“My ma, in the casinos.” He shook his head, his wide hands around a tin coffee cup.
“She was just doing what she thought best. Supporting herself and your sister after Charles Wilson took off with her money.”
“You know that for sure?”
“Adora said she lost her purse somewhere, and so did your mother. They noticed not all that long after Charles left us. Now he's back, and that store cost more than what the mules brought. Adora swears they built it with no borrowed money. Might actually be some of your mothers lost cash.”
“I'll go looking for Mariah and Ma soon as Mazy and Seth get back. Milking cows isn't something I'd want to do for a lifetime, but I guess everybody has to find their own way of living. Me, I like beef cows. And I grew kind of fond of your mares.”
Ruth felt herself blush. How childish. She'd poked pins into her new, broad-brimmed hat and left for work. Wearing her only shirtwaist dress.
It was all so confusing. Matt couldn't be more than eighteen at the most and she was what, nearly twenty-four. He was just a boy. He'd done a mans job in bringing the horses back, but he was still just a boy.
It was best she remembered that.
Suzanne folded her son against her breast, cooing to soothe him, the wound of his hand made worse by the guilt of her own neglect. She felt the stickiness. Blood.
“You didn't say I had to watch him, Ma,” Mariah said. “You said Ned should. You sent me pawing through your things for a tobacco twist.”
“Don't correct your elders, missy,” Lura said. “Ned's younger than you, gets tired easily.”
“I should just let you keep smoking and listen to you cough all night. You keep us awake,” the girl said.
“How did we get from your bad behavior to mine?” Lura said.
“He should have been in bed,” Mariah said. “All of us should be asleep.”
Suzanne listened, holding her sobbing child in her arms,
“Don't know how he managed to get that knife out anyway,” Lura said. “He had to climb on the trunk and balance to reach it.”
“You shouldn't have left the knives where he could see them,” Mariah told her.
“Listen. Just put a bandage on it, and it'll be fine,” Lura said. “Just one of the cuts and scrapes of childhood, all this is. Go ahead, Mariah. Get some water and we'll wipe it off good. It's hardly bleeding, Suzanne. He's just scared, is all. It's all right, Clayton, it is.”
Suzanne said, “Pig, get cloth.”
“What?” Lura asked as the dog came back with a rag drooping from his mouth. “Well, I'll be.”
“I've been teaching him. To help me, even in the wagon, or to do more than just lead me around,” Suzanne said. “He picks up things and brings them to me. Surprised me the first time.” She patted Clayton's back, and his sobs lessened into deep gulps of air. She had to stay calm so the child would quiet. She could tell by feeling his palm that it oozed blood, but the wound felt like a poke rather than a cut.
“We might work Pig into your act somehow, Suzanne. Charge even more for a dog that does tricks.” Lura dabbed with the cloth at Clayton's palm. “Spencer's built a big hotel at Horsetown. Got a concert hall with raised seating for three hundred. We could do a big show there, with the dog. Maybe even dress little Clayton up. Or”—her voice dropped as though to share a secret—”maybe this'll be the time to show a wealthy one you really need his tending, Suzanne. A lot of men like looking after helpless women, with pitiful kids. Makes them feel bigger themselves. Here you are blind, with a wounded child and a baby. Think of the possibilities.”
Zane cursed at the child, his foot throbbing from the crack of the stone. Jessie lay in a heap on the grass. He stuffed the chloroformed cloth into his vest, felt “Ruth's surprise.” He must leave it, place it somewhere Ruth would find it and know that he'd been there. She must know. The cat hunched on the table, its tail twisting over the wooden soap containers. He brushed at the cat, laid “Ruths surprise” on the soap. Then he lifted his Jessie and limped toward his horse.
He had a dozen back ways out. He decided to skirt Shasta completely to not risk meeting Ruth until he was ready. His toe throbbed, pushed against the top of his boot. The brat lay like a rag across the pommel of his saddle. He'd put her out again before they reached the Wintu woman's cabin. He bumped his toe against the horse and groaned out loud. No! Never cry out not for pain, not for humiliation, nothing, ever! She'd done that on purpose, hurt him. Just like Ruth had. Mothers and their brats. Like that Wintu wench and hers.
