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Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three

Chapter One

Struggling to hold back her bubbling excitement, Annie took the teaching certificate with the official golden seal in the corner from the older woman. "Thank you, Mrs. Simpson." She had finally made it; she was a real teacher!

"You're welcome, Annie. You've been an outstanding student and I'm sure you'll find a teaching position soon. Oh," the tall woman came around her desk, "be sure to stop at the bulletin board in the hall. My secretary just posted a job request there this morning. I haven't had time to look at it yet, but perhaps it will be something of interest to you."

"Oh, I will." Annie held out her hand and the two women clasped hands warmly. Annie's time here at the academy had been an open door that filled her with hope for her future, a future that had looked abysmal for so much of her adult life. Now she was impatient to go out into the world and make her way as an independent woman. No longer would she have to rely on a man's whims and moods.

Clutching her well-earned teaching certificate to her chest, Annie left the overheated office and went straight to the long bulletin board in the main hall. Annie hadn't been able to receive her certificate with the rest of her class because little Holly had been so sick with a cold. But all the pomp hadn't interested her anyway; the certificate was, after all, only a piece of paper and she knew she had earned it and that it would be waiting for her in the office when Holly was back to her energetic self.

Standing on tiptoes, she scanned the notices of upcoming social events in Seattle, the listings of rooms for let, and various other notices of interest that littered the board. Then she saw it. It was a second letter tacked up along with the first one--the one she'd read several times already and because she was the wrong gender had disregarded. Taking both letters from the board she began to read the heavy blocky printing. Instantly she saw that obviously the same poorly educated person had written both letters.

This letter is to whoever it might concern at the Martha Simpson Academy for Teachers.

Jed's Landing, a small, but growing, logging and mill town needs a teacher for grades one through eight. Male teacher only. Annie scowled at the heavily underlined world before reading on. Will not accept a female. Living conditions are rough and isolated and the winters are hard. Housing will be provided. Will negotiate wages. This is my second letter to this establishment and am hoping for an answer soon.

Send inquiries to Jed O'Connell General Delivery, Jed's Landing, Washington Territory.

Tapping a short fingernail against her small chin, Annie studied both letters for a long moment. She needed a job. She didn't want to spend the rest of her life in two rooms above a bakery in the center of muddy, busy, smelly Seattle, even if Sarah Peterson was her landlady and a dear friend. She wanted a home. She wanted a real home for Holly...and for herself, too. She wanted a place where her precious daughter could run and play with other children, where Holly could have a bedroom of her own and a dog or a cat, where she herself could have a tiny vegetable garden and flowers. An aching hunger filled her heart and her blue eyes took on a far-away look before looking back down at the two letters. Gradually a slow smile bloomed on her lips. "Well, Mr. Jed O'Connell with the big head and poor education, you'll be getting your teacher."

Anyone who named a town after himself had to have a big head. She hated men who thought they were so important; they kept getting in the way of allowing them to be nice people. Adjusting her hat, Annie forced her excited feet to move sedately down the broad front steps of the academy. Every person she passed, she wanted to stop them and tell them that she was finally going to make her own way in the world--that she was a certified teacher and would soon be heading to her first job.

Holding her skirt off the ground, she darted across the street, thick with mud and horse manure. With an exclamation that would have gotten Holly's mouth washed out with soap she sidestepped the smelly splatter from a wagon's wheels as the driver, indifferent to her presence, dashed past her. Her destination was the post office and she burst through the door, not able to keep the wide smile from her face. "Good afternoon, Mr. Dunlop."

The gray-haired postmaster greeted her warmly. "Good afternoon, Mrs. Trowbridge. There's nothing today for Mrs. Peterson."

"Oh, I didn't come for the mail." She held up the two letters as the door banged shut behind her. "I came to find out about Jed's Landing. I understand it's up north, on the Skagit River." David Dunlop was an encyclopedia about the whole area clear to the Canadian boarder, and she couldn't think of anyone better to answer her questions.

"Jed's Landing?" he mused pulling a rolled map from a drawer. Turning it to face her, he unrolled it on the counter. "I know just where it is because I happen to know Jed O'Connell a bit...and his father before him. What can I tell you about it?"

"I'm going to be teaching school there and I thought it would be nice to familiarize myself with it."

"You're teaching school up there?"

Annie smiled at his wide, gray-eyed, shocked expression.

"Yes, I am." She leaned her elbows on the counter and cupped her chin. "They've written two letters to the academy where I took my training requesting a teacher and I'm going to apply for the job." Of course she wasn't about to mention the male only clause...it was such a stupid one it deserved to be ignored.

After a skeptical look, Mr. Dunlop gave her a descriptive overview of the area. Warming to his subject he went on to give her a lengthy explanation of logging and how the O'Connells were carving a growing enterprise out of the wild, untamed virgin forests of the northern territory.

By the time Mr. Dunlop had run down, Annie was even more excited about the move. It sounded like just the place where she'd like to raise her daughter. It had families with women and children, miles of forests to play in and no street crime or burglaries...or horse-drawn buggies and drays to run over a careless child crossing a busy street. Seattle also had rows of saloons with drunks stumbling from their smoky dark bowels twenty-four hours a day. Jed's Landing sounded like a brand new land--the perfect place for her to start her new life.

Annie thanked him and went to the door. Behind her, the postmaster cleared his throat. When she turned back to him he said, "Are you sure you want to teach school...in a logging camp, Mrs. Trowbridge? I'm afraid logging camps are a good deal different...than what you're used to." Why, he knew for a fact that a rough logging camp would scare the pickle out of the small woman with eyes the color of a warm summer day.

Still holding the doorknob Annie opened those blue eyes wide, smiled politely, and assured him that was just what she wanted to do.

Back out on the street, she nearly ran the five blocks to the bakery where Sarah Peterson was watching Holly. Bursting through the door, she set the little bell above it into a raucous jangle. The scent of spring and sparks of excitement danced around her like a vivid aura. The bakery was empty but she heard Sarah and Holly in the kitchen and called out, "I've got a job! We're going up north!" The door flew open and a small projectile charged at her. Annie swept her daughter into her arms. "Holly Berry...Oh Holly Berry." She hugged her armful of blond curls with the pixy face and pink ruffles. "We're going to move up north, my darling."

"North?" Holly squealed from her mother's arms. "Where's north? Is it far away?" Holly had caught her mother's excitement and threw her small arms around her neck, sending Annie's only good hat, a gift from Sara, toppling to the floor.

"I've got a job," Annie said to the older woman who had come from the back room wiping flour from her hands and brushing at the crisp white apron covering her dark brown skirt.

When Sarah heard Annie's declaration of a job up north she'd had to wait just a moment to gather her disappointment so as not to rain on dear Annie's parade. But rain she just might if Annie was taking Holly and moving away. "And what have you found up north?" she asked, pasting what she hoped was a congratulatory smile on her lips. "You don't mean Canada, do you?" Surely Annie wouldn't go that far away. Lord love a duck, she couldn't stand it if Annie were to go that far away.

Sarah had rented the two upstairs rooms to Annie Trowbridge when Holly was less than a year old. Annie had been freshly divorced from an abusive man who finely did her a good deed and left her for a dance-hall woman with a big bosom and a small brain. Through the years Sarah had grown to love both Holly and her mother and she hated to think of them leaving. She had always been so sure that Annie would find a teaching position right here in Seattle where she could still help care for dear, sweet Holly--the child of her heart. But now, with Annie's excited words still hanging in the air, Sarah was near tears--tears she was fighting to hold back.

"Is it a long, long way away, Mama?" demanded Holly, holding Annie's face in front of her own when Annie tried to turn to Sarah.

Sarah asked, "Is it in Canada?"

"No, it's not Canada," she told a worried Sarah. "And it isn't a long, long way away. Only a long way away." She kissed Holly's pug nose.

"How long?" Holly and Sarah asked at the same time.

Laughing, Annie put Holly down.

"When are we going?" Holly asked, holding her mother's arm to keep her attention.

"We go from here to Utsalady, a mill town on the northern tip of Camano Island, on a steamer ship. Remember..." she tweaked Holly's tiny nose. "Like the ones we saw when Sara went to the docks to get the big new cook stove."

"The big ones..." Holly spread her arms wide. "With the big chimneys that puff black smoke?"

"Yes. Then we board a sternwheeler and travel up the Skagit River to Jed's Landing. Do you know what a sternwheeler is?"

Holly shook her head, tossing long blond curls to dancing like a dozen springs.

"It's a boat with a bi-i-i-g..." Annie stretched her arms wide, "...wheel in the back of it. An engine makes steam that turns the big wheel that's halfway in the water. When the big wheel turns it makes the boat go forward."

