California Woman (Daughters of the Whirlwind Book 1)

by Daniel Knapp

  He laughed, but his face quickly resumed an expression of poorly concealed apprehension. "You are one of the most intuitive people I have ever known," he said, suddenly reining his buckboard toward Sacramento's Chinese quarter. "Yes, there is something more. I want you to listen to something someone told me yesterday."

  "Who, for goodness sake? Why all the mystery?"

  "Lewis Keseberg."

  "Keseberg? For God's sake, John! He's one of the last people on earth I'd want to talk to."

  "You won't have to talk to him. Just listen. I think you will want to hear what he has to say."

  "That he didn't murder anyone at Donner Lake? At this point, I don't care if he did or not. He's done enough since—that restaurant, for one thing—to turn my stomach."

  "Be charitable, Esther. I have stayed in touch with the poor man since they tried him at the fort. No matter what he did, he has more than paid for it. I have befriended him through the years, out of pity. Now I am glad I did, and you will be, too, when you hear what he has to say."

  They pulled up in front of an unpainted pine building at the end of a row of shanties. Chinese in pig-tails, baggy pantaloons, and broad, straw sunhats stared at Esther as though she were the first white woman they had ever seen. She noticed a man weave out of the weatherbeaten pine house with a glazed look in his eyes. Another two went inside in quick succession.

  "Wait here," Sutter told her. "I will bring him out He is usually here at this time of day."

  "It's an opium den, isn't it?"

  "Yes."

  "I want to come with you."

  He started to object, but he saw that look in her eyes and decided he was too old to argue with anyone so strong-willed. "Come," he said. "They will not like it, but I doubt they will throw you out."

  Inside, only the light from a few candles illuminated the hallway as a diminutive Chinese led them past a succession of tiny rooms lined with double-tier bunk beds. Men and women, some of them white, reclined on bare, ticking-covered straw mattresses, smoking pipes. A cloying aroma filled the hallways, making it difficult for Esther to breathe.

  Sutter peered into several rooms, finally found Keseberg, and pulled him up off his mattress as though he was also made of straw. He seemed to glide, float next to Sutter as the old man guided him out, nodded down the hallway to Esther, and then steered Keseberg toward a thin rectangle of pale light coming through the outline of a rear door.

  Sutter propped him up against a shed covering stairs to the building's cellar.

  "Tell me again what you told me at the Hock Farm about Judge Todd."

  "Judge Todd, he is a good man." Keseberg's head lolled.

  When Sutter tilted his face up, Esther tried to remember what Keseberg had looked like when he was young. All she could recall was a bulkiness of body, and that he had been fair and somewhat handsome. The man standing before her on rubbery knees bore no resemblance to the Keseberg she had known. Thin, hollow under the eyes, spittle forming on the corners of his mouth, it was all he could do to keep from falling over.

  "Tell me, Lewis. I would not disturb you unless it was important. You know that. I am your friend."

  "He is a good man. I voted for him."

  "And what else did you hear? About Judge Todd?"

  "Kill him. They going to kill him."

  "Who, Lewis? Who said that?"

  "Tall man with moustache. I don't now… The man with moustache hit me… give me this." He turned his head and pointed to a purple bruise in front of his ear. "I joost make mistake. I forget… girls are upstairs. I joost make mistake. I don't know they in room… no close on… with three woman."

  Sutter let him go back inside. "He was in a place like this about two blocks from here. There was another man in the room, apparently also a Southerner. Occasionally, Lewis shows up at the Hock Farm. He did yesterday, and when I asked him about the mark on his face, he told me what he overheard before stumbling against the door and crashing in on them."

  "My God!" Esther said.

  "Do you have any idea who this tall man might be?"

  She stared past Sutter for a moment, then said, "No. Not the faintest idea. I've got to tell Judge Todd."

  Sutter looked at her, recalling the newspaper accounts of the Sharon trial, remembering Mosby and Barnett, hoping she would say more. When she didn't, he took her arm and started around the side of the house toward the waiting buckboard. At the end of the alley, just before they stepped into the street, he stopped and turned to her. "My God," he said, shaking his head. "How could I forget? Lewis said the man mentioned Utah. That they would kill him in Utah."

