Emmy wasn’t sure who Jacob resembled in disposition, except that his temper fits sometimes reminded her of Isaac’s brother, Winfield.
Jacob was direct and always ran ahead. He needed to be watched and pulled back. More than once Isaac had to correct him and apologize for his son’s interruptions into adult conversations. But she also mused that at least on one occasion, the person with whom Isaac had been speaking turned to Jacob and thanked him for his passionate observation.
Jacob would become a fine young man someday, if he survived. And someday, soon she expected, a delivery of books and a good slate board would arrive in Bellingham, and she could start teaching her children what they must learn if they were to prosper in this new land.
Until then, she drilled them about rudimentary arithmetic and tested them daily on English grammar. On Saturday mornings, she used Dr. Roget’s book to help Sarah expand her vocabulary, and employed every appropriate opportunity to teach both children, but especially Jacob, about proper manners.
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Shortly after Isaac departed that week on yet another official trip, she received a letter directed to her from the Bellingham military commander, Captain Pickett, who inquired whether she could provide fresh beef for his forty-man garrison. He announced he would visit that week and, if she was amenable, wanted to inspect the cattle before consummating the order. He also wished to introduce himself and pay his respects.
The order would be smaller by a third than the one they had negotiated last year with the Port Townsend fort commander, who had ordered four hundred pounds of prime beef each week. She had always been surprised that the small garrison in Port Townsend could consume so much meat. But as she reread the letter, she suddenly realized he had been receiving his fort’s allotment from the commander at Port Townsend, who was reselling it, likely at a significant markup, with some of the proceeds going into his own pocket.
Captain Pickett had either discovered the little scam, or unwittingly found the supplier, but in either case was trying to reduce his cost.
By his florid language, she realized he was an educated man, and from his looped and gentle script, she could tell he was a sensitive one.
He chose sad, ornate phrases. One sentence she reread several times in his official communication was, “I beg your indulgence, madam, lest I create an importune imposition on loyal hardworking settlers like yourselves, most certainly beset by the arduous work and sometimes desperate difficulties of surviving in this hostile land.”
He signed the letter, “Your most obedient servant, Captain George E. Pickett, Commandant, United States Army.”
Thus bemused, she wrote back to him that she would be most pleased to sell him the beef and, without revealing that she surmised he was being swindled by his fellow officer in Port Townsend, offered a price five cents less per pound than what she was delivering to the cheat. She and Isaac could afford the few dollars a week that this was likely to cost them, if, as she suspected, Port Townsend subsequently cut back its order. And it made her smile at the propriety of such mischief.
Chapter Nine
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Pickett
We are exploring the region south of Bellingham Bay and bargaining with local suppliers in the area to better provision our troops for the upcoming winter.
—1857 memo by Captain George E. Pickett to Lt. Colonel Rufus Ingalls, Quartermaster General, Oregon Territory
He had heard she was comely, a looker, by the description of one of the grain merchants with whom his supply sergeant was bartering.
The merchant, a dour, unctuous, pot-bellied man with a pock-marked face poorly covered by a gray-yellow stubble, also noted that Emmy Evers ran her husband’s business with a tightness that surprised anyone who casually might be taken in by her soft countenance. In his experience, the merchant said, if one tried to push past her civil and gentle demeanor, one found something quite durable, a “spirited filly,” not easily swept aside by casual assumptions.
Most men in the region believed she was the perfect complement to her mate, Isaac Evers, a hardworking and honest dreamer who, until he had brought her to Whidbey, had little to show for all his ambitions. After she married ‘Ol’ Isaac’, the merchant said, things began to fall in their right place, and the entire Whidbey area started to prosper.
George Pickett was intrigued by this banter, and as he listened to it, he thought about what another good mate would bring to the unique loneliness he felt here, so different from what he had experienced in the parched Southwest, where he had buried his first wife.
The perpetual gray skies of this area, the inescapable drizzle during the winter months, overwhelmed every bit of disciplined fortitude he had at his personal command.
He dreaded the oncoming winter and the gnawing boredom that drove everyone in the garrison to fits of mischief and frequent day-long drinking bouts with contraband whiskey obtained from local mill workers who helped load ships in the harbor. The last year had been particularly bleak, and he reprimanded himself for the example he set for his men.
He had remorse for the punishment some of them endured because he believed, with some certainty, that he had contributed to their transgressions.
He had built a home away from the post so he could find privacy and indulge himself without betraying the trust he
