by Fools Gold
“Make people wait for them,” he said. “Too many at once not valuable. Then price go down.”
Rumor of the potatoes spread through the camps and Libby no longer had to go out peddling them. She sold them as fast as they came out of the ground and she set Ah Fong as guard at night, just in case any miner decided to help himself rather than pay her dollar apiece. As it was, nobody seemed to object to the high price. They were so much fresher and more appealing than the tired, moldy objects down at the store that the miners were delighted with them.
“You got any more vegetables, missus?” they asked. “We’ve been without decent vegetables all winter.”
“I’ll have some soon,” she said. “I’m going to be planting summer crops.”
She hurried over to Ah Fong. “What would grow fast and easily in this soil and this climate?” she asked.
“Melon,” he said. “They grow like weed, and squash, and onion. Onion grow real good and easy.”
“I’ll see what I can find,” Libby said. “I’ll get Mark Hopkins to look around for me and find out where I can get seeds.”
“Maybe Chinese get you seeds,” Ah Fong said. “Chinese grow own gardens, have seeds too.”
Ah Fong’s enquiries came up with some watermelon seeds and some mung beans, which he said she could sprout on a piece of flannel and eat after a few days. Encouraged by this, she tried sprouting some of her own dried beans and soon had a row of beans growing in her vegetable patch. Mark Hopkins came back to report that most of the vegetables down in San Francisco still came from Chile but that a broker in Sacramento might be of some use to her.
“I’m going to find new things to plant, Ah Fong,” she announced as she returned to the cabin. “Mr. Hopkins thinks I might be able to buy seeds or little plants in Sacramento.”
“You get more plants you need more land,” Ah Fong said. “No sense buying just a few plants. Get many, get rich quick.”
“Where do I get more land?” she asked. “We’ve almost reached the edge of the clearing.”
“Dig up around cabin,” he said as if it were a stupid question. “What you need grass out in front for? I get ready for you while you gone.”
Then she took all her profits from the potatoes and went down to Sacramento.
Sacramento was like a gold town, only larger. It had grown into a large city, set out in ambitious square city blocks but still half tent, half wood, busy and bustling, incredibly smelly and dirty. Evidence of the winter floods was still marked by the black line halfway up the canvas walls and by the evil-smelling mud in the streets. The wharf was full of ships, from big river steamers to Little sailing craft, all unloading and adding to the enormous piles of every kind of provision already stacked in the open air. Obviously, some of the perishable foods had not been sold soon enough and flies were settling on slabs of green bacon and mounds of rotting peaches and spoiled fish. Mosquitoes were everywhere. Libby felt her stomach turn as she picked her way over thick debris to find the food broker.
She found that he was one of the few who had managed to build a warehouse for his goods, in the hope of keeping them from spoiling. He did not seem to be succeeding in this because the temperature inside the big wooden hall was just as hot as it was outside. The air was fetid with the smell of rotting fruit.
“Seeds you want?” he asked Libby. “I don’t have any seeds to sell, but I can let you have some corn. That would grow well here and I’ve some squash that are too big and old to sell now. You can take the seeds from them if you like . . . and these strawberries are just rotting on me. See if you can get new plants from them.”
Libby bought those and a variety of dried beans and peas, to see which of them could be coaxed back to life, plus all the onions he had. Then, because she still had money to spare, she bought two sacks of flour and a box each of apples and peaches, remembering how easily she had sold the pies last fall. She was just paying him when the heat and the smell seemed to overpower her. Perspiration started to run down her forehead and she felt clammy all over. Saliva welled up in her mouth. The walls started to sway around and the next thing she knew, she was lying on the floor with several worried faces bending over her.
“You all right, missus?” a young man asked.
“I think so,” Libby said. “It’s just so hot in here.”
“You’d best go lie down in a cool room,” the older man said. “There’s a lot of fever going around. They say there’s cholera and typhoid and smallpox too, after the floods.”
Libby sat up cautiously. “I think I’d rather get the stuff packed up and get out of here, back to the hills,” she said. “I feel fine now.”
She bought a mule and had the sacks loaded onto it, then she set off, leading the mule behind her rented horse, not stopping until she was on rising ground again and could spend the night at a hotel above the plains.
All the time she journeyed, she worried about getting sick. Even though she was clear of the city, she still could not shake off the clammy, nauseated feeling she had had before she fainted.
I can’t have come so far to go down with a fever now, she told herself severely. Not now that we’ve almost made it. If these vegetables work out, I’ll grow more and more. Like Mark Hopkins, I can make a fortune. But I can’t afford to be sick.
Her stern pep talk seemed to be working, because she felt better as the air got cooler and by the time she rode up to the cabin the next day, she was feeling almost well again. Ah Fong greeted the vegetables with delight, showing her where they were going to plant the corn, where the squash was going to go, and how they had finished a new bed for the onions. They worked together, all five of them, all day to get everything planted. When they finished, by sunset, the little girls danced around with Ah Fong singing a nonsense song, “Planting all the melons, planting all the beans, planting all the good things, yum yum yum.”
Libby watched them with a weary smile.
