Tears of Gold (30 page)

“Thank you, and my name is Mara. You’re welcome to call me by it if you wish,” she invited the other woman who couldn’t be more than four or five years older than she was. Mara had often thought if Mrs. Markham would smile more, she would be quite an attractive woman. Of course, she didn’t have much to amuse her, working from dawn until midnight trying to run a boardinghouse and raise her three young children. Mara shook her head. Jenny Markham hardly looked old enough to be the mother of that trio of roughneck, gamin-faced boys ranging in age from three to seven. With her fine-boned face under that incredible mop of tousled red hair, she seemed so young and innocent, as if she shouldn’t have a care in the world.

Now Jenny Markham’s eye avoided Mara’s in embarrassment, her face flushing uncomfortably as she held Mara’s cloak in her work-roughened hands. “Well, I’d be mighty honored, Miss O’Flynn, but for some reason it just don’t seem right to be calling a person by their Christian name when they’re a paying guest,” she explained, shrugging her shoulders as she smiled shyly. “But I hope you’ll call me Jenny still.”

“Of course,” Mara said with a cynical smile curving her lips as she accepted her cloak from Jenny, who seemed to be flustered as she saw the expression in Mara’s tawny eyes. “If you’ll excuse me, I want to take these sweets to Paddy.”

“Oh, Jamie stepped out for a short spell, Miss O’Flynn,” Jenny Markham called after her. “She took Paddy and a couple of my boys along. She said something about buying some new boots for the boy.”

“That’s right, I forgot they were going,” Mara remembered.

“Ah, Miss O’Flynn,” Jenny spoke suddenly. “I was just fixing myself a cup of coffee. If you’d care to join me…well, I’d sure like that.”

Mara stared down at her in puzzlement. As she thought of the tempting coffee, she nodded her dark head in assent and followed her hostess into the room that served as a dining hall for her boarders. A long table that could probably have seated at least thirty or forty people stretched almost the length of the room, while a long bench ran the distance on each side. In the middle of the table were stacks of plates, cups and saucers, and cheap silverware.

A tray with an earthenware coffeepot and two matching cups and saucers and an unmatching sugar bowl had been placed on the end of the table near them. A plate with several small slices of cake had been added as well, and it was to this that Jenny Markham gestured in embarrassment.

“It’s the last of the set. Most all of it except for a couple of plates and cups got broken on the trip out here, along with most everything else. I thought maybe you wouldn’t mind having coffee in here, and maybe we could talk while I’m setting the table,” she said hopefully.

Mara nodded and sat down with a curious look on her face. It seemed as though Jenny had been expecting her.

“I was hoping I’d see you when you came back in,” Jenny answered Mara’s silent query, “and we’d get this chance to talk. My smallest one is sleeping and most of the other boarders are out right now, so I’ve got a few moments for myself.”

“Talk about what?” Mara asked as she waited for Jenny to pour the dark, freshly brewed coffee.

Jenny looked down into her cup thoughtfully, obviously ill at ease. “Just now when I said I’d rather call you Miss O’Flynn,” she began, looking up frankly into Mara’s golden brown eyes, “it wasn’t because you’re an actress, or that you work down at the Eldorado.”

Mara’s eyes began to warm a little as she listened to Jenny Markham’s awkward explanation.

“I admit that when you first came here seeking rooms,” Jenny said nervously, “I didn’t think the kindest thoughts about you.”

“I had gathered as much,” Mara commented dryly as she took a sip of coffee.

Jenny’s dark blue eyes traveled over Mara’s elegant figure, not missing the pearl buttons closing the front of Mara’s bodice jacket of dark brown velvet, or the edging of fine lace around the collar and cuffs. She made a wry face as she looked down at her own plain wool dress and practical apron. “I guess I was partly jealous. You’re so pretty, and dress so fine, that I never gave myself a chance to like you. I thought you’d have a lot of men friends calling, and be real uppity. But no one ever comes to call on you, and I seldom see you with a man at least until today,” Jenny corrected herself as she remembered the curly blond head that had been stuck inside the door with Miss O’Flynn.

“The gentle giant,” Mara laughed as she remembered her rescuer. “He came to my assistance and rather handily routed two amorous drunks from my path. He says he’s called the Swede.”

