by Steve Frazee
She had learned some basic facts about men the hard way. Tomorrow they would laugh about their repulse and some of them would apologize to her, but if she had killed one of them … A woman had no right to kill a man who held himself not responsible for his acts because of drunkenness.
CHAPTER NINE
DAYLIGHT was seeping through the cracks in the logs when Dunbar came into Cushman’s cabin. He entered without knocking, an assumption that he was welcome. Ordinarily Cushman would have been angry with any man who did so, but there was a cheerfulness in Dunbar and an air of honest eagerness about him that overrode Cushman’s surly feelings.
“Get to moving,” Dunbar said. “She’s invited us to breakfast.”
Cushman swung out of his bunk and looked sourly at-the dead fireplace and the frying pan with ashes blown into the grease of last night’s cooking. “She wants to pay us for what we did last night, huh?”
“Sure.” Dunbar paused. “You got paying on the brain, ain’t you? Another thing, she knows we’ll advertise her cooking, if it’s any good, so when she gets that wagon here everybody will be hammering a plate and licking their chops. That woman has got a head for getting along.”
“Yeah, she sure as hell has.”
“I don’t blame you for being a little sore about the oxen. It was business, of course — ” Dunbar stopped and regarded Cushman thoughtfully. “You ain’t sore, after all, are you?”
“No.” Cushman began to dress.
“Hm.” Dunbar changed the subject. “Did you know any of those four last night? Recognize ’em, I mean?” “No. Did you?”
“Sure,” Dunbar said. “All of them. They were just drunk and wild, Cushman. Drunkenness made them go directly at something that every man in camp would like to try, including you and me. Ain’t that right?”
Cushman smiled faintly. “That’s right.”
“You heard Big John last night?” Dunbar asked.
Cushman nodded.
“He’s got a hell of a pride about some things, Big John has.” Dunbar fished around for words. “I’d suggest — ”
“Let’s say I never heard him.”
“Good! That’s what I was trying to get at. Come on. You can wash up at my shack and then we’ll go sample her grub.” Dunbar laughed suddenly. “That Big John, standing there like a bear, making a fine speech …”
Cushman was mildly surprised to see Big John ahead of them when he and Dunbar went to Miss Drago’s cabin. Big John was sitting straight-backed on a stool. He appeared to be at ease, although he gave Cushman and Dunbar long, slow scrutiny when he spoke to them.
Although she had gone through a night which had been enough to give most women the megrims, Miss Drago was quite composed. Her long-sleeved shirtwaist with trim white cuffs made a startling contrast against the crudity of the cabin. “I’m afraid you gentlemen will have to sit on the bed.” She took their hats with a quiet smile.
Big John’s sandy hair had been beaten down with water. His shirt was clean but badly wrinkled, and the dark red cravat he was wearing looked as if it had just been taken from long storage in a sack. He said, “How early were you awake last night, Cushman?”
How much did you hear of what I said, Cushman?
Miss Drago was stooping to lift the lid of a Dutch oven on the hearth. She waited for the answer. Dunbar fidgeted on the bed beside Cushman, as if he would like to do the answering himself, not trusting Cushman.
“Let’s say I was awake some time after you went back to the saloon,” Cushman said.
Big John found the answer acceptable. He smiled and a minor crisis was over, but his expression was still reserved and thoughtful whenever he looked directly at Cushman.
Cushman ate automatically and was halfway through breakfast before it occurred to him that the food was very good. He watched Miss Drago’s hands as she poured coffee. They were long-fingered, strong hands and they showed the marks of weather and work. Obviously, she was not too recently removed from the life of a lady.
She explained about the restaurant she was going to establish. For a time at least it would be run from the wagon. If business warranted she would erect a building later. In either case the operation would be on a cash-and-carry basis. Those who wanted to eat would bring their own utensils, be served, and take their food away to eat where they pleased.
Big John and Dunbar approved of the plan.
“You’ll do well,” Big John said. “When the weather breaks we’ll have two hundred men here, I don’t doubt.”
“How about supplies?” Dunbar asked.
