I asked the miners if they knew Father. They thought for a bit, discussed it among themselves, then agreed they didn’t know him. I immediately burst into tears, something I know a boy would not do! One of the men was quite stricken and patted my shoulder. “Try Richfield, boy,” he said. “If he’s in this area, they’d know him there at the mining office.”
The miners offered Mr. Wattie and Mr. Fortune a share of their stake if they would provide food for them for two weeks, as they were out of provisions and their claim had not yet made them any money to buy more. But Mr. Wattie and Mr. Fortune said they were going to Victoria to winter and were merely here a short while to look things over.
We also came across a miner working his claim alone, though I don’t think it is his claim. I think it is HER claim. I think this miner was really a woman! Most miners here have beards, but this one was clean-shaven with no hint of even a single whisker on the chin. He (or she) said very little, but did have a high-pitched voice when speaking. As we left, I turned back to stare once more, and the miner suddenly winked.
September 24, 1862
Richfield
Mr. Wattie and Mr. Fortune wanted to see Richfield. The settlement is ringed by low mountains, and borders Williams Creek. Higher up, the slopes are covered with trees and it should be a pretty place, but it isn’t! In fact, it is quite possibly the worst looking place I’ve ever seen. The land around the town is barren, all the trees having been chopped down willy-nilly, leaving ugly stumps sticking out. Piles of discarded trash and dirt are everywhere. Tents and rough wooden shanties line the creek into the town. We smelled the settlement before we saw it — wood smoke, cut pine, frying bacon and — I swear — beans.
There are several stores here to provision miners (with more being built), eating places, a hotel, a log jail, a bank and a church (Roman Catholic) and of course, gambling houses and saloons. Mr. Wattie and Mr. Fortune told Talbot and me to go look around while they went into a saloon. Talbot’s nose was out of joint for a while as he thought himself quite old enough for a saloon. He was so busy ranting about that, he didn’t look where he was going and stepped in a fresh pile of mule droppings. That made him even more vexed.
Father was never one for drink — a bad habit, Mama said, and as she hated bad habits and didn’t let us have any, Father didn’t drink. We did have other bad habits though, ones I am now sorry I taxed her with. Like my stubbornness, which she didn’t have much success ridding me of, or Father’s restless feet. Dear diary, if I could have Mama back, I’d work awful hard at ridding myself of my bad habit of being stubborn. But I guess that’s closing-the-barn-door-after-the-horse-has-left wishing.
We wandered about, a pack of dogs barking and nipping at our heels, and I kept having a niggling feeling that something was missing. Then I realized what it was — there wasn’t a school. But then, there weren’t any children.
I carefully examined every man we passed. They all have whiskers, and I realized that if Father has grown a beard I might pass right by him. And with myself dressed as a boy, he might pass right by me! One man yelled at me, “What are you staring at, boy?” I quickly stammered, “Nothing,” and looked away.
Then I saw the mining office. I dragged Talbot in there and asked the clerk if George Palmer had staked a claim. The clerk asked when Father arrived at Cariboo. I told him I didn’t know. My answer vexed him, as he sighed deeply, flipped through a book, barely looking, and said he had no record of any George Palmer. I wanted to ask him to look again, but he was so impatient, I didn’t dare.
Here is a sketch of Richfield.
September 25, 1862
I thought I saw John and Thomas Drummond today, but I lost sight of them quickly. Talbot said it is unlikely we’d run into them here, as Cariboo is a really big place, and there are thousands of miners around. I want to believe he’s right, but I feel very unsettled.
September 26, 1862
It has turned quite cold. Still no sign of Father. No one I’ve asked knows his name.
