by Jane Toombs
Putting one of the flowers in the buttonhole of her brown taffeta dress, Pamela went to stand in the doorway of the cabin. The night was warm, the stars bright and close overhead, the moon a thin sliver above the hill to the west. The bittersweet scents of spring were all around her, in the pines, the burgeoning earth, the lilac fragrance she herself wore.
She crossed her arms under her breasts, drawing in a breath and letting it out with a tremulous sigh. A yearning filled her, vague and undirected, yet strong and persistent. She remembered running through fields of flowers when she was a girl with the wind in her hair while in the sky above a great red kite dipped and soared.
And she remembered Danny’s smile—so like Barry Fitzpatrick’s. Would she ever see Barry again? Pamela shook her head and went back across the cabin to remove her bag from its peg on the wall. Pausing to take some of her medicine, she walked slowly up the path toward the hotel. I should check our supplies, she told herself. Tom Horobin was due in a few days and he’d expect her to have their order ready. She heard the night sounds of the distant woods but as she walked they were replaced by the hubbub coming from the Empire.
She hesitated at the foot of the porch steps, finally deciding to call on Selena to see if she wanted to add anything to their order. She crossed the darkened hallway of the hotel and eased open the door to the gambling saloon until she was able to see through the crack without being seen herself.
Selena sat on a high stool on the stage Rhynne had built for her, her feet on a rung, her hands clasping her scarlet skirts to her knees, her face aglow as she sang. The men joined in on the chorus, clapping, calling out for more. Pamela studied the faces in the crowd, looking at each in turn, then shook her head and frowned.
When the song ended, Selena stepped down from the stage, pushing aside the hands of the men. She stopped beside a gaming table, standing with hands on hips, talking to a man Pamela couldn’t see.
“And what was your name before that?” Pamela heard her daughter ask. And then Selena was back on the stage, whispering to Ned. As she started singing she pointed to the man at the table and he stood up, trying to retreat but hemmed in by the crowd. Pamela saw it was Danny O’Lee.
Selena sang:
“Oh what was your name in the States?
Was it Thompson or Johnson or Bates?
Did you murder your wife,
And fly for your life?
Say, what was your name in the States?
Danny O’Lee broke from the crowd, the laughs and hoots of the men following him from the room. Pamela eased the door closed and walked out onto the porch. There was no one about.
Going down the steps, she looked along the street. No one. She walked past the store and, off to her right, saw a figure outlined in the darkness.
“Danny?” she called softly.
“Miss Pamela?” His voice echoed his surprise. “Ah, you see the luck of the Irish isn’t as good as you thought,” he said.
“Take my hand, Danny,” she told him. His palm was warm in hers and she led him back to the Empire, across the porch, through the hallway and up the stairs.
“Which room is yours?” she asked.
“The last.”
She led him there, standing aside while he unlocked the door. Once inside, she slid home the bolt. “Wait,” she said, her fingertips touching his chest. She went to the bed, and, as quickly as she could, removed her clothes. Naked, she slid between the rough blankets.
“Come here to me, Danny O’Lee,” she said. When he was beside the bed she reached out for his hand. “Take off your clothes, Danny,” she said.
“Miss Pamela,” he began, “never in my life . . .”
“Hush,” she said. “Not a word.”
Then he was in the bed beside her. She felt him trembling so she took his head in her arms, nestling him against her, letting him lie next to her for a long time until his trembling quieted. When she felt him stir, seeking her, she guided his head down to her breasts, trembling herself when his lips closed on her nipple. Her hand slid down his body and found his sex. Afterwards, she lay holding him in her arms. She was fulfilled, fearful and happy, ashamed yet defiant. Joyful.
“Danny O’Lee,” she said, “when I was a young woman in England I once saw a great star trailing a train of fire. For days on end it was there in the sky and then Halley’s Comet was gone. It won’t return in my lifetime, perhaps not in yours. Some things come only once, Danny. Do you understand?”
