Summers, True

by Poppy

Guided by the address on Jack's last letter, Injun Gulch, she and Andy had left the stagecoach at what the driver assured them was the nearest stop with a decent hotel where a lady could stay. She had found a man riding to Injun Gulch and sent a message. Jack had turned up two days later with borrowed horses. She had barely glimpsed the town as they rode past on their way to the diggings, and she had had no reason to go there since.

  She only knew it was a town. In a town, she could somehow support herself and Andy. She had no doubts about that. Or if Jack did not have his heart set on Grass Valley and wanted to return to these diggings in the spring, his remark about game had given her an idea. She had the little derringer Maurice had given her.

  It was a beautiful little object, the butt elaborately inlaid with silver. Surely it could be sold for the value of a shotgun. If Jack shot the meat and she had a place to cook and serve meals, they might do very well in Injun Gulch through the winter. If Jack had his heart set on Grass Valley, wherever that place was, would he be satisfied to see them settled in Injun Gulch and go off alone? A man on his own could travel on almost nothing if he must.

  As if he sensed what she had on her mind and did not want to discuss it, Jack avoided her. He worked down in the creek all day, ate hastily, and then either drifted off to another camp until she was asleep or went to bed immediately himself. The days passed, and Poppy did not see him alone for five minutes.

  That only made her more determined. The nights were icy, and the days were growing short. They ate breakfast and dinner now by firelight.

  One afternoon, Poppy went up the hill to a spot where she could see all up and down the creek. The men stood knee-deep in the stream patiently shifting the gravel and water to separate out the few grains of bright gold. Some used a pan, slowly working it back and forth, and if they washed twenty pans a day, that meant hard, steady work. Far to the left she could see the spot where Jack and Andy had built themselves a wooden cradle. Andy carried the buckets of water and gravel and poured them into the cradle.

  Jack, because he had the greater strength, judgment, and patience, carefully turned the handle of the cradle, swishing the water back and forth until the water and sands floated off leaving the heavier gold behind. At the other end of the valley where the stream made a sharp bend, the three men who had merged their claims into one long stretch were still working on the sluice. They had dug a narrow ditch to divert the water down it and were carefully riffling the bottom so it would catch the gold as the water flowed over and through the sluice to rejoin the stream farther down.

  Those three would stay here through the winter, Poppy knew, and when the spring floods carried the gold down from the heights above, they would reap their reward. She wondered about the others. Whether they were using cradles or pans, they were lucky if they brought in a dollar a day now. Jack would have had trouble paying for supplies the last time he went to town if he had not, idly digging with his knife at the base of a rock on the edge of the stream, dug out a thirty-dollar nugget. But there were no more, and that was the only sizable nugget he had ever found.

  Evenings now, Andy came in with his lips and nails blue with cold and shivered over the fire for an hour before he was warm. Poppy put on a jacket and wrapped up in the hooded cape under her blanket and still woke whimpering with the cold. They could not stay the winter here.

  Thinking of winter made Poppy feel old and grim. The men admitted a few had died here last year of the scurvy hut said it would not happen again now that they knew to eat raw potatoes and drink spruce tea. Nobody mentioned pneumonia, and she thought that spoke louder than anything they could have said. That was last winter. Whoever suffered and died here this winter, it was not going to be one of hers. Before the weekend, she was going to talk to Jack.

  Meanwhile they needed every penny, and she must earn her share. Every man along Injun Creek knew if he wanted his other shirt washed by Poppy, he must get it to her by Wednesday morning so she could wash it on Wednesday to let it dry on Thursday. Then, on Friday, he could pick it up, giving her a dollar or a pinch of dust, whichever was handy. It was ready to wear to town on Saturday.

  When she first arrived, found the big kettle on an abandoned claim downstream, and saw it could be used for washing, every man up and down Injun Creek whooped with delight and offered to help. They hauled the kettle up for her. They dug the fire hole and settled the stones. They told her how to make soap by boiling grease and lye together, and faithfully saved and brought her their bacon drippings. Someone gave her a 'bag of lye, too. They stood around and watched admiringly while she cooked up the foul mixture, gagging at the stink, and poured it into pans to cool. They found a part of the creek nobody was working and pointed it out to her. Then they watched while she carried their dirty shirts down there, weighted them with rocks and left them for the running water to wash away ,the lice and fleas and the heaviest part of the dirt.

  They watched while she carried bucket after bucket from the shallow well they had dug ten feet back from the stream and filled the big washing kettle. If they were around, they would build the fire under the kettle with the wood Andy and Jack kept stacked by the lean-to. Apparently that was men's work. But carrying the heavy, wet shirts from the stream was women's work again and so was stirring them with a long pole while they boiled.

  That was the part Poppy hated the worst. The last laundress over at Injun Gulch, everybody told her ,had coughed something terrible for months and finally died of a congestion of the lungs last winter. Poppy believed them. The big kettle gurgled and steamed with a sour, nauseating odor. Using both hands on the pole, Poppy thrust her whole body back and forth to stir the heavy mass of shirts. The rising steam filled with fatty vapor stung her eyes and made her choke. Then when the water cooled and she managed to tilt the heavy iron kettle enough to pour it out, the splashing water drenched her feet and skirts.

