Janet Quin-Harkin

by Fools Gold

  “Wot did yer want to see me about?” A sharp voice demanded and a little dark man swaggered up the line of men towards Libby.

  “Your missus is here,” one of his companions shouted.

  Libby and the man looked at each other in dismay and then Libby said, “This is the wrong man” at the same time as the cockney said, “This ain’t my old lady.”

  Libby kept her composure all the way home, but back in the tent she flung herself down on the ground and cried, no longer able to keep her disappointment and despair from her children.

  CHAPTER 18

  IN MID-OCTOBER the first real winter storm rolled in from the Pacific. All night long the wind howled through the branches and tore at the canvas, sending driving rain into the tent. In the morning they were cold, wet, and miserable, and Libby was not able to get a fire going. Bliss started coughing. The storm continued all day, turning paths down the hillsides into rivers which threatened to sweep away the tent. When Libby tried to go into town next day, she found that the track was now impassable mud.

  The creeks continued to rise, even after the rain had stopped, as water came down from the High Sierra, and miners found their digging sites either under water or swept away. As they waited impatiently for the water to go down, they had nothing to do but household chores, and Libby found that they no longer needed her to do their washing.

  That night Bliss developed a fever and lay tossing and moaning. Libby sat huddled in a wet blanket, staring out at the drops dripping from the branches, sunk into despair so deep that she felt as if she were drowning.

  “It’s hopeless,” she said softly. “They’re going to die and it’s all my fault. Oh, God, forgive me for my pride and recklessness,” she whispered. “Punish me, but spare my children. Don’t leave us to die.”

  In the morning it really did seem as if her prayer had been answered. The storm had passed over, leaving clear blue skies and new grass sprouting and the men anxious to get back to work. When they got down to their sites they found many of them unrecognizable. The water had swept away tools and stream banks and piled up debris where there had been none. This added to the frustration of enforced idleness and fights broke out. Libby was carrying her pan to get water just above the nearest diggings when two men emerged from the undergrowth right in front of her.

  “I’m warning you, you just stay away,” one yelled.

  “It’s my claim, I’m telling you,” the other snarled.

  “Prove it! Where’s your tools?”

  “Can I help it if the danged storm swept them away? I know my claim when I see it and you’re jumping it.”

  “You’re out of your head. Your claim never came that far down the creek.”

  “It did so. Right to that big pine.”

  “It never did.”

  “You calling me a liar now?”

  The first man drew his gun. “I’m saying that I’m working that stretch of river now and if you don’t like it, that’s too bad.”

  “Think you can scare me?” the other man demanded. He drew his own gun.

  “You’d never dare use that thing,” the first man taunted. He was a skinny, shifty-looking type with long, drooping moustaches. “You’re as lily-livered as they come.”

  “You take that back,” the other man said. He was small and fair skinned, freckled from the sun.

  “Lily-livered, that’s what I said,” the first man repeated.

  Suddenly shots rang out. It was impossible for Libby to see who fired first, but both men dropped to the ground. Libby rushed over to them shouting, “Stop this madness!” But it was too late. The skinny one was lying dead with blood trickling down his moustaches. The other appeared to be dead too, but as Libby bent over him, he opened his eyes and tried to focus on her, as if he didn’t really believe her presence.

  “He got me,” he murmured.

  “You got him too,” Libby said. “He’s dead.”

  A faint smile passed the man’s lips. “No kidding?” he asked. “They always said I couldn’t shoot straight.” He groaned in pain, holding his side and coughing.

  “We’ve got to get some help for you,” Libby said. “Where are your friends working?”

  “Get me back to my cabin,” the man whispered. “It’s right here, just through the trees.”

  He tried to get to his feet. Libby helped him, draping his arm over her shoulder. He was not a big man and she managed to half drag him up the hill to a small log cabin among the trees. It already had a roof and two wooden walls, a stove and a crude bed, but only canvas draped over the front and one side. Libby laid him on the bed.

