Soul of a Gunslinger

by Jim Cox

  Lefty quickly waved her closer to Hide’s bed. “This is the woman I was telling you about. She looked after you while you were out-of-it and did most of the work, tending to your injury. If it hadn’t been for her, you’d be six feet under.”

  “I’m obliged to ‘ya, ma’am. Taking me into your home and getting me all healed up.”

  “I didn’t do it all. Lefty helped a great deal, and the doctor was here once to help get your fever down and salve your injury. He stayed with you for a couple of hours.”

  “That might be, ma’am, but just the same, I’m obliged to ‘ya.”

  “Please call me, Louise. We’re not very formal on the Barbary Coast.” Hide accepted her request with a nod and smile. “Are you hungry, Hide? It’s been days since you’ve eaten or had much to drink.”

  Hide’s eyes brightened. “I sure am, but before I eat, I’d drink a cup of coffee if you have some made.”

  Louise smiled and stepped back. “It hasn’t been made this morning, but we’ll have it ready within a few minutes.” Turning to Lefty, she said, “You can fill the coffee pot with water and get a fire started. You might have to bring in some firewood from shore. I’ll grind the coffee beans before I get dressed and comb my hair.” Lefty nodded and turned to do his jobs.

  Lefty had the coffee perking before Louise came from the back room, so he started telling Hide more of what happened while he was unconscious, but Hide interrupted, “The last thing I remember was the men bidding on our horses and a gunshot. I can vaguely remember falling and the terrible pain in my chest.” Lefty nodded with a smile and started his explanation again, but Hide stopped him the second time, “I can recollect a man bidding four bags of gold for one of the horses. How much did we end up getting?” Hide asked with enthusiasm.

  Lefty grinned. “Are you gonna let me tell ‘ya the details or not?”

  “Just as soon as you tell me how much gold we got for our horse,” he answered.

  “What-do-you mean, our horse,” Lefty said with a wide smile. “They were bidding on the thief’s horse that belonged to me.” Hide’s face sobered and Lefty let his friend stew a bit before telling him the two thieves’ horses sold for nine bags of gold.

  Hide’s face quickly regained its brightness, and he asked, “How much is a bag of gold worth?”

  “Louise says a reputable gold buyer would give us between six and seven hundred dollars for a bag. That’s a total of nearly five-thousand-dollars, and we ain’t even started digging.” Hide was grinning from ear-to-ear when Louise reentered the kitchen area, poured herself a cup of coffee, and started cooking breakfast.

  Hide had been pulled up to a sitting position, and two chairs pulled close to his bed when Louise brought coffee and a Bear Paw to each of them. She smiled as she watched Hide wolf down the Bear Paw and gulp the steaming coffee. When the cups were empty, she went after more coffee, but she only filled the men’s cups. “I’ll finish our breakfast. It’s time you’re getting some solid food in your stomach to speed up your recovery.” She had started for the stove but turned back looking at Lefty. “It’s time you’re mixing up ingredients to make dough for our pastries. The men will be lining up before long.”

  Lefty rose, took a long drink of coffee and said to Hide, “I’ll tell you what I been trying to tell ‘ya later on. Right now, I’ve got to start mixing the dough.” Hide smiled as he watched Lefty put on his apron and followed the woman’s instructions.

  It wasn’t long until the aroma filled the air from breakfast cooking, and minutes after that, Louise called them to the table. Hide was helped to the table with a plate of fried potatoes and bacon setting before him. The freshly baked biscuits and a bowl of gravy sitting at the table’s edge was passed, and all three dug in.

  The following couple of weeks brought about a few changes. Hide was getting back to his old self, the weather was getting a mite colder, and Lefty was getting itchy to head for the gold fields. But the most obvious difference taking place as the days passed was Hide’s attitude and appearance. He was keeping his hair and beard trimmed, and was changing into clean clothes every other day. Not only that, he was all smiles and stayed in a good mood, especially when he was around Louise in the kitchen. And it seemed to Lefty that Louise enjoyed the attention she was getting from him.

