Savage Hellfire

by Jory Sherman

  “That’s why I’m going alone up there tonight. I want to know what we’re up against in case those prospectors have other ideas once their wounds heal.”

  “Aw, I think you drove ’em off for good.”

  “Ben, nothing’s for good in this world. You cut off a snake’s head, it can still bite you.”

  Ben snorted and walked back to where Whit was fitting pieces together and driving nails into wood.

  “No, no, kid, you’re doin’ it all wrong. You get to work on a sluice box, and I’ll build that first rocker. Hell, I drew you a dang picture.”

  “And the wind blew away what you drew, Mr. Ben.”

  “Don’t call me Mr. Ben. It’s just Ben, or Mr. Russell. And you don’t call me that unless you got somethin’ pretty important to say.”

  Whit nodded. “I know I can build that sluice box,” he said.

  “Just build one about two feet long for now. We got to start gettin’ gold outen this crick by afternoon tomorrow.”

  “I’ll do it, Ben.”

  Ben started hammering tenpenny nails into one of the rocker’s side panels. Whit sawed a four-foot two-by-four in half, then another, while Ben glanced sidelong at him to see if the boy knew what he was doing.

  John made coffee over a fire in the ring of stones up against the bluff. Ben opened tins of bully beef and peaches.

  “Save those empty airtights,” John said.

  “What for?” Ben asked.

  “I have a use for them.”

  The sun had crawled over the lower hills and mountains, was just sliding down behind the snowcaps when they finished eating.

  “You coulda made some bannock or biscuits, John.”

  “Maybe tomorrow. I want to get you and Whit settled up in the mine and be on my way right after dusk.”

  “We sleepin’ up there?” Whit said.

  “You slept there,” Ben said. “What’s the matter? You didn’t like it there?”

  “It’s cold and damp in that cave.”

  “Be glad you got a place to sleep, boy. Or maybe you want to go back home and sleep on a slat bed.”

  “Naw. I guess it’ll be all right. I’d rather sleep by the fire, though.”

  “You sleep by this fire, you might never wake up, boy.”

  “Let it go, Ben. You’ve ridden Whit enough for one day. Your bedrolls are up there. Now, get on with it.”

  “Sure thing, Boss,” Ben said, and the sarcasm in his voice brought a wry smile to John’s lips. He picked up his rifle, checked his pistol, and walked to the creek. He waded across as Ben and Whit climbed the ladder to the mine. He looked back once, then disappeared into the aspen and the pines. The sun slipped down behind the western peaks and the clouds blazed with salmon and peach before they turned to ash. The blue faded from the sky and Venus winked in the darkened fabric of evening, a flickering silver star floating on a pale sea.

  John stepped with care through the trees, stopping every so often to listen. His vision adjusted to the fading light as he crossed game trails and avoided noisy brush and downed limbs, his moccasins softening each footfall so that his journey was almost soundless.

  He heard voices, and widened his course away from the creek until he was opposite the prospectors’ camp, where firelight danced in orange tongues and men sat on logs, the smoke from their cigarettes and pipes swirling like fog in front of their orange faces.

  He crept closer to the creek, hunched over, a step at a time, pausing, listening, trying to discern the words. When he got within twenty yards of the creek, he lay flat and crawled to a place where he could see the men’s faces, hear their words without distortion.

  “Not much color in my pan today,” Krieger said. “Mighty disappointin’, you ask me.”

  “Nobody asked you, Al,” Pete said, a clay pipe stuck in his teeth.

  “It’s hard to pan with only one good arm,” Krieger said. “When it’s healed up, I aim to tack some hide to the barn door and set the door on fire.”

  “Don’t brag about what you’re gonna do, Al,” a man said. “And I’ll call that shot and all the others you might be thinkin’ about.”

  John couldn’t see the man’s face. His back was facing him, but he determined that he was probably the leader. He saw Krieger, Rosset, and Short. The man they called Corny didn’t say much, and there was one other, whose face and form were in shadow. He counted heads. Six men, and all but the one called Corny were packing six-guns, and there were five rifles close at hand, two leaning upright against the bluff, the others stacked on logs next to the men who owned them.

