Slocum and the Sawtooth Sirens

by Jake Logan

  And the same went for some men, he decided.

  Especially those men with dark hearts and hard cold souls.

  11

  Slocum guided the borrowed gelding around the alder bushes and halted when he saw the oncoming wagons.

  Two covered wagons rumbled toward Sawtooth. He heard strange sounds coming from the wagons as they passed, and saw sallow-skinned men sitting in the wagon seats and under the canvas. The men were bareheaded or wore skull caps or pillbox caps. They sounded like human magpies as they passed, and he recognized the language as one he had heard in San Francisco.

  Chinese.

  A white man on horseback rode out in front and another brought up the rear. To Slocum, the men looked like prison guards in their saddles, with rifle stocks jutting from leather sheaths and pistols at their sides.

  When the dust settled, he took to the main road behind them. He rode the horse at a walk as the sun rose in the sky behind his back. He felt odd in borrowed clothes and work boots, no rifle tucked under his leg in a leather boot.

  In town, he saw the wagons parked in front of a long log house, and observed Chinese men unloading burlap sacks that clattered, boxes, suitcases, and carpetbags. They carried their goods into the bunkhouse. One of the bags opened at one end and two wooden bowls fell out. A box rattled with what Slocum took to be chopsticks. Stout men in skullcaps lugged sacks of rice into the long house. They all chattered in Chinese as the two men on horseback looked on, their faces stippled with day-old beard stubble and caked with flakes of trail dust.

  Few noticed Slocum as he rode to the Sawtooth Hotel, dismounted in front of the hitchrails. He wrapped the reins around a pine pole and walked into the hotel, which had no front porch or stairs. A startled clerk looked at him from behind a crude wooden counter.

  “Prospector?” the clerk said as Slocum walked up and flattened both hands on the counter.

  “Yep. Heard some found color up hereabouts,” Slocum drawled.

  “Ain’t been nobody come to town in a quite a spell. My name’s Barney. Barney Fetters. It’s two dollars the night, down to a buck a night if you stay a week.”

  “I’ll stay a week,” Slocum said.

  He counted out seven one-dollar bills and laid them on the counter, fanned out as if they were from a deck of cards.

  Barney lifted a ledger from behind the counter and pointed to a pen lying next to an inkwell.

  “Sign your John Henry and I’ll make you out a receipt,” Barney said. “Print your name, then your signature, will you?”

  “Sure,” Slocum said.

  He wrote down the name “David Sinclair,” then signed it on the same line.

  The clerk was busy with pencil and paper. When he took the bills and handed Slocum the receipt, he turned the ledger around and read the name.

  “Fine, Mr. Sinclair,” he said. “You’re on the first floor, room 100. Right down the hall. First door on your right. Will you be needin’ anything brought to your room? Whiskey? A girl maybe?”

  “Just point me to the saloon,” Slocum said.

  “Right next door. It’s open, but you won’t find hardly nobody there this time of day.”

  “Stables? A livery?”

  “End of the street. You can’t miss it.”

  “Where might I find an open spot to dig for gold?” Slocum asked.

  “When the town runs out, you’ll see a big old crick and some little hills, and wherever you don’t see no stake, you can prospect. Good luck.”

  “Thanks,” Slocum said as Barney slid a latchkey across the counter.

  He walked to room 100 and opened the door. Inside, he found that there was a table, two chairs, a bed, and a bureau with a slop jar, a pitcher of water, two glasses, and a porcelain bowl atop it, along with a small mirror hung on the wall beside it where a man might stand and shave.

  Not much of a room, he thought, but it would do for the time being.

  Slocum locked his room and exited the hotel. He left Ferro tied to the hitchrail, patting his horse’s neck and promising to return soon. Then he walked through town, his sack of tools slung over his shoulder.

  What he witnessed as he strolled past shops were men carrying rifles and shotguns at nearly every corner and hiding in the spaces between buildings. They watched him with curious eyes, but did not hail him or speak to him. He saw no other signs that Sawtooth was a mining town.

