by Neil Hunter
‘Jacob had to kill a man!’ Seth said. ‘He busted in on a fellow who was giving Sachs a hard time. The upshot was that Jacob got pulled down on but he was still faster. The other fellow got a shot off that missed but Jacob didn’t. Got him fair and square.’
‘You alright?’ I asked Jacob.
He nodded. ‘Hell of a mess I made of our first day.’
I handed him some coffee. ‘It was you or him.’
‘I guess.’
I had a feeling they hadn’t told me everything. I voiced my feelings and Seth told me the rest.
‘It was Cole Prentise that Jacob killed.’
‘I know that name from somewhere,’ I said.
‘Prentise ran with a real wild bunch. Couple of hard cases run it. Red Karver and Will Pike. And they got Tall Lyons with them.’
I saw trouble brewing on the horizon. If what Seth had said was true, then we were in trouble deep. And it was trouble of the kind that was only cured with a quick mind and a quicker gun.
Chapter Two
During the war Red Karver and Will Pike had run with one of the so-called Freedom Fighters Bands, who were supposed to be riding for the South but in fact they were nothing more than renegades who raided and looted, taking whatever they wanted and causing a deal more misery than the real war. After the war Karver and Pike just carried on with what they were doing. They gathered a bunch of real roughs and moved West, bringing their brand of dirty dealing with them to the gold-camps where the pickings were plentiful. In the lawless boom towns, where a man was his own law, Karver and Pike were feared names. They were said to have killed a number of men in various camps. It was probably true but nothing was ever done about it. A man kept his suspicions to himself, kept on digging, and if he made a good strike he hoped he could make his pile and get out before Karver and Pike found out and moved in. Some were lucky. Others were not. Some took savage beatings then sold out. There were the ones who stood up to the Karver-Pike bullies. They were the ones who suddenly vanished, or were found dead in some gully, most of them with bullets in the backs.
These then were the men with whom we were liable to be involved with. If Karver and Pike were operating around Hope, then we were in for an uneasy time. Not that it overly bothered Seth or Jacob or me for we had known trouble for most of our lives and took it as it came.
‘Last I heard Karver and Pike were up around the Comstock,’ I said to Seth. We were sitting round the fire, drinking coffee and trying to figure what might come of Jacob’s killing of Cole Prentise.
‘I talked to a miner,’ Seth told me, ‘and he said that Karver’s bunch has been hanging out around Hope for nigh on six months. Seems that a vigilante group started up on the Comstock and got some hangropes filled. Seems that Karver and Pike felt the shadow of the noose a little and decided to move on.’
‘Well if they come too close they’ll feel more than a coil of rope,’ Jacob said abruptly. His tone showed that he was angry, and when Jacob got angry he also got deadly serious, meaning every word he said.
‘Go easy, brother,’ I told him, ‘they ain’t here yet!’
He threw a scowling glance at me. Then he saw the smile on my face and he mellowed.
‘You know, Joel, to hear Brig talking you’d get to believing he was the most peace-loving of us all. But he isn’t. Why he’s fighting mad under that smile.’
‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘I don’t go looking for trouble, but I’ll not walk away when it comes.’
Joel, who had been silently sitting by, glanced at me. ‘I hope I have it in me to do the same if I ever have to face trouble myself,’ he said.
Jacob put up a hand. ‘Rider coming.’
I could hear the approaching horse myself now and I eased off. ‘It’s only Sachs,’ I told them, for I’d recognized the step of Sachs’ tired old dun. The animal had a slight limp and it made a distinct hoof beat.
Moments later the old man rode into camp and dismounted. He tied his horse and then joined us at the fire. He had a bulging flour-sack in his arms and he dumped it on the ground.
‘Any coffee left?’ he asked.
It was getting dark now, and it wasn’t until Sachs joined us at the fire that I saw his face. It was plain that Jacob had stepped in at the right time. Sachs’ face was bruised and cut from jaw to hairline, his skin puffed and raw. His lips were swollen and split, and his left eye was almost shut.
