Soul of a Gunslinger

by Jim Cox

  When the men got back from stalling the horses, Shorty asked the old man where they could eat a good meal and find a place to hang their hats. He answered right-off because there was only one hotel and two cafes in town. They had turned, heading for the café the old man had suggested, when he called them back. With a big grin that showed his tobacco stained teeth, with a couple missing, he told them of a saloon where good whiskey was served without being watered-down.

  Shorty and Lefty took their time eating at the café, and by the time they got to the hotel, it was dark. It was not a real hotel. There were no divided rooms, only one long, narrow room with cots along the walls and down the middle. It didn’t have windows, and the room was hot and stunk something awful. A dull lantern at each end of the room threw-off enough light for Shorty and Lefty to pick a bed and eye the room which was only a long log hut. A couple dozen men laid uncovered on top of the cot’s mattresses which was nothing more than a canvas stretched over a bed of straw. Most men still had their clothes on, and several had on boots. Their snoring sounded like a herd of cows bawling for their calves. Lefty guessed most of them were sleeping off a drinking stupor.

  Shorty and Lefty weren’t ready to hit the sack, so Shorty grinned and suggested they go to the saloon and have a drink. Lefty returned the smile, and they headed off.

  A low glimmer of light shown from a few hanging lanterns along the street, outlining men on the packed boardwalk benches. Several stood along the boardwalk holding bottles, arguing about something that seemed unimportant to Lefty and Shorty. Walking on, Lefty noticed shifty eyes from men with tied down guns and assumed they were troublemakers who would rob a person at gunpoint if given the chance. I need to be careful, he thought. I’m carrying several hundred dollars in my pocket. Lefty thought he had removed the leather safety loop from his gun’s hammer, but just to be sure, he felt of it. It was hanging.

  The saloon was jammed when Shorty swung the batwings open. There seemed to be no room for another person. Finally, they were able to chisel themselves inside, standing among men who were holding glasses of whiskey. The tables were all taken. A cloud of cigar and cigarette smoke hung from the ceiling, and a bad odor rose up from the sawdust floor where whiskey had been spilled. Loud talking and a piano blasting away in the corner of the room made it almost impossible to hear each other talk.

  Shorty and Lefty were not sure how to get drinks because of the congestion and the shortage of waiters. There were a couple of women milling around in low neckline dresses showing a great deal of cleavage, causing men to be google-eyed, but most of the whiskey was poured by men. It took several minutes, but finally, one of the men came by and handed Shorty and Lefty glasses with two fingers of the brown liquid. Not long afterward, Shorty waved for another shot.

  When Shorty had drunk his second shot, Lefty told him it was time to go; that the saloon was too crowded. Shorty agreed, and as the men were turning to leave, Lefty accidentally bumped into a man so hard it knocked the man down. “You did that on purpose!” the man called out in a slurry voice, obviously drunk.

  “I didn’t mean to do it, mister,” Lefty said. “Let me buy you a drink to make things right.”

  “You’re gonna have to do more than that,” the drunk said. “I want part of the money you got in them pockets.”

  “Don’t you think that’s a mite too stiff,” Lefty said with a slight smile, “you’ll have to settle for a drink.”

  Apparently, the drunk thought he’d found a push-over and reached for his pistol, but before his gun left leather, he was looking down Lefty’s gun barrel. “I wouldn’t try that,” Lefty said, “It might get you killed.” The man was drunk, but he wasn’t so drunk he didn’t know what he’d gotten himself into. He knew if the man aiming the pistol at him wanted too, he could have shot him full of holes and he’d be dead, laying on the sawdust. The drunk nodded and slowly eased himself back into the crowd.

  “Did you see that!” a voice echoed from the crowd. “That was the fastest draw I’ve ever seen!”

  “Yaw,” another voice echoed. “That’s Lefty Newman, the gunslinger. I saw him gun down Bob Ellis back in Las Cruces, and Ellis was thought to be one of the fastest men in the territory.” Lefty grabbed Shorty’s arm and hurried for the door. He didn’t like to hear people talking about his draw.

