California Woman (Daughters of the Whirlwind Book 1)

by Daniel Knapp

  She got up on her elbow. "Tomorrow?" she whispered weakly. "Why can't we leave today?"

  He laughed. "Listen to her! You ain't strong enough even to lift your tail outa bed, let alone onto a horse.

  Anyways, it's nearly sunset."

  "Sunset?"

  "You been asleep for over twenty-four hours."

  "My Lord! The baby! I've got to nurse the baby!"

  "Don't worry about him. We been feedin' him soup."

  "My God!" She reached down, so weak she could hardly lift John Alexander, and somehow managed to take him to her breast.

  Mosby sat where he was, watching. Aroused, he licked his lips involuntarily. "You was any stronger, I'd take some of that myself." She glared at him, and he laughed. "Got a temper, do you?"

  She ignored him and finished nursing, then held her hand to the infant's forehead. "He's feverish. Sick. We've got to leave tomorrow morning!"

  "I told you we would, didn't I?"

  "Do we have to double back?"

  He smiled, then looked away. "Can't just leave them poor rich folks out there to die without lookin' a bit for 'em, now can we?"

  She started to argue with him but held back the words. He was the only hope for John Alexander's survival.

  "You sleep now. You're gonna have to be as strong as you can be in the mornin'."

  She hated him for loading the Indian's horse with pelts as well as herself and the baby. It would slow them down. She knew that much, dazed and disoriented as she still was. But she said nothing. She knew also there was very little chance they would find even tracks, let along any of the snowshoers. She was right. By noon they had gone miles north and west, the horses slowly pumping their legs up and down in the snow above the buried crust. There was no sign of anything human. The only thing that kept her from utter despair was the thought of the three days' provisions Mosby had packed in his saddlebag. She began to pray.

  "They're goners," Mosby said, reining his horse southward. "They set out for Sutter's with Stanton?"

  "Yes. By way of Bear Valley."

  Mosby shook his head. "Jesus Christ! We're halfway south from there to French Meadows. They're so far off the mark they don't stand a chance. Well, maybe we'll still run into 'em."

  All that day the horses plodded southward. They camped for the night in a shelter Mosby and the silent Indian made from cut pine-boughs and a covering layer of hand-packed snow. John Alexander opened his eyes only twice when she nursed him that evening. She knew he was getting weaker by the hour.

  "You skinny or fat under that dress?" Mosby asked after they had settled in under the fur pelts.

  She looked away. "I think you would call me slender."

  "Skinny, huh? Well, you sure got beautiful teats."

  Apprehensive as she was that he might come near her during the night, she slept as she never had in her life. In the morning, she felt as though the cold, dry air had almost restored her. But there was a frightening dullness in John Alexander's eyes as she took him to her breast again.

  A bulge in the long tail of the snowstorm that had been raging just to the west and north since Christmas Day hit them about noon. Leaning into the howling wind, their faces covered except for their eyes, they bent forward as the lathered horses shivered, snorted vapor, and worked through the increasingly higher drifts. At four in the afternoon, Mosby's mount slipped, stumbled, then lost its footing entirely on a rock ledge over a steep ravine. Thrown uphill, Mosby landed face down in the snow to their left. Elizabeth watched, horrified, as his horse went over the edge, whinnying in terror, bounced off a boulder, kept falling, hit again, and slid down to the bottom. Within minutes the animal's legs stopped kicking spasmodically, and the falling snow began covering it up.

  "Son... of... a... bitch!" Mosby shouted. He glowered at the Indian. "Don't just stand there gapin', Seeswash! We got work to do plenty."

  Huddled in the lee of a giant fir, she watched them build a three-sided wall of packed snow to screen out the wind. Then they lined the wall with pine branches torn from surrounding trees. Mosby's strength frightened her. When he and the Indian had roofed the walls and covered the snow floor with additional boughs, they crawled inside and huddled together for warmth. The Indian built a fire just inside the entrance with flint and stone he carried in a belt pouch. Only when he came back and sat down did she realize all the provisions had gone down the ravine with Mosby's horse.

