The Copper City

by Chris Scott Wilson

  “Didn’t have much choice.”

  “His boss, Green, owns damn near all the town, law and all, so what Harley wants, Harley gets.”

  “I started seeing it that way too,” Quantro’s nostrils twitched as they detected cooking. “White-Wing. Is she okay?”

  Pete nodded.

  Quantro patted his stomach. “I’m as hungry as hell. All they got down there is tortillas and beans.”

  “She’s cooking fatback.”

  “Smells good.”

  Pete inspected the blade of his knife. Scowling, he began to slice at the wood. “You get on in, I’ve already eaten.”

  “Think I will.” He stood up and pushed open the door. She had her back to him, standing over a spitting skillet on the pot-bellied stove. At the sound of his boot heels she turned, dark flashing eyes that lit up as she saw him.

  She looked good, he had to admit. He almost couldn’t blame those two drifters for wanting to sample her favors. The truth was he didn’t know why he had waited so long himself. Maybe it was the thought that if he left her alone she would go back to her people. Now, he was glad she hadn’t. She’d nursed him twice when he’d been in a bad way. What he had done yesterday wouldn’t even begin to repay what she had done for him.

  He stood there, staring into her bronze face, wondering at her resilience. He could detect no trace of yesterday in her serene face. She looked solidly back at him, knowing he was about to kiss her. She had waited a long time. Just as he was about to close the gap between them, his belly rumbled loudly.

  He stopped, frozen. She burst out laughing. After a second he joined her when he realized how ridiculous it was. The moment had gone.

  “You’re hungry.”

  “I could eat a saddle. As long as there’s no beans with it.”

  She pointed to a chair, her other hand automatically reaching for the coffee-pot. By the door was a bowl of cool water where he washed away the dust of the street. Face damp, but refreshed, he sat down on the hard seat. The strong black coffee was cooling and he sipped it gratefully. The jail coffee had been like muddy creek water. At the stove, White-Wing flipped the fatback over once more in the skillet then served it up.

  Quantro ate as though he hadn’t seen food for weeks. White-Wing wiped her hands and came to sit opposite, watching as he chewed. He smiled his satisfaction, glancing at her pleasing face, remembering how he had thought of her most of the night while he’d been lying sleepless on the hard bed in the jail. He had worried what the attack on her and the death of the two men would do to her. A sudden flash had recalled the image of his own mother, three years back, when she had been raped by the four men he had since hunted down. That indescribable expression before she turned away her face, a raw mixture of shame and embarrassment, scant hours before they had killed her. In White-Wing’s case at least the act had never been completed; he had spared her that.

  But there had been other thoughts too. Since they had left the settlement, he had tried to close his mind to her, and thus relieve himself of the burden of her welfare. Something, he understood now, like looking the other way and hoping everything would disappear. And it had worked too, up to a point. He had forced himself to stop looking at her as a woman, merely as another member of the party. But now, the attack yesterday had opened up that corner of his mind, as if the two men’s advances had in some way proved how desirable she was. The act, no matter how drastic, had brought him face to face with the truth. He wanted her. Last night, alone in the cell he had wanted her more than anything.

  So what if she was an Indian? Men had taken Indians as wives before. With the exception of Harley, nobody else knew she was Apache, they all took her for Mexican, and if she could fool the Mexicans themselves, then the Americans over the border would be no problem.

  He had made his decision.

  He finished eating and lit up the cigar that Harley had given him at the jailhouse. White-Wing still watched him openly. It was as if she knew his mind was made up. She said nothing, just looked at him in that way, and he grew conscious of the low neckline of her blouse where the drawstring nestled in the valley between her breasts. They rose and fell with her breathing.

  She had noticed the change in him as soon as he had come back. The strange fire she had divined in him first at the settlement had waned after the fight with Crawling-Snake, and all along the trail to Cananea she had watched for it to surface again. Now it had happened. It was back in his eyes as he gazed at her. She knew he had come to terms with it at last. Now it was only a matter of when it would happen.

