Arrival

This story is the first in the "Aaron's Way" series. It provides another view of when the brides came to Seattle.

September 2, 1867

She noticed him right away, in spite of the dark night and the crowd. He was alone and separate, even though he was in the middle of the Seattle town square, surrounded by a hundred loggers and the hundred women who had just arrived from New Bedford, Massachusetts, to be their brides.
He didn't fit in—and it wasn't just the way he was dressed, in a well-cut suit that contrasted sharply with the loggers' plaid work shirts. It was something about his face. He looked—lonely.
The next moment, Karen chided herself for being melodramatic. Her eyes followed the tall, dark-haired man as he made his way purposefully through the crowd, his face set in a controlled, serious expression.
Karen St. James was separate and apart from the crowd who were dancing and laughing and talking in the town square, too, but for a very practical reason: like the other girls, she had come to Seattle as a potential bride of one of Jason Bolt's loggers, but she had come with her young brother. Four-year-old Jonathon was asleep below deck in the ship they'd all just arrived on, and Karen was staying nearby, watching the party from the deck of the Shamus O'Flynn, in case he woke up.
Thinking of Jonny for a minute, wondering if the crowd and the music were loud enough to wake him, Karen's mind wandered, and she didn't notice at first that the man she'd been watching was walking directly towards her.
Startled, she at first thought the man had seen her staring at him and been annoyed by it, but he wasn't looking in her direction, and she realized that he couldn't see her on the shadowy deck of the ship. He stopped on the dock only a few feet away, and glared out across the water.
Suddenly feeling as if she was intruding on the stranger's private thoughts, Karen started to go back below deck. But the man heard her, and called out, "Cap'n Clancey?"
"Um, no," she said, stepping up to the rail, "it's not Clancey. I think he's in the saloon."
The serious stranger looked surprised, then recovered, and said, "Oh, you must be one of Bolt's brides. My name is Stempel—Aaron Stempel."
Karen was somehow calmed by the fact that he seemed just as ill at ease as she was, and she was able to be coherent as she explained why she was lurking on the ship's deck. The man—Mr. Stempel—answered briefly, and she was struck by his outwardly confidant manner, which seemed to hide a hint of vulnerability just below the surface.
He seemed complicated; not easy. And that's what she liked, Karen thought, as she stared intently at his tie: nothing simple or obvious. She liked really long books, especially mysteries that she couldn't figure out until the last page. And nothing black and white. Lots of shades of grey...
Suddenly she realized that she was staring (again—what was wrong with her?), and she stumbled through an apology. So much for seeming coherent, she thought, hearing herself rambling on. What was it about this man that reduced her to a babbling fool?
Aaron Stempel and Karen St. James both heard the noise at the same time: a small boy having a bad dream, from the sounds of it. Karen hurried down to where Jonny had been sleeping, and after a few seconds' hesitation, the man followed. As he arrived at the child's sleeping place, he heard the boy telling his sister about the giant flying machines and the men from the moon in his dream. Karen glanced over her shoulder at Aaron Stempel, grimaced a little, and said, "It's my fault—it must be that bedtime story I was reading him."
"Little green men?" Stempel commented with a bit of a sneer. "I don't believe in 'em." He turned to the boy and solemnly introduced himself. With a few very definite sentences, Aaron convinced the four-year-old that there were absolutely no creatures at all in outer space, and efficiently tucked him in again.
It was impressive, Karen thought; he must have a lot of children. She found this strangely disappointing. Until she'd seen how good he was with her little brother, she'd thought he was unmarried. She shook off the sudden thought that his wife was a lucky woman, and mustered enough poise to thank him as they went back up on deck, leaving Jonny already nodding off.
With a quick, nervous smile, and some awkward-sounding comments which again had the strange effect of putting her at her ease, Aaron Stempel took his leave. Karen watched him walk away with a slightly wistful wish that she'd met someone like that in New Bedford, instead of coming here to Seattle. She estimated that Mr. Stempel must be at least thirty, and had a sudden image of his wide-eyed, distraught children—a houseful, probably—if he were to run away with a New Bedford girl who'd developed an instant fascination for his necktie.
"Oh, well," she sighed, turning to go back down to where she and Jonny slept. As she started to fall asleep, she tried to think about the loggers she'd seen milling round the town square that night, but an image of a man in a suit, whose smile never reached his eyes, kept interfering.

