Calico Palace (21 page)

Ellet shrugged his big shoulders. “Oh, the damn fool. Keeps begging me to buy his liquor. I don’t want it, got my own. Told him to set up a saloon for hisself, but he won’t take the trouble. Too lazy to work, too lazy to pan gold, grumps all day long because the Lord ain’t running the world to suit him.”

To give Kendra time to look around, Ted said he wanted some kerchiefs to keep the sun off his neck. Ellet had a variety of goods—salt pork and jerked beef, salt cod and herring, coffee, seabiscuits, liquor, flour, dried peas and beans, besides mining tools and trinkets for the Abs. But the minute she had set foot in the shed Kendra had known she was not going to eat anything that came out of it. Ellet was affable enough, but she had never smelled a stench like that of his trading post and she had never seen so many crawling things in one place. Already she felt as if they were crawling on herself. Maybe they were.

The shed was fiercely hot, and the smell was making her sick—stale food, stale sweat, hides reeking because they were only half cured. She heard a greedy buzzing of flies, and saw black beetles creeping in and out of the cracks in the barrels.

A man came in carrying a pail, saying he wanted flour. Genially booming, “Sure, right here,” Ellet reached into a barrel—it had no top—and brought up flour in a tin scoop. Kendra saw a cockroach wiggling in the flour as Ellet dumped the scoop into the pail. The customer paid with gold dust. Kendra looked after him as he walked off, wondering if he had seen what she had. Maybe he had not, maybe he did not care. Well, she cared. Outdoor living had made her less squeamish than she used to be, but she was not going to eat cockroaches. She thought of the store at Sutter’s Fort, where she and Marny had talked with Gene Spencer. It had not been elegant but it had been reasonably clean. At least it had not smelled like this.

She said, “I’ll wait for you outside, Ted.”

She went out and mounted her horse, and when he had paid for his kerchiefs Ted followed her. He was laughing. “I don’t blame you a bit,” he said as they rode away. “Ellet is not a bad fellow, but we’ll get our food supplies from the fort.”

Ted went back to work at the rocker. When Kendra had scrubbed off the memory of the trading post, she built up her fire and put on a kettle of beans and jerked beef, seasoned with the sage that grew in thick purple beds on the hills. While the stew was simmering she filled a pot with leaves of the wild mustard plant and set it on the fire with a scrap of her shrinking store of bacon.

The shadows were lengthening, but the sun had not yet gone behind the hills. As she looked down the strip Kendra could see other women stirring their kettles, and children bringing sticks for firewood, and men gathering in groups with their pots and pans. Other men were going into the Calico Palace, to buy a drink or to risk their day’s takings with Marny. The air was full of coffee and bacon, and whiffs of salt fish bought at Ellet’s trading post. Ted and his friends were dragging their rocker up to the spot where they would let it stand for the night. They all four waved to her, and went on to a pool behind a jutting wall of rock, where they liked to take a plunge after their hot day’s work.

Kendra put on the coffee pot and set the eating-pans by the fire to be ready when the men appeared. The odors of sage and bacon and wild mustard were making her hungry.

She heard a sound of hoofs, and looked around. Riding up the strip on an ugly sort of nag she saw Stub Crawford. He had a saddlebag, from which he was trying to sell liquor to the men around the campfires. But not many of them were buying it; evidently they had heard of the dreadful quality of his liquor and those who wanted a drink could get a good one at the Calico Palace, for no more than Stub wanted them to pay. As he drew near Kendra, Stub dismounted and ambled toward her, carrying a tin canteen that smelled of booze.

“Howdy,” he greeted her in his fretful voice.

Kendra, bending over her kettle, glanced up at him with distaste. “Good evening,” she said. She said it with a snap, and returned to her task of stirring the beans, to let him know he was not welcome.

But Stub was not one to take a hint. “Where’s your menfolks?” he drawled.

“They’re taking a bath,” Kendra answered shortly, wishing Stub would take one too.

Stub wiggled his nose. “Mmm—mhmmm!” he murmured. “What’s that you’re cooking?”

“Beans, said Kendra.

“And meat too, ain’t it? Sure smells good,” said Stub. He sniffed hungrily. “And coffee. And—what’s that?” He pointed his dirty finger.

“Wild mustard,” she said tersely, wishing her friends would hurry.

