Novel 1963 - How The West Was Won (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  He wanted to stay here, where Lilith was. After all, he had been gambling for years, and where had it gotten him? No use cashing in his chips when he was this close to seeing what the pot held.

  He would stay on to the end. After all, a girl like this, with a gold claim?

  What kind of a fool had he been to think of leaving?

  Chapter 11

  *

  RABBIT’S FOOT GULCH, known to all and sundry as “the Rabbit” or simply “Rabbit,” was a ragged gash where the mountain seemed to have been split apart by some gigantic earth-shudder. Cleft deep into the mountain, its sides rose sheer from the creek in the bottom to the rim more than a thousand feet above.

  Along the rapid, shallow creek where the canyon widened out were a few rock houses, split-log shacks, or mere dugouts where the gold-seekers huddled when not employed in panning, working their cradles, or cleaning sluice boxes.

  Here and there some miner had diverted a portion of the stream to wash off the sand and gravel shoveled into the sluice box and leave the gold behind, caught in the riffles in the bottom of the sluice box.

  The trail, if such it could be called, wound precariously around the huts, along the creek edge, up on the high bank, and back down to the bottom of the stream itself.

  Cleve Van Valen, with Lilith beside him, rode a cautious way among the laboring men. Several times one or the other was hailed by some former acquaintance, and at their appearance work ceased for the time. Women were few at any time, and such women as Lilith were scarce at all times. Men stopped their work to stare, shielding their eyes against the sun.

  It was mid-morning. Most of the miners worked with shirt sleeves rolled up, exposing their red woolen undershirts. Most of them wore clumsy, flat-heeled boots, though here and there a man wore moccasins or riding boots, or worked in bare feet. To a man, they were bearded, unshaved, mostly unbathed, and armed. Those who did not wear a gun while working had one lying close at hand.

  They were a rough, tough, good-natured crowd of individualists, each one as independent as his physical strength or his gun could make him. Until a few days or weeks before, none of them had been known to any of the others, and a few weeks from now each would be off on some other creek, following the chance of gold.

  One husky miner recognized Lilith. “Hey, Lil! Sing us a song!”

  She waved, remembering the man from St. Louis, where he had been especially wary of the law. “We’re in a hurry, boys! Next time!”

  “Come on, Lil!” the bearded, hairy-chested man from St. Louis yelled cheerfully. “Tune up! Sing us a song!”

  She laughed at them. “What shall I sing for him, boys? ‘What Was Your Name in the States?’ ”

  All within hearing roared with laughter, and the bearded one made believe as if to duck a blow.

  Cleve turned in the saddle. “If your claim peters out, you’ve still got a following. You might make more singing.”

  The faint trail they followed turned up through the pines and away from the creek, which here filled the bottom of a canyon so narrow the sun could only strike the water at midday.

  It was not much further. Cleve led the way, but he sat half turned in the saddle so as not to present his back completely to Lilith.

  “I’ll go to San Francisco,” she said, “and I’ll buy a home on Nob Hill, and I’ll have my own carriage and driver. I’ll have all the linen and silver and cut glass I’ve ever dreamed of, and I’ll never sing for a crowd of men again.”

  After a minute or two she added, “I’ll have a concert grand, and when I wish to sing I will sing for myself…or my friends.”

  “And will you sing for me, Lilith?”

  “Yes, I’ll sing for you whenever you like, and I’ll wear fine clothes and give dinners for the people I like, and perhaps I’ll go to New York, even to Paris or Vienna. Have you been to Vienna, Cleve?”

  “To Vienna, to Innsbruck, Bayreuth, Weimar, Monte Carlo…you will like them, Lil.”

  The trail took a long bend, and far ahead of them they could see the widening of the canyon where lay the mining claim. They could ride abreast now, and they rode without talking. So much lay ahead of them, and soon there would be so much they could leave behind.

  The trail dipped down, and they saw the scar of rubble where waste rock had been dumped from the mine tunnel. Below, a rocker stood idle upon the bank of the creek, and a small stream poured into the creek from the sluice box.

