California Woman (Daughters of the Whirlwind Book 1) (7 page)

South
Fork Cabin

July, 1847

December 22, 1846...

Predating these pages. Recording after the fact, as best as I
can recall...

Separated
from the rest of the snowshoe party this day. Down on the west side of the
mountain crest, far from the pass. My own fault. Decent motives, but
foolish—and in the end unforgivable, considering what happened. Willful
ignoring, forgetting that my first responsibility was to John Alexander, then
myself, not the two women...

The two women had been gone for an hour
after dawn that morning. The previous night, a snowsquall had smothered the
campfire. They were six days gone from the lake, less sure now that Bear Valley
and the settlements west of it were within no more than five or six days'
march. By now, they were exhausted, Stanton worst of all, from the effort of scaling,
then descending, the pass and slogging west through waist-high drifts. Near
starvation, almost out of their meager provisions, all of them were nonetheless
still optimistic. Five of them had gone searching for firewood, among them the
two women. The three men were back, breakfast of dried meat and coffee had been
eaten, but the two women, Mary Graves and Mrs. McCutchen, still had not
returned.

"Got to go on," William Foster
said grimly. "We'll all die here if we don't."

The brilliant sunlight bouncing off the
snow almost blinded Elizabeth as she turned to him. As weak as they were, she
scarcely knew whom she was responding to. "We cannot just leave them
behind!"

"Have to," William Eddy said.

She turned to "Uncle" Billy
Graves. The old man who had contrived the snowshoes looked away. "Mister
Graves. You are not going to just stand there and do nothing, say nothing about
this, are you? Your daughter may die!"

"No choice," he mumbled,
glancing guiltily at his other daughter and her husband, Jay Fosdick.

"Then I will look for them, damn
you! I will search for one half hour, no more. And then I will come back.
Surely you can wait a half an hour."

One after another, they reluctantly
nodded.

"Has someone a pocket watch?"

Graves handed one to her. She stared at the
gold-encased face. It was seven forty-eight. "I'll be back no later than
eight thirty." She glanced at Stanton, who sat propped against a tree,
hoping that neither he nor anyone else would check the time. He winked
conspiratorially at her. For a moment she thought of leaving John Alexander
with them. But then a sweeping glance at their grimly set, almost emaciated
faces decided her against it. Adjusting the sling in which she carried the
baby, she set out in the direction the women had taken.

She never found Mrs. McCutchen or Mary
Graves, nor was she able to retrace her steps through the windblown snow to the
campsite that day. Blessedly, it did not snow during the night she spent under
the bow of an evergreen, shivering, numb with cold, nursing the baby, starting
with every frozen cracking of the surrounding branches, and certain that at any
moment they would be set upon by a mountain lion.

She
stumbled on the campsite the following day and was seized by terror. All but
one of them were gone. Stanton was still sitting where he had been the previous
morning, frozen solid. Staring at her lifelessly through a thin shell of ice,
his hand was clutched around a folded piece of paper. Beginning to cry, she
pried the note loose and unfolded it.

Dear Mrs. Todd:

Mrs. McCutchen and
I
got back safely.
I
tried to make them wait. They would not. Left here 10
a.m
. Mister Stanton offered to remain and travel with you. He
is so weak it will no doubt be you who helps him. The men say we will be going
due West at all times, unless the way is blocked, then South if possible,
otherwise in any direction that is open until we find a path west or south
again. Forgive me, and bless you for searching. God speed both of you back to
us.

Mary Graves

Dropping the note, she collected herself,
said a prayer for Stanton, asked his and God's forgiveness, removed his boots,
and put them on over hers. After she strapped her makeshift snowshoes back on,
she thought to search his pockets. One of them contained a narrow, eight-inch
piece of hide. Turning away, she glanced at the campfire ashes, then resolutely
set out across the clearing.

There were no tracks in the windblown
snow as she pushed west. John Alexander gurgled, unaware, in the makeshift
shawl-sling. She looked back once, first at Stanton, then at the enormous,
white-capped dome of Cisco Butte. Ignoring the fire in her thighs and calves,
she crossed a rise, then threaded along windswept rocks on the edge of a gorge.
Finally, the terrain sloped downhill, and she plunged on, her snowshoes coming
untied every tenth of a mile, into the bottoms just west of the Yuba River
headlands. Zigzagging, guessing which way the rest had gone, she crossed a
series of ridges and valleys that flanked narrow, snow-covered streams. She
noticed vaguely that they seemed to amble almost imperceptibly southward. She
kept on, stopping every fifteen minutes to rest her numb legs, let her bursting
lungs and heart quiet—and pray.

