Calico Palace (17 page)

At this moment Mrs. Posey’s ears caught a ripple of laughter. She turned her head, and her round little mouth tightened as she got a good look at Marny.

Like Kendra, Marny had stopped her horse and was waiting for Ning. While she waited, a cluster of men had gathered around her. Marny had pushed back her bonnet, and the sun glinted on her hair. She was laughing with her admirers. Tired though she was, Marny was never too tired to enjoy such a welcome.

Mrs. Posey viewed her with alarm. After a moment she turned back to Kendra. “And who’s
that
?”

This time Kendra smiled without trying. “Her name is Marny.”

Mrs. Posey gave her head a toss that sent a shiver through the curls. “And what,” demanded Mrs. Posey, “is
she
doing here?”

Kendra said, “She’s going to set up a gambling tent.”

Mrs. Posey gave a righteous start. “Gambling tent! We’ll see about that.”

Losing interest in Kendra, she turned, and as fast as her short little legs would carry her she hurried over to the group around Marny’s horse. The men parted to let her through, reluctantly but with resignation, as if they knew it was no use to object. Mrs. Posey slapped her plump little hand on the arm of one of them. “Orville Posey,” she exclaimed, “supper’s on.”

The men chuckled, and Marny joined them with a soft little laugh that did not amuse Mrs. Posey. She led her husband off by his elbow, though it gave the effect of her leading him by the nose.

A few minutes later they heard a big jovial voice shouting “Ready!” Hiram came riding back, waving his hat above his head and as usual giving the impression that he filled up even more space than he did. “Ning has picked our campsite,” he called. “Catch up!”

Marny kissed her hand to her new friends as the train fell into line. Hiram led them to the far upper end of the open strip, close to the point where the mountain ranges came together. Here the ground was steep, but Ning explained that this was a good safe place to keep the horses. Down at the lower end of the gulch, beyond the turn where the stream went around a hill, a village of Abs had gathered to pick up the offal of the camp, and there was nothing an Ab liked so much as a roasted horse. Better keep the whole camp between them.

And here, right at the edge of the gulch, was a clear level spot that would do for Kendra’s cook-fire tonight. Tomorrow they would fix her a permanent cooking place.

At the word cook-fire Kendra felt another tremor of weariness. She had to cook supper, this was her job, but she was so tired that she dreaded it. Ted was anchoring their wagon with logs under the wheels. Hiram walked over and helped her dismount.

“I came to tell you,” said Hiram, “give us a cold supper tonight.”

She started. “What do you mean?”

“I spoke to Ning,” said Hiram, “and he agreed. Salt beef and hardtack and some dried fruit—we’re so hungry, those will taste like a feast. Don’t do any cooking except to make coffee.”

Kendra gave a grateful sigh. “Oh, thank you, Hiram! I’ll give you a big breakfast in the morning, to make up.”

Marny came over to say she had found a place for their bathroom. Kendra felt better when she had washed off the dust, or at least part of it. Back at her level space on the edge of the gulch, she gathered sticks while Ted brought a pail of water. “Now I’ve got to help Hiram and Pocket with the horses,” he said. “Shout when you’re ready.”

He left her, and Kendra knelt to set the sticks and light the fire. When she had put on the coffee pot, she stood up to stretch her cramped legs and look down into the gulch. The gold hunters had quit work for the day. The gulch was empty, and quiet but for the rush of water at the bottom. Farther downstream she could see paths the men had cleared so they could make their way down to the stream with its golden sands, but up at this end the sides were rough, broken only by rocks and bushes sticking crookedly out of the bumpy earth.

Raising her eyes Kendra looked around her. Their campsite was about a quarter of a mile from any other, for few people cared to make the hard climb to this high end of the strip. Down where most of them were camped, she could see tired men already going to sleep, their hats over their faces to shut out the last rays of the sun.

On the other side of her, near the spot where the mountains closed in, Ted and Hiram and Pocket were tethering the horses. Lulu and Lolo were busy at their own cook-fire. The Blackbeards were anchoring their wagons as Ted had anchored his, and near one wagon Marny and Delbert stood looking over the territory, no doubt choosing a place to set up their gambling tent.

Already, standing at the edge of the gulch and looking around, Kendra felt almost rested. “I like it here,” she said to herself. “I have friends. I belong.” She added with decision, “And no matter what happens, I’m never going to let myself get lonesome again.”

