California Bloodstock

by Terry McDonell

  Slant told him to relax. Any publicity was good publicity, he said. He had other things on his mind.

  He felt terrible about his family, such as it was. Taya was brooding and hostile toward him. She rejected his every gesture of compassion. Guilt gnawed at him. Then there was his own son, obviously on the verge of nervous collapse. The lad seemed to be drifting, tied to some mad organ grinder who couldn’t get the rhythms straight; and he, too, his own flesh and blood, seemed to despise him, blame him.

  Then there was Buckdown, goading him constantly through some maze of mutual guilt and responsibility. Old bones kept coming up between them, pushing them into corners they had both seen before. They kicked through the purple winter flowers on the hill behind Cargo West, arguing over how to go about things, what things to go about first, and what things were about. They appalled each other.

  The book was your idea, Buckdown grumbled.

  Yeah, Slant hissed, but it was your idea to share.

  98

  His Own Ghost

  The old shaman was drawn to Benicia as if by a magnet. It was his job, after all, to make sure that the ghosts of the dead Worm Eaters made the correct choice. What form to take on the journey to the Dead Place was a serious matter. One did not want to get caught in the Sacred Time as a puma when one really needed to be a silver trout, for example.

  So His Own Ghost looked at the mutilated young Worm Eaters, considered them with his heart, and tried to be helpful. He ate a mouthful from his medicine pouch and sat down among the corpses. Soon he had a song:

  I dream

  I dream of you

  I dream of you flying.

  That was all he had to sing.

  99

  Sewey

  One thing that Sewey knew was that you didn’t just ride into a new town alone. Nope, you scoped it first, preferably from an elevated point of vantage, a hill. He was certainly right about that, a man with as many enemies as himself had to take certain precautions. Too bad for him that he picked the very hill where Zorro lived, the hill where the old folk hero and Taya were passing another morning as real good friends. And especially too bad for Sewey that His Own Ghost would also be making the scene momentarily.

  Congratulating himself on his canny moves, Sewey tied his horse out of sight in a cluster of oak and started making his way carefully up the slope. Close to the top he looked off to his left, and there, in a notch just below the summit, he spotted Taya and Zorro. And thinking them just a couple of easy pickings, he headed over to see what he could get off them. He was just about close enough to recognize Taya, when he got whacked unconscious by a blow from his own saddle gun wielded by His Own Ghost, who also happened to be riding Sewey’s own horse.

  Sewey went down in a spread, arms and legs flung out, his back to the dirt. Taya stared at him. A chill, then a flutter, raced around her brain and she decided not to smash Sewey’s skull with any of the handy rocks. It would be much better, she suddenly knew, to stake him down naked there on top of Telegraph Hill and walk away.

  This is the best way, she said to Zorro and His Own Ghost. I have a feeling.

  His Own Ghost smiled and scanned the sky.

  100

  Condors

  The few citizens of what was now San Francisco who noticed the huge birds circling Telegraph Hill wondered what was up. Such giants usually glided clear of the tricky thermals and squalls that dominated the region. All of the local Worm Eaters naturally understood right off that the Animal People were around.

  The birds circled all day, finally settling at dusk. The night that followed was moonless and especially cold, driving all but the Worm Eaters to early sleep. And in that sleep not one of them heard the shrieks that shot like electric currents blowing downwind off the hill. But the Worm Eaters heard and stayed alert through the night, smiling with each whistling cry.

  And at dawn, only the Worm Eaters saw the huge birds rising in hard arcs, then swooping into an elegant ballet high out over the bay.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  101

  Taya

  A pack of large dogs waited open-mouthed on the mud flats, anxious to bark. Shaboom and the Burgetts slid across the water in Richardson’s launch. Only Millard took notice of the mangle of bones that dropped out of the sky and splashed with a rattle off their stern in the middle of the bay.

  Ahead of them in San Francisco, Cargo West was packed. Sutter and Joaquin Peach had arrived, having come straight through by small boat without stopping at Benecia. They sat with Larkin, whispering back and forth. At the next table Brannan made a list of potential members for a vigilance committee he planned to organize against the Hounds.

  Pierre Wallingsford tinkered with his gambling wheel. Slant and Buckdown argued at their regular table. T. D. Jr. stood at the bar, slashing into his sketchbook. It was midmorning of a day that hung naked off the trunk of the new year like a branch of overripe fruit. Outside, the Eagle was preparing to sail, and upstairs, Taya was going into labor.

  She pressed deeper into old T. D.’s feather mattress and waited for the next pain. She began counting each breath. The windowless room was cool and dark. There was a knock at the door.

  Go away, Taya said.

  Wild Emma opened the door and walked in with a pan of warm water and a stack of towels. She set them on the table and sat down next to Taya on the bed.

