Janet Quin-Harkin (16 page)

“I’d better leave you to your stargazing.”

“You always run away from me,” Gabe said. “Am I such a monster?”

“No, you’re not a monster,” Libby said.

“Are you still angry with me for interfering the other night?”

“Of course not. I’m grateful to you. It’s just . . .”

“Just what?”

Libby sighed. “Why do you have to be a gambler, Gabe? You have so many good qualities. You’re kind and you’re obviously smart. Why couldn’t you have been something respectable?”

Gabe laughed, his laugh bouncing off the polished surfaces of the rock. “You sound just like my mother. She wanted me to be a bank clerk,” he said.

“But you didn’t want to?”

“My father died when I was young and we lived in what were politely called ‘reduced circumstances’.” Do you know what that is? It means pretending you are not poor when you are. Not very enjoyable. When we had someone to tea we had to pretend we weren’t hungry because there was only one cake, and that was for the guest. Anyway, my father had been in a bank and she arranged for me to start as junior clerk in the same bank after school. I stuck it out for three months.” He laughed again. “Imagine me—starched collars, columns of figures, Yes, Mr. Blakely. No, Mr. Blakely. You’re two minutes late, Foster. Lateness will not be tolerated. I felt as if I was suffocating. I had to get away.”

“So what did you do?”

“You name it, I did it,” Gabe said. “I tried my hand at most things. When I was a deckhand on a river steamer, I started playing poker and I realized how very stupid and very greedy most people are. They would always give themselves away when they thought they held a winning hand and they would never know when to quit. I decided that there couldn’t be an easier way of making money.”

“But it’s not always easy, is it?” Libby asked. “You had to flee from a hanging judge. From the way you handled that gun, you’ve obviously had to use it.”

“Those things don’t worry me,” Gabe said. “I’ve never shied away from danger. In fact I welcome it. Danger gives spice to life. It’s boredom that I fear, Libby—routine and pettiness and being tied down. But I have to admit that the loneliness isn’t always easy to handle. Nobody wants to get too close to a gambler because he’ll always be moving on.”

He fell silent and they both stared out into the blackness while the wind sighed through the rocks.

“So tell me about your Hugh,” Gabe said at last. “He must be quite a man to make you come so far after him.”

“Hugh is . . . Hugh is different,” Libby said. “Have you ever seen a drawing of Puck? You know, in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
? Hugh is like that. He’s somehow not affected by the real world. He goes through money like a sieve, and he will have forgotten to pick me up from the milliners because he was writing a sonnet. He can be quite exasperating at times. He’s quite impractical. That’s why I have to go to him. He won’t have a clue how to survive in a mining camp. He probably won’t have a clue how to dig up gold—he wasn’t born to be a laborer.”

“And you were?”

“I was born strong,” Libby said. “I was headstrong, even as a little girl. My governess said I’d come to a bad end.”

Gabe laughed. “Seeing you here, she’d probably say that she’d been proved right.”

“I was just thinking the same thing.”

“So you’re off to rescue an impractical, exasperating man who spends money and writes sonnets,” Gabe said. “He must have some good qualities too, or you’d have said good riddance and begun searching for a replacement.”

“He has many good qualities,” Libby said. “The most wonderful curly hair, for one thing.”

“Has anyone ever crossed a continent for curly hair before, I wonder?”

“And he has the nicest nature,” Libby said firmly, conscious that Gabe was teasing her. “He looks at me as if I am the most wonderful thing on the earth, and he adores the children. He acts as if they can do no wrong, and as if he is the only man who has ever fathered a child.” She smiled at the memory of him, suddenly sharp and clear, with Bliss astride his shoulders, playing at horsey. “I’m a very lucky woman,” she added. “Not many women can say they’ve a husband who still adores them after seven years.”

“I’d say he was a very lucky man,” Gabe said quietly. “Not many men have a wife who would tramp halfway across the world in search of him.”

“As I told you before,” Libby said, “I was brought up on duty and loyalty, although had I known what terrible things lay ahead, I doubt I would have been so eager to set off.”

