by Short, Luke;
Charles Bonal’s letters to his daughter had been kinder. He had not mentioned the tunnel’s progress at all, but he had said that he had hauled Seay away from the tunnel last Saturday night long enough for both of them to take too much whisky, after which they watched the last twenty rounds of a prize fight that was not so good as many a street brawl he had seen. The absurdity of their doing it made Sharon smile. Prize fights, she had always believed, were for people of low tastes or for people like Hugh, who got a vicarious thrill from a brutality they themselves never indulged in. But for Charles Bonal, a street brawler in his past, and Phil Seay, a saloon brawler now, to watch a fight was like a miner prospecting for gold on Sunday.
To be able to laugh at it indicated to Sharon that she had come a long way in these past weeks. When she was in Tronah this last time she had taken a quiet pleasure in asking her father to recount his early adventures. And Charles Bonal, humoring her, told of his experiences in the rush of ’49, and of the terrible fools’ rush up the Frazer years later. They were stories touched by the grimness of Charles Bonal’s humor, shaded by tragedy and need, and from them she learned of a whole gallery of people who were legend before she was born, and whom her father respected as heroes of a harder day. She was closer to understanding her father then than she had ever been; and curious now, she began to absorb some of his views and much of his wry contempt for these times of swollen greed when money’s only gift was the privilege of plundering a land. She listened to his tales of the first women in this land, women like Maizie Comber, whose manners might be as rough as files, but who showed a harder learning than manners demand. She did not know that, by learning Charles Bonal’s views of times and people, she was preparing herself to understand the views of someone else. Or perhaps she did. Afterwards, when she was alone, she would find herself thinking of a different life, a harder, freer life where a man’s work was his badge of honor; and then the shallow, febrile pace of her own made her restive and discontented.
These were the times when she slipped off to San Francisco, hoping old faces and old friends and an escape from the brutal desert heat would supply some interest. And each time she returned to Tronah with a new eagerness, only to find that it, too, had no real place for her. At times, in her confusion, she could not identify the right people with the right places. The men who courted her in San Francisco she expected to meet on the streets of Tronah, and then she recognized the irony of it and laughed at herself and was suddenly sad and furious. Hugh could not understand her. He was engaged in a silent but nonetheless deadly fight for control of the Dry Sierras Consolidated, he said. Perhaps these easy, graceful dinners, the occasional parties, the relaxing nights of gambling, were enough for him. Perhaps they took his mind from his cares, but they were not enough for her. They held an implacable boredom for her that Hugh could not understand. She often wondered if Vannie Shore had conquered this boredom in her own sensible way.
But if Hugh understood little of what she was thinking, she understood even less of him. Two weeks ago, the hoist cables on the cage of the Dry Sierras’ main shaft had broken, sending sixteen men plunging thousands of feet to an indescribable death. Hugh had shrugged philosophically and had ordered the man responsible dismissed. But Sharon could not help but contrast Hugh’s cold sympathy with the hot and savage anger of Phil Seay when nine of his men were threatened with death. Perhaps Hugh would have slaved days and nights without sleep if some of his men could have been saved, but, with that new skepticism taken from her father, Sharon doubted it. She knew she was changing, but she had nowhere to turn. The one man who might have helped her with his friendliness she avoided like the plague. And she did not know why.
The night stage let her out at the Union House, and she instructed the hotel help as to the disposal of her baggage, then went upstairs. Her father was not expecting her, and she felt a small glow of pleasure as she anticipated the surprise he would show at her return.
She did not knock at his office door, but opened it gently, and the drone of her father’s voice coming across the long room was dear and nostalgic.
Bonal must have seen the door open, for his talk ceased, and Sharon opened the door fully. Bonal was rising, a mixture of surprise and delight on his face. He skirted the desk, and she was in his arms. The warm smell of cigars and whisky was about him, and she hugged him to her, wordless. After a moment, it occurred to her that her father could not have been talking to himself when she opened the door, and that therefore someone else was in the room.
She drew away from her father. In the shadow away from the desk she saw Phil Seay standing before a chair. The tall lean grace of him caught at her throat, and she saw that for this brief moment his rain-gray eyes were not walled away with reserve. Sharon could not explain afterward why she did it, but she walked across to him and gave him her hand and then turned to her father, saying, “I hoped it would be this way, Dad.”
The quiet pleading in her eyes met puzzlement in Charles Bonal’s face for only an instant, and then he chuckled. He said to Seay, “Will we let her in on our stag party, Phil?”
“I think so,” Seay said. Sharon had the courage to look at him then, and his face was friendly, touched with a quiet smile that held no memory of their other meetings.
“I had my mouth open to call Sarita,” Bonal said and immediately proceeded to bawl for the maid. “You wait,” he told Sharon mysteriously. When the servant appeared, Bonal said, “Now get this carefully, girl. You’re to go down to the kitchen and hunt up José. Only José will do. Tell him to take those two mallards out of the ice chest and put them on a plain white platter, a large platter. I won’t have any garnish around them. I want three portions of apple chutney placed in side dishes. I want individual salt-cellars, large ones. Also, bring those two bottles of sour, heavy burgundy I picked out this noon. Get silver service, plain white serviettes, and hurry up here with the mess. Now vamose!”
