Fool's Gold (18 page)

‘There isn’t that much choice.’

‘You and Pedro … me and Julia …’ she suggested.

‘I’m not going to disturb them now.’

‘But why didn’t Julia think of that? Oh!’ She coloured furiously. ‘She thinks that you … and I …’

He shrugged indifferently. ‘Isn’t it a little late for modesty?’

‘What the Hell is that supposed to mean?’

‘Not much modesty in a saloon,’ he sneered.

She narrowed her eyes in fury as the import of his words hit her. Obviously Julia was not the only one to have got the wrong impression. Well then, let him think that. What did she care? Any reputation she might have had had been blown away that day up at Coloma.

‘Many people come to California to start again,’ she said with a forced laugh. ‘You included. Why should a saloon girl be any different? And who are you to play God?’

In the kitchen she washed her hands and face perfunctorily, ran her fingers through her hair until her eyes watered and then braided it. No comb, no clean linen. Her stomach lurched. No sleeping draught.

She was angry: with Cornish for bringing her here, with Chen Kai whose meticulous care in doling out the herbal drink so exactly had left her stranded here without support, but within seconds of the thought she had turned the blame where it belonged: fairly and squarely on her own shoulders. That she, who had always thought herself so independent, should think she could not manage without drugs! Was she really that pathetic?

Buoyed up by her own anger, she marched back into the living room. Unceremoniously she dragged her bedroll and blanket into the farthest corner and turned the lamp down. She turned her back on Cornish in his bedroll and stripped down to her chemise, unaware that the flickering firelight lit her figure up in silhouette much more than the lamp would have done.

As she drew the blanket up around her ears, she heard an amused chuckle from her unwelcome room mate. ‘Goodnight!’ he called softly. She rolled over and did not answer.

In the small hours of the morning, she was regretting her move. This corner was in direct line of the door and cold draughts were whistling through the gaps. Strange to remember that in Sacramento the air was hot as in a furnace; even in Tresco the huge fireplaces would not often be needed, but this high up in the mountains, the night temperature dropped quite rapidly.

‘Come back to the fire,’ came a low voice. But pride and stubbornness sustained her and she turned once more on her side and tried to sleep.

Julia, rising early to stoke the fire and cook breakfast before the men rode out, was shocked to find Alicia curled up in the corner. In the kitchen she exclaimed volubly over her guest’s cold and pinched face.

‘So stupid!’ she exclaimed. ‘I had not realised — I had thought —’

‘That I was his woman?’ flashed Alicia bitterly. ‘I don’t suppose you’re alone in that. Seems you can’t work for a man here without being thought a kept woman.’

The storm had passed. Outside the sky was clearing. Over the valley the cloud was beginning to break up and a fugitive ray of watery sunshine shone down on the sheltered valley. Alicia would have liked to stay there for ever.

While Pedro and the Colonel walked around the yard to see the improvements Pedro was making, Alicia and Julia fed the chickens and then prepared food to take with them.

‘Come up and see us again as soon as you can,’ insisted Julia.

‘There’s still a lot of work to be done,’ said Alicia weakly.

‘Promise you will come when it’s finished,’ urged Julia. ‘We have so few visitors — and there’s not another woman within miles.’

Alicia fobbed her off. ‘I don’t know what we shall be doing next,’ she told her with forced cheerfulness. ‘We may go back to Sacramento when this job is finished, or we may try our luck further afield.’

She turned to pack the food in the saddlebags and found Cornish standing in the doorway, regarding her curiously.

When they rode off up-valley Alicia’s spirits were as low as the grey cloud which still masked the tops of the mountains.

Chapter Thirteen

While Alicia was clambering up hillsides and down canyons, mapping the course of foaming torrents and delicate waterfalls that arched down verdant hillsides, Chen Kai was not idle.

