Janet Quin-Harkin (33 page)

He put an arm around her protectively. “But Libby, darling, these vegetables and fruit are supposed to free you from slaving away. You don’t want to spend your life baking pies, do you?”

“I want to make sure we are never desperate again,” Libby said. “Vegetables are so precarious. One hailstorm would flatten them. One plague of rabbits would wipe us out. And my pies are selling so well. In this sort of place you grab what you can when you can.”

“But you have to remember your condition,” Hugh said. “You should be resting.”

She walked away from him. He perched on the edge of the bed, looking at her with concern.

“Libby, please take care of yourself,” he said. “You seem so different. So remote. Back in Boston you were always so gay, so carefree . . .”

“Things were slightly different back in Boston,” Libby said. “I didn’t have to worry every day that my family might starve.”

He came up behind her, putting his hands on her shoulders and kissing the back of her neck. “It will all be over soon,” he said. “If this crop works out as we think it will, then we’ll have enough to go to England. We’ll take that house my brother is offering and we’ll bring up the children as little aristocrats. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“That would be very nice,” Libby said politely.

“Isn’t it what you want, Libby?” he demanded.

She stared out through the open door at the dappled green of the hillside, sloping away to the leafy valley. “I don’t know what I want anymore,” she said. “I’m sure it will be fine in England.”

“But you don’t seem very happy,” he said. “Aren’t you happy about the baby?”

“Oh, yes,” she said with conviction. “I’m very happy about the baby.”

“That’s good,” he said. “I’m sure it will be a son this time. Look how big you are already and how high you carry him.” He put his arms around her, caressing her belly. Libby shivered. “Don’t,” she said and moved away. She caught a glimpse of his face and the hurt look in his eyes and she immediately felt guilty. She came across and took both his hands.

“I’m sorry, Hugh,” she said. “I know I’m moody these days. I suppose my nerves have been stretched too far for too long and I don’t know how to relax anymore.”

“But the end really is in sight, Libby. Soon this whole business will seem like a nightmare when we look back on it. We’ve just got to keep us all well and strong until we can book a passage to England.” He looked up as Ah Fong passed the front of the cabin, a hoe over his shoulder, singing a harsh Chinese song. “And we can take Ah Fong with us, if you’d like.”

“Where Ah Fong goes is up to him,” Libby said, “but I’ve been thinking about him. I think we should build him a better house. I’ll see about the timber when I’m in town. And we should finish off this place too. These canvas walls are delightful in summer, but I assure you that they are not so delightful when the wind whips through them.”

“You think we’ll be here another winter?” Hugh asked. “I was hoping this summer’s yield would be enough . . .”

“We have to plan for the worst,” Libby said. “It might not be wise to travel when the baby is due.”

“But we could be home by January if we left in September,” Hugh said.

“All the same, I don’t feel right about travelling in the last months,” Libby said warily. “What if I fell in a storm? I’d hate to give birth on board ship.”

“Whatever you want,” Hugh said warmly. “Whatever makes you happy.”

If only you knew, she thought and went back to her baking.

As the summer progressed the crops began to fulfill their promise. Under Ah Fong’s instruction, Libby became expert at looking for signs of bugs, picking strawberries at just the right moment, and recognizing weeds the moment they sprouted. Hugh’s leg was much stronger and he started making the deliveries, leading the mule with baskets full of beautiful produce strapped on either side. The miners could not buy enough of it and the hotels would take anything that was not snapped up on the way to town. By the middle of August Libby had two new log walls on the cabin and a real front door that could be bolted, Ah Fong had a little one-room house beside the vegetable patch and there was almost three thousand dollars in the bank. Hugh started making enquiries about ships sailing from San Francisco. Libby greeted the news of ships with a heavy heart. Part of her did not want to be trapped in this cabin for the rest of her life, but part of her could not bear to sail so far away from Gabe. She knew it was irrational to expect that she would ever see him again, but she could not face the finality of sailing to another continent. When she heard Hugh describing to the children the new life they would have and how they would go riding and learn to dance and be presented at court one day, Libby had to go outside and join Ah Fong pulling weeds among the vegetables.

