Whippoorwill

by Sharon Sala

  In spite of the pain, the gambler stared—first at the mountain man—then back at the woman in red. Lady? Not where he came from she wasn’t.

  Truly shrugged at the gambler, as if to say, ‘it’s out of my hands’, and as she did, the blue-black feathers around the neck of her dress fluttered against her pearly-white skin like the tail feathers of a pissed-off rooster.

  Miles glared, his eyes burning with a sense of injustice that Truly Fine seemed incapable of feeling.

  The way Truly looked at it, so many men had put themselves inside of her, that in her estimation, one more feel was hardly worth noting. But she couldn’t ignore the fact that Miles had taken it upon himself to right her wrongs and save her from herself, even if it was only for his own selfish reasons.

  Miles wanted a wife. He’d chosen Truly Fine. All he had to do was convince her that it was not only for her own good, but also her pleasure. Truly did not understand that concept. She wasn’t like her old friend, Letty Murphy, back at the White Dove. Letty was a dreamer, always listening for the call of some bird, as if it would turn her into someone other than a woman who got paid for a poke.

  Truly was practical. She got paid to give pleasure, not receive it.

  “That’s no lady,” the gambler groaned. “And let go of my hand before I’m forced to shoot.”

  Considering the condition in which Miles held him hostage, it was an impotent threat that landed the gambler nothing but a trip out the door. Seconds later, he was face down in the street, licking dirt from his lips and trying to remember where he’d tied his horse. He had a sudden desire to get the hell out of town while he still had all his fingers and toes and everything in between.

  “Dammit, Snag, you hadn’t oughta done that,” Truly grumbled. “He was gonna pay me good. Real good.”

  Miles frowned and ran his tongue over his teeth. He hated his nickname, but coming from her, it was the ultimate insult.

  “I don’t call you names, Miss Truly. I wish you would return the honor by using my given name, instead.”

  Truly pouted, and flounced toward the bar, her henna-red curls bouncing with every step.

  “Moose! I need a drink.” She leaned against the bar while the bartender sloshed watered-down whiskey into a less-than-clean glass.

  Miles followed her to the bar and caught the drink before she did. His hands curled around the glass and then shoved it back at Moose before she could set up a fuss.

  “What you need is a man, Miss Truly, not a drink.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I had one. You threw him out into the street.”

  Miles shrugged. “Not that kind of man. I mean a man like me.”

  She turned. The appraisal she gave him was suggestively slow. It was to Miles’s credit that he did not rise to the occasion when her gaze lingered longer than necessary below his belt buckle.

  “I don’t mind,” she finally said. “As long as you keep your mouth closed, that is. One man’s money is as good as another’s.”

  Miles gritted all four teeth and tried not to shake her. “I ain’t gonna pay to sleep with you, Truly. That would make me no better than the rest. I’m askin’ you, just like I do every time I come to town. Would you be my wife?”

  She winced. In spite of his missing teeth—in spite of her bone-weary soul—she was tempted. But the pain in her heart just wouldn’t go away. It was an impossible situation. She didn’t want to live from hand to mouth, traveling by foot, or straddling the ridgeback of some mule while this fool kept moving dirt from one place to another, trying to strike it rich.

  “Snag…”

  “Miles,” he corrected her.

  She rolled her eyes. “Miles… I’ll tell you now, like I tell you every time you ask. You go find that gold you keep searchin’ for. When you’ve got the money to take care of me proper, then teeth or no teeth, you’ve got yourself a wife.”

  Miles sighed. It was the same answer he’d been getting since he’d laid eyes on her—right down to the jut of her chin and the stomp of her little foot when she was finished.

  “But, Truly, that could take years! By the time I’m rich, I’ll be too old to make you happy.”

  Truly batted her eyes and pursed her lips in a tawdry display of affection. “Oh no, Miles, honey. Money doesn’t get old, only men. If you’ve got enough money, it don’t matter a whit to me whether you can get it up or not.”

  He growled and spun, knocking chairs and tables asunder as he pointed a long, brown finger in her face.

