Sacred Ground (35 page)

The attitudes of the men, on that Saturday morning, had alarmed Eliza. Especially when Mrs. Ostler had next greeted the creature with a “good morning,” and the other ladies had followed!

Miss D’Arcy had explained that she wished to purchase something for Mr. Hopkins’s supper, and so she had bought fried chicken with mashed potatoes and giblet gravy from Eliza’s kitchen. Eliza had wanted to inform the creature that the food was for hotel customers only, but how could she say that when it wasn’t true and everyone was standing there to witness her lie? She had had no choice but to let the girl go off with a basket full of Eliza’s best cooking, which she had no doubt the creature was going to claim she cooked herself.

It hadn’t ended with that. There had been the Saturday night when a group of fiddlers had come into the camp to hold an old-fashioned barn dance without the barn and it had ended up in a brawl because all the men wanted to dance with Angelique. And the day a couple of mountain men came into Eliza’s hotel with their Indian women and Eliza had been about to demand that they leave when Angelique had come running in, having heard of their arrival, to ask if they knew her father and, learning they were French, to get them all prattling like monkeys in a foreign tongue with Llewellyn, that daft Welshman, asking her afterward to give him French lessons! Ingvar Swenson sending a dozen fresh eggs to Miss D’Arcy as a welcoming gift; Mrs. Ostler wanting Miss D’Arcy’s opinion on the color of the yarn she had chosen for a new shawl; and Cora Holmsby asking Miss D’Arcy for advice on perfume.

But the final straw had been the incident with the peaches.

Eliza had secretly contracted with a farmer in the valley to bring a wagonload of peaches on the guarantee that everyone would buy them, with Eliza receiving a percentage of the take. As she had promised, peaches were such a rare treat that everyone crowded around, pressing banknotes and bags of gold dust upon the vendor. And then all of a sudden, Seth’s creature had come pushing through, babbling something about the fruit being bad and that to eat it would make everyone seriously ill.

A fracas had erupted, with the farmer shouting angrily and waving his arms, and Miss D’Arcy trying to stop people from reaching for the peaches, and Seth Hopkins arriving and trying to calming everyone down. When asked why she thought the fruit was bad, the creature hadn’t even been able to explain. She had just looked at Seth with those bewitching eyes, and said, “Please, you will all be ill if you eat.”

To Eliza’s astonishment, Seth had said, “Well then maybe we shouldn’t buy the peaches,” and everyone had replaced the ones they had selected.

While the others stood around wondering what to do, with the farmer shouting invectives in a language no one recognized, Eliza had walked up to the wagon and purchased a whole bushel of peaches. The others immediately followed suit, nearly emptying the man’s wagon and sending him off with a smile.

What had burned the incident into Eliza’s brain was the way Seth had acquiesced to the creature’s admonition, as though she had sapped his will. That was when Eliza had realized it was time to take matters into her own hands.

And so, on this late-summer Saturday evening with crickets singing and a taste of fall in the air, she plied Seth Hopkins with a generous second helping of her peach pie. “She knows things,” he said between mouthfuls, washing the sweet, juicy pie down with cold milk. “I don’t know how or why, but Miss D’Arcy just somehow knows things. She said she saw the camp falling sick after eating the peaches. Like a vision.” He ran his spoon around the plate, catching the last of the syrup and crust. “Some folks do have the sight, you know. Women, mostly.”

Eliza didn’t know anything about visions or sight, but she knew a sly and cunning woman when she saw one. After the peach vendor left Eliza had made up a batch of pies so that the folks who had missed the farmer could still have a treat. She had even sent a pie over to Seth’s cabin, only to learn the next day that the creature had thrown it out! Everyone in the camp had savored Eliza’s peach pies and declared them the best in the territory. Who did that creature think she was to throw one out? But Eliza knew the gesture had less to do with Miss D’Arcy being worried about the fruit than with her staking a claim on Seth Hopkins. Eliza knew what the creature was up to. Even if Seth did not.

For a few Saturday nights now, as Seth had sat with Eliza on the front porch of her hotel, he had sent conflicting signals. One minute he would tell her he was reaching the end of his patience with Miss D’Arcy and that she was costing him an arm and a leg to keep, in the next he would comment on Miss D’Arcy’s perfume, or the charming way she laughed. Eliza knew what even Seth himself did not know: that he, too, was falling under the creature’s spell.

