Experience has taught me…that there is no such phenomenon as unmixed tragedy to be found in the world around us. Look where we may, the dark threads and the light cross each other perpetually in the texture of human life.

Wilkie Collins

Preface, "No Name"

1862

Stanislaus Mountains, California, April, 1859

He was running. Running for his life, maybe, but young as he was, Heath already had learned there were worse things than death. The high, eager laughter of the men pursuing him echoed off the trees and rocks that rose up the steep mountain slopes around him, and he knew. There were worse things. He ran, and did not waste an ounce of speed or energy on even a glance behind him.

His sprint between the trees quickly became a scramble on all fours as the grade grew steeper. His chest and muscles burned, his breath coming harsh as he kept moving upward. He cursed the bad luck that had gotten him caught out in this unfamiliar, unexplored part of the mountains. He had no idea what he would find when he crested this ridge. When the three mounted men moved to corner him, back there on the game trail, Heath had fled on instinct into the rocks and then up the grade. He was counting on the terrain to force the men to chase him on foot, and then, he hoped, the mountain would exhaust his pursuers before they could catch up to him.

They couldn't follow on horseback, that part had worked, but these were young men who were coming after him. Twice his age and well more than twice his size, they were feral, hungry and lawless. He could hear they were getting winded as they gave chase, but they were still laughing, still climbing, and still shouting out their lewd and violent promises of what they planned to do to entertain themselves, once they got their hands on his uppity, mongrel hide.

Heath recognized them as part of a recent wave of prospectors that were digging and panning for the vestiges of placer gold in the mountain ravines above and below Strawberry. These itinerant miners had become a predatory presence in the town, when they would come in from their campsites along the river beds.

Such men have a well-developed ability to sense when another is outside the protection of the herd. Not long ago, three of these drifters had stumbled upon the small isolated cabin where Heath lived with his mother Leah, her best friend Rachael, and Hannah, a former slave whom Leah had befriended back in '51 and who had become a de facto mother for all of them. Leah was outdoors alone when the men fell upon her like a pack of hyenas, excited to have discovered such pretty and easy prey.

Strawberry in those days had a sheriff and even a few deputies, but there was no protection for an unnatural and profane family such as Heath's. In the town's eyes, this group of outcasts had forfeited any place of safety or welcome among them. They saw only the unmarried sinner and her bastard son, product of her sin made flesh; they saw that strange, over-educated woman from back East who had no normal womanly interest in a man, but a ferocious devotion to Leah and her whelp; and they saw (but didn't see) a Negro woman who had no rights or place in White society to speak of anyway. On a good day, these four shared a hardscrabble but peaceful existence, and were left to their own to live or die as best as they could manage. On a typical day, the women were shunned or insulted, and Heath could rarely set foot in town without catching a boot or a fist or a broomstick from someone for his trouble. But on a bad day –

Heath came out of the woods with five trout on his line for their dinner and stopped in his tracks, horrified. His mother was fighting hard but losing fast. The men, sensing her flagging strength, were laughing and taunting her, ready to enjoy themselves.

"We've all heard about you, Miss Thomson. This ain't your first rodeo – that pup of yours runnin' wild around town is proof of that. Why you kickin' up such a fuss? C'mon, be friendly now."

Leah struggled and roared at them wordlessly, her voice hoarse with the strain. Heath saw no fear in her eyes, only anger, but he was full to overflowing with fear himself when he ducked inside the cabin and grabbed Leah's shotgun, loading it with numb, shaking fingers. So full up with fear, he realized afterward, that he had no clear memory of running out to the garden and yelling at the men to get away from his Mama, and only a vague memory of the sound of the shotgun when he fired a barrel at one of the men who thought to charge at him. Leah told him about it later, told him one of the men caught some buckshot but that all three had run away under their own steam. All he remembered was the silence afterward and her tears on his face, her warm arms around him, and the terrible heaviness of his guilt for having drawn those monsters down upon his beautiful brave mother. That heaviness, he thought it might crush him, and he wondered if he could become brave and strong like her, enough so he could carry that weight. It was his to carry, he figured, but what he wanted most of all was for his Mama and Rachael and Hannah to be safe and happy. Maybe if he carried it far away from them they could be safe and happy? Was that what he should do?

He didn't come up with an answer to his question that day, or the next, but he continued to think it through. Rachael and Hannah fussed over his mother and discussed plans to keep a closer eye on each other in light of what had almost happened. Bothered by the trouble he had caused his family, Heath hiked out to check a line of snares he had set much further beyond the south fork of the Stanislaus than he'd ever gone before. He was trapping for pelts and food – he caught mostly rabbit, some squirrel, maybe a chickaree – and his spirits rose when he saw how successful he had been this time. Here was something good he could bring home to make life easier for his family. It didn't make up for it all, but it was something. He moved down the line and collected his catch, stringing them so he could carry them over his shoulder. He explored further south and west, setting new snares as he went. It was starting to get dark when he turned to bring his day's catch home.

"See, I told you I saw him coming out this way."

Heath's stomach clenched as he recognized the voice. Mitch Harper. He was a few years older than Heath, but Mitch came from a normal, respectable family. Mitch was a lazy, needy boy with few friends and a mean streak a mile wide, and he had made it a hobby of his to bring trouble down on the Thomson bastard whenever he could. Heath had seen him recently hanging around some of the younger prospectors, trying to curry their favor by buying them sweets and laughing at their crude jokes.

