by A B Guthrie
"Some pardner. More like beggin' kin. That money you earned guidin' to Oregon, that gold coin, you paid it out from the very beginnin', and then put up for my wife. That busted you good."
"Push it out of your mind for Christ's sake."
"Nope. Gone too far and too long, things have. You got your honor as I damn well know, so give me mine. I'm goin' to where the gold is, Bannack or more likely that new strike they call Alder Gulch, somewhere where there's gold."
"I'll loan you a shovel."
"Don't try to put me off, makin' fun. My mind's made up. Them places ain't so far away."
"I'm too old to muck around heavin' gravel."
"Bullshit. Where gold is, there's a good chance of gettin' some without minin'."
"I never set up as a gambler, crooked or straight."
Higgins rose and started walking away. "I mean to go, Dick."
He glanced back. "With you or without you. Think on it."
28
IT WAS A COUNTRY of sweeping valleys they had come through, of sweeping valleys and Christly high hills, mostly bald, with one now and then fringed near the top or patched higher up with dwarf pine or brush. A man was put in mind of giant heads that had lost most of their hair.
The trip rolled through Higgins" head. Up the Missouri to the three Forks, up the Madison, with Summers leading like a hound on a scent. "I can sure as hell find the three Forks and the Madison," he had said, "and where there's water there's game trails and pony tracks likely and the marks of travois. It's white man's pride says we discovered this country. The Indians knowed it before."
At the three Forks he had told them, "It was around here that Immel and Jones and their men got rubbed out. Blackfeet."
But they had seen little of Indians — a couple of hunting parties and one camp — and these had given no trouble.
Valleys and hills that were trying to be mountains and might brag of a timberline if they kept growing, say for two hundred years. River and creek crossings, go-rounds where gorges choked travel, buffalo here, buffalo there, antelopes watching, the sun high and hot and low and cooled down, and pitch camp and break camp for another hard day after short sleep. Summers in the lead, trailing two pack horses, the women mounted, Lije on his own horse leading another that Nocansee sat on and himself at the tail end with two more pack horses in tow.
Higgins watched while the horses drank. Here was Alder Gulch. Here was the creek muddied by pans and sluice boxes. Up and down and in the stream were men working their eyes fixed on what shovels brought up and water cleared. No time for how-de-do and a chat. No time but for searches and grunts and a glad yelp once in a while. So far as his eyes could see, side to side, were nothing but claims and the men working them.
Summers had found the place, not asking questions, going by what he knew from before, going by hunch or some secret sense like a migrating loon. So it was up Grasshopper Creek and on to Bannack, which seemed to be dying out and then on the traveled road to Alder Gulch. He had picked a camp site on a hillside northeast of the settlement where a trickle of water flowed, enough just about to cook by. Later in the season it would dry up.
He let the horses drink their fill. Likely they would be dropping mud balls by morning. So be it. No harm done. No harm in letting the mind run far and high, seeing the valleys and hills again and the Madison where trout asked to be caught.
The tepees were up and a fire buming when he got back to their camping place, pufling from the climb. Summers had built a rock and earth dam to catch the little water that seeped close by. Higgins hobbled the horses except for three that they trusted not to range far. He put a bell on one that they didn't, hobbles or no. Afterward he said to Summers, "Christ, Dick, there's miners clear up and down the gulch, miles of 'em, and what town I seen was tents and wood shacks a breeze would blow down, all strung along in the dirt."
"It follers."
They stood, toeing the ground now and then, waiting for supper. The boys were close up, silent and listening.
"I reckon their eyes have turned yeller," Higgins said.
"Gold-eyed. That's what they come for. That's us, too."
"It's what I aim to get."
Into a little silence Nocansee said, "Someone comes."
From a dip in the side of the hill two horsemen appeared, heads showing first, then shoulders, and horses and all of them as they climbed. By and by they could make the men out, their faces bearded like an old buffalo bull's, their pants and shirts stained, their boots crusted with mud. They pulled their horses to a stop. "We figured there might be a stream flowin' down this here coulee. You stakin' a claim?"
