The Ladies of Sutter's Fort

by Jane Toombs

  “Yes, I thought of that, doctor. Would an honorarium be in order? I had in mind two bottles of my best forty-rod. For medicinal purposes. A donation to the advancement of the well-being of Hangtown.”

  “I think I can arrange my schedule so I’ll be on hand to draw the winning number,” Braithewaite said.

  Rhynne held out his hand.

  * * *

  King Sutton waited until the Empire closed sometime after midnight before he made his way to the shed behind the hotel. When the last light winked out upstairs he crept across the yard to one of the windows at the rear of the gambling saloon.

  He pushed up on the window. The sash, which he’d unlocked earlier in the evening when he stopped in the saloon for a drink, slid up easily. Sutton hoisted himself over the sill and into the room.

  After closing the window behind him, he went to the shadowed recess behind the stairs leading to the platform, He sat on the floor, prepared for a long wait. The clock in the hotel lobby chimed twice. Otherwise, there was no sound in the building. Could he have misjudged Rhynne?

  He heard footsteps near the bar, saw the outline of a man carrying what appeared to be a box. Sutton smiled. No, he hadn’t misjudged his man. Wordsworth Rhynne, with his Louis XIV bed and his lottery, was undoubtedly a clever man.

  King Sutton enjoyed outwitting clever men.

  Selena and Pamela stood in an upstairs window of the Empire watching the crowd on the road outside. Rhynne had set up long plank tables and was serving venison, salmon, beef, beans, oyster soup, coffee, and, as long as they lasted, brandied peaches. He had closed the saloon until after the lottery.

  “You look tired,” Pamela said. “Are you sleeping any better?”

  Selena sighed. “Oh, mother, I’m so tired it seems I’ll never summon up the energy to laugh again. If only there was some magic potion to make me sleep without dreaming, I’d take it.”

  “No!” Pamela’s voice was sharp. “Best not to rely on pills and potions. You’re young, this will pass.”

  Selena glanced at her, then turned her head away. “The dreams are different now. Not those nightmares I had just after Lieutenant Sherman and the others rescued me, when I’d wake up still smelling the awful burning stench . . .” Selena broke off and covered her eyes with her hand.

  “You don’t have to talk about it,” Pamela said. “I understand.”

  “You used to tell me I always slept like a baby, no matter what. I never will again.” Selena touched her left breast delicately. “Even though his knife barely cut through the skin and the scar is almost invisible, I feel it inside like it’s cutting into my heart.”

  “Oh, Selena, my poor little girl.”

  “And last night I dreamed about a comet like the one you saw when you were young. The comet came to earth, plunging into the forest. I ran toward it in my bare feet over pine needles. The woods were on fire all around me. I ran and ran.

  “Suddenly the fire was gone and I heard men’s voices calling me. ‘Selena, Selena.’ I was afraid so I kept running and wherever I looked there were men watching me. They didn’t do anything, just watched and called to me, but I could tell they were waiting until I fell to—to ... I don’t know what.”

  “Then somewhere in the woods I heard crying I wanted to run away yet I couldn’t. I had to see who it was. I came to a glade in the forest and there, beside a stream, was a cradle and somehow I knew there was a baby inside crying for its mother. For me.”

  Pamela put her arm about her daughter’s shoulders.

  “It was my baby, mother. The one I had on the trail. The baby I’ve tried to forget. She needs me, mother. My baby needs me.”

  “Selena, it was only a dream.”

  Selena turned and put her arms around her mother, holding to her and sobbing. They embraced, both crying now, Pamela murmuring, “Oh, my baby, my baby.”

  At last Selena lifted her head. “There’s more.”

  “To the dream?”

  “That, too. In the dream I ran to the cradle and looked inside. It was empty. There was no baby after all. Where is she, mother? Where is my baby? Where is Lydia May?”

  “Wherever she is, I’m sure she’s all right. Her grandfather Tedder would see to that.”

  “She needs me, I know she does. And that’s not all.”

  Pamela waited.

  “I need her, mother,” Selena said. “And it’s too late. I need her and it’s too late.”

