Читать книгу Alder Gulch - Ernest Haycox - Страница 7

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THE following night Pierce stepped into the Gem with two days' pay in his pocket and found elbow-room at the hundred-foot bar. Ten barkeeps sweated at their work and housemen scurried and ducked through the restless crowd to serve the packed poker tables, the roulette wheel, the faro layouts, the blackjack games. Inside this huge tent was a gold mine greater than any gold mine to be found in the back hills; for out of those hills men came with their dust, hungry and lonesome and eager to spend. As the shrewd Ben Scoggins had said, the money was in trading and not in digging.

Pierce got his drink, meanwhile noting here and there some of his companions on the boat. Rounds patronized a blackjack table, casually testing his luck. Ketchum stood near the doorway and stared at the crowd with his dead, wicked eyes. Ives, Pierce observed, was at the far end of the bar with a group of men he seemed to know.

He paid for his drink and slowly ruffied his remaining nine silver dollars betweeen his fingers, now considering the cost of an outfit. A month's work at the lumberyard would turn the trick, but a month was a long time and the tide of the gold rush was in full swing. If a man stepped out of the tide he was in the shallows and all his luck went bad. Everything was luck unless, as Ben Scoggins intended, a man got into trade. Pierce thought about that too, but not for long. He was no trader. He had freighted on the long Santa Fe trail, he had tended stage station up, the Platte, he had ridden Pony Express out of Julesburg, he had taken his year of action in the war and, being wounded, had drifted to the California gold-fields. He had been many things, but never a trader.

He moved to the blackjack table where Ollie Rounds was, laid his nine silver dollars before him and signaled the dealer for cards. He looked at his cards and said: "Stand on these." The dealer went around the circle and looked at his own hand, and debated and took a card. He broke himself and paid off, doubling Pierce's stake. "Play eighteen dollars," said Pierce.

Ollie Rounds said: "Luck."

The cards came around again. Pierce studied his pair and stood pat. Somebody stirred the crowd behind him and pressure pushed Pierce against the blackjack table. The dealer said: "Pay twenty."

"Pay me," said Pierce and turned to have a look at the cause of the confusion. George Ives had made a hole in the crowd with his shoulders and George Ives's face was ruddy red and his green eyes danced. "Friend," he said, "I just remembered we had a conversation."

The blackjack dealer cut in, speaking to Pierce. "What're you playing?"

Pierce turned to Ollie. "Play my stack. Play it straight through." He turned from the table again, watching the crowd give George Ives room. This Ives, Pierce considered, cut a figure in his clothes. He had a tremendous diamond ring and when he lifted his hand to adjust the flowing black tie at his throat, the gem flashed like an engine's headlight. But if he was a fop he also had a straight-grained nerve. He wanted trouble; he laughed at the thought of trouble and now stood inviting it.

"I guess we did," admitted Pierce. "You bring a good reason?"

"A fight's a fight," said Ives. "I think I can do you in." The crowd had backed against the tent walls, sensing violence. The dealer said, "I'll pay eighteen," and Ollie Rounds answered, "Pay here then."

Pierce saw Ketchum posed like a sullen dog near the door, and then his glance returned to Ives's full-blooded face, to the man's high smile and to the dancing deviltry of his eyes. "All right," said Pierce, "here's your fun," and caught him across the mouth with a short, smashing blow. Ives, making his stand for the crowd's benefit, had not been quite prepared. He fell backward and down, striking the packed dirt floor with his head; he rolled like a cat and leaped up and his smile came broad and brilliant through a sudden-bleeding cut in his lips. He hallooed a great shout and dropped his head a little and ran in.

He was a faster man than Pierce; he had his skill and his complete assurance. He struck Pierce twice on the head as Pierce slid sidewise and his eyes, now small and cool, measured Pierce and he struck again, catching Pierce on the neck. Pierce lifted his forearm to block these swift light blows, but they broke through his defense—and cut and stung and all this while George Ives danced away and circled and jumped forward and his light eyes were half closed and very bright, and filling with cool pleasure.

