“Not unusual for a husband to secure his estate in that way.”
“Some of the money Jeremy left, after he died, has to be my mothers.”
Josh McCracken leaned back, as though reassessing. His fingertips formed a tent below his nose. “But the cattle, they do not belong to you.”
“Half does. I've read somewhere that here in California, a wife can keep half the profits from a business made with her husband, even while they're married, and sue him if he refuses to give it.”
McCracken flattened his forearms on the desk, his palms on the table. “It has been known to happen,” he said, “but there is the question of the legality of your marriage.”
“I have the cows,” she said.
“Possession is important,” he said. “And the bull?”
“The bull I sent with stock belonging to other survivors of the cholera epidemic, more cows and horses, too. It has just recently arrived.” She stood now, taking in a deep breath of air, sure of what she wanted. “I propose this, to get us past this place,” she said. “Jeremy's brother, Sinclair, may take ownership of the cow brute as his half of the estate. If he comes to get him. And the cows I'll keep for my part in successfully bringing them west. Sinclair would have nothing if I hadn't done my part. And now he at least has the hope of a bull. I'll assume the remaining cash my husband carried belonged to my mother.” She stood. “Here are the papers for the registration on the bull. A signed bill of sale.” She opened the envelope that lay heavy in her lap. “If Sinclair accepts, I'll not press further for all of it, what I believe I could rightfully claim—Sinclair's word against mine the only evidence. Why, I might even charge that the Jeremy you speak of is not his brother at all. They didn't have the same names, as you said.”
McCracken stood then. He was nodding, rubbing at his chin. He'd stepped away from the window, and Mazy could see he wasn't an old man. But those eyes had seen sorrow enough to give them depth. She marveled that she could have this conversation and sound so firm while her hands sweated, her heart pounded, and tears of Jeremy's betrayal pressed against her nose. She fumbled with the papers, found them, handed them to him. She felt stronger with his nodding, his agreeing that what she said was fair. Lighter, that was what she felt.
“One more thing.” She pressed at her nose with the perfumed silk, picked up her purse, handed him back his paper and pad. “If you agree to tell me who and where the children are, I will give them half of their fathers estate. They are, after all, his only heirs.”
“You had no children?”
She shook her head. “Almost. But for my mother, those two children are my only family now.”
Josh McCracken allowed a lifting of his lips, enough she thought it might be a smile. His eyes crinkled at the corners. “Sinclair will have to accept the bull, but it is the more expensive item, and its true, your work and time to bring them west need compensation. I was asked to handle this matter to my best judgment. I'll confer with him, and any papers you need to sign I can send to you by mail. As for the children…” He looked back down on the paper. “The girls name is Grace. She is in Oregon City. The boy, he'd be nineteen or so, we have not located. Perhaps he's deceased as well. Or taken his own gamble and followed a dream. It's possible he's still near the claim, though his uncle didn't find him. You might. Mad Mule Canyon is near your home in Shasta. His name,” he said then, “is David Benjamin Taylor.”
21
Stars glittered above him, silver stones thrown to light the night. “No moon,” David said, his eyes sticky with sleep. His horse would easily stumble, traveling without a moon. He wondered if the sky was clear wherever Oltipa was. He stretched, his neck sore from the way his head dropped while he slept beneath the tree. He heard the crunch of his horse chewing, the rustle of the dog at his feet. Had he dreamed? He couldn't remember. He stood, reached for his packsaddle, took out a bite of dried meat, liking the pull of it against his teeth. A shooting star caught his eye, a single flash of brilliance. “So small, we are,” he told the dog as he squatted to share his food. “So small in the scheme of things.”
He'd done what he could do and would have to live with the failure of his efforts. He thought of heading into Oregon anyway, futile as it might be to find Oltipa there. He could see his sister, walk where his father once walked, try to understand how he could have left his wife and daughter behind. Maybe to keep them safe. Maybe doing what he thought best for them, at least that was what he wanted to believe. He preferred that explanation to the one he'd come to first—that his father chose the dazzle of a fire over its warmth. Gold was no end in itself, despite what all around him were saying.
