by Jory Sherman
“Hell, it was an honest mistake.”
“It was a dumb mistake. Now, see if you can’t make up for it and find that bastard. You might even save your sorry neck. Whoever that bastard was, he probably tracked us to our hideout from where we stopped the stage. Abe back-tracked him a ways just before that storm hit, and he sure as hell came from someplace up on the Denver road.”
“What do you want us to do with him, Finch?”
“Kill him,” Fincher said as the two reached the smelter. Fincher’s tone seemed to come from a deep black sepulcher where the only light boiled up raging from the fires of hell. Cole felt Fincher’s hot breath on his face, a breath fetid with garlic and night whiskey.
“All right, Finch,” Cole said, stepping back a pace. “I’ll find him and kill him.”
Fincher looked past Cole to the gaping holes of the mines in the sedimentary rock that was streaked with dark smears from the storm runoff of the day before. The caves were grim reminders of other men’s failures and the earth that would someday remove all traces of men’s folly. The adobe huts would crumble, the smelter would collapse and blow away, and his own grave would have no tombstone. But now, for the time he lived, he would take everything life had to give and kill any man who stood in his way. Like Jig, he had spent five years in a Yuma prison, where he saw cruelty and viciousness up close and met men who laughed at the law and their misdeeds under the lash of sadistic guards with malicious grins on their faces.
Fincher knew how the world was, and how it had taken Clarabelle from him. He was bound to take what he wanted from it, and spilling other men’s blood was a way to pay back those men who had tried to steal his soul.
“Who’s up in the blockhouse?” he asked Cole as he took his gaze away from the rocky bluffs beyond the creek.
“Al Loomis and Seth Vickers.”
“Walk up there and tell ’em to come down. I want everybody at this meeting. Shake a leg.”
“Sure, boss,” Cole said and started off at a lope to the guardhouse up on the rim of the bowl.
Fincher went inside the main building, walked through pale beams of sunlight, stirring up dust motes that wriggled like the ghosts of fireflies in the gloom.
Emsley and Danner were just entering the room. They carried a board laden with the silver bars they had remelted and stamped.
“Just set the bars on the table,” Finch said. “Leave the board for now.”
He walked over and picked up one of the bars. It glistened in the feeble light that streamed through the window. He examined the engraved lettering and smacked his lips in satisfaction.
The initials embedded in the bar were “GC” and there was a small outline of a wolf just beneath it.
“Very good,” he said and put the bar back on the two-by-twelve table.
“Payday,” Abe said.
Dick Emsley grinned.
“It’ll sure give us a taste,” Fincher said. “A taste of richer days to come.”
His eyes glinted with the dark ice of greed and the surety of more riches to come when the Golden Council grabbed Leadville by the throat and they all ruled over it like kings.
That was the dream. That was the message he would deliver this morning to the men who were loyal to him, hand-picked every one, and every one as greedy for money and power as he was.
“Today,” he told Dick and Abe, “we take charge of our destiny. We were once pushed by Fate, trounced and kicked and beaten back by the world. But now, we take charge and leave Fate to the fallen, to the unworthy, to the shopkeepers and merchants. We are the force for change, and by all the gods, we will succeed.”
Abe and Dick stared at Fincher and saw in his eyes the burning flames of the fanatic, the unmistakable mark of a true leader. This was a man they could follow, and the proof of his genius lay on the table shining with the same light the stars beamed down to Earth.
The silver was like a magnet, Fincher thought, and it imparted power and wealth to those who possessed it.
He felt powerful and alive, more alive than ever.
And the silver was only part of the proof he needed that he would not fail in his mission.
Nothing could stop him now.
Nothing.
ELEVEN
Holly Danner put an arm around Wilma Crawford’s shoulder and gave her a squeeze.
“I’m real sorry Finch wouldn’t let you pay your last respects to Ned. He didn’t want any of us women to see Ned buried.”
