Native Gold (12 page)

She overturned pots, searched under bedding, lifted the sack of flour, emptied her carpetbag, and even peered into the chipmunk’s escape hole, wondering if he’d decided to steal the drawing for his own parlor. But it was nowhere to be found.

"Damn," she muttered again, vaguely wondering if she was picking up the language of the miners.

Her stomach growled an ode to failure, and with a vexed puff of air, she blew out the last light, unlaced her shoes in the dark, and burrowed into her bed to hide from her disappointment.

"Where’s my sister?" Sakote’s harsh demand and the fist he snagged in the rough fabric of Noa’s shirt clashed with the serene evening air of the Konkow village. "What have you done with her?"

Sakote’s nerves were already stretched taut. His little brother had worried him, disappearing all day, and he’d given the boy a stern scolding. Now Noa had shown up without Towani.

The last smoke of the cooking fire rose like a wisp of spider’s thread against the violet sky, and the stars shimmered silently. But Sakote felt far from peaceful.

"She’s fine," Noa insisted. "She’s in my cabin. She’s got womenfolk all around her and every man in the valley ready to put a slug into the first fool who lays a hand on any of them. She’s safer there than here, and we both know it."

Sakote caught the inside of his cheek between his teeth and stared hard at Noa. At long last, he sighed and nodded, letting him go. “She’s shared her body with you then?"

Noa’s eyes widened, and he grabbed Sakote by the front of his deerskin cloak, hauling him forward until they stood nose to nose. “That’s none of your concern. Damn, Sakote!"

Sakote reared his head back and looked haughtily down his nose. “It
is
my concern. She’s my sister.”

Noa glared at him a long while. Finally he released Sakote, shaking his head. "No."

"No?" Sakote frowned.

"No." Noa crossed his arms over his chest.

"This is not good," Sakote told him. "For your spirits to join, you must join your bodies. Until she goes to your bed,” he said, lowering his voice to whisper what they both knew, “my sister’s spirit is still joined with that
hudesi,
the one who raped her. His
kokoni—
“

"Don’t chatter at me with all your
kokoni
nonsense. Towani isn’t ready. She needs time to...to recover. You don’t just grab a woman and go at her like that." He snapped his fingers, a trick Sakote had never quite been able to master.

Sometimes Sakote didn’t understand Noa. If Towani wanted Noa, and Noa wanted Towani, it seemed foolish for them to sleep apart. He sighed again.

"Anyway," Noa said with a sniff, "that’s not why I came. I think we’ve got big trouble. Amos came to visit me yesterday. They have a new resident in Paradise Bar. A woman."

Sakote stiffened. The image of a sheer white gown and long tawny hair danced through his thoughts.

"But not just any woman," Noa continued. "That doctor? The
hudesi
you’re talking about? This lady was going to be his missus."

Sakote’s breath caught. Missus? The white woman with the gun was supposed to marry
him—
his sister’s defiler? What kind of woman would share her body with such a monster?

“She got to Paradise Bar,” Noa continued, “and there was her husband-to-be, laid out in his Sunday best, dead as last year’s claim." He scratched the back of his neck. "Towani is upset. She says she’s got to take the woman in, going on about it being her fault that the woman is alone. But I don’t have room for an extra boarder, and I don’t think the lady would be keen on the idea anyway, what with—“

"The tribe will take her in." Sakote said it without thought and accepted it without question. The Konkow always took in the defenseless families of warriors they’d slain. In his village lived members of the tribe who’d been born of their enemy, the Yana. They’d been adopted so long ago that few remembered they hadn’t always been Konkow. If the white healer had left behind a wife, it must be so with her as well.

"Take her in?" Noa shook his head. "I don’t know. White women don’t take too kindly to being told what to do and where to go."

"The way is clear," Sakote insisted. "The Konkow must care for her. It’s what my people have always done." Yet even as he said the words, doubt crept in to taunt him. What would the miners think about his bringing a white woman amongst his tribe?

"But like I tried to tell Towani," Noa said, "there are plenty of white folks who’d be happy to take her off your hands. Every miner I know would give the shirt off his back just to have a woman to wash it. And just because Amos says she isn’t a miner, but a real lady from back East who wouldn’t know pepper from gunpowder and probably never touched a broom in her life doesn’t mean she can’t learn."

Sakote wondered if that was true. Was the woman that ignorant? Perhaps her speaking with the quail wasn’t a sign of magic after all, but of simple-mindedness. If she didn’t know how to pan for gold, she wouldn’t last a week in the camp, where the white man lived not on Wonomi’s gifts, but on what spoons full of yellow dust could buy. She needed a man to care for her, or she would die. But surely the odds of her finding a new husband were good. Not only was there a shortage of females in the mining camp, but the white woman was young and beautiful, the kind of wife any man would be proud to…

He frowned at the disturbing direction of his thoughts, then came to a decision. "Tell my sister that I’ll watch over the white woman for the passing of one moon. If no
willa
offers to take her, then she will have a home with the tribe.
Akina
, it is so."

"That’s real generous of you," Noa said. Both of them knew it wouldn’t come to that, but Noa seemed thankful to have good news to relay to Towani.

