Native Gold Read Free Page B

and her features were even, except for that crooked smile. Her dress was as drab as Missouri dirt, but the cinched waist showed a bit of female curve. On the whole, she looked too frail for the gold fields, but the fact she’d drawn herself hefting a gold pan and a pickaxe said a lot about her determination, and the title said something about her sense of humor. If that gleam in her eye lasted past the grueling journey from New York to California, he supposed she’d do fine.
    He burped, stuffed the rumpled drawing back into his coat pocket, and kicked the empty flask of whiskey at his feet.
    He was finally liquored up enough to face the walk back to camp. But lately it took more and more of his hard-won gold dust to get that way. And it also seemed like none of those sons-of-bitches he called friends ever cut him any slack. Damn it! Didn’t they know a man needed a drink once in a while when he spent day after day up to his arse in a freezing cold creek?
    He staggered forward, stubbing the toe of his boot on a rust-red rock. He kicked it again just for spite and cursed as the sharp pain penetrated his drunken stupor. Lord, he hated California.
    "Golden promise!" he crowed to the cedars, shaking an upraised finger like a seller of patent medicine. "Untold wealth!" He cackled ruefully.
    The only wealth he’d found in this God-forsaken place was doing the same thing he’d done back in St. Louis, where he’d had a rea l house—doctoring. But now there wasn’t enough of that to keep him in beans, let alone liquor. And to rub salt in his wounds, his kid brother Henry, who had a hankering for Lady Luck and a talent for five card draw, had struck it rich in San Francisco. Why, for pride’s sake, Doc Jim had had to out-and-out fib to Henry about the riches of his claim.
    He shook his head, then shoved his rumpled hat down over his disheveled hair and cursed again. He supposed he’d have to spend another dollar on Tom Cooligan’s barbering if he was to meet his wife-to-be this week. Hell, the woman wasn’t even here yet, and already she’d cost him close to two hundred dollars, what with the advertisement, the trip by steamer, and posting that fancy letter Tom had written up for him.
    "She better be worth it," he told the trees, adjusting his trousers with a decisive wrench of his belt. "She just damn better."
    But no one answered him. He was alone in this neck of the woods. It seemed like he was always alone these days, usually at the bottom of a bottle. Which was why he’d resorted to consoling himself with the local Indian squaws, who were always by the creek, digging up bulbs for their dinner, and who didn’t put up too much of a fight as long as he had a gun in his hand. It was also why those flea-bitten codgers at Paradise Bar had talked him into getting himself a wife. They thought maybe he’d settle down and straighten up once he had a woman to look after him.
    He frowned down at the pine needle-lined trail, wondering if any of the boys back at camp had a stash of liquor. There was still a good half-hour of sunlight left, and damn if he wasn’t out of whiskey. He sighed, pitched his pick and shovel atop his shoulder, and staggered forward.
    He was still trudging through the woods, almost home, when the brush just ahead of him gave a rustle.
    Squirrel? Jay? Skunk? No. Something bigger, by the way the manzanita leaves shivered. The whiskey suddenly froze up in his veins, and his heart lurched ahead of his brain. Might be a bear. Or a mountain lion.
    He dropped the pick and shovel and reached under the flap of his coat with a quaking hand to pull out his Deringer pistol, a puny thing that looked like it was made for shooting mice.
    The manzanita rattled again, its leaves shaking like silver coins. He raised the loaded gun, his two hands nearly swallowing the pitifully small thing, and aimed it at the bush.
    A figure slowly emerged then, and when he saw it was only one of the local Indian girls, the air rushed out