Chapter 12
Around the Campfire

Pa lashed Jester’s rump with the reins and the poor horse galloped for all he was worth.

I was bouncing up and down in front of Pa, and if his arms hadn’t held me in on each side, I’d have wound up off in a ditch. Zack didn’t have any trouble keeping up, but Uncle Nick fell a little ways behind, though Pa still kept pushing as hard as he could go.

Before I knew it we were speeding through a clearing, then we were on a wider road like before, and a small cluster of buildings came into sight. Pa later told me it was Gold Run, but at the time I was hanging on too hard to ask. A few men were standing outside the saloon watching us as we tore past. A couple of them yelled at us, but Pa just kept on going without even slowing down.

Just past the saloon he turned left onto another road, and in less than a minute we were past the little collection of shacks and racing again through the brush and trees and woods.

After about ten more minutes, Pa finally slowed the pace, though he still couldn’t let Jester stop and walk. At last, after another five minutes, he did stop.

By now it was night. The moon was shining on the water as it passed in front of us, but even without the light, I’d have known we had reached a river from the rushing sound.

“This here’s the ford across the North Fork of the American,” Pa said.

Over the sounds of the river, I could hear the heaving of all three horses. “Once Hatch tracks us to Gold Run and them fellas at the saloon tell him which way we was goin’, this is right where he’ll figure we’re headin’.”

“We gonna cross that river, Pa?” asked Zack.

“Naw, but we’re gonna make Hatch think we did. Come on, follow me.”

Pa urged Jester forward toward the water, then stopped. “No, wait. We’ve gotta leave him a clue to find—somethin’ he’ll recognize as ours, somethin’ that’ll make him know we came by here and went on—”

He stopped, thinking, looking around at all of us. Then he said, “Nick, gimme that hat o’ yours.”

“Not my hat, Drum!”

“You got us into this mess! Now do I hafta take it from you, or are you gonna give it to me?”

Silently Uncle Nick took his hat off his head and handed it to Pa. “He’ll know this, all right,” said Pa. “He came near shootin’ a hole clean through it!” He tossed the hat down a couple of feet from the water’s edge, then continued out into the river.

“It’s shallow all the way across,” he said to me. “Even in the dark, these horses won’t have a problem. But we ain’t goin’ all the way across.”

“Why not, Pa?” I asked.

“Cause we’re headin’ south, Corrie. Can’t you tell? Home’s back behind us. But I don’t want that ol’ cuss Hatch findin’ out where our claim is. I heard o’ him for years, and I heard he’s a bad ’un. I don’t think he knows who we are or where we’re from, and I wanna keep it that way! So we’ll make him think we’re headin’ down to Indian Hill, then we’ll double back up by Grass Valley and head home that way.”

We walked the horses twenty feet out into the river, then he pulled Jester’s head around and began leading him downstream to the right. Zack and Uncle Nick followed. Slowly we made our way, following the shoreline, till we were well out of sight of the place where Pa’d thrown Uncle Nick’s hat. Still he kept leading the way down the river for ten more minutes. I could hear louder sounds from the river up ahead when Pa finally turned again toward the bank. “Hear them rapids up ahead, Corrie?” he said. “Time for us to get back on dry land and head back north. I don’t think Hatch can track us now!”

“You really think he’d try to follow us, Pa?”

“Fellas like him don’t forget when they’ve been made a fool of! I still gotta find out from Nick what went on back in Dutch Flat, but yeah, I think Hatch’ll do his blamedest to find us. I don’t doubt he’ll be askin’ around in Dutch Flat an’ Gold Run tonight, an’ it won’t be long before he’s standin’ at that ford back there, cursin’ to himself as he’s holdin’ Nick’s hat, an’ vowin’ revenge. Let’s just hope he’s mad enough to ride across the river an’ just keep on goin’!”

“We gonna ride all the way home tonight, Pa?” I asked.

“From where we are now, Corrie,” he answered, “with no trail to follow for the next three or four miles, in the dark with only half a moon, we’re likely three hours from Miracle.”

“Zack and me brought some food, Pa. And blankets.”

“And the young’ uns?”

“They’re with Mrs. Parrish.”

“Then maybe it’d be best for us to find some place to bed down for the night. But we better get up past Grass Valley . . . maybe near Nevada City somewhere. Then we’ll be outta Hatch’s territory.”

