When Ed was out of sight down the fence-bordered road, the old man had turned and Charley had seen the angry round redness of his eyes. “Let no one speak his name in this house again. He is no son of mine.”
“Neither am I,” Charley had whispered, and the old man not hearing him had gone inside after his jug of corn.
The cold night wind slapped his eyes, making him blink. He stepped back into Gail’s parlor and pushed the door shut and went back to the stuffed chair. In a moment he was up again, turning the lamp wick higher and carrying the lamp around with him while he searched the place and presently found, in a high kitchen cupboard, a clay bottle of forty-rod whisky. He took it down and poured a mugful and took the mug and the lamp back into the parlor, and sat up with his drink nursing it while he tried to push dismal memories away so that he could think about the good hours—riding the old bay plow horse up the riverbank toward town under a warm summer sky with dragon-flies and bees making strange writings in the air and underfoot the passing of a broad field of brown-eyed yellow daisies. A hunting trip when he was ten, his brother showing him how to pour the powder down the muzzle and grease the patch and patch the ball and ram the ball home, halfcock the big knurled hammer and cap the nipple, set the front sight in the seat of the rear notch and draw his bead, and squeeze off the shot, afterward stepping aside to peer past the gently puffed cloud of black powdersmoke. Skinning an antelope out. Lying on his back under a silent temple of green treetops interlaced across the cloud-tufted sky, an ant crawling over the back of his motionless hand. Tramping through a fall of new clean snow to feed the stock in the barn. Skipping stones across the white-rippled surface of the river, deep water clear as sun-green glass. The smell of grass and wildflowers and pine needles, strong and heady the scent of the land.
The front door opened and Charley lifted his head sleepily in time to see the woman Gail slip inside and close the door softly. The pink-lavender curtains stirred. She turned to face him, throwing off her wrap, and said, “I thought you’d be sleeping.”
“No.”
She saw the mug in his hand and smiled. “You don’t miss much, do you?”
He raised the mug to his lips and felt the amber liquid scald its way into his belly. When he put the mug down he grinned, showing his teeth. “I didn’t figure you’d mind.”
“Why should I? Help yourself.” She sounded jaded. Through the crack-open window he heard the wind making a tune in the streets. She dropped her gray knit wrap on a table, put her level glance on him and let her hand hang idly touching the bundled wrap. Her lips parted, seeming to cling moistly to each other.
He gripped the whisky mug again, tightly in his fist, and suddenly he had the strange feeling that he was experiencing the exact moment when the fluidity of his youth was beginning to crystallize into its final form. The wind, no more than a gentle and almost imperceptible breeze, seemed quite distinct in his ears. His hand relinquished the mug and slid back toward him along the surface of the table. He noticed the yellow unsteady flickering of the lamp in the corner of his vision. He felt the pressure of the chair’s stuffing against his thighs and buttocks and back and shoulders. His head turned and he found his eyes fixing themselves on the strange incongruity of the empty, clean mustache cup at the end of the table. In the confused turmoil of his sensations, he was mainly aware of the girl’s quiet advance and of his own hard breathing. He stood up, made irritable by a consciousness of his own awkwardness, and he said, “What’s going on?”
She swayed when she moved; it was an unconscious gracefulness that was part of her at all times. She was so close to him that he could feel the flutter of her breath. She tossed her head back. “You’re a good-looking fellow, Charley. I hope your eyes stay clean like that.”
“What do you mean?” he said.
“You’re fine,” she breathed. He felt the soft touch of her fingers, toying with his sleeve, and then when she walked past him he followed her with his eyes. He felt afraid. She went to the kitchen and came back in a minute with a glass half full of red-brown richness. She sipped from it and looked at him with her long eyes over the rim of the glass. Her lips pushed forward thoughtfully and Charley said, “What’s on your mind?”
“You.”
“What about me?”
“Don’t be so damned innocent, Charley. You keep trying to hide behind your age.”
“I do?”
“Sometimes you’re a little slow, Charley,” she suggested.
