Chapter Four:  The last farm.  Into the wild lands.  A strange bridge is built.

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Each day as the caravan climbed higher into the mountains and the road became narrower and rockier the work of getting the carts across spots where the road had washed out became more difficult; the washouts were more extensive, the incline which the cart were being pulled up were steeper and the men grew more and ever more exhausted.  Although Tom had at first been almost eager to leap off the wagon and shovel gravel up from some roadside pit, his young muscles delighting in a chance to work, the novelty grew less interesting as the days wore on, and more often than not by the end of the day Tom was so tired that he barely had the energy to practice shooting with Old George before dinner, although he made a special point to keep with the lessons.  The ground was hard and the stones sharp under the wagon he shared with Pickering, or when they slept in the cart under the tarpaulin he was quite cramped, yet most nights he fell into a sound slumber the moment his eyes had closed.

It developed as well that this year all of the men found the work even more tiresome than it had been the year before, if that were possible, for the addition of the young lord to their party.  The preceding year they had not had to endure his constant observations, as he stood idly by watching the proceedings while they shovelled or cut boughs or put their shoulders to lifting a badly stuck wagon from a mud hole.  He would occasionally call a languid word as though intending encouragement to the workers, entreating them to “Lift with your legs and preserve your backs,” “Give a care to the branch, it doesn’t appear strong enough to use as a lever,” or some other such pointless advice impossible to follow.  Mostly the men gritted their teeth and ignored him, though they sometimes glared in his direction when his back was turned.

After the third or fourth such event Brackenstall spoke with him, and Phipps thereafter kept himself away from the men who were working.  Bart later told Tom that Lord Ethan had been requested to remain inside the coach even when they were stopped, but that the best he seemed able to manage was to sit on the driver’s bench or in the shade of a tree and play a hand or two of cards with Bart or George.  Usually he could not curb himself even so much, and he roamed the area, up and down the road, or made short sojourns into the woods.  Bart and Tom both agreed that being asked to stay inside a coach when one had the opportunity to see new sights and possibly even new animals that may not have been discovered as yet was asking a lot of a boy, and that they could scarcely have followed such an order even though it meant a caning — which it surely would for one of them, but might not for a young Lord.

Brackenstall did not realize that Phipps was doing this wandering until one day he was not on hand when it became possible for the caravan to move on, and Old George was compelled to beg that they wait a few minutes until Phipps should return or could be found.  Brackenstall was furious, of course, and his face turned a deep brick red, which Tom might have found amusing did he not, with all the other men now waiting with backs sore from cutting saplings to cover the latest long stretch of deep mud, find it equally annoying that Lord Ethan had nothing better to do with his time than to create trouble.

“Should he not have brought books with him to study?” asked Pickering, of no-one in particular.  “If he is doing so badly in his schooling that they must send him to a more highly disciplined school, he must need to study!”

“Perhaps,” replied Ivanovitch “he needs discipline because he is this sort of boy, who will cause trouble whenever he is allowed free time.”

“Aye, you have the right of it, there!” said Pickering.  “A good thrashing is what Brackenstall should give him!”

“Does Brackenstall stand in a place where he can do that, being paid to transport the lad?  I’m not sure; and, I think, neither is he.  On the one hand, a schoolmaster might give the boy a caning, on the other Brackenstall may want to feel that his reasons are just before he resorts to such, for news will surely go back to the Lord his father by way of Mr. George and young Belvedier, who much like the boy, and whether the father will agree that the caning was deserved might mean a great deal of difference to Brackenstall’s future business.”

“The boy needs a good thrashing,” Pickering muttered, and at that moment Tom could not help but silently agree, for it seemed to him that he would never have been allowed to be so free and cheeky, not to mention inconvenient to others, or allowed to wander about so, alone, in unknown places and into possible danger.  For certainly there was a chance that any new and undiscovered animal he might meet could be dangerous to a human.  If he had not been caned by one of his parents he would certainly have been hit — for his own good — by an older sibling, and he knew well that the only way he escaped such treatment from the men he worked with was to always keep a civil tongue in his head and listen carefully to instructions.

Just now, though, it was not long after midday, he had worked hard, and his annoyance with Phipps was partly subsumed by his exhaustion, and the warmth of the sun which shone through the budding branches of the trees.  It was difficult to maintain a head of anger on a day which held such promise of summer to come.  They would make camp that evening just a little shorter of their goal, and slightly less tired, perhaps.  All in all he reflected, it wasn’t as though he had any real reason to care to move on any quicker.  So he calmed himself, and lay back upon the grass by the edge of the road, watching the light of the sun cause blooming patterns on the insides of his eyelids and letting the complaints of Pickering and the gentle responses of Ivanovitch fade to a buzz in the background.

It was some time before Lord Ethan was found, and Brackenstall’s blustering awoke Tom.

“Oh!” he groaned to Ivanovitch — the first person he saw when he opened his eyes — “I’m all stiff!”

