Pale Rider

by Alan Dean Foster

  “It’ll come to that,” she shot back evenly. “I swear, Hull Barret, if anything happens to you in town, I’ll never speak to you again!” She tripped, caught her balance, and kicked angrily at the uneven ground as she fell behind the buckboard.

  Hull sighed and pulled in on the reins. The wagon coasted to a stop, and he waited for her to catch back up to him. This time his smile was familiar, if not proprietary.

  “That’s a pretty strong promise for someone who hasn’t agreed to marry a man yet.”

  She tried to summon up an appropriate reply, only to find she had nothing to say. Barret’s point was well made and it was one she couldn’t easily refute. She backed away from the buckboard and lowered her eyes.

  Hull pushed his hat back on his forehead. “Anything you want from the store ’long as I’m gonna be there?”

  Her reply was subdued. “No. Megan and I are okay.” She looked up at him again, an entirely different expression on her face, pleading for understanding as much with her eyes as with her words. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate all you’ve done for Megan and me, Hull. It isn’t that at all. I just—”

  “Appreciation’s a fine thing,” he said, interrupting her. “It just never did much to keep a man warm through a long winter’s night, is all.” He stared back at her for a long moment. When it became evident she wasn’t going to respond, he shrugged imperceptibly and flicked the reins. The wagon resumed its downhill course, leaving Sarah Wheeler standing by herself next to the creek, weighed down with the burden of her own indecision.

  It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair for him to challenge her like that, to make her feel the way she was feeling. It was still too soon, and she was still too bitter about what had happened to her before Hull Barret. There wasn’t anything she could do about that. He was just going to have to understand, and if he couldn’t, well, that was too bad for him.

  But she couldn’t bear to go back up to the cabin until his buckboard had vanished from sight.

  II

  At eight years of age, the boy Ebenezer was more than old enough to be aware of the difference between right and wrong, just as he was old enough to understand the concept of stealing. So he knew precisely what he was doing while he waited for Ma Blankenship to turn away from the counter. Two of the many glass candy jars were standing open, and he’d long since made his selection.

  Now he reached quickly into the nearest, seizing the largest of the candy canes stored within, and shoved it into the pocket of his velvet coat. Seeing that the old woman was still occupied with something below the counter, he headed for the entrance, intending to make good his escape.

  Since his attention was focused on the busy proprietress he didn’t see the shape that was blocking his exit until he ran into it. It was hard and unyielding. His eight-year-old body bounced off, only to have a steady hand grab him to prevent him from falling.

  He blinked and looked up into the strangest eyes he’d ever made contact with. Most adults, Ebenezer had discovered, did not look at children. They looked around them, or through them, or at their clothing or hair, but never into their eyes. Not this man. Big as he was, he was staring straight back at Ebenezer. It was a new sensation, and not altogether a comfortable one.

  One thing Ebenezer was certain of: this stranger had been there long enough to have witnessed the theft of the candy cane. But in that case, why hadn’t he said something by now? Ebenezer risked a fearful glance in Ma Blankenship’s direction, but she was still busy behind the counter. She wasn’t eyeing him accusingly in response to some secret adult look from the stranger.

  Still the man said nothing. Was it possible he hadn’t seen? It seemed impossible. Ebenezer held onto his look of defiance a moment longer, but he was badly overmatched. It was kind of like trying to outstare the family cat, which wouldn’t put up for long with such nonsense from Ebenezer or any of his siblings. Somehow he knew that this stranger’s patience wouldn’t last much longer either.

  Guiltily he reached into his picket and brought out one of the several pennies that resided therein. The stranger let him go. He walked back to the counter, put the penny next to the open candy jar, and then hastened out the doorway. The stranger followed him with his eyes and with just the slightest of smiles.

  Then he turned back to survey the interior of the general store. Considering the size of the town it was well stocked and prosperous looking. That made it unusual, but not unique. California was starting to fill up with men and women who were smart enough to realize that the best way to get their hands on some gold was to let others do the digging for them. There was gold in the ground and there was gold in bolts of calico and sacks of sugar for sale, too.

