The Highbinders

by F. M. Parker

  That man took a quantity of the substance and placed it in a shallow pan some eighteen inches across. Then, dipping water and swirling the mixture, he winnowed the heavy yellow sediment and allowed the lighter to wash away into the river.

  Tom watched the workers repeating the rhythm and cycle of their tasks over and over. Rarely did they speak and even then he could not hear because of the distance and the sound of the rushing water.

  Who were they? Were they enemies? Tom began to organize his thoughts for a scheme to deal with the strange men.

  Tom very cautiously rolled his head to look for his horse. The black mount was foraging in the willows and cottonwoods downriver from the miners.

  A step sounded on the ground beside Tom. He hastily shut his eyes and lay very still.

  A man’s hand caught him by the throat. The fingers pressed inward, not hard, merely feeling, testing. The man shouted loudly in some language Tom did not understand.

  Instantly, the men stopped working. All except four surged up the bank en masse.

  “He is awake,” said Yuen. “His heart beats fast. He only acts unconscious.”

  “That is exactly what I would do,” said Sigh. “But now it is time to talk with him. I hope I know enough of his language to make my meaning clear.”

  “Come awake,” Sigh said in heavily accented English.

  Tom opened his eyes. Many round, brown faces surrounded him. Black eyes stared intently.

  “Hello,” said Sigh. “You understand me?”

  “Yes,” responded Tom.

  “That is good. You have been with us four days. We have waited.”

  Tom strained to comprehend the broken and almost unintelligible words. The tone sounded friendly. He relaxed slightly.

  He placed his hands on the ground and tried to sit up. He could not lift the weight of his body.

  “Your strength will return,” said Yuen.

  Sigh said to Tom, “Yuen says you will become strong. He is the one that helped you to life.”

  Tom looked at Yuen. “Thank you. I am in your debt.”

  A pleased expression swept over Sigh’s face. He leaned and caught hold of Tom’s shoulders. “Let me help you sit up. Are you hungry?”

  “Starved.” Tom realized he had never wanted food so badly.

  “Then you shall eat,” Sigh called out to the cook. “Hoy, bring something nourishing for our new friend.”

  A moment later, a bowl of soup was placed in Tom’s hand. His weakened body trembled in anticipation of the food. His hand shook as he spooned a bit into his mouth.

  The aroma teased his nostrils and the flavor tingled his tongue. His stomach welcomed the delicious soup. He chewed slowly, savoring every tidbit.

  Never afterward would Tom be able to describe the contents of the mixture, for his mind was occupied with the realization he would live. That knowledge gave the food an essence that never again could be duplicated.

  “What is your name?” asked Sigh.

  “Tom .”

  “I am Sigh Ho. You will get to know the others later. Are you alone?”

  “Yes. All alone.”

  “Then you shall stay with us awhile. Rest now. We have much work to do. We will talk again when the sun has gone down and it is dark.” Sigh said something to the men that Tom did not understand and all filed away to the river.

  Tom saw heavy scowls on the faces of the four men who had not come up the bank at Yuen’s call. He wondered why they appeared to be angry.

  CHAPTER 6

  Tom lay in the gentle afternoon warmth of the November sun. Now and then he lifted his head and watched the Chinamen laboring on the gravel bar. He was amazed at the men’s relentless assault on the huge river deposit. Only rarely did a man stop to rest and then only for a moment.

  The men were young, most under thirty. All but two were small, hardly more than five feet tall and weighing less than one hundred and twenty pounds. The exceptions were a hand-width taller than the others. One of the two was striking in that he was unnaturally broad, greater by more than twice that of most of his comrades.

  He was one of the pair of men who carried the largest stones from the bar in the pole and canvas slings. Three times during the day Tom had noted a fresh worker relieve the mate of the man, for no one could maintain the rigorous pace he set. The relieved man fell upon the ground and lay panting

  On the upstream end of the bar where the alluvium was the thinnest, the men had exposed the granite bedrock for a stretch of thirty feet or so. One of the younger Chinamen was flushing the fractured granite surface with buckets of water and examining the material wedged in the cracks.

