by Daniel Knapp
"Your only alternative is to pull that pistol you are hiding beneath your jacket and murder me—right here, in front of all these witnesses. I suggest you think seriously before doing anything so patently guaranteed to send you to the gallows. Beyond that, this discussion is closed."
Esther suppressed a snicker as Claussen stammered, and the men nearby laughed so hard they had to hold their sides. The big, red-bearded man swung his head left and right like a confused bull, turned on his heel finally, and left.
"A year in Washington has done wonders for your delivery, not to mention your sense of humor, Warren. But that man is almost as dangerous as Mosby, believe me."
Barnett reached out with his free hand and rested it on Esther's arm. "You fret too much, dear girl. All of it is just talk. No one's going to do a damn thing but that. Talk. As soon as the convention and the election are over, we'll all be smiling at one another again. Now, I don't want to discuss it any further. Just stop worrying your lovely head about it."
"But…"
"No 'buts.' Let's not spoil our dinner. I haven't seen you in over a year. Tell me what you've been up to. Why are you living in Sacramento?"
She tried several times during dinner to bring the matter up again, but Barnett refused to talk of anything but their activities over the past eighteen months. He had just asked her for more details about the meeting with Judah, when Mosby entered the dining room. A combination of rage and fear froze Esther as Mosby walked slowly over to the table, looked at her, searched his mind, and then not thinking back as far as ten or more years, shrugged and turned to Barnett. There were more pressing matters on his mind. Again the room was as silent as an empty church.
"Good evening, judge," Barnett said.
"Understand you'll only accept a challenge from an equal."
"You are correct."
"And I suppose you'll find a way of thinking I'm not either."
"Not what?" Barnett smiled, annoyed and slightly apprehensive but enjoying it as well.
"Your equal, you horse's ass!"
"Obviously we could not be equal if I am a horse's ass, as you put it, since you are wearing a different kind of tail at the moment. I might add that it does little to conceal your true nature."
Esther shuddered as the patrons nearby broke into appreciative if hesitant laughter.
"What's it going to take then? This?" Mosby moved quickly, slapping Barnett hard across the face with his gloves.
"I will be the only one who obtains satisfaction from that stupid action," Barnett said, dabbing his napkin at a small nick where a button had sliced across his cheek. "In court, where these things are rightly dealt with." Barnett got up. "If you will excuse me, judge, I am having dinner. After which I plan to report your barbaric conduct to the police. You prove how unequal you are by thinking for a moment that I would be drawn into your crude little game."
Mosby shoved Barnett back into the chair. "You spineless son of a—"
Screaming, Esther threw herself at Mosby. "Leave him alone, you filthy beast!"
Half turning, hardly taking notice of the blow she landed on his shoulder, Mosby grabbed Esther by one arm and threw her sprawling into a cluster of people and plates at the next table. The onlookers gasped, but no one moved. Mosby turned back to Barnett. "Your lady friend is actin' like a whore, Barnett."
"You were born of one, you worthless scum!" Barnett shot out of his chair and seized Mosby by the throat. Livid, beyond his senses, he lifted Mosby off the ground and was shaking him like a dog worrying a cat when Claussen and two other men rushed in, grabbed him from behind, and pried his hands loose.
Mosby staggered for a moment, choking, as Claussen hit Barnett in the stomach, doubling him over. Recovering quickly, Mosby barked, "Turn him loose!"
"You've gone too far this time," Barnett coughed out, trying to regain his wind.
"You can have your satisfaction anytime you want it," Mosby hissed. "We gentlemen shouldn't brawl in public this way."
Still stunned, Esther swayed and screamed, "Warren! … Don't listen to him!"
"Tomorrow morning will be fine, you whoreson!"
"Tomorrow morning it is then. A mile north of the city, on this side of the river. Pistols?"
"It will be a pleasure."
Regaining her wits, Esther started to get up. "For God's sake, Warren!"
"If you're agreeable, I'll provide the weapons. You can have first choice between the pair."