  No sweat, she said, it’s a very natural thing. She started dabbing a white handkerchief at Taya’s forehead. Taya slapped her hand away.

  Get out.

  Wild Emma rose stiffly from the bed, smoothing her skirt. Little whore, she muttered, and walked out of the room.

  Taya closed her eyes and kept counting. An image of Sewey and the Burgetts learing over her barged into her mind. She stiffened. Another pain. It was the same thing all over again, inside out this time but the same. She began to thrash about on the bed. Suddenly she couldn’t move. Someone was holding her arms. She opened her eyes and saw His Own Ghost. The shaman must have snuck up the back stairs. He smiled at her and released his grip. Taya relaxed.

  His Own Ghost began to strip. He hung bits of fur and animal teeth about the room. He placed soft translucent pouches in the corners and under the table. He draped his bone-and-feather cape over the bed. He plucked twigs and sprouts from his mucky crotch and planted them in cracks in the wooden walls. Soon he began to mumble and hum, sliding about the room without lifting his feet. The lizard heads wobbled rhythmically to and fro. A soft, almost golden light seemed to glow from his pink eyes. He grew paler.

  When Taya closed her eyes again Sewey and the Burgetts were gone. She concentrated on the pains. They were coming faster now. She didn’t care. She began to push.

  102

  Come Together

  Clatter shouts and shit screams pumped like a fountain when Shaboom and the two Burgetts walked into Cargo West. Showers of accusation, terror, recognition; low-breed reason went mad.

  It’s them!

  Suddenly, the flash of weapons, but Larkin was way ahead of everyone as usual. He had signaled the elegant Greek barman who pulled a shotgun from beneath the bar and froze the room. Now…Larkin stood on a chair.

  One step at a time, he said.

  Bastards, Slant screamed. Justice!

  Shut up, Sutter shouted. That’s the least of our problems.

  Gold, Brannan said. Look at it all.

  In the confusion, Galon Burgett had dropped his traveling bag, and gold nuggets had spilled over the floor at his feet.

  Where’d you get the gold? Larkin demanded.

  Millard explained, said there was lots of it, plenty to go around.

  Yeah, Galon wheezed, you guys get your own.

  We can’t let this get out, Sutter began to plead, tears forming in his eyes. It’s too early. I’m not ready.

  Good point, said Brannan.

  Perhaps, said Larkin.

  Fuck the gold, said Buckdown.

  I want their balls, Slant screamed.

  Larki
n raised his hands for silence, but suddenly another surprise: Zorro slid through the door, obviously with a lesson to teach. He reached behind his back and produced Sewey’s little purse. He tossed it, and Slant watched his scrotum turn slowly in the air and land with a heavy plop on the dark mahogany bar.

  —

  Upstairs, His Own Ghost splashed the child in the pan of warm water, and Taya opened her eyes. Voices again, wafting up to her through old T. D.’s peepholes. She heard him and Buckdown, then Larkin and Wild Emma and, finally, Sutter arguing, pleading that the most important consideration for all of them is keeping the lid on. Silence for a moment and then she heard another voice; less familiar, but one she would never forget. Galon Burgett.

  What’s in it for me? he was saying.

  Taya was quickly out of bed and on her hands and knees, staring through the largest peephole. Beneath her, old T. D., Buckdown, and the rest were standing in a half-circle around Shaboom and the Burgetts. Guns and knives lay in a pile between them. Larkin was now sitting on the bar, flanked by the elegant barman and Wild Emma and their shotguns. A deal was going down but Taya didn’t hear. She reached under the bed for her saddle gun and old T. D.’s double-barreled pistol. She checked the loads and poked all three barrels through the floor at Galon. A tight fit and difficult to aim, but she managed. She held her breath and pulled all three triggers at once.

  Blam! Gunfire sprayed down on the barroom. Most dove for cover, some went for weapons. Wild Emma and the Greek both fired. Galon went down, Millard went out the window. Buckdown rolled across the floor with his pistol pumping one, two, three holes into Galon’s already dead body.

  Taya grabbed the bedpost and pulled herself to her feet, headed for the back stairs.

  In the bar, Larkin called things back to order. Galon was definitely dead: natural causes, according to old T. D. Also dead was Pierre Wallingsford, his face splattered with buckshot, probably hit by the elegrant Greek barman. T. D. Jr. was bleeding slightly from the shoulder; Wild Emma’s shot most likely. Slant and Brannan were gulping brandy. Buckdown was reloading and peeking out the window after Millard.

  Sutter crawled out from under the table where he’d taken shelter with that strange Worm Eater. Now, he, said, about keeping the lid on.

