Gold (17 page)

Holding her skirts in one hand, Selena ran down the steps and past the pack mules. She
stood in the road and kept staring up at the girl.
Sutton followed her from the porch, stopping a
few feet behind her.

“
I know you,” Selena said to the girl.

The girl turned her head away.

“You’re Esperanza. Esperanza de la Torre.”

The girl said nothing.

“Last year,” Selena went on, “your brother
Diego brought me to your
rancho.
We talked.
You told me you wanted twelve children, three
boys and nine girls.”

When the girl remained mute, Selena swung
around to Sutton. “How does she come to be here
with you?” she demanded.

Sutton shrugged.
“I found her wandering about
Sacramento like a stray cat. I fed her and she followed me. She never speaks so I don’t know
how she came to be there. Followed some miner
to the diggings only to have him die or else
desert her. At least that’s what I suspect.”

“
Is she
...
?” Selena eyed him quizzically.

“
Not what you might think. She cooks for us.
Nothing more. Why, she’s only a child.”
“If she is Esperanza, she’s sixteen.”

“
That old? I would have said fourteen at the
most.”

Selena turned to the girl.
“Esperanza,” she
said, “I’ll come to see you. If you need me, if you
ever need me, you are to come here to the hotel.”

For the first time the girl
’s dark eyes looked
up, sliding across Selena’s face and away.

“
I don’t think she understands English,” Sut
ton said.

“
She does. She understands. She’s been hurt,
can’t you see that? Terribly hurt. Don’t ever do
anything to harm her. Will you promise me that?”

“
I’d promise you anything in the world, Miss
Selena,” Sutton said.

“
This is important. Don’t flirt with me. Answer
me.”

“
I promise, Selena.”

She nodded once, then ran to the porch, up the steps and through the open door into the
hotel.

Sutton swung into the saddle.

“I’ll wager we’ll see more of you,” Rhynne said.

“
With your instincts, you’d make a passable
gambler,” Sutton told him. He stood in the stirrups and, like a troop commander signaling an
attack, waved his entourage forward.

After Sutton was gone and Horobin had hitched
his wagon and driven west toward Sacramento,
Rhynne returned to his room. He studied the row
of books on the shelf above his cot, finally taking
down two copies of Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads.
He leafed through one of the slim volumes, paus
ing time and again to read a well-remembered
passage, now smiling to himself, now shaking his head in wonder.

Then he took the books and ripped off the
covers. Starting from the front, he peeled the
pages free one by one until they lay in two piles
on the desk.

He opened the desk drawer and rummaged in
side until he found a pair of scissors. With them
he cut each page of one of the books across the
middle. Using the pen on the desk he numbered
each of these half-pages, once on the lefthand
margin and again, with the same number, on the right, beginning with “1” and stopping only after
he reached “100.”

Again he took the scissors and cut the half-
pages, this time down the center, keeping the two
stacks separate. He repeated the process for the
second book except he didn’t number the pages.
He put each of the four stacks of several pages in
its own envelope, numbering them 1, 2, 3, and 4,
sealed the envelopes and placed them at the rear
of his desk drawer.

Rhynne descended the stairs, went outside, and
into the store. Pamela was using her counter
scales to weigh gold dust for two miners. When
she saw Rhynne, she nodded to him, and after the
miners left she hurried across the room to where
he waited.

“
When, W.W.?” she asked. “When?”

“
Perhaps tomorrow.”

“
Don’t you know for sure? I can’t wait much longer.”

“
Come to my room tomorrow night at ten.”

“
To your room? You know I can’t do that. I
won’t.”

“
Do you want the laudanum?”

“
You know I do.”

“
Tomorrow night, Pamela,” he said, turning on his heel.

“
Rhynne,” she called after him,

He didn
’t answer.

The next morning Rhynne forced himself to get
out of bed at six. After shaving and putting on his
oldest trousers, he left the hotel through the back
door and headed for the storage shed a hundred
feet away.

He closed the shed door behind him. The win
dowless building was dark and musty, forcing him
to light a lamp. The four boards from Griswold’s leaned against the wall where Abe had put them. Rhynne laid one of the boards across two saw-
horses, sawing it into foot-and-a-half lengths. By
the time he had cut up all four boards, he had to
pause to wipe his face with a handkerchief.

He stood up, stretching, then began nailing the boards together. Before nailing the final two, he
notched them. When he finished he examined his
work: a box a foot-and-a-half to a side, completely
enclosed and nailed shut. On one side of the box
the two notches met to form a slot three inches
long and a half-inch wide. Rhynne nodded to him
self. His work was crude but he was satisfied.

