Chance Elson

by Ballard, Todhunter, 1903-1980

  "Nevada mostly."

  Doc grinned. "You're just the man I want to talk to. Tell me something about the state."

  John Kern had been sizing up men before Doc was bom. At eighteen he had ridden into Tonopah, Nevada, just to see what a mining town looked like. He had been one of the first in Goldfield and had stayed with the camp until it grew into the greatest mining town on earth.

  Nevada had produced many fortimes. Some of the greatest in this country had their roots in the huge mineral deposits of that barren state.

  Most of the money had flowed East to build stately mansions in Washington, to construct telegraph lines around the globe, to found a dozen banks and financial institutions.

  But not all of the mining millionaires had forsaken the country which had brought them wealth. John Kern, along with Winfield and Odie, Key Pittman and others, had stayed in Nevada. He owned half a dozen ranches, four banks and still held large interests in mining properties. In the thirty years since Goldfield had begun to die he had remained a leading figure in the state.

  "Gambler?"

  Doc was startled, then he laughed. "Am I getting that obvious?"

  John Kern's smile was lean. "Maybe not to most, but about the only people interested in Nevada nowadays are gamblers. You coming out expecting to get rich?"

  Doc sensed the irony. "I've got a sick partner." He was seldom on the defensive, but Kern impressed him. He knew without being told that this tall man was somebody. He had the air, the habit of command which is hard to mistake. "I'm supposed to take him to a dry climate. He's got a bad lung."

  "It's dry," said Kern, "dry, and hot, and windy, and sometimes dusty, but I guess it's healthy. At least it was for me."

  "You from Vegas?"

  Kern shook his head. 'I've lived there. In fact there are few cities in the state I haven't hved in at one time or another." He started to talk about Tonopah and Goldfield, and some of the gambling games he had witnessed.

  "Didn't Tex Rickard come from Goldfield?"

  "He was there, came down from Alaska and opened the Northern Saloon. The building's gone now. So is most of the town." There was a trace of sadness in Kern's voice. "They had a bad fire in thirteen or fourteen, and then a flood. It took almost everything below the hotel."

  He was silent, staring at nothing for a few moments, seeing the past. "But she was a great town while she lasted. We had them all there, the promoters, the thieves, the gamblers and hustlers. You have to have seen Tonopah and Goldfield, yes, and Virginia City to imderstand Nevada and the way Nevada thinks. Few people who haven't hved out there for years ever do."

  Doc said, "Is that why you legalized gambling?"

  There was no smile in Kern's eyes now. "We had to," he said. "The mining business never came back after the World War, and the depression has pretty well ruined our ranching. We don't have much else. Gambhng was legaHzed in desperation. I only hope it doesn't wind up by eating us."

  Doc did not understand exactly what he meant, but he did not ask. Instead he questioned Kern about Vegas and the chances of making a Hving there.

  John Kern was a lonely man, and he liked Doc. Doc could be very charming when he chose and he was making a special effort now. They had dinner together, talked until bedtime and most of the next day. By the time they finished John Kern knew as much about Liller as Doc knew about himself. He had heard all about Chance and Dutch and Joe—and Judy.

  Kern said, "You're Hable to have a rather rough time. Vegas is full of gamblers, not only the home-grown boys but a lot of men who came in from CaHfomia, like Farmer Page and McAfee and Camero."

  "Hoodlums?"

  "Not in the sense I think you mean, although Camero used to be a bootlegger. They are more like you, I'd say, than like the Chicago bunch or the New York racket boys. Thank God they haven't started out here yet. I guess there isn't enough money to attract them."

  Doc said, "Well, I guess there's always room for a couple more. If I can get a job."

  "Go see Comelately Hombone."

  "Who?"

  John Kern laughed. "Comelately's a character. That's his favorite expression and everyone in southern Nevada knows him. He runs the Club Grandee on Fremont. Tell him I sent you. Now, where you going to live?"

  "I haven't the slightest idea."

