Yeti Unleashed Page 11

  Placers could be found in almost any area where gold occurred in hard-rock deposits. Weathering forced the gold free of the rock where it was carried by gravity and hydraulic action to some favorable point of deposition and concentrated in the process. Usually the gold did not travel far from the source, so knowledge of the location of the lode deposits was useful. Gold also could be associated with copper and might form placers in the vicinity of copper deposits, although this occurred less frequently.

  Geological events such as uplift and subsidence might cause prolonged and repeated cycles of erosion and concentration, and where these processes had taken place, placer deposits might be enriched. Ancient river channels and certain river bench deposits were examples of gold-bearing gravels that had been subjected to a number of such events, followed by at least partial concealment by other deposits, including volcanic materials.

  Residual placer deposits formed in the immediate vicinity of source rocks were usually not the most productive, although exceptions occurred where veins supplying the gold were rich. Reworking of gold-bearing materials by stream action led to the concentrations necessary for exploitation. In desert areas, deposits might result from sudden flooding and outwash of intermittent streams.

  As material gradually washed off the slopes and into streams, it became sorted or stratified, and gold concentrated in so-called pay streaks with other heavy minerals, among which magnetite, black, heavy, and magnetic were typically present. The gold might not be entirely liberated from the original rock but might still have the white-to-gray vein quartz or other rock material attached to or enclosing it. As gold moved downstream, it was gradually freed from the accompanying rock and flattened by the incessant pounding of gravel. Eventually it would become flakes and tiny particles as the flattened pieces broke up.

  Pay-streaks always formed on the path that gold followed in the river. Sometimes there might be more than one gold path, because the gold might be originating in the river from several different sources. Pay-streaks were very important to miners because they were larger than single-type deposits, such as those found in a bedrock crevice along the gold path. Therefore, pay-streaks were easier to find. Because they tended to be long and wide, pay-streaks were deposits that could be worked for quite some time. Gold could be recovered from a pay-streak located on bedrock. It could also be found throughout the streambed material or on the top of a flood layer.

  Most gold traveled along the bottom of the other suspended streambed material as it was washed downriver during a major flood. If the material was washed down across bedrock, then gold could become trapped in the various irregularities, cracks, and holes. Sometimes, if conditions allowed, gold might even be deposited on top of smooth bedrock to form a pay-streak in a low-pressure area of the river.

  Sometimes, because the flood was not quite extreme enough to break up pre-existing hard-packed streambeds, material moving during a flood would wash over the top of already established streambed layers, rather than across the bedrock. Therefore, newly formed pay-streaks might be found on top of pre-existing streambed layers, rather than on bedrock.

  Most gold-bearing rivers had some amount of gold disbursed throughout the streambed material, so a miner could recover a small amount of gold out of each sample hole, called traces. This usually was not much gold; not enough to get excited about, and not enough to support a small-scale mining operation.

  It generally took a few sample holes to give a prospector an idea of the average amount of gold that was disbursed in the streambed. A miner could expect to get this small amount of gold from each sample hole that he dredged or dug. If he recovered more gold from a sample hole than was showing up in the average streambed, he knew he was onto something.

  “So, what now, Mr. Lowell?” Yarak said. He shot a glance upstream to where Garby and Terkel were hunched over a small campfire, warming themselves.

  “I think we need to go back to that line of quartz we found last week,” Lowell said. “It’s been the only real clue we’ve seen. Maybe another line heads off in a different direction. We really haven’t located anything that looks like gold or the mine itself.”

  “We’ve seen a number of caves but nothing like a mine entrance. Wouldn’t it have to be near a source of water to run the sluice?”

  “Yeah, it would. With all the abandoned mines in northern Nevada you’d think we’d have stumbled across something,” Lowell said, frustration showing in his voice. The sun was higher and heat began to accumulate in Mule Valley.

  Yarak nodded. Louis and Terkel were loading gear into a jeep.

