“Said I chipped the top of my hip bone, smashed up my floatin’ ribs some.”
“Yeah,” Sydnor said. “Now. Listen to me, Jonesy. I’ve treated you right. Took you in my home, got you a doctor, kept your goods safe for you.”
Jonesy’s eyes were cautious now. “Why?”
“Because I’m your friend,” Sydnor said. “You go see that white-hatted leader of yours. Tell him there’s a way into town under the big rock. I found it when I was building a storeroom. Tell him nobody with gold ever had to use a gun to do business with Charley Sydnor.”
He took his big bulk to the door then and went out. He shouted: “Phyllis, where’s my food? I gotta get back to the store!”
CHAPTER XVII
Ellen Lea was in trouble. Sydnor had left her alone in the store when Rylan’s men brought the wounded outlaw in, and shortly thereafter she was swamped with visitors. It had begun to penetrate to the minds of Rock Spring that they were going to be townbound for quite awhile, and a natural desire to start hoarding food had grown out of this realization. But, having come to Sydnor’s store to buy, they held back. Charley Sydnor had spent a busy night; not a price tag carried the same figures it had yesterday.
The men muttered and went away again. The women were more outspoken.
“Four dollars for a pound of coffee beans?” Mrs. Brister said. “Well, Mrs. Lea, you can just tell Charley Sydnor that I’m taking five pounds, and if there’s more than the regular amount on my bill, he’ll hear about it!”
“Mr. Sydnor said all charge accounts were closed. Everything’s to be strict cash.”
Several of the women began helping themselves to groceries. A man came to the counter and asked her for two boxes of .44 shells, and when he got them he deliberately put one in each pocket of his coat and, spitting on the floor, turned and walked out without paying.
Ellen Lea opened the till, got out a couple of pennies, and pushed through the profitless customers to the street.
There were small boys hanging around the livery stable, as usual. She gave two of them a penny each, and sent one up to the Sydnor house, the other to look for Jack Romayne.
On impulse she stopped Pat Patson, the blacksmith, who was angling across the street towards the Great Chance. “If Mr. Younge, the gambler, is in there, would you ask him to come over to Sydnor’s store for a moment?”
Patson was shorter than she, a massive, bulky man, habitually unable to remove the coal dust from under his eyes. He cut his eyes at her now, cynically, and then shrugged. “Sure.”
She turned back to the store. There goes my reputation, she thought. By tonight Rock Spring will have me sharing my bed with the gambler, by tomorrow I’ll be bearing him twin babies out of wedlock.
That was a fool thing to do. And why in the world did I have to add “the gambler” after his name? Rock Spring isn’t so big that Patson wouldn’t have known which Dan Younge I meant.
By this time she was back at the door of the shop. She took a deep breath before entering its noisy interior; her reverie went on. I wonder how it feels to have people always put your trade after your name. Ellen Lea, the widow. I wouldn’t like that. And a gambler is even more scorned than a widow. Charley Sydnor, the moneygrubber. Wellman, the saloonkeeper, Hostetter—
This wasn’t doing her job. “Get out of here,” she said. Her voice was surprisingly clear and loud. “Out of here, all of you. This store’s closed till Mr. Sydnor gets here.” She reached under the counter and got out the holdup pistol.
They left, fast. The predominantly female pack of customers—or robbers—went out of there, gabbling to each other, and she went across the floor after them, almost herding them, and then closed and locked the door.
She put the gun back, and sat down on the counter. Rock Spring really had something to talk about now! Someone was rapping at the door. She started to wave that the store was closed and then saw it was Dan Younge. She let him in and said, “Thanks for coming.”
“What happened?”
“The customers were looting the place. Look at the price tags and you’ll see why.”
He looked and whistled. “You’ve got to admit Sydnor has nerve. Men have been lynched for not much more.”
“I shouldn’t have bothered you. I kind of lost my head, all of them screeching at me, yelling.”
Dan Younge started building a cigarette. “Not your fault. You have to work and there aren’t many things for a woman to do in Rock Spring.”