Each morning, after the Colonel and Alicia had set off to survey and Kerhouan and the hands to ride the boundaries or check on the livestock in the far valleys, he would set Tamsin at the long table in the kitchen with the Bible, McGuffey’s First Reader and her slate and slate pencil. Perched on a rolled up bedroll to bring her up to the level of the table, she would copy out her letters and spell out the story in the primer until Chen Kai, summoned from his scrubbing and cleaning, was satisfied with her progress.

She would often be joined at her task by Jorge and Josefa, sturdy children, older than her, the younger children of Juan. Although their older brothers, Xavier and Luis, earned their keep by helping around the ranch, the younger two, until her recent death in the care of an aged aunt in Sacramento, had been left very much to their own devices. Alicia, when she discovered their existence, had been appalled.

‘Señora — what else can I do?’ Juan had demanded helplessly. ‘Colonel Jack, he does not like the women and children on the ranch. Until they can work like Xavier and Luis, they must keep out of his way.’

‘They are so young!’ protested Alicia. ‘Surely they need a mother.’

‘Señora! For every woman in California, there are a hundred men. What woman in her right mind is going to take on four children?’

‘But they can’t stay hidden away indoors for the next four years! You must speak to the Colonel about them!’

‘I cannot.’ He shook his head at her lack of understanding. ‘I have a good job here. I dare not risk losing it all by angering the Colonel.’

‘To be kept hidden away — it isn’t right!’

‘Better than the orphanage, I think,’ he said sombrely.

‘The Devil finds work for idle hands,’ muttered Kai grimly when he heard of this. ‘They are too young to work, but not too old to learn.’ And he sat them alongside little Tamsin at the table and set them copying and reckoning.

When the lessons had been done to his satisfaction — and his standards were as high as his expectations — he would take all three children out into the overgrown kitchen garden. Together they cleared away years of weeds and neglect to reveal straggling rows of squash plants, everlasting spinach and Indian corn, self-seeded year after neglected year from the original plants that the Holy Brothers had brought overland with them from the coastal missions nearly a century before.

Chen Kai taught them how to recognise the seedlings and plant them out in neat rows in the freshly turned earth. They even found a herb garden hidden beneath a riot of flowering vine. Chen Kai and Jorge ran lengths of wire along the old adobe wall and fastened the vine to it, careful not to disturb the ancient fruit trees that clung to the wall, while an excited Tamsin identified the herbs to Josefa and told her gravely what each-was used for.

It was net all work, however, and in the heat of the day the children would sit in the courtyard and take a
siesta
. In the cooler hours, they would teach Tamsin their songs and games, but at the first warning of the return of the riders, they would scuttle back to their shack behind the stables.

One hot and dusty afternoon, the Colonel and Alicia arrived back at the ranch to find Kerhouan, who had just ridden in from the southern boundary, standing in the stable yard with a large covered basket in his arms which he was regarding with a baffled expression. Agitated high-pitched noises were coming from within.

‘What in Hades have you got there?’ demanded Cornish in some amusement.

Kerhouan pushed his hat back on his head, said something in Breton that didn’t sound too polite but made the Colonel smile.

‘For Chen, ma’am,’ he said as he caught sight of Alicia. ‘From Pedro’s wife.’

As he spoke, Chen Kai came round the corner of the yard with Tamsin at his heels.

‘Ah, Ker-hwan! From Mrs Santana?’ He took the basket from him eagerly.

‘Come and see, Lisha!’ cried Tamsin, tugging at her arm.

Mystified, they all followed Chen Kai around the corner, to be pulled up short at the sight of a fenced grassy run and a neat shed built at the back of the stable.

Tamsin opened the gate to the run and Kai unfastened the basket. Out tumbled two vociferously indignant hens and seven or eight fluffy chicks.

‘Chickens!’ exclaimed Cornish.

‘Ohé, Chen Kai!’ called Kerhouan over the fence. ‘Now we have tough burnt chicken for when we tire of tough burnt beef!’

Chen Kai, who had never had any illusions about his cooking, took the comment in good part and joined in the laughter, but Tamsin scooped up one of the cheeping balls of fluff in her little hand and hurried over to the picket fence.