September 27, 1862
The ground is white with snow and it swirls about us still. Seeing it terrifies me. Mr. Wattie, Mr. Fortune and Talbot are to leave today for the coast. They want to go before the snow makes their journey impossible. They urged me to go with them, as they said they didn’t feel right leaving me on my own. For a while there I thought the three of them were going to make me go with them, but I managed to hold out. It wasn’t easy. “Harry,” Talbot said. “This is just the first bad weather. Winter will be here soon. Come to Victoria, and in the spring we’ll come back and find your father. I promise.” But I told him that I had a gut feeling that Father was nearby and that if I waited until spring, he might be gone, and Mrs. Owen would take Luella and William away and I would never see them again! I smiled as cheerily as I could and told him I’d be fine. I don’t think he believed me. I don’t believe me. But I have no choice.
They are ready to leave now. I must say goodbye.
Evening
Talbot has stayed! “Can’t have you finding all the gold,” he said. “I’d never hear the end of it.”
I could have hugged him for staying — I hate to admit it, but it scared me nearly to death, thinking of being on my own. Instead I said, “Whatever suits you.” And immediately felt bad for saying that so offhandedly, because he looked a bit hurt. He sent a message to his father with Mr. Wattie, who is much relieved that at least I won’t be on my own.
We’re camped outside of Richfield. I try to keep my mind off the coming winter, but it’s hard when my feet feel like blocks of ice and my fingers are too numb to hold the pen anymore!
September 28, 1862
Icy rain dripped on me all night long, Talbot’s tent being next to useless. I’m so tired this morning I can barely see the words I write. It doesn’t help that I have no tea or biscuits for breakfast. I’m very low today. I think I expected Father to be right here to greet me when I arrived, not me having to hunt and hunt for him.
Now I’ve gone making myself feel sorry, and thinking about Mama, William and Luella, Henry and Joe and the Schuberts. It’s like everyone I meet leaves a little splinter in me when they part, and it keeps jabbing me, making me hurt.
Talbot asked why I was sniffing. I told him it was the cold. I’ll have to take Mama’s watch into town and see if I can buy provisions. I wanted to yell at Talbot for spending all his money on the gold pan, but I can’t. It’s my fault he’s even here.
September 29, 1862
I awoke this morning with four walls around me for the first time in close to five months, though I share my room with a horse and two mules. Still, I took a moment to enjoy those walls, even with the cracks between the boards letting in the cold! Talbot would not stay here, despite my urging, saying it wasn’t proper now that we were in town. “Proper be hanged,” I said, but he returned alone to our camp.
I have a job! At a saloon! Mama, and I suspect even Father, would not approve, but it was either this job or starve. Yesterday I was determinedly making my way down the main street, trying to decide where to try to sell Mama’s watch, when a saloon door crashed open and a man sailed out and landed at my feet. Another man followed, though this one stomped down the steps rather than flew, and gave the other a kick in the side. The first man didn’t move, just lolled there with his mouth hanging slack and his eyes rolled back in his head.
“Well, that’s done it,” the second man said.
“Done what?” I asked, though I was a bit nervous, as he looked so mad.
“He’s my cook, but look, he’s useless. Drunk as a skunk,” the man said. “Got into my liquor, and me with a room full of hungry men wanting breakfast.”
I have no idea, dear diary, why I did this, but I told him I could make biscuits.
The man eyed me for such a long time I started to get antsy. “Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll take you on this morning because I’m desperate. But it’s not a regular job, you understand?”
And next thing I knew I
was in the kitchen mixing flour and water, brewing coffee and frying up potatoes and slivers of meat (to make it go further). It just about killed me cooking all that food, and knowing none of it was for me.
After two hours the men cleared out and the owner came into the kitchen. “I don’t know how you did it, boy, but you fed them all, and more importantly, they left without grumbling.”
I think he saw me swaying on my feet because he pulled out a chair and stuck me on it, and banged the skillet with the burnt remains of potatoes and meat and two biscuits in front of me. “Get that into you.” Then he offered me the job of cooking breakfast every morning.
He asked about my family, so I told him about Mama dying, my brother and sister at the Red River Settlement, and me looking for Father. I didn’t let on that I was a girl, but I did tell him Father’s name.
