California Woman (Daughters of the Whirlwind Book 1) (20 page)

"Plenty, plenty," he said,
untying the purse strings and staring greedily as the lantern light gleamed on
the gold. "I'm not a hard man, missy. Just had to know you had the
means…"

"There is more where that came
from."

"I don't doubt it, listenin' to you.
Be interestin' to see how successful you are with your arrangement in
San
Francisco."

"What you're saying is that if my
arrangement does not work out, you will keep the gold I just gave you."

"Missy, my time is worth money. But
you said you could do it. So what's there to worry about?"

Esther quashed a sudden tremor of fear.
"It will take a little time, Mr. Brannan. But you shall have the
goods."

"Shall we shake on it then?" he
said, coming out from behind a long table upon which glasses and bottles of
liquor sat waiting for the tradesmen and transient prospectors who were just
now finishing dinner inside the fort. He took her hand, held on to it, and
squinted to see through the veil. Esther tried to pull away. "You're a
pretty one, all right."

"Thank you."

"Why don't you stay for a while
'fore you go on to San Francisco?"

She pulled her hand free. "My time
is just as valuable as yours, Mr. Brannan."

He laughed. "So it is, so it
is." He took a step backward. "No offense."

"None taken." She turned.
"If you will excuse me now, I will be going back to my room."

"Leavin' on the early boat?"

"Yes."

"I'll tell you a little
secret," he said. "Now that we've made our deal."

"And what is that, Mr. Brannan? That
you knew all along you could sell just about anything I could lay my hands on
in San Francisco?"

He
doubled over as a deep laugh rumbled up out of his throat. "That's right.
I can tell you there'll be no end to what we can sell in these parts. I was
there. Showed 'em the gold I had and they wouldn't believe me. Less'n a month
ago, right on the main street of San Francisco. Now look at 'em. Practically
crawlin' over one another to get at it, like ants after spilled sugar."

*
* *

Esther thought about Brannan as she stood
on the forward deck of Sutter's launch with the cloth bag containing five
pouches of gold pressed firmly between her ankles. Leaning one gloved hand on
the port gunwale, she took off her hat and veil and let the breeze unfurl her
long, dark hair as she gazed down the last stretch of the wide river. There was
no cargo aboard the San Francisco-bound launch, no one else except the pilot,
and he was back in the raised cabin, not near enough to see the pale scar on
her face even if she turned.

She was glad to be alone; she needed time
to collect her thoughts. Despite what Sutter had told her earlier in the year,
she had not been prepared for the sight of so many tents, crude wooden
lean-tos, shanties, and scores of men working in the streams and along the
riverbanks, riding horses and pack mules, sawing, hammering, panning, picking,
and shoveling in and around Coloma.

She looked up. Two other boats were
moving upstream, loaded to the gunwales with cargo and male passengers.
Self-consciously, Esther put on her hat and hesitantly returned friendly waves.
Even at a distance of thirty yards, she could see the picks and shovels and
metal pans. There was no doubt about where they were headed. Thinking of them,
of Brannan's willingness to sell for her on a consignment basis, and of what
she had witnessed during the last three days, the last of her uncertainty
vanished.

The launch left the mouth of the river
and turned southwest into a stunningly wide bay. For the remainder of the
afternoon, Esther sat on a wooden locker pondering Sutter's predicament and
marveling at the serene, multifaceted beauty of the inland waters and the low
hills that encircled them like an enormous necklace of unmatched, gray-green
jewels. It was still light when the strait John
Frémont
had named the Golden Gate materialized
out of the sunset haze in the distance. Esther gasped as the launch drew closer
and the channel's size and splendor became apparent. But even that did not
match her astonishment when the pilot turned the vessel around the near
headland of a deep cove and San Francisco came into view.

The last time Sutter had described
Yerba
Buena
to Esther, more than a year
before, he had left her with an impression: a small village of perhaps fifty
humble and haphazardly scattered wood and adobe houses and a population of
about two hundred. What Esther saw now was a town at least four times as large
with more than a dozen stores, two hotels, a number of warehouses along the
shore, several wharves, perpendicular unpaved streets—and, strangely, a good
deal fewer than half as many people as Sutter had indicated. It did not make
sense. Except for the crowd of men waiting among the crates of cargo on the
wharf, the town seemed almost as empty as the windblown sand dunes that
surrounded it. Esther turned and scanned the dozen or more ships that lay
anchored offshore and just outside the cove. Nothing moved on any of them.

When the launch docked, several of the
men waiting to board tipped their caps and good-naturedly invited her to join
them on their journey to the gold fields. Esther ignored them and walked on, up
one street and then right at a corner in the general direction of a
"hotel" sign she remembered seeing from the launch. It was not in
sight, so when she came to another rude intersection, she glanced back down
toward the waterfront. The hotel was not down that street either, but she noted
the building upon which "Blue Star Shipping Company" was painted in
white letters. A single lamp burned in one window.

