California Woman (Daughters of the Whirlwind Book 1) (17 page)

If it was here, it was probably elsewhere
on Sutter's land. At least that seemed possible, along the river lands if
nowhere else. She suddenly realized that no matter what Miwokan believed about
the stones, there still was no absolute proof that it was gold; and that all
this talk might be meaningless. The practical side of her New England mind took
over.

"I want to think about everything
you have told me today. I have many reasons to tell Captain Sutter of the
stones, but I will not—until I have thought much about it, and I am certain
that it actually is gold. I must know that before I make up my mind. The stone
must be tested by someone who really knows."

"An assayer." Miwokan was
always surprising her.

"Yes."

"That can be done."

"In
Yerba
Buena?
Monterey?"

"No. There are men there, white men,
who could do it. But until you decide, I want no one in these places to know of
it."

"But where else can it be
done?"

"There is a place, far to the south,
near the Mission San Fernando. Gold was found there six winters ago. A small
place of gold. They do not dig much there now. But I believe such a man could
be found in those parts. Or near the Queen of Angels pueblo."

"Will you take the stone
there?"

Miwokan thought for a moment. He wondered
again if she had been sent by the sun to begin the end of the Miwok.
"No," he said, finally. "My people will need me." He rubbed
his angular jaw and strong cheekbones with thumb and forefinger, thinking of
all he had told her and the need to bring the teaching home in her mind. He
gripped the bridge of his nose and thought about what he was certain would
happen to those who carried the stone. It made him more sad than he had been
after his first wife died in childbirth.

"I will send my son and my
brother."

Esther laughed. "Your son is hardly
older than mine."

"I have another son. He has twenty
winters. He has lived with his mother's sister since the time, two years after
his mother's death, when
Solana
became
my wife."

"I never dreamed you were old enough
to have a son of twenty."

"I have forty-one winters."

"And
Solana?"

"Thirty-seven."

She was astonished. "The sun and the
earth have been good to you. They have kept you young."

"Think of that," he said,
"while the two men I
trust
more
than any others ride south through the long valley of blowing yellow grass with
your stone."

South
Fork Cabin

December 25, 1847

Captain Sutter shared Christmas dinner with me today. He came
this morning after celebrating his Yuletide in European style at the fort last
night. He brought me the comb and brush Alex gave me as a wedding present. It
was found by a party of his men who traveled to Truckee Lake to sift through
what was left there. He has had it since June, but feared it would upset me
unduly in its reminder of Alex. Indeed, I did feel far more than a pang for a
time, but that is all in the past. Now it is more than a matter of not wanting
Alex to see me as I am, know that I was responsible for his son's death, in a
way. I cannot involve him in what I plan to do to Mosby if the means and
opportunity present themselves.

Grateful to say the reawakening of my feelings continues. I feel
more fully alive each week. I am glad this year is coming to a close. Beginning
to study the manner in which the books Sutter continues to bring are written.
(Became aware how poorly I write upon reading the fluent sentences of Joaquin
Murietta's note. Shameful. And he not even a native! Must improve.)

I think of Murietta from time to time. Handsome man. Lord, what
a foolish cow I am. Well, he was too short for me by an inch or two even if I
had been so disposed. And I wasn't. And I am not. And I doubt I ever will be.
Toward him or any other male animal. Prattle.

Merry Christmas little… I must think of a name for the poor
child. Earliest conclusions about my feelings for him seem to be borne out. But
will wait still…
Solana
surely loves
him.

The two Indians have been gone more than a month now. Have
suspended all thought about the stones and what to do about them until they
return. Useless to waste the time. Cross the bridge when you come to it.

Sutter brought a spinning wheel and a volume of the writings of
a Roman, Epictetus, to me as Christmas gifts. Read a bit earlier, after he
left. Some of it interesting. Particularly one idea—that how we perceive and
think of events is the cause of much of our sorrows, rather than the events
themselves.

