“Now wait,” Matthew said. He stood up.
“Are we leaving your horses?” Jason asked.
“I decided once that I wouldn't run from what I had to face, that I wouldn't let that man decide my thinking, my life. That I wouldn't move away from him but toward the things I loved. But I did it anyway. Wasted all that time on worrying over how you'd take it, Jessie, over whether I could be a mama to all of you, raise you right. Blamed all of you for the awful things he did in this house. And you all already knew about him.” She shook her head. “I'm not running away this time. I'm moving toward something.”
“I think we get the chance to see if we've really learned a lesson. A second chance, so we can move on,” Suzanne said. “It's the test at the end of the schooling.”
“I'd sure like you to consider taking another look at that lesson, Ruth,” Matthew said. He stood next to her now and the room felt warmer. Her face felt hot.
“Which lesson?” Ruth said.
“The part about not running from something. At least not running before…well, some conversations.”
“I have a family to look after,” she said, then saw what looked like sadness on his face. “But I don't have to do that alone.”
“I remember Elizabeth telling you that a man holding a baby was as catching as a cold,” Suzanne told Seth. “Remember that, back on the trail?”
“I do,” Seth said. “Your Sason here has put on some pounds.”
“Got an orange for you, Sason,” Lura said walking up to them. “Packed right into our county Isn't that chirk?” The scent of orange drifted to Suzanne.
“At Lower Springs, someone's planted two palm trees,” Esty said. “If they survive, we could grow whatever we want in Northern California. Not have to ship in a thing.”
“Mazy has a watermelon coming on ripe too, in that garden she's planted.” Lura must have taken a bite as Suzanne heard a slurping. Then, “What'll you do in Sacramento, Suzanne? Decided to let yourself get married?”
Suzanne laughed, then smoothed the tucks in the sash at her waist. “Would you get Sason a drink of water, Lura? It's pretty warm.”
“I'll take him to the house, if you'd like,” Esty said.
Suzanne nodded.
“Could use a refreshing splash myself,” Lura said as Suzanne heard them walk away.
“Lura found a suitor for you, has she?” Seth asked.
“Marriage is Lura's solution, not mine. I just want to find the right person for us, not a husband. Someone…to assist us all, not just the children. I need help with Clayton, especially. To discover why he doesn't talk more.
“I thought real freedom was being independent,” she continued. “That I could do it all myself, not have to let a person live next to me as though they were a mother or father. Or husband. It's a different kind of intimacy, I guess, giving up privacy without giving up myself. I just wanted to control my life. But I lost focus. For a time. It's my boys who come first. Keeping them safe and getting them grown. I'm finding that real independence lies inside surrender. Isn't that ironic?” she said. “I don't need someone like a Wesley Marks ‘tending’ me like I'm a broken harp string. I want nothing to do with the likes of him, not ever. If and when I'm ready for marriage, I'll want someone who'll be just as strong beside me, but who recognizes we're two separate instruments who've agreed to play the tunes together.”
“So you're off to Sacramento. Could be dangerous. I'll take you, if you'd like,” Seth offered. “No harp strings attached.”
Suzanne considered. “No,” she said. “Esty's coming with me. She's going to give her love of millinery a try once she's there. And I've written to Sister Esther who's agreed to help me find a…keeper, if you will. For me and my boys.”
“Going by stage?”
Suzanne nodded. “David Taylors promised to take us on his last run south. Says hes taking Oltipa and her baby, too, and that they may get married there or come back here. So well fill the stage right up. It'll be fine. All we need will be provided. More, if we don't set limits.”
“Look who's here,” Suzanne heard Lura shout from a distance.
“Who is it?” she asked Seth.
“Mazy with David Taylor and the rest. Elizabeth, too.”
While Elizabeth filled them all in on her latest visit with her expanding kin, Suzanne listened to the shifts and pitches of voices, sharing in joy and surprise. It was like a reunion, the telling of tales, and here she was, a part of it. Maybe she should just stay here, get Esty to live with her, here, in Shasta City. Begin anew. She felt Clayton and Pig beside her. “Mommy?” he said. Her prayers had been answered—her children were safe. That was her focus now. It must be.
