California Woman (Daughters of the Whirlwind Book 1) (31 page)

Slightly giddy now, she stopped two yards
from him and smiled. "You are the chief. You can change the rule."

He sighed. "I have changed one rule
too many for you already."

"What is it you put in the water? In
your pipe? It makes me feel wonderful."

"You cannot be here," he said
evenly. But she had seen his eyes fastened on her breasts, rising and falling
beneath her chemise.

"Tell me what you put in the
water."

"The crushed seeds of a desert
flower."

"What is it called?"

"In your language it would be called
'the dust of living dreams.' Why have you come here?"

She took another step toward him,
breathing deeply. She no longer felt her body. She could scarcely remember who
she was. "I have come to offer myself to you."

"You would do this?" Within the
aroma of the steam he could smell her hair, the scent of lilac water, and faint
traces of her body. He forced his eyes away from her.

"I have caused you much pain,"
she said, swaying. "I will wash it away."

"I have a wife." He looked at
her again, saw the exquisitely tapered silhouette of her legs through the thin
fabric.

"She sent me. She asked me to heal
your pain."

He was astonished. "She did this
thing?"

"Yes. She loves you. You are her
husband. And I love you. You are my sunbrother."

He felt himself begin to engorge, rise,
then saw her smile as she watched it happen. He took a step forward and pulled
the chemise up over her head. For a moment he stared at the long-imagined lines
of her full breasts and pale, slender body, the dark hair at the base of her
flat stomach. Almost overcome, he swung his right arm back, throwing the chemise
behind him. Wadded, it hit the bowl of steaming water on the wall of the
firepit and knocked it over onto the red-hot stones. The water hissed, and a
spray of boiling droplets struck both of them. Tears formed in Esther's eyes
from the sharp, brief, stinging pain. As the droplets burned against his leg,
Miwokan suddenly understood.

It is a sign
,
he thought.
The sun is testing me
. In the clarity of that fleeting
moment of pain, he realized the full extent of his wife's love, how much Esther
loved him to be here, doing what she had no wish for. Then, as he reached out
and gently brushed away the tears brimming on Esther's eyelids, it became clear
to him that lying with her would only make things worse. She would hate him for
it. She would be gone again, and the remembered joy would haunt him.
Solana
would be with him, but no matter how much
she loved him, thought this would heal him, it would change things forever
between them.
They are women
, he thought.
They mean well, but they
cannot see what this would do to all of us. I will not be a woman, and I will
not fail in this.

Esther moved forward and touched his
cheek.
My God
, she thought,
his face is beautiful
.

"We will smoke this together
first," he said, relighting the pipe with a glowing twig and handing it to
her.

"Why?" she asked.

"It will make it easier for you.
Better."

"I have never smoked. How shall I do
it?"

He placed the tip of the pipe shaft on
her lips. "As you would breathe the air in with your mouth."

She sucked at the pipe and coughed.
"Wait," she said, recovering. "I will try again."

He watched as she drew in the smoke and
inhaled it this time. "Again." She took in a long draw. "Close
your mouth and hold it in your body until you cannot any longer." He saw
her eyes tear and glaze over and caught her as she staggered. She let the smoke
out. "And again."

When
she passed out, he gently dropped the chemise back over her body, wrapped the
fur around her, and picked her up in his arms. Still naked, he carried her
across the snow-covered clearing. Twenty feet from the entrance to her hut, he
veered and went into his own. Smiling at
Solana,
he laid Esther down next to the sleeping
boys in one corner, covered her, then turned and walked to his waiting wife.

Once, when the effect of the narcotic had
almost worn off, Esther opened her eyes in the middle of what she thought was a
dream. She heard gentle laughter from beyond a fire that glowed inexplicably in
the center of Miwokan's hut, rather than her own. She drifted off, then
awakened again. She saw and heard them together, Miwokan above his wife, the
two of them moving rhythmically beyond the embers, shadows playing on their
bronze, moist bodies, until, finally, she heard them both moan with joy.