The two women stood in front of one of the adobe huts, their laundry baskets on the ground in front of them. They were waiting for the other women to walk with them to the creek where they would do their washing. They could not see where the men had gone with Ned’s body because it was on the far end of the basin, well beyond the old smelter.
“It’s all right, Holly,” Wilma said. “I just wonder why they didn’t bury him over yonder where I could see his grave from my window.”
She pointed to a small cemetery beneath a rocky outcropping below one of the abandoned mines.
“Did you ever walk through that graveyard?” Holly asked.
“No. I’ve been afraid of graveyards ever since I was a little girl in Shreve’s Port.”
“I read the boards,” Holly said, “most of ’em rotting away, but you can still read the names. Most of ’em what’s buried there are women or young girls. Oh, a boy or two, and some men, but mostly women our age, in their twenties or early thirties.”
Wilma looked over at the graveyard. There were a few crosses still standing, but most of the markers were flat at the top end of the small mounds. She shivered in the freshet of breeze and pulled her shawl more tightly around her shoulders. The sky was a pale blue with little streaks and puffs of clouds floating serenely overhead.
She was a skinny waif of a woman with straggly blond hair, a small nose and mouth, and a wizened look of age on her young face. There were pockmarks on her cheeks, reminders of a childhood disease that had taken her little brother and sister back in Louisiana. She was only twenty-three but looked forty in her faded print dress and high button shoes with both heels worn down on the insides. She was slightly bowlegged but so short that it was barely noticeable except when she walked. She wore no stockings or makeup, but her arms, legs, face, and hands were tanned by the sun.
“Well, it’s no wonder those women and children died out here,” Wilma said. “Havin’ to live in these ’dobes summers and winters, with the flies and the rats and the other horrible critters.”
“It is hard,” Holly said. “Some nights we just lie in our beds and look up at the ceiling and watch the lizards lick up the flying bugs. One night a lizard dropped its tail right on Abe’s chest. I screamed and Abe just laughed.”
They saw the men come back from the burial. One of them walked up to the guardhouse but was too far away for the women to identify.
“Look,” Wilma said. “They’re all going into the big room at that smelter.”
“Abe said they might have a meeting this morning. He said Finch was in a rage over Ned getting killed.”
The prairie sun hung like a glowing yellow disk in the eastern quarter of the sky, and Holly pulled her bonnet lower on that side of her face.
“They’re always having meetings,” Wilma said. “And Ned hated to be up in that guardhouse. He said he felt like a sewer rat trapped in the bottom of an outhouse.”
“Little good it did for them two to be up there on guard.”
“It didn’t do Ned no good,” Wilma said.
Two of the other women approached, carrying their clothes baskets on their hips like sidesaddles. One of them, Myrtle Ferguson, was smoking a cheroot, the fumes floating in front of her in a thin stream of bluish-gray fog. The other, Fanny Becker, was waddling along beside her with a lump of chewing tobacco bulging out her cheek. They were chattering away like magpies, their bonnets pulled low over their foreheads to block out the sun.
“Good morning, girls,” Fanny said and spat a stream of tobacco onto
the ground. “Either of you got the matches?”
“I do,” Holly said. “You bring the lye soap?”
“I sure did,” Fanny said, waddling up to them on stout fatty legs.
Holly and Wilma picked up their clothes baskets and joined in the small procession as they headed for the creek.
“I think Delia and Elaine are already at the crick,” Myrtle said. “A couple of addle brains, you ask me.”
“Oh, Myrtle, you shouldn’t say such things,” Holly said.
“Well, it’s true,” Myrtle said. “I never saw a pair so downright dumb as them two.”
“They’re just slow and unschooled is all,” Wilma said.
“You stop that kind of talk, Myrtle,” Holly said. “It ain’t kindly to make fun of the dumb.”
Elaine Emsley and Delia Vickers were both gathering firewood. They had stacked twigs and dry brush next to three shallow pits, each encircled by stones, and were walking back to the creek, their arms laden with more burnable sticks gathered from the prairie beyond the basin.
