The Ladies of Sutter's Fort

by Jane Toombs

  He found a man kneeling beside Sutton and recognized the clerk he had seen a few minutes before in the lobby. McGregor? Yes, the man’s name was McGregor.

  “I couldn’t catch him,” Rhynne said. McGregor stared at him. Belatedly, Rhynne realized he still held the derringer. He put the gun back into his pocket.

  “I’ll send for a doctor,” McGregor said, slowly backing to the open door. Once out of Rhynne’s sight, he ran along the corridor.

  Rhynne went to Sutton and felt his pulse. It was weak but steady. The opal ring, he saw, was missing from Sutton’s right hand. Rhynne looked around the room; nothing seemed to have been disturbed.

  How did I manage to get into this? he wondered as he stood up. He recalled the angry confrontation with King Sutton the night before at Pierre’s over the editorial in the newspaper. And tonight. He’d even fired his gun. Who’d believe his story that he’d surprised an assailant—a thief—and shot at him?

  Certainly McGregor didn’t, not by the looks of him when he fled the room. Nor would Coleman or Fitzpatrick. Even those who knew him might raise an eyebrow. He realized he would himself if asked to believe such an unlikely tale.

  Rhynne walked swiftly to the rear hall and down to the alley where he turned away from the clamor of Fremont Street. He’d need money; he’d need time. He headed toward the Golden Empire. He heard the summons of the Monumental Engine Company’s bell, ignoring it until the ringing failed to stop after a few minutes.

  The Vigilantes’ signal to assemble at Battery Street. Rhynne stopped. Not to the Empire, that would be the first place they’d look. To Rincon Hill and Pamela? No, the obvious hiding places would be the most dangerous. Where then? Who would dare help him? It must be someone so unlikely the Committee would never suspect. Wisps of fog drifted toward him. A man approached, glanced at him, and passed on. Rhynne fought down the urge to run, forcing himself to remain where he was. Don’t panic, he told himself. Decide, then do whatever’s necessary. He pulled his coat closer to ward off the chill of the fog. Of course. Why hadn’t he thought of him before? A long shot, but this was the time for long shots. Sometimes when you were losing you could recoup with one daring play. Not often, perhaps once out of ten times. If he had any luck left this would be that time. Rhynne set off along the street with his cane thrust jauntily beneath his arm.

  “Are you sure?” Barry Fitzgerald asked.

  “It’s the God’s truth. At the Fremont. Mcgregor saw the whole thing. Sutton and Rynne had at each other, then Rynne pulls a gun and shoots him.”

  “Is Sutton dead?”

  “No, they say the doctor’s with him now. He’s hurt bad, though.”

  “How long ago did it happen?”

  “Fifteen or twenty minutes ago.”

  Barry tossed the boy a coin. “You made good time,” he told him.

  “Got a message for me to take back to Mr. Coleman?”

  “Tell him I’ll be by later tonight.”

  The boy nodded and ran off.

  As Barry strode along the street, the fog closed in around him. When he licked his lips he tasted the tang of salt. In the distance, the fire bell suddenly stopped.

  These first few hours, Barry knew, were crucial. This was the time most mistakes were made and most opportunities lost. He must act and act decisively. He’d overestimated Rhynne, seen him as a devious, clever man, not one to shoot an enemy with a witness present. Barry shrugged. He’d been wrong before and probably would be again. The danger now was in thinking Rhynne too easy an adversary.

  When he pushed his way into the Golden Empire, the gambling saloon was as crowded and noisy as he remembered it. Word of the shooting must not have reached here yet, he thought.

  Barry looked for McSweeney as he made his way past the bar but the big man wasn’t in sight. He opened the door leading to Rhynne’s private quarters and went up the stairs. The hallway at the top was deserted and the door to Rhynne’s office was locked.

  Barry threw his weight against the door and heard wood splinter inside. Again he slammed his shoulder against it. The bolt tore from the inside wall and the door flew open. Barry stood just outside the doorway for a moment, listening until he was satisfied the dark room was empty, then went in, closing the door behind him. Groping along the top of the nearest table, he found a lamp, lit it and looked around.

