In a whisper she said, “Think how to stay alive. Go back.”
“You got a plan?” My Jessie whispered.
“This is familiar place, these rocks and trees.”
She tried to remember where the pam-hal-lok was, the cave, the one her family took refuge in when an early snowfall caught them in these mountains. The yola melted the next day, but they had watched it come in flakes as large as acorns thickening the manzanita bushes in front of the cave opening with wet white. They watched from a place safe and warm.
In the morning, out of gratitude for this surprising home found where they did not expect it, her family left behind a cache of food— dried acorn flour, some deer meat—for someone else in need. Their feet made wide tracks in the melting snow, and Oltipa had looked back, remembered seeing two crooked trees like eyes growing out of the rocks above it, the cave opening like the slit of a frown in an old mans pocked gray face.
The food would not be there now. But if they could get free and find the cave, it would provide shelter, a place for them to hide until the Randolph man tired of searching.
“I have plan.” Oltipa said. “Tonight, to sleep. When we are not held like twists around a basket next to the fire, you will make noises like you are ill. When he bends to see your pain, I will slip my silver spoon from inside this pocket and press it to his back, make him believe it is a gun or knife. Force him to cut your rope. Then we will bind him to a tree and be set free.”
My Jessie shook her head. “He wont care if I'm sick. ‘Less I throw up on his boot, and that'd just make him madder.” She whimpered. “I wanna go home.”
Could such a man find an ill child too much work? Maybe leave her behind…as he did her child? Yes, she decided, the Randolph man was held hostage by hatred, blinded by rage. Oltipa shivered in the August heat.
Dried leaves crackled as the horses moved through them. It would be a time of fire if storms came, the ground so dry. Perhaps she could start a blaze, stumble through the campfire and in the smoke and dust, they could disappear.
Before another thought could fill her mind, My Jessie said, “I hurt his big toe. He cant run fast. Maybe we could take his horse. He'd be stuck.”
Oltipa thought, then said, “When horse goes down steep slopes, toward the creeks, rope around us gets loose. He holds it high. On right side of saddle. He does not notice.”
My Jessie whined. “I don't know my rights and lefts.”
“His bad foot side. We slide down when the way is steep,” Oltipa said.
“Wont he see us when he looks back?”
Oltipa considered. “Horses hit water. Much splashing, clop, clop. We slide off. Scare my pony. Confuse that man. We run. Hope he is blind, with his seeing eyes on this pony running past him.”
“Maybe I can hit his foot again. If he chases.”
“Shh,” Oltipa said as the Randolph man turned. He didn't bark this time about their whispering. Perhaps the leaves and crush of branches covered up their words. She had noticed when he held the rope that bound her and My Jessie, that the Randolph man sometimes looped their mare's lead twice around the saddle horn, to control one rope at a time. The hemp line leading their mare would be held hard and fast then, and any effort of the Randolph man to dismount would be tangled by the ropes tension. But now, he held both ropes in his right hand, his reins in his left.
“Heading down,” he called out then, pointing with his head toward the stream below. “We'll camp close to water tonight. You beauties might have a bath.” He laughed, turned back, started the horses down the steep side, moving around boulders, past windfallen trees, finally to a landslide area, steep and smooth, that ended at the water's edge, free of shrubs and trees. He kept his arm out to hold the lead horse clear.
As they reached the smoother slope, the mare they rode fairly sat on its haunches, dust from the other horse doing the same in front puffing up around them. The Randolph man lifted the rope that bound them, and Oltipa felt it loosen, felt it ease up her back with her own shoulders hunching down. She felt the help of My Jessie's hands pulling it over her, freeing her.
Oltipa watched, and when Zane Randolph's horse hit the water, he did what they hoped for—he stayed within the stream. The two horses clop-clopped through the water, splashing and kicking up rocks. He looked back, saw them still there, the rope around them held to look tight by Oltipas hand. Then he turned back, and she watched him take the lead rope and double hitch it around the saddle horn. He was resting his arm of the pulling. This was their chance.
