No Eye Can See (56 page)

He landed on rocks while his own horse stumbled, then smashed a hoof onto Zane's throbbing foot. Pain seared through him, worse than at the prison, worse than any whippings he'd taken. Zane yelped as the horse slowly slid his hoof off. Through the throbbing, burning pain, Zane saw that his treasures were gone.

He could barely move, the pain in his foot an outrage. He cut the rope to the dead horse and caught the reins of his own still wild-eyed animal. He tried to stand, couldn't. The horse half-dragged him, hopping on one leg, toward the bank. He dropped to the ground, his foot throbbing, then cut off his boot. Even before he saw the torn flesh, he knew his foot was crushed. He cursed them. Hawk for challenging him, for spooking the mare as they ran, for forcing him off, for his own horse stomping his foot. He cursed the girl Jessie for his rotten toe, Suzanne for resisting him and disappearing, David Taylor for interfering. And Ruth. Dear Ruth, for causing it all. She would pay. She would have to pay.

His body shook now, from the cold of the water and the pain. He
still hung to the reins of his horse. He needed to put his foot back in the cold creek to stop the swelling. When he could, he would pull himself onto the horse and ride out. He would find a doctor. He heard his own breathing, that sucking sound through his teeth. He'd been damaged, all because of her!

“You led me here, Ruth!” he shouted to the rocks. “You led me to this place! You owe me!”

Even in the cold, he was sweating. Fever. Infection. Blood poisoning. His mind raced. He looked again at his foot, the slightest touch shooting pain up his leg. The arch where the horse stomped it, already bruised purple around an open wound with shattered bone showing through. And the toe, the one Jessie had struck with the rock—it oozed yellow and green. A red mark moved up to the throbbing arch already. See! There it was! Even if he did find a doctor, he knew: his foot would have to come off. Ruth. She'd stolen his foot.

“I see I've already upset you.” McCracken sighed. “Mrs. Bacon. Let me begin at the beginning, shall I?” Mazy nodded. “Your husband,” he said, “lived most of his life in England, coming to this continent in the early 1840s.”

“He told me. He came to Wisconsin in the migration of ’48.”

“Well then he has told you in some error. He did not come to Wisconsin directly from England and he did not come in ‘48. It was the fall of’49 I believe when he arrived in Wisconsin.” He checked papers on his desk. “Yes. ‘49. But he grew up in England and came with his wife to Missouri several years after his marriage in”—he looked again at the notes—”1833. He was twenty years old at the time and had—”

“Wait.” Mazy held her hand up. “Let me figure this.” She thought, then said, “That can't be correct. He would have been only seventeen in 1833. He was just sixteen years my senior, not nineteen.”

Josh McCracken gazed at her then, a look that held sweet sympathy; patience pooled there too. He lowered his voice, a father now talking to a daughter, not a lawyer talking to a wounded wife. “This must be dreadful for you. Let me just tell you what I know from the brothers figures and the documentation he's provided. Perhaps then we can piece it all together with what you know. See how we can go from there.”

Mazy nodded, clasped her hands, wished she'd brought her writing book with her for taking notes, or had asked Seth for his set. She asked the elderly lawyer for paper and a pencil which, when McCracken handed them to her, provided her something solid to hang on to. She gripped the pencil, but her eyes never left McCracken's face.

“He came to California not long after the claim at Sutters mill.” He looked up. “His brother, Sinclair, at the time worked with him in Fort Vancouver and learned of the great need for a dairy industry in central and northern California as the frenzy for gold brought more and more people west. They'd both worked in the dairy barns at the fort—they were quite extensive, so I'm told. The plan apparently was for your husband to travel first to California and see what he could confirm, and if all went well, to then head east, acquire good dairy stock, bring them west. His brother planned to follow here, to California. Sacramento.

“Now then. Your husband, whose name was not Jeremy Bacon when he left here, apparently had an eye—”

“That wasn't his name?” She knew her mouth was open, and she snapped it shut.

