The Highbinders

by F. M. Parker

  Yow led the way into the yard and stopped near Gee. Pak followed. No one spoke, each thinking his private thoughts.

  Lian came outside with her sleeping pallet and bundle of clothing. She had changed her garb to cotton. She took a carrying pole from where it leaned against the side of the house and tied the pallet to one end and the clothing to the other.

  “Honorable Ho, may I have another minute before we leave?” asked Lian.

  Yow nodded his approval. Lian walked to the edge of the orchard.

  She stroked the rough bark of the nearest orange tree. She laid her forehead against the knotted bole. After a moment, she raised her head and her sad eyes roamed their tender touch over the ancient orchard.

  “Goodby old friends,” she whispered.

  Returning to the men, Lian stood in front of her father. “Send me news of yourself often, Father.”

  Gee Ah reached out a hand and felt the splendid cheek of his daughter. “And you, too, Lian. Send news often.” He backed away, and as if very tired, leaned against the wall of the house for support.

  Pak and Yow walked from the yard and toward their carriage standing in the rutted road. Lian shouldered her carrying pole, and with the two opposite weights swaying to her steps, fell in behind the two men.

  The men took the only seat. Lian placed her scant possessions in the rear of the vehicle and climbed in to sit on her rolled sleeping pallet. She did not believe she would ever see her home again.

  Pak clucked at the horse and it moved off with the wagon along the road leading down the hill to the river bottom.

  CHAPTER 5

  In the weak light of a thin, new moon, the weary black horse carrying Tom came onto a long gravel bar beside the Snake River. Its iron-shod hooves grated on the round stones. One round rock rolled and the horse stumbled.

  Tom’s slack body pitched from the saddle and fell upon the hard stones. He did not stir. The damp November cold of the river wrapped itself around him.

  * * *

  Sigh Ho arose from his sleeping pallet on the floor. In the pitch blackness of the cabin, he took his coat from a peg driven into a log of the wall and moved along the aisle between the two rows of slumbering men.

  He accidentally brushed against one of the sleepers and that person, disturbed in some private dream, murmured a few unintelligible words and then his voice trailed off.

  The door opened silently on its leather hinges and Sigh went outside. He glanced at the nearby cookhouse and farther away the second sleeping cabin. Not a glimmer of light showed that would indicate the occupants were awake. As was usual, Sigh had arisen first.

  He moved away from the crude log structure and looked out over the Snake River Valley. The mighty chasm lay full of black night to its rim. The wet, rumbling noise of the turbulent flow of the river through its rocky, two-hundred-yard-wide gorge reached him. Overhead a multitude of stars were tiny pricks of light in the dark heavens.

  Against the faint starshine in the east, Sigh traced the two mile high angular peaks of the Seven Devils Mountains. Towering only slightly lower, the round dome of Black Mountain lay close on the west side of the river. This foreign land was raw and wild.

  Somehow that seemed to Sigh to be a fitting place to find his fortune.

  The first year of Sigh’s sojourn in America, he had worked in California, on the North Fork of the American River in the Cascade Mountains. Unlike nearly all Chinese who avoided contact with the Americans as much as possible, he had deliberately sought a job with them so he could learn their difficult language and, more importantly, study the most profitable technique for finding and working the gold deposits.

  In the early summer of the second year, Sigh had gathered thirty-one of his countrymen, mostly from Kwangtung Province like himself, and had followed the tales of the new gold strike in Oregon. They had twice stopped to work on the Central Pacific Railroad to earn money for supplies and food. By late summer they had crossed the harsh desert of Nevada and reached the valley of the Snake River.

  They spread along the river and for several days worked downstream, panning the gravel bars of the main stream and testing all the side tributaries for gold concentration. At the base of Black Mountain, where a steep, tumbling stream emptied into the Snake, they had encountered the white man, Ed Cason. He had staked his claim to a long gravel bar on the west side of the river and was beginning a one-man mining operation.

