by Tess LeSue
But Deathrider didn’t get more than a day or two of enjoying the freedom before they hit the Lava Lands. Riding through that hell with Wilby almost ruined his nerves for good. As they crossed the hellscape, the kid almost drowned, poisoned himself on rank spring water, got blasted by steaming-hot geysers, fell in a sinkhole and cut his head open on a sharp rock. And that was just on the first day.
By the time they made it through, Deathrider felt like he’d aged a decade.
And then things really got bad. They fell in with a bunch of stragglers at the back of a train. They were all dour white people from somewhere far away, none of them spoke English, and each and every one of them was suffering from a severe case of influenza. Which they promptly gave to Deathrider. Wilby, on the other hand, seemed utterly immune. If babysitting a human ferret had been hard when he was well, it was damn near impossible now he was laid low.
Even worse, he seemed to terrify the whites; they didn’t so much as offer to share a pot of coffee with him. They watched him carefully and muttered to themselves, and Deathrider had the distinct feeling that they thought he’d kidnapped the boy. He was glad when they straggled their way out of the Lava Lands and back to grass and trees and drinkable water. He didn’t plan to stay with the dour whites with their fever-sweats and suspicious glares. Not when there were so many other whites to glare at him.
There were people crammed three wagon trains deep at Steamboat Springs. It took him and Wilby the best part of a day to comb their way through the crowd, Deathrider sneezing and shivering with fever all the while.
“They’re not here,” Wilby said, squinting up at him.
No. They weren’t here. There was no sign of Matt, no sign of Seb, no sign of Joe Sampson and no sign of Wilby’s mother.
He didn’t want to go to California, Deathrider thought grumpily. He was drenched with cold sweat, and the world was shimmering around him. He didn’t want to do much more than pitch camp and sleep this foul sickness away.
But that wasn’t an option either. Because the dour white people took it upon themselves to talk to all these other white folks, and before night had fallen, Deathrider found himself accused of kidnapping a white boy.
Then he compounded matters by actually kidnapping the white boy and getting the hell out of there before they could string him up from a tree. The whole affair was a bit hazy, as he was running a high fever, but it came back to him in bits and pieces: gunshots, the pounding of hooves and the barking of dogs as a posse charged after them, and the sound of Wilby squawking in his ear as they tore through the moonless night, Dog and Woof racing alongside them. Deathrider could imagine a year or so from now there would be an account of the whole thing in one of those cursed dime novels. It would probably claim he’d ridden into a camp of honest emigrants, like a ghoul risen from the grave, stealing children in the night; he’d probably vanish into the desolation of the Lava Lands, where he kept a lair. Which was rubbish. He actually ended up bouncing around off-trail, delirious, for days before they found any kind of “lair” to hole up in. And even then, it wasn’t his.
* * *
• • •
THEY STUMBLED ACROSS the campsite on their fifth day. Deathrider was struggling to stay in the saddle by that point and had lost track of where they were. He’d kept well away from Fort Hall, knowing that was the first place the posse would look for him, but he’d lost consciousness a few times, and things had become rather hazy. Now he didn’t know quite where he was. He wasn’t sure if the river he was looking at was the Snake or the Humboldt. That was when he realized how sick he was. He should have been able to tell them apart in a heartbeat, but all he saw was a smear of water in his blurred vision.
“We need to stop,” he slurred. Not only did he have no idea if this was the Snake or the Humboldt, he had no idea if these people in the camp were friend or foe. Had the posse come here before them?
It was a sad-looking campsite, with a stained tent pitched next to a rickety farm wagon. There were two nags tethered close by, and the campfire was a desultory-looking affair. Whoever they were, they didn’t look like they were having a good time of it.
“Stop,” he slurred again. He could barely keep his seat.
Wilby somehow yanked at the reins until the horse pulled up. He’d insisted on riding in front of Deathrider again, and sometime in the last couple of days the boy had quit wriggling and had started helping.
