Free Working the Lode by Karen Mercury

chortled lewdly.
    This bit of levity was enough to take their minds off the subject of the newspaperman, for all three men were now obliged to laugh at the concept. Cormack didn’t personally find it so far-fetched, as he’d seen all manner of Plains Indians who acted as women and sometimes, well, when the pickings were slim and folks were half-froze for any human warmth…He would not rub out anyone who gratified his dry in that manner. Heaps of beaver to them. But in front of Bigler, well, Cormack had best be conservative.
    “A goddamned sodomite.” Bigler chuckled.
    As their laughter died down, Cormack pricked up his ears. What sounded like four or even five horses galloped up the muddy road about half a mile distant. Such a herd could not be Zelnora making their rendezvous, so the three men grabbed their rifles and waited silently, lying close to the ground on their elbows, hoping the herd would pass. Their own sturdy Californio horses were picketed nearby, securely hobbled against horse thieves. But the riders drove their jingling spurs into the horses’ sides and reined in toward their campfire. The three gold miners got to their feet and leveled their weapons, and Cormack, who could nearly see in the dark, was the first to note it was Wimmer from the mill, along with other Battalion fellows such as Mowry, Sly, and Nutting.
    They picketed their mounts and told how they wanted to join up and mine this fertile strip they had heard so much about. How had anyone heard? As far as Cormack knew, Marshall still thought they were deer hunting, although by now it was a foregone assumption no one was actually hunting. Cormack had been attempting to devise a method for legally staking a claim. As of yet, the rule of the mines was that each man got fifty feet along a streambed, but Cormack was waiting for Zelnora’s arrival to advise him as to which fifty feet she deemed the richest. Up until the arrival of these dunces, he’d felt that he owned this entire length of river.
    So the newcomers yammered, warming their hands by the fire and eating their jerky, while Cormack shouldered his rifle and set out toward the road. He splashed across the newly formed creek that had created the island on which they were encamped. He didn’t care—he wore his new miner’s boots that nearly reached his knee, stiff things he was unaccustomed to after years in moccasins, and he felt like a lumbering Frankenstein when he walked.
    Claims should be marked out with stakes, he thought as he leaned against a tree, stakes decorated gaudily so it was obvious from afar that spot had been chosen. Up till now, men just left their tools along the river to indicate a claim. If this spot panned out, he’d go talk with Sutter about registering the claim. Although Sutter had no control over mineral rights, he was the closest thing to an alcalde, or mayor of the area.
    He was wrenched from his reverie by ducks streaking it upstream from the fort. What brought ducks streaking it upstream if humans weren’t behind them? He eagerly perked up and listened for Zelnora’s horse, but the wind changed direction then, and something disturbed him. He sniffed smoke from a cook fire, but it was not his men, no, this came from the fort’s direction, although of course the fort was too far away to smell sign, about twenty miles. Indian sign? They’d be some pretty smart Indians to get hold of a side of beef. For Cormack scented beef, only a sign of white men or Californios.
    Well, why shouldn’t a man have a cook fire between here and the fort? Cormack didn’t own the river. Maybe some more of his compañeros were “hunting.” So he kept his eyes skinned, and soon the beloved woman hove into sight, dragging that laughable husband of hers by her horse’s tail.
    She waved wildly. “Cormack!”
    He jogged up to her, taking her reins and placing a hand under her arm to assist her to dismount. “Hush,” he said quietly. “I smell white men sign about. Did you