Atonement Continued

Ramiro stepped back onto the trail with his hide bag full of plants. There was no sign of the man who had tried to warn him that they were being hunted. Ramiro was saddened by this.

To think that an out-worlder, who couldn’t even recognize a maquenque plant, should have a keener nose for danger than the great Ramiro. It was almost enough to make him weep.

 Suddenly four men emerged from a section of heavy brush on the native’s left side. They were Cimarrons; black men who’s forefathers had escaped slavery by bloodying their hands. Two were armed with the loud muskets. The others carried machetes.

 “Where did you hide your letter carrier, Choco?” asked the largest of the four.

 “I am not Choco. I am Wounaan,” the native responded.

 “You speak Spanish, and you are on the king’s old trail, so do not bother me with small matters. Just drop the machete and tell us where you’ve hidden Herrera’s man.”

 The bandit leader was referring to Colonel Commandant General Tomas Herrera, who was currently serving as the military leader of the Isthmus. Herrera’s long range goal was to acquire permanent independence from neighboring Colombia. That was a dream that would only see limited fruition, but for the time being, political struggle created a black market for confidential documents. Apparently, the Cimarrons had gotten the idea that the out-worlder was a government courier.

 “Follow my tracks into the trees if your eyes are good enough,” said Ramiro. “That is where I was when the great water traveler left this trail.”

 The bandit leader gripped his musket tighter and headed towards the spot where the native had emerged from the brush.

 “Cayano, tie this one up. Maybe we can catch a croc with him---if the courier hides better than he dresses.”

 Several grins disappeared when the bandit’s head exploded and a cloud of white smoke drifted out of a botanical meshwork some thirty yards distant. The remaining musket man fired at the source of the smoke then picked up the fallen weapon and gripped it with a look of rage.

 “Maybe crocs go hungry,”  thought the native as the two machete men charged the brush.

 The remaining musket man kicked his prisoner in the testicles and then shoved him down with one hand.

 “You stay down. Don’t make me waste a ball on you.”

 Ramiro complied, but strained his neck to get a proper look down the trail. He saw the two men disappear into the brush. He heard the sounds of metal crashing on metal, and men giving vent to great pain. The following silence weighed heavier than the throbbing pain in his gentiles. Ramiro willed himself to breath slowly, while his captor held a reloaded musket at the ready.

 Then a lone figure appeared out of the gloom, holding his Brown Bess with practiced hands.

 The black man swore a blue streak and brought his sights to bear. The other shooter did likewise, absent the profanities. Two shots rang out; one after the other. The first was a near miss, and the second caused the Cimarron to turn ninety degrees and stumble heavily with a .75 caliber ball in his shoulder.

 Ramiro got to his feet and with a sense of caution picked up the now empty musket.

 “You want it?” asked his liberator. “Hell---I don’t want to carry two.”

 The native studied the features of the thunder weapon and said, “William is very smart—and stronger than Ramiro.”

 “Well----if your General Herrera is bound and determined to make this shit hole independent of Colombia, you’ll probably get some practice at killing men. Then you’ll be just as strong as most outworlders,” the larger man said kindly.

 “They think you work for da General,” stated Ramiro.

 William stepped over to where the lone surviving Cimarron was sitting with his shoulder wound.

 “You loyal to Colombia?”

 “Ain’t loyal to anything but silver,” the prisoner responded. “We be after da papers you carry.”

 “I don’t have any poxy papers,” growled the traveler. “All this killing and hurting was for nothing.”

 William turned his back on the wounded man and resumed his trek towards the city of Panama. Ramiro picked up his machete while keeping his grip on the greatest prize of his life.

 “His life is yours,” declared the native. “You must give life, or death.”

 “Already done that,” answered the European without bothering to slow down or turn around.

 Ramiro caught up with him and happily marched alongside with his musket. Both men were silent for a mile, then the bigger man’s curiosity got the better of him.

 What the hell kind of plants are worth risking our necks for anyway. I warned you that we were being shadowed and you went running off to pick em anyway. How come?”

 “Plants help old men with women,” the native explained simply. “Worth much gold to canteen owner.”

  “Is that a fact? Well then why don’t we go back and get enough for both of us to carry?”

  “Took what was good. Must wait many moons before taking more,” the native explained.

 “And that’s the only patch you know about in this area?’

 Ramiro nodded.

 “Oh, well, then I’ll settle for what you can do for me in town,” said William. “I don’t plan on staying in this shit hole of a country long enough to gather anymore of that dick medicine. Besides, I’ve been all over this world, and I know for a fact that get it up concoctions disappoint a lot of customers. When that happens---it’s a good idea not to be involved.”

 The surviving bandit waited until he was sure he was alone. Then he painfully shuffled over to where the bright eyed demon had done his grim work. The machete fighters were found where the traveler had made his first shot, and then survived to reload. One broken skull and one slashed throat told part of the tale. But how it could have happened so swiftly---that was no less important.

 The bandit tied up his wound as best he could and started down the trail towards the only house that might take him in. He probably wouldn’t make it, but what kind of man would he be if he didn’t try? It meant that he would have to walk through the night---and the insects would feed on him until his trial was done.

 His expression was impassive. He was no child after all.

Chapter Two.

Provincial Governor Juan Bautista Alvarado penned his signature with a flourish, then handed the document over to the most unusual man he had ever met. His Anglo guest fairly beamed with satisfaction while carefully placing the paper in a weather proof leather carrying case.

 “My congratulations, Captain Sutter. You have gained Mexican citizenship, and a position of high authority, all in one day. As a chief magistrate, you will function as an extension of my authority. I trust you will put that authority to good use.”

 The Anglo was wearing the uniform of an officer of the Swiss Guards. Alvarado would not be able to verify any of the claims made by his guest for many months, but he vaguely recalled reading somewhere that the Swiss were a very trustworthy lot. This man in particular had large blue eyes that seemed to radiate honesty and a desire to advance through his own efforts.

 “I will dispense justice, heedless of race or position,” the uniformed man stated categorically.

 “That is----a fine base on which to build policy,” the governor answered carefully, “but it need not strictly apply to those who are not loyal to Mexico. Take the Russians for instance. We certainly don’t want them gaining too much power in this part of the world.”

 “Um—I suppose not,” said the European, “but on the other hand, Governor, I should think their money is as good as anyone else’s.”

 “Just so that we are counting coin, and not their rifles,” cautioned Alvarado. “Also, I should like to give you some advice concerning the local savages…”

 “Would you be referring to the Nisenan, Governor?’

 “Not necessarily,” responded the bureaucrat. “As I understand it, there are many tribes in your area alone.”

 “Well, they are also called the Maidu, and they live in many separate tribelets that remind me of the city states of old Greece. Oh, and there is also the Miwok up stream of me.”

 “And any one of them could turn on you in an instant,” warned the governor.

 “I suppose there is that possibility,” Sutter conceded, “but the tribesmen who now work for me are my friends, and after they are taught how to use muskets---“

 “With the most outdated pieces of scrap metal the Russians have to offer, I do hope,” put in Alvarado. “Also, don’t acquire any Northwest Trade guns for anyone you are fond of.”

 “Yes, a mountain man named Dripps warned me about those. Still---the Brown Bess was English made and I never met a soldier who was afraid to shoulder one.”

 “I own three,” admitted the governor, “but I would not place them in the hands of Indians if there were three loyal Mexicans left to be armed.”

 “Well---I need the Nisenan,” Sutter replied with a slight shrug.

 Alvarado nodded half to himself as the two men watched the sun set from the governor’s patio. He was fairly certain that he was entertaining a dead man. But then, how safe was it in Monterey with the strange rash of murders that was taking place? The governor was tempted to comment on that, but decided not to. He was tired of the questions that would remain unanswered until God only knows when.

 Upon the suggestion of the host, the two men rose and entered the governor’s house for a nightcap and early rest. The doors would be bolted, and a watchman would patrol in the fog of the late night hours. Then on the morrow both men would do what they could to push the wilderness further away from their chosen homes.

Chapter Three

The man who called himself William leaned his chair back on its hind legs until his head met with the wall behind him. His Brown Bess was on the table in front of him, but it was not as close as the tankard of wine or the block of cheese that had just been delivered. He grinned slightly at the memory of Ramiro explaining that his plants would help a man raise the flag pole. He grinned because there were several tavern whores upstairs, and a fat over the hill proprietor was almost drooling over Ramiro’s bundle of half dried flowers.

 “Now there’s a shit sandwich I’ve never tasted,” thought William. “Got his own place, women upstairs anytime he’s ready. But no wind for the sails.”

 William found himself wondering if there were any drugs back in that jungle that could earn him a berth on a north bound ship leaving Portobello . Up until now he had been working his way across oceans, and that tended to work out fairly well. But such means of employment were subject to the needs of the government or company that controlled the ship. Another words, if the captain needed to travel far off in an unexpected direction, the working passenger could be stuck onboard until a replacement could be found. Better to be a paying passenger, because at least then you could get off the ship at the next port .

 William patiently waited until Ramiro’s business was concluded and then waved the native over.

  “Well, did you remember to ask about Druey?”

 “What?”

 “Jonas Druey, the Swiss fellow,” pressed the white man.

 “Oh—si. He got on ship. Went north to Acapulco. Four days ago.”

 “Hells bells, I’ve never seen such a slippery customer! I thought for sure I’d have him this time! And I suppose the next ship won’t be along for a week or so.”

“No lo se, Senhor.”

 William nodded to himself and emptied his mug. Bounty hunters needed to be patient, but this particular bounty hunter had a boss man who harbored a special grudge. Seems his daughter had taken up with a Swiss immigrant named Jonas Druey. The man had gold fever really bad. Claimed he knew of a place in south Mexico where a miner could get rich. Trouble was he needed operating capital and sweet talked the daughter into getting it for him.

 Of course Druey left an I.O.U. for the seven-thousand dollars but that didn’t cut shit with the old man. He put up a reward for the apprehension of Druey and then doubled the figure when it was discovered that the daughter was pregnant. Only thing that mattered to William was his belief that he could run down the domestic fugitive before he could get south of the Florida Keys. Sadly, it didn’t quite work out that way. He had to write to his boss while searching in the Caribbean and again when he reached Portobello.

 “He wait two weeks at Acapulco, then head in land” added the Indian.

  “How do you know that?”

 “He talk to man who sells drinks. Man who sells drinks talk to anybody.”

“Well, the good news is that he won’t be hard to find. The bad news is that I don’t know when the next ship will be coming by and I have no idea how long it will take me to find my man after reaching Acapulco.”

 William was still mulling this over when four men entered the west coast cantina and all sat with their backs to the only other customer. William stared at these new arrivals and his eyes became as bleak as a north Atlantic storm. He judged that they had taken no notice of him, but that didn’t mean that he could stay put. He quietly signaled for the young serving girl who had brought him his first round of wine.

 “Ready for another drink, Senhor?” the girl automatically inquired.

 “No,” William answered in a low voice, “ I would just like to know if those gents tried to order anything bottled in Spain.”

 “Si, Senhor, they did. But I explained that we have no such drinks available.”

 The Anglo grimly laid hold of his musket and rose to his feet. The bastards would get a pretty good look at him as he left. Maybe they’d recognize him---maybe not. But then a thought came to mind.

 “I’m thinking I’d like to visit one of the ladies upstairs. Whichever one has a bedroom window facing the back.”

 “Very good, Senhor, but there is a rule that no one is allowed to bring a weapon upstairs. You must leave it behind the serving counter. The owner has stepped out for a while but when he returns I will tell him that the musket belongs to you.”

 William choked down a retort and did some quick thinking. Then taking out a coin of silver he handed it to the girl and said, “Lean the musket out that south window while I climb the stairs. If you have to drop it, drop it, but try real hard not to get their attention.”

 The girl’s expression grew fearful but William placed a reassuring hand upon her bony shoulder.

 “All I want to do is get out of here so those men will not have cause to fight in this place. Believe me, Girl, it is the best thing for everyone concerned.”

 The girl nodded slightly, then William casually headed for the stairs and climbed them slowly, so that the four men could watch him as the girl tried to block the musket with most of her body. At the top of the stairs the European paused for an instant to calculate where south was, then knocked on the appropriate door.

 “Door’s not locked,” responded a business like voice.

 William entered to find a cigar smoking woman who was even taller than he was. She was a veritable Amazon who looked like the sort that would tie a man to the bed or whip him.

 “Well, what’s your game, Sailor?” she asked with a bore expression.

 “I’m going to pay you to keep quiet so I can climb out your window and get the hell out of here,” William explained with no small regret. He had seen more than his share of tits and ass, but the tall ones tended to be far and few between.

 “You trying to skip out of paying somebody?”

 “No, I’m trying to skip out of a killing.”

 “Oh, well now, perhaps I can interest the senhor in this.”

 The big whore brought out a ten foot bullwhip and held it under William’s nose.

 The man let out a sigh.

 “No. I just want to escape without notice.”

 “Exactly,” said the woman. “I will hold the fat end, and you wrap the other end once around your hand. Then I let you down part way. Otherwise you might twist an ankle, and then you will not be able to run if necessary.”

 William had to admit that the woman was pretty damn pragmatic—not to mention stacked.

 “Well---if you want to.”

 “For good silver, I want to.”

 “How much silver?”

 “One-hundred pesos worth.”

 With a neutral expression William tossed the woman a fourth of what she wanted and said, “Keep the whip, Dearest. You might need for your next customer.”

 With that the man stepped up onto the window frame and promptly dropped out of sight. He landed with good form, and was pleased to see his musket leaning against the building just below the first floor window. He was about to retrieve the heavy weapon when his keen hearing picked up a smattering of Latin. William left the musket and bolted off to his right as if a pack of wolves were on his trail.

  William rounded the southeast corner just as two men turned at the southwest.

 “He didn’t pay me!” shouted the whore. “I want his musket!”

 A grim chuckle caught in the runner’s throat as he cut away from the east wall and headed toward a group of horses that were tethered on the other side of a sun baked street. He had abandoned it for speed, and his pursuers would find it unloaded, and therefore also a burden.

William freed all the beasts save one. Slapping them on the rumps he tried to scatter them to the four winds. But to his chagrin, the animals distanced themselves from their molester, then merely stood about in the empty street.

 “What’s wrong with these poxy critters?”  thought William as he vaulted into the saddle of the last steed.

 Desperately the fugitive kicked the horse in the ribs and yanked hard to one side on the reins. The result was semi-comical. The animal reared up on it’s hind legs and whinnied in protest. Anything the man had ever learned about horses was temporarily forgotten as he threw his arms around the horse’s massive neck, which aggravated the creature all the more. William made several tight circles with the distraught mount while his pursuers were joined in the street by the four men that William had tried to leave in the bar.

 William chose to abandon his mount, not wishing to be dragged from it.  His adversaries then formed a circle around him, which was a mistake on their part, albeit a small one. William’s hand went for his knife, only to discover that it had fallen away during his jump from the window. A minor setback, in actuality. In the blink of an eye the fugitive picked out the weakest man and charged in his direction. The young man’s name was Dino, and he drew his knife when he realized that he would be doing more than just adding his strength to a capture.

 The gray eyed man almost ran him down, but at the last possible second he launched a front snap kick at Dino’s private region. As the injured man doubled over, William grabbed hold of him and threw him into the next closest man named Carlo. That man merely shoved poor Dino out of the way, but that effort left William unchallenged long enough to change direction and charge into a third man named Ciro. This time a turn around back thrust kick was employed, which was doubly effective because Ciro actually advanced into it.

 Still, Ciro had to be credited for drawing first blood. His knife point had run the length of William’s calf as the leg drove in. The Anglo growled at this development and slowed down enough to help himself to an opponent’s weapon. With two broken ribs, Ciro was obliging enough, but his comrades were all done getting in each other’s way.

 William slashed in a wide arc, giving one named Alfonso a second facial scar. But the slash created an opening that was promptly exploited by a man who was also fond of kicking. William took a boot tip in the right kidney and the pain almost blinded him to the fact that someone was grabbing a fist full of his hair.

 “Alto!” someone shouted as cold steel was placed against William’s throat.

 Everyone froze. (Especially William)

 “Unless you work for Herrera, you had better put those pistols down,” Alfonso declared to someone standing twenty paces behind William and his guard.

 “I am loyal to the General---but on this side of the isthmus I am free to do as I please with foreigners who run out without paying, then chase about like bounty hunters.”

  “We are not bounty hunters,” Alfonso stated honestly. “My friends and I were attached to a mercenary company that fought for Santa Anna. This man here is also a mercenary, but he lost money to one of our number in a game of chance, then murdered him. We come for just retribution.”

 William heard the sound of boots circling around to his right on the hard packed earth. Then the pistolero came into sight, and William took heart at the number of weapons that his rescuer had at his disposal. As Alfonso had indicated, the man held a .36 caliber dueling pistol in each hand. A third pistol was tucked inside a wide belt along with a fighting knife. Beneath a narrow hip a saber hung in an ornamental scabbard, and to top it all off, another knife was tucked into a special boot case.

 The man was a gray beard, but in damn good shape, and apparently not all that determined to die in bed.

 “I am Alonzo Verdugo de Albonez, and I am not interested in this man’s past trespasses. I am now forced to stand under a hot sun because this fellow attempted to steal my horse. I will have him atone for that, and no other crime.”

 “You would have had your wish in another second,” growled the man who had managed to get a blade under William’s chin.

 “You speak of revenge. I speak of servitude. The latter is so much more pragmatic than the former.”

 “You are a man with a cracked brain,” declared Dino.

 “It has never interfered with my marksmanship,” replied the Latin gentleman. “You would do well to think past the reach of your weapons,” advised Alfonso.

 “We have hunted this man for a very long time. We will want him just as badly when you are asleep,” warned Dino

 “Yes, I believe it is time to address that point,” said Albonez, who then pointed one of his pistols at a nearby target and squeezed the trigger.

 The weapon barked and a knife went flying from a tense and sweaty grip. The man who had come close to slitting William’s throat was now hissing over a minor wound that would heal if the bugs could be kept away. More importantly, the gunshot served as a signal, drawing a dozen armed men out into the street.

 “You will be taken immediately to the overland trail from whence you came. You will be escorted east until close to sundown. I pray that you will have the wisdom not to return in the dead of night. You might be mistaken for a Cimarron in the dark and shot.”

 Some of the locals laughed at that while they collected their horses.

 “Our pack animals are on the other side of that whorehouse,” said Alfonso. “Allow us a moment to retrieve them---if you are not a bandit.”

 “You may keep your beasts of burden, but we will relieve you of any firearms that you may have packed.”

 “We were advised not to bother with flintlocks. Something about the high humidity causing misfires. Besides, we were expecting to find nothing but a sleepy little docking facility for passing ships. How very foolish of us,” Dino said with a down cast expression.

 “Yesterday, it would have been so,” conceded Albonez. “Ordinarily, my men and I come to town only when the mast of a ship is spotted on the horizon. My ranchero depends on at least four such visits a year. But today I am in town to pick up a fine bull that is owed me. I will also instruct the black smith to make me a new pair of shackles for my new worker. Sadly, I lost the last pair when the wearer disappeared into the jungle.”

 “Keeping him chained will be more bother than profit,” said Dino.

 Albonez gave a cavalier shrug and said, “If that is so, your friend will be avenged. If it is not, you may resume your hunt in one years time. Pedro, search their packs and then get them on their way.”

 Only one man remained behind with Albonez and William. He looked to be half Indian and half Spaniard. William noted with interest that the fellow was cradling a rare double flintlock shotgun.

 “German made?” inquired William.

 The bodyguard wouldn’t answer, but his employer was amiable enough.

 “Belgian; .62 caliber smooth bore---loaded with nails.”

 That caused an eyebrow to go up a tad.

 “I’ll bet that scars up the bore something terrible.”

 “Si, but it gives the Cimarron something to think about,” explained Albonez, “and perhaps an occasional lawbreaker as well.”

 “You mean like horse thieves, who should be taken before a magistrate?”

 “Or perhaps horse thieves who attempt to escape from the magistrate,” put in Albonez. “I did not wish to boast in front of those other men, but in truth, Senhor, you are now speaking to the magistrate.”

 “Oh shit,” breathed William.

 “Oh it is not as bad as all that, Senhor. You will weed the crops and shovel a bit of manure. That is far better than sitting in a cage, don’t you agree?”

 “For a year? My employer won’t like that.”

 “Oh, I think five months would be just. I didn’t like the looks of those men. Perhaps it was the way they wore their hats.

 “I’ve never killed a helpless man,” the prisoner stated emphatically, “and you got brought into this only because I grabbed a horse that obviously was trained not to be stolen.”

 “Now about that,” Albonez interrupted. “Perhaps the Senhor would be interested in a proposition that would eliminate his debt to this society.”

 “Oh I love such propositions. But I’m a mercenary turned bounty hunter, so I’m not sure how I can help a magistrate. Even one that operates your way.”

 “Are you the sort of mercenary who is afraid to give out his name?” the magistrate asked with just a hint of annoyance.

 “William Longpenance. Had to work my way down the South Atlantic, that’s why I’m dressed like a swabby .”

  “I am not displeased with your attire, Senhor Longpenance. In fact, it encouraged me to come to your aid.”

 Albonez took William by the arm and ushered him into the cantina that served as his auxiliary office. The well armed magistrate conducted most of his business at his ranch some four miles out of town. That way he was only subjected to a portion of the small town squabbling.

 The combination bar and meeting place was now empty except for a serving woman who was less appealing than the big whore he had met, but still comely enough to get to know after drinking hours. Albonez gave her a stern look while pointing to a number of bottles that sat on his private table.

 Conchetta, how many times must I tell you that I want my office of state kept tidy.”

 With pouting eyes the barmaid gathered up the bottles and took them away. William guessed that it was no accident that her hip brushed against him as she passed.

 “Let us get down to business. In five to ten days a ship will arrive bound for California. The captain of that ship is an old acquaintance of mine. He will pick up a few items, and drop off a few items. He will also enter into a gambling competition with me. His best man will fight my best man. No weapons, but also no rules.”

 The newcomer smiled knowingly.

 “So that’s what this is all about. You want to bet on me. Well---I might be agreeable to that, but I want more than just my freedom after I’ve won.”

 The rancher shrugged slightly.

 “We do not wager with fortunes here. I could get you enough coin for passage north out of Portobelo, assuming that you can avoid those gentlemen who just left us.”

 “I want passage on your friend’s ship,” William cut in.

 “That would be most unwise,” the magistrate said with a grin. “The sailors are not known for their good sportsmanship. If you cripple their champion, and cause them to lose their hard earned money, I fear you would accidently fall overboard some night.”

 “Do you really care?” the William asked bluntly.

  Albonez leaned back in his chair with just a bit less amusement.

 “No, Senhor, but our priests would have me exercise compassion whenever possible.”

 “Oh yea? Well, keep em away from me,” growled the fighting man. “I told you that I’m not a follower of any horn headed hobgoblin. But I got no use for The Jew  neither.”

 Albonez nodded in tactful silence, but his thinking brought the grin back to full strength.

 “Long—penance. Yes, I think this one could be very well named indeed. I can only hope that his punishment commences AFTER the coming match.”

Chapter Four.

At the fork of the Sacramento and American rivers a young man sat on a fallen tree and fished with a long branch that had been stripped of its bark. The young man’s contented gaze was aimed at a patch of reeds on the bank of the American. He would catch a fish there, he was sure of it. More importantly, he would help justify a work policy that was often criticized by his elders. They believed that fishing should never be done in the middle of the day; only in the very early hours.

 A number of the colonies’ young men pointed out that wood cutting required rest breaks, and those breaks could be spent constructively on the river bank fishing. The oldsters saw this as a ploy to shorten the work intervals, but the young men insisted that they could police themselves appropriately. So they were given their chance, and thus far they were making a proper go of it.

 “Any bites?” asked another young man as he approached from behind.

 “Just started on that spot yonder. Saw me a real trapper half way through the break. He called out in Nisenan, and when I forgot how to answer, he tried several other languages. I was tempted to teach him a little Kanakas but didn’t see any point in it.”

 The fisherman handed over his pole and promptly trudged up to the high ground where after a short walk, the settlement could be viewed. Indian and white man alike would marvel at the sight of a dozen large huts made of tule, and a adobe structure that was far from completed, but sizable in its present state.

 The young man circumnavigated a large vegetable garden until he reached the spot where he had been working to cut up a tree. Two other dark skinned youth labored over a double handled saw and barely spared the third lad a glance.

 “Our luck better change pretty soon or they’ll have us taking our breaks while weaving baskets or something,” warned the returning native.

 “That might not be a bad thing. The Nisenan would have to help us with that and some of them are pretty nice.”

 “Shit—Akahi’s wife would probably teach us, and then the first one of us who got a hard on would get cut high wide deep and uh---what was that last word that Sailor Jack used?”

 “Frequent. High wide deep and frequent,” Kalani reminded him. “And watch your language when you’re around the captain’s woman. If she’s in a good mood, she’ll just laugh it off, but if she’s in a bad mood, she’ll likely tell on you, and then you’ll be in trouble.”

 “That’s another thing I don’t understand about white people,” stated a lad named Haku. “If they use bad language it’s alright, but if we do it they worry that our souls will go to hell. Even back in Honolulu it was that way.”

 “Ah who cares about that,” growled the immigrant named Ewe. I just want to know what the rules are for getting married here in this place. I got my eye on a Nisenan woman who sticks out this far, even when she’s wearing animal skins.”

 “Maybe she’s wearing coconut shells,” joked Haku.

 “Not from around here,” said Kalani, “but maybe there are some really gigantic acorn shells that the girls collect.”

 The three south sea natives were still laughing at that when a Nisenan worker came within earshot and yelled, “Kalani! Captain wants you behind his house!”

 “Oh shit, I had a feeling that my bricks weren’t straight enough,” Kalani half mumbled to himself as he trudged away from his friends. “If the captain wanted brick layers why did he take us dumb grass weavers from the middle of the Pacific?”

 “Maybe cause we begged him to,” said Haku to his friend’s back.

 The Hawaiian nodded slightly and marched around the huge vegetable gardens that were being weeded by three dozen Nisenan field workers. Many other Indians were contracted to bring in fresh game and bring up finished product from the coast, but at the moment, the settlement was showing only a fraction of its work complement.

 When Kalani reached the back side of the adobe structure, he was startled to see the settlement leader holding a sword in his hand. Captain John Augustus Sutter often wore a sword with his uniform, but never had Kalani seen the weapon out of its scabbard. Sutter was confronting an Indian laborer who appeared to be unarmed and at the white man’s mercy.

 “Kalani, I need to ask you something,” the captain said in the way of a greeting.

 The Islander closed the distance between himself and the two older males.

 “I need to know if you were working with this man yesterday afternoon.”

 “I was working about fifty feet from him,” specified the young Hawaiian.

 “Was he limping at that time?”

 Kalani glanced down at the Indian’s lower legs and noted that the man had sustained a nasty wound on the left ankle. An animal bite by the looks of it.

 “Uh—no, sir, he wasn’t.”

 The blue eyes of the uniformed man showed cold resolve.

 “Explain your lie about the dog, Cotta.”

 The Nisenan seemed to shrink a bit in the presence of his employer.

 “Cotta not tease Captain’s dog. Cotta come into house at night. Dog bite Cotta. Run away. Tell lie. Cotta sorry.”

 “And your purpose for entering my house?

 “Hit on head. Take things,” the man confessed with an effort.

 “You mean kill me,” the white man said in a hollow tone.

 “Cotta sorry. Not do again. Very sorry.”

 The European took in a deep breath and let it out slowly before saying, “You will leave this place and never come back. If you do, I will have you hanged.”

 Kalani understood that the worker was being shown great mercy. In the white man’s world of guns and uniforms there could be no forgiveness for what Cotta had tried to do. Kalani (like everyone else in the colony) could not clearly envision what life must have been like in that place called Europe, but they had all learned that it was a land of powerful warriors. Their leader was kind hearted and did not take life without provocation, but his great sword was a constant reminder of what he was before he left his home.

 The Hawaiian watched Cotta slink away while Sutter placed his blade back in it scabbard.

 “To think that this settlement will continue only because of the actions of an English bulldog,” the leader said half to himself. “God but I’m feeling low right now.”

 “Even my own King would have killed him, I think,” Kalani said awkwardly.

 “Yes, but your good king Kamehameha was not surrounded by hundreds of men of a different blood, my young friend. That is why I must get more ammunition for my cannon. That big gun is the only thing that continues to frighten the neighboring chiefs. Of course if someone manages to slit my throat in the meantime, feel free to take the weapon back to Yerba Buena and sell it to the first sea captain that comes along.”

 “I---would rather stay, and make your dream come true, sir.”

 Sutter nodded his approval and his eyes regained some of their old sparkle.

 “There’s a good lad. Yes, a man of vision can come from any place on Earth. Doesn’t matter what color his skin is or what he wears on his back. Someday I’ll make that plain to everyone in this valley. But for now, I need to keep the Indians frightened of me to some extent.”

 “Is that why you wear the uniform, sir? Do you feel that it frightens the Indians?”

 “Fear and respect for authority are close cousins, lad. Also, I need to convince people that they can gamble on me and win. Didn’t you feel that way about me back when you decided to leave the Sandwich Islands?”

 “Yes sir---but I also felt sorry for you, sir.”

 “Oh? How so?”

 “Well sir, your uniform looked terribly uncomfortable in the midday sun, sir.”

 The veteran of the Swiss Guard  smiled at that, then playfully swatted the lad’s shoulder.

Chapter Five.

The professional soldier gazed down at the huge open pit in front of him, then across the twenty foot expanse to where his opponent was standing. Both men were shirtless and poised to drop five feet to the floor of the fighting area. The harpooner named Otto was smiling confidently; a pit fighter who had won all of his seven matches. The other man was William, who looked somewhat indignant about being forced to fight like a wild animal.

 “This isn’t exactly my style, Senhor Albonez.”

 “Actually, it makes perfect sense,” responded the rancher-magistrate. “Before the pit was dug, combatants used to shove and throw each other into the spectators.”

 William scanned the assembly of sailors and locals who were packed together on all four sides of the twenty by twenty foot pit. Some sat while others knelt or stood. All waited impatiently for the contest that took place every time the whaler Bullhead  came to port.

 “You’d think at least the younger men would rather visit the big whore that lives down the street.”

 “This is no time for levity, Senhor. I need to warn you about Otto. He is quite different—“

 Without warning the mercenary was shoved over the edge of the pit before another word could be spoken. The other combatant happily dropped down on his end and advanced toward his flustered pigeon. William wasn’t terribly put out by the fact that the other man was a grim looking piece of work. The bullet shaped head, the twice broken nose and the plethora of tattoos were all common features in the world that William was familiar with. But what stood out the most was the man’s odd shaped mouth. Apparently he was buck-toothed. Well what the hell, no body ever lost a fight to a man just because he had an overbite.

 William positioned his left foot at ten o’clock and his right foot at four o’clock. His left hand stayed open and was positioned some two feet in front of his torso. The right hand was made into a very tight fist, and that was positioned slightly above the right hip. The fighting sailor had seen something like that in Asia a few years back, but a rum bottle over the head had wiped out most of the recollection. It didn’t matter. The sailor had his way, and it never failed him.

 In battle William was accustomed to being on the offensive, but in contests of this sort he had a habit of waiting on the opposition. It was never really a good idea, but some little voice inside of him would say, “Do only what is necessary,” and the professional soldier would then reluctantly comply. William would be the first to admit that the little voice inside his head was full of shit, but he couldn’t resist listening for some damn reason.

 In any case the sailor didn’t keep him waiting. He charged in like a wrestler; totally focused on the idea of getting his arms around his opponent. William’s back foot rose up and forward to execute a perfect front snap kick to the man’s advancing solar plexus. The ball of his foot caught the nerve cluster dead center and the sailor let out an involuntary grunt. It took Otto about four seconds to collect himself, then he slowly renewed his advance.

 “Don’t recall THAT ever happening before,”  thought William. “Ok---no more gentleman like behavior.”

 The sailor was allowed to close the gap again and when the distance was once again perfect William fired off another lightening front kick. This once came in decidedly lower, and nailed the sailor where he lived. But once again the brawler just stood there while the spectators cheered his ability to absorb the blows.

 “He’s wearing some kind of protective cup,”  mused William. “Oh well---these shit heads would have been disappointed with a quick win anyhow.”

  One of the spectators yelled, “Grab the foot and take it off!”

 The sailor must have thought that a worthy suggestion because he focused on that kicking foot while inching forward, waiting for it to come flying towards him again.

  William showed him something different. He shifted forward on legs that had carried him many a mile. Then his forward foot rose and performed a low hooking sweep from left to right. The foot caught the side of Otto’s forward knee and this time the man let out more than just a grunt.

 “Fight like a man!” the other sailors bellowed.

 The professional soldier shrugged slightly at all the frustration around him and then assumed the pose of a boxer, with both fists held out stiffly in front of him. With a somewhat condescending demeanor he danced around the now crippled sailor, throwing respectable jabs that rocked the bullet shaped head with every tag. But when the boxer became too engrossed with his play, the sailor willed his damaged knee to work for him and suddenly William was at close quarters with his adversary.

 His training didn’t fail him. Elbows and knees went immediately to work, but now, as if in a bad dream, the sailor became impervious to the close in techniques---and that was just the beginning. The sailor endured a series of vicious blows in order to finally get his enemy into a proper bear hug, and that is when William got his big surprise.

 Lips came closer and then parted to reveal something that William had never seen in all his years of fighting. Hideously deformed teeth; oversized and completely inhuman. The whaling men howled with glee. Mr. Fancy Feet had threatened to rob them of their grand finale, but nasty faced Otto was coming through after all. The fact that he couldn’t fight with style never meant shit to the sailors.

 William was anything but a weakling, but now he was pinned against an earthen wall by a man who’s arms belonged on an ape. Otto’s jaws hovered no more than an inch from William’s corded neck as the two men pressed with a grip on each other’s wrist. If only the poxy wall wasn’t being shoved up his ass, but it was, and Otto was now doing the one thing he was good at.

 “Like an Asian friend once said: It’s not the size---it’s how you use them,” warned the world traveler.

 The muscle bound sailor couldn’t possibly understand what his opponent was talking about, and he summoned his last ounce of strength to bring his ugly bridge work to bear. William still didn’t look like a man fighting for his life, but he certainly wasn’t happy with the way things were going. He had screwed up by toying with his opponent, and he damn well should have known better.

 Otto’s teeth came close, but he had made the mistake of telegraphing his intentions. William beat the sailor at his own game by closing his own smaller teeth on the end of Otto’s nose.

Otto’s roared like a bull but only for an instant. Then released his grip on William and staggered back two paces.

 “What the hell is wrong with you?!” bellowed Captain Omar Gantell, who up until that point had blended in perfectly with his crew.

 William then shifted in, pushing aside his opponent’s reaching hand and then delivering a straight power punch to the windpipe.

 The pit fighter clutched at his throat and his eyes grew wide. William grimly stared up at all the distraught faces. Would they be sore losers? He was getting kind of tired of that.

 “You worthless sack of shit!” bellowed the captain. “You can’t take a little eye rubbin—“

 Maybe Otto could hear his captain---maybe not. His watering eyes rolled up slightly and the big sailor toppled over like a mast giving way in the wind. Everyone looked on in amazement. Everyone but William that is.

 The professional soldier wiped the sweat from  his brow and then mounted a short ladder that Albonez had lowered for him. In the meantime a number of whalers had jumped down into the pit to see just how bad off Otto was. With no pulse or respiration they all concluded that he was pretty damn bad off.

 William gratefully accepted a bottle of wine from a man who was in charge of the liquid refreshments.

 “We should outlaw your style of fighting. I think it is too damn efficient for sport,” said the Captain. “Comes from Asia, which is where you learned it if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Yup, on an Island realm called Okinawa. Anyway, your boy was tough. Gave one-hundred per cent—but he wasn’t fighting fair with them crazy chompers of his. What the hell are they anyway?”

 “Shark’s teeth. Ain’t ya ever seen none?” growled a sailor who then yanked the custom made dentures from the dead man’s mouth.

  William calmly read the expressions of the whalers as they waited on their captain. He guessed that Otto was probably too weird to have any close friends. They were just pissed off because they lost money to the locals.

 “I suppose I could be talked into another round with your second best fighter,” said William.

 Gantell accepted the dentures from the sailor and tried to look like a proper sportsman.

 “I figure we’ve had enough excitement for one visit---and I know a carnival owner down in Rio who will probably take this thing off my hands. Course we won’t be going that way for quite some while.”

 Each sailor then grabbed himself a bottle from the vendor and proceeded to wander down the main street. No one even glanced at poor Otto after that.

 With a happy Albonez beside him William asked, “What’s your next port of call, Captain?”

 “Oh—probably stop at Salina Cruz. It’s a shit hole but our cook has a brother there who sells goat meat real cheap. Then I guess we’ll just follow the coast until we get to Monterey.”

 “Acapulco is where I need to get to.”

 Gantell scratched his red bulbous nose and did some quick calculating.

 “Tell you what. You sail with us to Puerto Vallarta and fight one match for me there and I’ll take you straight to Acapulco with enough money to buy a good horse. Well—maybe you’ll have to settle for whatever they have available at the time. But I’ll make sure they throw in a guide so you won’t run into bad Indians.”

