Time Setting: 1882
Genre: Historical
Minimum Word Goal: 90,000
Timespan: July–September
Location: Rock Creek, Nevada County, California1
Main Characters: Keiller Bartlett, Rebekka Eld
Background Information:
Orphaned at an early age owing to his mother’s death from childbirth complications, Keiller has always lived a rather lonesome existence, even when he was adopted into a family that already had nine children. He would eventually depart from the family because he didn’t like their religion, and their daughter whom he was sweet on didn’t return his affections, but, instead, felt inclined to depart for the Sandwich Islands2 to share her family’s religion with the indigenous residents.
Upon his departure he got work as a guard for a stagecoach line and ended up becoming an object of affection for his employer’s daughter-in-law, which led to his employer’s only son and heir arranging for a staged attack by a band of highwaymen at a narrow pass that was hard to escape.
Although Keiller was sure he was the target of the attack, as one of the son’s maids told Keiller of the arrangements — even if so much time passed after her doing so that he forgot all about them until a man stepped out in front of him and shot his horse in the head — he ended up being the lone survivor of the encounter.
Because he was the target, and was presumed dead, Keiller moved on to self-employment following his recovery, choosing to become a bounty hunter in an effort to get the highwayman who’d nearly killed him — whom he was sure he’d know because he bit the man’s ear off in their fight — but that highwayman has remained elusive, even as he has ruthlessly hunted down and brought in others.
As he led those men to the nearest law enforcement offices, Keiller grilled them about the highwayman he was seeking, but if any of them knew anything about that highwayman, they were stubbornly tight-lipped, leaving him frustrated.
Owing to his bounty hunting, he got to know many local marshals in the Gold Country, including Marshal A. Farley Evans, who had been marshal in Birchville, North Bloomfield, and eventually Rock Creek.
It was when he brought one of his latest captives to Rock Creek that Keiller was offered a job by Marshal Evans, which he initially refused. However, when his horse went lame less than a year later, he made his way back to Rock Creek and accepted the position as one of two Deputy Marshals of Rock Creek with a former stagecoach guard named Cyril Gillies.
Keiller had been a Deputy for less than a year when Marshal Evans went out to respond to a domestic dispute in early December 1880. As usual, Keiller waited up for him to return, only to wake up stiff in his chair the following morning.
Immediately he — and many a concerned citizen — undertook a search for Marshal Evans, having determined that he resolved the domestic dispute and was presumed to have been heading back to the office by the family involved.
Less than a week later Marshal Evans’ body, with two bullet wounds in the proximity of his heart, was found, and the town organised an election to determine which of their two deputies would replace A. Farley Evans as the Marshal of Rock Creek.
Keiller worked diligently in tracking down all the evidence he could about Marshal Evans’ death, interviewing everyone he could think of, and trying to puzzle out where Marshal Evans had been killed because it was clear that the body had been moved; and owing to his dedication to finding Marshal Evans’ killer — as Marshal Evans had been much-beloved by the townspeople — Keiller won the election, despite the fact that he was five years younger than Deputy Gillies, and Deputy Gillies had been assigned Acting Marshal until the election.
In the year that he’s been Marshal of Rock Creek, Keiller has continued to do what he can to puzzle out who killed Marshal Evans and why, but the trail is growing colder as time goes on — as is his relationship with Deputy Gillies, who is very sore about the fact that Keiller succeeded in winning the position of Marshal he’d thought himself to be all-but-guaranteed — yet Keiller has no intentions of giving up until he can bring the killer to justice.
Born the fifteenth child of seventeen, and the last of nine girls, Rebekka was the youngest of six girls who would succeed in outliving both her parents, who had been born, raised, and married — as well as having many of their children — in Sweden before emigrating to Minnesota three years before she was born.
The birth of her youngest brother, who was stillborn, severely weakened her mother, who would go on to die three years later — at which time Rebekka was six — leaving her father to raise his five youngest daughters, as Rebekka’s oldest sister had been married the year after the youngest brother was born; with her and her husband also moving west the year that her mother died as that, coupled with her own miscarriage of twins she’d been carrying, drove her to desire a change of scenery.
Rebekka’s oldest remaining sister at home spurned many advances from local young men in order to remain at home and be a mother to her sisters, and to keep house for her father, while the next sister made plans to go west as a teacher.
However, in the winter of 1875 Rebekka’s father headed to town on his own, and as the girls were sitting down to supper Rebekka’s secret sweetheart, Gunnar — whose family had recently arrived from Sweden, and was five years her senior — came to the door to tell them that their father, his sledge, and their trusty gelding had gone through the ice of the lake and no one had been able to save him.
Thus, at twelve years old, Rebekka was an orphan, and she was truly devastated at the turn of events.
Her oldest sister came back to Minnesota from California — where she and her husband had recently moved — and insisted that her sisters all come and live with her there, including her sister who’d planned on becoming a teacher, who had cancelled those plans owing to her father’s demise.
Although Rebekka didn’t want to be so far away from Gunnar, whom she dreamed of marrying someday — if he could just wait about five years for her to get old enough for him — since she was the youngest, her vote didn’t really count, and the move was made.
Owing to the addition of five young women to the household, things were cramped in California, and Rebekka’s brother-in-law wasn’t altogether impressed to be housing his sisters-in-law either, nor were matters improved when Rebekka’s oldest sister gave birth to twin daughters who died within their first two weeks, only to have her husband refuse to move the family again — as they’d moved every time a child had died so far — putting the couple at odds with each other.
This led to Rebekka’s brother-in-law directing attention toward her second-oldest sister somewhat discreetly. When his wife died bringing a second living son and fourth living child into the world, his attentions became more clear, and he asked Rebekka’s now oldest living sister to marry him less than a month after becoming a widower.
She refused him every single time he asked, until finally he got frustrated and packed the five of them up into his wagon, driving them to Sacramento — which wasn’t too far from where they lived — to drop them off at the back door of a rather indecent place.
Despite their efforts to resist, they were taken inside and were soon transformed, at least by appearance, into prostitutes.
Since they made some money off of what they did, they all agreed to set it aside for train fares back home to Minnesota — where they all agreed they never should’ve left in the first place — and once they had the $100+ needed for one fare home, they intended to send Rebekka, whom they’d prevented from having to lay with a man, but she insisted that her immediately older sister go first, as she was the most traumatised by what they had to do.
Her sisters eventually acquiesced, and have acquiesced every time she’s refused to be sent in favour of one of them.
At present only her oldest sister and herself remain in California, with the rest having returned to Minnesota safely and found somewhere to stay, and they’ve accumulated enough money for another fare to Minnesota, but Rebekka doesn’t want to leave until they can both go together — as well as the son her sister conceived and bore who is the apple of his mother and aunt’s eyes — which means that it looks like there will be another year in California before they can finally return home to Minnesota.
1Not an actual town at any point in the history Nevada County; 2The original European name for the Hawaiian Islands.
Pronunciations:
Keiller: kaeler
Gillies: gillees
Gunnar: gounnahr
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