Heart of the West (14 page)

"I expect you gentlemen have been friends for a long time," she said.

Pogey wiped his mouth with his sleeve. "I been soppin' gravy out the same skillet with this ol' son of a... gun for nigh on fifty years."

It was like a marriage, Clementine thought. Their petty bickering only hiding a deep fondness that had built up over time and shared memories. She tried to imagine how she and Gus would be with each other fifty years from now and found that she could not yet see her future beyond Gus's next bucket of brew and the setting of the sun. "And how do you come to be here in Rainbow Springs?"

Nash grinned, obviously pleased things were taking a turn toward conversation. "Well, we was just passing through, and Pogey was feelin' kinda parched, so we decided to wet our gullets at the Best in the West. We got into a card game, and durned if we didn't win a silver mine off some old geezer who shoulda known better'n to try and draw a fourth jack when Pogey had three queens showing on the table plain as daylight."

He chuckled, shaking his head. "We named that mine the Four Jacks as a way of reminding ourselves not to be as big a fools when it comes to the pasteboards as the fella that went before us."

He fell quiet then, and in the shadowed light of the cabin, his gaze searched out Clementine. She imagined she could see a wisdom in his strange owl-like eyes, an understanding. She imagined he knew of those aching, empty places in her heart and of the girlhood that had driven her to marry Gus and follow him out here to this alien place. She imagined that he could name the missing things for her and tell her where to find them.

Nash blinked, his gaze breaking away from hers, and she saw only an old miner who smelled of sour sweat and liked to talk. "We been working that hole off 'n' on ever since. Which reminds me, Gus, of what we rode out here to tell ya—"

"Well, hallelujah," Pogey said. "Ye're finally circlin' up to the point."

Nash turned his big sad eyes onto his partner. "You're wearing me out with all your complaining about my talking. You don't think I can be a pithy man, a man economical with his speech? From now on, if you want pithy, I'll be pithy. I'll boil the whole blamed tellin' of it down to one pithy word..." He looked at Gus, licked his lips, and drew in a big breath. "Bonanza."

Gus laughed and wagged his head. "What?"

"There, you see, Pogey, what happens when a man gets pithy? He ain't understood, that's what happens."

"You ain't understood 'cause you never make any sense. Let me tell him, or 'tis never gettin' done." Pogey braced his elbows on the table and leaned forward. "You know the Four Jacks mine..."

"I ought to," Gus said. "Aside from the fact that Nash here was just jawing about it, I'm supposed to own a twenty percent share in return for grubstaking you old sourdoughs for the last two years. So far it's been nothing but twenty percent of muck and gangue."

"Yeah, well, we too was beginnin' to think that ol' claim had about as much poke to it as a dead man's dick—ugh!" He grunted as the jug slammed into his belly. A blush spread over his jowls and big ears, turning them the dark purple of overripe apples. "Beg pardon, ma'am."

"Let me tell it," Nash said. "So's the missus can be spared your foul tongue. We was sort of fiddling around one day when Pogey bit into a vein of quartz that looked promising. So we went along to Sam Woo's and got ourselves some—"

"Giant powder," Pogey finished for him. "We had Sam add it to your tick, Gus. Hope you don't mind."

Gus waved a hand. "Why should I mind? The Rocking R's already so deep in debt, what's a little more?"

"That's what we figured." Pogey took a swig of whiskey, then rested the jug on the ledge of his barrel gut. "We blasted out a nice piece of that quartz and sent it to the assayer's office over in Butte Camp, and damned—durned if it didn't prove to be veined with silver."

Nash produced a small flat stone out of his vest pocket. It flashed like a new dime as he dropped it into Gus's hand. "There's a whole lode of it down there where that come from. And it looks to go on for just about forever."

Gus rubbed the silver nugget between his fingers. Then he startled Clementine by leaping to his feet and letting to go with a loud yipping yell. He swung her up into his arms and they danced around the table, his laughter bouncing off the rafters.

When he let her go, she was breathing hard. Her cheeks felt flushed, and her hair was tumbling loose from the tight knot at the nape of her neck. Gus's face glowed like a child's with his excitement. "Here you go, girl," he said, tossing the silver stone at her.

