Prospects of a Woman

by Wendy Voorsanger

  40

  Since the night we met

  Back in her bedroom above the Pacific Print Shop, she flung herself onto the bed, burying her face in the embroidered linen pillowcase, shaking. Trying to forget. Trying to find a way to hate that man, journeying along with every vagrant breeze! Loving her and leaving her to forget her eyes that shamed the purple sky, with that damn Lily B., young and beautiful and hungry for a fancy Californio like him. What a fool she’d been to carry around his Malagueña letter in her pocket all year. And even now. She pulled it out from her skirt pocket, the paper thinned and frayed from rubbing it to death. She ripped it up, ashamed he still flowed through her blood after all this time, after using her like a dirty rag, then tossing her aside for a young American girl with a load of money behind that stupid squeal. Seething atop her quilt, she lay in a rage. Angry at herself. She’d come so far during the past year. She thought she’d moved on from all that hurt and shame. Replaced it with hard work and a load of learning. Moved on from all she’d done wrong. All the wrong choices. Wrong turns. The wrong loving that pricked with so much pain. What a fool she’d been! He’d been living in her bones the whole time. No amount of work or temperance could leach him out. Nothing could drain away that sort of love.

  She wanted a drink of whiskey or mezcal. Something hard enough to dull the sharp stick of jealousy stabbing into her heart. Something to prop her up, give her strength. Digging around in her lock box, she grabbed a fistful of coins. She leaped down the steps and grabbed the front door knob, just as someone knocked. She backed up quiet, not wanting to deal with Mr. Langley. Not wanting to explain or make excuses.

  “Elisabeth, open the door. Por favor.”

  It was Nemacio. He knocked again, and she sank to the floor, frozen.

  “Please. My love. Please. I know you are there . . .”

  He rapped on the door again and again as she sat quiet in a heap. She wasn’t strong enough to open the door. To see his face up close. Not strong enough for his excuses. His lies. Just smelling him, she’d probably fall right back down his well of lying loving, getting trapped deep in that dark passion all over again with no way out. She stayed silent, pleased at hearing the growing desperation in his voice.

  “You were married. I couldn’t take you from him.”

  She wanted to open the door, to scream that she wasn’t some damn horse to be traded. She was a woman who owned herself. He got quiet, and she wondered if he felt her through the door, listening. Holding herself back from unlocking her heart. Holding herself back from letting him in, again.

  “I didn’t know,” he said, calmer now. “About the divorce. I didn’t know you could divorce.”

  He knew. He just didn’t approve. He’d told her so.

  “I came back to the diggins. To explain about Lily, but you were gone,” he said.

  It went quiet, and she thought he might’ve left. Gone home to his red-haired American girl. She scooted up close to the door, leaning her cheek on the cold wood, and pressed her ear flat. Listening. She heard his breathing then, heavy and trembling. She felt him sad and weak right through the door, and she smiled, knowing he wasn’t worth a drop of whiskey. Wasn’t worth ruining all she’d built up. Wasn’t worth losing her dignity.

  “I had to marry. To save the ranch,” he said.

  She’d a never done that. She’d a never traded her love for a little money and a sweet slice of land. Not for a spot of heaven itself. She’d a never given him up. Standing, she turned away from the door. Walking up the stairs, she heard him calling out. Pleading.

  “Please, Elisabeth. I only love you. Solo te quiero a ti. Solo ti. Solo ti.”

  As his voice faded away behind in hollow pleas, she vowed to never again settle for less than a grand love. Honest and true. And meant only for her.

  41

  Up a hill, down a stream

  “Shhhh . . . I hear something,” said Julie, putting her head down the hole.

  Elisabeth listened, peering inside the hole burrowed into the side of the hill. Black as pitch and cold, the shaft stunk of rotten eggs wafting up, slapping her in the face. She turned away, coughing.

  “Shhhh,” said Julie.

  “I don’t hear a thing,” she said.

  Elisabeth and Julie were at the Porter Mine on a dry ravine, investigating all the deep well mines.

