A pair of horsemen to the rear of the others served as escort for a fancy black carriage not previously seen in Seattle, and for its passengers: Aaron Stempel; Cody, the local circuit judge; a third man a little younger than Loden; and a woman who looked familiar to some of the spectators, the men particularly. Loden marched up to the carriage door and hailed the eldest. "Sipes!"
    "Governor Sipes, you mean," the man said, looking down his nose.
    "High time you showed up. You should have come sooner." Loden spoke quite as if he had summoned him personally.
    The Governor appeared indisposed just then to pardon anybody. "Enoch, what in the Sam Hill have you gotten yourself into?"
    Jason approached Aaron as he stepped out on the other side of the carriage. "You fetched the Governor all the way from Olympia?" He could not help being impressed, or showing it.
    "Yes, yes." Aaron nodded smugly. "Or, well, no. I tried but was turned away at the door. Fine reception for one of the Territory's leading citizens! Luckily I ran into Mrs. Fanjoy there." He nodded toward the woman in the carriage. "I explained our situation, and she volunteered to intervene in our behalf. She's a...close acquaintance of the Governor's. Rumor confides"–he lowered his voice further–"she has more influence on him than his wife–I mean, his advisors. She's the one persuaded him to come here."
    Something was missing from the story, Jason felt sure. "Ready to play the good angel, just like that?"
    "Well...." Aaron looked like a schoolboy with a naughty secret. "We were somewhat acquainted."
    The woman turned to reveal a face Jason knew. She greeted him with a smile. "I'll be–you're Mrs. Fanjoy?"
    "Small world, isn't it?" A few years earlier she had introduced herself to him by a different name, and with a slightly different smile, as the directress of the visiting dance hall troupe (to use the designation she had preferred). Aaron was smiling, too, in a mixture of pride and embarrassment; Jason could not decide whether it was pride at being embarrassed or embarrassment at being proud. "You may want to put a word in with the judge," Mrs. Fanjoy advised them.
    Loden was already at it, and the two of them joined in, trying to talk over him, till Judge Cody silenced them all. "The ins and outs of it don't amount to a hill of beans. Enoch Navigation has no legal standing in this Territory–no license, no permits, no right to do business here."
    "It was Ashley's job to see to that," said Loden.
    "Therefore," the judge continued, regardless, "I declare all of its purchases and partnerships here transacted to be null and void, and any property or legal entity acquired thereby reverts to its original owner." He interrupted the cheer that was about to go up. "–except for the stretch we're on, which, unless someone here can prove legal ownership,...." He looked to Jason, who shook his head. "...becomes–or I should say, remains–the property of the Territory."
    The Scots rushed forward. "What about the castle?" asked Morna.
    "That monstrosity we saw as we came in? Oh, it's Loden's, fair and square. But not the land it sets on."
    "That was Ashley's job, too," said Loden, looking around for him.
    "You know the Bolts?" the judge asked Morna.
    "Some, aye," she said, with a trace of a smile.
    "If you can get 'em to buy it and charge a rent maybe they can lever him into selling the eyesore."
    "Eyesore, indeed!" Ian muttered.
    "Oh, what do I want with it now?" Loden sounded peevish. "This was all Ashley's doing. Where's he got to? Eh?"
    Then the thunder returned; and this time it came from the mountain. Jeremy was the first to recognize what was happening. "He's blasting the camp," he said, by which he meant of course the base camp. At its extreme east end, which was all they could see of it, brown earth flew outwards, a small section of mountainside collapsed, and more earth cascaded down through the evergreens, some rising as dust, some settling in the crevices and crannies, the last load sliding into the east shallows of the creek. Jeremy's conjecture was correct: when Ashley had seen the tide of battle turn he set off the charges he had laid by for such a contingency–those crates Jeremy had seen being carted by night.
    Presently Ashley returned from the mountain, in the same wagon he had gone by, together with the men he had taken along. His sleeves were rolled up, his cheeks flushed, his eyes gleaming. He hardly looked the same man Jason had met in Portland. "I did it!" he exulted.
    "What have you done, you fool?" Loden asked.
