Colter's Path (9781101604830)

by Judd, Cameron

  There had been no hidden metal slugs during Jedd’s fight with the Irishman, but he’d gone down hard nonetheless, having carelessly given the fighter an opening when a pretty saloon girl had blown a kiss Jedd’s way and distracted him for less than a second. When he’d come around again, spitting blood and a knocked-out tooth, he’d made a pledge to himself to steer clear of Finnegan in the future.

  In terms of fighting, he’d kept that pledge completely. But it appeared likely that it had been Finnegan who was outside McSwain’s Knoxville home that night…. Finnegan with a gun in his possession, a threat to McSwain. Why? Who had put him there? Would the board of trustees of a respected college actually do such a drastic thing as hire an assassin? Actually try to do in a collegiate president under their hire?

  Not just a president, though. A president who apparently had stolen from his own college, stolen at a significant level.

  Sitting there in the darkness, Jedd decided it was time to find McSwain and, if he could, finally get to the bottom of this thing. It was impossible for him not to care about McSwain and what might happen to him, considering McSwain’s support of Jedd and the simple fact that he was Emma’s father.

  Jedd decided he’d just have to see Emma, too. He owed it to himself, particularly after traversing the entire country to be where she was. If her husband didn’t like him coming by, the scoundrel would simply have to deal with it.

  Jedd lay back down and rolled over. He closed his eyes, but it was an hour before he slept again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  San Francisco

  The man sat back on the outdoor bench and appreciated the shade of the awning above him. The awning was attached to a slightly fire-damaged and abandoned dry goods store and extended out over the wide boardwalk that had become a place of business for the man kneeling at the first man’s feet.

  “And how did you come into the knowledge of the boot-making trade, might I ask?” the first man said. He was a lean fellow, fair skin but weathered, and appeared to be bald, or mostly so, because he wore a scarf tight around his head and showing no evidence of a padding of hair between the cloth and his flesh. One of his ears had a triangular piece missing from it, cut out as neatly as if a surgeon had removed it or a tailor had taken a pair of good scissors to it.

  The kneeling man, who was studying the reading on the tape measure he’d just wrapped around the other man’s foot at the highest point of his arch, said, “It was family training, sir. My uncle was the best boot maker in Knoxville, Tennessee, in his day, and he taught me all I know. Well, most of it. What he didn’t teach me, experience did. I’ve made many a boot for many a foot in my time, and I believe that when the final product is on your own feet, you’ll see the benefit of that experience.”

  “Confidence!” the boot maker’s customer said. “I like that in a man! Knoxville, did you say?”

  “Yes, sir,” replied the other. “That’s where I come from. Me and my brother, Rollie, we both traveled from there to here, and been in San Francisco just shy of three months now. We’d probably have come sooner if it hadn’t been for needing to take care of our mother, who was old and ailing. It was after she passed on that we were free to leave Knoxville.”

  “Aye, aye,” the other man said. “I’ve been to, and left, Knoxville myself. It was from the Knoxville area that I set out just last year to come here.”

  “You ain’t a-foolin’ me, sir?”

  “Not a bit of it, Ollie. Not a bit.”

  “Well, I’ll be! They say it’s a small world, and I reckon it must be.”

  “Aye, and smaller yet it will become as the years go by, my good man.”

  “Sir, I hope you don’t mind me saying that, from the sound of your speaking, I’d never have guessed you for a Tennessee man.”

  “Oh no. I was in that state only briefly. On business, shall we say? Where I come from is a long way indeed from Knoxville in Tennessee. I’m an Irishman, friend Ollie. I spent my youth in the old country and came to America to build both future and fortune.”

  “‘Future and fortune,’ I like that, sir,” Ollie Slott said. “I’m going to remember them words, and tell them to Rollie. He’ll like them, too.”

  “Is Rollie a boot maker as well?”

  “Oh no, sir. No. Rollie’s a strong man, powerful with his fists. He fights. Fights for money.”

  “A fighter? No!”