He built a second box, identical in every way to
the first. Placing the two side by side on a work
bench, he studied them. Again he nodded.

With a shovel, he struck the side of one of the
boxes, leaving an ugly indentation. With the same
shovel he struck the other box in the same spot.
Again he examined the result. Although the scars
on the wood weren’t precisely the same, they were
close enough.

No one was about when he carried the first box
into the saloon and placed it on the counter be
hind the bar. He returned for the second box and
took it to his room where he shoved it far beneath
his cot.

Once he made his donation to the Reverend
Colton’s church, Rhynne told himself, he could
begin.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“He was like someone out of the Bible,” Selena told her mother. “Like Moses leading the Israelites
into the Promised Land.”

“
A Moses on horseback? Leading two slaves
and a Mexican girl?”

“
It was the way he looked. The flowing hair touched with grey. His face was stern yet under
neath he’s a kind and gentle man. I could tell. And
he’s suffered a great loss in his life. A tragedy of
some kind. How else would he get those lines in
his face?”

“
I think aging might have something to do
with it.”

“
He wasn’t that old. You didn’t see him, did
you?”

“
No. I was working in the store at the time.”

“
I’m going to help you clerk all the rest of the
day,” Selena said.
The two women were walking
beside the road leading from their cabin, where
they had just eaten their noon meal, to the Em
pire.

“
You’re positive this girl with him was Esper
anza? You couldn’t be mistaken?”

“
It was Esperanza de la Torre. Even though I only met her once, I’ll never forget her. She was
so alive, so positive about what she would do
when she grew up and married. She’s changed.”
Selena put her hand to her breast. “There’s been
some terrible tragedy in her life too, something so
shocking it’s made her into a different person.”

“
Selena, you’re being melodramatic. The fact
is that Mexican women age young.”

“
She’s only sixteen, mother.”

“
I wonder where her brother is.”

“
Diego’s probably in Sonora by now. You
sound as though you’re afraid of him.”

“
I don’t trust him. And he does have reason to
hate us. He thinks I misled him, you’ll remember.
And he knows you rejected him.”

“
You don’t trust Diego. You don’t trust
Rhynne. Whom do you trust?”

“
Robert Gowdy, for one.”

“
Though you don’t really like him. As a man. Is
there any man you do like? Besides that brash
Irish boy who brought you the flowers?”

“
You mean Danny O’Lee.”

“
Or whatever his name is.”

“
Selena, you were cruel to him. I was ashamed
of you for the way you treated him.”

“
Oh, mother, I was ashamed of myself for sing
ing that song. Afterward, not at the time, because
I was getting even with him. Still I shouldn’t have
done it that way. You don’t realize how I feel
when I’m on that stage. When I’m singing, I feel
I can do no wrong. That whatever whim I have is
right merely because it’s mine.”

Pamela sighed.
“I don’t understand you any
more, Selena.”

“
But later, after I made sport of Danny O’Lee,
I felt sorry for him. I wanted to comfort him. Like
a mother would, I suppose. Don’t you ever feel that way about Danny? He is the right age to be your son.”

Pamela stopped and looked at Selena.

“Did I say something wrong, mother?”

“
No, of course not. When you’re thirty-eight as
I am, you won’t want to be reminded of your age
either. As for Danny O’Lee, yes, I suspect I do feel like mothering him at times. He’s a likable
lad. You should apologize to him, Selena.”

“
Perhaps I will. Someday.” They walked for a
time in silence. “Are you feeling better, mother?”
Selena asked. “At times I believe you are and then
I wonder.”

“
I have a great deal on my mind. Money
for one thing, paying back our loan from Mr.
Rhynne. Some other troubles with Mr. Rhynne
for another. And my sickness.”

“
If anybody has something on their mind, it’s
W.W. I’ve never seen him as distracted as he’s
been this last week. I’m positive he’s plotting a coup of some kind.”

“
Mr. Rhynne is always planning a coup. Just
like a man—he’s never satisfied. Give him a shill
ing, he’ll want a pound, give him a pound, he
wants two.” She paused. “Did he burn Varner’s,
Selena?”

“
I—I don’t know. I think he did. I’m not sure.”

“
From the way you acted after the fire, I was
convinced you knew he did.”

They saw a burly black-bearded man running
toward the Empire from the opposite direction. He
leaped up the steps, threw open the door and dis
appeared inside.

“
Could someone have struck it rich?” Selena
asked.

“
Look, he’s coming out again. Who is he?”

“
Pike, he calls himself. He’s new in town. I’ve only seen him once or twice. He’s a braggart.”