Sharon laughed at him. “Does that give me time to scrub the stage road from my face?”
“If you hurry,” Bonal said gruffly.
When Sharon had made a hasty toilet she regarded herself in the mirror. Some of the high-mountain coolness they had passed through early this morning still seemed to linger on her face. All the weariness of that trip had vanished, and her eyes were bright and laughing.
In the outer room Sarita was laying out the spread on a white cloth. Seay was pulling up chairs.
Sharon was not afraid to be friendly with him now. Her father held up a warning hand as Seay seated her, and Sharon knew this was his signal for silence. Solemnly, expertly, Bonal carved one duck and then gestured to them to help themselves. They did, while he poured the wine, and then Bonal tested the duck. First he tasted it and nodded, and Sharon almost giggled. Next he tasted the chutney, raised his eyebrows; and then he passed on solemnly to the salt. He tasted this with all the gravity of a gourmet, and then laughed, and Sharon knew the formalities were over.
Sharon ate and drank with the gusto of genuine hunger, listening to Seay and not speaking often. He lounged back in his chair, one leg thrown over the arm of it, while he and Bonal argued with good-natured violence over the superiority of teal meat to mallard meat. When that argument was settled to nobody’s satisfaction. Seay told her of how they both had stolen a day from the tunnel to hunt these ducks up in one of the mountain lakes.
“Wait,” Bonal interrupted him and regarded Sharon with a grave, expressionless face. “I can smell a lie a mile off. He’s going to tell you how he shot this big mallard. He lies in his teeth. I shot him.” He looked over at Seay. “Weren’t you?”
Seay nodded just as gravely. “To the best of my memory, you were blowing mud out of your gun when that mallard rose.”
“If I was blowing mud, it was at the mallard—and I hit him,” Bonal insisted.
Seay looked at the remaining duck and then casually took his napkin and unfolded it and spread it over the whole duck, covering it completely. Settling back in his chair, his ey
es gently mocking, but his leaned face dead serious, he said, “We’ll have a trial. We’ve got the evidence here—the evidence and a judge.”
Bonal studied him shrewdly, then put down his duck leg. “All right. How do you propose to?”
“What load were you using?” Seay asked him.
“Bird shot, of course.”
“And I wasn’t. I had buckshot loads because that’s all Tober could scrape up. That’s settled then. You had bird shot, I had buckshot.”
Bonal nodded and Seay turned to Sharon.
“Miss Bonal, you unveil the duck. On the stern end of it—toward me—just remove that browned meat on the back. In the clear meat you’ll see some small dark holes. That’ll be where the shot went in. Dig down and bring out what you find. At least”—he was frowning thoughtfully—“there should be shot there. He was going away from me.”
“He was going away from me, too,” Bonal said. “That’s right.”
“He had gone away from you,” Seay corrected him. The skin around the corners of Bonal’s eyes crinkled with some secret amusement, but he motioned to Sharon. “Get on with it.”
The platter was put before Sharon, and while she performed the operation with all the awkwardness of a person who had never held a carving knife before, Seay and Bonal exchanged amiable insults.
Presently, when they were not watching her, Sharon cried out and held up her two fingers pinched together. Between them was a tiny black ball, and she held her hand midway between them, presenting the evidence.
“Whose is it?” she demanded.
First Seay examined it, and then his eyes touched hers briefly, and in that look was a secret delighted understanding. He frowned darkly. “That looks a little too small for buckshot,” he admitted cautiously.
“Dad, what do you say?”
“Put it over here,” Bonal growled. “Let me look at it.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” Seay countered flatly. “He’s got his pockets full of bird shot. He’ll pretend to drop it and then substitute evidence.”
“I’ll hold it right here,” Sharon said firmly. “Midway between you.”
Bonal leaned over and studied it and then said exultantly, “Why, anybody but a plain fool could see that’s bird shot. Of course, it’s bird shot. It’s my duck, just as I said.”
“Are you sure?” Seay said.
Bonal looked up sharply. “Certainly I’m sure. You never saw buckshot that size, did you?”
Sharon said with sweet gravity, “Then you’re certain this is your shot, Dad. This is part of the shot that killed the duck?”
“Dead certain,” Bonal growled.
Sharon spread her hand and let the object drop to the white cloth. It was a tiny, black-headed pin, whose shank she had concealed between her fingers, and whose head, unless subjected to a keen scrutiny such as Seay had given it, looked like shot.
“That,” Seay mused, “is a new kind of bird shot. What do you call it, Bonal, and where did you get it?”
Sharon looked once at the amazement in Bonal’s face, and then she leaned back and laughed delightedly, Seay with her. Bonal looked sheepish and then roared great laughter and delighted oaths.