“Now,” Oltipa whispered and she rolled the hemp rope up and over My Jessies shoulders, off over her head. “I slide off back. You follow. Now!”
Their legs wide, still bound hands pressed on the horse's rump, they dismounted. Oltipa first, her heart pounding. She felt the mare startle forward. She hit the water, stepped aside to avoid the hooves, did what she could to pull the child. My Jessie was sturdy and strong and pushed herself back from the horse and landed on her feet. “Run,” Oltipa shouted. “Run!” She threw a rock at the mare, which jolted, causing the Randolph man to turn.
Seth waited with the driver, only half hearing as he talked about the flood damage of the year before, rebuilding going on. Seth thought of the game of chance he'd entered with this woman and his life.
Last evening, he had gone to the casinos. He played the game of a lifetime, taking his winnings up and gathering others until it was just two of them left and a pot of fifteen thousand spilling on the table before them. A single turn of the cards and he either walked away a wealthy man or sank into indebtedness he'd spend a lifetime digging out from. It was the rush of his life, that game. Maybe Mazy was right. Maybe there was no other passion for him except risk.
When he turned over a queen of hearts and the other man held only a jack, he'd stayed calm on the outside. His insides swirled with triumph. He'd wanted to wake Mazy, to tell her. Walked to her door but did not knock. He had suspected she wouldn't have shared his elation in his newfound wealth even though it meant they might have a more predictable life. Still, he hadn't given her that option, had simply gone to his room and turned in. He wondered what held him back.
Zane Randolph heard the shout and felt the rope yank around his back in the same second as he saw the mare bounding up beside him on the left. No! He grabbed for the lead rope bound hard and tight at the horn, tried to yank it loose, couldn't, turned his own horse to the right, wanting to straighten the rope being pulled against his back, his thigh, frightening his horse. His horse, pulled by the frightened mare, frenzied it more. It sidestepped and lurched, pulled even tighter by the rope attached to Zane's saddle. The mare's neck stretched out now, its eyes wide in terror. Zane's horse spun around it. Water splashing, rocks rolling, horses slipping. The rope gouged tighter against Zane, the noise of water and a shrieking horse, and rocks tumbling, and his own shouts, of “Whoa, now, whoa now!” throbbing like a hammer at his head.
The rope stretched tight across his thigh, and his own horse pulled and sidestepped, and then the mare reared and whinnied and shrieked, and Zane heard the crack and grind of its neck just before it went down, strangled. The rope raked Zane from his saddle.
He landed on rocks while his own horse stumbled, then smashed a hoof onto Zane's throbbing foot. Pain seared through him, worse than at the prison, worse than any whippings he'd taken. Zane yelped as the horse slowly slid his hoof off. Through the throbbing, burning pain, Zane saw that his treasures were gone.
He could barely move, the pain in his foot an outrage. He cut the rope to the dead horse and caught the reins of his own still wild-eyed animal. He tried to stand, couldn't. The horse half-dragged him, hopping on one leg, toward the bank. He dropped to the ground, his foot throbbing, then cut off his boot. Even before he saw the torn flesh, he knew his foot was crushed. He cursed them. Hawk for challenging him, for spooking the mare as they ran, for forcing him off, for his own horse stomping his foot. He cursed the girl Jessie for his rotten toe, Suzanne for resisting
him and disappearing, David Taylor for interfering. And Ruth. Dear Ruth, for causing it all. She would pay. She would have to pay.
His body shook now, from the cold of the water and the pain. He still hung to the reins of his horse. He needed to put his foot back in the cold creek to stop the swelling. When he could, he would pull himself onto the horse and ride out. He would find a doctor. He heard his own breathing, that sucking sound through his teeth. He'd been damaged, all because of her!
