Orphan Hero

by John Babb

  He took one more step and felt his foot give slightly. A rock rattled away down the hill. The big cougar lifted his head, and with no more than two quick, effortless bounds, was gone. He hadn’t wanted to shoot, because he didn’t want to warn Rooster that anyone was in the area. But to be honest, he couldn’t have cocked the pistol fast enough to get off a shot.

  He moved back to the blood trail and continued up the steep incline. He didn’t have to go far. Apparently, he and the cougar had been looking for the same fellow. About all he could recognize was the short-cropped, red hair. The smell was terrible. B. F. leaned against a pine tree as he threw up. There was no way to tell if Rooster had been dead when the cat had found him, but B. F. fervently hoped he had still been alive. He spit on the carcass and walked back down the hill.

  My story. On November 30, 1853

  Rooster came back last night and tried to burn the store down with all of us inside. I shot him through the window and he got away up the side of the mountain. I don’t know whether my shot killed him, or a panther did it for me. Makes no difference to me, but he’s sure enough good and dead.

  Jane is eating a little bit, dressing herself, washing her face, walking to and from the necessary, and sleeping on her pallet. But the rest of the time she just sits in a chair by the window. Mary and I talk to her as often as we think we should, and I’ve even tried reading to her to see if that might get her interested in something. But there is no acknowledgment of anything we say or do, and she has yet to speak a single word. It really hurts to see her like this.

  Doc McDaniel recommended that Jane go to San Francisco to see a nerve and melancholy specialist. Mary has no idea if that kind of doctor can even be found in the city, but she’s made arrangements to take Jane on the Tuesday stage.

  Twenty-Seven

  Get Away From Me Once And For All

  Placerville, California 1853

  The last Monday in December, a storm blew in from the Pacific and it began to pour down. By mid-day, the wind had picked up from the west and the rain was slanted almost to the horizontal. Not a soul was moving outside.

  B. F. used the situation to sit with Jane again. He pulled a chair close to hers so they were sitting side by side but facing in opposite directions. He sat there quietly for a few minutes, trying to tell if anything in her demeanor indicated she was uncomfortable. The steady hammer of the rain on the tin roof seemed to desensitize the situation somewhat.

  He leaned his head close to hers, but did not touch her, keeping his hands resting on the tops of his thighs. “Jane. I am so sorry that I wasn’t there for you when you needed me. The men who hurt you had knocked me out. What woke me up was hearing you call my name. You are the most important person in the world to me, and nothing can change that. Please talk to me.”

  He sat there. He didn’t know which was louder—the rain on the roof or the blood pounding in his brain. He finally bowed his head and rubbed the place behind his left ear. His headache hadn’t stopped throbbing since the night they were attacked. He suddenly realized Jane had placed her hand on top of his right hand. He wanted to pull her close. But he sat still.

  “Nothing is the same no more.” He could barely hear her. “I ain’t the same as I was. Then I was brim full of life and joy. Now it seems like all that is dead. I remember I used to dream about what was gonna come next in my life, and how I looked forward to seeing what would happen. But now I can’t seem to remember how to dream, even though I sit here all day trying. Now everything is so . . . empty.”

  And then, “And where is Ethan? Did they hurt him too?”

  B. F. couldn’t—wouldn’t—lie to her. But he knew how fragile things were. “Let’s get your ma in here to talk about Ethan.” He felt her hand go slack on his. “Mary, would you come in here please.” Mary left her place at the front door where she had been watching the storm. “Mary, Jane has asked about Ethan.”

  Mary looked at B. F. with the slow realization that her daughter had started talking. He read her look and nodded. She drew her daughter to her and held her tightly. “Janie, I got some terrible news to tell ye. The men who hurt you was the ones that put rattlesnakes in Ethan’s little fort. He got bit and took awful sick. We lost him that next morning. He’s gone to be with your pa now.” She began to weep. “I know they’re together in heaven and watching down on us.”

  Jane was shivering. “What about those men?”

