The Seekers

by F. M. Parker

  Celeste awoke in the dark. She was troubled by the passage of time. Dokken still lived and her oath to her brother Ernesto went unfilled. She also felt frustrated because the increase in her skill with the pistol had stalled. For the past week try as she might, there had been no further improvement. Something was blocking the perfect coordination she must have between eye, brain, and hand.

  She climbed from her bed and stood on the dirt floor of the cabin. The passage of time worried her for another reason. How many acres of valley bottom land had Ignacio and the other men prepared for the planting of wheat? She should be working with her vaqueros, encouraging their efforts, and adding her strength to accomplish the task. But that must wait for now. Dokken’s death came first.

  She dressed, picked up her pistol from beside her bunk and strapped it around her waist. She left the cabin, and from the stone stoop looked about in the darkness. The night was totally silent. The grass and the scattered trees around the cabin were bathed in light from the half moon. Farther away to the east, the San Joaquin Valley was a great pool of blackness.

  The mare watched her from under the nearby oak. The horse nickered and came up to the stoop and nuzzled the front of Celeste’s shirt. It raised its head and sniffed at her face.

  “You are spoiled but you are my only companion,” Celeste told the mare. She petted the long bony jaw, and the muscular neck. “Now go away for I have something to do.”

  Celeste climbed the familiar path up the slope to the spring at the base of the rock outcrop. She bathed her face in the cold water and drank several handfuls. Lifting her shirttail, she dried her face.

  She leaned against a huge block of stone that had fallen down from above. Around her the night lay quietly, the wind motionless, and all the animals of the darkness, the large and the small were mute as if voiceless. She listened to the silence and waited in the cool morning hours for daylight to arrive and the long hours of practice to begin anew.

  In a bush on the mountain side above the spring, two small brown wrens stirred as light brightened the darkness of night. They rose from a squatting position on their roost. Thin legs straightened, and strong tendons relaxed to unclamp clutching claws from twigs that had held the three-ounce bodies safely all night. Fine feathered wings stretched and sharp eyes examined the set of each feather to insure they were aligned for best flight.

  The tiny cock cast a flicker of a one-eyed glance at the even smaller hen and launched himself from his perch. She was instantly at his side, then ahead of him, pressing down on the cool buoyant air to stay aloft. The first drink of morning was only seconds away.

  The birds flew directly at Celeste standing by the spring. The brown wings beat a few strokes, then stiffened for a short glide and repeated to produce a flight of rises and falls. The birds drew within a hundred yards of the woman, fifty yards, and nearer. They sighted the strange form that should not have been there by the water. Wary of the unknown animal, the wrens zoomed up at a steep angle, their strong little wings swiftly stroking the air.

  Celeste saw the birds. Shoot! her mind cried. She shoved away from the boulder. Her hand dipped down and came up with her revolver. Two shots blended into one rolling explosion.

  The small bodies burst into blossoms of feathers that drifted downward lazily on the quiet air. Celeste spun left. She triggered the gun at a white pebble on the ground. It vanished in a puff of pulverized rock.

  The plumage of the birds had not yet settled to the earth. Celeste’s eye picked one single, oscillating feather, and pointed the barrel of her weapon. She fired and the feather vanished. Celeste’s blood rushed in exaltation at the unexpected triumph. The gun was, as Vicaro had said it must be, one with her hand. More than that, the accuracy had been enormously better than ever before. Some new, perfect link between hand and eye had been forged. As if two red-hot lengths of iron had been pressed together and struck with a hammer to make two in to one. When one end moved, so too did the opposite end at that exact same fraction of time. The eye saw, the mind thought and the hand moved, all instantaneously.

  One feather had caught in the seed head of wild rye grass. The delicate down of the end of the feather that had been next to the warm, live body of the bird was startlingly white. It glowed a little beacon in the dusk of the morning.

  Sorrow for the death of the wrens rose in Celeste and hot tears gushed up from their little salt springs and streamed down her cheeks. She wiped the tears away, but the sorrow remained. She would kill no more innocent things. She would kill only the murderer Dokken who had no innocence. It was now time to challenge him to a duel.