  Off to the left stood a trestle counter populated by a brace of hand-hewn stools. Keeping his mackinaw buttoned, the tall man sat down on one stool that looked a little sturdier than the others. He was conscious of his size and always had care for someone else’s furniture. He was six foot four and broad in proportion, and the petite chairs often favored by store owners for their female customers sometimes displayed the disconcerting habit of collapsing beneath him, to the chagrin of both the proprietor and his visitor. But these stools had been fashioned by men who also built railroad trestles and sluice boxes and mine carts. The one he’d chosen did not creak beneath him when he placed his full weight upon it.

  He was much harder to overlook than the boy who’d just fled the store. The woman who had been working at the cutting board behind the counter turned to greet him. As she spoke she toweled fresh bread dough from her hands. Fiftyish, matronly in appearance and pleasant of voice and countenance, she gave the stranger the impression that she could deal on an equal basis with tough miners or the wives of the wealthy.

  “Mornin’, stranger. I’m Carlotta Blankenship, but everybody hereabouts calls me Ma. You might as well too, and I don’t think your own ma would mind. Welcome to Lahood, California.” She gestured expansively. “Only place on Earth they cut the seasons down to three: winter, July, and August. What’ll you have?”

  “Just coffee, thanks.”

  Her eyes narrowed slightly and she regarded her customer with fresh curiosity. Odd sort of voice. Came from the back of the throat and not the lips or mouth. Sort of whispered out at you. It reminded her of something, and it took her a second to remember.

  A steam radiator. She’d once stayed in a room in San Francisco that had been heated by such a device. That was just what this tall visitor sounded like when he spoke.

  “Pardon me for sayin’ so, but you look like you could use something a mite solider.” She nodded back toward the cutting board where she’d been working. “Have some fresh bread ready in a while. Supposed to save the first loaves for the Cutter boys, but they’ll likely be late as usual. So if you’d like some . . .” She let the offer trail off meaningfully. “Got some fresh blackberry jam, too.”

  His initial reply came in the form of a winning, almost boyish smile. “Sounds good. Coffee first, then maybe I’ll work up to the other. If I have enough time.”

  Lahood, California, was a far cry from Sacramento or San Francisco. The town was composed of no more than half a dozen permanent buildings flanking a muddy main street. Tents and lean-tos clustered around the town’s outskirts. Their owners aspired to wood and plaster but found better uses for their gold.

  The foothills of the Sierra Nevada encroached on the east side of the community, smooth, rolling, and deceptively modest in size. Shrouded in mist, beyond rose the first of the granite ramparts that formed the Range of Light. These were covered in snow and ice the year ’round.

  Not everyone living in California was engaged in the mad hunt for gold that year. Someone had to provide the miners with tools and victuals. Someone had to bury the unlucky, someone had to cut hair, and someone had to assist with births as more and more women followed gold hungry men into the new state. They filled up the burgeoning cities and trickled out into new towns like Placerville and Bad Flats and Lahood.

>   Some strolled along the duckboard planks that enabled ladies to keep their feet out of the mud while others worked to load a freighting dray outside the big feed store. A few horsemen trotted down the main street, eyeing the sky and wondering if this winter would be as hard as the last.

  From the northern end of town a buckboard could be seen as it approached, its single horse plodding townward slowly and patiently.

  The barber-cum-dentist was busily engaged in extracting a broken tooth from the mouth of a customer with all the skill and delicacy of touch that his patient would use to blast quartz matrix from the surrounding granite. Both dentist and patient strained mightily. A powerful yank on the iron pliers and the rotten molar emerged, along with a barely stifled grunt of pain from its stoic former owner.

  Tossing the tooth into a nearby metal pail, the dentist paused long enough to glance streetward. He did not expect to see anything of unusual note. This was Lahood, after all. So he was doubly surprised to see the buckboard as it rolled past his establishment.

  “I’ll be damned,” he muttered, moving toward the window for a better look.

