California Woman (Daughters of the Whirlwind Book 1)

by Daniel Knapp

  She sat there for almost half an hour, going over what she could do, what would most absorb her. A few minutes before she collected herself, dried her eyes, and got up, Solana quietly came back and peered through the door at her, unseen.

  The Indian woman went back down the hallway and the stairs and waited. She weighed the extreme measures Esther had taken not to reveal herself to Ralston and Todd. She thought of the day they had found her on the river ice… pictured the baby, ice blue, cradled in her arms… remembered the heretofore unexplained slightly wistful look in Esther's eyes whenever Todd's name had come up in conversation with Miwokan and Murietta. And then she nodded to herself as it finally began to come together.

  There was little doubt in her mind that Alex Todd was the dead child's father, that he thought Esther had died with the baby in the mountains, and that Esther wanted it that way.

  Shaking her head sadly, Solana turned her thoughts to the newspaper picture she had seen of the man who had killed so many in her village. She had carried his first name, along with that of the red-bearded man who had killed her husband, in her mind for years. She knew the moustachioed man's last name: Mos-by. She turned the name over in her thoughts as she recalled vaguely the questions she had once overheard Esther asking Murietta about him. Mos-by. Clauss-en. She remembered something about Mosby beating Murietta. She pictured Esther clipping a line drawing of Mosby out of the paper, placing it in a pigeonhole of her desk, and wondered if what he had done to Murietta was all there was to it. Instinctively, she sensed there was more, and guessed that it went back as far as the time before they had found her, half-dead, walking on the ice.

  And then her eyes narrowed and she nodded to herself, smiling as it began to fall into place.

  Sixty-three

  "The man in the top hat, the judge with the whiskers. You watch him always. Why?"

  Esther felt a burst of annoyance with Solana. "I'm not watching anyone!" She softened her voice. "We're simply out for a ride. I needed some air."

  "He is always there when we go in the carriage together."

  "He is? I hadn't noticed. Just coincidence."

  "Many coincidences." Solana clucked and snapped the reins.

  "What are you doing?"

  "We are out for a ride, you said."

  "Stop the carriage. I… I want to rest from the… jouncing."

  "As you wish, Sunsister." Solana gave no hint she knew Esther was trying to conceal her continued observation of Mosby. The tall man and his friends walked up the steps of the state courthouse and disappeared beyond its ten massive pillars.

  "I'm sorry I spoke so sharply," Esther said. "We can drive on now."

  Solana smiled.

  For a moment Esther wondered what Solana knew, if somehow she recognized Mosby. Ridiculous, she thought. She was unconscious while it happened. She toyed with the idea of telling the Indian woman everything. Mosby had been a part of the death of her husband, her son. For an instant she was seized by the conviction that she owed it to Solana, and briefly, guilt over her concealment almost prompted her to speak. But then she wondered what the Indian woman would do, how she would react. Overcome by emotion, would she attempt to kill Mosby and be killed herself? Short of that, she might rob Esther of the chance to take revenge. Sighing with a measure of guilt, Esther decided to remain silent.

  It is true, Solana thought. I feel it. Mosby was the one who had given Esther Moses when she did not want a child. The boy looks too much like him for it not to be true… If it was only what he did to Murietta, she would not be doing this, watching him, thinking of him and almost nothing else when she was not with the children at the school. That is why there was not only one picture of him in Esther's desk now, but many. And if he was a part of the death of Esther's firstborn, then all this could only mean she would one day try to kill him. She had the power of the sun, who was with her, and the power of the white man's money turned from gold. She would try to do it! If she destroyed or changed the place of the pictures in her desk, then it would be clear that the time had come.

  He was the man who had held Mwamwaash in the fire. Solana was certain now. He did not kill Miwokan, but he had been a part of it, and he had killed many others. And she would kill him someday. She was only an Indian. Only a woman. But she would wait until her sunsister found the way and the place, and then she would be there and be the one to kill him. For herself and for Esther.

