He Rode Alone

by Steve Frazee

  Cushman kept his eyes on his plate, strangely embarrassed because the man’s words had suggested something which did not exist. “How’s Joe Kenton?”

  “All right, I guess.”

  “Did he get over you firing him?”

  “That isn’t why he hates me.”

  Cushman decided he had carried the subject far enough. After a time he asked, “You figure to be independent like this all your life?”

  The woman didn’t answer. She came across the room slowly and sat down opposite Cushman, and then she said, “Why did you ask that?”

  “I wondered if you ever change your mind.” It was as close as Cushman could get to asking her to marry him again. In the quick set of her eyes he saw that she understood well enough.

  “I do when there seems to be reason.” Belle rose and went back across the room and stood by the stove.

  “What kind of reason does it take?”

  “I can’t explain.”

  Once more Cushman felt the frustration and anger against something he could not come to grips with. He was watching Belle gravely when Big John knocked lightly on the door jamb and came in.

  He made the perfect focal point of anger. Without thinking, Cushman looked at him and said, “Get out.”

  “Oh?” Big John blinked owlishly in the light, and then his whole expression hardened. “Is that a challenge, Cushman?”

  “I told you to get out of here.”

  “Both of you stop it!” Belle said.

  Big John raised his hand in a smooth quieting gesture. “This seems to be a matter between gentlemen, Belle. If Cushman cares to join me, we’ll both step out. I’m sure there’s room enough back in the trees to adjust our differences without rousing the whole camp.” He took a lantern off a nail on the wall. “If I may?”

  Cushman took off his coat and dropped it over the back of a chair. Big John lit the lantern and walked toward the back door. When Cushman stepped out he half expected that the man would try to nail him as he came through the doorway, but Big John was waiting, looking casually toward the trees behind Belle’s wagon.

  They walked together into the timber until they came to an open place. Big John was huge, all right, and he moved with an easy grace in the jumping light of the lantern. He looked up at the curving limb of a yellow pine over his head and reached up to hang the lantern on a snag.

  Cushman wanted to hit him then, but he held off because his act might lose them the lantern and leave them flailing in the dark. The illumination was poor at best and the outer edges of the yellow light were ragged with shadows.

  Big John kicked a rotting log out of the way. He started to remove his coat. Cushman struck at him when his arms were encumbered by the sleeves. It was an accepted, reliable move; you fought to hurt a man, not to provide a sporting exhibition.

  Cushman’s blow missed as Big John took one smooth step backward and pivoted away like a matador. Cushman went forward off balance and Big John tripped him. Cushman caught himself on one knee. His hands ploughed through the rich brown cubes where the rotting log had lain. He scrambled on ahead to get out of the way of a kick. When he came to his feet and turned, he saw Big John calmly finishing the removal of his coat.

  Big John hung the garment on a limb snag, and faced Cushman with his hands at his sides. There was a hot tightness around Big John’s eyes, but his body appeared perfectly relaxed. Cushman sighted on the big sandy mustache and the cold eyes above it and went in to beat Big John down.

  The Englishman’s hands went up in a classical fighting pose. Cushman felt like laughing when he saw the move. He hunched his shoulders and strode in. His head snapped back and he felt the sharp sting of blows against his mouth. They were nothing. He had merely to beat aside the silly position of Big John’s arms and get to him.

  The plan was simple, but Cushman could not quite make it work. The arms were always in his way. His best punches slid off elbows and shoulders. Once he was sure he had a straight powerful blow well carried, but Big John’s head moved a few inches to one side and the blow went over his shoulder.

  And then Cushman found his left arm neatly trapped. An instant later a jolting blow took him under the heart. Big John stepped around him, circling away from his right hand.

  God damn the polished smoothness of the man’s methods! Sure, he could give a boxing lesson, but that didn’t count in the long run. Cushman had enough of boxing lessons. He lowered his head and charged to ram the breath from Big John’s stomach.

