Janet Quin-Harkin (31 page)

The woman shrugged. “No more than fifteen, twenty miles, I’d say. Not easy miles, mind you, but I’d say you could be there and back by nightfall.”

“Then I’ll go,” Libby said. “Which is my husband’s room? I’ll tell him that I’ll be back for him by nightfall.”

Columbia was already a big, sprawling camp, set in a narrow valley among tall hills. The noise of machinery echoed from the steep rock walls above it as Libby rode into town, her dress plastered to her back with sweat. Sheldon Rival was standing on a rock, his cigar hanging, as usual, from one corner of his mouth, his hands stuck in his pockets. He watched a sweating group of men maneuver a length of metal rail into position. As Libby walked toward him, she felt the revulsion again for this man rise in her throat. She wished that he was seeing her on more equal terms for once. She was very aware that she looked tired, sweaty, and disheveled, while he looked immaculate and very prosperous. She was not used to riding and this second long ride made her legs feel as if they had turned to jelly.

His face creased into something like a sneer as he recognized her.

“Well, well,” he said. “I wondered when and where you’d turn up. I’m amazed, frankly, that you’ve kept going so long. Found your husband then?”

“Yes, thank you,” Libby said with icy politeness.

“And you were looking for me—or is this just a happy coincidence?”

“I have to speak to you,” she said. “About my husband.”

“What about him?”

“He’s been staying at a hotel you’ve just bought,” she said. “The landlady says she’s not allowed to let him leave until the bill is paid.”

“And?”

“The bill is over four hundred dollars.”

“So? He ought not to have eaten and drunk beyond his means,” Rival said crudely. “That’s his problem, not mine.”

“You don’t understand,” Libby said, fighting against her anger. “He’s been very sick. They brought him to the hotel when he was half dead and he’s spent all this time recovering.”

“So what you’re saying is that he can’t pay? Is that what I’m hearing?” Rival asked bluntly.

“He hasn’t been able to work all winter,” Libby said. “All I ask is a little time, Mr. Rival. It makes no sense not to let him leave until he pays. He’ll just be running up a bigger bill and be no nearer to paying at the end of it.”

Rival sneered again. “Then he’ll have to do what other men have done—come and work for me until it’s paid off.”

“Doing what?”

Rival jerked his head. “See all this?” he asked. “Miners scratching in the beds of streams—that’s all over. Mining is going to be big business from now on; we’ve learned to get gold out of solid rock. I’m digging into the hill over there and I’m getting the machinery set up to crush the rock and melt out the gold. He can work in my mine until he’s paid up.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Libby blurted out, unable to stay calm any longer. “I just told you that he nearly died. He can still barely walk. He couldn’t work in a mine.” Then she swallowed hard, realizing that anger would get her nowhere with this man. He enjoyed seeing her angry and seeing her squirm. “Look, Mr. Rival,” she said. “Let me take him home and I’ll give you my written word that we’ll pay you.”

“How?” He eyed her appraisingly.

“Just give me a little time,” she said, “and I have prospects of making a lot of money.”

“You’ve got a claim that’s paying well?”

“Almost as good as that. I’ve a crop that should be ready for harvest soon. You know what vegetables are selling for up here.”

Rival actually chuckled. “You must think I’m very softhearted all of a sudden,” he said. “Vegetables, you say? One hailstorm can flatten vegetables. One invasion of gophers or rabbits and you’ve lost them. Sorry, lady, but vegetables are not good collateral.”

“Maybe I’ll find someone else to lend me the money—someone who does think that vegetables are worth something,” she said. “A little time—that’s all I ask, because if you make my husband work now, it will surely kill him and then you’ll never get what’s owning to you.”

Rival eyed her critically. “Tell you what,” he said. “I could always use you instead.”

“In a mine?” Libby asked.

Rival laughed loudly. “A mine?” he demanded. “What use would you be in a mine? I’m talking about in one of my saloons. I can’t get enough bar girls for the demand, and when the water goes down and the miners are digging up gold again, they’ll all be coming into town and wanting a little of what they’ve been hankering for. So what do you say?”

Libby eyed him coldly, amazed that it was possible to loathe another human being so violently. If she had been holding a gun at this moment, she would have found it very easy to pull the trigger. “You’re suggesting that I come to work for you as a prostitute?” she asked.