"Naw," Summers answered. "Not us. There's the stream you was lookin' for, flowin' drop by drop. We tried a pan or two just for luck. No color. Stake if you want to. Minin's not our business."
The men studied the tepees and eyed the women and boys who stood near, and the second one said, "It don't look like it for a fact."
The first one said, "I don't guess it's any use."
"I say go up the gulch, way up where no son of a bitch is. No tellin' how far the strike runs. Come on." They rode away.
Once they had eaten, Higgins told Summers, "Reckon I'll mosey down into town. Might pay to scout around. Comin'?"
"Teal Eye, Lije," Summers said, turning, "we're leavin' for a spell. I figure the camp will be safe enough, but remember you got the scattergun and the musket. Load 'em but don't use 'em careless."
Teal Eye smiled and said for a joke, "We play with them. Throw around. Make big noise."
"I shoot straight, too," Little Wing put in.
"Hell, Dick," Higgins said, "you got so used to carryin' a rifle you feel naked without it. I say leave our shootin' irons. What good they do us?"
"None to my knowin'."
Along the gulch lights were showing as the dusk settled, and voices sounded and the frail music of strings. They walked down the rough street, looking and listening. Men traipsed back and forth, going from one saloon to another, from one gambling table, Higgins guessed, to another where luck might be better. They spoke loud. Their voices rose and were lost in the great silence around them, lost in the sky and among the hills where they were no matter. If a man wanted to learn to cuss, here was the school for it.
"My fiddle sounds better than that there hurdy-gurdy," Higgins said.
"And tepees are better'n tents."
A good part of the camp was tents, staked to the ground or to wood platforms. Some places were part tent and part wood. The best were built of poles or logs or whipsawed lumber, and a man could throw a cat through the cracks. The best one, a saloon, had a plank walk in front of it.
A freight string of mules — eight mules, four yoke Higgins counted — had pulled in, and men were unloading boxes and barrels and such from the five wagons they'd drawn. The men cussed because the delivery was late, and the driver cussed back at them. They worked in shadow. The best of lamps didn't throw out much light.
Two men broke out of a saloon door, their speech loud and hard-edged.
"By God we'll settle this," one of them said. "Try it, you Yank son of a bitch!"
They squared off, but the talk wasn't quite over. "Talk about me, you're a goddamn galvanized Yank."
"I done fit for my side, and that's more than you ever done. Hurrah for Jeff Davis."
"My ass to him. Hurrah for the union."
Jeff Davis swung and Union went down. He got up, his mouth bleeding, and said, "We'll beat you bastards." But the fight had gone out of him. He went back into the saloon.
Summers said, "Friend, not my business but seems you got your differences."
"Whose side you on?"
Higgins answered for Summers. "I don't guess we rightly know. Got to hear more of the fors and againsts."
"Where the hell you been? In a hole? Don't you know the country"s at war, south against north?"
Summers said, "Sure. Even where we was we picked up some things. But it"s a far piece away and come to us like an echo
. Slaves or no slaves, that's the stickin' point, way we heerd."
"You could say it started there, I s'pose, but now the south's broken off from the union."
"We heerd that, too."
"That's our right, ain't it? To secede? We got our own president and officers and way of livin'. Don't tell me that's not our right."
"Not tellin' you anything," Summers said. "How's the war comin'?"
"You can't tell, not out here. Seesaw, I would say. I was took prisoner early and to get out of that stinkin' prison I promised not to fight anymore."
"Looks like you done busted that promise," Higgins said.
"Not to fight in the army, I promised. They call them like me galvanized Yanks."
"This camp's split, huh?" Summers asked.
"Split all to hell. It's gold that holds it together. I got a good-payin' claim my own self. Buy you a drink?"
"Obliged, but I reckon not. No offense and glad to hear your side of it. Too bad, though, Americans fightin' Americans."
The man nodded, unoffended. "It's them union, abolitionist bastards forced us to it."
