Working the Lode (2 page)

Chapter Two

“You’re some with the ladies, Erskine.”

The two mountain men shouldered their rifles and ambled down the hill from Brannagh’s store toward the fort, chawing on jerked beef Aaron Erskine had just purchased. Brannagh had rushed on ahead of them to find James Marshall, their boss at the mill upriver.

“Pshaw,” Erskine said modestly, nearly blushing in his prudishness, much to Cormack Bowmaker’s amusement. “You also, old hoss. I always say, ‘Keep your eyes skinned.’”

Cormack smiled to himself. Erskine didn’t “always” use those terms, being recently a California Battalion man from New York City, and only intermittently a mountain man such as himself. Erskine had not knocked about the mountains for a decade, as had Cormack, but he had old grit in him and the hair of the black bear. Imitating Cormack, Erskine carried his powder horn and bullet pouch strapped to his shoulder belt, along with the backwoodsman’s vital tools of deer horn-handled awl and bullet mold. And just this morning at the fort, Erskine had found himself a pair of buckskin pantaloons decorated with beads and porcupine quills, a costume that was some pumpkins. It was good to be back together with his former
compañero
from the East.

After losing his Cheyenne wife to some hair-raising whites, Cormack had made his temporary bed with more than a few Indians, there not being many white women in the mountains. “Maybe I should lay my sights on this redhead of yours,” he jested, referring to his own head of gingery hair, the likes of which he enjoyed calling “flowing locks.” “This child’s getting old and feels like wanting a woman’s face about my lodge for the balance of my days.”

“Ho, boy! I’d lift your fiery hair if you did!” Erskine replied jovially.

But his imagination of the redheaded woman did stick in Cormack’s entrails. He had seen many beauteous Californio women of Spanish descent sashaying about the fort with their brightly colored shawls and tiny slippers, their glossy hair done up in all manner of coiffures. The only white women he’d viewed were pathetically downtrodden emigrants come over the plains and Sierra, women ill with dysentery or mountain fever, dark circles under their eyes, attempting to nurse squalling babies. Sutter’s Fort was the first civilized stop for them in many months, and being unaccustomed to mountain life, they were left nothing but lamentable shells of their former selves. Cormack reflected that he and Erskine should have a blowout down in San Francisco, but there was too much work to do at Marshall’s mill at Coloma, forty miles upriver.

Leaving one of the fort’s gates, where Indians lounged and Spaniards in side-buttoning
calzoneras
smoked
cigaritos
, Brannagh now came toward them accompanied by two men, one of them James Marshall. The other fellow presented a fine military figure in a double-breasted coat with gold buttons, shiny black leather shoes, and a saber at his waist. This man was introduced as Captain Sutter, builder and founder of the fort and all the agricultural lands around it farther than the eye could see.

“The way I see it,” Cormack explained to Marshall, since between him and Erskine, he was the more mechanical of the two, “the mill’s tailrace is causing quite a fix. It has to be forty or fifty rods long, so it needs gunpowder blasting and digging by hand to loosen up that red soil so we can take out those large rocks and boulders.”

Marshall nodded sagely. “Yes, I’ve taken note of those enormous rocks. I was worried this might happen.”

Cormack continued, “If you want this thing finished by early January, we’ll need gunpowder. Brannagh, you got any gunpowder?”

Captain Sutter interrupted. “I’ve got some, my son. You can all have it free of charge as long as it’ll help you complete the mill. Why, Brannagh here, General Vallejo in Sonoma, all of these emigrants, everyone will have need of that lumber once you get it running.”

Marshall became excited. “Yes, yes, thank you for your consideration, Captain! I am sure you need many more stores for your operations, homes for the settlers, and—”

Cormack saw Marshall’s beady eyes become round and the pupils dilate as he looked at some spot distant beyond Cormack’s shoulder. Marshall’s voice became hushed.

“—and shelter for these delicate beauties that must have come from San Francisco.”

Naturally, Cormack and Erskine swiveled their torsos and craned their necks to view the “delicate beauties” from San Francisco. But there was only one beauty heading their way from Brannagh’s store, and she was some pumpkins.

The biggest kind of pumpkin at that.

Instantly, Cormack became a thoughtless beaver kitten.

Wending her way down the hill, at first sight she appeared to be a Californio woman, dressed in their short skirts, wearing their delicate slippers and stockings, ensuring to hold her colorful rebozo over her coiffure, although she lacked most of their ornamentation.

But her white skin the color of borax marked her plain as beaver sign as an American. Her white
camisita
displayed the substantial charms of her bosom, although hers was not the shapeless, lumpy form of the undernourished emigrant women. In the mountains, American women were valued at low figures, being too refined and “foofaraw,” too much like pictures. They couldn’t make moccasins or dress skins. But he was not in the mountains any longer. And if she had somehow made it to this outpost looking this lovely and almost deer-like, with a neck as graceful as a snow goose’s, true and sound as a sapling, well, then, she must be capable of many things.

Cormack stared at Erskine. Erskine stared back at Cormack.

This woman was some pumpkins now, but she did not appear to have hair as blindingly ginger as Cormack’s own. Had Erskine mistaken the color of her hair in the darkness of Brannagh’s store? Oh, death or glory, more than likely she was Brannagh’s own wife, so why had everyone suddenly gone beaver? What ailed them? Cormack had no relish for mush and molasses! Marshall should have been acquainted with Brannagh’s wife. Unless this was Brannagh’s mistress recently arrived…

Brannagh smiled widely at the sight of the woman—who was by no means one of the tender young things missionaries such as Brannagh often married, but appeared to be only a few years shy of Cormack’s own thirty and eight. “My dear!” he boomed, opening his arms wide. “Come and meet the fine fellows of Sutter’s Mill upriver.”

