California Woman (Daughters of the Whirlwind Book 1)

by Daniel Knapp

  There were at least two dozen crude houses between the fort and the riverfront now. Stacks of unthreshed wheat sat amid new growth that already showed signs of withering in the sun for lack of water. The Indians were gone. All but two of the white men employed by Sutter had left. Manaiki did the bidding of a domineering man named Kyburz, who had leased Sutter's two-story house for five hundred dollars a month and converted it into a hotel. Merchants, strangers, had opened stores in rented rooms along the walls of the fort. Cattle and horses, sheep, pigs, and dogs wandered and dropped waste everywhere, unattended. A completely new crowd of men Esther had never seen before hauled wagonloads of goods into the fort. Others reined their teams to a halt in front of the general store Sam Brannan had opened in an outbuilding leased from Sutter. Now she understood the look of fear she had seen in Sutter's eyes: the hint of a man drowning economically. Now she knew why he had passed the point of even considering a partnership with anyone. The acrid stench of two thousand abandoned, rotting hides stacked outside Sutter's unmanned tannery confirmed the impending disaster.

  She took a room, asked Manaiki to find her a hat with a veil, ate an early supper alone, rested briefly, then, her face sufficiently concealed, went to see Brannan. Burly, chin-whiskered but moustacheless, he was wearing a Sunday-meeting black hat, a colorless, dirty shirt, and black trousers tucked into knee-high boots. His store was crammed with merchandise and dry goods of every kind and description.

  "Don't need no partners," Brannan said when she broached the subject. "Doin' right fine by myself."

  "I had hoped…"

  "Say you're goin' to San Francisco? What for? Nothin' to be had there now. Everything's bought up. Goods that isn't, you can't find a man jack to get it here for you. Into the mountains neither. I had the foresight…"

  "I have made arrangements," Esther said, stretching a half-truth. "The goods will be delivered. But if you do not wish to become partners…"

  "Now just wait a minute, little missy. You got brass, you do. Don't want a partner, I said. But I might be willin' to strike some sort of arrangement with you—if you can get supplies delivered here."

  "I can," she said, trembling.

  He regarded her coolly, and she saw a mercenary glint in his eyes as he manufactured a smile. "Tell you what I'll do. I'll receive any goods you get shipped here, store 'em and, ah, attempt to sell 'em. You pay for 'em, pay for storage—reasonable, reasonable, rates the market bears these days—if I don't turn them over. What sells, why, we'll split the profits. What don't… well… you'll just have to cart it off, say after six months. At your own cost, of course."

  Esther thought for a moment. She could not believe he would have any trouble selling anything, anywhere. The storage and carting expense likely would never materialize.

  "Sixty-forty on the profits," she heard herself say.

  "Good-bye, young lady."

  "All right. Fifty-fifty."

  "Ought to charge you an extra 5 percent just for your cheek." Brannan fabricated another good-natured smile. "But I like you. Admire your gumption. Fifty-fifty. Do we have a deal?"

  "We do, Mr. Brannan."

  "No, we don't."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Got to show me some earnest money. S'pose I get stuck with a whole room full of goods and can't sell 'em? Got to have a little payment against possible storage costs."

  Esther frowned. She did not like Brannan, but he was all she had for the moment, and she had to make a start somewhere. She opened her carryall bag and handed him a pouchful of nuggets and dust. "Will this do for now?"

  "Plenty, plenty," he said, untying the purse strings and staring greedily as the lantern light gleamed on the gold. "I'm not a hard man, missy. Just had to know you had the means…"

  "There is more where that came from."

  "I don't doubt it, listenin' to you. Be interestin' to see how successful you are with your arrangement in San Francisco."

  "What you're saying is that if my arrangement does not work out, you will keep the gold I just gave you."

  "Missy, my time is worth money. But you said you could do it. So what's there to worry about?"

  Esther quashed a sudden tremor of fear. "It will take a little time, Mr. Brannan. But you shall have the goods."

