A Good Prospect

 

Going for the Gold 3

A Good Prospect Salvador Palomares, Don of a vast California rancho, saves the life of Ophir, a former slave pierced by an Indian arrow. Sal has wasted years in drunken cattle driving and horse racing, and he is surprised when Ophir tells him gold has been discovered, and his land is being invaded by a gang of ruffians determined to banish all Spanish “foreigners.” Sal and Ophir rescue Tamasin, a downtrodden Irish refugee raised in a convent. Their passion for Tamasin creates rivalry between the two partners. Tamasin loves them equally, so the decision to form a ménage cements their bond. But their empire is threatened by The League, lawless thieves moving in to starve them out of their own mines. The trio’s goal is to live in peace. And they fight to the bitter end to reclaim it. Their love is…a good prospect. Genre: Historical, Ménage a Trois/Quatre, Western/Cowboys Length: 75,687 words 

 

A GOOD PROSPECT Going for the Gold 3

Karen Mercury

MENAGE AMOUR

Siren Publishing, Inc. www.SirenPublishing.com

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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK IMPRINT: Ménage Amour

A GOOD PROSPECT Copyright © 2011 by Karen Mercury E-book ISBN: 1-61034-706-4 First E-book Publication: August 2011 Cover design by Jinger Heaston All cover art and logo copyright © 2011 by Siren Publishing, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission. All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

PUBLISHER Siren Publishing, Inc. www.SirenPublishing.com

Letter to Readers Dear Readers, If you have purchased this copy of A Good Prospect by Karen Mercury from BookStrand.com or its official distributors, thank you. Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book.

Regarding E-book Piracy This book is copyrighted intellectual property. No other individual or group has resale rights, auction rights, membership rights, sharing rights, or any kind of rights to sell or to give away a copy of this book. The author and the publisher work very hard to bring our paying readers high-quality reading entertainment. This is Karen Mercury’s livelihood. It’s fair and simple. Please respect Ms. Mercury’s right to earn a living from her work. Amanda Hilton, Publisher www.SirenPublishing.com www.BookStrand.com

 

DEDICATION Thanks to Nikki Holmes for her horse knowledge, and Annalynne Russo for the Spanish. Viva los Americanos!

 

A GOOD PROSPECT Going for the Gold 3 KAREN MERCURY Copyright © 2011

“Drunk! Aye, drunk with avarice! Behold the picture: California in her cups!” —Hubert Howe Bancroft, California Inter Pocula

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.

 

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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

 

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that spurted from what Salvador knew was a very 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

 

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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 black 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, predictably, 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 collapsing 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

 

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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 penis 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

 

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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. As he 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’s 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?”

 

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“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, and he whistled less piercingly. The horse started for him calmly, sure of foot, as Sal proffered the whiskey flask to the stranger. The stranger shook his head, oddly. “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?”

 

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Chapter Two Calaveras Bill was amused that this Salvador Palomares vaquero seemed not to know about the gold on his land. Why, it wasn’t just the bárbaros trying to crowd him from his claim—Yankee prospectors had been hounding him from bar to gulch, calling him a peón due to his dark skin, demanding to know where his master was. “Gold claim?” Señor Palomares scoffed as they hobbled down the ravine. “What sort of gold claim? You’ll be going back to the States empty-handed if that’s what you’re after.” Calaveras Bill was ashamed that his leg was now so numb, he had to stagger downhill with an arm slung over this landowner’s neck, and the señor supported him with both arms around his waist, followed by the most beautiful and well-mannered horse he’d ever seen. The kind vaquero had even wrapped him in his own colorful serape, to guard against the shocking chills wracking his body. He was a bit ashamed of his violent reaction to the feeling of the other man’s fingertips tickling his balls. Perhaps it had been an accident. He had been told over and over that his cock was overly sensitive to the slightest breath of wind—by men who should know. Another reason he had perhaps reacted so fiercely. “You own this land, yet you haven’t heard of anyone prospecting? I’ve been chased from Mariposa to Hornitos, Quartzburg and Bear Valley.” “All on my land,” the vaquero said, suddenly dark. “I keep hearing from these Yankees that they know the legislature granted settlers entry rights to unused land. And because I’m halfblack, they put me in the same class as the greasers and other

 

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‘foreign’ Spaniard devils. Saying we’re taking gold that belongs to the people of the United States.” The vaquero froze so suddenly, Calaveras Bill nearly pitched forward onto his face. What had he said wrong? Settlers? Black? Foreigners? He turned and at last looked his savior straight in the face. And was so astounded that all thought was wiped from his brain. He’d been occupied with such urgent health concerns, such as coming within a hair of being wiped out by bárbaros, that he had not gotten a good look at this vaquero. A tall, majestic Californio, perhaps only half a shade as dark as those gentlemanly natives, Señor Palomares was possessed of an intent, riveting face. His intelligent, almond-shaped eyes were the most crystalline blue, as the landed gentry of that class were wont to have. In the modern style, to elevate himself above the peóns, he was clean-shaven and had chopped off what most certainly had been a long pigtail, as thick chestnut curls emerged from under his flat-crowned sombrero. No, he was not a pure Californio, although he dressed the part, in his short embroidered jacket and side-buttoning leather calzonera trousers, and especially those enormous, saucer-sized spurs that rattled sharply. He was a perfect literary bandit of Old Spain, only…his skin, his hair was too light. Could it be…he was a half-caste, like himself? Salvador Palomares, to his credit, did not let him fall. Clutching him again about the waist, they continued their hobble downhill, shuffling through the woody oak leaves, but the other man sputtered, “‘Unused land’? Settlers! What manner of settlers? Jackasses looking for gold that doesn’t exist, such as you?” He had the glorious, rich tones of the pure Californio, but there was a distinct trace of Yank to his sensuous voice. “Yankees, mostly English, French, German, a few Italians…and I’ve run into a lot of hard cases from Sydney Australia, former convicts suddenly taking to crying, ‘California’s recovery or death!’ Though they could hardly be concerned with the recent war. Where have you been, not to have run into these fine citizens?”

 

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Palomares went silent, putting such strength into assisting him that he fairly flung him down the slope. After awhile, though, he could not contain himself, and burst out, “Where have I been? I’m a cowman, a cattle rancher! I don’t have time for petty intrigues such as chasing fellows from one worthless claim to another. My cattle range to Mariposa and Bear Valley in the summer, and I didn’t run into a single soul last summer other than a few greasers who got lost on their way to a bullfight. Bear Valley was nothing but Jim Savage’s trading shack with a couple of shitty serapes and sardine tins. Now you’re telling me my land is crawling with squatters?” “Yes,” Calaveras Bill gasped, as they finally reached the sandy banks of Greaser Gulch. He waited until Palomares slowed his stride to say, “They call themselves settlers. One boasted his stomach would feel better at the killing of a Spaniard than at the crushing of a body louse.” Perhaps he should not have said that, for Palomares resumed dragging his numb body down the sand bank in the direction he pointed, where he could already see his few meager belongings were scattered to the winds. “They’re no settlers, Cal–Calaveras—Oh, what in hell is your real name?” He shoved Bill so heartily that this time, Bill really did stumble, sprawling right atop a few of his former tent stakes. Of course the bárbaros had taken the actual canvas tent. They had stolen his cunning pack mule, his pickaxe and all his prospecting tools, cooking pans, buffalo robe, lamp, and probably worst of all, his only other pair of trousers. The only item they had no use for was the tallow soap. He still retained his Colt’s revolver, which of course he kept on his person at all times, but had been too taken by surprise to draw it. He was a blacksmith, after all, not a pistolero. Now, being conditioned to the obsequious status in life, and being smart enough to realize he had best treat this vaquero like the Don he claimed to be, he clambered laboriously to his feet using one of the tent stakes as a cane. This time, Palomares stood his skeptical ground

 

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and did not assist, and as Calaveras Bill hopped to the base of a young oak, Palomares predictably spat out, “I’d like to see your freedom papers, if you don’t mind. I don’t envision hauling a fugitive up the valley. I know California has a Free State constitution, but if you’re on the run, I’ve an obligation to bring you back.” He paused. “And that would be a major inconvenience to me when I’m trying to get my cattle home.” That was to be expected, probably every day for the rest of his life, and that was why Bill, upon stopping at a new prospecting site, always câched his most prized possessions. Palomares finally came to help when he saw Bill strive to kneel down to the base of the tree. “You have to understand,” said Palomares, in the soft, gentle tones that Bill much preferred. “I’m just in a stew about what you’re telling me. In forty-eight, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo promised us Californios would be ‘maintained and protected in free enjoyment of our liberty and property,’ and now you’re telling me there are, what? Hundreds? Hundreds of Yankee squatters taking gold out of my land without my knowledge? Oh, is this your feeble gold câche? Don’t worry, I’m not taking it. You earned it, you worked for it, and you were kind enough to warn me about what’s going on. Here. All right, your ragged papers. Ay dios, these things are about to fall apart. Let’s see here now. North Carolina, is that so? I don’t believe I’ve ever met anyone from North—” As though suddenly felled by a giant vat of caper juice, Salvador Palomares collapsed upon the oak trunk, hand limp at his sides holding the offending papers, head back in a silent guffaw. Completely still, only his stomach shook with hilarity, and Bill even saw a tear of laughter squeezed from the corner of his eye. Bill was used to this, too. He’d seen this reaction a hundred times. He was so accustomed to it, his mind wandered. He admired Palomares’s full and muscular throat as the Adam’s apple bobbed in a paroxysm of humor. Leaning back against the tree as he was, his sombrero tipped

 

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back and displayed his fine, intelligent forehead, and his royal aquiline nose had a bit of a bump in the middle. When Palomares at last came forward, he clapped Bill on the shoulder in a brotherly manner. Still shaking hysterically, he cried, “Cupid!” Then he was overtaken by another wordless fit, so Bill filled in for him. “Yes, Cupid.” He rolled his eyes. “That was the height of classical snobbery for my master. Yes, I know it’s the Roman god of erotic love. Now you see why I was so eager to call myself Calaveras Bill when I got to California.” While Palomares was doubled over in convulsions of endless entertainment, Bill leaned over the oak tree’s hollow and withdrew his fiddle. Experimentally, he plucked a few strings to ensure it was still sound. Well, he had his papers, fiddle, daguerreotype, gold…Everything he needed to start out afresh for what felt like the thousandth time. But it was evident he’d have to rely on this dubious, unaware landowner, perhaps at last stake a legitimate claim that he could defend with legitimate papers. Palomares clapped him on the shoulder again. Yes, it had taken this fellow approximately five minutes to speak rationally, maybe more because he exuded whiskey from his pores. Again he drank from his flask, and again Bill turned down the offer. “I’ll tell you what, Cupid. You can’t be Cal because I’m Sal, so let’s start from the beginning. Let’s refer to you as Ophir. That’s a biblical land rich in gold, because you’re looking for gold, sí?” He swung a vague arm toward the east. “Also, we’ll be heading toward Mount Ophir pronto. I’ll put your belongings in my saddlebags, and we’ll be on our way. Vaya con dios, sí?” Ophir, as he was perfectly willing to be called, was awash with relief that the stranger was taking him somewhere. Anywhere. Without a mule or tools, and lame as a newborn kitten, his chances for success out here were questionable, and he didn’t have a friend on the flat side of the earth.

 

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Ophir didn’t even ask where they were going until they had mounted—laboriously, as the vaquero had one of those absurd Mexican stock saddles with an enormous pommel, richly decorated in gold and silver so heavy it was a wonder the horse could walk. The stirrups were giant, blocky wooden things, but only Salvador could use them, as Ophir had to sit behind the saddle on the saddle blanket. Ophir soon saw the reason for the saucer-sized spurs. Not only did the expert horseman guide the mount with the spurs, but he maintained his seat under the most difficult conditions, something Ophir couldn’t say for himself as he clung to the muscular man’s hips like the baby monkey he’d seen in a zoo. The tourniquets loosened as they rode and his damaged thigh hollered in agony, so he used his good leg to grip even tighter against Salvador’s powerful thigh, so tight Ophir imagined he could feel every sinew in the athletic haunches as the vaquero controlled the mount. It was awkward in the extreme. In his panic, he had hacked away so severely at his trousers with his bowie knife the tatters were now held up only by his suspenders. The ball and chain buttons up the side of Sal’s calzoneras actually burned Ophir’s naked calf, but if he loosened his grip, he’d tumble off. It was a strange juxtaposition of pain and pleasure, his palms riding the stranger’s strapping hip muscles, such a blazing and secure feeling that naturally his prick was up like a hammer—and the wrenching agony of his wound, knowing he had torn it open and blood was oozing down upon such a fine saddle. They charged up the gulley, entered the main valley, and with a series of whistles Salvador had found some cows and someone who was apparently his main drover, José. They babbled in Spanish together—Ophir gathered mostly about cows, but he also heard the word for gold, oro—and soon they were merely trotting across the wide valley that sloped gently upward to the east. After the few months of rain, the grass was green and sweet-smelling, and Ophir began to relax. He even saw a tiny lizard glancing from a tree’s mossy

 

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roots, and butterflies of many colors flitted from flower to flower. They passed the shaded glen of a side valley, where diamonds glinted off a deep blue lagoon. “Where are we going?” he finally dared ask. He could almost feel Salvador smiling. “Well, Ophir,” he said in his smoky voice, and Ophir liked the way his new name sounded. “It’s nothing grand, but it’s home. Rancho Las Oliveras. I’ve got a housekeeper who can take care of you, and a mother who thinks she can cook. How much gold do you think you found down in my gulch?” Ophir shrugged. There was no need to grip Salvador’s hips so tightly anymore, but his eyeballs were well nigh jiggling out of his head, so he held steady. “Just at that gulch, maybe four pounds.” “Four pounds? Why, at the going rate, that’s a thousand dollars! Was that all nuggets, in that sock I pulled from that tree?” “All nuggets and dust, although you know there’s talk it’s already giving out. Some greasers, expert miners from Sonora in Mexico, told me the future is in underground quartz vein mining. They said the earth around here looks like the Veta Madre—” “The Mother Lode!” “—in Mexico. But you need water to run a mill to crush the ore, and already there’s a lack of surface water. You should ask around. You could be sitting on a…a gold mine.” Ophir chuckled. At this, Salvador became hot. “Yes, if I can run off these squatters who are stealing the very earth from under my feet!” “Hell. You didn’t even know there was gold till you met me.” “It’s our very founding principle, Ophir. Californios raise cattle, and serve king, God, and country. Is it right that I lose my patrimony to a crowd of Yankees who believe it’s ‘unused’?” “Now they’ve found gold, they won’t go away. I presume you’ve got a parcel map, some evidence of ownership? If you survey the boundaries and have a map, I don’t see how anyone can dispute it.”

 

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Salvador became quiet. The rocking motion of his hips under Ophir’s palms became very obvious, and Ophir removed one hand as though to check on his thigh wound. “There are maps. Somewhere. And now that you mention it. There was some mining equipment my father had hauled up the valley a couple of years back, but I…” Salvador faded into mumbles then, and he withdrew his flask to take several long pulls from it. He didn’t offer any to Ophir this time. With renewed enthusiasm, Salvador spurred the mount to a gallop so suddenly that Ophir’s head was nearly left behind, whooping and a-hollering something that sounded like “¡Madre, estoy en casa!” Mother, I’m home. Ophir clutched Salvador’s back for dear life, his cheek pressed to the sun-warmed shoulders of his embroidered jacket, tasting more than breathing what he knew to be Salvador’s singular essence—cow hides, sweet grass, and whiskey. He must have been squeezing his eyes shut very tightly, for he only later recalled his teeth jangling, variable patterns of sun flashing on the backsides of his eyelids, the horse’s hooves churning up clumps of mud, the piquant odor of cow shit. They stormed to the top of a rise, and Salvador reined in the mount, whooping triumphantly, as though he’d accomplished a great feat with his reckless race. Uncurling his spine, Ophir tried to breathe normally. He had definite ideas about the need to straightjacket this vaquero. But Salvador’s profile was triumphant, and it relaxed Ophir to see the gleam of his even, white teeth. Salvador looked down at him almost lovingly, but Ophir knew it was the vast herd of cattle below them that elicited such love. Vast herd? Why, the valley was one sea of bellowing, complaining longhorn cows from one side to the other! They were packed so solidly it looked as though one could walk across the valley on their backs. One, two, three…With his brain for mathematics, Ophir counted off a small grid of cattle, multiplied it by the length and breadth of the valley, and…He sat upright, too.

 

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Salvador sent off such a wreath of beamy smiles, Ophir was caught up in his elation. The lowering sun washed the valley of cows in a buttery light. Salvador grinned, and once again produced the hip flask he had refilled when he had met with José. “We’re almost there. You don’t drink liquor?” Ophir shook his head. “Liquor is mellow, but it will lay out a saint just as flat as it will a sinner.” Salvador nodded in agreement, complacent from looking at his cows. “Ophir, listen.” They sat so closely on the mount, Ophir could smell the whiskey on Sal’s breath. “If you agree to help me run off these squatters, I’ll guarantee you the choicest claim you can find. Yours, in ownership. I’ll sign you a deed of sale. Just help me get rid of these squatters. You know where they are, who they are, how best to deal with them.” The smile evaporated from Ophir’s face. He had never owned anything other than his fiddle and his daguerreotype, and the mule that had been stolen from him.

 

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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

 

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Sutter’s, larger than Nuñez’s, fancier than Hernández’s, 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?” But 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

 

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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 blond 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

 

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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.

 

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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.” “Well, let’s see. They wanted to know who owned all the land around here. I told them you, of course, but you were gone in the San Joaquin plains with your spacious and colossal herds, and would not be returning for a month.” Putting an arm about the majordomo, Salvador steered him toward a first-story apartment where an assistant of Ascensión’s was tidying things by lamplight. “Did they give you an indication of what they wanted? Besides the water. I mean, what were they doing in the middle of the Sierra?” Knut shrugged. “They merely gave an impression of being funseeking, sturdy hale fellows. Perhaps looking for a fandango.” “Yes, perhaps lost on their way to a bullfight. Listen here, Knut. Our new guest has told me he’s seen many Yankees on my lands. And they’re looking for gold.” At the mention of “gold,” Knut’s bleary cornflower blue eyes turned round, and he had to take a few more swigs from the bottle. “Gold?” he at last squeaked.

 

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“Yes. The guest has samples of gold he’s discovered himself. Now, this is a potential source of revenue as you can well imagine. But first I need to document that I own this land. Have you ever seen a parcel map? A grant deed? Anything of that nature?” “Yes, yes, first you need a diseño!” Knut proclaimed. “That’s a ‘design’ proving ownership. I know you own eleven leagues between the Merced River and Mariposa Creek. I have investigated this myself! There are only two hundred California families who received land grants from the Spanish government. The problem seems to be, many of these parcels overlap or have dubious boundaries. There is a Board of Land Commissioners in San José we could apply to solidify our ironclad title, but I need documentation. Something saying when this adobe was built, for example.” “Exactly. Have you seen any sort of document?” “I have tried to look, but you know how your mother gets when people appear to be snooping in her belongings. She mutters something that your father told her about a marker, a fork in a path, and a dead cow.” “Well, that’s just ridiculous.” “Jah, especially since I doubt the dead cow is there any longer.” It was Salvador’s turn to grab the bottle from Knut. Waxing dramatic, he railed, “Are not herds and houses enough proof of tenure? Did I lose my patrimony because I lack papers? I agree the land is vaguely defined, but Governor Micheltorena must have given the Captain some sort of map, so he didn’t accidentally wander into Hernández’s grant and insult him by killing a bull!” Knut sidled up to him. “We can always forge papers.” Salvador pressed his fingertips to Knut’s chest and shoved. “Ay dios, land was so plentiful back then, there was no need to lie to get a title! How can anyone doubt the legitimacy of our solid old grants— the Peraltas, the Berryessas? Any fool can see those are sound.” Knut held up an illustrative forefinger. “The Palomares clan of Rancho Las Oliveras! Viva los Californios!”

 

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He probably would have embarked on a more bombastic tangent then, but José was hobbling down the path supporting a blob dressed in a dashing, dark blue broadcloth cloak. The gold trimmings of the cloak gleamed richly in the moonlight as Ophir lifted his face to look limpidly at Salvador, perhaps at last under the influence of some native weed. “Ah, here is our guest.” Salvador took Ophir by the elbow, pleased to see he had improved his toilet by stepping into a suit of Salvador’s own clothes. Everything seemed to fit, although the cuffs of the short jacket revealed his wrist bones. “Let us show him his new quarters.” Knut sputtered behind him as he ducked down beneath the low doorframe. These were comfortable, whitewashed apartments with windows to the rising sun, brown and white spotted cow hides for rugs, and best of all, fresh bottles of liquor on the table. Knut’s hot breath at the back of his neck sent a wave of dreadful shudders down Salvador’s spine. “A…negro buck? This is our guest?” Now in the room, Salvador could stand tall. He knew he looked imperious and frightening when his nostrils flared like this, and he stared down at Knut’s red nose. “Yes, this is our guest, Knut! What’s more, I’ve offered to give him land if he’ll help me drive out these squatters. He has invaluable assistance to give us.” Knut hovered over where José was gingerly laying Ophir onto the bedstead, wringing his sombrero, his face screwed up. “Doña Carmen will make him work in the stables.” Yanking the cork from a bottle, Salvador roared, “She’ll do no such thing! I am the Don of this rancho! I don’t care how crazy she is—Ophir is getting a plot of land and that’s the last I’ll hear of it.” “José,” Ophir said weakly. “He told me some Sonoran miners had also found gold, and they’re the experts.” At this, Salvador poured José a cup of aguardiente. When Knut reached for the only other cup, Salvador swiped it from under his

 

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hand and poured himself some. “José, do you think you can find these fellows again? When Ophir is recovered, we shall set out to survey my land, and it would be good to have some expert Sonorans with us.” “Certainly, jefe. They came months ago, to ask permission to prospect for gold, so I think I know where they went. I can send the word out.” Salvador frowned. “What did you tell them? Why did you not ask me for permission?” José looked at the floor. “I did ask you, several times. You were…sleeping.” Oh. Sleeping. To cover his embarrassment in front of Ophir, Salvador turned on Knut. “And did José ask you for permission?” “Yes,” José said eagerly. “I asked Señor Frostad also!” Knut looked at his boots, toeing at an imaginary line on the floor. “I vaguely recall that. I must have been…sleeping as well.” Ophir chuckled weakly. There was a brief uncomfortable silence that was broken when Knut cried, “Mein Gott im Himmel, a fiddle!” and snatched that instrument out of José’s claw. “Careful, now,” Salvador warned the musical enthusiast, as the majordomo set the bow onto the strings and raked most painfully. “That’s Ophir’s.” Ophir raised himself on his elbow and reached for the fiddle, which after all was one of the only possessions left in the world to him. Salvador stayed Knut’s arm and extracted the bow. “Now, Knut,” Sal said. “I recall there was some mining equipment the Captain had hauled up the valley. Has it rusted into dust?” Reluctantly abandoning the fiddle, Knut entreated Ophir, “That is your fiddle? We must play together sometime! I have a guitar, and I can be very entertaining at fandangos. I know all the most modern and up-to-date tunes such as ‘O! Susannah,’ and the song about the grandma leaving an old armchair to someone in her will.” Knut could

 

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be a trial when in his cups, but he made Ophir laugh, so Salvador relaxed. Ophir asked, “Do you know ‘The Pope He Leads a Happy Life’?” Knut held a splayed hand to his chest. “Do I? The Pope he leads a happy life He knows no cares nor marriage strife He drinks the best of Rhenish wine I would the Pope's gay lot were mine!” Salvador relaxed so much to see his newfound partner singing, he even sat on the edge of the bedstead. Ophir was encouraged to tune his fiddle, and Salvador was not surprised to discover he had a clear and robust singing voice. “But yet not happy in his life He loves no maid or wedded wife Nor child hath he to cheer his hope I would not wish to be the Pope.” Salvador should have paid more attention to these tunes over the years. Before the War, he had been a carefree youth, not prone to studies or learning his father’s business. Learning happened oftener by running your head against a stone wall. Even before the War had robbed him of any idealism, he had taken to drink and horse racing, gambling, bull- and bear-baiting. If someone struck up a song, it was an invitation to leap into a wild el jarabe dance. The War, at first, had no material effect upon the doings at Las Oliveras. The Captain after all was a Boston whaling man who had just happened to marry into a gente de razon family, the daughter of a member of the DeAnza expedition. Stuck in between two cultures, there was no apparent need to run from either one of them.

 

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But with the death of the Captain and Salvador’s older brother, out of necessity he had paid more attention to running the cattle business. Now, sitting in Ophir’s apartments, listening to him bellowing about the jolly life of a sultan, Salvador wondered if he hadn’t finally found that human contact he’d been longing for. Maybe the connection he wanted to all things that were lively on this planet was not a wife, but a partner. A partner in business, so he wouldn’t have to roam these leagues of rolling hills alone. A brother-in-arms, so to speak, someone who knew the travails of living in two different worlds. Saving Ophir had been the first, and perhaps only, kind act Salvador had committed in many years, and perhaps he was just getting carried away with the benevolence of it, but he now felt like sallying forth and committing yet more acts of kindness. With the Sonorans, they could find Ophir the richest vein of gold in the entire southern mines. “Mein Gott!” Knut wheezed, holding fast to a bedpost to keep from falling over with mirth. “That was a regular old to-do!” Salvador tried to unstick the majordomo from the wooden post. “Come now, Knut. Ophir needs his rest.” “I shall be back tomorrow, jah?” Knut insisted on pleading. “I will come back with my guitar!” Salvador shoved Knut out the door after José. “I’m sorry,” he whispered to Ophir. “I’ll check in on you tomorrow.” Ophir lifted a hand of acceptance with a sleepy smile. When his fingers moved to unhook his suspenders, Salvador at last shut the door, an odd feeling of contentment filling him.

 

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Chapter Four Tamasin Norris lifted a hot rock with the pair of metal tongs and laboriously stood erect. She waddled to another fire several feet away and dropped the blazing rock into an Indian basket of water, making the water jump and sizzle. Now she bent down to lift the heavy lid with a long stick to replace it on the basket, or the water would cease to boil. Sighing deeply, she faced her next task of waddling back to the fire pit of rocks to wait for the next rock to become hot enough to boil water. She decided that instead of wasting time waiting for another rock, she would adjust the splint she’d made for her arm that appeared to be broken. She knew it had been broken when Niall had zealously tossed her to the ground, but she had no real opinion or emotion either way about this. Tamasin was accustomed to doing most everything with a marked absence of emotion, but today the baking spring sun bouncing everywhere off the naked rock of the canyon walls let her know she was thirsty. Even a lizard doing calisthenics on a nearby boulder appeared to be gasping for water. Was “thirst” an emotion? It was necessary to know when one was thirsty, Tamasin had learned from the agonizing overland excursion across the Plains. Her group had once gone eight days with no water, and three men had actually expired. It was obvious one could go a lot longer without food than without water. So she treated herself to a big dipper full of cool water she had brought up from Mariposa Creek. Briefly, she vaguely enjoyed several butterflies flitting over a patch of periwinkle blue lupines. She knew the names of many flowers in California. Whenever they

 

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encountered groups that included other women, she would ask the names of flowers. It was useless as an occupation, but it was something to talk about while doing the laundry. In secret, when Niall was laid out corned, she liked to paint the flowers with a watercolor set a kindly prospector had given her. She hid her painting supplies at every camp spot, because Niall had a habit of rifling through her belongings and flinging them about. But she was almost out of paper now, and had to paint over old paintings. When they had visited that trader Savage in Bear Valley, she had peeked about to see if he had any more paper. There had been many novels, silk hats, and sawdusty crackers, but no paper that she could see. Yes, she supposed she was refreshed, and now another rock was hot enough to boil the basket full of beans. “Thomasina!” Halfway to the bean pot, her husband’s piercing yelp caused her muscles to flinch, and she dropped the burning rock directly on the toe of her boot. Oh, Lordy. Tamasin found that even merely thinking Oh, Lordy somehow alleviated intense pain. Having been accustomed to various pains most of her adult life, she still resorted to that epithet once in awhile, such as now. Why was Niall returning from the river so early in the day? That was not a good omen. “In need of penitence again?” he barked as she scrambled to grab the rock with the tongs. Of course, now the rock wasn’t hot enough to make the water boil, she’d have to return it to the fire pit, and then she hadn’t even started the tortillas, having not expected him back so soon. “Give me water! It’s hot as blazes down there.” I only have two hands, Tamasin thought as she plopped the rock back into the fire pit. She started for the bucket of water she’d placed in the shade—why couldn’t Niall drink the water from the river he stood knee-deep in?—but his real reason for returning so soon became evident, when he grabbed the whiskey keg and poured himself an enormous cupful.

 

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“Ah!” He smacked his lips loudly when he was done drinking half of it. He looked around for something else to criticize. “Where’s dinner?” “I didn’t expect you back so soon.” Tamasin positioned herself over the flat rock she’d chosen as a seat, where she could shape some tortillas as she’d seen Indian women do. “I ran out of whiskey. This dad-blamed flask is only big enough for about three swallows. Now I’m starving because you didn’t make enough to eat last night.” Maybe it was the pain in her arm distracting her. She should have known better than to protest the truth. “You arose around midnight and finished the last of the beans.” He wouldn’t recall having done that. Niall frowned at the way she had to look over her shoulder in order to fall back correctly on her behind, and not miss the flat rock. She probably looked a sight, if she had a mirror to look into, with her arm in that makeshift splint, bruises on her face, and her distended pregnant stomach neither one of them had really prayed too hard for. It had just happened, much to Niall’s disgust. So he shoved her, so he wouldn’t have to watch her trying to sit in such an awkward manner. The result was even more awkward. For some unknown reason, lack of balance perhaps, she actually went flying several feet, bashing her head with great force against the heavy black iron rock-boiling pot. Water jumped out of the pot, splashing her broken arm, and she must have cried out involuntarily, for to make his point, Niall kicked her in the thigh. Just one sharp rap that seemed to resonate up her spine, as though all her nerves were being wrenched. With her eyes squeezed shut, she only saw black with explosions of burgundy red. Niall did not seem as good of a husband as the husbands she’d viewed on the trail, treating their wives with gentle, apparent respect, but it was better than being in the asylum. Maybe those husbands beat their wives in the privacy of their own tents. And “Out West,” she was in the open air, sun, and flowers. She could speak with strangers

 

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once in awhile—on the trail, they had even joined in a few shindigs. And certainly, Niall’s drunkenness meant that he didn’t collect nearly as much gold as the prospectors she’d spoken to. Or maybe those prospectors were exaggerating their luck. Niall was probably no worse, but certainly no better, than any other man. Tamasin was attempting to open her eyes and crawl back to the flat rock when she noticed two shadows looming overhead. Two men on horseback apparently, and one of them was saying to Niall in the flowery Castilian tones of the native Californio, “I seriously doubt that girl did anything to deserve that treatment, señor.” “Oh, yeah?” Niall responded, backing toward the tent, no doubt to get his revolver. “I doubt you know what she did.” The other man, who sounded like an American but appeared much darker, said “She doesn’t look capable of doing anything terribly offensive.” “Oh, yeah?” Niall said again. It was true, he didn’t have a very wide vocabulary. Tamasin didn’t think he was very educated, but she didn’t know too much about him. “Well, I don’t see where it’s any of your business, amigo. Especially when you’re coming here trying to horn in on my claim.” He ducked inside the tent. The Californio man dismounted just as Tamasin struggled to her feet using the tongs as a sort of crutch. She should make these men some coffee, although offering them the precious whiskey was much easier. My, this man was certainly grand, in all the trappings of the royal native, his buckskin boots armed with heavy spurs bristling out into six points, steel plates rattling when he walked, his colorful serape flowing. As the black spots evaporated from before her eyes, she saw he had an imperious swagger, as though he owned the place, his stride sure in his calzoneras with elaborate gold buttons up the sides. “Californios don’t kick their women, señor,” this grand man said. His long arms dangled at his sides where two six-shooters were holstered at the ready, and he cocked one hip arrogantly. “And they don’t squat on land that doesn’t belong to them.”

 

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“Oh yeah?” Niall said intelligently for the third time as he emerged from the tent empty-handed—he had probably left his revolver down at the creek with his gold pan. “This here is public land, belonging to the United States of America, of which I’m a member, and I doubt very much that you can say the same. Hey, you! Don’t you go touching my wife!” For the darker American man had also dismounted when he saw Tamasin struggling to stand with the tongs, and had dared to come forward and take her arms in his large, warm hands. Bending at the knees with concern, he gazed directly in her face with raised eyebrows of the silkiest night. Tamasin knew at once that Niall was not the best husband—although he certainly may be the worst. He had never once looked at her with eyes of concern. Now the American pivoted about without letting go of Tamasin’s arms and shouted, “She doesn’t look well to me. How’d she break her arm?” He asked Tamasin directly, “How’d you break your arm?” “I…I fell,” she said truthfully. Although she wouldn’t have fallen if Niall hadn’t shoved her. “Hey now!” Niall barked, and started for Tamasin. “You darkie, get your hands off my wife! She’s perfectly well, and I can take perfect care of my own property!” He yanked her arm that wasn’t broken, and the American took his hands off her, much to Tamasin’s regret. She didn’t feel one shred of fear from these two other men, and only now was she realizing she felt fear when around Niall. Fear. Was that an emotion? The Californio came so close to Niall, their noses were only inches from touching. It was interesting the way Niall shrank back slightly in the proximity of this haughty, regal man who was really overwhelmingly handsome, if one cared about such things. “Property, is that so? Well, you are squatting on my property—Rancho Las Oliveras, the property of Don Salvador Palomares!” The American said, “Why don’t you clear out north of the Merced River, and there won’t be any trouble.”

 

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Niall threw Tamasin’s arm away in disgust. “Property? Oh, that’s rich. A greaser owns everything from here to the Merced River?” Señor Palomares practically breathed fire down onto Niall’s upturned face. “Indeed I do, amigo. And I could shoot you right now and never be obligated to report a dead body that was trespassing on my land, but I wouldn’t be so cruel as to leave a poor beaten woman without a husband.” Withdrawing a little, Señor Palomares finally looked back at Tamasin, his features softening, his stunning lupine blue eyes glittering with what Tamasin believed people described as “kindness.” “No,” he said. “I’ve got a better idea. Since you’re not fit to travel, I’ll let you stay here, at least till all the gold pans out. I’ll have a servant bring you a cow in a few days.” With an authoritarian hitch of his chin toward the darker man, Señor Palomares effortlessly vaulted upon his gaudy horse. The American remounted, too, with what seemed like regret. “I’d like to know the name of my tenant who is squatting on my land,” Señor Palomares demanded. It took Niall a few moments to reckon out what he was being asked. “Oh,” he said mildly, perhaps thinking about the cow. “Niall Norris. From Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.” But Señor Palomares touched the brim of his sombrero only to Tamasin. “And your name?” Tamasin started to answer, but Niall stepped in front of her. “This here is Thomasina Norris, my beloved wife. And, you know. Apologies about the greaser remark.” “Well,” said Señor Palomares. “I trust my servant won’t be seeing any more bruises or broken bones when he returns with the cow.” So, as Niall muttered half-statements about how clumsy she was, the two men rode off. The two most stately and imposing men Tamasin had ever viewed. She knew that to be true, comparing them to the thousands of men she’d met on the Plains and here in California, even the kind ones, since being let out of the Magdalene

 

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Asylum in Philadelphia a year ago. Comparing these two men to the thousands of others seemed like a mathematically sound equation that was bound to stand the test of time—again, and again. **** “Not to question your decisions on your own land. But why did you let that good-for-nothing bastard stay? You know he’s going to harm that poor girl again.” Golden pheasants moved languidly aside to let their mounts pass, and knots of cunning crested quails skittered as though accustomed to seeing such gigantic, lumbering animals. Ophir’s belly was filled with dried biscuits, salt ham, and venomous green tea, and he’d been feeling in tip-top spirits, moving over the mountain ridges under cloudless skies, until they’d met up with that louse, Norris of Philadelphia. It stuck in Ophir’s craw to see that misbegotten woman kicked like a feral dog—he’d seen enough of that mistreatment in his years in North Carolina. He knew Salvador must have a sly reason for allowing that odious fellow to remain, when they’d threatened at least a hundred men so far from Mt. Bullion to Mt. Ophir. They’d only been able to find a rude hand-drawn map in Doña Carmen’s desk at Las Oliveras, a map that didn’t describe much more than the fork in the road, a hatchetblazed stump, and the long-gone dead cow, but Salvador knew from his father’s descriptions that his land ranged north to the Merced River, and that’s where they’d been warning everyone to skedaddle. Salvador was taking sextant readings a couple of times a day to map their location. “I want him staying put to keep an eye on him,” Salvador replied. Ophir nodded. He was also cautiously optimistic that Sal had not even brought his whiskey flask on their surveying journey, much less packed a keg of the stuff on his mule. Ophir had the hunch that

 

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Salvador Palomares could be a dangerous person when in liquor, a man with a turbulent past. Sal added, “I don’t intend on having any servant bring a milk cow back to that worm. I’m bringing it myself. Did you see, that girl must’ve been six or seven months with child, and he’s booting her like she’s a cockroach?” Ophir tilted his head thoughtfully. “She looked as though she must have been very pretty once upon a time. Before that buffoon started bashing her around.” “I noticed that. You know what I think it is? It’s the overland journey these people are making from the States. These ‘manifest destiny’ people dragging themselves over the Plains and Sierra, civilization marching on. By the time they make it here to the promised land, they’re half-dead. I see it in the women we’ve been meeting, just exhausted shells, their brittle hair falling out, their dark yellow skin decaying off their bones.” Ophir tried to chuckle, to make light of it. “And of course, standing waist deep in these freezing waters with the sun broiling their brains doesn’t help.” Salvador grinned. He was even more beautiful when he was serene, like the high-born gente de razon Ophir now knew him to be. “Sí. Half-dead, like you were when I met you a couple weeks ago. Look.” He pointed. “See that saddle at the top of the ridge? From there we’ll be able to see Bear Valley.” Sal’s wiggling eyebrows suggested the obvious, that they race to the ridge, and he spurred his mount before Ophir could even get a handle on his reins. Ophir tore clumsily off on his mount past a few straggling oaks, darting by slate blue rock formations, then getting tangled in some scrub. By the time Ophir reached the saddle, Salvador was already stock-still, staring down into the valley. Ophir was now familiar with that faraway look on his friend’s face, and it usually meant admiration for what he viewed, but today that handsome face was puzzled. Ophir looked into the valley.

 

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A column of riffraff tents lined the valley floor, maybe fifty tents of calico shirts and canvas stitched together with pine boughs and patched in a slapdash mélange. Threads of smoke from another fifty cook fires blanketed the valley floor with haze, and men the size of ants virtually crawled, criss-crossing the velvety green grass with footpaths. Past the tents, there were twenty shacks of a more or less permanent nature, just visible through the fog. Sal frowned, and it almost seemed his eyes teared up, maybe from the smoke. “What’s wrong?” Ophir enquired. “Isn’t your partner Savage down there with his trading shack?” Sal’s voice was a mere shadow, uncertain and distressed. “I imagine so,” he said remotely, eyes not budging from the valley floor. “But last time I was here a year ago, there were maybe three shacks and three tents. Now there are a hundred. All bad Americans.” Ophir shrugged. “This is how it was a month ago when I was here.” But he didn’t like the consternated cast to his friend’s face, so he urged cheerfully, “Let’s go find Savage. He’ll know the story.” Abruptly, Salvador charged off down the slope, uncaring about their pack mules that struggled to follow, his serape billowing. “Mata! Mata los chingados Yanquis!” he hollered, which Ophir knew to mean Kill the fucking Yankees! Ophir lagged behind to hitch the mules to his horse, so he didn’t reach the tent village for another hour. He zigzagged through the rag city of crimson calico, homes formed from the most basic tree limbs, greeted by a few men who remembered him. The miners without exception were clothed in dark blue flannel shirts, pants stuffed into boots, broad-brimmed felt hats, and a wreath of curses they probably had not dared utter when in the States. Drunkards, as elsewhere in California, seemed to make up most of the village, fellows reeling like a Virginia fence while slathering hot oysters, bacon, and toast across their faces. Ophir’s path was sprinkled with oyster cans, brandied fruit jars, and empty bottles.

 

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Not being accustomed to the fracas of a newly founded mining town, merely the lowing cows and songbirds of the serene Rancho Las Oliveras, Ophir trotted to where he remembered Savage’s trading shack to be. It was easy to spot Sal’s gloriously caparisoned horse outside of the structure, the finest one in town—the only one with actual planed boards for walls. Inside, Ophir tried not to breathe too freely of the barrels of mackerel, vinegar and pork. These putrid odors no doubt imbued the piles of velveteen and flannel shirts that were pressed up against pickles and hams. “Villainous outcasts, proud of having escaped from Botany Bay and Sydney!” Savage cried, pounding ferociously on his counter. Salvador’s eyes bulged with rage, and he blinked many times to clear the anger from his vision. “Squatters have been telling us the Spanish land grants are of no value, that only ‘actual’ settlers can hold lands and mines.” Savage nodded vehemently. “Everyone knows Don Salvador Palomares owns eleven leagues of these foothills, from the Mariposa Creek to the Merced River. Your father has let me trade on this land since 1846. But I tell you to be careful, Don Salvador. Estos hombres son peligrosos. In particular these Australian convicts. Why, Calaveras Bill!” Ophir was accustomed to being recognized so readily, thanks to the dusky shade of his skin. He nodded. “Savage.” “Back from San Francisco so soon?” Savage asked. He turned to Salvador with vigor. “This fellow was the finest boxer in Boston— I’ve heard his name from other Boston natives, too.” “A boxer?” Salvador spat, apparently still fumigating about the state of the Bear Valley settlement, and Australians in general. “I trained as a pugilist,” Ophir admitted. “Savage here got the idea I was going to San Francisco for a public boxing exhibition, but I kept trying to tell him I’m staying put and mining gold.” “I was going to place a lot of money on Bill here!” beamed Savage.

 

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Now Salvador banged a fist on the counter, and Ophir saw that he was sharing some whiskeys with Savage. “I’m going to have to hire more bandits, more Sonorans to drive these Yankees away!” Savage said confidentially, “I heard Joaquin Murieta is in Hornitos.” Murieta was a well-known Sonoran bandit famed for slashing the throat of any white man who wandered by. “Then again, the worst of them Australians is in Hornitos, too. Fellow name of Tyke McCarthy, comes to my store. Always blathering how he’d just as soon shoot or gouge Spaniards as pass them on the street. Started up a group he likes to call The League. I’d stay away from Hornitos if I was you, Don Salvador. Without anything resembling the law, Sydney men feel free to follow any bad impulse.” Ophir pointed out, “But Hornitos is where we were told we’d find these expert Sonoran miners.” Savage shrugged. “If McCarthy has his way, the expert Sonorans have probably gone back to Sonora by now.” Salvador tossed his head back along with another gulp of whiskey. His glare was so fiery, Ophir knew that Savage had not scared him away from Hornitos. “Spaniards have a saying,” he told Savage, nostrils flaring. “Children speak in Italian, ladies in French, God in Spanish. And the Devil speaks in English.” Savage shook his head with regret. “Vaya con dios, Don Salvador.” Go with God.

