Like a River Glorious (7 page)

“Andy!” I whisper. He's helping his ma take up the dishes, but he comes running. “Go to the corral and find Hampton. As fast as you can. Tell him to get out of sight and stay out of sight.”

“Okay, Lee.” He gestures to the dogs. “C'mon, Coney.
C'mon, Nugget.” And he's off, pumping his chubby legs as fast as he can, the dogs at his heels.

A hand settles on my shoulder. “That was good thinking,” says the Major.

“Frank Dilley's going to tell my uncle where I am,” I say.

The Major gives my shoulder a squeeze. “We all knew he'd come looking, once he settled in.”

“We'll be ready,” Jefferson says, his face fierce.

Becky clears her throat. “Well, would you look at that,” she calls out. “I made too many eggs today. Free seconds for everyone!”

Old Tug and his friends whoop and cheer and slap one another on the backs, and for the first time, I'm glad to have them around. Becky was right to cultivate some goodwill.

The college men tumble from their lean-to, bleary-eyed, suspenders hanging at their hips. Jasper yawns and stretches. “What'd we miss?”

I
t's been a week since Frank Dilley's visit, and the weather has turned. Frost greets us most mornings, and panning in the creek turns my fingers and toes into icicles. Becky's customers don't thin out one bit, even though so many have headed into the valley to wait out the winter. Plenty of stubborn folk like us remain. Jefferson and I were raised in mining country, after all. We know the surface gold will play out soon enough, and we've only got this winter and the coming spring to find it before we have to start digging pit mines or diverting the creek.

Jefferson and I practice shooting our revolvers. Sometimes, Martin or Tom or Jasper joins us, but I like it best when it's just Jeff and me. We set pinecones on distant rocks and take turns trying to make them burst apart or at least fly into the air. I'm a better shot than Jefferson, even with his Colt, which has nicer action than my old five-shooter. But I can't bear to give it up in favor of a Colt of my own, even if the blasted
thing is a burden to load all the time. I've precious little left of my parents and my life with them.

The college men make another supply run to Mormon Island. This time they find a cow, a milking shorthorn with a shiny red-brown coat. They name her Artemis.

Artemis's milk nearly dries up the first few days she's with us, on account of being terrified of Nugget and Coney. But one morning, Hampton finds Nugget curled up happily against Artemis's warm back, and the big, dumb-eyed cow drops plenty of milk from that day forward. I teach Olive how to use Jasper's new churn, and Becky is able to add buttered biscuits to her breakfast offerings.

Our lean-tos weren't much—just pine boughs slanted across rough-hewn wooden posts to keep out the worst of the wind and rain. We've converted them into what Old Tug calls “right, proper shanties,” but they look like overgrown woodsheds to me, if woodsheds had canvas roofs.

Jefferson and Henry finish the walls of the log cabin and top it with yet more canvas, promising Becky they'll build her a real roof come spring, with shingles and all. The cabin is dark as night inside, with a single window covered in paper for now, and a dirt floor that seeps wetness at the edges whenever it rains. It's drafty—the walls need chinking badly—and it stands a bit lopsided, the peak of the roof rising slightly off-center. But it's solid, mostly dry, and warm on account of the box stove, and after six months sleeping in or under our wagons, followed by another month in tents or lean-tos, Becky announces that it feels like the finest hotel in the whole wide West.

My chest swells with warmth and pride to return each evening from a hard day's prospecting. With newcomers lending a hand, our camp has grown into a small town practically overnight, with several buildings, an awning for Becky's customers, three outhouses, and a corral and pasture—all cozied up to the clear running creek that tumbles into our wide, beautiful beaver pond.

Frank Dilley's visit with his weaselly land recorder in tow has got Tom fired up. He's already scheming on how to make the land ours, straight and legal. He says the days of informal mining claims are numbered, that we'll eventually have to file real claims at a land office, probably by next year. Once we do that, and California becomes a state, we ought to petition for a town charter.

I can hardly believe something as grand and official and permanent as a town can happen just because people settle down and make it so. But that's how it seems to work, and every evening as I wander back toward the cabin and campfire to greet my friends, it feels like coming home.

Only Jefferson seems displeased. He works as hard as anyone, but whenever Tom gets to discussing property or claim rights or town charters, he goes silent and gloomy.

My job all this time has been to find gold, and I've found plenty. Piles of it. My own claim has yielded a fair bit, but Hampton's has proved out better than anyone could dream. There, I found a small vein hidden in a big slab of slate with quartz outcroppings. It was easily accessible to our pickaxes, and both Martin and Jefferson helped us mine it out.

