A New Beginning (4 page)

It didn't feel like a wintry February day by the time we found ourselves galloping along the road through the trees and foothills that led in the direction I wanted to go. Before we had been gone ten minutes, we had to stop to take off our gloves and unbutton our coats.

“Phew, I forgot how hot you get when you ride hard!” said Becky. “I ride so seldom, I was worried that maybe I'd have forgotten how.”

“You never forget how to ride,” I answered. “And besides, the horses know what to do.”

As the road gradually steepened and narrowed, we slowed to a walk, making our way eastward through the foothills along the side of the swollen creek that flowed down out of the mountains, past our family's mine and our claim (where Pa still hoped to strike gold again) and on into Miracle Springs and down farther into the valley where it eventually fell into the Yuba and Feather Rivers and finally the great Sacramento River itself. It was about a three-mile ride to a place where two smaller creeks joined to create Miracle Springs Creek.

When we got to the fork, we dismounted so the horses could rest a bit and take a drink out of the nice cold mountain stream. Whatever the blue sky and the bright sun might be trying to say, it was definitely winter. The seasons aren't so defined here as in the East, and the pines and firs were nice and green. Yet there was still a different look to the terrain and to the forest and the grasses underfoot. We stood gazing about, drinking in the quiet. No words passed between us. This moment was in such contrast to the chatty time we had spent with Almeda and Ruth earlier. But when you are out in the midst of nature's wonders, a different kind of sharing takes place that requires no words.

In a few minutes we remounted our horses, and I now led the way along one of the two creeks in a more northward direction. After another forty or fifty minutes, we drew near the place I had wanted to show Becky.

I reined in beside a small still pool of dark blue-green water and dismounted. Becky did likewise.

“Do you hear the falls up ahead?” I said.

We were silent. Then Becky nodded. “Yes . . . yes, I think I do. Is it much farther?”

“We're almost there.”

I knelt down to take a drink from the pool. “Come, have a drink, Becky,” I said. “You've never tasted anything so good!”

Becky knelt down and scooped her hand into the water.

“It's so cold!”

“It's snow-water,” I replied. “That's one of the reasons it tastes so good.”

We stood and now walked our horses, for the way grew rockier and steeper the closer we got to the falls. Eventually it became even too difficult for them to walk.

“Let's tie the horses here,” I said. “There's no room for them at the falls anyway. I usually walk from here up.”

We secured the horses, then took our packs of bread and climbed the rest of the way over rocks and up the face of the mountain through the brush until the falls became visible to us. The moment they came into view, both Becky and I were silenced in awe of the long fall of water from the stream over the tall cliff. It plunged straight down, cascaded off a boulder or two in a great white spray, and finally splashed into the deep pool below, which wasn't yet visible from where we stood but beside which, as I had told Becky, was one of my favorite “sitting spots.”

“It's so beautiful,” said Becky quietly at length. “Now I see why you wanted to bring me here.”

“God has made so many places like this,” I said, “that are in places where nobody sees them. If I made something this beautiful, I would want to show it to the whole world. But God seems to make things just because they are beautiful. That's enough.”

Becky still stood gazing about speechless. “But that makes it all the more wonderful when you chance to find one,” she said finally. “You must feel as though this is your own private beautiful place, that God made just for you.”

“I have felt that,” I said. “And now it is
our
special beautiful place. Promise me you'll ride up here in the summer to see it. There's not so much water then, but lush moss and wild flowers grow everywhere. Promise me you'll come.”

“Oh, I will!”

“I'll be in the East thinking about you sitting here under the cool spray on a hot day in July!”

“I will come here often,” whispered Becky, her mood growing quiet again. “I understand now why you were always riding off.”

We stood a moment more side by side, then gave one another a tight hug.

“I'm going to miss you, Becky,” I said.

“And I'm going to miss you. I love you, Corrie. You're the best sister ever.”

