by Gene Hackman
The two greenhorns gawked at the wall-sized map displayed behind the man.
“And it’s gotta coincide with our chart to be valid. Do you have a location for your claim?”
It was way too early for either Bob or Jubal to be interested in staking out a title. Jubal stepped in and asked the man about others who had made claims. “Sir, if I gave you a couple of names, Tauson, for instance, and Wetherford, could you—”
“Son, you’d have to see the manager about that. I can’t give out no personal business. Next.”
The two stepped outside. They decided Bob would stay back to try to get a word with the manager while Jubal scouted out the town. Bob didn’t think he’d have much luck prying information, but it would be worth a try, so they agreed to meet back in camp later in the afternoon.
Jubal cocked his thumb back and fired a shot at Bob with his index finger. Bob faked a shot to the heart, then Jubal proceeded up the street, only to be stopped with a shout. The mountain man caught up to him and held one hand to the side of his mouth as if he were about to impart a secret. “Listen, pardner. A-ah,” he stammered. “You’re not ashamed of me, are you?”
“Ashamed, why? What about?” Jubal frowned.
He paused, then blurted, “Ah, well, shoot. You know, all that palaver about my time in the war, how I hightailed it to greener pastures, you know all that kid’s nonsense.”
“Forget it. You did what you thought was right.” Jubal stuck out his hand, they shook, and Bob proceeded back toward the claims office. He turned once again, hands over his heart as if wounded from Jubal’s previous mock gunplay. Jubal had to smile at the big guy’s sense of humor. He also thought in some ways he knew exactly what Bob had gone through. There had been a number of times at Morning Peak when he had wanted to drop everything and run for his life.
TWENTY-THREE
Jubal passed the local post office on Main Street, a building with a high U.S. MAIL facade and an American flag waving off the porch. Thin vertical bars encased the windows from inside, and the building sat alone as if it were grander and more proud than the other wood structures on the street. Jubal wondered if it would be possible to send a note to Judge Wickham. Stepping inside the building, he noticed a wall of small wood boxes with tiny windows. Jubal figured it was so mail would be easily visible. “Excuse me, sir. I wonder if you could help me.”
“I can probably help you with anything relating to the mail, but I don’t lend money and I don’t have a daughter you can marry, so what’s your pleasure?”
“Sir. I need to send a note to someone in Cerro Vista, New Mexico. I wonder how I go about that.”
The kindly postmaster smiled. “Do you have the note with you?”
“No, sir. I haven’t written it yet.”
“Well, cowboy, once you’ve written the note you simply give it to me. I’ll sell you a stamp, you lick it, stick it on the envelope, and I mail it for you. Simple, huh?”
For a second, Jubal wondered how to continue.
The older man chuckled. “You don’t have a piece of paper, do you? Or an envelope? How about a pencil or pen?” The postmaster lowered his voice. “Can you write?”
Jubal quickly said, “Ah, yes, sir, I write quite well.”
The clerk reached under the counter and produced several sheets of paper, an envelope, and a pencil. “You can stand there by the WANTED posters and write ‘til sundown.”
Jubal moved along the oak counter until he was standing beneath several notices proclaiming several hundred dollars’ reward for information about a certain Jack Stanton and another for the dead-or-alive capture of a desperado named Miguel Cavallo.
Jubal had a tough time concentrating with these outlaws staring down at him.
Judge Wickham,
I hope this note finds you in good health. When last I saw you, your color was the shade of this paper. I hope your health has improved.
As for me, I disobeyed your wishes to stay close by in Cerro Vista. Sir, I am not asking for a pardon or sympathy but simply understanding.
I was doing okay until your shooting. Some thing about the gracious supper earlier in the evening, the company and your welcome, that, simply put, overwhelmed me after your wounding.
I am, sir, not much of a scholar, so please forgive this poor attempt, but I will try to do whatever it takes to apprehend the villains who shot you and bring them to justice.
Regards to your family.