  By the time she carried the wet shirts down to the stream to rinse them and then carried them back to hang on tree limbs to dry, she was soaked to the skin and perspiring as well. She was just lucky she had a complete change of dry clothes and could get into them quickly, though she usually was so tired on wash nights that she only pretended to eat.

  Still that brought in fifteen dollars every week. Fifteen dollars bought flour, coffee, and beans, with sometimes a little left to put by in the poke.

  On this Thursday afternoon, it started to rain. Poppy ran, grabbed the still-damp shirts off the trees, got the long pole, and draped them somehow inside the tent. When Jack and Andy came up from the stream, she was in the lean-to, protected from the steady, pounding downpour.

  "Come in here," she called. "The shirts are drying in the tent. And we'll eat cold beans unless somebody wants to try to build a fire and cook in the rain."

  Andy huddled against her, shivering. "The men say once this starts it can go on for weeks and months."

  "Not quite that bad," Poppy soothed, handing him a towel. "But this is the end of our regular wash money."

  "I shouldn't have let you do it anyhow," Jack muttered.

  "So it's over." Poppy was cool now that she had him at last. "Jack, could we all go in to Injun Gulch this Saturday?"

  "Fifteen miles there. Fifteen miles back."

  "Just fifteen miles there," Poppy said.

  Jack made a long, shuddering sound, half sigh, half groan. "You're right. We can't spend the winter here. I didn't realize until now, this rain. It's like being under-water."

  "What kind of a town is Injun Gulch?"

  "Growing. Seems to be at least one new building every time I go there. Why?"

  "Do they have a place that serves good meals?"

  "There's a hotel. Two stories. I haven't eaten there."

  "If I cooked and you hunted-" Poppy began.

  "With bows and arrows?"

  Poppy did not know what Jack would say if he knew she had the derringer. A lady might handle a sporting gun at an English shoot, but a pocket gun was different. He might be shocked, and she wou
ld not risk losing it. "If you had a gun?"

  "I might get a few dollars for the kettle and the chest and the things we can't carry," Jack admitted. "

  You mean we're leaving, going to live in Injun Gulch?" Andy demanded. Jack hesitated.

  "I didn't say that."

  "Can I ride with Dutch again? Who will Poppy ride with?"

  "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride," Jack said harshly.

  Poppy winced inwardly. Jack was hating himself, feeling a failure again. "Jack enjoys a walk," she said with forced cheerfulness. "I'll do some hinting when the men get their shirts. Tanner's old plow horse could carry two easily."

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Poppy sat on one of the two wooden rockers on if the porch of the hotel in Injun Gulch and appreciated she had been given the best the town had to offer. She concentrated on behaving with all the decorum that honor merited.

  Maurice had chosen well when he packed the portmanteau, and she had kept the black and white suit untouched while everything else was worn to rags. So she sat demurely, skirt well spread to hide her torn, roughly cobbled shoes. Mitts hid her reddened hands, and the green satin bonnet, too elaborate but the only one Maurice had managed to cram in, was tied closely to hide the sun streaks in her bright hair.

  Injun Gulch was bigger than she had guessed from her one glimpse of it. Injun Creek cut deep in a horse-shoe curve on three sides, and the town was built on the enclosed flat pancake of land with a small range of hills at the back. A high, narrow bridge with only cords for railings crossed the creek. Poppy had been relieved when the men from the diggings had not tried to force their horses across that bridge but had ridden through the shallow water to the livery stable and stockyard at the water's edge beside the bridge. From there, they had pointed out the hotel.

  Since it was so early in the day, the serious gambling and heavy drinking would not start yet, so she told Andy he might stay with Dutch if Dutch did not mind. Then she had walked across the square with its one old straggly oak and two spindly pines to the hotel, and asked if she might wait there for her brother, and had been given this place of honor.

  Now again she felt like a Christmas tree ornament. Or perhaps like the tree itself, on the night before Christmas, with all the children tiptoeing down the stairs to try to get a secret look before they were discovered and hurried back to bed.

  Muffled footsteps sounded at the hotel windows behind her, and she knew men, and probably women too, were coming in the back door and peering out at her. All around the square she could see men walking slowly from one building to the next, and their faces were always turned toward her. The yards of every one of the few houses required the mistress's attention too this morning, to hang something on a line or inspect individually each of the few straggling flowers around the doorstep.

  Poppy forced herself to sit quietly, as if unaware. Inwardly trepidation gnawed at her. Jack was late, hours late. He had started long before them and should have been here when they arrived. He was not, and none of the men riding into town for Saturday necessities had brought her a message.

  She told herself any of a dozen things could have happened. Jack could have come across a camp with sickness and stopped to help. He could have found a likely place to run a few pans and been unable to resist. At worst, he might have twisted an ankle and be able to walk only slowly. Lateness did not spell tragedy. No.

