Sary's Gold

by Sharon Shipley

  How did we get here? How the Hades did we get here! Seb was always promising a trek down to Big Bear and its bleak amenities, if even for a spell, but always there was some excuse—the horse was lame, wait till the weather cleared, he was feeling poorly that morning. When they found a few more slippery flashes of gold in the creek, he slipped off by himself. The months evaporated.

  Their sketchy wagon trail was overgrown. Open patches between brush and fallen limbs could be a true path or meander into dead ends on a precipice. She could wander hours—days—lost and starving till she and the horse dropped in their traces, hoping she’d glimpse some spark in the wilderness, some glimmer of another living creature heralded by campfire, a lantern, smoke. All was black like a wall two inches before her nose, dense and secretive. All she knew was she must get away. Which way was that God-forsaken outpost of Big Bear? Vaguely north, she thought, looking in vain for the North Star, recalling they’d veered off-trail after coming across the panner—didn’t they? Seb had forged the mule through close-set pine, following the sound of water, before they found that bandanna scrap. Laughing bitterly, recalling how green she was and how she’d feared bears, she paid more heed to the underbrush than to her surroundings. She would almost welcome a bear now as another living creature.

  The horse balked. Its knees stiffened. Sary looked down, aghast.

  Her toes were two inches from a steep drop. As the moon sailed beyond a cloud, she made out a thin ledge about three feet below. In the next pass of the moon, she saw another shelf, like a stair step, and perhaps a gentle descent beyond?

  She yanked the horse’s unyielding scrawniness. “Come on! Move!”

  The horse dug hooves at the brink, threatening to jack-knife itself over, when, from out of nowhere, Seb whacked the horse’s legs. Seb! The horse staggered to its knees.

  Sary sagged. But Seb was asleep. And I was so careful.

  Seb jerked Sary, bending her out into space. Yanking her back, he screamed against the wind into her face. “Know what they do with horse thieves? Twenty-five miles to the next train halt! Big Bear? In the dark? Hah! And you ain’t got no where-with-all. Don’t see how you’re gettin’ where you’re goin’, sister-mine. Skinny crow bait. That’s what! Couldn’t last the night.”

  He stopped, heaving and murderous—and scared, she saw—and hauled his hand back.

  ****

  Seb looked down, stunned, his hand still poised for the stinging blow to her face, where Sary huge-eyed but determined, steadied Handi’s pistol against his midriff. Seb chuckled shakily. “And where’d ya get that fancy little gewgaw?” He walked into it, pressing his belly hard against the tiny cold muzzle, grinning down at her.

  Sary’s hand shook. How did things get this far?

  “Here.” Seb didn’t fail to read her hesitation and snickered, cricking his neck—and grinding her gun-hand up, he dug the Derringer deep in his own jugular.

  “Stop it!” She twisted her hand.

  “Or here!” Seb sniggered, unrelenting, forcing her fist clutching the tiny pistol grip to the other side of his neck. He seemed to have regained his backbone if not his imagination. She could kill him if he didn’t stop!

  “Blood gushes good from the neck. Have to step back lively, though.” He giggled and wrested the gun to his temple, grinning from shadowed pits of eyes. His head blotted out the moon, with a pale blue corona about his unreadable face.

  “Or here,” he breathed hoarsely drawing the misery out. “Nice—big—black—hole. Brains just ooze out,” he whispered, “like long—bloody—worms.” He gripped her chin with his other hand, forcing her head back. She couldn’t speak.

  “Bone chips’ll spatter, stickin’ all over your purty face.”

  Seb released her and slid her gun hand down to his belly, pressing the barrel into it, as Sary struggled to regain control. How can Seb be so strong? He doesn’t do anything!

  “Or here,” Seb whispered intimately in her ear. “Gut shot. Ever seen a man gut-shot? Oh, the pain…! Guts just pop out, all coiled up in there—”

  Sary gagged. “Stop! Don’t, Seb! It’s enough!” But it wasn’t. She recalled Seb’s jests and teasing always were one or twenty steps too far to be funny or clever. He wouldn’t stop. She remembered the tickling sessions as children, when she supposed she would faint. The rodents and dead snakes in her underthings, in her drawers. “Just leave me alone!” Sary cried out, wrenching the gun free.