I remain your loyal servant,
Jubal Young
Jubal slid the envelope, paper, and pencil back to the center of the counter.
“How did you do, youngster? Everything hunky-dory?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you going to address the envelope?”
“Ah, yessir, I forgot.” As Jubal wrote the address of the Wicks Hotel, he asked the clerk, “Sir, if someone wanted to send a letter to me, how would they do that?”
“Well, son, you put a return address on the envelope. You have an address, don’t you?”
“No, sir, I don’t. I’m just sort of wandering about in these parts.”
“You could rent a post office box for a dollar a month or if you don’t expect a lot of mail you could just say on the envelope, ‘care of general delivery.’ How’s that?”
“Fine and thank you, sir.” Jubal started to leave.
“Are you forgetting something, sonny?”
“Ah, yes, sorry, what do I owe you?”
“Penny for the stamp and I’d have to charge you another penny for the paper and envelope. Fair enough?”
“Yes, sir. More than fair, thank you… and the use of the pencil?”
“Just consider that courtesy of the U.S. government.”
Jubal felt good having gotten the burden of a guilty conscience off his chest. He hoped Judge Wickham would accept his apology and explanation in the tone and manner in which he intended.
By the end of the day, Jubal felt he knew nearly all of the various dwellings in the immediate vicinity. He’d made a rough mental sketch of the places where he had seen people and where they camped. Trying to keep track of a bunch of prospectors became a tiresome job, but the idea that he could best the raiders of the farm kept him going.
After a long day, Jubal and Bob were at last back at their campsite, a number of fires glowing throughout the surrounding woods. They stirred their vegetable stew and spoke of their endeavors.
“The claims man wouldn’t tell me a whole hell of a lot. He didn’t really want to say anything. Went on about claims being private. I did a bit of weepy storytelling about my brother and a death in the family. He finally looked it up but couldn’t find anything on Tauson, William F., or Wetherford, Peter. You say you had a good look around and didn’t see any signs of them, right?”
“Right.” Jubal stirred the stew with a long stick. “Let’s drift back into town tonight, late. See if those devils are sticking close to what they know, boozing and trouble-making.”
Around ten-thirty that night, Jubal and Bob walked into town to find a group of men raising a fuss outside the Good Chance Saloon. As they approached, Jubal saw two of them rolling on the ground, throwing wild fists, while bystanders shouted encouragement. Neither man seemed very fit and the fight didn’t look as if it would lead to anything. Bob and Jubal stepped around the panting figures.
Inside the music hall, merrymakers crowded the grimy floor and lined a second-story balcony. A piano man, being generally ignored, struggled with his songs. Jubal and Bob skirted along the walls of the large room, trying to see as much as they could without being seen.
“I’ll stand you to a beer, son. Wait here.” Bob elbowed his way through the drunks and soon-to-be drunks to get to the bar, his bald head bobbing above the throng.
As Jubal waited, a woman approached him. “New in town?”
Jubal nodded.
“Uh-huh. You looking for a good time, handsome?”
“Good time, sure, I’m having a—oh, you mean… No. Sorry.”
She drifted away, calling over her shoulder, “Your mustache is weeping, sonny.”
Jubal’s hand flew to his upper lip, coming away with a dark smudge. He felt an urgent need to get a look at himself. On the far wall between two pillars hung an ornate mirror tilted to one side. Jubal made his way through the room and stared at his clouded image. A faint walnut stain colored his upper lip. He wet it with his tongue, then scrubbed it with a finger.
“What’s you doing, fella? Come in here to drink with the men, or are you some kinda dandy what comes in to just use the mirror?”
Jubal turned to see a young man about his own age holding a foaming glass of beer in one hand and a cigar in the other, his cattleman’s hat towering above Jubal.
“I asked you a question, cowboy,” he said. “Are you looking for trouble?”
His sudden temper surprised Jubal, like he was looking for a fight. “Looking for trouble?” Jubal responded. “No, why would I do that?”
