Chapter 7
At first it felt a lot like a fever dream.
One moment Julie was sitting under a tree all alone, and the next Andrew’s voice was speaking to her.
He couldn’t really be there. But he called her name, and she called his.
What could it hurt? Her mind was really playing tricks on her now.
It had to be the hunger and thirst causing it.
Clearly, she was losing her grip on the world.
And then, to her great surprise, strong arms closed around her, and she felt so immediately safe that she knew without a doubt it was him.
She managed to move her right arm and held him as tightly as she could.
He was alive and well and holding her close.
Without a doubt, she knew she was experiencing a miracle.
“Andrew,” she whispered, pressing as close to him as possible. “Thank God. How did you find me?”
“You’ll never believe this, but a coyote showed me where you were,” Andrew said, murmuring into her hair and not letting her go so much as an inch.
“Did he have a limp?” she asked.
Andrew drew back. “How did you know that?”
Julie smiled. “I helped him, and he helped me.”
“Will wonders never cease.” Andrew finally let her go and handed her a waterskin. Julie drank greedily and then, feeling queasy, had to stop. She closed her eyes for a moment and forced the water to stay down. Then she opened her eyes and found that Andrew had bread for her.
Taking little bits and eating them slowly, she managed to get them down. She must have received a slight concussion which, combined with the dehydration and the various aches and pains, had led to her feeling quite out of sorts.
“Thank God you’re all right,” Andrew said, looking her over. “Wait. Are you all right?”
“My shoulder was dislocated, but I managed to put it back in,” Julie said. “I have a lot of bruises and pains, but I am so glad to see you. Did the water wash the whole camp away? Is everyone else all right?”
“Yes, they’re fine,” Andrew said. “We nearly lost Jeff, but he’s a tough one. We got him out.”
“Praise God.”
With her help and guidance, Andrew bandaged her left arm to her chest. She told him how to make sure her shoulder wouldn’t move much so that it could set and heal properly. Once that was done, she got to her feet. “I think I can manage the walk to the camp now.”
Andrew got up and, with his arm around her shoulders, they began the walk upstream to the camp.
Julie was amazed how far down the creek she had floated before being washed ashore. It was quite a way. They walked slowly, because she didn’t have much strength at the moment.
At a place where the creek split into three smaller branches, Jeff and Michael were waiting. They stood up when Andrew and Julie appeared.
“Julie,” Jeff said with a huge smile. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
“Me too,” Michael added. “Camp wouldn’t be the same without you, Mrs. Carter.”
She blushed and moved closer to Andrew, whose arm folded around her more securely. “No, it wouldn’t. I wouldn’t be the same,” he said. His lips brushed her hair and she closed her eyes, not even feeling embarrassed at being so clingy with people watching.
After a moment, they all set off together and Julie found that having walking companions was far better than trying to find her way alone. Jeff and Michael chatted to her constantly, and Andrew stayed by her side the whole way. It felt like she had found both new friends and family.
Seeing the relief on Andrew’s face made her wonder if there was a chance that their marriage might turn out to be one of love and not just of convenience. She liked to think that was a possibility.
Thinking of such things sent her mind to thoughts of her parents.
Hers was a tight-knit family, and Julie would have stayed in Maine if she hadn’t found it so oppressive.
Her little town was full of folks who thought that she couldn’t care for them as well as her father could.
That she, being a woman, would make an inferior apothecary.
But here were these strangers who valued her enough to chase her down after a storm and bring her home.
Julie was filled with joy and gratitude.
When they finally reached the new camp, she collapsed in the sleeping area and lay on her back, looking up at the cloth they had strung overhead.
She could hear Andrew and Jeff warning a large group of well-wishers to let her rest, but she didn’t pay attention.
She closed her eyes and, knowing that she was safe at last, fell sound asleep.
It took Julie a few days to feel like herself again. No one expected much of her, but she still cleaned and bandaged all the wounds the men had sustained in the flood. She also took care of several injured horses with some of the same salves she used on the miners.
Around her, the camp began to take shape again. Tents were pulled out of the crates, which had been moved to the new spot, and they were erected on the higher ground. Soon the camp was bustling like it had never been washed away in the first place.
