Page 38 of Working the Lode

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Bowmaker

Gripping the injured woman to his chest—a tourniquet of buckskin stopped the bleeding after he’d dug the bullet out with his scalping knife—Bowmaker flew into Sonoran Camp on Zelnora’s horse and carried her to the best bed in town. This “corral” consisted of a dozen enclosures with cloth ceilings next to a billiard room. He sent a few lounging merry Andrews and a toreador he was acquainted with to sound the alarm for Valenzuela. There was no point in calling the town “doctor” to care for Zel while he scouted for Joaquin in the pulquerias and bar-rooms. “Doctor” Leblanc was actually a tightrope walker from France whose usual work was as auctioneer hawking pickles.

The bandit’s ball had lodged in Zelnora’s deltoid, luckily avoiding the bone and jugular. The only thing to do now was keep her still, and disinfect the wound with the best whiskey he could find.

The assayer Eddie Tremaine closed his shop upon hearing they had been robbed and came to sit with Bowmaker. He admired the scalp Bowmaker had lifted from the desperado who had shot Zelnora. Bowmaker had tied it to the cinch ring of Zelnora’s saddle out front where he’d picketed her horse, to warn and also to draw Valenzuela to him. On the street, “Doctor” Leblanc bawled, “And I’m only bid one dollar for a dozen mixed pickles that cost five dollars in the States?”

“Doo!” shouted a Dutchman.

“Have I any advance on two dollars and a half?”

“Dos y medio!”

“Trois!”

Tremaine asked Bowmaker, “Did you recognize any of those pistoleros who assaulted you?”

Bowmaker shook his head dolefully. Zelnora breathed easy, and the volume of whiskey he had poured on her wound and down her gullet assured her relative comfort. Her fever did not appear to be high enough for alarm. “Not a sign. I can’t imagine Valenzuela taking kindly to others overrunning his territory. He might give those pistoleros free passage out of this world on the California ‘Lynch and Company Fast Line.’”

“Right! You are on good terms with Valenzuela and his men—“

“Valenzuela only,” Bowmaker corrected. “Three-Fingered Jack, Feliz and the rest, why, they’re no account anyways you lay your sight. And even then, I’m not so sure about Valenzuela. Tremaine, who’s to say it wasn’t Valenzuela himself who sent those pistoleros to rob us? Look at it. He gets us to mine his river, then sits back when we come here loaded down with heaps of gold.”

But like many in Sonoran Camp, Tremaine was hesitant to admit that their bandit hero Valenzuela had a black heart. “Don’t be absurd, Bowmaker. At the very most, you’ve been acting as Valenzuela’s agent. How does it behoove him to rob his own agents? And you’ve been doctoring poor Antonia. Why would he deprive his daughter’s doctor of fair pay for his work? What would he do if you had been killed this morning—go to that ass Leblanc? What would he do, give Antonia some Chinese sugar or bad brandy for her consumption?”

Tremaine made a good point. Bowmaker didn’t want to think that a man he had recently frigged, kissed—whose semen he had tasted—would cross him like that. Sure, if Joaquin had committed even half of the murderous acts attributed to him, he had been a pretty vile hoss. But his dealings with Bowmaker and Zelnora, as of late, had seemed on the level. Why would he expose to them his lurid leanings, his desire to lick another’s man’s prick, his hankering to gobble Bowmaker’s balls while Zelnora watched? If Bowmaker revealed those cravings to his band of pistoleros, well, Valenzuela might as well say hard doings to his topknot right now. They would never allow such a deviant to lead them.

“Dog-gone if he wouldn’t,” Bowmaker mumbled in assent. “LeBlanc would bathe her in salt butter and set her out for the flies. Then act surprised when she went under.” He thought. “Some desperadoes have to go under for this day’s work.”

“Speaking of doctoring, old chap,” said Tremaine. “Can you take a look at this odd lump on my side…?”

An hour later, Valenzuela rushed into Bowmaker’s room, swirling his serape about the tiny enclosure as he paced in agitation up and down Zelnora’s bedside. His enormous silver spurs the size of saucers jangled as he cursed at full chisel in Spanish. The basic gist of his rant involved “pendejos” and many remarks about donkey’s anuses, and he took off his gloves and slapped them against the flimsy wall as though challenging a foe to a duel. Bowmaker had to hand him several cups of whiskey before he calmed down enough to talk.

Joaquin tossed firewater down his throat and swallowed hard, his eyes flashing. “I think I know the men responsible, Bowmaker. I must apologize profusely that I was not aware of their intentions beforehand! Let us go into the next room so as not to wake your slumbering sweetheart.”

Leaving Tremaine there in case Zelnora awoke, they strode to the next tiny cell. A fellow’s possible bag and pickaxe lay there, so they continued to the next cell.

“I swear to you, Bowmaker, I had no warning of this plan!” Valenzuela protested as they entered the enclosure, this one containing an actual fellow lying askew on the cot. “Of course I would have stopped these pistoleros from waylaying you if I had known!” He distractedly waved his pistol in the fellow’s face, and the fellow went like sixty out of the hotel, considerately leaving behind a half bottle of whiskey.

Joaquin sucked prodigiously from it, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, in his distress forgetting his impeccable Castilian manners. “This is unheard of, idiots racing about without my knowledge!”

Bowmaker accepted the grimy bottle. He didn’t address Valenzuela’s protestations of innocence. “Eddie Tremaine is getting the word out to all assayers if they see a gold lump like that, to let us know straight off. We told no one about the strike.”

Valenzuela pointed at the ground. “No one? What about that simple hombre who likes to feel the heads of people?”

He referred to Quartus’ phrenology hobby, and this irked Bowmaker. He had become very fond of Quartus. Quartus always eagerly pitched in with whatever was asked, and it was no fault of his own he couldn’t ride a horse too well. “Old hoss! Don’t you lay a hand on that child. He’s half froze for brains but we didn’t tell him about the giant nugget. No, if anyone went crawling like a rattler along the bottom to raise the alarm about the nugget, it was one of the men you sent to work with us. How do we know we can trust them?”

“Did they see the nugget?”

“Not to my knowledge, but who knows where they câched themselves, laying handsome on their stomachs behind a boulder?”

Valenzuela furrowed his silken brows and took a step toward Bowmaker. “How dare you accuse me of sending duplicitous men!”

Bowmaker took an additional step toward Valenzuela. “Well, it sure appears there are certain folks roaming about that you have no control over. You don’t have the tiniest sign who these desperadoes are who nearly raised our topknots, leaving us lying there like wolf’s meat.”

“I will find them.” And Joaquin turned on his boot heel and stalked out.