“We're needing some singing for this celebration,” Elizabeth said. “Will you sing for us, Suzanne?”
“I've no harp,” Suzanne said, raising both palms to the air.
“I'll get it for you, Auntie,” Jessie said.
“You don't need one with your voice,” Lura said. The others agreed.
“All right then,” Suzanne said, pleased to be asked. “One of my favorites, perfect for a time of new beginnings.”
With a voice as clear as spring water and just as refreshing, she sang:
“Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart;
All else be naught to me, save that thou art—
thou my best thought, by day or by night,
waking or sleeping, thy presence my light.”
A silence followed. “Is something wrong?” Suzanne asked. “Seth, what's happening?”
“Everything's chirk,” Elizabeth said. “I think we was all pondering your insight, helping the rest of us learn to see.”
They pressed Ned into singing next, while Suzanne's mind wandered back to the words of her song. Perfect for me, too. She listened to the sounds of safety around her, the clapping and laughing, felt a fresh breeze of hope. She imagined the faces of the friends she'd never seen but knew as kin, and she smiled. Whatever the future might bring, she now had a vision, a focus. She might stumble some, but there'd be friends to pick her up. What mattered was, at last, she could see.
“Oh, look, Nehemiah. At long last, Mazys sent the quilt! Its a wonder she ever got it finished.” Tipton hovered over her husband as he tapped at the coopers seal and pulled the oak lid. He lifted the heavy, felt-stuffed material from the barrel while Tipton pulled the cream-colored paper from around the cloth. She inhaled a deep breath. “Oh, smell this!” She said. “It is morning sunshine in December if I ever knew it!”
“A little woodsmoke in there too,” Nehemiah said.
“She must have hung it on the line before she put it in the barrel.” She breathed again. “I miss the smells from Shasta,” she said. “I never thought I would.”
“We'll go visit next summer,” he said. “You can breathe it back in then.”
“Maybe,” Tipton said. “Maybe.” She didn't look at her husband, didn't want to think of old hurts. “She didn't stitch it all herself,” Tipton said, making her voice light. She felt the soft cotton, the smooth pieces of silk stitched in swatches. “These look like Sarah or Jessies work. Lets lay it out over the bed. This'll be cozy when those coast winds blow. Looks like she dyed the backing with tea to get that rosy color.”
Somehow, Mazy had stitched the quilt into what looked almost like a book, with the outer borders dyed a darker brown as though they might be leather and then three, four, five tiny tucks of white material stitched all around to make the border look like pages. Inside were all the stories, separated with blocks of white on which Mazy had drawn with black ink—tiny letters. They were done in Spencerian Script, the slender loop on the tail of the Frising to flow into Sarahs block, the line barely showing through her replica of a sampler, then becoming a firm A in the border, the long side of that letter taking her eye into Jasons block, a tin whistle and a hoop he'd rolled across Nebraska.
The letters strung the stories together.
Tipton kneeled on the quilt then, pointing
and oohing, interpreting for Nehemiah, guessing which stories revealed the author of each block. Her face flushed with excitement. Here was Elizabeths—a tree house with an antelope looking up at it; Ned's with a musical note. There was Ruths with an open book and a Scripture reference. “John 8:32,” Tipton said. “Lets look it up.”
“No need,” he said. “’Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.’“
“Huh,” Tipton said. “I wonder what that was about. Our truth-or-lie game? Oh, maybe she finally told Jessie the truth, or Jessie finally told her that she knew.” She looked up at her husband. “I thought these quilt squares were supposed to be related to our journey across the plains. Ruth's is about what happened after she arrived.”
“Hard to separate the past from the present if we're paying attention.”
“Oh, well, my block is sort of about being here as well as there, too,” she said. “See. I put your silver work with the blue stone on Tyrell's spurs. Is that all right? Do you like it?”
