Colter's Path (9781101604830) (23 page)

Upon awakening two hours later, Ben had stumbled over to the entrance of his tent and stepped out into the waning day, having completely forgotten he'd stripped down earlier. He looked around, stretched with elbows cocked out beside him at shoulder level, and yawned broadly and loudly. Then he'd heard a youthful feminine scream and, immediately after, the chiding voice of a man who was running toward him, none too happy.

“Sir! What in blazes are you doing, showing yourself so! My twelve-year-old daughter is down there in that wagon, and this she does not need to see! Cover yourself, man! Have some decency about you!”

Ben looked down and was visually reminded, with horror, of his nakedness. His hands groped downward, covering himself, and he backed into his tent, apologizing profusely. He quickly pulled on his underwear, then scrambled to get his trousers on with equal haste—but abruptly he stopped.

Something was glittering back at him. Yellow flecks caught in the fabric of his pants, throwing back the last remaining rays of sunlight streaming in through his west-facing tent door. Ben's mind was seldom quick, liquor having slowed it. This time, though, he knew right away what had happened, and that the golden dust caught in the cloth of his pants had to have been trapped there while he was washing the garment clean of urine.

He'd found gold. He, Ben Scarlett, world's must unprivileged and unlucky man, had become the only man in history to find California gold because he'd peed in his own pants.

In subsequent days, word spread of the new find, as it always did. Ben established his claim, but before long had neighbors all around him. When details of his odd
route to success became known, what started out being called Scarlett's Creek became Scarlett's Wash, then Scarlett's Camp, and finally, Scarlett's Luck.

Ben liked the sound of that. He'd never thought he'd be considered a lucky man. And his luck continued, day by day, as he began to adjust himself to the discipline of kneeling by Scarlett's Creek and swirling gravel and sediment in his pan. The dirt was kind, and paid. He was steadily gaining wealth, however modestly, for the first time in his life.

In September of 1850, statehood came to California. By that point, Scarlett's Luck had become an actual town, governed by a board of “mining commissioners” who oversaw much more than mining. As some mining camps were prone to do, Scarlett's Luck attracted more than its share of undesirables, leading the commissioners to seek an appointed officer to maintain a measure of law and order. When the sheriffing background of Blalock was discovered, he was offered the post, and took it on condition that he be allowed to hire a deputy to assist him. Jedd, who had never sought to work as a lawman, was offered the job and on impulse accepted it.

It was to be a more fateful choice than he could ever have foreseen.

It was by no particular design that so many of the emigrants from the California Enterprise Company of East Tennessee drifted into Scarlett's Luck and established claims there. In California, news of a new strike drew miners from all over, both newcomers and those well established in other camps. So Scarlett's Luck gained new residents derived from any number of recently arrived emigrant bands.

Some of the Sadler group who came to the new mining town did not know that the Scarlett whose name had become attached to the place was the same one who had traveled with them. Others knew exactly who he was and came in part because they could not resist seeing with
their own eyes how success and good luck would affect the bedraggled drunk with whom they had passed almost all the way across a continent.

Crozier Bellingham was one of the latter variety. He'd heard the story of Ben Scarlett's undignified way of discovering gold in his little creek, or at least one version of it, and knew he had to learn the full details. This, he knew, would have to find a place in his novel of the gold fields. Probably in a disguised, renamed form, but still the same story. And he wanted to get it right. He also wanted to see Ben again, and Jedd Colter, who reportedly was living in Scarlett's Luck as well. There were stories of the Sadler journey as it progressed after Jedd's departure that Bellingham wished to share. And he wanted to know what had happened to Jedd and his partners on the final leg of the trip. And if it was true that Jedd's friend Tree Dalton had been killed.

