Hard Money

by Short, Luke;

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  Hard Money

  Luke Short

  Chapter One

  Booming Tronah stepped up a pitch at six o’clock evening when the shifts at the mines came off and, like a great lusty and colorful caterpillar, turned over in the cocoon of its own din.

  Charles Bonal regarded it from the open win-down of his suite in the Union House with something like affection tempered with disapproval, while behind him the waiter set a place for one at the massive desk in the middle of the huge paneled room. Bonal sniffed the faint hot breeze riding off the Piute sink. Its stink of sagebrush and sun on rock was fouled a little by the smoke and fumes of the stamp mills scattered to the east and south of town, but it was there nevertheless, the all-pervading smell of the desert.

  “All ready, sir,” the waiter said, and Bonal nodded. Below him, in the dusk, the street was jammed with a continuous line of creeping ore wagons, the nose of each lead team to the end gate of the wagon ahead, while around them and between them, almost oblivious to them, the noisy crowd milled. Three years of bitter complaint on the part of the merchants had never succeeded in rerouting to a side street this endless line of ore freighters on their way from the mines to the stamp mills, for this was a boom town, and ore was king. Charles Bonal was glad of it for the two thousandth time.

  He sat down in the deepening dusk to a lone meal, linen napkin under his short, bristly beard, and ate as ferociously as he talked and moved and thought.

  He had lighted a cigar and poured himself an ample slug of brandy when the waiter returned to clear the desk.

  “Send my daughter in,” Bonal said curtly, “if she can be spared.”

  He was squatting beside the small safe against the back wall when the door opened and Sharon Bonal entered. The noise of a party died out as she closed the door behind her.

  “No lights again,” she said reprovingly and stopped, and Bonal answered with a grunt. Crossing to the desk, she lighted the kerosene lamp and by its glow saw her father raking sheafs of bank notes from the safe into a canvas sack. Observing him as she did now, he was a bent little man in broadcloth with a squarish head which had the set of a terrier’s on his trim shoulders.

  He said without looking around, “Having a good time?”

  Bonal grunted again, but this time he turned around and laid his cigar on the edge of the desk, squinting from the smoke in his eyes. He was about to return to his business when he looked up at her, and then, slowly, like a man treating himself to a rare pleasure, observed her carefully. Under his gaze Sharon backed away, picked up her full skirt and curtsied demurely, smiling. Her dress was of yellow silk, spangled with tiny blue cornflowers, and the wide neck and full short sleeves left her shoulders and arms bare, so that the sheen of her flesh contrasted to the dark wash of her chestnut hair. Only the slight dusting of minute freckles across the bridge of her nose saved her from regality—that and a kind of warm impudence in her blue eyes. For both Charles Bonal was thankful, for they were reminders of her maternity.

  “Like it?”

  “Yes. Yes,” Bonal answered absently and turned to the safe again.

  Sharon said, “Is that money, Dad?”

  “Have you lived in mining camps so long you don’t know a greenback when you see one?” Bonal answered, without turning around.

  “Stupid. I mean, where is it going? And how did it get here?”

  Bonal hefted the sack, slammed the safe door shut and stood up, tying the drawstring of the sack. He did not answer.

  “You’re going to gamble,” Sharon said, without reproof and with some interest.

  “I won that last night. Tonight, I’ll triple it—and I think I’ll bring back something else.” He walked over and took down his beaver hat from the antler hat rack and put it on, so that it rode his head with an uncompromising squareness. Standing just out of the circle of lamplight, he watched his daughter a moment, scowling. She came over to him.

  “The last night you’ll be here, Dad. I thought we might spend it alone.”

  He gestured with his cigar toward the next room, the movement at once dry, ironical, explanatory.

  “I’ll send them packing if you say so.”

  “Why should you? I’ll be busy.”

  She brushed a streamer of cigar ashes from the lapels of his coat, adjusted his bow tie and gave the bottom of his waistcoat a yank, straightening out his pleated shirt front, which had a tendency to creep toward his neck.