  He’ll end up killing himself or me, she had time to think, when a shot blasted the night and Seb’s mouth formed a hurt O.

  He stared down at the toy-like gun Sary still held, his expression almost comical, and grabbed his side. His hand came away all bloody. He snatched at the Derringer with hands so slick they slid off, and he tottered back, with a wounded look. His hand drizzling red, fingered a bloody kiss on her mouth before he theatrically slumped to his knees and toppled at her feet.

  As she watched Seb drop, howling, making a great fuss, Sary smeared her lips dry with the back of her hand. “Help me, Sary,” he whined.

  ****

  By the fire’s light, Sary roughly daubed a raw streak that glanced across Seb’s ribs, while Seb moaned, casting mournful looks.

  “Hurt me, Sary,” he whined.

  She almost replied, aware he watched with a calculating hangdog look. Sary mutely wiped the wound, binding it with a scrap of old petticoat.

  “Thank your lucky stars I ain’t dead,” Seb prodded.

  Sary roughly smoothed his shirt down. “You’re not dead—not even hurt—but it was a fool-headed thing!” And, later, she told him, “You shouldn’t press me, Seb.”

  Seb awkwardly patted her shoulder. “Won me a hand a whiles back, Sary. Squirreled away. It’s yourn. Take it, or however much you need. But not too much,” he mumbled. “And we ain’t going back.”

  ****

  Seb wended their horse down the mountain next dawn—the right trail commenced just beyond a dead branch Sary noted that looked mighty like a resting squirrel—to the outpost of Big Bear City. Sary kept her eyes peeled, scribing each twist and turn in her head, every odd-shaped boulder and lightning-struck conifer, cursing herself for being starry-eyed and woolgathering on her maiden trip to the camp when all was new and filled with wonder, either for good or ill. She’d remember it all, and just maybe she could escape.

  Chapter 9

  Big Bear City. As Sary and Seb rode in, Jules watched the world pass, with a bit of the “Emperor” his father owned, from his usual place of eminence on the veranda, fronting two sides of his father’s saloon. Bored. Listless. Usually bad news for Pearl, or one of the other “slags.”

  His lizard eyes flickered mild interest over the weak spectacle of two flatlanders riding in on a horse he wouldn’t feed his hounds. His eyes flared like dying stars as he watched Seb hand a wallet over his shoulder to the too-thin-for-his-taste girl, he who liked their flesh plump and moist, mottled with bruises like over-bloomed roses. Still—his gaze traveled her lithe figure. Her hair was rough, and her dress hung from her shoulders, with the small points of breast moving gently beneath, he fancied like small warm kittens—still there was a vulnerable beauty in the pure-honed features and long neck…and those huge eyes, like water sparkling from the sunburned face.

  “And don’t be spendin’ it like you’re a danged Carnegie!” he heard the weak man carp. The girl said something back that Jules couldn’t catch.

  “’Course not, Seb. Only what we need.” Sary muttered under her breath, “Everything!”

  Sullenly, Seb hitched the mount at the saloon post, hawking his sister as she rushed to the nearest mercantile. Finally he wiped his mouth and clomped up the steps, stopping dead at the top.

  That odd cuss Jules just sits there, grinning like a fool. Seb was aware too of a hulk of a man tilted in a chair beside Jules, but next to Jules’s eerie presence, he was a mere cipher. A big barn with nothin’ much ta stable. Seb snickered to himself, uncomfortably aware the big man’s—the buffalo�
�s—feet stuck out, blocking his dignified way. With cold sweat tickling his back, Seb calculated he needed to go past Jules, and he needed to piss. Seb wavered, already committed, one foot raised to reach the step.

  Jules giggled as Ev’ret stuck out an anvil-sized boot and played foot games with Seb.

  Seb wobbled. Lordy, I want to avoid the pair of them.

  Jules smirked wider at the hick grinning sickishly as he hopscotched over Ev’ret’s feet darting in and out. Finally tripping, the clumsy oaf bowed himself into the saloon. Jules smirked again and sighed, boredom once again descending.

  Ev’ret, Jules’s new, huge, dumb-as-a-plank, goon/bodyguard, zealously watched everything Jules did, to Jules’ annoyance, including Sary as she crossed the road, for Jules recalled her name now.

  Jules was not alone. His father also hawked her from his bedroom window.