 “You would have gone to Puerto Vallarta if my dancing partner hadn’t up and died on us?”

 “Planned to.” There is a whaling station there and the owner is almost as fun loving as Albonez here.”

 “I would like to sail up there with you,” Albonez put in. “One of my men could see to it that a good horse will be waiting for us both at Acapulco, if you can wait a bit.”

 “How much you gunna charge for that horse, Albonez?” queried the whaling captain.

 “I will set a price after the next fight is concluded,” stated the Panamanian. “Rest assured that no matter how things fare, the price shall remain below thirty American dollars.”

 “Well I should hope so,” drawled the captain. “They may not be plentiful around these parts, but up north you can’t swing---“

 “---a yard of rope without hitting one,” Albonez finished with a slightly displeased expression.

 William grinned slightly and turned away from them without a word.

 “Got much gear?” called the captain. “I can have one of me men help ya with it.”

 “Just need to get my musket.”

 “Ah, well---that’s a one man job.”

 “Oh yes,” William called over his shoulder. “Definitely a one man job.”

Chapter Six

The Bullhead  was halfway up the Mexican coast when it’s lookout spotted a welcome sight not two miles from land. A geyser of carbon dioxide and water that shot up some forty feet.

 “Whale ho off the starboard bow!”

 “Shit---this is going to slow us down a mite,” growled William as he stood beside Albonez near the starboard rail.

 The rancher looked out over the blue expanse, but of course saw nothing.

 “If it is a small one, perhaps I can talk the captain into leaving it be.”

 “Not with a spout as high as what I saw,” muttered William

 “How tall was that?”

 William ignored the rancher as all hands scrambled to launch the pursuit boats. Soon even the rancher was enthralled by the sight of the men expertly lowering the boats and applying the oars with a precision that was like nothing Albonez had ever seen on land. The ship altered course but made no attempt to converge on its prey.

 After some moments even the rancher could make out the long hump of flesh that plowed along in the even waters. William frowned at the sight; shaking his head slightly.

 “Damn peculiar. It’s about the size of a blue whale---but the body isn’t right. If we were on the Atlantic side I would guess---“

 “Cachalot!”  one of the lead boatmen shouted across the water.

 “Oh crap. Gantell ain’t gunna let this one go---and we’ll be lucky if all four boats make it back,” said William.

 Albonez watched briefly as the four long boats converged on their target. Each boat had a harpooner at it’s bow.

 “I know the tail can be deadly, but these are whalers. I’m certain they know how to watch for that danger.”

 “Cachalot means big head,” explained William. “You’re looking at a sperm whale, and it’s probably as big as the one that sunk the Essex. Shit---could even be the same one.”

 The Panamanian swallowed hard. Everyone who lived near the sea knew the story of the whaling ship Essex.  In 1820 a sperm whale rammed its hull below the water line. Whaling ships tended to be older vessels with hulls that were weak from years in the water. This one sank about three-thousand miles west of Chile.

 The crew abandoned ship in three open boats that eventually scattered. All but a handful starved over a period of three months. The survivors had resorted to cannibalism.

 “Well---we’re very close to land,” the rancher said half to himself.

 William climbed up the main mast to get a bird’s eye view. The water was so clear in that area that he could see down at least two-hundred feet. Of course the leviathan would disappear completely if it decided to sound. Sperm whales were the greatest diving mammals in the world, capable of descending over a mile. But at least he could shout to the captain when and where the beastie was coming back up.

 From his perch he watched two “irons” sink onto gray mottled flesh. Even Albonez understood that the harpoons were not meant to kill the whale. The iron warheads were attached to a short line that in turn was secured to rope made of Russian hemp or the new manila. When the whale felt the pain of the darts, it would instinctively push off with its mighty tail and try to run away from its tormentor. The wooden shaft of the harpoon would usually come off, but the iron tip would be solidly embedded with its line.

 The men on the pursuit boats would then get one hell of a ride. They would get pulled far away from the mother whaling ship, but when the beast would finally think to escape by diving into the depths, the ship would get a chance to catch up. Then the killing lances would be made ready, to stab the animal when it resurfaced for much needed air.

 If a whale would decide to go down as far as it possibly could, the rope would have to be severed, but that rarely happened. The effort of pulling the boat for hundreds of yards before diving in panic, usually kept the dive within two-hundred fathoms. Besides, these were coastal waters they weren’t that deep.

 The whale sounded after a four-hundred yard run. As it hid in the depths, the Bullhead  closed in giving William a fair view of the water between the ship and the farthest boat. Twelve minutes dragged by with every man scanning the water’s surface. Then a dark shape started to form in the depths, and grew into a huge ascending dreadnaught. William and the lookout shouted as one, but by the time the warning was relayed one of the open boats was already being lifted clean out of the water.

 “Oh shit,” breathed William as he climbed down out of the rigging.

 Captain Gantell was bellowing orders at the remaining boats, not realizing that the crew of the Bullhead had yet to realize the worst part of their nightmare. The boat that had been lifted and smashed with all hands lost was not one of the two boats that were tethered to the monster. Those boats started moving again, and with Gantell’s voice behind them the boat crews found themselves being aimed at the fourth boat.

 A three boat collision was narrowly avoided and the mother ship moved in to get the now highly agitated boatmen off the dangerous water. William went and helped himself to a couple of lances. Actually he would have taken a dozen if he could have managed it.

 “Coming around on the surface!” shouted the look out.

 Willliam made his way to where the last boatmen were abandoning their flimsy little shells of wood for the protection of a two-hundred ton ship. Every man there gawked at him as he threw his lances into the boat and climbed down.

 “Are ye out of yer mind?” asked a Scotsman.

 “You get your ass out of that thing!” Gantell commanded.

 “He’s coming for the ship!” William yelled back. “He’s got to be speared as he passes, and I can’t do that up on your poxy deck!”

 “Will any man go with him?” the captain then challenged.

 One man threw a couple more lances into the boat, barely missing William’s cheek. He then lowered himself even faster than William had done.

 “I remember you. You were screaming for Otto to eat my liver,” said William as the other man took to the oars.

 “Half a share I lost on em,” growled the sailor as they pulled away from the ship. “Di nah raise yer voice tah me as ye did the cap’n.”

 “Well maybe we can get you a fat bonus here,” said William as he placed the lances for easy reach and readied himself for some desperate work.

 No one had any idea exactly how smart a whale might be, but William noted that the creature was running on the surface where he could generate the most speed for ramming. Maybe that was just nature’s way, but it sure seemed calculating at the time. For one terrifying moment it looked as if the whale was going to hit their little wooden shell en route to the main target, but instead it passed by with one eye staring at them.

 William only had time to launch two lances, and the sailor was experienced enough to know that his work was at the oars. But the hits were good. Both of them in the creature’s mighty lungs. Now all they could do was hope that the whale would abort his run and sound.

 He didn’t.

 The boom of the collision was like that of a small cannon. The hull retained it shape, but both William and his oarsman envisioned water pouring in faster than their crude pump could throw it out again. William thought he could see men throwing lances down from the rail, but a giant tail splash cut his viewing short, so he helped himself to a pair of oars at his comrade’s back and the two men pulled for all they were worth.

 William began to sweat harder and realized that the cooling wind had died down. Gantell noticed it first and called to the look out.

 “Is he under us?”

 “No, sir, he’s heading straight south and into deeper water.”

 “Alright then, collect the long boats and pull us toward land.”

 “Captain, I think we kin stay on top of the leaks,” stated the ship’s carpenter. “But we can’t refit anywhere in these parts.”

 “That is no great revelation, Mr. Tyler. But if the leaks get out of hand, I want the option of beaching this tub, so our cargo won’t go to waste.”

 Although William’s feat of heroism seemed to be over, he kept his oars and helped to tow the ship a bit closer to the coast. Each whaler would spare a periodic glance at the empty sails, hoping to see them spread out. But that was not to be. It was as if Neptune wanted revenge for the slow killing of one of his mightiest subjects.

 William gazed sightlessly at the broad back of the man seated in front of him; brooding over his poor choice of transportation. Why was it so damn hard for him to stay out of trouble? The battlefield was one thing, but for him, violence seemed to flow over into every other possible facet of his existence. He had learned the sailor’s trade long ago and it suited his need to be able to travel with little coin. But even out on the ocean, violence and struggle would eventually find him and the many poor souls that would be in his company.

 William let out a sigh. Well, at least this particular shit sandwich was just about swallowed. Half a dozen men dead and a leaking ship, but unlike the Essex, Terra Firma was comfortingly close. Yup, a little optimism was definitely in order.

 “When we get to Puerto Vallarta, I’m gunna make each of you miserable sods rich,” William promised. “We’ll make out like Otto was your only ace card, and I’m filling in just to preserve the honor of the Bullhead.”

 “If you’re gunna act like a dusty then you best keep your shirt on and cover that cheek scar with grease,” advised the man who was seated beside William.

 “Don’t worry. With Albonez managing things and you boys acting like I’m next to nothing, we will clean up. We’ll make so much money you won’t ever need to see a whale again.”

 Suddenly the longboat was lifted into the air with the bow tilted skyward. The lookout gawked in dismay. The monster had come back deep and the damn sun was shining on the water exactly where he would have seen the whale ascending from the bottom. All the other long boats reversed oars and pushed until they were sliding along the Bullhead’s hull.

 Six men had been pulling in each of the long boats, but when William hit the water and sank below the surface, the pack of six thrashing sailors was split by a giant fluke that shoved at least one dying man’s body further into the deep. The resulting wave of water caused William to tumble end over before gradually drifting upward. It was a sure mercy that his oxygen starved brain was swiftly closing down, because the whale was not quite through venting it’s rage. It came around for another pass, but this time instead of ramming, it turned over shark style and clamped its ponderous lower jaw on a miserable bobbing creature that was never meant for the water.

 Several giant teeth forced ribs to give way and then held fast as the creature then turned northward with its prize of battle. The men on the Bullhead could not see what was in the whale’s jaws as it swam away, but even if the sight had been plain to them it would have made no difference. After fishing two live men out of the water and a single corpse, the whaling ship crawled south along the coast with a wind that was better than nothing.

 Eventually the captain assembled the men and read off the names of the dead before reciting the prayer Our father. Albonez didn’t join in, and it was his private belief that William’s soul was probably speeding its way to a ghostly whorehouse, be it in heaven, or more likely hell.

Chapter Seven

 The great ocean beast was never tempted to swallow even a portion of its catch. It cracked and re-cracked the drowned creature’s ribs, but never to the point of drawing blood, much less bisecting the body. If revenge needed to be prolonged, it was not a conscious thought of the wounded Cachalot. There was in fact no explanation for the whale’s behavior. No rhyme or reason until at last, the whale released its prey and turned west, towards deeper water.

 William’s body came in on the surf after a brief and uneventful meeting with some sharks.

 The most aggressive of the pack coasted up to the body as if it had all the time in the world. It’s natural grin was poised to widen as it’s body rolled to one side. But then in an instant something registered in the shark’s tiny brain, and the big fish merely slid along the man’s body, rubbing it with its sandpaper like skin. Then it altered course, to once again trail behind thousands of pounds of whale flesh.

 The whale for his part, was now approaching a drop off that would enable him to out dive the sharks. He would not survive that descent, but it didn’t matter. Like all creatures in nature, his life was focused on the present effort. Denying the sharks a gigantic feast was the only purpose the whale now lived for. Did the whale reason that the release of the man corpse would gain it solitude at the edge of the sea shelf—or was it simply tired of having the thing in its mouth? Inhabitants of the depths did not ponder such things.

 The whale made its dive to where its great heart would stop beating. There on the bottom, in a place of eternal night, it would feed everything from hagfish to bristleworms.   The sharks fanned out hundreds of feet above, with no intention of returning to the small piece of flesh that that was washing up on shore.

  Chapter Eight

On a vast expanse of coastline, nine beasts of burden cut a southbound trail while the ever present seagulls soared over head. The horses were of identical colors, namely white with dark spots. The leopard like pattern made them one-hundred times more valuable than the common Mustang which roamed in the north, south and east mountain regions.

 These horses were of the Appaloosa breed, and the former property of the Nez Perce Indians of the north. The solitary man who lead them was half Nez Perce, half Mexican. He was small of stature but could leap onto his mount with a dexterity that most men would have lost a good ten years earlier. His name was Joaquin Feliz and he was no stranger to the lands that stretched between Monterey and the Oregon Territory. Such knowledge prompted him to take his stock of horses along the coast, to avoid a nasty stretch of marshland filled with mosquitoes that would have eaten his poor horses alive.

 Feliz enjoyed looking at the ocean, but more to the point, the local bandits did not. No one wanted to travel on sand and rock, so a bandit would have to wait a long time to find himself a victim. Feliz would lead his horses a few more miles along the beach, then stab inland to a road that was patrolled by the authorities of the Monterey area. He was just beginning to grow tired of the blue expanse when he spotted a strange object up ahead. He maintained his easy pace until he realized that the object was beginning to move.

 All nine horses bolted forward until Feliz was towering over the man in need. Then he slipped from his mount with a half full canteen. He helped the man drink, mindful not to let him consume too much.

 “Did you fall off your ship?” he asked in Spanish.

 When the man didn’t answer, he tried the question in English.

 “I speak Spanish---but my throat—“

 Feliz nodded once at the explanation.

 “Save your voice then. I will take you to Monterey. Let us see how difficult it will be to get you on a horse.”

 The sand covered sailor gamely rose to his feet. With a little help he was able to settle himself on Feliz’ mount. The horse trader then took the reins and proceeded to walk ahead of the nine animals.

 “We will take it slow until sundown. It is best to enter Monterey in the morning so we will camp northeast of town at the end of this day. If you feel any great pain let me know and we will stop.”

 The sailor kept silent. He could not remain out in the middle of nowhere. There was no wagon to be used and that meant that he would just have to endure the after effects of what had been a miracle of good fortune. The pain racked sailor wondered if the whale was hurting as much as his former victim. That critter sure was better at bashing then he was at chomping.

 Once they were settled in with coffee and soaked jerky, the horse trader decided it was time to learn the main facts relating to the sailor’s misfortune.

 “Can you write, Senhor?”

 “Yes.”

 “I have paper and a pencil if you would like to explain briefly what happened to you.”

 “I can talk now,” the sailor assured him. “I was on the whaling ship Bullhead. Damn longboat got sunk by the biggest sea monster you can imagine. Don’t know how the others lost me exactly but they did. I managed to float on my back to shore. Got some cracked ribs that I figure will be hurting me for sometime. But I’m happy to be here drinking your very fine coffee. I’m beholding to ya.”

 “And your name, Senhor?” pressed Feliz, who had already introduced himself back on the trail.

 “William Longpenance.”

 The horse trader was tempted to comment on the name, but better judgment prevailed. Perhaps it was a good thing that he had run out of whiskey the other night.

 “Your monster was a whale?”

 “Sperm whale. Worst thing there is when you fill the beast with hate. Still---it sure did a strange thing with me.”

 “I have met people up north who have hunted the smaller whales. They tell stories about the whale that has great teeth growing out of its lower jaw. I suppose Jonah was swallowed by such a beast. It is hard to imagine how God could be so strict with a cowardly disciple, but then, was it not the only way Jonah could return to land?”

  William’s eyes turned hard for a moment, but then his attention shifted to the horses.

 “I suppose Appaloosa’s sell for a pretty penny this far south.”

 “This year—I think so, but I will only haggle with the Dons. They think I am shit because I have no Spanish blood in me, but their sons and daughters will beg them to pry open their purses and pay a gentleman’s price. It is always the same when the crops are good.”

 “And you’re sure I won’t have to wait long for a ship?”

 “No, Senhor. There is always at least one foolish sailor who runs away thinking that California is a Garden of Eden. There will be a place for you. With your luck, you might even be reunited with your friends. Then you will all have something to celebrate.”

 “Not if the Bullhead is licking its wounds next to some pier,” growled William. “I need a ride south. Friends-------friends come and go with the scenery.”

 The following morning William woke before Feliz. He quickly palpated his rib cage and frowned at his miserable state.

 “Hey, Amigo, I’m ready to head into town if you don’t mind helping on a horse. I’m getting hungry, but I can take care of that in town.”

 The horse trader woke with a start, then got to his feet without comment. He didn’t need to be a mind reader to understand how the muscular sailor felt. The horse trader had eaten up most of his victuals by the time he found William. After all, with Monterey so close at hand, Feliz no longer had any need to ration his meat. For that reason, he had little to offer the marooned seafarer. Of course Feliz had the ability to shoot or snare wild game, but it would be quicker and more agreeable to just ride into town and order a meal at The Whale Bone Inn. So that’s where they headed just as soon as the Appaloosas were stabled.

 William noted en route that there were no ships docked in the modest wharf section, so when they entered the inn he went directly to the bar where a graying overweight lady barkeep stood ready to greet him.

 “Whatever is the matter my handsome sailor boy? Did those filthy little beavers swim away in fright when they saw you coming with those big broad shoulders of yours?”

 William had a pretty good idea what the woman was referring to. Feliz had elaborated on the trail that some of the less intelligent sailors would occasionally jump ship and go hunting for beaver, not realizing that every local waterway had been trapped out years ago. Besides which, the fur trade was in a decline that actually started long before the introduction of silk hats. Only an occasional old timer could be found up north trying to sustain a marginal existence as a trapper.

 “Well, at least I can comfort you with the knowledge that your captain didn’t report you to the magistrate. Is it possible that your skill at sailing is equal to your skill at trapping?”

 A gang of carpenters laughed at the joke, all choosing to forget the fact that they had also wasted some time trapping when they first came out west.

 “He did not jump ship,” Feliz explained from his table in the back. “He is a whaler who barely escaped drowning.”

 “I suppose you had no coin to drag you down,” said the lady barkeep with her last vestige of humor.

 “How long before another ship arrives?” William asked in a no nonsense tone.

 “Maybe the day after tomorrow,” guessed one of the carpenters. “We’re expecting a shipment of nails.”

 “They’ll take me on, once I explain to the captain what happened. Advanced pay to cover a few meals shouldn’t be a problem.”

 “You will have to take that up with the owner of the establishment. He will be here to manage the evening customers. But if he should decide to refuse you, I will feed you in my own home. I have a soft spot in heart for men who brave the seas in order to bring us, rum, and feather mattresses and the like.”

 With that the carpenters exchanged muffled coughs and obscene leers.

 William pretended not to notice, but it was plain as could be that this woman liked sailors because at the end of a long voyage, a fat, over the hill barmaid could easily be mistaken for a sumptuous siren. Such was not the case in this instance however and besides that, the professional soldier didn’t much like being taken in while there was a poxy audience gawking at him.

 “A most gracious offer, Senhora, but you should know that half my ribs are cracked. I’m afraid that means I’ll be an invalid for some time.”

 “That is alright with me, Sailor. You will be fun just to look at until you regain your higher functions. In any case, it is good to know a man well if he owes money---and I intend to get to know you very well.”

 William suppressed a sigh. It was plain enough that his recovery was not going to be the stuff that dreams are made of. Indeed---it was not. But William had an iron constitution and in time he was able to leave the bar maid’s room and seek out the rather boisterous carpenters who he had been forced to listen to all hours of the day and night.

 “Gentlemen, I have decided not to wait for a ship’s captain to advance me some coin. I believe you gentlemen are in a position to lighten my debt.”

 The grins disappeared and were replaced with looks of puzzlement.

 “Are you suggesting that we should give you some money, Sailor Boy?” queried the senior member of the construction crew.

 “Not unearned. Never take charity if yer capable of earning yer keep. My old man taught me that long ago, and I have not strayed from that advice.”

 “So where is this taking us, Senhor?”

 “Couldn’t help noticing the wood carving of a bear outside,” said William. “Don’t suppose its creator is here in this inn.”

 “You are looking at him,” stated the chief carpenter. “My name is Lezaro Cardenez, and I carved that bear when I grew tired of making statues for the church. Too bad the priests have gone away, Sailor. They could have found you some honest work hoeing weeds or something.”

 “I have something else in mind,” said William as he walked back to where Feliz was patiently waiting to order his breakfast.

 “May I borrow your knife, Master Horse Trader?”

 Feliz was reasonably certain that this poorly dressed seafaring man was no criminal, but there were not many law abiding things a man could do with a knife under the present circumstances. So naturally, every man in the tavern was on his guard, albeit with deadpan expressions.

 “C’mon,” said the sailor as he casually headed for the front door.

 More than a little curious, the carpenters indulged the strange man, still not entirely convinced that no one would get hurt. Feliz also left the building, but only after placing his food order with a woman who had seen enough macho foolishness in her life.

 The bear carving was only six feet tall and just a tad on the slender side as bear likenesses go. The subject was standing on its hind legs and was nailed through the feet to the top of a large tree stump that was situated halfway between The Whale Bone Inn and a general store. William studied the carving as the Californians caught up with him.

 “If you want trouble with me, Senhor, all you have to do is place a single nick in that wood,” announced Cardenez.

 “Got that covered,” replied William as he helped himself to a wet paint sign that was hanging on the general store’s hitching post.

 The sailor hung the sign around the bear’s neck . It covered a good portion of the bear’s upper body, but there was still plenty of bear to hit.

 “I would prefer you use a tree,” growled Cardenez.

 “Nothing but saplings around here,” said William as he positioned himself ten paces from the bear. “I’m kind of hungry so I’d like to get this over with as soon as possible.”

 “Get what over with?” Cardenez demanded to know.

 “Sporting proposition. I’m going to throw this knife from where I’m standing and stick the blade in the space between the letters t and p. If I accomplish this, each of you gentlemen will pay me two dollars American money.”

 “And if the throw is not good?” queried the wood carver.

 “Then I will be an extra pair of hands for your crew until you have finished the building you are now working on.”

 “What if the supply ship chooses to up anchor before the building is finished?” asked another of the carpenters.

 “Then the poxy ship will have to leave without me,” William answered impatiently. “As I said: I will work until the building is completed.”

 Cardenez stared at the sign. The sailor’s target was little more than one inch square. A most challenging mark for someone standing ten paces away.

 “Alright, Senhor. Say a prayer and make your throw.”

 For a moment the gray eyes of the sailor were as cold and bleak as a North Pacific storm. Only Feliz noticed this. All the other men were studying the way the sailor set the knife blade between thumb and forefinger, and the way he cocked his arm for the throw. No two men ever threw exactly the same. Each man would have his own style which would then have to be matched with a throwing distance that would work for him.

 Every witness present had to assume that the sailor was experienced with blades that were identical to what was now being used. Those men were only half right. William had once owned a knife that could have been the twin of Feliz’ blade, but that was a very long time ago. More years than anyone would have dreamed possible.

 No prayer---just practice,” the thrower muttered to himself, and then let fly.

 Since half the men couldn’t read, and the other half couldn’t believe their eyes---there was silence for several heartbeats. Then Cardenez stepped up to confirm that what they were all looking at was no optical illusion.

 “Mary Mother of God---never have I seen such inhuman skill,” wheezed Cardenez.

 “That’s because you measure your life in days,” explained the stranger, “whereas my life is measured with experience.”

 William collected his meager winnings and then headed back to the inn with Feliz in tow.

 “What did he mean by that, Jefe? asked the youngest of the work gang.

 “I’m not sure,” the boss responded honestly. “I only know that the authorities are going to want to speak to that man. He is a master killer---and we have been plagued by such a man for days on end now.”

 “That one did not even have his own knife,” pointed out the youngster.

 The work boss didn’t answer. He just got his men back to work.

Chapter Nine

Monterey, like so many communities of their day, consisted of lined commercial establishments running the length of the main streets, as well as structures that required a bit more elbow room. Corrals, barns and individual vegetable gardens caused the outer perimeter of a frontier city to be laid out in a rather haphazard pattern. Late night establishments like The Whale Bone Inn  often kept their distance from the more respectable establishments, just so that the more conservative folk could get their sleep.

 The black smith shop was another establishment that might possibly choose to stand alone on the outskirts of town. The reason being that a good smith might have to work long hours to keep up with his work load, and that might mean a great deal of hammering well after dark. People needed to get along so that they could support each other. Seaport communities might be different from settlements inland, but when there was a common threat to the citizenry, a passing traveler might find himself wishing he was someplace else.

 William got that feeling almost as soon as he left the company of Feliz and the fat old barmaid. He spent most of the day trying to gain temporary employment , fearing that the next ship might not arrive before his knife throwing winnings got spent. Like most sailors (or soldiers) his ability to wisely manage money was sorely compromised every time he entered a bar. Therefore he chose not to rely on his winnings. He would earn extra cash while waiting for the next ship. Trouble was---nobody seemed to want him.

 He offered to work cheap, and anyone’s barn would serve as a nightly lodging. But every prospective employer treated him as if he had just got out of prison. It was a real puzzlement until Feliz caught up with him on the street.

 “Hola, my knife throwing wonder. Found any work yet?”

 “No. Maybe I should take a bath or something,” grumbled William.

 “Well, part of your problem might be the fact that there has been a number of killings in this town. Five knifings and two broken necks so far this year. The magistrate has no idea who is behind the murders, and the people have become suspicious of strangers. Everyone is asking me questions about you.”

 “Oh yea? Well why the hell don’t they ask me directly?” William asked with an edge to his voice.

 “I think they will let the magistrate do that when he returns to town. But anyway, I think you should come with me to meet Juan Mourino. He is the town blacksmith. His son broke his arm a few days ago and I’m thinking maybe you could work the bellows for him and things of that sort. I know it’s not pleasant work but---“

 “It may not be pleasant work,” William interrupted, “but its familiar work. I was taught something of the trade years back. I admit that I’d rather be mending a net or caulking a boat, but under the circumstances I reckon I’ll take what I can get.”

 “Then follow me,” said Feliz.

 On the way the horse trader spoke of his dealings with the two ranchers who had purchased his stock of horses. According to Feliz, he was robbed blind by men who possessed not a shred of honor. But by the time they reached the gritty establishment of Senhor Mourino, William was certain that the little Indian had haggled the fancy pants Dons down to their long johns.

 The two men politely waited outside the black smith’s doorway while the craftsman finished his business with a gentleman who was wearing a military uniform that Feliz had never seen before.

 “You were four hinges short in the last order, Juan. I would not complain except that we are talking about a fort, not just a simple house to live in.”

 The big Mexican scowled at this latest pain in the ass complaint but held himself in check.

 “The lives of two-hundred workers could be at stake,” the customer went on, “so I do not intend to wait long for those hinges. I need to know precisely how long it will take you to make them and I will have one of my men here to pick them up without delay.”

 Mourino nodded ever so slightly and said, “I’ll have them ready the day after tomorrow, Captain. Your bill will also be ready.”

 “I was hoping to pay you at the end of the season,” the white man said stiffly, “but if you will take payment in cowhides, I believe I can accommodate you.”

 The blacksmith gave another slight nod and the meeting was concluded. As the uniformed man passed the newcomers he smiled and said, “Buenos dias,” with a very heavy Swiss accent.

 William turned to face the departing man and asked a question in French.

 “Sir, is that not the uniform of the Swiss Guard?”

 “It is, sir,” replied the captain with a broader smile.

 The Swiss Guards was the name given to a special group of men who served as bodyguards in the foreign courts of Europe. Since the late 15^th Century they had earned a reputation for unwavering loyalty to their adopted monarchs. During the French Revolution the vast majority of the Guards defending royal property lost their lives rather renounce their stations. But William had something entirely different on his mind.

 “I know this is a long shot, Captain, but would you happen to be acquainted with a fellow Guardsman named Jonas Druey?”

 The fellow European looked thoughtful for a moment, then shook his head.

 “No---I don’t recall anyone by that name. Of course I haven’t served the French Court in some time now. It is quite likely that this Druey fellow came afterward.”

 The man then extended his hand.

 “Captain John Augustus Sutter, at your service.”

 “I’m William and this here gent is Feliz.”

 Sutter shook both their hands and didn’t inquire about last names.

 “Don’t suppose you have any recent news about Santa Anna. His activities could still have an impact on us for quite some time to come.”

 “Well, I don’t pretend to know anything about Santa Anna’s Navy, which theoretically might venture as far north as Monterey.”

 “It is small, but it has brought some fine Arabian horses to the capital city,” Feliz reported without a hint of mockery.

 “Actually, I’m an infantryman when there’s a big enough fight to jump into,” said William. “I had to work my way across the Atlantic, and then sign on again as a whaler. But I’m more than ready to give up the high seas and get some marching in.”

 Sutter was about to comment on the distance between California and Central Mexico when something occurred to him.

 “Have you ever functioned as a drill sergeant, my good sir?”

 “Yes, but not in a official capacity,” answered William. “I sort of got promoted in the field, then more than once I got stuck with a bunch of cherries that needed to learn one end of a musket from the other.”

 Sutter’s smile intensified.

 “The reason I ask is because I am organizing my own militia which could use some shaping up. It is made up of Nisenan Indians who are very praiseworthy fellows but require more training than I have time for. I also have a cannon that we’re all quite proud of. Even in France I didn’t have much call to practice with artillery. So would you consider lending me you skills, sir?”

 William listened to the sound of coal being loaded into the forge and knew he would be in for a rough wait for the next ship.

 “When’s the next muster?”

 “Monsieur?”

 “When will your militia be reporting for training?”

 “Oh, as soon as we get back to New Helvetia. Er—that means New Switzerland. A rather deceptive name I admit. I am the only person there who hails from that country. In fact some of my fellow settlers come from the South Seas believe it or not.”

 “Feliz here rattled off the names of all the neighboring ranches,” William said cautiously. “I guess yours must be a bit further out.”

 “Approximately eighty miles by water. We’re in the central valley,” Sutter said happily.

 William’s eyes drifted back to the blacksmith’s open doorway. He didn’t want to pass through it, but he wasn’t about to go far and away from a chance to spy a sailing mast.

 “Sorry, Captain, I guess I’m gunna have to pass.”

 Not waiting for a polite farewell, William dragged his feet into a soot encrusted semi-enclosure that was pretty much the same the world over. A great stone tub filled with coal took up the center of the work area. Beside it further back was the anvil mounted on an enormous block of hard wood. Water buckets, hammers, tongs, punches, swages and files either hung from the walls or were scattered around the back perimeter of the shop.

 The entrance was avoided, because sunlight made it difficult for the smith to read the colors of the heated metal. Cherry red, orange red, yellow and white all had their uses and needed to be plainly displayed. For this reason, a blacksmith shop was usually a place of eternal gloom, and much of the heating was done after dark even with the work load was light.

 “Got threes days of work ahead of you,” the smith said in the way of a greeting.

 “I’m looking for work. Just until the next ship comes to port,” stated William.

 The big Mexican’s face was impassive; covered liberally with hair, soot and heat rashes that never went away. William perceived that it was not the face of a heartless man, just a man who expected little from his fellows, and gave only what was fair.

 “The counter weight on my bellows broke down yesterday. Haven’t had a chance to fix it yet. That’s good news for you---maybe. Depends on how strong you are. My rule is that if you don’t keep a constant breath on them coals, I’ll pay you with a boot up the ass and nothing else.”

 “Yea yea, right up the ass,” William acknowledged with a nod, “but I want a percentage of the work done between now and when I leave. I’m thinking that we’ll kick ass and I want to be paid for that, not a standard wage.”

 A flicker of curiosity showed in the smith’s dark eyes.

 “Heard you outside. Soldier strength ain’t shit compared to working iron, and that bellows of mine is stiffer than most. But there’s a way to test you, so I don’t have to waste no more time talking.”

 The blacksmith bent low and rested his right elbow on the surface of his extra long anvil. William frowned at the challenge and said, “I’m no weakling, but you don’t put a horse up against an elephant in a tug of war.”

 “I don’t expect you to win. I just want to see if you can hold me for a few seconds,” explained Mourino.

 William nodded and took his station on the other side of the anvil. The two men clasped hands and William was allowed to commence at will. After a full minute with both hands at the twelve o’ clock position, the blacksmith willed his huge arm down so that the test would end and the real work of the day could begin. As far as Mourino was concerned, the stranger had earned himself a try at the bellows. All that big talk about getting a percentage of the shop earnings would be agreed to if and when the back log was completed.

But the test didn’t end. Mourino’s fist remained at twelve o’ clock, and his iron will could not even get him to eleven.

 “Do I get my percentage?” asked William with a strained voice.

 “Si,” answered the bigger man with grudging respect.

 Mourino’s first suddenly found the strength to bring both fists down, albeit with a speed of an inch worm. Then when the test was done, William glanced over at a small pile of bricketts that stood alone in the center bottom section of the forge.

 “Want me to get your starter coke going?”

 “I’ll tend to that. You dump that load of ash out back then take that pair of gloves to your left. Damn things shrunk on me so they should fit you just right.”

 “Never use em,” drawled the new hire. “Skin needs to be kept thick.”

 Mourino grinned at the greenhorn’s statement.

 “We’ll just see about that,” the big man thought to himself. “You maybe good enough to work here, but you are not the heathen god Vulcan. I will take you down a peg or two---for your own damn good!”

Chapter Ten

When the merchant ship Clementine  reached Monterey, Mourino was still in the beginning stage of bringing his hired help down a peg or two. The blacksmith had inadvertently placed himself in a sort of contest with his highly resilient assistant. Mourino would coax William into forgoing any visit to the tavern so that they could work late evening hours on a project. Then William would get his revenge by waking his boss at four o’ clock in the morning and accuse him of oversleeping.

 Mourino never stopped being the undisputed master of his domain. But William was younger and could sweat gallons of water while bellowing out obscene soldier ditties to get on Mourino’s nerves.

 The blacksmith’s wife didn’t like where this stupid game was heading, since Mourino was pushing forty and the customers were showing up in droves. When it was time to settle up with William, Mourino handed over the appropriate coin but then insisted that they share a jug of wine that was left over from his younger sister’s wedding.

 “That Pablo fella will be in for his pump handle later today,” William reminded his boss as they sat down under the awning of a modest patio.

 “Oh the hell with Pablo and his stubby handle. At least I can fix the problem after the counter weight is mended. His wife has a similar complaint that is far more permanent. At least that is what she tells my wife.”

 William grinned more at the mentioning of Mourino’s wife than the vision of Pablos personal problem.

 “She is a fine lady. I suppose you won her over with your boundless wit and charm.”

 “I don’t think she liked me much at first,” confessed the smith, “but her father had watched me work for about a year and figured that Adoncia could do worse. The work is hard, but if you’re good at it, you’ll always be able to support a family.”

 “Yea—that’s true enough,” replied William.

 The blacksmith emptied his cup and then brought forth the real reason for the drinking session.

 “William---you made it plain that you’re not a newcomer to the forge. True---you’re not a proper smith—but you could be one with less than a year’s training. If this town keeps growing as I figure it will, I could probably fix you up with your own shop in less than two years.”

 “You got another sister needing a husband?” William asked bluntly.

 Mourino shrugged slightly and answered, “Sister-in-law. Kind of boney but she never loses her temper and she’s got every one of her teeth.”

 “Well, that’s more than I can say about most of the women I’ve known in my life time,” William half joked, “but I’m not the sort of fellow who settles down.”

 “No. You’re the sort of fellow who keeps marching into battle until your luck gets used up and you catch a ball in the guts or maybe just in a leg or arm. You keep pressing your luck because you don’t think you’re good for anything but fighting. Well, it never made no sense to me. I’ve seen men march for days on end with little sleep. Go without food---go without proper cover, and they never gave up until they got killed. Men like that could make their way without a musket put they just couldn’t see it. After watching you work I’m convinced that you could make a proper go of it. You have a practiced way about you that could carry over into anything. Don’t let that bleed out on some damn battlefield.”

 “Where did you serve?” William asked as soon as the sermon was done.

 “San Jacinto. I kept their wagons from breaking down before the general finally turned us around.

 William shook his head. “Sorry, the name doesn’t ring any bells.”

 “It is the place where General Sam Houston defeated Santa Anna,” explained the blacksmith. “My captain was Juan Seguin, a brave man who left the Alamo to get help but was not allowed to return. Not only did we have to forsake those brave men at the mission, we then had to retreat eastward, day after day while slowly growing our force. When Houston finally gave the order to turn and attack our pursuers---it was like a dam bursting.”

 Mourino poured himself another drink.

 “Seven-hundred of Santa Anna’s men died in a quarter of an hour. Anna took off his uniform and tried to escape but one of his men made the mistake of calling out to him. I left Texas soon after Houston made the decision not to execute the peacock. I know now that Houston did the right thing---but I hated him for it at the time. So many young men dying for a man who cared only for himself---yet was allowed to go free. It was more than I could bear. No young man should waste his life on some power mad bastard.”

 William smiled at that, but the expression didn’t reach his eyes.

 “I’m different, Boss. Believe me---I’m not some farm boy who gets mowed down before he can even lose his cherry. Besides, those kids you’re talking about need a kind of big brother to look after them, and that’s what I do in so many fights. Call it superstition, but I like to think it brings me luck.”

 The big Mexican nodded and rose to his feet.

 “Si. My wife’s head is full of the scriptures, but mine is full of memories that do not fit well with what I was taught as a child. In the end, all we can do is hope that God does not judge us too harshly for where we have been, and what we have done.”

