And the Hills Opened Up (3 page)

4

Ingrid Blomvik made the short walk from the church back to the Runoff Saloon alone, not waiting for Madam Petrov or the other girls.  Two men, sitting out on the Copper Hotel’s front porch, whistled their appreciation as she passed by.  Ingrid ignored them and crossed the empty street, slowing as she approached the Runoff Saloon’s porch.  Five girls stood propped up on its banister, doing their best to look attractive while they sweated through their cheap dresses.  Nobody was used to this kind of heat, not this high in the mountains, and when it did come to visit for a few days, usually in July or August, it felt hotter than the salt flats of Utah.

The porch girls murmured hello as Ingrid mounted the steps and swept past them.  Madam Petrov made the regular girls display themselves like goods at a mercantile.  She said it attracted more customers, which was doubtful, since nearly every man in town spent his days below the earth, breaking rocks and hauling the mess out (every man who could afford a whore, that was).  She let the girls work the porch in shifts during the daytime, four hours on then four hours off, with everybody on the porch starting at five, no matter what.  About one hour into a porch shift you ran out of talk, if you’d had any in the first place, and from there the conversation dragged along like a lame mule, nearly as bad as the time you spent with your legs parted beneath some sweaty, unwashed man.

Not that Ingrid dealt much with sweaty men these days—the sole use of her services were reserved by Revis Cooke, who paid a high sum for such special treatment, and Revis Cooke kept himself clean with a particular vehemence that bordered on insanity, his skin so buffed and soft it reminded her of a baby’s bum. 

The saloon’s interior was dark and cool, a large, open space with plenty of tables and chairs and a fireplace to one side.  A few customers sat at the island bar in the middle of the room, drinking without talking.  Caleb sat on a stool behind the bar, whittling a block of wood.  The young man looked up as she came inside and nodded. 

“What’s it going to be this time, Caleb?”

“Beaver.”

Ingrid laughed and started up the saloon’s stairway, running her hand along the smooth banister. 

“A beaver?  With a fat tail and all?”

“Figured we could set it above the fireplace, right next to the cow skull.”

“That skull could use some company,” Ingrid said, stepping onto the second floor landing.  “Being dead must get awful lonely.”

Caleb made no reply, already forgetting her as he returned to his work, shaving off another layer of curls from the block.  Ingrid turned right, passing three bedrooms until she came to her own, which overlooked the street below.  The girls used their own bedrooms for business, seven upstairs and seven down, with the extra rooms for Madam Petrov’s bedroom, office, and the bartender’s room.  Ingrid’s room was as small as any, just big enough for a bed and a chest of drawers.  It wasn’t too glamorous, entertaining a distasteful man in the same room you slept in, but it beat the hell out of a being a girl of the line in some noisy city like Butte, set up in a row of hot wooden shacks like you was nothing but a pumping doll.

Ingrid opened the top drawer of the bureau, rifled through her collection of undergarments, and pulled out a small leather bound book.  She sat down on the edge of her bed, kicked off her shoes, and opened the slim volume on her lap, enjoying the way its binding creaked as it spread.  It was a book of poetry her deceased husband Erik had given her when they’d been courting back in Minnesota—“In Memoriam”, by Lord Alfred Tennyson.  The poems were about his dead friend Arthur, about how sad and heartbroken he’d felt at Arthur’s sudden death.  The book had seemed like a strange thing to give a girl you were courting, especially since they’d both been so young back then, only thirty-two years between them, but it made perfect sense now, with Erik buried in the Black Hills for six long years.

A photograph slid out of the book as Ingrid turned the pages.  They’d had the picture taken right after they’d gotten married in Rapid City, spending money on it they couldn’t really afford, but she’d rather have it now than a hundred cash dollars.  She’d worn a dress her mother had made, a blue and white checkered she’d outgrown since and given away to another girl, and Erik looked so handsome in his good suit, his eyes brimming over with life and jubilation.  They’d both been children still, really, not knowing that nothing but cholera and heartbreak was waiting for them around the bend.

Somebody knocked on her door.  Ingrid wiped the damp from her eyes, slipped the photograph back inside, and returned the book to its hiding spot at the back of her bureau drawer.  “Come in,” she called out, sitting back.  The door opened and a young woman stepped inside.  She was on the short side, with curly dark hair and chestnut brown skin.  She was a favorite with the men, all plump curves and wide, beautiful brown eyes.

“Howdy, Anita.”

“Hey, Ingrid.  Sorry to bother, but Mr. Cooke is here.”

Ingrid sighed and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.  They’d lain together the night before and she’d hoped to have an evening’s reprieve.

“Send him up, Anita.”

“You sure?”

“I am.”

The young whore made to leave, then poked her head back inside.  “Your eyes, Ingrid.  They look red.”

“Don’t worry about that.  Just send the bastard up and mind the slime.”