The stranger looked around to make sure his buddies were behind him, hearing every word. “Don’t smart me. I’ll rip off that girlish pin on your hat and fix it onto your goateed face, you hear?”
Jubal waved him off and moved away through the crowd. He could hear the young man bellowing and the chorus of catcalls coming from his friends. It was difficult to do, to walk away, but he certainly didn’t want to draw attention to himself. He reached up, touched the brooch on his hat, and smiled.
“Where you been, Jubal? Was looking for you.” Bob handed him his beer.
“Oh, I just took a gander at myself in the mirror. I thought my disguise was slipping.” They clinked glasses, Jubal taking a sip of the warm liquid. It tasted good, mysterious, filling his mouth with sensation. As he swallowed, there came a light need to cough, but the fluid coated his throat. He started to feel a strange relaxation. “It’s good, I’m surprised.”
“Surprised, why?”
Jubal didn’t want to tell Bob it was his first beer. “Oh, I don’t know, surprised they would have this good a beer, way back here in the hind end of nowhere.”
Bob looked at Jubal quizzically. “Have you drank before?”
“Oh, sure, lots,” Jubal answered, maybe a little too quickly. The two drifted back toward the wall so they could survey the room. When they decided they’d seen enough, they started toward the door.
“You were rude to me, cowboy,” came the familiar taunting voice from earlier. “My friends made fun of me ‘cause of you.”
“Who’s this,” said Bob, more like a statement than a question.
Jubal pointed at him. “Oh, it’s a lad who seems to be in charge of the mirror.”
“You just aching for it, ain’t you?” said the stranger.
“Aching for it?” Jubal looked at him again. “Let’s go outside.” He put the half-full glass on a table and pushed his way out through the swinging doors.
They walked out to the dirt street, the men from the previous fight long gone. “What I am aching for, sir, is to see the smirk on that rotten-boy face of yours wiped off. I’ve done you no harm, minding my own business. You’re half drunk and wanting to show off for your drunk friends. If I was somehow rude to you, I apologize. So turn your country ass around, and you and your girlfriends call it a night.”
It surprised Jubal how calm he was; he actually felt good. A part of him wanted to lay into the provocative yokel, but he thought the time just wasn’t right. Jubal had nothing against him, he was a young man itching for a fight, trying to prove he was a fully grown man. Jubal stuck out his hand.
“Shake, partner. Let’s call it a misunderstanding, okay?”
“You hear this, guys?” The man glanced back at his friends. “Wants to shake and chicken out.”
Jubal turned and smiled at Bob. “Let’s call it a night.”
It really did take a lot of gumption to walk away from a fight.
TWENTY-FOUR
The duo hung around the Poverty Gulch campsite for a week without spotting Wetherford or Tauson. It made them restless.
“There’s a bunch of different mining sites around this here gulch,” Bob said after their seventh consecutive fruitless day. “What say we split up and scout the various spots?”
“Sure, but as you said when I first met you, a body doesn’t want to be standing up to the likes of Tauson or Wetherford alone.”
Bob thought about this. “Damn if you aren’t right, son. Let’s get a move on, we’ve done nearly all the scouting we can do here. Let’s stick together.”
Unfortunately, they were running low on money. Jubal had almost none, and Bob had enough to last only three or four days. The animals wouldn’t understand short rations and neither would they, so they had to make a decision.
“You want to try our luck at mining?” Bob asked.
“I don’t look forward to getting down in a deep hole and shoveling rock, if that’s what you’re saying.”
“It would only be for a few days, maybe a week,” answered Bob quickly. “I’ve heard you can make a good number of dollars working the company mines.”
The following day they signed on at the Ajax and, along with nearly fifty other men, descended into the shaft. Dust hung like fireflies, seeping into every pore, even though Jubal wore a neckerchief around his mouth and nose.
After the first week, as they stood outside the mine entrance waiting to be paid, Bob declared, “Life is too short to devote to this sort of slavery. Perhaps we should call it a career.”
