The Dead Spend No Gold Page 4

  “A Hunter?”

  “My people have a word for it: Canowiki. Hunter is the closest English word,” Feather explained. “In every generation, some few are born who can fight the creatures of the dark; not only the Skinwalkers, but all manner of beasts. We were told there was such a one among the party that was trapped in the mountains. My uncle, Salvador, went to see if it was true, but he never returned. I fear he fell to the beasts.”

  “Salvador was your uncle?”

  “I knew him as Sewati.”

  “He was brave and kind,” Virginia said. “He and his companion, Luis, helped our family. But…I don’t know what happened to them. They went off with the last escape party, but never returned.” She bit her lip, remembering the two silent Indian sentinels who had brought her family food and stayed near their cabin, protecting them from the werewolves.

  “The survivors of that group came to my village,” Feather said. She was blinking as if trying to hold back tears. Her voice sounded constricted, almost hoarse, as if she was having a hard time speaking. Virginia was surprised by the show of emotion. “We knew from the look in the white men’s eyes that they had killed them, but we took no revenge. That winter took so many of my people, with or without the help of the white men.” Feather’s eyes were turned away, and her voice, so strong and confident a short time ago, was soft and low.

  Virginia was amazed that the Indian girl was opening up after all this time. “I thought you were estranged from your people.”

  “I was…I am. But I still belong to them, and they to me.” She hesitated for a moment before she explained. “After I left the missionaries, I went to live among my people. Not long after, the miners came, invading our territory. But they drew too near the territory of…another. This creature took revenge upon my people, carrying away several children.

  “I, having been raised by the white missionaries, was sent to look for thee, and I was glad for it. I feel more comfortable among thy kind than mine, but I am not fool enough to believe I am one of you. I need but walk out into the street and listen to the calls of the men and see the scorn of the women. That is why I stayed in this place, because thou didst not treat me thus. I had thought a Hunter would not treat me that way.”

  Virginia wanted to deny that she was a Canowiki, or whatever they called it. A Hunter. I’m just a fifteen-year-old girl! she wanted to protest. I’m no slayer of monsters!

  But when she looked inside, she hesitated. Everything since Truckee Lake had seemed to happen in a dream, a daze, and so she had left her home and her family, seeking she knew not what. She knew only that the humdrum life she had been living was not the life for which she was destined. As terrible as it sounded, the thought of battle called to her, drawing out a restlessness she didn’t know how to quell.

  She had recognized it as she’d stalked and battled the werewolf, Herman Strauss. It was like shedding an overcoat that had grown too tight across her shoulders, and shedding it gave her freedom at last.

  “I have been seeking thee,” Feather said, her dark eyes calm again. “We—my tribe—need thy help. We are being stalked by a terrible creature.”

  “A werewolf?” Virginia asked, feeling her pulse quicken.

  “No…something far worse.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Tucker’s Journal, Day 2

  I live.

  I expected to die when the monster swung me against the tree, but I awoke with a deep gash to my head, bleeding and dizzy, but still breathing.

  I am beyond terror. I am numb.

  It is a mystery to me why the monster let me live.

  I have this journal, where I recounted our travels, and the stub of a pencil. When daylight leaks through the narrow opening of the cave, it is reflected and redoubled, giving me enough light to scribble a few thoughts.

  Kovac was vainglorious and delusional. He’d been so certain that we’d be rich, and I…I was a fool. What possessed me to follow such a madman, I do not now understand.

  Well, we found gold, that is for certain: more gold than King Midas had, but it doesn’t matter. Kovac is dead, and I will follow him to the pits of hell, if I’m not there already. The cave reeks of death, but even more, it has the taint of the creatures that live here.

  I awoke in the darkness, and the foul smell smothered me until I gagged and vomited. I struggled for breath, then gagged again, emptying what was left in my belly. I kicked out in agony, and the bones scattered and rattled, and something scurried away. There was a rustling sound. I sat frozen in fear, listening to the movement, until I realized that it was insects feeding on the decaying carcasses that litter the floor of the cave.

