Chapter 66: More Death and a Declaration

 

Consuela survived the night after she was stabbed. The doctor stitched her up and told Mac and Ethel, “Don’t know what good my sewing will do. Knife wounds to the belly usually lead to sepsis.”

By morning Consuela moaned in pain, barely conscious. The doctor gave her laudanum. “Give her a few drops whenever she’s hurting,” he said. “No food, only liquids. Call me if she develops a fever.”

Ethel nursed her through the day, and Mac took over in the evening. He could hear the raucous sounds from the saloon below.

“Maria?” Consuela whispered.

“The Indian girl has her,” Mac said.

“I want to see her.”

“I’ll get her.”

Mac went downstairs to the kitchen and found Maria with her nurse. He motioned that he wanted the baby, and the girl handed Maria to him. She was a small but solid lump in his arms and gurgled in her sleep. He took the baby back to Consuela’s room.

Consuela reached to touch Maria’s cheek. “So sweet.” A tear ran down Consuela’s face. “Take her back to Oregon with you.”

“Oregon?”

“To your Jenny. I want a good woman to raise my child.”

Mac stiffened, pulling Maria away from her mother. “You know I told Jenny I wasn’t coming back.”

Consuela shook her head. “You were wrong. You love her.”

“We’ve been through this. I can’t. She didn’t want me.” Mac thought of Susan. She was a good woman also. “I’m thinking of marrying Susan Abbott,” he said.

Consuela closed her eyes. Mac thought she’d gone to sleep, until she whispered, “When were you happiest in life, Mac?”

“As a boy, perhaps. Summers on the shore.” Mac had a fleeting memory of laughing while he raced after his older brothers along a rocky beach. Of holding his grandfather’s hand as they traipsed to their favorite fishing hole.

“Since you’ve been grown?”

He felt the hard wood bench under him as the wagon jolted over prairie grasses. He smelled the fresh scent of pines in the mountains. Jenny sat beside him, swaying into his shoulder while they rode. “On the trip to Oregon,” he admitted.

“With Jenny.”

“Yes.” He’d been happiest with Jenny.

“Not with Susan.”

He shook his head. He didn’t know if Consuela saw him.

Consuela sighed. “Just say it, Mac. You love Jenny.”

Mac thought of Jenny smiling at the Snake River falls, her hand pulling a strand of hair out of her face. She had appeared in his dreams since he’d left her, and running away from her had driven his every action. “I loved her.”

“You love her still?”

“Yes.”

“Then take Maria and go back to Oregon.” A wistful smile fleeted across Consuela’s face. “It’s too late for me to find happiness. Unless Ramón waits for me in the next world. But you must take my daughter to a better home. You promised you would keep her after I die.”

“Don’t say that,” Mac said. “You’ll survive.”

Consuela shook her head. “I see it. La muerte.” And she faded into sleep.

By the following morning, Consuela thrashed in her bed, delirious with fever. “Sepsis,” the doctor said. “When the gut is opened up, it can kill off the body from the inside. Nothing I can do.”

Mac and Ethel sponged Consuela, trying to bring down her fever, to no avail. She lasted another day, but succumbed on the third day after the knifing.

 

June 3, 1850. Consuela died of her wound, leaving her orphaned child in my care.

 

Mac paid for her coffin. He and Ethel and an old Spanish priest were the only ones who attended the burial. Mac had sent word to Joel the day after Consuela was stabbed, but Joel didn’t come to Sacramento. He wrote Nate also, but told the old assayer to keep Susan away until after Consuela was laid to rest.

“Will you keep the baby?” the doctor asked when Mac paid him for Consuela’s treatment. “If you don’t want her, I can find a family to adopt her. She’s a comely mite, even with her Indian and Mexican blood.”

“I promised Maria’s mother I would take care of the baby,” Mac said. “I don’t know how, but I’ll keep her.”

“Let me know if you change your mind,” the doctor said.

Nate and Susan came to the store a week after Consuela was buried, arriving late in the day on the steamboat from San Francisco. “You poor man,” Susan said, rushing across the room to take Mac’s hand. “You’ve had such a time. Well, what can you expect of a woman like that? She was bound to end badly.”

“She didn’t deserve to be murdered.”

Susan brushed aside his comment with a wave of her hand. “Have you found a place for the baby? New York had many foundling homes. Why, there must be one in San Francisco by now. Shall I look for you?”

“No.”

“Surely you’re not thinking of raising her? With her parentage and history?”

Mac looked at Nate, who cleared his throat and wouldn’t meet Mac’s eye. “I’m considering it.”

“But—” Susan looked at her grandfather and was still.

“Shall we have supper?” Nate said, breaking the awkward silence.

Over their meal in the saloon, Nate asked about the store. Susan said little. After they ate, Susan asked Mac, “I’d like to walk a bit. Will you escort me? Grandfather is probably tired after our travels.”

Nate rose and said, “I do think I’ll turn in.”

Mac offered his arm to Susan and led her outside into the warm evening. The wide road toward the Embarcadero still bustled with wagons, dusk coming late in midsummer.

“I had hoped,” Susan said slowly, “we might reach an understanding.”

Mac opened his mouth, not knowing what to say, but knowing some response was necessary. “Susan—”

“It’s not proper for me to raise the subject. I should wait for you to speak,” Susan continued. “But you are faced with a situation which will impact your future wife, and I feel I must say something.”

“Susan—” Now Mac knew what she would say, and he had to speak. “Maria is not Consuela, and as her guardian, I must act in the child’s best interest.”

“No proper woman will want to raise the bastard child of a prostitute,” Susan said. “You should consider what is in your best interest, as well as that of the child.”

Mac nodded.

“I think I’ve had enough air now,” Susan said. “Shall we return?”