    "Took care of their camp. Ripped the heart out of it." He turned to Jason and his brothers. "Thought you had the better of me, didn't you? Bet you're not feeling so cocky now. Go on, win the field, win the day, see where it gets you when you've no place to lay your heads, you high and mighty Bolts!"
    "The Bolts!" Loden shook his head. "Always the Bolts! You embroiled me in this entire fiasco just to get back at them. Even talked me into buying that fool castle so you could rub their noses in it. And see where it's got you."
    "Why?" Joshua asked. "What did we ever do to you?"
    "Do!" Ashley almost shrieked it. "That upstart brother of yours, scurvy little hare-lipped hick nobody from nowhere, waltzing in to that bidding, snatching a contract that should have been mine, made me look a fool. Cost me my job. Well, I found a better one."
    "And lost that one, too," said Loden. "That is, after you've worked off every nickel you owe me."
    "And these good people," Cody put in.
    Jeremy, being Jeremy, felt his sympathies well up within him–even for Ashley, even now. "Sorry. I didn't know I'd done all that."
    "I don't need your pity. You think you're such a crack lumberman. You're nothing, boy! I was moving logs up and down this coast before you were born."
    Joshua smiled. "Personally, was that?"
    "I was doing the real work–the fighting and clawing. You johnny-come-latelies with your clean noses and sweet-smelling hands, where were you when that was going on? Tell me that!"
    "We didn't need it," Jason said simply. "You see, we had a mountain."
    "Had! That's the right word!" He projected spittle with every breath. "Before I'm done I'll level it to the ground! I'll burn your woods as black as your cabin and see you starve like orphans in the snow!"
    Vendettas always bewildered Joshua, for revenge was as alien to his nature as to Jeremy's. "What purpose would that serve?"
    "Rob you of your lair, is what! Wipe you out like the other wild beasts–the buffalo and the Indians–yesterday's lords, tomorrow's memories. Before long there'll be no more of your kind. No more frontier, no more wild places–"
    "No more freedom?" Jeremy suggested.
    "What you call freedom is a relic. Order is the way of the future. Order! Progress! Civilization!" Hearing this, Loden began to reconsider his ill opinion of the man.
    Jeremy, on the other hand, was wondering why he had ever been frightened of him. "If it's of your brand I don't think we'll be having any, thank you."
    "This country fought a war to end slavery," said Jason, "but it will never get rid of slaveholders."
    "It can damn well try," declared the judge, who had been listening in great disgust. He turned to the crowd. "Boys, since these interlopers appear to have a taste for the Sound, what do you say we treat 'em to a swim?" The boys agreed noisily. They rushed at Ashley and the others. Lottie and Katherine moved to shield Quentin from them.
    "This is felonious assault!" Loden shouted as he was being borne off. "Sipes, you bear witness!"
    "I bear more than that. I bear a hearty dislike for you, Enoch. Have ever since we were at West Point." He whispered to Cody behind his hand, "He's right, you know. It is a criminal offense."
    The judge scratched his jaw. "Folks," he called after them, "you're charged with assault, and I find you guilty!" He looked about for a surrogate gavel and fixed on Billy's axe, which he confiscated and brought down–the flat of it, not the blade–on the seat cushion. "Suspended sentences all round." He returned the axe to its owner. "That ought to satisfy the law. Let's go watch."
    The crowd stopped at quayside, where a multiplicity of arms took the once-would-be invaders and jacked them into the air once–twice–and with the third thrust flung them into the bay. Loden, in respect of his advanced age, was tossed more gently. Joshua, perhaps inspired by his experience at the castle, broke out in a song that seemed apposite, and was also Jason's favorite song; Jeremy joined in after the first two lines:

             Is there for honest poverty
             That hangs his head an' a' that?
             The coward slave, we pass him by,
             We dare be poor for a' that!
             For a' that, an' a' that,
             Our toils obscure an' a' that,
             The rank is but the guinea's stamp;
             The man's the gold for a' that.

             What though on hamely fare we dine,
             Wear hodden grey, an' a' that?
             Gi'e fools their silks and knaves their wine,
             A man's a man for a' that.
             For a' that, an' a' that,
             Their tinsel show an' a' that,
             The honest man, though e'er sae poor,
             Is king of men for a' that.

             Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord,
             Wha struts an' stares an' a' that;
             Though hundreds worship at his word
             He's but a coof for a' that.
             For a' that, an' a' that,
             His ribband, star, an' a' that,
             The man o' independent mind,
             He looks an' laughs at a' that.

             A prince can mak' a belted knight,
             A marquis, duke, an' a' that,
             But an honest man's aboon his might
             Good faith, he maunna fa' that!
             For a' that, an' a' that,
             Their dignities and a' that,
             The pith o' sense and pride o' worth
             Are higher rank than a' that.

             Then let us pray that come it may
             (As come it will for a' that)
             That Sense and Worth o'er a' the earth
             Shall bear the gree an' a' that.
             For a' that, an' a' that,
             It's comin' yet for a' that,
             That man to man the world o'er
             Shall brothers be for a' that.

    Against this chorus the victims floundered for a time, whose length depended on each individual's skill at swimming, and then stroked, paddled, or flailed their way back to the dock, whence the natives pulled them ashore, to the accompaniment of rude noises and ruder remarks, and sent them off to pack their things; those who had any to pack.
    Aaron, who had been showing little interest in the ceremonies, and had never cared for Burns, anyway, stepped up to Cody, who was sitting picking his teeth. "Judge, that strip of land–"
    "You been chewin' on that this whole time? Well, figures, I reckon."
    "What will happen to it now?"
    "Told you. Comes to the Territory."
    "What will the Territory do with it?"
    Jason was near enough to overhear. "Tell you what it can do," he said. "Parcel it out as wedding gifts to any couples that apply. What better use could there be?"
    "Can't get marriage out of your head, can you?" Aaron said, only half-jokingly.
    The Governor revolved the idea in his head. "There will be more applicants than parcels. How do we choose fairly?"
    "How, you ask?" Jason said. His brothers braced themselves for one of his verbal tumbling acts. The others in the crowd hushed, as crowds always did for him on such occasions; his brothers were long used to it. "Why, mister–Mr. Governor, I mean to say–it's plain as soup without salt. You hold a land race." This came out as smoothly as if the idea had not just occurred to him. "Flag every parcel like we flag our trees, and first to the flag wins the prize. As consolation prizes the Bolts will offer smaller lots adjacent. The day after we declare a field day, and finish clearing away what Enoch started. What do you say to that?"
    It tickled the Governor's romantic streak. "Sounds a splendid plan!"
    "Might work," Aaron allowed grudgingly, his own ambitions for the property having evaporated before they had ever formed.
    The Governor turned to the judge. "Is it legal?"
    Cody was cleaning his right ear with his index finger. "Can't recall any statutory impediment. Of course–"
    This was good enough for the Governor. "Then we'll do it! To qualify for the competition–to qualify...." He got stuck again.
    "Man has to produce a wife," the judge concluded, "or a firm promise of marriage,"
    "Right, right," the Governor said, as if had devised those terms himself and just remembered them. "The event will take place three days from today at–" He picked at random. "–nine a.m."
    "I never get up that early," said Cody. "Make it noon."
    "Very well, noon."
    "Is it official?" asked Aaron, a little doubtful in view of the celerity with which all had been settled.
    "I'm a judge, ain't I? And he's the Governor. You don't get more official than that."
    "Well, then," said Jason expansively, "if it's races you want–"
    "We do!" the crowd shouted.
    "Then I say as I've said before"–he grinned his broadest grin–"choose your partners!"
    The injunction was like a lightning rod. Every man present who had till that moment steadfastly resisted matrimony or anything that resembled it went running to the woman of his long-nurtured aspirations–or, failing her, the one closest to hand.
    Yarb Hawser ran to Valerie. "Honey, you know you're the only gal for me! Marry me, won'tcha?"
    "Hush, you fool. Where's Nigel?"
    Hawser looked hurt for a moment and then shrugged. His eye ran over the sea of faces, stopping at the female ones, and landed finally on Tillie. He ran to her. "Honey, you know you're the only gal for me! Marry me, won'tcha?"
    "You just bet I will!"
    ...and the pair kissed.
    Corky ran to Biddie. "Is now the right time?" he asked.
    "It certainly is!"