She felt his head nod against her bare breast.
Outside in the hall, W.W. Rhynne turned and went quietly to his room. His face was as expressionless as ever, but his eyes glinted like the eyes of a man who has just filled an inside straight.
Chapter Eleven
“Can I help you, Mr. Rhynne?” Putting down his hammer, John Griswold looked up from the bed of a wagon.
“I need some lumber. About forty board feet should do it.”
“Think I’ve got what you need,” Griswold said, climbing down from the wagon. “Have to be pine, if that’s all right with you.”
Rhynne shrugged.
Griswold pulled the corner of a tarpaulin from a pile of lumber stacked next to the shed he used as his carpentry shop. He stacked four boards at Rhynne’s feet.
“Could you deliver them to Abe at the Empire?” Rhynne asked.
“Guess I could. It’s a dollar-twenty a foot.”
Rhynne raised his eyebrows. “Heard you charged Callahan a dollar.”
“That was two weeks ago. Prices go up every day. But seeing how it’s you, Mr. Rhynne, I’ll make it a dollar.”
“Abe will pay you.”
“Planning on building some shelving for the hotel?” Griswold asked.
“No, thought I’d put together a bookcase.”
Griswold nodded. “Need nails?”
“I have plenty left from when the Empire was built. Reminds me, though, I do have need for some hinges. Four of them.”
“Can’t help you there. You’ll have to use canvas strips. There’s nary a hinge to be had in Hangtown.”
“On second thought,” Rhynne said, “maybe I won’t need the hinges after all. Tell Abe I said to serve you one on the house when you deliver the lumber.”
“That I will.”
John Griswold watched Rhynne leave the yard whistling What Was Your Name in the States? I should have asked for a dollar to start off with, Griswold thought. He was charging one-twenty now, that was true enough. Rhynne, though, was a man to stay on the right side of. Lumber to build himself a bookcase. A bookcase with hinges? Now that was a queer notion. What would a man want with a hinged bookcase?
When Rhynne got back to the Empire, he found Tom Horobin waiting for him on the porch. Inside the hotel he heard Selena practicing on the piano.
“You asked me to stop by before I left for Sutter’s,” Horobin said after shifting his cud of tobacco to his right cheek.
“That I did. Care for a drink, Tom?”
Horobin shook his head. “Four years back I broke a leg hauling supplies down into a defile while I was tight as a drumhead. I’ll do my drinking after I get to Sutter’s tomorrow.”
“I’ve a special order for you, Tom. That’s the reason I asked you to stop by. Don’t know where you’ll be able to get it filled, though.”
“San Francisco?”
“Perhaps. Then again, you may have to send to Monterey. Or inquire at the ranches down that way.”
Horobin spat tobacco juice over the porch rail. “You’re rousing my curiosity, W.W.,” he said. “What is this special order?”
“A bed.”
“A bed, is it? Well, now, a bed shouldn’t be too hard to come by. Have you thought of having Griswold build you one?”
“I need a special bed. A one-of-a-kind bed.”
“All Griswold’s beds are one-of-a-kind. Everything Griswold makes is. I don’t think he ever followed a pattern in his life.”
“Anybody with a few dollars can have Griswold make him
a bed if he’s got the time to wait.”
“John never was one for hurrying. What sort of bed did you have in mind, W.W.?” Horobin raised himself up to sit on the porch rail.
“I want the grandest bed ever seen in Hang-town, the biggest and most elaborate bed you can find in all the West. I want a bed with high posts and a canopy, a bed with a carved headboard and a carved footboard, a bed fit for a king, yet with room enough for the king and the queen and three or four others besides. I don’t want a bed you can flop into. I want one that you have to climb up onto a step-stool to get at. I want a bed so magnificent that after this California gold rush is forgotten, W.W. Rhynne and his bed will be remembered.”
“W.W.,” Horobin said admiringly, “now that is what I’d call a real bed.”
“It’s what I mean to have.”