With sad, worried eyes framed by wire-rimmed glasses, Sarah asked, "Lordy, girl, you didn't have the job this morning, how did you get it between then and now? When did you get it? When are you leaving?" Sarah smoothed the dark coil of hair at her neck and glanced away to blink at tears that she was ashamed of. She realized she had failed to keep the magnitude of her sadness from her voice when Annie reached out and squeezed her hand.

Annie saw the hurt in Sarah's eyes but she had to make a life for her and Holly. She knew how Sarah loved her...and Holly, but she also knew she couldn't stay trapped in those two small rooms upstairs for the rest of her life. "I don't know for sure, yet. I'm going to mail my letter of inquiry tomorrow morning."

Sarah's round face lit up with relief. "Ohhh..." The word came out on a long sigh. "Then you don't have the position yet...for sure. Where did you hear about it?"

"I want to go!" Holly danced around the room, her small feet tapping on the polished fir floor. "I want to see a logging camp. Do people live in tents...will we live in a tent?"

"They live in houses just like we do, honey, and we will go, little precious. Now go play so I can visit with Aunt Sarah. I love you." Annie gave her excited daughter a hug and silently vowed that she would, indeed, get the position and that she and Holly would leave the city behind them. Leaving Sarah was going to be a different matter--a sad one, but she had to take this chance of making a real home for Holly and herself.

After the door at the head of the stairs banged shut Annie turned back to Sarah. "The second letter requesting a teacher was tacked up on the bulletin board today at school. See." She pulled the letters from her coat pocket, then finally took her coat and gloves off and retrieved her hat while Sarah read the letters. Dear Sarah, she thought, taking a cinnamon-coated cookie from pretty cloth-lined basket.

Holding out both letters, Sarah said, "But it says they only want a male teacher...in both letters."

"And they've asked for a man for more than two months." She popped the last of the cookie in her mouth. "There are no male teachers at Martha Simpson's," she added licking crumbs from her lips. "I imagine there aren't many male teachers anywhere with so many men still looking for gold or settling land for their families. Mr. Jed O'Connell will just have to settle for a woman! Me!" She tapped her own blue-sprigged chest.

"He probably won't accept you, Annie, not when he reads your letter."

"He won't know that A. Trowbridge is a woman."

Sarah's eye grew wide. "You're going to lie! My God, girl, the lie won't hold once he sees you. You do have all the proper proportions to make a very feminine...female."

Annie laughed at her dear friend's shocked look. "I'm simply not going to mention my gender. I'm A. Trowbridge. I'll simply let my credentials speak for themselves."

"But what about when you get there? Why, he'll send you right back on the same boat, I'll wager."

"He won't know that I'm a woman until the boat has already left."

"Oh...Annie." Sarah sighed as she smiled tenderly at the vivacious young woman. When most women still put up with their marriages, good or bad, Annie had rebelled and after a year-long struggle she'd finally gotten her divorce. It helped, of course, that her husband had left her pregnant, penniless, and homeless...and by the time Sarah saw her, nearly starved to death.

Annie's parents had taken her in but at a price of constant recriminations. Daily her mother carried on about how good women didn't divorce, and her father, most often a silent man, had railed that she was a troublemaker by setting an example for other women to become discontent with their lots in life.

Annie had taken the verbal abuse until she was back on her feet after Holly's birth then had begged two hundred dollars from her parents to leave Tacoma and their sight. Totally embarrassed and ashamed by her status as a divorced woman, they gladly gave her the money.

Most women would have been devastated by that sort of treatment from their own parents, but not Annie. No sir, not her Annie! She'd blown into town on a rainy, windy day, holding a baby wrapped in a thick blanket and with only a thin cotton coat to cover her own shivering body. Sarah had seen the small woman pass the bakery, her head bent over the baby she held close to her heart, then stop. She retraced her steps and looked through the window for just a moment before coming in and asking for a job and if she knew of a room for rent.

When Sarah saw the tiny baby and the bright-eyed woman her heart had melted and she hadn't been sorry for it...not one moment in the nearly four years the mother and daughter lived upstairs. But now Annie was going to leave! What in the world was she going to do with her life? Originally the bakery had filled Sarah's days after her husband died, but that was before Annie and Holly had entered her life and made her realize just how lonely she'd been.

Annie's heart wept for Sarah's disappointment that she was losing her struggle to hide. "Dear Sarah," Annie said going to her and gathering the tall angular woman in her arms, "we'll visit you. It's not all that far away, and you can come and visit us any time you want. My home will be your home, Sarah."

Even though she doubted that she'd ever leave Seattle and this tiny bakery, Sarah nodded and smiled, patting the smaller woman's slender back. Her only hope was that Annie wouldn't get the position--that this Mr. O'Connell would send her packing right back to Seattle. But was that fair to the young mother who had worked so hard to go to school while at the same time helping her in the bakery, working far harder than any other hired woman would have?

Starting the very first day that Annie had lived upstairs she got up before dawn to help her get the baking started then went to school while Holly played around Sarah's feet. At night after Annie tucked Holly into bed she'd come right back downstairs to help scrub and polish until everything gleamed. Chattering happily and smiling, Annie helped prepare dough and fillings for the next pre-dawn day before going up to bed. Lordy, what was Sarah going to do if Annie left Seattle? The prospect of her life without Annie and Holly was dismal. Lord forgive her for wanting Annie to be sent back to Seattle...to her, but she did.

* * *

Jed's Landing, Skagit River, Washington Territory

Jed stepped out of the tiny cabin and hoisted the heavy mail pouch waiting beside the door to his shoulder. The sternwheeler had docked more than an hour ago and he and Harry Swiatkowski, the capital and old friend, had shared their usual drink of moonshine--top quality stuff Harry picked up along his route. Now it was time for both of them to get back to work.

"There may have been no passengers today," Harry said, scratching his full, bushy salt and pepper beard. "But that there mail pouch is sure full."

Jed hunched a shoulder under the mailbag. "I imagine cabin fever is settin' in with the womenfolk. They send away for them catalogues, then they just have to have two of everything that's in 'em. Like I keep saying, Harry, logging camps are no place for women."

Harry chuckled. "Oh, come on, Jed, it can't be that bad. The womenfolk have added a lot to this place." They were walking toward the gangplank of the sternwheeler where the voices of the men on the dock were raised in friendly hoots and yells.

Jed shook his head. "A lot of headaches is what they've added. They always want this or that...always wanting to change things. Women aren't like men; they're never contented with what they got. Give a woman a house and they want rugs and curtains and all that tomfoolery. Oh, well." Jed sent a neat stream of spit over the railing of the boat. "It's time I get back to work."

Harry watched the tall man he'd known since he was a little boy in knee pants, and not for the first time wished he'd find himself another woman, someone to soften him before it was too late. He hated to think that he just might turn out like his old man.

On the dock Jed stopped to call out orders to the men handling the shipment of supplies. His commands caused a small flurry of activity that stopped when one of the deck hands called out an off-colored joke that set all the men to laughing. Jed O'Connell threw his head back and laughed, the sound reminding Harry of a big bear roaring his authority to the forest.

Leaning on his arms on the ship's railing, puffing contentedly on his pipe, Harry watched the young O'Connell and marveled at how the man had bamboozled everyone around him. Just how many of his men knew his secret...that is how many more beside his bookkeeper, Jesse Jarvison. It was too bad because he certainly was a specimen of power and authority with his broad shoulders and thick brown hair with hints of Irish red shining in the early spring sunlight.

In spite of his size and the heavy sack over his shoulder Jed moved with the grace of a big cat as he wound his way through the men loading crates and barrels into wagons for the cookhouse, the company store, and the laundry. Jed O'Connell was as big and as powerful as his old man, yet Harry saw a gentleness in him his dad had never had. Oh, Harry supposed the Old O'Connell had been gentle enough with his little wife--there'd been a love match if ever there was one.

Squinting off to his right at the patch of cleared timber on the gentle slope almost around a bend in the river, Harry studied the unfinished log house that stood there, a tribute to the love the old man had had for his wife. After Hattie died from a fall from the roof of the house when she'd just had to climb the ladder to tell ol' Bogg something, he simply walked away from it, choosing to stay in the small, original cabin further up in the trees. Hattie had died only months before young Jed O'Connell had married a pretty little thing, Julie McIntire, from Olympia. When she'd gotten in the family way everyone was so sure Jed would finish the house for her. And he had started to work on it. Every trip Harry made up-river he would look up the bank expecting to see the house finished and smoke coming out its chimney.