    "Wa-hoo!" He picked her up and whirled her around and up and down till she ordered him to stop.
    ...and the pair kissed.
    Joshua ran to Morna. "I must have you," he said.
    "I ken it," she said, "Aye, verra weel."
    He stared at her. "That's all there is to it?"
    "What mair can there be, here in the midst of a'?"
    "Feels rash getting engaged when we haven't even kissed."
    "Have you cause to doubt your abilities in that regard?"
    "None I've been told of."
    "I shuid think not, indeed. Mind, laddie, I've seen ye climb."
    The import of the observation eluded Joshua, and he felt safest ignoring it. "But since I'm such a gowk, oughtn't we to make sure?" He pulled her to him.
    "Och, I've nae objection to that!"
    ...and the pair kissed.
    Jeremy ran to Candy. "W–w–would y–y–?" he began, stuttering for the last time (that is, till their first child would be born).
    "Yes," she said.
    "We got here by a different road than I expected. But we finally got here." He looked at her. "Don't you have anything to say? You usually have a lot to say. Why don't you have anything to say?" She smiled at him in perfect bliss: what was there to say? "Oh," he said. Then she took him in her arms, a thing that had never happened before. "Oh!" he said in a different voice.
    ...and the pair kissed.
    Aaron did not have to run anywhere, for Mrs. Fanjoy was standing right next to him. From the answers to his offhand inquiries of an aide at the State House he had concluded the "Mrs." to be ceremonial. "Don't imagine you'd have any interest in marrying this late in life," he said to her, wearing his best expression of nonchalance. "Again, I mean."
    "Why would you imagine that?"
    "You've found yourself a comfortable niche. Why give it up?"
    She regarded him with the amused expression he remembered from before. "You don't know women very well, do you?"
    "They're like cats." He reflected a second. "Wait. I understand cats." This drew a smile, which encouraged him. "If you did decide to get married–I say, if–you think the Governor would let you go?"
    "He doesn't have me locked up."
    "Oh." It was Aaron's turn to smile. "Well, then."
    "Well, then what?"
    "Do you accept my proposal?"
    "Aaron," she said gently, "you haven't proposed."
    "Haven't I? No, I suppose I haven't. Patricia–it is still Patricia?..." When the words came at last they were not those either of them had expected. "Did I ever tell you the joke about the Englishman and the actress? There was this Englishman–"
    "...and the actress says, 'My, you are English, aren't you?' Yes, Aaron, you did." Patricia sighed in resignation. "All right, I accept your proposal."
    Aaron looked miffed. "Are you going to cut off all my jokes?"
    "Mm-hmm. Like this."
    ...and the pair kissed.
    Jason was idly enjoying the romancing at all points of the compass when it intruded on his awareness that he deserved one of those parcels, too. He spied Miss Essie standing alone. ...Perhaps not, he thought; and then, ...But on the other hand,.... Without pondering further he started for her at a run. It chanced that Big Swede was doing the same from another quarter, so that the two of them pulled up and dropped to their knees side by side in front of her. "Oh, my!" Essie exclaimed.
    Swede looked at Jason in astonishment. "What are you doin' here?"
    "Same as you, I judge."
    "You can't marry her!"
    "Who says?"
    "Who?" Swede sputtered. "Everybody!"
    "They say I can't marry who I please?"
    "Everybody knows you ain't the marryin' kind."
    "They're not doing the marrying." He turned to her, hands over his heart. "Essie, be mine forever."
    Swede would not be outdone. "Essie, you know I come to town to marry you. I aim to do that."
    "It's up to the lady," Jason reminded him.
    Essie folded her arms. "It is indeed. I shall allow each of you to present his case and explain to me why you think you deserve my hand. Based on your arguments I shall choose one or the other of you. Or perhaps neither." She giggled. "I never thought I'd get to do this!" She made an effort to recover her sobriety. "Olaf, you may speak first."
    Swede gazed at her soulfully. "You wass always the only one for me. You know I love you, don't you?"
    "Yes, I believe you do." She turned to his competitor. "Go ahead. If you're sure you have the right woman."
    Jason smiled. "I don't have her yet."
    She smiled back. "Try your chance while you may, Mr. Bolt."
