Kendrick Read online

  As much as she dreaded the daily interactions with Dorcas, Lydia had no reason to suspect she might have to deal with Simon trying to climb into her bed.

  As for their only brother, Timothy left home at an early age. None of the family had heard from him since. As much as her mother, Dorcas, and others had criticized his desertion, Lydia had understood the reason behind his flight. If she had been born male and possessed more courage than she did, she would have chosen to do the same to escape her mother.

  If only convention did not demand that a single woman live with family rather than on her own. She would have been much happier if she could have stayed in town and taken in laundry and sewing. Fritz, her stepson—by virtue that he was her late husband’s stepson and a half-brother to Race and Johanna—would not have liked that, however. People in their community would have wondered why, after inheriting and taking control of a large farm, he did not continue to support the woman who had finished raising him during his teenage years. No, she knew there was more than bowing to social expectations that prompted Fritz to insist Race leave the only home he had known and Lydia and her sons live with one of her married sisters.

  Thankfully, Race had understood the difficulties Lydia would face traveling alone with his two younger half-brothers. He announced his intention to also travel to California and agreed to accompany her most of the way. However, Race had been willing to go anywhere near the same city in which Dorcas Thompson lived. He decided he preferred to try his mining luck in the gold fields to the north.

  “Mama, can we raise the flaps and look out the windows now?”

  Cole’s request brought Lydia out of her reverie. She turned to the men sitting across from her little family. “Would you mind? I know you will get the worst of the wind, and I would not wish you to become uncomfortable on account of my sons.”

  The older man dressed in work clothes smiled. “Let’s give it a try, ma’am. Sun’s come up now. It’s right pretty out there, with the oak trees leafing out and the grass growing all green, and the fields won’t stay that way much longer once the heat sets in. It gets too breezy, we’ll let you know. Reckon I’ll raise my flap, too.”

  “Please do, and thank you.”

  Cole began to fiddle with the lines to the flap in an effort to figure out how to raise it. The man who had spoken to Lydia moved to the center bench long enough to help him. At the same time, Lydia raised the flap covering Will’s window. Before long, each boy sat in his seat with hands clutching the bottom window frame and his head sticking partway outside.

  When Will started to rise to a kneeling position, Lydia grabbed the back waistband of his britches. “No, Will. You must sit on the bench at all times. I will not allow you boys to stand or kneel and lean your bodies out the windows.” After quelling moans of disappointment from both of her boys, Lydia finally established her expectations with her sons if they wished to ride in the coach with the window covers raised. Soon, quiet prevailed, and Lydia leaned back in her seat with her eyes closed. She knew the luxury would only last moments before she must check on them again. In spite of the bright green of the grass and the stark, mostly bare limbs of the oak trees silhouetted against the vivid blue sky, they would soon grow bored with the sameness of the scenery. They would, once again, squirm and badger her with questions.

  Her thoughts drifted to Dorcas and her family. Back home, Simon Thompson, her sister’s husband, had been considered a catch by many of the young ladies. He had been older, as had been Dorcas, who was twenty-one when she married. Before their wedding, she taught school.

  Lydia scrunched her nose at the memory. Since she was seven years younger than Dorcas, Lydia had been Dorcas’s student for five years. She recollected how, at the time, she felt it so unfair she must endure Dorcas both at home and at school. The four years between Dorcas’s marriage and her own would have been a reprieve if their mother had not still been alive during those years. It had only been four years since her mother had passed from this life. Now, she faced once again living with Dorcas, a reproduction of her mother as far as critical attitudes and negative temperament went.

  Lydia thought of the twins, Charlotte and Caroline, the firstborn of Dorcas and Simon’s four children. She guessed them to be about fourteen years of age. She recalled the blonde-haired beauties—they took after their father when it came to appearance—seemed to live in a world of their own. Although Dorcas fussed at them—just as she did everyone—they seemed to shrug it off better than most because they had each other. The boys were so young when Dorcas left Pennsylvania, Lydia had no idea how they fared when it came to dealing with their mother. Hopefully, when they grew older, their father would take them under his wing to rescue them from their mother’s judgmental comments and disapproving attitude.