  Her mother wrapped a quilt around her shoulders. “They won’t bother nobody, not never, ever again. You’re safe now, Janie.”

  It poured all the remainder of the day and all night and continued into the next day. The roads were impassable during bad weather, as the stage had to cross three significant streams on the trip down to San Francisco. The normally shallow Hangtown Creek across the road from the store had overflowed its bank on their side and was close to reaching the road itself. If it rained much more even the town might flood. Many of the mines were already flooded, and most of the miners were trying to exist in miserable conditions, huddled under leaking tentage or makeshift shelters.

  Mary decided the only Christian thing to do was to feed them. The meals wouldn’t be fancy, because she had not been open for business in over a week and had not replenished her supplies. But she could certainly put bacon and biscuits on the table.

  She and B. F. served over a hundred men for breakfast and almost three hundred for supper. They ran completely out of food before five o’clock, and she wouldn’t accept payment from anybody. Jane worked with them but stayed back in the kitchen. They made no attempt to push her.

  It finally stopped raining, but the temperature had quickly become much colder. As she and B. F. were cleaning up for the day, Mary suddenly realized that Jane was no longer in the kitchen. They looked through the store for her, but with no success. They ran outside about ten minutes before sundown, hollering for her. B. F. asked every miner he encountered if they had seen Jane.

  Finally, one pointed toward the footbridge that crossed the swollen stream. “I seen her down by the bridge just a minute ago.”

  B. F. trotted toward the bridge, calling her name. Then he saw her, and his heart stopped. Blind fear seized him and he began to run as hard as he could. She was out on the footbridge, and the bridge was being battered by the roiling water underneath. The structure was normally at least eight feet above the creek, but the rain of the last two days had the water blasting underneath no more than a few inches below the walkway.

  Mary had also seen what was happening, and was now running herself. Both of them were screaming her name, trying to be heard above the roar of the water. Jane had maneuvered to almost the middle of the footbridge. Even her slight weight on the bridge pushed the walkway into the rushing water. It appeared that she momentarily struggled to keep her balance, but let loose of the handrail on the right hand side and looked down at the water. B. F. was almost to the bridge. “Jane. Hold tight, Jane. I’ll be right there.”

  She turned and looked straight at him, seemed to shake her head once, her left hand came off the rail, and she fell forward into the brown, foaming water.

  It was impossible. No one could survive in that water. B. F. now began to run back downstream, hoping to see her head bob up to the surface. If he could just see where she was, he might save her. He ran for over a mile, scrambling over rocks and fallen timber, shouting her name. He knew the creek would soon empty into the South Fork of the American River, and if anything, it would be far worse than the usually mild Hangtown Creek. He had seen no sign of her whatsoever, but with the sun disappearing behind the foothills to the west, it was getting difficult for him to distinguish objects in the water. He kept thinking—praying—that every dark thing in the water would be her, but there was a great deal of flotsam churning along in the current, and nothing looked like Jane.

  Panicked, he called to her again and again. He should have jumped in with her at the bridge. Maybe he could have found her in the water. He cried out into the dark, now realizi
ng that he could no longer see anything in the river, save the white, frothing water. He had known for a long time that he was in love with her, and he had no idea how he could keep having a life without her in it. He wondered if she had even known how he felt. He should have told her. Maybe that would have changed everything.

  He was almost hyperventilating as he trudged up the road, clutching his arms across his chest. How could this be? All he could think was, for the second time, he had failed to save her when she needed him. When Mary saw him on the road, she knew any hope was lost. From somewhere, a cry came from deep inside her and she fell to the ground.

  B. F. and two men picked her up and carried her back to the store. B. F. suddenly realized what a frail woman she was. It had been hard to see anything but her strength and toughness, and you just didn’t think about her being such a small person. However, her strength had all been for the benefit of her family—and now she had no call for it.

