GOLD RUSH DREAM

by Billie Sue Mosiman

  He thought about a shot of whiskey and a nice smooth-topped table in a corner of a saloon where he could deal some cards.

  It took asking five different people before they were instructed to the correct street and the right house. It was a big house, three stories, with a rounded tower on one corner. Travis imagined Rose’s aunt must be wealthy. Transporting the wood alone to the island would have cost a fortune.

  He sat on the horse and waited while Rose ran up the steps, her hair flying behind her. She banged on the front door in her haste, but stepped back the second it was opened. Travis listened politely from the distance. He had no family left, either, his brothers having never come back from wherever they had gone. He usually liked his solitude, but something about being in a city always made him lonely and wishing for his dad back.

  “Yes?” The old gentleman who answered the door peered over rimless spectacles.

  “I’m looking for Joanna and Douglas Feadley,” Rose said.

  The old man looked puzzled a moment and then he said, “I’m sorry, they’re not here. We bought this house from them and that gave them the stake they needed.”

  “Stake?”

  “For going west. California? The gold rush, that’s where they were headed. Got the fever like a lot of folks around this town. For my part, I think it foolishness to race off all that way for such small promise. Why, the biggest deposits were found two years ago, already, in 1847. Ain’t no gold left now, I wager.”

  “Gold rush?”

  The old man stepped onto the porch and took Rose’s arm.

  “Look, I’m sorry if you really needed to see the Feadleys, but like I said, they’re gone. Wait, what’s your name anyway? They said to give anyone come looking for them a letter.”

  “I’m Rose Donahue. Joanna is my aunt. And I thought…”

  “You hold on right here. I’ll go get the letter. They said to keep it a year, at least, just in case. Said they had relatives up north of Galveston might come around. I know I put it in a drawer in my desk somewhere…” He wandered back into the house leaving Rose standing alone on the porch.

  Rose turned to look at Travis, a pained look on her face. He’d heard the news. Here the girl was on her own for sure now. His mind raced with what he might do. She was awful unsophisticated for a rowdy seaport town like Galveston. This place would chew her up and spit her out again. She’d be prostituting on the street or down at some saloon before week’s end if he left her here. He frowned back at her, his fears altering his face. She looked down, and she appeared to be the saddest little girl in all the world.

  Damnit, Travis thought. Now what was he going to do? Poor kid had nobody to watch after her. Blame the luck.

  The old man reappeared at the door and handed over some folded papers. Rose took them, thanking the man, and came down the porch steps slowly. Travis hoisted her behind him on the horse and trotted off. He knew she could use a real bath so he headed for the stables where he could board Dorry and the horse. On foot he led her to a bath house on the Strand, where the commerce was bustling. He paid the proprietor of one of the better looking bathhouse establishments for two baths and told Rose, “You go on first. I’ll wait out here.”

  “I want to read this now,” Rose said, unfolding the parchment papers. He stood fidgeting with his hands in her pockets while she read. He could read a little, but it always made him timid when other people read as quickly as Rose did. The letter’s pages flipped over in her hands rapidly. When she finished reading, she looked up at him with glistening eyes.

  “Well?”

  “They’re not coming back. Aunt Joanna said there’s reports of whole fortunes being made in the gold fields. Says Uncle Douglas bought them all the supplies they needed for the trip and they could be found near Sacramento, if anyone wanted to write them there.”

  Travis didn’t know what to say.

  “Will you take me?” Rose asked in a small voice.

  “What?”

  “To California? To my aunt and uncle? I know they’d pay you when we got there. They’d gladly pay.”

  Travis began shaking his head. “Now wait a minute, I hunt and trap…”

  “Didn’t you ever want better?” she interrupted.

  “Better what?”

  “A better life? If there’s gold out there, you could find it too. You know how to work rivers and streams, right? You could be a rich man. My people aren’t idiots. Douglas Feadley owned four farms in Ireland. If it hadn’t been for the potato disease, he’d never have left. He wouldn’t head off on a wild hair. If he thinks there’s gold in California, there’s gold there, that’s what I’m saying.”

  Travis saw it all of a sudden. He mentally reviewed his life of total silence and loneliness in the wild, with only a rare trip to a town or city, and no real prospects of bettering himself. One day he’d get old--too old to wade the streams and lay his traps, too old to wrestle a bear if he had to. The girl made some sense. A pile of gold would set him up for life. Until now he’d thought all the talk about gold out west a pipe dream. But if people like Rose’s uncle thought it enough of a gamble to give up a handsome three-story home in Galveston, there must be something to the tales.

  “Let me think it over,” he said. “Right now the bath’s waiting. While you’re in there, I’ll go sell my pelts and maybe buy you a new dress.”

  “And some long pants for wearing beneath it. I really need long pants.”

  “What? Why would you want that? They don’t make long pants for women.”

  “Then buy me a boy’s pair. If I’m going to California, I can’t wear these dresses all the way.”

  He nodded and watched as she ascended the bathhouse steps. He thought it presumptuous of her to think of traveling garb already and he hadn’t in any way agreed to take her west. Maybe she wasn’t as witless and needy as he had imagined. She sure knew how to take charge of things.

