Silver Rock

by Luke Short

  Later, as he was mounting the stairs to the Moffit apartment, he heard music and halted. A combo was playing “Sweet Georgia Brown.” As soon as he had identified the piano player as Dave Brubeck, he went up and knocked at the door. Sarah let him in.

  She was dressed in green velvet slacks and a pink pearl-studded cashmere coat sweater. She looked beautiful, Tully thought, as he smiled and tried to make his greeting seem normal and offhand. “Is this the new music?” he asked, tipping his head toward the phonograph.

  Sarah said it was, and as Tully walked into the room he said hello to Mrs. Moffit who was knitting on the sofa and to Beth Hodes who was seated on the floor by the phonograph, sorting out records.

  Beth turned down the volume a little and then looked frankly at him. “Last time I saw you—no, the only time—you looked like a tiger ready to pounce.”

  Tully grinned. “That’s my Elks Club expression.”

  Beth smiled, too. “I like this one better.”

  Sarah came over and sat on the arm of the sofa as Tully slacked into a chair. While the record finished he watched her closely, looking for any change in her manner. She was whistling thinly and expertly a counterpoint to Brubeck’s piano, and to Tully it seemed as if there was nothing on her mind except the enjoyment of the music. When the record ended, Sarah glanced over at him. “What’s new at the mine, Tully?”

  Tully hesitated a moment, wondering if Beth Hodes should hear this, and he decided it didn’t matter. “The Little People took another crack at us,” Tully said wryly. “Somebody put sugar in the compressor gas tank.”

  “Somebody what?” Sarah asked blankly.

  Tully told her of his discovery while unloading the compressor, and explained what it would have done to the engine, adding that this was the reason why he was in town instead of at the mine.

  Beth listened with interest, but when Tully looked at her she dropped her glance to the pile of records before her. She suspects Ben, too, Tully thought.

  Mrs. Moffit observed, “Someone has a very strange sense of humor.”

  “Tut-tut, Ma,” Sarah said, almost angrily. “You mustn’t be too harsh on your favorite prankster.”

  Mrs. Moffit looked up in surprise. “Well, I declare, you sound angry, Sarah.”

  “Sense of humor she says,” Sarah said in angry mockery. “There’s no humor in it, Ma! Whoever’s doing this is plenty serious. The harder we work, the more of it there’ll be, too.”

  Mrs. Moffit looked at Tully. “Do you think that, Tully?”

  “I suppose I do, Mrs. Moffit.”

  “You mean there’s somebody doesn’t want you to get the mine operating?”

  Tully only nodded. Mrs. Moffit looked from Tully to Sarah. “Now, who would wish that sort of bad luck on anyone?”

  Sarah refrained from answering. Beth Hodes was leafing through a stack of albums as if she had not heard. Tully said nothing.

  Sarah said, breaking the silence, “Put on some Errol Garner, Beth.”

  “Just one more and then I’ll have to go,” Beth said.

  “It’s early,” Sarah protested.

  “And I’m tired.” Beth put on the Garner record. They listened in silence. Afterwards Beth rose. Tully rose, too. “I’ll take you home, Beth.”

  “Oh, don’t bother,” Beth said.

  “Yes, do bother,” Sarah countered. “She’s moved out of their house, you know, Tully. Ben’s watching her every minute. I think you’d better go with her.” Tully helped Beth with her coat and while Beth was saying good night to Mrs. Moffit, Tully was waiting for Sarah to ask him to return after he dropped Beth off. There was no invitation forthcoming, not even after he said good night to Mrs. Moffit.

  When the door closed behind him, the old fears returned. She knows, Tully thought. Here’s where the deep freeze starts.

  Tully and Beth walked downstreet to the jeep parked in front of the hotel, and then Tully drove Beth home. The Kelly house was a small white frame affair, neat as only the widow of a Welsh miner could keep it. No lights were showing.

  Beth, climbing out of the jeep, said, “Don’t bother to come up, Tully. Good night.”

  Tully, however, swung out of the jeep and started up the dark walk toward the house. It was dark inside, so Tully had almost reached the steps before he saw the black hulk before him. A split second later Beth gave a start, and then halted, too.

  “Is it you, Ben?” Beth asked.

