Pale Rider Read online

  “Nothing. I don’t have nothing against you.”

  He didn’t dare smile. He was still unable to believe, still unsure whether to press the issue to its inevitable conclusion.

  Oh hell, he told himself, why not? Get it over with one way or the other. He’d lost everything else during a year of being unsure. Lahood had put finish to the community of Carbon Creek. It was time the last loose ends were tied up.

  “Well then,” he asked, rather more brusquely than he intended, “do you love me or not?”

  She raised her face to meet his eyes and this time, unlike on so many similar occasions in the recent past, he didn’t flinch from that unblinking examination. She took note of that, just as she took note of the pain and hope he displayed so guilelessly on his handsome face. And after a long moment, she nodded.

  “You’re the decentest man I’ve ever known, Hull Barret. You’ve watched over me and mine and took care of us when any other man would’ve tried to take advantage. It took me a long time to believe you were sincere in what you were doin’ for us. I blame myself for that. I’ve had a hard time believing in any man since—since Megan’s father ran out on us.” She put a hand on his cheek. It was smooth and warm. She smiled up at him.

  “I expect it’s been rough on you. Since that man weren’t around no more I’ve tended to take out all my bitterness on you, and you don’t deserve that. You deserve a lot better. Yes, Hull, I do love you. I have for some time now, but the old hurt made me keep it locked up tight inside. The hurt, and the bitterness. You’re gentle and kind and caring, Hull. I saw that right from the start. I just never could let it out and—I wanted to be sure. For Megan’s sake even more than mine.”

  She pressed up tightly against him and he put his arms around her to hold her close. “I wish I were better with words, Sarah, but I never was. I always kind o’ dance around what I’m tryin’ to say without knowin’ how to come out and say it. With a woman, anyways, and especially with you.”

  Her eyes shut tightly as she clung to him, the tension that had existed between them shattered for all time. “I’m so sorry, Hull, so sorry. I apologize for being so high-strung lately. It’s just that I’ve—I’ve been so confused.” As she spoke she was looking past him, at the room where until this morning the Preacher had stayed.

  It was just as well for both of them that Hull construed her remark as a reflection of his own recent frame of mind. He nodded sympathetically.

  “What with everything that’s been goin’ on around here it’s a wonder we ain’t all crazy. But it’ll be all right now, Sarah. You’ll see. I’m goin’ to make it all right for the three of us. There’s nothin’ more to worry about.” He disengaged himself gently and gazed down into her upturned face.

  “I ain’t afraid of hard work. I guess not every man’s destined to strike it rich, but that don’t mean he can’t make a decent livin’ for himself and his family. We’ll start over again someplace else. Maybe in Sacramento, or maybe we’ll try San Francisco. And I hear tell there’s even people startin’ to move south, to a little pueblo called Los Angeles. It’ll be just fine so long as we’re all together. There’s always a place in the city for a man that’s willin’ to work hard.

  “But there’s somethin’ else we got to do first. First town we get to we’ll find ourselves another preacher. That’s one bit of business I’ve got enough put aside to pay for.” He chuckled softly and gazed beyond her, envisioning the ceremony as the fantasy he’d always dreamed of but never dared hope could be made reality.

  He didn’t see Sarah’s eyes drop at the mention of the word preacher, nor the blush of shame that stained her cheeks. It faded quickly, however, almost as though she willed it away.

  “Yes. Another preacher.” She pulled him to her once again, locking her arms around him and squeezing with all her might as if to force out every last trace of the conflicting emotions that had been tormenting her for the last few days.

