Janet Quin-Harkin (17 page)

“Apparently they think we’re travelling too slowly with wagons. They want to make a quick dash across the desert. They thought you wouldn’t pay them when they got to California, so they’ve taken mules and supplies instead.”

“What did they take?”

“Whatever they could carry,” Jimmy’s tired voice answered. “All the mules, spare rifles, a couple of sacks of flour and the dried meat. They’ll probably make it.”

“I hope they rot.” Rival spat. “I hope we come across their bloated corpses. I wish them damned to hell.”

“Wish all you want,” Jimmy said. “It doesn’t alter the fact that we’re down to ten men and we’ll have to leave wagons behind.”

Rival strode out of his tent before Libby could move away. He caught sight of her and pointed. “You! You think you could drive a team?” he asked. “I’ll make it worth your while.”

“I suppose I could try,” Libby said. She had been watching the drivers for so long that she was sure she could imitate any command. Besides, the tired oxen were reduced to such a slow plod that she reasoned all the driving required was an occasional flick of the whip.

“Good,” Rival said. “That’s one more wagon we can take. What about Foster? Did he go with them?”

“Foster’s still here,” Jimmy said, following him out of the tent.

“He can drive too, and so can you. Tie your horses on behind.”

“So can you, for that matter,” Jimmy said.

“I will, if I have to, dammit,” Rival said.

“Let’s get going, then,” Rival added, “before the day gets too unbearably hot.”

“If you take my advice, which you haven’t so far,” Jimmy said in a tired voice, “you’ll rest up during the day and make the desert crossing by night.”

“And what if we lose our way?” Rival asked. “What if we pass the Carson River in the dark?”

“If we make for the mountains, then head south, we can’t miss it,” Jimmy said. “Anyway, that’s less of a risk than losing all your animals to heatstroke.”

“Very well, do what you want,” Rival said.

They spent a miserable day, lying in the shade of the wagons to get away from the sweltering heat. As the sun sank they set off. Eden and Bliss were delighted that their mother finally had been promoted to wagon driver and wanted to sit beside her on the driver’s seat. Libby remembered all too clearly the child who fell under the wagon wheels and made them stay inside.

“But it’s so hot in here,” Eden complained.

“I’m thirsty, Mama,” Bliss said pitifully. “My mouth’s all dry and crackly.”

“You have to be patient, darling one,” Libby soothed. “We’ll find water soon and then you can take a lovely long drink.”

Gabe came over to her as the first wagons set off. “Are you sure you can handle this?” he asked. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to. You could ride in my wagon and let Rival’s supplies go to hell.”

Libby managed a weak smile. “I don’t see why not,” she said. “I used to handle a pony and trap pretty well in the park at home.”

Gabe shook his head. “I don’t think the two have much in common. If you lost your way in the park you went on until you hit the railings.”

“I’ll manage,” she said.

“I knew you’d be stubborn,” Gabe muttered. “Very well. I’ll go right ahead of you. Stay close behind me. We’ll stick together, no matter what.”

Libby nodded. She cracked her whip and the oxen lumbered off, grunting unwillingly. The last light faded and it was hard to make out the shape of the wagon in front. The animals’ hooves crunched through the crisp salty surface into sand beneath.

Libby’s own mouth was painfully dry and her tongue felt as if it were swollen to double its real size. Her eyes stung with blowing sand and when she rubbed them, no tears came. At first the thought of driving a wagon had seemed like a challenge, almost like a game, but as the night deepened around her, she realized how very easy it would be to stray from the track and become lost in wasteland. With nightfall the temperature dropped rapidly and her hands became so cold it was hard to hold the reins. She sat shivering as she strained her eyes for the ghostly white shape ahead. Then she heard the sound of singing: “Oh Susannah, don’t you cry for me. I’m off to Californee with my shovel on my knee!”

It was the song she had heard many times from many camps along the trail, but the voice was now unmistakably Gabe’s. She smiled to herself and urged the oxen to catch up with him. All through the night the snatches of song floated ahead, rousing her every time her eyes began to nod shut. The desert trail seemed to go on and on, unchanging, plodding hooves, ghostly rocks, sand and grit. In the darkness Libby’s eyes played tricks on her and she saw Indians moving between rocks, rattlesnakes slinking across the path, even lights dancing in the distance.