She caught it, smiling because this was the Gus McQueen she liked best, the Gus of dreams and laughter, the Gus she knew she could grow to love. She held the stone up to the light of the window, marveling at how it shone. "I don't understand... What is it?"

"An assayer's button."

"But what does it mean?" The stone felt warm in her hand, magical. "Are we rich?"

Gus smacked his hands together, laughing some more. "It means maybe we're gonna be twenty percent of rich."

"Thing is, it ain't all high grade," Nash said. "And it's hard rock. It's goin' to be expensive to dig it out."

Gus dropped back onto the nail-keg stool, quieter, though the shine of dreaming still brightened his eyes. "Hard-rock mining does need the proper machinery to drive through the rock to get at the veins, and you need mills and chemists to reduce the ore to metal. Y'all won't be able to do it yourselves. You'll have to lease the mine to a consortium."

Pogey blinked. "Huh?"

"A consortium, a group of investors. Men with the money it takes to run a full-scale hard-rock mining operation. How it works is, you'll lease the Four Jacks to a consortium in return for a piece of the mine's yield. A percentage of the profits, so to speak."

Nash blinked. "Uh... we was kinda hoping you'd arrange that for us, Gus. We was figuring them fancy educated ways of yours would set better with the money boys over in Butte Camp and Helena." Nash sighed, and his face took on a mournful cast. "It ain't easy being rich. Already things've got all complicated on us, and we ain't even started yet. There was a time when a man could pull up a sagebrush, shake off a dollar's worth of gold into a pan, call it a day's work, and be satisfied."

Pogey thrust out his chest, hooking his thumbs in his black suspenders. "Me, I like the feel of bein' rich. Some folk who don't know better might call it a complication. Those of us with vision and smarts—we call it progress."

"I suppose I could ride on over to Butte Camp and talk to some of those big leasing outfits," Gus said. "It'll have to wait until after the spring roundup, though."

"You better hop to it with that roundup," Nash said. "Else the calves now sucking your cows are going to be wearing some renegade rustler's brand."

"Yup," Pogey said, shaking his head. "That Iron Nose sure is one hell of an artist with a running iron." He leaned toward Gus and pitched his voice into a rough whisper, as if the rustlers had their ears to the windows even as he spoke. "You heard what happened to poor ol' MacDonald? Well, there's been talk about holding a necktie party for them murdering, cattle-thievin' Injuns." He made a fist and jerked it by his neck as if pulling on a rope. "Some folk are sayin' we oughta start right now with Joe Proud Bear. Others say wait and let him lead us to his pa, then we can have ourselves a family lynchin'."

At the mention of Indians, Clementine's gaze had strayed to the gouge in the wall. She wondered how MacDonald had died—had he been hacked into pieces with a tomahawk? No, she remembered Snake-Eye saying the man had been shot. She had never met MacDonald, only seen his coffin.

Ever since coming to Montana, her thoughts had been haunted by fears of Indians. Late at night, lying beside Gus, the sound of the wind caressing the cottonwoods easily became moccasined feet rustling through the grass outside the window. Yet more than by the massacring savages of her imagination she was haunted by the Indian girl and her babies, and how her man had roped her like an animal and dragged her away because she'd shamed him with her begging. And how everyone in Rainbow Springs, including her, had let it happen.

She was standing by Gus now, and she felt a latent tension within him, like a coiled whip. She laid her hand on his arm; it was hard, muscular, a man's arm with a man's strength and a man's capacity for violence. "That Indian boy," she said, "he has a wife and children. If he's stealing, maybe it's to feed them. It isn't right for ordinary citizens to take the law into their own hands. That's what courts and judges and juries are for."

He swung his head around, and she was startled by the raw anger on his face. "You people from the States, y'all just don't understand. There are stockmen at the railheads who'll buy anything on four hooves, cheap and no questions asked, then ship em back to Chicago and make a nice fat profit. Those same stockmen own the judges and the courts and the juries, Clem. They've been letting cattle thieves go for years. There comes a time when a man's got to protect what's his or he can't call himself a man."

"Rustlers have always got their necks stretched first and been tried later," Pogey said. "And these here are renegades we're talkin' about. Half-breeds. Most folk don't think a man with red skin got a right to any trial."