“Yes you would. Once you’d made up your mind to go, wild horses wouldn’t have stopped you. You are the most stubbornly determined woman I’ve ever met, Libby Grenville.”

“Am I to take that as insult or compliment, Mr. Foster?”

“We’ve known each other for a thousand miles and the nearest person is a half-mile away. Can’t I now be Gabe?”

“Very well—Gabe,” she said softly.

“Much better.”

“I still have to thank you for what you did for Luke,” Libby said. “You showed that you could be very caring and very kind. I really appreciated it.”

“Thank you,” Gabe said. “So does that mean we’re not enemies anymore? You don’t hate me?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever hated you.”

“Is there then a possibility that we can be friends for the rest of this journey at least?”

“I think I would be unwise to turn down any offer of friendship right now,” Libby said.

“Shall we shake on it?” Gabe asked and extended his hand to her.

As she took his outstretched hand and it closed around hers, it was as if a jolt of electricity ran up her arm and spread throughout her whole body.

“I, er, really should go back now. My daughters might wake and wonder where I’ve got to,” she said shakily, pulling her hand away.

“I’ll walk down with you,” he said.

They came down the hill in companionable silence.

A
UGUST
5,
1849. At last we are moving along at a good pace, now that the weather is cooler and there is enough water. I was despondent at first when I learned that we had half our journey ahead of us, but the air up here is very bracing and everyone is in good spirits. I think we all reason that downhill is preferable to uphill! Beautiful, majestic scenery
—
mountain peaks tipped with snow and strange rock formations that look like the columns of an ancient city. The men are shooting plenty of game at the springs we pass. I have a horrible feeling that I’ll have to learn to pluck wildfowl and skin rabbits before long. So far the men have been kind enough to do this for me
.

The days in the high country were the most pleasant portion of the journey so far. There was no more mention of cholera and everyone seemed to have overcome the mountain sickness so that they went about chores whistling and addressed each other with good-natured insults. There was feed for the animals and everyone seemed to think that California was almost within reach, if they kept up a good pace.

It was hard to say when all this changed. One by one the good springs died out. There were several frightening descents into steep valleys. The drivers would lock the rear wheels and let the wagons slither down behind their terrified, complaining teams while everyone else stood well out of the way. But then came the terrible descent to Goose Creek. From above it looked insane to even consider taking wagons down.

“There must be a better way,” Rival shouted.

Jimmy shrugged. “If there is, nobody’s found it yet. We have to follow the valley and this is the valley.”

“Take good care of my provisions, you hear,” Rival shouted after him. “You better not spill one sack . . .”

They took down the first wagon with teams of men using ropes to keep it from sliding into the animals, who could barely keep their feet. It took agonizing minutes to get it down and then the same thing had to be repeated with the second wagon, and then the third. When it came to the water wagon, either the ropes had been tried to their limits or the cargo was just too heavy. Suddenly, there was the groan of snapping rope, the cries of the men, and the wagon going faster and faster. The men on the other rope tried to hold on, but they were dragged down the rocks as the wagon slithered sideways, hit a rock and tipped, rolling over and over, dragging two of the screaming oxen with it and spilling water barrels which bounced and broke in a cascade all the way to the bottom.

Sheldon Rival was beside himself with impotent rage. “Fools! Incompetent fools! Look what you’ve done! My water! My precious water,” he yelled, running to try and salvage the last drops from shattered barrels. He paid no attention to the dying oxen, thrashing to free themselves from the shafts, nor to the men who clambered down with scraped arms and legs.

“You were paid to get my stuff through safely,” he shouted to Jimmy. “Now I’m damned if I’ll pay you at all.”

“You’ll not live to finish the journey if you don’t pay the men what you owe them,” Jimmy shouted back. “They did their best. The wagon was too heavy. I kept telling you that. Now you’ll just have to drink spring water like the rest of us. You’ll survive.”

The camp was in a somber mood when they stopped that night. It had been very reassuring to have a wagon full of water barrels. Now there was no guarantee of fresh water, no way of carrying it if they found it, and the true desert lay ahead. The six oxen from the wrecked wagon all had to be shot and the men stewed the tough, stringy meat, putting out strips of meat for jerky to dry on the hot rocks.

