Calico Palace (27 page)

Pocket sat down beside her. He rummaged in his pockets for a knife, picked up a stick, and began whittling. Around them sounded the usual bangs and clanks. From down in the gulch came a shout as some man made a lucky find. Ning and Hiram slept on. After a while Pocket spoke.

“Miss Kendra, if you don’t want to talk about your trouble it’s all right with me. But if you feel like talking, that’s all right too.”

She turned herself halfway around toward him. It had been a month now since Ted left her, and in that month not once had Pocket or Hiram or Ning asked her to talk about him. She had welcomed their restraint. But now, somehow, Pocket had sensed that she needed a confidant. Pocket had such a kind and simple heart—sometimes people like him understood life better than more sophisticated people like Marny. Without any prelude Kendra asked,

“Pocket, is it possible to love a person and not love him at the same time?”

Pocket said, “Why of course it is, Miss Kendra.”

He spoke as simply as if a child had asked him if it was possible for rain to fall in one place while the sun shone in another. Kendra felt a vast relief. He had seen at once what Marny had not seen, in spite of all her own attempts to make it clear. Kendra put her hand on Pocket’s wrist. The sleeve of his shirt was torn, and grimy from the morning’s work; the wrist under the sleeve was hairy and strong. “How do you know, Pocket?” she asked.

“Because,” he answered, “I felt like that once, myself.”

Looking across to the mountains on the other side of the gulch, Pocket put away his knife and linked his hands between his knees. When he spoke again his voice was like that of a father speaking softly by the cradle of his sleeping child.

“I figured this might be your trouble, Miss Kendra. That’s why I thought I might help. The others—well, Hiram, he’s a fine fellow, I never met a finer, but he’s never been really hit by love. Ning, I guess he never will be. Marny—not yet anyway. But you have, and I have.”

He paused, still looking at the mountains.

“Where was this, Pocket?” she asked. “At Sutter’s Fort?”

“No ma’am, it was back in Kentucky. That’s why I joined that wagon train coming West. I had to get away from it.”

He picked up a twig and began breaking it into little pieces.

“I sure never thought,” said Pocket, “I’d want to leave home and not go back. I was doing fine. My father and mother had died but I lived on my grandpa’s farm. It was a real handsome farm, big white house, lots of horses, and it was all coming to me. Then I met this girl.”

He threw away the remnant of the twig. With one hand he pulled up a long dry weed.

“I’d been liking girls since I was half grown, I still do, but I never thought one of them would knock me over like that. But she did. I was really in love. I don’t reckon I’ll ever feel that way again. Then I found out. I was luckier than you. I found out before I married her.”

Pocket crushed the weed in his fist.

“Miss Kendra, I haven’t talked about this since I got to California. There was another man. She didn’t want me, never had. She wanted the farm. The big house, all those horses, that good fat land. A fellow told me, my good friend. He thought I ought to know. I was furious, called him a liar. But then I thought, I’d better make sure. I made sure. I found her where he said I would. I found her and that other man together, making love.”

Pocket stopped. Both his hands were fists now, striking each other softly between his knees. His forehead was tight, his eyes were strange. Kendra had never dreamed that the gentle Pocket could look like this. Listening, she almost held her breath.

Pocket said, “I shot that man, right there.”

He stopped again. His blazing eyes still looked across to the mountains. In a low voice Kendra asked, “What about the girl, Pocket?”

“I wanted to shoot her too,” said Pocket. “But I couldn’t. I loved her too much.” He turned and looked at Kendra straight. “That’s why I know how you feel. I hated her, but I loved her. And this is what I want to tell you now.” He spoke earnestly. “It hurts. It hurts something terrible. But it doesn’t last forever. It doesn’t, Miss Kendra.”

She asked tensely, “Pocket, why do we feel so?”

Pocket smiled a little. As if it had been a release to talk about his own experience, he was again his quiet gentle self. “I spent a lot of time,” he said, “trying to understand that. Coming over the plains, you get time to think. I hated that woman like I never hated anybody. But I loved her too. There was a real smart man with us, a preacher coming out to a mission church in Oregon. He was older than I was, had been to college. I talked to him. He told me what I’m going to tell you now.”

She waited.