  It was cloudy the next morning when Lefty and Shorty left the hotel for the café. As they walked in, a burly looking man facing the door saw them and waved them over to his table with three other men because all of the other tables and chairs were taken. By the time Shorty and Lefty got to their chairs, their coffee was being poured, and other cups around the table were topped-off.

  Most of the plates had been pushed back by the time Shorty and Lefty got their plates, heaped-up with fried potatoes and several pieces of beef steak, or it might have been buffalo meat, they couldn’t tell. Biscuits were soon passed their way, followed up with a bowl of gravy.

  Lefty and Shorty were busy eating their food while their ears stayed tuned-in to the table conversations; especially to the man who said they were sitting within a few miles of where James Marshall had found the first flakes of gold. He said Marshall was in the process of building a sawmill for Sutter, who owned thousands of acres of land in the area when he found gold in a stream.

  After the waiter refilled the table’s cups again, the man went on. He said several years before gold was discovered in the area, Sutter had created a private fort at the junction of the American and Sacramento Rivers and commissioned himself as general of a regiment of men who were mostly of Mexican and Native American descents. In no way was the regiment a part of the U.S. military.

  He said when the word circulated about the gold strike, a city sprang up beside the fort and grew at an unbelievable rate. Within a year, the town of Sutter’s Fort had attracted several stores; liveries, cafes, a hotel, and several saloons. It even drew in a Methodist Church, and a theatrical stage was presently being built.

  The men at the table kept on jawing about the town’s growth and all of the miners passing through. When they started arguing about how many men had been shot and killed in the past few weeks, Lefty and Shorty laid their two-bits on the table and headed for the livery to get their horses. The gold was waiting.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Lefty and Shorty weren’t sure which way to go when they headed out. There were worn-down trails going in all directions. Their aim was to end up at the top of a high-up mountain, miles away from where the bulk of men were panning. According to Louise, when her husband returned home after a three-month trip, he explained to her in detail his findings and its location. He told her he walked for over a week in a northeast direction but mostly north, climbing three mountains, and staying in valleys as much as possible. He said he passed several men in streams, but as he continued they became fewer. By the time he stopped and started panning his strike, he hadn’t seen a person for over a day. He did tell her he had a feeling the best panning would be higher up in the mountains which he was going to explore when he returned. Louise left out the part of never seeing him again after he left.

  Lefty and Shorty were following Louise’s story the best they could, not knowing the actual trail or location of her husband’s strike. They had ridden northeast between two small mountains for most of the morning, but when the mountains turned west, the men swung east and headed up the mountainside. It didn’t appear steep, but it was. The horses had to make frequent rest stops causing travel to be slow. The lack of climbing endurance wasn’t because the horses hadn’t been active in the past, but because their efforts had been on fairly flat ground and not climbing mountains. The men hoped they’d get their wind in a few days after they’d climbed a bit.

  It was past high noon when they stopped for a bite to eat and give the horses extra time to rest and graze. There wasn’t much grass for the horses, but there was enough. Coffee water was heating, and bacon was hanging on branches over the fire when Lefty asked as he looked toward th
e foot of the mountain, “How high up do you think we’ve come, Shorty?”

  “We ain’t climbed as far as you might think. It’s normal to think you’ve climbed higher than you have. I’d guess we’re up about five-hundred feet.”

  “Is that all? Seems to me like we’ve been riding up-hill for at least a mile.”

  Short laughed. “There ain’t many mountains a mile high in this part of the country. Later on, when we get deeper into the Sierra Nevada, we’ll see snow-capped mountains over twelve thousand feet high; some may even be higher.”

  “We ain’t going up that high, are we?”

  “Probably not, but we’re going up a far piece,” Shorty answered with a slight nod.

