The root cellar was stuffed full. Altogether Emmet had bought seven barrels of flour, two of cornmeal. He'd remembered dried fruit, but had only been able to purchase about fifty pounds. And coffee--neither she nor William was as fond of it as Emmet had been, so they had enough to last the winter and then some.

When the first snow fell in early November, Hattie welcomed it. She was ready for winter. The stock were fat, the fences were tight, and the cabins were well-chinked.

Once they were across the Blue Mountains, Emmet saw no reason to hurry. They stopped by the Whitman Mission to see if Flower had been there, but she had not.

Silas left a letter, to be delivered to Fort Boise. They both knew it would probably be next summer before William and Hattie received it.

They fell in with a wagon train on the lower reaches of the Umatilla River.

Emmet knew the guide slightly. Philo Andrews had been in the party he and Buff had traveled with up the Missouri, four years ago.

They sat at Philo's fire the first night. "Heard tell you was with a train last year," the guide said, spitting into the flames. "Figured you'd be all settled in the Willamette by now, makin' a farm."

"I'm not a settler," Emmet said. "Dirt makes my feet itch, and pretty soon I'm movin' again."

"Yeah, me, too," Philo agreed. "I never see me a mountain 'less I want to know what's on t'other side." He spat again. "What about you boy? You a settler?"

Silas shrugged. "Not for a while," he said. "I aim to see the world first."

Philo swatted him across the back. "That's the lad! Plenty of time when you're old to grow moss." Turning to Emmet again he said, "I'm thinkin' to head on down California way soon's I get these pilgrims to The Dalles. I'd welcome your company."

"Not this time," Emmet said. He had been to California. "We're thinking of goin'

farther west. The Sandwich Islands. China, maybe."

"Australia," Silas added. "I'm hoping to see them big kangaroo critters."

"Hey, boy, they're nothin'. Why I recollect the time I saw me an elephant,"

Philo said. "Big as a house it were. And it had this snake for a nose, and legs like logs...." He went on to describe the wondrous sight.

Emmet grinned across at Silas, received an answering grin in response. "Yeah.

Well, I've heard tell of dragons in China. Big, long snakes with wings."

"Breathe fire, they do," Silas added. "And they go flyin' about the country eatin' up folks." He shuddered realistically.

"Wal, that shines! Now, I was down there in New Orleans one time and I saw me a monkey that swung by its tail." He stretched his hands an armlength apart. "Big long tail. Funniest thing I ever saw."

Silas was evidently unimpressed. "Aw, everybody's seen little monkeys like that.

Back in Pennsylvania I once saw me one big as a man. Ugly as sin, with long shaggy hair."

"Did it have a tail?"

Emmet tuned the conversation out. He was restless. Ordinarily he would have joined in the aimless talk, topping each new offering of Philo's with one of his own, each more fantastic and boastful than the last. But not tonight. "I'm goin'

for a walk," he said finally, tossing the dregs of his coffee into the fire.

Silas waved his understanding, but didn't stop in his description of a two-headed calf he'd once seen.

Walking until the sounds of the wagon train were indistinct, Emmet climbed a low rise. The river gleamed in the moonlight, the willows and cottonwoods along its banks black shadows.

Why was he so restless? Always before he was content with the pace of his travels. Each new day brought new scenes, even on trails he'd covered before.

Since joining Buffalo, he'd never worried so much about his destination as the quality of his journey.

The first season with Buff, he'd told the older man of his reasons for leaving the sea.

"The way I see it," Buff had said that night, sitting across the fire in a tiny cabin high in the Rockies, "a man can go along blamin' hisself for everything he done wrong, until there ain't no more of him left to blame. Or he can jest forget about what's gone before and start every day new." He'd removed the long-stemmed pipe from his mouth and tapped Emmet's arm with the mouthpiece.

"Now that's what I do, lad. I got me some regrets--ever'body has, if he's lived any time atall--but I don't carry 'em around with me no more'n I tote me a set of fine dishes."

"My crew would be alive if I'd waited--if I hadn't gone off half-cocked."

"Pshaw, Em. You saw a chance to get away and you took it. Any man'd done the same thing. Warn't your fault the rest of the pirates was nearby."

