California Woman (Daughters of the Whirlwind Book 1) (43 page)

San
Francisco

May 18, 1856

Solana
and I buried "Jack Marin"
today. On a quiet knoll beneath a sycamore on his property just to the west of
Twin Peaks. He would have liked being interred away from the city, in one of
his beloved quiet places, no matter how changed he was during the year and a
half we were intermittently together after we chanced to meet again. How
shocked you must be, Alex, to read of Murietta's survival. How surprised this
city would be if it knew "Jack Marin's" real identity! I dare say the
double hanging that took place today would have been postponed indefinitely
while William T. Coleman's resurrected mob of vigilantes and Luther Mosby's
opposing "Law and Order" hoodlums recovered from the stunning
knowledge that Joaquin Murietta lived among them, sold goods to them from his
profitable saddlery, for more than two years!

I have not written of "Jack Marin" or Joaquin in these
pages in a year and a half for fear that, had this journal fallen into the
wrong hands, it would have spelled his doom. Nor have I addressed myself to
you, Alex, since shortly after your marriage to Judith Britten. It was a
comfort once, and I tried to continue writing “to” you. But I found that doing
so, late of an evening, as is my habit, knowing you might at the same moment be
in Judith's arms, stirred longings and jealousies within me that were
intolerable. (Is that not remarkable after all this time?) And so I have
written since only as one does normally. That will explain the inclusion of so
many things you should know about. Your dear friend Billy Ralston's rapid rise
to a position equal in importance at Blue Star with those of William Kelsey and
Warren Barnett, for example. You might be surprised to know that I was
introduced to him at one of the few Blue Star board meetings I have ever
attended. Did not expect him to be there. Heavily veiled. Even had I not been,
I seriously doubt he would have recognized me after so many years.

So, too, would you have known about Warren's reelection to the
state assembly at the same time you, not six months admitted to the bar, also
joined that august body. (I was so proud for you.)

I have written little of Luther Mosby, who this very moment
languishes in the Committee of Vigilance jail. Believe me, I have not forgotten
him, nor my intentions, as you will soon discover in these pages. But beyond my
comments that he has been virtually untouchable since Gwin engineered his rise
to a seat on the California Supreme Court, there has been precious little to
say, until today.

You know, undoubtedly, that Mosby had a hand in "Jack
Marin's" death, even if he did not strike the killing blow himself. But
what you, and everyone else in San Francisco, cannot know, is that "Jack
Marin" was actually Joaquin. Let me go back over the events of the past
week, nay, past year and a half. Let me recount it all, so that you will
understand… and so that I can share the burden of a grief so deep it cannot be
described… other than to say it could only be deeper had you been the one
killed this past Friday.

The morning sun warmed Esther as she
waited for Murietta in the swing seat on the porch of her two-story house.
Mayflies swarmed above the oval of green lawn and the circular driveway
bordered with lavender Johnny-jump-ups. She could smell the fragrance of the
flowering shrubs skirting the porch and the thick blanket of white alyssum
blossoming between the house and her carriage stable. The warmth lulled her.
She nudged a toe impatiently at the
Evening Bulletin
lying near her
feet. Murietta was due at nine sharp; she would read the paper when they
returned later in the day.

Gazing instead toward the new houses
being built on
Rincon
Hill,
south of the city, she smiled ruefully. Fitting, she thought. Sides were being
taken in Congress on the increasingly explosive issue of slavery, and they were
being taken there as well. The houses barely visible in the distance on
Rincon
Hill were being built for a dozen or so
of San Francisco's wealthy Southerners, the Gwins among them. Set apart from
the rest of the city, the area was to be called South Park.

The Southerners were not the only hostile
faction in the city. Editors railed at one another, at corrupt politicians and
businessmen, even personal enemies. The newly named Republicans vilified every
Demo
crat,
including
Barnett.
Esther
knew Warren was above the rapaciousness, election rigging, and strong-arm
tactics of his fellow party members, but her conviction didn't matter. A rising
malice was transforming San Francisco into a savage arena. Daily there were
insults, brawls, challenges, and duels. There was talk of reviving the
Committee of Vigilance, which in 1852 had taken the law into its own hands and
rid the city of numerous criminals—as well as innocent people—in a series of
beatings and lynchings. This time, if the rumor was true, the target would be
political exploiters.

But here, on her blossom-covered hill far
to the west of the city, Esther felt protected from it all. Her gaze swept
northward past a hill too steep to be settled, then on to the clapboard and brick
dwellings that sprawled south and west toward her ten acres. Some of the new
Romanesque, stone business buildings were four stories high. She knew the land
she owned would hold the city at bay if the growth reached out and surrounded
her, but the prospect rankled.

