The Ladies of Sutter's Fort

by Jane Toombs

  “Not at all,” Dr. Phillips said. “My experience shows it comes from intemperance. I’ve seen three cases this past week and debauchery, drunkenness and bad food were involved in all three. Not to mention filth.”

  After inquiring what had been done for the patient, Dr. Speer went into the bedroom where he found the unconscious Sutton lying on his massive bed. Dr. Speer examined him and rejoined his colleagues.

  “We can’t wait any longer,” he told them. “This artery question has to be settled now. If the artery’s severed, we have to operate at once and suture it.”

  “Closing the artery’s a risky business,” Dr. Dee said. “I thought at first the artery was involved but now I’m not sure. The hemorrhaging has stopped.”

  “The risk must be taken. We can’t just wait. You said leave the sponge in. Now you say take it out and, I suppose, you want to suture the artery. Why can’t you make up your mind?”

  “But doctor . . .” Phillips began.

  “We can’t operate. Didn’t you see the extent of the swelling in the left breast? It must be congestion induced by the sponge.”

  “Isn’t that a good reason to open him up? To let that fluid drain?”

  “We’ve waited too long,” Dee said. “It’s too dangerous now. His condition’s become too precarious.”

  “I think we should have another opinion.”

  “Speer again?”

  “Good God, not that pompous ass. What about that army surgeon, Griffen? I’m told he’s had experience with wounds in the Mexican War.”

  “Most army surgeons,” Dr. Dee said, “aren’t worth the powder to blow them up with. As you know. Why would they stay in the army if they can make a living practicing on the outside?”

  “Still we should have another opinion. Especially after the fuss Speer’s likely to make.” Dr. Phillips walked to the window and looked down at the crowd waiting for news. “The Committee of Vigilance is involved. They jailed that gambler Rhynne and they’ll put him on trial before the week’s out. Whatever happens, whether Sutton lives or dies, there’s bound to be an inquiry. The newspapers are into it, of course. I saw Curie in the corridor when I came here this morning.”

  “I acknowledge the merit of your position, doctor. Yes, I totally agree that another opinion is indicated. And this Griffen is probably as good as anyone else. Dr. Griffen arrived at dusk. A stooped, arthritic man, he briskly examined the patient while mumbling to himself and dolefully shaking his head. When the three men came out of the bedroom, he glared at Phillips and Dee.

  “Who put in that damned sponge?” he asked.

  The two doctors looked at one another. “I did,” Dee admitted. “After consulting with Dr. Phillips.”

  Griffen sighed.

  “A temporary measure only, doctor,” Dee said. “We had to do something to stop the hemorrhaging, and we did succeed in doing that.”

  “What do you recommend?” Dr. Phillips asked.

  “It’s too late to operate,” Griffen said. “He’d die on the table. And it’s too late to remove the sponge. I suggest we relieve the-congestion with an incision under the armpit.”

  “Anything else?”

  “We might all try praying,”

  When Dr. Griffen made the incision under the exit wound, great quantities of pus drained from the opening. King Sutton did not, however, rally. He remained stuporous. Dr. Phillips suggested they take turns at his bedside. Dr. Dee agreed but Dr. Griffen grunted and muttered something about a suspected case of cholera at the Presidio. He bid them goodnight and let himself out.”

  “I’ll talk to the crowd out there,” Dee said. He went into the parlor. “Kingman Sutton is still alive but moribund,” he announced. “We’re doing all we can, but we hold out little hope, as the wound appears mortal. We’ve been fortunate to be able to prevent the patient’s suffering; we are struggling against odds to save him.” The message was passed from man to man along the corridor outside the room and was called from the window. “Dying, Sutton’s dying.” The word seemed to echo up from the street. “Dying, dying, dying.”

  “I’m given to understand, doctor,” Curie said, “that there is considerable dispute among the attending physicians. Regarding the most appropriate treatment.”

  “Not at all. You can ask Drs. Phillips and Griffen if you like. We all freely aired our opinions, of course, since medicine is still far from an exact science. But we were unanimous in the treatment decided upon. Unfortunately the patient is not responding. And that, gentlemen, is God’s will.”

