Working the Lode (11 page)

He must face it—his thoughts had turned to subjects other than robbery and mayhem. For a brief moment, he had envisioned doing something to his quarry other than slicing off chunks of his chest or shooting his brains to hell on the ground. Joaquin became even more enraged, thinking how easily the white man had aroused him.

He hoped to wipe these thoughts clean. Punishing the perfectly formed specimen of manhood would be the answer.

Chapter Eleven

June 1848

Lion Island

Zelnora and Mercy slept in each other’s arms.

Brannagh had crossed the Sierra to meet Origin Pickett, the leader of the overland party that included Mercy’s fiancé, Jerusha. There, Pickett sent a message to Brannagh that he had been told from above that the Colorado River was the place they were meant to stop, so he had stopped there and commenced to build a town.

This news angered Brannagh immeasurably. For once, Zelnora could somewhat sympathize with him. Pickett was supposed to bring his three hundred emigrants over the Sierra and join up with Brannagh. Now Brannagh would lose even more power when California folks inevitably wished to go to the Colorado River to join their relatives. He was falling away from the faith and becoming strictly a businessman now. Mercy was making plans to set off for the Colorado River in July along with about a hundred other folks, though she was not ecstatic about the plan.

“Do you ever feel…real love for Jerusha? I mean passionate love, romantic love, not just the duty sort of love.”

Mercy was silent for awhile as she adjusted her chemise. “I…I don’t know Jerusha that well. As you know, it was decided by my parents for me.”

“So you feel no passionate love for him?”

Mercy shook her head. “No.”

Zelnora crawled to her friend, as their narrow bedsteads of rough poles nearly touched each other in the small tent. “And what of Aaron Erskine? Cormack just told me Aaron has a financial background—he was a trader on Wall Street in New York.”

Mercy turned her delicately pale face to Zelnora. Zelnora herself had been browned nearly like an Indian from working in the sun. “Oh, Aaron’s just jim-dandy, Zel, you know I think that.”

“Why don’t you just stay a couple more months, and go to the Colorado River later? I will miss you so much! And Ward’s already irate with me for spending barely any time at the store.”

“Well, we don’t want what happened to the Donners to happen to us, which it will if we start out too late. Zel, you’ve got to make a break with Ward. Cormack is mining enough gold for the both of you, and you’re helping him. You said yourself the beaver are all trapped out, and he has no plans to return to the mountains. There just comes a time when you have to toss your faith to the wind and see where it falls.”

“Zelnora.” Cormack rapped on a tent pole. His tall early morning shadow threw an alluring shape onto her tent flap—the long arms, one at his side, the other holding, presumably, a piece of fruit that he chawed—hips thrust forward, his rifle at his shoulder, all the miner’s paraphernalia clanking from his belt. “I’m going down to the claim. Wanted to let you know, Brannagh just came a-streaking it in here.”

“What? Wait, don’t go.” Lying on her back, Zelnora wriggled into her skirts and stockings, making sure Mercy was decent before pulling open the tent flap.

Cormack looked down at her indulgently, as though she were a small child. “And that newspaper fellow, your old flame.”

“Ed Kemble? He’s no old flame. He’s a child! Where are they?”

“Bigler’s tent, last I saw. Kemble’s telling a powerful smart yarn about Brannagh in San Francisco. Here, I’ll walk you over.”

Already, in June, the country was parched. The hill on which Zelnora was camped was shaded by white and evergreen oaks. She had chosen the lee side of the hill for her camp in order to block out the miners’ noise—the yelling, splashing, and clanging of homemade rockers. Once they crested the hill, the village came into view: scattered suburbs of tents dotting the hillsides, a baggage wagon of eager miners coming from the fort road, the new store where one could purchase jerked beef, flour, and coffee, only the most rudimentary of supplies as of yet. The river wound around the rocky island, crawling like a giant anthill with men.

Men were digging and filling buckets with earth and gravel among tents made of calico shirts and pine boughs. Paths led to the various tenements, and one entire level might be dotted with mining excavations surrounded by immense piles of dirt and stones. Men carried buckskin bags and quart pickle jars packed with gold dust to the store, where they paid for whiskey with a pinch of gold. Cormack and Zelnora carefully picked their way up and down the pathways.

“A Digger Indian just gave me this,” Cormack said, pulling from his possible bag a large lump of gold encrusted with gravel as big as his fist. “He traded it to me for my scarlet sash.” He shrugged. “If they have no use for gold, hard doings if they prefer my sash.”

“Your sash is rarer to them.” Zelnora studied the gold lump, turning it this way and that in the sun. “Cormack. Just this piece here is enough to buy a fancy house in San Francisco. We simply must get to the fort and trade in all this gold, start an account. It’s not doing anyone any good câching it where it is.” She smiled. “Then we can buy you a new sash.”

Brannagh was not at Bigler’s tent, but Ed Kemble was drinking coffee round the fire with Bigler and several other men who desired news of San Francisco. Ed’s face lit up when he saw Zelnora, and he put down his coffee cup to embrace her. They had met on the ship coming to San Francisco two years earlier and had become awfully fond of each other. Zelnora much preferred working inside the newspaper office or gathering gossip for stories to the work at the fort store, but she had to go where she was most needed.

“I was just about to tell you boys this story, and I think Miss Sparks will enjoy this, as well,” Ed orated loudly to the rapt group. “I was at the anchorage in San Francisco a few weeks ago when suddenly some tomfool fathead in a sombrero commences to rushing up and down Jackson and Montgomery Streets waving a quinine bottle of gold dust, shouting in a bull voice, ‘Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!’”

“No!” the men cried in unison. “Who was this tomfool blockhead?” the men asked Ed.

