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Sacketts 06.5 - The Courting of Griselda

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by The Courting of Griselda


  Arvie spotted me and they fetched to a halt right beside me. "Sackett," Arvie

  said, "I hear you're scraping bottom again. Now my baker woman needs a helper to

  rev up her pots and pans, and if you want the job—"

  "I don't."

  "Just thought I'd ask,"—he grinned maliciously—"seein' you so good at woman's

  work."

  He saw it in my eyes so he grabbed Griselda and they waltzed away, grinning.

  Thing that hurt, she was grinning, too.

  "That Arvie Wilt," somebody said, "there's a man will amount to something.

  Popley says he has a fine head for business."

  "For the amount of work he does," somebody else said, "he sure has a lot of

  gold. He ain't spent a day in that shaft in a week."

  "What do you mean by that?"

  "Ask them down to the settlement. He does more gambling than mining, according

  to some."

  That baker woman was there, waltzing around like she was light as a feather, and

  seeing her made me think of a Welshman I knew. Now you take a genuine Welshman,

  he can talk a bird right out of a tree ... I started wondering ... how would he

  do with a widow woman who was a fine baker?

  That Welshman wasn't far away, and we'd talked often, the year before. He liked

  a big woman, he said, the jolly kind and who could enjoy making good food. I sat

  down and wrote him a letter.

  Next morning early I met up with Griselda. "You actually marrying that Arvie?"

  Her pert little chin came up and her eyes were defiant. "A girl has to think of

  her future, Tell Sackett! She can't be tying herself to a — a ne'er-do-well! Mr.

  Wilt is a serious man. His mine is very successful," her nose tilted, "and so is

  the bakery!"

  She turned away, then looked back, "And if you expect any girl to like you,

  you'd better stop eating those onions! They're simply awful!"

  And if I stopped eating wild onions, I'd starve to death. Not that I wasn't

  half-starved, anyway.

  That day I went further up the creek than ever, and the canyon narrowed to high

  walls and the creek filled the bottom, wall to wall, and I walked ankle deep in

  water going through the narrows. And there on a sandy beach were deer tracks,

  old tracks and fresh tracks, and I decided this was where they came to drink.

  So I found a grassy ledge above the pool and alongside an outcropping of rock,

  and there I settled down to wait for a deer. It was early afternoon and a good

  bit of time remained to me.

  There were pines on the ridge behind me, and the wind sounded fine, humming

  through their needles. I sat there for a bit, enjoying the shade, and then I

  reached around and pulled a wild onion from the grass, lifting it up to brush

  away the sand and gravel clinging to the roots ...

  It was sundown when I reached my shanty, but I didn't stop, I rode on into the

  settlement. The first person I saw was the Welshman. He was smiling from ear to

  ear, and beside him was the baker woman.

  "Married!" he said cheerfully. "Just the woman I've been looking for!"

  And off down the street they went, arm in arm. Only now it didn't matter

  anymore.

  For two days then I was busy as all get-out. I was down to the settlement and

  back up above the narrows of the canyon, and then I was down again.

  Putting my few things into a pack, and putting the saddle on that old mule of

  mine, I was fixing to leave the claim and shanty for the last time when who

  should show up but Frank Popley.

  He was riding his brown mule with Griselda riding behind him, and they rode up

  in front of the shack. Griselda slid down off that mule and ran up and threw her

  arms around me and kissed me right on the lips.

  "Oh, Tell! We heard the news! Oh, we're so happy for you! Pa was just saying

  that he always knew you had the stuff, that you had what it takes!"

  Frank Popley looked over at me and beamed. "Can't keep a good man down, boy! You

  sure can't! Griselda, she always said, 'Pa, Tell is the best of the lot' an' she

  was sure enough right!"

  Suddenly a boot crunched on gravel, and there was Arvie, looking mighty mean and

  tough, and he was holding a Walker Colt in his fist, aimed right at me. Did you

  ever see a Walker Colt? Only thing it lacks to be a cannon is a set of wheels.

  "You ain't a-gonna do it!" Arvie said. "You can't have Griselda!"

  "You can have Griselda," I heard myself say, and was astonished to realize that

  I meant it.

  "You're not fooling me! You can't get away with it." And his thumb came forward

  to cock that pistol.

  Like I said, Arvie wasn't too smart or he'd have cocked his gun as he drew it,

  so I just fetched out my six-shooter and let the hammer slip from under my thumb

  as it came level.

  Deliberately, I held it a little high, and the .44 slug smashed him in the

  shoulder. It knocked him side-wise and he let go of that big pistol and

  staggered back two steps and sat down hard.

  "You're a mighty disagreeable man, Arvie," I said, "and not much account. When

  the boys down at the settlement start finding the marks you put on those cards

  you'll have to leave the country, but I reckon you an' Griselda deserve each

  other."

  She was looking at me with big eyes and pouty lips because she'd heard the news,

  but I wasn't having any.

  "You-all been washing gold along the creek," I said, "but you never stopped to

  think where those grains of gold started from. Well, I found and staked the

  mother lode, staked her from Hell to breakfast, and one day's take will be more

  than you've taken out since you started work. I figure now I'll dig me out a

  goodly amount of money, then I'll sell my claims and find me some friends that

  aren't looking at me just to see what I got."

  They left there walking down that hill with Arvie astride the mule making pained

  sounds every time it took a step.

  When I had pulled that wild onion up there on that ledge overlooking the deer

  run, there were bits of gold in the sand that clung to the roots, and when I

  scraped the dirt away from the base of that outcrop, she was all there ... wire

  gold lying in the rock like a jewelry store window.

  Folks sometimes ask me why I called it the Wild Onion Mining Company.

  [28 May 2002] Scanned and proofed by (unknown) on a.b.e-b

  [04 Jun 2002] converted to HTML by NickL

 

 

 


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