"Breechclouted savages, the lot of them." Gus gripped her arm, pulling her against him, as if he could physically force her to line up on his side. "Don't fret yourself with it, girl. This is men's work and is nothing to do with you."

"But it does have to do with me, and what you are planning is wrong—"

"That's enough!" He slammed the flat of his hand down on the table, knocking over her recipe book and sending a cloud of flour puffing into the air. "That's enough talk about cattle rustling," he said, calmer. "I'll do what's got to be done. You let me take care of it."

She pulled away from him, swallowing down the words she wanted to shout back at him. She rubbed the sting on her arm where he'd held her, where his fingers had bitten into her flesh. He had a right to chastise her. She had shamed him by arguing in front of the other men. He was her husband and he ought to know what was right, except that in this instance she couldn't help but believe he was wrong. And it was so hard to accept, so hard...

Gus drew lines through the sweat on the pail of beer he'd barely touched. "You seen my brother in Rainbow Springs any time this past week?" he finally said, after the silence had grown uncomfortable.

Pogey cleared his throat. "Ain't seen him precisely. We heard him. Heard of him, that is."

A muscle bunched in Gus's jaw. "I understand there's a new girl at the Best in the West."

"You mean Nancy? Naw, she ain't up to Rafferty's standards. Not only is she so bucktoothed she could eat an apple through a keyhole, she's as hard-used as a cowpoke's boots." He cast a sheepish look at Clementine. "Pardon me, ma'am. Nope, all the while you been gone, Gus, every man in the RainDance country 'cept Rafferty has been calicoing that Hannah Yorke and gettin' snubbed proper for all their pains. Then last Friday night he saunters on into the Best in the West, gives her a look, and damn—durn if she didn't succumb. He's been pokin' her ever since as if to make up for lost opportunities... no offense, ma'am."

Beneath the thick curve of his mustache, Gus's mouth took on a bitter slant. A shadow from the rafters slanted across the upper half of his face, obscuring his eyes, but Clementine didn't need to see his face to know his thoughts. His brother was openly sinning with Mrs. Yorke, a woman who wore violet silk and red-tasseled shoes. Hannah Yorke, the town harlot.

"I reckon we oughta be making tracks," Nash said, creaking to his feet and giving his belt a hitch. He nudged Pogey with the thick round toe of his boot. "Hump yore tail, pard."

Pogey pried himself off the nail keg, belching and scratching and swaying slightly once he got vertical. They took their leave, teasing Gus some more about his contented state of matrimony as they shuffled out the door.

Clementine took shelter out of the sun beneath the eaves to wave them on their way. Gus went with them as far as the corral. Pogey rode the sway-backed burro, and Nash walked alongside. They passed the jug back and forth between them. They didn't look like the owners of a silver mine. She wondered if being rich would change them.

The old biscuit-colored dog raised his head and watched them go, but he didn't leave the shadow of the barn. For hours he'd been lying there, flat on his belly, resting his nose on his paws. He pined for Gus's brother, who had stayed gone for three days, courting Mrs. Yorke, the town harlot. The dog had walked around Clementine and sniffed her once and then ignored her, as if he too didn't expect her to be here long. He had a strange milky white cast over one eye. Gus said he'd been bitten by a rattler and should have died. Instead he'd been left blind, or nearly so.

Gus didn't come back to the cabin, but went instead to the side of the barn where the buckboard rested. He'd mumbled something about having to take the buckboard back to Snake-Eye or buy it off him. Clementine knew what he was about. He was going into town to fetch his brother home before the man brought more shame and embarrassment upon the family. Her family now.

The misty light of morning had flattened into day. The meadows of wild hay that ran the length of the valley rippled in the constant wind. She could smell the hay, sweet and green. She tilted her head to watch a lone chicken hawk draw circles in the sky. The sky, always the sky. The vast emptiness of the sky numbed her mind and made her dizzy.

Lifting her skirts high above the mud, she crossed the yard toward Gus. She could feel the mountains, bristling with black pines, watching over her shoulder. The wind and the sky and the mountains always made her uneasy. They lured her, laid claim to her, and they frightened her. They stirred the same sort of restless feelings in her that Gus did in bed at night. And along with the restlessness that gripped her heart, there were still the hollow, echoing spaces that needed to be filled. The yearnings of her childhood had followed her to Montana, or she had brought them with her.