The structure was built of perfect length logs with hardly a taper. Harry had walked through it several times, each time shaking his head at the waste. The floor plan was simple but so big! A twenty-foot wide room ran across the right end of the house. The room was big enough to hold a dance in. Then there was what he supposed was meant to be the kitchen on the back left corner--it was eighteen by twelve, if it was a foot--with another room leading off it behind the house with a roofed porch. The front left corner was a big bedroom. Each room had two big windows except the biggest one. In that one--he supposed Hattie would have called it her parlor--there was a huge fireplace made of rock right out of the Skagit River. Big windows looked down where the river made a bend flanked either side of the fireplace. Another window on the front looked out on a covered porch that ran the length of the house. Harry shook his head at the memory of bringing all those windows up from Seattle.

It was a house to write home about, that was for sure, and there it sat, empty as old Bogg's heart had been after his Hattie died. The chimney in the kitchen had been left half done and the whole upstairs was a huge open loft area. A set of wide stairs went up from four or five feet inside the front door to the loft, giving the whole place a grand appearance. The house was especially impressive from the big room where one could tip his head back and look right up to the thick logs that formed the beams and rafters.

Harry's thoughts were interrupted when Jed called to his men. Leaning over the railing, his pipe clenched in his teeth, he watched the activity below.

Still shouldering the mailbag, Jed stood at the far end of the dock, his deep voice booming out over the noisy waterfront. "Jake and Kale, when you're done here go on up to Number Seven." The nine men working the huge log boom into position to be tethered to the stern of the sternwheeler stopped, hesitated for a moment, saw who he was talking to and went back to work.

Two of the men started toward him, walking the floating logs as though they were on a wide, smooth roadbed, their long log hooks pointing heavenward.

"Joe and Weegie are supposed to be heading up there now, boss," Jake called back. "You think they'll still need us?"

Jed waved at the logs. "It looks like you're nearly done there, so go ahead and finish up, then head up there. I want that donkey engine in place before nightfall. We've got timber to cut, boys. That peace of junk cost me a fortune and I want to get it working for me as soon as possible."

The steam-fired donkey engine was a costly investment that Jed had deliberated over for months. Had his dad still been alive he'd have thrown a fit at the expense of the foolish toy, but Jed had a feeling they were going to herald a whole new way of logging in the area. Some of the camps down around Tacoma were already using them and Jed had been impressed when he'd heard the increase in log output. Oh, it'd be years before they'd take the place of a good ox team...or even of a good team of horses. But some day...

Jake hitched up his trousers and called back, "Okay, boss, we'll head up there in a minute." Jed waved his okay and both men went back to working the last log boom into place as the other men hooked chains from it to the next one in line for The River Queen to tow over to the mill at Utsalady where the logs would be cut into lumber to be shipped to Seattle. Seattle was growing like summer fleas on a dog and it used every stick of lumber he could ship down there.

Jed crossed the wide gravel-covered road that ran between the dock and the row of buildings where his office sat with its sign proclaiming in letters chiseled into a wide cedar plank: Jed's Landing & Logging Company. He bounced up the four steps, jerked the door open, and dumped the mailbag on the floor. He figured he'd better check the stuff before heading up to Number Seven just in case he needed to send something back with Harry.

When he'd worked the knot free the heavy canvas fell open to display letters and brown paper-wrapped boxes, and a thick bundle of newspapers from Seattle. He undid the twine holding the papers and picked one up and carried it to the window where he turned his back to the warmth of the long-awaited sun. Standing with his feet planted wide apart, a look of pained concentration on his rugged face, he studied the headlines, picking each letter out of the jumble of words and trying to make sense of the message. P-r-e-s-i-d-e-n-t...President, G-r-o-v-- Grover Cleveland. At least he knew the president's name. S-i-g-n... He pitched the paper back into the pile. Oh, hell! He didn't have time to read, anyway.

"Dad!" Michael burst through the door. "Harry wants to know if you have any last minute things to go aboard. He says he's leaving in about thirty minutes."

"I don't think so; if I do I'll run it over myself. You got those oil barrels on the wagon? The swampers have Number Six ready to go and they're getting the new donkey engine set up at Seven."

Michael nodded his shaggy head. "Wagon's all loaded, ready to go."

They went through tons of dogfish and whale oil, greasing the logs on the skid roads that veined the woods like a spider's web. The oiled logs made it easier for the oxen to drag the logs over them.

"I was helping Dan at the shake mill," Michael said, going to stand in front of the big hand-drawn map pinned to the logs behind his father's desk. There were seven tacks pushed into the map and each one had a number by it. The map made him prickle with pride. Each tack represented a logging site. But he was more interested in the new shake mill being built north of the dock, beyond the landing where the logs were dumped, then rolled into the river.

When he wasn't delivering oil to the different logging sites Michael spent every spare moment he had helping Daniel Enslington, his dad's best friend and right-hand man. As soon as the shake mill was up and running, which Dan said should be in about another week, then he'd be cutting shakes and some of the other younger boys would take his job of hauling dog fish oil around to the bullpunchers. Some day he'd be a partner with his dad. And some day, by God, he'd finish the big house and it would be his. He'd given up asking his dad to finish it. His answer was always, Why? We don't need the space? We're never in the house much anyway; we may as well stay right where we're at.

Jed looked at his son, actually seeing his shaggy mane of reddish-brown hair. "God, boy, you need a sheering."

Michael swiped hair from his face. "Yeah, I know. Is there anything to eat at the house?" As soon as the question was out, Michael knew it was stupid; they never had food at the house unless he brought something back from the cookhouse.

His dad looked up from the scattered mail. "Not unless you want some old biscuits you brought home two nights ago." Jed never ate at home, but Michael had a growing boy's appetite and was forever bringing leftovers home. "Go on over to the cookhouse, Bertha'll find something for you to chew on. Hey, wait...what--" Jed grabbed a letter from the jumble on the floor that he'd nearly stepped on, but Michael had already banged out the door.

Jed heard him call to Ronald Collins, the fourteen year-old son of the storekeeper, to join him as he studied the envelope with the return name of Martha Simpson's Academy for Teachers. He'd watched Harry write that name twice and even though he couldn't read each word singularly he knew what the name meant.

"Finally," he muttered, ripping the envelope open as he sank a hip on the edge of his desk.

Inside was a neatly printed letter with a whole string of tiny words that made his mind spin and his vision blur. Frustration pushed anger into his chest. It was times like this he wished he could read a hell of a lot better than he did.

Dear Mr. O'Connell... He was used to reading those words on all the letters to him. I'm...ha-p-p... The sound of the Y escaped him. ...to...you...a...those words he knew. But when impatience drove his eyes further down the page he threw the letter across the room at the same time a blast from the River Queen's whistle made him leap to his feet. Grabbing up the letter, he charged out the door.

"Harry" he yelled, bolting down the length of the dock and sprinting to the deck in three long steps, waving the letter above his head so that Scotty in the pilot's house could see it. "Harry, wait!" he yelled again.

Harry poked his head out a lower window. "What'cha got, Jed?"

"Read this," Jed said, charging through the door. Harry closed the narrow door behind him and took the letter. Jed forced a tight rein on his impatience as Harry fumbled in his pocket for his store-bought specs, adjusted them on his big nose, and began to scan the page.

"What is it, man?" Jed looked over the other man's shoulder.

"It seems like you finally got an answer to the second letter we wrote." He was always careful to say we even though it was Harry, not Jed who did the writing. But then, Jed did have a way with words, a lot better than he did. So Jed usually said what he wanted to say, just the way he wanted to say it...and Harry wrote.

"It says: Dear Mr. O'Connell, I am happy to inform you that you have a teacher. I am a certified instructor through grade twelve. I'm single and I have always enjoyed new experiences. I am worth twelve dollars a week and that's what I will expect as my wages plus a place to live and a horse and buggy for transportation. The above mentioned is not negotiable. I'm free to leave as soon as you want me.

In Seattle the school year usually runs from September to June, leaving the children free to help their parents farm during the summer, but that is something we can discuss when I get there.

Sincerely, A. Trowbridge

"Well I'll be damned!" Harry handed Jed back the letter. "Sounds as though you've got a teacher."

"Hot damn!" Jed punched Harry's shoulder. "I knew we'd get one. Twelve dollars a week?" It was a bit steep just for teaching kids something that their mothers should be teaching them. Oh, hell, he was probably worth it. Besides, Jed was a realist, and he was pretty sure he wasn't going to get flooded with answers to his letters.

"Do you want to answer this now, then I can take it to the post office in Utsalady?"