The weather in August was so hot and dry that the wind felt like a blast from an oven. The little creek on the hillside dried up and they had to go down to the river with buckets to keep the gardens going. It became a morning ritual as all five of them stood in a bucket chain and passed the water up the slope to the plants. The first crops were now gathered and Libby looked speculatively at the bare earth where they had been, longing to put something in their place. But there was no point, if they were not going to be here for the harvest. She was feeling the heat very badly, the weight of the baby pressing against her too-tight dresses.

“I should get some gingham in the store and make myself something looser,” she said to Hugh.

“Don’t bother. We’ll have you something made properly at a dressmaker in San Francisco before we sail,” he said. “There are no proper fabrics up here. You can’t wear gingham when we get back to civilization.”

“I suppose not,” she said, “and I suppose I’ll have to go back to corsets again after the child is born.”

“And put your hair up,” Hugh said with a laugh. “You look about fifteen years old with it tied back like that.”

“It will be hard to adjust to the real world again,” Libby said. “There’s so much we’ve forgotten about.”

“Indeed there is,” Hugh said. “The girls’ table manners are quite appalling and their language! At least we’ll be able to work with them on the ship so that they are presentable by the time they meet my family.”

He started a campaign of instruction and criticism that both girls resented and fought against.

“You’ve let them run wild, Libby,” Hugh complained. Libby agreed this was probably true.

“It seemed more important to keep them well and happy,” she said. “There were so many times when we could have lost them . . . I wanted their childhood to be happy.”

“They don’t have to be unhappy just because I want them to eat with their mouths closed and not to tear at their food like animals,” Hugh said. “Sit up straight, Bliss. When you’re an English lady you’ll not be allowed to slouch.”

“I don’t like you,” Bliss said, scowling at him. “I liked Mr. Foster better. I wish he was our daddy.”

“Bliss!” Libby blurted out.

“Who is Mr. Foster?” Hugh asked in a clipped voice.

“He was a man who helped us along the trail,” Libby said quickly.

“He was very nice,” Eden added. “Mama liked to talk to him.”

“He still lives around here?”

“I’ve no idea where he is,” Libby said. She tried to sound uninterested, but Hugh must have caught something in her voice. He looked enquiringly. “A gentleman?”

“Not in your sense of the word,” Libby said. “A gambler.”

“Oh, I see,” Hugh said, looking amused. “No wonder he hasn’t paid any social calls since I’ve been here.”

“Meaning what?”

“A lady of your upbringing could hardly be seen to associate with a gambler, could she?” Hugh asked easily.

The incident was over and Hugh did not mention Gabe again. He continued to work on the girls’ manners and deportment, but not with too much success.

“Don’t worry about it,” Libby said. “They’ll pick it up very quickly when we’re in England. Children ape what they see. They’ve only been exposed to miners with no manners for so long that they think it’s the correct way to behave. When they see English gentle-folk, they’ll want to be like them.”

“I hope so,” Hugh said with a sigh.

Eden came running up the path toward them, her pigtails flying and her gingham dress billowing out. She had grown tall in the past months and no longer looked like the pale, skinny child of Boston.

“Look at her,” Hugh said, shaking his head critically, “she’s like a little Indian child, brown and skinny and running barefoot. Her aunts in England will die of heart failure when they see her.”

“Mama, Papa, there are horsemen coming up the trail,” Eden was yelling as she ran. “A whole bunch of ‘em.”

“Eden, you can’t have a bunch of horses. That’s not correct,” Hugh said, but Libby interrupted.

“What do they look like?” Libby asked nervously. She had never told Hugh about the lynch mob and the way she had escaped death.

“Like an army,” Eden said. “They’ve got uniforms and guns and things.”

“Maybe they’re a new company arrived at the gold fields,” Hugh said, not showing much interest. “They often dress in military style. I’m surprised new companies are still coming out here. Don’t they hear how overcrowded California already is?” He stuck his hands in his pockets. “Well, I can’t wait around all day. This load of produce has to get down to the hotel before it spoils in this hot sun.” He went around the house to begin loading the mule for its daily trip to town.

