LEROY HAMLIN GLOWERED at Calhoun and put his shirt over his blocky torso, shrugging it over his great shoulders. Matthew Ruarke was sitting on his spread coat, looking squint-eyed at the river. Phil Mercy came over and said, “Well, what do we do now?”
“Move on,” said Calhoun.
Catherine Goodfellow sat near her father by the bank, combing fingers through her long hair. Phil Mercy said, “Just a pleasant morning stroll,” and smiled wryly.
Matthew Ruarke got to his feet and picked up his coat, and folded it carefully over his arm. “Let’s get going,” he said, and turned upstream. “The river curves around. If we cut across country we’ll save four miles.”
“And run smack into every Indian west of El Paso,” said Phil Mercy.
Goodfellow came up and said, “Indians hereabouts are peaceful. Apaches don’t roam this far west.”
Calhoun said, “If the people from the stage station are looking for us, they’ll travel the river road, expecting us to keep to it. We’ll take the long way.”
Matthew Ruarke shrugged. “Are we going or not?”
“Relax,” Calhoun told him, and led the way to the road. They stopped for ten minutes’ rest at a bend of the river. Leroy Hamlin never spoke; his malevolent glance shuttled between Mercy and Calhoun and finally settled on Catherine Goodfellow, who noticed his attention and, made uncomfortable by it, stood up and said, “Well, let’s go,” and set out with a swinging stride.
Phil Mercy was lying on the ground, leaning on one elbow, listlessly pulling stalks of dry yellow grass from the ground, and looking as though at the moment the future was to him a very black thing. Calhoun said gently, “Come on, Phil.”
They went up the road under a hot blast of sunlight that blistered their backs through their clothing. Now and then they went through a spindly growth of trees that gave a few minutes’ shade; they drank frequently of the river. In all directions the land spread flat and arid, beaten into a lifeless gray-yellow by the sun. Only the river was vital, piercing the desolation of the plain. When a breeze came up it was hot, like the breath of a naked flame; soon the men took to dunking themselves periodically in the river so that the water soaked into their clothes and evaporated, cooling them, as they walked. Finally Catherine Goodfellow joined them in this adventure; afterward her blouse clung like skin to the thrust of her breasts.
Shortly before noon Price Goodfellow judged they were within five miles of the way station. They came across the carcass of a butchered and half-eaten mule. Smoke still curled from the coals of a fire. Matthew Ruarke said, “Indians—Mojaves, I’d guess.”
“That’s one of our coach mules,” said Goodfellow. “The Indians made off with the others, I suspect. That’s why no one’s come looking for us.”
Leroy Hamlin walked to the half-raw carcass, his nose wrinkling. He knelt and tore a hunk of meat off the carcass and gnawed on it.
Calhoun said, “Cut a piece for the lady, Leroy.”
“Cut it yourself.”
Calhoun grinned wickedly. Leroy threw the bone away and stood up. “Damn you,” he growled, “you ain’t God.”
“Ease off,” Matthew Ruarke said. “Leroy’s right, we all need food. Who’s got a knife?”
At the way station the owner regarded them with amazement and finally said, “Sorry I ain’t got a wagon for you. I can borrow you company saddle horses to get you as far as the Ten Springs station. Burt down there’s got a hack you can use to get you the rest of the way if they ain’t a stage goin’ through there. Otherwise you can wait here for the next eastbound, but that ain’t for four days.”
They spent the afternoon unwinding—bathing, napping, drinking; they ate a heavy meal and retired just after sundown. In the morning Price Goodfellow signed a rental note on seven company horses and saddles, and they rode out in a party.
Ten Springs was fifty miles away; they were fifteen miles short of it when they camped for the night, sheltered in the lee of a cliff. Their camp was high up in a rock-strewn pass through a range of barren mountains.
Calhoun was half asleep when a shadow moved above him—Catherine. “I brought your saddle blanket,” she said, dropping it by him. “It will be cold up here by midnight.”
“Obliged.”
She crouched down by him. “What are you thinking?”
“Nothing much.”
“That man you shot yesterday,” she said. “Or was it the day before? You could have killed him but you didn’t.”
“I had time to aim.”
“No,” she said. “The fact is you’re not as hard as you like to pretend. There’s a human being inside that mask of iron.”
