Page 25 of A Good Prospect

Chapter Ten

“It is the height of immodesty, living in such a land of men!” Knut proclaimed. “There are only two or three white women in these parts. It is a travesty to allow this gentle flower to travel with us, living in a hand to mouth fashion, breathing the odiferous fumes of squatters who have last seen a bar of soap in the hands of their mothers.”

Unconcerned, Tamasin said, “I can be headstrong.”

“And she’s certainly breathed in more than a few odiferous fumes from your dirty laundry, Knut.” Ophir grinned from where he was perched on a flat rock.

Knut sputtered indignantly. He whipped off his top hat—he thought it made him look more lawyerly, but it was quite greasy from tortilla lard and bashed in several spots—and gestured dramatically with it. “Laundering is a noble occupation! One white woman I heard tell of up in Coulterville earned nine hundred dollars in nine weeks by laundering.”

“Nothing is strange here in California.” Salvador seemed to commiserate.

Feeling very mellow and perhaps—an unfamiliar sentiment—actually happy, Ophir gazed down from their ridge at the compressed view of the Ahwahnee. The granite rock formations seemed quite close in the thin and refined mountain air, but were actually probably fifty miles off. Ophir didn’t know, since he’d never spoken to anyone who had been there, it being the secretive bárbaro kingdom, spoken about so mystically it might well have been rife with cannibalism. This eastern face of his quartz-capped namesake mountain, Mt. Ophir, fell away at their feet in steep sheer descents, giving a flat look to the valley below, like the floor of a giant tenpin alley.

Knut had already approved the spot they’d staked out for their mill and office building on the Merced River. The Sonorans were there mining, and a dozen other Spaniards were laying the groundwork for the office building and the hacienda. It was a warm, pleasant spot charmingly known as Hell Hollow with sharp, oak-dotted hillocks. Ophir and Sal had whispered that Tamasin appeared to be assessing it with wifely eyes. She had remarked on the richness of the soil that might be good for planting tomatoes and wine grapes. She had no interest in the talk of long toms, mica, limestone, and mercury—she called mining “bashing to pieces boring-looking stones”—but she seemed to bloom like her beloved lupines as she stepped about in the riding habit, gloves, and crop Doña Carmen had rigged her out in. No one had said anything about bringing Tamasin to their Bear Valley mill of the Palomares Commercial and Mining Company. Doña Carmen might create a to-do about it, not wanting to lose her only white female companion. But it was Ophir’s privately held opinion that Tamasin would be a big asset in Bear Valley, if he and Salvador didn’t have a fatal duel over who would “win” her.

Now Tamasin settled very lightly on one haunch in a patch of sweet grass just turning golden in the early summer sun. She had sketched and was now coloring in the landscape that unfolded below them. The oil paints Knut had brought her from San José were too bulky to take on their trip, so she was delicately daubing away with washes of watercolor, now filling in the distant grand cathedrals of the Ahwahnee.

Knut cleared his throat. “I tell you, amigos. Robert Loblaw in San José told me the squatter courts will accept nothing other than an ironclad title. Since we have no proof of the year Las Oliveras was built, why don’t we doctor the title a little?”

Lounging on another flat rock nearby, Salvador snorted. “The new survey will solidify our claim! The Board of Land Commissioners is fair in general. They just have a lack of fluency in Spanish and incompetence in Mexican law. Dozens of trustworthy men of all nationalities—Larkin, Vallejo, de la Guerra—can draw up a sketch of my rancho and testify it is sound.”

“Ach!” Knut spat in disgust, and Ophir’s nostrils trembled at his fiery breath from fifteen feet away. Ophir turned toward Salvador, and they shared amused glances. “Why will you not allow me to doctor a tiny little piece of paper, or at least fashion an adobe brick that appears to be stamped with the year ‘1842’?”

Now Tamasin swiveled her head, her eyes dancing with the reflected light from the distant granite temples. Her shoulders hunched in silent mirth, and with her autumn-colored hair in two long plaits, she was the picture of an alpine beauty.

“We don’t need a doctored title or a fake brick,” Salvador said lazily, leaning against a boulder, hands knitted behind his head. “It’s easy enough to prove who the true owner is.”

“Ach!” Knut spat again, dismissively. “Our new investor Bob Loblaw says they have assigned our claim for title as California Land Case Number One, and they want me to show their government surveyor around! What do you think this surveyor will discover when he sees all these heinous squatters laying about—”

“Squatting about.” Tamasin giggled.

“—bloviating to the skies how only true Americans can own California land?”

Sal tipped his sombrero back from his face so he could shoot his lawyer a look. “Knut, you were the one who was supposed to be keeping track of all the papers.”

Ophir added, “And Don Salvador is a true American. Truer than any of these Yankees.”

“Viva los Americanos,” Salvador said unenthusiastically.

“Oh darnation!” Tamasin cried loudly. She bashed the hand that held the paintbrush onto her knee, sending up a spray of green, watery paint.

Ophir rose. He needed to stretch his legs anyway, maybe go down to the creek and collect more freshly melted snow in his water skin. He meandered over to where Tamasin was slapping her knees in frustration, now crying, “Oh, Lordy!”

He glanced down. The painting looked fine to him. “What happened?”

“Oh, I completely ruined the face of that—that—that mountain that looks like a teapot cut in half. See? This is why I wanted to start painting in oil. You can change oil. You can’t change watercolor.”

Ophir held a hand down to assist her to stand. “Well, this is just a sketch, right? So you remember what it looks like, and can do the oil painting later?”

“Yes,” Tamasin agreed, tilting her head so she looked at the recumbent Salvador. Her mood abruptly returned to her usual cheerful vacancy. “That’s true. Say, if you’re going to be sitting here for a few more minutes, I think I’ll go bathe in the creek.” She fairly skipped to where the mounts were picketed, presumably to get fresh clothing or some soap, and Salvador was concerned enough to stand, too.

“¿Qué?” he demanded with hands on hips. “You heard what Knut just said. A gentle flower breathing smelly fumes of squatters. Who knows what sort of lumbering hijo de burro will stagger up that mountain and decide to…Well, get immodest thoughts in his brain.”

“I agree with Salvador.” Ophir stood abreast of his partner, also with hands on hips. “You have to at least let us stand guard.”

Salvador slapped Ophir’s chest, to show earnest agreement. “Sí, sí. Let us stand guard, with our backs turned of course.”

Coming to them with a bundle of items in her hands, Tamasin gave them her usual blandly cheerful face. Sometimes Ophir wished she would show a wider latitude of emotions than her everyday close-lipped inscrutable smile with upraised arched brows. He had never seen sorrow or even pain in her face, not even when that feral husband had been manhandling her. Quite often, he had wondered what her ethereally flawless face would look like in the throes of passion, but he had always concluded she had never once viewed sex as anything pleasurable, or even desirable. He could see why, with the background of her experiences, with only the dubious teachings of the convent or the husband to show her what was what.