Sarah did not remember the stories that her mother had told her. But she had inherited her mother’s imagination and willingness to spin a tale. Now, sitting alone in the darkness and listening to the voices of the men at the campfire, she imagined stories for herself. She imagined herself crouching in a tree, holding the lariat at her side. The pack was chasing a deer, and the animal ran beneath the tree. She tossed the loop over the deer’s head and, in her imagination, stopped the deer in its tracks.
Sarah thought about the wonderful lariat and listened to the rise and fall of human voices, a strangely comforting sound. When their voices fell quiet and the fire burned low, Sarah made her way closer, ghosting between the grazing animals so quietly that they did not look up as she passed.
She paused at the edge of the camp, listening to the steady breathing of the sleeping men. Her eyes were accustomed to the dark. Unlike the emigrants, she had not spoiled her night vision by staring into the glowing coals of a fire. By the light of the rising moon, she could see clearly.
The men slept around the fire. One of them had his head resting on a saddle. Looped around the horn of the saddle, inches from the man’s head, was the lariat Sarah coveted.
For a time, she stayed at the edge of the camp. The men slept soundly, weary from their day’s travels. At last, she crept closer, her bare feet silent on the soft grass. The camp was dark except for the moonlight and the glowing coals of the fire. She could hear the mules cropping the grass, the soft snores of the sleeping men, the chirping of crickets in the grass. Squatting on her heels by the saddle, she reached out and put her hand on the lariat.
It wouldn’t come loose from the saddle.
Sarah stared at the rawhide cord that held it in place. She had never encountered a knot before, and it puzzled her for a moment. She had seen the man easily take the lariat from his saddle, yet now the rope seemed to be attached to the saddle. Gently, she tugged at the lariat, but the knot held.
Carefully, she pulled at the rawhide cord, trying to work it loose. Her first efforts pulled the knot tighter, but then she began to pick at the knot itself. This puzzle intrigued her. She had never encountered anything quite like this knot. The tendrils of the wild grapevines twined around the oak trees, but that was just a tangle. She knew, from watching the man take the lariat from his saddle, that this twisted cord could be untangled and freed.
Jeffrey woken when he felt something tugging on his pillow. A halfnaked savage crouched by his head—a young girl, wearing nothing but a pair of cut-off trousers and a belt that held a sheath knife.
A dream, he thought. This wild creature could not be real. The moonlight glittered on her curly hair, unlike the hair of any Indian he had seen in his travels across the prairie. Her features were delicate—a thin, aristocratic nose; wide, blue eyes focused on his saddle.
At that moment, the savage smiled—such a sweet and innocent smile. The lariat came free of the saddle and Jeffrey saw it in the savage’s hand. And then she was gone, melting into the darkness like a ghost.
Jeffrey closed his eyes and slept. In the morning, he woke to find his lariat gone. His companions laughed when he told them that it had been stolen by a half-naked white girl, and teased him about being away from his wife for too long. Nothing in the camp had been disturbed, except for Jeffrey’s lariat, and the others claimed he must have lost that somewhere along the trail.
In the following days, Sarah carried the lariat with her wherever she went. She played with it, experimenting with knots like the ones that had held it to the saddle, with sliding loops like the one she had seen the man use to rope the cow.
In the long afternoons, while the pack rested in the heat of the day, she practiced throwing a sliding loop over boulders or bushes or trees. Beka often watched her as she played with the rope.
One afternoon in the pine forest, she succeeded in tossing the loop over the broken stub of a high branch. Pressing her feet against the tree’s broad trunk and pulling herself upward with the rope, she climbed up to the branch she had lassoed. Beka watched from the ground, her eyes wide with disbelief, as Sarah perched in the tree, higher than she had ever climbed before.
Just a few days later she had occasion to use her new skill. It was just before dawn. The pack was coming down the mountain, trotting in single file after Rolon. Through the long night, the pack had been hunting without success. Rolon led them through the pine forest into a valley filled with ancient oaks. The air was cool. The first light of the rising sun illuminated the mist that drifted among the thick branches of the trees.
