by Steve Frazee
Some of them took time to touch their hats and greet the woman. Others merely looked and went on by, and afterward raucous laughter broke out among small groups of them.
They had been here all winter with snow and wind and drudgery. Other appetites beside craving for fresh meat had been sharpened by their exile. One lone woman in camp … Even if she looked like a Digger squaw it wouldn’t matter to most of them. Cushman watched the miners thoughtfully.
“I’ll be all right, Mr. Cushman. Don’t fret yourself.” Miss Drago gave him an amused smile.
Cushman shot her a sharp look. Wherever she came from, no matter what her background was, she had been around. She had read his thoughts and that was unusual, for he generally did not care enough about what happened to anyone to allow worry for others to show in his expression.
She walked away unhurriedly, thrusting her hands into the deep pockets of her white jacket. There was a faint blueness gathering on the high snow masses of the mountains. The sun was gone and cold was gathering in the basin.
Dunbar came trotting up. “How about giving me a hand with the skinning, huh? I’ve got two others to help. I want to get those hides off while they’re still warm.”
Cushman shook his head. “I’m going back to the river tonight.”
“Why?”
Not often did anyone ask Cushman his business. He was surprised now that he did not resent Dunbar’s question. “No feed for my horses.”
“I had two sacks of hay under my bunk all winter. Figured to refill my mattress with it but I never got to it. I gave the sacks to the gal for her horse but she’ll split with you, I know.”
“Uh-uh.”
“You don’t like her?”
“That’s got nothing to do with it, Dunbar.”
“Just asked. If it’s only the horses you’re worried about, I’ll see that they get fed. Wish you’d stay, Cushman. I’m worried about something else.”
The two men stared at each other.
“They’re a good bunch here in camp. Don’t get me wrong,” Dunbar said. “But maybe I’ll need some help.” He shook his head. “She ain’t the kind you’re thinking she is.”
“No? Even if she ain’t, why trust me?”
“You ain’t been cooped up here all winter,” Dunbar said simply.
There were a few men like Dunbar in every camp and town, Cushman thought — men who took responsibility. They started early talking about public buildings, tax levies, street drainage, fire protection. Generally they wound up owning the town. Dunbar was one of them. He was trying right now to organize a police force.
“I’ll stay tonight,” Cushman said. “Right now I want to take care of my horses.”
“I’ll help you, and then we can get to the skinning.”
They went past a solid cabin with a lean-to built over a woodpile. “My place,” Dunbar said. There were two huts with snow drifted high against the doors. Behind the next cabin Cushman saw a half of beef hanging in the trees. He noted the horse tracks near the place and the smoke coming from the chimney. This was where the woman was staying. “I own this one, too,” Dunbar said. “Funny thing, she wouldn’t stay there overnight without paying me.” Dunbar seemed to take no offense from Miss Drago’s insistence on paying her way.
Twenty yards farther on they came to a cabin where the snow lay to the eaves on one side. It was the last one up the main gulch, dirt-roofed and inhospitable-appearing. They unsaddled the horses and carried Cushman’s gear inside. There was a small fireplace, a packing box cupboard, a pole bunk with spruce boughs for a mattress, a hewed plank table made from a single log, and a three-legged stool with a broken leg. Cushman could see daylight in a dozen places between the logs. All the cold of the mountain winter seemed to be concentrated inside.
They kicked some of the snow away on the lee side to make a place for the horses. Dunbar went to get the hay. Cushman heard him talking to Miss Drago, and then Dunbar crossed the irregular street to find Kenton. Presently he returned with a sack of hay.
Blue dusk was in the basin by the time they finished skinning the steers with the help of the two miners Dunbar had enlisted. Cushman’s fingers were aching and the hides they had thrown aside were already frozen.
Dunbar said, “How about eating with me, Cushman?”
“No thanks.”
“Well, let’s go over to Big John’s and have a few drinks, at least. I’ll fix the deed up for you while we’re there.”
“No thanks,” Cushman said again.