Ivanovitch grinned broadly and offered him a hand up.  “It seems we’re on our way at last — the wandering lamb has been found, if the row up the road is any indication.  And, you’ve missed the fun!  Brown’s wagon was invaded by some sort of serpents, the like of which no-one has seen before.  Very fast creatures, they were hiding under his rain cape which he had left on the bench, and gave him quite a surprise.  You would have laughed to see how he jumped and shrieked!”

“I’m sorry I missed that!  Still, it can’t be good for Mr. Brackenstall to yell so much,” Tom observed.

“Indeed not!”  Ivanovitch agreed.  “Facing down bandits would be much better for his constitution.  At least he could kill them and be done with it!”

Brackenstall smiled, however, when he saw the first of the goats, sheep and shaggy cattle on the hillside at the end of the week, as it meant they were still on schedule and approaching Sarnwythdon.

A group of children playing near the road turned up their heels and scampered ahead through the fields whey they saw the caravan, so that the adults of the household were gathering outside the main house when they arrived, offering cool mugs of sweet, clean well-water and asking how the road had been.  They were delighted to see new faces after the long winter with only their own company, even though there were at least a dozen adults and innumerable children of varying ages all living in the homestead, and they were eager for the news of other parts of the Colony.  Tom and a number of other men leapt down off the carts to lead the mules into the field indicated for their use, unhitching them and rubbing them down before doing anything else so that the animals would have time to graze before dark.

Sarnwythdon was a sprawling farm inhabited by a single extended family, though it seemed nearly a village in its own right; a large main house with several additions and many barns, sheds and other outbuildings — one for almost every function that might be needed.  The farm had its own forge, a summer kitchen separate from the house, and a broad veranda on the back of the house where the family might sit on warm evenings.  They never tired of telling how a certain rude outbuilding had been the first house built by the great-grandfather of the clan, Henry, and his wife, Matilda, with their own hands, and they had lived in it and raised ten children, most of whom had lived to marry and raise children of their own there.  The large house had been built by his children, who had a much greater skill with carpentry than he had (an increase in all manual skills being a defining quality to the first generation who had been born in Victoria Colony, presumably because it was absolutely required that they work with their hands from the very earliest age, unlike their parents, who had arrived as adults), and much beautified by their children who had designed and created much ornamentation during the long winter months.  Their home and their outbuildings were the pride and joy of this family, only exceeded by their pride in the quality of their livestock, particularly their shaggy, short-legged cattle.

The year before Ivanovitch had told Tom that the Sarnwyth farm was unusual for the fact that it had been founded and built by the family which worked it.  Hypothetically it would not now be impossible for a family to homestead far from the towns, but Sarnwyth had, at the time he had founded the farm, in fact been breaking the law by taking himself and his wife off into the mountains, as they (along with most other working class people) had been brought to the colony as indentured servants and had an obligation to pay off their passage before leaving the service of their Lord.  However, by the time the farm had been discovered it had become a going concern and had been able to not only pay taxes but also pay off the passage of Henry and Matilda as well as the price of the pair of cows they had stolen, all with interest, so that Lord Hemsworthy, whose land they were considered to have squatted upon, had been moved to petition Lord Barnstable, to whom they had been indentured, for their freedom.  The effectiveness of this petition had undoubtedly been aided by the fact that Henry and Matilda were long past the age when they could be useful servants at the time the farm had been discovered.

The men of the caravan were well-fed that evening, several chickens meeting their demise, reserved hams and kegs of cider from the previous Fall being brought up from the cellars along with the last of the potatoes and turnips, and elderly fruits being transformed by the spices brought by the caravan into quite edible pies.  They were also graciously invited to sleep in the hayloft of the barn, where the hay provided them a much softer bed than the ground, and, although the chaff made them sneeze, they greatly appreciated the luxury.  They knew they had not much further to go before they crested the first mountainous barrier, the Governor’s Range, and that this was the last house they would see until they came down from the second range of hills, the Hensteeth.  In between the two mountain ranges were wild-lands, ruled by beasts and roaming groups of men little better than beasts who had left society, often running from prosecution for crimes.

As Tom lay full-bellied in the hay he digested not only the dumplings, but much sad news of the Sarnwyth family.  They had lost two of the eldest of the clan as well as a new baby during the winter, all to sickness, though they all repeated, slowly shaking their heads, that it could have been much worse.  Tom remembered having met the old man the previous Spring, and thinking him completely senile, but very happy.

One of the younger daughters had begun upon another story — “My sister Clara got engaged!” — but was hushed by her mother, whose mouth compressed in a narrow line as she shook her head.  Later the girl had whispered it to Mr. George and Tom, fairly bursting with the delight of having a scandalous story to tell and someone to tell it to.  A young man had come to their house in the Fall, asking for work and a place to sleep.  He had proposed to Clara after only a few months and they had planned to have the wedding in the spring when the roads had cleared enough to make their way to the church in Saradell.  Then, only a little over a week before, with the spring thaw, the young man had simply disappeared in the middle of the night, as quietly as he had arrived.

