California Woman (Daughters of the Whirlwind Book 1) (58 page)

Sutter propped him up against a shed
covering stairs to the building's cellar.

"Tell me again what you told me at
the Hock Farm about Judge Todd."

"Judge Todd, he is a good man."
Keseberg's head lolled.

When Sutter tilted his face up, Esther
tried to remember what Keseberg had looked like when he was young. All she
could recall was a bulkiness of body, and that he had been fair and somewhat
handsome. The man standing before her on rubbery knees bore no resemblance to
the Keseberg she had known. Thin, hollow under the eyes, spittle forming on the
cor
ners
of
his mouth, it was all he could do to keep from falling over.

"Tell me, Lewis. I would not disturb
you unless it was important. You know that. I am your friend."

"He is a good man. I voted for
him."

"And what else did you hear? About
Judge Todd?"

"Kill him. They going to kill
him."

"
Who
, Lewis?
Who
said
that?"

"Tall man with moustache. I don't
now… The man with moustache hit me… give me this." He turned his head and
pointed to a purple bruise in front of his ear. "I joost make mistake. I
forget… girls are upstairs. I joost make mistake. I don't know they in room… no
close on… with three woman."

Sutter let him go back inside. "He was
in a place like this about two blocks from here. There was another man in the
room, apparently also a Southerner. Occasionally, Lewis shows up at the Hock
Farm. He did yesterday, and when I asked him about the mark on his face, he
told me what he overheard before stumbling against the door and crashing in on
them."

"My
God
!" Esther said.

"Do you have any idea who this tall
man might be?"

She stared past Sutter for a moment, then
said, "No. Not the faintest idea. I've got to tell Judge Todd."

Sutter looked at her, recalling the
newspaper accounts of the Sharon trial, remembering Mosby and Barnett, hoping
she would say more. When she didn't, he took her arm and started around the
side of the house toward the waiting buckboard. At the end of the alley, just
before they stepped into the street, he stopped and turned to her. "My
God," he said, shaking his head. "How could I forget? Lewis said the
man mentioned Utah. That they would kill him in Utah."

Aboard
the
Pacific Union Express

May
7, 1869

2:20 P.M.

Esther closed the diary as the five-car
train sneaked around the final portion of a narrow wedge cut into the sheer
face of an immense mountain. She glanced at the invitation, no doubt sent and
signed by Charles Crocker for all four men responsible for this gleaming ribbon
of steel so brazenly thrust through terrain that had once barely offered
purchase even to an eagle.
Their work
, she thought. The ribbon and the
agony of so many who worked on it. Death was no stranger to these tracks. An army
of Chinese, "Crocker's Pets," had virtually clawed and picked with
their bare hands into the ice-cloaked mountain just past, hundreds of them
never to see the lush green paddies of their homeland again.

She wondered how many of these laborers
had fallen or been blown off that ledge, when it was just a series of chalk
marks on a giant granite blackboard, dotted with scores of men dangling a
thousand feet in the air on all too fragile ropes; how many Bull Carter, the
other supervisors, foremen, or more favorably treated Caucasian workers had put
a bullet through over the slightest provocation. Disquieting as the thought
was, it gave her a measure of comfort. What she hoped to do to Mosby was in a
different category entirely.

Cursing
the years she had slowed and then abandoned her pursuit, then remembering her
revived determination, she turned back to her journal.

Sacramento

April 10, 1869

Oh, God, despite hours of pleading, nothing I say to Alex is any
use. I know his promise to carry a weapon to Promontory is merely a sop to
appease me. He does not believe Mosby would be so foolish as to take revenge
upon him surrounded by so many. He does not realize the merits of my theory
that Mosby will not strike the killing blow, that an accomplice or two or more
will do it at the very moment Alex and everyone else would least expect such a
thing. At the height of the ceremony, for example, when the crowd is roaring,
the band and the train whistles drowning out all other sound. Or in a saloon,
on a pretext, Mosby far enough away and with enough prestigious companions to
preclude complicity.

Alex points to the fact that Mosby smiled at him! In the Tehama
Theater the other night, and then came over and shook hands with him. Well, I
know differently. I know that he and his political cronies have won over
Governor Stanford to the degree that Mosby will be reinstated to the bar. I
cannot believe what money can do! No doubt that among the public so sharply
divided on Mosby there are those who not only sympathize with him but contributed
to Stanford's campaign, or lent the railroad money in the lean early years, as
even Ralston did. They have obviously won Stanford over, called in their
favors. Mosby's name on the revised list of those invited to ride the Pacific
Union Express is evidence enough of that.

