Veiled Joy

by Reece, Colleen L.

  Veiled

  Joy

  Colleen L. Reece

  Copyright

  Print ISBN 978-1-55748-427-7

  eBook Editions:

  Adobe Digital Edition (.epub) 978-1-62836-081-3

  Kindle and MobiPocket Edition (.prc) 978-1-62836-082-0

  Copyright © 1993 by Colleen L. Reece. All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now know or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the permission of the publisher, Truly Yours, P.O. Box 719, Uhrichsville, Ohio 44683.

  All of the characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events is purely coincidental.

  prologue

  1848

  Sand swirled like a woman’s veil, hiding all but a few blood-red gleams from the dying sun. Angus McFarlane, desert rat that he was, shivered at the spectacle. “Jenny,” he told his faithful prospecting companion, “We’re in for it.”

  The faithful burro plodded steadily ahead, long ears drooping. The latest of many Jennies, she picked her way toward an unknown destination, always on the move, ever carrying picks and shovels, food, and a few cooking implements—and always water. She had watched a thousand sunrises, stumbled in the dark, crossed flooding rivers and desolate valleys. Time meant nothing. Only the presence of her master and a full stomach made life worthwhile. Now she bent her head against the rising wind and blindly followed the stocky, grizzled figure whose fingers tightened on her coarse mane.

  For a single moment the sand lifted. “Praise be!” Angus increased his pace. The glimpse of stunted green ahead lent strength to his tired legs and sagging spirits. In the long years since he fled from a faithless sweetheart and an equally faithless friend to make the desert his home, Angus had learned the value of even the smallest living tree and bush. He pushed on with the unerring instinct of a wolf on the trail, breathing heavily through the old scarf he had bound across his nose and mouth. It matched the one that protected Jenny, who quickened her slow steps.

  “What is it, old girl?” Angus demanded when his burro brayed. “Water, I hope.” He thought of the small amount left in his canteen—a sip for him, a cupped handful for Jenny.

  Jenny brayed again and pulled a little to the left, becoming leader instead of follower now that the storm had made seeing impossible.

  Angus clutched her mane and let her guide. Thank God for the knowledge He had put in critters when He created them. A dozen times they would have perished had it not been for the little burro’s survival instincts. As he struggled in the heavy sand that sucked and grabbed at his feet, sometimes sinking into it, he was grateful for his companion and he remembered a legend of the desert.

  According to the story, Jesus had appreciated so much that a little donkey had carried His mother on the way to Bethlehem and another had borne him in triumph into Jerusalem, that He wanted to reward them. The legend says that He placed a cross-shaped mark, lighter than the donkey’s color, on the back of every burro. Some had a distinct mark, others had a faint and barely visible mark.

  Just a story, yet Angus never stroked his beast of burden’s cross-marked back without remembering Jesus. Although the prospector, whose keen eyes shone as gray as his hair, had lost faith in mankind, childhood teachings about God and His Son remained bright. Because of them, he held back from the vice and sin that led so many rough, lonely men downward. Never a day dawned without Angus’s reading aloud from the Auld Book—his mother’s Bible. And never did he sleep without a simple prayer of thankfulness that he and Jenny had been kept safely for another day.

  The southwest trails that Angus’s booted feet trod held invisible footprints of a man who stood far taller than his five-feet, eight-inch height. He traveled light and gave to those less fortunate. When Angus dreamed of striking it rich, thoughts of ragged children with hungry mouths filled those dreams. He had seen many such children, so when a passing acquaintance told him gold had been discovered at Sutter’s Mill in California, Angus turned Jenny north and west. God willing, he might pan enough gold and find enough small nuggets to send relief to God’s children in need.

  The sense, rather than sight, that Jenny had stopped, roused her master from his soliloquy. Sand stung his red-rimmed eyes, but he dropped to his knees. The touch of water cooled his hands. He splashed it on his eyes, heard Jenny lapping noisily, then pulled his coat higher, turned his back to the storm, and waited.

