The Ladies of Sutter's Fort

by Jane Toombs

  He didn’t seem to recognize her, though. But she must look quite different from Lady Pamela in her plain brown cotton without any crinoline. And she had a brown cotton cloth tied over her hair, too. No, he wouldn’t be likely to connect her with Lady Buttle-Jones.

  Turning her attention back to the child, Pamela saw the little girl was desperately ill. She sprawled on the cot like a rag doll, her eyes closed. When Pamela put the teaspoon containing a few drops of laudanum to her lips she whimpered but didn’t move.

  “She’s very bad,” Pamela said.

  The young man clenched his fists. “She’s only been sick a few hours,” he said. “God in His mercy spared me, but I fear for her.” He lowered his head.

  All at once Pamela remembered. The wagon train. So long ago. Howard Tedder. Then she shook her head. This man was too young to be Howard. Nazareth, of course, now the image of his father. Her eyes widened in shock. If this was Nazareth . . .

  She dropped to her knees beside the cot, gently pushing the girl’s dark hair back from her forehead. She leaned close to the small face. “Lydia,” she murmured so low Nazareth couldn’t hear. “Lydia May.”

  The girl opened sunken blue eyes, then closed them as if the effort had been too great.

  Pamela scrambled to her feet. “I’ll heat some bricks,” she said. “She needs to be kept warm.”

  Nazareth Tedder. A boy when Selena had lain with him in a wagon and conceived Lydia May. And now, the little girl, the little girl was . . . Pamela choked back her sobs.

  Despite the warm bricks at her feet, despite massage with cayenne pepper dissolved in brandy, despite the laudanum and Pamela’s desperate attention, Lydia May grew steadily worse. Pamela saw no hope for her, it was just a matter of time, and there was precious little left.

  Pamela looked up at Nazareth with tear-filled eyes. “I tried,” she said brokenly. “I did all I could.”

  “I saw you did,” he said. “I’m grateful, ma’am. Everywhere else I went no one would help. Poor little thing didn’t have nobody but me. She always was sort of puny but I—” He broke off and covered his eyes with his hand. “I loved Lydia May. I don’t know what to do now; I just don’t.”

  “I’m sorry, Nazareth.” Pamela laid her hand on his arm.

  He blinked tears away, his expression changing. “How come you know me?”

  “Because I—I’m Lydia May’s grandmother, God help me,” Pamela said.

  Nazareth stepped back from her, scowling. “You are that,” he muttered. “I see that now.”

  “I’m sorry,” she repeated.

  After a moment he took a deep shuddering breath. “I expect you couldn’t help it,” he said. “But that daughter of yours will burn for all eternity. If Lydia May had had a proper mother to take care of her, she wouldn’t have come to this.”

  “Where are you going? We—we have men here who ...” Pamela began.

  Nazareth brushed past her with Lydia May in his arms. “No!” he said. “I won’t let her die here. I won’t let Selena come and pretend to weep over her corpse. That’s all your daughter ever did— pretend! The Tedders care for their own. I’ll see to her burial myself. God damn you all!” With the dying child in his arms, he burst into sobs and ran from the hospital.

  * * *

  Selena hummed as she pirouetted in front of the pier glass in her bedroom, examining the new peach gown from all angles. A shirred bodice bound at the scooped neck with satin binding showed off just enough of her breasts to be intriguing. The vee of the bodice where it joined the skirt made her small waist look even tinier. And the cage crinoline thrust the skirts out excitingly.

  “Sounds like a mighty sad song you’re humming,” Veronie said. “Ain’t you happy?”

  Selena glanced back at her maid. “All Irish airs are plaintive,” she confided to Veronie. “The Irish like to make themselves cry.”

  The girl shook her head doubtfully. Selena already knew Veronie wasn’t especially bright but she was a wizard with curls and could mend a seam so not a thread showed. What more did one expect from a personal maid?

  Selena sang the words:

  “The harp that once through Tara’s halls, its soul of music shed. Now hangs as mute on Tara’s walls as though that soul were fled…

  “Don’t make no kind of sense,” Veronie said. “But you sure got a pretty voice. All the gentlemen say so too.”

