Forgiven Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter ONE - November 27, 1905

  Chapter TWO - November 28, 1905

  Chapter THREE - November 28, 1905

  Chapter FOUR - November 1905—March 1906

  Chapter FIVE - March 24, 1906

  Chapter SIX - March 25–28, 1906

  Chapter SEVEN - March 28, 1906

  Chapter EIGHT - March 28, 1906

  Chapter NINE - March 28, 1906

  Chapter TEN - March 28, 1906

  Chapter ELEVEN - March 28, 1906

  Chapter TWELVE - March 28, 1906

  Chapter THIRTEEN - April 3, 1906

  Chapter FOURTEEN - April 3, 1906

  Chapter FIFTEEN - April 3, 1906

  Chapter SIXTEEN - April 3–4, 1906

  Chapter SEVENTEEN - April 4, 1906

  Chapter EIGHTEEN - April 4, 1906

  Chapter NINETEEN - April 5, 1906

  Chapter TWENTY - April 6, 1906

  Chapter TWENTY-ONE - April 9, 1906

  Chapter TWENTY-TWO - April 12, 1906

  Chapter TWENTY-THREE - April 12, 1906

  Chapter TWENTY-FOUR - April 13, 1906

  Chapter TWENTY-FIVE - April 14, 1906

  Chapter TWENTY-SIX - April 15, 1906

  Chapter TWENTY-SEVEN - April 16, 1906

  Chapter TWENTY-EIGHT - April 16, 1906

  Chapter TWENTY- NINE - April 16, 1906

  Chapter THIRTY - April 17, 1906

  Chapter THIRTY-ONE - April 18, 1906

  Chapter THIRTY-TWO - April 18, 1906

  Chapter THIRTY-THREE - April 19–22, 1906

  Chapter THIRTY- FOUR - April 22, 1906

  Chapter THIRTY-FIVE - April 22, 1906

  Chapter THIRTY- SIX - April 22, 1906

  Chapter THIRTY- SEVEN - April–May 1906

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Acknowledgements

  Teaser chapter

  AN OUTSIDER

  “Some people don’t think well of a Chinese man consorting with a non-Chinese lady,” David said.

  I straightened, hearing him refer to me as a lady. My hands and fingers worked and fretted as I gripped my reticule. I knew all about it, I wanted to say. All about that skin that didn’t quite fit. “Maybe they were talking about me. About how I look.” I’d heard the name-calling. Heard the references to the blood that flowed in my veins. “Maybe they weren’t talking about you at all. It might have been about me.”

  “If they talked about your looks, it’d be because you’re so pretty.” His cheeks went dark, and he stared at his feet. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to blurt that out. It was supposed to be a compliment.”

  And I lost words. He stood there, this kind young man who had just saved me, his hands thrust into his jacket pockets, thick dark hair slicked back, his dark eyes lifting to mine and then dropping away in shy retreat . . . I didn’t know what to think. He was sweet and nice-looking, no doubt about it; he lit up some feeling deep in my heart.

  Kula Baker keeps her wits about her. Kula Baker does not go soft over a young man.

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  Published by Speak, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2011

  Copyright © Janet Fox, 2011

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  For Jeff and Kevin, with all my love,

  and for Leda, with deepest thanks

  PROLOGUE

  JANUS, THE ROMAN GOD OF GATES AND BEGINNINGS wore two faces.

  The Spanish named San Francisco for a saint. The Celestials met their Demons on its streets. Called Golden Mountain by those in the Middle Kingdom, it perched precarious on a cracking plate. Children’s sad eyes pleaded in the stench and filth of its tight alleys, where hawk-nosed men slithered and the unwary were shanghaied. San Francisco’s gilded halls and palatial homes held wealth beyond dreams. For some, it was a prison. For some, it was release.

  I went to San Francisco to uncover secrets locked tight in its man-made canyons. But the earth shuddered and heaved and unleashed a consuming storm, and I saw its walls leveled. I saw what dissolves in a shivering fire and how that fire purifies. I witnessed how gates tumble and life begins new from ash. I found what is important, and what is too easily lost.

  I discovered in that Janus place the secrets locked inside my own divided heart.

  Chapter ONE

  November 27, 1905

  “Whether I shall turn out to be

  the hero of my own life, or whether

  that station will be held by anybody else,

  these pages must show.”

  —David Copperfield, Charles Dickens, 1850

  WITH ONE SHAKY HAND I RAISED THAT BRANCH, AN INCH only. I quaked like an aspen leaf in a tricky breeze. Not from the cold, though there was that. But from the fear.

  “Come on out, girl.” The voice of this intruder with the evil snaky eyes rang through the clearing, bell-like in the frost morning.

  I eased back deeper into the tangle of chokecherry. Snake-eyes had his back to me, and I fixed my own eyes on the ripped edges at the bottom of his pants leg, watching those frayed threads as the knitted branches that hid me sliced up his form. If I could crawl back silent, if I could just belly back far enough here, if I could get on my feet again, could get enough ground between us so he couldn’t shoot me, I could outrun him. Because when I had to, I could outrun a deer.

