Salmon River Kid Read online

  “Sing Chen. He’s a year older than me.” Samuel began drying the utensils and putting them in the box where they were stored. “He was born in the year of the dragon. I was born in the year of the snake.”

  “And how do you know this?” Mrs. Shearer asked, appearing intrigued. She gestured to Samuel to add wood to the fire while she filled the kettle with more water and set it on to heat.

  Samuel fit some wood into the burn box and began telling Mrs. Shearer about the Chinese, about the festival of the moon, about being called a foreign devil, and about trying to teach Chen how to read and write.

  Mrs. Shearer fixed some tea, and they sat at the table.

  Samuel told her of other events since they had come through last spring. He liked talking to her because she listened well. He told her about his hunting accident when he was thrown from Spooky and how Sang Yune helped doctor him and save his life. He told her about selling vegetables with Chen and about the bandits jumping the Chinese pack train. Then he talked about finding the O’Riley.

  “Anyone else in Washington about your age?” she asked when he finally finished. “I haven’t kept up with the news as much.” She smiled. “Any young ladies?”

  Samuel blinked. He was getting drowsy, but Mrs. Shearer’s question brought him awake. A bit embarrassed, he thought of Miss Lilly, remembering her flashing red hair, hazel eyes, and, curiously, her shapely figure. Her memory tugged at his stomach, reminding him he had promised to visit her. “None really my age. At least none that count.” He then remembered the girl at Slate Creek.

  “Hey, how far’s Slate Creek?”

  Mrs. Shearer arched her eyebrows. “A good day, if travelin’s good. Thinking of going there?”

  “Maybe.” Samuel wondered if she knew about the girl but decided not to ask. He doubted his father and he would have reason to go to Slate Creek, being it was that far.

  “Do you hear from your family back in Iowa?” Mrs. Shearer continued.

  Samuel nodded. He felt a lump in his throat. He knew for certain his ma and little sister, five and a half now, weren’t having as fine a Thanksgiving as he was. He knew his grandma wasn’t. He knew Uncle Jake and his cousins weren’t. They had remained behind at the family farm trying to raise enough food to survive until their return.

  “They’re doing okay,” Samuel managed.

  “I figured you two would have gone back by now.”

  “We can’t sell the mine until we prove it up, and … we’re just not done.” That was the truth, Samuel realized.

  She nodded and smiled. Samuel sat for a moment, thinking. His eyes drooped.

  “All talked out finally, I see,” Mrs. Shearer said quietly. She rose and went to the sitting room. Voices and pipe smoke filtered in. Shortly, she was back and took his cup.

  “You’re staying here for the night.” She tapped Samuel on the shoulder. “Come on. You can have the room you had last time.”

  The temperature remained frigid through the following week. The Shearers said it was the earliest and worst cold spell they could remember. They feared some of the fruit trees would be winterkilled.

  It was all Charles and Samuel could do to keep a small fire going in the cabin and keep warm. The creek beside the cabin froze over. They chopped a hole in the ice in the river through which to draw water and kept another area open for their stock. They also broke out the hay they had cut and mixed it with some feed from the Shearers to help get the stock through. They would buy more feed if necessary, but each purchase cut into their money.

  Samuel had borrowed a couple of books and spent much of his time reading. He wondered if Chen was reading the words he knew from the book that Ma Reynolds had given him. Samuel knew Chen. Likely as not, he would have figured out much of the book long before Samuel returned.

  Sometimes Samuel read to his father. Sometimes they invented stories to tell. Sometimes they played checkers. At first, they talked about the coming mining season, what they had to do to prove up the O’Riley—and how promising the last two assays had been.

  “I thought I could see gold, Pa,” Samuel recalled. “Under Mr. Hinley’s glass, you could really see it. That’s just the start. I know it’s going to get better the deeper we go.”

  They talked about the Sweet Mary—how they were going to drill and blast the two boulders and get to the gravel underneath, how rich the gold would be, and how many nuggets they would be able to pick out of the sluice.

  “I hope no one discovers our dig and works it over the winter,” Samuel worried.

  “It’s under snow, son. Besides, they would have to wash it bucket by bucket and melt the ice to have any water,” Charles reminded him. “We just have to be the first ones back when the water starts running in the spring.”

  They talked about how good it would be when the seasons turned, but now each day continued to shorten. The shadows lingered longer and arrived earlier. The canyon remained in darkness most of the day. By four in the afternoon, it was dark, and by five, night.

  Soon the stories and the talking and the plans diminished. Soon there was nothing new to plan or discuss. They sat quietly in the darkness of the canyon.

  Warren Hunt, the expressman, stopped by the cabin one morning. Samuel remembered him from Independence Day, a tall man with chiseled features who spoke strongly.

  “Heard you were here. Didn’t know if you might not have a letter for me to carry.”

  The two were surprised, the thought not having occurred to them, having been isolated from any town.

  “I come through about every two weeks. No problem in swinging up here to check. Put a flag near the trail.”

  They invited him in for a cup of coffee and to share a few minutes.

  “Only a minute. I have a schedule.”

  Usually Hunt stayed with the Shearers and then again with Burgdorf before he reached Washington.