 

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Chapter Five “I apprenticed to a blacksmith in North Carolina,” Ophir stated after a silence of many hours. Sal at last became alert. Since leaving Savage’s trading post, he’d just been trotting up and down the rounded emerald foothills in a numb state, swigging from the whiskey flask he’d demanded from Savage. This whole notion of Yankees, and most of all, “The League,” having the gall to organize on his land bent on outright confiscation was something he would not tolerate. Hatred had been building in the pit of his stomach ever since first viewing the onceboundless verdant valleys becoming choked with the garbage and offal of humans. The only item that even slightly lifted him from the depths of anger was Savage’s revelation that Ophir had been the finest boxer in Boston, presumably after winning his manumission from that Yankee who’d named him Cupid. Now, that was a hearty thought, a shirtless Ophir wrestling with a brutish, sweaty opponent. Surprising how easy it was to imagine his shiny shoulders furrowing as he walloped some red-haired cuss. If The League was as dangerous as Savage seemed to think, it would be pleasant to see Ophir’s pugilistic skills put to the test. “That’s a valuable trade to know,” Sal said apathetically. He was distracted with an image of Ophir standing triumphant over some faceless defeated foe, hips thrust forward, his fibrous biceps bunched in victory. Ophir added, “What I mean to say. I became expert in smithy work on machinery and tools. When we get back to Las Oliveras, I could take a look at your father’s mining equipment, see if it’s still

 

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usable. We may as well mine some of this gold for ourselves, if the damned leather-brained Yankees are just going to keep carting it away.” “Esta bueno,” Salvador agreed, and pointed. “El Dorado Creek is right down there.” Already Sal was dreaming of a particular wonderfully cool watering hole. He hoped it was still where his foggy memory recalled it to be, as he’d probably been half seas over the last time he’d bathed there. His vaquero José was usually the companion who reminded him of things. He was glad Ophir was not one to drown his sorrows, as nothing good usually came when both partners wandered around “splicing the main brace,” as his seafaring father would say. Salvador found the deep swimming hole shielded by walls of quartz-veined rocks, even more inviting than his memory allowed. A musical waterfall poured over a fifteen-foot ledge and into the hollow of the blue-green pool. Salvador immediately watered his mount and set to unbuttoning his calzoneras and untying the sash at his waist. “When we’re done with Hornitos, we’ll return to Las Oliveras. Give our readings to that surveyor Knut said was coming, and get that damned cow over to that poor girl.” Into the pile on the ground went his linen shirt and cotton pants, and Salvador dove into the darkest part of the pool. His head emerged to gasp at the shocking frostiness of the water, and he almost swam to the opposite side to drag himself into the air, but soon relaxed into it. Heat emanating from his body warmed the waters around him as he floated on his back. He relished the bracing juxtaposition of the hot sun on his upturned face and the refreshing melted ice lapping at his ass and balls. Yes, that poor girl, Thomasina Norris. Pretty girls being essentially a myth anywhere outside of the ranchos, Sal had been thinking more and more about that bedraggled girl who had probably been extremely enchanting about a year ago in Philadelphia, before hopping into her “Prairie Schooner” and coming to the Far West with

 

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that offensive bastard. She was tall by Californio standards, her hair the color of ripe apples had probably been abundant and shiny once, and Sal could tell by her accent she probably hailed from Ireland—he had met some of those people when he had lived in San José with his parents. They had been arriving since forty-seven due to a blight on their potatoes, and ensuing starvation. These sons of the Emerald Isle seemed quite jolly to Salvador, despite the horror they were running from. As he floated, Salvador imagined what Thomasina had looked like a year ago in Philadelphia. Why had she agreed to wed that Niall louse? Sal had noted the pale, freckled skin of these Irish, and he now imagined a healthy, nurtured Thomasina, her neck proud and erect, holding her head high. How creamy her bare, broad shoulders were. When his dream eyes swept lower, over the uplifted slopes of her full, jiggling breasts, Salvador realized his penis was stiffening, even in the frigid waters of the pool. He didn’t care, and he allowed its length to pop from the water’s surface, warming his throbbing glans in the sun. When he spread his legs, melted ice bathed his asshole, burning from days of being seated in his saddle, riding. His floating feet felt so light he seemed lifted in the air. He allowed himself to imagine the entirety of Thomasina’s younger Philadelphia breasts, bobbing and hovering somewhere above his face as she offered them to him. Salvador had never fucked a white woman who wasn’t a hooker. It was difficult to imagine an upstanding, devout woman such as Thomasina doing much more than baring her breasts, but Salvador was in a pleasant dream. So he glided on his back to the bank where he’d left a bar of rough tallow soap. He dragged his torso into the sunlight and found a stable foothold so he could lean, unencumbered, and revel in the sensuality of soaping his dusty chest. He sighed with satisfaction when he splashed water to rinse his chest. The combination of sun and the whiskey he’d drank relaxed him. All the anger evaporated from him as he became bolder in his bathing, socking the heated waxy bar into his armpits, almost lovingly

 

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soaping his taut bare stomach, rinsing. In his romantic state, his hand slipped lower to lather his pubic bone as he dared to imagine how buttery Thomasina’s ribcage would feel if he dared dabble his fingertips over that unknown, sacred area. A sound—a squeaking, to be exact, that he thought was a large rodent—came from the bank to his right, and Salvador opened one eye. What was Ophir doing, squatting on the bank with hands dangling between his knees? Ophir appeared to be staring directly at him, expressionless, limpid eyes unblinking, as still as a majestic deer. In his corned state, Salvador probably had not been shy enough about displaying his enormous erection. Perhaps because he continued to be pleasantly stewed, his splayed fingers wended their way through the silken bed of pubic hair, waggling his long, thick penis with abandon. He closed his eye, but the image of a young Thomasina had vanished. As he rubbed the soapy bar against the base of his cock, the earlier figment of Ophir glancing up from his vanquished foe drifted in to replace it. Salvador allowed this image to stay. As he became increasingly aware of the darker man’s eyes on him, Salvador’s fingers squiggled a soapy trail down to the crown of his cock, the thumb lingering there to rub a circular pattern across the mushroom head. He felt bawdy and erotic, his other foamy hand slipping down to cup his balls, which by now had drawn up tight and hard next to his body. He massaged them salaciously, pleased to be an object of interest. He had imagined Ophir’s body many times since the day they’d met, when his fingers had accidentally brushed against that monstrous cock. His chocolately torso was astounding, the ridges of muscle up his abdomen like the corrugations of a city road, perhaps from years of prizefighting, a silken ribbon of hair arrowing down to his pubic bone. Sal had even been lucky enough to admire the high, mounded globes of his ass as Ophir was dressing one morning. His mouth actually watered when Ophir bent to one side to retrieve an item of

 

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clothing, and the head of his long, donkey-like penis was visible hanging down between his thighs. Salvador fretted that he may secretly be, unbeknownst to himself, a sodomita, one of those perverse fellows who had sexual congress with other males. But if so, why had these thoughts never occurred to him until he had met Ophir? He had brooded back and forth until he’d finally dismissed these censorious thoughts. No, he merely admired the sculpted beauty of Ophir’s body, much as he’d remotely admired a likeness of that David fellow in one of his father’s books. Now his fist pumped the length of his cock assiduously, delighting in the slippery tension that rushed into his groin as he sped up his ministrations. Spreading his feet apart on the icy stones, he caressed his thick penis and fondled his balls passionately—as though Ophir’s steady gaze was stoking him to greater heights. A sudden surge had him gasping. No, no, he must not ejaculate yet! He stilled both hands, panting, and opened his right eye. Ophir was now sprawled on his butt, thighs spread, one broad hand covering a deliciously conspicuous bulge in his crotch. He had the same steely, unwavering gaze, but when Ophir gave the long, donkey-like appendage a distinct squeeze, Salvador’s eye closed again. It only took three or four masterful, powerful strokes of his fist, and he ejaculated in such a sudden surge, he could hear the arcs of semen splashing against the surface of the cold pool. His breath held, his head tossed back as wave, and unbelievably, another wave of lust pulsed in his hand. It wasn’t long before he wished it would stop, the wantonness was so intense it almost hurt. He gripped the back of his neck and allowed his penis to drool, the currents of warm air feathering it painfully. A splash about the size of a white-tailed buck cleaved the water to his right and snapped him out of his erotic trance. Ophir had calmly slid into the pool. Salvador almost laughed at the clumsy way Ophir swam. For such a graceful athlete, he had probably not had much experience

 

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swimming in North Carolina. But he had obviously forced himself to learn in California, and for that Salvador had to give him credit. Releasing his grip on his balls, Salvador eased himself into the water to his armpits and called, “You swim like a steer.” Paddling closer, Ophir threw a handful of water in Salvador’s general direction. “I haven’t grown up in the water like Californios.” Salvador smiled. “That’s riding. Californios can ride before they can walk.” **** Ophir was perplexed. As they zigzagged lower over the foothills toward Hornitos, Ophir became more and more confused. And the more confused he became, the more he thought about the six-shooter warmly holstered at his hip, ready for the cross-draw, as he’d been practicing. He thought about what Savage had said, about the danger of The League in Hornitos, and he knew he just wanted an excuse to shoot someone—something he’d never done before. While mining alone, he’d managed to shoot a deer once, and once he’d killed a quail with a rock. But while traveling with his partner Salvador, he left the hunting to that more worthy Californio. He realized he was angry, frustrated by watching, and being seen watching, Salvador masturbate in El Dorado Creek. His first instinct, upon seeing Salvador floating airily on his back in the aquamarine pool, his shimmering sienna form appearing to hover a full two feet above the water’s surface, was to look away in deference. Regular men simply did not gaze at each other nude for longer than was necessary—two seconds at the most. But he was oddly drawn back when the proud crown of Sal’s cock breached the water, turgid like a burgeoning mushroom. He’d viewed the man’s prick before of course, as he clothed himself in his layers of cotton and leather, fascinated by the way he wound his red silk sashes about his knees and waist. Ophir

 

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wanted to dress like a vaquero as well, it was so dandy and dashing, so he paid close attention to the way Salvador shrugged into his short cream-colored leather jacket, scalloped into incredible patterns of red and blue—how he yanked on his zapatone boots into which he slid a knife, ever ready at hand. Hundreds of times he’d watched, so as to better copy, the manly swagger with which Salvador wound up his deadly lasso to throw at a beef—this was why Ophir knew intimately the spheres of Salvador’s ass, undulating manfully as he sauntered to saddle his mount, as though a colossal Californio saddle, laden with silver and gold, weighed as much as a spoon. But he’d never seen him floating on his back, and certainly had never seen him clutching his own prick, his lower jaw hanging slightly loose, lower lip shining with a speck of spittle in his concentration. It was a frankly fascinating sight, the Adam’s apple bobbing in his muscular throat as he tried to swallow, nostrils flaring, the beaded brown nipples hard from the icy water. Ophir soon found himself flat on his ass, his own jaw slack at the beauty so brazenly displayed to him—yes, to him, since he’d seen Sal open one eye, notice him, and not miss a beat as he lathered up his thick cock. Ophir gulped air to see Salvador massaging his balls, foam squeezing between his fingers, even his strong wrist shapely and graceful. With hips jutting forward shamelessly, Salvador’s silhouette presented a fine image to Ophir, the pool’s reflections casting otherworldly shapes on the underside of his sculpted chin. As he frigged his cock, even the vein that ridged his bicep turned a darker shade of green, like the sky right before a thunderstorm. Ophir barely noticed his own hand going to his crotch to caress himself, he was so enraptured by his view of the sinewy hips twitching, the athletic haunches contracting when Sal impressively ejaculated. Ophir didn’t realize until much later that he stopped breathing when the jism arced out across the water several feet, a stream of diamonds caught in the sun. He became shamefully aware that he longed to have been there to

 

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taste the semen, and even to wrap his lips around the bulbous head of that cock. So he splashed into the pool to cool himself off, to rid himself of that shame, to breathe. It was shameful because in North Carolina he’d been toyed with and humiliated by men, and he had vowed never to have any physical congress with members of that sex again. Now, to have it occur even in his imagination was infuriating to the utmost, so he was already predisposed toward wanting to shoot the first handy target that presented itself. “Low indeed lie the social sewers,” Salvador muttered as they ambled through what appeared to be the main street into Hornitos. “This town was named for the hornos, the little ovens where Sonoran women bake bread.” Salvador inhaled with gusto, tipping his sombrero to some women who were, indeed, baking bread in beehiveshaped ovens. He added, “But it was never more than a few shacks before.” As in Bear Valley, the main preoccupation here seemed to be getting “hilarious” on aguardiente while losing one’s pile of gold dust at three-card monte or faro, guessing cards at gaming tables. The street was an endless din of little tent-stores and groggeries, shacks thrown together to make human dormitories where men spewed in and out. Ophir noted a rude coffin thrown to the side of the road with its denizen’s hand sticking out, covered with a grey monte tablecloth. “This town appears to be laid out in the style of a Mexican village.” Salvador pointed to what might be considered a town square, where a couple of men wailed upon horned instruments, accompanied by a guitarist almost as competent as Knut Frostad. They had stopped in front of one such groggery and dismounted. Salvador drained the last of his whiskey flask, so Ophir surmised he wished to refill it.

 

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“I heard,” said Ophir, “this town was named from the graves made of brick and adobe. In the summer the clay is too hard to dig, so the dead are buried in ‘little ovens.’” Salvador approached the German barkeep, who dispensed odorous compounds from a whole army of brightly labeled bottles. “Schtand back, poys!” the German commanded to the native citizens. “Let de shentlemens to de bar.” Ophir regarded the patter of the gamblers. “Here’s the place to get your money back!” “The genuine string game!” “Three, six, twelve ounces no one can put his finger in the loop!” Ophir was not a gambling man, but even he had his fingers round his purse and was contemplating putting his finger in the loop when Salvador virtually whisked him off his feet. “I found him,” he growled in Ophir’s ear, emanating aguardiente. They mounted, and Ophir followed Salvador onto another street that radiated from the ramshackle town square. “Tyke McCarthy?” Ophir queried, stupidly. “Sí,” Sal called back over his shoulder, his serape flapping quite handsomely. “He fancies himself alcalde, the mayor, and presides over a grand tent atop that knoll. Paying Sonoran miners to build him a big hacienda.” Ophir frowned. “You do realize you can’t possibly hope to drive off all four hundred of these corned…settlers.” He had thought about this. They had probably only succeeded in scaring off one out of five hundred squatters they had warned—probably only the one fellow who missed his mother in San Francisco, anyway. “The nearest regiment, what’s left of it anyway, is in San José. They’re not going to waste their time coming all the way here to back up a grandiose old Californio, just to protect his land.” He was silent for a moment. “I mean, we could start a war, but it seems to me the majority of people would be on the side of the squatters, and you’d go broke paying soldiers to fight for you.”

 

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“I’ve realized that,” Salvador said huskily as Ophir came abreast of him, sidestepping a team of oxen hauling boards. “If I have to accept squatters they are going to have to pay rent for the privilege, and to whom should I address my demands? The alcalde, of course.” They started up a series of diagonal trails that snaked up the knoll. Salvador added, “I intend to address this hijo de puta with the utmost respect.” “Certainly,” Ophir said sarcastically. “Going in blowing off steam will only, as you said, start a war. Perhaps I won’t be so angry if I feel I’m getting paid for my losses. I don’t like being angry all the time. Who does?” “That’s very…” Ophir was at a loss for words. “Republican of you.” At the top of the knoll, Ophir was surprised to see that, indeed, a dozen Sonorans scurried about hammering at a new building while a few dissipated-looking Yankee hard cases lounged under an oak snoring loudly. There were no cognizant white men to be seen, so Salvador dismounted and asked a Sonoran, “¿Dónde está tu jefe?” Where is your boss? The fellow gestured toward a large tent where already someone was emerging, alerted by the arrival of the horses. This fellow was gangly and squinty-eyed with a shock of hair streaked by many colors, and he hardly resembled the intimidating hombre peligroso that Savage had described. Yet there was something in the manner in which he sidled up to them, not walking erect and proud like Salvador, but veering almost like a crab, so that he wouldn’t have to address them frontally. Well, perhaps he was lame. “Greetings, fellow American!” Tyke McCarthy, if this was indeed him, sneered at Salvador, ignoring Ophir completely, as Ophir was accustomed to. McCarthy obviously thought Salvador, with his light skin, was a fellow American. Salvador extended a hand. “Mr. McCarthy?”

 

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“That’s what they call me.” Tyke McCarthy shook Sal’s hand briefly, limply. He then attempted humor, though it was with a face unfamiliar with the genre. “Though some have been known to call me worse.” Salvador attempted to smile. “I am Salvador Palomares, and this is my partner, Ophir. Mr. McCarthy, I’ve come to you—” “Call me Tyke.” “Tyke,” Salvador said with effort. “I’ve come to address some issues that have been forefront in my mind. I’m the owner of Rancho Las Oliveras, down a couple of valleys.” “Really?” Tyke squinted. “Why, I’ve stopped by there a few times. You’re the fellow owns all those cattle.” Sal nodded, terse. “Yes.” “Right! Well, if this isn’t fortunate, then. Like I said, I’ve stopped by there on several occasions, to ask to purchase a few head, but whenever I get stuck talking to that doggoned lubricator—José, is it? Juan?—he insists you’re not around, and refuses me beef.” “Lubricator” was another term for “greaser”—someone of Spanish origin. “But now, when I confab with that blond-haired fellow from Sweden, although he does talk a bunch of confusing claptrap, now he will be kind enough to sell me a couple head for my men. But boy…” Tyke spat on the ground. “He sure does like to blow off a stream of fancy indignation gas.” Salvador frowned. “That’s odd. Mr. Frostad mentioned a group of Australians stopping by, but said you only wanted to know where a good spring was for your horses.” “Mr. Frostad, is it?” Tyke tried to smile, but it only gave the impression of a mummified lizard stretching its skin over corroded teeth. “A fine, hard worker he must be, running your rancho for you in such a wonderful fashion. Now”—and Tyke’s mood became confidential, as he faced Salvador in an oblique manner and glanced knowingly at him—“between you and me, maybe you could have a word with that Juan character. Just so we solidify our agreement to

 

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purchase the beeves. As we all know, greasers are hardly reliable, certainly not reliable enough to make business transactions.” Salvador glanced at Ophir. “But…we have no agreement to purchase beeves.” Waxing gregarious again, Tyke flung an arm to encompass his entire knoll. “I mean, I employ these here fellows to build my house. They can certainly hammer a few nails, and they do need to make enough gold dust to eat, so they can come again tomorrow to hammer more nails.” “These fellows,” Salvador stated thinly, “are expert Sonoran miners.” Ophir could tell by Salvador’s narrowed eyes he was swiftly losing patience with this hijo de puta and would soon be losing what little “utmost respect” he’d had for him. Now Tyke was in an orating stance. “Americans prefer to live peaceably, but we will not give up our rights.” “But you’re Australian.” “We’re all Americans now! I’m one of the boys, so I can tell you. It’s the first principle of liberty that a man should do as he pleases in this country. Exterminate the Indians, or blow the brains out of every Mexican he meets. I came to see the elephant, Mr. Palomares! I did, and I’ll enjoy myself. Everything that stands in my way I will annihilate. Mexicans have no business in this country.” Salvador closed his eyes to maintain composure. “Well, then, Mr. McCarthy. I suppose you wouldn’t be averse to me hiring some of your carpenters away from you. In exchange for beeves, of course.” “Oh, do you need some structures built, too? Fine, fine, if we can trade for beeves. An American may do just as he pleases, no? Break up public meetings by making a fuss, stab companions for amusement, toss bottles at haranguing landlords, play the very devil just as it suits him. That’s what I call Liberty.” Did he have a screw loose? Ophir finally became bold enough to utter, “Listen here, Mr.—”

 

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But Salvador had the louse’s shirtfront in his fist. He had shot his arm out so fast it was a blur, and the next thing Ophir knew, he was dragging the lizardly man bodily to a nearby oak tree. Tyke’s boot heels dragged in the soil, leaving track marks, and he sputtered partial sentences such as “hey now,” and “we’re all Americans around here.” The interesting thing was, all of the Sonoran workers turned their heads at this sudden violence, but not only did they not drop their hammers, they looked at each other and smirked. “You listen here, mi amigo,” Salvador snarled before lifting the cur to his feet and banging his skull against the tree trunk. “You’re not a goddamned American. You’re a newcomer, an escaped convict, a squatter on my land.” He shook the bastard a bit for emphasis, grinding his skull against the rough tree bark. “Salvador Palomares is the sole owner of this entire countryside from Mariposa Creek to the Merced River, and I am the haranguing lubricating landlord who you’re tossing bottles at. I came here with good intentions to make an agreement with you, to allow you to remain on my land as long as you pay rent.” Now he rattled the filthy lizard before flinging him to the grass where his limbs jumbled every which way like so many chicken bones. Ophir swelled with pride at the imperious way Salvador glared down at Tyke, nostrils flaring beautifully in his supremely aquiline nose. “I still intend to get my rent.” He turned and stalked off, hitching his chin at Ophir to indicate their departure. They swung onto their mounts just as a few of the snoring cohorts stirred. Snorting in confusion, they automatically reached for their pistols, but Salvador and Ophir were already departing down the trail, a few of the Sonorans following them eagerly with shining eyes, as though Salvador was some kind of god. Salvador called to them, “Sígame si quieres trabajar de minero!” Follow me if you want mining work. Tyke McCarthy was on his wobbly feet now, shrieking maniacally, “You goddamned greaser! I’m justified in shooting every foreigner who disputes me!” He brandished his own six-shooter now.

 

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But, seemingly hesitant to shoot someone who might provide him with meat, instead Tyke took a poor shot at one of the departing Sonorans, only causing them to scramble more rapidly after Salvador. “I’ll make sure my greasers are safe,” Salvador hollered before they disappeared down the trail. Ophir hadn’t told Salvador what he’d seen in Hornitos town— several of his own beeves clearly branded, and clearly stolen.

 

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Chapter Six “Sal, Sal, Sal.” Doña Carmen wrung her hands dramatically, entwined on her black silk lap. Sal’s mother had always been fond of theater. “Why will you not go see Don José for me? All this talk of losing our land has been weighing so heavily on me. Don José will know how to set things right. The last time I spoke to him, he was losing his land near the Bay, too.” Salvador closed his eyes patiently. “Madre. Don’t you remember? José Berryessa was killed at the Mission San Rafael in forty-six. His brother Nicolas is the one who remains, and he has lost most of his land paying legal fees to defend his title.” His mother frowned, mystified. Streaks of grey had appeared in her hair of late. Sal wished there were more women at the adobe, for he’d heard of some herb women washed their hair with to keep it black and glossy, but he had no idea what it was. Women would know. “No, it is Don José de los Reyes Berryessa I am talking about. Stop contradicting me!” That certain twinkle came into her eyes, and Salvador didn’t like that one bit. It meant she was reminiscing. Thinking about times he could barely remember. “He always wears those white stockings, and thin morocco slippers. He has such tiny feet…” Knut Frostad set his mug of aguardiente onto a low table. “Now, now, Mrs. Doña.” Knut imagined that the appellation “Doña” was not a title but part of her name. “I shall personally send a messenger to New Almaden to request that Don José de los Reyes Berryessa come

 

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up here, pay us a visit. How does that sound? Would you like that? You can show him your cows.” Sal rolled his eyes. Why would Knut propagate a fantasy such as that? For Doña Carmen now became even more excited, halfway standing in her lacey bustle, one hand modestly going to her hair to tidy it, as though the ghost of Don José was already walking through the door. “Oh, yes, Knut, you must send a messenger right away! A fast rider can get to New Almaden by tomorrow evening. Why don’t you send this fellow?” She pivoted in her wing chair to face Ophir. “Are you a good rider? You must be, since you’ve been working in the stables.” Raising his eyebrows, Ophir turned his hands palms up to the ceiling, as if to say “What do I do now, Sal?” Sal exhibited a calming hand to Ophir and said to his mother, “Madre. This is Ophir, my partner, not a stable hand. He’s helping me out with Father’s mining equipment, and we just completed a survey—” Knut struggled to his feet, swiping at his aguardiente cup on his way. “Mrs. Doña doesn’t need to be bothered with such boring details, Salvador! Come, let us talk manly talk in the library, and leave the womenfolk to their embroidery.” Salvador rose, utterly confused by now. Sure, it was everyday knowledge that Doña Carmen had been a bit loca since her husband had been shot at the Mission San Rafael. Berryessa, upon hearing that General Frémont had jailed his son for alleged revolt against him in the Bear Flag incident, decided to sail across the Bay to visit his son in Sonoma. Captain Dearborn went with them in order to report back to the commandant at San José, where they lived at the time. Upon disembarking near the mission, both men, as well as Berryessa’s nephews, were promptly ambushed and shot. The murderer was famed scout Kit Carson, acting upon Frémont’s orders, as he had no room for prisoners at the mission.

 

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Doña Carmen had been a bit loca, understandably. Sometimes she imagined that John Dearborn was still alive, and sometimes her suitor was José Reyes de Berryessa. Now they left her alone with the housekeeper Ascención, the only female company his mother had at the rancho. The three men crowded into Captain Dearborn’s study, where Knut reached onto a shelf between volumes of Two Years Before the Mast and The Deerslayer, two more books Salvador had never found time to read. Predictably, Knut withdrew another bottle, this time of brandy, motioning to Ophir to shut the door. “Knut!” Salvador scolded, with folded arms. “Why do you lead her to believe Berryessa is still alive? That is the worst sort of pretense!” Knut squared his shoulders for a really good harangue. “Let me tell you, son. With a delicate woman of Mrs. Doña’s fragility, and taking into accounts the debilitating effects of her disease—yes, it is a disease! I am sorry to have to break that news to you—it is for the best just to humor her, to play along. If you try to reveal the facts of any affair, to force reality to intrude upon her insubstantial and unsound mentality, why, you could crack the very shell that is protecting her gauzy mind from the shattering effects of the disease itself!” He took several swallows of brandy, and gazed out the window thoughtfully. “Let her continue to think Ophir here is a stable hand. What harm can it possibly do?” “What harm?” Ophir asked mildly. “Well, it sure makes a difference to Roberto. The real stable hand. Doña Carmen had me shoeing a horse the other day, and he near about tore my head off.” Salvador chuckled, but Knut took the subject with the utmost sobriety. “This is what I mean! You are a competent enough blacksmith, are you not, Ophir? Well, then, why not play along with her?” He sipped some more, then said, “Back in the olden days, when the war first ended, I used to argue with her, to attempt to remind her that her venerated and cherished ‘Don Juan’ had met an untimely

 

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demise. It was pointless, Salvador. Pointless. It would only upset her, and what is the point in upsetting someone when you can have them gaily laughing?” Vaulting his ass from where it had been perched alongside a low table, Salvador strode to his father’s old desk. “Yes, speaking of gaily laughing.” He pointed to a tray that contained a clay pipe and some crumbly balls of a green herb. “Since when have you taken to smoking hemp? Like you need to become any more ridiculous and absurd?” Knut grabbed a sombrero that hung from the chair’s back and even made as if to cover the tray with it. “Oh, ah, this belongs to one of the assayers, yes indeed! This is the ‘journey in my head’ of Shakespeare’s sonnets! Quite healthy and good for the blood that circulates through one’s brain, but certainly not agreeable to a gadabout such as myself. Speaking of those fine gentlemen, we should bring them in here for a meeting, pronto. Ophir, you have inspected Captain Dearborn’s mining equipment, have you not?” “Yes,” replied Ophir. “It all looks to be in good working condition after a little oiling. What’s odd is, apparently they are parts for a sixteen-stamp ore-crushing mill, four banks of four stamps apiece. How could the Captain have foreseen that quartz vein mining would be the future, when he didn’t know of the existence of any gold on his land? But yes, the engineers will need to design a check dam with a penstock—after we decide where, with the help of the Sonorans.” Their next journey was to head back to the Bear Valley area with the surveyors and Sonoran miners. Salvador agreed, “Yes, I’ll leave the building of the mill to them. I’m not much for technical items. But we should form a company, should we not, Knut?” “Jah, jah, indeed, señor! I can get investors, if you allow me to travel to San José and see some of my old compañeros.” Salvador ushered them out the door so they could go to the carriage house where the engineers were lodging. As they walked down the flagstone path, Salvador addressed Knut in a low voice.

 

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“You do know, Knut, that Nicolas Berryessa is also said to be smoking that hemp, and slowly going insane.” “Yes. I have heard that, too. It is the end of the dream in the new land of California.” “Nuñez over at Rancho Orestimba told me many tragic stories a few months ago when I wintered there with the cattle. Apparently the Berryessas had a dubious lawyer who told them to emulate settlers, and squat on their own land. The lawyer allotted each of them one acre apiece. Then this lawyer went and claimed the ‘vacated’ property, including Don Nicolas’s hacienda. Other squatters are deliberately grazing cattle on his newly-seeded fields, driving him from his sickbed to save the crops. Don Nicolas in a rage burned many of his papers.” “Well, yes,” Knut conceded. “The Berryessas were once great friends of your father’s. All amenities and courtesies of life were preserved in their home, and our personal life and liberty were as sacred at their hearth as they were at our own fireside.” “Yes, they woke the waltzing string of the fiddle on our behalf,” said Salvador, becoming as flowery as Knut in his speech. “But this insanity…seems to run in their family.” “Indeed!” Knut agreed. “That it tends to do! I have seen it on many occasions!” Salvador was really thinking about his mother, and her worsening insanity. If insanity ran in families, what good did that speak for him? Of course there had been many occasions when he’d been apparently wandering around, his limbs going through the motions of riding, or lassoing, or horse racing, and the next day he recalled only bits and pieces of those events. But that was probably just the aguardiente. Such losses of memory had only occurred a couple of times in the past month, when he had nearly ceased poisoning the “blood that circulated through his brain” with aguardiente. But what had this insanity to recommend him as a future husband for a good upstanding Californio girl? If he was just going to go loco

 

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and wind up racing naked through a field, what future security had he to offer a woman? **** The tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Tamasin Norris lay on her side, the side without the broken arm, cramped into the tiniest ball possible. For hours she had been trying to figure out what she’d done wrong to enrage Niall this time. She kept coming back to the same conclusion—he had been so drunk the night before, he’d forgotten that he’d eaten the last of the beans around midnight. There had been plenty of beans, plenty to fill a stomach that was already bloated with whiskey. But around midnight, he had stumbled to the pot and had chawed the remaining beans while bellowing a song Tamasin had taught him: So goodbye, Muirseen Durkin I’m sick and tired of working No more I’ll dig the potatoes No longer I’ll be poor. For as sure as my name is Carney I’ll be off to California Where instead of digging potatoes I’ll be digging lumps of gold He’d stumbled back to the tent, and this morning he’d forgotten he’d eaten the beans. The sunlight bouncing off the canyon walls gave him a blinding headache, so he’d gotten angry that there were only a couple of dusty tortillas and the usual jerked beef to put into his stomach. He’d started shouting about the cow those stately

 

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Californians had promised to bring, how if they had a cow, they could have milk and quesadillas, which were cheesecakes. So Tamasin grabbed her fishing pole and headed for the river to catch a salmon, but Niall hollered that he was sick of fish, too. “We’re packing up and heading for that rich greaser’s house!” he shouted. “They’ll give us the cow if we show up on their doorstep.” “I don’t think that’s proper,” Tamasin had the gall to say. “They offered it from the kindness of their heart, not as something we should be demanding.” That’s when Niall grabbed her by the broken arm. She must have jerked in an odd manner, cringing from the sudden pain that shot through her as though it wrenched her very nerves. She feared Niall, but some strange self-preservation instinct must have overpowered the fear, for she twisted so oddly that before she knew it, Niall punched her in the stomach, to prevent her from falling forward. She fell onto her tailbone, the fishing pole made of a pine branch cracking loudly under her haunches. The thudding of her bones created an echoing boom inside her head, and she was too dizzy to even stand for several minutes. By that time, Niall had left the campsite, and when Tamasin struggled to her feet using the broken pole as a crutch, she realized she’d been sitting in a puddle of blood. The metallic smell wafted up her nostrils, and intense cramps gripped her abdomen like so many spiders sinking their fangs into her womb. Even accustomed to pain as she was, she knew this went beyond the norm, so she hobbled to a nearby bed of pine needles and hiked up her skirts. She knew that her immunity to pain could lead to complications—if she didn’t feel pain warning her she was injured, she might continue operating as normal, and make things worse. So she squatted there for such a long time both her thighs went numb. Exhausted, she made it back to the tent before collapsing. She was numb emotionally, just an unfeeling slab of granite, and she didn’t want to be unfeeling anymore. The women she’d met on

 

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the Plains and here in California seemed to experience joy once in awhile. There had even been a group of Mormons who had seemed downright cheerful as they laboriously built their road, taking a day to move each boulder twenty feet. Perhaps she could join up with the next Mormon party she met. Being religious didn’t mean they didn’t beat their women, but the gals helped each other out, and she’d always have someone to talk to. An unfamiliar burning—tears?—seeped into her eye sockets as she recalled she had been “happy” once. When Niall had first come to take her from the Magdalene Asylum. As Niall had wanted an Irish wife who was a skilled laundress, the nuns had been happy to sell her to him, and Tamasin had been happy to go. The nuns told her she was lucky to get a husband who didn’t mind that she was over thirty years of age. The first week of freedom had been joyful. All the new sights and sounds that invigorated her soul. Then Niall had blackened her eye because she dropped a coal on the floor, and she concluded he was no better than the nuns. Well, the Mormons didn’t appear to mind a woman over thirty years of age. Tamasin vowed she would ask the next group of Mormons if she could flee with them. I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. “Hey!” Niall’s stupid bellow echoed up the canyon, although Tamasin could tell he was standing not thirty feet away. “What’re you going to do with this damned disgusting mess you made? Just lie around in the tent feeling penitent? Well, you’d better feel penitent! You’re in need of loads of penitence, Thomasina!” Instantly, and without forethought, Tamasin stretched her good arm out to wrap her fingers around the hilt of a bowie knife she always kept under her bedroll. However, Niall’s voice softened a bit as he came closer to the tent.

 

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“I know, Thomasina. That’s too bad you lost the baby. It’s all your fault, and we’ll say some prayers. But we can’t just leave this mess lying around—it’ll attract wolves, and they’ll attack us! So what do you say…” He was at the tent flap. “Come out and clean up this disgusting mess. It’s making me sick to look at it.” With barely any energy left to open her eyes, Tamasin crawled to a sitting position, still clutching the bowie knife. The tent flap fluttered, letting in a ray of pristine sunshine in a feeble attempt to tell her everything would be all right. But Niall’s attention wasn’t on her now. “Oh. Hey!” he called out in another direction. “Good to see you again!” Good to see you again? Could it be…? More lively now, she stuck her head out the tent flap. Uphill, away from the river and in between some pines, two imposing mounted figures stood. She knew by their flat-crowned black sombreros and the glinting of metal saddle ornaments it was the two Californios, and her heart actually thudded with hope. As the riders ambled toward the tent, she hauled herself to her feet, acutely aware that the entire lap of her skirt bloomed brightly with fresh blood. A smile even started at the corners of her mouth when she recognized the darker American with the silky eyebrows, and the regal, lupine blue eyes of Señor Palomares. Tamasin nearly forgot she was bloodied until Señor Palomares looked at her with piercing hooded eyes. She was familiar with the look of pity and revulsion, but she didn’t return to the tent to change her skirt, as Niall was inspecting the cow the two men were leading. The Californios dismounted. The dark American wandered toward the river, perhaps for the purpose of nature, and Señor Palomares came toward her. One hand on his hip displayed his six-shooter, and he swaggered toward her, the other hand stretched out to place upon her shoulder. Lordy. A ragged shudder went up and down her spine at the touch of another human. And she didn’t cringe in fear of this man’s touch.

 

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His full, lush lips were turned down in disapproval, and he said quietly, “Now what has he done to you. Where is your baby? You don’t look so…” And he briefly glanced down at her sticky lap. “So full with child anymore.” “Oh, ah, I fell,” Tamasin repeated obediently, but the horror of her words was imbued with the happiness she felt at Señor Palomares’s proximity. Just to stand next to such a regal man was an honor, especially since Niall was examining the cow’s udders and was not placing his filthy judgments upon them. “Fell.” He seemed skeptical. “You ‘fell’ once again, and bloodied your skirt, and seem to have lost your infant.” Automatically, Tamasin nodded, but soon her voice burst forth with, “Niall punched me in the stomach, and then I fell.” Ashamed she had blurted the truth, Tamasin cringed back, away from the comforting hand. His nostrils flared in a manner Tamasin already knew was characteristic for him—when enraged. He looked up to the sky for patience, and put both hands on his hips, belligerently displaying both pistols. That was when the American approached obliquely, long arms dangling in an enticing masculine way, and told Señor Palomares in a quiet, grave tone, “There’s a fetus behind the bushes over there.” Señor Palomares stared daggers into Tamasin’s eye sockets, his pupils contracted to needle points. “Thank you, Ophir,” he said remotely, his eyes not even wavering. He stared at Tamasin for several long moments, his needle-like lupine eyes almost scary in their intensity. Even so, Tamasin was not fearful of this man. It was merely as though he’d suddenly stepped over some edge into a realm so passionate and laden with emotion there was no retreat until he’d acted upon it. Tamasin had the impression he could be extremely fierce and powerful if enflamed by a subject that mattered to him. Not fierce in the bludgeoning, mindless way Niall was accustomed to, but vigorous and mighty, as though he could accomplish things, get things done. Ophir regarded his jefe with

 

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a questioning air, eyes flitting from his boss to Tamasin, then back again, seemingly poised to spring at the smallest signal from him. And indeed, the boss’ upper lip curled. He growled and whispered at the same time what sounded like, “We’re taking her.” He whipped one forty-four caliber pistol from its holster and spun about to face Niall and the cow. “I’ve got a proposition for you, amigo,” Señor Palomares called as he sauntered up to Niall, pistol dangling casually. Ophir, also unsheathing a pistol, came to stand in front of Tamasin so that she had to peek over his broad shoulder to see. Niall looked up, a rare grin on his face at having handled the valuable milk cow. “And what might that be, amigo?” Señor Palomares called out in an oratory tone, although Niall was only ten feet away. “It appears that your wife needs some medical care. Seeing as how your baby is lying in the bushes over yonder, you won’t miss your wife if I take her back to my rancho and give her expert care.” Slowly standing upright, the grin faded from Niall’s face. He, too, reached for his pistol, but as usual, it wasn’t on his person—probably in the tent. “Lookie here. I need my wife for lots more things than just birthing babies. You can’t just come in here and steal my property.” “We’ll bring her back when she’s healthy,” Señor Palomares lied. Everyone seemed to know he was lying, and just took it for granted. He took one step closer to Niall and nodded at the cow. “In the meantime, keep that cow as a token of my…regard.” Niall cheered to hear he could keep the cow, and Señor Palomares turned to head back toward Tamasin and Ophir. But before he’d covered half the distance, Niall erupted in a frenzy. Stalking on his double-jointed chicken legs, he came between Señor Palomares and the tent, bloviating, “You can’t just take my wife! What’m I going to do with this cow? I don’t know how to milk it!” Señor Palomares pivoted slowly, his eyes again hooded with anger. Under a façade of false calm, he told Niall, “Why don’t you

 

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bury that baby that you punched out of your wife’s stomach? We’ll take care of getting her well again. You can stay on my land as long as you like. I won’t make you pay me rent.” He was so quiet, Tamasin couldn’t be sure she heard correctly. Niall shrieked, “I ain’t burying that damned mess! She needs to. She’s the one who made it!” As Señor Palomares patiently took a breath in preparation to responding, Niall darted in a zigzag manner into the tent, and Tamasin clutched Ophir’s shoulder. “He’s got a gun in there,” she stated flatly. Señor Palomares nodded blandly, as though bored with the entire fracas. When he lifted his chin at Ophir, the American took Tamasin by the shoulders and moved her around the side of the tent. “He’s going to shoot Señor Palomares,” she told Ophir. The American actually chuckled a bit. “I doubt that.” Sure enough, Niall emerged from the tent waving about his Colt. “You give me my wife back! I can’t do nothing with this damned cow without her!” “She needs medical help,” Palomares stated calmly. “I have a housekeeper who is very skilled at nursing. She needs food and care and rest, not to be thrown about like some horseshoe. Ophir, she can ride behind me. Step aside, Norris, so she can gather her things.” It all happened in about two seconds. Niall shrieked, “Get your hands off my wife, you darkie!” and shot at Ophir and Tamasin. The ball plunged into the soil as Ophir ran with her a few steps and crouched down, sheltering her with his torso. Tamasin could see through a crack in Ophir’s armpit that Niall prepared to shoot at them again, evidently uncaring whether he hit her or Ophir. It was such a simple thing, really—one explosion, a cloud of sulfuric smoke, Señor Palomares standing rigid with the smoking pistol at the end of a taut, unyielding arm. As a delicate red spray atomized from his back like the mist from a perfume bottle, Niall merely collapsed like an empty pile of clothing. All very swift and silent aside from the discharge of the ball.

 

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Tamasin felt Ophir breathe again, and he slowly uncoiled his torso from around her. He assisted her to stand, too, and they both breathed in tandem. Tamasin stared numbly at her husband’s body as Señor Palomares slowly lowered his pistol and holstered it. Ophir went forward to marvel at the one shot through the heart, and Palomares turned to Tamasin, the regret palpable in his eyes. “Lo siento, Señora Norris. I had no choice. He was about to shoot you.” As usual, Tamasin felt no emotion viewing the body all splayed out, the pistol still gripped tight in his fist. The fist that had struck her so many times. Broken so many bones, and now punched her until the fetus had separated from her womb, deciding it did not want to be born into such anguish. But wait, she did feel some sort of emotion she couldn’t identify. She looked from the body back to Señor Palomares, then back to the body, then back to Palomares. Palomares’s eyes were beautifully limpid, as though he was sorry in some fashion for having to shoot. Why would he care about having shot a stranger, a stranger who had shown him nothing but boorishness? “Thank you,” she heard herself say, before stepping over the body to duck inside the tent. Eagerly stuffing items into her knapsack without folding or arranging them, it struck Tamasin what she felt— relief. She would go with these genteel, vigorous men, Californios who were not accustomed to striking women. She was relieved to think she’d never be struck again—at least, not by the brutal fist of Niall Norris. She could work for these men, just as she had in the asylum, or for Niall Norris. In the asylum they had worked eighteen hours a day, and just as many hours for Niall. And she had heard Californios were fond of their relaxation and fandangos, so perhaps they didn’t work that much. She changed her drawers and skirt, and crammed the dirty things into the knapsack. As she reached into Niall’s knapsack to pilfer his bowie knife and other valuables without guilt, a great feeling of

 

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solace overcame her, as though the entire sheltering bowl of sky above was saturated with contentment and rest. As a test, she forced a smile, to see how it felt. Of course it felt odd, but she thought if she practiced it more, it might come more naturally. Emerging from the tent, she saw that Señor Palomares stood in the same spot, only he had removed Niall’s body somewhere. He smiled, too, and took her knapsack. “Anything else? Do you want some of your cooking pots? We have plenty at the hacienda.” Tamasin wasn’t used to talking to men, so she was very succinct with him. “Let me bury my baby. Then I’ll look for Niall’s gold— I’ve seen where he hides it. He must have quite a bit by now—you can have it, since it’s your land.” “It’s your gold,” said Palomares in his sandy, alluring voice. “But do take it. It’s doing no good hiding under a rock.” When they were ready to go, Ophir was about to assist Tamasin to mount the large white horse that Palomares rode—they lassoed and led her husband’s sorry, broken horse—when she remembered her painting supplies. Leaving them behind struck more fear into her than anything else that had happened that day. She raced off to the clearing where she’d put everything into a hollow log, and Ophir called out, “Hey! Don’t run! You’re not well!” Someone telling her to not run—actually caring if she wasn’t well! Tamasin practiced her smile again as she ran. Señor Palomares smiled indulgently at her art supplies. “We have an artist here.” He patted the saddle in front of him—where his powerfully muscled thighs were encased in the fancy calzoneras. Everything was such a mystery, so exciting to Tamasin. Ophir helped her to mount, and it took her hours to grow even halfway accustomed to the feeling of this athletic man embracing her, his chest hot against her back, emanating pungent waves of leather and sweet grass. “Now we have to take the cow all the way back to your rancho,” Tamasin said apologetically.

