Jubilee Trail (50 page)

Florinda raised her head from the pillow. “What now, Garnet?”

“The baby.”

“What about the baby? We’ll take care of it.”

“In a saloon?”

“Well, holy Christmas, you don’t have to feed it whiskey. You’ll have milk of your own. I’ll show you how to take care of the baby.”

“I’m glad you know how. I don’t. In fact,” Garnet confessed, tired of trying to be brave, “I’m scared about the whole thing.”

“Of course you are, dear. But you’ve got no reason to be. I mean it, Garnet. It’s not scary, it’s wonderful. How long has it been now?”

“About four months.”

“Pretty soon you’ll feel the baby move. Just a tiny bit, like something quirking its finger. Then all of a sudden, the baby won’t be an idea any more, it will be a person, and it’s so surprising, and you’ll love it. It will keep on moving, just those funny little quivers at first, but after a while you can feel it kicking, great big healthy kicks—”

“Doesn’t it hurt?”

“Not a bit. It’s thrilling. Oh Garnet, really it is, I’m not just talking to cheer you up. And then finally you see it—”

“That hurts dreadfully, doesn’t it?”

“Why yes, but it won’t hurt you too much because you’re as tough as a pony. Once you’ve got the baby it doesn’t seem to make any difference whether it hurt or not. The baby is
so
little, you can hardly believe anything alive could be so little, but it’s got hands and feet and a face, such a queer screwed-up little face. Then they put it up to your bosom, and that’s not like anything else on earth. I can’t tell you, nobody can, but you’ll find out. It’s all so beautiful, and it’s so right—”

“Florinda!”

Garnet had tried to raise herself on her elbow, but she was not strong enough. She lay staring incredulously at Florinda’s blue eyes and the shadows of fatigue under them, deepened by the faint light.

“Have you had a baby?” asked Garnet.

Florinda nodded.

“But you never said a word about it. Not till this minute.”

“No. But I did have a baby. That’s why I can help you take care of yours. I know what to do.”

“But your baby!” said Garnet. She was so astonished that she had almost forgotten her own.

“A little girl. Do you want a little girl or a little boy?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. What happened to your little girl, Florinda?”

“She died. Your baby’s not going to die. You’re not going to find out what that’s like, not if I have to crawl around the world on my knees.” Florinda spoke with determination, but she was so drowsy that she let her head drop back on the pillow as though she could not hold it up any longer.

“Go to bed,” Garnet began, but before she could say any more John came in, tousled from sleep, demanding,

“Why didn’t you wake me up, Florinda?”

Florinda roused herself and stood up. “I meant to. But I went to sleep myself.”

“How’s Garnet?”

“Fine.” Florinda picked up the water-jug. “Get some fresh water, will you, Johnny? And make some more broth like that, first thing in the morning.”

John took the jug from her. “I’ll be right back with this. You go on to sleep now, and sleep till you wake up.”

Florinda nodded. But she waited by the bed until John had gone out, then she said to Garnet in a half-embarrassed undertone, “Say, Garnet, don’t let out to John about all that babbling I did a minute ago. Or to anybody.”

“You mean about your little girl?”

“Yes. I don’t know what started me off. I guess I was so sleepy I didn’t have right good sense.”

“All right. I won’t say anything about it.”

“Thanks.” Florinda bent and kissed Garnet’s forehead quickly, and went out.

T
HREE DAYS LATER
THE
Handsome Brute came riding up to the rancho. As usual, he rode in a great splendor of satin and fine leather, followed by retainers and a string of horses laden with packs. Charles went out to meet him. Charles despised the Brute as a stupid savage, but the Brute was a landowner, and neither his opinion nor his grief at Oliver’s death could make Charles willing to omit the forms of courtesy customary among the landowners of California.

The Brute brought Garnet and Florinda silk shawls, Garnet’s printed with red flowers and Florinda’s with blue. Florinda put on her shawl at once, turning before the mirror to try various effects of draping. The Brute came over to the bedside. He patted Garnet’s hair with his great hand.

“I am sorry about Oliver,” he said gently.

“Thank you, Brute.”