Bellingham had another reason for wanting to go to Scarlett's Luck as well. Now that the California Enterprise Company of East Tennessee had completed its venture, it was officially inert and inactive, if not fully dissolved. Bellingham's part, however, was at an end. He'd filed his last report back to the Knoxville newspaper, simply averting his attention, as he'd taught himself to do, while Wilberforce Sadler worked over his report with a censorious and self-serving pencil before allowing it to be posted off to Tennessee. Bellingham had no idea exactly what was being published under his byline once Wilberforce got through with the copy, but he tried not to worry over it. He was gone from Knoxville now and did not anticipate a return. The newspaper reports did not matter. What mattered was his own, Sadler-free project, his planned novel. He already had a title in mind for it:
Schuyler's Luck
. Anyone in the know would easily guess from whence that title was derived, but it wouldn't matter. He would fictionalize it sufficiently to separate his story from the real-life tale of Ben Scarlett and his remarkable stroke of pants-wetting luck.

*    *    *

Jedd Colter had built his own cabin within sight of Blalock's, but had taken it a step or two further than Blalock had by riving wooden shingles and putting a real roof on his dwelling. He offered to help Blalock do the same, but the old lawman was prideful and didn't want to be seen as trying to keep pace with somebody else's progress. He'd put on a real roof when he was ready; until then, his tent-cloth covering would suffice.

Jedd was behind his little hut of a cabin, building himself a boxy outdoor oven from native stone, the day Bellingham arrived. Because of Jedd's deputy status, he was well known in Scarlett's Luck, so Bellingham had encountered no difficulties in obtaining directions to where Jedd could be found. It was a Sunday afternoon and Jedd was enjoying a time of solitary work. He wasn't much of a stonemason, but it was a pleasure to try his best to do a good job at it…. So he was none too happy to hear the muffled thump of someone knocking on his cabin door. Though he wasn't inside, the sound carried around the cabin. He walked around the cabin to see who was out front, still limping badly on his injured ankle, but now moving about without a crutch or cane.

“Hello, Crozier,” he said, feeling surprise but not showing it. “Where did you come from?”

“Jedd, sir. How are you?”

“I can't complain. I won't, anyway. I reckon you heard about Ben Scarlett's turn of good luck.”

“I have. That's part of what brought me here.”

“Come on around back. I'm building an oven back there. You can tell me all that's going on with you and the others.”

Bellingham found a handy stump to sit on. He couldn't stop grinning. It was honestly good to see Jedd Colter again. Jedd went back to his stone laying. “Got your book wrote yet?” he asked Bellingham.

“Still involved in the planning,” Bellingham replied. “It's something I want to do right, when I do it.”

“I can understand that. Sadlers won't be involved, right?”

“The Sadlers won't know a thing about it until everybody else does. When it's published.”

“You're confident you can find somebody to publish it?”

“I am. Because I know how good it will be. And because this nation is still full of excitement about gold in California. And stories like Ben Scarlett's are just what people love to read.”

“So it's Ben's story you'll tell?”

“It's likely to be the frame around which the novel is built. Names changed, some details different, of course. No pants-pissing in it.”

Jedd grinned. “That's the best part, though.”

Bellingham laughed. “I know, I know.”

Jedd worked awhile longer in silence. “Got a bottle inside, if you'd like a drink.”

“I'd like one, but I think I'll pass. Get yourself one, if you want.”

Jedd did, and when Bellingham saw it, he changed his mind and accepted one as well, served up in a cracked china teacup. Bellingham sipped slowly.

“Have you gone to see her yet?” Bellingham asked Jedd, knowing it was a potentially delicate question.

“Who do you mean?” Jedd asked, knowing perfectly well to whom Bellingham was referring.

“McSwain's daughter. The one you told me about.”

Jedd felt some irritation at the personal question, and wondered if talking to Bellingham would result in his most personal life affairs being fictionalized before the entire world in Bellingham's planned book. “I ain't been to see nobody,” Jedd replied, a little sullen but trying to hide the fact. “I was named deputy marshal in this mining camp, and I've tried to keep close by in case something happens.”

“Has anything happened?”

Jedd shrugged. “A few fistfights. Two knife fights. A bit of gold theft. One fellow shot at another and missed, but killed his own dog with the shot. Nothing you'd want to write about, I don't think.”

“It's the little things that bring life to stories. The touches that make them feel real. Verisimilitude, it's called. Verisimilitude.”

“Sort of like, very similar to the real thing. Real life.”

