The Highbinders

by F. M. Parker

  Often the tax was collected more than once. Dishonest men, declaring themselves agents of the state, tramped the canyons and made forcible demands on the foreigners. In retaliation, the Chinese did what they could to hide the true numbers of men in the work groups.

  * * *

  The train sped southwest beside the Humbolt River. The mountainous upthrust of the Humbolt Mountain Range, with Star Peak stabbing like a spike into the sky, passed on the left. The more rounded dome of the Trinity Mountains slid by on the right.

  The Humbolt River was crossed at Carson City. West of the city, the foothills diminished and faded away and the train raced out onto the broad expanse of the Carson Sink. This was the graveyard of the Humbolt River, a three-thousand-square-mile area consisting of sand dimes circling wide alkali flats that in turn surrounded, in the lowest depths of the sink, mile upon mile of marshland.

  The thundering and hissing locomotive sped near several shallow lakes and sloughs. A great white cloud of snow geese rose up, to be immediately joined by masses of gray crane, green-head merganser duck and the many-colored widgeon, and scores of other species of waterfowl.

  Tom was flabbergasted as the heavens became black with soaring, milling flocks of birds, each crowding the other for sky room to fly. Never had he imagined there could ever be so large a multitude of waterfowl.

  The train veered due west from Carson Sink and approached the Pah Rah Mountains. Just before the climb started, the locomotive pulled onto a siding and stopped. A thin white haze rose around it as excess steam was vented.

  As the passengers waited for the oncoming traffic, the sun weakened and the evening dusk came rushing from the east and overran the motionless train. A few minutes later the eastbound train sped down the mountain grade and swished by an arm’s length away, a dark blur with flashing patches of yellow light from the windows of the passenger coaches.

  Water and wood was replenished at Reno. The twisting, tortuous climb of the straining locomotive up the mighty Cascade Mountains was made in the night.

  Morning arrived and lit a dazzling new world of snow and evergreen forest. The train wound through the large pine, fir and spruce and reached the crest of the mountain range. Tom’s view was quickly drawn beyond the mountain to a mammoth valley that seemed to stretch forever to the west. He began to wonder if he might not actually be seeing the ocean at that farthest reach of his eyes.

  The train tipped toward the balmy Pacific and began to pick up speed.

  * * *

  Sacramento lay spread across the flat flood plain of the river with the same name. It bustled with activity as drays, wagons, hacks, carriages and coupes moved endlessly along the streets. The hurrying townsfolk, though seemingly bent upon important business, still often called out greetings to each other.

  “A magnificent city,” said John and waved his hand to indicate the entire assemblage of buildings and the thousands of acres of irrigated cropland ringing the town. “It is the capital of California and, with the coming of the railroad, is the center of transportation and trade in the state.”

  “I have never seen anything like it,” said Tom. “Thousands of people must live here.”

  “Yes, indeed, tens of thousands. Let’s go down to the dock and catch the riverboat to San Francisco. That city on the coast hills is even more beautiful.”

  They moved along the wooden walkway in front of a wide variety of business establishments and arrived at the river shore. A brilliant white riverboat tugged gently at the hawsers that held it to the wharf. People were filling up a gangway to board at the bow. At the stern, carriages and saddle mounts were being loaded by way of a stout wooden ramp lowered from the side of the boat.

  “We have now returned to civilization and my fiddle has once again become a violin,” said John and smiled at Tom. “Now let me return some of the kindness you have shown me and I’ll pay for our passage to San Francisco. Keep my gear while I talk with the captain of yonder vessel.”

  The captain stood midship near the side rail and called out orders to members of his crew. Now and then he greeted a dignitary or a friend. He ignored the attempts of the rickety old man on the pier trying to capture his attention.

  John opened his battered violin case. He lifted up the violin and tucked it in under his chin in that certain way with which Tom was so familiar. Even at his distance of a hundred feet on the noisy pier, Tom heard the lovely music commence. A waltz, John had once called a similar tune.

  Heads began to turn. Traffic near John halted. He played for twenty seconds and halted in the middle of an ascending bar.

