California Woman (Daughters of the Whirlwind Book 1) (52 page)

When she arrived at the recruiting center
at  Platt’s Hall, the officer in charge told her the California Battalion had
sailed for Boston two days before, December 10, 1862. No one recalled a young,
dark-haired boy with somewhat sharp features. In any case, she was told, there
was no possibility that a fifteen-year-old would be accepted for service.

She hoped Moses would be there, at her
house, or at least at the school for Indian children, when she and
Solana
got back. He wasn't. Only when she sat on
the edge of her bed, damning Bull Carter and crying for Moses, did she notice
that the daguerreotype was missing from its oval frame.

Sacramento

December 20, 1863

No
sign
of Moses in over a year. I pray the boy is safe. Not a word from Alex since his
letter of June 28, at which time he was preparing his battalion for Gettysburg.
I fear, no, by now I am almost convinced, that he rests in that bloodied earth
where Pickett's long gray line was finally turned back. Save for the fact that
young Todd, who will be a year old in February, is robust and healthy and
brings me a measure of joy each day, there is little to kindle the Christmas
spirit. Thank God Mr. Carter has informed me he will remain at the railhead
through the New Year…

She continued to busy herself at the
school, where she had begun teaching again as soon as she had weaned the
infant. Blessedly, Bull Carter was rarely home, and Esther spent most nights in
the apartment over the school with the baby and
Solana,
who cared for him during the day. When
Carter was in Sacramento, she moved over to his house and went through the
motions of their marriage. She would keep their bargain, but she hated him now,
rarely spoke with him unless it was absolutely necessary.

It went beyond Carter's part in Moses'
disappearance. She loathed all of them now—Huntington, who had duped his own
country in time of war; Hopkins; Stanford, whom they had successfully stuffed
into the governor's mansion; and Crocker, whose brutality toward his laborers
sickened her. She knew Carter vied with his half-brother in these horrible acts
out at the railhead each day. What they had done to Judah she could never
forgive them for. The fiery little genius had finally taken a stand against the
false survey. They had in turn offered to buy him out for $100,000 or let him
buy them out, if he could raise the millions they asked for. Optimistic until
the very end, Judah had started on a trip east with expectations of rounding up
the necessary investors. But his long battle with the Big Four had taken its
toll. Crossing the Isthmus, he contracted cholera. Esther read of his death in
New York in the
Sacramento Bee
just as 1863 came to an end.

In the same edition she learned that
General John C. Fremont had been relieved by Lincoln of his supply command in
the wake of a kickback scandal. It was only one of many articles about the war
she read avidly. She followed the progress of the Union Army southward and
prayed that Alex would be mentioned.

By late summer of 1864, she gave up even
the remnant of hope for him she had somehow maintained. For distraction she
turned her attention once again to the Comstock. Almost miraculously, Ralston
had stayed on his feet and kept the value of their investments rising through
several crises. When the mines were flooded in late 1862, dropping the bottom
out of what had been partially an inflated market built on worthless desert
land, Ralston bought up depressed shares on credit after prices were driven
down, then helped finance a pump system, and came out ahead of almost everyone.
Somehow he walked the wire over the most rapacious mining market the world had
ever seen. Dozens of men around him had
fallen, ruined by swindling, natural disasters, lawsuits, and the luck of the
draw. But Ralston not only kept on making money for himself, Esther, and two
dozen other investors, he made enough to establish the Bank of California.

By the time she stopped in at Ralston's
new offices during a visit to San Francisco in the summer of 1864, his bank had
millions invested in foundries, suppliers, factories, and forges as well as the
mines themselves. Stocks in the Ophir, Yellow Jacket, Gould and Curry,
Chollar,
Belcher, Kentuck, and Empire mines were
selling for as much as $22,000 a share; dividends were exceeding an unheard-of
$100. Twenty thousand men working for huge companies had already ripped $20
million-worth of ore out of the Nevada earth.