“You’re tired,” Hugh said. “You’ve had a strenuous time. Now maybe you can take it easy until these crops grow.”
“I’ve got to keep on with the washing and baking in case they don’t,” Libby said with a sigh. She felt so tired that she could lie down and sleep for a week, and she still could not shake off the clamminess.
I’ve got to see the doctor in the morning, she decided. I can’t risk getting sick now. I can’t risk giving something to my family.
So in the morning she rode the new mule down to Hangtown, which was strange in itself, because usually she enjoyed the walk. The doctor greeted her civilly. “It’s good to meet in happier surroundings than before,” he said. “What seems to be the problem?”
Libby described how she had fainted in Sacramento and how she could not shake off the feeling. “I don’t want to find that I’ve got some terrible fever, Doctor. I have to know, because I don’t want to give it to anyone in my family.”
“Let’s take a look at you,” the doctor said. “If you had cholera, or typhoid, I think you’d know it by now. That’s not to say you haven’t caught a lesser fever. Every germ in the world breeds down in the swampy country by the river.”
He examined her briskly and efficiently. When she had dressed again, he motioned her to sit at his desk.
“You don’t seem to be running a fever right now,” he said. “Let me ask you one thing, when was your last menstrual period?”
“My what?” Libby asked, then blushed. “I’m not very regular, I’m afraid. I never have been.”
“But not within the last month?”
“I don’t think so,” Libby said.
The doctor nodded. “Then I think I have happier news for you than a fever,” he said with a smile, as if he were very pleased with himself.
Libby looked at him in disbelief. “Are you trying to tell me that I’m going to have a baby?”
“My dear young woman,” he said. “Does it come as such a surprise? You are reunited with your husband after a long time apart. What could be more natural?”
&nb
sp; “Nothing. Nothing at all,” Libby stammered.
The doctor held out his hand. “My congratulations,” he said. “I expect you’ll both be hoping for a boy this time, eh?”
“Yes,” Libby managed to say with a false smile on her face. “That would be very nice.”
She got to her feet. “Thank you very much, Doctor,” she said.
“I expect I’ll be seeing you about eight months from now, eh?” the doctor asked jovially.
No, Libby said to herself, hurriedly counting from March. About seven months from now.
CHAPTER 27
THE KNOWLEDGE THAT she was going to have Gabe’s child should have shocked Libby. Instead it elated her. She often put her hand to her belly, as if touching it was in some way touching part of Gabe. “Now I’ll always have something to remember you by,” she whispered.
When Libby told Hugh, a month later, he was equally delighted, if very amazed. Libby was glad that they had made love, albeit very tentatively, so that he did not question that the child was his.
“It will be a boy this time, I know it will,” he said happily. “Finally it looks as though everything is going to be fine, Libby. We’ve had a rough time but now our troubles are over.”
Libby smiled at the irony of his words. Everything in the world has mended except for my heart, she thought. The garden is flourishing, the children are flourishing, Hugh is recovering, and the baby is growing. I’m the only one who can’t flourish.
As the summer days grew longer and warmer, Libby spent a lot of time in the vegetable garden with Ah Fong. Hugh had forbidden her to take in any more washing as soon as he learned about the baby, and it really did look as if the garden was going to produce magnificently. In a month the corn had already grown into strong green shoots, the squash and melons were sturdy little plants, and the onions had begun to flower. They had already begun to sell Ah Fong’s bean sprouts, at first to very suspicious miners, then to repeat customers. Ah Fong looked after the garden as if it was his own child. He would not allow the tiniest weed to appear. He collected horse dung relentlessly and worked it into the soil. He dug irrigation ditches from a stream higher up the hill so that there was enough water flowing past the plants on hot dry days.
Libby’s pies were also very successful. Both hotels in town would buy as many as she could bake and often she sold her entire stock before she ever reached town.
“If only we had a bigger oven,” she complained to Hugh. “Maybe I’ll get a brick oven built outside when the profits come in from the summer crop.”
He put an arm around her protectively. “But Libby, darling, these vegetables and fruit are supposed to free you from slaving away. You don’t want to spend your life baking pies, do you?”
“I want to make sure we are never desperate again,” Libby said. “Vegetables are so precarious. One hailstorm would flatten them. One plague of rabbits would wipe us out. And my pies are selling so well. In this sort of place you grab what you can when you can.”
“But you have to remember your condition,” Hugh said. “You should be resting.”
She walked away from him. He perched on the edge of the bed, looking at her with concern.
“Libby, please take care of yourself,” he said. “You seem so different. So remote. Back in Boston you were always so gay, so carefree . . .”
“Things were slightly different back in Boston,” Libby said. “I didn’t have to worry every day that my family might starve.”
He came up behind her, putting his hands on her shoulders and kissing the back of her neck. “It will all be over soon,” he said. “If this crop works out as we think it will, then we’ll have enough to go to England. We’ll take that house my brother is offering and we’ll bring up the children as little aristocrats. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“That would be very nice,” Libby said politely.
“Isn’t it what you want, Libby?” he demanded.
She stared out through the open door at the dappled green of the hillside, sloping away to the leafy valley. “I don’t know what I want anymore,” she said. “I’m sure it will be fine in England.”
