California Bloodstock (9 page)

Old T. D. Slant was amused. What a colossal joke. But then what is a joke to a man with a jaded life?

T. D. Jr. looked at the peaks of the Sierra Nevada in the distance and thought they were spectacular. He
raved to Taya about the majestic qualities of the layered light he saw shining down through the passes. And what scale!

But getting there proved tricky. As they rode farther up into the foothills, his wonder at what he saw in the distance gave way to the insidious frustrations of where he actually was. The bleary flatness of the giant valley that fell away behind them looked comfortable in comparison. The steepening hills were thick with brittle growth unimagined in the East. Ticks dropped down his collar. And worst of all, a full day of sweaty travel seemed to gain them nothing. Trails disappeared in dusty box ravines and the cresting of one ridge merely called up the need to crest another. There was no end to it, like chasing the horizon.

His only pleasure came in the evenings. He would remove his shirt and sit with his back to the fire while Taya searched him for ticks. Her fingers skimmed over his clear skin like tiny water birds. He felt them in an intricate and gentle tatoo across his shoulders and down his spine. Then the twisting pinch, and she would lean close around him with one of the parasites on display like a peppercorn oozing blood between her slender fingers.

Since the American River, a certain tension had been tightening between them, and he ached for her now, for her smooth legs and perfect hands. He imagined tracing them with his tongue, taking all of her delicate parts between his lips and….

Late at night, cock in hand, he would stare at her across the dying fire and shut out all else. Gone, the clouds flying past the moon and the wind purling
through sumac and oak. Gone, the hard ground beneath him and the beasts ranging about in the dark. Gone, everything except his image of her, pacing his climax like a string of mules winding up into some far-off pass. Then wet spurts, and he would rise up in an arch before falling back on his blankets to moan himself to sleep.

A light sleeper, Taya would sometimes be awakened by his muffled howling and ask him what was up. He would explain earnestly that because he was an artist he had the dreams of an artist. And such dreams were incomplete without certain guttural punctuation. The muse demanded it, he told her, and he had no control anyway.

He assumed she understood that he was just being polite, and hoped that she was flattered by such exquisite and complicated longings. But she considered his dreams presumptous and icky. When he tried to explain what he was feeling with subtle hints and innuendos, she yawned.

It was not that she didn't have healthy appetites of her own, or that she didn't like him. She liked him fine and even felt a certain tingle when she looked at him sometimes. But she had decided that certain things were impossible.

Then one day, when they had almost cleared the foothills, she asked him about his dreams. They had stopped earlier than usual and were looking back down over the way they had come. She wanted to know if his dreams were always the same.

No, he told her. Except they are always, uh, inspiring.

She didn't say anything. He thought maybe he had
misunderstood her question. Perhaps it wasn't a question at all, an invitation maybe.

I dream about beautiful things, he said, hoping it was what she wanted to hear.

She still didn't say anything. He felt her silence tightening around him as if he had made some terrible mistake. He decided to take a chance. He asked her about her dreams, what they were made of, what she saw in them.

Dead animals, she said.

Buckdown would have been proud.

Who was to say that Buckdown was crazy? Certainly none in his herd. He schooled them in inconsistency, teaching them never to move in any discernible pattern. He emphasized milling about, like so many shag balls blowing on the wind. And when trouble came they must scatter, he insisted, gallop off like smithereens. It would drive the white hunters nuts and make the Indians even more respectful.

Some were slow to understand, but he was patient, touching them constantly, assuring them, loving on them. Eventually he even took some of the slower learners as wives, figuring that his seeds, packed as they were with savvy, might improve the line.

Buckdown explained later that couplings were rather awkward at first, but by the spring of 1846
there were a number of little buckaloes roaming with the herd. If Buckdown is to be believed, it is not unreasonable to speculate that these results of his snortings into the bovine life force had something to do with the eventual long march into Canada that saved what was left of the herd many years later. It is impossible to know for sure.

