Pale Rider (14 page)

If only so many of the fools weren’t on his side.

Hull couldn’t see the buckboard clearly as he emerged from Blankenship’s because his arms were piled high with goods.

“. . . Paid off both accounts in full, Sarah,” he was saying as he picked his way down the steps, “and had enough left over to pay up Spider’s! He’ll pay me back when he can. He’s a funny old coot but he’s honest.

“You should’ve been in there to see Blankenship’s face.” He stepped off the last step onto the street. “He couldn’t believe it when I showed him the nugget. Had to weigh it out three times, and he still wanted to melt it down to make sure I hadn’t gone and wrapped some gold around a lead ingot, but he finally—” He broke off in midsentence when he saw that both women were sitting rigidly upright in the back of the wagon and staring across the street.

Of their protector there was no sign.

“Where is he?” Hull asked sharply.

“In there. Josh Lahood came and asked him to go with him and they went in there.” Sarah nodded at the Lahood building.

Hull took a deep breath, then carefully deposited the supplies in the rear of the wagon—except for the brand-new axe handle. This he hefted in both hands as he came back around to the front of the wagon. What he’d do once inside the warehouse he didn’t know for sure, only that it was incumbent on him to do
something.

As it turned out, events saved him from himself.

“Look,” Megan whispered, “they’re coming out.”

Sure enough, the porch was filling up with Lahood’s men as they slowly filed out the front door. Hull hitched up his jeans and started toward them, utterly terrified but equally unwilling to abandon his newfound friend, no matter how foolish it had been of him to go with Josh Lahood. Maybe if he raised enough of a ruckus it would . . .

He stopped. The Preacher appeared, pushing easily past the roughnecks. He started to cross the street. No one moved to challenge him. As soon as he saw Hull advancing to meet him he raised a hand in a reassuring wave. Rescued from his own bravery, the miner let the axe handle drop to his side. Behind him Sarah sagged visibly with relief while Megan could barely suppress a triumphant smile.

The two men met in the middle of the street, and Hull joined the Preacher in walking back to the wagon.

“What were you doing in there?” Hull didn’t try to hide the concern in his voice. “You might never have come out.”

“Unlikely,” the Preacher told him calmly. “Lahood invited me in for a drink.” He glanced down at the axe handle dangling from the miner’s hand and smiled. “Thanks for the thought.”

Hull looked from his companion back to the Lahood building. “You were in there all the time I was in Blankenship’s?”

“Yep. Lahood and I, we had us a talk.”

“About what?” Hull asked curiously.

They had almost reached the buckboard. “It concerns everyone working in the canyon, not just me and you and the Wheelers. Best thing to do is tell everyone about it at the same time. Tonight.”

“If you think that’s best, Preacher, then it’s all right with me. But don’t expect me to take it easy on the ride back.”

The tall man just grinned.

VII

The bonfire fed on summer-dried juniper. It pushed back the chill of the Sierra night and illuminated the faces of the men who sat or stood on its perimeter. Young and old, they represented all the families who had chosen to settle in the canyon as well as those solitary men who sought similar riches there.

At the moment they were silent, listening intently to the stranger who’d appeared so suddenly among them. Only when he’d concluded his talk, which primarily involved the conveying of Lahood’s buy-out offer to them, was there a rush of hands skyward.

“Aye—aye!” The chorus of affirmation rang out around the circle. Hull Barret performed a quick count.

“All those opposed,” he asked when he’d totaled the number of upthrust hands.

“
Me,
dang it!” The solitary voice was touched by time but still rang out clear and unmistakeable.

Everyone turned to face the man who’d sung out against the majority. Rising from where he’d been sitting, Spider Conway moved closer to the fire so that his neighbors could see him clearly. He tried to sting every one of them with his eyes. Hull watched him too, as did the Preacher, who sat on a nearby log.

“Aw, come on, Spider, it’s gettin’ late!” one man said tiredly.

“Yeah, we’ve already taken the vote,” said another.