“Well, maybe I am,” he said. Her smile was, he thought, a little sad. He did not understand, but he did not need to. His experience taught him nothing about this moment, and while he tried to think his own feelings betrayed him: he lifted his hands palms-up and displayed great, inarticulate energy, but it was of no avail; he found himself wordlessly encircling the woman’s body with his arms. He thrust his face forward and sought her lips. He felt the warm hunger of her mouth, the insistent thrust of her body, and yet, through all of it, there was a nagging corner of his mind that lived through this and was not touched by it except for a dim, faraway regret.
CHAPTER 5
Charley walked slowly down the street to Jim Woods’s saloon. The hour was early; the place was almost deserted. Out of his last fifty cents he spent twenty-five on breakfast and the rest, in the course of the morning, on mugs of beer. Norval Douglas did not appear that morning, nor did Jim Woods himself. The wood-frame clock ticked loudly and rang the hours. The bartender told Charley that Woods had taken the mail coach to Stockton to see a man about selling the saloon. No one seemed to know Norval Douglas’s whereabouts. Senator Crabb had returned to San Francisco the night before. And, the bartender confided, Chuck Parker was in town.
Mention of Parker’s name made Charley’s hands become still. It awakened unhappy memories of pain and embarrassment. “Did Parker break out?” he said.
“Released,” the barkeep said, stroking his mustache. “Served his time, I guess.”
“Hasn’t been that long, has it? A year?”
“I don’t exactly recall,” the barkeep said, and went.
Charley borrowed a pack of cards and played solitaire through the afternoon until at sundown hunger made him impatient with the game and he swept the cards together and turned them in to the bartender. Remembering that there was no money in his pocket, he made friendly talk with the bartender and managed to talk the man into slipping him a few sandwiches. He took one or two more from the tray on the bar when no one was looking, and that was the sum of his supper, consumed quickly in the alley behind the saloon. Afterward he drifted the streets, now and then stopping by Woods’s place to find out if Norval Douglas had returned. Someone said he had gone out into the valley to solicit enlistments in Crabb’s party. He was expected back any time—but midnight came and went and he did not appear.
Then, on one of his visits to Woods’s saloon, Charley caught sight of a massive shape standing far down the bar—Chuck Parker. Charley stood still. The big man stood hipshot, his narrow, suspicious eyes sweeping the crowd with constant wary intensity, and Charley was reminded of the brisk, perfunctory trial that had sent Parker away.
Charley’s legs were tired and when a good-natured gambler, flush after a winning streak, offered to buy him a drink, Charley accepted, sitting down at the gambler’s table and listening with half his attention to the gambler’s talk, which was the idle but insistent talk of a lonely man to whom few people ever listened.
The room was full of hearty people, drinking and smoking in large quantities and talking with loud and friendly ease. At the bar, Chuck Parker was signaling for a cigar and standing with the look of a man quite pleased with himself. His cheeks were round and his body was like a single square-hewn chunk of stone, with vast girths at thighs and waist and chest. His glance surveyed the room with cool detachment, passing over Charley’s face without pause or recognition. Well, Charley thought, I guess I’ve grown a little, changed some. Parker was regaling a few awe-eyed drunks with stories. At the tabl
e with Charley, the lonely gambler kept talking, and Charley listened to him, thinking none of this better than it was. There was a man slumped over a table in a stupor. One of Woods’s men just then came to the drunk and pulled him from the chair and boosted him out the door. Thereupon the gambler who had bought Charley’s drink said, “Poor Tom. He’ll be out in that cold damned street, and he’ll tell himself he’s cold, but he’s not enough of a man any longer to do anything about it. He’ll probably die out there unless some kind fool who still has dreams pulls him out of the street and gives him a blanket.” And a moment later, smiling coolly, the gambler excused himself politely and left the saloon, apparently to hunt up a blanket. Charley’s expression remained blank.
Woods’s professor was pounding the battered keys of the spinet, and the rouge-cheeked girls moved around the sawdust floor avoiding the stamping boots of the miners. A vaquero came into the place, swept off his huge hat and laughed loudly, afterward making a place at the bar and calling for a drink. Charley wished he was a vaquero—they were always laughing.