Esther frowned when she recognized the
real estate man, William Sharon, as he hurried out through Ralston's crowded,
buzzing waiting room. Ralston leaned out of his office and glanced around.
There was an uncharacteristically troubled look on his face when he spotted
Esther and quickly motioned her inside.

"Do you know the man who was just in
here very well?"

Ralston frowned. "Sharon? Well
enough. Former real estate man who just lost his shirt—one hundred fifty
thousand dollars worth of shirt. Just like I may lose mine in that damn
Comstock. I should say my shirt, and, ah, possibly your dress, if you'll pardon
me."

"He's a dishonest man."

"Sharon? Never heard that before.
Sharp poker player. Hardnosed. The meanest expression I've ever seen. But dishonest?"

"He tried to cheat me once when I
was looking for a house in Sacramento."

"Well, there's a little dishonesty
in most of us, isn't there, Esther?"

"I suppose there is."
More
than a little in my case
, she thought.

"I'll be wary of him. But in a way, I
hope he's dishonest enough to deal with that pack of sharks in Virginia City.
I'm banking on Sharon."

"Banking on him?"

"I just gave him a job as our branch
manager there. I have a hunch he'll come through with his promise to find ways
to get the mines working, and the profits rolling in again. Just out of pure
hatred. He was sold back his own shares in one mine just before it closed
down."

"I don't understand. It's summer?
What's happened?"

"The mines are flooded again. They
reached about five hundred feet and ran into an underground river. No one's
figured a way to get past it."

"What does that mean to us
financially?"

"It means a nightmare for me,
considering all the bank has invested. You? I've restricted your Comstock
investments to one-quarter of what's coming in. But I have reinvested all the
mining profits, as you agreed. Some of the other things I've sold and shifted
to mine-oriented items. Of the two million you're worth on this end,
Esther—"

"
Two million dollars?
"

"Two million dollars. But I'd say
about three quarters of it is in mining paper and allied stock-holdings."

"Billy, this frightens me."

"Don't worry, Esther. We'll find a
way out of it."

"I hope so, for your sake. You've
done well enough for me, despite this setback. And I'm well taken care of now,
no matter what happens in Nevada. But I don't like it, Billy. And I think
you'll be sorry you ever got involved with Sharon."

"You'll be worth
three
million after we pull out of this!"

Esther smiled. She had grown attached to
Ralston, wishing only the best for him. "Billy, listen to me. I don't
really care about that. It's you I'm concerned about. I see you looking at the
calendar, getting ready for your next meeting before this one is even through.
Harried. Worried. Tired."

"Esther—"

"Listen
to me!
Please!
I don't care half as much about what happens at the
Comstock as I do about what's happening to you. It's changing you, all this.
And it worries me."

She was right about Sharon, and right
about Ralston as well. Just as right as he was about pumping the value of her
stock even higher than it was before Virginia City's second Mount Davidson
flood. She didn't like what he was doing any more than she cared for the
increasing changes in Ralston as the months quickly passed.

Esther had moved back into her own house
after the tenant who replaced Stanford pushed on with the hordes moving to
Virginia City. She had reached a tacit understanding with Carter—she would not
bring down the scandal of divorce or the embarrassment of a formally announced
separation if she saw him only when he picked up young Todd for an occasional
outing. Once settled into her old home, she resumed teaching and kept track of
Ralston's increasingly indefensible tactics.

She learned that Sharon had discovered
tons of hastily dumped waste at the mills as well as the mines. The leavings
were loaded with ore. It was also evident, he reported, that the veins ran well
below the water level. Rather than solve the underground water problem
immediately, he suggested the Bank of California take advantage of it in a way
that would result in control of practically every mine in the Comstock.

