Crimson Palace (17 page)

She swept the floor clean. No Lincoln.

The coffee was ready. Where was he?!

And then she saw the note lying on the table. She stood there staring at it. He had covered nearly every bit of the blank areas on the paper with neatly written words, far more words then would be necessary if he had simply gone off hunting. At least she supposed they were words, because to her the writing looked like nothing more than squiggly lines.

She sat down at the table, picked up the paper and stared at it. Would could it mean? If only she could make out what those lines and swirls were saying! At last she burst into tears of frustration. It was too much. It just wasn’t fair!

Well, she would just have to wait. Surely Lincoln would return soon and she would just have to admit to him that she couldn’t read and ask him what he had written. He would understand. He wouldn’t love her any the less because she was ignorant, would he?

The hours crept by. She thought of preparing herself something to eat, but the idea of food turned her stomach. No, she would wait until he returned. He would be hungry. She would wait for him. Surely he would come through that door any minute now.

But where could he have gone? Why would he leave her alone like this? Time and again she looked at his note, filled with frustration and rage at herself that she was unable to read his words. Right there on that sheet of paper was the answer to his strange behavior, but there was no way she could solve the mystery.

Night fell, and still she waited. Darkness crept into the room. She didn’t bother to light the kerosene lamp. The flickering light from the fireplace cast dancing shadows in the room. She waited.

Finally, curled up in a blanket before the fire, she dozed off, only to wake with a start an hour later.

What was that noise? Were those his footstep on the porch? But as she came fully awake she realized it was only a dream. She had only heard what she wanted to hear. He still wasn’t there. She was still alone.

She awoke in the morning to total silence. The fire was nearly dead. She knew he was gone and wasn’t coming back. She didn’t even wonder why anymore. She had stopped thinking.

Gathering together her few possessions, she turned to walk out the door. As she passed the table where they had spent so many hours happily planning their future, here eyes rested once again on the letter.

Should she take it with her? She could have it read to her.

She lifted the thin sheet from the table, uncertain. Then, in one decisive move she crumpled it into a ball and threw it with sudden fury into the dying embers in the fireplace. She may have been fool enough to have believed his lies, but she would be damned if she would sit and listen to his casual words of dismissal from some stranger’s lips. At least she could spare herself that humiliation.

The crumpled page curled in the heat of the glowing embers as she closed the door behind her.

Chapter 12

A chilling wind struck her full in the face as she struggled to saddle her horse, but, thankfully, the sky was clear with no threat of another snowfall soon. Though frigid air burrowed quickly into her bones, she knew that no mere wind could cause the chill that had settled in her soul.

The trail back down the mountain was treacherous with huge drifts of snow at nearly every turn, the threat of avalanche constant. She traveled slowly, carefully leading her horses.

She knew she should be frightened to travel such a dangerous trail alone, but was relieved that the task demanded her full attention. There would be time enough for her to think about what had happened in the cabin, but she couldn’t face those thoughts just yet. She didn’t dare remember the hours she had spent planning her future with Lincoln, nor those special moments when they had lain together before the blazing fire.

Her heart nearly broke when she thought of how his hauntingly dark eyes danced with pleasure when she beat him at a hand of cards, and how they had smoldered with desire the night she had slowly undressed before him, not allowing him to touch her until she stood before him completely nude.

The sound of her laughter echoed in her memory when she remembered how he had growled with animal passion as he had reached for that night.

What had gone wrong? Why had he left? Had he planned it this way all along?

Stop it! Don’t do this, she scolded herself, knowing that if she kept up that line of thinking she might never make it to safety.

It took most of the day to reach her cabin outside of Downieville, arriving just as the early winter twilight settled over the mountains. Light snowflakes swirled around her. Before morning arrived all traces of her path would be covered. She prayed it would be a light snowfall so that she could continue on with her escape.

As she entered the cabin her first instinct was to light the stove as quickly as possible. But then she thought of the trail of smoke that might alert a passer-by of her presence. Remote as that chance might be, she decided she had better not risk it. She prayed that, in the gloom of the evening, no one would see her horses as they peacefully munch hay in the nearby meadow.

She bundled herself in blankets and prepared to wait until she felt it safe to leave. Several hours passed with frigid air creeping into the tiny cabin, reaching to the very depths of her. She huddled within the blankets, so painfully chilled that her mind ignored the iciness of her heart as the hours crept slowly by.

Finally, deciding that it must be past midnight, she gathered together what was left of her courage and left the cabin for the last time.

Her frozen fingers struggled clumsily with the straps on the horses’ tack as she forced herself to do the work that was necessary to get her far away from this place and all the memories it held.

Although the going was slow on the snow covered trail several wagons had passed over it since the last snowstorm, enabling her to guide her mount along the ruts the wheels had dug. She trudged relentlessly on, down the winding road, past darkened miner’s shacks.

To her right, down the steep incline of the mountain, she could hear the Yuba River tumbling over boulders. Up on the hill and to her right she saw the darkened outlines of Downieville’s outlying buildings.

Her heart raced with a mixture of emotions as she prepared to steal through the town unnoticed. Fear threatened to overwhelm her as she crept silently along the road, praying that no one would hear the slight squeak of the horses' leather binds, or the gentle clop of their hooves on the snow covered road.

If asked, she couldn’t have said which she was more terrified of, being found by the men who had molested her in the saloon or having to face a mocking Lincoln Bradley. Did he laugh with those same men as he told them stories of their lovemaking, she wondered? Did he joke about how easy she had been fooled into thinking he loved her? How easily she had returned his imitation love? Did he describe in humiliating detail the secret intimacies they had shared?

For a moment she thought she would become physically ill with the shame of it all. How could she have been so easily fooled? Hadn’t she always known that no man could be trusted?