The woman approached beatifically, glancing shyly at each man in turn, even shaking their hands. “This is my helpmate, Miss Zelnora Sparks.”

He called her “Miss”! When she shook Cormack’s hand and dipped a little curtsy, Cormack imagined that she gazed deeply into his eyes. He looked down at her with a rapture he hoped did not show, as he knew himself very capable of maintaining a strict poker face. Miss Zelnora Sparks! His rifle-lock would speak her name clearly when he cocked it! She had a straight nose turned up slightly at the tip, a small, petulant mouth the color of raspberries, her eyebrows silky and arching, and her eyes were the brown of sarsaparilla beer. Not the green or blue they should have been, if this was Erskine’s girl.

“Miss Sparks has been assisting me at my store, so if you boys need anything, she’s here to help. And say, Captain Sutter, did you know that Miss Sparks here used to work in the Georgia mines?” He turned heartily to Marshall and the two backwoodsmen. “So if you see anything, shall we say, lucrative in the ground up your way, be sure and let us know. Miss Sparks has a great affinity for identifying any type of rare or valuable mineral. She can tell mica from fool’s gold—in fact, she was just opining to me there might be turquoise around these parts, like the beautiful blue stones in her earrings.”

Cormack did not like the manner in which Brannagh reached out to actually touch Miss Sparks’ earrings, and the woman seemed to cringe a bit as she protested, “Well, actually, no, I said there was turquoise out the Rio Grande—”

Cormack knew turquoise as clear as beaver sign, having traveled between the Platte and Arkansas, and trapped on the Gila River, raising the hair of more than one Apache, and he knew there was no turquoise in California.

“Bah!” Sutter suddenly exploded in a strange horn-tossing mood. “I tell you, Brannagh, and all the rest of you. If you do find any valuable mines on my lands, beware! There is one bandit who is feared throughout the entire state of California—Joaquin Valenzuela! Beware!” Was he being dramatic, in his blow hardy Swiss way?

It was Miss Sparks who dared ask, “And what should we beware of, Captain?”

The Captain’s face actually turned red with rage as he sputtered, “Valenzuela and his band of confederates have left a bloody trail of evil-doing destruction throughout the Sierra Nevada for over a year now! They will plunder anyone who is said to have as much as a single milk cow! Now, I know my Indians are peaceful and for the most part do not steal, but Valenzuela’s band? Bah! Just last month I heard they raped—err, took advantage of a woman down at poor John Ridge’s cabin. It is insufferable that we have no police, no rangers to bring these men to justice.”

“Are they Mexicans, then?” Miss Sparks enquired.

Sutter became thoughtful, hand on chin. “Most of his confederates are Mexican, yes, from the Mexican state of Sonora. But some people become overly romantic and have been calling Valenzuela himself a
gente de razón
, a Spanish nobleman, and to that I say
bah
! There is nothing noble about the evil they inflict upon innocent people. You must beware, if you do find anything of value, not to go spreading the word about.”

Miss Sparks curtsied then, briefly and prettily, saying, “Thank you for the warning, Captain Sutter. Now, Ward, I must go fetch Miss Narrimore. She, ah, she has a question for you.”

“Certainly, my dear. We’ll be here for awhile, discussing business.”

She curtsied to Marshall, then to Erskine, and lastly to Cormack himself. How he wanted to touch her hand again! And once again, it seemed that her eyes lingered the longest upon his face, this pumpkin who was the pinnacle of female virtue. Cormack’s cock, unbidden, elongated and stiffened. He was glad that his buckskin shirt covered his erection, although suddenly he was acutely aware that his belt was probably too tight.

Then she was gone up the hill, and all five men stood dumbly with hands at their sides, mute, like the giant boulders Cormack had to blow out of the water.

Chapter Three

Zelnora’s hands trembled as she trudged up the hill to the store. Who was that man? Mr. Cormack Bowmaker, that’s all she knew. Was he Mercy’s backwoodsman? But no, it was the other fellow who wore the buckskins with the porcupine quills. This flame-haired man of impossible beauty was taller than the other, stood erect with hips thrust forward and long arms dangling at his sides, as though he knew how to walk, to stalk, to fuck. His piercing, unblinking eyes, a celestine blue of a clarity she had never known, had seemed to look quizzically at her. His head was slightly cocked, as though wondering if he knew her from somewhere, or questioning the veracity of her soul, her past, as though he knew something about her, something that was perhaps shameful. Was there anything shameful about her?

Oh, dear Lord,
he must know about her and Brannagh, about their fumbled couplings in the back room, about his groping of her in the San Francisco newspaper office, oh, dear Lord, but that was absurd. Brannagh had not touched her earring until after Mr. Bowmaker had looked at her that way. Perhaps he had somehow found out that she was a divorced woman?

Burning with this imagined shame, Zelnora burst into the store, glad there were no customers in there. Mercy, behind the counter, leapt to her feet, her face ablaze with anticipation and anguish.

“Zel! What happened? Did you see him?”

Dramatically flinging her back against the closed door, Zelnora panted, “If by ‘him’ you mean the redheaded, taller one without the fine beaded leggings, then yes, indeed, I saw him. And no animal on his head, just a scarf tied round it.” Zelnora paced about the room and fanned herself with her hand. “Mercy!” she breathed, realizing the double entendre of the word for the first time. “I have been struck by an angel. I had never thought this would happen.”