by Jory Sherman
The guitar players varied their tunes, playing some slow, some fast, some mournful and sad. Dobbins brought out his squeeze box and added to the joyfulness of the occasion.
Carlos and Gasparo danced together. Manolo danced with Emma, and so did Corny. John danced with her, too, while Whit danced with Eva.
“I see you and Eva are getting acquainted,” Emma said to John.
“She’s a nice young lady.”
“See that you keep her that way,” she said.
“Whoa, Emma,” he said. “I don’t see a chaperone’s bonnet on your head.”
“She’s just a young girl, Mr. Savage.”
“Why don’t you call me John? And I know she’s young. And sweet and innocent.”
He whirled her in time with the music, his dark eyes locked on hers, his jaw set in a hard line.
“Just be careful. John. I don’t want you to break her heart.”
“You can break a leg jumping to conclusions,” he said, twirling her in a tight turn.
“You dance so harshly,” she said. “I’m getting dizzy.”
“Harshly?”
“You’re an aggressive dancer, John.”
“Maybe you want to try a waltz, Emma.”
“The music is just fine, I just don’t like to be tossed around like a rag doll.”
“Maybe I should warn you about Ben,” he said.
“What’s wrong with Ben?” she asked, her eyes opening wide.
He leaned close to her and whispered.
“Ben can’t dance, either,” he teased.
“Oh, you,” she said. “Ben is a very good dancer. And a very polite man.”
“I taught him manners.”
“You’re a big tease, aren’t you, John?”
“When I’m happy, I can be,” he said as the music faded away. He bowed to her and led her back to Ben.
“She’s all yours, Ben,” he said. “Emma wore me out.”
Ben scratched his head as John walked away, back to Eva.
They watched the dancers.
“Your ma has her eye on us,” he said.
“John, let’s not dance anymore. I’m—I’m tired.”
“The night is young,” he said.
“I’m going in to bed,” she said, and squeezed his hand. “Make sure Whit sleeps with you and Ben tonight.”
“Eva, what’s the matter?”
“Just do that for me,” she said. “I’ll tell you later.”
Eva ran to the cabin. John looked at Whit, who was watching his sister, a peculiar look on his face.
When Whit turned around, John beckoned to him.
“Yes, John, what is it?”
“Whit, I want you to ride down to the trail that leads to the creek we’re panning and spend the night. Take your bedroll with you and a pistol.”
“You want me to guard the trail?”
“Yes.”
“Where you gonna be?”
“I’ll bed down in the trees with Ben and Corny.”
“All right.”
“Whenever you’re ready, Whit.”
Whit walked over to Ben and his mother. John saw Ben unstrap his gunbelt and give it to the boy. John knew he had another rig in his saddlebags.
Later that night, when he and Ben were laying out their bedrolls, Ben whispered a question to John.
“How come you sent that kid to guard the trail up here, John?”
“I don’t know, Ben. It’s something I have to figure out.”
“You are just full of mystery, Johnny. Plumb full of pure mystery.”
“Go to sleep, Ben.”
John lay down and looked up at the stars through the trees. He thought of Eva and what she had said about Whit.
A light had come into his life, and now somebody had put a shade over it.
23
THATCHER BATHED HIS SORE FOOT IN HORSE LINIMENT, HIS FACE greasy with sweat from sitting too close to the fire.
The creek basked in morning mist, all but invisible to the four men who sat around the fire, munching on hardtack and jerky, drinking almost scalding coffee from tin cups. The only sounds were the raucous calls of jays flitting through the aspens and the pines, and the soft whickers of their horses as they grazed, hobbled, in the timber.
“This coffee tastes like it was boiled with your socks, Harry,” Krieger said.
“I made it same as usual,” Harry said.
“I don’t taste no cinnamon in it,” Ferguson said. “And it don’t taste like Arbuckle’s.”
“Cinnamon dropped in the pot yesterday,” Short said. “You’re tastin’ the rye whiskey you guzzled last night, Al.”
Short blew the steam off the top of his coffee and took a swallow.
“Tastes all right to me.”
