The Dead Spend No Gold Page 3

  Would he hear her, lying in his bed? Virginia wondered as she cocked the gun. Would he be rising in silence to meet his attacker, Changing even as she drew near? Would he be waiting for her on the other side of the door?

  She turned the key. The click sounded louder than thunder to her. She reached for the doorknob and felt the cool brass in her hand.

  CHAPTER 3

  Yerba Buena, 1836

  “Thou art welcome here, Chief Honon.”

  Litonya hid behind her father’s legs, for the white man was loud and fat.

  “Who is this?” the man boomed. He dressed funny, smelled funny, and spoke funny. Litonya did not know the English language then, for she was only five years old, but this meeting was forever etched in her memory. It was impossible that she could have understood the conversation, much less conversed herself, and yet she remembered it.

  Her father’s gentle hands disentangled her from his legs, pushing her toward the thunderous giant. There was an equally large woman behind him. Litonya had never seen anyone so fat.

  The stranger scooped her up, and she barely restrained a scream as he set her down on top of an outside table. Her father would want her to be brave. Both her father and the strangers examined her, as if she was a prize horse.

  “She is as light as a feather,” the man said. “And so shall she be called…Feather.”

  “My name is Litonya,” she said, very clearly.

  “No, Little Hummingbird,” her father said. “You must speak as these people speak, and learn all you can.” He did not give voice to what he must have thought, that a feather was an adornment that the Miwok gave their dead.

  “Why?” she asked. She managed to keep the mournful wail out of her voice, which sounded flat to her ears and yet desperate, too.

  “We must learn their ways, so that we can live among them,” her father explained. “Stay and learn everything you can, and when you have grown, return to me. Teach us what you have learned.”

  Father left, taking a little bundle of her clothing, her buckskin moccasins and her manta dress.

  From then on, Feather dressed like the other girls and tried to act like the other girls, and as the years passed, she forgot what her father looked like, forgot even her own language. She learned, as her father had commanded, attending the missionary school and reading every book the Cumminses owned. She learned the Bible and the white man’s religion, but she never completely believed. She learned to love the books and to value them, but she knew she was missing the Tellings of her people.

  The missionary couple was kind to her, protecting her as best they could from the taunts of the other children, but they were already old when she came into their lives, and sickly. She was only thirteen when Charles Cummins died, and Sarah Cummins soon thereafter. Feather was put into the care of another missionary, but he was not kind, nor did he protect her. Instead, he had…

  She never let herself think about that.

  She left the settlement that had once been Yerba Buena and was now called San Francisco.

  At first, she could not bear to return to her own people, the Miwok. She wasn’t ready. Instead, she remembered a story from when she was small and lived among them. It was one of the few stories she remembered, and she often thought about it long into the night, after the white man’s lessons threatened to overwhelm her. She clung to the myth, for when she thought of it, she remembered how it felt to belong to the land.

  It is said that after Coyote and Lizard created the world and everything in it, they argued. They agreed that humans should be created, but they fought over whether The People should be allowed hands. Lizard won the argument in the end, and thus humans have fingers and hands to grasp things and get into mischief.

  But Coyote was angry. He went away and created a place of his own, hidden from humans and all other creatures, a paradise that the humans would be allowed to enter one day, but only once they had learned the lesson of bearing hands.

  Until then, men would be clever and lord it over the other creatures, but they would die alone, and turn to stone.

  It was a silly bedtime story, perhaps, and she didn’t quite understand it, but it fascinated Feather. She spent months walking the trails of the High Sierra, looking for this paradise, knowing it for a myth and yet still wanting to believe it existed.

  Eventually, she found her tribe, her people. They’d been driven high into the Sierra Nevada by the encroachment of white men. Her father had grown old, but remained chief of the Miwok.

  “I am happy to see you, daughter,” he said in Miwok.

  Tears sprang into her eyes as she understood his words. But even if she had not, the look of kindness on his face would have made her weep.

  And so had come a second learning period as she reimmersed herself in the culture of her people. Their language returned to her as though she had never left, but the comfort she had once felt among them was gone. She didn’t feel as though she belonged with the Miwok, but she stayed for her father’s sake.

  Litonya quickly discovered that her people, except for her father, did not want to learn what she had to teach them about the white man, his religion or language. Most importantly, they did not wish to learn about what the invaders wanted. She almost despaired, for she saw how many more white men sailed into the harbor of San Francisco every year and understood more would come.

  The miners crept ever closer, following the stream, until they neared the sacred valley. Then her father sent for her. “The Skoocoom is upset,” he told her. “You must go to the white men and warn them they are in danger.”

  When Litonya had first returned to her people, she had not believed the beast to be real. She vaguely remembered childhood tales of the Skoocoom, but as an adult, she thought them superstition. The white man’s attitude had affected her more than she knew.

  But one day, she saw the Skoocoom staring at her from the trees, as if Litonya was suspicious and possibly threatening.

  She went alone to talk the white men, knowing they wouldn’t believe her. “Thou art in danger,” she told them.

  “Art we now,” the leader of the miners laughed.

