California Bloodstock (11 page)

In spite of advancing age, Francis Buckdown was a handsome figure of a man. He wore his thick black hair in a fat greasy braid that fell below his waist. At the end of the braid he hung various ornaments, depending on his mood. Feathers sometimes, sometimes bits of carved bone, and when he was feeling especially festive, a small tin bell that jingled when he ran. Sporting the bell, he was seldom mistaken for anyone else. This was how they found him.

There he was, belly-deep in cattails and wild onions, in a high valley outlined vaguely on T. D. Jr.'s map as Big Meadow. His herd stretched up the meadow behind him, grazing demurely. Buckdown looked the picture of bovine pride as he stood there testing the wind, alert so that nothing should sneak up.

That man has obviously lost his mind, T. D. Jr. observed, focusing in on Buckdown in the distance.

He and Taya passed the small telescope back and forth. They consulted the picture on the book cover. It was Buckdown all right. Gently nudging her pony, Taya rode slowly out into the meadow. T. D. Jr. drew his pistol and followed.

Buckdown's reaction upon seeing Melting-Snow-Of-Winter-That-Chases-Despair for the first time in almost sixteen years was predictable. He didn't recognize her. No remembered picks of things past twanged on the strings of his heart. Indeed, no gut strings tugged anywhere in his laced-up emotions as he moved cautiously toward the intruders. He was just doing his duty as he saw it, all very straightforward, resigned. There would be no animal murder this day in the meadow, not if he could help it. He circled them several times, crouching low and then bounding closer in quick starts. They pulled up and waited.

Powwow time, Buckdown decided, and advanced to face them. He cocked his head, wondering at this woman with the hard distant eyes and this young man with the nervous horse and drawn pistol.

And they were facing him, this old man gone clearly crazy. And clearly dangerous as well, as T. D. Jr. found out when Buckdown swatted the pistol out of his hand. Next, a long thick face-to-face silence, some kind of ritual stare-down. Taya knew it was up to her.

Father?

Now hold on!

Buckdown took three giant steps backward and
waited for the punch line. He scanned the ridges for a sign. He frowned like a sour old fool and farted indignantly.

Very rude of him, but how would you have felt in Buckdown's moccasins? Better walk a mile in them before you criticize. You lost your wife too many sunsets ago to remember. You are seventy-one years old and not getting any prettier. You have been to the end of the earth and have seen a beach covered with animal blood. And, for almost a decade, you have been living with a herd of mountain buffalo, gobbling peyote.

Men came after you, Taya said. But they got old T. D. and they got me.

Buckdown blinked. The realization of exactly what was happening didn't hit him until Taya handed him the book with his picture on the cover. Then it hit like a bucket of icy water, very sobering. His eyes literally rattled in their sockets. He was obviously coming back from somewhere very far away. Taya read it in his face, surprise and anguish, like a horse falling off a cliff.

Buckdown held up the book and traced a berry-stained finger over old T. D.'s name on the cover.

Did he send you? Did your father send you?

Now it was Taya's turn off the cliff.

Buckdown wanted to explain, but it was all so long ago and so very complicated. He made T. D. Jr. wait in the meadow and led Taya to a thick stand of aspen where he got the story of what happened in Monterey. Time for him to consider responsibilities once again. The weather was changing, and a gradual darkening thickened in Buckdown's head to match
what was happening in the sky. Taya became the time stream. Buckdown saw what he had to do just as clearly as he heard the first thunder cracking toward him over the ridges.

The Burgetts would have been easy enough to find if only Buckdown had remembered to read the weather. The storm blowing in from the west was a trail of sorts, readable. He could have backtracked it over ridges marked by lightning fires, could have followed it straight to the coast where it was renewing itself over and over in a juggle of tumbling static pressures just off Fort Ross.