Pierce stood on his heels, neither retreating nor advancing; he pivoted to face his constantly swinging, never-still opponent. His hat had dropped and his head was a motionless target and his big hands lifted and lowered to screen himself. He waited out that feinting, shifting, dancing attack and as he wafted he watched George Ives's lip corners pull in and his nostrils begin to spring wider from need of air. Ives darted forward, his feet making a sandpaper sound on the packed dirt floor and he caught Pierce under the belt and followed it with two rapid jabs to face and temple.

Back in the crowd a voice called: "Cut him to ribbons, George! Stand off and slice him down!" The blackjack player's voice came through the half-sound of the saloon: "Pay eighteen," and after that Ollie Rounds answered: "Pay here—and ride the stack." Rube Ketchum, still by the door, let his big shoulders fall until he was in half a crouch, watching Pierce with his empty, morose eyes.

And at that moment George Ives ceased to smile. He came to a full stop, with his breath racking in and out of his chest and he flung up his head and cried, "Damn you—come on! What are you—"

This was the moment for which Pierce waited and now with George Ives stopped he jumped forward, struck him a single, sweeping blow on the cheekbone and stunned the man in his tracks. Ives brought up his arms to cover himself. Pierce tore them down. He moved on step by step, beating Ives backward. He made a second jump and seized Ives at the chest and he lifted Ives from his feet and threw him against the tent wall. Ives stumbled and fought for balance, half bent over. Pierce, caught him again and at these close quarters he pounded at Ives's face with his left hand until he saw light turn gray in the man's eyes; and he lifted him from his feet and flung him to the hard dirt floor—and stepped back.

Ives was hurt. He lay on his side without wind. His leg kept pushing forward in a kind of steady jerk and he put his free hand to his face and held it. Pierce murmured: "I told you there, was no fun in this business."

Ollie Rounds cried out: "Stand still, Rube!"

Pierce now remembered the doglike Ketchum and wheeled and found Ketchum frozen in his crouch, one hand gripping the gun at his belt. Ollie Rounds had stopped that draw before completion; he had turned from the blackjack table to fling the muzzle of his revolver dead down on Ketchum. "Stand still, Rube," he repeated.

Ives came up from the floor and braced himself on spread legs. He scrubbed sweat and dirt and blood from his face with a slow pull of his palm. He lifted his chin and found Pierce. The smile was gone and the assurance was gone, so that for a moment he was dull and voiceless and not in command of himself.

The blackjack dealer said: "How about this stack?"

"Cash in," Pierce said. "We've had fun enough." He never let his eyes leave George Ives, and now watched remembrance come to the man. The dash and daring, Pierce observed, was a thin cover stretched over Ives's character; for what he saw now—coming out through the breaks of that cover—was a ruined pride and a cruel, conscienceless greed to repair it. Yet Ives was a dissembling man; now he searched for his smile and found one ragged streak of it, and said: "I thought I might do you in, friend. You're better than I figured. But you're slow. Next time—"

"What next time?" asked Pierce.

"Always a next time," said George Ives and made a sharp turn on his heel and left the saloon. Ketchum followed like an obedient dog.

Ollie Rounds murmured, "Here's your velvet," and slid the blackjack stake into Pierce's pocket. He caught Pierce by the arm and his tone got rougher. "Come on—come on," and he moved with Pierce to the saloon's door. Out in the street Pierce stopped and felt the weight of his pocket. "What's there?"

"I ran it through the deal four times straight. Five hundred dollars. Let's get out of this. I don't like it."

They moved over the street, hearing the hum and boil of talk rise again in the Gem. Ketchum and Ives had vanished and Ollie Rounds seemed in a greater and greater haste. At the stable wherein Pierce had made his lodging, Rounds retreated into the runway's darkness and called Pierce after him. "Where's your gun?"

