The Hinterlands (6 page)

We followed the creek up the valley through the poplars. It seemed the stream got muddier the further we went. The water looked bright red in the bare woods. It was like the earth was bleeding toward the head of the valley. It even crossed my mind they might be a battle with Indians, or a slaughter of cattle up there, though I knowed the creek was really colored with mud.

We had gone maybe two miles when we heard voices and banging ahead. I was getting scared and held back. Your Grandpa stopped the horse and we listened. They was banging and ringing.

“Could be somebody making a mill,” Realus said. “And they're sharpening a pair of millstones.”

“But why would they build a mill where there ain't no fields?” I said.

“Maybe they's settlements nearby we ain't seen,” he said.

I could tell Realus was thinking of going around whatever was up there. We was heading for the Holsten and didn't need to be
stopped by any devilment going on in the woods. But I think his curiosity wouldn't let him leave without seeing what it was.

We continued up the creek, which got muddier and muddier. Then we seen a clearing ahead, and the flash of bodies working along the creek. I was startled by the sight of bare flesh.

“What kind of heathens are them?” I said. “Are they Indians?”

“No, they're white people,” your Grandpa said.

I might have held back from the clearing of half-naked men, but we had been seen. A big man with a black hat and no shirt on stopped shoveling and grabbed a rifle-gun. He run toward us, his hat flapping. “What you'uns doing here?” he said.

“We're on our way to the West,” Realus said.

“This ain't no way West,” the man said. Others had stopped work and was watching us. The clearing was maybe a hundred yards long, and all churned up with dirt and mud and piles of rocks.

“We may have got a little lost,” your Grandpa said.

“Who told you to come here?” the man said.

“Nobody told us to come here.”

“You heard about us and you thought you'd come dig some for yourself,” the man said. “Next thing there'll be hordes descending out of the woods like buzzards to pick us clean.”

“Ain't nobody else coming,” your Grandpa said.

“You're the first one to bring a woman here,” the man said, eyeing me.

“We was just passing on,” I said.

The half-naked man stood on the pile of dirt and rocks and looked at us. The other men in the clearing was watching us too.

“Can your woman cook?” he said.

“Sure she can cook,” Realus said.

“Then if she cooks some for us, we will cut you in,” he said.

“Cut me in what?”

“Don't act so ignorant you don't know we found gold here last week,” the man said. Realus looked at me.

“I ain't no prospector,” your Grandpa said. “We was just passing through.”

“I ain't no prospector either,” the man said. “I'm Jones the Preacher. And that over there's Owens the Peddler. And when we get the gold out of this mud we can all go back to being whatever we was. Except we'll be richer.”

Me and Realus was caught. If we tried to leave, they might shoot us to keep us from telling other people what they was doing. If they was gold, we could get a little to take to the West. All around it seemed better to stay and take a cut. At least, that's the way it looked then.

I got out some of my pots and pans and built up a fire at the edge of the clearing, a ways back from the mud and pits. They had set up screens for sifting the dirt. And everybody that had a pan was out in the creek scooping and sloshing. They'd shake the pan a little and look, pick something out and shake the pan again. From time to time one of the men would look at me and make me uncomfortable. Somebody had shot a mess of squirrels for dinner.

Realus got his shovel and tied the horse to a poplar. The man called Jones the Preacher told him to start shoveling in the bank. While I was heating the water I tried to make sense of what everybody was doing. They was men going this way and that, some carrying buckets and boxes and dumping the dirt. It was like watching trout circle in a pool, the way they heaved and hurried, then hunkered over a pan or pile of mud.

Finally I seen the pattern of their work. Some of the men, like your Grandpa, was digging into the banks to loosen the dirt. Then they carried it to the screen and separated the big rocks out. Then
in the pans they washed and shook the load until the dirt melted and drained away and only pebbles and sand was left. The pebbles and sand they washed still more, to sort out the nuggets and gold dust from the rest.

