California Woman (Daughters of the Whirlwind Book 1) (36 page)

As the day she planned to take little
Moses to the school approached, an unsettling hollowness grew within her. Vague
fears and sieges of inexplicable remorse drifted through her mind like patches
of ground fog, all the more unsettling, puzzling, because they did not last.

Thinking of it now, as the stagecoach
jounced over a rough stretch of road, she wondered whether the source of that
additional disquiet was Moses himself. She had long since accepted the
impossibility of having him with her, she told herself. She was sad about
separating him from
Solana,
but
she was sure that she was doing the best thing for Moses. The thought buoyed
her spirits until the boy spoke to her for the first time.

She was saying good-bye to him outside
the entrance to the school. The old priest who met them when they arrived stood
watching. She was certain the Jesuits would provide him with a good home, moral
guidance, proper food and care. He would have an education. Barnett had spoken
highly of this new school once, when she had drawn him into a general
conversation about California's educational needs. Esther realized that in all
likelihood, the end result for Moses here would probably be a seminary and the
priesthood. Although the prospect went against her Protestant grain, no other
denomination had established a similar institution in northern California. And
the thought of Moses once-removed from what she knew of the world made up for
her reservations. But then he said his first words to her.

"Are you my real mother?" he
asked, eyeing the gold, heart-shaped amulet hanging next to her locket watch.

She was suddenly sure he remembered it
from their time together. Guilt stabbed at her as she saw that he could not
look her in the eye.

For a moment she was about to answer,
"Yes. Oh, God, yes, I
am
your mother," and sweep him up in her
arms and kiss his little face and take him back with her.

The priest who had come out to greet them
took Moses' hand, turned him, and pointed to a hand-carved Virgin near the
vaulted door of the Spanish-style school.

"That, my son, is your real
mother."

Esther fought down mounting doubt,
self-recrimination, and anguish as Moses' face brightened. The boy walked over
and hesitantly touched the wooden woman whose outstretched arms and loving
smile were directed toward three small children carved at her feet. Esther felt
a brief but shocking twinge of jealousy. She had not seen Moses smile at her
like that since his infancy. But now, as he stood there mesmerized, he was
beaming.

"When will I see her?" he asked
the priest.

Two voices argued in Esther's mind:
"He is Mosby's son and you cannot bear the constant reminder when you are
with the boy for more than an hour." Then softer, but almost as
powerfully: "Moses is
your
son as well. And
you
are his
mother."

Moses turned again to the statue.

She took a step toward him, but the
brown-robed, aging friar gently laid a hand on her arm and held her back.

"She comes here every night,"
the priest said to Moses. "When we are all asleep."

Esther's expression had become a plea as
well as a question now. But the gray-haired Jesuit wisely shook his head. A
small voice within her whispered that he was right. Surely it was better for
Moses to be here rather than with her, seeing, every day, the loathing that he
could only think was directed at him. Surely, not telling him that she was his
mother, rather than telling him and leaving him here, wondering how his mother
could do such a thing, was best. For a moment the logic was almost overwhelmed
by emotions that seemed to pull her apart.

"Will she ever come in the
day?" Moses asked.

The priest sighed. "Yes… one day…
one day you—all of us—will see your real mother."

"I would like to go inside the great
hut now," Moses said.

"Go," the priest said,
smoothing the boy's wild black hair. "Father Bernardo is waiting for you
inside the door."

The boy stared at Esther for a moment.
Her moist eyes and the resignation in her face confused him for a moment. He
saw her try to smile and innocently interpreted her tears as happiness for him.
His huge brown eyes were no longer wary. She thought she saw the beginning of a
grateful smile at the corners of his mouth. But then it and he were gone
through the solid oak door.

She wiped her eyes and bit her lower lip
until she thought she would draw blood. The priest strolled with her briefly,
recounting the contents of her letter, reaffirming the wisdom of what she was
doing, then bade her farewell.

In the hired buggy on the way back to
Marysville, she refused to break down and have the driver see or hear it. She
knew, now, that no matter how much she missed Murietta,
this
had tied
her mind in knots, torn at her even more. She held herself in check until she
was alone in the stagecoach, headed south again. Once the tears started, she
thought they would never stop.

It was late in the day when Esther
debarked from the stagecoach in Sacramento. She was immediately reminded of
Murietta and, tangentially, of Mosby. The city was buzzing with stories of how
the bandit and four companions had stopped a stage near the mining town of
Angel's Camp, then inexplicably let it pass untouched. It had been one of Alex
Todd's expresses, carrying gold from the southern mines. On board was a
shipment from
Frémont
and
another from E. Cable's Southern Sierra Mining Company. Some wags had it that
Murietta was in the employ of the two mines. Others thought it possible that
the bandit and the Todd cousins were in league with one another.

Esther had her bag taken to her rooms at
the Hotel Orleans and headed for a real estate office owned by a sharp-faced
man named William Sharon. She looked at two houses with him and found them
unsuitable. Sharon showed her another, and she began to suspect that he was
trying to unload at ridiculously inflated prices properties he probably owned
himself. There could be no other reason why the houses were empty when they
were in such short supply.

