Page 4 of A Good Prospect

Chapter Three

Salvador’s first item of business was to take care of Ophir.

They didn’t get to the rancho until around midnight and by that time the prospector and former slave was fading fast, Salvador could tell. Even as they trotted within sight of Rancho Las Oliveras, the hacienda and outbuildings standing out from the landscape in the slight luminescence of the quarter moon, Salvador felt the broad hands that had gripped him about the hips start to slide, then fall away altogether. For the last hundred yards, in fact, Salvador had to reach an arm back and hold the groggy fellow in the saddle.

Prospero and Román came jogging from the corral to take the mount, and Ophir slithered off nearly into a boneless heap, were it not for Salvador catching him. “Vaya a despertar a la Ascensión,” Salvador told a youth who darted off, and he assisted the jiggly fellow to walk in a straight line to the kitchen door, as though he was half seas over.

Salvador knew he’d probably lost a lot of blood, but even he had to chuckle when Ophir uttered, “Where am I?” Sitting him at the kitchen table, he pressed a glass of cool water into Ophir’s hand, and went to the cupboard to pour himself a healthy swallow of aguardiente.

“You’re in my kitchen,” he said, lighting a whale oil lamp with a split of wood from the fireplace. He was gratified to see Ophir’s eyes at last open in cognizance, and he looked around in wonderment. Salvador was proud. He knew his kitchen was the grandest—well, that wasn’t difficult to say, since it was pretty much the only kitchen within a hundred mile radius. But it was grander even than Captain Sutter’s, larger than Nuñez’, fancier than Hernández’, better appointed than Thompson’s, neighboring rancheros who prided themselves on throwing week-long fandangos whenever an excuse presented itself. It was just unfortunate that Salvador’s mother, Doña Carmen, usually insisted on presiding over this room.

Taking a seat across from Ophir, Salvador gulped more of the fiery brandy. “Ascención will be here in a moment. She can take care of your leg.” Ay dios, Salvador didn’t even want to glance at the naked flesh again. Gore and the innards of bodies didn’t disturb him in the slightest. It was fear of seeing that prodigious cock again. Now Sal forced himself to think about putrefying muscles laid open to the air. “How did you make it from North Carolina to California?” he asked, to take the fellow’s mind off his pain, for which he stupidly refused to take any liquor.

Ophir drained the water glass, and Salvador stood to refill it. When he turned back to him, Ophir had slid the suspenders from his dusty shoulders, in order to better inspect the wound himself. Salvador’s knees weakened to view a hint of full, bursting balls under the filthy tatters of cotton. “I read in the North Star that the California Constitution had voted down a slavery provision, so I figured I’d try my hand here instead of getting sold down the river.” He winced, and exhaled raggedly. “Buy the rest of my family back. I’ve got a bunch more gold câched about this area.”

“Don’t touch that!” Salvador cried softly. “Here, pour more brandy on it. Wait, the rest of your family?”

Ascención was bustling into the kitchen with an armload of Sal’s clothing, uttering her carambas in concerned, dulcet tones, so with a mixture of relief and irritation, Salvador took his leave. “Let me go check on your room,” he told Ophir.

He didn’t need a lamp to walk into the courtyard and down a path laid with flat stones. The rest of Ophir’s family? A father, a mother, siblings? Ophir didn’t look to be over thirty years of age or so, probably too concerned with the everyday worries of being a slave to get married, and it comforted Salvador to think his new partner would be so reputable as to come to California just to free his parents.

The strains of a haphazard guitar cancíon being mangled beyond recognition came from the second story balcony of an outbuilding. As Salvador padded up the wooden stairs, he smiled to make out the lyrics being belted. The singer caterwauled his phrases out over the still air of the hillside, where they dropped like so many cow turds.

Yo soy un bandido peligroso! (I am a dangerous bandit!)