“It tastes like it’s got horseshit in it,” Krieger said. But he took another sip and swallowed it. His eyes were red-rimmed and his head throbbed like it had a trip-hammer pounding at his temples.
“More like owl shit,” Ferguson said. “And I didn’t drink no rye last evenin’.”
“You and Old Taylor were good friends last night, Walt,” Thatcher said, wincing as he felt his swollen ankle.
“That foot of yours is so red, it could light the whore-house district in Cherry Creek,” Ferguson said. “You might want to wrap it with gauze or cut the damned thing off.”
“You a sawbones now, Walt?” Thatcher cracked. “I don’t see no shingle hangin’ from your tent.”
“I hope to hell you did some tall thinkin’ last night, Lem,” Ferguson said. “None of us can take much more of these dry diggin’s.”
“Keep your hat on, Walt,” Thatcher said. “I did some thinkin’, all right, and I’m doin’ more of it now.”
“Seems to me you kept your cup pretty full of Old Taylor last night yourself, Lem.”
Ferguson watched as Short busied himself laying out a flat piece of board and unpacking the weighing scales. Harry was the only one doing anything useful that morning, with the chill still on the land and the mist so thick, it made a man think of San Francisco and the Embarcadero.
“Harry,” Thatcher said, “we got any bandages?”
Short looked up from the scales where he was weighing gold dust. The scales sat on a square board lying flat on the ground.
“Yeah, in the medicine box.”
“Bring me a roll, will you?”
“Sure, Boss,” Short said, and stood up, careful not to disturb the board and scales.
“Don’t nobody touch them scales,” he said, as he walked to one of the pup tents. He dropped to his knees and crawled in. He backed out on his hands and knees, pulling a small wooden box. He took it over to Thatcher, who opened it.
He pulled out a roll of bandages still wrapped in butcher paper. He began wrapping his ankle with the gauze. When he had the bandage tight and thick, he used both hands to tear it. Then he split it down the middle, using nearly a foot of the material, wrapped that around the bandage, and tied two strong knots in it. He put the roll back in the box and closed it.
“You can put it back now, Harry,” he said.
Harry, who had been looking on, picked up the box and carried it back to the tent. He knelt down and shoved it inside. Then he squatted back down with his scales and poured a pouch of gold dust into one of the copper baskets. He placed a square chunk of lead in the other. The bowl of dust sank and he added another chunk of lead.
“Four ounces,” he said. “That’s what three of us panned out today.”
“And yesterday we got only two ounces,” Ferguson said, glaring at Thatcher.
“It adds up,” Thatcher said.
“Not fast enough,” Krieger said, who was poking the sand with a stick he had whittled from an aspen branch. “And mighty poor pickin’s. I’ve shoveled enough gravel into that sluice box to build my own pyramid and not enough dust to cover the head of a pin.”
“My back’s so sore from pannin’,” Short said, “it feels like I got the rheumatiz. And my legs feel
like they been mashed with a pile driver.”
“How much panning will you do today, Lem?” Ferguson asked.
“I’m crippled up, Walt. You know that.”
“So, you’re just goin’ to lie around camp while we uns break our backs shovelin’ gravel into the sluice box or swirl sand around in a pan.”
“I had something else in mind, Walt.”
“Let’s hear it, Lem.”
“See that fog on the creek?”
“Yeah, I see it. You can’t miss it. Thick as Grandpa’s whiskers.”
“It hides the creek, and it can hide us now and again.”
Ferguson finished his coffee, threw the grounds out with a whisk of his cup.
“Hide us from what?”
“I got me a plan,” Thatcher said. “All of you sit up and listen.”
“We’re listenin’,” Krieger said.
“Yeah,” said Short.
Ferguson set his empty cup down and pulled his legs up, set his arms and head on his knees.
“Any of you ever heard of the Swamp Fox?” Thatcher asked.
Krieger and Short shook their heads. Ferguson nodded.
“Civil War general, warn’t he?”
“Brigadier general,” Thatcher said. “He changed the way soldiers fought in the Revolutionary War. Snuck around, hid out, and picked off British regulars whenever he had the chance.”
