A Sweetness to the Soul (13 page)

Though Joseph tried to talk him out of going, Fish Man would not budge. He could be stubborn that way. His routine just simply included summer fishing on that northern river. “Will be hard winter, this one,” he had told Joseph. “Deer already have much fat close to their skin. Maybe next year, rivers too high and muddy, fish slip by. This year, good one.” He’d patted his belly approvingly and smiled. “So I will go.”

Fish Man told Joseph, too, of the narrow gorge where a massive falls forced the fish to jump above each other in the air making themselves vulnerable to the nets. And he described a log bridge where the
white man named Lewis and his friend Clark had crossed it was said, saving days of travel. “Friends cross there, camp,” he’d said. “Few white man. If you come sometime, I show you how to fish.” He had grinned knowing such an offer would be a real lure for Joseph. “I be back before first snow.”

Fish Man left shortly after that and so Benito had arranged for a Eurok who knew the country and two of his own cousins to travel with the sheep as far as San Francisco. His cousins would continue east. It was all arranged. Joseph needed only to nod his approval.

The two men walked back toward the arches of Joseph’s stone home, the kelpie at his heels. Benito did not revisit the subject of change. The men walked by bougainvillea blooming profusely hanging from the clay pots and window boxes tended by the housemaids. Benito’s new wife managed the household with an iron hand, Joseph noted as they stepped into the cool of the tile entry, stepping around a young girl already scrubbing the floor on her knees. She laughed a tinkling laugh as the kelpie rushed to lick her face. The dog raised its eyebrows, two tan thumbprints above its eyes, delighted to find a human at his height. “Come, Bandit,” Joseph said to the kelpie and the dog trotted behind him, his cinnamon-colored coat disappearing into the cool darkness of the dining room.

Between Anna and Benito things were so well organized that despite the usual disasters common to all ranches, things did run smoothly. Joseph could even be gone for days at a time and return with all problems handled. With the government contracts for beef, the war in the east pushing up fleece sales, and now breeding stock being shipped east, he had no financial worries. In fact, he’d successfully shipped an entire shipload of wool around the horn to Boston markets making a killing while helping the north in the war. The only difficulty he’d faced in recent months seemed to be a growing resentment by some of the locals over his good fortune.

The weekly card game at Yreka had become troublesome. Riskier bets seemed to push him, make his heart pound and his face turn hot. He found himself alive in the challenges, reading men’s
faces, anticipating their cards and their willingness to raise his bets, pushing his own limits to risk even larger sums. “The games really weren’t about them; they were about me,” he said, “about energy and intensity and taking greater chances.” He found himself excited after the games, alive. “I hated taking their money,” he told me years later. “But I hated more not playing to win.”

Joseph pulled the heavy oak chair from the table and sat his tall frame down on the wide leather strips forming the seat. Bandit slipped beneath the table and lay quietly on the tiles, panting at Joseph’s feet.

Benito excused himself, entered laughing to meet with his wife in the kitchen. Before Joseph could even ask, a kitchen maid swooshed out from the carved doors Benito had just gone through. She bent her bare shoulders near him, swishing her full striped skirt near his chair as she placed before him a cool glass of lemonade in a sweating clay mug. He lifted and drank. “I was so totally engaged in thinking about my future,” he lied to me years later, “that I was unaware of her sweet perfume.”

“Ha!” I said. “How did you know she wore any?”

He returned the subject to his year of change. He said he saw no need to travel into the gold mines of the Powder River country, no need to keep a pack string or to wheel and deal to bring luxuries in and carry gold out. He’d done that. His life was in California, organized, predictable.

Perhaps that was what Benito considered “boring,” that everything could be handled without effort.

But it was what he’d worked for all those years.

He pushed himself away from the table, still holding the mug to let a second kitchen maid put before him a platter of steaming huevos rancheros with its reds and greens and yellows. Next to it, she set a platter of tortillas, unfolding the linen that wrapped each one, keeping them hot and soft. She would watch and as he completed his meal, the kitchen maid would bring a hot cup of coffee with three clumps of sugar served in his favorite porcelain cup.