“I tried to tell you that in Yuma,” he said, smiling a little. He moved so that he could see her face better. He said, “It’ll be good when we don’t have to worry about road agents anymore.”
“It was exciting,” she said. “Except for the poor driver, I don’t regret it.”
“You’re a strange child,” he told her. “You can’t hold it back—someday there’ll be farms and towns right around here. It won’t be too long before this country’s settled.”
“And that will be a crying shame,” she said.
He looked at her; he could not wholly make out her features but this didn’t bother him. She was calm and practical in some ways; she was disposed to take an impulsive view of things at times; she had will and self-confidence. But sometimes he was not certain about her. Her silences might contain deep wisdom or they might only hide childish dreams of exotic wonders. She suspected change and yet she always sought new excitements.
Phil Mercy drifted up and emerged from the dark. “Couldn’t sleep.” After a moment he observed, “We all belong to a pretty exclusive little club now, don’t we?” He was looking at Catherine.
When she made no reply, Mercy said, “Quiet tonight.”
“Be glad of that,” said the girl.
“Yes,” he said, and added, “It’s been just another dull trip.”
He took out a cigar and rolled it between his fingers, but put it away without lighting it. His fingers drummed restlessly on his knees as he crouched beside Catherine. The silence seemed to bother her; she said, “What do you plan to do in the camps?”
“I don’t know yet,” said Mercy. “I’m a gambler by trade but I’m a little sick of myself. I’d like to work with my muscles for a while—there’s a kind of magic in that, it cures a lot of things.” He looked at Calhoun as though he resented Calhoun’s presence, and after a moment got up and went away.
In a while Catherine also got up, with a soft, “Good night, Sam,” and walked into the night, leaving Calhoun alone in the cool evening. He listened to the little dry sounds of darkness and then rolled over and pulled his blanket up about his shoulders.
A shape loomed some distance away and stood wholly still for some time: Leroy Hamlin. Calhoun watched him with some amusement. “Good evening,” he said.
Leroy growled softly and swung about, and padded away on his bare feet. Calhoun grinned once, and lay back to sleep.
At ten in the morning they raised the Ten Springs station across the flats. Calhoun rode behind Leroy Hamlin, not trusting the man; all during the trip Calhoun had been baiting Leroy, trying to see how the man would react. Leroy was dog-like in his simplicity, dog-like in his animal way of living, and—perhaps—dog-like in his loyalty to Matthew Ruarke. Calhoun wondered just what kind of bidding Leroy did for the deceptively easy Ruarke. There was a quick agile intelligence in Matthew Ruarke, and Calhoun said to himself, “If there’s trouble in the camps, it will be tied up with those two.” Calhoun’s brown, weathered hands fingered the neck reins as he rode; a wisp of dark hair fluttered under his leveled hat brim. He was a high, strong shape on horseback, making a shadow against the bright, clear plain. Looking behind him, he allowed himself to enjoy the grace and beauty with which Catherine Goodfellow sat her saddle.
They reached the sod way station and turned in their horses. A mail hack, a lightweight brougham, was on its way into the camps, and picked them up at eleven o’clock; at one it stopped at another way station and the driver said, “Half an hour for lunch,” getting down and taking the harness from his teams to change horses.
Calhoun got down and helped Catherine to the ground; he slipped his hand under her elbow and turned her toward the station, and Phil Mercy came along to take the girl’s free arm, grinning brashly at Calhoun.
Leroy Hamlin and Matthew Ruarke left the hack at this way-station, taking a mud-wagon to Washington Camp. The hack took the rest of them higher into green hills and presently climbed up a tortuous gorge at the head of which was the new sprawling camp of Mule Canyon.
The depot was a tent with a rough-hewn plank platform and a litter of corrals behind. It sat at the lower end of town—town, for the moment, consisting of perhaps three dozen wooden structures and a few hundred tents and lean-tos and shanties built of rock, brush, cast-off adobe bricks—whatever materials had come to hand. There didn’t seem to be any regular pattern of streets, except that along the creek that flowed down the center of the gorge there was a wide-open tilt of earth, trampled into an ooze of mud, which eventually would probably serve as the central street—if the camp survived long enough.