“What are you getting at, Lem?” Ferguson said, raising his head and stretching out his legs.
“That fog gave me the idea,” Thatcher said. “We can fight this Savage feller and beat him. All we have to do is keep our wits about us. I propose that we break camp and take to the woods. My great-granddaddy fought with Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox, and he told my grandpa and my grandpa told my daddy and he told me how old Marion outfought and outwitted the British. Why, he’s still a hero back in Georgetown, South Carolina.”
“We ain’t but four of us, Lem,” Krieger said. He looked at Short. “How many Messicans did you count, Harry?”
“Half a dozen, maybe. They was still drivin’ in cattle when I left.”
“Numbers don’t mean nothin’,” Thatcher said. “I say we scout that tabletop. Let’s say he has nine or ten Mexicans. Then there’s Savage, his partner, Corny, maybe a couple of settlers, and that snot-nosed Blanchett boy. When we know where they live and sleep, we can pick ’em off, one by one.”
“And have Savage trackin’ us down,” Krieger said.
“We use the tricks of the Swamp Fox,” Thatcher said. “We cover our tracks. We wipe ’em out. We don’t camp in the same place two nights in a row. We shoot, we kill, we hide.”
“That might take all summer,” Ferguson said.
“Might, but I don’t think so. If we can kill Savage, we cut off the head of the snake. Them Mexicans will run like rabbits if Savage goes down. I tell you it can be done. By God, we’ll do it. We’ll break camp right now and hide in the woods, up next to that flat valley.”
“What do we do for food?” Short asked.
“Live off the land, like our grandparents did. There’s plenty of game up here. Mule deer, elk, partridges, quail, rabbits.”
“You’re crazy, Lem,” Ferguson said. “Plumb crazy.”
“Am I? Or am I just smarter than you, Walt? Who grub-staked you?”
“You had to kill a man to do that, Lem.”
“And what’s a few more men to get what we want? Savage is getting rich on his claim. We’re suckin’ hind tit at ours.”
“It might be a good idea,” Krieger said. “We’re all good shots. We can sure whittle down the odds over time, I reckon.”
“You’re damned right, Al,” Thatcher said. “That’s the idea. And say we don’t get Savage right off. We got dynamite. Comes to that, we can blow him out of his mine, blow him off the bank of this here creek. Him and his partner and that whippersnapper of a kid.”
“Let’s do it,” Krieger said. “I’m tired as hell of sluicin’ and pannin’ and gettin’ nothin’ but pennies for my work. I’d like to get our rifles back from Savage and see him shot or blown all to hell.”
“I’m game,” Short said.
Thatcher looked at Ferguson. Ferguson stood up.
“Count me in,” he said.
“Then, let’s get to it,” Thatcher said. “Harry, go round up the horses and we’ll start striking our tents. We can leave most of the tools, the sluice box and such. Travel light.”
In an hour, the tents and gear were packed, loaded on panniers, and the four men were mounted on their horses. They traveled north along the creek, and climbed into the thick timber that bordered the tableland where Savage was building his cattle ranch. By nightfall, they had found a camping place next to a rocky outcropping, high up in the timber. They pitched their tents and the next day, they hunted north of their camp.
By noon, they had a mule deer hanging from a pine limb, all dressed out and skinned. They built a fire pit and feasted on venison that second night.
The next morning, they drew blades of grass to see who would be first to scout the grassy plateau. Thatcher selected the stems and held them in his fist.
Krieger drew the shortest blade of grass.
“I want you to count heads, see where Savage is, what the Mexicans are doing, and how many men are carrying arms. Got that, Al? Take a spyglass with you. And don’t get caught.”
“I’ll have to blaze my trail to find my way back here.”
“Small blazes,” Thatcher said. “High up or low down.”
“Low down, I reckon.”
“High up is best,” Ferguson said. “Men tracking don’t look up, they look down.”
“You’d make a good guerilla fighter, Walt,” Thatcher said.
“I done some trackin’ in my time,” he said.
Krieger left on foot late that afternoon. He was packing a six-gun, a Henry .44, hardtack, venison, a wooden canteen full of springwater, and a telescopic spyglass.