  * * *

  Celeste rode north along the foothills that separated the San Joaquin Valley from the Diablo Mountain Range. The gray mare, towing the packhorse, moved at a swift gallop, her long legs swinging easily. She sensed they were heading home and she needed no urging to hurry her pace.

  The rider and horses passed Crow Canyon and onward under the high looming shoulder of Copper Mountain. The steep, stony maw of Del Puerto Canyon slid by.

  Celeste climbed the mare up a rocky ridge that extended out into the valley. From the top she could see miniature forms of her vaqueros on the flat bottomland about half a mile ahead. A wave of dismay struck her. Even from this distance she could see that little land had been cleared of the scattered brush, or leveled, or raked with a harrow to kill the wild grass.

  She spoke sharply to her two horses and sent them in a run straight for the men lying in the shade under a leafy oak tree.

  Celeste pulled the horses to a halt and sat looking down upon the men who had sprung to their feet at her fast approach. They held their sombreros in their hands and watched her with expressions of concern.

  Trying to control her anger, Celeste swung her hand out at the land that had been cleared, thirty acres she judged. She locked her gaze on Ignacio. “Why is such a small amount of land ready for the planting of wheat?”

  Ignacio’s eyes were full of remorse. “We try, Senorita Celeste. You catch us resting in the shade, but we seldom stop. We know that we must grow wheat.”

  Celeste examined the men more closely. She saw their weary faces and their shirts were sweat soaked.

  “Then what has gone wrong? Nine men should have cleared ten times that much land.”

  “I agree,” replied Ignacio. “If we had the proper tools to work with. We have only those poor, worn out things to use.” He gestured with his hand at the tools lying on the ground.

  Celeste cast a look at the few old mattocks, garden hoes, and axes. “I told you to go to Sacramento and get hand tools and the big harrows that you needed.”

  “I did go, senorita. But I had no money and none of the merchants there would trust me to take the things and pay him later. They all say that you must pay cash for everything. I believe they think you will lose the rancho. “

  “They’ll be correct if we don’t get a good wheat crop grown this year. The seed grain must be in the ground by November. Keep working. Do the best that you can. Where is Vicaro?”

  “He left. The gringos came to arrest him and he rode away very fast.”

  “All right. I’ll buy tools and also hire more men.” She had badly misjudged the amount of effort required to prepare the land. “We will need not only harrows but big scrapers to level some of the rougher land and teams of mules to pull them.”

  She reined the mare toward the hacienda on the mountainside above her. While she had been practicing with a gun to kill a man, her rancho had been slipping out of her hands.

  * * *

  “We can’t work for you, Senorita Beremendes,” said Ricardo, a strongly muscled Mexican. “We must be paid as we work. If we waited a year for our money, how would we feed our little ones?”

  Celeste had come to the Mexican section of Sacramento, several square blocks of small adobe houses along the river, and asked Ricardo to gather men for her to speak to. He had quickly agreed, for the Beremendes name was known and well respected. In only a short
time he had assembled this group.

  “I can’t pay now,” Celeste said. “But l must have workers.”

  “I’m truly sorry that we can’t help you,” Ricardo replied. “But there are many jobs for us now and we are paid at the end of every week. If we were rich men, then we would come and help you for you are one of us.”

  “I’ll get money to pay you,” Celeste said.

  She stepped up into her buggy and drove away from the men. She could not blame them for refusing to work for her. Their children must eat.

  Shortly Celeste came upon a crowd of people gathered on the top of the bluff above the Sacramento River. Most were men, still there were also women and children. Some of the men carried pistols and rifles. A section of land was being roped off, surrounding a machine that flung targets into the air for marksmen to shoot at. One of the shooting contests frequently held in Sacramento was soon to begin.

  She was about to drive her buggy on when she spotted Dokken arriving mounted upon a spirited roan horse. The man did not see Celeste. He tied his horse to one of the several hitching rails and went into the crowd.

