Calico Palace

  PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF GWEN BRISTOW

  Jubilee Trail

  “Miss Bristow has the true gift of storytelling.” —Chicago Tribune

  “This absorbing story giving a thrilling picture of the foundation on which our West was built is heartily recommended.” —Library Journal

  Celia Garth

  “An exciting tale of love and war in the tradition of Gone with the Wind … The kind of story that keeps readers tingling.” —Chicago Tribune

  “Absorbing and swift-paced, well written … The situations are historically authentic, the characterizations rigorous, well formed and definite. The ‘you-are-thereness’ is complete.” —The Christian Science Monitor

  “Historical romance with all the thrills [and] a vivid sense of the historical personages and events of the time.” —New York Herald Tribune

  Deep Summer

  “A grand job of storytelling, a story of enthralling swiftness.” —The New York Times

  The Handsome Road

  “Miss Bristow belongs among those Southern novelists who are trying to interpret the South and its past in critical terms. It may be that historians will alter some of the details of her picture. But no doubt life in a small river town in Louisiana during the years 1859-1885 was like the life revealed in The Handsome Road.” —The New York Times

  Calico Palace

  A Novel

  Gwen Bristow

  For Louis, Bobby, and the girls

  Contents

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  About the Author

  1

  THE GOOD SHIP Cynthia was on her way to California. The Cynthia was a beautiful ship, her sails tall and singing in the wind, her figurehead a white goddess crowned with a crescent moon.

  The Cynthia had left New York in October, 1847. For two months she had been sailing south, and now she was coming close to Cape Horn at the tip of South America.

  On the quarterdeck at the after part of the ship, Kendra Logan stood by the rail watching the gray sea around her. Kendra was nineteen years old. Her figure was slim and firm, and her face, while not beautiful, was a face people looked at twice. She had a straight nose and a stubborn chin and a humorous mouth; her eyes were deep blue with black lashes, and her dark hair grew to a point like an arrow on her forehead. When they got a chance, men liked to drop a kiss on that arrow of hair. A mere peck on the forehead, why that was the way a man would kiss his old teacher, or his aunt. Or so they said.

  Kendra’s dress and cloak and scarf were all blue like her eyes, and all swirling around her in the wind. As a gust harder than usual struck her she turned from the rail and looked up at the men working among the great sails high against the sky.

  These men had never spoken to her and as long as they were on the Cynthia they never would. Cabin and quarterdeck were forbidden to sailors, and passengers were not allowed anywhere else. The men worked so hard that they had little energy left for wishful dreams, but as Kendra looked up, drops of sea mist beading her eyelashes like tiny pearls around her blue eyes, a sailor high in the rigging paused to gaze yearningly down upon her. A big fellow with a rust-colored beard, he caught her eye and grinned. He was quite unabashed; his whole attitude said you couldn’t blame a guy for looking.

  Kendra knew she ought not to smile back, but she smiled anyway. As his grin brightened in answer, she dropped her eyes regretfully and turned toward the sea again. During their two months on shipboard her mother had warned her often enough that she must ignore the sailors as if they were not here. Kendra supposed the ban was necessary, but she wished it were not. That man would be fun to know. She wondered how he liked being here on this cold gray sea, sailing toward a dreary country off at the end of the world.

  But at least, he had chosen to be here, and she had not. Kendra was going to California because she could not help it. The United States was at war with Mexico, and her stepfather, Colonel Alexander Taine, had been ordered to duty in a town called San Francisco. Alex had sailed on a troop transport that had no place for women, so Kendra and her mother were following him on the Cynthia, which though a merchant ship took a few passengers. Kendra’s own father had died young and she had grown up in boarding schools. But now her schooldays were over, so for the first time she was going to live with her mother and stepfather at an army post.

  She did not like the prospect. In spite of all the pretty pretending that enfolded this journey, Kendra knew they did not want her there. They had lived without her all these years, and they were accepting her now only because she could no longer be tucked away at school, and nobody else wanted her either. Kendra was young and her experience was small, but she was not stupid.

  Long ago Kendra had made up her mind that she was not going to feel sorry for herself. But she could not help wishing there was somebody who cared what became of her.

  Standing here in the wind that was blowing her to California, Kendra wondered what her life there would be like. She could not make a picture in her thoughts. She had never spent much time with her mother, and she hardly knew Colonel Taine at all. As for California, nobody knew anything about California. Half the gentlemen in Congress had already said the place was not worth having and it was sheer waste of the taxpayers’ money to send an army there.

  Listening to the crash of water and creak of ropes, Kendra thought of the ship’s figurehead, the goddess crowned with the crescent moon. The goddess could not be seen from here, but Kendra suspected that her gleaming whiteness was by now tarnished as gray as the clouds above. Here near Cape Horn the weather was bleak and dark. At night they saw ghostly globes of light hovering about. Loren Shields, the jolly young supercargo of the Cynthia, had told Kendra the sailors used to think these were wandering souls. No, Loren didn’t know what they were, he didn’t think anybody knew, but he was pretty sure they weren’t spooks.