  She fell asleep just after feeding the baby. Her milk was holding out, but without food, she knew it would dry up quickly.

  She woke with a start two hours later. Mosby was lying with his arms around her. John Alexander was between their bellies. Mosby was smiling. She could smell liquor on his breath.

  "What the hell you lookin' at me that way for? I ain't done nothin' to you. Just keepin' warm now the fire's gone out."

  Despite herself and the shrieking wind, she fell asleep again. In the morning Mosby peered in through the hole he had scooped out of the blown snow filling the entrance to the shelter.

  "You ready to go?"

  She got up, arranged the baby in his sling, and crawled out through the opening. The snow had stopped, but the sky was overcast. She looked around. The Indian was gone.

  "Damndest thing," Mosby said, pulling her up behind him on the Indian's horse. "See them tracks?" He pointed to a single set heading toward the ledge. Beside them were two furrows. "Must have gone to take a look-see at my horse. Probably thought he could go down and get the food. I guess he slipped and fell over."

  He eased the horse to the middle of the ledge and leaned over carefully. "See him?" Mosby said, shaking his head. "Must be three hundred foot almost straight down. Damn shame. No way in the world you could get down there without breakin' your neck."

  She stared at the snow on the ledge. All but one small patch of blood had been kicked loose and covered up.

  "Better git goin' 'fore it hits again. Maybe we'll make it to the Squaw by tonight. Ought to be easier goin' by then. Should be able to make it downriver on the ice pretty quick tomorrow."

  Shutting thoughts of the Indian from her mind, she tried to buoy herself with what Mosby had said. An hour and a half later, its heart and lungs bursting from the weight it had carried so long and the strain of pushing through heavy snow, the horse gave out under them. Mosby lashed furiously at the animal with the reins, but it simply lay there, quivering, one eye staring blankly skyward, froth and blood bubbling over its ice-encrusted bit.

  Enraged, Mosby stalked off. She followed him. A half mile further south, Mosby slapped at his thigh violently, cursing himself as he suddenly realized how much food the horse could provide them. Almost gently, he sat her and the baby down in the lee of a giant evergreen, then started back to the animal.

  His first slice into the soft flesh along the horse's withers was unsuccessful. He tried again with no luck.

  "Open up, you son of a bitch!" he shouted, lifting his bowie knife high and stabbing down hard at the horse's flank. As though the fat and muscle had turned to rock, the tip of the knife broke off and he sprained his wrist. Jerking his head to one side in fury and pain, Mosby glanced skyward and screamed, "Why's it always have to be like this, you son of a bitch? Ever time it's important! Ever' fuckin' time since I's a kid."

  He lowered his head and looked at the horse. "It's always the same..."

  Collecting himself, he probed in several places with no more success. Even the animal's tongue was frozen almost solid. He thought for a moment about building a fire, thawing the animal out, but he realized the woman and the child would be frozen stiff by the time he finished. Thinking of the three hundred dollars, he got up and started slogging back to them. We'll run across somethin'... a deer, a rabbit... somethin', he thought. Got to keep movin'.

  With Mosby pulling and dragging her some of the time, they walked the rest of the day and all of the next, stopping occasionally to rest and then pushing on. Near nightfall of the second day, the snow started again. Exhausted, so weak she cou
ld stand no longer, Elizabeth lowered herself and sat on her knees.

  "Get up, goddamn it!"

  She shook her head slowly. "I... can't."

  He walked over, pulled the shawl and the baby away, and took a step back. "You'll get up or I'll leave you here and go on with the kid myself."

  She started to cry.

  Mosby looked up. The snow was beginning to thicken.

  "Here, goddamn it!" He handed her the infant and began breaking and gathering branches again. Over the uneven terrain the snow pack around them had formed a small, concave depression. Mosby covered most of the snow well with pine needles and boughs, then spread more over the floor of the eight-foot oval. So tired she could hardly lift her arms, she lay down on the branches with John Alexander, staring at the green needles above her as Mosby cleared a small circle in the center of the floor. He left her in terror for fifteen minutes, but then came back with an armload of wood he had stabbed loose from a fallen trunk. Removing the wrapping from a cigar, he started the fire, lighted up, and sat there smoking and staring at her.

