Dead Man’s Hand (53 page)

I got to the gold fields ahead of the rush. I wasn’t a forty-niner, I was a forty-
eighter
. And by Jove, I found those nuggets just lying there, and more than a few of them.

But it wasn’t long before you had to do more than stroll along the riverbank to find
gold. You panned up and down the stream, hoping to find enough ore to justify building
a rocker box or a sluice box. You could stand or squat in freezing water for hours,
and often enough you found nothing at all. Tens of thousands of people were flooding
into the territory—not just Americans, but Mexicans, Chinese, Mormons, Australians,
and even a gang of Kanakas from Hawaii. Turn your back for an instant and your claim
was gone, and maybe your gold with it.

It was impossible to carry on alone, so I recruited a gang of fellow gold-seekers—we
called ourselves the “Gentlemen of Leisure,” though we were anything but. I tried
to get as many sailors as I could, because sailors know how to
do
things—build structures, haul ropes, stow supplies, handle the canvas we used for
our tents. About half were English, like me, and the rest came everywhere from Tipperary
to Timbucktoo. Soon they were calling me “Commodore”—as a joke, like.

There was absolutely no law. No constables, no judges, no sheriff, and no military
because all the soldiers had deserted and run to the gold fields. If you had a dispute,
you settled it yourself.

Settling one of those disputes was what brought me up against the Condor.

The winter of ’49 had settled in, and most of our party decided to take the
Sitka
steamboat down the Sacramento for a little vacation in San Francisco. We’d staked
ourselves a decent claim on the Middle Fork that was bringing in a steady amount of
income, nothing spectacular but regular. Some of the more ambitious of us argued for
striking off to other parts in hopes of finding better paydirt, but we decided to
postpone that decision till the spring.

There were a couple lads who offered to stay on the claim over the winter, which should
have made me suspicious. But I was eager to spend the gold I felt burning in my pockets,
and if I felt any doubts, I brushed them aside.

When I had first landed in San Francisco, it was a little mission station called Yerba
Buena, but the place had the new name now, and it was a fine time we had there. The
growing town was a perpetual buzz of activity, because it was in the act of transforming
itself from a tiny settlement of a few hundred people to the city it is now. We paid
nothing for lodging, because we moved into one of the scores of abandoned ships in
the harbor. That allowed the Gentlemen of Leisure to spend our money on the things
a sailor enjoys: drink and ladies. Though it has to be said that both were expensive.

Still, I managed to save enough of our funds to buy supplies for the return trip and
the mules to carry them. So it was that we rollicked into our camp on the Middle Fork
one fine April day, only to find a bunch of Australians working our claim. Working
with our flume, which we’d built, and our sluice box, which we’d left in place back
in December.

If I’d had an idea that any of this was going on, my approach would have been more
cautious, but instead I just strolled right into the camp leading one of our mules
and blinked in surprise at all the activity going on around me. And before I could
think, I opened my mouth and shouted out.

“What in blazes is going on here?”

One of the Australians waded out of the shallows and confronted me. He was a well
set-up cove, over six feet tall, with tattoos sprawling all over his powerful arms.
He wore a Bowie knife in a scabbard at his waist. He loomed over me like a big redwood,
and I didn’t like the look of him at all.

“We’re workin’ our diggins, mate,” he says. “You have any objections?”

I recognized those flattened Australian vowels and was reminded that most of the inhabitants
of that country were convicts—and that the British didn’t transport prisoners thousands
of miles for
little
offenses. This might be a criminal gang, for all I knew.

Still, I brazened it out.

“This is our claim,” says I, “so you lads will just have to hook it.”

“You wasn’t here when we arrived,” says the digger. “All we found was an abandoned
cabin and some moldy old tents. So this claim is ours now, I reckon.”

It wasn’t till later that I figured out what happened. The two chaps we’d left at
our claim were among those who had argued for striking off to find better diggings,
and that was just what they’d done: they’d taken our remaining supplies and equipment
and gone upriver, and either they’d planned to be back in time to meet us or they
hadn’t. I wouldn’t know, as I never saw either of them again.