“But you don’t seem very happy,” he said. “Aren’t you happy about the baby?”
“Oh, yes,” she said with conviction. “I’m very happy about the baby.”
“That’s good,” he said. “I’m sure it will be a son this time. Look how big you are already and how high you carry him.” He put his arms around her, caressing her belly. Libby shivered. “Don’t,” she said and moved away. She caught a glimpse of his face and the hurt look in his eyes and she immediately felt guilty. She came across and took both his hands.
“I’m sorry, Hugh,” she said. “I know I’m moody these days. I suppose my nerves have been stretched too far for too long and I don’t know how to relax anymore.”
“But the end really is in sight, Libby. Soon this whole business will seem like a nightmare when we look back on it. We’ve just got to keep us all well and strong until we can book a passage to England.” He looked up as Ah Fong passed the front of the cabin, a hoe over his shoulder, singing a harsh Chinese song. “And we can take Ah Fong with us, if you’d like.”
“Where Ah Fong goes is up to him,” Libby said, “but I’ve been thinking about him. I think we should build him a better house. I’ll see about the timber when I’m in town. And we should finish off this place too. These canvas walls are delightful in summer, but I assure you that they are not so delightful when the wind whips through them.”
“You think we’ll be here another winter?” Hugh asked. “I was hoping this summer’s yield would be enough . . .”
“We have to plan for the worst,” Libby said. “It might not be wise to travel when the baby is due.”
“But we could be home by January if we left in September,” Hugh said.
“All the same, I don’t feel right about travelling in the last months,” Libby said warily. “What if I fell in a storm? I’d hate to give birth on board ship.”
“Whatever you want,” Hugh said warmly. “Whatever makes you happy.”
If only you knew, she thought and went back to her baking.
As the summer progressed the crops began to fulfill their promise. Under Ah Fong’s instruction, Libby became expert at looking for signs of bugs, picking strawberries at just the right moment, and recognizing weeds the moment they sprouted. Hugh’s leg was much stronger and he started making the deliveries, leading the mule with baskets full of beautiful produce strapped on either side. The miners could not buy enough of it and the hotels would take anything that was not snapped up on the way to town. By the middle of August Libby had two new log walls on the cabin and a real front door that could be bolted, Ah Fong had a little one-room house beside the vegetable patch and there was almost three thousand dollars in the bank. Hugh started making enquiries about ships sailing from San Francisco. Libby greeted the news of ships with a heavy heart. Part of her did not want to be trapped in this cabin for the rest of her life, but part of her could not bear to sail so far away from Gabe. She knew it was irrational to expect that she would ever see him again, but she could not face the finality of sailing to another continent. When she heard Hugh describing to the children the new life they would have and how they would go riding and learn to dance and be presented at court one day, Libby had to go outside and join Ah Fong pulling weeds among the vegetables.
The weather in August was so hot and dry that the wind felt like a blast from an oven. The little creek on the hillside dried up and they had to go down to the river with buckets to keep the gardens going. It became a morning ritual as all five of them stood in a bucket chain and passed the water up the slope to the plants. The first crops were now gathered and Libby looked speculatively at the bare earth where they had been, longing to put something in their place. But there was no point, if they were not going to be here for the harvest. She was feeling the heat very badly, the weight of the baby pressing against her too-tight dresses.
“I should get some gingham in the store and make myself something looser,” she said to Hugh.
“Don’t bother. We’ll have you something made properly at a dressmaker in San Francisco before we sail,” he said. “There are no proper fabrics up here. You can’t wear gingham when we get back to civilization.”
“I suppose not,” she said, “and I suppose I’ll have to go back to corsets again after the child is born.”
“And put your hair up,” Hugh said with a laugh. “You look about fifteen years old with it tied back like that.”
“It will be hard to adjust to the real world again,” Libby said. “There’s so much we’ve forgotten about.”
“Indeed there is,” Hugh said. “The girls’ table manners are quite appalling and their language! At least we’ll be able to work with them on the ship so that they are presentable by the time they meet my family.”
He started a campaign of instruction and criticism that both girls resented and fought against.
“You’ve let them run wild, Libby,” Hugh complained. Libby agreed this was probably true.
“It seemed more important to keep them well and happy,” she said. “There were so many times when we could have lost them . . . I wanted their childhood to be happy.”
“They don’t have to be unhappy just because I want them to eat with their mouths closed and not to tear at their food like animals,” Hugh said. “Sit up straight, Bliss. When you’re an English lady you’ll not be allowed to slouch.”
“I don’t like you,” Bliss said, scowling at him. “I liked Mr. Foster better. I wish he was our daddy.”
“Bliss!” Libby blurted out.
“Who is Mr. Foster?” Hugh asked in a clipped voice.
“He was a man who helped us along the trail,” Libby said quickly.
“He was very nice,” Eden added. “Mama liked to talk to him.”
“He still lives around here?”
“I’ve no idea where he is,” Libby said. She tried to sound uninterested, but Hugh must have caught something in her voice. He looked enquiringly. “A gentleman?”