  “I want to talk with you, Beth.” Ben Hodes’s voice was heavy, serious and almost threatening.

  Tully said quickly, “You want to talk with him, Beth?”

  “No.”

  To Ben, Tully said, “Then step aside while I escort the lady to the door.”

  “I mean it, Beth. I want to talk with you.”

  “Not tonight, Ben. You come down to the office tomorrow and I’ll talk with you as long as you want.”

  There was a moment of silence in which none of them moved, and then Tully put a foot on the bottom step. “Let’s call it an evening,” he suggested mildly. He reached back for Beth’s arm and drew her close to him, and then mounted the steps, prepared to shoulder Ben aside and to accept whatever followed.

  Surprisingly, Ben stepped back and let them by him. Tully waited until Beth had unlocked the door, bidden him good night and closed it, and then he turned, standing on the balls of his feet waiting for Ben to make his move. When Ben turned and tramped down the steps, Tully breathed a sigh of relief and followed him.

  “Want a ride?” Tully asked.

  He saw Ben’s shoulders lift in a shrug, and then Ben said gloomily, “Why not?”

  Tully waited to speak until the jeep was in motion, and then he said, “Well, it didn’t work, Ben.”

  Hodes looked at him. “What didn’t work?”

  “The sugar in the compressor tank.”

  Hodes was silent a bare second. “What are you talking about, man?”

  Tully said, “When I catch your man, I don’t think he’ll want to work for you again.”

  “Now what does that mean?” Hodes asked, a faint amusement in his heavy voice.

  “It means I’ll send him back to you in a basket.”

  He could hear Ben’s snort above the sound of the motor.

  “It’s got to be bigger than these fleabites, Ben, to do me any harm, but when it does I’m coming after you.”

  “I’m slow,” Ben said, almost plaintively. “Dumb it up. What are you talking about?”

  Tully glanced at him. “I’ve got one hundred and twenty days to pay back a ten-thousand-dollar loan. If anybody gets in the way of my paying it, he’ll get fitted for new teeth, and that’s a promise.”

  “One hundred and twenty days,” Ben said dreamily. “On the one hundred and twenty-first day I’ll have your half of the Sarah Moffit in court.” He looked at Tully. “I’ll have all my teeth, too. I’ll even have something else.” Tully said nothing, and Ben went on. “I’ll have your hide nailed to the wall, friend Gibbs.”

  Tully said mildly, “Where you going?”

  “Elks.”

  They did not speak until Tully deposited him before the Elks building. Ben courteously thanked him, bidding good night, and Tully drove off down the street.

  Next morning Tully cleaned out the compressor tank at one of the garages, and afterwards stopped at the town’s lone clothing store and bought a half-dozen cheap scarlet shirts. At the Nugget office he bought some cardboard “No Hunting Allowed” signs and by midmorning he was on his way back to the mine.

  It was a beautiful, crisp fall day, and Tully almost wished he were hunting too. When he came to the new road he saw that several vehicles had passed over his last night’s tracks. Beyond the climb to the first ridge, he could see where two camps had been set up by hunters in the scattered spruce in preparation for opening day of hunting season tomorrow. At the first camp, three men were erecting a tent. As he neared, one of the men, a stocky, soft man, wearing rimless glasses and a friendly expression, flagged him
down. Tully braked the jeep to a stop and wondered idly as the man approached why most men looked more absurd in caps, especially red ones, than they did in hats.

  The man put his hand on the windshield frame, said, “Hi,” and then asked the inevitable question. “Where’s a good place for elk around here?”

  Tully said, “I’m a stranger here myself. Five or six miles north though there’s a mine working. They’re pretty noisy, so I’d stay away from that area.”‘

  The hunter thanked him and Tully drove on. The second camp was shipshape but deserted, and Tully supposed the members of this party were out spotting likely-looking country for tomorrow’s hunt.

  As he drove on, his thoughts returned to last night and Sarah. If he were the brooding kind, he thought, now would be the time to brood. Even if he hadn’t known of Sarah’s call to San Diego, he would have thought her actions last night almost unfriendly. The hour Beth had chosen to go home had been early. The natural, friendly thing for Sarah to have done would have been to invite him back for a drink and more music. Mrs. Moffit could gracefully have retired and if Sarah had wanted they could have had a pleasant evening. I’ve probably had my last one with her.

