A call came from the fire. “Johannes?”
“Up here,” I said. “I’ve got me a pigeon. He’s lookin’ toward his rifle now, wondering if he should chance it. I may let him try.” They came up the hill then, and through the brush. Only it was not just Monte and Jacob. Kelso was there, and two other men, two strangers. “Looks like you had you a time,” Monte said. “Your pa couldn’t have done better.”
Forty
During our early years in Los Angeles, with a population not exceeding three thousand persons, there was an average of fifty to sixty killings per year; yet when we moved our horses to Miss Nesselrode’s rancho, there was no trouble. Even the black stallion behaved himself, shying only slightly when, riding beside him, I reached over and put a hand on his back. The ranch was a quiet place with an old adobe house standing under the shade of huge old sycamores, and with a good view back toward Los Angeles. On the morning after the delivery of the horses, Miss Nesselrode was busy with other things, so it was I who opened the shop and laid out the newspapers just in from Wilmington on the morning stage.
The streets were virtually empty, as I had come early to the shop. Down along Commercial Street, only one man was visible, a tall man, wearing an apron, who was sweeping the boardwalk. I had just taken a book from the shelf and was settling down to read when the door darkened and I glanced up to see the man whom we had seen watching the shop from across the street. He was a man of what we then called middle age, a neatly dressed man in a gray suit and a narrow-brimmed hat. Nodding a greeting, he asked if we had a Boston newspaper he might see.
“It is ten days old, which is very up-to-the-minute news for us.” “For me, also.” He smiled, but his gray eyes were sharp, penetrating. “You have a nice shop. Are you the owner?”
He was leading up to something, and I was wary, yet something else disturbed me also. There was a faint suggestion of an accent in his voice, something vaguely familiar.
“Mind if I sit down? This is a reading room, is it not?” “Of course.” Opening a box of books, I began taking from it several volumes by Bulwer-Lytton and a collection of tales by Poe. I glanced at it again, as he had been a friend of my father’s and a man whom I had known slightly. He saw the name. “Is that Edgar Allan Poe? He has become very popular in Europe, suddenly.”
“These are the first of his books we’ve had. My father knew him, and I have met him.”
“He died, I think. A few years ago.”
“I had not heard.” For a moment I straightened up. Another thread to the past, gone, lost forever. “He was a soldier once, so my father said. For as much as two years, I believe, and a sergeant.”
He glanced at me. “Surely you did not know him here?” “We lived in the East then. My father said that as a boy Poe was a noted swimmer, and thought of swimming the English Channel.” “Well for him he did not try. Nobody could swim the channel! That’s preposterous!”
He changed the subject. “You have a nice shop. Is it yours?” It was the question I had avoided.
“It belongs to Miss Nesselrode.”
“Nesselrode? An interesting name. Have you known her long?”
“Long enough. She’s a fine woman.”
“I do not doubt it, but I am curious. The name is not common, you know. I have seen her, I think. A tall, attractive young woman?” “Yes.”
“Most women of her age are married,” he commented. The comment deserved no reply. He was seeming to read his paper, making idle conversation the while. Yet he was prying, he was seeking for something, and it seemed to be about her. It occurred to me suddenly that she was no longer such a young woman, yet she seemed ageless. I had never thought of the passing years affect-ingherin any way at all.
“I wonder”-he spoke casually-“how she came by the name?” “As most of us do, I presume.” I spoke rather brusquely. “As you, no doubt, got yours.” Straightening up from my work, I said, “When it comes to that, I do not believe we have met. I am Johannes Verne.”
“I am Alexis Murchison.”
An interesting name. The Murchison would be English, no doubt, and the Alexis?
It could be Russian.
He shook out his paper, settled himself as if to read.
“You are not a cattle buyer. Is it horses in which you are interested?”
“We have many horses in Russia.”
“You are from Russia, then? Not England?” Was that the accent I detected? But where could I have heard it before?
He was irritated. “Does it matter?”
“Not at all. We have had Russians in California from the beginning. I believe they had thoughts of claiming the area at one time. “As to the name, I was simply curious, as you were. California is welcoming many strangers these days. Some come for gold, the wise ones for land, and others are simply buying or selling. Of course,” I added, “others are merely prospecting.” “I am a traveler. The name Nesselrode intrigued me. It is uncommon.” “So you said. I knew some Nesselrodes back east when I was a child. Quite a large family. If the name interests you, I believe I could provide their address, in Philadelphia. He is a painter, I believe, and his wife taught ballet, when there was anyone to teach.”
He folded the newspaper and put it down. “Thank you very much.” “Not at all,” I replied. “When you want to know anything, please feel free to ask.”
He gave me a look that had a whip in it, but I smiled and he went out, his back very stiff, and when he closed the door, it was with an emphatic bang. Feeling pleased with myself, I returned to putting books on the shelves. The streets were growing busy now, people coming and going about their trading and shopping.
That accent, now. Russian, was it? Where had I known any Russians? I hadn’t. The thought returned. Who was Miss Nesselrode? Was his interest romantic? Her age … It gave me a sharp feeling of discomfort to realize she was not what people called a young woman any longer. Yet she was as slender and graceful as always, unchanged so far as I could see.
She came in suddenly, yet not so suddenly, for I had been hearing the distinctive click of her heels on the walk.
She closed the door behind her and glanced around, then looked at me with sudden awareness. “Hannes? What is it?”
“There was a man here … the one we saw across the street. I think he was trying to find out about you. I do not believe his interest was romantic, although I could be wrong.”
She smiled beautifully. “Romantic? I am afraid it is late for that.”
“Is it ever?” I paused. “His name was Alexis Murchison.”
She was drawing off her gloves. There was a moment of stillness. “No,” she was thinking aloud, “it cannot be. Not after all this time.” She came through the gate in the railing that divided her desk and the shelves from the reading room, where there were easy chairs and a table. “What did you tell him?” “What could I tell him? That you are a beautiful woman. That you own the shop.
What else do I know?”
She was amused. “I haven’t told you very much, have I?” “I do know a little more than before he came in,” I commented, “because he had a very sligbt accent. I was puzzled as to where I’d heard it before.” I glanced at her. “You are Russian, are you not?”
“I was once, a very long time ago. Now I am an American. A Californian.”
“But you were a Russian.”
“When I think back now, it seems another world, another life, and almost another person.”
“You will go back?”
“I cannot. You see, Hannes, I was sent to Siberia, and I escaped. There were nine of us who started and only three who made it. I was a young girl when we escaped to China. My brother was killed in Siberia before we even got away, another died of hardships, and a third was killed in Mongolia by men who robbed us. I am the last of my family, and there is nothing to which to return. And I would be arrested.”
She looked into the sunlit street, watching an old carreta rolling past. “When I reached China, I was taken in by an English family and earned my keep teaching French to their children. When I got older, I hired out as a governess. I saved my money, determined to come to America.