"It's the American," said Jake, spitting tobacco the size of a dark dollar onto the dusty ground.

"Mr. Wakefield, I've asked you not to spit," admonished Miss Wren, Edward's nurse.

"So you did, Ma'am," Jake acknowledged, wiping his bushy, drooping, sandy-colored, tobacco-stained mustache.

Listening to the way he said it, though, Dollie, the eleven-year-old girl in the back of the wagon, had the distinct impression he had no intention of paying Miss Wren any mind at all.

Jake would have made a fine desperado, Dollie decided. His shirt was tightly stretched across his broad shoulders; his hat was shapeless; his gun hung loosely at his side. What had he called it? A Colt?

That they were entering desperado territory was obvious. Dollie shivered deliciously at the thought. There were no houses, no brick buildings with glass windows like Baltimore, no tree-lined streets, elegant carriages or sidewalks. Here, the smell of sage and pine drifted over them. For as far as Dollie could see there were scrubby trees and dry golden grass, and before them, winding into the hills, a deeply-rutted trail.

There were an abundance of men on the trail. Dollie was used to crowds, so jostling and bumping did not overly concern her. Still, there was a strange anomaly about this crowd. Dollie saw no women careful of their dresses, nor carrying parcels; she saw no children running, shouting, playing; she saw just men—plenty of men—of all races, dressed in all sorts of outlandish outfits, speaking languages Dollie had never heard.

"From all over world," murmured Jake. "From Italy and France and Scotland and Greece and Ireland and Portugal and South America and China. We have more Chinese in these here parts than in the States, I bet."

There were men striding purposely down the trail, men with mules loaded high with gear, men with packs on their backs, or just a pick or shovel over their shoulder and a pan and not much else. There were men with fierce-looking, bristling, thick, black mustaches; Chinese men with ques; men with broad-brimmed hats, high boots, red bandannas, and overalls. There were men dressed in immaculate black outfits on horseback—their hands smooth of calluses, their hair slicked back, a cigar clenched in their white teeth. There were men in wagons, even men dressed as sailors.

"They probably jumped ship to come up to the gold-fields," said Jake. "Happens all the time."

Dollie saw one of the sailors she knew from the ship that had brought them to California.

"Bertie!" she called, waving, remembering the card tricks he had shown her.

"Miss Dollie," he called back. He came up and strode beside them, lightly resting his hand on the side of the wagon. Bertie touched lightly all of existence.

"Why aren't you with the Zephyr?" asked Edward.

"I decided to seek my fortune in the gold-fields of Californiaye," he said, grinning at the two children. "They say there are valleys hereabouts where you can walk beside streams and pick up gold nuggets the size of your fist, like picking up melons from a garden."

"They say," said Jake. "I ain't never seen it myself."

"And if you don't find your fortune?" sniffed Miss Wren.

"Then I'm no worse off than when I started, am I? There will always be a ship waiting in the harbor for a good seaman—I can return to the sea whenever I like. And if I discover a nugget as big as a watermelon, then . . ." He shrugged expressively.

Then? wondered Dollie, but she didn't have time to ask as he fell away from them. She waved to him; he grinned in return.

"Good luck," he called to Dollie, and Edward, her older brother, waved, too.

"Good luck to you, Bertie," they called in return as the wagon pulled ahead of him.

All the men on the trail seemed happy. Dollie couldn't remember so many smiles, so much laughter. All of them were marching toward the future, not clinging to the past, going to seek their fortunes, intent on conquering these humped-backed hills. They all knew fortune favored only a select few, but each was confident he was the favored one. In Baltimore, Dollie recalled, there had been an intensity about the faces, but rarely a smile. Here, there was focus, fervor, and goodwill all mixed into one emotion.

Whenever the wagon passed a group of argonauts—as they often styled themselves, Jake had said—the men would stop and stare at Dollie and Edward in his high-backed black chair and Miss Wren. These were the first children and the first proper lady they had seen in some time. Some grew silent and removed their hats until the wagon had passed.

Sky blue bonnet carefully adjusted, Miss Wren, sitting beside Jake in the front of the wagon, kept her eyes forward and her back straight. She smoothed the wrinkles from her pale blue dress. It was as if she felt some obligation to be the Madonna these men envisioned.