  Still, her sudden coolness didn’t make sense. She had learned nothing from her San Diego call that didn’t jibe with what he had already told her. Tully guessed shrewdly that a normal person, when his suspicions turned out to be unfounded, was apt to be overcordial to the person suspected. Sarah had been anything but overcordial to him. That meant she still suspected him on other grounds, but what were they? Even if Dottie Humphreys had been flip and had seemed too familiar with Tully’s service and medical history, this was scarcely grounds for Sarah’s treatment of him. It was something else, something unguessable.

  But Tully felt a bitter regret at Sarah’s change of manner toward him. He admitted to himself now that she was already a large part of his new life. Up until yesterday he had had the hope, naive as it was, that Sarah would never know of his scheming and his dishonesty. But somehow, perhaps intuitively, she had sensed his deception and was beginning to back off. Would Kevin do the same? In a few weeks, would he be just another date for Sarah, to be treated like any personable young man with a known character weakness—just a guy to kill time with? And would Kevin begin to mistrust both his judgment and his work? He did not know, but he had the uneasy and unpleasant feeling that command of the situation was slipping away from him.

  The jeep had now reached the end of the surveyed road. Tully halted it, climbed out and tacked a “No Hunting” sign on a prominent tree close by. Then he turned off on the wretched bushwhack road. Where the timber began to thicken Tully shifted into low low and picked up speed for the turn and the steep grade beyond. As he made the turn, wheels churning, he suddenly jammed on his brakes. There ahead of him up the hill in the narrow lane was a stalled pickup truck. Already its wheels were mired in the loose earth churned up by the cat.

  Swearing under his breath, Tully cut the motor. Three sweating, unshaven, red-jacketed hunters who had been trying to heave out the truck straightened up and looked at him. Two of them, Tully saw, were already a little drunk. A long-legged, square-jawed character, a dead cigar clamped in his mouth, came stumbling down the hill in the loose dirt toward the jeep. He hauled up alongside Tully, his chest heaving. Tully could smell the rank odor of long-drunk whiskey on his breath. “Say, you mind giving us a hand so we can get up this hill?” the hunter asked.

  “I don’t mind giving you a hand, but you’re not going up the hill,” Tully said quietly. “You’re going down.”

  The man looked carefully at him, and then said, “Who says we are?”

  “I do.”

  “This is forest land and we’ll go any damn place we please on it, Buster,” the man said flatly.

  “You’re on a private road on a working mining claim,” Tully contradicted him. “You’re getting off, too.”

  The man looked at him dubiously. “You wouldn’t be kidding me, would you?”

  Tully tilted his head. “Go back down the road a piece and you’ll find a sign that says ‘Private Property, No Trespassing Allowed.’ “

  “I didn’t see it.”

  “I can’t blame you for that. I just put it up. Still, it’s there and it means what it says.” He gestured toward the truck. “This is the only access road to the mine and you’re blocking it. Even if you climbed this hill, you’d be bogged down for a week in the stuff ahead, so you’d better back down.”

  The hunter stared rebelliously at Tully for a long moment, then turned his head and called, “Hey, Joe, come here.”

  Both Joe and his companion came lurching down the slope to join the long-legged man who said, when they halted beside him, “This guy says he owns this land and we’re to get the hell off.”

  One of his short, heavy-set companions snorted, “Ha! Let him get us off.”

  “I’ll get you off,” Tully said levelly. “If you’ll listen, you can hear a bulldozer working up on top. If you aren’t cleared off of here in an hour, I’ll bring it down and turn your damn truck upside down and then run over it.”

  The short man said, “Real tough, huh?”

  “All you’ve got to do to find out is stay here.”

  The third man said belligerently, “Why don’t you post your land then?”

  Tully took a No Trespassing card from the seat, stepped out and impaled it on the broken branch of a spruce nearby. He turned and said, “All right, it’s posted.”

  The long-legged man said, “Where’s your boundary?”

  “Right where the No Trespassing sign is back there.”

