Ghosts in the Gulch: An Evergreen Cemetery Mystery (Evergreen Cemetery Mysteries Book 1)

by S. L. Hawke

  I was speechless now. “Madame, I assure you all I want is a guide. Perhaps I may speak with the Don?”

  “He’s not here.” She began to go behind her adobe, a signal to me that any more conversation would be considered an invasion of their land.

  “Why?” the very large, soot-covered man asked me, still holding his broom and sweep pan.

  “Pedro! Go inside and finish cleaning the oven!” his mother’s voice commanded. Pedro had no malice, no anger in his face, simply curiosity. My heart ached for him. That was what he was, simple.

  “I’m looking for Jose. I hear he can guide me into the mountains by Corralitos,” I said carefully.

  “PEDRO!!!! GO BACK INSIDE!!” Pedro looked guilty at his mother’s commanding voice.

  He walked out to me and said quietly: “Come back tonight. Jose my cousin will be here with my brother Faustino. They know the mountains.” Then Pedro went back inside, his younger siblings running behind the adobe to tell their mother what he had said.

  I walked to the rear of the adobe but kept a respectful distance from the woman grinding on her metate.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Rodríguez. Tell Faustino that I’d like to play cards with him again soon.” I took off my hat when I said this. Then with as stern an expression as I could muster, to imply the potential for insult should my request not be honored, I put my hat back on and walked a bit closer to Mrs. Rodríguez. “If he ignores my polite request, I shall consider him a coward, and all of his family an insult.” She stopped grinding and looked up at me. Then she nodded her acknowledgement of my message without words. I tapped the brim of my hat and walked away.

  The trail was silent. No one followed me. I enjoyed the birds, the sound of the creek, and the feel of trail beneath my feet. I missed Hiru terribly.

  That was when I heard the scream of a horse, then a crack of a whip.

  Quickly, thinking Juan might be in danger, I ran towards the sound but found that it was across the gulch and down another track way that had seen a lot of horse travel. As I ran into the clearing, there was a man in a bowler hat trying to control his horse with a short, sharp whip. The horse was rearing away from him at every attempt. She was frothing and white-eyed.

  “You BITCH!” the man swore. There was blood dripping off the flank of the mare from this vicious use of the whip. “Yield!” The mare kicked the man, who fell down, then yanked free of the man’s hold on the reins and started towards me.

  “Whoa!” I said cautiously. Grabbing the loose reins, I spoke softly, cajoling her, calling her a good girl, with a soft hand until she calmed and steadied. I tied the reins to the stout limb of a nearby madrone tree. Then I looked at her flank. I’d seen this kind of wound, long ago, on the back of my friend Josiah. It was a gash used by short cat, the kind used on slaves. The rider was Southern, or had Southern tastes.

  I turned to face the abusive rider when he came at me, whip held high.

  “Get away from my horse!” the man yelled.

  The whip fell past me as I sidestepped his arm. The weight of his own body propelled him forward. I grabbed the whip stalk itself right out of his hand.

  He stumbled past me and turned quickly enough. Now his arm was extended and in it was a small, expensive, custom-made pistol attached to his very wrist. He was sweating and looked panicked. I half smiled, glad to have put him in his place. But my eyes never left his face. The small gun could maim, I reasoned, as Miles kept one in similar fashion, but little else. It was a testament to his cowardice in my book. Any man who feels the need to beat animals into submission was no man’s ally or friend.

  “I don’t believe we have met.” The man had a wide, fake smile and bright blue eyes. He wore a grey ribbon on his lapel, pinned with a red rosette. He gestured with the snub-nosed pistol for me to move aside. “Let’s never plan to.”

  “It’s a small town. I doubt I will forget your face.” I stood my ground.

  “That’s my horse. She’s not worth a bullet in the back, believe me.” He came closer, putting the nose of the small pistol up towards my face. Then he sidestepped towards the horse, undid the reins, and miraculously climbed up onto the saddle. “Now if you excuse me, I’m late for a rally.” He kicked the mare hard, making her scream, and together they galloped off. I quickly made my way back across the stream to my rig. This rally I had to attend, I assumed it was the same. This was not going to be pleasant.