    "Love," Jason said, taking up where Swede had left off. "Fine word, lady–finest in the language. But not fine enough, no, ma'am. To do justice to how I feel about you, why, I'd need words that shine and shimmer like the summer sun–words that shatter and shiver into a thousand golden sparks–words that–"
    "Words. That's what you're offering. Of course. You have such an abundance of them. Whereas Swede...." She touched his cheek affectionately. "...is offering sincere and everlasting love."
    "You bet I am!" he affirmed.
    "In that case...." She looked from one to the other. "...I choose Jason."
    "What?" Swede popped to his feet.
    Jason made to embrace her; she fended him off. "But you must promise one thing."
    "Anything!"
    "Never to speak a sincere word to me as long as we live."
    She was proving not quite what he had expected. "You'd have me lie to you?"
    "I require it. And the greater the lie the better. I've had two husbands who were never anything other than sincere. I can't abide any more of it! I want you always to tell me only what I want to hear. It shouldn't be difficult with the practice you've had."
    He smiled. "As my lady commands."
    This beat anything Swede had heard. "Well, if you ain't a-goin' to marry me, I–I–I ain't a-goin' to marry you, neither!" With that, he stamped off.
    Essie regarded Jason with a penetrating eye. "I'm aware you wouldn't be marrying anyone if it weren't for this land race."
    "Well...." He recalled their pact. "Lady, for you I'd give up my whole mountain."
    She sighed. "As I thought. Come on, we'll want a license."
    Jason found himself staring at her with a new regard, or a new kind of regard–or had it been creeping up on him all along without his being conscious of it? "Essie," he said, "you know...."
    "Now, don't you start having feelings, too!"
    He reached out and rippled her hair. "Man can't help what he feels."
    "No, but he can jolly well keep it to himself."
    He swept her up in his arms in a way no man had before. "All of it?"
    ...and the pair kissed.
    Essie showed a fervor Jason had not expected, and wondered afterwards why he had not. She emerged from the kiss as from a great depth, breathless and blushing (or at least roseate of cheek), to confess, with a little cry of delight, "I won't say I didn't enjoy that!"
    As for Swede, in the words of a song Jeremy had knew and had sung at odd times:

             He went a little farther
             And there he met a maid
             A-going a-milking
             "A-milking, sir," she said
             And he began to compliment
             And she began to sing....

    Or, as Swede himself put it: "First drink I ever had wass milk! It's a sign!"
    ...and the pair kissed.
    Among Lottie and her family there was of course no courting to be done, but there was something else, which Lottie had been feeling more keenly of late: a silence that cried out to be ended. She told Katherine so, in just those words. "But I know," Katherine said softly, and she enfolded herself in Lottie's arms. "I think I always have known...Mama."
    "Darling!" Tears danced in her eyes. "Why didn't you say before?"
    "It was your secret. You wanted to keep it secret. How could I disappoint you?" Quentin took the opportunity to advance a wish of his own, which had been growing in him since he had first met the woman whose true bond to his wife he had known about all along: that the three of them live together as a family. "But you can't ask her to leave Seattle!" protested Katherine.
    "Dear," he explained, "I'm asking you to stay in Seattle."
    "Yes! Oh, yes!"
    ...and the pair kissed.
    "Expanding the business was the right step to take," he told his now-official mother-in-law. "You'll still need my aid in managing it."
    "I wouldn't be so sure of that."
    "Mama, what Quentin means–" Katherine was already playing mediator between them.
    "Honey, I know what he means," her mother interrupted. "What I mean is, Lottie's may not be Lottie's much longer. I got this wire today." She pulled it from its place of keeping next to her bosom. "Did you hear the one about the Irishman who was set on returning to the old country? When he stopped off in Boston he met so many of his fellow countrymen he decided it was as good as home. And he's asked me to join him there. What gall!" she said fondly.
    "Will you go?" asked her daughter.
    "Haven't decided. My feelings change with the tides." She gazed off. "Always did hanker to see Boston, though." Katherine gave her husband a significant look. "If I do, the saloon is yours." She laughed. "Imagine me saying that to my daughter!"