  The afternoon passed rather slowly, and frequent stops continued. Neither man had seen, or even knew, trees existed as large as the virgin pines they were riding through. Some trees were nearly two-hundred feet tall and six feet across. The white fluffy clouds floating east seemed to be touching the trees tops at the mountain’s peak, and in the far distance, eagles soared.

  They were not quite to the mountaintop, and it was a mite early to stop for the day, but when they came to a plateau covered in grass and a fast-flowing creek, they decided to call it a day. It was obvious that the site had been a stopping place for several travelers in the past. Boot and horse tracks were everywhere, and several black spots dotted the area where fires had blazed with cigarettes butts beside them.

  Their evening was like most. Drinking coffee, eating a bacon sandwich and one of Louise’s fried pies, and hitting the sack as soon as darkness came. There was one difference; it got extremely cold during the night, and the men nearly froze.

  When Shorty and Lefty reached the mountain crest the next morning, they stopped in awe, taking in the sight. It was beautiful, no matter which direction you looked, but the one to the northeast was the best. It was a view of tall mountains, appearing to have a stack of three different levels. The lower level of the mountain was covered with pine trees; the next level was bare rock, and the top level was snow covered. “Pretty, ain’t it?” Lefty said.

  “Yaw,” Shorty answered, “it’s where we’re headed.”

  “We ain’t going that high up, are we?” Lefty asked.

  “Maybe not clean to the top, but up a good ways.”

  “How tall do you think those mountains are, Shorty?”

  Shorty paused a bit, doing some figuring. “I heard-tell trees stop growing at six to seven-thousand feet because of the air being so thin. If that holds true, that tallest mountain must be over twelve-thousand feet ‘cause the trees ain’t over halfway up its side.”

  “That means this mountain is less than half as tall ‘cause we’re still in the trees,” Lefty said.

  “I imagine we’re only a third as high.” Lefty’s eyes bugged at Shorty’s comment.

  The men stayed on top of the mountain’s crest, riding through the trees in a northerly direction for the balance of the day. The relative flat terrain of the mountaintop made traveling easy. There were a few dips that had to be climbed, but not many.

  At noon the next day, the men started down the east side of the mountain and reached the valley floor in late afternoon. Their ride down the mountain wasn’t nearly as far as their climb up the mountain had been the day before because of the area’s gradual incline. The valley had a good amount of grass and a fair-sized stream flowing swiftly around rocks in its floor. After stopping for the horses to drink, the men rode alongside the creek for a couple of hours before stopping for the night. They rigged-up a tent-like structure by cutting a few limbs with Shorty’s ax and stretching his sixteen-foot-long canvas around them. Afterward, an extra amount of wood was gathered up, so a fire could be kept burning all night. Hopefully, it would keep them warm.

  Nothing much happened the next day until they stopped in late evening for the night at a curve in the valley. They’d already set up camp, made coffee, and Shorty was fixing supper when Lefty spoke up, “I think I’ll get my pan and try my luck in the creek. I need to practice up, see how it’s done.” Lefty walked along the creek, occasionally dipping up sandy gravel and swirling the pan, looking for gold.

  He was around the curve and out of sight when Shorty took the bacon from the fire and dug out the hardtack. He’d eaten and drank a cup of coffee, but Lefty hadn’t shown. Maybe, he’s struck it rich, Shorty thought with a grin. I’d better go see about him and claim my part.

  When Shorty rounded the curve, he saw three men holding Lefty at gunpoint a hundred yards or so farther up the creek. Shorty slipped back, not wanting to be seen. Then he crawled up the mountain a-ways and slipped from tree-to-tree until he sided Lefty and the three men. Shorty wasn’t good with a gun, but he pulled his pistol anyway and crept slowly toward the men. “I got ‘ya covered,” he called out. “Throw those guns down. If you try anything, you’re dead.” Two of the men followed orders, but one of the men stepped sideways and swung his gun toward Shorty. He was pulling the hammer back when Lefty’s gun sounded. The swift flowing creek water had to make a detour around the thief’s dead body.

