by Steve Frazee
Cushman declined to stay there on the pretext that he had to stay outside to watch his steers. The prospector invited him to have supper inside and Cushman countered by asking the man to eat outside with him. He knew by the way the prospector ate that he had been on short rations. The man jammed bacon into his mouth with his fingers and kept watching the steers.
After a time he said, “I’ll trade you a tenth interest in my claim for one of them steers, butchered tonight.”
“I’m not interested.”
“You won’t do any better in Victory. When the spring floods come down — ”
“I’m not interested in mining at all.”
“A quarter share in the claim?”
Cushman shook his head.
“I’ll say one half, and after that you can go to hell!” The prospector swabbed grease from the fry pan with a biscuit and kept looking at the steers.
“How many miners stayed in Victory through the winter?” Cushman asked.
“Some, I guess.” The prospector kept swabbing at the pan. When the last biscuit was gone he ran his finger through the hardening grease and licked it, and after that he reached out with his tongue, licking at his beard. “I ain’t plumb out of grub. I got beans and flour and some other fixin’s left, but by God, I’m starved for meat.”
“I saw deer along the river all the way up.”
“When I was a kid we lived on game too much for me to like it again. It ain’t like fresh beef, mister.”
“That’s right,” Cushman said. He watched the hungry glitter in the prospector’s eyes. The man had eaten a fair-sized meal, but he had his mind so set on fresh meat that he didn’t realize his belly was full.
“I’ve got a mighty fine rifle I’ll trade you straight across for any steer in that bunch.”
“I don’t need another rifle.”
“Yeah,” the prospector said sullenly. “Thanks for the meal.” The prospector went back to his cabin.
Cushman moved his bed into the trees. He was in for an uneasy night. There was a faint chance that the prospector might be stunned into solid sleep by the first good meal he’d had in a long time; but Cushman thought otherwise. Experience had taught him that a hungry stomach is likely to be more enraged after a meal. A mind that had lived a long time with even the thought of hunger could not read correctly the signals from the belly.
Cushman did not expect the man so soon. In the first strong grip of early sleep he did not hear the prospector come from his cabin. The horse heard, and grew restless, and that wakened Cushman. Stalking through the moonlight with an ax aslant past his matted beard and hair, the prospector was a wild-looking figure. He was in his bare feet. Great bulges at the knees of his long underwear made his legs appear deformed.
By the time Cushman rolled out and grabbed his rifle, the man had gone into the shadows where the steers were bedded down. Cushman heard one of the animals getting up noisily. If he fired, the whole six of them would go rocketing away and some of them might break their legs on the boulders along the river.
“Drop that ax! I’m centered on you.”
Dead silence lay in the shadows where Cushman could not see. He heard another steer rising after a moment.
“Back out of there!”
“Just one,” the prospector pleaded from the darkness. “My gut’s in a twist for meat.”
“Drop the ax and back out of there!”
Cushman heard the ax thump the frozen ground. “I wanted only one!” The prospector ran from the trees and went back to his cabin.
Cushman went out and retrieved the ax. He put his back to a Cottonwood and draped his blankets around him. He spent the rest of the night taking short dozes. At times he heard the prospector banging around in his cabin, and once the man came to the door and yelled, “I ought to kill you, you tight son of a bitch! I wanted only one!”
In the morning the prospector came out and went to the river for a bucket of water. For a while he stood looking up to where Cushman was cooking his breakfast. “I hope they all die in the snow before you ever get to Victory.”
“I’ll take the chance.”
The prospector went back to his cabin and closed the door. He had said he still had food, so Cushman let him go. It was not his fault that the man had chosen to stay here and wolf out the winter beside a worthless claim. If he had such a hunger for meat, let him hunt deer in the piñon country across the river.
