by Penny Hayes
If the men didn't go away, they at least backed off, giving the ladies room to set up their camps. Two men put the oven together under Julia's watchful eye. It had been decided to leave it outside, thirty or so feet away from the tent for safety's sake. If it rained, there would be no baking. If it didn't, there would. As much as the oven meant to Julia, it would be sold in the fall, so rusting was of little concern to her. She promised the laborers the first pie for their efforts, and they raised a rumpus until Belle couldn't stand it anymore and walked over from her site to tell them to settle down or not bother coming back for their pie — or for her.
All that day the women worked. First they opened the boxes that held the tents. They had practiced pitching them last fall when they had come in from Ward's, and their experience now allowed them to raise the tents with a minimum of difficulty. The shelters were big and heavy and bulky, the thick canvas fighting their hands as they pulled and tugged on ropes, drawing the sides and tops taut, and lying the structures down to stakes driven deep into the ground with a sledge hammer that yanked at their back muscles with every swing.
They moved the rest of their belongings inside, first opening boxes outdoors, then packing their contents within. It would be days before they were completely organized, and they fought off waves of depression as they became more and more tired and the long day wore on, as the sun dipped closer and closer to the horizon.
They moved between each other's tenting areas, helping one another and offering words of encouragement. It was three o'clock before Belle's shelter was up and her things stashed away. Compared to Margarita's and Julia's tent, Belle's took no time at all to make ready; her furniture was crates and boxes, her bed a single wide cot. There were piles of sheets and blankets — she knew she would need plenty of those.
At five, Margarita and Julia were finished, and flopped down on two of the empty crates littering the surrounding area. The sound of both their stomachs rumbling simultaneously sent them into peals of near hysterical laughter. "I think we'd better eat," Margarita suggested, wiping away tears. "I believe we are completely exhausted."
"Or mad," Julia added.
In thirty minutes all three relaxed before an open fire, eating beans, salted bacon, and boiled potatoes. Occasionally small knots of men would stop by to see how they were doing, offering helpful comments and suggestions and sharing a pot of fresh strong coffee.
By nine that night, beneath woolen blankets that kept them comfortably warm and snug, the women slept soundly on hard canvas cots.
Margarita awoke with a start. She didn't move, not even to open her eyes. She concentrated solely on the sound that had disturbed her, using old talents as a tracker to determine what was happening. In the tent's blackness, the noise seemed to be near the door. Cautiously she looked in that direction. A narrow slit of barely discernible light appeared as the flap was stealthily drawn back.
From beneath her blanket she withdrew a gun, pointed it at the crack and cocked the hammer. The noise seemed louder than a gunshot. The light disappeared; footsteps receded rapidly into the night.
Margarita called Julia's name softly, but she slept soundly on. Deciding not to disturb her, Margarita sat up and swung her feet over the edge of the bed. She would stand watch the rest of the night.
At first light, Julia opened her eyes. Margarita sat straight and rigid on her cot, wide awake and watchful. Julia looked at the gun in the small woman's hand. "What's going on?"
"We had a night caller. A hen is missing. Otherwise everything is all right."
"How's Belle?"
"Still sleeping. She must not have heard him."
"We must hire a guard today."
Mutely, Margarita agreed.
They ate breakfast quickly, then headed for Dimmick's, leaving Belle to sleep. Before they had gone twenty feet, mud covered their shoes and dirtied the bottoms of their dresses. Without complaint they continued on.
They stopped at the first saloon they came to, already in full swing. Howls and whistles greeted them as they entered. Something crunched beneath Margarita's feet and she looked down to see peanut shells scattered everywhere; thousands of discarded tobacco butts and shells had turned the floor a rich brown color, and endless traffic had beaten it into a granite-hard surface. Stale tobacco, thick cigar smoke, and pungent whiskey smells floated through the air. The women passed by men lining a thick slab of wood slung across two oak barrels that served as a bar. Other men sat on boxes surrounding tables made of barrels, drinking rotgut whiskey out of black bottles and clinking glasses. The intermingling of dozens of male voices created a heavy drone of sound.
