Like a River Glorious
Page 63

“I need to talk to someone soon,” I add. “I’m trying to figure out a way to . . . help.” To kill my own uncle, is what I don’t say.
“Don’t be stupid,” she snaps. “You could ruin everything for me.”
“For the Maidu, you mean.”
“Them too.”
We are silent a long moment, and her back is still to me when she says, “Thanksgiving. Everything will be ready by then.”
It’s a great comfort to confirm that they have been busy planning. “That’s less than two weeks,” I say.
“Muskrat’s people won’t last any longer than that.”
“I see.” How many more bodies have they pulled from the stockade since the day I saw it? “What can I do?”
Mary finishes the dishes. “Tonight. Look to your window.” And she walks out the door.
I do my duty. I tidy up the cabin after Mary leaves, then meet Wilhelm outside. I offer him a few leftover biscuits, which he gulps down so fast I almost miss it. Together we visit the mine, and I’ve no advice to give except to keep going in the same direction. Abel Topper practically falls all over himself to be polite to me, and I allow him to waste my time in a useless, boring conversation about weather and statehood and our upcoming thanksgiving celebration, because it wastes his time and keeps his attention away from the working Indians.
Wilhelm escorts me back to the cabin, and I turn to him before going inside.
“Why do you work for my uncle?”
His face is stony, which is exactly the response I expected.
“He’s a bad man, Wilhelm. Maybe the worst person I know. Well, I suppose it’s a toss-up between him and Frank Dilley. Did you know that Dilley once offered to shoot my friend in the head just because his leg got busted?”
Wilhelm’s blue eyes narrow.
“That was your laudanum he forced into me, wasn’t it?” A guess, but a good one. I’ve seen pain flash across his face occasionally, the way his step hitches once in a while. Something bad happened to this man, maybe the same thing that took his voice.
He gives me a single curt nod, which is so unexpected I almost take a step back.
“That’s expensive stuff, isn’t it?” I press on. “I wonder how much it cost you, to hand over so much of it.”
His perpetual scowl deepens.
“You’re a bad man, too, Wilhelm. And maybe you think you’re not, because you only do what others order you to do. Maybe you’re in a prison, like me.”
Wilhelm’s eyes rove my face, and I’m not sure what he’s looking for. He might have been a fine-looking man once, before that scar slashed across his face.
“I suppose I could be wrong about that,” I tell him. “Maybe you’re not doing anything you don’t want to do. Maybe you like kidnapping innocent people and enslaving them.”
A muscle in his jaw twitches.
“I guess it doesn’t matter. Whether you love what you do, or you just don’t have the gumption to do the right thing—either way, you’re a bad man.”
I turn my back on him and go inside.
Hiram has returned already, and he sits at his writing desk as usual.
“Uncle Hiram?” I say.
He continues to make careful loops with his pen. “I’m not your uncle.”
He’s not my father, either. His story about Mama doesn’t set right, in a way that makes me not want to think about it too much. But even if it were true, there was more than just blood between Reuben Westfall and me. He raised me, taught me, loved me.
“Well, that was a lot of knowledge to dump on a girl all at once,” I say in a perfectly reasonable voice. “It’s going to take me some time to get used to it all.”
When did I become such a lying, manipulative Delilah? When did I become like him?
He turns in his seat to face me, and a soft smile graces his lips. “I understand, sweet pea. What can I do for you?”
“I was wondering if I could borrow some paper and a pen.”
“For what purpose?”
For talking to someone through the window tonight. “There are folks back home I’d love to write to,” I say brightly. “Judge Smith and his family, to let them know I arrived safely in California.”
His eyes narrow. I suspect he doesn’t care for judges unless he owns them.
“Mama and I used to write our correspondence together once a week. She always said a proper girl ought to have beautiful penmanship. I practiced by writing letters to Annabelle Smith, and she’d write to me. We exchanged them at school.”
It’s another rotten lie, mostly, on a whole heap of rotten lies I’ve been telling lately. Mama loved her lettering, sure, and she always kept pretty stationery on hand. But I never gave a rat’s eyeball for handwriting.
Which might be a problem. If Hiram sees my awful penmanship, he might suspect I’m pulling his leg, so I add, “To be honest, my penmanship is terrible. But I was getting better at it! And I just . . . well, I suppose I miss it.”
He considers, tapping the end of his pen to his top lip. “It’s true that all the fine young ladies I knew in Milledgeville were accomplished in the art of correspondence,” he says.
I hold my breath.
“And at the Christmas ball in Sacramento, I expect you will establish some female connections, which you will wish to properly maintain.”
“I reckon so.”
“You must promise to show me your letters before sealing them,” he says.
Blast. “Of course.”
“In that case, I will be glad to share my stationery with you. I’m planning a trip to Sacramento right after Thanksgiving. I can take your letters and post them for you.”
“That would be wonderful. Thank you.”
“Would you like to get started right now?” he asks. A shy, hopeful smile graces his lips. “We could . . . write together. Like you and Elizabeth used to.”
Caught in my own trap. Now I’ll have to pretend to write letters to people I pretend to care about. Annabelle Smith feels so far away and part of such a different world that I don’t know if we’d recognize each other in the street. I suppose I’d write to Jim Boisclair if I could. But I have no idea where he is. I last saw him in Independence, before he headed west for California. I’d surely love to run into him someday, though I know my chances are small, this being such a huge territory.