  It was much later when she awoke suddenly, her face pressed through the pine branches into the snow, the tip of her nose practically frozen, remembering the baby. Rolling on her side, she tried to nurse it. She was vaguely aware that there was no feeling between her nostrils; none in two fingers of her left hand. Dimly, instinctively, she knew the liquid was the last she had in her breasts. Involuntarily, she licked her lips. They were split and caked with dried blood in a half dozen places. But she was too weak to do anything but lie there.

  Mosby stared at her breast, at the suckling infant. He knew he would never get out of this alive with the two of them on his back. He was ravenously hungry. And now, his gaze locked on her pale, pink nipple, the sucking sounds filling his ears, another craving rose in him. He got up and moved toward her.

  She tried to protest when she felt Mosby pull the baby from her arms, tried to scream when she saw Mosby toss the baby aside, but she was too weak even to summon sound. For a moment she thought she was imagining it all, dreaming. But then she saw the stream of sparks suddenly rise up over the edge of the fire where the infant had fallen.

  She tried to understand what was happening, but the facts would not stay coupled in her mind. She closed her eyes and tried again, but then she was distracted as Mosby tore her dress open and began draining the last of her milk.

  You must not do that, she thought woodenly. It is all I have, and John Alexander needs it. She lifted one arm partway off the ground to push him away, but it fell back and she could not raise it again.

  You must not... He can't be. This is a dream...

  She felt him turn her over when he was through with her breasts. She opened her eyes, tried to scream again as he untied the strips of leather securing her slitted skirts to her legs. Her eyes would not stay open. No sound came out of her throat.

  He didn't bother to position her, remove her undergarments. Instead, he simply ripped through the bloomers, tore open the lower buttons on the long johns she was wearing, then yanked them down far enough to thrust into her just before she blacked out.

  He was gone when she feebly lifted herself up the following morning. The contents of her carryall bag were scattered all over the floor of the shelter. She was not aware that Graves's gold pocket watch was gone. Not comprehending, almost in the preliminary stages of shock, she picked up the journal and stared at the sooty thumbprint on one corner of the first page. Sitting up and cocking her head in confusion, she turned the journal over. The other half of the hide strip she had found in Stanton's pocket, wedged until now between two pages, dropped into her lap. She stared at it for a minute, not knowing what it could be, then picked it up. She hesitated for a moment, distracted by the severe whiteness of two fingers on her left hand. She wondered where her gloves were. In a moment, she thought hazily. In a moment I will look for them. She stared at the strip again. Without knowing why, she put it in her mouth and began chewing.

  While she was searching for her gloves, placing everything back into her bag again, she found John Alexander. Her senses blunted completely, she didn't notice the pale blue color of his skin or the dark, charred flesh where the edge of the fire had burned through the shawl and the left arm of his little coat. Dropping the bag, cooing at her son soothingly, she picked him up, rearranged the shawl, and rocked him back and forth until she was sure he was asleep.

  Under a bright blue sky she walked again as she had before finding Mosby and the Indian. An unseasonably warm sun crossed over her from left to right. Vaguely, she was aware she was going south. Sometime in the afternoon, she veered west. Near sunset she came upon the snow-well floored with stripped green branches where the snowshoers had waited out the Christmas storm for five days.

  There were five bodies lying in the concave hollow. She recognized the faces of four of them: Antonio, the Mexican herder; "Uncle" Billy Graves; Patrick Dolan; Mrs. Murphy's thirteen-year-old boy, Lemuel. She thought she smelled smoke, turned and saw the dead pine tree, fallen now, that the rest of them had set afire after the storm broke. She looked at the bodies again, rocking John Alexander back and forth, and tried to understand.