 

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She imagined she could feel Señor Palomares smiling. “You must stop apologizing for things that aren’t your fault.” What a new concept, not apologizing! Tamasin had a feeling all sorts of new experiences lay in store for her, so she practiced smiling again. It felt good.

 

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Chapter Seven Ophir volunteered to take Tamasin her lunch. They had installed Tamasin in the apartment adjacent to Ophir’s, in the outbuilding that faced the valley to capture the morning sun, so it made sense anyway for him to carry the two covered dishes down the flagstones to the building they also, unfortunately, shared with Knut Frostad. Ophir set one dish on the veranda floorboards so he could rap three times at her heavy wooden door. He usually just barged on in anyway after warning her, and that’s what he did now, setting the two dishes on her small, roughly-hewn table. Numerous coarse engravings representing the Virgin Mary and many saints were suspended from the walls. They had also been hanging in Ophir’s own apartments, but he had respectfully removed them. Oddly, an empty aguardiente bottle also sat on the rough table. The one glass sitting there was probably Knut’s, in his cups having nothing better to do than annoy the poor girl. “Tamasin?” he called lightly. He now knew she preferred to be called that, as the nuns at some school she’d attended always referred to her as Thomasina—as well as that brutish husband that everyone would prefer to forget. There was not far for Tamasin to go in the two rooms of her apartments, and Ophir saw she’d even made up her bedding before leaving the building. He first rapped on the rickety door of the privy which was set some distance off—no one. “Tamasin!” he bawled, more concerned now. She should not have even been out of her bed, much less leave the building! Ascención and Román had reset the broken arm, which would probably never

 

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hang straight and true as it perhaps had before, and Ascensión had tried to tell Sal and Ophir some shy and embarrassed details about how awfully the Irish girl was bleeding, but the men did not want to hear it. They hemmed and hawed, drew imaginary objects in the dirt with the toes of their boots, and basically slapped each other on the back to go shoot something, rather than listen to the story of female bleeding. He shouted toward the valley, “Tamasin!” Ophir had visited her several times a day. He’d played chess with her using Captain Dearborn’s chess set, and was surprised to find Tamasin was remarkably literate, so got permission to loan her some books from the Captain’s library. Most of the books were manly, but Tamasin’s favorite, the one Ophir always saw her reading, was a volume of Audubon’s Birds of America. He also saw her deeply engrossed in Dostoevsky’s Poor Folk and even Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, which Ophir meant to borrow. Apparently the nuns had taught her a sense of social justice, which was probably what nuns did. “Tamasin!” Some knocking from above made Ophir lift his head. There on the second story veranda, Knut Frostad clung to the railing balusters, peeping through as though he were in jail. “What’s all this hubbub?” Knut croaked. He’d evidently been lying on the veranda this entire time. Ophir called up, “I thought you went to San José to find investors for the Palomares Commercial and Mining Company.” Struggling to his feet, Knut flung his torso over the railing with a laborious “ooph.” Wiping his face with his hand, he drawled, “I guess I’ll go tomorrow. Today does not seem like a propitious or advantageous day to start on such a journey. I shall get in touch with Robert Loblaw, a dear old friend in the finance business. Ach, that fellow can go on a bender! Are you looking for Miss Tamasin?” “That’s why I was yelling her name,” Ophir concurred.

 

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“Oh,” Knut said, as though genuinely surprised. “Well, go down to the river. I sent her down there to wash my laundry, jah!” Ophir jammed his hands onto his hips. “What? Are you loco? The girl has a broken arm and is supposed to be staying in bed.” Knut waved a dismissive hand. “She’s been getting very antsy lying around. A girl like that lives to work! She practically demanded to wash my laundry! And a gadabout such as myself must have clean clothing for a trip to San José, to look as dapper as possible.” “You’re unbelievable, Knut!” Ophir railed. “I’ve never met anyone as selfish as you! Sure, she’s antsy because she’s accustomed to working like a machine day and night!” He stalked off toward the river, but it didn’t stop his grousing. “Listen, Knut, don’t forget. In San José we want you to find evidence from the Board of Land Commissioners of the year this adobe was built. And don’t forget to change the gold I gave you into currency!” He muttered to himself. “Unbelievable! He’s a fine one to talk about bending the elbow! He was supposed to be on his way to San José…Now he’ll be gone for three weeks on a bust with the boys instead of finding us investors! Not that he’ll find anyone worthwhile anyway. He’s definitely humbugging Salvador!” He had run out of steam by the time he reached the banks of the sparkling stream. Sure enough, Tamasin squatted there on some large, round rocks. She did look much improved from the pathetic wraith they had rescued a week earlier. Doña Carmen had loaned her a Californio ensemble, and the tightness of the black silk bodice showed her bony figure to even worse advantage. Doña Carmen was attempting to fatten her up with corn tortillas—Las Oliveras boasted many acres of cornfields over a couple of nearby hillocks—but Ophir knew that Doña Carmen could ruin even something as simple as a tortilla, so he’d been sneaking Tamasin jerked beef and had asked the fellow who slaughtered beeves to dry some fatty cuts for the girl. The bright silk sash about her waist made her resemble even more a young girl, and she had placed her stockings and slippers to one side

 

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as she worked. Her brilliant rebozo hung over a nearby sapling branch, its fringed ends fluttering in the slight breeze. She had even done up her hair in two long plaits of the brashest red, giving her the pious look of a supplicant. Altogether, Tamasin was the picture of serene contentment as she scrubbed Knut’s smallclothes with a hog’s hair brush as mockingbirds trilled and dove over the babbling water’s surface, and red and yellow grosbeaks puffed their feathers as they eyed the bright rebozo jealously. “Tamasin!” Ophir said cheerfully. She turned her beautiful moon face to him. Ophir did not grasp how happy she had been before they had rescued her, but there always seemed to be a smile on her face now. Her lips were plump, as though she’d pinched them to make them full and rosy, and her flawless open face had not a blemish or freckle. Her large, round eyes were the sage green of malachite pebbles, alert and surprisingly trusting for one who had been through so much pain. “Ophir,” she acknowledged happily. “What’re you doing, washing Knut’s laundry?” He tried to act casual, but inside he was fuming. “You should be in bed.” He squatted down next to her, hands dangling between his knees. “Oh,” she said lightly, continuing to scrub some perfectly shining undergarment. Her broken arm had been bound in a sling, and with the fingers of that hand she held down the garment while scrubbing with her good arm. “I must admit, I was getting bored lying about in bed. I’m just not accustomed to it. I have been working for my meals since I was six years old! Besides,” she added, confidentially, “I feel guilty just lounging about. In my life, it just hasn’t been done.” “You’ve only been recuperating a week. You went through a terrible ordeal over at that camp you had.” Shrugging, Tamasin labored to her feet, the smallclothes streaming onto the rocks at her feet. “Oh, yes, it was sorrowful of course, losing the baby. But many girls at the asylum gave birth, or lost babies without any dire consequences.”

 

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Ophir stood, too, going to the water’s edge and taking the disgusting garment from her hand. He tossed it in the water where he could poke at it with a stick to rinse it. He had actually been referring to the regrettable death of her husband. “Many girls at the asylum…? Was it an asylum for girls with child?” “No, not necessarily, that’s just how it worked out, I suppose. It was a place for fallen women in general, women with no family like me. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t a ‘fallen woman.’ I didn’t share the Magdalene Society’s image of ‘guilt and wretchedness.’ I simply took passage for the States when we had no food to eat in Ireland. So already my only skills were labor.” She tried to take the stick from Ophir, apparently not wishing to burden him with laundering. They played a little child’s game with Ophir keeping the stick away from her reach. She finally gave up, obstinately wedging her little fists on her hips. “We inmates worked eighteen hours a day in the Magdalene laundry. I’m a very good laundress!” Ophir could see she was proud of this dubious achievement. “So the asylum took in girls who had fallen…become pregnant by strange men?” Sticking out her luscious lower lip, Tamasin shook her head adamantly. “Most of them only became pregnant after arriving at the asylum.” Ophir frowned. “How does that work? If it was an asylum for girls, and there were nuns…” “The priests. They were mostly responsible. Hey, that’s plenty clean. Let me wring it and hang it on that tree.” Ophir was bursting with questions, but he didn’t want to be too blunt. Tamasin seemed very straightforward and candid, perfectly willing to be direct in revealing details of her past, with no emotion imbuing the facts. She had exhibited none or very little emotion other than an unstructured, vague image of lightheartedness. She had not once mentioned anything relating to her husband Niall. Although she was a little less open toward Salvador, apparently seeing him as more

 

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of a jefe than a friend, as she seemed to view Ophir, she evidently didn’t bear him the tiniest shred of annoyance for having shot her husband clean through the heart. She had abandoned his body with as much concern—less concern, actually—than she now took in hanging Knut’s underwear on the tree branch. Not that Ophir could fault her. Niall Norris was not one to mourn and sob over. Bearing a baby to a brute like that, the misbegotten infant wouldn’t have had much of a chance. The whole turn of events, in actuality, had been a huge relief, a massive burden off the young woman’s shoulders. “You came to America alone? With no relatives?” Her reply was not so immediate this time. She turned from the tree and continued to the next garment, a striped waistcoat. She swished it in the stream’s current using the long stick. “I had a brother, we came together. He was run over by a carriage in Philadelphia.” “Oh,” said Ophir. “I’m so sorry about that.” Everyone in California had tales of woe, and it was simple to become immune to them. Sal had his dead brother and father. Ophir was still struggling to free his children in North Carolina. He didn’t want to be an immune, numb, and heartless person. “But you want to be something more than a laundress in your life…right?” She turned her open, clear face to him, looking mildly surprised at the question. “Why…I’d never thought about it. What else could I do?” Ophir chuckled. “I’ve seen many laundresses, where I grew up, turn into broken-down old hags when they weren’t even yet forty. You’re a very pretty girl. You deserve better than that. What about your plant paintings? You’re a talented artist.” Tamasin dragged the waistcoat from the water and plopped it on the scrubbing rock. “What can you do with plant paintings? They’re not very useful.” “Sell them. There are plenty of textbooks that need illustrations. ‘Wildflowers of California.’ Or your landscape paintings. When I’ve

 

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been in San Francisco and San José, there are always enormous landscape paintings hanging in the better saloons and hotels. People are clamoring to learn about the Far West.” She shrugged carelessly, but Ophir could tell she was piqued by these ideas. In her humbleness, and how little she thought of herself, she could not imagine any of them actually coming true, but she seemed to like the ideas. “It seems impossible to find any new paints, anyway. That Savage fellow didn’t have any paper, much less any paints.” The next idea was immediate. “We’ll send Knut on a new mission, when he goes to San José. To repay you for the laundry. He can find you some paints.” Tamasin very nearly “pshawed” Ophir. “One day’s laundering is hardly worth a whole set of paints.” “Miners pay six dollars to have a dozen garments washed! Some send their laundry to San Francisco just to avoid having to do it. Six dollars can buy you a darned good lot of paints.” Tamasin smiled, abashed, but wordlessly squatted to begin scrubbing the waistcoat. “If I’m to do more landscapes,” she said quietly, “I’d like to begin trying my hand at oils.” Ophir clapped his hands. “There you go! There was another slave where I lived in North Carolina, he did oil paintings. I always loved the smell of the linseed oil he mixed into the paints. One time, he—” He perked his head up, intently listening. There seemed to be some distant whoops and hollers coming from the valley on the other side of the hacienda. “Do you hear that?” Tamasin slowly rose to her feet, ears alert like a rabbit. “Yes,” she said slowly. “Yelling.” They both stood stock-still, and soon Ophir could distinctly hear one of their Californio vaqueros shouting, “¡La cerca! La cerca está rota!” The fence is broken! “The fence is broken?” Ophir translated uncertainly for Tamasin, who knew almost no Spanish.

 

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“Well, that doesn’t sound like such a disaster,” Tamasin ventured. But Ophir had already broken into a run. “I’ll find out what the uproar is. You stay here. And don’t hurt yourself washing!” At the stables, he mounted the horse he’d been favoring. The stable hand, Roberto, was not fond of Ophir, as Doña Carmen often imagined Ophir was his jefe, but he told Ophir, “Los Yanquis destruyeron la cerca.” Yankees tore down the fence. Roberto said it was not the first time that had happened. It was well-nigh two miles to the other side of the fenced corral, and Ophir galloped in fine, high Californio style. It occurred to Ophir’s rattled brain as he pounded across the valley that he possessed no weapon. He had not thought one necessary, to bring Tamasin her lunch. The break in the fence was obvious, two sections of posts and rails split and shattered to the soil. Prospero and Román, somewhat calmed down by now, were on horseback preventing more cattle from escaping by that route, and their dogs skittered and nipped at the hooves of those who dared. “What happened?” Ophir asked Prospero in English. “Did some cows break the fence?” “No, señor!” Prospero shouted over some six head of cattle. “Men, people, Yankees! Look at the rails, see how they are split? With an axe!” Ophir inspected the fallen rails and indeed, it was evident they’d been hacked away. “Roberto said this has happened before. Are they stealing cattle?” “Sí! They break the fence, take as many head as they can, and let the rest follow, just wander about the hills. Alonzo and Esteban have gone out, to see if they can find out who is doing it.” Ophir had his suspicions who was doing it. They had not left the Australian’s hilltop hideaway on very genteel terms, and Ophir had already seen some of the Palomares cattle trundling about the streets

 

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of Hornitos. “What you need now is more rails to repair this fence. Now, what in the name of…?” Tamasin came bounding across the valley on that broken-down mount of her dead husband’s. The creature’s bones had been robbed of fat and flesh, his flank was tucked up and his neck was bowed, but Ophir supposed he had a clear cheerful eye and hearty appetite, which he now displayed by falling to work on the sweet valley grass. “Girl!” Ophir scolded. He didn’t like calling anyone “girl,” but the circumstances warranted it. “You ought not to have followed me out here. What if there were armed bandits?” Smiling in her mysterious lunar way, Tamasin withdrew a fortyfour caliber pistol tucked into the waistband of her skirt. It looked enormous in her little fist, but she was proud of it. Ophir did not want to encourage her. “So what if you have a pistol? There could’ve been ten of them, with ten pistols. And you, with a broken arm in a sling!” Feeling ridiculously like her father, and even more absurd because he himself didn’t have a weapon, Ophir waved an arm and reined his mount back toward the stables. “Come. Put that thing away. I’m going to get a wagon to bring these amigos some more rails.” “Who broke the fence?” “I suspicion it was those no-count Australians from Hornitos. We had a run-in with them last week, before we…Before we brought you back here.” Tamasin nodded. “I think I know of them. Some Australians came to our camp a few weeks ago. Their leader was this very rodentlooking fellow, the crown of his hat sort of bashed in? McCarthy, his name was.” “Yes, that’s the rodent. What did they want from you?” “They tried to say they owned the land we prospected on, and demanded a tax on each ounce Niall sluiced from his long tom. But we knew you were the owner, or Don Salvador at any rate, and then

 

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he started talking how only foreigners should pay the tax, anyway, so they let us alone.” “Hmm. A foreigner’s mining tax. Those crafty bastards. Viva los Americanos! We’re all Americans now. This fighting is getting preposterous.” “José told me that Don Salvador is returning tonight from his assaying trip. He sent a messenger saying he’s found the perfect spot for the stamp mill. Oh, and I found a large rubber ball in a storeroom near our apartments. Doña Carmen told me her sons used to play a game with it, hitting it across a field with a bat. Can we find the bat?” “Listen to this girl!” Ophir marveled. “Your arm in a sling, and you want to bat a giant rubber ball across a field.” “I am, what did Knut say, antsy. I’ve never felt such freedom before! I owe you and Don Salvador so much, for taking me here. Oh, and I found a deck of cards, with images of drums, shrimp, skulls, and roosters. Doña Carmen told me it’s lotería, a Spanish lottery game. Do you think Don Salvador remembers how to play it?” “We’ll ask him, Tamasin, but we have lots of work to do first.”

 

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Chapter Eight They were going to hold a rodeo. Sal was jubilant, having found the ideal location for his stamp mill, with the help of the Sonorans and the assayer from San Francisco. There was a spot on the Merced River just north of Bear Valley where he could control the surface water for placer mining, as well as the underground water for hard rock mining. The assayer told him placers would soon be exhausted, and gold-bearing quartz would produce infinitely more treasure. He would bring Ophir there to oversee the building of the mill, while he himself could build a hacienda and office building to house the assayers, surveyors, Sonoran miners, faro dealers who would no doubt follow, and perhaps Knut, if he did a good job in San José and brought them back some investors. In the meantime, Sal planned a rodeo. It had been a couple of years since they’d hosted one of those rip-roaring, tumultuous events. This would involve many confabs with José, Prospero, and Román to organize the events and cattle, but Salvador’s immediate interest was in hold a boxing match, with Ophir as the main attraction. Now that he knew his partner was a professional pugilist, he thought it would make for an exciting event to pair Ophir up with any contender tomfool enough to challenge him—fish, they were known as, blockheads who imagined themselves invincible after a few mugs of aguardiente. Sal had not felt this enlivened in…well, since a youth, perhaps. Perhaps horse racing with his brother, yes, that had been the last time he had actually looked forward to something.

 

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“Este será el mejor rodeo,” Sal babbled as Ophir swung his long legs out of his bed. Ophir stretched, unfurling the undulating muscles of his impressive back. Sun bore down on him through the window, shimmering his skin a gold-dusted bronze. Sal’s breath hitched—he would never cease to be amazed by, and profoundly admire, the athletic beauty of Ophir’s body. He slumped back against the adobe wall with arms crossed, trying to focus on the candle on the table. “This will be the best rodeo?” Ophir attempted to translate as he pulled on his long-sleeved undershirt. Sal smiled. “Very good. Let’s go down to the barn right now, and have a practice match.” Ophir spun to face him, linen shirt dangling from his hands. “You?” he gasped in awe, before correcting himself and forcing all emotion from his face. “Yes, me! And don’t put on that linen—don’t prizefighters just wrangle in their pants?” Ophir draped the shirt over the back of a chair. “Yes, but…All right. I’ll fight you. For practice. Have you ever done any bareknuckle boxing before?” Salvador pursed his lips. “Well…not exactly.” Brightening, he added, “But I’ve been in dozens of fights, that’s for certain. Sí, señor, I’ve whacked and walloped many a caballero in my time.” Ophir spread out explanatory hands, palms to the floor. “Sal. It’s not just about whacking and walloping. If we fight under the London Prize Ring Rules, for example, butting with your head is deemed foul, and you’re automatically the loser.” Sal scoffed. “Who said anything about butting with my head?” Ophir grinned. “Something tells me, it’s probably the hardest part of you cowmen.” “Cowmen have hard heads?” Tamasin stood in the doorway tentatively, smiling shyly. She had filled out a bit since arriving at Las Oliveras, and of course her bruises had subsided so as to be almost

 

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invisible. Her skin bloomed with an Irish refulgence, as though she’d just stepped from a stream of melted ice, her skin so white she sometimes frightened Salvador, when he momentarily thought she was a passing specter. Ophir was the first to recover. He’d developed quite a rapport with the woman, perhaps because he’d been the one to shield her with his body, while Salvador was the villain who had picked off her husband with such impassive cool. “Why yes, niña. Didn’t you know that? Cowboys are as hardheaded as they come.” Niña! Already Ophir had an affectionate nickname for her! A flash of jealousy shot through Salvador’s chest, actually paining him and shortening his breath. It all came to him in a brief burst of envy— Tamasin was beautiful, a very hard worker, and she would want another husband. Of course she would choose Ophir, with his easy manner, ready smile, and affectionate nature. In California, it was no stain on an immigrant’s already dubious reputation to wed a Negro, especially not a stunning half-caste like Ophir. Well, perhaps he’d heard of some folks getting into trouble in big cities like San Francisco. But out here? Especially if Ophir was to manage the gold mill and become a rich man. Nary a squeak. It was the first realization Salvador had that he even imagined Tamasin as a potential wife. Up until now, he’d only thought of her as a broken-down wraith they’d saved from certain death. She was simply too ill to think of in that manner. She seemed to only possess two emotions—the strained, expressionless mask of pain, which was understandable given her history. This was her regular face that she wore when no one was looking. The other emotion was the bland sort of regulated happiness she expressed now. That appeared to be her social face, the face she thought would please people. He brushed off his shock at his own imaginings, and tried to charm the girl. “We’re staging a practice boxing match, in preparation for the rodeo.”

 

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Her blandly cheerful face lit up a bit more. “Ooh, prizefighting! Can I be the umpire? Or is it called the ‘second’?” Ophir regarded her skeptically. “We’d need another second. Why don’t you just be the umpire?” Salvador was irritated that Ophir had taken charge of the conversation. “Let’s use the barn, where all the plows and hoes are.” Californio farming was still stuck in the age of Cortez, when everything was done manually, although Salvador had tried to introduce a few newfangled hay rakes and a horse-drawn reaper he’d had sent out from San José. These implements baffled his farmers, so they sat unused in the barn. “What will the prize be?” Tamasin asked in her mellifluous lilt as they made their way to the barn. “I mean, during the rodeo. Obviously there’s no prize today.” Ophir slapped Sal’s chest with the back of his hand. “Sure, why shouldn’t there be a prize today?” Sal thought. “What do we have to bet, other than gold dust?” Ophir said, “You have plenty of hides, California bank notes. I’d like a new rug and a new coverlet for my bed.” “All right. If you win, I’ll give you some California bank notes. What if I win?” Ophir guffawed, throwing his head back and displaying his full, muscular throat. Sal felt like spitting on him out of spite. “You? Win?” Tamasin interrupted. “If Don Salvador wins, I shall do all his washing. For an entire week. You told me miners pay six dollars for a dozen garments, so that should be worth a couple of California bank notes.” Salvador maneuvered so that he walked in between the other two, and he spoke fondly down at coppery crown of the girl’s head. Her braided hair, glossier now than when they had first met, was so shiny it looked as though plaited with satin ribbons. “Why should you have to pay if Ophir loses?”

 

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“Because I’m betting it won’t happen,” she said, blank face innocent of all guile. Salvador was speechless. Speechless she could be so witty, and awestruck that she was counting on him losing! Ophir wisely did not lord it over Sal, and merely said, “Very smart girl to bet on the winner.” Inside the barn, the men staked off a ring of twenty-four feet square. There was always plenty of rope, being constantly needed to make reatas, so they roped off the ring, while Tamasin went to the hacienda to get a bottle of water and a sponge, the necessities of the umpire. After stripping to their pants, even peeling off their cotton undershirts, Ophir declared Sal’s boots were unfair. “You Californios wear boots so pointy, it’s almost like you’re wearing spikes.” “All my zapatones are like this.” Ophir pointed at the ground as he circled Salvador in the ring. “Well, it shall be a fair, stand-up fight. You know there are no blows below the waist, and no kicking or striking with the knees.” This time, Sal did spit on the ground. “You think I’d stoop to that?” They were fairly growling at each other in barely-leashed anger by the time Tamasin returned with her bottle, handing Ophir a peso coin to toss. “I am the fancy,” Tamasin stated as she tied one red and one blue silk sash to a stake in the middle of the ring. She looked up at the two blank-faced men. “Oh. That is the audience who admires the prizefighters. In Ireland, anyway. It is called ‘the noble art.’” “How do you know so much about boxing?” Salvador inquired. He was smoking to think that once again, Ophir bested him for Tamasin’s affections. Sal was not a prizefighter. He was only a hardheaded cowboy.

 

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“Oh.” She backed out of the ring, sucking at her water bottle. “Sometimes they would come up to Ireland, put on exhibitions. People would travel for a hundred miles to watch them.” Ophir smiled. “Then you’re the perfect umpire. Remember, now. Thirty seconds.” “Thirty seconds,” Tamasin agreed. The men walked casually to the center of the ring and squared off with raised fists. They frowned violently at each other, but Salvador was not concerned. How superb of a boxer could Ophir be? If boxing was the only time he’d squared off with an opponent, he knew nothing of serious frontier brawling. How many noses of fellow rancheros had Salvador broken in his time? A dozen, at least. Boxing was for girlish men. Androgynous fools who would rather fight by arbitrary rules than to break them. “Tamasin?” Ophir queried, his shoulders muscles bunched with furor. “Oh! Am I supposed to say something? All right, men…Fight!” They started with a series of jabs that didn’t connect, and Sal grew even more confident. He had never seen an organized prizefight before, but he’d seen fellows lock horns hundreds of times. It was usually over a cow, horses being dispensable in California, and women being nearly nonexistent. Then Ophir landed a couple of punches on Sal’s chest, and Sal frowned even fiercer. He knew he surprised Ophir with a straight left to the jaw, knocking him off balance. Sal chuckled to himself. No doubt Ophir had never noticed he was left-handed. Ophir seemed angrier, too. Sal had to duck from a vicious hook, and by the time he stood erect again, Tamasin was calling “Time!” Manfully wiping their unbloodied noses on the backs of their hands, they sulked to their own corners of the ring. Salvador was gratified that Tamasin came to his corner, not Ophir’s, and offered him a swig from the bottle. He nearly gagged when he realized it was whiskey, not water, in the bottle. His eyes watered as the fiery liquid bloomed

 

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inside his nostrils—he hadn’t had any whiskey in a week or so. But he managed to swallow, and nodded at her in gratitude. She smiled at his feet, shy and modest. Why would he make her feel modest, unless she was thinking something shameful? Was it that she stood not one foot away from his toned and vigorous chest, already shiny with sweat? Having come from some sort of nunnery, she probably hadn’t had much occasion to glance at men’s sweaty chests. They grappled again. After more jabs that barely connected, they both took sudden swings that left them in a clinch. The slippery contact of Ophir’s hairless, polished chest against his was a shock to Salvador—as though Ophir would be acutely aware of the rubbing of his own clammy, silky chest hair. This angered Sal even further, and he brutally shoved Ophir away, only to land a combination of blows against that sculpted chest. Before Ophir had a chance to respond, Tamasin was calling “Time!” again, and this time when they retreated to their corners, they glowered at each other. Again, Tamasin handed Salvador the bottle of whiskey. “When did you start drinking whiskey?” Sal inquired, giving her a sideways glance. He assumed a gal from a nunnery did not drink booze. “When I came here.” Tamasin held her hand out in the shape of the bottle by way of asking for it back. “Knut started giving it to me, to kill the pain. It works quite well,” she said lightly. Sal half-turned to hand her back the bottle, forcing her to gaze upon what he’d been told was a gloriously athletic chest. He could tell she tried to force her gaze to his face, but her eyes kept glancing down. Casually, he lifted his arms to the crown of his head, to smear his hair out of his eyes. “All right,” she nearly whispered. “Fight.” Salvador smiled down at the woman. He knew his cock was lengthening, filling with lust, and the fairly tight pants did not rein the erection in very effectively. He knew the bulbous head was rising,

 

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pointing directly at the lap of her silk Californio skirts. “I don’t think Ophir heard you.” She blinked her dream away and grinned a fresh grin. “Fight!” she called out. Freshly invigorated now, when they squared off Salvador realized he was fighting to earn Tamasin’s respect. The two men fell immediately into a ferocious set-to, each throwing a dizzying combination of wallops and punches. Salvador had never been this furious with Ophir, due to some ancient masculine effort in his blood to win the female from his rival. Tamasin only handed him the whiskey because Ophir did not imbibe firewater, not because she found Salvador more manly and deserving of her progeny. No, he’d have to fight to prove that. A couple of his left hooks connected with Ophir’s cheekbone, satisfying, resounding thuds that gave Salvador more energy to bounce on his toes and duck from another uppercut. Drops of blood from the cut on Ophir’s face were flung onto Sal’s shoulders as he bounced around. He must have become too confident, as he fell for a few of Ophir’s feints and put his skull directly in line with a wide swinging uppercut that had his dancing toes removed from the dirt. It felt as though his body hovered in the air for a few short seconds, arms and legs splayed like a corn husk doll, before a powerful right cross slammed his entire skeleton back down to earth so mightily he seemed to make an indentation in the soil. The breath was compressed out of his lungs in an audible “ooph,” and his light head floated up to the ceiling. Tamasin’s high girlish lilt brought his consciousness back down to earth. “Ooh, he’s down!” she cried, ignoring the rules that dictated she stay out of the ring. I’m not down, Sal thought as he struggled to move his limbs. When that failed, he tried to move a finger. Something light fell onto his stomach, and he realized Tamasin had thrown her sponge into the ring. It became apparent it would not be a fair stand-up fight, though,

 

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when Ophir took advantage of his prone, insensate condition to jump upon his hips, straddling him so tightly that the firm globes of his muscular ass were planted squarely on either side of his bulging erection. Was this some new kind of bare-knuckle move, a kind of hold to keep a downed man from getting back up? Ophir had declared no kicks or blows below the belt, but he was not kicking or striking, merely pinning both his wrists above his head in one of his broad fists. Leaning over to put his lips near Sal’s ear, Ophir growled, “You damned brawler. You’re just a slugger moving slowly with no finesse at all. How did you think you could best me?” Salvador humped furiously to buck the prizefighter off his hips. To his mortification, this only served to wedge his stiff penis even more securely into the enticing cleft of Ophir’s ass. Raising his knees to the barn’s roof with his boots securely planted in the dirt, he only wound up bowling Ophir’s hips more firmly against his own. He broke out into a clammy sweat when he felt Ophir’s bulky erection pressed solidly against his. Was Ophir becoming hot, knowing the attractive girl was watching them? Tamasin had been calling time. “Twenty-one, twenty, nineteen…” Now Sal struggled to lift his torso from the dirt. Ophir only had him pinned with one hand, after all. But Ophir had the leverage as he leaned over him from above, and his free hand now pinned down a shoulder. He did not sit up straight, but continued to whisper angry warnings into Sal’s ear. “Your punching pattern is predictable.” He continued to insult Sal. “But you make up for that with raw power. You could probably knock me out with a single punch.” “Lárgate de mí!” Sal snorted. Get off me! “We can fight for the girl,” Ophir panted, his breath creating steam on Sal’s neck. The musky, fresh odor of horsehair imbued Sal’s nostrils, almost like a drug causing his mind to drift, his body to relax

 

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and stop struggling. “It’s a fair contest. And you know what I think would help her make up her mind?” “Twelve, eleven…” “I could get up if you’d just get off me!” The hand that pinned Sal’s shoulder now released him. But Ophir didn’t let him up. He dragged his fingertips sensually up his shoulder to his throat—there was no doubting this now, this was not a boxing move—to cradle Sal’s jaw in his palm. His palm was hot and moist against Sal’s throat, and he could have easily snapped his neck, so perhaps it was a boxing maneuver. Ophir hadn’t said anything about no neck-breaking. But since Sal could by now easily feel the throbbing of Ophir’s massive prick against his own, it wasn’t his neck he feared for. Ophir whispered huskily, “It would make the girl very randy to decide which of us is the most sensual kisser.” Before the implications of this could register, Ophir pressed his sculpted cupid’s lips to Sal’s. It was not a chaste, companionable kiss, but blatantly erotic as Ophir parted his lips and tickled the tip of his tongue against the inside of Sal’s upper lip. Sal could relax and give in to the kiss, since Ophir was the aggressor, and Sal himself had no option in the matter. In some faraway realm, Tamasin’s reedy lilt was petering out. “Two…” She waited a very long time before saying, “One.” No one budged at the proclamation of “one.” Instead Sal tilted his head to one side so his nose wouldn’t clash with Ophir’s, and he slid into what felt like the longest, most drunken and lusty kiss of his lifetime. It made no difference that it was a man who kissed him. They blatantly feasted on one another, and the thrusts of Sal’s hips were no longer to buck Ophir off, but to revel in the rush of semen that spurted up the length of his penis and threatened to ejaculate out the tip. A few drops did discharge, Sal could tell, as he felt Ophir answer his thrusts by swaying his own bulky prick against him. Ay dios, if he ejaculated with no direct contact like this, it would be

 

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entirely obvious against the front of his pants, walking about with a wet stain when he was declared the loser of the bout! Ophir emitted nearly inaudible moans as he licked at Sal’s mouth, cradling his jaw in his palm. Sal wished more than anything that he would at least release one of his wrists so he could touch Ophir, too. For weeks he’d been longing to fondle any one part of that magnificent body—just a beautifully molded shoulder would do. It was a sin and an embarrassment to be attracted to another man, but there were so few women in California, a man had to obtain satiation somewhere. Was he androgynous, a sodomita? It didn’t matter right now as he added his sighs to mingle with Ophir’s increasingly lascivious moans. They smacked at each other’s mouths with loud sucking sounds, and Sal could feel the vibration of Ophir’s growls resonating against his mouth. “Ah,” Ophir sighed as he drew away. Still hunched over and gripping Sal’s wrists, there was a trace of a smile at the corners of his mouth. “You’re no beaten man,” he said, tracing a shape with his thumb on the underside of Sal’s jaw. “That contest was a draw.” Sal’s head was dizzy with lust. He knew that once Ophir jumped off of him, his erection would stand out brazenly for all to see. But he felt compelled by social mores to give a few more efforts at struggling his wrists free. “Why don’t we let the umpire decide?” He attempted a snarl, but it probably came out passionately. Grinning lopsidedly, Ophir released Sal’s wrists with a snap and leaped to his feet. He reached a hand out for Sal to take, but Sal was too shamed and bewildered to take it. As he struggled to stand, he wiped his face free of some blood drips from Ophir’s cheekbone. “We’ll have to stitch that wound,” Sal said casually, turning away from Ophir. Ophir laughed outright now, and turned to where Tamasin seemed to cling weakly to one of their ring stakes. Completely ashen now, her lower jaw hung slack, only her eyes bouncing between the two men,

 

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burdened with questions. “What’s your ruling, umpire? Who won the battle?” “I—” Tamasin said. “Now, no offensive or irritating expressions from noncombatants,” Ophir said jovially. “Those are the rules.” Salvador cast the woman a sidelong grin, achingly aware that his erect penis stood at half-mast, tenting his pants. Over his shoulder he saw Ophir in the same state, and the poor girl was going loca deciding between the two. “It’s a draw,” Sal suggested forcefully. “A draw.” “I—” she said again. Her jaw slung lower, and this time her arm moved to lift the whiskey bottle to her mouth. She looked back and forth between the men with wide, dilated eyes as she drank, at last squeezing her eyes shut, presumably in terror. “A draw?” Sal suggested to Ophir. Ophir appeared satisfied with that. He nodded in agreement. “A draw.”

 

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Chapter Nine The two men didn’t speak after the boxing match. Salvador raced about getting prepared for their journey to Hornitos and Bear Valley, and for once Ophir was relieved that Doña Carmen imagined he was a stable hand. He shod horses with a glowering Roberto for a couple of days until Doña Carmen breezily suggested he find her son Salvador and enquire which mount he wanted to take to Hornitos. As Sal wasn’t in his chambers in the main house, Ophir sullenly set out to meander about the property. The same mortifying thought insisted on bursting into his consciousness: What on earth had possessed him to kiss Salvador? Sal was his jefe, his superior, employer, overseer—Good Lord! Now that word was entering his brain! Ophir smacked himself on the face to erase that word completely, preferring to dwell on the kiss instead. Well, ever since viewing Salvador frigging his long, delicious cock at the swimming hole—and before then, really, if one went back to the day Salvador had saved him from certain death—those images had refused to evaporate. That hard, statuesque body—the result of years of riding, roping, wrangling, breaking wild horses, racing— Ophir was simply in awe of him. For despite his fame as a pugilist, Ophir was more of a mental, intellectual nature. He had never shot and killed a man, for example, and had never engaged in fisticuffs that were not wagered on by spectators. Respecting a man like Salvador, it was perhaps natural to want to be physically close to him. Maybe hoping some of that combative masculinity would rub off on him.

 

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And try as he might, Ophir could not muster one shred of disgust when reminiscing about the kiss. It had been utter heaven to at last taste that perfect, angelic mouth, and when Sal surprisingly responded in kind, his prick burgeoning and growing stiff beneath his, Ophir had not hesitated to rub his own fat erection against him. After all, the moment they had met, Salvador’s fingers had already been exploring his prick. Out of curiosity, probably, for Ophir had learned most men were interested in discovering more about his giant, mammalian cock. But two men kissing? It just was not done in the society where he grew up. At least not between citizens of his little slave village in North Carolina. White men were different, talking out of both sides of their mouth and getting away with everything. Ophir cringed when he found Sal in an unexpected place— practicing at archery in a field behind the outbuilding where Ophir and Tamasin lived. Good Lord. Now he would actually have to interact with the man he had so blatantly kissed. He had been praying Sal wouldn’t even bring up the subject. So he stood quietly watching Sal at target practice, but became overwhelmed with the beauty of his upright stance. His back was so strong and straight one could use it as a level to build a house’s foundation. His curvaceous ass, cupped by the leather calzoneras, actually made Ophir’s mouth water. There was not the vaguest hint of a tremor in his arm when he used two fingers to pull back the highly elastic bowstring—it took a lot of strength for that, Ophir knew, from having practiced with a bárbaro bow. Fluffy passing cumulus clouds cast ever-changing shadows on Salvador’s form as he stared intently with narrowed eyes at his target of bottles. He got off four arrows in this manner, each one striking down a bottle, and when he lowered his bow, he noticed Ophir. He walked down the field with a brilliant smile that erased all signs of concentration from his face. “Cupid, old amigo. Help me retrieve these arrows.”

 

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Ophir tried to behave nonchalantly, too. “Hey. I thought you promised to never call me that again.” “Did I?” The sideways, teasing look Salvador shot him actually pained Ophir’s heart, it was so completely guileless and provocative. “No, I decided to call you Ophir instead, but I never said I wouldn’t say ‘Cupid’ aloud.” Bending, he swept a long arm to pluck an arrow from the grass. “Your mother wants to know which horse you’re bringing to Bear Valley.” Salvador quickly found three arrows, while Ophir found one. Ophir was hopeful the entire kiss episode would be ignored, but now Sal swaggered over with a serious face as he dropped the arrows into the quiver that was slung over his shoulder. “About the boxing match.” Standing the bow upright, he leaned on the tip with folded hands. Ophir looked nervously at a stand of oaks. “I don’t want to fight you for Tamasin.” Well. This approach was unexpected. Ophir could deal with this. “Oh. You have no interest in her?” Those sincere, crystalline Prussian blue eyes were impossible to doubt. Salvador Palomares may have wasted his youth as a drunken worm, but he had probably never told a lie. “I’m not saying that. She’s beautiful, Ophir. That skin like milk, that bright red hair that blinds you…She’s absolutely magnífico.” He got a faraway look in his fathomless eyes, and gazed at a spot distant over Ophir’s shoulder. “Su belleza me da ganas de llorar.” Something about how her beauty made him weep. Serious now, he added, “I’m saying she’s not ready, she’s not prepared, she’s not capable of handling even one man pursuing her, much less us two fighting over her. She’s damaged, Ophir. Look what she’s been through. She needs time to recover. Not some hombre manhandling her.” Ophir found himself nodding assiduously. “Yes. Yes. I couldn’t agree more. Did you know, she told me most of the girls in her school were made pregnant by priests?”

 

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Salvador shook his head in pity, and waved an arm to indicate Ophir should follow him back across the field. “Sometimes it’s shameful to admit you are a Catholic.” Ophir was so relieved the kiss hadn’t been mentioned, he was babbling on now. “And they forced the girls to do laundry eighteen hours a day. I suspect they were beaten for the tiniest infraction.” “Is that why she’s always doing laundry?” “She must think it’s her one worthwhile contribution.” “Well. I think we can do the best for her by being her friends. Or like brothers, entiendes?” “I couldn’t agree more. I don’t know what made me suggest we fight for her. Maybe to add more drama and violence to our bout. You were fighting like such a limp brawler, I had to stimulate you to greater heights.” Salvador smiled with a secret knowledge of something. After a moment, he glanced at Ophir from under his long lashes. “You already stimulate me to greater heights.” Ophir’s heart nearly stopped. What did that mean? Did he mean the kiss? Or had he been excited when Ophir had kneaded their erections together, well-nigh miming an act of copulation? He probably didn’t want to know what Salvador meant, but if he didn’t find out more, it would give him more sleepless nights. His mouth opened and closed for several moments until at last he blurted, “You mean the boxing, right? That would be pleasant if we could practice more. Maybe have some bouts against some Hornitos fellows, or at the rodeo here.” Sal’s expression was serene, looking straight ahead with a sly smile. “Yes, we can practice more,” was all he said. “And you and I. If we can only be friends to Tamasin right now, perhaps we can be more to each other. ¿Estás de acuerdo?” Don’t you agree? Ophir frowned in frustration. He jammed the arrow he held into Sal’s quiver with unnecessary force. He had no idea what Salvador meant, but he desperately wanted to change the subject. “More to

 

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each other? Like brothers?” Quickly he added, “Listen, Salvador. Let me come with you to Hornitos and confront that Tyke McCarthy jackass. You’ll need the beef behind you, especially if he’s got his henchmen around—and if they’re not corned this time, they might actually be formidable.” Salvador nodded briskly, as if also eager to change the subject. “Sí, I appreciate the company. Knut wants to come to talk sense into The League—” Ophir’s instant laughter stopped Sal’s train of thought. Ophir chuckled, “Knut talking sense? That’s a good joke, but fine, the more the merrier. He’s due back tomorrow, right?” They were paused where the path forked—one leading to the outbuilding where Ophir lived, the other to the hacienda. “Yes,” said Sal. “He wants to help choose the site for the office building, since he’ll be spending most of his time there.” Ophir ambled toward his apartments, and Sal willingly followed. “Maybe you could help me. I need to send a letter to North Carolina.” Ophir sighed. “I need to send money, actually—gold.” “Right, right. To buy your family out of slavery? How many people? Mother, father?” Ophir was perplexed. His parents were long gone. “No. My two children.” Sal froze in his tracks, and Ophir could swear that his pupils, under the shade of his sombrero brim, shrank into tiny pinpoints. His muscles, too, froze as he gazed vacantly at Ophir’s apartments, as though he were sleepwalking. Ophir wondered if Sal was having some sort of immobile seizure. He’d seen that happen before in a few people, and it was frightening. He grabbed Sal’s bicep and gave him a brisk shake, once. “Sal!” he shouted. “Are you all right?” Abruptly waking, an almost serene smile spread over Sal’s handsome face as he turned to face Ophir. “Sí. Of course I’m all right.