  After seeing Nemacio at the opera, Elisabeth had convinced the Rosenblatts a feature in California Illustrated about the new mining techniques would sell in the thousands, and even back East too. She took off for the placers the very next day, fleeing Nemacio and his excuses and her own delicate heart. Eager for an adventure, Julie agreed to come along. They’d been out traveling for only two weeks and had already found one mine she owned shares in, the Clearwater, which turned out to be a modest operation making decent gains, and four mines from John Langley’s list.

  The Porter Mine was partway obscured by dried grass, so they’d nearly missed the hole altogether. Elisabeth cleared bits of sticks away from the head beam to reveal an entrance about four feet in diameter, braced up off-kilter with rickety wooden beams and a sign claiming it The Porter Mine.

  “It smells like deep pay dirt. Might be over twenty feet, maybe more,” she said.

  “Shhh!” Julie said.

  She heard it, then. A feeble tapping, like a tummy gurgling faintly with hunger. Then nothing. Then the feeble gurgling tap again.

  Julie pulled her head out of the hole, with a face turned white and beading up with nervous sweat.

  “It’s the tommy-knockers,” said Julie.

  “The tommy-knockers?”

  “My grandfather told all about those godforsaken imps,” said Julie.

  “Stop!”

  “Those tommy-knockers are like leprechauns and brownies. Little green men living in the mines, knocking around, making strange noises,” Julie explained.

  “I don’t believe in magic,” said Elisabeth.

  “Believe it! Those tommy-knockers are real, making mischief. Depending on their mood. That knocking means two things: either the tommy-knockers say this hole leads to richness or it’s a death pit about to collapse,” Julie insisted.

  “Just those two choices?”

  “Yep,” said Julie.

  “Go in for the booty or get the hell away?” she asked, mocking.

  “You go ahead and laugh, but my granddaddy told me about those tommy-knockers living in the coal mines back in Cornwall. One time, he heard them knocking and ran out of the mine just as the fore section caved in. After that my granddaddy left a slice of cherry pie every Friday for those tommy-knockers, thanking them. Asking for protection. Call it superstitious, but come Monday, that pie was always gone.”

  “Lemme guess. Eaten by the tommy-knockers,” Elisabeth said, funning.

  Returning to the American River basin with Julie had improved her spirits after seeing Nemacio again. Julie proved a great traveling companion, always goofing around and making light with a warm, funny manner. She hadn’t told Julie about Nemacio at the opera, preferring instead to forget altogether.

  “Yes! And after, no more mine accidents,” said Julie.

  As the tapping turned to clomping, they listened at the mouth of the mine. When the clomping got louder and louder, they backed up.

  “That you, ladies?” a voice called out, muffled and small.

  A short man crawled out of the hole, scruffy with a long red beard and a hat filled with cobwebs and bits of dust that sparkled in the sun. He stood short but was still a man, not a tommy-knocker. Both women sighed in relief.

  “I heard you was coming,” he said.

  The man introduced himself as Drew Mack, manager of the Porter Creek Mine, explaining that word had gotten around two ladies were crawling all over the hills, writing and picturing the deep pits. His boss told him to show the ladies the spoils. Explain the particulars and such.

  “Who’s your boss?” Elisabeth asked.

  “Mr. James Porter,” he said.
r />   “James Porter! He’s an old friend,” she said.

  “You got a picture box? I’ll stand right to the side so you can see the hole,” said Mr. Mack, posing tall. “The world will want to hear about the production we’ve got going on here.”

  “Where is Mr. Porter?” she asked.

  “Maybe up in Auburn Town this week. I never do know the particular whereabouts of Mr. Porter at any one given moment. He’s a busy man.”

  “I’ll bet,” she said. “Tell me, Mr. Mack, how do you separate the ore with no water running down the ravine?”

  “Not in the summer, that’s for sure. We operate in winter, full up, and in spring, too, when the rains fill the gully down there. We break up rock, more than two dozen of us, till we get out the gold.”

  She had her notebook out now and started scribbling with a charcoal nub along the paper, even though the mine looked abandoned with no past evidence of the production Drew Mack described.

  “How exactly?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “How exactly do you break up the rock? You still smashing with pickaxes?”

