by Steve Frazee
Cushman said, “I’m going down. If Kenton cares to ride my pack horse, he’s welcome.”
The woman looked Cushman over carefully. “Thank you,” she said.
“I’ll be ready in a minute.” Over his shoulder Cushman called back, “I’m going the long way.”
When he was ready to go Cushman went to his meat cache in the snowbank and dug into it. He started to take a front shoulder, and then some compulsion made him shove it back into the snow. He took a haunch instead, wrapping it in canvas and tying it behind the saddle, before he joined Kenton and the woman.
• • •
They went down the broad gulch in the rising warmth of late morning. The sun glare striking from the peaks was blinding, and through it Cushman saw the faint discoloration of thaw up high. Before they reached the lower end of the gulch they were riding in thin mud. Unconsciously, Cushman scouted a wagon route. A few more days of warm weather and Campanero Creek would be booming and the crossings a wagon would have to make would be difficult.
On the mesa above the prospector’s cabin Cushman said, “I’ll meet you later.” He didn’t wait for an answer before he sent his horse sliding down the steep gravel bank.
The Arkansas was rising. Brown water was lapping at the prospector’s gravel bar, threatening to go over it soon. The man himself was standing on the bank watching the stream eagerly. Because of the water he did not hear Cushman until Cushman was quite close. Then the prospector swung around quickly. His face went sour. “Oh! You again.”
Cushman untied the meat, unwrapped it and gave it to the prospector without dismounting. The man stared at it a moment and then pointed to the river. “She’s starting the runoff! Before it’s over my bar will be two feet higher and loaded with heavy gold!”
“Or washed away,” Cushman said. “They did pretty well up at Victory all winter. You could get set there, maybe, before everybody — ”
“I’m not moving! The river’s rising, and I’ll be here when she goes down!”
Cushman tied the bloody canvas behind the saddle and rode away. Meat, not advice, was about what every man wanted. Even those who asked for advice didn’t want it unless it agreed with what they had in mind already. He looked back before he started up the bank.
The prospector was running toward his cabin, carrying the haunch of beef in both hands against his chest.
The poor bastard, Cushman thought. But no one had forced the man to wolf out the winter there on the rocky Arkansas.
When Cushman again met Belle Drago and Kenton, they both looked at the canvas behind his saddle and made no comment. For a time all three of them rode in silence and then Cushman said, “There’s a fellow mining down there. He was short of meat.”
Again, neither the woman nor Kenton said anything, but they glanced at each other as if passing private information, and Cushman’s irritation increased. He said, “I don’t suppose, Miss Drago, that you can understand what it is to go without food.”
She gave him a startled look. In the instant before she looked away, he saw a curious expression of pain in her eyes, almost as if she pitied him. “There are worse things, perhaps, Mr. Cushman.”
Kenton asked, “What part of the country are you from, Cushman?”
From where, indeed? Cushman asked himself. Illinois was far lost, with only sentimental boyish memories of it troubling him now and then. It seemed that he had grown up in Ruby Valley, but he knew that wasn’t so. Should he speak like old Sko-kup’s medicine man, of an origin from rocks and fire and arid earth and desert sunsets? At least the Indians had answers to such questions, vague and unsatisfactory though they were to white men.
Cushman pointed westward and let it serve. Belle Drago watched him keenly and took the answer, but Kenton persisted stubbornly. “From California, you mean?”
“I’ve never been to California and never will be,” Cushman said curtly. He rode on ahead, away from the woman’s steady appraisal of him.
They came to the wagon in the grove. The cases of food were still piled on the ground where Cushman had first seen them. Once she had got the wagon from the river, Belle Drago hadn’t wasted a second beating him to Victory, Cushman thought. He looked out at the river. It was running hard above the big rocks. A man would have a bad time trying to hold his feet out there now.
Cushman looked inside the wagon. The side boards were extraordinarily high and all along them were tightly built cupboards, tables that let down on hinges, and cooking utensils tied down on racks. The stove was bedded in four buckets of sand bolted to the floor. A sailor’s hammock was slung on gripes across the wagon.
Belle Drago was giving Kenton instructions. “I’ll load the wagon while you go to a ranch and arrange for horses and a driver to take us on to Victory.”
Cushman said, “I can do that. I’ve got to go to one of the ranches anyway.”
“He could, maybe,” Kenton said. “That way I can stay here and load the wagon. It ain’t no work for you, Miss Drago.”
“Never mind what’s work for me.” Belle Drago looked at Cushman. “You wouldn’t mind doing that?”
“I’ve got to go to one of the ranches anyway.”
“Would you — Would it be too much trouble for you to take my horse along and leave him there with the others?”
It struck Cushman that Belle Drago was defensive and embarrassed when she asked the question. She was like a child who expects refusal. “I’ll take him along,” Cushman said. As he rode away he wondered about the hesitancy in the woman’s simple request of a favor that a man would have taken for granted.
She had a strange, high pride, but it was not, after all, imperiousness. She had actually been afraid and ashamed to ask for help; and her fear of refusal had come from something more basic than the fact that she had bested Cushman in the matter of the steers.