  Juan had not been idle. The gelding was ready to work, as Juan must have brushed him down, watered him, and walked him a bit. I could tell she wanted to know what had passed between me and the Rodríguez Clan. I decided to take a risk and treat Juan like a friend, and ignore the reason she chose to hide in this manner. Lam was right, all would be revealed when the time was right. I kept my visit with the odd white man carrying the small-nosed wrist pistol to myself.

  “The lady of the house thought I was there to steal from them.” I checked the hooves on the gelding then mounted up onto the bench. Juan climbed into the back.

  “Most gringos are seen as thieves.” Juan’s voice changed. I turned and looked at her. She didn’t look away now but held my gaze. I pulled up the reins and took off the brake.

  “Well, they are right about that.” I studied Juan. “I’d better get to that rally.” With a click of my cheek I jiggled the reins. The gelding moved forward and we ambled on down the cart road to the main road back to town.

  The main road flowing in to town was completely blocked by wagons, traps, and a few handcarts. Some shouting was going on as one trap and a wagon had locked up and the horses were neighing and panicking.

  “Is there another route back to Harris House?” I asked Juan who had moved forward, boldly standing up. Others with young sons in their carts did the same.

  “Yes, but it will take a longer time. At least an hour.”

  “Well, at least we have an excuse,” I said with a grin. Juan smiled back at me, then tried to return to the wagon’s back when I stopped her with my outstretched arm. “Stay sittin’ here so I can hear you tell me which way to go.”

  She sat, and I noticed, not as far away as before. I liked this, almost too much. Part of me wondered how it would be, as husband and wife, seated together, about our way.

  “Go along the river right here.” She pointed off to a track that was not in use. I coaxed the gelding on an awkward turn, almost hitting a smaller trap. I waved my apologies as we squeezed into the lane and headed down alongside the river. The track dipped downward into a smelly, smoky, industrial road of kilns, forges and small tanneries. Juan put her kerchief over her face. My eyes smarted from the caustic smell and smoke of the kilns, but we headed stalwartly forward until gratefully we came upon farmland and livestock.

  Juan pointed left to another track that led us onward between another farm, its house too far distant for me to make out. Then the road hugged the base of the ridge. Chinese workers were carrying split wooden shingles on their backs, but the redwoods stood defiantly upon the ridge to our right as we came around a bend and crossed a small, damp remnant of a creek. Juan opened a private gate, left something in the small, wooden locked box, then closed the gate behind us as we travelled through the private track. Then, as we rounded a fence and a few cattle, I saw the first gravestones.

  “Stop. Please,” Juan said. I couldn’t refuse her and pulled the reins to a stop. I hitched the brake and climbed out of the wagon myself. Juan jumped down and walked towards a worn and stained picket fence to a small cemetery that rose darkly up along a small, sunless ridge.

  Very few times in my life had I experienced a sudden chill of the bones. But at that moment as I watched her enter the cemetery through a broken side gate, I thought for a moment I had returned to a place I had been before. Juan walked up the path a ways, paused, and for a moment, I swear, she was not alone, that others had walked by, shadowlike with wheel barrows, and bags of black sack cloth; then the vision lifted as I pushed through the gate itself into the silent yard.

  Mon
uments of stone were up the tended path. Someone still came here. Some fresh graves with no marking were scattered, and a few had tidy, neatly arranged retaining walls surrounding their family plots. Dead bouquets littered one grave. I turned around, then looked left up the dark sides of the ridge and saw to my amazement an Asian offering oven. It was smoldering, and I could see a few Chinese men bending over themselves in silent grief. The flat, painted wooden head markers, too many, poked out of the hillside like dead cornstalks.

  A deep sensation of winter cold came upon me. I could not see Juan. For a moment in the gloom of the bushes and the shade of the hillside, I thought I saw her, crouching down in front of a marble obelisk doing something with one of her hands.

  “Juan, we should go!” I said to the dark canyon in front of me, up a cobbled lane that went straight up the side of the hill. Not liking this place, I could not shake the feeling of a strange intimate knowledge, as if the next time I would visit here, it would be in care and attendance. I took off my hat and rubbed my hair, feeling out of place. “Juan!” I called into the shadows.