  Selena smiled at her. The peach gown was definitely provocative. That new dressmaker on California Street showed a true French flair. If only she could persuade Pamela to have a few gowns made. Her mother’s clothes were all so drab. But Pamela insisted fashion wasn’t important to the sick.

  Selena grimaced. How could her mother go into those ghastly charnel houses they called hospitals? “Someone has to look after the cholera patients,” Pamela kept saying. “I can’t understand how people can pass by the sick and suffering without even a second glance.”

  I can understand very well, Selena thought. I can’t bear sickness.

  “You sure got a lot of gentlemen after you,” Veronie said.

  Selena’s mouth twisted wryly.

  “Like a bitch in heat,” Barry Fitzpatrick had growled at her. “All the pack gathering ‘round.” Jealous, that was his trouble. Barry intrigued her, but since he’d trapped W.W. she’d refused to see him and would continue to do so. She loved W.W. almost like a father.

  The front door opened and closed and she heard Pamela’s light step on the stairs. Waving her hand at Veronie in dismissal, Selena waited for her mother to come along the hall. Seeing the peach gown ought to be enough to persuade her . . .

  Selena’s thoughts broke off abruptly as Pamela appeared in the doorway.

  “Mother! What’s the matter? Are you ill?” Selena hurried toward her, reaching out her hand.

  “I’m not sick,” Pamela said, clasping her daughter’s hand. “No, I’m quite all right.”

  Selena examined her mother’s tired face with concern. “But something is wrong, isn’t it?”

  Pamela pulled away and lowered her face into her hands. “Oh, Selena, my dear child. I don’t know how to tell you.”

  “Is it W.W.? Oh my God, have they lynched him?”

  “No, no, he’s safe enough in jail for the time being at least.”

  “The cholera then. Who is it, who’s sick? Barry? Danny O’Lee?”

  Pamela shook her head. “They’re fine as far as I know. But it is the cholera and it’s killed her, your—my—”

  Tears rolled down Pamela’s cheeks. “So young to die, her life hardly begun. When I found out who she was, for a moment I wished I’d been taken instead.”

  “Mother, what are you talking about? Who’s dead?”

  “Lydia May.”

  Selena stood for a moment without speaking. A muscle twitched in her face. Pamela held out her arms but her daughter ignored them. So she told Selena of Nazareth’s coming to the hospital, of the child too far gone to save.

  “I told you long ago it was too late,” Selena said. She turned away to sit at a vanity table where she picked up a powder puff. Pamela watched her unbelievingly as she continued her toilette. “You can’t be thinking of going out this evening,” she cried. “Not now!”

  “Of course I’m going out. Lee will be picking me up in less than an hour.”

  Pamela held the black umbrella over her head, staring down at the muddy burying hole. The wind-blown drizzle lashed her face and she could feel moisture seeping into her shoes.

  Nazareth Tedder stood on the opposite side of the grave still gaunt-faced from his own bout with cholera. He did not look at her. He hadn’t personally informed her of when Lydia May would be buried, but she’d read the burial notice in the newspaper and had come to mourn her grandchild, despite him.

  “My fellow mourners,” the minister began, “though we weep today, we must teach our hearts to rejoice that an unsullied soul is safe in the bosom of Jesus.”

  Pamela shut her ear to the minister’s voice and
tried to ignore the wet chill of the day and Nazareth’s icy unfriendliness. Water trickled into the newly dug hole. She thought of the small body in the miniature coffin soon to be lowered into it. The poor child.

  She glanced from under her lashes at Nazareth. To her surprise he was staring past her, his eyes dry of tears and narrowed with hatred. She turned and was astonished, yet unbelievably relieved at what she saw.

  Muffled in a black cloak, Selena climbed the path toward them. She had no umbrella and the wind had blown her hair loose, so that it swirled wildly about her black bonnet. Her face pale with grief, a mother’s grief, she might have been an angel coming to gather up her child’s soul.

  She did not stand next to Pamela but stayed back, apart from them all. Pamela eyed her nervously, dividing her attention between the minister and Selena.