On the way back to the Orleans, Esther
passed an eating establishment and could not believe the sign outside:

"The Donner Lake Restaurant.
Proprietor: Lewis Keseburg."

She shuddered and shook her head in
disgust. The sound of harsh male laughter drew her attention to an open-front
saloon and beer garden just ahead. She started to cross the street, but then
she had an even darker reminder of Joaquin. At one of the tables underneath a
broad, striped awning, Isaac Claussen sat with his arm around a silver-haired
Indian. Anger rose within her. As much as she hated Claussen for what he had
done to Murietta, his association with Mosby made her wish even more that the
red-bearded man were dead.

She had the urge to walk up to Claussen
and smash his face with one of the whiskey bottles on the table.

She took a deep breath to quiet and
control herself, adjusted her veil, and slowed her stride. The Indian was so
drunk Claussen had grabbed his chin and propped his head up. Claussen was
talking nonstop. Four other rough-looking white men nodded in agreement with
him. Two of them braced another Indian much younger than the first. There was
an empty chair next to Claussen. It was pushed back as though someone sitting
there had left the table, but Esther paid it no mind. The pale-brown men wore
miners' clothing. Their faces were partially obscured. For a moment Esther got
a good look at the Indians. She could not tell if they were Miwoks or Maidu,
but something about the older one, whose silver hair hung forward and partially
obscured his face, seemed familiar.

She
was almost abreast of the saloon now, and Claussen glanced out at her. Fear
suddenly took its place beside her anger.
I am only a woman
, she
thought.
And there are five of them. What chance would I have?
Quickening
her pace, she looked away and hurried on. Turning a corner, she skirted a row
of charred, empty houses that had gone up in a four-block blaze only two months
before, and continued toward her hotel.

Luther Mosby looked at his watch as he
stepped out of the privy behind the saloon. Absently, he brushed the back of a
sleeve over the silver marshal's star pinned over the breast pocket of his
coat. Working his way back through the pantry past a Chinese dishwasher, he
went through the kitchen and the main room of the saloon toward the front door.
Outside, under the canvas awning of the open, beer garden area that fronted on
the street, Mosby started to sit down again next to Claussen. But the
red-bearded man stood up and motioned with his head for Mosby to follow him out
onto the wooden sidewalk.

Claussen waited until a man and woman
passed out of earshot, then whispered, "It's him, Luther, it's got to be.
Ain't no two Indians in California with a scar like that."

"It's hard to believe," Mosby
said, looking back at the older Indian.

"It all fits together. I
know
it's there. I can feel it!"

"Well, you must of slept in
horseshit last night, if it
is
him… I wish you luck," Mosby added
with a touch of envy.

"You gotta come with us,
Luther."

"I got a prisoner to think of."

Claussen glanced at Mosby's star. "Shit.
You been gone how long comin' out here to find him?"

"Six weeks, maybe seven."

"Couple more days ain't gonna make
no never mind."

Mosby pushed his hat back on his head and
took in the bank across the street. He glanced up at the legal offices on the
second floor and clucked his tongue against the inside of his teeth. "You
think it could amount to more than just a piece of change?"

"You're damn right it could. I'm
bettin' on it."

"I could use a stake like
that," Mosby said, thinking. He glanced at the sign on the law offices
again. "I got some plans go beyond bein' a marshal."

"Well, how 'bout it? You
comin'?"

"I suppose I could let my man rest
up in the jail for a few days more. It's gonna be a long trip back to
Galveston."

"Now
you're talkin'," Claussen said, putting his arm over Mosby's shoulder as
the two of them headed back into the saloon.

Esther turned into Second Street and made
her way to the entrance of the Hotel Orleans. Walking past the reading and
billiard rooms, the saloon and parlor, she climbed the stairs to the second
floor. In her suite she tried to distract herself with how quickly and
precisely the proprietors had duplicated the orig
inal
Creole decor of the hotel. It, too, had
burned to the ground in the conflagration that summer, but the owners had
replaced the old wood-frame structure with a larger one of brick.

Esther's distraction could not compete
with the hatred she felt for Claussen—and something more; an uneasiness that
surfaced now, refused to be ignored. Something about his friendly expression,
the brotherly arm over the Indian's shoulder, the grinning camaraderie of the
other four men with a second "Digger" went beyond simply being
incongruous, inconsistent. She thought about it as she took off her hat and
poured water from a pitcher to wash her hands and face. As she was drying her
hands, she realized she was so upset, so preoccupied she had forgotten she
wanted to take a bath rather than just freshen up. As the hot water in the tub
calmed her and soaked away the stiffness brought on by the long ride back from
Marysville, Esther searched her mind for a clue about the old Indian. She found
nothing and gave up.