  “I ain’t gonna hurt you, now.”

  Liar. The bruise on my upper arm spoke to that lie. The bruise where he’d grabbed me, surprised me, and I’d twisted around and whanged him good with that fry pan, giving myself just enough time to scrabble into the thicket where I hid now, my stomach on the frozen ground.

  I wished I’d nailed him harder and less glancing and laid him flat. I’d be clear to the safety of the fort at Mammoth Hot Springs by now if I could’ve kept on moving.

  Snake-eyes grunted as he rubbed at what must’ve been an egg-size lump forming where my whale of a swing with the pan had connected with his shoulder. He moved to the left, shoving the barrel of his rifle into the brush barely five feet from where I lay trying to make myself smaller, invisible. “You come out now, it’ll go easier for you. I’m gonna find you, one way or the other.”

  Come back, Pa. I whispered the plea in my brain, begged. I sent that plea out over the trees and snow-dusted hilltops. I couldn
’t hide here forever.

  Snake-eyes moved away from me, and I took that as an opening. I could ease back a little bit more, just catlike . . .

  Snap.

  Snake-eyes whirled, came at me so fast I didn’t have time to get farther than my knees. He reached into the thicket and had me by the hair and he yanked.

  Kula Baker doesn’t scream.

  “I got you now, you sorry little . . .”

  My feet jabbed on the hard ground and slid on the snow patches, as my hands went up for my scalp, where he pulled on my braid so hard I thought he might snap my neck. He jerked me back into the clearing while my feet fought for purchase and found none, and then he threw me toward the fire ring at the center, where the fire smoked and sputtered.

  I landed hard on my knees, the winter soil like bare rock. I thanked the good Lord and my pa for those thick denim overalls I’d borrowed, as I rocked forward onto my hands. The pan, my only weapon, lay too far away.

  “Now I will ask you nicelike and you will answer.” Snake-eyes cradled his rifle with the barrel pointing in my general direction. “I want something I ’spect to find in this camp. Something of Nat Baker’s.”

  Nat Baker: Pa. “Then you ask Mr. Baker himself, why don’t you?” I braced my palms on my thighs, trying to coil back, trying to be ready, trying to ignore the smarting pain where more bruises were forming and where I’d surely lost some hair from my scalp.

  “I’m asking you.” He leaned forward, his lips curled in a sneer. “If you run, girl, I’ll plug you.” He straightened again. “There’s a box. About as big as a badger. Has a brass clasp and a lock. Now, you tell me if you’ve seen this box.”

  Box? What box?

  Kula Baker can keep a stony face.

  “Spill it, girlie. You seen it, or ain’t you?”

  If I told Snake-eyes the truth, he’d plug me. If I lied and he believed my lie, I might stand a chance of escape.

  I lied. “I’ve seen it. If I tell you where, you’ll let me go?”

  He snorted. “Once I have it, I’ll let you go.”

  “Fine, then. It’s about so big, right?” I made a shape about as big as a badger with my hands. “Baker hides it in Cookie’s tent. Underneath the flour sacks.”

  “Stand up.” He waved his gun at me.

  I stood, wobbly, as if the ground beneath me quaked, and then with all my strength pulled my muscles together, ready.

  Snake-eyes looked me up and down. “Thought you was just a girl. You more like a woman.”

  He stepped closer. I stepped back.

  I clenched my hands into fists, gave him the slit-eye look, but, oh. Pa, hear me. You must come back. My plea went up into the crystal sky, curling like smoke and vanishing.

  As far as I knew Pa and the men would be off for hours. Who knew where they were—I never truly knew where Pa and his gang went. Never needed to. Saving myself now was all up to me. I could smell Snake-eyes’s sour breath from here, the stench of his filthy clothes. My stomach knotted.

  But I pointed with a steady arm. “It’s over there. Hadn’t you better go get it if you want it so?”

  “You surprised me once, girlie. I ain’t turning my back on you again. You lead me the way to that box.”

  I stepped farther away, glancing sidewise to keep my footing; the last thing I wanted was to fall now. I knew what happened to a prey animal once it fell. I moved toward Cookie’s tent and calculated my options.

  They were not good. I decided I would just as soon die with a bullet in my back as enter Cookie’s tent with Snake-eyes. Inside that tent I’d be as vulnerable as a fox in a leghold; and I hated closed-in spaces. I figured then I was done for. My skin prickled with sweat even though my blood ran cold. I sent up a last prayer to the sapphire sky; I had no hope for it.

  To hear it answered was something of a shock.

  Snake-eyes heard it, too, the drumming of hooves as Pa and the men returned to camp. He cursed and spat and reached for me fast, but I was faster.

  I spun away and ran as hard as I could in the direction of the hoofbeats. I expected that bullet in my back at any second, but it didn’t come, and I figured old Snake-eyes was more bent on saving his own skin than on shooting me.

  I ran out of the clearing, through the ring of trees, and met the men on the hillside as they came near to the camp.

  Pa, riding at the front, saw me coming, and he slowed. I threw my arm toward the camp. “Stranger, Pa! In the camp! He . . .”

