Janet Quin-Harkin

by Fools Gold

  “They’ll have to. We’ll scoop up water with every pan we’ve got and leave it until it’s cool enough to drink.”

  Eden and Bliss came to join their mother.

  “It smells bad here, Mama,” Eden said, wrinkling her nose. “Can’t we stop somewhere else?”

  “We have to stop where there’s water,” Libby said.

  “I want a drink, Mama,” Bliss begged.

  “We have to wait a while,” Libby said. “Hold Mama’s hand. The water’s very hot.”

  The men cursed as they carried bowls of scalding water and it slopped over them. Rival noticed Libby, standing with her children in the shade. “You made it then,” he said. “Might as well make the most of all this hot water and get my washing done.”

  “If you want me to drive all night, I intend to sleep all day,” Libby said. “Do your own washing.”

  She caught Gabe’s eye and he winked at her.

  “I enjoyed your repertoire of singing, Mr. Foster,” she said, “although I’d have preferred a little opera and not so many barroom songs.”

  “My apologies, madame,” he said, bowing, “but my Mozart is a little rusty and I had not realized I had an audience. I was singing purely to keep myself awake. I hope I didn’t disturb you?”

  “On the contrary, I found it very reassuring,” she said, returning his smile.

  “I thought from time to time that I heard a cricket chirping behind me,” Gabe added, his eyes teasing. “Did you hear it?”

  “I can’t say that I did,” she replied, walking past him to take a pail of water to the shade of the wagon.

  The water was foul tasting, and never really cooled enough to be refreshing, but it was better than nothing. They spent a miserable day lying in the shade, splashing themselves with warm water to try and get cool. As the sun set, they started off again in a repeat of the past night’s march.

  The second night was almost unbearable. Libby had hardly slept during the heat of the day and now her head throbbed and she swayed with tiredness. Every few minutes she found herself dropping off to sleep, the reins slipping from her hands. Once, one of the oxen stumbled and the wagon lurched, almost sending her sprawling forward off the seat. She only just managed to grab at the footboard to stop herself from falling under the hooves. That frightened her awake for a while, but as dawn approached, sleep overtook her again. She woke with a start when a voice yelled. It was still dark, but the eastern sky was etched with a thin line of approaching dawn. She had no idea how long she’d slept, but the wagon ahead of her had stopped and there were shouts and screams echoing off the rocks.

  Cautiously, she reached for the rifle under her seat. A figure came running toward her. “Hey, put that down. My singing didn’t offend you that much, did it?” Gabe shouted.

  “What’s going on?” Libby asked. “What are all those shouts?”

  “We’ve found the Carson,” Gabe shouted back. “The men are going crazy. Come on, come and get wet.” He put up his arms to her and lifted her down. She was very conscious of his hands on her waist and that they lingered there, long after her feet had touched the ground. “You can let go of me now, Mr. Foster,” she said, laughing uneasily. “I’m quite able to stand on my own.”

  “I’ve noticed,” he said and slid his hands from her.

  CHAPTER 14

  EVERYONE ENJOYED THE fresh water, the oxen standing knee deep or wallowing in satisfaction and the men, stripped to the waist, splashing each other like Little boys. Libby would have loved to join in the fun, but she felt uneasy among so many exuberant men, especially since these men were now little better than naked and had been without women for two months. So she had to content herself with bringing pails of water back to the wagon, where she and the girls washed themselves in privacy.

  “We have to start looking respectable again soon children,” she said, “because we’re almost in California. We just have to follow this river up into the mountains and then California is on the other side. In a few days we’ll be safely there and we’ll find Papa again.”

  “Does that mean we’ll have to wear pantaloons and underskirts again?” Eden asked, wrinkling her nose with disgust.

  “We can’t go on dressing like savages forever,” Libby said.

  “I like being a savage,” Eden said.

  “Me too,” Bliss added.

  Libby looked at them. They had survived remarkably well, she thought. They were very different from the pale, chubby daughters who had set out, dressed in their laces and velvets. They were both skinny and suntanned like little native children, but they were fit enough and Eden seemed to have grown.

