Prologue

13th May 1869

Old Town, California

The room was cool and dark, and as Esther pulled desperately on the decaying wooden bookshelf that stood against the wall, her palms and forehead glistened with sweat.

She desperately wriggled the wood along the wall, revealing the badly filled hole in the ground.

As it moved, the wood creaked.

She gritted her teeth with each screech of the furniture, pausing for a moment before continuing.

The bookshelf was the only furniture her father, Pete, had left in the basement. When she’d first been thrown in as punishment at twelve years old, there had been a box of blankets and some old dining chairs.

As the years passed, her father had instructed her siblings to clear the basement. She was to have no comfort when there—it was punishment, after all.

In her time locked away, she had discovered that the wooden floor was a simple facade. Beneath was simply dirt. Her father had even tried to make the basement fancier than it was, as he’d always done with every other part of their house. He thought nobody would notice—but she more than noticed.

As soon as twelve-year-old Esther spotted that the ground beneath her was soil, she began digging. Nine years had passed since then, and she’d created herself an entire tunnel out of the basement. Whenever she was thrown into that damp, dark room, be it by her brothers, her father, or even her mother, she’d escape.

At first, she thought about going to her bedroom, but she soon realized that she’d be found. Instead, she’d run out the back of the house, over toward the sparse woodland at the bottom of the peaks. She’d even left a small box there full of knitting needles, thread, and books.

Each time, she’d come back before her father would open the basement door and wriggle the old bookshelf back over the hole. On the days he tossed her into the basement, he drank his guilt away at the saloon, so he only reappeared after closing time—giving Essie a solid time estimate to work with.

When it stretched into days of her being there, she’d only risk running away for an hour or so at a time, which she’d judge by the movement of the sun.

Then, almost a year ago, her father had almost spotted the hole.

She’d filled it in that afternoon.

But now, things were different.

Her father had found her a husband. An older man—a wealthy man. He wanted a young wife, an item solely for status and prestige—not an equal, not a lover. She’d purposefully made a fool of herself in front of him. She’d been as awful as she knew how to be, going against every mannerism and social rule she knew existed. She’d put her elbows on the table, worn her hair down, and even coughed without covering her mouth.

The man was disgusted. He’d refused to marry her; he scolded Pete and accused him of humiliating him. She’d messed up not only her arranged marriage but a business relationship of her father’s. He’d taken her home. They’d rode in silence, and he then proceeded to beat on her like never before.

In the past, it’d been a couple of strokes with the belt or a slap on the cheek. For that, she got beaten so hard that her nose bled. Then she was left in the basement to rot.

That was three days ago. Blood still stained the dress her mother had made for the occasion. She was starving; usually, her sisters would bring down food, but this time, all she’d gotten was a slice of stale bread thrown down the stairs and a bucket of water.

If she’d behaved at the meeting, she’d have been packing, and her father might have even smiled at her.

Little would he have known that she was actually packing to disappear.

As soon as her father had revealed his plans for her, she made plans of her own. Her friend, a gentleman named Sam Daunt, had agreed to help her leave. He was a worker on her father’s property, and he saw the way they treated her.

In exchange for a horse for himself, he had agreed that three days after the meeting—whether she succeeded at ruining the engagement or not—he would meet her just outside of her father’s property. She would dash out of the house and reconvene with him, grabbing a horse for them both on the way.

She just had to make it out of the tunnel. They wouldn’t know she was gone, so they wouldn’t come after her.

She shoved the bookshelf with all her might, eventually revealing her escape route. Carefully and quietly, she emptied out the dirt that she’d used to fill the hole. Her breaths were fast and haggard as she got down on all fours and fumbled through the tunnel, popping out a few yards away from the house.

Her mind and heart raced; she could feel her pulse in her hands as she pushed herself up from the ground. She didn’t even think to check behind her. She just ran. Her feet hit the ground hard as she sprinted in front of the house, heading toward the stables that sat by the fence of the property. She could see Sam waiting. She just had to make it.

As she approached the stable, a shot was fired behind her.

Her heart stopped.

Her breath caught in her throat.

She looked at Sam, and his face was as white as a ghost.

Slowly, she turned her head, where she saw her father with his revolver in hand, pointing it into the air. Standing next to him was her younger sister.

No. Oh, goodness, no, Esther thought to herself.