"That will be fine. When I'm through with you, Mosby, your foul-smelling friend here can have his turn."
Mosby smiled, then swept out of the room with Claussen and his cohorts. Esther got up and walked unsteadily toward Barnett. Crying, she put her arms around him. "It's insane, Warren. For God's sake, can't you see that? The man is a crack shot."
Barnett smiled coldly. "He may be. But at twenty paces, that won't come into play."
"Warren—!"
"And I'll have the hand of God steadying me." There was a frightening look of certainty in his eyes as he fished a bill out of his pocket, paid the waiter, and took Esther by the arm. "Come, I'll take you home," he said, guiding her toward the door.
She attempted a dozen times to persuade him to reconsider. Nothing she said got through to him. When he finally stood in her doorway and noted he had much paperwork to attend to—just in case God saw fit to call him—the look of righteous invincibility on his face was gone. In its place was the blank stare of a man considering the possibility that he was living his last hours on earth.
He was not dead when she was called tohis hotel room the following afternoon. He had asked to see her. She winced at the blood-soaked bandages the doctors had wrapped around his chest after removing the bullet.
"Now, don't you spend a minute thinking you had anything to do with this," Barnett rasped. "It would have come to a showdown sooner or later. I just couldn't let him do what he did without answering it like a man." He waved a nurse and several political cronies out of the room. When they were gone, he motioned Esther closer and kissed her on the cheek. "I have always loved you as my own sister."
"I know," she sobbed. "And I you, as a brother."
"I want to share a secret with you. Nothing, no election I have ever won, no amount of money I have ever made, has given me the satisfaction of finding the courage not to run this morning. All the glib talk, the windy bravado, the sarcastic bluster has concealed a coward until today. I want you to know how happy that makes me. Particularly since I have paid for it with only a superficial wound."
"But the nurse said it is gravely serious."
"Doctors and nurses. What do they know? I am more alive at this moment than I have ever been in my life. And I will recover. Count on it, little sister. Now let me rest awhile. As soon as I'm better, up and about, we will have that dinner Mosby so rudely interrupted."
She hoped fervently that he was right, but word of his death was sent to her that evening just after she read the newspaper accounts of the duel. She didn't want to believe it. Almost obsessed, she kept reading the articles over and over, hoping she would find that it was not Warren Barnett's name she saw there. Finally she read the report in the Democratic Standard one last time, accepting the reality and noticing for the first time the peculiar way Barnett had been left defenseless almost immediately.
… as the seconds stepped hack and Mr. Ryder gave the word, the principals raised their pistols, which they had held pointed to the ground. On the rise, Mr. Barnett's weapon went off, the ball striking the ground a few feet short of his opponent…
She scanned the rest, her mind already at work on how to find out how such a thing could happen to a man who had fired guns skillfully at recreational targets. A gun expert will know, she thought, still reading.
… lowered himself… reclining position… then fell full length… Surgeons present…. passed through… cavity of the chest… mattress litter…. conveyed to the city… sat up… concealed the great pain… the weight of a thousand pounds upon him… intern
al hemorrhage…
She glanced back up the page. "On the rise… ball striking the ground…" Before she could even think of where to find a gunsmith, she knew instinctively what the man would tell her.
Sixty-four
Aboard the Pacific Union Express
May 7, 1869
9:30 a.m.
Esther glanced through the window beside her as the train slowed in its ascent through the Sierra foothills. It had long since left behind the spot on the river where Mosby had fatally wounded Warren Barnett. More than enough to justify revenge at that point, she reminded herself, let alone now. She moved her gloved fingertips over the pebbled leather of the journal cover, recalling the furor that arose when it was discovered that Mosby's pistols had been tampered with… that he had practiced with them on two successive nights before the duel… his resignation… her fruitless search for him after his sudden disappearance. He had resurfaced almost a year later in Nevada, carrying with him an appointment as governor from Jefferson Davis if he succeeded in aligning the territory with the Confederacy. Then there had been the election of Lincoln… the interminable winter of 1860-61, waiting to cross the Sierras, to find and face Mosby once and for all, no matter what the consequences were… the ridiculous attentions Bull Carter paid to her… Alex…
Shaking her head at the irony of the unexpected events that delayed her departure for Virginia City that subsequent spring, she opened the journal again.