  He shook his head as he wandered over to where his horse and Dorry were being kept. Gold, he thought. It certainly was a mite prettier than a bear skin, that was for sure. And he’d wade a thousand streams in good cheer to be able not to come up against a mama bear protecting her cubs.

  He began to figure in his head how much he’d get from his pile of furs and wondered if it would be enough to get them all the way across the country. They’d have to join a wagon train, buy supplies, and it could take months, a trip like that. He could hardly believe he was contemplating such a life-changing decision. It was as if the girl had been plunked down into his life just to shake up his notions of the world and his place in it.

  “Blame girl,” he muttered beneath his breath. “Got me thinking about doing it, that’s what she’s done. I can’t even believe it.”

  #

  Broken Bear tracked the young couple all the way to the Bolivar Peninsula where a ferry waited. He hung back in the woods, watching. He hadn’t eaten properly in days and his stomach rumbled until he put the palm of his hand over his flat stomach and pressed down hard.

  He couldn’t follow them to the island. Too many white people. No place for an Apache, especially one not dressed in white man’s clothes.

  He turned his head and spit. Indians who changed from buckskin and loincloth to don the white man’s trousers were drunkards and cowards. They were lower than dogs, prostrating themselves before the white man that way.

  He’d just wait here for his woman. For that is how he thought of the Red Hair. His woman, soon to be.

  Unless they were taking a ship from the island into the far ocean, they’d be back sooner or later. He’d wait. He’d move further back into the brush and keep a low profile, hunt some fresh game, set up a little camp. Make no fires at night. He hadn’t had a night fire for days now and that hadn’t caused any paucity to his comfort. Broken Bear was a solitary warrior used to deprivation. It made no difference to him. Not with a prize in sight like the white squaw woman he meant to have as his own.

  He watched until the couple boarded the ferry a
nd then he spat again on the ground, showing his disgust with the whites still streaming down to the shoreline to wait the ferry’s return. White men and their ways were no mystery to him, but they certainly were a thorn in the side of the nation’s people. The more the Apaches killed and raided and looted and burned, the more the white men spread out over the land, hogging it and building cities, roads, and settlements. It was like a plague. It was a tide of aliens who could not be turned back or dissuaded from their stealing ways.

  As the sun lowered in the sky, and the first cool damp of twilight stole over the bayous and swamplands near Bolivar, Broken Bear found an isolated spot and set about making his bed with dried grasses.

  That night, with his stomach full of muskrat, he dreamed of the red-haired woman with a papoose strapped to her back. She was a good mother, a provider for their many children, and a warm comfort as old age approached both of them through many long winters.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  While Rose bathed the traveling dust and the leftover soot off her arms and legs, she thought about Travis. She hoped he’d take her west. If he didn’t, she was determined to go on her own. It wasn’t as if she were a child, uninformed and helpless. She had survived a long, cramped voyage from overseas even as a child. Later, when she was older, that momentous trip had been nothing compared to the longer and more arduous trek from the eastern coast all the way to the Texas territory. She had helped her parents build the cabin, hack out the thick woods for a clearing, and went hungry for days at a time during bad times. She had not reached the age of seventeen without deprivation and difficulties. She was no milk-sop girl raised in luxury with servants at her fingertips to do her biding.

  She let soap bubbles slide down her raised leg and thought of the last few days she’d spent in the company of the trapper. He was not a talkative man, but he was not taciturn either. He was strong and had been kind to her. So far he had done all she had asked. But she knew a long journey across the wilderness between Galveston and Sacramento was asking a great deal of the young man. He was still a stranger to her, really. And there was a further problem. How were they going to travel together for months without it ruining her reputation? If others knew they were virtual strangers, they would naturally assume she was a low woman, giving herself without the benefit of marriage.

  She could ask him to marry her. The thought surprised her and her mouth opened. Or she could ask they pretend to be married. Or she could ask him to pretend they were brother and sister. No…that wouldn’t work. They looked too dissimilar and she had an accent different from his Texas twang. No one would believe they were related. Then he would have to agree to marry her or pretend to be married. She would not be treated lowly by strangers. At this point her reputation was all she really owned in the world. If she lost that, she lost everything. She had already lost her home, her mama, her daddy…

  Tears welled and Rose knuckled her eyes before grabbing up a sea sponge she’d been given for bathing. She scrubbed at her skin until it turned pink so the visions of the Indian raid receded from memory.

  When she emerged from the bath water and dried with a rough muslin cloth, she felt clean and strong and resolute. She would find a way to talk Travis into doing as she asked. She needed him. Again. She already owed him more than she could repay. She might as well raise the debt higher. Besides, she thought, she had no choice. She had to reach what was left of her family. It was tremendous bad luck that they had left and were so far distant. But she’d find them some way. She had to.

  * * *

  To Travis she looked like an angel.

  “Please,” she begged. “You’re the only one I can depend on.”

