California Woman (Daughters of the Whirlwind Book 1) (37 page)

Barnett was unreachable until almost noon
the following day. Red-eyed and exhausted after a sleepless night, Esther
caught him on his way to a carriage he was taking to the new state capital at
Vallejo. She still had nothing to support her suspicions, and she could not
bring herself to tell Barnett about the cache of gold buried at the base of the
waterfall. Tightened like a guitar string from fatigue and frustration, her
emotions snapped, and she could not hold back the tears. To put her mind at
ease, Barnett instructed an aide to enlist a handful of deputies to accompany
Esther to Miwokan's village.

It took until late afternoon to round up
even two lawmen. They were uninterested at best, plainly annoyed that they had
to ride more than a hundred miles going and coming for what they assumed was
nothing. They were already talking about finding a place to stop for the night
when they saw Miwokan's brother and the younger Indian. Two crows that had been
plucking at the dead men flew off as they approached.

Esther gasped and turned her head away.
The more heavyset of the two deputies took off his hat and stared down at the
bodies for a moment. "Well, that's that, ma'am." He started to wheel
his horse around for the ride back to Sacramento.

"
Just one minute!
Certainly
you are not going to leave them here?"

The second deputy, a tall, gaunt man with
enormous ears, stared at her. "Nothin' we can do for 'em now, ma'am."

"For God's sake, you can at least
bury them."

"No shovels, ma'am. Besides, we
don't do that."

She looked at the bodies and a faint
awareness that something was incongruous about them flashed through her mind.
The off-key note was lost for a moment in rising anger. "You don't do
that?
You don't bury people lying dead along the side of a road?
What
kind of law officers are you?"

The heavy-set deputy rolled his eyes up
in exasperation. "That's undertaker's work. We'll send someone out…"

"You'll do no such thing!" she
shouted. "By the time anyone gets to them, they'll be mutilated."

"You got no right to get sharp with
us, ma'am," the gaunt deputy said. "You got no authority to tell us
what we have to do. Anyways, you're actin's though these here was white folks.
Plain to see they's just two drunken Indians killed each other in a
fight."

"They shoulda thought about gettin'
a decent burial before pickin' this place to kill each other," the other
deputy said.

Esther was looking at the two dead men
again, and what she began to realize overrode her urge to lash out with her
reins at the face of the nearest peace officer. She got down from her horse
and, fighting back nausea, reached out and pulled the younger Indian off the
body of Miwokan's brother. She started to wretch at the sight of the wounds and
blood, but the gagging stopped as she looked away and thought about the element
that seemed to be missing. Then it struck her.

"There is only one knife."

"So what?" the heavy-set deputy
said. He got down from his horse, not yet aware of what she was driving at.
"Could've been throwed or knocked away in these bushes."

"Look for it," Esther said.

"Now lissen…"

"You
idiot
," Esther
hissed. "Can't you see it would be practically impossible for them to stab
each other in this way—in the heart and in the throat, at almost the same
instant—even if they
had
two knives?"

The gaunt man got down now and looked
more closely at the bodies. "She's right, Lemuel. Either one of these cuts
would've stopped the other in his tracks. Couldn't have struck the second blow,
stabbed the first one back."

The searched the underbrush carefully,
then covered a circle of ground as far as a knife could possibly be thrown.
They found nothing.

"Looks like they's murdered, all
right," the gaunt man said.

"And more will be killed unless we
get to the village in time," Esther said, getting back on her horse.

The two deputies looked at one another
uneasily, then at Esther, both of them aware that she was a friend of Warren
Barnett. "How many men you say was with these two?" the heavier man
asked.

"At least five."

The
gaunt man whistled. "We better stop by Negro Bar on the way, see if we can
round up a few more men." He looked at Esther and sheepishly dropped his
gaze. "Afraid we won't have time to bury 'em, ma'am. But maybe we can get
someone to come down from the Bar and do it."

