* * *
Quade Sharpentier stood in the bow of the Charleston. Usually he was contented with the wind in his face, a port behind him where they had completed some successful trading, and a port in front where there was more trading to be done. But not now, for this was not his ship. He was a passenger, an interloper in another man’s charge. They had sailed as far as Drake’s Bay, just north of the entrance to the great San Francisco harbor. They had also stopped at the old town of Yerba Buena, now being called San Francisco by most captains, and the trading had been good. They would make one stop at Punta Ano Nuevo and, if the winds were favorable, Monterey and Port San Luis Obispo. After that, Sharpentier would have another chance to see if the deserter, John Clinton Ryan, had turned up in Santa Barbara.
The rumor, heard by Sharpentier in a cantina in Yerba Buena, was that a new Anglo had arrived in Santa Barbara, a light-haired man who wore the clothes of a seaman. It could only be Clint Ryan, Sharpentier thought, and his jaws clamped. The Turk had been right—the bastard had lived.
Skinner walked up beside him and leaned his heavy hulk against the forward rail. “It seems a long voyage, Captain.”
“It’ll he longer if I have to return to Boston without stretching Ryan’s neck. That and only that will be a fitting end to the sinking of the Savannah. The Charleston’s holds are near full, we’ll be heading back to Boston before the month’s out. If I’m to satisfy the owners, I must have Ryan’s head.”
“And the alcalde?”
“If what I heard in Yerba Buena is right, it may be of no consequence what the alcalde thinks. He may soon be just another greaser. Another of California’s small rebellions has taken place. There is a flag flying over Sonoma, a flag with a five-pointed star and a bear. Don Vallejo has been taken prisoner, and the Anglos and many of the Mexicans claim independence from Mexico. There has been no official word, but they say the dragoons in Texas are marching into Mexico.
“California, from the sea to the Rocky Mountains, may soon be a territory of the United States.” The angry captain of the Savannah ran a hand into his salt-and-pepper beard and scratched his chin. “If only I had a ship, we could play a part in this.” Sharpentier turned his back to the wind and attempted to light a cigar. “But Captain Armstrong is a company man, not a man of destiny.” The wind took the flame from the match.
“If the rebels prevail,” he said, giving up on the cigar, “or if this rumor of war in Texas is true, it will be Anglo law, not Mexican law, that rules… not that it matters. We’ll hang Ryan on sight if we see him, even if my upcoming business with Consul Larkin is not successful.”
“What business is that?”
“Private business, not your concern, but you think on this… we can take Ryan if we wish. The Charleston carries a dozen Hawkens long guns and two dozen of the finest Aston handguns, not to speak of the midship six-pounder and the swivel two-pounder on the stern. Even if they try to protect him, the Mexicans would drop under our firepower.”
“Will Captain Armstrong back you up?” Skinner asked.
“If he doesn’t, I’ll have you bump him over the rail in the night,” Sharpentier said with a facetious grin. Then his look hardened along with his tone. “In fact… ”Sharpentier’s eyes narrowed, “…that’s not a bad thought, mate. We would have ship and crew, and be back in business. And if I stepped in and solved the problem of the Charleston’s lack of a captain, and returned a full cargo to Boston…”
Skinner’s face twisted with a grim smile as he shaded his eyes with his hand and studied the horizon. “Seems a bit of a storm is coming, rough weather ahead, Captain. And I’ve noticed Armstrong has the habit of pacing the windward rail each night.”
Quade Sharpentier, a captain without a ship, laid a hand on his first mate’s broad shoulder, “Let’s go below where I can enjoy this long nine, and I’ll stand you to a mug of grog. The man about to make me a captain again deserves at least that.”
Skinner’s small eyes became slits. “And a piece of the captain’s share of the profits? That’s the least you should do for a mate who’ll testify to Ryan being away from his duty station, as well as assure your prompt and efficient assumption of duty on this leaky tub.”
Sharpentier stopped short, surprised by the thickset man’s request. He scratched his heard. By God, I underestimated him, Sharpentier thought. Maybe there is a brain in that thick skull.
“Ten percent of the captain’s share could be had,” he said quietly, noticing a seaman who had come forward to tend a jib halyard, “by a man who helped return me to captain. And another ten if that man were to find and stretch the neck of Ryan, then testily to his malfeasance.”
“Let’s go below… partner,” Skinner said, and walked on ahead, not following deferentially as he normally would.
Sharpentier hesitated and looked after him for a moment. The bastard’s already taking his partnership a bit too seriously. When I’m captain again, with a cat-a-nine-tails in hand and a full crew to back me up, I’ll bring the big ox back into line. He’ll agree I promised no share, or he too will do the hangman’s jig.
Fifteen
Cha-ahm-sah reined up and turned his mount off the old trading trail. He and his men had been three days picking their way southwest through the marshes and tules of the valley. By nightfall they would be into the coastal mountains, where the great condor lived. Clouds hung low over the coastal mountains, and gusts of wind roiled the dust and raised small whitecaps on the lake the Spanish called Buena Vista.
Cha urged the mustang down to the lake to let him drink. Two regal white egrets left their ankle-deep hunting stance and began the slow, beating run that would take them into the air. Tadpoles fled from the disturbance as their grandfather croaked from a nearby stand of tules. Then his white belly plopped on the water, signaling his retreat into the safety of the quiet lake.