As the night wore on, she was even glad of the cold, because she was too uncomfortable to fall asleep. Every time Gabe’s singing died down she tried some of her own or she recited every childhood poem that Miss Danford had made her learn. In this way she managed to keep going until the sun came up, rising as a harsh red ball behind the eastern mountains. They continued on as the whole valley was lit with flame and only called a halt when they finally struck water. Her mouth parched and her head singing with tiredness, Libby climbed down stiffly from her hard perch and staggered down to join the men. The water turned out to be a hot spring, boiling as it came from the ground. It was a strange place of rising steam and twisted mineral columns. The smell of sulfur hung heavy in the air.

“Do we have to camp here?” Rival demanded. “There must be a better spot than this.”

Jimmy shook his head. “No more water until the Carson,” he said.

“Then let’s press on and try to make the Carson by nightfall.”

“The animals would die.”

“But they can’t drink this.”

“They’ll have to. We’ll scoop up water with every pan we’ve got and leave it until it’s cool enough to drink.”

Eden and Bliss came to join their mother.

“It smells bad here, Mama,” Eden said, wrinkling her nose. “Can’t we stop somewhere else?”

“We have to stop where there’s water,” Libby said.

“I want a drink, Mama,” Bliss begged.

“We have to wait a while,” Libby said. “Hold Mama’s hand. The water’s very hot.”

The men cursed as they carried bowls of scalding water and it slopped over them. Rival noticed Libby, standing with her children in the shade. “You made it then,” he said. “Might as well make the most of all this hot water and get my washing done.”

“If you want me to drive all night, I intend to sleep all day,” Libby said. “Do your own washing.”

She caught Gabe’s eye and he winked at her.

“I enjoyed your repertoire of singing, Mr. Foster,” she said, “although I’d have preferred a little opera and not so many barroom songs.”

“My apologies, madame,” he said, bowing, “but my Mozart is a little rusty and I had not realized I had an audience. I was singing purely to keep myself awake. I hope I didn’t disturb you?”

“On the contrary, I found it very reassuring,” she said, returning his smile.

“I thought from time to time that I heard a cricket chirping behind me,” Gabe added, his eyes teasing. “Did you hear it?”

“I can’t say that I did,” she replied, walking past him to take a pail of water to the shade of the wagon.

The water was foul tasting, and never really cooled enough to be refreshing, but it was better than nothing. They spent a miserable day lying in the shade, splashing themselves with warm water to try and get cool. As the sun set, they started off again in a repeat of the past night’s march.

The second night was almost unbearable. Libby had hardly slept during the heat of the day and now her head throbbed and she swayed with tiredness. Every few minutes she found herself dropping off to sleep, the reins slipping from her hands. Once, one of the oxen stumbled and the wagon lurched, almost sending her sprawling forward off the seat. She only just managed to grab at the footboard to stop herself from falling under the hooves. That frightened her awake for a while, but as dawn approached, sleep overtook her again. She woke with a start when a voice yelled. It was still dark, but the eastern sky was etched with a thin line of approaching dawn. She had no idea how long she’d slept, but the wagon ahead of her had stopped and there were shouts and screams echoing off the rocks.

Cautiously, she reached for the rifle under her seat. A figure came running toward her. “Hey, put that down. My singing didn’t offend you that much, did it?” Gabe shouted.

“What’s going on?” Libby asked. “What are all those shouts?”

“We’ve found the Carson,” Gabe shouted back. “The men are going crazy. Come on, come and get wet.” He put up his arms to her and lifted her down. She was very conscious of his hands on her waist and that they lingered there, long after her feet had touched the ground. “You can let go of me now, Mr. Foster,” she said, laughing uneasily. “I’m quite able to stand on my own.”

“I’ve noticed,” he said and slid his hands from her.

