Free Eutopia by David Nickle

smile faded, and was replaced by a look that Jason had not seen on her before: an eyebrow arched a hair higher than its twin, and her mouth half open, a fold of her lower lip pinched gently in her teeth.
    Days ahead, when he had composed himself and knew her a little better, he would learn what that look signified.
    Miss Harper’s considerable store of curiosity was mightily piqued.
    §
    Jason found the Harper steamboat not so very impressive. Not more than fifty feet long, it had a shape that reminded Jason of a shoe. The boat was a side-wheeler, with a tall, fluted smokestack coming out the middle, a wheel on either side to propel it, and an interior that was mostly filled with barrels and crates and sacks. It was called The Eliada , which, while not imaginative, at least hit the point. Its skipper could take a wrong turn or even two, and it would not stay lost for long before someone read the bow and sent it on its right way home.
    Sam Green collected the umbrellas as they stepped on board, then cleared off a bench for them that allowed them to look out the side of the boat without getting rained on.
    “It’ll be a few hours,” he said. “The river gets rough in spots as a matter of course, and the weather today is not ideal for it.”
    Aunt Germaine smiled in a kindly way. “It is preferable to the alternative—riding horseback through Indian country.”
    “Oh,” said Ruth, “I don’t know about that. I always enjoyed the trek. Particularly the horses. And the Indians—the Kootenays—oh, they were never any trouble. Mr. Green and his people were always most helpful in that regard.”
    “I am just as happy,” said Miss Butler. “Indians terrify me.”
    “There is no reason they should,” said Ruth. “Not these days.”
    “Most of ’em are over in Montana now anyhow,” said Jason. The two women looked at him, and he shrugged. “Government set up a big reserve for Kootenays last year. I expect they’re all of them headed over there by now. ’Twas all the talk of Cracked Wheel.”
    Miss Butler giggled. “Cracked Wheel? What sort of name is that?”
    “Name of my home town, miss,” said Jason. “It is not very large, I guess. Or it was not,” he added.
    “Was?” Ruth looked at him. “Mr.—Thistledown. You speak of your town with the weight of the world on you. Is there something the matter?”
    Aunt Germaine caught his eye and gave him a warning glare, but that wasn’t what shut Jason up on the subject. He didn’t want to stray back to Cracked Wheel, didn’t want to pick at the scab forming over his grief. He’d misspoke, he saw, naming it at all.
    So all he said was: “Sorry I brought it up. No. Nothing’s the matter.”
    Had Ruth Harper known Jason a little better, she might have known to leave it lie, let him to himself for a few minutes. As it stood, her curiosity got the better of her, and she persisted.
    “You,” she said, turning a third toward him on the bench, “have a secret, Mr. Thistledown. Is it, I wonder, a secret connected to your infamous surname?”
    “My infamous surname?”
    “I am sure,” said Aunt Germaine, intervening, “that he is unrelated to that scoundrel.”
    “Well, Madame,” said Ruth, “as his aunt, you ought to know. Still—” she turned to Jason “—those are, as they say, ‘mighty big shoes to fill.’”
    “Ruth!” said Miss Butler, but Ruth rolled her eyes. She looked at Jason, and pointed with her index finger. “Bang!” she said, and giggled.
    Jason felt his hands squeezing into fists. He pushed them between his knees, and took a breath.
    “Miss Harper,” he said. “I must apologize but I cannot make head nor tail of what you are saying.”
    Miss Butler was trying not to laugh herself by now. “You are not alone, Mr. Thistledown. She has, I daresay, read altogether too many dime novels for her own good. And your name—”
    “What about my name?” said Jason.
    “You mean to say you don’t know?” said Ruth, having composed