Anyway, Buckdown lived with the buffalo and tried to forget. Occasionally he would leave his herd to seek out His Own Ghost. The strange Indian was always glad to see him. They would smoke a little tolache together and consider various aspects of the mythic content. Buckdown aspired to join the ranks of the Animal People, a pantheon with which His Own Ghost was sociable. But the sly albino was not about to forfeit his connections with a hasty or undistinguished recommendation and was somewhat standoffish whenever Buckdown broached the subject.

Your motives are pure, His Own Ghost would tell him, but I'm afraid there are certain weaknesses in your background. All that animal murder in your youth, you know.

But Buckdown would not be daunted, and his determination never failed to touch the shaman and make him feel proud, like a warrior when a daughter asks why she, too, cannot steal horses. So although His Own Ghost knew that he could not in good conscience encourage Buckdown, he cheated a little and did not discourage him either.

When it was time to say goodby, His Own Ghost always presented Buckdown with a new supply of
his potent little buttons and one of his favorite double-edged cantos:
Go your own way and you will get what you deserve.

His Own Ghost knew that the Animal People were always watching. They were very sneaky.

To and from his rendezvous with His Own Ghost, Buckdown routinely sabotaged whatever works of man he came across. Former colleagues, making their rounds to collect the soft pelts that made such fine hats and coats for the sissies back east, found their traps prematurely sprung and their bait buried. Such men were, of course, too singleminded to suspect one of their own kind of such bizarre and unnatural subversion. They figured it was the arrogant red man again, axing, out of ignorance and envy, at the roots of an obviously superior wilderness technology. Incidents occurred.

As for the Indians, whenever they found a fish dam mysteriously busted or watched a herd of antelope veer suddenly away from a carefully conceived ambush, they usually cartooned the event into their oral history as the Great Spirit having a little fun at their expense. Occasionally, however, if Buckdown's mischief was a shade too obvious, a philosophic brave might build a fire and proceed to dead-color the sky with smoke signals suggesting (generally with a rather heavy-handed irony) that the Animal
People were at it again. Buckdown could read their smoky semaphores and was encouraged by such flattering speculation, but back with the herd he was never known to brag like he had in his book.

Brass-colored light bounced off the water. Not hot yet, but a stickiness hung in the early morning air like a promise. Gnats were hatching in the eddies downriver, and from somewhere back up the bank in the trees, Millard heard the mumblings of naked men marching to work. It was usually his job to watch them, keep an eye out that they didn't damage the logging hardware or run off to their mud caves before quitting time. But not today. It was Millard's day off and their singsong moaning seemed as ambiguous and remote as whatever he was going to do next.

Take the day off, Joaquin Peach had told him. You know, relax. Think about bigger things.

Millard was stumped. What to do? He wished Galon were with him. Galon would know. Galon….

Millard certainly missed his brother. And it was all so confusing. What had happened, that is. His memory scattered back on him like a loose pattern of buckshot through a forest of petrified regrets, pinging here and there off how sorry he was. But since he had no idea why Galon didn't like him anymore, Millard's recall suddenly jumped to the good times, the good old days on the Rosebud, buffalo runs through the Tetons, frisky trades at Counsel's first place on the Wind River, high glee toots in Taos. Whoopee, he remembered their song:

Oh mountain men, how great are we
,

We cannot stand for trifles.

We hang our balls on canyon walls

And shoot 'em down with rifles.

Yeah, that old T. D. Slant got what he deserved for getting it all wrong and making Galon mad. Maybe Galon would like him again if he got the literature fixed for him. Maybe if he got Buckdown….Anyway:

We fuck our wives with bowie knives

And feed on bears and pickles.

We wipe our ass on broken glass

And laugh because it tickles.

In high spirits now, Millard set off with new resolve to do good for Galon, to do good on his day off, and to do good in his work for Sutter. Galon would see.

So Millard Burgett went wading up the shallows of the American River looking for helgramites and wound up staring over the edge of history.

When his eyes caught the curious yellow sparkle, he pondered not at all. It was instinct. Gathering himself like a puma about to leap some dark chasm, Millard plunged his arm elbow-deep in the clear water and grabbed. His gnarled fingers closed around a gold nugget the size of a dog's eye, and his crusty palm began to tingle with anticipation.

