by Zina Abbott
A RESURRECTED HEART
Eastern Sierra Brides 1884
By
Zina Abbott
A Resurrected Heart by Zina Abbott
Copyright© 2015 Robyn Echols (aka Zina Abbott)
Cover Design Livia Reasoner
Background image: Robyn Echols
Prairie Rose Publications
www.prairierosepublications.com
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. However, among the minor characters in this work, the author did include the names and occupations of some real people who lived in Lundy, California in or about the year 1884. These include Frederick Gluntz and Leonard Haas, co-proprietors of the Arcade Saloon; Doctor Rafael Carlos Guirado, physician and owner of the local drug store; Mrs. Mary A. Ford, owner of the Pioneer House boarding house; Andrew Barnes, furniture maker, coffin builder and mortician; William Long “Bill” Callahan, constable; Rodney G. Montrose, recorder for the Homer Mining District; Alexander Rosenwald, co-proprietor of the Pioneer Cash store run by Rosenwald, Coblentz & Co. and the Postoffice store, also the postmaster; Charles McLean, butcher and elected justice of the peace; Otho Johnson “O.J.” Lundy, sawmill owner, owner of May Lundy hotel; C.F. “Charley” Hector, owner of the Lundy and Bodie Stage Line and his livery plus his younger brother, Eddie Hector, driver. The way these characters were portrayed in this novel in no way is intended to resemble the personalities or characteristics of those who actually lived in Lundy at this time.
All other characters in A Resurrected Heart are strictly figments of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to real people, past or present, are purely coincidental.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
CHAPTER 1
LUNDY, CALIFORNIA – aPRIL 4, 1884
Beth Dodd stepped away from the pie crusts she was rolling, stretched her back and used the back of her hand to brush a lock of brown hair away from her face. She peeked through the doorway from the chop shop kitchen run by Gus Herschel into the main saloon.
Where’s Val? He done should of been here.
The thought of Val Caldwell, the Big Meadows rancher with his dark good looks she was officially allowing to court her, prompted an involuntary surge of longing in Beth. The man affected her in ways she had never known any man could. She felt drawn to him like no other. She longed to trust him. But she didn’t dare. Her father, sick with consumption, had pushed her to marry a complete stranger as part of the sale of the family’s farm rather than to allow her and her sister inherit it. Her husband, the late Jim Dodd, had decided to sell the farm out from underneath her and desert her for the mining region of the eastern Sierra-Nevada Mountains—so Beth no longer felt she could trust any man. If she did completely yield her heart to Val, it would be at a time well into the future. She had her own business she needed to take care of first. She would never trust a man to always provide a home for her and her sister. Just to prove that a woman does not need to rely on a man in order to survive, she would take care of settling what passed for an estate left by Jim Dodd. She would earn enough money to go back to southern Ohio and rescue her little sister from Agnes Dodd, Jim’s harridan aunt.
On Valentine’s Day, Val and his brother, Luther, had been forced to use skies, or snowshoes, as the locals called them, and a sled to bring in some dried meat. The most recent trip, the snow was down enough that he had been able to bring a sleigh up. But, from what he had told her the last time he visited, he and a couple of his men planned to drive a few head up to sell to the local butchers in town. He was supposed to have arrived on Wednesday so some of the animals could be butchered in time for Resurrection Day.
Gus had been looking toward to having fresh steaks to fry up for the occasion. The beef still aging in the meat locker of Charles McLean, butcher and elected justice of the peace, was almost sold out. That was where Gus was at the moment—trying to buy a large enough supply to last him until the herd Val was bringing up the canyon was ready.
Gus’s chop shop was located in back of the Arcade, the saloon owned and operated by two other Germans; Frederick Gluntz—better known as Fritz, from Württemberg—and Leonard Haas from Baden. Beth had learned that none of the three Germans, including Gus from Bavaria, considered themselves natives of the nation of Germany. They considered the individual duchies of Germany from which they had come as their home countries.
Everyone who worked in the Arcade expected the growing influx of miners looking for work to bring them plenty of business this day. Word had spread throughout the gold and silver mining region of the Eastern Sierras that the snow had melted enough for the worst of the avalanche danger to be over. The mines, including the Gorilla, Parrott, Bryant as well as others were starting operations within the next week or two. The May Lundy and others higher up on the range that included Mount Scowden weren’t expected to start until the end of the month. Men with blankets and basic supplies on their backs coming from Bodie, Aurora, Virginia City and Mammoth Lakes had been making their way to this town high in the Mill Creek Canyon for a chance to get on with a mine that was still pulling precious metal out of the ground.
Tomorrow would be the big day, Beth knew. Dubbed “Resurrection Day,” Saturday, April 5th had been set aside by the citizens and tradesmen to celebrate the return of the miners to Lundy on the western point of Lake Lundy. They hoped for news of new gold strikes. They celebrated the opening of the majority of the mines in the area. Mostly, the local citizens hoped for a resurrection of a strong economy for their town to see them through the next year.
