Chapter 17

When ‘Battling Ray’ Parer took off again, Mickey Corcoran almost had a stroke.  The Battler’s take-off was accomplished by securing the tail of his DeHavilland to tree-stump with a length of stout rope, after which the Brumby revved plane’s engine to the point that it was doing a little dance at the end of  it’s tether.  Then, at a slashing signal from The Battler, a native standing by with an axe chopped through the rope in a single swipe, and the plane shot forward, as though propelled by a giant slingshot.  For a second, it looked as if the D.H. 9 was going to plough straight through a pair of miners’ shacks...but at the last possible instant, Parer pulled his aircraft up and over, barely skimming their rooftops.  Circling once above the valley, he waggled his wings in farewell, and then the aircraft was shrinking away up the valley, leaving a fading engine song in it’s wake.

At once Corcoran grabbed Katie’s arm.

“THAT’S how were supposed to get out of here?”

“Looks like it,” said the pinto mare, with a laconic shrug.  She had suspected something like this was in the offing from the moment she had seen that so-called runway.  Never one to resist a good tease, she added deadpan, “I wonder if The Battler will let ME try that when it’s our turn to go.”

The packrat’s response to this was to emit a series of odd, guttural sounds and stalk rapidly away.

Katie bunked at Drigo Chavez’s shack that night, and Mickey bedded down with another miner, a wombat named Tay Seedleman.  The accommodations were as rough as green timber, but still preferable to the dung-heap masquerading as Iso Mining and Minerals.  Christmas, how the hell had that place managed to produce ANY gold?

“Coz it was a pretty decent outfit till it started to run out.” Drigo told her as he ladled a spicy smelling concoction from an iron-pot into the bowl in front of her. “An’ Wally wasn’t drinkin’ so much back then.  If you could see what that place looked like a year ago...ai madre, you wouldn’t know it’s the same mine.”  He pointed at the bowl in front of her, “Uh...lissen, I prob’ly shoulda said this earlier, but your grandfather used to love chile peppers, and I kinda assumed...”

“Don’t worry about it, Drigo.” she said, waving a hoof and smiling, “You’re right.  Grandpa introduced me to chiles when I was eight.  I love ‘em, too.”

The stew was a mixture of plantain, sweet potatoes, and coconut, spiced with Thai chile peppers.

“What do you call this?” asked Katie, nodding with approval at her meal.  The coati responded with an impish grin.

“I call it, TWYGITPAP, Throw-What-You-Got-In-The-Pot...And-Pray.”

Katie’s dinner almost came out her nose.

Later, with the sky rapidly fading from pink to indigo, they retired to what passed for a veranda in Drigo’s residence, a narrow porch lit by a single hurricane lamp.  At once, the prospector lit up a strong, black cigar and much to Katie’s surprise, offered her one.

“I know it’s not exactly ladylike,” he said, “but there’s nothin’ better for keepin’ the flies an’ mosquitos away after the sun goes down...and they’re yiffin’ fierce around here.”

“Uhhh, I appreciate the offer, Drigo.” Katie answered while managing a smile, “But if I have to choose between having my face turn red or green...I’ll go with red.”

“Okay,” said the coati, chuckling, “but don’t say I didn’t warn you, Duchessa mia.”

With that, he took a seat on a dugout log chair, and picked up a guitar, strumming an idle melody about nothing in particular.  “You know,” he said, as Katie took the seat opposite, “When your grandpa started that company a’ his, he offered me a job with him.  I told him gracias, pero no gracias.”

“You did?” asked Katie, startled, “Why?”  This was one thing Grandpa Joe had never mentioned about Rodrigo ‘Drigo’ Chavez.  The coati sniggered ruefully and looked away for a second.

“Coz I was young an’ full a’ piss an’ vinegar is why.  I didn’t wanna work in no yiffin’ office...I wanted some yiffin’ adventure.” he regarded her out of the corner of one eye,  “You know what I mean, Senorita Duchessa?”

“I do.” said Katie, who had flown to Cape Horn and over the North Pole.  She understood VERY well what he was talking about.