  For the sake of her sons, Lydia comforted herself with the thought that, in only a few more days, their journey would end. The boys would no longer be stuck on a ship, a steamboat, or a stagecoach. They would stay in one place and have their cousins to play with. Charlotte and Caroline were probably too old to willingly spend much time with Cole and Will, but the two boy cousins should be close enough in age for them to enjoy time with each other.

  It was only the thought of dealing with Dorcas that prompted Lydia to shudder.

  Chapter 2

  Columbia, California – Wednesday, May 24, 1854

  K endrick looked up from the counter where he chopped a chunk of beef into steaks. He nodded a greeting to a man he recognized as a miner, one of them who opted to live in a tent on the outskirts of town rather than rent a bed in one of the barracks-style boardinghouses in town. He couldn’t remember the name, yet it amazed him how many people knew him.

  “Hey, Rick, you got any good beefsteaks today”

  Kendrick looked down. Surely, the man realized the meat before him was beef. “Cutting some of the last of it I have on hand right now. You want one?”

  “Yeah. Can’t take it with me. If I leave it in the tent, critters or some thieving miner might get it. Can you hold one for me until the end of the day?”

  “At least the flies and meat bees aren’t too bad yet. They’ll be real pests in another month or so. I can keep it in the shade and under burlap. You need to pay in advance. Otherwise, it’s first come; first served.” Kendrick watched the man grimace but held a straight face himself. He had already learned the hard way that if a man did not pay ahead, and ended up either not pulling the gold dust from the ground he anticipated, or spent it all at one of the saloons as soon as he left his claim, he would probably ask for credit or not show at all. He ignored his customer’s grumbling. Kendrick noted the wistful tone in the man’s voice.

  “Sure would be easier if my wife were here to take care of the morning marketing so my supper would be prepared come dark.” The man fished inside his waistband for his leather poke.

  “Maybe you should send for her.”

  The man snorted. “Then again, she’d want to economize and make beef stew instead of steak. Today looks like it will be a pleasant day but not too hot once the sun goes down—a good night to get a healthy blaze going and fry up a good piece of meat.”

  Kendrick agreed this day would probably be bright and sunny, but it also meant most of the snowmelt in the higher elevations to the east had dwindled. That made it harder for men to wash their dirt in search of gold. Although many men earned good wages constructing an aqueduct to bring water from the Middle Stanislaus River closer to town, some miners tenaciously persevered with placer mining without the benefit of local water. By this time of year, they found themselves transporting dry dirt that showed color down to the year-round springs at Springfield, several miles to the south and west. There, they paid a Spanish lady for the privilege of washing their gold using the water on her property.

  Tonight, the sky should be clear and shine its glittering dome of stars upon all who looked up between the pines and oak trees. The man, more than for frying a steak, might appreciate a healthy blaze to warm hi
s feet and legs if his claim still had a creek running with snow run-off.

  However, far be it from him to discourage a customer. “Here’s what I have cut so far. Any of them appeal to you?”

  The miner eyed the contents of his opened poke before he inspected the four cuts of meat Kendrick had laid flat and in a row before him. He pointed to the one smallest in circumference.

  “I’ll take that one. How much?”

  Kendrick suppressed his smile as he picked up the steak and turned to hang it on the hook of his meat scale. He tended to chop the meat to a thickness to all his steaks weighed about the same. If the miner hoped to be getting a smaller cut in order to save money, he might end up surprised. Then again, the thicker cut would keep better over the long day. “Do you want any eggs with that?”

  “Not unless they’re hard-boiled. I could stand to take two hard-boiled eggs with me for later.”

  “You’re in luck. I don’t always have them, but I can sell you four today.”