He'd watch. He'd ride to the area above “Hawk's” cabin, wait to see when the jehu's horse was gone, and then he'd take her, take her and his Jessie north.
And Ruth would know who had her child. He imagined Ruth's terror, her helplessness, her life out of her control. No way to find him. No way to respond. Now she would know what he had survived during those years in the prison. Because of her. He calmed himself by breathing deeply, sucking air in through his teeth. His Jessie moaned. “You're going north with me,” he said. “You and the Wintu.” He'd forget about Suzanne for now. She'd beg to find him someday. He must focus on Ruth, on her slow demise. He smiled, placing another dab of chloroform over the girl's face. Let Ruth shrivel, knowing that her only living child was now with him.
18
Ruth had worked at the Courier a month now. Plenty of time to get a feel for things. And still, she resisted being under someone else's reins. Oh, she'd met and liked Madeline, the correspondent said to have coined that “Whoa Navigation” name for Shasta. But the editorials of Sam Dosh bothered her. She'd kept her tongue bridled. But today, she felt strong enough to speak of what she saw as injustices. Justice coursed through her blood. She guessed she shared that with Mazy. That and a hard time coming to decisions.
“You have a responsibility,” Ruth told the editor that morning, knowing as soon as he looked at her that she should have picked a better time. She'd already stepped into it now. “To set an example for how people might be, could be, should be. To use the press to…inspire all of us to better things.”
Sam Dosh's black eyes narrowed as he turned from the type table. He ran ink-stained fingers through flowing black hair. “My dear woman,” he said. “An editor reflects the attitudes of his readers. He can't shape them as you suggest.” He looked over the top of his glasses at her as though she were a bug. He reminded her of someone she preferred to forget. “I only print the news.”
“Sensationalizing, that's what you're doing. Just to sell papers,” she charged. “You make the worst of humanity seem reasonable and ignore the facts of decent people doing decent things. You barely gave an inch of copy to the women who raised funds for Father Schwenninger's benevolence efforts for the orphans.”
“You actually measured the copy space?” he said.
“Don't change the subject. Why not inspire people to clean up the legal system at least? Change laws so people can be proud of their town. Investigate the jury stacking. Haven't you noticed that rich lawyers never seem to lose a case, and poor ones end up hauling freight or dealing monte no matter how just their cause? And I've yet to see any Indian found ‘not’ vagrant when that claim is made.” Her heart pounded and she felt her cheeks burn. “You could expose that.”
“Actually, the judges earn five dollars more when they find for the plaintiff in the cases involving the return of Southern slaves to their owners. Did you know that?” She shook her head. He smiled now. “I suppose I could report that some enterprising soul collected the Chinese miners tax all winter but kept the money for himself. Enough to build a warehouse or a mercantile. Now is that exposing fraud or celebrating some entrepreneur in our fair city?”
“Do they know who did it?” Dosh shook his head. “Expose it as fraud. That's what it is, and it would be a better story than printing the governor's wretched address, inciting people to storm into Indians’ homes.”
Dosh bent again to his typesetting, that half-hat on his head keeping his long hair out of the w
ay. Was he just going to ignore her? He looked up again. “What you should do is put your passion into women's suffrage,” he said. “Cady Stanton and her Seneca Convention and all that chatter about equality. Then you could be a juror. Set the world straight. Suppose you think that large hat you wear symbolizes your…equality, equal to a man. Imagine. A juror with a plume and hatpins.”
“I wouldn't stop at being a juror,” she said. “I'd become a judge.”
He laughed at that. “Not worth holding out for,” he told her. “You have a fine gift for lithograph work, Ruth. Best you just stick to that. Beginning right now. We've work to do.”
Ruth kept her fume as she accepted his dismissal. There was no changing another's mind. She could only change herself.
