Wagon Train Sisters (Women of the West) (11 page)

To make matters worse, during the five months they’d been on the trail, their food supply had dwindled to practically nothing. Their small store of “luxury” goods, such as tea, maple syrup, vinegar, and pickles was long gone. Eventually they used up their dried fruits, vegetables and potatoes. At lower levels, wild game had been plentiful, but the higher they got, the scarcer the animals. Toward the end, their diet consisted of hard biscuits, beans, and an occasional hunk of beef jerky. “If I never see another biscuit, it will be none too soon,” Sarah complained over a cold supper one day.

Riding by, Jack overheard her. “When we get to Gold Creek, I’ll buy you dinner at the finest hotel in town.”

She’d laughed at his foolishness, so weary of trekking clear across the Sierra Nevada Mountains, she couldn’t even imagine the delights of sitting at a real table, eating good-tasting food, actually enjoying her meal.

What a relief the day they crossed the highest summit of the Sierra Nevadas and started down the other side. Now, as they rolled into the busy main street of Gold Creek, Sarah stared with amazement. Buildings of all descriptions lined both sides of the street, some no more than tents. Others were rickety, thrown-together affairs built of wood. The only substantial buildings of any sort appeared to be two- and three-story hotel-saloons, all with tinny piano music blasting through their wide-open front doors.

All kinds of people swarmed the street, mainly men in their teens and twenties. Most wore bright flannel shirts—red was the prominent color—slouch hats and pants with suspenders. Many had let their beards grow long and looked as if they hadn’t bathed for a while. The main street was laid out directly beside a river where, between the buildings, Sarah saw men wading hip deep in the stream, gold pans in their hands. A woman in a shortened skirt and rolled-up bloomers scooped her gold pan alongside the men.

“Lord have mercy, look at this mess.” Ma pointed toward the endless assortment of litter strewn alongside the road. People stepped over or through it, no one seeming to mind.

A babble of voices filled the air—some in foreign tongues Sarah didn’t understand. They passed by one of the largest buildings in town, a three-story building with a sign that read, The Alhambra Hotel & Saloon. From inside came the raucous sound of a poorly tuned piano playing “Sweet Betsy from Pike.” As she watched, a woman in a fancy dress and feathered hat strolled out the front door and down the wooden steps. Ma gasped and whispered, “Look there, she’s got rouge on her face!”

Pa threw her a stern glance. “She’s a woman of ill repute, Luzena. Turn your eyes away.”

Jack came riding up. “What do you think of Gold Creek, Sarah?”

“It’s not what I expected.”

Jack nodded agreeably. “You’ll get used to it. If you keep going straight, there’s a good place to camp right outside of town.” He addressed Pa. “If you like, tomorrow I can show you what you’re going to need for the diggings.”

“Why, yes!” Pa looked greatly relieved. “That’ll be just fine.”

Sarah could scarcely conceal her delight. Since that night she and Jack made love by the river, they’d hardly had a chance to talk. She had no idea what his plans were. “So you’re staying in Gold Creek, Mr. McCoy?”

He grinned at her. “For a while.”

“I thought you hadn’t planned to look for gold.”

His grin faded. “Maybe I don’t know what I want. Maybe…let’s leave it at that, shall we?” He looked at Ma. “I just talked to Hiram. He’ll be coming, too.”

Ma wagged her head. “He can’t do that. His leg hasn’t healed yet, and he’s got that terrible limp.”

With an amused twitch of his mouth, Jack replied, “That’s what your daughter-in-law just said. He’s going, though. She couldn’t stop him.”

Hooray!
Hiram had defied Becky. Actually, she was probably right and Hiram shouldn’t go because of his injury. Still, Sarah loved to see her brother defy his domineering wife.

At the end of the main street they found a campground filled with all manner of tents, lean-tos and wagons. Exhausted from the journey, Sarah went to bed early, but the boisterous sounds of revelers in town kept her awake. Past midnight, when she was finally drifting off to sleep, men’s sharp outcries awoke her, followed by the sounds of someone running and three or four pistol shots. Peeking outside her tent, she saw Becky peering wide-eyed from her wagon. “What was that?” she called.

“I don’t know,” Sarah replied in a loud whisper, “but it sounded like guns going off.”

From one of the nearby lean-tos, a gruff male voice declared, “Ladies, a few shots ain’t nothing around here. Jest shut up and get back to sleep.”

