California Woman (Daughters of the Whirlwind Book 1) (44 page)

She was thinking of James King now, and
of the threat he had reported in the
Bulletin
two days before, when she
heard Murietta's carriage turn up the road to her house. James Casey had
boasted that he would shoot King on sight. She dismissed the idea. Surely, as
biased and vindictive as King's editorials sometimes were, there was much truth
in them. And Casey would not dare to…

Murietta came into view. Gathering her
parasol and trying unsuccessfully to hold her annoyance in check, she went down
the front steps as he reined up his lathered team.

"Joaquin, I've been waiting an hour!
Did you forget?" She noticed he seemed breathless, agitated.

"For God's sake, will you
ever
remember to call me Jack? Someday you will forget in public!"

"Jack, then. I'm sorry. But you're
almost never this  late…" Then she noticed the bayonet-fitted
muzzle-loader propped up beside him.

"What in God's name are you doing
with that weapon?"

He ignored the question. "I simply
came to say we must postpone our ride. I'm sorry, but I have to get back to
town. Too much is happening."

"Wait a minute!
What
is
happening? What are you talking about?"

"You haven't read the papers?"

"No. Not for a day or so."

"Casey shot King. He's dying. I
witnessed it from the doorway of the Pacific Express Company."

"When?"

"Yesterday. It's the last straw.
We're forming our own city government. We're going to put a stop to what's
happening in San Francisco."

"Who is forming a government?"

He cracked the buggy whip and started to
rein his horses around.

"Wait!"

"I have to go!" he called over
his shoulder. "A group of businessmen. I'll be a witness against Casey.
I'll tell you more about it tonight—if I'm still invited for supper."

She nodded, and he cracked the whip
again. He was out of earshot by the time Esther collected her wits. Her first
impulse was to hitch up her own team and race after Murietta, but she realized
he was already a quarter of the way back to the city. She needed to think.
Spotting the paper lying on the porch, she walked over and picked it up. It was
all there: The account of the shooting… Eyewitness quotes from several men,
including "Jack Marin." …Casey's subsequent surrender to the
authorities… The prediction at the end of the story that James King would
likely die.

And
then she caught sight of the notice printed on the lower left corner of the
front page:

The
members of the Vigilance Committee in good standing will please meet at No.
105-1/2 Sacramento
Street,
this
day, Thursday, 15
inst.
at
nine o'clock
a.m.
By order of the
Committee of Thirteen.

A feeling of predestined dread rose in
her as she turned to the third page and saw Charles Cora's name. It was in a
reprint of a James King editorial entitled "The Heavens Be Hung With
Black."

"Thieves and harlots will
rejoice," the column ranted, "with the acquittal of Charles Cora in
the murder of Marshal William Richardson."

She had heard Murietta mention an
upcoming trial in which a gambler was accused of the unprovoked killing of a
U.S. Marshal. But she had no idea the gambler was Charles Cora. When it had
happened, she and
Solana
had
been visiting little Moses in Marysville, and she had been busy trying to find
a second teacher for her expanding school in Sacramento. Esther also remembered
Murietta saying the man owed him a gambling debt. She had not pursued the
matter, never asked his name.

Astonished by the coincidence, she read
how Cora had surrendered himself to his own employer; how Arabella Ryan had
spent $10,000 tampering with justice and hiring as counsel Edward D. Baker. A
masterful lawyer, Baker had secured a hung jury. Half the panel had been bought
off: Cora, in fact, had almost been acquitted. He sat in jail now, King's
editorial went on, but it was almost a foregone conclusion that Baker, Arabella
Ryan, and corrupt city officials would set Cora free. Something, King had
raged, had to be done.

Esther pondered what might happen and
tried to understand why Murietta would be a party to any of it. All she could
guess was that the vigilantes' actions would be a repetition of the kangaroo
courts, trials without due process, whippings and hangings they had sponsored,
carried out in the early fifties.

She
guessed that he saw joining them as a final maneuver that would forever screen
his past from view. She could understand that, but she couldn't believe he
would ever participate in mob violence. Perhaps he thought this time it would
be different, lawful. She doubted that. Worse, Murietta's life might be in
danger. The thought chilled her. Somehow, at dinner that night, she would find
a way to guide him to an objective appraisal of things.