  Hunt told them, “It’s already making for the worst winter I’ve seen at Warren’s since the strike in ’62. Not so much in snow yet, but it’s mighty cold.”

  Samuel hoped for light snow and an early spring.

  “Good snow makes for a good placer season, not so much for the quartz mines. They fill with water come spring.”

  Samuel corrected his thoughts and hoped the snows would be deep.

  The cabin was up off the trail and mostly hidden by brush, but Samuel occasionally caught sight of a rider going through if he was paying attention. Sometimes he sat where he could watch through a crack in the door and check the trail. There was no glass window, only an opening with shutters, which they now kept closed in the bitter cold. Light filtered in through a few gaps; otherwise the cabin was dark except for their kerosene lamp they infrequently lit and the glow from the woodstove.

  One night he awoke. A spot of moonlight filtered through one of the cracks, illuminating an area on the floor near his head. Frigid air had seeped in along the floor. He rose to put a piece of wood into the stove. He lifted the flap on the edge of the window, looking out at the moonlit landscape, its glow reflecting off the water and ice.

  A flaring match lit up a man’s face upstream, and a chill washed over Samuel. Two men sat their horses and were looking in his direction.

  They milled about for a moment or two. When Samuel was about to wake his father, the men turned and continued upstream and soon passed from sight beyond the trail’s bend.

  “I wouldn’t be too concerned,” Charles said the next morning. “It’s easy to misjudge where you want to be on trails in this country.”

  “They were watching the cabin, Pa.”

  “I’m sure they smelled wood smoke and were considering waking us for a place to warm up and stay the night.”

  “Doesn’t seem to make sense. They had already passed us by.”

  “Who knows what they were thinking?” Charles’s voice had an edge.

 
Samuel let it drop, but something about the men nagged at him. Later, he noticed hoofprints near their sluice.

  One morning at breakfast, his father addressed him. “If I’m figuring right, about fifteen years ago this day, your ma had a rude awakening.”

  For a brief moment, Samuel wondered to what his father referred. He had lost track of the days. His father had not. This day, he turned fifteen.

  “I can’t say I have much to give you to mark this day, son. I was hoping by now we’d have a pile of gold and be back home. All I can say is happy birthday.”

  “Thanks, Pa.” Samuel embraced his father.

  “When we get somewhere where I can buy you something, I promise, I will.”

  “Sure.” Samuel knew of no place they could go, and they had little money with which to buy anything.

  Chapter 3

  ONE MORNING, Samuel woke to his father packing gear. Outside was pitch-black.

  His father had watched him awaken. “How about you fry up some bacon, and we’ll finish those spuds we got from the Shearers?”

  “Where you heading?”

  “I’ll tell you over breakfast.” Charles rolled his blankets and tied them tight. “Make a little extra coffee.” He stepped out the door. A cold blast of air swamped the cabin. “I’m bringing the stock up.”

  Samuel wanted to pull his blankets up tighter and go back to sleep, but he forced himself out of bed. He pulled on his trousers and blue dobby shirt and fixed his suspenders. He stoked the fire and presently had breakfast going, musing that his father did not hold in surprises well.

  As his father stepped back in, cold again blasted across the room. “You’ll need to pack your bedroll and your other set of clothes.”

  Now Samuel’s curiosity was killing him, but he did not give in just yet to his father’s game. He served up the bacon and sliced spuds and poured two cups of hot coffee.

  “You and I are going to go have Christmas dinner at Slate Creek.”

  “We are?” Samuel almost dropped his plate.

  “We need to buy some supplies, and I want to talk to folks.” Charles raised his cup to Samuel.

  “Whoopee!” Samuel wolfed down the remainder of his breakfast, cleaned and stowed the dishes, and finished throwing his gear together.

  As light streaked the sky, they were headed down the trail. The elevation would drop by several hundred feet, enough that there would be no snow. The trip would take a full day, maybe longer if traveling became rough.

  Ice covered the trail in places. The horses and mule clattered across, sometimes slipping on the sidehills. Samuel cringed, remembering the thread of a trail ahead that crossed the narrows.

  Huge clouds of steam billowed into the air across the river at the Indian hot springs.

  “If there was an easy way across, that wouldn’t be a bad idea about now.” Charles pointed.

  Samuel studied the roiling clouds for a while, shivering and watching his own breath. The sun was out, but the temperature had not climbed much. His ears and nose stung. He tried to pull his coat collar across his mouth.

  Groff’s ferry appeared abandoned. It made sense; no one would be coming down the Little Salmon River, the direction from which his father and he had come last spring. Country in that direction was now locked deep in snow.

  After they turned north, they entered country they had never seen. The canyon broadened; the river widened. At every draw, a new stream emptied its additional waters. In places, the side canyons were impossibly steep and were choked by brush and trees. Where there were larger streams, the creek bottoms spread out for short distances, creating small openings in the canyon walls, presenting some level land but not much.

  Samuel recognized a Chinese placer camp across the river opposite them, several miles below Groff’s ferry. The Chinese had built a low-slung stone hut, its only apparent wood being the beam across the door and the driftwood roof. He wondered how they reached the hut. Groff’s was the nearest ferry, but using it would certainly be too costly for the Chinese. Then he noticed the raft sandwiched in the ice near where a couple of Chinese worked rockers.