  "Shall we shake on it then?" he said, coming out from behind a long table upon which glasses and bottles of liquor sat waiting for the tradesmen and transient prospectors who were just now finishing dinner inside the fort. He took her hand, held on to it, and squinted to see through the veil. Esther tried to pull away. "You're a pretty one, all right."

  "Thank you."

  "Why don't you stay for a while 'fore you go on to San Francisco?"

  She pulled her hand free. "My time is just as valuable as yours, Mr. Brannan."

  He laughed. "So it is, so it is." He took a step backward. "No offense."

  "None taken." She turned. "If you will excuse me now, I will be going back to my room."

  "Leavin' on the early boat?"

  "Yes."

  "I'll tell you a little secret," he said. "Now that we've made our deal."

  "And what is that, Mr. Brannan? That you knew all along you could sell just about anything I could lay my hands on in San Francisco?"

  He doubled over as a deep laugh rumbled up out of his throat. "That's right. I can tell you there'll be no end to what we can sell in these parts. I was there. Showed 'em the gold I had and they wouldn't believe me. Less'n a month ago, right on the main street of San Francisco. Now look at 'em. Practically crawlin' over one another to get at it, like ants after spilled sugar."

  * * *

  Esther thought about Brannan as she stood on the forward deck of Sutter's launch with the cloth bag containing five pouches of gold pressed firmly between her ankles. Leaning one gloved hand on the port gunwale, she took off her hat and veil and let the breeze unfurl her long, dark hair as she gazed down the last stretch of the wide river. There was no cargo aboard the San Francisco-bound launch, no one else except the pilot, and he was back in the raised cabin, not near enough to see the pale scar on her face even if she turned.

  She was glad to be alone; she needed time to collect her thoughts. Despite what Sutter had told her earlier in the year, she had not been prepared for the sight of so many tents, crude wooden lean-tos, shanties, and scores of men working in the streams and along the riverbanks, riding horses and pack mules, sawing, hammering, panning, picking, and shoveling in and around Coloma.

  She looked up. Two other boats were moving upstream, loaded to the gunwales with cargo and male passengers. Self-consciously, Esther put on her hat and hesitantly returned friendly waves. Even at a distance of thirty yards, she could see the picks and shovels and metal pans. There was no doubt about where they were headed. Thinking of them, of Brannan's willingness to sell for her on a consignment basis, and of what she had witnessed during the last three days, the last of her uncertainty vanished.

  The launch left the mouth of the river and turned southwest into a stunningly wide bay. For the remainder of the afternoon, Esther sat on a wooden locker pondering Sutter's predicament and marveling at the serene, multifaceted beauty of the inland waters and the low hills that encircled them like an enormous necklace of unmatched, gray-green jewels. It was still light when the strait John Frémont had named the Golden Gate materialized out of the sunset haze in the distance. Esther gasped as the launch drew closer and the channel's size and splendor became apparent. But even that did not match her astonishment when the pilot turned the vessel around the near headland of a deep cove and San Francisco came into view.

  Thirty

  The last time Sutter had described Yerba Buena to Esther, more than a year before, he had left her with an impression: a small village of perhaps fifty humble and haphazardly scattered wood and adobe houses and a population of about two hundred. What Esther saw now was a town at least four times as large with more than a dozen stores, two hotels, a number of warehouses along the shore, several
wharves, perpendicular unpaved streets—and, strangely, a good deal fewer than half as many people as Sutter had indicated. It did not make sense. Except for the crowd of men waiting among the crates of cargo on the wharf, the town seemed almost as empty as the windblown sand dunes that surrounded it. Esther turned and scanned the dozen or more ships that lay anchored offshore and just outside the cove. Nothing moved on any of them.

  When the launch docked, several of the men waiting to board tipped their caps and good-naturedly invited her to join them on their journey to the gold fields. Esther ignored them and walked on, up one street and then right at a corner in the general direction of a "hotel" sign she remembered seeing from the launch. It was not in sight, so when she came to another rude intersection, she glanced back down toward the waterfront. The hotel was not down that street either, but she noted the building upon which "Blue Star Shipping Company" was painted in white letters. A single lamp burned in one window.