He might never know what his father thought, or what happened to him either. Just another unanswered question life handed him, asking him to ponder and trust.
“Heading back,” David told the dog. “Don't want our Ben growing up without knowing there was someone there for him. Got to tell him about his kin and what she was about.” He could keep her story alive, and if she did live, if she did escape the hands of Zane Randolph, then she'd return to where she last saw Ben. “She might not come back for me, old boy,” he said. “But you can bet she will for Ben.”
Riding a straight trail, without the side trips of following the dog seeking Oltipa's scent, he arrived at the cabin sooner than he expected. His eyes scanned the simple room, noted the things Oltipa did to make it her place, their place. Bos, she called it, home. Baskets woven and filled with flour and berries sat on the plank floor; salmon she'd caught and dried in the wind were stacked on a crate in the corner. She'd been working a deer hide. It lay rolled up, fur outside, and there were other skins—squirrel, rabbit—whose softness smelled of her as he picked them up, brushed the nap beneath his fingers. He couldn't find the small spoon he'd given her. That surprised him. Nor the dress. She must have been wearing it when he left. His eyes watered. He assumed she took it off as soon as he left, returned to her chosen clothing. But he found a woven grass dress folded and lying on the raised bed he'd built her. Once-yellow flowers spilled out of a pot, dried wisps scattered across the table. Little things unique to them made this a home. They'd always had enough—some to give away. “Generosity toward others,” his mother had said, “is the true sign that you're grateful for all God has given.” This cabin had become a home that way.
He hadn't thought of the walls and roof as a “home” when he lived here with his father. They'd thought of nothing but gold then, using the wooden walls and rafters as a space to keep them safe from the wind and snow, healthy enough to change streambeds and shorelines the next day. He looked around, wondering if there was a single thing left in this structure that was personal to his father. He found nothing. No wonder it was so easy for him to leave it once his father left. Like his father, David had given nothing of himself to the place, kept all of what he was inside. Until Oltipa came.
Maybe that was what his father left behind: a son who took a gamble not for gold but for a woman's life, for the stillness of his own soul.
This cabin would stay a home again, for him and Ben. They'd keep it ready for her.
He checked to see what supplies he would need, deciding then he would work the claim not as an end, but as a way to one. He could be with the boy, to stay close. And when Ben was older, then he'd find another way to make his living, not wanting the boy to believe that gold was the goal in life. Others had struck it rich, but many invested in hotels, mercantile businesses. They gave others work. Yet they lived in homes not much bigger than this. There were other things to be done with money. David would make his mark for Ben.
Elizabeth greeted him at the hotel door, flour drifting like snow down her front. “Come in, come in! Oh, I know you're looking for your boy. He's in good hands. Got him out at a friend of mine's, Ruth Martins. He was just too much boy, here. He needed entertaining every time I turned around. I liked the fun, but my Strudels suffered. Sarah wanted to be back home with her auntie, what with Jessie missing… you don't need a
ll that news, now do you? So,” she said, looking closely at him, “I'm pondering your eyes there and I'd say you didn't find her. Them.”
“Lost their trail north. At least I think it was their trail. Could be they went south or toward the coast. I don't know.”
“Will you head south, then?”
David shook his head. “Maybe. But I'd just be chasing dust, I expect. He'll sell her, sure.”
Elizabeth patted his shoulder. “I got news for you too. Not good either. That man? He's been making Ruth's life miserable for years. He was her husband. Is, I guess. And he took her little niece with ‘em.”
“That must have been the treasures he meant. More than one. This Ruth might know where he'd go, then?” David's eyes brightened. The dog barked and scratched at the door.
“Haven't seen your dog since you left,” she said. “I was worrying over that. Let him in.”
