Gold Rush Wedding, Page 9

  Chapter One

  Sierra Nevada, Alta California, 1849

  Lucinda Martin York squared her shoulders, straightened her skirt, and steeled her resolve as the last of the wagons pulled away and left her behind. She was alone. Wholly, undeniably, unequivocally alone. As she watched the dust rise from behind the wagon wheels, a tremor passed through her uncorseted diaphragm, and she held back the urge to give in to her emotions. She was sixteen, she was strong, and she had her wits about her. She would survive. Not only would she survive, she would reach her dreams.

  Shaking their heads at her stubbornness, everyone else in the Middy-Brighton wagon train was continuing on to places where they’d heard the gold was richer, the nuggets bigger, and the lands of milk and honey sweeter. Those were places farther away from San Francisco, farther away from her dreams.

  She watched her own wagon, the one she’d sold, roll away, bumping along the rutty road—a horse trail, really—and she patted the possible bag tied underneath her apron. At least the sale of her wagon and oxen gave her a few dollars. Enough dollars to survive on until the snows settled in upon this little valley the locals called “Cullumah.” By that time, she’d be long gone, on a ship bound from San Francisco, heading back east to apply to medical schools. The deaths of both of her parents from cholera while on the trail had convinced her of the rightness of her choice. She already knew a great deal about herbal healing, but it hadn’t been enough to save her ma and pa. If she’d had a doctor’s knowledge, Lucinda reasoned, she could have done more. Besides, if Elizabeth Blackwell could graduate from Geneva Medical College, then Lucinda Martin York could and would graduate from medical school. With honors. She held Elizabeth’s story in her heart as a beacon of hope.

  “What are you waiting for?” she asked herself.

  She tucked her unruly mass of chestnut hair into her bonnet, dusted off her apron, grabbed the handle of her handcart, and began the short trek up the road that skirted the few buildings in the settlement.

  The first group of small buildings sat near the sawmill. Today the mill towered silent beside the American River, an unfortunate victim of the delirium that had swept the millworkers. They scurried and scooped in the water below the tailrace, swirling the sand in their gold pans like supplicants praying for a glint of color.

  Looking away from the men, Lucinda knocked on the door of a small stone house. The smell of fried bacon and beans wafted out through the stone chimney and settled in the curls of her hair and the folds of her cotton dress. A rugged-looking man came to the door, a bit of pot likker dripping down his gnarly beard. Lucinda instinctively laid her hand over her chin, making a wiping motion.

  “Well, well. It’s a woman.” The man rubbed his sleeve over his beard and inspected the fresh stain on his already crusty sleeve.

  Alarmed at the rude reception, Lucinda frowned. “Yes, I am that.”

  Behind him, a faded calico curtain divided the cabin into two areas. A second man, as grizzled as the first, sat at the table in front of the curtain, scooping beans from a bowl. His beard was so thick Lucinda couldn’t actually see his mouth, where she supposed the beans were being transported. She saw only his hand with the spoon depositing food into a mass of hair.

  She swallowed. “Excuse me for interrupting your breakfast. I’m eager to find employment here for a fair wage.”

  The man stared at her as if she’d spoken in a language he didn’t understand. After a pause, he recovered. “What kind of work did you have in mind, miss?”

  “Anything will do. I just need to earn enough to pay my way to San Francisco.”

  The man at the table coughed and hit the table with his hand. As he continued to cough and slap the table, the man at the door hitched a thumb toward his roommate. “Look what you done to my brother. You about gave him a fit of apoplexy. We don’t have any work for you, miss. As you can see, we shut down the mill, ’cept for emergencies. We’re miners, looking for some color, just like everyone else in this town.”

  “Surely there are people here who aren’t miners,” Lucinda ventured.

  “Why would they be here if it weren’t for the call of the gold?” He hitched his suspenders up over his shoulders and reached behind the door for his hat. “You’d best get along or get down to the river and stake a claim of your own.”

  Lucinda stepped back to let him pass through the door. She grabbed the handles of the handcart that held all of her belongings. A few pots and pans, a waterproof tarp to use as a shelter, some clothing, and a few sacks of food. Precious possessions in this wild country.

  “I’ll just keep on walking up the road, then.” She turned her cart uphill. “Good luck in the river today.”

  “You’d better keep that luck.” The man hefted his pickaxe onto his shoulder. “You’re going to need it more than me.”

  Around a bend in the road, she saw a long, low building with a sign that read: “J. B. Garland, Assayer of Fair and Honest Repute.” She knew if a businessman needed a sign to pronounce him honest, he often wasn’t. She stepped into the assayer’s office anyway.

  Behind the office, a stamper pounded rocks from the surrounding hillside. The noise deafened Lucinda, and she leaned forward into the barred window separating Mr. Garland’s desk and scales from the front lobby. She shouted to be heard over the booming of the heavy metal beams on the rock.

  “Good afternoon, sir. I’m looking for work in town.”

  “I can hear you fine without you shouting.” The man she assumed to be Mr. Garland didn’t raise his eyes from his ledger.