  They were all naked, their clothes strewn about haphazardly. The bones of Patrick Dolan's arm and legs were visible where the others had finally stripped the flesh from them. There was an enormous opening in Graves's chest where the skin and muscle had been sliced open, the ribs smashed and pulled apart. Vaguely aware of what she was looking at, she climbed down into the well and sat down next to Antonio's partially stripped body. One of his wrists lay in the edge of the dead fire. Where his hand had been, there was only a ribbonwork of crisp, black ash.

  She sat there for half an hour, trying to think it all out. She was unable to. Finally her will to live and the unquenchable desire to get her baby to safety made her get up. Still clutching the child she methodically removed the knife from the sheath attached to Antonio's belt. Then she walked over to little Lemuel Murphy and cut away as much flesh as she thought she would need.

  Numbly, she fanned up a fire in the charred, still smoldering trunk of the fallen pine, thawed out some of what she had, ate, pressed some to the baby's mouth and let the liquid drip between his lips. Certain he was nourished, singing to him, she wrapped the rest in the shawl and lay down close enough to the dead pine trunk to stay warm without being burned.

  The following day, after removing the soggy boots and shoes on her feet and replacing them with two pairs lying in the snow-well, she reached the west base of Indian Peak. By the time she crossed the sloping, broad bowl beneath the escarpment, she was totally exhausted again. She found a cave at the base of a bluff, slept in it, ate again in the morning, then pushed on. Continuing on an increasingly downhill path, she followed a series of streambeds and stumbled onto the narrow, snow- and ice-covered South Fork of the American River at noon. Somehow—delirious, her nose and extremities half-frozen, her mind almost blank—she sensed the river would eventually flow west and down toward a valley and settlements.

  She began laughing and singing when she briefly pictured a ranch house, a dog barking and smoke rising from a chimney. Stopping to rest, she ate the last of what was in the shawl, then continued downstream. An hour later, no longer singing, she approached a point where the river widened abruptly and the layer of snow on the ice was more shallow. For a few seconds her mind was clear. It came upon her that her energy was almost gone, that she would not make it much farther, that she and the baby would perish. She remembered Mosby and shouted at the top of her lungs: "I will not die! Oh, God, I will not die!"

  Her mind blank again, she kept on shouting it every few minutes until she turned a sharp bend and heard, amid the sounds of a waterfall, two shrill high notes that could have been made only by a living creature. She was certain it was her imagination.

  Twelve

  The two Miwok Indian boys squealed with delight as they stared, fascinated, at the trout darting under the clear stretch
of ice halfway down the South Fork. The sound of something moving toward them from upstream brought them to their feet. They were only fifty yards from their village, and though they could not see their people through the dense growth of evergreens, they were not afraid, simply alert, the pointed sticks they carried aimed in the direction of the sound coming from around the bend in the river. When the figure came into view, swaying unsteadily as it moved toward them on the ice, they were sure it was a spirit. Sun dancing off its ice-encrusted, windblown garments seemed to them a supernatural halo. And they were certain the small blue form the figure carried partially concealed under its shawl was a strange and fearsome weapon they had never seen before. Overwhelmed by terror, they dropped the sticks, scrambled through the crust of snow on the shallow riverbank, and raced toward their village.

  Elizabeth had been walking down the river on the ice since noon the day before. When she first saw the blurred figures dressed in skins, she thought they were deer. Delirious from hunger and exhaustion, her senses warped by what had happened in the mountains on this side of the pass, she saw the blurred movement of the two creatures up the riverbank as the reaction of two frightened fawns. She no longer possessed the capacity to reason that it was too early in the year for such young deer to be at large. For a moment the fragmented thought crossed her mind that had she been stronger, if her vision was not so strangely blurred, if she were more cunning, she might have somehow surprised and killed one of them. Numbly she chided herself for losing the opportunity to obtain food for John Alexander and herself. Perhaps the baby could not eat the meat, but the warm blood would have nourished him. Enough perhaps to sustain him until she found a settlement. Even in her present state of mind she had been certain, once she found the river and became hazily aware that it followed roughly the westward path of the sun overhead, that sooner or later she was bound to find the lowlands and people.