“I told you, Papa, I saw her runnin’ past my bedroom,” her sister said, a twisted smile on her face.

“Good job, doll. She won’t be runnin’ far; not today,” her father said loudly.

“And look, Papa, someone’s in the woods.”

Pete squinted and spotted Sam. Before Esther could move, think, or speak, her father was running toward her. Her sister stayed where she was and watched as Pete knocked Esther to the floor with a slap. His hand collided with her face harshly, making her cheek sting and her eyes water as she collapsed in a heap.

As soon as she was down, her father stalked toward Sam. She couldn’t see what was happening, but she heard punches being thrown and then some grunting. Before she knew it, she saw her father leading Sam at gunpoint back to the house.

She tried to pull herself off the ground, but her arms were weak, and her joints creaked and ached from digging and crawling out of the hole.

It was no use.

A mere moment later, her father was back by her side.

He yanked her up by the back of her dress and dragged her to the house. She struggled, trying to get a footing, but nothing seemed to work. Her toes dragged in the mud, and her hands grabbed at her father’s arm, trying to free herself, but his grip only tightened.

As they reached the house, he threw her down the wooden steps that led to the basement. Her head hit the corner of the second step, and tears began to fall from her eyes. A searing pain filled her mind, and she felt her head begin to throb.

Something that felt like sweat, but thicker, began to gather on her scalp, and she could feel it as the warm liquid oozed down her head.

She landed with a crash on the wooden floor, and a sharp pain stabbed up her spine as she took a weak breath.

Looking around, she noticed the shelves were gone. The hole had been boarded up; she could recognize her brother’s handiwork.

She didn’t even have time to despair.

Seconds after she’d landed, her father stormed down the stairs and let all hell loose on her poor, frail body. He began to punch her. Slapping was no longer enough. His fist collided with her face, causing her nose to bleed again, and she swore she heard a crack as his knuckles met her cheek.

Pinpricks of pain began to spread across her face, like a needle had been pushed into the skin with brute force, and a coppery taste filled her mouth. She tried to wince, but the muscles were already too swollen to move.

She could feel the warmth of the blood oozing down onto her lips, and her ears were ringing.

After a few punches, he moved and began to kick her torso instead; his hands were likely sore from the impact.

A lump rose in her throat as his foot came into contact with her ribs, her spine, and her sides. With each kick, her lungs emptied, and her heart skipped. The muscles in her torso burned, and as the impacts continued, she could feel her skin turning tender and sore, her bones beginning to creak.

“All I wanted,” he said, punctuating the sentence with a kick, “was for you to marry.”

Another kick.

“And now, you’ve gone and got some poor boy arrested, and you’ve humiliated your”— kick— “whole”—kick— “family.”

He pushed her by the shoulder, making her look up at him.

Blood continued to drip from her nose, mixing with the tears that covered her face. She could barely see, and each breath filled her mouth with the taste of salt and metal.

“You don’t deserve anything we’ve tried to give you,” he hissed. With that, he turned and walked back up the stairs. “You won’t humiliate me again.”

She watched through swollen eyes as her father disappeared behind the door, and as it shut, she let out a shaky sob. The sob traveled through her body, igniting the burning pain in her torso all over again.

She stayed there, on the floor, and let the tears rip through her, wincing with each movement.

There was no energy, no fight, left in her body. Escaping with Sam had been her last hope.

As she cried, a wave of darkness crept over her mind, and slowly, as the pain and shock began to build, her consciousness began to slip.

She was awoken by the sound of wheels catching on stones and the feel of a cart bobbing up and down. Her head moved with the cart, and each lump in the path caused her neck to ache and her shoulder to burn.

She tried to open her eyes, her heart racing as she listened carefully to figure out what on earth was going on, but only one of them opened.

She saw the ground and the wagon around her, and from where she was lying, still curled up, she could just about make out the back of her father’s head through the hole in the fabric of the wagon.

“Father?” she croaked.

“Shut up,” he replied. “I’m done hearing your voice. After today, I don’t ever want to see or hear you again.”

She’d heard worse. She assumed she’d be spending a long stint in the basement; they’d probably never even let her back into her bedroom. She’d be given no food again, for longer this time; she was sure of it.

But seconds later, the wagon stopped.

She tried to hoist herself up onto her elbows, but every fiber of her being felt as if it were on fire as she did so.