When the hollow ache in her stomach
became unbearable, she got up and began walking and wading again. As precarious
as they were, the wind-scoured rocks and ledges along the upper portions of
each ridge seemed more easily negotiable. Climbing, falling in the snow,
getting up and going on again, she reached a rim and continued southward. At the
top of a gradually upward-sloping rise, she stopped to rest. Looking around,
she saw the formidable Yuba buttes behind her, to the north an impassable wall
of mountains. As she stood there, the air around her suddenly chilled and grew
slightly darker. She gazed to the west. The sun had dropped behind the
mountains.

Her hands were numb. Above the upper edge
of the shawl wrapped around her face, the tops of her cheeks felt as though
they were being repeatedly punctured by hundreds of razor-sharp needles. The
rising wind mocked her. The bridge of her nose and her forehead ached so much
she wanted to scream at the pain. She knew with nightfall it would be even
colder.

She looked around again. Deep snow
blanketed the undulated floor of the pine forest covering the surrounding
mountains. Thirty feet to her left she spotted a rock outcropping. Remembering
how the men in the snowshoe party had set green wood on the surface of the snow
to lie on, even built small fires on the primitive platforms to warm them
through the nights, she began breaking small branches off the evergreens and
the few birches in sight. It took her an hour of exhausting labor to set out a
rude wood and pine-needle platform on the snow beneath the overhanging ledge.

Finished, she placed one of the larger
pine branches behind her and huddled against it in the corner formed by the
rock and the mountainside. She did not bother to take the sling off. Uncovering
John Alexander's mouth and one of her nipples, she nursed him slowly, wiping
the milk off his chin when he dribbled and licking it ravenously off her
gloves. She was aware that her breasts were smaller, that the milk was
diminishing. For a moment her fear increased almost to hysteria. She looked up,
and the trunk of a nearby fir tree rippled before her eyes, took the form of a
bear, and lunged at her.

She screamed, startling the baby and
making him cry. She hushed him, looked back, and saw just the trunk of a tree
again. Fishing in her carrying bag, she pulled out the narrow piece of hide
she'd found in Stanton's pocket. For a moment she was almost overcome with the
urge to cram all of it into her mouth. Transforming itself before her eyes, it
became a salamander. Startled, she dropped it When it was a piece of hide
again, she picked it up, broke off a quarter of the strip, ate it, and put the
remainder back in her bag.

Easing
down on her side, she turned toward the rock, cradled John Alexander against
her belly, then pulled her knees up and lay one arm over him. Staring at the
ridges on the base of the darkening ledge, she saw them start to wave before
her and wondered if she would live through the night. She closed her eyes.
Somehow she remembered to pull one piece of the shawl up over her face and tuck
it under her bonnet before she slept.

She was awakened by John Alexander's weak
crying. Still tired, she was stiff but, astonishingly, not as cold as she
expected. Stretching her legs out, she felt the small drift of snow the wind
had blown up along her back, bottom, and the soles of her boots. Without moving
further she partly uncovered one breast and fed her child. She took a glove off
for ten seconds and felt under his clothing. He was warm. She looked at the
gold pocket watch she had borrowed from Graves. It was already past eight. She
had to get started no matter how much she preferred staying right where she
was.

At noon, after she had repeated the
bone-wearying movements of the previous morning over similar terrain, snow
began to fall. Nearly delirious, she had no idea it was Christmas Eve. She
pushed through the drifts and along the rocks, wobbling as her own shoes
slipped back and forth within Stanton's boots. For another two hours she
dragged herself westward as the wind rose steadily.

