“Now, that’s a true thing,” Wash said. “Though west of the Great Barrier, it’s best to be cautious about when you stop considering and start practicing. What will turn away one animal may call up a worse one. I speak from experience.”
“Oh?”
Wash shook his head ruefully. “During the war, when I was in the army, we had a little spell for keeping the flies off in summer. One of the men in my company said it made some kind of sound, up high where most folks can’t hear, that drove the bugs away.”
Professor Torgeson gave him a quizzical look. “I’ve heard of the spell, but … during the war? You mean the Secession War?”
“I do indeed, and I’ll take that skeptical tone as a compliment, ma’am,” Wash said with a grin. “I was a large lad, and like a good many others, I lied about my age to join up. That was the third year of the war, and by then the army wasn’t looking too hard at anyone willing to volunteer. I was seventeen when I was mustered out after the Southern states surrendered.”
I did some quick math in my head. The third year of the war was 1835. Wash must have joined the army at fourteen or fifteen, in order to have been seventeen when it ended in 1838. Lan and I had been born in 1838; everything I knew about the war, I knew from history class. It felt peculiar to think that Wash had actually fought in it when he was younger than I was now.
“Anyway, after the war, I had a hankering to see some places no one else ever had,” Wash went on. “So I lit out for the Far West. And naturally, I made use of that neat little spell for keeping the flies off.”
“What happened?”
“About a week west of the Mammoth, an arrow hawk dove at me. They don’t generally have much interest in people, but this one sliced a fair-sized hole through my sleeve and a bit of my arm. Next day there was another one, and two more the day after that. Took me four days to figure out that it was the spell for keeping off flies that was bringing them down on me.”
“Why would it do that?” I asked. I’d gotten so interested in Wash’s story that I’d forgotten we were only speaking in the way of business.
“I can’t say for sure,” Wash told us. “But have you ever seen a mob of sparrows drive off a hawk that came too close to where they were all nesting? Those hawks were acting the same way — like I was something they wanted dead or elsewhere in a right hurry.”
“You think there’s a hawk predator that makes the same noise as your spell for getting rid of flies,” Professor Torgeson said.
“Could be,” Wash said. “Or it could be something else about that spell that made them angry. All I know is that as soon as I quit using the spell, the arrow hawks lost interest in me.”
Professor Torgeson nodded thoughtfully. “Another thing that someone should investigate.” She made a frustrated noise. “There is so much that we don’t know, and all the research funds the department has can barely stretch to cover five months in the field for one junior professor and an untrained girl. It is very badly arranged.”
Neither Wash nor I had any argument with that. For the rest of the day, the professor alternated between questioning Wash about the wildlife he’d encountered during his travels in the West and watching the land around us. I didn’t know what she’d really been doing until we got to the wagonrest.
As soon as we had the horses tied up and watered, Wash went to talk to the other travelers who were sharing the wagonrest with us, to see about setting up a schedule for handling the protective spells overnight. Professor Torgeson pulled a pencil and a journal out of the supply pack and started listing all the different plants and birds and animals she’d seen on the day’s ride. Then she asked me to mark the ones I’d seen, too, and add any I’d seen that she hadn’t. As soon as Wash got back, she asked if he’d be willing to do the same, and he did. When we finished, the list took up two pages, at two columns a page in small, clear printing — everything from grasses and wild-flowers to birds and insects and even a white-tailed deer we’d startled out of a little copse of serviceberry bushes.
I’d only added five names at the end of the list, and marked less than half of the things the professor had put down. Wash had seen all but three of the things the professor listed, all of mine, and he still had a dozen more to add. Professor Torgeson stopped him when he started to write them. “I’ve seen the notes you’ve sent Professor Jeffries,” she said, “and I’d rather have no confusion. Let Miss Rothmer copy the names down for you.”
“Whatever you say, Professor,” Wash replied, but he didn’t grin the way he usually did.
We didn’t even start making camp until we finished with the professor’s journal, except for watering the horses, so it was getting dark by the time we finished eating. I was worn right out from riding so long, and I went to sleep as soon as we finished clearing up.
I maybe shouldn’t have been quite so eager to bed down, because the next morning I was so stiff and sore I could hardly move. But Professor Torgeson wasn’t much better off, and she was up at first light, taking notes on which birds started calling first.
We spent that second day at the wagonrest — or, rather, all around it. The professor said that with only two of us doing the survey and only a few months to do it in, I would need to do more than take notes and handle supplies, and I might as well start right off doing it.
So she spent the morning working her way around the north side of the wagonrest, showing me how to list the plants and insects I found, and mark the signs of animals and birds. She wanted a count of different kinds of things, and how many of each kind, and a bit about where each one was — in sun or shade, rocky ground or damp soil, near trees or in the open.
“If you have time, describe or sketch what you see,” she told me. “At the least, we’ll want to know what stage of growth the plants are at — whether they’re just germinating, in early growth, in bud, flowering, or going to seed. Especially if it’s something you’re not familiar with.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier just to pick a few for samples?” I asked.
“We won’t have room, if we start now,” she said. “Besides, we already know about most of these plants; I want the lists here mostly for comparison purposes. So we can see what changes as we get farther west.”
I thought about the bare wasteland we’d ridden through last summer, where the grubs and mirror bugs had eaten every growing thing there was. I’d been too busy then to think about exactly where the barren patch started and where it ended, but I was pretty sure the professor would mark it down to the nearest half inch, if she could.
So I spent the afternoon taking notes on a patch of earth near where the professor was working, measuring out a small square of ground and then listing every kind of plant in it and counting how many of them there were. The grasses were hard because they weren’t very tall yet, and it was hard to tell one flat, thin blade from another. Acadian thistles and dyeroot were easy. I made sketches of two plants and a butterfly I didn’t know the names of. The bugs were the hardest, because they kept moving around and I couldn’t be sure whether I’d counted them. I had to put a question mark next to two different beetles, and I gave up on the ants entirely.
In the evening, the professor went over everything I’d done and pointed out things I could do better next time. She even said I’d done very well with my sketches. By the time I curled up in my bedroll that night, I was feeling pretty good about what I’d done that day.
But I was too tired to do any magic practice that night, Aphrikan or Avrupan.
CHAPTER 7
NEXT MORNING, WE SET OUT AGAIN, AND AFTER AN EASY DAY’S RIDE we came up on the Puerta del Oeste settlement. Puerta del Oeste was one of the older settlements west of the Mammoth River. The core had been built right after the Secession War, a tiny thing compared to a modern settlement, but in the years since it had been founded, it had grown three big loops off the original log wall, enough to house a passel of new folks from the Eastern states, Acadia, Vinland, and even all the way from Avrupa. Now they had three settlement magicians and a full-time doctor, and the North Plains Territory had just opened a branch of the Homestead Claims and Settlement Office there.