Silver

by Graham Masterton

  ‘You do know that the gold ran out here, nearly sixteen years ago?’ said Henry. ‘Once the placer was gone, that was it. Every prospector was up stakes and off to Pike’s Peak or Cripple Creek or Virginia City. There’s silver, for sure. But every decent claim is already taken; and those that aren’t taken aren’t worth having. Everything else is played-out, just like you two.’

  ‘Mr Roberts, we only look for slim pickings,’ said August Rische. He tugged his cap back on to his head again, too tightly, and had to adjust it. ‘We have kept together bodies and souls for all these five years by prospecting in mines that were always said to be done for.’

  Henry shook his head in gentle exasperation. ‘You might have kept bodies and souls together, but not much else. Not even the seat of your pants.’

  ‘We repeatedly implore you, Mr Roberts.’

  ‘What do you want? A free handout? You won’t get it here.’

  ‘Mr Roberts, all we ask is a grubstake. Is a grubstake asking the moon from you? Twenty-five dollars, and maybe some flour, and whatever we dig up, you can have a third of it. A third for George Hook; a third for myself; and a third for you. There is no peculiarity in that, is there?’

  Henry took the cigar out of his mouth, and paced around the boarded floor. All three of them watched him: August Rische, George Hook and the dog. Henry went up to the glass counter where the candies were displayed, and leaned forward with his hands in his pockets and peered into it. Fresh chocolate fudge, cut in squares, which Augusta had made yesterday afternoon; as well as pecan penuche; and caramels; and molasses taffy, which she had pulled with the help of the thin starved-looking woman who lived across the street and took in laundry, and sometimes miners, too.

  Henry said, with his cigar clenched between his teeth, ‘I’ve been living here and working here for eighteen years, Mr Rische. When I got here, I had nothing at all, except for eighty-one dollars left over from my wife’s childhood savings, and enough good sense to realize that even a godforsaken place like California Gulch needed a bank, and a post office.’

  He stood up straight, and faced the two sourdoughs with his hands in his pockets, his watch-chain stretched across his brown hound’s-tooth vest. ‘Everything you see around you here is the result of honest hard work. It may not be much to somebody like you, who wants to be a millionaire; but look at me and then look at yourself, and then tell me who’s the better off. Here,’ he said, and he drew around the cheval-glass which his customers used when they were trying on suits and bonnets. ‘Take a look at yourself, what do you think?’

  August Rische kept his eyes averted, although George Hook walked across to the mirror and peered into it from only two or three inches away, and then suddenly smiled at himself with benign lunacy.

  August Rische said, in a quiet but persistent voice. ‘I know how you are thinking of us, Mr Roberts. Bums and wastrels. Not worthy of any investing. But have some belief that whatever sum you care to give us for the purposes of grubstaking will be cherished and husbanded.’

  ‘Spent on whiskey, more like,’ said Henry. ‘Now, take yourselves out of here. This is supposed to be a food store, hygienic. Do you think people are going to want to buy anything here if they walk in and see you two dungheaps and that mongrel of yours?’

  ‘Henry, let them have some crackers,’ Augusta implored. ‘They’re probably starving.’

  Henry waved his hand impatiently. ‘Go on, then, dip in. Take a handful.’

  But August Rische remained where he was, frowning at Henry from beneath the peak of his cap, as if he would change Henry’s mind by staring at him.

  ‘Go on, get yourselves lost,’ snapped Henry.

  ‘Sir, all we are asking is twenty dollars,’ begged August Rische. ‘Two golden eagles, sent flying to bring back hundreds more. Throwing your bread at the water, sir, and expecting its return.’

  ‘Just take your crackers and go, will you?’ Henry told him. ‘And, Augusta, give that dog something, there’s a hambone out back.’

  ‘Well, sir, if I am not persuading you to take a chance,’ said August Rische, with an air of tremendous resignation.

  The word ‘chance’ for some inexplicable reason caused the hair around the back of Henry’s neck to prickle, as if he had been touched by the bare wires of a galvanometer. Chance. He couldn’t think why it had such an extraordinary effect on him. He found himself standing with his hands in his pockets and his eyes focused on nothing at all; so that the sunny interior of the store became blurred, and the voices of the men in the back room suddenly seemed very distant; like men talking in another time. Chance.