"Hell yes!" Jed slapped the top of the small desk, nearly spilling the thick mug of hot coffee Harry had been sipping. "The guy is willing to come right up, so let's get him up here. The women in camp have been screaming at me for months and I'm that damned sick of hearing it." He laughed, the hearty sound filling the small cabin. "This ought to make them happy. Hell, we can start school right away. We don't need to have the same school year as Seattle--we can do our own thing." Jed was used to doing his own thing. "Right?" He asked, slapping Harry's desk again.

"Right," Harry said taking ink and paper from his desk drawer.

Chapter Two

Back in Seattle, Annie was anxiously awaiting word from up north. Then, finally, when the letter arrived on the sixth day she was nearly afraid to open it. What if Mr. Jed O'Connell didn't want her--didn't want Mr. Trowbridge for a teacher? Then what would she do?

Mr. A. Trowbridge, you have the job. As I had stated in my request for a teacher, you will be given a place to live. The wages are agreeable, however, about the mentioned buggy, if you're referring to a well-sprung high-riding buggy like you might see on the streets of Seattle, do remember that this is a logging camp. You will have the use of a horse and we will have to see what we can get as far as a wagon goes. I will be expecting you on the twenty-first of April. Until then,

Sincerely Jed O'Connell

Jed's Landing, Washington Territory

"I've got the job, Sarah!" Annie cried waving the missive in the air when she'd finished reading it aloud. Looking at the calendar beside the big black cook stove, Annie said, "It's March ninth. I can be there by the second week in April, easy." She laughed aloud with excitement and added, "I could be there next week if I had to."

Annie flew out the door to tell Holly her news where she was playing with the neighbor's dog in the postage-stamp sized back yard. Sarah watched the two from the window over her sink and felt her own spirits sag. How had those two rooted themselves so deeply in her heart? Of course she knew why, she'd never had any children and Annie had become the daughter she'd never had, and Holly the grandchild she would never have.

She would never admit it to Annie, but when she had picked the letter up from the post office earlier that day while Annie tended the bakery, she had--just for a moment--thought about throwing it into the stove when she got back home. But almost as soon as the terrible thought was formed, it left her. The thought, no matter that it had only been fleeting, had left her weak with shame at her own duplicity. She would simply have to do without Annie and Holly and settle for letters. And who knows...maybe someday she could travel to Jed's Landing and see them. Or perhaps it simply wouldn't work out for them and they'd be back in no time. But watching Annie, her long warm brown hair flying around her shoulders as she played with her tiny daughter, she was ashamed of that wish, too.

*****

Annie and Holly's belongings were packed into five wooden crates, the biggest one filled with used books and school supplies she'd garnered from church rummage sales and estate sales. It was the day of departure and both women stood on the busy dock with other travelers, weeping in each other's arms. Holly hugged Sarah so hard Sarah thought the little girl was going to break her neck. But it was a welcome pain and she held the small child close.

"I am going to come visit you two this summer," Sarah said, having suddenly realized it was the only sensible thing to do.

Blinking and sniffing at her own tears, Annie said, "I'll write you a letter as soon as we get there. I'll get it on the next boat. I'll tell you all about it."

"Me, too," Holly added giving Sarah another hard hug.

Then it was time to board the ship.

*****

When the steamer docked at Utsalady on the northern tip of Camano Island, mother and daughter got off and along with their five crates were taken to a seedy looking hotel. Upon opening the door to their room, Annie looked around the narrow space with one small, dirty window, no rug on the floor, and to the narrow bed. Was the bedding even clean?

"What are you doing, Mama?" Holly asked as her mother tugged the blankets way back and inspected the sheets.

"I'm just making sure we won't be coming away with bed bugs...or worse." But she didn't see any and the sheets looked dingy but clean. After washing their face and hands in a pitcher of cold water, they went down to the dining room where they ate a very good meal. Around them, three women escorted by their men, and several single men in heavy scuffed and dirty boots, their brown trousers held up by wide suspenders and hats that they had neglected to remove when entering the room, ate at the other tables. Holly stared openly at the men's bushy, bearded jaws working methodically at mountains of food until Annie cleared her throat and nodded to her plate. Holly dropped her gaze to her plate but Annie found herself glancing toward the men under hooded eyes. Were they loggers?

When their meal was finished, Annie herded Holly right back up to their room and shoved the only chair under the doorknob as an extra precaution.

The next morning dawned with a weak sun behind dark clouds and a strong, cold breeze that sent the saltwater lapping against the dock. "They call all these little sternwheelers the mosquito fleet," Annie told Holly as they waited to board the boat. Holly stopped her bouncing on the crate to study the boats tied to the long dock in front of them. "Do they bite? Is that why they call them mosquitoes?"

Laughing, Annie shook her head. "No, silly, it's because they're small...and just look," she nodded to three small sternwheelers tethered to the dock and another just pulling away. "See how many of them are right here? And there are more that dock in Skagit City and Mount Vernon. If it weren't for all those little boats the farmers and loggers and miners who live way up in the woods wouldn't get any mail or any food supplies."

Not paying attention to her mother's mini history lesson Holly quipped, "But ours is the queen, isn't it?" tipping her head to read the name on the side of the boat.

"Right." Annie tucked an unruly curl back up under the boy's cap Holly had perched jauntily on her small head. Annie thought she'd tied the mass of golden curls tight enough to stay put, at least until they got into their new stateroom, but Holly's enthusiasm for life was threatening to send the whole shimmering mass tumbling down around her shoulders at any moment. Annie's own brown curls were twisted into a hated tight knot on top of her head and well hidden under the man's hat she wore. The trousers were something else; she felt nearly naked in them. But no one had paid them any attention so she felt safe in their disguise.

"What's your pretend name?" Annie leaned close to Holly's ear. She couldn't let Holly forget their little act; too much depended on her playing her role convincingly.

"Rolly," Holly answered with the ease of a veteran liar.

"And what's my given name?"

"Danny." Holly slapped a fly that had landed on her arm. "And you're my older brother. Our parents are in heaven and we have to travel together because I'm too young to leave behind all by myself."

Annie laughed softly. "That's enough, honey, we don't want to say too much because I'm afraid my voice doesn't sound like a man's."

"But you're only a boy, too. Remember...you're only sixteen...and I'm five. Sixteen isn't a man...is it?" She tipped her head and looked quizzically up at her mother, her softly rounded cheek pink with the cool breeze nipping at them.

Annie had deliberated over the lies she was encouraging her little daughter to tell, but it would only be until the sternwheeler left the dock at Jed's Landing. She had warned her that these lies were not right, but if they wanted to leave the dirty, smelly city, and live in the mountains, they would have to lie for just a very short while. Besides, the way Annie reasoned, it was Jed O'Connell's fault--he was forcing them into lying. Once the boat was gone from Jed's Landing it would be too late for Mr. Jed O'Connell to send her back to Seattle--at least for a week. She was looking forward to seeing this opinionated man's face when he saw that she wasn't a man, and when she came ashore on April fifteenth when she'd written him that she'd be there on April twenty-first?

A few minutes later they were in their stateroom and Annie pulled her hat off. "Take it off, honey." She gestured to Holly's hat but Holly clapped her hand on it and shook her head.

"I like it. I'm going to wear it all the time. Do I look like Teddy?"

Teddy was the little boy who ran errands for Sarah in exchange for cookies and loaves of bread for his family...and a few pennies. Annie laughed and squeezed her daughter. "You look like a little boy, but Teddy is black."

"But he wears a hat like this...and trousers."

"I guess he does." Throwing reason out the door, Annie agreed. "Well, I guess you do look a little like Teddy."

Puget Sound had been a wide expanse of open water compared to the narrow Skagit River, its banks heavy with dense trees in spots and heavy with stumps in others where the trees had already been logged off. After studying the scarred landscape Annie wasn't all that sure she liked what the loggers were doing to the beautiful forest.

Shading her eyes against the sun that had suddenly popped out from behind threatening clouds, Annie watched as now and then a cabin with smoke curling from its chimney came into view. Sometimes a woman and several children came out to wave at the boat, and the captain would blow the high-pitched whistle, the sound bouncing off the enclosing banks on either side.

"Here we are," Annie said to Holly in her forced deeper voice as the boat finally bumped against a long wooden dock. Holly looked up at her mother and laughed with excitement before quickly covering her mouth with her small hand. When the boat's whistle blew, both of them turned their attention to their new home.

They had traveled quite a way up the Skagit River. The current was strong here, but the river wasn't all that wide. Here the mountains were so close, their lofty tops touching the sky above the tall, dark green trees. They had noticed that the water of the Skagit River looked nearly as green as the trees that hugged the banks on both sides. Annie knew that spring came later in the mountains so she wasn't surprised to see vast snowfields lying in the deep crevasses of the mountains. The trees here were huge, the forest dense and dark as it marched right down to the water's edge where it hadn't been logged off.