"I should have made sure."

"You should have done just what you did. You got away alive, didn't you? An'

that's what's important."

"I was responsible for my crew."

"The way I see it," Buffalo said, "is that they had the same chances you did.

Any man among 'em could'a been the one to swing them chains. But they didn't.

They waited for you to do it, and then they followed along."

He tapped the ash from his pipe and rose. Looking down at Emmet, he said, "When all's said and done, a man's responsible for hisself first. You couldn't have done them any good if you'd jest sat there and let yourself get sold as a slave.

It ain't your fault that you was lucky and they wasn't."

Emmet hadn't believed him then and he still didn't believe him. Each time he'd been given responsibility, he'd failed.

Each person he'd been responsible for had died.

Please God he'd left Hattie before she fell under his curse.

William paused in his whittling. "You reckon she's all right?"

Hattie lay down the scraper. The hide was beginning to look like those Flower had used for their skirts, but at what cost. It seemed like she'd been working on it for days, scraping, soaking, scraping some more. "I don't know, William. I keep telling myself she'll be back, but the longer we wait, the less sure I am."

"It's mighty cold out there."

"Oh, William, Flower's spent all her life in this country. She'll have herself a cozy place for the winter." But Hattie listened to the occasional crack of ice-laden branches and wondered. Had Flower gone because she needed solitude to heal herself, or had she gone away to die, like a wounded animal would? Catching Ellen's hand as it reached for the bone scraper, she said, "No, baby, you can't chew on that." She scooped the girl into her arms and distracted her with the necklace of wooden beads William had made.

"Give her here," William said, reaching out. "I'll rassel her around so's she's ready to sleep." He took the baby and tossed her into the air. Ellen squealed happily.

Hattie returned to her task. She wanted to get this hide finished in time to make William a shirt for Christmas. His was split across one shoulder. It was taking her so long, though. Tanning leather was not something a young housewife in Pennsylvania learned.

For perhaps the twentieth time, Hattie regretted not asking Emmet to arrange for a loom and spinning wheel to be shipped to Fort Boise for her. And some sheep.

She'd trade all the gold coins buried in the wall of the root cellar for some sheep.

Stop it! You've got a home and a child and you'll never have to move again. What more do you want?

The answer came readily to her mind.

Emmet.

Forcing her thoughts to William and away from her futile dreams, she said, "I think she'll come in the spring. Like the Flower she's named for." And as soon as she said it, she hoped she was right.

Would Flower return in the spring? Not healed, but healing. And would she stay in Cherry Vale with them?

"I hopes you're right," was all William said, but his expression held more hope than she'd seen on his face since the day Flower left them.

Emmet and Silas reached Fort Vancouver in early November. Incredibly, a ship was in port and Emmet was able to obtain passage. The British captain agreed to carry the two Americans as far as the Sandwich Islands, where they could find American ships on their way to the Far East. When he saw the color of Emmet's gold, he even managed to find them a cabin.

They boarded the night before the ship was due to sail, settling into their minute cabin, careful to avoid bumping each other as they did so. Emmet relaxed on his bunk, fully clothed. Silas blew out the lamp and followed suit.

After a while Silas said, "I 'spose there's snow in the vale by now."

"I reckon," Emmet answered. He found himself wondering if the meadows would gleam blue-white under the full moon. Or were there low clouds swallowing the tops of the mountains, dropping their heavy white burden onto an already deep snowpack?

Were the cattle able to rake the snow from the grass underneath, or was William already feeding them from the haystacks they'd all worked to amass? If they were already using the hay, they'd likely run short before spring.

"What's winter like in the mountains? I'll bet it's real quiet," Silas said.

Emmet thought back to the three winters he'd spent in the Rockies. "Sometimes.

But every once in a while you'll hear a big crack, when a branch breaks under the weight of the snow. Or a far-off roar, when the snow on a steep slope gives way."

There were tall trees above the cabin. Why hadn't he insisted they build far enough out from the forest that they would be in no danger of falling branches?

He hoped William had the sense not to go upriver as long as there was snow above. They'd already seen how unstable those steep slopes were.