  Danny O’Lee sat on the steps in front of the Empire watching the miners mill about in the road. Rhynne, Danny thought, seemed on edge. Testy. Was he worried about the drawing? Why should he be? He must have cleared a bundle. In eluding five hundred dollars from Danny O’Lee.

  And King Sutton, strutting around like the cock-of-the-walk. Strange. Danny didn’t know what to make of it. He had seen the way King looked at Selena and the way she looked at him, old as he was. What did he have to be so pleased about today? And here he was, coming toward the Empire.

  “Ah, if it isn’t that fine broth of a lad, Danny O’Lee.” King Sutton extended his hand. Danny got up and reluctantly shook it. “The lad with the golden touch. The King Midas of Hangtown.”

  “You’ll not hear me complain.”

  “And why should you, young O’Lee? A handsome broth of a boy such as yourself? I imagine any day now you’ll him yourself off to San Francisco to sample the forbidden fruit of the city.”

  “I was thinking of traveling there on the river-boat once the rains set in.”

  “Good, good. You’ve earned it. I hear Madam Reba has ten new girls direct from Paris at the Union. That’s Paris, France. There’s nothing to match a mademoiselle, they say, for a lad’s first dip of his wick.” He clapped Danny on the shoulder. “Tell Madam Reba that King Sutton sent you. She’ll see you get nothing but the best.”

  Danny felt his face flame. He scowled. King Sutton smiled, gave him a mock salute, and strolled off. Damn him, Danny thought. Damn him, damn him, damn him.

  W.W. Rhynne mounted the platform in the middle of the road. He raised both arms above his head. “Gentlemen!” he called. “Gentlemen. Let me have your attention, please.”

  The crowd gathered around the platform.

  “The time has arrived at last,” Rhynne said, “to discover which of you men will savor the delights of the magnificent new bed which the Empire Hotel has imported from France, sparing no expense.”

  The men cheered.

  “Soon we’ll know the name of the lucky gentleman who will take his place in the personal bed of King Louis XIV, the Sun King of France.”

  “Never mind the king,” someone shouted. “Where’s the queen?” The men laughed appreciatively.

  “Hurry up, Rhynne, let’s get on with it,” one called out.

  “All in good time,” Rhynne said. “I know that before we have today’s grand finale, the drawing of the winning number, you’ll all want to hear the oration prepared for this occasion by our candidate for the legislature, the Reverend James Colton.”

  The crowd groaned.

  “Not seeing the Reverend in attendance, however,” Rhynne went on, “we’ll have to forego that pleasure.” The men cheered. “And so, there’s nothing for it but to conduct the drawing. Would some of you bring up that table?” Two miners carried a table to the platform.

  “And to select the winning ticket we have a man honored in this community for his probity, a man for all seasons, a graduate of the prestigious Castleton Medical College of Vermont, Dr. Samuel Braithewaite.” Doc Braithewaite was pounded on the back as he made his way forward. He climbed onto the platform beside Rhynne.

  “Doctor,” Rhynne said, “there’s one point we should clarify before we begin. Have you yourself entered this lottery?”

  “No sir, I have not.”

  “And do you have any financial interest in it whatsoever?”

  “You haven’t forgotten that forty-rod, have you?”

  There was a chorus of guffaws.

  “Two bottles of the E
mpire Hotel’s best whisky will go to our eminent physician and surgeon in appreciation of his many services.”

  “Cut out the palaver,” Jack Smith of Howard called, “and let’s have the drawing.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Rhynne said. “Abe!” he shouted to the bartender standing on the porch of the Empire. “Will you be so good as to unlock the hotel and bring us the box containing the tickets?”

  Abe nodded and went into the hotel.

  “After the drawing,” Rhynne said, “all losing tickets will be redeemed at the bar for one drink of your choice. No man goes away dry.”

  Abe returned with the pine box, climbed onto the platform and set the box on the table.

  “Here we are,” Rhynne said. “The box you’ve all been eyeing these last few weeks. Now, Mr. Griswold, will you perform the opening honors?”

  John Griswold inserted a metal flange in the notch at the top of the box and pried off one of the pine boards.

