Fool's Gold (13 page)

‘Of course they are! No one had then properly surveyed the area. That was not done until my —’ She paused and bit her lip. ‘I believe,’ she continued in deliberately controlled tones, ‘that no accurate map was available until ’54 when the army released the Wilkes map.’

‘None of which helps me.’

‘Except that no one can possibly produce anything more accurate. And the intention of the contracts is all we can hope to prove, surely?’

He did not answer her but continued to stare at the maps as if he would wrest the truth from them. Then, with a sudden movement that made her jump, he rolled the maps up together and laid them firmly on one side.

‘Lamarr’d give a lot to get his hands on those,’ muttered Kerhouan.

‘You know where to keep them,’ replied the rancher gravely. ‘They’re your responsibility when I’m not here.’

‘
Soit!
I will not let you down.’ He reached out for the bottle and poured himself another whiskey, gazing down into the amber liquid as if it held the answer to all their problems.

Cornish turned back to Alicia.

‘Can you be ready to leave at first light?’ he demanded.

‘Whenever you wish. But — forgive me — should we not take the maps with us? How else can we check the boundaries?’

‘I know each one like the back of my hand,’ he grinned. ‘We’ll take one of the hands with us. He’ll read you out the bits in the contract where the boundaries are described.’

‘But wouldn’t it be better if …’

‘Until the morning, Mrs Owens, good night.’ He turned away deliberately and refilled his glass.

It was a rebuff, a dismissal. She had tried to help and he had not even waited to hear her out. She rose and pushed the chair back angrily. She turned away and saw Kai standing in the doorway.

‘How is she?’ demanded Alicia anxiously.

‘She sleeps. No more need for worry.’

‘Good.’ She stepped away from the table and shook out her crushed skirts. ‘I’ll sit with her tonight.’

‘No, you won’t!’ snapped the rancher. ‘I’ll need you fresh in the morning.’

‘Do not worry, Corr-onel,’ said Chen reassuringly. ‘The child will sleep.’

‘Pah!’ Kerhouan, who had been drinking morosely, suddenly slammed his glass down on the table, making them all jump. ‘Lamarr uses the best lawyers, the best Spanish-speaking clerks in Sacramento to drive you out!’ he exclaimed in disgust. ‘And you — you go to rely on a half-educated Mexican who speaks worse English than me!’

‘Not to fret, Kerhouan!’ chuckled Chen. ‘Mrs Owens learnt the best Castilian Spanish from the
Alcalde’s
confessor and Mexican Spanish from her servants. You have no need of any of the hands.’

He took Alicia firmly by the arm and guided her out of the room before anyone could say anything more. In silence they walked across the yard to Chen’s room. There, out of earshot of the others, she turned on her friend.

‘Kai!’ She looked at him wide-eyed with fear. ‘You shouldn’t have told them! Now they could find out who I am — perhaps about San Francisco!’ Her voice was rising in panic.

‘I think not.’ He shrugged fatalistically. ‘I think they are too busy with their own problems to care who we are, where we are from. But think: if Corr-onel loses Tresco, then we will be back on the road again.’ He looked at her consideringly, his head on one side. ‘And you are not yet strong enough for that. So — we do all we can to help him keep Tresco. You make him his maps for one month, more if we are lucky. I can work here maybe six months or more. Corr-onel Jack has great plans for Tresco once he has dealt with Lamarr. He pays well and we can save much — perhaps you can go back east, if you want, leave it all behind you.’ He paused and grinned at her. ‘Anyway, I like him.’

‘Like him? That ill-mannered arrogant woman-hater! Kai, how can you?’

He smiled gently. ‘Perhaps because I am not a woman! Now, sleep well, Alicia. I will call you before first light. There is a potion on the table in case Tamsin wakes. And here — this is for you.’

*

A wild dove cooing on the roof of the
portal
outside her window woke her with the dawn. Rising quietly so as not to disturb Tamsin, she stretched, picked up the ewer on the table, threw a shawl around her shoulders and slipped out of the door and into the garden.