  “Actually, sir, it’s yes. He’s been at it for a few years now. He don’t lose often, Rollie don’t. He’s best known back home, but it won’t be long before he’s known just as well out here. He’s been fighting some since we got here, and he’s won every one of them.”

  The Irishman stared across the street at a dog slowly sauntering up an alleyway. There was a cat at the far end of the alley, but the dog was too old and slow to care, and so was the cat. The dog strode past the feline as if not even sensing its presence.

  “Rollie Slott. I’ll remember the name,” the Irishman said. “You know, Ollie, I’ve done some fighting for pay in my time, too. I wonder if your brother and I have ever crossed fists. I’ve fought a few Africans over the years.”

  “Sir, might I ask your name? I’ll need it anyways to make sure I get your new boots safe to you without a hitch.”

  “I am Declan Finnegan.”

  “Sir…I might have heard of you. I think maybe you did fight Rollie once before, years ago. I think maybe you won that fight.”

  “If he is the man I am thinking of, I believe you are right. It was a hard fight, and I very nearly got the worst end of it. It was a lucky punch on my part, as I remember it, that brought your brother down. Nothing I can boast in…just good luck.” Finnegan looked squarely at Ollie. “I respect your brother, Ollie. I respect any man possessing the level of skill he possesses. I might have prevailed over him before, but I’d guess that if we faced off again, I’d not be so lucky.”

  “I’ll tell him I run across you, sir, and pass on your greetings, if that would suit you.”

  “Please do, please do. And one other thing I’ll ask you about. You are from Knoxville. Perhaps you know an old friend of mine who I believe came to California. He was president of a college there in your old city, but I think no longer is.”

  “Zebulon McSwain, sir?”

  “The very man! Do you know him?”

  “I’m familiar with him, sir. I’d not call him a friend, him being in a station of life far above my own.”

  “He is an old friend. I hope to find him. Can you help me?”

  “I’ll try, sir. Where could I get word to you if I find him?”

  Finnegan provided the name of a well-known hotel, and Ollie promised to send word to him if his path and McSwain’s should cross. Even as he did so, he wondered if he was being prudent. This Irish fellow seemed cordial enough, but Ollie didn’t really know him. And Rollie always did tell his brother he was too quick to put his trust in strangers.

  Ollie told himself it didn’t really matter. The odds of encountering Zeb McSwain were tiny. Nothing to be concerned about.

  Bowater Gulch, California

  It was said that the feminine population of California in this year of 1850 was under eight percent of the total, and Emma Wickham had no problem believing it. She lived in a world in which it seemed every traveler coming down the road, every visitor knocking on the door, and every face of a customer in her husband’s camp store was inevitably male.

  Emma remembered what her expectations had been at the time she’d married Stanley Wickham and their move to California was still ahead of her. She’d anticipated life in an exotic, perfect country where warmth and sunshine prevailed. Her home would be fine and modern, rivaling the best dwellings of the big eastern cities. Accustomed to the rugged and gritty little frontier town of Knoxville, Emma would make sure they lived in a far more sophisticated setting, a place where there was culture, music, art, theatre. And they would have money, Stanley’s family money combined with that which he would make in business, in abu
ndance, and with that they would enjoy a life of security, good food, good clothing, good living in general. And for Emma there would be friends, countless friends, other women of like status and situation, sharing with her the joys of privilege.

  How different the reality had proven to be! They lived not in a sophisticated community, but a little mining town where the greatest artistic and cultural endeavor was a little out-of-tune brass band made up of amateurs who routinely slaughtered every melody they attempted. Her house was, admittedly, one of the biggest and sturdiest in town, but even so it was a haphazard combination of conflicting construction techniques: log, frame, stucco. To Emma’s eye it appeared absurd, an architectural joke.

  As for the army of female friends she had anticipated, there was no such group. There were hardly any women around at all, and of the few there were, several were Mexican, two were “Celestial,” or Oriental, one was Indian, one an Australian. The Aussie drank hard and swore harder, and Emma found her intolerable. With the others she simply had little in common.

