Janet Quin-Harkin (26 page)

“I hope not,” Libby said. “He’s one of the most obnoxious, heartless individuals I’ve ever met. I’m glad I spoke to you before I went looking for a job at his hotel.”

“I wouldn’t worry,” Mark said. “I hear he doesn’t run these places himself once he’s got them started up. He puts in managers and just checks on them from time to time. He’s having himself a mansion built, down towards Sacramento, well away from the primitive conditions at the diggings.”

“As long as it’s well away from me,” Libby said. “I’ve seen quite enough of Mr. Rival to last me a lifetime.”

She left Mark Hopkins’s store and came out into the main street. Although more buildings had sprung up, there had been no attempt made to relieve the squalor of the town. Castoff clothing, broken tools, and empty sardine cans littered the streets and there were still yawning potholes where men had hopefully mined for gold. It seemed that small-scale dry digging was still going on around town, for new pits had appeared and piles of gravel were mounting up behind and between buildings. But these pits were idle at the moment, probably because it was much harder to separate the gold without running water. This problem was obviously being addressed, as a series of flumes was being built. Men were working on high trellises as they constructed a wooden channel to carry water where they wanted it. Libby stared up at the ambitious wooden waterways and decided that they must have cost a fortune to build. Obviously, gold mining was no longer a one-man operation. It was already turning into big business.

At one end of the town the sickly smell of incense came from the new Chinese quarter. Libby looked curiously at the expressionless Oriental faces as they walked past her, not seeming to notice her presence at all. Some of them were patiently working through the gravel which had been cast up by previous diggings. They squatted there, meticulously digging and sifting, then throwing away and digging some more. As Libby paused to watch, one of the men called out excitedly and held up something in his hand. She could see it looked like a good sized nugget. Immediately, the other Chinese came running over and started digging next to the lucky man. But Libby was not the only one who had witnessed the discovery. From the hotel porch several men materialized, strolling up to the Chinese digging, as if they had all the time in the world. When they reached the spot, however, they fanned out, encircling the diggers.

“What you got there, Chinky?” one of them drawled.

The Chinese looked up suspiciously.

“Show me what you got, boy,” the man commanded, taking his pistol from its holster.

Unwillingly, the Chinese opened his hand to reveal the nugget.

“Well, lookee here,” the first man said, whistling. “I think Chinky just struck pay dirt. This claim’s too good for dirty foreigners, don’t you think, boys?”

His companions nodded, walking forward menacingly, fingering their own guns. Most of the Chinese backed away, but the finder of the nugget stuck his ground. “This not your claim,” he said. “This all used up. You don’t want.”

“Obviously it ain’t all used up if it produces stuff like this,” the man said. “OK. Hand it over.”

“Is mine. I find,” the Chinese said bravely. “Law says no claim jump.”

The men laughed. “What law?”

“United States law!” The Chinese said defiantly.

The laughter continued. “United States law is for Americans,” the man said. “It don’t apply to no dirty Chinese.”

“Excuse please. Chinese people not dirty. Chinese people wash more than white peoples. Very clean.”

The laughter faded at this direct insult. Another man stepped forward to join the first. “You’re scum. Killing Chinese is the same as shooting deer. Nobody cares.”

“Now, are you going to hand it over like a good boy, or am I going to have to blow your hand off first?” the first man asked.

Unwillingly, the Chinese opened his hand and the first man snatched the nugget. “Now, get out of here and don’t come back,” the man said. “If I catch you digging here again, I’m going to shoot first and ask questions afterward.”

“Is free country. Part of America,” the Chinese man said. The miner raised his arm and brought the butt of his gun crashing down on the Chinese man’s head. As he fell he kicked him viciously.

“This one’s a troublemaker, boys. Better make sure he don’t make no trouble again,” he growled.

The other men closed in. Libby had watched unseen from the side of the street. Now she could stand by no longer.

“Leave him alone,” she shouted, running up to the men who had closed in. The Chinese man had rolled himself into a ball, trying to protect himself from the vicious kicks. She didn’t stop to think of her own possible danger as she grabbed the leader’s arm. “Stop it at once!” she shouted. “It’s cowardly and disgusting. You’re a disgrace to your country.”