 “Well now---if it was your intention to break me over the past few days, you should have used that kind of religious talk, cause that would have done it. Anyway, have you noticed that this is most talking we’ve done in the past three days?”

 “Not counting those bawdy songs that my wife could have done without,” put in the boss.

 “Yea, I’m sorry about that. I should have sung the French ones I know. They’re just as earthy but appeal to women who don’t know the language.”

Chapter Eleven

The Swiss landowner was deep in thought as he marched down a forested path that connected Mourino’s Smithy with Vallejo’s Weavery. In truth he had much to think about. He owed over twenty-thousand dollars to the Russians. He had an outstanding account with almost every merchant in the area, and while most of his laborers did not actually work for cash, he still had to provide them with cloth and bead material.

 He had much going for him since the land was free and the labor cheap, but much depended on successful farm crops and the ability to get along with the Indians. He would need years of good fortune to go with all the hard work, and while it was true that California was more hospitable than most frontier lands, it was still a place where only fools hung their dreams on luck.

 Captain John A. Sutter was not exactly what you would call a fool, but he was optimistic to the point of being irresponsible. So much so, that he was thinking about purchasing better uniforms for his Indian militia, and a new sword for himself. Drawing his saber from its scabbard, he noted the tarnished guard and the worn grips. The weapon was a faithful friend that he would always cherish, but it had always been his theory that a smartly decked leader could command with more authority than a man of medium dress.

 Napoleon Bonaparte had taught him the value of appearance, just by marching through his home village many years ago. Some shortsighted frontiersmen would call him a dandy, but Sutter was convinced that his uniform was a great asset when it came to dealing with people of all cultures. In any case, it gave him a sense of identity in a land where a man could become anything with luck, perseverance, and one more helping of luck.

 Sutter was casually poking at passing fern leaves when suddenly a real adversary materialized in front of him. The would be assailant was startled to find his victim with sword in hand. The ambush was not supposed to be that big a challenge. But there could be no turning back at this critical moment, so the dagger man lunged ahead with less steel than he would have liked.

 The Swiss Guardsman could have run the man through if he had been thinking quickly enough. But since the attacker was not an Indian covered in war paint, Sutter hesitated, thereby denying himself the chance to put his attacker on the end of his long blade. Instead, he cut at the attacker’s hand with the saber’s edge. The assailant cried out in pain but held fast to his knife. He was an adversary the likes of which Sutter had never faced in his life.

 Sutter’s own blade was made useless, and the dagger slipped in and was stopped by a single brass button. Sutter managed to get hold of his opponent’s knife wrist before the blade could be centered, and he chose to relinquish his sword so that he could grope at a hand that was determined to gouge out his right eye. Then a knee shot into his groin followed by a head butt to his nose.

 With his victim dazed, the assailant tried to pull off a hip throw, with Sutter gamely holding on to both of his opponent’s wrists. The throw failed for the most part, but when Sutter let go of a wrist in order to punch at his opponent’s nose, he missed and only grazed a cheek. A counter punch caught Sutter in the upper throat causing him to lose his vital control of the dagger. The assailant was about to drive in with his liberated blade when his head and neck felt enormous pressure on one side. An instant later his neck gave with a muffled crack, and a twitching corpse fell to the ground.

 “We meet again----William,” Sutter managed to say with a raspy out of breath voice.

 “Did he get your windpipe?” William asked with concern.

 “Hopefully----it won’t----swell shut.”

 “I’ll help you get to the doctor’s office, but first---“

 William quickly went through the dead man’s pockets. He found seven dollars in coin, and a tiny statuette that was meant to be a likeness of Jesus. The mercenary groaned something in Latin when he recognized the figurine. It caused him to forget about the injured man until Sutter stepped in front of him.

 “Could we---get going---please?”

 “Yea,” muttered William, who was now more curious than ever about the ship that had come in.

 William ran and got a horse from Mourino, then helped Sutter get on it. He walked the horse to the doctor’s office, all the while searching for men who had a certain look about them. Once inside the building, he decided to remain there until he could get clear on a few things. He explained what happened to the physician, and when he received assurance that Sutter would be alright, he then requested that the local magistrate come to the doctor’s office. The doctor thought the request was rather strange, but since the rash of homicides had thus far gone unsolved, the doctor wasn’t about to say no.

 Ten minutes later Ramon Mestres, recently appointed magistrate for Monterey, stepped into the doctor’s office with a sword at his side and a pistol tucked in his belt.

 “Senhor Sutter, let me be the first to congratulate you for what you have done. You and this other gentleman have rendered the community a great service, and we shall be forever in your debt.”

 Sutter handed the magistrate a note and then laid back down on the doctor’s examination couch.

 “Yes, the doctor has explained your condition. He has gone to the general store to purchase something that he believes will be of benefit to you.”

 Mestres then turned to face William with a smile and an outstretched hand.

 “Ramon Mestres at your service, Senhor. And your name would be…..?”

“William Longpenance.”

 “Interesting name,” Mestres commented with a blank expression.

 “I’m an orphan,” lied William. “Somebody slapped that name on me when I was really young. Guess he had a strange sense of humor.”

 “I see. Well—uh---would you be so kind as to direct me to where you left the body?”

 “I guess I’ll have to, since Sutter is in no shape to do it. But could you answer me a question right off? I’d like to know where that ship in the harbor is bound for.”

 “The Sandwich Islands, then on to China.”

 “Aw nuts,” William muttered to himself.

 “They only stopped here to deliver additional press parts for the new winery.”

 That went in one ear and out the other. William was focused on the fact that he now knew who was doing all the killing in Monterey. But it didn’t make any sense; and more importantly---he couldn’t sail away from the whole business unless he was willing to cross the Pacific. With more than a little trepidation he brought Mestres back to the scene of the ambush; all the while hoping they would encounter only Mexicans.

 Mestres dismounted quickly and knelt beside the Anglo Saxon.

 “I don’t know the identity of this man, but I saw him deliver several large boxes to the new winery some two months ago. Since he is not a dock worker, I must consider the likelihood that he works for the winery. Help me load the corpse onto my spare horse and we shall take it over to the winery to see if anyone there can indentify it.”

 “You think that’s wise, Senhor Mestres?” asked William.

 “What is your concern, Senhor Longpenance? The winery is only a half mile out of our way, and I don’t like to interfere with men’s daily labor anymore than I have to.”

 William shrugged slightly and said, “I was thinking that if this man has an accomplice, that man might run out the back way and hide while you’re standing at the front door. But if you get a posse together, you can surround the winery and make sure that doesn’t happen.”

 Mestres chuckled for just an instant.

 “Senhor---I will not deny my lack of experience, but in the unlikely event that a manhunt becomes necessary, the surrounding rancheros would come to my aid, and they can run down any fugitive. But if it would please you, I will grant you authority to arrest anyone you see fleeing out the back of the winery. You can circle around as I approach the front door.”

 “I’m afraid not. I took some painful body blows dealing with that fellow,” lied William. “I came out here because I felt it was my duty, but I’ve had my fill of fighting or pursuing for the rest of the day. So if you don’t mind, I’m going to go treat myself to a drink.”

 The magistrates grin disappeared, but he was content enough with the fact that a dangerous killer was no longer stalking the community.

 “I will bear the brunt of the weight. Just help me get the bastard onto my back.”

 Soon the job was done and Mestres was about to take the trail that would bring him to the winery.

 “You say you’re new on the job. What happened to the old magistrate?” asked William as he pointed his horse in a different direction.

 “He was murdered by that piece of shit on the pack horse,” answered Mestres. When this business is concluded, come see me. I will find you a better job, now that you have had your fill of Mourino and his man made hell.”

 William watched the magistrate amble down the trail. He had no reason to believe that the man was riding to his doom, but there was no doubt in the soldier’s mind that if Mestres would pay attention to other men’s hunches, he would have elected for a posse.

 The mercenary frowned at the idea that Monterey was still unsafe.

 “Why do I feel like I’m walking into shit?”

Chapter Twelve

Father Jose de Real placed his piece of buckskin on the same spot where the rat had first made off with some bread. It was four feet from the rat hole and just a bit out of reach from the pile of straw that the prisoner was forced to sleep on. Real’s coarse woven robe hung against the north wall of the cell, and the loose fitting wall peg could be yanked out in an instant by a line made from a portion of the robe.

 All this could be assessed by daylight that filtered down through a heavy iron grating that had been built into the middle of the ceiling. Apparently the chamber had once served as a storage room that required some measure of air circulation. A heavy oak door that went all the way to the stone floor was the only thing needed to turn the room into a fine prison cell. The priest had no idea what was in the chamber above his cell. He only knew that repeated calls through the grill had gained him no response, or any hint that other humans were anywhere about. For the past couple of days now, the same was true of his cell door.

 The thief was expected to return at night, and the prisoner would have to bet his life on his ability to hear the rodent make his way over straws that were positioned with a great deal of forethought. He would then pull out the peg and his robe would fall over the rat’s only avenue of escape. He would need to place his back to the exit until the coming of daylight. Then, for a moment or so, the starving man would be a predator, instead of a victim. A powerful  carnivore, instead of a porridge eating bookworm.

 Only his stomach would rejoice in the role. A quiet soul, who had been raised to believe that Man is separate from the laws of the jungle, would have to pounce and snatch; crush and pick apart. The scholarly priest had once been told that rat meat tasted like chicken. Well, it would have to be raw chicken, after ripping the pelt open with his teeth.

 Loss of life and dignity came half an hour after dawn, and at the height of the man’s thirst, the rodent’s blood could have rivaled the finest wine. It revived him just enough to conclude that a non-tanned rat pelt would make better bait than a piece of buckskin, presuming that the half eaten rodent had not been a solitary scavenger. But fortunately for the priest, he wasn’t given sufficient time to test his assumption.

 Twelve hours after his chicken dinner, the heavy wooden cell door scraped open and four men stood just beyond the threshold with a litter. One of the men entered the cell and immediately noted the rat pelt and a few tiny bones.

 “My compliments, Priest, you are not the weakling I thought you were.”

 The priest struggled to his feet; not entirely for the benefit of his enemy.

 “I don’t mind becoming a martyr,” de Real muttered with a bit of a slur, “but why must it be so awfully---time consuming.”

 With that the priest dropped to his knees, then teetered forward. His chief jailor caught him by the chin and held him in an upright position long enough for the stretcher to be placed where it could receive the priest’s bony form. Two men carried the litter easily, while the other two followed at a leisurely pace.

 All four men could trace their ancestry back to the court of Ferdinand and Isabella, but the stretcher bearers were most likely descended from royal mistresses or lackeys of some sort. The other pair stood straighter and possessed a predatory gaze that was difficult for them to conceal when speaking to outsiders. The one who had spoken to de Real was named Juan Saldivar, and his colleague was Arturo Sanchez.

 Although both men had been brought up as Spanish gentlemen, their attire and hairstyles were anything but ornate. In fact they were an almost mocking duplication of Father de Real’s appearance, right down to the bald pate know as a tonsure. No one could say for certain why the strange hair style was created, but the theory was that it was meant to make even a young monk appear wise and fatherly. However the woolen robes could be discarded at the end of the day, when any and all visitors were safely off the grounds. Then the masquerade would end for everyone except the gate keepers, and the true work of the complex would carry on in the underground portions of the old monastery and winery.

 “Be thankful his brains have not dried up,” grumbled Sanchez. “Boss Meleck would be most displeased with us if we had to report that Bacon’s triliteral cipher  is only eighty percent decoded, and the only recognized expert on the code has chocked on a rat bone.”

 Saldivar gazed briefly at the dozens of empty wine barrels that sat collecting dust in the west section of the spacious basement area. Then he lead his companion up a flight of stone stairs while the stretcher bearers gave rudimentary first aid to the priest somewhere on the other side of the barrels.

 “We should also be thankful that we have been selling that rot gut wine of ours as fast as we can make it. Otherwise I think Hernandez would have talked me into putting the priest in a barrel of wine and sending the barrel back to our headquarters in Lisboa.”

 “Si, I am more than a little concerned about that,” confessed Sanchez. “The local populace accepts the idea that we are poor monks who are merely learning  the art of wine making. But every time another shipment arrives, men come out here to ask for work. Sooner or later a real wine maker is going to sail into Monterey and expect a grand tour from us.”

 “What is the latest count?” asked Saldivar as the two men strolled down a long central corridor.

 “Seven-hundred and fifty revolving rifles, and three-hundred revolving pistols. That Colt fellow is a genius. What a pity he does not work for us,” Sanchez half joked.

 “All we ever need is the idea,” said Saldivar. “With our resources around the world, we can improve or expand on any concept, once we have the idea.”

 “Well, we have only eighty percent of Bacon’s idea,” Sanchez reminded his associate unnecessarily. “That remaining twenty percent pertains to landmarks that don’t work if you travel in the wrong direction. What an irony that one of our people chose to utilize a secret code that was used against us centuries past. I find such a strong interest in history rather annoying.”

 “And we are not completely certain of the cipher material that our guest just happened to have written down when we captured him,” growled Saldivar. “But you know what makes this code so damn interesting, Sanchez? It is the fact that we cannot use it just yet---but we were lead to believe that we could. How many useless mines would we have dug? How many men would we have hired who would have squandered our---“

 “Jefe! That new magistrate is approaching the gate, and he brings a body with him!” reported Hernandez as he ran in from the courtyard.

 “Sutter? Why in God’s name would he bring the body here?” Sanchez asked with a sweating brow.

 Saldivar didn’t answer. All thirty-two men residing in the winery lived with the same fear hanging over their heads; namely that the men folk of Monterey would someday come calling with muskets and torches because the secret of the winery failed to remain as silent as its victims. Not that Saldivar’s men had any fear of violent death. They were warriors all, and the winery had originally been built by men who had Indian attacks on their minds.

 No, the make believe monks were not afraid that they might have to fight. Their only fear was that they might fail in their overall objective, which had been many years in the planning.

 Saldivar marched out to the front gate, his throat tightening when he realized that the man slung over the pack horse was not John Sutter.

 “Dear God in heaven, what happened to that poor man?” Saldivar asked in his priestly persona.

 “He was killed by a third party while attempting to murder Senhor John Sutter,” Mestres stated while lifting and turning the head of the corpse. “Can you identify him?”

 “Si. His name is Lazaro Cardenas. I hired him to do advanced wood working. Admittedly, he did seem like a troubled soul, and I might add that he was not Catholic.”

 “I need to take a look at his personal effects,” stated Mestres.

 “But of course. I will have them all sent to your office,” pledged Saldivar.

 “I would prefer to take them now, Father. If Cardenas had an accomplice, there might be great danger for anyone holding Cardenas’ belongings. Also, I would appreciate it if I could inspect his living quarters at this time. Probably won’t tell me anything, but you never know.”

 “Well, actually he didn’t have a room of his own. He slept in the stable on hay and his travel bag was never in plain sight. Very secretive fellow in retrospect, but I must admit that a pile of hay is probably more comfortable than the beds we use in this place.”

 Mestres smiled at the small joke, but then proceeded to lead his horses through the open gate. To Saldivar’s dismay he took the horses all the way to the modest stable that stood between the west wall of the winery and the heavy iron fence that surrounded the compound. While almost at the wide entrance, the magistrate noted a small portable forge set up against the adobe wall of the winery. Behind that, was a most impressive pile of lead ingots.

 “Must be a thousand pounds of lead there,” Mestres commented while tying off his mounts.

 “We hope to earn money selling figurines ” Saldivar answered smoothly. “In truth our wine is not the best, and as you know, we can no longer do God’s work in this part of the world, unless we can support our own activities.”

 “Si, that is a great pity,” said Mestres, who like most of the people of Monterey, had always been pleased that the mysterious monks had never come begging for money.

 “Those of us who chose to come north, did so because we believe in California,” Saldivar went on. “Soon a highly resourceful artisan will be joining us. A man who would rather make small  statues of The Saints than large statues of that worldly Santa Anna. We will make statues for every city and village along the Pacific seaboard. Then we will resume our work with the Indians, but we will not underpay them the way Senhor John Sutter does.”

 “Of course not,” Mestres responded politely.

 The magistrate was just about to step away from the forge when he noticed a piece of wire that had been formed in the shape of a noose. Apparently someone had dropped it while packing or unpacking a horse. Mestres picked it out of a shallow pile of hay and was only mildly curious about it until he noticed that both ends of the looped wire had small wooden handles attached. Mestres had never seen a garrote before, but he was astute enough to realize what it was.

 “Which horse belonged to Cardenas?” asked Mestres while hiding the wire with his body.

 “He had none. He came to Monterey by ship, and could not afford to purchase a mount.”

 “But he did spend some time in this stable,” pressed the magistrate. “I saw him driving a team of horses from the dock area to this winery.”

 “Driving---si, but Father Cesar takes care of the stable. He would have hitched the horses to the wagon.”

 “Then I want to speak to Father Cesar,” said Mestres. “I am thinking that he may have allowed some passerby to sleep in the stable. A stranger who might have dropped this.”

 Mestres held out the silent killing weapon for Saldivar to see. The priest took the wire and stared at it with a look of child like wonder.

 “It is meant to pass over a man’s head? But none of the murder victims were strangled. Perhaps this thing is meant to be used on vicious dogs or even a pig.”

 Mestres turned his back on the innocent looking priest and began a closer examination of the stable area.

 “It is an instrument of murder, and I am afraid that I will now have to poke around your winery until I am satisfied that Cardenas had no accomplice.”

 “No such accomplice could reside here,” Saldivar declared emphatically, “and I believe it is only logical that Cardenas acted entirely alone. That’s how it is with madmen, and obviously the man was mad. The killings made no sense at all. The victims had nothing in common.”

 “Si, and my predecessor was the last of the murder victims. How often do magistrates die at the hands of random killing lunatics? No, Father, there was some reason for his murder.”

 Mestres took no consolation in being right as the wire bit into his throat. The thought of killer priests gave way in an instant to the more profound realization that inhaling is the last thing you give a damn about as you move towards the threshold of another world.

 Saldivar left the wire in the dead man’s throat and called for the men who were stationed above ground at that hour.

 “Find out who the irresponsible bastard was who left the garrote lying around. Give that man the task of burying the bodies at least two miles west of here. Then have the shithead ride all night long before releasing the horses. I want Alonso to get rid of the magistrate’s back trail, then have him go into town and find out what went wrong with the Sutter ambush.”

 Then Saldivar angrily marched into the winery and returned to his office, where a huge blackboard was covered with symbols and portents of a new western empire.

Chapter Thirteen

William frowned at the sight of a “monk” leading two beasts of burden out the gate of the winery and then proceeding in the opposite direction of town. Mestres was now tied down in the same manner as the corpse he had brought with him to a very dangerous place. A shovel was also strapped to the back of the magistrate’s horse, and it was obvious enough that Mestres and Sutter’s attacker were supposed to disappear somewhere, forever.

 The professional soldier felt a twinge of guilt, but quickly brushed if off as he made his way back to his horse. Mestres had done nothing to deserve death, but magistrates, like soldiers, had to be willing to march into harms way. But now someone would have to take over, and that someone was not a happy person. Once again it was time to do what the soldier hated doing most. With the utmost reluctance William closed in on the one man burial detail. The underling was allowed to finish his hole before he was struck from behind with an improvised club. When the fellow came to he found himself hanging upside down over a patch of ground that had been prepped for a campfire.

 “Good evening, Brother,” said William.

 The prisoner craned his neck to make sense of his surroundings but it wasn’t easy. There was little moonlight in the space between the trees, and surrounding ferns would have cut down on visibility even in the daylight. But the dry moss and shavings for a fire were only inches from his head, and his captor was standing close to where the single grave had been dug.

 “It was not me!” cried out the prisoner. “I did not leave the garrote in the stable, but I would not argue with my accuser! I know that you cannot allow me to leave this place alive, but I swear that I do not merit a slow death! Please, take my life quickly.”

 William had no idea what the man was babbling about. But there was one way he might find out.

 “I came from the ship,” lied William. “I reported to your leader only a few hours before that meddling city official arrived. The project does not yet seem to be in jeopardy, but I suspect that my superiors will not be pleased when they learn that a magistrate appeared at the winery with the body of one of our own, and the official then had to be killed. What would you say to me about this if you were inclined to survive this night?”

 “I have no additional information for you, sir. We still need to get the remainder of the code from the prisoner, and one last landowner remains alive. But only Cardenas blundered in any way that I know of.”

 “Can the prisoner stand on his own two feet?”

 The man hanging from a rope frowned at the question.

 “I don’t know, sir. I’m sure Saldivar explained to you that de Real became a little----malnourished.”

 The man in the dark pulled out flint and steel and produced a shower of sparks over the light vegetation.

 “Please, sir, you know all that I know!” wailed the prisoner.

 “Not yet I don’t,” muttered William as he got the fire going. “Now I want you to tell me what the hell you assholes are doing in California. Take all the time you want, but you’re gunna blister at the same speed.”

 “You are not one of us? Then will you let me go if I tell you everything?”

 “If I believe you---and brother, that there is a big if.”

 “They---they found gold. Enough to start a new country. We are killing the men----who won’t sell their land.”

 “I need to be sure. Give me the name of your organization.”

 “We call it The Company. It used to have another name, but that was before I was born. The only names I know belong to the men back in the winery. If you’re a lawman, you need to go after them. I’m just hired muscle. I started three years back. I’ll tell you anything you want to know about my days in New York, but I’m not anything but hired help here. I swear.”

 “What about this prisoner you mentioned?”

 “Exact location---of the gold---is still a secret. The prisoner is the key. But---he won’t talk.”

 “Did you guys think of using fire?” William asked in a casual tone while cutting the overhead rope.

 “Please, I’m a small fish. Get a posy together and storm the winery. Then you’ll get the ones that matter,” uttered the burn victim as he laid on the ground in misery.

 “You matter enough to be tied up. If you can worm your way out of here, you get your freedom. Just pretend to be Hugh Glass and don’t give up.”

 The prisoner stifled a protest, noting that the fire was still burning well.

Chapter 13B

 The man who came knocking at the door of Dr. Samuel Rodriguez’ office was quite a bit different from the patient who had now been there for nearly eight hours. Captain John Sutter had been wearing a dress uniform when he had been brought in. His moustache was neatly trimmed, and his hair only slightly mussed by the worst hand to hand fight of his life. All in all, a gentleman patient, who would have kept his voice low, even if he hadn’t suffered a throat injury.

 The newcomer on the other hand, was clad in dirty buckskins, with a filthy mane of jet black hair, and a beard that could hide an eagle’s nest. Blacker still were his eyes, which were both keen and filled with suspicion. They locked onto Sutter’s gentle blue eyes for just an instant, then passed on to the doctor who was getting ready to call it a night.

 “I wouldn’t have come, but I saw yer lights on,” the frontiersman almost shouted.

 “Well, this man came in with a life threatening injury,” explained the doctor. “I was going to take him over to the boarding house before turning in for the night.”

 The man in buckskins nodded slightly and said, “Name’s Smith. James Smith. Gotta bum knee here, but I reckon it kin wait till morning. Been limpin around with it fer years now, but it’s gettin worse. I don’t see a doctor’s office everyday, so I figured I’d better stop in.”

 “Very good, Senhor. I will see you in the morning. Say---around seven,” said the doctor with a painted on smile.

 The stranger was about to leave when Sutter croaked out a single word.

“Wait.”

 After hastily scribbling something on the note book he had been given, Sutter handed the book to the doctor.

 “Captain Sutter would like to know if you would consider escorting him to his ranchero. As you can see, his throat has been injured and I do not want him to travel home alone.”

 Sutter did some more quick scribbling.

 “Captain Sutter says that he would pay you one cow hide, and two pounds of dried meat.”

 Smith looked thoughtful for a moment, and during that moment the doctor was hoping that the wild looking man would opt to hole up in the nearby tavern rather than swat at mosquitoes for hours on end.

 “If you’ll also pay my doctor bill, you gotta deal.”

 The doctor let out a small sigh and said, “Thy will be done, Captain Sutter. As to the matter of payment, I would appreciate receiving mine in the near future.”

 “Senhor Smith can bring it here from my ranchero,” wrote Sutter.

 “I would not trust this mangy fellow to deliver a bag of oats to his own horse,”  thought the doctor. But he passed on the message, knowing that the eccentric man from Switzerland would have things his way.

 “Well now, it might be easier to send the Doc’s money down river,” drawled the long beard. “Towns make me a mite skittish, and if this here Gent could use another cow puncher, I’d rather stay where the air ain’t fouled by so many fish nets and boiling cauldrons.”

 Sutter beamed at that, but the doctor promised himself that he would have a word with the magistrate before the two left town. The crack brained Anglo would certainly be less inclined to pay his debts if he should run afoul of a flea bitten swindler.

 “Keep an eye on him, Lord,”  prayed the doctor as he headed for home. “He’s easy enough to spot in that uniform.”

Chapter Fourteen

William spent half the remaining night circling the five acre enclosure. Trust the Catholics to build something that would be non-military, yet highly defensible all the same. Reinforced oak doors and shuttered windows that featured firing crosses so that a rifleman could move his muzzle up and down or right and left. Everything else made of thick stone. One very large snapping turtle that was now withdrawn into its shell for the night. Yet there was a guard that walked the perimeter of the tall iron fence work, and that was actually encouraging.

 William noted that the guard always started and ended his circular patrol in the same spot, and the hood from his monk’s costume was up, likely to protect him for the mosquitoes. That was good. Such lax behavior wouldn’t have been tolerated if they were expecting trouble of any sort. “Trouble” climbed over the fence and took another thirty minutes getting up behind the hooded sentry.

 Ordinarily the master fighting man would have chosen to break the man’s neck, but in the employ of the blacksmith, he happened upon a tool that Mourino had long discarded. It resembled a pick ax that was roughly the size of a tomahawk. William worked an extra hour to pay for it, not specifying what he wanted it for. The pick had no difficulty penetrating the top of the sentry’s skull, and the man was fading out before his body ever hit the ground.

 Unfortunately, extracting the pick required a full powered yank. If there had been another man to deal with, William’s new weapon would have slowed him down; perhaps to the point of losing. Still, it had its advantages over a knife, so he tucked back into his belt and then stripped the body of its over garment. With his costume donned he went back to the guard’s resting spot and began yawning as loudly as possible.

 “Roberto, I can hear you on this side of the door, for God’s sake,” complained a muffled voice. “I will bring you some coffee if you promise not to piss as loud as you yawn.”

 A moment later the back door opened and another robed man stepped out into the moonless night. Things grew even darker for the cult member when the tip of William’s booted toe connected just under the man’s chin, causing his head to snap back with a distinct crack. Then came the moment of truth for the brazen invader. If the room was occupied with additional adversaries, then William would be shit out of luck. But a few tense steps forward showed that the room was a kitchen, filled with unwashed pots and pans.

 William picked up a butcher knife and weighed it in his hand as he cautiously approached a basement staircase. Pausing at the top of the steps, he reached out with his combat instincts for some hint of danger. He detected plenty of it, but judged that the majority of the cult members were on the ground floor, beyond the one room that he could enter safely.

 Prodded on by feelings that were not entirely his own he descended the stairs and was almost put at ease by the sight of stacks of wine kegs and bottle cases. There was only one lantern that had been set on a free standing keg and its light failed to serve the full expanse of the subterranean warehouse. William took the lantern with him and commenced to make his way between containers that were warmly familiar to him. Then suddenly he came upon a huge cache of objects that were less familiar, but recognizable enough.

 One of the many shipping crates was open and from it he lifted a device that was streamlined, coated with oil and deadly looking. It was a carbine that featured a five shot rotating cylinder like the ones used in the recently invented Patterson Colt. William wasn’t shocked to find such hardware in the possession of organized crime.  He just couldn’t figure out why such weapons would be brought to such a remote and unimportant part of the new world. Why would these lunatics give a damn about the town of Monterey?

 “Hey Priest, you ready for some more soup?”

 William dropped instantly into a fighting stance at the sound of the unexpected voice. He then realized that it was coming from the other side of yet another tall stack of wine kegs.

 “The Boss says we’re supposed to get as much soup into you as we can so I’ll go get you another helping if I know you won’t waste it.”

 “Not a single unholy drop,” responded someone who sounded older and frailer.

 William was about to put the carbine down, but instead he kept it and moved to another spot between the voices and the bottom of the staircase. When the gang member got closer he noticed the light and approached it with the intention of questioning the kitchen worker who obviously had come down stairs to search for a sack of pepper or something. Just as he began to realize that the lantern was unattended, a blur of motion came from his right and a shoulder stock struck him hard in the throat.

 The man bowed slightly while struggling to inhale. William quickly but calmly got behind his enemy and gripped the head by it’s opposite ends. With a mighty twist he made his second kill of the night, making a bee line for the heavy cell door while the basement guard continued to twitch silently on the stone floor.

 To say that Father de Real was surprised to see his liberator would be an understatement of the first magnitude. The middle aged man stared at William as if he were a patron saint that had just passed through a solid wall.

 “You’re not one of them. You’re features are----different.”

 “I’m here to get you out. Keep quiet and close behind me. I’ve never done anything like this before and I’ll probably screw it up.”

 The priest moved with stiff joints but he gamely kept up with the more agile soldier until they were half way up the stairs. At that point de Real exhibited the effects of his recent bout with malnutrition.

 “Sorry,” he whispered between puffs.

 The soldier willed himself to be patient, even though he was in the worst place he could think of in all the wide world. With the butcher knife in hand he lead the priest to the door, then turned while changing his grip on the knife. He heard something, or maybe it was that thing that went beyond the five senses. He had come to him some years back. Trying to describe it would be like explaining color to a blind man.

 A second later a gang member entered through the inner door. The butcher knife was already flying across the length of the room. It caught the gang member in the throat just as his brain told him that he should sound the Hue and Cry. That killing was far less efficient, and William grabbed hold of the priest so that he wouldn’t waste time gawking at the dying man.

 Out in the dark William made a split second decision. He lead the priest to the stable and began searching about in the near black.

 “What are you looking for?” whispered the priest, certain that it wasn’t a horse because his benefactor kept walking past them.

 “A climbing ladder. That fence will be a bigger challenge than the stairs was,” responded William while pulling off his costume.

 “Well, perhaps if I could get up on your shoulders I could then make it,” suggested the priest.

 “I suppose so,” the soldier conceded, “ but what about the jump on the other side? The brain may be willing, but what about the legs?”

 “My legs will do what I tell them to do, just as my stomach did.”

 “Intruso!” shouted someone on the other side of the grounds.

 “I just got talked into it,” declared William as he lead the way to the section of fence that ran parallel with the nearest wall of the stable.

 The priest got his feet onto William’s shoulders and walked his hands up the vertical bars as the soldier slowly straightened his legs.

 “Muy buena,” the priest whispered gratefully, but William had already locked gazes with a cult member who was carrying a single shot pistol.

 “You got two seconds to clear this fence, Priest.”

 Actually, he had five. The man with the pistol stopped moving, cocked the heavy hammer of his weapon and took very careful aim. That gave the priest the time he needed to step onto the uppermost horizontal bar of the fence and then consign himself to the second half of their unplanned getaway.

 The .40 caliber pistol lit up the night for one brief moment, telling every gang member where to converge with additional loaded shot. William felt a familiar burning sensation along his short ribs and doubled over so as to convince his enemy that a follow up strike would be a piece of cake. The trick wasn’t necessary. Just the sight of the priest running off into the darkness was enough to prompt the pistol carrier to advance with his empty weapon now held like a club.

 William waited until the distance was right then drew and threw his little pick ax. The cult member was able to deflect it with his pistol and then charge in with renewed determination. The professional soldier caught the pistol butt with wrists that were crossed in an X formation. The left wrist then parted to shove the pistol club off to the side while the right hand performed a two finger eye gouge. This was followed up with a straight punch to William’s favorite target: the throat.

 Now more denizens of the winery were sprinting in to take their turn with the priest’s mysterious champion. William cursed his own lapse in judgment, climbing the fence like an ape and vowing that he would give no more thought to the welfare of the priest far ahead.

 The iron fence emitted a vibrating groan as several lead projectiles hit it almost simultaneously. William abandoned his perch; vaguely aware of the thrumming sounds being created all around him. When he hit the ground on the other side, he clutched at his side and commanded his legs to make for the tall brush that grew some one-hundred yards beyond the perimeter. William got about halfway to it when someone bothered to stop running and actually rest his weapon on a pile of firewood. The result was something better than a lucky shot.

 William pitched forward and fell hard with a bruise on his side. The ball had been driven by a weak powder charge and only cracked one of the few ribs that the whale had missed. With the resiliency of a wild animal he rose up on hands and knees and began crawling towards the brush. It was an exercise in futility. Half a dozen men were now climbing the fence and many more had headed out the front gate when they realized that the hunt would not end at the iron barrier. They would arrive perhaps thirty or forty seconds after the climbers.

 William scowled at the sound of horses moving towards him. Somehow he must have missed them when he was circling the grounds.

 “I should have known,” he muttered to the weeds beneath him.

 Then suddenly a huge animal was there on his left.

 “You have only ten seconds to get on the other horse,” the priest stated evenly.

 William’s head jerked up, then with a superhuman will he got to his feet and mounted the second steed while leaving the reins in the priest’s capable hand.

 The two horses bolted off as men rushed in close enough to grab at the saddle blanket or even the tail of William’s mount. Fortunately for the horsemen, (or more likely the horses) not a single firearm remained charged. The professional soldier found himself grinning at the sight of men with empty guns struggling mostly in bare feet to keep up with the horses. William never would have guessed it, but the scrawny priest was proving himself to be one hell of a fine partner in this business that neither of them wanted. After putting enough space between them and their pursuers, the priest slowed the horses and started avoiding the brush that was hard on both man and beast.

 “How bad is your wound?” the priest finally asked.

 “It’s just a graze. I won’t even need a doctor, but I’m kind of curious why those assholes didn’t use the new repeating guns to fill us full of lead. Any chance they’re still waiting on the percussion caps? The guns I saw in the crates can’t fire with a standard musket cap.”

 “That is correct, Senhor. Ten thousand such caps are still on the ship.”

 “Why?” The ship’s been in the harbor a long time now.”

 “The guns came from another ship, but the captain of the present vessel is a very inquisitive fellow. He would not hand over such a cargo to a group of wine making monks without asking questions. So the shipment will be purchased by a man who will claim to be en route to a certain military faction down in Mexico.”

 Then the priest turned his horse around and tossed the knotted reins over the head of the other mount.

 “Now kindly identify yourself, Senhor. I am of course very grateful for you gallant rescue, but even the virtue of modesty can be carried too far.”

 “William Longpenance. Amateur lawman, you might say. I found out you were being held against your will here. I didn’t realize it would be so tough liberating you.”

 “Those men do more than just kidnap. Every man back there is a killer,” stated the priest, “and you were like a tiger in a den of wolves. I do not think that you are just a man who blundered into a scorpion nest, Senhor Longpenance.”

 “That’s right,” admitted the mercenary, “but that fact is not going to benefit you any longer. I want to know why you were being held prisoner. I want to know what I’m getting into.”

 “Which means that you already know that I am a man who deals in secrets, and that describes you too, at least in part. How very interesting. Let us proceed toward the coast,” said de Real while turning his mount around.

 William moved ahead and cut across de Real’s path.

 “Don’t try to hide behind your station, Priest. You showed courage when you came back for me, but I got you out of the snake pit to begin with. As far as I’m concerned we’re square now. That means you better tell me what I want to know or say good bye to me right now.”

 The priest wasn’t the least bit frightened but he nodded slightly as a hoot owl flew over head.

 “My name is Father Jose de Real. In a manner of speaking, I work for the Vatican. I spent many years studying the history of secret codes and the key systems that could still be needed today should an old coded document be uncovered. My accomplishments in that field would no doubt put you to sleep, but I have been working on something that would interest any man who is breathing. Some forty-two years ago a rather unremarkable Spanish fur trapper named Rafael Simancas found gold in California. In six months he was able to mine nearly seventy pounds of it all by himself. He then hired a dozen men to work for him, but in a letter written to his brother, he stated that the men were challenging his legal claim to the land.”

 “The land is near the winery?” asked William.

 “No. The lode is somewhere north and east of here. Perhaps as far as the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.”

 William rolled his eyes at that.

 “Well at least you won’t have to dig up the neighborhood. Look Priest---there are more counterfeit gold maps in the world than there are shitholes. I have learned that a man who sets things down on paper, can be a source of grief for generations to come.”

 “You needn’t be concerned with that,” the priest assured him as he got his horse moving again. “I believe the miners were all killed by Indians, but sometime before that happened, Simancas sent a map of the dig site to his brother. The brother in turn sold the map to the Spanish government because he was not as fond of adventure as Rafael had been. The contents of the map were accurately described on paper, then the map was destroyed. The next step was to re- document the details of the map using a secret code devised by Francis Bacon sometime before his death.”

 The soldier chewed on that for a moment but was reluctant to swallow.