  His pain momentarily forgotten, the patient sat up in his chair and let his eyes follow the dentist’s gaze. “What, what is it?”

  “Barret.”

  Holding his aching jaw with one hand, the miner pushed aside the sheet that had been used to cover him and joined the dentist in gaping out the window.

  “Danged if it ain’t,” he breathed in amazement.

  In the newly built United States Post Office the tight-lipped postmistress was taking letters from a sheaf held firmly in one hand and placing them in their respective pigeonholes on the wall oposite. A chance look in the direction of the multipaned windows revealed the buckboard wending its way down the main street. She paused, one letter halfway to its destination, to stare at the driver.

  So did the undertaker, who left off painting a newly fashioned pine casket to observe the passing wagon in silence. When he resumed his work he was whistling softly. California in the midfifties was full of business for a man in his profession. He’d done right well there in little Lahood, though some of the business that was brought his way required the utmost skill and patience his art could muster. Very few of his clients died a natural death. Some of them had met their demise in noisy and spectacular fashion. It wasn’t always an easy task to make them presentable for the last time. A post-Gold Rush mortician tended to earn his money.

  Unaware that he was the object of so much attention, Hull Barret guided the buckboard down the right side of the street, where the mud was shallower. His head never wavered, but his eyes were in constant motion, darting from right to left and back again. He examined each building in turn as he passed it, paying particular attention to each door and half-opened window.

  It was with considerable relief that he reined in the mare and tied her up to the hitching rail outside his destination. It was an imposing structure. A large sign both identified it and proclaimed ownership.

  BLANKENSHIP MERCANTILE

  A lone gelding was the only other animal tied up outside, a fact that Hull noted with additional relief. As he worked at securing the reins he couldn’t keep his gaze from straying to the building directly across the street. It was even more impressive than Blankenship’s emporium. The two-story office and warehouse was surmounted by a massive sign of its own, the letters bold and challenging.

  C. K. LAHOOD & SON

  Mining and Smelting

  There were chairs on the porch that faced the street. Three of them were presently occupied by a trio of Lahood’s roustabouts. One of them recognized Hull and gestured. The three exchanged whispers and even across the street Hull could make out their faint, unpleasant laughter. He doubted they were talking politics.

  Nothing much to be done about it now. He was committed, and they’d seen him. What was he worrying about, anyway? He had as much right to come into town as anyone else, including Lahood’s flunkies.

  Sure he did.

  He added a protective clove hitch to the reins, the men’s distant sniggering loud in his ears. Ignoring it as best he could, he climbed the steps leading to the store. He was inordinately glad once he was inside. Not that that would make any difference if anything happened, but if felt good to have their eyes off him.

  Jed Blankenship watched him enter. The owner of the general store was seated on a stool behind the hardware counter. He looked his sixty years, and wore shirtsleeve garters and an accountant’s visor as well as the attitude of a man who at that moment would rather have been someplace else. Ordinarily he was delighted to greet his customers, that they might enrich his coffers, but he was not pleased to see Hull Barret enter. He leaned slightly to his right to peer out the open door. The street was empty. For the moment.

  Ah well. Blankenship was both kindly and Christian. He was also hard as nails. He could always abandon his seat and make a dash for the back room if trouble broke out. Actually he was more upset by Barret’s timing than by his presence.

  “Damn fool,” he muttered to himself. “Couldn’t you have waited ’til the smoke cleared away?”

  “Afternoon, Mr. B.” Hull’s voice was full of forced cheerfulness. “We seem to be in need of a few supplies.”

  Blankenship responded with a grunt. “Whole new camp, the way I hear it.” He shook his head and looked at his visitor reprovingly. “You got sand, boy, but you ain’t got the sense God gave a sack o’ beans. You need something, that’s for sure, and it ain’t supplies. Couldn’t you have at least waited a day or two before coming in?”

  “Didn’t have much choice. They ruined the MacPherson shack, damaged a couple others. Got to fix ’em now, before the weather starts to set in. If it rained, some kids up there could catch their deaths. We wouldn’t want that to happen, now would we? Then there’s a bunch of sluices down. They’re in want of nails and some brads.”

