The Highbinders

by F. M. Parker

  The Highbinders

  F. M. PARKER

  The Highbinders is a rousing saga of adventure, romance and violence set in the rugged frontier of the Pacific Northwest.

  The time is 1869.

  On the Black Rock Badlands, Tom Galaway is ambushed and shot. Near death and delirious, he wanders north into the mountains of the Snake River Country.

  In the Snake River Valley, Sigh Ho and 30 other young and lonely Chinese gold miners have pooled their money and sent to China to buy a woman and have her brought to California to provide love for them in the foreign land.

  In China, beautiful Lian sells herself to a “Buyer of Girls” to provide food for her starving family. She dreads the frightening voyage across the stormy sea to America.

  Pak Ho, a fierce Triad warrior, a Highbinder, is ordered to guard and transport Lian safely to San Francisco.

  Sigh Ho finds Tom near death on the banks of the Snake River and nurses him back to health. He asks one favor from Tom, go to San Francisco and bring the girl Lian to him and his 30 lonely comrades.

  While Tom is away, Sigh Ho and his comrades pay a terrible price for their rich strike of gold. Cardone and his gang of thieving killers come upon the Chinamen in the Snake River valley and slay them for their gold.

  Tom with his sixgun and Pack Ho with his sharp sword set out to take revenge upon Cardone and his gang. In the rugged Sierra Nevada Mountains and on the violent San Francisco waterfront and back alleys, the threads of the lives of these strong characters intertwine and explode with passion and violence in a struggle for revenge and survival.

  The Highbinders reveals a little-known chapter of the history of Chinamen in the gold fields of California, Oregon and Idaho. It combines authenticity with non-stop action and suspense. It is a thrilling reading experience.

  The Highbinders is fiction, however it is based upon a true event that cost the United States Government $276,610 in indemnities to the Chinese Government.

  About the Author

  F. M. PARKER has worked as a sheepherder, lumberman, sailor, geologist, and as a manager of wild horses, buffalo, and livestock grazing. For several years he was the manager of five million acres of public domain land in eastern Oregon.

  His highly acclaimed novels include Skinner, Coldiron, The Searcher, Shadow of the Wolf, The Shanghaiers, The Highbinders, The Far Battleground, The Shadow Man, and The Slavers.

  Visit www.fearlparker.com for more details.

  “SUPERBLY WRITTEN AND DETAILED… PARKER BRINGS THE WEST TO LIFE.”

  Publishers Weekly

  “ABSORBING…SWIFTLY PACED, FILLED WITH ACTION!”

  Library Journal

  “PARKER ALWAYS PRESENTS A LIVELY, CLOSELY PLOTTED STORY.”

  Bookmarks

  “REFRESHING, COMBINES A GOOD STORY WITH FIRST-HAND KNOWLEDGE.”

  University of Arizona Library

  “RICH, REWARDING… DESERVES A WIDE GENERAL READERSHIP.”

  Booklist

  Also by F.M. Parker

  Novels

  The Highwayman

  Wife Stealer

  Winter Woman

  The Assassins

  Girl in Falling Snow

  ThePredators

  The Far Battleground

  Coldiron – Judge and Executioner

  Coldiron - Shadow of the Wolf

  Coldiron - The Shanghaiers

  Coldiron – Thunder of Cannon

  The Searcher

  The Seeker

  The Highbinders

  The Shadow Man

  The Slavers

  Nighthawk

  Skinner

  Soldiers of Conquest

  Screenplays

  Women for Zion

  Firefly Catcher

  Contents

  About the Author

  Also by F.M. Parker

  The Golden Cube—A Prologue

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  EPILOGUE

  The Golden Cube—A Prologue

  Over aeons of time, the hot, primeval earth cooled and powerful convection currents, reaching to the very core of the molten sphere, lifted up the lighter elements and concentrated them upon the surface like a thin froth. Vast quantities of heat continued to radiate away into space during additional millions of years. The froth hardened into one giant land mass.