“I con it thisaway,” says I. “You lot just move on now. Keep the gold you’ve taken—you’ve
worked for it. But this claim is ours. You can ask anyone up the Middle Fork or down.”

I was bolder now, because the Gentlemen of Leisure had come up behind me, all nine
of them, and I knew I wasn’t alone. By now we were an experienced, well-equipped party,
and each of us had a Colt Dragoon pistol, and as well we carried some old Hall carbines
and brand-new Sharps rifles for hunting. I had a double-barreled shotgun strapped
to the pack saddle of my mule, and a big knife at my side.

If the Australian saw any of this, he decided to disregard it. I could see color rising
into his face like a red tide.

“You abandoned your claim, and now it belongs to the Sydney Ducks!” he says, gesturing
at his mob. “You clear out, or you’ll get thumped!”

Instead, it was me that thumped
him.
Remember that I was a sailor, and had been at sea since I was a boy. I’d been hauling
rope and rigging all that time, and the sort of labor I’d found in the gold fields
wasn’t the sort to soften me. My hands were covered in callus as thick as my little
finger, and as hard as horn.

So what I did was slap the Duck across the side of the head with one of my hard, hard
hands, and he was knocked silly. He sprawled unconscious to the ground, after which
I turned back to the mule to unstrap the shotgun.

My own lads were quick to brandish their pistols and rifles, but the Sydney Ducks
weren’t so slow, either, and came roaring at us with shovels and picks and knives
and pistols of their own. Bullets whirred through the air. I yanked the shotgun from
the lines holding it in place, drew the hammers back, and fired the first barrel at
one of the Australians that was coming at me with a shovel. I’d been hoping to kill
a grouse for dinner, so the gun was loaded only with birdshot, but it struck him in
the face, and he reeled back howling.

That was when I heard the cry of the Condor for the first time, a high-pitched
Ky-yeee
that echoed from the granite walls of the Sierra Nevada, and then there was a great
thumping crash between my shoulder blades, and I went down face-first in the gravel.
While I lay stunned, trying to decide whether or not I’d been shot, I heard a wild
volley of pistol fire, and a series of meaty thwacks followed by the sounds of bodies
falling. My head awhirl, I staggered to my feet, and I turned around to see the most
preposterous sight I’d ever seen in my life.

This was a man dressed in a feathered costume, with a large red hood pulled up over
his head and down over his face, with only his piercing blue eyes peering out. Add
to that a hooked beak made of boiled leather that hung over his mouth and a kind of
contraption mounted on his shoulders beneath a streaming cloak.

That and the fact that he was fighting like an absolute demon. He was fighting
everybody
, my own party as well as the Sydney Ducks. He was punching, kicking, clawing—and
sometimes he’d pick someone up and simply hurl him into one of the Jeffrey pines that
surrounded the camp.

The stranger was so outlandishly dressed that I thought the camp was being attacked
by Red Indians, and I reached down for my shotgun. And that only attracted his attention,
for he leaped down the bank at me, snatched the gun from my hands, and flung it into
the American River.

“No guns!” he shouted. “Everyone throw down your firearms!”

I watched in surprise as my shotgun disappeared in a great splash. Then rage filled
me, and I swung back to the stranger.

“Damn you!” I said. “That shotgun cost me six dollars!” And I swung one of my hard
hands at his head.

He slipped the strike easily and landed two blows on my ribs. Which only made me the
more furious, so I lashed out again.

I should point out that I’m good with my fists, and though I’m no true prizefighter
I’ve been up to scratch any number of times, defending the honor of my ship in ports
all over the world. I had every expectation of giving the stranger a good hiding,
especially as he was cumbered with that heavy cape and the bits of gear that I could
see hanging from the thick belt he wore around his waist.

But the stranger turned out to be a regular Tom Cribb. I never touched him. He cut
me to pieces in just a few seconds, and then I felt like a top-maul had just smashed
me in the jaw, and I fell into darkness.

* * *

I woke some hours later, bound hand and foot and strapped to one of my own mules,
my head hanging down one flank, my feet the other. Pain was driving spikes into my
skull and my beard was soaked with half-dried blood. I gave a snort and jerked my
head up, and to my amazement I saw four of the Gentlemen of Leisure stumbling alongside
the mule, their arms expertly tied behind their backs, their faces covered with bruises.
A long rope linked them together by the neck, and they looked nothing so much as a
coffle of slaves, shuffling off to market.

