The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters (Arbor House Library of Contemporary Americana) (57 page)

“I don’t want a python,” I said, snuffling a little. “I want Sam.”

“Well, son, he’s expired, and we’re simply going to have to bear up and put a brave face on it. Think of it this way—he’s gone to frisk and baaa in Goat Heaven, a wonderful, wonderful place for an animal with his disposition. I see it as a very old, littered back yard, full of cans, broken bottles, pieces of rake and umbrella, half-bricks and fresh laundry. He’ll browse and munch, selecting this,
discarding that. Why, he’ll have a perfect picnic of a time. He’ll never miss us at all.”

No matter what he said, my father never liked Sam after he’d broken into the house and eaten his suitcase. So I didn’t listen any more, but took some of the letters and went off by myself.

It wasn’t till that evening, when Uncle Ned Reeves and Todd had gone to Marysville to see friends, that Mr, Coe told us what
his
mail had contained.

“The sad truth is, I must leave,” he told us, as we sat around the campfire. We made a fuss, and my father said, “If it’s a question of money, Coe, it goes without saying that we consider a share of this strike to be yours. As the companion of our misfortunes, you can scarcely be omitted from our triumphs.”

Coe smiled. “Thank you, doctor. It isn’t a question of money. The trouble is that we’ve had something of a family crisis. Two of them, in brief, and the consequences are far from pleasant to me.”

“Any way we can help, Coe. Any way at all. I’ve gathered from what you’ve let slip that they’re somewhat beneath you. You have risen above your origins, and I like to think that you’ve won some influential, and even moneyed, new friends.”

“I’m warmly appreciative,” said Mr. Coe. “But there isn’t any easy solution. No, I’ve simply got to face the music. There’s no two ways about it. You see, I’ve come into the dukedom—Duke of Blandford—and it isn’t the sort of thing I want at all. Never thought it possible, actually. What happened was, the old gentleman toppled over. He had a heart seizure after an argument with some judges at a petunia exhibit, and my elder brother—never could stand him, by the way—took a spill while pursuing the beastly foxes. Rotten bad luck for me. I’m for it, that’s all there is to be said.”

“Perhaps if you went over it again, a little more slowly, Coe,” said my father, and I could see that the words were coming out hard.

“I’ve got to go back and take charge—manage the estate, lawn fetes, charitable balls, county benefactions, local member, can’t
imagine a more galling ordeal. I like it out here, too. The life suits me.”

“Coe,” said my father. “Not a dukedom. Surely you mean baron, or viscount, or even earl or marquis.
Not
a duke, if it’s perfectly agreeable.”

“Believe me, you have my profoundest apologies. My brother was Lord Hurley, and being the second son, I was ‘honourable,’ you understand. I never believed in the system at all myself. A title ought to be won, like justice of the peace, or sergeant major. Certainly the old gentleman was never worth shooting, his whole life long, and neither was my brother.”

“Why, you must be related to the royal family.”

“Cousins—I’ve forgotten how distant. They’ve got it written down somewhere around the place.”

“The estate’s gone to pot, you said?” my father went on hopefully. He’d got to find some flaw here if it killed him. “There probably isn’t money enough to keep up appearances? I’ve seen this sort of thing before; it’s common enough.”

“No, I believe the governor was considered rather well off, in a comparative way. The estate itself, the house, acres and the like, are entailed, of course. But I believe he has a fairly large amount of money, something like three or four million pounds, somebody said. He didn’t make it, of course. His father did. Silly, I mean all that for one man, and him an idiot, practically.”

Well, we couldn’t think of anything sensible to say. Especially my father, who’d been so free about calling Mr. Coe’s family a bunch of ne’er-do-wells. It’s funny, but it changed things. The Kissels couldn’t take it in, exactly, and Jennie acted like a schoolgirl, never addressing a normal remark to the unhappy fellow from that moment on. It was a crying shame. One day he was a good friend, on the easiest kind of footing, and the next he was something removed forever. And it wasn’t any of his doing, either.

“I’d shirk it in a minute if I could,” he said gloomily. “But you just don’t do that sort of thing in England. I needn’t tell youyou probably know it well enough.”

