by Mike Blakely
“I don’t fiddle since I froze my fingers off,” Caleb said, holding up his left hand. “I’m learnin’ guitar left-handed, but I haven’t got around to the fiddle yet.”
“The guitar will do. How are you fixed for money?”
“Flat broke,” he replied, as if he was proud of it.
“Then you could stand the weight in your pockets. Turn your hat up on the bar and pluck a few songs for us.”
“Well, maybe. If you’ll advance me and my friends a drink.” Caleb pointed to his three acquaintances standing by the door.
The old saloonkeeper cussed, but he waved the three cowboys over to the bar and set up a round.
“Thanks, Milt,” the musician said. “Say, how come you give up your place in Black Hawk for this dive?”
Milt hissed through the gaps in his teeth and covered his face in shame. “The fever got me, boy.”
“The fever? You mean the gold fever?” Caleb laughed.
“I swore I was too old and smart for it, but it got me all over again just the same.”
“What happened?”
“An old Californee friend of mine went broke on a prospect hole above Nevadaville. He asked me to come take a look at the place and see if I couldn’t find him a buyer for his claim. I swear, as soon as I set foot on that claim, all my old broken joints started achin’. The fever got me like a vise. I could smell the ore down the shaft!”
“Did you find your friend a buyer?”
“Hell, yes, boy, I found him a right handy one! I sold my store and sunk all my money down that shaft myself. I blasted fifty feet before I went broke.”
“So you left for Texas?”
“No, no, no! There was gold under that hill, boy! I could taste it in the shaft dust I’d been breathin’. There was a vein in there thick as my crippled leg.” Milt leaned toward Caleb to speak confidentially. “I had a friend with a payin’ mine in Central City. So I borrowed a little ore from him and had it assayed. I said it came out of my mine and got some Denver bankers to stake me.”
“You salted your own mine?”
Milt shushed him violently. “Would you ruin me right here in my own home? Keep it down, boy. Yes, I salted it. Don’t judge me, boy, the fever had me. It ain’t like I run off with the money. I sunk it all down the shaft. I blasted a drift at seventy-five feet and worked like a fool, muckin’ out the chunks, but there wasn’t a sliver of color in nary a one of ’em.”
“What did you do?”
“What do you think I did? Them Denver bankers wanted to see profits. When I ran out of their money, I skipped the territory. That’s why you scared me so spoutin’ off about Black Hawk. I thought they had sent a bounty hunter to find me.”
Caleb smirked arrogantly, impressed that Milt had mistaken him for a bounty hunter. “But why in the hell did you come to this dive?” he asked. “Of all the sorry places on earth…”
“It’s the safest place for me. Those bankers knew Old Milt Starling: veteran of Californee, Cherry Creek, Gregory Gulch. If they wanted to find me, where do you think they’d look?”
“A mining town, I guess,” Caleb said.
“You guess, my ass! Of course that’s where they’d look! So I thought to myself, ‘Milt, where’s the cheapest dirt on earth?’ Then it struck me: Texas! If you sink a shaft here, you’re lucky to strike a vein of alkali water. They’ll never think to find me in Texas!”
“Well, at least the fever won’t get you here,” Caleb said.
“Hell, the fever runs here, too. That’s the beauty of it. A man can still mine gold from men’s pockets. But the fever here ain’t for color.”
“What then?”
“Buffler! They come in here with the same look in their eyes. They sit at that bar, get rich, and spend their earnin’s before they even take aim at a hump. They stake their claims on the buffler range just like a miner up some lonesome gulch. They use Sharps rifles and skinnin’ knives the way I used to work with a pick and shovel, and they haul back flint hides instead of gold dust, but it’s the same old fever, boy, I recognize it.”
Caleb felt a touch of the fever himself and eyed the patrons of Starling’s Lone Star through the bottom of his glass. “Any hide hunters in here?”
“Yeah, there’s Washita Jack Shea and a feller name of Frost over there by the stove. They’re puttin’ together a flint-hide party. Lookin’ for skinners.”
The last of the jigger trickled down his throat. “Would you vouch for me?”