Pa, Hiram, Jack, and Ben got off to an early start the next morning with Jack knowing exactly what to do. “First we go into town and buy what we need—gold pans, hammers, pick axes, something for lunch. All the nearby claims are taken, so we’ll be going some distance. These mountains are too steep for horses, so we’ll walk.” He looked at Hiram. “You’re sure?”

“Positive.” The stubborn set of Hiram’s jaw invited no argument.

Sarah watched the four men head for town. Would Hiram make it? The sight of his lopsided walk filled her with concern, yet she enjoyed the satisfying spectacle of Becky’s disapproving face.

After breakfast, Ma and Sarah decided to walk into town to replenish their meager food supply. At first, Becky refused to go. “I will not set foot in that sinful place! There’s drinking and gambling and God knows what going on there.” Only after Sarah and Luzena convinced her they couldn’t carry the supplies back by themselves did she reluctantly agree to come along.

Sarah put on a clean dress and combed her hair with extra care. How strange to be going to an actual destination instead of facing just another long day on the trail. Outside her tent, she heard her mother call, “Where is it? I can’t find it!”

“Can’t find what, Ma?”

“My reticule! The beaded one with the tassels.”

“Don’t you remember? You threw it away in the middle of the desert.”

Becky appeared. “Mine’s gone, too.”

“Mine, too.” Sarah sighed at the thought of her lovely blue satin reticule with the white tassels rotting in the sands of the Humboldt Sink.

Ma frowned. “How can I go into town without it?” She realized what she was saying and began to laugh. “After all I’ve gone through and I’m worried about my reticule?”

Even Becky joined in the laughter. Afterward, they knotted the four corners of white dishtowels into improvised handbags and headed for town.

The main street bustled with activity even at that early hour. Stores and saloons were open. Had they ever closed? Slouch-hatted miners carrying shovels and pickaxes hustled in all directions. Starting from camp, they had to pick their way around the mud holes until they reached a board sidewalk. Soon they found a tarp-roofed general store with goods priced shockingly high. “Well, I never!” Ma shook her head in disbelief. “Thirty dollars for a pound of coffee? Twenty for a pound of beans? I shall starve first.”

“No you won’t, Ma. We’ve got to eat.”

They bought what they needed. Pa would be horrified at the cost, but they’d deal with him later. They hauled their purchases home and headed back, this time to take a look at the town. Strolling along the wooden sidewalk, they passed a boarding house, another general store, a blacksmith shop, brewery, meat market, and the stagecoach depot. Toward the end of the sidewalk, they saw a long row of decrepit, one-story shacks just ahead. As they approached, Ma asked, “What are those?”

Sarah gazed at the rickety buildings. “I don’t know. Maybe rooms for rent? If so, they must be awfully cheap.” As they approached the first shack, a slight young woman with long black hair appeared in the doorway. How strangely she was dressed with wide-legged black satin pants and a long tunic top. The young woman caught sight of them and stared.

In a loud whisper, Becky said, “Look there, she’s wearing pants! I think she’s one of those Chinese girls. See how her eyes are different? What’s she doing here?”

Sarah paid no attention to her sister-in-law. The woman remained in the doorway. Something in her eyes stabbed at Sarah’s heart. Grief? Desperation? Sorrow?

“Look at her scar,” Becky hissed. “How ugly.”

How sad. A scar ran from directly below the woman’s eye down her cheek to her chin, a jagged, uneven scar that turned her face into a tragic ruin. Suddenly the girl disappeared, almost as if someone had yanked her back inside.

“Ladies, you’d best not go any farther,” a male voice called. They turned to see a white-haired man, beard neatly trimmed, dressed in miner’s clothing. He respectfully removed his hat and pointed toward the shacks. “There’s nothing there for you to see. Better turn around.”

Becky went into her huffy mode. “Whyever not, sir?”

The man gave a patient sigh. “Because those are cribs run by the Chinamen. They’re not meant for the eyes of ladies.”

“Cribs? Are there babies down there?”

“Becky!” Sarah rolled her eyes skyward. Even she knew what a crib was. She grabbed Ma’s arm with one hand and Becky’s with the other. “We’re turning around right now.” She gave a grateful nod to the man with the white beard as she hustled her mother and sister-in-law back up the sidewalk. When Becky asked what was wrong, Sarah said she’d tell her later and hoped she’d forget to ask.