‘They’re not for eating!’ she said anxiously. ‘These are from Mrs Santana’s best layers. They’ll give us lots of eggs!’

One of the two broody mother hens came clucking anxiously around Tamsin’s ankles.

‘You don’t give her back her chick, Mrs Santana’s best layer going to have your toes for her tea!’ chuckled Kerhouan.

Tamsin handed the chick carefully back to Chen Kai, who shooed them all into the shed for the night.

‘Now,
belle demoiselle
,’ Kerhouan went on gruffly. ‘Would you like a ride back to the rancho? Perhaps we can even catch our supper before it goes up in flames!’ he jested.

He caught the little girl by her hands, scooped her out of the chicken run up on to his shoulders and carried her back to the house.

Not until later when they were sorting through some more papers did Cornish refer again to the new arrivals.

‘I’ve been watching that kitchen garden coming back to life, Jo — Chen Kai,’ he commented. ‘A deal of work’s gone into it all. You’ve done well.’

‘I did not do it all by myself,’ said Chen Kai-Tsu gravely. ‘Jorge helped me build the shed and dig the garden. Josefa and Tamsin did the planting and the chickens were their idea …’

‘Just hold on there! Who is Jorge? And Josefa?’

‘Juan’s two younger children,’ replied the cook imperturbably. ‘Just as bright as their brothers. Jorge is as good with plants as with horses and young Josefa has a great talent with figures.’

‘I heard his two youngest were in Sacramento!’ objected Cornish, banging the papers down with more force than absolutely necessary and causing clouds of choking dust to fly out.

‘The great-aunt who looked after them died,’ said Chen Kai precisely. ‘She was very old.’

‘So he holed them up here and hoped I wouldn’t notice?’

‘What else could he do?’

The Colonel looked at the three hopeful faces turned towards him — it seemed even Kerhouan had known of the children’s presence.

He ran his fingers through his hair.

‘Kerhouan!’ he grated. ‘Have one of the hands put up a sign out front tomorrow.’

‘A sign?’ demanded Kerhouan, one eyebrow raised in surprise.

Cornish looked Alicia straight in the eye. ‘Write on the sign: “Tresco. Home for Waifs and Strays”!’ he growled.

*

One evening Alicia came out on to the verandah to find Tamsin sitting with Kerhouan on the bench, listening wide-eyed to a story.

‘I hope Tamsin isn’t being a nuisance to you,’ she said anxiously. ‘I know you’re very busy — please don’t let her get under your feet.’

He looked up from the wood he was whittling, a warm smile crinkling his dark eyes. ‘You worry too much,’ he chuckled. ‘Me, I enjoy to sit with the child.’ He sighed and his eyes clouded over for a moment. ‘When I left Brittany, I had a little sister of about her age.’

‘What was her name, Kerhouan?’ asked Tamsin.

‘Marivonne,’ he said with a reminiscent smile. ‘Like you, she had no fear of the horses. But she had darker hair than you and darker eyes too.’

‘Did you used to take her rides on your big horse too? And tell her the stories about the mermaids and the fairies?’ asked Tamsin eagerly. ‘D’you know, Lisha, where Kerhouan comes from, they have elves and fairies and mermaids! And before they knowed America was here, Brittany was the end of the earth?’

‘Nonsense.’ Cornish must have been standing behind them for some time. ‘Cornwall is the end of the world. Everyone knows that.’

Kerhouan chuckled, but Tamsin looked up at the rancher, eyes wide and mouth open. ‘Oh!’ she gasped. ‘And what about all the fairies and mermaids then?’ She put her head on one side as though seeing him with new eyes. ‘And what about the Kingdom that drownded beneath the sea?’

‘All stolen from the Cornish, m’dear,’ declared the rancher with a mischievous smile. ‘Now close your mouth before a fly pops in.’ He bent down and swung her up on his shoulder with his good arm. ‘Would you like to come to the stables with me and give Ross an apple?’