  He stooped and grabbed up something in his hand. For a few seconds he turned it in the sunlight. Then he cried out shrilly and began to laugh and dance about. He thrust the object high above his head and ran to Sigh.

  The others speedily surrounded Sigh and the young man. They milled and shoved to see what had been found. Their laughter and shouts of delight rose above the noise of the river and echoed against the far mountainside.

  The joy of the Chinamen drew Tom. He climbed shakily erect and went gingerly down the bank to join the happy throng.

  On the palm of Sigh’s hand lay a golden cube of gold nearly three inches on each side. The corners of the malleable metal had been slightly rounded from being tumbled by the running waters. The cube’s journey from its birthplace had been short.

  Sigh handed the square of yellow metal to the nearest man. “Pass it around. Let everyone feel it for luck. There may be many more of these buried beneath the gravel.”

  The man hefted the lump of gold in his hand. “It weighs many ounces. This one piece alone will make several of us rich.”

  “It could buy many things in China,” agreed the man beside him and took the gold.

  The cube of precious metal passed from man to man. Each stroked and caressed it with his calloused fingers. Tom wondered what their dreams were.

  One man made as if to put it in his pocket and then laughed at the others as they let out a roar of disapproval.

  Sigh recaptured the gold and placed it atop a large rock in the middle of the gravel bar. “We can all see it there. Now back to work. We may soon find another to match this one.”

  He silently decided that when the gravel bar had been fully sifted for all its wealth, he would search again for the mother lode, the source of the gold. There had to be one place where the gold came from deep within the earth. What a glorious discovery that would be.

  The yellow ball of the sun dropped behind the peak of Black Mountain and shadows filled the deep Snake River Valley. The wind began to blow chilly.

  On the gravel bar, one of the Chinamen ceased working and, taking his basket, set off downstream along the shore of the river. An hour later he returned with the basket full of fish. The man must have a fish trap, thought Tom, or several baited hooks set in the river.

  Hoy took the fish and went up the slope to the cook shack. The fisherman returned to his work on the gravel bar.

  Tom saw smoke from Hoy’s cooking fire begin to rise from the chimney. He considered joining the man, for the cold wind was cutting through his thin cotton shirt. Still, Tom had not been invited inside, so he remained on the river bank.

  When the shadows were dark with evening dusk, Hoy rang a high-pitched metal bell from the door of the cookhouse. At the signal an instant change occurred in the laboring men. Their quietness broke and they began to talk to each other. Quickly they stowed their shovels, buckets and slings.

  Taking time only to remove their boots, they rushed into the river, submerging themselves completely. They surfaced, blowing noisily and swinging their long wet queues heavy with river water. Speedily they stripped and bathed, using fine sand from the bottom of the river to wash away the grime of the day’s work.

  The men scrubbed their sweaty clothing and wrung the water from them. Then trooped unabashedly naked up the slope to their sleeping quarters. Shortly they emerged in dry b
louses and pants and filed into the cookhouse. Tom was to learn this was an evening ritual of the Chinamen except when the ice locked the river away under its white barrier.

  He thought the bathing an excellent idea and checked his own clothing. They were filthy. He went to the river and in a pool of more quiet water in an eddy behind a large boulder, washed his garments and bathed.

  He tugged the wet trousers and shirt on. In the cold wind, they felt like ice. He shivered. Unless a person had a change of dry garments, maybe it wasn’t such a good thing to become wet. Yet even cold, the cleanliness felt remarkably fine. He walked up from the river to the cookhouse and peered inside.

  Sigh came to meet him. “I saw you in the river. Here is some dry clothing. Put them on and then come inside.”

  “Thank you,” said Tom. He stood beside the wall of the cabin and changed into a set of Chinaman’s blue pants and blouse. His arm protruded a good six inches from the sleeves of the shirt and his legs an equal distance from the legs of the pants. He felt so warm and comfortable that he smiled with pleasure. Stooping low, he passed through the short doorway and went inside.