Deathrider fumbled for his gun. You could never be too careful.
“Well, my goodness, you look a touch under the weather.”
Deathrider was so fevered he just about fell out of the saddle as he turned to find the owner of the voice. It was an easterner, looking absurdly out of place as he emerged from the brush. He was dressed like a town-dweller, in dusty-hemmed dark trousers and a broad-brimmed black hat. Deathrider squinted, trying to make the man clearer. The easterner held an empty trap in his hand and had a calculating look on his face. Deathrider took an immediate dislike to him.
“Tom’s sick,” Wilby said.
“So I see.” The man’s gaze flicked to the gun. “If you put that away, I can have my woman, Ruth, take a look at you.”
Cautiously, Deathrider let the man lead them to the fire. With Wilby’s not terribly helpful assistance he tethered the horse and sank to the ground. Wilby sat next to him, patting his leg reassuringly. Dog and Woof piled in too, crowding close. Dog didn’t seem to trust the easterner either, judging by the way he followed the man’s every move.
Deathrider wouldn’t normally have stopped if he didn’t like the look of a man, but he’d reached his limit. If he didn’t stop, he was liable to fall headfirst off his horse. And then what would happen to Wilby?
“Ruth,” the man called over to the tent, “I’ve told this traveler you’ll help him. Get out here.” He told his guest, “She’s good with herbs.”
Ruth wasn’t too pleased, Deathrider noted, when she emerged from the tent to help. She was enormously pregnant and suffering in the heat.
“She’s useless now that the baby’s coming,” the man confided, as though the woman wasn’t there. “It’s her first baby, and you’d think she was the only woman who’d ever carried a child before.”
Deathrider disliked the man even more. He kept one hand on his gun.
“I guess I’ll be doing supper again,” the man grumbled, “while she gets you fixed up. We only have beans to share,” he warned as he went to the river to fill the cook pot with water. “I’m not having much luck with the traps now Ruth is abed.”
The woman was Indian, Deathrider saw, but she dressed like a white.
“Who are your people?” he asked, while the man was gone.
“No people,” she said, as she rummaged through a shapeless leather bag. “They’re all dead. Tell me what sickness you have.”
He told her about the dour white people and their influenza, about his fevers and headaches and the feeling that the world was slipping away, like he was sinking under water. He trusted this woman more than he did the man. She had a clear, direct gaze. She was young, but her calm was reassuring.
“Here,” she said, pulling a pouch free. “Bear root.” Abruptly, she squeezed her eyes shut and held her breath.
He might have been sick, but Deathrider didn’t miss the import of her pause. “Your baby is coming,” he said.
She nodded. “It’s early still. That’s why we camped here.” Her expression blackened when she saw the man returning. “Why I made him camp here.”
“You don’t have any meat on you, do you?” the man asked Deathrider, as he set the pot by the fire and went about trying to liven up the flames.
The woman rolled her eyes and stole some of his water to make Deathrider the bear root tea.
“No meat,” Deathrider said shortly. Now that he was sitting down he felt steadier, but his head was pounding like it might burst.
“Yes!” Wilby answered for himself, his eyes lighting up.
The woman smiled and took a small paper packet from her bag. She opened it and gave Wilby two boiled sweets. “They came all the way from California,” she told him.
“We’re going to California!”
“You are?”
“I got lost,” Wilby told the woman matter-of-factly. “Tom found me.” He patted Deathrider again.
“Your mother must be very worried,” the woman clucked. She poured the steeped tea into a tin mug for Deathrider. “I got lost too when I was a child, but I never got found again.”
The tea was familiar to Deathrider, but his people called it osha, not bear root. “This is good,” he told the woman approvingly. It should stop the pounding in his head and ease his chills.
“I told you she was good with herbs,” the man said, as he sprinkled a stingy handful of dried beans into his cook pot. “And she doesn’t charge much. It will only be a dollar. Or we’ll take it in food if you have it . . . provided you don’t offer beans.”
