Dead Freight for Piute

by Short, Luke;

  Pulling up his teams in the dusk, he turned and waved Ted Wallace, who was behind him, to a halt, then dismounted stiffly. He was tired, his nerves edgy, for he was not used to this work. He had been freighting from the Lord Peter all day, but even its wide road and its gentle grade had been hard enough for him. He had a lot to learn, he thought humbly, before those tons of ore behind him ceased to be a constant threat.

  He was slapping the dust from his Stetson when Ted Wallace walked up.

  “Aren’t those Monarch wagons at the hoppers?” Ted asked.

  Cole glanced over in the dusk, saying he didn’t know.

  “Since when did they start freightin’ in spring wagons?” Ted asked contemptuously and then added, “Let’s have a look.”

  The small wagons were half empty now. Their ore was being shoveled into the big hoppers which were located on the highest point of the slope above the descending buildings of Union Milling. Fed down by gravity, it would soon be in the mill’s stamps, which were making the evening dusk throb even now.

  The tally man from the mill and some idle shovel men stood around the wagons, grinning. The Monarch teamster was standing by the front wheel of his wagon, scuffing the dust with his feet.

  As Cole and Ted approached Cole saw his relief man, Bill Gurney, squatting on the road to the side of the teamster. Bill was talking, and Cole put a hand on Ted’s arm as they mingled with the shovel men and paused to listen.

  Bill Gurney was a sour little monkey, rough-tongued and hard-bitten and scrappy. He was saying to the teamster, “Tell me again, Loosh. It give me an earache the first time.”

  The Monarch teamster looked over at him and said, “Go easy, rooster. You’re liable to loose some teeth.”

  “You won’t loosen ’em,” Gurney said promptly. “You ain’t got a man in your outfit that could hit the ground with his hat. Not after today you ain’t. You’re dead, the hull damn lot of you.”

  The Monarch teamster flared up. “Okay, runt. You’ll have a crack at it pretty soon, I reckon. See if you can do better.”

  “We’ll do better,” Gurney said. “We just got the nerve. We’re gettin’ paid wages. We ain’t bein’ drove. We’re gettin’ a bonus. We got good mules and harness. We’ll do it.”

  “Maybe,” the tally man from the mill said.

  The Monarch teamster looked over at him and nodded agreement. “Maybe is the word. Me, I don’t think it can be done.”

  Gurney said dryly, “Not by them Monarch women it can’t. You’re damn right.”

  Loosh lunged for him then. Bill stepped back, came to his feet, and he held a heavy wagon spoke in his hand. Loosh stopped at sight of it. “See that,” Gurney said, waving the spoke. “I can wrap that around your skull, Loosh, if I wanted to. Now look.” He threw the wagon spoke away, and when he spoke his voice was sharp with scorn. “I don’t need nothin’ to whup you, Loosh. You and your hull damn lot. Come on.”

  Cole said quietly, “Easy, Bill. What’s the ruckus?” and stepped into the circle of men. The shovel men in the wagon had ceased work now and were watching.

  Bill swiveled his head, saw Cole and grinned. “Howdy, Cole.” He nodded his head toward the enraged teamster. “Ain’t you heard?”

  “What?”

  “Monarch got a wagon hung up on the China Boy road this mornin’. Not a man in the lot of ’em, includin’ Keen Billings, had the guts to drive her down. So they unhitched and shifted the load to these damn buggies, and it’s took ’em seven hours to get the load down.” He looked over at Loosh and grinned. “That’s right, ain’t it, Loosh?”

  “You’ll get a crack at it!” Loosh snarled. “Let’s see how you do it!” He turned and walked away. Bill laughed and went over to Cole’s wagon, and Cole walked over to Ted.

  “You heard him?”

  “Sure,” Ted said slowly.

  “You thinkin’ the same thing I am?”

  Ted nodded. They were both thinking, not of the Monarch’s failure, but of their chances. Ever since the Piute field was established the China Boy, a fairly rich mine, had been forced to shut down time and again because its ore could not be moved fast enough to keep men in work. Its isolation, its height, the treacherous shale that the road to it passed through had all combined to scare out the freighters. Small wagons could move it, but it took too many wagons, horses and men, and the cost of them made the freighting prohibitive. There was a standing offer by the super of the China Boy that any outfit who could move four hundred tons of ore in a day would get a contract that was better than any offered in the Piute field. And the only way to move those four hundred tons of ore was in big wagons, tandem.

