"Ain't you carryin' this ride too far, little brother?" he asked, with a curious half-amused smile.
Zebulon recognized the Colt that he had carried when he had been shot in the saloon and thrown into the arroyo.
"I didn't steal it," Hatchet Jack said. "And I didn't take it off a dead man. Not my style. The Colt was on the table. Since You weren't around, I figured it might as well be mine."
"Go ahead and shoot him." Large Marge was looking over at them. "And her, too. He'd do the same. Or if you lose your nerve, shoot me. Or yourself. Anything that shuts down all this stupid goddamn palaver and poochin' around with each other."
Disgusted with a situation that was more than she could or wished to understand, she pulled a blanket over her head.
Hatchet Jack handed the Colt to Delilah, who shifted it from one hand to the other. Then she handed the Colt to Zebulon, who handed it back to Delilah.
Hatchet Jack stood up, pulling on his pants. "Tomorrow we'll ride after Plaxico. He's waiting on the Yuba. He drew me a map.
He removed a slab of cowhide from his shirt pocket. CALFORNIE was scratched above a line of arrows pointing to the northwest, ending in a three-masted sailing ship. Another scratch of letters was marked ORAGON.
Delilah pressed the Colt between her breasts with both hands.
"Is that all we need? A map? Is that why we're here? To ride on, and then ride on some more, and then some more again after someone who rides after us, or maybe ahead of us, because we don't know how to ride after ourselves? If that's true, then let's ride up to Oregon and find whoever it is we're looking for. Maybe Plaxico, whoever he is, will tell us what we're doing, even if he doesn't know, or if he does, but can't say why. You choose. I don't care."
She fired a bullet into a tree trunk and stalked off into the night.
When she returned they were sleeping, or at least pretending to be. Choosing a spot away from Hatchet Jack and Zebulon, she curled up alone with her arms crossed over her breasts.
Above them, dark clouds swept beneath a full moon, like blotches of spilled ink. Somewhere a wolf howled. Then two more, until the whole pack joined into one mournful chorus.
They slept through the night, together and apart, too exhausted to dream, or hear the howling of the wolves.
ATCHET JACK LED THE WAY OVER GRASSY HILLS DOTTED with goldenrod and manzanita berries. To the east, a rainbow, thin and pointed as the end of a cue stick, hovered over a waterfall. Above, eagles soared. At the sound of their horses' hooves, antelope and deer scattered ahead, then stopped to stare back with huge startled eyes.
After crossing the headwaters of the Sacramento River and Cottonwood Creek, they negotiated a series of hills covered with tangled alder and thick groves of maple. Further on, as they emerged from a stand of spruce, they saw a thin column of smoke curling against the horizon.
They climbed towards a rocky outcrop. The thin air left them speechless, their minds empty, as if they had entered a stillness that had always been there, a magical land free of stagnation and death, where nothing had ever happened nor was yet to come.
Their dreamy preoccupations were interrupted by the clink, clink of pick axes and shovels. Beneath them, through strips of foamy mist, a mining camp of shacks and tents had been set up along the bank of the river — a roaring cascade that plunged down the middle of a steep gorge.
The only shack with four walls stood apart from the others on a small rise. A sign across the door read:
SUPPLIES AND GEAR — AFFORDABLE PRICES.
Delilah pointed to Cox, the Englishman from The Rhinelander, as he walked up the rise towards the shack, followed by three Miwoks carrying heavy sacks of grain on their heads and shoulders. After Cox directed the Miwoks inside, he sat down on a bench near the door, lighting up a hand-rolled cheroot.
Beneath him, a line of exhausted men worked tailrace ditches and flutter wheels. Further downriver, half-naked Chinese, Mexicans, and Indians stood waist-deep in freezing water, shifting gravel back and forth in wooden rockers.
Suddenly a Miwok let out a low cry. Kneeling down, he pressed an ear to the ground. Immediately the other Miwoks working upriver threw down their rocker pans and ran into a dense stand of silver fir, just ahead of the Warden as he galloped into the camp.
A slanted cockade hat was pulled over the Warden's forehead. His frail body, bent with dysentery and choleric rage, was covered with a torn red cloak. Behind him, the Sheriff led a ragged platoon of guards and three horse-drawn supply wagons. Further back, struggling to keep up, Stebbins and the photographer pulled two mules loaded with camera equipment and several racks of Spanish wine.
"We're looking for the outlaw, Zebulon Shook," the Warden shouted. "We know he rode this way. If any man has information about his whereabouts, now is the time to speak up."
No one spoke. Most of those present had never heard of Zebulon Shook — not that they would have betrayed him if they had, or any other outlaw, given their own problematic histories.
"One last chance," the Warden shouted again.
When no one came forward, he nodded to the Sheriff, who pulled out his pistol and shot a Chilean miner through the foot.
Except for Cox, who had run into his shack at the first sign of the Warden, everyone else shouted what they knew, or thought they knew about Zebulon, even if most of their information was invented: "He went to ground, General. Who knows where — "; "New Mexico or Coloradv — '; "Oklahoma — "; "El Paso is what I heard — "; "People seen him on the Brazos — '; "He took down a bank in Sliver City, shot up half the town — '; "Killed a man in Placerville — "; "Set up camp on the Frazier River with a bunch of renegades — "; "Halfway to Vancouver — "; "That mulatto whore leading him by his nose ring — "; "On the way to Oregon, with some Minnesotans — "
"Apprehend that man!" the Warden shouted, pointing towards a Chinaman crouching behind a sluice gate, his face half-hidden beneath a split-bamboo hat.
As two soldiers ran towards him, Lu wrenched a board from the gate and waded into the river. Holding onto the board, he let himself be swept over the boiling rapids, his long black queue trailing behind him like a snake as he disappeared down the river.
Everyone ran in different directions except for a dozen Chinamen holding rocker pans in front of their faces. Two were shot out of hand, then three more running into the trees. The rest stood in the water, hands raised in surrender.
The Warden rode furiously back and forth as his men spread out through the camp, bursting into shacks and tents and shooting anyone that resisted, and even a few that didn't. When a large stash of gold was discovered beneath one of Cox's floorboards, he was clubbed, his gold confiscated, and his shack burned to the ground.
The violence stopped as suddenly as it had begun, leaving in its wake the roar of the river, which was almost loud enough to drown out the cries and moans of the wounded.
As if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred, wagons were unpacked and a table and chairs were set up for lunch by the river for the Warden, who was joined by the Sheriff, the photographer, and Stebbins.
While they drank wine and smoked cigars, waiting to be served a warm meal, the photographer set up his tripod.
"Hold it right there, gentlemen," the photographer shouted. "Perfect…. Warden, if you would be so kind as to move to your left three inches. That's right, your left…. Perfect…. Now, if you could all look straight ahead, towards the river…. No one move…. Beautiful."
"We ought to shoot 'em all and get it over with," Hatchet Jack said as the camera flash went off.
"I can drop a few with the Sharps," Zebulon said.
"No point in stirring a hornet's nest," Large Marge advised. "Otherwise, I guarantee, vengeance will hound us forever, or at least until we get to Oregon."