 

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Just a bit shocked.” He commenced walking again, casually asking, “Only two children? No wife?” “No wife,” Ophir said brusquely. “My master is ransoming—I suppose you could call it that—my two children until I pay him enough to manumit them. He first gave me my freedom so I could win enough bare-knuckle bouts to free my wife and children. But when my wife died”—Ophir swallowed hard in a dry throat, as he had so many thousands of times the past few years when forced to discuss this—“he doubled the price of the children’s freedom. Since then, no matter what I send him, he raises the price. The ransom, I call it.” Sal waited politely for Ophir to unlatch the door to his apartments. Now, around noontime, the sun did not directly blare into the living space, or “parlor” as Salvador called this sort of little white-washed room with a cow hide thrown on the floor—the same old California bank note, since Ophir had not won a fresh rug as a result of the boxing match. As Doña Carmen currently approved of Ophir, at least his horseshoeing talents, she had sent over two rocking chairs with woven cane seats and an array of other puzzling decorations he had since discovered were retablos. She must assume everyone else in California was of the Catholic faith, but Ophir could not in good conscience display these altarpieces, some of them absolutely horrifying renditions of Christ on the cross in various stages of decay and gore. Catholics certainly seemed to enjoy their gore. They now sat down at the table in the rocking chairs, where Ophir kept a bottle of aguardiente that Tamasin seemed to be asking for lately. After slinging their sombreros over the chair backs, Ophir poured a cup for Sal, but oddly, Sal didn’t touch it, instead saying softly, “That’s despicable, Ophir. Californios do not hold with keeping slaves. You know I would have forged your freedom papers even if you had turned out to be a fugitive. What can I do to assist you in getting your children back?” Ophir tried to chuckle. “But you have bárbaros working all over your estate, doing menial things and living in the basest manner.”

 

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Sal explained patiently, “They are emancipados, neophytes, converted bárbaros with nowhere to go when the missions were secularized. Some of them worked for us in San José. They come of their own free will, and can leave any time.” “And you won’t hunt them down?” Sal’s laugh was genuine. With relaxed arms on each rocker arm, leaning back like that he was almost beatific—like some of the more up-to-snuff saints in the happier retablos. “Like a runaway beef? Why would I? I have more vital things to do with my day. Branding cows, doctoring the ill ones, signing new agreements with other landowners and merchants who wish to buy beeves—” “—seeing to the grain crops, the pumpkins, and the grapes—” Salvador pointed an adamant finger in agreement. “Sí, sí! Why, the hundreds of things I do around here! Brawling, bullfighting—” “—horse racing, wooing women, singing—” Sal could no longer restrain his outright laugh. “Sí, just the singing alone could take entire days! The drinking, the eating, the masturbation—” Ophir joined in the laughter. “—falling down drunk, standing up again after falling down drunk…” His hearty chuckles quickly died away, though, when he realized Sal had said the word “masturbation.” Absolutely no one wanted to address that word or even admit he had heard it, so both men’s gaze wandered to different points in the room, clearing their throats, pretending they were still thinking about cows. Sal finally put his forearms on the table and touched the rim of the aguardiente mug with his fingertips. “So, what sort of assistance did you—” “Masturbation?” That tiny, lilting word startled both men so harshly that they literally jumped into half-standing positions. Apparently there was someone else, a black silhouette in the doorway, who wanted to address that word.

 

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**** “Masturbation?” Tamasin had never uttered that word aloud before, but she knew what it was. Nuns had referred to it as one of the endless “unnatural vices,” vaguely in the same category as sodomy—whatever that was. Of course, this had led to curiosity on the part of every girl in the asylum, and not a night passed without the shivering of many of the wooden pallets where they slept while girls explored the resulting horrors of this vice. Tamasin, who had never quite been able to shake off her independent Irish ancestry, privately deemed it an acceptable practice, especially since so many of the things the nuns had hinted at had also been found to be patently wrong—such as the concept that sexual congress within the confines of marriage was some manner of ecstatic bliss. That “proper ejaculation of seed” had been a painful, laborious, abominable hell. So maybe the nuns had everything exactly backward. And her recent conversion to the pleasures of aguardiente somehow seemed to have loosened her tongue as well as her morals. She would never have dreamed of uttering that word aloud prior to a month ago, and would not have uttered it even now, had the men who had saved her life not said it aloud first. The men had even been laughing, so they must feel the same way about it as her. It was such a forceful word, it seemed to eradicate all their talk about horse racing and pumpkins. But now her saviors looked perplexed, even stunned. The three of them stared at one other for several long moments, the men’s eyes riveted on her. They were fully clothed, so she had not caught them masturbating, and Ophir did not have any of the dreadful retablos on his walls that populated the main hacienda and seemed to be the source of Doña Carmen’s ever-changing nonsensical moods, so he could not believe that it “procured pollution.” In fact, the silence was so long and bewildering Tamasin had a good chance to drink in their

 

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beautiful, strapping forms, how their linen shirts bulged at the biceps, how silken their chests looked under the knotted scarves about their necks. She could not decide which man was more handsome, although Ophir was friendlier and she had had many more conversations with him. Don Salvador was too upright, too much of her superior, although she knew the men considered themselves equals. Ophir had been the one to shelter her with his body when Don Salvador rightfully shot Niall Norris dead. At last it was Ophir who laughed nervously and came to a full standing position, proffering one open hand to her. “Tamasin, my little duckling.” Tamasin didn’t know why he called her that, but she liked it. “We were just discussing how Knut is bringing you some paper and paints when he returns from San José tomorrow.” Don Salvador rose fully also and made a funny little bow. These Californios stood on such ceremony. She was only a laundress, after all! “Yes, and how Ophir here also is in need of some paper to write a letter. I presume you have good reading and spelling skills, being raised in a convent?” “I read and write fairly well, I suppose.” So she had made a mistake, after all, uttering such a venereal word! They were pretending they had never heard it, standing here formally discussing her literacy. Perhaps only men were allowed to utter such a word. Men were allowed to do many things that women were not even supposed to think about. “Did you need my assistance in writing something in English?” “I don’t know,” Don Salvador said, and reached for the aguardiente bottle, although clearly his cup was still full. He looked sideways at Ophir as he poured a second cup of the fiery liquid. “Were we discussing how we need assistance writing a letter?” This question seemed to fluster Ophir greatly. He actually seemed to fumble when he tried to yank a third chair from where it stood against a wall. Tamasin usually sat in a rocking chair when she visited Ophir. “Well, not perhaps so much in writing it. You’ve seen the

 

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books I read, Sal. I actually finished that entire Christmas Carol volume yesterday.” Don Salvador smiled lazily. “Yes, and I noticed you had borrowed History of the Conquest of Mexico.” He slid the second cup of aguardiente toward where Tamasin stood lamely in between the two men. She supposed he meant it for her, after discovering she was imbibing during the boxing match. Yes, the boxing match… “Attempting to know more than I as usual, I see.” Ophir thudded the straight-backed chair down and gestured for her to sit. “That’s not difficult to do,” he said affectionately. Tamasin sat down as genteelly as possible, wishing she wore the veil Doña Carmen had given her to wear in the house, wishing she had never come. Timidly now, she drew her tasseled rebozo closer about her shoulders and took an overly hearty swallow of the burning liquid. She had just been overcome lately with ceaseless, enduring visions of the fifth round—was it the fifth round?—of their boxing bout. When Don Salvador had been flung onto his back and Ophir had straddled him, it had stirred similar overpowering sensations in her lower abdomen, such as she felt when she rapidly flicked her fingertip over that sheathed protrusion between her legs. Almost identical feelings rushed through her at the sight of the men, but not as narrowly focused between her legs. This was more like a rush of— lust?—that raced downward through her body. Her heart rate sped up, her mind quieted, her eyes grew round when Ophir grasped both of Don Salvador’s wrists in one broad palm. Her quim moistened, the folds engorged and became pulpous, her knees weakened, and most embarrassing, her breathing came fast and shallow. She could scarcely believe her own eyes, the manner in which Ophir clamped his athletic thighs about Don Salvador’s hips, essentially squashing him to the dirt, both of their swelling chests heaving from what appeared to be exertion. Tamasin was particularly riveted by the bulging, sinewy muscles of Ophir’s shoulders, all of which seemed to operate on plates that slid under and over one

 

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another, all with their own separate bunched waves of brawn. And the slope of Don Salvador’s nude underarm as he bucked and arched his magnificently muscular hips to throw the darker man off—the fluffy tuft of hair in that hollow was, she knew from standing next to him feeding him from the whiskey bottle, a most pleasingly fresh scent, not the eye-watering stench that wafted from her dead husband’s person when she was forced to be near him. But this was not a pugilistic behavior, from what she had seen in Ireland. Ophir’s penis stood out audaciously with what could only be venereal intent, a towering, bold, animal display of his lust, curving slightly downward with gravity and the pull of his pants. Was this some bestial manner of demonstrating his power over the other man, his victory? Not from anything she’d seen of the battering, dueling pugilists in Ireland. They merely bludgeoned each other mindlessly and without emotion, from what she could tell. Ophir’s long, thick penis was so blatantly displayed she could even make out the ridge of the crown through the flimsy material, and it did not disgust her. She had to grip the tip of a ring stake to remain on her own two feet when Ophir plastered that monumental erection against Don Salvador’s bulge, and they ground their hips together in an angry show of competition. Ophir whispered some things against a pulsating vein in Don Salvador’s neck, and when they smeared their panting, sculpted lips together, Tamasin nearly thought she would reach that apex of lunacy that she always strove for when masturbating. It was a clutching idiocy that happened if she diddled herself long enough, if no one interrupted her. At first it had frightened her, but as it seemed to happen consistently, she grew less afraid of the sudden swelling of ecstasy that gripped her uterus and clamped up all the muscles in her thighs and belly. Then as she watched the men’s jaws working as they licked each other’s tongues, she thought it might happen spontaneously, without her moving a single finger anywhere near her sex.

 

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Why were they doing that? Did they do that often? Perhaps they did. Perhaps Californios had a different style of boxing…More Roman, perhaps. “Who are you writing to?” she now asked. “My old master in North Carolina,” Ophir said conversationally. He stood and went into the bedroom. Don Salvador regarded her with a mellow expression, although he had not touched his own aguardiente. “You are a very good umpire. Will you act as umpire again during the rodeo? I think spectators would enjoy seeing a woman act as umpire. It will be different.” Did he mean…in front of a thousand people? She had to gulp a couple more large swallows of her drink in order to squeak out, “Will you and Ophir face off again?” She did not think she could tolerate undergoing that ordeal again. Tamasin had somehow imagined that if she could gratify them— one or the other, in her imaginings they were one and the same— make them call out in strangled wild incoherent sounds—well, it was just a vague concept, but Tamasin knew they would be grateful, not mean. They would be loving, not cruel. They would make her feel safe and would hold her in their arms in a comforting manner, and such behavior would make her want to do it again—whatever it was she had done to deserve such good treatment in the first place. Don Salvador looked down modestly, his long lashes glistening as though he had just emerged from a swim. “No, I don’t think such a bout would be…satisfactory.” Ophir came back with something in his hand, which he displayed in front of Tamasin’s face. “See? I need to write a letter to purchase my two children back from that miserly old master.” It was a daguerreotype, housed in a thin leather casing, unprotected by glass. Only about two inches square and much battered, three sets of eyes peered out, wide-eyed, holding their breaths for the camera. The woman embraced two children of about four years old, one on each knee. Tamasin couldn’t tell much about

 

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them from the shoddiness of the daguerreotype, but she smiled up at Ophir. “What a lovely family. You’re not going to buy back your wife?” His smile froze then, and she turned her face to Don Salvador when he responded for Ophir. “No wife,” he said simply. “I imagine Ophir here needs my assistance to send a trustworthy messenger to San Francisco to post his letter.” “That’s right,” Ophir agreed. Tamasin said, “You are so kind to Ophir, Don Salvador.” “Call me Salvador, please, Tamasin,” he said gently. With more rancor, he pointed at Ophir and declared, “I will do more than send a messenger to San Francisco. I will send someone on a ship to North Carolina to punch that hijo de puta and steal your children back for you!” Two men, both capable of behaving in such a peaceful and mutual fashion! It was beyond Tamasin’s comprehension, but her mind entertained itself with striving.

 

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Chapter Ten “It is the height of immodesty, living in such a land of men!” Knut proclaimed. “There are only two or three white women in these parts. It is a travesty to allow this gentle flower to travel with us, living in a hand to mouth fashion, breathing the odiferous fumes of squatters who have last seen a bar of soap in the hands of their mothers.” Unconcerned, Tamasin said, “I can be headstrong.” “And she’s certainly breathed in more than a few odiferous fumes from your dirty laundry, Knut.” Ophir grinned from where he was perched on a flat rock. Knut sputtered indignantly. He whipped off his top hat—he thought it made him look more lawyerly, but it was quite greasy from tortilla lard and bashed in several spots—and gestured dramatically with it. “Laundering is a noble occupation! One white woman I heard tell of up in Coulterville earned nine hundred dollars in nine weeks by laundering.” “Nothing is strange here in California.” Salvador seemed to commiserate. Feeling very mellow and perhaps—an unfamiliar sentiment— actually happy, Ophir gazed down from their ridge at the compressed view of the Ahwahnee. The granite rock formations seemed quite close in the thin and refined mountain air, but were actually probably fifty miles off. Ophir didn’t know, since he’d never spoken to anyone who had been there, it being the secretive bárbaro kingdom, spoken about so mystically it might well have been rife with cannibalism. This eastern face of his quartz-capped namesake mountain, Mt. Ophir,

 

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fell away at their feet in steep sheer descents, giving a flat look to the valley below, like the floor of a giant tenpin alley. Knut had already approved the spot they’d staked out for their mill and office building on the Merced River. The Sonorans were there mining, and a dozen other Spaniards were laying the groundwork for the office building and the hacienda. It was a warm, pleasant spot charmingly known as Hell Hollow with sharp, oakdotted hillocks. Ophir and Sal had whispered that Tamasin appeared to be assessing it with wifely eyes. She had remarked on the richness of the soil that might be good for planting tomatoes and wine grapes. She had no interest in the talk of long toms, mica, limestone, and mercury—she called mining “bashing to pieces boring-looking stones”—but she seemed to bloom like her beloved lupines as she stepped about in the riding habit, gloves, and crop Doña Carmen had rigged her out in. No one had said anything about bringing Tamasin to their Bear Valley mill of the Palomares Commercial and Mining Company. Doña Carmen might create a to-do about it, not wanting to lose her only white female companion. But it was Ophir’s privately held opinion that Tamasin would be a big asset in Bear Valley, if he and Salvador didn’t have a fatal duel over who would “win” her. Now Tamasin settled very lightly on one haunch in a patch of sweet grass just turning golden in the early summer sun. She had sketched and was now coloring in the landscape that unfolded below them. The oil paints Knut had brought her from San José were too bulky to take on their trip, so she was delicately daubing away with washes of watercolor, now filling in the distant grand cathedrals of the Ahwahnee. Knut cleared his throat. “I tell you, amigos. Robert Loblaw in San José told me the squatter courts will accept nothing other than an ironclad title. Since we have no proof of the year Las Oliveras was built, why don’t we doctor the title a little?” Lounging on another flat rock nearby, Salvador snorted. “The new survey will solidify our claim! The Board of Land Commissioners is

 

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fair in general. They just have a lack of fluency in Spanish and incompetence in Mexican law. Dozens of trustworthy men of all nationalities—Larkin, Vallejo, de la Guerra—can draw up a sketch of my rancho and testify it is sound.” “Ach!” Knut spat in disgust, and Ophir’s nostrils trembled at his fiery breath from fifteen feet away. Ophir turned toward Salvador, and they shared amused glances. “Why will you not allow me to doctor a tiny little piece of paper, or at least fashion an adobe brick that appears to be stamped with the year ‘1842?’” Now Tamasin swiveled her head, her eyes dancing with the reflected light from the distant granite temples. Her shoulders hunched in silent mirth, and with her autumn-colored hair in two long plaits, she was the picture of an alpine beauty. “We don’t need a doctored title or a fake brick,” Salvador said lazily, leaning against a boulder with his knitted hands behind his head. “It’s easy enough to prove who the true owner is.” “Ach!” Knut spat again, dismissively. “Our new investor Bob Loblaw says they have assigned our claim for title as California Land Case Number One, and they want me to show their government surveyor around! What do you think this surveyor will discover when he sees all these heinous squatters laying about—” “Squatting about.” Tamasin giggled. “—bloviating to the skies how only true Americans can own California land?” Sal tipped his sombrero back from his face so he could shoot his lawyer a look. “Knut, you were the one who was supposed to be keeping track of all the papers.” Ophir added, “And Don Salvador is a true American. Truer than any of these Yankees.” “Viva los Americanos,” Salvador said unenthusiastically. “Oh darnation!” Tamasin cried loudly. She smacked the hand that held the paintbrush onto her knee, sending up a spray of green, watery paint.

 

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Ophir rose. He needed to stretch his legs anyway, maybe go down to the creek and collect more freshly melted snow in his water skin. He meandered over to where Tamasin was slapping her knees in frustration, now crying, “Oh, Lordy!” He glanced down. The painting looked fine to him. “What happened?” “Oh, I completely ruined the face of that—that—that mountain that looks like a teapot cut in half. See? This is why I wanted to start painting in oil. You can change oil. You can’t change watercolor.” Ophir held a hand down to assist her to stand. “Well, this is just a sketch, right? So you remember what it looks like, and can do the oil painting later?” “Yes,” Tamasin agreed, tilting her head so she looked at the recumbent Salvador. Her mood abruptly returned to her usual cheerful vacancy. “That’s true. Say, if you’re going to be sitting here for a few more minutes, I think I’ll go bathe in the creek.” She fairly skipped to where the mounts were picketed, presumably to get fresh clothing or some soap, and Salvador was concerned enough to stand, too. “¿Qué?” he demanded with hands on hips. “You heard what Knut just said. A gentle flower breathing smelly fumes of squatters. Who knows what sort of lumbering hijo de burro will stagger up that mountain and decide to…Well, get immodest thoughts in his brain.” “I agree with Salvador.” Ophir stood abreast of his partner, also with hands on hips. “You have to at least let us stand guard.” Salvador slapped Ophir’s chest, to show earnest agreement. “Sí, sí. Let us stand guard, with our backs turned of course.” Coming to them with a bundle of items in her hands, Tamasin gave them her usual blandly cheerful face. Sometimes Ophir wished she would show a wider latitude of emotions than her everyday closelipped inscrutable smile with upraised arched brows. He had never seen sorrow or even pain in her face, not even when that feral husband had been manhandling her. Quite often, he had wondered what her ethereally flawless face would look like in the throes of

 

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passion, but he had always concluded she had never once viewed sex as anything pleasurable, or even desirable. He could see why, with the background of her experiences, with only the dubious teachings of the convent or the husband to show her what was what. Like a little minx, Tamasin brushed right on by them—right in between them!—perhaps to show her lack of concern. “These hills remind me of the smiling meadows of the Emerald Isle,” was all she said. Ophir looked at Sal and shrugged. “All right, then. We can water our mounts, and keep our eyes skinned for putrid pioneers at the same time.” Salvador seemed to get an impish idea then. “Knut, are you coming with us to protect Tamasin while she bathes?” Knut’s reaction was immediate and fierce. He splayed out protesting palms and his eyes went round. “No, no! I mean, ah, who else will stay here with the horses? I will be fine here alone with my firewater and this fine six-shooter piece, in case some dunderhead decides to rob us of our valuables.” They had both observed that Knut became paralyzed with a baffling sort of terror when the chance of seeing an unclothed female body part was even remotely hinted at. He got along very well with the gentler sex on an everyday basis, but the sight of a woman’s naked knee sent him screaming for the hills. They did not know the story behind it, but it was much more fun to let it remain a mystery. “All right, Knut,” said Salvador with twinkling eyes. “That sixshooter will ensure the barbáros don’t lift your hair.” Their mounts began the rugged, steep descent cautiously as Knut cried, “Barbáros? The barbáros in this vicinity do not lift hair! You are referring to the Indians of the Plains, are you not? I have never seen one of our barbáros take the hair from a man’s scalp. Have you? Mein Gott im Himmel!” Tamasin chose a spot in a deep, glassy, aquamarine pool. After picketing their mounts at the riverbed to be watered, the men

 

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ascended a thirty-foot-tall, rocky cliff where they had a good view of any intruders arriving from the other side, or above them. Tamasin, already stripped down to her chemise and drawers, waved up at them unconcerned, her moon face beaming. Salvador shaped his hand into a horn and yelled, “We’ll be right here, behind this…” He looked around. “This boulder!” Ophir finished. Tamasin must not have heard them. She poised, her hands on the lower hem of her chemise, and all cheer fell from her face. Then the happiness suddenly returned and she waved again, perhaps understanding. When she began raising the chemise over her shoulders, the men went at full chisel behind the boulder, although Ophir suspected Salvador of looking over his shoulder. They cowered as though hiding from bandits, panting as though they had run a mile. They glanced at each other and laughed. Their laughter turned fuller, throatier, until they were gripping the soil beneath themselves for support. Ophir hooked a thumb in the direction of the river. “I think we should at least crawl…” He couldn’t stop laughing. “…to a spot where we can at least see…” “See if anyone’s about,” Salvador agreed. Instead of crawling, they ambled upright like humans toward the lip of the cliff. Their heads cleared the rim of smaller boulders just barely enough so they could view Tamasin’s blindingly white form. Entirely nude. She must have been standing on the creek bottom, for she held both hands up in the air at her sides, seemingly concentrating at a point on the water’s surface. Like a dancer, she seemed to hover lightly, bouncing on her toes. If she would have looked up, she would have seen their two heads like notched crenellations atop a castle wall, peeking over the rocky lip. But she was too intent to notice them. She had unplaited her hair, and the squiggly, radiant locks flowed down her shoulder blades like fire snakes. Indeed, if she were back in

 

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the States, some may have imagined she were a witch, the way she appeared to be incanting or at least meditating with half-closed eyes, her lips vaguely moving. But she was only preparing to slide her entire body into the icy water, so blue it was almost black. When she slowly arrowed her fingertips above her head, she dove carefully into the darkness, her graceful form diffracting like an albino trout beneath the surface. The men released the breaths they’d been holding all in a whoosh, and collapsed to the ground on their backs, panting shallowly. Ophir couldn’t quite believe what he’d seen. He’d been expecting her to swim in her chemise. “Ai ai ai…” Sal whistled in approval, ineffectively with dry lips. “Double that,” Ophir agreed. He tried to swallow, couldn’t, and reached for his water skin. Tiny clear bubbles danced before his eyes, and he fumbled with the plug. Flinging one limp arm out, Sal wiggled his fingers to indicate he wanted some water, too. “Hoo. Ay dios. Encantador de piel blanca…” Enchanting white-skinned… Ophir handed Sal the water skin. “I’ll say.” He was going to say more, but Salvador overflowed with emotion. “Me gustaría lamer esta piel hermosa…” Ophir turned to his friend in disbelief. “You’d like to lick her skin?” Sal glared. “Certainly. Wouldn’t you? Ella tiene el sabor de leche fría…” “Listen. We have to keep our eyes skinned for her. It’s our duty to guard her. We’re not doing her any good lying here like jackasses, are we?” They stared hard at each other, then scrambled like iguanas on their stomachs to the ledge. “All right…” Ophir breathed. “I don’t see anyone lurking about. Do you?” “Not yet.”

 

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They remained there motionless, chins propped on their folded hands, breathing steam, looking mostly at Tamasin, and not skinning their eyes for interlopers. “She swims as though she’s accustomed to the cold water,” Sal observed. “Maybe she is, being from Ireland. Isn’t it cold there?” “The nuns probably didn’t heat their baths.” “I doubt it. Hey, Sal.” “What.” “What do you think of her breasts? I mean, is she average…for a white woman? Aren’t they usually bigger, hang down more, more like a shelf you could lay your head on?” Sal didn’t even laugh at him, evidently not wanting to take his eyes off the porcelain figure that now hopped from rock to rock below. She was frolicking by herself, as though a child! “She’s not average,” he breathed. “I have honestly never gazed upon such a splendid example of womanhood.” Sal spoke as though he were being crushed by a mountainous rock, expressing all the air from his lungs. Ophir tried to keep things light, although his prick was swelling painfully against his tough leather calzoneras. “She’s gained some weight.” He tried to speak casually, but it came out the husky grunt of a copulating animal. “That’s good. I’ve tried to get her to gain weight by giving her tortillas.” And…he couldn’t recall what else he’d been feeding her. “Yes,” Sal puffed. “She has the most perfectly balanced hourglass figure. A perfect Venus de Milo.” Ophir attempted a laugh. “Who would have thought, when we first brought her home? She looked like a mangy polecat.” All thoughts of sculpture and any pretenses at hoity-toity airs went completely out the window at what occurred next. Tamasin vaulted herself up on a rock in the middle of the pool where she had placed a small bundle. Heat emanating from the rock must have burned her ass, for she quickly shook out a towel of some sort and sat on it.

 

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“Holy mother of Joseph,” Sal whispered. She reached for a wedge of tallow soap, pressing it to the pit of her throat and tilting her chin up, clearly reveling in the feel of sun and cleanliness. With knees drawn up in a relaxed masculine manner, her pussy was bared to the bald heat bouncing off the rock. Ophir’s straining prick nearly busted his fancy calzonera buttons. He knew if he just rubbed against the ground, he’d instantly come off in an explosive fashion he could never manage to hide. He could not push away persistent thoughts of a similar sight, when he’d watched Salvador frig himself in a rampant fury while bathing in a river. That had been a sight permanently engraved on the backside of his eyelids, but now he had a fresh image to replace it. “I can’t take this anymore.” Ophir had no idea what Sal was talking about—he was too intent on finding out what Tamasin did next. Annoyed when one of the resplendent dotted orange butterflies landed on his hand, Ophir brushed it away, and when he looked back to Tamasin, he was rewarded to see that her bar of soap had slipped lower. She was now lathering up the underside of her breast, lifting it to the sun, then slithering the bar over the stiff nub of a nipple. All the while her chin was inclined almost arrogantly, eyes firmly shut, as though she knew she was torturing her two saviors. But how could she know that? She was an innocent, devoid of all knowledge of how to torment using her sex. Now, Ophir really did hump the ground. He gasped when the sudden intense pleasure shot through his testicles and up the underside of his cock, nearly erupting. Twisting onto his side with one arm thrown out for balance, he could still watch Tamasin and grip his own erection in his palm. His prick was so taut against the leather, he knew he had reached the crisis point. He simply had to do something. No, it was not healthy to keep it in. A man’s seed had to be spent or he would contract some illness. Some ague or scurvy, bleeding of the

 

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gums, some Chagres fever was bound to come of it if he did not unbutton his calzoneras and pump his prick until he shot his seed. One hand scrabbled to undo the ball and chain buttons at his hip— damn this lunkheaded sash getting in the way! He had wanted to emulate Salvador’s style of dress, but these fancy sashes, ties, and ribbons created a conundrum to getting undressed in a hurry. His prick soon leaped into his hand as he uttered a groan of relief, the bulbous crown hot in his hand, nearly burning his palm. With spread thighs, one knee pointing directly into the burning sun above, Ophir dragged his torso up to lean on one elbow and stroked his prick as lightly as he could. He did not want to miss what Tamasin was to do next, whatever that might be. A steaming sweat broke out on his skull as he craned his neck to view the girl. Ah, her soap had slipped even lower now as she washed her mons veneris, a simple strip of the lightest red-blonde positioned exactly above the juncture of her pearly white thighs. Was she being purposefully seductive, or was this an act of innocent ablution? Ophir had to think she was blameless, but he wouldn’t last long at this rate. Even the slightest touch of his palm against— “Get back, amigo!” Sal hissed from somewhere behind him. “She can see your entire estúpido head!” It was true. Just as Sal whispered that, Tamasin’s closed eyelids appeared to flutter a bit, and Ophir released his hold on his cock and scuttled away from the cliff’s edge, on his ass like a frightened crab. He was shocked to find Sal kneeling away from the cliff. The broadfalls of his calzoneras and pants were down to his knees, and the gloriously thick and muscular prick Ophir had often daydreamed about was in his fist, drooling with a drop of moisture glinting at the tip. Sal grabbed Ophir by the bicep and yanked him so they kneeled abreast of one another. Now Tamasin’s blinding image could only be seen if they straightened their backs, but Salvador’s vivid imagination had apparently been filling in for him.

 

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“Ay amigo, su piel es tan blanca,” Sal moaned, defeated. “I can’t help it, amigo. We have got to do something about this exquisite gentle flower. She’s making me so loco.” He palmed the slick crown of his prick, circling his thumb around the shining mushroom cap head. Ophir squeezed his own prick as he sat side by side with his partner. “Estoy loco también,” he agreed, falling easily into the Spanish that he didn’t utilize often. I am crazy, too. Sal leaned upon his free palm, tossing his head so the gloriously brawny throat was exposed to the roasting sun. His hat hung down his back by its chin strap, so the insolent beauty of his profile was shown to its best advantage. The slight bump in his aquiline nose, the arched flaring nostrils, the bowed, full lips. He had not shaved in a few days, and his lazy-lidded eyes fringed with such long lashes gave him the dangerous look of a bandit. How easy it would be to reach out and slide the fingertips of one hand down that hot chest, feeling the crinkle of the silken chest hair before pinching a comely, sensitive nipple! That would make Salvador gasp, his nostrils tremble, the muscles of his beautifully ridged abdomen jump with a mixture of pain and pleasure. “We have to do something, Ophir. You would not mind if I approached her?” There were enough drops of semen on the tip of that delectable jutting prick that Sal was now sliding his palm the entire length of it, making it stand out at a right angle from the steamy root of his pubic bone. Ophir was so loco that Sal’s words barely registered. Just three more pumps of his own hand would bring him off, but then it would all be over, and Ophir wanted to make this last. To be allowed just one more, two more, three more moments of admiring the imposing style of this aristocratic man, to be kneeling next to him when he shot in a wide arc, instead of revering him from the opposite bank of a pool. He tried to swallow with a dry throat. “Yes, I would mind,” he said huskily. “I would be very jealous, because I want her, too.”

 

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Sal shot Ophir a competitive, flashing look, but soon he was back to fondling the entire length of his prick, so shiny and taut it looked about to burst. “All I can think about is slurping one of those white breasts into my mouth.” Ophir gasped at the word “mouth,” for he wanted to taste Sal’s tempting, ripe lips, to have his pliant, sweet mouth under his once again. Ophir breathed, “What if I want to suck on her breast?” Sal half-opened one eye to regard Ophir skeptically. “What if we let her decide?” Sal smoothed his free hand down the flat plane of his belly and over the humid mound of his pubic bone. His fingers slithered down to grasp his balls in his hand, and that’s when Ophir’s mind must have gone blank. Ophir faced Salvador. He tentatively reached out to touch his fingertips to that alluring corrugated abdomen, the skin so hot Ophir’s fingertips nearly sizzled. Sal’s cock jumped in his fist. “Listen. We both want her. Who’s to say she wants either one of us?” Thankfully, Sal did not shove him away. Instead, he swiveled his head to face Ophir with those droopy, almost drugged eyes. The bulging head of Sal’s enormous erection nearly brushed against his prick, and Ophir drew in a jagged half-breath. Sal snaked his hand around Ophir’s neck, digging his fingers in and shaking Ophir. “I cannot rest until I sink this penis inside that sweet cunt of hers.” Like a defeated man, he gently rested his forehead against Ophir’s. Ophir’s eyelids fluttered as he thought of licking the drop of sweat at the tip of his partner’s nose. “I know how you feel.” Ophir dared his hand to stray lower, and he inhaled sharply to finally touch the sultry hair of the oily, dark pubic bone. Sal didn’t flinch when Ophir boldly tickled the covering of skin there—no, he squeezed Ophir’s neck tighter and inhaled sharply. “It’s hell having to look upon something you want, and not be able to have it.” “Ophir.” Sal gulped. “I won’t rest, I won’t give up, you know that.”

 

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Ophir twined his fingers around the trunk of the prick hard as granite, surprised to actually feel the pulse of a vein there. “Maybe she doesn’t want either one of us,” Ophir said hoarsely. He slid his hand down to meet Sal’s, cupping his balls. Brazenly, Ophir squeezed the fullness of the scrotum, so burgeoning it had drawn up close to Sal’s body, full of his sweltering, delicious jism. “Maybe we’ll never get to suckle her lovely teat, or fill her navel with our tongues.” Sal withdrew his hand from his balls, apparently content to let Ophir stimulate him. He let it dangle at his side, but Ophir had a feeling, from the rapid, shallow pants puffing against his face, that Sal was also dangerously close to orgasm. “No. That can’t be. She’s a widow. She will want sex. You saw her swim. Saw her bathe. She wants sex.” Ophir must be even bolder. “You think she wants this?” he hissed, and shamelessly gave Sal’s cock several lunging, twisting jerks of his fist that turned the man into a helpless puddle of entrails. Sal squeezed his eyes shut and tossed his head back in that vulnerable position that had got Ophir so hot moments ago. The full, muscular throat was so inviting that Ophir could not resist laying a couple of biting sucks there, but he wanted to see Sal, so he had to pull back a bit. He frigged the enormous appendage, so tight and weighty with semen that a few drops squirted out the tip. “Sí,” Sal gasped, touching his forehead to Ophir’s again. “I think she wants this. Ay dios. Do it. Dios sí, do it.” “Why would she want this, Sal?” Ophir teased, rubbing his thumb in the circular pattern that Sal seemed to favor over the bulging crown of the prick, while vigorously massaging the handful of swollen balls. “Because you are a nasty, hot, handsome hijo de puta who doesn’t give up until he gets what he wants?” That did it. Salvador exploded in Ophir’s pumping hand, hips jerking spasmodically. Sal’s strangled cries seemed to get stuck in his throat. “Ai…ai…ai…” The warm jet splashed against the underside of Ophir’s jaw as he encouraged his partner.

 

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“That’s right…Show me what Tamasin’s missing. What is she missing, Sal? Big, hot streams of your raw jism spurting out this big, long Californio prick. That’s right. Don’t stop.” He milked the penis heartily as surge after surge of delicious semen spurted, running down Ophir’s throat, over his collarbone, trickling down beneath his shirt. He slowed his pumping as only another man would know to do when Sal began hissing for breath, squeezing his eyes shut hard so little frown lines of agony and ecstasy appeared. Now Ophir petted the long cock with the flat of his hand, and massaged the balls gently, almost lovingly. The two men would not kiss, for that would have been admitting their lust was for each other and not for the girl who bathed in the river. “Buen chico…” Ophir soothed him. At last Salvador relaxed enough to exhale fully, and he wove the fingers of both hands together around Ophir’s neck. He attempted to chuckle a bit, although his panting prick still dangled at half mast between them. “Sí, exactamente.” He laughed. “Just like that.” Shaking his sweaty head so that salty drops sprayed onto Ophir’s face, Sal pulled back and said cheerily, “That is what I think the woman wants.” Ophir smiled, too, slapping his throbbing erection against Sal’s flagging one. He didn’t mind. He had many nauseating memories of being manhandled by other men, but not a one clouded his feelings for frigging a man. He’d never done it before, so there was nothing to ruin the powerful and freeing sensation of wrapping his hand around such a stupendous organ and bringing such a commanding and stalwart man, well, literally to his knees. Ophir liked the feeling of wielding this power. It meant that Salvador might return for more, when Tamasin shied away in fear. “I’ll bet it is, buddy,” he said agreeably, cradling Sal’s testicles in his palm. He could tell by Sal’s nervous laugh that he was about to pull away, to button up his calzoneras and talk about looking for whatever bandits had probably already kidnapped Tamasin by now. It was a

 

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shame to act like nothing had ever happened, but just as Sal detached himself from Ophir and turned toward the river to smooth down his shirt, an engaging lilt came from the bushes. “You devilish fellows!” Tamasin seemed perfectly unsurprised to discover her two employers facing each other with cocks slapping together. In fact, she came forward fully clothed in a fresh Californio outfit, her short skirt displaying her ankles, her head kerchief covering the fact she hadn’t replaited her coiffure, perhaps in her eagerness to laugh at them. Still on their knees, both men instantly swiveled to face her, cocks bobbing in the air, calzoneras shoved down to their knees. There was no explaining this one away, but Ophir had a feeling they didn’t have to. As the men tried to stand and stuff their cocks away from sight and laugh simultaneously, Tamasin sashayed over girlishly. “You devils! Do you do this all the time? No wonder you’re always so happy.” The men looked quizzically at each other. Salvador was the first to gain his composure. “Sure.” He turned to Ophir for affirmation. “I mean, why not, right?” “Oh, yeah, yeah,” Ophir agreed. “We do it all the time. There’s nothing wrong with it.” Salvador even started getting a bit carried away in his enthusiasm. “Right! It’s completely normal. You know, out here in the wild frontier, we men do all sorts of unexpected things.” Ophir was still buttoning the ball and chain closure below his groin, but he wanted to cut off Salvador’s relish for his subject, so he said, “You enjoy this sort of thing, right, Tamasin?” Her smile faded a bit, and she looked at his boots with uncertainty. “I…” Then she cheered. “I would like to enjoy that sort of thing, yes! I think it’s possible.” The two men shared warm, conspiratorial glances. Now they had opened up this topic, a world of possibilities were laid bare to them,

 

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but just then a “halloo” echoed down the canyon, and all three heads looked up. Knut. Tying his sash at his waist, Salvador stalked up to Tamasin. “But we don’t generally go around discussing it, do you understand? People like Knut, or my mother, or religious Californios in general don’t appreciate it.” Tamasin’s delightfully round berry mouth opened gently. “Yes,” she agreed. “Like the nuns in the asylum. They say the wasting of seed for other than procreation in marriage is a sin.” Ophir pointed at the ground. “Exactly.” He even clapped a hand on her shoulder, to solidify her membership in this new club. “Knut is afraid of ladies, in case you haven’t noticed.” “Oh, I noticed! He turns away as though burned if he happens to glance at my ankle.” “Hola amigos…” Knut was getting closer, so they had to retrieve their mounts and go meet him. They set out, and the feeling of being a team now was palpable. Ophir was struck that Knut could have seen them in the grip of eroticism like that, if Tamasin so easily peeked over the lip of the bench where they grappled. The feeling they were indulging in a bit of secretive but passionate shenanigans gave their furtive glances more meaning, and suddenly the future seemed to promise more joy, too.

 

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Chapter Eleven The going was a bit slower down into Hornitos. While Sal had been indulging in paroxysms of lust down by the river, Knut had entertained himself with the aguardiente bottle, and insisted upon blaring: “Let me go to my home in the far distant west, To the scenes of my childhood in innocence blest; Where the tall cedars wave and the bright waters flow, Where my fathers repose. Let me go, let me go.” He had demanded that Ophir bring his fiddle, but poor Ophir couldn’t very well play while he rode, so they took to traveling ahead of Knut, riding toward the San Joaquin plains, traversed by the steely glimmer of the Merced River. At intervals they had to wait for Knut to catch up, and they drank water from their skins, pissed behind trees, and now were forced to talk to pass the time. “Your parents,” Salvador said offhandedly. “You said they are long gone.” He had not quite known how to approach this, but he had an overwhelming need to know. Sal had heard that untoward and unchristian things went on in those slave plantations in the States, and it was very evident that Ophir was not of full African descent, with his burnished copper skin. “Yes?” Ophir looked up quizzically from where he was standing by his horse, chomping on a cigarrito he’d purchased at Savage’s trading post. Savage was beginning to carry ever more esoteric items, such as bolts of silk for women to sew garments, torrid sentimental

 

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novels, India rubber blankets, and brandied fruits. Overnight Bear Valley had turned into a booming town. “They are long gone. My mother passed ages ago—consumption.” Salvador walked closer. “And your father?” Predictably, Ophir glowered at him from under his silken black brows. But, perhaps thinking of the shameful intimacy they had just shared, or knowing he needed Sal’s help to get that letter sent to North Carolina—or the fact that Sal was giving him a plot of land— he allowed, “He’s alive. Just was never really…a father to me.” “Where is he?” Sal ventured. “North Carolina?” Ophir held the glower for a few more seconds, then abandoned it with a sigh of disgust, fiddling around in his pommel bags, presumably looking for the phosphorous matches to light his cigarrito. “Yes, North Carolina,” he admitted through gritted teeth. Salvador tried another approach. “You’re very light-skinned, like me. I’m obviously not a true full-blood Californio—it’s obvious my father was from Boston, and—” Despite all Sal’s machinations, Ophir exploded at last. Slamming the pommel bag against the horse’s withers, he faced Sal and yelled, “All right! My master is my father! Is that what you wanted to hear? Good God almighty, amigo! And yes, this is why I have no siblings— all my siblings grew up white in the big house!” He returned to the pommel bags, angrily tossing items he did not want onto the ground. Salvador was sorry he had prodded. He further ventured, “We have more in common than we knew, both being half-caste. It’s been difficult for me to explain in Californio society why I’m not as dark as the rest of them.” Ophir snorted again. “Yes, and your father was a well-respected ranchero who acknowledged his paternity. He converted to Catholicism and was given the name Juan Palomares y José, your mother told me. That’s why your surname isn’t Dearborn.” “True,” Sal swiftly admitted, bending down to sweep the box of matches from where Ophir had tossed them. Standing erect to face his

 

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partner, he said gently, “I was trying to describe parallels between us, perhaps to express the closeness, the devotion and regard I have for you.” Californios could be quite florid in their speech, and Sal meant to utilize it to his greatest advantage. “And if my father was not white, I would be standing here speaking to you in Spanish right now. Our conversation would mostly consist of cravings for beef and descriptions of horses.” That brought a flicker of a smile to Ophir’s harsh face, and he accepted the box of matches. Sal noted that Ophir had somehow managed, during one of their breaks to wait for Knut, to trim with his razor the short goatee he liked to affect. It gave him the look of a handsome but predatory satyr. It made Sal achingly aware that he had best step up his “exquisite” toilet, if he wished to remain in competition with Ophir for Tamasin’s hand. Perhaps she preferred men with beards, and Sal was childishly clean-shaven, although this week he had not shaved in days. Men simply didn’t shave when on the trail. “Yes,” Ophir agreed. “Or we’d be gambling away our gold dust on monte.” That was true. Californios did love to gamble. Sal was about to say something else, but Knut’s warbling came into earshot then, bouncing off the golden hilltops like the Germanic yodeling Sal had been unfortunate enough to hear once. Tamasin emerged from the chaparral, and Sal couldn’t tell if she glanced at him or Ophir with more favor. They mounted and continued down the succession of oak-studded ridges, but Sal was lost in deep thought. He tried to ride close to Tamasin to give her the impression he was also her protector, as he knew she viewed Ophir as her protector, when he’d shielded her with his body. That gave Ophir a distinct advantage over Sal, while Sal would be forever known as the one who had ruthlessly plugged her worthless husband. But that had been a form of protection! Niall Norris may have even picked off Tamasin herself, the way he’d been flailing that piece about!