A rim overlooking another frozen stream
turned south. Slowing with each step, she fought her way forward for another
fifteen minutes, thankful she was no longer heading straight into the stinging
flakes of snow. She stopped for a moment to regain her breath. The dollar-sized
snowflakes almost choked her. When she tried to pick one boot up through the
half foot of new snow covering a thick layer of crust, she found she couldn't.
Standing there, snow swirling around her, swaying drunkenly, she reached into
the bag and hungrily ate a third of the remaining piece of hide, putting the
rest back. John Alexander was sleeping. She leaned over, saw the pasty,
solidifying mucus almost filling his nostrils, and heard the faint wheeze of
his breath. For a second she gave up hope. But then, slowly, the trailing edge
of the snowsquall moved past her and continued east into the higher mountains.

That restored her determination for
another hour. By then she could move no farther. She knew if she sat down she
would never get up. She cared, yet didn't care. She hated the thought of dying
here but felt drawn to the peace of it even more. She looked at John Alexander.
His eyes were half open, staring blankly at her. She fed him, squeezed more
milk out of her breast onto the palm of one glove, and lapped it up. When she
lifted her head again, she saw the narrow column of smoke rising above the next
ridge.

There was not an ounce of energy left in
her when she reached the top of the rise. She was sure the smoke was a mirage;
certain that the tall mustachioed man in furs, the Indian squatting near him
skinning a small animal, the lean-to atop the flattened boulder blown bare
under the branches of an enormous conifer, the rack of pelts, were all a cruel
hallucination.
I am seeing things
, she thought numbly, as sunlight
briefly streamed through an unbelievably beautiful blue fracture in the clouds.

She did not feel herself, fall, slide,
roll over, and slide again, still clutching John Alexander; she never saw the
startled men running toward her from the direction of their fire.

South
Fork Cabin

July, 1847

December 24, 1846 (predated)

Came upon
Luther Mosby's lean-to in the mountains north of Lucifer Peak this day. Thought
at first it was a Christmas miracle, the food and fire gifts from God...

She felt warmth first, then fear as she opened
her eyes and was startled by both the man and the coldness of his gaze. She
recognized him immediately from Bent's Fort but said nothing when he failed to
remember her.

"Here, drink this," he said
evenly.

She sipped at the broth and took in his
hawk nose, curving moustache, and sharp jawline.

"You been out for quite a walk, you
and the little fella."

"The baby!" She tried to push
up but he stopped her. "John Alexander! Is he—?"

"He's alive. Weak as hell, but
alive. Gonna have to get him to a doctor. You too. Don't know if he'll make it
'til thaw."

She lay back and rested for a moment.
"Can't we go now?"

"We got horses." He glanced at
the Indian standing outside the entrance of the lean-to. "But just two of
em.

She propped herself up and saw the baby wrapped
in furs at the foot of the sleeping platform.

"I told you he's alive. Lay back
down again, you hear?"

She felt under her breasts for the money
belt. It was still there.

He saw the movement. "We didn't take
your clothes off, if that's what you're worried about. You ain't exactly
invitin' right at the moment."

She smiled gratefully. "Are we very
far from a doctor?"

"Quite a ways."

"Please. Take me to one. Take me and
the baby."

He shrugged. "Ain't easy leavin'
here 'til spring. Helluva risk, not to mention the money in pelts lost."

"I'll pay you!"

His eyebrows rose. "You ain't got
any money. I checked."

"My husband. He's in Monterey.
He'll
pay you."

"Take quite a bit to make it worth
riskin' our necks."

"It doesn't matter... He's... he's
rich. He'll pay you anything you ask."

"Two hunnert dollars?" Mosby
asked hesitantly.

"Three. I'll see to it. I promise
you."

"How come you's alone? Who was you
with?"

"The Donners."

"Jeeesus Christ! The Donner Party?
Wasn't nothin'
but
stories about you folks just before Seeswash and me
come up here trappin." He rubbed his jaw. "Who was it brought the
news down to Sutter's?"

"Charles Stanton?" She
shivered, remembering the shell of ice that had covered his face and body.

"That's it! Stanton. Went back to
bring you people through, didn't he?" Mosby thought for a moment.
"Lotta rich folks in that train. You say Stanton brought them in?"

"No. He died back there." She
pointed, not really knowing in which direction.

"Beyond the pass?"

"This side."

"And the rest of them?"

Not fully in control of her senses, she
thought he meant just the snowshoe party. "They must be beyond this point
by now. I was separated from them two or three days ago. I... I don't
remember."

"Here, drink some more of this soup.
Real slow, now."

