Page 19 of The Prospector's Only Prospect
What did she have? Not even a change of clothes or the berries she’d picked. They’d eaten them along the way.
As she hurried to keep up with Virgil, a drumbeat sounded in her head.
What have I done? What have I done?
Chapter Six
“That’s the office.” Virgil nodded at the only other wooden structure besides the storehouse and the outhouses built at convenient locations near the tents and worksites. Last year, he and his partners had wintered in that small cabin across from the storehouse.
“One of us is always in there, so if you need to find me, start there.” Four of the men slept there, but he didn’t tell her why they kept it manned. She would find out soon enough that the gold was stored there between payday and trips to Denver.
They passed what would be the cookhouse if anyone found time to put walls around it. For now, it was four posts and a roof with a pair of long tables, benches, and a cast-iron stove. The camp cook, Gristle, served army rations with a surly resentment of critics.
Next to that was a laundry run by one of Bing Sun’s men, then a poor attempt on Ira and Stoney’s part to grow cabbage and onions. A withered patch of tomato plants clung to life nearby.
On the hillside, their original four horses had expanded to twelve and had since been joined by four mules, six burrows, three dairy cows, two goats, and the oxen. Stoney had an order in for two dozen chicks come spring while Bing Sun had mentioned acquiring ducks when he wintered in San Francisco. Levi and Chaveno, the son of Tom’s cousin, were armed with slingshots and charged with keeping an eye out for predators along with bringing the animals in at night.
Across the river, the Utes had made a small camp of wickiups and a communal fire. Some of their men worked under Tom while others hunted. The women had been gathering plants, drying meat, and tanning hides all summer. Virgil reckoned they would close up shop right quick if Leyohna was free to travel. They wanted to be well south and meeting up with other family and associated bands before the first flakes of snow began to fall.
Virgil had his eye on a plateau above their camp for his permanent home. It was high enough to avoid spring floods, had a long view of the valley and a glimpse of peaks in the distance. It was close to the hot spring tucked up in the forest and caught more sun than the valley floor, but it wasn’t practical to build up there when he had to run back and forth all day between work and—
“Pa!” Levi came sprinting toward them. He stopped abruptly about eight feet away, chest heaving to catch his breath. “You came back.”
Those words cut him to the bone every time. It made his voice gruff as he said, “Same as I do every time I run to Denver. This is Mrs. Davis. She’s our housekeeper. My son, Levi.”
“I thought you said you would get us a mother.” Levi frowned.
“Things change,” Virgil grumbled, instantly annoyed with himself for putting that shadow of distrust into Levi’s eyes.
“It’s nice to meet you, Levi.” Marigold smiled and held out a hand to the shirtless, barefoot eleven-year-old. “Please call me Marigold.”
Levi was tanned brown by weeks of running around half dressed. His arm was limp as he briefly shook her hand. His, “Nice to meet you, ma’am,” was unconvinced.
Virgil shifted uncomfortably. He was a skinflint sort of man. He’d spent too many years scraping and scrabbling to throw away a penny unnecessarily, but he was suddenly embarrassed that Levi was dressed like a beggar.
It was summer, and the children were growing like weeds. He’d ordered fabrics into the storehouse two months ago, but there was no such thing as church here. What did they need fancy clothes for? When they had grown out of the clothes they had arrived in, he’d given Leyohna some of his work-worn things and asked her to do what she could. She’d butchered a pair of his dungarees, cutting out the patched seat to take them in, and made short pants. Levi kept them on his lanky hips by cinching a length of twine around the suspender buttons.
Seeing him through Marigold’s eyes, however, it looked like Virgil didn’t care. He did, though. It bothered the hell out of him that Levi kept his distance and acted surprised that Virgil came back and that he watched Virgil with wary, storm-gray eyes.
Virgil had been afraid of his own father for good reason, but he wouldn’t lift a finger against his own children. He wished they knew that.
“Did you get your work done while I was gone?” Virgil immediately knew it was the wrong thing to say, because Marigold shot him a look of dismay.
“Yes, sir.” Levi fell into step beside them, head ducking shyly, but his eyes came up hopeful as a puppy seeking a pat. “Emmett checked my measures and let me saw the boards. He said you would get the nails and rope from Yeller.”
“I will.” He didn’t break it to the kid that the bed Levi had been working so hard to build for himself would have to go to Marigold.
They passed a pile of logs, and the cabin came into view. Marigold made a noise like someone had knifed her.
Okay, it was a shack. It was the best he had been able to throw together given the children had turned up with the spring melt. There had been sluice boxes and rockers to build, channels to dig and gold to recover. Four walls of uncaulked split logs, a shake roof, and a bed to hold the bunch of them had meant shirking his paying work. His partners had been understanding and pitched in to get him this far, but the season was short. The pressure to work the gold was enormous.
Even so, after Virgil put in his twelve hours with the company, he sometimes took Levi up the hill to fell trees. They used the horses to drag the logs down here, but they still needed peeling and planing. Window glass was on order along with frames and lumber for a floor. Somehow, Virgil would have to get all of that carried in and nailed together before the frost.
Marigold didn’t know any of that, of course. Her steps halted and her jaw hung slack while her shoulders sagged.
A pound of river gravel seemed to drop into the pit of Virgil’s stomach.
Nettie burst out of the shack with an excited, “Papa!”