“A bed like that would cost as much as a man earns in three or four months.”
“I know, Tom. Just find the bed for me. I trust you to drive a hard bargain. I’ll pay you what the bed costs and ten percent for your trouble. Plus your regular cartage fee to haul it here to the Empire.”
Tom Horobin hunched himself from the rail. “Anything else, W.W.? I’ve already got Miss Pamela’s order for the store and Abe’s for the saloon. Anything else special for you?”
“Only the bed. The next time you come up Hangtown way, I’ll expect you to bring it.”
“I’ll have your bed, never fear. You’ll notice I’m not asking what you want the bed for. I know you’ll tell me when the times comes. Is this something between the two of us and the gatepost?”
“No, it’s not. On the contrary, you might mention the bed around town, what kind I want and all. In fact, I’d appreciate it if you would.”
“I take your meaning. The word will be all over Hangtown by nightfall.” Horobin turned. Staring along the street, he said, “Now if that doesn’t beat all.”
There were four persons in the procession coming toward the Empire, three men and a woman. A man on horseback led the way, a man of perhaps forty, dressed elegantly in black with flowing black hair tinged with grey. The horse sidestepped as the rider reined him toward the hotel.
“Mighty fine looking animal,” Horobin said to Rhynne.
Rhynne nodded, looking past the rider to the two men who followed him. Both sat stolidly astride mules, an older man and a younger, the older with a grey moustache and a short grey beard, the younger clean-shaven, muscular, and huge. Rhynne stared at his hand—he’d never seen such hands. They were twice the size of an ordinary man’s. Both of the men were black.
Behind them were two heavily laden pack mules and behind the pack mules was the woman. As they came closer, Rhynne realized she was very young, certainly less than eighteen, dark-skinned, Spanish most likely, with a black shawl hiding her hair and covering her upper body. She too rode astride a mule, her long brown skirts torn and soiled.
The horseman looked about him with frank curiosity, taking in the rough log structures, the men in the streets and those lolling in doorways. The two blacks stared straight ahead, yet Rhynne sensed they missed nothing.
The girl, though, stared down at her hands clenched on the reins, almost as though she was in a stupor. Rhynne was about to look away when he noticed she was a pretty girl with high cheekbones and delicate dark features. If she smiled, he thought, she would be beautiful.
The horseman stopped at the foot of the steps. “I’m Kingman Sutton of Georgia,” he drawled, “by way of Cape Horn and San Francisco. Could either of you gentlemen tell me where we might set up camp? I’d prefer a location convenient to the diggings.”
“You could go on another half mile,” Rhynne told him, “then take the right fork and climb to the pines at the crest of the hill. Good a spot as any.”
“I’d be careful if I was you, mister,” Horobin warned. “Some folks hereabouts don’t take kindly to bringing slaves into the diggings.”
“Some folks should pay heed to their own affairs and not meddle in matters that don’t concern them.”
“No harm intended. I was only passing along some friendly advice.”
“I heard the same kind of talk in San Francisco. They’re hypocrites, the lot of them. Ready to shoot an Indian for sport, they are. What do they say? The only good Indian is a dead Indian. And then they turn around and threaten the protectors of a race less fortunate than our own. I don’t give a damn what hypocrites think.”
Rhynne glanced at the two blacks behind Sutton, noting they bore a family resemblance to one another. They stared back at him, expressionless.
“And what can you tell us of the state of affairs in San Francisco, sir?” he asked quietly.
“They’re damnable. The city’s fair on its way to becoming the hell-hole of the Pacific. No decent lodgings to be found, rats and fleas everywhere. So many rats, in fact, they’re selling cats for ten dollars each to hunt them. All the prices are outrageous. I paid a dollar for an egg and a five-cent loaf of bread sells for seventy-five. The food, what there is of it, is abominable. They’re beaching the abandoned ships and using them for sleeping quarters. Men live in shacks and tents, they sleep in the open or on bales of hides waiting shipment east.”
