Too Old for Christmas Read online

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  TOO OLD FOR CHRISTMAS

  Too Old in Columbia

  Book 1

  By Zina Abbott

  Copyright © 2015 Robyn Echols

  All rights reserved.

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  Dedication

  ~o0o~

  This book is dedicated to

  Dinnie Echols

  In gratitude for the many trips to Columbia and the surrounding foothills of the southern Mother Lode gold country of the Sierra-Nevada Mountains, including our trips to Yosemite National Park.

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  Author Disclaimer

  ~o0o~

  This story is a work of fiction. Although the names of some the actual people who lived in Columbia in 1854 were used in this work, the manner in which their characters were portrayed is in no way intended to be a true depiction of these people in actual life. All other characters are a product of the author’s imagination and are not based on actual people. Any resemblance to real people is completely unintentional.

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  Columbia, California – November, 1854

  Chapter 1

  ~o0o~

  T

  he pain in Sean Flood’s back tooth had bothered him for three days. He had tried to wish it away with a salt water gargle night and morning and a dose of two fingers of whiskey just before he went to bed each night. He had originally hoped just this one time the abscess would heal by itself and leave the tooth intact. By last night, though, the pain had become almost unbearable. The bitter taste of pus released each time he used his finger to rub the gum next to his ailing tooth foretold the inevitable. The tooth had to come out. His efforts to pull it himself had been unsuccessful.

  In spite of the agony, he had struggled through the workday before collecting his wages. Every man at the construction site except Sean had complained bitterly when the heavy rain forced them to quit early. Even though it meant his pay was shorted, the brisk wind that had kicked up later in the morning had conspired to blow spray on him no matter where he stood, soaking his clothing. It had not hurt Sean’s feelings to escape early to a warm place where he could dry himself out a bit before facing his ordeal.

  Sean stopped by the Columbia Mercantile in order to buy a bottle of whiskey, some dried beef for flavoring—for he certainly didn’t have the teeth to chew it—and a small sack of flour to have something to cook into a soft gruel for supper. He knew he would not feel like shopping after seeing Doc Massey, the dentist. Those supplies would be his daily menu until his gum started to heal. As much as he preferred the thought of pulling up a chair to warm himself by the glowing wood stove for an hour or more, he didn’t linger once he felt his clothes start to dry.

  Sean shrugged off Mr. Magendie, owner of the retail store, as the man sought to convince him to buy the newly arrived cast iron stove he had for sale. All Sean cared to focus on was buying the whiskey he planned to start consuming as soon as he stepped out the door so he could face getting his tooth pulled. Sean impatiently waved away the man and his polite sales chatter.

  Sean’s annoyance over his situation increased as he stood behind the woman talking to the clerk at the counter.

  Finish your business, woman, and move on. My patience be wearing thin.

  Through his self-absorption with his pain, Sean realized the woman asked for credit for the three small sacks of goods on the counter in front of her.

  “I know I can’t charge to a standing account until the other matter is settled, but if you can just wait until tomorrow afternoon for payment, I’ll have made my delivery by then and collected my fee. I’m owed enough to not only cover this, but I can put some on the other account as well. I promise I will bring it right in.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. McNair, but Mr. Magendie has given me strict orders…”

  “Give over, man, I’m in a hurry, now,” Sean interrupted him, realizing the exchange could take longer than he was willing to wait. “Here…” Sean sorted through the coins he held in his hand in anticipation of paying for his items. He selected one he felt would surely cover whatever the woman was trying to purchase and, leaning past her, he slapped the coin on the counter. “’Twill cover the shortfall, certain. Now, if you don’t mind…”

  The woman rounded on Sean, her eyes flashing with anger. “I do mind. I’ll thank you to take your money back and wait your turn. I can take care of my own business and I don’t take charity.”

  Blue eyes, Sean noticed. Unlike Sean’s hazel green eyes with medium brown lashes under his thatch of reddish-brown hair only a few shades darker than the freckles dotting his face when he spent too much time in the sun, the woman possessed beautiful, clear blue eyes ringed by almost black lashes. They reminded him of the eyes belonging to his older brother, Timothy, caught up in the Irish underworld of New York and his younger sister, Catherine, who had died on the ship coming over. These two siblings who had survived the great famine long enough to board a ship for America had inherited the black Irish coloring of his ma’s side of the family. Unlike them, Sean’s round full face and wide-set eyes along with his classic Celtic coloring came from his da. The woman held her mist-spattered shawl around her head, clasped barely beneath her lips to hide her lower face. But there was no mistaking the beauty of her wide cheekbones, her wide forehead or the almost black hair peeking from beneath her shawl.

  “Aye, and you be not getting charity from me, now be you? You can pay me back when you get ahead by putting it on my account. This man, here, will get it done.” Sean reached forward and slapped more coins on the counter. “Now, I be taking these.” Sean raised the supplies he held in his hands for the clerk to see. “Figure it on my account and I’ll settle with you in the morn. On my way to Doc Massey’s, now, to get this devil plaguing me pulled out of my head.”

