California Woman (Daughters of the Whirlwind Book 1) (26 page)

The snow fell off and on for three weeks,
blanketing the land around the cabin and bringing the placer mining to a halt
there and everywhere else in the Sierras. Working during the intermittent
stretches of dry weather, Murietta built an extension on the shed for himself.
Miwokan had kept silent about his suspicions concerning Esther and Murietta
since the day of the hanging. Esther sensed only that he was reluctant to leave
when his men retired to their camp, more than ready for two or three months of
lassitude, frequent sex, and the supportive, purifying rituals of the
sweathouse. Taking some reassurance from Murietta's new bunkhouse, Miwokan held
his tongue when she asked him what the trouble was, and glumly followed his
braves toward the village.

Late in the day on Christmas Eve, after
he had hammered in the last nail on the enlarged shed, Murietta snared a quail.
Turning his back to Esther, he snapped its neck quickly and began dressing it
for the fire. They had kept a discreet, unspecified distance from one another
since the incident at Hangtown. Unexpectedly, the physical closeness had
aroused and alarmed Esther. She was not ready for it, and Murietta sensed her
need for time to sort the matter out.

Time had softened the terms of their wary
sexual armistice, and by now, as Esther watched Murietta finish plucking and
trimming the bird, his tactfulness had pushed the concern from her mind.

"I was going to offer you some cured
deer meat this evening," she called from the door of the cabin.
"After all, tomorrow is Christmas. But now that you have something fresh,
I will make a deal with you."

"And what is that?" Murietta
said, smiling. "It will have to be equitable for me to give up so much as
a morsel of this soft, tender, plump, and obviously delicious creature."

"Well," she said, twisting the
end of an apron string with a coyness she did not realize was only half
contrived, "if you will contribute your soft, tender, plump, and obviously
delicious bird, you may sit at my grand table this evening. And I will provide
the remainder of a complete dinner you would not have otherwise enjoyed."

"I will have to think about
that…"

"Oh, well, if you would
rather—"

"For about twenty seconds,"
Murietta interrupted, grinning.

Esther pursed her lips. Her veil was
flipped back over her hat, but Murietta was oblivious of the pale scar. "
Well,
"
she said, mock-seriously. "You have had five seconds longer than this
exchange usually allows its traders."

"Done!" he said, laughing and
moving toward her. He remembered himself and stopped just close enough to hand
over the bird.

She took it with her thumb and forefinger
by one leathery talon. Making a face and shaking her head, she cocked an
eyebrow and sighed. "I don't know,
Señor
Murietta, it seems to me you have struck
the better part of this bargain."

"That
remains to be seen," he said, relaxing again. "I must wait until I
have sampled your cooking."

The fire crackled as they finished the
meal, sipped at their coffee, and stared, smiling, at one another. Murietta's
stare became a gaze, and he felt a longing for her he knew was out of place.
Quickly, he wiped his lips with a napkin Sutter had given her and stood up.
"Well, now I must go out to the shed."

Inexplicably, she was annoyed with him.
"You don't have to leave so early, do you? It would be nice to sit and
talk for a while. You have never told me much about yourself. Do you realize
that?"

"Señora,
it
is absolutely necessary that I return to the shed…"

"Oh, all
right
," she
said, surprised at her pique. "We'll talk some other—"

"For a moment or two," he said,
smiling.

She was puzzled, but she waited. He
returned with a small velvet pouch and placed it on the table before her.

"Whatever is this?" she asked,
surprised again.

"It was obvious to me that I did
indeed strike the better bargain." He pointed to the small pouch.
"This is a small gesture of appreciation."

She took the velvet material in her hand,
immediately aware from its weight that it contained something of substance. She
undid the strings. Inside she found a small, oval, gold locket-watch on a
delicately wrought gold chain. It was an antique, engraved exquisitely with an
italic capital E.

"My God, Joaquin, it's beautiful. I…
I cannot accept something so valuable from you."

"I wish to trade it for the silver
spur," he said, laughing and immediately easing her mild discomfort.
"I have kept this to myself, but without the spur, I find it extremely
difficult to turn my horse to the left."

She burst out laughing. "Haven't you
ever thought of moving your one spur to the other boot before you need to
turn?"

"There is not enough time for that.
I tried turning around in the saddle and riding backward—but the branch of a
tree nearly gave me a haircut."

She was completely disarmed. "Thank
you, Joaquin. I will treasure it. Where did you find such a lovely watch?"

"It was my grandmother's. Her name
was
Esperanza."
Seeing
her renewed reluctance to accept it, he added quickly, "Many, many times I
have almost damaged it. Accepting the watch would be a great kindness. You
would be taking care of it for me."

He ached with longing again as Esther
opened and closed the locket, stared at the delicate black roman numerals and
scalloped hands that stood in sharp contrast to the bone-white watch face.

Unaware of the depth of feeling beneath
Murietta's misleadingly easy banter, Esther suddenly thought of Alex, and of
what it would do to him if he knew. For a moment she was filled with guilt.
Well
,
she thought,
there will be no reason for guilt. It was my choice not to
return to Alex. But I am his wife. And I love him still. As long as I am his
wife, or at least as long as he is not married, I will try to honor my vows of
fidelity
.

Sighing, she stood up. Moving close to
Murietta but keeping her arms at her sides, she leaned over at the waist and
kissed him on the cheek. "You are a wonderful man," she said, the
thought of Alex still strong in her mind. "I only wish…"

"Wish for nothing," Murietta
said, placing his palms on her cheeks and lifting her gaze to his. "Accept
what is in you, and what is not in you. And do not trouble yourself for things
that come only in their proper season."

