The Ladies of Sutter's Fort

by Jane Toombs

  She held the knife so that it barely touched the side of Varner’s flannel shirt. She closed her eyes, gathering courage to plunge the blade into him. No, she couldn’t. Yet she had to. Varner was mad. There was no telling what he might do. She tensed and thrust the knife forward. The blade met nothing but air.

  She opened her eyes to see Varner standing beside the bed watching her. “Give that to me,” he demanded, holding out his hand.

  Selena, crouching on the far side of the bed, shook her head. As Varner reached for the knife, she slashed wildly at his hand. He stepped back, watching her warily. She saw his eyes go from the knife to the floor and back to the knife. He smiled as he stooped beside the bed. Standing again, he swung the pan he had used to bathe her feet, hurling the water into Selena’s face.

  She gasped, blinking and spluttering as he clambered across the bed to grasp her wrist. He twisted her hand and the knife dropped onto the blanket between them. He released her, seized the knife and stood up. His eyes seemed unfocused as they stared at the foot-long blade.

  Mumbling to himself, Varner snatched the roll of twine from the table and began cutting it into equal lengths. When he was done, he threw the knife to the floor, where it quivered point down in a pine board. He approached the bed with the lengths of twine in one hand.

  Selena huddled against the wall at the head of the bed. When Varner reached for her, she screamed. He took her hands in his, trying to draw them together. She fought him, striking out at him with all her strength. Though he was short, her own height at the most, Varner’s shoulders were broad and his arms heavily muscled. When he pressed his body on hers, she knew she was no match for him, yet she struggled on, stopping only when she lay exhausted beneath him.

  He lashed her hands to the head of the bed, one on each side, and though she pulled and twisted she could not loosen the bonds. Kneeling beside her, he grasped one of her ankles while she kicked futilely at him. He tied her ankle to the foot of the bed, circled the other with cord and tied it to the other side so she lay spread-eagled on her back.

  Varner then drew the tattered robe and gown apart so that she lay naked to the waist. She saw his mouth working as he looked down at her, saw his chest rising and falling in what were almost sobs. He stepped back to take the hilt of the knife in his hand, easing it back and forth until the point came free. He came toward her.

  Selena screamed.

  “When I have finished with you,” he said in a low voice, “you’ll no longer be able to tempt men. I’ll be free of your wiles. Men will gaze upon you only to turn away in revulsion.”

  She stared in horror at the knife blade glinting in the light from the lantern. Varner reached down. She closed her eyes, twisting from side to side. She felt a slicing pain above her right breast. When she opened her eyes she saw he had traced a circle in the skin around her breast, leaving a thin red line on her flesh.

  “No, no, no,” she moaned.

  Smiling, he stooped to pick up the wet cloth from the floor. He pushed the cloth into her mouth and tied the ends behind her head.

  The lantern on the table began to sputter. Varner went to the rear of the cabin and rummaged on his shelves for an oil can. When he had the wick burning high, he again went to the shelves, this time to get a handful of candles. He used the lantern to light one, then placed it in hot wax on the floor beside the head of the bed. He lit the other candles until seven flames burned in a semicircle around the bed, three on each side and one at the foot.

  He knelt beside the bed, his lips moving silently. Selena realized he was praying.

  She twisted her head from side to side, trying to speak, trying to plead with him, to invoke God’s name. She choked on the water dripping into her throat from the cloth in her mouth, gagging as she struggled to breathe.

  Varner rose to his feet. With the knife in one hand, he grasped her breast with the other. She gagged again, screamed, and fainted.

  A clatter came from outside. Varner stiffened. The sound was not repeated. He released Selena, went to the window at the front of the cabin and held the curtain aside. All he saw was the black of the night.

  He walked around the bed, pinched out the candle flames, then turned the lantern low and set it on the floor. Taking his Hawken rifle, he slipped from the door to crouch in the shadows in front of the cabin, waiting for his eyes to grow accustomed to the dark. By the light of a quarter moon low in the west he saw the outlines of the hills and the pines. There was no hint of movement in the deeper darkness around the knoll.