Apparently a better way to make friends with these low-life drifters was to lead them to where the Thomson bastard had disappeared to. Heath turned to see the men that had attacked his Mama, one of them with a bandaged arm, and all three moving to close him in. They dismissed Mitch with a wave, and he rode off with a satisfied grin.

"No shotgun today, hmm, little pup?"

"Not as pretty as his Mama, but almost. This'll be fun."

"I just wanna beat the tar outta him right now for what he did. Then you can have him."

Heath turned and ran. There were a few moments of helpless terror when they were still chasing him on horseback; one of the men cut him off and almost got a grip on the back of his shirt. As it was he tore away two of the rabbits on his string. Heath dodged between boulders and kept going uphill. Heard their hyena laughter as they dismounted and came after him on foot, but Heath seemed to be getting some distance on them, and he started to think he'd be able to get away clean and without losing any more of his catch.

He crested the ridge and skidded to a halt, grabbing a pine trunk for balance. The south face of the ridge dropped away below him, almost vertical in places, sloping far, far down into the dark where he could hear a river flowing.

"Hey, puppy, the farther you make us chase you the more you're going to pay at the end, you know that, don't you?" The sing song threat curled out of the woods behind him. They were coming closer now.

Heath cursed and ran as best he could along the top of the ridge, frantically seeking a safe path forward. A detached, irrepressible train of observation ran quietly along in the back of his thoughts, analyzing the topography, asking questions, drawing a map in his mind. The crest descended as he moved westerly, but the south face became even more rocky and steep, until finally he found himself at the edge of a cliff with nowhere to go. Unseen water moved at the bottom of the ravine, he could hear it, but the shadows were deep and dark.

That must be the Tuolumne down there, he thought. He'd been wondering how much of a hike from home it would be to reach the north fork. He'd wanted to scout it out for fishing and trapping. Well, now you know. Great lot of good it's gonna do you now, Heath.

He did glance behind him then. Saw them approaching between the trees. He looked back down into the ravine and considered his choices. If he jumped, he would probably die. If those men caught him, he would not be able to stop them from doing what they wanted, and they would probably kill him anyway.

Heath had met death before – his Uncle Matt's fists had introduced him to that reality at an early age. But this was the first time, he realized, that he had a choice. In fact, he had to choose, and this made him simultaneously sad and angry. Sad, because either way, he couldn't bring his catch home to his family and see them smile; angry, because he hadn't even turned eleven years old yet, and it really wasn't much of a choice at all.

The men were close enough now he could see the laughing violence in their eyes, and he made his decision. He roared his rage at them, his hands clenched into fists, the faces of the family he loved before him in his mind. Then he jumped.

Barkley Ranch, November, 1874

Heath sat up in bed with a gasp, his heart racing, his mind full of fear and falling and darkness and water. The sound of his ten-year-old rage was still ringing in his ears, and he wondered if he had cried out in his sleep. He drew up his knees and rested his head on them, trying to settle himself down and stop shaking. He waited for the myriad aches and pains of his body – all of which had woken up right along with him – to ease a bit into the background.

Beside him, Rivka stirred and sat up, wrapping her arms around him. Her long dark hair caressed his back and gave him pleasant chills as she laid her head on his shoulder.

"Bad dream, love?"

"Yeah."

"From when?"

"Long time back. When I was a kid, before the war. Haven't thought about it in a while. I wonder why n-–" He stopped abruptly, staring at the bedsheets rumpled up in front of him.

"Heath? What is it?"

Thoughtfully, he reached out and ran his hand gently over the ridges and valleys created by the sheets and blankets.

"The Tuolumne. I wonder – if they did get away – they would have followed the Tuolumne."

"Show me what you mean," she said, her head still on his shoulder.

He moved the sheets to make a plateau and then two diverging valleys, separated by a ridge that began steep and sharp but grew wide and broad as it descended.

"This is the western slope of the Sierra. We're roughly here. This is Pinecrest Lake above Strawberry. The trail the two violinists took when they left Hannah's house follows the South Fork of the Stanislaus River. Jasper ambushed Peter and Ilsa and stole their horse right about – here." He pointed to a spot on the north face of the ridge. "Nox is a very protective horse. She would have fought to defend them from Jasper – it's possible she gave them a chance to get away. I keep thinking about it, picturing it, trying to imagine which way they would have run. If they did survive, where would they have ended up? That must be why that memory is pushing in now, don't you think? I climbed that ridge – no, I ran for my life up that ridge, and I found myself in the Tuolumne."

Rivka nodded. "And the Tuolumne ends up down near Sonora, where John got a lead on an unusually skilled, itinerant violinist playing at someone's wedding. It fits."

Heath rubbed his eyes and sighed. "And as you so tactfully just pointed out, we're planning to ride to Sonora today anyway, so no need for nightmares to tell us which way to go." He rested his knuckles against his mouth as he frowned down at the topography of the bed, frustrated with himself. "Sorry I woke you."

"What time is it, love?" She knew he had no need of a clock.

"3:30."

"That's good. You slept almost three straight hours. Next thing you know you're going to actually get a decent night's sleep. I'm not sure what you're going to do with all that extra energy. Maybe you'll get back to being able to beat me at chess every once in a while."

He turned away from his contemplation of the sheets and took her in his arms. He smiled down into her dark eyes. "That's not the first thing that comes to my mind to do, darlin'."

She kissed him. "Go back to sleep, cowboy. We've got a busy day ahead."