Chapter 4: The Eyes Have It

The Pride docked at Boardman, unleashing a tide of chaos that swept onto the dock and into the terminal. Sam and Jenna, managed to avoid most of the chaos, keeping their horses away from the terminal until the majority of the unloading and loading had been done.

By the time they decided they could board, the confusion in the terminal had faded into barely discernible bundles of chaos. It was possible that some of those people would be making their way to Echo Point, or as Jenna suspected, for Greer.

"Looks like a lot of people are headed towards Greer today," Sam announced, as if reading the words straight out of her thoughts.

"Oh ... looks like, yeah," Jenna said, startled a bit at the eeriness of Sam's timing.

"We've got tickets to The Dalles, but we'll be getting off in Biggs," Sam announced. "We'll take the old highway 97 up out of the canyons straight into Wasco."

Jenna nodded. What he proposed made sense.

Even with the delay it was an early morning departure for the Pride, and both Sam and Jenna took the opportunity to get in a quick nap as the ferry worked its way down river. Sam rapped on the door to Jenna's cabin in time for them to get to the dining room for lunch. They were barely into the room when they discovered Becky and Tom Kendall sitting at a table near the door ordering their own lunch.

"Becky, Tom, how you doing?" Sam asked as they approached.

"Fine Sam, Hi there Jenna. What brings you two aboard the pride?" Tom asked.

"Oh just got something to do downriver," Sam answered.

"Funny, me and Tom do too," Becky added. "Wonder if it's the same something?"

"May be, I suppose," Sam admitted. "We've got tickets to The Dalles, how about you two?"

Tom grinned, motioning the pair to have a seat. "Nope, We bought tickets all the way to Portland."

"I suspect you two won't see Portland any more than Sam or I will see The Dalles," Jenna said, taking a seat.

The waitress came, and Sam and Jenna added their order to Becky and Tom's. Once the waitress was gone, the four of them looked each other over a bit before Jenna observed, "Perhaps this isn't the place to be having this conversation."

"You're right, I'm sure," Sam agreed. "In fact, the way things are going, I don't think we need to have any kind of conversation. We'll see you two when and where we'll see you, right?"

"Sounds good," Becky admitted.

The foursome engaged themselves in their tea, and chatter about the families, and once their meals had arrived, continued to speak of everyday topics and the sort of things relatives told each other when they hadn't seen each other in a while. Sam in particular was interested in what the Kendall twins had been doing in the 'Upper Palouse' as they called it."

By the time the Pride pulled into Arlington, it was late, and neither pair stirred at the sounds of the few people getting off or on at this stop. The passage through the locks at the John Day Dam, and the subsequent docking at Rufus happened in the wee hours of the morning, but they were all awake in time to each make their way to the lower decks and have their horses and gear ready by the time they docked in Biggs an hour later.

Biggs might have become a ghost town like most had, except that it sat across the river from the route up Davies Pass that led to Goldendale. Goldendale was still an important hub for the agricultural efforts in that part of Columbia, and the route to the river, and to transportation for the wheat which was still, or at least again, the regions main export, was vital.

No one had spoken, or hinted at their actions, but the four young people found themselves on the dock well before dawn, with their horses saddled.

"We've got a couple hours before it's light enough to ride on up Spanish Hollow. We should probably see if we can find breakfast somewhere before we start out."

"Good idea, Tom, any suggestions?"

"Seems like the terminal office is the only place showing any signs of activity. Maybe we can ask there?" Jenna offered.

At the ferry terminal they learned that there was a place called the Water Jacket, where they could get breakfast. It was a block downriver.

"You folks waiting to meet someone coming in on the Beckett?"

"The Beckett's due in?" Becky asked.

"Yup, this is about midpoint for the two runs, so four days out of seven the upriver route and the downriver route just miss meeting here. We schedule em to miss, to be honest. Biggs isn't big enough to handle two ferries at the same time."

"Maybe we should come back in an hour and see who gets off?" Sam suggested.

"Sounds like a good idea," Becky answered. "Now lets go get some grub, I"m starved!"

-oOo-

By the time Pip and Lily caught up to the twins, the confusion back at the dock had condensed into more discernible bundles of chaos. It was possible that some of those people would be making their way to Goldendale, but it appeared that most of the knots of chaos were headed aboard the Beckett, not away, so Taegan suspected that there were a lot of people headed upriver today. "Looks like a lot of people are headed upriver today."

