Native Hawk (California Legends Book 3)

by Glynnis Campbell

  NATIVE HAWK

  California Legends, Book 3

  by

  NATIVE HAWK

  Copyright © 2016 by Glynnis Campbell

  Excerpt from NATIVE WOLF

  Copyright © 2015 by Glynnis Campbell

  Glynnis Campbell – Publisher

  P.O. Box 341144

  Arleta, California 91331

  ISBN-13: 978-1-938114-13-7

  Contact: glynnis@glynnis.net

  Cover design by Tanya Straley & Richard Campbell

  Formatting by Author E.M.S.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This work is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Learn more about Glynnis Campbell and her writing at www.glynnis.net

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication and Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Epilogue

  Dear Reader

  More Books by Glynnis Campbell

  About Glynnis Campbell

  Contact Information

  From the Jewels

  Sneak Peek at NATIVE WOLF

  Dedication

  For my Grandma Alma

  who loved a good Western

  and gave me her Singer treadle sewing machine

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to

  Mia Sara and David Boreanaz,

  My dad, for all the stories about stagecoach robbers,

  My mom, for teaching me how to sew on a treadle machine,

  My BFF Lauren Royal and father-in-law Dick Campbell,

  for attempting to teach me five-card draw,

  My stepmom Betty, for educational field trips in Shasta,

  Ernesto Pavan for his brilliant Italian brainstorming,

  My friends at the Gold Nugget Museum—

  Joan Dresser, Becky Dresser, and Al Abrams,

  The Hoopa Valley Tribal Council for their

  amazing Hupa Online Dictionary,

  and all those who refuse to judge by the color of one’s skin

  but rather by the content of one’s character

  Chapter 1

  PARADISE, CALIFORNIA

  SPRING 1875

  Catalina Palatino Prosperi Valentini di Ferrara clutched her caffelatte-colored silk parasol in one tight kid-gloved fist. This was it—the end of her journey.

  The buggy driver stepped down to fetch her trunk from the back. She took a single calming breath of fresh, pine-scented air. Then she peered down the main street of her new home.

  Despite her uncle’s descriptions, Paradise wasn’t quite what she’d imagined when she’d dreamt of coming to America from her villa in northern Italy.

  For one thing, she’d never seen so many buildings made of wood. They butted up against each other like wardrobes squeezed into a too-small room. Their names—The Adams Hotel, Clark’s Dry Goods, The Red Dog, Assay Office, Pair-o-Dice Saloon, The Parlor—were painted above the doors in large, gaudy letters.

  In Italy, her centuries-old stone-walled family estate dominated a grassy slope overlooking rolling vineyards. But this town, surrounded by thick evergreens, looked like it had sprung up in the middle of the forest. The street was bare earth, full of ruts, so wooden walkways connected the shops for foot traffic.

  There was a lot of foot traffic. Or maybe it only felt that way because she was receiving so many stares. It seemed every man who passed Catalina ogled her as if they’d never seen a woman before.

  Self-conscious, she straightened her jacket and smoothed the wrinkles from her traveling dress. Was there a tear in her skirts? Was her sleeve smudged with dirt? She’d been wise to choose the cocoa-and-cream ensemble, considering the amount of dust the buggy had kicked up on the journey.

  At least the voyage had been shorter than the one her uncle had taken during the Gold Rush twenty-five years ago. There hadn’t been a railway or a stagecoach then. He’d traveled by ocean liner, steamboat, and mule.

  She wished he were still alive. At least then she’d have one friend in this new land. She didn’t truly remember her uncle, since he’d left when she was an infant. But he’d corresponded to her father every week by letter. She’d read those letters so many times, she felt as if she knew him…and California. It had been his love of this little mountain town that had inspired Catalina to follow in his footsteps. One could make a new beginning in this new place, he had written. And that was exactly what Catalina intended to do.

  Her heavy trunk suddenly landed with a thud on the ground beside her, startling her and sending up a puff of fine dust. She clapped her hand to her bosom.

  The driver took off his grimy hat and wiped his brow with his forearm. “Whatcha got in there, ma’am—a boat anchor?”

  She frowned. A boat anchor? Was he serious? Why would he imagine she was transporting an anchor? How odd.

  Catalina could speak English passably well. She’d made a point of learning it over the last few years—ever since, for Londoners, a season in Italy had become all the rage. But the English that Americans spoke sometimes seemed to be a completely different language from that of London.

  The driver apparently didn’t expect an answer. He left to fetch the porter from The Adams Hotel.

  She glanced down at her trunk. No anchor. But everything else she owned was inside.