  Juan appeared silently behind me. I jumped, startled that I did not hear her approach. When I looked back up the gully to where I thought I had seen her, there was nothing there except a few smaller headstones. We left through a small unlocked gate and quickly climbed into the wagon without too much sound. The need for quiet seemed paramount.

  As I pulled off the brake and shook the reins, we passed a sign, freshly painted and adorned. It read: Evergreen Cemetery, established 1859, by the Trustees of the City of Santa Cruz. I didn’t ask why we had stopped. I was only glad to go past it, down the dark dell, then up into sunlight — the Mission above us, and down a great hill back to the depot and the livery where I could return Cynthia’s trap. We spoke no more to each other as if fearing for something, I wasn’t sure what. It was 4 o’clock in the afternoon.

  3

  Corralitos, Rancho del Augustin Mountains

  “I would not put much stake in what a greaser says,” Ian McKenna told Poole.

  Sally watched as the men stared one another down. She loved Tom’s passion for a cause, but he rarely could make a woman feel anything other than disgust. He hardly cleaned himself, and he drank so much, he fell asleep before either of them could satisfy the other.

  Sally lost her virginity long ago to her brother, one dark night when they were both afraid the coppers would find them. They had fled, watched the house burn down, and their parents die. After that they lived on the streets and held each other in comfort, John being not much older, but eager and Sally simply afraid.

  But Sally had learned from an old whore that sometimes men were afraid to take an unknown woman because of disease. The mouth was a good substitute and kept men, even married men, coming back. It also made men feel powerful and relaxed, even though in one clench a woman could emasculate a man. It was that thought that made the horrible act bearable, that and the ability to vomit back the seed. The old whore taught her other things too, like how to judge a man’s nature, and how to act in a way that made the man trust a woman’s judgment. This made Sally feel like she was the best weapon in her brother’s arsenal to social success, and to wealth.

  But Ian McKenna was quite different. Sally felt as if he fancied himself godlike or at least driven to make decisions as if he were God. John had met him when they first came here. McKenna had saved John from bankruptcy by loaning him the money he needed to salvage a lost ship’s valuable cargo. Sally played the fool on what was lost, but knew John was moving opium for gold from up the coast to past the blockade and overland into Confederate hands.

  “Perhaps, Tom, Mr. McKenna should control the shipment’s logistics, while you command our path?” The statement startled Poole out of his humming. Poole took Sally’s hand and kissed it.

  “My precious Confederate Cotton Queen has forgotten me.” Poole actually flirted with Sally then: “Such a woman is a queen among women, and should be held in the highest regard not for her beauty but for her vision in procuring us someone who curries favors from our enemies, reminding us ever that the true enemy we all face is, of course, the ignorance of tyranny. Choice, the desire to express that choice in true pure ideology, the purest of all form that being our Christian race, our Christian principles, is our divine and complete right.” Now he was reminding her he could be charismatic, when he chose to be, which made her tremble with divine purpose and a bright future. “And let us not forget the night our dear friend here,” and with this Poole toasted McKenna, “decided to rid our camp of homosexual activity by shooting one of my guards last night. Such passion you display for the morality of God.”

  Sally recalled last night. She had woken to a scuffle and then a rifle shot. Afterwards, as the dead man lay in a heap like a stack of firewood, McKenna tore through the camp, killing two more men who were simply laughing at him and calling him a coward. After this, some of the men fled, and it took all of Tom’s charisma to calm the remaining men and convince them that they could win the war now, that they could have homes free of vermin, of pollution from other races, from the need to treat everyone equally. No, Tom, when sober, could see the future. I trust him with mine, Sally told herself.

  She had tried to seduce McKenna that night, mostly to calm him down and reassure him of his masculinity and his urges, with the wiles of her mouth, but he refused. Instead, he grabbed her roughly, touched her breasts rather than squeezing them, as if he knew how they would feel if handled well. He spent the remaining night cradled within her bosom while she handled him, rubbing him until he shook, whispering the name “Emma!” into the fabric of her corset, and spilling his seed discreetly into a well-placed sack rag.