  "You'll have trouble," said Kern. "There never was much extra housing and most of it has been taken. I've got an old place up on the Tonopah road. The key is hanging from the top of the second porch post. Take it and use it as long as you like."

  Doc was staring at him. "I'm beginning to beheve what they say about the West."

  "What's that?"

  "God's country. Imagine a stranger offering me his house to use in New York."

  Kern smiled. "Don't thank me until you see the place. It isn't much. I suspect Vegas and the whole country is going to be something of a shock. Maybe you'll stay a week or two, or maybe you can take it, but it won't be easy or pleasant. Our country needs a bit of knowing." He rose, offering his hand. "I'm getting off for Salt Lake."

  Doc shook the hand. After Kern had gone back for his baggage, Doc sat staring out of the window. "We'll stay." He said it under his breath. "You may be a bitch, Las Vegas, but you aren't so tough that you can't be taken."

  (^^
  Las Vegas had been founded as a railroad town. For years travelers on the old trail which wound northward from Santa Fe across the Colorado badlands had known of the springs and the grass and the trees, which were fed by the under-

  ground Amargosa River, but until the railroad had laid out a townsite and put in their division point and shops, there had been no permanent residents.

  For twenty years Las Vegas was not much, a sleepy desert town of less than five thousand people. It was not until 1931 that two events utterly unrelated conspired to alter her future.

  First, after years of discussion, the federal government began work on the dam which would harness the Colorado River.

  The second event was the repeal of the state's gambling ban, but neither of these happenings had much immediate eflFect.

  Black Canyon, where the dam was building, was over twenty miles away, and the vast majority of the workers imported by the five allied contracting companies found quarters and entertainment closer to the canyon. As for gambling, no one outside of Nevada, nor for that matter most of the residents, took much notice of the change. There had always been rather open gambling in the state, just as there had been hquor sold during prohibition.

  A few tourists braved the danger of vapor-locking their cars on Baker Grade and traveled the long, lonely stretches of Highway Ninety-One across the sandy wastes of the Colorado desert. But most of these were more attracted by the skeleton of the dam than by the roulette wheels, the twenty-one games and the crap tables beginning to multiply in the old barrooms, and the town's main payroll was still the railroad shops.

  The legislature had hoped to attract Cahfomia tourists by the move, just as they hoped to attract outsiders by their liberalized divorce laws, but there was too much gambling nearer home. Vegas did not actually feel the impact of outside money until Los Angeles suddenly elected a reform mayor in 1938, and at almost the same time the attorney general cracked down on the gambling boats o£F the coast.

  These two actions marked the conception of modern Las Vegas. Suddenly the boys who had made their living running the gambling clubs, the barges and the flash and slum

  games at the Los Angeles County beaches panicked. Gam-bhng had been outlawed below the Mexican border, and even the sheriffs of the inland counties were beginning to close the hot-spring spas and the mountain resorts.

  The migration to Vegas was on, a trickle at first, swelling into a flood which jumped property values along Fremont to double their former level, and made the town one of the most diflficult places in the world to find a room.

  Old clubs were purchased, their furnishings cleared out, the places redecorated and new equipment rushed in. Dealers from CaUente, from Culv
er City and the barges appeared in Vegas.

  On the heels of this immigration came customers, men who had played at the California gambfing houses these operators had deserted. Cards were mailed out to selected fists and the great of the movie world began to make their pilgrimage to the desert town.

  But the novelty wore off, the crowds decreased and at the time the train carrying Chance arrived at the station after its all-night run from Salt Lake, Vegas was suffering its own depression.

  Joe helped Chance down the car steps. Dutch and Doc and Judy carried the baggage. There was a lot of it. They had brought all they owned.

  They waited in the station entrance while Doc hunted up a cab. Chance was weaker. It was all he could do to stand. His eyes ranged morosely down Fremont. The first two blocks had clubs side by side, their garish signs seeming to fight each other for the space above the dirty sidewalk.

  Below the second block, the buildings thinned out and shrank in size, so that southwest of Fifth Street there was nothing much but houses.

