“Hold up, me lad!”
The familiar voice stayed Michael’s step. He had known Patrick Flannery most of his life, though they’d lost contact for the past few years as Michael worked the Brooklyn docks and Patrick remained in Five Points. Michael had been pleased to find his friend among those heading to Washington Territory. With his warm blond hair, green eyes and a spring in his step, Patrick was all things good and bright about their heritage.
His friend craned his neck now to see up the pier, battered top hat shading his eyes. “Is that her, then, your warden?”
“She’s not my jailer,” Michael said, starting up the pier.
Patrick kept pace, long legs flashing in his plaid trousers. “She holds the keys to your freedom, my lad. That sounds like a jailer to me. What’s she like, then? Is she the fire-eater Ciara led us to believe?”
Ciara had bragged that her sister could do anything, but Michael wasn’t so sure. For all her confidence, Maddie O’Rourke had a fragility about her. Perhaps, like her sister, a more tender woman dwelled inside the bold shell.
But maybe that was just wishful thinking.
“Give me a day or two, Pat,” Michael said as they moved up the pier, shouldering their way through the crowd. “And then I’ll be able to tell you the truth about Maddie O’Rourke.”
“If anyone can, you can,” Patrick said. “You’re good with understanding people. Me? I just like getting things done. So, I’ll explore the place and let you know me findings.” He dropped back and allowed Michael to continue on alone.
Michael caught up to Maddie, Ciara and Aiden at the top of the pier, where they’d stopped. Aiden was down on his knees, bent over the water and grinning at a furry face that appeared to be grinning back.
“Ah, and here you’ve gone and made a new friend already,” Michael teased him with a nod to the seal.
Aiden glanced up at him. “Can we bring him home?”
Maddie chuckled, a sound as warm as the color of her hair. “No, I’m afraid not. His family would miss him.”
Aiden nodded as if he accepted that, then climbed to his feet. “The people here probably want him for the menagerie anyway.”
“No menagerie,” Maddie said. “All the wild animals here roam about free.”
Aiden stared at her, and Michael couldn’t tell whether the boy thought it a grand idea or a horrible one.
Ciara stomped one foot. “There you go again! You stop teasing us, Maddie!”
Maddie’s smile disappeared. “It’s the honest truth.”
Ciara turned to Michael. “She said you don’t need permission to cut down trees in the park either.”
“What I said,” Maddie clarified, “is that the trees aren’t in a park. Here you can own your land, up to one hundred and sixty acres per lad or lass.”
“Well, that’s a whopper,” Ciara said with a shake of her head.
“It’s the truth,” Michael told her. “It’s from a law called the Homestead Act. I read about it. If you’ve an interest in farming and a stomach for hard work, you could go far.”
He thought Maddie would thank him for supporting her, but she frowned at him as if she wasn’t sure what he was trying to achieve.
Ciara’s frown eased. “Well, maybe you can farm, but that still doesn’t mean you get to cut down trees anytime you please.”
“You have to be cutting down the trees,” Maddie told her. “Those one hundred and sixty acres you claimed most likely are covered in trees so thick you can barely squeeze through them. If you don’t cut them down, you’d have no place to be planting your vegetables.”
“Why would they plant vegetables?” Aiden asked. “Why don’t they just buy them from the grocer?”
“I suspect you’ll not find many green grocers just yet, my lad,” Michael told him. “Or all that many farmers either. This is the wilderness. But that just means you can be anything you want to be.”
Even saying the words made his heart lighten. No one to tell him what he must do, whom he must support in the name of protecting Irish interests. He could be his own man, follow whichever way the Lord pointed. He drew in a deep breath, savoring the crisp, salty air.
“I don’t want to be a farmer,” Aiden announced, heading toward the road beyond the pier with a skip. “I want to be a sailor, see the world.”
“Now, where would you be getting that idea, I wonder?” Maddie said, following him with a sidelong look to Michael.
“Not from me,” Michael assured her as Ciara came along as well. “I worked the docks in New York. I didn’t sail the ships. And I’d think you’d have had enough of living on a ship by now, Aiden.”
“You’re right,” Aiden said. “It was too small. I can’t wait to run!”
Maddie grabbed his hand as if she feared he’d dash off right then. “Not so fast, me lad. First you need to learn your way about.”
With her free hand, she pointed up the steep hill in front of them. Michael had never seen anything like it. Though businesses were rising on each side, the rutted track running down the center was dark with mud. He could not imagine a wagon navigating it.
“That’s the skid road,” Maddie explained. “Lumbermen drag their chopped-down trees to the top and skid them right down to Mr. Yesler’s mill over there, where workers cut them up for boards to make houses and ships. Some of the logs are so big across, a man looks like a wee child beside them.”
“Now I know you’re bamming me,” Ciara said.
This time, Michael couldn’t argue with her.
“Be that as it may,” Maddie said, face turning stern, “it’s a dangerous place for the likes of you. The men are rough, the logs heavy and fast. You’re not to be going anywhere near it, understand?”
Aiden nodded solemnly. Ciara looked less sure, but she nodded too.
As if satisfied by their responses, Maddie set off walking, one hand still holding her brother’s. Ciara walked on her other side. Michael could only fall in behind. Her heavy skirts twitched with her impatient stride, and he didn’t think it was her siblings who concerned her. She didn’t like him by half. He needed to work harder if he wanted to put himself in her good graces.
He tried to keep quiet as he followed her up the street. Humility had been a hard lesson, but nearly three months at sea had given him time to reflect. He had a chance for a future and he wasn’t going to lose it by slipping back into old habits.
But Seattle, he saw, was even more sparsely populated than he’d supposed. He was used to tenement buildings crowding out the sunlight, masts of sailing ships so thick in the harbor he could have walked from one yardarm to another.
Here, single-story, whitewashed houses dotted the hillside, with dusky green trees taller than any he’d ever seen rising all around them. Two-story businesses were rare. The wide roads were heavy with black mud and crowded with wagons pulled by thick-necked oxen and wiry mules. And almost everyone he saw was male.
They were halfway up the hill, Maddie pointing out interesting shops to the children, when an older fellow in a fine suit, his whiskers thickest over his chin, stopped them. The tiny woman holding on to his arm must have been his wife.
“Good afternoon, Miss O’Rourke,” he said as he tipped his hat. “Mrs. Horton was asking when we might purchase more of your exceptional ginger cookies.”
“Now, dear,” his wife chided him with an affectionate smile, blue eyes crinkling at the corners. “I’m sure Miss O’Rourke