by Poppy
Had that been lucky chance, men in town from a distant rancho, rollicking and happening to break the line of carriages at just that point, accidentally, to halt the men who seemed to be watching for Madame's carriage? Or had Madame spoken with some rancher who sold her produce and valued her business and asked him to set his men on guard? Poppy realized she would never know, but she did wonder.
Sometimes in the long, sultry afternoons, she mused about men. She decided every nationality was different.
Maurice was a typical Frenchman, she decided, gallant to all women and faithful to none. She thought a Frenchman would make a good husband if a woman realized the marriage was only one of life's set conditions, like an income of five hundred pounds a year, and a man was expected to have his other little amusements.
Englishmen were her own people, and yet she had her reservations. Jack was the best type of English gentleman. To him, women were either good or bad. Bad women could be enchanting baubles in their prime. Or, as they aged, sad examples of what happened once a woman fell, and they could be aged at twenty. Good women were potential wives and mothers and must be treated as treasures, guarded, protected, and respected. To Jack, in spite of everything, she was a good woman. The other men on Injun Creek knew Jack would use his fists on any man who as much as uttered a profane word in front of the woman he called his sister. Poppy marveled but accepted the situation. It made it easy for her to love Jack. As she loved Andy.
American men she simply did not understand; They had their own code, and she had learned it, like some foreign language, but she still thought it strange and sometimes outrageous. They had something of the Englishman's attitude of reverence toward women as wives and mothers, and yet they treated them as equals, too, and expected more of them. In other ways, and she still did not understand all its intricacies, they had a strange code of conduct. Some things were men's work, and some were women's. A man would not touch women's work, through he might cook, wash, and mend for himself if he was alone, and brag about how well he did. But while he might treat women with a respect and even awe that seemed more sincere than an Englishman's ritual politenesses, he still left women's work to them when they were there. That was what Poppy, looking at her rough, reddened hands and feeling the new muscles in her arms and back, found outrageous. Washing shirts was physically brutal labor, yet American men would watch dotingly while she strained and heaved. Though it was profitable, she admitted, and they needed the money for food, it did not endear the Injun Creek miners to her, though otherwise she found them likable enough.
Her thoughts always ended with Dex, in mingled sorrow and anger. She did not even know whether he was English or French. Perhaps that was why his attitude was so incomprehensible to her. Either a Frenchman or an Englishman could have kept her as he had done in Paris. Either could have discarded and paid her off as ruthlessly when he decided to marry. But what kind of man could send a girl and a boy on board a ship like the Bonne Irene with an invitation to murder in their luggage?
That, more than the memory of Felicite, was the hurt that stabbed Poppy every time she thought of Dex, His memory was a seeping wound that refused to heal. She could keep busy all day, her mind occupied with a dozen trivialities and practicalities, and swear his name had never crossed her mind. At night, asleep and off guard, the wound broke open again and again.
Alone in the lean-to beside the tent where Jack and Andy slept, curled upon the straw mattress to get the most warmth from her one blanket, she would doze and drift in restless sleep. Then she would be once more in the big bed in Paris, everything around her soft and silken, and she would be held close against his strong, warm body, enraptured, glowing with tingling response as his hands caressed her and his lips found hers and moved on down her body.
She would reach for him with a murmuring whisper, to draw him closer, to feel his strength entering her-and then she would begin to wake, chilled, empty-armed, and alone. The murmur would sink to a whimper in her throat, and her face would be wet with tears. Desolate, angry, hating Dex, despising herself, she would swallow the sore rawness in her throat and dry her face on the blanket. She would not cry and whimper and long for the man. She would not admit the hurt that left her heart withered and crippled. Awake she did not. Asleep her dreaming body betrayed her again and again.
Chapter Thirty-three
SABBATH peace encompassed Injun Creek. Along the whole curve to the bend and beyond, nobody waded or worked in the fall-shallowed water. In the clearings along the banks, the smoke of cookfires rose straight up in the still air. This early in the day, no sounds broke the silence. The men were reading their Bibles or the newspapers they had got in town yesterday, writing letters home or penning long pages in their voluminous diaries, doing their week's cooking, scrubbing out a washing, or, for some of those who had spent yesterday in town, still nursing aching heads.
From her shelter under the oak, Poppy looked down at the camp sprawled along the banks of the creek and relished her solitude. Her excuse for getting away, three handfuls of greens brought out by the unseasonably early rain last week, wilted in the red calico kerchief at her side. She wiggled her toes in her crudely mended boots and smoothed out her green rep skirt. The heavy silk was wearing well, though the gloss was long since gone, but she must not have rinsed out the cast-iron kettle well enough before she washed it this last time because it had streaked badly. The green boy's work shirt was holding up just fine, except she had no way to iron it.