  “Will you come in and say hello?” she asked, smiling a little, making her voice purposely gruff in mockery.

  He scowled. “They weren’t asked in my name, were they?”

  “You know they weren’t. I wouldn’t dare.”

  Behind his beard he smiled a little and removed the cigar from his mouth. “You would that. Good night.”

  Downstairs, the lobby was thronged with men, and a cloud of acrid tobacco smoke billowed around the high chandeliers overhead. To Charles Bonal, who had known this town when it was a wild camp of tents and rock huts and brush shacks, this hotel was an irritating badge of Tronah. Though it was three stories, it fronted on a street that was alternately bedded in six inches of muck or dust; though its hundred rooms had shiny new plumbing, only a third of them ran water; although its lobby and corridors had rolls of red plush carpet, bright paint, brassy murals, crystal and gold braid, it missed elegance. It was typical of a camp whose boom had known no planning, whose gamblers possessed no shrewdness, whose foresight reached barely into tomorrow.

  Making his way through this jam of men, Bonal was greeted on all sides with a quiet respect by the men in frock coats and white shirts, and with a more jovial and deeper respect from the men in boots and corduroy. Without removing the cigar from his mouth, he nodded curtly, and all the time the sack of money was tucked under his arm as if it were ore samples, or even provisions.

  On the street, he turned into the tide of humanity which flowed over the boardwalk, letting it carry him downstreet. It was only here that a man could best understand the lure of money, Bonal thought, as he submitted himself to the jostling, irresponsible crowd. Men of all nations, whose old-country ways had not yet been filed down by the hard and fabulous life of this boom town, mingled here. Shallow-hatted Chinese, cheek to jowl with swart and gaudy Mexicans, and stocky central Europeans rubbed elbows with Cornishmen, dour Welshmen and the ebullient, omnipresent Irish. Solid Northcountry English were here, to work out the remainder of their lives in the mines they understood. Germans, Canucks, Greeks, Jews—every race and every color trampled these rotting boardwalks between the flimsy false-front shanties and stone buildings, for bonanza was a word understood by the whole world. And through this stream, day and night, dominating and jeering and cursing and liking it, were the Americans, a booted, hardfisted, swaggering, hard-drinking, hell-raising mob, most of whom were ex-army men and tough to the core of their truculent souls.

  Ahead of him, down this street which needed no light, there was a constant din, centered occasionally about the front of the saloons and gambling halls. The street was not lighted, for the lamps of a hundred business places had never acknowledged night. In the dust which moiled up from the unceasing feet of the freighting mules, there was another smell, whisky. It pervaded the work and play of this street with its fifty saloons, until it became part of the smell of sage and alkali and manure and powder-reeking ore and sweat and humanity.

  Across the street, in front of the bright lights of Temple’s Keno Parlor, a man ballyhooed the games in a raucous, good-natured voice, designed to entice the miners
away from their wages. And they went in, so that the entrance was clogged with them, for gambling was in the blood of this camp and had built it. Bonal eyed them with a disapproval he did not voice, for in all this mass there was no one he could talk to.

  He passed up a dozen saloons before he came to the Melodian, whose busy swing door of walnut fronted squarely on the street, so that every time a man came out he apologized automatically to the person who was sure to have been hit.

  Inside the oversweet smell of whisky and fruits mingled with cigar smoke, but the crowd was not large. It was the best saloon in Tronah, patronized by the moneyed men, their mine and mill superintendents and the better gamblers. At its rich mahogany bar only a dozen men engaged in conversation, for this was the lull at the dinner hour. No women were working here, which contributed to its quietness and air of sedateness. The wall seats were lined with leather, the waiters were in uniform, and the gambling tables toward the rear were ringed with chairs, a sure sign of calm in a feverish town.

  Bonal took his brandy at the bar, talking idly with one of its customers until he felt a man come up beside him. In the bar mirror he saw the man, and beneath his beard there was again a small smile.

