Sacred Ground

by Barbara Wood

  When he awoke after sunset she was able to coax him to drink some lukewarm coffee. But he had no appetite for the fruit and biscuits she offered. He tried to get out of bed saying he should be getting to Charlie’s but he hadn’t the strength. So Angelique made him more comfortable and went down to Ostler’s, where she bought blankets and another pillow, coming back to fix a bed for herself on the floor.

  The next morning, Seth was worse.

  With her hand on his burning forehead, she felt his pulse. It was abnormally slow for such a high fever. Terror suddenly gripped her as she remembered a fever that had swept through Mexico city ten years earlier. The high fever and slow pulse had alarmed the doctors for it was a sign unique to a dreaded illness: febre tifoidea— typhoid fever.

  She closed her eyes in fear. She had been right about the peach vendor. He was what the curanderas in Mexico called a carrier. He had brought illness to Devil’s Bar. Angelique stood paralyzed with fear and helplessness. People died of typhoid, even young, healthy men.

  As she frantically wondered what she should do, whom she should call for help, Seth woke up and blinked at her with fever-bright eyes. “You’re still here,” he whispered. “Can I please have some water?” Suddenly he leaned over the side of the bed and vomited. “Oh God, I am so sorry,” he moaned as he fell onto his back. To her horror, she realized he had also soiled himself.

  And all of a sudden everything that had happened in the past weeks— the voyage on the Betsy Lain, the auction block, Devil’s Bar— rushed at her like a malevolent black tide and she could take it no more. She ran out of the cabin crying, wanting her father, hating this place, hating Seth Hopkins.

  Blindly she fled from the camp, splashing across the creek and up the slope covered with tree stumps.

  At the top she reached the forest where she fell to the ground and wept bitterly, all the loneliness and feelings of helplessness and homesickness pouring out of her. And then pain filled her head and she was far from her medicine so she had no choice but to let the attack run its course, this accursed falling sickness she had inherited from Grandmother Angela.

  As she lay immobilized by pain and paralysis, visions filled her mind, not prophecies or hallucinations, but memories from years ago, when she was six years old: that strange time at Rancho Paloma when there was supposed to have been a wedding but something else happened and they had all abruptly left. Angelique didn’t know what it was, but she suddenly remembered now her mother’s hysterics at the time. Carlotta, whom Angelique had always remembered as being strong and practical, reduced to hysteria. It had something to do with Auntie Marina vanishing mysteriously, and something happening to Grandfather Navarro. But what stood out in Angelique’s mind now as sharp as the mountain peaks surrounding her, was Grandmother Angela’s face— round and pale and beautiful— and her voice, as clear as the birdcall in these woods, as she said, “I have done what had to be done. You can say it was wrong, and perhaps it was wrong, but it was what had to be done.” And then Carlotta, panicked: “They will come for you, Mother! They will hang you! You must run. You must hide.” And Grandmother, so calm and strong: “I will neither run nor hide. I shall face whatever God has set before me. Navarro women are not cowards.”

  D’Arcy had taken his wife and daughter away the very next day, and the memory had faded from Angelique’s mind. She wondered now, in the grip of a sick headache, what had happened that fateful night, why had her mother thought Grandmother Angela would be arrested and hanged? Where did Auntie Marina vanish to and was she ever found again?

  Who went riding out that night in a thunder of hooves?

  Finally, the spell began to pass. The headache subsided, the voices and visions faded like dreams at dawn. When Angelique opened her eyes she seemed to see and hear and smell the forest around her for the first time. What majesty. What beauty. She inhaled air and it was like inhaling power. Inhaling the soul of the woods. “Navarro women are not cowards.” Angelique looked around the sylvan paradise she suddenly found herself in, and through the trees, saw the homely mining camp she had just a short time ago despised. And she thought, I will do what has to be done.