She stamped her foot on the ground.

“I’m never going to be lonesome again,” she repeated. “I’ll be hot and dusty and tired, but I
won’t
be lonesome. I’m just beginning to live and I’m going to
live.
I’m going to live every minute.”

She stamped her foot again. This time she stamped so hard that the rim of the gulch gave way and she felt herself falling.

From somewhere above her she heard Marny give a cry, but she hardly noticed it. Her fall was too fast and too terrifying. The earth, soaked by the melting of the mountain snows, was still soft; as Kendra slipped downward the stones and young growth came out easily, and fell with her instead of holding her back. She felt herself thumping and heard her clothes tearing, and the rocks and clods clattering down beside her. Her knees and elbows were scraping raw, dirt was filling her eyes and mouth and nostrils. A bush caught in the neck of her dress, giving her a hard scratch and drawing the dress so tight around her throat that it nearly choked her.

But this gave her an instant’s delay. The skin was torn off the sides of her hands, and the grains of dirt in her eyes were making her shed tears so that she could hardly see, but she caught blindly at the bush and clutched the stems. By good fortune this bush was an old one, well rooted, and she had grasped it near the ground. The roots held, and the pause gave her a chance to breathe.

Above her she heard voices. Though she was too confused to catch the words, the sounds gave her comfort. Her friends would get to her somehow, if she could hold on to the bush. But, she wondered in fright, could she hold on?—hanging here by her bleeding hands? The collar of her dress chafed painfully into the place where the bush had cut her neck, but she managed to look down. Below her, not far from her dangling feet, a ledge broke the side of the gulch. It was a shelf of stones and earth about three feet wide, and it looked solid.

Kendra heard her breath coming in choking gasps. She heard another sound too, close to her ears—the roots of the bush were firm in the ground, but the stems she held were cracking under her weight. Catching her lower lip between her teeth she loosened her hands from the stems and let go, and slid down upon the ledge and fell there in a heap, sore and bruised and ragged, but on steady ground again.

For a moment she could not do anything. Stones and dust and lumps of earth tumbled after her, and fell upon her and all around her, but she hardly noticed. She felt as if every organ in her body had been shaken out of place and was hurting from the shock. Her hands were stinging, and she saw bloodstains on her skirt.

With an effort she lifted her hands to her neck and unfastened the top button of her dress so she could breathe more easily. This was a help. She moved her shoulders. The shoulders hurt, and her hips hurt, and her knees felt bruised, and her upper arms were stinging as if they too had been scraped raw. She felt so many hurts that only now did she realize that Ted was calling her name, over and over above her head.

Vaguely she looked up. Ted was there on the edge of the gulch, close to the spot where she had slipped. He had thrown himself on the ground as if to get nearer her, and he was shouting,

“Kendra! Can’t you hear me?”

Kendra managed to nod. With another effort she called back, “Yes, I can hear.”

“Hiram has gone to get a rope,” called Ted. “Understand?”

Kendra’s head was beginning to clear. She nodded again.

“He’ll make a noose,” Ted went on, “with a good strong sailor’s knot. You’ll put the noose around you, and we’ll bring you up.”

Kendra called back that she understood. As she looked up she saw with surprise that Ted was not very far above her. Her fall had seemed so long that she felt as if she should be nearly down to the bottom of the gulch. But now, though she was still too confused to judge the distance, she could see that it was not as great as she had thought. It would not be very difficult for the men to bring her up.

Too bruised to feel like moving, she sat as she was. More pebbles, loosened as she scraped down the slope, fell around her.

Worse than feeling shaken and sore, she felt ashamed of herself. Through the whole journey, twelve days from San Francisco, she had been a good traveler. And now, just as they reached Shiny Gulch, she had gone and done a stupid thing like this, and discommoded the whole company. Her hands would have to be bandaged and maybe it would be days before she could make a fire or lift a kettle again. Bruised as she was, maybe she could not even walk.

Her dress was torn in a dozen places and so dirty that an hour’s scrubbing would hardly get it clean. In her lap, as well as all around her, were rocks and sticks and leaves and lumps of red clay. Near her right knee she saw a lump not as red as the others. The lump was about the size of an egg, but unlike an egg it was rough and uneven. It did not look like a clod, it was more like a rock with scraps of red earth clinging to it. A shiny sort of rock—in a spot where there was no dirt on it, the side caught the sunset with a little soft glow. Kendra picked it up.