The fleeting hint of disappointment, pain
in his eyes cut into her. "Oh, Joaquin," she said, leaning her head
on his
shoulder.
"I…
a part of me… wants… to…"

"Simply wait. I know the place your
heart and mind still ride across. I have been there. I understand. And until
you feel such things, if you ever feel them for me, it is enough that we are
friends."

They sat facing one another across the
table and talked for hours. She stuck to the truth about her life up to the
meeting of Alex Todd, substituted a nameless "husband" in his place,
and then, paraphrasing, tried to leave Murietta with the impression that she
had lost her husband, two fingers, and the normal pigment at the tip of her
nose during an accident coming west on the Santa Fe Trail.

He did not fully believe her. The scar
was plainly the result of frostbite. He had seen it before. And she had
mentioned nothing about winter or the mountains. In time, he thought, perhaps
she would tell him all of it. He decided not to probe for additional details.

His own story was just as complicated.
His grandfather, Don Miguel Murietta
y
Guitterez, had been the
padron
of the
Rancho
de los Encinos,
south of the Mission San
Fernando. Don Miguel and his wife had adopted a beautiful Gabrieleno Indian
girl,
Esperanza,
when
both her father and mother died in a fire at the
rancho.
Don Miguel doted on the child, treating
her as he did his natural son and daughter. Nineteen years later, after his
wife died of cholera on a visit to Mexico, he became hopelessly infatuated with
his ward.

"At first," Murietta explained,
"he flouted his passion and ignored the outrage and the pleas of his
family and wellborn friends among the
gente
de razon
.
He
even set a date for marriage. But during the engagement the entreaties of his
bishop swayed him. By that time, however,
Esperanza
was pregnant."

Don Miguel ensconced her on one end of
the hacienda just as though they were formally married. She gave birth to a son
who eventually married and became Joaquin Alejandro Murietta's father. There were
other grandchildren. One of them, Ramonda, lived on the
rancho
with her parents, Don Miguel's legitimate
son and daughter-in-law. During their childhood, Murietta and Ramonda were
inseparable. Neither Don Miguel nor
Esperanza
gave the affection the children held for
one another a second thought.

"She went to school in Spain for
several years during adolescence," Murietta went on. "When she
returned a young woman, we edged slowly toward what we knew was forbidden. We
were in the grape arbor hours past sunset one summer night, locked in each
other's arms, half-naked and almost paralyzed with love and fear when my father
surprised us. Tears were streaming down his face. He beat me senseless and
banished me from the
rancho
on
the threat of death."

Murietta had spent a year in the desert
and the mountains, alone, healing both physically and spiritually. During this
solitary period, he said, before he passed a second year herding sheep in the
hills along the southern, end of the San Joaquin Valley, he had come to
understand his precise place in the universe. He had reached a state of mind
where he could slip off his boots and clothes, dig his feet into the earth,
tilt his head upward, and lose consciousness of himself. It was as though, he
continued, he blended completely into the earth and sky. He had tried
peyote
and mescal, and while they were
interesting, they did not take him to the amorphously serene place he could
reach himself by ridding his mind of all thought.

He returned at least once every few
years, he told Esther, to the desolate and nearly unreachable places to renew
himself, feel the earth spin, and hear the soothing rhythms of water and wind.
Death had long since held no fear for him.

"If all that happens," he said,
"is that I return to being part of the earth, the waters, the universe, it
is enough. If there is more, all the better, but more is not necessary."

Listening to Murietta, Esther found
herself thinking about an eventual confrontation with Mosby. She might fail.
Mosby might kill her. Suddenly she saw the possibility of her own violent death
in a new light. She had thought of it before. In the past, the prospect had
chilled her. Now it didn't seem to bother her as much. She liked Murietta's
concept of death. It made sense. It soothed her. After all, she thought, once
you are dead, what does it matter
how
you died?"

"You are certainly a different sort
of man," she said.

"I do not feel so different. Just
fortunate to understand what is important and what is not… I think."

"So many do not. So many behave like
animals."

"Not all. And I enjoy the company of
gentle, amusing people." He sighed. "Those that are not gentle, well,
occasionally they force me to do things I would rather not."

She thought of Mosby again and spoke
without caution. "Have you ever taken revenge? Killed a man?"
Alarmed, she hoped Murietta would not be curious about why she had asked such a
question.

He stared at her evenly for a moment.
"No. Not for revenge. In self-defense… But there is one man I have thought
of killing for what he did to me."

"Just before I found you by the
river?"

"Yes. But I wish to talk no more
about it."

Esther sighed. "Will you kill
him?"

Murietta was silent for a moment.
"In time, I believe the desire for vengeance will pass. I hope it does. I
do not like the idea of killing another man. But until my blood cools on the
matter, I do not know what I would do if I saw him. I hope I do not, for that
very reason."

Briefly, Esther wondered if she would
ever get over her desire to bring Mosby down. She doubted it. She saw from his
expression that Murietta was wondering why she had asked him the question. She
led him in another direction.

"One would never know how much there
is to you, Joaquin," she said. "Sometimes I want to scream at the
lack of such understanding among men—and women."

"That is when you need to be alone,
in a wild place where men do not pass." He smiled. "Sometimes I have
seen you slip away, when you thought I was dreaming on my bedroll."