It had been a month since he’d last seen a woman or a town or a hot meal that would fill his belly to satisfaction. His supplies were meager and a sudden drop in temperature told that it was time he head down the mountain. But even if he did pack up now, it would be only a mile of granite crags and clawing chaparral before those black clouds were dumping the first snow of the season onto his holey hat. Sensing a change in the air, Daisy had returned from her grazing on sorry brambles and stood hobbled in the clearing that was their camp. “We’ll hunker down,” Deavers told the old hinny. He had ceased panning the creek to build a fire, but yesterday’s rain had wet the pine needles he favored for kindling and his attempts to light them were sputtering out in ghostly wisps. Fed up with the task, he went to look on his cache. The nuggets were buried at the base of a knotty pine, wrapped in burlap like a laborer’s lunch. Setting aside the marker rock and scratching at the dirt, he brought up the bundle and unwrapped it. Five gold nuggets, the smallest about the size of buckshot and the largest bigger than a lima bean, winked in the cool light and whispered promises. Unlike most men who were offed or scared off by the mining companies in the death rattles of ‘49, he, John Walter Deavers of Red Bluff, Arkansas, had stayed, pushed deeper, gone higher still. He ran the big one over his lips, soft and warm like a beating heart.
Thump.
Daisy hawed. The prospector's eyes strained in the stillness, and the dense brush he so liked for its camouflage now concealed the threat. He folded up the nuggets and reburied them, taking care to place the rock.
Thump.
He scrambled for his shotgun, which was leaning against his tent. A patch of manzanita rustled, and he took aim at the sound, breath crystallizing in the sharp air. Then, from behind the rugged blind, the head of a palomino surfaced to eye him. Its bridle was fine and stamped with silver. The shadow of a hand moved to steady the horse, and Deavers saw the shape of whoever had been watching him. He aimed at the shape. “Whoa, whoa!” it yelled, hands flying up over the thicket. “Amigo! Friend! Don’t shoot!”
“No amigo! State yer business!” Deavers' own voice sounded strange. There is no business to be had up here, he thought, least nothing above board.
“Ranchero!” the stranger called out. “Looking for three head that wandered off. Have you seen them?” Evidently not, or he wouldn’t be so darn rawboned. “Please,” the stranger said. “Let me come out so that we can see each other.”
Deavers’ trigger finger twitched, and the stranger waited.
“Alright,” Deavers said finally, and his target sidled out from behind the brush, arms high like a sun worshiper. He was a tall man with peppered black hair and a clear complexion that a woman would find handsome. He wore a vaquero’s soft leather chaps with tassels and a jacket to match. His face was clean-shaven, likely that morning. Deavers thought of his own ruddy cheeks and sooty beard and knew he must look like a wildman. “Why were you watchin’ me?” he asked the stranger.
“I was deciding whether to ask you about my missing cattle,” he said. “Now I see it was the wrong decision.”
“This far up?” Deavers asked.
“That is why they are missing,” he said, flashing a pristine smile. “Now, if you don’t mind, and if you are not going to shoot me at this juncture, I would request that you allow me to lower my arms.”
“I ain’t no scoundrel. I got principles. This is an interrogation.”
“Perhaps we could continue this interrogation sitting down, by a good fire.”
Deavers consulted with the sky. The hour was late, the clouds were fit to burst, and he was already shivering. As for the vaquero, it didn’t seem like he’d come prepared for a night in the snow. “Keep those up,” Deavers said and took from the man’s belt a buck knife and a revolver with mother-of-pearl inlay. He cocked the pretty gun and held it on its former master before setting down his own shotgun. Then he patted him down from embroidered collar to alligator leather boots that gleamed like a dark swamp back home. “Alright,” he said. “You got kindling?”
“I do,” the vaquero said, shaking out his arms. “Allow me to call my horse.”
Deavers nodded, and he whistled, summoning the fine palomino who had hovered obediently. All his buried gold, probably, for a horse like that. Out of an adorned saddle bag, the vaquero retrieved a roll of dry oak kindling. Deavers directed him to the pit and tossed him a match. He watched his captive hunch against the cold as he deftly built them a fire, the kindling catching easily, his Latin visage cast in the warm glow of salvation. Like many men Deavers had encountered in California, this one had a gleam of wealth that radiated from within, regardless of the trappings. But there was no bloodless fortune to be made in these parts, inherited or otherwise.
The vaquero hoisted a pine log onto the fire and rocked back to warm his hands. He sniffed the thawing air. “Amigo, what is that smell?”
There had been a smell these last few days, but the cold had deadened it some. “That’s the Skunk Man,” said Deavers, who was now warming up nicely. “Comes ‘round here and leaves his musk all over the trees. I seen him last week, over thataway.” He pointed toward a grove of giant sequoias.
“Skunk Man?” The vaquero shivered and looked at the fire. “Is this a man or a monster?”