  Big John hammered the side of his neck with a slashing blow. His knee came up and crashed into Cushman’s face. With the heel of his hand Big John drove Cushman’s right shoulder back and then hit him in the side of the jaw. Cushman reeled into a tree that kept him from falling. Without shifting his eyes or the high position of his hands, Big John kicked Cushman in the knee. It was just a trifle high or it would have been a crippling smash.

  And now Cushman had a lesson, too, in the less polished methods of frontier fighting. Big John had mastered two schools of combat, making a rare and dangerous combination of them.

  There was still no doubt in Cushman’s mind that he could beat the man. He was dazed and hurt and far behind at the moment; but Big John had not taken any of his punches yet.

  He got to Big John with two of his hardest blows a few moments later. He saw Big John’s mouth sag and his eyes fog. Cushman tried to finish him then.

  There was a hellish cleverness in the arms that were constantly in the way, in the roll and thrust of Big John’s shoulders, in the way his head moved just an instant before a blow would have crashed against it, in the way he tied up Cushman’s arms when Cushman was in close enough to chop.

  A good many times Cushman connected with his solid strokes, but he never could quite get in the clincher. Big John’s bristling mustache was smeared with blood. One eye was dropping at the outer corner. But still his fists kept jarring out, rocking Cushman, preventing the one solid moment when he could have both feet set, and a clean shot at Big John’s stubborn jaw.

  After a time Cushman became aware of the sodden, wearying impact of the punishment he was taking. He was slow. He swung and it seemed that he had power, but when his fists landed, he knew he could not smash Big John down.

  With a queer, distant breaking comprehension, Cushman realized that he was losing the fight. He tried harder then. He went down from a blow he never remembered receiving. He saw Big John’s legs close to him. A boot came up as if to kick Cushman. Cushman managed to lower his face and put one hand on his head. But the kick didn’t come.

  Cushman staggered up. Big John was ready. His guard was lower now, his fists not so tautly held. Cushman flailed away at him.

  Just when Cushman felt that Big John’s strength was crumbling, the man went deep into some source of strength for power that spun Cushman to the ground once more. He rose, knowing he would not have strength to do so again — and Big John knocked him down.

  Cushman lay with one arm thrown across the log Big John had tossed aside. He saw his opponent standing with his arms down, his breath all ragged and gusty, his mustache limp with blood and sweat. Cushman imagined himself getting up, going on to beat Big John.

  But it never came about. He tried to rise and could not, even when his mind ran ahead of feeble effort and made him think he was getting up. His breath came out through swollen lips. “I’m not licked yet.”

  But he couldn’t rise. Big John stared down at him with a strangely blank expression. Big John tried to walk carefully to a tree. His legs were wobbling, but he lurched to the support of the tree and stood there with one arm hooked over a limb. After a while, as if it weighed a hundred pounds, he raised his hand and began to re-form the straggling shape of his mustache.

  Rising slowly, Cushman fell over the log, and lay awkwardly until he could find strength to haul his legs on across the log and get them under him. The sickness of nausea and utter exhaustion was like a cloud around him when he finally rose.

  Deep insid
e there was still a will to fight; but a deeper law of nature told him the futility of trying to reach Big John across the fifteen feet that separated them. Cushman defied the greater law and tried anyway.

  He took two steps and fell. He crawled on his hands and knees to reach Big John, feeling the sharp bite of dry pine needles in the raw flesh of his knuckles. He came to Big John and stared up at him like an inquiring dog.

  “Here now,” Big John said, and bending shakily he reached Cushman’s hand and helped him to his feet.

  Cushman grabbed a limb. They stood close to each other, staring. All at once Big John’s swollen mouth broke into a grin. He tried to laugh. “Somebody should have paid to see us!” he gasped. He touched his face gently. One eye was completely closed now. “No man — I say no man, Cushman — ever hit me like that.”

  Cushman wondered why his own hatred of Big John had vanished. It was not possible that he could like Big John, but it was so.

  They regained strength clinging to the same tree. After a time Big John retrieved his coat. He looked at the ground where they had fought. “There must have been two stags here. Come on, Cushman, let’s go to water on the west fork.”