The glowing fire at the far end of her
long, oak-paneled dining room did little to warm Esther as she listened to
Murietta go on and on about the developments of the day. Eight thousand men
were under arms, among them policemen who had turned in their badges, at least temporarily,
for the white-linen buttonhole markers of the vigilantes. William T. Coleman,
active in vigilante affairs in 1852 and now a prosperous San Francisco
businessman, had been elected Chairman of the Vigilante Committee. Coleman had
requested the delivery of Cora as well as Casey. The new marshal had refused.
In forty-eight hours the committee would take the prisoners by force if they
were not turned over voluntarily. Tomorrow, Friday, others would be arrested.
Opposing forces were organizing, calling themselves the "Law and Order
Party." Among its leaders: Luther Mosby.

How ironic!
Esther thought, hardly touching her food. She let Murietta go on until
Solana
retired to her room and her nightly
ritual of prayers for Miwokan and Mwamwaash before going to bed. Sitting there,
gazing past him, Esther feared for Murietta. The enthusiasm in his candlelit
eyes sickened her; his earnest expression appalled her. Beyond the walnut
harvest table where they sat, a fog that seemed as thick as lamb-fat blocked
from view everything beyond the sixteen-paned windows. She felt as if they were
sailing blindly in some unearthly ship on a collision course with doom. She
recalled a similar sensation crossing the Missouri on a river ferry with Alex,
years before. They had hit no shoal, just the opposite bank, slightly off the
waiting slip. It had been startling for a moment, but no more. This time, on
this imaginary vessel, Esther was increasingly certain the landing for Murietta
would be a graveyard.

"You're not listening to me!"

"I
am
listening! It's simply
that I can't believe it's you speaking." She had been stunned, speechless,
but now disappointment and rising anger unlocked her tongue. "Do you
honestly believe it will be any different this time? That Coleman and the rest of
those animals will wait for legal juries to convict, authorized judges to
sentence?"

Murietta glowered. "They're
not
animals! Some of them are my friends."

"Friends?" Esther laughed
scornfully. "They're the same men who hunted you like a beast! Who laughed
and made jokes about the 'greaser' whose head they displayed all over
California! The man who leads them helped put the scars on your back!
Friends?
"

He shifted uneasily. "That's all in
the past. This is different. This has to do with the life I now lead. I have to
forget Joaquin Murietta. Don't you understand?" He lowered his voice.
"They are simply replacing corrupt men who bend the law any way they
choose." His voice grew more emphatic again. "It is
their
law,
their
courts, isn't it? Everything will be as it should be." He
fished into a jacket pocket, pulled out a handbill Coleman had hastily printed
up, unfolded and handed it to her. "Here. Read this."

At the top of the page the all-seeing eye
in the center of the vigilantes' seal stared at her indifferently. Around it
were circled the words:

"Fiat Justitia Ruat
Coelum * No Party. No Creed. No Sectional Issues. * Committee of Vigilance -*-
San Francisco."

Below the seal, the self-justifying first
paragraph read:

"Who made the laws and
set agents over them? The people. Who saw these laws neglected, disregarded,
abused, trampled on? The people. Who has the right to protect these laws, and
administer them when their servants had failed? The people."

Enraged, not a little because Coleman had
seized on some truths that galled her, she balled the handbill up and threw it
at Murietta. "And you're swallowing this self-righteous trash?" she
shouted. "It's nothing less than well-dressed anarchy. The rule of the
mob—again. You must have lost part of your brain while you were robbing
innocent people in stagecoaches."

Murietta pushed away from the table,
stung by her sudden attack. "You don't know I did that."

"I'm sorry," she said, appalled
that she had cut at him in such a humiliating and unjust way.

"And even if I—even if Joaquin
Murietta—did such things, the Murietta who was driven from a lawful life,
driven to rob simply to survive, would he not be forgiven? Understood?"

Revived feeling for him washed through
her. "Yes. Yes, he would be." She reached out and touched his hand.
"I didn't mean to speak the way I did. I'm afraid for you. I can't just
sit here and let you take part in something so evil."

