Pale Rider Page 14

  Spider Conway, however, was not so easily fooled. He was neither as gullable as Henderson and Gossage nor as feebleminded as the easy-going Bossy and Biggs. He hung back until he was alone with Barret in the creek. Then he turned those sharp eyes on his companion.

  “You got sand, Barret, and I admire you for that. I admire you for aimin’ to stick it out, too, but it’s a damn good thing you’re just a miner and ain’t runnin’ for mayor of this non-town, because you can’t lie worth a damn.”

  Hull essayed a sickly smile and pretended to examine a chunk of quartz. “I don’t know what you’re gettin’ at, Spider.”

  “Is that a fact? Listen to me, Barret. You’re a good man, but you ain’t the kind to play the fool or the martyr. That’s better left to worn-out old horse’s behinds like me, and to my boys, who don’t know no better. I can see the lay o’ the land and I expect so can you.

  “With the Preacher gone and Lahood on the warpath, your life won’t be worth spit around here. Don’t throw it away on this bunch.” He nodded contemptuously toward the ramshackle collection of cabins and shanties. “You don’t owe them a thing, and you got as much or more than most of ’em to live for. If I was you, I’d pack up them two ladies and git.”

  “I ain’t the runnin’ kind, Spider.”

  “Hell, this wouldn’t be like runnin’. Grant wasn’t runnin’ when he pulled back to regroup in the West. This’d be common sense. It’s what I’d do now if I were in your boots.”

  Hull hesitated. “What are you going to do, Spider, if—if he doesn’t come back?”

  The old miner spat into the sand. “Me, I been here too long to run.” He grinned around his chaw. “My mouth works better than my legs, anyways. I’ll stick it out whatever comes. But just because I’m a pig-headed old fart don’t mean you have to try and be one too.”

  Having said his piece, Conway turned on his heel and strode off downstream, picking his way through the exposed rocks toward his claim. Hull looked after him for a bit, pondering his words. Then he let out a tired sigh and started climbing the rubble-strewn slope toward Sarah Wheeler’s cabin.

  Megan saw him coming. She was standing next to the first trees. There was no point in her descending to greet him. It was her mother he’d want to be talking to anyways, and now there was little comfort to be gained from his presence, though he was a nice enough man and had always been good to her.

  Nor would it do any good to go inside to talk to her mother before Hull arrived. There was no longer much comfort to be gained from that quarter, either. She suspected it was part of growing up, and it was one aspect of maturing she didn’t much like. There was a time when a single word or two from her mother could wipe away all life’s misfortunes and make everything seem fresh and good again.

  No longer. She’d changed, was changing as she stood there and stared at the eerily silent creek. And now the Preacher was gone, too.

  Something close to her feet caught her attention. She bent to pluck the dandelion, held it close to her face. Once it would have delighted her with its delicate beauty. She was too sad now to be delighted by anything. A puff and the gossamer plumes exploded into the air, needing only the wind to free them.

  It just wasn’t fair. Nothing seemed fair anymore. She let the stem fall to the earth and ground it underfoot.

  IX

  Everyone was hard at work on their claims the following morning, only now they no longer had the power of Carbon Creek to assist them. Dry mining was every bit as difficult as Biggs had claimed.

  Ev Gossage dumped shovelfuls of gravel into his sluice. His wife Bess followed each with a bucket of water gleaned from the forlorn watercourse’s meager remaining supply. Ev knew she couldn’t keep up that heavy work for more than an hour or two. There were still the household chores to attend to. But the hour passed, and the second, and both husband and wife kept at it, not knowing what else to do but work until they couldn’t work anymore.

  Biggs and Bossy had staked out the largest remaining pool to pan, but without a steady current to keep the water clear one of them had to stir the muck constantly while the other searched for color. Jake Henderson had sat down nearby. He dejectedly held his head in his hands, having given up already with his soul if not his body.