‘Seems that Jacob did everybody a favor shooting Prentise,’ I said.
Sachs nodded. ‘Damn right he did! Wouldn’t be sittin’ here now if he hadn’t come into that saloon. Man, that bastard Premise was a mean son. He like to stomped me, an’ all because I spilt his beer.’
‘You mean he did that to you just for a glass of beer?’ Joel’s voice was shocked and I realized that he’d had more than his fair share of violence for one day.
‘There’s only one thing to remember, Joel,’ I said. ‘This isn’t New York. There are no policemen out here. The Law is spread very thin and in a place like Hope the only kind is what a man carries on his hip or in his fists. It may be hard to take but it’s something you should learn fast. Get into trouble and most times you only have yourself to depend on. You have a gun, then learn to use it, and be ready to use it, because others will. Don’t worry over the other fellow because he sure won’t be worried over you. Long as you’re in the right, don’t hesitate. If a man’s going to kill you the only thing you got to figure is whether you can shoot first.’
‘He’s right, boy,’ Sachs said. ‘Most probably makes us sound nothing but a bunch of savages, but it’s the only set of rules we got out here yet. Law’ll come one day but ‘til it does every man is his own law, like Brig says. It’s a rough country and a man has to be rough to stay alive in it.’
Joel listened and nodded. ‘I came here to make my way,’ he said, ‘but I guess I didn’t realize just how rough it was going to be. I’ll just have to learn, because I’m not going back!’
We sat for a while longer. I steered the talk away from what had taken place today and the others took up the cue. Seth broached the subject of where we should start digging and before long we were all giving our views. Here both Sachs and Joel came into their own. Sachs knew about prospecting from personal experience, while Joel was able to hold forth from his knowledge of geology, a subject he had studied for years. Between them they cornered the major part of the discussion and it took us through three more pots of coffee. It must have been close to midnight when we turned in.
I moved my blankets some distance from the fire and made sure I’d got my rifle and handgun close by.
I lay for some considerable time before I slept. My mind was full of the things that happened and my thoughts of what tomorrow would bring. Would we make a go of this hunting for gold? What would come our way from Red Karver and his crew? I stirred restlessly, wishing to get answers to my questions so I could sleep. Eventually I did sleep, but then only lightly and I woke often, to any sound that broke through to me. I finally drifted off a couple of hours before dawn. When I opened my eyes again the sky was already streaked with daylight, and Sachs was up, tending the fire. He glanced round at me as I sat up, and his face creased into a smile.
‘Boy, you had a restless night.’ He brought me some coffee. ‘I could hear you tossing and turning from where I was.’
‘I keep you awake?’
‘No. I don’t sleep a lot. My age a man gets so he don’t need as much as he used to.’
I got up and drank my coffee, then wandered over to the stream. I took off my shirt and had a wash. The water was cold and it made me gasp, but I felt wide awake when I got back to camp.
Sachs had everybody else up by then. He was rooting around in the sack he’d brought with him the night before and when he emptied it we thought we were seeing things. He produced a side of bacon, flour, a bag of coffee, and four cans of peaches.
‘Where in hell did you get all this?’ Jacob asked.
Sachs grinned. ‘One of the ad
vantages of being in this game a long time is that you know where to go to get the things you want. Mind, I had to pay for ‘em but I figure it was worth it.’
We breakfasted well on bacon, beans and pancakes that Sachs made with flour and water. After the meal we checked our gear and filled our canteens from the stream.
We had decided to ride on up into the hills, well above any of the other claims. Sachs and Joel had both agreed that we might stand a better chance of finding something up there. They made a try at explaining why, but they lost me right at the start.
The sun was hot as we set out and it got hotter as we rode. As we moved higher into the hills we were able to look back on the jumble of the campsites and the claims below. Even further back we could see Hope, a maze of dark shapes that stood out against the dun-colored earth.
We rode for over two hours. Every so often Sachs and Joel would get down and poke about in the dirt. They would pick up chunks of rock, inspect them, and toss them aside. Then we would ride on. It went on this way for some time. And then they found something.
