“I want to shake you by the hand, I do. That spalpeen of a Jake…he’s standin’ in with some of them with political power in the town, and there’s no touchin’ him, but I’ve wished this many a time to put him behind bars where he belongs.”
“They attacked me,” I said. “I am afraid the gentleman and I had a few words over in the Fifth Avenue, where I am staying.”
“I know that, lad. I heard of it. There’s little happens about here that does not come to me, and I’ve had me eye on that Jake for a long time now. I was expectin’ this…but not tonight.
“Oh, it was a lovely sight! Ah, man, you should be a boxer!”
“Thank you, officer. I think I’d better get inside. If you have no objections?”
“Oh, none at all! Go along with ye, an’ carry the blessin’s of Tom Mulrooney with ye!” He waved a hand. “Go along! Ye’ll hear no more of this!”
When I reached the walk in front of the hotel I straightened my coat and put my hat back on my head. For a moment I stood on the steps, composing myself, then strolled inside, nodded to the clerk, and crossed to the elevator.
Suddenly, I felt very good. New York was quite a town, after all. Quite a town.
I could come to like it here.
CHAPTER 38
* * *
YET I FOUND myself restless, and my mind returned again and again to the mountains and to my promise to Uruwishi. I thought I had detected in the old man’s manner a wish to do just as I wished…to go to the Medicine Wheel. What it meant to him, if anything, I did not know, but he had been a great warrior. I knew he did not wish to waste away, to die slowly, seated by the fire.
On the night after my brief difficulty in Madison Square, I took Lorna to the theater. She wore a new gown she’d found in a shop on Broadway. At that time the fashionable shopping area was on Broadway between the St. Nicholas Hotel and Thirty-fourth Street, and most of the great stores were located there. She found the gown she wanted in Stewart’s, and as we were shown down the aisle to our seats I overheard many complimentary comments, as many from women as from men.
She was excited, and I was pleased for her. This was more her world than mine, for I longed for the feel of a good horse under me and the fresh chill of a wind from off the Big Horns. I wanted again the dark and lonely canyons where only echoes lived, the crash and roar of waters charging between the boulders, hurling themselves against a rocky wall…I wanted to skirt the deadfalls, gather the dead sticks from the ground, build a fire of cedar or pine, and smell the smoke.
I liked to sit in Delmonico’s or the Fifth Avenue and watch the pretty women pass. I liked the swish of silks and the quiet tones of people talking…I liked to think they spoke of music, the arts, and the theater, and that they said witty things or ironic ones…but I knew that most of the conversation was dull and commonplace, of day-to-day things, a woman complaining because her corset was too tight, and a man wishing he could get outside for a smoke or a drink.
But I liked looking at them, though not so much as at my own country, so far, far away, and I whispered to Lorna, “I’m going back. I want to see the country again from up on the Beaver Rim…I want to ride the trails up the Wind Rivers and drink from the Popo Agie.”
She nodded quickly. “I’m afraid I do too, Ben. Let’s go home.”
When the show had finished, we went backstage for Ninon. She was dressing quickly, and she looked around at me and laughed. “Ben, you look like a little lost boy tonight!”
“I am,” I admitted, “I’m going back to the mountains.”
“Tonight?”
“No…soon. Lorna wants to go, too.”
“My show closes on Saturday, Ben. I think I will play Millinette for the last time, then.”
“It is enough. You can come home with me.”
She gasped, beautifully, teasing. “Lorna! Did you hear that? I think he’s proposing.” Suddenly she looked very prim, and she came right up to me and looked up at me, her eyes laughing. “Young man, are your intentions honorable?”
“Sort of…at least they are intentions.”
There was one more thing to do, something I’d neglected. I called upon Stryker.
“There’s a place called the Gold Exchange, I think?”
He looked at me curiously. “Yes, of course. You are interested in buying gold?”
“Selling,” I said, “I want to sell gold.”
He frowned a little. “But you see, they have no gold at the Gold Exchange. They are buying paper…speculating in gold prices.”
“I want to sell gold,” I replied quietly, “a considerable amount.”
He sat back in his chair. “That can be arranged, of course. It might be interesting to see their reaction to some real gold. Do you have this gold? Or is it still to be mined?”
From my inside belt I took a bar of gold weighing about two kilos. “No, it is gold. Here…fresh, clean, unadulterated.”
He was startled. “You are carrying that around with you? On your person?”
“Part of the time,” I admitted. “At the going price I imagine that is worth about fifteen hundred dollars. I want to sell this one and eleven others just like it.”
He sat back in his chair. He looked a little pale. “Shafter, I never knew anybody like you. You mean you have about twenty thousand dollars in pure gold? And you’re carrying it with you?”
“Oh, I’ve been reasonably careful! Can you arrange a sale?”
“Of course, of course! A dozen bars of gold! Shafter, I never saw the like!” He sobered suddenly. “I suppose you can account for it? After all, that’s a lot of gold.”
“I have a little mine out there…I dug the gold myself; my brother and I melted it down in his blacksmith shop.”
“A little mine? This would seem to be something quite substantial. How large a crew do you have at work?”
