Silver Rock

by Luke Short

  Climbing the stairs to her apartment, she recalled her lunch with Tully today. He had been restless, still angry, impatient and oddly very gentle, and she found herself almost forgetting that he must be watched unceasingly. Ben’s badgering of them would continue she knew, but deep within her she felt it would always stop short of real trouble. Ben’s pride had been hurt and his plans crossed up, but he was too cunning to jeopardize his career by a really reckless mistake.

  Mrs. Moffit was reading the paper as Sarah let herself into the warm and cozy apartment. “Hi, Ma! What’s for dinner?” she asked as she hung up her coat.

  “You have to ask? Can’t you smell it?”

  Sarah sniffed. “Shrimp?”

  “Curried shrimp.”

  “That’s good. Want a drink?”

  “Just a little one.”

  Sarah went out to the kitchen and mixed a couple of weak highballs, came back to the living room, handed one to her mother, sank into a chair and kicked her shoes off. She could hear the wind tugging at the window, and as she sipped contentedly on her drink she heard the first spatter of rain. It would later turn into sleet, she supposed, and she wondered if all the hunters camped in wretched flapping tents and nursing their precious fires didn’t wish they were home tonight. She knew they didn’t, but thought they should.

  Idly, contentedly, she watched her mother finish reading the paper while sipping at her drink. Carefully, Mrs. Moffit folded the paper and said, “Anything exciting happen today, dear?”

  “Nothing with me, but plenty with Tully.” She told Mrs. Moffitt of the shooting at the mine and of Tully’s visit to the sheriff. Mrs. Moffit smiled faintly at mention of Sheriff Olson.

  “But that’s absurd,” she said when Sarah finished. “Ben’s out of town. He couldn’t have done it.”

  “Ma, you’re being simple again,” Sarah said patiently. “Ben is paying someone to do it. Probably one of his miners or mill hands.” She frowned. “Why are you sticking up for Ben? You loathe him and you always have. Admit it.”

  “Well, I’ve never really liked him,” Mrs. Moffit conceded. “Still, it just doesn’t seem sensible. Why should he want to stop Kevin and Tully from opening a mine? He’s got a mine of his own and a very good one. He doesn’t need money. Why should he risk it all by making all this trouble?”

  “It might be partly me, Ma.”

  Mrs. Moffit looked sharply at her. “You mean he’s jealous of Tully?”

  “Could be.”

  “Are you giving him any grounds for jealousy?”

  “No,” Sarah said slowly. “It wouldn’t take much of a shove though.”

  “Then why don’t you?” Mrs. Moffit said matter-of-factly.

  Sarah rose, and in her stocking feet went over and turned on the radio. As it was warming up she glanced over at her mother. “You like him?”

  “Of course, I do.”

  “What if he turned out to be a crook?”

  “I’d still like him. Why? Is he?”

  “I wish I knew, Ma,” Sarah said. “I wish I did.”

  “Feel like telling me about it?”

  “I honestly don’t,” Sarah said. Then the radio cut in and the moment was lost. Sarah listened to the news, then went out to help her mother with dinner. They ate in the warm kitchen, listening to the rain pelt softly at the window.

  Mrs. Moffit reminded Sarah that tonight the Library Board met, and that she dreaded it. The Board consisted of three ladies whom the town considered genteel. That they were, Mrs. Moffit conceded, but they also knew nothing of books, and at times seemed to hate the printed word. They were incessantly demanding censorship of the new library acquisitions, and it took a fine sense of tact for Mrs. Moffit to gently stand them off and still retain her job. She would do it again tonight Sarah knew.

  Dinner finished, Mrs. Moffit took off for the Board meeting. Sarah cleaned up, put on a stack of records, then washed her hair, leaving the bathroom door open so she could listen.

  Afterwards, while her hair dried, she sat in the living room and did her nails.

  An hour passed thus. Combing out her pale, curling hair, she was trying to make up her mind if she really liked the Bartok piece when a heavy knock came at the door. It was imperious and somehow so demanding that Sarah rose quickly and with the towel still about her shoulders answered the door.

