“I’d say all you need is somewhere quiet and only to ask him things, the way you do.  But don’t be forgetting that you’re still only thirteen.  And you know if things got out of hand, I wouldn’t let Miller forget it either.”

“That’s something I don’t want to ever have happen.”

“Good,” Charlotte said.

“I’ve got another question maybe you won’t answer.”

“I answer lots of your questions.”

“Can I ask about the letter Chace brought you?”

Charlotte put her fingers to her temples.  “For a minute it all went away.  Here, of course.”  She handed Ada the letter.

“Oh my gosh,” Ada said, reading quickly through it.  “He’s coming.”

“Apparently he is.”

“Soon, even?”

“Yes.”

Ada studied the page.  “He has beautiful handwriting.”

“He has lots of beautiful things about him.  Sometimes I just wish he was somebody else’s father.  And undoubtedly there’ve been times when he wished I was somebody else’s daughter.”  She reflected for a moment.  “Like now.”

“What’ll we do?” Ada said.

“I don’t know.  We’ll talk about it at dinner tonight.  It’ll concern Ellis as much as anybody.”

“Because he left you.”

“Yes and Samuel would have no way of understanding that.”

“That’s his name?  Samuel?”

“It is.  Samuel Duchesne.”  First Elder of the Church of the Brothers of Ezekiel, God help us all.

<>

Charlotte smoothed the letter out in the middle of the table.

“Colonel Hutchinson received this from my father,” she said.  “You can read it if you want, but he’s on his way.”

“Who’s on his way?” Ellis said.

“My father is.  He’s coming here.”

“Shit.  That can’t even be.  Nobody heard me say that.”

“I did,” Jeremy said.

“How’s he traveling?  Not on his own.  Not out here.”

“He’s with the Brigadier General’s party,” Chace said.

“The General.  Coming out to inspect the forts again, wanting to see everybody using a napkin and the right fork even though we have the worst guns ever dumped off on an infantry division.  What was his name?”

“Bascombe.”

“That’s right.”

“I don’t remember him,” Miller said.

“He weighs about three hundred pounds,” Ellis said.  “And wore his dress uniform and a sword to visit the latrine.  That one.”

“Now I remember.”

“Does your father just miss you?” Ada said.

“Oh, I highly doubt that’s all of it,” Charlotte said, “since the chances are that he’s heard from Tobias.  I imagine he’ll have some fairly large topics he wants to discuss, one of them being what exactly it is I think I’m going to do since nothing worked out the way he’d planned.”

“Well, we’re agreed on that, aren’t we?” Ellis said.  “We’re going to Oregon Territory.”

“Everybody?” Ada said.  “We are?”

“It’s mostly all settled.”

“There’s a wagon train?”