The wagon creaked and thumped over the bumps and dried ruts that passed for a trail. The sun warm on her cheek, Dollie tried to look in every direction at once, trying to gather into her mind every scene, every sight, every sound. Dollie watched Jake, watched his lean body sway and roll to the rhythm of the wagon. He reminded Dollie of the sailors on the ship, how the rhythms of the sea seemed to flow into their legs. So, too, it was with this man. The rhythms of this new land had permeated his body, so he easily absorbed the jostling of the wagon.

Occasionally, he would good-naturedly say, "Giddup," to the two horses pulling the wagon, if they reached a slight incline, ambling up the trail. But his call was more conspiratorial than authoritative. Often he would sing, gaily, "Oh, Susanna, oh, don't you cry for me. For I come from Alabama with a banjo on my knee." At times the men on the trail would join in with Jake. "Oh, Susanna, oh, don't you cry for me . . . ."

Edward's wheelchair swayed, jiggled, and rolled back and forth as the wagon rumbled with its load of children, trunks, and a nurse through the golden hills of autumn. Edward could have sat in the wagon beside Dollie for the journey to Nevada City ("The third largest city in California, after San Francisco and Sacramento," Jake had proudly proclaimed to them.) and let his wheelchair rest on its side, but he had insisted he wanted to sit in the black wheelchair that had come with them all the way from Baltimore.

"I can see better this way," he said, but Dollie suspected Edward was just showing off.

Run over by a coach when he was four, Edward had not been able to walk for eight years. In that time, he had gotten used to the stares—and the special treatment, too, Dollie thought—so he didn't even notice it any more, but merely took it for granted, the way a monarch might take the stares of commoners for granted. Indeed, sitting in his wheelchair, he did look something like a monarch on his throne, surveying his domain.

And his domain was all new and fresh to him. Constantly, he would point out details in the novel landscape. It might be as simple as a new flower.

"California golden poppies," Jake had said, pointing to a vivid golden vision in a meadow.

Or Edward would point to a tree, a squirrel, a rabbit, or some other animal that would linger for a moment on the edge of their vision, then disappear. Above, hawks floated on the currents of the foothills looking for prey.

"Red tails," said Jake.

One time they saw an antelope bound away from them and down a ravine. Another time, they saw, on the edge of a clearing, a herd of deer lorded over by a many-antlered buck. Yet another time, Jake gestured to a hill in the distance. A brown splotch lumbered over the golden crest, disappearing almost as quickly as Jake had called attention to it. "A grizzly, the meanest damn—"

"Mr. Wakefield," Miss Wren warned.

"Yes, Ma'am," Jake said. "The orneriest critter on God's green earth."

Miss Wren said, "You can imagine what a thrill it must be for a child who is rarely out of doors to see such sights."

"Chair or no chair, I'd have him outside with me, smelling the pine, feeling the sun on the back of his neck, the breeze on his cheek, hearing the gurgle of a creek, or feeling the tug of a fishing pole. Let me have him for a week, and I'd have him hunting and fishing with the best of them."

Miss Wren humphed in disgust. "I hardly think that is the reason Judge Hardgrove sent you to Sacramento."

"There you are right. He sent me to fetch you from the Golden Zephyr, and that is exactly what I aim to do."

Judge Hardgrove—it sounded strange, Dollie thought. Their father had been an attorney in Baltimore when he had decided that, with all the claims, claim-jumping, and quarrels over mines and property going on in the Gold Rush, California could use some good lawyers. He wrote to Dollie and Edward often from California, but the letters arrived haphazardly. Months would go by with nothing, then they would receive two or three letters by one ship. A year after leaving for California, he had written Dollie and Edward to say that he had been elected Judge, that he had decided Nevada City offered enough promise to make it his home—their home. He had made all the arrangements for boat passage, for the trip across the Isthmus of Panama, then another boat passage on the Pacific side, on the Golden Zephyr. That was where they had met Bertie. Now, on the very last leg of their long journey, Dollie and Edward were agog, looking at all the strange sights. Baltimore was a distant and pale memory.