We rode on in silence for a while, and I leaned back against Pa’s chest. I felt so safe and protected with him behind me and his arms around me. Even if he had decided to go straight back to Miracle, I could have ridden with him like that forever! By now nothing could have been further from my mind than what had sent me and Zack after Pa in the first place.

A couple of hours later the four of us were sitting around a small fire, munching on the biscuits, dried venison, and apples Zack and I had brought along.

“Wish we had some coffee,” said Uncle Nick.

I half expected Pa to make some sour reply. He hadn’t been any too nice to Nick the whole time, though I suppose he was right about Uncle Nick getting us into the tight spot we’d been in. But once he had the fire going and I pulled out the food we’d brought, Pa seemed to relax a little.

“Yeah, coffee and some o’ them beans ol’ Grimly used to make,” replied Pa. “That’d be ’bout as good as it gets. How that ol’ coot could get so much from a pot o’ beans and an old worn out ham-hock, I could never figure.”

“Them wasn’t all bad times, ya gotta admit—eh Drum?”

Pa half smiled as he stared into the flickering fire. Maybe it was just the dance of the light over his forehead and eyebrows, but a look came over his face that I had never seen before. It was a faraway look. All at once he seemed to be someplace else.

“Yeah, they had some good moments,” said Pa after a spell. His voice sounded the way his eyes looked.

“An’ you recollect his flapjacks?” Uncle Nick went on. “Can’t ya just smell ’em? After a hard afternoon’s riding—”

“Likely runnin’ from a posse!” added Pa with a little laugh, but not taking his eyes off the fire.

Uncle Nick laughed, too. “Yeah, an’ then beddin’ down for the night someplace in the hills and sleepin’ so hard nothin’ could wake ya, till that smell o’ his cakes on the griddle worked its way into yer nose, and suddenly you was awake an’ the sun was halfway up the sky, an’ it was time to eat and get in the saddle again!”

Pa smiled, but said nothing. Zack and I didn’t want to say anything. We were both listening to them reminisce about the old days. But after a while I found myself as fascinated with watching Pa’s face as listening to his voice.

The light from the flames of the fire seemed to bring different things to my mind as I watched. One moment I saw the hard, stern man I’d been afraid of when I first laid eyes on him that day outside the Gold Nugget in Miracle Springs. The slight squint of his eyes and just the hint of an indentation below his cheekbones made him look cold, as if he didn’t care much about feelings. But then when the light hit more full, and I could see into his eyes, then all at once I saw that maybe he had felt things too much.

Maybe the severe look was really a soberness that had come from years of feeling things so deeply that he tried to keep his face from showing what was going on inside. I thought I could see a tiredness in the eyes, too—a weariness from the unsettled life of being on the run for so long. And now here he was again having to hide from someone who was after them, and because of Uncle Nick, just like before.

It was probably silly of me to sit staring at my own Pa, trying to figure out things like that. But ever since I’d started keeping a journal, I found myself thinking more and more about the inside of people and experiences instead of just the outside. And so I couldn’t help doing that when I looked at Pa’s face and heard him talk about when he and Nick rode together.

It was a good face, I thought—even with two or three days’ whiskers. Rugged, I suppose, but I wouldn’t call it craggy or sharp. The cheekbones, the chin, the nose were all hard-edged. Pa didn’t have any extra fat on him, although his shoulders were big and he wasn’t lean. And his dark brown hair coming down just over his ears and spilling down his sideburns onto his cheeks, with just a little bit of gray showing here and there—all put together, I liked Pa’s looks. He showed himself as a man that could take care of things. Yet the few times we’d talked seriously, and the time when he’d first told me about leaving the East, there was an earnest tone in his voice that showed he was sensitive, too. Pa looked like the kind of man who wouldn’t be out of place in either a gunfight or a quiet talk with a woman.

I found my thoughts drifting to Mrs. Parrish. I wished she could see the deep look in Pa’s eyes that I was seeing right then. I wanted her to know what a fine man Pa was, even though he’d had a past life that was different from her Rev. Rutledge. I wanted her to be able to see the feelings that were beneath the hard shell that Pa showed to the rest of the world. They were certainly getting along better now than at first, but I wanted them to become friends. Well, maybe someday . . .

“What are you thinking about, Pa?” I said finally, not planning to say it and almost surprised at the words when I heard them.