  With the coming of night, the wind lessened. The sand settled and no longer pelted the travelers. Bright stars poked holes in the heavens and a wary moon opened an eye to survey the waterhole. Angus munched a hard biscuit and ate sparingly of jerky, then drank the last of the water from the canteen. In the morning he would refill it from the opposite side of the small, shimmering pool away from where Jenny drank. Wrapped in a blanket, the man made old before his time murmured his prayer and slept.

  He awakened to Jenny’s bray. No longer did the burro’s ears droop; both stood picked up, listening.

  Angus shook sand from his blanket and cocked his head. Only the sound of a small bird in a nearly bush reached him. “What’s the matter, old girl?” He pulled one of her long ears. Jenny didn’t move.

  “Something strange here.” Angus shifted position. The same sun that had slunk away, defeated by storm the night before, peeped over a distant rock outcropping then poured its warmth onto the land. Strange mounds of sand whipped into dunes rose around the waterhole. A slight sound drifted from behind the largest pile of sand.

  Angus quietly slid his rifle from its resting place next to where he had slept and strode toward the dune, prepared in case a wild animal lay in wait. He rounded the pile of sand, stared. “What?” He shook his head and stared again.

  The apparition was no mirage but a living, breathing child! Huddled with her arms across her chest, terror shone in her bright blue eyes. Reddish gold, disheveled curls framed a pale face and a dozen or so gilt freckles reflected the rising sun.

  “Who are you?” Where did you come from?” Angus stepped nearer, and she shrank back. He calculated her age as five or six, perhaps even seven. The child opened her mouth. No words came.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he told her gruffly. “I’m just Angus. This is Jenny.” The burro poked her nose over his shoulder to see what Angus had found.

  Some of the fear left the little girl’s face. She clutched her throat and tried to speak again but couldn’t.

  Angus turned on his heel, bumped the curious Jenny out of the way, and hurried back to the waterhole. He found where it fed into the small pool and filled his canteen. Moments later, he held it toward the child who eagerly reached for it with grimy hands. She drank and would have drunk more but Angus stopped her. “Take it easy, little one. There’s plenty more. Are you hungry?”

  She nodded and the sunshine danced in her sunset-colored hair. The prospector held out a weather-stained hand, and she scrambled up and slid her fingers into his big palm. Something inside Angus melted at her trusting touch, the way she curled her small hand and trotted beside him. With deft skill he shaved jerky into a little water and softened it. He toasted the last of the hard biscuits and brought her breakfast. “Sorry it isn’t more,” he apologized.

  Her first smile captured Angus’s heart forever. Small but perfect white teeth flashed in her dusty, tear-streaked face.

  “What’s your name?” he asked when she had eaten every scrap on the battered tin plate.

  “J-yes.” Her low voice had a tiny lisp.

  Angus scratched his head. “J-yes?”

  She nodded emphatically.

  He mulled it over. “J-yes? Must be Joyous.”


  His keen gray eyes noted the way she responded. “Joyous. A good name.”

  “Where did you come from? How did you get here?”

  Blank puzzlement crept into the poignant blue eyes that had laughed a moment earlier. She looked around her and fear returned to her face. “A long way. Men shouted. I—I hid the in the dark. Someone carried me. I woke up here.” She wrinkled her nose and looked at her slender hands. “Dirty.”

  Angus produced a battered pan with heated water and dug a tiny piece of soap out of the saddle bags. “I’ll just mosey around for a while. You get washed.” He awkwardly took out a shirt big enough to wrap around her a dozen times. “Put that on and I’ll wash your clothes.” He looked dubiously at her stockings and small shoes, totally unsuitable for the wilderness, then pulled out a clean but mended pair of socks. “Wear these. Then sun will dry your clothes fast.” He started away then stopped, held by the fear in her eyes. “I won’t go far. See, Jenny’s here to keep you company.” The fear subsided and Angus walked away warmed by her smile.