Gus hoped for the same. Beth remembered when she had entered the Arcade Saloon the previous January right after she arrived in Lundy. The owners had worried she came looking for work as an “upstairs girl.” Although there were saloons that catered to men in search of prostitutes, the Arcade Saloon was not among them. It provided a chance to socialize at the bar or at the table over an honest card game, a game of billiards, or a chance to eat fried steaks, potatoes and biscuits in Gus’s chop shop. Beth assured the German owners she was only looking for her wayward husband.
Gus had not known Jim Dodd, But, upon learning that Beth could cook, bake and knew a smattering of German, the grumpy, light-haired, balding man who stood no taller than Beth had asked her—almost insisted—that she work for him. Beth accepted the job offer only after learning that, at the ripe old age of twenty-four she had already been a widow for a week.
It had worked out well for both Gus and Beth. Gus fried up steaks well and his homemade bratwurst proved to be popular with his customers. However, he could not make good biscuits, even after Beth tried several times to show him how to do it right. As word got around town that Gus’s place now served the best biscuits in town as well as fresh bread by the loaf, plus additional side dishes, his business had increased and brought in more than enough to pay Beth’s wages.
Beth stepped back to her pie crusts. She was making dried apple turnovers. She found that for selling them to the miners, the fruit encased in a flakey crust worked better than pie slices. They were filling, more portable and, with a larger crust to fruit ratio, allowed her fruit to stretch farther.
As much as Beth preferred baking with fresh fruit, it was still too early in the year for that. Rumor had it that berries and cherries from the San Joaquin Valley on the other side of the Sierra-Nevada Mountains might be available soon and peaches would be available in the summer. She looked forward to their arrival in Lundy.
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sp; How many berry, cherry and peach pies she made depended on the price, for the pies, turnovers and cakes were her own business. She gave Gus a cut of her sales to pay him for the use of his kitchen and any additional wood needed for the stove. However, she purchased the raw ingredients and did all the labor. She kept the bulk of the profits.
That, and wait tables. Gus took most of the orders and did most of the serving. However, when the chop shop got busy, Beth stepped out front to take orders, collect money and dish up food.
Although Gus kept forks and enamel-coated tin plates for the town people to eat off of—which either Beth or Josh were tasked with washing up—Gus had learned the hard way to not trust many of the miners. If they came without something to eat off of, he made them buy a plate and fork before he would take their food order. Most of the miners learned to bring their own mess kits. He kept a bucket of hot soapy water, a second of hot clear water and a rag tied to the leg of the counter in the corner so the miners could wash their dishes before they left.
Beth shook her head. When she first started serving the miners who had wintered over, it had taken a few sharply-spoken words on her part and a few slashes through the air by Gus with his meat cleaver to convince the men that Beth was a respectable widow who worked as a cook only. Just once since being in Lundy had she felt the need to pull her father’s old hunting knife from the sheath she kept strapped to the calf of her leg with its tip tucked into the top of her boot. So far, she had not needed to pull from her pocket her double-barrel derringer to persuade the men to keep their hands to themselves and watch what they said around her.
But, an entirely new group of miners were pouring into town. Many were good family men who left their wives and children in towns like Bodie or Carson City in order to find top-paying work in the mines. Others were drifters and trouble-makers who saw the mines as a means to build up a cache in order to move on to someplace more exciting. She wondered with this new bunch how long she would need to stand her ground in order to convince the men that she expected to be treated like the respectable widow she was. If they wanted the other kind of women, the kind that out-numbered the wives, daughters and other decent women in town, the Arcade was not the place to find them. Like her late husband, they needed to go two blocks down toward the lake, past China Charley’s, and over a block or two.
The backdoor leading to the outside opened, letting in a blast of cool air. Beth turned around long enough to see young Josh Connor, tall and lanky with his usual swatch of reddish brown hair hanging on the forehead of his freckled face, step into the kitchen. She turned back to her work as she heard the clunk of his crude wooden crutch against the floor and the door bang shut behind him.
“You want I should bring you more water, Mrs. Dodd? You needing more firewood yet?”
“I got me plenty of firewood, Josh. I been aimin’ to ask, that lean-to we done built, none of them new miners comin’ up has bothered it none, has they?”
“Nobody’s been bothering it, Mrs. Dodd.”
Beth soon learned after moving to Lundy that the citizens were more likely to be robbed of firewood than they were of their valuables. In fact, all over the eastern Sierra region where timber was scarce and the forests of pine and aspen were quickly cut to feed the voracious appetites of the wood-fired mining equipment, firewood for home use was scarce and the price was dear. A man could get himself hung faster for stealing firewood than he could for murder.
Until Beth had taken in Josh, preventing their wood from disappearing a little at a time had been a problem for both Gus and the owners of the Arcade. The resourceful young man, no older than Beth’s little sister, had gone up to the part of Lundy destroyed by avalanches two years earlier. Most of the wood from the mangled buildings had already been salvaged and reused in construction further down the canyon. Yet, Josh had dug through the snow and pulled out several boards and splintered sections of wall. While clutching the wood in one hand and holding his crutch in the other, over the course of several days he had dragged enough boards down to Gus’s place for Josh, Gus and Beth to nail together a lean-to on the side of the saloon building. The lean-to not only held the firewood, but the trio built it large enough to also hold Beth’s six baby chicks, a small round wood stove Beth had purchased, and a pallet she had made for Josh to sleep on.
