Homecoming Girls (7 page)

Jewel gazed up at the towering mountains above them where the sun was slowly sinking, colouring the sky to red, orange and yellow and casting deep shadows on the valley below.

‘Up there, look.’ She pointed the direction out to Clara. ‘That’s where Mama and Kitty rode into the valley for the very
first time. They didn’t come by waggon trail but were shown the Indian way by a trapper.’

‘How romantic!’ Clara breathed.

Jewel nodded. ‘Yes. I do believe it might have been.’

Jewel slipped into a slight doze, but Clara, wide awake, continued to gaze out of the coach window even though as darkness was falling it was now difficult to see. Ahead of her the road ran in a straight line over the plain and appeared to come to an end against a mountain wall, and she puzzled as to how they would go any further.

As they travelled on towards the apparent end of the visible road, Jewel stirred. ‘Are we nearly there?’ she murmured.

‘I don’t know,’ Clara said. ‘The road seems to disappear into the face of the mountain.’

Jewel smiled. ‘Then we are nearly there. When I came back the last time, Mama said that I should close my eyes and there would be magic and when I opened them we would have arrived. Try it,’ she teased.

Clara shook her head. ‘No. I want to see what happens, for it seems to me we are going to crash into the mountain!’

The other passengers smiled. ‘That’s what we thought when we came the first time,’ the man said. ‘And that’s what appealed to us. Now we’re planning on coming to live here in this hidden valley. It’s hidden even though everybody knows it’s here. Our names are Bert and Sarah Thompson. Do you live here?’ he asked Jewel.

‘No,’ she said. ‘We’re visitors from England, but have family friends here. My name is Jewel Dreumel and this is my cousin Clara Newmarch.’

‘Are you a relation of the original Dreumel?’ Sarah Thompson asked curiously. ‘I understand he lives in Europe, or did I hear that he’d died?’

‘He certainly didn’t die,’ Jewel said. ‘Wilhelm Dreumel is my father – my adoptive father,’ she added.

‘Look!’ Clara said. ‘We’re starting to turn. There’s a corner after all.’

The horses were slowing, moving only at a trot as a sharp corner appeared ahead of them, and the passengers felt the pull as the driver reined in and steered into the mouth of the mountain, which opened up to reveal a road wide enough for two waggons to pass each other safely. A broad creek ran alongside the road and half a mile further on a stone bridge crossed over it.

‘Oh, if only it were not so dark,’ Clara began, but as she spoke a thin sliver of silver moon appeared in the night sky and the waters of the creek glinted in its light. So it is a magic place after all, she thought, and I must be careful what I wish for.

The coach pulled up outside the Marius, which was a double-fronted, two-storeyed timber-framed building with a wide overhanging portico supported by a pair of painted wooden columns. A wooden bench was placed on either side of the doors.

The driver got down and opened the coach door. ‘Here y’ah, young ladies. The Dreumel Marius.’

The Thompsons stayed in their seats. ‘We’re going on to Nellie O’Neill’s hotel,’ they said. ‘We’ve booked a room for a couple of days and are going to look for a building plot.’

‘Then we’ll see you again,’ Jewel said. ‘We’ll be coming to visit Miss Nellie and Isaac.’

Wilhelm and Georgiana had impressed upon her that they must be sure to pay this particular visit. Isaac had been with the original team when Wilhelm had first come to the valley and begun the search for gold. He was well past his first youth even then and too old for further prospecting, but Wilhelm had employed him as a guard to watch over the
camp, promising him a stake in any gold if they should find it, which they did.

Then along came Nellie O’Neill, who was keen to open a saloon bar in what was then a burgeoning settlement. She and Isaac had met previously and in his heyday he had been sweet on her; together they now ran the popular bar and rooming house in Dreumel’s Creek. Often they could be heard haranguing one another, but that they were fond of each other there was no doubt.

‘We’ll go tomorrow after we’ve rested,’ Jewel said as they followed the driver with their luggage up the steps from the boardwalk and into the hotel. ‘I just can’t wait to see everyone, but especially Kitty and Caitlin. We write, you know, Caitlin and I, and yet I hardly remember what she looks like.’

