No Eye Can See (42 page)

Zane planned to give Suzanne time. Let her flounder with those women and discover what she'd given up in refusing his offer. Yes, he'd give them time. Both of them, he thought as he rode south toward the Middle-town camps, then west, and finally ending up northwest at Greasy's camp. He expected to hear the sounds of working boys, picks and shovels, and shouts. But the diversion dam had not been set in Whiskey Creek that ran through Mad Mule Canyon. And no one stood in the water shoveling ore into the Long Tom sluice box.

A sliver of smoke came up through the chimney of the shack, so someone was there. Zane eased off his horse a distance from the cabin. The door stood partially open. Stupid Greasy. The Indian brats had probably outwitted him.

Inside, Greasy lay sprawled on the floor. A gash at his head bled, forming a pool beneath it. “Help me?” He coughed.

Zane stared, looked around. No gold stashed. The boys had been smart enough to take that after they took Greasy on.

“Whend it happen?” Zane asked.

“Not long. You. Catch ‘em.” The man's beak nose looked broken, his face already bruised. “Help. Me?”

Zane reached over him, pulled a bottle of whisky and set it beside him. Greasy reached for his pant leg, and Zane moved quickly back. No sense getting blood on his suit.

The ankle irons might hold those boys back,
he thought as he spurred his horse. Those and the weight of the ore they carried. He picked up their trail, slipping and sliding, so close to the thickness of the timber, then through it. He noticed handprints clutching at rocks, bare feet gouging the earth. They couldn't be far ahead. Branches still moved from their passing, and he thought he caught a glimpse of one or two. Tendrils of long black hair hung on low branches.

Zane zigzagged the horse up the side of the gulch, crossing over their tracks, once or twice picking up where one split off from the others. The footprints he followed sank in deep—they'd be carrying the ore. Not much loss, the boys. The war fever against them would tend to them soon enough anyway, so Zane had no fear of complaints if they turned up wounded. Or worse. They couldn't even bring a charge against him. But he wanted his gold. He had earned it.

He rode now, just below the top of a ridge, through manzanita with its glossy leaves, around large boulders bulged out from streaks of red and sandy earth. Once, he thought he lost the trail, but then he found it again, and this time it worked its way down over the side of the hill, and then something from the corner caught his eye.

They'd dropped the ore pack. Must have decided their lives were worth more than the gold. Zane smiled, rode over to the spot on the steep side-hill where the canvas lay. He dismounted, scanned the area, then lifted the sack, securing it behind his saddle. The horse stomped, twisted its head back to bite at a fly. Zane wiped his brow of sweat with the back of his arm. Something moved in the distance.

Another rider, headed out of the ravine, up and over the next ridge. Zane eased himself over to his saddle bag, moved slowly, got out the telescoping glass. A single rider. Where had he come from? He scanned the horizon, moved his gaze down through the trees to the base of the ridge. He stopped when he saw the cabin hidden among the pines. A small open space of green spread out from it toward a fast-moving stream. He moved the glass. He saw a woman and a child.

The woman looked up then, stood staring in his direction. She put her hand at her forehead to block the sun, and he thought perhaps there'd been a reflection from his brass. He quickly pulled it from his eye, but not before he recognized who she was.

His breathing sounded raspy, his thoughts clanging as he rode back to Greasy's cabin. He found the man dead. Inconvenient. He considered digging a hole in the gravel and dragging the body to it. Instead, he set the structure on fire.

A new focus twisted with the old one, as he watched the flames. The shack burned hot and fast, leaving little but ashes to drift across the gravel bar.

July came on dry and hot. There'd been no rain since April except for a sprinkle in June. The temperature had risen along with tempers as Shasta sprouted tendrils of streets and alleys, no letup in sight with rich new diggings being uncovered. Main Street resurrected itself. Running east and west like a trough between the hillsides dotted with shanties and cabins rose buildings of sturdy red bricks and heavy lead doors and shutters, no one allowing fire to ravage the “Queen City of the North” again. On the side streets, the smell of fresh-cut lumber and sawdust tickled the nose. Seth's anticipation of four or five bookstores looked to come true before long. Two already lined the new, widened street. A third was planned. Farther down, but on the main road toward the coast, the route Tipton and Nehemiah had taken from town, rose Chinese quarters, Koon Chong's store, his competition—Quong Sing and Company—and simple houses facing west. Their presence made it easier for Shasta housekeepers to buy their imported fish and oil and nuts, and easier for Mazy's mother to fetch the Chinese candies she'd come to love.

Right down the street rose up Charles's Mercantile financed in part
by his mother's mules. Mazy heard them arguing with packers over supplies one morning when she delivered the milk tins to Washingtons Market. She could hear Adora screeching from the covered walk.

“You brought me more Dutch ovens? I ordered three-legged spiders. What about the Lovers Eyes? By the time you get here with them, the fad'll be over. People will paint their own eye for a locket. And what about that piano?” she said to the packers back as he unloosed diamond hitches to unload his tired mules. “We ordered that first thing, didn't you, Charles?”

“I left that to you, Mother. My gout.

