Jubilee Trail (36 page)

“John,” she said, “why didn’t you want Garnet to go to California?”

“I’ve told you before,” said John, “that it’s none of my business.”

“Stop being like that for about ten minutes, can’t you? Is there trouble ahead for her?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“What sort of trouble, John?”

“If she wants you to know,” said John, “she’ll tell you.”

“Oh, rats,” said Florinda. “She doesn’t know it herself. Whatever you said to scare her, Oliver must have smoothed it out. She’s perfectly happy.”

“Maybe she’ll stay that way. Anyhow, I can’t do anything and neither can you. I hope you’ll keep on being her friend. There’s nobody else she can count on.”

Florinda gave him a crooked little smile. “I wonder what Oliver would think about that remark.”

“I thought,” John said shortly, “that Oliver had the convenient habit of not thinking about anything.”

Florinda fingered the grass. “He’s crazy about her, John.”

“Yes, he is. So maybe she’ll be all right.”

“And you can’t do anything, so you’re not going to talk about it.”

“Right. And you’d better not talk about it either. Mind your own business.”

“I guess I’ve got to.”

John stood up. “Why don’t you go on back to camp? They’ve started cooking. A bowl of atole would do you good.”

He gave her his hand, and she stood up too. “Are you coming?” she asked.

“Not yet. I’ve got to put this bandage over my leg.”

Florinda walked back toward the camp. Garnet lay asleep on her blanket. When she had stopped at the fire for a bowl of atole Florinda went and sat by her. Mr. Penrose passed, carrying some leather thongs he had been mending. He waved at her, and she waved back at him brightly. “You all right?” he called.

“Sure, fine,” Florinda returned. “I’ve always wanted to know what an Indian fight was like.”

Mr. Penrose laughed, and carried his thongs off to the picket-ground.

Florinda glanced after him with a lopsided smile. If he thought she was a cross between a doll-baby and a goddess, it was no more than he should have thought after all the nonsense she had told him. When he had asked about the scars on her hands, Florinda had made up a touching story. She told him another girl in the theater, less beautiful and less applauded than herself, had gone wild with envy backstage and had thrown a lighted lamp at her, with the purpose of ruining her flawless face. But, Florinda said, she had knocked the lamp aside with her elbow and it had fallen back on the other girl, setting her costume ablaze. “And what could I do?” Florinda exclaimed. “I had to throw her down and roll her over on the floor to crush out the fire. No, she was hardly burned at all. But you see what it did to my hands.”

Mr. Penrose thought she was noble beyond the common run of mortals.

Florinda good-naturedly despised him. She was planning to get rid of him as soon as she could. But first she had to get to California, and find out how a girl could live in that strange place. Florinda moved into the shade and leaned back against the rock. She felt terribly tired.

A few minutes later Texas came over. He squatted on the ground near where Florinda sat by Garnet.

“She’s still out, Miss Florinda?”

“Yes. Oliver dosed her pretty well.”

“That’s fine. Let her sleep as long as she can.” Texas stroked Garnet’s hair. “It’s hard on her,” he remarked.

Florinda glanced at the torn sleeve dangling from Garnet’s arm, and the bandage near the shoulder. She wondered if Texas, like John, foresaw trouble for Garnet in California. But evidently he did not, for he said,

“Well, she’s stood it fine, and we’ll be there pretty soon. And she’ll have all winter to enjoy herself.”

“You think she’ll have a good time this winter?” Florinda asked.

“No reason why she shouldn’t. Oliver’s brother is about the most disagreeable man in California, but I don’t guess they’ll stay on the rancho much. Oliver has lots of friends.”

Florinda moved a little to get the sun out of her tired eyes. “How much farther is it, Texas?”

“Two-fifty, three hundred miles. Depending on the waterholes.”

“Three hundred miles, say. At twenty miles a day, fifteen days.”

“Mostly nights. We’ll have to ride at night. The days get a hundred and twenty.”

Florinda gave a shudder, but she made no comment. “What do we do when we get there?” she asked.

“Well, we camp for a week or two at Don Antonio Costilla’s rancho. That’s the first rancho on the other side of Cajon Pass.”

“Is it nice? The rancho, I mean, not the pass.”

Texas pulled his beard and grinned. “It sure is, Miss Florinda. Good food, good rest, nothing to do all day.”