  John retreated, crawling backward an inch or two at a time. The sound of the creek drowned out any whispers from his clothing. He winced a time or two as pine needles poked his belly and legs, one of his arms. When he was far enough away, he stood up and walked back to camp, following the dark creek with its rippling waters off to his left. When he saw the glimmer of their campfire, he stopped and assessed its appearance. It looked as if two men were sleeping within yards of the fire, one on each side. Two dark lumpy shapes that might pass for him and Ben.

  He had no doubt, after listening to the talk at the other camp, that the men he had shot carried grudges. And if the leader turned them loose, they’d be back. Apparently, they had brought extra rifles with them, which was not unusual. A man needed extra weapons in wild country. Five against two, if he subtracted Whit and Corny from the equation. Whit might be an extra gun if he could shoot. And Corny just might be a surprise if he took to bearing arms. Six against three, then, John thought.

  Well, he had faced worse odds.

  The moon rose and blazed a silver ribbon across the creek. John waded across the shallows and tossed another log on the fire before climbing up to the mine.

  Somewhere above him, on the plateau, he heard the call of a timber wolf, and the sky was filled with stars as he reached the ledge, careful to make no sound.

  “I see you, Johnny,” Ben called from inside the cave.

  “How do you know it’s me?”

  “I can smell you and them wet mockersons.”

  John chuckled and entered the cave.

  9

  THEY SAT ON TREE STUMPS MANOLO HAD SET FIRMLY IN THE ground to keep them from wobbling. He had placed five stumps around the front of the cabin. He sat on one, holding his tin cup with both hands, the coffee still steaming. Emma and Eva sat together a few feet away, drinking their coffee from tin cups. They wore old work dresses and lace-up boots, and their hair was bunched up in tight buns beneath faded kerchiefs.

  “I guess Whit won’t be back to help us with the garden, Manolo.”

  “No. It has been a week. Do you worry?”

  “A little. I hope he’s all right.”

  “He’s in good hands, Ma,” Eva said. “I’m sure John and Ben will take good care of him.”

  “I don’t know,” Emma said.

  “Don’t you trust them?” Eva asked, blowing on her coffee.

  “After Argus, I don’t think I trust any man,” Emma said.

  “Not all men are like Argus,” Manolo said.

  “I was married to that man for twenty years, Manolo. And it turns out I didn’t know him at all.”

  “Oh, Ma. John’s a nice man. Just look at his eyes. You can tell.”

  “Don’t you be lookin’ at that man’s eyes, young lady. You’re too young to be flirtin’ with any man.”

  “I’m nigh twenty years old, Ma. I can look at a man’s eyes if I want to.”

  “Not that man’s eyes.”

  “I notice you did your share of lookin’ when he was up here.”

  Emma’s face took on a rosy hue and she fanned herself with her hand.

  “My, that coffee’s hot,” she said, changing the subject.

  “He is handsome, Ma.”

  “Handsome is as handsome does. He killed your father. My husband.”

  “For good reason,” Eva said.

  Emma looked away from her daughter, out across the vast expanse of
young grass, at the trees shining green in the early morning sunlight. The scent of evaporating dew and wildflowers filled her nostrils, and she saw faint mist rising from the grassy plain.

  “A man who lives by the gun shall die by the gun,” Emma said, a dreamy expression on her face.

  “I think you mean ‘sword,’ Ma.”

  “No, I mean gun. That man, John Savage, is a gunman. We saw enough of that kind in Denver.”

  “They weren’t like John.”

  “He carries a gun, doesn’t he? A gun that took Argus’s life away.”

  “And it was a good thing he wore a pistol, Ma. Otherwise, Pa would have killed him. And maybe that poor girl, too.”

  “I don’t want to hear any more about it, Eva. Now, Manolo, can you hook up that plow to one of the horses and plow us a garden?”

  “You just tell me where, Miss Emma.”

  “A place that’s close to the house and where the plants can get the sun all day. It would help if the ground was sloping a little.”

