California Woman (Daughters of the Whirlwind Book 1) (57 page)

Mosby represented himself when he was
brought up on charges of aggravated assault and contempt. Held at the
courthouse jail without bail during the hours court was not in session, he
proposed, then arranged to be married to Katherine McDonnell in his cell.
Newspapers seized on the romance and argued profitably over the merits of
leniency for Mosby. The trial took only two days. Mosby pleaded loss of his
senses under the provocation of defending the woman he loved. There were four
Southerners on the jury. To them he pleaded additionally, "on the basis of
his record in the late war." The rest of the panel he wooed with reminders
of his years of creditable service as a Supreme Court Justice and U.S. Senator.
In terms of gaining sympathy, the marriage had been a masterstroke.
Additionally, there was rumor that two of the jurors had been bought off. Out
of greed, compassion, allegiance, or a combination of all three, he was found
guilty of only simple assault and contempt. Under existing statutes, the
maximum sentence was six months in the Alameda County jail.

Katherine McDonnell fared even better.
She had dropped her charges against Sharon, and the silver baron decided it
would serve his interests better if he let it all blow over quietly. A suit for
fraud would only keep his name in the wrong columns of the papers. As a result,
Katherine McDonnell could be tried only for contempt. A second jury, softened
by a continuing series of sentimental newspaper articles, found her guilty but
also recommended leniency. She was sentenced to ninety days in a cell at
Alameda overlooking the exercise yard where Mosby strolled every day.

Now,
with McDonnell free and Mosby's sentence about to expire, Esther read an
article quoting his reiteration of one thing he had professed in court:

"The
threat I made to Judge Todd was born of passion and the heat of the moment. I
bear no malice toward Judge Todd, plan no retaliation against him. What I said
should be taken in light of circumstances. My only wish is to return peacefully
to society. I am a chastened man. I wish only to work to reverse my disbarment,
and I once again offer Judge Todd my most sincere apology."

Esther did not believe a word of it. She
knew Mosby too well. Sooner or later he would attempt to gain satisfaction. He
might wait for years, but as long as he lived, she knew Alex would not be safe.
It didn't matter that Alex had arranged to have his tour of duty on the bench
in Sacramento extended. There was scarcely a place on earth a man like Mosby
could not reach to get at Alex if he wanted to. She was as certain of that as she
was about the necessity to cut Mosby off first. She no longer cared how it was
done—by her, by someone else—just as long as it was accomplished without
implicating her. It was late March 1869. In a little more than six months she
would be forty years old. She wanted to spend whatever years she had left with
Alex. The railroad was due to be completed in early May. She glanced again at
the front page of the
Sacramento Bee
and ran her finger down the list of
those invited to ride the Pacific Union Express to the golden-spike ceremony
com
memorating
the
joining of the Union and Central Pacific railroads somewhere in Utah. She
stopped tracing when she came to Alex's name.

The irony of it made her smile. When Alex
came back from the trip, he would be coming home to her. When Bull Carter
returned, he would find only the legal papers requesting a formal separation,
along with her note suggesting that she would sign over all their jointly held
stock in the railroad if he did not contest a divorce. As embarrassing as that
might be, she didn't think Carter would object, considering the extent of the
benefits. All that remained to be dealt with was the threat Mosby posed. She
did not know yet how she would go about it, but she guessed she had time enough
to come up with a plan. Possibly, she thought, someone she might meet in
circumstances that would not reveal her identity. Such a person might be
persuaded by enough money to come up with a plan of his own. A quarter of the
money in advance, the remainder would be too much to forego.

She doubted Mosby would attempt anything
for at least six months after he was released. He was too shrewd to risk that,
too cunning not to take the time to establish an elaborate, watertight alibi
for himself.

She
relaxed a bit, fairly certain she would find the proper person to do it.
Methodically, she began making a list of the names of those who might be
willing, even eager. She thought of going to the Sacramento courthouse to
record all the defendants to whom Mosby's decisions had caused great damage.
Then she remembered the man he had stabbed the day Murietta died. An
auctioneer, he had been left mute by the wound, and she had heard he'd fallen
on extremely hard times. She was pondering ways to reach and meet with the man
covertly when events suddenly began pulling her in another direction entirely.

She jumped involuntarily as the sharp
sound of someone knocking on the front door reached the kitchen. Mosby had been
free for almost a week, and as sure as she was that he would not attempt
anything so soon, she had been quaking and trembling each time someone arrived
at her house, each time Alex was even a few minutes late.

"You stay here and finish your lunch,
Todd," she said to her son, waving a finger. "No cookies until you've
eaten that sandwich and finished that milk, do  you understand?"

The boy nodded obediently, then went
straight to the cookie jar when he heard her talking to someone in the foyer.

"My, what a surprise," she
exclaimed, concealing her distaste. "I thought you… were out at the
rail-head. I never imagined you'd be back in Sacramento before the ceremony
next month."

Charles Crocker seemed speechless for the
first time in his life. He glanced at the mirrored seat-chest in the hallway.
"You'd better sit down," he said, nervously revolving his hat by its
brim. "I have some bad news."

She could not imagine why Crocker would
be telling her of anything that might have happened to Alex. Her entire body
suddenly felt empty. "All right, perhaps I'd better," she heard
herself say. "What is it?" She clenched her hands, expecting the
worst as Crocker started once, stumbled, then began again.

"I'm not much good with words at a
time like—I better just—your husband. There's been a terrible accident. We were
laying track parallel to the Union Pacific bunch. Competing. I know that sounds
crazy, but there's been no order about where and when we stop and join up. The
pranks started about three weeks ago. They were trying to outdo one another,
the crews. There's no love lost between them, and things got out of hand. Badly
out of hand." Crocker Paused. "Someone from our gang set fire to
their paymaster's car. They got angry as hell and buried bottles of
nitro
where we were scheduled to lay track
three days ago. The whole damn thing went up when we set down the first two
sections, killed a dozen men. I'm afraid Bull was one of them."