‘You’ll recognize her, I expect,’ Clara murmured. She was very tired. The day’s travelling had exhausted her. Whatever will I be like when we travel to California, she thought?

They were greeted by James Crawford, the manager of the Dreumel’s Creek Marius, but he was young and newly appointed and therefore hadn’t met Jewel on her visit when she was a child.

‘I’m delighted to meet you, Miss Dreumel,’ he said, ‘and you too, Miss Newmarch. I’d hoped that your father might have accompanied you. I was looking forward to meeting him again.’

‘When did you last see him?’Jewel asked.

‘When he came to Philadelphia a year ago, during the crash. I’d heard he was in town and approached him, asking for an interview. I was in the hotel trade but wanted to rise up the managerial ladder. He said he’d get in touch if a position should arise.’ He smiled enthusiastically. ‘And, man of his word that he is, he did! He wrote to me from England offering me the post of manager here. Everybody wants to work with Wilhelm Dreumel,’ he added.

‘That’s good to know,’ Jewel said, and thought how like her father it was to take someone on trust after one meeting. She wondered if he had been influenced by the fact that
James Crawford was of mixed race, white and possibly Native American Indian, judging by his raven-black hair and lean face.

They were shown to adjoining rooms on the first floor by a uniformed bell boy and followed by a maid who came to turn their beds down and bring fresh water jugs.

‘My room is charming,’ Clara called through to Jewel. ‘There’s a canopied bed with a patchwork bedspread, and a lovely vase of flowers on the bedside table. And muslin curtains!’

‘So has mine.’Jewel came to join her. ‘Except that my bedspread is rose and not green like yours. I don’t remember any of this,’ she said. ‘But of course I wouldn’t.’

Supper was brought to their rooms: slices of cold chicken, hard-boiled eggs, tomatoes, and a pot of English tea and china teacups to drink from.

‘There’s Mama’s influence,’ Jewel said as she poured. ‘She said that English tea was something she often longed for when she lived here.’

When they had finished eating they undressed and prepared for bed, but first Clara looked out of her window. Their rooms were at the front of the hotel overlooking the creek and she could hear the rush and gurgle of the water. Its source was somewhere high in the mountains and the stream came down first into the neighbouring Yeller Valley, which, Jewel had told her, had also been a secret place, approachable only by climbing the mountain peak and descending the other side until Wilhelm and his team, including Ted Allen, Caitlin’s father, had blasted their way through, releasing the waters of the creek which had previously spouted through a narrow opening in the mountain wall and simultaneously finding gold as they did so.

The evening was warm; she could smell tobacco smoke and hear the low gruff tones of men’s voices. She guessed that they were sitting on the front porch below them, perhaps discussing the events of the day. It was a comforting, pleasurable sound, she thought, as she climbed into the feather bed,
like old friends joining together in companionship.

They both slept soundly, exhausted by the travelling but waking refreshed. They bathed and dressed and went downstairs for breakfast, where they were served with eggs, bacon, muffins and piping-hot coffee. The day was sunny, with a heat haze over the mountains, so Jewel suggested they first of all visit Nellie and Isaac and then in the afternoon hire a cabriolet to take them to Yeller Creek.

‘It’s not that it’s too far to walk,’ she explained. ‘But it will be too hot.’

They took parasols and walked the short distance to Nellie’s hotel. Jewel explained to Clara that the building was the original miners’ longhouse.

‘Mama said it was all very basic when she and Kitty first came. There were no facilities at all; the men bathed in the creek, and,’ she lowered her voice, ‘she and Kitty had to dig a hole in the ground – you know,’ she nodded significantly, ‘for—’

‘A privy, you mean?’ Clara had no qualms about such discussions. She had visited enough poor houses in Hull with her mother to know about primitive conditions.

‘Yes. And then as the town grew, Papa rented the longhouse to Nellie, added on another storey and it became a rooming house.’

‘Fascinating,’ Clara said, gazing about her as they walked.

The town was built along one side of the creek, but, where some areas delved back towards the mountains, squares with houses or stores on three sides had been built, with the road running into them and room for waggons or carts to pass or turn. Many of the buildings were raised on stilts and all had boardwalks in front of them, and she guessed that this was a precaution against winter snow cascading down the mountainside or a swollen creek overflowing. New buildings were still going up and some had land in front to make a garden plot.