  “Thou must stop,” she insisted.

  “Who’s going to stop us?” the miner asked.

  “There is a Being who lives in these mountains who will take offense at thy intrusion. We cannot protect thee.”

  They were amused by how she spoke their language, but it was clear they didn’t take her seriously—not until Chief Honon and the men of the tribe appeared on the hills above them, fully armed.

  The white men fell silent at the sight and conferred anxiously.

  “We will mine the lower reaches of the stream first,” the leader said, finally. “It’s what we planned to do all along.”

  For a time, the miners stayed away. But they could not stay away for long. It might have been only one or two of them at first, but inevitably, they climbed too far. The Miwok found out about the trespass one night, when there was a loud bellowing from the mountains. A wind swept through the village. Shelters were knocked down, cooking pots overturned, and fires broke out. Amid the confusion, children cried out in fear.

  In the morning, a young boy and a young girl were missing.

  They were never found.

  Litonya was summoned to the Council.

  The next morning, she reluctantly donned the dress of a white woman and descended, alone, into the valley.

  * * *

  Strauss, or rather the creature pretending to be Strauss, waited behind the door. Virginia didn’t know how she knew, but every primeval instinct that her ancestors had bestowed upon her was screaming a warning about the danger. It was the thing in the dark, the monster in the basement, at the bottom of the stagnant pond, just beyond the turn on a dark path.

  It waited.

  She’d seen werewolves transform: the flow of saliva over the sharp fangs, the wild aspect to their eyes, the transformation into the rawness of nature, of tooth and claw, without thought, o
nly hunger. The Change was most frightening not upon its completion, for she’d seen wolves and they fit into her perceptions of what was natural. No, the truly terrible part was when they were neither man nor wolf, but something worse—something unnatural and without the redeeming aspects of either species. Something dark and malformed.

  Imagining him Turning in the darkness only made it worse.

  She opened the door.

  It cracked like a shot, and Virginia fought the impulse to run. There would be no stealthy attack; this was her only chance. She threw the door open and leapt into the room.

  It was pitch black. The werewolf had completely covered the window. Virginia felt a sharp pain in her hand. The pistol flew out of her fingers and into the darkness, landing who knew where. She instinctively put up her arms, and again there came a slashing pain. She felt the blood start flowing from her wounds.

  She ducked, not even thinking how or why, and felt the wind of a slashing blow pass above her head. Then she rolled to one side and heard the smack of a blow on the floor next to her. She scrambled to her feet, feeling a compulsion to jump. As she did, she sensed the passage of another attack, this time below her.

  Virginia marveled at her ability to guess her opponent’s moves. But unfortunately, there was no way for her to attack. Her weapon was gone. All she had were her fists. She swung wildly, and amazingly, she struck something. There was a howl of pain. By some kind of wild luck, she had connected with Strauss’s misaligned jaw. She struck again, moving forward, and again connected.

  Then he was attacking again, with a shriek that seemed to shake the walls of the room. Virginia dodged in the dark, each time sensing where the next blow would be before it fell. But each time, the strike came closer. It was only a matter of time before he’d have her.

  A blinding light flared in the room. Virginia’s eyes adjusted faster than the werewolf’s. She glimpsed Feather holding a lantern in one hand and a butcher knife in the other. It was a knife Virginia used every day, and when the Indian girl threw it to her, she easily plucked it out of the air by the familiar worn handle, turned, and thrust it into the darkness.

  The werewolf almost impaled himself on the blade, but at the last second, moving faster than any human, he twisted to one side and the blade struck him in the shoulder. He winced but held the young women at bay with a snarl and red, glowing eyes. Then he ripped the knife from his shoulder with his teeth. A toss of his head, and the knife clattered into a corner.

  All of Virginia’s courage and resolve fled. She knew all too well how fast the werewolf could strike. There was no way to escape.

  She drew herself up to her full height, resolve steeling her spine, determined to hold the monster back for the sake of the Indian girl. She moved between Feather and the beast. “Run, Feather!” she cried. “Get help!”

  Feather did not move.

  The werewolf opened his crooked mouth and a sound came out that was like words, but also like the growl of an animal. Either way, the meaning was clear. He was promising them a painful death.

  Virginia clenched her jaw. I was spared that winter in the mountains, she thought, so I could destroy these creatures. But Feather doesn’t deserve this fate. She gathered herself to leap at the creature, into its jaws if need be, anything to give Feather a chance to get away.

  “No, Virginia,” Feather said, her measured, calm voice, pulling Virginia back. “Let me…”

  Again, an intense light filled the room. Virginia closed her eyes involuntarily. When she opened them again, she saw the lantern fly past her, toward the werewolf, who drew back, seemingly blinded. The lantern burst over him, and he emitted a half-human, half-animal cry. He batted at the flames, which only spread the fire. He turned and glowered at Virginia before leaping for the window and smashing through it.

  Virginia and Feather ran to the window in time to see the werewolf land in the middle of the muddy alley and roll in the puddles there. They watched the creature transform back into the shape of Herman Strauss. Disoriented, he stumbled to his feet, glaring up at the broken window before staggering out of the alley.