She sat silently for a moment, letting it
sink in. Then suddenly one part of her wanted to laugh, another to cry, and a
third not to respond at all.

"Will he go to heaven?" Todd
asked from the doorway leading into the dining room. He was still munching on a
chocolate cookie.

She burst out crying then, not for
Carter, although she did not wish him dead, but for the boy.

"He's in heaven right now,
son," Crocker said. He walked over to the child and rubbed his tousled
hair. "He's up there right now building a railroad for Jesus."

"Then he'll be happy," the
seven-year-old said matter-of-factly. He turned on his heel and went back into
the kitchen for another cookie.

"You want me to stay while you talk
to the boy?"

Esther shook her head.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Carter. Really
sorry. Is there anything I can do for you?"

She shook her head again, crying silently.

"I'll have Mrs. Crocker look in on
you. Will that be all right?"

"Yes," Esther whispered.

"Well, if you'll forgive me, I'd
better be going. Got to get back out there. Trip'll take a few days, you
know."

"It's all right. I understand."

Todd came back and put his arms around
his mother. "Don't cry, mommy. You know what daddy always said. We all got
to die sometime." He turned to Crocker. "It don't hurt when you die,
does it?"

"Doesn't, son. No, it doesn't
hurt." He turned, walked to the door, then paused and turned around.
"We'll be driving the golden spike next month, son. If you'd like to come,
I'll arrange it for your mother and you to be there. I think your father would
have liked that." He thought for a moment. "If you want, you can ride
all the way to Utah in the locomotive with Mister Sam."

The boy's mouth dropped open, and his
eyes grew wide. "You mean that? In the
locomotive
?"

"I certainly do, son. You know
Mister Sam, don't you?"

"Sure I do."

Crocker walked back to Esther and placed
his hand on her shoulder. "Of course, it'll be up to your mother… If you
feel up to it by then, Mrs. Carter, I will see that my private car is at your
disposal." He went back to the door and again said, "I'm sorry about
all this."

"Thank you," she said, wiping
her eyes and getting up.

"You're
a brave woman, Mrs. Carter. I have to leave now. I hope I see you at the
ceremony. It's true, you know. I think your husband
would
have wanted
you to come."

The reverberating, double irony of
Crocker's words did not become fully apparent until a week later, when John
Sutter called on her unexpectedly and asked her to accompany him to dinner. She
was puzzled as well as delighted that he was back from Washington for an
appearance at the golden-spike ceremony. She had seen him occasionally in
Sacramento through the years, but rarely for dinner. When he had come to her
house, it was usually to let her know he needed money, to refuse help when she
offered it, and then to write back gratefully from the Hock Farm when she sent
the funds by mail. He had paid back some of the money during the last two
decades, but the last time he came to see her after the close of the Civil War,
vandals had set the main house of the Hock Farm ablaze, and he was desperate.
This time he didn't have the same woebegone look in his eyes. He said nothing
to indicate he was hard-pressed. Still, there was a hint of urgency in his
voice.

"As usual, you're concealing
something from me until the right moment," she said after they picked up
Solana
at the school and left young Todd with
her. "What is it?"

"I told you. I want to take you to
dinner. After all you have done for me, my child, is that so strange?"

"But there is more to it than that,
isn't there?"

He laughed, but his face quickly resumed
an expression of poorly concealed apprehension. "You are one of the most
intuitive people I have ever known," he said, suddenly reining his
buckboard toward Sacramento's Chinese quarter. "Yes, there is something
more. I want you to listen to something someone told me yesterday."

"Who, for goodness sake? Why all the
mystery?"

"Lewis Keseberg."

"Keseberg? For God's sake, John!
He's one of the last people on earth I'd want to talk to."

"You won't have to talk to him. Just
listen. I think you will want to hear what he has to say."

"That he didn't murder anyone at
Donner Lake? At this point, I don't care if he did or not. He's done enough
since—that restaurant, for one thing—to turn my stomach."

"Be charitable, Esther. I have
stayed in touch with the poor man since they tried him at the fort. No matter
what he did, he has more than paid for it. I have befriended him through the
years, out of pity. Now I am glad I did, and you will be, too, when you hear
what he has to say."

They pulled up in front of an unpainted
pine building at the end of a row of shanties. Chinese in pig-tails, baggy
pantaloons, and broad, straw sunhats stared at Esther as though she were the
first white woman they had ever seen. She noticed a man weave out of the
weatherbeaten pine house with a glazed look in his eyes. Another two went
inside in quick succession.

 "Wait here," Sutter told her.
"I will bring him out He is usually here at this time of day."

"It's an opium den, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"I want to come with you."

He started to object, but he saw that
look in her eyes and decided he was too old to argue with anyone so
strong-willed. "Come," he said. "They will not like it, but I
doubt they will throw you out."

Inside, only the light from a few candles
illuminated the hallway as a diminutive Chinese led them past a succession of
tiny rooms lined with double-tier bunk beds. Men and women, some of them white,
reclined on bare, ticking-covered straw mattresses, smoking pipes. A cloying
aroma filled the hallways, making it difficult for Esther to breathe.

Sutter peered into several rooms, finally
found Keseberg, and pulled him up off his mattress as though he was also made
of straw. He seemed to glide, float next to Sutter as the old man guided him
out, nodded down the hallway to Esther, and then steered Keseberg toward a thin
rectangle of pale light coming through the outline of a rear door.