PHIL MERCY FOUND a spot a mile and a half down-gulch from the top; he put down stakes and for once his optimism—nurtured by the wild hopes of other prospectors along the canyon—blinded him to the failures of so many who left the camps with even less than the pittance with which they had arrived.
He spent two energetic days building a small tar-and-wood shack with borrowed tools, after which he busied himself building a sluice to filter and ripple out the gold. He spent most of his money on lumber to construct the rocker-box and sluice.
He was hammering the rocker-box together when he heard a wagon coming down-canyon; its rattle preceded the sight of it for three or four minutes. Phil Mercy stepped out of the muck and wiped his hands on his pinstripe trousers, now unspeakably grimy. He watched the bend in the canyon with anticipation: he was a mingling man and loneliness was one of his most fearsome enemies.
Calhoun, tooling the big mud wagon around the bend, saw Mercy, and spoke to Shelby Long, beside him on the seat; “Here’s a friend.”
“Hello, Sam,” said Phil Mercy.
Calhoun stood on the brake. He waved a hand back and forth and introduced the two men. Mercy wiped sweat from his forehead with a muddy sleeve. “In business, Sam?”
“I am.”
Shelby Long gave the claim his consideration and grinned widely. “Think you’ll pull anything out of that muck?”
“I’ll tell you that after I’ve started sluicing,” Mercy said.
Long laughed. “It’s a gamble. You can break your back for nothing.”
The observation soured Mercy. He slid his hands into his pockets. “What brings you two down this way?”
“Were running a concession on firewood. Supply you through the winter, eight dollars a month,” Calhoun said.
Mercy shook his head. “Can’t afford it yet. But there are plenty of rich ones on the creek. You’ll make a good living.”
“Any more claims below here?”
“One, but he’s a cagey old Scotsman. I’d bet he’d burn his shanty down around him before he’d pay for wood.” Mercy smiled one of his sardonic smiles and leaned his arm on the wagon. He said in an idle tone, “I saw Ruarke in town last night. He was looking pleased with himself. Did Goodfellow get that strongbox back?”
“He sent somebody to fetch it. I don’t think they’re back yet.”
Mercy nodded. “Well,” he said, “good luck.”
Calhoun drove a few yards down-canyon to a spot wide enough to reverse the big wagon. He brought it around in a tight turn and drove the mules back past Mercy, who lifted a hand as they came by. Mercy watched them go and then turned to look at his sorry little mining operation; his face took on a wry expression.
Driving the wagon past the group of big tents that housed Mule Canyon’s general supply stores, Calhoun heard his name called and stopped the wagon to look around; finally he saw Catherine Goodfellow in the shadows on the porch of Belding’s mercantile emporium. She walked out to the wagon and stood by the hub of the big front wheel, looking up. “Hello, Shelby. I haven’t seen you in years.”
Shelby Long was grinning at her. “Time ain’t done you any damage,” he told her.
“Why, thank you, Shelby.” She turned her glance to Calhoun. “I haven’t seen you, Sam.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Making excuses?”
“No,” he said, meeting her eyes.
She turned a palm upward and lifted one shoulder in a pert gesture. “They tell me that you two are in the firewood business. May we subscribe?”
“That’d please us,” Shelby Long drawled. He was watching the girl with unconcealed interest.
She gave him a coquettish smile. “All right. Both of you come to the house for dinner tonight and we’ll discuss it.”
Calhoun said, “I’m afraid I’ve got—”
“Fiddlesticks,” Catherine said. “My father wants to talk to you about business, Sam. That is, if the promise of my company isn’t enough.” She smiled with mock-sweetness. “Seven o’clock,” she said, and went promptly away.
Shelby Long gave Calhoun a drily amused look; he said blandly, “Best we get at the wood choppin’. We’ve wasted enough time—and cold weather’s coming up.”
Calhoun nodded and clucked at the teams. He felt a small bite in the air, a little chill that presaged the winter to come. They stopped by Long’s cabin to pick up an axe and crosscut saw; Long tossed these in the bed of the wagon and hopped aboard. They fought the wagon up and over into the adjoining canyon, thick with scrub and stunted timber.