  Riding back to the school, Esther mused about the year that had passed since they moved to Sacramento. Scarcely two months after returning from Europe she'd closed the San Francisco house again, in the wake of her painful meeting with Ralston and Alex. She recognized now that her move here to the state capitol initially was just to be nearer to the man she had always loved. But after Alex had won his election, resigned from the assembly, and moved back to sit on the bench in San Francisco, Esther had stayed on.

  She worked hard at her original intention—to shut all thought of him out of her mind. She plunged into expanding the Sacramento school; converted its attic into an apartment containing two small bedrooms. Nights, she pored over Ralston's reports. Most of her investments had dipped to only average returns, but the money was literally pouring into her account from the Comstock mines. She had given Ralston leeway to use his own judgment, and he was shoveling at least a quarter of everything he made for her into the Ophir and other mines he virtually controlled now, after pulling together a dozen investors besides Esther. She had been the first, so when the others came in with them, the value of her stock jumped even higher.

  Last but not least, she had avidly followed the activities of Theodore Judah, the builder of the Sacramento Valley Railroad. Ralston kept her abreast of Judah's unsuccessful efforts to form a stock company to underwrite a railroad across the Sierras. After reading Ralston's latest report, she had taken it upon herself to speak to Leland Stanford, her tenant, and two men she was indirectly associated with through Blue Star: the Sacramento hardware merchants, Collis P. Huntington and Mark Hopkins. They had reluctantly agreed to attend one of Judah's almost evangelistic presentations of maps, charts, and figures at the St. Charles Hotel this coming week.

  Other things kept her mind off Alex, as well. The Butterfield Overland Mail was making the trip from St. Louis to San Francisco in twenty-three days. With the inception of the transatlantic cable, news from Europe was reaching America in twelve hours. Dispatches from New York and Washington as well as London and Paris were on the presses in San Francisco and Sacramento more rapidly than ever before. The news from the East was ominous. From the tenor of the reports, secession and war seemed inevitable.

  Barnett had been in Washington since his election to the U.S. Senate the year before. He had outmaneuvered Gwin in California, won most of the political patronage Gwin controlled as a condition for supporting the Southerner's reelection. Outspokenly anti- slavery, Barnett had been received icily by President Buchanan, who saw to it that the patronage remained in Gwin's hands. Barnett was back in California now, for the state Democratic convention currently being held in Sacramento. She hoped he could regain some of the political power that was slipping from his grasp. They planned to have dinner together. Perhaps she could be of some help to him.

  By the time the convention started, thousands of Californians had crossed the Sierras, drawn by the extraordinary yields of the Comstock. Ralston was increasing what were now their joint holdings in the mines. Her profits were beginning to rival the initial sums she had made in the gold fields. At first that had bothered her, but she quickly suppressed her distaste for precious metal. She knew now that she would probably need all the money, all the power she could accumulate if she were ever to have what she wanted most.

  For despite all the other interests that absorbed her, her greatest preoccupation was with Mosby. During that year in Sacramento she took every opportunity to observe his movements. She knew where he lived, where he ate, the women he spent time with. She sat in the gallery and watched him, contemptuous
and coldly efficient, in his courtroom. By now she knew he was virtually unreachable. Hated by political opponents, former vigilantes, and those he had dealt with harshly on the bench, he was accompanied by a bodyguard everywhere. During the day, cronies surrounded him. At night, two Sacramento policemen watched his house until midnight, when a pair of state militiamen took over. He was inaccessible at the courthouse. In the streets she rarely saw him unaccompanied by other men. On the rare occasions when he went to a restaurant, the bodyguard kept the curious away from his table, and friends usually occupied several tables around him.

  Esther had again contemplated having him assassinated, but the chances for success were slim and the risk of exposure too great. In any case she still considered that method morally unacceptable. And she still wanted to strike the avenging blow—in a manner that would provide at least a chance of bringing it off undetected, of surviving and savoring her accomplishment.