  Louise had been alerted that her every two months standing order of flour, sugar, lard, and coffee beans with a shipping company down the coast had arrived and since Lefty wasn’t busy these days, Louise asked him to go after it. Of course, he agreed to do the work but decided to take advantage of the situation and explore the Barbary Coast before renting a team and picking up the supplies. After all, I’m not needed in the kitchen these days, so there’s no hurry, he thought.

  Lefty was concerned he might be recognized as the gun-slinger who had killed a man on the street a few weeks back, but as the morning passed, no one bothered him as he walked the streets. As usual, Bay Street along the coast was extremely busy. Men were on their way to the gold fields with tethered horses or mules carrying their gold digging equipment. Other men and women milled around seeming to have nothing in particular to do. Even at this early hour, loud piano music sounded from nearby saloons and drunks staggered about with bottles in hand while prostitutes roamed the streets soliciting customers.

  At the edge of a side street, a tiny Chinese woman waved for Lefty to visit her store. He didn’t know what type of business she ran, but he ambled over, and after a few minutes of listening to her in a broken dialect, and not understanding a word she was telling him, he followed her. The door opened into a dark hallway with three doors on each side. The woman opened the first hallway door on the right, and a strong odor hit Lefty he’d never smelled before. They continued on. The room was narrow with slender beds stacked beside the walls, filled with men of different ages, nationalities, size, and dress. But they were all the same. They were all in a stupor, looking like corpus, except for the smoke rising from their pipes. It didn’t take Lefty long to realize he had no business in a place like this, so he left. Lefty found out later from Louise the men were smoking opium.

  Just a few doors down from the opium parlor was a mining supply store. Lefty entered to find out what kind of equipment he’d need in the gold fields. A fast-talking clerk with a fake smile met him at the door and tried to convince him he would need practically every piece of equipment in the store. Lefty didn’t like his tactics or believed a word he said, so he thanked the clerk for his time and left without purchasing a thing.

  He was headed for the livery to get the team and wagon he needed to hall the bakery supplies when he came to a saloon and decided to go in and have a beer. The place was different than most western saloons he’d been in. The various nationalities were jabbering in their native languages and wearing their strange-looking home-spun clothes. Barmaids were pushing through the crowd holding trays of liquor, heading for the tables full of men playing cards or simply drinking the brown liquid.

  Lefty found an empty space at the bar and took it. He lazily drank his beer while watching and listening to the crowd. The beer tasted good, and since he was in no hurry, he ordered another. He had drunk his second beer and was ready to leave, when he heard a voice from down the bar, “I figure he’s on his way to San Francisco if he ain’t already here, and you can bet your last dollar he’ll be a dead man the minute I lay my eyes on ‘em.”

  “Are you sure you can outdraw, him? I’ve heard men say he’s has the fastest draw they’ve ever seen,” another man said.

  “He outdrew my brother, but Bob was the slowest among us Ellis brothers. Lefty ain’t got a chance against Joe or me.” The boastful man was obviously Frank Ellis. Lefty pulled his hat brim low and slowly backed away from the bar, heading for the door. This is not the time or place to have it out with the Ellis, Lefty thought.

  He was ready to push the batwings open when a man sitting at a nearby table called out, “Ain’t you Lefty Newman? The gunslinger who killed a man who was bidding on your
horse a week or so back.”

  “You’ve got the wrong man, mister. I must look like him because I’ve been asked that before.” The batwings swung close as Lefty quickly left the saloon and headed for the livery.

  Lefty spent a few minutes with his horses at the livery to make sure they were being tended and fed well and paid the holster for two more weeks of horse boarding. Afterward, he bargained for a team and wagon and drove them to the supply company at the west end of Bay Street. Lefty wasn’t sure the wagon would hold the entire order, but after rearranging the goods and piling them high above the sideboards, he was able to get it all on. Then he climbed into the driver’s seat and snapped the lines. The two big drafts tightened the traces as they stepped into their pull. The busy street was hard to get through, but Lefty finally got to Louise’s place and had the goods unloaded by mid-afternoon. When he returned the team, he wasted a good bit of time over coffee with the holster, but when large black clouds started rolling in from the west, he headed back.

