Jubilee Trail (89 page)

“Dear God,

I know I am going about this badly, but I apologize, and I hope You understand that I’m doing the best I can. Please don’t let anything happen to him. Please let him get there safe and sound. And when he gets there please let everybody be nice to him and let him be happy.

“Now as to whether or not I want him to come back, I honestly don’t know. He said even if he did come back it might not be for ten years and in ten years I’ll be thirty-six years old and only You know what I’ll look like by that time. Anyway, even if I’m still beautiful ten years from now, I just don’t know if I want him back or not. So I guess I’ll leave that up to You. But whatever he does, please let him be happy doing it. Please let him be happy always, as long as he lives.

“Yours respectfully, Florinda Grove.

“Amen.”

Garnet sat on the wall-bench in her room, looking out at the oxcarts and the people idling in the sun and the water-sellers strolling about with yokes over their shoulders. Above the voices and the creaks of the carts she heard what she could always hear through any other kind of noise, Stephen babbling as he played on the back porch.

She looked out at Los Angeles. What an ugly, rackety, smelly town it was. This was the end of the Jubilee Trail. You left the States, wherever you were, you came to Independence and you took the trail to Santa Fe. You left Santa Fe, and you took the Jubilee Trail to Los Angeles. You left Los Angeles, and you took another trail to—where? She did not know. The end of every trail was the start of another; you never knew where you were going, but you had to go all the same. All you did know was that you were not a little girl any more. You would never again take a new trail with that same blissful confidence that the going would be easy and your happiness would be safe.

Oh, how hard it is, she thought, that we must give that up! That fair blundering business of being young, that gay incompetent way of living before we know how to live, that plunging into the trail full of joy because we don’t know enough to be scared. Just take a look at Los Angeles, this huddle of brown boxes under this majestic sweep of mountains—take a look at it, Garnet, and finally own up to yourself that you love it. You love it because you lived so fully and richly here. Yes you did, even when you thought you hated it and were trying so hard to get away. We always hate the schoolroom where we learn hard lessons. But then we love it, because that’s the school that taught us all we know, and gave us all the strength we have. I wasn’t fit for the Jubilee Trail when I took it. I wonder if I’m any more fit for the new one. I don’t know.

All I know is that I am older, so much older, than I was when I took the trail before. Older by so much more than time. Older by three thousand miles and so many, many thousand hours of being scared and lonesome. I’m not lonesome any more. I’ve got John. But I’m still scared. That’s because I’ve learned so much. When you are young, you are not scared; when you are older, you are scared and you know you’ll be scared as long as you live.

Among the people and the ox-carts, she saw John. He was coming back from the alcalde’s office, to tell her when they could be married. Garnet raised herself eagerly and knelt on the wall-bench. Leaning out between the shutters, she called to him.

“John!” she cried. “John!”

He heard her, and paused. For a moment he looked around, not sure where her voice was coming from. She called again.

“John!”

He looked up then, and saw her in the window. A light broke over his face. He waved at her, and she waved back. “Tomorrow!” he called. He beckoned her to come down.

She nodded, and hurried away from the window. As she ran down the stairs to meet him she felt little tingles of happiness running all over her skin. Tomorrow she would be married, and then she would start the new trail to the gold-fields. She wondered what was waiting for her there.

Gwen Bristow (1903–1980), the author of seven bestselling historical novels that bring to life momentous events in American history, such as the siege of Charleston during the American Revolution (
Celia Garth
) and the great California gold rush (
Calico Palace
), was born in South Carolina, where the Bristow family had settled in the seventeenth century. After graduating from Judson College in Alabama and attending the Columbia School of Journalism, Bristow worked as a reporter for New Orleans’
Times-Picayune
from 1925 to 1934. Through her husband, screenwriter Bruce Manning, she developed an interest in longer forms of writing—novels and screenplays.

After Bristow moved to Hollywood, her literary career took off with the publication of
Deep Summer
, the first novel in a trilogy of Louisiana-set historical novels, which also includes
The Handsome Road
and
This Side of Glory
. Bristow continued to write about the American South and explored the settling of the American West in her bestselling novels
Jubilee Trail
, which was made into a film in 1954, and in her only work of nonfiction,
Golden Dreams
. Her novel
Tomorrow Is Forever
also became a film, starring Claudette Colbert, Orson Welles, and Natalie Wood, in 1946.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1950, 1978 by Gwen Bristow

Foreword by Nancy E. Turner copyright © 2006 by Nancy E. Turner

Foreword by Sandra Dallas copyright © 2006 by Sandra Dallas

Cover design by Connie Gabbert

978-1-4804-8514-3

This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

345 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

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