A week after the flood, Julie began to plan her garden once more.
“You want to try again?” Andrew asked as they sat on a log with their morning coffee.
It was a morning routine they’d started since her rescue.
She enjoyed the quiet before everyone else was awake, sitting beside her new husband and watching the sunrise.
From the rise where the camp was, they could look down the little slope to where the creek flowed.
A morning mist evaporated as the sun’s rays began to lengthen.
“Yes, I do,” she said with a decisive nod. “One thing people can never say about me is that I’m a quitter.”
He chuckled and brushed a kiss over the knuckles of her hand, which he was holding. Julie smiled.
She looked around at the dwellings the miners had set up from all the salvaged flood debris.
They weren’t quite tents, but nor were they houses.
They were something in between, made from the logs that had come downstream en masse and tied together with rope.
Stone and bits of crates were added to make the walls, and what was left of the tents was cut up and used as doors and window flaps. They were quite cozy.
Julie had one to herself, and she used it as her clinic as well as her sleeping quarters. Andrew and Jeff’s little house was right next to hers. The other men were also sharing as there was only enough flotsam for them to make six houses.
They were sleeping on piles of pine needles collected from a grove of the trees that Ethan and Troy had found not far away. They made soft, fragrant mattresses on the otherwise muddy floors of the improvised houses.
Things were finally going back to normal. All the bruises and bumps, the slight cases of diarrhea that had developed from coming in contact with such filthy water, had cleared up, and they even had a decent outhouse dug down the slope from what Julie was coming to think of as a village.
“So where do you want to put your garden?” Andrew asked.
“I thought I could combine it with the kitchen garden,” she said. “Most of the herbs I use are culinary as well as medicinal. I’ll plant the ones that are medicinal on one side so everyone will know not to use them in cooking, and then I can help with growing the kitchen vegetables.”
“Now that’s a plan,” Kyle said from nearby. “You’re a handy woman to have around, Mrs. Carter.”
She still wasn’t used to hearing her married name and blushed.
Kyle smiled. Since her trip down the river, he had been being very nice to her. She got the feeling that he had a guilty conscience about something, but she had no idea what. Before the flood, he had hardly spoken to her.
“I think we should put it over this way,” he said, pointing to the right. “It’s away from the mine and the outhouse, it’s close to the horses, for the manure, and if we build a chicken coop close by, they can eat the worms that the garden will attract.”
“Many herbs actually discourage insects from eating the vegetables,” Julie said. “They’re natural barriers. The insects are put off by their aromas.”
“You’re still set on the chickens?” Andrew asked with a chuckle. He put his arm around Julie’s shoulders, and she leaned in closer.
“A few of us are,” Walter said, emerging from his hut and pushing his spectacles up the bridge of his nose. “It makes sense financially since we’re going to have to spend money on other things.”
“All right,” Andrew said. “Troy, can you make a coop?”
Troy walked up and nodded. “Think there’s enough wood left. It won’t be pretty, but it’ll hold up to ten fowls.”
“That’s all we need,” Andrew said.
“So, we can go and buy the chickens?” Kyle asked, sounding excited.
“Can I build their home first?” Troy asked, sounding annoyed.
“How about I help?” Kyle offered.
“No!” Troy snapped. “You do the garden. I’ll do the building.”
And that was that.
Andrew volunteered to also help, and the three of them set off to the spot that Kyle had suggested.
The ground was better than the other plot Julie had chosen for her herbs.
The only problem she could see was going to be watering the plants.
The creek was quite a walk away, considering that one would be carrying a lot of buckets back up a rise.
Perhaps when Troy was done with the chicken coop, he could think of something to make that easier.
First they planned out the beds and set to work loosening the soil. Julie would have thought the soil would still be damp, and yet it wasn’t. It was surprisingly dry.
“This soil doesn’t hold water,” she said. “That could be a problem.”
“There’s not much in it,” Kyle said. “We’ll have to add plant matter to make it better. Maybe if we turn the peels and stems from the vegetables we use into compost, we can fix that.”
“We could,” Andrew said. “It would help us get rid of the waste.”