To the left of the dock hundreds of logs floated in the water so close together it looked as though someone had tried to plank over a great length of the river. Having read about log booms, she supposed this is what she was seeing.

Annie had only one moment of worry when the captain of the boat, a Mr. Harry Swiatkowski, had asked them who they were visiting when they came aboard. Hearing that the cooks were always held in high regard in any logging or mining camp, Annie had used her gruff voice and said they were visiting the cook, then feigned a fit of coughing to stop further questions. Taking her cue from her mother, Holly faked a wonderful sneeze, snuffed heartily, and wiped her nose on the sleeve of the old coat she wore just like she'd seen Teddy do. Heaven help them if they didn't get this charade over with soon; Holly would become a wild little savage right before her eyes.

Harry had shaken his head and wondered just what relation these two kids were to Bertha. They didn't either one of them look very healthy and what in the hell were they doing traveling alone? Where were their parents?

*****

Jed reined Docker to a stop and leaped down by the knot of men working over the two lead oxen that had somehow become bogged down in the soft muddy earth beside the skid road. "What the hell happened?" His angry voice barked out above the other men's voices. It was something that rarely happened, but when it did it usually meant a broken leg or two for the poor beasts...and death. "Any broken legs?"

Dan stood, shaking thick mud from his hands. "Nope, not that we can tell." He had been down on his hands and knees, trying to reach under the top beast to hook a block and tackle line around its belly...a dangerous job at best. With the animal's long horns inches away from goring a man, and the hooves that could lash out and crush a man's skull, it was a job no man wanted. Jed had seen a man gored to death doing just what Dan was doing.

Jed waved his friend back. "Get away, Dan. I'll do it." He moved carefully around the two animals that someone had gotten at least unhitched from the rest of the team. The top animal was free of the yoke, although it still hung about the bottom one's neck. They looked like Siamese twins that Jed had seen in a circus in Seattle when he was a boy. The top animal was wild-eyed and bawling. The one under it was wild-eyed, too, but silent as though it had resigned itself to its fate...or it had been badly hurt and was dying.

Jed turned back to the men standing in a semi-circle. "How the hell did it happen?" He glared at the bull puncher who at that moment gave his whip a snap, with his wrist sending the leather out in a vicious snap across the top downed animal's heaving flanks. A bellow of pain and confusion rent the air.

Jed leaped to his feet. "You goddam sonofabitch!" He grabbed for the whip. "Stop beating the poor thing, you ain't doing it any good." He missed the whip by inches as the other man jerked it away.

Shorty narrowed his beady eyes and spat, "You tellin' me how to do my business?" This time he lashed the ground sending up a spray of mud to splatter Jed's legs and chest. "Jist git out of my way and I'll get these damned lazy shit machines up." The man was short and wiry with scrawny bowed legs spread in defiance. His ragged, filthy clothes hung on his thin frame. Brown teeth barely showed through a filthy beard that was probably a nest for all sort of vermin.

Jed stepped forward. Locking his gaze with the other man's, his hand shot out and he grabbed the whip, jerked it free of his hands, and threw it into the sodden brush. "I'm telling you to leave the animal alone." Shorty Halverson took a step back but not before Jed got a strong whiff of corn whiskey.

The short man glared back with a nasty sneer. "I suppose you're gunna just stand there and ask the beast real perty-like to get up?" he sneered.

Jed would take issue with the whiskey as soon as he had his animals safe. "We're going to get a cable around this one," he said, nodding to the one on top. "Then we can see what happened and maybe the other one'll just walk out...if it can. I don't see any blood so I don't think it's been gored by the top one's horns."

Turning away from the repulsive man, Jed reached for the cable Dan still held in his hand.

"I can do it," Dan said, reluctantly holding the cable out to Jed. But Jed shook his head.

"I'll take the risk, Dan. Get back!" He nodded to the circle of watching men. "Get back. I want to be able to jump clear if I have to."

"Be careful," Dan said under his breath as he moved to the other side of the animals. Getting in real close Dan began talking low and steady in a gentle hypnotic tone as Jed moved in and began poking the heavy cable into the soft wet ground beneath its side. While he worked the cable back and forth from the front of the animal Dan was at its back reaching under it to clear debris and mud away with his hands. The bottom oxen grew very still but Dan kept a wary eye on it, knowing that at any moment both animals could kick out or twist their heads and kill him.

Recognizing the danger both men were in, the others held their collective breaths. To a point, each man was fighting his own guilt because they had seen Shorty come on the job with a bottle in his hip pocket from day one, and a swagger that had nothing to do with showing off his scrawny bowlegged frame.

Dan was in the safer position but not by much. Both men could be killed as quickly as a lightening strike. Dan kept his eyes on both animals, praying that he'd see a change in the huge muscles if they were going to kick out. He never changed his tone as he watched for an agonizingly long time as he and Jed dug out the mud by handfuls. Jed slowly pushed the cable under the animal, only to pull it back and push it into the mire again, each time clearing a longer path under the animal's huge bulk. Finally Dan felt the steel hook. "I got it, Jed." Dan whispered. "Just keep feeding it through."

With the same gentle tone Dan was using, Jed said, "Hand me the end over its back." A minute later Dan had enough length to hand Jed the end with the big metal hook. With one eye on the restless animal Jed started to form a big loopy-knot in the cable when the beast swung its head and lashed out with his hind leg catching Jed a glancing blow on his calf. He'd seen the eyes roll and jumped back just as the critter kicked out.

"God, boss, that was close." Smithy spit in the dirt to settle his jangled nerves. Soft murmurs of agreement lifted from the watching men...all but Shorty. He was standing apart, wrapping the retrieved bullwhip around and around his thick fist only to let it slide off and coil on the ground at his feet.

"You okay?" Dan asked.

"I'm okay. He just gave me a temporary beauty mark on my leg." That would hurt like hell pretty soon. Jed turned his attention back to the animal. "Slow does it old boy." Cautiously he crouched and once again slowly knotted the cable. This time he got the hook into the knot, stood, and motioned for Joe to start winding the cable in from where the men hooked the block on a big tree. The animal let out a bellow that could raise the dead, threw his massive head a few times digging into the dirt with its horns, and for a moment fought the tugging cable around its middle. Then with one last heave of its flanks worked with the line and stood, stumbling and awkward, thick mud dripping from its heaving flanks.

"I think its dead," Dan said, looking down at the oxen still laying more than half buried in the mud, the yoke stuck up at a right angle to its body. Jed nodded and waved to Joe to keep winding the cable in to pull the standing oxen clear of the other one.

Jed and Dan were bent over the still-downed oxen, releasing the yoke when it gave a great heave, swung its head nearly catching both of them with its powerful horns, and lashed out with all four feet. With a loud snort and bellow it scrambled to its feet, the yoke still hanging from its neck. A cheer went up from all the men. No words were spoken between Dan and Jed; the men's eyes said it all: We survived this one.

Jed turned and glared at the short man who was still twisting and untwisting his long bullwhip into coils. "And just why in hell did this happen, Halverson? I don't see any logical reason, there's no loose or broken skids."

The man glared at him. "Be damned if I know. They're just dumb beasts. I don't make any attempt at understanding them."

"These oxen are your responsibility. You're supposed to know what the hell they're doing. It's your job to keep them safe and not let them wonder off the skids. Obviously you weren't doing your job. What the hell were you doing that was so goddam important that you couldn't keep your mind on your job?"

Shorty slipped the coiled whip up onto his shoulder and spit a stream of brown tobacco juice on a fern before looking insolently at Jed through narrowed eyes. With his thumbs in the band of his pants he rocked back on his heels. "It rained last night. I'm not God, I can't control the weather." His voice was thick with sarcasm...and alcohol.

Jed glared back. "The oxen would have been all right if you'd kept them on the skids. Of course the ground was soft, it's always soft after a good rain."

Shorty spat in the dirt. "I don't know what the hell's your problem, anyway, O'Connell. The animals are fine. I'd have gotten them back on the skids if you hadn't come charging in here wantin' to play the big hero."

Irish anger, hot and wild, built in Jed and he clenched his fist at his sides. God, he wanted to smash the shorter man's sneering face. Jed's height forced Shorty to look up at him and when he did he swayed on his feet. Smelling the whiskey on Shorty's breath he snarled, "You bastard, you're drunk!"

"Like hell I am."