From the gravel mesa above, while he was driving his steers away, Cushman looked down on the smoke of the cabin. He could not say that the prospector was crazy, for he himself could remember one night on the Humboldt River when the memory of cool, firm apples in his grandfather’s orchard had so obsessed him that he had begun to stuff dry grass into his mouth — and the first few frantic bites had actually tasted like apples.
With no quickening of interest because he was getting closer to his immedate destination, Cushman found the wide gulch that led up to Victory. The steers would bring him money, which he would spend drifting on somewhere else until he neded money again. He had no roots anywhere.
Yes, he thought, that unshaved, smelly man in the cabin by the worthless claim was better off than Ed Cushman.
Before long he was into drifts of snow where the wind had coursed across the gulch from the timbered ridges. Over in the trees the snow was three feet deep, but there was good passage in the gulch; Cushman guessed men had gone back and forth, visiting other camps, moving about restlessly even during the strong mountain winter. Between the long curving terraces of the drifts there was often solid ground.
Not hurrying, Cushman made good progress.
There was no forage here, and there would be none at Victory, but that was a worry he could forget now. He would reach the camp some time this afternoon and the steers would be sold and butchered soon afterward. After that he would go somewhere else, probably back down the river to wait for summer. It didn’t matter.
He considered reserving one haunch of beef to take back to the prospector; but it was only an idle thought. The man would not understand that it was really not for him, but an effort to pay back a little girl who had given Cushman two biscuits long ago.
• • •
The sun was still bright on the high, cold reaches of the mountains when Cushman reached the camp. Victory was in a tree-ringed basin where three small streams came together to form Campanero Creek. Great drifts of snow lay at the upper end of the basin, and in the surrounding timber the snow was deep and soft. Cushman knew it was well that he had not tried to take the short way.
A steady, bitter wind was coming off the mountains. Cushman buttoned his mackinaw. The steers plodded on, following the lead of a big brindle brute who sensed that there should be hay ahead because there were human habitations in sight. For a while the absence of men in view did not strike Cushman. He observed that miners had stirred around mightily during the winter, shoveling snow back from the creek in places, building long, narrow timber shelters over their sluices. Fires were still smoldering where men had been thawing the frozen earth.
Cabins and huts and tents that were stained with age were scattered along the creek and in the edge of the timber, where hard-packed trails led through snow trenches to half-buried habitations. At the upper end of the camp stood the biggest building in the gulch, a long log structure that faced the south. The sun had melted the snow away from that side of it to show the heavy dirt banking around the lower logs. Smoke from a fireplace chimney was drifting along the ridge. Empty whisky kegs, just emerging from a snowdrift at one end of the building, proclaimed the nature of the structure.
Every man in camp must be in the saloon, Cushman thought. He drove his steers a little closer, and then he heard shouts and talking off to the left where one of the branch creeks came in from the south. It sounded like a celebration going on.
He made the turn around a jut of timber and there in a small gulch he saw what was going on. The whole population of Victory was butchering cattle. The snow
was red where they were working. Piles of steaming entrails were giving vapor into the cold air and men with bloody knives were chattering like jubilant Indians.
Cushman stopped and stared at the scene. Some rancher from the valley had beaten him here, coming in by a route he did not know. There had been no tracks of cattle in the gulch. So intent were the miners on their work that they did not see Cushman for a few moments, and then a bearded giant in a ragged coat and Scotch cap pointed with a long knife.
“We’re being overrun, boys! There’s another herd!”
“Hell, we got meat now. What we need is more drinking whisky.”
No rancher had brought the cattle here ahead of Cushman. He knew the truth when he saw squat Joe Kenton using a horse to help hoist a carcass on a skinning bar laid between two trees. The slaughtered cattle were the oxen from the wagon stuck in the Arkansas. Kenton must have fought like a fiend through the deep snow in the timber to get them here.
A grinning miner came up to Cushman. “The market for what you got just busted, brother, but I still might make you a deal.”
“A tenth interest in your claim?”