Home or to the mines! I say

I eat another man for breakfast

And I spit him out just like the man in the moon

Salvador reached the top stair just as the fellow was wailing out “moooon…” Obviously proud of himself, he allowed the final note to soar, where it was echoed only by the hoot of an owl.

He lay flat on his back on the wooden planks of the balcony, a sombrero needlessly over his face, choking the neck of his sad guitar, wringing the last gasp from it. “Heh heh,” he chuckled before carefully laying the guitar and hat aside, and sitting up with alacrity. Some items rolled off his stomach, and Salvador squatted down to pick one up. A strawberry. He crushed it between his teeth, the bittersweet flavor exploding down the back of his tongue.

The blonde man exclaimed as though reciting from a book, “The man who can eat strawberries sprinkled with crushed sugar and not lay his hand on his stomach is a man with a worn-out conscience—a man whose mouth tastes like a hole in the ground.”

Smiling lazily, Salvador stood tall and proffered a hand to help up the shorter fellow. Knut Frostad stood uncertainly, swiping at a whiskey bottle on his way up. Allegedly from some far-flung Scandinavian country, he had done everything he could to make himself American. Now, in his attempts to fit in with the Californio rancheros, he enjoyed bellowing old canciones late at night, inventing his own lyrics depending on his mood at the moment. Doña Carmen had relegated Knut to this outbuilding to avoid hearing his poetry.

Knut gestured at Salvador with the bottle. “The return of the prodigal son!” He drank to that, and shoved the bottle at Salvador. Sal wiped the bottle’s mouth on his sleeve before he drank. “Did you bring in the California bank notes?”

Salvador nodded. “Yes, the beeves are being driven into the corral.” Cows were termed “California bank notes,” as natives had very few coins and traded most everything for the valuable hides that had been just as good as money since time immemorial. Until Yankees had started crowding the coastal cities and looking askance when offered a stiff cow skin in exchange for a barrel of bad Boston wine. “Prospero is counting the heads, and we’ll have a tally tomorrow. I have another task for you, Knut.”

The bloated man’s ears perked up like a rabbit. As fond as he was of bending the elbow, he did enjoy having duties to sink his teeth into. Knut Frostad had been an associate of Salvador’s father, Captain John Dearborn, in San José, before Captain Dearborn had been granted the land of Las Oliveras. Being of a lawyerly habit of mind, he had taken to acting as majordomo for the rancho, with results that were not always evident or even desirable, but Salvador was usually too corned to care—or had been, up until today. “Task? I do take pleasure in a good task. Now, tell me, son.” Knut insisted on calling Salvador “son,” though they were probably the same age. “Did you make any progress in sparking that beautiful Esmeralda Nuñez when you were visiting her father last month? For you know,” he said with overt camaraderie, “marriage is as old as the pyramids and as full of hieroglyphics that no one can figure out.”

Salvador threw his head back, braying with laughter. He pointed an index finger at the majordomo. “That’s a very good one, Knut!” With her moustaches and vanity, Esmeralda Nuñez was not beautiful, he had no interest in sparking her, and the metaphor about the pyramids was just plain absurd.

Knut frowned, and grabbed back the bottle. “I am glad you like it,” he groused.

Still laughing, Salvador clapped Knut on the shoulder and steered him toward the stairs. “Come now, mi amigo. Let’s talk business. We have a new guest who has told me there are many squatters on my land who are digging for gold. Have you heard any news of this?”

Knut appeared deep in thought as he lumbered down the stairs holding fast to the railing. “Squatters? Aside from the usual barbáros? Let me think…Some fine fellows from Australia came by about a week ago. Jah, fine, upstanding hale men who wished only to know where to find a good spring to water their mounts.”

“Australia? Knut, those men are former convicts, some of them probably escaped.”

“Or maybe rehabilitated into fine, upstanding hale—”

“Yes, I’m sure they are. And remind me to hire more peóns to guard the rancho. What else did they say? Think. Anything.”