Jenny smiled in understanding. “Even with my brood of redheads tagging along, I get proposals of marriage on nearly every street corner. I suppose if you’re looking for a husband, it’s the best place to be, but for us who’d rather be left alone, the shortage of females is a hazard. Besides, they just want someone to wash their shirts and fix them a decent meal. Do you know some of them actually send their dirty linen all the way to China to get washed?” Jenny demanded incredulously.

Mara shook her head in disgust, thinking it must be true if they were as helpless as Brendan. She could not imagine her brother fixing himself a meal, much less washing out his own clothes.

“I misjudged you, Miss O’Flynn,” Jenny confessed, “and I wish you’d forgive me. I can tell you’re a good person by the way you treat the boy. You love him a lot, and I reckon a person has to make a living the best way they can. So I hope you and I can be friends?”

“I’d like that, Jenny,” Mara responded, “but don’t expect too much of me, or paint me something I’m not. I’m not always a nice person, and I’ve made a lot of mistakes,” Mara told her abruptly.

“All of us have things we’d like to forget,” Jenny spoke softly, a look of remembered pain in her eyes.

“My brother Brendan’s favorite saying is, ‘I’ve got the divil ridin’ on me shoulder, so don’t be blamin’ me.’ And besides that,” Mara laughed, “we’re Irish.”

“I’m afraid I don’t have that excuse, although you would’ve thought as much the way I raised hell with John, my husband, when he told me about coming out here to California,” Jenny confided with a rueful laugh. “I couldn’t believe it when he told me he’d gone and sold the farm. We had a real nice one back in Ohio, and his folks lived nearby. We were doing pretty good, or so I thought. But I guess John just got kind of restless, wanted more out of life than he could ever get on the farm. It was just a small one and we’d never have gotten rich on it. But we were happy and making a decent living off it.”

“You’re a widow aren’t you?” Mara asked gently.

Jenny nodded, sending numerous unruly curls cascading over her brow. “Yes, been one now for little over a year I guess. Funny how you lose track of time when you’ve got nothing to look forward to. You just live each day as it comes,” she reflected sadly. Then, taking a sip of coffee, she continued on a lighter note, “I guess, you being from Ireland, you came around the Horn? A lot of people say that’s one of the worst ways of doing it, but don’t ever let someone talk you into coming across country. That’s the way John and me did it. We joined up with a wagon train heading west from Council Bluffs on the Missouri River. We had a wagon and a team of oxen and what supplies we thought we’d need for the journey.” Jenny laughed with a grimace of remembrance. “We had all our possessions packed in the wagon as well, including furniture. I even had my grandmother’s fine cherry chest-of-drawers, but it went for firewood about two months out. In fact, most of the furniture ended up in the fire ’cause the wagon needed to be lightened. We left Iowa in May and started out across the plains knowing we’d have to make at least sixteen miles a day if we were to make it across the mountains before the snows came. Nobody wanted to get trapped up there like the Donner party did in ’forty-six. We were up at daybreak getting breakfast, burning buffalo chips when we couldn’t find enough kindling, packing, and hitching up the wagons to move on a little bit more each day. There was always a river to be crossed or a water hole to be reached before we could stop and get some of the dust out of our eyes. Of course, there was always the threat of Indians attacking us, but I think it was the sudden storms and the sickness that scared me the most. I thought for sure the heavens were going to fall in one day when it rained so hard and the thunder was deafening, but it wasn’t until the next day when we had to cross the rain-swollen river that I realized how awful it’d really been when one of the wagons got swept downstream by the current. I guess we were lucky that we even got as far as that; a lot of people died when the cholera hit the train and took twenty people in one night, and it seemed as though there was always a grave to be dug for someone who’d caught something or hurt himself in some accident. Since we didn’t have a doctor along, there wasn’t much that we could do.”

She shook her head. “I remember how happy we were to cross the Rockies, little realizing we still had deserts to cross and another mountain range to climb before we even got to California. That’s when we started losing more of the wagons and the animals began to lag behind, finally dropping dead beside the trail, just too tired to go on. But we had to keep going on. We couldn’t turn back. There was no place to go. I didn’t think we’d ever get through that desert. I stared out on miles and miles of sand stretching away into the distance, and seeing the skeletons of wagon trains that hadn’t made it—the bleached bones of their animals, all the graves—well, it still haunts me. But finally we got across, and John and me and the three little ones actually made it to California.”