On the other side of the water, between areas of white fencing, cows and sheep grazed on lush grass and small
copses of cottonwood trees were well managed for the animals’ shelter when the weather became too hot. Beyond the pasture, the land leading towards the mountains was mainly rough scrub, scanty cottonwood trees clustering more thickly as they climbed the rocky hillside and bleating goats and chickens roaming unheeded.

Across the front of Nellie’s rooming house was a sign proclaiming, in large white lettering,
Nellie’s Place. Best lodgings in town
. Outside the door sat an old man wearing a wide hat and smoking a pipe.

Rising to his feet as the two girls came up the steps, he tipped his hat, revealing very little hair, and took his pipe out of his mouth. ‘How de do, ladies? You looking for h’accommodation? We’re pretty full up, but ah reckon we can find a room.’

‘We’re not looking for a room, Isaac. It is Isaac, isn’t it?’ Jewel said. It could be no one else, she thought. Though it was over ten years since she had last seen him, she would have known him anywhere.

He rubbed his chin and looked from one to the other. ‘Well, I’m danged,’ he said. ‘Do I know you young ladies? Am I so old that I don’t remember?’

‘Sure you remember, you old dawg.’ A strident female voice came from the open doorway. ‘If it ain’t Miss Jewel herself.’ Nellie, resplendent in purple, came to meet them with her arms outstretched. ‘Why, honey,’ she said. ‘If you ain’t the prettiest gel I’ve seen in a long time.’

She gave Jewel a smacking kiss on her cheek and held her at arms’ length. ‘Ain’t she just beautiful, Isaac?’

She turned to Clara, standing shyly to one side. ‘And here, jest look at your friend.’ She put out her hand to Clara, who gave her hers. ‘My, my! Here’s a true English rose. Pardon me, ma’am, but how d’ya get that skin? Is that because of the rain in England?’

Before Clara could answer, Isaac broke in. ‘That ain’t that little gel I took fishing?’ he said, looking at Jewel. ‘Why, you were only this high.’ He put his hand level with his waist.

Jewel laughed and leaned to kiss his leathery cheek. ‘I’ve
grown a bit since then, Isaac. This is my cousin Clara,’ she said, hooking her arm into hers. ‘She was just dying to meet you both.’

‘I was.’ Clara smiled. ‘I’ve heard so much about you that I feel as if I know you both already.’

‘Come along in.’ Nellie turned towards the door, but Clara glanced at Jewel.

‘Could we sit outside? Here on the bench? I’d love to do that, and watch people go by, and the creek, and . . . everything,’ she said. ‘It seems such a nice thing to do.’

‘Sure we can,’ Nellie said. ‘Isaac, you go along and ask Clemmie to bring out some tea. Proper English tea, mind,’ she added. ‘With my best china.’

They sat for about an hour whilst Jewel gave the old pair all the details they wanted to hear about Wilhelm and Georgiana.

‘I sure do miss them folk,’ Isaac said gruffly. ‘Bill Dreumel just about saved my life, and as fer Miz Gianna and Kitty, well, they were the best thing to happen to us in Dreumel’s Creek, until Nellie came along.’ He grinned, and Nellie gave him a little shove with her elbow.

Clara sat half listening to the conversation. She felt the warmth of the sun now high in the blue sky as she watched the activities of the small town. Waggons piled with timber trundled by and women driving dog carts looked up and gave a wave as they passed and either Isaac or Nellie lifted a hand in response. Women with baskets over their arms and small children by their side walked along the dusty road, and Clara guessed that they were going to the general store which she and Jewel had passed on their way here. It had appeared to sell everything anyone would ever need, from butter and cheese to wheelbarrows and sweeping brushes.

They were offered another drink, this time of cold lemonade, and then Jewel said they must be getting back to the hotel, for they were expected for lunch and then they were going to see Kitty and Caitlin.

‘You give those gels a great kiss from me,’ Isaac said. ‘I gave
her away, you know,’ he told them. ‘Kitty, I mean. When she married Ted Allen. Such a little gel she was when she arrived, but what a cook! Saved my life, she did.’