    Aaron approached Jason, who had Essie hanging on his arm. "Essie," said Aaron, and then, "Essie?" They smiled; he shrugged. "Jason, I've had a thought. What with the damage to our properties, and the need to rebuild, perhaps some sort of–that is–" He seemed unable to finish.
    "Yes?" said Jason, and then, "Ah. Yes. Crossed my mind, too."
    "We could."
    "We could."
    Both men were silent for a moment. Essie looked curiously from one to the other. "Make sense," said Aaron. "Strictly from a business standpoint, that is."
    "Make for a hornets' nest. We'd be at each other's throats the livelong day."
    "We are, anyway."
    "That's true." The others waited as he stood considering. "Well," he said at last; and that seemed to settle it. "One thing I'll hold firm on, though."
    "What's that?" asked Aaron, fearing the worst.
    "The order of the names–Stempel and Bolt, Bolt and Stempel...?"
    "Now, just a minute–"
    "Have to be Stempel and Bolt."
    "Not by any–!" Then he absorbed what Jason had said. "You don't mind coming second?"
    "No choice about it. Rolls grander off the tongue." He demonstrated.
    "And that's your only consideration?"
    "What else?"
    "Remind me to teach you a few things about business."
    Joshua joined them. "You can't," he said flatly. "I've tried. Just try."
    –and then Jeremy. "Why will you have to teach him about business?"
    Jason's brow wrinkled. "Brothers, we've a dilemma. The phrase 'Bolt brothers' business'...will require emendation." He winked at Aaron.
    Valerie had been hunting about for Nigel and found him in his room packing. Another one of his bright ideas, she thought. "And where will you go?"
    "Haven't made up my mind yet. Canada, perhaps."
    "What will you do in Canada?"
    "What will I do here? Besides bring the town to ruin." He still blamed himself for selling out to his brother. Now Raynor was leaving, and the role he had played in negotiating the sale of Kilmaron, only Nigel had guessed; what his future dealings might be, even Nigel would never know. He had not said farewell and he would not, but he had left his brother something to remember him by: a last remittance of guilt.
    "Bring the town something it needs," Valerie suggested. "Like marmalade."
    "Eh?"
    "Start a shop to sell imported jams and jellies. I'll help you manage it." And yourself, she could not help thinking. "Then I might consider marrying you."
    "You mean to say you'd marry me just because I had a jam shop?"
    "No, silly. The reason is the same as the reason for the shop–so I can have my marmalade in the morning." She approached him and draped her arms around his neck. "You know I'm useless without it."
    ...and the pair kissed.
    For the next two days work was nearly stopped nearly everywhere. When it was taken up again it would require nearly every hand, and would mark the beginning of a new Seattle. On the morning of the second day Jason hitched a mule to the wagon that had been the Reverend's for an excursion to the railhead, which he had not seen yet. He planned to invite a man in to build it up, a kindred spirit of his who had won a railroad in a poker game. As he began to help Essie up onto the seat he stopped and struck his forehead. "Cuss me for a sinner if I didn't forget the most important thing. All these weddings on the horizon, and no preacher! Can't have a wedding without one."
    "Oh, you can, too. Judge Cody's authorized to perform the ceremony."
    "Never been quite sure Cody's rulings are legal." Essie saw what he meant. "Besides, it's hardly proper to leave such a holy ritual to the judiciary." In an onrush of devotional zeal such as she had never seen in him, he dropped to his knees and clasped his hands tightly together. "Hello, Lord? You listenin' up there? It's me, Jason Bolt–down on my knees again, still believin', yes, Sir. I know where weddings are concerned You set a lot of store by Your camp rules–no cussing, no drunkenness, so on and so forth. But we're just a flock of poor miserable sheep who need a shepherd to guide us."
    Essie felt an amusement she knew to be impious but she could not help herself: she had never met anyone who seemed less like a poor miserable sheep than her husband-to-be. "Else," he continued, "how will we know our unions have Your blessing? I ask You, now. So we'd be right beholden if You'd send us a preacher for tomorrow. That's all." He started to rise, then had an afterthought, knelt, and clasped his hands again. "And we'll need him by four o'clock. Thank You. Amen." He waited a little for an answer and, on receiving none, returned to his feet.