  It was Tully. Sarah’s heart seemed to do a small nip-up at the sight of him. Drops of rain clung to his flushed face, and his slicker had already shed pools of water on the corridor floor. “I got some news,” he announced grimly. “Can I come in?”

  Sarah said, “Of course. What is it, Tully?”

  He tramped into the room and then halted as Sarah shut the door.

  “Picked up my cook around dark and headed for the mine,” Tully began. “You know where the road curves around that gully?”

  “No.”

  “Well, anyway, somebody, brought a chain saw up there and laid fifteen big spruce down across the road.”

  “How childish!” Sarah said angrily. “This is really fantastic, Tully.”

  “Oh, brother, you don’t know how fantastic. Nailed to the first downed tree was a nice neat sign. It said, ‘Road closed by order of the owner.’ “

  That’s it, Sarah thought suddenly. That’s the Jote Smith Claim. For full seconds Sarah considered this. This was the claim whose conveyance Judge Apperson had recorded only this afternoon. Had Ben bought the claim, hoping that the easement would not be conveyed also? Sarah doubted it, since his attorney acknowledged the fact.

  Swiftly then Sarah described Judge Apperson’s recording of the deed this afternoon, and what she supposed lay behind it.

  “But Kevin’s got easements through all those claims our road crosses, hasn’t he?” Tully asked.

  “Of course he has.”

  “Then let’s get them,” Tully said flatly. “I’ll have the sheriff and my own chain saw out there by eight o’clock in the morning.” He started for the door.

  “Wait, Tully, I’ll go with you.”

  Remembering the open jeep, Sarah got her raincoat, galoshes and ski cap from the closet, and then tramped town into the rainy night beside Tully.

  As Tully turned into the river bottom, they could see Kevin’s lights were still on. Halting the jeep in front of the house, Tully handed Sarah out.

  Their knock on the door was answered by Kevin who still held in his hand the newspaper he had been reading when he was interrupted.

  “Come in, come in,” old Kevin said. “What are you two youngsters doing out on a night like this?”

  “An emergency, Mr. Russel,” Tully said.

  Old Kevin led the way back to the kitchen which was warm and tight against the night. Once their raincoats were removed and they were seated at the table, Tully told of the roadblock. Old Kevin listened carefully. As Tully finished with his account he asked, “You have an easement on that Jote Smith Claim haven’t you, Mr. Russel?”

  Old Kevin nodded. “From Bill Carpenter, yes. I’ll get it.”

  Sarah heard Tully breathe an audible sigh of relief. Slowly old Kevin moved toward the living-room desk, rummaged around and presently returned with a sheaf of documents held by a rubber band. He seated himself almost with ceremony and removed the rubber band, then sorted through the documents. He came up with one he handed to Tully, saying gently, “There it is, boy.”

  Tully opened the form and saw that the easement was properly signed by Carpenter.

  Sarah said, “May I see it?” Tully extended it and she took one look at the easement. Then a feeling that was almost physical sickness came to her, and the paper slipped from her hand.

  “What’s the matter?” Tully demanded.

  Sarah raised her glance to Tully’s face and she felt an overwhelming misery. “It’s not recorded, Tully. It’s worthless. Ben can close the road.” She shifted her glance to old Kevin who was staring at her with an unbelieving expression.

  “But Carpenter signed them,” old Kevin sa
id.

  Sarah only shook her head as Tully skirted the table and picked up the document to look at it again.

  “No, Kevin,” Sarah said bitterly. “Carpenter probably sold Ben the claim believing your easement would be honored, but since your easement wasn’t recorded it just doesn’t exist for the new owner.”

  Now she looked up at Tully and saw the shock in his eyes. “You mean our only road to the mine is blocked?” Tully asked.

  Sarah nodded. “How could I do that, Tully? Don’t you see, I’m the one to blame! I work at the Clerk’s Office. I record these every day—and I didn’t think to remind Kevin to record them.” The tears were here now and uncontrollable, and even Tully’s rough jacket to cry on didn’t help.