"You're as drunk as a lord," Smithy put in, striding toward the two men. "You've been coming on the job like this every day. I told you last week that you were headed for trouble. I should have reported him," he said in Jed's direction. "I told him I was, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt."

"Who the hell do you think you are to tell me anything," Shorty snarled at Smithy. "You're just a goddam cutter."

Smithy jabbed a finger at the man. "I know trouble when I see it, and you're it, man. You're trouble for this whole damned outfit!"

Jed jerked his thumb at the road behind him leading back to camp. "You sonofabitch! You don't have a job here! Go get your pay and your gear and be on the boat before it leaves this afternoon! I'm also going to send word out to some of the other camps to be on the lookout for you. None of us needs drunks working in the woods."

Shorty's eyes bulged in disbelief. "Goddam, you're firing me just because those stupid animals couldn't stay on the skids, and because that prick over there's kissing ass?"

"I'm firing you because you're drunk, and your carelessness nearly cost me two good animals. Now go pack your gear! I want you out of here today!" Jed bellowed.

Jed started to turn away when the shorter man lunged at him. Before Jed knew what hit him Shorty's fist drove deep into his gut forcing a whoosh of air from his lungs. He doubled over but when he came up his long arm drove his fist into the other man's jaw and Shorty went down on his knees like a piece of cut cordwood dropping off the end of a log. Grabbing the front of his shirt, Jed hauled him up.

Dan yelled, "He's got a knife!"

Jed picked the smaller man up off the ground by his balled shirt and jacket and flung him into the brush like old dishwater. Shorty still clung to his knife but he was defenseless on his back in the mud. Jed towered over him. "If I see you around here after this afternoon you'll think I was just playing with you." Ignoring the hunting knife in Shorty's hand he jerked him up so that his face was only inches from his. "Do you understand me?" He shook him like a dog shakes its kill.

"Bastard!" The shorter man snarled when Jed let him drop back to the ground.

"Now get out!"

"You'll pay for this, O'Connell--you and your goddam O'Connell Logging. You think you're some big shit, don't you, just because you own a few acres of timber and can push the little guy around."

"Just get the hell out of here like the boss says," Smithy snarled, throwing the long bullwhip at him that had fallen to the ground in the tussle. "We've all had enough of you."

Shorty scrubbed blood from his face with his muddy sleeve before bending and retrieving the whip. "You'll get it, too. You ain't big enough to scare me!"

The other men who had at first busied themselves tending to the animals and unhooking the block and tackle all stopped and watched their boss take care of Shorty. As a whole the men liked Jed and liked working for him. When Shorty spit out his threat each man had a vision of what he could do in the woods that would either hurt or kill a few men...or even destroy Jed's business. The woods were dangerous at best and when you had an enemy prowling around them they became deadly.

"Damn fool!" Jed snorted. Shit! His leg hurt! He rubbed it, knowing that tomorrow he'd have one hell of a black and blue mark. At least it wasn't broken! His gut hurt, too, but he'd be damned if he'd rub it. He'd been surprised at the punch the little bastard had delivered. Standing with his feet spread wide in the underbrush he watched Shorty disappear around a bend in the road. Worry over the man's threat creased his brow but he turned and yelled, "I need a bull puncher!"

"I'll do it," Weegie, a big Norwegian, called out. Weegie was a good guy. Everyone liked him and he seemed to be able to take up the slack at any job in the woods.

"Pay's better than for a cutter," Jed said, slapping, Weegie on the back. "Take over, Weegie, I'll tell Jesse about the change in your pay."

When Weegie turned back to the team, Dan asked, "Are you okay?" He and Jed had grown up together right here in the hills logging at their fathers' sides. When a tree fell on Dan's father, crushing his left leg, the senior Enslington moved to Seattle. Loving the woods too much to leave, Dan stayed on, and since then had become not only Jed's closest friend, but his trusted right-hand man.

Flexing his leg, Jed snorted. "Well, I can tell you one thing, I ain't going dancing tonight."

Dan shook his head, putting on a sorrowful look. "Hey, boys," he called to the crew heading back into the fresh cut. "You hear that, Jed ain't going dancing tonight."

"That's too damned bad," Smithy called back. "We had you all lined up with a real beauty queen for tonight's ball."

Jed laughed. "Yeah and pouches of gold just keep falling out of the trees, too."

Dan looked up and around him to the thick virgin growth of evergreens already starting to turn dusky in the late afternoon light. "Well, I'll be damned, all this time I thought it was rain. Oh, well," he said, shrugging wide shoulders, "see you at supper."

Jed settled into the saddle, thinking he was going to probably have a real gut ache, too. He let his body roll gently with Docker's gait. His old Docker was no Tennessee walker but he was a damned good horse for the woods, as sure-footed as any donkey, as well as mild tempered and not easy to spook even when he smelled bear or cougar.

Maybe pretty Pearl could take his mind off his aches tonight. He chuckled to himself. If the good wives of Jed's Landing thought that chasing Pearl out of town got rid of her and her girls...well, hell, it just never happened. When the women had gotten on their warpath last summer and insisted that the small whorehouse be shut down, the men had only laughed at them. But then, all the wives and Bertha, and even the two women who worked in the laundry, went on a sit-down strike. No meals were cooked, no laundry was done, and no husband had his pleasures until Jed ran the three soiled doves out of town. But every single logger breathed a sigh of relief when Pearl opened up her little business in the abandoned trapper's cabin just four miles down river.

Some of the men--no one knew who or how many--had gone right down to that old shack and fixed it up and added two more rooms. To this day the women were never without wood to burn or wild game to eat. It was a good arrangement as far as the men were concerned, and the women in camp were helpless to insist on any more.

But that one success had made the women cocky and all of a sudden they were insisting on a school for their kids. Not only a school but also a certified teacher. It wasn't good enough to have one of the wives who knew how to read and write and do numbers teach them. No, they had to have a certified teacher right out of Seattle. Jed had fought them and argued with them until he was sick of the argument, and with curses bluing the air had sent the first letter to Seattle.

A logging camp was for logging, dammit, not for schools and churches and bake sales and God knows what else. Sometimes he was real sorry he'd put in the houses for the married men. Life had sure been a hell of a lot easier when it had been an all-men's camp and they all stayed in the big bunkhouse.

Chapter Three

From the top deck of the sternwheeler Holly pointed to the rough cedar-board buildings clustered on either side of the dock. Across the wide graveled road, more rough buildings seemed to stagger up a gentle slope to be lost in the trees.

Annie had wondered the same thing when the boat pulled in against the dock. It certainly wasn't a town as far as she was concerned. Had Mr. Jed O'Connell lied to her...if so, why? Through critical eyes Annie studied the shacks. Down quite away on her left she saw two newer big buildings. Well, one was only a large roof with no walls, but the other at least had three sides and it sat almost at the very water's edge in a large graveled--covered area. Lord, if this was a town...but surely it wasn't. Perhaps the town was further up, hidden in the trees. Across a nicely graveled, wide road from the dock she counted seven shoulder-to-shoulder buildings. One made of peeled logs was a bit nicer than the others. A long sign over the top of it read, Jed's Landing and Logging Company. Next to it was a Laundry and next to that a Company Store.

Then she saw the bigger log structure to her right. She had almost missed it, nearly hidden as it was from the dock and nearly out of sight around a bend in the river. A wide band of trees gave it privacy from the dock and the buildings there. She sighed with relief. Ah, yes, surely that was the hotel and the real town was probably beyond it. Didn't every town have a hotel? It was certainly much nicer than all the other buildings with its peeled logs gleaming honey gold in the late afternoon sun.

"When can we go ashore, Ma--Danny?" Giggling, Holly covered her mouth. "I almost forgot," she whispered in a stage whisper.

"We'll go down as soon as we see our crates being set on the dock." Annie pointed to the men coming aboard on the lower deck. They had seen this same scene repeated several times as the sternwheeler stopped at other clusters of building around small docks. Now she understood why the little sternwheelers were the lifeblood of these small communities--that's what the article in the Seattle newspaper had call the mosquito fleet--the lifeblood of the Upper Skagit River and the small Puget Sound Islands.

From her reading about logging the Upper Skagit River she could at least look at the busy scene on the dock and understand a little of what was going on. The teacher in her always prevailed, she heard Sarah's voice saying in her mind. She had been so excited about her new life that she'd brought home all the information she could find about logging and shared it with a dubious--and obviously sad--Sarah, and an excited Holly.

"Just smell the air," Annie said softly to Holly who was now standing on the bottom rail and leaning over the top. "And get down before I have to fish you out of the river. Aren't the mountains beautiful? Just look at them, Honey. Maybe this summer we can go hiking right up there." She pointed to a deep purple fold in the mountain peeking at them from over the trees behind the buildings.