I shrugged, very casually. “I mined this myself. I hadn’t much time, you know, just enough to get started before winter came on, and I made a few trips after the freeze up, but I’m no miner.”
“But surely, you’ll open it up in the spring? You could get a crew in there…no telling how much you might take out. It’s worth millions!”
“Maybe. There’s no question about the surface values. They are excellent, and I’ve no doubt I could get a good bit more out, but I’m no miner, as I’ve said, and I have some cattle now and am more interested in building up a cow ranch. I suppose I’ll work at it from time to time, but I’m not that interested.”
“Would you sell? I am not making an offer, understand, but well…this is gold, man. Gold!”
“I hadn’t thought of selling. Of course…if the price was right…but how do you put a price on gold? I’ve only to mine what I want, buy what I want, and whenever I need money go back and dig out some more.”
“But that’s no way to do it. You need a crew…equipment. A mine as valuable as that should be a big venture. Why, there are men here in town who would jump at the chance.”
“Maybe.” I got up. “If you can find a buyer, I would appreciate it. For the gold, that is.”
That twenty thousand, if I could get that much, represented freedom. A time to work, to plan, to decide just where I wanted to go and what to do. Whatever else I might do I knew that I would do some ranching. I had learned a little about cattle, and the market for beef was growing.
Good grazing land was to be had for the taking, and I believed some of the men now at our town would come with me.
But what of Ninon? Could she leave all this for the frontier? Many women had followed their men into the lonely lands, and from her brief experience with us she knew what it was like…but had I the right to ask her?
Well, why not? She could only say no…and I had almost asked her at dinner.
I shook hands with Stryker and left him hurrying back to his office. Twenty thousand dollars, the amount I hoped to realize from my gold venture, was a good-sized fortune in this day.
Lorna was waiting for me
at the hotel. “Ben, we’ve a letter from Cain. There’s been trouble.”
“What is it?”
“Ollie Trotter shot Neely Stuart…wounded him very badly. It was some fight over Neely’s mine. I think from what Cain says…”
I took the letter from her hand.
Dear Lorna and Ben:
Shortly after you left Finnerly, Pappin and Trotter returned to town. Nobody saw them until Neely went to his mine. They’d broken the lock off the door and were digging up some gold they had cached there before he sent them away.
He tried to stop them, and Trotter shot him. Colly heard the shot and went to see what had happened, and they rode off. Webb got a look at them as they left, so we have double identification.
Colly trailed them into the mountains but they got clean away. Neither Stacy nor Ethan was about, but Colly thinks they will come back.
The cattle are doing well. Business has fallen off some, but we’ve a half dozen wagon loads of ties to freight to the railroad.
Nubbin Taylor, his wife and youngsters were killed by Indians, their cabin burned, stock run off.
There was a little more, but what I had read was quite enough. If the Indians had attacked Taylor’s place…he was only four miles east of town…anything might happen.
“Lorna,” I said, “better get packed. We’re going home.”
She smiled. “Bendigo, I am packed. I knew you’d be wanting to leave.”
CHAPTER 39
* * *
SHE STOOD BY the window, looking down into the street, and I looked at her and thought how different a world was this from our own little town at the foot of the Wind Rivers!
This sister of mine was tall, beautifully shaped, with clear, intelligent eyes, a wry, but pleasant sense of humor…what would her life be?
“There’s one thing I must do,” I said.
“Of course. You must see Ninon.” She turned from the window. “Do that, Bendigo. I’ve some goodbyes to say, too.”
“You?” I was surprised.
She laughed at me. “You’ve been very busy, Ben, and I can’t blame you if you haven’t noticed, but I have a friend, too. A very nice gentleman, in fact.” She hesitated. “I wonder if you’d approve?”
“If you like him, I will like him,” I replied simply. “Who is he?”
“His name is Fairchild…Jackson Fairchild. He’s a doctor…a physician.”
“I’d like to meet him.”
“You shall. We are to have lunch together in a few minutes.” She came over to me and put her hand on my arm. “Please like him. I do…very much.”
“Well…if he’s right for you. Remember, you’re something very special to Cain and me.”
“He’s very special, too. He’s from upstate New York, Bendigo, and he grew up on a farm, studied medicine, and he’s been practicing in a small town in New Hampshire, but now he wants to go west.”
“Where? I mean where in the west?”
“California, I think, but he’s not quite sure. Only that he wants to be where things are happening, and he has an offer to go into practice in Colorado.”
“Well, I’ll talk to him. In the meanwhile…”
“I know. You’re going to meet Ninon.”
Their suite was on the floor above mine, and I went up the steps, then paused at a window looking out over the city. I knew so little of cities, even now, and so little of this one where there was so much to learn. In between times I had met people, Horace Greeley who might soon be a candidate for president, several writers, naturalists, and many would-be investors in land or mines. All were interested in the western lands, and all asked questions. What astonished me even more was that the answers came readily to my lips…at least, when their questions related to conditions or circumstances. On the Indian question I had no answers, no conclusions to offer.
I had fought Indians, hunted with them, talked with them, ridden miles with them, and many of them I liked. We could learn, each from the other, and I found the Indian very quick to adapt to conditions that favored him. But for most of our customs they had no use at all.