“So after I turned your grandfather down,” Drigo was saying, “he offered the job to another guy, Jim Spanaway...mountain goat.  Your grandfather ever mention him?”

Katie horse-laughed out loud.

“MENTION him?   Hell, I’ve known Jim since I was a filly, Drigo  Grandpa Joe put him in charge of running Combs Mining Machinery when he semi-retired.  And he ended up marrying my nanny, Mary Fallon.”

The coati almost swallowed his cigar.

“Son of a BITCH!” he said, slapping at a knee, “Goddam, I thought Jim’d never last a month in...” He suddenly looked chagrined, “No offense, Duchessa Katie but he was yiffin’ useless as a miner.  I thought your Grandpa had go hold a’ some loco-weed when he offered that job to Diego Spanaway.”

“None taken,” Katie responded, folding her arms and nodding knowingly, “These days, Jim would be the first to tell you that he was a hopeless case on any kind of dig.”  She looked away for second and puffed out her cheeks.  She had already made her decision to tell Drigo everything, and this was about as good an opening as she was going to get.

“Only...you should know he’s not working for Comb’s Mining Machinery any more.” she said, and went on to relate the tale of how her brother Colin had seized control of Combs, then lost it to a board of directors who couldn’t agree on what time of day it was.  From there, she went into the details of Colin’s demise and of Comb’s Mining Equipment’s  imminent demise unless she could raise more capital.

She finished up by recounting her conversations with both Mickey Corcoran and Ray Parer, earlier in the day.  The coati responded by taking two short puffs on his cigar, “Well you’re right to keep that under your hat, Senorita Duchessa.  You think you had everyone pestering you to buy their claims before, that’s nothing compared to what’ll happen once word gets out there’s a lot more dredgable gold up here than anyone thought.”

A red-hot pin pierced Katie’s cheek at that instant and she whinnied and slapped herself hard.

“Ai!  Dumdum fly.” said Drigo, grimacing.  He disappeared into his shack for a second, and returned bearing a small jar filled with something that looked like lime-flavored axle grease, and smelled like a mixture of chlorine bleach and rotting fish. “You better get some a’ this salve on that.  I know it stinks like lizard shit, but it’ll keep the itching down.  Those yiffin’ dumdum flies make mosquitoes seem goddam pleasant.”

“Thanks,” said Katie dabbing the concoction lightly on the spot where the insect had nailed her, “but I thought that once everyone here found out what Mickey discovered, they’d REFUSE to sell me their claims.”

“They would if they thought they could work ‘em themselves.” Drigo responded, seating himself and picking up the guitar again. “But even with that big new plane Bulolo Gold’s got, ain’t no way even THEY’RE gonna get dredges up here...an’ everyone in Iso knows it.”  He strummed the guitar two more times then chuffed out a breath and laid it aside. “Ai, covrona...I shoulda asked Ray to bring me some new guitar-strings when he comes back.  Yiffin’ thing just won’t stay in tune.”

“That’s too bad, Drigo.” said Katie, “You’re really good.” And she meant it. What the coati had considered just noodling around on the guitar would have been deemed a virtuoso performance by almost any other player.  “Where’d you learn to play like that?” she asked.

“From mi padre.” said the coati proudly, reaching into his shirt pocket and pulling out a faded tintype photograph.  It showed another coatimundi, dressed in traditional vaquero garb and a big sombrero.  In the picture, he grinning from ear to ear and holding a guitar in his paws as proudly as if it were a world-record sea-bass.

“The best damn mariachi in Mazatlan.” Diego told her, beaming as he pointed at the photo, “That was taken right after he played for Presidente Porfirio Diaz.  El Presidente was so moved by his playing that he personally gave papa the guitar you see in that picture.”

“Where is it now?” asked Katie, looking closely at the photo. “The guitar, I mean.”  Even in a grainy tintype, she could tell that the guitar was a work of art, with fancy inlay and a beautifully buffed surface.

“Mi hermano, Manuel’s got it.” said Drigo, “I’m pretty good with a guitar senorita Duchessa...but he’s better, lots better.  He’s even recorded a few records.  You better believe that Papa got no argument from me when he gave Manny his ‘El Presidente’ guitar.”