 “Are we talking about the Francis Bacon that lived hundreds of years ago? I didn’t know he played around with secret codes---and I sure as hell don’t care. But let’s just suppose that some really well educated fellow understood the code and worked for the Spanish Crown. What should he do when some clown offers to sell directions to a gold field that’s way over in California? Sure, the Spanish Empire picked up a lot of gold in their day but those days ended long before you were born. During the time you’re talking about, a typical Spanish bureaucrat wouldn’t pay copper for a promise of more gold out in the wilderness. At that time Spain didn’t have the money to go chasing after dreams of past riches, and there were plenty of fake maps to be purchased, let me tell ya. Therefore I must conclude that your story so far--- ain’t worth shit, Priest.”

 The priest shook his head in wonder.

 “A master of arms comes to my rescue, but he is not associated with the church. Your manner of speech suggests that you are not a product of higher learning, and yet you have quite a knowledge of history. Truly---you  are the greatest mystery riding in these woods, Senhor---not I.”

 “Just because I choose to talk plainly doesn’t mean I’m ignorant, Priest. Fact is I got a shit load of schooling. Ma was a prostitute and she wanted me to be higher up the ladder than her. But everything I learned pointed back to a basic hypocrisy that can be found in every country on Earth. The priests and nuns didn’t actually try and teach me that, but the history of Catholic countries gets kind of thought provoking, when you dig deeply into certain areas.”

 “Oh yes, many a scholar would be quick to point such things out,” de Real piped in, “but how is it that such thoughts belong to a man who fights like Sampson, and arrives as a God send to me? I will not turn your stomach by suggesting that I was saved because I am a priest. I will only express what I feel is a rational curiosity. How is it that you are such a formidable warrior?”

 “Ma worked in New Orleans before consumption took her. Lots of Catholics, and lots of merchant sailors. I got a belly full of what I saw on land so I ran off to sea. But the merchant ship I was on ran afoul of a British warship. I served with them tea toting jokers for two years before I got a chance to jump ship at Okinawa. I was taken to a French merchant who happened to be there and he was so damn happy to meet up with a man who could speak French, he set me up with the only French speaking family on the Island. The head of that family could kick a fly off your nose and you’d never see it coming.”

 “I thought impressment of sailors ended with the war of 1812,” said the priest.

 “Not hardly. Anyway, I discovered that there are white merchant men who like to employ white fighters to---ah---resolve what you might call credit issues in foreign ports. From there I graduated to small military conflicts that you won’t find in any history books because they were hushed up. I was what you might call between governments when I heard about this smuggling kingpin who operates in the Caribbean. He was in need of a bounty hunter and guess what? The man he wanted just happened to sail with me shortly after I got back from Asia. Knowing what a man looks like helps a lot when you’re searching for him. Just the same, I’ve been unlucky so far.”

 “Are you required to bring this man in alive?”

  “Never mind that. Just finish the poxy story so I can laugh at the rest of it.”

 The priest smiled with tired eyes and said, “A Spanish bureaucrat did purchase the location of the abandoned gold field, but not with the Crown’s money. That secret society that you just rescued me from has existed for many hundreds of years. They have had their tentacles ’in every worthwhile government all that time. They have their own money accounts, although they most certainly did not gain their wealth in any honest fashion.

 In 1781 the gang lost their connection with the Spanish bureaucracy. A government upheaval took place and the operatives were forced to burn most of their records. I suspect that the code cipher was burned accidentally, but that doesn’t matter. The gang is now making efforts to learn the location of the gold field. For some reason that is not yet clear to me, they think there is enough gold to raise a mercenary army. That could mean, that they actually intend to start their own country.”

 “You hear a lot about criminal organizations when you’re traveling in my kind of circles,” mused William. “I got wind of The Company back in Asia. Most are the spawn of Spanish adventurers and resent that Spain’s hay day is over.”

 “It is good that I do not have to explain how powerful some international organizations can be. Know that I came here with a veteran gold miner. The poor man’s throat was cut before I could even call for mercy. The Vatican assigned him to me for verification purposes. They will not reach out their arm until I have proof that the gold deposit is substantial.”

 “Let the good folks of Monterey do that,” countered the unhappy warrior. “If those gang members choose to kill a few hundred townspeople, the Mexican government may bring up their army and then I could go another round with the bastards the proper way-- with a regiment around me. Besides, you and your gold miner would have gotten caught sooner than later. All the bastards have to do is scout the waterways. That wouldn’t give you a whole lot of time to assess a gold deposit.”

 “Well, if my theory about the Indians is correct, only weapons and tools would have been carried off. A log book or any other written material would still be where the owner left them. There is no harm in telling you that I did not come to Monterey on a regular sailing ship. I have an associate who set himself up as a local fisherman, but kept his original sailing boat which is very fast. He is always ready to take me to Ensenada, where another sailing captain will transport me further south. . Perhaps Senhor Mystery Man, you are free to assist me in exchange for one-fourth of the gold that we will be taking to Mexico City?”

 The soldier frowned at the priest’s optimism.

 “I just told you that you probably won’t have a lot of time to work the deposit before trouble arrives; and on top of that, any gold we bring down to Mexico City will end up in government coffers. But I suppose I could stash my share in some secluded place about a thousand miles south of here---if things go better than I expect them to. So I guess I’ll throw in with ya. But right now I gotta hot foot it to that ship and dump them percussion caps before the assholes get them. Hope you can do your de-ciphering work on the back of a fast moving horse cause when word gets out what happened, we won’t be safe anywhere in the territory.”

 “Oh I don’t need to de-cipher anything,” corrected the priest. The um---Assholes  will need to do that. All I require is a compass and the location of the key waterways.”

 “Well, compared to what we’ve done so far tonight, it should be pretty easy acquiring those things before I dump the caps in the drink,” muttered William.

 “You mean from a closed store? Then I expect you to return to the store where you will compensate the owner handsomely before we head south,” declared the priest.

 “If things aren’t too hot for us by then,” amended the soldier, “and I get to decide what a handsome compensation looks like.”

 Well aware of the fact that he lived in a less than perfect world, de Real accepted the terms of the deal and then rode in silence until something occurred to him.

 “Perhaps you didn’t know what you were getting into when you trespassed on the winery. But now you commit yourself to a very dangerous undertaking. Do you presume that the Vatican will compensate you for this?”

 “Haven’t really thought about it, Priest. You still haven’t explained why the Vatican is even involved in this gold finding business.”

 “I’m afraid that is classified information,” said the priest.

 “Fine, I got too many things on my mind anyway. Main objective is to get rid of them percussion caps. With them the villains could probably wipe out the whole town if it came down to it. I know ships and I know the wharf and I know what munitions crates tend to look like. So I’ll give er a try.”

 “That is good, Senhor. I am only pointing out that you are going to risk your life again, and in the process, you are preparing to commit a crime.”

 “Most of my life has been a crime, Priest. But in exchange for a compass, a watch and a musket, the good citizens of Monterey won’t have to face the deadly craftsmanship of Samuel Colt. That makes us criminals of good will---pretty much.”

 “But why must we burglarize?” whined de Real. “I could get the shop owner out of bed---“

 “Hell, I don’t want some store owner asking fool questions and watching to see which way we run after I leave the cargo ship. Let’s just get this done and hope that them Tong like bastards expect us to stay in town. If they think to block the inland trails, we will have a very bad morning in store for us.”

The two riders happened upon a stream, and after allowing their mounts to drink just a bit, they proceeded to follow the little water way down to the coast. There under a wind swept sky, the priest breathed deep the fresh air of freedom, given to him by a very mysterious new found ally. William for his part seemed deadpan, and wordlessly lead them towards a distant light that marked the location of a sleeping community.

Chapter Fifteen

James Smith nonchalantly drew his new rifle from its horse scabbard and rested the curved brass butt plate against a lean hip. The heavy black octagon barrel pointed skyward, like a war banner that required no flag. His companion John Sutter took note of it, but more importantly the Indians off to their right took note of it. They were carrying grossly inferior Spanish muskets, but also traditional bows in case of a misfire.

 Sutter needed to save his voice, but for two hours now the party of seven warriors had been keeping a parallel course, plowing through tall reeds in the bottom land of the Sacramento River. That would give anyone cause for comment.  The Indians were about one-hundred and fifty yards out. A very long shot for their outdated muskets. But even though they had no paint on their faces, they ignored the white men’s waves of greeting.

 “They’re not Nisenan.”

 “Nope---Hokan. Purdy sure.”

 “Hostile?”

 “Not on their own land, but that ain’t where we’re at right now. Never seen em this close to Monterey before. Real interesten that they took up position on our right jest as soon as they got a look at us. Almost like they was waitin fer us.”

 “I will ride out to them,” said the European in his spotless military uniform.

 “Yea, I heard tell how you done that when you first got out here. But you ain’t gunna gamble with my scalp.”

 “If you have a better idea, Mr. Smith, I would like to hear it.”

 Smith grinned with a mouth that had been badly cut in a knife fight several years earlier.

 “We got a fair sized bog comin up soon. Maybe you recollect it from yer last trip up.”

 “Yes. I recall that the mosquitoes almost ate us alive.”

 “Point bein thet them Injuns will have ta come closer or go round the back side. If they come closer, it’ll be fish er cut bait. If they go round the back, we’ll have our chance ta lose em.”

 Sutter wasn’t exactly sure what the frontiersman was talking about, but he was all in favor of resolving the problem before sundown. Twenty minutes later they came upon the miniature lake and the Indians stopped when they reached it’s edge. The two white men proceeded around the western side, slowly putting distance between themselves and the stone faced natives.

 Suddenly one of the Hokan started his horse around the same side.

 “Clear the saddle n don’t fergit yer shootin bag,” Smith instructed as he slid off his own mount.

 Sutter did as he was told, quickly checking to make sure his flintlock still contained priming powder. Smith on the other hand produced a tiny piece of copper containing fulminate of mercury. The cap was placed on what was called a “nipple” and the hammer was then cocked the rest of the way. At a range of one-hundred and twenty yards Smith fired his heavy rifle. A .50 caliber ball smacked into the lead warrior’s chest, causing him to roll backwards off his pony.

 Smith applied his powder horn to the muzzle of his rifle, then dipped his fingers into a small side pocket that was attached to his “possibles” bag. He drew out a lead ball that was pre-wrapped with a thin greased cotton patch. While loading he could hear the remaining warriors accelerating into a full gallop; their high pitched war cries adding to the sense of urgency.

 Just as Smith got hold of his second percussion cap, Sutter fired his musket, causing a second warrior to fall off his mount. Then the remaining warriors fired their muskets , creating a cloud of smoke that their horses rushed into. Smith let go with his shot as his opponent towered over him. The Indian took the round in the lung and fell with a sucking chest wound while his four remaining brothers charged on to grab the horses that the white men had abandoned.

 By the time Smith and Sutter were reloaded, the Indians were far away with the saddled horses. Smith took out his frustrations on the sucking chest would victim by kicking him in the groin over and over.

 “Control yourself, Smith. Don’t you realize how fortunate we are to be standing here in one piece?” preached Sutter. “Five shots and five misses. That is something to be thankful for, not angry.”

 “They got my traps!” bellowed Smith.

 “And some important papers of mine,” added Sutter, “but I can replace those things easier than I could an arm or a leg.”

 Smith walked further away to where Sutter’s victim had fallen. The man had a powder horn and a good skinning knife that would not be left with the warrior. As Smith bent low to take the possibles, he suddenly realized that he actually knew the dying warrior. The man’s father had gone blind drinking wood alcohol that Smith had carted down from a primitive distillery operating at the mouth of the Yuba River. Smith had planned to throw the batch out, but his ex-partner had collected a few jugs of the stuff and sold it without Smith’s knowledge.

 Maybe the other Bucks had a score to settle with bad whiskey peddlers as well. It made as much sense as anything. Anyway, there wasn’t much he could do about it. He had done a bit of horse stealing twenty miles south of Monterey, so he wasn’t about to go bitching to the local magistrate about his own mount and traps.

 “We should take the wounded into town, then see about getting saddles for these ponies we seem to have inherited,” suggested Sutter.

 “They ain’t wounded. They be soon nuf dead. You go back if ya want. Take all the ponies. If’n I win the comin fight, I’ll have my horse back. If I go under, I’ll have no use fer ponies in hell.”

 “How will you fight them if you can’t catch up with them” Sutter asked incredulously. “Shooting on foot is one thing, but pursuing on foot is ridiculous.”

 “ Ah hell, they ain’t runnin off nowhere. They’ve a mind ta jump us tonight if we don’t go back ta town, or bury their dead if we do.”

 Sutter took a closer look at the man he had shot. The warrior was conscious, but remained silent, and refused to make eye contact with his enemies.

 “I think he has a chance to live, Mr. Smith. I missed both the heart and the lungs.”

 Smith drew a long bladed fighting knife from its buckskin sheath and immediately thrust it up under the rib cage until the tip pierced the victim’s heart.

 Sutter was not appalled by the action, but his expression conveyed marked disapproval.

 “Mr. Smith, I would prefer not to gain a reputation as a merciless adversary. I intend to reach out to more and more tribes as I expand my various enterprises and I do not want to be associated with this sort of killing.”

 “Don’t worry, Capt’n, any Injuns livin out the day will know who did what. But if yer gunna head back ta town, I’d be obliged if I could borrow yer musket.”

 Sutter glanced at the three muskets still lying on the ground where their former owners had dropped them and said, “Why not take one or two of those?”

 “Cause they’re no damn good, that’s why. Were you thinkin that all them misses happened cause The Almighty was lookin out fer you? Shit, betwixed bent barrels and bounc’n ponies, them Injuns woulda done better ta fall on us. I picked this place fer a fight cause I know’d that them horses would be steppin poorly. Made horse shootin extra troublesome. But speakin of smoke poles, I reckon yer fancy Prussian piece is almost as good as my Hawken. Almost.”

 Sutter nodded.

 “Most of my experience is with French weaponry, but I happened upon this musket when I first arrived in the United States. It is going to stay with me, Mr. Smith and I strongly suggest that you do the same.”

 Smith picked up a musket and the ball bag that went with it. Then with heavy iron in each fist he commenced marching on the trail of the Hokan warriors.

 “Rode two-hundred miles to have them traps made. Ain’t givin em up,” he declared over his shoulder.

 Captain John Sutter let out a long sigh and proceeded to collect the ponies as they grazed some two-hundred yards from the dead. He hated leaving the man who had contracted to escort him out to New Helvetia, but the fellow was obviously deranged. Colorful characters seemed to abound in California, and a sensible man knew when to part company with such adventurers. But he would bring back re-enforcements, at least to make sure that the trail could be safely used.

 Twenty minutes down the trail the European removed his hat and waved it joyously over his head as two riders closed the gap between them

 “Thank the Lord that I didn’t have to go all the way back to town! I need your help, Gentlemen. My companion and I were attacked by Hokan Indians. We survived the fight but lost our mounts. We gained these Indian ponies but my companion is obsessed with the idea of getting his traps back. I didn’t want to leave the fellow but I simply could not reason with him.”

 One of the outbound riders brought his mount in closer. His clothing seemed too big for him and he had an odd, yet gentle mannerism about him.

 “Sir, your voice sounds a bit thin. Could you use a drink of water?”

 “I received a recent throat injury,” explained Sutter “Doctor made a fuss about it but now I think---“

 “You wanna take us to your friend now or after he’s dead?” the other rider asked bluntly.

 Sutter blinked once and collected his thoughts.

 “He is not under attack at this moment. He’s tracking the men who have his horse and traps. If you gentlemen intend to travel far to the north-east, it would be in your own best interest to gain some knowledge of this situation by speaking with my companion. I have reason to believe that he is some sort of mountain man.”

 “How many Indians ran off?” inquired the man with the sharp tongue.

 “Four. I would also mention that their muskets are of poor quality. Eh---sir, do you have a pistol in your saddle bag? I would recommend that you carry it in your belt from here on.”

 “I have no weapon,” replied the strange little man “My name is Father Jose de Real. My companion, on the other hand, has weapons and the willingness to use them. His name is William Longpenance, and your companion will survive his bold venture if William gets to him in time.”

 “I am Captain John Sutter, formerly of the Swiss Guards. I am homesteading near the fork of the Sacramento and American rivers. Forgive me, Father, but the only times I have ever seen a priest out of uniform was when he was painting a house or digging in the earth.”

 “Then I would say that the priests of France are closer to God than the priests of Rome,” said de Real, “because in Rome, the priests get someone else to do the shoveling. Particularly where shit has to be moved.”

 The two men laughed long and hard at that joke, while the professional solder rode behind them with a long suffering look.

 “But seriously, Father, I can’t imagine what your business could be on this deer path leading to the Sacramento. Is it possible that a priest of Rome would choose to build a mission in the central valley without my knowledge? I would not find that objectionable, just not very practical. Better to remain in Monterey and work on improving the wine that your monks are having difficulty with.”

 The priest and the soldier exchanged glances but did nothing to encourage Sutter’s interest in the viper’s nest that they had escaped from. Instead, de Real touched on a subject that almost always was at the center of his thoughts.

 “Simancas would search for the next landmark by riding straight east from the bog. We’ll look into that when we’re ready to uh----return to Monterey,” the priest half lied.

 “What landmark?” inquired Sutter.

 “Oh nothing important. But tell me, Captain Sutter, have you ever bothered to trace the American river to its source?” inquired de Real.

 “Well Father, I should first mention that the American river is made up of a south, middle, and northern branch. The south branch is the most serviceable year around I think. Someday I’m going to search for a suitable place to build a sawmill, but I won’t have time for that this year I’m afraid.”

 “How did the river get its name?”

 “Oh I named it,” answered Sutter with just a hint of smugness.  

 “And how did the governor feel about your choice of names?”

 “I’m sure Governor Alvarado hates it very much. He does prefer Americans to Russians, and whites to red Indians, but I’m certain he would like to see nothing but Mexicans homesteading the Sacramento Valley.”

 Sutter then turned his attention to the bog that was just beyond and to the left of a clump of trees.

 “Here—up ahead here is where we fought our battle.’

 William briefly studied the scene before picking up a musket that Smith hadn’t bothered with.

 “A Baker rifle. Used by elite British troops in the Napoleonic Wars.”

 “Yes, I believe I have heard of such a weapon. But when I glanced down at that rusty old thing, I just assumed that it was one of the poor trade rifles that have always been sold to Indians in exchange for furs,” explained the slightly embarrassed captain.

 “Yea. Maybe someone let the salt air get at it on a long sea voyage. But more likely those Indians have been living in bottom land country for a long time. Swamps, river flood lands with high humidity. Doesn’t take much more than that to age a gun. Still, you can always use er as a shotgun until you can afford a gunsmith who’ll ream out the bore to a bigger caliber. I got some .30 caliber shot in my saddle bag, Captain. Go on and load up with some. I’m gunna follow your friends tracks as far as I can before sundown.”

 “We’ll be waiting right here, for whoever returns,” promised Sutter, who was kind of glad that he hadn’t actually run out on Smith.

 “Other side of the bog would be better. Just keep the priest out of trouble. Don’t come running if you hear shots. I’ll be fine—and so will your companion if I can get to him soon enough.”

 “His name is Smith,” said the Swiss captain as William headed into a thin cottonwood forest, “and he has a long beard.”

 William nodded to himself without looking back. His man would be alone, and moving slowly unless he was as big a dandy as the uniformed Sutter. Which didn’t hardly seem possible.

Chapter Sixteen

The frontiersman was belly down in the ferns and allowing the mosquitoes to probe where beard and buckskin failed to protect. Violent death was close at hand and his best chance of survival rested with his ability to out wait his opponents in a deadly game of hide and seek. Thus far he had only made one mistake: He assumed that the men who had his gear would remain mounted and on the trail that lead diagonally to the banks of the Sacramento River.

 On the west side of the trail was marsh, on the east side was woodland that varied in thickness every fifty yards or so. It offered Smith a chance to dominate the trail from a strategic position. But the Hokan Indians chose to replace their well used flints, and opted for the security of the woods for such work. Then while waiting for the end of day, they heard the calling of birds and knew that something was moving towards them from their left. Something moving on four legs, or two, but something too big for the birds to ignore.

 Smith for his part was not really interested in what the birds had to say, but as a veteran horse thief, he understood that you don’t take from a man and then turn your back on him on the same day. So when the hairs on the back of his neck came up, he went belly down, mindful that he was outnumbered four to one, and by men who could hear a cricket fart in a strong wind.

 After an hour of lying motionless, he decided to cut to his left in the general direction of the trail he had been paralleling. The heavy Hawken rifle added a lot of weight to his elbows as he crawled over ferns, nut shells and twigs. The buckskin fringe on his heavy shirt collected thistles as if designed for the task, but a man doesn’t fret such things when he’s close to being slit from crotch to eye ball with a dull deer antler.

 The steady creep continued until Smith could make out the first signs of the edge of the woods and the trail beyond. By this time he had concluded that the Hokan were no longer mounted and probably had the trail under surveillance. They would be mindful of their flanks, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to think that they actually knew that he was close at hand. That blissful ignorance disappeared in a frozen heartbeat as a great weight pounced on his back.

 Smith didn’t think, he acted. Twisting like an eel he relinquished his rifle and placed an open hand roughly eight inches in front of his face. The blade of a skinning knife sliced between thumb and forefinger, but stopped short of it target as Smith’s hand got hold of a descending wrist. The blade quivered as it slowly drew closer to flesh, and the bearded man fancied that soon he would be supporting the Indian’s entire body weight in order to keep the blade at bay.

 The Hokan’s face twitched with effort, and was far less serene than that of the white man who didn’t seem to have a single damn thing going for him. Then when the tip of the blade began to break skin, Smith released his grip on the Indian’s empty hand and tried to gouge his opponent’s eyes with a hand that was shaped like a C. The tactic was partially successful, and with the couple of seconds that the white man had gained, he chose to look beyond his half blind opponent, at something that was truly a glorious sight to behold.

 Two powerful hands gripped the Indian’s head, and then with a mighty wrench the neck was twisted until two of the vertebrae gave way. Smith rolled out from under the twitching corpse and picked up his rifle.

 “Gotta hand it to thet immeegrant, he sure did bring help right quick. What’s yer name, Mister?” inquired the backwoodsman in a low tone.

 “William, and you pretty much have to be Smith

 “Where be the rest of the party?”

 “You and I are it---and there’s three more unfriendlies to deal with.”

 “Hell I know that,” retorted Smith, “sure as I know that old flinter belongs to Carlos Hernandez.”

 William nodded slightly while scanning the woods to the northeast. In truth, the only thing he knew about the musket’s previous owner was that he had a glass jaw. He was the only fellow awake and about when the supply of percussion caps got poured into the harbor. In truth, the professional soldier felt a little guilty about that. But if the cult members had gotten their hands on those caps, Salinas could have died along with every other able bodied man in the city.

 William brought the flintlock to his shoulder and took aim at nothing at all. Smith was about to crack a joke when a Hokan popped his head out from behind a tree and William promptly opened the man’s skull with a .69 caliber ball. The distance was unremarkable; some thirty yards between the trees, but Smith couldn’t help but chuckle at the results of that lethal game of peek-a-boo.

 “Carlos woulda missed. Don’t suppose you kilt him fer that smoke pole?”

 “No, but he’ll be eating soft foods for a while. He a friend of yours?”

 “Not so you gotta worry about it,” answered the bearded man.

 “Oh I wasn’t gunna worry about it at all,” said William as he shoved the ram rod down the barrel.

 Suddenly both men froze. One cocked his head in an effort to get the most out of his sense of hearing. The other man did nothing. He didn’t blink; didn’t seem to breath. But his brain was accepting information. The almost certain knowledge that one Hokan was still moving in, while a remaining comrade was back a far piece with the horses.

 Smith brought up his heavy rifle, but didn’t shoulder it because of its weight. William took up his priming horn and glanced down at a small hole in the side of the barrel, just a bit forward of the hammer. Underneath the hole and protruding outward was a tiny piece of steel that worked much like a spoon. It was called a pan, and into it William dropped just a pinch of priming powder.

 Even though the memory of an exploding head was fresh in his mind, Smith eased around the closest tree and scanned the forest gloom to the left of where William had fertilized the ground. William would scan the area to the right. Smith didn’t need to discuss the matter with his new found ally. He just knew that it was so. William for his part was also gazing to the left, because he knew that his poxy target was there somewhere.

 Early evening gloom was gathering in the woods. Soon William would wish that he had taken some buckshot for his musket, instead of just leaving it for Sutter. Would these killings bring on night raiders during the twilight hours? The professional soldier would be mulling that thought over just as soon as it was safe to do so. More minutes dragged by, and Smith began to ponder the possibility that the damn Injun might be trying to sneak all the way to their backsides.

 That thought ended abruptly with a sulfuric flash that spoiled the enemies’ perfect blind.

 “Misfire,” proclaimed Smith as he grinned down the sights of his Hawken.

 “Don’t shoot him. I wanna know how many are in his war party, and where they might be,” said William.

 “Ain’t no war party,” replied Smith. “Just a handful a Injuns with bad blood betwixt em and the white man.”

 The Hokan waited with his useless musket, fully expecting to die as his brother died. But when Smith lowered his rifle, the Indian saw that as an opportunity to run and fight another day. As the Indian retreated, the Hawken came back up, but the trees denied Smith his shot.

 “Gotta git on the trail,” urged Smith as he hot footed it in that direction.

 William followed, though not entirely happy with Smith’s decision. Once on the path, Smith headed in the direction of the Indians.

 “Why did we leave the trees?” inquired William. “This is a good place to get shot.”

 “Shit, with all the bad luck them Injuns have had today---“

 Suddenly four horses bolted from the edge of the forest some one-hundred and fifty yards down the trail. Each Hokan was leading a rider less mount, and it was plain enough that they were tired of losing companions.

 “Too far out for this noise maker,” grumbled William, who never was very keen on back shooting in any case.

 Smith brought up his heavy rifle and sighted on the lead rider. The Hawken sent it’s .54 caliber ball spinning into a back that had been craned to present a more difficult target. When the Indian dropped to the ground the other mounts sidestepped awkwardly to avoid stepping on him.

 “Pretty good stand up shot, but maybe you’d have fewer people trying to kill you if you weren’t so damn keen on killing them,” commented William as the other man quickly placed the end of his powder horn over the muzzle of his rifle.

 “And while we’re talking shop here; you know---it’s kind of dangerous loading powder that way,” William lectured. “Safest way to go is with about fifty grains of powder individually wrapped in paper. Cause if that horn ever goes off, you’ll be needing a new face.”

 During the lecture Smith had slapped a heavy greased patch of cloth over the muzzle and then placed a ball on the center. A short ram rod was used to start the ball down, then the long rod was applied after that. William noted that Smith really had to push hard to get the ball all the way down the barrel. The procedure looked down right exhausting compared to sliding a ball down the smooth, slightly oversized bore of a musket.

 “I’ll be borrowing yer shoulder,” said the rifleman as he stepped in back of William.

 “What?”

 Without ceremony the bearded man placed the heavy octagon barrel on William’s shoulder and then scrunched down by spreading his feet fore and back.

 “Shit, that Indian is two-hundred and fifty yards out and running,” thought William.”Smart money says that poor horse is gunna get a lead pill up its ass.”

  The Hawken rifle featured two triggers positioned in tandem. Smith quickly pulled the back trigger which did nothing but convert the forward trigger into what was commonly referred to as a “hair trigger.” The master rifleman then placed his sights on a imaginary line some two feet above the Indian’s head. Smith then exhaled one last time, and before his breath was completely out the big rifle belched out a plume of white smoke and the brass butt plate shoved against buckskin.

 With his ears ringing William nodded as the target pitched forward against the horse’s neck and then slid down the animal’s right shoulder causing the animal to break to the left.

 “Well Mr. Smith, if you weren’t a sniper in a war someplace, you sure as hell could have been.”

 “And you got the makins of a first rate Injun fighter, but ya need sumthin like my Hawken.”

 Willian shook his head as the two of them walked after the now free standing mounts.

 “I’m a professional soldier. I wouldn’t want to march all day with a heavy rifle like yours; and reloading would be a problem. Being able to kill lots of men close up is more important to me than being able to drop one man from far off.”

 “If you gotta kill lots of men close up then yer fucked,” argued Smith. “A battlefield is a meat grinder. Hell, even the fiercest of Injun tribes don’t fight that-a-way. It’s more uncivilized than eatin a man’s liver.”

 “I sure don’t fault you for thinking that way,” said William, “but at least on a battlefield a man has friends who can look after him a little bit. Today if not for me, you would have died alone.”

 The frontiersman’s laugh was like the bark of a wolf.

 “Hell---I’ve never been any other way. Truth ta tell---every man is alone. But I figure you soldier boys ain’t taught to think thet way, so ya never learn.”

 William’s expression was inscrutable as he climbed onto a pony and prepared to ride along side the other man’s sorrel quarter horse. He wasn’t offended by Smith’s remark, but he certainly could not agree with it. In fact, Smith was preaching to the choir, but he’d never know it. He would never be allowed to know it.

 Hell---the whole damn world was never allowed to know it.

Chapter Seventeen

 Saldivar tensed slightly when he spotted the drinking mug perched on top of one of the smaller wine kegs. He had ordered all such crockery removed from the basement so that none of their unwelcome visitors would be tempted to indulge in a bit of on the spot libation. That would most certainly bring an end to their plans, and force them to pirate the ship that had done such a poor job of safeguarding their last consignment.

 Secretary Marcelo Ebrard embodied all of Saldivar’s worst fears as he slowly paced the length of the storage facility. The gang leader could just imagine how close the fat man was to asking for a drink. Of course there was a supply of wine upstairs for just such an emergency, but what if the fat bastard should have his heart set on a particular vintage?

 Ebrard stopped in front of a barrel that was marked Angel Dew and gazed at it as if it was a tavern wench. Saldivar rushed forward and took the city official by the arm, ushering him back in the direction of the staircase.

 “As you can see, Senhor Ebrard, there is nothing out of the ordinary to be found in our winery. However I would be remiss in my responsibilities as head of this mission if I did not invite you to come upstairs and sample the very best wine this facility has to offer. You know I was afraid you were about to ask for some of the vinegar that we have in some of these kegs. I swear I don’t know what happened to the wines. My guess is that the containers were not properly cleaned by the Indian laborers that used to work here.”

 “Si,” agreed the thirsty paper shuffler, “the savages are good at tanning hides and salting fish, but they have always shown a poor aptitude for any work of a refined nature.”

 “My thoughts exactly,” Saldivar responded with a happy nod.

 “And I hope you understand, Father, that we did not expect to find any evidence of wrong doing here. It is just that with so many murders taking place, and assaults, and disappearances---we could not ignore the possibility that some vagrant might be taking advantage of your trustful nature.”

 “We all feel much safer knowing that the townsfolk are keeping us in their thoughts,” responded the head priest.

 Suddenly Ebrard’s left hip struck against a small keg that had been left protruding out further than the others. It was shoved back an inch, and emitted a strange metallic sound. The bureaucrat frowned at the small keg, grabbed hold of it with one hand and gave it mild shake. The result was another distinct rattling sound.

 “What in the world do you suppose could be causing that?” inquired Ebrard with his hand still on the edge of the keg.

 “Nails,” answered Saldivar in a flash. “The priests used to hide them because the Indians would steal them. Silly way to solve the problem but my brothers in Christ were far too forgiving and therefore never resorted to anything as effective as a good rap on the fingers.”

 “In town they’d get a good whipping,” said the fat man as he let go of the keg and resumed his walk to the stairs. “Of course we didn’t resort to that sort of thing everyday, Father, just when things started to get out of control.”

 “Say no more, My Son, I’m sure his honor the mayor would never endanger us by provoking the Indians to the point of uprising.”

 One hour later Saldivar, Sanchez and a work crew of twelve were back down in the cellar. Saldivar opened the “nail keg” and took out a pair of Paterson Colt revolvers.

 “Were those stupid sailors able to salvage any of the percussion caps?”

 “A few dozen caps were found lying on the deck, but several empty boxes floated to shore, suggesting that the vandal scattered the caps for maximum effect.”

 “I want to know who that vandal was,” growled Saldiva, “and I want those spilled caps.”

 “I think those caps are the reason we were investigated,” put in Sanchez.

 “By amateurs---fortunately. Alright---tonight I want every weapon transported to the cave. This location is no longer secure. In a few days I intend to burn it to the ground. We’ll need a broken Nisenan arrow or two and some moccasins to create the appropriate tracks.”

 “I don’t understand,” admitted Sanchez.

 “We’re going to make it look as though the priests were carried off by Indians. Then we’re going to kill every member of the posse that rides to the rescue.”

 “But Juan, if we do that, the ship in the harbor will sail south and bring back half the Mexican army!”

 “To kill Indians,” specified Saldivar. “In fact, I believe it would be to our advantage if we could come up with a backwoodsman who could inform the good people of Monterey that Lazaro Cardenas was an Indian lover. After all---every man killed by him had a history of cheating Indians, if not killing them outright. Yes, I think we can come up with something plausible.”

 Sanchez gawked at his comrade in disbelief and said, “Juan, should we not stay focused on our orders?”

 “How, Sanchez? Cardenas wasn’t supposed to get caught. The priest wasn’t supposed to be rescued before we could break his will. Mestres was not supposed to become interested in this winery. The percussion caps weren’t supposed to end up at the bottom of a bay. I could go on all day, Arturo!”

 Sanchez let out a long sigh.

 “If the priest is now under the protection of some Vatican cloak and dagger expert, he will be very hard to find. Harder still if Spaniards and Indians are killing each other all across the territory.”

 “Sutter is the key to that,” exclaimed Saldivar. “ Very soon one or many of Sutter’s pet Indians will see the priest and be able to tell us where he is. So first we must abandon this place, then find the priest, and then the gold. We will bring in another shipment of caps and additional men. Then we should be able to return to the original plan. Then you will no doubt breath easier.”

 Saldivar gazed at the pistols in his hands and said, “It is time to switch to a more agreeable attire, including a sash that will hold these beautiful weapons.”

 As the gang leader ascended the stairs, his lieutenant stared after him with an expression that was decidedly lacking in confidence. Turning to one of the movers he placed a hand on his shoulder and quietly said, “I’ll have a letter for you to deliver to the ship’s captain in a moment, so have Michael take your place.’

 Sanchez then went to find ink, paper and a pistol that was small enough for his pocket.

Chapter Eighteen.

The man in buckskins yanked his blade from the side of the tree and turned to regard his opponent some twelve feet away.

 “Bout two inches.”

 “Yea, I can see that.”

 “Wahl, scuse me fer mistakin you fer a blind man,” growled Smith as he walked back to where William was standing.

 “We could double the distance,” suggested William.

 “Hard wood. Wouldn’t stick proper,” Smith stated in a semi subdued tone.

 Well, we gotta think of something to make this game more interesting,” stated William. “Our audience is falling asleep.”

 Smith glanced around for a moment. There were two dozen Nisenan Indians watching the contest; their expressions ranged from impassive to hypnotic. Their employer had given them the rest of the day off, but only if they agreed to stay on the property and honor the presence of the three men who had saved the ranchero owner from certain death.

 The celebration was proving to lukewarm until an attractive young woman jumped up with a sudden inspiration. Stepping over to the target tree, the five foot four inch woman placed herself directly under the knife marks that that had been made so far.

 “Throw!” she shouted with a heavy accent.

 Smith and William exchanged looks and then scanned the faces of the Ninenan. Most of them were women and men who were too old to do anything but hoe weeds. They all grinned at the challenge and waited to see what would happen next.

 “Wanna flip a coin to see who goes first?” asked William.

 “I reckon,” muttered Smith.

 The bearded man got the honors and he took his spot at the twelve foot line with just a hint of trepidation. The blade that Smith was using was much smaller than a Bowie Knife, yet longer than a standard skinning knife. Much of the original steel had been honed off over the years, and Smith considered it lucky simply because he had never lost it.

 After a tense moment of preparation the blade was tossed, and it struck the tree a good eight inches above the woman’s jet black hair. William’s expression was deadpan. He wasn’t about to suggest that the knife should have come closer.

 “Your turn,” Smith said in a low tone.

 William stepped up to the mark, but before he could ready a throw, the damnedest thing occurred. A young woman came running across the field from the “fort,” where Sutter and the priest were bent over a chess board. As she drew near, both William and Smith noted with astonishment that the woman was an exact twin of the female who bravely stood with her back to the tree. The two women had a short but passionate exchange in the Nisenan tongue, followed by a shoving match which the newcomer won.

 Now the other woman stood against the tree, and the first woman gazed somewhat apprehensively at William.

 “I seen this kinda thing before,” said Smith. “Sometimes the women kin get whatcha might call competitive. It kin get a little bit outa hand if the men folk let it.”

 William stared at the target with a dour expression until a decision was reached. He then readied his blade, and finally made his throw. It stuck five inched above the woman’s head.

 “Can’t say I’d care to top that,” admitted Smith.

 “I’d be kind of unhappy with you if you were willing to try,” said William.

 With Smith acting as a semi competent interpreter the two men learned that the twin sisters were named Chanay and Sahnay which were slang terms for right and left. Chanay (right) happily snuggled up next to William as the dialogue continued. Sahnay was not displeased to be paired with the lesser of the two knife throwers. Smith was, after all, the white man who had taken the trouble to learn a “human” language, and his rifle did much to elevate his standing as well.