  Julie set up her tripod with a camera box as Drew Mack shifted on his feet in the hot sun.

  “Make sure you write down there are no Maidu in these parts,” he said, pointing to her notebook. “Last spring they all got rounded up for those Indian Farms. There’s a bounty on their scalp, with the new laws. Those savages stay clear now, is all I know. You getting this all down?”

  Hearing about the Indian Farms made her think of Henry and his girl. She still held soreness for them both but wasn’t so cruel to want the girl to get rounded up. Penning up any person like an animal struck her as cruelty beyond redemption.

  “How much have you pulled out so far?”

  “See this here? I pulled this up just today.”

  Drew Mack handed over a nugget, brassy like a crystalline sunflower. Turning over the golden ore, Elisabeth found it hard and flat with crackled striations radiating out from the center. As she ran her thumb along the center, gold bits flaked off, sticking to her sweaty skin.

  “What’s the total yield?” she asked.

  “Quite a bit,” he said.

  “How much is quite a bit?” she pushed.

  “Looky here, ladies. My hat sparkles with the stuff.” Mr. Mack thrust his hat in her face. “Make sure you write that down. ‘His hat sparkled in gold dust.’”

  “Quite impressive,” she said, handing the nugget back to Drew Mack and nodding for Julie to take a picture.

  “Hold your hat in one hand and the nugget in the other,” said Julie. “Now keep still.”

  Elisabeth wondered if Mr. Mack was really that stupid, or if he just thought women knucklehead fools. Gold isn’t brittle, but soft. It can’t rub off in your hands and doesn’t smell like rotten eggs. His golden nugget was simply iron and sulfur fused together into the heartbreaking joke of fool’s gold. She didn’t let on she knew the truth, just nodded in approval, grateful she’d refused marrying that lying Mr. James Porter when he’d asked.

  “Give me a figure, Mr. Mack,” she said.

  “A figure?”

  “A figure on how much gold you’ve pulled up so far.”

  “Uh . . . seventy pounds. Say seventy pounds.”

  She didn’t ask for proof, just wrote the number down in her notebook and elbowed Julie to move on.

  Following a map from the Hangtown assayer, the women traveled around on horseback, zigzagging along the new roads cut through the Sierra foothills, twisting and turning down rugged pine-covered canyons and snaking up the other side, looking for all the hard-rock mines on Elisabeth’s list. The mountains teemed with activity now, with pack trains of mules carrying mail into mining camps, and Wells Fargo money stages, passenger coaches, supply wagons, and miners on foot swarming like locusts from one location to the next. Folks proved friendly as ever, eager to make small talk with the women, share in the latest word of a new strike. The road builders took tolls on the roads, and Elisabeth was happy to pay, thinking routes cut into those steep ravines a marvel of man’s ingenuity and far safer than those skinny footpaths she’d once traveled with bears lurking under bushes.

  Elisabeth still wasn’t relaxed up on her horse. Coming overland with the wagon train turned Julie into quite a horsewoman, and she insisted they ride straddling the horses with both legs, like men.

  “I’ve always been convinced those damn sidesaddles are some diabolical invention of a tyrannical man, made to drag women lopsided through the world. I like to see where I’m going,” said Julie.

  Elisabeth wasn’t at all happy with her squat, dappled gray gelding, looking old and doddery with a scraggy mane and graying whiskers. But Julie insisted she needed something steady on its feet since she’d had no riding experience. Elisabeth slumped awkward atop the pony, nervous at managing such a creature, even with its small size. Although she was happy wearing her comfortable skirt, cut short, with no corset digging into her ribs.

  Julie demonstrated the particulars of horse riding, sitting easy on her mare, Old Sally, showing how to steer and stop, and how to weight the saddlebags even so as not to cause the horse distress. Julie said to act casual but confident too. Let the horse know who’s boss. Give him a kind talking to. Treat him just like any old man, telling him he’s smart and strong.

  Elisabeth hated calling her horse Burrito, thinking the name silly. Even though Julie advised it wasn’t a good idea to confuse the horse, she took to calling it Tom, in honor of her dead dog.

