Into the Bright Unknown

  “Well, of course,” Henry says, looking from us to Jefferson. “But . . .”

  “Don’t look at me,” Jefferson says. “My mother was Cherokee. Government says I can’t be trusted to vote.”

  Henry’s mouth drops open. Then he turns toward the Major. “What about you, Wally?”

  The Major shrugs. “I never worried too much about politics—as long as the system works for me I’m happy. The system always seems to work for me.”

  Henry throws up his hands in disgust.

  “You’re awful worked up about this,” I observe.

  “Think about it,” Henry says. “A self-made millionaire returns from California to New York—a man who is now rich beyond imagination. People will love that story. He decides to get into politics on his claims of being a successful businessman—because it was the frontier, it’s like being a war hero, only more glamorous. Meanwhile, nobody in New York knows his character, what he’s really like. Someone like that could get nominated to run for president. It doesn’t even matter which party.”

  Jefferson leans forward. “You think that’s Hardwick’s plan? He’s going to take the millions of dollars he’s made and go back to New York to get elected president?”

  “I’m not sure,” Henry says. “The timing is good. It’s three years to the next election. He goes back now, invests his money in a bunch of legitimate businesses, spends the rest to establish himself. He’d be in prime position.”

  “I don’t know,” Becky says. “It seems far-fetched.”

  “He mentioned something last night,” I say. All the faces turn toward me. “I accused him of not respecting the law. He told me he respected laws so much, he wanted to make them.”

  Henry leans back in his chair and folds his arms, as if putting a period on his argument.

  “This is a good thing, right?” the Major says. “He’ll be out of California and out of our hair. We can go back to living our normal life.”

  “How can you think that?” I snap.

  The Major looks at me, genuinely confused.

  “He paid to exterminate Indians—whole tribes of them, all of their families, destroyed. Muskrat is probably dead, and it’s because of him. He ignores the rights of free men, and profits off buying and selling people’s lives. He takes advantage of the poor and people without legal protection, and gets rich by using the law to rob people of their hard-earned wages.” I point across the table at Becky and the kids. “He steals from widows and children. It’s bad enough that he does it out here, but what if he’s in charge of the whole country? Think about everyone he’ll hurt.”

  By the end, I’m shouting. My face is hot with anger. The longest silence yet follows, broken only by the uncomfortable shifting of Becky’s children in their chairs.

  “Ma, may I be excused?” Andy whispers.

  “Olive, take your brother, and the two of you go play in our room for now,” Becky says.

  Olive quickly gathers up her brother and flees.

  “You’re right, Lee,” the Major says softly. “It was a thoughtless thing for me to say.”

  I overreacted, and I’m fixing to apologize, but Jefferson says, “Once Hardwick leaves California, we can’t touch him. The minute he sets sail on the Argos, our chance to stop him is gone.”

  “The auction is Tuesday,” the Major says. “How can we stop him before then?”

  “I wish I knew.” I stand abruptly, gather my dirty dishes, and carry them to the washtub, where I stack them loudly.

  Jefferson brings his dishes over. “Do you want to talk about it?” he whispers.

  Guilt twinges in my chest. I’m being rude. “No, I want to think. But thank you.” I should scrape and wash my own dishes, but I leave them and flee down to the hold to see Peony.

  It’s neat and tidy, with four separate stalls and space to store the wagon. The stalls have fresh straw, and somebody has mucked them out recently, so it smells familiar—like the clean barn my family always kept. The last time I set foot in that barn, I was hiding from Hiram, waiting for my chance to escape.

  And once again, it only serves to remind me that this is not home. Not really. Not yet. No place can be home until we’re safe from Hardwick and people like him.

  Peony snorts when she sees me, shuffling eagerly. I imagine she’s tired of being cooped up in here. I find a brush and groom her.

  “Sorry I’m not taking you out for fresh air,” I say. “You deserve better. We all deserve better.” She nuzzles my hand for the treat I didn’t bring, so I spend extra time cleaning her coat, especially the little swirl of hair on her withers she likes brushed just so.