  I tried to rise, but my legs gave out under me, from weakness or from a wound, it is hard to say. There is surprisingly little pain, but I am beset by an overwhelming weariness.

  The miasma of the smell has coated my skin and my clothing until I have become part of it; a wraith, wallowing in filth.

  I am an educated man. Kovac and I were different from the other miners. We left good jobs in San Francisco, he an accountant and I a teacher in a school for the children of those who own the town. Perhaps it was proximity to wealth that made me so greedy, for I grew weary of teaching Beowulf and Hamlet to ungrateful children. Because of my education, I know too well what holds me captive, and my fate.

  When I saw the shadow of the creature, I heard Beowulf’s lament:

  “The monster rose, from demon-haunted halls,

  Spawned in slime, evil banished,

  By God, forever punished,

  Hell is his home, Hell on Earth.”

  * * *

  Unaware of the events in the hotel, Frank and Thomas Whitford left Sutter’s Fort early in the morning, their Indian ranch hand, Hugh, driving the wagon. Thomas sat with Hugh while Frank was left to sit in the back, holding onto the crates of supplies. No one else was on the road to stir up the dust that usually hung over it, which gifted them with clear, cold skies stretching all the way to the mountains. The puddles they’d had to flog the horses through on the way into town were drying up.

  Frank wished he were on horseback, but that wasn’t the kind of trip they were on. Once a quarter, they came into town for the few things they couldn’t make or grow themselves. They had most of what they needed at the ranch, for it was a huge spread, with many capable hands.

  It was Frank’s first trip back to town since coming home. He was still trying to regain his bearings around the homestead. It seemed as if only Hugh was unchanged. The half-breed Indian had always been there, a steady, reliable presence in the lives of the Whitford boys. Frank hadn't even known the tall man was an Indian until someone had shouted a slur at him once in town.

  Frank wasn't sure which had changed more, the ranch or him. He hadn’t wanted to come back, and had hoped to work with some of his friends in Boston during the summer. But his stepfather's last letter was so strange that he'd felt compelled to return home.

  Surprisingly, the ranch seemed to have fallen on hard times in the two years Frank had been gone. Most bewilderingly, the property boundaries had shifted, and no one could tell him why.

  "Father?" he ventured. The old man didn't seem to hear him, but Frank continued anyway. "I've been wondering why you sold the bottom pastures to the Newtons?"

  From the driver’s seat, Hugh glanced over his shoulder with a strange expression. He gave Frank a slight warning shake of his head.

  “That is none of your concern,” Frank’s stepfather snapped.

  Frank wanted to object that it was very much his concern, but something about Hugh’s warning glance told him to stay silent. Frank examined Thomas’s stubborn posture, looking for a chink in the iron facade.

  Nothing he’d seen since he’d returned home surprised Frank more than his stepfather selling the Bottoms, especially to Henry Newton, whom he disdained. The Newtons had arrived several years ago, flush with money, and had begun buying out the smaller ranches in the valley. Worse, they had begun to push into territor
y that had been given, by unspoken agreement, to the Indians. Henry Newton had been agitating for the removal of the Indians ever since arriving in California. Until then, Thomas Whitford and the other early ranchers had always gotten along well with the natives.

  “Father,” Frank began again. “I need to understand what’s happening…”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” The scowl on Thomas’s face was impenetrable armor, so Frank fell silent. The buckboard rattled endlessly, and it was too noisy to do much talking anyway.

  His stepfather had changed while Frank was back East. He’d always been a grim man, but the death of Frank’s mother had made him shut down completely. Now he seldom talked, never laughed, and spent much of his time holed up in his gloomy office, leaving the operation of the ranch to Patrick.

  Frank couldn’t remember any father but Thomas Whitford, and yet…he still couldn’t quite get himself to leave the “step” out of the “father.”