  I hope their father won’t have a fit when he sees them in this condition, Libby thought. I must try to clean up their proper dresses so that they look respectable when he sees them. And me, she added. I must look like a savage too. She ran her hand through her hair which she now wore in a braid, like a schoolgirl, and which was sun-bleached strawberry blond at the front. When she thought of dressing up again, of wearing her corset and her hooped skirts and layers of undergarments, she shuddered.

  She wondered if Hugh had become a savage too, then shook her head. Hugh would probably still be insisting on starched white tablecloths and polished silver as he worked in his gold mine. He’d probably be shovelling up gold with lace cuffs on his shirt. It would take more than a wilderness half a world away from civilization to make Hugh forget he was an English gentleman. Then she found herself smiling at the thought of him. He had been less and less in her thoughts as she faced the hardships of the journey, but now that the journey was almost over, she realized how much she wanted to see him again, to get back to being normal and safe with a man to protect her.

  They waited several days for the animals to get back their strength before they moved on down the Carson River with the bare faces of the mountains coming closer and closer on their right. At last they came to the place where the river entered the dry valley. It was the first week of September when they set off, up the steepest, most rugged mountains they had yet encountered. The pass over the Rockies had been so gentle that they had hardly been aware of it. The pass over the Sierra Nevada Mountains went straight up. Beside them the river cascaded down to the dry plain in a series of trickles and falls. There was no trail to follow. The only route went over and around boulders, some as big as a man, some as big as a wagon. At times it was hard enough for a person to find footing. The oxen slithered and bellowed and had to be dragged and pushed and whipped while the wagons bumped and lurched behind, more often on two wheels than on four.

  After a day of sweat and bruises the plains seemed to have barely dropped away. The top was nowhere in sight. But the men who stayed with Rival were in better spirits now and everyone felt that California was literally just around the corner. They had been on the road for more than three months and they were anxious for journey’s end. Also there were fears of snow. Until this moment, all they had worried about was the heat. Now the men muttered about rumors of parties snowed in at the summit, freezing to death or dying from starvation only miles from the promised land.

  “As long as we make it over safely before fall starts, we won’t have to worry,” Jimmy told them.

  At last, battered and exhausted, they reached the summit. They stood on top of the world and stared out in all directions—the dry, parched desert world behind in muted tones of yellow and gray contrasting with the world ahead, a world of granite peaks, splashes of snow, towering pines, and small blue lakes. It was enchantingly beautiful but not what any of them wanted to see. They wanted to see a clear road leading down to towns where chimneys were smoking. Instead, the rugged country went on, peak after peak into the blue west.

  They set up camp in a high alpine meadow, wrapping themselves up as the temperature dropped with the sunset. The fire of dry pine branches flared up into a big blaze and Libby secretly hoped that the blaze would attract settlers from hidden towns nearby, who would arrive with fresh food and warm clothing and inv
itations to shelter. That night Libby lay in a dream. She was at a concert, back in Boston, and the orchestra was playing. It was a rousing piece with much clashing of cymbals and banging of drums. When it finished the crowd broke into applause. Libby opened her eyes and the clapping went on, accompanied by a final drum roll. There was a bright flash, lighting up the whole wagon and Libby sat up.

  “What is it, Mama?” Bliss asked, waking too.

  “It’s only a thunderstorm,” Libby said, realizing that the dream clapping had been the sounds of rain on the canvas top of the wagon.

  Bliss moved closer to her mother as the storm raged on. A wind sprang up and tore at the wagon flaps. The rain fell harder and harder and from outside came the sound of branches breaking and falling. Eventually, they drifted back to sleep and woke to complete and overwhelming silence.

  “The storm’s over,” Bliss announced, sitting up.

  Eden opened her eyes. “What storm?” she asked.

  “You slept through a thunderstorm last night,” Libby said, smiling.

  “That’s funny. I thought people were clapping in my dream. It must have been thunder,” Eden said.

