The Gold in These Hills

by Joanne Bischof

  Someone has moved to the window, and I can just glimpse a shape through the curtains. A hand presses to the glass, the muscular wrist wrapped in a beaded chord. Santiago. Why doesn’t he go to Edie? Or perhaps he has and it’s why he’s come. Panic rises as I reach for the knob.

  “Dying here,” he adds. Then his words turn to Cahuilla, even more foreign than the Spanish sometimes spoken in this land.

  I don’t understand them, but am too panicked not to open the door.

  I push the slab outward and Santiago lumbers in, nearly shoving the door off its hinges. I stumble back. He moves in a rush of power that is far from the edge of death. He’s clad in a thick overcloak that’s as coarse as a horse blanket. A slit has been cut in the middle, allowing it to be pulled over his head like a vaquero’s poncho. A belt cinches his waist, bracing the horse blanket to his body. His fringed, leather jacket is not so much missing . . . but placed elsewhere.

  It drapes the form of a man that is limp beneath his arm. Another Cahuilla man? Is this who is dying? Dark, muddy flannel has been cut into rough squares so as to wrap around the man’s hands, binding closed at the wrists by dried grasses. Pauper’s gloves, and in desperation at that. The same type of covering binds the stranger’s feet that drag across the floor as Santiago tugs him inside. The man’s neck dangles forward, limp and unstirring. A canvas sack covers his head.

  I bite back bile even as I fight to keep my wits. “Lay him here!” I push two chairs clear of the table.

  Bethany, who’s now halfway up the stairwell, starts to cry.

  Turning back, I see that Santiago has removed the sack from the dying man’s head.

  And that man—so covered in filth that I can hardly recognize him—is not one of the native’s kinsmen.

  It is John Cohen.

  Bethany’s father.

  My husband. Unconscious and near frozen. Returned somehow from the clutches of death, only to be lowered to the floor at my feet.

  Chapter 18

  Johnny

  March

  5th of September, 1902

  Dearest John,

  Three wagons pulled out today. Loaded into their weather-beaten frames were several families but mostly miners. One of those miners asked me to marry him only the day before. As he stood there, lit by the sunrise, I thought of you. And as he turned his hat in his hands, beseeching me with his request, I thought of you.

  I’m shamed that I was tempted to say yes. To shake the dust of this place from our shoes and to give Bethany a life that is filled with more hope than the one we have here. Do you know why I said no? Do you want to know what thought crossed my mind when I refused him?

  It was the dawn that we stayed abed. It was nearly time for us to rise for chores. The milking, breakfast, bringing in wood. But on that morning, there you were, your head pressed to the side of my stomach that was big as a washtub. Your hand held the other side, and it was so warm and right against my nightgown. You looked at me then with a sheen in eyes that were green as the pines, and you told me that you could feel her. Our sweet girl.

  How you knew it was a girl inside me, I’ll never know. But she was made in love and was growing in love. You kissed me then, and rose, bidding me to keep both me and the baby warm. You went downstairs then, moved the kettle to the stove with a soft clang, and headed out to do the chores in the frosty dawn.

  You are missed not only for your goodness, but because your soul somehow knew how to speak to my own. This silence terrifies me not because you have been silenced. Quite the contrary. I feel you and hear you in nearly everything still. I am afraid because I do not know if you can hear me in return.

  You are missed more than I could ever describe.

  Juniper

  Chapter 19

  Juniper

  March 1903

  Edie’s husband shoves back the kitchen table, and chairs tumble, slamming into the wall. I help him make space as he drags John closer to the fire.

  “Make him warm,” Santiago demands.

  Rushing to the stove, I yank open the iron door and cram two more wedges of oak inside. Tears blur my vision, and I fight them back. The whole world spins as I try to make sense of this moment. Of this relief that bends with pain inside me. Shaking hands reach for the kettle. I fill a cup, not even bothering to steep tea leaves. I carry the warm water to where John is lying, and with Santiago’s help we lift his head. John is unconscious, and the hot water only sears against his lips, dripping down his bearded jaw where the overgrown whiskers tangle with mud and neglect.