She said: “Yes,” and then shook her head. “No. I could take in washing.”
“Too many doing that now,” the gambler said. He split a match off a block from his pocket, struck it, waited for the sulphur to burn away, then lit his cigarette. His movements were very slow, very certain; it occurred to Ellen Lea that a woman could get a lot of comfort from hands like that. “No,” Dan Younge said. “It’s clerk in the store or catch you a husband… His lips clamped down. He smiled: “Or I could teach you to shill for me.”
She said: “What’s that?” Then at once she added: “Or should a lady know?”
“It’s not all that bad. But a little too fancy for Rock Spring. Why, in the fancy gambling halls, San Francisco, Denver, they hire people to pretend to gamble, pretty girls, country-looking boys. The suck…the customers see them making money, think the table’s having a bad night and hurry in to shower down.”
“It sounds like nice work.”
He shrugged. “As good as any. Nobody’s really honest. Worked for a farmer one time. Twenty dollars a month, he said. End of the harvest, came to find out he had been charging me two bits a glass for milk. Food was thrown in, like he’d promised. So I owed him eight dollars for four months’ work. And he went to church every Sunday, was on the board of the bank, he’d have fainted if you told him he was a crook.”
“How old were you?”
Dan Younge said: “Fifteen.” He laughed. “The life and times of Dan Younge. A book with a dog-eared cover. Your husband was a well-driller, wasn’t he?”
Ellen Lea said: “Yes. We drove the drilling rig out from Kansas on two wagons. It’s in Glidden’s barn, if you hear of anybody who’d like to buy it.” She stood up from the counter. “Here’s my boss.”
After he’d been let in the front door, Sydnor went right to the point. “What is the store doing closed, in broad daylight, on a weekday?”
Ellen Lea said: “The new prices, Mr. Sydnor… Well, they seem…”
Sydnor brought a roar up from his ample belly. “There’s been no mistake. I put those prices on there, and they stand! I pay you to take orders, not to decide policy!”
Dan Younge said: “Easy, mister, easy,” in the tone a man uses to a horse. Sydnor kept on glaring at Ellen Lea.
“It wasn’t I, Mr. Sydnor. The people got very angry. They started taking things without paying for them. One man took two boxes of cartridges, a man I’m not sure I know.”
Sydnor grunted and turned on Dan Younge. “And you couldn’t stop them?”
“I wasn’t here,” Dan Younge said quietly.
There was a note of warning in the gambler’s voice, but Sydnor didn’t seem to hear it. Incapable of telling an employee she had done the right thing—Ellen Lea might ask for a raise—he concentrated on Dan Younge. “See here, young fella. You seem capable, and you don’t have much to do in the daytimes. I can pay you, not much, just to sit here, kinda keep order.”
He got his answer promptly: “Certainly not.”
Sydnor didn’t get it. “You don’t have to lift goods down from the shelf, wait on the customers. It’s like picking money up in the street.”
Dan Younge said: “And how small the coin, how deep the horse manure before you’d hesitate to do the picking?” He bowed to Ellen Lea. “Glad to be of assistance, ma’am.” He left without bothering to close the front door.
Sydnor looked after
him, genuinely puzzled. “Now, what’s eating him?”
Ellen Lea had borrowed courage from the gambler. “I guess the same thing that’s bothering the rest of the town. They don’t think you ought to make money out of their troubles.”
Sydnor had worn his hat down from the house, had never taken it off. He did so now, put on his long storekeeper’s apron. He was frowning. “Why, that’s what a man’s in business for,” he said slowly. “To buy cheap an’ sell for all the market will stand. This is a monopoly, what I have here, a corner on the necessities market. A fella’d be a fool to pass it up. He might never get another chance.”
Ellen Lea asked softly: “And being hated by everyone in town doesn’t matter?”
Sydnor said simply: “Why, if I make the kind of money I expect, I’d be moving back East or maybe to California, wouldn’t I? Who’d stay here when he’d made his pile?”
