by Steve Frazee
“We hung a man here today over the Webster robbery,” Dunbar said. “Caught him with the goods. We run some of the others out of town. It’ll be a better camp now, Ed.”
Cushman said, “Suppose they’d caught up with Volgamore and got the gold, then what would the miners think about you and Belle sending your dust with me?”
Dunbar had regained his good humor. “It would have looked bad, for a fact, wouldn’t it?” He laughed. “Anyway, I would have made a beautiful speech just before they hanged me.”
Cushman thought that some day he might be able to tell Dunbar about Gravelly Crossing.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
JAKE DUNBAR lived in a fret and a fury until one day the Kenton brothers freighted in the tools he had ordered — two bellows, a duckfoot for a forge, drill steel, striking hammers, kegs of black powder and other items. Joe Kenton was working with his brothers now, but he never helped them unload when they delivered supplies to Belle Drago.
“First off, we’ll need a blacksmith,” Dunbar said.
“I can get by as a blacksmith,” Cushman said.
“Fine!” Dunbar seemed to give the problem no more thought. “The first thing to do then is to get our tools up there and set up some kind of camp close to the mine. I hate to waste time building a trail but we’ll have to have one. How many men shall we hire?”
“Let’s take a look first.”
They went up the mountain with two pack horses.
When they came to the stunted trees at timberline, Cushman looked at the gray slopes and wondered if there were tools enough in the world to make an impression on the mountain.
“How far up there?” he asked.
“About a mile,” Dunbar said cheerfully. “You never mentioned knowing anything about blacksmithing.”
“I learned a little about it from a man who took me in out in the Nevada country after my family died on the way to California.” It was hard to say. Cushman waited for a quick reaction from Dunbar.
“What you learned is going to come in mighty handy.” Dunbar looked up the mountain, squinting.
Cushman didn’t know whether it was deliberate pretense on Dunbar’s part or whether the man had accepted only that part of a hard statement which was of practical interest now. If he had probed, Cushman would have gone back into his shell. Dunbar had not probed. Still, Cushman felt some resentment about his lack of interest.
“I’ve ridden a horse part of the way up there,” Dunbar said, “but it ain’t worth it.” He grinned. “Shall we start building trail right now, or do you want to have a look at — ”
“Yeah. I’d like to see where we’re going first.”
It took them two hours to climb to the outcrop. Once they were there, Cushman was appalled by the roughness of that mile that lay between them and the timber. Victory itself lay hidden by the bend of a wooded ridge, but the lower end of the road into it was visible. They could see their horses quite plainly in an alpine meadow at timberline.
Dunbar was all over the face of the outcrop like an excited monkey, chipping rock, prying specimens loose with a short-handled pick. “Look at that!” he cried, waving at the outcrop. “Is there any reason it won’t run as deep as the mountain?”
“Maybe deeper,” Cushman said, and grinned. The mass of rusty-looking quartz was thrust out through iron-stained granite. Cushman had crushed and panned some of it and he knew it held free gold, a great deal of it. The showing was as wide, or even wider, than the three feet Dunbar had said. Cushman looked up the dizzying run of the mountain, past ledges and buttresses that ran to the sky. This seemed to be the only place where the quartz broke out.
Dunbar’s word and his enthusiasm were enough. The prospects of having a mine did not excite Cushman as much at the moment as the problem of building a trail up here around sheer drops and across rock fields that looked ready to slide away at the touch of a foot.
“There’ll be a railroad up the valley some day,” Dunbar said. “About where that crazy prospector is working a gravel bar, we’ll take off with a spur, wind it around a couple of times in the timber, and — ”
“You think he’s crazy, do you?” Cushman looked down the mountain and shook his head.
Dunbar laughed and went on with his plans, and all the while Cushman kept working out in his mind the lines they must follow to build a trail up here. It would have to be wide enough for pack animals to carry timber. It was not going to be easy. The challenge began to grip him.
• • •
The next day they hired four men and started the trail where Cushman had planned while he was sitting at the Illinois, the name Dunbar had already given the mine. Neither of the partners nor the men they hired knew the first principle of drilling rock or blasting with black powder. Cushman discovered that the temper of the drills he sharpened was either too soft or too hard. They mushed to bluntness quickly in the former case and broke in the latter case. When he struck a temper that stood up well he was not sure how he’d done it.
A former quarryman from Vermont came up one day and watched the trail building, and then he stood in the doorway of the rough blacksmith shop at timberline, watching in silent pain until Cushman, sensing both the criticism and craftsmanship of the man, put one foot on the anvil block and said, “For God’s sake, speak up!”
“You shape a good bit,” the Vermonter said, “but the tempering is a crime. There’s a way to drill rock and a way to temper steel.”
“Do you want a job?”
The Vermonter considered. “I might.”
Cushman hired him forthwith. His name was John Marvel. He had walked across the plains to Denver and from there to a dozen mining camps looking for work that suited him. Now he had it. He showed the trail builders how to drill, and after that it was a matter of acquiring skill by practice. Cushman took out the insurance of learning tempering from Marvel before he turned the shop over to him, and went up on the trail to work.
Marvel’s coming was the key that unlocked progress. The trail went faster and faster, across the faces of cliffs, over slide rock that did not run as easily as Cushman had thought, and on up toward the golden promise of the outcrop.
It was not fast enough for Dunbar. He bought more tools and hired more men and gave them the advantages of instruction he had received himself from Marvel. To Dunbar, trail-building was almost a waste of time. He wanted to be down in the mountain, to see a railroad and a smelter. To speed up things he hired still more men and began to build trail from the Illinois down.
The gap between made all kinds of complications, but Dunbar had a chance to hammer and pound and knock specimens from the outcrop, and to look down to where the railroad spur would leave the main line, and to change the site of the smelter as it suited him day by day. Dunbar was completely happy.
Cushman was edging slowly toward satisfaction himself. He enjoyed swinging a double jack in the thin air, loading holes and hearing the muffled poom of black powder breaking rock where he wanted it broken. It was satisfying to look upon the steep fall of the mountain one day and then to see the next day a few more feet of trail reaching upward on the easy grade he’d planned.
He knew he lacked Dunbar’s vision. Cushman was content to do a good job day by day, to plan his next step carefully. In giving orders to men he learned more about them and himself than he had ever learned before. He discovered that their respect and liking returned in approximately the same measure as given.
They laughed and joked with Dunbar and exchanged friendly insults, and asked him how soon he was going to start the smelter, and whether he was going to build his railroad spur first or wait for the main line from Denver. They were not as free and easy with Cushman, but still a startling fact was unfolding to him: they all liked him.
When the two sections of the trail began to near each other on the bleak granite, Dunbar set part of the crew to drilling the outcrop and soon they had more ore piled on the level place they had blasted out for mine buildings than the shelf would hold. S
ome of the ore tumbled down the mountain. Dunbar began to blast a bigger shelf.
Almost every miner in Victory had tested a piece of the ore. The camp agreed that Dunbar and Cushman had a big thing, but some thought the partners might be ahead of the times.
Standing in a cold wind one day at the mine, after the crew had gone down, Cushman asked Dunbar, “How’s our money holding out?”
Dunbar cocked his head. “It’s going faster than I thought it would.” His volatility for once was capped and quiet as he stared from the mountain. The nearly finished trail, catching shadows now that the sun was on top of the mountains, the small piece of road at the lower end of Victory, and the shine of tiny green patches in the valley that marked two ranches were the only signs of men that the eye could see.
Distance put silence on everything.
Cushman knew that all their furious efforts had scarcely made a scratch on the mountain. From the valley when the light was right a man could barely see sections of the trail, if he knew exactly where to look, but the mine itself blended into the mountain and the greater mountains behind it so that it was nothing.
Watching Dunbar standing quietly in his ragged coat, with his shoulders hunched against the wind, Cushman wondered if his partner were thinking the same as he. Work here was like looking back during a desert crossing at a landmark which you knew was eight miles farther away each day but which seemed to grow no smaller.
Cushman didn’t think their efforts were futile, by any means, but he knew how slowness galled Dunbar. Dunbar was as aware of daily problems as Cushman was, but his mind was geared to race on far ahead. If he had one smelter now, he would be planning ten more.
“You really think we’re doing all right?” Cushman asked.
“We’re doing fine. But I underestimated things. It’ll take a lot more money and time than I expected.”
“You’ve laid out four times as much as I have, haven’t you?”
“I suppose. What’s the difference? It’s men that count, not money. You’re the one I wanted for a partner. That was what was important. The money part is important only if we don’t have enough of it.” Dunbar turned his coat collar up. It was still dark blue on the underside.
He said, “I’ve been talking to Big John. Freight costs would ruin us if we tried to haul ore out of here.” His voice gained strength and the assurance that had been missing for a time returned. “So we’ve got to build our smelter as soon as possible. It won’t cost much to haul bullion.”
“No, but what will it cost to build a smelter? Freight costs will hit us on every stick and timber and brick.”
“I know,” Dunbar said. “That’s where Big John comes in. He knows people in England who’ll be interested in a stock proposition. He knows two men who can raise a hundred thousand pounds selling stock. That’s half a million dollars, Ed, but it’s only money and that’s what we need.” He gave Cushman a questioning look. “We’ll have to take Big John in as a full partner.”
“Is that a squeeze?”
“No. It’s just the fair thing. The three of us would have controlling interest.”
Hostility between Cushman and Big John Freemantle was as strong as ever. It seemed to Cushman that since Belle’s refusal to marry him, Big John had pressed his own cause harder. Cushman had been busy on the trail, staying most of his nights in the hut at the lower end. But Big John, with three bartenders now working for him, had been free to visit her in the restaurant almost every night.
It was a wrench to divorce these personal facts from Dunbar’s plan. If it had been any man but Dunbar, Cushman might not have been able to make the break. “All right,” he said, “take Big John in.” He saw Dunbar’s relief.
“He won’t involve his friends in anything with too much gamble in it,” Dunbar said. “Before he even makes a move on the stock deal, he wants the Illinois examined by two mining engineers, friends of his. They’ve been spending the summer around Idaho Springs.” Dunbar shrugged carelessly. “I think it’s a good idea. They can give us some hint of how really big the Illinois is. All right with you?”