  “One day, Truly, I swear on your good name that I will find that gold and then you’ll have to keep your promise.”

  Truly frowned as he disappeared through the swinging doors.

  “I don’t have a good name,” she muttered, and hitched at the neckline of her dress. Because she felt so lost inside, she ran to the door and yelled out into the street. “And you can’t find your butt with both hands, Snag Crutchaw. What makes you think you’ll find gold?”

  “Want another drink, Truly?” Moose the Bartender asked.

  She stuck out her tongue and flounced upstairs, not for the first time wondering if she’d made the wrong choice. Her heartstrings pulled as she entered the room and closed the door.

  Hell yes, I made the wrong choice. I’ve been doing it since the day I was born. Why should I suddenly become careful and wise?

  ***

  Miles rode west.

  Out of Sweetgrass Junction.

  Back toward the mountains.

  With fire in his heart and tears in his eyes.

  He’d find gold or die trying, or his name wasn’t Miles Crutchaw. This time not even God Himself could have deterred Miles from his quest. He would find gold and he would marry Truly Fine. And he would not return to Sweetgrass Junction again until he could claim her.

  On the seventh day out of Sweetgrass Junction, he entered his camp, glad that the ride was over. He stored his provisions in the usual places, taking care to secure them against the marauding bears and other varmints that seemed to have a sixth sense about Miles’ periodic trips.

  Before he’d been mildly irked; allowing them their ravaging for no other reason than because they’d been here first. But this trip was different. When this was gone, there would be no more sugar. No more salt. No more anything bought from Sweetgrass Junction until he’d struck it rich. He’d lived off the land most of his life and would do it again for as long as it took. But what he wanted most was what lay beneath it.

  With dogged determination and the spirit of a gambler who believes mightily in the next deal of the cards, he took up his lantern and pick axe and headed up the mountain above his camp.

  The location of his mine was a secret, but one not hard to keep. Except for an occasional Shoshone on a hunting expedition, there was no one around for miles. And the Shoshone gave the big miner a wide berth. No Indian would have anything to do with a man who talked to himself as Miles often did. A man with a disturbed spirit was a man to leave alone.

  Hours later, and deep inside the heart of the mine, Miles dug and cursed—picked and shoveled—his back jolting from the shock of pick against stone. Dirt splattered and chips flew as he swore beneath his breath.

  “I’ll find your gold, Truly Fine. And when I do, you’ll have to be my bride. You promised.”

  Slowly, but surely, his wheelbarrow filled. And when it was overflowing, he began the long trek out of the mountain’s belly toward the mouth of the mine where he would empty it into the sluice he’d built by a high mountain spring.

  Behind him the mountain rumbled, like the guts of a man who’s eaten too many green apples. Miles paused, listening.

  “Fart and get it over with,” he shouted. “I ain’t finished with you yet. Not by a long shot.”

  And so the days passed into weeks, and then months. And before he knew it, the sugar was gone, as was the last of his salt. When he boiled the empty salt sack with last night’s squirrel in hopes of soaking a flavor from the cloth, it hadn’t tasted bad, but he’d be
en forced to sort thread, as well as bones, from his meal. Both the squirrel and the sack had come apart at the seams.

  That night, wrapped snug in his blankets and sheltered by the lean-to he’d grafted into the side of the mountain, he slept hard and deep, unaware that things were happening inside his mine that were out of his control.

  This particular year in the mountains, the late summer weather was unusually wet. Day after day the rains pounded upon the earth, running downward in swift, red rivulets between trees and rocks toward the river below, like blood pouring out of a wound. Unbeknownst to Miles, the water wasn’t just running over the land, but was flowing through it as well; filtering down into the cracks and crevices of the mountain that housed his worm-hole mine, carrying away more dirt than he’d planned, and weakening the tunnel on a daily basis.