  Seventy-four

  Aboard the Pacific Union Express

  May 7, 1869

  2:20 P.M.

  Esther closed the diary as the five-car train sneaked around the final portion of a narrow wedge cut into the sheer face of an immense mountain. She glanced at the invitation, no doubt sent and signed by Charles Crocker for all four men responsible for this gleaming ribbon of steel so brazenly thrust through terrain that had once barely offered purchase even to an eagle. Their work, she thought. The ribbon and the agony of so many who worked on it. Death was no stranger to these tracks. An army of Chinese, "Crocker's Pets," had virtually clawed and picked with their bare hands into the ice-cloaked mountain just past, hundreds of them never to see the lush green paddies of their homeland again.

  She wondered how many of these laborers had fallen or been blown off that ledge, when it was just a series of chalk marks on a giant granite blackboard, dotted with scores of men dangling a thousand feet in the air on all too fragile ropes; how many Bull Carter, the other supervisors, foremen, or more favorably treated Caucasian workers had put a bullet through over the slightest provocation. Disquieting as the thought was, it gave her a measure of comfort. What she hoped to do to Mosby was in a different category entirely.

  Cursing the years she had slowed and then abandoned her pursuit, then remembering her revived determination, she turned back to her journal.

  Sacramento

  April 10, 1869

  Oh, God, despite hours of pleading, nothing I say to Alex is any use. I know his promise to carry a weapon to Promontory is merely a sop to appease me. He does not believe Mosby would be so foolish as to take revenge upon him surrounded by so many. He does not realize the merits of my theory that Mosby will not strike the killing blow, that an accomplice or two or more will do it at the very moment Alex and everyone else would least expect such a thing. At the height of the ceremony, for example, when the crowd is roaring, the band and the train whistles drowning out all other sound. Or in a saloon, on a pretext, Mosby far enough away and with enough prestigious companions to preclude complicity.

  Alex points to the fact that Mosby smiled at him! In the Tehama Theater the other night, and then came over and shook hands with him. Well, I know differently. I know that he and his political cronies have won over Governor Stanford to the degree that Mosby will be reinstated to the bar. I cannot believe what money can do! No doubt that among the public so sharply divided on Mosby there are those who not only sympathize with him but contributed to Stanford's campaign, or lent the railroad money in the lean early years, as even Ralston did. They have obviously won Stanford over, called in their favors. Mosby's name on the revised list of those invited to ride the Pacific Union Express is evidence enough of that.

  Well, I too have accepted Crocker's invitation, and at least Sutter will be on board the train. I have slightly less than three weeks to decide if Sutter will play a role, and also to devise the means to put bullet, blade, or poison into Mosby's despicable frame, develop the manner in which I dispose of the body, and come out of it not only alive but unsuspected. Three weeks. I must think carefully.

  No doubt Claussen is already in Utah, awaiting the final moments. Fearing and beholden to Mosby. More likely enslaved in a subtle way. He must hate that. What would he do if Mosby does not arrive? Go on with it, one would guess. I need to find a way to prevent Alex
from reaching there as well. What will he do if neither Mosby nor Alex arrives in Promontory? Return to California? Await further instructions? Yes. And when he realizes Mosby has disappeared, may be dead, he will probably not only withdraw but rejoice.

  The parlor car. The train. Across the Sierras. Over the pass and by Donner Lake. It will come to me. It has to. And it must be before we reach Utah. Mosby is untouchable here, too. There are just too many at the Sacramento Hotel where he stays. The train. The train. Somehow it must be on the train. Must go again to Carter's office, study once more the maps, the notes, the timetables. Three weeks. Oh, God, I must find a way.

  Dutch Flat

  May 7, 1869

  2:30 P.M.

  Esther put on her veiled hat, raised the shade beside her, and eased the window up a bit more. Across the tracks several children played in the midafternoon shadows of an idle railroad sawmill, indifferent to the fanfare along the other side of the train and the passengers who had disembarked during the half-hour station stop. She crossed the aisle of the car, looked out and searched for Alex. She couldn't see him for the swirl of miners and railroad men who crowded around the forward cars. Beyond the station and central buildings of the mining town, houses perched on the mountains that rose almost vertically from the hollow where Dutch Flat lay.