She peered through the hole, and all she could see was an endless expanse of sky and sand.

Turning her neck, a new pain tore through her body, and her muscles stung from her ear to her elbow. She squinted her one eye and tried to peer out the back of the wagon, but again—nothing but sky and sand.

They were in the middle of the Californian desert.

She heard her father step down from his seat at the front of the wagon, and she turned her head around. Her heart sped up, and her gaze darted around as her father’s footsteps approached.

She saw him from the corner of her eye.

He held in his hand a carpet bag: her carpet bag.

She watched as he threw it away from the wagon. It landed with a soft thud in the dust.

A second later, he reached into the wagon and scooped her up in his arms. In any other situation, with any other father and daughter, it would’ve been a soothing action. But, deep in her heart, she felt that something wasn’t right.

As if to prove her right, her father walked over to her carpet bag and dropped her in a heap next to it.

“Goodbye, Esther,” he said.

His face was completely blank, not even an eye twitch to suggest he felt anything—neither pleasure nor pain.

Then, as quick as he’d walked over, he turned and walked away. He left her there, under the hot Californian sun, and rode the wagon home.

Chapter One

The Californian Desert

14th May 1869

Esther had not moved since her father dropped her. She didn’t have the energy. After being beaten so much and having eaten around three slices of bread in five days, her body wasn’t able to cope with anything beyond breathing and keeping her alive.

She’d been lying on the ground for around seven hours, from what she could tell by the sun. Esther had spent many years tracking the sun for timekeeping; it was how she’d always made it back to the basement in time. She knew that if she stayed in the desert any longer, the sun was going to all but cook her.

As it was, she was soaked in a layer of sweat, and her head was pounding. She needed shelter, somewhere to hide from the sun. To find that, though, she had to move, which felt impossible. Her entire body was giving up, slowly but surely. If she wanted to make it through this, she was going to have to fight that feeling, but, laying there in the heat, her face bloodied and bruised, her ribs cracked and swollen, she was unsure whether she even wanted to make it through.

Esther hated her family; she had for a long time. They’d abused her, treated her like a slave, and then tried to sell her off like an object. Her siblings had, at one point, stayed out of it. Before she was eleven, though, her father had managed to turn them all against her. They began to help with the bullying; they turned her in when she’d stepped out of line.

Yet, somehow, none of that made what was happening hurt less.

Esther was still hurting emotionally as well as physically, despite everything they’d done and all she felt about them. She’d been discarded, thrown away…. She was unwanted. She’d always craved independence, but not like this. She’d been left to die.

Even if she survived, she couldn’t help but wonder what kind of life she would have without her family. She had no friends. She’d been a quiet, introverted child. She was well-read—she’d always made sure to read whenever the opportunity arose—but not enough to be a schoolteacher or anything of the like. Would she be able to find work? What about shelter? She’d end up destitute, with nothing and nobody. Was that the independence she’d been after her whole life?

I sound like my father, she thought to herself.

She let out a long, shaky sigh.

Her stomach coiled, and a wave of burning anger coursed through her at the thought of her father’s words. The number of times her father told her that she didn’t deserve independence or that she was too stupid to ever decide for herself…. Now she was telling herself the same thing.

Esther shook her head.

No more. If for no reason other than to prove her father wrong, she was going to find her way through this. She was not going to let herself die.

Her muscles twitched and ached as she took in a deep breath and pushed herself up from the ground. Her legs lay stretched out ahead of her. As she pushed her torso up, she dragged her hips toward her chest, pulling herself into a sitting position.

Esther winced with each shift of her bones. It felt like the sand had embedded itself between them—making any movement of her joints stiff and uncomfortable.

Slowly, she reached a hand toward the carpet bag her father had so gracefully left her.

Dragging it closer, tears began to sting her eyes once more.

She sniffed, trying to keep them away, but the pain in her bruised and swollen nose made them spill down her cheeks. After wiping them away with the back of her hand, she opened the sack. Sitting on top was a small paper bag and a glass bottle of water.

“Pretending to care,” she mumbled.

Esther tore the paper bag open, revealing two slices of her mother’s pumpkin seed bread, hard and stale. She prodded it with her finger, and it cracked under the pressure. Taking them out of the bag, she placed them on the sand and dug through the rest of the contents.