The woman gave the man another black look. He ignored it.
“If you don’t have a dollar or any food, I’ll take it in ammunition.” He eyed Wilby, who was sucking intently on a boiled sweet. “Consider the sweets a gift.”
Deathrider heard the woman mutter something. He didn’t know the language.
“You called him Tom?” the man asked Wilby, gesturing with the wooden spoon at Deathrider. Wilby nodded. The man’s gaze flicked to Deathrider. “You’re an Indian.” It wasn’t a question.
Violent shivers hit Deathrider. He didn’t deign to answer. He could tell all too well what the stranger thought of Indians by the tone of his voice. Ruth covered Deathrider with a blanket and gave him another mug of bear root tea.
“I can’t say that I like to leave a white boy with an Indian,” the man said, as he stirred his pot.
“Will!” Ruth gave him a filthy look.
He ignored her again and focused on Wilby, the only other white person at the fire. So far as he knew. “What’s your name, boy?”
“Williambeeblunt.” It all came out as one word.
“What?”
Wilby spat his sweet into his palm and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Williambeeblunt.” It still all came out as one word.
Which was why they called him Wilby, Deathrider guessed. Because that’s how he said his name: Wilbeeblunt.
The man blinked, startled by the stream of words. He probably couldn’t make heads or tails of it. “What’s your mother’s name?” He tried another tack.
“Mama.”
Deathrider heard Ruth laugh.
“No. Her name.”
“Her name is Georgiana Bee Blunt,” Deathrider sighed. There was no point in pussyfooting around. Maybe this man Will and his woman, Ruth, had seen the wagon train on its way to California. The sooner he got Wilby back to his mother, the better. “Sometimes she goes by the surname Smith,” he added.
Will had turned to stare at Wilby. Deathrider didn’t like the way he was looking at the kid. He was probably wondering if there was a reward. He seemed like the mercenary sort.
Ruth gave a low moan, and Deathrider turned in her direction. She was bent over, her face screwed up in pain.
“It’s just the baby,” Will said dismissively, still more interested in Wilby than in his woman, who was clearly in agony. “The boy’s mother is in California?”
“Do you need help?” Deathrider asked Ruth as he made to rise.
“No!” The woman waved him back down. “You’ll give the baby the sickness. Stay back.”
“If you’re going to have that thing, go do it in the tent,” the easterner snapped at her. “Even if you are a native, it’s not decent to have it out here in public.”
Even Wilby gave him a look at that one.
“Aren’t you going to help her?” Deathrider asked sourly as Ruth disappeared into the tent.
“God, no. What do I look like: a savage? Birth is no business for a man.”
As the night went on, Deathrider liked the man less and less. He carried on like Ruth wasn’t screaming on the other side of the canvas. He ladled out watery beans and ignored her completely. He gave Wilby a bowl first, making a comment about him being a growing boy, but it was clear that what he really meant was that Wilby was a white growing boy. Deathrider ranked somewhere closer to the dogs.
Deathrider wanted to get out of there, even though he was still shaking with fever, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave until he knew Ruth was safe. Vaguely, he listened to the easterner ask Wilby why he’d been heading to California with his mother, but he couldn’t concentrate over Ruth’s cries. Eventually, he had to say something.
“She might need water,” he interrupted the easterner, who, unsurprisingly, was trying to find out if there was a reward posted for Wilby’s return.
“Be my guest,” the easterner said, not rising from where he was mopping up bean-flavored gruel with a hunk of rock-hard bread.
“I can’t. I’ll make the baby sick.”
The easterner flicked his hand like he was waving away a fly.
