Dead Man’s Hand

by John Joseph Adams

  That and the fact that he was fighting like an absolute demon. He was fighting everybody, my own party as well as the Sydney Ducks. He was punching, kicking, clawing—and sometimes he’d pick someone up and simply hurl him into one of the Jeffrey pines that surrounded the camp.

  The stranger was so outlandishly dressed that I thought the camp was being attacked by Red Indians, and I reached down for my shotgun. And that only attracted his attention, for he leaped down the bank at me, snatched the gun from my hands, and flung it into the American River.

  “No guns!” he shouted. “Everyone throw down your firearms!”

  I watched in surprise as my shotgun disappeared in a great splash. Then rage filled me, and I swung back to the stranger.

  “Damn you!” I said. “That shotgun cost me six dollars!” And I swung one of my hard hands at his head.

  He slipped the strike easily and landed two blows on my ribs. Which only made me the more furious, so I lashed out again.

  I should point out that I’m good with my fists, and though I’m no true prizefighter I’ve been up to scratch any number of times, defending the honor of my ship in ports all over the world. I had every expectation of giving the stranger a good hiding, especially as he was cumbered with that heavy cape and the bits of gear that I could see hanging from the thick belt he wore around his waist.

  But the stranger turned out to be a regular Tom Cribb. I never touched him. He cut me to pieces in just a few seconds, and then I felt like a top-maul had just smashed me in the jaw, and I fell into darkness.

  * * *

  I woke some hours later, bound hand and foot and strapped to one of my own mules, my head hanging down one flank, my feet the other. Pain was driving spikes into my skull and my beard was soaked with half-dried blood. I gave a snort and jerked my head up, and to my amazement I saw four of the Gentlemen of Leisure stumbling alongside the mule, their arms expertly tied behind their backs, their faces covered with bruises. A long rope linked them together by the neck, and they looked nothing so much as a coffle of slaves, shuffling off to market.

  “Oi!” I called to the nearest. “What’s going on?”

  “No talking!” came a stern voice. I looked up again and saw the stranger in his feathered costume striding toward me. I tried to ignore the pain that was stabbing my brain.

  “Who in blazes are you?” asks I. “Spring-heeled bloody Jack?”

  Because in the costume he looked like that celebrated Londoner, at least as pictured in the penny press.

  “I’m the Condor,” says the stranger.

  Now, I had never heard the word condor before. It’s Spanish I suppose, and I don’t speak that lingo beyond a few words. Naturally we’d seen condors flying overhead, lots of them, but we just called them vultures or buzzards.

  There’s a theory that on account of his Spanish name, the Condor is a Mexican. I don’t believe he is, for he speaks American English—a sort of generalized American, without a hint of the regional dialects common in the country. Other people have heard him speak Spanish, but none said he spoke it like a native.

  “What the hell’s a condor?” asks I.

  “Gymnogyps californianus,” says he, with perfect seriousness.

  I should point out that the Condor, as long as I’ve known him, has never demonstrated the slightest inkling of humor.

  “You won’t get any ransom,” says I. “We spent all our money before coming back to the Middle Fork.”

  He glared at me with his blue eyes. “It’s not ransom I’m after,” says he. “What I’m after is Justice.” You could just hear the capital J in his tone.

  “Justice?” I was bewildered. I looked at him more carefully, just in case he was someone out of my past, someone to whom I’d done a bad turn. I couldn’t think who that would be, but then I’m not always sober, and I might have injured someone and forgot.

  “You shot a man,” says the Condor sternly. “And your gang tried to steal that other party’s claim.”

  “Other party’s claim?” I demanded. “They jumped our claim!”

  “I’ve been patrolling the Middle Fork for weeks,” says the Condor. “And I’ve never seen you there.”

  He patrols? I thought.

  “We left two men behind when we went for supplies in the autumn,” says I. A dark inspiration struck. “Those Australians probably murdered them.”

  “You’ll have a chance to defend yourself,” says the Condor, “at your trial.”

