Sary's Gold

by Sharon Shipley

  Seb had already rejoined the frivolity inside the saloon.

  ****

  That night, fully clothed, Seb and Sary lay back to back in Handi’s hostelry bed, as if an invisible board lay between them. Both had bleak faces as they studied the dark.

  Chapter 3

  At dawn, Sary and Seb rattled out of Big Bear in a weary wagon with scanty new gear, a few hogsheads of salt pork, bags of dried beans and peas, some meal sacks, and their worn baggage.

  The rowdy theater troupe also made a grand and exuberant departure in their own gaudy wagon train piled higgledy-piggledy with props and costumes, trunks, plus the midget, with a long plume in his hat, riding a mule.

  From an upstairs saloon window, Handi gazed down hard at both of the departing groups.

  Sary turned her face, showing a slight bruise, as if she felt her watching, or perhaps just looked back for female kinship.

  She waved up, tentatively smiling, and stealthily patted her skirt where the Derringer lay nestled.

  Handi closed the curtain. Julian halted her and looked out. His dead eyes warmed.

  “Nice piece. Angel on a Christmas tree.”

  Handi stiffened. “You’re worse than Jules.”

  Julian studied her raddled face in the harsh light.

  “We’re a long time over, Hannah.”

  “You made me this way.” She squinted at Sary’s back. “Already asked her. She’ll beg to empty my whores’ slops jars, once she claws her way through a Big Bear winter.”

  “Keep your filth off this one.”

  Handi looked slapped, turning away while Julian tracked Sary until the wagons rounded the feed store across from the stables and disappeared.

  ****

  At a dusty, rocky crossroads, the troupe waved royal goodbyes to Seb and Sary. Tommy, for Sary had learned that was the actor’s name, tipped a flashy fedora. “Ophelia!” he sang out, and blew her merry kisses.

  Sary grinned back, half-standing, and wildly waved, with the oddest urge to just leap out and run to their wagon. She unconsciously brushed her lips recalling the tingle of his touch, and wondered how she would look in the redheaded woman’s purple velvet turban with the feather and jewels…

  “Owww!” She looked down at a sudden pressure on her knee.

  Seb pinched it—hard—nailing her in place.

  The actor mugged, “Sorry!” He almost toppled as the wagon jolted on, but laughed uproariously and kissed his hand, waving it at her.

  And so the long moment passed. Sary watched until the troupe rounded a bend and became just a cloud of pixie dust, and even watched that as if Tommy might magically appear out of it, as a genie from a fairy tale, the boisterous singing still in her ears—and long after in her mind. She smoothed her black dress as if holding in her emotions. Perhaps it was for the best. She clenched her jaw. She must be a helpmeet, not a nay-sayer or a loose woman or a flibberty-gibbet.

  ****

  Mesmerized by the mule’s patient jog, Sary nodded, fanning from her nose the thick yellow dust heavy with pine pollen, dully scanning last year’s dead weeds lining the trail like children’s pickup sticks, and endured the new-hatched swarms of gnats without noticing them anymore. Dust spurting from the rattling wheels coated her face with dun powder. The trail was steeper and less defined now; the mule labored. Sary jolted with the wagon, trying to hang on and stay seated as the iron-rimmed wheels bumped and clanged over a trail that was more rocks than dirt.

  She spared a glance at Seb. He too looked tired—or worried. Then…Sary heard an almost joyful sound of rushing, gurgling water, still unseen. They must be close! Seb licked a dry mouth. She hoped he would stop and not mulishly keep on—but Seb flicked reins and the mule spurted ahead. They rounded a bend to come upon a lean man hunkered over a frigid-looking rushing creek. Apparently he was panning. She watched with curiosity.

  A thicket of beard covered most of his jaundiced face like a pelt, right up to the man’s black watchful eyes. He seemed an animal peering through a hedge. The panner hungrily hawked Sary beneath a shadowed brim, but he held a cocked Colt in mute warning for Seb to just keep on going.

  Seb, sunk deep in his denim collar, shrugged nervously. “Reckon—reckon our claim’s on down a ways,” he muttered, throwing haunted looks back at the man.

  Sary looked back, too.

  The man with the wide silver pan and deep hat brim still followed her with his shadowed eyes. Sary shivered and shrank down on the plank seat.