  Gusts of cold, early evening wind blew up from the cove and chilled her as she continued on, disoriented by these new, tightly packed surroundings. She passed an empty butcher shop, a vacant tailor's establishment, a shoemaker's with the door open and no one inside. Signs in French, German, Russian, and Chinese increased her unsettled feeling. At the next corner she saw the hotel sign over the rooftops a few streets farther on. A woman and her child crossed the street ahead as Esther turned toward it.

  Another woman watched her from the window of a dressmaker's shop as she hurried past. She saw a few more people and felt comforted. The sun dropped behind the hills to the west. Although it was still light, the first coils of a night fog were rolling in. The entire town suddenly took on an unearthly translucent amber hue.

  She turned the last corner and started toward the hotel. At first, she paid the relatively tall, well-proportioned man walking toward her from the next cross street no mind. But then she realized that something about the way he walked, the way his shoulders were set, the way his arms moved seemed familiar. Her pulse quickened as he approached. At a distance of twenty feet she knew it was Alex Todd.

  She saw him smile courteously and tip his hat just before she tilted her head downward and passed him. She held her breath as she heard him continue on. Then his footsteps stopped. She knew he had turned around and was watching her, felt it. Three years. A small part of her screamed silently to turn around, drop the cloth bag, run and throw her arms around him, tell him all that had happened, sob it out against his chest and… Three years… She thought of the scar… the missing fingers… the dead baby… Mosby… His son… Three years. I cannot stop, she said to herself, I cannot go back. I must not give in.

  She was certain he was still watching, observing the way she walked as she had observed him. He could not possibly have seen her face, but God, she thought, will he remember this dress? She continued on past the entrance to the hotel. The thought that he had not come out of this establishment registered in her mind. She began rocking her shoulders, taking wider, swinging steps and bouncing a little on the balls of her feet. Anything; anything to walk like someone else, prevent him from recognizing movements that no doubt were still indelibly traced in his mind.

  "Elizabeth?" he called out as she turned the corner.

  Without looking back, she began walking faster, uphill, away from the hotel. At the next intersection she crossed the street diagonally and glanced back. He was following her. She began to run. She turned left into a dirt alley behind a row of houses and then right into another. She came to a broad street and briefly slowed to a walk, her breath coming in short gasps. She looked back again. Oh, God, he is pursuing me now. He had just come out of the last alley and was walking fast.

  Turning at the next corner, she ran downhill toward the waterfront and a street that veered left past warehouses and wharves. A block to the west a lamp turned on in what appeared in the glowing darkness to be a large, barnlike structure. As Esther approached it, she saw that the place had once been a large stable. Now a series of canvass-walled enclosures hung from an attached shed roof along one side. Another lamp, then a third, flamed on behind two separate tent-units.

  She peered back through patches of blowing fog and saw a man's figure at the last corner she had turned. He was standing still, looking in her direction. She went into the building. Beyond the bare pine planks of the entrance hallway, another door led to the central area of the stable. It had been converted into an enormous room. An unvarnished subfloor had been laid in; one wall was painted a garish red, but the others were only whitewashed. A girl wearing a camisole dotted with eyelets, long white bloomers, black stockings, and buttoned, high-heeled walking boots sat sprawled in a chair reading a newspaper. Near her a glowing, potbellied stove stood by the far wall. The girl did not look up.

  Another young woman in cheap cloth slippers and a dirty nightdress came out through a door to Esther's right. Scowling, she glanced at Esther and continued on without a word through a stall and an opening into one of the tents. Esther turned to the doorway the girl had come from and found it filled by a fat, slatternly woman with dyed red hair.

  The fat woman puffed on a thin cheroot and gave Esther a quick, appraising look. "I'm sorry, honey. But you've come to the wrong place at the wrong time. All the regulars are up to the gold mines. There ain't no business. I had to send three girls away this mornin', and like as not, we'll all be packin' up and movin' to Coloma before the month is out."

