California Bloodstock Read Online Free Page B

fraternity of grubby southerners who hung around a distillery run by Kentucky-born Isaac Grahm. Grahm was highly respected. He had been plotting and schemingin California for a number of years and had done well, if you forget the various efforts by numerous Californios to have him deported as a dangerous foreigner. He and the Burgetts hit it off at once and they were his guests for more than a week, drinking raw whisky and bullshitting.
    Galon was quick-minded as a drop latch but having only just arrived in California his understanding of its politics was, as he put it, as fuzzy as a mad cat’s back. He wondered if there was any law around.
    Naw, Grahm assured him, anybody with any balls just makes up his own.
    Galon was relieved. It wasn’t that he was especially concerned about their fun with the girl, but he had been feeling vaguely anxious whenever he thought about what Sewey had done to Slant.
    Well, fuck him if he can’t take a joke, Grahm roared when Galon told him the story. Ha, ha, ha.
    So when the Burgetts rode on, Galon was chuckling to himself at how easily such things could be made into jokes. Which goes to show how right he sometimes was for all the wrong reasons.
16
Slant
    Slant lost most of his illusions along with his balls. He knew without thinking that it would be useless to report the incident to the greaser authorities. He didn’t have any confidence in American justiceeither, but he did file a formal complaint with Thomas Larkin, the American consul, probably just to test the density of his new status. What would Larkin say?
    Larkin was a big-eared, plodding, dry-goods-oriented transplant from Massachusetts who dealt primarily in skins, soap, and manifest destiny. He wore black linen suits and was known from Mazatlan to Mystic as a man who definitely knew how to fry more than one fish at a time. He had bartered his way into Californio society, and since about 1840 had been carrying on like some kind of one-man chamber of commerce and tourist bureau, writing letters full of hard-sell descriptions of California as paradise to the New York papers. Larkin called for pioneers the way that most men ask their wives to pass the salt, and quietly supplied any warships, whalers, or trading vessels touching his coast without regard for their affiliations.
    He propped his black boots up on his shiny mahogany desk and leaned back grinning at Slant. So they cut your balls off.
    Just what Slant was afraid of, snide ridicule. Larkin rocked in his chair and chuckled that if Slant could round up the culprits he would be glad to officiate at a trial.
    Big deal, Slant shouted, limping toward the door.
    You never know, Larkin called after him. Hang in there.
    Very funny. Slant’s paranoia conjured hideous jokes being circulated at his expense. He imagined former friends and business associates yucking it upover his condition as they sat around drinking and gambling at the Cantina del Futuro Proximo. Sticks and stones…indeed. He dropped from sight.
    Days, he convalesced in bed, cursing out of control at the vacancy between his legs. Nights, he brooded on the patio. And the deeper he brooded, the icier the winds he felt blowing up his thighs. He felt his manly juices deserting him, dripping away. He decided to get out of town, to flee. If he couldn’t have a miracle in his sad old life, he could at least be left alone. But where?
    Finally, after considering a return east, he determined to point his future north, toward Yerba Buena, a small settlement at the head of San Francisco Bay noted for keeping secrets and not giving a shit who showed up. A good place to forget about everything.
    Ironically, it was on the very night he made his decision that his past fell in on him like a crumbling library. The keystone had moved.

FOUR
17
New York
    T. D. Slant wooed Miss Pippa Lippencot on the muddy sidewalks of New York in the spring of 1825. An interesting year, 1825, and not just for Slant.
    Buckdown helped organize a