I wondered how much gold dust they had found. No doubt Preacher Jones kept it all hid where only he knowed. He seemed like the kind of feller who would look out for hisself.

“I want to show you something,” the preacher said behind me. He liked to have scared me where I bent over the fire. I turned around and thought he was taking his pants off. He unbuttoned the top button, and pushing a gallus aside, reached down inside his straddle. Then he pulled out something fat and yellow. I took a step back, and saw it was a deerskin pouch.

“Looky there,” he said, grinning at my surprise.

But I didn't reach out and take the dirty poke.

“Don't you want to see?” he said. “Here, let me show you.” And he opened the little sack and poured out in his hand what looked like bright sand with little rocks.

“Looky there,” he said, and stared into my eyes. “They's enough here for a man and young woman to go wherever they wanted to and live like quality.”

He leaned closer to me, looking into my eyes. His beard was black but had streaks of gray. “You and me could go anywhere we wanted,” he said and smiled at the pile of gold in his hand. I took another step back.

“Don't you want to come?” he said, and reached to touch me.

“We're going to the Holsten,” I said.

“What's on the Holsten?” he said. “Besides snakes and wildcats and hard work?”

“We're just married,” I said.

“The Lord can marry and unmarry,” he said and grinned.

I backed halfway into the poplar brush to get away from him.

“Just give me a little kiss,” he said. “And I will give you this poke. Just a little kiss to try me out.”

He was pushing me back against the poplars. “You'll have to ask my husband,” I blurted out. It was a silly thing to say, but it was what come to mind. The preacher looked at me for a second, then he busted out laughing. You could hear him laugh all across the clearing. I seen your Grandpa look toward us as the preacher stepped back. I bent over the fire, stirring the stew.

It seemed like each man in the clearing was looking at me every chance they got. I must have been the only woman they had seen in weeks. It made me kind of shivery to know all their eyes was on me. I was making hoecakes on a spade I had washed in the creek above the digging, and I was making stew from the squirrels they had already killed. A breeze had come up and besides the ring and grind of the shovels, and the rattle and slosh of the pans, they was tall poplars rubbing in the woods behind me. You could hear them rubbing their necks and groaning. It was a sound like nails pulling out of planks.

A little feller with a red face and a red beard come up to my fire. He was streaming sweat and he had freckles all over his shoulders and chest. “Name's Jenkins,” he said.

“How do,” I said.

“You need salt,” he said. “I got a gourd over here in my bag.”

“I got some salt,” I said.

He couldn't take his eyes off my skirt. He couldn't help hisself, though his face was getting even redder than before. I felt sorry for him. He must not have seen a woman in months.

“I ain't got no pepper,” he said. “I wish I had some pepper to offer you.”

“We can do without,” I said.

He just stood there, like he didn't know what to say. His pants was covered with mud, and he was dripping with sweat. He must not have been more than eighteen.

“You go back to work,” I said. “And we'll have dinner ready before too long.”

“You let me know if I can help,” he said, and turned to walk back to the pits.

The men worked like Trojans in the gravel and dirt. It always amazed me how men like to move around earth. They like to cut up the dirt and shift it around and reshape it.

But it seemed to me, as I watched them sweat and strain with the heavy loads, digging and carrying, that they was no longer quite human. They had become a power, working beyond will and choice. They could have been a force of the elements, breaking apart and sorting, taking and rejecting. At the very least they seemed like animals working there, doing things they did not understand.

It come to me the piles and puddles resembled a dung heap. They worked like flies on a manure pile, their skin white as maggots bending and twisting. You wouldn't even want to describe the mess that fouled the creek, that touched into the woods and stained every bit of grass and every stick the men had touched. It was like they had turned the woods into a pit of filth. It sickened me as I turned back to the dinner I was fixing.

When I banged on the pot with my spoon all the men come running except Realus. They didn't even wash their hands or put on their shirts. They come dirty and sweaty to the stew pot and dipped squirrel meat and taters onto their hoecakes and eat them like they was tarts. Their faces was dirty and they eat like hogs come to a trough.

