The Furies (30 page)

Yet recalling Jared’s eyes and his dying plea for her to leave the gold alone, she doubted.

Was she letting the fury of wounded family pride warp her?

Or was she on the right course?

She didn’t know.

But when it struck her that she should at least look after Jared’s interests up in the diggings, she didn’t put the idea aside. Instead, she immediately informed Israel that they were going.

Louis had received word of the forthcoming trip in somber silence. To add to the gloom of the departure, she was worried about Bart McGill. The morning she and Israel set out, his ship was seven days overdue. He’d often spoken of hundred-knot winds that created an extreme hazard on the Cape Horn passage—

Now here she was, winding up a muddy track beneath sodden trees. She felt more than a little out of her element. How ridiculous for a woman almost forty-seven years old to go traipsing into the gold country like the very fools she’d once condemned.

Someone had to settle Jared’s affairs, though—

To whose benefit?
was the immediate response of her questioning conscience.

Confused again, she took comfort in remembering what she’d once told Luis Cordoba about the Mandan’s vine to paradise. A human being did what seemed necessary and right, and left it to someone else to judge whether the sum of thousands of such decisions equaled a life lived with honor, or the lack of it. If her plan to recapture Kent’s, tainted as it was by her hatred of Stovall, was impure—why, so was life itself. Despite Jared’s warnings—and Bart’s—she would go ahead. She had in effect made that choice the moment she informed Israel about the journey.

A sudden change in the irregular clopping of the mules’ hoofs drew her from introspection. Ahead, between two great shoulders of granite, Israel had brought his mount to a halt.

“Guess we’ve arrived safe and sound,” he called. He pointed. “There’s civilization.”

Amanda grimaced. Just beyond the mulatto, a hanged man dangled from the branch of a tree.

The corpse twisted as the rope unwound slowly. The tree limb creaked. A young man, Amanda saw as she rode up beside Israel. A young man with a black beard and distended eyeballs and flesh discolored by death. She wondered what his crime had been—and what heaven’s verdict on his life would be. The earthly decision was unmistakable.

The two mules clopped by the hanging tree to a place where the trail again descended. Listening, she heard a fiddle scraping “Old Dan Tucker.” The camp itself was still invisible in the mist.

They rode on till they came to a crudely lettered sign on a post driven into the ground:

welcom to Hopeful

Another sign—rather, the sheared-off top section—lay discarded nearby. Amanda leaned forward to read what had been painted on the board:

War! War! ! War! ! !

The celebrated Bull-killing Bear

KIT CARSON will fight a Bull to the Death on Sunday the 15th inst. at 3 p.m.

The rest was gone. Somewhere ahead, a gun went off. Men shouted. Her shoulders felt heavy. Foolish old woman, she thought.

Then she recalled the fob medallion in her pocket, and sat up straight. Two more shots exploded. She said, “We may be sound, but who knows how safe?”

She unbuttoned her heavy coat; laid her right hand on the holstered revolver. Israel fell back to let her take the lead as the mules negotiated the muddy track that led toward lanterns now visible as smears of yellow in the murk.

Even in San Francisco, Amanda had seldom seen such a confusion of humanity as she did that Sunday morning.

Hopeful straggled for more than half a mile along the bank of the Feather’s branch, hemmed in on the landward side by nearly perpendicular hills covered with dark firs. The camp consisted exclusively of improvised housing—tents, scrap-lumber hovels and even a number of large packing cases from which the sides had been removed. Inside one of these, a man lay reading. In another, a couple of bearded miners played cards.

Amanda kept her hat brim pulled down as she and Israel rode along the main street. She saw no women anywhere. Men milled aimlessly on either side. Most were white, but here and there she spied a darker face: a Mexican, a Chilean. Two stocky youngsters appeared to be Kanakas from Hawaii. Most of the miners were dressed as Jared had been—heavy coats and trousers. There was an almost universal display of mustaches and chin whiskers.

Being hatless, Israel immediately attracted attention.

A group lounging outside a tent identified as Sacramento Tom’s started pointing. One man lobbed a stone. Another shouted, “Ain’t no claims for niggers here!”

Israel went rigid. Amanda laid a hand on his arm. He swallowed and gazed straight ahead.

Inside Sacramento Tom’s, the fiddle scraper swung into “The Old Oaken Bucket.” A man approached Amanda’s mule, weaving. He doffed a filthy felt hat.