  “There is such a place,” Pacheco said, “right over there, this side of the pine trees. The land rises there and your garden will drain.”

  “Good. Eva and I will get hoes out of the wagon and work the ground you plow, break up the clods before the sun dries them.”

  She looked over at the place where Manolo had pointed and saw that the ground did rise there, slightly, and it looked like a perfect place to grow vegetables.

  “We’ll finish our breakfast coffee and get to work,” Emma said.

  “And we won’t either of us think about that handsome man John Savage all day, will we, Ma?”

  “You watch your sassy little mouth, Eva.”

  Eva crinkled her nose at her mother and took another sip of coffee.

  She knew they would both be thinking about John Savage until they saw him again.

  And neither could wait until that day.

  10

  WHIT HATED THE JOB BEN HAD GIVEN HIM. HE WORKED BARECHESTED in the hot sun every day, shoveling gravel into the dry rocker he and Ben had built.

  “We was goin’ to work all this gravel when we was here before,” Ben explained to Whit. “But we never got around to it. They’s got to be dust a-plenty twixt the bluffs and the crick. You can make yourself some money, boy.”

  “When are you goin’ to quit callin’ me boy?” Whit snapped back at Ben.

  “When you get some hair on your scrawny chest,” Ben said.

  He and John worked the sluice box, digging into the creek and shoveling water and gravel into the box, which was slanted on a large rock so that it had a steep slope. Color showed on the slats, and some wound up in the large pan set at the foot of the sluice box. Every evening, Ben washed the gravel, swirling it around in his large blackened pan until the gold clinging to the black dolomite shone like goldenrod.

  The two men worked the stream, but they also paused often to listen. John had strung empty tin cans filled with small pebbles across every path leading to their claim. Anyone passing their way at night would not see the black string nor the cans stripped of their labels and painted black. Anyone tripping on the string would make a hell of a racket. But during the day, they were vulnerable and wary.

  “I look for Carlos and Juanito any day now,” Ben said that afternoon, when he was swirling sand around in his oversized pan, sloshing dirty water out over the lower edge every so often.

  John, pouring clean stream water into the top of the sluice box, loosening the fine gravel so that it ran down the ladder, looked up and wiped his neck with a red bandanna, scowled at the sun falling from its zenith.

  “Could be,” he said, squinting to block out the sun from his eyes. “They’re both good drovers and they have good help.”

  “You keepin’ them on after they deliver the herd?”

  “That was the plan. We’ll have to plant hay right quick and winter wheat before the snow flies. And with those other folks living up there on our property, I reckon they’ll have plenty to do. A lot of mouths to feed.”

  “Them Mexes won’t take to pannin’.”

  “Two separate things, Ben. We dig for the gold, they tend to the herd and the crop.”

  “Yeah, but I seen what happens to men who see gold.”

  John laughed. He remembered. His first sight of gold in Ben’s pan had sent a thrilling current through him as if he had touched a bolt of lightning. The beauty of it, so golden against the fine black grains of dolomite, was as intoxicating as any liquor, and the worth of it made it all the more appealing. And alluring.

  “Yeah, I know. I’m not worried about Carlos or Juan so much as I am the other two he hired on. I can’t remember their names.”

  “One’s called Pepito, the othern’s Gasparo, I think. Pepito is Juan’s cousin. Gasparo herded sheep up in Wyoming.”

  “Yeah, but he likes cattle better, he told me.”

  “That man was hungry. He’d have said the same thing about herding cats or prairie dogs.”

  “You read a man pretty good, Ben.”

  “You got the same feelin’?”

  John didn’t answer, but dipped a pail into the creek and started running water through the sluice. He knew the spring runoff had brought down grains and nuggets of gold from somewhere higher up in the mountains, someplace near the mother lode, perhaps, where gold had been deposited many thousands of years before, or so he had heard. They already had an appreciable amount of dust and a few nuggets, weighty enough to put a few greenbacks in their pokes. And Whit had done his share, too, mining dust out of the dry sand. They hadn’t had to do any crushing yet, and they hadn’t laid a pick to the mine. That was hard work, and being up there brought back too many sad memories.

  Gasparo Calderon, a burly, stocky man, with a face leathered and bronzed by the sun, rode into camp late in the afternoon. He wore two pistols on his hips, had another dangling from the saddle horn of the mouse-gray pony he called Chiva. He broke into a grin when he saw Ben and John, splashed across the creek in the shallowest part, and waved his battered felt hat as if he were attending a Saturday night foofaraw.

  “Mr. Savage, we bring the cattle. They will be here tomorrow.”

  “Light down, Gasparo,” John said.

  “I got to get back. Carlos, he say to tell you he is coming.”

  “How many head?”

  “Oh, more than a hundred, I think. Good cattle. Strong. Very fat, yes.”

  “How far away is Carlos camped?” John asked.

  “I ride two hours. Maybe not far now. I find a place for him to bed down the cattle and left my bandanna to show him the place. I am very happy I find you. Do you have any whiskey? Any tequila?”

  “No, we don’t have any whiskey. You ride back and tell Carlos we’ll meet him on the trail.”

  “First, John, I tell you something, eh?”

  He rode up close to John and beckoned for him to come closer.

  “What is it?” John said.

  “There is a man watching you,” Calderon whispered into John’s ear. “He has the spying glasses.” Gasparo cupped both hands and held them up to his eyes.

  “Binoculars?”

  “Yes, that is what he has. He did not know I see him hiding in the trees. When I see him, I ride a circle and come in so he do not know I am seeing him.”

  “Can you tell me where that man is now, without pointing?” John asked.

  “He has built a ladder on a tall tree. He is in the top of that tree, maybe thirty metros from where you now stand. If you draw a straight line in the air, that is where he sits.”

  “Don’t let him know you saw him when you ride back to Carlos.”

  “I will go the way I come. He will not know.”

  “Thanks, Gasparo. That is very useful information.”

  “What do you do? Do you kill this man because he is spying on you?”

  “No, I won’t kill him, but I sure as hell want to talk to him.”

  “Yes. I go now. Adios.” Calderon grinned at John and his
eyebrows arched twice above his eyes.

  Gasparo turned his cow pony and splashed across the creek, disappeared into the trees.

  “What did that Mex tell you that I didn’t hear?” Ben asked.

  “If I tell you, Ben, don’t let on, even to Whit. Got that?”

  “Sure. What is it?”

  “Gasparo spotted someone spying on us. I know just where he is. I’m going to walk upstream a couple of hundred yards and cross the creek at those shallows where the creek bends. You know the place.”

  “Yeah, way past where you got all them cans a-danglin’.”

  “That’s the place. I want him to think I’m heeding a call to nature, so you go get me a couple of corncobs and holler something at me when I leave.”

  “Holler what?”

  “I don’t know. Make some joke about what I’m going to do in the trees.”

  “If you was goin’ to take a crap, John, you’d go downstream, not up.”

  “I know that. Make a joke about that if you want. Yell real loud so he thinks I’m just going to drop my pants and squat.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then, do what you were doing and make sure Whit stays at his task.”

  “I got it, Johnny. You’re going to sneak up on that jasper and pull his rope.”

  “I’m going to find out what he’s doing out there, sitting in a tree with a pair of binoculars, watching our every move.”

  “And if I hear shots from yonder, then what?”

  “Then you’ll know I couldn’t talk the man down out of that tree. Now, go get those corncobs.”

  Ben went to the supply tent and walked back with two dried corncobs. He made a big show of handing them to John. John started walking upstream, away from camp. Whit looked up, but said nothing. He was still working the dry rocker, shoveling sand in it and shaking it until it rattled with gravel.

  As John reached the aspens on their side of the creek, he heard Ben call out to him.

  “Watch out a snake don’t bite you on the ass, John.”

  John smiled and dropped the corncobs beside the path. Then he walked to the shallows and crossed without splashing or making any noise. It was quiet in the woods, and he made a wide circle, holding to his course by dead reckoning. When he was directly opposite their camp, a good two hundred yards from where he figured the spy to be, he began his silent stalk, heading straight for the tree where he figured the man was watching from.