  “Do you have a partner I can get?” she asked.

  The man shook his head. “Only me,” he said. “I’m here by myself. My partner died of cholera back on the trail. I’ve been alone since I got here.”

  “You lie there, I’m going for help,” she said. “I’ll try and get a doctor to you.”

  The man shook his head sadly. “Won’t do no good,” he said softly. “I’m done for, I can tell. Just stay here with me, will ya?”

  “Of course,” Libby said, squatting down beside him. He grabbed her arm urgently. “I want you to do something for me,” he whispered. “You look like the sort I can trust. I’ve got three bags of gold sewn into this mattress. I want you to send them to my wife.”

  “Where does she live?” Libby asked. “Do you have the address written down somewhere?”

  His grip on her forearm tightened. “It’s Hettie Jacobsen,” he said, his eyes pleading. “Snowdrop Farm, just outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. See it gets to her.” He broke off, coughing again.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll see it gets to her,” Libby said.

  “You promise?” the man insisted.

  Libby put her hand over his. “You can count on me.

  He nodded. “That’s good,” he said. His eyes opened, alert and clear blue. “Shame to go now, just when the claim was starting to pay,” he said with a sigh. “Why don’t you take it? Lots of gold waiting to come out of that creek . . . just waiting . . . gold.”

  He closed his eyes and sank back again. “Where is it?” Libby asked. “How would I know it?”

  “It’s down next to that big old. . . .” His voice faded away. He was dead.

  Respectfully, Libby covered him and went down to the nearest creek to find men to dig him a grave. When they came up to the cabin it seemed that nobody really knew him. He was a loner who didn’t like to drink, they told her. If any of them had an idea where he had been working the river, they were not telling Libby, in spite of her subtle questions. They buried him along with the other dead man on a bank behind the cabin and then hurried back to their claims again, leaving Libby alone.

  “I’d better get that gold and send it back to his wife,” she murmured to herself. She ripped open the side of the mattress and took out the three heavy bags. I wonder how many ounces there are here, she asked herself. The bags sat round and heavy in her hands and slowly an idea began to creep into her mind: she did not have to send the gold. Nobody except her knew it existed. She and the girls could get a passage down to Sacramento for the winter, down to a warm, snug house and good food and new clothes. Then if they decided to sail back to Boston, she could send the woman some money from there. . . .

  Even before she had finished reasoning it out, she dismissed it. She remembered the man’s face, his pleading eyes and she remembered saying, “You can count on me.” Whatever happens to me, I was not brought up to cheat and steal, Libby thought. I can’t do it, even if my children’s lives depend on it.

  Slowly, another realization came to her, spreading through her with warmth and excitement. She might not take his gold, but he had left behind a cabin—a cabin which nobody else could claim. He didn’t have a partner. He was a loner, the others said. She looked in wonder at the stove, at the barrel of flour, at the bed and table and it looked like a palace. As fast as she could, she ran back to get the children. She got the stove going, made some hot t
ea, and put on the rabbit she found hanging up to start a stew. She tucked Bliss in the bed, wrapped in warm quilts.

  Within a few days her cough and fever had completely gone. As soon as Bliss was well enough to be left Libby wrote a letter to the man’s widow and took it into town. She also took the gold with her to the Wells Fargo office to have the gold sent back to the widow. It came to almost a thousand dollars. As it was being weighed, Libby watched wistfully, thinking what she could have done with so much wealth. But on the way back she decided a cabin was even better than a fortune. She now had a place of her own that would keep out storms, that nobody could take away from her.

  After the tent, the cabin seemed like a palace. The bed was only strips of rawhide nailed to a frame and way too small for the three of them, but it had a mattress stuffed with pine needles and it was off the wet ground. They managed with the two girls snuggled at one end and Libby at the other. The table kept the food away from ants and rats and there was even one high shelf behind the stove where the miner had stored his most prized possessions like tobacco, ammunition, coffee, tea, and sugar. His rifle hung on a hook on the wall. Best of all, there was some dry wood and the stove gave out steady heat. Libby joined the canvas from their former tent to rainproof the last two walls and stood looking around her in delight.