The miner’s eyes widened. “You must have been in a mining camp before.” He scratched his beard. His bright eyes and shrewd good nature reminded Cushman of Jeremy Flint, the mule trader. “No, I’ll do a little better than that. For them six beeves I’ll trade you a claim at the upper end of the main gulch. It’s under four feet of snow and ice right now and it may not be worth a damn.”
“You trying to back into a deal?” Cushman asked.
“Just telling the truth. There’s gold here. There might be gold on that claim. Again, there might not be.”
“What would you do with the steers?”
“Oh, I could find some use for them, I guess.”
“I imagine,” Cushman said dryly. He estimated the number of men in sight and set the figure at twenty. “In about two weeks from now when everyone is out of meat, I guess you could find a use for beef.”
“It might be less time than that. Big John over there swears he can eat a half a steer tonight, but however long it takes for the first six to disappear, you’ve still got to drive your cattle out of here to feed ’em, and then bring ’em back. In the meantime, who knows but what a rancher will show up with a bunch?”
Cushman watched the butchering. The miner was right, and Cushman knew it. Moreover, he’d had enough of nursing steers. There were ways by which he could still come out with a good profit but he didn’t care to extend his operation longer. The mining claim might be a good gamble.
Cushman swung down from the horse and stretched his legs. The steers were bawling, nosing the trampled snow for forage. Cushman thought of the ride back to the valley.
“My name’s Jake Dunbar,” the miner said, “from Illinois four years ago. I’m damned nigh an old-timer out here now.”
Cushman introduced himself and they shook hands. He nodded toward the butchering scene. “Did Kenton bring those cattle in here alone?”
“No. That was the biggest surprise of all. We — ” Dunbar grabbed at his hat and grinned. “Howdy, Miss Drago, we was about to talk about you.”
Cushman swung around and saw the woman. Her heavy woolen skirts were brushing the snow. She wore a woolly white jacket that heightened the clear brown color of her complexion. She gave Dunbar a courteous smile as she came forward. Cushman might not have been there at all. She walked past the two men and stood a short distance ahead, watching the butchering. Joe Kenton, helping now with the skinning of the ox he had hoisted, saw her instantly and paused in his work, looking from her to Cushman.
“No, Kenton didn’t come alone,” Dunbar said unnecessarily. “She was riding ahead, breaking trail.” He watched Miss Drago for a while as she stood tall and straight against the snow. “Now there’s real class, Cushman,” he murmured.
“This claim you mentioned, Dunbar — I’ll give you five steers for it.”
Dunbar started to say something. He took a long look at Cushman’s face. “You’re not one to haggle, are you?”
“That’s it. I can butcher those steers and keep the meat in the snow as well as you. That’s what you’re figuring to do. Sold by the piece, they’ll bring more dust than on the hoof.”
“Yep!” Dunbar said. “You’ve just become a claim owner. I’ll throw in a cabin on the deal, or you can stay with me.”
“I’ll take the cabin.”
“Then it’s settled. I’ll give you a quitclaim deed in the saloon as soon as you want it.” Dunbar walked over to the woman. “You’d best get in the clear, miss. We’re going to shoot the steers.”
The woman walked back toward the camp and stopped. Dunbar drew a pistol. “Give me a hand, Cushman?”
Together they killed four steers with four shots. One of the others whirled and charged toward Miss Drago. She stood her ground calmly and the steer swerved past her, bucketing toward the saloon. The sixth one went down the branch gulch toward the miners. “Go it, you son of a gun!” Dunbar yelled, and fired into the air.
Tail high, bawling, the steer went rampaging toward the twenty miners. They scattered, running toward the trees. One man slipped in his rush to leap into a snowbank. He got up to try again. The steer brushed him with its shoulder and knocked him skidding into a pile of entrails. It charged at three men who were helping each other scramble through the snow. They all went down, yelling and cursing, and the animal swerved away from them.
