Page 42 of A Good Prospect

Chapter Sixteen

Ophir had convinced the Frogs to accompany them to Bear Valley the next day.

He told Jules and Henri it wasn’t safe for Tamasin and other denizens of Hell Hollow if they hid out there. Eventually they’d be found out and The League would make the fur fly. Jules and Henri made the dignified choice to face the music, so now they descended into the motley valley that was obscured by the fog of cook fires and—this time—rifle powder smoke. Some of the Frog’s more militant miners had clamored to accompany them, and Ophir nearly felt like the captain of an army company, riding at the head of two hundred angry greasers. The Sonorans, having heard the veterans from Mormon Gulch had dressed in their uniforms and were parading with regimental colors on high, had quickly fashioned their own pennants from serapes and knotted them to poles.

Ophir noted that Salvador had omitted to wear his serape, dressing instead in high Californio style, hair turbaned by a red kerchief. His embroidered zapatone boots were protected by rust-colored leggings tied at the knee, and he even wore a cross on a chain about his neck. “We’ll go to Savage’s first, since that’s the largest building in town,” Ophir suggested. He had promised Tamasin he’d get more sketching paper from Savage.

But Sal reined in his mount, his sharp, crystalline eyes skinned for something Ophir couldn’t see. He always respected when Sal squinted like this with flaring nostrils. He knew that Sal’s vaquero senses were giving him important information. “I think they’ve set out pickets. Didn’t it seem strange our courier never returned from Savage’s this morning?”

Even before they reached the picket, the scene was horrifying. Women, children, and even destitute men were streaming out of Bear Valley in full retreat, the women chattering and moaning, perhaps down to the San Joaquin Valley or all the way to the Colorado River. They told how only a few affluent miners were able to pay the twenty dollar tax and The League were chasing the rest away. Ophir’s contingent ran into some of these pickets literally following the Sonorans on horseback, waving raggedy and dubious colors and shooting at the hooves of the miner’s mules. It all gave Ophir a queasy feeling seeing people being hunted, and the sulfurous odor of the gunpowder clung sickly in his nose.

They passed the remnants of some of the prospector’s tents, tents ripped apart and divested of their belongings, then set afire by Yankees. One Sonoran, protesting the pillaging of his worldly goods, was promptly beaten over the head with his own tin retablo, an oil likeness of the Virgin Mary. Ophir knew they could do nothing for these men, and was surprised they had been allowed to get this far, as Bear Valley was obviously under occupation by—well, by foreigners. They had gone a few more steps, crushing oyster cans, retablos, and wooden children’s toys underfoot, things the Americans had no use for. Ophir was almost relieved when they were at last stopped by two Frenchmen clad in haphazard remnants of their Mexican war uniforms, one with a sailor’s trousers, tight-hipped but flowing freely about his feet, and an abundance of checked shirt.

“Où allez-vous ?“ they demanded to know at rifle point.

“This might be fortunate,” Sal opined to Ophir as the two Frog rebels chatted animatedly with their brethren.

However, it soon became apparent their countrymen didn’t share Jules and Henri’s zest for revolutionary slogans, and were probably more interested in gaining a good paycheck for turning in the two insurgents who had started it all. They shoved the two Frogs down the main street, while Jules shouted at Ophir,

“Do not worry about us! Liberty, equality, and brotherhood forever!”

“Yes!” Ophir bellowed. “Viva los Americanos forever!” This time he genuinely felt the urgent emotion behind the sentiment, more vibrant and resonant than ever before. In fact, revolutionary fervor had gripped him, seeing what The League jackasses were doing to the Sonorans, and he turned to Sal. “I don’t think we need to find Tyke. Tyke will find us.”

“No doubt,” Sal agreed. “By the smell of manteca lard in our greased hair.”

They continued toward Savage’s trading post, past knots of blue-shirted prospectors reveling in the streets, reeling in and out of calico rag tents recently confiscated from refugees. The Yankees parodied those recently departed, whipping their stolen serapes about their persons, gallivanting about like imbeciles wearing sombreros—Ophir had noticed that Sal had not worn his own sombrero today.

It was the pugilist Abel who first found them, and when he stood with crossed arms in the middle of the street as though capable of blocking their progress with just the width of his body, Ophir became aware that Abel was a Pike. Men from Pike County in Missouri were extremely inane and chowder-headed—their brains were in their balls, and you could tell them because their once-red shirts were now purple and pants the brown of snuff.

“Halt,” Abel bellowed, palm facing the partners. “California’s recovery or death!” he chanted, obviously merely repeating a slogan he’d heard Tyke utter many times. What did he care about California? These League men were simply murderous outcasts, escapees from Botany Bay and Sydney, and Ophir was losing tolerance for their bilious ways.

“You Pike County blackguard,” Ophir shouted. “Salvador Palomares stands up for stopping the jumping of our mines.”

“And you bring two hundred greasers to intimidate us?” Abel shouted.

Sal interrupted Ophir then. “You are addressing a man of the purest blood of Europe, here on a civilized foray, to get Alcalde McCarthy’s word he will cease and desist, and let the Frenchmen go.”

Many of the rowdies around them had ceased their capering and were leaning on their rifles or ripped-up tent poles, eagerly awaiting their chance to let loose against the greaser brigade. This could easily devolve into a full-blown battle, as anyone unarmed would be a fool to enter Bear Valley on such a day, so when Salvador dismounted, Ophir understood that he was trying to subdue the tension.

“So the poofs have dared to enter town,” Tyke’s voice suddenly blared, “with a greaser battalion armed with rusty flintlocks.”

All heads whipped to view Tyke, leaning with crossed arms against an ox-cart that The League had confiscated from Sonorans. Ophir saw a limp hand projecting from the back of the cart, so he dismounted too and walked sideways to look inside the cart while Sal orated,

“These men are rightful miners, given their grubstake by the power vested in me as landowner.”

Yes, it did appear to be a stiff lounging in that cart under a filthy serape. Ophir wondered how many other miners had been dispatched like so much cold meat.

Tyke chuckled. “I hardly think you intend to evict a thousand righteous Americans, Mr. Palomares. It is the power of the people that has brought such sweeping change to this country. You can’t stop the will of the people.”

Ophir shouted, “Is this stiff the power of the people?” With his pistol barrel he lifted the serape and saw the man’s face half blown off by a rifle blast. Already in the furnace heat of the day he smelled like regurgitated carrion. “What did this man do wrong?”

Tyke replied, “Several Americans were found murdered in Quartzburg. Reatas were the murder weapons, so the obvious culprits were foreigners of Spanish descent.”

Ophir yelled, “So you just randomly go picking off any Chileno or Peruvian you see, to make them pay for it?”

Tyke shrugged. “All Spaniards should suffer for a few.” He sauntered closer to Sal, looking him up and down with a sneering interest. “And you poofs are here to protest the American way of justice?”

Sal answered, “We’re here to pay the fine for the Frenchmen, and see that they’re liberated. They are righteous Americans as much as you are, and the will of the people demanded that the miner’s tax be reduced. They were just speaking the will of the people as dictated by the freedoms given to all Americans. You know all about that. Right?”