Celia Hayes – The Accidental Texan

(Jon and Pa Kettering have briefly returned from Coloma and building Mr. Sutter’s new sawmill.)

We reached the cabin where we lived then, early in the afternoon. It was a mild day, just a scattering of clouds floating in a blue sky. You might have thought it a fine day to start on the spring plowing, with all the grass coming up green through last year’s dead tufts, but it was still winter. Ma had started digging up the vegetable patch on the sunny south side of the cabin. Pa and Henry had built a zig-zag pole fence to keep the cattle out – and there were already thready green sprouts on some of the rows. There was smoke coming from the chimney, and clean laundry flapping on the clothesline.  Ma herself was pegging out clothes to it, with two clothespins in her mouth, which she dropped the moment that she saw us.

“Sakes alive, Elkanah!” she cried, and ran towards us. “Johnny-cakes! What has happened – is the mill finished? Did Captain Sutter pay you – oh, he had better have paid you!”

“Easy, Sue,” Pa replied. He swung down off his horse and took Ma in his arms. “We can only stay for a day or so. Mr. Marshall had a serious matter to discuss with the Captain and he asked me to come along with him.”

Inside I heard a baby crying, a sudden and very shrill cry, as Boomer the hound suddenly erupted from the door, and ran up to me. Boomer had been our family dog since I was a lap-baby myself. Now he was starting to go grey around the muzzle although he was carrying on as if he was still a pup. He capered around me as I dismounted from Kanzas the pony, leaping up to lick at my hands and face – silly old dog! My mother pulled away from Pa’s arms as my sister Sally appeared in the cabin door, holding a howling baby. Sally held Emily-Anne to her shoulder, patting her on the back and trying to shush the baby to silence. My sister Sally was then the age of 14, and thought very pretty, but as there were hardly any American girls of marriageable age at that time in California, she had not much competition in that respect. Sally had dark hair with a streak of auburn-red in it like Pa’s and a heart-shaped face with strong dark brows slashed across it. My sister also had no patience with foolishness, which was why she had already turned down several offers of marriage from men afire with impatience to marry.

Sally’s gaze fell on me, and she exclaimed, “Johnny-cakes! Is the work at the mill done? Where is Henry?” Her eyes went looking beyond, and when she looked back at me, they were accusing. “Why are you riding Kanzas!? Has something happened to Henry?”

“No, Sugar-plum, Henry is fine,” Pa soothed her. “He stayed at the mill – he had work to do there, now that the machinery is in place.”

“What’s the matter with Emmy!” Ma demanded, for Emily-Anne was barely soothed, still sobbing and red-faced. Ma took the baby into her own arms, as Sally said,

“She was sleeping in her basket by the fire, and Boomer was sleeping next to her, when suddenly Boomer leaped up and jostled the basket when he leaped over it. He heard Pa and Jon’s horses outside … and you know how much that dog adores Jonny-cakes.”

Boomer was still capering around my feet, nudging me with his nose, as I led Kanzas to the stable, took off the saddle and horse blanket and rubbed him down. I had to pet him often, just to get a chance to take care of Henry’s pony, and he wiggled with happiness as dogs do, with his whole body.

“Looks like the old boy missed you, something awful,” Pa observed, as he took the same care of his horse.

“Guess he did,” I answered, feeling somewhat guilty, because I hadn’t given much thought to Old Boomer in the time that we had been away. When I did think about him, I just assumed that he, like Ma and Sally, were all taken up with the baby, Emily-Anne.

Ma fixed dinner for us – a cut of beef stewed with a few carrots and potatoes, the carrots tough and stringy, the potatoes half-gone through having been saved over from fall. The beef was good, though. In California then, beef was so common that folk commonly purchased a whole beef, rather than just a roast or chops. She was apologizing over and over for how she would have made something special for Pa and I, if she had known we were coming down from the hills. Boomer lay under my chair, poking his nose into my lap at every opportunity. Pa did not say anything about gold, or the errand with Mr. Marshall, although I expect that he told Ma about it, when they were in bed together, later that night. We talked at the supper table about the mill, gossip among the workers about the doings of the Mormon leader, Brigham Young, in establishing a new colony in the Utah desert, and how California had yet another military governor, a Colonel Mason, who was reported to be very tall, affable and much more reasonable a man than anyone thought an Army officer could be.

Sally followed me when I went out just before sundown, making certain  that Kanzas and Pa’s horse were safely stabled away for the night.  The cold seeped out, after the sun went down. In the morning, I thought we would see frost on the grass, even though we were just around the corner from spring.

“What of Henry?” she demanded, as soon as I closed the slatted stable door and let the latch fall. “Did he ever say my name, or ask after me, all the time that you were in the hills? Why didn’t he come with you and Pa?”