He went off for the drink he had mentioned.
"I swear, it looks like we don't know nothin' much," Higgins said. "A big war, and us only hearin' the littles of it."
"Just so it don't reach out to us. Men fight and die and both sides dead right to their thinkin', and a man 1ookin' square at things can't make up his mind. Only sure thing is that the side that loses is more'n ever set in its notions."
They lazed on until a man in a black business suit stopped them. He had a trimmed beard and looked like a Dutchman Higgins once knew.
Looking at Summers in his buckskins, he asked, "You be a hunter, yah?"
"I been known to shoot."
The man gave his name, but Higgins couldn't catch all of it. It was Con something or other.
"I have butcher shop," the man went on. "Sell meat, you know." He shook his head. "Meat. Sometimes I get the old ox, up from the Oregon Trail. Sometimes I get longhorns, and the meat be as tough as the horn. No good, but I sell it."
Summers nodded.
"If I get deer, if I get elk, maybe buffalo, I pay good."
Summers said, " 'Pears to me this country's pretty well hunted out, or scared out."
"Not so. Nobody hunts but for gold. A good hunter find plenty."
"Maybe."
"I pay twenty-five dollars in good dust for a deer, forty for an elk, and for a buffalo — " He spread his hands wide.
"Antelope?"
"Fifteen for that little meat. You bring them in, gutted is all, and I give you gold, fair weight, on the spot."
"I might short you on deer liver."
"AlI right. All right. You hunt for me?"
"I'll give it a try. Name"s Dick Summers."
Con wrung Summers' hand before he walked on.
"Hard work, this job-huntin'," Higgins said.
"We maybe can do all right."
"Figure me out, Dick. I got an idee of my own." He wasn't ready to say what his idea was — to sing and play for the miners, who might feel like putting a little something in his hat.
29
SUMMERS called out, "Meat. Here's your meat."
He had pulled up in back of the butcher shop. His pack horses carried two deer and one elk, canvas-wrapped against the flies. A couple of curious men and three dogs had followed him at some distance.
The butcher came out of the shop. He said, "By Gott, what you have?"
"Two deer, one elk. Meat's still sweet."
It was. He hadn't given it time to sour, and now he felt on him the drag of the long ride. "Hard huntin'," he said as he slid from his horse.
The butcher was working with the canvases. Summers went to help him, standing his rifle against the back of the building. The butcher, his apron bloodier than when he came out, said,
"Meat not shot up, by Gott." He was looking at the two deer carcasses, now unwrapped.
"One hole is all." The man's eyes went from the deer, to Summers, to the standing rifle. "That old iron shoot goot, yah?"
"Good enough."
"Goot for the goot eye." The man smiled. He kicked at a dog that had come too close. The two curious men now stood near. One of them said, "I can't believe my damn eyes, Con. Fresh meat and tender to boot. Last chunk you sold me bounced my jaw out of place. Save me a piece, will you?"
"How much?"
"Say five pounds. How much you chargin'?"
The butcher shrugged. "How I know so soon? It be a bargain."
The second man said, "Same for me, Con."
Con turned to Summers. "Must hurry. It all be sold before I cut it up."
A young man, a boy, had come out of the shop. The butcher turned on him. "Gott damn you, Hans. Help. What you do in there? Yust dream?"
The unwrapped carcasses lay on the canvases that had covered them. The butcher, helped a little by the boy, started skinning.
"You want me to, I can give you a hand," Summers said. Con clapped a hand to his forehead. It left a blotch of blood there.
"I forget, all the time forget. Pay you want now."
"Not for helpin."
He got out his Green River knife. It was old but sharper than when it was new. Watching for a moment, Con said, "See, Hans. Learn, boy. This man be a skinner."
An hour later they carried the skinned meat inside, laying a deer carcass on a block. Summers washed his hands from a bucket of muddy water. The butcher wiped his on a soiled rag.
The butcher said, "I cut up for sale, but first I pay you."