  Thumps on the ramp signal someone stepping down into the hold, and I have the urge to hide, but within a split second I realize that hiding will not stop Hardwick or solve any of my problems.

  Melancthon approaches with that peculiar rolling gait of his, like he’s compensating for waves that aren’t there anymore. He pauses when he sees me.

  “You did a good job down here,” I tell him. “The horses seem as comfortable as can be expected.”

  He nods. “Thank you. It’s been a long time since I was around any kind of creature that couldn’t swim.”

  “Peony swims just fine. Most horses do.”

  “Huh. Haven’t worked with horses since my canal-digging days. Would rather be on the water, though.”

  “Weren’t you ever afraid?” I ask.

  “Of horses?”

  “No, of sinking, when you were sailing the ocean.” I touch the smooth, curved hull with my fingertips, thinking of the ship Hardwick will sail to New York. Maybe we’ll get lucky and he won’t make it that far. Which I recognize for a bit of meanness, considering all the other people aboard. “This doesn’t look like much to keep between you and the bottom of the sea.”

  He grins, pounding the hull with his fist. “Those are three-inch planks, and the hull is double planked, so that’s six inches of solid oak between us and the water. We needed it, the one time we took her around Cape Horn.”

  “So it’s hard to break the hull of a ship like this.”

  He rubs the back of his neck thoughtfully. “Not if you drive it onto rocks, or get rammed by another ship, I suppose. But that takes a particular kind of bad luck. Although I once had the misfortune to be aboard a ship that capsized, so I figure I’ve used up my bad luck for a spell.”

  “Capsized?”

  “Another whaling ship, the Salem—got caught in swells in the North Atlantic. It shouldn’t have been a problem, but we only had half a hold full of cargo, and a new cargo master who didn’t know better, and the barrels broke loose in the waves. Shifted from one side to the other, before we could stop them, making the ship roll more with every wave until it rolled right over.”

  I stare at him in horror. “I hope all your crewmates survived.”

  “We got safely into the ship’s boats, not a soul lost. But the ship and all the cargo sank to the bottom of the ocean. Lost everything except the clothes on our backs.”

  I rub Peony’s nose, and she nuzzles my face. I lost everything once, everything except this horse and Mama’s locket. “That sounds awful. I’m so glad you—”

  “Lee?” A familiar female voice shouts down into the hold. Peony’s ears flick with recognition. “Lee?”

  I drop the brush and run to answer. “Mary?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  My friend stands at the stable door, and even though she’s supposed to be back in Glory, taking care of the Worst Tavern, I’m so glad to see her. She’s wearing a printed wool challis dress, with beautiful patterns in swirling red and purple. I throw my arms around her and hug tight, before remembering she doesn’t much like to be hugged.

  I step away sheepishly. “Sorry. I’m just really glad to see you.”

  “I forgive you.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “About a week after you left Glory, I missed you and decided to come to San Francisco to find you.”

  I s
tudy her face. “That sounds like a bunch of hogwash.”

  She frowns.

  “Mary? What happened?”

  She becomes fascinated by the bridle hanging beside Peony’s stall. “Nothing. I mean, I left before something could happen.”

  “Mary! Tell me!”

  Her frown deepens. “It wasn’t safe for me, all right? Once my friends left, everyone expected me to . . . be like I was before. Some of the men were . . . demanding. They just assumed that because I’m a girl from China, I’m in a certain line of work. So I left.”

  “Oh. I see.” And I do. Mary was a prostitute before she joined up with us in Glory. At barely seventeen years old.

  “This town is even bigger than when I was here last,” she says, but I won’t let her change the subject just yet.

  “What about the Worst Tavern? Becky left you in charge.” She glares, and I hold up my hands in protest. “Not judging. Just asking.”

  She sighs. “Old Tug and some of his Buckeyes are working the place in shifts—when they’re not working claims. They’re terrible cooks, but no worse than Becky.”