He walked six miles through the woods, standing on tiptoe to blaze his path. When he saw the valley and the cattle, he searched for a hiding place somewhere along the northern edge of the plateau. He crawled to a thicket of brush and lay flat on his belly. He set a rock in front of him, and rested the spyglass atop it. He began to scan the valley, marveling at the grazing cattle. He heard men chopping down trees, saw others notching logs and setting them up, while another man rode a wide circle around the herd.
He saw two women washing clothes in large tubs outside the cabin, and hanging the clothes on a line to dry. Later, he saw the two tending to their garden, and his stomach churned with hunger.
There was no sign of Savage or his partner, Ben. Nor did he see young Blanchett, but thought he might be in the woods helping to chop down pine trees.
He counted the number of men he saw, scratched parallel and vertical lines in the dirt. One, two, three, four. Horses skidded the logs out of the timber. Four men, two women. Then, a fifth man emerged from the woods. All were Mexicans.
No sign of Corny, either.
Perhaps, he thought, Savage, Corny, that Ben, and the boy were working their claim down on the creek. There was no way to tell, but he added four more lines, for a total of nine. He drew a line through the first four on a slant, which counted for five men. Then he had four standing lines, not counting the two women.
A lot of people to kill, he thought.
And what about the two women? Would Thatcher want to rub them out, too? No need. And through his spyglass he could see that they were both comely women. No, they could be spared for other things. Things a man might want after spending days or weeks in the wilderness.
Krieger had many thoughts as he watched and waited for nightfall.
Perhaps, he thought, Thatcher’s idea was sound. It would be easy to pick off the Mexicans. Maybe two or three at a time. That would cut down the odds.
But there was still Savage and his fast draw to consider. At long range, though, a rifle could bring him down. Then there was Th
atcher’s idea of the dynamite. If they could pull that off, they’d be sitting pretty, right smack on top of a producing gold claim.
Sure, there might be a lot of dead men, Krieger thought.
But dead men told no tales.
It all seemed so easy to him as he lay there in the cool shade, completely invisible to those he watched. Men who would soon be dead.
24
JOHN COULD MAKE NO SENSE OF THE DREAM, ALTHOUGH IT seemed very real to him.
The dream was filled with metal objects, contraptions that did not work, and there were dark men on horseback crossing a shining stream. A young woman called to him from a high rock on a mountain that appeared to have been plowed to raw dirt. The girl held out her arms to him, and he struggled up one of the furrows with something like a bow and arrow in his hand, but the objects turned into steel braces that would not fit beneath a wagon that suddenly appeared out of nowhere. The shadowy men were riding down the furrows, shooting golden rifles at him, and he could hear the bullets sizzle past him like a flight of angry bees. He picked up a stone that changed into a mangled pistol. The bullets fell out of the cylinder and he kept trying to stuff them back in, when the gun turned into a broken clock, its springs sticking out, its mechanisms twisting into grotesque shapes when he tried to cram them back into the wooden shell.
He heard the woman call his name, but her face turned away from him, and when she turned back it was Ben, or someone resembling Ben, and he slumped over and turned into a wolf, trotting away over the mountain until he was swallowed up by blinding white snow.
A door opened, and John heard someone whisper his name. He saw a shape in the doorway, and it was his sister. His sister was calling to him, “Johnny, Johnny,” and he opened his eyes in shock, jerked out of the dream by someone tugging on his hand. He felt the whisper of mist on his ear, the heat from an open mouth, and a pigtail dropped on his chest like a snake.
He sat up and there was Eva, holding a finger to her lips.
Ben was sound asleep, his soft snores sounding like a muffled throng of tree frogs.
She moved away and beckoned to him. He saw her by moonlight, walking between two trees out onto the plain, the grassy plain that glowed a soft pewter under the gauzy light of the moon and the stars. He arose from his bedroll and followed her to a place near the garden. She turned and beckoned to him again. She was wearing worn-out trousers that might have been her brother’s and a faded denim shirt that was too large and must have been her father’s. Her pigtails fell over both shoulders, so that she looked twelve years old instead of twenty.
