by John Legg
“Not much,” Flake admitted. “I want to sell our goods before I give thought to that. Why?”
Rhodes explained his reservations.
Flake nodded. “I’ve thought of that, and it does present a dilemma. However, I think that if we sell all the goods for the prices I believe we can get—and we sell off the big wagon and its team of mules, we should be all right. I checked some places yesterday since our hotel is asking a mighty dear price for such inadequate accommodations. There are few that are cheaper, but I have found a house—a shack, actually—that we could rent fairly reasonably. We also should have enough food and such in our stores to make it through the winter, unless it’s extraordinarily long.” He paused, then added, “Thank you, though, for thriving of us.”
Rhodes shrugged. He felt responsible for the group. It was a ridiculous notion, and he told himself sternly not to do it anymore. “You going to need Joe and me to help out any?”
Flake nodded. In deadly serious tones, he said, “I had hoped not to need you, because we’re already so far in your debt.” He sighed. “But...well, the marshal of Intolerance is asking a mighty dear price.”
Rhodes looked at him quizzically. “Why?”
“I was told that the four previous marshals here lasted a grand total of twelve and a half weeks. Marshal Pritchard has been on the job two months, mainly, I think, because he hasn’t been foolish.”
“Damn,” Rhodes breathed, more amazed than worried.
“Indeed,” Flake answered.
“What’s that got to do with me and Joe, though?” Rhodes asked after his wonder had passed.
“I don’t trust the ruffians.”
“That’s wise,” Bonner tossed in. He was leaning back in his chair tamping tobacco into his pipe.
Flake nodded. “Anyway, I had wanted to have the marshal watch over the sale to make sure nothing went wrong. And...”
“But the marshal wants too much money, so you want me and Joe to watch over things. That right?”
“Yes,” Flake said tightly. He did not like asking Travis Rhodes to do any more for him. The young man had been a great help all along, and Erastus Flake was not a man who enjoyed being in another man’s debt. Not that Rhodes had ever indicated he wanted any repayment. Still, Flake did not like asking for more help.
“I don’t reckon that’d put me out any. How about you, Joe?” Rhodes asked, looking at his new friend.
Bonner shrugged. “Can’t hurt none, I expect.” He puffed on his pipe slowly, sending foul clouds of smoke spinning through the room.
“There, Erastus, all settled,” Rhodes said. He stood. “We’ll meet you over there just before noon.”
He looked at Bonner again. “Come on, you lazy old fa...” he realized that the children were at the table, “...lazy old man,” he amended.
“I was jist gettin’ comfortable,” Bonner complained.
“You get any more comfortable, you’ll be snoring, and I’ll have to pay the folks here rent money for you.”
The children giggled, and Rhodes winked at them.
“Lord, Lord, why do I have to suffer such things?” Bonner said, eyes cast toward the heavens. He rose. “Woe unto you who have lost patience,” he said quietly.
Rhodes didn’t know who was more shocked, himself or the Mormons.
Bonner grinned and picked up his rifle, which had been resting against the table. “Well, come on, boy,” he said with a grin. “You was the one all fired-up for gettin’.”
As they hit the street, Bonner said, “You know, don’t you, boy, that we could be up to our ears in trouble watchin’ over this sale?”
Rhodes nodded. “I know.” He paused, and shrugged. “What I don’t know is why I’m so hell-bent on helpin’ these folks. I’ve tried to puzzle it out, but I ain’t come to a conclusion.”
“Maybe you’re tryin’ to replace your family,” Bonner said evenly. He kept walking, and got a few steps before he realized that Rhodes was no longer next to him. He stopped and looked back. As Rhodes caught up to him, Bonner added, “And that ain’t such a bad thing, all in all.”
Rhodes shook his head in wonder. The more he considered the possibility that the statement was true, the more he knew it was. There was a lot more to this rickety old man than met the eye, that was sure.
Rhodes grinned lopsidedly. “Then I ought to quit worrying about it and just follow the path where it leads, eh?”
