‘You, my friend, have just made a serious error,’ he said, softly and deeply and coldly. ‘Nobody in Denver takes kindly to insults; and quite often they become shooting matters. Well, I’m not a gunfighter, although I can use a gun. I prefer to see people like you having to suffer for being so ill-mannered. And, mark my words, that’s exactly what you’re going to do. You’re going to suffer, my friend, so bad that you’re going to curse your mother for ever having given birth to you. You’re going to know what pain really means, believe me.’
Henry felt as if all his blood were shrinking in his veins, but he replied, in a completely expressionless voice, ‘I’m really frightened, Mr Harrison. Believe me.’
Nina said, ‘Henry, please go. Don’t make things worse.’
‘All right,’ Henry nodded. And he remembered the words she had spoken to him two nights ago, because he had repeated them over and over in the back of his mind, all the way to California Gulch. ‘Ailleagan cumh nan neamh. Precious lady of the skies.’
He closed Nina’s door behind him and stood in the darkness of the corridor listening to the irritated grumbling of Charley Harrison; and the soft conciliatory murmurings of Nina; and the steady tireless ticking of the boarding-house dock.
‘…walks in and wakes me up like he owns the place…’
‘…didn’t mean any harm, Charley, and nothing happened…’
‘...sure you didn’t fuck him, I can’t believe that, not the way he walked in here…’
‘...he’s a boy, that’s all, no more than a boy, and I like him…’
‘...going to make damned sure he doesn’t grow up to be a man, believe me…’
Henry stayed where he was until the clock struck the half-hour, and the springs of Nina’s bed began to squonk and squirrel again; and then he thrust his hands into his trouser pockets and walked disconsolately back to his room. He sat on the end of his bed and felt lower and more alone than he had since Doris had been killed. He was tired, too, after that hard drive all the way back from California Gulch, more than seventy miles since yesterday morning. He lay back on his bed, fully clothed, and closed his eyes; and within a minute he was asleep.
He dreamed dozens of short, vivid dreams; in bright colours; full of hurried activity and worried conversation. Somebody was telling him to come as quickly as he could, something was wrong, somebody needed his help. The shack was gone, that was the trouble. The shack was gone. He felt that if he knew where the shack had gone, he would know the answer to everything. Then he was running for a train, he had to catch it so that he could see his mother. He knew she was dead, but if he caught this train he would be able to meet her and talk to her. He had a sudden feeling of intense sadness, and he knew that he was weeping in his sleep, but somehow he couldn’t wake up and stop himself. A soft voice said, ‘She wishes you were never born,’ and then a steam-boat whistle was blowing and seagulls blew across the water like torn shreds of paper, and Nina was standing over him in her nightgown and he was awake.
‘Henry? Henry, wake up. Henry!’
He stared at her. It was morning. He couldn’t think where he was.
‘Henry,’ she said, ‘you were shouting out.’
He sat up. He was still fully dressed. Out of the window, the day looked blue and windy and unsettled; and across on Sixth Street he could see dust blowing, and a sign swinging backwards and forwards.
‘Oh...Nina,’ he said, thickly.
She sat beside him on the bed, and took hold of his hand. She looked pale, and her mouth was bruised, as if she had been crushingly and violently kissed. ‘I’m sorry about what happened last night.’
‘Well...no, that’s all right. Nobody made any promises, did they? You didn’t make any promises to me, any more than I made any promises to you.’
‘Henry, I’m still sorry.’
‘It’s all right, you don’t have to be.’
He stood up, feeling stiff and awkward, and went across to the washstand. He filled up the basin; and then he eased off his coat, and unbuttoned his waistcoat, and rolled up his sleeves. Nina sat watching him: he could see her in the looking-glass.
‘I persuaded Charley not to do anything silly,’ she volunteered.
‘You mean, you prevailed on him not to pull my fingernails out, or cut my arms and legs off?’
‘You shouldn’t have called him a hog. I mean, anybody would have taken exception to that.’
Henry splashed his face, and then groped for his towel. Nina stood up and handed it to him, and watched him closely while he dried himself.