  With the lantern hanging on a sluice box they washed their hurts in icy water. The man who owned the sluice came out of a bough hut with a rifle and challenged them, but when he walked closer and saw who they were and their condition, he held the lantern high for them and made no comment.

  After a time they walked back toward town together, the lantern throwing blobs of yellow light and leaping shadows before them.

  “This won’t hurt Dunbar’s plans about — ” Cushman said.

  “Of course not. Don’t be an ass, Cushman.” The clipped precision of Big John’s voice contrasted queerly with his battered face and wild hair. “I’ve already arranged for Potts and Hardesty to come here and examine the mine. Disrupt an agreement merely because you and I had to settle something that was inevitable? I should say not!”

  They walked on across the clearing where they had fought. Big John said, “Will you come over and join me in a drink? It might allay certain unpleasant rumors which are bound to come.”

  “No thanks.”

  “You have a grudge?”

  “No,” Cushman said, “I don’t.”

  “Excellent! I still don’t love you as a brother, Cushman, but I’ve relieved my feelings against you. I was obliged to hate you because Belle was attracted to you, and that was made worse by the fact that you heard me offer her marriage the first night she was here. She refused me. You remember that?”

  “I remember.”

  “That’s all,” Big John said. “I feel better now. Sure you won’t have the drink with me?”

  “Yes, I will.”

  They went in the back door to Big John’s living quarters and drank from his private stock. Later, they went out to the bar and had another drink together so that everyone could see them in friendly conversation.

  They shook hands when Cushman was ready to leave, “I was refused too,” he said.

  “I’m damned!” Big John was puzzled. “I wouldn’t have believed it.”

  Cushman went back toward the hut where he and Dunbar and Marvel lived. The climb brought out the full extent of his aches and bruises. His lungs pounded hard against sore ribs. He knew he had been beaten.

  Dunbar was drawing a sketch of a smelter on a shaved board. Marvel was in his bunk, smoking his pipe. They stared at Cushman and then they looked at each other.

  “Big John,” Cushman said.

  “Good Lord!” Dunbar leaped up, spilling the shaved board from his knees.

  “I didn’t hurt anything, not even him. The mine will go right on, Jake.”

  Dunbar picked up the board and sat down again. He let out a long breath. “What do you mean, you didn’t hurt him?”

  “You can see me, can’t you?”

  “Yeah, but there’s plenty of Big John to work on. You must have got a piece of him now and then,” Dunbar said.

  Cushman’s grimace was lopsided and painful. “There’s a lot of him to hit back, too.”

  Marvel got out of his bunk. He rummaged around in his duffel bag and pulled out a tin of salve wrapped in a stained cloth. His grandmother in Vermont had given him the salve when he started west. It had melted half a dozen times, but that, Marvel said, had not affected its qualities. It was a special treasure he used only in severe emergencies — and then sparingly. He handed it to Cushman with a rare smile.

  “Here, Ed. Spread it on.” As an afterthought Marvel added, “Use up what’s on the rag first.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THEY closed the ends of the trail across the harsh slope of the mountain. From beside the hut in early morning Cushman liked the sight of the Z’s scored in hard granite. He knew John Marvel was proud of the trail too, but Marvel wasn’t one to say. To Dunbar it was an already forgotten step toward something much greater.

  Both Cushman and Dunbar had sold their property in the gulch, retaining only Dunbar’s cabin. Victory was still going strong, but those who knew were aware that returns on all the placer ground were falling off sharply.

  With their money going fast, Dunbar wanted quick action on the Illinois. Big John’s engineers were coming, but they were slow. Packing ore with horses was slow too, Dunbar said. They needed an aerial tram. By night he drew pictures of one, wearing out shaved boards rapidly.

  They stockpiled their ore near the site Dunbar had selected for the smelter. Miners immediately began to carry it away for hand crushing and panning. It was not rich enough to make anyone wealthy by such crude methods, but industrious thieves could net a few dollars a day.

