8. Questions
Chapter eight
Questions
Kizzy’s voice held a brave mixture of worry and challenge. Clem could tell she was nervous. Hell, so was she as the incredible beauty stared up at her. She cleared her throat. “Um, let’s start with the simple stuff. How old are you?”
Clear blue eyes met hers. “Eighteen, last month on the Fourth of July. You?”
“Twenty-four next May.”
Clem handed Kizzy the reins, impressed as the younger woman displayed her abilities. “You’ve driven a team before,” she noted, turning to examine her profile. “You’re of an age to consent, which is important, and your name is Keziah Walker.”
“Well, it’s the name I grew up with, but I’m not attached to it now that I know it’s not mine by paternity.” She licked her generous lips with a quick tongue, eyes flicking toward Clem and away.
She spent a moment deciphering Kizzy’s remark. “You’ve recently discovered you’re a bastard…uh…illegitimate?” She quirked her head and raised an eyebrow.
“Oh no, I’m legitimate. My mother married him before giving birth, but he sure didn’t sire me. Best news I’ve ever gotten.” Kizzy nodded. “My father, or the man I thought was my father, is a blow-hard minister, more interested in being heard than saying anything important.”
She took a deep breath, handed the reins back to Clem, and fanned her face, wiping her neck.
“Last Saturday night he caught me with a woman in the choir loft. He threw me out of the house, denounced me in church, and bought me a one-way ticket to Independence with a warning to never come back. I hate him.”
Clem squeezed her waist and changed the subject. “Why do you want to mine for gold?” Rewarded when blue eyes lifted in response, she basked in the sunshine of Kizzy’s smile.
“Who doesn’t want to?” she chirped. “I read everything about the gold strikes. There are stories about people finding gold everywhere, someone even took a bath in a stream, and found a nugget lodged between his toes.” She laughed, her eyes dancing.
“How exciting it must be, all that wealth just lying around, waiting to be found.” The beautiful young woman she’d decided to marry bounced up and down in her seat as the empty wagon jostled and jiggled along.
“There’s dirty, heavy, tiring work involved, but yes, finding the yellow stuff is very exciting.”
“You found some?” Kizzy’s warm hands clutched her forearm.
“I had a claim, but I sold it.”
“Why?”
“A claim is only yours while you work it, and it was a rich piece of land. My partner, Barney Finkle, must be wealthy by now.” She laughed. “At least, I hope so. Couldn’t happen to a better man.” She patted Kizzy’s knee. “We’ll stake a new claim near there, as good or better, don’t you worry.”
“We. It has a nice ring to it. How’d you meet Mr. Finkle?”
“Three years ago, to prove something to my father, I decided to pass as a man, and shortened my name from Clementine to Clem. Just like you, I headed for the gold strikes people were talking about in California. I took notes on the journey, then used them to write articles I sold to newspapers back East.”
“You’re an author?” Kizzy’s eyes grew round.
“A writer. The journey west was brutal, lasting four grueling months; over half the men I traveled with died along the way.”
“Why?”
“Illness and accidents. Cholera decimated the wagon train.” Clem passed a hand over her eyes, wiping away perspiration. “The rough trail jostled our wagons, weakening them, the animals, and people. More than once, I doubted I’d make it.”
She focused on the road ahead. “Those still alive took turns burying the dead, and Mr. Cushing partnered me with Barney, who was also twenty. To escape the horror of our work, we focused on the gold we’d find in California.
At night we shared maps, arguing over the best place to stake our claims, planning without knowing if we’d ever get a chance.
Clem smiled, then turned and winked at Kizzy.
“Luck was on my side when Barney suggested we combine the best of our separate crumbling wagons into one sturdier one. More than half our animals died, those who survived couldn’t carry everything.
We dumped heavy supplies by the trail side, and agreed to share what we could still carry if…
no… when we arrived.” She shook the reins.
“Barney never allows negative thinking to get in his way. He’s always telling me we manifest our own destiny. ”
Other memories rose. “He became a close friend, the best I ever had. He respected my privacy and insisted on his own; in that we were much alike. I kept my secret, if he has any he kept his, but we talked about anything and everything else.”
Clem chuckled. “We traveled together to Mokelumne Hill,” she pronounced it Mo-kel-lum-me, “and struck claims next to each other on the southern side of the river. With the luck of the draw, mine proved rich and Barney’s far less, but since we worked both claims together, shared a tent, cooked, ate, fished, and took care of each other when injured or sick, we split everything fifty/fifty.