  Augusta said, ‘Henry.’

  ‘Yes,’ he answered, his eyes still not focusing.

  ‘Henry, Grover says he gave the hambone to Mrs McLintoch. But there’s a pork-knuckle, if that’s all right.’

  ‘All right,’ Henry said absent-mindedly; and then the wheels of the coffee-grinder began to turn against the sunlit window, as George Hook idly ran his hand around it; and the turning of those spokes unlocked for Henry the concealed memory of the word ‘chance’.

  The Colossal Whirler, turning against the sky. The sunlight of summer, eighteen years ago, in 1860, before the war; before Lincoln was President and before anybody had heard of Chickamauga or Chancellorsville; before bicycles and typewriters and suffragists; before linoleum and talking telephones. A young day at the end of an innocent era. And Madame Waldorf the fortune-teller had peered into his head and said, ‘You will not become wealthy by talent; or by skill; but simply by chance. There will be two men who are looking for something. One of them speaks very little English. You will know them when you meet them, at least you will if you remember my words.’

  August Rische and George Hook, their pockets crammed with Graham crackers, opened the door of the store and stepped out into the dusty sunshine. August Rische turned, and raised his cap, and said, ‘With regrettability, we are taking our leave, Mr Roberts; but thank you for the small foods.’

  Henry said, ‘Wait.’

  What Madame Waldorf had predicted for Doris, that had come true, hadn’t it? That there was a cloud over her life, and that she would never many? Now here were these two men whose arrival she had spoken about, all those years ago; and her forecast had been that they would make him rich.

  August Rische didn’t hear him, and closed the door. Henry crossed the store in three electrified steps, opened the door up again, and called, ‘Wait! Mr Rische! Mr Hook!’

  The two tattered prospectors turned around; as did almost everybody else in the street, Leadville, like most Western towns, was populated by the incurably inquisitive, and gossip was as staple as whiskey. Henry beckoned August Rische and George Hook back towards the store; and they shrugged at each other, and came, watched by half a dozen shoppers and prospectors and layabouts who were all patently wondering why a smart prosperous man like Henry Roberts should want to have anything to do with two run-down no-hopers like these.

  Henry said, ‘I’ve changed my mind.’

  August Rische looked suspicious. ‘You want back the crackers? The pig-bone?’

  ‘Of course not. I’ve changed my mind about grubstaking you. Come on back inside.’

  Cautiously, the two prospectors followed Henry back into the store. Augusta stared at Henry in perplexity, her hands clasped in front of her apron, and said, ‘Henry? Is something the matter?’

  Henry went to the cash register, and rang up No Sale. As the newspaper pundit Finley Peter Dunne had recently written, ‘th’ cash raygister is th’ crownin’ wurruk iv our civilization,’ and at no time had Henry agreed with that remark more than now. He handed August Rische two 10-dollar coins, minted in Denver; and August Rische took them and laid them side by side in the palm of his dirt-stained hand and stared at them as if they had materialized there by magic. George Hook kept his eyes on Henry; squinting and suspicious; quite obviously baffled and alarmed by anybody who should so freely give them money.

  ‘There’s just one thing,’
said Henry, and walked around to the post office side of the counter; where he took out a sheet of vellum paper, and quickly scribbled on it, ‘Reed of Henry Roberts, Twenty Dollars in Gold Specie, Being a Grubstake for Mining Exploration in the District of Leadville; in Return for which I Guarantee One-Third of All Ore Precious or Semi-Precious.’ He waved the paper dry, and then brought it round for August Rische to sign and for Augusta to witness. August Rische signed his name in big, careful, kindergarten loops.

  ‘Now then,’ said Henry. ‘If there’s anything you need such as bacon, or vinegar, or beans, you can help yourselves to whatever you need; enough for a month, say. Augusta, will you help these gentlemen?’

  Augusta, mystified by Henry’s sudden change of mind, walked around the counter with her striped skirts swishing on the boards and her large bustle protruding aggressively. Bustles of such a size were already waning in popularity in New York and San Francisco, and had become much trimmer; but Henry had once told Augusta that her large bustle made her look ‘most provocative’, and so she made sure that she always wore it, and that she paraded it as ostentatiously as possible. ‘You will need 33 pounds of bacon for two men for one month,’ she announced. ‘You will need 85 pounds of flour; and four pounds of salt; and 16 of sugar; and I suppose you had better have some dried beef, too, and some coffee.’