Through the length of the day they chopped trees down and sawed them into fireplace lengths, working with methodical speed; it became a good-humored contest between the two tall men, which of them would tire first. Pride kept them both working until, at five-thirty, they unloaded the wood in Long’s yard and stacked it inside the shed they had built during the preceding days. Afterward, refusing to admit the stiffness of his muscles, Shelby Long set out to wet his throat in town, while Calhoun went down the gulch afoot to solicit more subscriptions.
At seven the two partners came into the Goodfellow house and had their supper with the thickset mine-owner; afterward all of them went out on the porch. Catherine brought glasses of brandy and they had their evening smokes, watching the town come to life below. Goodfellow talked firewood with them and drove a bargain. Catherine sat on the top step and clasped her hands around her knee, leaning on a post. She watched and listened, and Calhoun saw in her expression that same small-girl curiosity mingled with the suggestion of deep wisdom. In a stretch of silence Catherine said, “Have you seen Phil Mercy?”
“This morning,” Calhoun said. “He’s working a claim.”
“Good for him,” she said.
Goodfellow observed, “I never pictured him as the type.” He knocked out his pipe and said, “What about your saloon, Sam?”
“In a week we’ll have enough subscriptions paid for firewood. I intend to buy another wagon. We’ll pick up lumber in Sonoita and I’ll start construction by the end of next week.” He pointed, “Right up on top of the hill. You’ll see our lights for miles.”
Catherine said, “Is that wise? This camp may die by the time your saloon begins to pay for itself.”
“I’ll take that chance.”
“I guess you would,” she said. “You’re still a gambler.”
“Life’s no fun without risks,” Shelby Long said.
At noon Phil Mercy came into town for a bundle of supplies; having made his purchases, he went into the California saloon and had two drinks, and then turned outside again. Indecisive for a moment, he finally swung uphill and climbed to the Goodfellow house with a restless frown on his face. He knocked and heard Catherine’s voice; he entered, closed the door, and saw her sitting by the room’s big table, sewing. She looked at him with some kind of shadow in her eyes. He said, “Hello. Where’s your father?”
“At the mine.”
“Have you seen Sam Calhoun?”
He watched her with care. “You like him, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
Mercy leaned his back against the door. His face was long and dour. Catherine said, “How’s your digging?”
“Poor,” he said without tone. He gave a nervous little laugh. “I suppose I knew it wouldn’t work, even before I started.”
“You’ve only been at it ten days. Is that a fair chance?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I expect too much. I’ve never had the patience to abide long-term projects.”
She said, “Sam’s saloon will be open in a little while. He might be able to use you on the floor.”
“I’d like to find something more solid than that,” Mercy said. Then he shrugged. “I suppose that’s a contradiction, isn’t it? Hell, I don’t know—I wish I knew what I wanted. Most of my life I’ve been content just keeping out of trouble. I’ve got a good memory for details and a good pair of hands, so I’ve done some gambling. I don’t really enjoy it. It’s no thrill for me the way it is for some.”
“Maybe you ought to sit down and think it out,” she suggested.
He shook his head immediately. “I’m scared to do that. I always have been. I’ve just drifted from one thing to another. Never stopped to figure it out.”
“Why not?”
“Because I know the conclusion I’d come to.” He put both palms out, facing them down, and swept his arms out to his sides. “Nothing. No meaning, no value, no matter what a man does. It all leads to the grave. Why worry about it? I’d just get scared. What’s the good of a man spooking himself? I’d rather let it ride.”
She said, “I don’t see how blindfolding yourself can really help. All you have to do is set a goal. It doesn’t matter much whether you ever achieve it.”
“Exactly,” he said. “None of it matters.” He paced around the room like something caged, hands locked behind him. He was a small man, almost delicate in physique. There was a hollow despair in his dark eyes. He stood in front of her looking at her; she stood up, keeping her eyes on him but turning her face quarter-away. He became more aware of her body’s fullness and her power to attract him; his eyes began to burn. She shook her head. “Don’t make a mistake, Phil.”