“And bacon. I smell bacon. Aw!” Stub whimpered. “Help out a pore man, can’t you? Just a little somp’n?”

“No,” said Kendra.

Stub stuck the canteen into his pocket. He drew nearer. “Oh now, you could spare a
little
somp’n.”

“
No
!” said Kendra. “Go away.”

Stub was pleading. “How can you be so mean? A pore man that ain’t got nothing to eat and nobody to care about him. What makes you so stingy?”

Kendra turned to face him, the ladle from the bean kettle in her hand. “Go
away
!” she ordered him. “Let me alone. I’m not going to give you anything.”

She spoke clearly, in a voice that meant what it said. A drop of gravy fell from the ladle and splashed on the ground.

“Let me alone!” she repeated through her teeth.

But Stub bent and picked up one of the pans that stood waiting. “Aw, you’ll never miss it,” he whined like a spoilt child. “Just a little bit.” He reached for the ladle she was holding.

“
No
!” retorted Kendra, and gripped the ladle with all her might. But Stub wanted supper and saw no reason why he should not have it. With a cackling laugh he wrenched the ladle out of her hand and gave her shoulder a push. Kendra fell backward on the ground.

No man had ever touched her roughly before. Blazing with fury, a gasping noise of rage in her throat, she sat up. Pan in one hand and ladle in the other, Stub was about to help himself to beans.

But he never did. Kendra heard the crack of a gun. Stub let out a howl, the ladle dropped, the pan tumbled on the ground and went clattering away toward the gulch.

Several men, their attention roused by the shot, were running toward Kendra to offer help. But she did not need it. From the direction of the pool Pocket was walking toward her, pistol in hand. Pocket was smiling sweetly. Finishing his bath before the others, he had come around the rock that hid the pool, in time to see what Stub was trying to do and prevent his doing it. With the same exquisite marksmanship he had shown when the sailors had approached Marny at Carquinez Strait, he had shot the pan out of Stub’s hand without hurting the hand itself, as he had shot the hat out of the hand of the sailor.

Yelling with terror, Stub was running toward the spot where he had left his horse. The canteen fell out of his pocket and the booze trickled out onto the ground. The other men burst out laughing. Kendra laughed too, in admiration and relief.

“Pocket, you’re a wonder,” she exclaimed as he reached her.

Pocket put the gun into its holster. “Glad to be of service, ma’am.”

“Weren’t you afraid,” she asked in some disquiet, “you might kill him?”

Pocket answered with innocent surprise. “Why no ma’am,” he said. “I never kill anybody,” he explained, “unless I mean to.”

Before Kendra had time to ask him if he had ever killed anybody, Ted and Ning and Hiram came running from the pool, pulling on their clothes as they ran and calling out to ask what the shooting was about. Kendra explained, Pocket borrowed an eating-pan from somebody, and she served the supper.

When they had finished and the men lay on the grass talking, they agreed that Pocket and Hiram would ride down to Sutter’s Fort with packhorses and bring back food supplies. While they were gone Ning and Ted would work the rocker, and the gold they took would be shared with Pocket and Hiram when they came back.

Ning said this would be better all round, for Pocket and Hiram would take the gold they had already gathered, and leave it at the store for safekeeping. Here at Shiny Gulch, so far there had been no thievery. Men left gold at their camping places, in bottles and cans and anything else that would hold it. But with no-goods like Stub Crawford moving in, they’d better be on guard.

The long June day was still glimmering. As she looked at the glow on the peaks Kendra thought how well she felt. She was tired, they were all tired, but there was nothing wrong with being tired at the end of the day. All it meant was that they would sleep soundly and be ready for tomorrow.

Tomorrow they would have to eat beans and jerky again, but she would flavor the stew with wild dill instead of sage. And she would fill a pan with an herb Ning had shown her. This was a charming little plant three or four inches high, with a stem that went up straight through a round flat leaf, and then, half an inch or so above the leaf, produced a little pink flower. Ning said the plant had no name he had ever heard of. But the leaf made a good salad, so they called it “miners’ lettuce.”

Hiram, who had been lying flat, lazily watching the clouds, raised himself on his elbow. “Hey, what’s that?”

The others looked around, all now hearing a clatter of hoofs. Foxy was riding up the strip as fast as his horse could carry him, shouting as he rode. Evidently he was giving an alarm, for men were dropping their pans, and women grabbing their children.

