Falconer's Law

by Jason Manning

  Only Hugh Falconer did not indulge in the river's delights. Eben watched him as he rode up and down the river, then crossed to the other side and repeated the process. Was this man, wondered Eben, made of iron rather than flesh and blood? Did he ever succumb to weariness or thirst, or suffer from heat or cold? It did not seem as though the three-week desert crossing had affected him the way it would any mortal man.

  Eben deduced that Falconer was exercising caution, seeking sign of anyone who had previously passed this way, but Eben thought it a fruitless enterprise. Nobody in their right mind would have come through here. He had a poignant sense of their being very much alone in this wild, strange immensity. Not even Indians, he decided, would attempt to eke out an existence in this godforsaken country.

  That evening, with the brigade gathered around the campfire, Falconer announced they would follow the river south until they reached a place called the Humboldt Sink, a vast marshland. At that point they would turn west again and, if his information was correct, reach the Sierras in less than twenty days.

  "There is little time to waste," he said. "It's nearly mid-September now, by my calculations. If we don't get across the Sierras by the middle of October we will be in for some trouble."

  "What kind of trouble?" someone asked.

  "The Sierras rise fourteen thousand feet, if memory serves," announced Doc Maguire, jumping in unbidden. "It will be one hell of a bloody climb, because we shall be starting near sea level. If we get caught in a high pass by an early snow—well, you will all wish you were back down here, basking in the sun."

  Falconer nodded as the others looked to him for confirmation.

  "How come you know so all-fired much about them mountains, Maguire?" queried French Pete Bordeaux. "You've not been there before."

  "No. But I was once a proud member of the esteemed Royal Geographic Society," said the Irishman, with a sardonic twist to his mouth. He was flicking one of his pearl-handled knives into the sand between his booted feet. "When I was charged—falsely, I might add—with murder most foul, they revoked my membership. It mattered not that I was innocent, or that I had not even had a fair trial. The Society's good name could not be sullied by scandal."

  "Who you murder, you?" asked French Pete.

  Maguire's gaze was as steely as twin stilettos. "You are deaf as well as ugly, French Pete. I told you, I was falsely accused of murdering the wife of a duke, a woman with whom I was having an affair at the time. I am convinced she was the victim of a jealous husband." Maguire's smile was cold—Eben took an immediate and powerful dislike for the man when he saw that smile. "Yes, gentlemen, I impaled her—but not with one of these." He held up the knife.

  Some of the others laughed. Eben glanced at Falconer. The booshway's face might have been carved from stone, and Eben was left without a clue to what Falconer was thinking.

  "We'll linger here for one day," said Falconer, and the men fell silent. "Leave the following morning. Sixkiller, Cotton—come with me."

  The Flathead Indian and the runaway-slave-turned-mountain-man followed Falconer away from the campfire, into the starlit darkness.

  "Reckon he'll send them two out tomorrow for a little scout downriver," mused Rube Holly. "Next to him they're the best at readin' sign."

  "What is he worried about?" queried Eben. "There's probably not another living soul within a hundred miles of this spot."

  "Think not?" Holly shrugged and fired up his evening pipe. "Who knows? We're the first white men ever to set foot in this country. This here's the great unknown, hoss. And that's what worries Falconer, I reckon. No tellin' what we'll run into. Whatever's out there, he don't want to be surprised by it."

  Far off in the distance a coyote bayed at the moon, a singularly lonesome sound, shredded by the chilly night breeze—a sound that touched an icy finger of primitive dread between Eben Nall's shoulder blades and shook him with an involuntary shudder.

  Early the next morning, before the rising of the sun, Sixkiller and Cotton Phillips set out southward, the Indian on one side of the river and the black man on the other. Eben Nall was certain they would find nothing out of the ordinary, and he gave no more thought to the matter, joining the others in enjoying to the fullest this brief respite on the banks of the Humboldt. He ate, slept, and swam in the shallows when the mood struck him, as did all the other men, and closed his mind to any futile speculations about what lay ahead. There would be tribulations, surely. But nothing, he decided, could be any worse than what they had endured in the desert crossing.