  She quickly roused with wet compresses on her forehead and the back of her neck. B. F. thanked the men for their help, and when they had gone he moved to hug Mary. But before he could do so, she turned her back on him. He didn’t know what to do. She walked into her kitchen and curled up in a ball on Jane’s pallet. It was one of the straw tick mattresses the two of them had sewn together so long ago in West Port. B. F. stood there, feeling completely helpless for the better part of a half hour, then finally retreated to his own pallet.

  As soon as he was by himself, the tears came—first in rolling drops that stung his eyes, and later in sobs that involuntarily shook his body. He cried until the tears wouldn’t come any more. Mercifully, he must have gone to sleep sometime during the night.

  When he awoke sometime before daybreak, he lay there in a confused state for a time, believing that he must have had a terrible dream. He jumped up and dashed into the kitchen, sure that he would see Jane there on her pallet. Instead, he saw Mary sitting there, rocking back and forth with her arms around her knees. It wasn’t a dream.

  B. F. started a small fire in the cookstove and put a coffeepot on. Then he found a tin can of peaches in the store and opened it for them. “Mary, you have to eat something.” She sat at the table and dabbed at the pickled peach without any interest, although B. F. knew they were usually her favorite treat. He brought her a mug of coffee with a good spoonful of honey.

  After she sipped a bit, she cleared her throat. “B. F., I was scared of what bad luck ye might bring upon my family when you come on a full moon back in West Port. You was even born under a bad sign. But I pushed aside my fears when I saw how you got on with Mister Fitzwater and my Janie. I’ll blame myself for that poor judgment for the rest of my life. I shoulda listened to what my Granny Leary taught me about the moon and strangers.

  “I lost my husband because you didn’t bring no doctor. Then I listened to you and brought my family to this here wicked place, and my Janie and Ethan are both dead. You even kilt the man that was trying to spark with me. I want to sell this here store and never come back. Every place I look I see Janie and Ethan lookin’ back at me. I fear they’s a demon livin’ inside of you. Maybe you can’t help it, but it’s still there. I want you to take what’s yours, and get away from me once and for all.”

  My story. On December 30, 1853

  Everything left that was good in my life came to an end yesterday. Jane fell into the Hangtown Creek after a big storm, and was swept away in a flood right in front of me. I never saw her again.

  This morning, Mary told me that all the bad things that had happened to her family—the deaths of Mr. Fitzwater, and Ethan, and now Jane—were my fault. It’s bad enough that they’re all gone, but I didn’t ever figure she’d blame me for it. I guess she’s felt this way for a long time—all the way back to West Port—and it finally came out this morning.

  She told me she never wanted to see me again—that I had a demon inside me. I wonder if that could be true? She once asked if the people closest to me met with a bad end. When you put all these things together—maybe she’s right.

  Mary is in such a state, the chance of her leaving Placerville with all her gold, and getting both it and herself to San Francisco in one piece is not very good unless I can figure out a way to help her. I owe her that. She’s the nearest thing I’ve had to a mother since I left Indiana.

  He sat her down and told her his plan. She didn’t object. He spent three hundred dollars on two buckboard wagons and two horses. Next he tore out a five foot wide section of the south wall on his barbershop lean-to and pushed one of the wagons inside and out of sight for “improvements.” After measuring the wagon bed, he found a bolt of heavy cloth in the store, and cut a section four feet wide and eight feet long, which completely covered the existing wagon bed. Then he removed flooring from the barbershop and cut them into exact, four-foot sections. He pushed the freshly-cut ends of the boards into the dirt so there was no visible evidence that would reveal his recent carpentry work.

  He retrieved every hidden bag of gold coins and gold dust with “BFW” written on the side. He then placed the coins evenly over the cloth. There were eight hundred ninety Double Eagles, twelve Eagles, and ninety-nine Spanish Doubloons. The coins completely covered an area about 3½ x 4½ feet. He also put fifteen of the seventeen bags of gold dust he had on the cloth, each of them holding some twenty-four ounces apiece. Five Double Eagles, all of the Eagles, and two bags of gold he placed in his pockets or his kit bag.

