomach, sharp as the hurtful words I had spoken to my sweet papa, and staggered forward.

  “Boston Jane?” Sootie asked nervously, looking between Jehu and me.

  Jehu’s eyes widened in alarm. “Jane, what is it?” he asked urgently, grabbing my shoulders.

  “Papa’s dead.”

  “Oh, Jane.” Jehu’s voice echoed in my head.

  And then I did precisely what Miss Hepplewhite would have recommended in just such a situation.

  I fainted.

  CHAPTER TWO

  or,

  All Alone in the World

  When I came to, I found myself on a hard bunk in a filthy, flea-ridden cabin.

  The settlement at Shoalwater Bay was barely a settlement at all. In the center of a muddy clearing, up from the winding beach, stood Mr. Russell’s pioneer cabin, which doubled as a trading post—and inside it I now lay. A slender stream running alongside the cabin led to the Chinook village, where my friends Keer-ukso and Chief Toke and Sootie lived. Near a spot on the stream where the Chinooks liked to gather water was a small rustic chapel. There Father Joseph, a French Catholic missionary, preached and lived. Farther up the bay, a pioneer named M’Carty and his Chinook wife had a cabin.

  Mr. Russell’s cabin had been my home, albeit a poor excuse for one, since arriving on the bay in April. I had been obliged to take up residence there because my former betrothed had abandoned me, without bothering to arrange suitable accommodations. The inside of the cabin consisted of a ramshackle grouping of wooden bunks lining two walls, a rickety set of shelves that contained trading supplies, and a sawbuck table where meals were generally taken. The floor was hard-packed dirt, and the cabin had a tendency to attract local vermin despite my hard work trying to keep it clean. Then again, the vermin were quite probably attracted by the filthy pioneer men, who thought it perfectly reasonable to take a bath once a month. Any pioneer man passing through Shoalwater Bay looking to make his fortune was welcome to stay in the cabin where I resided. Needless to say, I was now rather unfortunately used to the sound of snoring men.