  Only one thing intruded on his peace of mind—his brother. Silas had made every effort to avoid him since the ugly scene twelve days ago. Eben regretted the fact that Silas had been allowed to join the brigade. Intuition warned him that he would have cause to regret it even more in the near future. His feelings toward his brother burdened Eben with a degree of guilt, but he couldn't help those feelings. He had been dependent on Silas after they left home and ventured west into the great unknown together. His year in the mountains with Rube Holly had apparently cured him of this dependency. Now he tried to cope with the dilemma of kinship—how far was he obliged to go by blood bond in helping or defending Silas? He had a hunch that he would find out before this journey was over.

  That afternoon Hugh Falconer searched out Doc Maguire and found the Irish doctor apart from the others, seated with his back propped up against the trunk of a cottonwood. Maguire was drawing in a sketchbook balanced on his knees.

  "Didn't know you were an artist," said Falconer, sitting on his heels.

  "A hobby."

  "Thought you might like to tell me who you're working for."

  "I don't understand."

  "Is it Bonneville? Or the British?"

  Maguire wore a carefully crafted blank stare. "I'm sure I don't . . ."

  "Doc, don't you lie to me." Falconer's Scottish brogue thickened.

  The Irishman dropped all pretense and smiled wryly. "Have you been rooting through my possibles, Hugh?"

  Falconer shook his head. "You know better than that. But you're making a map."

  "So I am. What harm is there in that?"

  "Plenty."

  "Even if your suspicions are well founded, what will you do? Leave me behind to die?"

  Falconer let that pass. "Bonneville approached you back at the rendezvous, didn't he? You were one of the first men I picked to come with me, and he must have known about that."

  "I have been meaning to ask, Hugh—why did you pick me? Doesn't my checkered past concern you?"

  "I'd be making this trip alone if I refused to sign up anyone who fell short of sainthood."

  "I didn't murder anyone."

  "Until someone proves otherwise, I'm willing to take your word on that. But you could get us all killed with that map of yours."

  "How so?"

  "Do you know why Bonneville wants a map?"

  "To establish a trade route to California."

  Again Falconer shook his head. " 'He is come to open the purple testament of bleeding war.' "

  Delighted, Maguire laughed. "Shakespeare! Richard III, is it not? By God, Hugh, you're full of surprises."

  "I have a hobby, too. Bonneville is dead set on taking California away from Mexico. Any maps he can get his hands on will be used to that end."

  Maguire nodded. "I suppose I had guessed as much."

  "How did he enlist your aid? By telling you that if we didn't seize California the British would?"

  "Something like that. To quote Shakespeare, he knew I've been 'eating the bitter bread of banishment.' For some reason, I harbor a tremendous amount of resentment toward anything British. Imagine that. They were going to send me to the gallows for a murder I did not commit, Hugh. They weren't the least bit interested in giving me a fair hearing. In fact, they didn't want to hear my side of it at all. I was just a bloody Irishman. What was my word against that of a duke? Well, I say to hell with that 'precious stone set in the silver sea. This blessed plot, this earth, this real
m, this England.'"

  Falconer nodded. It was just as he had surmised. "Destroy the map, Doc. Give me your word."

  Maguire gave him a funny look. "You would accept my word?"

  "Of course. Look, if the Mexicans find out we're making maps they'll peg us all as spies, and none of us will get out of California alive. It's going to be hard enough to convince them we're not working for the United States. They're suspicious, Doc, and I think they have a right to be."

  "Very well, then. If you'll take my word, you can have it."

  "Good enough." Falconer rose to go.

  "Bonneville approached you, too, didn't he, Hugh?"

  "He did. I turned him down. But I thought he gave up too easily. I figured he had something up his sleeve. Made sense he would try to recruit someone else in the brigade."

