by Liz Harris
‘It was the coil of rope. You let the car down by a rope. The rope’s coiled twice around the prop, and then whoever’s lettin’ the car down holds the loose end. That was Pa. Somehow or other his leg caught in the coil while he was lettin’ the car down, and it was trapped between the car and the prop. He’ll’ve bin careless ’cos he was tired.’
‘Your poor pa!’ Martha exclaimed. ‘That must’ve hurt real bad. He didn’t deserve that, whatever tomfool things he’s done in the past.’
‘Oh, it hurt all right. You should’ve heard him as they tried to free his leg. It fair broke my heart. Well, you saw how torn and mangled it was between his knee and his ankle. We didn’t need the doc to tell us his bones were broken in a dozen places.’ He paused. ‘You’re not to worry, Ma. Doc did a real good job of puttin’ his leg back together. Sure, Pa’s not a young man and his bones won’t knit as readily as they would in a younger man, but you heard the doc – he don’t think Pa’s gonna lose his leg.’
‘It’ll be awhile afore he can walk on it, though, and I’m guessin’ he’ll never be able to go down the mine again,’ Martha said. ‘He may not have liked minin’, but I reckon he’ll like bein’ helpless even less, and watchin’ you earn and not him. And what about our house?’ She sat up sharply. ‘Without his money, it’ll be harder to pay the rent and with your pa not workin’ in the mines, the company might throw us out. What’ll we do then?’
‘You can rest easy about the money, Ma. I’m gonna work extra hard to make up for what Pa’s not able to bring in. And there are no worries about the house – I’m in the mines, too, aren’t I, so we’re entitled to a house.’
She gave him a tired smile. ‘You’re a good son, Sam, and I’m grateful to you, but I don’t want the next mangled leg to be yours. You might not be as lucky as your pa about keepin’ it. And I’d forgotten when I spoke that we’ve got Joe’s money now, and that means we’ll manage.’
Charity leaned forward, her eyes hopeful. ‘You know the herb store next to the laundry, the one run by a Chinese doctor? All the Chinamen go there when they’re ill. I could ask Chen Fai to get us some herbs that’d make bad legs better. I reckon they’d have herbs for that – they’ve got them for everythin’ you can think of.’
Sam thumped the wooden table in anger. ‘Don’t you let Chinaman Doc near him, or any of his so-called medicine. If it wasn’t for those heathen rice-eaters, Pa would be goin’ down the mine tomorrow, not lyin’ sick in bed.’
‘I don’t know, Sam,’ Martha said slowly. ‘It might be worth a try. I’m thinkin’ of that time when Caroline Oakland’s baby wouldn’t stop cryin’. It cried for more than two days – we could hear it through the walls – and she became real fearful for it. Jeb got the white doc in and the doc said the baby would settle down. But it kept right on cryin’. Real early on the third mornin’, Jeb had had enough and he sent for Chinaman Doc. The Chinaman went to the house, looked at the baby, said it was colic, rubbed a kind of peppermint oil around the baby’s mouth and navel, and it stopped cryin’ at once. He said the baby would be all right, and it was.’
‘What are you sayin’?’ Sam asked testily.
‘That if the Chinee have got somethin’ that’ll take away pain and ease your pa, then maybe we should ask for it.’
‘I ain’t askin’ them for anythin’,’ Sam said stubbornly. ‘And you ain’t either. What’s more, with what’s happenin’ in the mines, I’ve bin wonderin’ again lately why Charity’s still livin’ here. We’re a minin’ family and yet we’re—’
‘One moment, Sam,’ Martha said, hastily interrupting him. She turned to Charity. ‘We’ll need more water, gal. I want you to go to the well and fill four pails. You’ll find some pails by the door.’
Glancing nervously at Sam, Charity swiftly got up and went to the door. She picked up two of the pails, opened the door and went out.
Martha leaned forward. ‘Now you listen to me, Sam,’ she began. ‘Charity’s stayin’ with us.’