“Took my sister Clara right in, he did.  Seemed like a good enough worker, but we think now he was just looking for a place to winter over, and that he was headed for the wilds to become an outlaw.  He might even have been a murderer or some such!”

“Or escaping debt,” Mr. George suggested, “Or even just bored — it’s not unheard of.  But he was certainly a bounder to toy with your sister’s affections so!  I don’t know what sort of man could do that — she’s a lovely young lady and seems quite nice.  If I find him shall I hit him for her?”

“Oh, do!” said the girl, in a warm flash of sisterly affection.

And he promised he would, and gladly.

Tom had also been amazed at the amount of news which he heard Brackenstall and Ivanovitch relate, for he had not imagined that so much had happened in Victoria Colony in the past year, as he barely ever concerned himself with the doings of the Lords.  He didn’t understand politics and he knew that he did not, for why in fact would he remember the name of some Lord who had apparently arranged for various favours to go to his neighbour in order that a dam might be built to help irrigation in his own district?  Some higher up son marrying someone else’s daughter he vaguely understood would bring their two families into alignment, and several older men clucked their tongues over what those families might do with their combined powers, but what the new bride wore to the balls of the winter season was of no interest to him.  However, Tom did notice that Brackenstall had society page sketches of those balls which he handed around to the ladies of the family, and patterns for the dresses worn, which they cooed and giggled over, and then they were gifted with some patterns for more practical dresses and suits of the latest fashions, and the men were offered small tools and gadgets, and the children small toys, so that Tom knew the family would be more than happy to host them again the next year.

In the next days the climb grew steeper, as they neared Chikang Pass.  It grew colder and the air was thinner, the mules and men as well grew baulky and tempermental.  The mules spirits improved in the evening when Tom and the others brushed them down, inspected their hooves, and gave them a ration of sweet oats.  Cook did his best for the men, as did Ivanovitch, who spent all his time riding up and down teasing them into smiling and flattering them that they were certainly the best crew ever and worked so well together.

The road here wound up along the side of a mountain which Tom had been told was called Pouvrir, though he was baffled as to how one could decide where one mountain left off and another began in order to give them names, let alone how one really told one from another.  And here, with a wall on one side and a drop on the other, the caravan came to a halt.  Word was passed back that the road was washed out, and the men grumblingly pulled their shovels from the carts, but very soon a second message came back that they may as well put them away again.

The men clustered toward the front of the line, but few could see well due to the narrowness of the road.

“The road is washed away — Landslide — The road has fallen down the side of the mountain!” came the word back.

Each man needed to shuffle to the front to see for himself.  Even as advertised, the road had fallen off the mountain.  It was not a particularly broad gully, but the road simply ceased to exist, and fifteen feet later, it resumed.  Only four feet below the level of the road were the larger rocks, and smaller rocks, gravel and sand spread in a fan into the trees and underbrush below for yards.

It took only some ten minutes consideration before a team of men were dispatched to fell two trees.  It would be some little time before they could be expected to return, so Cook started a fire and made fresh tea for all the men.  Although it required backtracking nearly a half mile, a path down and around the washout was scouted and Tom and other mule handlers were told to unharness their teams and lead them by this route to the other side of the washout.  Once safely upon the road again, the mules stood about incuriously, flicking their ears, but Tom was eager to see what possible plan had been conceived for moving the wagons across this seemingly impossible gap.  He could think of no way in which the entire road could be rebuilt using only two long trees.  They could possibly construct a bridge, but that would take longer than the time they had left in the day and this was a singularly inauspicious place in which to camp.

The trees had already been stripped and peeled when the men returned with them, and they were laid across the washout at a distance somewhat nearer together than the wheels of the carts, and stakes hammered in on either side of each end of each tree to hold them in place.  Ropes were tossed across the wash and the first cart was tied to them.  Tom and another mule handler were asked to harness two teams of mules together and to the ropes.  Tom’s heart leapt to his throat as the cart he thought of as his was pulled over the edge of the washout and lowered onto the tree trunks, but, though the trees bowed and swayed, and their ends dug into the dirt and slipped a little, they were new and green, quite resilient, and they caught the weight of the cart and supported it.  The cart now safely rested upon its axles, its wheels hanging down on either side, and thus it was pulled across the gap.  At the other side the wheels hit the embankment, but here more ropes and pulleys, which had been suspended from trees nearby, were used to lift the cart directly up the last few feet so that it could be pulled back onto the road by the mules.  The manoeuvre having been proven possible, they proceeded to bring the rest of the carts across in this manner.  Hours of the day’s travel had been lost, and the road had still to be properly repaired, but for now the caravan was reassembled and moving would make their camp for the evening in their traditional point in Chikang Pass.

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