  Next he poured the contents of two bags of rice on top of the coins to ensure they were well cushioned and would not be clinking together. He followed this with another layer of cloth, and then covered the entire bed with the just-cut four-foot boards. He then used a wide board to make a tailgate of sorts, which would conceal the fact that there were two layers of boards in the back of the wagon. Rather than use shiny, new nails, he used only nails from a rusted keg. The final step was to go out in back where he had tied the two horses and retrieve a mixture of hay, dirt, and manure, which he spread haphazardly in the bed of the wagon.

  He stepped back to review his work. There was no indication that the wagon was any different than every other wagon on the roadways, and certainly no evidence that it held the equivalent of over $23,000.

  The next day he switched out the wagons and repeated the process to carry Mary’s wealth. She had miscalculated her holdings. By the time her coins and gold dust were loaded, gold reached from side to side and front to back. At least a hundred and fifty coins were double-stacked. B. F. estimated she had over $90,000 in the back of the wagon.

  Including the money she had in the banks, she already had her $100,000. She could have moved to San Fran three months ago, and none of this would have ever happened. Both Ethan and Jane would be alive. B. F. figured that news was just too cruel. He decided not to tell her.

  The wagon was so heavy that he couldn’t push it out of the lean-to. He had to harness a horse just to pull it back in the yard behind the store. She had observed the whole process, but had done nothing to assist other than retrieve her bags of gold from their assorted hiding places. “Where’s my spare gold?”

  “It’s still in the bank. It’ll look mighty suspicious if you don’t withdraw that money before you leave town. I’m going to completely tear down this lean-to, and block off the wall of the store with some of the boards. Once I’m done with that tomorrow, you need to try and sell this store. Even with what’s left, it ought to bring four or five thousand dollars. Maybe even Yukon will want the place back.”

  “I hope the fool ain’t already spent all his money on that Lola Montez.”

  “Even if he doesn’t want the place, maybe you could hire him to ride you down to San Fran in this wagon. He’s about the only honest man I met here. You might even hire him to take that wagon apart once you get there so you can get your money in two or three of those big banks.”

  “Maybe. He’s probably up at the Pot o’ Gold peeling grapes for the woman. That hussy went to seed a long time ago, and Yukon
ain’t got sense enough to see it.”

  Something in the way her mouth was set caught B. F.’s attention. All of a sudden he realized she was jealous! Why in the world had she not made her feelings plain long before this? He shook his head. “Just remember, if you do meet up with any bandits, give them the gold you’ll be getting from the bank. Everybody in town will know you withdrew it within a half hour anyway, so as far as the bandits are concerned, they’ll think they will have taken everything.”

  Mary paused for a minute to consider. “I reckon that’s right.”

  By noon, he had finished his work on the side of the store. The freshly cut end pieces from the floorboards he had used to build the second-level beds of the wagons were shoved in the big cookstove and burned. He didn’t want anybody—even Yukon—to suspect what he had done.

  When Mary went to the banks, and then to find Yukon, B. F. loaded his wagon with his wall mirror, his barber equipment, four chairs, a piece of waterproof canvas, and the simple gear he had brought with him from Indiana. He retrieved his old cloth travel bag, his gun, and a collection of his clothes and put them in the wagon. He then packed a variety of groceries from the store’s shelves, did a quick calculation, and left three Single Eagles on the kitchen table to pay for the food.

  He started for the front door, turned back around, and picked up Jane’s quilt. He held it close to his face and took in a deep breath. There was a part of her still there. He took it with him.

  He decided not to wait on Mary’s return. First of all, he couldn’t think of anything to say, knowing now how she felt about him. Secondly, he suspected that whatever might be said would not really help either one of them. And he’d done all he could do for her anyway, under the circumstances. He stood in the doorway of the store and looked back one last time. He’d spent over four years here. He always knew he’d be leaving—but never figured it would be by himself.