“In due time, Mrs. Bacon. As I was saying, your husband had an eye for fast money and for…” He looked up at her and said, “Ah, never mind.” He turned back to his pages, his fingers lifting the long parchment pieces, flipping them until he appeared to find what he wanted. “Upon arriving in California, he was apparently hit upon by the gold craze—it happened to many a good man—and he staked a claim. He'd brought his boy with him, and after some small gain was made, he
supposedly came to his senses as far as his commitment to his brother was concerned. He notified Sinclair that he was heading east and urged him to come south, bring his wife and child, gather up the boy still working the claim, and he would meet them in Sacramento by the fall of ’51.”

“He left his son?”

“The plan was for only a short time—we can assume. But the brother was delayed in Vancouver. A family matter, I believe, his wife's illness.” He perused his notes. “No, an accident, leaving the girl as a ward of McLoughlin, the former Chief Factor at Vancouver, and his Indian wife.”

Mazy was rubbing her temple, still gripping the pencil.

“He abandoned his son?”

“The boy was fifteen, Mrs. Bacon.”

“Fifteen? But…”

“A number of lads younger than that have staked claims and done well on their own. I doubt your husband would be found neglectful for that, though unsympathetic, perhaps. One can assume he asked for someone to look in on the boy until the uncle was expected. Hopefully he advised his son of that fact. That would have been essential to have him remain. Still, if he didn't… that might explain the difficulty his uncle had in locating—”

“If he was fifteen in ‘49…”

“Yes?”

“I was only sixteen then,” she whispered. “He had a son just a year younger than me?
Has
a son a year younger?”

“That I do not know, not being certain of your age. I do know that your husband became injured in Milwaukee, sometime in late ‘49 or early ‘50. I believe that was when you might have met him?”

She nodded. “My father was a doctor. We had a small surgery in our home. Patients sometimes remained until their recovery Jeremy did. I married him in April of 1850.”

“Aha.”

“But why didn't he leave then to come back?”

“The advance originally given him to make the proper investments was depleted, apparently when he purchased a farm in…yes, here it is, in Grant County, Wisconsin.”

“That was his uncle's farm. A gift to him.”

“Apparently not.” McCracken slid the paper onto a growing pile, read at the top from another. “He did however notify his brother of his…delay, and after rather heated correspondence, I should imagine, over the next two years, he sold the farm, bought the cows and bull and headed west to do what he'd originally agreed to. By then, California was desperately growing and in need of active dairies. Of course, now your husband had the complication of a wife to whom he'd given an assumed name.”

“Why?”

“I'm sure he did not plan to die on the way here. I suspect he assumed you would never know of his first wife or the children. When did you say your anniversary was?”

“April second, 1850.”

“That might explain it.” He looked up from the page, down into her eyes. “Your husband may not have known he was a widower when he married you. Your marriage would have been illegal, obviously, a small matter if he intended never to come back. And of course, that does present problems for this…settlement as well.”

“But then he did decide to go home. Maybe to see the two children he'd left?” Mazy blinked back tears she knew were spilling onto her cheeks, knowing she wasn't following everything McCracken said, but clinging to a quality of goodness she desperately wanted to see in the man she had chosen to marry. “Why didn't he tell me? After she was dead? He knew, yes?”

McCracken nodded. “We can assume, but we don't know.”

“He lost a wife, never saw his son and daughter again, and I believed he had a good heart. What happened?”

“It takes a remarkable man to stay secure, or may I say ‘true,’ to
what he's about when all around him people appear to be falling into riches, gambling big and coming out bigger. There is a sense that only a fool would keep to the tried and true, a steady course of making do day-to-day, providing for ones family, meeting commitments and obligations despite the sacrifice. The daily drudge of milking, or shoeing horses, or putting up hay, even the law, if seen as a distraction to easy wealth, has made many a man—and woman—do things they later regretted. No one can see ahead how it'll all come out, and keeping a clear eye has never been easy, Mrs. Bacon. Without a clear vision, dreams are easily converted into entrapments. And your husband had an eye for taking risks or he never would have come to America, and would likely not have gone into business with his brother as he did.”

