Crimson Palace (8 page)

"But they seemed so determined. I was sure they would try to scalp us all in our sleep."

"They’ve been watching us for quite a spell, boy. They know we’re strong and would give them more of a fight than they’re of a mind to bargain for. They won’t be bothering us again."

As they left behind the gently rolling foothills of the Rockies, fears of an Indian attack were replaced with new worries. Each day the track grew more difficult - more dangerous. The hours were filled with the back breaking work of hauling heavily loaded wagons up seemingly impossible trails, over passes only the scouts could have found in the rugged wilderness of mountains.

The struggle tested each and every member of the train. Every ounce of energy was needed from morning’s earliest light until the train was bedded down for the night. Shinonn could only wonder how long they could all hold out under the grueling strain, but like the others, she rarely spoke her thoughts.

Better to toil without complaint than to force her own troubles onto others. She was young and strong; how, she wondered, could the older women work so hard without complaint?

***

Shinonn awoke to a gray day, a heavy mist of rain soaking through her blankets and clothes. She groaned as she climbed out of the sodden blankets and stumbled towards the Carter’s campfire.

"It looks like we’ll have our work cut out for us today, Tim." Horace Carter sat hunched under a dripping poncho, cupping his hands around a steaming cup of coffee. "Here, better get some of this in you. As miserable as you are now, I’ll venture to say that this may be the best part of the day."

Horace’s prediction proved to be more than correct. The heavy, misty rain not only soaked everyone’s clothing and the canvas covering of the wagons, it also sank deeply into the thirsty earth. As the day wore on and the rain continued, the trail became mired in thick, sticky mud.

Climbing the mountains, already a tedious and dangerous chore, became a nightmare. Wagon wheels, clogged with mud, bogged down and had to be dug out of by hand. Oxen pulled as they had never pulled before, advancing a few feet, only to slide backwards by several yards.

Horace walked alongside the lead oxen, pulling, guiding and cajoling each step of the way. While Etta stayed inside the wagon with the baby, Shinonn sat atop the driver’s seat, leather reins in hand. It took all of her strength to manage the strong and patient beasts.

Suddenly, with a sick twisting in her guts, Shinonn felt the earth beneath the wagon shift. At the moment she felt the track slipping away, she grabbed a tighter hold on the reins with one hand and whipped at the oxen with her other with all her might. She rose from her seat, standing in a semi-crouch, as if her weight and strength of will would pull them all to safety. Just as she was certain the wagon would roll, the oxen gave a mighty heave and they were just as suddenly on solid ground again.

But the wagon directly behind the Carter’s was not so lucky. Caught in the middle of the mud slide, there was nothing that could be done to stop it from being rushed over the side of the mountain and into the ravine below.

Horace led his team to a safe place and then he and Shinonn joined the others as they all scrambled over the side of the embankment in a feverish rush to rescue the stricken Miller family. Although climbing down the slippery mountain was treacherous, all thought of personal safety seemed to evaporate as they rushed to rescue their fellow travelers. Each time they passed an item which had been thrown from the wagon in its tumbling descent, they were reminded of the tragedy they were likely to find at the bottom of the ravine.

Finally they came upon the scattered ruins of the wagon and its contents. Furniture, clothes, tools and people were scattered in every direction. One oxen lay dead, its neck twisted at a crazy angle. Shinonn felt like crying when she heard the report of a gunshot as another poor creature was put out of its pain.

But the full tragedy lay beneath the rubble of the wagon and its contests. Maud Miller and the two youngest children, Sadie and David, had all been sitting together on the driver’s seat of the wagon while George Miller and the oldest boy, Adam, led the oxen from below. When the wagon rolled down the slope, the woman and young children had been crushed to death by hundreds of pounds of debris as it tumbled over them.

Although George Miller had been clear of the wagon, he suffered a broken leg as he was pulled along by the falling ox. As he struggled to gain a foothold in the mud, the huge animal crashed him against a tree, pinning him at his chest. As she listened to his labored breathing, Shinonn was sure he had suffered internal injuries as well as the broken leg.