 

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Sal pondered further about his recent physical congress with Ophir. Of course they had been overcome with carnality, watching Tamasin floating in the river like a mermaid. Their cocks were both hard—why not do something about it? It was perfectly normal for youths to frig themselves in the same room while lewdly discussing the merits of various girls. It did give Sal a shuddering pause for thought that Ophir had stepped beyond those societal boundaries and had taken Sal’s penis into his own hand, but it was just the natural progression of things. Sal did not consider himself a sodomita. He was merely a man with a larger than normal lust for things of a sexual nature. That seemed to go hand in hand with his athletic prowess. He desired to lasso cattle, to horse race, to bait the bulls and bears…Why not seek out every possible avenue of physical satisfaction to satiate his passion? And of course another man would be more proficient in the ways of frigging, having doubtless done it to himself thousands of times. In fact, as Sal now observed the sultry gyration of Ophir’s muscular haunches in the enormous Californio saddle, he was confident they would probably indulge in physical congress again. Or, he hoped so. Tamasin had not seemed shocked to discover them in the throes of eroticism, so it would not be untoward if they were to be discovered like that again. Perhaps they could even use it to help educate the naïve and unschooled woman who had probably only experienced congress at the bumbling, soaked hands of that loathsome husband. Yes, watching Ophir’s splendid purplish cock swell and rise and stand up, pulsating in the air between them, indeed, that had inspired Salvador. He wished to return the favor Ophir had done him, of frigging him to completion, that salty, warm semen splashing over his own chest, gobs sliding down his abdomen. He was fascinated with Ophir’s sculpted beauty, that was all. He had no desire at all to be a sodomita as a general rule. They were not effeminate men, like those exquisites who paraded in San José and seemed incapable of picking up a reata.

 

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The babble and shouts of the exuberant town of Hornitos wafted up when they were a half mile away. The quartet of riders from Las Oliveras plunged into the hodgepodge of the main street, where the draw of gambling appeared even stronger than upon Sal’s last visit. “Americans” played faro and poker, relegating monte for the Spaniards and lansquenet for Frenchmen. Indeed, nobody appeared to be engaged in any useful occupation at all aside from the Sonoran arrieros, muleskinners who brought goods into town. Sal’s horse crunched many broken bottles and oyster tins underfoot. “Something’s different,” Ophir observed guardedly. “Sí,” Sal agreed, although he couldn’t quite put a finger on what it was. Surprisingly, it was Knut who pointed it out. “There are many less Spaniards! Note the preponderance of poker and faro tables, and almost the complete absence of monte! I had heard a rumor they were trying to evict foreigners from Hornitos. A very prominent Texan was tossed out of the Yuba River up north because he owned slaves, and all peón and patrón relationships are being frowned upon. This Mr. Green has come here to stir anti-greaser sentiment.” He seemed to flicker his knowing eyelids in Ophir’s direction. “Son, you may want to release Mr. Ophir here from attending our meeting with Mr. McCarthy.” “I’ll do no such thing!” Sal said hotly. “We’re not a masterservant team—we’re partners!” However, part of Knut’s speech did sink its tentacles into Sal’s brain. Was he imagining that people were staring longer at them as they attempted to navigate the cluttered, trashy street? In a town where the most motley collection of vices were freely practiced in the full noonday sun, why were citizens pausing like statues and staring at them in wonderment, as though their broadfalls were unbuttoned? Even that eventuality would not have caused such stunned reactions, and Sal couldn’t discern if the citizens were disgusted at the sight of them, or intrigued. He finally concluded it must be the beauteous presence of Tamasin that had

 

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residents so astonished—here, as in all gold-digging towns, pretty young women were so rare as to be mythological creatures, and Tamasin may as well have been a mermaid for all the astounded stares she received. But perhaps it wasn’t only Tamasin who caused such a reaction… “Sal.” Ophir hitched his chin at an approaching fellow. This purposeful fellow was a giant thug of a man, his face as red as a campfire as he shouldered his way through the gambling throng. Men fell away at his touch like twigs pushed to the banks of a roaring river, some of the unfortunates even pitching face-first into their gaming tables, but the thug paid them no mind, and nobody certainly raised a hand to him. “Mr. Palomares!” With shoulders squared, the buffoon addressed Knut. Knut sat up proudly. “How did you know that I am Mr.—” he started to say, but Sal cut him off. “I am Don Salvador Palomares,” he declared with irritation. Knut looked offended to have not been allowed to be Don Salvador for more than one second. “Who are you, and what is your business?” “Mr. McCarthy says you should proceed to the Legislature of a Thousand Drinks, and meet with him there.” The thug reversed his direction and lumbered back down the street. Ophir shrugged. “I guess we should follow. Although what will we do with Tamasin while we’re having this confab? We can’t very well leave her in the street with these ruffians.” “No, not at all. And Knut will turn into a crybaby if we try to leave him out. I suppose we should take her in with us.” “If this place really does have a thousand drinks, she could amuse herself with some aguardiente. Didn’t it seem strange that lout immediately knew who you were, as though we were expected here?” The thuggish fellow vanished into one of the many buildings that had been built in the past couple of months. There was no sign out

 

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front, and no drunks were describing zigzag Virginia fences in and out the door, so it couldn’t be an ordinary grog shop. “Maybe it is sort of an office building, such as we are building in Bear Valley?” Knut suggested when several efficient Americans leaped forward to take their reins. “But I would really like to know more about these thousand drinks.” The interior proved to be a large room about twenty feet long, a wide array of different rickety tables and chairs lit by whale oil lamps. Indeed there was an rough oak bar and a barkeep who wasn’t very busy, as there were only three men seated at a center table, so Knut made a beeline for one of the many drinks he was assured were there, taking Tamasin with him. The two partners approached the center table, and Tyke McCarthy removed his threadbare, misshapen hat. Apparently for one who styled himself the alcalde of this burg, he couldn’t afford a better hat. “Mr. Palomares,” he sneered. He did not extend his hand. “Last time we met, you introduced me to an oak tree and stole some of my workers.” Salvador placed his sombrero on the greasy table, and nodded guardedly. “Yes, I did. California is a free state, and workers are free to go wherever the pay and the treatment is the best.” “Well, and thank you for asking me how my head is doing. I see you’ve brought your contingent with you—a colored slave”—he looked Ophir up and down as though he were a steaming pile of cow’s entrails—“and your Swedish manservant, as well as a…” “Yes, this is my partner, Ophir, as I introduced you before,” Sal said quickly, as Tyke’s eyeballs were already glazing over with a prurient appetite at the sight of Tamasin. Sal did, however, extend his hand to the stranger wearing an extremely wide-brimmed felt hat. “And you might be…?” The small-eyed fellow shook his hand, but said guardedly, “Thomas Jefferson Green.” The anti-greaser slave-owner narrowed his tiny eyes at Sal. Sal had a feeling this meeting would not go well.

 

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The third member of the meeting was the burly enforcer, no one introduced him, and no one was sitting down. Sal said, “We’re here to discuss collecting rents, and the loss of many of my cattle.” “Oh, is that so?” Tyke laughed and raised his empty glass in the direction of the barkeep. “Sam, a round of whiskeys all around.” “No, thank you,” said Ophir. “Thank you, no,” Sal echoed. “Some water would be nice.” “Water?” scoffed Tyke. He laughed with his partner, Mr. Green. It was a gruesome sight in one so slimy and repugnant. Sal certainly didn’t want to have to look at his corroded teeth again. “Have you ever seen anyone drink water in these parts, Tom Jeff?” Tom Jeff shared Tyke’s amusement, and his teeth weren’t nearly as noisome. “Maybe Mr. Palomares is so interested in water because he’s fixing to steal all the Merced water for his own operations upriver.” Sal frowned. “Steal? You can hardly steal water, Mr. Green. If anything, you’re stealing it from me, as I own this entire part of the river.” Tom Jeff’s face reddened and Tyke cut him off in a show of forced jollity. “And maybe that’s why he wants a glass of it back, Tom Jeff. Now, here’s Mr. Frostad, how are you, my fine fellow? I see you don’t consider yourself above drinking our whiskey.” Knut gestured with his whiskey glass. “Jah, Mr. McCarthy, I find it most interesting to compare the different vintages of whiskey from one part of this country to another—” Tyke nearly bowled over his chair in his attempts to greet Tamasin, who had been hiding behind Knut, soaking her lips in her whiskey glass. “And who might I have the pleasure of greeting?” he said slimily, while Tamasin yanked her hand away from his paw. Salvador stepped to Tamasin’s side, insinuating himself bodily between Tyke and his paramour. “She is nobody, she is our housemaid.” Already he intended to apologize later to Tamasin for

 

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that remark, but he didn’t want Tyke paying undue attention to her. He took her by the upper arm and led her to an empty chair while saying, “Now, we have business to discuss. Knut here has taken my survey of my land, and filed it in San José—” “As California Land Case Number One!” Knut pointed out with alacrity. “—so it’s only a matter of time before my ownership is acknowledged. Most everyone in and around Mariposa and Bear Valley have agreed to pay rent for the use of my land in their mining operations. Now you, as alcalde”—Sal loathed bestowing Tyke with that moniker, but flattery would help in this instance—“have the power to persuade people around Hornitos to follow. Knut, show him the claim you filed.” As he shuffled around in his purse, Knut remarked, “Why do they call this building the Legislature of a Thousand Drinks? It does not appear to be an ordinary grog shop, more of a headquarters for your League.” “Ah, that’s easy,” Tyke replied happily. “Tom Jeff Green here has served in three Southern legislatures. He had a mighty idea to come to California from Texas and use slaves to grow cotton.” “Which is why he was ejected from the Yuba River,” Ophir mentioned. Tyke ignored Ophir. “So Mr. Green here is going back to San José to run for state senator. He has a splendid saloon there known as the Legislature of a Thousand Drinks, so we started up this one here.” Sal frowned. “And what is your business in Hornitos then, Mr. Green? Shouldn’t you be in San José trying to win office?” Tyke accepted the paper from Knut, but did not even look at it. “Tom Jeff is spreading the word of a new law about to take effect in California.” He looked Sal levelly in the eyes. “This new law will render all of your rents obsolete, and all things Spanish and negro will vanish from these rivers.” Sal barked out, “What new law?”

 

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Tyke and Tom Jeff shared gloating looks. Tyke allowed Tom Jeff to speak, as a member of a high-minded body such as the legislature. “The Foreign Miners Tax Law!” Tom Jeff crowed. “Yes sirree, all these damned lubricators who are not native or naturalized citizens will have to pay California taxes of twenty dollars a month for a mining permit. This splendid plan will bolster the state’s bankrupt treasury, and please Americans! The prospector will be able to evict all aliens, we can undercut the agents of foreign bankers who protect immigrants, and collectors will make a commission of three dollars on each permit sold.” He spread a wide arm to encompass the entire state of California. “These greasers are but one degree above the beasts of the field.” Tyke cheerfully thrust a fist into the air. “The great American people forever!” Sal was so enraged he couldn’t trust himself to speak. He wanted to reach across the table and grab this Tom Jeff person by the shirtfront—no, better yet, merely cock his pistol and put a ball through his forehead, thus ending any furtherance to this misguided law that had obviously been conceived in drink, Sir Barleycorn to blame. Knut even appeared a bit concerned about this turn of events. “I am attending the first legislature in San José also. But I cannot say as I would vote for this. Twenty dollars a month is extortion! We are only charging men five dollars rent. Sonoran miners cannot afford twenty dollars a month. And if they leave, who will be the arrieros? Who will bring goods to town?” “Sí,” Sal agreed, finally able to speak through clenched teeth. “Sonorans are mild in spirit, content to endure, willing to suffer. They are exactly the men for the job of mining.” “And they gamble!” Knut pointed with his whiskey glass. “Americans save their gold or send it home. Sonorans, Peruvians, and Chileans, they all gamble away their dust.”

 

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Tyke said smugly, “They can claim protection of the law if they pay their tax.” Ophir asked, “What about foreign-born Frenchmen, Irishmen…Australians? You said foreign-born, non-native. Will they pay the tax as well?” Tom Jeff raised his whiskey glass. “More whiskeys, Sam!” Was that his answer? Tyke appeared to attempt to clarify the issue when he exhorted, “If slaves are prohibited from the mines, then so should the refuse population from Chile, Peru, and Mexico! They are as bad as any free negroes of the North, or the worst slaves of the South.” Sal seethed. “So you are barring them, then? Barring them from my land? If California wants to enact this Miners Tax on public lands then I cannot stop them, but I control which laws I enact on my own property. And I will instruct all of my men to shoot on sight anyone seen stealing my cattle. I’ve been losing cattle and wasting time engaging in relentless guerilla warfare in my own backyard.” Tyke handed back Sal’s claim. “I’m sorry, Mr. Palomares. I have no say over what these greasers do in their spare time. When I see a greaser approaching, I cock my rifle and cover him with it. I call to him to raise his hand away from his lasso, and I keep my rifle on him until he passes. You should consider doing the same.” He clapped Tom Jeff on the shoulder. “Down with the Spaniards! Right, Tom Jeff?” Sal said with narrowed eyes, “I will keep a loaded pistol, cool eyes, and steady nerves.” These men were drunk with whiskey and patriotism. Now they were blaming Spaniards for stealing his cattle, when Sal’s own men had seen only Yankees engaged thus. The Yankees were the léperos, grimy adventurers and exiles from civilization. How could a few men hold out against the thousands who were invading his land? There was no hope—without an army of his own, he could not enforce the rule of his own land. It was predictable that Tyke would deny any involvement in the cattle rustling, and Sal

 

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would order his vaqueros to shoot anyone they saw. Sal reached down to snake his fingers around Tamasin’s arm, to indicate it was time to leave, but the enterprising Knut had more questions. “I have noticed a distinct absence of ‘greasers’ in Hornitos, compared to the last time I was here. Have you already begun eviction, although the law is not yet in effect?” Tyke and Tom Jeff fairly knocked each other over in their eager elbowing. Tyke burst out with, “Take a look for yourself!” The three Americans strode to the front door of the Legislature of a Thousand Drinks, and Tyke gestured to a guard to fling open the door. The four citizens of Las Oliveras slowly emerged into the street. Sal was unsure what they were looking at until Tyke—gruesomely actually touching his arm to steer him in the right direction—pointed at a fellow hammering a poster to the side of a building across the street. Sal now saw there were dozens of such posters decorating the downtown plaza, and he went to the nearest one to read it. MINERS LAW effective imediatly All greazers, Chilanos and Prooveans must leave Turn over arms to Americans! 15 days to depart efectiv NOW! And, pathetically, even as Sal read this poster two bedraggled Sonoran prospectors approached him holding out their pistols as though they were poisonous snakes, and enquired meekly, “¿Dónde entrego mi pistola?” Where do I hand over my pistol? Sal shot back angrily, “¡Eso es ridículo! Mantenga sus pistolas!” That is ridiculous! Keep your pistols! Over Sal’s shoulder, Ophir’s words were so hot he could feel it against his neck. “Miners Law is the hanging code of Judge Lynch.” Tyke McCarthy exulted, “The great American people forever!” “Viva los Americanos,” Knut said without enthusiasm.

 

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Sal tore down the poster and purposefully ripped it into many squares right in front of Tyke. “Here is what I think of your Miners Law, Mr. McCarthy.” All expression fell from Tyke’s face, and the four Los Oliveras residents stalked back to their horses. Sal knew he would not get a moment’s peace as long as Tyke McCarthy was squatting on his land.

 

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Chapter Twelve Tamasin raced up the outdoor steps of the hacienda to reach the second floor. “Doña Carmen, Doña Carmen!” she cried. The rodeo was in full swing, and Doña Carmen no longer could tolerate social events. She had been carrying on about it for three weeks now. Every time a response to an invitation arrived from an outlying rancho, Carmen would stamp around in a huff nearly in tears over these “invaders” infringing upon her solitude. Salvador had explained to Tamasin that she’d been increasingly reclusive since his father had died, to the point where she currently could not bear the friendliest visitor. But this was definitely an exception to the rule! After pounding down the outside veranda, Tamasin still had to knock at Doña Carmen’s door. “It is very exciting, Doña Carmen! You must come out to see this! A big prize-fighter has arrived from Hornitos”—she didn’t bother explaining the prizefighter was the same thug who had sat in on the Hornitos meeting with Tyke and Tom Jeff, like some kind of glowering bodyguard—“and Ophir has agreed to fight him! Please open your door!” The heavy wooden door opened a few inches, and Doña Carmen’s wan, pale face appeared in the crack. “Ophir is fighting? Madre de dios…” “Yes, yes, you must come right away and see him defeat this…this giant pendejo! He is one of the babosos who are stealing our cattle and collecting all the rents for themselves, so won’t it be exciting to see Ophir best him?” Behind her, vaqueros, farmers, housemaids, the stable hand Roberto, even Ascención were running like greased lightning for the

 

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field where they had formerly been holding horse races. Tamasin had not been able to watch the races as she was stuck in the kitchen preparing puchero stew, but she’d been told that Salvador was neck and neck with Sebastián Nuñez of Rancho Orestimba from down in the San Joaquin Valley. It must have been a very glamorous sight, Salvador’s serape billowing, enormous Californio spurs flashing while the crowd of hundreds shrieked in delight. The winner was undecided, so they would race again later, and Tamasin would not miss that one! “Madre de dios,” Carmen repeated in an exhausted voice. What had she to be exhausted about? She never did anything. But maybe that was part of her illness, constant exhaustion. “I cannot come. I cannot be around all of those people.” Oh, don’t be silly! Tamasin wanted to scream. You are being absurd—no one will be paying attention to you, they’ll all be watching the fight. But now she looked for a gracious way out, so she could watch the fight herself. “All right, that’s fine, I’ll report back to you who the winner is. Although we know it’ll be Ophir, right?” “Tamasin!” Twirling about, Tamasin looked below and saw Sal standing there, hands on hips, sombrero hanging down his back by its string. Was he here to yell at her for leaving the food cooking in the kitchen? Or the beef roasting in the outdoor beehive-shaped oven? “Yes, Salvador?” He waved an expansive arm. “Come! Did you not hear Ophir is fighting that brute Abel from Hornitos?” Salvador wished her to accompany him? Tamasin could not clatter down the stairs fast enough, practically being swept into Sal’s waiting arms as he strode with long-legged steps toward the field. “Am I to be the umpire?” she asked excitedly. “Or can I be a second?” His arm around her shoulders hurried her along. “It was decided to have an impartial umpire, so we chose Basil Thompson from the

 

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Stanislaus River. I wanted Francisco Rico or José Castro from Rancho Del Rio Estanislao, but Thompson won out, probably because he’s white.” “And the seconds?” His dazzling smile was so brilliant it nearly blocked out the outside world, the milling crowd around them. “I am Ophir’s second. Tyke of course is Abel’s.” It had not been a pleasant event when Tyke had shown up with a group of right-hand men, but since it was a rodeo, fandango, and other social events that were supposed to be full of frivolity, Sal had decided to overlook their bad blood. He had also instructed cooks and barkeeps to withhold liquor from the League men, but now Tamasin asked slyly, “Should I fill Tyke’s water bottle with whiskey?” With hands on her shoulders, Sal appeared to have found a satisfactory position for her to watch the fight, and he pressed down on her as though to plant her in the ground. “Ophir doesn’t need such an advantage. Gloria a Ofir!” He bellowed so suddenly and loudly, her ears fairly rang, and then he was off through the crowd, emerging only at the corner of the impromptu ring they had erected in the middle of the field of flattened grass. Tamasin refused to be embedded, though, and wandered off to stand next to Ascención. They had become friends of sorts, uniting in their giggled jokes about Doña Carmen’s terrible cooking, and Ascención appreciated that Tamasin enjoyed doing laundry, while she herself abhorred it. “There is no one in the kitchen,” Tamasin acknowledged. Ascención fluttered a hand at her. “No matter. Oh, look at Señor Ophir! Have they greased up his…his…” Tamasin dared to utter the words. “His torso? Yes, it does look like it.” Ophir stood in his corner as though reined in by Sal, who roughly massaged his bunched, shiny shoulders. The ridges of his muscular abdomen gleamed in the sun like the hot dunes of sand

 

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Tamasin had crossed in Utah Territory. Now Tamasin played the game with the housekeeper. “Señor Ophir is so very…very…” “Very exquisite!” the housekeeper declared brightly, then seemed to blush. But Ascención was right. The Californio women, wives and daughters of rancheros who owned similarly vast tracts of land bordering Las Oliveras, these women were obviously enraptured with the sight of Ophir’s gleaming torso as he champed at the bit, punching the air and bouncing in place. Tamasin heard flustered sighs of “que encantado” and “tan viril!” in the air about her, and the housekeeper became so modest at her own apparent thoughts she even lowered her veil, while continuing to sneak peeks at Ophir. Abel was merely a brawler, a brute with plenty of meat to his bones but no discernable muscle. Tamasin recalled the way he’d shouldered aside hapless gamblers in Hornitos, and she knew he could crush Ophir merely by falling on him. That was her main fear as round one was called and the two men sprang like toys from a box. They were immediately upon each other with a flurry of jabs to the gut and upper chest, wherever they could get a fist in. Tamasin had to shove aside the rowdy vaqueros who blocked her view and was elbowed in the gut herself. By that time the round had ended, Ophir back in his corner, bouncing around on tiptoe while Sal slathered more grease on his chest. It was quite stimulating, actually, knowing what Tamasin knew about their intimacy. To watch Sal’s spread palm applying what was probably manteca, which Californios used in lieu of butter, to Ophir’s flexed, hairless pectorals—and recalling their first boxing match when they had grappled with erect penises in an apparent effort to rub and hump each other and satisfy their lewd urges—Tamasin felt privy to a profound secret. She didn’t think there was anything wrong with two men touching each other—indeed, thinking about it roused her to greater heights at night when she explored her own unnatural vices. Seeing their two naked erections after bathing near Bear Valley—

 

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Ophir’s fist clamped so tightly around Salvador’s jutting, proud penis that his knuckles well-nigh turned white—had lost Tamasin for many hours in private thought. Their beautiful, hard, elongated erections were not repellant. She had cringed in horror many a time when approached by Niall’s disgusting appendage. She had even wondered toward the end if she was simply a woman who loathed congress with men, as she suspected most of her fellow pioneers did. Tamasin had seen many a pioneering fellow emerge from a tent or a Conestoga wagon to pee after what was obviously congress, congress so silent the woman uttered nary a peep, so how pleasant could it be? While the men, as always, grunted like squealing swine stuck in a mud hole. That made sense. They were only doing it so as not to waste seed, to produce children. No, the penises of her men—her men, she thought with a thrill— they were attractive, beautiful even, and the lovely joyous way they touched, stroked, and held each other had Tamasin’s imagination running wild. Salvador’s long tapered fingers slinking around the back of Ophir’s powerful neck. Ophir’s fingertips tickling the flat athletic plane of Salvador’s abdomen while Sal thrust his hips forward. And their long, drawn-out kiss while boxing had betrayed more pent-up rapture than Tamasin had ever thought possible. If two men wanted to waste seed in such a sensual manner, who was she to stop them? No, Tamasin just wanted to find a way to participate. Why did men get to have all of the fun? Elbowing aside another vaquero who viciously whipped his sombrero in the air as though looking to decapitate someone, Tamasin clung to Ascención’s sleeve and watched Ophir and Abel pummel each other. Abel seemed of the “brawler” sort, what Ophir had explained was a boxer who lacked finesse and mobility and punched in a predictable pattern. So Ophir was able to land many straight rights and left hooks as he hopped around the brutish fellow like a rabbit, dodging the long, swinging wallops, backing off from the

 

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punches before bending at the waist to connect a powerful straight left to the thug’s belly. Abel looked as though he expelled a sudden “ooph,” his craggy and uneven face almost comically frozen in a surprised expression. The crowd roared to a fury, their huzzahs ringing and echoing around her, some of the men even jumping on the makeshift ropes of the ring while Tyke’s League men went about hitting them over the head with sticks to back them off. One of the League convicts came to Tamasin’s side to hit the enthusiastic vaquero, yelling, “Down with Spaniards!” “There’s no need for that!” Tamasin shouted, tugging on the League man’s sleeve. “He can’t be near the ring!” Tamasin didn’t even have any room to put her hands indignantly on her hips. “Let’s say I order some of my men to hit your men over the head with sticks. Let’s see how you like that. I don’t see them staying away from the ring!” It was true—two Australians gripped Abel’s arms, preventing him from going down flat. Tamasin did not think this was playing by the rules, but Abel was soon capable of standing unassisted, and like a rampaging bull, he nearly had steam coming from his nostrils by now. When he was released he charged at Ophir before Thompson gave the call, with the result that he rammed his big head into Ophir’s chest before Salvador could even scramble away, bowling both men over. The crowd pitched into Abel. A farmer sat on the shoulders of a vaquero, emitting the piercing scalping shriek of the Comanches. Tamasin, unaware that she herself was screaming at the very top of her lungs so they later ached, tore her fingernails into the vaquero’s shoulder, and was kicked in the head by the farmer. “No fair!” she bellowed, and even Ascención was shrieking, “No es justo!” Tyke merely leaned against the ropes grinning while Abel spread his arms in preparation for one giant dive into the dirt, atop Ophir and, by default, Sal. Tamasin made a circuit of the ring to get closer to her

 

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men, but by the time she had shoved aside all of the whooping and wailing caballeros and convicts that crushed the ring, she saw that Ophir had managed to scramble out of Abel’s way. So Abel’s thick body had crushed Salvador—his second, who was not even a combatant! It would have been humorous if it was someone she didn’t know, being squashed like a beetle under the waving, blubbery limbs of this gargantuan lummox. Risking a clobber to the head, Tamasin gripped the ropes and shrieked, “Ophir! Get him off Salvador!” Ophir, perhaps recalling the rules that said he could not kick—as though Abel was playing by the rules!—leaned over and grabbed Abel’s bare shoulder so viciously that Tamasin later saw ten claw marks there. “Get up, you brawling ass!” Ophir shouted. He finally succeeded in tearing the monster off Salvador, and swung him wide the full length of the ring. Abel crashed into the ropes with such velocity he tore the stakes from the ground. He halfway flattened about four spectators, but enough men remained to shove him back into the ring, and he now came at Ophir in an upright position. Meanwhile Salvador had rolled and bounced from the ring apparently no worse for wear, panting from having all the air compressed from him. “Thompson!” Sal bellowed, pointing angrily at the ground. “He jumped us before the round even started! What are you doing, you pendejo?” “I’m trying to call time,” Thompson insisted, “but no one’s listening to me!” “¡Véte ál carajo!” Sal growled. Go to hell! “Butting with the head is foul!” Tamasin tried to tell Thompson. Indeed, Ophir was bestowing a dizzying array of violent jabs to the bully’s stomach and chest, and Abel merely resembled a wall that would not budge. One of Ophir’s wide swinging uppercuts caught the brute in the forehead and down he went, but not before clutching Ophir by the biceps and bringing him down with him.

 

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Now they rolled in the dirt, made a bit muddy by a recent summer rain. Tamasin could tell Ophir was trying to get loose, for if he just stood and waited for a count to ten, he’d be the victor, if the bovine animal could not raise himself. Once again Abel managed to pin poor Ophir, who was unable to connect a single blow with his limbs agitating under the fleshy mass. But apparently there was nothing in the rules about not kneeing anyone in the groin, for Ophir was finally able to do just that, and Abel rolled off him, roaring like a steer. Leaping to his feet, Ophir turned his back on the thug and strode over to Thompson. “Call ‘time’!” he shouted angrily. “I am objecting, so both men should return to their corners!” Sal added. But Thompson was immersed in calling out the seconds since Abel had been down. Rallying now to the cheers of the convict portion of the crowd, Abel clambered to his feet and took a roaring running start in a beeline for Ophir. “Ophir! Ophir!” Sal and Tamasin cried the alarm with wide eyes, pointing to the approaching battering ram. Why did Ophir appear so unconcerned, when not only Tamasin and Salvador, but the largest portion of the crowd, were entreating him to turn around? Perhaps he’d been bashed in the head and couldn’t hear, for he merely faced Thompson with fists jammed onto his hips and lower lip angrily jutting, arguing over his absence of timekeeping skills! “Ophir! Ophir! Turn around!” Tamasin screamed. Abel was so close Tamasin could hear his Paleolithic yell of infuriated agony—he fully intended on pinning poor flailing Ophir beneath his weight again. He ran at full chisel with outspread fists pummeling the air, and it was a vast anticlimax when Ophir merely turned calmly, took a step and a half to one side, and bashed him with a fist to the cheekbone. Instead of continuing forward under his own steam, Ophir had clobbered Abel off track, and he veered to the left,

 

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resembling a wild fandango dancer with crossed eyes before collapsing in a heap. Thompson was on top of things for once, and he quickly counted down the seconds Abel remained in a pile in the mud. Wreathed in smiles now, Ophir climbed out of the ring as the crowd of maybe two hundred surged in his direction. Tamasin only caught a brief glimpse of Tyke standing over Abel, shaking his head with disgust, looking as though he wanted to kick Abel. Tyke would later argue that striking a blow below the waist in the testicular area was foul, but Salvador countered that deliberately falling on an antagonist was foul, and by that time the crowd’s opinion was heavily weighted in favor of Ophir, so he collected all the winnings. Tamasin was smashed up against Ophir’s chest, which she did not mind at all, but he smelled of fresh dirt mingled with sweat. “Let me draw you a bath,” she said into his ear. “You want to be clean for the fandango, and I’ll wager all of these women wish to dance with you.”

 

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Chapter Thirteen Sal Palomares paced around the kitchen agitatedly, finally breaking down and pouring himself a glass of champagne. Let me draw you a bath, Tamasin had whispered to Ophir. Why, how absurd! Ophir could bathe in the river along with everyone else! The only bath tub they had belonged to Doña Carmen, and Tamasin had even forced some men to carry it down to Ophir’s apartments! This was a ridiculous show to put on for a fellow who had just knocked out a bully with one punch. How difficult had that been, anyway—one punch, that was all it took? How much effort was that? One punch. Sal could have done that himself. Sal fumed, supervising the boiling of the water for Ophir’s grand bath. He counted how many kettles of hot water the housemaids carried down to Ophir’s outbuilding. Would the bath be full enough by now for Ophir to step into? Salvador could not allow activities such as that to occur without his presence! Ophir could not win Tamasin simply because he had stuck a fist in the right place at the right time. Gulping his second glass of champagne, an idea struck Salvador. He left the house, going around back to ascend the staircase to the second story. He knocked only briefly on his mother’s door before entering. She had heavy cloths over the windows and the room was sooty black as Carmen’s empty shell of a body slumbered. She slept about eighteen hours a day, normally. So Sal knew he didn’t have to be quiet as he went to her dressing table and opened an ornately carved and inlaid box.

 

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Some of her jewelry had been handed down from her antecedents, the colonists of the DeAnza expedition who had first located the sites where San Francisco and San José would be established. Those colonists, for all their hardships and deprivation, certainly had some valuable jewelry. All of it was set in the fine Mexican silver from Taxco. Salvador fingered past many necklaces and bracelets boasting turquoise, coral, topaz, and amethyst, but the one Sal sought was an opal necklace. He found it in its own rectangular wooden box lined with velvet. He had to take it out onto the veranda to verify it was the same one Carmen had shown him. Yes, these stones were cut with a convex surface, and when he turned it in the bright shade of the awning above, it exhibited the red and yellow hyacinth and fire-red reflections. About twenty of these gemstones were set into flowery, filigreed silver, and the largest opal of all would sit high on Tamasin’s chest, right between her round uplifted breasts. Placing the box into his vest pocket, Salvador stamped down the stairs, on a mission. This necklace will be for your bride, Carmen had told him. And Sal had to claim his bride before his partner, that pendejo Ophir, swayed her with his own charm. And impressed her with his sculpted, muscular, and nude body. **** Tamasin had no thoughts of actually assisting Ophir to bathe. He was obviously capable of doing that himself, though already some deep green bruising had appeared on his abdomen and chest. Tamasin was familiar with bruising, and after poking her fingers into the affected areas, had determined there was nothing broken. She had been up to the kitchen to pound some chilies into powder in the mortar, mixed it with manteca and was carrying it back down to the outbuilding when she heard boots stepping quickly behind her.

 

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“Buenas tardes, Señor Salvador!” she said brightly. She was always glad to see him. He walked abreast of her, the first knuckles of his fingers embedded in his vest pockets. “Miss Tamasin.” His sombrero hung by its string down his back, and she was glad for that. He had such a beautiful head of thick glossy curls, night black but for streaks of gold and chestnut. Tamasin noted that ever since their journey to Hornitos, Sal had somehow managed to maintain a beard that consistently looked about three days old. It gave him the look of a very bandido, the way she imagined Joaquin Murieta must look, but on Sal it was not intimidating. “And what is that you’re carrying?” “It’s a poultice for bruises. I tested our pugilist for broken bones and I don’t think he has any.” “Hah. Maybe you should have been the second. I am accomplished at creating broken bones, but not at fixing them.” “That was an exciting bout, was it not? I thought Tyke McCarthy would have an apoplectic fit.” They stepped into the shade of the outbuilding’s veranda and approached Ophir’s door. Tamasin hesitated instinctively, then remembered that Ophir would not be embarrassed for Sal to see him naked. However, when she raised her free hand to the door handle, Sal reached out and stayed her. “Wait, Tamasin. I have…I have something to give you.” Her curiosity was further piqued by his serious manner. He took the mortar from her and placed it on the ground. Whatever could it be? Some food item, no doubt, as he and Ophir had constantly remarked how they needed to fatten her up. But he didn’t appear to have any food secreted about his person, merely emanating the perfume of cow hides and sweet grass, those manly scents that stirred her lower abdomen and moistened her pussy lips. She had petted her clitoris until she reached that ecstatic realm many a night just breathing deeply and imagining Sal’s scent wafting over her.

 

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Bouncing a little on her toes, she folded her hands before her lap and looked down to his vest pocket. “What is it?” she couldn’t resist inquiring. He even seemed shy, although she’d never seen that emotion in his face before, as he withdrew a box from the pocket. “If you accept this, Tamasin,” he said awkwardly, “it means you agree to allow me to court you.” Court? Tamasin had a vague notion of what that meant. Niall had not courted her, merely shown up at the asylum looking for a suitable wife. The nuns had pointed out that she was an excellent laundress, and she obviously tolerated quite vicious beatings without a word. Tamasin had been surprised, though, that they had recommended her—no one knew if she was not barren yet, since she hadn’t allowed any priests to copulate with her. “Court?” she asked cheerfully. Sal paused with the box in hand, maybe unsure now. He tilted his head, tendrils of his long mop of hair snaking over his brow. “Yes, court.” He shook the box a bit, but didn’t take his intent, fixed eyes from her. “I’ve decided on you. You’re a…” Now he looked to the heavens for assistance, obviously inexperienced with giving voice to his thoughts. “A very suitable choice for a wife. You’re beautiful, a hard worker, you’re intelligent, a good companion. You’re—” “A wife?” Tamasin’s jaw dropped. She gathered her blouse front in her fist, appalled at such a notion. “I? Am suitable? In what way am I suitable?” Sal frowned. “Didn’t I just tell you?” “I mean…What about these other possible mates?” Tamasin spread her arm to encompass the entire rancho. “The daughters of these grand old Dons, such as Esmeralda Nuñez. Would you not prefer to marry your estate to another? Isn’t that what’s done, in Californio society?” “Usually,” Sal said shortly, and he seemed angry. “But I don’t need another eleven leagues of land. I have a hard enough time holding onto what I have. And I don’t wish to marry for anything

 

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short of love. Call me a romantic, call me stupid, call me whatever you wish. But I’ve made my decision.” Now his look was pleading, and she wanted nothing more than to throw her arms around him, to protect him, as he looked like a sad lost dog. “Please, Tamasin. Allow me to court you. Then you can make up your mind.” “Yes, but…I? Salvador, I am hardly good wife material. Look at what a mess I made of my first marriage.” Salvador pointed the box at the ground. “You made a mess? Tamasin, it was that cowardly reptile you wed who made a mess of it! Not you. You tried to fix what couldn’t be fixed, and you would have stayed by his side until he beat you to death. You’re faithful and loyal, that’s another characteristic I admire about you, but sometimes perhaps you are too faithful where it’s not warranted—loyal to a lowdown violent cur like he was.” He exhaled his anger, and closed his eyes to gain patience. “It is up to me to decide who would make a good wife, is it not, Tamasin? If I say it is you, then it is you!” He practically shoved the box at her. Her heart raced with trepidation, even as she felt her hands rise to accept the box. If she opened the box, whatever it contained, it meant she was accepting his proposal to court her! What would that entail? Did she want that? Of course she wanted it—she adored Salvador! But what would he expect from her? And wouldn’t she disappoint him, as she’d continuously disappointed Niall? Would he wind up beating her as well? No, he’d made it clear in conversations with Niall that Californio men did not hold with beating women. So maybe he’d do something worse if she displeased him. What was worse? Dump her in a gorge somewhere? Without forethought, her hands grabbed the box. Was she so materialistic all she wanted was the unknown object in the box? But Sal’s dazzling smile was enough to encourage her, and she opened it. Oh, my. “Lordy,” she whispered. “What sort of stones are these?” Sal quickly explained, “Fire opals from Mexico. It was my mother’s, and her mother’s before her. Here, let me.” He whisked the

 

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box from her hand and went to stand behind her. “Hold your hair up. I’ll get you a looking glass later so you can see how enchanting you look.” When his fingertips brushed the fine hairs at the back of her neck, Tamasin’s entire body became electrified. A shiver shot down her spine, blooming in her tailbone and spreading out through her pelvis. Without meaning to, she gasped and shut her eyes. Her entire face vibrated with the excitement and stimulus of something as simple as Sal’s fingers on her neck. It struck her that she had never been touched by a man other than Niall—and this was the first time ever she had welcomed it. Her nipples stiffened against her linen chemise as Sal fiddled with the necklace clasp, his slightest touch more intense than any full-blown coitus with Niall had ever been. After he fastened the necklace he put the box on the ground and turned her to regard her. He seemed to like what he saw, for he smiled handsomely, and told her, “You should keep your hair up, to show your lovely white neck.” It was all coming back to Tamasin, the need to attire one’s self and attend to one’s coiffure in accordance with a husband’s wishes. But this time, she wanted what Sal wanted. His desires did not disgust her, nor would she resist them. “I like to braid it, and knot it up in a bun covered with a kerchief.” She touched her fingertips to the smooth stones. “And it would show off this impressive necklace.” A sudden voice at the glassless window made them both jump. Ophir stuck his head and naked torso into the open and said merrily, “Come inside, instead of standing around for the world to hear your romancing and devilment. Tamasin, I’ve got you some aguardiente.” Tamasin squatted to pick up the mortar with the chile paste, and Sal squatted to pick up the wooden box. Their eyes met and they smiled secretively at each other. However, once inside Ophir’s apartments, the pugilist noted, “So you’re to be wed now, is it?” His question forced Tamasin and Sal to look bluntly at him. He must have been issuing Salvador a challenge, for he was clad only in

 

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the muddy pants he’d worn for the bout, green grass stains on the knees and hips, and his lower lip was somewhat outthrust. He cocked his hips forward as he unknotted the red silk sash at his waist, unfurling it like a nautch dancer, as Tamasin imagined such a flirtatious gal would do. It was extremely stimulating to be in the same small room as two such masculine fellows, and Tamasin weakly went to the table to pour the aguardiente. Sal waved a dismissive hand at Ophir. “Oh, no. I just gave her a necklace.” Just gave her a necklace? Tamasin narrowed her eyes at Sal, and he must have caught it, for he amended stiffly, “I asked if I could court her, is all. She agreed…to wear the necklace.” “Courting, eh?” Ophir looked at Sal skeptically as he loosened his pants and dropped them to his feet. The large, hefty penis she had viewed slapping up against Sal’s erection was heavily pulsating. Perhaps to cover up such a bold moment, he dampened the excitement in the air by asking, “Does your mother approve of this?” He swaggered to the bathtub, the globes of his ass swaying with a meaty weight, and Tamasin sat in a chair with a relieved exhalation. One sultry, sensuous man was enough to overwhelm her senses. But two in the same room, no, she would surely faint. “I have a poultice for you…” she said weakly, but Sal was taking the bait of Ophir’s challenge. He strode right up to where Ophir was splashing his feet in the tub. “I don’t need my mother’s approval, Ophir. I am a Californio male, of upright heredity and bearing. I am the patriarch of Las Oliveras. We don’t ask our mother’s opinions.” A flicker of a smile flitted across Ophir’s face as he looked sideways to Tamasin. “But I’d venture to say, Carmen would approve.” Lightly, he added, “She approves of Tamasin.” And abruptly dropped to his ass in the tub, perhaps wanting to bathe before the water got cold. Tamasin was relieved she didn’t have to view the girth of his long, purple cock. Although now, if she scooted up and

 

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straightened her spine a little, she could see the shiny glans breaking the surface of the bathwater. But Salvador seemed agitated. Slapping himself on the abdomen with frustration, he started walking in little circles, the saucer spurs around his heels jangling with each step. “Well, you know, Ophir, would Carmen’s opinion have any weight at all? You know how she’s been lately. Well, you didn’t know her before, before I saved you from those bárbaro arrows. But believe it or not, she used to make sense, be halfway lucid, act like a regular person. But now? No, I have full authority to make up my own mind.” He grinned at Tamasin, and his voice became softer. “And I choose Tamasin.” Oh, Lordy. How strikingly handsome he was when he tilted his head and seemed somewhat shy. Oh, darnation. He was handsome in any attitude. How she wanted to kiss him! What would it be like, kissing a man one actually had warm affection for? She wanted to envelop him in her arms, to hold a man and not tense in fear. Would she relax? Actually fall asleep? She imagined how the warmth of his chest would seep into her muscles, how she could tenderly stroke his beautiful, glossy hair. Now Ophir seemed vaguely irritated as he soaped his athletic arms. “I’m glad to see you bothered asking my opinion.” Sal’s eyes grew clouded. Tamasin had always loved how his wonderfully arched nostrils flared when emotion rose in him, and now he narrowed his eyes at Ophir. “And why should I have bothered asking your opinion? You’re my business partner, not my father.” Ophir shrugged casually, seemingly intent on the mud he was sluicing off his forearms. “I’ve told you before that I would like a chance to court Señorita Tamasin.” What? What was going on? Were these two men actually…dueling over her? Tamasin opened her mouth to speak and rose halfway to her feet, but Salvador was locking horns with his partner. “Well, the race is to the swiftest, amigo! I got there first.”

