Rudolph Wurlitzer - The Drop Edge of Yonder

Further inside the compound, half-naked Indians, all that remained of Sutter's farmhands, knelt in front of a long wooden trough shoving feed and cornmeal into their mouths. On either side of them, drunken men rolled in the dirt, wrestling and slashing at each other with bowie knives and tomahawks. A gunshot was followed by a woman's scream and maniacal laughter. A naked man ran out of a barn waving a frying pan only to be clubbed to the ground by a Peruvian miner. A horse bucked out of a barn. Mormons sang hymns and shouted praises to the Lord, ignoring three prospectors dancing on top of a busted wagon, braying at the full moon.

Zebulon stopped at the edge of a crowd, where a one-armed man in an English top hat held up a shiny new shovel. "Only five of these fine beauties left! Never been used. Pure metal from Vulcan's forge. Can't dig for gold without a shovel, gentlemen. Thirty dollars! Do I hear more? It's good business, gentlemen. Forty to the handsome gent sitting underneath the wagon! You know what it takes to get a box of shovels overland or by sea? Fifty! Do I hear fifty? Who knows when one of these shovels will come this way again. Maybe a month! Maybe six! Maybe never! No shovel, no gold. No gold, and I guarantee it's a long way back to Tiperary. There! At the rear. Fifty dollars. Sold!"

For his next item, the hawker held up a painting of a lascivious ebony nude lying on a sofa surrounded by three Egyptian eunuchs. The roundness of her thighs and breasts reminded him of Delilah.

"The best for last, gentlemen! Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile, in her most intimate lair. A welcome companion for the diggings, where a man can go for months without the sight of a woman. This beautiful vision of exotic lust and romance was owned by a Russian count murdered just last week in Calabasas Springs. Before him, she was the proud possession of an English lord. Before that, she was hung in the Queen of Spain's boudoir! We start at a hundred dollars. Over there! Under the wagon. The man in the leather vest. One-fifty…? Two…! Do I hear three?"

The hawker pointed at Zebulon. "You, Sir! In the fancy linen pants! You're obviously a gentleman who knows how to appreciate a great work of art!"

Zebulon kept going, heading towards Sutter's headquarters, the Casa Grande, a crumbling two-story adobe structure with its upstairs windows shot out. Approaching the twenty-foot oaken front door, he stumbled over a Mexican slumped against a wall.

`~Quien es?" The Mexican glanced up from underneath his sombrero, revealing a toothless face marked by an empty eye socket. "You ever get the feelin' that the faster you ride, the longer it takes to get there?"

The Mexican slapped his thigh, doubling over with laughter at Zebulon's startled expression. "You ain't sure if I'm that old Mex from the pueblo, or just another down and out greaser."

"You're Plaxico," Zebulon said.

"And you're Zebulon. The one that's so stuck inside his own nosebag that he can't figure out if he's comin' or goin'. That happens more than you think."

"Hatchet said that?"

"That and other things, like not knowin' the difference between a straight flush and a ditch full of frogs. Quien es? Know what I mean? Who's out there? And if you is out there, where are you headed? Maybe it's time to quit all those questions."

"Where's Hatchet now?" Zebulon asked.

"Most likely lookin' for you. Now that he's done his best to deal with your Pa, you're next in line."

"You're here for the gold?" Zebulon asked.

Plaxico laughed and stood up.

"I ain't here, and I ain't there. Ain't that how the song goes."

He slapped Zebulon on the back, then walked straight across the compound as if he knew where he was going.

Zebulon sat down against the wall. Around him, men and women were spreading out bedrolls, discussing a mudslide near Grizzly Flats, a mother lode on the Yuba, and a hanging at Morgans Flat. A small boy led a crippled horse into a livery stable. A door opened and slammed shut. Then silence, followed by a song drifting across the compound from the Casa Grande:

It was Delilah.

E PUSHED OPEN THE HUGE OAK DOOR OF THE CASA GRANDE and walked down a dimly lit entrada to a banquet hall. A stern white-haired woman in a high-necked black dress sat at a dining table in the middle of the cavernous room, her head between her hands. Next to Fran Sutter sat her son, August, a plump young man in a Tyrolean hat, drinking whiskey and smoking a curved ivory pipe. Behind them, a large-bellied man with a thick brush mustache and knee-length buckskins strode back and forth, slapping a riding crop against his massive thigh.

Delilah sat behind a clavichord on the far side of the hall. As Zebulon paused inside the door, her eyes found him, then shifted to August Sutter as he slammed his pipe on the table.

"You are not the only one that wants to buy my father's land, Herr Kehoe. I will tell you once again: My mother will never sell without my father's consent."

Azariah Kehoe took a deep breath, trying to remain calm. "You must understand that I am here to help, not to make matters worse. It was my distinct impression that Captain Sutter wished to sell what was left of his land to settle outstanding debts."

Fran Sutter looked at him, speaking with a halting German accent. "You must understand, Herr Kehole. I am newly arrived in this country. I am tired. I have sick stomach. I am not seeing my husband in seventeen years. Imagine how I am suffering when he has business somewhere else and is nowhere to wait for me in San Francisco. I have left a son and a daughter to wait for him, and then I journey with one more son, August, to find my husband, and we go over a terrible, wild country, and now I am seeing his fort of ruins. Imagine all that!"

"My dear Lady," Kehoe said. "I am deeply sympathetic to your difficulties and sufferings. Having spent half my life on the frontier, I know very well what you're going through. For your own sake, please allow me to help."

"And everywhere this gold madness!" Frau Sutter continued, not having heard a word he said. "In Switzerland, I hear of my husband and California and his orchards and vegetables and cows. For many years, I am hearing my husband is a king in this land. That he is being loved by everyone, even native savages, and that everything is arranged for me and my children to come here and be loved with him. We are not business people, Herr Kehole. We are family people who want a life with cows and food and happiness. That is the promise I am hearing in Switzerland, and that is why I am coming here."

"What you say is certainly true about your husband, Frau Sutter," Kehoe said. "Or it was, anyway. A fine man, Captain John Sutter. Courageous. Inventive. Energetic. Even though, alas, foolish in business as well as his choice of, shall we say, leisure pursuits. But we won't indulge in spurious gossip. Above all, we must remain calm."

As Zebulon approached the table, Delilah stood up from the clavichord and walked over to him. Her eyes never left his as she sang to him in Spanish:

Zebulon stood in front of the table, repeating the verse in Navajo: