Sacred Ground

by Barbara Wood

  She brightened. “Señor Hopkins, in Mexico I manage a large hacienda while my husband is away fighting in the war. I am very capable.”

  They pulled away from the hotel, leaving the crowd behind to murmur and to speculate— and Eliza Gibbons to stare enigmatically at the retreating wagon.

  Seth’s log cabin was farther down the ravine and nearly the last dwelling on the dusty road. He helped Angelique down, then pulled aside the canvas flap that served as a door to allow her to enter. The cabin consisted of just one room, and Angelique stood speechless in the center of it as she took in the rough log walls, the blackened fireplace, the bare dirt floor, the sooty potbellied stove, the narrow bed, and a table that looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned since it was a tree. There were no windows, just another door at the back.

  “You can stay here tonight and I’ll bunk with Charlie Bigelow. We’ll work arrangements out tomorrow.” He started for the door.

  “You are leaving?”

  “That wagon and horses aren’t mine. They’re rented by the day. Help yourself to anything here. Food in the pantry over there. Fresh water well’s out back, just through that door.” He paused, cleared his throat in embarrassment, and said, “The, urn, is under the bed. You empty it down by the creek.”

  She turned to look, and just glimpsed in the darkness, under the bed, the white enamel chamber pot. Shock rendered her speechless.

  Seth went out, closing the canvas door, and Angelique was engulfed in darkness. She continued to stand there bewildered as she heard voices outside: “She’s a respectable widow lady.” Seth explaining to the small crowd that had followed him to his cabin. “She’s come looking for her father. Anyone know of a Jack D’Arcy, Frenchman fur trapper? Pass the word, we need to find him.”

  “You missed some excitement while you were gone, Seth. A vigilante mob from Johnston’s Creek rode through chasin’ after Injuns that raided their camp. Came back a week later and said they’d cornered the thieving lot on Randolph Island, ‘twas like shooting pigs in a pen, they said. Won’t be having no more trouble from that band.”

  Angelique heard footsteps tramp away and voices fade until she was alone in the crude cabin, where she could see the last of the dying daylight through cracks in the walls.

  * * *

  Too numb with shock and too exhausted to do anything else, Angelique had curled up on the bed, wrapping the single blanket around herself, and had spent a night filled with dreams and nightmares until she was awakened at dawn by Seth presenting himself outside the door, announcing his presence.

  It took Angelique a moment to remember where she was. Her first thought, before opening her eyes, was that she would have the maids change all the bedding throughout the hacienda, as her blanket smelled musty. She would also give all the rooms a good airing, and set the women to the furniture with oil and cloths. Fresh flowers in each room, too, would help to dispel the fustiness. And who was making all that noise outside, people calling to one another in English, riding horses too closely by? And where were the birds that always greeted her every morning from the bottlebrush tree outside her window?

  “Miss D’Arcy? You awake?”

  Reality shot back like a bullet. Angelique quickly got up and smoothed back her hair. She looked down at her gown in dismay. She had slept in her clothes and felt itchy all over from the straw mattress. “Come in, Señor.”

  Seth pushed the canvas door aside and a milky dawn struggled to come in with him as he filled the small cabin with his height and masculine presence. Casting Angelique a quick, self-conscious smile, he frowned at the table and then at the cold stove. “I came for my breakfast but I reckon you didn’t know the hour I would be here. And you don’t know my preferences. I head off to my claim at the river as soon as the sun is up. I like coffee, eggs, and biscuit for breakfast. Bacon when it can be afforded. I’ll take my breakfast at Eliza’s this morning. Tomorrow we can start our routine.”

  He took a minute to show her the creek out back, and the well and how to use it. He pointed out the wooden storage bin containing potatoes, onions, turnips, and carrots. Acorns, too, he said, from last fall. Back inside the cabin he showed her the two lamps, asking her to trim the wicks and refill them daily. She would also be cleaning out the ash from the cookstove, making the morning coffee, doing the laundry, and ironing. Angelique followed him wordlessly. Since waking up and realizing that no servants were going to bring her hot water for bathing or her breakfast chocolate, and that she must handle the chamber pot herself, she had moved in a kind of stunned torpor.