San Francisco
April 18, 1861
No matter what I have revealed about my continued feelings for you, Alex, you must believe me when I tell you that my heart is shattered with the news that your lovely wife, Judith, is gone. I rejoiced, despite my longings for you, when she recovered from her miscarriage nearly two years ago. And I prayed for her well-being during the untroubled period of her latest pregnancy. And now this. Oh, how I wish I could comfort you personally, soothe you in your grief. You have done nothing to deserve this. Whatever the telegraph message I send to you as Mrs. "E. Cable," when I return to Sacramento, know, if you ever read this, that my true feelings could never be expressed…
Esther lingered in San Francisco for a month after the death of Judith Todd. Repeatedly she found excuses not to make the journey back to Sacramento. She arranged a series of meetings with Ralston, to ask him redundant questions about the Comstock, the railroad, her other investments, until he almost lost his temper. Reopening her house, she surprised the Kelseys with a dinner invitation, then surprised them again by immediately accepting a reciprocal meal three days later. News of the firing on Fort Sumter and the start of the Civil War reached San Francisco. Several days later she attended a pro-Union rally with Ralston, and through him offered financial support in the effort to thwart secession maneuvers by Southerners throughout the state. When she spotted Alex standing at the far side of the noisy crowd just across from the Road Depot Saloon, she finally admitted to herself why she had remained in San Francisco.
And then Bull Carter showed up at her door.
He was holding a nosegay of flowers. It was almost hidden in a hand the size of a small rib-roast. Respectfully, he held his hat in the other.
"Why, Mr. Carter, what a surprise."
"I hope not too much of a one," Carter stammered. "I mean callin' on you… uh… this unexpected… way." His hair was slicked back with what appeared to be half a pound of chicken fat. He rushed on. "I was in San Francisco on business for my brother… half-brother…"
"Mr. Crocker."
"Yes… and… I… ah… thought I'd bring you these flowers." He handed them to her, his tiny eyes blinking repeatedly.
"That's quite all right, Mr. Carter. And thank you."
"I know I bothered you… in Sacramento. That is—"
"You weren't a bother, Mr. Carter. I was simply too busy with things at the school."
"Well, it was stupid of me, what with you bein' in mourning for your friend Senator Barnett. I didn't show no tack." He glanced in through the door for a second, stared at her oddly. She guessed he was trying to remember again where he had seen her before.
Esther reached for her hat on the mirror rack just beside the entrance. "I wish I could invite you in, but I'm expected in town in just a few minutes."
"Quite all right, quite all right," Carter said, following and trying to keep up with her as she headed for the carriage stable. "I just wanted to… pay my respects."
She lost Carter easily once she reached the outskirts of the city, then doubled back to her house fifteen minutes later. The following day she wrote a note to Ralston, requesting a meeting.
"What do you know about William Carter?" she asked Ralston, after setting out chairs on the porch when he arrived after dinner. On the pretext that the mayflies had been noisome in the unseasonal warmth that evening, she was wearing a gardening hat with light mosquito netting draped down over the front brim. For a moment she thought he recognized her features, but then she realized it was simply male appreciation. Casually she moved the lamp on the table beside them so that it shed less light on her face.
"Carter? He's a climber. Wants into the Big Four so bad he can taste it. But he doesn't have any money. Best he'll manage is a handout from Crocker. A good job, probably. But, knowing Crocker, it will be about as secure as an ice cube in Panama. Why do you ask?"
"Oh, just a woman's curiosity. I spoke briefly with Mr. Carter yesterday. I ran into him unexpectedly—in town."