  There was a stir on Nazareth’s side of the grave, of people, his few friends, whispering to one another. If only W.W. could be here, Pamela thought. He’d knew how to handle any unpleasantness before it started.

  Now the men were lowering the coffin. The white blossoms Nazareth had placed on it spilled into the muck as the box tilted, their sweet smell rising from the grave. Nazareth’s face twisted. He glared across at Selena. He seemed, to Pamela, almost joyful, but it was the maddened joy of contemplated revenge.

  “Whore!” he hissed. Hands pulled at him, led him away.

  Pamela started toward Selena. Before she could reach her, Selena crumpled face down into the mud.

  “I’m not sure you should be up,” Pamela said two days later.

  “I haven’t time to waste in bed if I’m to be of any help.” Nevertheless Selena huddled in one of the overstuffed chairs looking pinched and miserable. “You may still have a fever.” “Oh, mother, I’m not planning to die young.”

  “I know what W.W. would say,” Pamela told her. “He would quote Shelley: ‘The good die first, and they whose hearts are dry as summer dust burn to the socket.’’

  Selena sighed. “I’m afraid King Sutton puts the lie to that one. He wasn’t a good man.”

  Pamela paid her no attention. “Well, at least it wasn’t the cholera you had. Thank God the epidemic seems to be diminishing. There’ve been no new cases.”

  Selena looked at her. “You haven’t mentioned King since Danny O’Lee sent us word of his death this afternoon. And mother, I know you and King were . . .”

  “We won’t speak of him, if you don’t mind, Selena. He was dead to me long before that bullet ever was fired.”

  The knocker banged against the front door. “That must be Danny now,” Pamela said.

  Maria appeared in the archway. “Mr. O’Lee,” she said in her accented English. “And a ...” She paused, casting a quick glance behind her. In her confusion she lapsed into Spanish. “Senor Jed.”

  Pamela blinked, then moved forward, smiling to greet the men.

  “Ah, you’re still as lovely as the dawn,” Danny told her.

  “Sunset is more appropriate these days,” Pamela said wryly. “I am getting on, you know.” She smiled at Danny. “How have you been? When we received your note we decided we would do everything we could to help free W.W.”

  “Selena,” Danny said, nodding at her politely. Selena waved her hand languidly. “Mr. O’Lee.” She smiled softly them. “Hello, Dan,” she said.

  He grinned at her.

  “How have you been, Jed?” Pamela asked. “Are you getting along all right? I didn’t think when King—Mr. Sutton—was shot I should have . . .”

  “Thank you all the same, missus.” The big black man bowed his head and then nodded toward Danny. “Mr. O’Lee’s been taking care of me since then,” he said.

  “Jed’s going to help us free Rhynne,” Danny said. “Now that King Sutton’s dead they’ll hang him sure if we can’t spirit him away.”

  The knocker banged again.

  “I asked Mac, Mr. McSweeney, to join us tonight,” Danny said. “If that’s all right with you.”

  “Anything that will help free W.W. is fine with me,” Pamela said.

  McSweeney seemed even less at ease in the parlor than Jed. He sat gingerly on the very edge of a wing-backed chair, turning his hat in his hands.

  “What can we do?” Pamela asked.

  “That we don’t know as yet,” Danny said. “First we want to see the lay of the land. Perhaps with your aid, Pamela. No one looks quite so respectable and innocent as when escorting a lady.”

  “Anything I can do, I shall.”

  “When the time comes, Mac and Jed will provide the muscle. I’ll be in charge of distractions, as will you, Pamela.”

  “You haven’t told me what my part will be,” Selena complained.

  “Ah, well, Selena, you will have to eliminate the greatest danger of all.”

  “And what might that be?”

  “Not what. Who. Captain Barry Fitzpatrick.”

  Chapter Twenty Six

  The trial of Wordsworth Rhynne was held at the office of the Committee of Vigilance on Battery Street a few mornings after King Sutton had died.

  Raymond Curie, brother of the owner of the Californian, described meeting Sutton at Bidwell’s Saloon several days before the shooting. Sutton, Curie said, claimed he had lost a considerable sum of money in Rhynne’s Golconda mining scheme.