  Mighty forces broke the land mass into segments and slid them chip-like upon the denser interior of the planet. These continents arched and buckled under the thrusting force, creating tall mountain ranges upon their backs. From the hot center of the planet, mineral-rich fluids and gases were pumped into the passageways of the fractures and ruptures.

  Upon one such land mass there was a mountain that received part of these deep earth fluids. As the emanations migrated upward away from their source, they found regions that were cooler and had less pressure. The minerals that could not remain in solution in the new environs differentiated and precipitated out in the cracks and fissures of the mountain. Remaining behind to continue the journey through the rocks was a mixture becoming ever more concentrated with the more volatile and mobile of the compounds.

  In a place far underground within the mountain was a cavity, a very insignificant void as measured on the scale of the mountain. The percolating fluids containing the final elements entered the cavity. The temperature and pressure that existed there breached the fine line of mobility of one element.

  One atom of this metal settled from the liquid to rest upon the bottom of the void. A second atom attached itself to the first. And then a third joined its brothers.

  Preordained by the order of the universe, the atoms could join with each other in only one physical structure. As millions, billions of additional atoms dropped from solution, they formed themselves into a crystal lattice, aligning themselves with infinite precision, straight lines, right angles—a perfect cube.

  Time passed, an unimaginable span, and more billions of the particles of the mineral added their mass to the cube. Its edges were always sharp, sharp to the dimensions of one atom.

  Finally the passageways through the rocks closed and the mineral-laden fluids ceased to flow. Left resting in the cavity of the mountain was a perfect metal cube, three inches on each side by human measurement.

  Over uncounted epochs of time, wind and water eroded the mountain and earthquakes jarred down mammoth slabs and blocks of its flanks. One day the last weathered fragment of the rock that had been the host of the cube fell away. The sun shone upon the cube for the very first time, a glorious yellow nugget of gold.

  The magnificent golden nugget tumbled from its resting place and over the ensuing millenniums rolled and slid down the bottom of a steep creek to a mighty river.

  The cube was swept by the river onto a gravel bar. Floods buried it.

  The cube once again lay hidden from the sun.

  CHAPTER 1

  Honeycomb Badlands, Oregon—November 6, 1869

  The body of the outlaw lay wrapped in the blue Indian blanket beside the half-dug grave. In the bottom of the excavation, Sheriff Gumert dug with a short-handled shovel, the iron blade ringing harshly with each blow upon the stony earth of the badlands.

  Gumert stopped his labor, and lifting his hat, flicked beads of sweat from his forehead with a c
alloused finger. He looked out across the inhospitable and nearly impassable rock hill and sharp rock pinnacles forming the cells of the imaginary honeycombs.

  The barren land stretched away mile upon weary mile in every direction. It had been formed by the erosion of a great blanket of volcanic debris that had in some long-ago time exploded with fiery violence onto the land. Wind and water had carved and sculptured the ash and rock into a steep, angular topography hundreds of feet tall.

  The moisture of rain and snow had dissolved the crystals of iron in the tuff to stain the tortured rock mass with splotches of deep reds and browns. Like an army of men had dripped its lifeblood on the Honeycombs.

  Access into the jagged and broken terrain was possible only along the gravelly beds of the dry washes. Squeezed in between the more welded and enduring knobs of tuff, the gullies twisted and curved in strange and unpredictable paths. It was a land without pattern, easy for a man to wander lost in its labyrinthine channels.

  Thunder rumbled, sweeping north across the badlands from the distant Black Rock Desert. All afternoon, clouds had been building in the heated updrafts rising above the dusty, flour-white surface of the desert. The boiling masses of moisture, towering nine, ten miles high above the ancient dry lake bed, hung nervously electric, seething with energy. Some of the thunderheads had grown powerful enough to exist without the desert, and were striding like giants up from the Black Rock into the southern edge of the Honeycombs.