From the look of it it was a cheerless camp. At least it was so by day: the gamblers were sleeping, the miners were away working. A few mule trains of freight-goods piled the slopes, a certain number of pedestrians tramped the gulch in jackboots; the sun beat down on it, throwing black shadows and harsh glares.
Calhoun stepped stiffly from the hack and waited to give Catherine his arm. He noticed the speculative shine in Price Goodfellow’s eyes when the man looked at him. Goodfellow said, “Let me know if you need help getting set up, Calhoun.”
It came as a surprise, that statement out of the blue. Calhoun only nodded briefly, digesting it, and then Goodfellow was going away with Catherine. She lifted her skirts to clear the mud. Once she looked back at Calhoun; she was too far away to read her expression.
Phil Mercy stood on the platform brushing dust from his clothes. “Well,” he said, “we got here.” And added after a moment, “The hard way.” He stretched his thin arms and beat a short rataplan on his chest. “I’ve gone sour. Think I’ll try to stake a claim and do a little honest labor.” He gave Calhoun a tired unsteady smile and walked stiffly into the center of town.
In no particular hurry, Calhoun stood before the depot, rocking on his heels. One of the stage-line hostlers came out of the tent and stood a little distance away, drinking out of a tin cup, squinting at the sky. A lanky towheaded man came ambling down out of the tangle of town and raised a hand: “Hey, O’Hara.”
The hostler peered at the newcomer over the rim of his cup. When the newcomer came up, O’Hara said, “Top o’ the mornin’, Shelby.”
With a broad white-toothed grin the lanky newcomer said, “You damned Irishmen. It’s not morning—why don’t you give me top of the afternoon?”
“It don’t quite have the same lilt,” the hostler said. “What kin I be doing for you, Shelby?”
“The high-side wagon out back. Are you selling it?”
O’Hara grinned. “For the right price you can have anything I got, save me wife—and that’s just perhaps.”
“The wagon, O’Hara?”
“Selling it? Sure and I am—and you’ll not find a better mud-wagon in the whole puking camp.”
“Uh-huh,” Shelby said skeptically.
Calhoun watched this with idle amusement; he tiptoed himself back in the shade of the tent-awning and fashioned a cigarette. One boot rested on the war-bag.
O’Hara said, “What would you be wantin’ a big rig like that for?”
“Figure to go into competition with you buzzards. Plenty of room around here for another freight outfit—and I can undercut your ridiculous prices easy.”
O’Hara grinned broadly. “In that case,” he said, “the price o’ the wagon just went up, Shelby my friend.”
“Now,” Shelby said soothingly, “is that fair, amigo?” He had a slow easy Texas drawl and a sparkle in his eyes. Calhoun watched him walk around in a slow bowed circle and then come to a halt, shoot his head back, and grin at O’Hara. Shelby said, “And what did the price go up to, or do you mind me asking?”
“More’n you can afford, dear boy.”
“I’ll need a few span of mules too, just to get started.”
“Started, finished—’tis all the same the way you’re goin’ about it, Shelby. What the divil d’you know about toolin’ one of these rigs?”
“I was weaned on one,” Shelby said. “My daddy hauled freight from San Jacinto to San Antone.” He rubbed his face and said slyly, “That wagon’s all dried up. May need new axles, maybe even wheels. The tongue’s pretty splintery.”
“You’re talkin’ to a horse-trader,” O’Hara said. “Maybe you forgot that?”
“Not for a minute, amigo,” Shelby said with easy humor. “Now, then, let’s talk gold.”
“You hit a pocket?”
“That’s it,” Shelby said. “And before I lose it all across Matt Ruarke’s crooked tables, I figure to get it invested. In that wagon. How much you want for it?”
O’Hara swiveled his head around, sweeping the horizons with a pretense at concentration. He poked his tongue into his cheek, bulging it out, and said thoughtfully, “Well, I’m thinking a fair price might be somewhere around, say, fourteen ounces pure.” He grinned with abrupt innocence, rubbing his palms together.
“Why, you Goddamned highwayman!” Shelby roared. “Five hundred dollars for that broken-down wreck?”
“It’s a seller’s market, dear boy,” O’Hara purred.
“I’ll tell you what—you throw in twelve mules and a year’s supply of axle grease, and I’ll pay you the fourteen ounces.”