By this time we were riding in an area of jumbled rock and tough scrub. The hills towered above us on every side. Much higher than where we were, I could see the dark green of trees and I wondered what it would be like to ride up in that country. I had heard that there were icy streams and green meadows up in the tall hills. Places where it was so peaceful a man had to shout to let himself know that he was still alive. Up there it was green and silent and the air was bright and fresh and so clear a man could see for miles. I had heard that country like this was called the High Lonesome, and though I had never yet ridden in it myself, I knew that name was the only one to describe such places. I made a promise to myself to take a ride up there some time in the near future.
But right there and then I was forced to cut short my dreaming as I heard Sachs give a shout. I drew my eyes from the distant hills and swung down out of my saddle. Jacob and Seth were already bending over Sachs and Joel.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘Why, Brig, don’t you know gold when you see it?’ Joel said. He was holding a hunk of rock in his hand and he thrust it at me.
It looked like a chunk of crumbling rock to me at first, but then I saw the zigzag threads of golden color running through it. I felt my heart pound. I turned it over and over in my hand.
‘You sure?’ I asked.
‘It’s real,’ Joel assured me.
‘You mean we’ve struck gold? Just like that? Ride out and look round for a while, then just pick it up off the ground?’ I must have sounded awful cynical but I couldn’t help it.
Joel grinned. His young face was shiny with sweat and grimed with dirt. ‘It has happened,’ he said. ‘What we’ve found, Brig, is a chunk of rock that’s been washed down the hill from up above. I’ll admit it’s a lucky find but it doesn’t mean we can quit looking. What we have to do now is to trace this back to its source.’ He pointed up the rocky hillside. ‘Up yonder somewhere is the place this came from. All we have to do is to find it. We might find it tomorrow, we may have to look for a week. And then we might find there isn’t any gold worth bothering about.’
I tipped my hat back. ‘Well that’s me told!’ I shaded my eyes and looked to the hillside above us. ‘You figure we might find something?’
‘From what I can tell this looks like pretty good stuff,’ Sachs said. ‘We might have hit a strong seam. Then again it might only be a foot deep.’
Jacob stood up. ‘Only one way to find out,’ he said. ‘We go to it.’
And go to it we did. For the next week. A week in which we worked harder than we’d worked before. Under Joel’s knowing eye we traced that chunk of rock back up that hill until I thought we were going to end up on the high peaks themselves. We dug and we sifted and we dug some more. At night we fell into our blankets and slept the sleep of the dead. By the end of the week we had begun to show some results. A small leather pouch was pretty well filled with gold-bearing rock. Joel explained that we were following a runoff that wound its way down from the hills and that somewhere on its journey it was passing over a gold seam and sometimes it was bringing down chunks of the gold-bearing rock. All we had to do was to find the place where the gold originated. It sounded easy but it was far from that.
We were two days into the second week when we found what we were seeking. Joel brought us together and showed us the outcropping of rock that held more of the thin gold threads. He chipped some off and passed it round.
‘And now we dig!’ he grinned.
We dug. Dug until our bodies ached and our fingers and palms were raw and blistered, our eyes and throats sore from the dust. We took that hillside and we opened it up and ripped out its guts.
We cut timbers to stop it falling in on us and we dug right inside that hill, so deep that we had to light lamps it was so dark. We dug for days, for nights, and the weeks slid by and before we knew it we’d been digging for a whole month.
But we had our gold. It didn’t seem a lot for the amount of work but we had it. Pure, hard gold. We had a dozen canvas bags of it. Joel figured it might bring us in about forty thousand dollars. When he told me I didn’t even smile. I was so tired and sick of digging that I would have given it all up just to be able to rest and maybe never see another shovel in my life. It wasn’t that I’m scared of hard work. I thrive on it. But I wasn’t used to grubbing around in the dark, deep earth. It was a job like this that had killed my father back in Lancashire. It was one of the reasons why Seth and Jacob and me had left. We’d come to this country to work but what we were doing now didn’t sit right with me.