 

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“No, the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,” Ophir corrected Sal’s quotation. “Don’t you read your Bible?” Flustered, Sal carried on. "Well, the rules of fair play do not apply in love and war.” He pointed at Ophir. “And that I read in one of my father’s books.” Ophir sloshed his bathwater so stridently, some spilled over the lip of the tub. “Aren’t you supposed to be horse racing?” he groused. Now Sal pointed at himself, poking himself in the chest. “I had better things to do with my time than to waste it on pointless masculine posturings.” “Right,” Ophir said agreeably. “You just wasted your time pointlessly posturing by my front door.” Now Sal seemed genuinely angry. He seethed, “I did not waste my time, amigo. You see the lady is wearing the necklace, don’t you?” Tamasin took a few steps toward the bath tub. “Muchachos, muchachos. Why are you arguing?” She sat on the edge of the tub to placate Ophir, but Sal only sat behind her and put a protective hand on her shoulder. My, were these men actually in competition to win her hand? Nobody had ever wanted her hand before, not in a serious, romantic way. Tamasin supposed it was the complete absence of tolerable women in California that made men so desperate. And she was a hard worker. “I don’t want you fighting. You two are partners, and you get along so well, usually.” “Yeah,” Ophir grumbled, soaping and rinsing both his grass-green knees in turn. “Until Señor Adonis here decided to claim you for himself.” “Adonis?” Sal protested. “What does Adonis have to do with it? I didn’t get killed by a wild boar.” Ophir closed his eyes patiently. “No, Adonis means a handsome, hot fellow who—” Tamasin held up both her hands. “Look, muchachos. I’m sitting right here! Listen, Ophir, niño. I agreed to wear Sal’s necklace

 

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because…” She craned her neck so she looked directly in Sal’s eyes as he perched behind her on the tub’s lip. The warmth between them was so palpable, Tamasin had to wipe the sweat off her brow with the back of her hand. Sal even brushed a curl of hair from where it was plastered to her cheek. “I like Sal.” One could almost say she loved Sal, if she knew what love was. Her heart literally surged in her chest when she saw him, and not five minutes passed, even when engaged in mindful work such as cooking, that she didn’t imagine him, or wonder what he was doing at the moment. Was that love? Tamasin didn’t know. She had loved her brother, but that was a different sort of love. “But I like you too, Ophir.” That statement clouded Sal’s eyes again, although Ophir’s hands on his knees stilled and he perked up. “Wait a minute,” Sal said. “You like us both…equally? In the same way?” Tamasin nodded and shrugged apologetically. Ophir reached out a dripping arm and put his hand on Sal’s knee. “Hold on there, Sal. You have to understand this innocent girl. She doesn’t know what romantic love is! She’s confused, is all. She likes us both equally because we’re equally as kind to her.” He returned to scrubbing his feet now. The bathwater was a sort of murky green, and Tamasin was glad no one was coming to the door with fresh hot water. “I say the contest is back on, compañero. And do you even know what romantic love is? Have you ever actually been in love? How old are you, anyway? Over thirty years of age, I’d venture to guess. And the farthest you’ve gotten with these rancheros’ daughters is a quick fuck behind the stables. Nothing too romantic.” At this, Sal stood indignantly. Tamasin was shocked and aroused to the core to see his erection proudly bulging out the lap of his calzoneras. He must be enticed by the sight of Ophir’s naked body, because Tamasin in her admittedly dressy Californio get-up did not display any more flesh than usual. “I’m thirty and five, and I’ve not been in love with any of these Californio women because I’m always out on the range, and I was drunk for about ten years! Besides. They

 

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are much too quiet and retiring for me. I like a gal with a little vitality.” He looked fondly at Tamasin. “Like Tamasin.” Why did they persist in discussing her as though she wasn’t even sitting there? She cried, “I’m not confused! I do like both of you equally! What is wrong with that?” Now Ophir stood, unfurling his compact, muscular body like a creature emerging from a lagoon. “Because it’s illegal to marry more than one man, little duckling.” He stroked his stomach absentmindedly, as though he wasn’t aware that his impressive phallus was at Tamasin’s eye level, and he was nearly braining her as it engorged and elongated even further than she thought was possible. Now she was confused, and she stood to go pick up her mortar from the table. Taking Ophir by the arm, she wordlessly instructed him to lean his naked butt against a sideboard. Which he did, quite blatantly, leaning back on his palms, unconcerned that his penis was so stiff the crown grazed his navel now. He couldn’t have known what she planned on doing, but he was certainly relaxed about any eventuality. “Does it matter, though?” she asked lightly, dipping her fingers in the manteca. “You two are partners, compañeros. I’ll be around both of you no matter what.” But Salvador would not be soothed. “I’m not sharing you with this arrogant pendejo!” Ophir rolled his eyes, and Tamasin paused with her buttered fingers poised above Ophir’s admirable pectoral. “Salvador!” Already she resembled a scolding wife, as Niall always termed her whenever she dared to take exception to something he did, which was often. She hadn’t thought it would happen so soon with Sal. “You two are always together!” She stood nearly between Ophir’s outspread thighs, but she had to, to apply the poultice, flinching at the burning heat of his chest. The butter instantly melted, sending a gleaming ribbon toward his erect, beaded nipple. “How can I avoid one of you, if you’re always together? You sleep next to each other, you…touch each other.”

 

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“That’s true, Sal.” Ophir squiggled one expressive eyebrow. What was true, that they touched each other? Tamasin was getting quite light-headed, her cunt so squishy a drip of juice rolled down her inner thigh. She spread more butter on Ophir’s bruised chest, but she was so weak she nearly pitched forward into him. Perhaps noting this, Sal came so close he almost stood on the toes of her slippers. He breathed heavily with what she assumed was anger, but the heat from his distended cock gave her the idea he panted for other reasons. His dangling fingers were just inches from Ophir’s erection, which now twitched excitedly. Tamasin realized that she, too, panted, and her oily thumb now mindlessly diddled Ophir’s stiff nipple. “What is true, compañero?” Sal asked quietly. “That we’re always together, or that it stimulates Tamasin to watch us touch?” “Yes,” Tamasin breathed instantly, without forethought. “Kiss him, Sal. Don’t fight. You upset me when you fight.” She realized she was being manipulative, but it was for everyone’s advantage, was it not? If she had to force these two bullheaded males into necking in order to stop fighting, well, those were the drudgeries of being a wife, she supposed. Rattling Sal by the arm, she urged childishly, “Kiss Ophir and show me that you’re not angry with each other.” Sal had that heavy-lidded look of arousal she had seen when Ophir had frigged him in the mountains, and Ophir’s look was distinctly challenging and sly, his curvaceous lower lip jutting out. All on a sudden, Sal lunged for his compañero, and Tamasin fell back a couple of steps in awe. Gripping Ophir’s jaw in both palms, Sal pinioned one of the powerful naked thighs between both of his, and laid an open-mouthed kiss on his partner. Oh Lordy, it was a sight to see, and Tamasin had to lean weakly against the sideboard, forgetting her hand was greasy. She slid off the sideboard and banged her hip against the edge, but managed to right herself in time to see the two men tasting each other as though they gorged on delicious sweet corn wafers. It was

 

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astounding the way men kissed each other with giant cow tongues intertwining, their jaws working, the muscles of their throats swirling as they gulped at each other. Sal slapped a palm to Ophir’s lubricious chest and slid it downward, hard. It must have hurt Ophir to have those bruises pressed in that manner, but when Sal’s fingers reached the stiff nipple, he pinched it, and Ophir gasped into his mouth, while the massive erection that laid up against his abdomen jumped, so shiny Tamasin could see it pulsating.

 

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Chapter Fourteen Ophir was overwhelmed by the deluge of sensation when Salvador lunged for him and laid that enormous kiss on him. It wasn’t just the intensity of the sudden grope and the freedom of finally being able to admit their lust for each other—it was the idea that Tamasin was watching avidly that set Ophir off. If Tamasin spoke the naïve truth, that she couldn’t separate them and wanted to be affectionate toward both of them, was there anything wrong with that? Not that Ophir could see. Only one of them could marry her, but she was right—they were partners, a contract that presumably extended into the future for decades if they got their quartz mill going in a smart fashion. There was no breaking them up, as far as Ophir could see. So he returned the kiss lustily, reaching one blind hand out to find Tamasin and draw her closer. He could hear her panting, could even feel the steam from her breath against the side of his face as he languidly sucked on Sal’s tongue. His cock was so taut he’d come the moment anyone dared touch it, and perhaps just from the stimulation of Sal’s pinching fingertips. He wove his hand through Sal’s thick, lustrous hair, reveling in the silken feel, the locks sliding over his strong, muscular neck. He gripped Tamasin by the wrist to keep her near, wondering if they would suddenly grapple in another round of fisticuffs the moment either one of them made a sensual move on the woman, and then Ophir was gasping for air. Sal dropped to his knees and veritably inhaled Ophir’s prick into his hot mouth.

 

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Ophir was so stunned his breath caught, and for a moment he nearly choked. Perhaps he was just imagining what Sal felt trying to cram his oversized phallus down his gullet. Semen surged up the length of his cock and a few drops of ejaculate spurted into the hot mouth, and Ophir’s hand automatically slapped against Sal’s forehead, to push him away, to indicate he must slow down. But Sal was voracious in his suckling, so enthusiastic that large, hungry sucking sounds echoed off the adobe walls of the room. And the next thing Ophir knew, Sal was spinning on his butt atop the cowhide rug like a fallen vaquero, as Ophir angrily stomped to the far side of the room. What? What had just occurred? Ophir spun to see the confused and pained look in Sal’s eyes, and Tamasin cried, “Ophir! Why did you shove Sal?” She squatted next to the fallen cowboy to smooth the curtain of hair from his forehead, tenderly. “Yeah, partner,” Sal said hoarsely. “If you didn’t want me doing that, a polite ‘no thank you’ would do. You didn’t need to nearly crack my skull open.” Ophir rubbed his face, his mind racing to recreate the past few moments. “I know it had something to do with North Carolina,” he stammered, completely dumbfounded. “A sudden vision leaped into my head. Some of those men…” And then he remembered what it was. He took several long steps toward Sal, to take his other arm and help him up. “Good God almighty, Sal. I can’t apologize enough.” Sal frowned. “What men in North Carolina? What does that have to do with me?” Ophir rubbed his face again, hoping to wipe the shame and anger away, but he’d have to confess to Sal. Otherwise he’d never understand why Ophir had reacted that way to having his cock sucked by another man. “There were some men…” He gently smeared a lock of hair over Sal’s forehead, but he couldn’t look him in the eye. “Not to equate you with those sons of bitches. But yes, some of them thought it was great fun to manhandle me as if I was some kind of

 

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donkey. I guess a memory flashed before my eyes when it hit me that it was a man sucking on me. Good God, I hope you don’t take it personally, Sal.” “Manhandled you?” Tamasin inquired. “Meaning, without your approval?” Ophir tried to laugh. “I don’t think my approval entered into it, my niña. Being a slave doesn’t give you many rights to object to anything.” He sighed. “But yes, they mauled me whenever they’d drink rum, laughing, taunting me. And my traitorous body responded—who wouldn’t under similar circumstances? So they took this as a positive response, and only amplified their attentions.” He shrugged. “They were bored. There’s not much to do on a tobacco plantation for Yankees of privilege.” “Don’t think about it,” Tamasin urged. “I try not to.” It occurred to Ophir that Tamasin had also been manhandled by her husband. Sure, it was mauling within the confines of holy matrimony, but when one of the participants didn’t really desire it, it was still manhandling. It made Ophir feel filthy, especially when his body responded, giving the impression that he was enthusiastic about the sucking and frigging. “I try not to think about it. A sudden memory must have appeared in my brain, somehow.” Sal finally spoke. “Ophir. You know I’m not those men. I wasn’t doing it to laugh at you, or gain some prurient…Well, all right. Prurient thrill, I’ll admit that.” Their laughter eased some of the tension, and a thought occurred to Ophir. How to erase even more tension, blot the awkwardness from everyone’s recent memory. Taking Tamasin by the upper arms, he said soothingly to her, “Gentle flower. We need to teach you all over again that being touched by a man doesn’t always have to be traumatic or distasteful. I know that, in my logical mind, but I have yet to really learn it, too.” He steered her to the sideboard so she could give a little hop and perch there on her ass where he had formerly leaned, greasy with spicy butter. She did slide a little on the butter that

 

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had dripped there, perhaps from her greasy handprint, and Ophir stood between her thighs, stroking the side of her placid face. “You have bad memories,” he said tenderly. “I have bad memories.” He chuckled. “Sal only has drunken happy memories, if he can remember them at all.” “No fair,” Sal said cheerfully. He, too, leaned a hip on the sideboard, perhaps eager to see what Ophir’s plan was. “Now.” Ophir pressed a tranquil kiss to Tamasin’s juicy berry lips. But only one—he didn’t want her to rear up, grow tense, or lash out as he had. His fingertips snaked down to her thighs, thumbs hitching up the hem of her Californio skirts, inching the fabric up her milky legs until he could hook his thumbs in the waistband of her drawers. “Being touched doesn’t have to be horrid or alarming. I’ll show you a gentle, pleasant manner of being touched. You just have to relax and trust me.” Her eyes glittered almost as though laden with unshed tears, and her lower lip trembled, but Ophir didn’t feel her go tense. He stroked her face some more before falling to his knees, as Sal had done before him. Tamasin uttered a little surprised gasp—“Oh!”—but didn’t pull away the tiniest inch. Would Sal react with jealous fisticuffs because Ophir was the first to pleasure the woman? He would find out soon enough if Sal could really accept the idea of sharing his ostensible fiancée. **** Oh, Lordy. What on earth was Ophir doing? Tamasin allowed him to slide her drawers down. She had no embarrassment at being seen naked—well, maybe a little, back when she had been a collection of bruised broken bones. But now she’d gained weight, the bruises had vanished, and she thought she could compete with any other thirty-year-old from the Emerald Isle.

 

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But…What was he doing on his knees, nuzzling his crisp moustache against her inner thighs? Lordy, she might be a tad mortified that her cunt wept trails of sweet slime. Watching Salvador gobble up the impressive breadth of Ophir’s penis had her so moist she was damp down to her knees. Ophir licked and nibbled at her inner thighs, no doubt tasting the juice trails that betrayed her state of lust. Her spongy pussy lips were so saturated with eager sap, she could feel the bulging prepuce at her core extending, reaching out in blatant greed, fairly wagging in Ophir’s face like a tiny penis. Oh, this would not do! If he kept this up, she would have to reach down and shove him away as he had done to Sal. Or, even more unthinkable, she would have to slide her own fingertips over that prepuce and frig herself into that mindless crescendo she liked to enjoy so much when alone. She’d always wondered if men experienced the same explosion of ecstasy when they had orgasms, but there had never been anyone to ask. “Oh, Ophir!” she cried out unintentionally when he darted the tip of his tongue out to touch her clitoris. It fluttered wildly, the blissful shuddering radiating down her inner thighs and up the center of her abdomen, nearly making her ovaries leap with the intensity of such a simple thing. A touch of the tongue apparently was enough to grip her entire body in the throes of euphoria, and she found herself almost sobbing, either wanting him to get on with it, or stop! Salvador clambered onto the cabinet behind her, leaning against the wall and sheltering her between his thighs. A great warmth oozed into her—she felt protected and relaxed, clamped between his sturdy, leather-clad thighs. She allowed her head to roll onto his solid chest as she breathed in his essence of cow hides and sweet grass. She snaked her tongue out like Ophir was doing down there somewhere, and licked the pit of Sal’s sweet throat. Sal cradled her head to him in his big capable hands, and they fell into a deep, swooning kiss. Oh, this was so utterly opposite from

 

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being forced to kiss Niall! Although thankfully, Niall had long ago given up on that romantic mode of expressing desire, as it had only produced distasteful results. No, kissing Sal only enlivened the surges of lust racing up her cunt as Ophir tongued her more potently now, flicking his tongue up and down the length of her tiny erection, the tip of which was so sensitive she felt she might crash around him at any second. Reaching her arms behind her, she wove her fingers together behind Sal’s neck and feasted on his delicious mouth. She had never known how delicious and stimulating it could be merely kissing a man. Something as simple as sucking on a man’s beautifully shaped lips, touching the velvet of the back of his neck, rotating her shoulders like a cat against his firm chest—there were simply worlds of sensations she had never dreamed were even possible. And if she hadn’t known such feelings were possible, how could she have ever craved them? She arched her spine to press her shoulders more deeply into that hot, athletic chest, and to give Ophir a better angle to access her labia. He slurped away like a pig at a trough, and when Sal slipped one warm palm down the neckline of her fancy blouse to cup her breast and tweak her stiff nipple, she had reached that apex from which there was no turning back. It always came upon her so suddenly she knew she’d have no chance to react—a couple of times she was so taken by surprise she had fallen off the chair where she frigged herself, and once she had even tumbled out of bed. So she frantically clawed at the collar of Sal’s linen shirtfront, so enraptured with the building clogging sensation filling her pelvis she was barely aware she was finally able to rub her cheek against the exquisite expanse of his bare chest. The oily silken hair invigorated her skin as she flicked the tip of her tongue out to lick his nipple. When he gasped with pleasure, Tamasin lost all control over her willful quim, and the contractions of her

 

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climax crashed down on her so violently, her viselike thighs clamped around Ophir’s neck. Wave after wave of contractions clenched at her core, and she bucked around the man’s neck as though riding a testy stallion. She realized later she had probably gnawed a bit too strenuously on poor Sal’s nipple, but she couldn’t help it! And she was probably choking Ophir between her thighs as he gasped for air against the flood of juices that washed his face. But he didn’t seem to mind, as he in turn humped her ankle with his enormous erection until she felt his own semen coursing down her leg to puddle on the floor, such an erotic event she was set off on another round of bucking and twitching. It seemed to go on for much longer than normal, this apex of ecstasy. When she frigged herself, maybe twenty contractions would clutch at her muscles, and she was easily able to clear her mind afterwards, and go about her work. Current after current raced through her belly and clenched her sex against Ophir’s talented mouth. Soon the rhapsody built to such a high pitch she found herself unlocking her thighs and shoving Ophir away. “No!” She gasped against Sal’s chest, squirming like a beached fish. Sal laughed, a low amorous growl that vibrated through her body. He petted her hair affectionately. “Now that was an impressive orgasm.” Tamasin forced her eyes open a slit, so she could see Ophir leaning on the balls of his bare feet, wiping his face with his hand. “A whopping orgasm,” he agreed. Tamasin tried to force herself to sit upright. “Orgasm? No, I just had one of those crashing, squeezing, exploding feelings. It happens when I frig myself.” Through her puffy eyes, she saw Sal smile indulgently down at her. “Yes. Orgasm. Right, Ophir?” “Right,” Ophir said cheerfully. “I know a whopping female orgasm when I taste one.”

 

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At this, Tamasin felt herself blush hotly, and she forced herself to her feet, smoothing down her skirts. “Men have orgasms,” she said, wandering to the table where she’d left her aguardiente. “Women have those clenching, crashing—” She inhaled suddenly in fear when she noticed she was staring directly at a strange man’s face as he peered into the glassless window! All three people in the little apartment went still, and Tamasin could swear the stranger was as shocked as she was, his mouth forming a gaping O. However, as he collected himself and vanished from sight, she recognized his leering, rodent-like face. She pointed at the empty window. “Tyke McCarthy! What’s he doing here, looking in our window?” Sal, being still mostly dressed, was already swinging open the door. “I’ll find out,” he barked, and was gone, slapping his holster to make sure it still contained his pistol. Ophir had many more items of clothing to put on, so Tamasin straightened her blouse and made for the door, too. “What are you doing?” Ophir asked. “Don’t follow that madman—we don’t know what he’s capable of.” “It’s fine,” she said ambiguously, also fingering the bulge at her hip where she’d secreted a ladylike pocket pistol. Ever since Niall’s death she liked to keep it upon her person, because you never knew what sort of violence you’d encounter. Sal had met up with Tyke at the corner of their outbuilding. Tyke shuffled his feet around nervously, although his manner was belligerent, and he was protesting, “I was just looking for my buddy, Abel.” Sal glowered at Tamasin. “Tamasin, go back inside.” Tamasin didn’t budge. “Now, Tyke. Can you explain to me why Abel would be lounging about inside our hacienda? And why you had to leer through the window instead of knocking on the door, if you really thought he was inside there?”

 

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Tyke obviously had no ready answer, as he shifted from foot to foot, muttering something about Abel moving very fast and hiding out in hovels. Then to forestall another accusation by Sal, he blurted out, “I seen you performing all sorts of poofy things in there.” Tamasin only had a vague idea what “poofy” was supposed to be, but she surprised herself by speaking out. “So you lurked at the window long enough to watch us? Why didn’t you leave once you realized Abel wasn’t there?” She turned to Sal. “These lies don’t make any sense.” “I know,” Sal said shortly, before poking Tyke in his bony chest. “Well, you’re leaving now, señor. I want you off my land.” “Well,” Tyke sneered. “If by ‘off your land’ you mean anywhere between the Merced and Mariposa, as you claim, I think I pretty much own Hornitos and everything around it by now.” Tamasin had witnessed Sal’s anger before, and she knew how quick he could be to make decisions that might result in a death, so she stepped in between the two men. “Mr. McCarthy. I think you’d best take his suggestion to leave.” “Tamasin, be careful.” Sal grabbed her by the biceps and bodily lifted her out of the way, but fortunately Tyke was leaving. “David Smock from Hornitos won the horse race,” Tyke called menacingly over his shoulder. “While you was engaged in poofy acts.” “Oh, who cares about the damned horse race,” Sal muttered from between clenched teeth. Ophir headed toward them, actually brandishing his own weapon, his finger on the trigger, but Tyke was out of sight around the corner. Tamasin said, “I think he was looking to rob us. Don’t you agree?” Ophir nodded. “That had to be it. Unless he randomly wanders about peering into windows hoping to catch sight of people engaged in sex.” Sal narrowed his eyes in the direction Tyke had gone. “Someday I am going to have a severe disagreement with that hombre.”

 

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Chapter Fifteen Sal was working down in his Black Drift Mine, overseeing about twenty Sonoran miners when the two crazed Frenchmen came stumbling over the ridge, sliding down the hill in a rush of mill tailings. “Jefe! Jefe! Hombre Francés!” Some of his men cried out and pointed, so Sal walked away from the river to meet the strangers. By the time the sludgy frog-eaters made it down to Sal’s position they were dyed the color of mud up to their hips, but they were so obsessed with their mission, they didn’t seem to care. “Don Palomares!” they both cried urgently. Sal felt like slapping them into submission, they were flailing about so anxiously. It was already hellish standing in the rocky glare of the boulders reflecting one hundred degree sun—“heat” was too mild of a word to use. Sal’s Bear Valley was a basin where the only breezes came like furnace blasts, as though the entire ridge top was on fire. Even in his house which was close to being finished, it was ninety degrees at midnight, and they had to layer their marble-topped dining table with newspaper to prevent their arms from being burned. “What is the problem?” Sal said in English, knowing only about three words of French. He offered them his skin of river water, but they were too distressed to drink. “Over in Hornitos,” a Frog tried to explain. “We have just come from there,” said the other. Oh, ay dios, not Hornitos again. Sal yelled some instructions to the Sonorans and waved the Frenchmen up the hillside past his mill, and tried to piece together the story.

 

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Jules and Henri, freshly minted in the French Revolution of 1848, had attempted to start a rebellion against the Foreign Miners Tax. So they had gone to Hornitos and covered over The League’s posters with posters of their own, denouncing the tax and exhorting victims to “put a bridle in the mouths of that horde who call themselves citizens of the United States.” Just this morning, a surprising crowd of four thousand Spaniards had heeded the call in Hornitos and accosted the tax collector. “We only asked for the monthly fee to be reduced to three or maybe five dollars, but he stood fast and demanded the full twenty!” Henri moaned. So most of the “foreigners” had fled, but one Sonoran threatened “the sheriff,” a fellow who sounded a lot like none other than Tyke McCarthy, and a bystander had killed the Sonoran with a bowie knife. Merchants had insisted that no one sell any supplies to foreigners, and the Frenchmen assumed that soon an alarm would be coming to Sal’s camp, calling for reinforcements for Hornitos’s impending war. “We have heard you are sympathetic to our cause, Don Salvador,” Jules said stoically. Before Sal had reached the office building where his engineers worked, Knut emerged, also flailing his limbs. Sal supposed that was the European call to rebellion, to run about with thrashing arms like a stuffed doll. There was also a crowd of maybe two hundred Spanish prospectors Sal had never seen in his life milling about the office building, presumably fellows who had been kicked out of Hornitos. Ay dios, he didn’t have enough work yet for two hundred more miners! And if he didn’t feed them, they would soon start croaking. “The League will get no reinforcements from my camp,” Sal assured the Frenchmen, and turned to greet the agitated Knut. “Mein Gott, compañero!” Knut wailed. “I knew that Tom Jeff personage’s evil, sinful, and reprobate Miners Tax bill passed in the State Legislature—with my amigo Robert Loblaw being one of the sole dissenters, jah!—but I never thought it would come to this!”

 

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Knut whipped a kerchief from his waistcoat pocket and mopped his sweaty, red face with it, even wringing it of a few drops of fluid while he sobbed. “And mein Gott im Himmel, one of these fine, upstanding miners who has just come from San José has brought me a letter from none other than Bob Loblaw himself informing me that the chief Judge is openly in sympathy with The League! Yes, I tell you, compañero, this horrifying decision of the State Court will keep every mine owner in the position of a constant sentinel! Whatever will we do?” “First of all,” said Sal, “calm down. I doubt that The League will have the grit to send anyone into Bear Valley or Hell Hollow.” His father had always said “grit,” and it felt right to use it now. “I will not pay a tax for men who are working on my property, but this whole issue seems to be boiling over with violence, so we should make some preparations.” He sent a messenger boy down to fetch Ophir and the head miner Hector from the mill, and took the Frenchmen and a blubbering Knut up to the relative coolness of the offices. It angered his heart to see the forsaken prospectors standing about looking at him questioningly as though he were their savior, all their worldly possessions in their mules’ saddlebags and their rickety ox-carts, their gold dust tied up in rags or poured into eagle quills. These men were the finest miners in the Far West, one of the reasons McCarthy and his ilk wanted them ejected from the mines, so Sal shouted at them, “¡Cada minero está seguro en mi tierra!” Every miner is safe on my land! The dusty prospectors huzzahed, but Sal had a feeling that by twilight, the crowd of fugitive miners would double. And he’d need Tamasin’s help as well. In the office, he scribbled a note and sent it by courier the three miles to Bear Valley proper, to be delivered to Savage at his trading post. Then he proceeded upriver to their roomy, two-story cottage where men were still working on fencing in a few acres, and Tamasin had put to work a few more men on constructing pathways leading to

 

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and from the carriage house, her vegetable garden, the barn and stables. She told Sal she wanted at least two dogs, to have something fluffy and affectionate to pet, but didn’t want them eaten by bears. He now found her in their kitchen, opening cans of peaches and peeling some oranges she had brought from the orchards at Las Oliveras. On the big wooden table in the center of the commodious room lay the evidence she had also been grinding coffee in a mortar and peeling onions. Wafting from the stove was the aroma of fragrant salmon, always in abundance on these rivers, spiced with cedar. She looked up from her preoccupation with the fruit and gave him a sincere, enigmatic smile. Before, she had been blandly happy, as though she didn’t know what “happy” was supposed to look like on a face. Lately, it seemed she was gaining more knowledge of just what this entailed, and her face was imbued with real, lively feelings. “Tamasin. It seems there’s been some commotion down Hornitos way—” “I know,” she said simply. The large opal between her breasts glinted in the rays of sun that poured in the many windows Sal had instructed to be installed. Glass was a great expense, but he wanted Tamasin to be happy. “I’ve been studying my Spanish, and couldn’t miss the crowds of miners suddenly pouring up the mountains. They told me how Tyke killed one of them for daring to question the Miners Tax, and ejected them all from Hornitos area.” “Yes,” Sal admitted, toying with a segment of orange on the table. “Oh, was it Tyke himself who killed the miner? Well, we have to prepare for the possibility that there might be some more commotion tomorrow, maybe even tonight. Do you have a pistol?” This question seemed to please her very much. Stepping away from the table, she lifted her skirts and displayed a leg. Sal was surprised to see a tiny pocket pistol of the “pepperbox” variety tucked into the top of her cotton stocking. Tamasin said, “I also have a pistol of Niall’s, but it’s too big to carry around. I have enough implements about my person without adding a holster around my waist, such as

 

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you men like to wear. You must be weighted down with twenty pounds of leather and metal!” It was true, Tamasin’s hard-working credo meant she always wore an apron with pockets that bulged with small shovels, hammers, spatulas, and knives. She seemed to cherish being in the kitchen and cooking for anyone who should be around, but Sal felt remorse that she had to work so hard. That hadn’t been his intention in inviting her to the Hell Hollow Mine. They had also brought a couple of younger helpmates from Las Oliveras, but this wasn’t the hacienda life of a Doña he’d imagined for her. She had been endlessly running about from the outdoor horno oven where she baked beef in the Spanish fashion, strung onto a skewer and roasted on the coals. Fashioning and slapping tortillas onto the griddle, stewing jerked beef with chile seasoning, making quesadilla cheesecakes—she had even ventured into cheese-making. Tending her new vegetable garden, brewing countless pots of coffee, and the backbreaking work of dipping enough water from the springs was not the worst of the work a woman at Hell Hollow had to look forward to every day. The laundry work was still her most pressing chore, the broiling heat and hardship of lugging water creating a devilish task that Sal would not wish upon—well, upon Tyke McCarthy even. All right, maybe it was a fitting punishment for someone so heinous. Doña Carmen had screamed almost to the point of tears, protesting that she wouldn’t notice the absence of Tamasin, how she preferred to be alone, and the less people, the better. The stridency of her protestations led everyone to believe that the opposite was the real truth, that she would miss Tamasin, and sowed the seeds of more questions in Sal’s mind. When he was as old as Doña Carmen, would he start shrieking the opposite of what he truly felt? Or would he sincerely prefer to be alone? That was impossible to believe now—he found himself lonely if he had to go check the herd without Ophir by his side.

 

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“Do you have enough ammunition for that little pistol? You know, those things are notoriously inaccurate.” “Yes. I purchased some from Savage not long ago, and where do you think your most recent beefsteaks have been coming from?” Her lower lip jutted out proudly. “I was the one who shot that beef! I only needed two shots to fell it.” “Yes, and how far away were you standing? At point-blank distance, I imagine.” When her proud face fell, Sal realized he’d made an error in speech. However, one could not be too careful when it came to protecting one’s self, so he said, “Look. Go and fetch Niall’s pistol, and I’ll have one of these desperado bandits practice shooting with you. What sort is it?” “It’s a five-shot Colt’s, like yours.” “Good.” Softening a bit, Sal stepped closer and caressed her face in his hand. He always enjoyed feeling the glassy smoothness of her braided bun under his palm, and he tilted her face up to kiss her. Ay dios, she smelled like powdery flowers mingled with wood smoke. It never failed to engorge his cock when he gently sucked on her full lips like this—but kissing was all they had been doing since that day at Las Oliveras when Ophir had brought her to orgasm with his mouth. Sal had instructed four bedrooms to be included in this house, but the downstairs one belonged to Knut Frostad, ostensible attorney at law. That worthy so shook in his shoes when any of the trio so much as sent each other a warm glance, all lust had been tamped down the past week Tamasin had been here. They all worked so hard and fell into their beds unconscious at night before they reached the mattress, that so far it hadn’t been a topic on anyone’s minds. The only time he saw Ophir, for example, was when Ophir was repairing the iron shoe in the stamp mill, pelted with handfuls of hot crushed ore. In the mill, they had to scream so loudly to be heard over the earsplitting banging of the iron shafts, it was not worth trying to talk. Sal had requested a door be installed between his bedroom and Tamasin’s, but that door had been untouched.

 

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There was also the fear of what Tyke had warned them of, having witnessed the men engaged in “poofy” activities. Sal couldn’t imagine how Knut would react if he were to happen upon them stroking each other’s cocks. Knut might even run at railroad speed to Hornitos and join up with The League, simply to avoid ever having to view such a scene again. Now Sal would have to return to the office building with an erection that could break a plate, so he backed away from Tamasin and smiled at her. “Now, wear that holster and take this hammer out of your pocket. Whatever do you use it for?” He placed the hammer on the table. “I use it all the time!” she protested. “I hammer nails I don’t see seated correctly, I hammer acorns to make bárbaro mush, and I am about to hammer your head if you don’t stop bossing me around!” Sal grinned from ear to ear. Tamasin was a sprightly woman, and very difficult to order about. That was beginning to seem like a good thing. **** The meeting with Ophir, Knut, Jules, Henri, Hector, various Sonoran jefes, and the engineers of the office had gone on so long and taken so many convoluted turns, it was past midnight when Sal staggered out of the building. Holding his whale oil lantern up high since it was a moonless night, he found himself stumbling through an acre of snoozing prospectors lounging on their Indian blankets, their weapons and tools under their heads, animals tethered close at hand, some hobbled against horse thieves. Ay dios, Sal thought as he navigated the front steps of his new house. Whatever will I do with all these Sonorans? So many men had reported for defensive duty at the mill, and so far, he only had tents enough to sleep his own thirty Sonorans.

 

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Sal’s stomach growled as he stood in the foyer, pivoting about, undecided where to head—stairs or kitchen? The acidy roiling of his stomach made up his mind instantly, and he sprinted to the kitchen. There was an old-fashioned icebox there that contained no ice, of course, but since it was iron, it kept things cooler than the barbecue fieriness of the rest of the house. He saw a few of the oranges Tamasin had earlier been peeling, but the room was enveloped by blackness when he reached for the fruit. Damned lantern, out of fuel. He grabbed the orange and managed to place the useless lantern on the table. Feeling along the walls, he made his way back in the direction of the stairs that led to the upper story. He gasped in shock when his hand hit something even hotter than the wall and definitely not fashioned out of wood. The orange dropped to the floor and rolled, and now Sal was afraid of stepping on it and taking a tumble. His hand went to his holster, but Ophir was laughing. “Run out of whale oil? Mine got blown out by the roasting wind.” Ophir shoved on past him, and Sal could hear him fumbling around, presumably in the drawers of the wooden table in the center of the room. “‘We spend our midday sweat or midnight oil—’” “‘We tire the night in thought, the day in toil,’” Sal finished for him. The phosphorous match between Ophir’s fingers flared into life, illuminating his striking face, dark and polished in the hot oven of the kitchen as though hewn out of obsidian. He smiled at Sal brightly. They had been reading the same book from Captain Dearborn’s library, evidently. Ophir held the match to the lantern wick and the room was lit sufficiently for Sal to find the orange on the floor. “Who did Hector put on night watch at the mill?” He casually peeled the orange, dropping the pitted pieces of skin onto the table. They sprayed up at him with an acidy citrus that swelled pleasantly inside his nostrils.

 

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But when he glanced up again at Ophir, the blacksmith was reaching over his neck to yank his shirt off. Sal’s fingers on the orange stilled. “Ah!” Ophir sighed in satisfaction to peel the clammy linen from his muscular back, and he flexed his pectorals to display how good it felt. After unbuckling his gun belt and dropping it on the table, his eyes flickered with interest at Sal’s orange. He bent over the icebox to retrieve one himself, saying, “He went to wake up those Rivera brothers, get them to stand guard.” Sal decided to at least rip off his heavy leather vest and deposit his gun belt next to Ophir’s, and the relief was instantaneous, leading him to imitate Ophir and peel his shirt off, as well. “Are you sleeping with your revolver?” Ophir leaned his butt against the stove, probably not noticing it wasn’t any hotter than the air of the room, fingering his orange with disinterest. “I’m putting it inside my bed,” he affirmed. He placed the orange on the stovetop and grinned. He was probably too hot to eat. When he put his hands on his hips every muscle in his torso glimmered with a bulging intensity, and Sal’s penis elongated down his thigh. Sal had been dreaming of Ophir’s body equally as much as he had been dreaming of Tamasin’s, but everyone had been too beat at the end of the day to move a muscle, sleeping in a sopor as though they’d taken hypnotics. “But I don’t look forward to the heat of that bedroom, with only one window.” All of the kitchen windows that constituted two entire walls of the room were open to the hot wind. “Sí,” Sal agreed languidly. “We might as well just sleep here in the kitchen.” All on a sudden without forethought, Sal tossed the remaining segments of the orange to the table and lunged for Ophir. Ophir responded ardently, flinging his arms about Sal’s shoulders and gripping him tightly. Sal pressed Ophir into the iron stovetop with his pelvis, raising his booted foot so that its heel rested at the back of Ophir’s knee—luckily they did not wear the oversized jangly spurs, as they had not ridden anywhere that day.

 

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Fairly mounting Ophir in his zest, Sal gyrated his erection against Ophir’s and sucked up his partner’s luscious lower lip. It was heavenly to feel Ophir’s slickly muscled chest against his, hairless and solid as the quartz ore he pulverized every day. Ophir inched one palm down Sal’s back, massaging and squeezing every tensely painful sinew that had been pummeled by the uncustomary, excruciating mining work. As they panted against each other’s mouths, a drip of sweat flicking off the tip of Sal’s nose, Ophir worked his hand lower until he gripped Sal’s haunch in his claw, urging Sal to ride him. Their calzoneras were so strained by their erections, the friction of their brass buttons against each other nearly created sparks. Something would combust soon if they continued to rut fully clothed, and Sal knew from unfortunate experience how unpleasant it was to climax inside of the heated leather leggings. So there was no forethought, no sentence spelled out in his brain, that told him to do what he did next. It wasn’t logical, based upon Ophir’s reaction last time he’d tried anything like this, but Sal suddenly found himself kneeling before Ophir and nibbling at the delicious bulge that now rode up near his hip. “Ah!” Ophir gasped, lifting a boot to wedge the heel on a stove handle, indicating his willingness to be toyed with. Sal bit and chewed at the leather-clad erection, drooling so ardently he knew that later on Ophir would have an embarrassing wet spot on his calzoneras to explain away. Sal’s left hand nimbly unknotted the red silk sash and unbuttoned the broadfall, vastly rewarded when his fist closed around the pulsating phallus, so hefty it was like a limb. This time, instead of diving right onto it like a ravenous feral dog, he parted his lips to taste the knob of the prick, darting his tongue out to snake around the underside. This time, he would make Ophir beg for it. The taut crown was hot and tight underneath his tongue. Taking up the massive balls that more than filled his entire palm and massaging them, Sal yanked the calzoneras down past Ophir’s knees,

 

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enabling Ophir to spread his thighs farther apart. Ophir’s fingers dug into Sal’s naked shoulders, and he humped the air as Sal played the teasing game with him. Sal sucked on the full crown while squiggling his tongue against the underside, then retreated to bestow tiny flicking motions around the tip. When Ophir started huffing his frustrated lust in a series of arousing “ah!” cries and swiveling his hips in attempts to jab his cock down Sal’s throat, Sal gave a bit more. He suddenly swallowed as much as was possible without gagging, giving it three or four good sucks before he relented and backed off. This time Ophir did utter a frustrated “Good God!” and gripped the back of Sal’s head to urge his cock down his throat, but Sal persisted in applying his flicking tongue to the underside of the phallus. Now he lunged forward to gently suck one of the balls as though it were an egg that might break, tickling the squishy globe with his tongue-tip. Ophir grabbed a handful of Sal’s hair and yanked his head away. Sal looked up innocently to see Ophir glaring down at him. “Suck on me, Sal,” he said menacingly. Without guile, Sal murmured, “I don’t want you to shove me away again—” “I won’t shove!” Ophir snarled as he shoved Sal’s head toward his groin, spearing his penis down Sal’s throat. “Oh!” Ophir’s instant groan resonated so fully down his body, Sal could feel the vibration in the cock he struggled to swallow. Sal found that if he relaxed his throat muscles as well as he could, he could take another inch without choking. He tried to think of prior women—maybe all of them hookers— who had sucked on him. Did they have such large mouths and throats, to stuff all of that meat down there without choking? Well, some women, of course, strangled and choked on his tool, but just the sensation of having a warm, suctioning mouth clamped around him had been enough to bring him off immediately. Sal tried to imitate those hookers, but being inexperienced didn’t stand him in good stead. He knew, as a recipient of a good sucking,

 

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which techniques were most effective, so he tried to pump his head in and out while writhing his tongue all about the veined member. He knew from Ophir’s strangled whimpers that he was doing an acceptable job, and it made him so hot he clamped his own thighs around Ophir’s leg and humped him, as Ophir had done when licking Tamasin’s sex. Oh, no. This would not do at all, to ejaculate inside his own clammy calzoneras, so Sal used an adept hand to unbutton his broadfall, allowing his penis to spring free where the warm air bathed it. He worked his jaw intently around the pulsating cock, snorting against Ophir’s steamy pubic mound, gripping his partner by his slick bare hips. Sal was so absorbed in this scintillating task he barely took note when a little slip of a sylph—Tamasin in her flimsy nightgown— appeared soundlessly, propping her butt on the stove alongside Ophir. She looked salaciously down at Sal with a sly smile as she gathered up the hem of her gown in her hand. It rose like a curtain, revealing inch by inch of her shapely white leg which she positioned to maximum advantage, displayed out on tiptoe so her calf muscles flexed. What was this little siren up to? Sal was so awestruck by her sudden appearance he released Ophir’s cock with a suctioning sound and sat back on the balls of his feet. But Ophir would have none of that, and he gripped Sal’s neck harshly. “Ignore her, you peón!” he growled, giving Sal the title of the Sonoran laborers who worked for the higher-up patróns. Sal resumed his chore, noisily gorging on the heft of the large, dusky cock. But he could hardly ignore this graceful, snowy spirit who had now gathered her skirts about her hip and was artlessly smashing the pads of her fingertips in the folds of her pussy, looking directly and meaningfully at Sal. She now took to stroking the erect prepuce of her clitoris, hitching a bare foot alongside Ophir’s on the stove’s handle to give Sal an unfettered view. How brazen of her! But Sal supposed she had been influenced by the activities of the men who hadn’t quite been overly prudent in their lusty displays. She half-

 

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closed her eyes and stuck out the tip of her tongue to salaciously lick her upper lip as she cocked her hips forward, diddling her button that jutted forth with the urgency of a small erection. Sal was fascinated by the relatively thin strip of reddish-blonde hair that sheltered her erection. He had never seen a woman frig herself—why would a prostitute do that?—and he increased his humping of Ophir’s leg nearly to the point of shamefully ejaculating. Now Tamasin took the flats of her four fingers and fell to frantically rubbing the entire span of her clitoris, emitting little ladylike gasps like the boil of a teakettle. Again Sal’s sucking stilled—ay dios, he would finish that ladylike orgasm for her with his own mouth, instead of letting Ophir get all the glory!—but just as he thought Tamasin would launch into that gut-wrenching spectacle she didn’t even know was an orgasm, she slithered down the front of the stove. Her knees completely caved in and her butt settled on the floor. Sal gasped in fear she’d injured herself, lodging the burgeoning crown of Ophir’s cock firmly against his tonsils, and Sal choked loudly. Ophir rattled him by the scruff of the neck, ordering him to “Suck me, peón! Suck your patrón until I spew down your throat!” Being ordered about by someone who had, until recently, clearly been his inferior reinvigorated Sal, and he applied the flat of his tongue to long bovine licks of the entire penis, gulping the delicious little spurts of ejaculate that erupted when a man was close to climaxing. When he peeked to see if Tamasin was all right, she gave him a wicked little grin and slid over between Ophir’s outspread feet! Now she intended to pleasure Ophir, leaving Sal out in the cold once more? But no. Propping herself with one palm flat on the floor and her neck scrunched against the stove, the wily vixen squeezed the bare globe of Sal’s ass and inhaled his cock down her own throat! Sal had been sucked by many women before, but never by a lovely innocent such as Tamasin, a beautiful, naïve woman he loved.