A dog came running from behind a house, barking furiously in the still night. Panic stabbed her like a knife, paralyzing her with fear. But before she could take flight, she heard a voice from within the house shouting an obscenity at the animal, silencing it immediately. The shaggy animal contented itself by running wildly back and forth behind the wooden fence.

She reached the bridge which crossed over the forks of the river. It was from this very bridge that Jaunita had been hung not so very many years before. Remembering the story of the young Mexican dancer, she was suddenly filled with empathy for the hapless girl. This place was too hard on unprotected women. How cruel men could be to the more vulnerable sex. And physical cruelty was not always the most painful, she thought, her heart aching.

She left the bridge behind her and turned left at the crossroad. Relief swept through her as she realized that within minutes she would be out of the town and on her way to Placerville at last. Back to Sofie and Alex. Back to the only two people in the world she knew she could trust.

***

As Shinonn approached Placerville she began to sense that something was wrong. She noted a different atmosphere in the air as she passed one abandoned miner’s cabin after another. When she had left the town, the area had been crawling with placer miners. Now there were only a handful working their claims.

Had this whole area been panned out already? Although it was an old story in the mine fields, Shinonn had somehow expected Placerville to survive. A big, bustling town, it had always seemed more substantial than most of the other mining camps.

As she entered the town itself, her worst fears began to materialize. Building after building was boarded up. Only occasionally did she see a business that was still in operation.

Her heart began to race with apprehension. Would Alex and Sofie still be here? If they had left, what would she do? Where could she go? Her mind had never allowed her to think past finding her two friends.

She began to look frantically about for the bordello. She knew they would have replaced the tent with a wooden structure long ago, so in order to find them she would have to remember exactly where Sofie had purchased her lot. At last she was certain she had found the right building, but like so many others, it too was abandoned.

As soon as Sofie’s bordello came into view Shinonn knew they were gone. It had that look of neglect which engulfs buildings within days after having been abandoned. Trash lay heaped in piles on the porch where the wind had carelessly blown it. A dirty grit covered the windows. One of the windows on the second floor had been broken and a tattered curtain gently billowed through the hole in the pane.

Shinonn approached the building slowly, taking in each sad detail. She climbed the steps slowly and tried the door. To her surprise it wasn’t locked. But then, why would Sofie have bothered to lock it if she didn’t plan on returning someday? The unlocked door sent a clear message to Shinonn, her friends had no intention of ever returning to Placerville.

She looked around the room. There was little left to testify to the fact that once it had been full of life. A couple of bottles lay where they had been carelessly tossed. A broken chair rested on its side near the stairs.

Curiosity took her up the stairs and into each of the bedrooms. She went from room to room, searching in her heart for some answer to her dilemma. Where could she go? What was she to do? She had never felt so alone in her life.

Finally, realizing that the abandoned structure held no answers for her, she stepped out to the chilled winter day. She stood for a moment at the top of the steps, her hands shoved deep into her pockets.

She turned and looked at the house one last time, trying to imagine what it had been like when Sofie, Alex and the girls had all been there. She could almost hear the sound of laughter, the plinking of the tinny piano, the clink of glass touching glass. Lost in her thoughts, she didn’t hear the old man as he approached from across the road.

"You won’t find no girls there, sonny. They all took off to Virginny City."

Shinonn was startled not only by the man’s sudden appearance, but also by the fact that he obviously thought she was a young man. She realized immediately that her experience with Lincoln had completely erased any possibility that she could continue with her foolish deception. She would never think of herself in a masculine sense again.

"Virginia City? Isn’t that way over in Nevada? Why would they want to go there? Don’t tell me Placerville has been played out."

"Well, ain’t you full of questions!" he cackled with an old man’s laugh. "Guess you ain’t been around here long."

"No, I just got here. Came down from the Northern diggings."

"Well, I guess you might say Virginny City is the one and only true bonanza. Why, they got more gold there than anyone has ever seen before, plus they got even more silver than gold. It’s the biggest strike of the century. Maybe the biggest ever.

"Why, just about everyone hereabouts pulled up stakes and headed across the mountain months ago.

The onliest ones that stayed are us that are too old to make it over the grade and some of the merchants who stayed here to supply those that went.

"There’s a lot of money to be made here in old Dry Diggings, but it ain’t by digging in the dirt no more.

No siree, now the way to make a bundle is to bring in the supplies that gold and silver bonanza will be needing. I hear it ain’t much more than a desert out there in Nevady, so’s most everything they need has to be brought in from the outside."

"Do you know for sure that Sofie and her girls went out to Virginia City?"

"That they did. Bundled up everything in the place, even that dad burned piany and headed out. Hated to seem ‘em go, I can tell you that. Sofie’s Place was the best cat house in town."

"Thanks a lot, old timer. I guess I’ll be heading out there myself as soon as I get a good night’s sleep."

"You won’t be heading anywhere for awhile if you want to get there alive. The pass over the mountain is piled high with snow. Onliest one who can make it through is Snowshoe Thompson, and if you ask me, I think he’s a might tetched in the head to go through all that jest to deliver mail."

"Maybe this Mr. Thompson would take me along. I’ve used snowshoes some myself."

"I’d say you got just about no chance at all of convincing that big Norwegian of letting you tag along.

He’s a loner, that one. Course, you could ask him. Nothing says a feller cain’t ask. You’ll probably find him over at the post office. I hear tell he’s leaving in the morning."

Shinonn thanked the old man and turned back toward the post office she had passed on her way into town. As she climbed the steps to the building she noticed two strange looking objects leaning against the wall, next to the entrance. They were made of wood and were at least ten feet long. The tips at one end of each of the boards came to a point and were slightly bent upward. Leather straps had been attached to the middle of each board.