“Never heard of him,” he said. “But this isn’t a bad place for you to stop for a while. Everybody in the area comes in here at some time or other.”
I told him Father doesn’t drink, but he said it didn’t matter, since Father might still come in for a meal or something.
I wasn’t sure if he meant it, or whether he was just desperate for someone to cook breakfast. I eyed the last biscuit, feeling a little hollow spot that needed filling, but thought it rude to eat while he was talking, so left it on the plate. I could have it when he went.
He said I could stay in the shed out back. “There’s a couple mules there, and whatever other animal people want to board for the night. You can have the care of them, too.”
I asked if that included camels. They stink so bad, I doubt I could sleep with them. He said he wouldn’t have camels because they stir up the mules, and he picked up the remaining biscuit and nibbled at it.
My chores are: cook breakfast, sweep the saloon floor, empty the spittoons (I’m not looking forward to that!) haul water and wood, shovel the droppings from in front of the door and tend the mules. In return I get the shed to sleep in, breakfast and dinner. He offered me a wage of fifty cents a day. I asked for more than that and we settled on a dollar. I had to point out to him that I didn’t eat much, though I would have liked that biscuit he ate! His name is Mr. Mallard (like the duck!) and he’s yelling right now that it’s 4:30 a.m. and when was I planning to start the biscuits.
October 1862
October 1, 1862
I can see why Mr. Mallard’s cook took to drink! Mr. Mallard yells and shouts all the day long! Yet when one of the men aimed a kick at me for moving the spittoon (how was I to know they had the spitting distance measured exactly!), Mr. Mallard grabbed the man by the back of his coat and hustled him out the door and told him not to come back. Then he himself yelled at me for moving the spittoon.
I asked every single person I saw, but nobody has heard of Father.
I’m so tired tonight I can’t see straight to write any more. Which is probably a good thing, as the account book is nearly full.
October 2, 1862
Too tired to write. Too tired to hunt for Father.
October 3, 1862
Some goods arrived at the saloon today wrapped in paper. I asked Mr. Mallard if I could have the wrapping. “You want my paper and to be paid?” he asked. I just stared at him until he told me to take the paper. Now I have some extra for writing and a sketch or two.
The saloon is a good size. There is a long bar like a high table along one wall. Mr. Mallard stands behind it and guards the bottles of liquor behind him. There are eight regular sized tables crammed into the remaining room, with a stove in the middle for heat. At the back of the saloon are three rooms, one for Mr. Mallard, another with four cots crammed into it for paying guests, and another where men who are nearly broke can pay less to sleep on the floor. The men in these rooms change constantly. “Always someone leaving,” Mr. Mallard told me. “But there’s new ones with a spark in their eyes arriving every day to replace them.”
It is quite ripe in these rooms as most of the men, and I must admit, myself, are in sore need of a bath! You can tell if someone’s struck it rich because they stay at the fancy French hotel rather than the saloon.
Attached to the back of the saloon, like an afterthought, is the kitchen, with a stove, a table on which to mix biscuits and slice bacon, and shelves to hold stacks of plates and cups, and very little space for me to move about without knocking my hips or knees on something.
And then there’s Old Jackson. No one knows where he came from and some say he was just here when the town went up. He has a permanent cot in the back room and breakfasts here every morning, and the rest of the day he sits and drinks whiskey. All that drink, you’d think he’d be mean, but he has the manners and speech of a gentleman and doesn’t use the spittoon. I tried to figure out how old he is, but could only narrow it down between thirty and one hundred years. One rumour is that he’s a bank robber from New York City and is running from the law. I studied Old Jackson pretty closely on hearing that. He certainly doesn’t look like a bank robber to me. Outlaws should have beady eyes, a black scowl and shifty ways. Another rumour is that Old Jackson has a hidden claim and that he’s actually very rich and could stay at the French hotel if he wanted.