He looked closer. “Well done,” he said. “Quite fine, indeed.”
Tipton beamed. She turned the quilt over then. On the back, Mazy had made a signature block, she called it, listing all the names in the order of their “chapter” of the book. Three blocks were placed throughout and left blank: for Cynthia, Betha, and Zilah, Mazy had written. And all the others we hst. The pages that didrit get fully written.
“I never thought of it that way,” Tipton said. “That Tyrell's life didn't get fully written.”
“Only because we want more,” he said. “Some shorter stories carry more meaning than long ones.”
Tipton nodded. She reached for the letter Mazy d packed in the barrel: Something for you andNehemiah to put under your Christmas tree.
Nehemiah kissed the top of her head as she curled into the quilt to read, wrapped herself in the stories while deciphering Mazy's words.
“Wind is up,” Nehemiah said. “I'll go latch the shutters.”
“Oh, listen to this,” Tipton said when he rose. She reached for him and he held her hand. “The shutters can wait,” she said. “Please?” She released his hand and watched him sit back down, put his feet up on the leather-covered stool. She read again, glancing up occasionally from her catching up on the past, listening to the wind rattle the shutters. It was a good tight cabin. A good place to be. Nehemiah was a good man to share it with.
“Mazy's mother is spoiling a great grandson, sort of. Gosh. There's a story behind that. A long section. You'll have to read it.” She read silently again, then, “Lura is staying in town, now, sharpening knives. Oh.” She swallowed hard.
“What?”
“She's working at my mother and brother's store.”
“Maybe your mama'll get some free time then. To come and visit.”
Tipton raised her eyes to his, said nothing, returned to the letter. “Oh, listen to this: / have finally set aside my fear that the husband I chose was none but bad. Perhaps Til plunge again someday remembering as he once told me, that ‘things aren't always what they seem/Sometimes they re even better.
“Geese fly overhead, Tipton. I can hear them as I write. I confess, one will give its life for our Christmas dinner. I've heard the storms are fierce where you have set your roots, so let our stories warm you, hold you close. The stories of the past we captured here are like the cooper's ring around the barrel, not meant to bind or hold us hostage but to define us. Without that ring, the pieces of our lives would fall apart I've come to see my faith in that light, too. Not to bind me, but define me. “
Tipton let the letter drop onto the folds of the quilt. “Not to bind us but define us,” she said. “I like that way of looking at the past. Oh, here's one more page: Which brings to mind one last note of explanation for the quilt. Suzanne's block. She designed it, Ruth drew it out, and mother and I and all the rest here who took time stitched it, Mariah, too. But she wished this explanation written.
“When we were at the choosing point of Nobles Cutoff, the morning Zilah became scattered in her thinking, Suzanne dreamed. She dreams little, she says, even before she lost her sight. But in this dream she could see, and she was crossing a stream to her husband. Her foot slipped and she thought she would drown. Her husband called to her and said to look up, not get caught up in the swirling water, the fears around her, but to keep her focus, to look always above the fray. She did not have the dream again, but she remembered it. And that the word for focus in Latin means hearth. So that is what she wanted drawn, afire burning in it, all of us—her family— warm and content around it. We are all together there in Suzanne's block, Tipton. She says she can almost see us. And in the corner is a tiny ‘Lover's Eye'drawn in ink. Suzanne says that it is God's eye on us all, and if we look up to him, that is all that we will ever need to see.
“Next year, send the quilt to Suzanne. She was second in the choosing.
“Blessings to you both,
“Love, Mazy”
AUTHOR'S NOTES AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
“Stories tell us who we are and who we might become,” D. H. Lawrence wrote. This story, though fiction, grew from the realities of the 1850s, a time when stories of easy wealth drew people west with consequences far reaching. To help readers step into this place and time and story, I've relied on many resources, but what emerged is mine, for which I bear responsibility.
