David had misjudged him. Apparently he'd also misjudged the strength ofthat Mr. Randolph, a man who'd not only gotten his money from the stage company, but a pound of Davids flesh, too. David guessed he was fortunate enough to get hired on with a rival stage line, Baxter and Monroe, before any word of his indiscretion reached them. Maybe this route operating farther north would be better for him anyway, good for Oltipa and good for him. Maybe it would all work out. A fellow couldn't always see what was around the bend.
He stoked up the fire in his father's cabin. It was a tightly chinked place. His father had built it to last, must have planned to come back, but he hadn't. Something had gotten in the way. David set his cup down, pulled the blankets up over Oltipas shoulders, hoping she would wake so he could tell her good-bye. She didn't. He packed up some grub, then headed out. He hoped to be back before the week was out.
“Excuse me,” Zane said. He was aware of his breathing. Steady. Patient. He was certain it was the blind woman from Fort Laramie, met all those months before. Should he suggest they'd met? No. The dog hadn't liked him. He looked about for the animal. Nothing. “Your boy there, the baby, his head has dropped to the side. May I…help him? He looks a little uncomfortable.”
“Yes, please,” the beautiful woman said.
He straightened the boy in the backboard. He even tucked the little woolen cap strings beneath the baby's chubby chin.
“Clayton, stand still, dear.”
“Quite an ingenious…appliance,” Zane said.
“They say the Indians use something like it,” she told him.
Zane looked around, wondering where the dog was and if any of the other women were with her. The boy Clayton leaned from her, pulling her to move away.
“Would you like the boy to go into Kings store here? There's a cat inside. Might interest him. It's warm there.”
“So that's where the cat lives,” she said. She was a portrait of loveliness, full lips, smiling now; a delicate nose on a porcelain face. Her whole form, perfection. He watched her feel her way through the doorway with a cane to assist. She stepped inside the bookstore. Zane followed and closed the door behind them.
“You're very brave to use something others might find crude or offensive,” Zane said.
“The baby's board? Not really brave. I don't see the looks of others, so I'm rarely distracted by noses raised in disgust. It's one of the benefits—of being blind.” She laughed.
“Excuse me?” Zane said.
“Oh, it just struck me as strange, finding something beneficial about being blind. I never thought of it before.”
“So you are both brave and insightful,” Zane said. “How admirable.”
“Have we met?” she asked then, turning her body toward him. “Your voice…”
“Oh no. I would have remembered someone so lovely.” He had almost said “delicious.” He might have used the word in Laramie! Another habit he meant to change. “May I introduce myself. My name is—” He coughed. Why hadn't he thought of this? “Wesley Marks. Investor,” he said as he clicked his heels and bowed at the waist. “I've just bowed to you, dear lady.”
“I can hear,” she said. “I'm Mrs. Suzanne Cullver. Not an investor.”
“And Mr. Cullver, is he with you today?”
Suzanne stiffened. “I'm a widow, Mr. Marks.”
The boy carried the cat to him, and Zane stepped back. “Ah, let's leave the kitty on the floor, shall we?” The cat growled with Clayton's squeezing. The boy's lower lip moved out into a pout.
“Clayton, put the kitty down. Too many things to get into here. Take my hand. We should be going.”
The cat sprang over Zane's boot as Suzanne tapped her way around to the door. “May I walk you home, Mrs. Cullver?”
“I…we have a few items to get at the mercantile. Perhaps another time. Thank you, though, Mr. Marks, was it? It was delightful to meet you.”
“Please,” Zane said in his most charming voice. “Call me Wesley.”
“Wesley. An English hymn writer bore that name. Charles Wesley. He had a brother named John who founded the church at Aldersgate.”
“My mother knew of them,” Zane said solemnly. “She told me often. As a result, I've always been a deeply religious man. May I call on you…Mrs. Cullver?” He waited, feeling his breathing change, hoping he hadn't moved too quickly.
“I think not, Mr. Marks. I'm becoming comfortable with making my own choices. Without a man about. I suspect such determination would trouble a deeply religious man.” With that, she tapped with her cane through the door, holding the boy's hand.