‘I didn’t marry you, simply because I went to bed with you,’ said Nina. ‘I have always been a free woman. I travel from town to town, how can I be anything else but free? I choose the men I want to sleep with because they are beautiful, or because they are ugly, or because they are wealthy. I choose exceptional men, whatever they look like. You are exceptional. You are so exceptional that you have no need of this ridiculous jealousy. Perhaps you are poor, and down on your luck, but you have a spirit in you which you do not even recognize yourself. You have a hardness in you, too; which you try to conceal. You are sentimental, yes; but when you find what you want, you will sweep anybody out of the way in order to make sure that it is yours. Do not condemn Charley Harrison so readily. Do not hate him. Quite often, the people we hate the most are the people who are most like ourselves.’
Henry stripped off his stale shirt, and hung it over the back of his chair. Then he began to unbutton his long johns. ‘Are you going to stay, or are you too modest?’ he asked her.
‘Don’t be cross with me,’ she said; not pleading, not demanding, but calm.
‘I’m not cross,’ he told her. ‘You can only be cross about people you care for.’
‘Henry…’
He took hold of Nina’s wrists, and grasped them very tightly. ‘Nina, I don’t care. I’m not interested. If you want to go to bed with Charley Harrison, that’s none of my business. As you say, you’re a free woman. You can do whatever you want. Ailleagan cumh nan neamh.’
Nina said, with great softness, ‘That also means “lady of easy virtue”.’
‘I see. Well, I should have guessed. More fool me.’
‘Henry, I shall always remember you.’
‘Well,’ he said, swallowing, ‘that’s one consolation.’
He released her wrists; and she reached up on her toes and kissed his cheek, and then his lips. Then she turned and left the room without another word, leaving him standing there alone. He looked towards the window, towards the windy street. The swinging sign said H.V. Cram Novelty Store. He sat down on the bed again and felt that his whole world had collapsed around him like .a balloon. He heard the door of Nina’s room closing; and voices in the corridor; and someone saying, ‘How long do you think it’s going to take us to get to Cheyenne?’
He wondered if he ought to think of going back East. Perhaps the frontier was more than he could take. Its greed for gold, its careless violence, and its loose morality. Perhaps, on the other hand, he was simply tired; and because he was tired, and a stranger, he was being more dependent on the people around him than he should have been. Back home in Bennington he wouldn’t have been jealous of a girl like Nina. He probably wouldn’t even have looked at her, let alone thought of taking her to bed. And as for bursting into her bedroom, and blustering away at Charley Harrison.... He flushed at the memory of it, and hoped very much that he wouldn’t bump into Charley Harrison again.
He washed, and dressed in his second-best suit, and combed his hair. In the looking-glass, he was still handsome, still fashionable, still poised. He was beginning to think twice about the moustache, however. Sticking up like that, it looked mannered, and even effete; especially in comparison to the wealthiest men he had met in Denver, the really powerful figures behind the banks and the brothels and the dry-good stores, who all wore their whiskers heavy and drooping like walruses.
He left the boarding-house and walked across the street to the Rocky Moun
tain Dining Room. He still had $1.35 left, and he was determined to spend it on a good breakfast. The wind blew grit in his eyes, and he had to clutch the brim of his hat to keep it on. There was an awning in front of the dining-rooms reading Excellent Eats, Pies, Zang’s Beer, Steaks, which ripped and thundered with every gust. He had almost reached the boardwalk on the far side of the street when three men in derby hats and dust-soiled suits came out of the shadow of the hardware store next to the dining-rooms and walked towards him with friendly smiles on their faces.
‘Mr Henry Roberts, isn’t it?’ asked one of them. He had a big blue chin and a white scar across the bridge of his nose that looked like a caterpillar.
Henry hesitated, and looked from one man to the next. ‘That’s me,’ he said, defensively. ‘What of it?’
‘Somebody wants a word, that’s what of it?’
‘Well, I’m going to take some breakfast. If somebody wants a word, they can come and have a word in the dining-room.’