  She returned to the cabin to find Seth trying to undress himself. He had poured water in a basin to wash, but he had collapsed on the floor. The sheets and blanket were ruined. Remaking the bed with the only spare sheet, she settled Seth back down, covering him with the quilt he saved for winter, then she went to Eliza’s hotel where the chambermaid informed her that Miss Gibbons was ill, as were the four hotel guests. But the cook was in the kitchen, and she gave Angelique bread and soup, custard and sausage. After obtaining fresh sheets from the chambermaid, she then went to Bill Ostler who, though clearly feverish, insisted he was all right. He warned her, however: “The high fever can be dangerous if it is not brought down quickly. It can cause fits and permanent brain damage. Even death. Keep Seth’s skin moist and fan him. Give him plenty of cool water to drink. And don’t try to wash his sheets. Everything must be burned, clothes, bedding, everything.”

  Lastly she borrowed a cot from Llewellyn the Welshman to make a bed for herself.

  She returned to find Seth clutching his abdomen and groaning. Angelique warmed the food she had bought at the hotel but he couldn’t keep it down.

  His temperature rose in steps for three days and then remained elevated. Bouts of vomiting were followed by diarrhea, so that she had to go back to the hotel for more sheets, burning the soiled ones behind the cabin. He lay limply on the bed, trying not to let his pain show, but Bill Ostler had told her what the typhoid did and how it afflicted the intestines with ulcers which caused great agony.

  It was necessary to bathe him so she set aside her shyness and, reminding herself that she had been married, gave him bed baths from a basin of warm water, keeping the blanket over his loins for his own dignity. When she saw scars on his back she brought the lamp closer and examined them. They crisscrossed his flesh so many times they could not be counted. They were a few years old, so she knew they must have come from the prison lash. Scars on his wrists and ankles could only have come from shackles and irons. She began to cry. “Blessed Mother of Sorrows,” she whispered as she crossed herself, her tears falling upon the scars. “You poor, poor man.”

  The fever stayed high, causing him to tremble violently in delirium. A rose-colored rash appeared on his chest and abdomen as he slipped into a sleep that was like coma. Fear gripped her as she desperately tried to lower the fever with cool wet cloths. She stayed at it day and night, laying wet cloths on him and then fanning him, trying to get him to drink cool water. If she dozed off, she woke abruptly and got back to work. Recalling how in Mexico, during hot summers, ladies would dab cologne on their wrists and temples, she bathed Seth in her scents and toilette water, the alcohol evaporation helping to cool him a little. When those ran out she went to the saloon, which was deserted, and took the last bottle of whiskey and bathed Seth in it.

  When she burned the last bedsheet she went to the hotel for more, but there were none to be had, nor were there any at Bill Ostler’s. Devil’s Bar lay beneath a pall of stinking smoke from the many fires where bedding and clothing were being burned. So she returned to the cabin where she opened her trunk and brought out her petticoats. They covered the bed and were made of a soft cotton. When the petticoats ran out, she tore up her gowns, rolling Seth onto his side as she spread the emerald silk or pink satin under him, gathering up the soiled ones and throwing them on the smoldering pile out back. Angelique struck matches and watched her silks and satins blacken and vanish in flames.

  As her dresses were needed for bedding, she opened the box where Seth kept his clothing and chose a pair of the strange trousers made out of something called blue jean, with the pockets attached by metal rivets, and one of his homespun shirts, which she tucked in after tying a rope around her waist to keep the pants up. No longer having time to fuss with her hair, she combed it straight out and plaited it into two long braids. When Bill Ostler saw her he
was shocked. “Thought I was seein’ a squaw,” he said.

  Seth could not eat solid food so she overcame her fear of the stove— cooking was now a matter of life and death— and, keeping the wood burning, discovered how to cook rice to just the right consistency, adding salt and sugar to strengthen Seth. A porridge of oats. Beef and vegetable broth. Cold tea.

  When the food ran out she went to the hotel again where she didn’t see anyone. The dining room and kitchen deserted. But she heard moaning upstairs and the sounds of someone retching. There was a pile of smoldering, stinking bedsheets out back. She went to Bill Ostler again who was now seriously ill, dragging himself to the door. “Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked

  “It’s in God’s hands, Miss D’Arcy. With typhoid you can’t say who is to live, who to die. That decision is up to the Almighty.” He collapsed and she helped him to bed. She saw Mrs. Ostler, who looked on the threshold of death. She helped herself to supplies from the store and left a bag of gold dust.