  * * *

  “We have to get out of here,” Virginia said, turning away from the window.

  She felt Feather’s small but surprisingly firm hand on her arm. “Stay,” Feather said calmly. “It is too late.”

  As if in response, they heard a question from the doorway. “What happened here?”

  Mrs. Harrelson was wide-eyed and pale. She wore a nightgown and a sleeping bonnet and resembled an oversized child, but her sleep-bleary eyes quickly gained focus.

  “We heard a strange sound from the room below us,” Feather said. “It sounded like some kind of animal.”

  Virginia nodded. Room 14 was on the third floor, at the end of the corridor. Their own room was directly above it. There was a rickety fire escape running down the side of the building. It was just possible they could have gotten here before anyone else.

  “When we knocked on the door, a man opened it and grabbed us,” Feather continued. “He looked terrible; vicious. We were afraid for our lives, and for our…” She gulped and fell silent.

  Virginia finally spoke up. “Feather threw our lantern at him. He…he was on fire. He thrashed around and fell out of the window.”

  Mrs. Harrelson looked skeptical, but as the hotel guests crowded around her, she apparently decided this wasn’t the time to question the girls’ story.

  “Pardon, Miss, but what happened to your hand?” one of the guests asked, pointing at the blood dripping down Virginia’s fingers. He was dressed in some kind of velvet smoking jacket and had an arch tone to his voice.

  “She cut it on the broken window shards,” Feather answered.

  Virginia saw what were clearly claw marks and hid her hand in the folds of her dress.

  “What was it? What made that infernal racket?” asked Mrs. Peterson. She was an old woman on her way to San Francisco, the mother of a rich miner, though her accent was Midwestern dirt poor. “It sounded like a dog.”

  Mrs. Harrelson bent over and picked a clump of fur up off the floor. There was blood on the end of the tuft. “Did he bring a dog into the room?” she asked. Then the innkeeper went to the window, gently moving aside Virginia, who stood in a daze, her legs shaking. She wanted to sit down, but, glancing at the werewolf’s rumpled bed, couldn’t bear the thought of sitting on it. Mrs. Harrelson looked down at the muddy alley, saw that the puddles were red with blood, and frowned. Then she turned and shooed the guests away, her take-charge manner fully restored.

  “There is nothing we can do until morning,” she said. “Go back to bed.” She practically pushed the last of the gawkers out and slammed the door. Then she went over to the corner of the room and picked up the pistol, which was still loaded and cocked.

  “How did this get here?” she muttered aloud, as if mystified. But she gave the two girls an appraising look that belied her question. She gingerly lowered the hammer into a resting position and placed the gun in the pocket of her voluminous robe.

  Mrs. Harrelson turned and, before Virginia could react, grabbed her wounded hand and inspected it. She glanced sharply at Virginia, who avoided her eyes. “Do you know who it was?”

  Virginia didn’t answer.

  “One of the miners, perhaps.” Feather answered for her. “He was rough looking. I do not doubt he might have done such a thing before. They forget about civilized ways up there in the mountains.”

  “But if he survived, why run away?” Mrs. Harrelson wondered, clearly expecting no answer. Her gaze fell on Feather. “Feather, you’ve spoken more in this past hour than in the entire year I’ve known you. And you, Virginia, are singularly silent.” Her sharp gray eyes missed nothing as she looked from one girl to the other. Then she shrugged and put her arm around Virginia’s shoulder. “Come, girl. Let’s bandage your hand.”

  * * *

  Mrs. Harrelson led the girls back to the kitchen, closing the doors to give them privacy. Now that the
fight was over, Virginia couldn’t stop shaking. Feather got up and grabbed a towel and draped it over her friend’s shoulders like a blanket.

  While Feather bandaged her hand, Mrs. Harrelson went off and came back a short time later to announce that the missing guest from Room 14 was a man named Herman Strauss, and that she would inform the local constabulary first thing in the morning. She stared at her two charges in silence for a long moment, as if she wanted to question them further, but they both looked intent on their tasks, so she subsided.

  “I think there is more to this than you say,” she said, finally. There was a brief pause before she added dryly, “Men can be real beasts.”

  Mrs. Harrelson arched one brow at them before sweeping out of the room, leaving the girls in awkward silence until Virginia caught Feather’s eye. Suddenly, they were giggling, and then erupting into full-throated laughter. They could have died; they could have been found out; but they had survived. Still, their laughter had a tinge of hysteria to it.

  “Beasts indeed,” Virginia said, which set them off again.

  After a while, Virginia realized she was chuckling alone. Feather was staring her with a serious expression. “Thou art a Hunter,” she whispered.

  “What do you mean?” Virginia asked uneasily.

  “That is why I came to work here,” Feather said. “But I had to be sure. Now I am. No one but a Hunter could have survived a fight in a dark room with a Skinwalker, especially not an unarmed girl. It is no accident thou didst survive the Donner Party. Thou art a Hunter, Virginia.”