  “What do you think, Miss Towne?” The soft serpentine voice made her loins quiver and damp. Like Mr. Sloan at the mines, only, well, stronger perhaps. Sally took a delicate sip of the claret McKenna had brought.

  “I think the effete can be trusted to steal for us as long as we promise to give him his share. He hates the Blues in town.”

  “My Sally knows how to get the best of those of us of the male persuasion.” Poole took her hand and kissed it. McKenna simply looked away. Sally decided perhaps she should be more outspoken. Sometimes a man liked that in a woman, the sense of being untouchable because she found men silly and stupid. Then the man simply became aroused by the idea that he could and would control her at some point. Sally smiled flatly as she looked at Poole.

  McKenna was watching her now, she could feel it. “Did you not say, Tom, that the Spanish are of Royal descent and close to the Pope and therefore to God? If anything Faustino Lorenzana risked his own life to bring us this gold. Perhaps he pickpocketed it, was caught, threatened, and saved his own skin by offering a business deal. So you see, Mr. McKenna, it is really not about what one is, but what the person, whatever class or race they are, believes they can do.” She spoke to the side, as if McKenna were not worth her time. She smiled slightly as she could see McKenna’s feathers were slightly ruffled. Then she turned her glance on him. “Of course you can have the satisfaction of killing him when he brings no one. I really doubt he will bring the law, as he is a fugitive himself.” Then she leaned back, took a bite of chocolate (from Tino), and waited for this Confederate to stray into her trap. He’d want to hold her head to his parts now; he was one of those kinds, controlling, dominating, single minded in thinking women had no purpose other than to please him.

  When Sally looked back at McKenna, a different man greeted her gaze. His eyes were ice blue, cold, and absolutely focused on her. She was reminded of Mr. A.J. Sloan for some reason. The same focus, except that this McKenna had more fortitude, or something else. Perhaps that was why her brother was so fond of him.

  “Well, Tom. It’s not like we can be choosers here. This gold will buy a round of supplies to simply keep the camp in operation. Mr. Lorenzana has already brought us much needed supplies and we have maintained our secrecy because of it. Greasers they may be, but they have no lov
e of the Blues and no love for the country which took away much of what they did own when Spain ruled.” Sally, again, flatly smiled.

  McKenna sat back in his chair and studied her with some, she felt, surprise. After this, the men spoke of trying to find the man who would be their new investor. Faustino had said he would be a Yankee, coming to town under the watchful eye of a Marshal. That he would be staying at the Harris House and was the brother of John Towne’s new wife. Sally’s heart skipped a beat. That could only be one man, Sloan.

  McKenna finished this business with Tom and left the tent. Sally, carrying the platters from their shared meal to the washing tent, was suddenly grabbed by the neck with a gloved hand. She could not scream because another gloved hand was over her mouth.

  She tried to squirm but with every twist she was propelled further into the storage tent until her back was against the stack of crates. McKenna held his gloved hand across her mouth while the other……rubbed her.

  She could see his ice-colored eyes go dark as his gloved hand went under her skirts to her loins. It gripped right where her sensitive part was, the one place she herself caressed often, especially after Tom had finished. And he rubbed, pressed, and rubbed. She marveled at his skill and wondered how he knew to do such things, how he would even want to. She had misjudged him.

  Sally began to cry out, but not in fear. He smiled almost cruelly, but she spread her legs more, moving against him so that his gloved fingers delved deeper and finally, and exquisitely, pressed inside of her. He moved his hand faster and faster until Sally felt herself explode inside, like fireworks, her legs giving way. McKenna gently laid her down. Then he took off the gloves and left them next to her. With a swirl of his coat, he turned away, then stopped.

  “Tell Tom I’ll have his investor and his gunpowder by the end of the month. We—”and here Sally knew McKenna referred to her and him, “—are done.” Then he strode away.

  Sally did not move for a long time. Finally she straightened her skirts, repinned her hair and walked back to her own tent. The night was dark and warm. Worms were spinning their way down to the ground from the oak trees. She picked them off her bosom and her hair then, turning off her lamp, she sighed. It was time for her to go back into society and Santa Cruz. Besides, Sloan also wore lavender, her favorite scent. Perhaps they could get to know one another again.