 Smith did a bit of showing off with his Hawken gun. This pleased Sahnay because it meant that she would eat good and not have to rely on the vegetables that grew in straight rows on most of the giant clearing. But Chanay was just as pleased with the man she had latched onto. Her clean shaven man possessed a miraculous ability to learn Nisenan as fast as the woman could point to various objects.

 Close to supper time the two men were called into the fort like structure, which featured a spacious inner courtyard where a large rough cut table had been set up. There, Sutter sat down to break bread with his new found friends, and let them marvel at his very impressive domicile. William noted right off that the adobe complex was the equal of more than one government outpost to be found on distant frontiers. The fact that it was owned by a single man was very thought provoking indeed.

 The inner grounds were three-hundred feet in length and two-hundred and seventy in width, with several free standing shops that could manufacture frontier necessities such as blankets and ironwork. A maximum of three-hundred Indian workers might be found in or around the complex on a typical day. It was one hell of an example of what one man could do with a degree of freedom unheard of back in Europe.

 “William! I explained to the captain that I memorized a sort of landmark rutter that is supposed to lead us to a specific location hereabouts. To my amazement, the dear man actually has people in his employment who have been to the very place we are trying to find! In point of fact, I miscalculated somewhat. I though I’d be searching for a southern tributary of what Captain Sutter has named The American River, but that’s not true at all.”

 The professional soldier glanced at his host and tried to hide his disapproval of the priest’s lack of discretion.

 “To think we would have trudged back to that ridiculous bog to waste time searching for a non existent river,” de Real prattled on, “and I was almost tortured to death trying to keep the wrong  location a secret! I suspect that Bacon was probably laughing at me from on high as I consumed that raw rat meat.”

 Sutter chuckled slightly at William’s grim silence.

 “Do not be afraid that I will steal your gold from you, Mr. Longpenance. I have long known about the men who were prospecting for gold, and were killed by Indians. I have no wish to venture down that path.”

 “Why not?” asked the soldier. “It’s no secret that you’re heavily in debt. Why wouldn’t you want to solve that problem with gold dust?”

 “Because, sir, a miner never owns anything but dirt. His joints grow stiff and in the unlikely event that he strikes it rich, he then has to deal with very unpleasant people. Gold brings out the worst in people, Mr. Longpenance.”

 “Call me William, and I only know what poverty does to people.”

 Captain John Sutter held his tongue. The Swiss Guard had distinguished itself during the French Revolution, losing well over seven-hundred men to mob violence. But all that happened before Sutter’s time, and in fact, he had been nothing more than a reservist, not even reaching the true rank of captain.

 “Captain Sutter brought up the subject of the gold mining,” confirmed the priest. “I just said that Simancas and some other non-Indians had ventured east of here, and I wanted to know if any of his employees had heard stories to that effect. Well, they did, and they even found the deserted mining camp.”

 “But you’ve never bothered with it,” pressed William with thinly veiled skepticism.

 Sutter grinned at that skepticism and said, “If I were to turn hundreds of Nisenan into gold miners, I could probably collect enough dust to pay off my loans in a few years. But the governor gave me my land grant only because I agreed to work the land, as a farmer-rancher. That is something I will be able to show my wife and children at the proper time. It is everything to me. But I am willing to help you with your adventure because Father de Real is a man after my own heart. It will not hurt to have such a man here in the wilds of central California.”

 “Do we get to pick the men that will be going with us?” asked William.

 “Well---there are several hunting parties that will be returning shortly. I would prefer it if you would choose some of those men. I can never get them to hoe weeds and they will alert you to the presence of hostile Indians.”

 “Will these helpers have guns?” inquired William.

 “No,” Sutter responded with downcast eyes. “I am sorry, but my muskets must remain here at New Helvetia. I am responsible for the safety of many women and children who have agreed to stay here until the crops are ready to be boated down river. This place could be attacked by raiders at any time and I would not be able to defend it with just a handful of weapons.”

 Smith cleared his throat and turned his head toward the priest.

 “I’d be willin ta go with. I won’t try ta stake a claim. Just give me diggin time till the word leaks out---and it sure as hell will if there be anything to it all.”

 The priest turned to William who shrugged slightly.

 “He could follow us easily enough, and I would rather have that rifle of his next to me, instead of behind me.”

 Smith grinned at that and said, “I’ll be takin Sahnay with me. You best to the same, Will. I don’t figger them sisters will want ta split up far.”

 William shook his head.

 “I fell off a ship a while back. Just about everything that happens to me makes me glad I got no woman to worry about. I want us traveling light.”

 “That’s cause ya don’t know shit,” retorted Smith. “If we run inta Injuns, they’ll be less scared if they see us with women.”

 “I would want them scared. Too scared to tangle with us,” said William.

 “Um---perhaps I should mention that Sahnay and Chanay are not so very right in the head,” warned Sutter. “I appreciate the fact that they are the most attractive women to be seen outside of Monterey, but---“

  And ya wanna keep em  fer yerself,” drawled Smith without any hint of resentment.

 “Heavens no,” responded Sutter with reddening cheeks and a throat that was threatening to go bad again.

 “Senhor Smith,” de Real cut in to save the day, “I would like to submit a final condition for you to consider: I would have you searching for signs of danger all the while we are at the dig site. When William and I return to the coast, you will then be free to return to the dig site and prospect to your heart’s content. Hopefully it will be months before anyone will arrive to disturb your work.”

 Smith nodded with a mouthful of meat.

 “I’m guessing it will all hinge on how long it will take for the cult members to get a new supply of percussion caps” said William. “As for myself; I’ll decide what I want to do when we’re at the dig site and we know what’s there. One way or another, it will be a gamble.”

 That statement took the priest completely by surprise. He had not forgotten that William Longpenance was no ordinary soldier of fortune. (despite any claims to the contrary) So de Real assumed that his mysterious companion would stick to him like glue, until a ship could transport the priest to a safe port. The priest was hoping that he wouldn’t have to spend the rest of his life wondering who had sent the mystery savior, but he could live with the outcome one way or the other.

 “I have no authority over you, William. When you choose to go your own way, I will feel nothing but gratitude for what you have done.”

 After that the conversation became mundane, and they spoke only between mouthfuls of goose and assorted vegetables and fruits. Shortly afterwards Smith and William went to speak with two hunters that had returned with game. The Nisenan went by the names of Syym and Peen. Smith strongly recommended that they be chosen over the other hunters because they seemed the most docile.

 William was of a different mind. He wanted men who would rather fight than run. Timid men were easy to lead, but could be utterly useless in a tight spot. William wasn’t afraid of men who might stand up to him, anymore than he was afraid he might lose his woman to one of them. That was a major difference between Smith and Longpenance. But William gave in to Smith on this matter, because he had learned long ago that the fears of other men should at least be taken into consideration when possible.

 While the two fighting men did their recruiting, de Real remained at the supper table with his host, slowly working up the nerve to inform Sutter of a danger that would be very hard to accept. (especially since the host continued to belt down one brandy after another) So when Sutter reached again for the brandy bottle, de Real decided that it would be a mistake to put his business off any longer.

 “Captain Sutter---I must warn you of another danger that is not far off, but I need your pledge that you will send no messenger to Monterey until the danger of large scale hostility has passed.”

 “I can’t make such a pledge until I’ve learned more from you,” the host said reasonably.

 The priest nodded slightly.

 “There is a secret criminal organization gathering strength in this region. They abducted me while I was en route to California because I am in competition with them to find the gold field that was supposed  to be a secret.”

 “But---none of the men who were murdered owned the land where you are heading,” Sutter pointed out.

 “True, just the lands between here and Monterey, but gaining ownership of that land would have been a logical first step, while at the same time forcing additional information out of me.”

 “But you escaped.”

 “Yes, William was my delivering angel, and I would truly love to know why. But all you need to understand is that there is a possibility that some of those gang members might arrive here someday. They might still be masquerading as men of the cloth, or they might show up looking like Mexican soldiers. In any case, you must not let them know about the gold field. I strongly recommend that you collect all the Indians that know the way to the gold field and instruct them to avoid any strangers on your land until further notice.”

 “But for how long?” asked Sutter.

 “Several weeks perhaps. They will not be able to continue dwelling at the winery. I am hoping that they will hide their firearms and leave the territory as soon as they can secure passage on a ship that is to their liking.”

 “Why would they hide their firearms?”

 “Because they have enough multi-shot weapons to equip a revolutionary force. They have been recruiting mercenaries ever since they first established their foothold in this territory. They know the gold is out here somewhere, and with it, they intend to start their own country.”

 The priest could see the wheels turning in Sutter’s head. The man from Switzerland was a staunch advocate of diplomacy, and not just when it was safe to walk such a path.

 “Father---my throat still reminds me that one of their men tried to kill me. I truly appreciate how dangerous they must be. But I am also mindful of the fact that California has long been occupied by men who hold no emotional ties to a far away government.”

 “You think you can deal with them. You think there is enough room for everyone in this territory,” speculated the priest.

 “I’m only saying that the townspeople of Monterey will not protect me out here on my land. I would have to abandon my crops and cattle and become a refugee on the coast until the Mexican Army is able to control this area. That idea does not appeal to me. I would rather deal with this threat in my own way.”

 “You don’t know what kind of people you’d be dealing with,” warned the priest.

 “And you should scout the territory before deciding on your next chess move,” countered Sutter. “The American River system has three branches and I was told that the terrain on all of the banks is fraught with obstacles if you travel by horseback. They will slowdown anyone who comes searching for you , but your enemies will find you in time, and then you will need at least one escape route. Please bear that it mind, Father.”

 “Make a note of that, Senhor Longpenance,” the priest said with a slight grin.

 “Consider it noted,” William muttered with a darker expression.

Chapter Nineteen.

 The party of exploration set out the following morning in a heavy fog. The four Nisenan expressed their desire to wait for the fog to burn off, but de Real wouldn’t hear of it, and Smith was willing to lead off, even though it was not his job. For the first couple of miles the banks retained their usual muddy, reed covered appearance. But gradually the bank they were on became rockier , and a steeper incline stepped up the pace of the water until it finally began to produce white caps on protrusions of shale.

 Huge sheets of the slippery flat rock angling down from mud cliffs coaxed the riders into the shallow edge of the river. But the small stones in the water seemed designed to tip when sufficient weight was placed upon them. It was good country for snakes and amphibious creatures, but for mammals, it was just a good place to twist an ankle or pastern of a horse.

 “Why didn’t you ask Sutter for a pair of pants?” asked William, who seemed strangely annoyed by the priest’s woolen robes.

 “I know my attire does not seem very practical in the daytime, William, but it get’s chilly at night, and some of the Indians identify with the robes.”

 “Yea, it means you’re a man they won’t have to worry about if they’re thinking about taking us on,” grumbled the soldier.

 That night, they made camp in a side gully that was reminiscent of the terrain that existed back near Sutter’s landing area. Further inland the mosquitoes threatened to eat them alive, so to respect the priest’s sensitivities, Smith, William and the twin sisters chose to find little hiding spots up river where the sound of the rushing water would drown out other sounds that de Real was unaccustomed to. In truth, Syym was no less celibate due to an unfortunate accident that occurred two years earlier while repairing the roof of his house. Peen suffered no such impediment, but he wasn’t attracted to women who weighed less than two-hundred pounds.

 Among the Nisenan , both men were reputed to be lazy in the extreme, but obviously Smith had decided to overlook that when he learned about their redeeming qualities. William remained ignorant of all that, putting his time to good use studying additional Nisenan nouns and adjectives that pertained to human anatomy. Chanay proved to be an excellent visual aids teacher, even with several pounds of mud up her ass.

 Halfway through their second day traveling east by north-east, William and his companions reached a bottle neck in the white water river that would require more than just slow deliberate steps. A high and very steep promontory extended a third of the way into the river. Apparently caused by a landslide less than a few months ago. The choice presented to them was to climb a steep mud embankment to the right, or ford the river to the left. Smith allowed the guides to argue the matter for a few moments and then made the decision for them.

 Since all seven horses were being used primarily as pack animals, they would chance the water. The animals would be roped together in tandem, and the lead horse would not be forced the carry a pack. Those victuals would be lugged around the promontory by Syym and Peen, since they had gotten more sleep the previous night than Smith or William. The two Indians saw no justice in that sort of reasoning, but as Smith reckoned, they would do the job anyway.

  The horses whinnied in protest as the water level rose and pushed hard against their chests. Smith understood all to well that if the thirteen-hundred pound animals decided to rebel, there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot the puny men could do about it. Slowly the procession snaked around the promontory and pushed towards the promise of a dry sunny bank. Syym lost his footing and became totally submerged for a moment, but he maintained his grip on the rope and received a good natured teasing from Peen after he resurfaced. Both Smith and William had walked their mounts around the promontory. Smith did it because he was controlling the lead horse. William did it because he was not the greatest horseman and lacked confidence in the white water. Several times he had glanced back at the priest and saw his lips moving.

 “Talking to your horse would make more sense than talking to your god,” thought the professional soldier, but he kept his mouth shut.

 On the other side of the promontory the river had created a wading pool that was free of any vegetation. The Nisenan sisters tethered their horses to a fallen tree and quickly peeled off their buckskin shifts. The priest let out a mild sigh and kept his horse moving slowly up the bank. Syym and Peen did likewise, but Smith and William merely sat their horses and watched as the two women danced about in the swirling water. If not for the cold water, the two men might have chosen to take an extended rest at that spot, but Peen had calculated that the mining camp might be reached by the end of the day. (If they could avoid any distractions)

 Further upstream the river widened, offering a large shallow area where even melon sized rocks touched the surface of the water. Smith wasn’t surprised when Peen happily announced that they had arrived at their destination. The priest fairly vaulted from his saddle and marched off some fifty yards. He stopped in front of a long cold fire pit and quickly scanned his surroundings. Several lean to shelters still stood to the right and left of the fire pit. A few more had been torn down leaving perhaps a single pole standing erect.

 The priest went and stood briefly under each of the remaining shelters; bending low to closely scrutinize the shaded earth where men once rested from their toils. After inspecting the last of the sleeping spots he straightened up with the look of a man who had been cheated out of a well deserved reward. Smith kept closer to the fire pit but scanned the small clearing with a more practiced eye.

 “Looks like they picked er clean,” he muttered half to himself.

 “Yup. No diary, tools or broken weapons. Hell, they even made off with some of the lean to materials for some reason,” William noted.

 “Thet means wounded,” explained Smith. “Spaniards musta put up a fight.”

 “That surprise you?” asked William.

 “Nope, but when ya spend all day pannin fer gold, it don’t put ya in the best shape fer a fight. Joints git stiff an ya get all blurry eyed.”

 “So you figure the Indians used lean to framework to build stretchers?”

 “You mean a travois,”  Smith specified. “Yea---wounded or dead. Anyway---they won.”

 The priest let out a sigh of resignation.

 “Well---tomorrow we’ll see what we can find in Mother Earth. Even if we had found a diary, we would have been required to examine the soil first hand. While sailing up the Pacific coast, my late travelling companion explained how the panning procedure works, so we have some chance of success, God willing.”

 “Yea, well, I’ll do my prospectin after you all prove ta me thet it ain’t a waste of time,” stated Smith. Till then I’ll keep a look out fer anything thet needs ta get shot.”

 “If you spot a point man don’t you kill him unless you’re spotted,” advised William. “Come and get me so you don’t end up outflanked.”

 “Damn straight. My Honey Bun would jest pine herself ta death if my scalp was ta get lifted with so much sparkin left ta do,” Smith declared while grabbing a handful of Sahnay’s left buttock.

 “Peen, do you think you could spear us a few fish before the sun goes down?” inquired de Real.

 “Coon would be better. Critters are easy ta find and I could use some a the grease,” said Smith.

 “But a rifle shot might not be wise,” pointed out the priest.

 The bearded backwoodsman smirked at that.

 “Don’t need no gun to get a ra-coon. Sides—thet river makes nuff noise ta dis-com-bob-u-late any ears thet be down stream of us.”

 “Well, I think Chanay and I will move this broken down lean to a bit further into the woods. I know how uncomfortable you get at the sight of naked woman,” William said to the priest.

 “Very considerate of you,” de Real replied, “but the mosquitoes seem to be fairly active even when there is a chill in the wind. Do you really want to be swatting bare behinds all night long? It seems to me that you lost enough sleep last night as it is.”

 “Doesn’t seem hardly fitting for a priest to be concerning himself with that sort of thing,” said William. “Anyway, at first light I’ll be ready for my gold panning lesson. Got to admit that I never learned how, since I never did much gold mining on battlefields and such.”

 “We’ll need more light than what you have at dawn,” said the priest, “but if this deposit is half of what it’s supposed to be, we’ll have enough proof to satisfy ourselves by nightfall.”

  “What do you mean by ourselves?” asked William while Chanay dragged a pair of long poles past him.

 “As I told you earlier, William---the more gold we bring back, the easier it will be to convince The Mexican authorities as well as the church that this land is worth fighting for.”

 William nodded slightly.

 “Without the use of them revolver guns the bad guys are gunna be cautious about moving inland with so many people threatening to cut off all their avenues of escape. Now that I’ve seen the terrain, I’m thinking that they’ll send a scouting party out to dog our trail, but the majority will go back down to Mexico until they can get more percussion caps. Like I said before, they’re not going to tangle with the locals unless they have an advantage in firepower.”

 “Then let us pray that they do not acquire it,” muttered the priest.

 The Catholic scholar glanced around at his companions and shrugged to himself.

 “Well—I suppose I can do the praying for all of us.”

Chapter Twenty.

 Captain Sutter’s uniform was fairly drenched in sweat as he straightened up and arched his aching lower back. With the help of worker named Pablo he had managed to move his cannon behind a grove of trees before the first horseman could climb out of the nearby bottom land. Sutter rested a sweaty palm on his little four pounder and thanked his maker that the gun was bronze and not soft iron. As it was the heavy weapon nearly sank into the earth a half a dozen times while being wheeled to the nearest available hiding place.

 “Captain Sutter, what about the tracks?” young Pablo asked in dismay.

 Sutter scanned the garden acreage until his gaze locked on a manure cart that was on the other side of a field of carrots.

 “Put the cart at the edge of the clearing; right where the tracks end,” ordered Sutter.

 The boy took off like a rabbit. He got hold of the wagon and pulled it across to where clearing met forest.

 “The tracks are two different sizes!” wailed the boy.

 “Rake the wagon tracks out. Then hoe weeds until you get a chance to run into the north woods.”

 The boy obliterated the tracks while the distant point rider dismounted and entered Sutter’s fort with a saber in hand. By the time the intruder had reappeared, the boy was innocently hoeing weeds while working his way to the north side of the twenty acre field. Sutter, hiding on the south side, held a brace of single shot pistols at the ready.

 “Boy! Where is everyone?” called the stranger as he jogged over half grown vegetables.

 Pablo noted that the man had the look of a gentleman about him. His neatly cut hair and trimmed mustache looked out of place when combined with the shirt and trousers of a common laborer. Of course the sword and pistol had the boy’s complete and undivided attention.

 “Did you hear me?!” yelled the man when Pablo failed to answer immediately.

 “Pardon, Senhor. I was fishing and lost track of the time. When I returned to the field I noticed that no one was around. I was tempted to go to the big house, but I am responsible for weeding this section of the field. I did not want to speak to anyone until after I had finished my work for the day.”

 “How many people are usually in the fort?”

 “At this time of the day---perhaps three dozen, Senhor. Few people actually sleep in the building. Most live in the nearest Nisenan village. That is where they must be, since they did not go to the river.”

 “We passed a village about two hours back down stream. Was that it?”

 “Si, Senhor. It is a seasonal village. It is not a permanent site.”

 “Well, we didn’t enter it. Maybe we don’t have to,” the man muttered mostly to himself.

 Eight more horsemen suddenly rose up over a knoll and paused to stare at the adobe structure with apprehension.

 “It’s alright!” shouted the scout. “The place is deserted!”

 The horsemen drew nearer, kicking up more of the crop.

 “Somehow those damn savages must have gotten advance word to Sutter,” growled a man named Deseado. “Well---maybe we should be grateful that the Swiss peacock got a chance to run and took it.”

 The scout didn’t answer. He was the sort of man who was never entirely satisfied with anything; and he didn’t like the way the boy was fidgeting.

 “At first I wondered if there might be a damn cholera epidemic in the works, but there aren’t any graves.”

 “More than likely Sutter is behind us, heading for Monterey as fast as his horse can take him,” said a man named Chumo.

 “If I ride through the night, I might reach Saldivar and the others before they leave the secret jetty. Most of them could return with me,” suggested the scout.

 “No, Amado. It was never our intention to capture and hold that fort. Impersonate government agents, ask for information, then move on. That was the plan.”

 “Si, but we did not hope to find the place empty. Why should we now hide in the woods for God only knows how long, when we can remain here in comfort?”

 “Can we find the gold site and assess its worth from here?” asked Deseado.

 “Si, and let us not forget what we owe the priest’s champion,” said one named Cid.

 All the men tensed at the mentioning of that past failure.

 Amado then frowned at his own lapse in judgment and asked, “Do we let Sutter and the townspeople retake this fort then?”

 “Sutter has a cannon. God only knows he has boasted about it to enough people. That means he has a large supply of powder. We will use the powder to blow away the fort’s entrance. We will also destroy anything that would be of use to him starting with the big gun.”

 With that the men marched into the homemade military installation and began searching for Sutter’s primary weapons. Needless to say, they were very disappointed when their search turned up nothing but a few extra muskets that the Indians did not have time to grab.

 “Now what?” asked Cid as he kicked a butter churn.

 “We proceed up this piss-way Sutter calls The American River,”  growled Deseado. “The ground is too soft for a cannon in this area. They could only move it by raft, and since they did not travel downstream, it is logical to assume that they are moving upstream.”

 “That would be hard work,” commented Amado.

 “Easier than over muddy soil,” retorted Deseado. “Come on, let’s see if we can possibly spot them before sundown.”

 The nine men threw themselves onto their horses and scampered down to the river bank. Twenty minutes later the Indian boy returned to where Sutter was hiding with his cannon and the handful of men who helped move it.

 “Captain, the men have gone up river! Perhaps they are looking for the men who were visiting you earlier.”

 Sutter glanced down at the deep wheel tracks that his cannon had made.

 “Perhaps, but I have a feeling that moving the weapons was not a waste of time. In any case, I am glad that we didn’t have to go much further out. Another few yards and the wheels probably would have sunk to the axel.”

 “Do we keep everything hidden out here, sir?”

 “No---only until all of you have brought in as many men as you can find before sundown. Then we shall prepare ourselves for a defensive campaign.”

 The Indians glanced at one another, then waited for the boy to continue speaking on their behalf, which the lad was more than happy to do.

 “Captain Sir---what is a campaign?”

 “We will get ready to fight those men, when they come back,” Sutter explained with a self imposed calm.

 The Indians promptly jogged off in three different directions, leaving Sutter to ponder how many graves would have to be dug in order to hold this little pocket of civilization.

Chapter Twenty-One.

The priest surveyed the soil around him in the strong morning light, then scooped up a pan full and took it to the edge of the stream.

 “Alright William, here is how this works: you go to where the water is about eight inches deep and submerge the pan and its contents. As you can see, I have selected a portion of the bank where the water is moving very slowly. Mud and silt will float out with a mild shake of the pan, but since gold is heavier, it will settle in the bottom of the pan if the current is not too strong. As more and more of the silt is removed , you tilt the pan while gradually raising it out of the water. The key is to not hurry.”

 William nodded slightly and proceeded to give it a try. Chanay also got into the act, but she lost interest after three panning efforts that awarded her with nothing but cold fingers. William was more disciplined, and by the end of the day he had collected approximately ten dollars worth of gold dust. The priest did far better. He collected close to thirty dollars, and was more than willing to rub it in his companion’s nose.

 “It is not unreasonable to suppose that God prefers priests over soldiers,” de Real clucked while weighing his dust with a scale that Smith had loaned him.

 “He does,” confirmed William, “but I think he would have me lose out against any gold panning sinner in the world.”

 “Oh really? Why is that pray tell?”

 William sat on his rock and struggled with a temptation he had not experienced in quite some time. An old and crushing loneliness that could come out of nowhere, or be brought on by someone more sensitive and caring than most. William liked and respected de Real, but devout members of the Catholic church always made the professional soldier uncomfortable. It was an old problem with the mercenary.

 “Well---fact is---I killed a good man a long time ago. Since then, I haven’t been able to square things with my conscience. Every now and then I step into something that is none of my business because…..”

 The priest dropped his gold pan and pulled William’s attention back to the here and now.

 “Who sent you to rescue me from those criminals?”

  William returned de Real’s stare, with eyes that had impressed the Vatican agent from the very beginning.

  “Look, I already made it plain that I have no use for organized religion, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in God. Sometimes I get a chance to help the local constabulary with something. That kind of thing always makes me feel better. But this is big stuff. This will make a difference to a hell of a lot of people. I knew from that first night—“

 Suddenly Smith showed up; out of breath with his girlfriend in tow.

 “Wind shifted a mite. Got a whiff a campfire smoke. Maybe a mile down stream.”

 “Indians?” asked de Real.

 “Not likely. Damn good thing I didn’t let ya make coffee.”

 “We all agreed to that,” said William. “What we need to do now is wipe clean any trace that there was ever a camp here. Hopefully they’ll keep going right past here, whoever they are.”

 “Let the Injuns do thet. They got a practiced eye fer detail. You n me gotta size up what’s a cumin.”

 William nodded and turned to the priest.

 When this area is cleaned up, cut straight into the woods for about half a mile. I’m afraid you’ll have to stay there until we find out who those men are and where they’re bound for.”

 “If they are who we think they are, then they must be lured onto north fork of the river system. We need more gold than what we have gathered up so far,” de Real insisted.

 “Well, most important thing is to not get caught,” responded William, “but we’ll try to find some way to keep those assholes from ruining our fun.”

 William then took up his musket and followed Smith through some tall brush on a course that would parallel the river. The priest stared after them until Sahnay dropped a large poll onto his lap.

Chapter Twenty-Two.

 Chumo tucked the ball and cap revolver into his belt and then gazed ahead at his imaginary opponent. When the fantasy moment called for it, his hand closed over the wooden grips and he pulled the long barrel free of leather. His thumb awkwardly pulled back on the hammer as the weapon was pointed down range, but he did not pull the trigger. He wasn’t quite stupid enough to waste precious ammo on a phantom enemy, especially with Deseado so close at hand. He kept practicing his draw until the group leader came to stand in front of him.

 “What are you doing Chumo?”

 “Practicing the ways of the Texas Rangers, Deseado. This new pistol design enables a man to cock a hammer very quickly with one hand. A man armed with an old side lock pistol would have no chance against this weapon. But you need to practice, so that your thumb doesn’t accidentally slip off while cocking so swiftly.”

 The team leader shook his head in disapproval.

 “We have maintained a dueling tradition for centuries, Chumo. You know very well that nerve is more important than speed. If you are killed, you go to wherever strong men go, therefore your life is less important than your honor.”

 The younger man frowned at that statement.

 “I don’t understand, Deseado. How can this manner of practice be considered dishonorable?”

 “You must look upon danger with disdain. Therefore when you face an enemy, you must be focused, calculating, and resigned to your fate. You must trust in the cowardice of your opponent, Chumo. He will act in haste, and then he will miss you or only wound you. But you will kill him because that is more important than survival. So do not become obsessed with speed. Good sighting is far more important. When the next shipment of caps arrives, I will see to it that you get plenty of practice in.”

 Chumo put his revolver away, but he didn’t believe for one second that it was wrong to practice drawing his weapon quickly. Still, he could not fault Deseado for echoing the timeless axioms of their criminal code. His mental development was important to a number of oldsters, and for that reason, if he so much as scratched his butt, a lecture was sure to follow. It was a burden he had to live with, but with it came the promise of future power.

 From a distance of two-hundred yards Smith and William monitored the camp activities with great interest.

 “So thet there is a Colt. Shore is a ugly thing, but quick actin fer shore,” remarked Smith in a whisper.

 “Five shots, and you can switch cylinders to speed up reloading if necessary. Otherwise you gotta ram soft lead down the front of each chamber after pouring in powder. Sometimes the caps break up and fall into the cylinder cog, but for the most part the Colt gives good service.”

 “Each one em looks ta have two,” Smith muttered.

 “Shit, they got hundreds,” exclaimed William. “They plan on taking over the territory, and they would have gotten a good start if I hadn’t dumped most of their percussion caps in the bay.”

 “Must be a pack a loonies,” scoffed Smith.

 “Yea, but they got a lot of backing. They could pull it off if the Mexican government ignores them long enough. Two ship loads of mercenaries and another crate of caps and they’ll be ready to go for it. Unless they don’t find the gold.”

 Smith only had to think about that for a second.

 “Lookee here; if they stay in the fork, they’ll get wind of the first camp smoke. You can’t prospect-n- hide at the same time fer long.”

 “Maybe not, but if de Real is willing to try, I’ll keep him company. Hell, soldiering is tougher by a long shot. Besides, I’m not about to hang around Monterey harbor and wait for the next ship to arrive. Trust me---I got my reasons.”

  “I trust ya,” said the part time horse thief while his companion was staring hard at the riverbank encampment. “Course---thet ain’t the same as agreein.”

 William’s instincts warned him of danger just before the rock cracked the top of his skull. Smith then got to his feet and walked calmly into camp with his rifle cradled in his left arm. Needless to say he was in the sights of half the men as he strolled up to where the men were keeping a cold camp.

 “Howdy. Name’s Smith---James Smith. Thought maybe you could use another rifle.”

 “You thought wrong,” growled Amado, but Deseado made a small gesture of silence and then went to stand in front of the brazen newcomer.

 “Tell me, Senhor Smith---what would we do with another rifle---exactly?”

 “Oh---maybe take over Californee,” guessed the man in buckskins.

 Deseado’s expression was deadpan, but every man (including Smith) knew that the intruder’s life was hanging by a thread.

 “There are very few men in the territory who are privy to that sort of information.”

 “Yup, and one of em is back there in the weeds,” said Smith.

 “Pointing a rifle at us, perhaps?”

 “Oh hell no. He’s sleepin or dead. Ain’t entirely shore which.”

 “Manuel, Domingo—bring him in.”

 The two underlings jogged on Smith’s back trail and were soon carrying a body that was dumped at their leader’s feet. Everyman’s expression brightened as they all recognized the man on the ground.

 “Father de Real’s savior. Could that possibly mean that Vatican’s finest is somewhere hereabouts?”

 “Huh? Oh---shore nuff. I kin take ya to em---and the gold site.”

 Deseado smiled at that, and William’s betrayer noted that the smile was a bit stiff from lack of use.

 “Is he along the river bank?”

 “Sorta. Up-n-in a ways. Ready ta lead ya in. Course, I kin only hope thet you’ll be obliged fer my services.”

 The smile got a bit more unnerving, but the backwoods Judas was past the point of no return, so when the pack leader stated that Smith was now a full fledged member of the group, Smith didn’t ask for any financial clarification. Several hours later, the cultist group descended upon Father de Real and his Indian companions. The one good thing about the ambush was that they could then move back to the riverbank where the mosquitoes were less plentiful. There, the priest saw William already hogtied with his face only inches away from the water.

 “You have made a terrible mistake,” de Real whispered to Smith when he got the chance.

 “Maybe so, Priest, but in this here part a the world, ya can’t git no place unless ya gamble with yer skin.”

 “And what of your soul?”

 The backwoodsman shrugged with just a hint of discomfort.

 “Don’t reckon I’m closer ta hell than soldiers in the field. Thet one on the ground there, musta kilt many a man. Was he doin God’s work? Hell---let me be, Priest. Maybe I’ll build a church with some a my gold someday.”

 “You can’t buy your way into heaven,” de Real stated in a tone loud enough for all to hear.

 “That ain’t what I was taught as a youngin,” Smith retorted before turning his back on the priest.

 Deseado grinned at the exchange and strolled over to where the priest sat with his wrists bound behind his back.

 Saldivar will be very happy to see you again, and thrilled beyond words to see the man who took you from us.”

 “I suppose it will be a mercy if the poor man never regains consciousness,” the priest muttered.

 The gang member suppressed an urge to laugh and merely gazed happily at the man on the ground.

 “What good am I to you now?” de Real then asked. “ This is where Simancas found his gold---and died with it. Bacon’s old code is no longer of any importance to anyone.”

 “Tomorrow we shall do some panning and see if that is true,” said the group leader. “If it is,  you might still be of some use to us. We know that you have contacts in the Yerba Buena area. We would like to know who they are.”

 “Saldivar will grow old trying to get that information out of me,” de Real promised. “Before I was only guarding a silly code, but now I am protecting human lives.”

 “All this talk about the sanctity of human life,” mused Deseado. “You and I both believe that God will reward the righteous. Why fear for the life of a man who is destined for paradise?”

The priest let out a long and deliberate sigh.

 “Spiritual growth takes place here, not in the hereafter. When you snuff out a man’s life, it is like dismissing a carpenter when he has completed only half a house.”

 “Nonsense. If he is a servant of the church, he no doubt understands the concept of duty. He is therefore ready to die, just as you and I are. We are on opposite sides of the chess board, Father de Real, but we have much in common.”

 “We have only one thing in common,” stated de Real, “we both believe that there is but one God. We are on opposite sides of the universe regarding all other spiritual issues.”

 “You Catholics were powerful once, because you understood back then that you can only reason with sinners when you have the point of a sword touching their throats. You forgot that, which is why you now dust off your statues and beg for coins.”

 “We dust off statues so that every generation can appreciate the artistic splendor that man is capable of creating---when he is not slaying and burning.”

 “It is not the action that matters so much as the motivation,” said Deseado with a wagging finger. “The righteous might be compelled to kill while ant like men toil to erect monuments to the unworthy.”

 “Ant like men,” echoed the priest. “Yes, that is how your company  generally views mankind. The individual is nothing. Let them be killed by the millions someday, when the nations have evolved into military machines that can do more than just lay waste to a battlefield. They will ruin whole continents, never realizing that they serve the needs of a secret organization that is most comfortable in the sewers of the world’s largest cities.”

 “We will change that here,” Deseado declared with steel in his voice. “With tons of the yellow metal that drives men mad, we will finally have our own nation, and we will feed the growing animosity that exists between the northern and southern portions of the United States. The mercenaries that have already been recruited will be our spearhead east, as soon as the California natives have been eradicated. The mercenaries will be backed by thousands of German immigrants in the north and Tejano-like Mexicans in the south. Eventually we will control everything west of the Mississippi River.”

 “Um---speaking of Mexicans: don’t you think the government will come calling long before your immigrant armies can be assembled?” asked the priest.

 “A portion of the military will be sent,” conceded Deseado, “but the bulk of the troops will need to remain near Texas.”

 “Why? I was given to understand that President Sam Houston is trying very hard to avoid hostilities now that Santa Anna has given up on the north.”

 “Santa Anna is not through with Texas, and Houston is no longer president. Mirabeau Lamar is now head of the Republic of Texas, and his ambitions are very much to our purpose. We will let him think that we wish to join hands with him in the spirit of Manifest Destiny. Of course even with the Texans buying us time with their blood, we will still have to work very quickly to finance our army before the United States can jump in where they are not wanted.”

 “There isn’t enough gold to make even half of your dream come true,” stated de Real.

 “Your actions so far suggest otherwise, Father de Real. But if you are right, we will just have to fade away as we have done so many times in the past.”

 The priest nodded grimly.

 “Oh yes. Start a war, feed off of other people’s misery, then burrow back under the ground. You bastards will probably walk the Earth forever.”

 Deseado’s eyes suddenly brightened in the campfire light.

 

 “I will tell you something that even your superiors do not know. The Company has had twelve different names in its lifetime. Twelve different operating capitals. Twelve different hierarchies. California would be the first such chapter that does not feed off an existing empire or government. If that should come to pass, we would then be able to share our history with those who have called us enemy for so long. I am of course referring to the Vatican.”

 “My superiors are already versed in your history,” said de Real.

 “So you have believed for centuries. But in truth our organization did not begin with an army of whores, cutpurses and assassins as you were lead to believe. No, it began with the acquiring of a very special relic: The Spear of Longinus. Our founders held fast to that relic until the church was able to pay a ransom that then made every future enterprise possible. Stealing technology, bribing statesmen, recruiting mercenaries who think they are working for people who have actual names…but I digress.

 There is a reason why the Vatican is willing to peacefully co-exist with every tyrannical regime on the planet, yet bend every effort dog the heels of The Company. The fact is priest, we still have the spear. We sold the Church a fake. They know it, and they are vexed. Terribly terribly vexed. That is why they are always so put out when we experience a successful venture. In truth they really know how to harbor a grudge.”

 “Why are you telling me this?”

 “Oh, I don’t know---I suppose it’s because you are one of the few men who is allowed to know that my people exist. Our history is really quite remarkable, yet we are the people who help make history without being a documented part of it. Most of our operatives don’t give a fig but I must admit that I have always wanted to speak to one of you special Vatican operatives. Even though you’re just a code expert.”

 “And you’re just a criminal; and a rather eccentric one at that.”