Milt’s cloudy old eyes narrowed on the drifter. “I’ve warned you about the fever, boy.”
“I need work.”
The old miner sighed and got up. “Well, you’re growed. Jist don’t cuss me when the Comanch’ pull the fresh bloody hide off’n your skull bone.” He tossed his head toward the table of the hide hunters.
FIFTY-SIX
Every Sunday afternoon, after presenting his Holcomb Ranch scripture lesson, Pete would treat Amelia to a picnic. Sometimes Lee Fong would fill a basket with fried chicken, roasting ears, corn bread, and fruit preserves. Sometimes Amelia would have Captain Dubois’s chef pack roast beef, cranberry sauce, fresh-baked bread, and cake. Pete would borrow Buster’s old spring buggy with the holes cut in the floorboards for the wind-wagon rigging and call on Amelia at the Dubois mansion.
Strict ritual attended his visits. He would twist the bell knob at the front door, wait for the house servant to answer, and announce his intentions of taking Miss Dubois on a picnic. The servant would then ask him to wait in the parlor until Amelia made her appearance on the staircase. She always looked stunning and stylish, and Pete always told her so, whereupon she would blush and ask the servant to tell her father that she was going on a picnic with Pete, as if the captain did not already know.
Once in the buggy, Amelia got to choose the picnic site. She might decide on the Pinery, the seven falls of Cheyenne Canyon, or the Garden of the Gods. Lately, she had wanted to get as far away from Colorado Springs as possible. The town had swelled with tuberculars hunting a healthful climate. Their constant coughing and hacking in all of General Palmer’s public parks tended to detract from her enjoyment of the outing.
So it was, one Sunday afternoon in September, that Amelia climbed into the erstwhile wind wagon and told Pete she wanted to have her picnic at the ancient cliff dwellings above Manitou Springs.
“Well, all right, if that’s where you want to go,” Pete said. “I guess you haven’t got much of an appetite yet. It’s a slow drive up there.”
“Actually, I’m starving,” she said, fanning herself with a scallop of lace. “But, it’s been such a hot summer, I just want to picnic in a cool place. When I toured the cliff dwellings with the ladies’ club, I can’t tell you how refreshingly cool the little rooms felt to us in the middle of the day.”
Pete twitched the reins and drove down the street between the rows of cottonwoods that stood horse-high now after just three years in the ground. The buggy trundled across town and bounced over the narrow-gauge tracks of the Denver and Rio Grande. It passed the sanitarium, forded Monument and Camp creeks, and mounted the road to Manitou Springs.
“My goodness, it’s dusty,” Pete said. He slapped his brand new Stetson against his leg to knock the dirt from the sprawling brim. “One of these days some rain will come along and break this drouth.”
“Please, you’re not going to start…” Amelia said.
“I’m sorry, darlin’. No more ranch talk, I promise.”
Pete let the horse take its time pulling the buggy up the grade to Manitou Springs. He drove past the health resorts in town and turned onto the narrow road leading to the ancient homes of the cliff dwellers. He was glad Amelia had chosen the cliff dwellings, even if it meant a long drive from Colorado Springs. The old cubbyholes of stonemasonry built under their protective outcropping of the Front Range held a mystical fascination for him. They reminded him of the glorious time and place God had chosen for him, leading a new and holy civilization into a land of primal sin and i
gnorance.
The road led along the cliff bases until the abandoned dwellings came suddenly into view. There, among the rambling fissures and jutting crags, a tiny two-story village of fitted stones filled a cavernous depression in the mountainside.
A well-crafted wall—broken by windows, doors, and mazelike passages—closed in the entire mouth of the cave. It wound in and out at perfectly square angles, extending in places to the very rim of the overhang above. In one place the curved wall of an ancient granary spanned the cave from floor to ceiling, like a great column built to hold it open for eternity. Wooden ladders led to the balconies of upper tiers. Rotting stubs of timbers formed horizontal rows between the upper and lower levels. Inside, the timbers supported the flooring of the upper apartments. The dwellings faced south and east, affording a view of mountains, plains, and every practical approach.
