“Well, ponder that,” Elizabeth said, pinching her nose with her fingers, shaking her head. “What have we come to, then?”
“It isn't the kind of place I hoped to make my home in,” Mazy said. “Not a very pleasant place at all.” They sat for the evening on the porch at the Popover, shaded by a spreading oak that had survived the fire. Smells of ginger drifted from Hong Kong and dogs barked in the distance. Mazy missed Pig anew. Sarah worked on her samplers, and Mazy would soon head back to Ruth's, making the early evening ride on Ink, taking less than an hour to do it.
“This can be a pleasant place,” Elizabeth said. “It's all in what you make it. I like the mix of Celestials and Portuguese and trappers and loggers and sweet-smelling women, stagecoaches bringing in new folks and wagon trains heading this way more now. And miners coming in with nuggets, listening to others soothing the wounds of those who've spent their last dust. The swirl of things don't have to be all you see of this place. It ain't the landscape so much as it's your eyes, the way you see. Why—”
“Reverend Hill said people actually justify their accumulation of wealth through this hostage-taking and slavery, by giving a tithe! Can you imagine?” Mazy said.
“Everyone's looking for ways to soothe their souls,” Elizabeth said. “Coverings a fever, I'll ponder, with healing a long and wandering process. ‘Specially if what you're seeking promises just more empty hunger.”
Greed. That was the word Mazy'd written in her journal that morning. It overwhelmed this California land. There were laws against greed, scriptural laws, yet here she sat in the midst of people driven by it, and she was powerless to stop it. The opposite of greed, what would that be? Generosity, a characteristic of God she'd “pondered” more than once.
“I don't understand why Adora didn't go with her only daughter,” Mazy said. “Like you did. Was she trying to be generous to Charles at the expense of Tipton? To just throw in again with that rascal son of hers seems so shortsighted.” Mazy spoke out loud as though her mother'd been part of her thoughts. “He'll just take advantage of her. I can see it already.”
“Hard to know how to help a child—send ‘em away, take ‘em back, loan ‘em money, make ‘em pay. How to forgive but not get caught up in the same old ways of doing things.” She reread the newspaper article Mazy had given her, then handed it back. “Most folks don't realize that getting money ain't the same as keeping it. They get blinded. Don't find out how the gold and the seeking of it holds them hostage. All the while they think they're hanging on to something, it's choking the air outta them. Same thing happens to anything we hang onto too tight. Keeps us distracted from what God intended.”
Mazy stared. Was her mother talking of gold or…
She bit hard on a piece of maple candy, rubbed at her cheek. “I think I broke my tooth.”
“Let me look,” Elizabeth said. She motioned for her daughter to open her mouth. “Your tooth looks fine.” Elizabeth sat back, wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, patted her neck with a silk hanky. “It's hotter than a highwayman's pistol,” she said. “Or maybe older people just sweat more.”
Mazy looked over at her mother, reached to fluff a graying curl back behind her ear. “You're surely not old, Mother. Why, you even have a suitor.”
Elizabeth smiled, “We ain't never too old to love.”
Her mother was like an acorn, Mazy decided, bobbing along in a rushing river, believing that God would plant her where he wanted in his time and she'd eventually become the oak that he intended, shading the place he had chosen.
Mazy hoped she'd live to become so strong an oak.
Zane spent the time gathering up ore from the other traps, the other cabins on his line. He had time to think, to plan. He dreamed now of what he'd do, how he could use each of them to finally get to Ruth. He was ready. He'd given Suzanne enough time to become desperate, needing him. And it was time to step up his pursuit of Ruth.
He rode back in to Shasta, surprised at the brick-and-lead buildings, the activity. More pack strings, more stages spitting out people. The trees still stood with blackened trunks, but the smells of beefsteak drifted to him as he rode past the St. Charles.
Find Suzanne. That was his focus now. Find her first.
As independent as Suzanne was, he knew she'd rebuild, make her own place. But chances were she was still at Ruth's, waiting. Stores and hotels would take precedence over some blind woman's whim.
He stopped first at the saloon and located Esty, telling her he was a friend of Suzanne's.