  Of all the tasks at the mine in which he participated, Josh Lahood’s favorite was to scan the bottom of the forty-foot-long iron sluice for traces of color. The promise of gold enabled a man to shut out the roar of the monitor and the noise of drenched workers shoveling gravel and rock. Not only that, but when he was on collection duty he was usually able to pocket a small nugget or two without being seen. Even if he was, no one would dare report the theft to his father. The operation didn’t depend for its survival on such minor discoveries. Besides, his father was tight with his money, and the gold Josh pocketed was a useful and necessary supplement to his regular allowance. What the old man didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

  Today the sluice displayed flecks of dust and the occasional larger fragment, but no nuggets. He hadn’t found one in more than a week, and now even dust was becoming scarce. Everyone knew what that portended. Cobalt Canyon was nearly played out, having yielded to the monitor and the sluice all the gold it possessed. The whole operation was going to have to be moved to more profitable diggings soon, or the company would find itself operating at a loss. Every man in Lahood’s employ knew where their next destination was going to be. Just as soon as some minor difficulties were cleared up.

  McGill arrived, dismounted near the far end of the sluice, and hurried to interrupt his boss. A couple of the shovel men glanced curiously in the direction of the conversation, though the steady roar of the monitor made it impossible to hear any of what was being said. It appeared to be good news, however, since both the foreman and Lahood’s boy were grinning from ear to ear by the time McGill turned to point toward the trees that lined the far hillside.

  Still grinning, the foreman assumed Josh’s place at the sluice and watched while the boss’s son loped toward the rail where his horse was tied. The rest of the men followed his progress until he was swallowed up by the forest. They chatted curiously among themselves as they worked. There was nothing up there but rocks and trees. Yet it was clear McGill had sent the younger man off in that direction with some purpose in mind. They were more than a little puzzled. But since McGill remained by the business end of the sluice and did not offer any explanations, there was nothing for the rest of them to do but attend to their work while continuing to speculate.

  Josh guided his mount through the pines. It was quieter up on the hillside. The woods served to mute the monitor’s thunder. Another rider was waiting to greet him, just as McGill had said. Josh strove to hide his surprise.

  She looked very pretty indeed, sitting there atop her mare. She was as unexpected a sight as the sun in winter, and just as welcome.

  “Well, Megan Wheeler, welcome to Cobalt Canyon.” He managed a half bow from his saddle, then pulled up alongside her. “Come to see how the rich folks do it, huh?”

  She shrugged, apparently indifferent. “Maybe.”

  “Your mom know where you are?” He looked beyond her, but there was no sign of another presence in the woods.

  “I don’t tell her everything,” the girl told him haughtily. “I go where I want when I please.”

  “Well now, that’s admirable. Bet she wouldn’t like it, though, if she knew you were here.”

  “I’m almost sixteen. Same age as she was when she got married. I can do what I want. You think I have to ask her permission every time I want to take a step outside our cabin?”

  He put up both hands in front of him. “Oh no, not me!” He was grinning broadly. “I mean, it’s plain to me you’re more’n able to take care of yourself.” He jerked a thumb in the direction of the canyon below. “Long as you’re here, maybe you’d like for me to show you around? It’s why you came by, ain’t it?”

  “Maybe,” she said again.

  He turned his mount around and started downhill. “Come on then.” She chucked the mare’s reins and let it pick its own way as it followed Josh.

  The younger Lahood was nothing if not an enthusiastic guide. As they emerged from the trees he pointed toward the upper end of the canyon.

  “Three quarters of a mile upstream we divert
ed half of Cobalt Creek. See?” He chuckled. “Dad’s an old hand with dynamite. He can make a creek do just about anything he wants it to.” She gave no indication that this snide reference to recent events in Carbon Canyon made any impression on her, even though it was tantamount to an indirect confession. “It flows through a ditch that runs along the contours of the slope, there, and ends a hundred yards up yonder, to our right.”

  Megan tried to follow with her eyes. “It can’t just end. The water has to go somewhere.”

  “Sure it does. It runs into a length of three-foot pipe over there,” he pointed, “that heads almost straight down. See, there’s ten yards of three-foot pipe. It narrows into a two-foot pipe and then into a one-footer. All the time the water’s goin’ downslope it’s picking up speed, see, and it picks up force as the pipe gets thinner. Volume plus compression equals energy.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “I’m not sure I do either, but that’s what Dad says.”