Gusts of cold, early evening wind blew up
from the cove and chilled her as she continued on, disoriented by these new,
tightly packed surroundings. She passed an empty butcher shop, a vacant
tailor's establishment, a shoemaker's with the door open and no one inside.
Signs in French, German, Russian, and Chinese increased her unsettled feeling.
At the next corner she saw the hotel sign over the rooftops a few streets
farther on. A woman and her child crossed the street ahead as Esther turned
toward it.

Another woman watched her from the window
of a dressmaker's shop as she hurried past. She saw a few more people and felt
comforted. The sun dropped behind the hills to the west. Although it was still
light, the first coils of a night fog were rolling in. The entire town suddenly
took on an unearthly translucent amber hue.

She turned the last corner and started
toward the hotel. At first, she paid the relatively tall, well-proportioned man
walking toward her from the next cross street no mind. But then she realized
that something about the way he walked, the way his shoulders were set, the way
his arms moved seemed familiar. Her pulse quickened as he approached. At a
distance of twenty feet she knew it was Alex Todd.

She saw him smile courteously and tip his
hat just before she tilted her head downward and passed him. She held her
breath as she heard him continue on. Then his footsteps stopped. She
knew
he had turned around and was watching her,
felt
it. Three years. A small
part of her screamed silently to turn around, drop the cloth bag, run and throw
her arms around him, tell him all that had happened, sob it out against his
chest and… Three years… She thought of the scar… the missing fingers… the dead
baby… Mosby… His son… Three years.
I cannot stop,
she said to herself,
I
cannot
go back
. I must not
give in
.

She was certain he was still watching,
observing the way she walked as she had observed him. He could not possibly
have seen her face,
but God
, she thought,
will he remember this dress
?
She continued on past the entrance to the hotel. The thought that he had
not
come out of this establishment registered in her mind. She began rocking her
shoulders, taking wider, swinging steps and bouncing a little on the balls of
her feet. Anything; anything to walk like someone else, prevent him from
recognizing movements that no doubt were still indelibly traced in his mind.

"Elizabeth?" he called out as
she turned the corner.

Without looking back, she began walking
faster, uphill, away from the hotel. At the next intersection she crossed the
street diagonally and glanced back. He was following her. She began to run. She
turned left into a dirt alley behind a row of houses and then right into
another. She came to a broad street and briefly slowed to a walk, her breath
coming in short gasps. She looked back again.
Oh, God, he is pursuing me
now.
He had just come out of the last alley and was walking fast.

Turning at the next corner, she ran
downhill toward the waterfront and a street that veered left past warehouses
and wharves. A block to the west a lamp turned on in what appeared in the
glowing darkness to be a large, barnlike structure. As Esther approached it,
she saw that the place had once been a large stable. Now a series of
canvass-walled enclosures hung from an attached shed roof along one side.
Another lamp, then a third, flamed on behind two separate tent-units.

She peered back through patches of
blowing fog and saw a man's
figure
at
the last
corner
she
had turned. He was standing still, looking in her direction. She went into the
building. Beyond the bare pine planks of the entrance hallway, another door led
to the central area of the stable. It had been converted into an enormous room.
An unvarnished subfloor had been laid in; one wall was painted a garish red,
but the others were only whitewashed. A girl wearing a camisole dotted with
eyelets, long white bloomers, black stockings, and buttoned, high-heeled
walking boots sat sprawled in a chair reading a newspaper. Near her a glowing,
potbellied stove stood by the far wall. The girl did not look up.

Another young woman in cheap cloth
slippers and a dirty nightdress came out through a door to Esther's right.
Scowling, she glanced at Esther and continued on without a word through a stall
and an opening into one of the tents. Esther turned to the doorway the girl had
come from and found it filled by a fat, slatternly woman with dyed red hair.

The fat woman puffed on a thin cheroot
and gave Esther a quick, appraising look. "I'm sorry, honey. But you've
come to the wrong place at the wrong time. All the regulars are up to the gold
mines. There ain't no business. I had to send three girls away this mornin',
and like as not, we'll
all
be packin' up and movin' to Coloma before the
month is out."

"I'm not looking for… work,"
Esther said, moving closer to her. The woman reeked of cheap perfume and sweat.

"Well, what is it you want,
honey?"

Esther took five silver dollars out of
her purse. "A man is following me…"

The woman laughed. "We should all be
so lucky."

"No, please, listen to me! A man is
following me, and I must avoid him. Is there someplace I can hide? And will you
send him away if he comes in?"

The fat woman cocked an eyebrow. "I
don't want no trouble."

"There'll be no trouble, I promise
you.
Please
! I'll give you five more dollars if you'll do it."

The woman hesitated a moment, then
shrugged her shoulders. "That's more than I've taken in since Sunday. Come
on in here."

Grabbing Esther by the arm, the woman led
her through a makeshift office and into a small storage area screened off by a
slit curtain. "You wait in here." She hesitated for a moment, then
arched one eyebrow again. "You sure you got five more dollars?"