"It doesn't smell like Seattle, does it?" Holly tipped her head back and made a loud sniffing sound and proclaimed, "It smells good here."

It did smell good. The air was pungent with the aroma of cedar and pine and clean wood smoke. Wood smoke in Seattle took on a dirty, wet, sticky smell that clogged the nose and sometimes was so strong it made your eyes tear. Along with the horse dung and garbage that lined the streets the city had a rancid dirty smell that Annie had learned to hate. "Oh, there go our crates!" Annie pointed to the dock. "Let's go. Remember," she whispered, "we're boys." She deepened her voice. "We have to take bigger steps. And don't giggle," she warned, winking at her small, bouncing daughter before adjusting her own tattered man's jacket.

"Where are we going to go until we see Mr. O'Connell?" Holly asked from beside her as they made their way to the lower deck.

"We'll just ask where the hotel is. I think it's that building up there. See." Annie pointed to the bigger log structure standing alone on the bank.

"It's pretty. I like that one." Then Holly remembered to stretch her steps out like she was seeing some of the men do.

Annie looked down at her daughter and had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. Her little legs, clad in ragged pants were taking what she called her giant steps. "Not too big," she warned. But everyone was too busy taking freight off the boat amid loud calls and raucous laughter to pay any attention to the two ragged boys, one quite a bit older than the other, making their way down the gangplank.

Annie thought no one was paying any attention to them until a deep voice behind her asked, "You boys need some help finding the cookhouse?"

Annie spun around so quickly she nearly lost the hat covering her thick coil of brown hair. "Oh! You startled..." she said slapping the hat back in place. Then remembered and dropped her voice. "You scared me, sir. I was going to inquire about a hotel. Could you direct me to it?"

Harry looked at the boys. They were a real strange looking pair...and stranger acting, too. Hadn't the older kid said they were visiting Bertha? "You'd better go right to the cookhouse, ol' Bertha will probably be waiting for you, if she knows you're coming."

Annie shook her head. "It's a surprise. Me and my kid brother," she jerked her head at Holly who was doing just what she'd told her to do--stand still and be quiet. "I thought we might get us a room for the night first." She glanced at her haphazardly stacked crates. She had carefully labeled them with Jed's Landing and only her maiden name.

Harry followed the older boy's glance. "Those crates yours?" He nodded to the stack.

"Yeah...I..." Oh dear, should she have said that they were only visiting? Surely two young boys just visiting wouldn't need all those crates.

As though he read her mind, Harry asked, "You two boys belong to all those crates over there?"

"Yes sir, "Annie said and Holly nodded.

"What'd ya do, bring the whole darn city of Seattle with you?" Both boys shook their heads in unison. The bigger one muttered a barely audible, "No, sir."

Something real peculiar was going on and Harry had a feeling Jed ought to be told. But where the hell was he? Harry scanned the dock where several men were starting to hook the log booms to the boat with long chains. He wasn't among them. Usually he was right here to meet the boat. Harry looked across the street to his office; it looked empty, too. "Any of you men know where Jed's at?" he called to several men loading crates and barrels onto a wagon.

One looked up, shoving his hat back on his head. "Don't know, Harry. Last I heard he went up to Number Four. I guess there was some trouble up there."

"Packston!" Harry called to a tall, gray-haired man walking onto the dock, dragging a rectangular wagon by a long metal tongue.

The man tipped his hat back. "What'cha need, Harry? I don't know any more than, Carter, there."

"That's all right. Would you take those five crates over to Jed's office. These two kids are visiting Bertha and I'll be damned if I know what they're going to do with all those crates, but take them on over to the office. Jed can figure out what's to be done with them. I'm taking the boys over to the cookhouse." Two lone kids in a logging camp just wasn't right. Something was fishy, and it wasn't the smell coming off the river.

The man called Packston pulled the oversized wagon over to their crates and began loading them. Annie watched until Harry said, "Don't worry, they'll be okay," and started walking off the dock, leaving them to follow. Not knowing what else to do, Annie gestured to Holly and they fell in step behind the captain, all the while her mind darting around like a mouse caught in an empty cookie jar. What to do? Bertha--the captain had said the cook's name was Bertha. Lordy, she wouldn't know the woman if she walked right into her. And of course she wouldn't know them either!

Harry looked behind him and slowed down when he saw that the two boys were lagging behind. "What relation is Bertha to you two?"

"My aunt," Annie said, then added quickly, "Our aunt." Lordy, she'd be glad when all this was over. "But we've never met her," she added quickly as insurance against neither of them recognizing the other when they were to come face to face.

Harry looked at the delicate features of the boys, especially the older one, and was sure Bertha had to be some kind of aunt by proxy...or something like that. Bertha was square-faced, big-boned, and about five feet eight inches tall. She had feet like a draft horse and hands that could slap a smart-assed logger around before he knew what hit him. These kids looked...well, hell, they looked down right sickly. He gestured to a long cedar-board building several yards up the gravel road with smoking billowing from its chimney. "It's right over there, and she's cookin' up a storm, but I 'spect she'll be glad to see you."

At first he was just going to point the kids in the right direction and head back to his boat, but curiosity got the better of him and he decided to tag along just to see what was up. Maybe the kids' parents died and they were adrift and looking to Bertha to raise them. That thought made him nearly laugh out loud. Old Bertha'd piss her bloomers if she had to do something like that.

"Hey, Harry!" Jed's call made the trio look up the track to their right where a huge man nearly covered in mud barreled toward them on a big horse.

Harry called, "Where you been, Jed? God, man what'cha been doin' wallowing with the pigs?" he added when the big man stopped the horse only inches from them, sending gravel against Holly and Annie's pant legs.

"Had a run-in with Shorty Halverson up at Four. The sonofabitch was drunk and ran the two lead oxen right off the skid road and they got mired down in mud to their bellies." As he spoke the big horse fell into step with them.

"You lose them?" Harry asked.

"No, but I gave Halverson the sack and I'm hoping he'll be on your boat when you leave."

Hearing the big man's name sent Annie's feet into a jumble and she nearly fell. Oh, my God! She regained her footing, but her heart was still doing crazy flips in her chest. Harry had called him Jed! This mud-coated giant was Jed O'Connell! The realization made her mouth go dry. Now what was she going to do? The boat's captain was right here beside them so she knew the boat wasn't on its way back down the river?

Think! Think! Oh, Lordy, she couldn't let the big man look too closely at them. Her head ached with the effort to think. An idea popped into her head and before she could give it rational thought Annie cleared her throat. "Ahhh...Mr.--Captain."

Harry looked at her; so did Jed.

She brought a hand up to her throat. "I ahhh...my kid brother and me...we're not feeling so well. The boat...I think we're maybe a little seasick. Could we find a privy, maybe?"

Harry jerked his head toward the cookhouse. "Well, hell, kid, why didn't you say something. There's one right behind the cookhouse in them bushes."

Jed narrowed his eyes and looked down at the two boys, finally registering their existence. He barked, "Just don't puke all over the seat, the men'll kill you if you do. Who are you kids, anyway? What are you doing here?"

"Come on, Rolly," Annie grabbed Holly's hand and they both ran along the length of the building leaving behind two men shaking their heads.

"Mama," Holly cried, pulling her mother to a stop as they ducked into the bushes. "We can't go in there." She pointed to the privy tucked further into the thick growth. "The man said that there were men in there."

"Oh, Holly," Annie shoved Holly deeper into the huckleberry bush before glancing behind her to make sure they were out of sight of the two men. Weak-kneed, she flopped back against the sun-warmed building and rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. "Just a minute, I have to think, Honey. That man--the one on the horse that was covered in mud--is Mr. Jed O'Connell, the man who I told you only wants a man teacher. We can't let him see that I'm a woman, not until the boat leaves. Remember?"

"I know." Holding her nose, Holly looked from the foul-smelling privy back to the two men she could just barely see through the thick huckleberry bushes. The big muddy one, Jed O'Connell, had gotten down from his horse and was standing beside Harry, his back to Annie and Holly. In animated conversation, they were looking off up the hill. "I know," Holly said again. "We can run off into the woods and not come back until we see the boat leave."

With a heavy sigh, Annie shook her head and touched her daughter's small round cheek. Lord, she hoped she wasn't doing irreversible harm to her gentle nature. "Oh, honey, we can't do that. But I do have an idea." She looked quickly over her shoulder at the two men still deep in conversation. "I'm going into the...cookhouse, right here, and ask where the hotel is and then we can go to it. Look," she added pointing to Harry and Jed. "They're headed back down to the river. I think they've forgotten us."