  As Julian slicked his hair, his yellow-toothed grin drew neck wattles in strings of flesh up from a starched collar. He tugged his new velvet waistcoat, straight from Chicago via the train to Redlands at the foot of Big Bear Mountain. He slapped his jowls till they stung, checked himself in the mirror, and glanced once more out the watery panes before leaving. Feeling foolish and denied, Julian ducked back.

  Jules and Ev’ret tracked the Swinford girl as she walked into view from under the saloon veranda…his angel on a Christmas tree.

  ****

  Jules slammed back into Ev’ret, who dogged him as close as a coat of paint. Ev’ret, rooted like a rock, rubbed his chest, sulking as Jules snarled, pushing at him. It was like shoving the horse and the wagon. “Don’t you bathe? Soap? Stay away from me! And where the hell’s Ratchet, anyways?”

  “Un-hunh.” Ev’ret vigorously shook his head. “Julian said—”

  “Mister Delacorte to you!”

  Ev’ret breathed though his mouth. “Yah. Julian says, stick to you like plaster on a saint. Like plaster on a…” Ev’ret blinked.

  Jules skimmed past him while he ruminated and was already strolling into the mercantile after that female by the time Ev’ret lumbered after. He looked like an ox pulling a cart.

  ****

  Inside Delacorte’s, Seb thumped the bar, seeking attention. One or two drinkers glanced over, but the joint was disappointingly empty, with only three card players.

  Seb sniggered.

  “My woman’s gonna buy store out over yonder,” he tried.

  Men mocked with their eyes.

  “Doncha know!”

  The men went back to their cards.

  His neck grew red as a turkey wattle. “Gotta watch her ever’ minute. Man, can she siphon my money. Barkeep!” Seb rapped again. “That stuff you keep under the bar!” Seb morosely sipped alone. Hadn’t been so durn big-hearted, spoilin’ Sary, he woulda had enough to buy a round. She’ll pay! By gum, she’ll pay. He raked the bar under his eyebrows for Delacorte, half-fearful, half in hope.

  Glory be! The Great Man himself nodded Seb over.

  Seb gestured, “Who me?” and swaggered big to Julian.

  ****

  In the mercantile, Jules fitted on Homburgs and Trilbys imported from England especially for him, if he cared, tracking Sary in a hand mirror while Ev’ret hovered over a hard-candy bin.

  Sary breathed the store in. It was scantily stocked, but wide in variety, from laces and dress goods to tobacco and harnesses, but it seemed like Paris and Rome and even London, like in that Dickens book. She sucked in scents of cloves and peppermint and sage before absorbing color, patterns, and occasional flashes of mirrors and cheap trinkets among the odd kitchen ladle. She roamed, happily oblivious of watchers, holding up ribbons of satin and grosgrain, fingering cheap lace collars, and thrilling over brassy bits of jewelry. Eventually she dawdled to the L-shaped counter where a proprietor intent on toting bills sucked a pickle and cast nervous flickers at Jules.

  Sary watched the pickle. Her mouth watered. She swallowed.

  “Sir?” she tried. Her voice was the caw of a crow, rusty from lack of discourse.

  “How much might the twenty-five-pound bag be? The flour?”

  “Could be ten dollars.”

  He looked her up and down, eyeing the frayed bit of lace tatting at her neck, taking in the deterioration. Still, a dime’s a dime, and there’s a faded prettiness under the tan, and those eyes… He dismissed her then. She clearly had no scratch.

  “Oh.” Sary calculated. “The meal?”

  “Five.”

  “Oh, um, I, could I purchase three pounds each?”

  She gazed hungrily at a molasses tin.

  “Might come up with some”—the proprietor sucked the pickle in—“accommodation.”

  ****

  Whistling to himself, sprawled in a chair, and tilting his hat rakishly, Seb checked out Delacorte’s office. “Yes, Captain. And what can I do ya for?” he offered expansively.

  “Your sister, for starters.” Julian hacked a cough, waiting for breath. “Handi’s off emptying her whores’ slops jars.”

  Seb looked confused.

  Julian laughed and shakily poured shots, proffering a cigar box.

  Seb chose one, warily venturing, “Ummm. Well. That’s good…. A—a good thing…I reckon.”

  Julian snorted a laugh. “A small wager with Miss McAdams,” not explaining further. He puffed. Seb tried to look interested.