Well, I too have accepted Crocker's invitation, and at  least
Sutter will be on board the train. I have slightly less than three weeks to
decide if Sutter will play a role, and also to devise the means to put bullet,
blade, or poison into Mosby's despicable frame, develop the manner in which I
dispose of the body, and come out of it not only alive but unsuspected. Three
weeks. I must think carefully.

No doubt Claussen is already in Utah, awaiting the final
moments. Fearing and beholden to Mosby. More likely enslaved in a subtle way.
He must hate that. What would he do if Mosby does not arrive? Go on with it,
one would guess. I need to find a way to prevent Alex from reaching there as
well. What will he do if neither Mosby nor Alex arrives in Promontory? Return
to California? Await further instructions? Yes. And when he realizes Mosby has
disappeared, may be dead, he will probably not only withdraw but rejoice.

The parlor
car. The train. Across the Sierras. Over the pass and by Donner Lake. It will
come to me. It has to. And it must be before we reach Utah. Mosby is
untouchable here, too. There are just too many at the Sacramento Hotel where he
stays. The train. The train. Somehow it must be on the train. Must go again to
Carter's office, study once more the maps, the notes, the timetables. Three
weeks. Oh, God, I must find a way.

Dutch
Flat

May
7, 1869

2:30 P.M.

Esther put on her veiled hat, raised the
shade beside her, and eased the window up a bit more. Across the tracks several
children played in the midafternoon shadows of an idle railroad sawmill,
indifferent to the fanfare along the other side of the train and the passengers
who had disembarked  during the half-hour station stop. She crossed the aisle
of the car, looked out and searched for Alex. She couldn't see him for the
swirl of miners and railroad men who crowded around the forward cars. Beyond
the station and central buildings of the mining town, houses perched on the
mountains that rose almost vertically from the hollow where Dutch Flat lay.

Mosby was standing there, just below the
window, alone, when she went back to her seat. Casually, to anyone else just
out for a leisurely smoke, he stood loose-limbed, with his back to the parlor
car.

She leaned closer to the partially open
window. "One hour and five minutes after the train leaves Dutch Flat, Mr.
Mosby."

Not turning, he  nodded.

"And no earlier. The doors will be
locked until precisely that time. And remember, no one must see you come. Go
forward, then back by the roofs. I will open only the rear door." She
caught her breath. "You will love the danger,
won't
you?"

He shrugged and turned slowly, never
looking at her, then walked back around the rear of the parlor car.

Certainly
Katherine McDonnell had told Mosby about her connection with Alex. So Mosby
undoubtedly knew who she was. But he could not possibly know she was Elizabeth
Purdy Todd. That was what mattered. She guessed he would wait until he'd taken
her physically before gloatingly revealing he knew her identity. And that would
give her time enough.

Solana
waved
to young Todd, then slowly worked her way back through the noisy crowd in front
of the rude station. No one paid any attention to her. At the rear of the first
passenger unit, she paused for a second, looked about, saw the trainmen had
their backs to her, then climbed the stairs. Crossing the metal platform, she
quickly went down the steps on the other side and onto the gravel between the
two sets of tracks. Turning left, she walked back along the side of the second
passenger car, slowly, close to it, directly under the windows. She did not
look up.

At the rear of the second passenger car
she glanced up at the platform but kept walking. She knew exactly where she was
going. Reaching the gap between the third passenger car and the parlor unit,
she looked up and stopped. The large equipment bin was on the outer side of the
forward platform on the private car. Just as she had noted the day before, its
lid was upright, latched to the forward wall of the parlor car itself.

She turned, saw the boys playing in the
sawmill near the saw-toothed blade of a buzz saw. They disappeared behind a
shed wall for a moment, larking, chasing one another. Glancing down, she gauged
the size of the train's enormous wheels. Taking two steps backward, she
crouched, spun around, and waddled underneath the last passenger car and
pressed herself out of sight behind one wheel.

She
peered out. The boys were in sight again, whirling around a wooden column under
the gable of the sawmill. No one had seen her. She glanced up and looked for a
handhold. She knew she would have to move quickly, or she would either die or
be left behind. As far as she was concerned, one would be as bad as the other.

As
the last passengers reboarded, Luther Mosby waited on the track side of the
second car, out of sight. When he heard the forward door close, he pulled
himself up onto the steps of the leading platform and crouched, hidden to
anyone in the car or along the sides of the train. He guessed the trainmen were
aboard by now, leaning out and checking along the station side. As soon as the
train rolled, he would rise, cross to the first car, back in casually, and wait
in the lavatory until he heard the increased roar as the head trainman opened
the door and went forward to his seat. There were two of them. Mosby saw no
reason, short of an emergency, why either would be out on the nearby platform
again.

