Stringer and the Lost Tribe

by Lou Cameron

  He knew Lola was likely worried about him by now. Sooner or later she’d track him to that bay tree, only to find two white men stretched out stiff with arrows in their backs. There was an outside chance she’d read what happened and track him and his new pals here. It was even more likely she’d turn tail and ride for her life. Lola was a reservation gal who might not know any more than he did about really wild Indians. Most women who et jam on bread were inclined to act spooked at the sight of blood in any case, and—damn it!—she had that Winchester he felt sure he’d have better use for.

  The bland meal around the fire went on and then some. Yana seemed to enjoy conversation with their supper. He didn’t even know how to turn down second helpings. So he had to eat ’em when the gal serving him noticed he’d finished his first basket.

  A hundred years or so later, while the women and children got to eat what was left, the old chief belched politely and got out a stone-bowled pipe. Stringer knew what odd substitutes for tobacco the Sierra tribes favored. So when the pipe was passed around to him he shoved a wad of Bull Durham into the half-done bowl. The results still tasted awful when he took a polite draw on the pipe, but the Indians seemed to think he’d just done them a swell favor. They kept saying his tobacco was achoo chubb and even dambusah. Stringer could only opine they were damned right.

  He was hoping he wouldn’t have to smoke any more tobacco mixed with wild cherry bark and mayhaps lizard tails when he heard a commotion behind him and turned to see Joe Malliwah, of all gents, coming to join them in his cowhand duds.

  As Joe sat down beside Stringer he granted, “You was supposed to meet me in Los Molinos, you asshole. How come you didn’t?”

  “How come? Didn’t you send your cousin Lola to pick me up?”

  Joe answered some questions the old chief shot at them before he said, “I have no cousin called Lola. Is that the woman you’ve been screwing all over these hills for the past few days?”

  Stringer replied, in an injured tone, “You sure read sign dirty. Never mind why she seemed so friendly. Who the hell was she if she wasn’t kin to you, damn it?”

  “I don’t know. They told me in Los Molinos that you rode out of town with a Mex gal. Whatever she was, she knew how to leave a tough trail to follow, even on horseback. I could only trail the two of you by daylight. Every time I caught up with you you’d screwed her some more and moved on. After a time I could see you’d made it almost this far, but that you both seemed to be lost. You were riding back and forth, going noplace. Then I met a Yana brother who told me they had saved you from those bastards from Quicksilver and brought you here. Do you have any idea what might be going on?”

  “Yep. And now I know how old Samson must have felt when he woke up with that short haircut. I was supposed to be carried into that mining camp as another victim of you vicious redskins, arrowed and scalped. Lucky for me, it takes some practice to shoot an arrow worth a damn.”

  “My Yana brothers told me about the saltu with a Paiute bow. Hear me, Stringer, that woman must have set you up.”

  Stringer nodded soberly. “I just said that. She was so soft and friendly-acting, too. But then, Samson might never have fallen for Delilah if she’d come at him mean and ugly. I see now that she was sent to head me off and lead me astray. But after that it gets murky. She claimed to be Yana. She even spoke Yana, and anyone can see she knows her way about these hills. So why would a Yana gal be working in cahoots with the enemies of her own tribe?”

  “She wouldn’t,” Joe said flatly. “Not if she was a real Yana. How do you know she was? Do you speak the lingo?”

  Stringer agreed he didn’t, but offered a few words and phrases the mysterious little gal had used along the trail. His try made some of the Yana women giggle, and the kids all laughed right out.

  “She was trying to fool you with some baby-talk Yana she picked up somewhere,” Joe said. “Yana is not an easy lingo to learn. So trust me when I say you could teach me Scotch-Gaelic before I could teach you Yana.”

  Stringer smiled thinly. “I’d have me a time teaching anyone The Gaelic. I know a few words and how to cuss in it, but the grammar is a real bitch and hardly worth the effort when you consider how many still talk it.”

  His Indian mentor nodded. “Yana may be more complicated. For openers, Yana men and women put different endings on their words to show whether a man or woman is speaking.”

  Stringer frowned. “For Pete’s sake, can’t they tell just by looking? I know it’s none of my business, but hardly any of these gals have their tits covered.”

  “Don’t stare at them,” Joe warned. “My people are very modest, in their own way. Yana men never stare at women unless they are interested in them. The woman you were with let you have her the first place you camped. No real Yana woman would give herself to a man she had only just met. She used the male verb endings when she spoke baby-talk Yana to you. No Yana would have been fooled by her for one second.”

  “Don’t rub it in. Help me figure out why she treated me so dirty, damn it.”

  Joe suppressed a smirk. “Maybe she liked to act dirty. The two of you were sure rough on the ferns. They sent her to lure you into that ambush so they could blame it on this band. She had to get you there first, and maybe she enjoyed her work as she kept trying to make you trust her.”

  Stringer smiled ruefully. “I know I sure enjoyed it,” he admitted. “I did get to wondering, though, toward the last, why she was leading me no place in particular. But being the fool I am, I never suspected downright treachery, and í still can’t grasp the infernal motive behind so much effort. The mining outfit sent out a call for help, saying they were being attacked by wild Indians, no offense. They must have known newspapermen would come in with the Army, right?”