She drew the bucket up quietly from the well in the middle of the deserted stableyard and filled the ewer. The dove had settled back into its nest again and the silence was total. Above her, the sapphire sky was lightening to a pale azure as the sun rose above the Sierras. She wandered across to the archway and gazed down the valley, watching as the early sun caught the sparkling waters of the Tresco down below, dispersed the tule fog that hung over the distant valley of the Sacramento and tipped the far towering peaks of the Sierras with rose.

She became aware of another presence in the yard and turned, expecting to see Kai. It was Colonel Cornish. She drew nervously back into the shadows in the lea of the wall and pulled her shawl more closely around her, poised for flight.

His hand shot out to take her arm in a surprisingly strong grip.

‘Don’t go,’ he said softly, dropping his hand. ‘Five minutes will make no difference. This is my favourite time of the day — not to be rushed.’

They stood there, side by side, not speaking, for no words were necessary, just watching as the land, the beautiful, fertile, magnificent land reawoke in the warmth of the sun.

A door slammed on the far side of the yard and the mood was broken.

‘I — I had better hurry,’ she smiled weakly. ‘Chen Kai will be sounding the iron for chow …’

‘You must be the only one who hurries for Jo’s chow!’ he chuckled. ‘Go on — off you go. Time to see to the child before we leave.’

A different man from the night before!

*

They lost their early start while a suitable rig was found for her, for the only sidesaddle in the stables was of such antiquated design and so worn that she flatly refused to use it. She marched into the stables, to the surprise of the men working there, and selected for herself one of the smaller saddles with a high cantle and pommel.

‘I don’t need sidebars and footboards,’ she said crisply. ‘If one of your men can put plain stirrups and
mochilas
on this, I will do very well.’

Not one of the men on Tresco was without experience with horses and all to do with them and several hurried forward to help, taking the opportunity at the same time to have a surreptitious look at the newcomer. Within twenty minutes, it was done. Kerhouan threw an extra saddle blanket over the top and at last they were off.

Glancing sideways at Cornish as they rode down the valley she was not at all surprised to see the customary scowl on his face.

‘Look on the bright side, Colonel,’ she said, a barely suppressed chuckle in her soft voice. ‘How much worse if I couldn’t ride at all!’

‘That’s a thought that’s been exercising my mind for the last half hour,’ he admitted with a twisted smile. ‘I was so surprised when I found you were the mapmaker Jo had recommended —’

‘Horrified might be more accurate.’

‘Horrified,’ he agreed. ‘So horrified, it never occurred to me to ask whether you could ride. And there are no tracks up-valley for even the toughest carts.’

‘Lucky for you then,’ she observed drily. ‘Y’know, I can’t help wondering …’

‘What?’

‘You dislike females so much and I know you’re not really convinced I can make you a decent map so —’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘So why did you take me on?’

‘What else could I do?’ he asked in disgust.

She looked around her at the broad fertile fields of the valley bottom, the cattle grazing in the distance. ‘Tresco is rich. Why not simply pay the Land Commission officials whatever they want to put the judgement in your favour? Outbribe Lamarr.’

His face darkened, marred by a black scowl.

‘You wouldn’t understand.’

She shrugged. ‘Then explain it to me.’

He looked at her through narrowed eyes. ‘I didn’t need to explain it to Chen. He understood. But then,’ he shrugged, ‘he’s a man.’

She said nothing.

‘If I did as you suggest, then Lamarr would have won. Tresco would always be tarnished and I’d always be beholden to the men I’d bribed.’

‘I admire you for your honesty and principles.’

‘I didn’t bring you to Tresco to discuss my principles!’ he growled. ‘You’re the lesser of the two evils and that’s all there is to it.’

‘So polite!’

‘I don’t have time for the sort of namby-pamby society talk you ladies require!’ he snapped.