“Sure, why not?” he asked. “You’re not bad looking, if you were tarted up a bit, got some decent clothes, and had someone do something with that hair. Besides, you’d make a change from the Mexicans. The men like a bit of lily-white flesh now and then.”

“You are an obscene and disgusting man,” she said. “I think you delight in the corruption and destruction of others.”

“I confess it gives me a certain pleasure to watch a snooty high society queen put in her place,” he said. “You shouldn’t have refused me, back on the trail. Now we’ve a score to settle and it would give me great pleasure to watch you getting laid by any miner who had the money. So what’s it to be—him or you?”

“The answer is neither,” Libby said. “I’m going home right now and I’ll come back with the money, some way or other. I would rather die than be in your debt and I would certainly kill myself right away rather than work in one of your disgusting bars.”

“Your friend Gabe Foster didn’t feel like that,” Rival said, his grin spreading as he watched her reaction. “He was a sensible man when it came to making a buck. He knew a good deal when he saw one. He’s working for me right now.”

Libby was not going to give him the satisfaction of driving in this additional wound. “I think you’ll find that he’s just quit,” Libby said, enjoying the surprise that registered on his bloated face.

“Who said so?”

Libby smiled. “You think you know everything, Mr. Rival, but you don’t. I’ll be back with your money.”

She swept away from him, to her waiting horse.

B
ACK IN
H
ANGTOWN
, Libby made a desperate round of the banks, but got the same reaction from each of them. They would lend money against a good claim, but not against a vegetable patch. She looked longingly at Rival’s new hotel as she passed it, wondering if Gabe was up there in his room or if he’d already left. She fought off the temptation to go and find out. At last, in desperation, she went into Mark Hopkins’ store. He looked surprised to see her.

“I’m glad to see your head is still attached to your neck,” he said, smiling at her. “I was down arranging for shipping in Sacramento and when I got back the town was full of talk. They said you’d nearly gotten yourself hanged. I couldn’t believe it.”

“It was true,” Libby said, thinking how long ago it already felt. “But now I’m in almost as much trouble again.” She blurted the whole story out to him. He looked at her with compassion.

“Sheldon Rival, eh?” he asked. “I know the man. He wanted to buy this store, but I told him to get walking.” He shifted from one foot to the other. “I’d really like to help out, Mrs. Grenville but I’ve already ordered my next load of supplies to be delivered at the end of the month. I have to go down to Sacramento and pick them up from the ship and I have to pay cash for them—every penny of my profits.”

“But you’d lend me money until the end of the month?” Libby asked hesitantly. “I swear I’d pay you back by then.”

“But your potatoes won’t be ready by then, will they?”

“I’ll get the money somehow,” Libby said. “Just let me pay off Rival and bring my husband home and I swear I’ll find a way to pay you back by the end of the month.”

Mark Hopkins stared past her, out the open door for a moment, then looked back and smiled. “That’s what life is all about, taking risks, isn’t it?” he asked. “I’ll take the risk that you’ll be able to pay me back in time and I don’t have to send all those boxes of shovels back to San Francisco.”

“I won’t let you down, Mr. Hopkins,” she said. “I can’t tell you what this means to me.”

A few days later, Hugh was safely installed in the cabin, being waited on by his delighted children.

“You amaze me, Libby,” he said, looking around at the snug little room. “You’ve managed all this on your own. Who would have thought it, back in Boston.”

“Back in Boston I always had my father to tell me what to do and my mother to fuss around making sure I did it,” Libby said with a wry smile. “Out here it was a case of survive or die.”

Hugh reached over and took her hand. “I can’t tell you how I’ve dreamed about this moment,” he said, holding Libby’s hand as if he were drowning. “When I lay there half alive and half dead and I heard them talking about cutting off my leg, I said to myself, why bother? Just give up the fight and die before all that pain. But then I thought of you and the girls and I told myself I had to keep going, just to see you again.”

Libby squeezed his hand but could find nothing to say. She tucked him in the bed with rugs around him, trying not to let her concern about the money show in her face. Hugh must have no idea of how she had to ransom him. In typical Hugh fashion, he assumed all was taken care of.

“They were wonderfully kind to me, back there in Angel’s Camp,” he said. “That landlady treated me as if I was her own son. I’d like to do something to repay her someday. Wouldn’t it be fun to send her some silk or the latest shawl from England when we get there? But as for now, do you have writing paper for me to pen her a note or maybe I could even manage a poem now that I’m feeling better.”