At the first ranch Cushman made arrangements with the owner to keep the horses until the grass was up in the high country. The rancher had a team of six blue mules. He was proud of them. For twenty dollars he said he would use them to take the wagon into Victory. “I guess you know that there’s never been a wagon up there.”
Cushman declined the rancher’s invitation to stay the night. The rancher would talk his head off. Cushman walked back to the camp on the river. The wagon was already packed and ready to be moved. “A man will be here tomorrow.”
He sat on a log eating food that Belle Drago served him. “May as well go on back with you tomorrow.”
Across the fire Kenton stirred a little and stared darkly at Cushman. Firelight played across the woman’s face. The river made a heavy rushing noise in the background. “I’ll insist on paying you, Mr. Cushman.”
Cushman acknowledged the woman’s independent spirit. “I’ll take it out in meals.”
Before she retired, Belle Drago brought two blankets to Cushman. He heard the creaking of the hammock gripes when she went to bed. Kenton stirred the fire and looked steadily at Cushman. In a low voice Kenton said, “I’ll be keeping one eye on you, mister.”
In the man’s dark gaze Cushman read more than loyalty to Belle Drago. Kenton was in love with her. Before long, half the men in Victory would think they were too.
There was a faint, elusive odor to the blankets Belle Drago had given Cushman. The scent disturbed him.
• • •
At sunrise the rancher arrived with the mules, their harness rattling as they came through the grove. They were all raw, wild power and stubbornness for a while after they started up the bank with the wagon.
It took two hard days to reach the camp. Cushman and Kenton chopped trees, made crossings on Campanero Creek, levered rocks out of the way, and snubbed the top-heavy wagon with ropes around trees to keep it from tipping over on sidling grades.
During the last half-mile most of the population of Victory came down to help. When the big mules hauled the wagon to a level place near Belle Drago’s cabin, she stood up in the seat and said, “The first meal will be served in two hour
s. Bring your own fighting tools and one dollar and a half.”
Largely veterans of the Civil War, the miners roared at the familiar term “fighting tools” for knife and fork and spoon.
Kenton was already chopping wood for the stove.
Jake Dunbar gave Cushman a grave look. “Enjoy the trip?”
“I had to go to the valley anyway.”
“Sure you did.”
Cushman went up the street to his cabin. He observed that the snow had settled some since he had been gone. Up on the mountains the yellow glaze was growing on the great snowfields. The nights would be bitter for a long time yet but summer was not far off.
In front of his cabin, Cushman looked back at the crowd of miners milling around the wagon. Women were not sacred in the West because they were women; the law of supply and demand gave them high value which was often confused with other values. For simplicity’s sake there were two classes: good and bad. But all men were inclined to seek proof of something bad in good women and something good in the other kind.
The testing was only started for Belle Drago.
CHAPTER TEN
AS THE SNOW tumbled away with the booming rush of Campanero Creek, men came hurrying into Victory. Some of them owned claims and were coming back after wintering elsewhere. Some of them owned little and were very anxious to acquire a great deal quickly.
Drawn together by their tenure in the camp, Jake Dunbar and others tried to keep mining law intact, but in spite of their efforts there was pre-emption of claims unattended and increasing trouble from the have-nots, until at last the veterans were forced to confine their efforts largely to taking care of themselves.
Cushman stood apart in all the disputes. He had his claim. He worked it. Let the others growl and squabble as they pleased. Let Dunbar fret and stew about everyday violation of mining law.
And then one day Cushman found himself in trouble.
Early in the morning he surprised two men making a cleanup at his sluice. He shot one in the shoulder as the man started to fire at him. When the second thief ran Cushman knocked his leg from under him with another shot. His action was direct, unthinking, fitting the just needs of the moment.
Before he knew it he was surrounded by friends of the two wounded men, and by men who imagined they were friends of the culprits. Jake Dunbar led a hard wedge of the veterans through the clamor. With drawn pistols and ready shotguns they established the truth of the affair, and gave the two groaning thieves till nightfall to get out of the gulch. Thus the determined action of a few was accepted as temporary law, not because there was justice on the side of the few but because there was united force.
Thereafter, no one tried to make a cleanup at Cushman’s sluice, but one quick act had not brought order; thieves merely shifted operations to softer spots. Men now buried their gold beneath their cabin floors, and worked their sluices with one eye on their cabins — and a rifle handy.
Dunbar summed it up, “At first, you could hang your watch on your cabin door and be sure no one would touch it. Now you can’t be sure the door will be there when you come back at night. It’s always the way of these camps.”
Belle Drago lived through it all with outward serenity. During her first month in camp she served meals from the wagon, and then, with the coming of lumber, she and Kenton built beside her cabin a building that was known at the Restaurant, although in the proper sense it was not that at all, but no more than a kitchen. Near the front door was a long serving window with a wide shelf, on which set an iron pot that served as a till. Diners presented their plates at the window. Wearing a white apron that was incongruous against his heavy boots and black beard, Kenton carried the plates to Miss Drago to be filled and then returned them to the window, watching sharply to be sure the proper amount of dust or coin went into the iron pot.