"Haven't got one."

"Man—man," grumbled Ollie Rounds, "what's the matter with you? Take mine. I'll get another."

"Ollie," said Pierce, "thanks."

But Ollie Rounds was already on his way to the rear entrance of the stable and his voice came back with its overriding urgency. "Think fast. They'll be back." With that final warning he disappeared.

Pierce lifted the gun given to him; he sighted it against the stable's single lantern to check its loads. The hostler, smelling trouble, had drawn away from him and the hostler called from the blackness of a stall. "I don't want a fight in here. Move on, friend. Move on."

Pierce advanced to the edge of the archway, thus commanding a view of the street. Men trafficked steadily in and out of the Gem and the other saloons and dance halls sitting side by side; and freighters rolled out of town, and more men came in from the hills to leave their dust on Lewiston's bars. His teeth ached from the beating he had taken around the face and his scarred knuckles steadily throbbed. Another upriver boat had landed and the passengers marched up from the landing and barkers ran out of the saloons and began to call, and a solitary figure paused in front of the Luna House briefly and afterwards walked forward. He was for a little while in the shadows but even then the manner of his trudging gait and the swing of his bulky shoulders arrested Pierce's interest; a moment later he crossed a beam of store light and turned over to the Gem and at that instant Pierce identified him. This was Mister Sitgreaves, plodding doggedly upon his errand of retribution.

Pierce had been holding the gun in his hand. Now he tucked it inside his belt and as soon as Sitgreaves entered the saloon Pierce left the stable and walked to the Luna House. He got Diana's room number from the clerk, climbed the stairs and knocked at her door.

The first thing he noticed, when she opened the door, was the quick look of fear that came to her face; and the first thing she said was, "What's wrong, Jeff? What happened?"

"Nothing," he said, and wondered at the impulse which had brought him here. "I thought I'd say good-by. I'm leaving for Alder Gulch."

She wore a long woollen robe which she had evidently purchased since her arrival; and her hair had been done high on her head for the night. She faced him, holding the lapels of the robe together and for a brief moment she showed him a lost and lonely expression. "I thought you meant to stay."

"No," he said. Then he smiled. "I met you in the middle of the night. Now I'm saying good-by in the middle of the night." When he smiled the bitter-alum of his spirit vanished and left him cheerful. He had, she thought quickly, two complete sides to him, one on which the world had laid its marks of distrust and hardness, and one which remained buoyant and free. It made her say with some vehemence: "Why did you bother to come here at all?"

"Maybe," he said, "just to say thanks." Then, he gave her a keen glance. "Or maybe not. I don't really know."

She lowered her eyes. Her hair blackly glistened under the lamplight, her skin was fair and smooth and rose-colored; she had a woman's good and wide and clean-edged lips. She lifted her head and then he saw the flare of the same alert spirit which had been with her in Madame Bessie's. The same half-hidden sense of enjoyment was there. "There's nothing here for me, Jeff. Take me with you."

"Why?"

She made expressive turns with her two hands. "Everybody's going on to Alder Gulch. I don't want to be caught in another back eddy as I was in Portland."

"It is a hard trip,"

"I won't complain." She watched him and saw his smile go. The change that went through him was clear enough, turning her heart heavy. "I know," she softly added, "what you are thinking. I shall be alone with you again. I am making myself cheaper." She sighed and she shrugged her shoulders, "We must make the best of it. Take me."

"All right," he said. "Meet me in the lobby in half an hour. I'll get an outfit together."

"You'll need my purse again."

"I had a little luck at blackjack," he said. He turned down the hall at once, crossed the street and ducked into the livery barn. Forty-five minutes afterwards he brought a hastily acquired outfit—a horse for each of them and a third for a pack animal—into a dark alley near the Luna House. She was on the hotel's porch waiting and came at once to him. He gave her a hand to the sidesaddle of her horse and immediately turned northwest in the direction of Walla Walla. He said: "This will be a rough trip. I want to push along fast."

