Blood Gold (15 page)

Now falling stones whispered, shards and splinters of quartz-rich rock tumbling down from above. I blotted my tears on my sleeve and headed upward, through the boulders. A woodpecker squalled, hiding higher in the sweeping pine branches, and the perfume of woodland surrounded me.

I scrambled, climbing higher up the ridge, the sharp pink-white gravel cutting my fingers, following a trail of blood.

CHAPTER 40

Never before in my life had I felt such fear of solitude.

The days of my boyhood, classrooms and Sunday church, were more remote to me now than the stories of Noah and his Ark and Moses and the Burning Bush. I had always liked my neighbors and my friends, but now I felt a stab of need—a sharp, inner longing for the company of good-hearted people.

This was rank wilderness. No painter in oils or watercolor would ever be able to depict such a woodland—there was nothing pretty about it. But there was something rough and breathtaking about the landscape, a quality beyond poetry. Pines with red-scaled bark speared upward, and sharp-crusted lichen cloaked the rocks. If only I had lingered there with a few companions, I would have considered the vista beautiful.

Somebody just ahead of me had left a trail of blood, drops of darkening scarlet in the coarse-grained soil.

But I caught no sight of my quarry, the brush ahead quiet and unstirred in the warm, late-morning sun. And the bleeding was slowing down, and ceasing altogether, judging by the smaller and more subtle evidence on the pine needles as I clambered over a ridge, and looked down on a mountainous scene.

Elizabeth used to recite poems, fine verses by Keats and Shelley, and I had once imagined myself cresting peaks in far-off continents, an exploring adventurer like stout Cortez. Now I continued to wish I could be far from this rugged wasteland, right in the middle of some slow and smoky town.

At that moment I saw one of them.

He was curled into a ball at the foot of a moss-cloaked tree, and at first I was certain he was dead.

But at the sound of my step he tried to raise up into a sitting position. All anger left me for the moment, seeing a fellow creature so badly hurt. I reached for the flask at my breast, thinking that I would offer him a sip of juniper spirits, but he produced a knife and made an effort to climb to his feet.

“They're after you, Murray!” he called out.

He sank down again and then, like a dog too weary to do more than curl up, he fell to his side.

When I knelt to help him, he said, weakly, “Don't!”

I reassured the injured man that I would not hurt him. He said again, faintly, “No, damn you.”

At last I realized that he meant: Don't touch me.

Leave me alone
.

When I glanced back at him, he had taken on an awkward stillness I could not mistake for life.

I tried to climb upward. The mountain was composed of crumbling granite, crisscrossed by strata of hard, glittering quartz. In places the weathered, mealy granite bits were held together by the black roots of pines, and I clung to these roots as I climbed upward, my fingertips raw.

When I began to slip downward it was a matter of simple inertia, my weight dragging me. But soon there was a small avalanche cascading down, grains of granite down my shirtfront, and when I tried to seize a root, it slipped free of my grasp. On my helpless way down I passed the body, with its look of rapt astonishment, and I wished for my sake that his last words had not been a curse.

I did, in truth, feel close to being damned. With the logic of an event that had happened long ago, I felt my boots shoot out over nothingness, and my body fold around the hard edge of a precipice.

All around me a fan of tumbling stone, skittering down and past me. I could not brake my momentum—I was falling, too, over the root-slashed ledge.

Into empty space.

CHAPTER 41

I scrabbled, clawing at the rocky surface and the embedded pine roots. I hung on.

But I knew that if I moved again, or even took a deep breath, I would plummet.

I flung one leg up over the granite precipice, the stone warm with morning sunlight, and said, out loud, “That's enough.”

I can stay like this forever
.

I gathered my strength, trying to meditate on the sparkling granite and the red, searching figures of the ants just a few inches from where I clung. When I felt steady and determined, I extended my hand, feeling for invisible cracks and imperfections that would support me. To my surprise, I breathed no pious prayer during that long moment, nor did I envision the gentle eyes of Elizabeth back home. No grand hymn echoed in my breast.

