by E. L. Ripley
“With business, of course. You were a factory man. You’ve got a good head for it.”
Carpenter looked up at the stars, grimacing. “You thinking of opening a factory, Captain?”
“It worked for you, didn’t it?”
“I suppose it did.”
“You had better stay here with us tonight, Bill. Comfort starts to mean something when you get to our age.”
“Best tuck me in, then,” Carpenter replied, getting to his feet. “I’m not thirsty anymore. In fact, I’m nearly drowned.” That wasn’t a lie; he really should have put a stop to the whiskey earlier.
The women gathered up the children, and the men got the horses. One by one, they made off for their own homes, some taking the time to speak to Carpenter, some just going ahead.
O’Doul made his way over, brushing a firefly from his shirt and taking off his hat. He stood in front of Carpenter, chewing his lip. “I owe you an apology, Bill.”
“It’s all right.”
“Then you accept?”
“Of course I do.”
“I don’t remember telling the boy,” O’Doul said, leaning in close and shaking Carpenter’s hand. “But I have no doubt that I did. Maybe I was at drink. I would not lie on you sober, Bill.”
“I know.” Carpenter squeezed his shoulder.
He’d been looking forward to that feather bed in the hotel, but Hale’s house was just as good, if not better. Lacy curtains framed the windows of the guest room, and the bed was covered with a fine thick quilt. It looked so good that Carpenter felt a touch of the closest thing to temper that he had in decades. It really was uncanny, the way these things tended to play out.
The bed called to him.
But he went to the window, opened it, and climbed out into the night.
CHAPTER NINE
The walk back to town in the dark was more treacherous than it was difficult, and those third and fourth glasses of whiskey were no help at all. Carpenter wanted to move faster, but it wasn’t safe, and with the men still trickling out of Hale’s property with their families, he couldn’t use the road.
Branches snapped and pine needles slipped under his boots as he picked his way downhill, guided by the glow of town and the faint music on the breeze. The night was at least cool, if not exactly pleasant.
It was really something, what Hale had built here. Not the house; there were big, fine houses wherever you went. But to have kept them all together this way, and for so long, it really was an accomplishment. Captain Hale never had led them to any victories, but that was no fault of his. He had kept most of them alive. And now he was keeping them together.
During the war, no one could have asked for a better leader. And even now it was probably difficult not to feel the same way about the man.
There was a fight in the street when Carpenter came out of the trees, brushing himself off, and no one noticed. One fight, and hardly anyone watching. A few girls gazed from a balcony, visibly bored. If there was gold in this valley, there would be full streets right now, commerce still going strong, and those girls would not have been idle.
Silva wasn’t in the taproom in the hotel, though there was a man handing a tiny piece of gold to the barman. There was gold, then. Just not enough of it. No amount would ever be enough to keep everyone happy, but it wouldn’t take much to keep a camp like this alive. Still, it seemed like even that was too much to ask for.
Upstairs, Carpenter paused on the landing to look down the hallway lined with doors. Silva’s room was the third on the right, next door to his own. He had no house to sleep in, after all.
Below, someone laughed loudly.
Carpenter’s one goal for the day had been to find and purchase a new horse, but that hadn’t happened.
The sounds of the fight outside were gone; it was over, and he hoped both men still had their lives. He’d thrown more than his share of punches in his time, so he didn’t know why it bothered him so much to see it this way. Maybe it was because things just weren’t quite the same as he remembered. In his mind, folks might fight over money, or a girl, and there wasn’t really any helping it.
Now it seemed they all wanted to fight over an insult, or just because life wasn’t going their way. That was harder to understand.
He went quietly to his room and took the chair from the table, carrying it out into the hall. He set it down gently and took a seat. It wasn’t long before he was shifting around and leaning the chair back on two legs so he could rest his back against the wall. Comfort wasn’t an option, so he’d have to find a way to wait that wouldn’t leave him walking like a hunchback if morning came and he was still alive to see it.
The town grew quieter, and it wasn’t particularly late. These buildings were all but a year or two old, and well-built. Hale had made a real effort in Antelope Valley, and the expense must have been considerable.
But there weren’t enough people or enough prospectors to give it what it needed. It wouldn’t be enough for someone to just find a little gold and spark a rush. They’d need a reason to stay. This was rich land, but would those prospectors stay for that when they could chase gold elsewhere? Someone must have found something to start all this; maybe that fellow had just kept all the luck for himself.
* * *
* * *
Three full hours passed before he showed up.
Carpenter opened his eyes, though he hadn’t been dozing. There wasn’t any danger of that in a wooden chair in a hallway. There’d been a time when he could have slept anywhere, and that had been his greatest advantage during his days in uniform, but too many years had passed since then.
There were only two lamps in the hall, but he’d have known Joe Fisher anywhere.
He straightened up, the chair creaking in the thick silence.
Joe’s face was hidden in shadow, but there was no mystery about what sort of look would be on it. He’d believed Carpenter was at the house up on the hill, fast asleep in Hale’s guest room.