  "I'm not looking for… work," Esther said, moving closer to her. The woman reeked of cheap perfume and sweat.

  "Well, what is it you want, honey?"

  Esther took five silver dollars out of her purse. "A man is following me…"

  The woman laughed. "We should all be so lucky."

  "No, please, listen to me! A man is following me, and I must avoid him. Is there someplace I can hide? And will you send him away if he comes in?"

  The fat woman cocked an eyebrow. "I don't want no trouble."

  "There'll be no trouble, I promise you. Please! I'll give you five more dollars if you'll do it."

  The woman hesitated a moment, then shrugged her shoulders. "That's more than I've taken in since Sunday. Come on in here."

  Grabbing Esther by the arm, the woman led her through a makeshift office and into a small storage area screened off by a slit curtain. "You wait in here." She hesitated for a moment, then arched one eyebrow again. "You sure you got five more dollars?"

  Esther opened her bag, found a ten-dollar gold piece in a separate coin purse, and gave it to her. "Please… it's so important to me."

  The fat woman put her finger to her lips as they both heard the front door open and close.

  "It's him," Esther whispered. "I just know it!"

  The madam bustled out and greeted Alex. "Girls!" she shouted hoarsely. Turning back to him she asked, "What's your pleasure this evening, sir? I don't have but three young ladies with me at the moment, but…"

  "I'm looking for a young woman who came in here just a few minutes ago."

  "Got her all picked out already, do you?"

  "You don't understand," Alex said. "I…"

  "Rebecca just came in awhile ago. Here she is now."

  The three prostitutes walked up and stood in a ragged line, facing Alex. He shook his head and tried to explain. "Not one of your girls, I'm not…"

  "Rebecca," the fat woman said. "Let him see your titties. He's taken a fancy to you."

  "For God's sake, the girl I'm looking for…"

  "Maybe you'd prefer Dora," the fat woman said. "Show him your bum, Dora." She turned to Alex, leering and nudging him in the ribs. "She loves it that way."

  "I'm not interested in any of your girls!" Alex said, raising his voice. "Can't you understand?"

  "Well, there's no need to get sharp about it," the fat woman said. "What do you want?"

  "I'm sorry… I… another girl came in. I don't believe she works here."

  "Hasn't no one come in but Rebecca."

  For a momen
t Alex came into Esther's view. Through the curtain slit she saw him tilt his hat back and nervously rub his forehead. The look on his face was so frustrated and forlorn it almost brought tears to her eyes. For a moment she felt an almost overwhelming urge to walk out and spare Alex what he was going through.

  "The girl I'm talking about is taller than anyone here," Alex said. "She… I know her personally."

  "Where'd you see her?" the fat woman asked.

  "From up the street. I'm sure she came in here."

  "Mister, in that fog out there, Rebecca could'a looked like anyone."

  Esther bit her lip. I cannot help him, she thought, tears streaming down her face. I must do what I have to do.

  "Damn it," Alex said tenaciously. "I saw her. I followed her for at least six blocks."

  "From where?"

  "From in front of the Alta Hotel. She came in here. I know it!"

  "Rebecca just come from there," she said, turning to the girl and covertly winking. "Didn't you, Rebecca?"

  "Yes, ma'am," Rebecca said.

  "She just come back from givin' someone what she could give you just as nice. What do you say, mister?"

  Esther winced at the look of revulsion on Alex's face. She watched as the expression faded and he stared at the woman, unconvinced. He started to say something, then gave up. Oh, dear God, forgive me, she thought. Forgive me, please… Forgive me, Alex… I simply cannot… I must not… now or ever, no matter how much I would like to. She stood trembling, holding her breath until Alex finally shook his head in disgust and she heard him walk back out through the front door.

  After a few moments the madam came back into the office. "He's gone, honey. I had one of the girls get dressed and follow him a ways. He won't be back."

  "Thank you," Esther said.