Katie returned the photograph, being careful to handle it by the edges.

“So...you always been a prospector, Drigo?”  She asked.  That had been her father’s only profession before he started Combs Mining Machinery.   The coati laughed and pulled the cigar from him mouth.

“Would you believe I was a schoolteacher before, Senorita?  Yeah...I taught grade school for like three years.  In the summer when classes let out, I used to go prospecting down by Yucatan with my cousin Tomas, just for fun.  Then one day we hit a nice pocket a’ gold, an’ that was the end a’ teaching for Rodrigo Chavez.”  He took a long puff on his cigar, then rolled it pensively between his fingers.  “In my time, senorita Duchessa, I been bit by black flies, deer-flies, chiggers, leeches, dumdum flies, coral-snakes, tarantulas, bulldog ants, and half the yiffin’ mosquitos on the planet.  But lemme tell you, NOTHIN’ bites like the goddam gold bug.  I ain’t recovered from that bite in...Madre de Dios, more n’ thirty yiffin’ years now.”

To this Katie said nothing, only nodded.  There was no mistaking the wistfulness in Drigo’s voice...the reflection on the road not taken.

“Course not everyone gets as bad a reaction to a gold-bug bite as me,” he continued, looking reflectively out towards the Iso river, “Your Granpadre didn’t, that’s for sure...and neither did Tomas.  He used his share a that gold we found to open a tobacco shop in Veracruz and get married.”

“You ever been married, Drigo?” Katie asked him.

“Coupla times.” said the coati, with a tilted expression, “Probably still am for all I know...to both of ‘em.”  He regarded her with another sidelong glance.  “Neither one of ‘em ever divorced me you see, they just took off.  I got two kits by Maria, my second wife.  God only knows where they are now.”

No...there was no mistaking the fact that Rodrigo Chavez was sending his regrets.

None at all.

Mickey Corcoran completed his survey in three days.  The results went beyond anything even he could have suspected.

“Miss MacArran, it’s possible...just possible that we could be sitting on top of a mother lode.”

Anyone who has even seen a movie about the 49ers or the Klondike gold rush is familiar with the term, mother lode; the central deposit of ore from which the veins of gold snake outwards.  In actual point of fact, locating such a deposit of gold is an extremely rare phenomenon...and even then they’re usually found deep within the earth.  The rare exceptions to this rule usually occur in areas of geologic instability, along earthquake fault lines or near areas of volcanic activity, where the forces of uplift can push them closer to the surface.

And New Guinea was eminently qualified on both counts...especially the Iso river valley, which had been formed by a geologic rift.

Katie listened..and then told Drigo to spread the word that she was now open to buying up any and all gold claims that the miners wanted to sell.

“But...But there’s no way to get to any of it.” Mickey protested as soon as the coati was out the door. “For all practical purposes, that gold might as well be five miles underground.”

“I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.” Katie told him, and that was all she would say on the subject.

Within the hour, the line snaking it’s way towards the Rodrigo Chavez’s tin-roofed shack was so long, it might have been for the premier of a hot new Broadway show.  Even after learning of the geologist’s findings, (except for the tidbit about the mother lode,) EVERYONE wanted
to sell their claim to her.  By nightfall of that day, the entire Iso valley was the pending property of Catherine MacArran, 14th Duchess of Strathdern...a complete fool, according to the general consensus of opinion.

Katie’s reaction to that unity of vision could best be summed up by what she did next.  No sooner had the last miner departed with his papers in paw, than she turned to Drigo Chavez:

“I’m gonna need someone to run my new mine, Drigo.  How about it?  You want the job?”  The coati responded by stroking his chin and looking thoughtful.

“Take a job running a mine that’s sitting on top of a huge goddam gold deposit...but one that can only be gotten out a here with equipment there’s no yiffin’ way to bring into this place?” Before Katie could answer, he grinned and stuck out a paw. “Why the yiff not?  You got yourself a mine manager, senorita Duchessa.”

