by Daniel Knapp
Esther sighed. "Their leaving saddens me for many reasons."
"It has been a great strain on Miwokan," Murietta continued. "He wishes to keep them together, and he is also deeply troubled that soon there will not be enough left to keep his promises to you."
Esther was shocked to see how much Miwokan had aged when he greeted them at the village. There was something else, something beyond what she knew was eating away at him, but she could not put her finger on it. When she embraced him, he quickly pulled away and called out to Solana. The Indian woman burst out of their hut, trailing the two boys behind her, delighted to see Esther after so long. Solana kissed Esther on both cheeks and hugged her, but then she glanced past Esther and saw it: Miwokan couldn't keep his eyes off her. Quickly, she turned her attention to the two children. Esther couldn't understand why Solana, too, had retreated emotionally, but she let it go for the moment as each of the tribesmen and their wives came out into the heavy drizzle to welcome her.
Later, Esther asked Murietta to accompany her to Sacramento the following morning. Over her shoulder the Californio saw a fleeting but unmistakable look of pain and longing cross Miwokan's face. Esther missed it, and she was somewhat surprised when Murietta wisely decided to return and wait for her at the cabin. Then she couldn't understand why Miwokan suddenly found things to do in the rain and did not reappear all afternoon.
For a moment she wondered if it had to do with the feelings he once had for her. But I have been gone for months, she thought. And Murietta has been here. Remembering what Miwokan had said about never letting his jealousy dominate him again, she dismissed the idea. Still troubled, she sat with Solana in the central hut watching two-and-a-half-year-old Moses, dressed in deerskins, resolutely playing simple games with Mwamwaash and several other children their age. For a while she was preoccupied with the boy and what she should do about him. Aside from the ripple of unexplained uneasiness in Miwokan and his wife, a feeling of peace reigned at the village. Her apprehensions about Moses' safety suddenly seemed exaggerated, and she decided to leave him with Solana for a while longer. Finally, her thoughts back on Miwokan, she turned to the Indian woman.
"Your husband acts strangely toward me. Is he not well? Is there something I don't know?"
Solana remained silent.
Esther reached out and took her hand. "Tell me. Please. Is he ill?"
"Only here and here," Solana said, touching her temple and then her heart. "He is saddened by the loss of so many brothers. Saddened more by how many he knows will leave here."
"It's the gold," Esther said, thinking of the legend. Suddenly, she was so forlorn she had to bite her lip to keep from crying. "And he thinks it is my fault."
"You are a part of it," Solana said guardedly. "But not in the way you think. In many ways you have helped him keep them together. They work for you, their chief's sunsister, and Miwokan. They love both of you, and that binds them. They have some of the gold without leaving, because you are generous to them."
"I wanted them to share…"
"I know. They could have had much more. I think it is wise that Miwokan did what he did. And no one here would speak against it. But they hear how much more they can have elsewhere. They believe what Miwokan says about the sun's anger is true only here. Their brothers come and show them the bright things they have bought, and pour Claussen's whiskey into them. It does not take much after that."
"Claussen?"
"If not from that man's still, there are many others who make it."
"But whites are forbidden to sell liquor to them."
"Some here are secretly going to the store Claussen has made in Placerville. I have seen them go in."
"But the new laws—"
"Mean nothing," Solana interrupted, "when an Indian has gold and men like Claussen want it."
"The gold again. And I am a part of it all."
"Do not trouble yourself with that. He knows that if you had never been born, this would have come."
As they ate by firelight in the central hut, one side of which had been torn away and enlarged with canvas, Miwokan drifted off in his own thoughts. He scarcely looked at Esther. When she spoke to him, he answered as briefly as possible. With his fur cape off and the dancing light of the fire etching the deep creases in his wan face, his loss of weight was startlingly obvious. When he finally rose and left the hut, most of his meal uneaten, Esther experienced a sudden stab of anguish.
