Emmy looked up at him and at Missy.
He stepped forward: “Emmy, Isaac’s gone. Jacob’s been taken.”
“I know,” she said.
Three days later, Emmy was strong enough to walk about, and the next day she asked to be taken to the gravesite.
Edwards and Crockett lifted her off the buckboard, and Missy accompanied her and Sarah halfway, then stepped back when Emmy waved her away.
Emmy stood there for half an hour, holding Sarah tightly and peering south across the hillside resting place onto the magnificent gently rolling homestead below. She knew that Isaac had died protecting her and her children. All the suffering and success from hard work and vision, the discipline to fashion chance and opportunity into a measurable and sustainable fortune, the heritable hope for her family—all of it had been destroyed in one night by cruel acts she still did not understand.
Who were these people?
What was God saying to her by this event?
Why did Isaac fight instead of run?
Did he know he was going to die?
Was it a sacrifice?
And why hadn’t she helped him?
Why had she been so cross with him for awakening her and fumbling around in the dark?
Why had she run and abandoned him?
Her thoughts circled back again to Jacob. Why hadn’t she kept Jacob by her side? Where was he? Was he hurt? Did he know about his father’s death? Did he know she and Sarah were alive? Was he hungry? Was he cold? Was there someone in that savage crowd who would care for him?
She wept. And for the first time since she had surmised from her dreams the dimensions of her personal tragedy, she felt a release that cleaned out a muddy confusion about what she could have done to protect her family. She looked west, out toward the strait, remembered the dreams about herself on the shore, then pulled Sarah closer.
It rained for five straight days and nights.
One week later, word came from Port Townsend that a British provisions ship had sighted two long boats heading north near the Campbell River. They had veered course and closed on the ship.
The crew braced for an assault, but the long boats kept out of range of the ship’s small cannon and ran parallel to the ship’s course.
The captain reported that through his telescope he glassed ten men in each boat and a small white boy in the second canoe.
In the first long boat, a tall warrior, left arm in sling, stood facing them.
In his right hand, he defiantly held up a severed head.
Chapter Twenty-Two
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Jacob
The two long boats moved north, keeping close to the eastern shore of the sound. When they passed the first cluster of Lummi fishing houses south of Bellingham, they moved in closer, and Anah had his warriors push their way into the shallow harbor, which berthed a few lumber ships and small fishing ketches. Several Lummi canoes lined the shore beside racks of dried salmon and halibut.
It was six a.m., and the water moved slowly with a mild outgoing tide.
As soon as the Haida rowers got within hailing distance of the fishing village a mile away from the larger lumber vessels, they began chanting and beating their oars against the sides of their canoes. They fired two shots that rumbled across the still water, breaking the morning’s peace.
Curious Lummi natives and white settlers emerged half awake from their shacks. The Haida began hollering and jeering.
Anah, in the lead boat, held up Isaac’s bloodless head and screamed, “Tyee. Tyee.”
The long boats then paddled out of the harbor moving northward. They repeated this at every village they encountered along their trek toward the rendezvous point near the mouth of the Campbell River.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Jacob had fought his captors as soon as he regained consciousness on the first night and, despite being a small child, had doubled over two of the warriors with swift kicks to their groins.
One of them, the younger of the two, pulled a knife, but Jacob saw the other Northerner, holding a bleeding wound to his chest, waive off the younger and give orders to the others in the encampment.
Thereafter, Jacob was kept bound and slept during the journey north, drugged with a mixture of alcohol and herbs by Klixuatan’s wife.
On the sixth night of the trek, he awoke to the old woman’s quiet, rough voice singing a song he did not understand. As his eyes became accustomed to the darkness in the smoky tent, he heard the patter of rain hitting the lean-to’s sealskin covering and found himself next to another boy, a frail-looking towhead, possibly a year older than Jacob’s five years.
The boy, also bound at feet and wrists, was coughing and shivering. “I’m sooo cold,” the boy said.
Jacob looked about but could not make out much. He could see the flicker and shadow of a fire outside the tent, and he could smell meat roasting. He was hungry.
“Please help me. I’m so cold,” the boy beside him said again.
Jacob didn’t feel cold. He looked at the skins covering the boy and realized that he had more coverings on him than Jacob had himself and wondered how the boy could possibly be feeling cold.
The boy started coughing again, and his teeth began chattering.
Jacob wanted to say something but drifted off to sleep. When he awoke, it was starting to get light outside. The chanting had stopped. The boy next to him was breathing intermittently now with a wet, raspy gurgling choking with every inhalation. Finally, it quieted down and then stopped altogether.
Jacob slept. When he woke up again, he was alone. Where had the boy gone?
He came awake again with a bitter taste in his mouth and realized he had been fed. It reminded him of berries and salmon, but it was rancid and stuck in the back of his throat. He felt like throwing up.
Now he was in the back of the long boat, facing forward for the first time, and could feel the rain and wind kicking up as