  "Why are you going to California, anyway?"

  "Why are you?"

  Maguire shrugged.

  "Why not go?" asked Falconer. "It's there."

  "No. There's more to it than that, I think. We're all running away from something. What are you running away from?"

  Falconer looked away, out into the heat haze in the middle distance, and pictured in his mind a lonely snow-covered grave way up above the timberline in the Wind River Range—the grave of a pretty Shoshone woman named Touches the Moon who had stolen his heart in spite of his every precaution.

  "Memories," he said, and walked on.

  Chapter 11

  They seemed to materialize out of thin air. First a handful of them emerged from the stunted, wind-twisted shrubbery up ahead, to stand along the bank of the shallow river. They looked nothing like any Indians Eben Nall had ever seen; they were squat, stocky, wearing only loincloths and carrying spears and bows and arrows for weapons. Their faces and shoulders were daubed with dried clay, giving them a grotesque and fearsome appearance.

  The brigade had been following the Humboldt River for days. Sixkiller and Cotton Phillips had returned from their initial scouting foray to report no evidence that this bleak immensity was inhabited, and no sign that might indicate otherwise had been seen since. The sudden appearance of the Indians was all the more startling for that reason.

  At the head of the column, Hugh Falconer raised a hand to halt the brigade. The hammers of a dozen rifles being cocked made a sharp, lethal sound in the hot stillness of the river bottom. The mountain men didn't know what to expect from these fierce-looking natives, so they prepared for the worst.

  "No shooting unless I give the word," said Falconer.

  The five Indians cautiously approached.

  "If they make trouble," murmured Eben, "at least we've got the numbers on our side."

  Rube Holly glanced wryly at him. "Reckon so?"

  One of the five spoke in a guttural dialect to his companions, and they stood their ground as he came on alone. Falconer dismounted to stand at the head of his horse. The Indian leader advanced warily. Resorting to sign language, Falconer tapped his chest, then extended his right hand, chest high, palm turned outward, index and second fingers pointing skyward, and raised the hand until it was in front of his face. In this way he signed ME FRIEND.

  The Indian pointed at Falconer, then, with index finger crooked, brought his hand toward his face. Falconer nodded. Indicating the rest of the brigade, he described a counterclockwise circle with his right hand and then closed the hand into a fist and made as though he were pounding an invisible table with it.

  "That Injun wants us to come with him," Rube told Eben. "Hugh says he'll go, but the rest of us will stay put." Watching the Indian's response, Rube grunted. "He says we all come. Says we're his prisoners." Rube crossed his wrists, imitating the sign the Indian had just made.

  "Prisoners?" Eben laughed nervously. "He's sure of himself, isn't he?"

  At that moment the Indian uttered a sound reminiscent of a coyote's bark.

  On both flanks of the river were ten-foot cut-banks. At the signal, more Indians appeared to line the rims of the cutbanks. Eben's Appaloosa fiddle-footed, snorting in surprise. Several of the mountain men uttered grim curses. Though outnumbered three or four to one, they were ready for a scrape. Falconer turned and snapped, "The first man who shoots will answer to me."

  No one fired.

  Turning back to the Indian leader, Falconer signed WE GO.

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF EBEN NALL

  September 14, 1837. These Indians, known as Diggers, are a poor and primitive people. Their diet consists mainly of roots, insects, and small game. They live in varmint-infested huts made of sticks, and have no concept of personal hygiene, as far as I can tell. Men and women alike wear only the loincloth. The women do not seem the least bit embarrassed by their nudity, and why should they? They know no better. They nurse their infants and perform their bodily functions out in plain sight of everyone, with no sense of modesty.

  Having had a little contact with the Mojaves and the Utes, some of them are acquainted with the sign language that serves as a universal tool of communication between the western tribes. But it is manifestly evident that they have never seen white men before, and if there have been any white men before us who made contact with these people no one in our company has heard tell of it.