"I don't mind."

"Here we go for Alder Gulch."

They camped that night in a stage station on the old Fort Walla Walla road and next day reached the junction of the Palouse and turned northeast along a route heavily marked by travel. Two days later they were at the Spokane and here swung east, curling around the Coeur d'Alene Lake. A driving day's ride brought them into the Coeur d'Alene Mission. So far they had been in open, rolling land, and so far they had found shelter in toll-ferry houses or lone horse camps and rough taverns sprung up on the trail. Beyond the mission lay the rough and timbered heights of the Bitterroots into which the trail plunged and lifted and dodged from canyon to canyon. They forded creeks swollen by spring rain and slipped through deep mud-mire. Five days from Lewiston they arrived at the summit of the Bitterroots and came beside the St. Regis River, which moved east into a mountain valley skirted by high hills. They camped here in a slashing rain, covered by dark pines weeping dismally on them. Diana cooked supper over a fire which Pierce nursed into a roaring blaze; they made their beds on the sodden ground, wrapped in the tarps Pierce had thought to buy in Lewiston.

A great rain wind whirled over the mountains and cried and crashed through the trees. The fire soon died. The river moved through its rocky glen with a battering roar. Pierce watched the near-by shape of Diana beneath her tarp, wondering if she slept. Then he heard her say:—

"You haven't told me why you left Lewiston in such a hurry."

"I saw Sitgreaves come into town. He was the Captain's brother."

She was a yard away from him and she turned beneath the tarp so that he saw her face as a pale image in the tempestuous night. "You're not afraid. Why did you run?" He lay still and carefully brought up those reasons which had been so clear to him in Lewiston. On sight of Sitgreaves he had known he could do one of two things—he could run or he could kill the man; and he had at once known he would run.

"Those two men were drivers. That's the way they ran the ship. But that's the way all ships are operated. According to their lights they were good officers. They figured they had to be brutal or else lose control of the crew. That's the system at sea. The Captain had to settle me or watch his whole crew go overside, for the rest of the men were the same as I was, prisoners shanghaied aboard. He missed me with his shot and I hit him. It might have been the other way around just as easily. I had luck and he didn't. I don't blame the skipper. I feel sorry for what happened to him. There isn't any mercy in the world."

Wind howled and slashed through the pines and the river beat up its cannonading roar; and the world's raw force sang its terrible hallelujah through the dark.

"This mate Sitgreaves was the same. He saw his brother die. He liked his brother and so he told himself he'd come after me. You see what's in the man's mind? He thinks right and justice are on his side. He's not a crook. If he were I would have shot him out of his saddle in Lewiston. His conscience is clear and his law is clear to him—tooth for tooth, claw for claw. He's the avenging angel of the Lord—and it seems so right to him he'll wear himself out to do what he's got to do. I can see his point. Well, I had to shoot him or run. I ran. I do not want him on my conscience."

"What a strange mixture of things I see and hear in you," she murmured.

"Are you warm?"

"Listen to the wind tell us how great it is to be alive. Never be content with little things. The world is wide and all things are wonderful and somewhere, for every living soul, there is adventure to make his life sweet and his days good."

"The wind," he said, "is laying down the only law. The weak shall perish, just and unjust alike. Christian charity is a golden dream. The meek and mild will rule when the sun is shining and there are no wars. But when men grow flabby, and the fear of death makes them flinch back, and if the love of comfort holds them indoors, they die. You are hearing trumpets blowing, Diana. We are to arise and march. It doesn't make any difference where we're going. Nobody knows. It is the doer who alone counts, the fellow who sweats and is not afraid. The others do not count. Are you warm, Diana?"

"Yes. What is that sound?"

"A big gray lobo wolf answering the wind."