Jenny placed her empty coffee cup on the table. Noticing Mara’s empty cup, she refilled it and offered her a piece of cake.

“What happened to your husband?”

“Don’t seem right somehow for a man to come through all that alive and then get killed here in San Francisco by a runaway freight wagon as he stepped outside for a breath of fresh air. Such a senseless sort of thing to happen.”

“I’m sorry, Jenny,” Mara said and reached out to touch Jenny’s hand. It was the first gesture of comfort Mara had ever made to a stranger.

“Well, it’s over now, and I’ve got to make do with what I have.”

“Did you never think of going back home?”

Jenny shook her head. “I suppose I thought about it, but what’s back there for me now? My folks have been dead for years, and John’s folks are too old and poor to support me and the kids. I guess here’s as good a place as any to raise a family.”

Jenny stood up as she heard the front door open and the sound of voices. Mara gathered up her cloak and bonnet as she recognized Jamie’s shrill brogue.

“I’d better go see what Paddy’s up to. Thank you for the coffee. I enjoyed our talk.”

“I’m real glad we had it, Mara,” Jenny said, deciding suddenly to forego convention. “Have you heard from your brother yet?”

“No, and I’m not likely to either,” Mara responded. “Brendan will show up in his own good time.”

As Mara walked to the door, two redheaded little boys rushed in, nearly knocking her over. “Sorry, ma’am,” the tallest of the two said as he dodged past her and ran up to Jenny. “Gordie and me got new boots too, Mama! Same kind as Paddy!”

Paddy was only a step behind his friend, but Mara was quicker and managed to grab hold of him as he careened into her. “There is such a thing as walking like a gentleman into a room, Padraic,” Mara spoke in exasperation.

“I’m sorry, Mara,” Paddy apologized quickly, then grinned up at her with Brendan’s dimple showing in the softness of his cheek as he added proudly, “Did you see my new boots!”

Mara looked down, putting on a show of carefully inspecting their color and shape. “Very nice, Paddy,” Mara approved. She had to admit they were more practical than shoes in these muddy streets. He seemed so grown up in them. Indeed, he had grown a lot in the past year, besides turning seven years old.

Jamie entered and now stood behind the three boys as they lined up proudly before Jenny, showing off their brand new, knee-high boots. Both Jenny and Mara wondered how Jamie had managed to pay for all three pairs.

Jenny looked between Mara and Jamie, then back at her two boys, a look of regret on her face as she shook her head. “I don’t see how we can pay for these. I’m sorry, boys, but you’ll have to give them back,” she told them.

“Now, now,” Jamie interrupted the cries of protest from Paul and Gordie. “There’s no need for that. I got them all on sale from a man who’d bought a whole wagon load of them, only to find most of them too small for his customers. He was sellin’ them real cheap, ma’am,” Jamie explained, “and to be sure, all the boys needed new boots. Thought ’twas too good a chance to be passin’ up. Ye can be payin’ Miss Mara back sometime later. There’s no hurry.”

Jenny stared down at her boys’ pleading faces and nodded in agreement. “Very well, but I’ll want an exact billing for it, Jamie, and thank you,” she added with a grateful smile as the three boys started jumping around the room, Gordie and Paul copying the Irish jig Paddy was dancing.

“Got them real cheap indeed,” Mara whispered to Jamie as they left the room. “If those are the ones I saw in the window of the general store around the corner, they cost more like forty dollars a pair.”

“Closer to twenty-five,” Jamie admitted, “but they were marked down, bein’ so small, and her boys needed them real bad.”

“I suppose so,” Mara agreed, not seeing the surprised look on Jamie’s face as she failed to make an issue out of the expense. The little woman followed Mara upstairs, shaking her grizzled head in disbelief.

“I’ll just have to smile more seductively at my customers tonight and look a bit longer into their leering, bloodshot eyes if I’m to make up the difference in tips. You’d be surprised how much they pay for you to just sit and have a drink with them.”

“Wish ye weren’t workin’ in that place,” Jamie said, not for the first time. “And I’m not likin’ that gambler ye be workin’ for either.”

“Jamie,” Mara said, trying to make her understand, “you know I can’t earn enough in the theater to live on, much less support you and Paddy. I can earn more in one night by just sitting at Jacques’s tables, drawing the customers to him, than I could half a year on the stage. He pays me well enough, Jamie. I’m not complaining.”