One of the men circled around behind Henry, and stood there with his arms folded, grinning, one eye closed against the wind, and chewing a burned-down stub of cigar. Henry stayed where he was.
‘Are you coming, or what?’ asked the man with the blue chin.
There was a long, tight pause. Then Henry dodged to one side, and tried to make a run for the dining-rooms. At once, the man who had been standing behind him leaped on to his back, tugging his coat halfway down his back, and hitting him hard on the side of the neck. Henry staggered, lost his balance, and fell heavily on to the roadway.
They beat him up quickly, and very hard, and without any kind of emotion. They kicked him in the ribs, in the back, in the hip; and although he kept his hands clutched protectively between his legs, they kicked his fingers again and again, and still managed to bruise his stomach and his groin. One toecap cracked him straight in the nose, and his face was instantly smothered in blood.
When it was over, the man with the blue chin said, ‘A special message for you from Mr Harrison. If it hadn’t have been for the lady, you would have been sitting on your cloud by now. Mr Harrison says get out of town and stay out of town, that’s if you don’t want another kicking. Now, take my advice, do what he asks. I’m serious, Mr Harrison once said that he was going to make sure that he killed twelve men during his lifetime, so that when he went to heaven he could be judged by a jury of his peers. As far as I know, there’s nine to go, so don’t be one of them.’
Henry hardly heard any of this terse, twanging address. His head was singing, and his ears felt as if they were stuffed up with cotton. But after a while he was conscious that the men had gone, and then he cautiously lifted himself up on to one bruised elbow and looked around. Several passers-by stared at him, but nobody attempted to come to his assistance. They didn’t want the bummer beating them up too.
It took Henry almost a minute to get up on to his feet. Then, hobbling, he made his way back across the street to the boarding-house; and up the stairs. He had to lean for a while against the banisters on the landing, panting and coughing, before he was able to continue down the corridor to his room. But at last he managed to reach the door, one shoulder sliding against the wallpaper, one foot dragging, and blood running out of his nose and all down his mouth and his chin.
There was a carpet-bag standing in the corridor outside his room. He pushed it aside with his foot, and opened up his door. And then, as he lurched towards the bed, he saw whose carpet-bag it was. Standing by the window, in a prim hat and a prim blouse and a long brown skirt, neat and smiling, was Augusta.
‘Henry!’ she exclaimed, as he collapsed on to the bed. ‘Henry, what’s happened?’
‘Fight,’ muttered Henry, through thick lips.
‘Oh, Henry, how could anybody do such a thing? Wait, please, my dear, and I’ll fetch some water, and a towel. Here, staunch your bleeding with this.’
She handed him her scarf, which he pressed against his nose. He coughed blood, and it splattered all over the comforter.
Gently, she washed his face, and dried him; and then eased him out of his torn coat and his bloodstained shirt and collar. He didn’t resist. He didn’t even look at her. But all the time she murmured to him, ‘There, there you are, my darling. Everything is going to be wonderful now.’
Book Two: Bonanza
‘A rich mine, vein, or pocket of ore; from Spanish “fair weather”, “prosperity”.’
Eight
She said, ‘There are two men outside who want to talk to you.’
Henry looked up from the card-table, one eye squinting against the smoke of the cigar which was clenched between his teeth. ‘I’m busy,’ he said. ‘Did they tell you what they wanted?’
‘They don’t speak very good English. Well, the one who seems to be doing all the talking doesn’t. The other one doesn’t say anything.’
‘Sounds like the garbled leading the gobstruck,’ remarked Jim Roelofs, and cackled like a chicken.
‘Are we playing this hand or aren’t we?’ Billy Coren complained. ‘I got 75 dollars riding on this.’
‘Garbled leading the gobstruck,’ Jim Roelofs repeated, and cackled again.
Henry laid his cards face-down on the table and eased himself out of his chair. Eighteen years of married life had changed him very little, except to make him heavier jowled; and to infuse one side of his hair with grey. He was still handsome, thickly-eyebrowed, well-built. The neatly-trimmed moustache was still there, although he no longer waxed it up into points. He was the kind of middle-aged man who attracted all the wives at the local socials, and made them speak more throatily than they had meant to; and who only had to compliment a spinster to make her blush brightly.