"I miss Hat," Silas said after another long silence. "And Ellen. Bet she's got real big."

"Babies grow," Emmet agreed. His baby brother had grown slowly, poorly fed from the beginning. After their mother had died, Emmet had done his best, but Jonathan still seemed always ill. Sheila had cared for him, coaxing him to eat, holding him in her arms at night to keep him warm.

Emmet had become skilled at picking pockets, at snatching fruit and vegetables from stands when the proprietors' eyes were elsewhere. Sheila waited tables all day, sometimes earning tips, sometimes coming in with bruises where the patrons in the workingman's tavern pinched or grabbed at her. At night she'd worked at a different trade, and never told of the money she'd made from the sale of her body.

They lasted through the winter and into summer. Jonathan had improved with the coming of warm weather, although he still coughed at night, much as their mother had.

A neighbor--a widow with a little girl--who was as poor as they had agreed to care for Jonathan during the days. She did piecework sewing for a tailor. As long as Emmet was there to watch both children when she picked up or delivered work, she claimed two were no more trouble than one.

Of course they weren't, when they were lethargic from poor health. Emmet knew now that both children had been slowly but surely dying, from too little of the right foods, from the diseases that lingered in the very walls of the cheap, decaying rooms, from apathy and neglect.

Funny. He couldn't remember the widow's name, although he'd cared for her and her child as he had for his own siblings, there at the last.

Ellen, now, she was a healthy baby, showing none of the lassitude and pallor Emmet remembered being so common among the children of Boston's slums. She was chubby and happy, rarely fussy. He couldn't remember when she'd been ill, even though the babies he'd known were sick more often than they were well. Even when she'd cut two teeth scarcely a day apart, she'd been little more than cranky, less ready to play, less gluttonous when Hattie offered her breast.

"She's probably underfoot all the time," he mused.

"Huh?" Silas sounded as if he'd been asleep.

"Ellen. She's probably crawling by now." Jonathan had crawled long before he was a year old, a scrawny little animal, filthy from the ingrained dirt of half-century old floors. Emmet had bathed him whenever he had the energy to haul water up the four flights to their rooms, but it had been futile. There was nowhere for the children to play but on the floors.

Was Hattie able to keep Ellen clean? He could imagine how dirty the little girl would get on the compacted dirt floors.

"You know, I didn't figure you'd really leave," Silas said, long after Emmet assumed he'd fallen asleep. "You and Hat--you seemed so happy, there for a while."

"She's better off without me," Emmet said, honestly believing she was. If he wasn't there to depend on, he couldn't disappoint her. Or let her down. "And she's got William."

"I guess," Silas said, sounding doubtful. "But you seemed pretty content yourself."

He had been, Emmet realized. For a year and more, he had been more content than he could ever remember being. When he allowed himself to be.

But he couldn't settle. He had a need to see what was beyond the next mountain, just as Philo did. There was a world out there, half of it still unexplored. He couldn't settle until he'd seen it.

A vision of himself came to Emmet, a man destined to wander forever, always seeking something obscure, indefinite, unreachable.

He tried to relax, tried to evoke the anticipation in himself he'd always felt on embarking on a new voyage. Each time he'd sailed with Captain Knowles on theHilda Jane , he'd been excited, looking forward to new places, new experiences.

And he'd also felt free, as if he were leaving his problems behind.

Tonight all he felt was worried. Emmet tried to imagine his future and he could not. An emptiness like he'd never known before engulfed him.

He turned on the narrow bunk. The cabin was close, the air still and lifeless.Tomorrow , he told himself.Tomorrow we'll be underway. A few days to the mouth of the Columbia, and they'd be at sea. He imagined himself on deck, breathing deep draughts of sea air, tangy with salt-smell, brisk with an Arctic chill. It would be like going home again. He'd been ashore long enough.

Again he turned, wondering why sleep evaded him. Usually he was asleep as soon as he laid his head down.

"Em?"

"Yeah?"

"You reckon those kangaroos are really as funny lookin' as that picture in the newspaper?"

Emmet had never seen the picture Silas was referring to, but he'd heard a description of some of the animals in Australia. "Silas, I'd bet they're even more funny looking than you can imagine."