  There were a few other women who were more like Emma in age, background, and so on, but some of them were dance hall girls, saloon ladies, even prostitutes. Only Ellie Briggs and Sadie Cooke seemed to Emma like women she could enjoy a friendly, sisterly relationship with. Ellie was the dearer friend of those two, but she lived far enough away to make visiting difficult. Sadie, though nearer, wore on Emma’s nerves after only a short while. Too prone to chatter. And too envious of Emma, whom Sadie perceived as a rich mansion-dweller. The oddities of Emma’s helter-skelter house were fully lost on Sadie, who admired the place and envied Emma for it.

  Emma had the distinct feeling that Sadie also envied her for her husband. She had never seen another woman put on such a blatant display of flirtatiousness than did Sadie when Stanley was near. Schoolgirl giggles, ridiculous attempts at silly humor (which Stanley always laughed at, fulsomely), batting eyelashes, and movements clearly designed to be provocative. But what really wore on Emma was the fact that Stanley seemed to like it all, even encourage it. Sadie was a beautiful young woman, unmarried, but Emma knew she herself was more beautiful than Sadie. And why was Stanley paying heed to a flirty woman-child such as Sadie, anyway? Did he not love his own wife?

  Even now Stanley was not present. Off to San Francisco, he’d told her when he left the prior day. Another meeting with Wilberforce Sadler. “More discussion of the bright days ahead of us, my love,” Stanley had said to her. My love. His words.

  Therein lay the true misery of Emma’s life: her own husband did not love her, and she knew it, whatever endearments he might occasionally speak. Further, she was quite sure he had been with other women since their marriage…sure enough she had even confided that conviction to her father. To Zebulon McSwain’s credit, he had not responded with a “told you so” attitude but had simply grieved with her in her pain and disappointment. She wished now she had listened to him when he’d encouraged her to let Stanley Wickham go and take Jedd Colter as her husband instead. But Jedd had been a poor man who didn’t seem to have much by way of financial ambition, and Emma had not been able to accept the prospect of life without abundance.

  Sometimes she tried to persuade herself that things weren’t so bad, that if Stanley didn’t really love her, well, neither did she really love him, so what was the difference? She’d married him for security, not love, and secure she was. At least there was that. Things were not as she wanted them to be, but in her community she was reigning queen, if such a status existed, and other women, the few there were, envied her position.

  It should be enough, she told herself. Yet it wasn’t.

  Emma’s hopes at the moment were pinned on the plans Stanley had been talking about involving Wilberforce Sadler, the Knoxville businessman Emma had known all her life. Sadler, along with his funny lump of a brother, was in California now, San Francisco, and according to Stanley, was interested in pooling resources with him to create the biggest and most visible string of mining camp stores in the new state.

  Mining camp stores were the most central and important institution in any mining community. Virtual community centers, selling every kind of imaginable item, from groceries through pickaxes. Liquor, too.

  In the vision of Stanley Wickham and Wilberforce Sadler, Wickham and Sadler Supply stores soon would fill the gold country, stocked with the best goods the owners and operators could find at a discount price. That discount would be passed down to the customers, undercutting competing merchants and ensuring that virtually every gold pan, pick, shovel, and commercially produced rocker and long tom would come from a Wickham and Sadler store. Along with clothing, fabric for house curtains, iron stoves for kitchens.

  “You think we are well off now, Emma, you wait until our stores are open and running!” Stanley told her one rare night when he seemed to actually be in a mood to involve her in his life and plans. “You, my dear, will be the richest woman in all of California! That’s my promise to you, Emma. And my promise to myself is this: I will someday be governor of this state. You may rely on it.” And for a few days, the excitement she had known in the first days of their marriage had returned.

  “Do we have sufficient money to carry our part of the cost?” she’d asked Stanley, who always kept her in the dark regarding the specifics of their financial life.

  “Everything is in place,” Stanley had said. “The resources will be there when they are called for.” Typical vagueries, giving implications rather than hard information. Emma had known that was the fullest answer she was likely to receive.