Kneeling in front of her daughter, Annie took Holly's hands and pressed them to her own cheeks. "You stay right here, honey, I'll be back in a few minutes. Don't move." She pointed her finger at her wide-eyed daughter for emphasis.

"But, Mama..."

"Shhh, no buts." Annie kissed her sun-warmed forehead. "I'll be back by the time you've counted to one hundred. And..." she added in a conspiratorial tone, "we'll have a room and everything will work out just as we planned." Holly cast a worried glance around her and Annie kissed her again. Then Annie ran around the end of the building toward a door that stood slightly ajar.

From inside came the clatter of pots and pans accompanied by a volley of curses in a deep female voice. With her hand on the door, Annie paused. The woman didn't sound very friendly. But she couldn't turn back now. Taking a deep breath, she shoved the door open and stepped into a hot kitchen where a big woman in a dark blue skirt with a white apron around her ample middle stood in front of a crackling woodstove. The sleeves of her white shirt waist were rolled past her elbows and her beefy arm moved in a circle as she stirred something in the biggest pot Annie had ever seen.

"Excuse me," Annie ventured in her young boy's voice.

The big woman spun around, an oversized dripping ladle held aloft. "What the hell you want, boy? You scared the starch right of my drawers." She looked closer at Annie. "Who are you? Where'd you come from? I've never seen you around here before."

Feeling the heat of the room and the close scrutiny of the big woman Annie stammered, "I just got off the boat...I'm looking for the hotel."

"Hotel!" The big woman threw her head back and what came out was something between a laugh and a roar. "Hotel! The kid wants a hotel!" When she'd caught her breath with little burps and gulps, she asked, "What do you think this is? Skagit City or Mount Vernon? Or maybe you got all turned around out there on the river and now you think you're in Seattle?" She wiped sweat from her brow with a rolled sleeve and studied Annie for a long moment.

Under the woman's narrow-eyed scrutiny Annie forced herself to stand still and not run like her feet were itching to do.

"You say you just got off the boat?"

Annie's eyes went to the careless coil of graying black hair wound around her head. She took in the woman's sweat-dampened round face and the big hands that looked strong enough to crack walnuts and nodded.

"Where's your folks, Boy? You're mighty young to be working out here in the woods by yourself. And a mite uninformed if you're looking for a hotel. Besides that, you're a tiny thing, too, for a boy. You all right?" She studied Annie like she was a strange species. "If'n you ain't here with your family, then you'd best just get right back on that boat and go back to wherever it is you're from."

Annie's palms were sweaty and the heat in the room made her scalp itch. But she didn't dare take off her hat.

"What's the matter, boy, the cat got your tongue?" Bertha shook the drying ladle at her. "You'd better speak up or I'll have to go get Jed. If you don't have kin here he'll have to know about you. And I can tell you right now, he'll have you back on that boat so fast your head'll spin."

Annie knew her game was up and with a prayer sent up to a hopefully listening God she decided to play it straight. After all, this big woman was...a woman, and wouldn't she know the value of a teacher in this cluster of shacks that Jed O'Connell called a town? Taking a deep breath, she pulled her slender shoulders back, straightened to her full five-foot two inches, and dragged the old hat off her head. Most of her hair was still caught up in the knot but several long silky tendrils fell to her shoulders and little wispy curls framed her forehead. "I'm the new school teacher, Annie Trowbridge."

Bertha's eyes nearly bugged out of her head. "Oh, my gawd!" she howled throwing both hands up in the air and roared again. After a long moment when Annie didn't know whether she should run or not, Bertha finally caught her breath and said, "Jed's gunna have a shit-fit. He's going to absolutely have a cow! You're supposed to be a man. What happened?"

"I'm a woman," Annie said quietly. "Can I go get my daughter? I've left her standing outside the building?"

"Oh my gawd!" Bertha said and was laughing again, slapping her thick thighs, sending drifts of flour into the air. "Go get her. Is Jed ever going to blow his top at this. Yes, yes, go get her." Bertha waved the ladle at the door. "Bring the poor girl in here."

Annie ran out the door, calling, "Holly...come here, honey." Grabbing her daughter's arm with one hand she pulled the cap off her head with the other.

"My hat!" Holly cried. "Mama!"

"It's okay, Holly...we're Holly Marie and Annie Marie Trowbridge."

"We are?"

"Yes. Come on." She shoved the door open and pushed Holly in ahead of her. Bertha was waiting, her hands on her hips, a smile that stretched from ear to ear across her wide, round face. She loved it when a woman could pull the wool over a man's eyes...any man, even Jed O'Connell's of whom she thought the world.

"Well I'll be damned, if she ain't a princess. And what's your name, honey?" Bertha held a big hand out to Holly.

Holly reached her hand out, but pressed back against her mother's legs. "Holly...Holly Marie Trowbridge." Then she gathered herself and added, "but Mama calls me Holly Berry because I was born on December twenty-first. Aunt Sarah calls me that, too."

Bertha shook the tiny hand. "Well you can call me Bertha. That's what everyone in camp calls me--just plain Bertha." Kind eyes looked back at Annie. "Now, Mama, why don't you tell me your story? But first, you two sit right down here." She slapped the bench by a square table. "I'll get us some coffee." Annie winked at Holly as the woman took down two mugs from a shelf beside the stove. "It's a fresh pot, and I got some cookies for little Holly Berry-- Can I call you Holly Berry, too? I like that name."

Annie realized that the woman's smile radiated good nature and dared to relax a bit. "It's okay," she whispered to Holly, snuggled close at her side. Holly nodded, still visibly intimidated by the big, boisterous woman.

Bertha waved a beefy hand at the bench. "Go ahead, sit down. You both look a little peaked." With a worried glance toward the partially open back door Annie sat down and drew Holly down beside her as the woman set a plate of huge cookies and the two mugs of steaming coffee on the table's scarred surface. "Would you like some milk?" she asked Holly.

Holly bobbed her head. "Yes, please."

Holly's little girl voice was back and Annie smiled with pride at her daughter whose golden blond hair had instantly sprung into the long curls she'd worn all her life. She couldn't keep her hand from seeking the comfort of stroking the silky mass.

"I just happened to have a small jar right here, left over from cooking. I've got a cow out back that I milk every morning and night." She went to a long deep shelf and got a chipped glass down and filled it. Setting it in front of Holly, she thumped down on the bench across from them and folded her arms on the table. With a wide grin softening her face, she said, "I think we're going to be good friends...Holly Berry."

Holly smiled around a big bite of cookie and nodded.

Annie warned, "We have to stay hidden until the boat leaves...or Mr. O'Connell could send us back to Seattle. That's why we were dressed like boys. He wrote two letters to the school where I earned my teaching certificate asking for a male teacher. We have no male teachers at the school so when the second letter came I decided that Holly and I would do just as good a job as any man...and..." she added with a smile..."probably a whole lot better." She brushed cookie crumbs from Holly's cheek.

Holding her glass of milk in both hands, Holly nodded her head in vigorous agreement. "My Mama is a good teacher. She teaches me all sorts of good things."

Like lying and pretending to be a boy, Bertha thought, but not unkindly and winked at the little girl with a head full of long silky golden curls. She had never in all her born days heard of two women--well one woman and a tiny girl--pulling such a trick. She loved it!

Over two cups of coffee Annie told Bertha about living over a bakery in Seattle and wanting to get out of the city. She assured the big woman that Sarah was dear and that they both missed her terribly, but that Annie felt she had to grab this opportunity or lose out completely in her effort to leave the city.

The sun was setting behind the tall trees when Bertha led them to her own two-room cabin made of peeled logs in a clump of pungent firs behind the cookhouse. The back third of it was a bedroom with a small window that looked out on more trees. The rest was a kitchen/front room with a large window that looked out on the gravel road that had become considerably narrower as it wound its way up through the trees. It wasn't a fancy cabin, but it did have a big cook stove that snapped and crackled, chasing away the fast approaching evening's chill.

Bright sunshine yellow curtains hung at the big window and a metal sink with a hand pump sat against one wall between two lengths of work counter. A square table with four chairs took up the center space and a back wall beside the door leading into the bedroom was floor to ceiling shelves with yellow curtains across the front.

On the floor was an old faded braided rug and the best thing of all was a long deep-cushioned sofa that sat at a right angle to the cook stove. A matching chair sat next to it. The little cabin sparkled with cleanliness, warmth, and a reflection of its friendly owner.

Bertha showed them quickly around before rushing back to the cookhouse with a promise to bring them some supper as soon as the men were eating and she could slip out. "You two stay inside and no one should bother you. I'll send Jed over after he's eaten."

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