"It's the others who are evil,
Esther. And you're in no position to allow or not allow me to do anything. This
is the life I live now. These are my friends, business associates. I'm with
them because their cause is just."

Born of unspoken terror for his own life
or not, the piety of his words made her furious again.

"
Hogwash!
You're with them
because you think they will never suspect anything about you if you take part
in this despicable business! Admit it! You live in fear despite the fact that
no one in the world believes Joaquin Murietta is still alive! They'll provide
you with a little more insurance. A little less uncertainty. At the expense of
God knows how many lives!"

"You have no right—"

"Listen to me! Continue with them
and you will cease to exist as far as I'm concerned.
Do you understand?
You
will
be dead."

"Esther—"

"Don't 'Esther me! I mean it! I want
an answer now. This instant!"

He couldn't look her in the eye.
"Esther…
please…
" he whispered. "Please try to understand
why—"

"
Get out!
" she shrieked,
slapping him in the face. "You coward.
Get out of my house!
I never
want to see you again!"

She
awoke drained from a near-sleepless night, her first thoughts a vivid
recollection of a dream that had played over and over in her mind as she tossed
fitfully the last few hours before dawn:

Murietta swallowed up by the
fog enshrouding the house the night before. Then nothing but the fog and a
distant wailing of women, her own voice recognizable above the rest. Then
pelting, choking, blinding snow driven by a freezing wind. Rain and head-high
waves that turned from muddy gray to red. None of it touching her. Then the fog
again. And Murietta finally emerging from it, his face shattered and bloodied,
his jacket covered with spreading stains. Dark liquid dripping from his string
bow tie…

She tried to dismiss the dream. Her anger
had cooled. In its place, as she bathed, dressed, and ate breakfast, were
compassion and hard-won awareness that losing control of one's emotions was
always self- defeating. Getting into the buggy and starting for town, she
chided herself for having lost any influence she had over him, any chance of
persuading him to reconsider. Then she turned from self-recrimination to more
hopeful thoughts:
There is still time. I will find him. Talk with him. Point
out that, if these men, Coleman in particular, have not recognized him now, in
these circumstances no one ever will… I mean
something
to him still
.
Somehow, if reason failed, that depth of feeling would provide her with the
means to divert him from this madness.

Within a four-block-square area around
Sacramento and Front streets, the thoroughfares were impassable. Hundreds of
men carrying muskets and rifles drilled on hard-packed earth and planks set
between stone or wooden sidewalks. Other groups stood in squads at
intersections or idled, their weapons at rest, in orderly fashion at various
storefronts.

In Sacramento Street, she found number
105-1/2 deserted. Pushing back through the crowds, she turned left and started
eastward toward a concentrated din coming from the direction of four vacant
lots not far from the waterfront. She could make out long lines of vigilante
troops standing in formation. Brushing past onlookers, she stepped away from
the buildings and first heard, then saw a team of carpenters starting the
foundation for a huge gallows in the center of the vacant area. Beyond the
heads and shoulders of the armed men in the columns, she could see another team
of craftsmen constructing hinged platforms just below two third-floor windows
of the building at number 41 Sacramento. Above them, on the roof over a sign
reading "Mills & Vantine," cannons pointed out over the open
area. Armed men lined every visible rooftop.

She worked her way around the perimeter
of the vacant lots and moved toward an eight-foot-high wall of gunnysacks
filled with sand in front of number 41. The three-sided temporary breastwork
was pocked with slits for rifles. A police lieutenant wearing an incongruous
military cap from the Mexican War blocked a narrow, baffled entrance through
the wall of sandbags.

"I haven't the faintest idea,
madam," the lieutenant intoned, when she asked him how she could locate
Jack Marin. "He could be in that formation out there, or anywhere in the
city."

"Would anyone inside know where he
is?"

"Not likely." The lieutenant
grimaced and raised his eyebrows importantly. "Wait a minute… Marin? Isn't
he the fellow witnessed the King shooting?"

"Yes, he is. One of them."

"Well, the committee'd likely know
where he is."

"Could I pass through to speak with
someone who might know."

"Not allowed, madam."

"Could you send someone in to inquire?
Please? It's extremely important. A—a family emergency." She fished in her
purse and took out a gold coin.