  Miles began to worry about the constant dampness inside the hole. The walls wept continually. Day after day he noticed that the puddles inside the mountain no longer drained away. He knew that his first breaths of life had been taken while floating inside his mama’s belly. But he’d willingly sucked his last lung full of liquid just before he’d been born. He had no desire to die by drowning inside this mountain’s womb. Even with all the warnings, he had still not prepared for the internal devastation, or the fact that Mother Nature was about to reveal on her own what he’d been unable to find.

  ***

  Morning dawned wet and gray. The air was thick with mist that hadn’t decided whether to fall or hang loose. But for Miles, it was a day like any other day. Whether it rained, snowed, or burned hot with overhead sun, he still spent his days in the dark, in a hole in the ground.

  He lifted his head, sniffing the air as he stepped outside the lean-to, letting the mist settle his sleep-ruffled hair and beard in lieu of grooming. Relishing the cool dampness, he combed his fingers through his wild curls then tied them away from his face with a thin strip of leather.

  A slight breeze lifted his beard, stirring the singed scent from yesterday when it had come too close to a lantern’s flame. He tugged at its weight, thinking that the last thing he needed was to set hisself afire.

  Yanking his skinning knife from its sheath, he began to hack at the thick growth upon his chin, wincing as it pulled the tender skin beneath, and hacked until he was finished. The dark, springy pelt covering the lower half of his face was now only a mere six or so inches in length, and as shaggy as a molting wolf. Far off in the next valley he heard the rumble of thunder, but it did not deter him from heading up the slick, mud-covered path toward the mouth of his mine.

  Swirls of mist hovered just above his feet, moving slightly like bashful ghosts as he passed through it. Water dripping from the leaves along the trail fell on top of his hat, splattering upon the heavy leather with intermittent plops. He ignored the discomfort as he continued on, his long legs carrying his mighty weight as if it was of no consequence.

  The toothless mouth of the mine gaped similar to that of his own, and as he entered, he had the unusual impression of being swallowed whole. His stomach lurched, because this sensation was not normal. The skin crawled on the back of his neck and he even considered not going inside. Then he thought of his Truly and shook off the hesitation.

  Just inside the opening, he paused to light the lantern he’d carried up from camp. The scent of coal oil and smoke hung heavy in the damp air, stinging his eyes and nose as he adjusted the flame.

  Where there had been darkness, there now was light; small, but persistently yellow. He started down the corridor, pushing the empty wheelbarrow ahead of him, and as he did, the rest of the world fell away. The deeper into the mountain he went, the quieter and colder it became, until finally the only sounds that he heard were those of his own making.

  The squeak of the wood wheel on the barrow.

  The splat of his boots as he walked through water.

  The soft gasp and hiss of his own breath as it clouded before his face.

  The reverberating hammer of his heartbeat thundering in his ears.

  When the tunnel ended as suddenly as it had begun, he hung the lantern on a peg. Then as he’d done every day for the last seven years, he ran his hand along the wet, seeping walls, stroking it like a lover; searching for the perfect place to plunge himself into her depths.

  He lifted his pick, squinting his eyes just a bit as he aimed for a small seam in the wall that hadn’t been there the day before. He inhaled and swung, and the moment of connection coincided with a belch and a roar from the mountain that sent a fresh fall of earth and rocks tumbling down upon him.

  Oh hell!

  It was Miles’ first and last thought as everything went dark.

  ***

  At first, he had no way of knowing whether he was dead or just buried alive, then slowly, pain became the focus of his existence and he decided on the latter. His face hurt. Everywhere he touched, it felt wet. The morbid scent of blood was thick in his nostrils and salty against his lips. He spat, and teeth fell out in his hand. He fingered them in the dark—mentally counting. There were four to be exact. He shouted out in anger.

  “Christ all mighty! Everyone’s a critic. Even this dad-blamed mountain didn’t like my looks.”

  Miles tossed the snags into the rubble around his feet. Spitting blood and cursing the pain on his face and in his mouth, he levered himself to an upright position and began feeling around the walls for the lantern, praying it had not been broken.

  His luck held. The lantern was still hanging from its peg on the wall. The draft of air from the falling debris had simply snuffed out the light.