“And I love you too, Becky. Next to Christopher, you're the best friend I have. But let's walk up closer.”

“Is it safe?”

“In the summer and autumn, when there's not so much water, you can even get up behind the falls. Come on, I want to show you the pool!”

I led the way, climbing around a huge boulder to the point where I hoped to show Becky the clearest, bluest pool of mountain water. The falls splashed into one end, but the other had always seemed to me like a blue round saucer holding water for all the forest creatures to come and drink.

As I made my way around the boulder and into sight of the pool, suddenly I froze with a look of horror on my face.

There in the middle of the tranquil blue saucer floated the dead body of a gray mountain deer.

“Oh, eech!” exclaimed Becky. “Corrie, we drank water from that stream!”

My tongue began to salivate even as she said it, and a shiver went down my back.

We stood staring a moment or two longer, then I realized that it wasn't only Becky and me that drank the water that came down from this pool. This stream flowed into the Miracle Springs Creek, past our house, and into town.
Everybody
drank this water.

“Becky,” I said, “we've got to get it out of there somehow!”

“What do you mean—how?”

“We can't just leave it there. If this deer remains here, it will eventually bloat and rot and contaminate the spring.”

“But what can we possibly do?”

Already I had turned and was looking about for some large sticks or branches. I found a fallen limb from a nearby pine that I thought was long enough. With Becky's help I dragged it down the slope and into the water. It was just long enough to reach the deer. I gave the body several shoves, the last of which sent the branch from my hands floating out across the pond.

“That may do it,” I said. “Let's see if we can get around to the other side.”

By the time we had scrambled around the water's edge, the deer had floated leisurely from the center of the pond to within six or seven feet of where we now stood.

“One of us is going to have to get into that water and pull it the rest of the way,” I said. I sat down and began to take off my boots.

“But, Corrie, the water's too cold!”

“I'll be all right,” I said. “Nobody will see us here. When we're done I'll put my dry things back on.”

I undressed up to my bloomers, then stepped gingerly into the pool. Quickly I yanked back my foot. Becky was right—the water was cold!

But I had no choice. After a few seconds of gathering up my courage, I plunged my feet in, stepped carefully forward to a depth of about my knees, and then soon was shivering as the water came up to my waist. I was only about five feet from the edge, for the bottom was steep. I reached out as far as I could while retaining my balance, and just barely managed to touch the deer's carcass with my fingers. It made my skin crawl momentarily, but I did my best to pull it toward me. As the dead body began again to float toward me, I backed up the slope and out of the water the way I had come.

A few minutes later I stood on shore again, dripping and shivering, and the deer was floating at the water's edge.

“We've got to try to pull it up and out of the water,” I said. “I want you to grab on to one of his hind legs there.”

With a determined grimace, Becky did so while I took hold of the two stiff front legs. Pulling and heaving and maneuvering as best we could, in two or three minutes we had managed to haul the thing out of the water and onto the rocky edge of the pool.

Becky grunted again in disgust, then washed off her hands in the water and took several steps away. I washed my hands too, then put my clothes back on. I was freezing and already beginning to think of the nice fire we had left back home! Becky gave me her coat, but it was with great difficulty that I managed to get my boots on, for my fingers were practically frozen.

We wasted no time getting back to our waiting horses, nor in riding down the mountain. I rode as fast as I dared go with Becky, and when we got back, never had I enjoyed a fire and a cup of tea so much.

It took me nearly two hours, with my feet propped up in front of the flame, to finally finish warming up!

I found myself thinking about the incident for a long time after that. Compared with many of the things I had done in my life, I don't suppose this one contained all that much significance, yet I often thought of it in after years. I think it was partly because it happened to Becky and me together, alone and a good ways from home. We'd played together as children, of course, but doing something like that as adults—not dangerous exactly, yet I know it seemed so in Becky's eyes—somehow drew us closer.