He flushed. “Am I that crude, after all?”
“You’re not very hard to read.”
He shook his head back and forth, smiling crookedly.
“So I’m no mystery to you, and you like a mystery. That’s why you like Sam, isn’t it?”
“Is it?”
“That, and another thing too. He’s a stronger man. I can’t help it if I’m not that sort, can I?” It was practically a plea.
She said, “You’re trying my patience, Phil.”
“Don’t you have anything for me but contempt?”
“I won’t encourage your self-pity, if that’s what you mean. You want a lot of things, Phil, but you haven’t the stomach to try earning them. You can’t hide that—it’s in your face.”
“You’re right,” he said tonelessly. But then he moved forward and grasped her, feeling her body’s softness; he muttered something and kissed her with savage pressure.
She gave no response at all, only a cold scorn that hurt him more than a slap. When he stepped away she said quietly, “You’re a fool.”
He dropped his eyes; his face tautened in an expression of desperation. “Catherine, I need your friendship.”
“Is that what you had in mind?”
He started to step forward but she repelled him with the frigidity of her face. He said a pitiful thing. “I thought that being thrown together in that stagecoach wreck had left more than this between us.”
“That’s a raw excuse. You’d better go, Phil.”
“You hate me now, don’t you?”
“No.”
He nodded, as if confirming his own statement; with the dragging feet of lonely hopelessness he went across the room and left the house.
In a violent country, the strong take from the weak, and the weak say nothing, but only weep privately and are soon gone and forgotten. It is a place where the exercise of direct force makes for success, and anything less is contemptible.
That was the philosophy of Matthew Ruarke, who rode the stage into Mule Canyon at noon and stood a moment before the depot, putting his careful attention upon the town before he entered it. Then he moved through the thin traffic to his own place, the California Saloon and Palace of Chance, and pushed up to the bar. He caught the barkeep’s attention. “Leroy around?”
The bartender began to shake his head, but then he looked at the door and pointed and went back to glass-polishing.
Leroy Hamlin came into the saloon with a vacant expression on his hammy face. Ruarke signaled to him, and Leroy came up and awaited his instructions like a patient dog.
Ruarke said, “Get Donovan and Boone.” And turned away from the man. He went into his office in the back of the place and sat in his deep chair, and thought about Leroy Hamlin wryly: Leroy was an inanimate tool.
Presently the office door opened and two men came in, markedly in contrast to one another. Stacy Donovan, who owned the Palace Saloon, was lean and had a false air of silver-haired dignity; while Jacob Boone was fat to the point of obesity, florid, and cruel-faced, with heavy jowls and beady eyes sunk into pudgy cheeks and flesh-folds about his brow and nose; his lips were thick and insensitive. Jacob Boone owned the Canyon Paradise, a den where everything was permitted and where nothing heard was repeated.
“Keep smiling, Jake,” said Ruarke. “It makes me wonder what you’ve been up to.”
Boone uttered a coarse appropriate burst of laughter and pulled a chair forward, dropping his bulk into it. Stacy Donovan sat down easily beside him and pulled a golden toothpick from his pocket, and played with it during the conversation. “Well, Matt?”
“It’s about time we started moving,” Matthew Ruarke said. “Are we ready for it?”
“Holliday’s crew is still out on Silver Creek. If you don’t think that bunch is enough you can always use Leroy to help.”
Ruarke grimaced. “Forget Leroy. He can be recognized two miles away in a blinding snowstorm.” He settled in his swivel-chair, imported all the way from Mobile, beneath a large gilt-framed painting of a bosomy woman reclining on a couch, wearing only a sheer scarf. The woman, ample and pink-fleshed, wore a seductive smile on her heavy red lips.
Jacob Boone eyed his fingernails and crossed his legs; he ran fingers along the pouched flesh of his face and wiped his brow with a handkerchief. He said, “How many men does Holliday have?”
“Three.”
“Is that enough?”