Joe could have, if he’d chosen to, turned around and gone back down the stairs. Carpenter would’ve preferred that; it would have allowed him to go to his bed.
But he didn’t. Joe moved forward, treading lightly, though the boards underfoot squealed anyway. As he came closer, the lamplight caught on the old Navy pistol at his hip. And the handle of a sizable buck knife. He hadn’t been wearing either of them a few hours ago.
His hand wasn’t on the gun; it was on the knife.
Carpenter got stiffly to his feet, stretching and stepping into the center of the hall. Joe stopped just a few paces away, glancing at Silva’s door.
“I expected Fred,” Carpenter said, stifling a yawn. Fred was . . . Well, Fred was the type for this sort of thing. Or maybe not; maybe it was better if the sheriff was the one to do it.
Joe had thoughtfully taken off his badge for this errand.
“Figures the only part of you ain’t soft is your head,” Joe replied, glancing at the door. “He in there?”
“I suspect.”
“How about you go on to bed, Bill? It’s late. Or early, rather.”
Carpenter sighed. “I could.” He hooked his fingers into his belt and returned the other man’s gaze. “But I don’t know that I could sleep.”
“I am an elected official. Suppose I was issuing you an order,” Joe said quietly, though his heart wasn’t in it.
“Is it a lawful one?”
“You planning on pulling on me, Bill?”
“I suppose I could.” He frowned and patted himself down. “If I had a pistol, that is. But wouldn’t you know it, Joe? I’m unarmed.” Carpenter spread his hands and smiled. “How’s that for luck?”
“I’d say that what I know of your life, you best not talk about luck. You already had your share.”
“No argument from me.”
The door opened, sta
rtling them both. Silva peered out, a little blearily.
“Mr. Carpenter,” he said, turning to squint at Joe. “And Mr. Fisher. Sheriff Fisher,” he amended.
Joe’s jaw went tight, and a muscle throbbed in his cheek. “Evening, Mr. Silva,” he said.
That was all the time it took for Silva to wake up. The bleariness was gone, and nothing was lost on him. Questions could swim around in swarms like fish, and they could go away just as quickly, all at once, and all in a flash of glittery scales—and then it was as though they’d never been there to begin with. Clarity was what Carpenter had wanted, and now that he had it, it would’ve been nice to just give it back.
“Is everything all right?” Silva asked, a look of placid neutrality taking over his face. The man didn’t have an ounce of sense, but he had at least a little nerve.
“Joe’s an old friend of mine. So are his friends,” Carpenter said, “as it happens. We fought the blue bellies together, in years back. Though it could be said that we didn’t do a particularly good job of it.”
“I see,” Silva replied. There wasn’t any alarm in his eyes. Just a little more melancholy than before. “It’s good to have friends, Mr. Carpenter.”
“It certainly is. I apologize for disturbing you. Me and Joe are just having a little trouble falling asleep, that’s all.”
He looked at Joe, but the other man didn’t say a word. Silva stood in his doorway, holding his lamp.
“I wonder that I won’t have trouble sleeping now myself,” he said after a moment of the terrible silence. Awkwardness was a pest, a stubborn animal that would creep into your house and you’d have to tire yourself shooing it out. This wasn’t awkwardness, though. It was something a little more dangerous.
Carpenter kept his eyes on Joe, but the sheriff wasn’t moving his hands.
“Seeing that we’re all awake,” he said, watching the way Silva was working so hard to keep still, “and the bar is closed, do you have any more of that whiskey? I know you do, Mr. Silva. What do you say, Joe? How about a drink?”
Joe let his breath out and put his hands on his hips. “Hell, Bill. When’d you ever know me to turn that down?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Joe. Sometimes you don’t know a man as well as you think.”
“May I dress?” Silva asked dryly. Without waiting for an answer, he shut the door. Joe took a step back, putting his hand on his pistol, but he was just being careful.
Silva wasn’t the type to shoot through a door, though it wasn’t the worst thing he could’ve tried.
As the moments passed, neither of them made a sound. Carpenter just waited, and Joe watched him with a new look, one he’d never worn before. They’d walked more than one patrol together, after all. It felt like that, only they weren’t wearing gray now, as they let the time pass.
“Don’t tell William,” Carpenter said after a moment, “but you know it don’t bother me, what I did. Or what I didn’t do.”
Joe’s brows rose. “Is that so?”
“It bothers me that it was so sudden.” Carpenter rubbed his cheek, then hooked his thumb back into his belt. “I don’t know that Byron ever really knew it. You saw.”
“I did.”
And he’d been the one to tell Hale what had happened. Joe must have given the captain a narrative that was friendly to him, or Carpenter wouldn’t have been here now.
When the door opened, Silva was halfway presentable and carrying a bottle by the neck.
His pistol, polished metal and pearl handles shining, was on his belt. That didn’t seem to bother Joe.
“It wouldn’t be good manners to talk here,” Silva told them, “with everyone sleeping. Shall we take the air?”
“Might as well,” Carpenter replied, struggling with another yawn.
“Lie down,” Silva said quietly to Maria, who was just behind him, still in the room. She obediently padded to a little nest of blankets on the floor and curled up. “After you, Sheriff,” Silva went on, gesturing graciously.