I wracked my memory and honestly couldn’t recall if Henry had. I thought I had better be tactful, though. “I suppose that he did, now and again. He missed yours and Ma’s cooking. ‘Specially Ma’s bread. With fresh-churned butter on it. I reckon we all missed home, but we didn’t dwell on it, much.”

Sally’s face fell – she looked so disappointed that I felt sorry. For all that I knew, Henry had thought about her, but since I couldn’t see into his mind … to make her feel better, I added, “He was awful busy, Sally – we all were. The millrace wasn’t dug deep enough to turn the wheel proper at first, so it had to be dug out again. The job isn’t more than three-fourths done.” Sally looked at me, really sharp. I’ve never been good at telling lies, which Reverend Grandpa Kettering back in Ohio would have called the worst kind of sin. And Sally was always real good at picking apart those lies when I tried to tell her one. “I’m not fibbing, Sally – we really were busy, all of us.”

“Funny that you and Pa and Mr. Marshall should come away, with the mill not finished,” she observed. “Why might that be, Johnny-cakes? Don’t even think of spinning a yarn to me. I want to know.”

“Pa said that I wasn’t to tell,” I protested, but I knew in my heart that I couldn’t avoid telling Sally. After all, Pa was probably going to tell Ma. “But it’s a secret. We weren’t suppose to spill on it to anyone, until Mr. Marshall or Captain Sutter said. You have to promise, or all of us will get into terrible trouble. Promise you’ll keep it a secret.”

“If I even believe it in the first place,” Sally replied. She folded her arms. I hoped that Ma would call us into the house soon as it was already dark, but no such luck. “Well?”

“Mr. Marshall found gold in the millrace,” I whispered. “It’s true – I saw it. Two pebbles of gold and a bunch of little flakes. Mrs. Wimmer boiled one of the pebbles in her soap kettle for a day, and it came out bright and shiny. So Mr. Marshall said that Captain Sutter would have to be told, and he wanted Pa to come along as a witness when he showed Captain Sutter the gold that he found. Henry needed to stay because of the mill …”

“I see,” my sister mused. She had a look on her face as if she were thinking. “Gold in the… for certain?”

“Mrs. Wimmer was,” I replied. “And she grew up near to where there was gold in the rivers in Georgia when she was a girl.”

“I wonder if there’s a lot, in the rivers up there, in the mountains?” Sally still had that thinking expression. “When we were traveling along the Yuba, coming down from the mountains, I thought that some of the river sand glittered. As if it was gold. If you found a lot of gold, you’d be rich. Pa would be rich enough to buy the land that he wants. A fancy house for Ma, like Captain Sutters. With a garden, all around. If he found a lot of gold, Henry could buy all the books from the East that he wants to study.” Her look at me sharpened. “If you found a lot of gold, you could buy all the ponies you want, and never have to go to school. What else would you buy, if you found a great lump of gold, Johnny-cakes?”

I thought hard. “I don’t know, rightly. Something pretty for Ma, I reckon. A ginger kitten with white paws for you, mebbe. A proper good saddle for Kanzas. I don’t know, Sally.”

“Silly Johnny-cakes!” Sally laughed, and all of a sudden, she hugged me to her and kissed my forehead. “All for other people, nothing for yourself. You’re a good and selfless brother! I reckon Reverend Grandfather would approve! It’s cold outside – let’s go in. All the same,” she added, as she laid a hand on the door latch. “Do look for more gold, when you go back to Coloma. It just might turn out to be useful. At the very least, you can have a goldsmith make a pretty ring or a pin for Ma out of it.”

A half a chapter from the latest work, the YA adventure now tentatively titled West Towards the Sunset.

As Ma predicted, the meeting was not done in twenty minutes. Ma looked impatiently toward the Clayton wagon, and the gathering of men around it, and said,

“Go fetch your father, Jon. I’m about to feed his share of dinner to Boomer.”

Jon went off at a run, as Ma finished filling Pa’s plate with cold biscuits and some slices of ham from our stores, and a scoop of apple crumble that Ma had made from dried apples the night before. I was hungry, impatient for sitting down and eating. But within a minute or two, Jon returned, breathless and tearful.

“Ma, Sally – come quick! They’re talking about shooting all the dogs!”

“Oh, my dear Lord!” Ma exclaimed. She flung off her apron; we had already lost any appetite for food, after hearing this.

“Pa wouldn’t let them shoot Boomer, would be?” Jon demanded tearfully and Ma replied,

“No more than he would let someone shoot one of you!” which seemed to comfort Jon at least a little, and he loved Boomer so very much. But I recollected how Major Clayton disliked dogs – and he was the captain of the company, and would Pa have any voice in a decision that the men of the wagon company had voted on?

It turned out that Pa had more voice than I had thought at first, as well as more respect among the men of the company generally. When Ma and Jon and I came running to where the men were at the meeting that Major Clayton had called – it had already gotten fractious and angry. Mr. Herlihy the Irish blacksmith was already shouting, so angry that his face was nearly as red as his hair and wiry beard, his powerful hands knotted into fists.