  "So this is where we make our fortune?" Chance's tone was bitter. He shut his eyes and swayed a little. Joe caught him, steadying him. Doc had found a cab, a Buick, five years old, red with desert dust, battered.

  The driver lounged beside it, long and narrow, a big hat adding inches to his height. Doc said, "You know where John Kern's ranch is, out on the Tonopah Road?"

  The driver nodded. "How much to take us there?"

  The driver considered, glancing at the crowd in the station doorway. "Three bucks."

  Doc said, "You've made a deal. Let's get going." The driver went around the car and jackknifed himself under the wheel. He made a U turn and pulled up beside the steps; then he got out and opened the rear deck. He and Doc and Dutch loaded the baggage. The car was very full. Chance and Judy sat in the front seat with the driver, Joe, Doc and Dutch in back. The baggage not only filled the trunk, it was heaped upon their laps and on the rear floor.

  Judy had been looking at the driver sidewise, considering his big hat. She asked, "You a cowboy?"

  Chance spoke without opening his eyes. "From what I've seen this whole country couldn't support one cow."

  The driver laughed. "You get used to it. I come out from Chicago, sLx months ago. I kind of like it now."

  Chance still had his eyes closed. "I doubt that I'll live long enough to like it."

  There was tension in the car. The driver sensed it. He didn't quite know what was the matter but he was embarrassed. "You friends of John Kern?" "That's right." It was Doc. "Nice fellow, Kern, a big man." Chance opened his eyes. "What do you mean, big?" The driver was at a loss for words for a minute, then he brightened. "Well, you might say he runs the state, him and the senator." He turned the Buick left under the railroad and started out the Tonopah highway.

  The town had already faded. On each side of the road were ranch houses, set well back in green, tree-studded fields. Doc was looking at the grass and the trees. "They irrigate?" The driver shook his head. "Not here. They don't have to. There's an underground river along this valley. It's only eight, ten feet to water."

  Chance grunted. "What a country. Even the rivers have to run underground."

  The trees and the green crops encouraged Doc. He had

  been watching as the train ran through the badlands of southern Utah and eastern Nevada, and he had been about ready to give up himself. But, hell, this was pretty. It looked almost like some Eastern farming community.

  Maybe he built himself up a little too high, for the house came as a shock. Doc was the first one out. He turned to look at the weathered building. It reminded him of a shed. Its wall-boards ran vertically from the low eaves to the ground, the cracks between them shielded by warped battens. It didn't look very big, even with the wide screened porch, and he wondered if they could all squeeze inside of it.

  The yard was overgrown as if from long neglect, the bam at the rear canted at a dismal angle, seeming ready to fall. Doc stood, not knowing what to say, tempted to tell the driver to take them back to town, to a hotel.

  The driver did not notice Doc's disappointment. He had slipped from under the wheel and gone around the car to unlock the deck. He started hauling out suitcases and carrying them to the low steps. Doc went to help him automatically, still in a kind of daze.

  Dutch struggled from under the pile of baggage on his lap. He got out, followed by Joe. Chance made no eflFort to move. Judy wriggled from the car on the driver's side.

  Doc carried a load to the porch. He found the nail which held the key and unlocked the front door. Stale air came out to greet him. He did not know what he had expected. Certainly nothing like this. John Kern had impressed him, the driver had said Kern was a big man and Doc was not used to dry-country ranch houses.

  He stood in a front room, ten by twelve, with four doors opening from it. He walked to the nearest door and found a bedroom, scantily furnished with an iron bedstead, a cheap dresser with a warped top and a clouded mirror.

  Doc investigated the other two bedrooms, finding them much the same. In the hving room were two rocking chairs, a scarred table, a lumpy sofa.

  The kitchen was larger than the living room but its shed roof was so low that he suspected Dutch would have to duck to walk across it. The room held an oilcloth-covered table

  with four chairs, an iron cookstove with an oil burner in its firebox and a tier of shelves from floor to ceiling along the west wall.

  The rear door stuck. He pulled the bolt and managed to get it open, and stepped out onto a small service porch. At one end of the porch was an iron sink and a pump; at the other two steps led down into a woodshed.