  Now Seth was opening a small ledger book and turning to a fresh page where he wrote “Angelique” at the top. “The going rate for washing and ironing shirts is a dollar apiece,” he said as he pointed to the pile of dirty clothes in the corner. “I was going to take them to Eliza today, but now the job is yours. I’m an honest man, Miss D’Arcy. I won’t cheat you by a single penny.” He closed the ledger and returned it to the drawer. “I have to go check on my claim now. Charlie Bigelow’s kept an eye on it for me. I’ll be back for supper. Whatever you cook will be fine with me.”

  And then he was gone.

  She remained rooted to the spot. When he had asked her if she could keep house, she had thought he meant could she give orders to servants.

  Having no windows, the cabin was dark. She pushed back the canvas that covered the front door and the one covering the back door, but still not enough of the early-morning light poured in, so she decided to light the lamps. But as she regarded the two lamps, Angelique realized she had never had to light her own before and had no idea how it was done. She decided to just leave the doors open and make do with daylight.

  Next there was the question of food. Angelique was ravenous.

  She contemplated the crusted frying pan Seth had pointed out. What was she supposed to do with it? In a cupboard she found sacks of rice and flour, salt and spices, olive oil, coffee beans, baking soda, sugar, a jar of beef fat, a few canned goods and fruit preserved in jars, salted fish in a large crock pot. She had no idea what to do with any of it. Breaking off a piece from a loaf of bread and slicing a block of hard cheese, she ate ravenously and eyed the filthy clothes heaped in the corner. Did he really expect her to wash them? At home she had only to oversee the collecting and later the storing away of laundry. Angelique had no idea what happened in between. As she devoured the bread and cheese, wishing for her morning chocolate, Angelique listened to sounds of the camp coming to life, strange, foreign sounds, rude and crude, she thought, not at all like the gentle mornings on her hacienda outside Mexico City. When she wondered again why she heard no birds, she remembered the barren slopes surrounding the little valley, and the tree stumps covering them.

  The birds have retreated, and so should I.

  Standing in the middle of the tiny, dirty cabin belonging to a man she did not know, in the middle of a miserable mining camp in the middle of a godforsaken wilderness, Angelique began to realize the horrific mistake she had made. Not in coming to California. She had had no choice but to come. Upon her husband’s death, the Mexican government had confiscated her estate— the hacienda, fields, livestock— to cover back taxes, leaving Angelique with only a trunk full of clothes. The mistake had been in coming to Devil’s Bar.

  Her first thought was that she must find a way to get back to Sacramento, find a hotel, and wait for her father to find her. But then she reminded herself of the debt she owed Seth Hopkins. Not only the hundred dollars, but he had rescued her from a man of criminal intent, or so he had said.

  Stiffening her spine and squaring her shoulders— D’Arcys honored their debts— she thought: How difficult can this be?

  First, she hauled water up from the creek so she could bathe, discovering as she did so that she had had no idea water was so heavy. She withdrew fresh clothes from her trunk, carefully choosing the right outfit, spending extra time on selecting earrings that went with the red hues of the gown. Dressing herself proved a small challenge. Angel
ique had never had to do it by herself before. How was she to tighten her corset? She took pains with her hair, brushing it out and fixing it up on her head with combs. She applied cream to her face and hands, polished her shoes, brushed out her traveling gown and hung it up, laundered her undergarments and hung them out to dry.

  By the time she was done with her personal business, it was noon and the cabin was still dark inside so she worked on the matches and lamps until she figured out how to light them and keep them burning for the rest of the day. But once there was illumination, she saw how filthy the floor was, so she found the broom and as she swept debris from the earthen floor she came across a curious thing at the base of the wall beside the cookstove. A cone-shaped mound of unidentifiable substance rose from the floor several inches. Bending low to scrutinize it, she let her eyes travel upward until she came to the hook the fry pan hung from.

  “¡Santo cielo!” she declared. Apparently Seth Hopkins didn’t bother to wipe out the pan when he was done, but hung it straightaway on the hook and let the fat drip to the floor!