He walked back toward his cabin with a hind quarter of meat. One of the miners said to Dunbar, “He’s an unsociable bastard, Jake. Does he figure on staying?”
“Help yourself to my wood or anything you need in the cabin,” Dunbar called.
The Drago woman came to her doorway to throw out a pan of water as Cushman was passing with an armload of wood. She had to wait for him to go on. He caught a glimpse of the inside of the place, and it was no better than his. He wondered at the quality of ambition that would bring a woman to Victory even in the summer.
Heat drove the staleness from the cabin. Cushman cooked a meal at the fireplace and was eating it from the fry pan when Dunbar came in with a lamp.
“I don’t like the way the talk is shaping up in Big John’s place, Cushman. Before the evening is over somebody is going to try to prove what kind of woman she is.”
“Sure.”
“You’re going to help me, ain’t you?”
“She’s got a bar on her door, Dunbar.”
Dunbar’s blue eyes were worried. “You haven’t been here like a monk all winter. Maybe you don’t realize how rough some of the boys can get when they’re all likkered up.”
“She knew that risk when she came here.”
“Yeah. You going to help me or not?”
Cushman considered. “Let’s say anyone she doesn’t want in her cabin doesn’t get in. Is that enough for you?”
“You put it in a left-hand way, Cushman. Sure, she served you a dirty trick when she beat you here with the cattle, but after all, she’s a lone woman, and — ”
“I said I’d give you a hand.”
Dunbar gave Cushman a long look, and it struck Cushman that the man, in spite of his flustered air, was a tough customer. “All right, then.” Dunbar went out. Bitter cold rushed in before he could close the door and with it came a burst of loud talk and laughter from the saloon.
After a time Cushman put on his coat and went out. His footsteps creaked on the snow and the bite of the air sent needles into his lungs. He had arrived half an hour late with his steers and he was at least six weeks early to work the claim he had traded them for. He was a damned fool to stay here, but one place was like another. Twenty years from now it would be some other forlorn place like this, or a lonely fire down a far trail that led nowhere. Light was showing faintly against a blanket over the single window in the woman’s cabin as he passed on his way to the saloon.
The first man Cushman noticed when he entered Big John’s place was Joe Kenton. He was at the bar with three miners who seemed to be making much of him, and he was so drunk he could hardly stay upright.
CHAPTER EIGHT
BIG JOHN FREEMANTLE’S place was both store and saloon, the fireplace in the store part giving some warmth to that section of the room, and the bar at the other end supplying the heat there.
Kenton was drunk, but not too loaded to recognize Cushman. He gave Cushman a hostile, foggy stare as Cushman made himself a place at the bar. Big John rinsed a glass in a bucket of snow water and set out a drink. He was a huge, red-faced man with a mane of sandy hair like wind-blown straw. He wore a sweeping mustache that held its stiff sweep clear beyond his cheeks.
Jake Dunbar elbowed in beside Cushman. “I’ve got the deed.” He seemed to be jovially drunk as he went with Cushman to a table near the fireplace. “They’re making bets about the Drago woman. They’re wondering — ”
“Let’s see the deed to that snowbank, Dunbar.”
> While Cushman was reading the paper Dunbar said, “Handy Grimes and Pete Eliot got Kenton drunk as a fiddler’s bitch. He won’t be any good to us.” He was dead serious and not even close to being drunk.
Cushman glanced toward the bar and the young men full of health and whisky. Isolation and hard independence had made them a law unto themselves. They were a breed apart from the emigrants who took their families and moral values with them. Still, they were no worse than men Cushman had seen in other Western camps and towns.
“Get somebody to witness our signing,” Cushman said.
A miner thumped a poke on the slab bar and shouted, “Fifteen ounces to back me up! She wouldn’t have come here if she was a decent woman. Who wants to cover?”
“The dust, you mean?” somebody asked, and there was a bellow of laughter.
“It’s Grimes and Eliot that I’m worried about most,” Dunbar said, “but there’s others too that — ”
“I ain’t sleeping in front of her door. Get a witness for this deed.”
