Kendrick

by Zina Abbott

  A teasing glint in his eye, Kendrick grinned at Jeb. “You do know, don’t you, if you buy the place, you’ll share five feet of property line with Dorcas Thompson? She’s mellowed some since she and Lydia resolved their differences—well, somewhat—but she still has her opinions.”

  Jeb swallowed. “Well, she and my wife will probably get along good. I’ll deal with it when the time comes. Just think on it, Rick, and we’ll try to work something out that will benefit us both.”

  “I’m sure we will.”

  The door to the kitchen opened, and Cole stepped through. “May I come with you to make your meat deliveries, Papa Rick?”

  Will squeezed beneath his brother’s arm and stood in front of him. “Me, too, Papa Rick? I’ll get out of the wagon and talk to Sunshine while you take your meat inside. Sunshine likes me.”

  His hands on his hips, Kendrick switched his gaze from one boy to the other. “What does your mother say?”

  Lydia, Madeline in her arms, stepped through the doorway. “It’s fine with me. I told them it’s up to you. Madeline doesn’t need morning naps anymore, but I do. I’m hoping she’ll play quietly in her crib while I rest for a few minutes.”

  Kendrick turned to the baby. “And what does Madeline say? Are you ready to go with Papa, too?”

  Madeline grinned wide and giggled.

  Kendrick pulled down her bottom lip so she could show off her two new bottom teeth. “Look there. Soon you’ll be chewing steaks with the rest of us.” His gaze met Lydia’s. “Sure, both the boys can go.”

  Lydia turned and smiled at her sons. “Go in back and get your hats and a drink of water, boys. It’s going to be a hot day. Papa Rick will be with you in a few minutes after he talks some business with Mr. Cardwell.”

  Kendrick glanced at Jeb, who wore a wide grin. “Jeb, I either have to take that rail you built with me to the new house or hire you to make a new one. Madeline has been creeping everywhere. Lydia says it won’t be long before she starts crawling. With our new house having stairs…”

  Jeb rolled his eyes and laughed. “Say no more, Rick. Once she starts crawling, you’ll be constantly running after her. It’ll get worse when she starts walking. I’ll get you the rails you need to keep your little ones safe.”

  Lydia walked over to Kendrick. “Thank you, Jeb. I know you’re busy working here in town. It means so much to us that you are willing to build what we need to protect our babies.”

  Kendrick put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her tight against his side. The love and warmth he felt coming from Lydia as he gazed into her eyes again melted his heart as it did so often when he saw her.

  Tearing his eyes away from Lydia, Kendrick chucked Madeline under her chin. He next held out his hands. “Is Madeline ready to come to Papa for a hug?”

  Madeline squealed, twisted in Lydia’s arms, and leaned forward as she reached toward Kendrick. “Papa!”

  Kendrick lifted Madeline and set her little bottom covered with the pale blue soakers Lydia knit for her on his forearm. “That’s right, Madeline. Come to Papa.”

  Shaking his head, Jeb held his dish containing his eggs and steak as he walked toward the door. “Thanks, Rick. See you tomorrow.”

  Between smacks to his face administered by the baby’s palms, Kendrick nodded to Jeb “Tomorrow’s Sunday, so come early, Jeb. Now I have a family, I finish my meat sales in time for us all to attend church.” Kendrick laughed. “I’m still not Dorcas Thompson’s favorite person, and she’s not mine. However, she insists we share the Thompson family pew.” He shrugged. “Now that Lydia and her sister are speaking to one another again, after a fashion, it keeps peace in the family. Dorcas and Simon sit on one end, and we sit on the other with the children in the middle. The twins have threatened the four boys, insisting they behave. They know if the boys act up, their mother will make them sit between their brothers. Lottie and Caro prefer to be next to Lydia so they can hold Madeline.”

  Kendrick leaned over and kissed Lydia on the forehead. “Go in back, my love, so you can get a few minutes of rest. I’ll see Jeb out and lock up. Then I’ll put that new sunbonnet you made for Madeline on her so she can go with me and the boys to the livery to pick up Sunshine.”