  “What’s this all about?” Shorty asked, still pointing his pistol at the two remaining men while Lefty pulled the body from the stream. “How come a man risk his life over a good-for-nothing strike.”

  “That wasn’t all of it, Shorty. They were about to take my gun and money and tie me up when you came along.”

  Shorty nodded and then asked, “What are we gonna do with ‘em, Lefty?”

  “After they dig a grave and bury their partner, we’ll tie ‘em up for the night. Tomorrow we’ll take their guns and horses upstream a couple of miles. They’ll have to walk for ‘em.”

  Shorty looked at Lefty kind of strange. “What’s wrong, Shorty? Don’t you agree with me?”

  “I was thinking about the dead man. That makes eight…don’t it?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Lefty and Shorty tied the horses of the two holdup men to a tree limb a couple miles up-stream and put their guns in one of the saddlebags. They had untied the men before riding off from camp that morning.

  Lefty was now a three-horse string. He rode Star with Sandy and the dead man’s horse tethered behind; the pack load now split between the two horses. Indications of past digging were becoming more prevalent as they rode beside the stream. At some locations, it was evident several men had worked the site for a considerable time. Holes and trenches lined the stream’s sides, crude framework of poles stood where canvas had probably been stretched over them for shelter, and fire ashes fronted the poles with cigarettes buts lying around. Crosses occurred quite often, marking gravesites.

  Nothing much changed as they spent the day riding up the valley alongside the stream. The travel had been easy with only a noon stop to eat and a mid-afternoon stop for coffee before making camp at twilight. As before, they built a crude tepee for shelter with a fire burning at its entrance.

  It took three long days of hard riding, morning to night, for Lefty and Shorty to cross over the next two mountains and descend into a valley floor where a thirty to forty-foot-wide, swift-running river flowed. With a couple hours left in the day, the men headed upstream.

  Not long afterward, picks banging against rock and men talking was heard before they saw anything. Lefty and Shorty rounded a river-bend and saw several dozen men lining the river banks, swinging picks, digging with shovels, and swirling pans. When they got to the first miner, they stopped, and Shorty asked, “Howdy. Having any luck?” The miner raised up but didn’t answer the question. Shorty continued, “My friend and me are new at this; we ain’t ever panned before and could use any advice you might offer.”

  “Only been here three days myself,” the man said. “All I can tell ‘ya is to dig the crust off the surface along the river bank or even in the water if you want, and then start dipping the sand and swirling your pan. You might find some gold, but it ain’t likely.”

  “Have you found much since you’ve been here?” Lefty ask
ed again. The miner shook his head.

  “Naw, not much. I ain’t even got a half of a bag yet, and I’ve been digging from first light to dark for three days.”

  “How about the other men? Are they finding any?” Lefty asked.

  “Two men have been doing a mite better. I heard over fire last night that a man up the line has filled eleven bags, but he found most of it early on when he first got here three weeks ago, and not many men were around.”

  “I figured we’d see a lot more men panning the creeks,” Shorty said. “We saw several hundred leaving San Francisco heading this way when we left a few days back and were told several thousand had already left. Where did they all go?”

  “They’re spread throughout these mountains,” the miner said. “I had a man tell me the Sierra Nevada Mountains went on for miles and miles, north and south of here. He said they covered thousands of acres and a good bit of the land is not passable except by a mountain goat.”

  “How much farther north can a man go along this river without running into that mountain goat country?” Lefty asked with a wide grin.

  “I ain’t for sure, but I’ve been told the curve up ahead is as far as a miner can go. I’ve seen a lot of men passing through, and they all seem to be heading east.” Shorty and Lefty nodded their appreciation and started off, but the miner called to them. “Better keep an eye out. There’s men riding the rivers and streams robbing miners of their gold. I hear tell they’ve killed a few men.” Both men nodded their thanks for the warning.

  Shorty followed Lefty along the river for about a mile, passing busy miners the whole time. When the valley and river made a sharp curve back north, there were no longer any miners because the river was boxed-in with its water flowing against straight-up rock cliffs on both sides,