Now, with cold winds sweeping in from the Bellingham bay into the meager community, the locals were shuttering up the windows and themselves inside, bracing for another bitter winter. He kept himself busy, mostly by writing lengthy reports to General Harney about local hostiles and the likelihood of their renewing attacks on settler communities.
Despite this, and over the next few months, curiosity turned to an obsessed daydream, and he found his thoughts tugged to an image of Emmy Evers, constructed from what he heard from the merchant.
Did she resemble Morning Mist or Sally Vinge, his first wife?
Was Emmy Evers’ reputed steely constitution discernible from a distance?
How deep was the soft shell that supposedly lay on the surface?
He decided to make an excursion south.
Accompanied by his sergeant and armed appropriately for the hostile environs, he rode fifty miles along the coast, encountering both black bear and a small group of young aggressive Lummis.
The bear turned and ran away at the sight of the mounted twosome, but Pickett had to draw his saber and then finally fire a warning shot to get the natives to clear off.
Remembering a bad experience with the Apache in Texas, when a similar encounter had been followed by a nighttime attack that had nearly been disastrous, he and his sergeant traveled ten miles beyond the site of the confrontation to provide safe distance between themselves and the Lummi youth. He would have given himself even greater berth if he were in the Southwest or the Lummi were mounted, but these northwestern natives were likely more curious than truly dangerous, he reasoned.
Further south, in a natural safe harbor, he secured western waterway passage on a small logging boat to bypass the deep and treacherous channel they called Deception Pass that separated Whidbey Island from the mainland. One day later, they landed on the flat, sloped western landing on Whidbey that Isaac and Emmy Evers had created for their flourishing businesses.
Pickett didn’t know what he was looking for on this trip, wondered whether Emmy would be demur and slight like his first and second wives, or hardened like most of the white women whom he had encountered in the Northwest.
How did a reputed Northwest beauty compare to the women he had met over the years: the refined, wealthy ones in Virginia; the more adventuresome in Illinois and Ohio; and the aggressive, worldly-wise women in New York? He tried putting that thought away and justified his trip with the notion of official and responsible discharge of business duty for the United States Army.
Chapter Ten
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Emmy and Pickett
Rain stopped for half a day. Getting cold now. New bull broke the pen fence again. Took two hours to herd him back in. Finished mending the fence by sunset. Sent offer to Bellingham Cmdr for beef supply. Isaac gone for over almost a week now.
—Emmy Evers’ Diary, October 6th, 1857
She was surprised when Pickett arrived, as it turned out by coincidence the very next day after she had sent off a response to his letter.
When her neighbor’s son, Stephen Crockett, arrived at her door announcing the landing of the two soldiers, Emmy ran upstairs, quickly washed off the morning labor’s perspiration, pulled her hair into a tighter braided bun, and furtively glanced at her outline in the bedroom’s vanity mirror. As she did so, she wondered at her motivations, deciding that such attention to personal detail was really in the best interest of her employing a disarming presence for negotiating an enduring contract with a reliable client.
Driving her buckboard to meet Captain Pickett, she determined to take measure of him against his ornate script.
“Captain Pickett, this is quite a surprise. I received your letter last week and just yesterday sent a response to your query. I expect you and my offer passed each other out in the straits. I believe you will be pleased with our proposal,” she said, noticing with a bit of embarrassment that she was speaking much more rapidly than she usually did.
Pickett was dressed carefully with obvious attention to detail, and she noted that he spoke with a soft and gentle cadence, less florid than his written word, but with a refined, precise selection of words nevertheless.
“Madame,” he said, with a doffed-hat bow, “I am most pleased to hear that, and I humbly beg your pardon for not waiting to receive a response. This was the most convenient time for me to go on this excursion. The weather will get inhospitably mean in a short time.”
Hearing this gently voiced excuse, Emmy wondered if he also spoke this way to the men he commanded and watched the quiet exchanges between the captain and his sergeant, who seemed to respect his officer’s orders. Pickett carried himself with a dignified solemnity that was unassuming at the same time.
Emmy read a sadness that lay beneath his ornately designed ensemble. In contrast to the enlisted man, who looked as if he had slept for a fortnight in his dirty clothing, Pickett’s uniform was proper, clean, and tailored with attention to detail, from his boots to the nonmilitary-issue cape that covered his shoulders. The difference told her that Pickett gave an almost dandy-like attention to his own appearance but obviously was less concerned how the men he commanded represented him or his office.
When she extended her hand to receive his, she felt hard yet small and carefully manicured fingers. His nails were clean and trimmed. She inhaled discreetly to sense whether Pickett used any cologne, but could discern none.
Ordering the sergeant to drive the buckboard, Pickett accompanied her back to the house on his beautiful gray mare, and it was apparent to her that he understood how to cut a dashing figure by his canter and carry. Indeed, as they proceeded up the incline from the beach and onto the homestead, he kept slightly ahead to her right in a privileged, very visible position, so he could not
