The conductor was friendly enough, and at noon Ellen ate the sandwiches Aunt Ruth had made for her, wrapped in wax paper, washed down with a bottle of sarsaparilla from the store.
It was six o’clock when she arrived at Rouse’s Point, and she was met by a stout woman in bottle green bombazine.
“Don’t talk much, do you?” she commented when Ellen had given several monosyllabic replies to her questions.
“I’m sorry, I’m very tired,” Ellen murmured, and the woman, Mrs. Cranby, nodded in sympathy.
“It’s a long day, at that. Well, you won’t find anyone to say boo to—I cater to the soldiers at Fort Montgomery, and they won’t bother with a child like you. Mind, we’ve some traders staying with us just now, but they speak French. They’re Quebecois, not American like you or me.”
“I’m not American,” Ellen said startled, and Mrs. Cranby nodded knowingly.
“Scottish, aren’t you? Well, you’re American now.”
Ellen couldn’t decide if she liked that or not.
After making most of her way through a large plateful of venison stew, Ellen was escorted to her room, a small box room off the kitchen set up with a cot bed. Mrs. Cranby gave her a hot brick for the bottom of her bed, for the nights were chilly, and a hot water bottle for the top.
Despite the complete strangeness of it all, Ellen fell asleep nearly the moment her head hit the pillow. The next morning Mrs. Cranby took her back to the station, and she boarded the train to Ogdensburg, and switched again to Millhaven, helped by a kindly conductor who pointed her across the platform.
It was late afternoon when she finally arrived on the shores of Lake Ontario, a wide expanse of blue-green water with a few islands no more than gray-green specks on the horizon. It looked to Ellen as big as an ocean.
The train conductor directed her to the ferry, and Ellen walked across the little town, her valise bumping against her knees, to board the ferry to Amherst Island, a small craft with a cheerful, red-cheeked captain.
“You’re my only passenger today,” he told Ellen, “so I reckon we can leave.”
Ellen looked at him in surprise. “It’s only half past three. I thought the ferry wasn’t due to leave until four o’clock?”
“It ain’t,” the captain agreed cheerfully, “but I’m in charge, so I am. I suppose I can decide when it leaves. Besides—” he spat neatly into the foaming water—“no one left the island this morning, I’d have known. So no one’s comin’ back.” He pointed to his head, covered in white wispy hair that made him look like he’d dipped his head in cotton wool. “I keep it all in here.”
Ellen nodded, torn between liking the man and thinking he was quite barmy.
Still, she enjoyed the crisp lake breeze as it blew against her face, and the water of Lake Ontario was a deep, foamy blue-green, clear and beautiful. In the distance she saw a faint green smudge that the captain told her was Amherst Island.
“It’s not a big place, mind,” he said. “No more than twelve miles long and four miles at the widest point. But it’s a happy place, I’ll tell you that. The islanders are fierce proud of their little slice of land.”
“Do you know the McCaffertys?” Ellen asked hesitant
ly, and was rewarded with the captain spitting into the lake again.
“Do I know the McCaffertys! Everyone knows everyone else on this island, child, and that’s a fact.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Got more children than sense, Dyle has,” he continued. “He used to run the inn in Stella, a fine place, good taproom, but the island just can’t support that kind of business now the shipping’s down. It’s all going by rail, these days. He sold it up to the town, and they turned it into the new school. Of course, all the old ladies were fair scandalized, the children learning their letters in an old taproom! As for Dyle, he bought a farm out on the shore, nice piece of land, but... well, Dyle’s not much of a farmer, and that’s a fact.”
“I see.” Although truthfully, Ellen wasn’t sure she saw at all. She’d heard Ruth call Dyle a good-for-nothing, and now she wondered uneasily if it were true. Just what would the McCaffertys be like? And would they like her? It seemed like no one else had.
Ellen felt an ache inside her, of both longing and loss. She was tired of living with strangers, of feeling like a stranger herself. She wanted the comforts of home, of being known and loved, and yet she knew they would be denied her, at least for now. For a long while, if her experience was anything to judge by.
“You’ll like the island,” the captain assured her. “Everyone does.” He grinned, and Ellen saw that both of his front teeth were missing. “You say hello to Dyle for me, missy, say hello from Captain Jonah.” His grin widened. “There ain’t no whales in Lake Ontario, so don’t you be worryin’. I think my mum had a laugh when she named me, to tell the truth.”
They’d reached the island, and Ellen glanced nervously at the cluster of wooden buildings that comprised, according to the Captain, the island’s only town. A school, a general store, a post office, and a couple of churches, all looking silent and a bit forlorn in the setting sun. Captain Jonah tied the boat up by a small, wooden building that Ellen saw was the ferry office, now shuttered for the night although it wasn’t much past four o’clock.
“Harrumph,” he muttered. “As if I don’t know where Bill Lawson has gone!”
“Where has he gone?” Ellen asked.
Captain Jonah gave her a dark look. “Just because Dyle McCafferty sold up his inn don’t mean there ain’t any other taprooms on this island.” With that pronouncement, he went striding off down Stella’s only main street.
“Captain Jonah,” Ellen called, her voice edged with desperation. “What shall I do?”
“Wait,” came the reply, over his shoulder as he continued striding down the street. “Someone’s bound to come for you.”