  ****

  Later, the sun poured gold honey on their faces, light swallowed beforetime by jagged conifer peaks. As night sucked twilight dry, a scrap of pink bandanna fluttered like a faded flower on a skeleton clump of gorse.

  “Calculate this be it,” Seb grunted.

  Seb was as uneasy as Sary. Why did that give her little comfort? She must be a helpmeet—not a Doubting Thomas. Yet as Sary surveyed her new home there was little to give her hope.

  Seb attempted to hop from the wagon with vigor, but his knees crumpled as he furtively checked out the cheerless clearing at the edge of a straggly-treed foothill, with the requisite creek running through it.

  Chapter 4

  A tarp was slung over a tree branch. Sary ducked out of it, holding her back, and looked around, sighing. We’ve been here a month, and what have we got? There was a crude fire pit, and their scant belongings stored and stacked as neatly as Sary could approximate a home. She should wash out her bloomers and petticoat and Seb’s mud-caked shirt before dark, she thought, yet there was more important work to be done. She heartened. Stimulating chores this time…the reward for slogging snow-melt streams from dawn till dusk, chafed red hands, and draggled wet skirts.

  After a plate of beans, Seb lounged by the fire, blankly watching Sary, sweating, heft a bottle of mercury and start to prepare the copper plates. He called lazily, “Hot enough now for ya, Sary-girl?”

  She wiped her face and pulled at the underarms of her shirt in answer. Somehow, Seb couldn’t do this. It was delicate, woman’s work, he said.

  “Tole ya to wear trousers,” he continued to harp as she struggled with the awkward plates. “How can ya drag all them skirts around anyways?” he observed.

  “I won’t give up my skirts. I need something to remember I’m a—a lady.” Old arguments. But Sary smiled to take the sting out. No bad feelings tonight. She turned back to the plate. “Sure this is how to do it, Seb?”

  “’At’s what a man tole me.” Seb yawned and leaned closer. “What’s ’at yer doin’?”

  “If you helped me, you’d know,” she snapped—she couldn’t help herself—and continued scraping sludge from the completed plate, carefully lifting the hot gold-rich mercury sludge and pouring it into a kettle with a drain.

  “You gettin’ mouthy?” Seb almost stirred himself and then sank back. “Hunh,” he groused. Soon losing interest, Seb dozed in the heat of the enterprise.

  Grimly Sary salvaged the hot mercury. Her arms shook as she dropped the heavy kettle, waking Seb up.

  ****

  Later, grinning and shyly triumphant, their faces glowing from heat and fire, Sary and Seb in rare companionship hunkered over a trickle of molten gold spreading out to fill the lozenge-shaped ingot.

  Then Seb jumped up and war-whooped a victory strut, crowing, “Didn’t I tell ya I’d be rich? Didn’t I? Hot dang!”

  Sary trickled the last of the molten gold into the lozenge. She bit her lip. “Yes, Seb. You did.”

  ****

  In Delacorte’s saloon, O’Malley trickled gold dust on a small balance.

  Julian Delacorte, his gray satin waistcoat matching his slicked-back mane of hair and brocade vest, assessed, nodded, and dealt cards to O’Malley, Ratchet, Orvis, and young Cooley with his flaming acne. Julian winced at Cooley’s face. When he turned, something just as distasteful entered his view: The green flatlander riding by on a mule.

  But just then Biskits snuck past with a tray, headed to the gallery stairs, further distracting h
im—something about it wasn't right—and Delacorte forgot all about Seb.

  “Hey, Biskits?”

  Biskits grunted.

  “Just when do we get any a your culinary treats?” Julian gave a laugh, scowling, when Biskits averted his head and continued up without answer.

  “Around here, I’m first served!”

  Biskits nodded, fearful, hunching a shoulder up. “Pearl. And—and, with Jules.” He studied the tray. Looked anywhere but at Julian.

  Delacorte brushed past, up the stairs. Ratchet, smirking, re-arranged his lanky body and followed, lounging outside the room of masculine opulence Julian had just entered, where a bronze sun seeped through drapes muddying the bright day outside.

  ****

  Biskits stepped in with the tray, all eyes.

  Pearl, a battered dove with a torn chemise, was dimly seen huddled in a corner behind the bed curtains, whimpering and mewling. “Mr. Julian, sir…?” She began to crawl to him across the coverlets.

