Vote Then Read: Volume III

by Aleatha Romig

  "And of course, you can have the cabin," Swede said.

  "And all o’ the doctor’s personal effects," added Tom.

  At least that news was encouraging. She’d have a roof over her head and sustenance for the time being, thanks to the miners’ kindness. She scanned the faces of the prospectors once more, and this time, she saw them through eyes that lifted the tarnishing veil of dust from their cheeks and looked into their hearts. They were good people, most of them, despite their coarseness. They were decent men she owed a debt of gratitude.

  "Thank you," she said, smiling wide then, her first genuine smile since she’d arrived. "Thank you very much."

  Some of the miners returned her smile, some continued to scowl, and some stood with their jaws lax, as if they’d never set eyes on a woman before. Feeling suddenly magnanimous, Mattie decided she’d invite them all to the doctor’s residence tomorrow, once she was settled in, for a luncheon after church services and the funeral. It would have to be simple fare, of course. Cooking had been left to the servants, so there was very little that Mattie knew how to make. But it was the least she could do to thank them for their generosity.

  "Well, are we gonna jaw all night," Zeke snorted, "or is one of you gonna cart the lady’s belongings to her cabaña?"

  Several eager lads volunteered, but Swede stared them down, swallowing up the handle of her carpetbag in his oversized paw.

  Mattie stood and politely tipped her head. "It was so nice meeting you all. I look forward to seeing you at church tomorrow."

  That brought a peculiar silence over the group, but before she had a chance to wonder why, Swede jumped down from the porch and headed down the dusty path, where Mattie was obliged to follow at a clip.

  She hoped it wasn’t too far. Already, the sun dipped below the horizon, and though at present it cast wondrous coral light across the scattered clouds, soon the sky would darken, rendering the thick woods shadowy and foreboding.

  "I’m awful sorry about your husband, ma’am," Swede mumbled as she half-skipped to keep up with him. "But just so’s you know, there’s any number of fellas right here in Paradise Bar who’d be happy as all get-out to have such a pretty young thing for a wife."

  "Ah. Thank you." Mattie wondered if Swede counted himself among those eager to wed her.

  "Some of the miners, they’ve been here a long while. It gets pretty lonesome, and exceptin’ for Granny, we ain’t had a lady come through camp since last fall."

  Mattie would have asked about their autumn visitor, but Swede abruptly turned up the path toward one of those ramshackle lean-tos tucked underneath a big pine and plopped her bag down onto the porch.

  "Here it is, ma’am, your new homestead."

  There had to be some mistake. This shack was no bigger than the sheds they’d just come from along the...

  "It’s a fair piece from the rest of the camp. Doc liked his peace and quiet. But I don’t want you to worry none. If you’re ever in trouble, you just give a holler, and any of the boys in earshot, they’ll come a-runnin’."

  The walls were scarcely parallel, and the pitched roof, which appeared to be made of shingles cut from the outermost bark of several varieties of trees, sagged on one side.

  "There’s supplies that come from Marysville once every couple of weeks and mail and such, but if you want somethin’ special, you got to wait for a man to come from Sacramento."

  Dear Lord, she realized, those storage sheds were the men’s houses, which meant the dusty path she’d just trod was...the main street of Paradise Bar.

  "There’s water aplenty down at the crick," Swede told her, pointing down the hill, "and a whole forest of firewood." His fair cheeks blushed faintly as he added, "Me and the boys, we saw to it you had enough vittles and tinder to last the week anyways. There’s some salt pork and beans, a bit of jerky, a couple pounds of flour and such."

  "Th-thank you," Mattie managed, trying desperately to sound grateful.

  Swede leaned in close to her and confided, "There’s also a rifle in there, ma’am. Now, have you ever fired one before?"

  Mattie shook her head.

  "Well, you’re gonna need to learn. What with the bears and drunks and Injuns around, you never know when you’re gonna need to chase away one varmint or the other."

  Mattie could only stare helplessly up at him.

  "Tell you what." He rubbed his meaty palm over his chin. "Me and the boys’ll learn you to shoot tomorrow. How’s that?"