She sat, trying to find her own still place, breathing prayers to help her understand what she was hearing, to draw the best conclusions, not judge too quickly.

“He left a wife and two children. What would he have done with me when we arrived?” She felt the tears spilling over. “Was he even coming here at all or heading to Vancouver?”

McCracken reached into a side drawer of his heavy desk and from it pulled a clean and perfumed handkerchief. Mazy took it, thanked him, thinking as she did that lawyers must have need of tending to such office essentials.

“Please continue.”

“Yes. Well then. So you see, the money from the sale of the farm you had near Cassville, the money that went into the purchase of the cows and the bull, that is money that is not, ah, rightfully yours.”

“Not the cows. Nor the bull.”

“Not completely so, no.”

Something in his tone told her negotiation space existed. “But surely part of the stock and proceeds should be considered mine, as part of my husband's estate. And he also had funds from my father's house, placed in Jeremy's name—because my father thought my husband
would be a better manager than my mother.” She laughed with no joy. “My father intended for any proceeds to be used for her welfare.”

“Not unusual for a husband to secure his estate in that way.”

“Some of the money Jeremy left, after he died, has to be my mothers.”

Josh McCracken leaned back, as though reassessing. His fingertips formed a tent below his nose. “But the cattle, they do not belong to you.”

“Half does. I've read somewhere that here in California, a wife can keep half the profits from a business made with her husband, even while they're married, and sue him if he refuses to give it.”

McCracken flattened his forearms on the desk, his palms on the table. “It has been known to happen,” he said, “but there is the question of the legality of your marriage.”

“I have the cows,” she said.

“Possession is important,” he said. “And the bull?”

“The bull I sent with stock belonging to other survivors of the cholera epidemic, more cows and horses, too. It has just recently arrived.” She stood now, taking in a deep breath of air, sure of what she wanted. “I propose this, to get us past this place,” she said. “Jeremy's brother, Sinclair, may take ownership of the cow brute as his half of the estate. If he comes to get him. And the cows I'll keep for my part in successfully bringing them west. Sinclair would have nothing if I hadn't done my part. And now he at least has the hope of a bull. I'll assume the remaining cash my husband carried belonged to my mother.” She stood. “Here are the papers for the registration on the bull. A signed bill of sale.” She opened the envelope that lay heavy in her lap. “If Sinclair accepts, I'll not press further for all of it, what I believe I could rightfully claim—Sinclair's word against mine the only evidence. Why, I might even charge that the Jeremy you speak of is not his brother at all. They didn't have the same names, as you said.”

McCracken stood then. He was nodding, rubbing at his chin. He'd stepped away from the window, and Mazy could see he wasn't an old
man. But those eyes had seen sorrow enough to give them depth. She marveled that she could have this conversation and sound so firm while her hands sweated, her heart pounded, and tears of Jeremy's betrayal pressed against her nose. She fumbled with the papers, found them, handed them to him. She felt stronger with his nodding, his agreeing that what she said was fair. Lighter, that was what she felt.

“One more thing.” She pressed at her nose with the perfumed silk, picked up her purse, handed him back his paper and pad. “If you agree to tell me who and where the children are, I will give them half of their fathers estate. They are, after all, his only heirs.”

“You had no children?”

She shook her head. “Almost. But for my mother, those two children are my only family now.”

Josh McCracken allowed a lifting of his lips, enough she thought it might be a smile. His eyes crinkled at the corners. “Sinclair will have to accept the bull, but it is the more expensive item, and its true, your work and time to bring them west need compensation. I was asked to handle this matter to my best judgment. I'll confer with him, and any papers you need to sign I can send to you by mail. As for the children…” He looked back down on the paper. “The girls name is Grace. She is in Oregon City. The boy, he'd be nineteen or so, we have not located. Perhaps he's deceased as well. Or taken his own gamble and followed a dream. It's possible he's still near the claim, though his uncle didn't find him. You might. Mad Mule Canyon is near your home in Shasta. His name,” he said then, “is David Benjamin Taylor.”