  Lowell spat the last of his coffee onto the ground. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s get going. We’re burning daylight.”

  ***

  Harry and Dixie sat in their dormitory room of the research facility, having just finished dressing before heading to the dining hall for breakfast. Dixie brushed her hair while Harry donned his boots.

  “I didn’t sleep very well last night, honey,” she said, stopping for a moment with her brushing. “I kept thinking of poor Jimmy. I never knew him, did you?”

  “Sure. I interviewed him for the position here as graduate assistant along with Millie. I can’t believe this happened. It’s not going to go well for the university if these Yeti manage to get to a town where there’s more people. We’ve got to contain them here on the mountain. If they get off the mountain, they can go in any direction and the search area widens by an infinite amount.”

  “Did the sheriff talk to his parents?”

  “He did late last night. They live in Waco, Texas. He said they took the news pretty hard.”

  “Lawsuit?” Dixie said, still brushing her hair.

  “I don’t even want to think of that, sweetie. We’ve got to find these Yeti before any more people are killed.”

  “I was just thinking, though. If Jimmy opened the cage as Millie says he did, the university can’t be held liable for his egregious actions. Just saying.”

  “I hope you’re right. Ready for some breakfast?”

  “I’ll go with you,” Dixie said, “but I don’t know if I can eat.”

  ***

  Millie stepped out of the shower, dried herself quickly with a towel, and dressed. There was not going to be any scientific work done today, she reasoned, so she pulled on a pair of faded jeans and a blouse.

  She reflected on her relationship with the dead Jimmy Winkleman and shuddered. As bad and unprofessional as it had been, she never imagined he would be killed in the manner he was.

  When they both first arrived at the Primate Research Facility, they were friendly with each other and discussed the Yeti genome project. They ate dinner together. Radner had overseen their work and seemed pleased with their progress. As the work progressed, however, Millie noticed a subtle change in Jimmy, one that she thought was due to their being isolated at the facility. Beyond the pool table and the library of DVD movies, there wasn’t much else to do for relaxation. Millie enjoyed reading so it wasn’t much of a problem but it seemed to put Jimmy on edge.

  After an awkward attempt to take her to bed, he became increasingly withdrawn, refusing to discuss their mutual work with the Yeti, and even exhibiting aggressive behavior toward his animal, shouting at them and banging on Bentu’s cage. He once tried the same with Sasha, but Millie had come down on him hard, threatening to report him to Radner if he didn’t leave the animals alone. But he had only confined his actions toward Bentu, who would sit in a corner of his cage and growl for hours.

  She debated whether she should go to Radner with her complaints about Jimmy and his treatment of Bentu but, after many sleepless nights, decided against doing so. The two of them had to work together so maybe she still could get him to see things her way.

  Obviously, she was wrong.

  Millie was worried on several fronts. She anguished over the Yeti’s safety and the safety of anyone who came in contact with them. She tortured herself with thoughts that this tragedy would put an end to her research and
that her doctorate dissertation was in jeopardy. If she had to start all over with another research project it would take another few years and she would be that much farther behind her peers. She longed for a teaching job at a university in the Southwest, but they might all be taken if she was forced to begin anew. Fortunately, she had the Yeti’s blood samples and DNA and could always replicate the DNA at any time. She slapped on lipstick and, as she did, she studied her face. Her mother’s strong Italian features were etched in her tanned face, accentuating her green eyes and strong nose. She was happy that Dixie accompanied her husband, for maybe there would be a moment the two of them could talk about her research. Millie was never close to an animal before like she was with Sasha. There was something in her penetrating red eyes, eyes that would turn soft when she was sedated and Millie stroked her massive head.

  If Sasha was on the run, scared and knowing she was a hunted prey, she was liable to lash out at the first humans she encountered. And if that happened, Millie knew it would spell the great animal’s demise--she would be killed without a second thought.

  Millie couldn’t let that happen.