For the next three days, Katie herself began to question the wisdom of her decision.  Every night, the flies and mosquitos ate her alive..especially the flies.  Even mosquito netting was no proof against the nearly microscopic buffalo flies, which passed through the mesh like steam and bit all night long.  On the morning Ray Parer was supposed to return, she awoke to discover a leech the size of a breakfast sausage had attached itself to her nether regions.  After burning it off with one of Drigo’s cigars, she became so nauseated that she was unable to make herself get out of bed again.

“If you wanna puke, just go ahead an’ puke.” said Drigo, trying to sound as solicitous as he could.

“I CAN’T Drigo.” Katie groaned in response, clutching her tummy and pulling herself into a fetal position, “Don’t you know?  Us horses are unable to vomit.”  She made herself stretch out again, and said, “Don’t worry...I’ll have it together by the time Ray gets here.”

“Okay.” said the coati, who clearly didn’t believe that she would.

As things turned out, it was all academic.  It had rained steadily for the past two days, and so when the Brumby’s plane passed over the valley and the beer-bottle dropped from the cockpit, it embedded itself in the ground without breaking.  With an apologetic waggle of wings, Parer turned and disappeared back up the way he had come.

“How long before he’s back?” asked Katie, when the aircraft had gone.

“T’ree days, most likely,” offered a springhaas with an Afrikaans accent. “Probably better to take the trail to Wau and fly out from there..”

“And advertise the fact that I was here to Bulolo Gold?” said Katie, raising her ears, “Nooo, thank you...not until I make my purchase of you boys’ claims legal.  After the way Bulolo already tried to keep me out of here, I don’t trust them any further than I can throw a fit.”

“Hmmgh, probably right, yeah.” said the springhaas, rubbing his nose. “T’ough once Wally Watt gets to Lae, you can believe he’ll tell everyone and the Devil about you buyin’ up all the claims here.”

Katie threw him a puzzled look.

“What?  I kicked Wally out of here three days before I bought a single Goddam claim.”

“Yah, you did,” said the Springhaas, “But Wally, he’ll start yappin’ his head off that y’ WERE buyin’ claims just to make you some trouble for you, yeah.”

“Mais oui,” said a sardonic badger with Tonkinese hat and a Canadienne accent, “But not until he sobers up, eh?  And how long do you think that will take?  A fortnight at least, one should think.”

Every miner laughed and several spit on the ground.

“An’ on that subject, mate.” said one of them, a Tasmanian tiger in a bush hat that looked as if it had been regularly assaulted with sledgehammers. “Waste not, want not I always says.” Stepping forward, he plucked the beer bottle from the earth where it had impacted, and wiped away the mud.  Then, smiling broadly, he popped the cap with a thumbnail and drained the bottle in a single gulp.

His name was Jimmy ‘Striper’ McKenna...and he would not be realizing his plans to leave the Iso valley to resume his search for legendary, lost lode of Lassiter’s Reef.

Itching as she was to get home (and not just from the insect bites) Katie put her remaining time in Iso to good use, discussing plans for the new operation with Drigo, making a quick survey of her new claims...and doing a little impromptu construction work.   First, she persuaded the biggest and toughest of the miners, Jimmy McKenna amongst them, to remain behind to keep guard of her claims until she could bring in a permanent crew.  That being done, she began to discuss with Drigo the options for hiring that more permanent crew.  She had already made up her mind to let those workers already employed by Iso River Minerals go.  “The ones who were any good have already cleared out, “ Drigo Chavez had told her.

It wasn’t going to be easy.  Who the heck wanted to work a rich mine that almost certainly was never going to produce anything?  “Most frustratin’ job this side of a one-armed paper-hanger.” her new manager commented at one point.

That was when Katie mentioned a story that she had heard from her grandfather many years before.  During the ‘49 gold-rush, many thousands of Chinese immigrants had come to California, seeking their fortune, only to find that they were only permitted to work claims that had already either been played out and abandoned by the Anglo miners.  For all that, they had managed to bring out some substantial quantities of the precious metal, raising the technique of reclaiming gold from supposedly picked-clean sites to a high art.