  Mosby was standing there, just below the window, alone, when she went back to her seat. Casually, to anyone else just out for a leisurely smoke, he stood loose-limbed, with his back to the parlor car.

  She leaned closer to the partially open window. "One hour and five minutes after the train leaves Dutch Flat, Mr. Mosby."

  Not turning, he nodded.

  "And no earlier. The doors will be locked until precisely that time. And remember, no one must see you come. Go forward, then back by the roofs. I will open only the rear door." She caught her breath. "You will love the danger, won't you?"

  He shrugged and turned slowly, never looking at her, then walked back around the rear of the parlor car.

  Certainly Katherine McDonnell had told Mosby about her connection with Alex. So Mosby undoubtedly knew who she was. But he could not possibly know she was Elizabeth Purdy Todd. That was what mattered. She guessed he would wait until he'd taken her physically before gloatingly revealing he knew her identity. And that would give her time enough.

  Solana waved to young Todd, then slowly worked her way back through the noisy crowd in front of the rude station. No one paid any attention to her. At the rear of the first passenger unit, she paused for a second, looked about, saw the trainmen had their backs to her, then climbed the stairs. Crossing the metal platform, she quickly went down the steps on the other side and onto the gravel between the two sets of tracks. Turning left, she walked back along the side of the second passenger car, slowly, close to it, directly under the windows. She did not look up.

  At the rear of the second passenger car she glanced up at the platform but kept walking. She knew exactly where she was going. Reaching the gap between the third passenger car and the parlor unit, she looked up and stopped. The large equipment bin was on the outer side of the forward platform on the private car. Just as she had noted the day before, its lid was upright, latched to the forward wall of the parlor car itself.

  She turned, saw the boys playing in the sawmill near the saw-toothed blade of a buzz saw. They disappeared behind a shed wall for a moment, larking, chasing one another. Glancing down, she gauged the size of the train's enormous wheels. Taking two steps backward, she crouched, spun around, and waddled underneath the last passenger car and pressed herself out of sight behind one wheel.

  She peered out. The boys were in sight again, whirling around a wooden column under the gable of the sawmill. No one had seen her. She glanced up and looked for a handhold. She knew she would have to move quickly, or she would either die or be left behind. As far as she was concerned, one would be as bad as the other.

  As the last passengers reboarded, Luther Mosby waited on the track side of the second car, out of sight. When he heard the forward door close, he pulled himself up onto the steps of the leading platform and crouched, hidden to anyone in the car or along the sides of the train. He guessed the trainmen were aboard by now, leaning out and checking along the station side. As soon as the train rolled, he would rise, cross to the first car, back in casually, and wait in the lavatory until he heard the increased roar as the head trainman opened the door and went forward to his seat. There were two of them. Mosby saw no reason, short of an emergency, why either would be out on the nearby platform again.

  Solana started moving a second after she heard the trainmen call out "Awwwwwwlllboooooooord." Her joints creaking, every muscle in pain, she swung left on a chassis beam, cleared the housing, then scuttled as best she could across wood and steel until she was beyond the outside rail. She glanced across at the sawmill. The boys were lined up, gazing forward toward the locomotive. They had not seen her. She heard the train lurch forward, thought briefly of what would have happened if she had been pinned underneath one of the shrieking wheels. Suddenly the boys shouted and began racing to catch up with the engine.

  Fear limbered her. She rose quickly, turned and ran, trundling awkwardly, to the ladder beside the rear platform of the last passenger car. Swinging up, she held on until the sudden, exertive pain in her right arm subsided, then edged back and climbed over the platform railing. She stood there motionless, out of breath, her head bent down, until she heard the shouts of the young boys grow louder, then fade as the train picked up speed and left them behind. She moved quickly then, crossed the collapsible metal lips above the coupling and looked into the equipment bin. Five flares and a lantern lay on a piece of burlap a quarter of the way down from the rim. She pulled the burlap up and saw well-worn picks, shovels, a megaphone, two cases of blasting powder.

