Refiner's Fire by Ann Nolder Heinz

Author:Ann Nolder Heinz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: antebellum southern prejudices, antebellum fiction, transformation and redemption, transcontinental emigration, covered wagons, riverboat gambling, California gold fields
Publisher: Ann Nolder Heinz
Published: 2016-09-16T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

Another failure. How could she have done it? The bread was perfect. Or at least passable. The rest was a disaster.

Thinking to offer a little variety to the evening meal, she had rummaged among the sacks and barrels that constituted their food supply and decided on a mixture of beans and rice to complement the bread that had risen as promised and been baked in the Dutch oven to a nice golden brown. Her knowledge of beans and rice amounted to the simple fact that they were boiled in water. Thus she placed a scoop of each into a large kettle, added some water, and suspended it all over the fire. The result an hour later was an inedible mess of crunchy beans and mushy rice mixed in with a few tiny pebbles and sticks that had apparently been in the barrel with the raw products.

Earl Long’s diatribe on testing the contents of his plate included words she had never even heard and hoped never to hear again. She attempted to appease him and the others by quickly slicing off a piece of bacon and frying it, but as she did so, he retreated to one of the bottles of whiskey he had purchased in St. Joseph against train regulations. He and the two older men passed it around and were already partially drunk by the time she handed them their reconstituted supper.

She quickly cleaned up the remains of the meal and left them to their mutterings while she went to the Fielding/Collins camp to relate her latest culinary debacle. At first she was annoyed by her friends’ amusement over her story, but she soon recognized the absurdity of the situation and joined in their laughter. Sarah and Maude soon put her straight on the preparation of beans and rice, which were never cooked together because each required different techniques. By the time she left them, she had absorbed the lesson that she must never attempt to prepare a type of food until she was fully educated about its properties and correct cooking procedures.

As she reentered her own camp, she found Earl and Will Long sprawled by the fire, the other two men having gone out to take their turn at guarding the herd now that they were in Indian country. A nearly-empty whiskey bottle dangled from Earl’s hand, his stare surly, his lips curled in a contemptuous scowl. Young Will avoided her eyes as she walked past them, prepared a small basin of water for washing her face and hands, and climbed up into the wagon.

She had difficulty falling asleep. The Longs remained at the fire, Earl’s rantings more and more belligerent with frequent references to her cooking. She was greatly relieved when she finally heard them stumble off to their tent. She drifted off, only to be wakened an indeterminate amount of time later by sounds just outside the wagon.

Loud whispers, the staccato cadence of a serious argument. The scuff of boots circling the wagon and stopping just beyond the canvas opening.

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