  So she had continued to observe him, follow him and his cluster of bullies at a distance whenever she could. She knew just about everything she needed to know about him now. Sooner or later he would reveal an Achilles heel, uncover for her the ways and means she was watching for. Now, as she and Solana returned to the school from the latest of her rides, she knew she would have to devise methods of surveillance that were less obvious. If Solana were suspicious, others might react the same way.

  The next time Esther rode out in her carriage on a reconnaissance mission, she did not take Solana with her. She saw no sign of Mosby that day. And in the late afternoon he did not return as usual to the Supreme Court offices in the Hastings Building at Second and J Streets. On the ride home she did not recognize the red-bearded man carrying the case into the gunsmith's on M Street as she drove past. Five years of trapping in the Rockies and a prison term for manslaughter in Texas had slimmed him down considerably.

  "French dueling pistols," the gunsmith said, fingers splayed on the counter of his immaculate shop. "Beauties. I don't see nothing wrong with them."

  "There ain't nothin' wrong with 'em." Isaac Claussen pointed one of the long-barreled, understocked weapons at the gunsmith's face and pulled the trigger. He laughed as the hammer snapped home and the gunsmith flinched. "Nothin' wrong at all. Want you to file down the trigger mechanism for me, that's all. On both of ‘em."

  "Hair triggers, huh? Now why would you want me to do that?"

  "You'd be smart to mind your own fuckin' business," Claussen said, glaring. "Now and in the future, if you know what's good for you."

  Esther passed the swarm of children playing in the schoolyard. At the mailbox the happy noise of their shrieking and laughter faded as she opened the evening edition of the Sacramento Union and began reading the first of two adjoining stories on the front page. Her mouth dropped open. Luther Mosby had been one of Gwin's most vitriolic allies against Barnett in the past, but this time he had gone even further:

  Barnett is an arch traitor to the Democratic Party. The men who follow him are personal chattels of a single individual who has not even kept his pork-barrel promises of make-work jobs. A man they are ashamed of but beholden to for pathetic political crumbs he has fed them through the years. They belong heart, body, and breeches to the hoodlum son of an illiterate Irish, New York City Tammany shoulder-striker and ballot- box stuffer. Their souls are owned by the devil incarnate, Warren Barnett.

  Esther grew more apprehensive as she read Barnett's caustic response:

  I once called Luther Mosby the only honest man on the California Supreme Court. That was when he was one of the few who stood up against the vigilantes. I was mistaken. I donated two hundred dollars to a San Francisco newspaper to defend Judge Mosby when he was incarcerated by the Committee of Thirteen in the matter of the stabbing of a vigilante. I realize now that that was a mistake as well. As much as I detest all the vigilantes stood for, California might have been better served if they had had their way with the man. If I were to be asked now, I have no doubt whatsoever that I would not offer the opinion that Judge Mosby is an honest man.

  Esther was temporarily stunned, almost as much by the discovery that Barnett had once helped Mosby as by the severity of the exchange. She was so engrossed by what she had read, so gripped by an inexplicable certainty that things would get worse, she didn't realize the children around her were shouting playfully that the dinner bell was ringing. One of them finally brought her to her senses when he tugged innocently on her glove and almost pulled it off her disfigured left hand.

  "Hold your forefinger out straight, judge, against the front of the housing when you lift it. And don't move sudden with it. Otherwise, the hair trigger'll—"

  Mosby turned to Claussen icily. "You really think I need telling how to handle a weapon, any kind of weapon?"

  "Just—"

  "Just shut up, Isaac." Turning, Mosby slowly lifted the dueling pistol and aimed at the target tacked to the privy behind his house. Holding the ball-and-cap model steadily, he fired off the single round. Dead center. He smiled at Claussen. "Here. Load it up. I want to see you do it just in case the son of a bitch surprises us and shows some courage sooner than I expect."

