And Condors Danced (3 page)

S
OME OF CARLY’S
favorite stories were the ones Woo Ying told about his childhood in China and how he had gotten to California as a stowaway during the gold rush when he was only a boy. He’d had a terrible time on the ship and had almost starved to death before the sailors found him. After that he had to work very hard in the ship’s galley and was sometimes beaten, but at least he had enough to eat. He’d been told that he would be sent back to China when they reached San Francisco, so as soon as the ship docked he jumped overboard and swam to shore. He’d wanted to be a gold miner but after he made his way to the goldfields, he found that Chinese gold miners were not much safer than Chinese stowaways. In fact he was about to be shot by some evil miners when he was rescued by a kind and brave prospector named Edward Carlton. The same Edward Carlton, of course, who later became Aunt M.’s husband.

All of Woo Ying’s olden-days stories were full of terribly exciting things like narrow escapes and beatings and starvation and evil people with knives and guns. Aunt M.’s stories were interesting in different ways.

Aunt M. had grown up in a small town in the state of Maine, and although her early days hadn’t been nearly as dangerous as Woo Ying’s, she had fascinating stories to tell about such strange things as storms called blizzards that buried everything under huge drifts of snow.

But the part of Aunt M.’s life that Carly liked best was the love-story part. Aunt M., who was Mehitabel Johnson then, was only fourteen years old when she fell in love with a neighbor named Edward Carlton. According to Aunt M., she had mooned around for weeks before she discovered that the tall, handsome neighbor had proposed to Miranda, her older sister. Edward and Miranda became engaged, but in the meantime the California Gold Rush started, and in 1850 Edward Carlton joined the rush to the goldfields. He promised to come back for Miranda as soon as he made his fortune, but it had taken much longer than anyone expected, and Miranda had grown tired of waiting. Two years after Edward Carlton went away, a new young minister named Everett Hartwick came to the Presbyterian church that the Johnsons attended, and he and Miranda fell in love and were married.

Years passed and Aunt M. finished school and became a teacher. Edward Carlton had written to her now and then while he was engaged to her sister, and afterward their correspondence had continued. When he wrote that he had finally made a small strike, she’d hoped that he might soon return to Maine, but that was not to be. Instead he had decided to buy land and settle in southern California. But their correspondence continued, a friendly but rather formal exchange of letters between old friends, until 1869 when a very special letter was delivered to Mehitabel Johnson. It was from Edward Carlton and he wanted to know if she would consider coming to California to be his wife.

Carly was particularly interested in that part of the story. Sometimes, alone in her bedroom, she would act it out. She would be the young Mehitabel Johnson, sitting at her window, crying and staring out at mountainous snowdrifts. In Carly’s imaginings there were always blizzards in Maine. Having never seen snow except from afar on the tops of distant mountains, she yearned for blizzards and snowdrifts, and included them whenever possible. So there was always snow in Aunt M.’s story—snow and tears.

The crying was necessary, of course, because her heart was still broken. Carly had always been good at producing tears more or less at will, a talent envied by a few of her friends, but regarded with suspicion by others. So she would sit at the window crying real tears and staring out into a shimmering white landscape, until a postman appeared holding a letter over his head as he struggled through shoulder-high waves of rapidly drifting snow.

Sometimes she went on to act out the rest of the story—the bidding farewell forever to Maine and all her old friends and the long, dangerous, and uncomfortable trip to California in the very early days of the transcontinental railway. And then there was the meeting with Edward Carlton, her true love, after almost twenty years of separation.

But today, even though Aunt M. agreed to having tea in the kitchen, she didn’t seem to be in the mood for stories about the past. “Where has your father been?” she demanded while she was still filling the teapot at the kitchen sink pump. “I haven’t seen him in three days.”

Carly was feeding the fire in the huge gleaming stove. The stove, a magnificent Princess, the most regal of kitchen ranges, had six burners and two enormous ovens. Woo Ying’s pride and joy, it was always polished and blacked to perfection. In the wintertime it was the center of the house, a warmth-giving, comforting presence, but now in the summer heat it was less inviting. Gingerly, Carly scraped the remaining coals into a pile and added a few small sticks.

“Father went to Ventura,” she said, “to see about getting some extra hands for the apricot pitting. Charles went with him. They’re supposed to be back tomorrow.”