  You’re wreaked, boyo. ‘Tis bad when you can’t behave like a gentleman whilst talking to a pretty woman, now isn’t it?

  The woman studied Sean, her eyes focusing on his reddened cheek swollen sufficiently to force his left eye half closed. “Have ye…have you considered willow bark tea instead of drowning yourself in whiskey, sir? And there are herbs for pain.”

  “Nay,” Sean snapped back, impatient to be gone. “I know naught of the tea you speak of and I’ll not be dealing with the Chinese and their weed shops, not the way I be feeling.”

  “The willow bark tea alone will help the pain. It might also help with the headache you’ll be feeling…you surely will feel when the whiskey starts to wear off.”

  Sean stared at the woman. There was something about her speech that puzzled him, but his muddled mind refused work it out.

  A pox on meddlesome women.

  “And what might you be knowing about it?” Sean demanded of the woman.

  “More than I care to,” Ona McNair mumbled behind her shawl.

  The clerk reached behind him and pulled out a small wooden box. Sean flinched as the man slammed it onto the counter. “I have some willow bark for tea if you care to add it to your order.”

  Sean glanced at the clerk and then settled his eyes back on the aggravating woman who still blocked his way to the counter. Aye, aggravating was the only way to put it. But, why? Was she aggravating because she was reluctant to accept his token of help even though it was obvious she was in a bind? Maybe it was because he didn’t like a woman telling him how to take care of his problems. Perhaps it was because there was something about the way she spoke to him that niggled at him, as if there was something more to her than what she seemed to be. Or,
was it because he was in no physical or mental condition, and no longer had the good looks of his youth, to act upon an opportunity to learn more about the beauty before him?

  “Pardon me for interfering, sir.” Ona’s voice pulled Sean out of his musings. “I wish you well with your appointment with Dr. Massey. And…thank you for the…loan.”

  In some part of Sean’s pain-fogged mind it registered the clerk had addressed her as a missus. She was no doubt married, especially in this territory where men outnumbered women many times over. Just as well he not concern himself with exactly why she aggravated him.

  You be not fit for man nor beast, boyo. Best give way to the colleen.

  Except she wasn’t a colleen. She was a beautiful woman, probably closer to his age. And married. The last thing he needed in his present condition was trouble with her husband.

  “Aye, I be taking the tea,” Sean spoke to the clerk although his eyes never left the woman’s face. “’Tis worth trying.” Sean jerked open the tow sack he had brought with him that morning and shoved his supplies inside. He nodded to both the clerk and the woman with the eyes the color of a clear blue sky and stepped back into the dull gray drizzle of a mid-November day. Once outside the door, he paused long enough to pull the bottle of spirits free of the bag, uncork it and take a healthy swig. He prayed the alcohol would do its job of dulling both the anticipation of the ordeal ahead of him as well as the actual pain of the tooth being pried from his head.

  ~o0o~

  Once the tooth was pulled, an extraction that proved more time-consuming and painful than most he had experienced, the dentist had disabused him of any notion the abscess would have gone away by itself. Dr. Massey had shown Sean the pieces of the blackened extracted tooth, rotten to the root.

  Last one in the back of your head, boyo. You’ve only the three towards the front. Once they’re gone, you’ll be fair toothless.

  Using his tongue, Sean Flood worried the pad of flannel pressed between his gums on the left side of his face.

  ‘Twas a pretty penny I paid to Doc Massey for the torture.

  Sean knew it was a wonder he had held onto his teeth as long as he had. He had finally escaped the potato famine in Ireland, but not before the scurvy both in Ireland and a bout on the ship over cost him weak gums, swollen limbs and the loss of half his teeth. He often felt like a man twenty years older than the thirty years he could lay claim to.

  Aye, and the fare we ate whilst with the American Army fighting against the Mexicans didn’t help, now did it?

  In an effort to distract himself from the soreness in his mouth, Sean continued to think on his past, and how distasteful he had found it fighting under the West Point officers of the United States Army. They had proven to be as proud and scornful of those not of their ranks as had been the absentee British landlords in Ireland who had impoverished the Irish people with their taxes, beaten them into the ground because of their religion and then evicted families off land they had lived on for generations after the potato blight had nearly wiped out the available food supply of the Irish peasant. Once the year of his enlistment was up, and after being treated like scum, half-starved on enlisted men’s food, and persecuted for his religion by the officers and Protestant Americans in the ranks, Sean had refused to re-enlist. The final battle for Mexico City had not yet been fought by then, but knowing there was nothing waiting for him east of the Mississippi, he had decided to take his chances in the frontier territories. As nasty and vicious as the Texas militias had been—a state he blamed for starting the invasion into Mexico to begin with—Sean had skirted Texas.

  It was while working his way north to the settlements along the upper Missouri River he had heard about the gold strike in California. Ever a pauper all his life, Sean figured he had nothing to lose by trying California. If he could find even a reasonable portion of the gold rumored to be glittering in the rivers and stream beds for the taking, it would be worth it.

  Didn’t work out quite that way, now did it, boyo?