Rolon stopped, staring into the woodland, his head high as he sniffed the air. In the distance, Sarah could see a mature buck, standing among the oaks. The deer had seen the wolves. His head was up; he was ready to fight or run.
A powerful buck in his prime is not easy prey, even for a pack of wolves. A large buck can outrun wolves easily. If cornered, he can fight back, delivering kicks that can disable or kill an attacking wolf. Earlier that year, Luyu had been kicked in the head by a buck. Though the pack eventually brought the animal down, Luyu had died of the injury. Now, watching the buck, Rolon hesitated.
Sarah was hungry. She eyed the buck, judging its distance from the pack. If the pack gave chase, the deer would escape. But perhaps there was another way.
She leapt onto the lowest limb of a nearby oak. Agile as a monkey, surefooted as a tightrope walker, she ran up the branch to the trunk of the tree, then stepped over to another branch that led toward the buck. From the end of that branch, she leapt to another tree, making her way through the branches toward the deer.
In the meantime, Rolon had begun stalking his prey. His eyes fixed on the deer, he walked toward the animal, moving slowly. His goal was to close the distance without frightening the buck enough to make it run.
The buck’s attention was focused on the wolves. He ignored the rustling in the branches overhead, keeping his eye on the immediate danger of the approaching pack.
Sarah slowly made her way through the branches until she was about ten feet from the buck, on a low limb six feet over the animal’s head. She loosened the noose on the end of the lariat. wrapped the free end of the rope tightly around her hand, and then tossed the rope over the buck’s head.
Luck was with her. The noose cleared the buck’s antlers and fell neatly into place around his neck. As the deer felt the rope touch him, he bolted. Sarah laughed as the noose pulled tight around the buck’s neck, but her laughter was cut short when the taut rope yanked on her arm, pulling her from her perch. She fell to the ground below.
Fortunately, she was on a low branch. Years of experience in climbing and falling had taught her to relax with a fall, catching herself with bent legs, ready to leap in any direction. But the pull of the rope yanked her forward, so that she fell awkwardly, landing half on her feet, but stumbling forward as she hit and falling full length on the grassy ground.
The buck, whirling to face his attacker, saw the girl land and charged. Sarah rolled, barely escaping the trampling hooves. The buck reared to strike again, but Sarah was already moving, scrambling to her feet. Still clinging to the end of her precious lariat, she dodged behind the thick trunk of the oak. As she ran around the tree, she inadvertently snubbed the rope around the trunk, just as a sailor takes a wrap around a cleat to hold a line fast.
From the distance, Sarah’s packmates had watched the rope tighten around the buck’s neck, had seen the girl fall from the tree. How strange it was. Strange enough that the girl climbed a tree, but stranger still that she had fallen from the tree, pulled by something as thin and brown as the rattlesnake that dwelled in the rocks. And now the snake-thing held the buck, keeping it from running, but not preventing it from attacking the girl.
Beka started the attack, running to Sarah’s assistance, her teeth bared in a snarl. The others were right behind her, rushing forward to set upon the buck. Wauna and Yepa leapt at the buck’s head, snapping at his soft muzzle. Rolon, Beka, Marek, and the others cir
cled behind, tearing at the buck’s flanks.
When the buck turned to face these attackers, Wauna and Yepa renewed the attack on the animal’s rump, biting and tearing at the hind legs. The buck lowered his head to threaten Rolon with his antlers, but the male wolf dodged and savagely bit the buck’s muzzle, holding fast when the buck tried to raise his head.
The buck was fighting for air. The rope choked him; the wolf held a death grip on his muzzle. On all side, enemies attacked him. In that moment, Sarah sprang into action, pushing her way through the growling wolves to reach the animal’s head. There, she attacked with her knife, the sharp blade that served her where her teeth could not. With a swipe of the keen blade, she slit the buck’s throat.