“They call that section of the town ‘Hide Park,’ I believe,” Rhynne said.
“It’s a town no longer. These days San Francisco styles itself a city. Not a city of houses that would smack of sense, though. No. They’re building bordellos and gambling saloons instead. Not that they don’t have their place, sir,” he said with a nod to Rhynne. “Yet a man doesn’t want to spend the whole of his life drinking, gambling and whoring.”
“I can’t quarrel with that,” Rhynne said. “If only we could become children again we could avoid the problem. That’s impossible, I know. ‘Nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower.”
“I doubt if we’ll ever see grass or flowers growing in San Francisco again,” Sutton said. “Not only do more ships arrive daily to be abandoned by their crews, now one hears reports of a great overland migration this year. Wagon trains from all parts of the East are gathering in Missouri waiting for the grass on the plains to sprout high enough to feed their livestock on the way across.”
“Gold fever can be an extremely contagious disease, Mr. Sutton.”
“And deadly as well. If it weren’t for certain unfortunate circumstances ...” He stopped, looking past Rhynne and Horobin. Rhynne glanced over his shoulder to see Selena standing in the doorway dressed in her green gown. Her loosened hair fell over her shoulders in a golden cascade; her blue eyes sparkled.
Sutton dismounted and sprang up the steps, hat in hand. At the top he paused to sweep his hat across his body and bowed with a flourish. “Colonel Kingman Sutton at your service, ma’am,” he said to Selena.
Rhynne looked closely at Selena as she smiled up at Sutton. Somehow she seemed different this morning. She had never looked lovelier, yet the change he had noted wasn’t only in her appearance. Her whole manner was subtly enlivened. She looked radiant. Could it be because of Sutton? he wondered.
“You have the advantage,” Sutton was saying to her. “I don’t believe I know your name.”
“Selena. Selena Buttle-Jones.”
“I’ve traveled fifteen thousand miles from the state of Georgia. Until this moment I’d wondered whether the journey had been in vain.”
A month ago, Rhynne knew, Selena would have blushed and been afraid to breach propriety by speaking to a strange man. Not now. Though she inclined her head, her eyes continued to look up into Sutton’s.
“You should always wear green,” Sutton told her. “The colors of springtime suit you.”
The two of them acted as though they were alone, Rhynne thought, as though no one else were near. As though no one else mattered. His eyes narrowed. Would Sutton threaten the plan he had in mind?
“Mister—perhaps I should say Colonel—Sutton has brought an imposing crew with him to help search for gold,” Rhynne s
aid to Selena.
She blinked, looking at Rhynne as though she hadn’t heard him. “A crew?” she asked.
“There,” Rhynne said impatiently, nodding to the street. For the first time Selena looked at the two blacks and the Spanish girl. She drew in her breath and walked past Sutton to the porch rail to stare at the girl on the mule. The girl raised her black shawl to cover the lower part of her face.
Holding her skirts in one hand, Selena ran down the steps and past the pack mules. She stood in the road and kept staring up at the girl. Sutton followed her from the porch, stopping a few feet behind her.
“I know you,” Selena said to the girl.
The girl turned her head away.
“You’re Esperanza. Esperanza de la Torre.”
The girl said nothing.
“Last year,” Selena went on, “your brother Diego brought me to your rancho. We talked. You told me you wanted twelve children, three boys and nine girls.”
When the girl remained mute, Selena swung around to Sutton. “How does she come to be here with you?” she demanded.
Sutton shrugged. “I found her wandering about Sacramento like a stray cat. I fed her and she followed me. She never speaks so I don’t know how she came to be there. Followed some miner to the diggings only to have him die or else desert her. At least that’s what I suspect.”
“Is she ... ?” Selena eyed him quizzically.
“Not what you might think. She cooks for us. Nothing more. Why, she’s only a child.” “If she is Esperanza, she’s sixteen.”
“That old? I would have said fourteen at the most.”