  Dunbar considered the stealing good advertising for the Illinois; anyway there was so much ore in the mountain that a few hundred pounds carried away was no loss.

  In Victory there were a few canny people who foresaw the end of placering operations — but only a few, for the yellow flakes were still coming from the creeks. Russian Bob saw the handwriting. He sold out quietly on the basis of ill health. Big John began to curtail credit.

  Belle Drago was another who observed the slackening. Toward the end of summer there were more miners in Victory than ever before, but the amount of dust and coins dropped three times a day in the iron pot at her serving window began to lessen. She had a blacksmith check her wagon thoroughly, inspecting all the iron work and replacing bolts. She had Ollie Hardwicke, her helper, paint the wagon a dark blue, and she told the Kentons to keep an eye out for a team of four good mules.

  These preparations troubled Cushman, and he worried also about the easy, agreeable way Big John continued to pay court to Belle. Big John didn’t know when to quit; he had an Englishman’s cheerful stubbornness.

  Cushman found that he himself could not stay away from Belle, although he had very little to say when he was with her. He was no casual conversationalist like Big John.

  They both were sitting in the restaurant one night watching Belle making pies. Big John said, “So you’ll go on to another camp, Belle, and go through all the drudgery and insults again. Do you like the prospect of it?”

  “No.” Belle dropped a thin sheet of pie crust over a pan and trimmed the edges with a small, sharp hunting knife. “Sometimes I hate the sight of men’s hungry faces.”

  The summer had left its marks on her. There was the same expression of strain and wondering in her face that Cushman had seen in the looks of emigrant women when they came into Ruby Valley, grateful for the respite but knowing they had to go out on the desert again.

  “But you will go on?” Big John asked gently.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Money,” Belle said.

  “I don’t believe it,” Big John said. “Money buys only one kind of independence. Not that I have any quarrel with money, but it sometimes cuts you away from other things.”

  “I’ll have to take that chance.” Belle gave Cushman a swift look and then she said to Big John
, “Why don’t you ask Ed what he’s been chasing all his life?”

  “He’s found it,” Big John said. “He and Dunbar will tear the mountains apart. Dunbar will have a hundred ideas at once and Cushman will spend his time stabilizing him and between the two of them they’ll have a wonderful time and grow very rich in the bargain.”

  “I hope so,” Cushman said. But he knew nothing was going to be entirely wonderful without Belle.

  She was still working quickly and efficiently when Cushman and Big John went out.

  Big John looked in on his bartenders and then he and Cushman had a drink together in the saloonman’s quarters. The rooms were well furnished and snug; they reflected Big John’s background as a one-time gentleman.

  “You could say I have everything she needs,” he said. He shook his head. “Except myself. She doesn’t want me, Cushman.”

  Cushman picked up a book titled The History of the Dutch Republic. He fingered the leather work a moment and put the volume down.

  “Part of me still hates you, Cushman,” Big John said in a puzzled tone. “That’s natural, isn’t it? You could have that woman if you worked at it half as hard as I have, but all you do is sit around like a lout.”

  “I tried.”

  “Not very hard, I’d guess.” Big John scowled at his whisky. “Why should I be a John Alden? I never was a sportsman when it came to losing. When I lost I always wanted to break a cricket bat over somebody’s head, instead of smiling and shaking hands. You Americans make no bones about losing hard. That’s what attracted me to this country.”

  Big John poured the drinks again. “Hardesty and Potts will be here toward the end of the week. Sound chaps. If their report is good, we’ll all be in for a fortune.”

  Dunbar was happy to hear the news about the coming of the engineers. “Not that we need them,” he said, “but the investors Big John will bring in have to be satisfied.” He watched four drillers driving into the mountain through the middle of the great bloom of rich quartz. Six others were enlarging the ledge for building room.

  Cushman thought of the slopes, the way they had been bright with heavy snow in late spring. “Might not be ready this winter, Jake. It’ll take time to do business between here and England.”