“Sure.”
Dunbar forgot the engineers at once. His eyes watered in the cold wind as he squinted down the mountain. “Do you suppose there’s enough water on the east fork of Campanero for the smelter? It’s the best site if we can be sure about the water.”
“How much water does a smelter need?”
“I don’t know.”
Cushman grinned. “Ask the engineers about it. Let’s get off this mountain before dark.” Dunbar would have put in twenty-four hours a day working and planning, if he could.
They scrambled across the unfinished part of the trail with the ease of familiarity. Walking ahead, Dunbar asked suddenly, “What was it with your folks, Indians?”
“Cholera.”
“That’s always bad. Diphtheria got most of my family, right at home during the war. My father and mother, my two younger brothers and one of my sisters — all within a week. It happened when I was in the Wilderness. I got wounded there and then damned near burned to death when the woods caught fire.
“It was eight months before I got out of the hospital and got home and found out what had happened. Pa and me had talked a lot about having our own butcher shop. For a while I thought I had to go ahead and get it, but when I got out here I knew I never would go back.”
Dunbar spoke without bitterness or pain.
Maybe it was easier to forget such things if you hadn’t been close to them when they happened. It was like a letter going back to some state from an emigrant trail, telling someone that a whole family had been wiped out. Elapsed time and distance softened the shock. Or did it? Maybe the uncertainty and helplessness were greater. They crossed the face of a cliff and Dunbar stopped to light his pipe where the trail curved against overhanging rocks. Cushman saw his expression and knew that coming home and being told that your family had died months before was no easier than being with them when they died ….
When they resumed their way Cushman’s memory of Gravelly Crossing did not seem as black as before. He began to talk about it to Dunbar’s back No part of it came easily. He told it all. When he was recounting how he had returned to find the camp deserted and his father’s wagon gone, his blood began to surge wildly and he cursed the Snellings, all of them, forgetting kindness even for the girl who had given him her pitifully hoarded food.
“It’s been a long time in coming, hasn’t it?” Dunbar said.
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve never told that story, have you?”
“How do you know?” Cushman had the feeling that somehow Dunbar had drawn the tale from him.
“If you had, you’d have run out long ago on cussing the Snellings. The woman did what she could. She couldn’t have helped your sister, you admit. All they did was run out on you, not your whole family. From your description of them, maybe it was the best thing for you.”
“The best thing! I ate mice and dead gulls, and I — ”
“Who hasn’t been hungry?” Dunbar asked. “I’ve been close to being a one-bite cannibal right here in the mountains. What do you want to do, kill all the Snellings because they were no good? If that’s it, you should have done it long ago. I’d say you were lucky you got away from them. They might have raised you as a son.”
Cushman grabbed Dunbar’s shoulder and spun him around. He had an idea Dunbar was grinning. Dunbar was not smiling. Cushman was bewildered to see him coldly serious. “It’s the Snellings that stick in your craw, Ed. You didn’t get heated up or start to cuss until you mentioned the part where they left you. For every bastard that runs out on you in a fix, there’s three good men who won’t. You’ve never given anybody a chance to prove that. I’d say you’ve been a damned fool.”
“You weren’t there, Jake.”
“How old were you?”
“Thirteen,” Cushman said.
“You’re not thirteen now.” Dunbar turned and went on down the trail.
When they reached the hut they had built behind their blacksmith shop, Marvel was sitting on a stump in front of the canvas door, looking at the sunset. He knocked his pipe out carefully in his palm, looking for unburned tobacco fragments. “There’s a venison stew ready.” He looked at the sunset again. “Be out of forge coal in two weeks if we don’t get some.”
Cushman was restless. His telling about Gravelly Crossing had not relieved everything that he had thought it might. He said, “I’ll go on into camp and leave word about the coal. The Kentons ought to be in tomorrow or the next day.”
“Leave the word with Belle,” Dunbar said. “She won’t forget.”
Cushman went down toward Victory. He had not expected sympathy from Dunbar, and he had not got it either — that was good. What had he expected? It came to him that no one could make him forget Gravelly Crossing and all the loneliness it had created in his life afterward. He would have to do the changing himself and arrive gradually at acceptance of what had happened. Maybe that was what Jake Dunbar had tried to show him.
• • •
The serving window and the front door of the restaurant were open to let out heat and cooking odors, but Cushman knew that service was finished for the day. He hesitated in the doorway. “Will you tell the Kentons we need three hundred pounds of forge coal, Belle?”
“Of course.” The woman hung a pan on a nail behind the stove. “Have you had your supper, Ed?”
“Yes. I came down just to — ”
“You haven’t eaten, have you? You’re not a very good liar, Ed Cushman. Come in and I’ll find you something.”
The helper finished scrubbing and went away to get the pails of water for Belle Drago’s bath. A miner came to the door and asked if he could get a meal.
“The place is closed,” Belle Drago said.
“What about him?” The miner was disposed to argue when he saw Cushman eating.
“The place is still closed.”
Cushman turned his head to look. The miner recognized him and said, “Oh, him, huh? I see,” and went away.