  “I’m terribly sorry.” Lucinda felt a flush of heat warm her neck and cheeks. “I’m new here, and I require employment.”

  The man peered at her with his calculating blue eyes and set down his pen. “Let me give you a piece of advice. Never tell anyone you’re new here.”

  Lucinda blinked in surprise. The man’s brusque reception was no less disconcerting than the previous man’s had been. “Why wouldn’t I tell people I’m new?”

  “Everyone is new here. The only people who have been here longer than a few months are Mrs. Henriod, who runs the boarding house, and Mr. Peabody, who was here when James Marshall first built the sawmill for John Sutter.”

  “I see. In that case, I’m here for a job.”

  “Let me give you a second piece of advice.” He leaned over the counter toward Lucinda. “No one here is looking for a job or to hire. They’re all down at the river. When it yields some color, they bring it to me. I don’t need anyone helping me value the gold the miners find.”

  “You don’t need to be rude.”

  “Didn’t mean to be. Just advising you.”

  “Your advice is taken.” Although not appreciated.

  “I don’t suppose you’d have experience working on a stamper.” She knew he was mocking her. She’d seen the heavy iron tubs of quartz behind the building, gold veins glistening with their riches. If she worked a stamper, she’d be deaf before year’s end. A doctor couldn’t be deaf, could she? Then how would she listen to her patients as they recounted their symptoms?

  Lucinda trudged farther on down the road toward the blacksmith’s shop, where she fared even worse than she did at the assayer’s office. When she suggested she might be of assistance to the blacksmith, he laughed until he doubled over. His gazed roved over her tiny frame. “You don’t look strong enough to blow out a candle, let alone pump the bellows. Besides, you’d probably catch your bonnet strings on fire.”

  “I can assure you, I have plenty of air in my lungs to handle your tiny fire.”

  His eyebrows rose to a satisfying height.

  “Additionally, for your information, my bonnet strings have never been singed.”

  Lucinda ripped her bonnet off her head and tossed it in her handcart. No matter. I’ll find a way to make a living here. I have no choice. I have no family to help. I have no friends here. I have my own strength of will and that will have to suffice.

  Lucinda didn’t even bother wi
th the small clapboard general store on what passed for Main Street. Most general stores were family-owned and run enterprises. She walked with weary steps upriver, crunching scabrous, dead leaves under her feet. The handcart grew as heavy with her lack of possessions as her heart grew heavy with worry. She checked the time on her father’s silver pocket watch, the only possession of his she still owned. When he and her mother had succumbed to cholera, as had so many on that terrible journey out west, she kept his pocket watch and her mother’s herbal journal. Deep within her, she knew the journal held the key to her future. The medical and botanical notations were Lucinda’s guidebook for healing others. The wisdom of life passed on from mother to daughter would be her inspiration through the dark days she knew lay ahead.

  Lucinda sighed. It was after 3:00 p.m. and the sun set early this time of year. Already, the mountains were casting purple shadows across the landscape.

  She needed to find a place to set up the waterproof tarps she used for a tent. After more than six months on the trail, she could set up and take down a tent in less than ten minutes. The area around the mill town was crowded with miners, so she walked farther up a hill and away from the town.

  She stopped on a small, flat stretch of land high above the sawmill where James Marshall had discovered gold in January of last year. All the men that used to run it were too busy looking for gold to be bothered with cutting lumber now. With California gold currently valued at sixteen dollars an ounce, the miners braved stark conditions in an attempt to become rich. When she and her parents had left Missouri with their wagon train last April, the talk had been all about the rich land free for the taking in the newly settled Alta California. It didn’t take long for the news of a gold discovery at Sutter’s Mill to spread, especially after Sam Brannan sent copies of The California Star newspaper back east by courier, announcing the riches to be found as easily as bending over and picking them off the ground. The hills around this valley and beyond now crawled with thousands of argonauts, tiny pillars of smoke from their fires marking their locations.

  The aroma of meat roasting, possibly a wild rabbit, reminded Lucinda she hadn’t eaten today. She found an inviting spot under an oak tree with low-hanging branches and pitched her tent. Keeping her valuables with her in her possible bag, she walked to the river and scooped a kettle full of clear, cold water. Then she walked back to her campsite and began building her evening fire.

  In no time at all, she had a cooking blaze going, and she set her kettle on one of the flat cooking rocks at the edge to heat water for tea. She pulled out her mother’s journal and read a few pages, admiring the beauty of her script. The swirls of feminine font brought on a rush of memories filled with emotions still new and raw. Lucinda found it hard to breathe.

  She shoved the journal back into her pack and pulled out her own journal. She’d written in it daily, keeping an accurate account of the overland journey ever since her family left Springfield, Missouri. Whenever she made it back east, back to the states, she could read this journal of her California adventures. She would never take a soft, warm bed for granted again.

  Over the crackling of burning wood, she heard a soft quacking sound in the nearby shadows. She stood up to see where it was coming from. A young duckling ran up next to her and peeped a friendly hello. It cocked its head to one side and looked up at her.

