Suddenly Errol whirled around, red-faced, and pounced on the Chinaman. He drew his knife and took hold of the man’s black pigtail.
I was quite frightened, and the boy was by now frantic. But the Chinaman was still. Errol put the knife to the pigtail and spoke into the man’s sun-scarred face. “Are you a citizen of California or not?” he asked.
“He can’t understand you,” I called, trying to remain calm. “Let him be.”
Errol released the Chinaman as quickly as he’d grabbed him. He returned to the sluice as if it had all been a great tease, the Pikes up the bank snarling with laughter. But it was no tease. I had heard rumors out of Hangtown of three tongs hung by their pigtails from a tree, their throats slit.
XI. THE FORTUNE FORETOLD
Despite Errol’s occasional volatility, the boy was soon pulling color from the sluice. It was chispa so small and so aggregated that no white man would have ever dug it, and Errol said as much — but it was gold all the same. I directed the boy to deposit his findings in our mustard jar. In this way, little by little, day by day, we did accumulate some dust. Errol went to town whenever he had the chance, where he spent his share on card games and spirit. I spent my share on provisions. One Sabbath I had pork and beans. Another, while Errol was away, the Chinamen and I had secret roast beef and potatoes. That rump could have been the toughest, most befouled muscle ever served a man, but to my starved tongue it was gravy-slopped ambrosia.
Then, the day of the first frost, the boy approached Errol and without celebration presented him a grape-sized yellow nugget, cool with river water.
My brother did not immediately take the nugget, as I’d always imagined he would. Instead, he leapt to embrace me, taking a long, affectionate look into my anomalous, all-seeing eyes.
After some celebration, Errol spirited the nugget into the tent, pounded it carefully to test for softness, distributed a petal of the malleable color to the Chinamen and a larger leaf to me. Immediately I entertained fantasies of ordering sardines, tongue, turtle soup, lobster, cakes, and pies by the cartful, a box of juicy golden peaches. Unsettling, the way even a tiny bead of element could enchant.
Errol instructed us all to continue. “More will come,” he called out merrily, barely containing his urge to wink at me. And it seemed more would come, the day we found our nugget, the day my brother’s infinite faith intersected with coincidence, the day of the first frost.
XII. WAR!
Two days later, Errol appeared by my side late one morning and said, “There’s something I want you to see.”
My brother fidgeted with his hands in his pockets excitedly as I followed him to Angel’s Camp. “What is it?” I asked several times. His only reply was, “Something you’ll have to see to believe.” We passed the Swede’s and continued down a small hill to where a glade flattened out. Many men were gathered there and my heart picked up some, with fantasies of a second mail coach or a bundle of letters lost and now found. But near the crowd Errol halted and tapped a poster nailed to the trunk of a pine:
War! War! War!
The celebrated Bull-killing Bear
GENERAL SCOTT
Will fight a Bull on Sunday the 15th at 12 p.m.
at Tuolumne Meadow
The Bull will be perfectly wild, young, of the Spanish breed
the best that can be found in the country
the Bull’s horns will be of their natural length
NOT Sawed or Filed
Admission is $6 or one half ounce
I had heard of Spaniards hosting contests of men versus bulls and the prospect of witnessing this even higher spectacle excited me. Errol and I hustled nearer the arena, which was composed of tiered seats enclosed by a wood slat fence. We could not see inside. Near the entrance two fiddlers played a lively tune, and a barker lured men by extolling the ferocity of the grizzly General Scott and the virility of the Mexican bull, whom he called Señor Cortez, much to the delight of the Forty-Niners.
But heavy as my pocket was, the entrance fee was prohibitive. As Errol continued to the arena I called after him, “That’s a costly admission.”
“I knew you would say that,” he said. “Follow me, cheapskate.”
I pursued him to the rear of the corral where a crabapple stood, its fruit already fallen and rotting in the grass. He climbed near to the top of the tree, then helped me up. From there we were afforded a splendid view of the arena.
“Look there,” said Errol, pointing to the clearing at its center. “Your foe.” There, tethered by a chain staked into the ground, was a massive grizzly bear. He scratched and scooped at the earth, his great scapulas moving like the machinery of a steam engine. He was carving a burrow for himself, it seemed. Even from our great distance we could see the thick neck shimmering, the monstrous hump at his back swaying, his knifelike claws making shreds of the meadow and the hard-packed soil. I both wished him to roar and feared that he would.
“Now that you’ve seen one you’ll be less afraid,” said Errol. I swelled with affection for him then, for I had not thought he’d noticed my fears. This was how I wanted us to be, always.
The barker was riling the crowd, playing on their terror. I scanned the bronzed and bearded faces under hats of many hues, the gay Mexican blankets and the blue and red bonnets of the French. Among all those like mirages were Mexican women in frilly white frocks, puffing on their cigaritas. Until then I had ever conceived that my wife would be a Buckeye, or perhaps a New Englander. But from where I was perched in that crabapple tree it seemed impossible to choose a bony, board-shaped descendant of the Puritans over one of these rosy, full-formed, sprightly Spaniard women.
Errol said, uncannily, “I’ll marry Marjorie in a meadow like this. Beneath a tree.”
“I expect so,” I managed.
“I’ll marry her here, then I will build us a great big house on the same spot. Soon, Angel’s Camp will be bigger than San Francisco. I’ll have more land than Sutter. I’ll buy the Swede’s store out from under him. Mr. Salter will have to buy a parcel from me. No.” Glee flickered across his face. “I’ll give him one.”
Errol’s gaze cast out from the tree, across the corral and the meadow and beyond. “Marj and I will have sons enough to line the American River. You’ll be there, too. An uncle.”
It touched me to be included like this, in both the fight and the fantasy. “And Mother,” I said.
“Yes, Mother, too. And Mary and Harriet and Faith and Louisa, too. Everyone.”
Then we were quiet, because we knew it would not be everyone.
By now the action below was nearly afoot. The bear General Scott had achieved a burrow several hands deep and presently he lumbered into it and lay there on his back, much in the manner of a happy baby. The crowd hated him for his merriment and screamed for the release of the bull. They stomped an infectious rhythm. Errol and I began to thump the branches of our tree, too.
From the far end of the arena came a large, muscular bull, with horns like none I had ever seen. The crowd went mute.
“Here we go,” whispered Errol.
“Are they going to unchain the bear?” I asked. Errol hushed me.
Initially, the bull seemed not even to notice the bear, so one of the vaqueros jabbed the bull in the rump with a prod, sending the beast galloping from the periphery. This was when he locked eyes on the bear. He stomped and snorted a bit, and then charged General Scott where he lay in his den. I gripped my limb as the bull struck the General in his flank, sending a frightful thunk through the meadowland. A cheer escaped from the crowd.