  The captain was looking at John with interest. They conversed briefly.

  John turned and motioned for Tom to come. They took places in the line of passengers and without a ticket boarded the riverboat.

  The last arriving passenger came up the gangway and onto the deck. The captain took the helm and the vessel cast off its lines and drifted away from the dock. A whistle tooted and the steam-driven paddle wheels started to churn the water.

  The captain steered the broad-beamed craft far out on the river, searching for the deepest water. Finding it on the outside sweeps of the meanders where the water current flowed fastest and scoured the bottom.

  “Now to keep my bargain with the captain,” said John. He walked out to the center of the deck and raised his violin.

  He played for a quarter of an hour, a medley of one captivating tune after another. The passengers at the far ends of the boat congregated around him and remained silent and enthralled for the total time. The applause was deafening when John finished. Tom greatly admired the iron will of the old man to put on such a performance even though sick.

  John stood motionless with his eyes closed for a moment, recovering his strength from the effort. People had noted his weakened condition and his worn and frayed clothing. Now they began to toss silver coins, quarters, half-dollars and big heavy dollars to rain upon the deck at the old man’s feet. At first he appeared not to hear the ring of the coins striking. Then he looked about and gave all the friendly throng his wide and kindly smile.

  The loudest accolade had come from a group of four young men on the lower deck. Now they opened a keg of beer in the rear of their carriage and lifting full mugs above their heads, began to sing in good harmony.

  Finishing the song in high, good spirits, they invited those people near them to find something from which to drink and join in emptying the keg.

  “Shall we go down and sample the brew?” John asked.

  “I’d like that,” responded Tom. He would miss the courage of the old fiddler man when he left and went on his way to the city called Los Angeles.

  * * *

  San Francisco was a city built on sand hills adjacent to a wide and shallow bay. A broad avenue, The Embarcadero, paralleled the shore. Many streets ran directly west from the thoroughfare and up the steep grade of the hill. Several rickety wooden piers extended east of The Embarcadero, hundreds of feet out into the water.

  Each wharf was jammed with drays loading and unloading, and seamen and craftsmen speaking a Babel’s tongue of languages. Steam pile drivers were hammering long timbers into the bottom of the bay for new piers. Chuffing paddies were hauling sand from alongside the piers to deepen the water so the ships could come closer in to the land.

  Scores of warehouses, large and cavernous, crowded the shoreline. Beyond that were the offices and business buildings stepping off along the streets. The brightly painted homes of the town residents were higher on the hills.

  John and Tom entered the Coastal Steamship Company office on the wharf at the end of Market Street. John bought a ticket for his trip south to Los Angeles.

  “Go right on board,” said the attendant. “The last call before sailing has already been made.”

  John grasped Tom’s hand. “I owe you my life. For that I most heartily thank you. It is very unlikely we will ever meet again. I wish you a long and happy life.”

  “Perhaps you will c
ome with your music to San Francisco before I leave and I will see you then.”

  “I do not believe that will happen. But I would like to leave some advice with you about San Francisco. It is a very large city, probably one hundred and fifty thousand people. It has a great vitality, a dangerous energy. It is a wicked city with many rough and crooked men and women. There is little law enforcement to control the scoundrels, drifters and rogues that have been drawn here. Only a few policemen are on the streets. Fearless Charlies they are called. Be very careful and trust no one.”

  “I can take care of myself,” responded Tom.

  John looked at his young friend with the bedroll on a shoulder, a rifle hanging lightly in a hand and a six-gun on his hip. Where he came from, he was a formidable opponent. Here in this place where crimps, muggers and every kind of sharper had a hundred tricks to throw a man off guard, Tom was an innocent.

  “Especially stay off The Embarcadero and the Barbary Coast, that’s a stretch of the Pacific, Kearney and Broadway Streets. You are just what the crimps are looking for.”

  “Mister, you’re going to miss your ship,” yelled the steamship company employee.

  John squeezed Tom’s hand one last time and hurried away. He boarded the steamer and went to the stern.