Joseph picked up his fork and began to eat, savoring the scents and aromas and tastes. Yes, this luxury was what it was all about. Hadn’t he enjoyed gloating just a bit when he returned to New York last year sharing some of his wealth? He brought with him a full, dark beard, a flat-brimmed leather hat with chin string, and California gifts for everyone. He remembered being a bit surprised when his older brother James, the other bachelor in the family, introduced his wife, Eliza. They beamed over three-year-old Carrie Ann, their pride and joy. He’d known of neither the marriage nor the niece. From a distance, he’d even seen Cherise, a girl he’d once courted, who was now a chubby matron with two tots at her side, and had felt a twinge of something.

But even watching love and family move past him did not cheat him of his moment of pride when he handed James a gold nugget worth several hundred dollars. The sense of delight he had at sharing his bounty with his oldest brother was fleeting. His elderly father had merely snorted and said something about making better use of his time and talents while his mother then herded them into the dining room for a less than jocular meal.

It had been a good decision to go back east for a visit, though the joy of it had not carried him as far as he had hoped. Even the excitement of the train trip across the country had not held the fascination for him it once might have. Oh, he kept notes of interesting sights: roads engineered in difficult places, tunnels bored into mountainsides, bridges over deep gorges, and drawings of unusual gradients in the tracks. Other than that, not much besides his little leather sketch book gave him delight. He didn’t call the feelings he had then boredom. A bit fatigued, maybe. And as the housemaids sometimes did, he might have lowered his energy by placing too many hand irons to heat in the fire. But he was almost thirty and a man of means, entitled to be tired. No, Benito had it wrong. He was fine. Not bored. He intended to live out his life in California and be happy.

The kelpie nudged close to his hand he let hang beside him. He
scratched between the kelpie’s pointed ears, patted the lighter brown spots above the dog’s eyes and chest and sighed.

“Maybe you go north, to the Klamath this month?” Benito asked returning from the kitchen.

“I could,” Joseph said, though the thought had not crossed his mind before. He stirred his spoon in his coffee idly. “Don’t want to make myself a nuisance.” He smiled.

He had purchased a ranch in the southern section of Oregon two years earlier, just before he’d sold the string. The small town growing there to serve the miners some 150 miles up the Klamath River seemed to appreciate the supplies freighted from the California coast into the mountains.

The ranch had been an afterthought, really, something to keep him connected to the little valley whose people had seemed so grateful each time he arrived with supplies. It was that part of packing that he liked best, seeing the look of pleasure when his string made it through, brought what was anticipated and needed.

Joseph had hired Philamon Lathrope, the son of a local rancher, to clear ground and build a small house on the donation land claim of 640 acres he’d purchased with a portion of the pack string sale proceeds.

He hadn’t seen it since.

“My friend and I could visit his ranch and ride a little farther. To the gold fields,” Benito suggested not disguising his interests at all.

Joseph sat quietly, the spoon tapping the side of the porcelain cup until the brown clumps dissolved. The distant chatter of Spanish drifted from the kitchen. “It might be good to check on my investment,” he said. “Maybe even go farther, to see about the gold strikes and what settlement they promise. I will go alone.” Benito dropped his lower lip in disappointment. “Anna would never forgive me if I took you from her for even a week, let alone several.”

“You are wise about this, my friend,” Benito sighed, pulling at his long mustache. “But if you like this place, or you have difficulty, you well send for me, yes?” he added hopefully.

“I will send for you. Yes,” Joseph said feeling a spark of energy he had not realized he’d been missing.

Joseph sat patiently, gloved hands gently holding the leather reins. He leaned onto the pommel of the saddle, standing in the stirrups for a moment to stretch his legs and still have an eagle’s view of the basin. The big roan gelding he rode snorted and stomped his foot impatiently, still full of energy despite the long day’s ride through brushy, thick-scrub country. The single pack mule stood head drooped, behind.

Below him, Joseph noted a cleared area not far from the river and knew that would be Philamon’s work. “Let’s go,” he said to the kelpie who had ingratiated himself by being forever present. At the last minute, Joseph had decided to take the dog along. Together, they started down, the gelding stirring up rolls of white lava dust like snow as they walk-slid down the hill.