“I can guess,” Zelnora muttered.

Ed continued, “Within the fortnight, the population of San Francisco went from several hundred to a dozen or so! I’m probably gonna have to suspend my newspaper,” he told Zelnora sullenly.

“So who was this flatheaded jackass?” a miner demanded. “I’ll drop him in his tracks.”

“Brannagh of course!” Zelnora told the miners irritably. “Advancing his interests.”

To calm the miners’ outraged curses, Ed said, “Brannagh’s a good businessman, you’ve got to give him that. Before he went tearing around the streets shouting about gold, he bought up every pickaxe, shovel, and pan in the entire town.”

A miner slapped his thigh with his hat. “Goddamnit! No wonder that damned pan cost me ten dollars at Brannagh’s store! That pan was worth twenty cents a month ago!”

“Sam Coleridge just traded an ounce of gold for a box of Seidlitz powder at Brannagh’s store!”

There was a general hubbub of disconcerted miners. Mining hubbubs always made one uneasy. Zelnora, Cormack, Bigler, and Ed stepped toward Brannagh when they saw him sliding down a sandy hill in his tall boots, followed by Hudson and Willes, two of his partners who had built the Lion Island store.

“We’d best warn him, his outrageous practices are unsettling the miners,” said Bigler.

Cormack mentioned, “He’s perfectly free to charge whatever they’re willing to pay.”

Bigler raised an eyebrow. “Bowmaker? Defending Brannagh’s trickery? Well, well, here’s the high priest collecting tithes.”

Brannagh tipped his hat, first to Zelnora, then Bigler, then Ed. Lastly, he barely sniffed at Cormack. Brannagh got right down to business.

“Bigler.” Zelnora noted he did not call him “brother” any longer. “I am here to collect the tithes, as you know. Ten percent each for Hudson and Willis by right of discovery, and ten percent for my collection fee.”

“That’s thirty percent! Regular mission tithes are only ten percent. And I thought you had abandoned the mission,” Bigler pointed out cautiously.

Brannagh chuckled. “Whatever made you think that? Yes, these tithes will go to buy young cattle here and send them to Elder Pickett at the Colorado River. There is more gold here than all the people of California can take out in fifty years.”

Bigler stepped up to Brannagh, confrontational. “You expect me to believe that? That you’d even buy cattle, much less ship ‘em to the Colorado River? I’ve seen enough of your tricks—Pickett will never see any cattle brought to him by that channel. What business do you have to collect tithes here, anyway?”

Cormack beat Brannagh to it. “Bigler, he has a right to collect the tax if you are fool enough to pay it.”

Zelnora had seen Brannagh erupt like this many times—on the ship, in San Francisco, at his fort store—so it didn’t shake her a bit to see how instantly red his face flushed, like a radish, how he attempted to draw himself up and loom over Cormack, nearly bumping the taller man with his chest like a puffed-up rooster. “Bowmaker, I’ve just about had enough—”

Zelnora did not even see Cormack’s hand at his holster, but suddenly Brannagh was looking cross-eyed down the barrel of his Colt’s revolver. Taking a couple of steps back from the businessman, Cormack’s hand was steady, and he narrowed his unblinking eyes at Brannagh. “And I’ve had just about enough from you, sir.”

Unaware that his two partners were backing slowly off, crawling in horror up the sandy hill behind him, Brannagh gulped and regained some composure, though the barrel was three inches from his nose. He attempted a chuckle. “I see that stealing my helpmate is not enough for a man of such voracious appetites as you, Bowmaker. Now you must incite my followers to mutiny?” He stepped into his preacher’s voice now. “Where will it all stop, Bowmaker, this clodhopping persecution you perpetrate on me? What is it about a pious man that sends you to such heights of uneducated irrationality? Oh, but I have heard you style yourself a doctor.”

Cormack’s growl was so murderous Zelnora could barely hear his words. “I don’t style myself anything.”

Brannagh blathered on with confidence. “What does the Bible say? ‘Physician, heal thyself.’ Oh, perhaps you’d know that if you could read.”

Cormack cocked the hammer. Zelnora had never seen such rage in his beautiful clear eyes before. Yet he was calm, still, as though his temper propelled him to an even higher sense of peace. “Perhaps if you kept your Thomas in your pants, you wouldn’t have driven Miss Sparks into my uneducated arms.”

Oh, dear Lord.
The childish tiffs men got into, as though she were a toy! Zelnora leaped to Cormack’s side, putting a soothing hand on the arm that didn’t hold the pistol. “It’s all right, Cormack. Please holster your revolver.” Slowly and seemingly reluctantly, Cormack did so, but he didn’t remove his level, steely gaze upon Brannagh’s sweaty face. “Ward. It is true. I shall have to tender my resignation from your employ. Quartus and I shall work with Mr. Bowmaker and Aaron Erskine from now on. While I do thank you most gratefully for the opportunities—” Cormack cast her a sharp look, and Zelnora swallowed hard. “I need to separate myself from your influence, and I believe I can be most fruitful with Mr. Bowmaker.”

With no pistol barrel in his face, Brannagh burst forth in oratorical splendor. “Ah, the frivolities of youth, when one imagines one’s circumstances will change for the better by throwing caution to the breeze. You’ll see. You’ll see that this gold fever is but a flash in the pan, the gold mining pan such as it is, and the real money is to be made in the restaurant, hotel, the pick and axe trade. Why, I could make more money selling vegetables to these pickled spirits, these maggots of society, seeing as how I’ve never laid eyes on a single green comestible out here in the gold mines! And such choice and pickled spirits you’ve chosen to align yourself with, Miss Sparks!”

Brannagh revolted her. She said, “That’s fine talk coming from one who is always corned himself, sir.”