  Doc was methodical. He even checked the drums in the woodshed to make certain there was oil. Then he tried the fuse box beside the back door. The fuses had been unscrewed. He replaced them and was reheved when he pulled the chain of the kitchen's single bulb to see the light come on.

  When he got back to the front porch, it was littered with their baggage. Chance sat on the top step, Dutch and Joe stood beside him uncertainly and the driver was waiting to be paid.

  It flashed across Doc's mind that if he hadn't been there to direct them, to goose them, they would have done nothing. Apparently the house had afi^ected them even more than it had him, and the need for action crowded some of the doubts from his mind. He paid the driver, then asked, "Is there a bus into town?"

  The driver said there was no bus. Doc hesitated for a moment. "Dutch, ride back in with him. See if you can rent a car for a few days until we get organized. Then market. Just start at the front of the store and go back. We need everything."

  He watched the cab pull back to the main road and turn toward town. The yard was silent after its noise died away and there did not seem to be much traffic on the highway. Only the wind made any racket. Doc thought it was blowing pretty strongly, but he was to find out later that this was a calm day in Nevada.

  He walked over to where Chance sat. "How do you feel?"

  Chance coughed. There was blood on the handkerchief when he took it from his lips. "Lousy."

  "We'll have you a bed in a few minutes. Judy, the sheets are in the black grip. Joe, find her some blankets and a pillow. Make up the bed in the front room for Chance."

  He went back into the house and through it to the woodshed. He found a battered five-gallon can and filled it from the drum. He filled and lighted the oil burner in the front room. By the time he finished, Joe and the girl had Chance's bed ready.

  Between them, Joe and he carried Chance in, undressed him and put him to bed. Afterward Joe showed him how to light the burner in the kitchen stove. There had been one like it at the training farm.

  He got a dishpan and bucket and filled them at the weU and poured them into the stove's reservoir. Then he refilled them and set them on top to heat. He knew he did not have to explain to Joe that everything in the place must be washed thoroughly. Joe hated dirt. Doc removed his coat and folded it neatly across a chair. He unfastened his diamond-s
tudded cuffs and rolled them back. Doc had never liked to get his hands dirty, but he got them dirty now.

  Doc caught himself watching Judy as she worked. She had tied a cloth over her head and pulled oflF her gray sweater to expose the top of her slip and brassiere.

  The brassiere was not very well filled out, but the shoulders and arms had rounded. Doc had always been a sucker for a naked woman. Skin, he thought, did things to him, and he had to set himself consciously not to watch her.

  Judy worked with a will. She had seen worse places than this, and the idea that it was in the country intrigued her. She could hardly wait to go exploring, but she made no move to leave until everything had been cleaned save the Hving room. Then with Joe mopping the floor and Doc out in the front yard beating dust from the misshapen sofa cushions, she shpped through the rear door and headed for the bam.

  Joe was whistling as he worked. Joe was never so happy as when he worked, because work was a kind of therapy. He did not understand this and would not have cared if he had. Home to Joe was where Chance was, and Chance was here. Sure, he was sick, but Doc had insisted that once they came West Chance would be all right again. And Joe had faith in Doc.

  Joe went into the kitchen, stopping at the door to examine

  it critically. He had loved the kitchen at the apartment with its clean white sink and drainboards, its modern stove and gleaming refrigerator.

  There wasn't even an icebox here. He'd speak to Doc when he came in, but at that moment Doc had heard the car turn in from the highway and straightened.

  Dutch drove up with a flourish. He had had three drinks and there were five bottles of whisky in one of the boxes which filled the rear seat of the 1931 Ford touring car. It made a lot of noise, but it ran, and Dutch was jovial. "Twenty dollars, boy. What do you think?" Doc walked slowly around the car, noting the peeling, sand-scarred paint, the worn tires, the twisted fenders and the absence of one front headlight. "You really want to know?"

  Dutch lost his grin. "Actually, no, but it does run." "What does the town look like?"