  Outside, the light was beginning to fail and they could both hear Pete still whittling at his stick. The sound stopped, then the door opened.

  “I’m going down to the Copper Queen to drink some beer.”

  Quantro’s eyes never left White-Wing’s face. “You go along, Pete. I’ll come along later.”

  Pete looked at them both and nodded to himself. “It’s a fair night. I think I’ll sleep outside when I get back.”

  “You do that,” Quantro said.

  “Well, I guess I’ll see you later.”

  “Sure.”

  Pete closed the door and they heard his boot heels clatter down the porch steps. They were alone again. She leaned forward and touched a match to the hurricane lamp. When the glass was back down, the room was lit by a soft glow. She was smiling now. I have him, she thought, I have him.

  “Why do you smile?”

  “It is time, white man.”

  Quantro crushed out the stub of his cigar on the dirt floor. “Apache, you could be right.”

  Her hand was at the drawstring of her blouse. “I have waited for your eyes to fall on me since that day at the creek.”

  “I know.”

  A cloud passed her eyes. “You are so sure of yourself.”

  He pursed his lips. “A man should always be sure. It is the only way to be.”

  She smiled. “You said that like an Apache.”

  “Maybe I am a little Apache.”

  She laughed softly as she came to her feet, her voice tinkling like chimes in the wind. It struck him she hadn’t laughed like that since they had been in the mountains.

  “Do you remember the way I looked then, white man?”

  The image of her naked, clutching his smoking Winchester to her brown body just after she had shot Crawling-Snake, sprang into his mind.

  “Yes,” he said, “but remind me now.”

  She tugged at the string and the neck of her blouse fell loose. She stood before him, breasts freed as the material slipped away from her smooth shoulders. Deftly, she kicked away her sandals, then her hands went to her hip to unfasten the skirt. It took only a moment. Blouse and skirt fell to the floor together.

  His eyes roamed the lush mounds of her breasts and across the plateau of her softly rounded stomach to the dark pubic triangle that nestled at the junction of her coppery thighs. They lingered, returning slowly to her face. The womanly smile of the moment before had disappeared to be replaced by uncertainty.

  He didn’t realize how ragged his breathing had become until he tried to speak. His throat was dry. “White-Wing, you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

  His words pleased her. A smile tugged at the corner of her lips. The lamplight caught her eyes, dancing briefly, then she turned and tiptoed to one of the cots that stood against the wall.

  His gaze followed the swing of her buttocks, smooth and fully rounded, narrowing to a tiny waist and the ripple of her backbone that crawled upwards until it was hidden by the thick curtain of her raven hair.

  He came to his feet, one hand already unbuckling his gunbelt. From the cot, where she lay one leg raised coyly to preserve the mystery, her eyes smoldered a welcome.

  He was hungry.

  And so was she.

  ***

  The moon was a pale eye that peered in through the window like a ghost on the night wing, casting its silvery glow over her face, relaxed as she slept, cradled warm and
secure in Quantro’s arms. His eyes were open. The strenuous activity that had taken place earlier had taken its toll on his bruised ribs. Now they ached as though an iron fist repeatedly squeezed, making the breath catch in his windpipe.

  He needed a smoke.

  Carefully, he slid his arm from beneath her head and swung his feet slowly to the floor. Naked, he sat for a moment, but she didn’t stir. The night was a little chilly so he slipped into his shirt and pulled on his jeans before he padded to the door. Outside, he fished in his breast pocket for his makings, then built a cigarette. The rasp of the match was loud in the night.

  “Can’t you sleep?”

  “No, but I thought you could,” Quantro replied as Pete materialized out of the darkness. He shrugged. “I was thinking about tomorrow.”

  Pete took the offered makings to occupy his fingers. “What’s bothering you?”

  Quantro blew smoke at the moon. “Harley. I can’t figure what he’s up to, but as sure as the sun comes up every day, he’s working on something.”

  “I figure he’s short of good guards.”