Hiram was already running to find out what the trouble was. As they scrambled to their feet Ted’s arm went around Kendra’s shoulders. Farther down the strip she saw Marny and Lolo come to the entrance of the tent, Delbert just behind them. Hiram met Foxy, heard his news, and came dashing back, his big feet pounding on the earth as he ran.

“That damned Stub Crawford,” he panted, “has trundled his rotgut down around the turn and is trading it to the Abs.”

His hearers gasped with anger. A drink that would merely give a white man a glow would turn an Ab into a dangerous beast, and every man in camp knew it. Hiram continued,

“Ellet tried to stop him but Stub was on a whining jag—nobody would help a poor fellow make a living, and when he was hungry and begged for food some ruffian tried to kill him—”

“Bastard,” said Pocket. “Excuse me, ma’am.”

“If Pocket had
tried
to kill him,” Kendra said indignantly, “he’d have done it.”

“The Abs are going wild,” said Hiram. “If we don’t go down and hold them where they are they’ll be all over camp.”

Along the strip groups of armed men were already gathering. Above their voices Kendra was almost sure she could hear the howling of the drunken savages down below. Her mind told her she could not, they were three miles away, but her ears thought she could all the same.

Ning had been conferring with Delbert and the Blackbeards. He told Kendra that she and Marny and the Hawaiian girls would spend the night in the tent, with Delbert on guard outside. Ning and the Blackbeards would also stay behind as camp guards, while Ted and Pocket and Hiram would join the posse.

Ted walked with Kendra down to the tent and kissed her goodby. Inside, she saw that the gold had vanished from the tables and the liquor from the bar. On the bar burned a single candle, and at either end of the tent Marny had laid a bedroll, one for Lulu and Lolo, the other for Kendra and herself.

Kneeling by the first bedroll, she told the girls to go to sleep. A moon was rising, she said, and the men outside could see any approaching danger. Her manner was so calm, her voice so warm and soothing, that before long she had quieted their fears and they lay down.

Kendra sat on the other bedroll. This one was near the bar, and the candle flickered above it. She looked up as Marny came to join her.

“How level-headed you are, Marny!” she exclaimed.

“Thanks,” said Marny, and sat down on the bedroll too, her arms around her knees. “But really, I don’t think we have anything to be scared of. The Abs are a long way off. Ning’s guarding your gold, and ours is out of sight. As soon as we opened the Calico Palace I fixed up a hiding place, in case we should ever need one.”

There was a pause. Lulu and Lolo, reassured by Marny, were falling asleep. The sounds of the voices outside were dwindling, as the men who were to guard the Abs went down to the village and those who were to guard the camp paced in silence. Kendra was glad Marny had a safe hiding place for her treasure. It was like Marny to be prepared.

She spoke thoughtfully. “Marny, you never leave anything to chance, do you? You always think ahead.”

In the half-dark she saw Marny pull reflectively at a lock of her red hair. “Well, I’d not say always—nobody can foresee everything—but I do try to arrange things the way I want them. Now what, pray, are you laughing at?”

For Kendra had begun to laugh, trying to smother her laughter but not succeeding. “I just this minute had an idea,” she returned. “It came to me as I was saying you don’t leave anything to chance.”

Marny was laughing too. “What is it, Kendra?”

“You planned to get aboard the
Cynthia
without Captain Pollock’s knowing it until the ship was out to sea. You arranged for everything to happen just the way it happened. Didn’t you?”

Marny answered in a voice quivery with mirth. “Of course I did. I knew he wouldn’t want me aboard because he’s a prig and I’m a bad girl. But the only other vessel due to leave for San Francisco was a dirty old tub full of rats, and I wasn’t going to sail on that.”

“So you told your friend Mr. Galloway you were too busy to buy your own ticket, and wouldn’t he please buy it when he bought his—”

“Right, dear.”

“—in the name of Miss Marcia Roxana Randolph.”

“That
is
my name,” said Marny.

“But Loren didn’t know it nor Captain Pollock either and you knew they didn’t. And you knew Loren had never been to your gambling place and was almost certain not to recognize you, but to be doubly sure you dressed and talked like a lady on her way to a church tea party—”

Marny said demurely, “I was well brought up. I’m not a lady but I know how to act like one.”