  “Where did she come from, Lord?” He often talked to God while he traveled. Many times he felt God near and cherished the feeling. It kept him from loneliness even when he was alone except for the burro.

  Now he doffed his old hat and shook his head. “Worse, what am I going to do with her? First thing’s to see if I can find her folks, I reckon.”

  Yet a thorough scouring of the north, west, and south over the next few days failed to unearth a single clue to the mysterious coming of the girl. Angus came to believe something had happened to her so shocking that she simply couldn’t remember any more than she’d told him. After a few futile attempts at questioning, he gave it up. With the adaptability of children, she quickly fell into his way of life. Except for once or twice when she cried out in the night and he comforted her, Joyous acted perfectly happy and wove herself into the fabric of the prospector’s heart.

  A week passed and Angus knew the time had come to move on. Yet he still must search east of the little waterhole. As usual, he left Jenny with Joyous. “Don’t be worried if I’m gone for a while,” he said. “There’s fried rabbit and sourdough biscuits for when you get hungry.” She didn’t argue, but the look on her face stopped him cold. It would take far longer today than when he’d gone before.

  “Reckon you’d better go with me, Joy.” His big arms opened, and she flew into them. Fifteen minutes later, she bobbed up and down on Jenny’s back, chattering about every bird or ground squirrel or tiny flower she saw.

  The final search bore fruit. A half mile east of the waterhole, Angus, Joy, and Jenny found a man sprawled under the scant shade of a mesquite, desert garb tattered and torn. Wasted by evident hunger and hardship, his breath came slow and uneven.

  “Do you know him?” Angus asked the little girl.

  She looked at the man. “He carried me.”

  Angus’s heart leaped. “From where?”

  “I don’t know.” The curtain between memory and reality had fallen again.

  Despite everything Angus could do, the stranger died the next day without disclosing the secret of Joy and how she had come into his possession. Angus tried a last time to rouse her remembrance. “Was he your father? Your daddy?”

  A spark flashed into her blue, blue eyes. “No.” She dug her fists into hips and emphatically shook her head before a flood of tears came.

  Angus said no more. He buried the stranger in a shallow grave and formed a cairn from nearby stones to protect the body from marauding animals. Perhaps someday it would be necessary to return to this spot. In the meantime . . .

  “Joy.” Angus felt a lump form in his throat. “Would you like to call me Daddy?” He quickly added, “I’ll do everything I can to find your folks, but ’til then, we’re pardners.”

  She climbed into his lap. “Daddy Angus.” Her small hand twined itself in his grizzled hair. “Pardners.”

  “We can’t do anything else here,” he told her. A great determination grew within him. “Before I. . .we got caught in the sandstorm—which, by the way, I’ll never figure out just how you got to the waterhole from where we found that fellow—anyway, Jenny here, and I were on our way to find gold. How’d you like for me to have enough money to buy you pretty things?”

  She smiled her enchanting smile and fingered the torn lace on her dress. Every few days he made her bathe while he washed the dress for her. “I need a new dress.”

  “You sure do.” He eyed the torn garment with distaste. “Let’s see what we can do. I’m no dressmaker, but I bet we can fix you up all right.” He carefully observed the general cut of her simple white dress, the lace-trimmed dress that had baffled him. How could a child in the desert possess such a thing? Even to his inexperienced eyes it looked like the fine dresses his cousins used to wear back home in the East.

  Angus fashioned a gown from an old blanket worn soft by use that wouldn’t scratch Joy. He cut holes with his hunting knife, stitched with the big old needle and coarse thread he always carried, and even braided a belt from narrow strips of the same blanket. “Not the world’s best, but it will do until we get somewhere to buy you some clothes,” he grunted.

  Charmed with the freedom of the wide skirt he had made to give her room to run and ride, Joy hooked one foot behind her other ankle and curtsied. “Thank you, Daddy.” She carefully folded up the little white dress and handed it to Angus when he warned, “We must always keep this. Someday it may help us find your real family.”

  “You’re my daddy. I don’t want a real family!” With a flash of the rare temper he’d seen only a time or two, Joy flung herself headlong into his arms.

