Far up the line, well beyond the end of any rail spiking, and over two thousand feet above the elevation of the road bed where grading and fill was underway, Simon Striker perched on an icy rock outcropping overlooking the valley far below that was soon to be the cradle of the Central Pacific’s gleaming iron road. Almost a year ago he’d begun work on what he was then convinced would be the making of his fortune. At great time and effort and with all he’d earned in the gold fields, he’d worked to develop his holdings on the west and north slopes of Blood Mountain. A mountain he’d named himself as he had spilled a great deal of that commodity in order to claim, procure, and protect it. A name he’d chosen as one that might just serve to keep others away.
The first to feel his wrath had been a small settlement of Norwegians who had carved out a tiny three cabined village and begun to hand cut posts and poles from the fine stands of jeffery, lodge pole, and ponderosa, and to whipsaw timber into planks and haul them all to the valley thirty and more miles below.
Two well timed fires to post piles and cabins had dashed the Norwegian’s hopes of a settlement to call their own, as well as had a couple of well placed back-shots when Striker found them working beyond ear shot of their bohunk chums.
The second and bloodiest of his forays to protect what he considered his was to rout, single-handedly, a settlement of two-dozen yellow dogs who’d been breaking the law by mining a fresh discovery. The law plainly said no Chinese could mine anything other than tailings. He was well justified in setting a charge that caused a landslide, an inundation saving him from any consideration of burying the twenty or so in the ravine they’d invaded on ‘his mountain.’ Even the stench of the little yellow men had been covered in rock and debris.
Unfortunately, it had also entombed their discovery in tons of over-carriage, so Striker’s thought of jumping the illegal claim was buried along with them. Hell, it was probably a worthless vein none-the-less, and one to which only the Chinee would pay heed.
Yes, he’d gone to great lengths to protect his place here in this paradise.
Even the railroad he considered an interloper, but at least it was one he’d schemed he could profit from. And he’d invested greatly in order to do so. A herd of twenty prime mules fed on last summer’s meadow hay spread in a nearby corral. Striker had hired a skinner, now buried down at the end of the meadow not far from where Striker had built his small cabin. He’d also inherited the animal’s fine tack and tow-rigging, oiled and hanging in the small barn out behind Striker’s cabin. An unmarked grave was the payment received by the mule man.
The animals were another addition to Striker’s growing fortune.
Striker’s ownership of the mule man’s property was a fitting salute, at least to Striker’s way of thinking, to the hard work the man had invested to haul the hydraulic mill over thirty miles up into the Sierra to Simon Striker’s Blood Mountain.
The man had even been foolish enough to keep the deposit Striker had paid him in a satchel in one of his saddlebags. Not only had Striker gotten the job done, he’d gleaned the mules, tack and tow gear, and his deposit back.
It was a wonder to Striker what could be accomplished with a simple half ounce of lead, or a pound of black powder placed under the proper rock outcropping.
It had taken him another two months, pushing his own small crew of Chinamen and digger Indians, to build the flume and penstock to deliver the proper amount of water to the mill to drive its foot wide leather strapping and three foot diameter saw blade, but it now spun with enough force and diameter to cut a timber large enough to serve as a railroad tie, at a rate of one every five minutes or so, if his worthless crew humped. Ten to twelve an hour could be produced, less the time it took to sharpen the blade before each workday began…and that with a crew of only seven men. Three Chinamen worked on the mill as tie hackers; one served as cook, stock wrangler, and preformed some extra duties tending the still, a couple of hundred yards up the mountain just below a sweet water spring, that had been cooking corn mash for the last three months. The other men were both flume herders and teamsters who wrangled the lodgepole pine down the mountain to be cut.
The mill could handle much more timber than the small crew could deliver.
Striker had a half dozen hogsheads of whiskey put up, for he knew how the Irish loved their drink.
The Chinee worked for little more than found; the Miwok Indians, one on the mill crew, and two to maintain the flume, were virtually slaves. They worked for beans and the occasional hunk of bacon, and fear of what Striker would do to them should they attempt escape.
The only Chinaman who had attempted to quit Striker had been waylaid half way down the mountain, and his wages were returned to Striker’s pocket long before the crows had begun to feed on his pebble-black eyes.
When the traveling became a mite easier, he would haul the whiskey down the mountain and set up a tent, unseen in a deep dark draw where the Irish could come and spend their hard earned. He knew that the construction boss, Crocker, and the superintendent Strobridge were dead set against whiskey for their crews, but he’d find a way. There was always a way to get whiskey to the Irish, for they would work as hard as he to see it accomplished.
The best result of the north side of Blood Mountain’s fine location was that the timbers could be easily skidded down the mountain side to within a couple of hundred yards of the rail bed. A perfect skidroad began in a long, smooth ravine only a hundred yards from the mill. A ravine formed by the good Lord as an avalanche trough, thousands of tons of snow and ice had cleared the trough and ground it smooth many times in years past. The tail-water from the mill, when the raceway thawed, would serve to grease the skidroad.
All was near ready.