‘Yes, please!’ she exclaimed. ‘Only — may I have one for Gwalarn too? Or he’ll be jealous …’

‘Gwalarn?’ queried Alicia as Tamsin jogged across the yard high up on Cornish’s shoulders. ‘An unusual name.’

‘It is a wind that blows to Brittany from the northwest,’ replied Kerhouan. ‘Whatever good or bad comes to fishermen in Brittany comes from that wind — but we Bretons are fishers and sailors, not horsemen, and so when I came on dry land, whatever good or evil came to me, depended on my horse. So Gwalarn he became.’

*

Tamsin perched on top of the pile of hay in the stable watching Colonel Jack grooming his horse. Ross and Gwalarn had each taken an apple from her hand and now she sat contentedly munching one herself, asking him questions between mouthfuls.

He told her of piskies who played tricks on Cornish folk, milking their cows in the morning if they lay too long abed; he told her of King Arthur, sleeping in a cave beneath his mighty castle of Tintagel till he and his heroes would be called again. She listened to him round-eyed.

‘When we go into Sacramento, we shall have to buy you a storybook for your mama to read to you,’ he suggested, bending down to clean Ross’s hooves.

‘I can read myself,’ she boasted.

‘Oh, can you, madam?’ he teased.

She reached behind her and picked up a scrap of old paper that had caught on one of the partitions. ‘I can! Really I can!’ she insisted, and proceeded to read out a report from the
Sacramento Transcript
on the plans for the California State Fair. She stumbled over the occasional word, but read it through to the end.

‘Lisha teached me ages ago,’ she confided, ‘but I like the pictures better. They’re not as good as Lisha’s pictures though. I wonder what equipment they use?’

‘Why do you call your mother Lisha?’ queried the Colonel. But the child was down from the haypile and out of the door before he realised she was moving. He stood there a moment, hoof-pick in his hands, then slowly he turned back to the haypile and picked up the scrap of paper. ‘Yes,’ he breathed. ‘I wonder what equipment they use? Now whyever didn’t I think of that before?’

*

‘It wasn’t something I could discuss with you at the Hotel,’ explained Cornish casting an anxious look over his shoulder as Revel closed the door to his private office.

‘Lamarr has been going the rounds of Sacramento boasting he’ll have your lands off you before the year is out,’ said the sub-editor, carefully arranging his pens and pencils in a neat row. ‘The chief has been carrying editorials warning of the dangers of a renewal of the old land and squatter problem if people can’t keep a rein on their greed. But — ah — I’m not sure he’d want us to take sides …’ he ended delicately.

‘I’ve no desire to endanger the
Tribune’s
independence,’ Cornish reassured him. ‘This is something quite different. See, I’ve found a better way of beating Lamarr’s landgrabbing — strictly between you and me, of course!’

‘That goes without saying,’ Revel assured him. ‘Do tell. I’m intrigued!’

‘A survey,’ Cornish informed him. The boundaries as they stand in the old documents surveyed, mapped and sworn out, every last landmark given a map reference that even Lamarr and his gang of corrupt lawyers cannot dispute. Only it all takes time and that’s something we haven’t got. D’you know what triangulation is?’ he demanded unexpectedly.

The sub-editor raised his eyebrows and shook his head.

‘Well, thank God for that! I began to think I was the only man in California who didn’t!’ Cornish laughed. ‘It’s matching a given site against three fixed points in order to establish its position … And if you can photograph it against, say, a waterfall or a mountain peak, or even a stand of trees,’ the Colonel continued, ‘then you have proof incontrovertible that it is where you say it is. Now I have the surveyor but he could work better with a camera.’

‘Then I’d recommend King’s — or Beal’s Daguerrean Gallery is very good if he’s not too sure what equipment he needs …’

‘A compact English-style field camera, to take Talbotypes or Calotypes,
not
the heavy plates. Also a folding dark room and the relevant chemicals and equipment,’ Cornish read from the list he had drawn out of his breast pocket.