  It was remarkable how little she possessed, considering her noble lineage and her family’s wealth. But most of that wealth was tied up in property and agriculture. The Ferrara vineyards produced some of the best Albana wine in Italy, and the woodlands on the estate were thick with valuable truffles. She could purchase anything on her father’s account.

  Actual coin, however, was not so easy to come by. She’d barely been able to scrape together enough to pay for the journey. Besides, if her father had suspected her intentions—to leave her home and her family to pursue her dream of designing clothing in America—he wouldn’t have given her a single lira. As the daughter of nobility, he expected her to simply marry the titled man of his choice and give him heirs.

  She restlessly tapped her fingers on her parasol handle, gazing down the street again as she waited for the porter. A few women ambled along the wooden walkway. She studied them with narrowed eyes.

  Their dresses were out of date and ill-fitting. One woman wore a drab, plaid, slope-shouldered dress that looked like it had been made during the presidency of Abraham Lincoln. Another sported a high-necked day dress ma
de out of faded red linsey-woolsy, with a frayed bonnet tied under her chin. A young lady in an oversized blue crinoline swayed from side to side like a big bell.

  Catalina clucked her tongue. Her talents were definitely needed here. Once she located the dressmaker’s shop, she’d start work immediately. Within a few months, the ladies of Paradise would be wearing her latest designs and setting fashion trends all over California.

  Her spirits lifted, she ignored the gray-suited man who stopped to stare at her in open-mouthed shock. With a half-smile and a dip of her beribboned brown hat, she followed the driver and porter as they hefted her trunk and entered The Adams Hotel.

  When she was finally settled into her room upstairs, Catalina propped her parasol against the wall, tossed her hat onto the feather bed, and peeled off her gloves.

  The first thing she had to do was assess her finances. She emptied the coins out of her reticule and then dug to the bottom of her trunk for the satchel of money she’d brought, spreading it out atop the coverlet.

  The currency still confused her. It seemed like she’d brought a great deal of lire. But since she’d arrived in America, and particularly in California, everything had cost much more than she expected.

  Figuring the cost of the coach and the hotel, she only had enough funds left for two weeks of lodging, and that was if she ate like a bird.

  Obviously, she needed to find employment as soon as possible.

  She put the money back in the satchel, hiding it in the trunk, and then turned to look at her reflection in the mirror of the dresser.

  Considering her long journey, she didn’t look too dreadful. A splash of cool water on her face, a few loose strands of her hair tucked in, a dab of perfume behind her ear, and she’d be ready to interview for a position.

  She examined her jacket, from the dark cording along the edges to the tiny tucks beneath the bust and the perfectly turned cuffs. She perused the sleek, cocoa-colored skirt, gathered up into trim, flat panels on the sides and finished with cream cording. She whirled to make sure her bustle was straight and that the pleated train was centered.

  It was suitable. The dress displayed her talents without braggadocio. Anyone with an eye for clothing would note her attention to detail, her sense of color, her clever stitchery. Yet it wasn’t so ostentatious as to be inappropriate to the position of a dressmaker.

  Her position. It was curious, this fall from grace she’d taken. In Italy, she belonged to a noble family. She dressed in the finest silks and velvet. Her complete collection of apparel filled several wardrobes.

  But in America, she was only a woman like any other woman. She’d brought just what she could squeeze into one trunk. She would have to earn her way into this new life on her own merits.

  Nothing had ever sounded more exciting.

  With renewed enthusiasm, she poured water from the pitcher into the bowl on the dresser, washed her face, smoothed her black chignon, and carefully pinned her hat on again. Then, pulling on her gloves and grabbing her parasol, she left to explore Paradise.

  Half an hour later, her élan became somewhat diminished. First, she’d received numerous impolite stares. And second, in her quick tour of the town, she’d passed two dry goods stores, a school, a jewelry shop, a number of saloons, a bakery, an assay office, a barbershop, a boardinghouse, two churches, a blacksmith’s forge, and three hotels. It seemed Paradise had no dressmaker’s shop.

  Considering the outdated and poorly tailored dresses she’d seen, she should have realized the clothes were homespun.

  Returning to the covered porch of The Adams Hotel after her rounds, she closed her parasol, looping it over her arm, and flicked open her silk and sandalwood fan. Perhaps the lack of a proper dressmaker here was a good thing, she thought, fanning herself. Perhaps that was just what the town needed. If she somehow managed to start up her own shop, she would have no competition.

  But it took a lot of capital to start a shop. Even if she lived and ate in a boardinghouse and took in hand sewing, she couldn’t make enough money to earn her keep. In a town where the women did their own sewing, only bachelors would pay to have their sleeves altered, their trousers patched, or their shirts hemmed by hand.

  If only she had her sewing machine, things might be different.