  “Well, hello, little one.” She held out a hand toward it. “Where did you come from?”

  It gave her a soft quack in reply. Lucinda peered into the nearby scrub oaks but didn’t see the mother.

  “You’ve wandered away from home,” she told it. “Where are your mama and your brothers and sisters?”

  Again, the duckling looked up at her, cocked its head, and quacked.

  “I suppose if you’re lost, it wouldn’t hurt if you spent the night here. In the morning we’ll go find your mama.” In her heart, though, Lucinda knew the duckling’s mother was probably dead. No duckling would wander away unless its mother was dead. They were two orphans together.

  She sprinkled a small amount of rice in a pan, poured some of the boiling water from the kettle over it, and placed it at the edge of the fire. Everywhere she moved the duckling followed, peeping softly, scuffling in and out of the hem of her skirt.

  “Are you hungry, too?” She spread a bit of coarsely ground cornmeal on a flat rock. The duckling gobbled it up and pecked around the ground for more food.

  “If you’re going to stay and visit with me tonight, I need to give you a name.” She slowly reached down and it allowed her to pet it on the head. “You’re so tame!” she exclaimed. “It’s a lucky thing for you that you came to my camp and not some hungry miner’s camp. You might have ended up in his stewpot.”

  Stirring the rice, she pondered names. “Hmm, let’s see. How about Molly?” The duckling ran a few steps away from her. Its head bobbed up and down as it looked at her.

  “Okay, I see you don’t like that one. That’s all right. I didn’t really like it either.” Lucinda sat down and made herself comfortable on her stool. “Maybe you’re a boy, not a girl. I should pick a name that could go both ways. Um, what do you think of Popper?” The duckling stayed in its spot, still bobbing its head up and down, watching Lucinda.

  “Okay, let’s try Cinnamon. You have such pretty brown feathers.” At the sound of the name Cinnamon, the duck moved a little closer, cocked its head, and quacked loudly.

  “Cinnamon!” Lucinda called to it. The duckling ran to her and scooted under her skirt hem.

  She laughed. “I see you like that name. All right. Cinnamon it is.”

  Cinnamon settled into a warm spot under her skirt hem, just barely poking its head out. The last rays of the sun winked out behind the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, turning everything to shadow. Lucinda stirred her pot of rice again and dropped a few tea leaves in her teakettle. She enjoyed the warmth of the fire and the warmth of the duck lying on her feet.

  Something crunched behind her and a twig snapped. Lucinda spun around. The dusky darkness hid everything beyond her warm ring of light. A tendril of fright, carried on her exhalation, reached out to brush her cheek.

  “Who’s there?” She hoped her voice sounded strong and clear.

  No one answered, and the silence was so great even Cinnamon stopped moving. The feeling of unease settled across her shoulders and into the pit of her stomach.

  She stood up, determined to out whoever was hiding in the dark.

  ~~~~

  Excerpt from Gold Rush Deluge:

  Prologue

  October 1848, New York

  Dr. Mitchell Kersey brushed a piece of dead grass off his wool coat sleeve as he watched the two oilcloth wrapped bundles sink under the still surface of the millpond. He tossed the key to his house into its murky depths. A sigh of relief escaped his lips. Soon the cold winter temperatures would ice over the millpond and bury it in deep snow, snow that would bury his cold secret. He felt a sense of satisfaction at a clean job well done, with a minimum of blood, mess, and fuss. However, his satisfaction was tinged with disappointment that he would never be able to share this particular accomplishment with anyone.

  Nonetheless, he hummed an energetic tune, Radetsky’s Marsch by Johann Strauss, as he walked to the crossroad where he would catch a hansom cab to New York City. It was marching music, a triumphant little tune, in direct correlation to his demeanor. He stepped sprightly, his head held high and his shoulders back, with the lightness that comes with the release of a heavy burden. The burden being his wife, holding him to this place where he had no future. He wanted to move to Alta California where he could make a name for himself, instead of being just another doctor. But she had been afraid to leave her family. Kersey could not tolerate fear. He told her if she wouldn’t come with him, she and the baby could stay here.

  And so it was.

  In the morning, Kersey would embark on the newly commissioned steamship SS California bound for San Francisco. The SS California would take Kersey to Ri
o de Janeiro, through the Straits of Magellan, docking in Valpairiso and Panama to pick up more passengers, before heading to the territory of Alta California. In October of 1848, Kersey had not yet heard of the California gold rush and the ensuing feverish migration to the Sierras. His reason for making an escape to the western edge of the continent was purely selfish. Once he put his life in Amherst behind him, he would begin a new life. A life unencumbered, a life in which he only had to look out for himself. A life in which his past did not matter, only the future he planned to create.

  ~~~~

  About Suzanne Lilly

  Suzanne Lilly writes lighthearted stories with a splash of suspense, a flash of the unexplained, a dash of romance, and always a happy ending. She lives in Northern California where she reads, writes, cooks, swims, and teaches elementary students.

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