Page 11 of Working the Lode

CHAPTER SEVEN

Joaquin Valenzuela

Aquí está. Here it is.

The religious people had found color. Color was what Joaquin Valenzuela wanted.

Although he was an accomplished miner himself from Hermosillo in the great Mexican state of Sonora, his compañeros weren’t. Mostly a pack of idiots and imbeciles, men despoiled and burning for revenge on Americans. The imbeciles tended to receive passports to the other world at the hands of Judge Lynch, but there were always legions of others smoldering to pay off the wrongs done to them. In fact, Valenzuela was now such a feared desperado there were more applicants for his gang than he could accept—being constantly on the move, the main band could only number twenty or so, to remain undetected, stealing horses and rustling cattle, although Valenzuela had hundreds of men spread out across the state.

Valenzuela’s majordomo, known by Americans as Three-Fingered Jack due to losing two fingers in the recent Mexican war, was a responsible level-headed enough fellow, although arguably more cutthroat than Valenzuela himself. At least Jack made sure his victim was an American before slashing his throat, a detail that sometimes escaped the rest of the band, who had accidentally robbed Californios and Spaniards in their zeal.

Lying on his stomach between two boulders, Valenzuela peered through his glass at the blindingly white, chile-haired American. This one seemed to be the leader, and Valenzuela had been following him for several days. Having been about Sutter’s Mill, trading stolen beefsteaks for liquor, Valenzuela under one of his many aliases had moved about at will, behaving with back-slapping jocosity with the mill workers. Clad in his fanciest calzoneras that buttoned up the side of the leg, his jacket trimmed with gold braid and a red sash around his waist, no one thought to question his heritage or his steaks. This was how he’d heard from Peter Wimmer and his brash, loud wife Gennie that some fellows had found color at the mill, and were now pretending to go on daily hunting trips with the real goal of discovering more. Several other parties of the religious amigos had also sallied forth on their own “hunting” trips since Gennie Wimmer had gossiped to the four winds about the initial strike made at the actual mill. She claimed that a Henry Bigler had given her some gold to make into a ring for herself. Someone had even sent gold speck samples down to San Francisco, so it was necessary to act fast.

“There is also that estúpido one with the spectacles,” Three-Fingered Jack breathed from his perch atop Valenzuela’s back. Valenzuela tried to shrug him off bodily as the majordomo continued, “I wonder what his role is? He seems to be a surveyor of some sort, with that rod in his hand.”

“He is silly, but he can’t be very estúpido if he’s the surveyor,” Valenzuela opined. “Maybe he just acts like a headless donkey to trick us off the track.”

“Yes, but he keeps spilling the rocker, and tripping over the shovels.”

“Maybe that means they know we’re watching. Now, that fire-headed one, the pelirrojo one, he seems very strong and capable. I think he is the one to contend with. He is the one who constructed that scale out of wood, and built that rocker. They made twenty dollars yesterday by nightfall.” Indeed, the norteamericanos, although merely digging in rock crevices with jackknives by the river’s edge and picking gold out speck by speck, had made amazing progress.

“Why don’t we just pretend to join up with them, then kill them when we make our first big strike? Besides the fact that it sounds like too much work,” Jack added.

“Yes; too much work,” Valenzuela agreed. The white hombre worked assiduously in the river, sloshing shovel after shovel of gravelly sand into the rocker while another dark-haired hombre shook it, and the woman Valenzuela had heard called Zelnora washed the sludge through the rocker with bucketfuls of fresh clear river water. The white fellow shoveled three times the rate the silly surveyor did. They were up to their waists in the melted snow of the river, but when it was sunny, it beat relentlessly on them, reflected off the water, and soon the strong white man was more the pink of a pinto bean, though he wore the wide-brimmed felt hat of the brave and tough mountain man. Valenzuela almost pitied him, investing so much physical labor when he could easily be doing what they did—taking whatever they wanted from whoever happened by, as long as he was an American. “It’s unusual they make a woman work for them. I wonder if she’s a slave of some kind. It also means they don’t have enough men.” Henry Bigler, who had originally found the first gold, worked downriver apiece with a wooden batea, but that was the extent of this crew.

“Yes, and if we joined up, who would get us meat?” Three-Fingered Jack finally slid off Valenzuela’s back and sighed. “Speaking of meat, jefe. We need some more to trade for aguardiente.”

Sighing when the surveyor completely missed the rocker with his shovelful of gravel and dumped it into the dark-haired man’s lap, Valenzuela put down his glass and rolled to face Jack. “All right. Send Garcia and most of the others out to that farm on the south fork of the Feather. You and I stay with these Americans, just leave Gonzalez here to cook for us.” They dared not rustle cattle in these parts, for that would give away their sign to Marshall and his men, so every night they had to travel far afield, the field becoming farther the more of the long-horned cattle they stole. Still, most of it seemed to be Sutter’s lands, so it was convenient to loathe Sutter, though the Swede had always treated them kindly as long as they appeared to be of noble Spanish ancestry.

Jack trotted off on his mission, and Valenzuela observed the Americans again. The brunette woman shouted at the surveyor now, pointing a stiff and angry arm. She couldn’t be a slave and behave in that manner. But the way she yelled at the bespectacled man made Valenzuela believe she was his wife. She wore the skirts and rebozo of a Californio woman, but he marked her as an American. She was quite bountiful and had pleasing features, and Valenzuela’s regal penis engorged at the thought of what he could do with her if he didn’t kill her, only captured her for himself. He just had to get rid of the dazzlingly white man first.