‘What are you doing?’ he asked me.
‘You are giving me this?’ said the boy.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Charlie asked.
I told the boy, ‘Return over the pass and keep to the north. When you arrive in Jacksonville, find the sheriff there and explain your situation. If you think him trustworthy, ask him to exchange your dust for hard cash.’
‘Ho-ho!’ said the boy, bouncing the pouch in his hand.
‘I am against this,’ Charlie said. ‘You are throwing that money away.’
I said, ‘That was money pulled from the ground, when neither one of us needs it.’
‘Simply dug up from the ground, is that all? But I seem to recall some element of work involved outside of wholesomely burrowing in the soil.’
‘Well, the boy has my share, if not yours.’
‘When did my share enter into the conversation, even?’
‘Never mind then.’
‘Who ever said anything about it?’
‘Never mind.’ Refocusing on the boy, I said, ‘Once the sheriff sets you right with the dust I want you to outfit yourself with some new clothes, ones that make you look older. I should think it wise to buy yourself the largest hat you can find, that it might cover up your head. Also you will need a new horse.’
‘What about Lucky Paul?’ asked the boy.
‘You should sell him for whatever price you can get. If you cannot find a buyer I would advise abandoning him.’
The boy shook his head. ‘I will never part with him.’
‘Then you will never get home. He will hold you up until your money’s gone and you’re both starved. I am trying to help you, do you understand? If you don’t listen to me I will take that gold dust back from you.’
The boy withdrew into silence. I threw some wood on the fire and instructed him to dry his clothes well before sunset. He stripped down but did not hang his clothing; it lay in a heap in the mud and sand and he stood before us, lumpily naked and full of petulance and defeat. He was an unattractive creature with his clothes on; in the nude I thought he looked something like a goat. He began once more to cry, which I took as my cue to sever our ties. As I climbed onto Tub I wished the boy safe travels, but these were empty words, for he was clearly doomed, and it was a mistake to have given him that gold but it was not as though I could take it back now. He stood there weeping and watching us go, while behind him Lucky Paul entered and collapsed the prospector’s tent, and I thought, Here is another miserable mental image I will have to catalog and make room for.
Chapter 27
We headed south. The banks were sandy but hard packed and we rode at an easy pace on opposite sides of the stream. The sun pushed through the tops of the trees and warmed our faces; the water was translucent and three-foot trout strolled upriver, or hung in the current, lazy and fat. Charlie called over to say he was impressed with California, that there was something in the air, a fortuitous energy, was the phrase he used. I did not feel this but understood what he meant. It was the thought that something as scenic as this running water might offer you not only aesthetic solace but also golden riches; the thought that the earth itself was taking care of you, was in favor of you. This perhaps was what lay at the very root of the hysteria surrounding what came to be known as the Gold Rush: Men desiring a feeling of fortune; the unlucky masses hoping to skin or borrow the luck of others, or the luck of a destination. A seductive notion, and one I thought to be wary of. To me, luck was something you either earned or invented through strength of character. You had to come by it honestly; you could not trick or bluff your way into it.
But then, as if California wished to prove me wrong on this point, we had stopped for a drink of water when the red-haired she-bear emerged from the forest and walked across the stream not thirty yards in front of us. She was fully grown and her pelt, which I had imagined might be blond-ginger, was in fact apple red. She looked at us cursorily and lumbered away into the woods. Charlie checked his pistols and made to follow after her; when I stood by he asked what I was waiting for.
‘We don’t even know where this Mayfield lives,’ I said.
‘We know he lives downriver.’
‘We have been riding downriver all morning. What if we passed him by? I don’t like the idea of climbing hills and mountains with a dead bear tied to my horse.’
‘Mayfield is only after the pelt.’
‘And which of us will skin her?’
‘Whoever shoots her, the other will skin her.’ Now he stepped away from Nimble. ‘You’re really not coming with me?’
‘There is no reason for it.’
‘Best get your knife ready then,’ he said, dashing away into the woods. I stood awhile, watching the passing trout and inspecting Tub’s worsening eye and hoping against hope I would not hear the report from Charlie’s gun. But he was a keen tracker and dead shot, and when his pistol sounded five minutes later I accepted my fate and moved toward the noise with my knife. I found Charlie sitting next to the fallen animal. He was panting and laughing, and he nudged the she-bear’s belly with his boot.
‘Do you know how much a hundred dollars is?’ he asked. I said that I did not and he answered, ‘It is a hundred dollars.’
I rolled the bear onto her back and plunged my knife in the center of her chest. I have always had a feeling that an animal’s insides are unclean, more so than a man’s, which I know does not make sense when you consider what poisons we put into our bodies, but the feeling was one I could not escape, and so I loathed and was resentful about having to skin the bear. After Charlie caught his breath he left to search out the boss-man Mayfield’s encampment, saying he had seen a series of trails some miles back, these leading away from the stream and to the west. Three-quarters of an hour later I was washing the she-bear’s fur and sticky blood from my hands and forearms, and the black-eyed pelt was lain out over some fern plants. The carcass lay on its side before me, no longer male or female, only a pile of ribboned meat, alive with an ecstatic and ever-growing community of fat-bottomed flies. Their number grew so that I could hardly see the bear’s flesh, and I could not hear myself thinking, so clamorous was their buzzing. Why and how do flies make this noise? Does it not sound like shouting to them? When the buzzing suddenly and completely ceased I looked up from my washing, expecting to find the flies gone and some larger predator close by, but the insects had remained atop the she-bear, all of them quiet and still save for their wings, which folded and unfolded as they pleased. What caused this uniform silence? I will never know. Their buzzing had returned in full when Charlie, back from his patrol, let out a shrill whistle. At this, the flies rose away from the bear in a black mass. Upon seeing the carcass my brother called out his happy greeting: ‘God’s little butcher. God’s own knife and conscience, too.’