  Instead, Sawtooth had the eerie atmosphere of a ghost town. A living ghost town.

  He stopped at a small log building that bore a sign proclaiming it to be an assay and claims office. He stepped inside. A bell attached to the door jingled a faint tinkle.

  A man sat at a desk behind the small counter. He arose when he heard the bell and adjusted his horn-rimmed glasses.

  “You’re a new face to me,” he said as he stepped up to the counter. He looked up at the tall man in nondescript clothes.

  “Howdy,” Slocum said. “I’m new here. Want to do some prospecting but don’t know where to start. Are there any rules to keep me from finding a place to dig and pan for color?”

  “Aha,” the man said. “You come to the right place. I’m Ebenezer Scraggs. You find ore, I got a back room where I can assay it, and if you want to file a claim, I got all the papers.”

  “I don’t see much activity here in town,” Slocum said.

  “I didn’t catch your name, stranger,” Scraggs said.

  “Dave Sinclair,” Slocum said.

  “I see you got yourself some tools. At least a pick and shovel from the looks of that sack.”

  “I’m ready to dig and pan for gold,” Slocum said. “But I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes.”

  “Well, I can help you there. Head west toward Sawtooth Mountain and you’ll pass some stakes and holes where men have blasted into the sandstone bluffs, and there’s a creek you can pan where you don’t see no stakes. Know anything about prospectin’?”

  “I been to the Comstock and Virginia City, Alder Gulch, Holcomb Valley.”

  “Ah, then you know the rules.”

  “I reckon so,” Slocum replied. “But each place is different.”

  “You find color, you drive a stake with your name and date, then file a claim here with me. It’s that simple.”

  “Where is everybody?” Slocum asked. “All I see are men with scatterguns walking up and down the street.”

  Scraggs scowled. He was a slender man wearing a rumpled pinstriped shirt and baggy trousers, and he had a hawk nose, watery pale blue eyes, and was clean shaven with a sharp Adam’s apple that looked as if it would puncture his throat if he coughed too hard. His pocket was full of pencils, and his fingers were stained with blotches of black ink.

  “Here in Sawtooth, Mr. Sinclair, you don’t ask too many questions. The miners and prospectors, they come and go.”

  “Mostly go, it looks like.”

  Scraggs’s scowl broadened.

  His small thin lips stretched in a toothless smile. He licked them with his snip of a tongue and looked at Slocum more closely, his eyes fixed on his like a bird staring at a rattlesnake.

  “Them what comes here roams about,” Scraggs said. “Prospectors and their like are always lookin’ for greener grass, the next dig, the untapped mountain, the untouched stream. See them Chinese boys out there?”

  “I saw them,” Slocum said.

  “They’ll work the claims. So you’ll have company, and make sure you keep to your own digs.”

  Slocum said nothing.

  “That about it, Mr. Sinclair?” Scraggs asked.

  “I’ll be moseying along. Thanks for talking to me, Mr. Scraggs.”

  “Maybe you’ll get lucky and come back to file your claim, Mr. Sinclair.”

  “Maybe. I hope so.”

  Slocum touched a finger to his unfamiliar hat and turned on his
heel. He went out onto the street and walked back to the hotel, where Ferro was still hitched to the rail. He tied the sack of tools behind his saddle and rode to the end of the street, where he saw the stables with a sign that said, ALEC’S LIVERY. Beneath the name, there was a notice that they furnished FEED AND GROOMING.

  The doors were open. He rode up to them, dismounted, and led his horse inside. Streaks of sunlight speared the dirt and straw, glanced off stable doors.

  “Howdy,” a voice called from the dark bowels of the stable.

  A grizzled man stepped into a path of sunlight. He was bowlegged and short, with a flowing hazel beard, strands of red hair poking out from under his crumpled straw hat. He had a currycomb in one hand and his jowls widened in a grin.

  “Board your horse, mister? I’m Alec Turnbull, stable master.”

  Slocum thought there was a trace of humor when Alec uttered his title.