  Danny O’Lee watched the armed Vigilantes escort Wordsworth Rhynne along the waterfront street toward the jail.

  “They caught him boarding the Sacramento packet disguised as a woman,” a man near Danny said. “He says he didn’t shoot Sutton. Can you believe that?”

  After the capture, Danny knew, they had taken Rhynne to the Committee’s offices where the charge—attempted murder—was read to him. He was then marched through the city to the Argonaut, an old coastal freighter that had been converted into a jail.

  Rhynne looked composed, almost nonchalant, as he walked up the ramp to the deck of the ship with his hands tied behind him. The Argonaut had been beached the month before and propped upright with four-by-four timbers. Eventually the land around and under the ship would be filled with dirt and rocks but now it perched high off the ground.

  When Rhynne reached the top of the ramp he paused and looked to his right and left. Danny waved to him, trying to catch his eyes to give him some sign of encouragement. Rhynne, though, didn’t appear to see him before he was pushed into the ship’s cabin.

  “They’ll try him as soon as Sutton gives up the ghost and hang him the day after,” someone said.

  “If Sutton dies.”

  “I heard he’s failing. They don’t expect him to live out the day.”

  Only getting his just deserts, Danny thought. Had Rhynne shot him? Somehow Danny couldn’t believe he had. Why would Rhynne kill Sutton when he had so much to lose and nothing to gain? In the heat of passion perhaps? Danny couldn’t imagine Rhynne becoming so enraged he’d commit murder.

  Danny crossed Portsmouth Street on his way to the Golden Empire. Although McSweeney and Abe Greene were running the gambling hall in Rhynne’s absence, Danny was worried. After all, most of his money was invested there.

  Where had the rest of his money gone? To Selena, for the most part. She had had an endless passion for clothes and jewelry, or so it seemed to Danny. As fast as the Luck O’ the Irish Mine produced gold dust, Selena spent it. The lode and Selena’s passion for him had both run out at the same time.

  Strange, though. He had no regrets. Selena had been worth all he had spent on her. Danny stopped short, staring at the two men walking ahead of him—both Vigilantes coming uptown from the Argonaut. One looked familiar, a big man with a neatly trimmed beard and a bit of a paunch. Who was he?

  Danny increased his pace until he was only a few feet from the men as they paused on a street corner. One of them, not the man Danny thought he recognized, said, “The trial’s tomorrow at nine, Duke, if Sutton dies.”

  Duke. Of course, Duke Olmsted. A leaner, better dressed Duke, but the same man who had killed Danny’s father three years before.

  Duke said something to his companion and they parted with a handshake, Duke walking on up California Street. Danny followed, his hand touching the butt of the Colt thrust under his belt. Since the duel with Sutton he’d practiced long hours with the Colt and had developed into a fair shot.

  Danny lagged behind, watching as Duke nodded to men passing on the street. He must have been right here in San Francisco all this time and Danny hadn’t been able to find him. Because he’d looked in all the wrong places. Duke no longer seemed a man who frequented waterfront hellholes.

  I’ll wait until he’s alone, Danny told himself, and then I’ll kill him. With no more warning, no more chance to defend himself than he gave my dad. I’ll shoot him down and that will be the end of it.


  A half mile from the docks, Duke Olmsted climbed the porch steps of a modest house and went inside. Danny found a barrel in an alley out of the house accompanied by a sallow-faced woman. She wore a grey dress and her hair was drawn into a bun at the back of her head. She looked up at Duke and he leaned over and kissed her lightly on the lips. When he set off for the city, the woman stood on the porch watching him until he was out of sight.

  Danny pushed himself from the barrel and followed. They were almost to the Square when the city bell began to clang. The Vigilantes again? Danny wondered. Had Sutton died? No, the bell rang three times, was silent, then rang twice more. The signal was repeated, three and two, three and two.

  Fire!

  With the first ringing of the bell, Duke started to run. He turned up a side street with Danny a hundred feet behind. Danny saw smoke billow into the sky ahead of them. Men were running beside him, then he heard the crackle of flames. He turned a corner and saw a storage shed burning in the middle of the block.