For a long moment Pa just kept looking into the fire. Then he took a deep sigh, pulled his gaze off the orange and red coals, and looked over at me. “I was thinkin’ about your ma, Corrie,” he said, then gave me a little smile. Even in the firelight, his eyes were bright with tears. I smiled back.

Then all at once he turned to Uncle Nick and said, “Now, Nick, I wanna know just what the devil happened back there in Dutch Flat to get Hatch so all-fired hot to put a slug through you!”

Uncle Nick laughed. “It was a card game,” he answered.

“Somehow I ain’t surprised,” said Pa.

“But ya shoulda seen it, Drum! It was the perfect set-up! I couldn’t lose!”

“Except that you were settin’ up to fleece Grizzly Hatch! Ain’t you heard of him?”

“Yeah, but I never believe half the things I hear.”

“Well you shoulda believed it in his case! So tell me what happened.”

“Well, Barton was dealin’, and he called five card stud. I had the seven of clubs underneath, an’ my first up card was the seven of hearts. Well, nobody else had much of anythin’, and when the seven of diamonds fell down on my pile for my fourth card, showin’ just a measly pair o’ sevens, I was high man. Now Hatch, meanwhile, had all spades but nothing else. But he was startin’ to put some good-sized money in the pot, an’ when the fifth card came his eyes flashed, an’ he threw in all he had. That’s when I knew he didn’t know nothin’ ’bout that declarin’ rule—you heard of it, ain’t ya?”

“Yeah, I heard somethin’ about it,” answered Pa, “but I ain’t never seen no game run that way. I heard there’s talk of takin’ it outta the rulebook.”

“Well, they ain’t taken it out yet,” said Uncle Nick. “An’ so ya see, Hatch had to figure he had me cold. The second his last spade came up, he knew he had his flush and he had to figure me for three sevens at most. He had me an’ he bet the pot. But I knew I had him! My only risk was whether they had a Hoyle around. So I called him, an’ the pot musta been two or three hundred. His eyes lit up an’ he turned over his last spade, and reached out to scoop in the dough.

“‘Just a minute, Hatch,’ I said. ‘Far as I can tell, you got nothin’ that can go up against my three sevens. That pot’s mine.’

“‘What’re ya tryin’ to pull, Matthews?’ says Hatch. ‘Open yer fool eyes! I got me a flush.’

“‘I can see that,’ I said, ‘but in this game, three of a kind beats a flush.’

“By this time Hatch was gettin’ plenty riled.

“‘Anybody got a book o’ Hoyle around here?’ I asked. The feller that runs the place said he did. He went behind the counter, got the book, gave it to me, and I found the spot where the special poker rules was discussed. I read it real slow an’ deliberate-like: ‘In five or seven card stud poker, the flush and the straight are not played unless it is declared in advance by the dealer.’

“Everybody’s mouths fell open, an’ Barton grabbed the book outta my hand mutterin’ that he hadn’t never heard o’ that rule. But then when Hatch asked him what it said—that fool Hatch can’t read a word himself—after a couple seconds Barton just said, ‘I’m afraid he’s got you dead to rights, Grizzly. That’s what the book says.’

“‘An’ I didn’t hear no one declare it,’ I said. ‘So I reckon my three sevens is high after all.’”

“And what happened to the pot?” asked Pa.

“Well, it was no secret now that the game was over. I put the money in my saddlebag an’ left.”

“So now Hatch has his money back, your money, and your horse! When are you gonna learn, Nick, that it never pays? And now you got him tryin’ to put a bullet in yer hide besides! You don’t need that kind of trouble! You’re just gonna land us back into the same kind of fix we were in back in New York if you don’t cut out that kind of nonsense!”

Uncle Nick fell into one of his quiet, sulking moods.

“It’s just a good thing these kids showed up when they did! If it hadn’t been for them, Nick, you’d be a dead man by now! There was nothing I coulda done to get to Hatch the way he was positioned, and if he’d kept firin’ into that cave, he’d have got you sooner or later.”

Pa paused, then looked over at me.

“By the way, you ain’t told me why you two did come, Corrie. And how in tarnation’d ya find us, anyway?”

Suddenly I remembered!

“Oh, Pa, I forgot!” I exclaimed. “Everything started happening so fast after we got to Dutch Flat and those men said you were in trouble. I plumb forgot what I had to tell you!”

“Well, what is it, girl, that’s so all-fired important you had to track me all over the country to tell me?”

