But there wasn’t anything I could do to keep them from hearing about it, so all I could do was hope.
CHAPTER 19
WORD ABOUT THE MAMMOTH GOT HOME BEFORE I DID THAT DAY. Mama was waiting for me on the front porch, and she swept me up in a big hug as soon as I came within reach. My heart sank. I could tell she’d been scared bad by what she’d heard. When she let loose of the hug enough to take a good look at me, and saw all the mud on my coat from where I’d fallen off the fence, she wouldn’t listen to a thing I said, but made me go in and lie down.
Papa wasn’t near so put out as Mama was. He’d heard the whole story from Professor Jeffries, and he said that the professor had commended my presence of mind and was quite happy to have William and me and Miss Ochiba continue our visits. Papa also said that if Miss Ochiba could teach me to stop a charging mammoth, he’d be more pleased than not, and in any case the incident showed that I was a sight safer with her than running around the college on my own. He got Mama soothed down enough to see that I wasn’t hurt, and asked what I thought of the matter. Of course I said that I wanted to keep on with my lessons.
That wasn’t the end of it, though. Seeing all the mud on my coat gave Mama the notion that working with the menagerie animals was a hard and wearying job, like mucking out stables, and she said she didn’t want me tiring myself out. It was no good pointing out that hauling the wet laundry every Monday was harder work than doing spells at the menagerie. She’d been used to thinking of me as delicate, ever since the rheumatic fever, and that was that. She didn’t put a stop to my lessons, but she fretted over them until it drove me to distraction.
Still, I loved the animals at the menagerie too much to let them go. After the incident with the mammoth, Professor Jeffries kept his classes outside the fence, and I snuck close enough to listen as often as I could. When he saw that I was interested in the animals, and not just in Miss Ochiba’s lessons, he let me help with feeding and tending them sometimes. I didn’t mention any of it to Mama.
In February, right after his eighteenth birthday, Jack announced that he’d gone down to the North Plains Territory Homestead Claim and Settlement Office and signed up for a homestead claim. Mama was almost as upset by that as she’d been over the mammoth, and Papa wasn’t any too pleased, either, but there wasn’t a thing they could do about it. The law said that at the age of eighteen any citizen who had a sound body and the will to work a claim could put in for a settlement allotment, and Jack had gone and done it.
Papa wasn’t much for yelling, even when he wasn’t happy about something the boys had done, but he came awfully near it with Jack that time. He couldn’t see why Jack would want to go out to the settlements at all, and if he had to go, Papa thought he should put in a few more years at school and become a settlement magician. It was a bit safer than homesteading, and it was an easier and better living, because the Settlement Office chipped in with the homesteaders to pay settlement magicians. Also, Papa was aggrieved that Jack hadn’t said anything before he went down to the Settlement Office, like he thought Papa would forbid him from doing it.
Jack heard Papa out with more patience than I’d ever thought he had. Then he rolled his eyes and said that he’d told Papa time and again that he didn’t want more schooling, and that he wanted to go out and do something real. It wasn’t his fault if Papa hadn’t believed him.
Mama just looked sad and said she didn’t want the Far West swallowing another of her children. Jack told her that he wasn’t getting swallowed up and he wasn’t sneaking off the way Rennie had, either. Also, it wasn’t like he was leaving right away. He’d have to wait for a place in a settlement group, because the Settlement Office hadn’t let anyone go out alone since the very first year, when over a hundred farms were overrun by wildlife because the magicians were stretched too thin. It might take two or three years for a group to have an opening for a single man. Meantime, Jack meant to hire out to one of the farmers on the far side of the river, to get some practical experience in an established settlement.
Once they saw that Jack was determined, Mama and Papa quit arguing, but it took a couple of weeks. I think Papa was impressed by the way Jack had worked out his plans, though he wouldn’t say so straight to Jack’s face.
Jack found himself a position and moved across the river in April, just in time for spring planting. He promised he’d come home every Sunday, since it wasn’t far, but the first week he was so tired that Mama told him he wasn’t to ruin his health for her peace of mind, and once a month after planting finished would be plenty. She and Papa still grumbled when Jack was gone, though.
I was more on Jack’s side than not. Jack had always hated school and loved adventure, and he’d had a hankering for the Far West since the day he heard we were moving to Mill City. And with so many of our school friends moving out to the settlements every year, it felt like a natural thing to do. I thought Robbie might mean to go the same way, if he didn’t find himself a town girl, but I surely wasn’t telling any of that to Mama and Papa.
What with all the grumbling at home, I took to spending more of my free time at the menagerie all through April and May. Which was how I happened to be there when Washington Morris turned up in mid-May, looking for Professor Jeffries.
“I’ll fetch him for you, Mr. Morris,” I told him.
He looked at me in considerable surprise, for he hadn’t given his name. Then he smiled that wide, white smile and said, “You’ll be one of Miss Maryann’s students. I thought I told you all to call me Wash.”
“You’d have been a sight more taken aback if I had,” I pointed out. “You jumped when I called you Mr. Morris.”
“I never,” he said. “I was merely looking behind me for the Mr. Morris person you were addressing. But it strikes me that you have me at a disadvantage, when it comes to names.”
“I’m Eff,” I said. “Eff Rothmer.”
“Pleased to meet you, Miss Rothmer,” Wash said gravely, raising his hat.
“Nice to see you again, Mr. Morris,” I said, and gave him my best curtsy.
“Wash,” he corrected sternly.
“Wash, then,” I said, and went off to find Professor Jeffries. He was out by the mammoth field, fiddling with the fencing spells. I told him that a Mr. Morris was waiting for him over at the classroom building. Then I followed him back, because I was curious what business Washington Morris would have with our college wildlife professor.
“You’re the circuit-rider Miss Ochiba spoke of?” Professor Jeffries asked when Wash introduced himself. “Has she told you what I’m looking for?”
“Just that you’ve a job that’s suited to a circuit-riding magician,” Wash said in his deep drawl. “Miss Maryann is a great one for letting folks see for themselves.”
“I see.” Professor Jeffries frowned. “I need someone to collect information on wildlife behavior in their natural habitat. It’s all very well to study these creatures in captivity, but to expect me to predict something like the Batterson fiasco with nothing to go on but this…Well, I’m sure you see the difficulty.”
Wash nodded soberly. The Batterson settlement had been half destroyed the previous summer when a flock of cinder-dwellers had flown in and burned most of its crops, two barns, and at least one homestead. The settlement’s one magician had been keeping off cinder-dwellers in ones and twos for a good six years, but a flock of sixty birds had been too much for him. Everybody had heard about it, and everybody wanted to know why a flock that size had suddenly showed up after so long. All the nearby settlements had been jumpy for months, not knowing if another big flock would turn up before they finished harvesting.
“I can see why you’d want better information,” Wash told Professor Jeffries. “But you have to understand that when I’m out in the borderlands, a lot of other things have to come first.” He smiled. “I can’t rightly see myself stopping to make observations when a bear’s after my supply cache, for instance.”
“Your notes won’t do me any good if you’re not alive to bring them back,” Professor Jeffries said with a small smile of his own. “And, frankly, whatever you provide will be more than what I’m getting now, which is nothing.”
“I’ll see what I can do for you,” Wash said. “Always provided you don’t mind an uncertain schedule. I go where there’s trouble and stay as long as I’m needed, which doesn’t lend itself to a regular correspondence. I wouldn’t be in town now if I hadn’t wanted the sawbones to look over a bit of an infection I picked up last winter