“Welcome, pilgrim! You don right, comin’ to Hopeful. We’re takin’ it out of the ground with jackknives—”

Head down, she didn’t respond. The man shrugged, executed a half-turn, unbuttoned his pants and began to urinate in the mud.

On Amanda’s left, three bearded fellows were carrying a wounded man out of another gambling tent, to the amusement of a small crowd. Had this been the source of the shots? She heard one of the watchers yell to someone in the tent, “Frenchie, you be in miner’s court at five sharp. The court’ll decide whether Dick provoked you. That is”—a glance at the wounded man being borne away—“if Dick’s still alive to state his case.”

A somewhat larger tent on the right announced itself as the bear flag palace. From all the lanterns burning inside, some positioned above others, Amanda realized an enterprising soul had somehow rigged an upstairs section for the hotel. Immediately beyond the Palace, a general store—another tent—was doing a brisk business.

Out in front, a shirtsleeved clerk waved a pair of boots to half a dozen customers. “Cowhide, double-soled, triple-pegged and guaranteed waterproof. Fit your road-smashers exactly! Who’s going to start with a bid of two and a half ounces? Do I hear two and a half ounces of dust—?”

“You hear three!”

“Three and a half!”

“Four!”

Before Amanda passed by, the boots sold for nine ounces of dust. She admired the auctioneer’s audacity.

She was so intent on watching the auction’s conclusion, she failed to see another man, more tipsy than the first, who came lurching toward her mule from the left. He stumbled against the animal. The mule brayed, bucked—and Amanda went toppling off.

She struck on her right side, sinking three or four inches into the ooze and gasping for air. Her cheeks and forehead were splattered with mud. Israel tried to control his nervous mule as Amanda gained her knees. She grabbed for the top of her head. Her hat had fallen off! The tipsy gentleman, pink-faced, middle-aged and bearded, gaped. “God bless us all, a woman! Madam”—he extended a pudgy hand—“Otto Plankveld, late of Albany, New York. Allow me to assist you—”

“No, thanks, I’m all right,” Amanda said, jumping up and jamming her hat on her head—too late.

“A woman! The Dutchman’s got a woman!”

“Ah, he’s just blind drunk again—”

“No, you are. She’s standin’ right out there!”

Instantly, men rushed toward Amanda from both sides. The commotion spread, attracting others from up and down the street. The damp air grew so full of alcohol fumes, she might have been inside a distillery. Poor Otto Plankveld was promptly elbowed to the rear of the crowd. Hands reached out. Teeth shone in sudden grins.

“Hey, dearie, you a workin’ girl?”

“How much for a toss in bed?”

“How about in the mud? Is that cheaper?”

“Hell, she ain’t no whore. She’s too damn old—”

“Yeh, but she’s got her nigger bully with her—”

“Gentlemen,” Amanda began, not a little alarmed by the ring of jostling, inebriated men, “I’m looking for the Ophir—”

Before she could finish, a particularly foul-smelling fellow with a long white streak down the center of his sandy beard grabbed her left arm.

“The Ophir boys can wait a while to take their turn. There ain’t another creature in Hopeful that’s got what you got—” With his other hand, he reached for her crotch. She jerked out of his grip and took a hasty step backward.

“Hey, Pike, leave hear alone—we seen her first!”

The man paid no attention, his smile fixed and ugly. The portly Dutchman had squeezed his way up front again. He stepped between Amanda and the man identified as Pike. Not his name, probably, Amanda thought, recollecting Jared’s remarks about the type.

The Pike shoved Plankveld. “Back off, you fuckin’ little sausage eater.”

“No. Can’t you see she is a lady?”

“Shit, why would a lady come up here—’less it’s to do business?”

“You’ve swilled too much liquor, Pike. She’s a lady. You got to treat a lady decent, especially on the Sabbath—”

“I’ll Sabbath you, you two-legged jackass!” the Pike said in a slurred voice. He shoved Plankveld hard. The crowd surged back as Plankveld staggered, then righted himself.

Amanda intervened. “Stop it! You’ve both drunk too much. I’ll thank you to get out of my way.”

Plankveld almost retreated. The bearded Pike refused, grinning as he faced the German. He wriggled his fingers, an invitation for the other man to attack.

