Page 29 of A Good Prospect

Chapter Eleven

The going was a bit slower down into Hornitos. While Sal had been indulging in paroxysms of lust down by the river, Knut had entertained himself with the aguardiente bottle, and insisted upon blaring,

Let me go to my home in the far distant west,

To the scenes of my childhood in innocence blest;

Where the tall cedars wave and the bright waters flow,

Where my fathers repose. Let me go, let me go

He had demanded that Ophir bring his fiddle, but poor Ophir couldn’t very well play while he rode, so they took to traveling ahead of Knut, riding toward the San Joaquin plains, traversed by the steely glimmer of the Merced River. At intervals they had to wait for Knut to catch up, and they drank water from their skins, pissed behind trees, and now were forced to talk to pass the time.

“Your parents,” Salvador said offhandedly. “You said they are long gone.” He had not quite known how to approach this, but he had an overwhelming need to know. Sal had heard that untoward and unchristian things went on in those slave plantations in The States, and it was very evident that Ophir was not of full African descent, with his burnished copper skin.

“Yes?” Ophir looked up quizzically from where he was standing by his horse, chomping on a cigarrito he’d purchased at Savage’s trading post. Savage was beginning to carry ever more esoteric items, such as bolts of silk for women to sew garments, torrid sentimental novels, India rubber blankets, and brandied fruits. Overnight Bear Valley had turned into a booming town. “They are long gone. My mother passed ages ago—consumption.”

Salvador walked closer. “And your father?”

Predictably, Ophir glowered at him from under his silken black brows. But, perhaps thinking of the shameful intimacy they had just shared, or knowing he needed Sal’s help to get that letter sent to North Carolina—or the fact that Sal was giving him a plot of land—he allowed, “He’s alive. Just was never really…a father to me.”

“Where is he?” Sal ventured. “North Carolina?”

Ophir held the glower for a few more seconds, then abandoned it with a sigh of disgust, fiddling around in his pommel bags, presumably looking for the phosphorous matches to light his cigarrito. “Yes, North Carolina,” he admitted through gritted teeth.

Salvador tried another approach. “You’re very light-skinned, like me. I’m obviously not a true full-blood Californio—it’s obvious my father was from Boston, and—”

Despite all Sal’s machinations, Ophir exploded at last. Slamming the pommel bag against the horse’s withers, he faced Sal and yelled, “All right! My master is my father! Is that what you wanted to hear? Good God almighty, amigo! And yes, this is why I have no siblings—all my siblings grew up white in the big house!” He returned to the pommel bags, angrily tossing items he did not want onto the ground.

Salvador was sorry he had prodded. He ventured, “We have more in common than we knew, both being half-caste. It’s been difficult for me to explain in Californio society why I’m not as dark as the rest of them.”

Ophir snorted again. “Yes, and your father was a well-respected ranchero who acknowledged his paternity. He converted to Catholicism and was given the name Juan Palomares y José, your mother told me. That’s why your surname isn’t Dearborn.”

“True,” Sal swiftly admitted, bending down to sweep the box of matches from where Ophir had tossed them. Standing erect to face his partner, he said gently, “I was trying to describe parallels between us, perhaps to express the closeness, the devotion and regard I have for you.” Californios could be quite florid in their speech, and Sal meant to utilize it to his greatest advantage. “And if my father was not white, I would be standing here speaking to you in Spanish right now. Our conversation would mostly consist of cravings for beef and descriptions of horses.”

That brought a flicker of a smile to Ophir’s harsh face, and he accepted the box of matches. Sal noted that Ophir had somehow managed, during one of their breaks to wait for Knut, to trim with his razor the short goatee he liked to affect. It gave him the look of a handsome but predatory satyr. It made Sal achingly aware that he had best step up his “exquisite” toilet, if he wished to remain in competition with Ophir for Tamasin’s hand. Perhaps she preferred men with beards, and Sal was childishly clean-shaven, although this week he had not shaved in days. Men simply didn’t shave when on the trail.

“Yes,” Ophir agreed. “Or we’d be gambling away our gold dust on monte.”

That was true. Californios did love to gamble. Sal was about to say something else, but Knut’s warbling came into earshot then, bouncing off the golden hilltops like the Germanic yodeling Sal had been unfortunate enough to hear once.