“I should have said I took him. I don't know if he really had their scent or not, but I followed it until he got confused. At least I had a step to take.” He thumbed at his eyes. “Where's this Ruth live? Maybe she can think of something about Randolph, about where he'd go. Give me a next step.” He lifted the dog. “Got to play the hand I'm dealt,” he said. “Play it good as I can.”
They sloshed through the shallow creek, running as fast the slippery rocks allowed, lifting knees high despite their hands being tied. Oltipa fell. My Jessie helped her up. Jessie cried as she ran, and Oltipa crooned encouragement. Oltipa had looked back only once. The Randolph mans horse stomped and skittered around him, pulling back as he shouted. Her pony looked dead in the water.
David Taylor had given her the horse they'd ridden, the one lying dead. No time to mourn now, she thought and turned away. She bunched her dress up in her tied hands, and showed My Jessie. The child picked up the edge of her flannel dress, what she'd been wearing for three days now. Oltipa always made sure the child was off to her side or ahead of her.
Once, early on, she thought she heard the Randolph mans words carry over the water, a shout, and they lay still, as still as a rabbit too far from its hole with a coyote fast on its trail. She stared into My Jessie's frightened eyes, thought of her son, prayed for their safety.
“That rock,” Oltipa said, pointing. They sat wet, shivering in the heat and panting beside a boulder. Oltipa eased out around the boulder to see what she could of the Randolph man. They'd come a distance, around a bend, and she heard nothing but the rush of water, the screech of a bird overhead. “Come,” she said and led the child up the rock-pocked and brushy bank, into the shrubs and up the steeper side.
The heat began to press against their skin, drying them. Then as though the God of David Taylor truly did watch over her, she found the pam-hal-lok—the cave! There was no food inside, but here came safety and the time she needed to pull the spoon from her pocket and begin the long process of using it to dig at the ropes that still bound her hands.
“Spoon,” she told My Jessie. The girl helped her fumble with the skirt, reaching for the inside pocket. “Hold,” Oltipa said, then rubbed the hemp strings that bound her hands against the spoon. She made little progress.
“Wont we ever get free?” My Jessie said, her lower lip trembling.
Oltipa looked around the darkened cave until she found a sharp rock.
She rubbed her wrists across the point until the rope loosened, then told My Jessie to pull the frays free. Rushing, she did the same for the little girl, fumbling once with her tired hands, then putting the rock and spoon back in her pocket.
“I'm hungry,” My Jessie said.
Oltipa grunted and nodded. “We go home soon,” she said. She reached for the girl, a child the size of Oltipas younger sister, and held her in her arms until she slept.
Through the opening of the cave, Oltipa looked out at thooyook. Stars, David Taylor called them. She wondered if he saw them. She heard a twig snap and held her breath. Nothing happened. She exhaled. They were safe here. Safe from this Randolph man. She decided then that when she found David, she would try to tell him that no matter where she was, when she saw the stars, she would remember the thousand kindnesses her life was given because of him. She'd tell Ben too, if he lived. A sharp pain stabbed beneath her breast with the thought. She did then what David Taylor told her once to do: “Ask for all you need.”
She was a strong woman, that Mazy Bacon, Seth thought. Strong, sure, and straight as an arrow. He supposed it was the set of her jaw line as she left McCrackens office that told him she was on a new trail, likely one that didn't have room for him. Nobles Cutoff had been a glitch, he decided, an interruption of this woman's single-headed steering of her world. He couldn't fault her for it. He admired it. He just wasn't sure he was up to the challenge of finding a way to make her care for him without risking her losing herself.
He guessed he knew it from the beginning, when she didn't lean on him as a woman might, when she said she was willing to wait for more. Knew it again with the chaste response to the kiss he'd given. Passion, she said she wanted. Well, so did he, and it was a gift if two people found it together, seeking similar things, making their way side by side. His old grandmother had told him once that God had a partner picked for everyone, but some took longer to be ready. “When you find the right one, you'll know it,” she told him.