  “Okay, let’s leave the jerk alone,” the stocky man said to his companions. The three of them turned without another word and struggled back up the hill. Tully climbed in and started the jeep and backed around the curve and out onto the timber flats. Switching off the engine, he drew out a cigarette, lit it and then leaned back and listened to the truck driver frantically gunning his motor in an effort to back the truck down the slope. It took a solid half hour of brush-laying, alternating with a furious gunning of the motor, before the truck backed into sight from out of the spruce. The three men pushing were now drenched with sweat and filthy from the churned dirt of the slope. As the truck backed off the road they stumbled wearily in its wake, then turned to glare at Tully. He started his motor and swung onto the road.

  “Wise guy,” the taller man growled as Tully passed him.

  In another ten minutes Tully achieved camp. Minutes afterwards he and Alec were busy installing the tank and the incident with the hunters was forgotten. By midafternoon they had the compressor spotted and working. There was some rock to shoot at the top of the ridge before Alec could start bulldozing the grade. By late afternoon the noise of the jackhammer was filling the forest with its working din.

  That night after supper Tully maneuvered the jeep down so that its headlamps could give him light to work by, and he ran the jackhammer until he had to knock off the noise and let his crew sleep.

  He was awakened at bare dawn by the first chorus of shots from the hunters celebrating opening day. After breakfast in the mess tent, he distributed the red shirts to his crew. Charlie Short, a stubby, widechested Welshman, picked up the shirt from the board mess table and said, “You figure they’ll be shooting down the shaft, Tully?”

  “Yes,” Bill Ligon said promptly. “Three years ago I was working at Phil Miller’s gas station on Main Street. Damned if some hunter didn’t put a slug into the gas pump. It was painted red, too.”

  As the crew changed into their red shirts they began swapping hunting stories, commenting on the dryness of the weather and the likelihood of a small kill. Tully knew every man loved to hunt, and he decided that the first day it rained or snowed he would give them a day off to bring in some meat.

  As Tully stepped out into the chill early morning, he halted and cocked his head listening. From all directions, but especially from the west there was the distant sound of
shooting. It was as if a small guerrilla war were being waged in these mountains. Alec stepped up beside him, borrowed a cigarette and listened too.

  “Does that racket make you want to be out there?” Tully asked Alec.

  Alec shook his head in negation. “Not me. I eat elk every year, a bull, but I don’t get one while half of Texas is shooting at me.”

  Tully grinned and they both started for the bulldozer. The crew had already scattered to their various jobs. Suddenly, there was a clanging of steel on the bulldozer, and then the unmistakable sound of a ricochet bullet followed by the sharp report of a rifle from a distant ridge several hundred yards away. Alec swore wildly, then turned and faced the ridge, waving his red shirt. A second later dust suddenly geysered up between Alec and the tent, and there came another sharp report.

  “He’s shooting at you!” Tully shouted. He grabbed Alec’s arm and whirled him around, pointing toward the ‘dozer. They both ran for cover as a third searching shot smashed into an empty oil drum beside the mess tent.

  Tully and Alec hit the dirt at the same time in the shelter of the cat’s tread.

  “Is that guy crazy?” Alec asked wrathfully. “What the hell is he doing?” As if in answer the distant rifleman shot again. There was the clang of a bullet on the ‘dozer motor and the following clap of the rifle. Still another shot at the ‘dozer followed. Both Tully and Alec, lying flat on the dirt, waited, looking at each other with a wild bitterness in their eyes.

  Suddenly the rifleman shifted to another target, this time the tugger. He put six shots into the shaft and tugger as Tully watched wrathfully. Then as if to keep them down, he switched again to the ‘dozer, putting several more shots into it. His aim shifted then to the distant compressor, and Tully groaned as he heard the slugs reach home.

  For twenty minutes they lay in the dirt while all the machinery in sight, plus air hoses and gas tanks, were thoroughly worked over. Lying there, a murdering wrath within him, Tully counted at least forty shots.

  As abruptly as the shooting began, it now ended. Tully and Alec waited a minute, then Tully rose and dashed for the mess tent, Alec on his heels. The cook had taken to the timber, but his rifle stood in the corner of the tent. Tully grasped it and lunged outside and raced for the timber. He heard Alec running behind him, and then Alec grabbed his arm and halted him. “I’m going to hunt that guy down and kill him,” Tully said thinly. “Let go!”