A husky miner with a pugilistic expression went by, bought a ticket and stood by the rope that defined the limits of the dance floor, waiting his turn. Charley felt in his pocket, and remembered he had no money, and observed that luck was truly indifferent, that you had to endure and reject it with equal sobriety, and that he was hungry again. One o’clock came and went. Chuck Parker was talking to a new group of interested listeners, and Norval Douglas did not appear; Charley remained in the saloon because it was cold and he did not want to sleep in the stable again. His lids were weighted. Men, eddied around, trafficked in and out, and gradually the crowd began to diminish and the volume of sound lessened. Chuck Parker shouldered away from the bar and backed against a wall, building a cigarette, covering the room from under the droop of his eyelids. Charley had a good idea of what was on Parker’s mind. He watched the big tough with a measure of old contempt in his look. Parker was clearly roving, on the hunt in his animal way, awaiting the passing of some simple prey, and presently Parker’s eye fell upon a small hollow-chested old miner who sat eating with his fingers at a table, alone in the back of the place, half drunk or more, with a round-butted leather sack at his elbow—a gold poke. Parker’s attention became fixed, and Charley pitied the little drunk miner.
Parker’s cheeks were flushed red, broiled to their lobster color by the sun. Road gang, Charley thought, seeing the raw marks of chain cuffs on the man’s thick wrists. Parker pushed indolently away from the wall and rolled through the crowd out into the night. When Charley looked back, he saw the miner on his feet, swaying a little, pocketing his gold poke. His shoulders were stooped; his beard was ragged. The little man went bent-backed through the place and out the door. Knowing that Parker would soon be upon the miner, Charley, in a fit of accumulated unaimed rage, slipped from his seat and went to the door. He remembered a time when Parker and Bill, the bartender at the Triple Ace, laughing wickedly, had backed him into a corner and hurled obscene insults at him until his face had burned, and with his eyes redly filmed Charley had hurled a chair at Parker and Parker had been too drunk to dodge, so the chair had smashed his face, making his broad flat nose bleed furiously. In unreasoning rage Charley had cried out and Parker had growled and slung his weight forward, trapping Charley in the corner, and had pounded Charley senseless while somewhere in the background Bill was laughing.
That was Charley’s memory of Chuck Parker, and now he wheeled out of the saloon doorway and saw the old stooped miner turn a corner two blocks away and fade back into the part of town that consisted mostly of board shacks and tents, where Charley had lived until two days ago. Charley hunched his shoulders against the cold and cursed his thin garments, and quickened his pace as he rounded that corner. He skirted the back of the big mercantile emporium and passed a row of tents and the frame building that was Madam Sarah’s, and went up on his toes, running. A wide circle placed him behind a warped, weatherbeaten cabin, where he waited drawing up his breath for the miner to come by so that he could warn the miner against Chuck Parker. Parker would be along soon. Time grew shorter and Charley chafed.
The miner shuffled nearer and lurched against the side of a tent, springing its canvas, speaking to himself in a reasoning way, “On down just a piece more, Ben …”
The air had the chill of a sharp knife. The miner came past the edge of the tent, approaching the cabin. The moon was clouded over and it was hard to see anything. Charley was all set to jump out and warn the miner when a huge dark shape loomed in the night and fell upon the old miner, throwing itself upon the man’s back, flinging an arm about the miner’s neck and a knee into his back; the miner cried out softly, his body arguing ineffectually, and Charley held his breath.
There was a chance. In the shadow of the cabin, Charley stamped his feet, crunching gravel heavily. At that sound of steps, Parker jerked his head up. Charley stamped harder. Parker gave the miner a long shove and whipped about, racing around beyond the tent, soon going beyond earshot.
“Think of that,” Charley whispered, a little awed by the effect of his own trick.
The miner was down flat. Charley went to him and knelt. The stillness of the man’s body was indication enough that he was dead. There was no pulse, no breath. Charley frowned into the night and cursed Chuck Parker and then, after a moment’s thought, slipped the gold poke from the dead miner’s pocket.
