“There’s glasses on the side there,” Billy Ritchie said. “Pour me a beer and a stiff one, and whatever you want for yourself.”

Neil went across to a low sideboard with a decorated glass front and laid out three glasses. He opened a beer for each of them, and poured out three fingers of bourbon for Billy Ritchie. Then he sat himself down in an uncomfortable, yellow-painted, basketwork chair, lifted his drink, and said; “Good health, Mr. Ritchie.”

The old man raised his glass in return. “Same to you. But call me Billy, and don’t worry too much about my health. I lost the use of my legs twenty years ago when I fell off a damn bad-tempered horse, and I’ve been fit as a damn drum ever since. I’ve seen a lot, though, and talked to a whole host of the old-timers, and there isn’t much that’s passed me by.”

“What do you know about Bloody Fenner? That’s what they called him, didn’t they?”

“Oh, they sure did,” said Billy. “Bloody by name and damn bloody by nature. But you have to judge a man like that by the days he lived in, and those days in the Napa Valley weren’t easy. This was fine land, and the Indians weren’t too happy about handing it over. If you wanted to survive, you had to be real tough, and ready to make the best of things. That was what Bloody Fenner was good at. Making the best of things.”

Neil swallowed beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I heard he was a traitor, of sorts.”

Billy Ritchie pulled a face. “Not to himself, he wasn’t. He did pretty well in the 1830s, made himself a fair pile of money, and owned a whole stretch of good land up along the Silverado Trail. Trouble was, the Fenner family lost most of their acreage in the late forties, after the year of the Bear Flag Party across at Sonoma, when the Californians declared independence from the Mexicans. Fenner had gotten along good with the Mexicans, on account of he was smart and wily, and willing to perform a service to any man who paid him. But when the Bear Flag folks took over, they made life so damn difficult for the Fenner family they sold out and moved to the coast, and I guess the land they bought was where you’re living now.”

Neil nodded. “Part of it, anyway. My grandfather sold about a hundred acres during the Depression.”

Old Billy Ritchie took a mouthful of Old Crow, coughed, and said, “A lot of folks did, especially around Napa. First, prohibition hit the wineries, then the Depression. They weren’t good times.”

“But what about Bloody Fenner?” asked Neil.