Florinda let a weary little sigh escape her. Texas raised his soft brown eyes and looked at her with sympathy. “Say, Miss Florinda, you don’t look any too well. Think you can hold out two weeks more?”

Florinda smiled. “You mean you think I’m going to flop and die in the desert? Don’t worry, Texas. I’m not. Nobody’s going to put up my skull for a target and shoot bullets through my eyes.”

Texas chuckled without embarrassment. “You’re a sassy creature, Miss Florinda.”

“So I’ve been told,” Florinda said. She yawned. “I’m a sleepy creature too. Those Diggers woke me up too early this morning. Why don’t you run along so I can get a nap?”

She stretched out on the blanket by Garnet. Instead of going away, Texas stayed there, looking down at her wistfully. Shading her eyes with her hand, Florinda spoke to him.

“Haven’t you got anything better to do than stare at me, mister?”

“I was just thinking,” he said slowly, “if I had your nerve, I’d be a better man than I am.”

She smiled at him. “You’re all right, Texas.”

“I’m a drunken bum,” Texas said bitterly. “I always was.”

“No you’re not. You’re a very nice man who gets drunk sometimes.”

“You don’t ever touch it, do you?”

“Not any more.”

“Why did you quit?”

“Dear me,” said Florinda. “What vulgar curiosity.”

“Right. Sorry.” Texas pulled up a handful of dry grass. She said nothing. “Well, go on,” he said after a moment. “Preach me a sermon.”

Florinda laughed a little. “You know, Texas, I don’t give a hoot about reforming people. Either I like them the way they are, or I don’t like them. And I like you fine.”

Texas looked down, pulling blades of grass to pieces. “You’re a pretty good sort, Miss Florinda.”

“Oh, be quiet. Let me go to sleep. You talk too much.”

She put her arm over her eyes to shut out the light. A moment later she heard Texas walk away. Off at the picket-ground, she could hear the men chanting as they worked.

’Tain’t no place for the law-abidin’,

’Tain’t no place for the peaky and pale,

You gotta keep tough if you gonta keep ridin’,

Ridin’ down the Jubilee Trail.

Florinda bit her heat-cracked lip. A hundred and twenty in the desert ahead. John had told her she couldn’t stand it. But she had to stand it. Only two weeks more. The men in the picket-ground sang with a cheerful brutal energy.

Strap that pack so it won’t start slidin’,

Drag that mule by his god-damned tail,

You gotta keep busy if you gonta keep ridin’,

Ridin’ down the Jubilee Trail.

F
ROM THE ARCHILLETTE
THEY
rode down to the Mojave Desert.

It was a harsh and terrible land. When she got out of it, Garnet remembered cliffs of rock, and miles of white sand, and clouds of dust so thick that the mules stumbled blindly. She remembered thirst like a red-hot poker in her throat; and her arm blazing with pain, though Texas bandaged it gently and told her it was healing well. She remembered Florinda, thin as a toothpick, riding night after night in an exhausted silence. She remembered how the dust rose and covered them till men and mules were white, with red eyes, like a line of savage ghosts.

This was the last lap of the journey, and the worst. Oliver told her they were nearly done. They would get through. They always did. And ahead, there was Cajón Pass, and a creek among the rocks, and then the rancho of Don Antonio Costilla.

They got through, and rode up the mountains into the pass. The mules smelt water. Tired as they were, they began to run, and ran till they came to the creek Oliver had promised. When they reached the creek, mules and men alike fell down and sprawled in the water, gasping at the miracle of wetness. Oliver put his arm around Garnet and told her the desert was over. She would not be thirsty again.

Garnet sighed and let go her tense muscles. Just then she saw Florinda. Nobody had an arm around Florinda. She was sitting with her shoes on her knees and her bare feet in the water, leaning back against a rock where the spray came up and wet her face. She was alone.

Garnet got up and went over to sit by her. Florinda glanced around and smiled in astonishment. “Why Garnet, I thought you were over there with Oliver.”

“I was. But the men are all talking at once, and there are so many of them, I thought you and I could be together. You were alone.”

“I don’t mind being alone, dear. I’m used to it.”

She was so brave that Garnet could not leave her. They stayed together for the rest of the day. After supper when they said good night Florinda brushed her cheek with a kiss, soft and gentle like the brush of a flower-petal.