  A hatch banged shut, and she saw Loren Shields coming out on deck. Bundled up in his thick coat, his cheeks pink and his light hair blowing, Loren waved and came toward her.

  Though he was twenty-six years old Loren was the type that Kendra privately classified as “nice boy.” He was not an exciting young man, but she liked him. It was almost impossible not to like Loren, simply because he was so nice—so courteous, so friendly, so agreeable. He lent her books, and told her the lore of the sea, and was often available for games. Kendra had been surprised that he had time for this, but Loren explained that the word “supercargo” meant what it said: he was supervisor
of the cargo. This kept him busy in port, but at sea he often had leisure.

  As he reached the rail the ship lurched, and they both got a spatter of sea water. Loren caught the rail with one hand and Kendra’s arm with the other, and when she had steadied herself he released her and pointed out to sea. Away out, half obscured by the mist, Kendra saw a great jagged cliff standing high in the water. Bringing his lips close to the blue scarf over her head Loren shouted above the wind. “There’s Cape Horn!”

  Kendra was not a timid girl, but she shivered. Cape Horn was a rock fourteen hundred feet high, jutting out of the end of South America to divide the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Here the winds were violent, and they nearly always blew from the west, hurling the sea against the ships that tried to pass from the Atlantic to the Pacific, as the Cynthia would be trying now. But as he saw Kendra’s tremor Loren gave her a reassuring smile.

  “There’s no reason to be scared!” he exclaimed into her muffled ear.

  Kendra remembered that Loren had been around the Horn before—doubled the Horn, she corrected herself. Seafaring folk said “double” the Horn, not “go around” it. Loren was speaking again.

  “It’s cold up here. Come below and get warm.”

  She went with him down the companionway. Once, as the Cynthia pitched and Kendra almost stumbled, Loren caught her elbow to steady her, but as he had done on deck, almost instantly he let it go. Loren treated a lady with respect; he had none of the impish daring of that sailor who had grinned at her from the rigging. She still thought the sailor would have been more fun to know.

  As they were out of the wind now and could speak easily, Loren paused to encourage her.

  “We won’t have any trouble, Kendra. There’s not a better ship afloat than the Cynthia, and Captain Pollock is as fine a navigator as ever lived.”

  What a nice boy he was, Kendra thought for the hundredth time. Loren added,

  “Besides, there’s another reason—I mean—oh anyway, we’ll be all right.”

  He was—why, he was blushing, thought Kendra, or was that extra pink of his cheeks due to the wind? But whatever he had been about to say, instead of saying it he was hurrying her into the cabin.

  Here they found Kendra’s mother, Eva Taine, with the other two passengers, Bess and Bunker Anderson. The Andersons were a middle-aged pair who lived in Honolulu, where Bunker managed a branch of a New York trading firm. They had been playing a card game, but the sea had grown so rough that they had given up. Eva was sewing. Catching sight of Kendra, Eva greeted her with a bright smile. She always did. Kendra smiled back. She always did. Kendra and her mother had never felt at ease together, but they pretended.

  Eva was thirty-five years old. She did not look like Kendra; Kendra looked like the father she could not remember. Eva was a really beautiful woman, with large dark eyes, brown hair always smooth and shining, and an air of gracious composure. Nobody was ever surprised to hear that she was a colonel’s wife. When Loren said Cape Horn was in sight Eva put aside her work, exclaiming that she wanted to see the famous rock. Bess and Bunker Anderson offered to go up with her.

  Loren, saying he had to check some records, went to his own quarters. Kendra took off her wraps and waited in the cabin.

  The cabin of the Cynthia was a handsome place, paneled in hardwood, with a skylight for daytime and whale oil lamps for night. The ship’s steward served meals at the table under the skylight, where Captain Enos Pollock sat at the head and the officers and passengers along the sides, in chairs bolted down to hold steady in rough weather. From her reading of sea stories Kendra had thought all you got to eat on a long voyage was salt meat and hardtack, and she had been surprised to find how good their food was. They did have salt meat, but this was varied with fresh, for they had brought along live pigs and poultry, kept in pens on the forward deck. They also had cheese and sausage and smoked fish, potatoes, onions, split pea soup, pickled cabbage, and dried fruit. On special occasions Captain Pollock even brought out a decanter of wine, though he never touched it himself.

  Kendra was interested in food. She liked to cook. She liked to try new recipes, and invent others, and make surprises out of leftovers nobody else wanted to bother with. In her grandmother’s home, during her vacations from school, when things got dull she always went into the kitchen.

  But here on the Cynthia she could not cook. And she was not going to sew. Kendra hated needlework, and Kendra was a decided young person. She either did something or she did not do it. She never went halfway.