Ellen Lea shook her head and got ready for the customers; she got behind the counter and resolved to stay there. Sydnor himself went to stand in the door and let himself be seen by Rock Spring, an indication that trade was expected.
After awhile, he bellowed, “Romayne!” across the street.
The sheriff came to the door of the windowless office. Sydnor beckoned to him imperiously. Ellen Lea watched as Romayne crossed the street, and again the thought crossed her mind, Dan Younge wouldn’t trot when Sydnor yelled.
Jack Romayne came in, with an easy smile for Ellen Lea, and a tighter, more careful one for Sydnor.
“Thought we were going to have some trouble here,” Sydnor said. “Could have used you. But, like usual, you were someplace else. Now I got something for you to do for me.”
“Anything,” Jack Romayne said.
“G’wan up to my house, tell my wife to pack some clothes, get down here. There is getting to be a little feeling against me in this town. She an’ I’ll live back of the store for a while. Safer that way, with you across the street.”
“Right away, Mr. Sydnor.”
“An’ I don’t want to hear of you going off, gallivanting after any outlaws, any Indians. There’s the Army for that. We need protection here in town, and we pay your salary.”
Watching, Ellen Lea thought she saw Jack Romayne start to smile, and then suppress it. But that couldn’t be. He couldn’t be taking any pleasure out of the bullying the storekeeper was giving him. And from what she knew of men—they liked nothing better than what Sydnor called gallivanting.
No, she must have been wrong. That must have been chagrin and disappointment that she read in Jack Romayne’s face, not happiness.
She smiled at him to ease the sting of Sydnor’s boorishness, and he smiled back and then went away, up canyon towards Sydnor’s house.
CHAPTER XVIII
At one o’clock in the morning, Dan Younge raised his hand and waved at Big Red, the bartender. Red promptly went to draw a beer; he knew the signal—the game was dosing. Carrying it himself he walked by Wellman who was leaning on the front of the bar keeping an eye on the customers.
Wellman elbowed away from the bar, followed Red over, and slouched down in one of the vacated chairs, idly watching his small gold mine. “Hear you were quite a hero out at the reservation today. And also at Sydnor’s store.”
Dan Younge’s tone was sardonic. “I’m always a hero. And the reward—Sydnor asked me to be his floorwalker.”
Wellman laughed. “When the trails open again, Sydnor had better be the first man out of town. I’m thinking of buying his store, when, as and if that happens. Want to run it for me?”
Dan Younge was genuinely surprised. He said: “Now, that’s not anything I expected to hear. What’s the connection between gambling and counterjumping?”
Wellman said flatly: “You’re honest, you’re smart and people like you.”
Dan Younge said softly: “People like me as a gambler. They hate change. A gambler should stay a gambler.”
“A lonesome life.”
“I’m used to it.” He looked up, saw Beer and Rylan coming towards the table, both of them in what he supposed was undress uniform, shirts open, forage caps on the back of their heads. “Table’s closed, gentlemen.”
“So are we,” Beer said. “You cleaned our detachment out of available cash sometime back. I’d like to talk to you, Younge. We—Rylan and I—would like to talk to you. You’re drinking beer?”
“I’ll put the order in,” Wellman said, rising. “I’ve got to circulate.”
Beer and Rylan sat down simultaneously, and nothing marked the occasion more—the sergeant did not wait for his officer to be seated. They waited until the beer had been brought and the waiter had gone, then Beer nodded at Rylan, “You speak.”
Dan Younge said, “I was just telling Wellman that people hate change. This is one that really upsets me. Are sergeants running the Army now?”
Beer said: “There are those who say they always did. Sergeant Rylan’s been on the frontier ten years and more, I’ve been here two. We don’t have a big enough command left to stand on formality. He’s taking over till we fight our way out of Rock Spring.”
Rylan said: “You stayed and fought with the boys today, and you got a brain, Mr. Younge. I’ve made up a plan. It listens good to the lieutenant, I want to hear what you think of it. After today, there’s no use swapping words with the Shoshone; they wouldn’t listen, right?”
