Page 8 of A Good Prospect

“No,” he said. “I’ve got a better idea. Since you’re not fit to travel, I’ll let you stay here, at least till all the gold pans out. I’ll have a servant bring you a cow in a few days.”

With an authoritarian hitch of his chin toward the darker man, Señor Palomares effortlessly vaulted upon his gaudy horse. The American remounted too, with what seemed like regret.

“I’d like to know the name of my tenant who is squatting on my land,” Señor Palomares demanded.

It took Niall a few moments to reckon out what he was being asked. “Oh,” he said mildly, perhaps thinking about the cow. “Niall Norris. From Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.”

But Señor Palomares touched the brim of his sombrero only to Tamasin. “And your name?”

Tamasin started to answer, but Niall stepped in front of her. “This here is Thomasina Norris, my beloved wife. And, you know. Apologies about the greaser remark.”

“Well,” said Señor Palomares. “I trust my servant won’t be seeing any more bruises or broken bones when he returns with the cow.”

So, as Niall muttered half-statements about how clumsy she was, the two men rode off. The two most stately and imposing men Tamasin had ever viewed. She knew that to be true, comparing them to the thousands of men she’d met on the Plains and here in California, even the kind ones, since being let out of the Magdalene Asylum in Philadelphia a year ago. Comparing these two men to the thousands of others seemed like a mathematically sound equation that was bound to stand the test of time—again, and again.

* * * *

“Not to question your decisions on your own land. But why did you let that good-for-nothing bastard stay? You know he’s going to harm that poor girl again.”

Golden pheasants moved languidly aside to let their mounts pass, and knots of cunning crested quails skittered as though accustomed to seeing such gigantic, lumbering animals. Ophir’s belly was filled with dried biscuits, salt ham, and venomous green tea, and he’d been feeling in tip-top spirits, moving over the mountain ridges under cloudless skies, until they’d met up with that louse, Norris of Philadelphia. It stuck in Ophir’s craw to see that misbegotten woman kicked like a feral dog—he’d seen enough of that mistreatment in his years in North Carolina.

He knew Salvador must have a sly reason for allowing that odious fellow to remain, when they’d threatened at least a hundred men so far from Mt. Bullion to Mt. Ophir. They’d only been able to find a rude hand-drawn map in Doña Carmen’s desk at Las Oliveras, a map that didn’t describe much more than the fork in the road, a hatchet-blazed stump, and the long-gone dead cow, but Salvador knew from his father’s descriptions that his land ranged north to the Merced River, and that’s where they’d been warning everyone to skedaddle. Salvador was taking sextant readings a couple of times a day to map their location.

“I want him staying put to keep an eye on him,” Salvador replied.

Ophir nodded. He was also cautiously optimistic that Sal had not even brought his whiskey flask on their surveying journey, much less packed a keg of the stuff on his mule. Ophir had the hunch that Salvador Palomares could be a dangerous person when in liquor, a man with a turbulent past.

Sal added, “I don’t intend on having any servant bring a milk cow back to that worm. I’m bringing it myself. Did you see, that girl must’ve been six or seven months with child, and he’s booting her like she’s a cockroach?”

Ophir tilted his head thoughtfully. “She looked as though she must have been very pretty once upon a time. Before that buffoon started bashing her around.”

“I noticed that. You know what I think it is? It’s the overland journey these people are making from The States. These ‘manifest destiny’ people dragging themselves over the Plains and Sierra, civilization marching on. By the time they make it here to the promised land, they’re half-dead. I see it in the women we’ve been meeting, just exhausted shells, their brittle hair falling out, their dark yellow skin decaying off their bones.”

Ophir tried to chuckle, to make light of it. “And of course, standing waist deep in these freezing waters with the sun broiling their brains doesn’t help.”

Salvador grinned. He was even more beautiful when he was serene, like the high-born gente de razon Ophir now knew him to be. “Sí. Half-dead, like you were when I met you a couple weeks ago. Look.” He pointed. “See that saddle at the top of the ridge? From there we’ll be able to see Bear Valley.” Sal’s wiggling eyebrows suggested the obvious, that they race to the ridge, and he spurred his mount before Ophir could even get a handle on his reins.

Ophir tore clumsily off on his mount past a few straggling oaks, darting by slate blue rock formations, then getting tangled in some scrub. By the time Ophir reached the saddle, Salvador was already stock-still, staring down into the valley. Ophir was now familiar with that faraway look on his friend’s face, and it usually meant admiration for what he viewed, but today that handsome face was puzzled. Ophir looked into the valley.

A column of riffraff tents lined the valley floor, maybe fifty tents of calico shirts and canvas stitched together with pine boughs and patched in a slapdash mélange. Threads of smoke from another fifty cook fires blanketed the valley floor with haze, and men the size of ants crawled, criss-crossing the velvety green grass with footpaths. Past the tents, there were twenty shacks of a more or less permanent nature, just visible through the fog.

Sal frowned, and it almost seemed his eyes teared up, maybe from the smoke.

“What’s wrong?” Ophir enquired. “Isn’t your partner Savage down there with his trading shack?”

Sal’s voice was a mere shadow, uncertain and distressed. “I imagine so,” he said remotely, eyes not budging from the valley floor. “But last time I was here a year ago, there were maybe three shacks and three tents. Now there are a hundred. All bad Americans.”

Ophir shrugged. “This is how it was a month ago when I was here.” But he didn’t like the consternated cast to his friend’s face, so he urged cheerfully, “Let’s go find Savage. He’ll know the story.”

Abruptly, Salvador charged off down the slope, uncaring about their pack mules that struggled to follow, his serape billowing. “Mata! Mata los chingados Yanquis!” he hollered, which Ophir knew to mean Kill the fucking Yankees!

Ophir lagged behind to hitch the mules to his horse, so he didn’t reach the tent village for another hour. He zigzagged through the rag city of crimson calico, homes formed from the most basic tree limbs, greeted by a few men who remembered him. The miners without exception were clothed in dark blue flannel shirts, pants stuffed into boots, broad-brimmed felt hats, and a wreath of curses they probably had not dared utter when in The States. Drunkards, as elsewhere in California, seemed to make up most of the village, fellows reeling like a Virginia fence while slathering hot oysters, bacon, and toast across their faces. Ophir’s path was sprinkled with oyster cans, brandied fruit jars, and empty bottles.

Not being accustomed to the fracas of a newly founded mining town, merely the lowing cows and songbirds of the serene Rancho Las Oliveras, Ophir trotted to where he remembered Savage’s trading shack to be. It was easy to spot Sal’s gloriously caparisoned horse outside of the structure, the finest one in town—the only one with actual planed boards for walls. Inside, Ophir tried not to breathe too freely of the barrels of mackerel, vinegar and pork. These putrid odors no doubt imbued the piles of velveteen and flannel shirts that were pressed up against pickles and hams.

“Villainous outcasts, proud of having escaped from Botany Bay and Sydney!” Savage cried, pounding ferociously on his counter.

Salvador’s eyes bulged with rage. “Squatters have been telling us the Spanish land grants are of no value, that only ‘actual’ settlers can hold lands and mines.”