The
discomfiting feeling that Claussen was up to no good persisted as she ate a
light, early supper in her room. Finished, she opened a book the priest at the
school had given her after she'd paid a year's board, room, and tuition in
advance. She gazed through the open connecting door at Moses' empty bed in the
next room. She began to think about him and had to bite her tongue to keep from
crying again. She got up and closed the door to shut away the reminder. The
sadness and guilt did not abate. She turned to the book again to escape. The
volume was a whitewashed history of the California missions. She started to
read, but her thoughts wandered back to Claussen.
No doubt
, she thought,
whatever it is Claussen and his cronies want, they will have before sunrise
.
She wished there were something she could do. But she knew there was no way
even Barnett would come to the aid of the two intoxicated Indians unless she
could somehow substantiate her fears. Realizing that was impossible, she forced
herself to read.

On the road to Coloma, Isaac Claussen
reined up in the darkness and waited with Mosby and two of the men with them.
Two others, leading horses carrying the drunken Indians, drew abreast ten
minutes later.

"Goddamnit," Claussen said,
"I want to be there by this time tomorrow night."

"We got 'em tied to the saddles,
Isaac," one of the stragglers whined. "But if we ride any faster,
they liable to pitch out, and we won't have no guides."

Claussen belched and thought for a
moment. "Shit, I know the village they's talkin' about."

"You sure, Isaac?" Mosby asked.
"Too much at stake if you ain't."

"Sure I'm sure. Ain't no other place
like the one the Digger spoke of. Sheer cliffs on both sides of the
river."

"You think they got it hid in the
village?" one of the men asked.

"Where else? Probably got it buried
somewheres." Claussen laughed. "We'll know soon enough."

Another man hesitantly spoke up.
"Why's it have to be tomorra night? Can't we take an extra day
travelin'?"

"You blockheaded bastard,"
Mosby snapped. "This's got to be fast and clean. Anyone gets wind of
it…"

"It's be your ass, you mean,"
the chastened man said. "You bein' a marshal and all."

Mosby lashed out and struck the man with
the back of his fist. "
You never heard that, never knew it,
"
Mosby growled, his eyes glaring. "You understand, you stupid son of a
bitch? You better. 'Cause if you don't…"

"Take it easy, Luther,"
Claussen said, looking up at the pale quarter-moon. "You ain't wearin'
your star. And none of these boys ever laid eyes on you. Ain't that right,
boys? Anyways, it'd be
all
our asses. We'll travel by night, both
nights. Goin' and comin'. No one ever sees us anywheres near the place."

"All right," Mosby said. He
glanced around at the four men. "But just remember.
All
of
you." He turned to Claussen again. "Now, what do we do with these two
Diggers?"

Claussen eased his horse around and edged
in next to the younger Indian. He started to pull his pistol, then decided
against using it. Unbuttoning his jacket, Claussen pulled his bowie knife from
its sheath. He pushed the unconscious Indian upright and sliced smoothly and
deeply across his throat. A gurgling sound rose from the pale-brown man as his
jaw dropped open. He stared at Claussen in hazy disbelief until his eyes rolled
up under their lids and he slumped forward. Untying the leather thongs holding
the Miwok to his saddle, Claussen let him fall to the ground.

Mosby watched as Claussen moved to the
older man and removed a knife from under his belt. He grabbed a shock of the
Indian's silver-gray hair and jerked him to a sitting position. The unconscious
man's eyes opened briefly, then closed once more. As Claussen lifted the blade,
he saw the old furrow over the Digger's left ear again. He hesitated for a
moment, staring at the scar and remembering how the Indian had gotten it.
Smiling with certainty, he drove the knife in hard under the old man's breastbone
and left it there.

He
cut the thongs around the older Indian's wrists and let him drop near the first
one. Claussen motioned to the man Mosby had hit in the face. "Jenkins, git
down and lay the young one on top of him. Sideways, kinda. Wrap his hand around
that knife butt. Make it look like they's in a drunken brawl." Claussen
pondered the two dead Indians for a moment. "Git me the knife in the young
one's sheath," he said. "And that necklace the old geezer's
wearing." Claussen smiled in self-satisfaction. "I got a notion how
we might be able to use 'em."

Esther sat bolt upright, perspiring and
wide awake. The book about the missions had fallen to the floor beside her bed.
She looked at her watch. It was well past midnight. She could not remember
falling asleep. She looked up and saw the pale quarter-moon hanging in the
center of the open window beyond the footboard. A light breeze stirred the
gauzy curtains for a moment, and from somewhere she heard the wail of a baby.
Filling out in her mind, the moon suddenly was transformed into the rounded,
heart-wrenchingly sad-eyed face of little Moses. The painful image faded as her
thoughts progressed to Mwamwaash, then
Solana
—then
Miwokan. Suddenly she knew why the Indian Claussen had been talking to had
looked vaguely familiar.

She had not seen him in at least two
years. His silver hair had grown inordinately long, and the old scar over his
left ear had been concealed. Had she seen it, gotten a better look at him, she
would have known sooner that the Indian was Miwokan's brother.