E
VERYONE ENJOYED THE
fresh water, the oxen standing knee deep or wallowing in satisfaction and the men, stripped to the waist, splashing each other like Little boys. Libby would have loved to join in the fun, but she felt uneasy among so many exuberant men, especially since these men were now little better than naked and had been without women for two months. So she had to content herself with bringing pails of water back to the wagon, where she and the girls washed themselves in privacy.

“We have to start looking respectable again soon children,” she said, “because we’re almost in California. We just have to follow this river up into the mountains and then California is on the other side. In a few days we’ll be safely there and we’ll find Papa again.”

“Does that mean we’ll have to wear pantaloons and underskirts again?” Eden asked, wrinkling her nose with disgust.

“We can’t go on dressing like savages forever,” Libby said.

“I like being a savage,” Eden said.

“Me too,” Bliss added.

Libby looked at them. They had survived remarkably well, she thought. They were very different from the pale, chubby daughters who had set out, dressed in their laces and velvets. They were both skinny and suntanned like little native children, but they were fit enough and Eden seemed to have grown.

I hope their father won’t have a fit when he sees them in this condition, Libby thought. I must try to clean up their proper dresses so that they look respectable when he sees them. And me, she added. I must look like a savage too. She ran her hand through her hair which she now wore in a braid, like a schoolgirl, and which was sun-bleached strawberry blond at the front. When she thought of dressing up again, of wearing her corset and her hooped skirts and layers of undergarments, she shuddered.

She wondered if Hugh had become a savage too, then shook her head. Hugh would probably still be insisting on starched white tablecloths and polished silver as he worked in his gold mine. He’d probably be shovelling up gold with lace cuffs on his shirt. It would take more than a wilderness half a world away from civilization to make Hugh forget he was an English gentleman. Then she found herself smiling at the thought of him. He had been less and less in her thoughts as she faced the hardships of the journey, but now that the journey was almost over, she realized how much she wanted to see him again, to get back to being normal and safe with a man to protect her.

They waited several days for the animals to get back their strength before they moved on down the Carson River with the bare faces of the mountains coming closer and closer on their right. At last they came to the place where the river entered the dry valley. It was the first week of September when they set off, up the steepest, most rugged mountains they had yet encountered. The pass over the Rockies had been so gentle that they had hardly been aware of it. The pass over the Sierra Nevada Mountains went straight up. Beside them the river cascaded down to the dry plain in a series of trickles and falls. There was no trail to follow. The only route went over and around boulders, some as big as a man, some as big as a wagon. At times it was hard enough for a person to find footing. The oxen slithered and bellowed and had to be dragged and pushed and whipped while the wagons bumped and lurched behind, more often on two wheels than on four.

After a day of sweat and bruises the plains seemed to have barely dropped away. The top was nowhere in sight. But the men who stayed with Rival were in better spirits now and everyone felt that California was literally just around the corner. They had been on the road for more than three months and they were anxious for journey’s end. Also there were fears of snow. Until this moment, all they had worried about was the heat. Now the men muttered about rumors of parties snowed in at the summit, freezing to death or dying from starvation only miles from the promised land.

“As long as we make it over safely before fall starts, we won’t have to worry,” Jimmy told them.

At last, battered and exhausted, they reached the summit. They stood on top of the world and stared out in all directions—the dry, parched desert world behind in muted tones of yellow and gray contrasting with the world ahead, a world of granite peaks, splashes of snow, towering pines, and small blue lakes. It was enchantingly beautiful but not what any of them wanted to see. They wanted to see a clear road leading down to towns where chimneys were smoking. Instead, the rugged country went on, peak after peak into the blue west.

They set up camp in a high alpine meadow, wrapping themselves up as the temperature dropped with the sunset. The fire of dry pine branches flared up into a big blaze and Libby secretly hoped that the blaze would attract settlers from hidden towns nearby, who would arrive with fresh food and warm clothing and invitations to shelter. That night Libby lay in a dream. She was at a concert, back in Boston, and the orchestra was playing. It was a rousing piece with much clashing of cymbals and banging of drums. When it finished the crowd broke into applause. Libby opened her eyes and the clapping went on, accompanied by a final drum roll. There was a bright flash, lighting up the whole wagon and Libby sat up.