"Perfect," Claussen said. Lying
next to him at the edge of the woods, Mosby nodded. Twenty yards away the
watchman circled the storage shed on the eastern end of the sprawling South
Fork Mining Company complex. Claussen waited until the watchman was beyond the
building, then moved to the shadows underneath an enormous ore chute. The
watchman circled back, and Claussen waited until he passed, a yard away, before
stepping out from behind the braced chute support. He took one step, cupped his
hand over the watchman's mouth, shoved the dead young Miwok's knife into his
back, and held him until he stopped squirming, his knees buckled, and he fell.

Mosby
watched as Claussen dropped the Indian necklace next to the dead watchman and
waved the other four men over. When they were at his side, he gestured to the
storage shed. Three minutes later, the four men returned with axes, picks, and
kerosene. Mosby bent down and took a half-finished pint of whiskey out of the
dead man's pocket. He found a small pouch of gold dust in the watchman's money
belt and took that as well. He held the pouch up and saw the initials that had
been burned into the leather:
SFM Co.
Smiling, he handed the bottle and
the pouch to
Claussen.
The
red-bearded man looked puzzled for a moment. But then he understood and nodded
in approval.

"I'm sorry for the delay, but we got
to rest the horses for an hour or so, ma'am," the gaunt deputy said.

Exhausted herself, Esther nodded and
looked at her watch as the other deputy and the five miners riding with them
dismounted. It was four in the morning. One of the men, a muscular black cook
well over six feet tall and with a completely bald head, walked over to her.
"Kin I lay out your bedroll, ma'am?" he asked in a gentle voice.
"You might ought to git some rest."

"Thank you. I'm very grateful to you
for coming."

"I seen this kind thing
before," the black man said. "Done to mah own kind. Wa'n't nobody
willin' to do nothin' 'bout it. Wasn't gonna be like them folks."

Esther nodded. She calculated the time it
would take, riding hard, to reach the village. "Do you think we'll be
ready to leave in an hour?"

The
black man turned a corner of her blanket back and stood up. "First light,
ma'am. Deputy say we be leavin' at first light."

Solana
stirred,
turned over under the fur blanket, and then awoke, listening for the sound that
had aroused her. She heard it again—a faint
wooosh
, like the flight of a
bird, followed by a soft, thicker noise that was accompanied by an almost
inaudible crack. She thought one of the small boys in the village had risen
early and was trying his skill with a bow and arrow on a tree stump. She
clucked disapprovingly. There were only three dozen people in camp now. Most of
the fathers were gone. A score of those who remained were children, and the
boys were difficult to manage with only five men left.

She got up and went to the rear entrance
of the hut. She heard the sound again just as she stepped outside. This time
she noticed that the hushing of the arrow in flight seemed unusually short. What
seemed like the quick splintering of light bark and the noise of the arrowhead
as it lodged in the soft core of a young tree followed the
wooosh
almost
immediately. She had only the light of the false dawn to see by. She had taken
three or four steps when she stumbled over the body of the sentinel. She
crouched down and saw it was the young male who had just gone through his
initiation ritual. There was a dark, gaping split in his head from crown to
eyebrow.

She heard the sound again and waited as
her eyes adjusted to the darkness. A white man in miner's clothing emerged from
a hut twenty feet to her left. He was carrying an ax. The blade did not shine.
Another man and then another moved from one hut to the next. Across the
clearing, a heavy, bearded white man and a taller one with a moustache walked
toward the dying campfire. She recognized Isaac Claussen from Placerville. In
the faint glow of the logs the tall man's long, broad knife glistened and dark
liquid dropped from its tip. The bearded man motioned to a sixth white carrying
a pick, and they started toward Miwokan's hut.

Solana's mind was still not keeping pace
with her quickening pulse. She heard a child wail and simultaneously remembered
Mwamwaash just as she started back toward the rear entrance. She screamed,
veered, picked up a spear lying against the hut and ran at Claussen.