She traveled into the city with
Solana
regularly now, enjoying the visits, the
myriad diversions San Francisco had to offer. The reassuring knowledge that she
had more than enough breathing room here had been a major factor in once again
abandoning her semi-reclusive ways. But she knew that sooner or later this
hilltop retreat would be lost to "progress." And that was the main
reason she was faintly excited and expectant about accompanying Murietta to see
the acreage he had purchased to the west of Twin Peaks today. She was eager to
look over the surrounding land. If it was as beautiful as he said it was,
perhaps she would purchase some herself as a hedge against the day the city
engulfed her.

There had been a hint of something else
in Murietta's tone when he asked her to inspect his purchase. She wondered if
he were planning to propose mar
riage.
She
doubted that, but it was not beyond possibility. She had no idea how she might
respond, although she guessed her answer would be no. True, they were more
married than many legally bound couples she knew of; Alex was married, and she
still cared about Joaquin. But changes in him had prompted a gradual lessening
of her feelings.

"Not the physical changes," she
said out loud to the cat curled in a chair on her porch, as if it would nod in
agreement. He did look different, had shaved off his moustache and grown a bit
plump in the face. There were deep lines around his eyes, he limped slightly
from a bullet wound in his left leg, and he stooped a bit to one side, like a
much older man. No, not those outward and visible signs. Nor the store-bought
suits and top hat he wore. Esther thought they looked ridiculous, but she
understood their value. Combined with the facial differences, they made him
virtually unrecognizable to almost anyone who had known him in the past. Even
Solana
looked at him disbelievingly  during  the
first six months he had come visiting her in the new house.

The
inward changes were the ones that had dampened her regard for him. They were not
total, and for that reason her feelings were still ambivalent, rather than
entirely gone. She remembered a day a year earlier, when one part of the old
Murietta emerged clearly, sharply defining all else that was gone in him.

They were picnicking on the
boulder-braced cliffs to the west of the Presidio, on the Pacific. Below them
more than a hundred seals blanketed a jagged outcropping just offshore. Waves
crashed against the rocks and sent sunlit spray thirty feet up the cliffs.

"Why won't you tell me about the
years you were—away?" She toyed absently with the edge of a cucumber
sandwich, knowing full well how uncomfortable the same question had made him in
the past. "Why won't you share that with me? Do you think I would tell
someone about it?"

He stared off at the horizon. "No. I
have told you many times. It is simply a time of my life I wish to
forget."

She knew she was being unreasonable, but
still it piqued her that he would not share that information, help her to
understand more fully why he behaved more than carefully now. In spite of
herself, she prodded him. "It seems obvious that you were not herding
sheep," she said almost waspishly. She tried to stop herself, but the
slender thread of bitchiness and sarcasm she hated in herself would not be silenced.
"The saddlery you own, the building itself, let alone the inventory, would
require a considerable outlay of money."

"And where did I get it? Is that
what you want to know?" He turned to her and the sight of her face
triggered in him a surge of love that checked his anger. He had pictured that
face countless times in the mountains, in caves, at night, alone on a bedroll
in the wilds, and longed to hold it, kiss it. He did  not want to lose it
again. He laughed, and for a moment displayed his once casual ability to
sidestep almost any issue through sardonic amusement. "There are such
things as banks, Esther. They lend money to men who wish to establish a
business."

"But not without—"

He put his hand to her lips, smiling
again, patiently. "No more," he said. "All right?" Finally,
he took his hand away.

"All right," she said guiltily,
subduing unreasonableness and wanting to make it up to him. "But if you've
borrowed money, why don't you let me pay you your fair share from the sale of
the Southern Sierra Mining Company? You could—"

"I have told you before. I asked you
to hold that money for me in your account at Adams—"

"I don't remember you ever asking me
that."

"Well, I did. And therefore it was
the same as if I had been a depositor, too."

"But—"

"No 'buts.' When the bank failed, I
lost my money just as you did. And I will hear no more about it." He
smiled again. "Now, can we finish our picnic and enjoy this lovely
afternoon."

She sighed, ashamed that she had pried at
him again but still slightly irritated with not having the information she
wanted. "Yes," she said. "Let's enjoy it." For a moment she
contrasted his independence and fairness with the solicitous mercantile life he
was leading now. She understood the need for some of it, but…

"Look at them," Murietta said,
pointing to a bull seal and his mate, basking near the top of the offshore
rocks. "Growing old together, sharing a life of peace. Perhaps that is in
store for us as well."