She weighed the effect on Miwokan if she stayed at the cabin with Murietta, and she decided to remain overnight at the camp. Settled in an abandoned hut, wrapped in furs and wearing only her chemise, she lay staring for hours at the fire. Unable to sleep, she pulled one of the furs around her, slipped on some moccasins, moved the bark door covering to one side, and stepped through the entrance flap into the clearing.
The rain clouds had passed. Moonless, the night sky was awash with brilliant stars. She looked straight up and saw the pale white streak of the Milky Way overhead. She wondered for a moment how far away it was, but then a sound and a movement to her right caught her attention.
Two human shadows played against a thin, canvas-covered enlargement of Miwokan's shelter. At first Esther was puzzled, but then it became obvious that inside, Solana was attempting to arouse her husband's sexual interest. Esther felt a tremor in her loins. Embarrassed, she began to turn away, but the shadows moved again, riveting her attention and overriding her normal sense of propriety. The breasted shadow of Solana hovered, now, over her husband. She massaged and then mounted him and moved slowly up and down. Almost overcome by long-suppressed desire, Esther forced herself to turn away. She had just entered her own hut when she heard Miwokan growl, "No!"
Esther turned just inside the entrance to her hut and saw Miwokan push Solana off, rise, and come stalking out of the hut. He stopped and looked around but did not see Esther watching him. For a moment he gazed straight ahead, then glanced quickly at her hut. She saw him take in a deep breath, let it out, then walk, head bent, across the central clearing. Esther waited a moment, then stepped outside. Across the camp she saw Miwokan disappear into the sunken sweathouse. It is I, she thought. Sadness enveloped her. Sighing, not knowing what she could do, she was about to return to her sleeping throw when she saw Solana watching her from in front of the main hut. Gathering the fur around her again, Esther walked slowly to where the Indian woman stood. There were tears in her eyes. Esther reached out and embraced her.
"It fills me with pain to see him this way. I couldn't sleep. I came out of the hut for a moment, and I couldn't help but see…"
"Go to him," Solana said, quickly regaining control of her emotions.
"Go to him? I don't understand."
"Go to him and heal him—any way you can."
"But you are his wife. He loves you."
Solana looked at her and smiled sadly. "Know that I have no bad feelings for you as I speak this. I know you have done no wrongs. But you are more of his pain than anyone or anything else. He feels a hollow place in him since you are gone. He would have it another way, I know that. He would be done with it. But he cannot kill what is in him for you."
"But he loves you. And you love him."
"Each is true," Solana said, her eyes drifting downward. "That is why he has not sent me away. And that is why I ask you to do this thing."
"But I do not feel… I have never…"
"You make too much of it, as all whites do. It will be no different than lying with someone sick and cold."
"You don't understand! It is more than that to me. I can't…"
Solana's eyes flashed with anger. "You will not do this for him, your sunbrother? Or for me, when I care for your child as my own?"
"Oh, God. I can't!"
"You can. And you will. You have the strength to do it. He lay upon you when you were like ice. He carried you to Sutter when that was not enough to heal you. For two of your years, his people have worked in the icy river so you would have the gold. He found a way to do t
his only because you wanted it. Go to him!"
At the entrance to the sweathouse, Esther trembled as she watched Miwokan inside. Stark naked, he stood a yard or so from the central firepit, fanning embers and new logs he had placed beneath an ingeniously suspended platform of smooth, round stones. There was no one else in the large, open-peaked enclosure. Torn by conflicting emotions, she stared, mesmerized by the sight of his extraordinary body. Confused as well as fascinated, she watched as he poured a finely ground powder into a large bowl of water and threw it on the heated stones. A cloud of steam rose above the fire as she stepped into the hut. Lost in his own thoughts, he did not see or hear her. She could not take her eyes off him. In the soft firelight, the loss of weight served only to accentuate the remarkable musculature of his torso, arms, and legs, the perfect shape and proportion of his dark genitals.
She inhaled silently, and her lungs were filled with the pungent steam that was rising and spreading out from the stones. He put more of the powder in the bowl, refilled it with water from a barrel, and placed it on the warm rock-wall of the firepit. Her heart raced as she inhaled deeply again, trying not to be heard. Suddenly, then, in the midst of her indecisiveness, her soul searching, the tension left her and she began to feel as if she were floating.
