Janet Quin-Harkin (43 page)

“How do I get there?” Libby asked. “I have to see him right away.”

“Mercy me. You’re not thinking of going there yourself?” the landlady stammered. “That’s no place for a lady to go, especially not after dark. The hospital’s in the worst part of town. With all those drunks coming out of the saloons! I’d wait until morning if I were you. I hear the mud’s terrible out that way. A man fell down dead drunk and drowned in it only a few days ago.”

“Nevertheless, I still want to go,” Libby said firmly. “The directions please.”

The hospital was one of the few two-story buildings in town, built away from the prosperous merchants of J Street, back toward the ramshackle immigrant quarter. The wooden sidewalks and street lamps ended with the stores on J street and Libby had to pick her way through the ooze in almost total darkness, past open-fronted tents, low saloons, and gambling houses, out of which spilled raucous singing and coarse laughter. She shrank into the shadows as two men staggered out, one of them muttering curses. The scene brought back a memory to her; the wet streets of New Orleans, the singing in the piano bar, and the drunken men, when Gabe had first materialized to rescue her.

“I’m not going to let you die, Gabe Foster,” she muttered to give herself courage. “Not now. Not here.”

She recognized the hospital right away, not by any outward sign but by its smell. The odor of burning tar could not mask the more overpowering sickly smell of death. Libby put her handkerchief to her mouth as she went up the steps and pushed open the front door. Inside was cold and damp—a long unfinished brick hallway lit by one feeble lamp. From the darkness came groans and the sound of someone retching. As Libby stood shivering, one hand still on the front door, as if this were her last link with reality, a large man in a spattered apron came running down the hallway, carrying a pan. He started when he saw her.

“What are you doing here? No visitors,” he snapped.

Libby decided he looked more like a butcher than an orderly, adding to the nightmarish quality of the place. “I understand you have a Mr. Gabriel Foster here,” she said.

“Lady, we have close on three hundred people here right now,” the man said, wiping off his forehead. “They’re bringing them in faster than we can find them beds.”

“This man was brought in several days ago,” Libby said. “Is there someone I can speak to to find out where he is?”

“If he’s still alive,” the man said. “They don’t often last more than a few days.”

“All the more reason to find him quickly,” Libby said angrily. “Where do I find the person in charge?”

“There’s a doctor in the building somewhere, but he’ll be too busy to talk,” the man said. “I can look in the admitting book for you. They’re supposed to write in the names when they bring them in. What’s the name?”

“Foster,” Libby said. “Gabriel Foster.”

“You his wife?”

“A close relative,” Libby said.

“Foster?” the man asked. He went over to a high table and flicked through a dog-eared book, reading through names so painfully slowly that Libby had to quell her desire to hit him. At last he looked up, evidently pleased with himself. “Ah yes, that’s him.”

“He’s still here?” Libby asked.

The man grinned, showing a gap where two teeth were missing. “Well, he ain’t dead yet. His name ain’t crossed out,” he said. “He’s down in the smallpox ward.”

“Smallpox?” Libby muttered in horror. “Can I see him?”

“I told you. No visitors.”

“But I have to get him away from here,” Libby said, her eyes pleading. “Couldn’t I just see him for a second?”

“It’d be more than my job was worth,” the man said. Libby caught his meaning. She opened her purse and took out a five-dollar piece. The man passed his tongue over his lips. “It’s your own funeral,” he said. “Every disease known to man running through this hospital at the moment.”

“I’ll risk it,” Libby said. “Just take me to him.”

“This way,” the orderly said, and trotted off ahead of her down the darkened hallway. At the end of the hall a large sheet was hanging over a door, smelling strongly of carbolic. The orderly stopped. “Stay here,” he said. “I’ll go in and find him for you. What name was it?”

“Tell him Libby is here to see him.”

The orderly disappeared behind the curtain. Libby waited, her heart hammering so loudly that she was sure she could hear it bounce back from the bare walls. After a while the orderly appeared, grinning more widely than ever. “He don’t want to see you,” he said, obviously enjoying her discomfort.

“He said that?” Libby demanded. “Are you sure?”

“Sure as you’re standing here. I said there’s a Libby wants to see you and he said don’t let her come in here. I don’t want to see her.”