Margarita scrutinized the population carefully. She sought a certain face: a man who looked down on his luck, one who might be willing to work steady — one who looked hungry. She saw him toward the back of the room. "Come on," she said to Julia, who followed obediently.
It was hard to tell how old he was. His beard and hair were snow white, but his eyes displayed no sign of age. He looked haunted and destitute. In one shaking hand he held a glass of whiskey, in the other, a nearly empty bottle. He tossed his drink down quickly and without pause, poured himself another. He paid no heed to the women who stood before him.
"You need work?" Margarita asked.
The miner squinted at her through piercing blue eyes, giving no indication that he had understood.
"Never mind," she said and turned away.
Like a flash of lightning, the man reached up and grabbed her, locking her arm in a vise-like grip. "I'll work," he said. "Pay for my whiskey."
"Come now," she ordered. Meekly he dropped his hand from her and rose to follow his new employers. Margarita tossed a spinning gold piece to the barkeep. He snatched it from the air and smiled at her efficiency.
Outside the saloon, the man said, "I don't come cheap."
"I'll work your ass off so you don't," Julia warned. "You step out of line once and I'll throw you to the dogs." Margarita looked at Julia with admiration. "You'll bring firewood," Julia ordered. "All you can gather. All day long if you have to. You'll find good pasture for the stock. You'll sleep during the late afternoon and evenings. At night, you'll guard the tent and the stock. If you get drunk, if anything goes wrong, if anything is missing, you'll be shot."
"By who?" he gruffly asked.
"By me," Margarita told him, and drew her gun out of a deep pocket in her skirt. She popped off a single shot at a bottle lying alongside a tent and shattered it to smithereens.
Beneath his beard the man paled visibly. "Look, ladies, I don't know if—"
"I paid for your whiskey, mister," Margarita reminded him. "That was the agreement. You're working now. Come back in an hour with wood and I'll feed you." Without another word the man walked a bit unsteadily toward the hills and canyons that surrounded Dimmick's Goldfield.
"He'll either come back or he won't," Julia announced.
"Let's see what we can do about baking at least one cake," Margarita suggested. "If we can give him one cake, he's ours."
At camp again, Margarita began at once to gather ingredients needed while Julia went to search out where the chickens were laying and to milk the cow staked in a grassy area nearby.
"We'll have to move old Bossy this evening," Julia advised upon returning with a white foaming bucket and a half dozen eggs cradled carefully within her apron.
"I'm glad of that," Margarita answered. "I don't want a cow living right outside my tent. Draws flies."
She had gathered enough wood to get a fire going in the oven and had only been waiting for Julia to return with the milk and eggs. She went busily about her tasks as she and Julia talked. In another five minutes the batter was poured into two circular tins, struck sharply against the oven top to knock out air bubbles, and placed in the hot oven.
While they worked, their new helper brought a stack of deadwood. He did not speak but went efficiently about his duties. When the cake came out of the oven, he watched
Julia place it on a cooling rack. "How long?" he grunted.
"An hour to cool, five minutes to frost," she answered.
"Chocolate frostin'?"
"Yes."
The man sauntered off wordlessly, returning several more times with wood that he was scrounging up from where the women could not imagine. The place was stripped practically bare now.
* * *
In a week's time, the bakers and the dancehall girl had settled solidly into a routine. Their handyman and guard, Jacob — a name he did not reveal until after he had totally consumed the chocolate cake Margarita had baked for him — was turning out to be highly efficient. After a couple of days and numerous curses, he had reassembled the wagon, using it to fetch all the firewood 'my ladies' needed, which was how he referred to the women who kept him well fed and spoke to him like he was a man again.
"I told you a cake would make him ours," Margarita gloated.