There were three small ore cars lined up over the fire pits, rusted by rain and blackened by flames. The women had carried each one to their washing spot, pushing and pulling the heavy iron carts from where they had been stacked near one of the mines alongside piles of narrow-gauge track, broken picks, and shovels. A fourth cart stood apart from the others and was used for rinsing the washed clothing.
“Creek’s running fast this morning,” Elaine said as she dumped her firewood next to a pit.
“All that rain last night,” Delia said as she stooped to unload her own kindling.
“I see it,” Holly said as she set down her bundle in its wicker basket. “We’ll have to be careful.”
“You fall in,” Delia said, “and you’ll be gone in a twinklin’.” Her smile was radiant. She was a dark-haired woman with dazzling blue eyes. Her long hair was gathered up in a bun at the back of her head. She was slim and graceful, but the lines in her face testified to a hard life.
Elaine was a buxom blond woman with a boxy face, drooping jowls, and ears that stuck out like cup handles. She was thick in the waist, but had surprisingly slim legs that she kept neatly shaven with her husband’s straight razor. Her eyes were a soft light brown that seemed to change color with her moods.
There were grates on the bank that the women used for scrubbing their soapy clothes and each woman began to carry her clothes over to the creek and pile them next to the grates.
“Who’s got the soap?” Delia asked as she carried a bucket of water to the first ore car. She didn’t expect an answer and didn’t get one.
Each of the women began to fill buckets with the fast-running creek water and filled the cars.
Wilma set some brush under the cars and packed them tight.
“Put plenty of sage on each one,” Fanny said. “I love the smell of burning sage.”
Myrtle lit the fires, careful to keep her face away from the flames as she blew on each spark until it caught fire.
“Where’s Winifred?” Elaine asked Holly.
“Oh, she’s sick,” Holly said. “I went to get her this morning, and she was still in bed.”
“She’s been tryin’ to kill that baby in her belly for a week,” Delia said.
“Well, there were a lot of bloody rags by her bed when I saw her this morning,” Holly said.
“Maybe she got rid of the little bastard,” Elaine said and laughed.
Wilma looked sick and had to gulp in air so she wouldn’t throw up her breakfast.
The fires burned, and the women set to washing their clothes by the creek, passing the bar of lye soap back and forth, scrubbing on the grates and carrying their washed clothes to the ore carts for rinsing.
The creek water was ice-cold, and the women stopped often to rub their hands or warm them at one of the fires. Their hands blanched from the exposure and turned rosy from the caustic burn of the lye soap. Their fingers ached and trembled from the chilly waters of the creek.
The women chattered and gossiped, sweated and fanned their faces as the sun rose higher in the sky and grew hotter by the minute.
An hour later, Winifred Loomis trudged up, lugging a basket full of clothing, along with blood-soaked rags and towels. She panted from the effort as she set her basket down. Her face was drawn and flushed. Her brown hair hung straight down. She looked weak and her plump legs shook as she closed her eyes and drew in deep breaths.
“Your belly’s gone, Winnie,” Elaine remarked. “You drop your kid?”
Winifred nodded, too worn out to speak.
“Boy or gal?” Myrtle asked.
“Myrtle, what a terrible question to ask,” Fanny said.
“Boy,” Winnie said and began to weep.
Holly left her washing and rose to her feet. She walked up to Winnie and put an arm around her.
“There, there,” she said. “It’s all right. Myrtle didn’t mean anything. She was just curious.”
“I know. I just couldn’t bring up a kid out here, livin’ like we do. It’s just too hard. Too goddamned grim.”
“Now, now, Winnie, don’t you worry. It’ll be all right.”
“I buried it in the cemetery,” she said. “Next to another little boy.”
“I’ll help you wash your clothes,” Holly said. “You just sit down and rest.”
“Eat some red meat,” Elaine called out from the creek. “That’ll give you your blood back.”