  “Our own home at last,” she said.

  “Are we going to live here forever?” Eden asked suspiciously. “What about Papa?”

  “We’ll find him,” Libby said, “but we can’t travel during the bad weather. We’ll be snug here.”

  “I want to go home to Grandma and Grandpa,” Bliss said suddenly, sitting up in the bed. Her face was still red and blotchy but the deep cough on her chest had improved with hot broth. “I miss my toys. We don’t have any toys here. And I want ice cream again. I want to go home.” Her little lip quivered.

  Libby felt like crying too. She wanted to say that she agreed completely with Bliss—she missed her own things and the good food and, above all, the company of people she felt at home with. She knew how to make small talk at dinner parties. She knew that wherever she went in Boston she would be treated with respect. Here, she was never sure from day to day. The miners were polite enough to her at the moment because they still thought she was Hugh’s wife, but just how long would they go on being polite if no Hugh showed up? As she sat warming her hands in front of the stove she considered seriously for the first time that she might never see him again and was embarrassed that she did not feel an overwhelming sense of loss and desolation. She would miss him, of course, but her main emotion was the empty fear of having nothing and nobody.

  She stood up and went over to Bliss, giving her a beaming smile. “We’ll find Papa and be home and safe before you know it,” she said. “Remember that big house in England I told you about—the one waiting for Papa? We’ll be going there and choosing ponies for you girls and a nursery full of toys.”

  “Can there be a dollhouse?” Bliss asked, her eyes lighting up.

  “Definitely a dollhouse,” Libby said.

  When she had cleared away the evening meal that night, Libby sat down to sew. She was in the middle of making the girls dresses, but she put that aside and got out the scraps of calico and gingham to make into two crude dolls. She realized that at the moment some things were more important than looking neat and clean.

  The dolls were a big success, although nobody could say that they looked beautiful. Bliss named hers Annabel, after her favorite doll at home, and took it everywhere with her, dangling by one hand. Consequently, hers soon got very dirty, while Eden’s, tucked into the bed during the day, remained pristine. Bliss didn’t seem to mind. She was happy and she was well again and it warmed Libby’s heart to watch her scampering through the woodland. She worried more about Eden. Eden never said much and never gave away what she was feeling, but Libby could tell the child worried about their future by the occasional questions she asked and the way she bit her lip at the answers Libby gave.

  “What will you do if there’s no more washing?” she asked Libby. “How will we eat?”

  “We’ll manage,” Libby said. “There’s a barrel of flour in the cabin and plenty of beans.”

  Eden made a face. “I hate beans,” she said.

  “I’m not very fond of them myself,” Libby agreed, “but they are better than starving. We’ll have to try and get some meat. Maybe I could shoot a rabbit.”

  “Shoot a little rabbit?” Eden asked in horror. “You couldn’t shoot a nice furry little rabbit, could you?”

  “If we have to, we have to,” Libby said. “We need meat, Eden.”

  “I’ll eat beans then,” Eden said stubbornly.

  Libby considered the possibility of hunting for their food as they walked down to the creek for water together. They often saw wildlife in the woods—ground squirrels and doves and quail and rabbits, also the occasional deer, although the deer had become very wary of humans and their guns. Would she have the nerve to shoot them? she wondered. Then she knew she would if her children were starving. It would be just another thing she would have to do to be added to the list of things she never dreamed she was capable of doing.

  October became November. In between rainstorms the weather was mild and beautiful. It seemed that the moment a storm passed by, the sun came out like the middle of summer and even in November it was warm and pleasant. It even became too hot inside the cabin with the stove going, so Libby rolled back the canvas front of the cabin to let in the fresh air and prepared her food in the open.

  One afternoon Eden had been out alone and came running back to Libby excitedly. “Mama, I found berries. Are they good to eat? They look good.”