Seth and Mazy made the journey without incident. They talked easily as they rode, pulling the horses up to step aside for fast-traveling stages. They met a few riders, several walkers, wagons loaded with lumber, freighters burdened with treasures arriving from San Francisco and shipped up as far as Red Bluff by steamer. Very few Chinese, Mazy noted, or natives, those people more and more seeking shelter from any who might be incited by the calls for their elimination.
“It bothers me, not seeing any Indian people along this road. They must fear for their lives. Everyone's gone crazy and blaming them for it, acting like they stand between them and their riches.”
Seth nodded agreement, stayed silent. Mazy supposed he tired of a subject discussed often between them but with no resolution. The Indians couldn't fish the rivers much, the salmon runs were all confused, and the streams were torn up by the dredging and water diversions, the silt and the sand swirling the once clear streams into murk. And when the Shastas or Pitt River or Wintus retaliated by stealing beef cows or pigs or chickens, they were hunted down like murderers, rarely brought back, justice handed out right there, while the fire roasted beef taken just to feed themselves. It was condoned. It was the law, published in the paper.
And she was part of it. Even the house she planned to build would rise near a meadow she learned had once been a place where Indians had camped. And all the deer that nibbled there would eventually go away with her presence and the mules and cows.
“Mother has a heart for Indians,” she said as they rode.
“Your mother's an accepting sort. Sees the good in everyone no matter who they are. That's a quality that gathers friends.”
“I'm sure that's why we were blessed by those Pawnee back along the Platte River. They rescued us from a certain death as I think on it now. We could have tried to walk back to Wisconsin, but we'd have run out of food long before we got there.”
“Glad you didn't try.”
“Strange, isn't it? How we can't know what's ahead or how what's happened in the past will be woven into the present. It's a little like reading a book. You hope the author knows there'll be a satisfying ending, but by reading along, you've agreed to trust that, not knowing if the difficult things faced will ultimately lead to something good.”
“Doesn't always have to be good to be a satisfying read,” Seth said. “Some of my best lessons have come from making mistakes.”
She smiled. “No, but there has to be hope. Some meaning found inside it, something that says we had good reason to trust in what we could not see until we got to the end.”
“Guess that's why we're not supposed to spend much time bemoaning old memories or speculating about the future,” Seth said. “Can't predict what's ahead.”
“Yes,” Mazy answered, her gloved finger raised to make her point. “But there's something more in life—there has to be—than just how much gold a person can gather up no matter the cost.” She looked at Seth, his eyes never having left her face. “I think that's part of my anger yet at Jeremy, that he risked our relationship and all we held dear for an unknown treasure.”
“Might have just been the challenge that lured him, Mazy. Maybe he was feeling…stifled back there. You said he hadn't always been a farmer.”
“I don't know what he might have been. He had that coughing whenever he worked around the animals. The dust, I think, which would be an odd thing for a man to have and want to stay with farming.”
“See there. Maybe he was wanting to just try something new, is all I'm saying. Something he could set his teeth into, really hold onto.”
“But he chose the Ayrshires and getting into a dairy herd.”
“He might have thought your marriage could survive that kind of change,” Seth said. “And it did. You came with him though you didn't want to.”
“Yes. And I've found things out about myself I wouldn't otherwise have known. I'm grateful for that.”
“You'd have made the best of it with him. Just as I'm hoping you'll be willing to make the best of it with me.” He pulled up his horse, reached across the saddle horn to take her hand, held it.
She felt her face go hot. Here it was. Why had she even brought the subject of Jeremy up with Seth? It opened the door to the intimate, a place she hadn't intended to go. She sighed. Maybe it would all be easier if she just gave in, let herself be tended by this good man.
Instead, she cleared her throat. “Seth,” she said. “I don't…” She slid her hand out from his. “This isn't a good time. I've got lots on my mind.” He nodded and pressed his horse forward.