“Sure.”
“They messed up that stagecoach thing pretty bad. Did you like being set afoot?”
“I chewed him out properly for that,” Ruarke said. “It won’t happen again.”
“That Calhoun’s a tough customer to handle,” Boone said. “What do we do about that saloon of his up on the hilltop? It’ll be open in another few days.”
“We’ll see how he does,” Ruarke said noncommittally. “That’s the least of our worries.” He toyed with a cigar in his slim, white hands. He looked sharply at Stacy Donovan. “Did you get a man in the express office at the depot?”
“Vinnie Warner.”
“All right,” Ruarke said. “Warner will get word to us of worthwhile shipments going out, and we send Leroy to Holliday. Holliday will grab the bullion and put it somewhere—not in town—where we can get at it if we have to make a run.” He added, “There’s always that possibility.”
Jacob Boone said, “I like that painting. I’ll give you three ounces for it. A hundred dollars.”
“Shut up, Jake,” said Stacy Donovan.
“Two hundred,” said Boone.
Ruarke craned his neck around to regard the painting. “I paid more than that for Lily. She came out of the saloon on one of the biggest Mississippi packets before the war.” He made a gesture that dismissed Jacob Boone’s offer. “I talked to John Rand in St. Louis. He’ll buy this gold in bulk but we’ve got to get it to him. He wanted us to send it along as we got it, but I haven’t got men to spare and besides I don’t trust Rand where I can’t see him. So we’ll let it pile up till spring. I’ve seen these towns before, and they rarely last. By spring we’ll be pulling dregs—and that’ll be the time for all of us to get out. They’ll organize for law and order, they’ll tighten up on their shipments and hire gunnies to ride shotgun. I just want the easy pickings off the top, and then we’ll move on. Why get involved in a blood bath? We’ll clear out in the spring. We can take pack animals—they’re easier to handle than wagons—and pick up the gold on our way out of the country. Suitable?”
Donovan nodded. Jacob Boone said, “All right. Say, I’ll give you three hundred for Lily.”
“Shut up, Jake,” said Donovan.
Ruarke chewed on his cigar. “Has Holliday got plenty of horses and provisions? He’ll be in the hills all winter?”
Donovan frowned. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Naturally,” Jacob Boone commented drily, wiping his brow.
Ruarke said, “I’ll send Leroy up with them. I think I’ll tell Holliday to pick up another man and post him here in town for a contact. I don’t know that I want Leroy taking messages to Holliday all the time—he’d be an easy man to trail.”
“That’s a thought,” said Donovan.
“Fifteen ounces of pure for the painting,” said Boone.
Donovan said sharply, “Never mind, Jake!”
Ruarke said, “It’s not for sale, Jake.”
Donovan said, “How do we know we can trust Holliday not to run off with the bullion?”
“I trust nobody,” Ruarke said, looking straight at Donovan. “I plan to keep stringing Holliday along with the promise of a great big granddaddy bullion shipment in late spring sometime. He’ll stick around for that. By the time he finds out it’s a hoax we’ll be long gone with the gold.”
Donovan grinned. “Smart.” He got up and walked out of the office.
Jacob Boone started to follow. He turned in the doorway. “One thousand dollars for Lily, Matt.”
Ruarke smiled helplessly. “All right, Jake.”
Boone grinned. “I’ll send my swamper by to pick it up.”
Phil Mercy had pulled a total of forty dollars in gold out of his claim in two weeks’ time. He was no carpenter: he had to spend hours patching leaks in the sluice that would not have sprung had it been built properly. Work, disappointment, and the increasing chill of the coming winter had their way with him. He was gaunt and nervous, he drank a good deal, his eyes were hollow and rimmed. On a chill morning he heard a horse coming down-canyon, and stopped working, hungry for conversation and welcoming an excuse to get away from toil.
Leroy Hamlin appeared around the canyon bend, his huge bulk overshadowing his struggling mount. His short legs made him bounce precariously; he was no horseman. Leroy rode up and sat heavily. “I heard you was down here.”