They worked until sunset and then went back to the camp for dinner. Everyone sat around the fire, eating their food out of tin plates with wooden spoons—stew with rice again. There wasn’t much else since most of their supplies had been washed away. Everyone was tired of the same meal every day.
“Should we go to San Antonio tomorrow?” Julie asked Andrew. “I think everyone might start rebelling if we can’t supply something more than the same bean stew for every meal.”
Andrew nodded. “I think you’re right. And I have to send a letter.”
Ethan eyed him over his plate. “You know those findings aren’t definitive,” he said. “We were lucky the mine didn’t flood, but a lot of my equipment was still washed away.”
“Those findings will do for what we need to show Mr. McGregor,” Andrew said.
“Who is that?” Julie asked.
Andrew pushed his stew around on his plate for a moment and then said, “We didn’t have enough capital to start this venture between us. It takes a lot of money to build and sustain a mine. So, we had to partner up with a man with very deep pockets.”
“So deep he makes the ocean look shallow,” Troy said, spooning rice into his mouth.
“Oh, so he’s the one you have to report to,” Julie said with a nod. “And you’re hoping to give him good news?”
“Yes,” Andrew said. “I was waiting for Ethan to do some tests on the ore to see what quality we were dealing with, and he says it’s pretty good.”
“It might be better, but without all my equipment, which sailed down the river in the blasted flood, we won’t know,” Ethan groused. “That stupid flood! It set me back weeks.”
Julie shivered despite not being cold. She still woke feeling the floodwater closing over her head and her lungs burning for air.
A few times Andrew had heard her cry out in the middle of the night and had come and sat with her until her heart stopped racing.
She was grateful for her husband’s kindness and patience as she continued to recover.
“Mr. McGregor isn’t a patient man,” Andrew said. “I’ve explained about the flood, but he won’t see that as an excuse for any loss of profit.”
“We can’t control the weather,” Michael pointed out. “He’s going to have to accept that. It’s a miracle we didn’t lose the mine. Pumping all that water out would have been a nightmare, not to mention expensive. I think we came out of it quite well. Although bunking with Troy is less than ideal.”
“None of us like bunking so close together,” Walter said, his gaze fixed on his plate. “But it will do until we can build something more permanent. We are looking to build something more stable now, aren’t we? I mean the mine is viable, right?”
Andrew seemed to be wrestling with some emotion. He shifted in his seat, and Julie heard him mutter something that she didn’t quite catch.
“It is, isn’t it?” Kyle asked. “I would hate to be wasting my time.”
“We all would,” Jeff said. “And yes, the mine is viable. Right, Andy?”
Andrew finally nodded. “It would seem so.”
“That’s good, right?” Kyle asked hopefully. “We’re going to be rich!”
“I don’t know if we’re going to be rich,” Andrew said, speaking with great caution. “We are going to open a mine soon though. We’ll need better facilities, a way to provide housing and food. It’s going to take a lot of work, so before you get too excited, Kyle, just remember that.”
“It’s still exciting,” Kyle said, grinning happily.
Julie wondered why Andrew seemed so hesitant to say that the mine was a real possibility.
What was going on that he wasn’t telling the others about?
Was it something dangerous? Her father always said that what a person didn’t know could still kill them all the same.
It was better to have all the facts. Or was she simply reading too much into Andrew’s behavior?
There was every chance that he was just taking things slowly, wanting to do them properly.
If Ethan had had his equipment and could tell Andrew definitively that the ore was good, he might be singing their pending riches from the rooftops. Andrew might just be a cautious man.
Julie liked that. Someone who ran into everything headfirst was bound to end up with a concussion sooner or later, metaphorically speaking.
And it was harder to bandage a financial concussion, she guessed, than one sustained from a hard object.
In the morning, she and Andrew would head into San Antonio and get the ball rolling properly.
Soon this would be a proper town with a productive mine. It was all very exciting.
She turned to Andrew and on a whim, planted a brief kiss on his cheek. The men around them whooped, she blushed, and Andrew just grinned from ear to ear and tucked his arm more tightly around her shoulders.
“Mrs. Carter, I do believe your kisses could grow on me,” he murmured so only she could hear.