She did make the best of things, but she wanted more. She wanted to celebrate, to feel real joy. It might not be as a wife and a mother. Maybe as a friend, and in that way she cherished Seth, for helping her see that a man and a woman could be friends and be blessed by it. But she sensed that her passion would come as a woman who made her own way, stood for something, stood for herself. That was what had filled her up on the trail. That was what she wanted: deep-down passion, more than making the best of it. Seth deserved more than that too. “Seth,” she said. He turned to her and smiled. “About making the best of things…”
“Wouldn't you? Have made the best of it with Jeremy?” he said. She saw a sadness now in his hazel eyes, a knowing coming through them.
“Yes,” she said. “I would have. Those were my vows. But I know something now I didn't know then.”
“About his not filling you in on everything?”
She shook her head. “No, about what I'm willing to wait for, what I'm trusting will be there to fill me up, even though I can't see what lies ahead.”
The day at the newspaper moved slowly. Five more minutes and she would tell Sam Dosh of her decision.
She finished filling the oil decanter—for whoever would work on the lithographs next. She set the inked rollers in their tin trays. Dosh spent considerable money on good Bavarian stone for the lithographs, allowing her to use hard, gray blocks as though each of her drawings might be as much in demand someday as Currier and Ives pieces were. She surveyed the room, her work. She could have found a worse place to work, easily. If it weren't for his news slants. Maybe if she remained, she could influence him, over time. Maybe she should give this decision one more day.
Finished, she brushed the powdered flint used as an abrasive from her skirt, dipped her hands into the wash basin. She waved them in the warm air, then reached for the hat she'd ordered from Esty after Tipton's wedding. She wasn't sure why. Maybe Dosh was right about the hidden meaning of a hat, its placing women at a different level in the world with men. She poked in the hatpins over the twists of her hair. She stood tall, checked the hat's placement in the hall mirror, and reached for the brass doorknob.
It opened, startling her. The bell above the door rang, and Dosh yelled from the back room, “We're closed.”
“I've got it, Mr. Dosh,” she said when she saw it was Matthew Schmidtke. He held his hat in his hand. “Ma'am, Ruth. I sure hope little Jessie's been with you all day. We've been looking since noon. Didn't miss her this morning. Jason says she stays to herself, so I didn't think anything was wrong…checked the creek, the river. I…Jason says she troubles you some. Troubling us, too, today. I'm just hoping she followed you in. Should hav
e ridden in sooner. Just kept looking for her there.”
“Jessies missing?” Ruth tried to make sense of it, all thoughts of work and wondering fleeing from her mind. She thought only of her child.
Zanz waited most of the day. Finally, he watched the man he assumed was the jehu ride away. He gave him a good long start. His Jessie sat groggy, and he held one arm across her chest, holding her as he eased the horse down the steep draw. They brushed through manzanita, pushed against pines. Once he stubbed his foot against a tree, the horse scraping too close. The jolt of the pain at his toe surprised him, but this time he didn't groan. He was in control now. Everything was under his control.
At the cabin, he flung the door open. He tossed his Jessie inside; the sound and surprise set the baby to crying. The Wintu woman dropped the pan of cornbread she'd been stirring. Zane slammed the door shut, limped forward, the terror in the Wintu woman's eyes almost enough to make him forget the throbbing in his foot.
The Wintu woman picked up the child, pushed him onto her hip and eased back toward the window. His Jessie lay in a heap, barely moving. The woman glanced to the girl then to Zane. Beads of perspiration formed at her forehead. He watched her take in huge gulps of air, and he knew cold knives of fear must have been scraping up her back. Outside, a dog whined.
“Open the door,” Zane told her. He took out a pistol now, motioned her toward it. “The mutt wants to be seen, lets see him.”
She opened the door. The dog scampered in. As it passed by Zane, he kicked it with the side of his boot, sending it with a yelp back out into the yard. He saw it stand, shake itself, then start back in. Zane stood awkwardly, favoring his foot. The dog barked. Zane took aim and fired.
The baby screamed at the shot. His Jessie woke up.
Ruth fast-walked to the house, Jason nearly running beside her. “We looked everywhere. Thought maybe she took a picnic or something. Or went with you.”