  They were off the hillside now and down in the bottom of the canyon. He led her toward the sluice and the monitor platform. Megan kept pace with her guide, fascinated in spite of herself by the complexity and scale of the Lahood operation.

  “At the bottom of the far slope, over there,” he went on, “all that water is funneled from the one-foot pipe into a four-inch-diameter hose. The hose connects up to the monitor. My dad brought in five boiler-makers to put the pipe together, and we bought the hose from a fire company in San Francisco. You got to hand it to Dad.” He was forced to shout now in order to make himself heard.

  “Every company in California trying to get monitor hose from the outfit that makes ’em back east, and here Dad goes and beats every one of ’em to the punch by buying the extra hose from a fire company, right out from under their noses. Ain’t nobody yet ever beat Coy Lahood at cards or gold-mining.” He looked over at her. “That’s how we do it, Megan. What do you think of all this?”

  “It hurts my ears.” She put her hands to the sides of her head to illustrate what she was trying to tell him. It was so loud in the bottom of the canyon, this close to the water cannon, that she didn’t see how anyone could hear themselves think, let alone talk. As for the monitor itself, it was impressive, yes, but also frightening. She hadn’t imagined that it would be frightening.

  Josh was used to the noise, however, just as he was used to communicating over the steady thunder. “When all that water leaves the monitor, it’s going at two hundred pounds per square inch. Blasts the gravel right out of the cliff. The other half of Cobalt Creek runs right over here—right down the creek bed and through the sluice. So the creek does all the heavy work for us except for loading the gravel into the sluice bed.”

  Megan’s eyes swept over the hillside where the monitor had played, taking in the barren rock, the awful man-made erosion, noting the absence of even the scrawniest vegetation. She’d overheard others talking about what the monitor could do to a canyon, but she hadn’t really been able to envision the scope of the destruction. It was like something out of a nightmare. She tried to imagine what it would be like to have a water cannon working in Carbon Canyon, and shuddered.

  “It looks like hell,” she finally told him.

  The comment had no effect whatsoever on Josh Lahood, who replied proudly, “We can placer twenty tons of gravel a day with this rig. And even after the equipment’s all paid for and the crew is paid off and you allow for delays and breakdowns and repairs, there’s still plenty of gold left over. This is how you make real money, Megan. Not beans and flour money, like the tin-pans in Carbon.”

  He pulled up. They were little more than a stone’s throw from the monitor platform. Club leaned into the iron as he guided the nozzle over the opposite slope. The sluice was nearby. Three men were working there under McGill’s supervision. All four of them were splitting their attention between their work and the pair of riders. Their expressions were anticipatory and unpleasant. Megan didn’t notice them. Her thoughts were elsewhere.

  She was snapped back to reality as Josh Lahood reached over to grab the reins away from her. He pulled her mount close to his own, then leaned toward her. His face was dominated by that engaging and yet somehow reptilian smile.

  “Now you’ve had your little tour, you’ve seen what our operation’s like. You can tell me what you really come by for.”

  There was something new in his voice that hadn’t been there before. It caused Megan to look sharply at him. “I—I was just out riding, and I thought I’d see for myself what everybody else’s been talking about.”

  “Well I can understand that. It’s nice to look at what you ain’t seen on your own before. I’ve been wanting a closer look at something too.” His smile widened.

  She shook her head, her expression full of sudden fear and the confusion of innocence. It only served to stimulate Lahood all the more. “I don’t understand. You’ve seen me before.”

  “Yeah, but not up close. Real close.”

  Her eyes widened. She turned away from him and tried to spur the mare forward, but it was too late. It had been too late for several minutes now, she realized suddenly. This wasn’t Carbon Canyon and Josh Lahood—Josh Lahood wasn’t a well-meaning neighbor. Dark tales and indirect warnings whispered to her at night by her mother flooded in on her. She’d paid little attention to any of them, supremely confident in her own ability to handle any situation she might find herself in.

