Free Fool's Gold by Glen Davies Page A

here.’
    Blindly she held the cup out to him and stumbled out of the tent to breathe in great lungfuls of pine-scented air in the chill night until she was calmer. She had to force herself to go back in: Robert or no Robert, she could not leave the Chinaman to look after them all alone.
    But Robert would never hurt her again, with his tongue or his fists. He had sunk back into the stupor from which there was no awakening. A few hours later, just as dawn was beginning to lighten the shadows in the gulch, he died.
    She put on the odorous muslin mask Chen handed her. Wordlessly they wrapped him in his bedroll and lifted the board on which he lay. There was no weight left to his body and they carried him, without much difficulty, down a path through the forest to where a digging had already been turned into a grave.
    ‘You go now, missie,’ he urged her. ‘Back to camp. I finish here. Not good sight.’
    She shivered. ‘How many?’
    ‘Eight already. You go now please.’
    What matter if the prayers were said here or at the tent? At least there she could ease the last hours of the other three wretches.
    Two more died in the early hours of the next day; masks over their faces they carried them again to that hideous pit. The fourth fought long and hard to survive. To Alicia’s surprise it turned out to be a woman.
    ‘Wife of picture man,’ said the Chinaman enigimatically, and Alicia was too tired to demand an explanation.
    ‘Wife of picture man’ lasted another thirty-six hours, then she too died. For the first time Alicia saw some emotion cross her companion’s face. ‘All so unnecessary,’ he said, or so she thought, yet how should he speak such good English all of a sudden? ‘If only she had listened …’
    ‘She fought hard,’ said Alicia as they trudged wearily back from the communal grave. ‘I thought she might have pulled through.’
    ‘Sick as others. But better reason to live.’
    ‘What reason?’
    ‘Missie see. Later I show.’
    Later. But first they had to burn the tent, the tents of the sick miners, all their possessions.
    ‘Now your clothes, missie, please.’
    Again that obsequious bow which accorded so ill with those knowing eyes.
    ‘No trouble, missie. I smoke ’em only. Burn off any infection. You go behind they tree. I behind they. Put clothes in my tent and burn special herbs. You see.’
    It was a little late to think about her situation, isolated up in the mountains, miles from anywhere — and anyone — alone with a total stranger. Instinctively she knew that he meant her no harm and did as he bade her.
    It was soon done and the clothes no worse for the experience.
    ‘Now, missie, now I show.’
    In a clearing not far from the camp a small wagon, a little like a shed on wheels, stood incongruously among the trees. A pair of mules cropped the grass nearby. Beside the wagon, a little spring bubbled out of the ground and plashed its way across the clearing to run down the hill until it found the Stanislaus itself, a mile or two further on.
    Mystified, she followed the Chinaman up the steps. As he opened the door, a baby of about a year gazed up from the drawer in which it lay, reached out its arms and smiled at them.
    ‘Her baby?’
    He nodded and then she cried: for the baby, for the mother who would never again hold it in her arms, for Robert and his wasted life and for the baby they had never had. She cried and cried until she felt a tentative hand on her arm.
    ‘No more cry, missie, please! Need help now.’
    Gradually the racking sobs stopped and she took the baby in her arms and held it tight.
    ‘Please, missie. Help me?’ he pleaded. ‘If Chen take this Anglo baby down into town and tell the people her parents died in my tent …’
    ‘They’ll string you up.’
    ‘I could have saved them if they’d let me. I have skills with herbs.’
    ‘They won’t care about that.’ Prejudice against the Chinese was so strong that no one would listen to his explanation.
    ‘I’ll