  As Lefty walked up the planks and opened the ship’s door, he stopped and took in a deep breath. The smell of a delicious super cooking filled the air, and he was starved.

  Louise had just called Hide and Lefty to the table when someone knocked. Hide started to answer it but Louise said she’d get it, and that he and Lefty should go ahead and start eating while the food was hot. When she returned, she said, “There’s a man at the door asking for you, Lefty.” As Lefty was getting up, Louise said, “He says he knows you; he’s a very short man.”

  By the time Lefty brought Shorty to the kitchen, Hide had explained Shorty to Louise, and she had another plate on the table. As usual, the meal was swift and silent. Afterward, when fried apple pies had been eaten, and coffee was drunk, Shorty complimented Louise on her meal and then turned to Lefty with a sober face. “I hear-tale the Ellis brothers are in town looking for you, Lefty. They’re a mean lot, through-and-through. If I was you, I’d get out of town and not get myself in some kind of a showdown with ‘em.”

  “I saw 'em in a saloon today, Shorty. They were bragging about their fast draw, saying I didn’t have a chance against ‘em. I ain’t afraid of ‘em, but I didn’t think it was the right time or place to have a showdown. I was slipping out, thinking no one had recognized me when someone called out my name. I told him he was mistaken, but I don’t think he believed me. I’m guessing he’s already told the Ellis brothers he saw me.”

  “What are you going to do, Lefty?” Louise asked. “You can’t go up against both of them at one time…it would be suicide!”

  “I agree with Louise. Why don’t you leave out first thing in the morning?” Hide said.

  “You ain’t healed up enough to start out, Hide. We’ll wait for another couple of weeks and then we’ll light out. Like I said, I ain’t afraid of those Ellis brothers.”

  Hide spoke up, “I’ll not be going with you on the first trip.” Lefty’s head quickly jerked toward Hide with a frown. “I need more time to get my health back. You’ll only be gone for a couple months before the snows set in. Come spring I’ll be ready to go along.”

  Lefty looked at Shorty who shrugged his shoulders and said, “I’ve been hankering to tackle those mountains for several days; bought my equipment a few days back. All I have to do is buy myself a couple of horses, that is, if I can find any for sale.”

  Hide spoke up, “Take Abe and Gray, Shorty. You’ll not find better horses, and I’ll not be needing ‘em.” Shorty nodded.

  All eyes were on Lefty as he sat with his head lowered thinking about what he should do. After a long pause, he looked up and said, “We’ll leave in the morning after I’ve bought my digging supplies and the grub we’ll be needing.” Louise went for the coffee pot.

  Chapter Twelve

  The men didn’t get the early start they wanted because Louise lagged behind for nearly an hour cooking baked goods. The reason she was behind was due to her cooking twice the number of hardtacks, Bear Paws, and Fried pies she had planned for the men to take.

  They were delayed even more at both stores they stopped in. The mining supply store was bulging with buyers, and the mercantile was crowded and slow because two of the clerks were busy unloading a wagon of supplies. Their order was finally gathered including Lefty’s chewing tobacco, but he pushed it back, saying he’d gone long enough without it and he no longer had the habit.

  It was mid-morning by the time Lefty and Shorty started out from the mercantile with both pack horses loaded down. They were riding east on Bay Street toward the piers where the ships were docked that crossed from the San Francisco Peninsula to the mainland. Several other men with pack-animals were heading in the same direction.

  The men couldn’t believe their eyes when they got to the pier. Hundreds of men were in line waiting to board, but there was no ship at the pier or none in sight coming to get them. “We ain’t gonna get aboard when the ship gets here,” Shorty said, “There’s too many men ahead of us. I’m thinking we’re three trips away.”

  Shorty was right. They were boarded on the third ship an hour or so after the noon sun. It took nigh-on to an hour to hit the mainland. Nearly all of the passengers started out in the same easterly direction as Shorty and Lefty, but it wasn’t long until men started taking separate paths which after a spell left Shorty and Lefty traveling alone. Their cross-country travel took them up and down treeless, rocky hills, and at the top of every hill the wind was so strong they had to pull their hats low and hold on to them.