 

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His reaction was instant. He shuddered, a delectable shiver of lust shooting down his spine directly into his balls and penis. Gooseflesh rose on his shoulders, nipples, the surface of his ass as the sweet obeisant girl struggled to gobble his prick, munching away at every inch she gained. Ophir must have seen her, for he said soothingly, “That’s good, little girl. Pleasure your patrón.” When Tamasin’s incisors accidentally nicked the tip of his urethra, Sal nearly swallowed Ophir’s prick whole, and that’s when Ophir gasped, “Good God almighty!” and exploded in Sal’s mouth. Sal grunted around the juicy penis as he felt the contractions roll down its length, and he managed to gulp the first spurt that shot over his tonsils. He couldn’t keep up with milking the eruptions of jism that followed—he swallowed one load, but the next jet nearly dribbled out his nostrils, and some of the unctuous semen trickled out the sides of his mouth. But he wanted to be as proficient as the whores who had pumped his prick, so he kept swallowing and snorting. He had been so primed by guzzling Ophir’s delicious cock he knew it wouldn’t take much before he was drenching poor Tamasin, but the little hellcat—Ophir’s ducking and gentle flower!—did something even more surprising. She must have wetted her middle finger with her saliva, for she now slid it effortlessly up his ass while slurping his penis. She just brazenly slid it past the first couple of knuckles until she tickled that spot that Sal knew would set him off. Before he could disengage himself from Ophir’s flagging prick, he was convulsing around her naughty little finger, against her bewitchingly innocent tongue. The semen splashed against her teeth which once again nicked the explosive head, but her finger never ceased its tantalizing tickling of that spot up his ass. She seemed talented as hell at this, and as long as she tickled, Salvador continued to deposit load after load, filling her mouth until he heard her gurgle and spit some out.

 

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Sal stroked the curls that tumbled over her shoulders, releasing Ophir with a loud gasp. Ophir let out a wail like a giant dying cat and staggered away from the stove, seemingly bowlegged. Tamasin, too, turned her head aside to let the final few spurts splatter on her cheek, and it was Sal who urged her finger from his rear, simply because he couldn’t tolerate the ecstasy any longer. Slipping both hands under her armpits, Sal tried to raise Tamasin to her feet. But his own knees protested the unfamiliar kneeling position he’d been locked in for many long minutes, and they both swayed as though corned. Tamasin giggled, wiping her face with the back of her hand, and they shared conspiratorial grins. Semen had dribbled out her nose, too. Sal gave up, sitting on his behind and letting his pulsating cock cool off in the air, while Tamasin used the stove handles to drag herself to a standing position. When Sal finally cleared his head and clambered to his feet, Ophir had stuffed his penis away and buttoned his calzoneras and was now leaning against the table cradling Tamasin to his bare chest. The woman smiled in adoration when Sal approached, smearing locks of hair from his forehead. “Do you think we can sleep now?” Ophir asked. “Even in this heat?” “Did I do well?” Tamasin suddenly cried. “Pshew,” said Salvador, still reeling. “Excuse me?” “I was trying to imitate the way you suck Ophir, Salvador. Did I do well? I am sure you’ve received much more talented ministrations from more…talented women before, but—” Sal took her by the upper arms and bent at the knee so he could look her in the eyes. “Of course you did well. Why else do you think I would…” He became shy, so used a euphemistic term. “Reach a crisis so fast?” Tamasin blushed now, looking down at Sal’s boots. “Well. Maybe because you were already stimulated from sucking on Ophir.”

 

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She truly looked adorable like that, pretending to be shy, while the devil was in the glance she cast up at him. Sal smiled, but determined booted steps clomped up the front porch stairs, and both Sal and Ophir leaped for their pistols that were lying on the table, Ophir placing Tamasin behind the broad, muscular target of his torso. They had cocked their hammers before the hapless Knut even entered the kitchen, staggering like a Virginia fence, his own gun belt so haphazardly buckled about his waist the pistols were well-nigh banging against his knees. Knut held up his hands defensively. “Whoa, whoa! Step back, you banditos! I do not wish to become some miner’s ventilated breakfast!” The men holstered their pistols, but Sal saw Knut looking daggers at their crotches and bare chests. When Tamasin’s nightgown-clad form was revealed, the lawyer visibly jumped and cringed toward the foyer. His face, normally flushed red from the exertion of bending the elbow, even paled and his lower lip jiggled in terror. “I will tell the Frenchmen not to expect breakfast in the morning!” he said dramatically. Sal frowned, shouldering his gun belt in preparation for going upstairs. “Why shouldn’t they expect breakfast? What’s that paper in your hand?” Knut looked at the paper as though he’d never seen it before, then brightened. “Oh, jah! A courier came from Savage’s trading post.” Sal tore the note from Knut’s paw, but Knut informed them of its contents, anyway. “Savage tells in horrifying detail of the one thousand prospectors who have descended upon Bear Valley! All fugitives from Hornitos, Quartzburg, and other towns who want to cleanse the hillsides of every Spaniard with the slightest tinge of evil.” “‘Tinge of evil’?” Ophir echoed. “Jah, I tell you, my amigos. It is just as I predicted. All the trouble is arising from various definitions of the term ‘unoccupied.’ If a miner goes home to dinner and leaves his claim for more than twelve hours

 

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it is declared unoccupied, and anyone can seize and legally hold it. We will be forever standing at our own doorways defending them from depredation!” Sal barely heard Knut—he was too busy trying to decipher Savage’s handwriting. Once Savage’s meaning sunk in, Sal looked at his friends with a face deadened of emotion. “Savage says a ‘moving engine of doom’ is heading toward Bear Valley. Some two hundred Mexican war veterans from Mormon Gulch, looking for the heads of…” He squinted back at the note. “‘Two hot-headed Frenchmen of the red republican order.’” There was a brief silence while the exhausted citizens of Hell Hollow pondered the meaning of this. Then Knut said brightly, “Well. I was going to sleep with those Frogs in the office. But I think I will repair to my usual bedroom.” “Mata,” Sal said tiredly. “Mata los chingados Yanquis.” But he knew it was futile.

 

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Chapter Sixteen Ophir had convinced the Frogs to accompany them to Bear Valley the next day. He told them 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 Frogs’ 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.

 

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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 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 miners’ 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 prospectors’ 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

 

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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 blueshirted 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.

 

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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.”

 

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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 Miners 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?” Tyke glanced at Abel and they shared a chuckle. “Is that so? Well, you can go ahead and try to liberate the Frogs, Mr. Palomares. I’m just surprised you were able to stop fondling each other’s darkie cocks for long enough to think about something else.” Good God. Ophir had an instant, sudden sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. It was not only the way Sal’s nostrils flared and his eyes narrowed—Ophir had witnessed that spectacle often enough and it was always very awe-inspiring. Now there was an overtone of menace, and Ophir braced himself to jump into the fray. The Sonorans behind Sal, too, cocked their hammers. Ophir doubted they understood most of Tyke’s meaning, but they could tell sure enough by the whip-like tension in Sal’s body that he had finally had enough from this pendejo. Sal snarled something so quiet, Ophir had to angle his head toward his friend. “¡Véte ál carajo!” Go to hell! But instead of shooting the scum of the mud of hell, an action that would have caused a major melee the likes of which hadn’t been seen since before the Mexican war, in one flash of a motion Sal bent to yank the knife he always kept in his zapatones and hurled it directly at Tyke’s heart. He was so swift and sure, Ophir knew that knife would have stuck in an oak trunk up to the hilt. But apparently Tyke’s intuition and

 

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experience with running like a yellow yokel was so acute, being the escaped convict he was, he was able to reach aside and grab that big boulder of a dunce, Abel, and use him as a shield. “Argh!” gurgled Abel as he clutched his own heart, although since he was a foot taller than Tyke, the knife had gone into his belly. Immediately Tyke darted out from behind Abel, leaving Abel to fall to the dirt like a hewn pine, and took cover behind the ox-cart. Simultaneously, about half of the Sonorans behind Sal dismounted and took several menacing steps forward, their weapons at the ready, while all the carousing looters seemed to think it wiser to just amble backward, whistling at the clouds as though they’d seen nothing. Some ten dyed-in-the-wool League men bunched up their muscles and stood their ground, but it was obvious they’d be dead ducks against the fury of the miners who had been deprived of their livelihood. “You stabbed Abel!” Tyke growled from behind the ox-cart wheel. It was simple for Ophir to dash around the back of the wagon and haul Tyke up by the shirt collar. “Yeah, well it was supposed to be you!” Ophir dragged him into the open, rattling him a bit for good measure. Oh, how he wanted to kick that son of a bitch into the next world with his pointy-toed Californio boots! He had run roughshod over the serene valleys and rivers that had belonged to Salvador’s father, he had desecrated the land with his oyster tins and whiskey bottles, and now he accused them of being some perverted greenhorn outlanders? Ophir trembled with rage, but it was Sal’s business to confront the mewling worm. He was the one who had launched the knife at him— he was the one whose land had been overridden by these outcasts. So, completely ignoring the mountainous form of Abel who rolled piggishly on his back nearby, Sal marched right up and gripped the front of Tyke’s shirtfront in his fist, like he had the time he’d rubbed him raw on the oak trunk. Agitating the convict in the air, he snarled,

 

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“Now. I want you to release the two Frenchmen. And I want a promise that there will be no more ejection of Spaniards from any mines, as far as I can believe any promise made by Alcalde McCarthy.” “Sure,” mumbled Tyke. Sal rattled him more fiercely until his misshapen hat rolled to the dirt. “What did you say?” “Sure! I’ll release the Frenchmen! Whatever your poofy little heart desires!” Salvador drew his fist and delivered a wallop so sound and solid, Ophir’s face lit up with pride. Tyke’s nose crunched as the fist connected, his head jerking and thudding against the dirt. As expected, several League men made threatening gestures toward Sal, and Tyke never lost his wobbly grin. He looked as though he would spit a tooth at Sal as he lifted his head and ordered some men, “Reiner! Howard! Go get the Frenchmen!” So Ophir and Sal retreated to their mounts, never turning their backs on those men who loathed the law. “You don’t know what sort of bee’s hive you’re stirring up, Palomares,” Tyke seethed, wiping his bloody nose on his hand. Sal appeared entirely unconcerned, his unruffled countenance as smooth as ever. “Bring the Frenchmen to meet us at Savage’s trading post,” he instructed as he mounted.

 

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Chapter Seventeen Tamasin smiled, placing on a flat rock what felt like the twentieth pot of stewed beef that day. She had spent hours in the sun that fried her brain, shoveling beef and tortillas out of the beehive-shaped oven, to feed the Sonorans as well as the Europeans who banded up with them against The League. The talk among the Sonorans was they planned to head to the Colorado River, but about fifty would stay around to fight for Salvador. Nobody was ignoring the threat Tyke McCarthy had made to Salvador during the Bear Valley riots. The brute Abel had survived the knife attack due to having a stomach thicker than an oak tree, but Tyke knew the knife had been meant for him. As Tamasin wandered around the knots of men sitting atop their saddles or blankets, a mournful tune rose from a group of Europeans. She didn’t hear Ophir’s fiddle, but paused to listen to Knut’s overwrought yet affecting serenade. “How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood, When fond recollection presents them to view! The orchard, the meadow, the deep-tangled wildwood, And every loved spot which my infancy knew!” There was an underlying tension that this somber dirge could at any moment explode into a battle song, with men sharpening their knives, cleaning their guns, distributing powder and shot, and murmuring things about “The League,” “posse,” and “violence.” Her work serving the voracious prospectors done at last—for the time

 

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being—Tamasin was finally able to do what she’d been dreaming of for hours now. Find Salvador and Ophir. They were not in the house, and Knut said they were not in the office building, cowering under tables with the engineers. So she went to her kitchen and made a fanciful lantern by knocking the bottom off a claret bottle and sticking a candle into it—all of her whale oil lanterns were being used by the men on the hillside. So she took her little lantern, stepping carefully among the squatting men who were threatening to overrun her precious vegetable garden, and checked the carriage house. No one. Next she wended her way toward the stables, relieved to see the outlines of two grand, regal caballeros leading their horses into the darkened building. Placing her candle on the ground, she peeked around the door’s edge and was about to make herself known, but something prevented her from speaking. It was their solemn, dispirited demeanor as they went about unsaddling their mounts. She could barely make out their silhouettes to decipher which man was which, but Salvador clearly said, “I’d estimate that express rider makes it to Stockton around noon tomorrow.” “You’d know better than me”—that was Ophir’s lovely, mellifluous voice—“but it’s eighty miles away, a day’s hard riding, right?” Sal sighed with the weight of all his troubles. “Yes, then a brief delay for the governor’s answer. Of course the best answer is that he gives his support.” Aha. They were presumably sending a courier to Stockton to ask for help. They probably didn’t want this fact to become common knowledge and panic people, so Tamasin stayed secreted in the dark to find out more of their manly plot. Eavesdropping was a bad vice, she knew, but she could always later pretend she had just arrived, and hadn’t heard a word of their plans.

 

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The two dark outlines moved closer together. It looked like the Sal shadow was putting his hand on the shoulder of the Ophir shadow. “Fresh horses are everywhere, only a matter of money.” Tamasin’s eyes were adjusting to the darkness, and she now clearly saw Ophir reach up and stroke Sal’s face. “Our entire success depends upon the first messenger getting there and away from the blockading League.” As the men sloppily kissed, all Tamasin could think was, The blockading League! What does that mean? Have they already cut off the Hell Hollow road to Bear Valley? No wonder they didn’t want anyone knowing. If there was no way out, what was the point of creating hysteria? Tamasin meandered a few paces from the stables, her mind whirling with thoughts. What about the road to Coulterville, a lawabiding town to the north equipped with a uniformed Home Guard, which would be the first place a rider could change horses on his way to Stockton? Would they allow a woman through? She wasn’t the swiftest rider, not nearly as proficient as the athletic Salvador who seemed to have been born on a horse, but she was lighter—and, more importantly, she could claim some womanly emergency. Men became so abashed at any vague mention of a “womanly emergency,” they would probably let her through just to avoid finding out the details. She could then proceed to Coulterville with her message. Fortified with this new plan, Tamasin returned to the stables and picked up her makeshift lantern. However, what she saw when she lifted the bottle high stopped her once again in her tracks. The candlelight bathed the two men’s forms as they coupled on the ground atop some strewn hay that Tamasin hoped was clean. Sal hunched over Ophir, the striations of his bare back muscles playing in the candlelight like the twinkling of a rippled lake as he grappled at Ophir’s shirt collar. Ophir, for his part, lay passively fully clothed, slipping his fingertips under the knotted sash at Sal’s waist. Where the

 

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expression in Ophir’s eyes looked serene and loving, Sal apparently expressed his nerves in a lusty assault upon his partner. Laying thick, open-mouthed kisses upon Ophir’s beautiful mahogany throat, Sal licked lower, squashing his tongue into the hollow that was laid bare like an offering, completely trusting in the bestial man. Though the men delighted in touching each other, there wasn’t the shred of anything effete about their demeanor or bodies as they coupled with entwined limbs, Sal crouched resembling a gorging beast, his broad back beautifully displayed to Tamasin. They had seemed to enjoy it when she had diddled her engorged button—she thought she’d even succeeded in taking Sal’s attention off guzzling the massive meat of Ophir’s penis. So now, in the interest of furthering her sexual education, Tamasin carried her candle to the men’s little bed of hay. It didn’t smell of horse shit, so she set the candle onto a railing. They paid heed to the flickering candlelight, Ophir grinning lazily up at her, and Sal lifting his shaggy head, his eyes heavy with lust. Sal rose to his knees, straddling Ophir, without taking his eyes from Tamasin. She could hardly ignore that Ophir had succeeded in not only unknotting the waist sash but unbuttoning his calzoneras, and his cock swayed in the hot, stifling air. Not for long, though, as Ophir swiftly grabbed ahold of the admirable appendage and started to pump it, rotating his thumb about the taut, shiny glans. Sal lifted his chin to indicate that Tamasin should approach, so she fell to her knees and touched the tip of her nose to his, draping one arm about his hot, solid neck. In the quiet night air, heavy with the portent of the armed League lying in wait for them, Knut’s wailing drifted over to the stables. “The wide-spreading pond, and the mill that stood by it, The bridge, and the rock where the cataract fell, The cot of my father, the dairy-house nigh it, And even the rude bucket that hung in the well.”

 

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Oh, she would do anything to get back that bucolic memory of what she thought the Hell Hollow Mine would become before the horde of intolerant criminals arrived! Tamasin kissed Sal’s robust jaw, breathing deeply of the musky scent of leather, and rubbed her breasts against his bicep. She ran her hand over the slope of his haunch, delighting in the buoyant feel of his stupendous ass. But Sal apparently had other ideas in mind, as he cupped his balls in his own hand and lunged forward, rubbing the crown of his cock against Ophir’s deliciously bowed lips. Ophir raised himself on one elbow and hefted the penis in his hand, slathering his lips all about the length of it until Tamasin could feel Sal jerk and twitch with the ecstatic teasing. Cradling Ophir’s skull in his hands, Sal lunged into the savory, suctioning mouth. Ophir devoured it so fully and suddenly with a great choking sound. Sal must have been so overwrought with a rush of bawdiness—if a man felt anything the same as a woman, and Tamasin was starting to assume that they did—that he thrust his hips forward, knocking Ophir off his elbow and flat onto his back. Ophir didn’t seem to mind being fairly suffocated by the mass of Sal’s cock, as he obligingly dug his fingers into the mounds of Sal’s pumping ass and drew his knees up to the roof, helping to bowl Sal forward and into his mouth. Now Sal hunched over Ophir, virtually fucking the gulping, slurping mouth. Tamasin watched from her vantage point on her ass where she had been bowled over. It was a most stimulating sight to peek between Sal’s thighs and see the fulsome sack of his testicles slapping against Ophir’s throat. Ophir suckled the phallus all the way down to the root, stroking the trunk with the flat of his tongue. When Tamasin realized that she was sitting on the toe of her slipper with a quim so spongy she rocked back and forth with increasing pleasure, she knew she couldn’t just sit there. She wanted to crawl out of her skin! Her eyes darted to various implements in the

 

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stable. One part of her mind must have remembered how Sal had luxuriated and exploded when her little middle finger had slid up his behind, for her eyes quickly alighted upon…her riding crop? Leaping to her feet, Tamasin scurried over to where she had last placed the crop. Given to her by Doña Carmen to complete her “proper” Californio riding attire, it was made by expert reata men, encased in leather, with a small leather paddle at the end. Slapping it experimentally into her palm, Tamasin grinned devilishly to think this probably wasn’t the use Carmen had intended for this implement. But when she kneeled again behind Sal’s pumping ass and slapped the muscular globe with the small tongue of leather, his gasp definitely indicated excitement. She slapped his ass a few more times, a tad more forcefully each time. Each time the muscles of his thighs, ass, and shoulders clenched a bit tighter until he was simply one delicious sculpture of bunched masculinity humping Ophir’s face. She became bolder, tickling his asshole with the leather spatula, and his cock twitched and lunged inside Ophir’s mouth. “Tamasin—” Sal gasped. “Yes?” she whispered sweetly, then punctuated her false innocence by lightly cuffing the mound of his testicles with the crop. “Ah!” Sal cried, and this time she wasn’t sure if it was truly painful, so of course she had to try it again. The power felt so freeing, being able to elicit such a severe reaction in the man whose every last nerve must be on fire at the moment. He slowed his humping and seemed to be holding his shapely buttocks up for Tamasin to get a better angle, so she swatted a bit harder, just a few tiny smacks so that his burgeoning balls jumped with each slap. The sinews of his forearms were shivering with tension as he held the bulk of his body off the pugilist, and he squatted so closely over Ophir’s face she was afraid she might accidentally swat the poor boxer, so she withdrew the tantalizing crop from her fiancé’s rump. She had a new idea for the instrument.

 

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“What…are you doing?” Sal gasped, turning his head aside and glancing down at her. He had not asked that when she’d been spanking him—no, he had accepted that unquestioningly—so she assumed he was in somewhat of a rush. “In a hurry?” she teased, and plunged the leather-covered handle of the crop into her lubricious cunt. She knew instantly from the widening of Sal’s eyes and the slowing of his humping that this fascinated him. So she worked the handle in and out a few times, just enough to coat it in her plentiful juices. Withdrawing it, she brandished it for a moment before his gleaming eyes. His nostrils flared in that manner that was both enticing and erotic, and she pinched one of his beaded nipples before rubbing the knob of the crop directly against the bud of his asshole. Sal’s eyelids fluttered, his penis twitched in Ophir’s guzzling mouth, and he gasped like a surprised virgin when she rotated the knob up his grasping channel. Tamasin held herself steady by slapping a palm against his powerful shoulder, nearly sliding off from the curtain of sweat that slicked his skin. When she flicked her fingernail against the tip of his hardened nipple, his eyelids shut completely, and his eyeballs rolled about crazily. His lower jaw hung slack as she worked the knob up his asshole—where was that spot that had forced him to ejaculate last time? “Oh! Holy mother of Joseph!” he whispered between clenched teeth, and she knew she had found the location. As she jiggled the crop to titillate the heavenly place, she lowered her head to bite lightly on his enticing nipple, and that’s when he erupted in Ophir’s mouth. It was odd—she could feel the convulsions around the crop handle as though threatening to suck the instrument inside him, and she had to jiggle harder to keep a grip on it. She heard Ophir swallowing and choking and had to smile to herself, knowing the semen was filling up his throat and coming out his nostrils, too. Sal gasped uncontrollably, little hissing intakes of breath like a coiled snake as he spilled his seed in his partner’s mouth. Tamasin

 

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suckled at his nipple and agitated the crop in tiny little spurts until Sal’s gasps turned into shouts, and he released Ophir’s head. He now pushed at Tamasin’s head. “Stop, stop,” he said weakly. Lifting her head, she giggled. She looked at her fiancé now almost shyly as he continued to jerk and twitch. A drip of sweat fell off the tip of his nose. She tossed the riding crop aside, where it banged up against an anvil, and one of the horses whinnied in irritation. Ophir, still fully clothed, was scrambling backwards on his butt. He propped himself up against a stall, hands dangling between his knees. “Hey,” he said weakly. “The stable hand ain’t going to clean that up.” “No,” Tamasin agreed. “The housemaid will.” Sal, too, fell back against a beam, his penis pulsating as it lay against his hip. “Caramba. Let the patrón do it.” Tamasin crawled between Sal’s thighs to pack his penis away, as she felt a wife must certainly do. “What is this about The League blockading us?” Sal’s face went blank as he apparently searched for an answer. “Well, ah…” Ophir said, “She’ll find out soon enough.” Sal cast his partner an ungrateful look. “Well, yes. They’re blockading the road to Bear Valley, so none of the Sonorans can get out of the Sierra.” “I thought they wanted them to leave.” “They do—it wasn’t the intention to keep them in. The intention was to prevent supplies getting up to us.” All three scrambled to their feet when they heard hooves approaching, and Knut’s wavering singing abruptly petered out. Tamasin scampered to grab the candle, and they went to the stable doors to see what the uproar was. “That’s Parmalli!” Ophir said in a hushed tone, and this fact obviously had great importance. The two men dashed down the hill,

 

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Tamasin following. Parmalli was an Italian woodcutter who had benefited Sal greatly in the building of his house, ore-crushing mill, and other outbuildings, and now Tamasin approached in time to hear him exclaim, “Don Salvador! The League men, they waylaid me when I was just a mile past the Merced River!” He leaned weakly against his sweaty mount while Knut pressed a skin, presumably of whiskey, to his chest. “They turned me away—they were blocking the road! They warned me that any new attempt to get through would be met by a rifle ball!” Knut looked about at the night sky with big housefly eyes. “I wonder how close they have come.” Sal clapped Ophir on the shoulder. “Let us go bring reinforcements to the night watchman over at the Black Drift Mine. We have plenty of men. Parmalli, how many men were in that blockading party?” “Maybe twenty. They have guarded every pass, and marksmen are watching out everywhere. I am sorry, Don Salvador, but I just turned around and came back, as they suggested.” “I would do the same,” Sal assured him, but Tamasin knew Sal was lying.

 

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Chapter Eighteen Sal, Ophir, the brave frog-eaters Jules and Henri, and a few of the more ferocious miners all armed to the teeth galloped down the rocky ravine toward the Black Drift Mine. Sal was demented with fury to think The League was attempting to converge on the last bastion of prospecting left to him, his one quarry of riches out of what had once been eleven leagues of his land. How many thousands of dollars of gold had they already stolen from him and the faithful Sonorans who had first mined this country? Could not they even leave him in peace in this one enclave of civility? It appeared Tyke and his ilk were hellbent on driving him to utter ruination—he, a son of the grandest gente de razon of Old Spain! They hadn’t even reached the waterfall of mill tailings before several sulfuric bangs told them a fight was breaking out in the Black Drift Mine, and everyone reined in their mounts to sniff the air and look about. “Down there.” Ophir needlessly pointed, because already miners were frantically trotting toward them on their mules, waving their arms. “The Hornitos League has jumped the Black Drift!” one man shrieked, and another added, “They have killed Emilio Castillo!” It was evident the miners weren’t stopping for anything, their surefooted mules skittering around in the quicksilver and quartz tailings, and Sal managed to ask a fellow, “Are there any of our men left alive down there?” “No!” “How many League pendejos?”

 

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“About fifteen, twenty pendejos!” Sal said to Ophir, “What about the miners in the Hell Hollow Mine?” “The usual six men, and what about the night watchman posted on Ass Rock?” Ophir meant the large promontory shaped like buttocks where Sal always staked a watchman—from Ass Rock one could see the entire road north to Coulterville, and a portion of the narrow canyon where the Hell Hollow Mine was situated. “You get the men out of Hell Hollow—I’ll take Henri and Jules to get the men out of the mill.” The only option was to split up. Ophir took the ruthless Sonorans up the ravine path barely wide enough to accommodate a horse, and Sal and the Frogs raced toward the sixteen-stamp ore-crushing mill. It appeared that the League hellions following them with a few more desultory shots had paused to make up their minds which faction to follow. This gave Sal more moments to tear around the side of the mill down past the delivery floor where oxen dumped the carts of ore from the mines. The mill men who worked the stamping batteries were, at this time of night, probably on the plate floor shoveling crushed ore into bins. Loosely tying up his mount to a steep railing—the Frenchmen stayed outside for a quicker retreat—in a flash Sal was stomping down the floorboards toward the stamp battery. Three men lounged at the foot of the battery where the iron shoes that pounded the ore now sat at rest—gracias a dios, for normally the awful roar of their hammering meant you had to scream to make yourself even remotely heard, and most inexperienced mill men learned their trade by watching. “Get out!” Sal shouted. “The League is fast coming! Get up to my hacienda!” It was now evident they weren’t lounging playing cards but rather cowering under a water pipe that ran downhill the length of the battery. They had evidently heard the shooting and were trying to

 

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make themselves as small as possible, so Sal squatted down and grabbed a fistful of someone’s tight-sleeved jumper—tight to prevent any piece of clothing being caught by machinery. He pulled out a corduroy-clad Irishman known as O’Callan, feeling the lad tremble beneath his fingertips. “We heard the shots and figured we were doomed,” moaned O’Callan. “Especially after Rivera here came to tell us that Sepulveda up at Butt Rock was bribed into giving up his watch.” Sal narrowed his eyes at the recoiling mill man. “¿Qué?” he said quietly. “Sepulveda left his watch?” Creeping out from under the pipe, Rivera peered up at Sal from under a curtain of hair. “Sí,” he affirmed. “They gave him five cows to leave Butt Rock and go live in Hornitos.” Sal seethed. “Five cows? Those were my cows!” He walked in a furious little circle, but could not spare a single second more in anger, for Jules was poking his head into the door of the plate floor and yelling, “They are coming this way!” Every man stilled for a fraction of a moment, listening to the clatter of approaching hooves, crashing first across boulders, then almost silently through the slurry of the tailings dump down below the mill. Everyone leaped into action, all clamoring to the door. Two more mill men were apparently hiding three steps downhill under the amalgamation table. They joined in the action, with the result that five people were trying to squish through the door at the same time. The knot of arms and legs squirmed like a giant squalling spider, but someone must have been pushing from the other side, for on a sudden the knot gave way and the men fell back into the room in a jumble. Jules and Henri, the bravest Frenchmen that Sal had ever known, sprinted in across the pile of bodies with outstretched arms, as though they ran on ice. They dashed so fast they tumbled into some of the iron pulverizing shoes, and Jules in particular looked to have been knocked unconscious, his eyes rolling up into his head.

 

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So these are the men who will be holding fast with me? Sal thought. Two unconscious Frogs, a trembling Irishman, and two mill men who thought it wise to hide under a table coated with crushed ore and poisonous quicksilver. “Mr. Palomares!” Outside the mill, Tyke McCarthy’s annoying banter floated uphill. Sal was so puffed with rage he didn’t trust himself to go to the door. Closing his eyes, he took several deep breaths. If he acted rashly, the first shot would bring out all the restrained evil on both sides. A murderous contest would ensue, one man picking off another until the side with the most men left won by default. Sal hadn’t killed that worthless thug Abel, and he would try not to kill anyone now. “Dear Salvador,” Tyke cooed. Stepping over the squiggling bodies of the mill men, Sal showed his silhouette in the doorway. Tyke sounded as though he hid behind a boulder about twenty yards down toward the river and was calling up to Sal through a cupped hand. “Call your men off, McCarthy,” he hollered back. Tyke called back, “Why should I, when we are winning? I just wanted to let you know, we can keep you under siege for days. We’ll starve you out of these mines!” A few more deep breaths. “Show yourself, McCarthy! I’m not accustomed to negotiating with someone so yellow they hide behind a rock.” Tyke paused a few moments before responding. “I don’t want to be stabbed in the back when I’m not looking.” Sal frowned. “Who has done that? I’ll holster my weapon, how’s that?” He didn’t move, however. Again, Tyke paused. “How do I know you don’t have some greasers or ‘keskydee’ Frog sharpshooters ready to polish me off through one of them loopholes? Besides, I’m not here to negotiate. We’ll accept nothing else other than your total surrender and the abandonment of all of these foothills—”

 

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Sal was slammed back against the outer mill wall by a blast. It was either so sudden or so severe it shocked him into momentary unconsciousness—his eyes rolling into his skull, surrounded by a fuzzy blackness imbued with a million red pinpoints. It was only when Henri rattled him by the arm and shouted, “They’re blasting the mine!” that Sal realized what had happened. Clinging to the outer mill wall, he clambered up the pathway and peered around the rear of the delivery floor wall. His nostrils flared at the rotten stench of powder, and when his eyes burned acridly, he knew the cloud had already reached the mill. The League had set shallow charges so as to make the Hell Hollow Mine unusable. Sal tried to think, how long since Ophir and I parted? About fifteen minutes. And more importantly. Is fifteen minutes long enough for him and the others to have escaped? **** After they heard the first powder explosion, Tamasin huddled in her parlor with Knut. He confirmed they were the explosions of gunpowder charges. She had heard those sounds when camped with Niall near some Mormons who were building an enormous highway across the Sierra. Knut opined they were probably set to destroy the mining operations, run them out, and thus create the “unoccupied” state that was required to take possession. About ten Hell Hollow miners had galloped down the mountain shortly thereafter, excitedly giving the news that Ophir had warned them away in the nick of time, although no one had seen Ophir since. At the first blasts, many Sonorans milled about shouting angry slogans, such as the ever-popular “Mata los chingados Yanquis!” But Tamasin, knowing how easily a few irate words could flare into bloodshed, had tried to calm them, convince them not to ride down to the mine making the fur fly. She attempted to get them to wait for

 

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either Sal or Ophir or the Frenchmen to return, and in the meantime she and Knut snuck among them, stealing their aguardiente bottles when their backs were turned. Tamasin felt awful, stealing, but drinking would only fire their dramatic outrage, and all would be war. Instead, she sent armed groups of them as pickets onto the Bear Valley Road and up onto lookout peaks using paths only goats could move on, to report back with League movements. She ordered them to shoot only if attacked, and of course all of her orders were commanded under the guise that they came from Knut, as the most senior mine employee at the moment. Now, cowering on their couches in the parlor, Tamasin felt equally bad that she and Knut were drinking aguardiente. It was the only way she could think to calm her nerves while she shivered here impotently. “The pathways that line the gorge are so narrow, a fall down means death!” declared Knut for the dozenth time. They both stared sightlessly out the window, where in daylight there would be a view past the stamp mill and also up the mountainside. Their concentration was focused on a sharp bend in the road that led to Hell Hollow Mine. Speckling the lawn immediately in front of their house, dozens of remaining prospectors milled anxiously about their campfires. “Yes, Knut,” Tamasin said vaguely. “Would you please stop reminding me of that?” Waiting was the worst sort of agony, with a brain growing feverish and numb with one obsessive terror. After several more minutes of silence, Knut said dully, “Have you set a date for your wedding to my dear old compañero, Don Salvador?” At last, Tamasin’s attention was diverted from her worry. “How did you know there was to be a wedding?” Knut’s eyes were still on the darkened path. He tipped his head. “Doña Carmen. She was very angry Don Salvador had not told her,

 

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but you know her. She preferred to sit and stew instead of directly asking Don Salvador about it.” “How did Doña Carmen know about it?” He nodded his greasy blond head again. “Your necklace.” Fingering the largest opal that lay between her breasts, Tamasin thought Oh, Lordy. How did we not think to approach Doña Carmen in a traditional manner? For Catholics, if the father was dead, should one ask the mother for permission to wed? Then it occurred to Tamasin that Sal had not even brought up the necklace or a marriage since the day he’d given it to her during the rodeo. This thought temporarily distracted her from worry about The League. Suppose Sal had just been pulling the wool over her eyes? He had plenty of reasons to. First, he would obtain a maid, chef, and prostitute free of charge. Second, he had an obvious competition with Ophir and the need to best him in everything. Knowing Ophir also coveted Tamasin—as a maid, chef, and prostitute?—he had gained the upper hand by stamping her as his property by giving her the necklace. Sal could always take the necklace back later. There was nothing preventing that. She had been pondering on this “love” thing for quite awhile now. What was the difference between the love she felt for her brother, and she love she felt for Sal and Ophir? Tamasin knew women were supposed to “love” their husbands, but she had never even felt a fondness for Niall. Had never been compelled to do anything for him out of the kindness of her heart. She simply performed her tasks for Niall because she knew it was expected of her, and he would beat her if she didn’t perform to his liking. She’d recently realized that her love for Sal and Ophir actually dated quite far back, to the first day they’d appeared at her camp like beacons from another world, warning Niall not to beat her, promising a cow. Since that day she had thought about them every five minutes, and even as their images faded into the daily maelstrom of pain, wretchedness, chores, and numbing agony, she had remembered them

 

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as happy, glittering saviors. When they had finally taken her away and she had grown to know them, become familiar and comfortable with them, the love had taken on many different shades, like a prism. They were so much more now than saviors. Was this the romantic love a woman was supposed to have for her spouse? Tamasin imagined it was. So, agitated beyond comprehension now, Tamasin began to pace with her aguardiente cup. She had opened her mouth to respond to Knut when the miners on her front lawn all rose as one body and rushed toward the form of a rider pounding down the mountain trail, accompanied by the men Tamasin had posted as pickets. Setting her cup down and missing the table completely, Tamasin dashed through the front door. Sunrise was coming on, and she knew by the smooth dome of the close-shaved head that it was Ophir, seemingly in good health, handing his reins to someone before stepping toward the house in one fluid movement. In his rush he must not have seen her, for when he turned his body slammed directly into her. Air was expelled from her lungs, but he caught her in his long arms, hugging her to his torso while walking to the house in longlegged strides. “Oh, Ophir!” she whispered into his neck. In addition, they banged into Knut as he wobbled uncertainly in the front doorway, so the three of them practically crashed into the parlor. Falling onto couches, they babbled at each other. “Ophir, what were those explosions?” “Where is Sal?” “Is anyone dead?” “How close has The League come?” “Sal told me to—” Ophir started out, and this silenced the other two. They sat on the edges of their seats waiting for him to finish panting and tell the story. “Sal told me to take the Sonorans up to Hell Hollow and get the other men out of there.”

 

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“Which way did he go? Which way did he go?” Tamasin whispered. “And that he would take the Frogs and get the men out of the mill. So I went up the ravine and got the rest out of the mine. We decided to head up the hill and avoid the narrow trail because we were sure The League would be riding up it any minute.” Ophir closed his eyes, hands patiently on his knees. “We got out all right—you probably saw the miners returning here—” “Yes, we did. Without you.” “Well, yes. Maybe one minute after we left the main mine shaft, that’s when the charges went off. They were trying to undermine the shoring to get the mine to cave in.” “Did it?” “I have no idea, for after I sent the men back here, I continued down the hill to see what was happening at the mill. But from the intensity of the blasts, I imagine they succeeded. So I rode to a vantage point where I could see the mill, but no one could see me. It was still quite dark, but I tied up my mount and crept closer.” Tamasin wrenched Ophir’s hands in hers. “What then?” He massaged her hands as though trying to soothe her. As if such a thing was possible! “I saw maybe fifteen League men surrounding the mill with weapons at the ready. I got close enough to hear bits of a few things Tyke was yelling at the…at the…” “At the prisoners, jah!” Knut helpfully filled in. Ophir shot him a frown. “At the citizens inside the mill. And it sounded a lot as though…Sal is refusing to surrender the mill.” There was a long silence during which the only movement was chests heaving to sigh as everyone stared before them at the cow skin on the floor. Finally Knut rose and retrieved an aguardiente bottle from where they’d stowed them, inside a sideboard. “I suppose that is good,” he said weakly. He gained strength with a few healthy swallows of liquor. “We cannot go around surrendering every single piece of land, every cow, everything we own!”

 

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Tamasin cried, “Yes, but we cannot sit here like lame ducks waiting to be picked off!” She faced Ophir. “We must do something! This is our land, our business, our future! We have already let The League take over Hornitos, Quartzburg, and now Bear Valley just three miles to the south. Now we have an actual home to protect, and the livelihood of all these miners, not to mention our own future as anything other than starving pioneers!” Ophir squeezed her hands hard, once, then stood. Folding his arms in front of his chest, he wandered to the window and frowned. Barely breathing, Tamasin waited for his response. Ophir was a father, trying to free and protect his children. He loved Sal, and had worked hard for the success of this land. He would never stand for having everything once more ripped from him. “I’ve had many walks up the mountains in back of this house,” he said in a strange, remote voice. “With good glasses I’ve studied the countryside. From some spots one can actually see the waterfalls of the Ahwahnee.” Sighing deeply, he turned to Tamasin and his speech became livelier. “The thickets of manzanita and chaparral would hide a horse. Once past the Merced River, there’s a large mining camp of friendly men of strong character, men who don’t agree with The League. I met them when I was prospecting earlier this year, before I met Sal. These men would see me through to Coulterville.” Tamasin was speechless. Her fiancé was a prisoner, under siege inside a stamp mill, and the other man she loved proposed to go riding off into mountains saturated with men who were basically bandits! Knut spoke first. “That is a very well thought-out plan, jah! And I think it is our only plan, once one really ponders upon it.” Tamasin stood, too. “Why do you have to go, Ophir? Why can’t you just send a couple of prospectors? They must know the mountains as well as you do.” Ophir shook his head. “They’re all so in fear for their own lives. The minute one of The League sees a Sonoran, he’ll shoot without question.”

 

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Tamasin put her fists on her hips. “And they won’t shoot a black man?” “Not unless they want full-blown war,” Ophir said tersely. “They’ve gotten away with terrorizing Spaniards so far, but the main partner of the Don of Las Oliveras? It would give them pause for thought.” But Knut stepped in, raising his aguardiente cup up high. “Miss Tamasin. Listen to reason. We have no other choice. We can’t go storming the mill or men—our men—will be killed. We are at a very distinct and horrifying disadvantage right now. But if Ophir here can somehow get a message through to Coulterville, we can possibly drive off The League with the sheer numbers of marching men who come pouring across the Merced.” Ophir nodded vigorously, and seemed surprised that Knut made sense for once. “Can you give me blank orders for any outlays I might require?” Knut toasted Ophir and nodded seriously, as though establishing the New Roman Republic. Ophir clapped Knut on the shoulder. “All right, then. Let me get more ammunition. I wasted some shooting at those damned outlaws.” He vanished from the parlor before Tamasin had a chance to protest. “How dare you approve of his mission!” Knut cringed back from Tamasin. “Miss! There are strange horsemen riding about firing off pistols. Absolutely someone must get us out of this muss!” “Yes. And why does it have to be Ophir?” She wandered to the window. Outside, men were gravitating toward an approaching caballero who leaped off his mount and stormed purposefully up her front stairs. Tamasin met him at the door. He was a Sonoran who saluted, and she recognized him as one she had sent to picket the road to Bear Valley. He must not have spoken much English, for he simply handed her a note, and she was too worried to even say gracias to him.

 

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The note was written in pencil and so badly misspelled she didn’t bother handing it to Knut, instead reading it aloud. “It’s from Tyke McCarthy, addressed to me.” Knut stood erect and alert, like a rabbit. “That blackguard!” he proclaimed. “It says that last night in Bear Valley at a meeting, it was resolved that we—meaning the Americans, I presume—should be allowed twenty-four hours to leave this place. An escort will see us down to the plains. No harm will be done to us if we just take our clothing and belongings. But if we’re not gone within twenty-four hours, the house will be burned and we must…” Tamasin felt nauseous. “We must ‘take the consequences.’” The note was signed in big block letters: TIKE McCARTY, Alcald. Knut seemed to stare past her, to the wall ten feet away. His pupils dilated so suddenly they seemed to darken the very room. “They want to entice us—mainly Don Salvador—away from the mines.”

 

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Chapter Nineteen Rather than ride the diligent mule, Ophir led her to the crest of the ridge, up above the Hell Hollow Mine. He’d had to circle around a bit to ensure he wouldn’t run into any League men, so it was nearly ten o’clock after he turned the crest and could mount. He could not even revel in the sight of the monumental waterfalls of the Ahwahnee far to the southeast, because up here he stood out like a majestic redwood tree about to be hit by lightning. So he zigzagged down shelving slopes, quickly descending to the Merced far upriver of the mill. He knew if he could find Gouge Eye Gulch that ran parallel to the road to Coulterville, he could find his friendly mining camp. He was glad he’d undertaken this journey alone. Compañeros would have slowed him down and made for a more obtrusive target— and besides, being alone gave him time to think, time he didn’t get much of working in the deafening stamp mill. The stamp mill. Where his beloved partner Sal was now languishing, held a prisoner in his own land! Many loving memories of intimate times they’d spent together floated into Ophir’s mind as he clopped on his mule around giant boulders. He had loved Sal almost immediately, and not just because he had yanked a bárbaro arrow out of his thigh, although that was a pretty kind-hearted thing to do for an utter stranger. No, it was Sal’s dignified wildness that got to Ophir, above all his impetuous temper that stood up for what was right. Without that temper, Tamasin would still be deteriorating slowly in agony under the “protection” of that husband, or worse.