  Angus swallowed hard. What had a desert rat to do with a child who obviously had been raised in a genteel, perhaps luxurious home? He gently laid one hand on the curls he smoothed for her night and morning and offered a silent prayer. God, thank You that I was here when she needed me. You know I’ve done my best to make things right. Now, it’s up to You. But he inwardly shuddered at the thought of a possible future without Joy, should God lead them to those among whom she belonged.

  By the time Angus, slowed by a child who was sturdy yet tired sooner than he, arrived in California and got to Sutter’s Mill, the majority of good claims had been staked by the thousands who had poured in after the initial finding of gold nuggets.

  James Marshall, a carpenter, had been hired by John Sutter, a pioneer trader, to help build a sawmill on the American River. Sutter had received a land grant in 1839 to a large portion of land in the Sacramento Valley. Marshall discovered the first nuggets in 1848 just before the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican War and ceded southwestern lands to the United States.

  From desert solitude to gold rush fury, Angus and Joy plunged. If those seeking their fortune hadn’t been so engrossed in their own pursuits, a grizzled prospector and a striking child such as Joy could never have escaped gossip. Angus used his canny Scottish upbringing to survey the situation and act accordingly. Instead of rushing to claim or grab land alongside others, he quietly and wisely took Joy and Jenny upstream and away from the hordes that resembled nothing more than bees in a hive in the frenzy. Joy soon learned that a cradle separated gold from worthless stone by rocking gravel and water until the lighter materials sifted out and left the gold. Her scream of excitement when flakes the color of her hair and occasional small nuggets appeared brought a smile to Angus’s austere face.

  “We don’t care about having all the gold the Almighty put in California,” he explained to her. “What we need is enough to take care of you.”

  “You and Jenny, too,” she insisted. The blanket dress had given way to calico; the golden curls were neatly woven into braids.

  “Of course.” Yet Angus’s heart lurched. It simply wasn’t believable that their roads would always be together. Someday Joy might well be taken from him.

  **

  In the months that followed, the thousands who poured in seeking gold came to pose
a threat in Angus’ mind. Neither did he like having Joy growing up in these surroundings. He said nothing to her of his plans, but after he discovered an extremely rich pocket and cleaned it of nuggets and dust that left them well-off though not wealthy, he took the child on his knee.

  “Joy, I’ve been thinking. Aren’t you getting tired of all the noise and crowds and digging for gold? How would you like to leave here?”

  She solemnly peered at him with her incredibly blue eyes surrounded with golden lashes the same shade as her braids. “Would you, Daddy? Would Jenny go?”

  “Yes, child.” His arms tightened around her.

  “Where will we go?” She snuggled close.

  A thousand times he had asked himself the same question. The desert he loved offered little to a child. No chance for an education, beyond what he could teach her.

  She already reads far beyond her years, a little voice inside tempted. From the Bible, too. She’s learned to write and to spell and to do numbers the same way. What better teaching can she have? “Is there somewhere you’d like to go?” he asked.

  Joy thought for a long time. Then she sat upright and said, “Somewhere faraway where it is quiet. I want to see the stars and hear birds sing instead of people yelling.” The same fear she had shown so long before, when she told him she remembered men yelling, crept into her face.

  “We’ll go, Joy. Tomorrow,” Angus promised.

  The next day the inseparable trio left the gold rush area to find the faraway place Joyous McFarlane, as she called herself, longed for. They didn’t look back.

  one

  The sailing ship Promised Land rose and fell with the tossing waves, waiting for the human cargo she would take to America. A swarm of humanity, bent beneath the possessions they could carry, filed aboard amidst shouts from the sailors, children’s cries, and a keening, growing wind.

  Seventeen-year-old Britton O’Donnell’s arms tightened around his baby sister, Katie, and he whispered, “Don’t cry, mavourneen1. Mother and Father and the lads are just behind.” His Gaelic pronunciation softened the words; they sounded like mither and feyther.