"He's here in San Francisco?" Ralston frowned. "I'd watch out for him, Esther. He didn't pay a call on you, did he?"
"Why… no. Whatever would he do that for?"
"I said he wanted in bad. To be more specific, he's sidled up to more than one wealthy widow, looking for a bankbook. Wants to pry his way into a silent partnership with Crocker and the rest of them."
Esther's mind began ticking. "Oh, Billy, are you sure of that? Or is it just rumor?" She thought of the marvelous act Carter had put on the day before. At least in part. No doubt some of it was authentic awkwardness with a woman as well as embarrassment about what he was doing. "He seems such a nice man."
"He's about as nice as his half-brother. And that's like calling a grizzly bear a Quaker!"
Esther laughed. "Well, I'll certainly be on the lookout. Not that he would ever be interested in me." She thought of Carter's enormous size and physical strength, and the power-potential attached to being even tangentially involved with the railroad suddenly struck her.
"Why not?" Ralston smiled. "You're not only wealthy, you're a beautiful woman. I can see that, even through your veils."
"Oh, Billy, you don't need to flatter me. There are many women in San Francisco far more attractive than I am."
"But most of them don't have money."
"No, they don't," Esther mused. The thought of beating Carter at his own game, turning it to her own advantage, intrigued her.
"And the ones who do often don't realize that under California law, anything a wife owns becomes her husband's property once they're married, unless she declares it beforehand."
"Well, that's only right," Esther said, concealing a righteous indignation. "Isn't it? Aren't we the weaker sex? Don't we need the guidance of a big, smart, strong man?" She suddenly knew she would use Carter's physical strength someday against Mosby. She quickly parsed the premonition with reason and probability. More likely, it would be the strength of the railroad she would employ. Or at least the privileges that being the wife of a silent partner might afford her.
"You don't seem to need a big, strong man," Ralston said, smiling. "You really don't believe that at all."
"Oh, but I do—at least occasionally. It would be a comfort."
She thought she saw a fleeting expression of pleasure cross Ralston's face; but then it was gone, and she couldn't be sure. The notion was quickly lost in considerations of Alex, what she had really asked Ralston to meet her about, and the discomfiting thought of being Bull Carter's wife.
"I never figured you had any interest i
n marriage," Ralston said, interrupting her thoughts.
"I never said I did."
"Well, if you ever do, be wary of Carter."
"What a pity. He's such a fine figure of a man."
"I think he'd look good on a serving platter—with an apple in his mouth." Ralston looked at his watch, suddenly a little nervous again.
"I'm not keeping you, am I? I did want to ask you if there's been any news from Judah."
"No, I have plenty of time. And yes, there has been some word. It will take some time, perhaps another year, to get an act passed, but Judah's convinced Congress that the road is a military necessity to the Union."
"That's marvelous news," Esther said, thinking about Carter as well as Alex again.
"Yes. It means the financial support that's needed. I have to go up to Sacramento before they draw up the papers."
"Papers?"
"Incorporation papers. The Central Pacific Railroad Company will be formed sometime before summer." He looked at his watch again, then glanced left to where the carriage road came over the crest of the hill. For a moment he seemed preoccupied, but then his face lit up with enthusiasm. "Esther, you won't believe what they're going to ask for—Huntington and the rest of them. Thousands of dollars per mile. An even higher rate for the mountains. They plan to set up their own construction company, so even if the damn thing never gets over the Sierras, they stand to make an enormous profit. Right now we're in a position to buy a small piece of it, since you helped put Judah and the rest of them together. But I want to get us more. It won't be a huge share, Huntington's too smart and too greedy for that. But I think we can increase our position."
"Whatever you think, Billy. You're the financial wizard." She was about to begin a series of circuitous questions she hoped might lead to an "accidental" meeting with Alex, when Ralston looked at his watch again.
"I am keeping you." She would wait for a more propitious time.
"No, it's just—I told someone I was going to be… I… ah… said he could meet me here. I hope you'll forgive me."