“Bang! Right on the nose!”

“I'm so smart I scare myself,” Jedd said, and Bellingham laughed.

N
ow it was Jedd's turn to ask a question. “Speaking of McSwain, how did things go with him the last part of the journey? And where is he now?”

“It was kind of strange with him. You know how things are between him and Wilberforce, with Wilberforce heading up the college board that took away McSwain's college and his job. Well, after you were gone, Wilberforce became more and more belligerent with McSwain, calling him a thief and a scoundrel, right in front of the entire camp. Challenged him to return what he'd taken.”

“Did he explain that any further?”

“No. That's all he said. ‘Return what you took, you damned thief.' And McSwain denied he'd ever taken anything from anyone. Wilberforce laughed at him, but there was nothing funny in how he did it. You know what I mean. One of
those
kinds of laughs.”

“Yep.”

“And Witherspoon scolded him for making such a display of it all, told him to leave McSwain alone. Wilberforce called Withers a ‘fat fool.' Witherspoon just glared back at him, trying to look bold and strong, and you could tell it.”

“Was Rachel McCall nearby at the time?”

“Oh yes. Oh yes. Witherspoon couldn't stop himself from glancing over at her, over and over. He was showing off for her, standing up to his brother like that.”

“I can't help liking Witherspoon,” Jedd said. “Wilberforce I can do without. He's the one who broke the deal we had, after my ankle got hurt.”

“I know. I don't like him, either. Nobody does, I don't think, except maybe his wife. And I can't swear that she does.”

Mention of Wilberforce's wife reminded Jedd about the painter of portraits, Dupont Gale, who had joined the Sadler wagon train along the way. He asked about him.

“He got shot. Santa Fe. I don't know the details, but I think he'd tried to talk a senorita into letting him paint her, and her man misunderstood what he was asking. Pulled out an old flintlock pistol, of all things, and shot him right through the head.”

“Gale is
dead
?”

“Believe it or not, no. That pistol ball punched right through his brain, but it didn't kill him. Put him down, but he was still breathing, eyes still looking around, he was even speaking some. Saying he was going to paint again. Damnedest thing I ever saw, I have to admit. I don't see how he survived it, but he did. Last I saw of him, he was still living, anyway. He was left with a doctor in Albuquerque who took an interest in him because it was so unusual, him surviving such a thing.”

“I hope he makes it.”

“So do I. Hey, one more thing about McSwain. A strange thing that happened one night, right at the time Wilberforce cut you off from working for the enterprise…right after your ankle was ruined.”

“It was hurt, not ruined. It's healing well now. But go on with your story.”

“McSwain was out in the camp, just talking to some folks, seeming more cheerful and less distracted than he usually did. Well, from out in the dark there came the sound of someone singing. A man's voice, off a far distance
away but still carrying in on the breeze, faint and strange. It raised chills on my flesh. The song sounded…well, I suppose you'd have to say it sounded foreign. The singer had a brogue, an accent. I don't know accents well enough to tell you what kind it was. Maybe Scottish. Maybe English…but no. No. I've heard Nigel Straw speak, and this accent didn't sound like his. I think it was maybe Irish.”

“Did everyone hear it?”

“A lot did. I heard it clear, and McSwain heard it. When he did, it changed him, right away. Sent him pulling back inside himself like a turtle going inside its shell…. I don't know how else to put it. He heard that singing voice coming in from out in the dark, and he quit talking, quit looking anyone in the eye…. Then he stood up and went back to his wagon and crawled inside. Nobody saw him the rest of the evening. But that voice out there just kept on singing. Sounding so strange and foreign and…well, fearful.”

“I know,” Jedd said. “I heard it, too, just like you did. There in my tent with Treemont. It raised bumps on my flesh.”

“Do you know who it was?”

“I don't. Do you?”

Bellingham's gaze drifted and settled on a lizard making its skittish way across a rock. “Not exactly…but I may have an idea of why he was out there, and why McSwain reacted to the sound of him like he did. Something Ferkus Varney told me that night. He heard the voice, too, and it rattled him. I could see that it did, and later I asked him about it.