  —

  Outside, the first thing Taya noticed was the bay, the blueness of it set off against the thick white fog tumbling in its afternoon roll through the headlands. She smiled. Whitecaps were blowing across the water like feathers. She began to hum, and by the time she reached the dunes she was singing.

  103

  Millard

  Millard went with the flow, so to speak. Actually, he hit the bay at a dead run at the foot of Battery Street, and then dogpaddled with the current until he caught the rising tide which hooked him north and then west, finally flopping him ashore in the dunes around the point.

  He lay face down in the sand, fleas crawling in and out of his ears. Boy, did he have some thinking to do. But time had already begun to slip away from him. First he heard a sound so soft he thought it was coming off the bay on the fog. But no, it was someone humming, singing actually. He lifted his head and opened his eyes straight into the twin barrels of a pistol that had fired on him not an hour before. Tears welled in his eyes and he began to smile, the vacant optimistic smile that he had forgotten was part of him.

  You’d be right to shoot, he said.

  And she did.

  104

  The Code of the West

  When Taya returned from the beach, Larkin had everything settled. A cover-up had been worked out and everyone at Cargo West had signed a secret agreement. They stood around drinking, congratulating themselves. It was assumed that Millard had drowned.

  Taya watched them for a moment through the window, then made her way up the back stairs. She fell facedown on the bed and was asleep at once. His Own Ghost had disappeared. And so had the child.

  TWENTY-SIX

  105

  Accidental Lives

  Strange how lives can turn so completely in one short year, and how most of them keep turning. The accidental life, Slant called it, although it was certainly no accident that the discovery of gold was postponed for close to a year.

  And what a year it was, very busy for most, sad and brutal for some. The Walla Walla Irregulars returned to Sutter’s Fort complaining that the looting had been scattered at best. Sutter tried to pacify them with whisky and a few more horses, but Yellow Serpent was very bitter, and on their return to Oregon the Walla Walla behaved very badly.

  When Joaquin Peach returned to Benicia and found the carnage left by Sewey, his mind went winging off into such a private despair that perhaps only Buckdown might have understood. The roto quit Sutter and isolated himself high in the Sierra. When the gold rush broke he took up the life of a wild bandit, using his mother’s maiden name, Murietta. He became a great hero among the poor and was immortalized after his death in romantic literature.

  Almost everybody else tried to get rich quick. Some did, some didn’t. Larkin, of course, was wealthy already and his fortunes continued to increase. That strange Worm Eater, Shaboom, was allowed to keep the passages booked by Millard on the Eagle. When he reached Hong Kong he sold the remaining tickets to two Chinamen and one China-woman, and reached Yedo with some cash in his pocket. Wild Emma married the elegant Greek barman and together they prospered, controlling at one point more than one hundred operations patterned after Cargo West.

  Vallejo hung on to what he could and lived to author a five-volume history of California that remains obscure and unread to this day. Sutter, in spite of his elaborate plotting, fared worse. He was overrun by hordes of argonauts and lost most of his vast holdings, in spite of numerous petitions to the government. Most legislators and bureaucrats found his babbling about divine right laughable, and he died broken and ignored in Washington, D. C.

  Slant would have loved it had he not been long gone himself by then. While others scrambled for leverage in the tense months before the discovery was announced, Slant patched together a lurid and sensational expose of Mormon sexual habits. He and Buckdown then used it to extort a substantial sum from Brannan before they traveled together to the most remote of the Sandwich Islands. They were never heard from again, although it was rumored that Slant had murdered Buckdown shortly after their arrival and bribed the natives to make it look like a surfing accident.

  Brannan was an easy mark for men like Slant and many of them found him. He made several fortunes but lost them all just as quickly. He died drunk and penniless in Mexico in 1889.

  T. D. Jr. remained in San Francisco for sixty years. He achieved minor fame during the gold rush for his stark portraits of luckless miners but did not keep up with the scientific development of his craft and wound up living quietly on an inheritance from his mother. He died from a heart attack in the early moments of the famous earthquake of 1906. His landlady claimed that he ran into the street screaming that it was about time and dropped dead.

  106

  Taya

  Taya kept moving. Some said she had murdered her own child, but she didn’t care. Just kept moving. Going to the beach a lot. Like a real Californian.

  New from Terry McDonell

  A celebration of the writing and editing life, as well as a look behind the scenes at some of the most infl uential magazines in America (and the writers who made them what they are).

  “McDonell has led the beau ideal of the editor’s life. And he’s got it down on paper. In both cases, he has done it better than anyone anywhere.”

  —Graydon Carter, Editor, Vanity Fair

  Available in hardcover and eBook from Knopf | For more information, AAKnopf.​com

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  Terry McDonell, California Bloodstock