  Having no wife to fetch water for him, Hull Barret had to load his Long Tom with gravel, then put his shovel aside to pick up his bucket. Each trip to the remaining water and back put an additional, unaccustomed strain on the muscles of his back and arms, but there was no other way to work the sluice, and that was still more efficient than panning.

  He dumped the bucketful into the wooden trough, washing the gravel over the riffles. Three or four buckets of water to each shovelful of gravel. It hardly seemed worth the effort. He had to keep working, though, if for no other reason than to set an example for the others. In the absence of the Preacher they’d come to look up to him. If he quit now, there wouldn’t be a family left in Carbon Canyon by nightfall. Only Spider Conway, who was too stubborn to quit, and his boys, who were too stupid to know better.

  A slim figure appeared to stare at him while he worked. Laboring over the Long Tom with single-minded concentration, he failed to notice her until she spoke to him.

  “Hull?”

  He spared Megan the briefest of glances, acknowledging her presence with a grunt without interrupting the rhythm of his work.

  “Hull, are you angry with me?”

  “Nuh-uh,” he said abstractedly, gritting his teeth as he tossed another heavy shovelful of gravel and sand into the upper end of the sluice box. “What gave you that notion?”

  She shrugged. “I dunno. You angry at Mama, then?”

  Frowning, he straightened and leaned on his shovel for support. He knew enough about young’uns Megan’s age to know that the sooner he let her say what she’d come to say, the sooner she’d leave him to get back to his work in peace. His shirt was sopping with sweat and his face and arms were begrimed with mud. The contrast with Megan, standing there in her spotless white skirt and blouse, was profound. He found time enough to note that the elaborate coiffure she’d affected the day before apparently had been more trouble than it had been worth. Once more her hair was secured by simple pigtails.

  “No, I wouldn’t say that. No, not exactly angry.”

  Megan nodded sagely, striving to look older than her fifteen years. “She hurt your feelings, didn’t she? I know what that feels like. ‘If you love something, set it free. If it returns to you, it’s yours. If it doesn’t, it never was.’ ”

  Hull blinked at her, curious as to the origin of this little speech but too tired to press for elaboration. “I guess so.” He hefted his shovel. “We’ll talk later, huh? I’ve got a lot of work to do.” He attacked the loose material of the creekbed with the point of the shovel.

  For a few more minutes Megan watched quietly as he worked the Long Tom, loading it with gravel and then washing the contents with buckets of creek water. She said not another word, which suited Hull just fine. Here lately, talking to women seemed to get him into more trouble than it was worth.

  “Can I borrow the mare?” she said abruptly.

  Again Hull paused. If he’d been less exhausted, less preoccupied with other thoughts, he might have thought to ask why. Instead all he said was, “Can you saddle her by yourself?”

  Megan looked abashed. “I already did.”

  “Sure, take her out for a stretch,” he replied indifferently. “She gets bored grazing outside the stable all day and she’d probably be grateful for the run.”

  He was rewarded with a bright smile. “Thanks, Hull.” She turned and scampered off up the hill.

  If only I had that kind of energy, he mused. He dumped another shovelful of gravel into the sluice and then picked up the bucket. After spreading the gravel as best he could with his hand he stumbled back to the creek for still another bucketload.

  Unencumbered, his mind went back to the days when he’d first heard the wondrous tales of gold in Ca
lifornia, the stories of men picking up nuggets big as hen’s eggs off the ground and of others raking up gold flakes like fallen leaves. Now he wondered how he could ever have been so gullible. He didn’t feel especially bad, though, because the Sierra foothills were full of thousands like him who’d heard and believed those same stories.

  He’d prepared as well as possible, reading the right books (which, it developed, were invariably written by men who’d never lifted anything heavier than a pen and had never been farther west than St. Louis), listening to the stories, taking notes on the rights and the wrongs of mining.

  Ah, the stories! He’d listened raptly to tales of savage Indians only to discover that hardly any Indians remained. They had been effectively wiped out by the white man’s diseases instead of his weapons, and the sorry remnants he glimpsed begging in towns and by the wayside hardly seemed the kith and kin of the great Sioux and Cheyenne.