  “Doctor, please mix the tickets thoroughly before you draw one.” Doc Braithewaite put his hand into the box, stirred the contents for a few moments, then held a ticket aloft.

  “Will you read the number, sir?” Rhynne asked him.

  “Forty-three,” Braithewaite said.

  Rhynne stared at him, open-mouthed. King Sutton, who had been lounging against a wagon at the rear of the crowd, raised his arm. Danny O’Lee pushed his way past the miners to the platform.

  “I believe that’s my number,” Sutton said. “A king’s bed for a King.” The men parted to make way for him as he walked leisurely to the platform.

  Rhynne snatched the winning ticket from Braithewaite’s hand. A large “43” was printed on a quarter-page cut from the Lyrical Ballads.

  “You seem a mite surprised, W.W.,” Braithewaite said.

  “More than a mite,” Rhynne said.

  “Here’s the other half of the ticket,” King Sutton said, holding it toward Rhynne.

  Danny O’Lee leaped up the steps at the rear of the platform and drew a handful of tickets from the box. Each had a “43” printed on it. Abe tore the tickets from his hand, dropped them back into the box and, with the box in his arms, jumped from the platform and headed for the hotel.

  Danny pushed his way forward. “You,” he shouted down at King Sutton, who stood in front of the platform, “are a cheat.”

  “Be real careful what you say, lad,” Sutton told him in a low voice. Danny raised his arm and there was a hush” King Sutton’s a liar and a cheat,” he shouted.

  “You’re forcing my hand,” Sutton said dangerously.

  “A liar and a cheat in spades,” Danny shouted.

  “Then, sir, seeing that you persist, I must call you out.”

  “And just what do you mean by that?”

  “I’m challenging you, O’Lee, to a duel. Will you meet me on the field of honor? Are you man enough?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  King Sutton arrived first at the meadow. Although they had tried to keep the time and place of the duel secret, he found more than a score of men waiting. Smiling, Sutton waved to them, then turned to his seconds, Doc Braithewaite and Jack Smith of Howard.

  Pointing to a cottonwood tree a short distance away, he asked, “Would you say that’s ten paces?”

  “A bit more than ten,” Smith said.

  “Would you say the first limb is heart-high, doctor?”

  “Heart-high or thereabouts.”

  Sutton raised his Paterson Colt, cocked the hammer, aimed and fired. Gunsmoke drifted across the meadow and a small hole had appeared in the tree trunk next to the limb. Sutton cocked fired the pistol two more times. When he finally lowered the gun there were three holes in the trunk separated by not more than two inches.

  “That’s what I call real good shooting,” Smith commented.

  “I could always hold my own in Georgia.”

  “Perhaps the O’Lee lad will change his mind,” Doc Braithewaite said, “when he sees those holes.”

  “That was my intent,” King Sutton said. “I don’t want to kill the boy unless he forces me to.”

  “They’re here.” All except Sutton turned.

  Rhynne came first, an unlit cigar tilted in his mouth. Danny O’Lee came next, dressed in his mining clothes of red wool shirt and blue trousers. He looked neither right nor left as he walked down the hill toward the meadow. Ned followed him, holding a Paterson Colt away from his side as though he wanted as little to do with the gun as he possibly could.

  The three men stopped at the edge of the meadow. Rhynne motioned Danny to wait, then walked across the grass to King Sutton.

  “I heard shooting a few minutes ago,” Rhynne said. “I was afraid we might be too late for the festivities.”

  “I was practicing, W.W.,” Sutton told him, nodding to the bullet holes in the cottonwood.

  “That’s real fine shooting. Real fine. King, I’d like to talk to you in private,” Rhynne said, nodding toward Braithewaite and Smith. Sutton’s seconds walked a short distance away.

  “This duel does you no credit.” Rhynne paused. “It’s murder, no more, no less.”

  “The duel’s not of my making. I don’t want to kill him, W.W. You know that.”

  “I don’t know what you want. But kill the boy you will if you fight him.”

  “He called me a liar and a cheat in front of all of Hangtown.”

  “You did change the numbers on the tickets.”

  “Are you calling me a cheat?”