  She put the finishing touches on her makeup and left for the dining hall.

  ***

  Undersheriff Andy Hardin, the last of a long line of Paiute warriors, met the pair of deputies at the top of Cinder Mountain. It was just past dawn and the deputies finished parking a horse trailer that contained a half dozen horses with their tack. He hurried over to the trailer and greeted his fellow deputies.

  “Good morning, Ben and Louis,” he said. He ambled around the trailer, peeking inside to get a look at the horses. “Any trouble getting up the mountain with this rig?”

  “Not a bit, Andy,” said Ben, a tall lanky deputy. “Piece of cake.”

  “I’ll just bet,” Hardin replied. “You forget, I’ve driven up that winding road. Well, the boss wants to get started as soon as everyone is through with breakfast so get ’em unloaded and saddled. Should be good weather today. I’ll go tell Buck you’re here.”

  Hardin had an uneasy feeling about the upcoming search on horseback. The search by air had proved unsuccessful so, as daylight faded, the helicopter returned home. He’d never looked for a quarry quite like these animals, and he didn’t know what to expect. Expect the unexpected, Calder always said. They could be hiding anywhere on the mountain, if they were still on the mountain. But Hardin didn’t see how they could have gone very far. According to the sheriff, they were big lumbering animals so were probably slow afoot. It shouldn’t take too long to locate them. It was the impending confrontation that had his nerves on edge.

  His ancestors traced their origin to the story of Tabuts, the wise wolf who decided to carve many different people out of sticks. His plan was to scatter them evenly around the Earth so that everyone would have a good place to live, but Tabuts had a mischievous younger brother, Shinangway, the coyote. Shinangway cut open the sack and people fell out in bunches all over the world. The people were angry at this treatment and that was why other people always fought. The people left in the sack were the Southern Paiutes. Tabuts blessed them and put them in the best place.

  Prior to contact with Europeans, the Paiutes’ homeland spanned more than thirty million acres of present-day Southern California, Nevada, south-central Utah, and northern Arizona. Their lifestyle included moving often, according to the seasons, plant harvests, and animal migration patterns, and they lived in independent groups of three to five households. Major decisions were made in council meetings. The traditional Paiute leader, called naive, offered advice and suggestions at council meetings and would later work to carry out the council’s decisions.

  Though the mid-1800s the Southern Paiutes encountered Euro-American traders, travelers, and trappers but they did not have to deal with white settlement on their lands. In 1851, however, members of the LDS Church began colonization efforts in the area of southern Utah, and by the end of 1858, Mormons established eleven settlements in Southern Paiute territory. At first, the Paiutes welcomed the Mormon presence, as it offered them some protection against raiding Utes, Navajos, and Mexicans. However, the Mormon settlements also brought sweeping epidemics. In the decade following settlement, some Paiute groups lost more than ninety percent of their population to disease, forcing many to relocate in Nevada.

  His ancestor, Chief Truckee, was a friend of the whites. He died before seeing the wrongs inflicted on his people by the pioneer whites and how they inflamed the Paiutes into the waging of a bloody war that wound up costing scores of white and Indian lives. Chief Winnemucca, at times, favored war on the whites but, at the point of conflict, he would always ride into the Humboldt River country, where his father had spent most of his life, where the grass was deep, and where the hunting was most plentiful. Within a matter of weeks of his death, the troubles broke into a massacre and the Battle of Pyramid Lake.

  Hardin watched as Calder exited the main building with the two Dr. Olsons and Drayton at his side.

  Chapter 12

  Vickie Anderson pulled her van off the road. She was tired--no, exhausted--from traveling through the night with her companions. After leaving San Francisco, they drove through Sacramento, past Lake Tahoe, then continued into northwest Nevada until her small band of demonstrators were now gathered at the sign denoting the beginning of the Primate Research Facility’s property. Cinder Mountain loomed at the end of the dirt road as a large dark shadow. Now that the sun peeked over the distant horizon, Vickie munched on an Egg McMuffin purchased in Elko. The sky was clear, the temperature cool. She hoped the television crew from Las Vegas would arrive soon so they could get the demonstration done and start the drive back home before late afternoon.

