Page 1 of A Good Prospect

Chapter One

California

April 1850

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Salvador Palomares lay in a bed of hot sweet-smelling grass, glad that he finally brought his cattle back into the Sierra foothills after wintering them in the San Joaquin plains. But something was wrong. He wasn’t happy. Something was missing from his life, and he couldn’t really put a finger on it. He just knew he was desperate.

Sure, allegedly he owned eleven leagues of this wonderful, remote and silent land. But ever since the Mexican war, he’d been a bit dissipated. Drinking too much whiskey, lazing about, waiting for something to happen. Nothing was really wrong with staring at the azure bowl of this sunny heaven. The warm smell of the grass, the cooing of the quails, his hand against his stomach, so weightless it seemed to float. Everything was perfect. Something was merely missing.

He lacked a closeness, a human connection. Since his father and brother had died in the recent war, his only social interactions were the fandangos he and his neighbors threw for each other. But those fellows lived on their own ranchos a hundred miles away, and life could not be a continual shuffling back and forth—What was that? Indians! Bárbaros, barbarians! A group of those beings were tearing down the ravine below, so close it seemed Salvador could feel the wind from the skittering of their nut-brown legs, yelling in that guttural lingo they used that allegedly only contained twenty words, probably killing a deer.

Salvador automatically reached for his whiskey flask, then realized that wouldn’t be of much help. He went for his pistol, instead. Where the hell was his vaquero? He relied on that fellow to get the damned beeves up to the foothills. Why couldn’t José just shoot the Indians?

Salvador moved slowly as a muddy arroyo, laden down with the pleasurable dullness of whiskey. He stumbled into the ravine as a few of those rascals were departing from what looked like a very small deer, or a dead body. He pulled off two rounds at their figures, but he couldn’t shoot too straight and probably only struck one of them in the buttocks. What a shame—now they would go after his cattle, as usual.

Huffing and puffing with the sudden entertainment of it all, Salvador holstered his pistol and walked down the gulley. Holy Mother of Joseph. It wasn’t a deer, lying there sprawled out for all of mankind to see. It was a human being.

As Sal got closer, his boot steps became more uncertain. This fellow’s skin was very dark, maybe a coffee shade darker than the Spaniards Salvador was accustomed to, but not the nut brown of the bárbaros that harried him night and day, stealing his cattle. Sal had never seen a fellow this almost negro shade, and the beauty of it distracted him for a few seconds. The man was attempting to pull an Indian arrow from his thigh, grunting into the splashes of bright blood that spurted from a delicate and important vein. Where the hell was José? José took care of everything.

Sal yelled to the hills, “José, ven aquí ahora inmediatamente!” although he knew it was futile. The bellow of his voice only echoed back to him, like the holler of a hoarse animal. He would have to take care of this dying person himself.

“Buenas tardes,” Sal said conversationally, sliding down slippery oak leaves the remaining few yards. Although he wasn’t too certain it was afternoon.

The negro fellow’s eyes flashed angrily, and he growled, “Buenas tardes, señor!” through clenched teeth.

The whole obsidian arrowhead had lodged in the groin, and at first the blood must have gushed so violently, crimson splashes decorated the fellow’s face and throat. A Bowie knife tossed to the dirt gave evidence the fellow had slashed through the stout cotton of his pants in order to free the arrow, it being less expedient to unhook the suspenders he wore over a bare chest. Having been shot with a bárbaro arrow on several occasions himself, Salvador knew the quandary that presented itself to the poor fellow’s mind: to pull the arrow, or not? No doubt his face was regally handsome like the Spanish saints in the mission murals, or a noble member of a respected old Californio family, such as Salvador was. But now his face was screwed up like a dried apple. His bare chest and abdomen, so sharply sculpted they resembled the rippled waves of a torrential river, were heaving in agony.

Dropping to his knees, Sal commanded, “No, no hagas eso!”No, don’t do that.

At last the poor fellow lost his composure, and he roared in English, “What the hell do you think I’m trying to do, you dumb ox? I’ve got an arrow stuck in my leg!”

Sal nearly laughed in relief and amazement that the negro man spoke proficient English—and with verve, at that. It was always so refreshing to converse in English, reminding him of many pleasant times with his father. “All right. We’ll figure this out.” Throwing his own felt sombrero to the dirt, Sal whipped off his filthy head scarf. The hombre’s squiggly eyebrows arched even further in amazement and perhaps disgust, so instead Sal unknotted the red sash at the waist of his buckskin calzonera trousers. That item was probably not so reprehensible. “We have to get the arrow out, or it’ll fester. You pull, and I’ll press down with this scarf. No, not now! I just need to tell you. I’m going to—oh, all right!”

The hombre yanked, and flung the arrow wide as blood spurted once again into the air. Salvador had not had a chance to tell him he intended to pour a healthy dose from his whiskey flask into the wound. He’d seen this happen a hundred times, using whiskey to cleanse a wound, and he certainly always had whiskey about his person.

Salvador poured, and the whiskey bubbled up and mingled with the blood in an interesting pattern that almost distracted him with its beauty against the coffee-colored skin, and then he pounced with the red sash, stifling the flow. The hombre, oddly, stopped yelling when he poured, almost as though the pain had got to be too much for him. As the eyes rolled back into their sockets, he at last collapsed back onto the oak leaf-strewn bank, one limp and powerful hand flung across his quivering belly.