Eliza hadn’t expected competition for Seth. It was one of the reasons she had come out to California from the East, because women here were outnumbered by men at least ten to one. Even a woman such as herself, who had been “passed over” and was a spinster at thirty, stood a good chance of snaring a great prize like Seth Hopkins. She had been trying for eight months to get him to look at her in a “matrimonial” way, seducing him with jam tarts, meat pies, and praise of his masculine strength whenever he worked the odd repair around her hotel. She never criticized him, even when he wiped his mouth on her tablecloth instead of using his sleeve, or when he belched without pardoning himself. She never mentioned that she thought he should expand his claim onto Charlie Bigelow’s since Charlie wasn’t working his own spot a hundred percent. She didn’t push Seth to higher ambition, like suggesting he would get more gold if he used a sluice instead of a pan— his argument being that those upstream shouldn’t be greedy because those downstream would get nothing. She bit her tongue when he declared all he wanted was enough to live comfortably while every other man in Devil’s Bar was burning to be richer than Midas. Eliza felt she was drawing close to a time when she could plant the seed in his mind that here they were, good friends by now, and helping each other as neighbors should, and how he needed a woman and she could use a man around the place, which only led to a logical conclusion. But now Miss D’Arcy was seducing him with her bright gowns and feminine helplessness.

“Won’t be long now,” he said as he filled his pipe, “before California becomes a state.”

“When it does, I hope they do something about all these foreigners coming in. I hear there are Chinamen up at American Fork now.”

He looked at her. “Aren’t
we
foreigners, Eliza?”

Her smile remained fixed. “Of course! I was joking!”

He nodded and went back to lighting his pipe. “Everyone here came from someplace else. ‘Cept for the Indians. I reckon God created them right here.”

Eliza said nothing. She loathed California’s natives and thought they couldn’t be gotten rid of soon enough. Thank God for men like Taffy Llewellyn and Rupert MacDougal who went on periodic purges through the countryside. If it were up to Seth Hopkins, Devil’s Bar would be overrun by savages. “Is Miss D’Arcy working out any better?” she asked, reminded of another loathsome creature.

He puffed the tobacco to life. “I’m in a quandary, Eliza. She comes in a mighty pretty package but she’s completely useless. I’ve tried to show her a few things, but it’s like she’s afraid of the stove. When bacon spatters, she jumps back. She doesn’t want to get grease on any of her fine dresses. And all the raccoons and foxes love my cabin, she throws so much food out. I came home the other night and there was Miss D’Arcy running out of the cabin with the frying pan on fire. She threw the whole lot into the creek. I had to buy a new frying pan from Bill Ostler, and you know what
that
cost me!”

He stretched his legs in front of him, crossing them at the ankles. “I’ve never known a woman didn’t know how to cook and sew. Not like you, Eliza. You’re a very capable woman. You don’t worry about being pretty or making yourself look nice. And you appreciate the value of a dollar.”

Eliza’s lips compressed in a thin line. “Maybe she won’t last long and you will be rid of her.”

“Can’t see that happening. She’s working off the debt she owes me. And she’s looking for her father. Can’t turn her out on her own. Not with her being so helpless.”

Eliza wanted to say something about Miss D’Arcy and her helplessness, but instead said, “Are you sure there
is
a father?”

He gave her a look of genuine surprise. “Why would she lie?”

Eliza didn’t respond. How could Seth have reached the age of thirty-two and not know that there were some women who would say anything to get a man to take care of them?

“In the meantime,” he said, “I suppose I’ll just have to put up with Charlie Bigelow’s snoring, and burnt potatoes for my supper.”

“You can always come here for a good meal. Fried chicken, biscuits, and gravy. Your favorite.”

He laughed. “Eliza, you charge an arm and a leg for your dinners.”

“I would give you a special discount, you know that.”

“Nope. Wouldn’t be fair to the others who are working just as hard as me. I’d insist on paying the full price, fair and square.”

Eliza kept her thoughts to herself. There were times when Seth Hopkins’s sense of fairness and honesty galled her. “Well, you are to be praised for doing your Christian duty and rescuing that poor creature.”