The oven was used daily from first light until early evening. The novelty of baking outdoors had still not worn off; the women were glad of the fresh air even when the weather was blistering hot, which it had been five days out of the seven they had been here. Only once had it rained, and Julia and Margarita had slept the day away.
They put in long, tiring hours, but before the sun sank from the sky they sold everything they had made that day. They were now sure their gamble on coming here had been smart and would pay off handsomely.
They were sure that Belle, too, must be stacking up a sizable sum. She was as busy throughout the night as her friends were during the day. Margarita and Julia asked each other more than once how Belle managed to sleep during the day with all the noise going on. But it didn't seem to affect her, and she kept her own hours, complete with time for a bath and three square meals a day. "I know the value of taking good care of myself," she told them one evening. "But it's tough. I'm going to look around for something to sink my money into after I get out of this racket."
"Like what?" Julia has asked.
"Oil, maybe. Or those electric glass bulb things you talked about last summer, Julia. Electricity could replace lanterns, you know."
Her friends laughed and said, "It'll never happen. You might better invest in oil. We'll be needing the kerosene for lanterns — lights that will endure forever."
Days passed into weeks. Miners, their mouths watering, came hungry to the bakers' camp, and left with a fifteen dollar pie in their hands, or a twenty dollar cake, or a fistful of cookies at two dollars each. Gold dust was the most frequent mode of payment. A teaspoonful was worth sixteen dollars, a wineglassful, one hundred dollars, and a tumbler, a thousand.
On their second day in camp, Julia had purchased a small set of scales from the hardware store, the dwelling nothing more than a rickety one-story building crammed full of picks, shovels, hammers, pans, denim pants, flannel shirts, hats, heavy leather boots, guns, bullets, lanterns, oil, scales, and anything else a miner might need that he had failed to bring with him — all at astronomical prices.
The nights became colder and the days shorter, and Margarita became more and more restless as summer drew to a close. Soon it would be time to tell Julia of her plans to leave. Living with her lovely Americano had been a joy and full of adventure, lovemaking had been rich and wonderful, and uncomfortable on the narrow cots with neither daring make a sound no matter how much she may have wanted to. And always, Julia has sworn her love, never once making a demand on Margarita to swear hers in return. Never even suggesting that she should do so.
But their life together was nearly over. Margarita had never been able to reconcile herself to her relationship with Julia. Something was missing and she had spent months trying to put her finger on whatever it was that was disturbing her. She had not been able to. It wasn't enough that Julia loved her, wanted them to spend their lives together. Whatever it was that was troubling her, she must discover it alone.
She broached the subject tentatively one evening after they had gone to bed and lay in their cots in the golden light of the lantern. Julia looked tired and drawn from too many hours at the oven, yet happiness radiated from her face. Margarita could feel her heart begin to beat faster as she realized just how nervous she was and how difficult this was going to be.
"I've sent money to my mother through the summer," she began. "But now I have enough dust to take to her so that she would be comfortable for a long time. I should go there soon; change the dust to bills and see how everyone is."
"That would be wonderful," Julia responded. "How long would you stay?"
"I might stay a very long time," Margarita replied.
Julia spoke too quickly. "A long time? Why a long time? We'll finally have enough to begin what we planned. We should get started soon. You don't need to be gone long."
Margarita sensed that Julia knew what was on her mind. She hadn't the heart or the courage to go on, and let conversation die there. When the time came, Margarita knew with certainty, her going would be very hard on Julia.
She had hoped that Julia might take an interest in her long time friend, Belle, or in one of the many flattering men who dropped by, the rewards they offered, their promises of a better life. Of the three of them, Julia seemed the least affected by their praise. If Margarita had been ready to marry, she might have seriously considered someone's offer.
She decided that she must set a date to finally act. It was the only way she was ever going to get through this. In a week's time she promised herself. One week from today she would tell Julia, and make her understand.