  Against the mountain, under a few ragged trees, stood a flimsy lean-to; a bearded man sat on a stump near the door, smoking a pipe. A few feet away a squaw was grinding corn in a metate.

  As they drew near, neither of the two looked around or changed their position. The man, immobile as the rocks themselves, was staring at the sunlight on the waters of the creek.

  Cleve and Lilith drew up. She glanced quickly at the dark opening in the face of the mountain, then looked around her with sharp disappointment. Suddenly, she knew not where from, came a chilling fear.

  “We’re hunting for a Mr. Huggins,” Cleve said.

  “You found him.”

  “This is Lilith Prescott.”

  “So I figured. They tol’ me she was a looker.” He gestured with a careless hand, the nails black with grime. “It’s all here, just like ol’ Brooks staked it out. He must’ve had twenty men workin’ on it at one time.”

  “Where are they now?” Lilith asked. “Who’s digging the gold?”

  “You talk about gold—you never did see such gold as this here claim produced. Just a pocket, though…cleared about forty-two hundred before she played out.”

  The fear was reality now. Cleve glanced quickly at Lilith. Her mouth was tight against the shock, and the realization of what it would mean to Cleve.

  “Mr. Brooks, he spent about three hundred before his heart give out, an’ I put up a nice piece for a brass-handled casket…they come mighty dear, away out in the hills, like this. The rest, an’ there’s mighty little of it, I figure you owe me for settin’ on the claim.” He squinted his eyes at them. “That’s only fair, ain’t it?”

  Cleve turned his horse. “Do you want to take his word for it, or shall I take a look? I believe him.”

  The bearded man moved at last. He got up from his chair. “You’re welcome to look, but there’s mighty little to see. Me an’ the woman, we’re takin’ out. I mean there’s nothin’ here for a body, an’ we favor the far-off timber. I’m a man likes to hunt.”

  Without a word, Lilith pointed her mount back down the trail. After a few minutes she said quietly, “It’s like you said, Cleve—I can always sing. I think I’ll make my start right back there…‘Next time,’ I promised them. Well, this is our way back—back to reality.”

  *

  ROGER MORGAN HEARD the sound of music before he reached the tent theatre. The first thing he saw upon entering was a long bar, behind which four bartenders worked desperately to fill the orders of men who crowded three and four deep at the bar. There were Spanish-Californians in wide-bottomed trousers and buckskin jackets, there were Chinese, Chileños, Irish, Germans, French—every race and every nationality could be found in the crowd.

  He stepped to one side of the door and looked around. Several games were going, and at the far end of the tent there was a stage, empty now. Several musicians sat in chairs bunched at one side of the stage, drinking beer.

  Jackass Hill was booming. One pocket of quartz was producing from a hundred to three hundred dollars a day; and another miner in just six weeks had taken ten thousand dollars out of a plot one hundred feet square. Dozens of prospect holes along the mountain had paid enough to make their owners rich—at least temporarily. They called it Jackass Hill from the braying of the jackasses in the pack trains as they passed up the hill on their way to the mines.

  It was a wild, free-spending crowd. Not everybody in that crowd had struck it rich, but everybody had caught the fever, so they all acted like it, and as long as it lasted they spent money like it.

  M
organ worked his way through the crowd, scanning the tables for a familiar face, and the face he half expected to see was the one he hoped not to see.

  Suddenly, to the sound of an accordion and a fiddle, Lilith appeared on the stage singing “What Was Your Name in the States?”

  Roger Morgan found an empty chair and dropped into it, watching her as she sang. The games had slowed, and here and there men had even ceased to drink. One and all, they watched her. There was about her none of the brassy boldness of the usual tent-theatre and gold-country performers. She looked fresh, young, and lovely. She was like a girl from home, yet with that extra something that stirred the blood of every man in the huge tent. As she went on from song to song, moving gracefully about the stage, her eyes moved from man to man throughout the crowd, making each one feel that she sang to him alone.

  Finally Morgan could stand it no longer. He got up and left the tent, circling around toward the familiar prairie schooner which now served as a dressing room and living quarters. He was still waiting there when she left the tent.