  Had he really heard the rattle of pebbles in one of the tin cans? He was no longer sure. Was the sound, if there had been one, an animal prowling in the night? How could he be sure? Going back inside the cabin he went to the window and rested the rifle on the sill. He sighted blindly at the trail leading to the cabin and fired.

  There was no response. Drawing the rifle back, he placed the butt on the floor and reloaded. He was slow at it, being unaccustomed to the gun, and could load and fire less than once a minute. He shot into the night again and once more placed the butt on the floor to reload.

  He listened. There was no answering shot. He must have been mistaken. There had been no clatter. Perhaps he had heard the cry of an animal. Should he, though, reconnoiter to be sure? Dare he leave the cabin? His only safety, he felt, was here. Varner looked toward the outline of Selena’s body on the bed. She was quiet, unmoving. He put Varner stiffened. The sound was not repeated. He released Selena, went to the window at the front of the cabin and held the curtain aside. All he saw was the black of the night.

  He walked around the bed, pinched out the candle flames, then turned the lantern low and set it on the floor. Taking his Hawken rifle, he slipped from the door to crouch in the shadows in front of the cabin, waiting for his eyes to grow accustomed to the dark. By the light of a quarter moon low in the west he saw the outlines of the hills and the pines. There was no hint of movement in the deeper darkness around the knoll.

  Had he really heard the rattle of pebbles in one of the tin cans? He was no longer sure. Was the sound, if there had been one, an animal prowling in the night? How could he be sure? Going back inside the cabin he went to the window and rested the rifle on the sill. He sighted blindly at the trail leading to the cabin and fired.

  There was no response. Drawing the rifle back, he placed the butt on the floor and reloaded. He was slow at it, being unaccustomed to the gun, and could load and fire less than once a minute. He shot into the night again and once more placed the butt on the floor to reload.

  He listened. There was no answering shot. He must have been mistaken. There had been no clatter. Perhaps he had heard the cry of an animal. Should he, though, reconnoiter to be

  He shook his head to clear it. What was that? Had he heard a noise in front of the cabin? Just beyond the door? Like a whisper in the night, a whisper as soft as the breeze. Yes, it must have been the wind. Or a man? A man who stalked him, waiting to punish him for his transgressions?

  Varner put his head beside the partly open door. He heard nothing. He eased the door shut and slid home the bar. Again he looked toward the bed. I should have guessed, he thought. She had summoned the devil. She had prayed to the evil one and brought him here.

  He had heard her mumbling while he prepared to punish her for her sins. Now he knew what she had been saying. At times he had opened his Bible to Matthew and shuddered at the sound of the words on his own lips. Now he repeated them:

  “Amen,” he chanted, “Ever for glory the and power and kingdom the is thine for. Evil from us deliver but temptation into not us lead.”

  The Lord’s Prayer said backwards—an incantation to call forth the powers of evil. Selena had summoned the devil and the devil’s minions. And he had heard them abroad in the night, circling the cabin, their wings beating the air above him. Yet he was safe here. He would fear no evil as long as he walked the path of righteousness.

  He could destroy them by killing the harlot. With her death they would
return to those nether regions from which she had called them. He felt for his knife. Not in his boot. Where was it? Had she somehow spirited the knife away? Or had he left it on the bed?

  A thud shook the cabin. Varner looked around him in confusion. The thud came again, the bar across the door cracking as the door shuddered inward. Yet the bar held.

  Varner raised his rifle, firing point-blank at the door as the pine boards were smashed inward. A log thrust through the opening into the cabin. The curtain was ripped from the front window. Men rushed into the room through both door and window. Varner retreated, stumbling backward as he tried to reload, only to have the gun twisted from his hands.

  He picked up the lantern from the floor and swung it in an arc, releasing it, hurling it at them. The lantern crashed against the wall, the oil making a trail of fire to the floor. Varner backed toward the window at the rear of the cabin while men beat at the flames. He turned to see a face appear at the window behind him. He was trapped.