  The man shook his head. “Two will do me.”

  After he told the miner the cost based on the weight of the meat and price of two hard-boiled eggs and received a nod of agreement, Kendrick reached below his counter for his hand-held gold scales—smaller and separate from what he used to weigh meat. He held out the brass pan to receive the gold flakes from his customer. He placed his set of weights representing the cost of the meat and eggs in the other pan.

  To balance the scales, the miner pinched out the necessary flakes of gold.

  “What’s your name or initials? I’ll mark my board to keep yours separate from any other orders.”

  “Jim. That’ll be good enough.”

  Kendrick noticed the man stayed to watch him place the steak on a board behind him. He then grabbed a piece of charcoal left from his fireplace and scratched the name on the edge of the board next to the meat. As he covered the meat with a fairly clean piece of burlap, he turned to see the back of the man as he stepped out of his shop.

  Kendrick returned to cutting meat until the next customer showed up at his door. Several of the hotel restaurants, chop shops, and boardinghouses in town were customers. Some of them took their meat with them. For his bigger customers, he would finish cutting their orders not long after foot traffic in the store ended as most single men started their jobs. He would then close his store, fetched his mule, Sunshine, from the livery, and hitched it up to the small wagon he kept in the three-sided shed out back so he could make his deliveries. His larger customers started preparing their meat dishes in the morning, or they had rigged up spring houses inside wells. Some even used ice cut from the lakes farther east in the mountains. However, this time of year, the weather seldom heated enough to worry about meat spoilage.

  Kendrick rounded his counter and reached the front window to exchange his handmade “open” sign for the one that said “closed” when the door burst open.

  Jeb stood in the doorway. Instead of entering, the man, standing half in and half out, turned and looked down the road in the direction of Main Street.

  His forehead wrinkled and lips in a grimace, Kendrick waved his arm. “In or out, Jeb. You’re letting in flies. What can I do for you?”

  Jeb took one step inside the door, and then he leaned his body back outside to study something down the street that held his interest one last time. He then entered far enough to close the door behind him. With an eyebrow cocked, he turned to Kendrick. “That’s the sheriff out there, and it looks like there’s another man on the wagon with him. They’re headed this way.”

  “The sheriff? As in, the Sheriff Stuart of Tuolumne County who lives in Sonora?”

  “The same.” Too fast for Kendrick to stop him, Jeb again pulled the door open, stuck his head out for less than two seconds, then pulled his body back in and slammed the door. “They’re coming here, if the direction their eyeballs are focused is any indication. Other man has something shiny on his chest, like a badge or something. Well, what I can see of it, considering the bundle he’s got held tight in his arms. What’d you do to get yourself in trouble with the law?”

  Bewildered, Kendrick spread his hands, palms up, and shook his head. “Nothing I know of. I have no idea why they’re in Columbia at all, let alone why they’re coming up this street. Now, get away from the door and don’t pop your head out again unless you plan to walk out and keep going. The last thing I need is for them to see how outlandishly you’re behaving and stop by because they figure we’re up to no good.”

  Chapter 3

  K endrick turned away from Jeb and started toward his meat counter on the chance the man had come to his shop to actually make a purchase, not to cause trouble. He cringed upon hearing the distinct sounds of a wagon and team pull to a stop in front of his store. His hands on the counter with his fingertips of each pointing away from the other, through the glass of the small front window, he saw the bed of the stopped wagon.

  Kendrick leaned forward and squinted. Was that a goat in the buckboard tied to the bench back? Several seconds passed before a young man he did not recognize walked to the street side long enough to lift a large trunk out of the back. Upon hearing the loud knock, he jerked his head and shifted his gaze to the door.

  “Tuolumne County Sheriff. Open up, Kendrick Denham.”

  After glancing at Jeb, who stood within a few feet of the door and who wore a questioning expression, Kendrick nodded.

  Jeb pulled the door open and stepped back into the shadows.