"Perhaps,"
she said, not convincingly, still half-lost in her own thoughts and betraying
how much she was beginning to doubt such a thing would happen. When she became
aware of the subtle change in his voice and turned, the look in his eyes made
her feel as though an arctic wind had knifed through the hot summer sun and sliced
a path between them.

Getting up from the porch swing, Esther
glanced again at her locket watch, and felt a twinge of irritation. It was well
past nine. Murietta had not been like this when she first knew him. He had
always been prompt. But in the last year and a half, he was late more often
than not. Invariably, his excuse was the press of business. But she knew it was
more often caused by extra time he spent ingratiating himself with customers.
Their friendship, he thought, would make him more "respectable" and
therefore less vulnerable to discovery.

Even
more annoyed now, she plumped back into the porch swing.
That's all he seems
interested in: mercantile stature, security, and creature comforts
, she
thought. His friends were so old, so stuffy; and he had adopted their ways,
their attitudes, even their causes. It seemed as if he were attempting to
become another person entirely! As though those few years spent in the
mountains and on stagecoach trails, wearing a bandanna over his face and
holding a gun in his hand, had aged him twenty years, robbed him of the better
part of his sardonic humor and, worse, stripped him of his courage. It had all
been brought home to her just a week earlier when she had decided to combine
the need to replace a damaged buggy harness with the prospect of an unexpected
lunch together at the little restaurant near Joaquin's shop.

She paused at the entrance to the
saddlery when she saw Murietta was just completing a sale to James King, the
vitriolically righteous publisher of the
Bulletin
. Murietta had just
convinced King that a snaffle bit would do less damage to a horse and be just
as effective as a curb bit for the sort of riding he did. Behind him an array
of hand-tooled saddles and brass-studded tack hung from pegs on the rear wall
of the store. King—short, bearded, and wiry— did not notice Esther's entrance.

"I thought you gave that fellow
Casey exactly what he deserved in the paper this morning," Murietta said,
deferentially nodding his head as he wrapped up the snaffle bit.

"Ah, you mean the account of his
ballot-box stuffing to gain his seat on the City Council." King turned.
When he saw a woman was listening as well, he took on an even more theatrical
air of indignation.

"Yes," Murietta continued,
coming around from behind the counter even though there was no need to.
"The business about Casey having been in prison in New York State… that is
true?"

"True? Of course it's true! I would
not have printed it if it were not. The man is a scoundrel of the first
order."

And the publisher of a rival
paper
, The Times, Esther thought.

"Were it not for your editorials,
God knows what men like Casey would get away with," Murietta went on,
glancing somewhat guiltily at Esther.

She sensed he was weighing whether or not
to introduce her to his "friend." She had no interest whatsoever in
meeting King, who so fancied himself above the average citizen he had legally
adopted for himself the appellation "James King of William," to
distinguish himself from a number of other men in the city with the same name.
But she still felt slighted when he turned back to King.

"You do the God-fearing citizens of
this great city an unending service exposing those in high office who abuse
power."

Late for something, King looked at his
watch, then succumbed to holding center stage for just a minute longer.
"Marin," he said, putting an arm over Joaquin's shoulder and walking
him to the door, "good men like you have no conception of the extent of
it. Ninety-five percent of the men holding public office in this city are
tainted."

At the doorway he paused and glanced over
to be sure Esther was taking it all in. "And it goes beyond that. San
Francisco is overrun with gamblers, prostitutes, pimps as well." He bowed
toward Esther. "Forgive me, madam. Mark my words, Marin, a day will soon
come when we citizens will take it into our own hands again, as the vigilantes
did in '52. We will rid this city of the vermin our elected officials and
police are either unable or unwilling to exterminate."

"You know I will be on the side of
right that day, Mr. King," Murietta whispered as the publisher started out
through the doorway.

"I'm sure you will, Marin. I
consider you a friend, and I appreciate your support."

Murietta watched him walk off, then
turned to Esther. "A good man, a good man," he said, nodding again.
"Now, what brings you into town?"

She stood up. "A harness," she
said, feeling slightly nauseated. "I need a harness to replace one—damaged
beyond repair."

"Then why are you frowning? Surely a
broken harness isn't enough to darken that sweet face. Is something troubling
you?" He reached out to put a hand on her shoulder, but she pulled away.

"No. It's nothing, Joaq—Jack. I'm
just not in a very good mood."

He looked at his watch. "Almost time
for lunch. Would that cheer you up?"

"No…
I'd like to, but there is too much to do. Would you just pick out a rig for me
and put it in the buggy?"