They could all now hear the chink of bridles and the muffled thud of horses hooves, moving fast. A horse snorted, the sound echoing loudly from the hills opposite. Then a well-armed band of men appeared, wheeling to a halt in front of the cabin.

“Keep those horses off my vegetables,” Libby called out, moving around to protect her precious patch.

As they wheeled to a halt she could see that the men at the front were smartly turned out in uniform but those behind them were a ragtag company riding an assortment of skinny horses and mules.

“We haven’t come for your vegetables, lady,” the leader said, a lean, weathered man in a blue uniform with a thick gun belt and rifles on either side of his saddle. “We’ve come for your husband.”

“My husband? What has he done?” Libby asked in amazement.

“He ain’t done nothing, lady,” the man went on, grinning. “We just need to borrow him a while.”

“Borrow him, what for?”

“Injun uprising, north of here near Lassen’s place,” another of the men said. “They murdered a bunch of settlers and set fire to a couple of towns. We’re recruiting a force to go teach them varmints a lesson.”

“I don’t think Hugh would be interested,” Libby said. “He’s been very sick. He’s only just walking again.”

“Is he the guy who takes around the vegetables?” the first man demanded. There was no longer a pleasant tone to his voice.

Libby nodded.

“Then he can walk. Where is he? Tell him to go get his things.”

“He’s not going to fight any Indian uprising,” Libby said, annoyed now. “Go and find somebody else.”

The second man who had spoken urged his horse forward and showed her a badge. “United States Cavalry, ma’am,” he said. “I have an authorization here from the President to recruit any men I need in case of emergency. Your husband doesn’t have a choice. Tell him to get his things.”

Hugh appeared at this moment, leading the mule. “What’s all this, Libby?” he asked.

“Hugh, they want you to go fight Indians with them.”

“No thank you,” Hugh said. The men all laughed.

“I’m not asking you, I’m telling you,” the leader said. “You’ve just been recruited, mister. Now get your things and saddle up that mule. We need to get going.”

“I don’t have to do anything of the sort,” Hugh said angrily. “I’m an English citizen. I’m not bound by your American laws.”

The cavalry man with the badge started to get something out of his shirt. “My orders say any able-bodied man. They don’t specify what kind of citizen. Now get your things, or I’ll shoot you on the spot.”

“But you don’t understand,” Libby said, running over to the leader and tugging at his bridle. “He’s been sick. He’s not well enough to go and fight.”

The man looked down at her, noting her condition. “Ma’am, it will all be over in a couple of days. I’m not asking him to come to the north pole with me. If we can round up a big enough force, we can blast those devils to hell and come back home again. But if we let this one tribe get away with murder, then the others will all try it and you and your children won’t be safe up in these hills.”

Hugh went over to Libby and led her away from the man. “It’s all right, darling,” he said. “If I must go, I must. I’ll just pack some things together.”

“Take the rifle,” Libby said. “We don’t have much ammunition.”

“He don’t need no rifle,” the leader said. “We supply the arms and the ammunition,” the first man said. “All we need is men to shoot them.”

Hugh went into the house. When he came out again, he looked very pale and fragile, but he seemed calm as Libby helped him saddle the mule. “Don’t worry,” he said to her. “I’m sure it will all be over very quickly. Take good care of the girls for me, won’t you? And take care of yourself . . . and my son.”

“I will,” Libby said.

He kissed her gently on the lips, then mounted the mule. The troop began to move off. At the edge of the clearing Hugh looked back and blew her a kiss.

It was a week later before Libby got news that he had been knocked from his saddle by an Indian arrow and trampled to death under the hooves of his companions’ horses.

L
lBBY RECEIVED THE
news of Hugh’s death with surprising calmness. Her overwhelming feeling was one of guilt, that she was not grieving more deeply for the man who had been her husband for nine years. She would miss him, she was sad for him, but her heart wasn’t broken as it had been when Gabe left. If she felt anything else, it was anger at the waste and stupidity of his death. She accompanied the cavalry officer up north to see his grave, on a wild, rocky hillside, overlooking a narrow canyon. It was such a remote place that she almost accepted the major’s offer to rebury the remains where she wanted them.