They went into the front of the shop. It held another block and a rough counter and a gold scale. On the counter were a few scraps of meat turning black.
"Ninety dollars I make it. Yah?"
"That's right."
From his pocket Con took out a pouch and began pouring small nuggets and gold dust on the scale.
"Hold on," Summers said. "What do I carry it in?"
"You have not the poke, like this in my hand?"
"Never thought I'd need one."
"Everybody have one." The scales balanced, but Con added an extra pinch. "For good measure. You want me to keep, then? You trust me? Ask any man."
"I'll get it the next time."
"Goot. You keep me in meat, yes?"
"Fur as I can."
It had been a long way to meat and a long way back. On these open hills and wide valleys, game could spot a man a long way from the reach of a rifle. No trees to speak of and few watering places, so that wildlife was far-ranging and, knowing the ways of man, spooky. He had found a spring with a patch of growth on its borders and had lain there unmoving, while the sun came up and arched over and hid behind the hills. Flies buzzed around him, the damn deer flies that came straight on and bit before a body could slap, if he dared to slap while playing dead, and mosquitoes hummed for a landing place, their little needles ready for action. But deer came, as expected, and one elk, and the live deer took off after one shot and were out of range before he could reload, and then there was waiting again.
He felt his muscles hang slack, as if ready to drop off the bone, and he yawned as he turned away. Tomorrow he would rest. He led the horses to water and let them drink and then from his saddle pulled the string up the hill. They were tired, too, not so much from work as from standing and fighting the flies. Only mosquitoes bothered them now that the sun was about down.
Pretty soon the miners would be knocking off work and tramping the street, looking for excitement and maybe finding fight in a bottle, or maybe taking the edge off, thanks to a whore. There were bound to be some, a few, about. There always were where men gathered. The lights down below were coming on, as feeble as candle gleams.
Teal Eye and Lije ran out to meet him. Seeing the bloody canvases, Teal Eye said, "Where is meat?"
"I done sold it."
"We go hungry then," she said, not as if really believing.
"Deer livers in my saddle bags. Good enough for you?"
Nocansee walked up, not stumbling, "How the big hunter?
I smell deer and what — elk?"
"No keepin' secrets from you," Summers answered and tapped the boy's shoulder.
Higgins lounged up, trailed by his woman. "Trust you to bring home the bacon."
The women began taking the wrapped livers from the saddle bags, and Lije was lifting the gear from the horses.
"Man who brings home the bacon has a right to a drink," Higgins went on.
"Camp was dry, last time I seen it."
"They sell whiskey down in the big city. Makes a man wonder where's the most money, in mines or in barrels."
They sat and drank, taking it easy, while the women cooked.
"Made out pretty good, did you?" Higgins said.
"Ninety dollars' worth."
"I call that more'n fair."
"Hard-earned money."
Higgins drank. "I found out one thing. Gold or gold dust is the only money passed hereabouts. So a man needs what they call a poke."
"I found that out already."
"What you d0n't know is the women made us one each, drawstrings and all. Better'n most, too, bein' beaded."
"The butcher's holdin' my dust for me."
"I'll have some to put in mine." Higgins' broken mouth smiled. "I got me a job."
"What? Good one?"
"Startin' tonight. You're so tired you ain't noticed how I was dandied up." Now Summers took note that his buckskins had been cleaned and brushed, his hair fresh-washed and braided and tied with ribbons.
"Where's the ball?"
"At first I thought I'd put out a felt hat, crown down, but dust wouldn't pour good from felt. It would stick and, first thing you know, someone would try pannin' the hat. So I"m takin' a tin cup."
"I'm beginnin' to track."
"The cup and my fiddle. I'm singin' for my supper."
"Where at?"
"That saloon with the boardwalk. It's called the Here's Howdy."
"You'll get sick, breathin' that air. It stinks."
"I can stand 'er, but I know. Spilled beer and whiskey. Men smellin' rank. And them shithouses. The Indians knowed better, scatterin' it around instead of pilin' it up."