“Oh, yes, I’d forgotten that he was planning to go this week.” Aunt M. pulled out a chair and sat down at the round oak table. Her voice had a tense, edgy sound as she went on. “He might have stopped by before he left. I’ve something important to discuss with him. And now he won’t be back until tomorrow.” She brushed imaginary crumbs off the table with quick, irritable sweeps of her hand. “Should have been able to telephone him,” she muttered. “Lines could have been up the valley months ago, and they would have been, too, if certain people hadn’t been pulling strings.”

Carly sat down next to her. Leaning on her elbows with her chin in her hands, she looked carefully at the wrinkle-furrowed face of her great-aunt before she said, “What’s the matter? What’s happened, Aunt M.?”

“Nothing’s happened. That is, nothing’s happened yet. But I’ve had another letter from Quigley. He’s after the spring water again. And he says that this time he’s going to get it.”

“Aiii!” The angry shriek from directly behind her made Carly jump even though she recognized it immediately as the sound Woo Ying always made when things didn’t go to suit him. “Aiii!” he always shouted when the toast burned or the biscuits didn’t rise, or when anyone so much as mentioned Alfred Bennington Quigley.

Many years ago Alfred Quigley had been Edward Carlton’s partner. By the time Edward died in 1894, Quigley was the biggest landowner in the Santa Luisa Valley and he had decided that all of the Carlton land should be his too. He had tried to buy the Carlton holdings from Aunt M., but she had refused his offer. Instead she asked her nephew, Ezra Hartwick, to come to California to take over as foreman of the ranch. Ezra agreed, and that was why Carly’s family had come all the way from Maine to California. But even after the Hartwicks had arrived and Carly’s father had taken over as manager of the ranch, Quigley had not given up.

Woo Ying said Quigley would never give up. “Aiiii! Devil Quigley never give up.” Carly had heard him yell it enough times to be used to it. But this time Woo Ying had come into the kitchen so quietly in his soft black slippers that she hadn’t known he was there, and his sudden shout had made her jump.

“Stop that,” Aunt M. said. “I’ve told you and told you not to make that dreadful noise. It’s enough to scare a body out of their wits.”

Woo Ying shrugged, muttered something in Chinese, and shuffled into the pantry. A moment later he came out carrying a loaf of bread and a huge knife. All the time he was slicing and buttering the bread he went on muttering to himself and occasionally swishing the knife around his head as if he were charging into an army of attacking Quigleys. Carly poked Aunt M. and nodded at Woo Ying.

“Look at Woo Ying,” she whispered, grinning.

“I know,” Aunt M. said, frowning sternly. “Crazy old coot.” Carly giggled and she said it again. “Crazy old coot.” But this time she was smiling.

T
HE SUN WAS
low and long shadows were creeping over the Santa Luisa Valley by the time Carly left Greenwood and started the long walk home. At the gate she turned to wave good-bye. Aunt M. and Woo Ying had come out on the veranda to see her off. Clanging the wrought-iron gate shut behind her, she waved once more and started down the dusty road, swinging a carefully wrapped package by its neat string handle. In the package were some books she was borrowing from Aunt M.’s library, some horehound drops, and a few Chinese nuts.

The horehound drops and the nuts were supposed to be a surprise, but she’d seen Woo Ying slip them into the package. Actually she didn’t care much for horehound, but Lila liked it. Carly always saved her horehound for Lila.

The books were
King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
, both of which she had read before, and two new ones. One of the new ones was
Love’s Chain Broken
, which she’d managed to talk Aunt M. out of even though she’d not yet read it herself, and another called
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
. She couldn’t wait to read that one because Aunt M. had hinted that Father might find Sherlock Holmes even more unsuitable than Bertha Clay.

“Is it too stimulating?” Carly had asked hopefully. “Too stimulating” was what Father said about most of her favorite books.

“Probably,” Aunt M. had said shortly, and then walked out of the room muttering something about stimulating being better than suffocating.

A little way beyond Greenwood the road forked where the Hamilton Valley Road sloped northward from Santa Luisa Avenue. Taking the north fork, Carly soon came in sight of the tops of the tall shade trees and the third-story tower of the Quigleys’ house. In the
Santa Luisa Ledger
there were often announcements such as “The Women’s Relief Corps met Wednesday last, at Citronia, the handsome estate of the Quigley-Babcock family.” The Babcocks were old Alfred Quigley’s daughter, Alicia, her husband, Elmer Babcock—and Henry. Henry Babcock was Alfred Quigley’s only grandchild—and the biggest pest and bully in the Santa Luisa Grammar School.