  “We ain’t that special. And even if we were, well he’s just too damn neighborly to be normal. First night we’re in town he offers to stand us drinks because we took care of a loud-mouth. Then I get hauled through the dirt and he steps in and gives us a company house and a company doctor to fix me up when neither of us works for the company any longer. Then, when I kill two men and end up in jail, guess who comes calling to fix everything just dandy.”

  “You bellyachin’?”

  Quantro shrugged. “Who knows? It doesn’t set right, that’s all. He’s up to something.”

  “We won’t find out until we start working for him.”

  “Yeah.” Quantro flicked the stub of his cigarette out into the night where it landed with a scatter of sparks on the hard packed earth of the street.

  “When we got to show up?”

  “Nine o’clock at the Copper Queen. With our horses ready to ride. My buckskin’ll be as frisky as a yearling so I’d better ride the bedsprings out of him before then.”

  “We’d better get some sleep.”

  “Sure.” Quantro turned back into the house. He shrugged out of his clothes at the side of the cot, and just as he was about to crawl in, a small hand sneaked out from under the blanket and gently stroked his thigh.

  White-Wing was still hungry.

  CHAPTER 5

  The job was exactly what Harley had said it would be. They shadowed him as he moved about town and out to the surrounding company smelting plants, conducting his business. As Green’s right-hand man there was a lot of it. Their days were spent waiting around, trying to look alert and menacing, which wasn’t easy under the broiling Mexican sun, or cleaning their guns that didn’t need cleaning because they hadn’t been used.

  For the first weeks Quantro had kept a careful eye on Harley, searching for a clue as to why he had employed them. There seemed no obvious explanation. If Quantro had noticed that Harley was as neighborly in his dealings with people as he had been with him and Pete, then his suspicions would have been erased. But he wasn’t. Only with the passing of the endless days did Quantro begin to accept the job for what it was.

  Payment for boredom.

  One night, after they had been dismissed for the day, Pete and Quantro shared a beer in the Copper Queen. They were both morose, fiddling aimlessly with their glasses while all around them miners attempted to forget their own harsh days in the confining reality of the shafts and tunnels that yielded the ore that paid their wages. If escape wasn’t to be found playing the faro layout, maybe it was by playing poker or downing the bumble bee whiskey until they keeled over into oblivion. The lesser drunk ones disappeared upstairs with the girls as they became available.

  “I’ve had it with this job,” Quantro declared.

  “Me too,” Pete agreed, “but what the hell, the money’s better than when we worked underground. It ain’t natural, besides, for a man to be in the dark when the sun’s up.”

  “But the days seem three times as long waiting on Harley.” He drained his glass. “Doin’ nothing just tires me out. I’m quitting. You got any ideas?”

  Pete shook his head. “Why buck it? We’ve got an easy meal-ticket. Might as well ride it out till we’ve got a decent stake.”

  Quantro waved to the bartender for another two beers. When they were delivered, he sank a long draught. They had waited outside nearly all day in the sun and no matter how much he drank he still felt dry. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Got me an idea. You ever heard of the Scalphunters’ Ledge? Down south?” Quantro said.

  Pete nodded. “Sure I’ve heard of it.”

  “They say there’s a whole heap of gold there.”

  “It’s a dream.”

  “Maybe it is and maybe it ain’t.”

  “I’ve prospected,” Pete said dryly. “There was the Blue Bucket lode on the Malheur River in Oregon, the Lost Bonanza in Nevada, the Lost Cabin in Montana, the Lost Cement in California, the Jim Bowie in Texas. There’s a list as long as my arm and yours put together. They’re all dreams. There’s always legends about lost lodes. Believe me, that’s all they are, legends…”

  “Hey, Pete!”

  Pete broke off his monologue and turned to see another of Harley’s guards, Buck Hulbert, waving from a poker table.

  “Yeah?”

  “Empty chair here. You want to sit in?” He grinned a wolf’s head leer. “Give us poor boys a chance at your money.”

  “No.”

  “What about Quantro? He wanna try?”

  Quantro grinned lopsidedly, more from the beer than good humor. “Sure do.” He pushed back his chair. “We’ll talk about Scalphunters’ Ledge again, Pete.” He weaved among the tables and planted himself in an empty chair.