  Eva could sew expertly, as well as knit and embroider, and she had accomplished a good deal since they left New York. On the table lay her present piece of work, a handbag of brown linen, embroidered with her initials in a design of autumn leaves. Eva never wasted time. She was always so right, Kendra thought rebelliously. In all her life Eva had done only one foolish thing, and this was to marry Kendra’s father.

  It had happened when she was fifteen years old. Eva lived in Baltimore. The youngest in her family, and the only girl, she was pretty and pampered and used to having her own way. One morning she was out on a horseback ride with a boy named Baird Logan, aged eighteen. Eva and Baird imagined they were in love, and all of a sudden they decided it would be a devilish adventure to run off and get married. They rode to a justice of the peace in a little town near by, added several years to their ages, and the justice, a silly old man with weak eyesight, accepted their fibs and married them. Eva rushed home and packed a few clothes in a bag, scribbled a note, and slipped away without being observed. Off they went for a honeymoon jaunt.

  In a week, their horrified parents found them and brought them back. Their two fathers summoned a lawyer and told him to have the marriage annulled. Baird and Eva made no objection; they were tired of their escapade and willing to forget it. But before the annulment process could begin, Eva found that she was going to have a baby.

  She wept and stormed. The two fathers paced the floor and wondered how they could ever endure the scandal. The two mothers moaned, each to her own offspring, “After all I’ve done for you, this is my reward!”

  But the fact was there. Baird and Eva had to stay married. The parents provided a pretty little house for them to live in. Baird’s father said Baird could go into the family importing business. But nothing could keep the pretty little house from being a hideous prison.

  Eva was barely sixteen when Kendra was born. By this time she and Baird hated each other. They quarreled without end. Baird started drinking, and one night, before Kendra was a year old, he rode horseback home from a party through a winter storm and caught pneumonia. In a few days he was dead.

  Baird’s mother, a woman of spirit, said it was her duty to take Kendra because Eva was a fool and Eva’s mother must be a fool too or she would not have brought up such a fool of a daughter. Eva was glad to get rid of her unwanted baby, but Kendra’s grandmother did not want her either. She was merely doing her duty. As soon as Kendra was old enough, her grandmother sent her to a school in New York.

  Nobody had ever told Kendra all this. Everybody was kind to her. Her grandparents, her aunts and uncles, the family friends—all the grown people were kind. But grown people talk. They drop remarks while you’re sitting on the floor with your doll. They look at each other across you, and sadly shake their heads. You’re just a child, they think you don’t understand. But you do understand. Ever since she could remember, Kendra had known she was a child nobody wanted.

  When Kendra was four years old, Eva married Alex Taine and they went to a post west of the Mississippi River, where the army kept the frontier safe from Indians. No place for a little girl, said Eva. Alex agreed. He had no interest in Kendra. He had never seen her, and he expected to have children of his own. In this he was not disappointed, for he and Eva became the parents of two handsome sons. They had left the boys at school in New York this year, because Alex wanted Eva with him and there were no schools in California.

  Kendra had seen Alex only three or four times
in her life, when he and Eva visited their friends in the East. Kendra had discerned, however, that he was not at all like Baird Logan. Alex was a graduate of West Point. He was not reckless or impulsive; he planned his time and paid his bills and did what was expected of him. So did Eva, now. Eva had learned; never again was she going to make a fool of herself. She and Alex had lived at various frontier posts. She liked this. It was adventure, but a safe sort of adventure; at a frontier post, she had the whole United States Army on her side.

  All these years, Kendra had stayed at school. When Eva came to New York for a visit she and Kendra would take a drive, and stop for ices and macaroons. They never knew what to say to each other and they were both relieved when it was over. On vacations Kendra would stay with her grandmother.

  And then, last summer, Kendra finished school. She came back to her grandmother in Baltimore, and about this time Alex was ordered to San Francisco. He sailed on the troopship, and Eva engaged a stateroom on the Cynthia. But while Eva was in New York waiting for the ship to sail, Kendra’s grandmother had a stroke and died.

  This was why Kendra was now on her way to San Francisco. Her other grandparents—Eva’s parents—had died some years before, and there was nobody Eva could leave her with. Kendra’s aunts and uncles were as sweet as ever. They said, if this bereavement had to take place what a mercy that it happened while Kendra’s mother was here to take care of the dear girl. What they meant was, they were not going to be bothered with Eva’s ill-gotten brat.

  Eva came to Baltimore, gracious and well dressed as always. She said she would write Alex at once and send the letter by one of the couriers who carried army dispatches. She would be delighted, said Eva, to have her charming daughter with her.

  Like the aunts and uncles, she did not mean what she said. Eva did not find her daughter charming. Other people might admire Kendra’s blue eyes and the dark hair growing to an arrow on her forehead. But Eva did not. Kendra looked like Baird Logan, and every glance at Kendra reminded Eva of the trouble she had made for herself when she ran off with him.