  Ted Wallace, like Cole, was mentally calculating their chances. With their four new wagons they had ten now, all told. By working from dawn to dusk, pulling all wagons off the other jobs, including the new Glory Hole job they’d just landed, they could, by making two trips with twenty tons to a wagon, deliver the four hundred tons. The Monarch had tried and failed. Up till now Ted Wallace had never had the wagons. He had them now, and this was the time to make his bid. Craig Armin, thinking to cut him out by getting the contract first, had failed to move the required ore.

  Ted said finally, “I think we’ve got a little business to talk over with the China Boy super tonight, Cole. Let’s ride.”

  It had been a punishing day, for they were crowding their luck. Riding back in the dusk, Cole could see the lights of Piute winking ahead of him. The setting sun, long since screened out by the hulking mass of the Sierra Negras, put the town in darkness early. Piute lay there under the shoulder of the mountain, challenging them to lick it.

  Already, Cole reflected, the money Celia had brought was spent. It had been poured into wagons, into more and better mules, into harness and into a new wagon yard, which was started that morning. They were taking chances, he and his new partner. They were betting on doing a hard job better than Craig Armin and trusting to luck and skill to pull them through to their reward.

  Ted looked over at Cole, who was silently contemplating the town. “You feel a little funny in the stomach?” Ted said.

  Cole looked at him and shook his head slowly. “I don’t reckon, why?”

  “That China Boy business,” Ted said wryly. “A man’s a fool to try it. But if we swing it we’ll have a contract that will let us buy ten more wagons and two hundred more mules. And with that, Cole, we’re on top. We’ll have this field tied up.” He shook his head and murmured, “But what a hell of a chance!”

  “You’ve got the drivers, ain’t you?” Cole asked.

  “Countin’ myself, yes.”

  “Then we’ll swing it,” Cole answered. “The only thing I don’t like is that you’re takin’ the chances, Ted. I’m not. I didn’t put up any money. And I can’t drive a wagon good enough to help out.”

  Ted laughed then, his uncertainty gone. “Did you ever stop to think, partner, that if you hadn’t been thinkin’ a little faster than Keen Billings yesterday we’d only have nine wagons today? And with nine wagons we couldn’t even try for the China Boy contract.”

  It was slight compensation to Cole, however. Yesterday he had been lucky. Maybe he wouldn’t be again. And all the time there was that thought in the back of his mind that it was Celia Wallace’s gratitude and Ted Wallace’s generosity that were responsible for his being in Western Freight. He wasn’t pulling his share of the load, it seemed to him. And his willingness to learn the business and share the work was, in the end, not much more than just willingness. Any six-dollar-a-day teamster could do his work and do it better than he could.

  It was dark when they rode into Piute. They avoided the main street, clinging to the off streets where mean little shacks housed the shifting population.

  They turned into the alley that ran between the corral and office, and Cole found himself eager to see how the day’s work on the new yard had progressed. There was a lantern in the old corral and wagon yard when they rode in. Along one side of it, rank on rank, mules were chewi
ng contentedly at their feed. The board fence on the other side of the lot adjoining the lumberyard had been torn away, and a long stretch of new board fence loomed up in the dark.

  They unsaddled, turned their horses to water in the pole corral at the rear of the yard by the stables.

  Together, then, they walked over into the new wagon yard, pausing by the edge of the stables to look into it. There wasn’t much to see in the darkness. The lumber sheds had been torn down, and the boards were piled over the lot. The new board fence had been hastily thrown up around both old and new yards by the crew Ted had hired. The two-by-four frames of the office, next to the big archway opening onto the side street, were upright, but that was all. Still there was a lot of room here, and both of them, without saying it, were seeing this yard as it would be someday—jammed with wagons, its long sides housing the mules and the busy blacksmith shop and spacious corral.