He’s the brother I never had, and there was plenty for us to both get rich. ”
She paused, and Kizzy asked a question, but not the one Clem expected.
“What were you proving to your father?”
“My father had no faith in me, or any woman, I suppose. He refused to let me attend college, or join the staff of his newspaper, the Boston Daily Journal.”
“I’ve read that,” said Kizzy, earnest face listening.
“Father believed women were nothing without men to guide them. I decided to do what all the young men my age were doing, go west. I found I could pass as one of them if I kept my wits about me. Which I did.”
“What did your father say?”
“That I’d fail, and come home having learned my lesson. I decided to teach him one, instead.”
“How?” Kizzy dabbed at the perspiration streaming down her neck.
“He published two articles I wrote under a man’s penname.” Clem shrugged.
“To buy my first wagon and cross to California, I had used the money I made selling poetry to a variety of publishers, Dad’s competitors.
I always showed them to him first, in hopes he’d print one in the Journal.
Later, Barney read my poems and said they were as good as any others published, and if my father hadn’t known I was the author he would have bought them. ”
Clem clucked and slapped the reins to hurry the mules along. “Then, like an irritating big brother, he hounded me to write a piece about traveling across the wild wilderness in a wagon train. “Write what you know,” he told me.”
“Did you write something?”
“I did.” Clem chuckled. “I spent two whole days on it, and he damned it with faint praise. “It’s good.” He shrugged. “You say what you saw.” He handed it back. “Now make me feel what you felt when seeing it.”
She glanced at Kizzy, then barked out a laugh.
“I never went to college. Barney was the first to challenge me. After prospecting all day, I stayed up nights working by candlelight, rewriting the piece. Two weeks later, I read it to him. “It’s better,” he said.
“You tell what happened very well to the boy you were when we set out. But we both grew up quick during the last year, we had to. We’ve become men. ”
“I almost laughed at the irony, but Barney challenged me, again. He shook the piece in my face.” Clem allowed herself a small smile as she demonstrated.
“Don’t send him a trail guide. Give Tom Dennison, editor of the Boston Daily Journal, the thrill of living the adventure with you.
He’ll never give up everything to chase a dream, so give him the next best thing; let him take the journey through your words. ”
“Barney slapped me on the shoulder and said, “Every experience changes a thinking man, once he steps back to see the whole of it rather than just the part closest. You’ve had time to do that, and you’re not the same Clem who started your adventure. Tell your reader who you are now.”
Kizzy sighed, wiping the perspiration on her cheeks. “We all change. It’s inevitable.”
Clem nodded, spotting some trees and heading for shade.
“I needed to figure that out, and I did; it’s in the article if you read between the lines.
I wrote with my authentic voice, without regard to my sex, expressing myself as a unique individual, the same as everyone thinks of themself, both men and women.
Those re-writes went deeper, they took much longer.
I gave it to Barney over breakfast one foggy winter morning, six months after my last version. ”
“Did he like it?”
“Barney did something Dad never did, he read it through, then started at the beginning again, and read it two more times. When he finished, he gave me a look I never saw from my father, one of pride. I remember his exact words. “No one could send the Journal a better piece. He’d be a fool not to buy it, and if he doesn’t, any other paper will.
” We left it for mail pickup the next time we went in for supplies. ”
“And he bought it.”
The sound of satisfaction in Kizzy’s voice carried like music on the breeze, as Clem pulled between sturdy oaks, sheltering branches still thick with leaves. Dappled sunlight provided relief from the glare, and they blinked at each other.
Fishing a clean handkerchief from her pocket, Clem wiped drops of sweat from Kizzy’s temples, but as those incredible blue eyes closed, she blew a soft stream of air over the glistening skin instead.
“Ah,” sighed Kizzy, smiling with her eyes still closed. “Feels like a cool breeze at sunset.”
“I prefer sunrise.” Clem blew another over her face. “I hear a creek over there,” she said, pointing deeper between the trees. “Shall we wet our feet?”
“That sounds wonderful,” sighed Kizzy, shaking her head no. “What about snakes?”
“We’re bigger than them,” Clem said, jumping down to the ground, “and if we make a lot of noise, the varmints skedaddle. I’ll keep my eyes open, promise.” She opened her arms in invitation.