The lieutenant glanced around, saw that
several men were watching him. "There won't be any need for that, madam.
Let me see what I can do."

He beckoned to a police sergeant standing
nearby, whispered in his ear, and sent him in through the sandbags. Esther
stepped back a few paces. While she was waiting, a tall, fully-bearded man
walked toward the entrance and stopped to shake hands with the police
lieutenant. Esther didn't recognize him at first. The last time she'd seen him
up close he had been much thinner and he'd worn only chin whiskers. But as soon
as she heard his harsh, booming voice, she knew it was Sam Brannan.

"Got you out of the hoosegow soon
enough, didn't we?" The lieutenant laughed ingratiatingly.

"
Soon
enough? Shouldn't've
been jailed one minute for demanding the hanging of that son of a bitch
Cora."

"Unjust. Unjust," the
lieutenant nodded. "How were you to know that crowd would go wild?"

Brannan grunted in agreement.

The police officer glanced at Esther to
see if she was aware that he was on privileged speaking terms with Brannan. He
turned back.

"What's the latest from our friend
the governor?"

Brannan sneered. "That horse's ass?
Neeley's appointed William T. Sherman, the banker, commander of the state
forces. I just tried to talk some sense into Sherman. Damn fool. He's taking
the assignment seriously. Couldn't budge him. Well, we'll shove that West Point
diploma of his up—" Brannan noticed Esther for the first time. She was
sure he did not recognize her. "Well, you know what I mean," Brannan
went on. "Wait 'til he finds out there
aren't
any state forces to
command."

Both of them broke into loud, deprecatory
laughter before Brannan slapped the lieutenant on the back and went in through
the sandbags. A minute later, the police sergeant returned and passed a message
to the lieutenant. He walked over to Esther.

"Your Mr. Marin is out with a group
making arrests this morning," the lieutenant said. "It'll be
difficult to find him. I shouldn't be telling you this, but you might have some
luck if you keep an eye out in Sansome Street or thereabouts. I'd be careful,
if I were you."

Esther thanked him and hurried off. She
had no idea how she would manage to pry Murietta loose. She would have to
improvise, possibly follow him back here and await an opportunity. Passage
through the street was difficult and slow. When she finally reached Sansome,
she searched the length of it, then doubled back. There was no sign of
Murietta. She veered off into adjoining streets with no more success. She was
beginning to despair when she passed a bank and caught sight of the list of its
officers in gold letters on a glass panel in the massive front door.

"William T. Sherman," she read.
Remembering, she felt once again an overwhelming sense of interconnected
destinies. William Tecumseh Sherman. As a young army lieutenant he had been one
of the first men to see a sample of Sutter's gold in Monterey. He had surveyed
Sacramento's
Embarcadero,
been
a part of the city's rise—and, unwittingly, Sutter's fall. He had obviously
done well for himself in San Francisco during the years she had also lived
here. Acting on a sudden impulse, she pushed in through the doorway, asked
where he could be found, then nearly bowled over a clerk blocking her way and
burst in on Sherman in the middle of a meeting.

"Can
nothing
be done about
the insanity that is gripping this city?" she pleaded.

Embarrassed for a moment, Sherman looked
from Esther to each of the concerned-looking, well-dressed men who turned to
her from his conference table. One of them, an aging man with rectangular Ben
Franklin eyeglasses, laughed half-heartedly. "Madam, we have been
discussing just that for the past hour."

Sherman scowled, then took in a deep
breath as he tried to control his frustration. "I do not know who you are,
or how you got in here, madam, but I assure you—"

"Can anything be
done
?"
Esther snapped.

Sherman sighed, exasperated, toying with
the tip of his carefully trimmed beard. "Our hands are tied for the
moment, madam. Without men, without arms, I can accomplish nothing."

"And what are you doing to get
them?"

"Everything I can," Sherman
said, his annoyance mounting.

"Which is precious little, from the
looks of things."

"You will be apprised of my
resignation as com
mander
by
the press if the present situation continues—
madam
. I bid you good
day!"