Yet the questions I had been asked had started me thinking, and when I returned to my own country I would try to learn. One never realizes how much and how little he knows until he starts talking.
Mrs. Beaussaint answered the door. “Ninon will be out in a minute, Mr. Shafter. You are going home, I hear?”
“Yes.”
I spoke with some reservations, for although our town was still my home, I somehow did not believe it would be for long. All that had been said about its location was true, I expect, and with the railroad completed to the south, the new town would come into being near the right-of-way.
Ninon came in, coming quickly to me, both hands outstretched. “Ben! You’re leaving?”
“I must. There’s been trouble out there.”
“It was always you, wasn’t it, Ben? You were always the first to face whatever happened.”
“I don’t know. I did what was necessary.”
“I know all about it. You went after Mae and the children when the Indians had them, and you went to help those Mormons in the snow, and you were out there in the street when the renegades attacked the town. It was you and Ethan Sackett who supplied most of the meat that first terrible winter. I heard all about it. And saw part of it.”
“A man does what is necessary. And then I always had good men beside me. There was Cain, and Ethan and Webb…and of course, John Sampson.”
“But it was you, Ben! You spoke for the town. You led the way.”
“No, Ninon. It was Ruth Macken and Cain. They were always the ones.”
She smiled. “In a way, it was. But it was you, Ben, more than anyone else.”
“It was all of us. We were all changing, all growing up, all discovering what it takes to bring people together, to build something. I’m not sure we know anything even yet, but we’ll do a better job wherever we go after this.”
Mrs. Beaussaint had left us alone, and together we walked to the window. “Your show closes soon?”
“They’ve extended the time for another week. Then I am going back to New Orleans.”
“You’re not taking any of the offers you’ve had?”
She smiled at me. “None of those I’ve had so far, Ben. But you never can tell…if the right offer came along, well, I might listen.”
“I was coming around to that. How about a run of the show contract? That’s the only offer I could make. At this moment I don’t even know where the show will be playing, and I am not sure of the town or the place…only the time.”
“Would I be the leading lady?”
“Of course. And with top billing always.”
“I’ll take that offer, Ben. It’s just the one I’ve been waiting for.”
Well, I’d been getting to be quite a talker, but all of a sudden I wasn’t so good any more, and I just stood there looking at her and she at me, but we didn’t need to say much or do much; we both knew how we felt about it.
We stood there by the window holding hands and watching the traffic in the street below. “I’ve got a few cattle, and I’m going to buy more. I’ll do some ranching, either in Wyoming or Oregon, and I’ll write a little about the things I know best.”
We talked…a lot of foolishness and some good sense, and then I told her about Lorna’s friend.
“Ben! Let’s go see him! Are they downstairs now?”
He stood up as we neared the table. He was tall, as tall as I was but probably twenty pounds lighter in weight, a mighty handsome man with a good, strong face and a firm grip to his hand. “Dr. Jackson Fairchild,” he said. “Lorna has been telling me all about both of you.”
We sat down and talked the hour away, and after a while I left the talking to them and remembered the rolling wagon wheels, the crisp brown grass of the plains, the river crossings, the bitter struggles, the times we had lost our horses and found them again, the Indian fights, and our town beside its small stream wit
h the white cliff rising above it and the pines.
I was homesick for the smell of cedar smoke and the feel of a good horse. There was nothing here to remind me of the west except the six-shooter in my waistband. Even the girls seemed different. Ninon had grown from a child into a beautiful young woman whom I only slightly knew, after all, and Lorna was no longer a girl from our town but a young lady of fashion.
I listened to their laughter, listened to their talk of the west and of the town where we all would be together, yet I remembered the creak of a saddle and the seamed face of old Uruwishi. I remembered the cool wind from down the canyon of the Popo Agie, and the smell of powder smoke and the kick of a rifle butt against my shoulder. I remembered the day with Ethan when we were cutting our meat and the renegades had come upon us, and I remember the smell of smoky, sweaty buckskins, and the far-off gleam of lights as we rode home.
Suddenly, I stood up. “I want to take a walk,” I said. “I’ve some things to think about.”
Outside the hour had grown late. We had talked long, and there were gray shadows already, for the sun was hidden behind a ceiling of dull cloud. I shrugged into my coat and walked off down the street, not too aware of where I was going.
The old smells were not here. These smells were of coal smoke and the city. Suddenly I found myself on the Bowery. Pawnbrokers’ shops, third-class hotels, flophouses, low-class theaters and concert saloons. This had once been an area of farms, a place where lay the broad lands of the Brevoorts, the Dyckmans, the De Lanceys; and even old Peter Stuyvesant had a farm here.
It felt good, striding along the sidewalks, listening to the carriages in the slushy streets, watching the gaslights and the windows I passed.
Tomorrow I would be starting for home…tomorrow.
It could not be too soon.
CHAPTER 40
* * *
I SAT IN THE car looking out over the vast white expanse. The snow-covered plains stretched away, losing themselves against a milky horizon.
Bendigo Shafter (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures) Page 30