  Santiago moves the cup aside. “Make warm,” he demands again.

  Yes. But I don’t know how.

  Santiago works on the nearest sleeve of the fringed coat. I start on the other. As we peel off the stiff jacket, the intensity of how foul John smells increases. I cover my face with the back of my hand. Gulping back the urge to recoil, I move into position to help Santiago get John nearer to the fire. But the native man presses on my shoulder, bringing me lower to John. It’s a grip that I haven’t strength to resist. It’s not rough, only adamant.

  “Make him warm,” he says a third time.

  That’s when I realize what he’s bidding me to do. I cannot.

  I cannot.

  John has deceived me. He has betrayed others. He has broken every vow he has ever made. But in this moment, his lips are tinted blue, and his skin is so stiff with cold death hovers over him. It chills the room itself. I lower myself to stretch out against his side, and the scent of him pulls bile to my throat. It is the sourness of a man who has not bathed in weeks.

  Santiago rolls John onto his side, making it easy for me to fit my chest to his own. I do, and sight of my husband’s face blurs as my vision does. He is home. And somehow still alive. With help, I manage to get an arm around John, and as I move in closer, something hard and square pegs me in the chest. I try to ignore it, but it digs into my ribs so sharply I feel it against the front of his shirt.

  A book?

  “There’s something here.” I begin on the buttons of John’s shirt. The fabric is so crusted the buttons won’t be coaxed loose. Brandishing a knife, Santiago slits the shirt up the front to reveal even more cloth binding a canvas-wrapped book to the center of John’s chest. He cuts this cloth next, and the book within a dingy sack falls away. For John to carry it so far, so close to himself, it must hold great value, yet there is no time to ponder the book’s contents as I settle against him again. This time there is nothing between us but my flannel blouse and the layer of dirt on his bare skin.

  Mrs. Parson returns with blankets, neither shocked nor repulsed as she places one over us, followed by a second. I cannot breathe. So foul is this man that I cough against the stench. His overgrown beard brushes the side of my face, and I fight the urge to recoil.

  “Bethany’s asking to come down,” Mrs. Parson says. “She’s calmer now. Knows it’s her papa and that he’s alive.”

  “Yes. Have her come.” I will shield her from the truth no longer. She is a brave girl, carved out of this West like the water carves its canyons.

  Mrs. Parson’s footsteps rush up the stairs and she returns with Bethany.

  I know by the sound of my daughter’s voice. “Mama?”

  “It’s alright, sweet girl. Your papa needs some help being warm.” Sitting up, I pat the blankets where John’s feet are tangled just beneath, still bound in cloths that are thick and dark like an old saddle pad. “Can you sit right here and help?”

  She perches against John’s feet, still wrapped in her blanket. She looks like a bird, wide-eyed and fragile, nesting there against her father. Her warmth will help.

  Mrs. Parson slips into place with a bowl of warm water and a rag. She starts first along the side of John’s neck where bruises and grime are etched into his skin. Santiago stuffs more wood into the stove. The kitchen is so hot now that sweat gathers at my temples and against the bones of my corset. Despite the heat, John is as cold as a side of meat that has been hanging out to
cure in midwinter.

  His hand, limp on the ground, is wedged beneath my stomach. His firm knuckles press without meaning to the place where I once carried our child. Crouched beside the fire, Santiago rubs his own hands back and forth, chafing heat back into them. He blows into his cupped palms once and then again. This man needs something hot to drink as well, and gratefully, Mrs. Parson is already on the task.

  Though every breath is stifling, I must ask. “Where did you find him?”

  Santiago’s eyes slide to my own, telling a story more vast than the single word he utters. “Yuma.”

  The prison referenced in the article where I sent a letter only weeks ago. A place known in Arizona territory as the Hell Hole. Tales of that prison have been whispered across the West. Such bleak accounts that I have turned an ear away, not wanting to know the horrors, yet John has been immersed in them. Has it been all this while?