An overcast sky obscured the early
evening stars as Esther emerged from the doorway of Sacramento's City Hotel
just after dinner. The rains of December and the first week of 1850 had turned
Front Street, along the
Embarcadero,
into a bog. Turning left, Esther began
walking the short distance beyond the C. M. and T. Company building to the
Eagle Thea
ter.
She
was early, and though the clouds were threatening again, she decided to stroll
a block or two before coming back to meet Warren Barnett for the evening
performance.

She passed G. B. Stevens's store on the
corner of Front and J Streets, glanced left, and shook her head. A half-block
away a crater at least two-dozen feet in diameter marred the middle of the
street where an oak tree had been callously ripped from the earth. On both
sides wooden houses and stores had been built almost as far as the eye could
see. Crossing J, Esther passed a long, clapboard warehouse, the Eldorado
Exchange, and then a grocery. She stepped around a Maidu Indian dressed in a
red-flannel shirt and rumpled trousers two sizes too big. He was too drunk to
feel the nip of a raw, slowly rising wind on his bruised, bare feet. Up the
street, a group of winter-idled miners brushed past another intoxicated Maidu,
jostling and almost knocking him off his feet as they entered the Elephant House
Hotel, bulging pouches hanging from their belts.

They have "come to see the
elephant," Esther thought gloomily, employing the forty-niners' slang term
for California and the gold fields. They are seeing it—and the Indians are
feeling its sharp-pointed tusks.

Esther turned back as a light drizzle
began to fall, and took a seat in the back row of the empty theater where
Barnett could easily spot her when he arrived.
How long will it be before
more of Miwokan's men succumb completely to the whiskey, the gold and the
gambling?
Esther wondered. She sighed as her thoughts turned to
Solana
and her husband. As clearly as though it
were happening again, she pictured saying good-bye to
Solana
three mornings earlier.

She had awakened in their hut, groggy and
beset by the worst headache she had ever experienced. The village was so silent
she could hear the rush of the rain-swollen river more than fifty yards away.
Morti
fied,
she
stared mutely out through the hut entrance at the sweathouse.
Solana
prepared breakfast and helped her dress
without mention of the previous night, her husband, or how Esther had ended up
sleeping near the children. Miwokan was gone, off on a hunting sortie with
several young braves. Despondent, scarcely aware that the sun had finally
broken through the storm clouds, Esther slowly prepared to leave. She was about
to climb into her saddle, ride to the cabin and then on to Sacramento in the
buckboard with Murietta, when
Solana
reached
out and touched the amulet hanging from her neck.

"Perhaps the gold heart made it work
out well," the Indian woman said, smiling.

"Work out
well
?" Esther
gasped. "I can never come here again!"

Solana
stroked
Esther's hair. "But nothing happened."

"Everything happened!" Esther
said, trying not to cry.

"You passed out from what was in the
pipe, and the sweating air."

"But that doesn't mean he…"

"What I thought… what I hoped would
happen, happened. He saw what it would do to us, to his friendship with you. He
knew how much I loved him to do this thing. And he carried you back here after
giving you enough of the smoke to make you sleep. Then he came to me in our bed
as he did when he was a young brave. And again, before anyone was awake this
morning."

Esther's mouth dropped open. "And we
did not? Nothing happened?"

"Nothing,"
Solana
said, smiling happily.

"You actually thought it would not
happen?"

"I knew two things could happen.
That he would see things clearly, as he did. Or that you would lie with him,
and afterward you would never come back. In time, knowing you hated him for it,
knowing you would not be with him again, the pain in him would pass and he
would force you from his mind. Which way did not matter. I knew that one or the
other would give him back to me."

"But he might have hated you."