  Tom waved at him as the ship left the dock. John lifted his hand in final salute. Oh, if only he were young again, what a pair he and Tom would make!

  * * *

  The schooner Tenrun Bay wallowed on the end of its anchor chain as the tide reached that instant of time when it was in equilibrium, moving neither in nor out. Then slowly, ever so slowly, the high tide began to rim out of San Francisco Bay. The schooner swung to the current, coming up with a little jar on the end of its chain and headed toward the beach.

  Captain Boorstin slapped the railing a resounding smack of anger. He had brought his ship heavily laden with cargo from Maine around the Horn and north up the coast to San Francisco. The profit was great. But never again would it be, for the railroad was now connected coast to coast. He could not compete with that.

  Other ships were making great profit by taking goods to China and hauling back a live cargo of Chinamen anxious to get to the golden mountains. It required little time for him to decide that was his next voyage.

  However, within one day of arrival in San Francisco, all his crew but four had deserted, jumping ship and rushing off to the gold fields or taking shore jobs that paid three times the wages a crewman drew.

  The tide ran stronger. It swirled and gurgled around the canting masts and spars sticking up above the water from dead ships, abandoned by gold-crazy men, and now sunken and forgotten on the bottom of the bay.

  A coastal steamer, riding the outgoing tide, chugged past close on the port side. An old man with long white hair blowing in the wind stood by the railing and looked backward at the docks.

  “Dotson, come here,” ordered the captain.

  Dotson, the first mate, came along the deck. “Yes, Captain.”

  “We’ve been waiting two days for more crewmen and Sam McNair hasn’t sent one man or a word of what he’s doing. We can’t keep those poor bastards he has already delivered tied below decks forever.”

  “Aye, that we can’t,” said the mate. “Some of them are bad hurt and need fresh air.”

  “Go ashore and tell Sam not to wait for someone to come to the boarding house or the saloon. Tell him to send his best crew of people out on the street and find me three strong men. Damn it, I want those men so I can sail on the morning tide.”

  “Captain, that’s dangerous to try and knock men over the head right on the street. A Fearless Charlie might see them.”

  “I know it. Tell Sam I’ll raise my price to a hundred and fifty dollars a head if he delivers tonight. And also tell him I’ll bring him a bolt of the best silk in Canton for his woman.”

  “Right, Captain.”

  The mate walked aft to where a skiff rode to a short line. Nimbly he went down the Jacob’s ladder and cast off the skiff. Bucking the tide, he rowed for the shore.

  The captain shouted after him, “Tell Sam not to break their skulls. I’m going to be short-handed even with three more men, and I don’t want a bunch of cripples trying to handle sails.”

  CHAPTER 15

  “Take plenty of cartridges for your guns,” Keggler told his gang of six men. “You’ll soon have a lot of use for them. We’re going to kill us a bunch of heathen Chinaboys and take their gold.”

  Keggler paced the floor as his men finished packing their bedrolls and saddlebags. He held his head angled to the right and slightly raised to ease the torment of the pain from the damaged vertebrae in his neck. Not once since that day on the Snake River when the big Chinaman had injured him had the agony left.

  The winter months had seemed endless to Keggler as he waited for his revenge. But now the weather was sunny and for the first of March quite warm. The snow had melted and the ground thawed. He was not going to delay any longer for the mud to dry.

  The outlaw chief spoke sharply to Bassel, the Boise gunman he had taken into the gang to replace Cardone. “Damn it, hustle yourself. The sun will be at the top of the sky before you get ready to ride.”

  Keggler glanced at Crowe, the replacement for Vaughn. He stood in the yard ready to ride. He was a quiet man who took orders well and was a fierce fighter when the fracas started.

  “Mount up or get left behind,” barked Keggler and climbed into the saddle.

  The seven outlaws left at a gallop, splashing the sloppy mud. Keggler’s blood ran hot. He would be killing his enemies in only one day. No damn Chinaman was going to lay hands on him and not pay for it with his life. And as for the white kid, Keggler would personally shoot him.