Apprehension held Mercy in frozen stillness. Leroy grinned at him in the way an old lecher would grin at a girl. Leroy said, “You’re workin’ on my claim.”
Mercy took a step backward. “It doesn’t look that way to me.”
“You’re a claim-jumper, Mercy.”
“That’s pretty raw.”
Leroy came clumsily off the horse and said, “We don’t tolerate claim-jumpers hereabouts.”
Mercy held up one hand, palm out. “All right. Hell, you can have the damned claim. It’s no good to me.”
Leroy was momentarily taken aback. He peered at Mercy through small round eyes. Mercy noticed the man’s hairy knuckles and the reach of his arms, and again stepped away from Leroy.
Leroy’s slim excuses for pleasure had been dashed, and he sought another. “You and that Calhoun feller, you both the same breed. You’re a friend of his, huh?”
“Not especially,” Mercy said, and was immediately sickened by his own betrayal.
“You’re a liar,” Leroy said. “Calhoun jumped me in a saloon a couple weeks ago. You put him up to it.”
“The hell I did!”
But looking at the loose hungry hang of Leroy’s face, Mercy knew it was no use. His resignation must have showed on his face. Leroy took a shuffling step forward, bending his blunt head. Intent on escape, Mercy leaped backward and fell awkwardly into the sluice, and Leroy laughed dumbly at him: Leroy’s laugh was a gravel sound in his belly and there was nothing good-humored about it.
A sudden frustrated wrath came upon Phil Mercy. He pulled himself out of the muck and said, “You Goddamned ape,” and turned to run toward the road. Leroy wheeled, a great mass in a bulky sheepskin saddle coat; Leroy’s long arm snapped out and caught him by the elbow and whipped him around like a puppet on a string. Leroy’s fist came up; terrified, Mercy heard the quick, greedy in-and-out grunts of Leroy’s breathing—and Leroy’s fist ripped Mercy’s lips across his teeth. It rocked him, stunned him; a red glaze flowed across his vision.
With a loud grunt of contempt, Leroy spun Mercy away from him. As Mercy turned, Leroy’s fist rammed into his kidney; Mercy felt the sharpest, most unbearable pain shoot through him. Something slammed the back of his head. Bright pinpoints of light stabbed through the haze. He bent double and Leroy’s knee came up into his bowed face.
He felt smothered in pain and terror. He fell to the ground clawing and scratching, intent only on getting away; he cried out, he whimpered. Leroy’s hand came out of the gloom, bunched his shirt-front, hauled him to his feet, arms flapping; he kicked out desperately. His foot slid past Leroy’s invulnerable shin, but somehow got behind Leroy’s leg and tripped Leroy. Leroy fell flat. Mercy saw the man’s evil face and kicked at it.
Leroy’s giant hand shot out, grabbed his foot in midair and turned it savagely; Mercy toppled. Leroy was on his knees, looming over him against the sky—Mercy saw the fists coming at him like falling trees. His senses became vague. He was hurt; he was a chunk of meat on a block and the butcher’s mallet and cleaver came at him and worked their way with him.
He lay on his face, blinded. Leroy’s boot ground into his arm. He jerked, twisting away in a half-unconscious spasm. Leroy kicked his buttocks and hips. It came to Phil Mercy that Leroy was going to kill him.
He scrambled with his legs until he had purchase, and then he rolled over quickly, rolling fully around twice; he searched frantically in his pockets and brought out his little nickel-plated revolver. Leroy was only a wavering shadow in the fog of his vision. He pointed the revolver at it and somehow cocked the gun.
Leroy stopped and stood, head bowed, watching the gun stupidly. Phil Mercy’s breath heaved in and out of him like blasts of desert air, burning his lungs. He said, “All right—all right.”
Leroy growled, considering the gun. He said nothing; in time he turned to his horse, climbed up clumsily, and rode up out of the canyon.
Phil Mercy lay on the ground feeling frustrated and useless. In a rage of suffering, he groped to his feet and stood swaying; he moved into his shack and collapsed on the cot.