Her father had packed a blanket, a couple of nightdresses, and a book. She couldn’t possibly figure out why he’d thought those items would be useful in the middle of the desert, but then again, his thoughts had never made much sense to her.

Rolling her eyes, she tore off a quarter from one of the bread slices and shoved the rest back in the bag. She zipped it up and brought the bread to her mouth. Because of her tender and bruised jaw, she was forced to open her mouth slowly and take a small bite. With each chew, a burning pain shot up the side of her face.

After a short while, she’d finished the section she’d torn off and turned instead to the bottle of water. It glistened in the sun, and all she wanted to do was open it and pour everything into her mouth and over her face. The crusted blood was uncomfortable, and her throat was drier than the ground she was sitting on. Realistically, though, she knew it needed preserving. She had no way of knowing how long she’d be lost between home and Old Town, and that bottle had to last her.

Carefully—as if it might shatter at her touch—she picked it up and took the lid off. She poured a small dribble of water into her mouth, and her shoulders relaxed slightly as it slipped down her throat, wetting what was sore and inflamed.

The small amount of food and drink had given her a tiny boost of energy. With a deep, shaky breath, she placed her hands on the dusty soil and pushed. She’d thought sitting up was painful, but standing…. That was a whole different story.

Each of her limbs screamed in agony as she dragged herself off the ground.

Esther clenched her eyes shut as she lifted herself, a hiss escaping her lips.

Her bones cracked, and her muscles burned as she straightened.

Once she was up, she looked around as much as her stiff neck would allow. There was nothing nearby. The desert stretched out around her, empty and barren as far as she could see. The world was sucked of all color, reduced to muddy browns and faded yellows from the countless mounds of sand and dirt.

Beams of sunlight bounced off the sand, creating a glare, and the air almost seemed to wiggle from the heat.

On the horizon, Esther could just about make out the shapes of a town.

I’ll never make it that far, she thought to herself. But it’s a better direction than heading toward home.

Leaning down, she collected her carpet bag and took a slow, unsure step in the general direction of Old Town. If there were shelter or water, it would be in that direction.

Esther walked on wobbly legs, imagining that she probably looked like a newborn deer wandering through the forest. The bag in her hand was making it all much harder; it threw off her balance and pulled on the muscles in her arms, so much so that they stung and ached all at once. It was making the walk even harder than it needed to be, and she was beginning to wonder why she was even carrying it.

It was clear that her family and her old life were all in the past.

She stopped walking for a second and glanced down at it—the few remnants of home she had left.

With a shake of her head, she chucked it on the ground, leaving everything but the bread and water.

“Goodbye, Father.”

Esther continued walking.

Her sore eyes scoured her environment, but nothing changed. No matter how far she seemed to walk, there was simply sand, dirt, and the occasional spot of green where a plant had beaten the odds and managed to grow.

The distance between the village and Old Town never seemed far when they went on a wagon. Not that Esther had gone much in the last decade, but they’d gone plenty when she was a young girl before her father decided she was to be the runt of the litter.

Walking it, though, in this heat and her condition, felt like she was crossing the entire country. Her legs could barely keep up—she could feel the muscles tightening with each step—and her knees creaked and popped every time they bent. Her hips felt weak, as if one step too much would release her legs from their sockets.

She was moments away from giving up when she spotted what looked like a break in the sand up ahead.

Squinting, she tried to make out what it was.

The road!

Suddenly, Esther’s legs weren’t so tired. She could make it that far; she was sure of it.

A surge of energy ran through her, and she stumbled forward, her breath becoming more ragged by the second. Her heart was pounding, and a new layer of sweat spread across her forehead. The road got closer and closer until it was just a few yards away when her legs buckled beneath her. She collapsed and yelped as her kneecaps smashed into the hard, dry earth.

As she fell, the bottle of water slipped from her hand, smashing into the ground next to her.

Esther whimpered, quickly moving off her knees. She could see the road, which should have filled her with hope—but it was empty. There were no wagons, carts, or even horses. She was still completely alone, without shelter, and without water. She was going to die out there of thirst, if nothing else.

She flopped onto her back.

What am I supposed to do? I’m not ready to die. Not here, not like this.

Tears that had dried beneath the scorching sun returned to her eyes, and she took a shaky breath.

I can do so much more. I want to do so much more. I don’t want to die.