“Being Christian had nothing to do with it. Couldn’t leave her at the mercy of the likes of Boggs. Any other man would’ve done the same.”

Any other man, Eliza thought, would have brought the creature home and set her up in a gilded cage and gone moony-eyed over her. But not Seth Hopkins. When it came to women, he wore blinders. He had once spoken of a sweetheart back home who ended up marrying someone else. In all of his talk of the girl, Seth never once uttered the word love. Eliza was beginning to wonder if he was one of those men incapable of love. The most a woman could ask from him was loyalty and protection. Well, that was all Eliza expected from a man. She wasn’t sure romantic love even existed, the type that poets spoke of. Men could be silver-tongued when they thought a woman was coming into an inheritance, she recalled bitterly, and then vanish when they learned that she was in fact penniless. No, Eliza preferred Seth’s bluntness. At least she knew where she stood with him. And if they should marry, she wouldn’t even expect to fall in love.

“Would you like me to try and help? Show Miss D’Arcy some basic cookery?”

He seemed awash with relief. “Oh Eliza, I would be most grateful! I think Angelique could benefit from the help of an older woman.”

The face of Eliza Gibbons, who was only five years older than Miss D’Arcy and two years younger than Seth, went hard and her eyes glinted like chips of black coal. But she managed to keep her smile, as she said, “Leave everything to me. I’ll help poor Miss D’Arcy find her way around a stove.”

* * *

She couldn’t believe it. She had ruined the potatoes again!

As she stared at the burnt mess in the cooking pot, Angelique felt tears threaten to rise. How did the other women manage it? She either made the stove too hot or not hot enough. If she paid attention to frying the meat, then the vegetables burned. If she stirred the stew, then the corn bread caught on fire. How was she to juggle everything at once? As she tossed the blackened spuds out back, knowing the raccoons and foxes would make a meal of them later, she pictured what Mr. Hopkins’s reaction was going to be: when she ruined a meal or burned holes in his shirts with the iron, he was never angry or critical. He would simply say, “You’ll learn and do better next time.” Seth Hopkins was the most even-tempered man she had ever known. She couldn’t imagine him almost killing a man. Yet he said he had gone to prison for that very thing. He didn’t seem to have that kind of rage within him. Perhaps the woman he was protecting was someone he loved. Was there maybe a hidden part of Seth Hopkins, a wellspring of passion waiting for the right woman to come along, someone like herself, who understood passion?

Chiding herself for such thoughts— more and more lately she had found herself daydreaming about Seth Hopkins, his tallness, his strength, his handsome face, wondering even what it would be like to be kissed by him— she returned to the cabin with its dark shadows and musty smells and loneliness. She had driven pegs into the walls and hung her gowns and dresses from them so she could work on the stains and the small tears in the fabric. Keeping her wardrobe in pristine condition was nearly a full-time job. It was also what kept her sane.

Angelique had never thought life could be so hard. She was even starting to develop blisters and raw hands, and her muscles were sore all the time. It was work, work, work with no diversion or entertainment whatsoever. Not even the traveling circus stopped in Devil’s Bar because the camp was too small to be worth their time. And the only piano was in the saloon, where women were not allowed. The only distractions came from Saturday night brawls, the occasional fistfight in the street, or the time the entire camp was wakened in the middle of the night when Llewellyn the Welshman’s moonshine still exploded, or the evening Charlie Bigelow, unable to take one more rendition of Rupert MacDougal’s bagpipe concert, came out with a shotgun, aimed it at the pipes, and said, “Learn ye another tune or I’ll blast ye and that infernal contraption to kingdom come.”

There had been one bright spot, when a baby was born to the Swensons. Children being such a rarity in this part of the territory, miners came from all around to pay their respects and bring gifts for the child, even Indians came bearing beads and feathers. Angelique had watched grown men weep at the sight of the baby, and the moment was so infused with reverence that it reminded her of the nativity of Jesus (although, later all the men got drunk and tore up the camp with fights and gunfire).

Most of all she was homesick. She craved chili peppers and tortillas. Her ears ached for the sound of a Spanish guitar. She missed strolling through the immense open-air markets of Mexico City and perusing the pottery, textiles, and unique wood carvings. She wished there were someone to speak Spanish with.