end of the speech and the start of the picnic. After the picnic, there was stick ball and other games, and then dancing and fireworks in the evening.
There was a crowd around every member of the expedition the whole time, because everyone wanted to know more about what had happened to them. Most of the folks had no business asking but curiosity and wanting to be first with a good tale, Mama said. They didn’t get what they wanted, though. Dr. McNeil and the Settlement Office had agreed in advance to do a series of broadsheets with the whole story laid out neatly in order, and no one on the expedition was to talk about what had happened beforehand, so as to keep wild rumors from starting.
It didn’t work very well. Maybe there weren’t quite so many rumors as there might have been, but there were plenty of them, and they were plenty wild. They kept circulating even after the broadsheets came out, and some still get told to this day.
We got the real story straight from Dr. McNeil, the day after the celebration. He and Brant came to see Papa, and naturally ended up in the front parlor having biscuits and jam and talking to the whole family. The very first thing the boys wanted to know was what really happened.
“I heard you saved the whole party from a nest of sunbugs!” Jack said.
“I heard you wrestled a spectral bear that caught you bathing in the river!” Robbie put in.
Brant rolled his eyes and groaned. “Don’t be daft,” he told them. “Do I look like I can wrestle bears?”
“Boys,” Mama said in a warning tone. “You know these gentlemen aren’t supposed to talk about what happened until the official account is published.”
Robbie and Jack and Lan all looked over at her and then sat back in their seats, scowling. Nan and Allie and Rennie had been leaning forward, too, though not as eagerly, and they straightened up quick, hoping Mama hadn’t noticed. Dr. McNeil laughed. “It’s not so strict a ruling as all that, Mrs. Rothmer,” he said. “In fact, I think there’s more harm being done by letting these tall tales run wild.”
“You shouldn’t have made me out a hero,” Brant said to Dr. McNeil. “Anybody could have shot those pests.”
“Perhaps, though I don’t think many men would have kept their heads under the circumstances,” Dr. McNeil said. “But you were the man who did, and it saved the expedition.”
“If you don’t intend to tell the whole story, you had better stop now,” Papa said, smiling.
“If he didn’t intend to tell the whole story, he never should have begun,” Mama said sternly, but there was a hint of a curl to her lips, so all of us knew she didn’t quite mean how she sounded.
“That
Lan gave Brant a sidelong look. “What kind of pests were they?” he asked. “The ones you shot?”
Dr. McNeil laughed again. “That’s the thing in a nutshell,” he said. “They were swarming weasels. Our campsite was nearly on top of one of their burrows, and naturally they picked the exit closest to us to come boiling out of. The spells we’d cast weren’t intended for such numbers or such close range, and there wasn’t time to cast more powerful ones. Fortunately, Wilson here kept his head and had his revolver handy.”
“You shot a whole swarm of those weasels with just a revolver?” Jack said, plainly awed.
“No, I shot the two leaders,” Brant told him. “As soon as they were dead, the swarm fell apart and the other weasels dove back underground. That was all.”
“Leaders?” Papa said.
“Exactly,” Dr. McNeil said, nodding. “Nobody has ever gotten such a close look at a weasel swarm and survived—nobody with the training or the sense to observe the way they work. Wilson not only saw that the swarm had a center, but he was able to pick out the critical pair and shoot them before we were overrun. If he hadn’t, we’d all have been eaten alive.”
Rennie, Allie, and Nan shuddered. “How brave!” Rennie said.
Nan nodded agreement and added, “How did you know?”
“My mother keeps bees,” Brant said. “The swarming weasels were moving around the leaders the way a swarm of bees moves around their queen, and I thought it looked familiar, that’s all. Then, when I realized what it reminded me of, I looked for the center. The two leaders were larger than the others, and had lighter coats. So I shot them. It was just luck that it didn’t send the whole swarm into a frenzy instead of making it fall apart.”
“You had the brains to see what was happening, the sense to have worn a loaded revolver, the skill to hit what you aimed at, and the nerve to stand and shoot when the first dozen swarming weasels were within a yard of your feet,” Dr. McNeil said firmly. He looked at Papa and shook his head. “I’ve offered him a permanent position at least a dozen times, but he won’t take it.”
“I’m much obliged to you, Dr. McNeil,” Brant said, “but I’m going with my uncle to found a new settlement as soon as he gets an allotment from the Homestead and Settlement Office. After this, I don’t see how they can continue to insist that we have to have a settlement magician.”
“Well, if you change your mind, the offer will remain open,” Dr. McNeil said, and went back to talking about the expedition. He didn’t tell as many stories as the boys wanted; mostly, he talked about the things they’d seen, like striped antelope and a new species of saber cat they’d named a chisel lynx, and something he called a chameleon tortoise that used magic to look like rocks when there was danger near. Nan and Allie left after a while, but the boys stayed until the biscuits and jam ran out, and Rennie and I stayed right up until Dr. McNeil and Brant said their farewells.
I dreamed that night of saber cats and mammoths and insects like tiny flying stars, and when I woke I thought for just an instant that I was in a tent on the endless plains instead of in my bed at home. I couldn’t help wishing Dr. McNeil had brought back more of the strange animals he’d found, so I could get a look at them for myself.
Maybe, I thought, he’d go on another expedition someday, and catch more creatures, and I could see them then.
CHAPTER 12
THAT WHOLE SUMMER, IT SEEMED LIKE ALL ANYBODY COULD TALK about was the McNeil expedition and how it turned out. Every man who’d been along got treated like something special and then some. It got so none of them could poke a nose out of doors without a whole gaggle of “expedition ladies”—upper school girls and young single ladies—following them around, giggling and flirting and fussing over them. Mama said such behavior was a disgrace, so she wasn’t pleased to find that Nan and Rennie had been joining in. She gave them both a tongue- lashing and extra chores for a week, which pretty much stopped them going out after the expeditioners. But it didn’t keep them from making cow eyes at Brant when he stopped by to visit Papa.
Brant visited a good deal, talking with Papa about the settlement his uncle was going to build and planning how to handle the wildlife without magic. At first it seemed just dreaming, but after dithering for nearly half the summer, the Settlement Office finally offered the Rationalists an allotment after all. The place the Settlement Office picked was a failed site about two days’ hard ride from the river, where a settlement group had collapsed three years before.
Some of the Rationalists weren’t too happy when they heard what the Settlement Office was proposing, because the previous settlement had used spells to keep the wildlife out. Brant said that was silly. What with all the magical animals and plants and insects on the Great Plains and on west, there wasn’t a place that hadn’t ever had something magic about it. That first settlement was gone, along with their spells. Even their buildings had mostly collapsed, and their fields had gone back to weeds and wild.
By the time Brant and the ones who thought like him got the others talked around, it was too late in the year for the whole group to set out. Some of the men went ahead to lay out the compound they’d all be living in later. The buildings had to be a lot sturdier than the ones in a normal settlement, and they were going to take a lot longer to put up, all because the Rationalists wouldn’t use magic. So Brant said it was just as well they had the extra time.
The expedition ladies made quite a to-do when the Rationalist settler group left. They threw a going-away party for Brant that was near as big as the welcome-home celebration for the whole expedition. Rennie and Nan helped with that, too. They said it was to wish the men well; Mama said it was an excuse for more foolishness, and gave them extra chores again.