Esther opened her bag, found a ten-dollar
gold piece in a separate coin purse, and gave it to her. "
Please
…
it's so important to me."

The fat woman put her finger to her lips
as they both heard the front door open and close.

"It's
him
," Esther
whispered. "I just know it!"

The madam bustled out and greeted Alex.
"
Girls
!" she shouted hoarsely. Turning back to him she asked,
"What's your pleasure this evening, sir? I don't have but three young
ladies with me at the moment, but…"

"I'm looking for a young woman who
came in here just a few minutes ago."

"Got her all picked out already, do
you?"

"You don't understand," Alex
said. "I…"

"Rebecca just came in awhile ago. Here
she is now."

The three prostitutes walked up and stood
in a ragged line, facing Alex. He shook his head and tried to explain.
"Not one of your girls, I'm not…"

"Rebecca," the fat woman said.
"Let him see your titties. He's taken a fancy to you."

"For God's sake, the girl I'm
looking for…"

"Maybe you'd prefer Dora," the
fat woman said. "Show him your bum, Dora." She turned to Alex,
leering and nudging him in the ribs. "She
loves
it that way."

"I'm not interested in any of your
girls!" Alex said, raising his voice. "Can't you understand?"

"Well, there's no need to get sharp
about it," the fat woman said. "What do you want?"

"I'm sorry… I… another girl came in.
I don't believe she works here."

"Hasn't no one come in but
Rebecca."

For a moment Alex came into Esther's
view. Through the curtain slit she saw him tilt his hat back and nervously rub
his forehead. The look on his face was so frustrated and forlorn it almost
brought tears to her eyes. For a moment she felt an almost overwhelming urge to
walk out and spare Alex what he was going through.

"The girl I'm talking about is
taller than anyone here," Alex said. "She… I know her
personally."

"Where'd you see her?" the fat
woman asked.

"From up the street. I'm sure she
came in here."

"Mister, in that fog out there,
Rebecca could'a looked like anyone."

Esther bit her lip.
I
cannot help him
,
she thought, tears streaming down her face.
I
must
do what I have to
do.

"Damn it," Alex said
tenaciously. "I saw her. I followed her for at least six blocks."

"From where?"

"From in front of the
Alta
Hotel. She came in here. I know it!"

"Rebecca just come from there,"
she said, turning to the girl and covertly winking. "Didn't you,
Rebecca?"

"Yes, ma'am," Rebecca said.

"She just come back from givin'
someone what she could give you just as nice. What do you say, mister?"

Esther winced at the look of revulsion on
Alex's face. She watched as the expression faded and he stared at the woman,
unconvinced. He started to say something, then gave up.
Oh, dear God,
forgive me,
she thought.
Forgive me, please
… Forgive me, Alex… I
simply cannot… I must not… now or ever, no matter how much I would like to. She
stood trembling, holding her breath until Alex finally shook his head in
disgust and she heard him walk back out through the front door.

After a few moments the madam came back
into the office. "He's gone, honey. I had one of the girls get dressed and
follow him a ways. He won't be back."

"Thank you," Esther said.

The fat woman saw the tears and sighed.
"It's gonna be all right." She put one corpulent arm around Esther
and glanced down at her bag. "Now don't you worry."

"I'm sorry," Esther whimpered,
wiping her eyes. "He… he… just upset me."

"Happens all the time, honey."
She looked at the bag again and thought for a moment. "Why don't you just
sit down here and relax awhile. I'll have one of the girls fix us some
tea."

When the woman came back, she
unexpectedly reached into the pocket of her housedress and handed Esther five
silver dollars back. "Ten's plenty. That was the original bargain."

"Thank you," Esther said,
surprised at the apparent fairness. But then she saw the fat woman eyeing the
bag again.

"If you want, you can spend the
night here in one of the tents. Three's empty, so there's plenty of room. Why
don't you stay?"

"That is most kind of you,"
Esther said, her mind racing.

"It ain't nothin'. Now you just calm
yourself. My name is Arabella. What's yours? Here, have some of your tea."

"Martha," Esther replied.
"I'm most grateful to you." She took a sip of the tea before realizing
it had a strange taste and a foreign aroma. She tried to hold the liquid in her
mouth, but it was too hot and she had to swallow. It caused an unfamiliar
tingling in her throat. Blowing on the tea, stalling, she tried to appraise the
fat woman's motivations. Suddenly she knew, and an electric sensation ran up
the base of her neck.

"Finish it up, finish it up,"
Arabella said, a little too insistently.

A murmur of voices in the large room
beyond the office rose to the sound of a heated argument. "Damn those
two!" Arabella said, scowling. "They're at each other like cats all
the time. You wait right here." She got up and rushed out of the room.

While she was gone, Esther carefully
poured the rest of the tea into a waste can and covered it with crumpled papers.
She held the empty cup to her mouth and pretended she was finishing the tea
when the fat woman came back.