Dunbar brought over Big John and a miner named Mark Allen. They witnessed the deed and Allen said, “What’s your guess about her, Big John?”
“You test whisky by drinking it,” the saloonman said, and went back to the bar. Allen thought a moment, puzzled, and then he laughed and lurched away to tell the miners at the bar what Big John had said.
Cushman dropped a silver dollar on the table. “Will that cover the hay?”
Dunbar nodded. “I heard Kenton tell what happened at the river the other day. You’re touchy, Cushman.”
Cushman made no comment.
“You wouldn’t take her money, but you want me to take yours.”
Cushman stood up.
“You’ll be awake?”
“I’ll wake up if there’s any need, Dunbar.”
Under the cold stars Cushman went back to his cabin. There was no light showing in the window of the Drago woman’s place. He checked his horses, huddled against each other beside the cabin wall. In the morning he would take them back to the valley and find a place to board them.
• • •
Big John Freemantle was the first to come to the woman’s cabin. Lying awake, Cushman heard his heavy tread on the snow and then the sound of his voice as he knocked on the door and called out in a low voice, “Miss Drago, I would like to talk to you a few minutes.”
He did not sound drunk or excited, and his accent was definitely that of an educated Englishman. Cushman raised on one elbow and peered through a gap in the logs. He could see Big John standing back from the doorway, immense in the starlight, a great, bushy fur cap on his head. The lights were still on in the saloon and the sound of merriment still came from there.
Apparently Miss Drago asked a question, for Big John gave his name. And then Cushman heard the scraping of her door as she opened it. She asked, “What is it, Mr. Freemantle?”
Big John took off his bushy cap. “I’m a man of some refinement, Miss Drago, although I daresay you’ve no cause to have observed that so far. I’ve some property here and I make a good living. I’ve money in a bank in Denver and some income from home. I neither smoke nor drink excessively and ordinarily I am not a violent man.” Big John hesitated.
“Yes, Mr. Freemantle?”
“There’s no need to make a long tale of it. I offer you marriage, Miss Drago.”
If any woman had a right to inquire about the suddenness of a marriage proposal, Miss Drago certainly did. She must be standing with the door partly open, in the flow of the bitter cold, here in a God-forsaken gulch, looking at a man she had never seen until today. Cushman strained to hear her answer.
She said, “Why do you ask me, Mr. Freemantle?”
“I am not a man of impulse,” Big John said. “My judgments are quick, as you can see, but generally well founded. I am attracted to you by your handsomeness and your courage. Then, too, it seems to me that a woman coming as you have alone to a place of men must be seeking a husband, or other compensations. As a husband I’m the best qualified man in this camp. Will you marry me?”
Cold poured against Cushman’s nose and across his cheeks as he pressed against the crack.
“I’m flattered,” the woman said, “but I did not come here to seek a husband. Good night.”
“Wait,” Big John said, not moving from where he stood. “It occurred to me that you could have found better-looking, wealthy men somewhere else.” He turned his head toward the saloon for a moment. “Now I will speak of the other compensations. I have here one hundred dollars in gold. May I come in?”
“No,” the woman said calmly. “Now you can go back and make your report to the rest of them.”
“And be laughed at as a fool who was twice wrong? No, I will make no report. I came here for myself only.”
Cushman heard the door close and a bar bang into place. Big John put on his cap and walked away. After he had gone some distance, Cushman heard him say, “You can go back to bed. Dunbar, and I’ll break you in two if you repeat anything you heard.”
Big John was part gentleman and part roughneck. Cushman had no doubt that he meant every word which came from those two parts of his nature. Cushman snuggled back into his blankets. There had been simplicity in the scene and at the same time a large element of ludicrousness. For one of the few times in his life he had a genuine desire to laugh.
The tone of the sounds at the saloon was growing wilder. Some of the celebrators no doubt would be harmless before long, but there would be others beyond caring what they did before the night was over.
He was asleep when the group came up the street and stopped before the Drago woman’s cabin. Their singing and their loud shouts woke him. They pounded on the door and asked her to come to the saloon with them for a drink.