  Cason offered the little army of men a share of the claim to help remove the overburden to reach the gold he believed lay buried near the contact zone between the fluvial material and the ancient bedrock. Before Sigh would agree to the proposal, he selected six members of his crew who were skilled at washing gold and they prospected up the creek that was the source for the sand and gravel on the bar.

  Because of the steepness of the bed of the stream, little sedimentary material was present to examine. However, Sigh found a golden nugget weighing a quarter ounce wedged in a crack in a rock. They searched diligently to discover another nugget or the origin of the first. They located neither.

  Returning to the river, they had discussed the single find with those of their crew who had stayed behind. They questioned whether or not that was the only gold in all the eroded land. Or was it a symbol left to guide them to great wealth?

  In the end, the Chinamen pooled their scant money and made a counteroffer to Cason. They would purchase his claim for eleven hundred dollars.

  Cason had mined gold from a score of placer diggings and with that experience had thoroughly studied the shape and depth of this gravel bar. Many of the stones were large and could not be washed away by redirecting part of the river flow. Further he had determined the bedrock dipped steeply and lay far beneath the overburden. Many hundreds of tons of heavy stones and ten times that much sand and gravel would have to be shouldered and carried away to expose the bedrock.

  The white man accepted the offer of the small brown men and producing his record of the filing of his claim at Baker, signed it over to one Sigh Ho and thirty-one other, unnamed Chinamen.

  Immediately Sigh and his comrades began to construct two log sleeping cabins and a cook shack on a narrow bench above the flood zone of the river. The soft wood of the cottonwood trees cut easily and the structures were soon erected. Not too soon for the anxious men. Below them, awaiting their eager hands, was a gravel bar some three hundred feet long and fifty feet wide. The gods be willing, buried in that sedimentary mass would be a golden treasure awaiting Sigh and his comrades. They would all return to China as rich men.

  Sigh saw the morning dusk arrive on the top of the mountains and begin to descend onto the valley. Objects began to take form. Sigh heard the cook arise and start his fire.

  The twilight sank downward, brightening the darkness in the bottom of the valley. Hidden objects took form. Sigh saw a gaunt black horse standing on the gravel bar and a man sprawled on the rocks.

  Sigh ran quickly to the nearest cabin and shook the sleeper nearest the door.

  “What do you want? Is it time to get up?” questioned the man.

  “Wake all the others,” directed Sigh. “There is a stranger near the river and we must find out what he is doing here.”

  Sigh alerted the cook and sent him to wake the men in the second sleeping cabin.

  All the men assembled hurriedly and followed Sigh down the bank to the gravel bar. The horse heard their approach over the rock and turned to face them. It snorted loudly, warning the men off.

  Sigh stopped and studied the man lying in an unnatural crumpled slackness. He was either unconscious or dead.

  Sigh moved forward slowly, speaking in a low, soothing voice to the horse standing protectively over the inert figure. The animal laid back his ears and bared his teeth like a big guard dog.

  “Maybe we should wait until the horse leaves,” suggested one of the men.

  “Or throw rocks and drive him away,” said another.

  “No,” responded Sigh. “Stay close and be silent
. We are not afraid of one horse, even if he does act fierce.”

  The black animal gave way, retreating reluctantly step by step before the press of men.

  Sigh spoke to Yuen, the healing man of the group. “Check the white man’s condition.”

  The healer knelt and placed his ear to Tom’s chest. “He lives.”

  Yuen felt Tom’s legs and arms and found them sound. He unbuttoned the ragged shirt and ran his practiced hands along Tom’s body. The ribs stuck out painfully bony, like ripples of sand beneath the skin. None were broken. He parted the hair stiff with old blood and examined the head injury.

  “He has no broken bones,” said Yuen. “There are bruises from falling. Some are old, some new. He has a very bad wound on the head. Probably been shot. It is badly infected. Without cleaning it, I cannot tell if the skull is broken or not.”