  CHAPTER 7

  It was sleeting the next morning when Tully, just after daylight, rode horseback out of town leading a pack horse with the compressor tank lashed to its back. He was making sure, at the price of his own discomfort, that the tank would be delivered today. To skirt the roadblock and the old Jote Smith Claim in the jeep would have meant bushwhacking in the deep gully among tangled timber and ground already soaked by a night’s rain. Horses were surer.

  He arrived at the camp soaked to the skin a little after noon. In the warm cook tent, while he had a sandwich and downed several cups of coffee, he told Alec of Kevin’s forgetting to record the easements. In a backwoods country, especially among elderly people who had been their own lawyers for a half century, it was a common occurrence that property owners neglected to record deeds and conveyances. Tully didn’t have to explain this to Alec. And Alec, tried, wet too, a deepening gloom settling upon his hard stubbled face, heard him out in silence. The news was so staggering that Alec did not even seem angry.

  “So what do we do?” Alec asked.

  Tully tiredly scrubbed his cheek with his open palm.

  “Keep pitching. We’ve got grub for a month, and the new cook will be out this afternoon. When the parts come for the cat, I’ll pack them in. Get the ore above ground. Right now the road will have to wait.”

  “What road? How you going to jump the Jote Smith Claim—build an overhead highway?”

  “I don’t know,” Tully said. “There must be a way.”

  “What way?” Alec insisted. “It’s forest land on either side of you. Those Forest Service characters won’t let you touch it. Even if they made a special consideration, it would take six months for you to clear through Washington. This is Wilderness Area, boy. Strictly holy.”

  Tully put down his cup. “I know.”

  Alec had summed it up neatly. There was no road possible that did not cross the Jote Smith Claim. It might be possible, by delving into county records, to piece together enough adjoining claims in this national forest to reach the Sarah Moffit. Yet, any substitute road built on these claims would be fantastically impractical, and would cost a fortune, even if it were possible to get the easements. The county naturally would refuse to condemn a right-of-way through the Jote Smith Claim. In short, he could mine ore, build new bins and fill them, and still the ore would remain on the Vicksburg Claims.

  “I’ll be getting along,” he said, and he began to button up his slicker.

  Alec watched him morosely. “What do I tell the boys?”

  “Just what I’ve told you,” Tully said. “They get paid. The transport problem is my own.”

  The ride back to town was almost as dismal and cold as the ride out. The sleet sometime during the afternoon turned into show. Low clouds on the peaks and the whole dripping forest seemed to be bracing itself for winter.

  Hunched in his saddle, Tully again tried to see a way out of their dilemma, but thinking of it he could only remember Sarah’s misery of last night. Her failure to record Kevin’s easements was the first sign of imperfection he had seen in her, and somehow it made her more dear to him. They had left old Kevin stunned and half sick at his own carelessness. Sarah’s state of mind had been little better. She bitterly blamed herself for having overlooked something so obvious she had never even thought of it. In the apartment later, after leaving Kevin, while she made a pot of coffee, Tully had watched her, and a growing concern for her came to him. This, after all, did not really touch her materially. The Sarah Moffit Mine could peacefully die and nothing in her life would be changed, nor would anything in Kevin’s life. But Sarah had seemed crushed and, what was worse, shamed to the depths of her being. When Tully had said good night and kissed her, she had clung to him almost with desperation. It was as if their common disaster had brought a new and tender intimacy to them.

  By dark it was really snowing and it was beginning to freeze, making the footing treacherous for the horses. Added to that, Tully felt the old trouble coming; his legs had turned totally numb. Wretchedly, he hung on to the saddle horn, wondering if his feet would freeze while he was unable to feel any sensation at all in his legs. An hour of the purest misery followed, but at last feeling began to return to his legs.

  When he reached town and dismounted at the stable where he had rented the horses, he clung to the saddle horn, laboriously exercising his legs until full feeling returned. Afterwards, he tramped back to the hotel in the mounting slush and ice of the street, and he was truly cold. Asking for his key from the clerk, he was so stupid weary that he did not notice the note that the clerk deposited on the counter along with the key.

  Turning towards the stairs, he heard the clerk say, “Don’t you want this?”

  Tully turned, shaking with the cold, and stared blankly at the clerk, and only a second later saw the note. He retrieved it and read it haltingly. It was from Sarah, asking him to come over to the Nugget office when he got in.