It was a long night. Wilby curled up with the dogs in front of the fire and went to sleep. Will sat back and watched Deathrider carefully. Deathrider was in no mind to go to sleep; he didn’t trust the man one bit. Dog clearly didn’t trust him either, sleeping so lightly that whenever Will moved, his eyes snapped open. Deathrider dozed uneasily, his fever dreams tangling with the reality of the camp. Deep in the night, long past moonset, he heard the wailing of a baby. He saw the easterner disappear into the tent and heard low voices, which carried clearly through the still night.
“It’s alive, then.”
“You have a son.”
“Another one. They’re coming out of the woodwork.” The easterner sounded amused.
“What shall we name him?” Ruth’s voice was cold with dislike. Deathrider wondered how the two of them had become entangled. They barely seemed to tolerate each other.
“I don’t care. Just pick something white. It’s bad enough having a half-breed for a son without him having a savage’s name.” The canvas parted, and the easterner emerged. “And get packing,” he said over his shoulder. “We’re heading off to California tomorrow.”
“I thought we were running away from California.”
“Things have changed.”
Deathrider watched through slitted eyes as the easterner paused to gaze down at Wilby, who was sleeping with both arms wrapped around Woof. Deathrider didn’t like the calculating look on the easterner’s face or the smug little smirk that lingered as he went back to his bedroll.
He had a bad feeling about this.
36
MOKELUMNE HILL WAS nothing like Georgiana had expected. Although, to be honest, she wasn’t sure what she’d expected. Nothing this big, or this busy, that was for sure. After months on the empty trail it was overwhelming. They’d seen nothing bigger than a trading post since Independence, and the bustle and noise and sheer number of people they saw as they rode into town was startling. New buildings were being thrown up on every dusty street, the smell of sawdust was heavy in the air and the sound of hammers beat out a constant drumbeat. They heard a dozen different languages before they’d even reached the main street: there were Chinese men and Frenchmen, men from Germany and Spain and Mexico, men from all corners of the globe, come to find gold. The place was a veritable Babel of men.
But no women. At least none that Georgiana could see.
As they rattled toward the center of town, the men of Mokelumne Hill stopped to watch them pass, their gazes lingering on Georgiana. She squirmed under their close examinations. There seemed to be an unending line of them, staring like they were dying of thirst and she was a pail of wa
ter. She knew when their gazes lit upon the whores at the back of the train, because a wave of cheers went up. The catcalls followed them through the town. Matt and Georgiana exchanged a wry look. This reaction was exactly what Seline had hoped for, and exactly why she’d had the girls wear their “best” and display themselves, standing tall, holding on to the wagon frames for balance, ready to wave and blow kisses and generally advertise for business. This was also why Matt had told them to ride several lengths behind the rest of the train.
Seline had seceded from Joe’s wagon train, which had plunged northeast toward American River. She planned to pitch camp in Moke Hill and do a little business before moving on. “Unless things are too good to leave,” she’d said with a shrug. “I’m not fussy. I don’t care where the girls work, so long as long as there’s lots of work for them to do.”
The flat, businesslike tone of her voice had made Georgiana shudder. She didn’t know how Seline and her girls did it. The thought of these men touching her made her skin crawl.
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Seline had told her, clearly reading her mind. “We all do what we must.”
Yes. We do, Georgiana thought, steeling herself for the ordeal ahead. She kept a sharp eye on the streets, looking for a glimpse of her son. Not that she expected him to be walking around unfettered. But she couldn’t help looking . . .
No matter how many times she and Matt and Wendell had discussed their plan, she remained uneasy. As they’d crossed the vast Sierra Nevadas, hauling the wagons up inclines so steep they were almost vertical, the ropes burning their hands, she’d grown increasingly anxious. A ball of dread grew in her belly. What if Leo was dead? The horrid, slimy black thought wriggled through her mind like an eel. What if she was too late? What if she’d failed him, just as she’d failed Wilby . . . ?
“I don’t like this place,” Susannah whispered as they passed the clumps of staring men. She held tight to Georgiana’s arm.
“Me neither,” Georgiana whispered back.