“I reckon we best keep an eye out. Plumb near every miner done brung a dog up with them. Most them hounds won’t think twice about goin’ after my baby chicks. I’m fixin’ to build a coop for them directly, once the weather warms some. Reckon as them chickens get up in size, a body’s got to watch for two-legged varmints, too.”
“I’ll help you, Mrs. Dodd.”
“I’d be beholden. I can’t abide a thief goin’ after my chickens. If it won’t put you out none, reckon I could do with another bucket of water to start heatin’ for dishwater.”
Josh clumped over to the corner where Gus kept the water bucket.
“Be right back, Mrs. Dodd.” With that, the door closed behind him.
Beth thought back on the night she had taken Josh in. It was the same day that Val had brought her the hatching eggs and asked her to be his valentine. She had agreed. Even though she wasn’t sure she wanted to marry again soon, if ever, she has also told Val that he could call her by her first name and officially court her.
A month-and-a-half later, Beth still wasn’t sure she was ready to marry and let a man have the kind of power over her that the law allowed. Val hadn’t asked her to marry him yet, for which she felt grateful. But, he visited with her every time he brought a sleigh-load of supplies up to Lundy. She looked forward to seeing him each time. They spent as much time together as she could arrange before he needed to leave to return to his ranch.
Beth knew Val loved her. She feared she was in love with him. She didn’t like that idea one bit.
But, the night of Valentine’s Day, after Val and his brother had left, Beth had been faced with the dilemma of what she was going to do with a basket of hatching eggs she had placed next to Gus’s stove to stay warm.
Yes, on that first occasion she and Val had met, after he offered to bring up anything she needed from Bridgeport, she had asked him to bring her some chickens when they came available. But, she hadn’t expect there to be any hatching eggs until later in the spring when it would be warm enough to put the chicks outside. With snow halfway up the sides of the buildings in town that mid-February day, she knew she needed to keep them in a warm, dry place until they feathered out. She had studied the eggs and tried to think of the best way to explain them to Gus.
When Gus had returned from shopping at the Central Market, Beth had followed Gus’s stare to her eggs. Seldom at a loss for words, she had struggled to find the right explanation for her boss.
“Nein!” No!
Using Fritz Gluntz to help translate, Gus had insisted that there could be no chickens where he cooked. Beth needed to take them home with her.
Only, there was no place in the Pioneer Boarding House run by Mrs. Ford for Beth to keep her chickens.
The matter was resolved with a timid knock on the back door to the kitchen. When Beth opened it, a skinny, shivering Josh stood before them asking if they had anything extra that he could eat in exchange for him chopping some kindling or hauling some water.
Beth had not worked for Gus long before she realized that beggars posing as unemployed miners were a fact of life in Lundy just as in most mining towns. These men came on the pretext of seeking work, but seldom accepted a job, giving one excuse or another. Gus had nothing nice to say about them, but did admit to handing out extra biscuits or fried potatoes that didn’t sell as long as the same men did not show up at his door more than once or twice a week.
Once Beth had learned about the situation, she had put an end to the hand-outs. She figured that if she needed to work to eat, so did those men who came looking for food. She had put them work chopping firewood and kindling, stacking a day’s worth in the kitchen next to the stove, and fetchin
g water from the spring a block down from the Arcade.
Some of the men grumbled about being required to work for food and didn’t come back. But, there were enough who did the work she requested, although often grudgingly, that she received much-appreciated help with many of the heavy chores. In exchange, she made it a point to keep enough extra held aside for the men who showed up at the back door.
Josh had been among those men looking for food. Unlike most of the men, Josh was a young boy in his mid-teens with an obvious bad leg that required a crutch in order for him to walk. He was also slow of speech. He often had been shoved aside by the older, more able-bodied beggars, but waited his turn in hopes there was some food left for him.
The afternoon Val brought the eggs to Beth, the men, knowing he was there, had stayed away. But, Josh had waited until Gus had returned before knocking on the door.
Beth had invited Josh into the kitchen to warm up and fed him the beans over rice that had been on the menu that night. While talking to him, she had coaxed a little of his story out of him.
Josh had come out west with his father to work the mines a couple of years earlier. A collapse in the shoring of the mine where they were employed had killed his father and fallen on Josh’s hip. It had also knocked him senseless. He had awakened days later in Dr. Guirado’s office only to learn that, along with the smashed pelvic bone that the doctor didn’t think would ever heal right, he had a broken collar bone. He also had suffered a head injury.
Josh said that the collar bone had healed all right, although it still pained him in bad weather. He didn’t think his leg would get any better. He knew he thought slower than he did before the accident, and he sometimes had trouble thinking things through. But, he hoped he would eventually start thinking faster again. All his money from mining, plus what his father had earned, had ended up going to pay the doctor and for him to live on those first few weeks after he was back on his own. His family couldn’t afford to send for him or to take care of him if he went back home. It had been because of their desperate situation that he and his father had come west to mine in the first place.