They followed the St. Regis, through little valleys and between great dark gorges. They passed Hellgate and Cantonment Wright and pursued the crooked turnings of the Hellgate River. Peaks showed white high above them in the early summer's sun and creeks whirled past them, foam-white between great boulder banks. They traveled rapidly by a steady stream of traffic moving toward the new gold strike, past wagon trains and solitary riders, past lumbering lines of supply outfits, past graves fresh-cut in the yellow clay soil; down long mountain grades thick with mud and through little valleys turning green and between the lanes of pine and early spring flowers red and yellow and white. The smell of everything around them was thin and wild, and everything was new and empty and vast. At the mouth of the Deer Lodge they swung south, here coming upon three women who traveled with a freight outfit. One of the women was Lil Shannon. She gave them a wave of her hand as they ran on. Ten days from Lewiston they labored over a rough spur of the Rockies and saw the country undulate before them in long, heavy and barren stringers. "Over there," said Pierce, "is Alder Gulch." That night they stopped in a miner's settlement and a miner's squaw wife took Diana into a house while Pierce pitched camp beside a creek.

They were not far from journey's end now, and the sense of ending was with them again, bringing its uncertainty and its strangeness. During the evening Diana came out and joined Pierce over the campfire, to match his silence with her own. When he did speak up it was to ask a question he had asked her before.

"What will you do?"

She shrugged it aside, not thinking of it. All along the route they had dropped little pieces of their individual stories so that now they knew each other better. It was of this that Diana spoke.

"How did you ever come to leave home, Jeff? You never told me."

"Six of us in the family. Four boys and two girls. My father died and my mother moved to Boston to get work. There never was enough work. One day she called my oldest brother into the house and handed him a dollar. That was about all the money we had. She just said, You'll have to go out and make your way. I can't keep you. He was fifteen at the time. I remember she kissed him and pushed him out and closed the door. We never saw him again. Work was scarce and all of us were starving most of the time. My mother had nothing else she could do. When my next oldest brother was fourteen she sent him away. It went like that until there were my two sisters and myself left. One day when I was twelve I came home from school and found her waiting for me at the door. She had tied my clothes in a bundle. She had a loaf of bread and some apples in a sack. There wasn't any dollar. She just said, 'It is your turn.' She had kissed my other brothers when they left. She didn't kiss me. I was the youngest boy. She didn't even take my hand. She just said, 'Good-by.' I went down the road about two hundred yards. When I looked back I saw her in the doorway. That was the hardest moment in my life, nothing like it before or since. I wanted to cry, but she wasn't crying—she had been through so much she couldn't cry any more—and so I couldn't cry. I waved at her. She didn't wave back. She just closed the door and I went down the road."

He bent forward to poke up the fire and she saw the flame of the fire in his eyes, the bitterness on his face, the bare and depthless hurt leaping through him. "I got a job as breaker boy in a mine, and one thing and another, drifting from place to place. Just before the war broke out I came back from St. Louis to find her. I had written a few times but the letters never got to her. She had been moving around from one shack to another. Well, I went back. She was dead. My sisters were married. Never heard from my brothers." He dropped a piece of brush into the fire and added, "It took me ten years to understand why she didn't kiss me when she pushed me out of the house. She couldn't stand to do it. It would have made things that much harder. I have since never been able to feel the troubles of other people very much. When I think of her everything else looks pretty small."

She had said nothing. Turning, he saw that she had tears in her eyes, that she had her fingers tightly together and tried to keep from making a sound. He put a hand on her shoulder. "Shouldn't have mentioned it. It is my life, not yours."

She stood up. She pressed the tears from her eyes with the end of a finger. He rose, again speaking. "Never mind. I have gotten along, and so will you. Just remember that the hand of man is raised against the hand of man wherever you go. It will save you a lot of misery."

"I wish you didn't think that," she said. "Everything else about you is good. But you will always be like that until someday you'll see that people are kinder than you think. How lonely you are!"