The men broke into laughter, but they stopped their attack to look at her.

“Well, ain’t that nice. It’s Lady Muck herself. Sorry you had to witness this, ma’am, but the little varmint was helping himself to gold he had no right to.”

“It was an old digging and you know it,” Libby said. “Besides, he gave you the nugget. Let him go.”

Bravely she pushed between them and held out her hand to the Chinese man. “Come on, get up and go while you still can,” she said. “They won’t kill you while I’m here. Hurry. Get out of here.”

The little man scrambled to his feet and scurried away like a frightened animal. The watchers roared with laughter and gave a final swing with the boot as he went past.

“He won’t be around here again in a hurry,” one of them said.

“And we got us enough gold here for a couple of bottles at least.”

Slowly, they began to drift back toward the hotel. Libby, her face still bright red and her heart still pounding, headed back to her cabin. She hurried as fast as she could, unable to shake off the uneasy feeling that she was being followed. Several times she was conscious of little sounds—the snap of a twig, the bouncing of pebbles down a slope. But when she stopped and looked back, she saw and heard nothing. She began to worry that one of the men she had stopped was coming to get his revenge and the moment she reached the cabin, she took down the rifle from the wall, putting it beside her on the table as she fixed the evening meal.

Eden and Bliss ate a few spoonfuls of pureed beans and coarse bread, then went willingly to bed. The docility worried Libby even more. It seemed as if they were just slipping away from life and that one day it would just be extinguished. She cleared away the half-eaten food and was washing off the remains outside the cabin when she was sure she heard a noise in the oak grove beyond. She dropped her pan and ran in to get the gun. As she came out again a shadow darted between trees.

“I know you’re there. You’d better come out and show yourself before I shoot,” Libby shouted.

“No shoot,” pleaded a little voice and out of the shadows stepped the Chinese man she had rescued that afternoon.

“Oh,” Libby said, completely taken by surprise. “It’s you. What do you want?”

The Chinese made her a solemn bow. “You save life,” he said. “Ah Fong thank missee. I stay here now.”

“Stay where?” Libby asked.

“I stay here with you.”

“But you can’t stay here,” Libby said. “I’ve only got this little cabin. No place for you here.”

“No worry,” Ah Fong said, with the slightest of smiles. “I build own place sleep and eat, but I belong you now.”

“What do you mean?” Libby asked anxiously. “You don’t belong to me.”

“Yes,” Ah Fong insisted. “You save life, now it belong you. I come be your servant. I make good servant. Take good care of missee.”

“But Ah Fong—is that your name? I really don’t need a servant and I can’t pay you.”

“No need pay. Ah Fong not need pay. Ah Fong need food. That all.”

“But I really don’t have food for you, Ah Fong,” Libby said, exasperated by his patient insistence. “We don’t have any good food left. Myself and my two daughters are only eating beans. We’re getting sick.”

“So?” Ah Fong said. He put down his bundle beside the cabin. “Not worry,” he said. “Ah Fong fix.”

Since he obviously wasn’t going to leave, Libby went back into the cabin again. It was getting dark and she could hardly send him back down to town at night. She scooped up a plate of beans and rice and took it out to him. He was already busy pulling down pine branches and making himself a little shelter. He accepted the food cordially.

Next morning he was nowhere to be seen, although the shelter now stood with woven sides and a thick pine roof and his bundle of possessions inside. Around midday he showed up again and came straight into the cabin without knocking or waiting to be asked. He opened his shirt and tipped out various plants onto the table.

“Here,” he said, picking up some small round leaves. “You eat.”

“What is it?” Libby asked.

“Good food,” he said. As if to demonstrate, he picked up a leaf and munched it, nodding all the time. “Make well again,” he said.

Then he held up some evergreen needless. “Make good tea,” he said. “Good for childrens.”