Sal had seen this before, too. Men keeling from pain and becoming insensate. That was just as well. He was going to have to press on this wound until the flow stopped, and then use the same sash to make an expert tourniquet so tight it would cut off sensation in his leg. But Salvador Palomares was the most proficient vaquero in the Sierra foothills, and maybe only José knew how to make as wide a variety of knots and cinches. Californios could ride before they could walk. They often held roping contests at the rancho, especially during the monotonous winter days with most of the cattle gone in the plains, and there wasn’t much else to do other than drink aguardiente, horse race, or gamble with the peóns and the emancipados, tame Indians who had been emancipated from the Spanish missions and now lolled about—

Holy Mother of Joseph. This coffee hombre’s penis was monstrous. It must have been slowly engorging, awakening, as Salvador pressed the red silk sash to the wound in the front of the powerful thigh. A thicket of steamy coarse black hair covered the pubic mound, and the heavy, extremely long balls were displayed prominently to Salvador’s view through the slash in the fabric. The hombre lay back almost lifeless except for the tremor of the heartbeat in his abdomen and in the throbbing of the immensely long and thick penis, stiffening so rapidly it actually rose and briefly brushed against Sal’s fingertips.

Fascinated, Sal watched as the cock moved across the sinewy hip, so muscular one could not have obtained a mouthful of fat from it. As the balls contracted up toward the pubic mound, Sal pressed with the soaked silk, straining his fingertips to once again brush against the captivating display of masculinity.

This was not a Spanish saint—this was a satyr, one of those Greek deities Sal had read about in his father’s library, beings with horns and horse’s cocks. Rather than being repelled, Sal became so fixated upon the long throbbing appendage he fairly drooled, a thin stream of spittle spinning down into the drenched sash. He was so gratified when his fingertips once again tickled the firm, textured surface of the balls, his own penis was full to bursting against his white cotton pants.

In a flash, the seemingly comatose man sat bolt upright, eyes flashing with hatred, his penis still bobbing tantalizingly in the air. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? he shouted, and he viciously shoved Salvador’s hands from his thigh.

Salvador fell back on his ass, and his enormous Californio spurs dug into his buttocks, but the fellow’s attitude swiftly changed when he looked down at the silk sash and saw fresh rivulets of blood emerging from beneath it.

Sal shouted back, “I was about to make a tourniquet, but if you’re determined to protest, go ahead and make your own!” Who the hell cared if this stranger died—stopping to help him was certainly the first charitable thing Sal had done in years.

Sal got to his feet uncertainly, wobbly with tiny clear bubbles swimming before his eyes. The hombre held out a hand to still him.

“Wait, wait! Please make your tourniquet! I apologize, señor. I must have been…unconscious for a moment there, from loss of blood.”

Slowly, so the hombre didn’t get the idea he was overly eager, Sal kneeled once again and set to making two tourniquets, one above the wound and one below, using the filthy head scarf. He had probably just been too drunk, that was the explanation for why he’d suddenly been so aroused by the sight of an erect penis. It had been too long since the last fandango at Nuñez’ rancho. He’d have to drink less whiskey if he wanted to get this fellow up to Rancho Las Oliveras. Well, he always said he’d drink less, and it never happened. But he’d have to moderate it a bit if he had to haul this dead weight through the remaining valleys.

“What’s your name?” Sal asked lightly, to change the uncomfortable subject.

The handsome satyr said sullenly, “Calaveras Bill.” His penis had gone tumescent, but it was still an impressive sight. With his short crisp hair like a cap about his head, and his neatly trimmed moustache and beard, he could have easily passed for a mestizo caballero of the first order.

“Well, I’m not calling you Cal, since I’m Sal. Don Salvador Palomares. You’ve no doubt heard of me, since you’re on my land.”

Leaning back on his elbows in the dirt, Calaveras Bill waited until Sal had hitched the last knot to say, “Your land?”

“Yes, eleven square leagues from Mariposa to the San Joaquin plains. One of the best land grants Governor Micheltorena ever bestowed,” he lied. It was actually one of the worst, so remote it terrified good folks to venture there, riddled through with thieving bárbaros, and too cold to overwinter cattle. But it certainly was big.

Standing straight, Sal reached a hand down to help up Calaveras Bill. But the hombre was clearly in such agonizing pain he simply could not, so Sal squatted down again to sling one coffee-colored arm across his neck. In this manner they hobbled, the hombre clutching at his tattered pants of formerly sturdy material.

Sal whistled for his mount, and the other fellow winced. “Where’s your camp?”

The hombre pointed down the ravine, toward Greaser Gulch. “I reckon those Indians rifled through my camp after attacking me. Don’t know how much will be left of any worth. Indians have been trying to crowd me from my claim for months.”

The silver glint of his richly mounted saddle caught Sal’s eye through the oaks. The horse started for him calmly, sure of foot, as Sal proffered the whiskey flask to the stranger. The stranger shook his head. “Claim? No one claims anything around here other than me. What are you claiming?”

Calaveras Bill drew back a bit, frowning in disbelief. “Claim. You know. Staking a claim.” Sal shook his head, not understanding. The fellow almost laughed now, through his pain. “You know. A gold claim?”