She halted and looked at him, eyes soft. “Your gout. Only old people are supposed to get that,” she said. “My poor baby. I'll check the orders. See if its there. It isn't something I'd be likely to forget, though, a piano coming in. You bring those bolts of cloth?” She was back at the packer. “And maple candies? I'm tired of Hong Kong getting all the market for sweets. You take better care of those Chinese than you do your American customers. Oh, hello, Mazy. I didn't see you there.”

“I've got to get my foot up, Mother.” Charles walked on his heel, limping in a way Mazy thought exaggerated.

“You should ride out to Mazy's and wait until one of her cows makes a pie. Stick your foot in it while it's still hot. That works,” she said. “For gout. Elizabeth told me. Doesn't it, Mazy?” she said as she fast-walked after her son inside the store. “Charles?”

Mazy shook her head. The last thing she wanted was Charles Wilson putting his feet in a cow pie while she was anywhere around.

She had enough chaos in her life. Much as she planned, nothing seemed to happen easily. She milked her cows—but Mavis would stick her tail in the bucket, ruining a day's work. One morning, Jennifer got into clover next to the creek and bloated. It had taken her and Jason and Jessie as well to get the cow up, put a stick to hold her mouth open, then yank her neck tight toward her back, trying to release the gas. They'd walked her then, for more than an hour while Mazy frantically read in
Jeremy's old cow books to see if there was anything more they could do.
If all ehefaih, seek the highest point of the bloat on the left side. With a butcher's knife, puncture the cows stomach at the top to release the gas. The cow may not survive this procedure.
One of Lura's sharpened knives had done the deed, and Jennifer survived. But now Mazy had to clean the wound daily to prevent infection. Always something to break up her plans.

One day she'd churned the butter for placing into new wooden molds. But the cart for hauling the milk broke, spilling white gold into the thirsty dirt. She planned, all right. But she must not be doing something essential or she wouldn't be having so many problems.

“If I do things right, if I plan them out and work hard, then they should work. And if they don't, it must be my fault,” Mazy told Ruth one day as her friend arrived home from her new job as a lithographer.

Ruth was thoughtful, then said, “If you tell yourself you've made a mistake or done something stupid every time something happens, you'll soon be afraid to do anything, won't you? I would be.”

Ruth pulled seven-inch hatpins from her wide-brimmed hat and placed it on a hook. “I can hardly wait to get out of this corset,” she said.

Mazy still found it strange to see Ruth wearing a skirt and going off to work.

“Maybe God's telling me to make a new plan,” Mazy said. “I just haven't been listening.”

“Do you have need of Sarah?” Ruth asked Elizabeth. “She's a good little worker.”

Elizabeth motioned Sarah away from the tent front she called the Popover Bakery where she'd been kneading bread and Strudels since the fire. “We grownups just need some time to talk here. Why don't you see what Ernest is up to? His saddle shop is almost rebuilt. My bakery is next for boards.”

“I see what you're doing, Ruth,” Elizabeth said when the child was out of earshot “It's hard enough to see Ned off with Suzanne and Lura on their ‘entertainment circuit.’ You've got Jason and Jessie working with Mazy. Just seems like you, young woman, are walking on a crooked road. ‘Course Luras traveling there, too, and she's old enough to know better. No helping her see different, though. But you—”

“Please,” Ruth said. “Mazy's already said I'm asking for more trouble than a barrel full of snakes. But this is best. The lithograph work isn't so bad. I can put up with Sam Dosh's tirades, too. For the children's sake. Besides, everyone says Ned has a voice like an angel. He promises to bring his weight in gold dust come winter, if their touring is successful. He'll see some of California, too.”

“That's a reason to deprive yourself of him? For the money?”

“One look at California prices should answer that. But no, it isn't for the money I let him go. Suzanne can nurture his music. I can't. And you can teach Sarah to bake. I can't. And Jason and Jessie, well, Mazy's got a way with tough little kids. I don't.”

“You sell yourself short, I'll ponder. Seem to me—”

Ruth held her hand up to stop Elizabeth's next thought.

“The Popover'll be inside a building before long,” Elizabeth conceded, allowing herself to consider Ruth's request. “Out of this cooking tent. Not a brick building, mind you, but we ain't on the main street, either. The Strudels and pretzels'll lure them in. Sarah could run errands.” She turned her hands over, followed the palm lines with one finger. “These're better, but sometimes they still tingle and ache. I guess I could use another pair of hands even though it worries me, Ruth, that Sarah'll be serving me instead of you. I have to say, Ruthie, seeing you in a skirt with them feathers in your head and seven-inch hatpins stead of your whip makes me wonder what your running is really taking you to, or if you're standing still.”

Essential.
Mazy's husband Jeremy had used that word often as he gazed over the top of his round glasses, frequently sending a withering look his wife's way. Scorn might have better described it. Or disgust. Oh, Jeremy would smile that lazy smile of his, even run his hands through her tousle of auburn hair and call her “his pine of sturdy stock.” Now with a year since his death, it was his looks of disgust that kept more gentle memories distant.