meadow. The female had two babies and no tail. She looked safe and happy. She did not look up when I called her Cora.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A UTUMN 1851
In which Mr. Flagg comes to a bad end
and is not mourned
September came, hot and still, and the remaining miners had to move farther upriver to find diggings that weren't already dug out, leaving behind them deep pits, bare hills, and piles of gravel. They had to dig deeper holes and wash more dirt, which meant they needed more water. Soon the land was crisscrossed with ditches and tunnels and flumes bringing water from here to there and there to here, all for washing dirt. We diverted some of that water our way and had less trouble with withering crops and thirsty mules, and I didn't have to carry water such long distances for drinking and washing. With the boarders working so far away, no one came home for noon dinner, and I had more time to myself for reading and writing letters, for making pies and money.
In her mourning, Mama paid little attention to what I did, or Prairie or Sierra. The boarding house was neglected, the miners ill fed. Although Mama was always there, in her heart she was out in the meadow with Butte, and those of us left behind felt lonely.
I took to tagging along with Lizzie as she checked her father's traps for critters. Thinking of Cora on her own in the woods, I begged Lizzie to let the animals go if they were not dead, but she just blasted them with her father's Springfield rifle. "Varmints is varmints," Lizzie said, "and good for nothin' but shootin', though some do make fine eatin'." Lizzie would skin the critters right there, put the fur and edible parts in her hunting sack, and rebait the traps with the rest. How different, I thought, from Bernard Freeman, who would not eat bacon even when he was hungry, and how odd of me to admire them both.
As we wandered, Lizzie and I gabbled like turkeys. I told Lizzie about Butte and how he was as a little boy, about Golden and Pa, Gram and Grampop, and Cousin Batty, about school, county fairs, Massachusetts, and the pickle crock. "As you know it is my heart's desire to return to Massachusetts," I said one day. "How about you? Do you have a heart's desire?"
"Seems to me," said Lizzie, "I have about all a body needs." She paused and chewed on her lip. "Well, maybe if Pa would quit hittin' ..." Sometimes Lizzie was covered with bruises, but that was the one thing she wouldn't talk about.
Lizzie told me about the salmon that used to crowd the river before the miners arrived and turned the water to mud "too thick to drink and too thin to plow," about the Indians decked in condor feathers dancing their prayers, about grinding manzanita berries and skinning porcupines and smoking the leaves of the wild nicotiana plant.
She taught me how to look at the trees. "They're not all just trees, Luce. They're oaks and firs and cedars and pines. Look here at the pines. Even they are all different. I call this one scaly pine because of the scaly look of the bark. And this one with the bark that looks like fungus I call mushroom pine. Here's smooth pine and there is mighty pine, the biggest."
In this way I learned the names of California things: miner's lettuce, shooting stars, duckweed, thimbleberry, skunkbush, needlegrass, checkerbloom. I didn't know if they were true names or Lizzie's. It didn't seem to matter.
We saw a bobcat rolling in catmint, looking for all the world like a giant kitten, and a hawk with a rabbit in its claws. Once we climbed all morning and came upon a bee pasture, ankle deep in flowers and miles wide, a meadow planted and tended by bees. There were wild rose and bramble and clover, yellow, purple, and pink, the air buzzing with the sound of bees and sweet with fragrance. We lay in the pasture awhile but after a few stings moved on, leaving it to the bees. I never found it again but never forgot it.
On the way back through the woods, Lizzie and I saw an Indian girl, hair matted and dirty,
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A UTUMN 1851
In which Mr. Flagg comes to a bad end
and is not mourned
September came, hot and still, and the remaining miners had to move farther upriver to find diggings that weren't already dug out, leaving behind them deep pits, bare hills, and piles of gravel. They had to dig deeper holes and wash more dirt, which meant they needed more water. Soon the land was crisscrossed with ditches and tunnels and flumes bringing water from here to there and there to here, all for washing dirt. We diverted some of that water our way and had less trouble with withering crops and thirsty mules, and I didn't have to carry water such long distances for drinking and washing. With the boarders working so far away, no one came home for noon dinner, and I had more time to myself for reading and writing letters, for making pies and money.
In her mourning, Mama paid little attention to what I did, or Prairie or Sierra. The boarding house was neglected, the miners ill fed. Although Mama was always there, in her heart she was out in the meadow with Butte, and those of us left behind felt lonely.
I took to tagging along with Lizzie as she checked her father's traps for critters. Thinking of Cora on her own in the woods, I begged Lizzie to let the animals go if they were not dead, but she just blasted them with her father's Springfield rifle. "Varmints is varmints," Lizzie said, "and good for nothin' but shootin', though some do make fine eatin'." Lizzie would skin the critters right there, put the fur and edible parts in her hunting sack, and rebait the traps with the rest. How different, I thought, from Bernard Freeman, who would not eat bacon even when he was hungry, and how odd of me to admire them both.
As we wandered, Lizzie and I gabbled like turkeys. I told Lizzie about Butte and how he was as a little boy, about Golden and Pa, Gram and Grampop, and Cousin Batty, about school, county fairs, Massachusetts, and the pickle crock. "As you know it is my heart's desire to return to Massachusetts," I said one day. "How about you? Do you have a heart's desire?"
"Seems to me," said Lizzie, "I have about all a body needs." She paused and chewed on her lip. "Well, maybe if Pa would quit hittin' ..." Sometimes Lizzie was covered with bruises, but that was the one thing she wouldn't talk about.
Lizzie told me about the salmon that used to crowd the river before the miners arrived and turned the water to mud "too thick to drink and too thin to plow," about the Indians decked in condor feathers dancing their prayers, about grinding manzanita berries and skinning porcupines and smoking the leaves of the wild nicotiana plant.
She taught me how to look at the trees. "They're not all just trees, Luce. They're oaks and firs and cedars and pines. Look here at the pines. Even they are all different. I call this one scaly pine because of the scaly look of the bark. And this one with the bark that looks like fungus I call mushroom pine. Here's smooth pine and there is mighty pine, the biggest."
In this way I learned the names of California things: miner's lettuce, shooting stars, duckweed, thimbleberry, skunkbush, needlegrass, checkerbloom. I didn't know if they were true names or Lizzie's. It didn't seem to matter.
We saw a bobcat rolling in catmint, looking for all the world like a giant kitten, and a hawk with a rabbit in its claws. Once we climbed all morning and came upon a bee pasture, ankle deep in flowers and miles wide, a meadow planted and tended by bees. There were wild rose and bramble and clover, yellow, purple, and pink, the air buzzing with the sound of bees and sweet with fragrance. We lay in the pasture awhile but after a few stings moved on, leaving it to the bees. I never found it again but never forgot it.
On the way back through the woods, Lizzie and I saw an Indian girl, hair matted and dirty,
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