Eyeing a willow stake and woven-tule fish corral a few yards out in the shallow water, Cha thought about setting his men to raiding the supply of fish he knew would have been herded there by the Yokuts tribe across the lake, but he did not.
The edge of hunger made a warrior ferocious.
Nearly one hundred men rode behind Cha. They were the Yokuts warriors of two great Ton Tache villages. Full-chested powerful men, all carried bows, a few carried iron hatchets and iron-tipped lances festooned with silk flags that had been taken from the cholos; and ten carefully selected men, including Cha, carried the iron firesticks taken from the San José Mission patrol almost a year before. Those without iron weapons carried stone axes and knives, and stone-tipped lances.
A few skilled men carried atlatls, throwing sticks with stone-weighted bottoms. Special darts, constructed much like arrows but with thicker shafts, were flung by the atlatls with great velocity and accuracy. All the warriors, even those with the firesticks, carried bows, either short, powerful, juniper bows; long, graceful laurel or baywood bows; and at least a dozen war arrows each. Made in one piece, with a stone bead fixed in place, the war arrows differed from the fletched but unheaded shafts that could he fitted with a variety of heads for hunting. These single-piece heavy-headed arrows were only for killing men. The bows of the great warriors were stored in lion’s-tail bow covers until they neared the coast, then nettle fiber or sinew bowstrings would be strung and the bows readied for action.
The weapons were not the only sign that these men were on a man-killing mission. Each man wore his most powerful medicine. Elk, bear, and lion teeth adorned the necks and biceps of the men. Paint on both men and animals also declared their intent. Black, white, and ocher were the predominant colors, but highlights of blue and splotches of red, mostly feathers, glimmered in the sunlight.
This time the cholos will run in fear of the men of Ton Tache, Cha thought with satisfaction. Dismounting, Cha dropped to his hands, dipped low, and took a deep drink from the lake. Removing his drinking gourd from the back of his hand-carved saddle, he knelt to fill it while the other men lined the lakeside.
/> Far away, well beyond bowshot, four tule elk slipped from the reeds near the lake and trotted, their heads tilted so the horns lay flat on their backs. They crashed through a patch of willows, then up into the dry, sage-colored foothills.
“We could chase them,” Cha thought, ”and probably bring down one or two with the number of men we have, but what good would one or two elk be? One small meal for this war party.” And he wanted to keep them keen and moving – with the edge of hunger.
No, a hundred horses maybe a thousand, that was Cha’s reason for crossing these mountains and facing the guns of the cholos and vaqueros. This time it would he different.
He remounted and reverently rubbed the stock of the musket stored in the doeskin wrapper that passed under his leg. On one side of the carved wooden saddle hung a horn containing the black-fire magic that drove the lead ball from the firestick, and beside it hung a leather bag with ball and patch.
Strong medicine, firestick medicine. A thousand horses. He motioned silently, and the men remounted and strung out behind him as he whipped the mustang into a lope. Far away across the lake he could see the smoke of another Yokuts village, Too-Lahm-Nee, whose fish corral he had decided not to raid. The Too-Lahm-Nee band was over four hundred strong, with almost as many warriors as rode with him, but he would not seek their assistance. He had enough men.
Soon he would be in the land of the Chumash, his enemy. Many times the Chumash had ridden with the Mexicans to round up the Yokuts of the western side of the valley, and now many of Cha’s people were among those forced to live at the missions. Many had died from the Spanish diseases or had been mixed with Mexican or Chumash blood until they could no longer be called Yokuts, the People. Maybe he would free a few Yokuts, if he could find any.
But nothing was as important as the horses.
As they climbed higher into the hills, the weather quieted, but the clouds hung low and dark.
In normal times he would have avoided this trail, for it passed the spot where the ancient ones, the giants who had roamed the before world, had come to die. Bones, hard as rocks and as long as his horse, had been found, and some believed the great giants, who roamed the skies and caused the thunder with their footfalls, still lived in the thick black pools. The men grew quiet as they neared, for no one wished to disturb the spirits.
Cha reined the mustang around the first of many great black pools that seeped from a rock formation at the base of a nearby hill. What the Spanish called brea was useful to line baskets for carrying water, but it fouled the ponds nearby and could trap even a horse. Along the border of the pit, bleached bones lay in the gleaming black and lined its banks. Creatures large and small had been lured in by the hope of easy prey—other trapped animals and birds. Eyeless sockets stared at the riders, some in skulls still feathered and furred but as lifeless as the barren branches of dead brush rising out of the muck.
A mist hung in the air over the wide expanse, almost covering a barren cottonwood on the far side that had given up the spark of life with the onslaught of heavy black goo but still served as a roosting site for three turkey vultures. The odor of death permeated the place, and the dank air made the odor cling to men and animals. Even the dragonflies did not disturb the evil pool’s surface on this damp day. Only one spot was the center of concentric ripples. Cha reined up and watched a still-living coyote stuck up to its belly, making a desperate lunge for freedom when he spotted the men. But it was to no avail, and the clinging ooze sucked him back. The dead quail that had enticed the coyote into the mire was only five feet from him. Even the clever kiyoo, the coyote, brother to the Yokuts, could not outsmart the home of the giants.
They cleared the black pools, to the lamenting howl of the dying coyote, and Cha urged the mustang into an easy lope away from this death place. His hundred warriors stretched out for a quarter of a mile behind him. There were still two days of hard riding before they reached the first of the horses at Mission Santa Ines where they might have to face the leatherchests.