  Celeste’s jaw hardened and she veered aside. She fastened her buggy horse beside Dokken’s mount and climbed down. She would watch her adversary and perhaps learn something about him that could help her in the coming duel.

  Chapter 11

  At Placerville in the western Sierra Nevada Mountains, Levi Coffin said good-bye to Ottoson and the five other men who had crossed the plains and the high Rockies with him. Leading his packhorse, he rode steadily on to the west, feeling more driven than ever to reach San Francisco and the Pacific Ocean.

  The land fell away before him and the cool ponderosa pine forest was left behind. He traveled through a land of low rolling hills covered with wild grass tall as a horse’s knees and studded with short oak trees. He saw herds of brown cattle and white sheep and riders on good-looking horses.

  In the edge of night he encountered the southwest flowing American River. He stepped down from his mount and squatted by the edge of the river as the horses drank. He grumbled to himself. The water was tan in color from being full of the fine silt washed downstream by the gold placer mining in the mountains. He lay down and drank beside the horses. On the tree-lined bank, he made his camp.

  Levi arose with the arrival of daylight and continued on beside the meandering body of the river. By midmorning he could see the buildings of a small city. He decided that this must be Sacramento on the river by the same name. He was within easy striking distance of the goal he had journeyed three thousand miles to reach. He would arrive totally broke for he had spent his last coin in Placerville.

  As he approached the outskirts of Sacramento, he saw a gathering of people in a large open field overlooking the Sacramento River. He estimated their number to be at least three hundred. Now and again a pistol or a rifle fired on the fringe of the crowd. Levi decided to investigate and guided his horses to ride closer.

  He saw that a shooting contest was being organized. His hand moved to rub the stock of the Spencer rifle in its boot beneath his leg. Maybe he had found a way to earn some money in a short space of time.

  He dismounted and tied his horses among others at one of the several hitching rails. Carrying his rifle in the crook of his arm, he moved through the crowd toward half a hundred men standing, talking and examining their guns in a roped-off zone near the river.

  Just outside the enclosed area, Levi stopped beside a man sitting at a table containing an open ledger and a cash box. “Good day,” he said to the man.

  “Hello,” the man replied. “Do you want to sign up for the rifle or the pistol shootoff?”

  “I’d like to try the rifle match. What’s the charge?”

  “Fifty dollars and you supply your own cartridges.”

  “How much is the prize money for the winner?”

  “That depends on how many shooters sign up and pay the entry fee. Of course, I get my cut for setting up the match. Are you going to enter?”

  “I’d like to but I must raise the entry money somehow. Do you want to buy a good horse?”

  “I’ve no use for another horse, but look over there.” The man pointed. “That man in gray clothing is George Louden. He’s the Wells Fargo agent for California. He’s always looking for a good riding horse, or harness horse. And men good with guns. Go talk to him about your animal.”

  “Thanks, I’ll do that. Who’s the big fellow in the city suit with him?”

  “That’s Brol Mattoon, a businessman from San Francisco. He sometimes shoots in the pistol contest. Always wins when he does. If you’re going to enter the rifle contest you’d better hurry. I’m going to close the register in ten minutes.”

  Levi moved through the people to Louden and Mattoon. As he came close, the Wells Fargo man cast an eye at him.

  “Something I can do for you?” Louden asked, sweeping Levi with a quick glance noting the youthful, wispy beard, and the long brown hair tied back with a length of rawhide. The fellow’s clothing was faded and showed rough usage, and his hat was battered and sweat stained. He had made a very long journey.

  “Are you Mr. Louden?”

  “I’m Louden.”

  “My name’s Levi Coffin. I’d like to enter the rifle shoot, but I need to sell a horse to raise the entry fee. I’ve got a good one and thought maybe you would be interested in him.”

  “Louden, you don’t have time to look at a horse now,” Mattoon said. “Let’s make a bet on the rifle match.”

  “In a minute,” Louden said. He looked at the rifle on Levi’s arm. “We don’t see many Spencers out here in California,” he said.