  All that confidence had vanished like smoke. She tried to wrench the reins away from Lahood’s fingers. As she leaned toward him he bent over to wrap both arms around her. She fought against him, batting futilely at his head and shoulders as he hauled her onto his knee. His strength was frightening, and there was sinister purpose behind every movement he made.

  His hands were moving and she couldn’t stop them from searching out all the secret places. She was too shocked and ashamed to cry out. Then he was kissing her, but it wasn’t the way she’d imagined it should be. He was attacking her with his lips, wet and possessive. There was no suggestion of affection in any of his actions. It was an assault, sharp and unpleasant. She thought back to what she’d been told, to the stories she’d overheard, and she knew that worse than unsought kisses were to come.

  There was nothing she could do, but she kept trying to fight anyway. Struck by her wildly kicking feet, the mare bolted. Even if anyone had been present to come to her aid, they couldn’t have heard her screams over the rumble of the monitor.

  Her gyrations and blows panicked Lahood’s own mount. It pivoted and charged off upstream. Some of Lahood’s pleasure was muted as his horse broke for rough ground. He couldn’t control the gelding and his prize at the same time. They started to gallop past the platform, heading for the devastated upper reaches of the canyon.

  “Clubbb!” he yelled.

  The giant heard the cry. The instant he saw what was happening, he spun the water cannon around. The powerful stream of water cut off the gelding’s headlong dash. A dozen miners dove wildly for safety as the bone-crushing flow swerved in their direction. Others scrambled to surround Josh Lahood’s wheeling, wild-eyed mount.

  Soaked to the skin and laughing like a madman, Josh finally got his skittish steed under control. He slid from the saddle with Megan clasped tightly to him, stumbled, and recovered his footing on the muddy ground. The roughnecks and roustabouts who worked for his father began to crowd close. They had found something more worthy of their attention than the gyrations of the monitor.

  “Lookit what I got me, boys. A tin-pan’s daughter!”

  “Let me go!” Megan was terrified and furious all at the same time.

  “Ain’t she purty,” one of the men murmured, staring at her out of the muck that covered his face.

  “Where’d you find ’er, boss?” another inquired.

  “Why hell, Carlos, she just rode on in of her own free will. McGill told me she was curious t’see what we got here.” That brought forth some unpleasant gu
ffaws from the circle of men. “Couldn’t resist me any longer, I guess.” More laughter and the first lewd comments greeted this clever sally on the part of the boss’s son. They clustered closer and Megan tried to shrink away from their suddenly intense stares. They made her feel considerably more unclean than the mud and grime she’d acquired during her struggle with Josh Lahood.

  Unlike the permanent settlers of Carbon Canyon, all of these men were transients. They lived and worked out of the nearby bunkhouses and owed no allegiance to anyone except their employer. Many knew no other life than the daily grind of the mine. Their days consisted of endless hours spent moving rock and gravel, interrupted only by sleep, three meals, and maybe the occasional game of cards.

  Some of them hadn’t had a woman in more than a year, while those who had knew only the attentions of the tired slatterns who lived and worked in the cribs that fringed the bars of the larger towns. Set among such spoiled flowers, Megan Wheeler would have stood out like a rose among weeds.

  “Rare up on ’er, Josh!”

  “Take that cherry, son!”

  “Y’all give me seconds, y’hear?”

  The first speaker shoved the third. “Like hell! I’m next.”

  The man pushed him back. “Says who?”

  “I got seniority, says who!” The two fell to fighting, giving the rest of the men something else to cheer about while adding to the spirit of violent celebration that had infused the assembly and sparking more laughter among their colleagues.

  “McGill gets seconds!” Lahood was laughing as he fell down on top of the distraught Megan. “He found her. And after him,” Lahood glanced meaningfully over their heads.

  A sordid grin spread over Club’s thick features as he saw how the wind was blowing his way. He abandoned the monitor. Left to the laws of hydraulics, the water cannon immediately went vertical, spraying into the sky like a giant fountain as its operator rushed to join the others. No one seemed to mind that it was soaking the entire camp. Logic and reason had given way to impulses uglier and more primitive.