Augusta held back the door-curtain for him as he passed. ‘I really couldn’t understand a word,’ she said. ‘And I’m afraid they rather alarmed me.’
‘That’s all right,’ Henry reassured her, touching her shoulder.
Augusta had become more angular; tighter, busier, sharper. But her sharpness had been brought about by years of happy hard work; of rising. at five-thirty to sweep up and make pastry; of baking pies and tidying shelves and serving customers all day; of mending and sewing; and of going to bed late at night when it was dark, after an hour of reading the Bible by lamplight, and of lying in contented silence clasping Henry’s hand and thinking how lucky she was, and how perfect they were, and how everybody must admire them.
‘Panhandlers, most like,’ said Henry, to nobody in particular, as he walked through the corridor which separated the store and the post office from the living quarters at the back. On the wall of the corridor was a framed etching of Abraham Lincoln; and, next to it, an amateurish watercolour of an Irish wolfhound. Henry pushed his way out through the beaded curtain into the store itself; a wide room with a boarded floor and a low ceiling, densely but neatly stacked on either side with all the merchandise which the citizens of Leadville demanded: plum preserves, calico, canned salmon, bootjacks, bushel-baskets, kerosene jugs, Woolson’s coffee, Union Leader cut plug, blankets, hats, crackers, and ‘all the latest clothing, both nobby and modest’. At the far end of the store, behind a high mahogany counter and a decorative brass grille, was the post office and bank. For Leadville, all these years later, was what the rickety mining township of California Gulch had come to be; and this bank was the same bank which Henry had discussed with Plumb-Bobbs, on his very first visit.
The two men who wanted to talk with Henry were standing close to the doorway as if they had no confidence at all that they would be listened to; and that they would be asked to leave the store in pretty short order. This was hardly surprising, for they were the two sorriest-looking sourdoughs that Henry had ever seen. They were both bramble-bearded, and their clothes were so worn-out and patched and patched again that they looked as if they were wrapped up in quilts. One of them wore a peaked cap with a leather top that must once have been waterproof, but which now had the appearance of a shrivelled mushroom. The other wore a huge shapele
ss stetson. At his feet, a filthy mongrel shivered, and occasionally sneezed.
‘Well, gentlemen,’ said Henry, resting his hands on his hips. ‘They tell me that one of you talks and one of you don’t.’
‘I am always being called August Rische,’ said the man in the peaked cap, lifting the cap high off his head as if inviting an academic inspection of his small knobbly bald patch. ‘And you are always the celebrated H. Roberts?’
‘Who’s this?’ asked Henry, nodding towards the man in the stetson with the shivering dog.
‘This gentleman is always being called George Hook.’
‘I see,’ said Henry, glancing towards Augusta, and raising his eyebrows. ‘And what do you want of me?’
‘We are in the way of prospecting, Mr Roberts. Mr Hook and I have been now for five years north and south, here and there, digging and searching, always with immense industry.’
‘Not with immense success, though, by the look of it.’
August Rische lowered his eyes, as if he were ashamed of himself, and shuffled his feet, and sniffed. The dog sneezed twice, in accompaniment. For his part, George Hook looked vacantly around the store, as if he were nothing to do with any of this conversation whatever, and was simply here to decide at his leisure what brand of chewing-tobacco he wanted.
‘The placer is not always presenting itself with obviosity,’ said August Rische. ‘Everyone has lucks; everyone has misfortunes. Mr Hook and I have not been more misfortunate than some adjacent prospectors; and now we sure feel that we are ready for finding gold.’
Henry drew slowly on his cigar, narrowing his eyes as he did so, and examining first August Rische and then George Hook.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘at the risk of giving offence, I must say that you two are just about the most played-out pair I’ve ever seen, and considering I’ve been living here for eighteen years, that’s really something.’
‘Played-out?’ asked August Rische, uncertainly. George Hook belched and August Rische gave him a quick nudge in the ribs.
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