  Jacques Chavalier, a waiter at Pierre’s, told of the angry exchange between the two men the evening before the shooting. Wordsworth Rhynne, he said, threatened Sutton in a loud and abusive manner.

  Floyd McGregor testified that he was at the desk in the lobby of the Fremont when he heard what sounded like a shot. Going upstairs, he found King Sutton on the floor of his room, mortally wounded. A few minutes later the defendant, Rhynne, appeared from the next room with a derringer in his hand. Rhynne had fled by the time McGregor returned to Sutton’s rooms after sending for a physician,

  Dr. Warner Phillips stated that he was the first physician to treat King Sutton. “The wound appeared to have severed an artery below the clavicle,” he said. “The patient lingered almost four days before succumbing.”

  “Did Kingman Sutton recover consciousness?” William Coleman asked.

  “Only once to my knowledge and then he was but semi-conscious.”

  “Did he speak?”

  “Yes, he did. He repeated a name several times.”

  Coleman seemed surprised. “And that name was?”

  “Betsy,” Dr. Phillips said. “From a later examination of his effects it was determined that Betsy Summers Sutton of Athens, Georgia, was his wife.”

  Coleman nodded. “Death was a direct result of the bullet wound in Sutton’s chest?”

  “Yes.”

  Captain Barry Fitzpatrick described attempts to find Rhynne after the shooting. “His quarters were searched, the Golden Empire, all the places he was known to frequent. He wasn’t to be found.”

  “And where was he apprehended?”

  “On the Long Wharf boarding a riverboat for Sacramento.” “How was Mr. Rhynne dressed?”

  “As a woman. He wore a black dress, a large hat, and a black veil.” Barry did not mention Levi Strauss, who had been warned by the Committee and released.

  “Not exactly what you would describe as the attire of an innocent man going about his business, was it, captain?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Was a derringer found on the suspect?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Had the gun been fired recently?”

  “Yes. In my opinion sometime in the two days prior to Mr. Rhynne’s apprehension.”

  Wordsworth Rhynne testified in his own behalf. He admitted he had quarreled with Sutton, denied a role in the mining scheme other than as an investor, and described finding King on the floor of his parlor at the Fremont.

  “I pursued someone to the alley at the rear of the hotel,” Rhynne said. “I fired at him but he escaped.”

  “A man?”

  “I couldn’t be sure although, yes, I believe it was a
man.”

  “When you first came upon Mr. Sutton, had anything on his person or in the room been disturbed?”

  “His opal ring was missing.”

  “That ring has not been recovered,” Coleman told the fifteen men who had been chosen to sit as the jury. “I suggest,” he said, turning to Rhynne, “that you took the ring to make the crime appear to be a robbery. That’s the truth of the matter, isn’t it?” “No.” Rhynne rose from his chair and faced the jury. “I did not kill King Sutton,” he said emphasizing each word. “I had no reason to kill him, no profit to gain by his death. Do you kill a man who owes you money? Of course not. The reverse is more likely to be the case. If you hang me, and I know you fully intend to, an innocent man’s blood will be on your hands.” He looked at each juror in turn. “On all your hands.”

  He sat down amidst silence.

  At eleven o’clock the jury began its deliberations and reached a verdict at eleven-twenty.

  “We find Wordsworth Rhynne guilty of murder,” the chairman said.

  The men gathered in the Committee rooms cheered.

  “The punishment?”

  “He’s to be hanged tomorrow at sunrise.”

  Shortly after one o’clock, Danny O’Lee and Pamela joined the throng gathered in front of the Argonaut. It was an orderly crowd, men for the most part. They stared at the beached ship with avid curiosity, little different from the crowds that gather at the scene of a particularly brutal murder or to view the charred remains of a fire. They talked quietly, recounting details of the shooting of King Sutton and the trial and naming the Vigilantes who came and went past the guard at the foot of the ramp leading to the ship.

  “There’s Fitzpatrick,” Danny said, nodding toward the Argonaut’s rail. When Pamela saw Barry look in their direction, she quickly turned her head away. After Barry had once more disappeared inside the ship’s cabin, Danny and Pamela walked to the far side of the dirt street where they could talk without being overheard.