She sipped at it, resting as the warm
liquid both stung, then soothed her insides.

"Three days ago, huh? They was on
snowshoes, like you?"

"Yes. I don't know exactly how long
it has been. I... I lost track."

"Mountain man with 'em?"

"Just Stanton, until he... died. Two
Indians. But I don't think they are from this region."

"Like as not they're still wanderin'
out there. Might have missed this place by less'n a mile yesterday or day
before and never know'd it." He thought again for a moment, then stepped
outside and spoke to the Indian. She could not hear him, but she saw the Indian
smile in an ugly way. He came back in.

"See by your diary your name's
Elizabeth. Mine's Mosby. Luther Mosby." He stopped smiling. "Three
hundred dollars?"

"Yes."

"We figure them other folks got to
be somewhere nearby. We'll start out tomorrow mornin', double back a little,
then come down the gorge they musta taken if they was travelin' south. Can't
figure out for the life of me why they would be. Or how you managed to angle
this way. Nigh impossible."

She got up on her elbow.
"Tomorrow?" she whispered weakly. "Why can't we leave
today?"

He laughed. "Listen to
her!
You ain't strong enough even to lift your
tail outa bed, let alone onto a horse.

Anyways, it's nearly sunset."

"Sunset?"

"You been asleep for over
twenty-four hours."

"My Lord! The baby! I've got to
nurse the baby!"

"Don't worry about him. We been
feedin' him soup."

"My God!" She reached down, so
weak she could hardly lift John Alexander, and somehow managed to take him to
her breast.

Mosby sat where he was, watching.
Aroused, he licked his lips involuntarily. "You was any stronger, I'd take
some of that myself." She glared at him, and he laughed. "Got a
temper, do you?"

She ignored him and finished nursing,
then held her hand to the infant's forehead. "He's feverish. Sick. We've
got to leave tomorrow morning!"

"I told you we would, didn't
I?"

"Do we have to double back?"

He smiled, then looked away. "Can't
just leave them poor rich folks out there to die without lookin' a bit for 'em,
now can we?"

She started to argue with him but held
back the words. He was the only hope for John Alexander's survival.

"You
sleep now. You're gonna have to be as strong as you can be in the
mornin'."

She hated him for loading the Indian's
horse with pelts as well as herself and the baby. It would slow them down. She
knew that much, dazed and disoriented as she still was. But she said nothing.
She knew also there was very little chance they would find even tracks, let along
any of the snowshoers. She was right. By noon they had gone miles north and
west, the horses slowly pumping their legs up and down in the snow above the
buried crust. There was no sign of anything human. The only thing that kept her
from utter despair was the thought of the three days' provisions Mosby had
packed in his saddlebag. She began to pray.

"They're goners," Mosby said,
reining his horse southward. "They set out for Sutter's with
Stanton?"

"Yes. By way of Bear Valley."

Mosby shook his head. "Jesus Christ!
We're halfway south from there to French Meadows. They're so far off the mark
they don't stand a chance. Well, maybe we'll still run into 'em."

All that day the horses plodded
southward. They camped for the night in a shelter Mosby and the silent Indian
made from cut pine-boughs and a covering layer of hand-packed snow. John
Alexander opened his eyes only twice when she nursed him that evening. She knew
he was getting weaker by the hour.

"You skinny or fat under that
dress?" Mosby asked after they had settled in under the fur pelts.

She looked away. "I think you would
call me slender."

"Skinny,
huh? Well, you sure got beautiful teats."

Apprehensive as she was that he might
come near her during the night, she slept as she never had in her life. In the
morning, she felt as though the cold, dry air had almost restored her. But
there was a frightening dullness in John Alexander's eyes as she took him to
her breast again.

A bulge in the long tail of the snowstorm
that had been raging just to the west and north since Christmas Day hit them
about noon. Leaning into the howling wind, their faces covered except for their
eyes, they bent forward as the lathered horses shivered, snorted vapor, and
worked through the increasingly higher drifts. At four in the afternoon,
Mosby's mount slipped, stumbled, then lost its footing entirely on a rock ledge
over a steep ravine. Thrown uphill, Mosby landed face down in the snow to their
left. Elizabeth watched, horrified, as his horse went over the edge, whinnying
in terror, bounced off a boulder, kept fall
ing,
hit again, and slid down to the bottom.
Within minutes the animal's legs stopped kicking spasmodically, and the falling
snow began covering it up.