  At twilight, the men found a good place to stop for the night. A patch of long-stem grass was close at hand for the horses, and a few yards down the hill was a fast-flowing stream. In the distance ahead, maybe a half mile, the hilly landscape they were traveling in came to an end and a flat, desert-like terrain began.

  After the horse’s packs were removed, the men examined them for any injuries the horses might have incurred, especially their hooves. After the horses’ look-over, they were free to roll before being taken to water and then hobbled in a patch of long-stem grass for the night.

  Cups of steaming black coffee hit the spot while the men’s hungry bellies waited for the sizzling bacon hanging on a stick over the fire. When the bacon fat had stopped dripping and turned to a golden brown, four sandwiches were made with Louise’s bread; two for each man. After gobbling down the sandwiches, they fetched two fried pies to top off their supper and drank another cup of coffee.

  The day had been long and kind of frustrating because of their morning delays, but sitting in the California clear night air beside a campfire caused their eyelids to become heavy, so after checking on the horses, they spread ground cloths, took off their boots, and crawled under covers looking up at a million sparkling stars. Some appeared so close it looked like a person could reach up and touch them.

  In a few days, my gold will be sparkling like those stars, Lefty thought.

  Shorty and Lefty had been in the saddle for a considerable time the next morning when the eastern sky started to lighten up. They were heading east and a little north, riding through desert sand on their way to Sutter’s Fort or Sacramento City as some folks were beginning to call it. Several men had told them it was their starting point. They didn’t talk much as they rode and didn’t pay any attention to the blue, cloudless sky with a bright morning sun climbing toward its noontime peak. Their minds were on the goldfields and the lifestyle they’d soon have after their fortunes were dug up.

  Time passed, but it passed at a snail’s pace. They ate hardtack and Bear Paws at noon, washed down with water. By mid-afternoon, the sun was blistering hot, causing their clothes to be sweat-soaked. But what was worse than the heat and their sweat-soaked clothes, were their sore rear-ends which were getting sorer by the minute.

  It was earlier than normal when they started looking for a place to spend the night, but nothing suitable was found, so they traveled on until twilight and made camp in an open plane of blowing sand without grass for the horses or anything to build a fi
re with. The five-gallon water skin provided the water. After taking care of the horses, the men ate two hardtacks and drank water from their canteens. With nothing else to do, they went to their covers and lay wide-eyed thinking about their days ahead. Sleep was slow to come, but the music from two coyotes in the far distance helped some.

  The following two days were pretty much the same. Dry and hot with hoof deep sand. In mid-afternoon on their fifth travel day from the wharf, they came to the tree line of the American River and spent a couple of hours on its bank. After watering and hobbling the horses in grass, Shorty and Lefty went to the river and washed the sweat-soaked sand off their tired bodies and relaxed for a spell in the cool water. Not long afterward, they sat in clean clothes resting their saddle-sore behinds while drinking a couple of cup of coffee. The bath and rest did its job; both men felt like tackling the world when they crawled back into their saddles and followed the river upstream.

  It was getting late in the day when the men rode down the main street of Sutter’s Fort. A few stores looked strange, but most stores were like other western towns. They stopped at the far end of town in front of a holster who was sleeping in a tilted-back chair with his out-of-shape hat pulled over his eyes. “Howdy,” Shorty called out loudly. The holster came alive, pushing his hat back over his balding head and dropped his chair. “If you’ve got the space we’d like to board our horses with ‘ya for a day or two?” The holster looked like he’d seen better days as he pushed himself up by the arms of his chair to get his stiff body going.

  “I’ve got the room,” he said, “but it’ll cost ‘ya six-bits for the lot of them four horses if you want ‘em fed, and you have to pay me now. I ain’t taken no chances on not getting paid.” After Lefty handed the holster the six-bits, the old man continued, “You’ll have to take the saddles and packs off the horses yourself. I ain’t up to it. Put each horse in an empty stall, and your gear can go in the storage room. It’s about halfway down the alleyway.”