  Sigh had been scanning up and down the river. No other men or horses were present in either direction before the river curved away out of sight. He believed the white man had accidentally stumbled upon their camp. He stepped to the horse, now quiet and watching closely, and searched through the saddle bags.

  Finishing his inspection of the articles he had found on the horse, Sigh spoke to Yuen. “Can you save his life?”

  “The head wound is the worst. It is several days old and he still lives. Therefore, there is reason to believe he will not die from that. But sometimes wounds such as this upon the head leave the man addled in thought. We could not know if that will be this man’s fate until we hear him speak.”

  Sigh pondered the situation a moment longer. Then he spoke to the group of men gathered around him.

  “We will help the man to live. Two of you carry him to the cabin where Yuen sleeps. He will heal him if it is possible.”

  “No! That is not what we should do,” exclaimed a tall man standing in the center of the crowd. “We should take what we need of the foreign devil’s things and throw him in the river.”

  “Scorn, we are not thieves or murderers,” responded Sigh.

  “Maybe not yet,” Scorn’s voice was tight with challenge. “But what have white men ever done for us except to treat us worse than dogs in the street and tax us outrageously for digging gold? I say we do not help this man.”

  “We may have need of him,” said Sigh. “If he recovers he will be in our debt. I have thought of ways he could aid us. Ways in which we cannot help ourselves.”

  “He means nothing to us now and never will in the future. Who of you are with me? We will take the horse to carry supplies from Baker City and drag the boulders from the gravel bar so we can get to the gold. Since Sigh does not want us to kill the white man, we will simply let him die by himself. He looks nearly dead now.”

  A few men near him growled ominously in agreement. They moved forward in a knot, elbowing aside those in the way.

  A large man who had been standing attentively in the rear, now hastily circled the throng. He stopped near Sigh and spoke to him. “I would like to give my help to you. Those mean fellows are strong and might try to use force to have their way.”

  Sigh looked up at the big man. Yutang was a brave and ferocious fighter. “I welcome your offer. I do not want anyone hurt. If there is to be trouble, let them start it.”

  “And then I shall end it.” Yutang spread his large hands and grinned.

  Yutang pivoted to face the men. “I side with Sigh. He organized this venture to find gold. There can be only one leader. We have selected Sigh. He says he has a way to use this man and I believe it would be a good plan.”

  Yutang hesitated for a moment then began to speak again. “Scom is one who always disagrees and causes trouble among us. Do not listen to him.”

  Yutang ranged his sight over the gathering to see how his words were being taken. Scom and his cohorts were still moving forward, but they had slowed. Unless some of the uncommitted men supported Sigh quickly, there would be a fight.

  “Yutang is correct,” said a man who had just been shoved by Scom.

  Many heads nodded and a loud murmur of voices rose to declare Sigh was the man to follow.

  “They had better let this end and not get Yutang mad,” said a man. He laughed as if he hoped there would be a battle.

  “You are all making a big mistake,” said Scom scornfully.

  “You have had your chance to speak and only your cronies back you,” said Sigh. “We will do this as I say.” He was sorry to see the division among the men. That could only weaken the group.

  Yutang bent and scooped Tom’s thin body up effortlessly in his arms. “I do not need assistance to carry the man to the cabin.”

  Scom stood directly in Yutang’s path. As the big man with his burden drew close, Scorn’s comrades warily moved aside. Scom spread his legs and put his hands on his hips.

  “Get out of my way,” ordered Yutang in a harsh voice. “If you cause me trouble, I will break your head and you will be the one that goes into the river instead of the white man.”

  Scorn’s eyes, dark and furtive, slid away and he stepped from in front of Yutang.

  “Lay him outside where the sunlight will shine on him so I can see to work,” Yuen called to Yutang and trailed him up to the cabin and knelt beside Tom.

  Yuen ignored the fetid stench of decaying flesh and brushed the white maggots from the grave injury on Tom’s head. With soap and water and a soft cloth, he washed away the yellow pus and dirty brown corruption. He did not stop until all the wound was exposed and oozing fresh blood from the raw, pink edges.