I thought of Florence.

I held on to a sweeping, fragrant pine bough, and rolled my glance back at the abyss I had just escaped. The void was much shallower than I had sensed, but still enough to break bones, a slope of granite shingle that flowed all the way to the mining claim with its tent and improvised wooden shacks.

I had held on, and I had survived. A sensation of shaky relief, and even triumph, swept me. And the sight of the camp inspired a moment of reverie, the small improvised buildings, nailed upright with the bark still on the lumber. They were like the make-believe dwellings a child might assemble on a rainy day, out of splinters and toothpicks, safe and imaginary—except for the crumpled figure of Ezra Nevin, just visible among the stones.

I was more careful, now, clinging hard to roots, embracing trees, gauging each toehold. A late-season wasp settled down over the remains of the unhappy man as I passed him again, the insect perhaps mistaking blood for blossoms.

I paused once to empty sand and pea-gravel out of my boots. I was just beginning to feel like my normal self, and wished I had a plug of apple-cured tobacco to chew. I labored hard, and as quickly as I was able, and at last stood on a ridge. And immediately fell to one knee behind a tangle of brush.

Just ahead of me sat Samuel Murray.

He was a haggard, whiskery copy of himself, garbed in a thick, loose-fitting coat, his red hair uncombed.

He knelt on a rocky ridge well ahead, in a sandy clearing, pouring powder from a flask into a pistol barrel. Another pistol gleamed on the ground beside him. When I tucked behind a tree, and eased out my head just a little bit, I could easily spy his companion—a large man with the weathered look of a laborer, missing many teeth.

The two of them were a long stone's throw away, and even at this height the ceaseless rushing of the river below masked the sound of my steps as I hurried forward. Murray plied a ramrod, stuffing the black powder down the muzzle of his pistol.

I lost sight of them as I snaked through the bronze branches of the underbrush, twigs snatching at my clothes. Climbing forward on all fours, I powered ahead.

Pine scales clung to me, branches seizing my limbs as I hurried. The vegetation could not impede me. I was intent on nothing but sinking my knife into Murray, and I had to make haste, because when he got the pistol in his hands loaded and cocked, he would be dangerous again.

But at the same time I mocked my own fears. I had spooked myself down there on the mountainside, convinced that I had been a heartbeat away from destruction. Surely I was foolish to be so afraid.

I strode quickly into the clearing, hastily rehearsed greetings running through my mind. I realized too late that I had misjudged Murray's readiness.

There was a lead pistol ball the size of a chestnut in his fingers, and he was just beginning to poke it down the barrel. But at the sight of me he interrupted the procedure. He reached for the other gun, on the pine needles beside him. He cocked it.

And leveled the firearm at me.

CHAPTER 42

The toothless man took a step back, drawing a weapon from his belt.

Such burly men are without teeth not because of age or infirmity, I knew, but through fighting. His nose had been broken at some time in the past, and he had the scarred eyebrows of an experienced pugilist. He held a fierce, jagged weapon—a broken saber.

I was breathing hard, and took a long moment to break my silence.

Murray gave in to the impulse to speak, like a man of business interrupted by a footman. “What are
you
looking for?”

This was said with his old manner of abrasive authority, with emphasis on
you
, giving the impression that the only person with a rightful purpose was Murray himself. I gripped my knife hard, wondering if I could throw it and pierce his heart.

Murray squinted, to draw a bead with the big pistol in his hand—or so I assumed. But it's hard to keep a heavy weapon like that steady, and he lowered the flintlock just slightly. Besides, as weary as I was from my climb, Murray was even more flushed and winded than I was—as though he had hauled a great weight onto this mountain ridge.

“I
know
you,” he said at last.

He searched his memory.

“You're that fellow,” he said with something like a wondering smile. He gave me a you-can't-fool-me wink. “From the carriage shop back home.”

I said nothing.