  “Yes. No grooming. Feed and water only,” Slocum said. “I’m Dave Sinclair.”

  “Be four bits a day,” Turnbull said. “Week in advance.”

  Slocum dug out some bills and handed them to Alec. The stable owner counted them, folded them, and put the greenbacks in his pants pocket, which was worn at the seam, showing white threads under the denim.

  “I’ll unsaddle him for you,” Alec said. “Store your tack and all.”

  Slocum untied his tool sack. He had no bedroll, and his fingers itched for the rifle that was not there.

  “Goin’ gold huntin’ eh?” Alec said as he took the reins from Slocum.

  “Yep.”

  “Got stakes?”

  “Nope, I reckon not.”

  Alec hawked a laugh.

  “Haw, nobody what comes here has wooden stakes. There’s a nail barrel up by the doors. I keep stakes there. Two bits apiece. You’ll likely need two.”

  Slocum dug in his pocket for a four-bit piece. He handed it to the stableman.

  “There you go,” Slocum said. “Mighty obliged.”

  “You stayin’ at the hotel?”

  “Room 100.”

  “Good luck to you, Sinclair. Might see you at the saloon when the sun goes down. And when it does, it gets mighty cold up here.”

  “I’ll be there. Might have to buy me a good wool coat before the day is done.”

  “Little store up the street carries ’em. Cheap, too.”

  “Cheap is good,” Slocum said.

  Alec laughed. He walked Ferro to an open stall.

  Slocum lugged his sack to the open doors, saw the nail barrel with a dozen stakes. He picked up two of them. They were sharpened at one end and wide enough to write on if he staked a claim.

  He put the stakes in his sack and walked out into the sunlight.

  The armed men looked at him as he passed, and none turned away when he stared back.

  He walked to the end of the street, where the town petered out, and on into the wide valley, where he began to see mining stakes and blasted holes in the sandstone bluffs that rose up beyond the creek.

  He looked back to the quiet town. Nobody seemed to be following him.

  But when he looked up, he saw a man on the ridge with a rifle resting on his left shoulder.

  The man looked down at Slocum and tugged on the brim of his hat. His face was in shadow, but Slocum could feel the man’s eyes on him.

  He nodded to the man and walked on, just another dumb prospector out to find gold in his pan.

  Farther on, he saw another man atop the ridge. This one sat on a large boulder that gave him a view of the diggings and the grassy valley beyond.

  This man did not acknowledge Slocum, but his gaze followed him for a long time until Slocum saw no more stakes.

  He headed for the creek and the bluffs beyond.

  He had never panned for gold, or dug into rock with a pick, but when he found a likely spot, he spread out the contents of his tool sack and stripped off his shirt.

  Soon, he was panning in the stream. He had seen it done many times, but after an hour, his back ached as if it were on fire.

  And not a trace of color clinging to the black dolomites in his pan.

  “A hell of a way to make a living,” he said and sloshed more water around and around in his shiny steel pan.

  Rod had packed a couple of sandwiches in the tool bag, and as the sun reached its zenith, Slocum sat down to eat next to the sun-shot creek.

  He looked around. He saw no one, but he knew someone was watching him.

  He lifted his right hand and extended the middle finger.

  So much for the spy, he thought.

  12

  In the afternoon, Slocum saw the Chinese stream into the valley and begin working in the mines. Some of them put sluice boxes in the creek and began to shovel sand and gravel into the boxes, while others poured buckets of water to propel the material through the box. There were struts placed a few inches apart. The heavier gold, Slocum knew, would collect next to the one-by-two barriers. All afternoon, he heard the ring of picks and the scrapes of shovels as the Chinese bent their backs to extract gold from the sandstone bluffs. Their voices carried on the wind in their singsong language that he did not understand.

  Mexicans with rifles and pistols directed the work, but they also served as guards. Slocum began to piece it all together. Hiram had driven the original miners and prospectors out after jumping their claims and now had brought in Chinese laborers to plumb the mines for what he knew was there, gold. He could only guess at the low wages Bledsoe was paying the Chinese.