  He ran to the table, unseen in the swirl of smoke. Taking the can of oil, he unscrewed the top and flung the oil onto the flames. Fire burst up around him. Men shouted. He saw Selena being carried from the cabin wrapped in a blanket. He saw men retreating before the flames. Varner stared at the wall of fire in front of him, then began backing away from the heat until he came to the log wall at the rear of the cabin. Fire hemmed him in; there was no escape.

  His mind spun. The whirlpool sucked him into its vortex. His soul was twisting and turning. He no longer struggled. He let himself be pulled into the depths. And beyond. And then he saw his fate. The everlasting flames of Hell.

  He had expected no better. He had hoped and prayed for something else, yet he had expected no more than this. He knew the evil that dwelt in his heart. Broad is the way that leadeth to destruction. The wicked shall be turned into Hell, into the fiery furnace, into the bottomless pit. Man’s fate is to burn through all eternity.

  He accepted his fate, facing the flames calmly. But then the fire enveloped his body, and he screamed.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “What in the name of hell do you mean?” King Sutton leaned across Rhynne’s desk. “You could call off the lottery any goddamned time you wanted to.”

  Rhynne tapped the ashes from his cigarillo. They were in his office in the just-completed addition to the Empire. “Of course I could, colonel, if I wanted to return ten thousand dollars to miners scattered between here and Mariposa. What I meant to say was that I don’t intend to cancel the lottery. It’s scheduled for tomorrow and will be held tomorrow.”

  “You’re making Miss Selena appear to be a ... a ...” He groped for the right word. “I think ‘pretty waitress girl’ is the phrase they use in San Francisco.”

  “I’ll say it plain out, Rhynne. You’re making her seem a common whore.”

  “Selena’s name has never been mentioned in connection with the lottery. Not by me.”

  “Then you’re the only one who hasn’t mentioned it. What do you think the man who wins the drawing tomorrow will expect? To go to bed with you?”

  “Hardly. Yet what’s expected and what actually occurs are often different things. If you understand my meaning.” He put his cigarillo on a tray and stood up. “Come with me, colonel, and I’ll show you one good reason I’m not about to call off the lottery.”

  The two men crossed the gambling saloon to the hotel. At the top of the stairs Rhynne unlocked and opened the first door on the right and stood aside.

  “Look in here,” he told Sutton.

  “My God, I’ve never seen its like.”

  A majestic bed filled most of the room. Each corner of its purple velvet canopy was decorated with a high plume of rose-colored feathers. When Rhynne pulled a tasseled cord, velvet curtains parted to reveal a coverlet of white and gold, the colors matching the ornate white headboard topped by a golden crown.

  “I’ll concede this is a bed fit for a queen,” Sutton said.

  “Or a king. It’s a Louis XIV. Not that he ever slept in it. I’m told these beds were more for show than for use. A man was known by the bed in his parlor in those days. Not much different from the way some Hangtown miners have their teeth pulled so they can replace them with gold ones.” “Sir,” Sutton said, “this bed must have cost you a fortune.”

  “One thousand dollars. Tom Horobin found it in a San Francisco bordello, as a matter of fact. He was told they’d had it shipped in from Mexico.”

  “Thousand dollars or not, Miss Selena isn’t about to bed down here with some sweating miner.”

  “Of course she isn’t. Didn’t she tell you?” Rhynne lowered his voice. “I fully expect the winner of the lottery to decline the prize.”

  “She mentioned something of the sort. Surprisingly enough, she seems quite unconcerned about the lottery. She must have a great deal of faith in you, Rhynne. Why she does I’ll never fathom.”

  “Because I’m an honorable man after my own fashion.”

  “Be that as it may, I can’t imagine any man in the gold country who wouldn’t give half his claim for her, much less turn her away after winning her. I wouldn’t.”

  “You have a ticket?”

  “Number forty-three.”

  “I realize most men would, like yourself, welcome the chance to know Selena better. Yet I can imagine a man who wouldn’t. Or, even if he did, couldn’t. But the less said, the better. Don’t you agree?”

  “Rhynne, you are one smooth son of a bitch.”