Joel saw my discontent and asked me about it.
‘The idea sounded good,’ I told him, ‘but this isn’t our kind of life, Joel. Seth and Jacob are like me. We like the outdoors. It’s been our way since we came to this country and I guess it’s in our blood.’
‘You pulling out?’ Joel asked.
I nodded. ‘All I want is enough to get me started.’
I told Seth and Jacob what I’d decided. They both said I was to do what I wished. Both of them had figured on giving the mining a few more weeks. We decided that I should take my share of the gold and that I would retain a share in the mine’s future output. I wasn’t very keen on the last part but they said that was how it would be.
The next day Seth and I were left alone at the mine while Jacob and Sachs and Joel rode down to Hope. They were going for supplies and then Jacob and Joel would carry on from Hope and ride to the capitol to file our claim.
I’d said that I would stay until they got back in a week or so even though I was eager to make a start on my own plans.
Seth had gone off to cut some wood. I settled down at the mine entrance, my rifle at hand, and picked up a book that Joel had lent me.
It was a little past noon when something made me look up. I came to my feet, grabbing my rifle.
A bunch of riders were coming down off a low ridge, heading straight for camp. There were eight of them, hard-looking men and all armed to the teeth. I got a feeling their visit was less than neighborly.
I noticed that the one in the lead, a big, heavy man, who had hair and a moustache of red, reminded me of someone. And after a few seconds I knew that I was looking at Red Karver!
I stepped out into the open and waited for them to ride up to me and I knew that it was trouble that was riding in. I jacked a round into my rifle’s chamber, holding the weapon easy, but in plain sight. If they’d come hunting for trouble then trouble was what they would get. And I was in the right frame of mind to give it to them.
Chapter Three
They drew rein some yards from me and for a moment we eyed each other in silence. Red Karver sat his horse a little in front of his men, though two riders were close by him. I took these to be Will Pike and Tall Lyons, and like Karver they looked to be mean, hard men.
Karver tipped his dirty hat back and eased himself into a more comfortable position in his saddle. ‘What they call yo
u, boy?’ he asked.
‘Brigham Tyler, if it’s any of your business, Karver.’
He leaned forward. ‘You know me?’
‘I heard your name,’ I told him. ‘It supposed to do something to me?’
‘He talks big,’ said one of Karver’s companions.
Karver grinned. ‘Maybe you ought to go down there and show him he ain’t as big as he thinks, Tall.’
Tall Lyons nodded. He was a big man, at least six-six and nearly as broad. He looked at me now and I saw his eyes were as pale as frozen spring water.
‘I’d call him off, Karver,’ I said, ‘because if he puts one foot on my land I’ll lay a bullet straight between his eyes. And if you think I’m fooling just let him keep coming.’
Something in my voice must have told them I wasn’t fooling. Tall Lyons stayed in his saddle but his eyes bored into me in a way that almost hurt.
‘Before you ride out you can tell me what you came for.’
‘Heard you’d made a strike. Come to make you an offer for the claim. In cash. You could be on your way by nightfall.’
I smiled at him. ‘You really got that off well,’ I said. ‘How many times have you made that speech before you shot a man in the back?’
Karver spat suddenly. ‘Damn you, boy, I’m giving you a chance to get out easy.’
‘I prefer to stay. I got four partners and I know they don’t want to sell out. More so to a load of scum like you and your crew, so I’d ride out now. Before some of you get hurt.’
‘By God, he’s got nerve, I’ll give him that,’ said the one I judged to be Will Pike. He was thin and almost girlish in his way but he looked as deadly as a poised cottonmouth.
‘I’ve more than nerve,’ I said. ‘I’ve a loaded rifle and I know how to use it.’
‘You any good?’ Pike asked, sizing me up.
‘As good as my brother Jacob. Cole Prentise could testify to that if he wasn’t dead.’
‘Yeah! I’ll settle with him later,’ Karver said.