  On the edge of hysteria, Mattie wondered if that would be before or after the luncheon she planned to serve the residents of Paradise Bar in her luxurious new abode.

  She smiled politely instead and nodded, stepping up onto the porch, which was little more than pine planks nailed together and half-sunk into the mud.

  "All right, then. You take care. I’ll be back at the camp if you need anything."

  As she watched Swede lumber away, trepidation closed in on her like the advancing night. Bears and drunks and Injuns, he’d said. What had she gotten herself into? But as dark fell around her, Mattie could vividly imagine even more formidable foes, like solitude, hunger, and plain ignorance.

  Hovering on panic, Mattie watched until Swede’s blond head vanished between two firs, and then braved the front door.

  The canvas-covered wood frame hung crookedly from three leather hinges, and she had to lift the thing to even swing it open. When she did, the sweet-acrid smell of burnt pine assaulted her. The interior of the tiny room relied upon the filtered light coming through one window of stretched white cotton, which was scarcely serviceable after sundown, but Mattie wondered if it wasn’t just as well. She wasn’t certain she was ready to see the hovel’s contents by the stark light of day.

  Nonetheless, she dragged her bag across the doorsill and onto the knotty planks that made up the house’s floor, took a deep breath, and scanned the room.

  A pot-bellied stove crouched in one corner, and a tiny bottle of matches perched atop a nearby narrow shelf that looked like a stick of kindling nailed to the wall. The walls were half-covered with ragged scraps of red calico, and where they were devoid of cloth, the rough-hewn wood boards butted against each other with about as much charm as an old geezer’s gap-toothed grin.

  Shelves of varying size and quality were tacked to the walls, crowded with sundry items: a metal plate, a comb, a coffee pot, spools of twine and thread, a half-full flour sack, tins of peaches, a hand mirror, a tiny scale, several blue and brown glass vials with medicinal labels, a slab of salt pork, a frying pan, a sack of beans, a can of coffee, an iron kettle, cream-colored candles crammed into a half-dozen assorted bottles, a set of bone-handled eating utensils propped in a tin cup, and a sticky jar marked MOLASSES that was crawling with tiny black ants.

  A rifle roosted between two wooden hooks, from which hung a ribbed washboard. Twill dishcloths were draped over a thick rope slung across one corner, and below them stood a pair of well-worn boots. A low cot near the stove featured thin ticking and a brown wool blanket, and a weathered black bag at the foot announced the doctor’s profession. Mining tools—a pickaxe, a pan, and a shovel—leaned against the wall, next to a stack of split firewood. A chair with legs made out of whole oak limbs tottered on three of them, and a traveling trunk covered with green oilcloth completed the room’s furnishings.

  The decor looked like the work of a child, and all of it lodged within a space scarcely half the size of her bedroom in Aunt Emily’s house.

  The way Mattie saw it, she had three choices.

  She could laugh. She could cry. Or she could make do.

  Since the first two would offer her little comfort against the encroaching night, she opted to attempt the third.

  First she’d build a fire. The miners had left her plenty of wood, and she found the bottle nearly full of matches. Rolling back her sleeves, she decided to take a peek inside the pot-bellied stove. She lit a stumpy candle and crouched down, creaking open the cast-iron door. Two tiny shining eyes stared out at
her. She screamed and scrambled back, tripping and landing with a plop on her skirts. A sooty, striped rodent scampered out and scurried across the floor, just inches from her toes, its furry tail held straight up. Mattie drew her legs back with a gasp and watched as the little beast disappeared out a hollow knothole in the wall.

  She sheepishly got to her feet and braved the stove again. There were no more animals holed up inside, but ash lay at the bottom like a thick blanket. She blew sharply to clear it.

  And was instantly sorry. Ashes shot out of the stove like smoke from a cannon, instantly coating her face, stinging her eyes, and extinguishing the candle. She coughed and blinked rapidly as tears streamed down her cheeks.

  The sudden darkness might have frightened her if she hadn’t been so vexed. But she was furious—with this hovel of a house, with Dr. James Harrison for dying on her, and mostly with her own ignorance. Was she so helpless that she couldn’t even light a stove?