“But you are going to have a baby,” said the Brute. “That is good.”

Garnet smiled at him. In New York, a man who made such a remark to a lady would have been thought unpardonably ill-bred. But the Brute did not know this.

“You are not happy now,” he went on, “because you are not strong and you feel helpless, and it is not happy to feel helpless. But you have strength inside. You will be happy.”

She hoped he was right. Just now she did not feel strong or happy either.

Later that day, with a great effort, she managed to write a letter to her parents, telling them she could not come home. John said he would take the letter to Los Angeles and give it to Texas, who would give it to one of the Missouri traders in Santa Fe. Garnet sat up against a pile of pillows, and John brought her a tray that she could hold on her knees for a desk. He set the ink on a chair by her bed.

It was a very hard letter to write. She was so weak that the pen wobbled in her hand, and she had to move it very slowly lest the lines shake and tell them, in spite of her, that she had been ill. She wrote that Oliver had died suddenly, but she did not tell them how; and she wrote that she was going to have a baby. The effort of pushing the pen was so great that it made her hands and forehead damp. Drying her hands on the sheet, she wrote, “My health, as always, is excellent. Oliver’s brother is kindness itself, and I have a very pleasant home. Do not be concerned about me. With all my love, Garnet.” The pen dropped out of her hand and rolled on the floor, and she fell back on the pillow, panting with fatigue. Tears crept out of her eyes and ran into the drops of sweat on her face. It seemed to her that this letter cut the last tie between herself and her home; she thought shipwrecked people must feel like this when they stood on the shore of some far lost island and watched their ship go down.

“Please read it, John,” she murmured. “Is it fit to send?”

John took out his handkerchief and wiped the tears and the drops of sweat off her face. He picked up the letter.

“Why yes,” he said quietly. “It’s a very fine pack of lies. I’d better start for Los Angeles tomorrow—the train will be leaving any day now.” He put the letter into his pocket and went to the door. “You have a great deal of courage, Garnet,” he said over his shoulder.

When John went to Los Angeles, the Brute stayed to help Florinda take care of Garnet. “Charles will not make Florinda leave while I am here,” the Brute said. “I could break Charles in two with my hands.” He said it with such charming simplicity that Garnet could not help laughing.

The Brute was an excellent nurse. With his great strength he had great tenderness. He sat by Garnet’s bed for hours at a time, talking to her. He did not speak of Oliver again. But he told her funny stories about the traders, and about the Yankee seamen who came up to Los Angeles in the hide-carts. Or he talked to her gently, letting her know he understood her loneliness in this strange country, since he had once been lonely here himself. Sometimes she laughed with him, sometimes she shed quiet tears, and he always seemed to know how she felt.

The Brute’s English had improved since last fall. When she praised him for this, he said it was important for him to learn good English, because he thought there would be a lot more Yankees here pretty soon. To get Garnet’s mind off her own troubles he told her what was going on.

He said the people of California did not like their present government. Their laws were made for them by a bunch of grandees down in Mexico City, and these gentlemen were being very stupid about California. “Like what John has told me about the British king George the Third,” he said. “You have heard of him?”

Yes, Garnet said, she had heard of George the Third. Were the Mexican grandees really being as foolish as that?

Yes, the Brute answered, he thought they were. Mexico City was nearly two thousand miles from Los Angeles, but those men thought they knew more about California than the people who lived here. They made laws without bothering to learn the facts, and they sent up governors who had never laid eyes on California till they arrived to govern it. Some of the laws were so fantastic that nobody tried to enforce them. Others were petty rules that hampered trade and annoyed everybody.

Florinda, who sat on the wall-bench listening, laughed acidly as he spoke. “Oh dear, don’t tell me about those rules!” she exclaimed with feeling. “Do you know it’s against the law for us to bring in American whiskey? We get it, but we have to pay several fellows to look the other way.”

That was the trouble with these laws, the Brute said. Nobody in California took them seriously. Each new one simply meant that a few more men made a living by taking bribes instead of by honest work. No wonder the people were tired of their rulers.

