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The house was silent as she sat in bed, sunlight streaking over her quilt in long, yellow fingers. For a moment, she allowed herself to be, if not happy, then content.
In the dawn stillness, she heard a faint creak, followed by the slapping sound of the screen door. Someone was up.
Ellen tiptoed to the window and watched as her father, his old rail works cap pulled low over his face, walked across the hen yard and out into the dew-damp grass, slipping behind the barn towards the meadows and woodland stretching behind, out of town, to an unknown horizon.
Ellen bit her lip, quelled a pang of indecision, and then slipped into her dress, one of the new navy muslin ones. Aunt Ruth had burned her old dresses.
She tiptoed downstairs, her heart skipping a beat when she heard Uncle Hamish let out a rumbling snore and Aunt Ruth gave a dry little cough. Then she heard the steady breathing of sleep, and she tiptoed on.
Outside she hurried to catch up with her father who had disappeared from view. Ellen had not walked very far from the house yet, both because of her own sense of caution and Aunt Ruth’s stern reminders not to sully her new dresses.
Now, however, with sunlight bathing everything in bright, yellow light, the air as clean and fresh as a drink of water, she wondered why she had not ventured on an exploration sooner. She wanted to get to know this new world of hers.
The Copleys’ house was on the edge of Seaton’s main street, and Ellen was surprised to see how quickly the ordered civility of the town dropped off into wilderness. The rolling, sweet grass meadow she hurried through was tame enough, but it was skirted by a dark-looking wood Ellen was hesitant to enter.
She scanned the fields rolling into the distance and saw only a few black and white spotted cows who gazed back at her balefully. Ellen wasn’t precisely frightened of cows, but she wasn’t well acquainted enough with them to want to get too close.
Da must have gone into the woods, she decided, and squaring her shoulders, she headed towards the trees.
Sunlight dappled the shady ground, and she could hear a ceaseless twitter of birds still awakening the dawn. She walked carefully amid the brambles, knowing that to snag her dress on a thorn would bring her aunt's wrath down upon her head.
“Da?” Ellen call
ed out, and her voice seemed little more than a whisper among the trees. It was very dark in the wood, despite the patches of sunlight, and the air felt close and heavy. What if Da hadn’t come into the forest? What if she got lost?
She kept walking, slowly, looking left and right, until she heard the sound of a stream, and she carefully pushed her way through some wild raspberry brambles to find herself on the crest of a slope leading down to a merry little creek, the cold, clear water burbling over the stones. With relief she saw that her father was standing by the shore, skimming stones across the water.
“Da?” Ellen picked her way down the hill, and her father turned to look at her in surprise.
“I must have woken you when I left.”
“I heard the door, but I was awake anyway.”
She joined him at the shore and gazed into the clear water, catching sight of a few minnows darting in the shallows. “Remember what you said? Fish to jump into your hand?”
“I said that, didn’t I?” her father agreed after a moment, his gaze on the water, and Ellen felt again the prickle of unease that had plagued her nearly every day since their arrival.
“We ought to fish,” she said brightly. “Uncle Hamish has some poles, I should think.”
“He has a lot of things,” Da said, and there was an edge of bitterness to his voice that sent genuine alarm skittering along her spine.
“It could be a laugh,” she ventured. “We’d bring home dinner! Rainbow trout, perhaps, like you said—”
“Ah, Ellen.” Da shook his head, and when he turned to her, his eyes were so full of sad regret that Ellen wanted to turn away, to forget that she’d ever followed him here. “I don’t know how to fish.”
“You could learn.”
Da sighed and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I suppose I could.” He shook his head. “I just don’t know if I want to, Ellen, and that’s the truth.”
Ellen stared at the rushing stream. The water was clear, tumbling over a few mossy rocks in a crystalline waterfall. “What are you trying to tell me?” she asked at last, for she knew well enough Da wasn’t really talking about fishing.
“I’m moving on, Ellen,” he said quietly, after a moment. Both of their gazes were fixed on the water. “There’s need for men out in New Mexico, building a rail line right down to the border.”
“But you’re an engine repairman,” Ellen said faintly. She felt as if the safe, little world they’d just begun to construct for themselves was cracking apart. She’d been uneasy, yes, but she hadn’t expected this. “You don’t lay tracks.”
“No, but I could see the way of it pretty quick, I reckon. And the country, Ellen—take a look for yourself!” He took a crumpled leaflet out of his pocket, worn and grubby from being thumbed many times, and Ellen stared blankly at the desert vista emblazoned on it.
She pushed it away with her hand. “You said you didn’t want to learn new things. It seems to me that’s a lie.”