  Brilliant bolts of lightning flashed down from the dark bottoms of the storm clouds to slam the earth. Thunder crashed menacingly, like the pounding of huge cannons. Rain began to fall in long slanting streamers from the swollen stomachs of the clouds.

  Swift wind swept out more than a score of miles ahead of the storm front to dart among the cinder cones and rock pinnacles. The wind, carrying a chill down from the frigid zones of the high atmosphere where it had been born, swirled up the dust to fling it in a billowing surf through the dry gullies.

  A strong gust of the grit-laden air buffeted the sheriff and flopped the wide brim of his hat. He turned and looked to investigate the condition of one of his deputies lying unconscious in the shade of a ledge of rock.

  Basker was bruised in many places, his left leg was broken a few inches below the knee. The leg had been bound in a folded blanket and then tied rigidly between two rifles to prevent the bones from moving and worsening the wound.

  Garrity, his second deputy, was riding toward the Owyhee River lying a dozen miles to the west. The fast-flowing river, fed by snow melt from the faraway Santa Rosa and Tuscarora mountains of Nevada and the closer Owyhee Mountains on the border between Idaho and Oregon, forced its wet course through the desert and skirted the west boundary of the badlands. Cottonwood trees grew on the bank of the river. Garrity should return soon with long poles from one of those stands of trees to make a horse-drawn travois to transport the injured Basker to a doctor in Westfall.

  Two saddle horses and a pack animal had been ground-tied down the slope of the land from the grave. The black horse that had once belonged to the outlaw had dragged its reins and drawn near the body of its master. His pointed ears were thrust at the body in an intent, listening attitude. He sniffed at the blanket. Catching hold of a loose fold with his teeth, he tugged at it and nickered plaintively.

  At the sound, the sheriff turned about to look at the horse. It was an excellent animal, with long legs and deep chest. However, he was getting old with a wide band of gray around the muzzle and gray hairs here and there in the black coat of the still muscular body. The horse must be as old as the dead outlaw.

  The horse nudged the shoulder of the blanketed form as if trying to waken the man. The action bothered the sheriff. He picked up a rock and threw it, striking the animal on the side. The startled beast pivoted away for a few steps. Then he came hesitantly, warily back, watching the sheriff with alert black eyes, to stand over the motionless body again.

  The dark shadow of a cloud slid silently in to dim the land. The sheriff examined the swiftly traveling thunderheads. Rain would be falling in a few minutes and a torrent flooding through the arroyos. He wanted the grave to be finished before that happened. He glanced at the blanket-shrouded figure, measuring it against the length and width of the hole. Then he lowered his head and began to dig hurriedly.

  A voice called out behind the sheriff. “Gumert, what’s going on?”

  The sheriff turned his head to find Basker had regained consciousness and dragged himself from under the rock cliff.

  The deputy thrust a hand at the black horse and then down at the figure of the man. “Where did that animal come from and who’s that in the blanket?”

  “That’s our thief’s horse and that’s his body. Strange though, I couldn’t find any money on him, except for four dollars.”

  Basker groaned. “Goddamn no. It can’t be. What happened to him?”

  “What do you mean? You can see he’s dead. I killed him with my Sharps 56. Damn fine shot too. Nearly a quarter-mile range and I got him through the head.”

  An expression of dismay swept over the deputy’s face. The look quickly changed to anger. “You’re a sonofabitch, Gumert. You always have been too ready to use that big gun. I owed that man my life.”

  Gumert spread his legs and planted his feet firmly in the bottom of the grave. “Stop yelling at me, Basker, and tell me why you think you owe this man anything.”

  Basker glared at the sheriff. “He saved my life, that’s what. It happened after we split up near the lava field to find his trail again. You went west and Garrity east to circle outside the lava where there was soil to mark a horse’s tracks. I went straight on across the lava like you told me to.” Basker stopped talking and looked at the body for a moment.