Beside Jake's lanky and fluid form sat Miss Wren, thin and wiry, erect and vigilant. Dollie's mother had died during Dollie's birth. At first, their father had hired a nanny to take care of them; Dollie could remember nothing of them save starched aprons and black-buttoned shoes. When Edward had been hurt in the accident, Miss Wren was retained, first as a nurse, then later, a governess. Miss Wren, prim with high, stiff collars and a no-nonsense approach, had taken care of the two children for seven years now. Indeed, she had been the only mother they had ever known.

Beneath the starched surface of her demeanor, though, she truly loved her two charges. There was a gentleness in her seamed and bony hand as she touched Dollie's forehead each night when she put her to bed. Without a word of complaint she took care of Edward, despite his occasional bouts of petulance and nonchalant demands. She even loved them enough to get angry with them when they did something that carelessly endangered themselves.

One day, on the ship from Baltimore to the Isthmus of Panama, Dollie and Edward had been arguing about how much the ship rolled.

"I'll show you," said Dollie, and she jumped up on the rails. Looking over the edge at the green and glassy waves that lifted and fell, rose and dropped, swelled and dipped, Dollie grew queasy. The girl swayed.

White-lipped, without a word, Miss Wren strode over to where Dollie trembled on the edge of the ship. With a sure hand, she grasped the eleven-year-old girl's wrist, yanking her onto the deck.

She stood over Dollie and shook her. Then she clutched the girl to her stomach, muttering angrily, "Don't ever do that again. Don't you have more sense than that?"

Dollie was surprised to feel some warm tears splash on her braids, but by the time Miss Wren allowed her to look up, the nurse was brushing them away. "Go to your room right now," she ordered, forgetting that Dollie's room was also Miss Wren's, and Edward's too.

Now, riding in the front of the wagon beside the lean westerner, with her lips pursed and her brown hair streaked with gray and pulled back tightly, she watched this new, warm and dusty environment as carefully as a mother bear guarded the territory her cubs explored.

Gradually, the road became less and less crowded as the men took different forks. Some merely stopped, looked around, and disappeared into the high tawny brush, following invisible trails down to creeks and streams, which were the arteries and veins of the gold rush. Others followed smaller trails that angled away from the major one. At such junctures, makeshift signs bore cryptic messages: Frenchman's Valley, Gunbarrel Summit, Hambone, Deadman's Detour, and Camp Lost Treasure. By imperceptible degrees Miss Wren and the two children were alone more and more.

"Savages," shrieked Miss Wren, pointing.

Dollie and Edward quickly craned their necks.

"Hardly," said Jake. He smiled. "Shhh."

Six Indians stood on the edge of the road. One, obviously the leader, stood slightly in front, while the other five stood behind him, watchful and waiting. He had a somber appearance. His bronze skin was deeply seamed. His intensely dark eyes probed. Dollie thought they were young eyes in an ancient face. Where or how he had gotten his outfit was difficult to tell, but he wore a navy blue coat with white edging and gold buttons. The coat would not have been out of place in any fashionable drawing room of New York City or Charleston. He also wore a white shirt, a black cravat that was tightly tied, and a high-crowned hat. His face was expressionless as he watched the wagon pull up to them.

Jake nodded to the chief, tipping his hat in deference as they drove past. The Indians watched Edward in his shiny, black wheelchair and Dollie beside him.

Once they had passed, Jake said, "That’s Wema, chief of the Nisenan. He’s on good terms with the Judge. Because of him and the Judge, there’s been little bloodshed in this neck of the woods. Both men are fair, reasonable, and honorable, so they get along well. They’ve reached an agreement. If an Indian breaks a law harming a white man, the Chief is expected to carry out the sentence. If a white man breaks a law harming an Indian, then the Judge has to see the sentence is carried out."

Dollie looked at the Indians. It was hard to imagine an Indian as a friend of her father’s. The Indians stood silently behind them, looking tan as ghosts in the dust created by the wagon. She looked into the eyes—the black and piercing eyes—of Wema. Dollie lifted her small hand, as if to wave at the old man, and she smiled. Was there just a hint of a smile in the old chief's eyes? Did his lips twitch just slightly? It was hard to tell. Still, he did lift his hand.