She looked at his face as he tamped some of the finely ground powder into the deep bowl of a long pipe. She found herself wanting to reach out and smother the sadness in his eyes with a mother's kisses, take his head in her arms and soothe him like a child. Her gaze dropped to his loins again, and a wave of raw animal desire washed over her. For a second, as she continued to breathe in the moist, aromatic steam that now filled the hut, fear and reluctance licked at her mind. Then, in rapid succession, she thought obliquely of Alex, Murietta, and John Alexander. Desire, compassion, tenderness, and sexual arousal blended together, flooding through her and wiping away all thought. She dropped the fur on the earth floor of the hut and took a step toward him.
He heard the sound, turned, and frowned. "This place is forbidden to women."
Slightly giddy now, she stopped two yards from him and smiled. "You are the chief. You can change the rule."
He sighed. "I have changed one rule too many for you already."
"What is it you put in the water? In your pipe? It makes me feel wonderful."
"You cannot be here," he said evenly. But she had seen his eyes fastened on her breasts, rising and falling beneath her chemise.
"Tell me what you put in the water."
"The crushed seeds of a desert flower."
"What is it called?"
"In your language it would be called 'the dust of living dreams.' Why have you come here?"
She took another step toward him, breathing deeply. She no longer felt her body. She could scarcely remember who she was. "I have come to offer myself to you."
"You would do this?" Within the aroma of the steam he could smell her hair, the scent of lilac water, and faint traces of her body. He forced his eyes away from her.
"I have caused you much pain," she said, swaying. "I will wash it away."
"I have a wife." He looked at her again, saw the exquisitely tapered silhouette of her legs through the thin fabric.
"She sent me. She asked me to heal your pain."
He was astonished. "She did this thing?"
"Yes. She loves you. You are her husband. And I love you. You are my sunbrother."
He felt himself begin to engorge, rise, then saw her smile as she watched it happen. He took a step forward and pulled the chemise up over her head. For a moment he stared at the long-imagined lines of her full breasts and pale, slender body, the dark hair at the base of her flat stomach. Almost overcome, he swung his right arm back, throwing the chemise behind him. Wadded, it hit the bowl of steaming water on the wall of the firepit and knocked it over onto the red-hot stones. The water hissed, and a spray of boiling droplets struck both of them. Tears formed in Esther's eyes from the sharp, brief, stinging pain. As the droplets burned against his leg, Miwokan suddenly understood.
It is a sign, he thought. The sun is testing me. In the clarity of that fleeting moment of pain, he realized the full extent of his wife's love, how much Esther loved him to be here, doing what she had no wish for. Then, as he reached out and gently brushed away the tears brimming on Esther's eyelids, it became clear to him that lying with her would only make things worse. She would hate him for it. She would be gone again, and the remembered joy would haunt him. Solana would be with him, but no matter how much she loved him, thought this would heal him, it would change things forever between them. They are women, he thought. They mean well, but they cannot see what this would do to all of us. I will not be a woman, and I will not fail in this.
Esther moved forward and touched his cheek. My God, she thought, his face is beautiful.
"We will smoke this together first," he said, relighting the pipe with a glowing twig and handing it to her.
"Why?" she asked.
"It will make it easier for you. Better."
"I have never smoked. How shall I do it?"
He placed the tip of the pipe shaft on her lips. "As you would breathe the air in with your mouth."
She sucked at the pipe and coughed. "Wait," she said, recovering. "I will try again."
He watched as she drew in the smoke and inhaled it this time. "Again." She took in a long draw. "Close your mouth and hold it in your body until you cannot any longer." He saw her eyes tear and glaze over and caught her as she staggered. She let the smoke out. "And again."
When she passed out, he gently dropped the chemise back over her body, wrapped the fur around her, and picked her up in his arms. Still naked, he carried her across the snow-covered clearing. Twenty feet from the entrance to her hut, he veered and went into his own. Smiling at Solana, he laid Esther down next to the sleeping boys in one corner, covered her, then turned and walked to his waiting wife.
