All Together in One Place (63 page)

In the morning, they met three riders touting various routes, offering to buy up Adoras mules. They eyed a thin Ink as well.

“If you're willing to give me that kind of cash out here,” Adora said, “think what I can get in California.”

“Your mules've got to make it. They're looking pretty slim.”

“They're tough as tacks,” she said.

“Speaking of them,” the man said, scratching at his hairy chin, “we'd buy them up too if you had ‘em, which I see you do there, on your lettering wagon.”

The offer came more than once.

“What would they do with those?” Suzanne asked when Mazy told her what they wanted. “My carpet tacks? And Lura's? Everybody's?”

“He's wearing white,” Tipton said. “I can see that. And he's about the same size as that Laiamie man.” The women stared, wary of the distant rider with a high top hat.

“Time I faced him,” Ruth said. “Mazy, keep Jessie and the others in the wagon, will you? I don't want them seeing him or him seeing them.”

“Seeing who, Auntie?” Jessie said.

“He must have taken the Salt Lake trail to be coming at us from the west like that, doubled back.”

Suzanne asked, not certain of what she heard, “He's riding in from the west, heading east?”

“Well, ponder that,” Elizabeth said, squinting her eyes into the distance. “We all know who that is”

“Charles?” Adora said

“Not ¨Charles,” Tipton said.

“No,” Elizabeth told them, beginning to wave her arm in a wide and welcoming arc “It's that gambling man turned teacher, Seth Forrester.”

“Why, Seth,” Mazy said as the rider pulled up his horse before them. “You white-collared man. What happened to your quality beaver-skin hat?”

Seth grinned at her “The quality comes from what's under the hat, not what material's in it.” He removed the white hat, said, “It is my pleasure to encounter you again. Where's that giant dog of yours?” His eyes cast across her, searched them all They stopped at Pig standing beside Suzanne, and then his eyes moved back. Mazy could tell that he counted no men.

“What happened?” he said, his voice low, his eyes holding hers.

“Sit a spell with us at our nooning and we'll tell you,” Elizabeth said.

And so he nooned with them, and they told him of the sorrow and the losses, the burials and the moving east and then west again like a dance There was a tenderness in the telling, for he was someone who
could hold their loved ones in his mind. It made the giving richer, the remembering deeper. And as they spoke, the men and women they'd lost filled their lives again, Jeremy and Antone, Jed, Hathaway and Tyrell, Bryce, Harold and Ferrel. Betha. Cynthia, too. All entered their conversations.

“We'll bring our memories with us, to new places,” Elizabeth said.

“You've been through much,” Seth said. “Worthy of admiration.” He fingered his hat as he sat on the milking stool Mazy offered him, set in the shade of a wagon. “I'm sorry to learn of your losses.”

“Thank you,” Mazy told him, “but we've been well provided for, beyond measure really, if truth be known.”

“And now you,” Sister Esther said. “Tell us your truths. Weren't you headed to the California gold fields?”

“I was. I did.” Seth extended his long legs before him as he leaned back against the wheel, scratched his back at the hub. “What I'm doing now is under contract to William H. Nobles of the Shasta City diggings. I was traveling with a train he met up with. Told us all of his new venture. From Minnesota he is, of German stock. He's made a shortcut to the northern mining regions. But it meets up with the trail heading on south, to Sacramento, or you can take an easier route north, along Applegate's Trail on up into Oregon. Uses portions of Lassen's Cutoff.”

“You took the Lassen?” Lura asked.

“It was a gamble, but I am a gambling man.” Seth grinned. “We took it, and as luck would have it, we learned later we were the first on Nobles's venture. Shasta residents had raised two thousand dollars to improve the trail and bring a train on in, and there we were, the first to be feted at the principal hotel.”

“What's
feted
, Auntie?” Jessie asked.

“Celebrated,” Ruth said. “Like a big party.”

“And he's hired you to bring other wagons in?” Mazy asked.

“So he has. It's a good little town. Timber, pines, oak, meadows along the river. Trinity River country is unparalleled in beauty. Good
water. Producing mines. They're needing everything a mining town needs: progress and people. It even has three, no four, bookstores. Just getting ready to open up a school.”

“We know our letters already,” Jason said.

“I see you've been working on them.” Seth nodded toward the wagon.

“You're one we can ask. Why do people want the tacks?” Mazy said. “Several have offered to buy them from us.”

“Are the letters made up of carpet tacks?” Seth said. “Brass ones?” He stood, walked to take a closer look. “Well, I'll be.”

“What's the interest?”

“Of all the things you could have discarded, it's amazing you kept these.” He shook his head in disbelief.

“Why? What's so unusual?” Mazy said

“Hanging muslin on the walls is the big craze in mining towns,” Seth said. “All over Northern California. Their nod to civilization. But they've got no tacks to hang it with, no little nails or anything to spare, so they pay their weight for tacks. In gold.”

“Gold?”

“You've got a fortune spelled out there,” Seth said.

“And we didn't even know it,” Adora gasped.

“I'd like to be feted,” Jessie said and swung her legs as she sat on the wheel. She smiled at Ruth, who winked back.

“I think you'll have good reason,” Seth said.

“Soon as we get to California we'll really have something to celebrate,” Adora chirped.

“Why wait? You're awful close,” Seth told her.

“We are?” Several spoke at once.

“You are. Allow me,” he said, “to be the first to officially welcome you. On behalf of William Nobles, I extend this invitation to consider making Shasta City your California home. I'll take you there myself, if you'll allow. And you can celebrate being back in the States, now.”