“I’ve arranged with Mr. Kenton’s brothers to freight them in from Denver as often as needed.”
Dunbar glanced at Cushman. “I hope Kenton’s brothers are better drivers than he is.”
Belle Drago colored slightly. “It was my fault that my wagon got stuck in the river. I was driving. Mr. Kenton was riding ahead to show me the way, but I used my own judgment.”
So she was not quite the self-sufficient Amazon she had pretended to be. She was a woman who had invaded the province of men. Now she had made a small admission of the fact, and it helped Cushman to understand her a little better.
But still he did not understand her very well. She was no whore, that was certain, but where had she gained the experience to move so easily in a man’s world? Cushman asked a question almost before he realized that he was going to do so.
“Have you got any brothers, Miss Drago?”
The woman gave him a quick look. “No. Why did you ask?” She was disturbed and on the defensive.
“I just wondered.”
Miss Drago kept studying Cushman. “Wasn’t that an odd question?”
“It just occurred to me.” Cushman was uncomfortable. He resented Big John’s heavy stare. Once more Dunbar was fidgeting. They both were intelligent men and Cushman knew that they understood exactly why he had asked the question.
He met Big John’s hostile look and sent back his own challenge. There was a bold streak of arrogance in Big John. It thrust out and dueled with the bitterly independent quality of Cushman’s make-up. When they looked away from each other, their antagonism was subtly, deeply set.
Dunbar missed nothing. He said, “You’ll be needing some help with the wagon, Miss Belle.”
“I think not, thank you, Mr. Dunbar. More coffee?”
After breakfast the three men stood in the street for a few moments. The camp looked utterly dead. A sharp cold still glittered in the basin, although the sun was touching it. Sluice boxes shone with frost and ice made blue-white veins of the small ditches leading to the sluices.
Dunbar sniffed the air eagerly and said, “Spring is on its way.”
Big John adjusted his fur cap. “I’ve decided she’s a lady, Cushman. You haven’t made up your mind. Be careful when you do.” He walked away, jumping the ice-edged creek with a light bound.
Once more Dunbar let words flow in to cover the tingling gap. “Will you be taking your horses down at the same time Miss Belle and Kenton — ”
Watching Big John, Cushman said, “You mean am I going to let Kenton ride back, instead of walk?”
“That’s exactly what I was getting at.”
“Where’d you get such a big social conscience?” That was one of Billy Bodega’s favorite expressions.
It fell cheap and flat against Dunbar’s quiet expression. “What gave you the chip on the shoulder about lifting a hand to help anybody, Cushman?”
Dunbar’s way of striking so deeply inside Cushman was disturbing. The direct honesty of him made it difficult for Cushman to take offense but he did not feel obliged to give answers about his personal life to Dunbar or any other man.
“How’d you know her name was Belle?” Cushman asked.
“I asked her.”
Cushman went to get his ax to chop up his steer. Dunbar started whacking up the others. When Cushman had finished, he hesitated for a time and then he went over and began to help Dunbar.
They were working
together on the last steer when Kenton came from the saloon. His gait was curiously sidling, but he was no longer drunk. Stubborn, brutish anger was smeared across his expression as he asked, “Who tried to get in her cabin?”
Dunbar shook his head.
Kenton turned reddened, cloudy eyes on Cushman, who did not bother to shake his head.
“Cute, the two of you, ain’t you?” Kenton said. “Was you in on it?”
“No,” Dunbar said, “and if you want a cracked head ask that question again.” He was as tough and sure of himself as he was quiet. “Why don’t you go ask Miss Belle?”
Kenton picked up the severed front leg of one of the steers. He marched toward the nearest cabin. He burst through the doorway and demanded to know where Grimes and Eliot lived.
The inmates resented being roused by a red-eyed maniac with a steer leg in his hand. One of them shouted, “Get the hell out of here!” There were more words, curses, and then the thump of a heavy blow. “They’re in the first cabin this side of the saloon!”