  “And how is Tug? Wait . . . is he one of the fellows who—”

  “No! He’s the best man in Glory, if you ask me. Kept an eye on me as best he could, but he couldn’t be there every waking moment. Even Wilhelm could only loom so much. But you and Becky and the Major—you’re the leaders in our town. And once you left . . . one of the Buckeyes’ claims was jumped. And a group came down from Rough and Ready trying to make trouble. Almost had our very own gunfight, but Tug talked them down. It’s just not the same without you all there.”

  “So you set off for San Francisco. All on your own. Mary, that was dangerous! You could have—”

  “Hey! I stowed away on a ship and traveled across an ocean all by myself. And if I recall correctly, you covered half a continent with nothing but your mare and a saddlebag. So don’t be lecturing me about it now!” Her eyes are bright and fierce, made more so by the meager lantern light.

  “You’re right. I’m sorry. And I’m sorry we left you there all alone.” It doesn’t set well, that Glory could turn out as lawless and frightening as any other frontier town. As if Glory’s residents are a parcel of naughty children who play dangerously when their mama and daddy are away. That could be Glory’s future, instead of the “sanctuary” Jefferson imagines.

  “Wasn’t your fault,” Mary says. “I was the addle head who said she wanted to stay.” The fight melts out of her, and she leans against the stall, looking a little defeated. “If I go back there, it has to be with friends. And when I do, I think maybe I should find someone who will marry me. A single girl from China . . . it’s just not safe. You know, California isn’t a very good place, if you’re not white.”

  She’ll get no argument from me.

  “But now I’ve found you—which, by the way, was easy as pie. Everyone knew you from your description. Not many white women in San Francisco.”

  This does not sit well at all.

  She says, “I can stay here, right? You don’t mind?”

  “Of course. Actually, we might be able to use your help with something.”

  I fill her in on everything that has happened with Hardwick. By the time I’m finished, she’s grinning like a kid at Christmas. “This will be fun,” she says.

  After Mary leaves to claim a cabin of her own, I go to my room and grab my saddlebag. It’s easier to heft than I’d like. I spent so much money buying the Charlotte. Doing something about Hardwick is proving more complicated and expensive than I expected.

  I sit on the floor at the end of my cot, saddlebag between my feet. Inside is a small pile of gold. A few eagle coins remain, along with a handful of gold nuggets I could get assayed if I need more money—though plenty of folks here take raw gold in payment. Still, there’s more saddlebag than gold by weight.

  Back in Glory, I practiced working with gold every day, and although I’ve had a few opportunities here in San Francisco to use my witchy powers, I need to be more disciplined about it. No one becomes a dab at something by laying about, Daddy always said.

  I close my eyes and reach out with my gold sense. The shape of it eludes me at first; there are so many individual pieces. The coins ring loudest at first, at 90 percent gold. Nuggets are sometimes purer than that, but not these. One is so muddled up with quartz ore it’s barely fifty percent. For my idea to work, I need this pile of gold to hum a single, familiar song, but this seems more like church ladies at a picnic all vying for attention.

  I concentrate harder, trying to imagine all the little bits of gold as a single entity. It doesn’t work. There are too many tiny pieces to keep track of, and they insist on singing their own tunes.

  So instead of focusing on the whole mess as one, I wrap my thoughts around as many individual pieces as I can, holding their shapes in my mind. A twenty-dollar piece, a half eagle, the largest nugget.

  I stretch out my hand, and I close my fist as if grasping that sound-shape in my mind. Then I open my palm and fling it across the room.

  The saddlebag slithers along the floor and thumps into the far wall. I gasp, my eyes popping open.

  I did it.

  I’ve called gold to me before, and pushed it away, but it’s another thing entirely to move something else with it. My shoulders ache, like I’ve been lifting hay bales. A throb is forming at the base of my neck.

  I clench my fist and summon the gold back to me, but the saddlebag doesn’t move, just gives a little hiccup on the floor and stays stubbornly still. I stretch out again with my gold sense. What did I do wrong? I used the same . . . aha. All the bits of gold settled into new places when it slid across the floor. I have to wrap my focus around the mess all over again if I’m to move it.