  “You didn’t taste any, did you?” Libby asked, hurrying over to see what Eden held in her hand.

  “Not until you told me they were all right,” Eden said.

  She held up her hand and Libby relaxed. “Why, they’re blackberries,” she said. “You must have found a late bush. Are there more?”

  “Lots more,” Eden said.

  Libby went to get a pail. “Come on, show me where you found them,” she said. “We can make a lovely pie. Much better than beans.” She slipped her hand around her daughter’s shoulder and Eden grinned up at her.

  An hour or so later the pie stood cooling on the table, sending out a wonderful aroma. The smell must have wafted down the trail on the light breeze because it wasn’t long before a miner came stomping up the path, pausing and scratching his head in wonder when he saw the pie.

  “You just bake that, missus?” he asked.

  Libby nodded.

  “What’s in it?”

  “Blackberries,” Libby said.

  “I’ll give ya this nugget for it,” he said, holding out a sizeable lump of gold in his hand. “It’s about an ounce.”

  “You want to give me that for a pie?” Libby asked in amazement.

  “It’s worth it to me,” the miner said. “My wife used to bake the best pies and I’m mighty homesick for a good one.”

  “Then it’s yours,” Libby said. Still rather dazed, Libby handed him the pie with instructions to bring back the plate. She put the nugget in her pocket.

  “Mama, you sold our pie,” Bliss complained.

  “She made a lot of money, Bliss,” Eden said. “The man gave her a lump of gold. Now we’re rich, right Mama?”

  “Not rich,” Libby said, “but we’ve a little money now, and you know what? We’re going hunting for all the blackberries we can find and were going to bake as many pies as we can.”

  They only managed to find enough blackberries for four more pies, but Libby sold them all with ease and went into town to get the gold weighed. It came to almost five ounces and Libby came out of Wells Fargo with seventy-five dollars in her pocket. She looked for the familiar tent at the end of town and was told that Mr. Hopkins had sold all his supplies and gone down to San Francisco to get more.

  So he’s already on stage two of his plan, Libby thought, hap
py for him, but missing the one friendly face she could count on. A big new wooden building was going up along what had become a main street, not draped with calico and canvas but with thick log walls and a sturdy porch. Libby paused to look at it as she passed.

  “I see someone struck it rich,” she commented to a man who was working on it.

  “Going to be the biggest hotel in the whole gold country,” the man said. “This guy’s supposed to be rolling in money.”

  “Lucky for him,” Libby said. She went into the German’s grocery store, trying to decide what supplies would give her best value for her money.

  “Still no vegetables?” she asked.

  Herr Otto shook his head. “Only potatoes right now. The mules can’t get up from Sacramento anymore. The roads are too bad.”

  “And the potatoes are still the same old ones at a dollar each, I suppose?” Libby asked.

  “The same.”

  Gradually, an idea was forming in Libby’s mind: a picture of sprouting potatoes.

  “Give me fifty,” she said.

  “You want fifty potatoes?” the man asked. “You got the money?”

  Libby put down fifty dollars on the counter and carried her potatoes home in triumph.

  “Yippee! Potatoes,” Bliss said when she saw them. “Can we have them baked with butter on them?”

  “Not these potatoes,” Libby said. “I’ve got something else in mind for them.” She started cutting them into pieces, around each sprout. The children watched, mystified. Then she took the spade and worked solidly all afternoon, turning over the soft sandy soil in front of the cabin.

  When the children saw what she was going to do, they were horrified.

  “Don’t plant our potatoes, Mama. We want to eat them.”

  “What will we have to eat if you put them in the ground?”

  “Maybe we can spare just one to eat now,” Libby said, softening. “If this works out well, we’ll never have to worry about food again.”

  CHAPTER 19

  THE THOUGHT OF potatoes growing outside her door lifted Libby’s depression and gave her something to aim for again. She knew nothing about planting things, but she dimly remembered, back in her very early childhood, hanging around the gardener at her grandmother’s big estate.