  He’d heard stories of miners having to eat their horses and mules and finally each other in order to survive the long Sierra winter. He’d memorized hearsay on how to deal with claim jumpers and crooked gamblers, with mosquitoes the size of field mice and bears that had to be shot twelve times just to slow them down. And unlike many, he’d even prepared himself to deal with lies, just in case everything he was overhearing turned out to be somewhat less than God’s truth.

  But the one thing no one had thought to warn him about or instruct him how to cope with was the everlasting, unending boredom of the actual work of mining itself.

  He dipped the bucket into a pool of stagnant water just as an ear-splitting cry resounded through the canyon.

  Having no gun, he made a run for his shovel, only to slow when he located the source of the shout. Spider Conway was pirouetting about his claim, waving his ancient floppy chapeau over his head and dancing a wild, frenetic sarabande like a man being assailed by hornets. Nor was he screaming a warning, as Hull initially feared. His dance, like his words, was purely celebratory.

  “Rich, by Christ! Sweet Mary Holy Ghost Mother of God I’ve struck ’er rich!”

  Whooping and hollering and whirling about like a man possessed, as indeed he was, Conway was holding something the size and shape of a loaf of bread. He kept tossing it from one hand to the other as his exultant voice reverberated off the sides of Carbon Canyon.

  “Gossage! Henderson, Barret, look at this!” He held the lump over his head for all to see. “Eddy and Teddy, you pair of clodpoles, come and see what your daddy’s pulled outta the stream!” He turned abruptly so that he was facing down the creek and shook his prize in the direction of the distant foothills.

  “Lahood, you son-of-a-bitch, you mush-mouthed offspring of a rancid sow, I beat you! Look at this. Old Spider’s struck it rich!”

  Across the stream Bossy and Biggs ceased their panning to view this extraordinary spectacle. Though older and more experienced than Spider, they had none of his savvy. Why, Conway could read, and even write his own name, and in most matters the two elderly partners usually deferred to their compatriot’s greater knowledge.

  But now they hesitated, wondering if their mate had, like the train that came from Sacramento three times a week, gone ’round the bend.

  “What’s that lump you holdin’, Conway?” Biggs called out uncertainly. “Some kind o’ turtle?”

  “Turtle my ass!” Conway laughed and continued his dance, brandishing the precious lump like a weapon. “It’s a lump of aggregate, ya crazy old fart! Mother lode aggregate. Never seen anything like it. Quartz and gold, and damned if there ain’t some silver and lead in it, too. Chock full o’ nuggets. Can’t even count ’em, they’s too many!” He finally ran down like an old clock spring and stood there in the shallow water, staring in wonder at his discovery. He was holding it so tightly his fingers were starting to turn white.

  “Shit,” Bossy murmured in amazement. The two old sinners exchanged a look, then threw their tools aside in their haste to scurry through the rocks toward Conway’s claim.

  Eddy and Teddy beat them to their father’s side. Both boys stared down at the chunk of matrix. “What you got there, Dad?” Teddy mumbled, gazing at the lump with wide-eyed innocence.

  “What’s it look like, y’brainless barn owl? It’s gold! More gold than you’re likely to see the rest of your life, unless there’s more like it right under our feet.” Conway tossed his prize into the air and caught it, marveling at its weight.

  “Glory be, but if I don’t think it’s half gold.” He looked up at both his benumbed offspring. “Well don’t just stand there lookin’ like a pair of damn statues. Run and git the mules. We’re goin’ to town.”

  “Us?” Teddy gaped at him in disbelief.

  “Going to town?” Eddy added.

  “You’re damn right ‘us.’ The Conways are goin’ to have them a little celebration.” There was a gleam in his eye that didn’t come from the gold. “Wouldn’t be right for us to keep this little find to ourselves. It’s only fair that we share it with our neighbors. Now git along with you two and hitch up the wagon.”

