I—I included that. I did. As God as my witness, I know I lived to tempt fate again—and tempt it I did over and over again and again because I am a fool, I have been a fool, and I never knew when I was a fool because that's the paradox of being a goddamn fool—but, as God as my witness I wrote that in my book!

I wrote that. Those words are mine.

[He drinks.]

That first blizzard of the Winter came the very next day. I had beaten winter by less than 24 hours. The men looked at me unsure if I carried the Good Lord's blessing or the blackest devil's curse—the kind, one might have whispered, that lingers to dog and claim its possessor. The Mexican workmen spoke a Spanish too fast and curious for me to glean, but their gazes seemed to anticipate my every step nearer a cold and dark revenge, exacted by a demon with neither name nor master—only a furious, implacable form.

The white men sensed it, too, but their patter—and their Protestant logic—I followed. It all stemmed from a simple misunderstanding: when I had left California, more or less in a champagne bath of good tidings and high expectations, Sutter told Vallejo, the politician, potentate, and all-around wire puller, of me and my plans to bring out a somewhat modest group of tradesmen. He wrote this in a letter at a time when I had not even fully conceived of my guide—when I was yet in the thrall of meeting somebody who knew somebody who once shook hands with Calhoun.

Somehow, this faithfully reported article of news circulated about California again and again, so that even though no one actually had heard of my book, Vallejo told Sutter he had it on good authority that I would be arriving with "1,000" souls.

I rode into town with ten.

And even though, Dear Reader, some 2,700 more would be on their way that very spring, the fort was somehow poisoned by my lackluster arrival. I was floored. I met with Sutter and told him of my party, my book, my lecture tour and he informed me I had perhaps grown too fond of possessive pronouns.

The mountains were stunning as ever and the meadows were slices of heaven and I rode down to the Pacific with a feeling of nothing less than ecstasy, but what of Sutter? What of our plans? Our partnership? The moment cuts me to the marrow even now to recall! I knew I was not entirely done for, but in every other way from that point on I would have to be without blame or fault. Cæsar's wife of the Sierra Nevadas. Every move I made was now somehow suspect when I had done nothing less than the irreproachable back East! And, now, no matter what I said it looked at best defensive and at worst threatening. Anything that came out of my mouth at all bore the brand of equivocation.

[He loses himself in his drink for a little while. He surmounts his frustrations and eventually recovers his purpose:]