  Ted lifted his hand and pointed and was about to speak when, out of the darkness of the stable’s side, a man stepped. He had a gun held close to his midriff and it was pointed at them. His face was masked.

  He said harshly, “Reach for it!”

  Ted and Cole, taken by utter surprise, did just that. The man stepped over, shucked their guns to the ground and then stepped back.

  “It’s payday tomorrow, boys. Got anything in your safe across the alley?”

  Cole said quickly, “You’re a day too soon, my friend.”

  Ted laughed then. “Don’t bother to bluff him, Cole.” To the man he said, “We pay by check, mister. There’s not a dollar in the place.”

  “Seems to me I read ’bout your stealin’ some money from Monarch,” the man said.

  “That was a lie,” Ted said easily.

  “Lie or not, you better get the money.”

  “I haven’t got it, I tell you.”

  The man cocked his gun; the sound of it was very clear. “I said, take me to it,” he said coolly.

  Cole had the sudden conviction that this man meant business. He was sure of it when the man said, “You thought long enough. You aim to?”

  Cole said swiftly, “Sure. Come along.”

  And on the heel of his last word there came a sharp crack! from the alley.

  The robber stepped backward and glanced toward the alley gate. There, standing in it, was a woman, her gun leveled. Celia!

  “Get back, Celia!” Cole shouted.

  For answer she shot again. This time the bandit swiveled his gun around, thought better of shooting at a woman, then turned and raced off into the darkness. Cole lunged for his own gun in the dirt, found it and sent two shots after the man, knowing he missed him.

  Then he hurried over toward Celia. Ted was there, and as Cole came up he turned to him. “This isn’t Celia,” he said.

  There was a deep, warm laugh from the girl, and she said, “Would you like me to stand over by the lantern so you can see me?”

  She stepped into the yard, and the light from the lantern fell upon her. She was smaller than Celia, and her dark hair was parted in the middle and brushed tightly back to a knot at the base of her neck. The full gingham dress she wore was patched but neat and clean, and there was a look of pride in her handsome face. Her dark eyes were wide-set and full of humor as she looked from one to the other.

  “I’m Letty Burns,” she said.

  Ted and Cole swept off their hats. Ted stammered, “I never saw you before in my life, Miss Burns, but that cutthroat meant business.”

  Letty Burns held out a small gun in her palm for them to see. “In all the time I’ve been in Piute,” she said, half laughing, “that’s the first time I’ve ever used that.” She put it back in her pocketbook.

  “It did the trick,” Ted said, smiling too. “Thing I can’t understand, Miss Burns, is how you happened to be in the alley at just the right time.”

  “I was waiting to see you, Mr. Wallace,” Letty Burns said. “I wanted to talk to you.”

  “Then let’s go into the place,” Ted said. “A stable yard is no place for that.”

  Celia came out of the kitchen as they entered, her face flushed and eyes filled with pleasure at seeing them. When she saw Letty she looked at Ted, and Ted introduced her to Letty, explaining their meeting. Then Letty Burns sat down and Ted pulled up a chair beside her. Cole didn’t say anything.

  “What was it you wanted to see me about, Miss Burns?”

  Letty Burns looked at Cole, who was standing beside Celia. “It’s—it’s private, if you don’t mind. Business.”

  Cole started to go out into the kitchen after Celia, but Ted said to him, “Wait,” and he came back. Ted added to the girl, “We’re partners, Miss Burns. If it’s business you can speak to both of us.”

  Letty Burns’s gaze faltered and she bit her lip. Then she said swiftly, “It’s about a job. Oh, I know I’m a woman, but won’t you listen to me?” She was talking to Ted now. “You’re building a new wagon yard, I’ve heard. I also know that both of you are working as teamsters. But soon, when the new place is done, you’ll need someone in the office—someone better than the old man down below who just sweeps out and refers business to you.” She looked at Cole, whose face was expressionless.

  “I’ve had training,” she went on, talking to him now. “I can keep books, write letters and take care of all the correspondence, pay bills, make out invoices. I’ve done it all before. When my father was alive, before his store burned down in San Francisco, I did all the work. I can do it.”

  Cole looked at Ted, who was looking at him. Ted said, “Teamsters are a pretty rough crew, Miss Burns.”