  The room seemed unchanged. He leafed through the papers on Rhynne’s desk. Nothing there. He opened the top drawer and found a ledger for the Hangtown hotel and another for the store. He put them on top of the desk.

  “So it’s a robber you are now.” McSweeney stood in the doorway with a Walker Colt in his hand.

  “Rhynne shot King Sutton,” Barry said.

  McSweeney’s blank stare told Barry he hadn’t heard the news.

  “Even if true, which I doubt, that gives you no license to steal.”

  “I’m looking for Rhynne.”

  “He’s usually not to be found in his desk.”

  Barry said nothing.

  “By whose authority?”

  “The Committee of Vigilance.”

  McSweeney grunted. “That’s no authority at all,” he said. For a long minute he made no move, as though weighing his options.

  “Rhynne’s a hunted man,” Barry said.

  “We’ll see what the sheriff has to say to all this.” McSweeney motioned Barry to leave the room ahead of him.

  Barry walked from behind the desk.

  “Keep a comfortable distance,” the big man told him.

  Barry veered away from him toward the table. He swung his arm at the lamp, sending it hurtling to one side, at the same time throwing himself to the floor in the opposite direction. The lamp crashed but stayed lit; McSweeney’s gun cracked, the shot going wild.

  Before he could fire again, Barry hurled himself at McSweeney, twisted his wrist and sent the pistol spinning away to thud on the carpet. McSweeney leaped back, tripping on a cuspidor. Recovering, he lunged for Barry. Barry hit him in the eyes, kneed him in the groin, and the big man grunted with pain.

  Seeing the pistol from the corner of his eye, Barry leaped to one side and grabbed it. McSweeney came at him, stopping abruptly when he came face to face with the muzzle of the Walker Colt.

  “I wouldn’t,” Barry said when he saw McSweeney poise to charge him again. He clicked the hammer back, his finger tightening on the trigger.

  McSweeney relaxed. “Another day,” he said.

  “Perhaps.” Holding the gun on the big man, Barry went to the desk and picked up the two ledgers. He crossed the room, pausing at the door.

  “I’m going out into that hall,” he said. “And I’m going to wait there, maybe for one minute and maybe for five. If you come out while I’m still there, I’ll kill you. Do you understand?”

  “Like a guessing game,” McSweeney said.

  “Except it’s a game you can only lose.” Barry nodded to the clock on the bookshelves behind Rhynne’s desk. “After five minutes,” he said, “you can be sure I’ll be gone.”

  Barry backed into the hall and along the corridor to the top of the stairs. There was no sign of McSweeney. Barry went down the stairs, thrusting the pistol in his belt. With the ledgers under his arm, he walked through the gambling hall and out into the fog.

  “How did you know I’d help you?” Strauss asked.

  “I didn’t,” Rhynne said. “I took a chance. Isn’t life one gamble after another?”

  “Ja,” Strauss said. “When I come to this country from Bavaria, to my brothers in New York City, that was a chance.” He spoke with a heavy German accent, his speech so guttural that at times Rhynne had to listen intently to understand him.

  “When I sail for California with my denim,” Strauss said, “that was a chance.”

  “You didn’t like New York?”

  “My brothers have carts. Wagons. Are peddlers. I’m not a peddler. I’m a merchant. Someday I’ll be more than a merchant. Today there is only Strauss, the poor tailor. Soon I hire anot
her man to sew with me and then another and another. One day Strauss will have a floor of a building with rows of men and women sewing. And not by hand. No, by machines. Imagine, machines for sewing.”

  “A sewing machine? Are there such things?”

  “I saw one with my own eyes in New York.” Strauss shook his head. “Too slow. Too clumsy. The work is not good. In five years, ten years, who knows?”

  “You dream dreams, my friend.”

  “Can a man live with no dream?”

  “My dream at the moment is to get from San Francisco to Hangtown.”

  “Ach, for the moment I forget. When a man dreams he forgets. Hangtown! Such a name. There you will be safe?”

  “The Vigilantes have no power outside San Francisco.”

  “One might hide, perhaps, in a wagon?”

  “I could. That’s slow, especially with the rains and the mud coming. And dangerous. As a last resort, maybe.”