Carly stopped when she was opposite the entrance with its huge stone pillars and the sign that arched above them spelling out the ridiculous name in elaborately ornamented letters—
CITRONIA
! But Aunt M. never called it that. “Ridiculous name,” she always said whenever it was mentioned. Curling her lip sarcastically, she would drawl “Ci-tron-i-a,” making it sound ri-di-cu-lous, and Woo Ying would throw up his hands and go “Aiii!”

“Citronia,” Carly whispered, peering down the curving graveled driveway to where she could catch a glimpse of the scrolls and curves and loops and bulges of the veranda’s fancy woodwork. “Ci-tron-i-a! Aiii!”

Dropping her package onto a patch of dry grass, she began to slice the air with both hands. “Aiii!” she yelled, jumping from side to side and slashing and jabbing. “Aiii!”

Just then a wagon turned onto Hamilton Road from Arnold Street and Carly froze in mid-slash. Picking up her package, she continued on her way in such a ladylike manner that she was soon overtaken by the wagon, which turned out to be Dan Kelly’s buckboard.

The Kellys were the Hartwicks’ nearest neighbors. Their homestead was in the foothills above the Carlton land in an area that had always been called Grizzly Flats. Dan Kelly was what people called a real old-timer. He’d lived in the Santa Luisa Valley since the early days and knew the area better than anyone, particularly the wilderness way back in the Sespe Mountains. He could tell wonderful stories about such things as grizzly bears and cougars, and ordinarily Carly would have been glad for a visit with him. But not when he’d just seen her pretending to be a Chinese hatchetman.

“Bless me, if it’s not little Carly Hartwick,” Dan said as he pulled alongside. His eyes were crinkling in the way they always did when he was teasing. “And here I was wondering what grand young lady was traipsin’ up our way at this hour of the evening.”

“Hello, Mr. Kelly,” Carly said, tucking her head and looking up at him sideways to hide a hot flush of embarrassment. Even though he was pretending he hadn’t, she was sure he’d seen what she was doing back there in front of the Quigleys’.

Leaning down from the buckboard’s seat, Mr. Kelly extended his hand. “Hop up here beside me, lass, and keep me and my old mules company as far as the Carlton place. ’Tis a long, dusty way for such a grand young lady to be going by shank’s mare.”

Carly shook her head. “Thank you, Mr. Kelly, but I think I’ll walk. I’m used to it. I walk to my aunt’s place quite often.”

“Well, now, I know you do, and the cool of the evening, ’tis a grand time for walkin’. Perhaps you’ll be visiting us at the Flats soon?”

“Oh, yes,” Carly said. “I’ll try to. Tell Matt to come for me—on the donkeys.”

“I’ll do that very thing,” Dan said. “We’ll be looking forward to seeing you. Maggie and meself, and Matt most of all.” Dan Kelly slapped the reins across the mules’ backs, waved his hand, and the buckboard pulled slowly away, creaking and groaning.

With the wagon out of sight around the first curve, Carly abandoned her ladylike pace in favor of her usual gait, a skipping, running walk that at times broke into a gallop—and in only a few minutes she passed the outskirts of Santa Luisa—and soon afterward the last telephone pole.

Carly had been waiting for the arrival of telephone lines in the Hamilton Valley with great impatience. It would be wonderful to be able to crank the handle and chat with friends who were miles away. But what she was looking forward to even more was being able to pick up the phone when other people’s numbers rang, and listen in on their conversations. That, she thought, would be a lot like becoming invisible—and important for the same reasons. But the poles had not yet gone up the valley, and that, according to Aunt M., was because of “string pulling.” And the string puller was, of course, Alfred Quigley.

Carly looked around her where, at that very moment, she was surrounded by Quigley lemon orchards. On both sides the dome-shaped trees, their crisp, shiny leaves glittering in the slanting sunlight, crowded the Hamilton Valley Road into a narrow, dusty alley. Sniffing the lemon-scented air, Carly wrinkled her nose and broke into a run. She didn’t stop running until the lemon orchards were behind her.