When they set out again, they travelled as fast as they dared, eager to reach the Humboldt River. That river was supposed to take them almost into California, through many miles of near desert. But the meeting up with the Humboldt, as August was drawing to a close, added to the depression that settled over the company. They had been looking forward to following a major river down to the lowlands, confident that a constant source of water flowed beside them. The Humboldt turned out to be a muddy, salty stream, not much more than a trickle in places, too bitter for humans to drink. On a rock beside it was scrawled Humbug River, so obviously previous parties had been equally disillusioned.

Each day Libby could sense that morale was getting worse. The men slunk about their chores muttering to each other. Nobody whistled. A scout was sent out ahead to look for a camping site with good water. When he didn’t come back, a search party was sent for him. They found him among rocks with an arrow in his back. There was no sign of his horse. “Digger Indians” was whispered around camp and that night the guard was doubled. Rumors about the Diggers spread and inflated in the darkness. It was said that they crept into camps and murdered everyone in their sleep, or that they stole all the animals and left expeditions to die. They could move so silently and invisibly through the rocks that they could get past any lookout.

“I say we go after ‘em and hunt ‘em down like the animals they are,” one of the men yelled. “We should avenge poor old Joe.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Jimmy’s big voice answered. “They know this country like the back of their hands. They’d melt into the rocks and you could spend a month looking. We’ll just press on as quickly as possible.”

Gabe brought his bedding roll and saddle over to Libby’s wagon. “I think I’ll sleep better away from all that noise,” he said. Libby recognized that he was guarding her and the children and she was grateful.

For the next days they moved with armed guards riding up and down the column but they saw no more signs of Indians. There were dead animals in plenty beside the trail, but these had obviously died from exhaustion rather than arrows. The trail began to be littered again as parties ahead had to consolidate provisions into fewer wagons with fewer animals to pull them. The smell of spoiled food and other human debris, as well as the dead animals rotting quickly in the scorching sun made the going very unpleasant.

“Mama, it smells bad,” Bliss complained. “There’s bad drains here.”

“Stay inside the wagon and hold up your handkerchief like I do,” Libby said, laughing at the thought of drains in the middle of a desert.

The two girls let down the wagon flaps and Libby held her scarf to her mouth, trying to stare at the majestic skyline of bare mountains ahead rather than look at the pathetic sights beside the trail.

At last the Humboldt River petered out into a scummy salt marsh in a desert. The animals tried to drink, then backed away again. There was no choice but to press on.

“No more good water between here and California,” someone muttered.

Just before nightfall they saw a magnificent lake stretching out ahead of them, covering the whole valley with blue water. Distant peaks were reflected in it and it shimmered in the pink evening light. The men jumped from wagons and mules and rushed forward yelling like schoolboys on the last day of school.

“Come back!” Jimmy yelled, spurring his horse after them. “It’s only a mirage. It’s not real.”

The sun set and the lake vanished. The men came back dragging their feet, hot, dusty, tired, and embarrassed to have been taken in so easily. There was no singing around the campfire that night.

Libby knew something was very wrong the moment she emerged from her bed in the wagon. Although it was light, no campfire was blazing with coffee cooking for breakfast. The oxen were still foraging nearby. Angry voices were coming from Sheldon Rival’s tent. Men hurrying past Libby looked scared.

“What is it?” Libby asked.

The man glanced back over his shoulder at her. “It’s Johnson and his mob. They’ve beat it.”

Still not much wiser, Libby hurried over to Rival’s tent.

“And you just let them go?” Rival was screaming.

“I knew nothing about it until I woke this morning,” Jimmy answered, his own voice shrill with anger. “I can’t stay awake all night, you know.”

“I thought I told you to post guards. What about them? They just let half my men walk out of here?”

“The guards were with them,” Jimmy said. “It was Bob Barclay. He’s a great buddy of Johnson.”

“Fools!” Rival shouted. “What do they think they can accomplish alone?”