“You led me here, Ruth!” he shouted to the rocks. “You led me to this place! You owe me!”
Even in the cold, he was sweating. Fever. Infection. Blood poisoning. His mind raced. He looked again at his foot, the slightest touch shooting pain up his leg. The arch where the horse stomped it, already bruised purple around an open wound with shattered bone showing through. And the toe, the one Jessie had struck with the rock—it oozed yellow and green. A red mark moved up to the throbbing arch already. See! There it was! Even if he did find a doctor, he knew: his foot would have to come off. Ruth. She'd stolen his foot.
“I see I've already upset you.” McCracken sighed. “Mrs. Bacon. Let me begin at the beginning, shall I?” Mazy nodded. “Your husband,” he said, “lived most of his life in England, coming to this continent in the early 1840s.”
“He told me. He came to Wisconsin in the migration of ’48.”
“Well then he has told you in some error. He did not come to Wisconsin directly from England and he did not come in ‘48. It was the fall of’49 I believe when he arrived in Wisconsin.” He checked papers on his desk. “Yes. ‘49. But he grew up in England and came with his wife to Missouri several years after his marriage in”—he looked again at the notes—”1833. He was twenty years old at the time and had—”
“Wait.” Mazy held her hand up. “Let me figure this.” She thought, then said, “That can't be correct. He would have been only seventeen in 1833. He was just sixteen years my senior, not nineteen.”
Josh McCracken gazed at her then, a look that held sweet sympathy; patience pooled there too. He lowered his voice, a father now talking to a daughter, not a lawyer talking to a wounded wife. “This must be dreadful for you. Let me just tell you what I know from the brothers figures and the documentation he's provided. Perhaps then we can piece it all together with what you know. See how we can go from there.”
Mazy nodded, clasped her hands, wished she'd brought her writing book with her for taking notes, or had asked Seth for his set. She asked the elderly lawyer for paper and a pencil which, when McCracken handed them to her, provided her something solid to hang on to. She gripped the pencil, but her eyes never left McCracken's face.
“He came to California not long after the claim at Sutters mill.” He looked up. “His brother, Sinclair, at the time worked with him in Fort Vancouver and learned of the great need for a dairy industry in central and northern California as the frenzy for gold brought more and more people west. They'd both worked in the dairy barns at the fort—they were quite extensive, so I'm told. The plan apparently was for your husband to travel first to California and see what he could confirm, and if all went well, to then head east, acquire good dairy stock, bring them west. His brother planned to follow here, to California. Sacramento.
“Now then. Your husband, whose name was not Jeremy Bacon when he left here, apparently had an eye—”
“That wasn't his name?” She knew her mouth was open, and she snapped it shut.
“In due time, Mrs. Bacon. As I was saying, your husband had an eye for fast money and for…” He looked up at her and said, “Ah, never mind.” He turned back to his pages, his fingers lifting the long parchment pieces, flipping them until he appeared to find what he wanted. “Upon arriving in California, he was apparently hit upon by the gold craze—it happened to many a good man—and he staked a claim. He'd brought his boy with him, and after some small gain was made, he supposedly came to his senses as far as his commitment to his brother was concerned. He notified Sinclair that he was heading east and urged him to come south, bring his wife and child, gather up the boy still working the claim, and he would meet them in Sacramento by the fall of ’51.”
“He left his son?”
“The plan was for only a short time—we can assume. But the brother was delayed in Vancouver. A family matter, I believe, his wife's illness.” He perused his notes. “No, an accident, leaving the girl as a ward of McLoughlin, the former Chief Factor at Vancouver, and his Indian wife.”
Mazy was rubbing her temple, still gripping the pencil.
“He abandoned his son?”
“The boy was fifteen, Mrs. Bacon.”