  When the wound lay clean, Yuen assessed the damage that had been done by the strike of the bullet on the head. A shallow groove, long as his finger, creased the skull. He nodded with satisfaction: some bone had shattered away under the impact, however the skull was not caved inward to crowd the brain.

  “How bad is it?” asked Sigh, who sat nearby and watched.

  “It is a very bad wound. But he is young. More than that I cannot say. Now while he is still unconscious and cannot feel the pain, I must close the opening. You hold the flesh together and I will do the stitching.

  Yuen spread a thin coating of salve from a small glass bottle over the injury. Then deftly with a curved needle and fine silk thread, he started his task. Sigh observed the needle pierce the flesh and the thread draw the lips of the wound snugly against each other. He was always amazed at the skill of the healer.

  As if sensing Sigh’s thoughts, Yuen said, “The scar will not be much, but there will be a sunken area where some of the bone is missing. However, it will be covered by his hair.”

  Yuen finished and again spread a film of salve over the stitched scalp. “Only time will answer our questions of how completely he will heal. That might be days or weeks. In the meantime, he must be fed and tended. It will require a great deal of effort.”

  “If I am correct in my plan, his help to us will be worth all the care we provide him.”

  “What is your plan?” asked Yuen.

  Sigh climbed to his feet and without answering went off toward the gravel bar and the men working there.

  * * *

  Tom came awake, floating up from the dark pit of unconsciousness. He lay stretched out on his back. A pleasant feeling of warmth bathed his body and his head was free of pain.

  With great joy he realized his mind was clear.

  He sensed its capacity to create order out of disorder, to discard the false dredges of his past hallucinating dreams.

  He allowed his thoughts to wander backward through the passageways of his memories. A kaleidoscope of past events tumbled through his mind, stopping for a moment at significant scenes.

  He remembered the violence he had done and the three dead men in Westfall. He recalled running before the sheriff and his deputies. He meant the lawmen no harm, wanting only to stay far out in front of them and go to a safe place.

  Then he had found the hurt deputy and helped him off the lava. That had ended with a period of blackness the length of which he did not k
now. The cold rain had awakened him and he had made the brain-jarring and seemingly endless ride beside a large river.

  There were unknown hours and days associated with that pain-filled journey. Some of the missing sections might never be filled. However, remembrances of that time were surfacing even now, fragments of it drifting up like a spark from the dark hole of a chimney to add another bit to form a more complete picture.

  He was awake from his nightmare and knew he was finished with it. He was no longer locked within his head and he felt the ebb of his life running strong and vital.

  The facts of this new situation must be quickly sorted out. Tom opened his eyes a crack and peered out. He lay on the ground in the sun. Mountain peaks covered with pine forest loomed above him on all sides, piercing the clear blue sky that arched overhead. The bottom quarter or so of the mountain slopes were carpeted with brown grass dotted here and there with patches of green brush and an occasional dark brown outcrop of granite. Below him at the base of a short, steep incline, a large river sped swiftly past between curving boulder-strewn banks. On a gravel bar beside the rushing water, many men worked.

  They were small men with brown skin. All were dressed in dark blue shirts and pants. Most wore hats, conical straw ones. Long braids of hair hung down each man’s back. Tom saw broad shaven areas on the front of the men’s heads.

  Tom watched the men labor. Eight of them, working in pairs, carried large stones off the gravel bar in canvas slings hanging between two long poles they rested on their shoulders. Twice that many men with shovels and baskets were transporting the smaller stones. All material was carried out into the flow of the river and dumped there.

  Two gold sluice boxes were situated in the edge of the water at each end of the bar. A man at each box shoveled sand and gravel into the upper end of the riffled sluice. Two men scooped water up in buckets and flushed the sand and gravel down the corrugated channel.

  A small young man went from one sluice box to the other, and with a metal blade, scraped the material trapped between each riffle into a bucket. This accumulation he carried to a man squatting on a flat stone near the edge of the river.