Bonner nodded. “Just as long as you don’t get to thinkin’ them folks is your real folks,” he warned. “They ain’t, ya know.”
“I’ll keep it to mind.”
They started walking again, and then Rhodes asked, “Where the hell’re we going?”
“I don’t know about you, but I aim to get a little more shut-eye.” Bonner grinned. “I didn’t get me a whole hell of a lot of sleep last night, and I ain’t as spry as I once was.”
“That’s obvious,” Rhodes said with a laugh. “But I reckon I could use a few more winks myself. Where?”
Bonner shrugged. “I reckon over where we left the horses and wagons. There ought to be an empty stall, or maybe the hayloft. Don’t matter much to this chil’ just where he lays his robe long’s there ain’t too much noise or people to come pesterin’ me.”
They told the stable man to wake them at eleven, if they weren’t awake by then. Both figured that would give them time to have a bite to eat before keeping watch over Flake’s auction.
Rhodes woke first, and lay there a few moments listening to Bonner’s soft, wheezing snores, as well as the sounds of the stable and the town. He stood and stretched. Then he called quietly, “Time, Joe.” Rhodes had learned on the trip to Intolerance that it was unwise to get too close to Bonner when waking him. One could never tell what would happen.
Bonner seemed to come awake all at once, eyes open and alert, hands reaching for weapons. Once he realized there was no danger, he almost slipped back to sleep, closing his eyes and settling himself.
“Come on, get up, you lazy old man,” Rhodes said. Now that Bonner was more or less awake, he could be more free in his talk. He began brushing off the bits of straw and dirt clinging to his clothes.
Bonner growled, but his eyes opened. He pushed up, having a little trouble with it. “Goddamn rheumatiz,” he snapped in irritation. He hated getting old, and sometimes wished he had been put under at the hands of the Blackfoot or some other hair-raising Indians.
Bonner brushed himself off, though not too much. It seemed to Rhodes that Bonner was unmoved by dirt.
Then they headed toward a restaurant.
Chapter Sixteen
A worried Erastus Flake was waiting at the barn for Rhodes and Bonner. The Mormon breathed a sigh of relief when he saw them. He hopped down from the wagon on which he had been watching for them and pushed his way through the milling crowd.
“Looks like you got yourself a mighty lively gathering.” Rhodes said.
“I just hope they’re not too lively,” Flake said.
“Never can tell with a place like this,” Bonner offered. As in all things, he considered himself an expert on such gatherings.
“You near ready to start?” Rhodes asked, ignoring Bonner.
Flake nodded absentmindedly. He was, Rhodes thought, a true businessman. He seemed harried enough to start pulling his hair out, yet Rhodes knew Flake would have it no other way. He just had to worry about every detail of business.
“Come, we have no time to waste,” Flake said. He whirled and stomped toward the large barn. Rhodes and Bonner glanced at each other, shrugged and followed along.
Flake went into a small side door next to the barn’s main double door. “Mr. Pace,” he roared. “Mr. Pace!”
“What the hell do ya want with all yer hollerin’?”
Christopher Pace grumbled from over near the big freight wagon parked just behind a small, flatbed wagon just inside the double doors.
“It’s time to begin,” Flake said loudly.
“Hell, I been waitin’
on you is all. Jeez.”
“Well, wait no more, Mister Pace. Open the doors.” He turned to Rhodes, Bonner, and Hickman, who had just materialized from the bowels of the barn. “Phineas will help me directly, bringing things from the freight wagon to the smaller wagon I’ll be using as a podium. I want you two—” he indicated Rhodes and Bonner—“to keep a watch that no one steals anything, and that no one tries to get anything by violence.”
“Tall goddamn order,” Bonner said sarcastically. Flake never heard him. He had already charged off, toward the opening barn doors. Pace and two of his workers shoved the smaller wagon outside. As Flake climbed up on the wagon, Pace and his men moved the big freight wagon a little nearer to the doorway.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Flake roared over the noise of the assembled crowd. When he had their attention, he said, “Welcome. And thank you for coming. I hope that we might offer you some things of value, of use.”
