Authors: Gwen Bristow
Calico Palace
Jubilee Trail
“Miss Bristow has the true gift of storytelling.” —
Chicago Tribune
“This absorbing story giving a thrilling picture of the foundation on which our West was built is heartily recommended.” —
Library Journal
“An exciting tale of love and war in the tradition of
Gone with the Wind
… The kind of story that keeps readers tingling.” —
Chicago Tribune
“Absorbing and swift-paced, well written … The situations are historically authentic, the characterizations rigorous, well formed and definite. The ‘you-are-thereness’ is complete.” —
The Christian Science Monitor
“Historical romance with all the thrills [and] a vivid sense of the historical personages and events of the time.” —
New York Herald Tribune
“A grand job of storytelling, a story of enthralling swiftness.” —
The New York Times
“Miss Bristow belongs among those Southern novelists who are trying to interpret the South and its past in critical terms. It may be that historians will alter some of the details of her picture. But no doubt life in a small river town in Louisiana during the years 1859-1885 was like the life revealed in
The Handsome Road
.” —
The New York Times
A Novel
Gwen Bristow
For Louis, Bobby, and the girls
1
T
HE GOOD SHIP
Cynthia
was on her way to California. The
Cynthia
was a beautiful ship, her sails tall and singing in the wind, her figurehead a white goddess crowned with a crescent moon.
The
Cynthia
had left New York in October, 1847. For two months she had been sailing south, and now she was coming close to Cape Horn at the tip of South America.
On the quarterdeck at the after part of the ship, Kendra Logan stood by the rail watching the gray sea around her. Kendra was nineteen years old. Her figure was slim and firm, and her face, while not beautiful, was a face people looked at twice. She had a straight nose and a stubborn chin and a humorous mouth; her eyes were deep blue with black lashes, and her dark hair grew to a point like an arrow on her forehead. When they got a chance, men liked to drop a kiss on that arrow of hair. A mere peck on the forehead, why that was the way a man would kiss his old teacher, or his aunt. Or so they said.
Kendra’s dress and cloak and scarf were all blue like her eyes, and all swirling around her in the wind. As a gust harder than usual struck her she turned from the rail and looked up at the men working among the great sails high against the sky.
These men had never spoken to her and as long as they were on the
Cynthia
they never would. Cabin and quarterdeck were forbidden to sailors, and passengers were not allowed anywhere else. The men worked so hard that they had little energy left for wishful dreams, but as Kendra looked up, drops of sea mist beading her eyelashes like tiny pearls around her blue eyes, a sailor high in the rigging paused to gaze yearningly down upon her. A big fellow with a rust-colored beard, he caught her eye and grinned. He was quite unabashed; his whole attitude said you couldn’t blame a guy for looking.
Kendra knew she ought not to smile back, but she smiled anyway. As his grin brightened in answer, she dropped her eyes regretfully and turned toward the sea again. During their two months on shipboard her mother had warned her often enough that she must ignore the sailors as if they were not here. Kendra supposed the ban was necessary, but she wished it were not. That man would be fun to know. She wondered how he liked being here on this cold gray sea, sailing toward a dreary country off at the end of the world.
But at least, he had chosen to be here, and she had not. Kendra was going to California because she could not help it. The United States was at war with Mexico, and her stepfather, Colonel Alexander Taine, had been ordered to duty in a town called San Francisco. Alex had sailed on a troop transport that had no place for women, so Kendra and her mother were following him on the
Cynthia,
which though a merchant ship took a few passengers. Kendra’s own father had died young and she had grown up in boarding schools. But now her schooldays were over, so for the first time she was going to live with her mother and stepfather at an army post.
She did not like the prospect. In spite of all the pretty pretending that enfolded this journey, Kendra knew they did not want her there. They had lived without her all these years, and they were accepting her now only because she could no longer be tucked away at school, and nobody else wanted her either. Kendra was young and her experience was small, but she was not stupid.
Long ago Kendra had made up her mind that she was not going to feel sorry for herself. But she could not help wishing there was somebody who cared what became of her.
Standing here in the wind that was blowing her to California, Kendra wondered what her life there would be like. She could not make a picture in her thoughts. She had never spent much time with her mother, and she hardly knew Colonel Taine at all. As for California, nobody knew anything about California. Half the gentlemen in Congress had already said the place was not worth having and it was sheer waste of the taxpayers’ money to send an army there.