  Flames shot skyward from the shed’s roof and licked up the side of a house in front. A bucket brigade had already formed to throw water on the nearby buildings. The shed and house were doomed. With a great clatter a fire engine arrived, eight men pulling the four-wheeled vehicle.

  “Knickerbocker Five,” one of the firemen shouted as they stopped on the street in front of the burning buildings. “First again!” The volun teer firemen unrolled their hoses while two men leaped to man the pumper.

  Duke Olmsted ran to the uniformed fire captain, who clapped him on the shoulder and pointed at the burning house. Duke ran to the porch and disappeared inside. Danny followed, dodging past restraining hands. Inside, he saw Duke at the top of the stairs. The other man paused, looking right and left, and Danny recalled Rhynne doing the same a few hours earlier at the top of the ramp leading to the Argonaut.

  Danny looked around him. Smoke seeped into the hallway from one of the doors leading to the rear of the house, but the air was still comparatively clear. He raced from room to room, opening doors, calling out, looking to see if anyone was left in the building. He found no one.

  When he came back to the front hall, Duke was just coming to the top of the stairs holding a handkerchief to his mouth. Danny positioned himself at the bottom of the staircase, took out his Colt and pointed it at Duke’s chest. The other man stopped and stared down at him.

  “Lay that gun aside,” he said. “Are you mad?” Olmsted took a step toward him.

  Danny fired to Duke’s left, the bullet splintering the stair rail. Olmsted drew back.

  “You killed my father,” Danny told him. “And so I’m going to kill you.”

  “I never killed a man in my life.” Duke looked at him, puzzled. A kind of comprehension cleared his face, but it was not the same understanding that Danny desired.

  “I might have roistered a bit in my time,” Duke said. “I may have been in a brawl or two before I married. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in my life. I know I never killed a man. Why do you think I joined the Vigilantes? I want an end to all that.”

  Danny cocked the pistol. He would shoot Olmsted and leave his body here in the burning house. No one would ever know he hadn’t perished in the fire.

  The moment stretched endlessly. Olmsted stood on the stairs, his eyes never leaving the Colt in Danny’s hands, while the smoke drifted around them, the flames crackled in the rear of the house, and the men shouted in the street outside.

  Danny remembered that fog-shrouded night when he and his father were set upon outside the saloon, remembered the duel with Sutton, the gun spinning from his hand, the fearful moment when he thought he’d been hit, Rhynne kneeling beside him, and now today, Rhynne, a prisoner of the Vigilantes, climbing the ramp to the Argonaut.

  If he shot Olmsted, he’d be doing exactly what the Vigilantes intended to do to Rhynne. He’d be killing him out of hand, without proof, without a fair hearing. Without a hearing at all.

  Danny eased the hammer of the pistol forward and tucked the gun into his belt.

  “Perhaps I made a mistake,” he said. “I’m not sure you’re the man I’m looking for after all. If you are, may the death of my father be on your head for the rest of your days.” Olmsted drew a deep breath, coughing when he breathed in the smoke fumes. “We’d best be leaving here,” he said. “There was no one upstairs.”

  “Nor down,” Danny said.

  They walked out of the burning house together.

  Later, Danny downed a whisky at the bar of the Golden Empire. He put down his glass, nodded to McSweeney, and they climbed the stairs to Rhynne’s office.

  “We have two days, maybe three to free Rhynne,” Danny said. “No more, perhaps less.”

  “Who’s to lead us in the attempt?” McSweeney asked.

  Danny went around the desk and sat in Rhynne’s chair. “I am,” he said.

  “You think you’re the lad for the job?”

  “No,” Danny said quickly. “I’m not the lad for the job. I’m the man.”

  He never saw Duke Olmsted again. Yet he knew that it was Duke and the way he had been able to handle the situation with Duke that let him call himself a man.

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Pamela put the handkerchief containing the lump of camphor up to her nose and inhaled before approaching the next pallet. What had the coroner’s jury called the first case? Death by visitation of God? Even now, with the overcrowded hospitals turning away cholera victims, the Californian persisted in claiming that the fear of cholera was as bad as the disease, itself able to kill, and that thinking cholera contagious was ridiculous.