Joe’s smile was a work in progress, on its way to becoming a smirk, but he stopped it there and shook his head, making for the stairs.
They followed him out of the hotel to find that the night’s chill had set in fully. Joe’s horse was just up the street, tied up outside the hardware store.
The sheriff took a few steps into the empty street. There weren’t many lights in the dark. Someone, voice slurred by drink, was talking in one of the alleys. The wind rustled the pines and stirred up the dry dust. The stars were out, and half the moon with them.
“When exactly did you all settle here?” Carpenter asked Joe, taking in the camp. He could see it as it must have begun, and that wasn’t so different from how it was now.
“At the beginning.”
“That long, and all these people have stayed even when the gold ain’t coming,” he said, looking up and down the street. It wasn’t a great many people, but for a town where the prospect had never come to anything? Were they holding out, keeping their faith in their claims? “That is a wonder, isn’t it?”
“Beautiful country,” Silva replied, watching the treetops sway, the dark mountaintops rearing up behind them. “Why would anyone want to leave?”
He offered his bottle of Overholt to Carpenter, who passed it along to Joe.
“How about this way?” the sheriff suggested, taking a drink and gesturing with the bottle. Carpenter was going to say something, but Silva just started to walk, and he thought better of it. It was best not to be more of a busybody than he already was.
“You fought together,” Silva said, accepting the bottle back from Joe as they strolled.
Someone was watching from a window above the bank, but Carpenter wasn’t worried about anyone like that. It was someone a little closer that he needed to keep his eye on.
“We did,” Joe replied, his thumb tracing the handle of his knife.
Silva clearly wasn’t as worried about courtesy as he had been in the past. He was ready to indulge his curiosity, and who could blame him? He’d come back here to a crowd of enemies and the news that they’d burned his home and everything in it. It was a miracle he had any manners left at all.
“Where?” he asked.
“Here and there. The big one wasn’t far from Richmond,” Carpenter told him.
“What was it like?”
“Like any other fight,” Joe replied without hesitation. He paused, squinting into the alley between the feed seller and the barber. Even without the tin on his chest, a little of the sheriff in him could bubble up to the surface.
Even on a night like this.
“Waste of time, waste of men,” Carpenter said to Silva. “Nobody won, everybody lost. McClellan didn’t reach the city. Close as the federals ever got, as a matter of fact.”
Joe just shook his head.
“That laundry was shut up just like that during the day,” Carpenter said, pointing at the dark building. “What’s the matter there? Even if there’s no gold, it ain’t as though we don’t all wear clothes.”
“Empty. There were two families who opened it,” Silva said, swinging the whiskey bottle at his side.
“Chinamen,” Joe noted.
“They ran a good business. A pleasure to deal with. Then they left.”
“Weren’t right for the town,” Joe said tiredly.
“Who is right for the town?” Carpenter asked curiously.
“You are, Bill. In fact, there’s a need, a real need, for a man who works with his hands, with the wood. Putting things together,” Joe said dryly. “Like tables and chairs. There’s a word for it.”
“There is such a word,” Silva agreed.
“Very funny, boys.”
They had reached the end of the street. Silva paused in the middle of the road, which would quickly become no more than a trail.
“I still ne
ed a horse,” Carpenter said.
“Take one of mine,” Silva replied.
“Don’t you need them for your wagon?”
“No, they’ve served that purpose. That’s my land up there, Mr. Carpenter.” Silva pointed, and Carpenter looked, but trees blocked the view. Silva had a plot similar to Hale’s: above the town, but with more timber for privacy.
“Anything left of your house?”
“Not worth keeping,” Silva said, stepping off the trail and going into the trees. “No gold, but there is a hot spring. I’ve become attached to that.”
“You want to stay over a spring?” Joe asked tiredly.
Silva hadn’t said one word about what had brought him to Antelope Valley. He had made plans for firearms, and he had been to school. He had a little money, though Carpenter sensed it wasn’t as much as people might think from looking at him. He had a letter from the Army for an order of rifles, enough of them to make the job worthwhile. He had prospects, and he had manners.
That was all Carpenter knew. He accepted the bottle and pretended to drink, then gave it to Joe, who didn’t pretend.
The pine needles rustled quietly underfoot. It was a change for the better. There were some comforts and conveniences in the city, but there were also noise and smells and no peace.
There wasn’t peace here, either.
Joe’s body language was giving him away. The charade of civility couldn’t go on.
Carpenter looked back, but the lights of the settlement were already blocked by the trees.
They crested a rise, and below lay a clearing with a small pool, the reflection of the moon making a white disk on the still surface.
“Is that the spring?” Carpenter asked.
“That’s just standing water.” Silva gazed down at it. “We aren’t on my property yet. Does this location suit your purposes, Sheriff?”
Joe’s hand was resting on the handle of his Navy.
“It’ll have to,” he said, taking a step to his right. “Is that one of yours? You invent that shooter, Mr. Silva?”
Silva didn’t move toward his gun. “I did.”