A House United Book 1: The Hardest Goodbye

Chapter Five

Once they were fully out to sea and Adam no longer had a city skyline to brood over, all the Cartwrights had fun on the first leg of their voyage. Josie's long ancestral line of sea captains and sailors came through for her, and she didn't get seasick. The weather was pleasant for most of the journey, and the three younger Cartwrights spent most days on deck in the sunshine, reading books, watching the occasional bit of sea life swim by, or seeing who could concoct the most outrageous tall tale—a game at which Hoss exhibited unusual and disconcerting skill. Adam speculated he'd been getting lessons from Little Joe. At night, Hoss and Adam lay awake in their bedroom until late, catching each other up on the last three years of their lives. Hoss kept Adam in stitches with tales of his and Little Joe's exploits—apparently their schoolteacher was deathly afraid of toads—and Adam enchanted his younger brother with stories of life in the big eastern cities.

"You sure were lucky to have Uncle Jacob and Aunt Hannah and Josie nearby," Hoss said one night, long after the boys should have gone to sleep.

Adam murmured his agreement.

"I wish I had me a cousin like Josie," Hoss continued.

"Josie IS your cousin, Hoss. She's Pa's brother's daughter."

"You know what I mean. Someone related to my ma, too. Yesirree, that'd be real fine."

A somber silence settled over the little bedroom. For the first time, Adam realized he had an advantage over his little brothers. While all three of them had lost their mothers, Adam at least had a connection to his through Josie and Aunt Hannah. Guilt twisted in his gut. If any of them deserved a mother, it was Hoss. He was such a gentle, caring soul. He was forever bringing home stray and injured animals, and he was the first to lend a hand to anyone in need. And if there was a "doctoring touch" running through the Cartwright line, Hoss had inherited it. Though he had no formal training, the 13-year-old could already stitch up a wound and lower a fever. In Adam's opinion, Hoss was the best of the of the Cartwright brothers.

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Everyone's favorite part of the journey was the riverboat across Panama. The mosquitoes were brutal, but the sights and sounds of the rainforest were well worth the scratching, though Jacob worried about malaria. Having made the voyage once in the opposite direction, Hoss considered himself an expert on the Panamanian rainforest and spent the entire day telling Josie everything he knew—and a few things he made up—about parrots. Adam spent the day practicing his Spanish with the natives and asking them about the railroad the country was building across its narrowest point. He was impressed by their plans to one day dig a canal across a forty-mile corridor so passengers and goods could pass through from the Pacific to the Atlantic on a single ship.

"Imagine how much time and money that would save!" he told his father in amazement. "The only thing better would be a train from California all the way east."

Ben ruffled his son's hair. "I could have used one of those about twenty years ago."

The Cartwrights spent only a single night in Panama City before boarding their steamship to San Francisco, where they arrived after an uneventful ten-day journey. Josie was fascinated by the nearly unbroken string of sea lions all the way up the coast of Mexico to San Francisco, but she was disappointed by San Francisco itself. She'd expected a large, bustling city on the same scale as New York, and what she discovered instead was a dingy little town of only a few squat buildings.

"It does not look like much," she whispered to Adam as they disembarked from their ship.

"Not yet," Adam said, "but give it time. Pa's friend John Sutter discovered gold here in California two years ago, and this town has been filling up with people. So much so that California should be a state by the end of the year, if Congress can sort it out."