“I’ll have my say! I was here first and, by the looks of it, I may be here last, but I’m entitled to tell you what I think about this business and you’re all damn well obligated to listen.” A few groans greeted this declaration, along with the admonitions of those who felt it only fair to listen with an open mind to whatever the canyon’s oldest resident might have to say.

Conway turned a slow circle as he spoke, trying to impress his feelings as well as his argument on every man there.

“Me and Coy Lahood seen a lot o’ ground together, startin’ back in ’55. I probably know as much about how his mind works as any man alive, including that fool boy o’ his, and there’s one thing I can tell you for sure about this business of buyin’ all of us out: greedy Coy Lahood may be, but he ain’t no fool.”

“We all know that,” said Everson boredly. “Get to the point, Spider. If you’ve got one.”

The old miner gazed sharply at the man who’d spoken. “It’s the point you want, is it? All right. You just think on this: if Coy Lahood’s willin’ to cough up a thousand dollars a claim, including for those that ain’t give up more’n an ounce or two o’ dust, you can be damn sure he ain’t doin’ it out of the goodness of his heart. He couldn’t be, ’cause there ain’t no goodness
in
Coy Lahood’s heart! The only way he’d come to part with that much money is if he knows that each claim’s worth five or ten times as much as he’s payin’ us for ’em!”

It was clear from their reactions that this thought had not occurred to any of the other miners. A murmur ran around the circle, and a few men began to voice their agreement. You didn’t have to like Spider Conway (and for assorted reasons some of the men did not) to appreciate his logic. What he said about Lahood and his motives made sense.

Then Jake Henderson spoke up. “I ain’t going to argue with you on what you’ve said, Spider. The way Lahood works, maybe each claim
is
worth more than a thousand.

“But the way we work, we’re lucky to see a thousand dollars in a year. Some of us ain’t never seen that much money, least of all at one time.” He spat into the sand. “Me, I’m plumb tuckered out. My hands are wore to the bone from swinging a shovel. Me and the woman are tired of freezing through every winter without any meat on the table but what I can kill. I ain’t none too keen on sittin’ out another one. I say we take the offer. There’s always the chance to move on, maybe up north Oregon ways, and strike it rich on another claim. One where a bunch of cutthroats don’t come riding down on you once a week.”

There was plenty of support around the fire for Henderson’s way of thinking, but Conway refused to give in.

“First off, you know as well as I, Jake, that all the easy placer claims were panned out or bought up years ago. The only gold that’s left in this country is stuff that’s harder to get at, up here in the rocks. As for up Oregon way, way I hear tell it that country’s good for fishin’, farmin’, and loggin’ trees, but there ain’t enough gold up there to fill a tooth.” He spat into the fire. The wind bore away the hiss.

“You ain’t lookin’ at your own claim straight. What about that nugget Hull here washed out this morning?”

“Freak luck,” Henderson snapped. “You’ve been mining right next to him for more’n two years and you ain’t made a strike like that.”

“Thanks for remindin’ me,” Spider replied. A couple of the men chuckled. “I keep tellin’ you.” He turned a slow circle. “I keep tellin’ all of you that the real gold’s here, just like Barret found. It’s just down under the top gravel is all, and you got to pan that or sluice that away to get at the pay dirt.”

“Pay dirt my ass,” grumbled an unseen speaker.

“All right then, tell me this,” Conway said, trying another track, “suppose one of you struck a thousand bucks in nuggets? Would you cash in your claim, quit your diggin’s and blow town? Or would you keep diggin’ for some more?”

The miners set to arguing among themselves. A few were ready to leave immediately, like Henderson, while the majority considered all the work and hope, all the long days and endless dreams they’d already poured into their claims. But even to the latter group, Lahood’s offer was tempting. A thousand dollars in the hand was a tough nut to turn down when all you had to use for a counterweight was hope.

Spider listened hard to the conversations, trying to determine which way the wind was blowing. Then he had a new thought and spun to peer down at the tall man who’d come among them.