"And a surprising number who are headed elsewhere," came a voice from behind them. The four of them turned to see a group of familiar faces.

"Jenna, what are you doing here?" Taegan said when he realized it was Jenna's eyes he was staring into.

"We seem to be headed someplace we have agreed not to discuss. I take it you four are as well?"

"Officially?" Pip said, looking around for other ears. "Officially, we'll talk about it more once we're on the road, unless we see fellow travelers we don't recognize. If that's the case then I think we just keep going until dark and we can talk more when we stop for the night. We've got some twenty kilometers of canyon to ride through, so I expect we'll be stopping before we've made it through."

Lily roller her eyes and shook her head. "Twenty kilometers, up-canyon in a day? We'll be overnighting somewhere all right."

"I suspect you're right as well," Jenna said, "I should be saying never underestimate what a Porter can do on horseback, but even with that said, 20 kilometers would be difficult to achieve under these circumstances."

"Especially with us Kendall's dragging you down?" Lily asked, getting a laugh from everyone.

"This would've been considered a pretty short trip in Grandpa Kendall's time." Sam observed.

"Huck, I assume the Cayuse have some knowledge of the route we're traveling, do you think you'll get any reports on the conditions ahead?" Conway asked.

"I'm in no position to share those kind of details with any of you," Huck answered. "I'll share what I can, when I can."

"We have to be careful here folks," Taegan added. "There are still ways of listening in on conversations remotely. Our gear could have been bugged while aboard the ferry without our knowing it. There are a lot of reasons to leave some things unsaid."

"Sure, I understand," Conway said defensively. "But its not like I'm asking Huck to point out their positions to me or something."

"I understand your interest Con, but Huck's not going to say more and you are as aware of anyone why, so lets concentrate on the road and get to where we're going safely."

The route out of Biggs took old highway 97, running south and east up the canyon called Spanish Hollow. Compared to the extensive canyon system that followed the Deschutes River a few miles downriver of them, this one was minor, but it wasn't straight forward.

The nine of them set a leisurely pace for the first few miles of the road, the part running up to the fork leading into Mud Hollow to the south; a few miles further on and it would fork due west into China Hollow, but they would ignore both forks, following the old highway.

Once they were into the stretch between Mud and China Hollows they let the horses slowly stretch out to their normal road-eating pace. Even if they had spare horses to ride, which they did not, it would be pushing it to try and make the entire steep and twisting twenty kilometers in a single day. There was no reason they needed to, so they took their time avoiding working the horses any harder than necessary.

Huck had the point, followed by Conway. Sam and Lily rode side-by-side following him, with Taegan and Jenna side-by-side following them. Pip rode drag, and it was his job to keep an eye on the road behind them for riders approaching from the rear.

Huck, as usual, rode silently, within himself and whatever discipline kept his gaze moving across the terrain. Conway, for whatever reason, was content to ride in silence as well. Taegan and Jenna spoke softly to each other as they rode, and Jenna, with practiced ease, brought her horse close. Their conversation was done in whispers, interspersed with quick glances at one another. Taegan tore his eyes away from Jenna repeatedly, determined to do his part to keep an eye out for danger, but he found himself drawn back every time to her eyes and shy smile.

Sam and Lily, riding behind them, spoke in more normal tones, and discussed the normal family business and news of the day.

"Another couple of mild winters and another season of heavy rains is going to make it even harder," Sam was saying. "We just can't keep up."

"We have the people who can do the work," Lily answered, "just not enough of them. Even with the reduced usage, the roads are beginning to succumb to erosion, and the effects of exposure."

"Which makes them less reliable every day as transportation. We're doing more and more moving of goods by riverboat and mule train all the time because of it."

"That's fine for now, but we can't afford to lose the skills required to repair the roads if we ever hope to build new ones, and our ability to reach the old cities away from the river grows weaker each year. We need to develop an alternative means of getting places beyond the horizon, or we'll spiral even further back than we're doing now."

"We're not really spiraling anywhere, Lily," Sam said with a laugh. "At least not yet. We've made some conscious decisions, what would have probably been called 'green' decisions back in Grandpa Kendall's day, and those decisions would be seen as moving backwards if we did them because we had to."