Kenton rushed out. A miner with his hair on end, holding his shoulder, staggered into the doorway and took a wild look around the camp. He saw Cushman and Dunbar standing with their axes by the steer carcasses. Kenton was charging toward Eliot’s cabin, his left shoulder lowered and thrust ahead, the war club swinging.
Hangover-addled and still shocked by his rude awakening, the miner in the doorway said, “By Ned, that bear has got a sore nose!”
Kenton went into Eliot’s cabin with a bang. In a moment there were shouts and curses and a great threshing about and a clatter of tinware. It was over quickly. Kenton roared, “That’ll show you!” He emerged with the steer leg in his hand, rolling his head like a grizzly as he looked around the camp. He tossed the weapon into a snowbank and went toward Miss Drago’s cabin.
Dunbar went running to see what had happened. Big John came out of the saloon and two miners followed him. Cushman stayed where he was. Kenton had clubbed two of the less guilty from last night’s trouble, but it would do.
Cushman began to carry meat to the snowbank behind his cabin. He had made several trips before Dunbar came back.
“He like to hammered those two to death,” Dunbar said. “He almost tore Orley Baker’s ear off with that hoof in the first cabin, and then he fixed Eliot and Grimes up real good with broken ribs and noses and assorted lumps.” He grinned.
Dunbar dug a rude sled out of the snow behind his cabin. They dragged it with Cushman’s pack horse and stored all the meat in the snow. “Comes a quick thaw and I’ll wonder why I ever made this deal,” Dunbar said. “What do I owe you?”
“Nothing.”
Dunbar took a silver dollar from his pocket. There was humor in his eyes but behind that was a deep understanding. “This is the buck you gave me for the hay.” He held it out, and Cushman took it.
There was something of Jeremy Flint in Dunbar and something also of Sam Hildreth and Billy Bodega, all men whom Cushman had liked without ever expressing his feelings. He put the dollar away. He would never make that mistake again with Jake Dunbar.
They went to Dunbar’s cabin for a pot of coffee.
“Now tell me the facts about my claim,” Cushman said.
“Just what I said. I gave three hundred for it myself. The man who owned it went back east before he did anything more than build a sluice. It may be a good claim, it may be a stinker. I thought it was worth a chance.”
“How’s the gulch in general?”
“Fair,” Dunbar said. “I imagine there’s a hundred thousand dollars in dust laying under bunks and stuck away in cupboards in Victory, not counting what Big John has taken in. When everybody comes back, we’ll probably clean the gulch out in a summer, but that’s the way it goes. California Gulch is done. Cache Creek is playing out — no placer camp lasts long. You get your gold while it’s there and then you go home or move on to the next workings.”
“Which are you going to do?” Cushman asked.
Dunbar walked over to his bunk and stripped back the ragged blankets and the hay-filled mattress. He used both hands to lift a buckskin bag. It thumped heavily when he put it on the table before Cushman. Dunbar untied the strings and spread the wheel of leather. The mass revealed looked like a pile of dull copper filings at first, but as the finer particles slid down the mound, shining faintly as they spilled away, coursing around nuggets as large as the end of a man’s little finger, Cushman knew that he was looking upon the largest amount of gold he had ever seen.
He guessed there was about ten thousand dollars’ worth. He picked up a nugget and scratched at it with his thumbnail and tossed it back and watched the dully shining grains stream away in a miniature landslide.
“Your winter’s work?” he asked.
“Most of it. Some from late last summer after I added four sections to my sluice.” Dunbar watched Cushman intently. “It’s generally not a good idea to show a man that much gold at once.”
“No.”
“I carry a poke with about a hundred bucks in it, like everyone else. You’re the first man I ever showed the whole pile to.”
Cushman gave the miner an inquiring look.
“You don’t much give a damn for anything, do you, Cushman? I noticed it before in the way you got rid of those steers. Most men would have been sore as hell, but you just dropped the whole thing as if it didn’t matter. At first I figured you had a poker face, but now I know better. You just don’t care.”
“That’s it.”
Dunbar pulled the puckered edges of the buckskin wheel together, retied the thong, and put the gold away. He put one foot on a stool and stared seriously at Cushman. “That gold didn’t arouse half as much interest in you as those biscuits did this morning.”