They left the buggy horse in the shade of a piñon pine, picked up their picnic basket, and went to explore the cool, dark recesses of the structure.
“I think this round room was where they put their corn,” Pete said. “It reminds me of the silos I used to see in old Pennsylvania.”
“Oh, you’ve lost your imagination out on that dreary ranch,” Amelia argued. “It’s a bastion of a castle-fortress. Now, isn’t that more romantic than your silo?”
Pete looked up at the cylindrical bulge in the rock wall and stroked his chin thoughtfully.
“Come on,” Amelia said, taking his hand. “Let’s get into one of these cool little rooms and have our picnic.”
Pete looked down on the turns of the switchback road leading to the cliff dwellings. He saw no horses or buggies coming. It wouldn’t do for anyone to catch him in the little cubicle with Amelia.
She stepped over the knee-high threshold of an entry-way that was more like a window than a door. It was so small that her skirt almost filled the entire opening as she pulled it in. She didn’t seem to mind that Pete got a good look at her calves as she crawled through. He followed, putting one leg through the hole, sitting on the high sill, ducking under the low transom, and pulling his other leg in after him. The wide brim of his hat scraped against both sides of the portal as he went through.
Amelia made Pete hold the picnic basket as she spread a blanket on the floor, gently so as not to raise dust. The cubicle was so’ tiny that the blanket lapped up against the rock walls all the way around. She sat near the middle, her skirts billowing around her like a parachute.
“How did they live in these little bitty rooms?” Pete said, hunching under the low ceiling timbers. “They hardly had space to stretch out.”
“I think it’s cozy,” Amelia said. “Come sit down and show me what that Chinese chef of yours packed for us.” She patted the blanket beside her.
Pete glanced out of the square hole in the wall and checked the road again before he sat down. “Fried chicken, as usual,” he said. “Lee Fong knows how to cook just so many things.”
It was fairly dark in the ancient little room, but their eyes soon adjusted. Pete watched Amelia tear into a drumstick with abandon, licking her lips, sucking the crumbs from her fingertips. He had never seen her eat so voraciously. Appetite went before manners, he thought.
She drank from a flask Lee Fong had packed. “What do you think they were like?” she asked, catching a stray drop on her chin with her finger.
Pete threw a chicken bone through the entrance hole. “Who?”
“The people who lived here.”
He leaned back to prop himself up on one elbow. The wall pushed his hat down over his eyes, so he took it off. “I’ll bet they were little rascals.”
“They must have been happy living here. It’s so cool.”
Pete was thinking that Cheyenne or Utes had probably run the little cliff dwellers off or killed them, but he didn’t impose his suspicions on Amelia. “Well, they had a good view. They grew corn. They stayed out of the rain and the north wind. I guess they were happy.”
“Will our house be like this one?” Amelia asked. She pushed the emptied picnic basket into a corner.
“I imagine the cellar might look plumb identical.”
“Oh, you sarcastic devil,” she said, stretching across the floor to hit him with her lace fan. “I mean the stonework.” She stayed close to him, lying on the blanket on her stomach, propped up on her elbows.
“If you want a rock house, that’s what I’ll build you,” Pete promised. “And if you want it four stories high, that’s how high I’ll make it.”
“Two and a half will be quite high enough. Now the only question is when.”
“It’ll take time, darlin’. But once we get a few good seasons of high grass and high beef, I’ll have money to build you a castle-fortress with a silo on every corner if that’s what you want.”
“But that will take years,” she complained.
“Well, the drouth’s got to break first. And the panic will keep beef down a while.”
Amelia rolled onto her back and used Pete’s thigh as a pillow. “Yes, I know. First the drouth, and then the wretched money panic. I’ll be an old maid by the time you build that house. Why don’t you just take the money Father offered to give you?”
“I’ve told you a hundred times I won’t use the captain’s money to build my bride’s house. He’s just testin’ me with that money anyway. He doesn’t really want me to take it.”