  Joe Malliwah shrugged. “You were not on your way here with any troops. You were coming alone. You have a rep for being a smarter-than-usual newspaperman. You have exposed many crooks in your time. I think that if I were a crook I would not want a newspaperman like you anywhere near me.”

  Stringer reached absently for his makings, remembered in time that he couldn’t smoke alone in such company, and got out a match stem to chew instead as he mused aloud, “Well, they just might have tried to set me up on the Oakland ferry, and they surely had old Lola head me off at Los Molinos. But no matter how it looks to you and these evicted kin of yours, there’s nothing all that crooked about staking a mineral claim on public land. They’ve incorporated their company town of Quicksilver as a part of Lassen County, fair and square as far as white man’s law sees it. They’ve outright admitted having trouble with a local Indian band the BIA didn’t even know about. I don’t think the Army will be coming, unless things get a lot worse. The BIA will likely send an Indian agent in, perhaps next spring, and if he’s an at all decent cuss he may chide the rougher mining men for mistreating his new wards. Do I have to tell a full-blood how often a white man hangs or even goes to jail for using an off-the-reserve and no-doubt savage Indian for target practice?”

  Joe Malliwah seethed a spell before he growled, “I wrote to you because you say things as they are, with no sugar coating. I know how little they have to worry about abusing these people. They must be up to something even you saltu would send them to jail for doing.”

  He turned to speak Yana for a time with the others. The old chief nodded and got out a beaver-tail pouch and began to dig into it. At last he produced a lump of stone that looked a lot like a wad of cinnamon toast. He handed it across to Joe, who showed it to Stringer. “This is the kind of rock they seem to be most interested in. They chased away the family who lived near an outcrop of this paint-stone the first day they came. It is not gold ore. I know what gold ore looks like. Do you think they may be mining something they don’t want you to know about?”

  Stringer held the lump up to the light, just to be polite, as he said, “No. This is cinnabar. Mercury ore. They’d never have staked a mercury claim and named their town Quicksilver if they wanted to mine
mercury in secret.”

  Joe translated and asked if this mercury stuff was as important to the saltu as the gold that drove them crazy.

  Stringer shook his head. “Not hardly, it’s valuable. Worth about the same as silver, depending on the market. They don’t use or need near as much mercury as silver, so most of the time it’s worth less. As quicksilver, it’s used mostly to make thermometers and play tricks with in chemistry classes. It’s used more in chemical compounds. The firing caps of the bullets in our guns are made partly of mercury. They brew some medicines from it too. Tell these folks not to try that. Some mixtures of mercury are poisonous as hell.”

  “What if those crooks are planning to poison us?” Joe asked.

  To which Stringer could only reply wearily, “They don’t have to go to that much trouble, Joe. We just agreed they have what amounts to a hunting license on these unregistered Yana. They were fixing to kill me more crudely just this afternoon. Give the old gent’s medicine stone back and let’s study on how we can get his band on the BIA rolls.”

  Joe Malliwah shook his head. “They don’t want to be agency Indians. My grandfather has already suggested that to them. They say they would rather die free than become the dogs of the saltu.”

  “Did your grandfather tell them we don’t eat near as many dogs as they might? I want to help them, Joe. I might be able to get them a fair shake if we run a nice sad story about Lo, the poor Indian. But until and unless you can get ’em to meet us halfway, those mining company toughs are just going to go on defending white civilization from howling savages, if you follow my drift.”

  “Sure I follow your drift,” Joe said. “I’m a cowboy these days, but I’m still Indian enough to tell you that they don’t understand meeting anyone halfway. Sometimes I have a heap of trouble understanding it myself, and, hell, I like jam on white bread.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Having learned little that he hadn’t already known about the mining operation in the Valley of Many-Colored Rocks, Stringer asked Joe Malliwah to tell the Yana how swell he thought their stew had been and headed for the entrance of their cave. Nobody tried to stop him, but Joe tagged along, insisting over and over again that Stringer was dawanah.

  As they got outside, Stringer said, “Let me see if I have it straight. ‘Dambusah’ means pretty and ‘dawanah’ means crazy?”

  Joe growled, “You’ve always been pretty crazy. This is the first time you’ve threatened suicide. Hear me. You can’t go into that mining camp now.”

  “Sure I can. Now that I know where I am, it figures to be mostly downhill, and I ought to make it just the other side of sundown.”

  “Alone and on foot? At least let me go with you. We can ride my pony double, and two guns are better than one.”

  Stringer shook his head. “I wouldn’t show my pale face in town if I had a lick of sense. But I’ve yet to get a good story by acting shy. If everyone in Quicksilver were out to get me, those guys wouldn’t have had to act so sneaky. They’d have just waited for me to ride in for a public execution. I know this may be hard to sell to an Indian, Joe, but all of us ain’t bad, and some of us can act downright decent. Decent or just sensible, I don’t think the town law could be in on it. They were the ones who called for help, and even if they’ve changed their minds for some fool reason, no lawman with a jail at his disposal has to lay for unwelcome strangers in the woods. Some other gents in town may be surprised to see me, though. I can’t wait to see the expression on their faces.”