  After locking the door behind Jeb, a sense of wonder filled Kendrick. He shook his head as he thought over all that had taken place within the last few months. He gave up panning dirt in search of the yellow metal. He traded mining for a butcher shop business as a means to earn his wealth. Back then, he thought he was settled for life. That all changed the day the sheriff brought Madeline to him, followed shortly by the arrival of Lydia and her sons.

  I’ve found the true mother lode, worth more than all the gold in the world.

  Author’s Notes

  C olumbia is a real gold mining town along the southern end of the large gold vein that became known as the Mother Lode. Discovered March 27, 1850 by the party of men, mostly from Maine, led by Maine physician, Thaddeus Hildreth, it was first known as Hildreth’s Diggins. Known by a few other names, the citizens finally decided up Columbia because the name suggested permanence. Columbia also became known as the “Gem of the Southern Mines.”

  Unlike most gold mining boom towns, Columbia continued long after gold mining ceased. It has never been completely uninhabited. Although the lack of year-round water made placer mining in the early years a challenging venture, water projects allowed gold mining to continue even after the easy placer gold was gone and mining companies were formed to coax the gold out using other methods. Today, Columbia is preserved as a California state park. Many of the structures in Columbia are original to the town, particularly the brick buildings with iron doors and shutters which replaced many wood and canvas structures destroyed by the 1857 fire.

  Columbia survived numerous fires, The first major one broke out on July 10, 1854, the year in which Kendrick is set. Although the fire is mentioned in the epilogue which takes place a month after the ashes settled, I did not include a fire scene in this book. I will in another “Too Old in Columbia” book.

  My butcher shop for Kendrick is fictional. However, other buildings and businesses mentioned in the book did exist in 1854: American Hotel on Main Street, the Livery (not the one in Columbia now, but the Clark and Bartlette Livery Stable across from the Clark Hotel, on the southeast corner of Fulton and Broadway streets.), the mercantile on Main Street owned by Victor E. Magendie, and last, but not least, the Eagle Cottage/Cotage on Washington Street. In the 1850s, Mrs. A. Arnold did manage the Eagle Cotage, a boardinghouse for 100 boarders, mostly miners.

  There is controversy over the proper name of Eagle Cottage or Cotage. Some claim the building was named correctly as Eagle Cottage, but on a 1855 lithograph of the town, the artist shortened it to Cotage in order to fit the name on the sign out front. However, the name Eagle Cotage is printed below the picture on the lithograph. Others claim because the building was a boardinghouse that rented out cots rather than rooms, the name Eagle Cotage is correct—not a misspelling—and was the name from the beginning. Originally built in 1854, this building was destroyed in the fires of 1854, 1857, and 1861. After the third fire, it was not rebuilt again until 1960 after the California bought the property in Columbia and began to restore it to the appearance of an 1850s gold mining town. I used Cottage in this book primarily because it would be more familiar to the reader and not appear to be a misspelling detracting from the story.

  Since the creeks in the area were seasonal, access to water during the dry summer and fall months was always an issue in Columbia. Although in 1854, the Tuolumne County Water Company was in the process of building a sixty mile aqueduct from the south fork of the Stanislaus River, it was not completed at the time of my story. There were seven cisterns dug in the city, but that did not happen until after the time of my story. I used literary license to include them to highlight the difficulties of obtaining water during that time.

  Five Mile Creek was the first source of water diverted by the Tuolumn
e County Water Company, but proved inadequate to meet the water needs of the town and its miners. The nearest year-round creek of any size was Mormon Creek, which has its headwaters in the limestone rocks of Springfield. It still flows today.

  Springfield was a community a mile south and slightly west of Columbia. Doña Josefa Valmesada, originally from Guaymas, Mexico, owned the property. She built it up with its own commercial district that catered to Mexican miners. She also allowed others to use the water on her property—for a price. Although not by name, I mentioned her in Kendrick, since many Columbia miners drove wagonloads of dirt to her springs during the dry months and paid her in order to wash out their gold.