  Stanley’s talk about his plans had been lessened of late, but Emma still was hopeful. She knew he’d had at least three meetings with the Sadlers, particularly Wilberforce, and had also been in conference with bankers and attorneys and land agents from San Francisco and Los Angeles.

  Something was brewing. Stanley, at least, was working to make things happen. The life Emma had hoped she would have when she’d passed over Jedd Colter, who truly loved her, in favor of one who had married her for her beauty and her willingness to be bought by the promise of wealth and luxury—that life of success and worldly fulfillment might even yet come about for her. Stanley Wickham might fulfill her hopes even yet.

  “I’ll be happy then,” she had whispered to herself one evening when Stanley was away, ostensibly on “business” but more likely consorting with some cheap strumpet in a neighboring mining camp dance hall or some roosting place of soiled doves.

  “My husband the governor,” she had said to the darkness. “My husband the leader of men, the wielder of power, the possessor of great wealth. Yes…then I’ll be happy.”

  But when she’d fallen asleep that night, she’d dreamed she was walking through a meadow alongside the Holston River at Knoxville, her hand clasped in Jedd Colter’s. In the dream, the happiness she wished for was already there, not something merely to be wished for in a faraway future, but already in her possession, clasped in her hand and Jedd’s, together.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  I can’t deny my concerns, sir,” Wilberforce Sadler said to Stanley Wickham. “I am beginning to wonder if you do indeed have the resources needed to carry forward your end of our bargain.”

  Wickham was a thin man with lush brunet hair that swept up from his brow and stood mostly straight up, but with a backward tilt that made it look as if he had faced into a stout wind to dry it. Wickham looked Sadler squarely in the eye and nodded. “You need not worry. Those resources will be in hand soon.”

  “That kind of vague promise rouses my concern even more, given that we are in a land with a steadily growing population of men who are confident they will soon be wealthy with only a minimal putting forth of effort. Hopes rise fast in California and die even faster. From where do you expect to gain these ‘resources’ you are so confident of? Do you expect to encounter the fabled mother lode in your privy pit?”

  Wickham laughed fulsomely at Sadler’s unimpressive joke, desperately wanting to lighten the
atmosphere in the room and establish rapport with this man who held his hope for the future. This was the first time Sadler had treated him with such ambivalence and vaguely hostile doubt. It was hard to blame him, because time was running out.

  Given the rapid pace of development in California’s gold fields, it was crucial that the chain of mining camp stores be put in place soon, or the opportunity would be seized by others. But so far all Wickham had been able to do was make promises. He’d put forth no actual money toward their project.

  He thought of his father-in-law and cursed him silently. Zebulon McSwain held the key to Wickham’s hopes, and the power to crush them. Without the diamonds that McSwain possessed, a portion of the famous Finnegan ancestral jewels, Wickham could not fulfill his pledge to Sadler. Not unless he did make some major find of gold, as Wilberforce had just joked about. Unlike some, though, Wickham knew better than to treat luck in the gold fields as a destined certainty. He could not assume he would be one of the fortunate few blessed with the same kind of luck that had come to old Ben Scarlett, making Ben’s name famous across all California.

  No, no birds in the bush for Stanley Wickham. He could count only on the bird in the hand…even if the hand belonged to Zeb McSwain.

  It was a highly frustrating situation, the diamonds so close, yet so unreachable.

  Those diamonds had been given to Bledsoe College of Knoxville, Tennessee, by one of Ireland’s wealthiest men, Samuel Finnegan, since deceased. Eccentric in the way of some men of wealth, Finnegan had been long fascinated by the growth of the American nation, and imagined himself tied to it. The simple fact that so much unsettled land existed on the North American continent had captivated Finnegan, resident of an island encompassing far less terrain. He had become a strong foreign proponent of what, five years earlier, a noted American editor had labeled the “manifest destiny” of the United States—and this though Finnegan had never set foot in America. His fascination with the country was given from afar, but was as strong as if Finnegan had been a native-born American.