That served to cement the intimacy of this evening. Afterward, Sharon, her wine glass cupped in her hand, leaned back and listened to these two men. They included her in their talk now, more often than not using her as an audience for the derision of each other’s views. Strangely, they talked of the same things, things of which she knew nothing, of the railroad builders of California, of ranch country up in Oregon whose grass was belly deep to a horse, of mining men and mining methods. Once, to prove his point, Seay quoted from the old Spanish of Gamboa, whose commentaries on the origin of mining methods he cited as proof of the beginning of the arrastra method in ore reduction. His Spanish was so fluent that it was seconds before Sharon realized he was speaking it. Before she recovered from her surprise they were discussing the mystery of copper smelting among the southwestern Indians, and each hazarding guesses which the other ridiculed. It was man talk, backed by shrewdness and knowledge, and devoid of the easy graces of conversation and overlaid with the thrusting of sharp curiosity.
Charles Bonal’s black cigars and Seay’s pipe filled the room with a thick fragrance, and as the wine mellowed the talk, Sharon began to piece together Seay’s history, gleaned in small snatches as he recalled a queer point of construction in the governor’s palace in Sante Fé, the long sweep of the Tonto rim, the fish in the gulf of Baja California, the queer pride of the northern Utes and the customs in the timbered vastness of the Canadian Rockies.
Watching his restless face, Sharon thought suddenly of Ben’s answer to her question if he knew Seay. “Hell yes. Who don’t?” And she could understand it now, understand that this was a man whom men listened to in these restless times because he talked their talk and had known their yearnings and had not hung back. But always, his talk was of places, not himself, and Sharon wondered jealously how much Vannie Shore knew of these things about him which she would never know.
Later, when it came time to go, Seay shook hands with Bonal and then turned to Sharon, the tall easy way of him dominating this room.
“We’ve forgotten your stage ride must have tired you,” he said, half in apology. “I won’t do this again.”
“But you must,” Sharon said eagerly. “I liked it.”
His glance held a question that slowly flooded away to give over to that granite reserve, but Sharon sensed that tonight she had won a small victory over him, and one that he would not grudge her.
When he was gone Charles Bonal paced the room with an aimless restlessness that Sharon watched, her back to the door.
Bonal glanced obliquely at her and said, “Shall I send Sarita for Hugh? It’s early yet, and he’ll be wanting to see you.”
“No,” Sharon said. “I’d rather not.”
She came over to the table and, passing it, put a hand on the back of the chair Seay had just left. She could feel the warmth of his body still in it, and the tiny litter of pipe ashes which he had spilled on the rug was a mute reminder of his presence. Bonal was at the window, looking down onto the thronged street, and he said nothing while the servant cleaned up the table and put the room to rights and left.
“You’re restless tonight, Dad,” Sharon said suddenly.
Bonal only grunted, and Sharon came over to him. The street below was a tangle of men and wagons and horses. Off in the night some shots racketed out and died, leaving only the war whoop of some carouser beating the still air.
“Is it the tunnel, Dad?” Sharon asked presently.
He answered quietly, “What makes you think that?”
“You haven’t money, and you can’t get it. Isn’t that it?” Sharon persisted.
Bonal nodded once. “I can get it. But it’ll take time. I’ll have to make more myself.”
“Hugh wrote the drilling was easier now. Isn’t there a chance you can put it through before the funds are gone? Hugh said so.”
“Hugh,” Bonal said without rancor, “is levelheaded only in his own affairs. In mine, he’s an optimist. No, there’s no chance.”
“Then what will happen?”
“I’ll go back to Frisco. Give me a few months until I learn all the stock riggings, and I can buy and bribe and threaten and blackmail myself into one of these mine directorates. Give me another few months and I’ll have control of it, if I don’t ruin the mine in the process. If I don’t, I can hoard my cut of the loot, and when it’s big enough I’ll start on the tunnel again.” He was quiet a moment. “The only trouble is that by that time this field will be borrasca, played out, the work stopped by water. Then they’ll gang up on me and buy me out of the tunnel control—and I won’t stand for it.”
“How can you stop it?”
Bonal said soberly, quietly, “I can’t.”
“But it’s awful, Dad!” Sharon protested. “You had the idea! You’ve put it through this far! You mustn’t
let them step in at the last and let the stupid fools claim the credit!”
“They won’t get the credit. Their money will.” He sighed. “You see, girl, I have a lot of money from a lot of places. And when my creditors learn that the tunnel work is stopped, this time for good, they’ll stampede. Some smart man—more than likely Janeece—will take their shares for a song, and they’ll be glad to sell. Then he’ll kick me out, put the tunnel through, and all I’ll have out of it is the cut of stock I’ve saved for myself. It”—he shook his head and opened his mouth and then shook his head again, sighing—“it’s just money I’ll have, that’s all. And I won’t give a damn for it, then.”
“And Phil Seay?”
“What about him?”
“What will he do?”
Bonal chuckled softly. “I’ve got a notion that he’ll cave in every foot of the tunnel on his last day of work.”
Sharon was quiet, and presently her father looked over at her. “You like him now, don’t you, Sharon?”
Sharon nodded mutely.
“Don’t like him too well,” Bonal said. He kissed her and said, “I’m tired. I’m going to bed. Good night.”