  Joe glanced up through the tree branches above them. “You’ll never make it before dark.”

  “That’s even better. If I stroll into town along that wagon trace like an innocent big-ass bird, I figure to be in town and surrounded by witnesses before anyone notices.”

  He looked for the sun to get his bearings and started walking. Joe tagged along afoot to make sure he didn’t get lost again.

  A while later, as they stood in a saddle, staring down into the valley beyond, Joe pointed at some lights winking on already as the valley filled with purple shadows. “That’s Quicksilver. They’ve put up more buildings since the last time 1 scouted it. You could make it before sundown if you beelined straight down from here.”

  Stringer pointed off to the west, where two thin lines of bare dirt wound snakelike through the hills around the little mining town. “Anyone on the prod for an Indian attack would be dumb not to shoot first and ask questions later if they spied me coming down from the high country in this tricky light. I’d best come calling polite from the direction of more civilized parts. You wait for me back near that lava tube, and if I don’t wind up dead I’ll get back to you when and if I figure out some answers.”

  They shook on it and Stringer started working his way west through the high chaparral. By the time he got down to the wagon trace, smelling like a cross between a drugstore and a cedar love chest, the sun had set, outlining the ominous bulk of old Mount Lassen in ruby light.

  He headed the other way, not trying to muffle the crunch of his boot heels as he strode along a wagon rut. He’d walked a little less than a mile when out of a dark clump of roadside oak came a call demanding who the hell he thought he was and where the hell he thought he was going.

  Stringer called back, “Hold your damned fire. If I were any whiter I’d be an albino. I lost my mount a ways back, and they told me there was a mining camp around here somewhere. I don’t feel up to walking anywhere more important.”

  The voice that had challenged him became more friendly as it replied, “Come on in closer. You sure don’t sound like an Indian. Quicksilver is private property, but I reckon the company won’t mind, as long as you come in peace.”

  As Stringer joined the two shadowy figures under the oaks he could just make out their mail-order badges and rifle barrels by the last light of dusk. One of them struck a match and shoved it in Stringer’s face. He shook it out and said, “Sorry. We had to make sure. They say the Comanche used to trick folk with rascals speaking pure American.”

  Stringer nodded. “They used Army bugle calls as well. But ain’t you boys taking a less serious tribe sort of serious?”

  The one who’d lit him up for inspection replied, “Company orders. Diggers may not be much next to Comanche or Sioux, but an Injun is an Injun, and the Good Lord seems to have created ’em equal when it comes to sneaky tricks.”

  The other one said, “You might still make the funeral in town if you hurry. Couple of old boys got arrowed in the hills just a few hours back. They said they was riding out to see if they could find any Indians.”

  His comrade said, “They found ’em. The kid they took along to hold their ponies brung ’em in a spell back, riding face-down across their saddles. You say the Diggers got your pony too, cowboy?”

  Stringer replied, “Can’t say for sure. I left my mount tied to a madrone one time, went off to gather some firewood, and I never saw the poor critter again. Might have been a plain old horse thief, you know.”

  Neither one seemed to buy that notion. One said flatly, “It was Diggers. No white man straying far off the beaten path would last all that long in these hills, honest or otherwise. You’re lucky they only lifted your pony.”

  “I’d best get on into town, then. You boys would know better than me whether the law in these parts might be watching out for white owlhoots, right?”

  The one who’d flashed the match in his face said, “We’d be arresting you instead of talking to you if we’d been told to guard this road against anyone but Indians.”

  Stringer agreed that that sounded sensible and moseyed on, feeling a heap less ill-at-ease. He’d guessed right about the town law. They didn’t seem to be in on it. But he still had to find out what in thunder somebody around here was so worried about his noticing.

  The town, if one wanted to call it that, was only a quarter mile up the wagon trace. The lights along the one main street outlined a closer black mass of the mining layout itself. It was easy to make out a smelter stack spe
wing smoke up at the stars. He passed a loading platform with a swamping road tractor and some freight wagons parked nearby. He didn’t go closer for a better look. If they had a night watch posted out along the road, they were sure to have someone riding shotgun over their more serious property. He’d already noticed there was no spur track out of the valley. The smelter and road tractor explained that well enough. Raw ore was too bulky to haul out by wagon. But cinnabar was easy to process on site, and while pure mercury was heavy as hell, you could load a mighty valuable amount of it in steel bottles on a wagon. It was a gut-and-git operation. They meant to mine and process that one outcrop until it petered out or got expensive to skim and then, in the sweet bye-and-bye, just give the valley back to the Indians in a messed-up condition the Indians might not have much use for.

  As he passed the mining mess, he was suddenly aware of the water-filled ditch running alongside the road. It had to be what they’d left of the mountain stream nature had put there to drain the valley. As he crossed a footbridge over the inky water he didn’t have to sniff hard to tell what they’d done to the local fishing. The fetid ditch stank of animal, vegetable, and mineral crud. A mining company that couldn’t afford a rail line could hardly be expected to spring for water treatment. What the Yana had once used as a trout stream was now an open sewer.