The Californios were peaceful folk, he continued, but they could be violent if they were exasperated enough. The last of the Mexican governors had been a man named Micheltorena. No doubt he was a well-meaning fellow. But the Mexican government, having promised him three hundred soldiers, had decided that this was a fine chance to thin out the jails of Mexico. The jailbirds arrived; they stole everything they could lay hands on, and were busy wrecking California when the citizens rebelled. Micheltorena had been chased back to Mexico with his flock, leaving the civil government to Pío Pico of Los Angeles and the military command to José Castro of Monterey.

Pico and Castro were always quarreling. Each one insisted he was above the other in authority. Neither of them would change his residence so they could get together on government affairs. If anything happened to upset the risky balance between them, said the Brute, somebody was going to get shot.

Garnet felt alarmed. She was about to go to Los Angeles with no protection but what her friends could give her, and they too were foreigners. “Oh Brute,” she exclaimed, “don’t tell me I’m going to get mixed up in a fight!”

The Brute smiled. “I do not think so,” he said. “You see, up in Monterey is the Yankee consul, Mr. Larkin. It is said that Mr. Larkin has privately been asking some of the most important Californios what they would think of belonging to the United States instead of to Mexico. I have been told that many of them say they would be glad of it. The Californios like the Yankees, so I think your people will take this country some day.”

Garnet wished they would. She did not care who owned California, but maybe if a lot of Americans came here they would set up some kind of safe transportation between Los Angeles and New York, and she could go home. She must have had a wistful look as she thought of it, for the Brute patted her shoulder.

“Would you like to try to walk a little bit?” he asked. “I will help you.”

Garnet nodded, and he brought her a robe. She got up for a while every day now. When she did, the Brute walked up and down with her, supporting her with his great arm until she was able to walk alone.

But though she was stronger now, Garnet got tired and went to bed early. When she fell asleep the Brute and Florinda went into the other room, and he brought her a late supper from the kitchen. Florinda liked talking to him. Brought up by the trappers, and knowing only the simple ways of California, the Brute had an innocence of the world that struck her as appalling. He had never been inside a bank or a court of law, and his only knowledge of these and other institutions like them was what he had picked up from his American friends. But he had a great intuitive wisdom, and he was not civilized enough to be a hypocrite. “You are so astonishing, Brute,” Florinda said to him. “When I hear you talk, I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry.”

“You will not cry,” said the Brute. “You never cry.” He gave her a thoughtful look across the candle. They sat by the table in Florinda’s room. “Why do you never cry, Florinda?” he asked.

“You big ox, what have I got to cry about?”

“I do not know,” said the Brute. “But it is not good to keep yourself all bottled up like you do.”

“Oh, go eat hay,” said Florinda.

But though she laughed at him, she talked to him more freely than she did to most people. One evening she told him about the Norwegian sailor who had been her father. The Brute was shocked. Florinda told him cynically that if he had known as much about life as she did, he would not be so surprised. A lot of men were no good, and a lot of children grew up with nobody to love them.

“Nobody?” the Brute repeated. He considered, and then said, “But your mother. She loved you, didn’t she?”

Florinda reflected a moment. “Not very much. Oh, she loved me in a way—I was all she had—but I looked so much like him. I can remember when I was a very little girl, sometimes she would grab me by the shoulders and stare at me, like she couldn’t believe what she saw.”

“Did that make you feel bad?” asked the Brute.

“Why yes, sometimes it did. I was sorry I had to be a child she didn’t want instead of the man she wanted. It made me sort of ashamed to be so much like him when I couldn’t be him.”

The Brute thought this over. “Is that why you are always looking into mirrors?” he asked.

“I look into mirrors because I like what I see there, silly. What do you mean?”

“I mean,” said the Brute, “your mother said you looked like your father, and she said he was a bad man. So you were ashamed of your looks. Then later when other people said you were beautiful, you were surprised and it made you so happy, and it still does.”

Florinda puckered her lips. “I don’t know. Maybe.” Then she shrugged, laughing at him. “Well, no matter where I got my face, I like it,” she said, and added as though he had overlooked something, “because I am rather beautiful, you know.”