  “Miss Prescott?”

  She started to pass by, then recognized him. “Oh, hello, Mr. Morgan. Sorry I can’t invite you into the wagon. We’re cramped for space.”

  “This ain’t no life for a woman like you. I heard your mine was played out and your fancy friend had left you. Where’s he now?”

  “Cleve? I heard he was in Hangtown.”

  “You really mean that no-good went off and left you?”

  “He left me, yes, but I don’t agree that he’s no good. Cleve is Cleve, that’s all.”

  Morgan dug a boot toe into the earth. “You’re a perplexin’ woman, Miss Prescott. When a skunk needs killin’…if you’d left me alone I’d have run that gambler clean off the wagon train. Might have saved a lot of trouble.”

  “He pulled his weight, Mr. Morgan. Even you admitted that. As for running Cleve off…he doesn’t run easily, Mr. Morgan. There are some Cheyennes who could tell you that.”

  “I ain’t denyin’ he can shoot, but he went off an’ left you. What kind of a man is that?”

  “All my life, Mr. Morgan, I have wanted a rich husband. Can I blame him for wanting a rich wife? We both may have been born for the poorhouse—at least I am beginning to suspect so—but we’re not the kind to like it.” She turned toward the wagon. “I must change.”

  He stepped around in front of her. “Do you believe all this? Tell me the truth?”

  “Cleve and I couldn’t live on love for five minutes. There’s the truth for you, Mr. Morgan.”

  “Then you’ve answered the question I’ve been askin’ for two thousand miles. So you just look here. I’ve got the biggest ranch you ever saw…you can’t ride across it in a day. That land will mean money, sooner or later. You say you want a rich husband. All right, you’re lookin’ at him.”

  Lilith looked at him, but she was not seeing him, for what she saw was herself as she had once been, a wet, bedraggled girl standing on an Ohio riverbank. This was not what that girl had wanted—not this tent theatre, not what Morgan had to offer, either. She did not know exactly what it was that girl had wanted so badly, but she knew it was not this.

  What Morgan offered was security, a shelter away from the wind. But when had she asked shelter of any man? Had she not always,no matter how hard the times, stood on her own two feet? Nowhere in the world was there anyone to whom she was beholden, except—a little—to Linus Rawlings.

  Linus, she told herself, had understood. Even as he gave up his own free life for her sister Eve, so he had provided the means for Lilith to be free. Better than she or any of them, Linus must have known what she was facing, for in another way and another time he had faced the same himself. Freedom, Linus had known, is never bought cheaply. Linus had understood her, even as he would have understood Cleve.

  “There ain’t a blessed thing you’d have to do ’cept mind the kids. An’ we can leave right now…whenever you’re ready.”

  She smiled at him suddenly, for she had made her decision. Or had it been made long before? One never knew what it was that went to making a decision. “Not now, Roger—not ever.”

  “How can you say that?” He was incredulous. “You just said—Don’t you believe your own words?”

  “It would take too long to explain. I am sorry, truly I am.”

  Roger Morgan turned abruptly, angrily, and strode away. She watched him go, a little sad, but without regrets.

  “Well!” Agatha appeared in the opening of the wagon. “I heard it! Why do you get the chance to make all the mistakes? Why can’t I make a fool of myself for once?”

  “Of course I’m a fool, but I know what I want, and I won’t settle for less.”

  “We both should have left the train at Salt Lake. With the Mormons, you may have to share your man but at least you’ve got one.” Agatha paused. “What are you going to do now?”

  Lilith laughed suddenly. “What am I going to do? Why, I am going to do what my sister did. When she found her man she had sense enough to go after him, and she let nothing stand in her way. Well, I’m going after mine, and if he won’t come to me of his own free will, I’ll have to find a way to make him.”

  Agatha put her hands on her hips. “Now you’re makin’ sense for the first time since we met! I declare, I never could see you lettin’ that Cleve Van Valen slip through your fingers, right when you had him, and all.”