  I had no need to finish. Pa read the rest in my face. He alone could read me like a book. His jaw set, and he reached down and took my arm and swung me up behind him in one swift move.

  Snake-eyes was on his way, spurring his horse in the opposite direction, already crossing the Yellowstone, the water rising around him like blasts from a geyser.

  Gus leveled his rifle. But Pa said, “No.”

  “You sure, Nat? It’s a clear shot.”

  “Kula?” Pa asked.

  Snake-eyes scurried up the slope, kicking that gelding’s belly for all he was worth. “He didn’t hurt me,” I said. I knew my pa had never killed a man. Never. Had never let any of his men kill anyone. All those years living as outlaws, hiding out in the woods, robbing trains, stagecoaches, my father as the head of his gang had made sure they’d done no killing. I didn’t want this to happen now on my account. “Don’t, Gus.”

  “Let him go,” Pa said to Gus. And to me, “What happened?”

  “He was looking for something.” I didn’t say how scared I’d been; I didn’t need to. Pa could surely feel my thumping heart.

  And Kula Baker doesn’t speak of fear.

  The rest of the men dispersed ahead of us into the camp. Pa spurred his horse. When we reached the picket rope, Pa helped me slide off before he dismounted and faced me. “What’d he say he was looking for?”

  “He wanted a box, about this big. I had no idea what he was talking about.”

  “He didn’t hurt you?”

  I touched my scalp, still burning. Anyone else, I’d lie, say, “No.” But I couldn’t lie to Pa. “He grabbed me by the hair. Bruised my arm some. And my knees.”

  Pa touched my head, all gentle, but his jaw was set so I could see his teeth.

  “But I gave him one heck of a whack on the shoulder.”

  Cookie, bent over by the fire, retrieved his fry pan from the dust and wiped it clean with his bandana. Pa brought this on me, had practically invited Snake-eyes here seeking a box the gang had likely stolen. I was tired of this life, sneaking, thieving, hiding. I wanted Pa out of it. To leave and take me with him. But I had to approach it sidewise. I dropped my voice. “What box was he looking for, Pa?”

  “Can’t truly say.” He had his back to me as he lifted the saddle and let the mare off to graze. He chewed his lip as his hands finished working through the rest of the tack. “But this settles it. I should’ve seen this coming, you being of age and all. Strangers take one look at you . . . Kula. It’s time for you to be off.”

  I scurried behind as Pa walked away from the camp to the line of trees. “So it’s time for what you’ve been promising me? You’ll quit. We’ll go off together, you and me.”

  Pa lifted his chin toward the snow-covered mountain peaks. Here in the valley snow cast a thin blanket, too, but russet patches of bare ground showed where the chinook winds of the past week had blown through and warmed things a little. The sky was the same color as Pa’s eyes.

  I waited. What I wanted, more than anything, was a yes. Leave, Pa, yes. Come with me, Pa. Help me get up in the world. I held my breath, hoping.

  “I can’t go yet. There’s one more job I’ve got to do. I can’t leave here until after the new year.”

  And hope crashed. “What job, Pa? It’s time you quit. You promised me.”

  “Don’t try to tell me what to do, girl.”

  Only one person in the world was as stubborn as me, and that was my pa. But my recent fright set my tongue loose. “You said when I turned seventeen, we’d go. I
want to be out in the world. I want to move up in the world.”

  “You will be out. I’m sending you out. This is no fit place for a grown girl.”

  No fit place for a grown girl—I wasn’t sure what it meant to be a grown girl, with no one to teach me the ropes. Times like these were when I missed my ma the most. A girl needed her mother, and I’d never known mine. Now if Pa sent me away, I’d really be alone in the wide world. “You can come with me. Leave this place and let’s both go.”

  “Not yet. Not for me. You’ll have to make do.”

  “But not without you!”

  “I can’t go yet. I won’t say it again.”

  Pa’s final word. And another broken promise. My cheeks burned, and I stabbed the toe of my boot at a lump of dirty snow. “But without you, how am I supposed to make do?”

  He pursed his lips and raised his hand to lift his hat and scratch up his hair. Snatches of gray ran through it, like the rivers of old snow that dressed the distant slopes. He looked older than his years. “I’ve been thinking about that. I’ve been thinking about that for a while, and this business makes me see that I was right for thinking ahead. I took the liberty of writing a letter to Mrs. Gale a month ago. You remember her.”

  “I remember the cleaning and the washing and the mending.” I also remembered Mrs. Gale as kindly, but I wasn’t about to say so. She had treated me well when I was employed by Maggie even before we knew about our connection, Maggie’s and mine. I’d admired Mrs. Gale for her pluck as she came and went through the park in summers, where she took modest rooms and worked hard as a photographer for the Haynes Studios, but I wasn’t about to say any of this to my pa. My words came out all grumbly. “I remember the work, all right.”

  He raised his hand to silence me. “I sent her back her rings.” His mouth twisted a bit. “Kept those rings all this time, instead of selling them. Anyhow, I returned them to her a few months back as a token.”