‘I’m not a lady!’ she snapped back. ‘I work for my living like any paid hand!’ She put her heels to her horse. ‘So let’s get on with it!’ she called back over her shoulder.

The first day’s surveying took them through the fertile acres of Tresco’s holdings down in the valley of the Sacramento — little chance of argument there, since the river itself formed the boundary, with rights of navigation automatically ceded to the holder — but once they moved away from the river, accuracy became more important, for this was the border with Lamarr’s lands.

Cornish had been sceptical about the army training Chen had claimed for her, but when he watched her map out with a practised eye and hand every natural landmark exactly as it occurred in the land grant documents, he had to admit, grudgingly, that she knew her job.

‘Your husband train you?’ he asked as he set out her chalks for her at the head of the dry gulch that she was mapping.

‘No.’

‘Who?’

‘A — a relative. He made maps — in the Army.’

‘Back east?’

‘No.’

‘Don’t give much away, do you?’

‘I’ve never been required to give my life history to an employer before,’ she replied curtly.

‘You’re not required now,’ he conceded. ‘I was just curious. You must admit, you and the child and Jo Chen — it’s a strange set up. Enough to make anyone curious.’

‘See that cairn?’ she interrupted him. ‘That’s the kind of boundary mark you’ve got to look out for. Rivers and gulches, they’re no real problem. They don’t usually shift — or if they do, the whole world knows of it. But a cairn can be shifted overnight — and then who’s to say it was ever anywhere else?’

She put her drawing pad aside, kilted up her skirts and stepped forward to the edge of the gully. To his astonishment, she dropped down on to her stomach and wriggled even further forward, holding her pencil out before her and squinting along it.

‘Whatever are you doing?’ he demanded.

‘Triangulating,’ she responded absently. ‘Fix that cairn against three fixed points — hills, mountains, tall trees, whatever — and you’ve fixed its position. Of course, there’s only us to say it’s where we say it is but …’

He had been about to offer her his hand to help her up, but she froze and stared straight past him.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Make a photographic plate of it! Of course! Why didn’t anyone think of that before?’

‘Photograph the scenery?’ He shook his head in despair. ‘If that isn’t just like a woman!’ He looked out across the gulch and back down towards the valley with a jaundiced eye. ‘Daresay it’s a good vista, but it’ll still be there next year. Which is more than Tresco will be if I don’t get that map made.’

‘If you’d just stop regarding me as an empty-headed idiot, you and I might get on a little better and progress a little faster!’ she said crisply. ‘I am no more interested in the vista than you! But if we took plates of all the boundary markers — from three points, if necessary — then we have a permanent record, don’t you see?’

‘By God, you’re right!’ he exclaimed, his eyes wide. ‘And if we had copies made, we could send them to the Federal Land Office, here and in Washington!’

‘We’d still need the map,’ she cautioned.

‘Oh, of course,’ he agreed. ‘The map may prove to be sufficient in itself — but the photographs! They would put paid to any nonsense Lamarr might think up about moving markers or putting squatters in in the future.’

He reached down and jerked her to her feet. Holding on to her wrist he grinned down at her, eyes sparkling. Then suddenly the light died out of his eyes. ‘Damnation!’ he swore softly.

‘What is it?’

‘That brings us back to our starting-point!’ he said angrily. ‘Where can I find a photographer who can keep his mouth shut and who hasn’t already been got at by Lamarr? Virtually impossible, without alerting the whole of Sacramento to what we’re doing!’

‘Don’t fret, Colonel Cornish,’ she reassured him. ‘You see, that was our trade.’

He frowned. ‘Daguerrotyping?
That
was what you did round the camps?’

She nodded.

‘Mrs Owens! I may live to bless the day when you persuaded Jo Chen to stay on at Tresco!’

She smiled a wicked smile and slowly shook her head. ‘Not him,’ she murmured.

‘Not …? Oh no, don’t tell me …’ His face was a picture, as conflicting emotions warred for supremacy.