“If that's so, you'd know she left town,” Esty told him. She squinted her eyes in suspicion.
“I've been…unavailable,” he said, his mouth dry as he breathed through it.
“She's with a traveling group,” Esty said after a time, watching him. “They're going to the camps and entertaining. You might check with Mrs. Mueller over at Popover. She kept pretty good tabs on Suzanne and the boys.”
He found the bakery, and using his most pleasant voice told the large woman with flour up to her elbows that he was a friend of Suzanne's. “Zane Randolph,” he said before he realized what he'd done.
“Where you know her from?”
“Back in Missouri,” he said. “I've just arrived and I'm most anxious to see her. She sent a letter telling me she was here. I…have failed to find her.”
“She's singing and playacting and probably having quite the time. Little scary, but then most all life is at some time or another, wouldn't you say, Mr. Randolph? That's what you said your name was?”
He nodded. “And you have no idea at all where she might be?”
“None. Expect her back come August, maybe later. You might ask at the Courier. A friend of hers works there, Ruth Martin. She might know just where about Suzanne and the troupe were headed. One of her kids is with her. You just got here in town, though? Huh. Your name sure sounds familiar.”
“All right,” Elizabeth told Sarah after Zane Randolph left. “You can come out now. I see your feet hiding behind them flour barrels. What're you doing back there?”
“Staying safe.”
“From who? Me?” Elizabeth turned now, alarmed by the sound of the child's voice.
“That man. Why'd he say his name was Zane Randolph? His name's Wesley.”
“Suzanne's Wesley?”
Sarah nodded. “I seen him there.”
“Ponder that.” She tapped her floured finger to the side of her cheek.
Not back until August? How dare she be difficult. He should not have to wait. He was tired of waiting, of playing her games. A blind woman with no more sense than to turn his proposal down and set herself for the pawing-on of slobbering miners. She used him, did this on purpose, coming and going, pretending weakness, just as Ruth had done. Ruth probably knew where she was.
Ruth. She had done this! Her refusal to be herded as a woman should, spreading like disease to Suzanne. Ruth, luring him west, just to humiliate him using a blind woman. She was evil, Ruth was. Deserving of what she would get. Never mind Suzanne. It was Ruth who needed tending. He should go to the newspaper, see her sitting there, holding a lithograph. Was this now the time to take her, to make real his image of her dressed in white inside her coffin? She was so sure that he would follow, so sure she was in control. That was why she lived out in the open, in her old ways, drawing pictures on stones. His breathing rasped. He had to calm himself, to think. She had done this to him.
He could take Ruth. She probably knew he was watching her, had known it all along and didn't care. He hadn't made her weep and wonder. She laughed at him, talked with Suzanne about him whenever she had the chance, talked with the baker woman, too. Hadn't she said his name was familiar? Ruth made this happen, lured him here, made him come after her with her lies, her tricks, her judgments, then deliberately got in his way. His mouth dried from his breathing. He swallowed.
Ruth had to pay now. The time had come.
He wanted it over. Not at the newspaper office. He would have to do it
on the road between the meadow and town. Five miles to find the perfect place to take her. Close to home, so she'd think that she was safe.
Zane spurred the horse, headed east, rode to the tree line that surrounded the meadow. He found a higher, well-hidden place, and there he pulled his telescoping glass from its leather holder. He scanned the road behind him, then turned to Ruths farm. He saw the privy. Nearby, someone stood on a stump, throwing clothes over a rope. He could see feet beneath the sheets and towels. He couldn't tell who it was. A child. The cabin stood partly shaded by oaks and a smattering of yellow pines. He moved past the house, the barn, to the meadow.
He saw milk cows. A black mule. Some oxen. A long-horned bull. Two horses. A herd of deer. No! Not deer. He counted—ten, fifteen horses. And Durham cattle. More than he'd ever seen there before, still coming, being pushed by drovers.
Someone rushed out of the barn now, running like a woman, but wearing pants. Ruth! He was sure it was her. He could tell it was Ruth as she bounded up to one of the drovers, patted at the lathered horse. The man swept his hat, held it to his chest, bent forward to her.