Afterward, suddenly afraid, he ran through the tent city, legs pumping, halting at last behind the livery barn. In that shadow he waited, trying to calm his breathing. Sometime in the ensuing run of time he heard a man’s heavy boots tramp by beyond the stable and he recognized Chuck Parker’s steady cursing. A little while thereafter the Negro hostler came out of the side door and shuffled away down the street, and Charley went inside and lay in the straw. The gold poke was heavy in his fist. He put his fingers inside it and sifted the gold dust between, his fingers. It was gritty, like sand. He could not be still, and finally he got up and went into the blackness, down to Woods’s saloon. He pulled his shoulders together and shoved into the hot stale air of the place. His mind asked tricky questions; he went immediately to the bar. The bartender gave him a curious look and he said, “Norval Douglas been in yet?”
“No,” the bartender said. “Hear about the murder?”
“What murder?”
“Ben Crane.”
“Who’s that?”
“Some old miner. They found his body a while ago.”
“Shot?”
“No. Neck broke. Funny thing.”
“Yeah,” Charley breathed. He looked around. There were very few people in the place. “This Crane—he have a family?” Charley asked.
“Wife and daughter.”
“They been told?”
“I guess so,” the barkeep said. “Why?”
“No reason, I guess. Where’d he live, this miner?”
“Little shack right behind Cora’s place.”
“Yeah,” Charley said. “Well, I’ll see you later.” He went out again and stood in the street looking upward. In his pocket his hand toyed with the gold sack. It made his pants sag. The moon was a vague luminescence through the thickness of a cloud whorl. The gambler who earlier had bought a drink for Charley now came down the walk and recognized Charley and touched his hatbrim. Charley said, “You put that fellow to bed?”
“Yes,” the gambler said. “I guess this is one more night he’ll have to live through,” and disappeared into the saloon. Charley pressed his elbows against his sides and looked at the sky again. His feet turned and took him down past the mercantile emporium. The night was very dark and still. A light was on inside the shack behind Cora’s crib, and there was the faint sound of weeping through an open window. He felt the taste of despair. Lamplight fell out through that opening and splashed along the earth. A pair of men stood by the door with hats in their hands, and while Charley watched from the shadows those two men spoke softly and soothingly and turned away, putt
ing on their hats and walking away, coming quite close to Charley when they went by, hands in their pockets and heads down. Charley waited until they were gone, then pulled the gold poke from his pocket. He bounced it in his open hand and then raised his arm, and threw the heavy poke overhand. It went through the open window and he heard it strike the floor. There was a small startled cry, a woman’s voice. Charley whirled away.
He entered Woods’s saloon and went blindly to the bar again. The bartender gave him a questioning glance. Charley felt a hand on his shoulder and almost jumped, and turned to see Norval Douglas’s yellow eyes smiling quietly at him. “You’re freezing,” Douglas said in his gentle drawl. “Let me buy you a drink, boy.”
“Obliged.” Charley wondered how much the gold poke had been worth. His hand trembled a little when he lifted the drink, and he could not tell if it was from the cold. He nodded to Douglas and then looked past Douglas’s shoulder, and his hand tightened on the glass.
Chuck Parker’s huge frame filled the doorway, making an aggressive block against the night, and Parker’s angry round eyes swept the room. Charley wanted to shrink back, but the bar and Norval Douglas stood there blocking his way. He flinched when Parker’s hot glance passed him. Parker mouthed a silent oath and swung away from the door, disappearing into the night. Charley put his back to that and leaned against the rich brown wood of the bar. His hand was unsteady. He said, “All right. Sign me up.”
“Fine,” Douglas said. He produced a folded piece of paper, opened it and took out a pencil. “Sign here.”
“You write it. I’ll make my mark.”
“Full name?”
“Charles Edward Evans.”
“All right,” Douglas said, and slid the paper along the bar. “Put your X here.”
The Vanquished Page 5