    Essie was eyeing him contemplatively. "I infer your religious instruction was neglected in your youth?"
    While Jason was trying to work out her meaning an unfamiliar voice addressed them: "Beg your pardon?" They turned to face a young man in a clerical collar. "Heard your last preacher recently kicked the bucket. Figured you might have a pulpit open."
    "It's wrong, what they say, you know," Jason declared to nobody in particular. "The Lord's ways aren't mysterious at all. What's your name, son–ah, Reverend?"
    "Wheems," said the young man. "Weems, I mean. Weems."
    "Parson Weems? Yet you seem so young a man."
    "Grandfather," he said affectionately, "the dear old sot. Wrote most of Washington in his cups."
    Jason did not know whether that were true but he did not care: the man had the correct collar. "Parson, welcome to Seattle. You may as well know straight off–the rectory's yours but the widow's already taken."
    Essie blushed. "Jason!" She poked him playfully. Weems looked from one to the other in youthful delight.
    In the hour before noon the following day every wagon, cart, buggy, and other form of wheeled conveyance owned or hirable rolled, rumbled, and rattled up to the starting line which had been drawn in the dirt from the southwest corner of the boarding house fence across to the middle of the flour mill. Each driver's seat was carrying two, for no woman who was not driving would agree to stay behind, and no man who was would dare to lose the race on his own hook and suffer the reproaches of his mate forever after.
    The course ran from the boarding house up the main street, along the face of the sawmill, aslant a stretch of undeveloped and undesired property, to the edge of Irontown, through a grove used for picnics and sparking, down the length of the strip, and back to town, with the totem pole demarcating the finish line. Judge Cody was to officiate. Everyone not a participant claimed a vantage point at the start, the finish, or one of the bends along the route.
    Aaron drew up in the Governor's borrowed carriage, with Patricia at his side. Jason and Essie were sitting to their left, behind a mare that had belonged to Clancey (he had always intended to race her, and before his departure had given her to the Bolts). Jason called across to Aaron. "What are you throwing your hat in for? It's not as if you needed more land."
    "And you do?"
    "Little surplus never hurts."
    "Couldn't have said it better myself." He grinned. "...partner." Holy saints! thought Jason. Three days, and I'm transmogrifying already!
    Judge Cody stepped out in front of the row of vehicles, which extended the breadth of the street. "You all know the rules," he said, "and for anybody who don't, there's only two to speak of. Number one, if you do deliberate damage to anybody else's rig, or his person, I'll throw you out of the race, and give you a kick in the tailbone for good measure. Number two, the first man to grab a flag gits the forty acres he grabbed it from–and there's only one to a customer." He moved aside. "Git ready!" He raised his pistol. The drivers took up their reins. "Git set!" The air was ripe with tension.
    "Gangway, Lord," Jason murmured.
    Cody fired. "Go!"
    The wagons took off. The drivers shook the reins, cracked their whips, and leaned forward in their seats as if they were on the horses' backs; the women–those not driving–held onto their hats. They shot round the bend at the sawmill, across the no-man's-land, and through the grove onto the strip (never Loganhead any more since they had pulled the sign down), then careered around, most of them on two wheels, and headed south.
    The driver in the lead, reaching the northmost lot, decided it suited him just fine; he pulled up on his reins and took a dive for the little flag that stood fluttering in the breeze. He landed on his face, but a second later held the prize aloft, clutched in a triumphant fist. Just then the second wagon clattered up behind, with the others at its back; the driver, seeing this flag taken, urged his horses on to the next one down the line. He dived at that one, and won it. In much the same way each succeeding entrant made for the next, or next but one or two, of the widely spaced pennants. Some left their wagons and competed on foot; each such competition ended with one man brandishing the flag and the other having to retrogress to his vehicle before continuing, thus losing any time he had gained on his rivals.
    At length the foremost of the wagons flew past the totem pole. The mud it threw up spattered a boy who was clinging to the pole like a monkey, but he seemed to take no offense. "First home!" he cried, upraising an index finger. The wagon's driver jumped down and sprinted over to Cody's seat to give up his flag in exchange for one of the deeds drawn up by the judge the night before and now stacked on a barrel in front of him.