  August Rische nodded, and kept on nodding, unable to believe his luck. Henry stood with his hand on the counter, alternately smiling and not smiling; and hoping very much that his feelings about Madame Waldorf would prove to be justified.

  ‘If you have no cart,’ he said, ‘I will have one of the boys bring these provisions out to you. Where is your claim?’

  ‘Ah,’ said August Rische, carefully.

  There was a pause. Augusta turned around from the sugar-sack, and looked first at August Rische and then at Henry, quite perplexed.

  ‘You do have a claim?’ asked Henry.

  ‘We are always having intentions,’ August Rische declared.

  ‘You are always having intentions, but you don’t have a claim, is that it?’

  ‘Always before we were scraping wherever we found somewhere deserted,’ August Rische explained.

  ‘Oh, Henry,’ said Augusta, exasperated, and putting down the sugar-scoop. ‘These two are quite impossible.’

  Henry rubbed his eyes. ‘If you don’t have a claim, there isn’t any point in my giving you all these provisions, is there? Nor a grubstake, either. Now, listen, you’ve worried my wife, and you’ve taken me out of a poker game with my friends, just to be panhandled. I’m not going to be vindictive, and I’m not going to give you any trouble; but I think you’d better return those twenty dollars, don’t you, and then we can forget about the whole business.’

  August Rische stood up straight for a moment, and looked almost proud. Then he stiffly held out his hand, and offered Henry his two golden eagles.

  ‘I am apologizing for any mendacity,’ he said. His lip trembled, and Henry realized that he had been seriously defeated. He and George Hook had no money whatsoever; no claim; and no hope of finding one. Henry knew for himself how low a man could feel with no money and no chance of ever making any. He could remember as sharply as if it were only last week how Augusta had spread out her money on the bureau at the Cherry Creek Guest House, $98.27; and how he had peered at it with puffed-up eyes and realized that here was his only salvation. There was a time when every man had to give in; not willingly, not lightly, but simply for the sake of being able to eat tomorrow. That was why he had given in to Augusta, and eventually agreed to marry her. She had been willing, and sympathetic, and ready to do anything. And apart from that, she had been able to offer him $98.27; enough to get him away from Denver and Charley Harrison, and to set up his business in California Gulch. God, he thought; what a man can give away for $98.27.

  He said, in a different voice, ‘I do happen to have a claim myself.’

  Augusta chipped in, ‘Not the Little Pittsburgh?’

  ‘Well, I was thinking about it.’

  ‘But you own the Little Pittsburgh outright! You’re not going to give away two-thirds of it to these tramps, are you?’

  Henry raised both hands. ‘Listen, Augusta, the Little Pittsburgh is barren; I never had a red cent out of it anyway. What’s the harm if Mr Rische and Mr Hook have a crack at finding something up there? One-third of something is better than three-thirds of nothing at all.’

  ‘I don’t approve,’ said Augusta.

  ‘You don’t approve? You don’t approve of what? Of making a little money?’

  ‘I don’t approve of surrendering ownership of our property to men like these; vagrants.’

  ‘I’m not talking about surrendering ownership. I’m simply talking about giving them the opportunity to mine up there, in the off-chance that they dig something up. Even a little zinc would be better than what we’re getting at the moment, which is thin air.’

  ‘I don’t approve. Do I have to repeat myself?’

  Henry took a deep breath. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry about that. But I’m still going to grubstake these gentlemen, and give them a month up at the Little Pittsburgh to dig for whatever they can find. So would you measure out provisions for them; salt and bacon and whatever else they want; and I’ll go get the deeds, so that they can see where they can dig.’

  ‘No,’ said Augusta.

