“Your father will never forgive me,” her aunt kept saying. “Oh, Maddie, I did my best. Laurel is such a sweet child. She was never noisy or messy like other children and she loved her new school. Why, oh, why did this happen to her?”
Maddie
gave her aunt a healthy dose of laudanum and went downstairs to wait. It was a long, nerve-racking day before anyone contacted her, and then a man came to see her. He kept his hat on and stood in the shadows, but she memorized every feature of his face.
He told her that she would get Laurel back if she would go to the new gold fields on the Colorado River and sing in six cities. At each of these places someone would contact her and give her a map, and she was to go to the place on the map and a man would give her a letter. She was to take the letter back to her camp, keep it, and deliver it to the next point.
“What’s in the letters?” Maddie had asked without thinking.
“None of your business,” he’d snapped. “Don’t ask no questions and your sister will be returned to you alive.”
He’d warned her more about not bringing any outsiders into this, and to keep her mouth shut. He said that if she obeyed all orders, she’d get to see her sister at the third town and keep her when she reached the sixth camp.
Maddie didn’t think any more about her planned singing tour of the eastern United States. She instructed her manager to cancel all performances. John was furious. He said she was abandoning America to Adelina Patti, that Patti would become the darling of America, and if Maddie canceled her performances, Americans would despise her.
She knew that what John said was true, but she also knew that she had no choice. She didn’t want to go west and sing for a bunch of gold miners who thought opera was “when the fat lady sang.” She had enough problems in her life without trying to sing for ruffians who didn’t want to hear her.
In the end John had done what she wanted and canceled her performances, but he’d also quit her service and sailed back to his native England. They’d been together since she was seventeen years old; he’d practically made her what she was, yet she’d lost him because of these men and their letters.
She was in a frenzy of packing and planning the trip west when General Yovington came to her. Since her arrival in America he’d been her staunchest fan, visiting her after every performance, taking her to supper, even giving her gifts now and then, a ruby here, an emerald there. She knew he’d love to make her his mistress, but she knew how to flatter men into believing she’d love to be theirs alone but she just couldn’t.
The man who came to her house that day, however, was different from the fawning, loving man who’d kissed her hand over dinner. He practically pushed into her house and told her he knew about Laurel.
To her shame, Maddie burst into tears. The general had held her for a while, then firmly set her to one side. He told her a lot that she didn’t understand. It was all about American politics, something that didn’t interest Maddie much. It had to do with slavery and whether this new territory where gold had recently been discovered would join the union as for or against slavery.
“What does this have to do with Laurel?” she’d asked, blowing her nose. “Or to do with me?”
“They need a courier, someone no one will suspect. Someone like a singer, who can travel about freely and arouse no suspicions.”
“Who needs a courier?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know whether you’re being asked to carry messages that are for or against slavery.”
“I don’t care about slavery. I’ve never owned anyone in my life, nor do I plan to. I just want my little sister back. Maybe my father—”
“No!” the general half shouted, then calmed. “These men are fanatics. They’ll kill your sister if you bring someone else in. You’d better do exactly what they say.” He took her hand in his. “But I’m going to help you.”
Three days later she found herself following the thousands of other people going west, either as settlers or seeking their fortune in the gold fields. Except that she was riding in her own stagecoach, painted bright red, and she had in her employ three of the oddest people she’d ever met. There was Frank, who looked out of his battered face with angry eyes, and Sam, who rarely spoke so you never knew what he was thinking, and Edith, who called herself Edith Honey and constantly regaled Maddie with stories about her life as a prostitute.
Both the coach and the people had been chosen for her by the general. Maddie had wanted a smaller wagon, but the general had pointed out the ruggedness of the Concord and he’d also pointed out the usefulness of the three people he’d hired, telling her in detail each person’s violent talents. At the time she’d been so eager to get started on her journey that she couldn’t have cared less who went with her.
So now she was in this wild country traveling up the side of a mountain, when just a few months before she’d been wearing satin and sleeping on a feather bed. During the day she had been surrounded by people who spoke of her trills and her cadenzas, and now she was sleeping in a tent on a hard cot, surrounded by people like Edith, who spoke of men tying her up. And men like Captain Montgomery, who crept into her tent at night and told her what she was going to do and how she was going to do it.
Thank heavens she’d been able to get rid of him! She could rather easily outwit Frank and Sam and Edith. After all, they felt like it was her business if she wanted to ride off into the woods alone and risk getting herself killed, but Maddie sensed that Captain Montgomery wouldn’t have let her do anything without his permission. She didn’t think he’d have taken calmly the announcement that she was riding off into the woods alone and she’d see him when she returned.
What if he did travel with her? What if he prevented her from meeting the man with the letters? What if he demanded to know what she was doing and why? Because Edith had been hired by General Yovington, Maddie had told her about the contents of the letters, but Edith had merely yawned. She cared even less about politics than Maddie did. But, of course, Edith usually couldn’t think past what was being served for dinner.
But Maddie sensed that Captain Montgomery was different. If he were to travel with her, he’d no doubt stick his nose into every aspect of her life. And if he found out about the letters, she had no doubt he would have an opinion of the slavery question and he wouldn’t like her to interfere with people choosing of their own free will. He’d probably do what he could to prevent her from “helping” the territory decide whether it was for or against slavery.
And it was imperative that he didn’t interfere, for if he did, Laurel would be killed. A sweet, innocent child of twelve years would die because some overzealous captain had done what he thought was “right.”
She kicked her horse forward, urging it up the steep hill. She was to meet the man in four hours.
“What d’you see?” Toby asked, lounging back on the grass, half asleep in the midday sun.
’Ring lowered the spyglass and looked off through the trees to where the woman was forcing her horse to climb a steep hill. With Toby close beside him, ’Ring had been following the woman for three days now. He’d kept his distance, never letting her know he was near. So far, she’d done nothing unusual. She’d traveled inside her coach all day, the men setting up her tent at night. She’d done nothing even very interesting, but he’d watched her so intently that it had been a day before he’d seen the other people who were following her.
At the beginning of the second day he’d seen the two men. They were heavy-footed men, not used to the mountainous terrain, and they made no attempt at concealment. For a few hours he watched them watching her, looking like vultures waiting for someone to die. As he was watching them, he saw a movement in the distance, many yards behind and above the men and, extending his glass to its full length, he saw a shape he could barely distinguish as being a man. And if he wasn’t mistaken, he was an Indian. Alone. There seemed to be no one with him. Was the Indian watching the woman or the two men who were watching the woman?