“You're pretty quiet this morning, Mazy,” Lura said.
“Am I?” She and Mariah and Lura sat on rough benches outside the St. Charles Hotel. A brief sun break felt like silk against their faces. Here they could munch their warm pretzels safely—men just stared and pointed at them in the hotel's eating area. It wasn't much of a hotel even if it was a board structure. There were no private rooms here, just one large open space for men to flop onto the cots when they'd tired themselves at monte or roulette. The provision for women at the St. Charles was a single room, for travelers and those who worked the casino tables. The Shasta was worse, no place for women at all.
“I'm just thinking about Suzanne's place,” Mazy said. “The fence will be great for Clayton. But it's so far…from the main part of town. I don't think she realizes that. Or that it's so steep a walk. Taking Pig out daily…1 don't see how she'll do that.”
“Maybe one of us should walk him,” Mariah said.
Mazy nodded. “That'd be me. I miss my old friend.” She took another bite. “And the woman, Miss Williams, who's taken Suzanne under her wing, seems…odd somehow, to not come around to meet us.”
“Maybe Suzanne made her up,” Mariah said. “So we'd let her be.”
“I hadn't thought ofthat,” Mazy said.
“Well, I found out about that banker business this Estys supposed to be into,” Lura said. “I've got plans to be one myself.”
“You don't have any money to bank, Ma. Not ‘til Matt sells the cattle or brings them back.”
“Don't need any for this banking they do here.” She leaned in to Mazy. “It's handling the money in the saloons and gambling halls. That's what the banking women do there. Among other things.”
“You can't be thinking of working in that kind of place,” Mazy said.
“And why not? They're looking for mature, sober women who won't be taking advantage of the house, who can handle money and men who lose it. That's me,” she said. She stuck her pointy chin straight out.
“But you'll get mistaken for those others and have to… Well, what will people think?”
“Who cares? It's an honest living. Pays five dollars a week and any gold dust I sweep up. Can't ask for more than that. No time at all and we'll have ourselves a house, Mariah. Besides, I can handle men thinking wrong about who I am. Grab their ears like their mamas would and tell them to hit their beds. Alone.”
“What'll I do, Ma?”
“Well now, I thought you might like to help Ruth out at her place. You could sleep out that way too since I'll be working nights mostly. I'd see you on Sunday, of course.”
“That's all? Sunday?”
“She said you wanted to help her. Don't you?”
“I just thought you'd be there too,” Mariah said as she played with the frayed end of her braid. Mazy thought the girl would cry. What had gotten into Lura? This formerly quiet, bumbling, forgetful woman's thinking had seemed scattered worse than chicken feed on the trail. She'd even misplaced her money. And now she'd set her sights on something risky and moved toward it like a hungry hawk to a rodent. Would everyone change their ways in California?
“Not enough room for the lot of us in Ruth's little shack there. Four children, five with you and her, that's more than enough. I'll come get you on Sunday and we'll spend the day together. Besides, you'd be bored sitting in some old boardinghouse. I did think about running one of thos
e. But I've no capital.”
“I could loan you some. To get you started doing that,” Mazy offered. The idea appealed to her. Doing something good for these two.
Lura frowned at her. “Best you figure out where that came from before you offer it,” she said. “Besides, a woman's got to make a living much as she can on her own. In the spring, I hear, there'll be a school going, and Mariah can live with me in town again and go to it.” She patted her daughter's hand. “That's what this West is all about, Mariah. Setting your own destiny and doing new and different things to get you through. Anything less and you'd be trampled by emigrants arriving. That's all Suzanne's doing. You best be getting into the swing of things too.
Mazy stared at her. She must have been the only one just treading water.
The snow melted quickly, then piled up again, drifted against the shacks, the tent houses, the boardwalks of the mercantile. Everyone talked about it being heavier up in the mountains, but even in Shasta, the piles shoveled away from the storefronts grew high enough a person couldn't see over them. Little alleys were shoveled through them so people could cross the street. From Suzanne's place, the lower streets boxed like a rabbit warren of tracks and trails.