“Writing paper?” Libby asked, barely able to keep her temper under control.

Hugh didn’t seem to notice the color rising in her face. He leaned back contentedly and went on. “Funny how I didn’t feel like writing poetry at all, when I had all that time on my hands and nothing else to do. In fact the only poem I composed in four months was an epigram:

The poet, Hugh Grenville

Became instant landfill

When a sandbank on himfell.

*    *    *

Not too great, but to the point, as I gather they had to dig me out. Not that I remember anything of it . . . just a typical Hugh Grenville way of doing things, I suppose, not knowing what sort of banks collapse on people. Maybe I can put it all into a book now and sell it back on the East Coast. My dangerous days as a Forty-Niner, by poet Hugh Grenville. Yes. I’ll get started right away. Paper, Libby!”

“Hugh, things like writing paper are luxuries out here. We’ve been at survival level with just enough to eat.” Before he could answer she went outside with Ah Fong to inspect her potatoes.

“There’s no chance they’ll be ready in the next couple of weeks, is there?” she asked.

Ah Fong shook his head. “Right now only tiny potatoes, like bullets,” he said. “Not make enough money from tiny potatoes. Wait one more month.”

“Then I’ll have to find some other way of making money fast,” Libby said. “Do you think you can catch me some birds and rabbits?”

“I try,” Ah Fong said. “Lot of hungry miners also trying catch things to eat.”

Libby threw herself into a frenzied program of work. She baked bread and took it around to the miners every morning. She made pies with the game that Ah Fong managed to catch and sold the pies to the hotels. She went around the camps doing washing and brought mending home to do at night.

“You’re killing yourself, Libby,” Hugh said gently as she dozed off with a torn shirt in her hands. “Slow down a little. Don’t work so hard.”

“What choice do I have?” she snapped back, caught off guard.

“What do you mean?” Hugh looked at her with large, innocent eyes.

“I mean that someone has to pay off a huge hotel bill for you, and I’m the only person who can do it,” she said and instantly regretted that she had. His face clouded over. “You mean my gold wasn’t enough? I did find gold, you know. The claim was really going well until I tried digging into a gravel bank which collapsed on top of me. I had a bag of gold when they brought me in.”

“It wasn’t enough, Hugh,” she said gently. “But don’t worry about it. It wasn’t your fault. There was nothing you could do about it.”

The next morning she found that he had gone out to pan for gold and she was overcome with guilt, knowing that he was not fit enough to do anything. When he came back home his face was almost gray with exhaustion and the bandage on his leg showed it had been bleeding.

“For heavens sake don’t do anything foolish like that again,” Libby said, sitting him down and putting a mug of tea in front of him. “You know you can’t start digging in rivers yet.”

“You’re right,” he said with a sigh. “It wasn’t any use, anyway. Every inch of these creeks is full of men right now. There’s not a spot within miles that hasn’t been prospected and claimed.”

“You just concentrate on getting well,” Libby said. “That’s what you can do for us at this moment.”

“But I want to help,” Hugh said. “Let me take some of the chores off your shoulders. I hate seeing you scrubbing like a common kitchen woman.”

“That’s what I am right now,” Libby said with a grin. “We’re all equal out here. All laborers.”

“I wish you hadn’t come,” Hugh said. “I wish I could have known you were safely home in Boston, living your normal life.”

“And what would you be doing, if I hadn’t come?” she asked. “You’d be working in Sheldon Rival’s mine or you’d be dead.”

“Either would have been a small sacrifice not to put you through all this,” Hugh said. “Tell me honestly, Libby. Don’t you wish you had stayed home? Don’t you hate me for it?”

A picture of Gabe swam unbidden into Libby’s mind. She pushed it away firmly. “I wouldn’t have missed this for the world, Hugh,” she said. “Until I started on this journey, I was only playing at living. Now I truly know what it feels like to be alive.”

He gazed at her admiringly. “I must say you are looking wonderful,” he said. “So blooming, so full of health.” He looked down at the sleeping children, curled together on the wolf rugs on the floor. Libby had given Hugh sole occupancy of the bed, and had made the three of them beds in the corner behind the stove. “They’re looking wonderful too. Thank heavens they take after you.” His gaze shifted back to Libby. “Don’t sleep down there with them tonight,” he said, running his hand up her arm. “I want to remember what it feels like to hold you again.”