Cannot rid myself of the ridiculous notion that I will someday
see Murietta again. Foolishness. In any case, dear Lord, I offer up
thanksgiving on this the day of your birth, for staying with me through these
last twelve months. My fervent prayers go out to you for Alexander Todd's
continued good health and prosperity. I know it has been a difficult year for
him as well. Painful, I am sure. Pray that he has come alive again after long
sorrow. And hope that the coming New Year will hold for him an end of
tribulations and the beginning of a new and happier life.

Forgive me
also, dear Lord, for my continued desire for vengeance. As I grow stronger, the
urge to have Mosby at my mercy, somehow, someday, fills me and silences the
God-fearing young girl I once was. Elizabeth Purdy Todd was not capable of such
thoughts. But Esther Cable is. Perhaps it will not be gold and the matter will
be put to rest as simply impractical wrath, impossible to act upon. But if it
is gold, dear Lord, forgive me for what it may one day make possible…

On
the last day of the year Esther sat staring at her morning coffee, pondering
the awesome beauty of the previous day's total eclipse, remembering the brief
terror of the earthquake that followed it, and the dream she had awakened from
before sunrise.

She
was driving a wagon loaded with goods. What they were was not clear. The team
of horses, the wagon were engulfed in a sea of bearded faces. The men and women
clawed at one another, scarcely able to breathe any more than she could in
their frantic efforts to exchange gold coins for the objects she seemed to be
selling. One man shot another. A woman in a shirt and trousers scratched out
the eyes of an old man with white hair who was next to be served. Then Esther
saw that they were standing in moving water up to their ankles, their calves.
They stretched as far as the eye could see, a virtual multitude. In the
distance, where the ground seemed to rise, Miwokan stood, watching. The sadness
in his eyes made her weep…

The sound in the doorway startled her,
and she looked up. Mikowan was standing there with his brother. He was
trembling. He came in and placed the stone on the table. His brother,
silver-haired and in his fifties, stayed just outside the door. In the sunlight
Esther could see the ugly purple streak running from his temple and through a
furrow of burned hair.

"It is gold," Miwokan said.

"What happened?" Esther was
suddenly aware of the ineffable grief in Miwokan's eyes.

He told her.

They had gone to San Fernando, then on to
the Pueblo
de
Los
Angeles. They found an assayer, and he tested the stone. Either they had been
seen with the gold or someone had told of it. Crossing the valley of San
Fernando on the return journey, they were overtaken by three men. One had a red
beard and was fat. Another had only half of one hand left. He was short. The
third was tall and lean. His left arm dangled and flopped this way and that, as
if there were no bones in it. The tall, lean man killed Miwokan's son with a
pistol. Miwokan's brother had scattered their horses with a scream, leaped on
his own pony, and outdistanced them after the redbearded man grazed his scalp
with a shot from a rifle. The three men had asked where the Indians found the
gold.

Esther put her arms around Miwokan,
rested her head against his chest, sobbing. "I'm so sorry. So terribly
sorry. It was my fault."

"It was not," Miwokan said.
"I sent them. I knew the gold would shine in the sun and make the
rattlesnakes dance. I only did not know if two, one, or no one would
return."

"God in heaven, I want to bury it!
All of it!" She ran to the armoire, pulled out the baggy pair of trousers
she had not worn since the birth of her baby, knotted one leg, opened the
drawer, and filled the pant leg with stones. "Will you take it?
Please
!
I understand now! I
want
you to bury it!"

"No,"
Miwokan said. "It will be more good if my people see you do it."

As the sun cleared the mountains on the
first day of the New Year, she stood on the ragged lip of ice again, over the
convex waterfall where she had sent the dust of her firstborn son toward the
ocean. The Indians along the bank watched Miwokan's sunsister as she gazed down
at the white, rushing water arcing toward the deeper place where they had
buried the golden stones for hundreds of years. For a moment she wondered how
much was down there, buried in sand. The gold in the water was unreachable, as
was Mosby, no doubt.
Perhaps,
she thought,
this is God's way of
showing me he is against my taking venegance. We shall see.

She looked at Miwokan, then
Solana,
then swept her gaze past the rest of the
tribe standing on the riverbank. Sighing, she turned the trousers upside down
and watched the small, gleaming pieces of rock drop into the tumbling water and
disappear beneath the fall.