  Patrick, who was bigger and more outgoing as well as being Thomas’s natural son, had always seemed like the older brother. He was tending toward fat, with the broad, weathered features of a Western rancher. Their youngest brother, James, was smaller and quieter. Red-haired and cheerful, he was almost always reading a book or daydreaming.

  It didn’t take long for Frank to realize his father needed his help saving the ranch, but every day, he regretted leaving Massachusetts. It wasn’t the sophisticated community of Harvard that he missed. He’d stuck out like a steer with one horn there. It was more that the ranch sorely lacked female companionship, something Frank had enjoyed as a star member of the Harvard rowing team.

  None of the neighboring ranchers had any suitable daughters—except maybe Patsy Newton, who was as shallow as Dry Creek. There were prostitutes in town, most of them intimidatingly forward, and some old widows running hotels and laundries. The Donner Party girl was the first female since his return to catch his interest.

  Frank couldn’t get her out of his thoughts. Virginia Reed was her name. The girl was a classic beauty; blonde hair and clear blue eyes, a petite figure and dignified bearing. It was her smile, disarmingly candid and fresh, that had caught his attention. He couldn’t forget how quickly that smile had disappeared and her expression had closed down when his father had grabbed his arm and hissed, “That’s her!”

  Such a pity, he thought. She is a beautiful girl. And in the face of such scorn, she has an indomitable spirit.

  Maybe he would put up with his brothers’ ribbing and his father’s disapproval and go see her. The alternative seemed to be Patsy, that old washcloth of a girl, who had managed to come by the ranch three times already, making a worse impression every time.

  One thing Frank had learned at school among all those Easterners was that others’ opinions didn’t matter. He’d come to realize he didn’t really fit in anywhere; not with the rough ranchers at home or with the more refined families of the East. He was, forever and always, an outsider.

  So what did it matter if his father and everyone else disapproved of his courting Virginia Reed?

  Besides, not everyone in the Donner Party had resorted to cannibalism. Of all the families trapped in the snows, the Reeds were one of the few to hold their dignity intact. But there was always that lingering doubt and the unspoken presumption of guilt by association, and the sense that it was the Donner Party’s fault, through foolishness or laziness, that they had been trapped.

  But Frank knew from personal experience how quickly the weather could change, how quickly the snows could trap the unprepared.

  As a child, his friends had invited him on an expedition into the mountains, but his stepfather had kept him home to do chores.

  One of the boys never returned. Billy Thomson came out of the mountains alone, wet and delirious, with no memory of what had happened to Jeremiah Fleming, only a strange story of how they had lost the trail when it began snowing. Jeremiah had torn off his clothing and run into the woods, but Billy had managed to stumble across the trail. Rather than pursue his friend, he made his way back to the valley.

  By the unwritten code of the West, Billy should have gone after his friend. But if Billy had done that, both would have died. After enduring years of scorn, the Thomsons moved from their homestead. Like many of their neighbors, they sold out to the Newtons.

  Before he left, Billy Thompson implied that something else had happened to the Donner Party; something that had been hushed up. Billy had whispered something about wolves. “But not natural wolves,” he had said in his portentous way. “These were half-man, half-wolf, thems that did the eating.”

  Frank had laughed at that, but since then, he’d heard other rumors, even more outlandish and unbelievable.

  An image of Virginia Reed’s face came into his mind.

  That girl fought her way through hell, Frank thought, and yet has the smile of an angel.

  * * *

  Patrick waited at the gate, looking grim. This gate had once been the entrance to the Whitford ranch, but now the land beyond it belonged to the Newtons, and Frank felt its wrongness each time he passed this stretch of road.

  Worse, Henry Newton was riding alongside Patrick, accompanied by his foreman, Dave Martin. Newton was a huge man in girth, and Frank always felt sorry for the horses that had to carry him. He was bald on top of his head, but let his white-streaked hair grow long on the sides and back, and it merged with his heavy beard.

  Frank had immediately disliked the man, even before he’d spoken and made his odious opinions known. Newton made it clear he wanted the Indians gone. Martin was even worse, speaking ill of the Miwok every chance he had. He was a dark, ruddy-faced man, always scowling.