“Bit of both, I’d say. He’s hairy, got no clothes, gotta be about eight feet tall.”
“Eight feet?” the stranger exclaimed. “And you are not afraid of him?”
Deavers shook his head. “Not anymore. The first time I seen him I shot at him, and now I think we have an understanding.”
The vaquero nodded. “The Miwok have stories about such a creature. The prospectors, too. Some tell tales about a savage gigante that tears men apart. But it's only to scare men away from their claim.”
Deavers crossed an arm over his chest, his other hand stiffening around the revolver. “Well, I ain’t lyin’. I seen it. And what makes you think I’m prospectin’ anyway?”
The vaquero shrugged. “Not many find their way up here, that is true. But your hands betray you.” Deavers looked down at his hands, carved and reshaped by the steady chafing of hard snowmelt and clawing through granite sediment. He reminded himself not to look toward the marker tree. “But don’t worry, the gold means nothing to me,” the vaquero said, as if hearing his thoughts. “And since you are going to kill me, you should know my name. Diego Riviera Martinez. My family has lived here for three generations, back when these lands held nothing but acorn-grinders and fresh air. Now the whole world lives here. Your kind have made it very unpleasant for we who were here before. Your greed is a disease, and you will destroy everything to possess nothing. No offense.”
Deavers was too hungry to take offense. “Got any vittles, Diego?”
“Of course, mi amigo.”
He let Diego retrieve a bundle from his saddle bag, unrolling it to reveal a trove of sausages and hard cheese. “Well, that is nice,” Deavers remarked before taking a hearty bite out of a fat sausage. “I don’t have much to offer,” he spoke around the mouthful. “But I do have whiskey.”
Snow began to fall, and the next hour passed in a fuzziness and artificial warmth that only drink can provide. Deavers told his stories of 49’er squabbles, and Diego laughed deeply at his account of frog-jumping contests down in Angels Camp, where a well-muscled bullfrog was as coveted as a pedigreed thoroughbred.
“Tell me, Mr. Deavers,” Diego spoke, his eyes swimming in whiskey. “What will you do when you are rich?”
Deavers looked at the fire. “I ‘spose I’d like to have a farmstead, a ranch, like you have. Maybe a family and some grandchildren. Somethin’ that’ll outlive me, ya know?”
“That is honorable, mi amigo.” Diego leaned back, his eyelids heavy. A snowflake drifted down like a spirit to perch on his dark lashes. “I think we could finish this interrogation in the morning, no?”
They laid out their bedrolls at the upwind edge of the fire, as close as they could get without burning up. Deavers resolved to hold the revolver at Diego’s back through the night. “I’m a light sleeper,” he warned before they both fell quiet. His companion's breaths soon grew heavy and long, but Deavers never slept well on the mountain. At some point during the night, he awoke, chilled to the bone, and he shifted close enough to share their warmth. He listened to the vaquero’s steady breathing and wished the man would die in his sleep.
***
Deavers’ eyes opened to an empty bedroll. It was morning. He jumped to his feet.
Diego was at the edge of the snow-dusted camp, collecting his horse. “Good morning, mi amigo,” he greeted Deavers as if they were, in fact, old friends.
“What are you doin’?” Deavers asked him.
Diego looked disappointed. “Mi amigo, I want to go home.”
“No amigo!” Deavers shouted, brandishing the revolver, and Diego's arms flew up in the same dance they'd done yesterday. “I hear these mining companies are out here hirin’ men — real slick men — to hunt down folks like me who are just tryin’ to make an honest livin’. You one of those?”
The vaquero stood very still. “I have heard that, too,” he said. “I am not one of them. I am not a killer. I am just a man.”
“Yeah, well so am I,” Deavers said, gun shaking in his hand, “I can’t have you blabberin’ about this claim. I know what you saw.”
Diego shook his head. “You are going to die out here, mi amigo.”
"No, you are," Deavers said. "I am sorry 'bout that."
One bullet pierced the vaquero’s right side, and the other went through his left eye.
Daisy and the palomino looked on as Deavers dragged a crimson trail into the sequoia grove. He tried to bury this one deeper than the last, but the ground had become hard. Scavengers would get at it soon enough, but he threw some ash from the fire over the body to hide the smell. When it was done, he lingered beneath the frowning trees. He removed his hat and said a few words.
“Here lies Diego somethin’ or other Martinez. Seemed like a good man. Probably wasn’t. He kept me warm on a cold night. May he rest in peace. Amen.”
Last night's snow was already melting. It was on days like these that the Earth gave up her primordial bounty in rivulets of tears, and he followed one of the streams, shimmering with fool's gold, down a gentle slope to where he kept his cache. He found the marker rock neatly in its place and sighed. But when he went to dig, his frozen hands found only dirt. Deavers threw down his hat, and his bones creaked as he got to his feet.
Then the prospector trudged back through his own muddy tracks to go dig up his treasure.