  The cookhouse was crowded with the gathering of Chinamen. Hoy worked at several pots set in the hot coals of an open fireplace. All the others sat on low benches on opposite sides of a long table made of split logs, the flat side up.

  Four tallow candles were spaced along the table and dimly lit the interior of the room. The yellow flames, flickering in the wind drafts from the open doorway, threw wavering shadows upon all the round, brown faces, the partially shaved heads and the black eyes. The men stared back at Tom with fixed expressions.

  In the half light in the crude log cabin on the wild Snake River, the men looked very alien to Tom. The thoughts behind their eyes were unfathomable. Still, he nodded a greeting and smiled at them for they had treated his wound and given him food and warm clothing.

  “Sit here beside me,” said Sigh and motioned at a vacant space.

  “You are very hospitable to a stranger,” said Tom.

  “What you mean hospitable?” asked Sigh, unfamiliar with the word.

  “Very kind,” explained Tom.

  Sigh laughed at the compliment. “Yes. I think you would be kind to us also.” He believed what he said. He sensed a gentleness about the white man, one who spoke in an odd way, each word deliberately and distinctly spoken as if he were placing something fragile upon a hard surface.

  Sigh lifted a cloth-wrapped bundle from the bench and handed it to Tom. “All your possessions are in here. I took them from your horse.”

  “Thank you,” said Tom.

  His tanned deer hide map was there. He smoothed it with his hands, glad it had not been lost. Also, there were his knife in a scabbard, a small quantity of jerky and raisins and his six-gun. He pulled the pistol from its holster and found it had been cleaned and lightly oiled.

  “You have taken good care of my things,” said Tom. “It seems I am much in your debt. Not only for these things, but for my very life. I am not sure that I will ever be able to repay you.”

  Sigh spoke swiftly to his countrymen in their language. Then he turned to Tom. “I told them what you said. You are among friends here. Rest awhile with us. When you are strong, there is more than enough work for all of us on the gravel bar. There may come a time when you can help us in other ways.”

  Tom did not understand all of the heavily accented English words. Nevertheless he comprehended enough to know the meaning of the man’s statement. He smiled his pleasure and agreement.

  “The food is ready,” said Hoy. He lifted the large pots from the fire and set them directly onto the table.

  A stack of tin plates were speedily distributed. Tin cups and chopsticks and a scattering of forks and knives followed. All began to eat.

  Tom ate the food with high relish. He knew the men watched him eat. That did not lessen his wolfish forage upon the food. He reached for a third helping of the boiled brown beans, tender flesh of the river fish, and some substance with a crunchy texture.

  “The foreign devil eats like a pig,” exclaimed Scom in a cutting voice. “Already he has consumed as much food as three of us. Twice as much as Yutang. We cannot afford his help. It is difficult to haul the supplies from Baker City.”

  At the explosion of rapid words, Tom stopped dipping the food onto his plate. He did not understand the man’s language, but the expression of anger and resentment on Scorn’s face fully told the man’s feelings. Tom let the ladle fall back into the pot.

  He looked past the rows of faces of the men at the stock of provisions on shelves along the rear wall and on the floor. There were cans, jars, boxes and sacks of what he believed to be food stuff. Still, compared with the large number of men, the quantity of provisions were very inadequate. There was indeed something for all to worry about. Winter could begin any day and they could be locked for weeks in the mountain valley.

  Tom turned to Sigh. He must apologize for his lack of consideration of the needs of the men who helped him.

  The Chinaman spoke more quickly. “It is understandable that you are very hungry. Scom should not have spoken as he did. I am sorry for his rudeness. Now finish your food for you are welcome here.”

  Scom grunted once in disagreement and lapsed into silence. Tom saw the hatred in the Chinaman’s eyes, ageless and ugly. Scom flung a last malignant glance at him and sprang up from the table and went out through the door into the darkness.