  “Take it any way you like. You know I’m not afraid of you, Sutton. I’m dealing from the top of the deck—you marked those tickets so you’d win.”

  “After you’d marked them yourself. Every ticket in that box had a ‘one’ on it.”

  “So the Reverend Colton would win the lottery. To protect Selena. I gave the miners the time of their lives, I gave them weeks of hoping and wondering and savoring and dreaming. I gave them all that, not to mention a free drink. I protected Selena, and I was about to make a generous contribution to Colton’s church.”

  Sutton stared steadily back. “By changing all your number ‘one’s’ to my ‘forty-threes,’ one of those men you took a hundred dollars from, namely myself, attempted to have his hopes realized. Listen, Rhynne, it’s not being found out that angered me, or the fact it was O’Lee. I have my honor to defend. I’d be branded a coward for the rest of my life if I hadn’t called the boy for what he said.”

  “This isn’t Georgia.”

  “Still I am a Georgian. And a southerner. Even if I wanted to back down, and I don’t, I couldn’t now. The only way out is for O’Lee to apologize.”

  “He’s not about to.”

  “Then we settle the matter on the field of honor.”

  Rhynne shook his head and went back to Danny.

  “Did you see that tree King Sutton used for target practice?” he asked him.

  “That I did. And I see King all dressed up like an undertaker, too.” Sutton was all in black— broad-brimmed hat, frock coat, and trousers.

  “Have you ever fired a Paterson Colt in your life?”

  “That I have not.”

  “Then why in the name of all that’s holy did you agree to use them?”

  “I’ve never fired anything else either. ‘Cepting a pepperpot a few months back. All the barrels went off at once and that cured me of guns.”

  “How old are you, lad?”

  “Twenty-one less a fraction.”

  “You’ve a long and happy life ahead of you. With the gold from your claim you can go off and live like a king. Marry a lovely colleen and raise a grand family. There’s no end to the . ..”

  “I told you before, W.W., I’m not about to apologize to that bastard. Talk till doomsday and I’ll be no more likely to show the white feather than I am now.”

  Rhynne looked at him closely, noting the pale spots at the corners of his mouth and the heaviness of his eyes from lack of sleep.

  “You’re a brave one, lad,” he said.


  “I’m not. I’m afraid.”

  “I know you are. That’s why I said you were brave.”

  Danny took a folded sheet of paper from his pocket and handed it to Rhynne.

  “I’ve a young brother in St. Louis,” he said. “If anything happens to me I want him to have half of what’s mine. Last night I sat down and wrote it all out on the paper in your hand.”

  “And the other half?”

  “It’s to go to Selena.”

  “Selena?” Rhynne frowned. “Are you certain that’s what you want?”

  “As sure as I’m standing here.” Danny smiled thinly. “Mr. Rhynne, shouldn’t we be getting on with the sport?”

  Rhynne gripped his arm. “As you wish.” He turned to Ned. “The pistol’s loaded?”

  “All five chambers.”

  “You fired the gun? You know how common misfires are.”

  “She’s in perfect shape.”

  Rhynne led them across the meadow to where Sutton and his seconds were waiting.

  “Do you wish to continue, Mr. Sutton?” he asked formally.

  “I do.”

  “Do you wish to continue, Mr. O’Lee?”

  “That I do.”

  “So be it. We’ve agreed that the weapons will be .36-caliber Paterson Colts. Is that correct?” Both duelists nodded. “You will stand back-to-back and at my signal you’ll walk five paces and stop with your weapons pointed downward. I will then say, Tire, one, two, three, stop,’ at one-second intervals. You may turn and shoot, one shot only, from the time I say, ‘fire’ until I say ‘stop.’ Is that understood?”

  Again both men nodded.

  “Ask the boy if he’ll take back his words,” Sutton said to Rhynne. “Mr. O’Lee, will you apologize to Mr. Sutton for your remarks of yesterday?”

  “I’ll see him in Hell first.”

  “He refuses,” Rhynne said. “So be it. Gentlemen, take your places.”

  Sutton and O’Lee faced each other and then both turned on their heels so that they were back-to-back with their Colts aimed at the ground. The men at the fringe of the meadow scrambled out of the line of fire.