  “I refuse to call out to a Burrito the whole way,” she said, grumbling.

  Leaving the Porter Mine, Elisabeth still wasn’t relaxed, off-balance and shaky up on Tom as usual, who moved slow and stubborn and refused to trot fast enough to keep up with Julie on Old Sally. Tom pained her, going sideways instead of straight and stopping sudden to munch on grass. She kicked Tom hard in the sides with her boots and slapped his withers unkind, pulling on his reins strong.

  “I keep telling you, he don’t go by Tom,” said Julie, shaking her head. “His name’s Burrito.”

  “He’ll go by what I say. Git up, Tom!”

  Her legs grew sore from kicking Tom over and over to git up, and from gripping tight when he got a mind to haul off at a rough unwieldy run. She yelled angry and impatient at Tom’s difficult temperament.

  “Quit beating on him. Talk nice. Let him nibble at the grass, a bit. They work for love.”

  She tried coaxing him to walk right, talking smooth talk to him. But the damn thing didn’t respond, instead sulked along, laying his ears low like he knew she lied. When Tom turned and bit her knee, she felt so mad and beaten down she thought she’d cry. Over a damn stubborn horse! After that, she resigned to ignore his willful manner, letting him go on at his poky, annoying pace. She stopped smacking on him, since it didn’t work anyhow, and he slowly started minding her gentle rein commands, if reluctant and with a little hesitation.

  By that afternoon, the two settled into a sort of resigned agreement, and she grew grateful at least that she wasn’t breaking her back walking and pushing a cart like she’d been three years before with Nate. She found the familiar nature of the American River canyon a grand comfort. Along the trail, the water’s cadence over the rocks gave her chills, like a long forgotten song streaming through her once again. Her mood soared at the rich blue sky; she hadn’t realized how much the wet fog of San Francisco had dampened her free spirit. Bright orange poppies and red Indian paintbrush speckled along the hillsides, burning her eyes open, as all the pines greeted her with outstretched branches like old friends.

  Julie turned out an agreeable traveling companion, energetic and eager to explore the area bringing so much fuss to the whole of America. Sometimes she rattled on too much for Elisabeth, who rather preferred savoring the simple sounds of the soothing breeze whooshing through the boughs. But she didn’t tell Julie to shut it, just listened to her friend chattering on about the beauty of California. Considering each day an adven
ture, Julie blanketed the air with cheerful optimism, offering up intelligent companionship, all while pointing out clever observations like how pine trees only collect moss on the north side, and how funny she found marmots always choosing a spectacular view atop high rock ledges to do their business, and how the American flows back up on itself in sections, eddying up into a calm whirlpool. Julie’s chatty manner grew on thick, and Elisabeth came to enjoy her lively observations on all sorts of subjects. Writing. Books. Picture taking and engraving. The particulars of managing financial matters, and the prospects of a woman working on her own. With Julie along, the journey turned surprisingly lighthearted and joyful.

  Two women traveling alone up through the foothills into the river basin was still a novelty to the miners they passed. The men usually stopped pickaxing near the riverbanks to doff their hats and stare dumfounded like they were looking at a mirage. Not one group let the women pass without offering them a place to stop and rest in the shade. Water their horses. Or join them for a cup of coffee. The women were polite but never accepted.

  “No time, boys, gotta get on,” Elisabeth said, begging off.

  She told Julie there was no reason to be nervous.

  “They’re harmless. Just ordinary men out looking for courting company. And we’re a rare sight. Precious things they haven’t seen in some time digging out here among only men. Don’t you mind ’em, Julie.”

  Looking down at the men from atop her horse as she passed, Julie mumbled to herself.

  “No man ever thought I was precious, that’s for sure.”

  Being near the American River again relaxed Elisabeth, and she soon gave up calling her horse Tom. She might as well call the damn thing by his real name, no matter how stupid Burrito sounded. She’d been foolish anyhow, trying to rename a horse after a dog she’d once loved. Those days had long passed, swept away along a river of remembrance. The gelding responded right away at hearing his name, perking his ears up sweet. She stroked the side of his neck, leaning down and whispering in his ear.