 “Also sadistic, so I really must get back to your benefactor,”  Deseado said while turning away from the priest. 

Twenty-Three.

  Deseado conferred briefly with the man who had been on guard, and it was then decided to strip William naked and hang him by his wrists from a stout branch that reached out over the small river. The man was suspended so that the bottom half of his body would remain immersed in the cold stream. All the while this process was underway, the prisoner showed no sign of life, which prompted de Real to huff and puff in exasperation. The other prisoners were a bit less animated, especially after being hobbled with rawhide and put to work panning for gold.

 “He will die for certain now,” grumbled the priest as he reluctantly squatted and showed the others exactly how to swish their gold pans.

 Deseado stood over him with his hands joined behind his back. With his deadpan expression, he conveyed the image of a leader who was supremely at ease in his position.

 “Yes, but I must admit I am curious about him. I cannot imagine that such a man would just show up out of nowhere and have such a profound effect on our operations here. Very curious indeed.”

  “I knew he was no ordinary man when he rescued me from the winery, but I swear by the Virgin Mary that I have no knowledge of his origin.”

 “Actually, I believe you, Priest. As I just said, you are only a coding expert.”

 Smith was fixing to head out in search of game. Sahnay was panning alongside her sister Chanay; perhaps out of a feeling of guilt. The frontiersman paused with his Hawken rifle cradled on one arm and grinne

 Suddenly Sahnay let out a squeal of glee and began speaking rapidly while holding out her gold pan for all to see. There in the pan lay a gold nugget about the size of a small grape, and it was the result of only thirty minutes worth of panning.

 “From this golden acorn a great martial oak shall grow,” Deseado then said with a look of triumph. “We shall build our own country, then sow the seeds of discontentment east of the Mississippi. Only our sort of people will be encouraged to immigrate to the United States, and in time Europe will become a place where shriveled up people will sit and stare at their statues.”

 “I suspect that if there is such a thing as reincarnation, you will come back as a pigeon,” muttered the priest as he and everyone else doubled their panning efforts.

 By the end of the day their combined efforts earned them approximately three-hundred and fifty American dollars in dust and small nuggets. The fact that the gold would end up in the hands of an enemy took all the pleasure out of it for de Real, and he did not feel inclined to explain to Sahnay that she would not be able to keep what she collected. (Even though she was the woman of that buckskinned Judas)

 With only half an hour of daylight remaining, de Real waded out into the cold water and stood before the man who had delivered him from evil; albeit temporarily. William’s feet did not quite reach the river bottom, but it was difficult to tell with the light distortion of the water. The priest checked for a pulse at the side of the neck and indeed found one. The water made an impression on him in just the first minute, and de Real was again awe struck at the strength and resilience of this man.

 Suddenly de Real stumbled back a pace in reaction to the prisoner’s eyes opening and locking on to the startled Italian. The priest was amazed by the power in those eyes, which seemed to function independently of the badly abused body that hung before him.

 The priest rushed over to the gang lead and said, “I don’t know who this man really is but I’m convinced that he is important. You should not freeze him to death before learning of his identity.”

 “He hasn’t lost consciousness yet, Priest. The cold water keeps his legs useless, and since we wouldn’t want to untie him so that he could urinate, this way we don’t have to deal with any unpleasant smell. All quite logical, really.”

 “What about bowel movements?” queried de Real.

 “Really, Priest, you should stay focused on the here and now. Look at the size of this nugget. Just ten minutes from the last one. I am now convinced that this site is everything you suspected it was.”

 “So what will you do now?”

 “Go back to Sutter’s rather impressive homestead and remain there while a messenger travels south with an update of our situation.”

 “On horse back?”

 “Certainly not. We have a number of small sailboats hidden along the coast. Saldivar will be very pleased to hear that we do not need to capture Monterey. We can start building our country at Sutter’s fort. But we need those damn percussion caps, even more than we need additional men. In any case, your job will be to speak with Sutter on our behalf, should that become necessary.”

 “And what exactly am I supposed to say to him---that the meek shall inherit the Earth?”

 “No, that the meek shall be allowed to stay above the Earth,” replied Deseado before ordering everyone to prepare to move down stream.

 “Ain’t gunna need me ta find Sutter’s fort,” said Smith while swishing his gold pan, “so me n Sahnay’ll stay put fer a few days and gather my re-ward fer serviced rendered.”

 Deseado’s men gazed expectantly at their leader, jointly concluding that the frontiersman had outlived his usefulness.

 “Alright, Smith,” responded the leader after a pause, “but I also want you to gather building materials so that lean-to construction can commence as soon as we return.”

 “When’ll thet be?” inquired Smith.

 “I don’t know. Could be as long as a month, but I want the polls cut and gathered in two weeks.”

 “And what of your prisoner hanging from yon tree branch?” pressed de Real.

 “I was thinking we could bury him up to his neck in the middle of Sutter’s onion field,” Deseado only half joked. “That would be one more way of keeping him secure without raising a bodily stench.”

 “I will assist him with his privy duties if you are that determined to keep him well fettered,” said the priest.

 The captors laughed in unison at the offer.

 “Well now---that will be grand entertainment indeed,” exclaimed the leader with his rusty smile. “A Vatican operative rendering very special assistance to our mysterious prisoner. Oh yes, for that, we will get the ice water off the prisoner’s legs and into his mouth just as soon as possible.”

 The prisoner was promptly cut down and hauled onto dry land. Once the horses were saddled and ready to depart, Deseado himself tied Casca’s wrists to a rope that was then secured to a saddle horn.

 “Must you be so cruel?” asked the priest.

 “A horse is a beast of burden, but I will have the rider walk his towing animal for a while, then have the other animals take turns with the burden.”

 “That’s not what I meant!” de Real exclaimed with frustration.

 “I know exactly what you meant,” Deseado snapped back, “and if you don’t keep quiet while we’re on the move, you will be dragging the prisoner as well as nursing him when he regains consciousness.”

 The party set out for lower ground, but not in the same manner as it had invaded that portion of the foot hills. Four men rode a parallel course one-hundred yards off on the main group’s left flank. Their leader felt this was necessary since their scout was no longer with them.

 “Why did you allow Smith to remain behind?” Chumo asked when they were a few miles from the gold site.

 “He knows how to protect what is valuable to him. We can count on him to gather up gold. He will never stop. He will prospect and avoid capture until we can return with more men and repeating firearms. Then we will take his gold and use it to pay off those people in Monterey who can be of service to us.”

 “You think they would betray their neighbors for gold?”

 “Of course not. The trick is to get them to do what they believe is honorable. For instance: I have ten men go into town to buy black powder. The merchant chooses to believe that these men have just as much right to buy powder to protect themselves as the militia that chooses to run off into the central valley. No one is a traitor, but some choices prompted by the sight of gold will benefit us. That is part of---“

 Suddenly Manuel pointed to a patch of brush that looked harmless enough and called out his leader’s name. The men in back of him closed the distance until all could see a grizzly bear cub staring curiously at the lead rider.

 Peen shouted a warning in his native tongue, but Chanay made no attempt to interpret. The Spaniards were vaguely aware that the Indian was concerned about something, but they felt safe enough being mounted on their horses. Only the horse towing the special prisoner would have been hard pressed to move away from a grizzly cub, and that horse was at the rear of the procession. Three horsemen circled the bear cub and playfully poked at it with their sabers. Peen forced his horse into the shallows and waded around to get behind Deseado, as did Syym as soon as he realized that he could break formation and not get punished for it.

 Chanay maintained her position in the column but turned in her saddle and said, “Call men! Call men!”

 Deseado assumed that she wanted the men to stop teasing the cub and proceed onward. In reality, she was imploring him to bring down the four men who were one-hundred yards away and unaware of the danger that was forthcoming. That danger did not stand on ceremony. It exploded out of the brush with maternal fury. The sow was a good seven-hundred pounder, and it scattered the three foremost horses by simply charging into their midst.

 All five gunmen brought their muskets around, anxious to fire even though their horses were straining against the wishes of their riders. To muskets were pulled off target at the last moment by the horses. One misfired and two scored hits that only served to infuriate the beast. Deseado had been told that even a heart shot might not stop a grizzly in it’s tracks, but it was the logical bulls eye on a profile shot.

 To ensure a proper hit, the Spaniard slid out of his saddle and placed his sights where he had reason to believe the heart would be. Suddenly the beast jerked around with the speed of a snake and the hapless cult leader found himself aiming at the bears jaws and beady eyes. It was common knowledge that the bear’s forehead was slopped and the skull very thick at that point. Even worse was the fact that the monster’s front was bobbing up and down with each stride. Deseado resigned himself to a shot between the eyes and let the ball fly.

 The ball went high and grazed the top of the skull, just as the shooter feared it would. Then the newfangled revolving pistol was drawn out and the first shot blew out the grizzly’s left eyeball. The beast advanced the last few paces and rose up on it’s hind legs long enough to get off a good swipe with it’s primary weapon. The claws shoved the offensive pistol aside and raked muscle and tendon in the man’s shooting arm. Deseado fell back, barely escaping a second swipe as the grizzly bellowed in fury.

 Beside him lay a semi-conscious prisoner, who looked as though he had already been mauled by a bear because of all the rocks he had been dragged over. The gang leader did some fast thinking and quickly pulled the prisoner over on top of him, despite the terrible pain in his right arm. The grizzly (predictably enough) slashed with both paws and then bent over to tear the face off the top man with his powerful jaws.

 Canines punched through the flesh of the prisoner’s right cheek, but now the four outriders had joined up with the men who had just finished reloading and the group took aim at a distance of only thirty feet. Additional paw swipes moved the top man away and exposed the man underneath. Deseado had his windpipe ripped out a split second before a volley of balls could destroy the bear’s belabored heart. With a final defiant growl the grizzly went down on its side and exhaled a measure of breath and blood.

When Manuel saw what had become of his leader, he took his sword and with an effort drove the blade through the throat of the bear cub. A few seconds later Domingo viciously kicked the still living bear attack victim and spat upon him.

 “I say we give this bastard what was coming to him a long time ago. We can’t waste any more time worrying where the hell he came from. Let’s just do him Indian style and move on.”

 Chumo considered the idea for a moment and then nodded.

 Peen and Syym were ordered to dig the hole while de Real and  Chanay observed the preparations with near inscrutable expressions. Chanay did not fear for her lover because she knew that he possessed some sort of great spirit power. That discovery amazed her at first, but not nearly as much as it would a civilized person who had been taught that miracles are for children to believe in. Her man would prevail in the end; of that she was absolutely certain. She just needed to be patient, and hope that her sister would fare as well.

 As for Father de Real, he didn’t know what to believe anymore. There was hope that William would survive this, and that was something. He would remain a model prisoner for this reason, so long as he didn’t have to divulge the identity of any confederates back in town. Surprisingly, the gang member dug the grave for Deseado, and then great care was taken to camouflage the burial site. The group traveled the rest of the way down river without incident. The prisoners were then tied and gagged so that no man would be needed to guard them. That was important, because eight men would have their hands full trying to take John Sutter’s fort; and taking it was precisely what the eight men intended to do.

Chapter Twenty-Four

 On that moonless night, Captain John Sutter had positioned all of his guns for instant use, and posted two guards on opposite corners of the fort. But the Indian sentries placed too much faith in the adobe walls, and so were fast asleep when a padded grappling hook caught hold of an inner ledge. Chumo was delighted to discover that the cannon was back and loaded with grapeshot, which was only logical. It was promptly turned around and aimed at a bunk house that stood some one-hundred and fifty feet from the firing wall.

 Four of the eight man commando group made their way immediately to a structure that housed but a single occupant. It was the quarters of John Sutter. A few tense moments later, the prisoner was ushered to the wall in his night shirt, with a knife at his throat. Chumo pointed to the cannon and then to the bunk house entrance.

 “You probably have over one-hundred men in this fort, Captain. We cannot kill all of them before they kill us, but every one of my men is worth five of yours. How many widows and fatherless children does that add up to, Captain?”

 “You have audacity, sir, if little common sense,” responded Sutter. “What is your objective here?”

 “We will occupy this fort. Your people will return to whatever shithole villages they came from. You will remain here as our hostage.”

 Sutter struggled to maintain a neutral expression, but Chumo, despite his youth, could easily picture the wheels turning in Sutter’s head.

 “What makes you think that you can hold a fort with only a handful of men?”

 Chumo was forthright. Too forthright for his own good, but he had been raised to believe that only cowardice was unforgivable.

 “Just as you will wait for the citizens of Monterey to bring government forces to this valley---my comrades and I will wait for others of our kind to return in equally formidable numbers. However wins that race will win the fort. If your side wins, I will face a hangman’s noose. If my side wins, you still might live to serve a new nation that might actually be to your liking since you are a military man.”

 Sutter was convinced that he was dealing with a madman, and madmen sometimes need to be humored.

 “Very well. I will surrender the fort since I hold myself responsible for this humiliating defeat.”

 Sutter then called out his men and instructed them to gather those belongings that they should take out with them. A number of Nisenan were sorely tempted to try their luck, but the sight of the cannon overhead and two revolver pistols aimed at Sutter’s head, convinced them that it would be best to fight another day. Spaniards and Indians alike were surprised when half a dozen Miwok laborers offered their services to the victors. Chumo knew damn well he wouldn’t be able to trust them completely, but he had good cause to accept them anyway.

 He had them fetch the priest and his companion prisoners and then gather additional vegetables from the fields. They were informed that they would not be allowed to reside in the fort, but they would be given materials to build their own shelters outsides the east wall.

 “You really think we can hold this fort until Saldivar returns?” Cid asked Chumo after the fort was completely secured.

 “All we can do is try,” Chumo responded with bloodshot eyes. “Deseado pointed out that we were not given orders to take this fort. But now that our primary mission has been completed, I feel that holding the fort makes sense if it can be done. I realize that the Indians might lay siege to it before Saldivar returns, but I can’t quite picture them standing up to grape shot and five shot revolvers for long.”

 “I agree, but should we fail in our duty to avoid being captured---“

 “That would be even more likely to occur out in the woods somewhere,” Chumo interrupted.

 Cid was tempted to argue that point. The central valley could hide a small group of men indefinitely, but Sutter’s fort would be on the minds of every Indian within a forty mile radius. The fort could easily become another Alamo, but Cid chose not to harp on that fact. Chumo’s father held a position of power within The Brotherhood of the Lamb. Saldivar had been grooming him and had charged Deseado with a likewise task. Chumo was taking an awful gamble, but it was the sort of risk that leaders occasionally needed to take.

 “Did Deseado ever confide to you how many messenger boats we have on the coast? Likely Saldivar has already set sail. A second boat with updated information would bring him back all the sooner I suspect.”

 “There are three more sailing craft hidden well south of Monterey,” informed Chumo. “I am confident that one of our spies will get one launched when word reaches Monterey that Sutter is our prisoner.”

 “Do you think the townspeople will send some of their own folk against us?”

 “There is that possibility, but I highly doubt it. The other ranchers would be envious. None of them understand what is happening in the territory, they only know that there are mysterious killers loose throughout the territory. Few townspeople will want to send musket men out this far from Monterey.”

 Cid nodded slightly and then after a pause asked, “When the territory is secured, will you want to remain in California or take part in the eastern hostilities?”

 Chumo snorted at the question.

 “Would any of us want to miss out on the fun? Believe me, Cid, the people of Texas are far more interesting than the people of Monterey. They have earned many great legends for themselves, and I hope that the majority of them survive to become part of our empire. I think they will. The Mexicans that fight under the domination of Santa Anna have nothing to die for. That is one thing that California and Texas have in common. Both are lands that the average Mexican could do without.”

 “But the gold changes all that,” put in Cid.

 “There is no gold, until our troops are ready for war,” amended Chumo, “that is why our prisoners must not be allowed to speak with the Indians that reside outside the walls.”

 “Sutter and the priest are the only ones that have any real value,” Cid pointed out.

 Chumo thought about the woman Sahnay for a moment, secretly wondering if he was strong enough to avoid such temptations until proper white women could be brought to their fledgling nation.

 “We will send the Miwok out hunting tomorrow. While they are gone, you may dispose of the non-essential prisoners.”

 Cid nodded, likewise appreciating the fact that the Indian woman would be a distraction until she was rotting in the ground.

Chapter Twenty-Five.

The priest left the brooding Sutter to himself for the better part of the day, but since he did not know the language of the Nisenan, he was eventually compelled to sit on the floor next to his fellow European and offer comfort whether it was desired or not.

 “I suppose your weavers will miss their looms dearly,” said de Real.

 Sutter cast a dour look upon the nearest loom in the little blanket factory and let out a bit of a sigh.

 “Yes---progress brings smiles to many faces. I admit that I am not always reasonable when dealing with workers, but I can honestly say that I brought a better life than what has long been endured in the Indian stone age.”

 “What of the Noble Savage?”  queried the priest. “Can a man retain his virtue while the concept of wealth keeps ballooning out in front of him?”

 “Only a priest would want to discuss such things in our present circumstance,” grumble Sutter.

 “Alright,” de Real responded in a soft voice, “let us discuss the possibility of escape.”

 The master of the keep was silent for a long while. So long that the priest had decided to let the man wallow in his own self pity.

 “The woman could do it,” he finally stated.

 “How’s that?”

 “I built a refuse portal to more easily remove---er--- those things that need to be carted out into the fields. I believe she could climb through it and drop a harmless eight feet to the soft earth. Then a two-hundred yard run to the heavy brush.”

 The priest liked the idea, because he knew that Chanay would make a bee line to where her lover was in need of assistance. Still---wishful thinking must give way to logic.

 “It wouldn’t work. She would be watched. A call would go out even as she slipped through the opening. Then the Miwok would run her down for certain.”

 “If they are awake and watchful---yes. But they know what is often upon the ground under the north-west wall, so they will be camped near one of the other walls.”

 The Italian was still not convinced.

 “In such a race, I would still put my money on the men outside the wall.”

 “You have never seen Chanay run,” responded Sutter with a grin. “She has a unusually athletic body.”

 “Yes---I uh---noticed,” said the priest while recalling the time she was naked in the pool.

 “Let us run the idea by her. If she can escape, it might force our captives to abandon the foulest element of their plan.”

“But how do we get her out of this building?’

 Sutter picked up a bucket that was meant to serve as a toilet.

 “Let us all contribute to a chore that she would normally be assigned to.”

 The idea was submitted to the Indian woman, who accepted without hesitation. Then each prisoner did what he or she could do to fill the bucket, before calling for the guard. Then they ran into a snag. The guard wanted them to wait until daylight before opening the door. Perhaps out of spite, or perhaps because it had been necessary to nail the door shut. (Captain Sutter had decided that a loom shed would not need a door with a lock)

 Sutter and de Real were just about to resign themselves to failure when the guard came back with an inquiry.

 “Did you say that the woman would be carrying out the bucket?”

 “Well, yes. We just thought that you would be more at ease if the woman came out,” Sutter explained innocently.

 There was a pause, then suddenly the prisoners could hear the sounds of nails being pulled out of the door frame. When the door opened, Chanay immediately recognized the guard that she had teased back at the mining camp.

 “Where will she take the bucket?” asked the thug.

 “The north-west wall section. Right next to a rain barrel,” answered Sutter.

 The guard noted that the wall portal was easy enough to view from the front of the loom shop so he judged that it was safe to let the woman go ahead. But first he ordered the men to sit on the floor behind the furthermost loom in the shop.

 “Come on out, Squaw,” he then growled as Chanay stood with the bucket on her side of the threshold.

 The woman did not hurry. The bucket was full and she held it in front, using short, ever so careful steps. She got about seven paces from the building when the guard blocked her path.

 “Since you’re on hand, I’m sure you won’t mind servicing the good hearted fellow who didn’t make you wait until morning.”

 The guard then undid his fly and pissed into the already full container. The result was over flow and a bit of splashing onto Chanay’s buckskin shift.

 “Oh, I’m sorry,” the guard drawled. “In this darkness I didn’t realize that you had a full load. Please excuse me---and do carry on.”

 Chanay obediently made her way across the courtyard, needing to put the bucket down for a moment while only halfway across. Then when she reached the wall, she stole a glance over her shoulder, and seemed to contemplate something far more complex than the task of pouring piss from a bucket.

 “Don’t take all night, Squaw, I have to nail you back into this keep before Manuel comes to make sure you haven’t taken my scalp.”

 The guard smiled at his own joke, but the smile disappeared when it became evident that the woman didn’t have enough strength to lift the bucket to the required chest level.

 “I can’t believe this shit,” the guard exclaimed. “You outta be able to do that while giving birth to another useless redskin.”

 The guard marched over and grabbed hold of the large container.

 “Should have buried you with shag partner, you worthless---“

 Suddenly the guard felt a terrible pain in his throat and realized that the woman wasn’t so worthless after all. While he was staggering in a puddle of piss, Chanay nimbly climbed up onto the ramp-ledge and allowed herself to slide out and down into the dark, while the Spaniard pawed at the makeshift knife that Peen had made from a metal component on one of the looms.

 The killing had not been part of the plan. The knife like tool was supposed to help Chanay free her lover from his earthen trap, before going for help. But the Nisenan  understood that a dead guard would be preferable to one that would sound an alarm. Manuel spotted the open loom shop a minute later from his post, but by that time Chanay’s victim had gotten comfortable with his failure (in the sense that he had lost consciousness) and Chanay was where only a dog could find her in the dark.

 As she expected, the search parties were assigned to the bank of the river. She on the other hand took to the woods and a course that would have her trudging along slowly and awkwardly for most of the night. Still, it was better than being a prisoner, and her heart’s desire was a set number of miles to the northeast. Let her enemies continue to enjoy the upper hand. A knife of vengeance would strike them all down as soon as her beloved was once again whole and hale.

 The stone age woman pictured them walking into her home village someday. William would answer challenges put down by many warrior fools who could not image the extent of his power. After several honorable victories he would be allowed to join a war party and then soon rise to the position of war chief. In time he might even unite all the tribes of the central valley, and they would have many strong sons who would be given the secret power that William possessed.

 These happy thoughts kept the woman moving over rough ground on a black night. More than once she unwittingly came close to a dangerous animal and trudged on before the creature could mark her as an imminent threat. Just as dawn was breaking she cut to the left and made her way to the river bank. From there it was child’s play locating the ground where man’s inhumanity towards his fellow man was on gruesome display.

 William’s eyes were open and responsive when Chanay jumped clear of the rocky bank after selecting a flat rock to replace the knife she had left behind. With renewed energy she tore at the recently filled in earth, while boasting of her escape. The man was unable to answer with words, but he nodded several times with a tired look of approval.

 “I am strong. I will drag you far from here. I will provide us with food and watch over you until you are strong once again. You will see that you chose well when you selected me as your mate.”

 The man’s smile was encouraging, despite the terrible claw marks that were still plain to see on one side of his face. As the woman dug deeper, more wounds appeared; as filthy as they could be. Of course neither of them was terribly concerned. Chanay’s main regret was that she had left her digging instrument in the guard’s throat to insure a quiet departure. It had featured a reasonably sharp edge that could have been used to saw through the ropes that circled William’s body.

 Even though the man had been mangled and buried up to his neck, his captors still took the trouble to bind him like an escape artist (which he was, in the loosest sense of the term.) The woman would have to use her digging rock to saw through the rope. She would be too impatient to hunt for a better piece of shale or even flint. In point of fact, she would gnaw through the bonds with her strong teeth if necessary. She understood the need to free him and get him out of there as quickly as possible.

 Her fingers were aching by the time she got down as low as his knees. By that time she was no longer taking brief glances at her man’s amazing gray eyes. She was totally focused on getting his legs free, and so did not notice William’s expression just before someone grabbed a fist full of her hair. She was quickly jerked to her feet and punched with a closed fist. Not surprisingly, the man with the fist was a Miwok, and the man who was about to speak to her was Manuel.

 “It was a bad night for me, Bitch. First explaining to Chumo why I didn’t see you being let out of the shed, then hiking up river until just before dawn.”

 The Spaniard then took his turn punching the woman in the mouth.

 “But at least we got permission to square things on this beautiful morning,” Manuel continued before delivering yet another blow.

 “The Miwoks brought a proper shovel along because we figured from the start that you would be coming up here to dig up that weird troublemaker---and that brought an idea to mind.”

 The four man work detail fairly leaped into their respective tasks. Two men dug the existing hole wider, while the other two men tied the woman spread eagle over a fallen tree. The Spaniard sat himself down on the ground next to the man who had been called William, and peered briefly at the prisoner’s filthy wounds.

 “I suppose that bear work will look like cat scratches by the time we get back to you. I can hardly wait to see what kind of shape you’ll be in after a week without food or water.”

 Suddenly a Miwok drew his knife and cut open the top and bottom sections of Chanay’s buckskin shift. Manuel couldn’t help but feast his eyes on the woman before the first of four men covered her with his own partially nude body. The gang member than turned his back on the spectacle and focused his attention of the scowling prisoner.

 “I don’t know who pays your salary, but I’m inclined to think its someone who wears long robes and pinches pennies for outside help. Any comment on that?”

 The prisoner stared at the ground just beyond the hole he was in. Then slowly, his bleak gray eyes locked onto his captor, as if to memorize Manuel’s features.

 “Still no voice? Interesting. The claw marks don’t seem to be over the voice box. Perhaps a lack of water is the problem. Well, I’m afraid I can’t help you there. I was given strict orders not to do anything that might hasten your recovery. All your fault you know. You really should have come here with a regiment.”

 The Spaniard rambled on as each Miwok took his turn. Once all four men were sated, the long silent Chanay was cut loose and dropped feet first into the widened hole so that she was positioned close enough to kiss her dream husband. The couple exchanged looks that spoke of condolence, and an iron will to endure. Manuel picked that moment to draw out of his pouch the digging tool that had been left in the throat of a comrade. He held it between the man and woman, as if to imply that it was more important than anything else they could have on their minds.

 Then with the speed of a trained killer Manuel drove the tool into Chanay’s throat and then rose to his feet. The Indians dutifully filled in the hole and packed it down, even as Casca witnessed the look of amazement in the dying woman’s eyes.

 “The woodland creatures will show you how transitory female beauty is,” said the Spaniard as he prepared to head out down stream.

 William stared hard at the woman’s murderer, and kept staring in that direction long after Manuel had departed.

Chapter Twenty-Six

 The animal appeared at sunset, and did not approach with an abundance of caution. It knew carrion when it smelled it, and death was not something that it feared. The coyote was alone as usual and had not eaten yet that day, so after a few exploratory sniffs it began to tear at the skin of the neck. In time it had removed the choicest pieces of meat on the head section, but desired to get at the rest. It began to dig around the carcass and continued to dig even after a sizable amount of flesh had been exposed.

 Then suddenly a pack of wolves arrived on the scene and drove the smaller canine off. The wolves also dug more than was necessary before eating their fill. Like everything from a mosquito to a grizzly, they left William alone. He simply closed his eyes and kept healing, until he realized that the scavengers had inadvertently dug him out past his hips, but tied as he was, he couldn’t quite work his way out of the gore filled nightmare of a hole.

 In time the wolves decided not to dig any deeper and reluctantly left almost half of Chanay’s corpse behind. The darkness of night hid the ugly remains from a captive witness, but the following day William and a few thousand flies had nothing to look at except the legs and pelvic section of the corpse. Toward midday William was visited by another grizzly, which had smelled the carrion from two miles off. The bear roared a challenge at the strange creature that seemed to be in possession of the meat, but of course the man wasn’t able to fight or give ground.

 Fortunately this bear had no offspring to be concerned about, so it approached slowly, with a desire to merely take what it wanted from the hole. William twisted in the loose earth until he could grab hold of a piece of buckskin. Then he waited, and struggled to keep his nerve despite his recent experience with such a monster. The grizzly gave the puny human a sniff, then dismissed it as unappetizing but harmless. It then clamped it’s powerful jaws onto the right upper thigh of the carcass and began to lift.

 William held fast to Chanay’s shift even though waves of agony began to course through his body as it slowly rose out of the hole. The grizzly didn’t even notice that William had come along for the ride until it was ready to begin eating. Then it let out another challenge.

 “Oh fuck you,” thought William as he slowly rolled away from the carcass and then struggled to rotate his way to the nearby river bank.

 It took him thirty minutes of agony to get there, but it was sure as hell worth it. William briefly reflected on the importance of water to a soldier. He could recall perhaps a dozen or so experiences in which he would have traded a cup of diamonds for a equal measure of brackish water. Such was a soldier’s lot. But how many soldiers were ever forced to endure the horror of the last couple of days?

 William began to rub a section of rope against a jagged rock, knowing that if he was lucky, the poxy strands might give way in a couple of hours. Then he would be free to crawl with mending ribs and torn muscles over an endless length of rocks.

 “Should get the bear to carry me,” he muttered to himself.

Chapter 26B

Chumo rested a booted foot on the bronze four pounder and fixed his chief captive with an inscrutable look.

 “Cute little gun. Loaded with grape shot, I imagine it could give a group of unwelcome visitors one very nasty reception. But it would have to be a fairly small group don’t you think?”

 Sutter stood on the other side of the gun and shrugged with his wrists bound behind his back.

 “I see it primarily as a psychological weapon. Lots of noise and what not.”

 “Of course---but I would be very interested to know what sort of shot pattern you could expect at say----one-hundred yards.”

 The former master of the keep could only shake his head.

 “You mean you’ve never fired a live round at a target?” Chumo asked incredulously.

 “No we haven’t,” Sutter admitted.

 “Well then---let’s give it a go, Captain. We have no pressing business at the moment and I’m always in the mood for a bit of target practice. In fact I had it loaded with two-dozen .36 caliber balls just before I sent for you. So let’s just kick up some dirt on this fine afternoon.”

 Sutter had no objections to that until he realized that his captor was holding a lit taper over a gun that was aimed the wrong way. Peen, Syym and the ever loyal young Pablo were chained together at the ankles while hoeing weeds close to the entrance of the fort.  They were directly in the gun’s line of fire, and that was no accident.

 Sutter kicked the gun just as the taper reached the touch hole but the effort was futile. The muzzle only moved an inch to the left, and it might have done more harm than good. Peen had been watching the two men through the open gate way; his suspicions aroused by the fact that the gun had been moved from it’s regular spot. Now he could only step in front of Pablo and mutter something to Syym who was blissfully ignorant of what was about to come.

 The barrage shoved Syym face first into the dirt with seven angry blotches on his back. Peen took only three balls but one of them knocked out his front teeth before exiting the back of his head. Pablo took a ball through the hand but made no sound as a cloud of white smoke drifted past him.

 Sutter tried to launch a booted foot at Chuma, but the younger man was better trained and most certainly on his guard. The group leader sidestepped the kick with ease and hooked his arm under the uniformed leg. The leg was then quickly lifted and Sutter fell back with arms that could not help him.

 “There, you see how little damage is actually done?” said Chuma. “You shouldn’t have settled for anything less than a six pound gun. Anyway, now we know that this piece should be used to cover the entrance. That’s about all.”

 Sutter choked down his rage and stared out at the boy who was silently cradling his injured hand.

 “Won’t you let me treat his wound? He’s not the arrogant buffoon who came out here thinking he would conquer the west with a hunk of bronze.”

 Chuma bent over and deftly cut Sutter’s bonds with a dagger that looked very old.

 ‘By all means, Captain Sutter.”

 “Please don’t call me that anymore,” the man in uniform muttered over his shoulder as he headed out of the fort.

 While Sutter tended to his youngest friend, one of Chumo’s men came to present a complete inventory of the fort’s weaponry and related accessories. When added to their own equipment, it gave the small party of brigands cause for optimism.

 “Let’s see what this popgun can do with the same number of shot, but in .69 caliber, Amado. We might keep a tighter group with heavier balls. My thought is to try lobbing volleys of shot over the wall at the same trail that brought us up from the river. We’ll try a few experimental shots before those rain clouds reach us.”

 The subordinate nodded slightly and went to fetch a small barrel that contained the appropriate sized lead. Chumo stayed with the bronze four pounder and watched his Miwok lackeys drag the bodies out to where the weeds would quickly cover a hole.

 “Arrogant buffoon,”  he mused with satisfaction. “Savages and glorified coachmen carrying toy swords. That’s all that stands between us and the gold in this region.”

 “Were you talking to me, Chumo?” asked a man up on the wall.

 “No,” the younger man responded; just a bit annoyed by the fact that he wasn’t addressed as sir.

 Well, those minor things would be set to right on Saldivar’s return. Then there would be a new chain of command, and Chumo would climb it on the bodies of dead savages and all manner of idol worshipers. Someday even Saldivar would be saluting him, in a capitol city that was yet to be carved out of the California wilderness.

 “Perhaps this shiny little pop gun will stand as part of a monument in the town square,”  Chumo thought briefly. “Cannons make such splendid decorations.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

 William Longpenance, sat with his back to a California Bay Tree and stared at a turtle as it basked in the midday sun. For the past three days he had been living on crayfish, balsam root, sage and what the squirrels might drop from the trees. Raw turtle meat would have been a culinary step up for the injured man, but the amphibian was perched on a rock well into the river way. No---crayfish would have to do for a while longer.  The one good thing about his condition was that it enabled him to ingest borderline food substances with pretty much the same results as what he would get from venison and goose eggs. Of course the improvised nourishment always tasted like crap but he could only recall one or two occasions when he barfed it back up.

 After the turtle slipped back into the water William tried to guess-timate how many days had gone by since that damn grizzly had ripped him a new one. He vaguely recalled that there had been a second bear, and wolves before that. The bearded man clenched his teeth at the memory of a woman’s body being consumed before his eyes. Tears swelled and were wiped away with a hand that was stained with blood. He needed something to pull his thoughts off that horrible image and indeed he found something, staring at him with small dark brown eyes.

 How long the grizzly had been standing there William couldn’t say. The bear was definitely focused on him but in no hurry to test the human’s physical prowess. William memory of the feeding nightmare had been dulled by a lack of water, but he was pretty sure the animal had sniffed him at the offset. Did the bear reject him as a source of food because of his mutated blood? Would it do so again? The grizzly’s continuous stare did not inspire optimism.

 Grizzlies had other concerns besides food. It might want to drive William out of its territory with claws that would undo whatever healing had thus far taken place. No, the already pain racked human would not chance that. He would, with reluctance,  take to the rapids and see if Old Ephraim was in the mood for swimming.

 Slowly (that being the only speed he was capable of) William crawled toward the water. The grizzly didn’t budge an inch during the entire ordeal, and it began to rain only moments after the injured man reached the shallows.

 “Well, dammit---you gunna sit there until your fat ass grows roots?” William asked some three hours after reaching the rocky shore.

 Then suddenly a trout came cruising along the bank in about twelve inches of water. Without thinking William rolled into the water and snatched up the prize with a deftness that was the product of many years of combat. Unfortunately, the remarkable display of hand to eye coordination did not go un witnessed. The grizzly saw it, and it was definitely something that got him animated.

 Most frontiersmen believed that Old Ephraim possessed poor eye sight. Well, in a matter of seconds it became plain to William that some bears have better vision than others. With strength born of desperation William staggered to his feet and limped heavily into deeper water. At the last possible second he threw the fish at the bear. When the fish fell back into the water, the grizzly instinctively slapped at it, trying to propel it onto the shore. It didn’t work and the lucky fish promptly swam away from the super predator. The bear then chose to take out its frustration on the funny little creature that smelled almost like a skunk that had unloaded sometime ago.

 While speed wading towards the center of the river, William suddenly recalled the time a pimp and three bullyboys had chased after him for not settling with a whore. A grizzly claws weren’t as sharp as a razor, nor as long as most daggers, but when the angry bear’s primary weapons made contact with William back, The Eternal Mercenary  was reminded that sharp cutters hurt less than dull ones.

 William pitched belly first into the now waist deep water. Like a crippled whale attempting to flee a harpooner, the hard pressed swimmer lowered himself to the river bottom, taking with him the pain and cold of a remorseless wilderness. Aided by clear water, the bear grabbed hold of the man and sunk his fangs into the back of a shoulder. William swallowed half the river at that point, and was denied the satisfaction of watching the bear high tail it to the bank while vigorously shaking its massive head.

 Thirty seconds later the grizzly was dead, and William was free floating with the current past rocks that occasionally dealt him a glancing blow. Of course he was past caring. His body didn’t stop until he reached a tree that had fallen into the water and taken up a parallel station beside a much older log. A trick of the current rolled the body over so that it’s face was turned upward to the blue sky. An hour passed, then suddenly the stomach contracted violently and water gushed out of the man’s mouth.

 Lungs followed suite, and in moments the man was crawling feebly out of the shallows and onto a cluster of tules. At that moment, William felt as though the river had given birth to him, and like any new born creature, he was a bundle of wobbling muscle and befuddled senses. His hearing was the first thing to come back to him. Liquid notes of meadow larks and robins seemed to float above him, and behind them the ceaseless murmur of the bank.

 But unlike Henry David Thoreau, William would shut out these rhapsodies of nature and probe for manmade sounds. As his vision cleared he scanned for predators of the two legged variety, even though his claw wounds were a constant reminder of his last grizzly encounter.