‘She isn’t really with us, though, is she? She’s always with her Chinese friends,’ he said, his voice a sneer. ‘I’m thinkin’ she’d do better to move in with them. The whites in the mines are wonderin’ aloud when I’m near them why the Walkers are puttin’ a roof over the head of one of the Chinee. They don’t like it. The Chinese are takin’ the food right out of our mouths, yet we’re givin’ food to one of them. It’s not right.’
‘We’re not givin’ Charity anythin’, as you put it,’ she said sharply. ‘She’s paid for her place in this house. She’s gone out and found work from the moment she could, and she hands over everythin’ she earns.’
Sam opened his mouth to speak. ‘But—’
Martha cut through him. ‘There’s no but, Sam. Apart from anythin’ else, three men make a lot of work, especially when two of them go down the mines, and many’s the time over the years I’ve been real grateful for her help. Are you suggestin’ that now, with your pa unable to lift a bucket to help me or himself, and with the extra chores caused by him bein’ ill, I should get rid of Charity and do all the work myself?’
Sam shifted in his seat. ‘I can see it wouldn’t be easy, but—’
‘Charity stays. She stays for reasons I already said, and she stays ’cos I promised Joe. The last thing he made me promise was that she’d always have a home with us. I’m gonna stick to my promise, and you’ll have to accept it.’
‘Joe’s bin gone a year. Things are changin’ real fast around here and it’s not like it used to be. There’s reason enough to forget such a promise.’
‘That so?’ she said, her tone sarcastic. ‘It’d be real good for Joe to quit his job, would it? He’d come home like a shot if he thought Charity wasn’t with us, and you know it. Is that what you really want – Joe back here, mad angry, and no longer able to give us much money? He’s doin’ a lot better where he is than he’d do at Culpepper’s. No, I reckon—’
The door opened and Charity came in, a heavy bucket in each of her hands. She put the buckets on to the floor in front of the sink, glanced from Sam to Martha, and went back to the door for the last pails.
‘I’ll fill these,’ she said, ‘and then do anythin’ else you’ve got.’ And she started to go through the doorway.
‘You do that, gal,’ Martha called after her. ‘And first thing tomorrow, you can go to the mercantile and ask Chen Fai to get us those herbs you were talkin’ about.’
Chapter Nineteen
Fifteen months later
July, 1880
Dear Charity,
Thank you for your letters – you can’t know how much I look forward to receiving them.
I’m sorry I’ve not written back for so long. It’s been a hard drive with little time for writing. By the time we’ve bedded the cattle at night and bunked down ourselves, we’re fair exhausted and we’ve still got a watch to do before sunup. Ethan once said I’d be so tired that I’d learn to fall asleep in the saddle while my horse kept right on circling around the herd, and he was right. But more about the drive later.
Firstly, I was mighty relieved to learn that Pa’s leg was doing well, but I’m sorry he’s out of sorts for much of the time. That’s not like him. I’m sure that when he accepts it’s better to walk with a stick than not walk at all, he’ll return to his old self.
You know I’m counting on you to tell me if you think I should come home, don’t you? The drive ends in about six weeks, and I’d planned to go up to Ogallala and work out the winter months on one of the ranches there, but I could return to Carter instead.
The way I figure it at the moment, though, is that Pa’s over the worst, and the money I’m sending home is more useful than me being there, an extra mouth for Ma to feed, more clothes to wash and all that. And I’m not sure what I could do that’s not already being done. I know you real well, Charity, and I know you’ll be doing everything you can to help with Pa.
But if you think I should come back, I’m sure I could work for Seth again. He always said
he’d find a place for me if I returned. I’m trusting you to tell me what’s best to do.
So to get back to the drive. Like I said, it’s a difficult drive, but on the whole I’m enjoying it. Riding sixteen to eighteen hours a day in the Texas heat isn’t easy, not for us and not for the cows. We do early and late drives to avoid the midday sun, and we often let the cattle lie down and rest for an hour or more, but even so, by mid-afternoon they’re restless. It’s hard on our horses, too, and we have to change mounts four times a day so they don’t get exhausted.