Tamasin emerged from the chaparral, and Sal couldn’t tell if she glanced at him or Ophir with more favor. They mounted and continued down the succession of oak-studded ridges, but Sal was lost in deep thought. He tried to ride close to Tamasin to give her the impression he was also her protector, as he knew she viewed Ophir as her protector, when he’d shielded her with his body. That gave Ophir a distinct advantage over Sal, while Sal would be forever known as the one who had ruthlessly plugged her worthless husband. But that had been a form of protection! Niall Norris may have even picked off Tamasin herself, the way he’d been flailing that piece about!

Sal pondered further about his recent physical congress with Ophir. Of course they had been overcome with carnality, watching Tamasin floating in the river like a mermaid. Their penises were both hard—why not do something about it? It was perfectly normal for youths to frig themselves in the same room while lewdly discussing the merits of various girls. It did give Sal a shuddering pause for thought that Ophir had stepped beyond those societal boundaries and had taken Sal’s penis into his own hand, but it was just the natural progression of things. Sal did not consider himself a sodomita. He was merely a man with a larger than normal lust for things of a sexual nature. That seemed to go hand in hand with his athletic prowess. He desired to lasso cattle, to horse race, to bait the bulls and bears…Why not seek out every possible avenue of physical satisfaction to satiate his passion? And of course another man would be more proficient in the ways of frigging, having doubtless done it to himself thousands of times.

In fact, as Sal now observed the sultry gyration of Ophir’s muscular haunches in the enormous Californio saddle, he was confident they would probably indulge in physical congress again. Or, he hoped so. Tamasin had not seemed shocked to discover them in the throes of eroticism, so it would not be untoward if they were to be discovered like that again. Perhaps they could even use it to help educate the naïve and unschooled woman who had probably only experienced congress at the bumbling, soaked hands of that loathsome husband. Yes, watching Ophir’s splendid purplish cock swell and rise and stand up pulsating in the air between them, indeed, that had inspired Salvador. He wished to return the favor Ophir had done him, of frigging him to completion, that salty, warm semen splashing over his own chest, gobs sliding down his abdomen. He was fascinated with Ophir’s sculpted beauty, that was all. He had no desire at all to be a sodomita as a general rule. They were not effeminate men, like those exquisites who paraded in San José and seemed incapable of picking up a reata.

The babble and shouts of the exuberant town of Hornitos wafted up when they were a half mile away. The quartet of riders from Las Oliveras plunged into the hodgepodge of the main street, where the draw of gambling appeared even stronger than upon Sal’s last visit. “Americans” played faro and poker, relegating monte for the Spaniards and lansquenet for Frenchmen. Indeed, nobody appeared to be engaged in any useful occupation at all aside from the Sonoran arrieros, muleskinners who brought goods into town. Sal’s horse crunched many broken bottles and oyster tins underfoot.

“Something’s different,” Ophir observed guardedly.

“Sí,” Sal agreed, although he couldn’t quite put a finger on what it was.

Surprisingly, it was Knut who pointed it out. “There are many less Spaniards! Note the preponderance of poker and faro tables, and almost the complete absence of monte. I had heard a rumor they were trying to evict foreigners from Hornitos. A very prominent Texan was tossed out of the Yuba River up north because he owned slaves, and all peón and patrón relationships are being frowned upon. This Mr. Green has come here to stir anti-greaser sentiment.” He seemed to flicker his knowing eyelids in Ophir’s direction. “Son, you may want to release Mr. Ophir here from attending our meeting with Mr. McCarthy.”

“I’ll do no such thing!” Sal said hotly. “We’re not a master-servant team—we’re partners.” However, part of Knut’s speech did sink its tentacles into Sal’s brain. Was he imagining that people were staring longer at them as they attempted to navigate the cluttered, trashy street? In a town where the most motley collection of vices were freely practiced in the full noonday sun, why were citizens pausing like statues and staring at them in wonderment, as though their broadfalls were unbuttoned? Even that eventuality would not have caused such stunned reactions, and Sal couldn’t discern if the citizens were disgusted at the sight of them, or intrigued. He finally concluded it must be the beauteous presence of Tamasin that had residents so astonished—here, as in all gold-digging towns, pretty young women were so rare as to be mythological creatures, and Tamasin may as well have been a mermaid for all the astounded stares she received.

But perhaps it wasn’t only Tamasin who caused such a reaction…