  A couple of black holes appeared cut into the hillside above the men.

  “Pretty smart,” he said.

  “What’s pretty smart?” Charles turned in his saddle.

  “See the holes on the far bank? The Chinese are tunneling in along the old bedrock that used to be the riverbed.”

  Charles squinted toward where Samuel had indicated. “Yep, it looks like placer gravel. A terrace, I think they call it.” Charles clucked at Buster. “They might be pretty smart, but their method is a lot of work.”

  “And if nuggets are lying on that old bedrock like there’s likely to be, then they’re doing just fine.”

  Charles smiled. “Maybe you should check along the river near our cabin for something like that. You might make us rich yet.”

  Samuel decided he would.

  Late in the day, they reached a placer camp at Lucile Bar. Smoke came from a couple of white canvas tents near the river. A few men were wintering, trying to make grub until they could return to richer diggings in the spring.

  The creek had been diverted across the hillside above to feed a sluice that ran downslope across the bar. Ice coated the box, and long icicles reached to the ground. A couple of men were at work but paused to say hello as they rode past.

  Directly across the river, they saw two more Chinese operations, and they encountered yet another small placer camp downstream after another mile.

  “Looks like all the good bars must be down this way, son.”

  “Looks like they’re all taken up as well.”

  With the early winter darkness, they were still several miles from Slate Creek when they decided to camp for the night. The going had been slow, and ice floes had spread across the trail in numerous places, making it difficult for the horses and mule.

  They moved well off the trail near a stream that trickled through blocks of ice and snow.

  “At least I don’t have to worry about rattlers,” commented Samuel.

  “Then you haven’t heard about them ice rattlers,” Charles said. “They’re the worst. Look just like frozen sticks. Should you accidentally thaw one, it’ll bite you twenty times and then again before you know what happened.”

  His father said it so casually it took Samuel a brief moment to realize the joke. “Yep, I suppose they’re about as bad as those ice rats. Like that one there.” Samuel pointed at a rounded cobble. “Look just like rocks until they attack you, eating your eyes out.”

  Charles stared at Samuel. “We start telling stories like this now, what’s it going to be like when we really get cabin fever?”

  “Time to go mining?” Samuel quipped.

  “I hope so.”

  Samuel picketed the stock and fed them some of the grain that Molly carried.

  His father had gathered wood and had a fire snapping against the cold by the time Samuel returned. Samuel could not help but picture the pieces of wood coming to life, turning into snakes.

  They fixed a supper of venison and warmed some biscuits and coffee. Although only about five o’clock, the night was pitch-black. Stars hung like frozen lights in the still, frosty sky.

  Pulling their blankets about their shoulders, their breaths rising in the night air, they watched the night sky as the fire burned down to a bed of glowing embers.

  “It looks like you can just reach out and grab the stars,” Samuel said, sweeping his hand toward the sky. “Never looked like this in Iowa.”

  “Iowa’s different. Sky’s not as clear,” Charles said. “But they do look sharper than usual. Must be the cold.”

  Samuel leaned back, staring upward, studying the blazing points of light. “You reckon the night was like this when the angels visited the shepherds?”

  “Could be. I’ve
often wondered the same seeing the stars shine like they do this time of the year.”

  “I can imagine what it must have been like. Night lights up. Angels come swarming about, singing and such. Would have scared the blazes out of me. Sure would have made me a believer.”

  Charles laughed. “Me as well.”

  A meteor lit the sky.

  “See that?” Samuel pointed. “Maybe they’re coming back.”

  “Might be.”

  Moments later, another meteor streaked across the sky, brighter and longer, disappearing behind the mountains.

  “Might be a meteor shower.”

  They watched until the night cold became too much to bear but saw no others.

  “Come on, son. It’ll be a long day tomorrow.”

  They built up the fire a bit to ward off the plummeting temperature and pulled their blankets about themselves for the night.

  Chapter 4

  EARLY MORNING, they woke to frost on their bedrolls, their boots frozen. They waited until the sun rose and glistened from the ice- and snow-covered gorge before riding out. In a couple of miles, they reached a broad, grassy bench where a few cattle grazed, steam billowing from their nostrils.

  “Must be John Day’s ranch,” Charles said. “We’re nearing Slate Creek.”

  The river pinched into a narrow canyon, and the trail narrowed as well. In places, men had cut away the rock to widen it. The river spilled a hundred feet below, its black water spitting up bits of white spray where it buckled over the rocks. It then swung sharply west and bent back upon itself, piling in monster swells and whitewater against the far cliffs. Samuel studied them. No human alive could possibly carve a trail across that cliff face. The trail barely clung to this side as it was.

  Shortly, the river gorge opened before them into a series of low, grassy benches. Several rough buildings were scattered on a barren plain adjacent to the river—a couple of general stores, a hotel, a blacksmith and livery, and a couple of ranch houses. Numerous whiteface cattle, horses, and mules grazed the hillsides beyond the buildings. They had reached Slate Creek.