  His eyes roved the office as if trying for some clue as to why he’d been summoned.

  “Thought she mighta died. Your sister. Buried up there somewheres. Made up my mind before that turns absolutely true.”

  Delacorte held a Lucifer under Seb’s cigar. Seb preened, lighting up from the flame Delacorte held—for him!

  ****

  Suddenly Jules reached over and shoved Sary’s money off the counter.

  “Give it to her…” His eyes were spent bullets.

  Sary looked down, clutching her purse tightly. A very pale and frail hand is in her view, a glimpse of lace cuff. When she looked up at Jules's pale pretty face, his eyes had a hot, liquid look, burning right into her like a faggot of firewood dropped on a tablecloth. There was a hint of the old man, Delacorte, about him too, but in an attenuated form, as if he were a fragile painted-doll image of the older man.

  ****

  Inside Julian’s office, Seb tilted his chair and drew deep on the cigar. “What ’xactly you got in mind, Cap?” Seb winked broadly.

  Julian brushed a flick of ash, hiding his disdain. “Not what you think.” His eyes looked down. ”Pure?”

  “Only by rights!” Seb sat upright. “Preacher-contracted,” he blurted. “Hardly touched. Husband died young—warn’t that a tragedy? But for a right dainty morsel, my sister’s a real wildcat.” He winked once more. “If you git my meaning.”

  Julian removed a wallet.

  Seb’s gaze followed it like a hunting dog would a rabbit, licking his lips. “Feller could do worse. Lot worse.”

  “Tell her—” Julian looked off. “Tell her I’d treat her good. And all. Real good. Won’t need to fret. Ever.” He held onto the wallet.

  Seb grabbed for it but let go like it was on fire. His chair banged the floor.

  “Hold on now! You mean for good? For good and all?”

  “A fuckin’ queen,” Julian growled.

  Seb half rose but fell back, backhanding his mouth while tracking the money.

  Julian leaned close. He watched him with pity. “How’s that?”

  Seb looked to the door as if seeing someone. Perhaps Sary. He licked his lips and grasped the wallet Julian still gripped, and he whispered huskily, “Maybe. Maybe it be best.”

  Julian frowned. “Any—hindrances with which I should be acquainted?”

  Seb shook his head, dazed.

  Julian released the wallet. “Have her redded up”—he hawked long and hard, gagged, breathless, and spat pink into a handkerchief—“for me.”

  Seb sat up. “Don’t you worry none, Cap. I’ll git Sary all spit-polished and shined to a fare-ye-well!
” Seb waited. Nothing more was proffered. He jumped up to leave, but halted at the door. “You done us an honor, Mr. Delacorte. Uh—Julian.”

  Julian waved him off. After Seb’s footfalls clattered off, he fingered a velvet box rubbed bald at the corners. He opened it and removed yellowed India rubber tubing and a long hypodermic with the silver worn off to brass at the plunger. He unrolled his sleeve, revealing his once muscular arm riddled with purple welts. After a pause, Julian Delacorte sighed and sank back. After a time, he snapped open another velvet box to reveal a pair of pearl-drop earrings. He turned to a drawing and added a pencil line to a surprisingly good image of Sary’s face and sketched in a pearl drop earring.

  Underneath, a crude half-finished architectural drawing of a sprawling Victorian house lay on his desk.

  ****

  Carefully not looking at Jules, Sary slid back her coin the proprietor had stooped for and shoved at her. “Take it!”

  Behind her, Jules ripped his hat tag off and let it drop to the floor, fitting the Homberg back on. His small white teeth flashed, as if daring the proprietor. As he turned, the proprietor bent low as if getting something from under the counter, while hissing to Sary, “Your trade I ain’t courtin’!” He glanced fearfully at Jules. “Hear? No more.”

  Sary blanched, nodded, and turned to rush out with her small bundles.

  Jules allowed her to brush by, but she ran smack into the wall of Ev’ret, holding out hard candy for her in his meaty, dirty palm.

  Jules looked on indulgently as Sary hesitated. She darted a look up at Ev’ret, ducked a curtsy, and snatched at the candy. She could hardly wait to get outside. Jules selected one too, tonguing it, watching Sary cram hers in her mouth once she was outside. He whispered, “Show you a good time…”