  Going to the Swensons’ hoping to buy eggs, she found Ingvar struggling to take care of his wife. When Angelique took a look at Mrs. Swenson, she saw the baby asleep in the crook of her arm. She looked more closely. Then she crossed herself.

  “Mr. Swenson, your baby—”

  “I know. She won’t let me bury him, poor little tyke.”

  The camp was deserted except for scavenging dogs. Angelique saw new graves on the hillside and wondered who was buried there and who had had the strength to dig them. The stench of sickness hung over the settlement. She remembered the smell from years ago, when typhoid had swept through Mexico. She also remembered the burials, night and day. There would be more here at Devil’s Bar, before the sickness had run its course.

  She stayed at Seth’s side every moment. When he tossed and turned in pain and delirium, she cradled him in her arms. And when she lifted him up to feed him, and when she stroked his face, she felt a tenderness she had never experienced before.

  Every night she fell exhausted into bed.

  On the seventeenth night after she was supposed to have left on the afternoon stage, Angelique looked down at Seth’s gaunt face, at the wasted body where little flesh remained. His eyes had sunk back into his head, his hair had fallen out on his pillow. It had been days since he had even opened his eyes. A person cannot burn with fever for two weeks, she knew, and live. But there was nothing else she could do. Exhausted and weak from hunger, thinking she would go mad from sleeplessness, she stared at the man in the bed with eyes bright with something that was not fever, but with an insanity of the spirit.

  Devil’s Bar was silent. No longer did she hear the honky-tonk piano in the saloon, the constant coming and going of horses and wagons, the sounds of people. She couldn’t remember when she had last spoken to a soul. When she had gone to see Charlie Bigelow she had found him lying dead in his own filth, untended, uncared-for. Visitors had stopped coming into Devil’s Bar. The last stage had been days ago. They had been abandoned by the world, left to die.

  Near the midnight hour, when the last of her lamp oil burned low, she sat by Seth’s bed and sensed a curious gathering of shadows around her. She thought at first they were the ghosts of Charlie Bigelow and the Swenson baby and Eliza Gibbons’s two chambermaids. Then she realized it wasn’t ghosts that were visiting her but memories coming back— memories she had long suppressed, things her mother had told her when she was a child about her family in California. That Angelique in her adoration of her father had turned herself against the Navarros because of their shabby treatment of him. But now she was remembering that Grandmother Angela had welcomed Jacques D’Arcy as a son. She recalled when an officer had come to the hacienda to inform her of her husband’s death at the battle of Chepultepec, Angelique had never felt so alone in her life. Her father had already left, and her mother was dead. She had no one. But now she was suddenly remembering all the cousins. Something about a bear being brought into a corral, and Angelique was surrounded by children, all related to her. She had never thought about it before but she had a large family. And what a comfort families must be at times like this.

  And now they were in fact here, in her memories, bringing comfort. And something else: aid in her most dire moment of need.

  Grandmother Angela at the kitchen table, which six-year-old Angelique could only just reach, preparing something in a cup, patiently explaining to the child how the magic in the bark cooled a fever.

  Without thinking, Angela dashed out of the cabin and ran down to the creek to follow it by moonlight until she came to a willow tree. She threw herself upon it, clawing at the bark with her fingers until it peeled away in her hands. Then she stumbled back to the cabin where she boiled water and put the willow bark in, letting it cool and trying to coax some between Seth’s lips. He coughed and spat it out. She put the cup to his mouth again. He could not drink. So she soaked a handkerchief in the tea and squeezed it out between his lips. Hour after hour, she gradually coaxed the brew down his throat.

  Finally, clutching her rosary, she knelt beside the bed and laid herself across Seth’s body so that her face was buried in his chest and she prayed with all her might. She fell asleep in this position and was wakened by the feel of his hand on her hair.

  The fever had broken, the crisis had passed.