  “Trial?” cries I. “There are trials now?” There was barely any law in San Francisco, let alone in the Sierra Nevada.

  “There will be, in time,” says the Condor.

  “And what are you going to do with me in the meantime?” says I. “Keep me tied up till someone gets around to appointing a judge and constables?”

  “I’m taking you to the jail.”

  The only jails I knew of were in the various military posts, and I supposed that was what he meant. But in fact there was a brand-new civilian jail, in the brand-new town of Sacramento City, which had been established near Sutter’s Fort under the sponsorship of John Sutter, Junior. Sutter the Younger was tired of the loiterers, drunkards, and thieves hanging around his father’s compound, stealing and drinking, breaking fences and stealing his father’s cattle, and he was determined to bring law and order to the area. But he had no actual authority to do so, and so his arrangements were entirely improvised.

  It took two and a half days to get to Sacramento City, during which time I and the Gentlemen of Leisure stayed bound and secured. The Condor lived up to his name and kept a careful watch on us, just as a buzzard keeps an eye out for carrion. After I’d recovered sufficiently from the clouting the Condor had given me, I was made to walk, tied into the slave-coffle with my mates.

  When we shuffled into Sacramento City, I didn’t like the look of the loiterers hanging around the jail, the usual tobacco-chewing, jug-swigging riff-raff you see in all western American towns—“border trash,” as I have heard them called. If they were my jury, I thought, they would see me hanged just for the pleasure of seeing me twitch.

  The jail was a plain log building sitting on what was probably meant to be a grand city square some day, but which was now nothing more than a muddy pit. The fellows in charge seemed to have met the Condor before. We were bundled into cells, four or five of us to a room, our weapons and gear were locked in a storeroom, and our animals were turned into a paddock. I told them the arrest was illegal and refused to give my name, so I was put down as “the Commodore,” which was what my mates called me.

  We were given a dinner of beans with a little bacon, and then locked in. The jailkeepers kept no watch in the nighttime, but went home. I reckon that Sutter Junior wasn’t paying them much.

  Other fellows in the jail enlightened us about the Condor. He’d first appeared just after the New Year, when he’d begun breaking up fights and apprehending rustlers. No one knew his true identity or where he was from. One man swore that he could fly with that cape apparatus of his. I told him I wasn’t drunk enough to believe that, and then set about escaping.

  It wasn’t hard. I don’t think anyone in Sacramento City had ever built a jail before, and they’d put it right on the ground, as if it were a backwoods cabin. We were able to break up our beds to make digging tools, and use our slop buckets as well. (As I say, sailors know how to do things.) Before midnight, we were all free. Some of the others in the jail dug out alongside us, but I wouldn’t let them join our group. If they lacked the enterprise to dig themselves out of the jail after all the time they’d spent in it, we didn’t want them in our party.

  We broke into the storeroom and found our weapons and supplies. Then we freed our mules from the paddock, along with some other animals, and took them all. We broke into Brannan’s mercantile store for more weapons, powder, and food, and then we legged it into the Sierras.

  It was only a few minutes before we ran into friends—the five missing members of the Gentlemen of Leisure, who
had been beaten by the Condor in the fight, but had run off before they could be captured. They had followed our party cautiously down to Sacramento City, and had been hoping to rescue us. I’m glad we escaped on our own, because though I appreciated my comrades’ pluck, they weren’t the brightest sparks among us, and if we’d waited for them, it might have been the next century before they’d managed to organize themselves for the job.

  We laid down false trails and crossed and re-crossed the American River several times, but I always knew where we were headed—back to the Middle Fork, where I planned to meet up with our old friends the Sydney Ducks. We found our old camp before any trouble caught up with us, and we properly sneaked up on the Australians—when we came out of ambush with our guns trained on them, they knew better than to do anything but surrender.

  We took their gold and their supplies, smashed the placer, and gave them all a thorough hiding for good measure. I told them that if we saw their ugly faces in the Sierras ever again, we’d kill them.