Elizabeth and Mazy shared a small room at the back of Kossuth House where Elizabeth had taken employment, baking pretzels and bread for the hotel guests. Most were miners down from the gulches, ready to gamble for the winter. Shasta had more than two thousand people nestled in every nook and cranny. Shacks of canvas and wood sat pushed into hillsides, a flat place gouged out just wide enough for a floor. Men had little to do but gamble and eat and complain about the weather. Every kind of card game found its way into the saloons, and Mazy heard about women being more than bankers in the back rooms.
She pored over maps she acquired from the land office, spent time at the courthouse looking at land claims. When weather permitted, she bundled up in her wool dress and wrapped hides around her heavy shoes, then rode Ink out of town. She was looking for a place to call her own. It wasn't the best time of year to be looking to settle, not with the snow spitting and drifting and, in between, rain pouring down in streets turning to red mud. She thought she'd build a cabin come spring. Do it herself. She just had to find the perfect place. She wished Seth were around, someone to talk with about a potential building site, the lay of the land.
Now that's interesting, my wanting him around.
She hadn't seen Seth since he left for Sacramento with Mei-Ling and Naomi and Esther in October. Coward, she thought. He never told us we could be drifted in for the winter. Must have been another of his “exaggerations” telling us this phce was “the Queen City of the North. “ If this was where the queen lived, she hated to think of the scullery maid's room. And he'd said nothing of the fires. Sacramento burned fast.
Then Shasta went up in flames. Despite all the snow, the miners said December was a good month to expect fires, what with the stoves burning day and night, sparks dropping on shake roofs, and the buildings so close together they could burn a block out in minutes.
Several people blamed its starting on Hong Kong, the Chinese area built right in the middle of the residential portion of town. But as Mazy rode the black mule through the burned commercial district, then on through the Chinese area, it seemed pretty clear that the fire had started in one of Shastas saloons.
She and her mother, and other women she only caught glimpses of, had cooked and fed people through the night as others worked to put the fires out. Their backsides froze while their faces and hands burned hot from the cookfires. By morning, the fires out, the businessmen were already rebuilding, teams of horses and sleighs sent out to the mill at Rock Creek to bring in snow-covered stacks of lumber.
Mazy rode past Hong Kong. She liked the sounds of the Chinese talking fast, hands up and down, wide hats bent brim to brim as she rode past. Mostly men lived there; mostly men came from China to work the mines. A few had taken Indian wives. It did seem to Mazy that a lot of Indian women were widows. At least she rarely ever saw a complete Indian family, though to hear people talk of the Wintus and Shastas and a dozen other tribal names, she'd have thought them all surrounded by vengeful warriors. Yet she'd never seen a dangerous looking one. They all seemed defeated, to her.
At least in Hong Kong, the few children she saw looked fed and tended, not like the hollow-faced Indian girls and boys she saw sleeping beneath the back porches of the stores. Her mother started setting out leftovers for the packs of dogs to eat until one morning they watched a reed-thin boy wrestle for a breadstick with a skinny-tailed mutt. Mazy wished she could do something for them, but she couldn't imagine what.
At Suzanne's she dismounted, tied the mule to the iron hitching ring, walked through the gate, and knocked on the door. The huge sugar pines that dominated the yard kept the ground clear of much of the snow, at least near the house. She turned, waiting. The view from here was breathtaking. She could see the top of the St. Charles Hotel, hear the pounding of rebuilding going on. At least it gave people something to do besides gamble and drink. She turned back as she heard someone on the other side of the door.
“Thank you, Clayton,” Mazy said when the little boy opened it. He was dressed warmly—maybe too warm for the fire burning hot in the fireplace.
“You really should ask who's there before you have Clayton let just anyone in,” Mazy told Suzanne, stomping snow from her feet.
“I knew it was you. Pig has his little sounds he makes when you're about.”