  After realizing the true nature of seeking gold in California, Sean figured he had done all right for himself considering he had started with nothing but his Bowie knife, an old musket, and a broken down mule he had bought from the Army with his mustering out pay. In spite of the claim jumping, the knife fight that had almost cost him his life, the swindle of a salted claim that had landed him a worthless piece of dirt to work, he had come out ahead. Through hard work he earned enough to buy his own team of mules and a wagon. He preferred to work as an independent, lining up his own jobs.

  Columbia, Gem of the Southern Mines, was rich in gold. However, it was a dry mining region. Once the creeks dried up in late spring, there was not enough water to continue mining. The rain may have put enough water in the rivers for the seasonal streams to start flowing again, but the only sure source of water in most of the Columbia area for much of the year was the rock lined aqueduct system built by the Tuolumne County Water Company. Sean had heard of the miners, upset over the high water rates, who had banded together to start their own canal system from the Stanislaus River. He had stayed free of the controversy, knowing any fight would end up being turned against him simply because of where he had been born. Now most of the placer mining was played out in Columbia.

  The fire the previous July had wiped out a sizeable portion of Columbia, which had been a boon to men like Sean. Purchases of a good hammer, saw, splitting maul and other miscellaneous tools had proven good investments. He focused on working as a carpenter between his local freight hauling jobs. He now owned a piece of land on which he was in the process of building his cabin, all purchased from his earnings.

  Sean pulled the flannel out of his mouth and, after one quick glance at the blood-soaked stain, tossed it aside into the mix of oak leaves and pine needles. He took a healthy swig of the whiskey before he pulled another flannel wad from his waistcoat pocket and clamped it between his gums to absorb the drain of blood and infection. Hitching his supplies more firmly on his shoulder, Sean heaved a sigh and started the climb up Yankee Hill towards his home.

  You’ll be feeling a fine splitting head tomorrow, you will, boyo, but at least the tooth nay be worrying you now.

  Sean wondered what kind of mess he would find back at his building site. The frame, roof trusses and outside walls of hand-split boards—another benefit of him purchasing his own tools—were mostly up. But, the plans for a stone fireplace had been set aside to await a more permanent room built of brick. The pile of gathered native shale stone brought up from the foothills further west and south cluttered the far side of his property.

  Nay be needing the fancy stove Magendie was pushing at you, but you be needing at least a single burner, now won’t you?

  Not even the floor of the loft was in place let alone the roof cross-boards and shingles laid. Because it was a temporary fix, Sean had not nailed the thick canvas in place with support boards like he had seen done on the semi-permanent officers’ quarters in the Army. He had quickly thrown the cover over his trusses and tied it down. There had been enough rain he worried the fabric heavy with water would now sag and dump the wetness on the dirt floor he had not yet covered with planks. Assuming, that is, the canvas had not blown off the roof and sailed to the four corners of the earth leaving his entire cabin site drenched.

  Aye, you be needing to finish the cabin afore the cold sets in worse. The barn with the mules will be your home ‘til you do, boyo.

  Sean’s suspicions were confirmed as he stepped over the creek marking the boundary to his land. The canvas remained tied down to his roof trusses on the right side, but one corner on the left had torn free and flapped in the wind. The dirt floor on the inside of the cabin was as damp as the ground outside. But, with the left side of his face still throbbing, he decided he’d worry about snapping canvas and wet cabin floors another day.

  Sean dropped his supplies inside the bed of his wagon which he used as a bedroom when he wasn’t hauling freight for someone. Believing in taking
care of his animals first before his own needs, Sean again offered a mental thanks that while the weather had still been warm, the first thing he had built was a barn and small corral for his mules. Although not built with the boards fit as tightly as those used for his cabin, the structure did offer both the mules and him a roof and a bit of windbreak.

  Sean stepped to the edge of the doorway so he stood barely out of the drizzle. He turned his gaze to what passed for his log cabin. Through his whiskey-induced haze, he fought to reason out if it would be better if he tried to build a fire just inside the barn where he now stood and hope the sparks didn’t catch in the hay and grain dust. Or, should he find a spot big enough in his cabin under the section of the canvas that held? He needed to dry his clothes. He craved his hot coffee to ward off the chill. And he knew whether he felt like it or not, he needed to cook his flour into some sort of gruel to get food in his stomach to offset the whiskey that continued to fog his brain, but was becoming less effective at dulling the pain in his mouth.

  Sean proceeded to feed his two mules. While scooping feed in one of the feed buckets, he heard a rustle on the other side of the back wall of the barn. Annoyed something might be after his mules or their grain, he strode over and banged the side of his wagon several times with his fist.

  “Get lost, you varmint! I not be in the mood to deal with you.”

  Sean grabbed his coffee pot and his bucket before he headed back down to the creek. As he dipped the pot into a spot where he felt confident of getting clear water, he gave thanks for the recent rains feeding the creek so it was running once more, even though those same rains made working outdoors miserable when they came in the daytime. It meant he didn’t need to hike further down the hill back towards Columbia to get his water from one of the canals in the city.