  Hull was watching from his own claim across the creekbed. He was enjoying the celebration almost as much as if the discovery had been his. He’d known Conway ever since he’d first decided to try his luck on Carbon Creek. The old man had provided the newcomer with invaluable practical advice, giving freely of the lore he’d accumulated over the years and asking nothing in return. If anyone deserved to make a big strike, it was Spider.

  So Hull Barret was happy for his friend’s success, happy in the knowledge that at least one of them would get out with something more than blisters and memories to show for the many months of back-breaking toil and dull, repetitive work. As for himself, well, it was said that such luck rarely smiled upon more than one miner in ten square miles of claims, and that was back in the boom days of ’49 and ’50.

  Movement upslope drew his attention. Sarah had come out of her cabin, carrying a big basket of laundry. She hesitated briefly to gaze down at the celebratory scene that was taking place at Spider’s claim. Then she turned away and crossed to her clothesline.

  Of course, he reflected, it was also said that a man makes his own luck. Weren’t there other things worth working for besides gold? So often the yellow metal proved a false mistress to its discoverers. What was it Megan had told him? Something about love, and letting go, and coming back? He shook his head, then wiped sweat from his brow with the back of an arm as he watched Sarah set out her washing.

  Several of the seemingly unrelated thoughts that were swimming around loose inside his brain suddenly snapped together as neatly as a clipper ship’s rigging. He let the bucket he was holding drop, oblivious to the water that spilled from it, and started climbing the hill. Spider’s whoops and yells echoed in his ears.

  She was pinning the laundry to the line the same as she always did, working slowly and methodically, placing each piece of washing precisely an inch from its neighbor to maximize the room on the line. So intent was she on her work and her own inner thoughts that she failed to notice his approach. He stood there quietly watching her work. Initial certainty gave way in her presence to confusion, which was eventually replaced by determination.

  “Sarah?”

  One hand froze in the process of securing a pair of bloomers to the line with a well-worn wooden pin. She did not look back, but resumed her work. Seeing that she wasn’t going to say anything, Hull decided to dive in all the way. If he retreated now without saying what he’d come to say, he’d not only damage his chances further, he’d leave looking like a fool. More than anything else in his life, he didn’t want to look like a fool in front of Sarah Wheeler. He intended to have his say.

  “I wanted to apologize if anything I’ve done or said is going to stand between us. I’ve taken a lot these past weeks. I don’t think I could handle thinking that, on top of everything else that’s happened.”

  “Can’t think of any such.” Her reply was delivered in an even, uninflected voice devoid of emoti
on.

  The silence and the significance of the moment were too much for Hull, an essentially uncomplicated man. Mining was a direct business. He was not used to dealing with subtleties. Unsure how to proceed, he glanced down toward the creek and nodded.

  “Look’s like Spider’s payday’s come.”

  She turned to follow his stare, sounding noncommittal. “Maybe it was just his turn. Like it was your turn a couple of days ago. Everybody takes their turn, I guess.”

  “Yeah, well, leastwise somebody’s gonna say goodbye to Carbon Canyon a few dollars richer.”

  “Looks like.”

  This time the silence was longer. Not knowing what else to do, Hull moved closer to her. She stepped clear and began to hang Megan’s dress, not so much ignoring him as she was professing disinterest. There was no indication of malice in her movements, but neither was there anything resembling encouragement.

  “When we all pack up to leave,” Hull told her, “I hope you know there’s plenty of space in my wagon for,” he gestured toward her cabin, “for whatever you’re wantin’ to take.”

  She spoke without looking back at him. “Are you asking us to leave here with you?”

  “I reckon we’re all leavin’, ain’t we?” he replied evasively.

  To this she said nothing. Then there were no more clothes to hang. As she turned to leave, he ducked under the clothesline and confronted her face to face.

  “Dammit, Sarah, ever since your Daddy died I’ve done what I could. I helped you and Megan as best I knew how and never put any conditions on it. Well now I’m puttin’ one. You owe me the truth. What have you got against me?”

  “Nothing.” Her reply was barely audible.

  “What’s that?” He moved as close to her as the clothesline would allow.