  He shook his head sadly and began to speak again. “My fool horse stepped in a crack in the lava and fell. Landed on my leg and broke it. Twisted his hoof most off with the bone showing. I shot the clumsy thing.

  “I started hauling myself across that lava rock. Damnation, it was sharp as glass and I was soon cut and bleeding. After a time I stopped to rest. Didn’t seem like I had made any headways at all. There was miles yet to go. I thought right then, that I would die out there. With all the ridges and hollows and slabs of lava standing on end, you and Garrity could never find me.

  “I started to crawl again. Then I heard this noise on the rocks near me.” Basker pointed at the black animal. “That big horse there was standing beside me. And a fellow was glaring down at me, cold as ice. I knew it was the thief right off. It had to be him way out in that godforsaken lava country.”

  The sheriff climbed out of the grave and came to kneel close to Basker. “What did he look like? When I got to see him after he was shot, there was blood all covering his face.”

  “A young man, not yet filled out but looked strong. Black hair.”

  Gumert nodded. “Yeah. I saw that when I rolled him in the blanket.”

  Basker spoke. “Well he steps down from his horse and squats close to me. I figured it wasn’t any accident he was there. Probably heard my pistol shot when I killed my horse. He had a six-gun on his hip and I figured since we had been hounding his trail for better than five days, well he was going to be damn mad and would shoot me sure as hell.

  “Quick as thought, he snatches my pistol from its holster. Then he stands up and watches out over the lava for a long time. I suspected he was looking for the rest of the posse, you and Garrity, to see how close you might be before he killed me.

  “But that’s not what he did.”

  Basker pointed at a large tear in the front of his shirt. “That’s where I had my badge fastened. Well, he just reached out and grabs that piece of tin and tore it off. He throws it way out on the lava rock.

  “Then he talks to me in a voice soft as a preacher. You’re not a lawman anymore. You’re just a man with a broke leg that needs help. Where can I take you so your friends can find you?”

  “Well, I think it’s all s
ome kind of mean trick he is playing. But I tell him that you will be expecting to meet me at the north end of the lava field. And what does he do? Well, he lifts me up, strong he was and gentle, and sets me in his own saddle. Him leading that horse, off we go. I swear that old horse is as nimble-footed as a goat, for he never made one false step.

  “Damn it, Gumert, he spent five or six hours packing me out. If he hadn’t done that, he could’ve been miles gone from us and safe somewhere far away.”

  “Yes, he could have been,” agreed the sheriff. “Damn strange thing for a bank robber to do.”

  “Then you used that long-distance killing gun on him without giving him a chance. Gumert, you did wrong.”

  “Basker, you listen to me good,” snapped Gumert. “Garrity and me looked for you at the rendezvous point. You were no place around. We go off trying to find you. When I get back, there you were looking like death on the ground. And this fellow loping off. I thought he had killed you. So I jerked out my Sharps and shot. I know now it was a mistake. But right then it seemed the right thing to do. Damn it, man, don’t you understand? I thought he had killed one of my deputies.”

  Basker did not reply. He saw the strain on the sheriff s face at the unexpected turn of events.

  The first big raindrops of the storm began to drum on the ground and splatter on the rocks. Gumert evaluated the thunderhead charging upon them and then turned to Basker. “This is going to be a mighty cold rain. Let me help you back under the rock ledge. I think I’ll climb in there with you for there’s enough room.”

  Both men peered out through the thickening rain. The body of the outlaw could barely be seen beside the grave.

  Basker spoke. “I wish we had got him buried before the storm hit. It doesn’t seem right for him to be laying there in the wet like that.”

  “Dead men don’t feel anything,” responded the sheriff.

  * * *

  The sky darkened as if night were falling. The air split open and rain poured in a deluge, drenching the badlands. Water collected in every crevice, gathered into streams and poured into the gullies.