Zane removed the glass. His eye caught another movement. He looked again. A woman kicked up her skirts as she ran. A boy whooped and shouted, then looked up at a skinny man riding a good mount near the back. Behind him rode another and another. Too many men. Dust and the milling of horses and cattle. The men all smiles. Ruth's stallion and gelding kicking and whinnying at the presence of so many mares. And there came Jessie. Zane's Jessie. Limping a bit as she hurried from the back of the house. She must have been the one hanging clothes. Ruth pointed at the girl. The child stomped back toward the house, toward the clothesline, throwing more garments over the rope. The towels and skirts on the line formed a perfect barrier between the activity in the meadow and what Zane now had in mind.
Suzanne knew it might not have been best idea she'd ever had. But how else could she bring up two boys without a father—one of whom hadn't said much more than “Mommy” for the past six months? She'd taken a gift and turned it into a way to be responsible for her family—and she was having the time of her life. They were well treated by the crowds. Was it wrong to have a fine time and still serve her family well?
“We're almost ready,” Mariah told her. “Can you hear them pounding? I think its their gold pans. They dont seem to go anywhere without them.”
Hear them? The stomping and pounding was music to Suzanne's ears, salve to her soul, misplaced as their adoration might have been.
“Your hair looks like twists of gold dust laced with the night,” Mariah said. She was a sweet child. “Even if I did fix it myself. The little tin stars we made catch the lamplight.” She pressed her fingers against Suzanne's hair. “They'll love it out there.”
“Thank you.”
Suzanne reached out and, with the palm of her hand, gently cupped Mariah's ear, brushed her cheek with the flesh of her thumb. Her skin was smooth as a piano key, and she imagined it as white. She felt the girl's face smile. Suzanne could localize sound well enough that she could imagine where her face was, could “see” Mariah's ears and eyes and the brush of her hair, so that when she reached out for a familiar person now, she was certain and sure. Like the photographer she'd been, she could aim, focus, then touch.
She remembered a psalm Sister Esther read once at one of their Sunday stops: “ ‘Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them.’ Psalm one-nineteen, verse one hundred sixty-five. Peace, greater than any we might know of our own effort, a completeness,” Sister Esther told her. “It's what God offers with him and his laws as the focus.” Suzanne liked the image of not being offended as much as the picture of peace and God's law as the focus.
“I wish you could see yourself,” Mariah said. “You really are beautiful.”
“Thank you,” Suzanne said.
She felt the curls the girl had twisted with the hot iron then pressed braids of black thread through them to set off the blond hair now piled high. The tin stars poked upward like a crown. Mariah described things as she worked, not as fully as Tipton had, but with her own flair.
Pig whined, pressed against Suzanne's leg. “Looks like everyone's getting impatient,” Mariah said.
Suzanne heard bursts of laughter, foot stomping as they called out her name, and the patter of their hands on their knees, slapping for her presence. Tobacco smoke tickled her nose, and she felt a breeze lift the crack at the flaps of the dressing tent Lura, Ned, and Mariah had set up beside the big one. Suzanne pushed her round dark glasses onto her face, smoothed the skirt at her hips, the linen cool despite the August heat. Then she felt for her troubadour harp, picked it up. She grabbed Pig's harness and took a deep breath. “All right,” she said. “Get Ned and Clayton ready. They're on next.”
Suzanne stepped through the opening. She smelled the smoke of cigars, the pounding got louder, and she heard appreciative applause, a sound she never imagined she'd ever hear for anything she did. Pig led her to a chair. She seated herself, and with the first strum of the harp and her clear soprano voice lifted in song, the room hushed then exploded into applause as she completed the old Irish hymn, “Be Thou My Vision.” As she bowed, Suzanne marveled again at her choices. A body had to ache and stretch a bit to see just what it could do if a person wasn't too frightened to step out onto a cloud of faith, believing she would not fall through.
17
“Matt Schmidtke!” Ruth beamed at the lead drover. “You made it! I cant believe it! Its incredible, just incredible!”