  Mattie refused to believe that. She may have been coddled the better part of her life, but she was the daughter of Lawrence Hardwicke, and she could conquer anything.

  Feeling her way to the matches, she relit the candle and set it atop the stove. By the flickering light, she approached the woodpile, wary of more furry residents. She chose a few chunks of firewood and stuffed them into the belly of the stove. Then she tucked splinters and small odds and ends from the pile around the larger split logs, arranging them as she would flowers. She lit a match from the candle and held it to the biggest log. The match burned, but the wood remained uninspired. The flame bit her, and she dropped the match with a yelp, popping her affronted finger into her mouth.

  Three matches later, the thing still wouldn’t light. Exasperated, she flung open her satchel and dug out a piece of drawing paper she’d purchased in New York. It was foolish, she knew, and wasteful, but she was determined to get the stove lit if it took all night and her entire stack of precious paper. Fortunately, the next match devoured the first piece greedily and even sampled the kindling as a second course. But its interest soon waned, and only by sheer desperation and begging and blowing upon the foundering embers did Mattie encourage the fire to revive.

  It didn’t last long. A kettle of water would never have boiled over the meager heat, and she doubted the little animal she’d found inside could have even warmed his toes by the flame. But she’d done it. She’d started a fire by herself. And for some reason, that was important. It meant she could survive here. She might not know how to shoot a rifle or pan for gold or even cook herself a proper meal yet. But she could learn. She had to.

  Mattie shook out the bedroll as the fire died down, and thankfully, no small mammals issued forth. She changed out of her traveling clothes, laying them out across the cloth-covered table, unpinned her hair, and slipped on her white cotton nightrail. The blanket seemed clean, if not terribly warm, and even though the cot was a poor substitute for the downy mattress she was used to, it was comfortable enough to entice her to skip supper in favor of a long and deep slumber.

  While she slept, she dreamed.

  She was drawing. In the forest, by the light of the full moon, she sketched a shadowy figure, a man. Her hand recreated his contours with strong, angular strokes. She peered into the wood, trying to get a better glimpse at what she was drawing, but her subject kept vanishing, and the image on the paper remained unclear. She felt she must finish the drawing—was obsessed with it—and yet she was unable to do so.

  The next thing Mattie knew, she was waking to the sound of urgent knocking upon her door. The buttery hue of the room told her morning had arrived.

  "One moment," she called out, her voice scratchy from sleep.

  Having packed no wrapper, she swept the woolen blanket about her.

  The rapid knocking resumed.

  "Just a moment," she repeated, raking her hair back from her face in some semblance of civility.

  The knocking continued relentlessly.

  "Good heavens," Mattie muttered under her breath, shuffling toward the door.

  She wrenched the door open, letting in a blinding stream of light, and peered out in time to see a red and black bird flit from the house to the side of a nearby pine. But no one was on the porch. Puzzled by the disappearance of her guest, she watched the little red-crested bird. For a moment it hopped along, clinging vertically to the trunk. Then it reared back its head and began pecking furiously at the bark.

  Mattie chuckled. There was her knocking visitor.

  It wasn’t alone in the tree. Above the bird, circling mischievously, scampered a fat gray squirrel. He twitched his tail, teasing the bird, then retreated into the needles of the pine.

  Mattie stepped onto the cold planking of the porch in her bare feet and took a deep breath. The air was just beginning to warm, perfumed with the scent of wildflowers and evergreens. The first insects buzzed in patches of sunlight, and dew glistened on the shaded grasses. The sky was clear and as bright blue as the lupines she’d spotted along the mule trail. It was a glorious morning.

  Impetuously, Mattie tossed off the blanket and walked out into a pool of sunshine. After all, for all intents and purposes, she was alone. The grassy dirt was soft beneath her feet, and the sensation of the sun filtering through her thin nightrail felt sinfully good. She closed her eyes, and the sun washed her vision orange. A delicate breeze rustled the pines all around her and played with tendrils of her hair, tickling her cheek. She smiled and lifted her arms above her head, luxuriating in a huge, self-indulgent yawn of which society would never approve.