  She turned, noted the long, curving low trestle the train was approaching. Beneath it, a latticework of wooden beams and piles rose from a partially graded bank of fill on either side. The train bulged outward along the clockwise curve. Even if only at a modest angle, she calculated, the windows to her left and right were temporarily pointed away from her. Quickly she picked up all but one of the pieces of equipment individually and dropped them down through the bowels of the trestle onto the sloping mound of fill.

  The muffling sound of the train filling her ears, she climbed into the bin, pulled the burlap up to her chest, arranged the flares and lantern almost as they had been, took a knife out of her purse, and quickly punched a hole in the burlap. Then she curled down and pulled the material up over her face. When her heart quieted, she peered up through the small puncture in the fabric. She could see only the gap between the roofs of the two cars. Afraid to open the rent any further for fear of being discovered, she wondered how she would hear anyone proceed rearward across the two platforms to the parlor-car door.

  Swaying slightly as the car oscillated on its wheel-springs, Esther took one last look at the section of Charles Crocker's survey map where the tracks ran in a serpentine line across the twin-breasted carapace of Calafia Mountain. East of it, the terrain subsided into a series of ridges, gorges and canyons, eventually leading to the Donner Pass. Across one of the gorges, Crocker and his army had erected Long Trestle, a monumental span three hundred feet high at one point and almost a half-mile long. She had seen a picture of it. Either the trestle or the thousand-foot drop from the single-track bed chiseled along the north side of Calafia Mountain would do.

  Turning, she walked back to the table by her seat, poured a glass of sherry for herself, and took a sip. Replacing the glass on the tray, she went back through the curtains, pulled back one corner of the eiderdown quilt, picked up the wooden-handled kitchen knife, and slipped it under the head of the mattress. She took her late husband's derringer and the partially empty vial of jequirity powder and went back to the rear door. Outside on the platform, she opened the vial, spilled its contents over the railing, then threw the glass vessel down a steep embankment. Taking
hold of a handgrip, she climbed carefully up onto a railing rung and wedged the derringer into a ribbon of space that ran around the metal skirts of the overhanging roof.

  Rocking, she held onto the grip with both hands for a moment, then reached up, banged at the pistol with the heel of her palm, and took hold of it with two fingers. Satisfied that it was secure enough, she slipped her fingers around the handle of the gun. It was a tight fit, but with the trigger housing facing this way and a small portion of the grip protruding from the narrow aperture, she was certain she could pull it free when the time came.

  She got down and once again took in the structure of the platform, going over in her mind what she would do here if the poison and the knife could not be employed. A rectangle four by eight feet in size, the platform was enclosed by a railing slightly more than waist-high. Two sets of rungs, the lower one a foot off the platform and the second a foot higher, encircled and reinforced the railing's upright iron rods. The fence was broken only by the latched gate directly over the receding tracks. She would not employ the gate, so she quickly dismissed it from her mind. Where the railings formed a perpendicular angle at the rearmost corners, heavier iron supports ran up through them to the end of the overhanging roof. On the outer side of the rear railing, a cast-iron ladder ran up and curled over to a point where it was bolted to the rear end of the roof.

  She walked over, swaying with the train, and took hold of the outer stanchion and then the ladder. Neither budged even a fraction of an inch in her grasp. Secure enough to hold onto with one hand, she thought. He will see that, however risky sitting on the outer railing will seem. He will know, as long as his feet are curled under the bottom rung and he is gripping either the ladder or the comer support as well as the railing with both hands, that the danger of falling off will be minimal.

  Back in her seat, she went over it again. The poison first. And if it does not work or cannot be used for any reason, then the knife. And the knife only if he has taken the poison but it has merely slowed, dulled his senses and ability to react. The platform only if it is necessary. She weighed once more what she would do on the platform. He would be most vulnerable there. Perhaps it would be better to move directly to it whether he had taken the poison or not. She pondered it for another moment. No, I will proceed as planned, following the three alternatives as things unfold, adapting as circumstances dictate.