"Son... of... a... bitch!"
Mosby shouted. He glowered at the Indian. "Don't just stand there gapin',
Seeswash! We got work to do plenty."

Huddled in the lee of a giant fir, she
watched them build a three-sided wall of packed snow to screen out the wind.
Then they lined the wall with pine branches torn from surrounding trees.
Mosby's strength frightened her. When he and the Indian had roofed the walls
and covered the snow floor with additional boughs, they crawled inside and
huddled together for warmth. The Indian built a fire just inside the entrance
with flint and stone he carried in a belt pouch. Only when he came back and sat
down did she realize all the provisions had gone down the ravine with Mosby's
horse.

She fell asleep just after feeding the
baby. Her milk was holding out, but without food, she knew it would dry up
quickly.

She woke with a start two hours later.
Mosby was lying with his arms around her. John Alexander was between their
bellies. Mosby was smiling. She could smell liquor on his breath.

"What the hell you lookin' at me
that way for? I ain't done nothin' to you. Just keepin' warm now the fire's
gone out."

Despite herself and the shrieking wind,
she fell asleep again. In the morning Mosby peered in through the hole he had
scooped out of the blown snow filling the entrance to the shelter.

"You ready to go?"

She got up, arranged the baby in his
sling, and crawled out through the opening. The snow had stopped, but the sky
was overcast. She looked around. The Indian was gone.

"Damndest thing," Mosby said,
pulling her up behind him on the Indian's horse. "See them tracks?"
He pointed to
a single
set
heading toward the ledge. Beside them were two furrows. "Must have gone to
take a look-see at my horse. Probably thought he could go down and get the
food. I guess he slipped and fell over."

He eased the horse to the middle of the
ledge and leaned over carefully. "See him?" Mosby said, shaking his
head. "Must be three hundred foot almost straight down. Damn shame. No way
in the world you could get down there without breakin' your neck."

She stared at the snow on the ledge. All
but one small patch of blood had been kicked loose and covered up.

"Better git goin' 'fore it hits
again. Maybe we'll make it to the Squaw by tonight. Ought to be easier goin' by
then. Should be able to make it downriver on the ice pretty quick tomorrow."

Shutting thoughts of the Indian from her
mind, she tried to buoy herself with what Mosby had said. An hour and a half
later, its heart and lungs bursting from the weight it had carried so long and
the strain of pushing through heavy snow, the horse gave out under them. Mosby
lashed furiously at the animal with the reins, but it simply lay there,
quivering, one eye staring blankly skyward, froth and blood bubbling over its
ice-encrusted bit.

Enraged, Mosby stalked off. She followed
him. A half mile further south, Mosby slapped at his thigh violently, cursing
himself as he suddenly realized how much food the horse could provide them.
Almost gently, he sat her and the baby down in the lee of a giant evergreen,
then started back to the animal.

His first slice into the soft flesh along
the horse's withers was unsuccessful. He tried again with no luck.

"Open up, you son of a bitch!"
he shouted, lifting his bowie knife high and stabbing down hard at the horse's
flank. As though the fat and muscle had turned to rock, the tip of the knife
broke off and he sprained his wrist. Jerking his head to one side in fury and
pain, Mosby glanced skyward and screamed,
"Why's it always have to be
like this, you son of a bitch? Ever time it's important! Ever' fuckin' time
since I's a kid."

He lowered his head and looked at the
horse. "It's always the same..."

Collecting
himself, he probed in several places with no more success. Even the animal's
tongue was frozen almost solid. He thought for a moment about building a fire,
thawing the animal out, but he realized the woman and the child would be frozen
stiff by the time he finished. Thinking of the three hundred dollars, he got up
and started slogging back to them.
We'll run across somethin'... a deer, a
rabbit... somethin',
he thought.
Got to keep movin'.

With Mosby pulling and dragging her some
of the time, they walked the rest of the day and all of the next, stopping
occasionally to rest and then pushing on. Near nightfall of the second day, the
snow started again. Exhausted, so weak she could stand no longer, Elizabeth
lowered herself and sat on her knees.