  A man Kendrick vaguely recognized as the sheriff, only because the lawman had been called to Columbia on a few occasions to transport prisoners, strode into the butcher shop. In one hand, perched on his forearm, he carried a bundle with a soft yellow blanket draped over it. With the other, he held the rim of a large wicker basket. The braided edge, which appeared to hold the sides to the bottom, he braced against his hip. Kendrick glanced at the other man carrying the large trunk as he followed the sheriff inside.

  As the sheriff approached, Kendrick noticed the bundle in his arm shifted. A high-pitched squeak followed.

  Kendrick leaned his head back. What did the sheriff carry into his shop—a piglet? No, surely, a piglet would not allow itself to be hauled in a man’s arm all covered up with a blanket like that. If they were small enough, most people carried one with a hand supporting its belly and the animal tucked under their arms. Why would the sheriff be bringing him a piglet? Besides, a piglet did not explain the basket and trunk that came with it.

  Movement outside the shop window distracted Kendrick from the puzzle of the piglet. He bunched his eyebrows together at the sight of two faces—one a young man probably in his teens and another definitely old enough to know to mind his own business—peering through the glass to see what took place inside the shop.

  The door cracked open a few inches, but no one entered.

  The deputy’s question returned Kendrick’s attention to his visitors. “You want I should just drop this trunk here on the floor, sheriff?”

  The sheriff kept his gaze focused on Kendrick as he spoke to the other man. “Go ahead, Nate. He can figure out where he wants it after we finish our business and get on out of here.”

  Business? Don’t they have butchers in Sonora? Deciding it was better to play ignorant as long as possible, Kendrick cleared his throat. “Morning, sheriff. What can I do for you today?”

  The sheriff scowled. “It’s more like what I can do for you. I brought something that belongs to you.” Wearing a no-nonsense expression on his heavily creased face burnt reddish-brown by the sun, he carefully set the basket on the counter and stepped back.

  The deputy snickered. “Yep! You placed the order. Now, looks like it’s time for you to take delivery.”

  Pushing back a burst of annoyance, Kendrick flicked his gaze in the direction of the deputy who had made the taunting remark. I didn’t order anything from Sonora. He returned his attention to the basket. He assumed there must be something important about it, otherwise, why would the she
riff bring it to him all the way from Sonora, five miles to the south? He lifted the basket by the handles on either end to make sure the section of counter underneath had been wiped clear of blood from his morning butchering. Although he knew he had not scrubbed his hardwood counter with lye soap yet, it appeared fairly clean.

  Kendrick peered inside the basket long enough to see what appeared to be a pillow covered in a white linen case. In the event appearances were deceiving and something other than a pillow was concealed beneath, he poked the center with his forefinger. No, it was a pillow. If he had to take a guess, it was stuffed with feathers instead of straw.

  Kendrick turned to the sheriff. “This isn’t my basket, sheriff. It’s a nice one, something a woman might enjoy. Even if it was mine, as you claim, I can’t see where it’s valuable enough for you to take the trouble to tote it all the way here from Sonora.”

  “Goes with what came with it. I’m no expert, but my guess is, she’s going to need something bigger to sleep in right quick. Your problem, not mine.”

  She? Again, Kendrick wrinkled his forehead and shook his head. Pigs don’t sleep in baskets. His voice rose in volume, as if he hoped that, the louder he spoke, the more convincing his words might sound to the sheriff. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Hold it down, Mr. Denham. It took us half the ride up here to settle her to sleep.”

  Just then, the bundle in the sheriff’s arms wiggled more strenuously and straightened, leaning away from the man’s chest. The sheriff quickly reached his now-free hand to grab the back of the bundle to prevent it from tumbling out of his arms.

  The blanket fell away, revealing a small head covered in a yellow knit bonnet.

  Kendrick, his mouth open and his eyes wide, leaned forward. What was that—a baby? It was not a newborn, but one he guessed to be several months old.