California Bloodstock by Terry McDonell Page B

Jr. rode north the next morning, but before they left T. D. Jr. made a daguerreotype, at Taya’s request, as a present to thank Counsel’s wife. He placed her and her husband in front of the trading post. She sat on a bale of fox pelts; Counsel stood behind her with his rifle. The trappers heckled from the side. Halfway through the exposure, Counsel suddenly wheeled and walked off into the woods. T. D. Jr. knew at once that the plate was ruined, and sure enough, when he developed it there was the woman, clear and sharp in every detail but totally unbalanced in the composition by Counsel’s blur fading out of the perspective behind her. T. D. Jr. wondered if Counsel knew Zorro.
43
San Joaquin
    Dawn. The sky was pink, pale blue, and shiny. It cupped over the San Joaquin like an inverted abalone shell, tropical and misleading. They were traveling north, straight up the middle of the huge arid valley, through a flatness that stretched in every direction like amnesia. Taya was sullen. Jumpy.
    Since leaving Counsel’s she had felt herself pushed closer and closer toward the edge of something, something physical, depleting. Yet she wanted to fly toward it, to get to it and see.
    She was already mounted, waiting for T. D. Jr. He was seeing to the packhorse, checking his equipment.
    Relax, he said. We’ll find him.
    Yes, she said quickly, if we get moving and don’t waste time talking about it.
    Her voice was sharp, too sharp for him that early in the morning.
    Look, he said, I don’t see why you have to be nasty about it. I’m still here, aren’t I? And I’m not complaining, am I?
    She didn’t answer, just dropped her eyes away from him and waited. He walked his horse up beside her and climbed slowly into the saddle. He had hurt her feelings, he thought, and he didn’t like to do that. But he was damned if he was going to be badgered into a pace that would exhaust them both and probably kill the horses.
    I know how you feel, he told her and was about to explain about the horses when she cut him off.
    No you don’t.
    She spurred her horse into a reckless lope and he didn’t catch up with her that day, or that week. In fact, he almost didn’t follow her to Sutter’s Fort at all. He thought about turning west, straight for the coast and the hell with her. But he didn’t, and not because of any promise he had made. No, it was far more complicated than that. In fact, he was never sure himself why he followed her to Sutter’s Fort.
44
Rio Fresno
    At dusk, Taya pulled up on a bluff and looked northwest. Ash trees quivered in the late breeze along a small river. Two miles farther north, it joined a much larger river, and there, in the crook of that junction, a tribe of Worm Eaters had made a fishing camp.
    Purple light thrown off in a glow from the dropping sun lingered in the air, washing the water birds in a florescent pastel. When Taya looked due west, she noticed the rolling dust of a band of mounted men. They were headed toward the fishing camp. Taya had two choices: warn the Worm Eaters about the night riders headed for them, or forget it and ride on about her own business. She spurred her pony toward the river.
    By this time there were about a hundred thousand Worm Eaters left in California, about half as many as that Majorcan-born soldier of God Junipero Serrahad found in the bushes when he had shown up to save them seventy or so years earlier. And the fact that there were, even in this year of our Lord 1846, only a few hundred Californios, Mexicans, Europeans, and gringos loose in the land made the Worm Eater weeding-out process seem all the more successful. Hell, it hadn’t been easy, especially in light of the Worm Eater’s timid manner. The young ones were sometimes tough to find.
    Riding into the fishing camp Taya wasted no time. As the braver of the Worm Eaters snuck out from behind their tule huts to stare at her, Taya jumped from her pony and drew the sign for bad trouble in the dirt.
    As she rode on, her