“Rubbish,” Libby said, pushing past him. “I don’t believe you. Where is he?”

The man made an ineffectual grab at her but Libby had already passed through the doorway into the ward. It was a long, bare room with an unglazed window at the far end, letting in the smoke and fumes from the street. The lamp on the table at the far end threw little light. Each wall was lined with iron cots and between them on the floor were straw mattresses, all occupied by tossing, moaning figures, wrapped, mummylike, in bandages. As Libby passed, one of them sat up, letting out a terrifying roar. “Let me get at ‘em,” he shouted, waving his bandaged hands. “They’re driving me mad.”

“It’s the itching, see,” the orderly whispered to Libby. “We have to bandage them and tie their hands so they can’t scratch. It drives ‘em crazy.”

“Where’s Mr. Foster?” Libby asked, shying away from the crazed patient.

“Third from the end over there,” the man said, pointing at a bed covered completely in a sheet. Libby gasped and walked slowly toward it. The figure under the sheet did not move.

“He’s not dead?” she asked in a tremulous voice.

“I’m not dead,” came Gabe’s voice from underneath, “and for God’s sake, go away.”

The man on the next bed thrashed, sending an arm flying into Libby’s back. Across the room someone was vomiting into a bucket. A feeble voice was murmuring, “Mom? Where are you? Mom?”

Libby looked down at the sheet-covered figure. As he showed no signs of removing the sheet, she didn’t quite know what to do. The orderly was grinning. “I reckon you’d better go, miss,” he said, “before you catch something you don’t want.”

“All right, I’m going,” Libby said loudly. “I came to see if I could help an old friend and get him out of this terrible place. But he obviously doesn’t need or want my help.”

“Don’t be a fool, Libby,” Gabe’s voice came, muffled through the sheet. “Get out of here while you still can. This is a place of death. Go away.”

“Very well, I’m going,” she said. “If you don’t even want to look at me to say goodbye, that’s up to you.”

Libby stalked to the door. As she left she thought she detected the sheet being lifted, but she didn’t look back. Once outside the door she reached into her purse and gave the orderly another five dollars. “Listen to me,” she said. “I’ll be back in the morning and I expect you to have Mr. Foster ready to leave. I’m taking him somewhere where he has a good chance of recovery, whether he likes it or not.”

She hurried back to her hotel and met the landlady still at the front desk.

“Any news on your poor relative?” she asked.

“He’s still alive but you were right. It’s a terrible place. I’ve got to get him out of there as soon as possible,” Libby said. “Where do you think I can find a room to rent where I can have him well looked after?”

The landlady shook her head firmly. “You’ll not find anybody in this town willing to bring the smallpox into their houses,” she said. “They come and take them away the moment the fever strikes whether the family wants it or no. I’ve seen some pitiful scenes myself these past days, mothers clinging on to the arms of their children as the poor wee one is carried out, and wives begging to go with their husbands. You’d best leave well enough alone, my dear. They say it’s a terrible end.”

That night Libby hardly slept, pacing the room impatiently, unable to wait for all the things she had to do next day. She was firm in her resolution that Gabe was not staying in that hospital a moment longer. If she couldn’t find a place in Sacramento to take him, then she’d take him home with her and look after him herself. She wrote a note to Mark Hopkins, leaving him money and asking him to arrange her vegetable transactions for her as she was taking his advice and getting out of town again. She had almost forgotten the main reason for her journey. At nine o’clock she had to appear in court. Until that moment her number-one priority in life had been to beat Sheldon Rival and win back her water rights. Now it no longer seemed so overwhelmingly important. If Gabe died, then any victory over Sheldon Rival would be hollow indeed.

The fact that Gabe did not want to see her was her one consolation. It proved he was not about to die at any moment. If he had been, he would have made his peace with her, held her hand, and bid her tenderly farewell. Not wanting to see her showed that his pride and stubborness were still working fully. Libby smiled to herself. How typically Gabe! How very much she had missed him!

At dawn she washed and dressed in clean clothes, ate a little toast, then walked over to the courthouse where she was to meet Jonah Fairbanks, her attorney. Mr. Fairbanks looked like the sort of man Mark Hopkins would recommend: tall, slim, somberly dressed with a neat little beard. He bowed when Libby introduced herself to him.