  She found few personal things belonging to Seth: aside from the shaving mug, brush and razor, there was a daguerreotype of a woman to whom Seth bore a resemblance, and four well-worn books. Picking up A Treasury of Poems, Angelique flipped through Burns and Keats, Shakespeare and Coleridge until the book fell naturally open to a page of Shelley, as if Seth had turned to it many times: “I arise from dreams of thee/In the first sweet sleep of night.” The three other books were Animal Husbandry, The Life of Napoleon, and The Sketch-Book by Washington Irving, a scrap of paper marking the page for “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”

  With her hands on her hips, surveying the crude little dwelling that in her opinion wasn’t fit to house pigs, Angelique decided she must do something about it. She worked for an hour, and when she satisfied herself that the cabin was a little more habitable, she confronted the task of cooking an evening meal.

  When Seth Hopkins arrived home shortly after sunset, he called out to her first before walking in, and when he entered the cabin, he came to an abrupt halt, his mouth dropping open. Colors assailed him. From a Spanish shawl embroidered in brilliant colors draped across the bed, from little painted saint statues, from a small painting of the Virgin Mary and the Christ child framed in gold. Votive candles flickered in little red glass jars. A lady’s fan was pinned to the wall, opened out to reveal eyecatching yellow flowers. Hanging on a hook, a pale blue bonnet decorated with bright pink ribbons and flamingo feathers. On the upended powder keg that served as a night table: an Aztec figurine carved out of pink jade, a large rock crystal of the deepest blue azurite, a small vase painted with pink roses. The keg itself was hidden beneath a lady’s scarf of shimmering emerald green silk. Propped against the foot of the bed, a turquoise parasol with pale green ruffles. Blood-red hyacinths, which he had seen growing by the stream, in a jar of water.

  Seth had to blink several times to make sure his eyes were all right. What had the woman done to the place?

  Then he saw wisps of smoke curling out of the stove.

  “What happened? Where’s my supper?”

  Her hands fluttered helplessly. “I try, Señor. But I do not know how.”

  He stared at her. “How can you not know how to cook a simple supper?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Because you’re a woman and— Good Lord, you’ve used nearly all the kerosene!”

  “This is un calabozo in here. It is a dungeon! I must have light!”

  “Keep the doors open.”

  “And then in come the flies!”

  He looked her up and down. “Why are you covered in soot?”

  When she explained how she had tried to light the stove and instead clouds of smoke had billowed out, he showed her how she first had to sift the old ashes down and scoop them into a bucket, and then how to adjust the vent.

  “Don’t you have an apron?”

  She shrugged helplessly.

  “We’ll need coffee for supper,” he said with a sigh, and showed her how to use the pot. Then he got a fire going in the stove and left. He returned a few minutes later with meat pies and fried potatoes. “From Eliza’s kitchen,” he said as he put the food on the table. “Cost me four dollars.”

  “Is that a lot of money?” Angelique hadn’t the faintest idea of the cost of anything.

  He sat down without waiting for her to sit first. “It’s an arm and a leg! It isn’t the gold miners who get rich here, it’s those with goods to sell. A handkerchief back in Virginia goes for five cents. Here it’s fifty cents!”

  He poured coffee first into his own mug and then into hers. As he brought the brew to his lips, he frowned into his cup. He tasted it, made a face, and said, “What did you do to the coffee?”

  “I do as you say, Señor. Put coffee in the basket, put the pot on the stove.”

  Seth lifted the lid and gaped in astonishment. “You used whole beans! You’re supposed to grind them first. Never mind. It’s an honest mistake. You’ll know better from now on.”

  As they started to eat, a terrible noise rent the air. Angelique jumped to her feet, but Seth kept on eating. Outside, in the twilight, she saw a man playing Scottish bagpipes.

  “That’s Rupert MacDougal,” Seth explained when she came back. “He likes to sign off the end of the day with a playing of the pipes. Unfortunately, he only knows “The Campbells Are Coming.’ “

  She watched him address his food in a most singular manner, elbows on the table, fork held as if it were a shovel. She had been unable to find any napkins or tablecloth, and supposed he hadn’t any since he seemed quite at home wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

  Biting into a potato and finding it surprisingly delicious, she said, “Where is your gold mine, Señor Hopkins?”