She was halfway to him when someone
knocked her down from behind. She rolled over and saw the tall white man with
the moustache lift the long rifle by its muzzle, crouch, and adjust his swing
as she rolled over on her stomach again. The flat of the stock came down hard
on the back of her head, but the grip and part of the barrel hit the flesh
across her back and shoulders, cushioning the blow so it did not kill her. She
heard Claussen say, "She's finished. Let's get on with it, Luther,"
before she blacked out.

She felt herself rotating slowly, pulling
at the earth with her fingers because her legs did not work, as she regained
partial consciousness a few minutes later. Blood ran down around her ears and
over her cheeks. She opened her eyes and saw that they had Miwokan, three of
them, and the bearded man was talking to him. She saw the man with the
moustache then, holding Mwamwaash upside down by his ankles. The boy was sobbing.
She tried to call out, but she could not open her mouth. She attempted to crawl
but could not move. The blackness enveloped her again, briefly, then she heard
Claussen's voice.

"Where's the fuckin' gold?" he
said, swinging up with the thick, solid butt of his knife into Miwokan's
stomach. "Where you heathen bastards got it hid?"

Miwokan smiled at him. Claussen smashed
him in the nose.

"No one's gonna help you,"
Claussen said. "They all gone. You better tell me."

Blood seeped down over Miwokan's split
upper lip. "There is no gold for you. Only the death it brings."

Claussen punched him with the knife butt
again, this time under the diaphragm. Miwokan choked, then retched. He forced
the bile down and pulled himself erect. He locked his knees so his leg muscles
would stop quivering.

"You think you're smart, don't you,
you Digger bastard?" Claussen nodded at Mosby. "Dip that boy into the
fire for a minute, Luther. We'll just see if his daddy don't want to
talk."

Solana
watched,
helplessly immobile, as Mosby lowered the screaming boy until his hands were
almost touching the logs. Mwamwaash shrieked in agony as the heat seared his
fingertips and palms. The higher pitch of his voice and his pleading eyes
unleashed something in Miwokan, a surging power he had not felt in years. He
lifted himself from the men holding him and spun left, then right, throwing
them off. Diving at Mosby, he bowled him over with his shoulders and pulled his
son away from the fire in the crook of his outstretched arm.

The boy was under Miwokan now as he
rolled and got up on all fours. He heard the other white men coming behind him.
He gazed briefly at Mwamwaash's terrified, pain-filled beseeching face.
"Forgive me," Miwokan said, turning the boy over on his side. He
lifted his arm and brought the side of his hand down sharply on the flank of
his son's neck, snapping it and killing him instantly. He started to get up,
but the men were already on him.

Mosby waited until he got his wind back,
then stood up and brushed at his clothes as two of the men held Miwokan again.

"Sand," Claussen said,
whistling and raising his eyebrows. He turned to Mosby. "Got to hand it to
him, Luther. He's got sand."

"You can no longer harm him,"
Miwokan said.

"No, but I can hurt you, Digger. An'
I'm goin' to, 'less you tell me where the damn gold is!"

Miwokan was silent. Claussen turned to
one of the men. "Get me an arrow. Caleb, Jared, get him on his feet."

When his man brought the stone-tipped
shaft back, Claussen removed the arrowhead and sharpened the wooden tip with
his knife. After he finished, he held the sharp point up and showed it to
Miwokan. He flicked at it with his fingertip, then traced a red welt across
Miwokan's chest.

"You ought to know about this little
trick, Digger.
i
seen one o' your
Apache cousins use it." Claussen turned to Mosby and smiled coldly.
"This don't make him talk, nothin' will. Hold him steady. He ain't gonna
like this at all. Hold them goddamned legs tight."

Claussen
stepped
up to
Miwokan
and
inserted the point of the arrow shaft into one ear. "How's 'at feel? Huh?
Feel good?"