“At your service, Miss Martin,” Matt said. “With apologies for the delay.” He held his hat at his chest. “Ma'am,” he said. He still had that shock of white hair against the black. Ruth blinked. Had he been that big a man when he left a year ago? No, he'd been merely a boy. A nice boy, a thoughtful boy, but still just a boy.
Joe Pepin, the string-bean drover who she thought was in charge of bringing her horses and cattle and Mazy's bull west, rode up now, his Adams apple bobbing. “Good to see you, Miss Martin, Mrs. Bacon,” he said. “Glad you made it.”
“Oh, we made it fine,” Mazy told him. “It was you we were worried over.”
Ruth smiled at the sight of the sun on the brood mares, the sounds of whinnying so welcome. “You did well,” Ruth told him. “Thank you. Thank you, Joe, very much.”
“Don't thank me,” Joe said. “Matthew there's the one who did it. Got us through things I never woulda. Yup, he's the one to thank.”
“Now, Joe, don't be modest,” Matt said. “It was a team effort. Hired on some boys to help us bring them south. What took us some time was wintering in Oregon. Worst ever, they said. Fed the horses tree moss, snow was so deep. Had to earn us some wage money. Sorry about not letting you know. When we got your letter, we decided to beat the postman south and just show up.”
“And here you are,” Mazy said. “Marvel give you any trouble?”
“You ever know a bull that didn't?” Matt laughed. “Kept our cows busy.”
Ruth thought he had a nice laugh, full and deep. And Joe had called him “Matthew” not “Matt.” How old was he, anyway? Ruth thought. She looked away.
“Is my ma around? My sister, Mariah?” he asked then.
“They're…working,” Mazy said. “Your mother is quite an enterprising soul.”
“Ma?”
“We have some stories to tell you,” Jason said. “She's in the gold fields.”
“Ma?” Matt repeated. He put his hat back on, held the reins lightly in his crossed hands. “My quiet little mother?”
Mazy laughed. “Your sister's with her, along with Suzanne Cullver. Remember her? They're entertaining in the gold fields. People change in a year. Your mother sure has.”
“And you've grown a foot,” Matt told Jason. Ruth thought Jason stretched even taller with the boy's, no, the man's notice.
“I'm helping Mazy with the milking,” he said. “And I might get to go with Mr. Forrester if he brings some wagons in next
month.”
“Good for you. Looks like lots of changes.” He smiled at Ruth, then twisted in his saddle to scan the meadow. “Good choice, Miss Martin. Good stack of grass hay you put up, too.”
“Its Ruth,” she said. “Ruth Martin.” She looked away, almost shaky. What was this about? “Let's get you men something to eat. You must be starved what with all that time on the trail.”
“For a lot of things,” Matt said, looking straight at her.
Too many people. Too many. Zane felt a thudding in his head. He pinched at his nose. This must not unravel. Not now. He had to make a plan. He'd take the girl when Ruth was at work at the paper. Yes. When the others were milking, he could go into the house and get the child. He'd have to chloroform her to put her out. And he needed to leave something behind—the perfect thing to let Ruth know that Jessie had gone with her father. Ruth deserved to know, so her confusion could twist and turn into a paralysis of fear and powerlessness. He knew that progression. Had known it, over and over again.
“He wasn't a nice man, Ma,” Mariah told Lura. “We can't be letting people come back here with Suzanne and the boys. Not safe.” The evening cooled the hot day, and the women stood outside the wagon, letting the still air dry their skin.
“I didn't let him. He pushed by, said he had to see Suzanne, couldn't live unless he personal-like gave her his gold nugget. Don't you be telling your elders what's what, missy,” Lura said, then, “What was I to do? It was the size of my fist.”
“Keep him out,” Mariah said. “Suzanne spent almost two hours talking to him. I told him to leave. She did too. Pig growled every time he got too close.”
“Well, see, Pig took care of her.”
“But he could have shot Pig, hurt the boys. Hurt Suzanne. He only left when he was ready, didn't care what we wanted.” Mariah hesitated. “I was scared, Ma, not just for them but for me. For you.”