  Mattoon spoke. “Louden, this fellow is just another man who came west to escape fighting in the war back East. Now he wants a handout. There’s hundreds like him in San Francisco.”

  Levi felt his face harden at Mattoon’s words. He looked at the man. Mattoon stared back, his eyes full of challenge. Levi held back the sharp retort that came to his lips.

  “Maybe so, but they don’t carry Spencers,” Louden said. He had heard of the sharpshooter companies being formed and armed with Spencers in the Union Army.

  “What difference does it make what kind of rifle he carries?” asked Mattoon.

  Louden spoke to Levi. “Are you good with that rifle?”

  “I hit what I aim at,” Levi replied.

  Louden thoughtfully rubbed his chin. “Come with me, Coffin,” he said.

  Levi went with the man inside the roped-off area. Mattoon strode along beside them.

  Louden pointed at a small catapult with a side-swinging arm, and then at several boxes containing round glass spheres. “How many of those balls could you hit without missing one?”

  Levi took hold of the arm of the catapult, swung it to compress the spring, and then let it loose, measuring the speed of its return. Next he picked up one of the glass spheres some four inches in diameter, and hefted it in his hand estimating its weight. He judged half its volume was hollow.

  “How many could you hit?” Louden asked again.

  ”I don’t rightly know. But I plan to hit more of them than any other rifleman here,” Levi said.

  “Should I bet on you to win the contest?” Louden said.

  “That’s the way I’ll bet if you buy my horse,” Levi said.

  Louden fell silent looking at Levi. The fellow was hardly more than a boy, yet the eyes that stared back at him were those of a confident animal.

  “I bet this Coffin, if that’s his name, doesn’t win,” Mattoon said.

  “Who would you put your money on?” Louden asked.

  “On Lasch. He’s won the last three rifle matches.”

  “I think he’ll lose today,” Louden said. He spoke to Levi. “I’ll buy your horse unseen. Here’s fifty dollars for the entry fee. If you win there’s another one hundred dollars in it for you.”

  “I’ll win.”

  “I bet you don’t,” Mattoon said in a rough voice.

&
nbsp; Levi turned toward Mattoon. He could not understand why the man had taken such an instant dislike for him. “What have I done to bother you?” he asked.

  “Go sign up with Baker the shoot master,” Louden quickly interjected. He gave Levi a light shove on the arm. The young man must not get into a fight with Mattoon for that would be suicide. “You’re almost out of time.”

  “All right,” Levi said. He gave Mattoon one last look and turned away.

  Levi heard Mattoon’s voice behind him. “Louden, that fellow is a deserter from one of the armies back East. The horse you just bought is stolen, and the rifle probably is too. I’ll give you two-for-one odds and bet a thousand dollars the deserter loses to Lasch.”

  “You’re covered,” Louden replied. Was his instinct about Coffin wrong?

  * * *

  Baker, the organizer of the shooting contests, walked out in front of the crowd. He whistled shrilly through his teeth and raised both of his arms above his head. The hubbub of the crowd dwindled.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we are ready to begin the shooting contests. We have eighteen marksmen for the pistol match and twenty-two for the rifle. The pistol shoot-off will be first. The winner’s purse will be five hundred dollars. Each elimination round will be five shots for each contestant. They will shoot in the order I call their names.” The man began to read from the register.

  Levi moved to a vantage point to observe the pistol shooting. A young, very pretty Mexican woman took a position beside him. She did not look at Levi. Her attention was focused entirely upon the shooters.

  * * *

  Celeste watched the contestants as one after another stepped into the firing box, a square space marked off with chalk on the ground. As the men fired at the glass balls flung out by the swinging arm of the catapult, she evaluated how they handled their weapons, cocked them, aimed, fired. Her attention focused even more intensely and her pulse hammered when Dokken came forward for his turn to shoot.

  The catapult hurled the first glass sphere and it sailed past Dokken. He lifted his pistol with a smooth motion. His revolver cracked. The ball shattered. The following four balls were just as easily disposed of. Dokken had survived the first elimination round. So had five others.