No one has done better than Becky Joyner, who seems to have found the mother lode by serving bad breakfasts to lonely prospectors. Now that she's hit on the idea of selling extra biscuits wrapped in kerchiefs for the miners to take along with them, she makes almost fifty dollars per day. Sometimes the men pay in gold. Sometimes they offer goods in return, like a chicken for a hankie full of biscuits, or a sack of oats for a week's worth of breakfasts. And if they don't have anything else, they pay in labor, which we make good use of, too.

Everything is going so much better than we could have hoped. We're going to be rich after a single season, every one of us. It's marvelous to think on.

And at the same time, my mind just won't take it in. I watch my flour sack fill with gold until it's bursting at the seams, and I don't believe it's actually mine. I see our camp grow, watch everyone add luxuries—like a second woodstove, an apple sapling, a large henhouse with room to grow, a feed shed beside the corral and pasture. And none of it matters. It's all temporary.

Because Frank Dilley is going to tell my uncle where I am, as soon as he finishes with his surveying job. Maybe he has already. Uncle Hiram might be on his way here right now. And this fancy little dream about a new home and a new family and more riches than a girl could imagine will meet a quick end.

It's a brisk fall night that makes us button our collars and don our gloves, but the sky is clear, showing a million sparkling
stars, which means we share supper outside the cabin beside the fire pit. We sit beneath Becky's awning, which traps some of the heat, and use Becky's too-hard biscuits to mop up platefuls of beans in molasses. An oil lamp hangs from a hook beneath the awning, lighting our meal and the faces around me in soft yellow orange. Crickets chirrup in chorus, punctuated by the occasional protestation from a bullfrog.

Jefferson sits beside me. Our thighs brush occasionally, but neither of us inches away.

While the rest of us finish up, Becky is already hard at work baking for tomorrow—another batch of biscuits, along with a meat pie she's sure she can sell to someone. Martin Hoffman holds Baby Girl Joyner in one arm while he eats, occasionally giving her a taste of his beans. I suspect he misses his little sister.

Hampton sits at the table across from me. He's hardly recognizable from the half-starved Negro who followed our wagon train at a distance, gleaning scraps when he could. Regular food and water have filled him out, giving his face a healthy roundness. His strength has grown, too. I've seen him flip sheep upside down with hardly more than a thought, and he can wrestle Sorry into submission with a few tugs on her halter.

He wipes his mouth with the back of his sleeve and clears his throat. “I got something to say,” he informs us, and everyone looks up expectantly. “I've found enough gold, with Lee's help here”—he indicates me with a lift of his chin—“to buy my freedom
and
that of my wife back in Arkansas.”

Becky gasps. “Hampton, that's wonderful news,” she says.

The Major reaches over and claps him on the back. Jasper raises his tin cup, which is purportedly filled with water, though my money's on whiskey. “To Hampton's freedom!” Jasper says, and we all lift cups or forks in echo.

“Are you going to leave us?” I ask.

Hampton shakes his head. “Not yet. Maybe never. I need to figure out how to go about this. Do it in a way that doesn't put the slave catchers after me.”

He's made himself scarce the whole time we've been in California—leaving for the corral to care for the oxen and horses before the sun is up, working his claim all day, joining us only after dark for meals. Talking to folks at Mormon Island, it became clear that the general mood of California is anti-slavery, that once it joins the union, it will probably be as a free state. But I don't blame Hampton for not wanting to take any chances.

Tom Bigler sits at the rough-hewn table behind us, the one Major Craven made for Becky. He places his elbows on the surface and leans forward. “Want some help?” he asks.

Hampton shoots him a grin. “That's why I brought it up. I want everything clean and legal. Unbreakable.”

“It would be an honor,” Tom says. “I need to consult with one of my books first, but I think I can figure out how to draw up the sale offer without revealing your location.”

“I'd appreciate that.”

“After the sale's done,” Becky says, “will you go for your wife?”

“I was hoping we could send somebody white for her. I don't ever want to set foot in Arkansas or any other slave state again if I can help it.”

“We know some abolitionists who could help with this sort of thing,” Tom says. “I'll write a letter in the morning to Reverend Sturtevant.”

Hampton leans forward. “Who's that?”

“He's the president of Illinois College, and my mathematics professor. He'll know who to contact, and he'll be wholly circumspect. I won't even mention your name.”

Hampton settles back with a nod, but I can see the gears spinning in his head. Sometimes when you say something out loud and ask for help with it, it becomes real in a way it never was before.