She glanced at the sun and settled back against the oak. Andy and Jack could warm up their own beans for lunch. They would not worry. No Indians ever came up this part of the creek, and anyhow the Digger Indians only wanted to be left alone to weave their baskets, fish, and gather acorns. Privately Poppy thought they seemed a little lacking.
No miner would do anything but fight to the death to protect her. That was the trouble. That was what she had felt she could not face today. Every Sunday the same thing happened. One 'by one, or in twos and threes, the men would all wander over to their clearing, hang around a while, shifting from one foot to the other, talking a little of the latest news they had heard in town or read in the papers. And all the time their eyes would never leave her. She knew, and they knew she knew, they came only to look at her, to see a woman moving around and working at homely, familiar tasks, to hear her voice and wait for her to smile. At first she had been touched and a little awed. She was the only woman this side of Injun Gulch, the only woman for fifteen miles around, the only woman some of these men had seen for weeks if their claims were far up the creek and they had not happened to go into Injun Gulch. Just to see and hear her was a wonderful, refreshing thing to them, something they looked forward to all week.
She disliked none of those men, but that ritual Sunday staring had been getting on her nerves for weeks. She began to feel like a battered but cherished Christmas ornament that was dragged out once a year to be seen but not touched and then put away in cotton again to be preserved for the next ceremonial viewing. So today she had announced she must gather these first new greens to cook before their teeth began to loosen with the scurvy, and she had come up the hill where she could be alone for a few hours.
She must have dozed. The sun was heating up, though it was getting so chill at nights now that her one blanket, no matter how tightly she curled herself into a ball, left her cold and stiff in the morning. She moved out from under the shadow of the oak and let the sun beat down on her as if she could store the warmth against the night. Down below ,the men were 'beginning to stir in their clearings. Each was a little separate from the others, some with tents, some with board shacks and a few like theirs with a combination of tent and rough timbered lean-to thatched with small branches.
She could see Dutch's red shirt moving toward their clearing. Below the bend, she could hear faint, sweet tones. Frenchy was playing his violin. Those distant deeper sounds were Little Joe and Ted Miller having one of their religious arguments, yelling .Bible texts back and f
orth at the top of their lungs. The quartet should have worked off their headaches and should start singing over on Tunner's claim soon. She always enjoyed that.
As usual ,they started out with "Oh, Susannah." Then they went on to "Hangtown Gals." That ha, ha, ha, in the last line always made her smile, the way the men roared it out. Now they were starting Tunner's favorite. He had come overland to California.
Oh, don't you remember sweet Betsy from Pike,
Who crossed the big mountains with her lover, Ike,
With two yoke of cattle, a large yellow dog,
A tall Shanghai rooster and one spotted hog?
Little Joe and Ted Miller must have gone over for a visit because they were singing hymns now. No, they were mixing them, first a hymn, then something else, and then another hymn. People said Little Joe had been a preacher and Ted Miller had 'been a doctor, but nobody asked, and they never said. If they ever wondered how an English sailor like Jack had found the money to bring his sister and brother to the States, they never asked that, either. It was not considered polite. Anything people wanted you to know, they would tell. Sometimes men hinted that asking questions was not only impolite but unhealthy.
Poppy sat up abruptly. What was that they were singing? That was a new tune but what were the words? Had she been hearing that, without really listening, because it was certainly related to what she had been thinking. The quartet was singing it again, trying out the harmonies.
Oh, what was your name in the States?
Was it Thompson or Johnson or Bates?
Did you murder your wife?
Did you fly for your life?
Oh, what was your name in the States?
Now that was different. Here people sang what they thought and felt. If they were beginning to ask, "What was your name in the States?" maybe California was changing, getting settled and civilized.
The mere thought was invigorating. A new song, as small a thing as that, was a bright shining spot in the endless, monotonous chain of days. For weeks, she had been feeling she was on an endless treadmill, plodding on and on, each day like the last, and none of it getting anywhere. She had felt bogged down, completely mired -in a hopeless situation that only got a little worse all the time. She had been wrong. She and Jack should have a talk. She must tell him she understood now that sometimes to move on to a new place was for the best.
She picked up her kerchief of greens and started down the hill, bending and nipping the few tender young shoots she had missed on the walk up. She would boil these and drench them with vinegar.
She had baked bread in both the skillet and the cook pot yesterday, so there was plenty left. She had put their last onion in with the chills for the beans, and that would make a fine Sunday dinner. She had saved back only the dried apples, and no argument was going to get her to touch them because the apples must stretch through all of next week when they would not have a single vegetable until Jack walked in to Injun Gulch next Saturday.
