Page 9 of A Good Prospect

Savage nodded vehemently. “Everyone knows Don Salvador Palomares owns eleven leagues of these foothills, from the Mariposa Creek to the Merced River. Your father has let me trade on this land since 1846. But I tell you to be careful, Don Salvador. Estos hombres son peligrosos. In particular these Australian convicts. Why, Calaveras Bill!”

Ophir was accustomed to being recognized so readily, thanks to the dusky shade of his skin. He nodded. “Savage.”

“Back from San Francisco so soon?” Savage asked. He turned to Salvador with vigor. “This fellow was the finest boxer in Boston—I’ve heard his name from other Boston natives, too.”

“A boxer?” Salvador spat, apparently still fumigating about the state of the Bear Valley settlement, and Australians in general.

“I trained as a pugilist,” Ophir admitted. “Savage here got the idea I was going to San Francisco for a public boxing exhibition, but I kept trying to tell him I’m staying put and mining gold.”

“I was going to place a lot of money on Bill here!” beamed Savage.

Now Salvador banged a fist on the counter, and Ophir saw that he was sharing some whiskeys with Savage. “I’m going to have to hire more bandits, more Sonorans to drive these Yankees away!”

Savage said confidentially, “I heard Joaquin Murieta is in Hornitos.” Murieta was a well-known Sonoran bandit famed for slashing the throat of any white man who wandered by. “Then again, the worst of them Australians is in Hornitos too. Fellow name of Tyke McCarthy, comes to my store. Always blathering how he’d just as soon shoot or gouge Spaniards as pass them on the street. Started up a group he likes to call The League. I’d stay away from Hornitos if I was you, Don Salvador. Without anything resembling the law, Sydney men feel free to follow any bad impulse.”

Ophir pointed out, “But Hornitos is where we were told we’d find these expert Sonoran miners.”

Savage shrugged. “If McCarthy has his way, the expert Sonorans have probably gone back to Sonora by now.”

Salvador tossed his head back along with another gulp of whiskey. His glare was so fiery, Ophir knew that Savage had not scared him away from Hornitos. “Spaniards have a saying,” he told Savage, nostrils flaring. “Children speak in Italian, ladies in French, God in Spanish. And the Devil speaks in English.”

Savage shook his head with regret. “Vaya con Dios, Don Salvador.” Go with God.