  Once in dry clothes, Tully went downstreet to the restaurant and ate a quick order of ham and eggs, and then tramped back to the Nugget office. The lights within cast in orange glow on the gray slush that scummed the sidewalk, and the thin snow held on.

  Through the glass of the door, Tully could see that Sarah, Sam and Beth were waiting behind the counter inside. At his entrance, Sam lifted a hand in grim salutation. Beth said hello and Tully answered, looking immediately, carefully, at Sarah. Perhaps it was the bright color of her plaid dress that made her face seem pale by contrast. In spite of the smile she gave Tully, she looked tired and depressed, and Tully wondered if his own face reflected the same low spirits.

  “We’ve saved a box seat at the wailing wall,” Sam said, indicating the chair beside Beth. Sarah sat on Beth’s desk, her long legs crossed. There was an open bottle of whiskey on Sam’s desk, and he held the glass cradled in his hand.

  Tully swung the chair around, straddled it, folded his arms on its back while Sam drank off the rest of his drink, then extended his glass and the bottle to Tully. “We got one glass, so this is the loving cup,” he growled.

  “No, thanks.” Tully declined, as did Sarah.

  When Sam offered the bottle to Beth, she declined, too. Then Sam looked at her disapprovingly. “Okay, get sulky,” he murmured. He poured out a half glass of whiskey, then rose, skirted the counter and went back into the composing room to the water tap.

  Tully glanced up at Sarah and surprised her watching him, an open concern in her face. “Bad trip?” she asked.

  “A wet one.” Tully shifted his weight in the chair. “Has anything else come unstuck since I left?”

  Beth murmured, “What else could?”

  Sam returned then and sank heavily into the chair. “The first thing I did this morning was check on the Land Records,” Sarah said. “Ben was right. The easements weren’t recorded.” The old look of guilt and shame fleetingly crossed her face. Sam’s eyes were oddly gentle, and he said nothing. But Tully, watching Sarah, saw her expression alter almost imperceptibly, as if once she acknowledged her shame a tough and stubborn pride still remained.

  Sarah lit a cigarette, and then said, “Besides eating worms all day I’ve been doing something else. Anyone interested in hearing what about?”

  “If it’s a post-mortem,
no,” Sam said gently. “Quit beating yourself over the head, will you, Sarah?”

  “Not quite yet,” Sarah replied. “The thing that’s bothered me all day is how Ben knew those easements weren’t recorded.”

  “The Land Records are a public record, aren’t they?” Sam said. “Anybody can look at them.”

  “That’s just it. Nobody has while I wasn’t around—except one man.”

  “Who was that?” Tully asked.

  “Justin Byers.”

  Sarah nodded when Tully cut in. “Would Byers have had a chance to check on the Land Records?”

  “He’s the only one who did have,” Sarah said flatly. “Oh, other people have asked to check something, but they’ve always asked me to do it for them.”

  There was a long silence then, while each of them tried to read some significance into this.

  Sam at last said shrewdly, “Keep talking, Sarah.”

  Sarah hesitated. “All right, I will,” she said then. “Maybe what I’m going to say adds up to zero. Maybe not. But I got to thinking today that Byers’s visits started only after the last commissioners’ meeting.”

  “The one where they bounced me around?” Tully asked.

  Sarah nodded. “Remember what happened at that meeting, Tully?”

  “I’ll never forget it.”

  “All right, let me tell you what happened after you left.” She described then how Byers had left the room and returned in a few minutes presumably after making a phone call, for he had stated that he had a doctor’s appointment, and must leave.

  “I didn’t pay any attention to it at the time,” Sarah continued. “But yesterday I had an appointment with Dr. Richards.” She went on to tell of the conversation that took place in the doctor’s office, relating how she had teased Dr. Richards about the treatment he received from the commissioners. She told of her suggestion that Dr. Richards could get even with the commissioners when they came to him as patients.

  “You know what he said then?” Sarah asked. “He said he’d never treated a commissioner. Remembering that Byers said that morning he had an appointment with the doc, I asked him especially if he wasn’t treating Justin Byers. He said he’d never seen him in a professional way.”