“What do you know about it, Elaine?” Myrtle said. “You’re as barren as a barn door.”
“Hey, you little bitch,” Elaine started to say.
“Both of you, stop it,” Delia said. “Let’s all bow our heads and close our eyes for a minute over that little lost boy of Winnie’s.”
Holly helped Winnie sit down and then carried her basket to the creek.
“They’re all gone,” Winnie said, after a few minutes of quiet among the other women. “Al come back to get his rifle and bedroll.”
“All the men?” Wilma asked.
“Yes. All of them rode out just as I was leavin’ to come down here.”
“Where are they going?” Myrtle asked.
“To Leadville. Al said they were goin’ to hunt down that feller what killed your man, Wilma. He said they was goin’ to kill someone named Sidewinder.”
“Sidewinder?” Wilma said.
“That was the name he used.”
Wilma shuddered.
“It sounds like some kind of snake,” Elaine said.
“Yes, I think it is,” Holly said. She began to dip a bloody towel in the rushing creek water.
“Sidewinder,” she said to herself and started looking all around as if expecting to see a rattlesnake slither up to them. She shuddered and then splashed cold water on her face.
The women were quiet for several moments, each wondering what kind of trouble lay ahead.
“No one in the guardhouse?” Elaine asked after a while.
“No,” Winnie said. “They all left. Even Fincher.”
“Looks like we better get our pistols out and load our shotguns,” Delia said. “Just in case.”
“Just in case what?” Elaine said.
“In case that Sidewinder rides in and tries to rape all of us.”
Elaine started to laugh, but the solemnity of the other women made her cut it short.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Elaine?” Myrtle said, her voice laden with sarcasm.
Elaine gave Myrtle a dirty look.
And then it was quiet again as the sun rose ever higher, crawling up the arc of the blue sky like some flaming eye beating down on them, streaking ribbons of gold and silver through the tumbling waters of the creek.
TWELVE
The gaudy sign over the entrance to the café featured a single word, CACTUS, framed by a pair of painted prickly pear cacti, bold caricatures of the real plant. Pete Farnsworth led the way through the wooden door on which hung a sign in two languages: OPEN and ABIERTO.
&n
bsp; Brad followed Pete to a table in the far corner of the main room. There was an adjoining room that was darker and not as crowded. The clink of plates and silverware could be heard under the drone of conversations in both Spanish and English. The tables were inlaid with colorful tiles in red, green, and yellow, with salt and pepper shakers in the center, along with a clay ashtray.
“Smells good,” Brad said.
“The food is good here.”
They both looked up at the blackboard behind the counter where two waitresses attended to the customers seated there.
“Hungry?” Pete asked.
Brad shook his head.
“Just coffee,” he said.
“You had breakfast?”
“I never eat before I go out hunting,” Brad said.
Pete smiled.
A pretty young waitress came to their table. She wore a small green apron trimmed in yellow, a red skirt, and yellow blouse. She carried a small slate and a piece of chalk. She had high cheekbones and a thin patrician nose over a small delicate mouth. The vermilion pigment in her cheekbones spoke of her mixed blood: part Spanish, part Indian.
“You want the coffee? Breakfast? Lunch?”
“Two coffees only,” Pete said. “Black.”
The young lady nodded and did not write it down on the tablet.
“And I would like to see the owner.”
“Eh?”
Brad wondered if she had not understood the English word.
Pete pulled a small tablet from his pocket, turned a page and read the name.
“Ernesto Valencia,” he said. “I want to talk to him.”
“Ernesto, sí,” she said. “He is in the office. I will tell him to come.”
The young woman walked through the opening in the counter and emerged a moment later from the small office, a man following in her wake. While she bent down to retrieve two cups and place them on the back counter, the man approached Pete and Brad. He looked to be in his late thirties, with flecks of gray in his sideburns and moustache, his straight black hair cut short and dyed, slicked down with pomade. He wore a faded striped shirt and tight black trousers. His shoes were polished to a high sheen.