One miner asked if Mr. Mallard would bring in dancing girls. He was from California and told us how the saloons down there had pretty girls that the men would pay for a dance. “But don’t make them wear crinolines,” he said. “I don’t take to crinolines on ladies — you have to take too much on trust. You don’t know what they’re hiding.”
I saw Mr. Mallard’s eyes get that gleam in them — the same look he gets when he’s studying the room where the men sleep and wondering if he can fit in yet another person. I think Mr. Mallard makes more money with his saloon than most of the miners passing through. I expect we’ll have dancing girls here soon.
I keep asking, but no news of Father.
October 4, 1862 (quite late at night)
or October 5 (early morning) I don’t know which
I slipped away from my chores today to beg Talbot to come to the saloon. There was to be a wake for a dead miner and I figured Talbot could sneak in and eat his fill, and people would think he was there to pay his respects. He asked what he’d do if someone talked about the dead man. I told him to shake his head sorrowfully and look sombre whenever anyone spoke of the deceased, and he’d do just fine.
This was my first wake and not one I’ll soon forget. I remember when Grandmother Palmer died and we all sat quietly around the casket the night before the burying. And Mama’s burying was even quicker. But the dead miner was Irish and had a fair amount of money, so the men said he should have a good sending off.
The wake began quietly and soberly enough. Especially as the priest from the Roman Catholic Church was there. I spent a fair amount of time studying him, as I’d never seen a priest up close before, other than the ones at St. Anne’s. The priest’s rosy cheeks and clean-shaven chin sure made him stand out from the whiskered miners. And of course, his black dress, though Old Jackson says it’s called a cassock. The room filled up quickly (everyone in town hearing about the free drinks, I expect) and Mr. Mallard was kept on his toes, pouring. I’d been making biscuits all day, and having found some dried apples in the storeroom, made those up into pies.
“Goes down real good with this whiskey,” one man said as he shovelled more pie into his mouth. He didn’t even bother to use a fork! Just reached in and grabbed a handful.
I saw Talbot hovering by the door so went over and pulled him in and shoved some biscuits into his pockets before they were all gone.
When the food was all eaten the men started to tell stories about the dead miner, and when they ran out of them, one man said, “Nothing Charlie liked better than a dance.” (Charlie was the dead man.)
And someone brought out his mouth organ and another his fiddle and the men began to dance — with each other, as there weren’t any women — stomping in their big boots on the wooden floors until the saloon echoed and trembled from
the noise.
But the worst, and funniest thing, I must admit, was when the man who suggested the dance pulled Charlie from the casket and dragged him all over the floor for “one last dance before the grave.”
Talbot’s mouth gaped open and his jaw fell even further when a glass of whiskey was pushed into his hand. He divided his gaze between the dead man dancing and the whiskey, and drained the glass. Three glasses later he was up dancing with the rest of the men.
October 5, 1862, later
I never saw the like of it! This morning most of the men were holding their heads and pushing their breakfasts back to me untouched, when a miner came into the saloon, walked up to the bar and asked Mr. Mallard for a whiskey. In the morning! That brought the men’s heads up from their hands. It’s uncanny, but these miners have noses like bloodhounds, scenting when gold’s around. “There are only two reasons to drink whiskey in the morning,” Old Jackson whispered to me. “To spend your last dollar and say goodbye to Cariboo before you return home empty-handed, or to celebrate a find.”
After a moment, the man who danced with the dead man last night sidled up to the miner and gave him a friendly nod. Then he says, real careless like, “Haven’t seen you in here before. You new to the area?” And the man told him he was. Which meant he wasn’t going home, so the whiskey was to celebrate. Everyone was alert now, like the place was one big ear listening. The miner suddenly cottoned on to that fact, put down his glass and high-tailed it out of there. The door wasn’t shut behind him when every last man, except Old Jackson, began whooping, and grabbed their hats and coats and stampeded after him.
A Trail of Broken Dreams Page 7