"No, Sunsister… In time, he would
see how wise it was for me to do this thing. He might not love me as before,
but he would not send me away. But that does not matter. The dream dust and the
amulet have been kind to me. He loves me now as he has not for many winters.
And that is good. It will help him live with the changes as the end for us
draws near."

"The end? It doesn't have to be that
way!"

"It
will come, Sunsister. And we will change. Not as you said it might be when you
spoke to him at the waterfall. We will eat mice, but we will live, and we will
be together. And that will be enough until the sun takes us back."

Remembering their final, half-happy,
half-sad embrace, Esther wiped at her eyes as she waited in the partially
filled theater. When Barnett arrived and sat down next to her, it was
practically jammed.

"Forgive me for being late. Minor,
unexpected difficulties. There has been a change in my plans, and I have the
time to accompany you back to Mariposa, if you like."

For a moment Esther had a fleeting
suspicion that Barnett might also be succumbing to an infatuation. "I had
tentatively planned to go back with Murietta."

"Oh, well," he said, glancing
at the program, obviously only slightly disappointed. "I thought I'd see
for myself just how well my orders have been carried out by the builders."

Relieved and embarrassed by her quick
assumption, she thought for a moment about how much less awkward it might be
for her if Barnett did accompany her, rather than the
Californio.
"The plans are not definite… Why
don't you? You could go on from the ranch by stagecoach."

"Yes, I thought I'd stay briefly, a
few hours, and then, if you were kind enough to have me driven to Coulterville,
go on to San Jose from there."

"We could stop at the South Fork to
let Murietta know. I'm sure he'll be delighted not to have to make the long
round-trip."

"I can attend to some business in
Placerville. Would you mind stopping there briefly?"

"I'm not too taken with that place.
But I can visit with Joaquin at the cabin until you've finished."

"Fine," he said, craning his
neck, fascinated by the people around them. Chuckling, he leaned over and
whispered: "We certainly have a mixed lot of characters here tonight, do
we not?"

Well-dressed women and their merchant
husbands sniffed and murmured disdainfully as the last of the bench-row seats
were filled by miners coming in through a side entrance from the Round Tent, a
saloon and gambling hall adjacent to the wood-frame, canvas-covered building.
An usher removed someone from the seat next to Esther, and a well-dressed young
man with muttonchop whiskers took his place. He nodded at Esther and took out a
notepad bearing a stamped
New York Tribune
on its cover. The air in the
auditorium was stifling, and the sound of rain on canvas rose appreciably in
volume.

Toward the end of the melodrama, the New
Zealand-born leading lady threw herself prostrate in the middle of the stage.
Turning to a knight in purple, attempting to outdo the now pelting raindrops
and flapping canvas along the walls, the actress moaned, then shouted,
"You're me only 'ope.
Me only 'ope!
"

The
Tribune
correspondent turned,
smiled, and whispered to Esther, "Me only 'ope is to get out of 'ere
before I suffocate from the lack of air and talent."

Suddenly with a roar and tearing of
canvas, a wall of water burst through the side of the building and flooded the
stage, taking the entire cast with it. In seconds, the orchestra was inundated,
each man swimming for himself in the pit, instruments floating like jetsam from
a sunken vessel. Next the audience received the brunt of the cascade; the
playgoers, dressed in heavy overcoats, knee-high boots, and long, full- skirted
dresses, were floundering, falling, screaming, and attempting to climb up on
submerged benches. The correspondent next to Esther grabbed one arm just as
Warren Barnett took the other, and together they lifted her onto a bench.

"Bayard Taylor," the
Tribune
correspondent shouted, reaching out to shake hands, still clutching his
notepad.

"Barnett. William Barnett,"
Warren said, more than unnerved. "I mean
Warren
Barnett."

