Homecoming Girls by Val Wood

understand he lives in Europe, or did I hear that he’d died?’
    ‘He certainly didn’t die,’ Jewel said. ‘Wilhelm Dreumel is my father – my adoptive father,’ she added.
    ‘Look!’ Clara said. ‘We’re starting to turn. There’s a corner after all.’
    The horses were slowing, moving only at a trot as a sharp corner appeared ahead of them, and the passengers felt the pull as the driver reined in and steered into the mouth of the mountain, which opened up to reveal a road wide enough for two waggons to pass each other safely. A broad creek ran alongside the road and half a mile further on a stone bridge crossed over it.
    ‘Oh, if only it were not so dark,’ Clara began, but as she spoke a thin sliver of silver moon appeared in the night sky and the waters of the creek glinted in its light. So it is a magic place after all, she thought, and I must be careful what I wish for.
    The coach pulled up outside the Marius, which was a double-fronted, two-storeyed timber-framed building with a wide overhanging portico supported by a pair of painted wooden columns. A wooden bench was placed on either side of the doors.
    The driver got down and opened the coach door. ‘Here y’ah, young ladies. The Dreumel Marius.’
    The Thompsons stayed in their seats. ‘We’re going on to Nellie O’Neill’s hotel,’ they said. ‘We’ve booked a room for a couple of days and are going to look for a building plot.’
    ‘Then we’ll see you again,’ Jewel said. ‘We’ll be coming to visit Miss Nellie and Isaac.’
    Wilhelm and Georgiana had impressed upon her that they must be sure to pay this particular visit. Isaac had been with the original team when Wilhelm had first come to the valley and begun the search for gold. He was well past his first youth even then and too old for further prospecting, but Wilhelm had employed him as a guard to watch over thecamp, promising him a stake in any gold if they should find it, which they did.
    Then along came Nellie O’Neill, who was keen to open a saloon bar in what was then a burgeoning settlement. She and Isaac had met previously and in his heyday he had been sweet on her; together they now ran the popular bar and rooming house in Dreumel’s Creek. Often they could be heard haranguing one another, but that they were fond of each other there was no doubt.
    ‘We’ll go tomorrow after we’ve rested,’ Jewel said as they followed the driver with their luggage up the steps from the boardwalk and into the hotel. ‘I just can’t wait to see everyone, but especially Kitty and Caitlin. We write, you know, Caitlin and I, and yet I hardly remember what she looks like.’
    ‘You’ll recognize her, I expect,’ Clara murmured. She was very tired. The day’s travelling had exhausted her. Whatever will I be like when we travel to California, she thought?
    They were greeted by James Crawford, the manager of the Dreumel’s Creek Marius, but he was young and newly appointed and therefore hadn’t met Jewel on her visit when she was a child.
    ‘I’m delighted to meet you, Miss Dreumel,’ he said, ‘and you too, Miss Newmarch. I’d hoped that your father might have accompanied you. I was looking forward to meeting him again.’
    ‘When did you last see him?’Jewel asked.
    ‘When he came to Philadelphia a year ago, during the crash. I’d heard he was in town and approached him, asking for an interview. I was in the hotel trade but wanted to rise up the managerial ladder. He said he’d get in touch if a position should arise.’ He smiled enthusiastically. ‘And, man of his word that he is, he did! He wrote to me from England offering me the post of manager here. Everybody wants to work with Wilhelm Dreumel,’ he added.
    ‘That’s good to know,’ Jewel said, and thought how like her father it was to take someone on trust after one meeting. She wondered if he had been influenced by the fact thatJames Crawford was of mixed race, white and possibly Native American Indian,