    The other drivers followed, one and then another, jouncing over the muddy ruts, swinging round the turns, each hell-bent to finish ahead of the others–and strictly out of competitiveness, since they had nothing to gain now but satisfaction; they had already won their flags (those who had) and waved them triumphantly as they crossed the finish line–but were ready enough to trade them for the legal reality.
    The Bolts had won nothing, but the younger two did not care. Jeremy's brothers had ceded him the site of the old cabin, where he and Candy were already planning their new clapboard house, and Joshua and Morna, by unspoken agreement, would go to live at the castle; their hieland kinsmen could now gae hame. Jason, as the eldest, had taken defeat the hardest. "What difference does it make?" his bride-to-be consoled him. "You have a whole mountain."
    "I wanted it for you. Fine house above town. It's no less than you deserve."
    "Oh, Jason...!"
    "After all, you'll be the wife of a Bolt!" Her gratitude was checked at once, and she regretted the lapse in his insincerity.
    Aaron halted beside them. He, too, had returned empty-handed. "We're getting too old for this," he lamented.
    "Well," said Jason, "unlucky at cards...."
    Aaron held out a paper tied with a ribbon. "Here," he said. "A wedding present."
    The couple unrolled and read it. "But this–" Essie began.
    "You're giving it away?" said Jason. "But you've only just built it!"
    Aaron nodded toward the woman with him. "She wants something more stately. Like a Governor's mansion." And maybe a Governor to go with it, he mused to himself.
    Surprised and touched by the generosity of the gesture, Jason stammered his thanks. "It isn't fair," he said. "I've no gift for you."
    "Haven't you?" Aaron's eyes moved to the mountain. After a moment he drove on, but the two had not missed the small smile of pleasure he had permitted himself.
    "He's almost as fond of it as you are," said Essie.
    "Strange, the thing that divided us for so long was the thing we had most in common."
    Essie squeezed his arm. "This is a day of happy unions."
    Jason smiled fondly at her. "It is at that."
    After His Honor had doled out the last deed, the couples lined up from the totem pole outwards, the men or (more often) their wives-to-be clutching the evidence of their landholding status. Then a starveling parson whom only a few of them recognized stepped up onto a soapbox to address them. "Dearly beloved–"
    "Oh, skip the articles!" the judge brayed. He felt like a drink.
    "Sure!" said Corky. "Ain't we heard 'em a hundred times?" The laughter of the others bespoke universal agreement.
    "Well, then," said Weems, eager to oblige his new congregation, "do you all take–?"
    "We do!" they answered in a roar.
    "I see you do. All right, then! Whom God hath joined, let no man...." Here the young man fumbled. "...horse up!"
    Joshua called to Jason. "You sure he's ordained?" Jason merely laughed.
    "You may kiss the brides," saith the preacher, "and keep kissin' 'em till the cows come home!"
    ...and the pairs kised (and the cows never came).
    Jason's face wore an expression of contentment: the contentment of a man with a dream realized at last. A hundred brides; a hundred wives; a hundred mothers-to-be, and grandmothers-to-be; a city, where before had squatted a tiny handful of cabins. The sky today looked the bluest he had ever seen, even in Seattle. He raised his eyes to it in unaccustomed humility. "Tell me true, now," he said, "my neighbors and me—we made a fine show, didn't we?" On the instant, the sun burst forth amid the cloudscape, hemming the white billows with resplendent glory. Jason beamed to match it. "Thank you, Father," he said. "I always knew You were watching."
    Then he and the rest of the town trooped off to Lottie's in a bunch–young and old, men and women, dogs and cats–and there danced away a day and a night, to tunes they had known forever: Jason with Essie, Jeremy with Candy, Joshua with Morna, Aaron with Pat, Lottie with every man in the place; and when they were not dancing, they were watching the others dance.
    So you may imagine them on that unseasonably balmy night which marked the salvation of their town, and also the end of it as they (and perhaps you) knew it; imagine their faces glowing in the oil light, smiling and laughing in the eternity of yearned-after legend; and dream perhaps that one day theirs will be the faces welcoming you to Heaven, if you live well enough to get there and are lucky enough to find that Heaven is, after all, only Seattle.

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