The old fort was a regular weather sink, a funnel actually, that sucked at the Pacific and blew waves of hard rain east through a natural spout in the Coast Range. And although Galon Burgett appreciated the moisture, he couldn't get used to certain other factors, natural and otherwise, that trespassed on his convalescense. All that noise on the wind, for example, and all the strange signs. This night, this storm, found him again unable to sleep for more than minutes as a stretch.

Shaboom, meanwhile, sat in his cave contemplating the clumsy storm walking around in the black sky, and it occurred to him that in the end he would become like the thunder. But not yet, and he prayed in his own mysterious way that the lightning would not take its flashy game of electric tag to Galon and
pronounce him
it
before Shaboom was finished with his own game. Shaboom had his own zoo now. It was his turn.

Day after day Shaboom played on Galon's failing health, his dwindling ability to do for himself, with the psychological swat of unseen hissings in the darkness. In the predawn fog, Shaboom would pad silently to Galon's door with a day's ration of acorns and clams. He would arrange the food in a shrinelike little pile and then use an eclectic collection of dead animal paws—beaver, fox, goose, frog, etc.—to track the signs of much animal travel to and from the offering. He was careful, of course, to cover his own tracks.

Weak and disoriented, Galon had no idea where the real world had gone. The food kept him alive and he welcomed it, but at the same time he was terrified by the possibilities. Where was it coming from? He would sniff tentatively at the eerie mix of animal tracks, convinced that he was being fattened up. Very spooky. And then there were those taunting, singsong shrieks….

The moon broke through the storm. Shaboom peeked around the entrance to his cave and…what's this? Coming up the path to the fort, he caught a shadow on the run. Too many fatherless shadows in this wilderness to speculate, so he was up quickly and on the move, stalking his way carefully down into the fort for a closer look.

Galon sat propped against the wall on his bed of redwood cuttings. He picked at his fingers. He searched over the lines in his palms. Like all men, he
wanted to live forever, sure, but not like this, not tormented by some devious pack of one-footed devils. Better, perhaps, to beat them to the end. He reached for his rifle and began to lick the muzzle. Now what? To be or not to be?…Finger on the trigger now, Galon brooded deeper and deeper into the choice until suddenly, bursting in on him, came brother Millard.

Greetings from El Dorado, brother!

Millard rushed to Galon's side, spilling a sack of bright nuggets and yellow dust on the bed. Galon's jaw dropped. His rifle fell across his lap. He grabbed Millard's arm.

Where'd you rob it?

I didn't rob it, Galon. It's free.

Free gold? Galon shook his head.

Millard's explanation made Galon dizzy. It wasn't just what he said, it was how he said it. Could this be his dumb brother making leaps of reason, articulating subtle implications, actually explaining something to him?…

Observing the scene through a crack in the door, Shaboom fixed at once upon the free gold. For the first time in many years he thought about escape. His mind leaped forward, picturing a first-class sea voyage on one of the sleek traders he had seen every year or so running south off his coast toward San Francisco. All to be bought and paid for with the shiny metal Galon was now fingering. Wasting no time, Shaboom took a deep breath and knocked sharply, very businesslike, on the rotting door.

Needless to say, the Burgett brothers were startled.
They exchanged amazed shrugs, then suspicious nods, and turned narrow eyes on the door. Galon cocked his rifle. Millard drew his knife.

Come ahead.

In walked Shaboom, his moon face beaming. He bowed back and forth, from one brother to the other. Galon didn't know whether to shoot or shit apples. Millard too was speechless. Shaboom pointed at Galon.

You're dying.

What's it to you?

It's unnecessary, said Shaboom and proceeded to explain that he knew a place where it was acceptable, common even, for a man to live forever. It was far away from this wretched coast, however, and reaching it required not only a long and expensive journey, but the services of an expert guide as well. Someone like himself, also expensive.

What kind of a scam is this?

Shaboom elaborated, flipping out the details of paradise as reasonable alternatives to being enfolded by the very wall of death that Galon felt backed against. Soon, Galon was hooked. He felt his age passing into a new scale of measurement. Forever. He turned, smiling sheepishly, to his brother.