We mentioned it between ourselves now and then as we grew older, recalling how much a seemingly beautiful moment had changed so suddenly, but also how it had turned out all right. Knowing that it was to be our final time alone together before Christopher's and my departure probably added to its seeming significance. That's why I wrote it down in detail in my journal.

Most of our things were packed away by the first of March.

Gradually a sort of solemn atmosphere began to settle over the house as the day of our departure drew nearer and nearer—fifteen days, then ten, then a week.

We were living out of two or three carpetbags by then, with four wooden crates containing the rest of our possessions all nailed together and sitting just inside the barn waiting to be loaded on a wagon and taken to the train in Miracle Springs. We would leave for Sacramento on March 16, three days before the ship was scheduled to sail from San Francisco.

I had done most of my crying by then. Now it was mostly sighs and conversations of pretended bravery. No one talked about the move anymore.

The sixteenth would come.

We would all go into town to the station together.

We would cry again.

Almeda and I would embrace, then Becky and I.

We would cry and blubber some more and talk about writing every day and about visiting next year, though in my heart I was so afraid I might never be back.

Pa and Christopher would exchange a handshake and a few manly words, during which Pa would tell Christopher to take good care of his daughter.

Then there would be handshakes from Zack and Tad.

Then I would hug Pa and my brothers too and would cry again, though the three of them would probably try not to.

Uncle Nick and Aunt Katie and all the younger kids would be there. Probably half the town would be there!

Then Christopher and I would get on the train, and as it pulled out we would wave to everyone through an open window. Everyone would be trying to smile and laugh as they waved, but what an empty feeling there would be in my stomach. Gradually the train would pick up steam, and we would pull out of Miracle Springs . . . and that would be that. Christopher and I would sit down in our seats in silence, and everybody else would walk quietly out of the station and back to whatever they had to do.

And life would go on.

I had envisioned the scene already in my mind a hundred times.

We didn't talk about it. The day was coming, and we would just do what must be done when the time came to do it.

By March 10, a Wednesday, I didn't think I could stand it another day. We would be leaving in less than a week and I wished we could just leave right then and get it over with. The hours crept by so slowly. The waiting was awful!

Then suddenly a shock wave slammed into our lives that changed everything.

The first evidence of it came that afternoon of the tenth when suddenly the sound of galloping hooves came pounding up the road. You could tell something was wrong just by the urgent sound of them.

Becky and I were talking together. We ran out of the bunkhouse about the same time Almeda appeared on the porch of the house with a look of concern on her face.

“Pa, Pa!” cried Zack as he flew up to the front of the house. “Where's Pa?”

“Up at your uncle's,” replied Almeda, “—why, what's—”

But she could not even finish her question. Zack had already wheeled his horse around and was making for Uncle Nick's as fast as he could go.

“What is it?” I said as Becky and I ran up.

“I don't know,” replied Almeda. “He wanted your father, that's all he said.”

We were still standing there a couple minutes later when Zack again appeared, still galloping furiously. This time he didn't even slow down as he came but kept right on back in the direction of town. Before the sound of his horse was gone, Pa's feet sounded on the path as he came running down from Uncle Nick's as fast as I'd ever seen him go.

“Avery's had an attack!” he called, not even coming to the house, but running straight to the barn.

Almeda's hand went to her mouth as she gasped in shock.

“Oh, the dear man,” she whispered. “God bless him.”

For a second or two she and Becky and I stood there looking at each other in stunned silence. Then, as if we all suddenly realized the same thing at the same instant, we all tore off to the barn to hitch up a buggy.

Pa was off before we were done, just about the same time Uncle Nick came riding down from his place. He and Pa galloped off together toward town. Tad and Christopher had by now heard the commotion and had come running. Tad quickly saddled his horse, while Christopher gave us a hand with the buggy.

In a few minutes more Christopher and I, along with Becky, Almeda, and Ruth, were in the buggy, following about a minute behind Tad, with Aunt Katie and her family right behind us.