Kenton leaped toward his sidling horse. He snatched his rifle from the boot. With one shot he piled the steer up dead in the heavy snow at the turn of the gulch.
The miners were bellowing with laughter at the plight of their unfortunate companions. One man had tried to climb a tree. A low limb had broken and plumped him backward into the snow, where he was threshing around in an effort to gain his feet. The one who had been knocked down by the steer was brushing off his clothes with handfuls of snow. He slipped and sat down suddenly on the paunch of one of the oxen.
Jake Dunbar, still holding his pistol, laughed until tears stood on his cold-bright cheeks. When he got himself under control he shoved the pistol under his waistband and yelled down the gulch, “Somebody stick that steer before it freezes!”
A miner yelled back, “I’d rather cut your throat!”
Dunbar began to laugh again: “That’s the funniest thing that’s happened all winter!”
“You’d better get the other one before it wanders toward the valley,” Cushman said. “I’ll stick these four here.”
Dunbar studied Cushman’s unsmiling expression as if puzzled. He walked away. Before he passed the woman he was laughing again.
Miss Drago came over to Cushman, watching coolly as he bled the steers. For a woman of her breeding, she took it calmly, Cushman thought. She was a cool one all around, grabbing opportunity and making that ride through the snow to beat him here. She knew how to get along in a new country.
“How’s the wagon?” he asked.
“It’s out, thank you.”
Cushman went on with his work. She had stolen a march on him. If he hadn’t made that slip about going to Victory there at the river, she might have thought he was going to some more easily reached camp.
The more a man talked … Cushman wiped his knife in the snow and stood up, studying her. Well, that was all right. Everyone was in competition with everyone else, in one way or another. Cushman’s belief in the competitive principle was so strongly rooted that he felt no resentment about being beaten; but this was the first time a woman had ever outsmarted him.
“Where you from, Miss Drago?”
“From Denver — this trip,” she said carefully. Her words, the tone, and the look she gave Cushman closed the door on further questions about her personal life.
A shot sounded over near the saloon as Dunbar killed the last steer.
Dark-faced from the cold, Kenton came up the gulch with his rifle. He gave Cushman a hard look of dislike. “Are you all right, Miss Drag
o?”
“Of course.”
Kenton stared at Cushman. “He should have warned you about getting back when — ”
“He did, Mr. Kenton. You can go on back now. Be sure that you get the best possible half of one of the cattle for my share.”
“I already done that,” Kenton said. The muzzle of his rifle swung across Cushman as he turned to go back to the butchering.
“Where are you from, Mr. Cushman?”
The question surprised Cushman. He answered as the woman had answered. “From the Greenhorns — last trip.”
The woman smiled faintly. “Touche”
Except for what he had learned from Billy Bodega, Cushman never would have known what she meant. He felt the wide disparity of their backgrounds. He wondered what lay behind this handsome, cool woman that had brought her here. Bodega had been a black sheep and he didn’t give a damn; but he was a man and a man can be fondly regarded because of being a black sheep. A woman either conformed or was considered no good.
Ed Cushman studied Miss Drago and did not know what she was.
She asked, “Are you staying here?”
“I might.”
“The reason I asked, Mr. Cushman, is that I might be interested in buying your horses. I intend to bring my wagon on up here as soon as possible.”
“They’re not draught horses, and I’m not interested in selling them.”
“Very well.” Miss Drago dismissed the subject with a lift of her brows.
Damn her proprietary air. She seemed to think that anything could be bought.
Kenton came by on the horse, dragging a half of beef in the soft snow near the timber. “You want I should hang it up in a tree behind your cabin, Miss Drago?”
“That will do for the time being.”
So she had a cabin, Cushman thought. She was going to settle right down.
Miners began to stream past, carrying various pieces of beef chopped from the oxen carcasses with axes. They were mostly bearded men, their cheeks and foreheads burned from the strike of sun on snow. They were tough, healthy men. And they were all young, or they wouldn’t have been here.