After this the traders took their time. The way was rocky and hard, and the creek was thin, so that they still had to be careful about water. But at least they had enough. And then at last, on Monday, the third of November, they saw the rancho of Don Antonio Costilla.

They came around a mountain, and far ahead, in the midst of a vast brown landscape, stood a group of brown adobe houses. Garnet blinked when she saw them, with a vague feeling of surprise. It had been so long since she had seen a house that the group looked unreal behind the dusty haze. She heard one of the men give a shout. All the men took it up, shouting hoarsely in voices thickened with dust. They began to hurry their tired mules. Garnet turned her head to look at Florinda. They both smiled wonderingly, hurting their cracked lips, and Florinda said in a faint voice,

“Garnet—are we there? Is it over?”

“I do believe it is,” said Garnet. She drew a long breath.

They rode on, faster. Garnet felt release all through her aching body. The dust blew up at her and she tried not to cough, and just then she heard more shouting voices. From the huddle of brown houses she saw a group of men riding toward the train. They were gay in coats of red or blue, or striped serapes blowing as they rode. Against the long brown land the bright colors looked very strange.

“People!” Garnet gasped. “Florinda—not Diggers! Civilized people!”

The shouting was all in Spanish and they were too tired to try to understand it. But they saw the men from the rancho greeting the men of the caravan, and passing bottles of wine and water. Oliver leaped off his mule and came running over to Garnet, his dusty bearded face aglow.

“Take this, Garnet,” he said, and thrust a bottle of white wine into her hand.

The wine was cool and tangy in her throat. Garnet gave a little sob as she drank. Oliver was sore and tired, but he grinned at her in triumph.

“We’re here,” he said, saying it as though it was almost too much to be believed. “We did it again!”

All around her she heard the same words. “We did it again!” Oliver helped her dismount. Beside her, Garnet saw Florinda holding a leather water-bottle in both hands. Florinda was drinking so fast that the water was spilling and making streaks in the dust on her chin. But it did not matter. They were in sight of a California rancho; they had plenty of water, water enough to spill. Garnet hugged the wine-bottle to her bosom, and looked around at the shaggy, tired, savage-looking men who had come with her over the trail. Standing there, she put her head down on the saddle of her gaunt little mare and began to laugh and to cry all at once, and she thought of Columbus when he saw the first green branch floating in the sea. She thought she knew now what heroes were like. They were not calm brave generals on white steeds. They were rude filthy sweating men who kept going till they got where they wanted to go.

“Wait for me,” said Oliver. “I’ll be right back.”

Garnet nodded and he went off. Everybody around her was shouting and bustling and talking at once. Some of the men were dragging the packs from the stumbling mules. Others were sitting down on the ground, happily starting to get drunk. Garnet put her hand to her aching head and sighed with rapture. She looked around at the new world.

And then, slowly, her forehead crinkled in a frown. She looked through the dancing haze of heat and dust. She blinked, and rubbed her eyes to get the dust out of them, and looked again.

This was the end of the trail. This was California. But California was not a land of grass and flowers. It was a land of gaunt mountains staring down upon a scorched and dismal plain.

Garnet did not know just what she had expected. But all through the desert she had dreamed of flowers and tall proud trees and rushing water. She saw nothing of the sort. All around her was a land of gray and brown, scrubby and shabby and covered with dust. She saw low hills thick with dry wild oats. The oats blew in the wind like the waves of a dull brown sea. Here and there on the hills she saw cattle grazing, knee-deep in the brown grass. Farther off, the high slopes were thick with the mountain brush called chaparral. The chaparral was a dull gloomy green, grayed with dust. In the distance it looked like a growth of rough fur on the hills. In places it was thick, elsewhere she saw great bare patches, as though the hills were moth-eaten. Still farther away were more peaks, blue with distance. They looked like pieces of cardboard standing up against the sky.

The rancho buildings stood in an open place among the hills. There was a long low brown adobe house, and around it a village of smaller houses, set helter-skelter without any particular plan. Among the houses were some low dusty trees, and fields cut with ditches leading from a stringy little creek. But even the trees and fields were not a bright happy green. They were merely greenish. Everything—trees, houses, fields, hills, chaparral—looked sad and tired under the dust.