  “Evening, Mr. Bonal,” Phil Seay said, and he was smiling too, as if there was an understanding between them, which there was. Taller by some eight inches than Bonal, younger by some twenty-five years, there was yet a look in his gray eyes that was similar to that in Bonal’s. Seay owned the Melodian, and yet there was nothing about him that smacked of the tavern keeper, none of that professional easiness of manner that did not distinguish the chaff from the wheat. On the contrary, there was a kind of sternness bred into that leaned face which had not picked up its weather burn from saloon air. The set of the frock coat on Seay’s overwide shoulders was not right; it pinched at the shoulder seams, as if it was too tight, suggesting that he would be more comfortable without it. He moved with that stiff grace of a man who has spent much of his life in the saddle. His hands were long fingered, square and bony when fisted, scarred in innumerable places, with a stiff brush of dark hair across the back of them which could not be as black as the trim brushed hair of his head.

  Bonal, regarding him in the bar mirror, nodded pleasantly, recalling all he knew of this man’s brief history. A week ago Phil Seay had come to Tronah, and inside half an hour had picked up old acquaintances, veterans of a dozen gold camps of the past. They all knew him well; they all drank with him, and not so well. Early in the morning they had roistered as far as the Melodian. It was Phil Seay who went to the faro table and quietly bought into the game. Inside an hour the faro banker had hunted up Morg Buchanan, the owner of the Melodian, with the news that his bank needed more money or the game must shut down. Morg Buchanan had taken over the faro bank himself. He kept it for exactly thirty-seven hours of straight playing, at the end of which time he had lost his money and the lease on his saloon and all its fixtures to the gray-eyed stranger with the run of luck.

  That was his history, Bonal knew, and yet it told nothing about the man except that he knew how to crowd his luck. It was the quick judgment of him, his ruthlessness, his gambling and his stamina that Charles Bonal read into that winning streak, and he knew he had found his man. In that bony face, with its wide mouth and the deep-set black-browed eyes, there was something that Bonal recognized and wanted and had to have. He could even do with the quiet mockery, which was in the eyes now, and which was seldom absent from them.

  Phil Seay said now, “Am I in for it again?”

  “You are,” Bonal said quietly. “As soon as I finish my drink, if it’s agreeable to you.”

  “How many lickings do I have to take from you?” Seay asked.

  “One more. Your last.”

  Seay smiled at this, but said nothing. He had noticed the canvas sack which Bonal had brought in, and he surveyed the tables at the rear. Presently, when Bonal had finished his drink, they went over to the faro table in the rear corner. A word to the house man, and Seay had taken his place behind the table at the box. The four men idly gambling at the green cloth paid no attention to the change. It was only when Bonal, a cold cigar clamped in his mouth, hatless, the canvas sack on the corner of the table, started to play that their attention was aroused. Two of them dropped out to watch, but the other two played on, their small bets trailing Bonal’s stakes.

  Within an hour the saloon started to fill up, and the word soon got around of the game at the corner table. Another overhead lamp was brought by one of the waiters, as the circle of watchers increased.

  After two hours of play, when the other two players had been replaced by three more affluent men, Seay, who had been losing to Bonal and consistently winning back a tenth of his losses from the rest of the table, said, “Maybe you’d like a back room, Mr. Bonal.”

  Bonal looked up. “Would you?”

  “It’s your pleasure.”

  “I’d like to stay here,” Bonal said and added dryly. “I’ll trim you in public. I told you last night I would.”

  Seay smiled and said nothing, and the play went on. There was little conversation in the circle of watchers, for faro is a game of thought, demanding quiet. At a little after eleven Bonal called for a chair. At midnight Seay called for a box of cigars. At one Seay said, “If I’ve calculated right, Bonal, I’ll have to close my house games for funds.”

  “Are you going to close this game?” Bonal asked.

  “Certainly not. That was our agreement.”

  Bonal nodded. Seay called a house man to him and talked briefly with him, then returned to the game. At a little past two Seay said, “Now I’m down to the lease. Are you interested?”

  Bonal raised his shrewd glance to him. “Depends. If I leave it will you still try to operate the place?”