Ralston went along with Sharon's scheme.
When other San Francisco banks refused to lend small-mill owners additional
funds, the Bank of California offered it to them at 2 percent a month interest.
With pumping stalled, the owners quickly failed to meet their notes. Sharon
then foreclosed, and Ralston took the small mills over. They worked the same financial
squeeze on as many of the still partially operating mines as they could, then
forced their new partners to send their ore to the bank-controlled mills. The
larger processing plants soon went into bankruptcy. In turn, they were bought
out at depressed prices as well.

Esther pondered the vicious cycle of
starving and buying out competitors as she sat on her porch watching young
Todd, now three and a half years old, playing in her fenced front yard with a
new puppy. It was Indian summer, the foliage was still green, and the
atmosphere of warm peace that had followed the end of the Civil War and the
death of Lincoln was in sharp contrast to events just across the Sierras in
Virginia City. The tactics Ralston and Sharon were using were just as inexcusable
as the bullwhip, bone-crushing approach Crocker and her husband were employing
as they pushed the railroad farther up into the Sierra foothills toward Dutch
Flat. She could see little difference between men dying from exhaustion at the
railhead every other day and others who starved financially in Virginia City
and took their lives in the wake of ruin.

She knew she was a part of it, at least
indirectly, and her conscience demanded she remove herself once again from
involvement of any kind. But, clinging to the undefined notion that her wealth,
her connection with the railroad would be of use when Mosby inevitably returned
to California, she rationalized, found arguments for her position, and finally
repressed all though of disengaging herself…

Until that Sunday morning, early in 1866,
when Bull Carter arrived at her house to pick up Todd and take him to see his
first locomotive.

"Letter came for yuh up to the
house," Carter said, picking the child up in his arms. "Somethin' in
it besides words. Here… I'll, ah, have the boy back to you by
midafternoon."

She
waited until Carter had driven off with her son in the buckboard before opening
the unsettlingly heavy envelope. Enclosed she found the daguerreotype of
herself that had been missing since Moses' disappearance. Quickly, she unfolded
the letter itself.

Dear Mrs. Carter:

Please forgive the long delay in getting
this to you. I have been preoccupied with reestablishing myself here since the
close of hostilities, and at first did not even know your name. The enclosed
tintype was among the personal effects of Private Moses Cable, who gave up his
life in battle at Aldie, Virginia, while serving under my command. Upon
returning to San Francisco, I took the liberty of inquiring at the shop of Mr.
G. R. Fardon, whose imprint I found on the back of the daguerreotype, as to
your identity and address. I do not know your relationship with young Private
Cable, but assume you are family.

I deeply regret bearing such sad news,
but be assured that Private Cable was conspicuous in his valor and died bravely
for his country. I have several of Private Cable's personal effects, including
an exquisitely wrought stone spearhead, a set of rosary beads, and a
heart-shaped amulet, woven, apparently, from the fur of a wild animal. Since I
am sure you would want these articles,
I
have enclosed my new address at Bear Point, just across the bay from San
Francisco. Should you find difficulty in locating my home, it is just up the
shore to the west of General James Atterbury's former residence.

Please feel free to call on me at your
convenience, as I expect to be here preparing a report of the battalion's
experiences in the late war for the State Adjutant General during the coming
weeks.

Once
again, I am so deeply sorry, and share with you the grief I know you must be
experiencing with this unhappy news.

Your most
obedient servant,

D.
W. C. Thompson, Major (ret.)

California Battalion

2d Massachusetts Cavalry

Esther fingered the stone spearhead set
in a base of bear claws, as Thompson tried to explain why he could tell her
very little about the circumstances surrounding the boy's death. There could be
no other reason for Moses adopting her last name unless he instinctively
knew
.

"I had no idea he was so young. He
seemed to have attached himself to a fellow, eventually given a field
commission as a lieutenant, in San Francisco. Lied about his age, I suppose,
and got away with it in the confusion of early '63."

"Didn't anyone bother to check his
age?"

"Madam, please forgive me, but I
must point out it was an extremely hectic time. Had he been more closely
connected to me, personally, I might have noticed."