  * * *

  Although Seth was still ill, Angelique was able to leave him alone while she went out into the camp to assist others. She helped feed and bathe the victims, cooked huge amounts of beans for the well ones, assisted with the burials and the burning of clothes and bedding, and shared the secret of her willow tea. At night she sat at Seth’s bedside and read to him from Animal Husbandry, which made him smile weakly at first to hear her recite, ” ‘If you wish to raise egg-laying hens, the White Leghorn is best,’ ” and then later, when he gained more strength, to laugh out loud when she read in a serious tone, ” ‘The Holstein cow produces four times more milk than the conventional beef cow…’ “

  Finally the typhoid was gone from Devil’s Bar. The last burial had been days ago, people were starting to resume their lives, inspect their claims, and put the horror behind them. Seth, able to sit now in a chair, looked at Angelique with clear eyes, all shadows of illness gone, and said, “I’m starving.”

  She fixed him something solid to eat, and he was astonished at the perfect potato pancakes she had cooked, chewy in the center and crunchy at the edges, spiced just right. While he ate he asked how the others fared. “Ingvar Swenson lost his wife and baby. Mrs. Ostler died.” She had difficulty speaking. There were thirty-two fresh graves on the hillside.

  “Eliza?” he asked.

  “Miss Gibbons is still very ill.”

  “I’ll pay her my respects when I can get back on my feet. Did I talk in my delirium?”

  She smiled.

  “Should I apologize?”

  “You woke up once and looked at me and said you didn’t know there were angels in Hell. You also spoke of your mother. Will you be going home?”

  “I can’t go home,” he said. “They don’t want me.”

  “Your father I can understand. He is angry, yes? But certainly your mother will want you to come home.”

  “The day I got out of prison I went home. My mother told me to go away and never come back. She said I had saddled her with a useless cripple, that I should have either killed him outright or let him alone. She said I had made her life a hundred times worse than before.”

  “She will change her mind. She is still your mother.”

  “Last year I sent her all the gold I found in the first month, over five hundred dollars’ worth. She wrote back and told me to keep my money, that all my father would do was buy liquor with it.” He shook his head. “They don’t want me. I’m on my own. I’ve reconciled myself to that.”

  Angelique felt a sharp pain in her heart. She wanted to take him into her arms and cry for him, and tell him that he wasn’t on his own, that he was loved by someone. But she could neit
her move nor bring the words to her lips. “Rest now,” she said instead. “You will soon be well enough to go down to the creek and work your claim.”

  “Why did we get sick and you didn’t?”

  “I didn’t each the peaches.”

  “I’ll never eat another peach for as long as I live. How did you know we shouldn’t eat the fruit?”

  “In Mexico, our curanderas tell us that there are people who carry sickness but who themselves never fall ill from it. If you eat food they cook or water they pour, you will fall ill with the fever. I had a sense that the old man was such a carrier.”

  His eyes moved up and down her body. “Except for the braids, you look like a boy.”

  “I have no more dresses,” she said with a smile. Then she covered her face with her hands and burst into tears.

  * * *

  When Seth was strong enough, he went to see Eliza Gibbons, who was now fully recovered, and then to inspect his claim at the river.

  He came back to find Angelique packing. She didn’t need the trunk anymore. Everything she owned fit into a small pillowcase. She said to him, “When I first arrived in San Francisco, I came with the hope of finding someone to take care of me. Mr. Boggs. My father. Or someone that I might marry. I never dreamed that I would be capable of being on my own. But now I can cook and wash and keep a house. I have even learned to speak like an American. I shall travel from camp to camp, from mining town to mining town, cooking and washing and taking care of myself until I find my father.”

  “You can’t leave!”

  She looked away, her chin quivering. “Our roads separate from here, Mr. Hopkins. You will go back to your gold mining and to Eliza Gibbons, who is in love with you, and I have to find my father.”

  He startled her by taking her by the shoulders, and saying, “Angelique, I need you. Before you came into my life I lived in a world without color. It was a world of brown and gray and black. But you brought me rainbows and sunsets and all the flowers that the good earth grows. Dear God, what was wrong with me? I kept you in a dark cabin much as I was once kept in a dark coal mine, and later in a dark prison cell. You were meant to live in sunshine, Angelique. Every morning I’ve gone down to the stream where there are rocks and trees and birds and sunlight, leaving you behind in the dark. I should have taken you for walks in the woods. I never even showed you my claim down at the river. I jailed you as I was once jailed.”