Amanda’s mule had wandered to a spot just beyond the two antagonists. The crowd closed in again. Israel, still mounted, was behind her. The only way to reach her mule was to remove the two drunks from her path.

“
Did you hear me?
Stand aside.”

The Pike called her a filthy name.

Muddy and exhausted from the long journey, her temper was short. She saw the quarrelsome Pike as an infuriating obstacle. She started to yell at him. Before she could, he reached for Plankveld’s neck.

The German tried to fend him off. The Pike’s arms were longer. He locked hands on Plankveld’s throat, yanked him forward and drove a knee into his genitals.

Plankveld cried out. The Pike flung him into the mud, laughed. A few watchers applauded. The crowd, completely ringing Amanda, Israel and the mules, grew larger every second. The Pike raised his right boot and brought it down on the German’s temple.

This time Plankveld screamed, the right side of his head driven deep into the mud. Amanda shot her hand toward Israel, snatched the quirt from the mulatto’s hand. Just as the Pike started to boot the German a second time, she laid the quirt across the back of his neck.

“Now will you stop and get out of the way?”

The Pike stood up to his full height. A hand darted to the back of his neck, where the quirt had drawn blood. Amanda’s palms started to sweat. Whimpering, Plank-veld tried to crawl away.

The Pike faced Amanda. “Well, ain’t the little bee got a sting—”

Israel kneed his mule forward to block the Pike’s lunge at her. The bearded man pounded both fists into Israel’s ribs. With a yell, the mulatto slid off the side of his mule just as Amanda had done, landing on his rump in the mud. Someone flung a handful at him, smearing his face. Almost at the same moment, the Pike stabbed a hand under his tattered coat and pulled a pocket pistol, a cheap copy of the popular large-caliber weapons built by the Philadelphia gunsmith Henry Deringer.

“I got me a sting too, woman—”

Behind Amanda, men yelled and scattered.

Perhaps if she hadn’t been so tired and so furious at having been stupidly balked in the middle of the main street, she might have reacted in a different way, tried to reason with the Pike. But he was mad and so was she. His right hand lifted for a shot at close range. She saw the man not just as a witless bully but as a symbol of everything that stood between her and what she wanted—

The Pike pointed the stubby muzzle at her eyes. She darted to one side, freed the revolver from her holster while the Pike tried to correct his aim. Because he’d been drinking, his forearm shook. He closed his other hand over the one clutching the pistol, squinting as the muzzle steadied—

Amanda extended the revolver to the full length of her arm and fired.

The reverberations of the shot died slowly. The pocket pistol slipped from the Pike’s hand. He dropped to his knees, astonished at the reddening hole drilled in his flannel shirt between the lapels of his old coat.

He lifted his head and stared at Amanda for one gruesome moment. Then his eyes shut. He fell facedown in the mud.

Someone exclaimed, “By Christ, she killed him outright!”

Amanda whirled. “He was going to kill me!”

“He was too drunk to shoot straight. He’d have missed you sure—”

“And I was supposed to take a chance on that? No, thank you!”

Men surged around her, shouting. Israel shoved them back. “Get away! You get away from her—!” He bent to whisper, “Keep the gun handy, Miz Kent. We may need it before we’re out of here—”

A violent argument erupted between factions in the crowd. Some claimed Amanda had committed coldblooded murder, others that she had only defended herself against a man who would have done murder himself. Her right hand was shaking so badly, she could barely hold the Colt’s.

Israel slipped an arm around her shoulder. A man demanded she attend miner’s court at five. In the midst of the yelling, Plankveld picked himself up and tried to out-shout the others.

“
Nein,
no court! He attacked her! A worthless Pike—everybody knows he had a terrible temper—”

“I’ll be in court!” Amanda said.

“Walk with me,” Israel whispered, cradling her against him and easing the revolver from her hand. “You bring the animals, will you please, sir?” he said to Plankveld.

The red-cheeked German nodded, grabbing the reins of the two mules. Amanda felt the unsteadiness of Israel’s gait; he was favoring his left leg, the one burned worst.

Faces swam around her, glaring eyes, mouths bawling this or that point in connection with the argument. She and the lanky yellow-skinned man took two steps, then two more. They could go no further.

Israel raised the revolver.
Oh God, he’s forgotten to revolve the cylinder. What if they notice
—
?