 Eyes that were as bleak as a North Atlantic storm registered an almost inhuman perception of what was happening in the marshy woodland. When the professional soldier was convinced that he had found sanctuary (at least for the time being) he slowly closed his eyes and allowed himself to drift off into a long and healing sleep. He awoke the following dawn, slightly displeased by a chilly wind that signaled the coming of autumn.

 His body craved protein with which to repair the damage inflicted by fang and claw. Without a firearm he was compelled to slip back into then cold water and once again take up the role of aquatic predator. Raw fish wasn’t so bad. At least there were enough fish so that he didn’t have to resort to eating the creatures whole.  The head, spine and tail portions could be discarded, and there was even some sage growing on hand (if he could stay out of the river long enough to dry the leaves)

 William didn’t know where on the river he was, but he decided to stay put and heal up before re-entering the world of violent men. He spotted another lone standing California Bay Tree about fifty yards from the river bank with a lot of tall reeds growing in between. He crawled to the spot, pleased that the tree’s leafy umbrella had created a permanent dry spot that was hidden by the neighboring tules.

 Here he would remain when not fishing. Here he would wait for his revenge. It would come in the form of a posse made up of rancheros who would not suffer political usurpers in their midst. They would learn of Sutter’s misfortune and fear for their own properties. That is when he would step forward and offer his services. With their backup, he would once again make the minions of The Company wish their mommies had never met their daddies. With that grim thought he drifted into yet another healing sleep, but it was not a peaceful one.

 Once again he found himself in Singapore. He and the cargo haulers hastily bringing crates down to the pier. Jolly John Decker had reneged on his end of a bargain. Now a shipment of rifles had to be repossessed. But there was a missionary priest in the area who didn’t like gunrunning. Got the port authorities to see things his way, but that wouldn’t stop a poxy thing.

 It was dark and raining. If you wanted to steal something from John Decker, it was a good idea to steal it fast. William was in the rear, covering their rush to the sea. Suddenly a number of hooded men appeared out of nowhere brandishing clubs. William smashed the closest one in the face with a straight punch. The hood fell back, and the fighting man watched as the priest’s eyes rolled up and closed. Days later he found out that the priest had died from a swollen brain.

 William’s eyes opened suddenly and he shook the cobwebs from his brain. Once again he apologized to the soul of the priest.

 The very special soldier let out a sigh and again struggled to get a grip on one of his few on going fears---namely the fear of going mad with guilt.

  William had learned some years ago that his biggest problem was that he wasn’t a cruel man. He loved the adventurous life of the professional soldier, but he hated all the other aspects of human conflict.

 He had been in the company of men who made him look saintly, but that didn’t matter. It pleased him that humanity seemed to be improving in parts of the world, but he never had to wait long to witness some gang rape or the brutalization of the very young or old.

 “If only I was evil,” he would often think to himself, “then I could sleep with a smile on my kisser every night I’ll wager.”

  After a bit more brooding William was able to shrug off his bout of melancholia and crawl back to the river for another helping of salmon or trout. He didn’t know how his recuperative powers actually worked, but he fancied that every ounce of protein he could swallow would fuel the hyper healing process. Maybe his mutated body didn’t work that way, but as long as the squiggling, slimy food stuffs were available, he would continue to choke them down with that goal in mind.

 He had just thrown a fair sized trout onto the bank when his combat instincts told him that he no longer had that section of the river to himself. There was time to crawl all the way back to his resting spot. He could only belly down behind one of the fallen trees that had caught his drifting body earlier and hope that he wouldn’t have to remain in about ten inches of water for long.

 The good news was that the ten horsemen were riding on the opposite bank; heading upstream and apparently oblivious to everything except the unstable terrain that stretched out in front of their mounts.

 The bad news was that they were soldiers of The Company. Reinforcements, and each of them was armed with the same revolver type carbine that William had gotten a look at back at the winery. As William peered over his log he noted that the riders weren’t packing much else. That meant they were bound for someplace nearby, like maybe where a man was supposed to be buried up to his neck.

 Suddenly William’s trout made an effort to get back to the water. The slapping sound caused the last rider to turn around and gaze at the opposite bank. William nearly shoved his face onto the river bottom while cursing the diehard fish. The rider was a city dweller and he almost gave into the temptation of asking if there were any alligators in California.

 Once the riders were gone William came to the sad conclusion that he would need to get to west bank. He was almost certain that those cult members hadn’t ridden all the way from the Monterey area just to keep going. No, they must have spent at least a little time at Sutter’s fort. Most likely that’s where they got their directions to lead them to the mining site. They’d be hunting for him soon enough, so he needed to get rearmed and equipped better than he was.

 With a sigh of resignation, fighting man crawled towards the center of the waterway until he was forced to dog paddle in a manner that was down right pathetic. The effort was extremely painful, and remained so even as his entire body began to go numb. Thoughts and sensations became less coherent and William was fairly certain that he would have to die (as it were) in order to get washed down river to a point where crossing might be possible.

 Happily, that was not the case. He actually made it to the other side without drowning, and the fact that he was now a whole mile further down stream was actually to his purpose. It placed him much closer to the fork where the American River emptied into the Sacramento. At that point Casca thought he heard voices, but he didn’t even try to look around. He just crawled into a muddy cleft that had been cut by the last rainstorm and fell fast asleep.

 It was around 4 a.m. when he awoke and slowly crawled up to the top of the embankment. There he could detect the odor of wood burning drifting in from Sutter’s fort and some of the lesser structures. Fatigue and pain continued to assail him, but he willed himself upright at this time and staggered forward into the thin woods. When he was some one-hundred yards from the fort’s east wall, he tripped over something, and was amazed to discover that it was a cross made of two sticks.

 A closer examination revealed that he had staggered over a fresh grave; actually the mass variety. With nothing to lose William probed the soft earth with one hand and was not surprised to discover that the top corpse was only down about twelve inches. That was proof enough that The Company had taken control of Sutter’s fort and had killed at least a few of its residents. William promptly exhumed the corpse and was elated by the fact that the Miwok Indian had not been stripped of his buckskins or even his knife.

 William discarded his ruined shirt and trousers and put on the buckskins. They were filthy and they smelled but it was a big step upward from the blood stained rags that the bear had left him with. Besides which, it gave him an idea. The following morning a soldier of The Company chanced to walk upon the south vegetable field, looking for some onions to spice up his morning meal. When he heard a curious clicking sound he raised his carbine and peered at the end of the field where tilled earth met with short brush and saplings.

 There wasn’t enough cover to hide anything bigger than a jackrabbit, yet the faint clicking continued. The cult member noted that a comrade was up on the wall and would certainly respond to any call for assistance, so he proceeded towards the edge of the field; wishing that the morning sun wasn’t in his eyes. Then suddenly he stopped short, hardly able to believe what he was looking at.

 Yesterday evening the Miwoks  had been liquidated and buried in a single hole. Apparently the corpse on top had sat up, raising himself up out of the shallow top soil. He had heard of such things happening in the past. Something about the gases that build up in the body. But there was also the possibility that the Indian laying underneath the top one might have survived the firing squad and regained consciousness in the hole.

 The cultist turned to call to the wall sentry but the man had disappeared. Well, that was alright. The new revolver carbine made the young man feel indestructible, especially in the case of partially buried men who were wounded. The young man was made slightly uneasy by the sight of the corpse slowly resuming a laying position as the gunman drew nearer, but he shook off the feeling and replaced it with one of self admonishment.

 “Check the second man down, then go wash your hands and report what happened, you “fraidy cat,”  he thought to himself as he bent over the top Indian.

 Yes, the cultist had a strong grip on reality. Only children and pagans are afraid of the dead. But then there was an explosion of movement that caught the startled gunman flatfooted. In another second he would realize that the second Indian was alive and armed with a knife. Then the cultist would simply bring his carbine to bear and fire on a hapless victim who is down and partially covered by a medium sized corpse.

 But the man with the knife did not need to rise to his feet, any more than he needed to be within stabbing distance of his opponent. No, he simply needed to sit up and throw his knife from the handle, in a manner rarely practiced by men who call themselves warriors. The cultist never saw the knife leave its owner’s hand. The distance to target could not have been more than two feet, and the throw occupied that time frame in which the victim was in shock. So the killing only made sense to the victim as he sank to his knees and watched his assassin roll out from under a dead Miwok.

 Without ceremony fighting man pulled the knife out of the dying man’s throat and helped himself to the carbine and the man’s ammunition pouch which also contained flint and steel. Then he willed his legs to carry him away from the fort as quickly as possible, so that when his handiwork was spotted, he would be back in the thick woods and moving parallel with the river. Pain would remain a constant companion, but at least now he could hunt decent meat, cook it, and fight well enough with the new fangled carbine.

 Any other man would have headed for Monterey under the circumstances. Even if labeled a suspicious character he would have more comfort than in the wilderness, and he would have at least a chance of getting on a ship that would take him south and away from his worst enemies. Then he could most likely enlist in the Mexican Army, since dictators were always in need of quality fighting men who would rather fight than rot in a jail somewhere.

 But William chose to head roughly in the direction of where James Smith would still be panning for gold. His plan was to get a few miles downwind of the site and shoot himself a deer. Smith would be allowed to pan for gold all the while William would be eating and regaining his peak form. Then when William was good and ready, he would pay Smith a visit, relieving him of his gold and his life. (Not necessarily in that order)

 Those men who passed him on the river might ruin the plan by killing or forcibly recruiting the traitorous frontiersman, but William doubted it. More than likely Smith would smell those Spanish gentlemen coming a mile away. His plan would be to hide from everyone until bad weather would finally drive him down to Monterey.

 William paused for a while to give his aching body a respite. He nodded in approval as he studied the sleek lines of the ball and cap revolver design. The gun certainly wasn’t a powerhouse. The five cylinders looked like they wouldn’t accommodate more than thirty grains of black powder, which meant that he’d have to get close in order to properly knock off a fair sized deer.

 No problem. He’d put the ball right in the brain. Same with Smith, except the flea bitten son of a bitch would first have to learn why he was going under. With that happy thought Casca forced himself back up on his feet, and resumed his painful march towards a safer hunting ground.

Chapter Twenty-Eight.

 James Smith couldn’t have been happier if someone had presented him with a brand new, completely intact pair of long johns. His ciphering left much to be desired but he was reasonably certain that in a few more days he would have enough gold to buy any ranchero in the Monterey area. Of course he wouldn’t attempt any such foolish thing. The rancheros were owned by men who had built them from nothing. Most already had family cemeteries on the land. None of them would give up their land, even after death.

 To be sure, he would have to take unsettled land and stock it with livestock purchased from neighbors. That would certainly be less time consuming than breeding, and since he knew most of the rustlers personally, he figured he would be able to hold on to his property better than most. As for women: he would keep his wits about him and bear in mind that he was not getting any younger.

 Yup---three women counting Sahnay would be the absolute limit. Hopefully they would get along, but if not, he could keep one in the nearest town, and Sahnay could have her own lodge somewhere on a back section of the property. That would leave some fancy lady from Mexico City to warm his store bought bed that would be in the loft of his big New Orleans  style house. (He broke into one once and was most impressed with its grandeur)

Smith would have to tour a few houses in daylight to get some ideas concerning décor, but he’d make sure there was a Hawken rifle hanging on every wall. Maybe a few nudy pictures and a painting of a good horse. Those thoughts, not to mention the subject of expensive whiskey, occupied much of his thinking processes as he and Sahnay worked the river bank. The woman labored simply because it was a thing to do, like tanning a hide or making dye out of berries. But it was different for the white man. He had thoroughly succumbed to a mental illness known as “gold fever.”

 It caused some men to go without proper rest or nutrition. It encouraged the taking of unnecessary risks and most certainly brought out a great deal of animosity in men. In Smith’s case it stunted all his senses except his ability to make out the golden specks that would materialize at the bottom of his pan. For this reason he failed to hear what the critters of the area had to say when the humans entered their domain. Sahnay spotted them first, but by then  there was nothing to do but stare and hope for the best.

 “Senhor James Smith---your services are once again required,” announced a giant of a man who, like his comrades was dressed in military attire that was both threadbare and out of place for the coastal side of the continent. The man in the officer’s uniform was no longer a real member of the Mexican military, but no one in California would have any way of knowing that. He wore a dark blue coatee that had red collars and cuffs. The matching pants were striped, and his boots were high and a bitch to walk in. All the men wore wide brimmed hats that could disguise their facial features with a slight nod.

 “Once again?”  queried the frontiersman, who was leery of soldier boys in any form.

 “I am called Captain Manuel Teran, and a number of my associates allowed you to remain here and pan for gold until such time when we would again require the skills of a Indian scout. That time is now.”

 “Uh---did ya pay a visit ta Sutter’s fort?”

 “Of course. That is where I received my instructions from Chumo.”

 “Well now---the closest Injuns are jest a ways south of thet there fort. Most likely you smelled their campfires when you was comin up river.”

 “Right now we’re not hunting savages,” explained Teran. “The fellow you know as William Longpenance has recovered from the blow that you gave him and is now roaming free somewhere in these parts. You will help us recapture him.”

 The frontiersman shrugged.

 “It’d be easier ta just keep a lookout fer im in Monterey. He’ll show up sooner or later. Ain’t no place else fer him ta go since the ranchers don’t cotton ta outsiders these days.”

 “If I were him I would regain my strength, then come after the man who betrayed me,” Teran said as if deaf to the frontiersman’s advice. “You are not safe out here, Senhor Judas. You would do well to help us find him before he finds you.”

 Smith wasn’t all that intimidated, but he had to bow to Teran’s logic. In this part of the world, revenge was definitely a prime motivator.

 “Kin my woman stay n keep pannin?”

 The captain was about to say no when a thought occurred to him.

 “Rodriguez, you stay behind and do a little stationary hunting. Stay out of sight until we return, or until you can put a bullet through his heart.”

 The subordinate nodded slightly and guided his mount off to a spot where he could secure the horse and set up a crude shooting blind.

 “If I even suspect that your slut caused the trap to fail---“

 “She ain’t empty betwixt the handle horns,” Smith assured him.

 Smith saddled up fast and before long the search party was gathered around the carcass of a grizzly bear. Teran sat immobile in his horse and gave the frontiersman plenty of time to come up with his own conclusions.

 “Wahl---I ain’t never seen no grizzly consumption b’fore, but I’m guessin thet I’m lookin at it now. Can’t think of nuthin else that don’t leave no mark.”

 “It was poisoned,” the captain growled with distain.

 “Do tell? Wahl---it come out of the water b’fore it did. That much is certain and for shore.”

 The captain’s eyes brightened slightly with interest.

  “Then it is possible that he floated downriver for quite a ways. We may even have passed within yards of the bastard after we left the fort.”

 “So he drown-ded. More in likely clawed up bad ta boot. Don’t know how poison comes inta it, but thet don’t concern me. You don’t need me ta find no drown-ded  stiff. So I reckon I kin git back ta—“

 The captain’s laugh was contemptuous, and it signaled trouble to the frontiersman.

 “You think you’re safe now, Senhor Judas? You really think that?”

 “Wahl---if I ain’t, then I reckon I’ll have ta shoot thet man right betwixt the eyes,” growled the frontiersman, who didn’t much like taking threats from a second party.

 Teran nodded in approval. As far as he was concerned, Smith was just a dog that walked like a man, but even a dog could be taught useful things, and The Company would be needing such well trained dogs for many months to come.

 “Ever hear of a man named Hugh Glass?”

 “I reckon I’d haffta be a bigger greenhorn than you ta not have heard of em,”  Smith responded fearlessly.

 The Spaniard nodded again, knowing the difference between boorishness and true insult.

 In 1823 an ex-seaman named Hugh Glass signed on for an expedition up the Missouri river. In a land that would someday be known as South Dakota, Glass surprised a grizzly bear and her two cubs. The mother grizzly attacked first with claws and then with teeth which is the bear’s usual method. If Glass had been in the middle of St Louis at the time, there might have been some hope of him surviving the mauling, but he was a long way from civilization, and in those days most doctors weren’t worth tits on a boar hog anyway.

 His comrades bandaged his wounds as best they could and waited for him to “go under.” The party was bound for the Yellowstone area and in those days you needed to get to your destination before winter could set in. Unfortunately for the trapping party, Hugh Glass was in no shape to travel, and was taking his bloody sweet time about dying. So the expedition leader asked for volunteers to stay behind and bury Glass, who surely wouldn’t live more than a few days.

 John Fitzgerald and a young Jim Bridger agreed to stay for some bonus money, but things didn’t work out as expected. As the days dragged by, Glass actually grew stronger, but not strong enough to get on his feet. Then an Indian hunting party was spotted from a distance and the two trappers decided that a badly wounded man wasn’t worth dying for. So they left him without so much as a knife.

 Evidently the Indians did not find him at that time, but he had a broken leg and the claw lacerations were so deep that you could see some of his ribs. After regaining full consciousness he discovered that he could crawl, but the nearest outpost was Fort Kiowa some two-hundred miles away. Glass did in fact crawl a good portion of the distance, living on edible plants and meat from a buffalo that the wolves had brought down.

 Some say a band of friendly Indians came to his aid; others say he built a crude raft and floated down the Cheyenne river to the Missouri. In any case, Glass was obsessed with the idea of hunting down the two men who had left him for dead. He intended to kill them both, and didn’t give a damn what the law would have to day about it. But as it turned out, young Jim Bridger was so remorseful and repentant that Glass couldn’t bring himself to kill the youngster. As for Fitzgerald, he had joined the United States Army, and was very well protected when Glass finally confronted him.

 None of these setbacks caused the trapper to give up his chosen life style, and he continued to court the dangers of the frontier until 1833 when he was killed by the Arikaras. But the thing that made Glass legendary, was his determination to confront the men who (rightly or wrongly) had abandoned him.

 Smith remembered how well Longpenance had handled himself in the woods where they had fought the Indians together. If the scar faced man was still alive, he would not likely forgive treachery, as Hugh Glass eventually forgave the wrongs perpetrated on him.

 “I reckon, if yer gunna play a man false, ya better take out his heart soon after.”

 “That is wisdom, Senhor Judas. In any case, I want his body found before---it starts to rot. You will accomplish this before you pan another speck of gold dust. However, your woman can remain at the river bank and serve as possible bait. Too planes being better than one.”

 “Fer certain,” replied Smith before heading back to give Sahnay some last minute instructions.

 Now more than ever he was glad that he had taken up with the Indian woman. No doubt she would be trouble in the future, but here and now she was the perfect partner for collecting gold. Of course being an Indian, stealing horses would have come natural to her, and she would have made a good whore as well. But those things wouldn’t have made them rich, and getting rich is what a man dreams of when his adventuring days slip behind him.

 Sahnay might try and castrate him in his sleep when the other women arrived, but until then she would pan as hard as any man and not hold out on him. Smith was fairly certain of it. So he would focus his mind on the task of finding William Longpenance, so that no specter would ever haunt him in a lonely forest.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

 For William Longpenance, the killing of a wild animal was not part of any hunt, but merely the first step in acquiring meat. He did not have complete control over this chore, but under favorable circumstances, he would most certainly gain his objective with a bit of patience. The Eternal Mercenary rarely had cause to hunt game. On a battlefield overpopulated with the living and the dead, he ate whatever his comrades ate; which was mostly dried meat and biscuits. But centuries of experience had taught him how to kill most anything---anywhere.

 In this situation, he had sat himself down with his back to a tree. Napped on and off until his combat instincts told him that something large was coming his way. He cocked the revolver weapon in advance, because the mechanism caused a loud clicking sound that could easily startle a wary animal. Then he waited until the deer passed the tree. The animal saw no predator that it was familiar with, but after a moment of deliberation, it chose to run away.

 That wasn’t good enough.

 The .36 caliber ball hit the deer squarely in the brain case. A very impressive shot at forty yards. The creature went down as if hit by a hammer, and William now had his meat. Since he was doing without any sort of stationary camp, he only removed a single hind quarter and left the hide on to protect the meat from dirt and forest debris. He couldn’t remember ever packing raw venison for more than three days, but for reasons that even he didn’t understand, meat preservation was not a big concern of his.

 One time he drank from a poisoned well and it put him down hard for the rest of the day. The occasional case of food poisoning would make him throw up like any normal person, unless the body was in dire need of sustenance. Then it would keep the food and just make William feel as if he was walking around with a pound of dirt in his gullet. Happily, the various forms of venereal disease had even less effect on him.

 William reminisced in solitude over such things and many more as he paralleled the river from a safe distance. By the time his meat was gone he was no longer limping and he was close enough to his destination to start thinking about what course of action would best serve him. He knew he was on the threshold of danger when his combat instincts started to tingle and he could hear the musical water not far to his left. The professional soldier got down on his now completely healed chest and abdomen and began a slow creep to where the forest met with a pocket clearing.

 There he was treated to the sight of Sahnay while she was tending to her personal hygiene. It was an agreeable view until William thought of her sister. Then came the nightmare vision of an equally beautiful body being torn and devoured by wild denizens of the wilderness. Then other memories flooded in. An old woman being cleaved because she dropped a  flagon, then a child being fed to a lion.

 Casca shook his head with an angry expression and then refocused,

 Self pity was shoved aside as the familiar feeling of foreboding intensified. He proceeded to do a slow perimeter crawl away from the woman. After twenty minutes he found what he was looking for, and was disappointed that it was not Smith. It was a soldier of The Company, who from a greater distance had been watching Sahnay bathe herself. But unlike William, this man was not pleased by what he saw.

 Rodriguez was the very picture of sexual frustration. Turning his back on the distant woman he slammed his fist into a nearby tree and let fly with a string of Spanish expletives. William knew enough about such men to appreciate his feelings in this situation. Every member of the gang was trained to put business first and personal wants second. Like soldiering, it didn’t always work, but most of the time the rules were observed.

 It had always been a pet theory of William’s that if sexually frustrated men would just get themselves to a good Cat House, much of their cruel nature might be relieved. Of course that was mostly wishful thinking, but until you actually try something and fail, you don’t know for certain that it won’t work. In any event, while Rodriguez was brooding over his bloody knuckles, Casca snuck up behind the unhappy sentry and slipped a choke hold on him until the green land turned black.

 When the sentry regained consciousness, he found his arms tied spread eagle to a long heavy pole that ran across his upper back. The man standing over him was neither grinning with glee nor frowning with disdain. It was a poker face; a face that simply meant business.

 “Why didn’t you kill me?” the prisoner asked as soon as he could get his mouth to work.

The scar faced man smiled at the miserable minion before him.

 “I’m going to cross the mountains and then make my way southeast. My guess is that The Company won’t just settle for California. You’re going to want a buffer zone that could extend all the way to western Texas. I intend to make sure that the men back in Texas see you lot for what you are. Any bullshit letters you’ve written to them won’t make good toilet paper after I’ve had my say.”

 “I don’t know anything about Texas,” the prisoner spat out.

 “I know you don’t. You’re just a messenger boy, and all you need with me is a fairly good memory. Now I’m telling you that your merry little band will have its way for a while, but Santa Ana and the Texans are gunna find out that they need to stop hating each other long enough to cut out some rot before it spreads all over the western continent.”

 “Ha! I don’t believe you’re going overland,” exclaimed the prisoner. “It would take you forever to hike from here to the Texas frontier. You will go back south, or perhaps think of crossing the Pacific, but that will not be possible.”

 “You mean because your people control the docks at Monterey,” put in William.

 “No, because we have people on every ship sailing east of the Sandwich Islands,”  clucked the prisoner. There is an exodus in progress, and we have been buying or contracting ships in preparation for this time. You can steal a nag and flee from us, but you are ill suited to warn the world about what’s coming. Run someplace safe. If we find you amongst the Mexicans in the coming fight, we will make you curse the day you ran afoul of The Company.”

 “Well----killing cockroaches is always easier if you can get them to congregate in one spot,” William stated optimistically. “Anyway---you got your message. I hope your bosses heed it and make things easier for the soldiers who will be coming, but one way or another, you people are going down.”

 William helped the prisoner onto his feet, but made no effort to remove the restraining pole.

 “You expect me to hike downstream with my arms pinned like this?” growled the prisoner.

 “Might be a little humiliating, but if you walked back to the fort without so much as a knife cut, they might think that you ran off at the sight of me.”

 “I would rather fight you, even though it would cost me blood and pain.”

 “I don’t give a shit what you would rather do,” muttered the scar faced man as he shoved the prisoner in the appropriate direction.

 The young man trudged forward for some twenty paces and then turned to glare at the object of his rage.

 “I will tell them that you dare them to come after you. I will instill such hatred in their hearts, that they will turn over every rock in Mexico to find you! Then I will come to where they have recaptured you, and I will piss in your face!”

“I don’t think you really want to do that.”

 After the man was out of sight, William turned and noticed that the Indian woman was regarding him with more than a little apprehension.

“You go?” Sahnay inquired.

 William nodded slightly and said, “I go, even though I’d love to hunt down your man and pay him back.”

 “I help you go.”

 The fighting man was more than a little impressed with how much English this woman had learned in her brief relationship with a white man.

 “Do any of the mountain tribes value the yellow metal?”

 “ Monache understand that the yellow metal is prized along the great water.”

 “That means I’ve got to buy my animals and provisions here in the central valley before I try my luck in the mountains,” William reasoned. “Good thing you’ve been here all this while panning for gold so that you can loan it to me. That’s the least you can do considering what your son of a bitch husband did to me.”

 The woman quickly fetched her leather pouch of gold and handed it to William.

 “Mother Earth gives up the yellow metal easier than crops. Where is sister?”

 “Your sister was killed by Chumo. He did it---to hurt me.”

 Sahnay stared into her own private space and quietly made her peace with a cold and uncaring world.

 “You hurt by death?”

 “Yes.”

 “But you no avenge. You run away.”

 “Catching your husband alone would be simple work compared to getting Chumo alone,” responded William. In a few weeks he will probably be surrounded by hundreds of well armed fighting men. Until then, he will be in Sutter’s fort with a fine bodyguard.”

 “Many words---no honor,” was her reply.

 “I’d be walking into a trap sure as shit floats on water. No, I gotta go someplace where my enemies won’t follow---namely those cold looking mountains. You’re gunna find me someone who has pack horses and gear for sale, Woman. I ain’t got time to wander about hoping to stumble on the right Indians.”

 “No honor. Smith better,” Sahnay said with contempt.

 “You think a back stabber like Smith is better than me?” queried William.

 “You have spirit power, but no honor.”

 “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

 “Rock not kill you. Water not kill you. Spirit power, but no honor.”

 “My spirit power is not strong enough to kill all of them,” William stated while going for the other horse. “My enemies are like a swarm of hornets. If you only kill a few, you accomplish nothing.”

 The Indian frowned at that last statement. It made no sense to her, and it reaffirmed her commitment to the bushy bearded frontiersman. Still---she understood why her sister had been attracted to the man. He was a supreme wonder and she didn’t really believe that he could be motivated by cowardice. But it stuck in her craw that her sister should go un-avenged. Blood must be answered with blood. This was the way of the world. Even the mysterious Christians would hang a man by the neck if he committed certain wrongs.

 While en route to her home village William explained in detail what had happened since their last parting. She only understood bits and pieces, but her seemed to pick words up like a sponge.

 “Anyway, that’s what happened, Sahnay.  That’s why it wouldn’t make any difference if I killed Chumo. He’s just one hornet in a swarm.”

 “Make difference to sister’s spirit. She rest---“

 Sahnay stopped short and gazed skyward with a hint of confusion. She knew what she was hearing but only The Eternal Mercenary  could calculate direction and distance.

 “Is your village slightly off to my left and beyond that tree line?”

 The woman didn’t answer, she kicked her mount in the ribs and bolted forward with her body crouched low. William cursed out loud and tried to catch up with her. Fortunately for them both, Sahnay was not a first class rider, so the infantryman was able to catch up and get a flailing hand on the other horse’s bridle. On the tail end of that success William lost his balance and promptly dropped between the two animals.

 The flustered foot soldier held on to the bridle for dear life and that made the fall a bit easier on William but a lot harder on the woman. Sahnay left the saddle with a short screech and a slightly longer drop.

 “Make me mad,” she grumbled as she got to her feet.

 “Tell me you weren’t actually going to charge into that village without so much as a sharpened stick,” implored her companion.

 With fists and teeth clench the woman glared at William with her breasts rising and falling. But after a moment she settled down and slowly got back into the saddle. The man did likewise and from there they employed a slow gallop to a grove of trees that were three-hundred yards from the creek side of the village.

 The sounds of gunfire had been a constant since William inquiry about the location of the village. Falling off his horse sort of interrupted his count, but he guessed that over one-hundred rounds had thus far been expended. Even with all the distractions the counting was much easier than it would have been on the battlefield. There were no volleys or simultaneous exchanges. Nothing but an ongoing series of individual shots that didn’t remind Wiliam of anything he had every heard before.

 William made damn poxy sure that once their horses were secured, the Indian woman remained at his side as they advanced in a crouch. He had a pretty good idea what they would find in the next few seconds, and he didn’t want Sahnay to bolt on him so close to the action. That was good thinking, but made irrelevant by the sudden on rush of several adolescent girls who were trying to distance themselves from what was behind them.

 The fighting man didn’t have to see their pursuer coming. He could sense him. A two legged predator bent on killing the helpless. William backed up behind a tree and prepared to shoot his carbine from the hip. At the same time Sahnay did the exact opposite of what William would have demanded if he had been in a position to open his mouth. She crouched behind a bush, and like William, waited for the oncoming enemy to materialize. The distance between them was a mere eight feet, and the man bent of pursuing the fleeing girls would likely pass between them.

 Directly, between them. 

 “Shit “ thought William as he brought the stock up to his shoulder.

 A split second later the runner flashed into view. With inhuman precision William sighted in on a face and dropped the hammer on a tiny percussion cap. The revolver carbine spat out white smoke as the Indian woman foolishly sprang up out of hiding. The .36 caliber ball drove through the runner’s skull and as a now flattened piece of lead whizzed over the head of Sahnay, spraying her with gore.

 The Indian mindlessly slashed at her adversary while he was in the act of pitching forward. William pointed his weapon in the direction of the distant camp, while Sahnay struggled to comprehend that the blood on her face did not belong to her.

 “Try to stay out of my line of fire in the future,” growled William as he tensely studied the mayhem that continued in the village. As far as he could see, his shooting had gone unnoticed by both the marauders and their prey.

 “I help you!” she almost shrieked.

 “Well, we better get out of here so you won’t have to help me anymore.”

 William cautiously retreated in the direction that the girls had fled, but Sahnay remained immobile; now focused on the extermination of her people.

 “Sahnay, stay with me,” William said to her back.

 The woman didn’t hear. Her ears only took in the sounds of screaming women and children. Her eyes only saw the killing that was possible with the new type of rifle. Warriors thinking to charge a man with a spent rifle, would discover that the rifle could still hand out death. Most of the others were seen fleeing danger on one side of the village, only to be cut down by shooters ready on the other side.

 William didn’t see any blue clad corpses on the ground and that didn’t surprise him. Every Nisenan with a musket or bow was probably cut down at the beginning of the attack. Most likely the lodge entrances had been well covered by top of the line marksmen. Obviously some of the women managed to escape, but most them were herded into the turkey shoot. The Eternal Mercenary  almost thanked The Jew  for the absence of pregnant women.

 Almost.

 “Each man is carrying spare cylinders,” William muttered to himself. “They know a trick or two for switching em faster than I could.”

 William grabbed hold of the woman and turned her around as the cultists began the grim work of finishing off those villagers who had not taken lead in vital spots. Chumo had not been spotted, but William was fairly certain that the new gang leader was somewhere near by.

 “Do you know any other village that would take our gold?” asked William as they approached their horses.

 “Eat dung,” she replied.

 “Oh I see—my spirit power was supposed to save those people. Is that it? There was at least sixty or seventy gunmen cleaning out that village. My guess is you didn’t notice because you were too busy looking at where the bullets were going.”

 “Demons,” Sahnay muttered.

 “Oh yea, and I’m thinking that they wiped out that village because it’s the closest to Sutter’s fort. Am I right? Well, they’ll do the next closest village before too long. Those extra shooters we saw are proof that at least a portion of The Company’s  own troopers have arrived. More and more make believe Mexican troops will be put ashore until they’re ready to overthrow Monterey with the help of mercenaries. I don’t doubt that some heavy duty mining equipment will be coming up river as well.”

 “What is a mer-cenary?” queried the Nisenan.

“Men who fight as soldiers for money. In a few weeks, most of the blue coats that you see will be such men.”

 “And all this, for yellow metal?” the woman asked incredulously.

 “No. That is for the mercenaries. Their chiefs desire the land. All of it. They will share it with no one.”

 “That is white man’s way,” grumbled Sahnay as she lead William in a northeasterly direction.

 “Well, yea---but some folks are a lot worse than others, and your man Smith will find out soon enough that he is not much safer than the Nisenan.”

 “He off that rock, before it turns over,” said the woman.

 Casca touched the part of his skull that had been cracked by Smith’s improvised weapon.

 “Are we heading for another village?”

 “No. I get more gold. You go up river.”

 “I can’t cross the mountains without provisions,” Casca stated with an edge to his voice.

 “Go up river. Find Atsugewi. They help on mountain.”

 “They deal in gold?”

 “Show spirit power. Strong thing.”

 “How do I do that---exactly?” rigging a sling for his Colt carbine.

 “You man. Be man.”

 Casca rolled his eyes at that, but the woman had something more to say.

 “Modoc  people bad. Capture Atsugewi. Help Atsugewi.”

 “Slavers huh?” responded Willaim with an evil grin. “Sweet Thing, I do believe you just presented me with a way of introduction.”

 “Sweet thing good?”

 “Very good,” William responded as he turned his back on the woman and headed for thinner and colder air.

Chapter Thirty

 William spent the next three days trying to find a trail and some form of nourishment that wouldn’t require the discharging of his weapon. He learned a long time ago that you never engage an enemy while lost. You have to know what you will find if you are pushed onto any particular compass heading. Since he was fairly lost, he dared not advertise his presence in this unknown region. So he trudged on an eastern course and found some bird eggs. Then marched further and found a fat snake. Then poked around and nearly got poked back by a porcupine.

 He had learned a little while back that if you need to eat an animal raw, the porcupine is a good choice. They don’t smell too good when you open them up, but they are cleaner than most woodland creatures.

 Well, he couldn’t fight hard without nourishment. Since he was in a hostile land, he needed to keep his strength up, even if it meant eating grasshoppers. Foraging can get a man killed, because it can distract him from the important business of looking out for enemies. But that day it actually worked to William’s benefit. He was on his hands and knees to better scan the jumping insects when he glanced along a shallow ridge line and spotted a procession of nine horses being lead along by their riders.

 They were heading south by southeast and would end up in front of him in another twenty minutes or so. In single file, that could work well for him, assuming that he was looking at a Modoc raiding party. His confiscated revolver rifle would not be able to dispatch all nine warriors, but then maybe it wouldn’t have to. The professional soldier worked his way into position for a rear attack and thanked the god of war for the young trees that were now flanking the column. He was also grateful that they were now mounted, but their increased speed meant that he would now have to act quickly.

 He broke from cover and shouted, “fuego!,”  since Spanish was the most logical choice under the given circumstances.

 His revolver rifle fired on the end of his shout and caused the last rider to topple from his mount. That exposed the next man who William also shot. That’s when the plan came together very nicely. The remaining seven riders urged their mounts onto a run as a third round creased the shoulder of the last mounted man in the column. William for his part wasted no time getting what he needed. He swiftly scalped the two downed men and stuffed the bloody trophies into his “possibles” bag. Then grabbed the two fallen muskets and a shooting bag. He was somewhat crest fallen by the fact that the Indians had been riding bare back, so Casca would have one hell of a time staying mounted, but at least the muskets were equipped with slings.

 He worked his way back to where he had dined on his last grasshopper. He knew that his fight with the Modoc  was not over, and that he would need even more luck now that the element of surprise had been expended. So William reloaded the spent chambers of his Colt rifle and then inspected the muskets. They lacked primer charges but that was fixed in a matter of seconds. He left his horse secured to a tree and did what any sensible man would do under the circumstances: he advanced for another attack.

 By now the enemy had concluded that they had not been attacked by a superior force. Spanish soldiers might  take scalps but probably not. So whoever the back shooters were, they were devils that needed facing up to. The Modocs  dismounted fifty yards west of the ambush site and formed a scrimmage line.  William had to belly crawl for all he was worth with the three weapons he needed but somehow he managed to get over to their right flank in time. Then the game commenced in earnest. He waited until the right end man was presenting a perfect profile target and nailed him with one of the muskets.

 He discarded the weapon and brought the second musket to bear. The next man fired but missed William by nearly a foot. The fighting man wasn’t relieved or elated. The muskets were devilishly inaccurate in the hands of men who never experimented with their pieces. William had never fired the musket he was holding, but he had tested many just like it so he didn’t anticipate a straight line of flight. By guess-tim-ating just a bit, he managed to catch the second man in the shoulder.

 Then he rushed to where his first victim’s musket had fallen and quickly snatched it up. He advanced a bit and heard the whining of a musket ball as it passed by his head. The man who had missed turned tail and attempted to withdraw past the next shooter. William sighted on his shrinking back and gently squeezed the trigger. There was the puff of priming smoke and then-------nothing.

 “Ugh,” he grunted.

