Free California Woman (Daughters of the Whirlwind Book 1) by Daniel Knapp Page B

breast.
    Mosby sat where he was, watching.
Aroused, he licked his lips involuntarily. "You was any stronger, I'd take
some of that myself." She glared at him, and he laughed. "Got a
temper, do you?"
    She ignored him and finished nursing,
then held her hand to the infant's forehead. "He's feverish. Sick. We've
got to leave tomorrow morning!"
    "I told you we would, didn't
I?"
    "Do we have to double back?"
    He smiled, then looked away. "Can't
just leave them poor rich folks out there to die without lookin' a bit for 'em,
now can we?"
    She started to argue with him but held
back the words. He was the only hope for John Alexander's survival.
    "You
sleep now. You're gonna have to be as strong as you can be in the
mornin'."
    She hated him for loading the Indian's
horse with pelts as well as herself and the baby. It would slow them down. She
knew that much, dazed and disoriented as she still was. But she said nothing.
She knew also there was very little chance they would find even tracks, let along
any of the snowshoers. She was right. By noon they had gone miles north and
west, the horses slowly pumping their legs up and down in the snow above the
buried crust. There was no sign of anything human. The only thing that kept her
from utter despair was the thought of the three days' provisions Mosby had
packed in his saddlebag. She began to pray.
    "They're goners," Mosby said,
reining his horse southward. "They set out for Sutter's with
Stanton?"
    "Yes. By way of Bear Valley."
    Mosby shook his head. "Jesus Christ!
We're halfway south from there to French Meadows. They're so far off the mark
they don't stand a chance. Well, maybe we'll still run into 'em."
    All that day the horses plodded
southward. They camped for the night in a shelter Mosby and the silent Indian
made from cut pine-boughs and a covering layer of hand-packed snow. John
Alexander opened his eyes only twice when she nursed him that evening. She knew
he was getting weaker by the hour.
    "You skinny or fat under that
dress?" Mosby asked after they had settled in under the fur pelts.
    She looked away. "I think you would
call me slender."
    "Skinny,
huh? Well, you sure got beautiful teats."
    Apprehensive as she was that he might
come near her during the night, she slept as she never had in her life. In the
morning, she felt as though the cold, dry air had almost restored her. But
there was a frightening dullness in John Alexander's eyes as she took him to
her breast again.
    A bulge in the long tail of the snowstorm
that had been raging just to the west and north since Christmas Day hit them
about noon. Leaning into the howling wind, their faces covered except for their
eyes, they bent forward as the lathered horses shivered, snorted vapor, and
worked through the increasingly higher drifts. At four in the afternoon,
Mosby's mount slipped, stumbled, then lost its footing entirely on a rock ledge
over a steep ravine. Thrown uphill, Mosby landed face down in the snow to their
left. Elizabeth watched, horrified, as his horse went over the edge, whinnying
in terror, bounced off a boulder, kept fall ing, hit again, and slid down to the bottom.
Within minutes the animal's legs stopped kicking spasmodically, and the falling
snow began covering it up.
    "Son... of... a... bitch!"
Mosby shouted. He glowered at the Indian. "Don't just stand there gapin',
Seeswash! We got work to do plenty."
    Huddled in the lee of a giant fir, she
watched them build a three-sided wall of packed snow to screen out the wind.
Then they lined the wall with pine branches torn from surrounding trees.
Mosby's strength frightened her. When he and the Indian had roofed the walls
and covered the snow floor with additional boughs, they crawled inside and
huddled together for warmth. The Indian built a fire just inside the entrance
with flint and stone he carried in a belt pouch. Only when he came back and sat
down did she realize all the provisions had gone down the ravine with Mosby's
horse.
    She fell asleep just after