Texas Is Cattle Country
This is a preview of the second novel in the trilogy on the life of Esben Hjerstedt, known as Yellow Hair.
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. Helen Keller
Chapter 1
San Francisco 1870’s
Sitting on his horse with the rain running down his face and soaking through his poncho, the rider looked down on the lights from the torches and lanterns dotting the city below. He could hear the raucous laughter from the miners and cow hands who have come down from the mountains and the ranches to spend their money and waste their time and health by participating in the life of the city, the Barbary Coast. It is the bowels of hell, a turbulent flow of vice and iniquity, littered from end to end with the dregs of humanity. It is alive with card sharks, pickpockets and prostitutes. It is the rainy season, when no work is being done upon the ranches and the work in the placer mines, has been suspended due to the rain. Placer mining is surface mining or open pit mining that is popular with the forty- niners, the men who rushed to California in 1849 when gold was first discovered.
This was San Francisco, the city he heard the immigrants he helped lead across the Wyoming Territory speak about, where they planned to make their fortunes.
He eased Kodah down the slope toward the bay. They would camp outside the city and wait to enter after daybreak.
The night was cooled by a strong wind blowing across the bay pushing the rain to the east. It brought with it the smells of the city, spicy Chinese foods, smoke and garbage. It was to the noise and these smells that he finally fell asleep with Kodah gently grazing on the grass beside him.