O’Hara emitted a bellow of laughter. Tears came to his eyes and he bent nearly double. Shelby watched him with a puzzled uplift of one eyebrow. O’Hara said, “You think maybe I’m running a charity bazaar, is that what you’re thinking?” Shelby said nothing. His lantern-jaw lay forward, in a stubborn jutting line. O’Hara said, “I’ll tell you what, sonny. I’ll be doin’ you a hell of a great favor which, mind you, y’don’t deserve by any reckoning—but I’ll give you the damned mud wagon for eleven ounce. And I mean give.”
“Now it’s my turn to laugh.”
“I’ve hit me bottom, sonny.”
“Seven ounces for the wagon alone. It ain’t worth half that.”
“Eleven.”
“Seven.”
O’Hara spread his hands, shaking his head. “You’re breakin’ me heart. Ten.”
“Seven and a half.”
“Ten.”
“Seven. Next time I open my mouth it’ll be six.”
O’Hara shrugged. “I ain’t all that anxious to sell it. Nine ounces pure—and by God that’s me last offer.”
Shelby frowned, considering it; finally he shook his head. “I still got to buy mules, O’Hara. What good’s a wagon without mules?”
“Don’t ask me. It ain’t my harebrained idea.”
Calhoun, who all this while had been studying the Texan Shelby, strode out of the tent-shadow and walked over to the two men. “Shelby?”
The Texan looked around. His eyes were studious, half suspicious.
“Name’s Sam Calhoun. I’ve been watching you dicker.”
“And?”
“If you had a freight-wagon, could you make it pay?”
“Why else you think I been talking?”
“I like your cut,” Calhoun said.
Shelby grinned. “That’s one Texan talking to another.”
Calhoun nodded. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll put up half your capital, for the mules and whatever else you need to get started.”
“And what do you get out of it?”
“One-fourth.”
Shelby’s eyebrows went up. Calhoun said, “You’ll be doing the work.”
Shelby glanced from Calhoun to O’Hara, who was frowning, and back to Calhoun. Finally Shelby said, “My last name’s Long. Shelby Long.”
Calhoun took the man’s quick, firm handshake.
Seven months ago Mule Canyon had been a handful of men and one building. Today it was a sprawling tent-camp of four thousand rough men and perhaps three dozen women, most of them whores. It was loud, hearty, impatient. It lay in the widening tilt of the rocky canyon, shaping itself to fit the terrain. The crooked tent-alleys took serpentine paths up the gulch sides, crawling over the lips, a few tents lipping over into adjoining canyons. Up at the very top was the smoke-plume of Price Goodfellow’s Acropolis mine; several other big operations were getting underway now in the fall—deep-shaft mines, to exploit the land beneath the surface that had been stripped by the placer mines.
The camp attracted a good many men of the types that traveled the shadow-circuits of the West: tough ones, loud ones, dishonest ones, shrewd ones; it was open and boisterous, but behind its hard-muscled gaiety lurked a shadow of dark danger, waiting for the drunken miner to drop in an alley with his poke, waiting for the chance at easy highgrading on jumped claims, waiting for night and easy prey.
Calhoun walked on into town, and found a tent barber shop which advertised: PERCY HEWITT, TONSORIAL ARTIST. Calhoun went in. He sat on the packing-crate near the entrance-flap, waiting his turn at the tub in the back shed. He noticed that already the place had its row of named mugs along the mirror shelf. One had Matthew Ruarke’s name on it. But the largest, most ornate of them was inscribed Price Goodfellow.
Finally Calhoun’s turn at the tub came. He went into the back room and removed his clothes. An Indian youth poured the tub half-full of hot water. Calhoun stepped into it, enjoyed the scald, and relaxed. He closed his eyes and became thoroughly comfortable, letting the water penetrate his pores. After a while he soaped and scrubbed, called for a towel and got his clothes on. He came out into the front of the place and said, “Do me up smart, Percy,” and took his haircut and shave, feeling at ease for the first time in days. An ironic thought struck him: he had gone through a good deal of trouble to get here and now he was involved in a freighting business, for no particular reason; otherwise he had no claim on anything. Once again he said to himself, “You’ve got to accomplish something.”