  “He just wanted my money.”

  “You know better than that. He may have thought so, and you may have believed it, but I never saw a man look at a bankroll the way he looked at you. Why, old as I was, I was embarrassed to see it!”

  “I hope he wanted something more than that!”

  “You do, do you? Take it from me, honey, if they want you that way, be glad of it. You can always feed them into quietness afterwards.

  “No man stands hitched of his own free will. You have to bait your trap, and when they nibble at the bait, why, you just make them happy, make them comfortable, and you can tie them tighter than with chains. An’ believe me, the ones you can’t keep that way ain’t worth keepin’.

  “Make a man easy in his home life, and he won’t stray, not if you have a mind to his needs. He may think about kickin’ over the traces, but let him feel he can go when he likes—if you’re as smart as I think you are, he’ll never want to go.”

  *

  THE PADDLE-WHEEL STEAMER Sacramento Queen was a little smaller than the Mississippi riverboats he had known, but the passengers were much the same. On the whole, though, they dressed somewhat more roughly and were somewhat more ostentatious in handling their money, of which they all seemed to have a good deal.

  On the Mississippi you could tell a gentleman by the way he dressed…there was no such easy classification on the Sacramento. Here the best-dressed men were almost invariably the gamblers. The exceptions were a few businessmen from San Francisco or an occasional traveler from the East or from Europe. The miners, ranchmen, or farmers usually dressed in a somewhat dressed-up version of the clothes they wore every day.

  Cleve Van Valen glanced at his cards. Before him was a comfortable-sized stack of gold coins, in his hand a pair of aces and a pair of deuces. His luck had rarely been good, yet he managed to be successful in a small way without it, relying on his knowledge of cards, of men, of percentages, and on his memory. His memory for cards played, as well as for how each man played the various hands, was remarkable. Months after a game had been played he could relate the exact sequence of hands; and he could estimate from past performances how each man was apt to play the various hands.

  He had rarely found it necessary to aid the percentages. The average gambler was not a professional, and flattered himself that he understood cards. Moreover, the average gambler could be led to back his belief with money. Very few understood their chances of filling any particular hand. As every gambler knows, there are runs of luck that have nothing to do with percentages or even logic, and these Cleve was careful to steer
clear of when they happened to others. They rarely happened to him.

  Faint music came from the main salon, and unconsciously he began to hum with the sound. The song was “A Home in the Meadow.” The opening bars were played, and then a girl began to sing the words and Cleve stiffened in his chair. He strained his ears to be sure of the voice, and there was no mistaking it.

  He sat a little straighter. The cards seemed to have blurred a little. Another card was dealt him and almost unconsciously he added it to his hand. It was the third ace—he had a full house.

  He looked at his cards, then swept the table with a quick glance. Suddenly he realized he was himself riding a streak of luck—and if a man was smart, he rode that streak hard.

  Of the others at the table, there was not one whose measure he had not taken. Properly handled, there was three or four hundred dollars in that full house, and it was his for the taking.

  The words of the song came to him more clearly, a song and a voice heard many times before over the open fires out upon the plains. It was Lilith, of course. Of late he had even been hearing her voice in his sleep.

  A wise gambler rode his winning streaks, but which way should he ride this one?

  The man in the gray vest said, “Check.”

  The man next to him said, “I’ll listen.”

  And it was Cleve’s turn to open. He looked again at his cards, then folded them neatly and placed them face down on the table. He got to his feet abruptly.

  “What’s the matter with you?” the gray vest asked.

  “Gentlemen, my regrets. I am checking out.”

  Abruptly, he swept the stacks of gold coins into his hands and filled his pockets, then he started to turn away.

  “Now, see here!” the gray vest began. “I—”

  With his left hand Cleve turned over the hand he had laid down, turned them over in his palm, but kept the face of the cards concealed.

  “Gentlemen, I am quitting, but if any of you think you have a better hand than mine—the one I am laying down—I will be glad to bet card for card that mine are better: I am laying down a hand that would have cost you gentlemen five hundred dollars, but if you doubt me—”