“Fifteen? But…”
“A number of lads younger than that have staked claims and done well on their own. I doubt your husband would be found neglectful for that, though unsympathetic, perhaps. One can assume he asked for someone to look in on the boy until the uncle was expected. Hopefully he advised his son of that fact. That would have been essential to have him remain. Still, if he didn't… that might explain the difficulty his uncle had in locating—”
“If he was fifteen in ‘49…”
“Yes?”
“I was only sixteen then,” she whispered. “He had a son just a year younger than me? Has a son a year younger?”
“That I do not know, not being certain of your age. I do know that your husband became injured in Milwaukee, sometime in late ‘49 or early ‘50. I believe that was when you might have met him?”
She nodded. “My father was a doctor. We had a small surgery in our home. Patients sometimes remained until their recovery Jeremy did. I married him in April of 1850.”
“Aha.”
“But why didn't he leave then to come back?”
“The advance originally given him to make the proper investments was depleted, apparently when he purchased a farm in…yes, here it is, in Grant County, Wisconsin.”
“That was his uncle's farm. A gift to him.”
“Apparently not.” McCracken slid the paper onto a growing pile, read at the top from another. “He did however notify his brother of his…delay, and after rather heated correspondence, I should imagine, over the next two years, he sold the farm, bought the cows and bull and headed west to do what he'd originally agreed to. By then, California was desperately growing and in need of active dairies. Of course, now your husband had the complication of a wife to whom he'd given an assumed name.”
“Why?”
“I'm sure he did not plan to die on the way here. I suspect he assumed you would never know of his first wife or the children. When did you say your anniversary was?”
“April second, 1850.”
“That might explain it.” He looked up from the page, down into her eyes. “Your husband may not have known he was a widower when he married you. Your marriage would have been illegal, obviously, a small matter if he intended never to come back. And of course, that does present problems for this…settlement as well.”
“But then he did decide to go home. Maybe to see the two children he'd left?” Mazy blinked back tears she knew were spilling onto her cheeks, knowing she wasn't following everything McCracken said, but clinging to a quality of goodness she desperately wanted to see in the man she had chosen to marry. “Why didn't he tell me? After she was dead? He knew, yes?”
McCracken nodded. “We can assume, but we don't know.”
“He lost a wife, never saw his son and daughter again, and I believed he had a good heart. What happened?”
“It takes a remarkable man to stay secure, or may I say ‘true,’ to what he's about when all around him people appear to be falling into riches, gambling big and coming out bigger. There is a sense that only a fool would keep to the tried and true, a steady course of making do day-to-day, providing for ones family, meeting commitments and obligations despite the sacrifice. The daily drudge of milking, or shoeing horses, or putting up hay, even the law, if seen as a distraction to easy wealth, has made many a man—and woman—do things the
y later regretted. No one can see ahead how it'll all come out, and keeping a clear eye has never been easy, Mrs. Bacon. Without a clear vision, dreams are easily converted into entrapments. And your husband had an eye for taking risks or he never would have come to America, and would likely not have gone into business with his brother as he did.”
She sat, trying to find her own still place, breathing prayers to help her understand what she was hearing, to draw the best conclusions, not judge too quickly.
“He left a wife and two children. What would he have done with me when we arrived?” She felt the tears spilling over. “Was he even coming here at all or heading to Vancouver?”
McCracken reached into a side drawer of his heavy desk and from it pulled a clean and perfumed handkerchief. Mazy took it, thanked him, thinking as she did that lawyers must have need of tending to such office essentials.
“Please continue.”
“Yes. Well then. So you see, the money from the sale of the farm you had near Cassville, the money that went into the purchase of the cows and the bull, that is money that is not, ah, rightfully yours.”
“Not the cows. Nor the bull.”
“Not completely so, no.”
Something in his tone told her negotiation space existed. “But surely part of the stock and proceeds should be considered mine, as part of my husband's estate. And he also had funds from my father's house, placed in Jeremy's name—because my father thought my husband would be a better manager than my mother.” She laughed with no joy. “My father intended for any proceeds to be used for her welfare.”