  Then she began to twirl, humming happily the tune she’d learned on the Sacramento riverboat, "Sweet Betsy from Pike," whirling till her gown floated like a great white camellia about her.

  A sudden violent rattling of the brush nearby stopped Mattie in her tracks. She gasped and wrapped her arms protectively about her. Something, some large wild animal, set the bushes aquiver as it made its escape. Her heart in her mouth, she staggered back toward the cabin, silently cursing herself for forgetting that she now lived in the wilderness.

  Panicked, she scanned the cabin’s interior for a defense of some sort. Her eyes alit at once on the rifle.

  It smelled of sweet oil, but the black steel felt cold, heavy, and forbidding in her hands. She didn’t like holding it, but she didn’t want to become some bear’s breakfast either. The beast might have run off, but it might be back, and by the looks of the thin cotton lining the window and the flimsy canvas frame door, getting inside the cabin would be the work of but one raking paw.

  Her heart slammed against her ribs, and her hands shook as she gingerly shifted the weapon in her arms, holding it as far away from her as possible.

  She didn’t want the animal cornering her in the house. The bed was too low to hide under, and there was only the one window. So she decided she’d stand guard on the porch.

  Warily she crept out the door, her eyes alert to any sudden movement from the meadow or the thick forest surrounding the cabin. She could hear her own pulse rushing through her ears.

  At first, every tiny sound made her jump—the robins fluttering in the trees, a bee making its morning rounds, a squirrel dropping a picked-over pine cone. Every flicker of a leaf in the morning sunlight, every turn of a sparrow’s wing, startled her. Her sweaty palms slicked her grip on the rifle, and she had to wipe them several times on her nightrail. Her toes curled anxiously on the pine boards. Time passed with agonizing sloth, and the gun grew heavier by the minute in her aching arms.

  Several long minutes later, fatigue finally made her relax her guard. Whatever the danger was, it seemed to be gone for good. Nothing but creatures of the small, harmless sort encroached on her parcel of land. A blue jay squawked from the low branch of a tall pine, mercilessly teasing one of those peculiar striped rodents that zigged and zagged over the roots of the tree. A pair of white butterflies made a tumbling flight toward a patch of wild sweetpeas. High against the rich blue sky, a bald black condor with outstretched wings co
asted in patient circles.

  This land truly was a paradise. The air smelled sweet and clean, of fir and young grass, bay and wild mustard, and the landscape was alive with color. Dewfall painted the earth brick red, and every shade of green from light apple to deep moss colored the vegetation. The iridescent wings of the jay echoed the sky’s azure hue, and a full palette of yellows and whites, purples and oranges, dotted the clearing on the petals of wildflowers strewn across the emerald carpet.

  Somewhere in the back of her mind, she remembered that she had to get dressed, that she had to prepare for church, that she had to—dear Lord—bury her husband-to-be. But the land beckoned her with its loveliness, and all she could think about was sketching. The world blossomed before her. She had to capture it, quickly, before the moment vanished.

  Swinging the rifle one last precautionary time along the perimeter of her clearing, she turned a deaf ear to the call of responsibility and propriety. And for one foolish instant, she forgot about Mother Nature’s dangerous face.

  CHAPTER 5

  Sakote had almost finished the arrowhead. Translucent flakes of obsidian made a small pile between his doubled knees, and when the stone knife chipped away a few more, the sharp point would be complete.

  The women of the village were up, making small cooking fires for acorn mush and chatting softly. Their talk didn’t disturb him. It was part of the Konkow music, as much a part of the morning as the song of the cheeztahtah—the robin, or the hum of the honeybees.

  One slender flake dropped to the ground as Sakote studied the point to discover the best place to make the final cut. He set the blade gingerly to the edge.

  "Aaaah!" Hintsuli flung himself out of the brush with a panicked cry, making Sakote slip with the knife. The arrowhead split into two useless pieces, the work of the morning instantly destroyed. But Sakote, too concerned to be angry, dropped his tools and sprang to his feet, catching Hintsuli against his thighs.

  "What’s wrong, little brother?"

  The small boy’s chest heaved from his running. He panted like a bear run to ground, and he trembled in Sakote’s arms.