  Seay smiled narrowly. “I don’t like it much. If you’ll accept it I’ll gamble it and the fixtures.”

  “Done.”

  At three, when all but the poker tables toward the front were abandoned, and the crowd at the bar had become larger and noisier, Bonal leaned back in his chair and regarded the chips in front of Seay. “I believe if I win this you’re through.”

  “That’s right.” Seay looked at him questioningly.

  Bonal carefully lighted his cigar. “My boy, you’ve got several hundred dollars there—too little to do much with except gamble. You might even gamble well enough with it to start winning from me. Therefore, I’m finished.” He picked up his hat and regarded Seay placidly.

  “Step in my office, will you, Mr. Bonal?”

  “No. You cash in my chips and come with me, please,” Bonal said calmly.

  “But the lease?”

  “We’ll arrange that later. Come with me.”

  The chips were converted, and Seay and Bonal left the Melodian. The crowd on the streets had thinned out somewhat, but the sidewalks were still thronged, and the endless line of ore wagons rumbled their slow way down the street.

  At the hotel Bonal led the way up to his suite and turned the lamp on the desk a little higher. While he got the whisky and glasses from the cabinet Seay sat down and looked around him. He was facing the door, so that when it opened he saw Sharon slip through. For a moment they both stared at each other, and then Seay came to his feet, silent, his expression one of puzzlement.

  Hand still on the doorknob, Sharon looked around her. She was in a gray wrapper, her tawny chestnut hair loose about her shoulders.

  “Do you make a practice of walking into hotel rooms at night?” she asked quietly.

  Over in the dark, out of the circle of lamplight where she could not see him, Charles Bonal chuckled. “This is Phil Seay, Sharon. My daughter, Seay.” Then he added to Sharon dryly. “He came up because he was asked.”

  Sharon’s face relaxed a little, and only then did Bonal understand that she had been genuinely frightened. She came across the room and nodded slightly to Seay, who towered above her in muteness.

  “May I stay, Dad?” she asked.


  “No. You can’t even have a drink with us,” Bonal said gruffly. “This is strictly business, dear.”

  Sharon came over and kissed him, and Bonal said, “I’ll come in later, Sharon. Go to bed.”

  Sharon went back across the room. On her way she looked long, frankly at Seay, who returned the look with a kind of brash hostility before she closed the door.

  Then Bonal ripped off his tie, pulled off his coat, hauled a chair around where he could put his feet on the desk and sat with his hand cupped over the brandy glass. The cigar he offered Seay was refused, and while Seay drank, Bonal regarded him covertly.

  “What do you do now?” Bonal asked finally.

  “I’ll see what your proposition is first,” Seay said.

  “How do you know I’m going to make you one?”

  “You aren’t the kind of a man who breaks a gambler for the fun of it,” Seay told him quietly.

  Presently, Bonal said, “That’s right. But you aren’t a gambler, either,” and he added. “I don’t mean that offensively.”

  “I’ve been one for a week now—a good one.”

  “But not before that.”

  “No.”

  “You have no liking for it?” Bonal asked.

  Seay looked at his brandy. “For gambling, yes. For being a gambler, no.”

  “Then you’re not sorry I broke you tonight.”

  Seay’s quick smile was dry, amused. He said, “Bonal, are you trying to make me thank you for breaking me? Every man wants money. I want it, too. There are other ways to make it besides gambling. I prefer them, I think, but when I began I didn’t have a choice.”

  Bonal only grunted, and then he said abruptly, “I suppose you know I’m in the thick of a fight.”

  “From what I hear, you always are,” Seay replied.

  “I don’t mean that kind—quarreling with mine shares, jockeying stock. That’s a pillow fight for a man with money. I mean a real fight.” He paused and added bluntly, “A fight for survival.” He gestured toward the table, where the canvas sack of bank notes and gold still lay. “For instance, these winnings from you tonight will be sent by messenger to the coast tomorrow. Very likely, this messenger will meet my creditors on the way to here.” He smiled faintly. “Haven’t you heard that, even?”