Bendigo Shafter (1979) (5 page)

Our mother's family was a family of builders, Cain told me. They built ships, steamboats, bridges, and houses. Part of her family came down from Canada and were French once upon a time. Ma could speak French, he added, and was an educated woman.

Little enough I knew of my mother and I treasured the times when Cain spoke of her; nor did I know aught of my family before Pa, although Cain being older had heard more.

There was not much food among us. We ate sparingly and looked upon the months to come with unspoken fear. As long as the heavy snow lasted there was no fresh meat, and we had eaten deep into our supplies, saved against the cold months. Our stock had grown poorly due to lack of forage, and as we looked upon them we worried. During this time only Ethan seemed to find game, and that was little enough.

Usually I was the first to rise. After my eyes opened I would lie within the comfortable warmth of my blankets, staring at the gray ashes in the fireplace and wondering if any spark remained that I could coax into flame.

Suddenly, I would move, throwing back the blankets. I would rush across the room, shivering in the bitter cold, stir the coals, pile on a few slivers of pitch pine and bits of shredded bark to any hint of an ember, then blow the coals to a tiny blaze. Once the flames began to crackle I would heap on wood and duck back under the covers until the room had lost its chill.

We banked our fires against the morning, but pine burns with a quick, hot blaze, leaving little behind. When we tried a back-log it would as often as not slowly gather all the fire into itself, then smolder and go out. There were a number of ways of nursing a fire through the night, and sometimes they worked.

The first one up in the morning would crack the ice in the water bucket, or if it was frozen to the bottom, which happened often enough, place it close enough to the fire so it would melt.

Once there were three days of such bitter cold that nobody ventured out but to water and feed the stock, rustle fuel for the fires, or do the few odd chores that had to be done each day.

We had dug a halfway sort of shelter for the stock from the side of a slope near the town and banked high the snow around it. We had almost no feed for them, but we had cut a hole in the creek ice so they could water. During the worst of the cold it had to be reopened every time they went for a drink, which was twice each day.

We had managed to cut a little hay in the meadow but used it sparingly, fearful of the months to come.

On the fourth day of the bitter cold worry began to draw lines upon the faces of the men. The women-folks made light of it to save their men trial, but food was scarce, and the bitter cold killed any chance of hunting, for the wild game would be holed in, waiting out the weather.

Come daylight on the sixth day I could stand it no longer, so taking my rifle I left the cabin while it was still dark. Ethan was up, huddling over his small fire, nursing a cup of coffee to warm his hands.

He glanced at me, then at the rifle. You gone crazy? There'll be no game out in this cold! It must be forty, maybe fifty below zero!

I was thinking of those snares along the river. We might find a rabbit or something.

All right. He got up and put on his coat. I don't believe it, but I'll go along. There's danger in a man being out alone in this weather.

He took his rifle down and checked the loads while I looked around. Ethan had less to do with than any of us, but he was a man who knew how to contrive. He had a double bunk against one wall and a fireplace with a chimney that drew well. He had rigged the chimney so the smoke rose through a clump of brush that spread it out and thinned it so that it faded from sight almost at once. It was a trick I'd not seen before, but I tucked it away in my thoughts for future use. Ethan was full of things like that, most of them so natural to him he'd never think of telling anyone about them.

We stopped on the crest of the ridge to catch our breath and to look over the country, yet as far as eye could reach the white expanse of snow was unbroken.

We watched each other's faces as we moved along, looking for the white spots of frostbite. When we saw one appear we would warn of it, and he who had the spot could warm it away with his hands.

No wind blew ... nothing moved. There was no sound but the crunch of snow under our homemade snowshoes. It was easy traveling because all the rocks and rough places were covered by snow.

Our walk was for nothing. The snares were empty. As we started back I said, I've been reading a book.

I read when I can find aught to read.

This is about Comanches, writ by a man who was prisoner among them.

Lies, most likely.

It isn't. It's gospel. He was a man who rode with Jack Hays, Ben McCullogh, and them.

Learn you anything?

Uh-huh. He tells how they'd stop at evening, maybe an hour shy of sundown, build them a fire and cook up, letting their horses graze the while. Then they would douse their fire and ride on several miles before camping for the night.

That's common sense. You don't need a book to tell you that. I've been doing that since I was a boy.

I never heard of it before.

We plodded on. They were in a fierce fight at a place called Walker Creek. Killed Indians there.

Ethan looked around me. You don't say. Who wrote that book, anyway?

A man named Lee, Nelson Lee.

Ethan stopped short. Nelson Lee wrote a book? I didn't know he could write his name.

You knew him? You knew Nelson Lee?

Well, I should smile. I was at Walker Creek. I was in that fight. I lost a friend there, name of Mott

He mentions him.

He should've. Mott was a friend to him also. When we had closed the cold out and were stirring the fire in the dugout he said, I'd admire to see that book of Nels Lee's. I surely would.

I'll have to ask. It belongs to Mrs. Macken.

Ah? Out of that box of hers, I'll bet. Macken told me it was full of books, but I scarcely believed it.

Of a night sometimes I'd sit with Cain, making nails against the summer's work. It was a thing we could do inside, and it took our minds from the hunger in us and the fear. Cain was a man who never stopped doing. His hands were forever busy, and so were his thoughts.

The end of a nail rod was heated and hammered to a point, then the rod was laid across the sharp edge of a wedge and a dent made around the rod at nail-length from the end. Then we'd put the rod into a nail-header, which was a wooden block with a hole through the center big enough for the nail-rod. We'd push the nail-rod through the hole as far as the dent, then snap it off. Afterward the end was hammered into a head, put into water to shrink the metal, then dropped from the header.