“It’s him, Pa! Buck Krebbs! I saw him in San Francisco!”

A cloud instantly spread over Pa’s face that neither the darkness nor the flickering of the dying fire could hide.

“You saw him. Is that all?” he asked solemnly.

“No, Pa. He saw me too, and he followed me and Mrs. Parrish to our hotel, and then when I was alone he sneaked up and grabbed me again, like up by the mine, and I think he was going to hurt me, but I got away and ran from him!”

By this time Pa was real serious and staring intently at me.

“Go on, Corrie,” he said. “Tell me everything.”

“I got away from him. I ran all around through the streets and got back to the hotel.”

“Where was the Parrish woman?”

“She was at her meeting, Pa. It wasn’t her fault. Please don’t be angry with her! She took real good care of me, and she told me to stay in the room till she got back. It was my own doing, going out alone like that.”

Pa nodded.

“But, Pa, after I got away from him, he ran down the street after me and was yelling all sorts of awful things, saying he was going to get you and the money, even if he had to kill us all to do it! I was so scared, Pa. I thought he might be fixing to come to Miracle right then! He sounded so evil, and I thought that seeing me again must have put it into his mind to come back here. And I just had to warn you, Pa!”

I stopped, thinking I was going to start crying. But I forced myself to hold it in.

Pa looked over at me. He knew what I was feeling. He reached out, placed his big hand on mine and gave it a squeeze.

“Everything’s gonna be fine, Corrie Belle,” he said. “Don’t you worry none. Buck Krebbs ain’t gonna kill nobody.”

“But the money, Pa! He’s not gonna stop till he gets the money.”

“There ain’t no money, Corrie.”

“But how we gonna convince that loco fool Krebbs o’ that?” said Uncle Nick.

Pa sighed again. “All the more reason, Nick,” he said finally, “for you to keep outta trouble with characters like Hatch. We ain’t out from behind the trouble from the East that keeps on houndin’ us, an’ it’s gonna take all we can do to get rid of it once an’ for all.”

Again everyone got quiet. Pa stood and grabbed up some more of the of wood we’d gathered and threw it on the fire. Then he came back and sat down, staring into the flames again. But this time I didn’t see a faraway look. Instead it was a look of worry, concern, like he was thinking about what he ought to do.

The next words out of his mouth caused me concern.

“Nope, this ain’t no proper place to raise no kids.” He said it quiet, as if he was just thinking out loud. “Nope, it sure ain’t,” he repeated. “Not for a man like me, alone, the law after me from the East, crazy men trailin’ me lookin’ to put a piece o’ lead in me. No place at all! My kids in danger . . .”

His voice trailed away. I knew he was blaming himself.

“Pa,” I said, “as long as we’re together, everything’ll be fine in the end, won’t it?”

“I don’t know, Corrie,” he said. “It just seems I ain’t no fit pa to take care o’ five kids by myself. Buck Krebbs tryin’ to hurt you, bullets flyin’ outta Hatch’s gun. You an’ Zack in danger there today! That ain’t no way to run a family! And me ridin’ off this mornin’, leavin’ Zack an’ the young’uns alone. What if Krebbs’d shown up then? No, I tell ya, things ain’t right the way they are! I can’t let it keep bein’ this way. You kids need a proper bringin’ up! And I gotta do something to get you one!”

“We’re happy being with you, Pa!” I said, but I don’t think he was listening. He stood up again and walked away. If I had learned anything about Pa, I knew he was thinking real hard.

Pretty soon Zack and I lay down on the softest piece of ground we could find near the fire and pulled the blankets over us. If it hadn’t been for the last bit of the talking, this would have been one of the most pleasant nights to remember since we came to California. It was so peaceful lying there, looking up into the black sky, the faint crackling of the fire in our ears, and the sounds of the crickets and other creatures of the woods.

After a while Uncle Nick pulled his harmonica out of his pocket and started playing softly. I was glad he hadn’t put it in his saddlebag! What a perfect way it was to go to sleep. I could hardly believe this day had started with Mrs. Parrish and Rev. Rutledge in Auburn!

Before long I heard Zack’s breathing change, and I knew he was asleep. The last thing I remember was wondering what Pa could mean to do to get us what he called a proper upbringing. I said a prayer for him, wherever he was right then, out alone walking, and asked God to help him do the right thing.