  Julian snatched the tray, glaring Biskits out. He spied Ratchet, lurking outside the door and hissed, “Fuck off! He catches this filth from you!” And kicked the door closed.

  Ratchet called from the hall, “Can’t catch the contagion if you already suffered the bite, Delacorte! Jules don’t scratch the itch,” he singsonged. “Neither do you when you need tidying up.”

  Julian grunted under his breath, “And who has ta carbolic the place after?”

  Pearl whimpered as Ratchet’s laughter echoed down the hall.

  Julian spun to Jules, who wore an olive-green silk robe embroidered with dragons and poppies, and seemed oblivious to the commotion. He sagged when he saw his son consumed with heating a knife blade in a candle flame, while young Pearl, bearing spade-shaped burns on her arms, still mewled and rolled her eyes at Julian like a frightened colt.

  Julian sat on the bed, earning a frown from Jules, and calmly went through an elaborate cigar-lighting ritual, ignoring the other two. He eventually murmured, studying the end of his cigar, “Jules? You are gainfully employed. And what is this in aid of?”

  Jules turned eagerly. “Gonna show Pearl a good time, Dad!”

  Julian blandly examined one of Biskits’ sandwiches—delicate slabs of ham and bread with trimmed crusts. A small wildflower lay by the side. “Asked Pearl?”

  Jules ignored him and sulkily turned to Pearl, who backed to the headboard of the bed, giving little mews of distress. Julian laid down the sandwich. Taking cards from his waistcoat, he riffled and cut, apparently unconcerned by the happenings on the bed.

  Jules reacted in irritation at the distraction.

  “Play you for her, Son.”

  Jules looked from Julian to Pearl, intrigued, but—“No.”

  Julian snapped the cards. “What’ll it be? Five out of five? Loser takes the new stallion. That black stallion. Winner takes Pearl.”

  Jules’s eyes glittered like the onyx ring he sported. “One you said I cain’t ride, less the devil was my stable hand?”

  “The very one.”

  Jules dropped the knife. The bedspread smoked.

  Julian palmed the scorch and laid out the cards.

  Jules fiercely concentrated, and eagerly lost game after game.

  Julian finally gathered the cards. “Now, I believe a true gentleman—a cultured gentleman—unties Pearl and honors his wager, Son. Give me the knife.”

  Jules looked stunned as he deciphered his father’s stratagem—his trickery. Pushing his lower lip out, he threw a sulky nod at Pearl. “But can I still have a good time?”

  Julian wagged his finger. “No bruises. Not around the face. Customers don’t like their doxies used-looking.”

  “Those ruffians wouldn’t recognize a whore from a slag-heap,” Jules mumbled.

  “Get that way soon enough without our help,” Julian rejoined with a faraway look.

  Jules sighed and handed over the knife. Julian froze halfway to the hall when his son murmured slyly, “I saw you eyeing that girl the other day, eyes green as my jade stick pin. Awfully fetching. She wasn’t a slag yet”—he paused delicately—“either.” Sliding a glistening eye toward his father, he giggled, tongued a slice of ham, and rolled over to Pearl. “Now, where were we?’

  Once Pearl saw Julian was not going to remove her from Jules’ presence, she tried to jolly Jules by smiling and adjusting her petticoat.

  Jules offered Pearl the wildflower from the tray and kissed her cringing toes. Pearl ventured hopefully as he reached the door, “Mr. Delacorte…sir?”

  However, Julian was already in the hall, flipping the knife to Ratchet.

  “Yours, I believe. Ya lost this one.” Julian brushed past.

  “That boy could use a little roughing up.” Ratchet displayed lupine teeth and hung on to Julian’s arm. “What ya pay me for.”

  Julian flung him off. “Off the payroll.”

  “He needs to know how to treat women.” Ratchet’s words were calm, but his eyes gleamed wet. He subconsciously licked his lips.

  Julian looked off. “Not from you, he don’t.”

  Ratchet cackled, tucking the knife into his belt with a flick of his rangy wrist. “Too late, Julian. Your boy’s a pure-born natural.”

  Julian started to reply but then swiveled at a thud of boots and laughter exploding from below.

  “What in thunder’s going on now?” He peered over the gallery and his lip twitched, releasing the tension. Seb, the greenhorn peeling bills off a roll, stood in the midst of a ring of men, and Delacorte’s liquor flowed.