  It had been heartbreaking to bid farewell to the thing in Italy. But it was too heavy to bring. Besides, as far as anyone knew, it didn’t actually belong to her. Since her father would never have allowed his daughter to toil like a common servant, Catalina had pretended to order the machine for their housekeeper, Paola. Many a late night, she’d crept down to Paola’s quarters to sew by candlelight, rocking the treadle with such practiced skill that it sounded like the clickety-clack of a speeding train.

  Her father assumed Paola sewed all of Catalina’s beautiful gowns. But the truth was Catalina had been designing and making her own clothing for years, right under his nose.

  She sighed, rapping her fan closed against her palm. A good dressmaker’s shop would have had at least one sewing machine. With a good treadle, a dress that might take all day to sew could be finished in an hour. An industrious seamstress could make a decent living as a dressmaker with that kind of speed.

  Of course, the women of Paradise probably didn’t spend as much money on their clothing as titled ladies did in Italy. In Ferrara, sumptuous attire was expected as a display of prosperity. Indeed, with the money that her cousin had spent on a wedding gown last year, Catalina could have purchased five sewing machines.

  She opened her fan again and waved it slowly in front of her face, deep in thought as she gazed down the street. Most of the women on the boardwalks were dressed in simple fabrics—calico, muslin, linsey-woolsey, gingham.

  After a moment, it came to her. She could design affordable dresses. After all, much of the cost of a dress depended on the fabric. And Catalina knew how to cut a pattern to get the most out of a piece of cloth. She could think of clever ways to use inexpensive cloth where it would never show while saving richer velvet, silk, and fine lace for beautiful trim and accents. She could even take old dresses—like that awful maroon monstrosity the woman walking toward her was wearing or the yellow calico sack on the young lady with her—and re-style them into something more fashionable.

  She didn’t realize she was staring until the two began whispering furiously behind their hands and looking in Catalina’s direction.

  She politely lowered her eyes and rapidly fanned her warm cheeks.

  Suddenly, to the disapproval of the woman in maroon, the young girl in yellow broke away and scurried directly up to her.

  Catalina froze. What did she want? Had she guessed that Catalina was secretly ridiculing her clothing?

  “Pardon me, ma’am,” the girl blurted before the frowning older woman could stop her, “but is that a…” She looked about for witnesses, then lowered her voice to a murmur. “A bustle?”

  “Agatha!” the older woman barked, picking up her ugly skirts and making her indignant way forward.

  Catalina exchanged a conspiratorial, amused glance with young Agatha.

  “Is it?” Agatha’s brows shot up in delight.

  Catalina nodded.

  Then the old woman grabbed Agatha by the elbow. “Come along, Agatha.” She dismissed Catalina with a rude perusal from her hat to her shoes and back up again. “I won’t have my daughter palaverin’ with one o’ your kind.”

  Catalina was stunned. She had no idea what palavering was. But she recognized an insult in any language. Her uncle had warned that, in some circles, foreigners were not welcome. She just hadn’t expected rejection to come so soon. After all, she’d been in Paradise less than an hour.

  Still, Catalina had never been able to keep silent in the face of an insult. Her father said her temper was a curse. Already the blood simmered in her veins.

  She narrowed her eyes. “What does this mean—my kind?”

  “Women who wear…” The woman thinned her lips, then spat out the word. “Bus
tles.”

  Catalina blinked in surprise. “What?”

  “Disgustin’,” the woman grumbled, yanking on Agatha’s arm.

  “But Ma!”

  “Come along, young lady.”

  “Aww, Ma!”

  Catalina didn’t mean to laugh as the woman dragged her daughter off, but the situation was ridiculous. The woman didn’t care that she was a foreigner. She just didn’t like the way she was dressed.

  Her laughter caught the attention of several pedestrians. They turned to look at her with a mix of expressions ranging from curiosity to confusion, from appreciation to disgust.

  Now that she thought about it, she hadn’t seen a single woman in this town wearing a bustle. No wonder they were all staring at her. They’d probably never seen such a contrivance.

  How strange she must look to them. And yet they thought nothing of strutting about in enormous, stiff crinolines and poke bonnets that were decades out of fashion.

  Deciding that now was as good a time as any to allay their fears that she might be “that kind” of woman, she planted the point of her closed parasol on the boards in front of her, cleared her throat, and addressed the town as a whole.

  “Hello! Yes! My name is Catalina, and I am wearing a bustle!” she announced, bringing all of the main street to a halt. She pivoted to the side to give them a good look at her profile. “It is the fashion in Italy, worn by all the finest ladies!” She turned this way and that, allowing them to see the back of her dress as well. Then she called out, “I am a designer of clothings! If you wish me to design a bustle dress for you…”