Her breath caught in her chest with a gasp so hard that it hurt. This was not a rock. No rock this size would be so heavy. Her hands still oozing blood, she took a corner of her skirt and rubbed the dirt off the lump. The gasps of her breath came harder and faster. The pain in her chest swelled till she felt as if she were going to explode. The hand that held the lump began to tremble. Above her, Marny was calling some words of encouragement. Ted shouted that Hiram was right now making the noose in the rope. Kendra hardly heard them.

They had been little more than an hour at Shiny Gulch. And she had made the first find. Her torn, tingling hand was holding a really magnificent nugget of gold.

T
HE NEXT DAY WAS
Sunday. Ning had said the fellows generally didn’t go after gold on Sundays, but got rested up like the Good Book said they should. Today they came to see Kendra.

She had spent a restless night, for it seemed that every time she moved, something hurt. When the light of the morning finally woke her for good, she found herself alone, for Ted had gone out to start the fire and make coffee in her place. She felt bruised and sore all over. But when he brought her a cup of coffee, and a piece of hardtack with bacon fried for her by Ning, she began to feel better. And now that she was fairly holding court she felt almost well.

Her wounds bandaged by Ted, her hair combed by Marny, Kendra lay on her bedroll in the wagon with a blanket over her knees, and under her head another blanket folded and covered with the blue scarf she had worn over her hair at Cape Horn. Ted had rolled up the wagon cover so she could look out—or rather, so everybody else could look in.

They all wanted to look in, for nuggets like hers were rare. Most gold came in bits like those she and Marny had seen at Sutter’s Fort. Though envying such good fortune, the gold hunters were glad of it too, like men at a gambling table who see another player win a big stake from the house. Every man in the camp came up to touch her for luck.

They were frontiersmen, with horny hands and workaday heads, but they knew finding gold was a matter of chance. A man could work all day and find an ounce, or work an hour and find a pound. And sometimes, as had happened to Kendra, gold would fall upon him without his having worked at all. Gold meant luck. And the way it looked to them, Kendra had come to camp in a rosy cloud of luck.

They said this. They kept on saying it until by afternoon Mrs. Posey thought it necessary to come up and tell her it wasn’t so. Mrs. Posey made her plump little legs carry her all the way to this high end of the strip, and poking her head into the wagon she gazed at the nugget in Kendra’s bandaged hand. After a moment she shook her scrambled curls in warning. “Well, don’t get the idea it’s going to happen like this every day. You’re no better than the rest of us.”

As she spoke Mrs. Posey looked past Kendra, between the curved wooden slats that held up the wagon cover. Now that the cover was rolled up, she could look through the wagon and see what lay on the other side.

“Now what,” Mrs. Posey demanded, “is That Woman up to?”

Kendra turned her head—a painful movement, as the cut on her neck was raw and sore—but in spite of the discomfort she began to laugh. Already, before they had been twenty-four hours at Shiny Gulch, Marny was in business. The tent for the Calico Palace could not be pitched until a space had been cleared of brush. But Marny had set up two barrels, across them she had laid boards knocked out of the side of a packing box, and over the table thus made she had placed a cover of green baize. Here she had set stacks of gold and silver coins, and a pair of scales to weigh the gold dust that was already gathering in little piles before her.

To the delight of about a dozen men, Marny was dealing cards. Beside the barrel at one end stood Delbert, army canteen in hand, doing double duty as bartender and guard.

Kendra answered Mrs. Posey. “I don’t know much about gambling games. But I think she must be dealing vingt-et-un—twenty-one—because she told me it was a game that didn’t need any special equipment.”

“Gambling!” said Mrs. Posey. “And on Sunday too! Shameless creature. If my Orville—”

Her little blue eyes scanned the group. But her Orville was not there, possibly because he knew he’d better not be. After a moment’s watching, Mrs. Posey trotted off. Reaching the sinners, she halted to scold. Kendra could not hear much of what she said, but she could see that Mrs. Posey’s words were not recalling the men to virtue. Several of them smiled tolerantly, others shrugged with annoyance, the rest paid no attention. The game went on.