Chapter One I tried to warn them but they would not listen. The white man never listens to the Indian anyway. Outside my hut, men were crying out in the cold night, running for their lives, the glow of their torches and lanterns rushing past, their guns firing from all around. Some of their bullets cracked through the thin walls of my hut while I sat with my back to the door, afraid to turn and look, crying out to my forefathers for protection, raising my voice against the heavy weight of my fear. It already knew where I was, the dark spirit of that place, protector of the Valley of Wonder, the sacred valley of our ancestors.
Outside, the cries from the miners broke off one by one, some shrill, others in low grunts. Their gunfire tapered with each taking of a life. When the shooting finally stopped, his triumphant scream filled the air. The shrill laugh that followed sent chills across my shoulders and down my back.
A heavy silence fell over the gold camp, a time of breathlessness I could not measure. All of a sudden, the waning flames from my small fire rushed higher. A gust of cold air told me, the deerskin cover over my doorway had been pushed aside.
It was there in my hut, standing close behind me. Hot, wet breath touched the back of my neck. It stank of fresh blood. I closed my eyes and continued the ancient chant of our people, even louder maybe.
I did not turn to look.
* * *
Now somewhere in his nineties, not sure exactly, John Crow was amazed how clearly he remembered his great-grandfather’s stories. He and other children had crowded into his hut on the Washoe County Indian Reservation to listen to stories of the gold rush days of the 1850s. On cold winter nights, they’d turned their backs to the fire, somehow warmer, watching the reflection of the flames flicker in his eyes, the way they must have looked that night, so long ago.
His great-grandfather’s shadow from the open fire would sway and skip across slats on the wall behind him, a magical, fearful dance; a sharp, clear memory.
His great-grandfather had told of how he’d warned the miners not to use explosives to tear up the earth and not to use acids to purify their raw oar. They were fouling the streams and river in this sacred place of the Paiute.
They had refused to listen to a young Indian hired to provide them with fresh meat. The morning after the slaughter, the few survivors from outlying camps had looked at him with unjust suspicions. Why had this Indian been spared while so many of their friends lay mutilated and headless, frozen into blood soaked snow? Everybody, including his great-grandfather, had packed up and left, leaving those frozen bodies for the wolves.
Maybe they had received a decent burial. The church cemetery had some very old, unmarked graves. Willis had never mentioned it.
But then, nobody ever spoke of what had happened ten short years ago, that night when fear again entered this valley.
John climbed onto his front porch near the giant Douglas fir. On the far side of the valley, shadows crept up the face of the mountain, still some daylight, a good time of day for memories, mostly good.
It had been at the annual mustang roundup down in Reno where he’d first met Jethro and Mary Lou Potter. Jethro had asked John’s advice on horses and purchased all three John had recommended. They’d hired John on the spot and brought him here to this sacred valley. He’d not yet grown to manhood.
It had taken a few years for John to realize where he was. He could not now recall the exact circumstances of his enlightenment.
No matter.
Jethro had purchased the whole valley from the land office down in Sacramento in 1935, not knowing about the gold or about those early miners, the ones from his great-grandfather’s stories. That had been the beginning of the Potter Ranch.
In those early days, Willis Donner had been the only other resident, living up on the Perch, a high granite dome that overlooked the entire valley. The Perch and John Crow’s place were separated by a fast moving stream, impossible to cross from up here. He lived up on the Perch, that high granite dome across the creek from John Crow’s place.
Around 1940, Jethro and Mary Lou had given Willis clear title to the Perch and about five acres surrounding it. A year later, they’d given John Crow title to this one acre. Their reason given for both deeds of title had been services already rendered.
He could see most of the valley from here. Willis could see the whole valley from the Perch.
John had never felt the fear described by his great-grandfather, not once in all the seasons that flowed, not even after realizing where he was, not until that night ten years ago. Now, that fear fell over the valley with each coming of the full moon.
Never forget.
John stepped down and walked out from under the overlapping roof planes of his teepee shaped house, looking west over the top of the sheer cliff into which Willis had set long redwood logs supporting the high point of his steeply pitched roof.
Looks like a tepee. Well, half a tepee.
He’d been angry with Willis at the time, thinking Willis was mocking John’s Indian heritage.
Not Willis.
He swelled with pride, looking at it now. It was a fine house, fitting this natural terrain perfectly.
Home.
The sun was long gone behind the mountain now.
Time to prepare.
The family of groundhogs downhill from John’s house was saying goodbye to the day, their heads poking out of their holes, chirping at one another, at the twilight, at John.