He scrambled up the riverbank and into the tall grass. He crouched like a fetus. He turned the soft metal over and over in his trembling hands. He popped it into his mouth and bit down, tasting a sweet pain on his rotting teeth. Millard was a fool no doubt, but this was definitely the real thing. Eureka!

But now what? He peeked out through the reeds, his eyes wide and cryptic. Across the river, a family of valley elk, timid except for antlers, dipped velvet noses into the current, drinking. And so was Millard, but he was quenching a different kind of thirst. His tongue worked new saliva around the nugget bulging in his cheek like an acorn.

Events would shape themselves from here on out. Cause and effect were finally in play again. A brand new game was about to open and the trump turned out to be sneaky and vicious enough to rival the wine-drinking, virgin-seducing catechisms of the missions in their heyday. Millard, of course, had no idea. The possibilities were beyond him as he raced off to show Sutter how good he had done.

Let's keep this our little secret.

Sutter weighed the nuggest in his hand and winked at Millard for emphasis. Lord, this was all he needed, a secret partnership with a geriatric half-wit who didn't have sense enough to wink back. Sutter needed more time. And there was still so much to be done, so many arrangements to make. The situation was getting much too volatile. Schemers were lurking everywhere. That jingoist Brannan was waiting for him in his inner office at that very moment.

Millard kept watching him, smiling like an adopted puppy. Sutter wanted to grab him by the throat and squeeze, wring every last yelp of breath from his stupid life. But he didn't. Instead, he produced a key which he kept hidden next to his skin and moved to a long cedar chest, heavily inlaid with cherry and walnut, that waited in one corner of the room like a coffin. Make that a sarcophagus.

Close your eyes, Sutter told Millard and proceeded to open the chest and rummage through what sounded to Millard like metal plates. When Sutter finally instructed him to open his eyes, Millard saw before him a mandolin with little lambs depicted in romp about the sound box.

Go on, take it, Sutter told him.

The mandolin made Millard very happy; it was smooth, it was clean, and it made noise. Millard plucked and fondled it in front of the fire while Sutter
laid out the conditions of what he called their limited partnership. How could Millard possibly guess that Sutter had already made plans to relegate the official discovery to one James Marshall, a man of ordinary intelligence and little style. So Millard just grinned.

Sutter, of course, smiled back at him and, in the end, put his hand gently on Millard's ragged shoulder. He led Millard to the door and even opened it for him. Remember, Sutter whispered, just between you and me.

With Millard gone, Sutter sent for Joaquin Peach and began pacing in a small circle around his writing desk. Things could be worse, he told himself. And if he couldn't handle some half-wit, then he didn't deserve to become king.

Serious and crucial talk between Sutter and Brannan over the next two days. Both obviously had things to hide. Millard, meanwhile, hurried back to the scene of his wonderful discovery, unaware that he was being followed.

He splashed into the shallows, collecting an assortment of nuggets, and then took up a position from which he could keep a sharp watch on the claim as Sutter had instructed. He sat on the riverbank, dangling his toes in the water and twanging away on his mandolin.

Millard had been what was called marked in the brain at birth. And most men he met, Sutter for example,
found his reason sadly lacking. Millard never understood insults or the dangers of a bad reputation, and it was almost impossible to hurt his feelings. He had never been in love. Few things ever moved him one way or another. It was not understood back then that a person like Millard might appear stupid for any number of reasons, or that in rare cases the brain produces its own morphinelike substance that acts as a natural pain-killer. Millard's was such a case, and it should be pointed out that so far he had lived his life not so much stupid as stupefied.

Then,
bang!

The rifle ball that lodged behind his ear with a thud as he sat there on the bank of the American River changed everything. It hurt, of course, and stunned Millard for a moment, but it did not kill him. Rather it dammed the reservoir of renegade enzymes that had been drowning his synapses for so many years, and he began to get smart. He began to think.

He knew at once who was responsible for the attempt on his life and a lot of others things as well. Punch lines of wit and reason fell through his head like confetti. In a flash he was on his horse and away, riding with thoughtful purpose toward the coast, making plans.