People like Ezra and Samuel Murray were from established, genteel families. My station in life was well above that of a servant—as a skilled craftsman I was destined to occupy some middling rung in society. But while Ezra had taken the time to give me a smile and a bit of conversation, Murray had always glanced at me as he would a doorstop or a bootjack, an object.

Murray's smile faded just a little as he queried, “Aren't you?”

No one arrived in California, and traveled the foothills, looking the way he had on Walnut Street. My coat was flecked with long-dried mud, stained with horse sweat, and my boots were scuffed. I had not studied my suntanned, whiskery face in my tarnished mirror long enough to register more than a glimpse of a lean stranger.

I said, “I'm William Dwinelle.”

Murray looked partly satisfied at this, but he needed further confirmation. “And you've come all this way?”

My intention until that moment had been to use my knife to gut Murray like a fish, and take great pleasure in the act.

Now, hearing his voice, and observing his manner, I changed my mind. I saw the way he looked at his big friend for approval, the gun trembling in his hand.

I couldn't, in all conscience, hurt him—not just yet.

“Where will you run?” I asked.

“Why should I run?” he asked. I knew, as well as he did, that the sons of rich families who violated even the most potent taboo could sail off to Tahiti, or even Paris, and live the grand life.

“Your family will wonder what became of you,” I said—before I could think.

At once I silently cursed my bad judgment.

Uttering the word
family
had been a blunder. Family honor was plainly an obsession for Murray. Furthermore, I had inadvertently reminded him that I was a witness to the nature of his revenge. I would be able to tell all Philadelphia, and any legal proceeding, that Ezra had most likely not died in an evenhanded duel.

My newest, still developing plan was to keep him talking, win his confidence, and take his life before he could hurt me.

CHAPTER 43

At the same time, in some half-mad way, I was glad to see Samuel Murray, happy to encounter someone from back home. I could almost will the present circumstances out of my mind.

Almost.

Murray was shaking his head with a nearly affectionate smile. He was sweating and breathing hard. “I'm sorry we don't have any refreshments to offer you, after your climb. I'm sure you'd like a glass of sherry right about now.”

“Sure he would,” said the scarred, toothless man.

It was as though a moss-clad boulder had spoken.

“So would any of us,” said the big man, “or any kind of liquor.”

A glance from Murray silenced him.

There was something forced and feverish about Murray, despite his surface calm. “Billy,” he began, then caught himself, and continued, “William, I do remember you pretty well. You're a capable hand.”

I made no further remark.

“I recall you putting the rim on a wagon wheel, William,” he continued, patronizingly, “with a certain flair.”

I used to be proud of my ability, knowing that Murray and his kind were particularly incapable when it came to mending things.

“And you can repair a firearm, as I recall,” Murray was continuing, in a self-controlled manner, his hand steady now.

He wanted me to say something at this point, but for the moment I would not give him the satisfaction.

“That's a useful skill,” he added. His speech was that of a creature of money and leisure, habitually captured by his own confidence. For a moment I could see why a tough former boxer might prove loyal to such a man. Murray was unblushingly arrogant, and this made him a natural leader.

“I'll pay you five dollars a day, William,” he went on, “to take up with me.”

The pistol was easy in his hand now, pointed down toward the sandy ground. He moved the weapon a little as he spoke—an expensive-looking, rosewood-stocked gun—to give emphasis to his words.

“To travel around with me,” he added. “And perform any little duty that might fall your way.”

Some people can throw a knife hard enough to do harm, but it takes long practice. I had stropped my blade once or twice a week, and wiped it with gun oil from time to time, but doubted I could hurl the thing with any accuracy. I estimated the remaining distance between us. He was six long paces away from me—very long strides. I stayed right where I was for now, and did not make a sound.

“And, as proof of my confidence in you,” Murray was saying with an air of breezy confidence, “I'll pay you a bonus, William. Forty dollars down.”

His gaze flicked from my eyes to the knife in my hand, trying to read my intentions.

“Forty U.S. dollars,” he continued. “Or the equivalent in gold dust.”

He hesitated.

“Or,” he said, “perhaps I can offer you more.”