He smiled in a fashion that was for him rather gentle and apologetic, as though he realized what he was and could not help it and wished it otherwise. And his smile was sorry for her tears. "Never let a man make you cry, Diana."

"I can't be like that. I must trust people. I can never lock myself away from them. What is the use of living if you have nothing or nobody to live for?"

She remained before him, watching his face in the close and deeply personal way she had; and the warm light of her eyes grew and her face changed in a manner he could not describe, but suddenly she was a shape and a substance before him and a fragrance and a melody all around him, so that the loneliness that always lived in him grew insupportable. The wall he held up against the world went down; the standards he held concerning women dropped away. She was before him and there was nothing between them—no barrier of his own making and none that he felt from her. He moved ahead and put his long arms around her and, watching her lips lift, he saw that she was smiling; and so he kissed her.

There was never any completion to a kiss, never the full giving of those things in him and never the whole receiving of that mystery which lay in a woman. He pulled back, angered at himself and on the point of apologizing. But the apology faded when he saw her smile die. She was fully open to him and silently saying it. In her a great tide moved and washed away her reserve, so that she faced him and read confidently what was in him and waited without embarrassment for him to read what was in her. She touched him with her hand and said, "Jeff," and she was waiting; and that hidden sense of excitement moved into view, as though this moment was a high point of her life for which she had so long prayed.

He dropped his head, he shook his head. He stepped clear and at once the fineness of the moment went away and his earliest doubt of her came back. For a little while she had carried him beyond anything he had experienced; now that was gone and his stubborn and familiar standards moved forward. By these he judged her.

"We have been together too long," he said. "The fault was mine."

She was stone still and then the change of her expression shocked him. She looked as though he had hit her across the face. She was cold and stunned, the great fine blaze of light dying from her eyes and leaving her dull. She caught her breath and turned away, half running back to the miner's cabin.

He kicked out the fire and walked over its coals until the heat scorched his boots. He was in the sharp-winded darkness, let down and bitter. She had offered too much to a man she had known only ten days; looking at him she had made no reservations.

They were on the trail at daybreak, saying nothing. They camped that night on the Beaverhead and next day reached the Stinkingwater at the mouth of Alder Gulch. This was the fourteenth and last day. Turning up the Gulch they passed stage stations, filed through a rocky narrow chasm choked by teams and riders and men afoot, and came upon a settlement. The road straggled upgrade with the Gulch, along whose edges were the potholes of prospectors one upon another. Camps clung to the edge of the Gulch, strung together like beads. They came to Nevada City, followed the road over a hill and fell into Virginia City, its streets and cross-streets ephemerally marked out by tents and brush wickiups and a few board houses; they made their way to the center of town and here halted.

Pierce lifted his hat. "This is it," he said.

"Thank you, Jeff."

"If there is anything you wish me to do—"

They were two strangers face to face across an unbridged canyon; and even as she thanked him her expressive hazel eyes were cool and showed him a reserve that seemed unchangeable. "No," she said. "There is nothing more."

He bowed, replaced his hat, and moved away through the crowd. Hammers flatted steadily against the day and voices lifted and fell, and wagons made a ceaseless parade in and out, of town. Alder Creek sparkled under a fresh sun and four thousand prospectors stood along it with their sluices and pans and long toms and gutted the hillside where once an old river's channel had dropped its gold treasure. Somewhere a gun went off, making a nasal complaint but drawing no notice whatever. This was Virginia City in Montana, June of 1863. Near by the Ruby Mountains and the Tobacco Roots lifted burly shoulders to the sky and civilization and law were a thousand miles away, and men of all kinds and qualities poured as a steady stream from the corners of America. Here Diana Castle and Jeff Pierce now found themselves. He turned a corner and saw a saloon's sign on a wall: JACK TANNER'S. Music from a hurdy-gurdy house adjoining came out with the shouts of customers and the calculated laughter of the dance-hall girls.