  In the late afternoon, while Slocum was studying the rocky face of a bluff, he saw a man on horseback. The man rode straight toward him. Slocum crossed the creek and waited.

  “You’re plumbin’ a dead well,” the man said.

  “Says you,” Slocum said.

  “First place I come to when I tried my hand at it,” the stranger said.

  “I don’t see any sign that anyone broke into that wall of rock,” Slocum said.

  “No, but I panned and built me a sluice box and got about ten dollars’ worth of gold from this very spot.”

  “I believe that,” Slocum said.

  “A geologist I know told me that there was a river of gold come through here in olden times. Gold got caught in tree roots and in the rocks. Then, the creek formed here and stirred up some of the buried gold. But he said the gold probably petered out where you see them China boys a-diggin’ and sluicin’.”

  “How did this feller know where the gold stopped running?” Slocum asked.

  “He said he was guessin’ because the bluffs flooded at this end of the valley and got turned to dust and sand over millions of centuries.”

  “Makes sense,” Slocum said.

  “Just a word to the wise, friend. What’s your handle?”

  “Name’s Dave Sinclair,” Slocum lied.

  “I’m Alvin Callaway. I work for Hiram Bledsoe. He saw you ride into town and got curious. Sent me out here to see what you were up to.”

  “Who’s Bledsoe?” Slocum asked, faking a genuine expression of puzzlement both in his question and on his face.

  “Hiram Bledsoe founded Sawtooth and he runs it. You want to do some payin’ work, just ask him. He can always use another hand. Especially if you know how to use a pistol or a rifle.”

  Slocum knew that Alvin was fishing for information, but he did not volunteer. He saw Callaway’s gaze drop to the pistol on Slocum’s hip.

  “That a .45?” Alvin asked.

  “It is.”

  “You got any notches on the butt?”

  “I don’t mark up my pistol,” Slocum said.

  “But you can shoot it, right?”

  “It’s a genuine snake killer, this Colt,” Slocum said, a wry smile flickering on his lips.

  “Ever shoot anything bigger’n a rattl
esnake?” Alvin asked.

  “Not anything I’d admit to,” Slocum said.

  “Hiram might want to talk to you. You won’t find no dust here no ways.”

  “I got a little grubstake,” Slocum said, handing Alvin a scrap to chew on.

  “Grubstakes run out eventually.”

  “Yeah, they do, Alvin.”

  “Call me Al. We might get to be friends. You just never know.”

  “Maybe I’ll talk to your boss, Bledsoe, and see what he has to say,” Slocum said.

  “Might be worth your while, Dave.”

  “I’ll work a few days. Here or someplace else.”

  “There’s always a chance someplace else,” Alvin said. He turned his horse as if to leave.

  “See you,” Slocum said.

  “Buy you a drink maybe, if you get a thirst tonight. Sawtooth’s saloon ain’t half bad. Purty gals and a card game or two if you fancy that kind of entertainin’.”

  “Might see you tonight, then. A man can work up a powerful thirst in the high country.”

  Alvin laughed and rode away. He flicked up a hand in farewell, but did not turn around.

  Slocum watched him ride into a small dot and then disappear into Sawtooth, barely visible from where he stood.

  He studied the bluffs awhile longer and took a shovel upstream a short distance and stirred up the bottom. The stream was filled with dirt and mud, motes of gravel. Then he walked back and panned, driving the edge of the pan into the sandy bottom and swirling the contents as he tilted the pan to let excess water run out.

  Soon there were only the black grains of dolomite and something bright and shiny clinging to one edge.

  Color, he thought.

  He swirled the pan until all of the water was gone. There were a few flecks of gold that clung to the outer edge of the dolomite and his heart raced.

  He brought out a small empty tin from his pocket. With care, he wet his finger and scraped it over the gold. The flakes stuck to his finger and he shook them into the tin. He did this until all the dust was gone from the pan.

  He looked at what he had dredged up. There was just a pitiful amount of dust drying in the old tin. Not even enough to tip a scale, he thought.