“Oi!” I called to the nearest. “What’s going on?”

“No talking!” came a stern voice. I looked up again and saw the stranger in his feathered
costume striding toward me. I tried to ignore the pain that was stabbing my brain.

“Who in blazes are
you
?” asks I. “Spring-heeled bloody Jack?”

Because in the costume he looked like that celebrated Londoner, at least as pictured
in the penny press.

“I’m the Condor,” says the stranger.

Now, I had never heard the word
condor
before. It’s Spanish I suppose, and I don’t speak that lingo beyond a few words.
Naturally we’d seen condors flying overhead, lots of them, but we just called them
vultures or buzzards.

There’s a theory that on account of his Spanish name, the Condor is a Mexican. I don’t
believe he is, for he speaks American English—a sort of generalized American, without
a hint of the regional dialects common in the country. Other people have heard him
speak Spanish, but none said he spoke it like a native.

“What the hell’s a condor?” asks I.

“
Gymnogyps californianus
,” says he, with perfect seriousness.

I should point out that the Condor, as long as I’ve known him, has never demonstrated
the slightest inkling of humor.

“You won’t get any ransom,” says I. “We spent all our money before coming back to
the Middle Fork.”

He glared at me with his blue eyes. “It’s not ransom I’m after,” says he. “What I’m
after is Justice.” You could just hear the capital J in his tone.

“Justice?” I was bewildered. I looked at him more carefully, just in case he was someone
out of my past, someone to whom I’d done a bad turn. I couldn’t think who that would
be, but then I’m not always sober, and I might have injured someone and forgot.

“You shot a man,” says the Condor sternly. “And your gang tried to steal that other
party’s claim.”

“
Other party’s claim
?” I demanded. “They jumped
our
claim!”

“I’ve been patrolling the Middle Fork for weeks,” says the Condor. “And I’ve never
seen you there.”

He
patrols
? I thought.

“We left two men behind when we went for supplies in the autumn,” says I. A dark inspiration
struck. “Those Australians probably murdered them.”

“You’ll have a chance to defend yourself,” says the Condor, “at your trial.”

“
Trial
?” cries I. “There are
trials
now?” There was barely any law in San Francisco, let alone in the Sierra Nevada.

“There will be, in time,” says the Condor.

“And what are you going to do with me in the meantime?” says I. “Keep me tied up till
someone gets around to appointing a judge and constables?”

“I’m taking you to the jail.”

The only jails I knew of were in the various military posts, and I supposed that was
what he meant. But in fact there
was
a brand-new civilian jail, in the brand-new town of Sacramento City, which had been
established near Sutter’s Fort under the sponsorship of John Sutter, Junior. Sutter
the Younger was tired of the loiterers, drunkards, and thieves hanging around his
father’s compound, stealing and drinking, breaking fences and stealing his father’s
cattle, and he was determined to bring law and order to the area. But he had no actual
authority to do so, and so his arrangements were entirely improvised.

It took two and a half days to get to Sacramento City, during which time I and the
Gentlemen of Leisure stayed bound and secured. The Condor lived up to his name and
kept a careful watch on us, just as a buzzard keeps an eye out for carrion. After
I’d recovered sufficiently from the clouting the Condor had given me, I was made to
walk, tied into the slave-coffle with my mates.

When we shuffled into Sacramento City, I didn’t like the look of the loiterers hanging
around the jail, the usual tobacco-chewing, jug-swigging riff-raff you see in all
western American towns—“border trash,” as I have heard them called. If
they
were my jury, I thought, they would see me hanged just for the pleasure of seeing
me twitch.

The jail was a plain log building sitting on what was probably meant to be a grand
city square some day, but which was now nothing more than a muddy pit. The fellows
in charge seemed to have met the Condor before. We were bundled into cells, four or
five of us to a room, our weapons and gear were locked in a storeroom, and our animals
were turned into a paddock. I told them the arrest was illegal and refused to give
my name, so I was put down as “the Commodore,” which was what my mates called me.