Solana
started
moving a second after she heard the trainmen call out
"Awwwwwwlllboooooooord." Her joints creaking, every muscle in pain,
she swung left on a chassis beam, cleared the housing, then scuttled as best
she could across wood and steel until she was beyond the outside rail. She
glanced across at the sawmill. The boys were lined up, gazing forward toward the
locomotive. They had not seen her. She heard the train lurch forward, thought
briefly of what would have happened if she had been pinned underneath one of
the shrieking wheels. Suddenly the boys shouted and began racing to catch up
with the engine.

Fear limbered her. She rose quickly,
turned and ran, trundling awkwardly, to the ladder beside the rear platform of
the last passenger car. Swinging up, she held on until the sudden, exertive
pain in her right arm subsided, then edged back and climbed over the platform
railing. She stood there motionless, out of breath, her head bent down, until
she heard the shouts of the young boys grow louder, then fade as the train
picked up speed and left them behind. She moved quickly then, crossed the
collapsible metal lips above the coupling and looked into the equipment bin.
Five flares and a lantern lay on a piece of burlap a quarter of the way down
from the rim. She pulled the burlap up and saw well-worn picks, shovels, a
megaphone, two cases of blasting powder.

She turned, noted the long, curving low
trestle the train was approaching. Beneath it, a latticework of wooden beams
and piles rose from a partially graded bank of fill on either side. The train
bulged outward along the clockwise curve. Even if only at a modest angle, she
calculated, the windows to her left and right were temporarily pointed away
from her. Quickly she picked up all but one of the pieces of equipment
individually and dropped them down through the bowels of the trestle onto the
sloping mound of fill.

The
muffling sound of the train filling her ears, she climbed into the bin, pulled
the burlap up to her chest, arranged the flares and lantern almost as they had
been, took a knife out of her purse, and quickly punched a hole in the burlap.
Then she curled down and pulled the material up over her face. When her heart
quieted, she peered up through the small puncture in the fabric. She could see
only the gap between the roofs of the two cars. Afraid to open the rent any
further for fear of being discovered, she wondered how she would hear anyone
proceed rearward across the two platforms to the parlor-car door.

Swaying slightly as the car oscillated on
its wheel-springs, Esther took one last look at the section of Charles
Crocker's survey map where the tracks ran in a serpentine line across the
twin-breasted carapace of Calafia Mountain. East of it, the terrain subsided
into a series of ridges, gorges and canyons, eventually leading to the Donner
Pass. Across one of the gorges, Crocker and his army had erected Long Trestle,
a monumental span three hundred feet high at one point and almost a half-mile
long. She had seen a picture of it. Either the trestle or the thousand-foot
drop from the single-track bed chiseled along the north side of Calafia
Mountain would do.

Turning, she walked back to the table by
her seat, poured a glass of sherry for herself, and took a sip. Replacing the
glass on the tray, she went back through the curtains, pulled back one corner
of the eiderdown quilt, picked up the wooden-handled kitchen knife, and slipped
it under the head of the mattress. She took her late husband's derringer and
the partially empty vial of jequirity powder and went back to the rear door.
Outside on the platform, she opened the vial, spilled its contents over the
railing, then threw the glass vessel down a steep embankment. Taking hold of a
handgrip, she climbed carefully up onto a railing rung and wedged the derringer
into a ribbon of space that ran around the metal skirts of the overhanging
roof.

Rocking, she held onto the grip with both
hands for a moment, then reached up, banged at the pistol with the heel of her
palm, and took hold of it with two fingers. Satisfied that it was secure
enough, she slipped her fingers around the handle of the gun. It was a tight fit,
but with the trigger housing facing this way and a small portion of the grip
protruding from the narrow aperture, she was certain she could pull it free
when the time came.

She got down and once again took in the
structure of the platform, going over in her mind what she would do here if the
poison and the knife could not be employed. A rectangle four by eight feet in
size, the platform was enclosed by a railing slightly more than waist-high. Two
sets of rungs, the lower one a foot off the platform and the second a foot
higher, encircled and reinforced the railing's upright iron rods. The fence was
broken only by the latched gate directly over the receding tracks. She would
not employ the gate, so she quickly dismissed it from her mind. Where the railings
formed a perpendicular angle at the rearmost corners, heavier iron supports ran
up through them to the end of the overhanging roof. On the outer side of the
rear railing, a cast-iron ladder ran up and curled over to a point where it was
bolted to the rear end of the roof.