A young man, nearly ten years younger than Joseph, Philamon had made significant progress in two years. Joseph was pleased that the money he’d sent had not been squandered. A completed two-story house sat at the edge of a huge stand of Ponderosa Pine. Several acres had been cleared and it appeared the timber put to good use as a large barn, corrals, and several out buildings were also complete. Some long-horned cattle tore at grass in a fenced area beyond. Chickens scratched in the garden Joseph rode past, promising a variety of vegetables. Joseph noted with approval that Philamon had ingeniously dug ditches to drain water from a small stream, irrigating the large garden and the cluster of fruit trees planted not far from the house. Even in the August heat with the grasses all around brown from lack of rain, Philamon had created a refuge of green.

Joseph inhaled the strong scent of pine and staying on his horse, listened for Philamon’s dogs to start barking his arrival. “Up,” he said to the kelpie and the dog leapt into his arms as though shot from his Sharps.

Philamon stepped like a shadow from behind the house at the sound of his dogs. He held a plains rifle loosely but ominously in his muscled arms. “Won’t hurt you,” he said in a voice surprisingly deep for someone so slender.

“The kelpie can hold his own,” Joseph said watching the dog’s lips curl back, hearing him clamp his jaws.

Philamon called to the dogs before they bit at the heels of the big roan Joseph rode. They barked louder as they discovered the kelpie, then came to the man who called them.

“Ye’ve done well, Philamon,” Joseph said, removing his leather hat and wiping the dampness from his forehead with the back of his forearm. His Irish accent always seemed to accompany introductory comments.

Philamon squinted. “Who are you, then?” he asked cautiously, adjusting his wire glasses. His hazel eyes quickly took in the size of the man, his expensive leather boots, his chaparejos, his whip coiled on the saddle. He spied the Sharps in the scabbard, an expertly rolled bedroll behind the cannel, a well-stocked pack animal. Philamon stepped closer, eyeing Joseph’s bearded face. Looking past the beard to the soft eyes of his landlord a spark of recognition hit him. “Joe?” He asked.

“Aye, ’tis me,” Joseph answered.

Philamon’s face formed a hesitant smile. “Well knock me flatter than a wallow! What are you doing here?” Then, as if remembering his manners, “No matter. I’ve just set the Arbuckle coffee on to brew. Down, Brutus! Cassius!” he called to the hounds sniffing at Joseph’s boots as he stepped down, still holding the kelpie.

Joseph shifted the dog and the men shook hands. And while each seemed pleased to see that the other had kept their agreements, Joseph sensed a caution from Philamon.

The kelpie pranced behind the men as they walked toward the corral, the larger dogs kept at bay by the smaller dog’s snapping jaw. Philamon described the process of planting the fruit trees as they walked.

At the corral, they stripped the gelding of his saddle and bridle and brushed him till he cooled. Joseph hung the blacksnake coiled at his hip and carried the Sharps into the house with him while Philamon pulled the pack box from the mule.

“So,” Philamon said clearing his throat, probing, “have you found that California doesn’t suit you?” He poured coffee into the porcelain cup he handed to Joseph, some into his own chipped ironstone cup.

“California’s chirk,” Joseph answered, his glance resting on Philamon’s stack of books on the floor.

“Figured by now you’d be wearing a California collar,” Philamon joked awkwardly, referring to the popular name for a hangman’s noose. “Or aren’t you playing cards these days?” Then added quickly, “Not that you didn’t always win fairly.” He paused before saying, “Some would question your good luck.”

“Still playing,” Joseph said, “but with less enthusiasm.”

“No wedding ring, either,” Philamon said. “Should be settled with a growing pack of kids ’stead of just a contrary dog to follow you about.” He cleared his throat again and swung a leg over one of several store-bought chairs surrounding the pine table. Sitting, his arms rested on the back of the chair. Joseph felt he was keeping a distance.

“No wedding ring,” Joseph said. For just a moment he thought of his brothers and sisters, all married. “But the dog never talks back.”

A Seth Thomas clock ticked quietly in the silence.

“Ye’ve done good work here, Philamon,” Joseph said gently leaning into the table, his forearms resting. He was aware that something troubled Philamon. “I’ve not come to take it away.”