Page 39 of Sure as Shooting

Chapter Sixteen

Vague forms danced about on the opposite bank, darting from tree to tree.

They had passed Whit’s beloved monolith they were now calling El Capitan, and the river here was a seething, impassable cascade. The five Indians were outside of rifle range, and when Huntley called a halt to the column and the Grizzlies knew they were discovered, they freely came into the open and displayed themselves, taunting the Yankees with obscene gestures that referred to copulation of a base nature.

Whit’s eyes flashed angrily. “I’ll swim that stream and capture them!”

“Bully for you, Doc,” Huntley replied. “Take them alive if you can, but take them anyhow.”

Whit took Captain Din, Terrell, Bud, and two others upstream to find a fording place while Huntley took his boys to retrace their way downstream. Huntley found a sloping bank where his stubborn mustang would enter the water, and gave it the spur. The boys swam their mules across the Merced behind him, and this unexpected tactic alarmed the Indians. They raced off at full chisel, so Huntley commanded everyone abandon their mounts and follow on foot.

They came to the base of a spur—what had Belle said the Diggers called it, from its resemblance to three frogs sitting up ready to leap? “Mountains playing leapfrog.” Here there was a saddle of rock debris where the Indians vanished. Huntley scrambled up on all fours, hands and feet skittering and tossing rocks every which way.

At the summit of the saddle there was a granite ledge where they were likely hidden, as Huntley detected no disturbance in foliage or fowl and no further footprints in the patches of snow. Motioning for two battalion boys to flank him, Huntley proceeded cautiously to the ledge shouldering his rifle.

But a sharp “hey you!” emanated from the opposite side of the saddle, flushing the five Indians off the ledge like a flock of startled quail. They came pouring over the rim directly for Huntley, and while one of them had an old flintlock rifle that was probably useless, they halted at Huntley’s order.

It was Whit’s contingent who came up the opposite side, Bud naturally proclaiming, “These imps of Satan! I’m sick of this Quaker style of subduing Indians. I’ll make a few of ’em squawk this time!”

Huntley motioned for Bud to stand down, which he did, with much show of rock-throwing and cursing. Huntley regarded the Indians, instantly recognizing two of them as sons of Tenaya. He asked why they’d exposed themselves to his view. They told him Tenaya knew of the battalion’s approach, and they’d been sent to watch their movements and report back. They had not thought the Yankees could cross the Merced, so they were not afraid. When Huntley asked where Tenaya could be found, they pointed east toward a monolith they called Tokoya, “The Basket,” saying, “He is there now.”

When Huntley interpreted these remarks to Whit, Bud broke in again. “I’ve long learned to discredit everything said by a red devil! Since our muster-in, we’ve had plenty of hard work and no honor at all. We may as well be armed with only clubs like any other jackass police!”

Huntley lost control of his cool. “Cheese it, you worthless shit!” If that dough-headed shrimp wasn’t Belle’s brother, Huntley would have had him booted a long time ago. Huntley took Whit, Boling, and Din aside and said, “Look. It’s too late in the day to go in the direction they indicate. They’ve said there’s a trail leading to Tenaya’s hiding place, so I propose to take one of Tenaya’s sons and one more captive just to find the trail, leaving the others as hostages.”

“I’ll go,” Whit said decisively.

“Doc,” said Huntley. “You’re hardly a scout.”

“I’m as experienced as Boling with a firearm, aren’t I, Boling? You run a hotel and I doctor people, so I expect we’ve shot as many men in our time. Besides.” His voice became more confidential now. “I expect you’ll be wanting to go over these captives’ reports with Miss Belle.”

That was true, and seemed to solve a dilemma that had been foremost in Huntley’s mind for a few days now. So he allowed Whit to depart toward “The Basket” with the promise to not allow anyone to bother the captives and be back by nightfall. Huntley herded the remaining prisoners back to camp.

Yes, there was a problem that had been distracting Huntley lately. When they had last been all dovetailed together atop that infernal buckaroo saddle, Huntley had distinctly heard Whit tell Belle that he loved her. That devious rat had given him the double cross! He had gotten there first with his insipid poetry and manual manipulations of her pussy!

Huntley’s main solace was that Belle hadn’t answered Whit’s proclamation. Now a fist of panic gripped Huntley’s heart to think that maybe she hadn’t answered Whit because she didn’t want Huntley to hear her positive response. That it was something the two of them shared, and now Huntley, as the outsider, would be booted from their presence.

No, it was probably not something Belle wished to discuss in front of Huntley. When he was buried balls-deep in the man she loved.

* * * *

They soon left behind the mountains that Whit was now privately calling “The Three Brothers.” He had determined that in addition to capturing two of Tenaya’s sons, another captive was married to one of Tenaya’s daughters. So in essence, in one ambush they had captured three very important hostages indeed.

Braced with exhilaration and the thin air of the High Sierras, Whit followed the brothers’ trail. They had made sure to point out caches of acorn baskets, and Whit knew the baskets had been placed there to lead Yankees astray. Ambushes of falling rocks were probably waiting at the top of these precipitous trails, so Whit continuously commanded the Grizzlies to walk around them. He wasn’t a rattlebrained saphead. Whit knew the meaning of those acorn baskets.

So they filed along at the base of the lofty dome of “The Basket” past frozen ponds that appeared encrusted with pulverized quartz crystals. Whit’s mind wandered to the incident that had occurred after he’d taken a dive into the Merced.

He’d been carried away with the exaltation of the moment, when he’d uttered those fateful words to Belle. The words themselves were a statement of truth. He did love Belle. He was in love with Belle. It was just that…he had not planned on speaking it so baldly, and while in such a compromising position. It was perhaps easy enough to tell a woman you loved her while sitting coupled atop a saddle, having just deposited a great load inside of her.

Perhaps easy for regular men. Whit knew he was a far cry from a regular man, having only fucked a few female hookers before. That made his proclamation of love even more suspect. Of course a man would imagine he was in love—with the first woman who had ever allowed him to fuck her without expecting payment! No wonder Belle hadn’t responded. She was probably brushing him off as a smitten schoolboy. She’d been married and had had a lover before that, and Huntley was King of the Tulareños. Between them they had enough experience with the opposite sex to, well, start their own Mormon outpost.

Belle—and Huntley—didn’t need him! Besides, what sort of arrogant half-caste bastard would assume such a highfalutin lady, a graduate of a Female Academy, would deem to marry a man who was partially red? Whit had seen with his own eyes the feeling of these California Yankees toward the Indians. Americans tolerated Whit because they were desperate for a physician, but if he were to aspire to marry one of their own, why, he’d have a heap of—

The two Grizzlies walking in front of him sprang aside to cling to the vertical cliff. Hollering in frightened Indian lingo, they pointed ahead on their trail.

“Hello!” Whit called. “What’s up now?”

Bud Pennington, his rifle leveled at Whit, appeared at a rise in the trail. What in Sam Hill…? Bud gnashed his teeth with his usual strange combination of merriment and rage.