FATHER POINTS MAE AND ULYSSES back the way we came and we head down Nooksack Avenue in the direction of home. As we pass the Nooksack Hotel, who should we see coming out the door onto the boardwalk but Mr. Moultray? Maybe he’s been seeing Mr. Osterman in the telegraph office, or maybe he was breakfasting with Sheriff Leckie.
“A conspiracy of ruffians,” Father calls it. “I wish to God I’d had the good sense to listen to your mam that night,” he says. “I wish I’d had no part in their filthy business.”
“There’s others that feel the way we do,” I reply. “There’s Mr. and Mrs. Stevens. And Mrs. Thompson. Maybe Dr. Thompson, too,” I add, although I haven’t forgiven the doctor for giving up on Teddy the way he did.
Father says nothing. I can see he’s thinking it over.
“We could get a message to Governor Newell,” I go on. “We could write him a letter and tell him who the leaders of the posse were.”
“Aye,” he says, “but let’s not fool ourselves. These are murderers. It’s a dangerous business.”
“Not if there’s enough of us.”
We’ve reached the edge of town. This is where Father should be stopping the wagon so that I can hop off and get to school, but he seems to have forgotten all about that, and I am not about to remind him.
“Perhaps I should pay Mr. Stevens a visit,” he says.
The Stevenses’ sawmill is right on our way, but Father reins Mae and Ulysses to a halt. He hasn’t forgotten, after all.
“Off to school with ye,” he tells me.
I jump down and he slaps the reins, calling to Mae and Ulysses to quicken their pace, like he can’t wait to talk to Mr. Stevens. I’m heartened by the prospect of finding like-minded souls to band together in defiance of Bill Osterman and Dave Harkness.
I CAN HEAR MISS CARMICHAEL giving the morning lesson in mathematics to the senior class as I slip into the schoolhouse. She is not pleased with me for being late. I make my apologies and take my seat. Half listening to the lesson, I glance around the room at the seniors, boys and girls I’ve grown up with, wondering how many of their folks besides Abigail’s might side with us. Tom Breckenridge’s pa I know for sure stands with the posse leaders. There’s Walter Hopkins, whose father, Bert, at the hotel keeps warning me to keep my mouth shut—so it’s a fair bet that Mr. Hopkins won’t be opening his own mouth any time soon. Kitty Pratt’s father was the one who struck Louie Sam in the head with his rifle butt. Under ordinary circumstances, Mr. Pratt is a nice man, good with a story and with the fiddle. Maybe he looks back on that night with regret. Maybe secretly he’s one of us.
By noon the day has turned warm. Miss Carmichael makes us take our lunch buckets outside into the sunshine. I see Kitty with Abigail, so I go over to them. They’re sitting on a bench with Mary Hecht, who considers herself the queen bee even though she’s skinny and plain-looking compared to Abigail.
“Why were you late this morning?” Abigail asks.
“I had some business to attend to,” I tell her.
“You’re making yourself sound awful important, George,” remarks Mary.
“You certainly are,” agrees Kitty, pulling a blond braid through her fingers. “What kind of business would that be?”
All three of them are staring at me waiting for an answer. If it were just Abigail and Kitty, I’d tell them. But Mary I’m not so sure of. I remember seeing her pa that night, one of the pack. I have no idea where Mr. Hecht might stand.
“Cat got your tongue?” snips Mary.
“Stop teasing him, Mary,” Abigail tells her, getting up.
She takes me by my good arm and leads me away from them.
“You got to be more careful,” Abigail tells me, keeping her voice low.
“They don’t know what kind of business I’m talking about.”
“George, everybody knows what kind of business! Walter Hopkins has been going around saying you went to the hotel yesterday to spill the beans to that detective.”
I look over to Walter. He’s standing at the edge of the schoolyard with Tom and Pete. Pete’s at least a hand taller than either of the other boys. He lets out a big laugh at something Tom is saying.
“But I didn’t talk to the detective,” I tell Abigail. “He left town.”
“It doesn’t matter whether you talked to him or not. The damage is done.”
“What damage?”
She purses her lips like she’s afraid to say. She gives a nervous look over to where Kitty and Mary are watching us.
“We’re not giving up,” I tell her. “My father wants to call a meeting of the like-minded. We’re going to send a letter to Governor Newell, telling him who the leaders of the posse were.”
She gets a frightened look.
“Are you crazy?” she whispers.
“My father’s going to talk to your father about it,” I tell her. “We’ll be okay if we stick together. Strength in numbers.”
“You told your pa about the rifle, didn’t you?” she says, still whispering. “You promised to keep that secret!”
“All I told him was that your pa sides with us,” I tell her. She’s making me mad. I want her to be better than this. I want her to do what’s right. “What’s the use in thinking the lynching was wrong if we’re not prepared to stand up and say so?”
She seems a little ashamed of herself at that. But she’s jumpy as a cat, glancing around at Mary and Kitty, and over to Tom Breckenridge like she doesn’t want to be seen talking to me. I calm down and try for her sake to appear like we’re speaking normally and not arguing.
“Do you think Kitty’s pa might agree with us? Or Mary’s?” I say. “Can you ask them to tell their folks about the letter?”
“I can’t ask Mary,” she replies. “She’s so stuck on Tom Breckenridge she agrees with every fool thing he says. Kitty … maybe.”
“It’s the right thing to do,” I tell her.
“You don’t have to be so high and mighty about it, George,” she shoots back.
She’s got some of her old spit back. For some reason that makes me smile. And then she’s smiling back at me. We bend our heads together so people will think we’re having sweet talk, when in fact we spend the remaining minutes of the lunch hour discussing who else might be persuaded to pass the message on to their parents. Ellen Wallace’s father rode at the back of the posse—maybe that was because he had doubts about being there. Donny Erskine’s pa wasn’t there at all, due to his cow calving that night. But maybe that was just an excuse. Abigail says she’ll talk to them, that it’s safer for everybody if they’re seen talking to her instead of me.
When we head back into the schoolroom after lunch, I get the feeling that Tom Breckenridge is keeping his eye on me.
AT HOME IN THE EVENING, once the younger children are in bed, Father says that Mr. Stevens agrees that something has to be done. He and Mrs. Stevens are willing to hold the meeting at their place, so including Mam that makes four voting citizens prepared to stand up and tell the truth. Mrs. Stevens believes Mrs. Thompson may be persuaded to join us, as well as Dr. Thompson.
“It can’t hurt to have the town doctor on our side,” says Mam, though something in her voice says she has no more forgiven him than I have.
“There may be others, too,” I tell them. “Abigail is spreading the word.”
“If we’re to succeed,” says Father, drawing on his pipe, “we must act swiftly and discreetly. We can’t be sure of who we can trust.”
The meeting has been set for tomorrow evening. Mam insists that Agnes and Joe be invited, too, but Father thinks it would be a mistake to invite the Indians. He says it’s one thing to right a wrong that’s been done to one of them, but quite another to start treating them like they have equal say with the settlers. As Indians, Agnes and Joe aren’t voting citizens, anyway. John pipes up that he agrees with Mam about the Hamptons, but Father tells him to shush.
So we have a plan. Tomorrow night the right-thinking people of the Nooksack Valley will gather to sign a letter to Governor Newell asking that he order the arrest of Bill Osterman, Dave Harkness, Bill Moultray, Robert Breckenridge, and Bert Hopkins on the charge of leading the lynch mob that unlawfully hung Louie Sam.