“What s the vote?” Jason shouted

“We have prayer first,” Deborah announced

“Thank you, Lord, for carpet tacks,” Adora intoned, her hands in the air “Amen”

“And for good mules and good people and for providing just what we needed when we needed it,” Lura said.

“I still need to fill my contracts,” Sister Esther told him. “In Sacramento”

“Direct trail south from Shasta City. I can help you find what you need to know,” Seth offered.

“There are others of us needing contact with lawyers,” Mazy said.

“I can get you that, too,” Seth said, his eyebrow raised at the tone of her voice “Almost anything you want we've got at Shasta City, or it s a gateway to it”

“Except carpet tacks,” Mazy said. “Who would have thought them essential?”

“They weren't,” Sister Esther said. “They're just the whipped cream on the cake of good eating God always provides”

“I was just wonderin,” Elizabeth asked him, “if there're any big trees in this Shasta City.” She spread out her arms as though they were an oak or maple swaying in the wind. Fip lurched toward her on his leash and bunted at her skirts.

Mazy laughed. “Why do you want that?”

“Why, to build a tree house in,” Elizabeth said. “Ponder that.”

She gathered up the troubadours harp then and handed it to Suzanne. Jason fished his tin whistle from his pocket, and the two began to play.

Seth bowed low, offering his hand to Mazy. She hesitated, then took it. He stood taller than she, and it surprised her as it always did to be looking up to someone.

“Hey!” Ned said. “Everybody didn't vote So are we going to Shasta City or not?”

Suzanne stopped playing. “Mazy? Its up to you,” she said.

“We're going all together; all together,” Mazy said. “Some questions though, Mr. Forrester: Will cattle thrive there? Will my garden give a bountiful harvest?”

“Yes to the first; no doubt to the second. Its a good little town, with orchards already planted. I plan to stay awhile myself. Not a better gamble in all of California”

“Well, get the bucket,” Mazy told Ned as she dropped Seth's hand to make his dancing offer available to someone else.

“You going to milk the cow now?” Ruth asked. “I don't think she's got any milk to give”

“Nope I'm ready to plant Mrs. Malarkys seeds. One of them's a maple tree. Might as well start it so we can transplant it for your tree house, Mother, soon as we find a home.”

They decided to rest for the day and let Seth lead them on in the morning The big man cooed over Sason, holding the child cradled in the cup of his elbow. The baby stared up at him, sucked on the man's little finger

“Careful now,” Lura told him. “My mother said men holding babies was catching as a cold.”

Seth laughed. “A man could catch worse things.”

He handed the baby back, and the Celestials circled him and spelled out English words to his deep-voiced praise. He stood, his hands smoothing the silk neck scarf that hung down his chest while he chattered with the boys. Ned slapped his cap on his knees to brush away dust the way Mazy'd seen Seth just do it. Jason stood smoothing a red neckerchief that had been his dad's Mazy'd never seen him wear it before. She blinked back tears.
How those boys must miss their dad. Now their mother, too

Seth brought a blush to Lura as he offered to dance with her. Adora and Elizabeth acted as each other s partner. Ruth stood off to the side, her arm draped over Sarahs shoulder. Mazy caught her eye and the woman smiled. A burst of laughter and both women turned to see Mariah helping Jessie onto a defenseless Fip, whom Ned tried to hold with a halter. Clayton, who perched on Tiptons hip, reached out, saying, “Me, now. I ride now. Me!”

Jessie lasted only a second, sliding west as the antelope jerked east. She landed laughing in the dirt. The children acted, at long last, just like children.

Mazy clapped and tapped her toes and watched the women, these turnaround souls, her friends worthy of celebration.

Deborah stepped out of the wagon, carrying a box of bees. Five colonies made it. That was a miracle in itself, though one more box was quiet, and Deborah told her, eyes cast down, that the queen inside had died

“You took such good care of them, Deborah. Such good care,” Mazy said. “Its all any can ask for.”

In the other boxes, the tiny insects hovered around the opening Deborah made for them to go about their work in the dusk. They moved in a pattern back and forth, this way and that as though memorizing where they'd been before leaving, seeking and searching the area for the nourishment they needed to bring back to the queen. They danced as they darted.

When they were sure they knew their way back home, the bees dotted into the distance.

“Another dance?” Seth asked, offering his hand.

Mazy shook her head. “But youre welcome to rest your feet,” she said. “And sit beside me while I work.”

“Work?” he said, his chin lifted in question. “What is it that youre doing?” He squatted down beside her, watching her face.

“Helping Deborah.”

“I ask one more thing,” the girl said. “You call me Mei-Ling?”

“Of course,” Mazy said. “I didn't know.”

“Does it have a meaning, in English?” Seth asked.

She blushed. “Beautiful. My mother say so.”

“As do all mothers, I suspect, Mei-Ling, as do they all.”

Mei-Ling step-stepped away, and Seth turned back to Mazy. “Are you still helping? Looks like you're resting to me.”

“I'm talking her bees back home.”

Home!
Her face lit up. That was the word Mazy had been unable to read in her dream, the word the bees had kept her from seeing! They'd almost suffocated her in the dream because she didn't stand out, wasn't unique, wasn't at home in her own heart.

Mazy laughed, but didn't explain it to Seth—how could she? This journey had been like the bees, a dance to remember, readying her soul to live at home, not in the past or the future but here, where she was.

“We played a game, to distract ourselves from the miseries getting here,” she told him then. “Of guessing a truth and a lie. It entertained us in our necessary circles. Revealing at times too. I'll share one with you, see if you can guess.”