  Santiago rises, and my gaze falls to John’s still face. I don’t dare touch him there, yet the longing intensifies in knowing where he has been.

  I brave another question. “Why was he covered so?” The sack that had draped his head lays crushed beneath us now.

  “For travel. No one stop us.”

  I don’t understand.

  “We walked many days. Not be stopped. White men don’t bother with worry over dead Indian. I say take home for burial.” Bitterness tints the words, and their truth is grievously true.

  When the men first entered, I had thought John a Cahuilla man. Santiago had camouflaged him in plain sight of passersby who would have regarded him little in territories where hostility and censure are still prevalent. It is a bleak truth. The journey would have taken hundreds of miles and many, many days past territories thick with white settlers and lawmen.

  I must ask . . . “Has he escaped?”

  “Netéteyamaqa pé’iy. I found him on the roadside by his prison.”

  His prison. I know nothing of the Cahuilla language but understand enough. A thousand more questions burn within me of how this man knows all this—knows John enough to risk so much and journey all the way to Arizona territory.

  The man steps to the door. “I’ll help the horse now.” He pauses, contemplating before speaking again in Cahuilla. “Héspen peqéyllaqmu’qa’.” His brow plunges as though trying to find the English. “Much pain. She’s very injured.” His words dance between two languages as he rifles through the kitchen wares until he unearths a clean cloth. He beseeches Mrs. Parson to fill a pan with hot water. She does so, placing the pan carefully in Santiago’s blood-encrusted hands. He’s still wearing the saddle blanket, belted around his waist as a crude poncho.

  The horse. That is where the wound is.

  With the saddle pad and blanket having been cut up for coverings to keep the men alive, the horse had nothing to protect its hide beneath a saddle. It’s no wonder the creature has become bloodied. “It will be warmer in the barn. And dry,” I say. “There’s a little hay. Take all that you need.”

  Santiago nods and steps out into the falling snow. Mrs. Parson swipes the rag down the side of John’s face. She helps me adjust so that my head is farther from John’s chest and I can take a breath of cleaner air. Warmth has grown between us. Is it seeping into him?

  Mrs. Parson dumps the soiled water into a pail and partly fills the pan with what remains in the kettle.

  As she returns to her ministrations to clean John’s face, I watch her calm, concerned expression. “Do you think this will help?” I ask.

  Water trickles in the lantern light as she wrings the rag. “We will pray so.”

  I have lost the ability to pray for this man. “Will you pray for the both of us?”

  Mrs. Parson squeezes my shoulder. “I’ll pray enough for many.”

  Tears sting my eyes. The heat is beginning to crush me, as is this nearness to John. I release my grip around his back long enough to swipe a tear. While it’s impossible to mine for a prayer within the cavern of my heart, I can at least remain here, warm against him. The wool coverings that shroud us are stifling, but he needs the reviving. It’s unclear if it will be enough. Beneath these blankets, beside this fire, I look at John and imagine for a single, brief moment that he did not shatter my heart into a thousand pieces. I imagine that this unconscious man pressed against me is good and honorable and kind. If I think of him for what he truly is—a convict—my stomach knots in ways that have nothing to do with his need for a bath.

  Pinching my eyes tight, I try to imagine that all I once dreamed of is real. I must. For tonight, so long as it is needed, I will be by him to help his heart beat closer toward life. As to what is to come after that, God will tend to it and prepare me to face it, just as He will also be preparing John.

  “Mama?”

  At Bethany’s fragile voice, I shift to try to see her better. Before I need move far, she steps behind John and sinks to a crouch. Her nightgown is a puff of white. So different from the grime of his clothing that holds most of Arizona and half of California in its creases.

  “Is he warm?” she asks in her small voice. “Can I say hello to him now?”

  “He’s very cold still.” Even with the rising heat, he feels like death. Fear needles me that he will be a corpse by morning. That I will have lost the chance to see him alive once more. “But you’re being such a good helper.”

