“There is, out of Missouri.  We’d pick it up here and take it over the mountains, Chace and Miller and me.”

Ada turned to Chace, her expression one of disbelief.  “You’ll go?  No question?”

“No question.”

“Won’t it be hard to leave here?”

“It won’t be hard.”

“Why not?  You said you’d tell me.”

“If you stay with it long enough, you figure out that the world didn’t end and you’re still in it, so you should do something about that.”

“Do you just forget then?”

“You don’t ever forget,” Chace said.  “You just try and keep hold of what was good.”

“You can do that?”

“It means too much not to.”

“Then I can do it too.”

“If we’re talking about Oregon,” Brewster said, “there’ll be things to think about.  Like building a house.”

“I’ve never built a house,” Ellis said, “but Chace and I helped build Fort Pence.”

“That should count for something.”

“Thank you, Brewster.  And I suppose you’ve built three or four in your young life.  It wouldn’t surprise me.”

“I haven’t,” Brewster said seriously, “but I’ve got this.”  He stood up and brought back the small black book from the sideboard.  He opened it to a page and handed it to Chace.  “It says how to build a cabin.  The drawings and measurements come first, then the directions.”

“That was your Pa’s?” Ellis said.  Brewster nodded.

Chace paged slowly through the small book studying the finely drawn lines of each careful entry.

“There’s everything in here,” he said.

“That was his way,” Ada said.  “And he’d planned out how the new cabin would be even better than our old one.”

“There’d be planting to do,” Brewster said.  “We’d need seeds, cuttings, things like that.”

“Who is this boy?” Ellis said.

“I have seeds,” Charlotte said.  “And we’ll have slips and bulbs and roots and cuttings, all kinds of things by the time we leave.”

“We only have one cow,” Brewster said.  “We could use another one or maybe two more would be good.”

“Jesus Christ,” Ellis said.  “Jeremy, you didn’t hear that either.  Miller and I’ve traveled with about as many cows as we can stand, I think.  Maybe when the railroad’s built the cows can come by train.”

“Brewster,” Chace said, still thinking.  “Do you do this too?  Do you have your own book?”

Brewster held up his journal.  “Charlotte gave it to me.  I didn’t mean for it to turn out like Pa’s, it just went that way.”