faces of the miners crowded into the store. She had the distinct impression that food was not what they craved. She got Landerfelt’s drift all right.
Her blood boiled.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Landerfelt.”
He chuckled—a slow, almost syrupy laugh in keeping with his Virginian drawl.
“Till tomorrow, is it? To dispose of the cabin and the land? I assume I may keep the horse and the mule?” She’d sell them, in fact, along with everything else that wasn’t nailed down, to raise the funds to pay the debt and buy her passage home. With her father gone, there was no reason to stay.
“Five o’clock.” Landerfelt reached into a pocket and withdrew a finely tooled money pouch. “Unless, of course, you’d like to sell it all—lock, stock and barrel—right now.”
“To you?”
“That’s right.” He reached for her hand and she stiffened. The charming smile that oozed across his face made her want to slap him. All the same, she allowed him to spill the contents of the pouch into her open palm. A half-dozen ten-dollar gold pieces winked up at her.
“Oh dear.” Vickery’s eyes widened.
She did the calculations in her head, allowing for the unbelievable inflation that had occurred overnight, since word had spread that the streets of California were paved in gold. She couldn’t read, but she was keen with figures. Years of stretching pennies to feed her wayward father and four brothers had perfected her skill for transactions.
“You’re crazy, Landerfelt.”
Her sentiments exactly. Why the horse alone had to be worth that much.
Through the crowd, Kate’s gaze lit on the rough-looking frontiersman who’d spoken. She’d not noticed him earlier, and wondered when he’d come in. He lounged against a timber near the store’s entrance, arms folded across his chest as if he owned the place.
Kate felt her face flush hot as the man’s cool gaze washed over her. He wasn’t dressed like the others in flannel shirts and wool trousers. Fur and buckskin clothed him from head to toe, but not any kind of fur Kate had ever seen. Lord, he was a sight! Wild black hair that was unfashionably long, and even blacker eyes.
She forced her gaze back to the coins in her hand. Landerfelt’s offer would barely pay for her return to San Francisco and a room for the night, let alone her debt and the clipper passage home. No, she’d need better than a thousand dollars. More perhaps. With prices what they were, she could only guess.
She watched as the frontiersman pushed his way through the throng and stood looming behind Eldridge Landerfelt. He flashed his dark eyes at her, and she felt a bit of a rush inside. He was taller than she’d first thought, and had a dangerous look about him. A wicked-looking scar cut across his left cheek. She wondered how he’d got it. A knife fight, perhaps, or a run-in with a bear? In this wild place there was no telling.
He stared at her as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. She felt suddenly overwarm in the close quarters.
“It’s not enough and you know it,” he said.
Landerfelt faced him. “No? Then why don’t you give the little lady some of your money, Crockett. If you have any left, that is.”
A couple of miners snickered as a whispered buzz spread amongst them. Kate watched the cords on the frontiersman’s neck grow taut. His eyes grew even blacker, if that were possible, and his face was as hard as County Wicklow’s limestone cliffs.
“That’s my price,” Landerfelt said to her. He tapped his cigar ash on the counter next to them. “Take it or leave it.”
Kate glanced at the coins in her hand and at Landerfelt’s triumphant smirk. Aye, she was a woman alone in a foreign land, but no one played Kate Dennington for a fool. She knew nothing of prices or the value of land, but she was certain she could do better than the merchant’s paltry offering.
“Keep your coin,” she said, and slapped the golden eagles onto the counter.
Landerfelt’s jaw dropped, and he nearly lost his cigar.
“Ha!” The frontiersman, Crockett, smiled at her.
She noticed his teeth; they were white and straight. This close up, aside from his sun-bronzed skin and that wicked scar, he didn’t really look like the other transient men she’d seen on the last leg of her journey from Sutter’s Fort to Tinderbox. And she’d seen plenty. Hundreds of them, immigrants mostly, all flocking to the goldfields.
Crockett’s voice, his demeanor, they were…refined, almost. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was that made him different, but would stake her last farthing he wasn’t born to this life.
All at once the store erupted into a cacophony of shouts and tussles. The miners crowded forward, nearly pinning Kate to the counter behind her. What on earth—?
“How ’bout sellin’ me that last jar a peaches?” A squat miner with doughy cheeks pointed at the shelf behind the counter.
“I’ll take all them tin pans ya’ve got left,” another cried out.
A dozen others called out their orders for goods. Kate’s head spun. What was she to do? Landerfelt and Vickery were all but pushed aside as the miners crowded closer. She looked to her father’s solicitor for help. Vickery merely shrugged, and fought to keep from losing his spectacles and his overstuffed portfolio in the ruckus.
One thing was clear to her. It was still her store, until five o’clock tomorrow afternoon. Aye, she’d sell off the remaining goods and…She didn’t bother finishing the thought. In a flash she was behind the counter, reaching for that last jar of peaches.
“How much?” the miner said.
“How…much?” Lord, she had no idea. She’d only been in California a handful of days. The currency and coin were strange to her to begin with, and the prices of things seemed to increase by the hour.
The miner plunked a small leather bag onto the counter, and gestured to an odd-looking set of scales Kate had noticed when she’d first arrived. “I’ll take that sack of flour, too.” He opened the leather bag and sprinkled some glittering dust onto the scales. “How’s that?”
“How’s…what?” Apparently this ritual was supposed to mean something to her. Kate looked hard at the glittering pile and with a start realized what it was. “Oh. The gold, you mean?”
Of course! The man meant to pay her in gold dust. But how much should she charge? And how was she to value what he offered? Her hands grew sweaty and, without thinking, she wiped them on the skirt of her one good dress.
In a panic she looked up, directly into the black eyes of the only man in the room who’d had the nerve to question the dealings of her father’s competitor. The frontiersman, Crockett. She wondered why he’d come to her defense at all. What was she to him?
“Stand aside, miss.”
Before she could protest, he was across the counter, his hand on the scales. From a drawer hidden beneath the counter, he pulled a beat-up wooden box. Inside was a collection of