“Just get the hell on with it,” someone shouted from amid the masses.
“Very well.” Flake paused. Then, “However, a little about the rules.”
“Rules? What goddamn rules?” a man shouted. “These rules,” Flake said calmly. “The bidding will be over when I say it’s over. All payments are to be made in gold, on the spot. No gold, no goods. And the auction will close when I say it closes.” He paused, surveying the crowd. “I also have armed men guarding the merchandise. Anyone who tries taking something will be shot down.”
Everyone was now silent, waiting for the auction to begin. Flake gazed out like an emperor viewing his realm. He had stopped in the grocery stores and general stores yesterday. Much of what the stores had was equipment. Food was in short supply, especially flour, sugar, salt, molasses, and cornmeal. Flake, who had been a merchant most of his life, had figured on these goods being in short supply, and so when he had been doing his purchasing at Fort Laramie, he had made sure he had bought as much of those items as possible. Now it was about to pay off.
Hickman brought up a fifty-pound bag of flour and set it on Flake’s “podium.” The bidding began.
Rhodes directed Pace to bring up two smaller wagons and put one at each end of the wagon Flake was using. Rhodes climbed onto one and Bonner onto the other. With the height advantage, they could keep a closer watch on the crowd.
Rhodes kept sweeping the field with his eyes. He was only a little concerned that someone would cause trouble. The problem would really arise if a number of them tried to cause trouble. He began to grow bored after a while, as the stores on the big wagon dwindled.
He did, however, notice an attractive young woman in the crowd. She was, Rhodes figured, about seventeen. She had dusky brown hair streaming out from a calico bonnet that matched her dress. The dress did nothing to conceal her curvaceous figure.
He wondered about her, whether she had a husband, or a beau; and why she was in a place like Intolerance, standing with a decrepit old man.
Rhodes hoped the man was her father and not some husband she had been saddled with by a cruel stroke of fate.
Suddenly Rhodes spun and slipped off the wagon. He took two steps and knelt near the back of the big wagon. “You think a bag of salt is worth dying for, boy?” he asked quietly.
The boy, who was around fifteen or so, froze, not liking the feel of the double barrels of the shotgun brushing the back of his head. “No, sir,” he whispered. He had slipped in—unobserved, he had thought—and grabbed the bag of salt. He was lying low, under the wagon, hoping for another opportunity to pop up and grab something else.
“What’s your name, boy?”
“Andy. Andy St. John.”
“How old are you, Andy St. John?”
“Be fifteen next month.”
“You expect to reach that birthday, boy, you’d best change your thievin’ ways. What the hell’re you going to do with the salt? Sell it?”
“No, sir. I was gonna give it to my pa.”
“He can’t afford to buy it?”
“Not at the prices around here,” St. John said simply.
Rhodes understood that, seeing how much breakfast had cost, and seeing what Flake was charging. “Your pa come on hard times?” he asked.
“Yessir.”
“What happened?”
“He won’t look on it kindly was I to say.”
“I ain’t going to tell him.”
St. John was quiet for a little, then said, “We come out here so’s Pa could work in the mines. Actually, he come out here first, a couple years ago, said he was gonna prospect and pan for gold and as soon as he hit the mother lode, he was gonna send for us.”
He quieted, and Rhodes figured he did not want to talk about it. It felt odd to Rhodes. He was only seven years older than Andy St. John, yet he had seen so much in life that it had robbed him of some of his youth. Rhodes shrugged. There was nothing he could do about that now. Hell, if the war hadn’t come along, he might be doing the same thing St. John was doing right now. He moved the shotgun away from the young man’s head. He had never even cocked it.
“Well, he never hit the mother lode,” St. John finally continued, “but he did find some color. Enough to send for us. By the time we got out here, claim jumpers had got Pa’s claim, and he was workin’ for Ludwig and Macmillan.”
“Who’re they?”