In a day's steady work a man could make several hundred to a thousand nails, if he had the rods. For most of our building we preferred careful fitting and wooden pins, which lasted longer and did not rust and rot the wood around them. In all our building, we built to last. It was Cain's way, and it was mine.

We made lists of the timbers we would need for framing and the planks for siding and roofing. Three times, during that cold spell, I went cruising timber to pick the proper trees for cutting.

At table of an evening, after the supper dishes were cleared, Cain, John Sampson, and I planned the mill and the smithy.

We selected logs not only for size but for ease of hauling, and while coming and going from the woods I tramped down the snow over the route we must follow so the hard-packed snow would freeze and make easier the task of skidding logs.

There was no Indian sign, and once I scouted as far as the hollow where the Indians had camped, but the place was deserted.

When it begins to thaw, Cain suggested, keep an eye out for any bit of iron. I can use anything you can find. There might be odds and ends cast over by movers.

Ethan was with us that night. You might find something southwest of here. There was mining done there a few years ago.

Mining? Webb was alert. What kind of mining?

Gold, Ethan said, and by all accounts they found it.

What happened?

Indians.

Ruth Macken came to visit a time or two, but on those occasions Cain talked little, watching the fire and smoking. He was normally a silent man, speaking rarely and to the point.

On the ninth day the cold spell broke, and on the tenth day Ethan Sackett killed a deer.

Nobody talked of leaving now, for everybody was talking of gold.

Of gold and Ruth Macken's floor.

Even Cain went along to see it, sizing it up, testing it with his weight, for he was an almighty heavy man, square, thick, and powerful. He studied the joining of the planks and the way the corners were fitted, and when he straightened up he looked over at me and said, I never saw it done better.

I was a proud man.

Stuart, Croft, and Webb were after Ethan to tell all he knew about the gold. It was little enough. It began with miners returning from the California gold fields. They had camped nearby, and one of them had seen something in the makeup of the country that reminded him of a place he had seen near Hangtown. He ran a few pans just for luck and found color.

They settled and began mining and stayed until the Indians drove them out.

The need for meat was serious so Ethan, Webb, and I were out most days or some part of the day. Ethan killed an elk while Webb and I each accounted for an antelope. We came across the tracks of a bear ... a mighty big bear.

Evidently that bear hadn't fattened up enough before hibernation, so he had awakened and gone on the prowl for food.

It was on that trip that I first saw Webb shoot. He brought down a running antelope with as neat a neck shot as I ever saw, and that antelope was just picking up speed. It gave me pleasure to see it, for I admired good shooting, and such shooting might be the saving of us all.

Ethan was the best rifle shot among us, although he claimed that I was. Webb and my brother Cain were as good, or almost as good.

John Sampson had hunted along the creek bottoms back home, and as a boy had done some Indian fighting. As to Stuart and Croft, I did not know. Both had hunted, and we presumed they could account for themselves.

That's five who can be counted on to hit what they shoot at, Cain said, when I'd told him about Webb.

Six, Sampson said. There's Ruth Macken. We just looked at him, and he nodded. Mrs. Macken is an excellent rifle shot. As good as any of us. She's been shooting since she was a child.

She's a remarkable woman, Cain said. We lived in the same town, although I knew her only by sight. Her husband had been a major in the army, and she knows Indians and can talk their sign language as well as some of the Indian tongues. There were Sioux all around us in those days, but she had lived on several frontier posts.

When it could be managed I slipped away and climbed to the loft. The loft was the warmest place in the house, for the heat from the fireplace rose and kept the loft warm longer than anywhere else in the cabin.

About half the ceiling of our cabin was formed by planks resting on the roof beams to form this loft, and it was a pleasant place. Getting into bed, I lit my candle and soon was lost in the account of Nelson Lee's pursuit of Rublo, the outlaw.

For security as well as for warmth the candle had been placed in a tin can into which hundreds of holes had been punched. The light was not very good but it was the best to be had away from the fireplace.

After my eyes tired I lay awake planning to make a window for the Widow Macken from some bottles I'd found where the miners had worked. There were at least two dozen bottles and by cutting out a window hole not so tall as the bottles, then setting them into a groove in the log at the bottom and a deeper groove to take the necks at the top ... or vice versa ... she would have a window that could let in light, although she wouldn't be able to see out of it ... or not very well.

Short of noon the following day when I was at Ruth Macken's explaining my window, Ethan appeared.

Bendigo, I've got to see you.

When I walked off a little way with him he said, There's horse tracks on the ridge. Shod horses.

We went down to Cain's house, and the men gathered. If they were honest men, Ethan suggested, they'd have come down to talk and have some coffee.

How many were there?

Three, I'd say. They sat up there quite awhile, sizing us up. Ethan Sackett paused. There are renegades around, raiding wagon trains and laying it on the Indians. It could be some of them.

What do you advise? Sampson asked.

Get set for a fight. Cain, if this sounds right to you, I'd suggest you, Sampson, Stuart, and Croft get inside and stand by to back our stand. I'd like Webb outside with us.

What's to be done? Stuart said. Maybe they aren't hunting trouble at all.

I'll talk, Ethan said, and we'd best not reveal our strength unless forced. If trouble starts, shoot them down. We have no choice. He paused. It's my guess they are after our stock and whatever we have, but mostly they want the women ...

My rifle was up at Ruth Macken's, so I walked back and laid it out for her. She listened, then nodded. Tell them Bud and I will be ready. From here we have a good view of the approaches and a good field of fire.