  Thank you for reading

  Kendrick

  Each book of my books is a sweet Western Historical Romance. You may find all my books on my Amazon Zina Abbott Author Page on Amazon.com

  If you enjoyed this book, please help other readers find it by leaving a review on

  Amazon Review

  and

  Goodreads.

  Just a few words will do. Reviews make all the difference!

  To informed about my book series and individual books, visit my website: ZinaAbbott.homestead.com

  Books in the Bachelors and Babies Series

  Trace

  Book 1 ~ Pam Crooks ~ June 1

  Logan

  Book 2 ~ Margaret Tanner ~ July 1

  Carter

  Book 3 ~ Cynthia Woolf ~ August 1

  Barclay

  Book 4 ~ Charlene Raddon ~ September 1

  Dallas

  Book 5 ~ Cyndi Raye ~ October 1

  Sawyer

  Book 6 ~ Winnie Griggs ~ November 1

  Jared

  Book 7 ~ Charlene Raddon ~ December 1

  Grayson

  Book 8 ~ Linda Carroll-Bradd ~ January 1

  Kendrick

  Book 9 ~ Zina Abbott ~ February 1

  Stuart

  Book 10 ~ Caroline Clemmons ~ March 1

  Zach

  Book 11 ~ Hebby Roman ~ April 1

  Chase

  Book 12 ~ Charlene Raddon ~ May 1

  Gilbert

  Book 13 ~ Carra Copelin ~ June 1

  Tanner

  Book 14 ~ Cheryl St.John ~ July 1

  James

  Book 15 ~ Tracy Garrett ~ August 1

  See all the Bachelors & Babies Books on our Amazon Series Page:

  https://amzn.to/31ks9XC

  If you enjoyed reading Kendrick, you may also enjoy Nissa, Book 3 in the

  Widows of Wildcat Ridge series,

  a multi-author series involving many of the same authors that wrote for

  Bachelors & Babies. Here is the start of Nissa:

  .

  .

  .

  .

  Wildcat Ridge, Utah

  May, 1884

  N

  issa straightened from bending over the wringer hooked to the tub of cold water she used for the final rinse of the sheets and arched her back. She picked up the clean sheets now piled in a basket ready for hanging and set it on the floor of the wide covered porch of the laundry building. She yanked the felt slouch hat that had once belonged to her late husband, James Stillwell, from her head and used the back of her other hand to sweep aside the stray locks of her auburn hair. Damp with perspiration, they remained plastered to her forehead after working with the first rinse which involved boiling water to kill any nits and flea eggs hotel guests might have inadvertently left on the sheets and towels.

  Even though her hands were damp, she tucked the loose ends into the neckerchief she wore under the hat to hold her hair out of her face she knew bore evidence of her Scottish ancestry. Not long after she started her laundry business, her pale freckles once again darkened to resemble those which had graced her childhood face. She sighed with relief at the prospect of being almost finished with the sheets and towels for the Ridge Hotel once they were hung and dried.

  Nissa fanned her face with the hat. The brim was wider than the derby hats her husband favored once he caught the mine owner’s notice and began to rise in prominence at the mine. Those hats she refused to keep, if for no other reason than what they represented. As much as she had wished to offer them, and her late husband’s good clothes to the mercantile to resell with her share of the proceeds to go against her bill there, she had left them in the house. They were part of his “estate,” such as it was. She knew her husband owed money to the bank for the fancy furniture he had purchased for the parlor and dining room.

  She kept the hat her husband used before they traveled from western Nevada to Wildcat Ridge to have something to protect her skin from the sun while she worked out of doors washing laundry where the light helped her find the stains that needed extra soap and scrubbing. Once the weather turned cold, and she moved her operation back inside the laundry shed, she would need to rely on lamplight and what little sunlight came through the single small window for that. However, in warm weather, she preferred direct sunlight to check for spots, even though it reddened and freckled her skin.