  Chapter 5

  Sary could hear Seb from the campsite, not that she hadn’t been listening, one ear cocked against the rattle of pines and howl of wind between the rocks. Seb’s faint voice! She gathered skirts and raced, stumbling in the dark, up the rise overlooking more dwindling ranges of peaky forests, and there was Seb, drunkenly caterwauling, leading the mule and riding a scrawny horse.

  As they approached. Sary ran alongside and called up to him in excitement. Catching the horse’s mane, she distractedly scanned the animal while searching saddlebags. “Did it assay? How’d it assay out, Seb?”

  Wearing a flash new hat, Seb slid off, flicking a new whip. “Feller at assayer’s tried ta gyp me. Said it was so puny he had to haul out his false eyes.” He chortled.

  Sary jumped back, avoiding Seb’s random whip flicks. “But you got something? They gave you something?” Sary still grinned, as Seb wavered about, lashing his whip. “Assay fella was goggle-eyed. He says to me, ‘Plague take it! Where you get this at?’ ”

  “I said, ‘Why, a place you told me warn’t enough gold to stick in your jaw.’ ”

  “He says it warn’t much, but pretty dang pure!”

  Sary distractedly lifted and prodded the mule’s saddlebags. “Anybody hear you, Seb?”

  “He’ll keep shut. Tighter’n a hen’s egg-chute.”

  “But—you didn’t go in the saloon?” Sary rummaged the horse, increasingly frantic.

  Seb looked to the fire. “Maybe told a few folks.”

  She ran to the other side of the mule, tugging and unbuckling straps. “Meal? Seb? The flour! Where’s the provisions? Beans, at least! Seb!” Sary finally screamed.

  Seb aimed for his bedroll.

  “Already et,” he mumbled, flopping down.

  She tugged the saddlebags off the horse—nothing—and spun, snatched the whip but ran up and kicked his backside instead. “Damnation, Seb! Hell’s bells! Six months for a dead horse! What do we do? Eat it?”

  Seb rubbed his backside and rolled over, petulant. “No respect, man don’t own a horse.” Squinting at Sary, his eyes shifting as though she wavered in his vision, he slurred, “Ain’t purtiest star in the firma-ment, Sary Swinford. Still, men’d pay hard eagles for what you got.” He sank back. “Wha’ a fancy feller told me.”

  Sary cracked the whip. Splitting the air, it sang out her anger. “Did he also tell you what we eat this winter?”

  Seb still gaped bright-eyed at h
er like he’d seen a vision, ignoring the whip. “Hey! ’At’s right. ’At’s right. I could be a fancy man steada lookin’ after you. God-dang it, Sary. You’re a God-danged anvil round my neck. I’d be somebody—make somethin’ of myself—weren’t for you, by gawd!” He swiped his nose. “Maybe it’s my turn.” And he peered blearily at the fire and spoke as though remembering. “Fellow at a saloon don’t guzzle scag-end beer. Aged whiskey! Rum! Alla way from Carri-be-an.”

  Seb sniffed himself, wrinkling his nose. “Stunk good, too!”

  “That would be a treat!”

  Seb scratched under his arm, tracking Sary. “You mouthing off?” He sucked a tooth. “Peculiar, ain’t it? I’m slavin’ away, and all you’d hafta do is wallow in some big ole feather bed.”

  “What!” Sary scrambled for a branch.

  Seb snaked up, darting for the whip faster than she thought possible, but he tripped, tangled with it, fell over, and wrenched the branch away instead.

  “Stop it, don't, Seb!” Sary flinched, holding her arms up, and waited for the blow.

  He grinned, instead poking her with the branch. They tussled, circling the fire until she was dizzy; Seb leaned over and retched, losing all the Big Bear whiskey he’d treated himself with. He looked up with mean eyes. “You know what’s between the kivers! He’s dead and molderin’, but you sure ain’t!” He stopped, swaying, distracted by Sary’s bosom blooming between torn buttons of his shirt. His shirt, by gawd! He finally slung the branch on the fire.

  Sary, shaken, breathing hard, took up her book—she had been re-reading Æsop’s Fables—and tried to sit calmly by the light of the fire.

  She ignored him. Ignored her hunger. Scarcely felt anything but an odd cold fear dropped like an icicle down her neck.