  “If only I made barrels to ship—or coffins. It would be easy to put you on a riverboat inside, with not a question from any man.”

  “How do you send your clothing to the mines?”

  “In bales.” Strauss threw out his hands to show their size. “Too small to hide a man. You couldn’t breathe. Five years from now, who knows, I may hire ships to send my goods.”

  “Your trousers have been a great success.”

  “Because they are gut. Well made. The work of a German craftsman. I have only one complaint.”

  “And that is?”

  “How would you like men to call their trousers by your first name?”

  “Wordsworths? I don’t think I’d mind if they bought them from me. Your name sounds much better than mine for trousers, though. I mean no offense, but I much prefer Levis to Wordsworths.”

  “Again we talk of Levi Strauss, not Wordsworth Rhynne. We must transport you to Hangtown.”

  “I have an idea, Levi. Perhaps in some way we could use your skill as a tailor.”

  “Ja. Gut, gut. I make you look like another person. No more Wordsworth Rhynne.”

  “I’ll shave my mustache.”

  “And wear a dress. I could make you a dress with . . . How to say it? Like a female.”

  “I’ll wear a poke bonnet to cover my head and hide my face. Wear a veil, perhaps.”

  “Wordsworth Rhynne will be a tall woman. I, Strauss, would be a better one.” “Yet what a shame to shave your fine growth of beard. I’ll walk with a stoop. I’ll be an old woman with a cane traveling upriver to see my son in Sacramento.”

  “Your only son?”

  “No, I have four sons.” Rhynne smiled. “Two live in New York, one in Sacramento. You, Levi, are my fourth son and you shall see me off.”

  * * *

  “Is Sutton dead?” Barry Fitzpatrick asked.

  “No,” Coleman said. “Curie was at the Fremont only a few minutes ago. King Sutton has at least three doctors treating him. They’re afraid to move him from his room.”

  “Has he named his assailant?”

  “No, he’s still unconscious. I didn’t see you as a man who picked nits, captain. There’s no question Rhynne’s the guilty one.”

  “I like to be sure, though I agree everything points to Rhynne. And there’s been no word of his whereabouts?”

  William Coleman looked at the other Committee members gathered in the Battery Street room. “Johnson?” he said, nodding to a tall, lean man.

  “He’s not at the Empire,” Johnson said. “Never showed his face there after the shooting. Nor at the Buttle-Jones’ on Rincon Hill. We’ve been to all his favorite haunts and come up with nothing. It’s as though Rhynne’s vanished into the fog.”

  “You have men blockading the roads and watching the docks?” Barry asked.

  “We have,” Coleman said. “All vehicles proceeding south on the peninsula are being stopped. No ship leaves the harbor without being searched. We have boats patrolling the bay in case he tries to slip away in a small boat.”

  “I misjudged Rhynne once,” Barry said, “and I may again. But I see him trying to outsmart us, using a devious method of escape. Perhaps one that’s too devious for his own good. A direct, simple plan is usually the best.”

  “What else can we do?” Coleman asked. “Captain, do you have any suggestions? That, after all, is why we brought you here.”

  “Only one.” Barry laid the two ledgers from Rhynne’s office on Coleman’s desk. “These show Rhynne’s suppliers, the men he does business with. Men who are, in most cases, obligated to him. I suggest you identify them, list them and circulate the list, then watch their places of business. And watch them.”

  Coleman nodded. “A good idea,” he said. “Consider it done.”

  The couple stood on the dock the next morning waiting for the riverboat’s gangplank to be lowered. The man was short and erect and wore a black plug hat, the woman, who walked with a cane, was older and stooped, though still taller than the man. Her face was concealed by a mourning veil.

  “My son,” she murmured in a low voice only he could hear. “You have been very good to me.”

  “We Jews,” Strauss said, “know what it is to be hunted. We know the fear of the words written on the outside of the shop, the fear of the knock on the door in the night. In Europe. Even in America. Where there is oppression, where there are vigilantes, there you will find Jews fighting them. You must know this. Why else did you come to me?”

  “Aren’t you afraid to help me?”