Incensed, frustrated, increasingly
forlorn, Esther searched several streets again without success. She was about
to make her way back to vigilante headquarters when she saw him. Two blocks
ahead, Murietta moved resolutely across the street in a diagonal path toward a
restaurant with a cluster of armed men. She started running, shoving aside
those who did not make way. There were eight men with Murietta. They were
heading toward six others standing on the opposite side of the street. In the
midst of the second group she saw a tall man in a top hat and formal clothes
directing those with him to fan out. He was affecting chin whiskers now, his
moustache was gone, but the moment she was within twenty yards of the two
groups, she recognized the scowl and the glaring eyes. It was Mosby.

As a member of the Supreme
Court, he
has
to oppose the
vigilantes
, Esther thought, her breath coming harder with each step. One of
the men with Murietta pointed toward the Law and Order man in a top hat and
frock coat standing near Mosby. Three of the vigilantes moved to seize him, and
Mosby barked a series of commands, shoving the man on his left toward Murietta.
She was within ten yards of them and still running when she heard the first
shot fired.

Murietta saw her, and she stopped.

He was holding the bayonet-fitted
muzzle-loader in front of him. Surprised, he paused for an instant, and the man
rushing at him took the opportunity to pull the rifle out of his hands. For a
few seconds Mosby obscured Murietta from view, his left hand grasping the
barrel of a rifle held by another vigilante. She saw Mosby's right hand flash
under his broad bow tie and inside his vest. When it came into view again,
jerking straight forward at the elbow, Mosby was
holding
a bowie knife. The blade gleamed as it
crossed the distance between the two men, and Esther gasped as Mosby drove it
deep into the vigilante's neck.

Two other men grabbed Mosby from behind
and, as they fell struggling in the middle of the street, she saw the
rifle-stock swinging hard toward Murietta. It struck him squarely in the face.
She heard the bones crack as his nose shattered and his forehead split open.

The rest of it she could hardly recall
later. She dimly remembered the vigilantes overpowering Mosby and most of the
men with him as she sat cradling Murietta's pitifully smashed face in her arms.
She heard someone give an order to take Mosby and the rest of them to
headquarters. After they had gone, it seemed as if an hour passed while she sat
there quietly weeping. She was aware of the crowd gaping at the woman sitting
in the middle of the street with the corpse lying across her lap. She knew
Murietta was dead, but she did not fully believe it until the undertaker and
his assistant talked to her gently and finally pried her hands loose from his
head.

Sobbing
and quivering in the darkness of her bedroom that night, her eyes swollen and her
limbs made leaden by grief, she realized that she had to pull herself together.
There was no one else to attend to the details of Murietta's funeral, no one
she wanted to share his secret. The grief would have to wait until he was in
the ground. She owed him a proper burial, at least that much courage and
efficiency. Then, in the early morning hours, as the mental armor she was
building for herself began solidifying, she realized there was something else
that would strengthen the protective shell. Someone else she could focus on so
she could hold up for the next seventy-two hours. She seized on the idea like a
blacksmith shaping iron, hammering, plunging it into the fire of her anger,
tempering it, cooling it, until by morning she had set the terrible hollowness
aside.

On the Sunday morning she buried
Murietta, Esther arranged to ride back into town with the undertaker. Before
stepping up into the black, horse-drawn hearse, she instructed
Solana
to drive her own buggy home and wait. At
three that afternoon,
Solana
was
to take the buggy to the entrance of Delmonico's restaurant. She was to bring
Esther's green shawl and a carriage blanket. She was to sit there until dark,
if necessary. If Esther did not meet her, if anything unusual happened, she
explained vaguely,
Solana
was
to deliver the journal in the bottom left-hand drawer of her desk to Alexander
Todd at the state
capitol
in
Sacramento. Along with the sealed envelope beneath it. She did not tell
Solana
that the envelope contained her will, or
that the document provided generously for the Indian woman.

She went over it once again in her mind
as the undertaker drove back toward the city. King had died of his chest wound.
From the tenor of the previous day's newspaper accounts, they had probably
seized Casey and Cora by now. The man Mosby had stabbed would recover.
Equivocating, Coleman had merely asked Mosby to resign. By the time she got to
Sacramento Street, she guessed they would have tried Cora and Casey and that
preparations for a hanging would already be in progress.