The only member of the family left unhurt by the tragedy was ten year old Adam, who had miraculously escaped being hit by the wagon or its contents.

Ed Peterson managed to find a meadow less than a mile up the track and the train sadly made camp. It was agreed that the trail was too dangerous to attempt to continue, and if the injured man was to have any chance to heal, he must remain unmoved for a few days.

Sofie and Alex Santini insisted on taking charge of George Miller, while Etta and Horace took little Adam into their wagon. Unfortunately, there was no doctor traveling with the train, and there was scant chance of finding one soon, so Alex and Ed Peterson were forced to set George’s broken leg as best they could. His pain was so great from his chest injury that he scarcely noted the additional agony of the crudely set let.

Sofie did all she could to ease the poor man’s suffering with the only pain killer available, a poor quality whiskey, which she allowed him to have whenever he asked. As that dreadful night deepened, both George Miller and Sofie knew he would not see the coming dawn. She held him in her arms while he coughed up streams of blood.

The agony was finally over shortly past midnight. Sofie sat with his still body for a few moments, holding his hand in hers, before she crawled out of the wagon and whispered to Alex that George Miller had joined his wife and children. Then she sat upon a stool and cried silent tears while Alex cradled her head in his arms.

Chapter 6

The prayer service was brief, hardly a suitable tribute for the ill-fated Miller family, but the wagon train must resume its journey westward. They had already lost two days due to the storm and the tragic accident, they couldn’t afford the luxury of losing any more.

Shinonn was the last to turn away from the four graves. Lost in her memories, she was startled to feel the heavy weight of Horace Carter’s arm settle on her shoulders.

"I guess those graves make you think of the kin you buried before you joined up with us."

Blinking back sudden tears, she nodded mutely.

"I wish I could tell you it gets easier, son, but I won’t lie to you. Burying folks never does get easy. That is, not unless you turn into a hard man, too hard to care, and you don’t want that."

Swiping the tears away with the back of her hand, she smiled up into the caring man’s face.

"We best be on our way, Mr. Carter. We don’t want ol’ Ed Peterson bawling us out!"

A couple of days later Shinonn began to notice that the mountains were becoming easier to traverse, that the grades over the passes were not so steep. Though the change was gradual, each day it became more apparent that they would be putting the Rockies behind them soon.

Excited rumors began to circulate, "In just a few more days we’ll be at Sublette Cutoff."

"Soon we’ll be splitting up, us for Oregon, you and the misses for California." Responding to the excitement, Shinonn’s spirits soared.

Before long, everyone on the train found themselves in a seemingly endless debate. Those bound for Oregon must decide if they should risk fifty miles of grueling dessert, or take the longer, but safer route through Fort Bridge. The Sublette Cutoff offered a savings of seven full days of travel, but it was strew with the bones of oxen and cattle ravished by intense heat and lack of water. The question that must be answered was, was the shortcut worth risk?

The Oregon bound unit finally opted on the shorter, more dangerous trail. Shinonn fought tears as she said her farewells to the Carter’s and Adam Miller, knowing the dangers they faced. Though she had known the Carters a few scant months, they had come to mean so much to her. She prayed that they hadn’t made a deadly decision to take the cutoff.

A tight knot formed in her gut as she watched their wagon disappear from sight. So much could happen between here and Oregon. Maybe she should have gone with them, see them safely in Oregon, and then make her way back down to California.

But then she gave herself a mental shake. They didn’t need her. With twenty-one of the wagons from the original train heading toward Oregon, plus the continued leadership of Ed Peterson, they would be fine.

She’d do better worrying about herself instead of wasting time worrying where it wasn’t needed.

After the Oregon contingent had left, the men from the remaining wagons gathered together to choose a new wagon master. It was a short meeting, little more than a confirmation of Pete Scruggins, a well seasoned, much traveled cowboy. A couple of the men suggested minor changes to the trail laws, all of which were voted on and accepted. Then they were back on the trail to Fort Bridger, having lost less than an hour.