  She wore the new dress, a blue gingham with a lace collar. It was the best he could afford. She hadn’t donned the boy’s pants beneath the dress, saving them for traveling. Right now she sat on a bench eating a sausage he’d bought them from a vendor. Her lips were slick with grease and her small white teeth showed when she bit into the meat. Her eyes were very blue, he noticed, like the sky when it was deep and free of clouds. She was so fetching she drew admiring glances from men as they passed on the boardwalk.

  He had already made up his mind to go west and look for gold. What he hadn’t decided was to marry the girl. Why, he hardly knew her!

  “All right then,” she said, taking another tack. “You don’t have to really marry me. We can just say we’re married. How will anyone know?”

  “Lie?”

  “Would you rather get married for real, then? I don’t know what you want!”

  He could see she was nearing the end of her tether. She had been wrangling him around to her way of thinking for nearly an hour and she was losing all patience. He had been noncommittal and realized now he must make a choice. What did he have to lose? The days of a trapper’s life in Texas was numbered. If finding gold didn’t work out, maybe the land was new enough to shelter abundant beaver and fox.

  “Well, marriage is a sacred thing and I don’t think we should do it,” he said solemnly.

  A look of exasperation stole over her face.

  “But I guess we could make believe,” he said.

  Her eyes smiled with her mouth for the first time since they’d sat down in the sunny afternoon. “Oh, you’re a wonderful man,” she said. “I’ll never be able to thank you enough.”

  He ducked his head in embarrassment. She was so forthright with her feelings. He had not spent any time around decent young women so he wasn’t used to their wiles and charms. Now she smiled like the angel she appeared to be and for just a second Travis wished he had agreed to a real marriage. He could have taken her to bed then; he could have loosened her piled hair and let it flow down her back, unhooked the dress and let it fall from her breasts, and taken her into his arms.

  Then reality interrupted his fantasy and he knew she would have never let him touch her, legally married or not. This was a plan to make their travel respectable in the eyes of others. She had made it clear she was not offering him anything more.

  “Come on then,” he said with a big sigh. “We have to see about some supplies and travel arrangements. Luckily there’s a wagon train leaving the island tomorrow.”

  She wiped her hands carefully on the hem of her old dress bundled in her lap and rose like a queen in her blue gingham dress. “I’m ready,” she said, taking his arm at the elbow and striding into the busy street with him.

  He would have to remember to introduce her as his wife. Please meet Mrs. Caldwell. This is my Mrs., he would say. He would say it with great pride and everyone who met them would believe they were a newly married couple in love.

  What an adventure it all would be.

  He did not really believe this.

  * * *

  By nightfall Travis had secured them a place with the wagon master for the trip to the California gold fields. It had taken three-fourths of his money from his fur sales. With the remaining money he bought a small tarpaulin for use as a tent, extra coffee beans, pinto beans, a slab of salt pork, flour, powder and shot and cotton wadding for his gun, two rain rubbers for inclement weather, and an extra pair of boots for Rose. Her shoes, he’d noticed, were so worn there were holes in the bottoms. That night he pitched the tarp at the edge of the city where other wagon train members had set up temporary camp. He set to make a small fire while Rose mixed a batch of flour, salt, and water for hard tack to take along on the first days of their trip.

  Not far from them he could hear the sea rustling as it rolled on shore. In the early twilight he had seen the city come alive with gaslight and torch until it lay like a jewel surrounded by dark sparkling waters. Palm trees fluttered in the ocean-scented breeze. People milled the streets while music jangled from saloons.

  A woman in colorful long skirts approached in the firelight and introduced herself as Maisy. She had a red scarf wound around her long, curly black hair. Bangles of cheap wire circled both arms. She gave a last name, but it was so foreign Travis could not pronounce it. She
claimed to be Russian and a gypsy whose whole clan had died from various diseases on their trip from her country.

  Rose welcomed her warmly and set about pouring her a tin of coffee.

  “You’re newlyweds,” Maisy said, smiling to reveal a gold upper tooth. “Or newly come-together friends?”

  Rose showed a startled look but lowered her face quickly.

  “This is my Mrs.,” Travis said with authority. “Mrs. Rose Caldwell.”

  Rose sent him a quick look of relief and smiled at the gypsy. “We just got married today,” she said.

  “Today! Then you’re newlywed indeed. Here’s to you both,” she said, raising her coffee to them. “May you be fruitful and raise many children.”

  This toast was too much for Rose. She turned away and busied herself with washing flour from her hands in a bucket of water.

  Travis thought he’d met the first test fairly well. For some reason he suspected the gypsy didn’t actually believe the lie, but she had accepted it nonetheless and that was what mattered. She’d spread the news just as she heard it and that would save him from repeating the lie too often to the other families in the wagon train.

  They were a motley crew, he reflected, dropping slices of salt pork into a hot frying pan. The wagon master was a short, rough man with a thick beard and a gleam of avarice in his eye. He had been a mountain man until the rush for the gold fields provided the perfect job for an aging trapper. He charged too much by half, but Travis knew there was no alternative. If they waited for another train to gather it might be too late in the season. They needed to get west before winter set in.