“Look down there,” said Pocket. He indicated a loner swirling sand and water in a pan, looking for pay dirt. “Do you love that man, Miss Kendra? Or hate him?”

“Why no,” she returned. “I don’t even know him. I don’t care about him one way or the other.”

“That’s it,” said Pocket.

She frowned, not comprehending. Pocket held out his hard dirty hand. He explained.

“Love and hate, Miss Kendra, are not two opposite things. That’s what the preacher told me. They’re like the front of your hand and the back of it, two sides of the same thing. They both mean, this person
matters
to me.”

A light began to dawn upon her. “You mean—that loner—” She stopped to think.

“You don’t love him,” Pocket said as she paused. “You don’t hate him either. You don’t care anything about him. That’s the opposite of love, and the opposite of hate too. Not caring.”

“And you mean—some day I won’t care?”

“That’s right, Miss Kendra. Some day you won’t love Ted or hate him either. You just won’t give a damn.”

“It’s hard to believe, Pocket! If I saw Ted this minute—”

“You’re not seeing him this minute,” Pocket interrupted her forcefully. “Maybe you’ll never see him again. But if you do—I mean this, Miss Kendra—if you do see him again, whether you still care or not,
pretend
you don’t.”

“I’m not good at pretending,” she said.

“In this,” Pocket said sternly, “you’ve got to be. Any time you think about Ted, tell yourself, it’s over.”

“And some day—it will be over?”

“Yes ma’am,” said Pocket.

She wondered if he was right. Just now, this was not easy to believe. But right or wrong, Pocket had let her know she was not alone.

“Pocket,” she said after a moment.

“Yes ma’am?”

“Pocket, you like women, don’t you?”

He smiled a little. “Why yes ma’am, I like women.”

“Some men wouldn’t, after what happened to you.”

He shook his head. “Country stuff. I’m not that big a yokel.”

“What do you mean, country stuff?”

“Oh Miss Kendra, I’ve seen them. One crop fails and they say nothing will grow around here. Some Frenchman comes along selling tools, then he rides off with the money and the tools fall apart and folks say, ‘See now, this proves all Frenchmen are a bunch of swindlers.’” Pocket spoke contemptuously. “They see one and they think they’ve seen all. Country stuff.” He looked at her directly, across his whiskers. “Don’t you be like that, Miss Kendra.”

“I’ll try, Pocket,” she promised. “I mean it.”

For several minutes they were silent. Then through the dry sunny air they heard Hiram calling.

“Hey, Pocket! We’re getting back to the rocker.”

“Be right there,” Pocket called back.

He stood up, held out his hand, and drew Kendra up too. “Thank you, Pocket,” she said in a low voice. “You’ve done a lot for me.”

“Glad if I could help, ma’am.”

“Marny has tried,” said Kendra. “She’s been a dear. But Marny didn’t know what I was talking about.”

Behind the wilderness of whiskers Pocket chuckled softly. “Miss Marny has a lot of education, I mean Latin and Shakespeare and things like that. But she’s still got a lot to learn.”

B
UT THE HURT DID
not go away. It stayed, and stayed, and stayed.

Still, Pocket had promised that in time the wound would heal. And unlike many well-meaning talkers, Pocket knew what he was talking about.

Time, thought Kendra. Time. She put her fingers on her wrist, where her pulse was ticking away the time. Enough ticks—how many thousands more?—and she would not care any longer about Ted.

Fortunately, she did not have much leisure to think. Her task of preparing the meals was growing constantly more difficult. The jerky from the fort was so hard that unless she pounded it to pieces between two stones it would not absorb water no matter how long she boiled it. Once in shreds, and cooked with dried beans, the jerky made an edible if not a savory dish. Sometimes she could add vegetables from a peddler’s wagon—a pinch of gold dust for six carrots or two red onions, usually dry and wrinkled with age. When she could not get even these, Ning told her to scatter clover leaves on each serving of stew.

“You folks never had scurvy,” Ning warned them, “and as long as I’m running this outfit you ain’t gonta have it. Eat that clover.”

They said “Yes, boss,” and obeyed.

But now after four months without rain, clover was hard to find. Over the beans and jerky, Ning said it was time to leave.

At first, Pocket and Hiram shook their heads. The land was rich with treasure. Some men were putting up cabins so they could stay all winter in the hills and be on the spot, ready to start work again, as soon as the snow was gone.