 William had experienced maybe seventy or eighty misfires in combat, so this development didn’t warrant a full load of profanity. But it did call for a swift backup move which was all part of being a good soldier. William was better prepared than usual with the Colt carbine, and the fact that the next shooter was a good eighty yards between the trees added an extra measure of confidence. The revolver rifle caught the man in the hip and took him down, but he got off his shot as well. It was a lucky one, and they hurt just as one that is well aimed.

 The man from New Orleans felt as though a club had struck him in the back. In truth, the .69 caliber ball had been poorly charged and only cracked his shoulder blade. The other good news was that the remaining Modocs cleared out of the area quickly, not realizing that the white man had been hit. Only the abandoned man with the hip wound stayed behind to make that discovery. William staggered up to the man and stood over him for a moment. Then with an effort he raised the muzzle of the carbine so that it was aligned with the man’s sweat plastered forehead.

 The rifle belched fire and smoke one last time and the Indian’s death stare was the last thing William saw before pitching forward like a falling tree. Hours later a wolf pack arrived and they cautiously sniffed at the unfamiliar man carcass before finally tearing it to ribbons. But the other potential food source was quickly rejected and left to lie beside a pieces of bone, bowel and buckskin not worth chewing on or dragging off. The white man slept fitfully while the mending process commenced. The day burned the rest of the way down, and with the coming dusk came more interlopers who gazed at his scalp with hostile intentions.

Chapter Thirty-One

 The Atsugewi base camp consisted of only five small lodges. Each hide hut accommodated four hunters who had volunteered to live apart from their families until the first snow. Their on going function was to collect meat and hides in the low land and bring it to the base camp. From there the vital materials would be hauled by travois up a difficult mountain path and then through a mountain crevice to a pocket valley beyond. That was where the women, children and the elderly now lived. It was a place that the Modocs were reluctant to enter, even with their deadly thunder sticks. But it was also a poor place to hunt anything larger than a rabbit.

 Mahku, Atpay, Werakmta, Jahwaj and Leepake were the lodge leaders. Their efforts brought in the majority of the game killed to sustain the people who depended on them. For the past five months now they had been risking the slaver ambushes that were carried out with such great skill. They would continue to brave the frustration of the slavers by keeping women and children safe. It was a sad arrangement, but until the snows came, the Modocs would be hunting those Atsugewi who dared to live so close to the slaver collecting grounds; namely the foot hills that saw the least snow and the most abundant food sources.

 The least skillful members of the twenty man hunting group were always looking for ways to gain more respect. Given their present circumstances the mediocre bowmen would search the foothills for the enemy, and when they found them, they would draw the slavers away from the better hunters with verbal taunts and even an occasional arrow. For that reason the sound of gunfire had to be investigated, albeit slowly and from downwind. When they found William seemingly at death’s door they almost scalped him, but luckily one of their number discovered the Modoc  scalps and concluded that the dying man was an ally who deserved an honorable burial.

 Of course the hunters were in for one hell of a wait, not to mention a big surprise as the man with the back wound grew stronger with every passing day. Since Atpay knew a little Spanish, and since the stranger seemed to possess a genius for languages, it only took a few weeks for the newcomer to gain a practical knowledge of the Atsugewi tongue. William thanked his benefactors who in turned praised his martial prowess, and his ability to survive a wound that would have crippled an ordinary man.

 So it was that William Longpenance was accepted into a tribe of people who shared a joint enemy. The Atsugewi  were a short, with large dark faces and small eyes. They traded for the cloth used by Spanish farmers, but often wore outfits that were a combination of cloth and animal skins. Their hair was medium length and was often partially covered with colorful bandanas. They were poor as Indians go, certainly wanting compared to the valley tribes that kept them in the high country. For that reason, William was pleasantly surprised to discover that they were a fairly amiable people, and a favorite prey of the more aggressive Modoc.

 One of the first things he learned was that no one was willing to take him through the mountains at that time of year. Even when he tried to bribe a man with his magnificent Colt rifle, the Indians stubbornly insisted that he wait until spring. The man with the gray eyes pretended to relent, just as he pretended to recover very slowly. But his iron will was set on gaining a bear skin coat, snow shoes and a knowledge of the passes he would have to travel. He had by no means given up on the idea of finding the fugitive Druey, but he was convinced that he would not be allowed to sail out of any California seaport. The Company  was hunting for him, and they had eyes on every ship that came or went. Trading posts to the south would also be watched, and beyond that was desert land that no sane man wanted to travel alone.

 But the mountains were different. True---they could kill a man six ways to Sunday, especially in the winter, but they were also beautiful, and lacking malicious intent . He was no mountain man, but as of late he had come to realize that he was far more than he ever realized. He would figure that out later, when his enemies were far away.

 “William, our medicine man has sent word that the snows are coming. We will hunt this land no more. We will take down the camp and return to our families. Now is the time to test your strength. It is not good to pamper an injury that is not killing you.”

 The white man felt ashamed. He passed up more than a few opportunities to help the men who had been feeding him with food meant for their village. All because he needed to down play his ability to sneak away. Now he realized that such efforts at deception were unnecessary. During the first few days of his recovery, the Atsugewi  had come to the conclusion that their ancestral spirits had guided a great warrior to them, to help them in their struggle with the Modoc slavers. William didn’t mind that line of reasoning. It was infinitely preferable to being burned as a demon, warlock or heretic.

 “You are right, Atpay. It is time for me to ask a very important question: How far away is the nearest Modoc village?”

 “Three summers ago there was a village five days away on foot, but I cannot be certain that it is still there.”

 “Judging by the aggressiveness of your enemies, I would guess that if they have moved their village since then, it would now be even closer. In any case, I will lead a war party against it in ten days time. It should not take longer than that to finish up here and train your toughest men to fight as a group.”

 Atpay was your classic Indian in the sense that his face conveyed no hint of vulnerability except when he was with his family. But now his square faced weather beaten features displayed open and unabashed puzzlement.

 “Every strong man will go to war with you, William. The Atsugewi  do not fear battle, but we are few in number because food in not plentiful in the high country.”

 “Yet you remain in the high country because the men of the low lands have black hearts,” stated the white man with certainty.

 “We are rubbed out more and more if we travel toward the setting sun. But between the foothills and the mountain peaks we can survive, if we can drive the Modoc  devils back up north where they belong.”

 William got to his feet and playfully brought a slow round kick up so that his foot came an inch short of touching Atpay’s ear.

 “We will drive the survivors back up north,” specified the gray eyed man, “and they will teach their cousins that it is no longer wise to hunt Atsugewi.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

On the tenth night William was crouched in another snow fall. It was a blessing, but not as much as the ones that fell during the last two nights. Those nights were just to give the dogs something to be wrong about. They barked and drove their masters crazy, convincing the villagers that the dogs were barking at four legged creatures and not two. William had to punch out one of his men to convince the group that attacking on the third night was an essential part of the plan. Even though they had gone more than seventy-two hours without a fire.

 But the waiting was over. Now the dogs would bark if they wanted to, since their canine credibility was all but spent. Besides: they had never been raided from the south, and the north country was at peace at the present time. Winter had set in, and while it was true that they suffered from a shortage of slave labor, they had gathered a fair amount of winter stock and were focused on the same concerns as any other tribe entering winter.

 William was about to change that. His war party was divided into three groups: His group approached the village from the east and entered the largest lodges to strike fiercely but briefly at men who were likely council members or war party leaders. Casca found this sort of work to be somewhat aggravating because he would have to differentiate between men and women in the dark, and that wasn’t always easy. Of course most of the Atsugewi  didn’t see that as a problem. They just stabbed with their short spears at anything that rose up to meet them.

 William wasn’t surprised that half the shock troops failed to withdraw on time. It’s damn hard to keep any sense of time in your head when you’re killing people. William wouldn’t deny that it hadn’t come naturally to him either back in the days when he was learning to fight without a Roman Legion around him. Only eight men were with him when they fell back to where the musket men were positioned. Maybe the others were dead, but more likely they were still killing warriors that would soon overwhelm them.

 In any case, the musket men didn’t have to wait long for their targets. They came blundering in between two huge trees; some of them naked. The Atsugewi had shaved their heads and each man carried the same short spear that required little skill. So when the first Modocs appeared with war clubs and tomahawks, they were cut down at a range of twenty feet. Then William’s nine man group counter-attacked, hoping that the remainder of the group was still alive and doing some good on the other side of the great lodges. The musket men would reload, then advance to support their leader.

 In the meantime, the third attack group moved in from the south end of the village with bows that would fire at men rushing towards the great lodges. The attackers whooped with glee at the discovery that their age old tormentors could be taken down even on their home ground. But the attack was not a one sided slaughter. Many defenders drew blood, demonstrating that a man defending his home is a determined adversary indeed. William understood this going in, so he inspired his novice warriors with a berserker  demonstration of continuous movement; always advancing on the nearest opponent.

 The display of martial prowess turned more than one Atsugewi into a manslayer of the first rank. William had told them to place their spear points in the enemies’ gut, put before long, the spearmen were aiming for throats and even eyeballs. It was a turning point in the history of two peoples, but none of it would have occurred without the element of surprise, or the special tactics that the Atsugewi had received from their highly inspirational war leader. Even so half the war party was killed or severely wounded in the twelve minute battle.

 A few elderly were killed after that, but William managed to calm his men down before they could slaughter half the non-combatants. Then it was time to give the Modocs a small taste of slavery, by selecting some strong women to travois the dead and a great deal of food. The trophy muskets were happily carried by the victors, and William was extremely glad that the weapons had not be loaded when the attack commenced.

 Five miles to the south, the Atsugewi  set up a bonfire, and in it’s bright light feasted on Modoc venison while a few of the men helped themselves to the women. William stared into the fire, feeling an age old emptiness amongst all the merry making. Thank God there had been no liquor to make off with. Sober rape was bad enough. The white man instructed his second in command to keep everyone away from him until dawn. He would now sleep in a fine bear skin coat that he had appropriated from someone with a caved in skull. Hopefully he would dream about a girl he had known back in Okinawa.

 More than likely, he would dream about the priest.

Chapter Thirty-Three

 The war party knew that something was wrong before they could even enter the pocket valley. No one stood on the sheer bluffs to call down to them, and there were many footprints along the spring fed stream that flowed out of the valley. A number of young men ran ahead, but William marched at a measured pace in the shallow snow, sensing that there was no reason to hurry. When the village was a quarter mile off, the rest of the men jogged on ahead, leaving William to save the women, which he most certainly needed to do.

 He gestured for the women to flee back towards their own village, leaving the dead not so far away from the others. Then William trudged forward, listening to the sounds of grief that echoed off the sides of the rocky bluffs. He stood positioned to keep some of the men from going after the Modoc women, feeling more obligated to the living than the dead. Atpay had not gone with the war party. He had scouted William’s left flank, fearful that a force of Modoc musket men might arrive at an inopportune moment. In the process he spotted campfire smoke on a trail leading up from the Sacramento Valley.

 He shadowed the lowlanders until their intentions became obvious, then he ran ahead to warn his village. He got there almost the same time as the horsemen, and caught a musket ball that would stop his heart in another six hours or so.

 William found him lying thirty feet from his burning lodge and asked, “Who were they, Atpay---Modoc  from another village?”

 The Indian shook his head.

 Spaniards---but not soldiers. They were---looking for you----William. Mahku told them---that you travel south. I think they believed him. But they rubbed him out---anyway.”

 The scar faced man carefully scanned his surroundings for a moment, noting that more than one grief stricken Atsugewi  was now staring at him.

 “I don’t see any survivors besides you,” he finally reported.

 “I know. I heard the order---to kill everyone.”

 William paused for a moment and then said, “Atpay, the anger of my enemies is a powerful thing. Even if the Spanish soldiers drive them out of the lowlands, they will still hunt me in secret ways. All who stand by me will die one day or the next. For this reason, I must go far away from this land. These men who still live will not find vengeance by following me.”

 The dying man thought on this for a moment and then said, “My woman is dead. My child is dead. My seed is dead. I will sing my death song---and speak no longer---to the men of ---this world.”

 The man closed his eyes and weakly hummed a tune that was more prayer than song. William had heard the same thing from a couple of wounded men as they were being dragged by the Modoc women. William gazed briefly at the mountain peeks to the east. Yes, he could get through with proper provisions and directions. Unfortunately, the men around him wanted him to go west; towards an enemy that they now hated more than the Modoc. So William helped bury the dead, and decided they should conduct a reconnaissance in force to make certain The Brotherhood  had truly returned to the lowlands.

 Then William would make his final decision to either go east through the mountains or south along the foot hills, then cut straight west to a place on the coast called Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana. It was unlikely that his enemy would have agents so far south of Monterey.

 When the burials were completed his battle lieutenant sliced open his right breast and screamed an oath of vengeance while kneeing before the corpse of his father. For that reason, William decided it was time to select a new Number Two man. The position went to one of the remaining hunters that had found him when he had a brown bruise on his back. Leepake was not a great fighter but he had a nose for trouble. He would keep the twenty-seven man war party safe from The Brotherhood  with early detection, and the ability to restrain any young hot heads that might be inclined to charge ahead without a plan.

 Since William had no idea what was going on down in the Sacramento Valley area, he opted to scout the east side with a young runner named Kees, but they had no sooner filled their water bags when Leepake came forward with some information that almost came too late.

 “Men on horses behind us. I think they wanted to catch us burying our dead.”

 “They’ll stay back until late night, then hit our camp from all sides,” William predicted.

 “There is a wash with much brush just off to the south,” said Leepake. “If we set up camp on that spot, they will not be able to count our numbers. We could slip out of camp after it is dark, and get behind the men who would kill us in our sleep.”

 William thought on that for a moment and then shook his head.

 “If your men had kept their bows, I would have approved such a plan. But they have fallen in love with their muskets, and they aren’t ready to fight with such weapons in the dark---“

 “We are,” protested Kees.

 I say you’re not,” William responded evenly. “So we’re going to attack them while they are waiting for the cover of darkness.”

 Two-thirds of the men whooped with approval, but Leepake and most of the older men did not look as pleased.

 “We have not rested from last night’s efforts. Now half the day is gone, and we do not know how many horsemen are stalking us. I think we should learn their numbers, then slip away and attack them tomorrow,” counseled the second in command.

 “I can see that Leepake is very wise,” William said for the benefit of all those who were listening, “but I fear that the horsemen might outdistance us in the early morning before we could position ourselves for a proper attack. I would have the sun behind us, and I would also like to have the horse riders on land that is not even.”

 “You ask for much,” growled a young buck who was eager to avenge his family.

 “Yes, more than I would be granted by men moving quickly. But I desire such things because a man on horseback is worth two men on foot. So we will try to get the setting sun behind us, and I will introduce you to the cross fire method of shooting as soon as my good friend Leepake is able to place us at the right distance.”

 In this manner the Eternal Mercenary lead the Atsugewi, exerting a strong presence, yet mindful of how easily an Indian can be offended. When the enemy was an estimated two-hundred yards distant, Casca quietly deployed his men into a pair of firing groups that would then slowly advance about fifty yards apart. When the sun was on their shoulders they closed in, finding a force roughly equal to their own, but apart from their resting horses.

 William killed both of the picket men while his comrades blasted away at men who had been lounging on tall grass. There were a number of misses and the men who were still able, scrabbled to their mounts and urged them to sprint away before the Indians could reload. William didn’t fire at their backs. He saved his remaining rounds and followed Leepake off to the right where apparently something was amiss.

 The scar faced man swore a blue streak when the top of Leepake’s head suddenly exploded. The intuitive scout had sensed a flanking action that added numbers and competency to the opposition. William wasn’t terribly shocked by this, but it sure as hell wasn’t what he wanted. He shot three of them off their horses as they approached but there were plenty to spare. With an empty cylinder he retreated to where his comrades were busy taking scalps and more modern weapons.

 “We’re being flanked!” Casca shouted at the trophy takers. “Form a circle while I check these weapons!”

 The Atsugewi did not readily give up the captured Colt revolver carbines that had fallen with their owners. But when they realized that they were not trained to load the weapons, they reluctantly surrendered the guns to the one man who could instruct them in their use at the proper time. William was glad to have the revolver rifles, but he had an ugly feeling that a noose was closing around him and it was made up of at least one-hundred men.

 That suspicion was confirmed some twenty minutes later when a commanding voice drifted out of the trees on a south bound wind.

 “Mystery Man---we have you and your savage minions surrounded!” proclaimed a man named Saldivar

 William let out a sigh and gave the revolver rifles back to the men who had claimed them.

 “Hope you boys are happy. You wanted to hunt down the bastards that wiped out your tribe. Well, you did it. Lets not all cheer at once.”

 “I’ve been authorized to bargain with you, Roman. You would be wise to hear me out!”

 “You’ve got my undivided attention---Cheese Dick!” William responded.

 There was a heavy pause, then the voice drifted out again.

 “You left your Virginia hovel to pursue a man with a price on his head---correct?”

 “Yea, but it wasn’t my idea to end up in California. This kind of shit just has a way of happening to me!”

 “That is the one thing we can agree on, Roman. Now I will make you an offer! The fugitive you seek in Acapulco shall remain there until you can apprehend him. We will even put you on a ship bound for that port. But first you must do all that is in your power to convince John Sutter that he should sell off those properties where gold has been located!”

 “I’m getting tired of yelling into the trees! Get your ass out here where I can see you!” demanded the ex seafarer.

 A moment later Saldivar appeared dressed in the attire of a man of property.

 “Now---what the hell makes you think I can talk Sutter into doing anything?”

 “You have the power to bend a man’s mind, Roman. You can mesmerize him into thinking that gold deposits are exhausted. Sutter is heavily in debt. This does not seem to concern him greatly, but it is a fact. Some of our people will be arriving in a few weeks from Switzerland. They will charm a fellow countrymen into selling land that has apparently lost most of its worth. You need only prepare him for that---on the day of the new arrivals perhaps. In the meantime we would have you reside in Monterey---at our expense of course.”

 The scar faced man mulled it over for an instant and then asked, “You gunna let these Atsugewi go in peace?”

 “Yes of course. They can even keep the Colt rifles, but the scalps must be buried with the deceased. My I detail some men to work with the rest of the light?”

 “One man per grave. Make em shallow.”

 Then William glanced around at his Native American comrades. Each tightly gripped his rifle and waited for the fighting to resume. The next step in the negotiating process was not going to come easily.

 “How can I trust you?”

 “We will ride very slowly in front of your—er—foot soldiers. Surely that will earn your trust.”

 “When we get down below, you will also give them all of your ammunition,” said William.

 “Agreed---provided we encounter no Mexican troops. They have been arriving in ever increasing numbers. Admittedly, we have brought that on ourselves.”

 “I thought for sure you were going to blame it on me.”

 Saldivar exhibited a smile that needed more practice.

 “You have been a nuisance, but no one man makes things happen in California---with the possible exception of John Sutter. Give him a new way to look at things, Roman, and you will not have to cross the mountains in the winter time.”

 “Give me a moment to speak to my men.”

 “I will do better than that. It might take a while for their savage blood lust to cool, so my men and I will camp a few miles from here. I will return in the morning. By then, I trust we will all be reasonable, rested, and set for a journey out of these hills. Good Night, Roman.”

 William stared after the disappearing cultist, then dropped the Spanish and communicated to the Atsugewi as a whole.

 “If we continue to fight we will be rubbed out. But if we make peace, you can get yourselves some Modoc women and start a new tribe. You will be given much powder and shot for the new rifles. You will have no cause to fear anyone ever again. But you must make peace now, and ride east when I tell you to.”

 “Those men are evil. How can we make peace with evil men and retain our honor?” asked a man who was Leepake’s brother-in-law.

 “I will be fighting them in the future. I will be avenging the Atsugewi and other peoples who have been wronged by the men around us. But you can fight them no longer. Otherwise the Atsugewi will be no more. Do not let that happen. Let me carry on the fight, using the power that you saw when I first came to you.”

 “We have not forgotten that great power. Surely it is a good thing that must be obeyed,” reasoned the man squatting to William’s left. Then each man nodded with reluctance. William then considered the matter resolved, and all they had to do now was guard against treachery through the night. That would be easier than fighting a larger force, and there wasn’t any doubt in his mind that the enemy had just that.

 Sure enough, shortly after dawn, when the procession assembled, there were one-hundred and eight horsemen still alive to ride slowly in front of William’s vastly inferior force. The scar faced man wasn’t exactly honored that he was the focal point of so much effort.

 William couldn’t figure out how the Spaniards had managed to find the Atsugewi village until James Smith showed his ugly face. The ex horse thief stared apprehensively at the scar faced man, remembering the rock he had used on William’s skull. He held his hawken rifle at the ready, and would not let William get behind him from that moment on. But that was just proof that Smith was stuck on stupid, and with the wrong man for certain.

 William handed his Colt rifle to the Indian on his right and then approached Smith empty handed.

 “I have a deal with the man holding your leash. But that agreement doesn’t involve you or any services that are no longer required.”

 “That ain’t the friendliest thing I’ve every heard. Makes a body wonder if these fellas would take it bad if I was to blow a hole in you big enough ta see daylight through.”

 “We would,” stated Saldivar from twelve feet off.

 “What if I was to just cut him up a mite with a toothpick?” inquired the frontiersman.

 “We will not hold that against you,” Saldivar stated honestly.

 Smith nodded with a crooked smile and slid from his horse while drawing out a large fighting knife. William drew out one of his own and faced his opponent with a deadpan expression. Smith placed his blade on a center line between his chest and that of William. He shifted in and out half a step, trying to provoke his opponent into creating an opening. But William was like a man hypnotized. He didn’t budge. He didn’t seem to care about anything. So Smith took the bait and brought his blade closer to William’s weapon.

 With inhuman precision William’s steel drove into the cleft between thumb and forefinger even as Smith tried to withdraw his weapon hand. Smith held on to his knife despite the burning pain and sought to counter, even though it meant thrusting in with a brain that was no longer focused. William on the other hand, was never anything but. His left hand caught his opponent’s knife wrist and when Smith tried to employ his other hand, William deftly impaled that piece of flesh. Then the scar faced man disengaged and stepped back a pace.

 “I find myself curious; do you often toy with your opponents?” Saldivar asked from his vantage point.

 “First time.”

“Stop yer jawin and finish up!” bellowed the enraged Smith.

 William nodded slightly and then promptly front snap kicked the knife from Smith’s injured hand. That move was followed up with a left round house kick to the head.

 “How fortunate we chose to put this off until morning,” quipped Saldivar.

 William pulled the hawken from its scabbard and cocked it. Then he pointed it at the semi-conscious frontiersman and pulled the trigger. The half inch ball ripped through genitalia and most of the men who witness it flinched.

 “Yes, how fortunate we put this off,” the cult leader muttered under his breath.

 William placed the heavy rifle on the ground next to Smith along with his shooting bag and canteen.

 “Roman, are you sure that Virginia is far enough away?” asked Saldivar.

 William didn’t answer. He just started marching with his Indian comrades.

Chapter 34

 Every musket was set on the east wall of New Helvetia, and Sutter’s prize cannon was loaded with grape shot and nails. Word had reached them half an hour ago that an army of Spaniards and Indians were marching in from the flood lands. Well, this time they would take his home over Captain John Sutter’s dead body. His nose had been rubbed in the dirt when he showed reluctance to spend lives on land that had only been his for a short while. But now he understood that these rogues were Visigoths bent on taking the best parts of California and they needed to be combated by men of the land.

 Sutter would never know what The Company was really all about; nor would he ever understand what was at stake in this under populated portion of a frontier territory. But the important thing was that he owned a spy glass, and he focused it on a lead rider while his part time artillery men awaited the order to fire.

 “Good Lord, its William Longpenance---and he’s carrying a rifle.”

 “He is enemy now?” queried the Nisenan with a hovering fuse taper.

 “Perhaps, but we will not fire on him until he gets close enough to shout his intentions.”

 The horsemen understood full well what was on Sutter’s mind, so when they reached the edge of a furrowed field, the mounted men broke right and rode parallel with the edge of the distant woods. The Atsugewi stayed on William’s tracks and was lead around the opposite side of the field, placing the Indians four-hundred yards away from the Spanish horsemen. When the scar faced man was fifty yards from the east wall of the fort, he slid off his mount and walked his men slowly towards the barricaded entrance.

 “Obviously you’re no one’s prisoner, Monsieur Longpenance, so what are you?” Sutter inquired from his position on the wall.

 “A man with a message. I think you should hear me out Captain Sutter. Worst thing that can happen is you’ll decide to tie me up and use my rifle against your enemies.”

 “My men are too lazy to undo the barricade, so we’ll lower you a rope,” said the master of the keep.

 William tied his rifle to the end of the rope and then ascended the wall. When he crawled over the top he was surprised to find Sutter standing there with a pair of manacles that were quickly applied to the visitor’s wrists.

 “Show me civilization and I’ll show you chains that are meant for men,” grumbled the man still known as William.

 “Are you judging me, Monsieur? I have legal authority in this valley. Beyond that there is nothing but the customs of the natives, and they are not praiseworthy in my opinion.”

 “The Atsugewi are nervous. I need to speak to you in private and then get back to them before there is trouble.”

 William was briskly walked down to Sutter’s apartment, which was Spartan by 19^th Century standards but fairly plush compared to what The Eternal Mercenary had seen over the many centuries.

 “Report, sir, as you pointed out, time is against us.”

 William took a deep breath. Sometimes the truth could be more bizarre than any tall tale. This was one of those times, and Sutter wasn’t looking especially receptive.

 “Captain---the world has its share of secret societies such as the Tiandihui in southern China. Those men on horse back are part of such an organization. Their attempts to take over this land have largely failed but they have not given up hope. They intend to bring in members that are of a different race and nationality. Those men will offer to buy your land at a handsome price---and I’m supposed to talk you into selling at the proper time. Today my function is to convince you that you should allow those men to pass through the valley in peace, and not report their whereabouts to the good people of Monterey.”

 Sutter’s grin was one part skepticism and two parts relief that there wasn’t going to be a fight.

 “Precisely how would you go about convincing me that I should sell my land, Monsieur Longpenance. My land is everything to me. To me, gold is naught but a metal that drives men mad. I do not want thousands of mad men running about in central California.”

 “I think you are in for a great deal of heartache, Captain Sutter. Even if we beat these jokers at their own game, this land will be overrun with fortune hunters sooner or later,” predicted the scar faced man.

 “So you pretended to take their side? I suppose it was necessary at the time. But I will not lower my defenses, and as soon as it is safe to do so, I will send a rider to report what has happened here today.”

 “You send out a rider today and you will be sending him to his death. Those men, and many more as well, will be leaving California by ship. But timing is important to them. They will want an alarm sounded that will draw their enemies away from the coast, but certainly not now. So you will be kept in a sort of quarantine for the next few days,” explained William.

 “Rubbish,” growled Sutter. “Ever since the good people of California found out that we have a pack of murderers haunting the land, the authorities have mobilized a system of posses, and government troops arrive with every ship that can be commandeered. The line of communication between here and Monterey maybe somewhat under strength, but if it were to be severed completely, it would signal the authorities better than anything I could devise.”

 “Not if the people receiving the messages  belonged to the other side,” stated William. “In a community made up largely of newcomers, half your fellow citizens could belong to The Company  This operation is probably the biggest one The Company  has ever put together. They’ll be shipping out most of their hired soldiers now that plans for a coop have failed, but they will still try and get you to sell your land in a nice legal fashion.”

 “Insanity,” snapped the man in uniform. “No one has any reason to think I would sell my land.”

 “Well, I don’t think they are accustomed to men like you. But you would do well not to drive that point home too quickly. Let them think you’re soft enough to bend.”

 “Do you think that?” Sutter asked with a defiant look.

 “Of course not, Captain. It’s just that I found myself in the clutches of a vastly superior military force and I had to talk my way out of being hung or shot. Lucky thing for me those boys are crazy enough to think that mesmerizing is all powerful. A more informed bunch would have shot me down.”

 “And what of those Indians that came with you?”

 “Yea, those are Atsugewi. They are the last of their village. Damn Spaniards massacred women and children alike.”

 “The ones out there on horseback?” Sutter asked incredulously.

 “Yea. The Indians want revenge, but I explained to them that they’d be wiped out to a man if they tried to get pay back now. Goes without saying that it’s damn hard to reason with men when they’ve had a real bad wrong done to them. But I think I’ve got temporary control over the situation for now.”

 No sooner were those words out of William’s mouth when a servant rushed in and called his master back to the fighting platform of the east wall.

 William let out an oath when he came up beside Sutter and discovered that the Atsugewi were all out of sight.

 “Where did they go?” the captain asked with an uneasy feeling.

 “Some Nisenan make joke at mountain people,” confessed the servant. “Mountain people get mad. They go fight I think.”

 William stared out at the horsemen who stared back from the other side of the planted fields. Obviously they had no idea why the Atsugewi had moved to the other side of the fort.

 “Can anyone see them?” asked William. (Knowing what the answer would be.)

 Men on all sides of the fort reported negative.

 “You don’t suppose your mountain Indians actually plan on engaging all those horsemen do you?” Sutter asked with a look of compassion.

 “They haven’t stopped thinking about revenge for one second,” answered the scar faced man. They would have all died taking their vengeance back up in the hills but I talked them out of it. I had a plan to help them but it hinged on the necessity of waiting a bit longer. Now they went and jumped the gun. They’ll ambush the riders somewhere in those woods on this side of the river. Then they’ll hit the riders again somewhere further along toward Monterey. They’ll keep it up until their numbers are reduced to nothing.”

 Sutter scanned the Nisenan at their battle stations. None of them gave any hint of guilt.

 “Rest assured Longpenance, I will find out who provoked this rash action and those men will be punished.”

 “My fault,” responded the man with the scar. “I should have conferred with you here where I could maintain control. Now I got my work cut out for me.”

 “Leave here? That would not be advisable, Longpenance. My Nisenan would not get along with you mountain Indians. The lowlanders think they are better than the mountain people. It is the same in many parts of the world is it not? It is a problem that I do not need.”

 “What you need is fighting men,” responded William with a tense jaw. “Those men on horseback are dangerous even when they’re letting go of something. If you’re going to turn down an offer to buy land, you better have a lot of guns around you until the government can get a proper grip on this situation. Right this moment the Mexicans only care about Monterey. You better start showing a hell of a lot of strength, Captain Sutter, because that is the only thing those characters respect.”

 The man in the fancy uniform let out a long breath.

 “Some people are of the opinion that I am naught but a strutting peacock who is not worth a damn in a real fight. Well----in truth, I wasn’t much to speak of back in Europe. But this land is where men often get a chance to make a new life. Here a man can turn dreams into reality.”

 “If he doesn’t take too much time going about it,” stated a fellow European.

 Sutter grinned at that and said, “Wyttee, I’m taking over the cannon for this shot.”

 The Indian looked as though someone had just made off with his third wife, but he stepped aside.

 “You’re going to shoot that little thing?” queried Longpenance.

 “That is what it was made for,” muttered the captain as he elevated the short barrel and turned it to the right.

 William stared out at the five horsemen who were in plain sight. The others were in the woods, probably resting their mounts and stretching their legs. Saldivar was the rider who stood out farthest from the trees. His never ending stare was a silent message for William to hurry up and rejoin him.

 “Too far away for that little pop gun.”

 The little cannon belched out a handful of thunder and jumped a few inches from the platform. Saldivar didn’t budge an inch but the man to his left took a piece of shot in the hip. Another man’s horse was severely wounded and would have to be put down. But the vast majority of the shot had whined harmlessly off to their right.”

 “Hopefully your mountain Indians will be curious about that shot and put off their ambush. In any case, I will give you my best scout and the two of you will slip over the west wall before those Spaniards surround us. With a bow and arrows, and some writing paper, you will be able to send messages over the wall and communicate your wishes to me. We will then do what we can with these land pirates.”

 William shrugged and said, “They might just move off and send men in to kill you in a month or so.”

 “Plan for the day, Longpenance. Let me worry about next month,” Sutter responded while leading his guest to the other side of the fort.

 The Nisenan scout didn’t speak more than a few words of Spanish. He most certainly didn’t know any Atsugewi. So when he and William finally located the mountain Indians, he stood behind the scar faced man and prayed to his ancestors that his hair would not be the first object of Atsugewi wrath in those woods. William ignored the angry faced youngsters around him and marched quickly up to Leepake’s brother-in-law.

 “It is time to take vengeance upon your kin’s murderers. But you must follow my advise or you will go into the next world with many evil men still alive.”

 “Do not speak to me as if I am a war chief,” responded the Indian. “I have not been chosen to lead.”

 “Who is leading then?”

 “I lead,” stated a young man that William had been ignoring.

 “Oh shit,” thought William as he turned around.

 The young brave’s name was Golla, and he was the most foul tempered, short sighted fool who ever pissed upwind. He wasn’t just stupid, he was stuck on stupid. But he was part wolverine and most of the surviving Atsugewi did not want to lock horns with him if it could be avoided.

 “I have a plan that needs your approval,” stated William mechanically. “We hide until the Spaniards become convinced that we have left the area. If the Spaniards then leave the area we will follow them until they get to feeling safe. Then we will attack their camp at night when they are almost back on their home ground. But if they choose to attack the fort, we will hit them from behind to reduce their numbers, then get permission to enter the fort and remain there until we can work a new deal with Sutter.”

 “I do not like that plan,” said Golla.

 “I didn’t think you would,” the white man replied with strong eye contact. “But I don’t want to kill you, because even though you’re not very smart, you are a good fighter. As long as we’re outnumbered out here, I don’t want anyone killed just to solve a dispute.”

 “That is just your way of getting out of a fight,” Golla responded with a sneer. “I know that you are also a good fighter, but you do not have ancestors crying for revenge. There is great power in this. It makes men into heroes. Your heart is calm, like that of a reptile. But my heart is on fire. When I strike, it will be with the power of my brothers and sisters and all who watch me from the next world.”

 “Uh-huh,” said William while turning to another young brave.

 “Tooka, isn’t that right?”

 The young man nodded.

 “Well Tooka, I need a live bird, fully capable of flying if released. Can you get me one?”

 All those present had witnessed William do amazing things since the day they met, and not even Golla would suggest that the scar faced man was a trickster of any sort. When the bird was finally offered to William, it was in anticipation of something wondrous.

 They were not disappointed. The bird was carefully positioned on William’s open hand. Every time the little creature attempted to launch itself into the air, William’s hand dropped two inches and then returned to its original position. In this way, the bird was as helpless as it would have been with broken wings.

  “I have been chosen by a great spirit to help you,” stated William. “Now I will say this: The fisherman requires patience. The hunter requires patience. So does the man seeking vengeance. It is a dish best served cold.”

 No one said anything, but by their expressions the white man knew that he had regained control over the group of men. He thanked his Okinawan master for that. The bird trick was difficult to learn, and it sure could impress the hell out of people.

 So the men hid, and they waited, and they scouted their surroundings playing a deadly game of cat and mouse with Saldivar’s scouts. But the Spaniards found nothing, and Saldivar finally concluded that William was playing him false. So he attached a white piece of cloth to his rifle barrel and rode fearlessly towards the fort on the second morning. Sutter received him with a pistol tucked in his sash, and one booted foot resting on his beloved cannon.

 “State you business and be off with you,” instructed a harder looking Sutter.

 “I should like to have a word with William Longpenance. I do hope he has not asked for sanctuary. That would vex me terribly.”

 “He is not in the fort. He slipped over the wall yesterday and I suspect is now back up in the hills with the Atsugewi.”

 “I take it that you did not make them feel at all welcome. You are a very sensible fellow, Captain Sutter, and I want you to know how much I appreciate your attitude towards the land. You don’t want this valley beset upon by an army of gold crazed vagabonds. My organization feels exactly the same way. True, we are not a compassionate lot, but are we really any different from the Spaniards that have been dominating the Indians all over this territory? Civilization is never brought forth with a gentle hand, Captain Sutter. Every savage that ever walked the Earth was content to wear his animal skins and scratch at his fleas.”

 “We manufacture a great deal of soap here at the fort,” responded Sutter.

 “We treated you shamefully,” pressed Saldivar. “We underestimated your leadership skills and your importance to the valley. My men and I must now flee California. The organization that we work for will probably have us bouncing in whorehouses for our stupidity. But in the future, reasonable men might approach you with a proposition that will help head the wounds that I have inflicted---“

 “You mean the bastards that are en route from my home country? I will sell them the shit from my out houses but nothing else. Longpenance was very enlightening before he made off for the hills. Crossing the mountains in winter will be difficult, but at least he would be free of the foul air that has been permeating California since you and your kind arrived. Now head on off to those whorehouses you referred to, and give your sister my regards.”

 Saldivar back stiffened, then with reptilian eyes he turned his mount around and galloped back to where his lieutenants were waiting for him.

 “Is blood required, sir?” asked the man who had lost his horse.

 “It is,” replied their leader. “We shall use the special powder that burns the lungs. No prisoners. In fact I want every corpse to disappear completely. Nothing like a little mystery to put the jitters into the next land owner.”

 “And the troublemaker?”

 “He has run off. Quite understandable really.

 “We attack at 3:00 a. m. Post guards and get some rest. This might be a tough nut to crack.”

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