I looked back to the creek and your Grandpa was still shoveling
mud out of the bank. He had took off his red shirt and his white skin glowed in the sun. I dipped some stew onto a hoecake and carried it to him.

“How come you didn't eat?” I said. He was up to his ankles in the mud and his boots and pants was smeared with the dirty water.

“'Cause I want to get into this vein,” he said.

“We want to go on to the West,” I said. “Don't we?”

“We can go on to the Holsten with some gold to buy things,” he said, out of breath as he scooped up the wet sand.

“Realus, I'm getting scared,” I said. “Them fellers look at me funny.”

“Ain't nobody going to bother you,” he said. He looked at me like I was pestering him. He stopped for a second and took my arm. “We get a poke of gold,” he said, “you can buy everwhat you want.”

“I don't want nothing but to go to the Holsten,” I said.

But he was like a different Realus. He was changed from the man who arrived at the clearing that morning. You could see in his eyes he had a new vision of how we was to live. He was not thinking of getting to the Holsten and starting our crops.

“Ho!” somebody hollered from the edge of the clearing. They was four men leading horses out of the woods.

“What you'uns want?” the preacher said.

“We've come to help you out,” one of the new men said.

“We don't need no help,” the preacher said.

“They's a whole mountain here,” the newcomer said. He tied his horse to a poplar not far from our horse. “You're going to need help to dig out the whole thing.”

The preacher talked to the new men. I just heard him say, “Who told you about this place?” They talked in low voices for a long
time. I wondered if they was going to fight. As they talked they kept shifting positions, circling each other. The preacher's face was red as wine, and when he took off his black hat the bald spot on top of his head was red also.

But they must have come to some kind of agreement, for the new men tied up their horses and took picks and shovels and pans off their saddles. One man had a kind of pie pan he must have took from his wife's cupboard, and another had a garden spade that wouldn't do much with the sand and gravel. They had grabbed whatever was at hand when they heard about the gold. They was nobody I recognized from the settlement.

The men eat every bit of stew and every bite of the hoecakes.

“That were a mighty feast,” the preacher said.

“That were a lavish of victuals,” another said.

The preacher come over and stood beside me. He smelled sweatier than a field hand. “You're the kind of woman could make a man happy,” he said. “You're pretty enough to be the preacher's wife.” I started to move away from him.

“The Lord wants his own to be happy, to have the best,” the preacher said.

“I'm sure that's true,” I said. “If they are his own.”

I turned away to carry my dirty pots and pans up the creek above the diggings and scrubbed them with sand and rinsed them in the clear water. My clothes was getting dirty from walking around in the mud. I thought, how am I going to get Realus away from here before something awful happens? How would I remember to him that we was just married and on our way to our own place in the West? I prayed a little, for the first time since we'd left home. Before that I hadn't felt justified to pray. Not because I had done nothing wrong, but because we didn't seem to be doing anything God would be interested in. I felt like he might not want
to look while we was getting away. Then he would be proud of us once we was well married and had younguns.

After that I felt a little better, and gathered up my pots and pans to take back to camp. When I turned around this big feller was standing there watching me. His name was Cyrus and everybody called him Sarse. He was looking at me with this strange look in his eyes. He didn't say nothing.

I thought it better to act cheerful and unafraid. “Evening,” I said and started to walk past him. He put out an arm and pulled me around.

“Pardon me,” I said, still trying to sound friendly.

But whatever had come over him was too strong for him to stop hisself. He was a big meaty man with hair on his chest, and he gripped my arm to pull me toward the bushes.

“No,” I said and tried to twist free. His teeth was clenched with determination. We was about a hundred feet from the clearing and the sound of the digging and the creek made it hard to be heard unless you hollered. I still thought I could get loose and run. It scared me to think how busy Realus was with the digging and not paying no attention to me.