  Meanwhile if Injun Gulch could look at her, she would look at Injun Gulch. The church stood centered with its back to the hills, the cemetery on one side and the parsonage on the other. Another small cottage, a pretty place with a small porch and a peaked roof, stood beyond that. The hotel with half a dozen houses straggling out behind it stood alone on this side of the square. Opposite it, at the foot of the bridge, was the row of stores and businesses.

  She counted them over carefully. The one with the sign Groceries and Provisions was only one story, so the owners must live in the rear, but the bakery was two stories with living quarters above.

  The general store looked as if it had offices above it. The unpainted shack next to it had two front windows with Assayer on one and City Hall on the other. The sprawling, rickety building with the sign Theater painted across its false front was plainly a combination fandango parlor and bar with rooms above. She looked again and saw there was another bar, the kind that would have gambling tables, there at the foot of the bridge.

  The hotel served meals. Somebody in one of those houses must take in laundry. Probably at least one of the women did sewing and mending.

  The town seemed complete, and it was a sizable place. Poppy tilted her chin. She would like to see what kind of meal the hotel served. She thought she could do better, especially if Jack hunted for the meat. She wondered if anybody kept chickens. Or raised vegetables-the ground looked as if it could grow some things if they were well watered. Surely she could make a place for herself here.

  A couple of dozen horses were tied to the railing on the business side of town. By noon, there could be fifty. Those men, after they bought their supplies and before they started drinking and gambling their money away, surely would enjoy a home-cooked lunch served by a pretty woman. If she could hold the price at less than the hotel cost-Poppy nodded approval, yes. And if only Jack could see it.

  She looked around uneasily again and saw Andy running across the square toward her. Jack must have arrived, and she had missed seeing him.

  Andy clung to the arm of the rocker and said, ''Dutch wanted to make sure he got a girl while he still had the money, and they don't let boys upstairs. So he sent me back to you. He says he won't be long."

  Poppy swallowed hard. She could add another national type to her list. Germans were direct and plain-spoken. "Has anybody seen Jack?"

  "Dutch thinks he walked around to have a word with that man who had a letter from Grass Valley."

  "That sounds probable."

  "I'm hungry," Andy said and promptly looked guilty.

  "I can spare a dollar," Poppy assured him. "In fact, you can help. I don't want to go in and order a whole meal here, that might cost five dollars, but I would like to know what kind of food they serve and what it costs."

  Andy's eyes sparkled with understanding. "The men are eating cheese and crackers in the general store, and they'd sure like it if they could have a cup of coffee, with it. They said the hotel's expensive."

  "That's what I wanted to know."

  "I'll find out and come back and tell you," Andy promised and scurried inside.

  Grass Valley. Where was Grass Valley? How could they get there, with no horse, no money for stagecoach fare, nothing? Fifty miles they might walk. But what was this Grass Valley? Was it just camps and diggings, like theirs up the creek, or a town like Injun Gulch?

  Gold fever was madness, madness. So she must stay calm. If she got herself in a frenzy before she even knew what Jack had on his mind or what he was planning, she could do nothing. She would stay calm.

  She could hear Andy's piping tones and men's deeper voices inside the hotel. Youngsters were rare enough here that it was likely the men were buying him everything in sight and he was stuffing it down as only a growing boy could do.

  She listened again and frowned. Andy's voice was too shrill. He was getting overexcited.

  He had been up long before his usual hour, stirring up the cookfire, calling them to wake and get dressed so the men would not leave them behind, then hopping from one foot to the other, unable to eat, half sick with excitement. Poppy thought it was pitiful. They had sold a few things and packed a few to take with them. They were breaking camp, but Andy had taken leave of places before with scarcely a lift of the eyebrow. He had traveled half around the world, lived in great cities, London, Paris, San Francisco, but here at the diggings he had been so isolated and alone that a trip to Injun Gulch had him almost hysterical. This life was hard and unsettling on men; Andy needed a normal boyhood. But she had said nothing, and the ride had quieted him.

  Now his
voice was again loud and shrill, working up to a shriek, followed by whoops of laughter, high and cracking, above the deeper rumble of men's mirth.

  "Andy," Poppy called sharply. "Andy. Come here. This minute."

  He came running, face purple with laughter, puffing out uncontrollable whoop after whoop. "

  Tell me what you find so comical," Poppy commanded.

  "It's-" Andy began, whooped and held his sides and fought for breath, "-it's on the bridge there."

  "What happened on the bridge?" Poppy asked, voice fiat.

  "Do you know that Chinese are white men?" Andy asked and whooped again until he collapsed in the other rocker holding his sides, whooping and writhing helplessly.

  "Is he all right, ma'am?" a deep voice asked anxiously from the doorway.

  "Just leave him alone, and he'll quiet down."

  "Is he often taken like this?"

  Poppy stiffened indignantly. "He's not taken," she said. "Didn't you ever get the giggles, say in church, when you were a child?"