  “What can they do to me, a poor immigrant tailor? So I make a few dollars less.”

  As the gangplank was lowered from the boat, a hansom clattered along the dock and stopped behind the waiting passengers. Two men got out.

  “Mutter”, Levi said, “Are you ill?”

  “I know those men. One’s Fitzpatrick, the other’s Curie from the newspaper. They’re both with the Committee.”

  Levi offered his arm. “A dutiful son helps his Mutter up the gangplank,” he said. “Safety is meters away.”

  Barry Fitzpatrick watched the passengers climbing aboard the riverboat as Curie signaled to a man lounging nearby.

  “This is Wilson,” he told Barry when the man joined them.

  “Is there anyone on your list with a shipment for upriver?” Barry asked him.

  “Only one. Levi Strauss. We checked his consignment. There’s nothing out of the ordinary. That’s Strauss there in the top hat boarding the ship with the old woman.”

  “He’s going to Sacramento?” Barry asked.

  “No, his mother is.”

  “That’s his mother with him?”

  Wilson nodded. “Strauss made quite a point of it, matter of fact.”

  “Arrest her,” Barry said.

  Wilson and Curie stared at him. “Damn it,” Barry told them, “do what I say before the ship’s halfway to Sacramento.”

  Wilson motioned to another man and they pushed their way up the gangplank. A few minutes later they were back with a bonnet less Rhynne between them, a prisoner.

  “How did you know?” Curie asked. There was more than a little awe in his voice.

  “Never in my life,” Barry said, “do I remember seeing a woman who was taller than her son. Do you?”

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Dr. Warner Phillips was the first physician to arrive at the Fremont Hotel after King Sutton was shot. A roly-poly man, Dr. Phillips bullied laymen though he was self-effacing with other doctors.

  He had reason to be, for he had never attended medical college. Twenty years before, in Ashta-bula, Ohio, when wearied of farming, Warner Phillips began teaching himself the healing arts by reading medical texts, since he’d always had a gift of healing farm animals. Finally he moved to Pennsylvania, where he nailed a shingle to his door and used his busy practice to continue his education.

  “Experience is the best teacher,” became his motto.

  Dr. Phillips found King Sutton sprawled on the floor, bleeding profusely and unconscious. He away the clothi
ng from the wound and saw that the bullet had entered Sutton’s chest just above the first rib.

  The doctor felt for a pulse. There seemed to be none in Sutton’s left wrist, only a feeble one in his right. The patient’s hands and feet were cold. Dr. Phillips put his finger into the wound and explored it. The bullet had slanted upward to emerge under Sutton’s armpit.

  Dr. Austin Dee arrived as Phillips completed his examination and immediately began his own. “There’s an artery severed,” he said when he was through.

  “I beg to disagree, doctor,” Phillips said. “Look, the hemorrhaging has stopped. I doubt if the artery’s involved at all.”

  “The artery may be clotted for the moment but the least movement will tear it open again.” Dee’s tone was positive.

  Phillips began applying mustard plaster to Sutton’s hands and feet to try to restore his circulation. King moaned.

  “Who’s responsible for the fee if he dies?” Dr. Dee asked.

  “The Committee of Vigilance, I understand.”

  “Good,” Dr. Dee said. “We’ll have to put in a sponge to plug that artery.”

  Dr. Phillips hesitated. Probably Dee was right, he thought. Wasn’t the man a licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland? At least he claimed to be.

  “I’m inclined to agree, doctor,” Phillips said. “At least putting in a sponge will give us time to put our heads together.”

  Dr. Dee took a piece of white sponge the size of a large hen’s egg, moistened it with water, and shoved the sponge up into the wound. King Sutton moaned once and was quiet. Dee felt his pulse, then applied wet compresses and bandaged the wound.

  “Now we’ll let nature take its course,” Dr. Dee said.

  When a third physician, Dr. Chauncey Speer, arrived at the hotel an hour later he had to push his way through a throng milling outside waiting for news. In Sutton’s rooms, he found the two doctors arguing in a parlor clouded with tobacco smoke.

  “There’s no question,” Dr. Dee was saying, “but that cholera’s caused by a morbid condition of the air. Miasma.”