We had a strained, silent supper, and since everybody was embarrassed to ask Mr. Coe what he should be called, now—knowing, too, that he wouldn’t let us change—we didn’t call him anything at all, but simply talked without addressing him directly. What’s more, I found myself avoiding his eyes, as if one of us had done something dark and shameful. It was crazy.

After supper, he took Po-Povi by the hand and said, including us all, “Now, child, I’ve been making arrangements with the bank in San Francisco, and if Doctor McPheeters is willing, it would give me pleasure to take you to England and see that you get a proper education. You have a quick, curious mind—that much I’ve learned from our lessons—and it should be given the chance for knowledge. How does that strike you, doctor?”

My father looked taken aback for an instant; then he said, “Whatever’s right for the lass, of course, providing she favors the idea.”

The girl looked up, her eyes shining, and then she glanced around at us all, me last. But she didn’t need to go throwing herself on my hands; I couldn’t make up her mind; it didn’t matter two pins to me if she went to the North Pole and sold ice. My father said she was free, and free she was, ungrateful or not.

And later, after they’d talked it over a good deal, she came down to where I was skipping rocks in the stream, and said:

“Doctor thinks I should go. I could be a lady.”

“You go right ahead,” I said. “Get to be a lady by all means. Yes, Your Worship, no, Your Lordship. Will you have some more punch, Your Honor. I’ve seen it in books. A collection of capering nincompoops.”

“Like Mr. Coe?” she said softly.

“He’ll change. You wait. He was wearing white gloves when he came out, and he’ll go back to them quick, on the other side.”

“Then you think I should
not go?”

“Who, me? I haven’t got any stake in it. It’s nothing to me. Charge right on, do just as you please.”

“I thought maybe you might miss our fun in the woods. Fishing and hunting for plants, talking together, being friends.”

“Fish will bite whether people go to England or stay home. It doesn’t make a particle of difference to
them.
Go ahead, if you think you’ve got to, I don’t need any guide in the woods.”

She didn’t say anything for a minute, then she said, “I’ll miss you, anyway. And I’ll come back, and be just the same.”

“Oh, no. Once you’ve joined the tea-sippers, you won’t have any time for outdoor things. Don’t worry about coming back.”

“You mean you don’t want me to come?”

“I’ll be pretty busy,” I said, “and digging gold and tea-sipping don’t mix. We wouldn’t have time to knock off and get the pot going. No, you’d better just count on staying right where you are.”

Her eyes suddenly blazed up and turned a kind of fiery purple, the way they did sometimes. Then she whirled around with her head high and started back toward the clearing. I continued to skip rocks, whistling, but I was so mad over her thinking it made any difference to me, I felt sort of choked, and both palms were sweaty. So she was gone. One Indian less. But at the edge of the trees, she stopped and called back, “Jaimee, I will miss you. You are my brother.” Then she folded her arms in a cross over her bosom, very curious, but it didn’t mean a thing to me.

I gave a short laugh, and stood without saying anything until she left. Indians. I kicked a couple of logs, which didn’t work out, being barefoot, and sat down on the bank, feeling miserable for some reason.

And I didn’t get any sleep that night, either. I was homesick, I guess. Toward dawn I dozed off for a while. When they left, with everybody teary and sad, I stayed to one side, mostly. I said I would write a letter, but didn’t mean it. After they were gone, I went down in the woods, and after a while I went to sleep.

Before leaving this part, I want to include a conversation my father had with Mr. Coe apart, after supper the night before. They didn’t think I heard, but I happened to be behind a tree, and I failed to entirely avoid listening.

“Coe,” said my father, embarrassed. “This is awkward to bring up, and I make my apologies in advance, but is your interest in the
little Po-Povi altogether, ah, educational? That is, in an honorable way, of course, do you—?”

“My dear fellow,” said Mr. Coe, “you have every right to ask. But I wish you to consider; the child is thirteen; I am nearly forty. What’s more, I am tentatively engaged to the Lady Barbara Willing. Nothing could be further from my mind. And as to any sordid intrigue, I can assure you—”

“Please say no more,” exclaimed my father, coughing furiously. “I beg you, erase it from your mind. Reduced as I am, I am still able to recognize a gentleman when I see one.”

“So am I, doctor,” said Mr. Coe, smiling, “and let me tell you now what I am not able to say well—that I feel the richer for having known you all.”