Once, when the effect of the narcotic had almost worn off, Esther opened her eyes in the middle of what she thought was a dream. She heard gentle laughter from beyond a fire that glowed inexplicably in the center of Miwokan's hut, rather than her own. She drifted off, then awakened again. She saw and heard them together, Miwokan above his wife, the two of them moving rhythmically beyond the embers, shadows playing on their bronze, moist bodies, until, finally, she heard them both moan with joy.
Forty-five
An overcast sky obscured the early evening stars as Esther emerged from the doorway of Sacramento's City Hotel just after dinner. The rains of December and the first week of 1850 had turned Front Street, along the Embarcadero, into a bog. Turning left, Esther began walking the short distance beyond the C. M. and T. Company building to the Eagle Theater. She was early, and though the clouds were threatening again, she decided to stroll a block or two before coming back to meet Warren Barnett for the evening performance.
She passed G. B. Stevens's store on the corner of Front and J Streets, glanced left, and shook her head. A half-block away a crater at least two-dozen feet in diameter marred the middle of the street where an oak tree had been callously ripped from the earth. On both sides wooden houses and stores had been built almost as far as the eye could see. Crossing J, Esther passed a long, clapboard warehouse, the Eldorado Exchange, and then a grocery. She stepped around a Maidu Indian dressed in a red-flannel shirt and rumpled trousers two sizes too big. He was too drunk to feel the nip of a raw, slowly rising wind on his bruised, bare feet. Up the street, a group of winter-idled miners brushed past another intoxicated Maidu, jostling and almost knocking him off his feet as they entered the Elephant House Hotel, bulging pouches hanging from their belts.
They have "come to see the elephant," Esther thought gloomily, employing the forty-niners' slang term for California and the gold fields. They are seeing it—and the Indians are feeling its sharp-pointed tusks.
Esther turned back as a light drizzle began to fall, and took a seat in the back row of the empty theater where Barnett
could easily spot her when he arrived. How long will it be before more of Miwokan's men succumb completely to the whiskey, the gold and the gambling? Esther wondered. She sighed as her thoughts turned to Solana and her husband. As clearly as though it were happening again, she pictured saying good-bye to Solana three mornings earlier.
She had awakened in their hut, groggy and beset by the worst headache she had ever experienced. The village was so silent she could hear the rush of the rain-swollen river more than fifty yards away. Mortified, she stared mutely out through the hut entrance at the sweathouse. Solana prepared breakfast and helped her dress without mention of the previous night, her husband, or how Esther had ended up sleeping near the children. Miwokan was gone, off on a hunting sortie with several young braves. Despondent, scarcely aware that the sun had finally broken through the storm clouds, Esther slowly prepared to leave. She was about to climb into her saddle, ride to the cabin and then on to Sacramento in the buckboard with Murietta, when Solana reached out and touched the amulet hanging from her neck.
"Perhaps the gold heart made it work out well," the Indian woman said, smiling.
"Work out well?" Esther gasped. "I can never come here again!"
Solana stroked Esther's hair. "But nothing happened."
"Everything happened!" Esther said, trying not to cry.
"You passed out from what was in the pipe, and the sweating air."
"But that doesn't mean he…"
"What I thought… what I hoped would happen, happened. He saw what it would do to us, to his friendship with you. He knew how much I loved him to do this thing. And he carried you back here after giving you enough of the smoke to make you sleep. Then he came to me in our bed as he did when he was a young brave. And again, before anyone was awake this morning."
Esther's mouth dropped open. "And we did not? Nothing happened?"
"Nothing," Solana said, smiling happily.
"You actually thought it would not happen?"
"I knew two things could happen. That he would see things clearly, as he did. Or that you would lie with him, and afterward you would never come back. In time, knowing you hated him for it, knowing you would not be with him again, the pain in him would pass and he would force you from his mind. Which way did not matter. I knew that one or the other would give him back to me."