The terrain we’ve been crossing is also a challenge. One day we’re driving through a canyon, and the next across a low mountain range. It’s interesting land, but not easy for droving, and it certainly isn’t land I’d want to settle in. With the dry air and scorching sun, the earth’s as hot and tired as we are, and there’s dust everywhere. When you look back, you see clouds of dust for twenty miles. I’ve had to wear a bandanna over the lower part of my face for most of the drive.
As you can imagine, water’s a problem. Not long ago, we drove across a wide open mesa for days without finding so much as a single drop of water. A few times at first, we were able to dig a well, but our mounts got the water, not us. Washing was the first thing we gave up, despite the heat. I won’t describe what we smelt like, or how dirty we were.
After three days of no water, we began to be afear’d. The cattle wouldn’t graze any longer or lie down – they just wanted to move on. They were becoming harder to control, and started milling all over the place, not seeming to know where they were going. And they were lowing something awful. We’d never seen them like that, and then it hit us – they were going blind.
That shocked us to the core. We knew we had to get them to water real soon or they’d not get their sight back. We’d no idea how much further we’d have to go to find water, but we knew we’d passed a lake several days earlier, and we turned round and went back. After a couple of days, you could see from the way the cows started moving that instinct was telling them there was water ahead.
When they reached the lake, they waded in till the water covered their flanks, and just stood and moaned a while, drinking little. Then they came out and lay down, and then went back and drank some more. And when they’d done with the water, they grazed. Seeing them recover like that was a real good feeling. Needless to say, we took a different route out of there.
We’ve seen Indians, but as I told you we’d be crossing Indian Territory, that won’t be a surprise. The boss paid the local tribes a toll of ten cents a head for the right to cross their land, and we went through without any trouble.
One of the hardest things we’ve had to do so far was get the cattle across a large creek. I know that doesn’t sound that hard, but remember we’re driving half-wild Texas Longhorn cattle, and they can be real contrary and stampede at nothing. Also they’re stubborn beasts.
We’d got them across two large rivers and a number of small creeks, and each crossing had gone okay, except for the last small creek when they’d got a bit bogged down. Not long after being mired like that, we reached a large creek, and they must have remembered what happened before because the moment they put their hoofs on the soft earth at the water’s edge, that was as far as they would go.
It took us almost three whole days to get them across. But by the end of those days, I’d picked up a skill I’d never expected to learn on a drive, and it could come in real useful in the future.
Because we just couldn’t get the cows into the water, and because there was a slight risk of them getting mired again, the boss said we’d have to make a bridge. No one had heard of that happening before, and we thought we’d never be able to build one. But we did.
We got a load of brush from the trees and piled it from one side of the creek to the other to make a foundation. Then we cut down cottonwood logs, put them on top of the brush, filled every chink and gap with sod and dirt and pounded it down real hard. And we had a mighty fine bridge.
But the cattle had never seen a bridge before, and refused point blank to go over it. The remuda crossed without a problem, but not those cows. In the end, we gave up for the day, settled down for the night and let the cattle graze. We figured that if we waited till the sun was high the following day, the cows would be well grazed and sleepy, and they’d just walk across.
We figured without their stubbornness, and we had to spend another night on the wrong side of the river.
It was looking as if we were going to be spending a third night there, when one of the drovers had a bang-up idea. He suggested finding a cow and a calf, roping the calf around its neck and pulling it on to the bridge. If we dragged it across the bridge, he said, and tightened the rope all the time, it’d keep on bellowing, and nothing stirs range cattle as much as the bellowing of a calf, so the cow and the rest of the herd would surely go after it.
It worked. They were so eager to get to the calf they didn’t know if they were walking on a bridge or on land.
Building that bridge taught me how to build a house, if ever I wanted, or at least a soddie. But like I said before, I won’t be building it in Texas or in Indian Territory. They aren’t the sort of places I want to live. It’s still green fields and rolling hills for me.