  * * *

  Tom awoke with the first paling of the stars. He left the cabin where he had slept on a pallet near Yuen and walked quietly south along the course of the river. He did not see Sigh sitting on the rock above the river. The Chinaman noted Tom passing.

  Sigh reentered the cabin and woke Yutang. “The white man has gone up the river. Follow without being seen and find out what he does.”

  “You do not trust him? Do you think he has a scheme to steal our gold?”

  “I do not know what plan he might have. We will watch him closely.”

  “How long ago did he leave?”

  “Just now. Be very careful.”

  * * *

  The game trail came down from the pine forest on the high, humpbacked reaches of Black Mountain. It zigzagged back and forth across the nearly vertical slope, avoiding several rock out-croppings and the hazardous talus slopes below them, and ended at the Snake. Three buck deer, heads sprouting heavy antlers with sharp ivory tines, moved in sure-footed agility along the path.

  Tom lay hidden on a small brush-covered point of land near the river and overlooking the game trail. He watched the deer descend the flank of the mountain, stopping briefly at times to nibble a bud from a bush, or to stand for a period, ears flicking first in one direction and then another and searching for sound, and eyes scouring the terrain ahead. The wind flowed away from the deer and to Tom and they did not know of his presence.

  He had spotted the tell-tale scar of the trail on the mountainside the day before while he had lain resting on the river bank. The ease with which he had located it from nearly a quarter mile had told him it was well-used. After the incident of the food, he had vowed to kill a deer to replenish what he had eaten.

  Silently Tom drew his six-gun from its holster. Not a fitting weapon for killing a deer unless it was very close.

  He had considered asking Sigh for the loan of a rifle. However, not one gun was visible among the entire group. It appeared the Chinamen had come into the hostile land without weapons other than knives. That could prove to be a fatal error.

  Tom mentally measured the range to the game trail and judged it sixty feet. Careful aim must be taken to hit a vital spot solidly enough to kill.

  Tom waited in his ambush, enjoying the challenge of the hunt. As the dawn gradually brightened, he examined his intended prey.

  The lead buck was past the prime of his life; the normally gray-brown pelage was almost white on muzzle and chest. The other two were young and sleek.

  The deer came
closer, a mere two hundred feet distant. The old buck stopped and the two trailing animals halted close behind. The lead buck looked directly at the brush patch where Tom lay. His head rose and the black openings of his nostrils flared, sucking air, testing for scent.

  You are a wise bugger—that is why you have lived so long, thought Tom. But come a little nearer.

  The wary animals remained frozen, like pewter statues. The minutes slid by. Sunlight touched the evergreen forest on the top of Black Mountain.

  The younger bucks impatiently shoved past the aged one and came forward on the trail. Well, you smart old rascal you are safe, thought Tom. He extended his pistol and sighted along the barrel at the closest deer.

  The six-gun boomed. The speeding bullet shattered a rib, drove inward to pierce the throbbing heart.

  Instantly Tom rotated his point of aim, seeking the second deer. That animal had spun away from the sound of the gun and was facing up the river. It sprang mightily, launching itself into a twenty-foot leap.

  Tom triggered the six-gun, striking the buck a glancing blow on the back of the head. It crashed down, a pile of slack muscle and jumbled legs. The deer pulled itself together and struggled to its feet. Tom took deliberate aim and broke its neck with a shot.

  A second later, a shout sounded nearby. Yutang came out of a pocket of brush and hurried to Tom.

  Yutang smiled broadly as he surveyed the dead deer. He pointed at the location of the bullet holes and nodded his understanding of the skill required to place them exactly so to make the kill.

  Tom was angry at the presence of the man. The deer could have easily been spooked and his opportunity to supply meat and repay the Chinamen would have been lost.

  Yutang brought a knife from inside his blouse and began to remove the entrails of one of the animals. Now and then as he worked, he laughed happily, his deep bass chuckles sounding like rocks rolling down a rough stone canyon.

  Tom’s anger faded at the evident pleasure and approval of the big Chinaman. He pulled his own knife and started to gut the second deer.