 

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One never got over the sort of rage that injustice brought, he supposed. Ophir could not imagine Sal and him going quietly into their old age—here he was, imagining them together in old age! His own two children had been held unjustly for three years, although Ophir had paid the agreed-upon price for their release several times over. The day the Frenchmen had come to Hell Hollow, another courier from Las Oliveras had brought him a letter from his old master. In this there was cause to rejoice, for the master had at last agreed to manumit his children, if Ophir would send yet more money or gold, preferably gold, for their passage through the Isthmus of Panama. Oh, and as a postscript, and only upon the signing of a pact that Ophir would stake him to a percentage in the Palomares Commercial and Mining Company. Then the Frogs had arrived and pandemonium had overtaken all else. Ophir had not had a chance to discuss the proposition with Sal, but he knew he would do what it took to get his children returned to him. Sal would agree. Tamasin would agree. But a percentage in a worthless mining company overtaken by Australian convicts was a percentage in nothing, so Ophir rode even harder. He struck Gouge Eye Gulch, dry and full of fallen branches and leaves this time of year, and followed it up the mountain again. **** “I’ll shoot the first man that hinders me!” Several of the thirteen men who guarded the mill laughed at Tamasin, Tyke McCarthy among them. He stood by the entrance to the plate floor with his asinine bashed-in hat, hands calmly folded before his grimy crotch, and he laughed. Tamasin could see, though, that her policy of patience and moderation had begun to take its toll on the men. Without their customary gallon of liquor per day per man, and standing under the relentless hundred-degree sun that fried a man’s brain like eggs, three

 

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of them had already collapsed into sitting positions in the scant shade the overhanging roof afforded. They held their limp heads in their hands, eyes dull and clouded. They were not among the ones laughing at her. A few other men actually nodded and tipped their hats to her. One of them was a fellow Irishman Tamasin only knew as Alistair, and he stood by seemingly respectful with an expressionless face. Tamasin wondered if there was any strife in their ranks—she’d been told the party numbered fifteen, but she now counted only thirteen. Perhaps there were some better men even among The League. It was true some had been tricked into joining when they assumed that occupying a parcel of land meant ownership, and the law of squatterism prevailed over old Spanish land grants. Perhaps there were some of these ignorant yet honest men in the ranks of The League. Without putting down her basket of food—oysters, toast, plums, and coffee—she waved her Colt’s revolver about. “Would you like to be shot by a woman?” Still laughing, Tyke walked a few feet closer, making a big show out of how unafraid he was. He was so unafraid, he didn’t even put his hand to his pistol. “Now, ma’am,” he said in a pitying tone, such as one might use before shooting a lame dog. “You have to understand. I can’t just have Mr. Palomares’s people walking in and out every minute of the day, don’t you see? He’s up there for a reason. The reason is we’re going to starve him out of these here mines. And that policy won’t work too well if I allow you to bring him sustenance.” Alistair did speak up now. “Tyke. I don’t see any harm in letting her—” Tyke glared at his compañero, revealing his gnarled teeth. He seemed to have lost at least one since Tamasin had last had the misfortune to notice. In an overly calm voice, he said, “Well, now, Alistair. Should we just give succor to the enemy? Is that the new

 

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rule? While we ourselves stand here expiring of starvation? I think not.” Tamasin waved her weapon some more. “I’ll shoot to kill, Tyke. You’ve got to let me carry Salvador his supper. You’ve got your quarrel with him about the mines and you can fight that out with him. But I’m only a poor woman and all I’ve got is Salvador. You won’t take his life for your idiotic quarrels!” And she moved toward the mill only to have Tyke step backward abreast of her, finally putting one foot before her as though to trip her, and grabbing at her basket. “Now, now, ma’am. Who is to say you’re not smuggling them more weapons? Just let me take a look inside the basket.” Tamasin held fast to the basket. “If you wrote me that note early this morning from Bear Valley, how is it you’ve been rampaging about my land since yesterday afternoon blowing up things?” Tamasin had sent a courier down the road to Bear Valley earlier, telling “Tyke” she would give him an answer later, to give herself more time to formulate a plan. Tyke seemed a bit confused at this, but continued pulling on the basket, and Tamasin let go, causing Tyke to stagger back a few steps. A couple men laughed at this, too, and Alistair rolled his eyes and leaned against the mill with folded arms. Tyke regained his smarmy composure while he rifled through the basket. “Why, lookie here. Tortillas, and is this homemade beans?” “Give her back the basket, McCarthy!” Oh, it was so gratifying to hear Sal’s voice! A smile wreathed Tamasin’s face when she looked over and saw Sal in the mill doorway, not twenty feet away! It was as though she’d never laid eyes on him before, he was that handsome. As though she’d walked into a vast ballroom just filled to the rafters with men of various colors and shapes, and they all turned into blurry ogres when this one shining, impressive, and stately man came forth. He had stripped off his customary calzoneras and vest and leaned against the doorjamb clad

 

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only in his pants and white shirt open at the collar, not even wearing his head scarf. For as hot as it was outside, it must have been ten degrees worse inside the mill. When Tyke swiveled his head to regard Sal, Tamasin snatched her basket and flounced toward Sal. “I stand by my man, Mr. McCarthy!” “Now…now…” Tyke sputtered, but Tamasin had eyes only for Sal, and when she stood on tiptoes to kiss him, some of the League men even cheered. He had that fresh woodsy smell of the unwashed, virile male. It could become unpleasant if a man waited too long to take a swim, but right now Sal smelled like a field of lupines, like fresh-ground pepper. He whisked her inside the mill while Tyke drawled, “Ten minutes only, ya hear? I don’t want to hear no fucking sounds from out here, or I’ll be forced to get violent.” Sal slammed and bolted the door while one of the Frogs—she didn’t know which—whisked the basket from her grip. Sal swept her across the floor, her slippers crunching the rubble of quartz rock, and set her down on a wooden footing, by the shoes and dies where they pulverized the rock. Lifting her at the waist, he placed her on his lap and said, “Mi amor, Mi amor, you shouldn’t have come. It’s much too risky just for a basket of food. It takes weeks to die of starvation, and we have plenty of fresh water from the creek water in the pipes. Dying for lack of water is what does it.” Tamasin grinned impishly. “It’s not just the food I wanted to give you.” Wiggling her butt against his lap, she hitched her skirts up and reached underneath. Sal’s eyes glowed with anticipation, and pride welled in her chest that he so obviously thought her capable of duplicity. She unbuckled the gun belt that rode low on her hips and had been weighing her down. “Ho ho!” Sal laughed with admiration as he grabbed ahold of one holster. The gun belt boasted three holsters and three fully loaded revolvers.

 

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“Oh, and O’Callan,” Tamasin called to the youth who was on the filthy floor cross-legged, dipping into the beans with a rolled tortilla. “Look under those napkins at the bottom of the basket.” When O’Callan withdrew the pouches of lead balls and caps Tamasin had carefully lined the basket with, Sal flung his arms around her and squeezed her till it hurt. “That’s my niña,” he whispered in her ear. “You should marry this girl, Don Salvador!” proclaimed Henri. But when Sal held her back, he looked at her sternly. “That was an enormous risk, Tamasin. I don’t want to think what they might have done if they had—all right, listen. You have to go now.” “But I don’t want to go. Why should I not keep vigil with you? Ophir rode to Coulterville to get the Home Guard to help. He rode through the brush, not along the main roads.” “You can’t stay here. Any moment a gunfight could erupt. Listen, we’ll be fine, my duckling. I need you to leave, so you can do all of us a big favor.” Lowering his voice, he said confidentially, “We have a plan.” He must not have been quiet enough, for Jules enquired lightly, “We do?” A bloody cloth was wrapped around Jules’s head, but Tamasin didn’t want to ask about it. Best not to know. Sal hissed, “Yes, we do, you baboso!” Brightening, he stroked Tamasin’s hair and said quietly, “I need you to go to the house and enlist some miners to make a diversion.” Tamasin frowned. “Who are you trying to divert? If you tell me what your aim is, I could help.” “Well. I think from my talks with The League, they’re already getting worn down. We’ve heard some grumblings through the wall, a couple men have already left, and that Alistair hombre in particular seems disgusted.” “Yes, I thought so, too.” “Now, there’s a clock on our mantel in the parlor. None of the miners have a watch, so take Knut’s. You need to organize the miners

 

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to make a diversion at exactly seven o’clock tonight. I was thinking maybe set a fire, over on the Hell Hollow side, where we know no one is. Only build it carefully, and have plenty of water available! I just need something with a lot of smoke, to get all these pendejos to run up there, away from this mill. Get the Italian Parmalli to do it. He’s good at starting fires.” Tamasin nodded. “All right. Seven o’clock?” “Seven o’clock. And Tamasin…” “Yes?” Sal cocked his head attractively, the corners of his mouth turning up slyly. “It probably would help if a lovely female came screaming down the hill, helplessly as women are likely to do.” “I understand. ‘Fire, fire!’” “Exactly. Babies are burning, or something of that nature.” Someone was banging on the mill door now, shouting, “Time for woman to leave!” Sal kissed her gently, and she clung to him with her arms around his neck. She was glad for a mission to accomplish, but leaving Salvador to these heartless rebels was the last thing she wanted to do. “Tamasin,” Sal whispered against her mouth. “Make sure you get back inside the house when you’re done with your feminine shrieks, and leave the rest to us.” He shook her a bit. “Promise?” “I promise.” The prisoners of the Palomares Commercial and Mining Company hid the ammunition and weapons she had brought, and Tamasin took her empty basket. The last thing she saw was Sal standing in the doorway, long arms dangling at his sides, eyes glittering from under a curtain of messy hair. **** “All right,” said Sal. “So everyone understands the plan?” “Sí,” said one of the Rivera brothers. “We run.”

 

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Sal sighed. “Everyone other than me and the Frenchmen run.” A fresh idea came into his head. “Rivera. Why don’t you and your compañeros here go now, up to the delivery floor level? That way, in case those babosos outside don’t notice the fire, you can be the first to shout out the fire alarm. Then, when all the League men run toward the fire—which I’m betting they will—you’re free to leave.” Relieved for a chance at getting out of the mill at last, the four Sonorans scrambled like greased lightning for the inner staircase. It led first to the level where they dropped the stamps, then past the ore bin and rock breaker, arriving up top on the delivery floor where ox carts dumped their loads of ore. League men guarded this entrance, too, but it was hoped the fire and the Sonorans could entice them to abandon their post. Now all they could do was wait. Already Sal had noted that two of the flagging League men had been allowed to leave, and three more lay lifelessly draped over boulders outside the mill. League men were not the heartiest mountain men of the lot, perhaps accustomed to the cool confinement of their jail cells. “That lass Tamasin,” said O’Callan. “She is not your wife?” “Not yet,” Sal responded. “I’ve asked her to be, and she’s said yes.” And when I get out of here, he thought, the first thing I will do is fix a wedding date. “I’d like to travel to the Mission San José to be wed properly, and Judge Terry in these parts is in cahoots with The League.” Sal felt a kinship with his fellow prisoners, having been cooped up with them, facing the same dangers, so he spoke honestly. He grinned reassuringly. “But I don’t want to take the time to travel to San José. Once we get out of here I’d like to be wed immediately. My father was a ship’s captain. He could have married us.” Henri said, “The office of alcalde is that of magistrate and justice of the peace.” Sal snorted. “We’ll need to find a new alcalde once we get rid of Mr. McCarthy here.”

 

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To pass the time, Sal buttoned on his calzoneras and shrugged into his vest. Although the sun was heading down to the farthest western reaches of the Merced’s canyon, it sure seemed as though it was getting hotter in there. At last, a few yelps from above signaled the sighting of the fire. All four men rushed to the plate floor door and stuck their heads out. Nobody would notice that they already seemed to know from where the fire came as they eagerly pointed and yelled things like, “I smell smoke!” “What’s that? A fire?” Instantly, three of the remaining outlaws tore off uphill, leaving only Tyke, Alistair, and two of the most spirited League men. They all skittered about uncertainly, brandishing their firearms as though about to shoot the fire. “Tyke!” Sal shouted. “What are you going to do, leave us here to burn to death? That’s the ultimate in cowardice, wouldn’t you say?” “It’s just a little campfire!” Tyke bellowed, although no one could see toward Hell Hollow Mine from this side of the mill. He waved his revolver at Sal. “You stay put!” To Alistair he said, “Let’s go investigate.” And to the enthusiastic amigos, he growled, “You stay here and guard this door.” As hoped, Tyke and Alistair sped uphill, while the two goldmining enthusiasts muttered, “I ain’t gonna stay here guarding these squatters!” Winking at Jules and Henri, Sal shut the door. The three men headed for the inner stairs, while O’Callan stumbled down one level to hide himself under the amalgamation table. They clattered up the several levels, stumbling and rolling on pieces of crushed ore. On the top delivery floor level, Sal was gratified to see the Sonorans had fled. As they had planned, Jules and Henri secreted themselves to one side of the door, so they would be unseen when Sal flung the door open, pretending to be excited by the fire.

 

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“It’s a huge conflagration!” he shouted, to draw attention to himself. Indeed, Tyke, Alistair, and a couple of henchmen pivoted about not twenty feet from the door, obviously uncertain about which way to run. A fire, Sal knew, always had a riveting fascination for the human brain, and it would have been just as lucky, and much simpler for him, if the League men had just gone at full chisel to watch the fire. But Sal had counted on Tyke’s tenacity, and when Tyke saw Sal at the top of the stairs he frowned something fierce, and came forward. “I don’t care if your whole house is burning down! We warned your wife that would happen. Just looks like it happened a bit sooner than expected!” Sal hadn’t heard anything about this—why hadn’t Tamasin told him they had threatened her?—so his reaction was partly genuine. He knew the fire didn’t come from his house, but it certainly played into his plan to pretend that it did. So he gripped his head in agony and cried, “My house! Ay dios, my house! Mr. McCarthy, you must let me go and attend to my house! Caramba!” Tyke appeared baffled, his gaze darting from the fire to Sal, and back to the fire. So Sal cranked up the emotion—it was a good thing he used to put on tableaus and plays with his brother and mother. Shouting into the darkness of the delivery floor, he shouted, “Jules! Henri! Where are you? My house is on fire! Ai-yi-yi…Jooools…” Light from high windows revealed Jules and Henri standing on either side of the door, backs flattened to the wall like rats. Going to the staircase, Sal called down it with angst in his voice. Not much effort was required to muster the emotion required. “Joools…Henriii…Where are you…?” Outside, Sal heard Alistair saying, “Tyke! What sort of shenanigans are they up to? If his house is burning, shouldn’t we at least let him go and try to save it?”

 

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Tyke snarled at Alistair, “It was supposed to be a trick, you dough-head! I never actually ordered anyone to burn down his house!” “Henri….” “You go in and find out what he’s up to!” Evidently Tyke had shoved Alistair, for soon the hapless amigo stumbled inside and looked from Sal to Henri to Jules, expressionless. For their part, they looked back with blank faces. Sal narrowed his eyes a bit in warning. It was proven not to be his imagination that Alistair nodded back in acknowledgement, and Alistair shouted to Tyke, “I can’t find them danged prisoners! You better come in here and help me search for them!” Tyke’s voice wavered. “But the fire…Oh, all right!” Sal flattened himself next to Henri, and Tyke stepped into the room. “Now, Alistair, did you see him going down those st—” Jules and Henri slammed shut the double doors, and Tyke whirled about, pointing his six-shooter every which way. It was a toss of the coin as to whether he’d drill anyone, but thankfully, once he saw four pistols pointed at him, he cowered back. Sal stepped into the beam of sunlight coming from the high window, the beam now muddied by smoke from the Hell Hollow Mine. The ever-changing passing clouds created a stormy, confused look on Tyke’s rodent face. “Alistair!” he snapped. “What in the name of Sam Hill?” Alistair said calmly, “I’ve had it with your disorder-loving faction, McCarthy.” Sal nodded at Alistair. “You’d best leave now, Alistair. After you disarm your boss.” Alistair stepped up to Tyke and held his hand out for the weapon. “This is mutiny, you black-balled son of a heifer!” Tyke yelled at his own compañero. Sal said quietly, “Not unlike you coming onto my land and trying to take it over with your lawlessness.”

 

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Tyke’s eyes narrowed so viciously they seemed to disappear into his head. He took a step toward Sal, seething, “You goddamned son of a greaser.” Sal stepped forward too, halting Tyke, and even backing him up a step. “My father was a Boston sea captain,” he said pleasantly. Alistair eased the pistol from Tyke’s grip, and Sal nodded at him. “Gracias, señor. Can you do me another favor? Go check on that fire. I’d appreciate it. And check on Miss Tamasin. Tell her we’re fine. She’ll give you something to eat.” Visibly relieved, Alistair chose to tear down the stairs, as the doors were guarded by the revolutionary Frenchmen. Attempting a smile now, Tyke held up his empty hands and revealed his twisted teeth. “Now, listen here, Mr. Palomares. Let’s be reasonable. I didn’t come here to take your land. I came here seeking freedom for every, ah, every freedom-loving American who wishes to mine the land that us Americans won from the Mexicans, am I right? I’m not outside the law.” Silently, Sal raised his revolver to Tyke’s forehead and cocked the hammer. Almost imperceptibly, he leaned closer to the outlaw as he stared levelly at the marsupial face. Tyke shrank back another foot, but continued to babble. “I mean, let’s talk about this, hombre! Why don’t we just make a deal. You’re a reasonable businessman.” Sal pressed his revolver’s muzzle to Tyke’s forehead, flipping that annoying smashed hat down the ore shaft behind him. “You weren’t too interested in making deals when you came to steal my cows and my land. And you’re not a fellow American, McCarthy. How long ago did you make a break from that Botany Bay jail?” Tyke’s claw grappled for the banister, where in normal times men leaned while dumping their wheelbarrows of ore. From there, the ore fell onto the “grizzly” grates that separated the coarser rocks from that which required no further breaking. Larger rocks were fed to the rock breaker. “All right, let’s make a deal, Palomares!” He was becoming

 

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frantic now, as his toes could probably feel the ledge of the ore shaft. Sal inclined his torso so heavily behind the weight of his revolver, now Tyke was literally holding onto the banister for dear life, his bony ass swaying over the cavern of the chute. “No. Deals.” “We can deal, Palomares! I’ll tell my men to back off! Just let us return to Hornitos, and I promise you we’ll never trouble you no more. Live and let live is my good old motto.” “No.” Sal shoved the forehead with the pistol’s muzzle. It wasn’t enough to dislodge the bandit, so he shoved harder, and wedged the pointy toes of his boot under Tyke’s toes. “No. Deal.” His free hand gripped Tyke’s shoulder like talons, and Tyke only hung on to the banister by his fingernails now. Sal whispered malevolently, “I want a new alcalde!” When he stressed “new,” he shoved Tyke sharply while lifting up with the toe of his strong, steely boots. “You bastard!” cried Tyke. He flailed in midair as if suspended for a brief moment before plummeting down the chute. Sal leaned forward with satisfaction as Jules and Henri rushed to eagerly look down. As Sal had planned, Tyke was not small enough to fit through the grizzly grate, and he bounced like a thrashing wildcat, scrabbling to grip onto one of the bars. The descent was too steep, and he bounced right over the bars and into the jaws of the rock breaker. If Sal leaned as far as possible clutching the banister, he could see both of Tyke’s boots sticking from the bin at odd angles, the toes turned inward. There was no movement. “Viva los Americanos!” shouted Sal. “Home or to the mines!” added Henri happily. The three men paused. Sal straightened and holstered his revolver. If he had a cigarrito, he would have lit it. He told the Frenchmen, “Mill men prefer to have the ore broken to a medium coarse size instead of pulverized fine. It feeds better and causes the battery to work more evenly.”

 

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“Maybe we should pull him out of the machine, then,” said Jules. “We would not want him to clog up the battery.” Salvador shrugged. “There’s no rush.” Sal had many more important things to do than to pull Tyke McCarthy out of his rock breaker. Like get back to his house, and find Tamasin and Ophir.

 

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Chapter Twenty February 1851 “I will meet you upstairs.” Those had been Tamasin’s final thrilling words to Salvador Palomares before slipping out of the reception party and leaping upstairs. It was so indelicate to actually leap, and she could have sworn Doña Carmen glared at her. After all, what else was a new wife leaping upstairs for on her wedding night, other than something a mother-in-law didn’t wish to think about? Doña Carmen had even nudged Knut Frostad who sat beside her. His face drained of all color, and in his horror he even put down his cup of champagne before grabbing Ophir’s fiddle from where it lay next to him. But it was raining heavy and steady, and they’d had no choice other than to bring the main party inside the house, while keeping an ancillary fandango going in the barn. The fandango was a raucous, joyous affair, with every good prospector within a hundred mile radius skipping, clapping, and stamping his staccato boot heels. It was a strain on Tamasin to refrain from whisking away serving plates and refilling them with food. How many times had she picked up a platter and started to walk to the kitchen before someone stayed her and took it from her? She was not used to this! She’d better start getting used to this, as Sal had been constantly telling her lately. He had forced her to hire a cook for the house, although Tamasin thought of her more as a “chef’s assistant.” Sal wanted her to paint landscapes all day, as her paintings had recently been exhibited in both San José as well as San

 

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Francisco, selling well to collectors from the States who were hungry for views of the Far West. But she was still the cook for Hell Hollow! They had recently knocked out the connecting door between their former bedrooms, and converted her old one into a dressing room. Tamasin swiftly changed into items from her trousseau. With regret she divested herself of the white satin bridal dress with the very low bodice. The skirt, trimmed with flounces of blonde lace and small floral wreaths, was a marvel. She felt like a princess in it, but she must change into her traveling costume so her bridal party could make their exit. However, when she came to taking off the headpiece of willowy blue and gold branches decorated with diamonds and feathers, she resisted. Doña Carmen had fashioned her hair in the Anne Boleyn style, large ringlets cascading from a center part where Carmen had affixed a diamond and pearl brooch. Tamasin felt so exotic and devilish this way. When she wagged her head, the branch swayed so that the diamonds danced and twinkled. Anyway, she did not need to put on her traveling costume. Not just yet. For now, she sipped her champagne that had been poured into an actual glass flute, sat at her dressing table wearing only her chemise, stockings, and heeled slippers, and admired her headpiece. With sheets of rain splashing against the windows, she didn’t hear the bedroom door open, only that the sounds of chiming glassware, barking laughter, and the shuffling of feet from downstairs became suddenly louder. Then quieter again, when Sal shut the door. Sal appeared in the mirror, leaning against the doorjamb. He was still enveloped in the rich serape his father had worn to his own wedding. His beautiful almond-shaped eyes were more than a match for the wonderment that was the rest of his attire—a silk blouse under an embroidered velvet bolero jacket, soft deerskin leggings tied with silk cord wound around the leg, its gold and silver tassels hanging below the knee. Tamasin liked how richly Californio men attired themselves, unafraid of being termed effeminate in the attention they

 

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paid to their dress. With his thumbs hooked in the waist of his leggings, the smoldering look he cast her—his bride!—was too much to bear, and Tamasin got to her feet. She unwound the serape from his shoulders and tossed it to her dressing stool. Standing on tiptoes, she lightly kissed his full lips. “Mm. Mi esposo.” She had just barely taken his full lower lip between her teeth—he lovingly fingered the opal that lay between her breasts—when he bent at the knees and lifted her into his arms. This always made her giggle, his grandiose Spanish gestures that made her feel part of a glamorous, romantic world. Now he carried her through the doorway they had eliminated between their former bedrooms, and placed her gently on his—on their—coverlet. He loomed bold and tall above her, the ideal picture of the perfect Californio gentleman. “Carrying you into the bedroom makes you seem less enthusiastic about losing your virginity.” He grinned. They both knew, and didn’t want to discuss, that Tamasin was not a virgin technically. But having performed every variation upon the exquisite dance of love Tamasin had never thought imaginable, every act up until now had been a waste of seed. They had not yet fucked, as Tamasin enjoyed the tease, the tension, the suspense, the boundless possibilities of their couplings—and, oh yes, there was something about setting this special event aside for her wedding night. It was part of her entire ingenious plan, to wed the man she loved and have it last forever. Tamasin lay against the pillows with one arm over her head in the position she knew Salvador admired. Her hair wasn’t in his favorite flowing arrangement, but she had not wanted to ruin this coiffure that had taken Doña Carmen so long to create. “Yes, I certainly wouldn’t want to appear enthusiastic. You might think I was promiscuous.” Sal was stripping off his various layers of Spanish nobility. First he flung the bolero jacket into a chair, and the scalloped leather vest adorned with gold buttons followed it. “I’m very sorry we couldn’t

 

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visit the waterfalls in the Ahwahnee,” he said lightly. When he lifted his arms to remove the silk blouse, Tamasin curled up cat-like on her side to treasure the view. She would never tire of this beautiful play of textures, the softness of the tufts of hair in the hollows of his underarms, the erect beads of his browned nipples, the abdomen ribbed with muscles from his endless riding. “I understand,” she said simply. “It’s for the best we couldn’t honeymoon there, as it would be exceedingly cold. But in San Francisco, I should like to take that steamboat up the river to Sacramento.” Sal stood shirtless at the side of the bed, and Tamasin well-nigh forgot about the steamer. She adored rubbing her face against his well-developed pectorals, the way the sprinkling of hair there made her face tingle, and she now got to her knees. It was one of her favorite things to fling her arms about him and press her cheek to his hot skin, to flick her tongue-tip out and tantalize a tight nipple. Sal wove his fingers into her hair as best he could with the peacock’s comb of diamonds foiling him, and he said, “Those steamers are dangerous, mi esposa. They race each other and overheat the boilers so they explode. I read an article that said the steamboat captains would rather see the passengers blown into eternity than to leave their boats behind. Then people lie in wait on the shore ready to rob and plunder the bodies.” “Oh, Salvador,” Tamasin sighed, diddling his nipple between her fingers. “I think the children would like the adventure. And since when does my dashing, bold vaquero shake in his boots so?” The more she fingered his nipple, the more the long, thick, sluggish erection expanded between her breasts, and she squished both upper arms together to capture the phallus. “You are the man who rid this country of Tyke McCarthy, and everyone loves you for it.” “Ophir helped,” Sal said modestly. “Well, yes,” Tamasin admitted. Holding the crown of his cock firmly in her palm, she jiggled her torso back and forth to stimulate it

 

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with her breasts. “His heroic ride to Coulterville saved the town as well.” Ophir had returned to Hell Hollow two days after the fire had been extinguished. He had found the friendly mining camp, where five men joined him in galloping to Coulterville. Their fine fivehundred-man Home Guard was instantly raised, and with them Ophir marched back on the nearer stage road. Such celebration and whooping and hollering had never been heard in Hell Hollow, when the Home Guard and miners went foraging the countryside for any sign of a League man. They garrisoned at the mill for several months, staying in the big barn, with sacks and tins heaped upon planks laid across barrels. They bivouacked even in haystacks until everything was back in good working order, even the ruined Black Drift. There were still small uprisings, fake tax agents roaming the land demanding payment from hapless miners, but not one League man had apparently dared venture beyond the boundaries of Hornitos, and eventually the Home Guard left. The trouble seemed to have organized the sterling element of society against the evil, and now Sal was finally confident enough in the mill’s security to take a honeymoon to San Francisco. “Saved the town?” Sal slipped the sleeves of Tamasin’s chemise down over her arms. “If Ophir didn’t bring back the Home Guard, why…” His breath hitched when Tamasin extracted his cock from his pants, replacing it between her naked breasts where it fairly burned when she wiggled. “Why, everyone’s last name would be McCarthy.” Tamasin laughed. “Don’t scare me, Sal. The Governor promised he’d be returned to Botany Bay.” In what shape or form, Tamasin didn’t mention. Tyke had had two broken legs, among other mangled bones, when the next day they’d pulled him out of the rock breaking machine. “Ah!” Apparently unable to withstand her teasing with her breasts, Sal slid his hands under Tamasin’s arms and lifted her to her feet. “Botany Bay, sí, until he escapes again.”

 

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Her chemise crumpled to her feet. When she hooked a toe around the back of Sal’s boot top, her quim was plastered firmly over his bulging cock. The walls of her inner pussy shuddered, clenching as if around an imaginary penis, and she knew she was ready. “Hey.” Her breath feathered against his lips. “Nobody would be named McCarthy ever again, if you had turned on that rock breaking machine.” Sal chuckled. “You admire me for having such self-restraint?” Tamasin rotated her pelvic bone against his erection. “Right now, I will admire you for having a lack of self-restraint.” Salvador’s breath came ragged as he touched the tip of his nose to hers. One palm slid down her abdomen and lifted the hem of her chemise, then his long middle finger glided over what she now knew was called a clitoris. This sensitive protuberance was the core of all ecstatic sensation, and now Sal knew how to manipulate her to greater heights than she had ever accomplished herself. Tamasin liked him to diddle her much the same way she tickled his nipple, and soon he had her uttering tiny ladylike gasps as she clung to his shoulders. Fine tremors ran up her thighs and she knew she couldn’t stand up much longer, but she didn’t want to orgasm until she had his sublime, thick cock inside of her. That would be something they had never experienced. Twisting to release herself from his heavenly torture, she was going to dive onto the bed, begging Sal to fuck her, when a manly form moved into the room. Of course it was Ophir, setting a bowl of something down on the night table. “Knut was so appalled when he saw you coming upstairs,” Ophir said conversationally, “that he told me he’s donating his downstairs bedroom to Polly and Jupiter. He’ll make his new rooms down in the office building.” Sal held Tamasin’s bare back to his hot chest. “You just had to name your son ‘Jupiter.’ Cupid.” Tamasin craned her neck to see the teasing twinkle in Sal’s eyes. They adored annoying Ophir about the name “Cupid.” Now Ophir ran

 

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his palms between them, caressing Sal’s abdomen and the small of Tamasin’s back simultaneously. He laid a sloppy, voracious kiss to the side of Sal’s neck, causing Sal’s eyes to close and his head tilt sensuously. Ophir clamped his upper thighs around Sal’s nearlynaked one, causing a violent shiver to sprinkle Tamasin’s shoulders and arms with goose flesh. It was always so stimulating to view Ophir’s potent phallus rubbing up against Sal, so unashamed in his lust for his partner. Now Ophir undid the laces of his own deerskin leggings, releasing the insistent bulge of his massive cock. “You’re not really one to talk,” he muttered against Sal’s ear. “Salvador Amado Valentín Palomares.” Tamasin would have laughed, had she not been in the slimy grip of a cunt that automatically clenched, crying out for her husband’s penis. So she squirmed her butt to indicate her readiness, even leaning forward with her fingertips balancing herself on the mattress, to give Sal a good view of her bare back and behind. She knew that never failed to rouse a man into an out-and-out blockheaded furor, for some reason. “Go ahead,” she heard Ophir growl against Sal’s throat. “Take your wife. I want to watch. I want to see you satisfy yourself inside her sweet cunt. I want to watch you hump the woman you love and spill your delicious seed inside her.” Still petting the outer lips of her labia, Sal wedged the pulsing crown of his penis against the opening of her channel. Ophir continued to bedevil Sal, murmuring things such as, “Do it, Sal. Release yourself inside of her, feel the hot slippery walls of her cunt around your delicious cock.” His banter was having an effect on Tamasin as well, driving her nearly over the edge into a loco passion. When she lunged her hips backward toward Sal, she instantly impaled herself on his proud phallus. Sal gasped loudly, and Tamasin cried out as well, since the massive member lodged nearly up to her uterus, and it had been quite

 

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awhile since she had accommodated anything that size—well, if ever, she thought with a vague giggle. But it only took a few brief moments, between Ophir’s salacious urging and the sweet slow pumping of Sal’s penis. Tamasin relaxed into the fucking as Sal filled her, his balls slapping against her ass, her breasts swaying. He continued fingering her, tickling the long hood of her clitoris with his talented tapered finger. Great electrical sparks shot from her core, causing her to twitch and jump. “Salvador, mi amor,” she cried. Her heart felt as though it was being wrenched with the power of her love for him. A year ago, she would not have dreamed this was possible. A year ago, she did not even know what to dream. And for the first time in her life, she craved a man to fill her. Now that she had seen how good, how sweet, how tender it was to be genuinely fucked by a man one loved…Well. She would never refrain from doing it again. Glancing over her shoulder, she wanted to see Sal’s gorgeous, aristocratic face. With his head thrown back onto Ophir’s shoulder, she was enticed by the full muscular throat, the peppering of satiny hair across his brawny pectorals. His eyelids flickered half-open and his nostrils flared in that bewitching manner that let Tamasin know he was affected by something. Ophir, from where he stood behind Sal rubbing his penis against Sal’s haunch, reached for the bowl on the nightstand and dipped his fingers into it. His other palm grabbed a handful of Sal’s ass, slapping up against it with a sharp crack. Tamasin panted. “Mi amor, la mejor y la única de mi vida.” My love, the best and only love of my life. She didn’t know what she was saying, she was so crazed by lust. It was not until several days later, in San Francisco, that Tamasin realized she knew that much Spanish. ****

 

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That Ophir stood behind him, urgently rotating the head of his massive cock against Sal’s ass, only increased his rapture. To finally glide his cock up her slick, hot passage was enough to bring him off instantly, and to watch her ass rotate and wiggle with pleasure was a treat he’d never experienced. He was afraid of hurting her at first, thinking perhaps she’d been assaulted in the past. It was an arrogant thought that his penis was overly large, but once he was lodged against the final extremity of her passage, Sal tried to move slower. It was as though her cunt had sucked him in, like the mouth of one of those meat-eating flowers! The sucking and clenching of it compelled him on, the walls of her inner twat gripping and munching at his prick as though it had some masterly, adept life of its own. When Ophir unclothed his own cock and rubbed the hot crown of it against Sal’s ass, his balls filled to their maximum and drew up close to his body. He had to still himself while Tamasin whimpered for more. Ophir dipped his fingers into a bowl of what was apparently manteca, and Sal could tell by the rigorous motions of Ophir’s bicep that he was slathering it onto his prick. Ophir’s bawdy murmurings only served to heighten Sal’s impending orgasm. “That’s good, Sal, real good. Keep it up, keep pounding your wife. Isn’t she beautiful all spread out like that? Doesn’t it make your long…thick…juicy cock just want to erupt inside of her?” “Oh, ay dios, sí, Ophir…” Sal muttered nonsensically. Yes to what? To the achingly exquisite sight of Tamasin with spread legs leaning forward on the bed, or to what Ophir was planning to do with the manteca? When Ophir’s greasy fingers probed his asshole, smearing the unctuous butter up to his first knuckle inside of him, Sal had to slow his pumping until he was nearly stopped. This made Tamasin mewl with need, so Sal picked her up by the hips and launched her on all fours onto the bed, where he remained crouched over and into her.

 

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“Ah!” she cried, and seemed to like this subservient position where her hungry quim could feel every nuance and slight motion of his penis. When he flexed his cock inside of her, she gasped and jumped, and he knew he could control her orgasm by the movements of his fingers against her clitoris. Ophir positioned the giant mushroom head of his prick against Sal’s asshole, and Sal’s thighs quivered with anticipation and a bit of fear. He’d never been speared before, much less with an enormous appendage like Ophir’s, but he relaxed into the warm grip of Ophir’s steadying hand on his hip, and Ophir’s licentious words helped calm his trepidation at being invaded like that. “I’m going to fuck you, Sal, my love, my love.” The bulging crown of Ophir’s prick breached the tight ring of his ass, sending a flood of jism up the underside of Sal’s penis. “Feel yourself inside of Tamasin. Feel her cunt squeezing your fat, luscious cock.” Ophir gave a swift little jab with his prick and he was halfway buried inside Sal. “You’re inside your wife, the woman you love. And the man who loves you is buggering your firm, fleshy ass. Good God, Sal.” He slapped Sal’s ass with such a loud snap the guests downstairs might have heard it, had Knut not commenced to caterwauling on Ophir’s fiddle. “That’s right, my big bull of a man. Feel my cock filling you. I’m gonna fill you with loads of my hot jism.” Another slap. “You like this? Tell me you like it. Tell me you like being bumfucked by my giant, meaty horse cock.” Sal was so choked up, trying to hold in roars of intense excitement, he could only answer Ophir in monosyllables. “Sí,” he squeaked. “Fuck me, Ophir. Fuck me. With your. Giant prick.” When Ophir commenced to driving nearly the entire length of his prick in and out of Sal’s asshole, Sal couldn’t hold back. The view of Tamasin’s pure white shoulder blades, so delicate like a bird’s, was enough to send him over the edge. He remembered to pet her clitoris, knowing by the slick bulging that she would soon be squirting her

 

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feminine juices all over his hand. He loved that, particularly when she gushed against his mouth, and he tasted and supped her juice. “Good God, Sal.” Ophir bit the tender flesh at the side of his neck as he pumped into him. “You are one. Big. Delicious morsel of ass.” That was it. Before Sal even had a chance to inhale a good lungful of air, he erupted inside Tamasin. Load after load spurted up the length of his penis, assisted by the lewd hammering he was taking from Ophir’s powerful hips. Holding his breath, he had the presence of mind to continue fondling Tamasin’s button. She, too, held her breath, as she always did when the first convulsions of orgasm flooded her nerves and blood, and then he felt her crash around him. The walls of her inner cunt rolled down the entire length of his stiff prick like the swells of a tidal wave, one after another, like the overpowering earthquake that had once undulated down the San Joaquin Valley, fracturing great rifts in the meadows and toppling over his confused cattle. “Oh—oh—oh—oh—” was all Tamasin would utter for many long moments, even when Sal slowed his stroking. “Good God, Sal.” Ophir’s teeth were clamped down on Sal’s earlobe so tightly, he was afraid his partner might bite it clean off. Ophir slapped his haunch again, so hard the tingling washed through his balls and clean through to the end of his prick, squeezing out a few more dribbles of sperm. “You—are—the most delicious—Ah!” Sal could actually feel Ophir’s cock exploding, great globs of jism squirting against that sensitive spot behind his balls. It seemed to roil through every muscle of Sal’s pelvis, up the underside of his flagging prick, and into the depths of Tamasin’s womb. She was now arching her neck to see over her shoulder, and the sly smile on her face told him she liked what she saw. Ophir’s body still as a sculpture of hard quartz as he discharged inside of his partner, eyes squeezed shut, fingers digging into the globe of Sal’s ass. Sal moved first, gently lowering Tamasin’s heaving, panting body to the mattress. She bowled over on her back, flinging her arms

 

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limply. Her beautiful tiara of cascading diamonds and feathers was crushed against the pillows. “Ay dios,” Sal groaned, wiping the sweat from his chest and neck. He raised one foot to the bed frame, curled forward with one forearm on that knee, to let Ophir disengage. “Ay dios,” Ophir agreed. Sal could hear him stagger backward, probably with cramps in his calves. This was not a customary position for a vaquero. They both stumbled, vaguely bow-legged, to the washbowl on a stand in Tamasin’s dressing room. Sal leaned his palms against the washstand while Ophir cleaned himself. The mood was pleasantly serene, sheets of rain splashing against the windows, Tamasin sighing with contentment in the next room. Sal washed himself as Ophir disappeared into his connecting room—they had built a door there, too, so anyone going between the apartments wouldn’t be seen in the hallway. Sal was drying himself off when Ophir returned with a bottle of something, and they repaired to the bedroom. “Ooh, champagne,” Tamasin cried weakly. She had taken off her headpiece and was gazing at the bent filaments. Sal sat next to her and gently stroked her face. “Mi amor. How do you feel?” She smiled languidly. “Do you mean, am I sore from being fucked by your massive cock?” “Oh, holy mother of Joseph!” Sal threw his head back and laughed. Tamasin was simply becoming bolder and cruder—the mark of a true American. Her skittish fear had almost completely vanished, replaced by a confidence that enhanced her natural beauty. Sometimes she shocked Sal with her newfound adventurous spirit. He kept telling himself this was the way of modern women, being forthright and intrepid in their ways and speech. “I suppose that’s what I mean, sí.” Now she became shy, looking down at the feathers between her fingers. “It was sufficient.”

 

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Ophir guffawed as he handed them champagne glasses. “Oh, ho! Listen to that, Sal. ‘Sufficient.’ I’d say we’re just going to have to try harder to please this woman.” Sal caressed her hand. “Or try longer. Would ‘longer’ please you, Señora Palomares?” “Yes, longer.” Tamasin held the champagne glass aloft. “I wish to see you try harder and longer for many more decades.” They all—even Ophir—drank to that, and then Ophir became serious. He stood in an oratory stance, his square jaw set resolutely. “The love you have is absolute. There is only one cure for this kind of love, and that is the oil of wedlock. Swallow it cautiously. One dose can give a man fits for life.” They laughed, but drank the toast just the same. They became aware of an insistent banging on the door to Ophir’s room. Sal and Ophir set down their glasses and moved through the apartments. Knut Frostad, looking very flustered, stood aheming and shuffling his feet about. “I was knocking at a very genteel level,” he explained with embarrassment. “But nobody answered. I had to knock increasingly loudly, risking drawing the attention of the guests downstairs, most of whom are, I must say, three sheets to the wind, as your father would say. But luckily for you—ahem—I have the ability to be quite stealthy and to sneak out unnoticed, like a giant panther patrolling the woods—” “Yes, yes,” Sal said. “What is it you need?” Knut stared at the doorjamb for a brief moment, then brightened. “Ah, yes! Alcalde Sims requests your presence downstairs. He wishes to smash a champagne bottle on the side of your ox-cart for good luck, or some other outlandish heathen tradition he learned in Australia.” Knut enjoyed locking horns with the new alcalde, Alistair Sims. Knut liked to imagine that Alistair was Australian, although he had been British for a couple of decades before being shipped to the penal colony. Now Alistair was alcalde, after having assisted in saving Salvador’s hide, and proving himself to be a worthy character.

 

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“That is a Viking tradition, so you should know about it, Knut.” Tamasin had appeared behind them, having donned her traveling skirt and blouse. Knut drew himself up, his chest inflating. “Prussians are not Vikings! The Kingdom of Prussia is a grand, old, much-lauded place, jah! Why, just the great Rhineland alone is steeped in—” Sal shut the door and turned to his two companions. “I will miss our lawyer.” Mysteriously, Ophir laughed uproariously, his eyes twinkling mischievously. Oddly, Tamasin seemed to be choking on a giggle, and the two shared glances. Sal frowned. “What?” At last Tamasin admitted, “We didn’t tell you, for fear you wouldn’t approve. But…Knut is coming with us!” Sal’s jaw hung low. “Coming…with us? On our honeymoon?” Tamasin wrung Sal’s hands. “It makes sense. He has work to accomplish with investors, and he can help out with the children.” Sal gaped. “Knut? Help with children?” Ophir added his hand to the pile and said reassuringly, “Yes. And with Knut to assist, it gives us more time to enjoy…our honeymoon.” Tamasin nodded slyly. “He’s right, Sal. It makes sense.” Sal shrugged and pulled his companions so close their foreheads nearly touched. He had been waiting his entire life to enjoy a honeymoon. It was the beginning of their lives together, and who was he to mind if a corned Knut Frostad was there to help arrange finances, secure rooms, or find a steamer to take up the river? “Home or to the mines!” Sal whispered triumphantly. “Home or to the mines,” Tamasin and Ophir agreed.

THE END WWW.KARENMERCURY.COM 

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Karen knew she wanted to be a writer when she was 3. She sat on her bed gazing at her book, The Bee Man of Orn, thinking “What power there is in creating imaginary worlds! The reader is automatically transported into a reality that you created. She hears your characters talking, sees the vistas you painted with words.” Then she realized she had better learn to read. When Karen was 12, she had a dream of being in a village on the coast of Kenya, so at 23 she bought a one-way plane ticket to Nairobi to find the village. She climbed the Mountains of the Moon in Rwanda to see mountain gorillas, hitchhiked overland through Egypt, Uganda, Zaire, and Zambia, lived with the Turkana in the Northern Frontier District of Kenya, went down the Congo on a decrepit steamer, and sailed up the Nile on a leaky dhow. Her first three novels were historical fiction involving precolonial African explorers. Since she was always either accused or praised for writing overly steamy sex scenes, erotic romance was the natural next step. She is currently writing about the rough-and-tumble life of the California gold rush, and lives in Northern California with her Newfoundland dog.

Also by Karen Mercury Ménage Amour: Going for the Gold 1: Working the Lode Ménage Amour: Going for the Gold 2: Either Ore

Available at BOOKSTRAND.COM

 

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