  We were escorted several miles downriver, flanked on both sides by columns of warriors, to their village, a miserable collection of approximately one hundred huts. I was struck by the absence of livestock. The Diggers are unacquainted with cattle and know nothing of horses. This explains much about their primitive existence. The introduction of the horse by the Spanish conquistadores to the great plains dramatically altered the culture of the tribes residing west of the Mississippi River. Thanks to the horse, those tribes enjoyed an enhanced potential for trade and hunting and for the making of war. Without the horse, the Diggers have remained isolated on this desert plain.

  These people are so different from other Indians with whom we are acquainted that my colleagues do not know what to make of them. I overheard someone suggest that they might be cannibals, and that by following Falconer into their village we were going to our deaths as meek as sheep to the slaughter. They were of the strong opinion that we ought to make a fight of it. Of the four hundred or so inhabitants of the village, perhaps a hundred were warriors, and a hundred warriors, no matter the tribe, will never cause thirty mountain men to break a sweat. But so great is the respect in which these men hold Falconer that in this instance they went against their better judgment.

  When we arrived at the village, the leader of the warriors addressed his people, and although none of us could make heads or tails of the language, it was clear by his gestures that he was regaling them with an embellished and no doubt self-serving account of our "capture." Some of those gestures were so belligerent that I began to wonder if indeed Falconer had led us to our doom. But Falconer appeared supremely calm, and I took courage. Apparently he knew all along that the leader of the party that had surprised us was not the chief, and he turned out to be right, as the chief later appeared. He was a wrinkled old man who wore a deerskin cape draped about his bony shoulders. To this man Falconer offered a few trinkets. Using sign language, he explained that we wished only to pass through their land in peace.

  The chief had to have been a hundred years old if he was a day, and he was slow in comprehending, but Falconer persevered, and eventually the message was put across. The old man was beside himself with wonder at the brightly colored beads and tin bells that Falconer bestowed upon him. The leader of the warriors believed himself worthy of a gift too, and Falconer gave him a knife. Testing the blade, the Indian cut himself. Obviously he had never seen a metal blade before. He dropped the knife to nurse his wound, but was quick to pick it up again, as he realized what a fine weapon it would make.

  Falconer's gifts changed the complexion of the whole situation. The old chief spoke to his people, and they swarmed forward with smiles and shouts. We were accosted by men, women, and children. They tugged at our clothes and hair. They put their hand
s on our horses and possibles. One of them latched onto my rifle with such determination that I could only dislodge him by planting a foot firmly in his chest and propelling him backward into the crowd. Rube Holly scared them off of him by plucking the glass eye from his head. Then one of our colleagues, flustered by this pestering onslaught, fired his rifle at the sky, just to buy some elbow room. The effect of the rifle's discharge upon the Diggers was a wonder to behold. All of them took to their heels, including the leader of the warriors. They scattered in all directions like quail. Much relieved, we all had a good laugh. These people no longer seemed to pose much of a threat. It was obvious that they had never seen a firearm, and just the sound of one being fired struck terror into their hearts.

  That day we camped near the village. Motivated by greed, the Indians gradually overcame their fear, and bothered us like a cloud of mosquitoes all night. Falconer had his hands full trying to prevent bloodshed, as the Indians vexed us sorely . . .

  A shout roused Eben Nall from exhausted sleep. He grabbed his rifle and was on his feet in a heartbeat. Blinking himself awake, he saw a Digger Indian running through the river shallows, holding a pair of moccasins. He was trying to reach the other side. Eben had no doubt he had stolen the moccasins, and he expected to hear a rifle shot that would signal a bloody end to the attempted theft. Instead, a heavy cast-iron frying pan cartwheeled through the air and struck the fleeing thief squarely between the shoulder blades. He flopped limply forward into the river. A roar of delight and approval rose up from the brigade's camp.

  The hurler of the frying pan proved to be none other than Gus Jenkins, who waded out to retrieve his purloined footwear. Falconer was waiting for him as he sloshed back to dry land.