  Fumbling in the dark, he fished out the sulfur matches that he carried in his vest and relit the wick. Light flared, and for a moment, Miles went blind again, only this time from the light. He looked away, blinking rapidly to readjust his eyes to the sudden change. When he could see, he began to survey the damage. It didn’t take long to ascertain that the tunnel had suffered less than he had. Judging from the blood on his shirt and hands, the mountain had worked him over good.

  A new wave of pain wracked his body. His stomach rolled. The cavity inside the mountain began to tilt, and the motion sent Miles to his knees. When the earth had stopped spinning and he could blink without wanting to puke, he looked up.

  Instead of the solid wall he expected to see, there was a wide rift in the surface that had not been there before. And something else shown from deep within, revealing itself in the crack like a woman spreading her legs for her man to come in.

  Miles thrust his fingers into the crevice, feeling along the crack and testing the differences in texture of the light and dark veins that he was seeing, praying that the blow to his head was not making him see things that weren’t really there.

  It wasn’t his imagination. There was a color far different from the dark obsidian and rich chocolate soil that he’d been carrying out by the barrow-full for years. He lifted the lantern from its peg, holding it close—peering into the crack and blinking back tears. Not only was the color still there, but it was brighter—and richer—and it ran long and deep up the wall.

  “Thank you, Jesus.” He spit blood and grinned. “Truly, darlin’, if you only knew. Yore days are numbered.”

  He hung the lantern back on its peg, his pulse racing as he lifted the pick axe and started to dig. The first strike was solid, with the second coming swift behind the first. Like a man gone mad, he began hammering at the wall with the tip of his pick, shattering chunk after chunk from the vein of gold that the cave-in had revealed.

  Hours later, he stopped. But only because the coal oil in his lantern was nearly gone. And because the chunks of color that he’d hammered out of the vein were overflowing in the wheelbarrow at his knees.

  His eyes were mere slits in a face swollen beyond belief. Yet if Miles could have seen his appearance, he would have laughed and thumbed his nose at the sight. A rich man could stand to be a little ugly.

  It was dark when he exited. Suddenly every tree hid a would-be clai
m jumper. Every shadow was a Shoshone come to lift his scalp and leave his body for the buzzards. He had a sudden fear that while he had made his find, he would never get out alive to tell the tale. It was strange how instant wealth could change a man’s outlook on life. Getting the ore assayed and putting his money in a safe place became all important, and Dodge City offered everything he would need—an assay office—several banks to transfer money back East—and a dentist.

  When he went to Sweetgrass Junction after Truly Fine, he wasn’t giving her any room to back out of her promises. The better he looked, the better his chances.

  He looked down at the gold and grinned. It wouldn’t matter what he looked like. If he knew Truly like he thought he knew Truly, she wouldn’t see anything but the money.

  But by the time he reached the cabin, he’d come to another conclusion. He had some cleaning up to do before he started off the mountain. If he didn’t get himself healed, he might die from blood poisoning before he reached Dodge City. And to doctor his wounds meant cutting off the rest of his beard. Just considering the act was daunting. Without a looking glass to see by, he could cut his own throat and never know it until it was too late.

  Much later after he’d hidden his find, he dropped onto his bunk with a heartfelt sigh and touched his face, instantly groaning from the pain. It would have to be doctored, but he was too sore and weary to deal with it tonight. The wounds would have to wait.

  The next day the sun was already up and shining in a bright, clear sky when he woke. He stretched and then gasped. The act was a painful reminder of yesterday. He looked down at himself, at his arms and his chest and frowned at the mass of bruises. His mouth and gums ached and it hurt to swallow spit, but the necessity of cleaning his wounds was upon him.

  With a heartfelt moan, he got up and hobbled outside to wash his face. When he leaned over the wash basin, the standing rainwater threw back a wavy reflection of his battered features. The sight made him shudder, but it had also provided a much-needed view of his face. He reached for his knife with a grimace. At least he wouldn’t cut his throat when he shaved.