Listening to the crash of water and creak of ropes, Kendra thought of the ship’s figurehead, the goddess crowned with the crescent moon. The goddess could not be seen from here, but Kendra suspected that her gleaming whiteness was by now tarnished as gray as the clouds above. Here near Cape Horn the weather was bleak and dark. At night they saw ghostly globes of light hovering about. Loren Shields, the jolly young supercargo of the
Cynthia,
had told Kendra the sailors used to think these were wandering souls. No, Loren didn’t know what they were, he didn’t think anybody knew, but he was pretty sure they weren’t spooks.
A hatch banged shut, and she saw Loren Shields coming out on deck. Bundled up in his thick coat, his cheeks pink and his light hair blowing, Loren waved and came toward her.
Though he was twenty-six years old Loren was the type that Kendra privately classified as “nice boy.” He was not an exciting young man, but she liked him. It was almost impossible not to like Loren, simply because he
was
so nice—so courteous, so friendly, so agreeable. He lent her books, and told her the lore of the sea, and was often available for games. Kendra had been surprised that he had time for this, but Loren explained that the word “supercargo” meant what it said: he was supervisor of the cargo. This kept him busy in port, but at sea he often had leisure.
As he reached the rail the ship lurched, and they both got a spatter of sea water. Loren caught the rail with one hand and Kendra’s arm with the other, and when she had steadied herself he released her and pointed out to sea. Away out, half obscured by the mist, Kendra saw a great jagged cliff standing high in the water. Bringing his lips close to the blue scarf over her head Loren shouted above the wind. “There’s Cape Horn!”
Kendra was not a timid girl, but she shivered. Cape Horn was a rock fourteen hundred feet high, jutting out of the end of South America to divide the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Here the winds were violent, and they nearly always blew from the west, hurling the sea against the ships that tried to pass from the Atlantic to the Pacific, as the
Cynthia
would be trying now. But as he saw Kendra’s tremor Loren gave her a reassuring smile.
“There’s no reason to be scared!” he exclaimed into her muffled ear.
Kendra remembered that Loren had been around the Horn before—
doubled
the Horn, she corrected herself. Seafaring folk said “double” the Horn, not “go around” it. Loren was speaking again.
“It’s cold up here. Come below and get warm.”
She went with him down the companionway. Once, as the
Cynthia
pitched and Kendra almost stumbled, Loren caught her elbow to steady her, but as he had done on deck, almost instantly he let it go. Loren treated a lady with respect; he had none of the impish daring of that sailor who had grinned at her from the rigging. She still thought the sailor would have been more fun to know.
As they were out of the wind now and could speak easily, Loren paused to encourage her.
“We won’t have any trouble, Kendra. There’s not a better ship afloat than the
Cynthia,
and Captain Pollock is as fine a navigator as ever lived.”
What a nice boy he was, Kendra thought for the hundredth time. Loren added,
“Besides, there’s another reason—I mean—oh anyway, we’ll be all right.”
He was—why, he was
blushing,
thought Kendra, or was that extra pink of his cheeks due to the wind? But whatever he had been about to say, instead of saying it he was hurrying her into the cabin.
Here they found Kendra’s mother, Eva Taine, with the other two passengers, Bess and Bunker Anderson. The Andersons were a middle-aged pair who lived in Honolulu, where Bunker managed a branch of a New York trading firm. They had been playing a card game, but the sea had grown so rough that they had given up. Eva was sewing. Catching sight of Kendra, Eva greeted her with a bright smile. She always did. Kendra smiled back. She always did. Kendra and her mother had never felt at ease together, but they pretended.
Eva was thirty-five years old. She did not look like Kendra; Kendra looked like the father she could not remember. Eva was a really beautiful woman, with large dark eyes, brown hair always smooth and shining, and an air of gracious composure. Nobody was ever surprised to hear that she was a colonel’s wife. When Loren said Cape Horn was in sight Eva put aside her work, exclaiming that she wanted to see the famous rock. Bess and Bunker Anderson offered to go up with her.
Loren, saying he had to check some records, went to his own quarters. Kendra took off her wraps and waited in the cabin.
The cabin of the
Cynthia
was a handsome place, paneled in hardwood, with a skylight for daytime and whale oil lamps for night. The ship’s steward served meals at the table under the skylight, where Captain Enos Pollock sat at the head and the officers and passengers along the sides, in chairs bolted down to hold steady in rough weather. From her reading of sea stories Kendra had thought all you got to eat on a long voyage was salt meat and hardtack, and she had been surprised to find how good their food was. They did have salt meat, but this was varied with fresh, for they had brought along live pigs and poultry, kept in pens on the forward deck. They also had cheese and sausage and smoked fish, potatoes, onions, split pea soup, pickled cabbage, and dried fruit. On special occasions Captain Pollock even brought out a decanter of wine, though he never touched it himself.