  “It happened again,” Patrick said when the Whitfords’ wagon rolled up. “Three head of cattle rustled this time. Oliver and James are tracking them.”

  Frank’s heart dropped. Oliver Newton was about the same age as James, but much more outgoing. For some reason Frank couldn’t understand, James had fallen under Oliver’s sway. It was an unhealthy influence.

  “Just the two of them?” Thomas cried. “I told you not to do anything until I got back.”

  “Don’t worry, Father,” Patrick said. “I told them to keep their distance. Besides, I have no doubt that it’s the Miwok again.”

  “Three head of cattle?” Frank said. “Is that all?” He regretted it the instant the words passed his lips. His father looked almost puzzled by the remark, for to him, losing one cow was as bad as losing a herd, but Patrick caught his meaning right away.

  “Because we have hundreds?” Patrick sneered. “How about we give a few head to the wolves, maybe some more to the Paiutes, maybe some more to the Maidu? Hell, McCarthy could use some cattle to replenish his stock.”

  Why not? Frank almost asked, stopping himself just in time. Old man McCarthy had been kind to them years ago, when they had fallen on hard times. The wolves? They took a few head each winter, and for that they were being hunted to extinction. As far as the Indians were concerned…

  “They’re starving,” Frank said. “The miners have pushed them too far into the mountains.”

  So far, Newton had said nothing. He didn’t need to with Patrick there. Now, the older man scoffed at Frank’s concern over the Indians. “That’s not our problem,” he snapped. “They should stay where they belong.”

  “They let us settle here,” Frank said. He turned to his father for support. “When you arrived in this valley, you were starving, that’s what you told me. The Miwok saved you.”

  Thomas looked away and didn’t say anything, which seemed to encourage Newton. “Well, the savages certainly steal like they own everything,” he said.

  “This land was once theirs,” Frank insisted.

  “No longer,” Patrick joined in heatedly. “The land belongs to those who make use of it.”

  Frank sighed, trying one more time to be reasonable. “Starting a war over a few head of cattle hardly seems worth the cost.”

  Newton snorte
d and shook his head.

  Patrick seemed to grow larger in his saddle. He was a burly man to begin with, and in that beefy body, Frank could sometimes see the vitality of his stepfather as a younger man. “Is that what they teach you in your fancy schools?” Patrick sneered. “To buy off your enemy?”

  “Of course not, you…” Frank began, feeling his anger starting to rise.

  “Enough!” their father roared.

  Frank was glad the old man had stopped him. Frank had almost called his brother an ignorant ass, which would have been a bad thing to say given the volatile tempers, no matter whether it was true or not.

  “We should send a search party after James and Oliver right away,” Newton said in the ensuing silence. His air was commanding, and Patrick nodded agreement.

  "Who's stopping you?" Frank asked.

  Newton flushed, recognizing Frank’s implication. Without the elder Whitford's blessing, most of the local ranchers would refuse to go along. Despite the ascendency of the Newtons’ spread and the decline of the Whitfords’, there was no comparing the relative respect the two patriarchs enjoyed among their peers.

  "Hitch your horse to the wagon, Patrick," Thomas commanded. "Get in back with Frank."

  “But Mr. Newton wants me to go along…”

  "Patrick!" the old man admonished, and Frank felt a swell of pride at the familiar tone of command in his father’s voice. It was one the boys never disobeyed.

  Again, Patrick turned red, his round, open face clearly showing his embarrassment.

  "You go along, now, Patrick," Newton said easily, as if it was his own idea. As if he was giving permission. His cold eyes bored into Frank as if he'd never seen him before. "My daughter has been expecting you to come calling, Frank," he said. "I told her you just got back and were settling in, and you'd be along soon enough."

  Frank nodded, but said nothing. He sensed Patrick glaring at him, and something that should have been obvious suddenly became clear. Patrick was jealous.