“God blast you for a treacherous, murdering salpeen!” He bellowed into Major Clayton’s face. “Murther me own dogs, you say! In hell you will be, before ye and your bully-boys harm a hair on the back of them!” And he went on, the Irish in him coming out so thick that we didn’t rightly understand more than one word in five.

“I will not stand for being addressed in this disrespectful manner!” Major Clayton shouted back, when Mr. Herlihy had run out of breath and before anyone else could get in a word by turning it to the thin side and wedging it in.

“Then you had better sit down for it!” Mr. Herlihy roared, and the shouting from all the men present burst out like the whistle from a steamboat. In the meantime, Mrs. Bishop, the poor invalid woman had her little spotted spaniel in her arms, hugged to her as she wept torrents and her husband had her arm around her, trying to talk reason and not being heard by anyone. We stood next to Mr. Steitler and Henry, at the edge of the crowd and Ma asked him what had happened to bring about all this ruckus.

“The lad’s dog,” Mr. Steitler replied. “Our commander of wagons has put it to a vote that all the dogs should be shot as a hazard to the company, since he blames the dog for panicking Herr Martindale’s cattle and breaking the wagon-tongue. All the dogs are a danger. Putting the wagon-train at the risk of harm, he says.”

“Surely the men have not approved this…” Ma replied, and Mr. Steitler shrugged.

“The majority voted so – that the dogs are a risk to all. I did not agree, but since I am a foreigner…”

This was appalling. We could not allow this, not Boomer. What would Pa do, now? Ma had said that Pa would as much countenance someone shooting Boomer as Jon or I … but this was the company, and we were out on the wagon trail, a week-long journey from where there was any settled law.

Meanwhile, Mr. Herlihy had taken a breath and resumed shouting at Major Clayton – and he had such a powerful bellow that he could be heard over the clamor.

“Before God, I swear I will leave the company and set off on me own, and what say ye to that, ye thrice-damned pismire! The de’il will make a ladder o’ your spine, afore ye murder my dogs!”

“You’ll be murdered yourself by the Indian savages before you get a day farther!” Major Clayton roared back, and suddenly, there was Pa, stepping up on the wheel of the Major’s wagon, where he could be seen above the heads of the men gathered. Pa put two fingers in his mouth and whistled – a shrill blast that cut through the babble, and such was Pa’s manner of resolute command, after the anger in Mr. Herlihy and the others, that there was a momentary silence – likely out of sheer surprise – into which Pa said, calmly,

“And I’ll take my own wagon and go with Herlihy, here. We voted to form a company, boys; we can vote to un-make it. Who’s with us, then?”

“I am!” That was Mr. Bishop, with his arm around his distraught wife, still weeping over the little spotted pup cradled in her arms. Mr. Bishop looked around, as if he was looking for support in his indignation. Three of the five German boys chorused,

“Ja! Ja – yes, we go mit Herr Kettering! Aber naturlich!” It seemed that they were indignant over their dog being blamed by the Major, in spite of doing all they could to help mend Mr. Martindale’s wagon to make up for it. Mr. Steitler also nodded, in vigorous agreement.

“Mir auch! We go, also mit Herr Kettering!”

At that, nearly a dozen other men called out their own dissent with Major Clayton’s captaincy; some had dogs, others had not, but I guess had been unhappy with how the Major exempted himself and his cronies from taking a turn at guard at night and for traveling on Sunday, the Lord’s Day. The Major looked fit to be tied, almost white with rage at being defied.

“Then leave and be damned to you all!” He shouted – and some of those men and boys who had decided to break from his company jeered scornfully, calling him a tyrannical old windbag and other names that at the time I did not know the meaning of.

Pa, still perched above the crowd, put two fingers in his mouth and whistled again for attention.

“Lads – we’ll move on in ten minutes, all of those who want to leave with me.” He jumped down, and extended his hand to the Major, who refused it and glared. “No hard feelings, sir? We just can’t countenance your latest order. Best that we go our own way, then.”

Major Clayton looked as if he would spit on Pa. “You be damned, sir! You and all the rest of you vile, selfish ingrates!”

“I can not say that it has been a pure pleasure traveling with you,” Pa replied. He seemed unruffled, although Mr. Herlihy glowered, scowling as if he would like to strangle Major Clayton with his bare hands, once Major Clayton had taken a moment and untangled the real intent of what Pa had told him. “Good day to you, sir.” Pa looked past the Major, at the remaining crowd. “Any of the rest of you are welcome to join us and form a new company. Ten minutes, boys. We’ll roll out in ten minutes.”

And that was it – the breaking up of the company. There were eleven wagons following ours and the Herlihy’s two, away from that nooning place. Mr. Martindale and his family followed a little later, rejoining us that evening, at the place where Pa and Mr. Steitler decided to camp, as the sun slid down into the west that evening.