“So what about bringing a Chinese crew up here?” the pinto mare suggested.

“Well, you wouldn’t have no trouble hiring Chinese guys.” Drigo conceded, nodding. “But even they’re not gonna be able to bring much gold outta here without any dredges and shit...an’ once what little surface gold’s left in Iso is gone, they’ll be gone, too.”

“Like I said,” Katie told him, “I’ll deal with that when the time comes.  In the meantime Drigo, what about you?   Do you a problem running a Chinese crew?”  The coati shrugged.

“Wouldn’t be the first time I worked with Chinese guys, though that other time I wasn’t in charge.  I speak a little Cantonese, though...not much, but I get by.”

That settled it, Katie would hire a Chinese crew.

Finally, after another three days Ray Parer’s D.H. 9 reappeared over Iso...and this time the bottle dropped from the cockpit shattered on impact.

When Ray Parer pulled himself from the cockpit, Katie felt a stirring at the sight of him.  Had she ever seen anyone who looked so devil-may-care?

But then the Brumby noticed the engineering work, Katie had done in his absence.  At the end of the Iso runway, there was now a low, wooden ramp that canted upwards a shallow angle.

“What are you lookin’ so surprised for?” Katie asked the stallion, unable to resist. “I got two degrees in aeronautics, remember?”  She tossed him her overnight bag, and added, “And I’m a pilot myself, in case you forgot.”

Just as she had known it would, the ramp turned out to work perfectly.  This time, the D.H. 9 easily cleared the roofs of the miner’s shacks.  Giving Katie a thumbs-up and the miners below a farewell wing-wave, Parer turned and headed back up the valley and to the southeast.

When they got back to Port Moresby, Mickey Corcoran took a hasty leave.  He had been contracted to work a long-range mining survey in Venezuela and was already running late, thanks to the delay in Iso.  (His fellow geologist, in fact, had already departed for Darwin.)

Katie thanked the packrat for all his efforts, then paid him the agreed-upon amount, plus a bonus for having been held over.  Mickey thanked her back, then hurried off to catch his plane to Australia.

Neither he nor Katie had that slightest inkling that they would one day meet again.

Before saying his good-byes, the packrat had handed over the results of his findings in the Iso Valley to her.  Knowing full well what would happen if Bulolo Gold ever got a peek at them, Katie wisely requested that Ray Parer accompany her back to her lodgings, where they could be put in the hotel safe.

“Right good idea, Y’ Grace.” concurred the Brumby, with that easy smile of his. “Only be sure y’ give the desk clerks a nice tip first, an’ promise ‘em more when y’ get yer papers back.  Furs round Port Moresby ain’t exactly immune t’ bribes.”

Katie did as The Battler suggested, and then asked him if he would mind seeing her back to her door.

“Thanks, Ray.” she told him when they got to her room, and he was ready to head back to his boardinghouse.  She took him by the hooves and clasped them, “Thanks for everything.  I couldn’t have done it without you.”

He gave her that careless grin again.

“Oh, think nothin’ of it, Y’Grace.” he said, patting gratefully at his pockets, “It’s not ‘s if I weren’t well compensated, now then wan’t it?”

“And worth every penny,” said Katie smiling, then she cocked her head slightly, “Listen, how’s the hot water where you’re staying?”  The stallion purse his lips slightly, and flipped a palm back and forth.

“Comes an’ goes.” he said, “Mostly goes...but I get by.”

Katie nodded and pegged a thumb over her shoulder, “Well, that’s no problem here.  There’s all the hot water you could want in my room...and real showers, too.” She gave him a small head-toss.  “And you look like you could use one about as much me right now, Battler.  Wanna grab a shower before you go?”

The response from the stallion was closed eyes and a long, yearning nicker.

“Oh, God...I’ve not ‘ad a proper shower since...”

“Well, then c’mon.” said Katie, opening her door and leading him inside.  There was silence for several moments after the door closed...and then the sound of running water.

A short while afterwards, other sounds could be heard coming from within the room -- fainter, but infinitely more passionate.



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