Pale Rider (18 page)

“He didn’t go into town,” Hull informed them. “Leastwise, I don’t think he did.”

“Well then, where is he?” Conway demanded to know.

Hull shot him a discouraged look. “He ain’t here.”

Ev Gossage finally unraveled what Hull was trying, but unable, to say. “You mean he’s gone?”

“Well, I ain’t sure—I mean, not exactly.” Conscious that all eyes were on him again, Hull thought fast. “I expect he, uh, went in to tell Lahood that we turned him down.”

Gossage and Henderson exchanged a glance while Biggs looked confused, as though he’d heard what Hull had said but couldn’t quite square it with what he knew to be reasonable. But none of them called Hull’s bluff. There was no reason to challenge the other man’s assumption. After all, wasn’t he the Preacher’s closest friend, and wouldn’t he be the one most likely to know what the Preacher was likely to do?

“Well, that makes sense—I guess,” Henderson murmured.

“Sure,” agreed Bossy. “Somebody had to tell Lahood. I’m just glad nobody nominated me.”

“Nobody’d nominate you to catch dogs,” his partner growled.

His confidence boosted by the lack of a challenge, Hull decided to play out his string a little further. “But before he left, he said that if anything happened while he was away, we should try and do like he’d do if he was still here.”

“Shit.” Bossy’s vocabulary being somewhat limited, the old sourdough relied more on shifts in inflection to convey his feelings instead of a change of expletives.

Ev Gossage looked suddenly thoughtful, as if marginally inspired by Hull’s ambiguous reassurance that the Preacher would return soon. “I don’t know. Suppose we
could
dry-pan for a couple of days, come to think of it.”

“Why not?” Henderson indicated the feeble remnant of the creek. “Somebody might get lucky and find some color in the rocks. You can’t pan in water that’s over your belt. This is our chance to find out what’s been swept into the middle of the creekbed.”

“That’s it!” Hull said with mock enthusiasm. “I know he’d hate to see us quit without we gave it our best.”

“I dunno.” Biggs was older than the rest of them, and therefore not nearly as hopeful. “Dry-panning’s awful hard work. I never knew a man made the price o’ a sack of flour doin’ it.”

“Aw, come on, Biggs,” Henderson urged him, “let’s play her out for a couple of days. What can we lose? And the Preacher’ll figure something out when he gets back.”

“Sure . . . that’s right . . .the Preacher’ll know what to do . . .” the men murmured encouragingly to each other.

“Won’t he, Hull?” Gossage asked the older man with the benign naïveté of ever hopeful youth.

“Sure he will, Ev,” Hull replied blandly.

“One nugget.” Spider was already scanning the sand and rocks with new intensity. “Like to find me one big nugget. I’d shove it so far up Coy Lahood’s ass it’d wink at him when he washed his teeth.”

Gossage let out a whoop. “You tell ’em, Spider! Come on, Jake!” He led Henderson in a dash up the hill toward their cabins to break the news to the womenfolk that the situation was well if temporarily in hand. Their lives would go on as usual—at least for a few more days. Stability and a sense of immediate purpose lent the younger men courage.

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 California, 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.