  “Which, I take it, is considered a compliment in the state of Georgia.”

  “Sometimes I wish I were back in Athens,” Sutton said as they left the room. They went down the stairs to the porch. “Here I am with two slaves to work my claim and what do I have to show for it? I promised Jed and Joshua their freedom when we made our fortune in gold but we’ve mined barely enough to cover expenses. And then there’s this O’Lee lad who’s hardly weaned yet from his mother’s milk who seems to have found Eldorado itself.”

  “Beginner’s luck.”

  “I wish to God I had some.”

  “You have had. Jed’s recovered, hasn’t he?”

  “That man’s as strong as an ox. And Joshua’s a good nurse. They’re half-brothers, you know. Jed was working the Long Tom the week after Braithewaite took that bandit’s bullet out of his chest.”

  “I hear Joaquin Murieta’s been busy in the south. They say he robbed a gold shipment and killed the driver.”

  “I wish we’d get law and order in this benighted Territory, He’ll not be caught until we do. When he is caught they should sever his head and charge admission to see it.”

  “A charming idea, colonel.”

  “Anyone who’d deliver Miss Selena over to that madman Varner deserves no less. She seems to have finally recovered, though.”

  “The young have short memories. Did she actually kiss that Lieutenant Sherman like they say?”

  “On the cheek, Rhynne, on the cheek. I think the lieutenant was quite taken with her. He told her he’s thinking of resigning his commission.”

  “Because of Selena?”

  “No, no. He can’t make ends meet on his army pay. The prices in the gold country are outrageous. I don’t see how anyone can prosper.” “Mr. O’Lee appears able to.”

  “Damn O’Lee and his cherub’s face. All the women want to mother him. They seem to think he’s incapable of taking care of himself and here he is doing better than the rest of us put together.”

  Rhynne smiled, recalling Selena’s overly casual questions about Danny O’Lee. Sutton had cause to be jealous.

  “She’s a beautiful woman,” Rhynne said. “And very young and very much in love. With the idea of being in love, that is. No one man can hope to hold her for long. No man should try.”

  “You’re right, of course. Absolutely, completely correct.” King Sutton looked at a group of miners passing on the road. “She’s a contagion worse than our lust for gold. She’s like a fever. You think the fever will break
and you wait and wait, yet it never does. And there’s no known cure. You burn until you’re consumed.”

  “Have you considered marrying the girl?”

  Sutton gave Rhynne a strange look, seemed about to speak but instead shook his head, turned abruptly and walked away.

  Rhynne stood staring after him. That man’s luck has turned for the worse, he told himself, yet King Sutton was refusing to recognize the fact. He was like an ill-made candle that yields a magnificent light only to gutter after a few short hours.

  Rhynne shrugged. He left the porch to stroll along the road, nodding right and left to the miners going by.

  “Tomorrow’s the big day?” one asked him.

  “Three o’clock sharp.”

  “I’ll be there. We’ll all be there.”

  Rhynne stopped in front of a cabin where a blue sign with red lettering had been nailed to the door: “Dr. Samuel Braithewaite, Surgery and Physic in all branches. Sets bones. Draws teeth painlessly. Bleeds. Advice gratis.”

  Rhynne knocked, opening the door when he heard Braithewaite’s, “Come in.”

  “I need your help,” Rhynne told him.

  The doctor tilted his chair back. “As the sign says, my advice is gratis.” Behind the doctor Rhynne saw a shelf displaying a microscope, stethoscope, a glittering array of other instruments, a mortar and pestle, and a great jar of leeches.

  “It’s not so much advice I need,” Rhynne said. “It’s more to do with the lottery at the Empire. The drawing’s tomorrow afternoon at three.”

  “I’ve kept informed of your venture even though I didn’t buy a ticket myself.”

  “Precisely why I’m here. I need an unimpeachable citizen of Hangtown, one who didn’t enter the lottery, to draw the winning ticket.”

  “There’s always Reverend Colton.”

  “I doubt if he’s available.”

  “I’d have to take time from my practice,” Braithewaite said.