Several days before they reached the Sublette Cutoff, Sofie and Alex Santini had approached Shinonn about joining up with them. She accepted their offer gratefully. Oregon had no hold on her; no mystical eyes, no softly rasping voice beckoned her from there.

While she had been made to feel a part of the Carter family, more like a younger brother than a hired hand, the Santinis treated her as a friend. No longer subservient in the role of employee, or even an adopted member of the family, she enjoyed being treated as an equal. From the very beginning she felt totally at ease with both of them. She still felt that they were an unlikely wedded pair, but their uniqueness only made them more likable to her.

In the evenings, as the three sat companionably beside their fire, they discussed the lives they looked forward to in California. But when Alex spoke of working in the gold fields, Shinonn could scarcely imagine the small, urban man in such a setting.

"Maybe we could go partners in a claim, Tim," Alex suggested. "Why, between the two of us. I fathom we could make our fortunes in a couple of months if we put our minds to it."

"I can’t think of anyone I’d rather partner up with. Only, well, I haven’t exactly decided that I’m going to be prospecting. I haven’t really made up my mind just what I’m going to do when I get out west. Mostly, I just want to get there, you know what I mean?"

She hadn’t fully admitted, even to herself, that the only gold she was looking for was the gilded glint in a certain gambler’s eyes.

"Oh, he knows what you mean, all right," Sofie spoke up. "All that talk about prospecting - talk is all it is, honey. Face it, Alex, working a pick and shovel would just about kill you. From what I hear, there’s lots easier ways to make a living in the gold fields than scrabbling in the dirt."

Alex glanced at Sofie, a strange expression in his eyes. It was almost as if his eyes were warning her not to say more than she should. The look was answered by Sofie’s understanding smile. She said no more.

At Fort Bridger the wagoners replenished their supplies and traded their tired oxen for rested ones.

Besides the much needed supplies, the best part of the fort to Shinonn’s way of thinking, was the owner, Jim Bridger.

Bridger, an old mountain man, had built and stocked the fort himself. Although he was kept plenty busy maintaining his stock, he could usually be enticed into spending an evening sitting beside a campfire, entertaining his audiences with stories of his many adventures. His craggy, rough appearance added authenticity of his often wild tales.

From Fort Bridger the train headed northwest, into Utah territory. Now the dessert terrain became their enemy, and they were in constant fear of further confrontations with Indians. No one had to be reminded of the constant need for speed; all were more than aware that they must reach the Sierra Nevadas before the first snow. But more than that, they were all anxious to put the dessert behind them.

The vast solitude of the terrain drew Shinonn, Alex and Sofie even closer. They worked as a team, and at times even thought as a team. Often Shinonn found herself reaching for something to hand to Sofie before the woman asked for it. And the same was true for Alex and Shinonn. The unspoken understanding between the three became uncanny.

She came really care about the Santinis, so much so that she began to experience a terrible guilt about how she was deceiving them. What would they think of her if they ever found out she was not who she pretended to be? Would they ever be able to forgive her?

The need to clear her conscience, to tell the truth about her identity, grew to unbearable proportions. But still she held her tongue. They were weeks away from California and she needed the Santini’s protection and friendship too much to chance loosing them.

***

It was early September when the Santini wagon pulled into Placerville, California. The gold rush town was a melee of makeshift buildings strewn along a twisting, turning road that had once been a pack-mule trail. The litter of thousands of miners lay scattered haphazardly along the road. Worn out boots lay alongside broken pots and pans. Empty oyster and sardine tins shared the dirt with discarded bottles.

The widely scattered trash gave strong evidence that mining gold was all that mattered to these people.

They cared nothing for civic pride, nor any of the accouterments associated with a civilized society.

As Sofie, Alex and Shinonn trudged the length of the town, looking for a quiet meadow where they could make camp, Shinonn felt dazzled with the realization that she had finally reached the famed gold diggings she had been seeking for so very long. Her mind reeled with the reality of it all.

What was she to do now? Searching every gambling house from here to the Oregon border for Lincoln Bradley was not really practical. Maybe she should she buy a pan and shovel and begin digging. But where should she stake her claim? She had no idea what to do or where to go.