September 3, 1867

Aaron Stempel's first thought the next morning was that the girl on the boat hadn't told him her name. It surprised him to wake up thinking about a woman: it wasn't like him. He was a businessman, not a romantic, and although he'd financed the lion's share of the Bolt brothers' trip to get the mail-order brides, he had no intention of claiming one for himself.
Moving sleepily but with the efficiency of long practice, Stempel moved around his house getting ready for work. Ye gods, he was tired. And no wonder: Jason Bolt had barged in last night at midnight, demanding that he open up the mill. Hard as it was to believe, Bolt's men had forgotten to build a dormitory for the brides, and now they needed the lumber milled right away. Grudgingly, Stempel had rounded up some of his men, and they'd had the wood ready in record time, but even so, it had been almost dawn by the time he'd gotten any sleep.
The incident brought home what Aaron had felt for some time, that the management of the logging camp had been shoddy while the Bolts were away. He'd thought that having Jason Bolt out of his hair for months would be a blessing, since the man had been the cause of most of his problems as long as he'd known him, but Bolt's absence had been bad for business. The logging camp had been consistently late in getting the logs to the mill, and the delays had been keeping his mill from meeting its contract deadlines.
Things would go a lot smoother if he owned that logging operation, thought Stempel. Well, if Bolt couldn't live up to the contract he'd signed to get the money for the trip, he would end up owning that camp, and the rest of the Bolts' Bridal Veil Mountain, too. That was their deal. The sawmill owner shook his head, thinking of the impossible terms that he was going to hold Bolt to: every one of those girls had to be decent, upright, respectable, marriageable ladies—and the logger had to keep them here in Seattle for one whole year.
Aaron leaned towards the mirror to adjust the knot in his tie, and studied the frowning face which stared back at him. No reason not to get to know that young lady, he thought, then immediately took a step back, distancing himself from that thought. What had come over him this morning?
Assuming a properly businesslike expression, he let himself out of his house and headed briskly over to Lottie's saloon to get some breakfast.
***
At the end of the day, Stempel walked back from the mill feeling very satisfied with his world. Things had been dull around here while Bolt was gone; today's events had reminded him that their long-standing rivalry had its satisfying moments. First thing this morning, Aaron had run into the ship's captain, who'd told him that Jason had spirited away his navigator. Bolt was up to his old tricks; obviously, he figured he'd better find a way to ensure that any bride who wanted to leave would have no means of transportation. Next he'd found out that Jason and several of his men had shanghaied the brides for a lengthy wagon tour of Seattle, one which covered every inch of the area except the town square, where the rest of the loggers were working feverishly to finish the girls' quarters. To counter Bolt's strategy, Aaron had made sure the young ladies found out what the logger had wanted so badly to hide from them: he'd had his men move the brides' possessions over to the new dormitory before they returned from their wagon ride. It wasn't his fault that so far the whole building consisted of nothing but a bare floor.
Stempel opened his front door and strode in, grinning as he remembered what had happened when the first wagon load of brides had come back. He'd stood in the middle of their belongings and gestured at the emptiness where walls should have been. "Well, ladies, I'm sure you've enjoyed your tour of Seattle's scenic wonders. And I'm sure you're all anxious to see your new quarters. So feast your eyes - this is it!"
He'd planned to wait around and give the same speech to each group as they returned, but when Jason's wagon had come back without him, and the distraught passengers had reported that Jason and one of the brides were lost in the woods on the Bolts' mountain, Aaron had walked away laughing. No point in wasting any more of his work day; Jason Bolt had just lost the bet. He and that young woman were in no danger up there—Bolt knew every acre like the back of his hand—but by the time that girl returned tomorrow, her reputation would be ruined. Unless Bolt was willing to marry her.
Stempel snickered, remembering half a lifetime of witnessing Jason's reckless ways. Now it had finally come down to this. Jason Bolt was faced with an impossible choice: lose his freedom, or hand over Bridal Veil Mountain. And he had only himself to blame.

It was only the beginning....

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