GOLD

Sacramento

May
7, 1869

8
a.m.

Esther retied the black-ribboned pages,
rose from her parlor-car chair, and placed the journal, open at the next entry,
down on the cushion. She stretched, loosening the muscles of her arms, back,
and calves, then bent over to unfasten the clasp of her valise. Searching
beneath neatly folded undergarments, she pulled out a broad, black sash, her
late second husband's double-barreled, over-and-under derringer, and a slender,
corked vial of poison. She stared at the objects for a moment, then walked back
through the curtain and slipped them under the quilt covering Charles Crocker's
brass bed.

Fishing in the valise again, she pulled
out her small black purse and searched through a jumble of personal items for
the oval gold locket-watch Murietta had given her almost two decades earlier.
She opened the cover, exquisitely engraved with an italic E, and marveled at
the time. Only an hour had passed since she had sat down and resumed reading
the diary entries. She could scarcely remember turning the pages; the memories
they evoked of things both recorded and unrecorded, things she had witnessed or
had been told, were so complete, so vivid, she felt as if she were living them
again.

She lifted a small writing table hanging
by hinges under the window nearest her chair, propped it up, and placed the
Swiss watch on its wooden surface, thinking of the entries still to be read.
There was enough time. She turned, walked forward, and, on the map spread
across Charles Crocker's teak desk, traced the route of the Central Pacific
from Sacramento through Dutch Flat and farther past Donner Lake. She calculated
the time it would take the Pacific Union Express to reach each point, compared
the intervals with the time she estimated it would take to read the remaining
portions of the journal, then superimposed both sequences on a mental diagram
of where she and Mosby would be and what they would be doing as the train
carried them up into the Sierras.

She smiled. The three moving elements
dovetailed, meshed like the gears of an engine. The smile faded.
Unless,
she thought,
an unforeseen cog interrupts' the movement of the machinery,
slows it, stops it, perhaps even destroys it—and me.

She shuddered and took in a deep, calming
breath. Turning, she walked back toward her chair; then, on an impulse, she
stepped to a window on the opposite side of the car and curled the edge of the
shade open. On the wooden sidewalk in front of the hotel, Sutter stood gazing
at the train. Several men came out through the hotel doorway. They exchanged
greetings with Sutter, but when he made an attempt to engage them in
conversation, they all but snubbed him, hurrying off down the street. Esther
watched as Sutter reached out with one hand, pathetically reflecting his desire
to stop them, bring them back, and hold their attention. He dropped the arm,
turned, and, downcast, walked aimlessly in the opposite direction.

Aside from his ceremonial value as a
historical curiosity, the short, portly, overgenerous, and ill-fated man was of
almost no significance to anyone in Sac
ramento
now. The irony of it struck her as she
wondered whether or not he would play a role in the final moments of her plan.
That would depend on chance—and on Luther Mosby's predilection for the added
excitement that deception and risk added to his sexual activity. But if Sutter
were involved, he—once the most important figure in the Sacramento Valley—would
again become the most important man in her life. For a second time he would
play a pivotal role in helping her conceal from the world yet another secret
within a secret, another act he would not witness, would not know about. Only
this time, Sutter might help provide her not only with the opportunity for a
brand new life, but also with an alibi that might save her life itself.

Compassion for Sutter gave way to deep
maternal pride as young Todd darted out of the hotel doorway and raced across
the street in the direction of the train.
Solana
appeared and stopped him with a firm
command. He turned and, looking over his shoulder longingly at the locomotive,
retraced his steps, took Solana's hand, and skipped along as she walked him
toward the river. Canny old woman. She knew the boats and the activity along
the riverfront would hold Todd's attention until it was time to strap him into
his seat in the cab of the engine.

The boy brought Alex Todd to mind. She
wondered what he was doing at this moment. Whether he had finished breakfast
and was on his way to the train, or if he had slept a little longer this
morning and was just commencing to shave.

She pushed the idle thoughts out of her
mind, picked up the journal, and sat down. Sutter…
Solana
—and
Miwokan—Alex Todd… Recollections of that next stretch of time flooded her mind
as she began reading again.