The buck’s blood gushed over her legs and feet. The end came quickly then. The buck collapsed to his knees, then fell to his side. Rolon and Wauna ripped at the animal’s belly, gorging themselves on the soft organ meats, while the others tore at the wounds, stripping away the tough hide to reach the muscle underneath.
Sarah stood still for a moment, watching the wolves feed. When it comes to food, wolves have no manners. Each wolf fights for a share of the carcass, snarling and threatening its packmates. Any wolf who succeeds in tearing off a chunk of meat takes it away from the others, retreating to eat in solitude before returning to fight for more food.
The savagery of the pack when feeding was familiar to Sarah. What held her still, what startled and amazed her, was her own role in bringing the buck down. She had killed small game, but never an animal the size of this buck. She stared down at the rope in her hands, the wonderful lariat. Such a powerful weapon. If it could stop the mighty buck, what else could it do?
A pang of hunger interrupted her reverie. She dropped the rope and pulled her knife from her belt. Usually, she hung back while the other animals fed, but not today. This was her kill, and she would take her share of it.
In the midst of the snarling beasts, she pushed between Marek and Dur to grab one of the buck’s forelegs, twisting the limb while pulling on it. With her knife, she stabbed at the buck’s shoulder, severing the connective tissue that held the leg to the body. With a mighty effort, she pulled the leg free.
Dur lunged for the leg, but she snatched it away, already leaping for the branch above her. She grabbed the branch in one hand, clinging to the leg of the buck in the other. Marek leapt after her, snapping at the meat even as she lifted it out of reach, then snapping at her feet. Too late. She swung her feet up to lock her legs around the branch.
Laughing, she perched on the branch, the buck’s leg across her lap. While Marek stared at her from below, his eyes hot with envy, she used her knife to strip away the deer hide, feasting on meat.
Long after Dur had returned to the carcass, fighting with the others for the choicest bits, Marek watched Sarah devour her prize, savoring the meat, gnawing on the bone.
While Sarah perched in an oak tree, gnawing on a bone and laughing at the black wolf that watched her from below, Max was sitting on the porch at Selby’s Hotel writing a letter to Sarah’s aunt. Over the years, Max and Audrey North had corresponded steadily. He had told Audrey of his life and he had learned of hers. She lived in New Bedford, the wife of the captain of a whaling ship.
“I know something of loneliness,” she had written to him early in their correspondence, “as I spend many months each year watching for sails on the horizon, praying that my husband is well, wishing that he were safe at home. More than once, I have wished that I could go with him. However hard the journey, I think I would find it preferable to waiting at home—so dull, so comfortable, so safe.”
Audrey North wrote poetry and published it in magazines like The Ladies Repository and Appleton’s Journal of Literature, Science, and Art. Max had read the work of a few women poets—like Mrs. Felicia Hemans (known in the press as the British nightingale) and Mrs. Lydia Howard Sigourney (know as the sweet singer of Hartford). He did not care for their poetry, finding it cloyingly sentimental. He had written to Audrey North, expressing this opinion, and he had been startled when she wrote to tell him that she agreed. Her favorite poet was a newcomer named Walt Whitman.
At Max’s request, Audrey sent him a poem that had been published in Appleton’s. The poem, titled The Captain’s Wife, described a woman walking on the beach. That morning, when the weather had been fair and clear, her husband’s ship had put out to sea. But as she paced along the shore, a storm was brewing. The wind swept in dark clouds, the waves lashed the shore, and as the storm built, so did the woman’s feelings.
Unlike the women in the poems of Mrs. Hemans and Mrs. Sigourney, the captain’s wife shed no tears. The bell in the village tolled, calling her to church, but she did not go. The rumble of thunder drowned out the bell. Lightning split the western sky. As rain lashed her face, she raged with the stormy sea.