She went quickly across the narrow valley bordering the stream, avoiding the other camps. She circled around ropes strung between trees to form corrals for the horses. A burro tied to a tree to graze on the scanty underbrush brayed at her, and a dog or two barked, halfheartedly. She passed close enough behind Red Luke's shack to hear the slap of cards and the low-voiced mutters of the weekly card game within.
When she reached their clearing, she stood looking at it as if she had never seen it before. Jack had made it shipshape, and she kept it clean. The tent and lean-to stood close to the big elm, and their straw mattresses and blankets were hung neatly on the line between the lean-to and the tree. Poppy believed firmly that only daily airing kept them free of vermin, and since she did the hanging and took everything back inside in the evening, nobody argued with her. The fire was out under the big washing kettle and would not be lit until next Wednesday, but embers glowed in the cooking fire with its log backing. Poppy put the greens on the crude wooden chest Jack had hammered together to hold their food supplies and nodded approvingly when she noticed somebody had scrubbed out their tin plates and the wooden platters Andy had carved. She kicked her shoes into the lean-to. They must be saved. She kept the ground around the camp swept clean with a broom she had made of twigs, and it was safe enough to go bare-foot. Her house was in order.
Jack and Andy must have gone visiting to hear all the news from town. Without a horse, the long walk of fifteen miles to Injun Gulch and fifteen back meant a whole day's work lost. Jack tried to go only every two weeks or even three if he had enough gold to buy supplies to last that long. The walk was too much for Andy. He had only been out of the diggings once when Dutch let him ride with him on his horse, weeks and weeks ago.
Poppy nodded decisively. They had been drifting, dulled into numb acceptance because they had shelter and food, but winter was coming. She would talk to Jack at dinner. She would not complain. They had come to him desperate for protection, and he was giving them everything he had. He was a proud man and a decent man. She would be the worst of ingrates if she let him feel his best was not good enough. But he was a practical man, too. Perhaps he also had been wondering what they could do through the winter and had hesitated to worry her by mentioning it.
She had the coffee brewed and the beans heating when Jack came striding back into the clearing. His shoulders were back and his blue eyes shining as they had not in weeks.
"I've been hearing about the deep mining in that big strike in Grass Valley," he called.
Poppy's heart sank. This was not news to open a reasonable talk about the winter. People were right when they called this gold fever.
"Originally two men just stumbled on the stuff, glittering down among the grass roots," he said, flinging himself down on the two logs he had flattened to make a seat. "Filled two sacks with nuggets as fast as they could pick them up, as much as their burro could carry, and took it in to an assayer. Thirty-six thousand dollars just like that."
Andy came rushing up to the cookfire and stood hopping from one foot to the other. "Little Jim's packing and pulling out in the morning."
"Do you want to go?" Poppy asked flatly.
Jack's whole face changed and set. "How?"
"How far is Grass Valley?"
''Too far."
Poppy knew to a dollar how much gold they had, enough perhaps for one person to travel some distance but not three. "Could you make it alone?"
"No," Jack said. "No. Never suggest that again. I've fallen pretty low here, but not so low I have to abandon women and children."
''Then let's eat," Poppy said quietly. "Andy, you take a towel and have a good wash in the creek. I'll have dinner dished up by the time you're back."
She dished up the beans and the greens and put a big slice of bread on each plate. She filled tin mugs with coffee for all three of them. She was out of the cocoa she usually mixed with water for Andy.
Jack took his place on the sawed-off stump, and she and Andy sat side by side on the logs. Jack looked at his plate without touching it.
''Try the greens," Poppy urged.
"Hey, this is a fine Sunday dinner," Andy cried.
Jack's face flushed brick red. "Fine for paupers."
"Are we paupers?" Andy piped up through a mouthful of beans.
"What else?" Jack growled. "I don't even have a gun to shoot meat for our meals. There's quail, rabbit, deer, duck, everything, but we eat beans."
"Then eat them," Poppy said shortly. "Andy, what other news did the men have?"
"Aw, just politics," Andy said. ''They'll bring you over a paper, and you can read it for yourself. A lot of men are speeching at each other as usual. Including Jeremiah. That's all."
That night an icy chill clamped down on the valley. First snow in the Sierra, the men said, and told tales of other winters and drifts twenty and thirty feet deep. The sun 'burned warmly by mid-morning, but that chill had bitten deep into Poppy. They could not stay in this camp through the winter.
She must talk to Jack. Sh
e was willing to do whatever he wanted, but they must do something. She turned secret schemes in her mind, always remembering she must not let Jack feel he had failed them. Then too, geography was betraying her again. She had only the vaguest, most general idea where she was.