On the way back, they passed a tent with a sign that read Fatt Cheng’s Laundry. Inside, a Chinese man with a pigtail stood before a huge steaming pot, stirring a batch of clothes with a stick. The tent was full of steaming kettles and wood stoves with hot irons heating on top. Next to the laundry, they came to a tented, open-sided restaurant furnished with a dozen or so crude wooden tables. The sign outside announced, The Miner’s Heaven Restaurant. It was empty except for a plump, cheery-faced woman clearing breakfast dishes away. “Hello there,” she called. “It’s not often I see ladies passing by. Do come visit. My customers have all left for the diggings.”

Soon they were seated at one of the tables, sipping tea and chatting with Mrs. Beatrice Amelia Butler of Boston, owner and proprietor. “I never intended to open such a place,” said the talkative Mrs. Butler. “I came here to be with Patrick, my dear husband. We had a lovely life in Boston, but he got the gold fever so here we are. One day, after he’d gone off to work his claim, I baked some biscuits over an outdoor fire where we were camped. A passerby took one sniff and offered me five dollars for the batch. Naturally, I accepted. That’s when I realized I could make some money if I opened a restaurant. I’m not much of a cook, but that doesn’t matter. My tables are always full. These poor, starved miners will just about sell their souls for a home-cooked meal.”

Sarah asked, “Has your husband found any gold?”

“Oh, indeed, yes! It’s all a matter of luck, of course. Patrick got here early before the placers were all worn out.” Seeing they didn’t understand, Mrs. Butler continued, “Placer gold is the gold that’s easy to reach—lying in the stream beds in plain sight or close to it. It’s going fast now, and that’s sad. People come here from all over the world thinking they can just pick those nuggets off the ground, but that’s not so anymore. Now you need all kinds of equipment—sluice boxes that they call Long Toms—hoses to blast the mountainside. Patrick’s done well until lately. Now a lot of the gold that’s easy to find is gone.”

“Oh, dear.” Ma shook her head. “My husband and son went to look for gold today. From what you’ve told me, they won’t have much luck.”

“Not at all! Why, just the other day, two miners dug out nine thousand dollars’ worth of gold in two days.” Mrs. Butler related several more success stories. She ended by saying, “You can’t always measure success by how much gold you’ve found. I can’t tell you how much I, a mere woman, have enjoyed starting a business, especially since I never did anything remotely similar to this before. Back in Boston, my main concern was how I could be the perfect hostess and impress my lady friends with the most elegant tea and
petit fours
. I’d never have dreamed of running my own restaurant, but in a place like this, anyone who wants can make money.”

Becky sniffed her displeasure. “How can you stand working in such an uncivilized place with all those rough, uncouth men?”

“They’re not all that way. True, some don’t know their manners, but they’d better behave around me or out they go.” Mrs. Butler lowered her voice to just above a whisper. “Naturally, there are some elements I don’t allow in here, like those Chinamen who work in the laundry next door. I would never allow them as customers. Of course, hiring them to work for me is a different matter. You have no idea how hard it is to keep the help around here. Sooner or later every white man I’ve hired runs off to the goldfields. I ended up hiring Fatt Cheng’s son, Fatt Li. Isn’t that crazy? In China, the first name is the family name, which only goes to show how backward those people are. Still, Li’s a hard worker, I must say. The Chinese are fine as servants, doing laundry and such, but it’s best to have as little to do with them as possible.”

Becky didn’t surprise Sarah in the least when she asked, “What are those cribs down the street? They’re run by Chinamen?”

Mrs. Butler pursed her lips with disapproval. “Those dreadful Chinese from the San Francisco tongs own the cribs. It’s just terrible what they do to those poor girls.”

All eagerness, Becky leaned forward. “Girls? What do they do?”

“Well, my dear…” The restaurant owner obviously relished a bit of gossip. “A man by the name of Au Fung is the one they fear. He belongs to a powerful tong and has the meanest face I ever saw. They call him a”—she lowered her voice—”
pimp
. From what I hear, he buys girls who’ve been brought over from China to serve as prostitutes. He treats them like slaves. Well, I guess they
are
slaves. The ones down the street are what they call end-of-the-line girls. That’s because they’ve gotten older or they have some disease or they’ve been treated so badly they’re scarred or disfigured in some way.”

Becky was speechless. Ma put her hand to heart. “I never heard of such a thing.”