  Vickie exited the van to stretch her legs and wait for the media to arrive. Her friends followed suit, including Norma Treadwell who ambled to her side, nodded.

  “Well, we made it,” Vickie said, finishing her Egg McMuffin. “And all in one piece.”

  “We all appreciate the use if your van, Vickie,” Norma said.

  “It was something I could do to help.”

  “Why are you here?” Norma said. “I’m interested.”

  “My mother,” Vickie began, “died from breast cancer. Her treatments were developed using laboratory animals. And those treatments allowed her to live another few years. I cherish those years, Norma.”

  “I would think that would make you on the other side of our fight,” Norma said. “It would me, I believe.”

  “I must admit I’ve been having second thoughts. Your zeal and eloquence swayed me to your cause but, lately, I’ve had my doubts about the ethics of our demonstrations.”

  “How so?” Norma asked.

  “Some people believe it is not acceptable to use animals for any human purpose at all. They believe animals have moral rights to life, liberty, and other privileges that should be upheld by society and the rule of law. These are the hard-core believers in animal rights, the fundamentalists of the animal rights movement. I think that is where our group is positioned. Other people believe some animals have or should have moral or legal rights under certain circumstances. They may rescue abandoned pets, lobby for legislation against animal abuse, feed pigeons in the park, or do any number of other things on behalf of animals. These people are broadly categorized as animal welfarists. Their adherence to the idea of animal rights generally depends on the circumstances. For example, a welfarist might defend the rights of pet dogs and cats but eat chicken, steak, or pork for dinner. I am beginning to think I belong in the latter category, Norma. After all, if science cannot use animals to test and develop new treatments, what can they use? I am afraid if all animals are no longer used in medical research new and innovative treatments will no longer be possible. Maybe there is an ethical way to use research animals.”

  Norma shook her head. “Vickie, this is unacceptable to us animal rights fundamentalists. FAAR argues that all animals, not just the lovable or attractive ones, have rights that apply all
the time. Not just when it is convenient.”

  “I dunno, Norma. I am beginning to believe that the animal rights issue is blown out of proportion. Animals--or any other living thing, for that matter--do have a right to this Earth as much as we do. With that said, I have the opinion that everything on this Earth is for the utility of humanity. This in no way, shape, or form gives any one the right to abuse, destroy, become cruel, or any other form mischief. Animals should not be abused or made to suffer pain or as least pain as possible. Isn’t it possible that animals can be used for medical research in a moral and ethical way? Without causing them undue pain and suffering?”

  Norma walked away with slow steps then turned to face Vickie. “I think when we get back home you should reconsider your membership in our group.” Her words hissed venom. “I don’t need someone who’s not fully committed to our cause.”

  Using her binoculars, she located activity at the top of the mountain, activity she surmised was from the facility. A thin haze that hung over the mountain’s summit made visibility nebulous.

  It was strange, she thought. Earlier, a helicopter landed and a military helicopter took off a short time afterward. What was an army chopper doing at the research facility?

  There seemed to be a lot of activity so early in the morning--lights on all over the place, along with what looked like people moving about. She didn’t know the usual routine on Cinder Mountain but felt fairly sure that normal activity didn’t include a military helicopter.

  She helped her crew unload the placards from the rear of the van and waited in the cool morning air for the television people to arrive.

  ***

  “Thanks for getting the horses ready, Andy, Ben, and Louis,” Calder said when they were standing alongside the horse trailer. He introduced Harry and Dixie to his deputies. Harry wore a daypack and a pair of binoculars hung around his neck. Drayton had his 30-30 slung over his shoulder and his nine-millimeter pistol on his hip. Harry and Dixie carried no weapons.