Chapter Nineteen
One of the saloons burned to the ground taking with it the flophouse to its left, and the general kitchen — and its cook — to the right. Everyone thanked whatever deity they followed that more damage had not been done and then cursed the drunken sot who had shot out one of the saloon's lanterns which had burst and spread flames everywhere. Then they had promptly dragged the kicking, screaming culprit to the nearest tree and hanged him.
Margarita hated with all her heart and soul what the camp had done, but the place had its own set of rules and they were swift and merciless. Loathing their heinous act, wanting to leave Dimmick's as soon as possible, she had still volunteered to work, along with the rest of the women in Dimmick's, in the temporary kitchen that had been thrown together to help feed the countless souls left without any kind of decent meal. She brought with her what plates, cups, and silverware that could be spared, and to that Belle added blankets. Others with extra supplies donated, too, and within a few hours of the fire, things were running fairly smooth again.
Salvaged from the kitchen's ruins, large black kettles three feet wide and two and a half feet deep hung over open fires giving off delicious aromas of boiling potatoes, carrots, cabbage, onions, and seasonings — ingredients that had wisely been stored in an outbuilding away from the saloon fire. On spits, large carcasses of beef rotated.
Finally the dancehall girls, who Margarita had begun supervising for the past week, learned from her how to keep the men alive without destroying their palates, and took over the chores completely. She wouldn't be back to help them tomorrow and she was grateful. Baking was an orderly business. Cooking for hordes was riotous and confusing, each man having to eat as quickly as possible so that another could take his seat, and use his plate and cup.
She returned to the tent late in the afternoon, her mind on what she must, at last, do, glad and frightened at the same time that it was almost over.
On the way back, she recalled the good times that she and Julia had shared here. How carefully they had, throughout the summer, weighed their precious dust each evening by lantern light. Using their little scales, they had meticulously measured to the grain, then poured equal amounts into every sack. The assayer himself wouldn't have been able to tell without his big fine scales any difference between the bags, each no bigger than a fist. And they hadn't actually cared which one weighed the most. It was just a game with them; a child's s
illy desire to see things divided perfectly even. It was fun to stack the gold on the table with the gentle yellow of the lantern's glow casting playful shadows across the small bags.
Her mind moved to thoughts of laughing with Julia as miners told outrageous stories of what had happened to them at their claims. She had difficulty thinking at all about the many nights Julia had spent running her strong firm hands across her body. Margarita blinked those memories away, too pleasant and too painful to recall.
Julia had just finished chores when Margarita arrived. I thought you'd never get here. Look." Julia pulled from her pocket a nugget as big as her fist. It was nearly pure. "That'll buy you six horses and me a hundred tubes of paint."
"Julia..." Margarita began.
"Heft it," Julia offered.
Margarita did not raise her hand. "Julia," she began again.
Julia dropped the nugget into an apron pocket, weighing the apron down ridiculously, and looked at Margarita with eyes tinged with fear. "It's come, hasn't it?"
"We need to talk. Please can't we go somewhere?"
Julia stared at her for some time before saying, "No. I don't think we need to go anywhere. I know what's on your mind. It's been there since I don't know when."
Margarita felt her face begin to burn as embarrassment and shame threatened to engulf her. She didn't want the end to be like this.
"Oh, I knew it was just a matter of time, Margarita. You're going to tell me that you're leaving me. Let's not drag this out. Just tell me when."
Julia's hands began to fidget, the way they had that day so long ago when a bandito had sat high in the saddle staring down on her, wanting to hate her, and unable to do so. Margarita could feel herself caving in.
"When will you be leaving?" Julia asked again.
The chill in her voice saved Margarita from herself. Quickly she answered, "As soon as I can. I need to buy a couple of horses and a saddle."
"Then I might as well return to Colter. I can't do this alone. We agreed to sell this stuff when we were finished here, right?" She encompassed the area with a careless flip of her hand. "I'd say that we're finished."