Well, Millard, how about it?

Financing will not be a problem.

Riding into Yerba Buena, Vallejo wondered where they all came from, all these wild-eyed men with
their faces twitching in the same ironic smile. Mountebanks to a man, he speculated, like Fremont and those Bear Flaggers. It was unnerving. Didn't they have a country of their own? Born in hell most of them, probably.

Not quite. Old T. D. Slant had done a survey for the paper and his records show that the citizenry of Yerba Buena, not counting Mormons or Worm Eaters, gave their birthplaces as follows:

Old T. D. Slant had gathered the data as part of a study to project the demographic possibilities of Brannan's paper. To aid the Mormon on his advertising calls, Slant had also determined that 173 of them could both read and write, 113 could read but not write, and 89 could do neither. But everyone was upwardly mobile.

Vallejo would no doubt have found Slant's findings interesting. He was himself an avid reader and personally owned the only substantial library in California. His passion for books had caused him threats of excommunication from the mother church on three occasions. The good padres were continually
catching him with dirty books. Only his shrewdly worded letters to the pope saved him in each case from eternal damnation.

His friendship with Slant had grown out of their mutual interest in the printed word. They had discussed its power often at great length in the old days. Slant also supplied Vallejo with books. He ordered them through Larkin. It was tricky because Slant and Vallejo had to meet each shipment in a small boat and smuggle the contraband ashore before the ship dropped anchor, and had to submit, under one of the very laws Vallejo was supposed to enforce, to a moral inspection of its cargo by the prying padres.

The only good news that Vallejo had received during his incarceration at Sutter's Fort was a letter from Slant telling him that his old book-running friend was sick of literature, life itself for that matter, and was giving him his library for the sake of old times. Vallejo didn't know what to make of the letter, but he certainly wanted the books. Slant had some real treasures, Balzac's racy
Droll Stories
, for example. So as soon as he had bought his way free of Sutter, Vallejo had come straight to Yerba Buena to find out if Slant was on the level.

He found Slant pounding on the bar at Cargo West, telling the elegant Greek barman that all of California south of Santa Barbara should be left to the greaser Mexicans and good riddance. The Greek insisted that the south coast had the only climate in the territory fit to cradle a civilization.

Civilization indeed!

Anyway, Slant might not have made good his promise of the books had not the first thing out of
Vallejo's mouth been an inquiry after Taya. Slant hadn't heard her name in months, and the sudden mention catapulted him once again into a guilty fit of remorse and worry. It was not that he had forgotten about her. No, it was just that he had been doing well emotionally as Money Balls, somehow managing to keep his guilt private. And now….

Slant pushed his library on Vallejo like a mindless exorcist trying to purge himself of all the devilish stories that men write down. That
he
had written down, caused. He ranted that he was done with such things, for good this time. His own vices, his interest in Mormon sex, had seduced him back into the stinking word racket, but never again!

I quit, he yelled down the bar at Brannan.

Vallejo was amazed at his friend's peculiar behavior but was too polite to ask questions. He just nodded and had some Worm Eaters load the books into a wagon, and the two old friends got on with the business of drinking out the night in silence.

When Vallejo got home to Sonoma he wrote Slant a thank you note which included this bit of business advice: Beware of Sutter. He plans to usurp your port. He now has the land I was planning to use.

T. D. Jr. had it all worked out in his head. He might have appeared silly on occasion over that last few months but perhaps only in comparison to Taya. After all, he was a young man and therefore given to
certain moods and inconsistencies. He was no fool, but he was also in love.

As he saw it, the perfect future looked like this: Taya realizes his gentle strength. She falls delicately in love with him. They make wild, youthful love at every opportunity. She forgets about revenge. They marry. She becomes the wife of a great artist. And he would also like to have that lake he liked so much, if it's not too much trouble.