  The sky remained clear as the gang skirted the Wallowa Mountains. In late evening the Snake River was reached and the men turned to ride with the current. When they came to the big oxbow of the river, they halted and climbed stiffly down. A camp without fire was made on the riverbank.

  “We’ll be there and looking down our sights at the moon-eyed Celestials by mid morning,” said Keggler. “We break camp first daylight, so be ready to travel.”

  * * *

  “The Chinamen have posted a lookout,” said Keggler, peering through the grass on the crest of a rise of ground upriver from Sigh’s mine.

  “‘Pears he has a rifle. Probably one of ours they took last winter,” responded Ottoson, who lay beside the bandit chief.

  “The guard’s not too smart about his job,” said Keggler. “He’s in the open where he can be seen easy. Also, there’s brush close to his back. Can you slip up on him and kill him without his sounding a warning to the rest of them?”

  “Sure. Give me a quarter hour to get above and come down behind him,” replied Ottoson. “I’ll put a knife in him real quiet like.”

  Ottoson crawled back from the top of the hill and made his way down the slope to the ravine at the base. Bending low, he stole up the depression eroded in the mountainside.

  Keggler glanced up the Snake River at the hiding place of the rest of the gang and all the horses. Nothing was visible to ruin the surprise. He lay where he could see the guard and waited for Ottoson’s assault on the man.

  * * *

  Guofeng alternately ran and walked through the brush and boulders on the bank of the Snake. His heart beat pleasantly, for he was a happy man.

  A pouch of gold, tied around his neck, tapped gently on his chest as he moved. The gold was the reason for his swift pace toward Sigh’s camp.

  Guofeng had discovered a new placer gold deposit, one that had never been worked and was rich enough to make half a hundred men wealthy. The nuggets in the bag had been simply picked up from the pool of water at the mouth of a spring.

  The fluvial deposit containing the precious metal was long and narrow, extending for hundreds of feet along the Snake River at the base of Triangle Mountain. Several swift streams tumbled down the steep flanks of the mountain, scouring their bo
ttoms to bedrock and cutting the gravel bar into sections.

  That segmentation had created the problem. Guofeng did not have enough men to work all the sections at one time. Other prospectors might come and lay claim to some of the gold-bearing gravel not being mined. To forestall that happening, Guofeng wanted Sigh to send men to join his crew and work the entire length. That would protect Guofeng’s discovery rights, at least against other Chinamen.

  Guofeng heard the metal clatter of shovels hitting rock and he slowed to a walk. Sigh’s camp was just ahead.

  Before Guofeng had gone a body length, a rifle crashed. He flinched as if he had been struck. A horrible premonition seized him. He sprang forward through the brush.

  A fusillade of rifle shots roared, many weapons firing. The sharp explosions hammered and echoed on the walls of the valley.

  Guofeng halted at the edge of the thicket and peered out. His friends were running in all directions across the gravel bar. Bullets hit, knocking some men off their feet to lie crumpled and motionless.

  Part of the bullets missed their intended targets, striking the stones and ricocheting away, snarling like deadly little animals.

  Some men, wounded and knocked down by the heavy slugs, struggled to their feet and, in stunned bewilderment, staggered erratically through the hail of rifle fire. Then, before they could escape harm’s way, they were pierced again, to fall in death.

  One man sprinted straight for the river to evade the deadly ambush by swimming the swift current. A chunk of zipping lead caught him in the back of the head and he fell in the shallow water. With his feet still on the shore, he made feeble, swimming motions with his hands. Then that ceased.

  Guofeng saw Sigh dash to crouch behind the boulder in the center of the bar. Sigh grabbed the golden cube from the top of the rock and bent low, darted up the course of the Snake. The gods seemed to be favoring him, for bullets struck on all sides of him and still he ran untouched.

  On the ridge above the camp, a man with a rifle rose up from some screening bushes and ran across the side of the mountain, parallel to Sigh’s course. However, on the rough slope the rifleman could not keep up and Sigh began to draw away from him.