Max found the poem both impressive and unsettling. In a return letter, he praised the poem for its lack of sentimentality and revised his mental image of Audrey. Initially, he had pictured her as a sweet and delicate New England lady. After reading The Captain’s Wife, he imagined her as stout and courageous—a broad, no-nonsense woman built rather like Mrs. Selby.
Recently, a Boston publisher had published a collection of her poems. “I have met with some small success,” she had written. “I find that rather gratifying.”
She had taken the liberty of showing Max’s sketch of the miners and his story about Socks and the lost child to the editor of The Ladies Repository. The editor had published the story, sent him a bank draft for twenty dollars, and clamored for more. Every now and again, he would send another sketch and another story about life in the mines.
When Max’s work was published back in the States, the San Francisco newspapers had taken notice. As a result, the demand for his work had increased and he regularly published sketches and short essays in several newspapers. It was, as Audrey would put it, “rather gratifying.”
Over the years, he and Audrey had corresponded very honestly about all manner of things. At that moment, he was writing to her about the civilizing influence of women.
“Take, for example, Mrs. Selby,” he wrote. “Before a miner goes to Selby’s Hotel, he combs his hair, washes his face, perhaps trims his beard. He cleans up his language as well, banishing blasphemies. Under her benign influence, Selby Flat is a far more civilized place.
“Compare Selby Flat to other towns, like Humbug or Hell’s Half Acre or Rough and Ready. There is no comparison. Consider, if you will, dozens of men camped along a river for months on end, digging in the mud each day, cooking their own grub each evening. There is no laundry, no proper latrine, no facilities for bathing other than the river itself. The men wash their clothes primarily to reduce the insect population before the itching drives them mad. Under these conditions, men—even the best of men—become shaggy and grimy and far more aromatic than the polite society of women would allow.”
Max heard footsteps behind him and looked up from his letter. Mr. Selby had stepped from the barroom. He sat down on the bench beside Max, opened his tobacco pouch, and began to fill his pipe. “Care for a smoke?” he asked.
Max set aside his letter, leaned back against the sun-warmed wall, and settled in to catch up on the news. He’d been up on the North Fork, visiting Downieville and the mining camps along the river for an article that would appear in the Nevada City Gazette. Max accepted the pouch and filled his pipe.
“I hear that you’re about to elect a sheriff,” Max said.
Mr. Selby nodded. “That’s so,” he said. “Election will be next week. I reckon we’ll be electing Jasper Davis. He’s been buying drinks for the past week, and everyone figures him to be a fine fellow.”
Max puffed his pipe thoughtfully. “He’s done well for himself, has he?”
“No question about it. He’s a smart man and he’s a lucky man and he’s done very well.”
“Lucky? How’s that?” Max asked.
“You hear about the big
fire in Grass Valley?”
Max nodded. A fire had swept through the city, leaping from one wood-frame structure to the next, burning stores, saloons, hotels, and homes, leaving the city in ruins.
“Jasper was building a new hotel in Grass Valley when the city burned. Handsome place, made of fieldstone rather than wood. Said he liked stone ’cause it was solid. It was out on the edge of town, a ways from the nearest building.”
“So it survived the fire?”
Mr. Selby nodded. “Didn’t even get singed. After the fire, he was the only hotel still in business. Everybody went to Jasper’s place to do their drinking and gambling and such. He did all right.”
Max nodded again. Some men, he thought, made their own luck. He wondered if Jasper happened to be one of those. But he kept those thoughts to himself.
PART THREE
1859
11 A YOUNG MAN’S GUIDE
“Authorship is not a trade, it is an inspiration; authorship does not keep an office, its habitation is all out under the sky, and everywhere the winds are blowing and the sun is shining and the creatures of God are free.”
—Mark Twain
FROM THE TOP OF A SUN-WARMED granite boulder, Sarah watched the man who sat by the lake. She had been watching him, on and off, for the past two days, leaving only to hunt, and returning to find the man still there. He puzzled and intrigued her.