“Then forget the house,” Amelia said, suddenly pulling herself across his chest. “I just want to get married. Build a little cabin and I’ll learn to like it.”
“No, I’ve already promised,” Pete said, slipping his hand around the back of her neck. “What would the captain think of me if I didn’t hold to my word.”
“But I can’t wait any longer.”
“Go marry some other fella, then.”
“Oh, shut up.” She whacked him with the folded fan again. “You know I won’t marry anyone but you. Stop teasing me. I’m sick to death of waiting.”
Pete chuckled and pulled her face against his shirt. “What’s gotten into your head, darlin’?”
She rested her chin against his chest and glared into his eyes. “You have, damn you. I can’t think of anything but you anymore. And I’m twenty years old and I’ve never lain down with a man.”
Pete laughed. “You’re layin’ down with me right now.”
“You know what I mean. Oh, I wish you had more money or less pride. These are my best years, and I’m wasting them.”
“Now have some patience, Amelia. You know we have to do what’s proper and wait.”
“I have no more patience, and I don’t care what’s proper.” She pulled herself up to his shoulders and kissed him. “We’re going to be married anyway, so what difference does it make?”
The soft touch of her lips lingered on Pete’s mouth. The room was so cool and comfortable—just the way he intended Amelia’s house to turn out. He felt himself weakening, drifting toward the primal sins of the ancients. “Well, when you put it that way,” he said, “I guess it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference.”
She pushed herself away from him, picked up his hat, and went to the little square hole in the wall. She put her palms on the sill and leaned out to look down on the road. Ducking back into the tiny room, she wedged Pete’s hat in the entryway, the stiff brim holding it in place and blocking most of the light.
When she lay back down on the blanket, Pete rolled toward her and felt her trembling.
“There wasn’t anybody comin’?” he asked.
“No,” she whispered.
FIFTY-SEVEN
The buffalo carcasses were still warm when the skinners arrived on the killing grounds. Caleb saw three cows suffering, lying on their sides, legs kicking, hooves gouging little arches in yesterday’s mud. He drew his pistol and walked toward the nearest one.
“Oh, hell, Caleb,” said his partner, Seth Corley, “leave them cows to bleed to death.”
“It’ll just take a minute to kill ’em,” Caleb arg
ued. “I hate to see ’em kick like that.”
“Well, hurry up. Joe and Eddie have already bloodied their knives.”
Caleb pointed his pistol at the cow’s head and pulled the trigger. “We’ll catch up,” he shouted back at Seth. “You know there ain’t another pair in camp that can out-skin us.”
“I know we’ll catch up, but just once I’d like to start out ahead!” Seth stropped his skinning knife across its leather scabbard a time or two and made the first incision along the belly of the downed bison. It would have been easier if Caleb had been there to help him roll the carcass onto its back and prop it in place with the willow pegs Seth carried under his belt.
Another shot rang from Caleb’s pistol.
“Two bits a hide,” Seth muttered to himself, “and he’s wanderin’ over five acres, wastin’ bullets on half-dead cows.”
Caleb fired his third round and looked over the rest of the carcasses. More than twenty of them lay in the prairie mud between two low, rolling swells. Washita Jack Shea, the hunter who had downed them, had done a good job of picking off each cow that had tried to lead the herd away, and they had all been slaughtered in a small space. He wound his way through the dead animals, his blood-crusted clothes clinging stiffly to him, and tried to get a whiff of cool north air that didn’t smell like offal.
He had hired on with the outfit at Fort Griffin. For five solid weeks he had followed the carnage of his camp’s hunters and peeled the woolly pelts from wasted death. The hunters—besides Washita Jack—were Smokey Dean Wilson, Roy Badger Burton, and Tighe Frost. Frost didn’t claim a nickname but was sometimes called Railroad Tighe because his wealthy father manufactured locomotive parts, or Red Hot Frost because he had already ruined one rifle by shooting too frequently without cooling the barrel.
There was one other hunter who worked out of the Salt Fork camp, but he worked alone, skinning his own kills, scouting for bigger herds, returning only for provisions. He was an old man named Elam Joiner.