His was not a man’s job, and Kenton suffered because of that. Each time a new group of arrivals saw him, they jeered and made insulting remarks. Kenton never forgot an insult or let one go unanswered. After supper he always hunted up his tormentors, selecting one as an example. And then he piled into him with such straight-out savagery that he became known as a man to avoid. One day at the serving window a miner underestimated Kenton’s shrewdness on the basis of his stupid face and dropped pinches of iron pyrites into the till. On the sixth pinch, when the man was sure he had succeeded in getting a free meal, Kenton reached through the window, seized his arm, slammed it against the side of the window and broke it at the elbow.
Kenton had chosen himself a hard job for a healthy man in a new country. He could have quit it any time, but he chose to stay with his menial tasks. Belle Drago owned a claim on the creek above Cushman’s, allowed her during her first week in camp after a solemn, four-hour meeting of all the miners to pass on the validity of her claim, as a woman, to being a citizen of Victory. She offered to lease the ground to Kenton on shares.
He said, “I’d rather stay here and work for you.”
After regular hours at the restaurant, Big John, Dunbar and Cushman were often there. Joe Kenton always stayed until the last one left. He never missed any of their conversation and in unguarded moments they saw him giving them bitter, frustrated looks.
There could be little formality, and there was certainly no privacy, in the attention of the three men to Belle Drago.
She was always busy, baking bread for the next day’s serving, making pies, checking the list of supplies for the next trip of the Kenton brothers. Her day began at four in the morning.
Big John and Dunbar and Cushman soon knew that they were trying to compete with a flourishing business. They seldom stayed longer than an hour, Dunbar and Big John talking while Belle Drago went on with her work. Cushman was the silent one.
One night Dunbar asked him, “Why do you go there, Cushman? All you do is sit and listen.”
“That’s all I generally ever do.”
“She’d run us out if she didn’t want us around, huh?”
“I reckon,” Cushman said.
The three were not the only ones who paid attention to Belle Drago, although they were the only ones who were privileged to enter the restaurant after the boards were put over the serving window.
Bold men found ways to discover for themselves whether they were facing a matter of principle or price when Belle Drago declined all offers, including marriage. They ran their tests the best way they could, and then often did not know if the results were positive or not.
Russian Bob, who had built a saloon astraddle the creek, was of the opinion that Belle Drago was merely waiting for the highest bidder. He saw things with a gambler’s eyes.
That she knew all the speculation and crosscurrents of opinion about her, Cushman did not doubt She worked the best part of sixteen hours a day and seldom went beyond the restaurant or her cabin, but still she must have a fair idea of what men were saying about her.
Kenton’s last chore of the evening was to carry three pails of water to the doorway of her cabin. Belle Drago bathed. No one was entirely opposed to a woman’s right to bathe daily, but it was still a puzzling thing, like using high-toned language when there was no real need to do so.
In spite of himself Cushman was drawn into personal speculation about Belle Drago. One morning he strayed away from his claim at ten o’clock and went down to see if she would give him a cup of coffee.
Kenton was chopping wood. He paused in his work to give Cushman a sullen stare. At the serving window Cushman looked inside and saw Belle Drago washing clothes in a tub set on two benches. He felt guilty at the thought of disturbing her work and he was about to go away when she said, “Yes, Mr. Cushman?”
The “mister” was part of a barrier she put between herself and every man in camp, excepting Dunbar, whom she called by his first name.
“Nothing,” Cushman said. He started to turn away.
“You wanted something or you wouldn’t have stopped.”
“A cup of coffee, but — ”
“Come
in then.”
“Don’t want to disturb you.”
“You’ll cause me a lot more disturbance by standing at that window where everyone can see I’m serving coffee between meals. Come inside.”
Cushman went around to the door. The room was steamy with Belle Drago’s washing and vapors from kettles on the stove. Cushman stood beside a worktable with his hat in his hands.
“Sit down, Mr. Cushman.” The woman dried her rounded brown arms on a towel and poured two cups of coffee. She sat down across from Cushman. “I generally drink a cup of coffee in the middle of the morning.” She should be tired out from constant work, but she did not look weary.
“How’s the claim going?” she asked.
“All right, I guess.” She was an attractive woman, Cushman thought. If she ever relaxed a little, lost some of her drive and determination, she could very well be a beautiful woman.
“There’s three hundred men in camp now, Jake Dunbar says. He keeps track of such things.” The woman glanced toward the serving window as an uproar that sounded like a fight broke out in the direction of Russian Bob’s.
“Quite a few men, all right,” Cushman said. He gave the woman a quick study while she was looking toward the window. Some carelessness in her appearance would have been allowable, for the country forced carelessness on everyone in some degree, but she was always neatly dressed and shining clean. Every few days her shirtwaists and skirts billowed on a clothesline between her cabin and a tree. She saw to it, too, that Kenton wore a clean apron every day, and that the restaurant was scrubbed clean every night.
When she turned her head from the window her eyes met Cushman’s and they looked directly at each other for a time. “Where will you go from here?” she asked.
Cushman was startled but he hid his feelings and said, “I don’t know.”
“You have wandered around the country a good deal, haven’t you?”