  Oddly enough, they took me at my word and cleared out. The Sydney Ducks later became a criminal gang in San Francisco, at least until the Committee of Vigilance hanged most of them.

  Better them than me, I’ve always thought.

  Now that we were no longer accidental criminals but proper road agents, I reckoned we might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. We moved up the Middle Fork and robbed and plundered more or less at random. I’d like to be able to claim that we robbed only bad people, but in fact we preyed on whoever seemed prosperous and careless about keeping a proper watch.

  One of the groups we robbed was, I swear to God, a band of Freemasons from Nova Scotia, Traveling Lodge Number Something-or-Other. They’d not just carried mining equipment into the Sierras, but all their masonic regalia as well, aprons and chains and such. They must have had cozy little lodge meetings beneath the Ponderosas, chanting all their nonsense and building Solomon’s Temple out of the stars in the sky.

  One of these anointed turned out to be no less than a Past Grand Commander of the Knights Templar, which entitled him to a military-style uniform, complete with sword, bullion epaulets, and a cocked hat with an ostrich plume. One of the lads put the cocked hat on my head, saying “Here you are, Commodore Sir,” and we all had a laugh. But the hat fit, and so did the uniform coat, and the sword was impressive in its way, so when we left the scene, I was dressed up as the Commodore in truth. If the world was going to assign me a role, I thought, I’d play it.

  That was the moment when the madness really began to take hold.

  * * *

  I may always have had it in mind that I’d meet the Condor again. I knew he’d be after us, so I always tried to camp in a place that was defensible, and we were careful to build our fire in a hollow where it couldn’t be seen. We couldn’t do much about the smoke, I suppose, but then the trees were thick and screened us pretty well. We kept lookouts.

  Of course it didn’t help. Of course he found us in an unguarded moment. We had just forded the river and decided to take a breather and a bit of dinner on the bank. I’d just fetched a cup of coffee from the fire and was walking along the pebbly alluvial strand, thinking that if we were ever to take up mining again, this would be a good place to set up the sluice box. Then came that Ky-yeeee cry from the trees, and I looked up in great surprise to see the Condor soaring toward me on kite-like wings.

  The idiot in the Sacramento City jail had been right after all. The Condor could fly, or at any rate glide, and he’d launched himself from one of the Douglas firs that stood like great masts around us and aimed himself right at me.

  I was so startled by the sight that my boot slipped out from under me, and I sprawled on the strand—which was what saved me, because he was aiming to kick me in the chest with both feet, which would have collapsed me like a piece of torn canvas. He whirred right over my head, and I felt the breeze from his cape on my face. I jumped to my feet and drew my sword.

  I had a pistol hanging from my belt. Yet I drew the sword. That’s because the lunacy had me by then.

  The other members of my gang were more practical. They produced their weapons and opened fire, but they were standing all around us and they fired away in a panic. Bullets hummed all around my head, and I shouted at everyone to stop shooting—which they did, as soon as they emptied their Colts.

  The Condor had recovered from his swoop and turned to face me. The scent of gunpowder swirled over the scene. The wild firing seemed to have done him no harm.

  “So, Commodore,” says he, with what seemed grudging respect, “you want to face me in single combat?”

  He thought I was challenging him, calling for the shooting to stop and standing there with the sword in my hand. That wasn’t my intention at all—what I really wanted was to not get shot. But if he was willing to credit me with a noble motive, I was willing to take that credit.

  “I’ve always considered myself a fair gent,” says I.

  “But you have a sword, and I do not,” says he. “Is that a fair combat?”

  “It was hardly fair to swoop on me from ambush,” says I. “So I’ll hang onto my advantage for the present, I reckon.”

  And then he charged, swirling his cape at me to dazzle my senses. I managed to make a cut with the sword anyway, and to my surprise I struck sparks—this is when I discovered that the long gauntlets that covered his forearms were sewn with steel splints to parry weapons. He lodged a couple punches to my floating ribs, and then I slapped at him with my free hand—my hard, horny hand, which knocked him back.