  Henry took the cigar out of his mouth and looked at Augusta with uncertainty. Augusta stood with her head lifted, her mouth tightened, her spectacles framing her eyes as if someone had pencilled ovals around them to emphasize how fixed they were; how challenging. She had startled Henry with this sudden show of defiance; not least because of the way in which she seemed to expect that he would give in to her without argument. There had somehow always been an unspoken understanding in their marriage that Augusta would do anything for Henry, and always agree with him, no matter what. It was a kind of silent acknowledgement that it had been she who had pursued him, and suggested marriage; that it had been she, and only she, who had declared their coming-together to be ‘a great romance’; and most secretly and most painfully of all, that she was plain and drew compliments for nothing more than her pastry, while he was unarguably handsome, and easy-mannered, and drew the women of Leadville into the store as much for his smile as he did for his groceries.

  But now: she was insisting that he give these two prospectors nothing, and it was clear from the expression on her face that she meant it very seriously.

  Henry said quietly, ‘Gentlemen...here are your twenty dollars.’ And without taking his eyes off Augusta, he dropped into August Rische’s hand the two golden eagles which Rische had so hurtfully returned to him.

  ‘Go up to the head of the gulch,’ said Henry. ‘Up on the left, you’ll find a shoulder of rock, overlooked by a bluff, with an overhang. You can’t miss it; there are pits and diggings all over the place. There’s a sign, too, if nobody’s taken it down, or used it for firewood.’

  George Hook took off his drooping stetson for the first time; and the dog sneezed yet again, and yawned.

  Henry said, ‘We’ll send provisions up later today; all the flour and beans that you’re going to need for a month’s hard work. But let me tell you this: that’s rock-solid ground up there, and when I say hard work, I mean hard work. I’m not paying twenty dollars for anybody to lie down like Laurence’s dog.’

  August Rische looked quickly from Henry to Augusta, and cleared his throat, and then said, ‘You are always being blessed, Mr Roberts. You also, Mrs Roberts.’

  ‘You can go now,’ said Henry.

  August Rische and George Hook retreated, leaving the door open behind them, so that the light and the dust and the horse-chaff blew in across the floor. Augusta went punctiliously to close the door, while Henry made a note on an order-form for all the supplies that Rische and Hook would require. He hesitated at the end of the list, and then wrote in ‘1 bott. whiskey’. He could forfeit that much towards his future.


  Augusta said, ‘I hope that is the first and last time you humiliate me in front of others.’

  Henry folded the order-form, and looked at Augusta narrowly through the smoke of his cigar. ‘You think I humiliated you?’

  ‘Of course you did. I specifically asked you not to let those two miners take a share of the Little Pittsburgh; and what did you do? You made me look like a foolish and interfering woman with no right to say anything at all in her own home.’

  Henry said, ‘You’re beginning to sound like a suffragist.’

  ‘I think I should be able to express my opinion, don’t you, even if I don’t have a vote?’

  Henry shrugged, and walked back through the store towards the beaded curtain.

  ‘Don’t you have anything to say at all?’ Augusta asked him.

  Henry stopped, and turned around. ‘What do you want me to say? That you’re right; and that I shouldn’t have let those two dig up at Little Pittsburgh? Well, I’m not going to say it, because you’re wrong. Even if they don’t find anything, they won’t have cost us more than twenty dollars and a few pounds of bacon. If they do, we can share in whatever it is they come across, copper or zinc, fair shares for all, in thirds.’

  ‘But supposing they find gold,’ said Augusta, quite shrilly. Henry paused, and looked at her carefully. She was so agitated that she was twisting the bow around the front of her skirt, around and around, as if she were strangling a chicken. ‘If they find gold,’ said Henry, ‘well, we could be rich.’

  He stayed where he was, in spite of the fact that he could hear Jim Roelofs calling, ‘Come on, Henry, we’ve finished all the damned beer; and now we want to finish this damned game.’ He could sense that he was getting very close to what was really upsetting Augusta, like a dentist who approaches a nerve.

  ‘Don’t you want to be rich?’ he asked her.

  Augusta shook her head. ‘Haven’t you ever realized Henry, that I am more contented with this store; more contented with the baking I do; with my candies and my pies; with getting up at dawn and going to bed tired at night; with you; and with the life we lead; than any of the riches in the wide world, Comstock or Ophir or Deadwood Gulch? If those vagrants find gold, what will it ever do to us, except upset us, and disturb our happiness? I don’t want it, Henry; I want everything to stay as it is. I want that deed-of-claim to remain in the bureau drawer, the same as ever, until we die.’