  “I can take care of myself,” Letty Burns said quickly. “Just give me the chance. I’ll work for very little, and I’ll prove I’m worth more than you pay me!”

  Cole said quietly, “You need the work, Miss Burns?”

  She swiveled her head to look at him. The way he phrased the question, the way he said it, the faint suggestion of doubt in it, the inscrutable expression in his eyes made Letty Burns study him closely. But he was only waiting, a tall, unsmiling man with a kind of sober courtesy that she shouldn’t be afraid of. She said simply, “Very badly.”

  They didn’t speak for a moment, and then Ted said to Cole, “It’s something new. Lord knows, all the male brains in this man’s town have quit and are working for miners’ wages.” He glanced at Cole, and Cole knew he liked this girl. And then there was that affair out in the stable yard which was in the back of both their minds. It was a debt to be paid off to this girl. Ted’s look was questioning.

  “There’s no reason why a woman can’t do as good bookwork as a man, I reckon,” Cole said quietly, noncommittally, leaving it squarely up to Ted.

  Miss Burns smiled her thanks and then looked at Ted. Ted said finally, “If you can do all you say, Miss Burns, there’s no reason why you can’t have the job. I’m keepin’ a rough set of books in the office below. If you can get them straightened out in the few days before our new shack is up over in the yard then the job’s yours.” He was going to look over at Cole to see if he approved, but Letty Burns came to her feet, her face lighted with joy. “Then you’ll try me anyway? I’ll prove it, Mr. Wallace!”

  And Ted Wallace, enchanted by her smile, never got around to glancing at Cole for his approval. For Celia came into the room then and announced supper was ready for them all, Letty Burns included.

  It was a pleasant meal there in the tiny kitchen, and Celia treated Letty Burns as an old friend when she learned of Ted’s decision, which she did not question. Letty was the first woman Celia had met in Piute, and they immediately began talking of clothes and places and recipes and such, as women will. Letty Burns had a quick wit, and more than once during the meal Ted Wallace threw back his head and laughed. She was a resourceful girl, for there were few ways for her kind of woman to make a living in Piute. Cole listened, joined occasionally in the talk, and when they were finished excused himself.

  He heard Letty say to Celia, “I’m going to work a little for
my supper anyway, Celia. We’ll go through those dishes in no time if we both pitch in.”

  When Cole walked out of the kitchen into the living room Letty was overriding Celia’s protests, while Ted laughed at them both.

  In the living room Cole stopped in front of the table. There was Letty Burns’s pocketbook on the table, and Cole gazed at it gravely for a long moment.

  Then, hearing the three of them still talking in the kitchen, he reached over, opened it and drew out the gun. He plugged out the shells, glanced at them and put them back.

  As he slipped the gun back in the pocketbook Ted called, “Ready to go over to the Cosmopolitan, Cole?”

  “Any time,” Cole replied. He reached in his shirt pocket for his sack of tobacco, and the gesture was an absent-minded one. He was wondering about those shells in Letty Burns’s gun.

  For, as he had thought when he heard her shooting at the holdup man in the wagon yard, they were blank shells.

  Harvey Girard, like most of the well-paid executives of the Piute field, lived in the Cosmopolitan House. There was, indeed, no place else to live in comfort, for the town was still raw and not shaken down in five years of its growing boom. But Harvey Girard was a working man all the same, not one of the big money men from San Francisco. As a consequence he could not afford one of the second floor suites and had his room on the third floor. And the Cosmopolitan House, once it passed the second floor, forgot its elegance and spaciousness and was just another frontier hotel. The stairs from the lobby to the second floor were broad and carpeted; from the second to the third floor they were narrow, steep, uncarpeted and dark.

  Climbing them, Cole and Ted went single file, and when they reached the top of the stair well they found themselves in a dark and narrow corridor lighted by one single lamp.

  They found Girard’s room and knocked and were bid enter. The room was a sitting room, littered with papers, topographical maps, books and ore samples. For the China Boy mine, whose superintendent was Harvey Girard, lay a long ride from Piute, and this was his town office. He was a big man, gruff and craggy-looking, about fifty. When he saw them he smiled faintly.