  Bethany’s green eyes trace the length of her father. If she is repulsed, it shows not in the gentle slant of her brow. The way she silently considers him. Her soft face is so full of compassion that it breaks my heart. The two feathers still twined in the end of her hair flutter as Bethany sinks lower until she vanishes from sight behind the span of John’s shoulders. Only a moment passes, and then her small hand rises to his upper arm. She holds on, gripping the fabric of his tattered shirt.

  “It’s alright, Papa,” she whispers, and her voice on this earth is small but it stretches wide inside this room.

  My tears that fall are silent ones. Near the stairs, Mrs. Parson conceals her own behind damp hands.

  “We’ve got you now,” Bethany whispers again, the assurance strong and sure as she holds John as close as I do. “We’ve got you now, Papa.”

  Chapter 20

  Johnny

  March

  I’m deep asleep the next morning until Rye starts barking and the UPS guy tromps up the porch steps, drops a heavy box against the door, and cranks his truck back down the driveway. Blinking awake, I go to sit up when the binder across my chest slips. I catch it before it slides to the floor. Closing the binder, I place it on the bed beside me and rise. My sweatpants are thick, but the cold of the morning still causes me to shiver. I reach for a long-sleeved thermal shirt and slide it on.

  How many letters did I read last night? And did I fall asleep in the middle of one? Judging by the binder that had been tented across my chest, I must have.

  Crossing the floor, my bare feet move once more over the circular stain embedded into the floorboards. No amount of scrubbing or refining would remove it. Apart from peeling up those boards and laying new ones, the dark water stain is here to stay. I don’t want to compromise the integrity of this place for something so superficial anyway, but it’s times like these that I wonder again at what caused these markings. What rested here over a hundred years ago?

  But maybe I’m probing too deep this morning. These thoughts are too heavy on an empty stomach.

  Juniper’s voice is still in my head as I lumber downstairs to switch on the coffeepot. It’s still in my head as I fill a cup of steaming brew, and as I stand in front of the window, watching fresh snow fall, I can hear her. It’s as though she’s here, peering out at this same view. Chills cover my skin, and I search the living room for a sweatshirt. It’s easier to chalk up the sensation to the cold as opposed to the fact that I have somehow peeled back a layer of time, looked into the past, and hurt for a woman—for a family—that I don’t know. But for some wild reason, we’ve shared this farm, and after reading over a dozen of
her letters last night, I realize that we have shared something else.

  Pain. Hope.

  It seems to spring up from this place. It settles around the land like dew. It’s in every creak of the stairs and every knot in the pine walls. It’s a cry for home and, in some ways, for renewal.

  She and I . . . We’ve wanted the same things.

  It’s why I had to know last night if she got them. If the cries of her heart were ever satisfied. Did her husband return? This John fellow who seems to have just vanished into thin air. What would make a man do such a thing? Why would a husband and a father simply leave with no trace of his whereabouts? I’m tempted to return upstairs and keep reading, but the next letters will have to wait. Right now, I’ve got to head down to the nearest city in the valley where the Home Depot is. I’ve placed an order for supplies for a new set of clients and their bathroom remodel.

  I don’t feel like cooking so grab half of an egg-and-cheese burrito from yesterday and pop it in the microwave. It spins slowly as it warms, and I take the moment to top off my coffee and Rye’s dish of food. With breakfast finally in hand, I settle on the couch and watch sunlight part the clouds. It’s only a dusting of snow on the ground and will be gone in a few hours tops.

  I manage just two bites of the burrito when my phone rings from the kitchen.

  It’s an achy kind of rise, but I reach my cell in time. “Hello?”

  “Hello, this is Mrs. Hollister from the historical society. I hope I’m not bothering you too early.”

  “Not at all.”

  “Well, I’m calling because I’ve got a young lady here who came in to ask about your property. She’s from Palm Springs and is doing a project on the local history and some of the connections between the Cahuilla natives and the white settlers.”