Slip-Slidin’ Down Gold Mountain - Part 1, Chap. 1
Edward Orem
A Salty Dog Production
Copyright registered 2017, U.S.A.
ISBN 978-1-365-98841-7
All rights reserved. You may not reprint any of this book for commercial purposes without prior authorization from the publisher.
Anyone using anything longer than a sentence in any other format—print, digital, electronic—is forbidden without said authorization.
Part One
A Perpetual State of Slight Mourning
Chapter One
1867 – Trinity Mountains, northern California
One-Eye Mordecai was cramming a human head back into the lumpy canvas sack slung off his mule when he heard a low, raspy voice behind him.
“Thet thar be a sin, donchall know.”
Mordecai turned to look up at his mounted pard, Ezekiel. They were pert-near mirror-images: grotty suspendered pants, grimy leather vests, feral hair skittering out from sweat-stained slouch hats, scraggly beards veiling their faces. Two outrider bounty-hunters wandering the mountains of northern California in the 1860’s.
He turned back to fussing with the grisly cargo. “How’s that, Zeke?” Worsern bein hitched, so’tis.
“Bible sez a person caint covet. You be covetin too many them thar injun haids, Mordecai.” He waved his hand toward the pack animals. There were six mules, each with two bags full of heads.
“Five greenbacks be five greenbacks,” his partner grumbled. “And I be covetin a stick right now. Whup ya longside yer secessionist, rebel-ass haid, y’all don’t alight and gimme a hand checkin these here pokes.”
“Chrissakes, leave ‘em be, wouldja.” Worsern a twitface schoolmarm. “The way y’all carry on about them sacks...” Zeke gave up his protest to swing down off his horse. “Hail, mights well break ‘er ratchere. Only a few hours outta Whiskeytown ennyhoo.”
+++
The half-breed boy trotted out from the last sunburned south slope of the Trinities and away from most of the chaparral.
Ahead, on the moister, north-facing hills, lived the ponderosa pines with only scattered individual oaks. The pineries were actually dense islands growing on terraces left after rivers of glacial ice cut the canyons. Lush riparian forest lined the banks of the river designated “Trinity” by the conquering Americans, one of the many rain-sheds from the leeward sides of the high range looming in front of the boy, Ishi. The new Americans named those peaks as well: the Trinity Mountains.
His own people (or, more accurately, his mother’s tribe, the Chamoc) referred to the wildlife-laden streams as Home of the Sacred Red Fish--tributaries of what the Chamoc called the “Water Mother of the Valley,” later known as the Sacramento River.
Ishi was short, but strong for his 11 years. He moved quietly westward and with good speed alongside the Trinity Trail, his long, black hair bouncing off his back—until he came up on a forest track meeting his own from the north. The sound of mule hooves thudding close-by made him plunge into the nearest cover of a ceonothus thicket.
He was close enough to see where the two trails merged, close enough to realize his narrow escape, close enough to smell the six laden mules, and more powerfully, the two whites on horses, one at each end. The men looked like they could be miners headed into town after weeks in the hills. The rear man yelled and advanced quickly up the column.
Ishi froze, horrified at what was happening in front of him. The white man was pushing a head, a human head, an Indian head back into the gunnysack on the mule. A rush of disgust made Ishi’s belly lurch. He had heard stories that the White Man’s government was offering bounties for the skulls of Indian men, women, children. What he didn’t know was that even tiny bergs, such as nearby Shasta City, offered $5- rewards for scalps or heads. This was a substantial sum, one that brought head-hunters from all over the State.
Ishi grew perfectly still as the white man handled his macabre prizes.
+++
Zeke half-squatted in front of the cook-fire, pestering it with small sticks. A blackened and battered quart-size pot perched unsteadily between three rocks. Small bubbles began to rise into steam.
“’Bout time,” he grunted. He reached back to his “possibles” sack, plucked out an old Goober’s Oats tin, popped the lid. “One hair, or two?” he asked.
“Hairier’n yer Granmaw’s lip,” One Eye murmured, cocking his head to give the late afternoon sky a hard going-over. “Any minnit now, dammitall, any minnit now,” he groused.
Zeke looked up at the gathering clouds. “Yeah, any minnit now, and ol’ One-Ear-and-Sideways will stumble inta camp.” He dug into the tin with his hand, tossed three fistfuls of coffee into the pot.
“Don’t ye be startin’ on me, now,” One-Eye said around the fresh plug sticking out the corner of his mouth.
The two sipped their black brew, leaning back on their elbows to judge the rain bank to the west. Such a change in the weather would bring a large flux of Indian whores into Whiskeytown. One-Ear-and-Sideways was one of their regulars, after meeting her on the trail in southern Oregon.
A few months back they were camped along the Rogue River, when two Indian women and a girl wondered in to beg for flour, sugar, and bread. Mordecai asked them if they’d have intercourse with him in return for some sugar wrapped in a red neckerchief. The youngest woman, the one with one ear, said yes.
The men fed the three, then One-Eye went off into the bushes with One-Ear. His partner studied them thoughtfully as they disappeared into the brush.
The pair came back into camp 15 minutes later, just as One-Ear’s husband arrived on the scene. The husband seemed to know what had gone on, and began to cuff One-Ear for her misconduct. She cried and wailed pitifully, and blanched when the husband pulled out a knife. He threatened to carve off her other ear.
At that point Zeke stepped in and offered to double his pard’s tariff if the husband would spare the woman.
“You pay three times,” the buck growled, the deal was struck, and trouble was avoided.
The two rough riders turned their string south on the Applegate trail, towards California. After an hour of plodding, Mordecai turned in his saddle. “Thet were a mighty Christian thang ye did back thar, pard.”
“Had yore well-bein’ on mah mind, ‘at’s all thar wuz to it.”
“How’s thet, Zeke?”
“I figgered, hail’s bails, Mordecai otter take thatun fer his woman, permanent like. If’n the two of y’all put both yore haids together, y’all be fully equipped.”
Mordecai ruminated seriously on that about for 50 yards of trail —til he heard Zeke cackle. “Sumabitch, Zeke.”
Two days later in South Fork, the bounty-men were wetting their whistles in front of the general store, and heard their entire story re-told by a man who had also run into the same Indians.
Zeke tossed the dregs of his cup into the fire. “Ne’er did know why y’all called ‘er ‘Sideways.’” He lanked his tall body to standing, gave the fire a couple scuffs of dust.
“It wuz somethin’ with the one ear,” Mordecai allowed. “When we wuz makin’ the sign of the double-back, she had to cock her head to hear me.” He tugged his ear at the thought. “Damnation—that wuz the costliest dern sugar we ’er did buy, Ezekiel.”
Zeke brushed his hands on his oily and splotchy pants, hunched his leather vest straight. “A one-eared sugar ridin’ a one-eye demon,” he smirked.
Mordecai let fly with a brown spew. “Demon, E-Z-Kill?”
“Les check them gunnies agin, Mortey.”
+++
Ishi watched as the rear guard mounted up, and the string started to trudge along the river trail. Ishi stayed hidden, actually flattened to the ground, until the entire train had ambled around the next bend, out of sight. He didn’t move until the sharp sounds of hooves striking rocks subsided, then slithered backwards, quietly, quietly. Deeper into the brush, there to remain shaking with rage and trembling with relief until nightfall.
He shook pounded acorn mash and dried fish out of his gourd canteen, appeased his belly for the night. His oversized deerskin shirt felt mighty welcome as he dozed fitfully.
A couple hours before dawn’s first light, the boy set off west at a jog, on an upper trail that paralleled the river. He hoped to skirt the round-eye settlement of Whiskeytown before daybreak.