“This could not, unfortunately, have fallen at a worse time,” he said. “You have heard of all the terrible sickness in this city? I was loath to leave San Francisco.”

“How long do you think it will take?” Libby asked, her thoughts still on rescuing Gabe. “It’s all fairly simple, isn’t it? It can’t take a judge more than an hour or so?”

Mr. Fairbanks stroked his beard meditatively, the way Mark Hopkins did. “It depends, somewhat, on the evidence produced by the defense,” he said. “If they have a lot of evidence which has to be examined and sifted through. . . .”

“What evidence could they have?” Libby asked angrily. She had not counted on Sheldon Rival being able to present his side fully in court.

The lawyer looked amused by her outburst. “This being the justice system of the United States of America, both sides are guaranteed equal access to the law,” he said. “I am sure that the opposing party will not want to tear down his dam without a fight.”

“But any judge would see that it’s wrong, surely?” Libby asked. “You can’t just take a whole valley’s water away.”

“That is what we hope to prove,” Mr. Fairbanks said.

“But we have to prove it,” Libby exclaimed, “and prove it quickly. That’s why I hired you.”

“Pray don’t distress yourself, Mrs. Grenville,” the lawyer said. “I’ll do my very best for you and you can help your own case most by remaining calm throughout.”

“How can I remain calm?” Libby snapped. “I’m not sitting back and letting Sheldon Rival tell a pack of lies.”

“Then maybe it would be better if you stayed out of the courtroom and let me present your case,” Fairbanks said softly. “A hysterical woman would not influence the judge favorably.”

“I am not a hysterical woman,” Libby said, her eyes flashing dangerously.

“Of course not,” Mr. Fairbanks soothed, “but you are very emotionally involved with this case—understandably so, of course. I beg you to keep your temper before the judge.”

“Anything as long as you get this over quickly,” she said with a sigh.

“I see you also desire to get away as quickly as possible,” he said. “And I don’t blame you one bit.”

Libby realized he thought she was frightened for her own safety if she stayed in the city but didn’t bother to correct him. Across the square a clock struck nine and Fairbanks ushered Libby through a large oak door into the courtroom. She expected to see Sheldon Rival himself sitting across the room from her, but instead there were only two dark men, both with beaked noses, their heads together as they talked, giving the impression of two vultures. Libby disliked both on sight. The judge, however, looked like a kindly old man, his round pink face surrounded by a fluff of white whiskers, and she smiled at him encouragingly as she took her seat.

The case was read and Mr. Fairbanks stood to present Libby’s argument. Then one of the dark men was asked to reply. He did so in a southern drawl and with many gestures which Libby was sure would annoy the judge as much as it annoyed her. He spoke of the lack of definitive California laws on the subject of water rights, the only clear one being that upstream property had prior rights to it. He pointed out that streams were being diverted and channelled all over the mining area and that many streams no longer flowed through their original beds.

“But this one doesn’t flow at all any longer,” Libby blurted out, unable to sit quiet. “And prior rights must mean that someone else gets subsequent rights to it.”

Her outburst only got her a caution from the judge and a frown from Fairbanks. The southern attorney was invited to proceed and placed several documents in front of the judge to show registration of mining claims. “It has been the precedent in California that water may be used as needed to expedite the process of mining,” he said. “My client’s process needs a large volume of water available at all times.”

“So do my vegetables,” Libby said. This time the judge wagged a finger at her. “One more outburst, Mrs. Grenville, and I shall have to ask you to leave.”

Libby glared at the southern lawyer and jammed her lips together. The judge looked through the papers he had been given. The clock on the wall ticked monotonously and Libby felt as if she would explode with impatience. At last the judge looked up. “At what date do you say that you took up residence on your present property, Mrs. Grenville?” he asked.

“October 1850, your honor,” Mr. Fairbanks answered quickly for her. “My client has been in residence just over a year and during that time has established a large, successful market garden business, dependent on a constant water supply.”

“I see,” the judge said. He glanced down at the papers again.

“What made you choose this particular site, Mrs. Grenville?”