“You’ve heard what I’ve had to say and what the others have had to say, Preacher. What do you think we ought to do?” Other voices took up the query in a rush.

The man with the collar sat on his log and considered. Finally he looked up at them, first at Conway, then Henderson, and then the rest.

“What I think doesn’t count. It’s your sweat he’s buying. My life isn’t here. I don’t lay claim to one foot of this canyon, and so I can’t have any say in the business.”

This reply was not the one the miners wanted to hear. They didn’t want honesty from the stranger. They wanted him to make the decision they themselves were unable to make. They wanted him to give them The Answer.

He listened to their expostulations. “Maybe you all should sleep on it, decide in the morning. Doesn’t pay a man to be hasty with his future.”

Some of the men were willing to accept this advice, but not the tenacious Conway. “What if we can’t decide in the morning?” He gestured toward his vacillating neighbors. “We ain’t havin’ much luck makin’ any decisions now. I don’t see that a night’s sleep is goin’ to make much difference. We could argue on it from now ’til doomsday without reachin’ a consensus, and we ain’t got ’til doomsday.”

“No, you don’t,” the Preacher agreed quietly.

“What happens if we take your advice and we do wait until morning and we still can’t decide? What then?”

The Preacher was using a piece of driftwood to trace a pattern in the sand in front of him. No one thought to look at it. They were all watching his face, waiting expectantly for him to tell them what to do.

“I expect,” he finally said, “that Lahood would take that as the same as saying ‘no.’ ”

“And then what? More riders?” Ev Gossage wanted to know.

The Preacher hesitated a moment before replying. “Something more than that, I’m afraid. He said he’d call in a U.S. Marshal.”

Hull Barret frowned. “Is that supposed to frighten us? Hell, I wish he would bring some real law down here. What kind of threat is that? We don’t have anything to fear from the law.”

“You don’t understand.” The Preacher looked up at his friend. “There’s the law as it’s written. That’s the kind of law that’s represented by your claims. Then there’s the law that some men know how to twist to suit their own ends. That’s Lahood’s kind of law. And the poorer you are, and the farther away from any other kind of law, the more twisted it can become and the easier it is to twist. This man Lahood’s talking about bringing in isn’t just any Marshal.”

There was something in the Preacher’s tone that subdued even the bellicose Spider Conway. “What are you gettin’ at, Preacher? What kind of Marshal is Lahood talkin’ about?”

“His name’s Stockburn, but that doesn’t tell a man much. You have to know more than his name to know what kind of man he is. I don’t know how he ever managed to get himself appointed Marshal, but that doesn’t matter. Not everything that happens on Earth happens for the good. Fact remains that he is what he is. ‘There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ ”

Conway made a quick scan of the solemn circle of miners. “Ain’t nobody here named Horatio, Preacher. Ain’t never been.”

The tall man did not smile. “There’s more than just the Marshal. Stockburn’s got six deputies been with him a long time. Six—and they’ll uphold whatever law pays them the most. Killing’s their way of life.” He paused to study their faces. “I want you all to know that, because unless you accept Lahood’s offer, it’s likely you’ll be meeting up with them.”

Until the Preacher’s short speech the miners had only been uncertain and confused. Now a new element had been introduced into the equation they were attempting to resolve: fear.

Spider Conway was as puzzled as any of them. The words the Preacher had spoken weren’t the ones the old sourdough had been prepared to hear. He stared at the tall man.

“You talk like there’s no doubt in your mind about this fella. You know this Stockburn?”

“I’ve heard of him,” was the soft reply.

It was dead quiet around the fire. Then Hull Barret stepped out of the circle. “All right, now we know what we’re up against. Me, I think it stinks. Lahood ain’t just sayin’ ‘take my offer.’ He’s sayin’ ‘take my offer or else.’ It’s one thing to offer to buy a man out, but rubbin’ his face in it ain’t right.”