Mist-shi-mus

Chapter 1 Mist-shi-mus

 Chapter One

Klootchman

 Pacific Northwest, 1860

 Jeannie Naughton was never one to run away from life, but at a tender age she learned that sometimes a good and honest one was nothing but an illusion. She was forced to run. Now as she stood at the front of the schooner, she braced herself as its deck rose and fell. The world lay out before her, the ship’s bow splitting it in half to a left and a right.

 My life is like that. Split in half and slipping behind me. And ahead, unknown.

 She squeezed her five year-old son’s hand as he leaned his thin body into her skirt. When he looked up at her, she gave him a smile that went all the way to her heart. My little angel.

 They had only recently arrived at the trading fort in Victoria, British Columbia after a hundred days at sea. Now she was to meet the wife of the camp's assistant surgeon and lay over for the next two days. It was good that Uncle Archie was a particular friend of Dr. Parker, but tomorrow she’d have to face an unknown circle of women and without any advance intelligence, appraise them for their skill at inquiry on the domestic scale. Though she had lived the lie for over a year, she had to have the story straight.

 I am the widow of John Percival Naughton departed this life two years ago, she said to herself. He was in the Pacific trades. No, he never met his little son.

 Thank God Uncle Archie had laid out all aspects of the story when he first brought her to North America. It’s for your reputation, lass. And you must adhere to it at all times.

 A breeze stirred the ribbons on her bonnet, causing them to tap her cheek. She tucked them away and took a breath of the clear, moist air. It was a beautiful, sharp April morning and as the sails filled, they lifted up and revealed a vista of forested islands in front of her and the high, white-headed mountains on the Olympic Peninsula to her south. Sea gulls swooped and cried before the bow and from rocks jutting out along the islands' shores, seals poured into the water like globs of brown black oil. As they turned and sped alongside the islands, the mountains rose up as one jagged blue-green wall, hiding their passages like lover's secrets.

 The schooner made its tack to the sound of rushing bare feet and the shouts of men. His light brown hair fluttering under his wool cap, Jeremy let go of her hand and ran to an older gentleman at the rail. Uncle Archie. He was as dear to her as her son. Jeannie was relieved when he helped Jeremy brace against the rail.

 Once the ship came around a small island blocking their view, the wharf of the British post came into sight. Next to it a long storeroom, a barracks and a multitude of white-canvassed Silbey tents stood on a partially open field, half-freed from a thicket of tall trees. Jeannie could see men clearing the trees straight down to the water, although some magnificent old big leaf maples stood unscathed. To her right, she saw what she thought was a garden. Behind it all, thick wooded hills rose up and stretched back into the interior.

 "What do you think, lass? It looks a wee raw, but it has promise, don’t you think?" Her uncle joined her at the rail with Jeremy in tow. "Not like the American encampment which is disheveled, undisciplined and stuck out on a pig of a barren hill.”

 “I still don’t understand, Uncle. The Americans are occupying the south end of the island and we are occupying the north. All because of a Hudson’s Bay pig?”

 “T’is true, the pig is dead, shot by an American squatter, and our Majesty’s forces nearly coming to blows with that fool American Pickett.” Her uncle waved his hand at the scene. “But this isna over a pig. It’s about the international boundary and the proper water line between our countries. Everyone has agreed to occupy jointly it until it is all settled by arbitrator.”