Special thanks go to the State of California for maintaining the Shasta State Historic Park, especially Ranger Jack Frost, who has not only taken the Noble's Cutoff, but who grew up in Shasta County, provides tours of Old Shasta, and carries in his heart the story of the city's once vibrant past as “the Queen City of the North.” Tom Hunt of Eureka, California, provided maps, diaries, articles, and moral support about the Noble's portion of the trail. His enthusiasm is matched by the Oregon California Trail Association whose dedication to preservation of the Oregon-California story is commendable.
I am particularly indebted to author Dottie West whose four books proved invaluable to whatever success I had at recreating Shasta of 1852-53. The Dictionary of Early Shasta County History, The History of the Indians of Shasta County, Registered Historic Places in Shasta County, and The History of the Chinese in Shasta County are the works of a woman passionate for history and for truth-telling about the lives of all the people in early Shasta, including people of color. Her inclusion of the Protection Act provided a detail related to the auctions I had long heard about, but had never seen documented. The Protection Act was amended in 1860 and repealed in 1864, but the practices continued for some years after.
History records that the Courier operated in 1852 under Sam Doshs editorial guidance; there was a St. Charles Hotel, a Hong Kong, a Kossuth House. There were two fires in Shasta City. That is fact. That Kossuths name was Nehemiah, was a silversmith, a friend of jeweler and gunsmith Ernest Dobrowsky (who did exist), or that he married Tip ton Wilson, is not. Poverty Flat, located close to the Sacramento River, was a major grazing area of packers. Mad Mule Canyon did give up gold along with its fascinating name. There were five bookstores in Shasta by 1855 along with more than three thousand people. True enthusiasts can visit Shasta Historical Park and see what remains of the brick buildings, mercantiles, and bookstores for themselves.
Peter M. Knudtsons work The Wintu Indians of California provided a glimpse into the lives of these mountain and river people. Few remain to tell their stories. To my Hupa/Wintu friend Kadoo Trimble and her brother Wesley Crawford, I express appreciation for allowing me to read material compiled by Jack and Jana Norton regarding the genocide perpetrated against native peoples in Northern California in the 1850s and for their insight based on stories of their own Wintu connections.
Fellow Women Writing the West member JoAnn Levy's books They Saw the Elephant, Women in the California Gold Rush; Daughter of Joy; and For Californias Goldixz treasures. Her research about the lives of the Chinese and the varied roles of women in the mining camps, theaters, boardinghouses, and mercantile shops and
about laws related to divorce, business, and more that affected women on the western frontier and her personal encouragement were invaluable. Women did indeed perform many a new task in their new landscape.
Gary and Gloria Meiers Knights of the Whip, Stagecoach Days in Oregon, and numerous works by the Oregon Historical Society and Carlos Arnaldo Schwantes’ book Long Days Journey provided background information about stagecoach transportation and commerce. These authors provided an understanding of the connection between these two great western states.
Finally, some personal appreciation. To my brother, Craig, and sister-in-law, Barbara Rutschow, for making the meaning of family real in our lives; and for their introduction to the Ayrshire cows of their neighbors Joe and Kathy Tousignant of Red Wing, Minnesota. The list of friends to thank is long and often repeated, but special note does go to Blair Fredstrom, Kay Krall, Carol Tedder, Sandy Maynard, Millie Voll, Katy Larsen, Bob Welch, Harriet Rochlin, Michelle Hurtley, Wade Keller, Bobbi Updegraff, agents Joyce Hart of Pittsburgh and Terry Porter. Special thanks and admiration belong to editors Lisa Bergren and Traci DePree for encouragement and desperately needed focus. I thank all the fine staff at WaterBrook Press for their confidence in me and this story.
And not least, to my husband, Jerry, thank you: for sharing our own adventure along Nobles Cutoff and our life's journey through the wilderness of landscapes, relationship, and spirit. Your love and support are unending and without equal.
Finally, to you readers, I extend my deepest gratitude, for caring for these characters and so graciously for me. I hope you'll want to follow their stories into book three and find nurture in the journey. Thank you.
Fondly,
Jane Kirkpatrick