Dan Younge said, “Right. But before you go on, I want to say that listening to you doesn’t commit me to anything. I’m a gambler, not a crusader.”
Beer said: “A crusader, Rylan, is a man who fights for a holy cause. Until you read history. Then you find out that they very often came home rich.”
Dan Younge said: “What do you want of me?”
“To go on the malapie party. To help me raise a posse. Younge, a straight question. What about your sheriff?”
“I don’t know him too well. Sheriffs and gamblers don’t mix.”
“I thought you must be his best friend. You were the only man with him out on the prairie.”
Remembering Phyllis Sydnor and his reasons for riding out with Romayne, Dan Younge almost grinned. And then an idea came to him, an idea that would serve a great many purposes. He said, “Oh, lieutenant, Romayne’s another man like all of us. But I just thought of something. Sydnor, Charley Sydnor, carries great weight in this town. And he won’t like the idea of able-bodied men going away, leaving him and his property unprotected.”
“I know,” Beer said.
Dan Younge said: “You’d better get him on your side—and I can tell you how.”
Beer said: “You listening to this, Rylan?”
“This isn’t for the sergeant. This you have to do yourself. Mrs. Sydnor,” Dan Younge said from behind his best poker face, “is the real boss of that family.” And forgive me for lying, Dear Lord. “Sydnor does anything she tells him to. And Mrs. Sydnor—I’m being delicate—would relish the attentions of a handsome young officer.”
Beer looked startled, angry, perhaps even a little intrigued.
“For Rock Spring, for your country, for West Point,” Dan Younge said, “You ought to see that she gets that attention. It shouldn’t be too unpleasant.”
Beer was frowning.
Rylan said: “I’ve seen her. A good lookin’ lady.”
Beer slapped the table. “The question is, if we decided to go into the malapie, are you coming with us?”
Dan Younge said carelessly. “Oh, sure. If you decide to go. I notice you’re calling it malapie now, instead of malpais.”
“Some of these local words are very interesting,” Beer said, and got up to go.
Dan Younge watched them out the door. The Great Chance was staying active later than usual: there was quite a crowd at the bar. He could pull down his lamp, light it and get up a game. He might make quite a bit of money.
; It had been a long day. He got his hat, strolled past the bar, and out into the street. There was a light in Sydnor’s store. He remembered a player saying that the Sydnors had moved down there for safety, but he hadn’t said safety from what.
Smiling his sardonic smile at the empty, starlit street, Dan Younge started his pre-bed stroll. He went up canyon, passed the Sydnor’s house and then stopped. A lamp was lit in the kitchen, but the Sydnors were downtown…
He waited. After awhile the lamp was blown out, and then the backdoor opened.
There was no moon, but Sydnor’s bulk was unmistakable. Another person, a man, followed him. Against the white of the house, whiskers bulked up the man’s face—the miner Sergeant Rylan had wounded and captured.
The two men moved up the road towards the big rock, and Dan Younge followed.
He followed as Sydnor and his man skirted the Army camp, and then he got behind a little clump of young alders and just watched. Sydnor led the smaller man almost to the big rock. They disappeared there, and then after a while Sydnor came back, alone.
There was no noise of a sentry challenging. The miner had gone into a cave of some sort and Sydnor had helped him…
When Charley Sydnor had enough lead, Dan Younge followed him back down into town. The gambler was pleasantly tired now, his lungs full of fresh tobacco smoke. He was asleep before the clothes on his hotel chair were cold.
CHAPTER XIX
If groceries were getting more expensive in Rock Spring, the price of horses was going down. Dan Younge found this out the next morning when he started looking for a replacement for the mount that the miners had run off.
Animals that would have fetched two and three hundred dollars a week before were now offered freely for fifty, for twenty-five by men who did not see how they were going to feed them. Grazing was cut off, hay was running low.
He told a couple of men he’d maybe see them later, and went around to Sydnor. The merchant was in his store. He had buckled a gun around his girth and was supervising his wife and Ellen Lea as they waited on the customers. Business was brisk.
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