“You can eat biscuits.”
“What do you want, Cushman?”
“Who the hell are you to ask me?”
Dunbar shrugged. “It was just a question, that’s all. I suppose a man judges everyone else by himself. We want something, or think we do. When I came back to Illinois from the war, I thought I wanted a butcher shop. The easy way to get it was to come out here, scoop up a few pocketfuls of gold, and then go home and buy my shop. Five thousand was what I aimed for. Now. I’ve got the five thousand, but I don’t want the butcher shop.” Dunbar shook his head.
Cushman said, “You’ve got one out in the snow.”
Dunbar smiled, but there was puzzled ruefulness in the expression. “I needed those steers like I need a white shirt. All the time I was so hot on getting them I couldn’t figure why, but now I know. I put in four years of my life thinking I wanted a butcher shop, telling myself that was why I was out here.
“Finally I must have realized I was never going back home, but I’d lived so close to the idea all the time that I had to do something about it. I bought the steers and that’s my butcher shop. Now I’m free of the idea.” Dunbar peered sharply at Cushman. “Does that sound crazy?”
“No. What do you want, Dunbar?”
“I want enough money to start lode mining when it begins to develop. It will, too, before long.” Dunbar flung his hand toward the bed where his gold was. “That and all the rest that’s been washed out pinch by pinch is only a dribble compared to the gold that’s in these hills somewhere. It took centuries for a few handfuls of gold to be washed down from somewhere up there.”
Dunbar pointed toward the mountains and Cushman visualized them standing there just beyond the cabin, tremendous and snow-clad.
“Here, or at the head of some other gulch, some day I’ll find where gold-bearing rock is in place. I want to mine it right where it took millions of years to form. I’ll build a smelter that’ll belch smoke day and night. I’ll have a railroad to it, and there’ll be a town. I’ll have five hundred men tearing into that mountain, ripping ore out and spilling it down to my smelter. I’ll have — ” Dunbar stopped suddenly, realizing how far he had flown from the draughty, dirt-floored cabin.
He went to the hearth and
lifted the coffee pot. He shook it, estimated the amount of grounds inside against the amount of liquid. There was enough coffee for half a cup more for each of them. When it was poured Dunbar sat down on the stool. “And I’ll have a special fund to keep coffee in the house all the time, so I won’t have to use the same grounds for weeks at a time.” His honest grin flashed out. “Do you reckon I’ve been out in the mountains too long?”
“No,” Cushman said. Dunbar had his feet on the ground and knew what he was doing. His dream was honest, and it was bigger than the dreams that most men hold. He didn’t want riches, or he would have talked of riches, of the things that gold could buy, of the power it gave to its owner. Dunbar wanted action, accomplishment; he wished to create things from his vision and work.
It was that side of the picture, rather than the dream itself, that impressed Cushman and lifted him for a time from his careful, narrow way of thinking. Dunbar’s enthusiasm and energy were greater forces than the mere vision of a golden mountain. Although he was dreamless himself, Cushman felt the fire of another’s ambition, and it left him with the haunted thought that he had been traveling savagely toward nowhere ever since he rode away with Jeremy Flint from Ruby Valley twelve years ago.
Dunbar finished his coffee and brushed the cup aside with a flip of his hand. “Now that you’re a claim owner, you’ll figure on staying the summer?”
“I’ll have to,” Cushman said. “I’ve got to get the price of my steers out of that ground.”
“I can sell it for you. I’ll even buy it back myself. You’re not interested in gold, Cushman.”
Cushman heard a horse going by in the street, and a few moments later he heard the Drago woman and Kenton talking. “I’ll stay a while, Dunbar,” he said. He rose from the table. “Right now I’ve got to take my horses to the valley.”
Belle Drago and Kenton were preparing to leave when Cushman passed the woman’s cabin. Kenton was rigging a rope stirrup. Cushman glanced at Miss Drago’s long skirts and thought, Of course she’s got to ride sidesaddle. It must have been miserably awkward for her going through the tight timber on the way here.