Jubal had been thinking the same thing. “Well, Mr. Bob, if you insist. I was just beginning to like it. The sweat, the camaraderie, the grinding dust. But to be serious, I understand that for very little money we could pan for gold along the creek, be outside, work for ourselves—find a spot that wasn’t staked and have at it. What do you say?”
Fresh air sounded great to Bob. They headed up high into the hills to begin their attempt at placer gold mining.
After several hours they ran into a friendly old-timer on his way back down the mountain. He made time to explain the process of panning.
“Find yourself a spot where you’ve come upon some quartz. Something that looks like it fell off a ledge ‘cause of an earthquake or some kinda upheaval years ago. If there’s a crick nearby, all the better. Look for a place where the stream changes direction or stands still like a backwater—”
“Don’t you just pan in the water?” interrupted Bob.
“No law against it, son, but you’d be best spending your time in a little used-to-be streambed close by. Otherwise you might as well take to being a mucker.”
Jubal and Bob glanced at each other.
“Oh, I see you’ve tried your hand at that,” the old man added. “Anyway, dig to a solid area, then spread that there dirt, about half a shovelful, into your pan.”
They looked once again at each other.
“You didn’t bring a shovel, did ya?” The old man grinned. Without waiting for their answer, he reached over to his pack and tossed a small shovel at their feet. “One dollar, cash money.”
“You got it,” Jubal said.
The prospector continued. “Hunker down next to the streambed and flip half a shovel of dirt into your pan, then dip a corner into the water. About a pint, I reckon. Then make the whole kaboodle kind of like soup—”
“Soup?” asked Bob.
“Yep, then scoop up more water and whirl the whole shebang ‘round and ‘round, then slowly let some of the soup slip out over the edge. Continue ‘til all the regular rock and gravel have been slurped over the edge. Get it so far?”
Jubal felt as if he understood up until then. Bob looked mystified.
“Well, sir, get her down to just a swath of dark red sand—almost black. Then drain the water to get the sand even all over. Gold is heavier than gravel and rock, and will settle at the bottom. If you got yourself five or six little sparklies, fine. Don’t depend on the sun. Take your pan into the shade—if it still glitters, it’s the genuine article. Make y
ourself a horsehair brush and sweep it gentle-like over the dried findings, and you can generally pick up your lode. Store it in a leather pouch and you’re off and running. If your spot gets thin and played, move on.” He paused, and said finally, “Don’t forget the dollar. For the shovel.”
The two greenhorns paid the old man his dollar. It worked out to fifty cents for the shovel and the same for the lecture.
The duo unsteadily continued upstream. Jubal hoped all of this would get him closer to Pete Wetherford and William F. Tauson.
They bought enough provisions to last a month with their few dollars and moved their camp high into the hills.
The first week of placer mining proved frustrating, even an outright disappointment. Bob stumbled his way through the day. They finally devised a method where Jubal stayed in the water and did the initial pannings, then Bob would take the red and black leavings and store them in a large bucket for further exploration.
By the end of the tenth day they had accumulated what they thought to be about an ounce and a half of dust.
“My good man, I think it’s time for ole Bob Patterson to have a couple of beers, what do you say?”
Jubal straightened his back. “I suppose we could journey into town for a decent meal and a beer. Let’s go in the morning. I’ll try and pan as much as I’m able the rest of the day to build up our little sack of dough.”
That evening, Jubal didn’t feel much like a king, but there could be no doubt about the heavy little pouch underneath his pillow. It represented a week and a half of work, and it was very real.
Before their journey into town, Jubal and Bob rode high into the mountains for target practice. In a small canyon facing away from the town below, they tied off their horses and walked deep into the crevasse.
Bob had a big old Colt .45. He thumbed back the hammer. “An old-timer once told me that two gunners fixing to shoot it out are usually inside twenty feet.” He fired off a round at a piñon and missed by several feet, pulled back the hammer once again, and in that way fired several more quick shots in a crouched gunfighter position. All the rounds missed high and wide. He was hopeless.