  Claussen carried the loaded pistol to the same spot, aimed, and fired. The ball went through the rim of the outer circle.

  "Stay here and practice until you can put two or three shots in a row right in the center circle," Mosby said. "Unless you want to lose the chance of gettin' fat as a bloated pig again."

  "Ain't no need to talk to me that way, Luther."

  Mosby stopped without turning back. "I'll talk to you any goddamned way I please, and don't you forget it! And the name is Judge Mosby, you hear? You might also try to remember, if your pea brain is up to it, that a letter from me got you out of prison five years early. Wouldn't take much to have you thrown back in."

  r for Barnett preoccupied Esther as she drove to the St. Charles Hotel the following evening to attend the Judah presentation. For the sake of convenience she had arranged to meet Barnett in the dining room after the meeting. In a second-floor suite, she listened absently while Judah made his fiery pitch to Huntington, Hopkins, Stanford, and a small group of men Stanford windily introduced before they all sat down. One of them was an enormous, ill-tempered man named Charles Crocker, a dry-goods wholesaler she had been competing with through the past ten years. With him was one of his two half-brothers, William "Bull" Carter.

  Esther had seen no reason to wear a veil untiBull Carter turned and whispered to her:"Haven't I met you somewhere before?"Esther pictured him toppling over after she'd struck him with the pistol the day they whipped Murietta in Placerville. "I don't believe so, Mr. Carter." She smiled and quickly turned away, hoping his eyes were weak as well as piggishly small.

  Carter smiled at her several times as Judah slowly reinforced the cautious support of the men he had won over, but she knew from the transparent expression on Carter’s face that he was interested in far more than determining where he had seen her. To avoid him, she went downstairs to join Barnett before Huntington, Hopkins, Stanford, and Crocker had themselves voted officers of the company and formally concluded the meeting. Barnett was waiting for her at a table in the far corner of the buzzing, smoke-filled dining room. The waiter had scarcely taken their order when Esther voiced her apprehensions about Mosby.

  "Just political barbs." Barnett laughed, waving the matter off.

  "But you don't know what a vicious, evil man he is. He's capable of murder."

  "Now what brings you to say something like that? Fiery, aggressive, yes. But vicious? Evil?"

  She was searching for a way to answer him when Barnett's eyes moved up over her head, and she heard the hoarse voice of a man standing directly behind her.

  "Senator Barnett, I take personal offense at your remarks about my friend, Judge Mosby, in yesterday's paper."

  Her skin prickling, Esther turned and gasped in surprise. He was thinner, but there was no mistaking the man. It was Isaac Claussen.

  "I'm sorry you feel
that way," Barnett said calmly, not moving.

  "Sorry's not enough, senator. Or should I call you almost ex-senator?"

  "You have the right to any words you choose, so long as they are spoken with the knowledge that you are in the presence of a lady."

  Frightened, Esther nonetheless felt the urge to leap up and slap Claussen across the face. He glanced down and, not recognizing her, shrugged.

  "I said sorry wasn't enough," Claussen repeated.

  "What did you have in mind, sir?" Barnett countered. "Perhaps I could arrange for a free meal in the kitchen—if you are as hungry and impoverished as you look."

  The waiter punctuated Barnett's remark by delivering the salad. Several men at nearby tables cackled. Claussen stared them down. He turned back to Barnett. "Now you gone and insulted me, too!" he bellowed. "How does you gentlefolks say it? If you will do me the honor, senator, I'd like to settle this up the river aways. Tomorra mornin' at dawn."

  The room was suddenly silent.

  "You must have practiced that little speech for some time to recite it so well," Barnett drawled sarcastically. Delighted, the men at the surrounding tables laughed again. "But to no good purpose, I'm afraid. I do not accept challenges from gentlemen who are—if you will forgive me—beneath my station in life." Barnett turned from Claussen and commenced on his salad.

  The onlookers howled.

  "You… you can't get away with that kinda crap with me!" Claussen barked, his blotchy face turning red.