Esther broke into a peal of laughter. It
rose to a hysterical pitch as she watched another wave of water smash in under
the flapping canvas siding and bowl the three of them off the bench. Before she
went under, she saw Barnett and Taylor picked up and tossed yards away like
life-sized dolls. She came up and a heavy-set miner washed into her from two
rows forward. Scrambling, he pushed her under and clutched desperately at the
bench. It toppled slowly in the water, turning until it wedged beneath a
nailed-down seat and trapped Esther.

She could not move. The coldness made the
bridge of her nose ache. Opening her eyes, she saw the hazy light of the gas
lamps not four feet above her, beyond the surface of the frigid water. The man
who had pushed her under was gone. She started to gasp for air involuntarily,
felt the water trickle down her throat, and fought the urge to breathe. The
water gagged her, and she coughed. Closing her mouth quickly, she put one hand
over it and tried not to panic. Reaching down with her other hand, she pushed
at the bench pinning her to the floor of the auditorium. It moved, but then it
wedged even more firmly as one end slipped beneath another bench to her left.
Someone scrambled by, stepping on her and sending sharp stabs of pain through
shin and shoulder. Only seconds had passed, but it seemed infinitely longer.

Oh, God
,
she thought.
Just one breath of air.
An image of Alex floated through
her mind. Then her father… sister… old Miss Cable… John Alexander.
I'm going
to die.
She was surprised that she felt no fear—it was simply a fact: I'm
going to die. Her stomach tightening in spasms, she was numbly, clinically
aware of the strange, swollen sensation of crying under water.

Now it was Mosby's face hanging in front
of her, laughing.
I will never have the chance to kill you now… Bastard!
The anger galvanized her.
I will not die. I… will… not… die…
Her lungs
knotted. She took her hand from her mouth and pushed at the bench with both
arms as hard as she could. It wouldn't budge. She knew it was useless and gave
in. Staring up through the water, she wondered when she would be forced to open
her mouth and let it in. She thought of Alex again.

Oddly, it was not Alex she saw hovering
over her just above the surface now, but Barnett. She watched as a frantic
miner pulled at Barnett's coat, saw him push the man away and take hold of the
bench lying across her chest. He pulled at it, and the cords in his neck grew
taut. He moved to the right, grabbed the bench again and, bracing his forearm
under it, heaved up with every muscle in his enormous body just as she passed
out.

Barnett relaxed once, then yanked upward
again, tearing the bench free. Throwing it aside, he reached down and picked
Esther up in his arms. Semiconscious, she coughed up a half-pint of water and
began sucking in deep breaths of air. Surprised that she was still alive,
Barnett waded, hip-deep, toward the door of the theater. Still spitting up
small amounts of water, Esther hung dazed in his arms as he pushed toward the
City Hotel, two buildings away.

Once, before they reached it, she saw the
body of an Indian drift past. Even through half-closed eyes she knew it was the
drunken Maidu she had seen sprawled on the sidewalk earlier. Near the flooded
hotel entrance, an old man floated by on a cot, pleading hoarsely for help. She
tried to lift her arm and reach out to him, but all her energy was spent. The
strain of the effort made her close her eyes for a moment. When she opened them
again, the old man had disappeared in the darkness.

Soaked through, she began to regain full
consciousness as Barnett carried her up the stairs and sat her down on the
second-floor landing. Cognizance of how close she had come to death caught up
with her, and she began trembling uncontrollably. Barnett found a blanket,
wrapped it around her, and began wringing the water out of her dress. She tried
to thank him, but her teeth were chattering wildly. Below, amid the screaming
and hysteria of those who lived, bodies floated face-down in the foyer and the
first-floor hallway. Near the foot of the stairs a small boy sat on a step,
water up to his waist, holding onto the hand of his dead two-year-old sister.

Pointing to the child, Esther nodded to
Barnett. When she stopped shivering and regained her wits, he went down and
carried the little girl's body back up to the second floor, then went back for
the boy. Numb with fatigue, speechless with horror and shock, Esther simply
gazed at Barnett in stunned gratitude as she put her arms around the boy and
tried to comfort him.