  “I had the same dream,” Libby said. “Thank heavens it’s stopped now.”

  “It’s awful cold, Mama,” Bliss said. “Is the sun shining, do you think?” She pulled back the flaps and let out a yell. “Look, Mama, it’s snowing!”

  The other two joined her. The world outside was eerily white and still. Snow was falling so thickly that the other wagons were just hazy shapes. The big pine trees were already bowed with white branches.

  “Can we play in it? Can we build a snowman?” the girls begged excitedly.

  Jimmy came up, not looking excited. “We must get going,” he said. “There’s more snow in those clouds and we don’t want to find ourselves trapped up here.”

  “But how will we find our way with all this snow?” Libby asked.

  “We’ll have to risk it. One good storm and we might be cut off for weeks.”

  “But it’s only September. How can this happen?”

  Jimmy shrugged as if he wasn’t responsible for the weather. “We’re pretty high up here,” he said, “although it’s not usual to have snow this early. Let’s just hope it’s a freak and it soon melts.”

  Libby was glad to get out her old underskirts and camisole and her Boston dress. Even with the woolen shirt and her shawl over her, her fingers were soon numb as she tried to help with harnessing the oxen. Two of them were so exhausted by the climb and the long journey that they refused to get up. They lay there, pathetically covered with a coating of snow and would not move, however much the men tried to cajole, force, or whip them.

  “Leave them,” Libby cried at last, when the whips had drawn blood on their backs. “Can’t you see they can’t go on?”

  In the end they had no alternative but to leave the oxen. That also meant leaving one wagon. With the expectation that the journey would end very shortly, Rival agreed to leave his own cook wagon behind, having Libby drive the wagon loaded with flour sacks. Rival had his brandied fruit and bottles of brandy brought across and there was scarcely room for Libby’s belongings, much less the children. Libby perched them on top of flour sacks and wrapped them in rugs. “Stay warm,” she commanded.

  They began to cross the Sierras with only two teams to each wagon. The going was nightmarish. The animals slithered and stumbled, scared to put down their feet on a trail they could not see. Snow blew into everyone’s faces and found openings in wagon flaps so that it piled and melted inside, making everything wet. Shoes which had held up for more than three months of crossing the wasteland now leaked and fell apart. The men pulled on several pairs of socks over their boots to help them keep their footing as they pulled the bullocks between boulders. Snow blew straight into their faces and in minutes they were soaked through.

  “Get back in the wagon, you can’t handle this,” Gabe shouted to Libby as she attempted to coax her team forward.

  “There’s no one else to do it,” she shouted back.

  “Then leave the damn wagon. You’ll freeze to death. You’ll catch pneumonia.”

  “I’ll manage,” Libby said, although she was shivering so violently that she could not keep her hands still.

  By midday they came to a man-high drift. While the men got out shovels to dig, Libby made them all hot coffee on the spirit stove. She noticed that there was almost no spirit left. If they had to spend another night up here, how would they keep warm? Eden and Bliss were huddled in blankets, covered in the wolfskins Gabe had bartered for. If she’d known how useful they’d be, she’d have traded the rest of her hair combs and even her mirror, Libby thought ruefully. She cradled a coffee cup in her hands, trying to restore feeling to them. Her legs and feet still felt numb. She had to keep moving, keep active. She poured more coffee and ferried it down to the men working at the drift.

  “It’s a bugger, ma’am. Pardon my language,” one of them said, wiping the sweat from his brow. Libby stared at the forbidding wall of snow. Then, as she watched, the two men working at the front dug through and they were looking at the long valley below. With renewed energy the men cleared a path wide enough for the wagons and soon they were heading downward. On the other side there was just a dusting of snow, as if Mother Nature had put this last obstacle in the way and then given up.

  They camped in another mountain meadow and dried clothes in front of a big fire. Next morning they woke to blue skies and no more trace of snow ahead. “Downhill all the way,” someone shouted and the men encouraged their teams to move faster. There was even more hint of a road here. In several places wooden bridges spanned ravines and at one point the road was built out from the rock face with wooden spikes. It was not easy going. The road was never wider than a wagon and pebbles slithered and bounced down thousand-foot drops as they passed over.