Mazy scratched the big dogs neck as he nuzzled her. Suzanne looked a bit disheveled, her apron caked with old flour, that tawny hair of hers in a braid, crooked and pulled off to the side. The house looked aclutter: a chewed shoe lay beside the door, clothes fell like snowdrifts in a corner. Into the back room, Mazy watched Sason playing with his toes while lying on the bed. He saw her, giggled, and began rolling toward the edge.
“No! Wait!” Mazy said, rushing to catch him. When she realized the bed had a rail around it, she stopped. “I thought Sason might roll off.”
“Seth made that,” Suzanne said. “Its awkward for me to get in bed with it there, but it works to keep him from rolling out. Sometimes I put Clayton there too. Just to keep him from the fire.”
A wooden flute lay on what appeared to be a fine oak table—they were both new—and Mazy commented.
“A gift,” Suzanne said, and blushed. “I was a little apprehensive about accepting them.”
“Seth's a generous man,” Mazy said. She let her hand linger on the smooth table finish.
“Seth? No, Wesley.”
“Who's that?” Mazy asked.
“Apparently the man who ordered them at the mercantile left town or passed away,” Suzanne continued. “So my new friend Wesley bought them. Along with that iron wagon, for the boys.” Suzanne felt across the table with her hands, found the flute, and lifted it to her lips. She played a tune. “It has a lovely, haunting sound, dont you think?”
“Its beautiful. You make the haunting sound.”
“Oh no. Its the craftsman. And the quality of wood.” She laid it down, patting the table with her graceful fingers.
Mazy noticed other new items—a music box, for one. She wanted to ask if it came from this Wesley too, or perhaps Seth. She decided not to pry. Mazy bent to pick up the shoe. “Looks like Pig left his teeth marks on one of your shoes, Suzanne.”
“Did he? Another one? He was a bit miffed when I left him in the house alone a time or two.”
“You went somewhere, without Pig?”
“Oh, just downtown, before the snow got heavy. He chases that cat at the bookstore, and I cant seem to handle him then. I'm working on it. I have this cane now. But Clayton led us just fine. It was so…wonderful, Mazy, just going on our own like that, the way everybody does it, walking about with your children. And as a reward, that was when I met Wesley He reads to me, Mazy. He has a wonderful voice.”
“I'd like to walk him for you,” Mazy said.
Su
zanne hesitated, then said, “I know Pig would like that.” Sason cooed from the bed, and Suzanne shuffled to lift him up.
Mazy pulled up a chair, brushing bread crumbs from the seat. “May I hold Sason? It's been so long.” Suzanne released her son, and Mazy watched Clayton look up from his playing in the corner, then come to stand at Mazy's side. They looked…hungry, she thought, though fed. “So tell me about this Wesley. Will he join us for Christmas dinner at the hotel?” Mazy reached an arm around Clayton, who hovered in close. His hair was matted with mush.
“I doubt that. He travels quite a bit. For his investments. Oh, Mazy, I know I shouldn't feel this way, with Bryce not gone even six months yet, but it is so nice to have someone to talk to, a man someone. And he listens. He's so interested in how we made our way across the plains, who everyone is, where they are now. He really could fit in well with our little family.”
“You're thinking of marriage?”
“No, no. I meant our family, we women. The way Seth fits in.” Suzanne sniffed, waved her hands as she made her way away from the bed. “I need a clean diaper. Don't help,” she cautioned. Mazy spotted a moldy piece of bread peeking from under a corner of the stove.
“I think Seth's avoiding me,” Mazy said. “He told some pretty tall tales about this country. Mild winters. Ha. It's either rained or snowed every day since November first.”
“He'll come see you when he returns, I'm just sure.”
“Maybe. At least I'll write and invite him for dinner, remind him that he may have gambled one time too many, thinking he could convince me that Shasta is the perfect place.”
“Its my perfect place,” Suzanne said, taking her son to change his diaper. “And Wesley just adds to it.”
“Suzanne,” Mazy said, “the boys, you, it isn't…perfect. I'm worried—”
“Don't,” Suzanne said. “Don't judge, Mazy Bacon, not while looking through your own uncertain eyes.”
Mazy winced. “Looks like a good time for me to take Pig for his walk.”