“We’ll drink and dance all night!”
Cushman couldn’t hear what the woman said but he knew it was refusal. The three continued to hammer on the door and talk, and then one became obscene.
Dunbar called out, “That’s enough, Eliot! You boys get away from there and go to bed.”
“To hell with you, Dunbar! Just because we elected you mayor of this dump, ain’t no reason for you — ”
“Go on to bed,” Dunbar said. “Leave her alone.”
The three fell into a drunken argument. They were too far gone to know what they were doing. After a time they started to their cabins across the creek. One man fell over a sluice and the other two fell into the creek trying to help him. Cushman heard them cursing the cold and their injuries as they limped away.
There were four in the next group that came to the woman’s cabin. They were trying to walk quietly, and that wakened Cushman more quickly than the sounds of the loudly drunken three. Two of them stopped at the door like prowling animals. The other two went around to the masked window, staggering as they walked.
The pair at the door grunted as they tried to push the barrier down. They backed up and tried again with a rush. Cushman slipped his boots on and stepped to the door. He heard Dunbar call out, “Get away from there!”
“Mind your own business, Jake!”
“Back away!” Dunbar called. “I’ll shoot.”
“We’ll jam your pistol down your throat if you do!”
Cushman eased the door open and looked past the corner of the logs. The two men at the window, lurching in a snowdrift, were trying to wrench the window from its frame. One of the men before the door was rubbing his shoulder. “There must be a double bar across the damn thing.”
“Give me a knife and I’ll cut the hinges.”
Dunbar was standing down the street. “Cushman!”
“Here,” Cushman said. To the intruders he called, “Get away from there.”
“That snooty new bastard,” one of the men said. He had a knife in his hand and was kneeling, trying to probe along the door jamb to find the leather hinges. For a moment all four men at the woman’s cabin were silent.
Inside, Miss Drago cried, “I’m armed. I
warn you!”
“Looks like everybody’s heeled,” a man muttered.
The backbone of it seemed to be broken. Then a long tongue of flame leaped from a pistol in the street. Cushman heard the bullet strike the logs of his cabin. The horses jumped. The man shot at Cushman again. From inside the woman’s cabin came the muffled explosion of a light pistol. The two miners at the window stumbled back to their companions.
Dunbar fired two shots. Leaping to the shadows at the corner of his cabin, Cushman knew by the lancing of the muzzle blasts that Dunbar was firing high. Coldly angry, Cushman sighted on the group of miners. At the last instant he raised his rifle and fired above their heads, but he thought he was a fool to do so because one of them had tried to kill him.
They broke and ran as he was working the Henry for another shot. Like a pack of fleeing wolves they fled across the snow, scattering toward the excited shouts coming from the huts and cabins of Victory.
Dunbar came running up the street. He was fully dressed, Cushman observed. He stopped at the woman’s cabin and called out, “Dunbar! Are you all right in there, miss?” Cushman heard the door scrape open and the woman said, “I’m quite all right, thank you, Mr. Dunbar.” She was as calm as if Dunbar had asked her if he could borrow flour.
Acutely conscious of the cold, now that the excitement was over, Cushman went back into his cabin. He had no wish to talk to any of the miners who were running up the gulch, shouting questions. In a moment Dunbar knocked on the door. “Cushman, are you all right?”
“I’m going to bed.”
Dunbar pushed in. He was breathing hard. “You didn’t hit any of them, did you?”
“No.”
“They were all drunk, you know. They — ”
“They were drunk,” Cushman said. As far as he was concerned, a man was responsible for his actions at all times. “Go quiet the rest of the fools and leave me alone.”
“Sure,” Dunbar said quietly. “But they’re not fools, not the way you make the word come out.” He went out and Cushman heard him talking to the men in the street.
After another hour Victory settled down to frozen stillness. Before he went to sleep Cushman considered the fact that the Drago woman must have shot only to scare the miners trying to break into her cabin; she could not have missed if she had fired directly into the door or window.