  Only one more day of this, Libby kept chanting to herself. She was convinced that she only had to survive this steep-sided valley and everything else would be easy. She sat gripping the reins, willing the oxen not to stumble, not daring to look at that dreadful drop.

  She made it safely over the wooden bridge and gave a prayer of thanks. Ahead was a clear road cut into the mountainside. The team ahead of Libby began to move ahead faster. She heard the driver’s shouts and the crack of a whip. Her own team responded, lumbering after the disappearing wagon ahead. “Whoa,” Libby yelled, dragging on the reins. She could feel the wagon picking up speed and jammed on the wheel lock. Sparks flew from the rear wheel, but she was not strong enough to stop it from turning. The wagon started gaining on the weary animals, one of them stumbled and the wagon slithered sideways, one of its wheels hanging out over the drop.

  Libby leaped from her seat. She could feel the weight of the wagon pulling at the animals. “Help!” she screamed. “Eden! Bliss! Jump to Mama!”

  Slowly, the wagon began to slide backward, hanging out over the drop. Men came running from other teams. Arms reached out to help Libby to the ground. “The children!” She reached out desperately toward them.

  “Mama, my dolly!” Bliss yelled. She tried to go back into the wagon. Desperately Libby grabbed at her skirt.

  “Forget the doll. Jump! Jump to Mama!” Libby shouted, dragging Bliss down from the seat.

  One of the men caught Eden as she jumped. Hands grabbed at the bullocks’ heads. A shower of pebbles cascaded downward, bumping off hidden rocks below. Libby dragged the children back to the rock face, an arm around each of them. The tired animals were no match for a laden wagon.

  “It’s no use, it’s going!” men shouted.

  “Cut them loose,” someone shouted. Knives hacked at the harness straps. The wagon inched backwards, teetered for a moment, then, with a groan, it disappeared over the edge, taking the animals with it. There was a horrible crash, then all was still. Libby put her hand to her mouth, feeling that she might vomit any second. The vision of that disappearing wagon kept haunting her, knowing that Eden
and Bliss had escaped death by seconds. Bliss was crying. “I want my dollie!”

  “Don’t worry, sissy, we’ll get you a new dollie,” Eden’s wise little voice comforted. Libby could not stop trembling. She was trembling so violently that she wrapped her arms around her to steady herself.

  “Are you all right?” Gabe asked, running up to her.

  “Oh, Gabe,” she whispered and buried her head in his shoulder.

  His strong arms closed around her. “It’s over. You’re safe,” he muttered, stroking her hair.

  Sheldon Rival arrived, panting, up the hill.

  “My wagon!” he gasped. “What did you do to my wagon?”

  “There was only one team. They couldn’t hold it,” men explained. “We’re lucky it didn’t go over with the Little girls in it.”

  “It was her wagon?” Rival demanded. “I might have known. You stupid woman. What about my flour? What about my potatoes?”

  Libby broke free from Gabe. “Your flour?” she screamed. “My children nearly lost their lives and you’re worried about flour? What sort of man are you? You’re not a human at all, you’re a monster! My only regret is that you didn’t go over that cliff with your precious flour!”

  She took her children by the hand. “Come on, children,” she said. “We’ll not stay with this man another minute. We can find our own way from here. Goodbye Mr. Rival. May you rot in hell!”

  “Mama—where are we going? What about Mr. Foster? How will we find the way?” Eden demanded.

  “My dollie!” Bliss wailed.

  Libby kept both hands firmly in hers and kept walking, past the wagons and into the pine trees. Moments later she heard the clip-clop of hooves behind her and there was Gabe on his horse.

  “Wait up, you walk too fast,” he called after her.

  “What are you doing?” she asked with a tired smile.

  “Keeping an eye on you.”

  “I don’t need keeping an eye on.”

  “Where do you intend to sleep tonight? What do you intend to eat?” Gabe asked.