A hawk swooped over and they all ducked into hiding. The hawk rose on the breeze, floated over the tall trees near the house and pulled its wings back, plunging into the forest. The shrill scream of a squirrel announced the hawk’s supper.
The way of nature.
He inhaled deeply the pungent odor of wolf bane, those night blooming red flowers Willis had scattered about, thicker near the house. They looked native to the terrain, same as the house.
White smoke hovered above the village, five miles up the valley, rising from the big wood burning stove in Jacobsen’s Emporium, getting ready for the night. The village was already in the shadow of the mountain.
Time to prepare.
John climbed back onto his porch, still amazed by the craftsmanship, the tightly fitted stone and timber of his house, the stone buttress design at the bottom and the way the windows were fitted. Willis had a God-given talent appreciated by everyone but Kidro Potter. Kidro cared only for Kidro.
Getting late.
The full moon rising over the eastern rim stood in stark contrast to the darkening sky, a clear night.
Early moonlight on his three inch thick, solid oak door highlighted the pattern Willis had chiseled into it. The geometric, interconnecting lines resembled a bird in flight; a crow, perhaps, or one of Willis’s beloved meadowlarks.
A chill crossed his shoulders, the humbling admiration for such fine craftsmanship. He crossed the threshold, closed his door and dropped the heavy oak bar into place, a solid barrier against whatever might come. He moved across the upper stone floor and secured the narrow, thick oak shutters over the windows.
Nothing could get inside now.
His fortress secure, he grabbed a match from over his wood burning stove and lit an oil lamps. He trimmed and carried the lamp down stone steps into the living space where he’d spread a large Navajo rug over the clean, white sand floor.
He set the lamp on a table Willis had carved from a fat tree trunk and knelt to light the kindling in his already prepared fireplace. Dry slivers ignited quickly and spread to twigs, leaping from twigs to crawl up the sides of heavier logs until the heat forced him to step back.
He fingered the well worn Bible on the mantle and wondered if this night was from God or from something else? This Bible had no answers.
Through all these years he’d never been able to understand the nature of a night like the one now at hand. His great-grandfather’s stories lacked any explanation.
It hadn’t come with each full moon. Even after they discovered it would take a young bull calf and leave people alone, it hadn’t always come. Maybe it hunted in different places.
Who knows?
Why the residents in this valley hadn’t all left was no mystery to John. This valley was an unnaturally healthy place to live.
John pulled his medicine bag from around his neck, opened it and emptied it onto the rug. He dropped to his knees and studied the pile of small sticks, smooth stones and tiny pieces of bone. After seeing how they lay, he swept up the pile and tossed it into the air, watching the bits and pieces fall again, studying the pattern.
Tonight, it will come.
The hair on his neck stood up, a spiritual force. He threw his head back and lifted his voice in the ancient, melodic chant of his forefathers. Maybe it would help protect him and his lifelong neighbors.
Yes, even Kidro.
* * *
Kidro Potter sat at the dining table Willis Donner had built into the wide bay window that jutted from the side of the Potter kitchen. The wood framed kitchen had been built over the top of the stone-walled carriage house which was now used as a garage. Being so high up, the kitchen didn’t need iron bars or protective shutters. From here, Kidro could see up River Road to the village and all the way around to his lower meadow where fine, sleek, Black Angus cattle grazed near the brook that wound its way into the tall timber forest at the lower end of his valley.
Down in that forest, the brook took the runoff from the lower hot spring and emptied into the river. Just beyond, the river flowed strong over the falls and down into Pickle Meadow, Leavitt Meadow Recreation Area and the Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center. The Marines never came up here, not into Kidro’s valley.
Only a few big trees grew in Kidro’s lower meadow, those that found deep boulders to root onto. The ground was otherwise too soft to support tall trees. Patches of brush hugged portions of the brook and tall grass covered the rest.
His young heifers and steers would be ready for market in another month. The remainder were breeders, sold out to canned goods companies when they got too old.
Every summer he let the Basques drive in herds of sheep to crop grass in both the upper and lower meadows. In return, each year, his family members had received a fresh young lamb and a fine, handmade sheepskin coat. The trade cost him nothing. The grass needed to be cut. His cattle preferred the feed corn he placed in bins near the brook. Corn produced better beef, anyway.
Yep. Kidro Potter raised some of the finest table beef in California. Hell, in the country. In the world.
He poured his second glass of Canadian Club rye whiskey, recapped the bottle and sipped.