  I take my time about it, going slow and careful. It’s several heartbeats before I’ve latched on well enough to give it another try. My patience is rewarded; the saddlebag slides—faster this time—back across the floor, and I stretch out my boots to stop it. The impact shivers through my knees.

  Eyes closed, thoughts swaddled tight around the gold, I open my fist and fling it away again. The saddlebag rips across the floor and slams into the wall. My fist closes tight, and it returns; this time I open my hand and stop it just before it hits me.

  Over and over again, I practice: slide thump, slide stop, slide thump, slide stop.

  The muscles in my neck and shoulders burn, and my head feels like there’s a tiny miner inside, jabbing with a tiny pickax. But in a way it’s also calming. It takes so much concentration, leaving no room to think about anything else.

  Slide thump, slide stop.

  A soft tap at the door interrupts me.

  “Come in,” I say.

  The door creaks open, and Jefferson pokes in his head tentatively. “I cleaned up your dishes,” he says, as though it was a monumental feat of heroism.

  “Thanks.”

  His gaze goes from me, to the saddlebag against the wall, and back to me, sitting cross-legged on the wood plank floor. “Practicing again?”

  “Yep.”

  He frowns. “Lee, are you feeling all right?”

  “Why? Don’t tell me I’m covered in gold again.”

  “Your face is flushed,” he says, plunking down beside me at the end of the cot. He stretches his legs out. “Like you’ve gotten too much sun. And your eyes are as bright gold as I’ve ever seen.”

  “Huh. Well, I’ve been trying something new.”

  “How’s it going?”

  “It’s going.”

  “Show me.”

  “All right.” I’m suddenly nervous, like I’m performing for the most important person in the world, but I concentrate a moment, and sure enough, the saddlebag goes scooting across the floor.

  “Isn’t that something!” Jefferson says. His gaze turns thoughtful. “We can use this. Somehow . . .”

  “I’m trying to figure out how to direct it better. Stop and start, change direction, that sort of th
ing. But it’s hard. It . . . makes my head hurt a little.”

  He’s staring at my face now, in a peculiar way that sets my heart to thumping. “Your eyes. They’re almost glowing.”

  “Oh?”

  Jefferson’s fingers reach up to gently touch my cheek. “They’re beautiful.”

  “Oh.”

  His gaze drops to my chest, and his eyes narrow.

  “What?”

  “That locket,” he says, indicating the charm with his chin. “Have you tried working with it?”

  Of its own accord, my hand goes to the golden heart shape hanging from my neck. Inside is a lock of hair, taken from my baby brother, who only lived a few days. “No, not really. Why?”

  “You wear it every day. Remember how you found little Andy with it? When he was lost on the prairie?”

  I nod, seeing what he’s getting at. When I told Mary about my gold sense, I was able to make it float in the air a little.

  “You once told me that you feel the shape of things. You know the shape of that locket like your own hand.”

  I reach behind my neck and undo the clasp. I lift the tiny chain so the locket slips off into my palm. Though I see it clear with my eyes, feel it cool and firm against my skin, my magic perceives it as a sparkling ember, ready to do my bidding.

  Just like with the gold inside the saddlebag, I wrap my mind around its shape, then I push the locket away. It flies forward until, with a thought, I command it to stop. It hovers in midair for the space of a breath before dropping to the floor.

  “Well, I’ll be,” Jefferson breathes. “You saw that, right? It . . . floated.”

  “Yep.” I blink to clear vision that’s gone a little fuzzy. “I’ve done that before. It’s easy compared to moving a mess of gold in my bag.”

  Jefferson’s eyes dance. “This is going to be useful.”

  His excitement is catching. “I don’t know how yet, but we’ll think of something. Maybe you could help me practice?”

  “Sure,” he says. “What do you need me to do?”

  “I’d like to test my range. Can you take the saddlebag to one of the other decks and leave it in an open space?”

  “Which deck?” He stands, tossing the bag over his shoulder.