The wagon rumbled over the small hills, burnished with dry grass, leaving behind a billowing trail of dust. They rolled through meadows of high and pale green grass, into and out of valleys. The earth turned a rusty red, and behind the wagon the dust made pink clouds. Many of the streams were dried up, cracked and copper-colored, and the wagon wheels clattered hollowly over the bridges that traversed the empty river beds.

"It looks like a dead and forlorn land to me," Miss Wren said.

"Just sleeping," said Jake. "You just wait for the winter rains; it’ll get all green and growing and lush again. Pile on that the warmth of the spring, and you'll see growth like you've never seen before. Why, I remember one night last year I hung my hat on a branch 'fore I went to sleep. In the morning when I awoke, I couldn't reach my hat, the tree had growed so tall."

The children laughed as Miss Wren said, "You did not."

"Sure did," Jake maintained, grinning.

"Stop right there."

A sudden chill spilled over the group. The voice was utterly emotionless and cold. Jake jerked around as he reached for his Colt. He got his six-shooter half way out of his holster before the first bullet tore through his left arm. He leaped from the wagon, firing, dropping one of the men. Miss Wren shrieked. It was hard to tell how many there were and where they were located. From the other side of the road came another shot, and a bullet ripped into Jake’s chest.

Bloody, wounded, Jake rolled beneath the wagon; he fired again and was rewarded by a groan of pain in the bushes. But before he could get off another shot, two more bullets slashed through him.

A man with colorless eyes, on a huge, prancing gray, loomed above the driver. For an instant, Jake attempted to lift his revolver one final time. Calmly, the man put a bullet through Jake's head.

An unnatural silence hovered over the scene. Horrified, silent, Dollie, Edward, and Miss Wren stared at Jake's suddenly still body lying in the dust. None of them had ever been touched by violent death. Now they could smell it, acrid and sharp, as Jake's blood mingled with the dust, looking like dark coins.

"Damn, I've seen men die hard, but he was the hardest." The man who had cold-bloodedly killed Jake casually eyed those in the wagon. He kept his smoking gun idly at his side.

One of the two remaining outlaws, riding a stallion, swept up to him. "Dammit, Bitters, there was no need for that."

"What was I to do? Hank and Will are both dead." For a moment, Bitters gazed at the leader long and hard. What went on behind the opaque film of his eyes was impossible to tell. Then he relaxed, holstering his .45. "You got the brains to head a gang, all right. You just need a stronger stomach."

Ignoring Bitters, the leader turned to the nurse and children. "What have you got in the trunks?"

Dollie felt a bead of perspiration slide down her skin, prickling her flesh. A surge of hot air stifled her.

With Jake’s death, Miss Wren seemed to gather strength. She stood in the wagon, facing the three men, her back straight, chin thrust forward, elbows akimbo and fists on her hips. "The trunks are our personal property."

"I can see that," said the leader, exasperated. "What is in them?"

"None of your business," she said.

"Bill, open 'em; shoot off the locks," he told the third member of the gang—a tall, lanky fellow with crooked teeth, a prominent Adam's apple, and a boneless way of sliding off his pinto.

Bill pulled a green trunk over the side of the wagon. He shot off the lock, then holstered his pistol and flipped open the trunk. He tossed gowns into the red dirt.

Miss Wren leaped from the wagon and onto his back. "Leave my things alone; they are personal." With her small fists, she beat his head and shoulders, knocking the hat from his head.

The other men laughed, watching, as Bill tried to pull Miss Wren off his back. Finally, he was able to grab her bony wrist, while she kicked, thrashed, and tried to bite him. She shouted, "There are men just down the trail. They will be here any moment to rescue us. Surely, they heard the gunshots. Judge Hardgrove will hear of this, I can assure you!"

Said Bitters, "If anyone heard us, they hightailed it the other way—probably half way to Sacramento by now."

"Wait!" commanded the leader; the imperious quality of his voice stopped all of them. "What did you say about Judge Hardgrove?" he demanded of Miss Wren.

"These are Judge Hardgrove's children," she replied, indicating Dollie and Edward, "and I have been entrusted with their care. If you do not want the full and awesome weight of the law brought down upon you, you would do well to make sure we are returned to the Judge unharmed."

"Ma'am," the leader said, "in this part of the country, we are law."