“My dear fellow—” began my father, choked up, and they left it at that.

So we lost two companions. It left our hearts heavy. And for my part, I guess I’d better out with it and get it off my chest—in my stupid, cruel, childish way, I let the girl go without a solitary word of kindness. But she hadn’t any right saying I’d miss her like that-most of all, she hadn’t any right to go.

We began crevicing in our creek bed again, but we were about through. Uncle Ned thought there was gold down deep in the rock, but it was probably a thin vein there, and not worth the toil. That rock was hard to powder, even for Mr. Kissel.

As it was, we cleaned out everything in sight, up one side and down the other; then we called it a day. Altogether, that creek bed had coughed up better than eight thousand dollars, which was a very good haul, short of an outright strike.

We divided it up and prospected around for more. Everybody could see the Kissels were anxious to put their stake in a farm now, but my father talked them into shooting for more, to “obtain a ranch of princely proportions.” So they went along, not because they wanted anything princely, let alone a ranch, but because they wished to be helpful and not leave us shorthanded.

Several days ran by, with us not crevicing enough in the creek beds to pay for our food. We did some dry digging, too, such as people said was popular, near a place called Weber Town, and also used the cradle and sluices on several ravines. But there was very little doing. We hated to see our eight thousand dollars melt away, and got pretty down in the mouth. One evening, a very frail man of about forty-five, gray-black-haired and sickly, with a woman in about the same shape as he was, only worse, stopped by camp to ask for water. Mrs. Kissel took pity on them right away, telling the poor peaked wife she ought not to be traipsing over the hills in her rundown condition but should tent up for a rest. The way they looked, they certainly needed it; they were beat out. Still, raggedy as they
were, something about them reminded me of somebody else. It was funny. I racked my brain, but I couldn’t place them.

“It’s hard,” the woman said. “I and Morris have sank everything into getting this far. What’s more, we’ve placed our faith in the dear blessed Jehovah, and we cain’t hardly stop when we’re this close to Canaan.”

The man spoke up in a kind of croaky voice, which would have interested an undertaker with the expectations of doing some business soon, and said, like her, “It’s hard, hard. Given one additional month, thirty days, in tolerable health, we could have shoved over the hill, but everything throwed off at once. Bauxie taken down with flux, and then I’m confounded to goodness if I didn’t slip on a rock while shoveling and produce a double hernier, totally crippling, both sides, port and starboard.”

The man said he had been cook on a small coastal vessel, but had naturally jumped ship when gold was discovered, the year before, and sent for his wife, who was running an eatery in San Francisco.

He looked around uneasily, coughing a little.

“There ain’t but one thing to do—sell out before we’re thieved out. And us with a fortune in our laps.”

“You poor things,” cried Mrs. Kissel. “You’re churchgoing, you said, back home?”

“Ma’am, it’s faith has sustained us this far. Faith, omnium-gatherum, and open bowels.”

This omnium-gatherum was a dish of food that a bunch of half-starved Frenchmen had concocted, and the name had spread through the camps, being no more than a potful of whatever they could find hereabouts, mostly frog legs, turtles, woodpecker birds and squirrels, all mixed together.

“Your luck hasn’t been all bad, then?” my father asked, politely.

The man looked even uneasier than before; then he said, “All bad, or mediocre, up to five weeks ago, sir.”

“Morris, your tongue’s a-waggling again.”

“These are kind, Christian people,” he said. “Even in a den of cutthroat thugs, you can select those worthy of trust, praise be to
the infant Jesus.” He described how they had been fleeced out of one claim, then told how in another place where they’d dug, a man had been branded on the cheek with a hot iron for claim-jumping, and still another, “only a lad,” had been shorn of his ears for pilfering dust out of sacks.

My father smiled. “Whatever secrets you may have are safe with us. We are not yet reduced to preying on our fellow creatures.”

Looking all around to establish that no strangers were nearby, the man hauled from his pocket something wrapped in a piece of tissue paper.

“Morris!”

He hesitated a second, then threw the coverings back. We all gasped. Lying there, fat and yellow, was a nugget the size of a walnut. It was pure, solid gold, no quartz blossom; no alloy of any kind a child could have told it.

“Great Scott!” said my father, and Uncle Ned reached over, with, “Begging your pardon,” and held it up to the light.