  Back home, Dr. Graves had claimed just the opposite-- Asiatic cholera was definitely contagious, he said. And Dr. Graves was one of England’s most prominent physicians. Perhaps the camphor wasn’t as much of a protection against miasma as Dr. Gunn had suggested in his Home Book of Health, but the aromatic fumes were preferable to the stench around her.

  Pamela bent over the sufferer, a bearded man with eyes sunk so deep she was reminded of two holes in a skull. His skin was cold, his lips blue. He desperately needed to be cleaned—she could smell that without looking under the blanket. But she shook her head and left him. No use, he was as good as dead.

  The next patient was a boy in his teens who stared fearfully up at her. “How do you feel?” she asked. “Can you swallow?”

  He nodded weakly. Carefully she measured a teaspoonful of laudanum and inserted the medicine between the boy’s cracked lips. She’d had to pay Charlie Sung a fortune for the last shipment. Although she’d tried to stop taking the opiate herself, she found she couldn’t. Not if she wanted to be capable of anything beyond turning and tossing in bed.

  “Water,” the boy whispered.

  Pamela went to the pail in the center of the room, stepping around the patients. Almost every foot of the room was crowded with the sick and dying. Using the tin dipper, she poured water into the cup she carried in her canvas bag. She’d learned not to look too carefully at the water or to object to the green scum in the pail. At least someone still bothered to bring water regularly.

  The next patient was past all human help. Pamela closed the young woman’s eyes and pulled the blanket over her face. She took a square of yellow calico from her bag and laid it on top of the blanket so that the undertaker’s assistant would spot the dead body quickly. Inhaling the camphor fumes, she moved on.

  When she could take no more, Pamela went outside to let cold wind from the bay dissipate the lingering odors of sickness. The sky was overcast but the rain held off.

  Last night she had dreamed of the Orient, warm sun, brilliant colors, soft silken cushions. She had been in the harem of a sultan who found her the most desirable of all women. Even the eunuch guard had gazed on her with dark lustful eyes. It had been a wonderful dream at first--she’d often had such erotic dreams since she’d started using laudanum.

  But then, when she’d been summoned to the sultan and went to his glittering, j
ewel-studded chamber, the dream went awry. For as she approached the curtained bed, one very much like the Louis XIV bed W.W. Rhynne had given Selena, her anticipation turned to dread, knowing what she’d see when she drew aside the cloth-of-gold curtains.

  She saw the same sight every hour of every day.

  Cholera. The sultan obscenely dead in his own wastes. And the horror of it was that the sultan was no stranger. He was W.W.

  Pamela bit her lip, remembering. No use to try not to think about W.W.he appeared in her dreams anyway. He wasn’t dead of cholera, of course. He didn’t even have the disease, but he was as good as dead and she could do nothing.

  Damn Barry Fitzpatrick for interfering!

  Not that Rhynne wasn’t capable of shooting a man. At first she’d thought he probably had shot King. Then when she’d learned the opal ring was missing she dismissed the idea. W.W. was a capable gambler, yes. He took other men’s money by his skill and luck. But he wasn’t a common thief.

  Tears filled her eyes. W.W. wasn’t common in any sense of the word. She’d done her mourning for King even before she knew of his wounding. In a way he’d be better off dead. But not W.W.

  If only there was some way to save him. She was so tired, so exhausted from caring for cholera victims. But if she didn’t come to the hospital every day, there’d be no one to take her place.

  “Oh,W.W., she said aloud, “what can I do?” A drop of rain struck her upturned face, then another, and she fled back into the hospital to escape the downpour, nearly colliding with a young man in the entry. He was holding a sick child.

  “Can you help her?” the man asked in a hoarse voice.

  Pamela glanced up. “I’ll try.” She blinked, peering intently at him. He had a familiar look, but she couldn’t place him.

  “Ain’t there a doctor here?” he asked. “I know it must be the cholera for I had it myself and like to have died.”

  “One of the doctors comes in ever few hours,” she said, trying to look unobtrusively at him. He was a giant bear of a man, though gaunt-faced from illness. And she’d known him somewhere, she was certain.