  Affecting an air of nonchalance which he didn’t feel, Hull started gathering up the supplies he’d come in for: a big roll of tarry construction paper, a bucket of big nails, a small keg of pitch. His eyes passed beyond the hardware department and over into the clothing. He could sure use another pair of Mr. Strauss’s work pants, and there was a hat there that would look just right sitting atop a certain lady’s head. But he could afford those only with a look, and that was not legal tender in Blankenship’s emporium.

  The proprietor’s gaze narrowed as he watched the pile grow larger. “I expect you’re going to pay for all this in gold, right? All that gold you’ve been working so hard to dig out of that damn canyon? All the gold you keep telling everyone is up there, just under the upper layer of gravel?”

  “Yup,” Hull replied easily. “Soon as we put together a couple ounces, I’ll bring ’em in.”

  Blankenship pursed his lips and pulled a hardbacked ledger from the shelf behind him, drawing it forth with the speed and skill of a gunfighter drawing effortlessly on his opponent. He laid the ledger flat on the counter in front of him, opened it, and began flipping through the tall pages until he came to the one he wanted.

  “It’ll take a damnsite more’n a couple of ounces, Hull. Last payment of any kind that you folks made was—let’s see.” He flipped a page and ran a finger down an unseen column. “Eight months ago, when old Lindquist brought in a small bag of dust.” He looked sharply up at his visitor, regarding him narrowly. The bridge of the visor he wore shaded his eyes but did nothing to soften his stare.

  “Ever occur to any of you people there ain’t no gold left in Carbon Creek? Not every river in the Sierra’s full of gold, you know. Might be you folks lit on a poor one.”

  “If that’s so, then why’s Lahood so set on drivin’ us out? That man never did anything didn’t have money behind it. ’Course, I suppose he could just be plain cussed mean. Probably is, but if that’s all that was settin’ him to harassin’ us, I’d think he’d of got his satisfaction by now.”

  “Might be,” Blankenship allowed. “But one thin
g’s sure: he means to have that canyon to himself, whether there’s any gold in it or not. Maybe he ain’t doing it for any gold. Maybe it’s the principle of the thing to him. Might be he wants it just ’cause you folks are saying no to him.”

  “Might be, Mr. B., except for one thing.”

  “What might that be?”

  “We all know Coy Lahood ain’t got no principles. Anyways, you’re wrong about the gold. There’s color in the creek and plenty of it. You’ve had some of it yourself, in payment for goods received.”

  Blankenship let out a derisive snort. “Dust! Color! Every sourdough in California finds color.”

  “Not just color then. Nuggets, too. Spider panned one out this morning that was big as your fingernail. You don’t find nuggets like that in played-out streams.”

  That made Blankenship sit up and take notice. “Spider Conway?”

  Hull nodded. “The same.”

  Again the gunfighter glanced downward. “Found a nugget big as a fingernail, did he? Well then when you get back you tell that son-of-a-bitch I’ve got him down for eighty-five dollars and thirty-three cents. That’s just what he owes me. I can’t even imagine what he owes you and the others by now, for picking up supplies for him and those two idiot boys of his.”

  Hull selected a small bottle from a rack filled with narrow-mouthed containers and added it to the growing pile. “Forty-three cents. He wanted some arsenic to bleach his dust.”

  “That tears it!” The storeowner rose from his seat and jabbed a warning finger in Hull’s direction. “I’m a Christian man and I do my best to be understanding, but every man’s got his limit and by thunder, I’ve reached mine! You tell Spider and the rest of ’em that this is the end of the line. The teat’s gone dry. No more credit, y’hear? No more until you pay up on what you all owe me. Hull, are you listening to me?”

  By way of reply Hull grinned at him while casually adding a roll of oilcloth, two small panes of glass, and several two-by-fours to the pile that was accumulating in the middle of the floor. Lifting as much as he could carry safely in one trip, he started for the door.