You’ve probably guessed I’m seriously thinking about setting up a ranch of my own one day. But not for a while – I’ve more things to learn, and I’ll need more money than I’ve got at the moment. But that’s the way my thoughts are going.
I’d better stop now. It’s almost time for my watch. Ethan and I are on the first watch tonight.
But before I finish, I just want to say I’m glad that Chen Sing is letting you carry on going to their home. I’d been worried that when he got back from China, he might stop you visiting, but not so, I see. Their ways are different from ours, but they seem good people, and Chen Fai has shown himself to be a good friend to you. I’ve not forgotten that thing about your ma’s grave.
I feel sorry for him having to take a woman he doesn’t know for a wife. I wouldn’t like that at all.
Don’t ever stop writing to me, Charity, will you? Your letters make me feel close to home, and I’m interested in everything you say about the Chinese way of doing things. I should tell you more often than I do that I get a real warm feeling when the boss hands me a letter from you.
But it’s not just getting news from home that makes me appreciate your letters – it’s more than that. You know I’ve always felt a person should have friends. Seth Culpepper’s my friend. So is Ethan Grey. And so are you, Charity. You’re a very special friend. I can talk to you about anything and everything, and I know you’ll listen.
I hope you’ll always feel you can say the same about me.
Your good friend,
Joe
Chapter Twenty
Two years later
July, 1882
Charity paused in her reading aloud and glanced across at Hiram. He’d leaned forward in his chair and was staring ahead in the direction of the river.
‘You want me to stop readin’ now?’ she asked, making a move as if to fold up the newspaper.
He didn’t reply.
‘I’ll stop if you want,’ she repeated.
There was still no reply.
She glanced down at The Carter Miner and bit her lip, wondering whether to continue. ‘What’re you thinkin’ about?’ she asked after a few minutes’ silence.
‘What I’m always thinkin’ about is that I shoulda kept pannin’,’ he said, his eyes fixed on the view in front of him. ‘If I had, I might’ve been walkin’ tall like a man, not bent over and leanin’ on a stick, about to start a job that’s usually done by boys, which will hardly give me enough to put food into the mouths of my family.’
‘No, you wouldn’t,’ Martha called out to them, coming to the open doorway. ‘You’d’ve been dead in the ground and so would we,’ she said, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘You weren’t ever gonna find gold in that water, Hiram, and you kn
ow it. Because you knew it and because you’re a good man, you stepped into the cage and went down the shaft.’
‘Maybe,’ he said.
‘There’s no maybe about it,’ she said bluntly. ‘If he’s stopped listenin’ to what’s in the paper, Charity, you might as well take it back to the superintendent.’ She went back into the house.
‘I’ve not finished listenin’, woman,’ Hiram called after her. The front door closed. He turned to look at the view ahead. ‘I was just thinkin’,’ he said. ‘Not just about pannin’, but about those mountains there.’
‘What about them?’ Charity asked.
‘When you’re deep under the ground from mornin’ to night, it’s easy to miss what’s around you. I always thought those crags across from Carter were just ugly grey rocks. But I bin lookin’ at them day after day while sittin’ here, and I now know that grey is only one of the colours. D’you know, gal, they go from grey to lilac in the mornin’, then they’re pink like a wild rose in the middle of the day, and then real green? And I never knew that till now. I can see why Joe took you there at times.’
‘I can’t remember much about it except standin’ on the rock and lookin’ out at the plain. Joe would point things out to me, and also things around Carter, but I can’t remember what they were.’ She paused. ‘I miss Joe bein’ around.’
He nodded. ‘Me, too.’
She glanced at Hiram, sudden hope in her eyes. ‘You think he’ll come back soon?’
He slowly shook his head. ‘Nope; I don’t. And it’s more help to us, him doin’ what he’s doin’ wherever that is. He was right about that. I don’t reckon he’ll be back for some time, if he comes back at all.’
Her hope faded. A lump rose in her throat, and she looked quickly down at the newspaper on her lap.
‘You don’t need him any more,’ he went on, glancing at her downcast profile. ‘You’ve got other friends now. That Chinese lot.’