“The big minin’ company that come in. They’re the ones brought in the two stamp mills up there. Anyway, that would’ve done us all well enough. Then Ma took sick. She passed on a couple of months ago. Pa took it pretty hard, and I guess he weren’t thinkin’ straight, and he got his leg stove all up bad gettin’ it caught between two pieces of equipment. He couldn’t work, so there wasn’t no money comin’ in. Soon’s he was able, he went out and tried pannin’ again. He found more color—it’s darn near impossible not to around here, it seems—but not much more than’d keep us in flour at the prices the stores’re charging.”
“He better now?” Rhodes asked. He hardened his heart. The tale was one of woe, for sure, but Rhodes had been around long enough to know it could all be just that —a tale.
“Mostly. Still limps a lot, since his leg never got doctored right. But the company don’t want him back no more.”
Rhodes rose. “Come on out of there, boy,” he ordered quietly.
St. John did so and stood facing Rhodes. The teenager still held the sack of salt in his hand.
Rhodes stood there looking at the boy He was almost Rhodes’s height, but he had not filled out yet. He seemed all knees, elbows, and eyes, big round hazel eyes that were almost disconcerting to look at.
Rhodes made up his mind. “Listen to me, boy,” he said, in his calm, reasoned voice, “and listen good. I find out you been giving me a load of shit here and I will hunt your ass down and make you pay in ways you can’t even imagine.” He paused to see if the threat had taken hold. It seemed to have. “Slip that salt into your shirt and get your skinny ass out of here.”
St. John started to go, relief splashing across his thin, freckled face, when Rhodes reached out the shotgun, stopping him. “And you best not breathe a word of where you got it from. Understand?”
“Yessir,” St. John said. There was no mistaking the relief in his voice.
“Git.”
St. John slipped out the door like a wraith, and Rhodes climbed back onto his perch.
“I saw that, Mister Rhodes,” Hickman said in one of his interminable trips between the two wagons.
“Saw what?” Rhodes asked innocently.
“Letting that boy make off with that bag of salt.”
“So?” Rhodes asked with a shrug.
“Soon’s I get a chance, I’m going to tell Brother Flake about it.”
“It’s your funeral,” Rhodes said staring evenly back at Hickman, who suddenly began to feel some uncertainty
“What’s that mean?” Hickman asked nervously.
“It means, Mr. Hickman, that if you say even one word about this, I’m going to pound you into ground.”
<
br /> “But…”
“When in the hell’d you get so goddamn sanctimonious?” Rhodes asked rhetorically in deadly cold tones. “How the hell do you know that I wasn’t going to pay Erastus for it myself when this was all done?”
“But...I...”
“Phineas!” Flake bellowed for the third time. “Bring some more goods.”
Hickman blinked at Rhodes and then turned. He hurriedly grabbed several tins of molasses and quickly went forward.
The mass of merchandise in the big wagon had already dwindled considerably. Rhodes went back to scanning the crowd. He spotted the attractive young woman again, and he let his gaze rest there for a little while. Looking at her, he could conjure up dreams of being married to her, of them settling somewhere a little less wild than Intolerance and raising a brood of kids.
As she had been before, she was standing with a man who looked terribly old. Or maybe he just looked overwhelmed by poor luck. The two had watched the parade of goods going to this person or that person, and each time something new came up for bid, they looked in a buckskin pouch. It appeared to Rhodes as if they never had enough in the pouch for anything. That was understandable considering that many store owners were bidding, and bidding high. That might make Flake rich, but the other people who would have to buy flour or whatnot from the stores were going to be paying even higher prices.
Finally the man and young woman edged forward a little bit. Rhodes noted that the man limped. Seconds later, Andy St. John sidled up to the two and, with his back to Flake, showed the two something in his shirt.
Chapter Seventeen
A short, fat, dapper-dressed man moved up behind Andy St. John, the young woman, and the old man. He said something, at which he looked mighty smug. The others displayed a decent amount of distaste.
Flake’s freight wagon was nearly empty, and yet the small group still seemed afraid to make any kind of bid. But as Flake called out that the last sack of flour was now open, the old man tentatively called out, “Ten dollars.”