Becky's smile is soft and yearning. “I'd dearly love to have another woman around to talk to.”

Jefferson chokes on his biscuit.

“Not that Lee isn't a woman,” she amends hastily. To me she says, “It's just that you're always out working the claims, as God ordained for you to do.”

I smile to show I take no offense. “I wouldn't mind some female company either,” I tell her, with a pang for my friends Lucie and Therese. Both gone home now, one to Oregon, the other to that great beyond.

Therese's brother, Martin, is bouncing the baby on his knee, and the tiny thing babbles happily. “I need to get to Sacramento sometime this winter,” Martin says. “See if I can figure out how to send some of my money home. It would be
a nice surprise if it was waiting for my family when they got back to Ohio.”

“I'm confident there's a way to do that,” Tom assures him.

“I'm short on medical supplies,” Jasper says. “I need a few things you can't find at Mormon Island. I may have to go all the way to San Francisco for them.”

“Actually,” Becky says, “I need to go to San Francisco, too.”

“You do?” I say.

Becky drops biscuit batter into a cast-iron pan, where it sizzles and steams. “Before we left Tennessee,” she explains, “Mr. Joyner had our entire house dismantled and sent to San Francisco by way of Panama.”

I had forgotten about that.

“My home and everything in it—furniture, dishes, knickknacks—are all waiting for me somewhere in the harbor.”

“Sounds like trips to Sacramento and San Francisco are in order,” Jasper says cheerfully. “I'm keen to see the Pacific Ocean. Can you imagine it? More water than even Lake Michigan.”

“It's not that easy,” Becky says, wiping her hands on her apron. “Andrew passed on, God rest his soul. I have all his documentation in my trunk, but I'm just a woman. None of it belongs to me.”

We all exchange looks of alarm. That she could come all this way, children in tow, nursing her sick husband for more than half the journey—only to lose everything?

“I'm thinking they might hand it over on behalf of my son,”
she continues, indicating little Andy. His face is smeared with mashed beans, and his feet knock the bench as he swings them back and forth. “As eldest son, he stands to inherit. Surely I have rights as his mother and guardian?”

Tom rubs at his chin. “Let me think about this, Mrs. Joyner. I'm sure there's a way. If we get your property released, would you have it shipped here?”

She raises a chin and primly says, “I would indeed.”

“Anyone on that boat ever lay eyes on your husband?” Major Craven asks.

“I don't know. I don't think so. Everything was handled through my father's solicitor.”

The Major's eyes take on a mischievous twinkle. “Then one of us can pose as Mr. Joyner.”

Becky gasps. “But . . . that would be . . . I couldn't . . .”

“Just think about it,” he says.

“It wouldn't be exactly legal,” Tom says, and the Major glares at him. “But sometimes, the law doesn't embody justice the way we'd like,” he adds.

“It's an elegant solution to a tricky problem,” Jasper says.

“Maybe,” she murmurs doubtfully.

“I've got no reason to go to San Francisco or Sacramento or anywhere,” Jefferson declares. “So I volunteer to stay right here and watch our claims.”

“If someone poses as my husband,” Becky muses, “then I could stay, too. Keep feeding those miner boys.”

“What about you, Lee?” Hampton says. “Staying or going?”

“I'd love to see the ocean, too,” I admit. “But if Jefferson's staying, I'm staying.”

My neck warms as everyone stares at me, Jefferson hardest of all. But it's true. He's the best friend I've ever had, and those months traveling all alone were some of the worst of my life. I'm not losing him again. Besides, I feel safe here, where I know the people and every hill and tree. I don't want to go someplace strange right now, where I might turn around a corner and run into Frank Dilley or my uncle.

“Blast!” Becky exclaims, and we all look up, startled. I can't remember hearing her cuss before. “Burned them again,” she says, frowning down at her pan. “You know, one of these days, those miners are going to figure out that I'm a terrible cook.”

No one says anything for a moment. Then Henry starts to giggle, then little Olive, and soon we're all laughing like it's the Fourth of July.

I'm snuggling down into my bedroll. From the shanty beside mine come the sounds of movement—a dropped boot, a snuffed lamp. Jefferson is settling down, too, and I close my eyes against a sudden pang of lonesomeness. We used to sleep side by side, Jefferson and me, when everyone thought we were just two friends traveling together. Sometimes we'd whisper long into the night, or at least until Becky's husband thumped the floor of his wagon to tell us to shut it. I guess I got used to the sound of Jeff's breathing, of feeling his presence beside me all through the night. Once in a while, he'd even reach out and hold my hand.