He brushed Libby aside and poured out water into a pan, adding the needles to it. The children didn’t like the taste, but the next day they did seem brighter and Eden’s gums weren’t bleeding as much. Ah Fong showed up with more leaves and roots he said were good to eat and spent hours putting out snares all around the cabin. By the end of the week the snares had caught a rabbit and a squirrel, both of which he skinned and cooked for them. He refused Libby’s offer to join them as she served the rabbit, but took his own plate outside, eating it squatting in his shelter. Libby felt guilty about his living in such a flimsy house, but he made it very clear to her that there was a distance between them. He was the servant and lived in the servant’s house and that was how it should be.

As she watched him, delicately eating rice with his chopsticks, she wondered if he was really some sort of genie in disguise. Incongruously, she found herself thinking back to her childhood. When she was a small girl her governess had read her the story of Aladin and his lamp. When she went to bed that night, she noticed her bedside lamp and, in horror, imagined what it would be like if a great, huge genie billowed out of it. The horror mounted until the evening breeze blew through her net curtains, sending them billowing out, just like a genie. Libby had screamed hysterically and brought the whole household running.

“It’s just a story,” her governess had said scornfully. “There is no such thing as magic lamps or genies. Now go to sleep.”

Maybe she didn’t know everything, Libby thought, looking with wonder at Ah Fong. Maybe I finally said the right magic words and now I have my own personal genie who’s going to make everything right.

L
lBBY SOON FOUND
out that Ah Fong was not going to be like a genie—devoted and willing to grant her every wish. As she should have suspected from the way he stood up to the bullies in town, he was not at all shy about speaking his opinion and telling her when she was wrong.

“Why you spoil good rabbit by stewing to death?” he asked her.

“It makes a good broth that way,” Libby said.

“Sure, good broth, but meat—like eating leather. Here, I show you.” Then he sliced up the meat and sauteed it lightly with some wild garlic, serving it with watercress that he had found in a stream. It tasted delicious beyond Libby’s wildest imaginings.

“Next time you go town, you stop by Chinese house,” he said. “I give you message and they give you spices. Make food taste better.”

Libby didn’t think the food could taste much better and she gladly let Ah Fong take over more of the cooking. The girls were responding to his additions to their diet and were already more feisty again. They were a little scared of Ah Fong at first, but after a week or so it became obvious that he had adopted them and would let them do all sorts of things their mother would not.

“Let’s play horsey, Ah Fong,” Bliss would yell and would climb on his back while he patiently galloped round and round.

“That’s enough, Bliss, you’re tiring Ah Fong,” Libby would call, but Ah Fong would look up, his face glistening with sweat. “Ah Fong no tired, missus. Ah Fong like play with little missee.”

Another thing Ah Fong took over as his own was the potato patch. He was horrified at the condition of the soil Libby had planted her potatoes in. “How they going to grow in lumpy bed?” he asked. “What they got to eat?”

“Plants need to eat?” Libby asked.

“Sure,” Ah Fong said. “We need dung. Make soil rich!”

So he had Libby and the girls walking up and down the trails, picking up the horse and mule droppings to be dug into the potato patch. The young plants seemed to like the attention because they sprouted healthy leaves and began to show white flowers. Libby found that she was looking forward to the future with anticipation for the first time in months. She really believed that the arrival of Ah Fong had been a turning point and that from now on, everything was going to get better and better.

One day she took her washing down to the stream below the cabin. It was still running fast and deep, far above the summer bed the miners had worked. Libby found a pool out of the main swirl of current and sat with her bare feet dangling in the cold water as she washed the girls’ clothes. It was an idyllic spot, overhung with willows decorated with the most delicate new green leaves. A kingfisher sat on a low bough, staring down at the water and a flock of tiny birds, no bigger than thimbles, hopped twittering through the branches. With the hot sun beating on the back of her neck, the water looked so inviting that Libby decided to wash the dress she was wearing also. It would soon dry in the sun on the bank. She took it off and slid into the water in just her camisole and underskirt. The water was icy cold but refreshing and she laughed as she bobbed up and down in it, splashing it over her face.

When her feet and legs were beginning to tingle with cold, she decided reluctantly that she had better get out. She hauled herself up the steep bank and found herself facing four grinning faces. She recognized at least one of them from the incident in town. Then, they had at least been polite to her. Now there was an animal quality to their grins.