Marny too was reluctant. She spoke to Kendra. “I’m raking in dust by the bagful. Do you think we ought to go so soon?”

“Yes,” said Kendra. She spoke with determination, to convince herself as much as Marny. She dreaded facing Alex and Eva, but she could not postpone it forever. “I don’t want to get scurvy,” she added. “What good is a bag of gold if you’re too weak to carry it?”

At last, when Kendra served them jerky and beans with not one clover leaf because the clover had all dried up, Hiram spoke thoughtfully.

“I’ve been told,” he said, “that a man who has had scurvy once would eat grass like an ox to keep from having it again.”

“In a few more weeks,” said Ning, “there won’t be no grass.”

Hiram sighed.

“And in case you ain’t noticed,” Ning continued, “our horses are already lean from lack of it. If we want them to carry us out of here we’d better start.”

Marny looked down at the shriveled old beans in her pan. “Well boys, a smart gambler knows when to quit. Let’s go.”

Ning nodded approval. “It don’t pay to be greedy. Count what you’ve got.”

Later that day, they counted. Hiram told Kendra they had done well. With the gold they had left on deposit at Sutter’s Fort, and what they had gathered since then, the men would have about a thousand ounces each. They could not say what this would be worth in San Francisco, for men lately arrived at the mines had told them the price was going up and down every week. But at any rate, said Hiram, a thousand ounces was good profit for a summer’s work. As for Marny, when she had collected her share of what Delbert had put on deposit at the fort, and added it to what she had made at the Calico Palace since then, Hiram had an idea that her gold would total even more than this.

Kendra had less than the others. Ted had left her a poke, but the poke held only about thirty ounces because nearly all his dust had already been sent for safekeeping to the fort. Her friends had been paying her a salary for eight weeks, so she had earned sixty-four ounces, and she still had the nugget she had found the day she fell into the gulch. This was enough. All she wanted now was to get away from everything that reminded her of Ted, to go back to the States and hurry time away, so her hurt would heal.

They made ready for the journey, not a simple matter any more. In the early days thievery of gold had been almost unknown, but now there were tales of bandits on the trails, watching for miners going home. Ning told them to look as grumpy as they could, as if they had had no luck. And at the same time, said he, contrive unexpected ways of carrying their gold. “And just so there won’t be no disputing,” he said firmly, “we’ll each carry our own. Put it in your saddlebag or anywhere you please, but fix it so it don’t look like gold.”

Gold did not take up much room—he told them a ton of it could be put into a bushel basket—but gold was heavy. Anything small and heavy would call attention to itself. Kendra and Marny conferred and for the first time since Gene Spencer recognized Ted, Kendra found herself having fun again.

Marny showed her where she had hidden the gold dust not needed on the gambling tables. She had put it into flat little cloth bags, and tacked these inside the pork tubs that served for chairs. “At first,” she said, “I thought of dropping the bags into the brandy kegs. Then I thought, somebody might steal the brandy. But who’d steal a greasy old pork tub?”

Now, however, they had to hide gold in something smaller than pork tubs. Kendra sent Hiram down to Ellet’s trading post for flour. “I don’t care how dirty it is,” she said, “we’re not going to eat it.” She heated stones in her fire-trench to make an oven, and baked bread of flour and water and saleratus. Making a cut in the first loaf she tucked in her nugget, and the soft bread closed around it.

Hiram also bought slabs of Ellet’s fly-specked salt meat, and Kendra slashed the meat and put gold inside. It was Pocket’s idea to carry gold in a coffee pot under a layer of stale grounds. Nobody would be surprised by stale coffee grounds in a pot. Many men at the camps made coffee by putting fresh grounds on top of the old and pouring in water, until they had filled the pot with grounds and the water tasted like coffee no longer.

While Kendra baked bread Marny cut up old clothes and stitched more little bags to hold gold dust. Several of these they put into Kendra’s loaves, others into sacks of flour, which they would carry as if to make pancakes on the trail. Marny made other bags the size of her little finger, so she and Kendra could roll them up in their hair and hold them in place with hairpins.

“You girls are right bright,” Ning said with a grin. “Got any ideas about the dust we’re gonta pick up at the fort?”

“Simple,” said Marny. “We’ll get pregnant.”