He'd thought Mazy was. But he was wrong. He could see that now. Mazy was gathering resources to stay put, build her a house, milking cows two times a day, put up hay, then commit to being there through the seasons, day in, day out, the same. That wasn't him and he knew it. Maybe she'd become like a sister to him, someone he could spar with, love true and true without the entanglements of anything more. That was what he'd hope for. To be thought of as kin.
They took a day to visit Mei-Ling, who bowed and smiled and looked as if she carried a watermelon under her tunic top. “Why, you're expecting,” Mazy said, and A-He grinned back the answer.
“You come be married in Sacramento?” Mei-Ling said to Seth. “You and Missy Mazy?”
Seth thought Mazy blushed. “No, were just friends, Mei-Ling, like you and I are.” He thought Mazy tilted her head in question at him.
“You come be friend for baby too?”
“We'll always be that,” Mazy said.
“Naomi have baby too. She tell me.”
“Well,” Sister Esther said. “How lovely. Perhaps they have put their differences to rest, then.” Esther had ridden out with them, and they all walked through the peach orchard A-He had started two years back until they reached Mei-Ling's bees buzzing around their boxes on the far end.
“We should go by Naomi's, too,” Esther asked.
Mei-Ling shook her head. “She say husband not like visitors. I come see her some. She say things be better when baby comes. She bring baby, show Missy Esther.”
“At least life'll be easier for her with a child,” Esther said.
“Kids never seemed to me to make life easier,” Seth said as they rode back to the boardinghouse. “Problems just seem to get bigger.”
“Still, they bring a change,” Esther said. “And it is much harder to stay self-centered after a child arrives. They often do help their parents get raised up. Those of us without little tykes to teach us skip some lessons,” she said, the word lessons zinging in that way she had. “And we only know we've missed them by the ache in our hearts.”
In the morning, Mazy told Seth she was ready to go home. Like an older brother, he sparred before relenting. “Might be we should wait to travel home with a freighter, packing north,” Seth said. “Might be safer.”
“Did you pick that information up at the local amusement house?” Mazy asked.
Seth wondered if Sister Esther tracked this double team of conversation. He cast a quick glance at the older woman, couldn't decide, then turned his ear back to Mazy. “The driver reported it. Not many are leaving except by stage. Or in packs. Just want you to be safe. Me too, for that matter.”
“I can take a stage if that
would suit you more, or the steamer. Leave Ink here with your of Snoz, if that's all right with you, Esther.”
“That's fine,” the woman said. “But when will you get your mule?”
“Seth can pack her back. You'd do that, wouldn't you? To help me out?”
“I'll take you now,” he said. “Wouldn't want you behind on your schedule.”
Mazy nodded. “I'll get packed up then.”
Seth's smile was wistful. He knew as he gave it to her they would always be friends, nothing more. And yet he didn't feel adrift as he'd thought he might. He had planned to tell her of his turn of fortune at what Mazy called the gambling “hell” last night. He could settle down now. But it wouldn't have made a difference with her. She wanted passion, and she didn't feel it with him. Maybe that he wasn't devastated by her rejection said he hadn't been all that ready for more with her, just as she'd said. He might not be ready for the wealth he had rolled into his pack, either. It should have made him elated. Instead, he felt weary.
They headed back, Mazy riding Ink, only not sidesaddle. She'd found a good saddle at a livery, so new the stirrups were still stiff.
“The tongues will wag,” Esther told her as she mounted up.
“Let them,” Mazy said. “The world looks much better staring through the ears of a mule straight rather than off to the side. Besides, no self-respecting California woman will waste her time worrying over wags. Come on, Ink,” she said. “Let's go home.”
“What did you work out about your cows?” Seth asked as the clouds lifted over the Sacramento River.
“The cows are mine. The bull is theirs.”
“That'll cut into your herd-growing a bit,” he said. “Not that being without one for a year hasn't.”
“True. But I've got a plan,” she said.
“I'm sure you do,” he said. Mazy was a good woman, but he knew she would never be his. He had plenty else to keep his interest, he decided. And what Esther said, about the emptiness of missing some little tyke's lessons, maybe that was speaking to him.