  Nissa knew before she started her laundry business it would not be a lucrative venture. Since Mortimer Crane, owner of the Gold King Mine, decided to not reopen the mine after the disaster, what relatively few miners who survived had already moved on to other mines—some of them to his new mine in Clear Creek. With the miners gone from Wildcat Ridge, there was hardly any call for laundry to be done. Most of the widows in town washed their own clothes and linens. Only a few, like Hester Fugit, the former mayor’s wife who now filled the post of mayor, still sent her laundry out. However, Nissa could not earn a living on what came from a middle-aged widow with no children living at home and the few others who brought their dirty laundry to her.

  Nissa looked over at the clothes from the newspaper editor, Duncan Moon, better known as Dinky. He was another one of her customers, when he sobered up enough to realize he needed to do something about getting clean shirts and underclothing. The sight, along with the stench of body odor and vomit, prompted her to wince. It would not be a pleasant load to wash, but it would bring in some cash money to buy food and essentials for her little family.

  One term of service Nissa had insisted upon from the start was she only accepted cash payment. She advised all her customers they would not receive their cleaned clothes or linens until after they paid for her work. She could not afford to carry accounts, not with the three of them to feed. The one exception was the hotel laundry. Since the hotel had closed its dining room, and the few rooms rented hardly generated enough dirty sheets and towels to be washed, what work she did for the Ridge Hotel barely paid for her rent for her “home” which consisted of the laundry shed and the yard full of roped lines for drying clothes.

  “Nissa, honey, ah missed y’all at the meeting. Ah thought y’all planned to come to hear what Mayor Fugit had to say to all the widows.”

  Upon hearing the soft voice with its Southern accent of her landlady, Nissa turned and offered a warm smile to Diantha Ames, the owner of the Ridge Hotel and the laundry building she rented. Diantha had been raised as a Southern lady to behave graciously and to never raise her voice to others.

  In the short time Nissa had rented from Diantha, she wondered how the woman would ever earn enough income from running her hotel and the side property on which the laundry building had been constructed. She was far too generous to her customers, and especially to Nissa and the children. Nissa’s official home consisted of the shed of pine with its gaps between the square-cut logs which, when several feet of snow layered the ground as it still had at the time Nissa first moved there, hardly held the heat in, even with the wood stove burning a full flame to provide hot water for laundry. However, Diantha insisted she and the children sleep inside and use the now-vacant cook’s room behind the kitchen in the back left-hand side of the better-built building. The room boasted a door to the outside, as well as one that opened into the kitchen from which the heat of the cook stove adequately kept both roo
ms warm. In addition to the door between the rear cook’s room and kitchen, doors in the kitchen led to the dining room in front of the building, Diantha’s sitting room to the right, and the outside door to the left. Since she knew Diantha’s late husband designed the room, Nissa often wondered how he managed to pay for so many doors, knobs and locks.

  Diantha also insisted Nissa share the common kitchen which had once been used to prepare breakfast and supper for the hotel’s guests, but now only served as a kitchen for Diantha. As much as she felt grateful for her landlady’s sharing, Nissa felt the lack of having her own home.

  Seeing Diantha suddenly jarred Nissa’s awareness of her surroundings. She twisted her too-thin body as she frantically searched the hotel grounds. “Jamie and Molly. They’re gone! I was so focused on finishing these sheets I lost track of them.”

  Seven-year-old Jamie, with his brown hair like his father and green eyes from her, behaved like a typical active little boy, although he acted out his grief over his father’s loss in ways that at times drove Nissa to distraction. In contrast, four-year-old Molly, a chubbier copy of Nissa, had retreated into herself and grown increasingly quieter as she struggled to understand the disappearance of her father and the changes in the family’s circumstances. She constantly sought approval, as if she was afraid if she misbehaved, her mother would also leave. Nissa knew she must do whatever it took to keep these two children healthy and with her. She had suffered the loss of her firstborn daughter at birth, and the boy that came after Molly had miscarried four months early. Jamie and Molly were all that remained of any family she knew of, immediate and extended.