Bitters wheeled his gray around to the back of the wagon. His dead eyes moved over Dollie and Edward. "Judge Hardgrove's kids, huh?" His eye alighted on Edward's wheelchair. "What's with that?"

"The boy has been unable to walk since early childhood."

"You mean he can't move without that chair?"

"Essentially."

"I still got my fists," said Edward, drawing from Miss Wren's defiance and shaking a fist in the outlaw's face.

The smile on Bitters's thin lips held no humor as he said softly, "We'll have to see about those fists one of these days."

Dollie felt a chill ripple through her body; the velvet menace of his voice matched the deadliness of his eyes. She sensed this man had no compassion and would hurt them if he ever got the chance, just for the sheer delight of beating them into submission.

"Bitters!" the leader called to him.

The three outlaws drew away from the wagon. The discussion went on for several minutes with the leader doing most of the talking.

When they returned, the leader said, "We figure the Judge will be glad to pay a pretty penny to get his kids back. We've decided to hold you for ransom. You'll come with us to our hide-out. Then we can look through the trunks in our own good time."

"You'll do no such thing—"

The leader waved Miss Wren silent. "Bill, drive the wagon. And roll the bodies into the ravine, so no one’ll notice. Coyotes will take care of 'em."

Taking the dead man by his arms, Bill pulled Jake's body to the side of the road, then let the body roll down the ravine. Dollie turned her head, unable to witness the ignoble end of a noble man.

Bill tied his horse to the back of the wagon, then took the teamster seat, clucking his tongue to stir the two-horse team. He ignored Miss Wren as she rattled on.

"I have never been treated like this in my entire life.This is infamous.You, sir, are a cad. Wait until Judge Hardgrove hears of this. You are going to regret this, young man. If you were my son, I would take you over my knee and give you a good thrashing until you wailed. Then I'd like to tell you a thing or two. . . ."

Dollie looked back, but all she could see of Jake was the two parallel lines his boots had left in the dust. Don't cry, she told herself. Whatever you do, don't cry.

On the lookout, the leader travelled some distance ahead of the wagon, while Bitters stayed far in the rear. To avoid his eyes, the children craned their heads toward the front.

After several miles, during which time Miss Wren cheerfully and relentlessly reminded the gang of their degenerate ways, their atrocious manners, their abominable use of Shakespeare's English, and the horrifying purgatory that awaited them, the group stopped. Cautiously, they looked around. To the left, an obscure trail, already overgrown, dropped down a hillside. In a few months it would be obliterated altogether. The grass seemed to grow taller even as Dollie sat in the wagon watching it.

Bill pulled the reins to the left, and the wagon started down the trail. It was a steep grade. In a moment, they were lost to the road above their heads. They were among a small forest—birches, willows, a few oak, beeches. Leaves scattered as the wagon wheels crunched over them. Dollie looked back; a small breeze stirred the golden, orange, bronze, tan, and red leaves—in a moment it would be as if no one had passed that way at all. The gang had chosen their hide-out well.

Eventually, they stopped their downward descent. After about a quarter of a mile, they came upon a creek. The creek was low and there was a large area of gravelly rocks where it rushed during the winter rains. Several abandoned buildings stood beside the creek, as well as tree stumps and straight-angled paths. Now the only denizen of the gold rush town was a rusty-colored fox that flitted down the weed-overgrown avenues.

Bill said, "For a short time, when they discovered a few nuggets in the river there, this was a bustling place. Now look at it."

The few dilapidated buildings stood gray and weathered. Boards were falling out. Only fragments of glass remained in windowpanes. Grass grew in the gaps of the steps, while the wind whistled through cracks in the buildings.

The two men dismounted, and Bill jumped down from the wagon. "In there," said the leader, nodding to one of the buildings.

Inside, Dollie looked around. At one time this had been a saloon, but the gang had turned it into their living quarters. Several bed rolls lined a wall. Unclean dishes littered the table, while the bar held bottles, dishes, a lantern, and some grub.

Rummaging behind the bar, the outlaws found a scrap of paper and the stub of a pencil.

"Sit down," the leader commanded Miss Wren. She sat at a green felt circular table, while the leader dictated the ransom note. "We are well. Meet the demands of these men and we will be returned unharmed. If you try to capture the outlaws, they will kill us. They are desperate. Please, I beg of you—"

"Oh, come now," said Miss Wren.