  And then it was back and forth across the strand, my sword striking sparks, his fists flashing out. One of his kicks caught me in the thigh, and then I knew to watch out for his feet as well as his hands.

  I thrust with the sword, and he parried it very low, to drive my guard down, so I reckoned a high attack was about to follow. I ducked, and he leaped clean over me with a flying kick. His cloak flapped in my face, and I grabbed a fistful of the fabric and lunged forward, taking the cloak with me. The Condor was yanked right off his feet, landing hard on his back, and I stepped on the cloak to keep him from rising again. I looked down at him as, half-strangled, he struggled to release the cape—after which I knelt, grabbed a rock off the strand, and bashed the Condor right between his blue eyes.

  Those were our humble beginnings, right there. The first fights between the Condor and the Commodore were these little scrimmages by the Middle Fork, nothing like the titanic battles we fought later.

  But on that afternoon I had no idea of what was to follow, so I gazed down at the unconscious Condor while the Gentlemen of Leisure ran up to congratulate me. Some of them were all for shooting the Condor then and there, but I stopped them.

  I did not have it in me, then or now, to shoot a helpless man. And while I was happy to play the robber, and fight in self-defense if I had to, I felt that deliberate murder was a line I was not prepared to cross. Killing the Condor, I thought, would have bad consequences somewhere down the trail, consequences possibly involving a mob, a rope, and a tall tree.

  So we settled for stripping him naked, beating him silly, and tying him to a tree. Once we had his hood off, I looked carefully at the face to see if I recognized it, but I didn’t. It meant nothing to me. And even if I had known him, he was so covered with bruises and gore that I might not have recognized him anyway.

  We examined his equipment. Not only did he have his gliding rig, but he carried other gear on his belt that made him a regular Vidocq—spikes for climbing trees, a small spyglass, a magnifying lens, measuring tape, a small supply of plaster of Paris, a notebook and pencil, and a phrenological chart. He used all this scientific apparatus in the pursuit of criminals, not that I knew what to make of it at the time.

  One of my lads tried to fly with the cape apparatus and promptly broke an arm. We laughed, and I ordered the gear destroyed.

  That night, the Condor managed to escape his bonds and flee into the darkness. I was more relieved than any
thing. Without clothing and his equipment, I knew it would be some time before he’d be on our trail again.

  Once the Condor was gone, I began to try to think of a way out of our dilemma. And dilemma it was, for all that most of my crew hadn’t realized it.

  Our pillaging had been successful. We had more gold than we would have got by working a full year, but in this remote area there was nowhere to spend it. The thought of returning to civilization with our gains was tempting, but I’d be recognized if I ever returned to Sacramento City, and thrown back in their ridiculous jail.

  There was no choice but to keep doing what we were doing. But I decided against continuing along the Middle Fork, where the miners knew to look out for us, and instead led the lads over the Sierras on a trek to the South Fork. It was only ten miles as the condor flies, but it took us five days, creeping along under Lookout Mountain and Big Hill Ridge and a lot of mountains and ridges that hadn’t been named yet, at least by white men. We encountered nothing but a few Indian camps, and as we saw no women in these, there was no reason to be friendly, so we left them alone.

  The South Fork runs through somewhat more open country, and once we arrived we could make better time heading downstream. The miners had no warning of us, and we plundered the more prosperous-looking of them. Eventually, we reached Sutter’s Mill, where the Gold Rush had begun, and where John Sutter, Senior, hired folks to mine for him. They were robbing him blind, of course, so we robbed them and headed downriver for the junction of the American and Sacramento rivers.

  There we avoided Sutter’s Fort and Sacramento City, and headed downriver partway to the Delta, where we flagged a steamboat.

  It wasn’t hard. When the Gold Rush started, there’d been only a single steamboat on the Sacramento, the Sitka, but now there were over a score, as well as dozens of sailing craft. The steamboats had all been built in New York and Boston and had floundered their way clean around the tip of South America, their decks stacked with all the fuel they could carry.