  Buck Hulbert gestured at the heaps of silver coins. Quantro nodded and dug out his money. They cut around the table for the deal. Hulbert pulled a jack, the highest of the five cards. He shuffled, then straightened off the edges of the deck before he dealt each player an opening card, face down.

  “Stud poker,” he declared. The first player tossed a coin into the center. “Okay,” Hulbert beamed, turning the next card over. “Possible pair of tens here.” A card to the next player. “Possible pair of queens…”

  ***

  At nine o’clock the next morning, when Harley came down looking scrubbed and eager for the day, both Quantro and Hulbert were still at the poker table. Gritty-eyed and gravel-throated they fanned their cards. They had both played well. Quantro’s winnings stood a little lower than Hulbert’s.

  “You two work for me, or don’t you?” Harley said, lighting his first cigar of the day.

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Harley,” Hulbert said, folding his hand on to the table and gathering his stake money. He rose and crossed the foyer. Quantro flipped over Hulbert’s cards. He grinned. Busted flush or not it was still a better spread than his own. Both of them bluffers. Shaking his head, he pocketed his winnings before scooping the pot up from the center of the green baize.

  “This is yours,” he said, holding out the coins.

  Hulbert frowned as he took them.

  “You won. Your ace high beat my jack.”

  “When you two have finished, there’s work to do,” Harley said sourly as he sat down to a table already laid for his breakfast. The two men sat down with him, waiting silently as the food was served. Harley made a great show of eating. Quantro’s stomach began to flip over from the smell of bacon when Upton, another of Harley’s men, came in.

  “Problem, Mr. Harley. Can I have a word?”

  Harley jerked his head. Quantro took the hint and stood up, followed by Hulbert. They stood over at the bar for a moment until Harley called them back.

  “Three guards have gone sick. Looks like something they ate. They were supposed to be part of the five men who have to go to Santa Cruz today to collect the miners’ payroll. You two and Wiltshir
e will have to make up the number.”

  “What about the bank in town here? Can’t they handle it?” Quantro asked.

  Harley shook his head. “No. They don’t hold much reserve and the miners’ll only take silver, no paper money. The bank used to make special shipments for us but they got robbed too regularly, so now we make our own arrangements. Up to now we’ve had no problems. The days and the routes are varied as much as possible.” He cast a sharp look around the table. “What happens is you get to Santa Cruz by sundown. You stay at the Rose of Cimarron Hotel. You collect the shipment from the bank before opening time tomorrow morning. You’ll bring the silver to the bank here for the night, then the day after you escort it out to the mine and we pay out. Any questions?” Nobody spoke. “You do a good job and keep to the schedule and there’ll be a thirty dollar bonus in it for each of you.”

  Everyone turned to face the batwing doors as they swung open. Pete walked in. Harley gestured to Quantro. “Your partner’ll explain.” He looked around the faces. “It’s getting late. You’d better make a start.”

  They did.

  ***

  The tequila in the cantina was cheap but potent. Pete took a lick of salt from the back of his hand, then gulped from his glass. “God-awful town this. Jesus, and this mescal, likely to blow my head clean off.” He looked over his shoulder at where Upton, Buck Hulbert, and Dobey were bellying up to the bar, ogling a Mexican woman whose low-necked blouse was full to overflowing. In comparison, her face held little attraction. “That Upton. I trust him as much as I’d trust a rattlesnake I’d just stepped on. He was the bastard that just about trampled his horse all over you that day they brought you out of the mine.”

  Quantro nodded. “He’s tough, and he likes everyone to know it. He’s okay, long as you keep an eye on him.”

  “I got a feeling,” Pete persisted. “I figure he’s going to stake his claim on that silver come tomorrow morning. Probably wait until we’re in the middle of nowhere then dump us and take off.”

  Quantro sipped at his tequila. It burned like a river of fire down his gullet. “He’s got to get the drop on us first. My friend here’ll be in my hand.” He patted the Winchester, the “One of a Thousand” that lay on the table.