(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.”
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