He enjoyed this time of day, sipping whiskey. With the sun long gone, the thin clouds over the western rim had turned pink, orange and gold. Some might call this a beautiful sunset, those who enjoyed such things.
- J. enjoyed these sunsets; so had his wife, before she was taken.
A little down from the rim and high up the slope, John Crow’s house was already shuttered and dark. A thread of white smoke swirled and dissipated into the evergreen trees above the cliff. That stinking Indian was ready for the night.
Damn squatter.
That stupid, superstitious Indian was his closest neighbor. Kidro didn’t have much use for Indians in general and he’d never liked this one, a real know-it-all when it came to horses.
Across the ravine from Crow’s, above the waterfall, lamplight winked through the treetops from the Perch, Willis Donner’s place. The glass reflected sunlight in the daytime and lamplight at night, a constant reminder of Willis’s so-called right to be there.
God, I hate that bastard.
Kidro’s parents had always treated Willis like a favored member of the family and Kidro had always resented him for it.
Hell, he’d never be able to do anything to get him and Crow out. That knowledge gnawed his gut near every night at this time, looking up at their two properties, both properly registered down in Sacramento. He hated himself for hating the both of them and doing nothing about it.
He squirmed on the cushioned bench and turned to look up River Road; still no sign of Nason. He drained the last of his whiskey and looked into the adoring stare of Scooter, his Springer Spaniel, sitting on the polished stone floor, patiently waiting.
He knows.
“Nason’s always late, isn’t he?” Kidro smiled, his dog’s tail sweeping back and forth against the floor.
“You’re right.” Kidro set the glass next to the bottle and stood, feeling soreness in his left knee where Gilpin’s horse pinned him against the lower corral rail. At age sixty eight, Kidro didn’t heel as quickly as he used to. He’d probably limp for a month, maybe for the rest of his empty life.
Stupid horse.
Kidro forced himself to walk through the pain to the kitchen door where he lifted his lightweight Levi jacket from a hook and put it on. He made it through the living room with only a slight limp and climbed three stone steps to the entry foyer. He dragged his heavy black Stetson hat from the deer antler rack Willis had mortared into the stone wall since before Kidro could remember and put it on. He opened his new factory made entry door and followed Scooter outside.
As long as Kidro lived, Willis Donner would never hang another door here.
Scooter shot down the stone steps and rounded the corner of the garage before Kidro shut the door. Pain forced him to use his right leg, limping down the steps, keeping the left knee straight like some kind of cripple. Climbing down steps was worse than climbing up. Hell, he hated pain anyway it came.
That stupid horse cost too much, five hundred bucks and a bull calf.
He wove his way up the rocky path through tall pine and limped out of the woods into his upper meadow where stubby grass mixed with sagebrush in rocky soil. He followed Scooter up the well worn trail, limping more instead of less.
“Stupid horse.”
Scooter reached that flat stone far ahead of Kidro, chasing those ever present meadowlarks, howling and baying until the sky was filled with swirling, yellow breasted birds. The dog almost never barked, earning Kidro’s constant gratitude, but he allowed it for chasing these stupid birds, always singing stupid bird songs.
Kidro never liked noisy things, especially noisy people like Gilpin. He gritted his teeth, hating Gilpin more with each painful step. That was the one good thing about this sore leg, another reason to hate Bruce Gilpin.
Always late, Nason’s truck sped over the crest in a cloud of dust and slid to a stop near that flat rock with Kidro’s Angus bull calf in back, the one he’d just traded to Gilpin.
Broad shouldered and fit for forty, Sheriff Phil Nason stepped out of his four door Ford pick-up and walked to the back.
“Gilpin gave you that calf?”
Nason shook his head with a tired dip toward Kidro. “Pounded on his trailer for five minutes.” He dropped the tailgate, climbed into the back and untied the calf. “I know they were around. His truck was parked in front and I could smell refer, like walking into a hippy’s house in Berkeley.” He lifted and carried the small calf to the back of his truck where Kidro took and set it on the ground, gritting against the pain in his leg. Nason climbed down and picked up the calf. “Found this one in the barn nursing from Gilpin’s milk cow. Idiot’s got pot hanging and drying everywhere. I should just arrest his ass. If not for his wife and kid, I would.”
“He’s probably got a grower’s permit. I heard his brother owns one of those marijuana pharmacies down below.”
Nason grinned and set the calf down, admitting the probability of a legal permit.
“You know how much I hate this?” Kidro followed Nason and the calf onto the wide, flat, blood stained rock. The surrounding grass stood thick and green, a good place for meadowlarks to nest and feed on bloodworms.