"Write it!" thundered the leader.

She wrote it.

The leader went on: "They want . . ." The gang discussed the ransom amount. ". . . $10,000."

"Judge Hardgrove is not a wealthy man. He doesn't have that kind of money," said Miss Wren.

"He'll get it if he wants to see his children again."

"If he doesn't have it, he doesn't—"

"Don't worry. The Judge knows every wealthy man in the county. He'll get it." He began to dictate the note again. "Leave the money under the bridge at Salmon Creek." He then spelled out more details of the ransom.

When the note was finished, the men started a fire in the stove. The three of them were jovial. Over a supper that consisted of beans and sourdough bread they talked about how they would spend the money.

"I'm going back to Vermont and buy myself a store," said the leader. "It'll be the prettiest little place you've ever seen, with green shutters and . . ."

Bill wanted to buy himself a ranch. "Down in the Santa Clara Valley. Raise beef for all the people pouring into California."

Bitters said he planned to get drunk for a week of Sundays, buy himself a bath and all that went with it. Dollie wondered what "all that went with it" meant, but decided it was better she not know.

A deep sapphire night descended with a swift finality. Huge stars spiked the profound, immense darkness. Because most of the windows were gone, the night spilled into the room, bringing cool air.

Bitters, the three men decided, should deliver the note, "in the dead of night." After he left, Miss Wren started to prepare the children for sleep. Edward slipped out of his wheelchair and onto a blanket beside Dollie, near the black stove which kept the cold at bay.

As Miss Wren covered them, she leaned in close—so close that Dollie could smell the powder she wore. "Courage, children," she whispered. "You must be very brave. When the men fall asleep, I’ll try to disarm them."

"Why?" asked Dollie. "They said they would let us go once they had the money."

" Perhaps the leader will, perhaps Bill would, but Bitters—him I do not trust. There is a gleam about his eye. As soon as he sees that gold, I think he will try to kill the rest of the gang. All of the money is better than one-third. And if he should emerge victorious, which seems likely, he will be worried that we can identify him."

"What are you going to do?" asked Edward, and although he was tired, excitement glittered in his voice.

"I don't know. I won't know until the time—"

"What are you talking about over there?" demanded the leader.

"I'm having the children say their prayers," Miss Wren told him. "That wouldn't be a bad idea," she whispered to the children.

"Bill, take the first watch," said the leader. "Wake me in a couple of hours, and I'll relieve you." He dropped onto a blanket across the room.

Bill sat at the green felt table and played solitaire with a deck of greasy cards. Hand after hand, the cards snapped down. Dollie felt a shudder of anticipation. She briefly squeezed her eyes open. She wasn't sure, but she thought she detected a gleam of light at the slits of Miss Wren's lids.

It was quiet. The soft warmth of the fire drifted over Dollie's face. The dark shadows cast by the flames became grayer, less distinct, as the fire died. The wood crackled and dropped quietly into ash as the log was consumed.

Bill laid his head in the crook of his arm. After a few moments his breathing became regular—as regular as the leader's breathing across the room. Quietly, Miss Wren raised herself onto her elbow. Dollie opened her eyes, too. Miss Wren put her finger to her lips. For a long time, the woman waited, watching. Finally, satisfied that Bill was asleep, she acted. The nurse was surprisingly lithe as she rose to her knees, then to her feet, crouching. The two outlaws continued to sleep. Miss Wren took a few steps, bending low.

The fire popped and crackled. She stopped while Bill shifted and mumbled, then settled down again.

Miss Wren took another step. She crept within a few feet of the outlaw. His six-shooter stood out from his hip. She lunged forward and grabbed it, yanking it from the holster.

"Wha—?" he exploded, leaping to his feet.

Startled out of sleep, the leader pulled out his own gun. Sleepy, not knowing what he was seeing except for a gray shape that was on its feet, he fired automatically. Bill moaned once, then slumped forward on the table. Miss Wren, screaming, held the pistol in both hands, shaking, taking a step backward. She fired at the same time the leader pulled the trigger a second time. Simultaneously, both uttered a shriek.