Sakote knew he was doing the right thing. If the woman died, Towani would be stained not only by the doctor’s death, but by that of the white woman and the generations of offspring they might have had. Only if the woman lived could Towani’s spirit be redeemed. As long as Sakote kept an eye on the white woman, the doctor’s
kokoni
would not haunt the Konkow. And by the next moon, the woman would certainly find a husband among her own people.

But before Sakote risked spying upon the white woman, he had to know one thing.

"Tell me, my brother," he said, bending close and speaking softly, fearing the word might possess some mystical power. "What is a...sketchbook?"

A good night’s sleep gave Mattie the determination to face another day. With the sunshine pouring across her sill like buttermilk and the sparrows and robins beckoning in sweet counterpoint, it was all she could do not to leap from her bed and rush outdoors. She dressed in her oldest chemise, hastily brushed and tied back her hair, and tugged on the oversized pair of knee-high boots the doctor had left behind. With the pan, the pickaxe, a stick of jerky, and a little canvas bag for gold, she set off for the Harrison claim.

At first it was great fun. The claim consisted of a piece of staked creekbed about forty feet long and fifteen feet across, situated in a sunny spot along the sparkling water. Her neighbors were already hard at work when she arrived, but they gave her a nod and a friendly "good morning." The air was clear, the sky cloudless, and the water gurgled and swirled happily along banks lined with reeds and tree roots and mosses. Insects stitched at the air, and birds sang a busy symphony over the percussive barks of chipmunks. The odor of pinesap mingled with bay, and the breeze brought a delicate perfume of mixed wildflowers across the stream.

Mattie dawdled at the task of panning, observing her fellow miners a long while before she began to chip gingerly at the streambed herself. She carefully scooped up a modest amount of gravel, circled the pan gently so as not to splash her skirts, and allowed the water to lap just at the toes of her boots. Which she soon discovered was completely ineffective.

No, if she wanted gold, she’d have to roll up her sleeves, hike up her skirts, and wade into the thick of things.

Before long, Mattie stood knee-deep in the midst of the stream, her drenched skirt splayed atop the water’s surface like a spent blossom. Tendrils of her hair had come loose from their ribbon and curled down over her forehead. Her legs shivered with cold while her cheek blushed from the bold kiss of the sun. The swirl of the gravel in the gold pan was hypnotic, and Mattie soon found a comfortable rhythm of movement.

But as time wore on, her feet grew numb, her face began to tingle with heat, and the pan became heavy. Her eyes were exhausted from hunting for the elusive yellow rock that she learned, to her utter humiliation, looked nothing like the shiny flakes she’d so enthusiastically displayed for her fellow miners, the metal the old-timers called "fool’s gold." To her dismay, despite panning all day, she didn’t find a single speck worth anything.

Mattie trudged back toward her cabin as the sun set, trying to ignore the fact that her wet skirts and her spirits grew heavier with each step. There was no cause for concern, she reasoned, fighting to keep despondency at bay. After all, it was only her first try. Things would improve tomorrow. She’d get an earlier start. Tomorrow she’d "find the color." Surely there was gold to be had or the residents of Paradise Bar would go home, wouldn’t they?

So intent was she on keeping her chin up that she never noticed the pair of jet-black eyes watching her every move as she climbed the wooded rise toward Paradise Bar.

Sakote heard the woman slogging through the wood long before he saw her. He grimaced. She’d never be able to hunt her own rabbits if she always made such noise. From the sharp smell of burnt food he had detected while circling her empty cabin earlier, she didn’t have much skill in cooking either. He hoped Noa was right, that some miner would take her to wife and provide for her, for she appeared to him to be as useless a woman as he’d ever seen.

Until she emerged from the trees. Then Sakote felt the scorn drain from him like water from a fishing seine.

By The Great Spirit, she was beautiful. Even weighed down by the heavy miner’s pick and in her long brown dress coated with red mud, she walked with her head held high. Her hair had come loose from its tie, leaving wisps as feathery as eagle down around her face. Her cheek was streaked with dirt, but she looked as proud and noble as a Konkow warrior.

His breath caught in the trap of his ribs, and his skin burned as if the sun still blazed at the top of the sky, searing him with mysterious fire.

Perhaps he was wrong about the white woman, he thought, as she neared the cluster of cedars concealing him. Perhaps there was more to her than he’d first imagined. She possessed some inner strength, some core of rock-hard will that might allow her to survive after all. The best hunters were not always those with the keenest eye or the strongest arm, but those with the most fortitude.

Then the woman stumbled directly before him, only a spear’s length away, knocking the pick from her shoulder, and he went as still as stone. This close, he saw her mask of confidence slip and glimpsed a trembling in her pointed chin as she stooped to retrieve the tool. Unbidden, his heart leaped out to her, and he nearly followed its path in an irresistible impulse to help her with her burden. He stopped himself in time, but not before he felt the full effect of her vulnerability in the softening of her eyes.

Suddenly, Sakote feared he might not take another breath or another step. The woman’s eyes...they were the same startling green as those of the white eagle that had come to him in his dream. The sight froze him like the snows of
ko-meni
froze the earth. What could it mean?

It must be magic, he thought. The woman must possess some enchantment. Sakote had never felt such...stirrings.

There could be no other explanation for it. After all, she was useless. She couldn’t hunt. She couldn’t cook. And from the sorrow in her face, she’d found no
oda
, no gold. Her skin was too delicate for the sun’s light, and her body seemed too frail to even bear children. She was nothing but a burden. And yet...