  “I don’t have an actual mine. The kind of gold hunting I do is called placer mining. I just sift through the silt in streambeds and pick up what gold is lying there. I don’t have a taste for gouging holes in the earth, looking for the veins as some men do. I had enough of that back in Virginia, where the coal mines were killing the earth and the men. I reckon if nature leaves gold lying around, then we’ve a right to pick it up. But I don’t like to tear up land that God created.”

  She eyed the little glass jar he had come home with. It contained gold flakes floating in water. “What will you do with the gold you find?”

  He wiped his mouth with his fingers and dug into the second meat pie. “I think I would like to own a farm. Not animals. I don’t think I want that. Something peaceful and green. Growing something, maybe.”

  “Have you experience with a farm?”

  “I come from a family of coal miners. But I can learn how to farm.”

  “We grew avocados in Mexico,” she said wistfully. “But they are very sensitive trees. Too much wind and too much sun is not good. Perhaps oranges, yes? Lemons would be nice. It will depend on where you will have your farm. Tangerines and grapefruit grow best in heat, but lemons love fog. And I know of an orange that is sweeter when planted away from the coast.”

  He looked at her. “How do you know all that?”

  She shrugged. “It is just something I know.”

  After supper, Seth opened the tin box that contained the ledger, ink bottle and pens, and assorted scraps of paper. On the back of a flyer advertising a circus, he wrote a list with a stubby pencil, saying, “Take this to Bill Ostler in the morning. Tell him to fill this list and charge it to my account. I’ll stay at Charlie Bigelow’s again tonight and probably all the while you’re here.”

  When he appeared the next morning for his breakfast— eggs and toast which Angelique had ruined beyond recognition— he said, “I’ll go on to Eliza’s for coffee and biscuit. Make rice and bacon for tonight’s supper. You can’t ruin rice. You boil it in water over the fire.” He pointed to the fireplace where a big black pot hung on a hook. “And you’ll find the bacon in that barrel there. Packing it in bran keeps it from spoi
ling in the heat.” He paused. “Can you bake bread? All right, ask Ostler, he’ll give you what you need.”

  Ostler’s general store was up the dusty road, past tents and cabins and lines of laundry. The store consisted of four log walls with a canvas roof and was crammed inside with shelves of jars, cans, boxes, bottles, tools, dishware, utensils, medicines, and even bolts of cloth. For the occasion Angelique had carefully chosen a gown of dove gray silk with rose pink lace. The plumes in her bonnet were of a darker pink and matched her gloves and parasol. When she entered Ostler’s, where three women were sorting through a box of buttons and thread Seth Hopkins had brought up from San Francisco, she paused to adjust her eyes to the interior darkness.

  Bill Ostler, recognized by his shock of red hair and paunch above his belt, blurted, “Oh my goodness!” and rushed around the counter so fast to greet her that he nearly knocked over the pickle barrel. “Mrs. D’Arcy! What a pleasure! What can I do for you?”

  Feeling the eyes of the three women on her, she handed Ostler the list. When she quietly asked him how to make bread, she heard one of the women whisper, “Imagine, a woman who doesn’t know how to make bread.”

  Before she left with her purchases, she saw a bolt of calico and gestured with her hands how much she wanted.

  In the cabin, she cut lengths of the calico and nailed them to the wall so that they covered a two-by-three-foot square. The rest she draped over the table.

  Then she decided to cook the rice. She filled a pot with water and scooped rice out of its sack, using a tin cup with measurements imprinted on the side. One cup didn’t look like enough. Four cups, she decided, would make a nice meal for her and Mr. Hopkins. Then she covered the pot and hung it over the fire in the fireplace and left it. While she got wood burning in the stove and managed to wedge the side of bacon into the pan, she heard a clang as the pot lid flipped over and fell to the stone hearth. To her horror she saw rice surging up and pouring over the sides, dropping into the fire.