Revis Cooke knocked once on her door and opened it himself, not standing on manners.  He was a tall man given to wearing costly suits fitted with small pockets.  He always carried a gold fob watch and checked it every five minutes, like he had some place important to be.  He claimed to be forty but Ingrid thought he looked older than that, like a grouchy old man in training.  He had dark, unsmiling eyes, a hawkish nose, and a pinched mouth that looked prissy if you couldn’t sense the sharp teeth hiding behind it.  He kept his hair slicked down with the old fashioned pomade fur trappers had used a hundred years before, the kind made with bear fat instead of petroleum.

“I regret to intrude on your leisure hours, Miss Ingrid, but matters would not permit me to visit you later this evening, nor the next day.”

Ingrid smiled and rose from the side of her bed.  She did not like to sit while her visitor stood beside her bed—it brought her to eye-level with his crotch and the inevitable rising therein.

“I’m delighted to see you, Mr. Cooke.  The Runoff Saloon always appreciates your patronage.”

“And do you, Miss Ingrid?  Appreciate my patronage?”

Ingrid widened her eyes, willing their blue to sparkle.

“Why sure, Mr. Cooke.  Aren’t I the one you show the most favor to?  And wouldn’t it be most natural for me to return it?”

Mr. Cooke stepped forward and set his hands upon her waist, his eyes gleaming as he absorbed her cleavage.  “That’s what I like most about you, Ingrid.  You know a real man when you see one.  Not like the rest of this goddamned town, populated as it is with dirt encrusted miners and the usual camp vultures.”

“You find it so bad, Mr. Cooke?”

“Bad?  Red Earth isn’t enough for such a word.  This town is a banality and a banality is a worse sin to me by far.”

Ingrid didn’t know what Mr. Cooke was talking about, but she rarely did.  He’d gone to university back East, the only man in town who’d done as much, and liked to hear the wind of his own words.  She knew it got him agitated, talking like this, using fine language and big words, and knew you just had to wait out the talking and try not to laugh.  Men hated it when you laughed at something you weren’t supposed to laugh at.

“You look delectable, Miss Ingrid.  You make me feel like the Big Bad Wolf, about to sup.”

Ingrid giggled stupidly as the accountant leaned in and nibbled on her neck.  The room’s heat, combined with the smell of Cooke’s pomade, was making her feel faint.  How could he stand his own smell?  He worked inside a building, as she did.  He was no cowboy riding along the open plains, no mountain man Jim Bridger.

Cooke’s hands cupped her breasts and began to fumble with her bodice, threatening to bust a few buttons or more—he talked fine, but acted the slop when it came to undressing a woman.  Ingrid pushed his hands away and undid the corsage herself, not wanting it harmed, and let it fall to the floor.  It took only a few seconds more before she stood naked in the hot room, a bead of sweat slipping between her breasts.

“Ah, yes.  Indeed.” 

The accountant stepped back, fumbling with his own belt in his eagerness to be rid of it.  A small pink bit of tongue slipped out between his teeth as he dropped his pants and drawers and kicked the mess of clothes away.  His prick was hard and at the ready, wobbling as he came forward and pushed her onto the bed.  Cooke had kept his suit coat on, as he always did, and its fine fabric felt over-slick as he climbed onto her and nudged her legs apart with his knees.  Ingrid fought against the urge to close her thighs and scream, still there after all these years of whoring, and allowed her eyes to drift away as the accountant entered her and began his thrusting.  She tried her best to remember her young husband, the feel of Erik Blomvik’s body as they once preformed this same act on a woolen blanket, hidden away in his father’s hayloft on a sunny afternoon much like this one.  The strength in Erik’s shoulders and back as she clutched him to her, so happy as he kissed her neck, her cheeks, her lips.  She drew on the memory as if it were a spell of protection, keeping her slightly distant from the slippery, pomaded man on top of her, no matter how deeply he tried to enter.

Some men fell asleep, afterwards, into a deep and untroubled slumber she allowed for a few minutes as she washed between her legs and dried off.  Not Revis Cooke, however.  Revis Cooke liked to talk.

“This whole town is nothing but a single operation, you know.  If Mr. Dennison felt an urge, he could have the whole setup collapsed and put away in a week’s time, like taking down a circus.”

“Is that so?” 

Ingrid wished Cooke would get dressed, or at least put his drawers back on.  She didn’t need to look at his prick, now soft and gleaming with the juice of his seed, any more than she already had.  She’d tell him as much, too, if he wasn’t already paying so dearly for their time.

“Yes, it is.  But that won’t happen for several years more.  Not until the mine runs dry and more profit can be found somewhere else.  Until then, you ladies will have livelihood enough in these hills.”

Mr. Cooke ran his hand along her thigh and set it upon her knee.  “Do you recall that matter I mentioned, when I first entered your room?”

“I sure do.  You said it would keep you from calling tonight.”

Mr. Cooke smiled.  No, not a smile, exactly—a hooking of the lip that made Ingrid shiver, though the room was as hot and baking as ever.  Out of all the rough and strange men she’d known in five years of whoring, he had to be the most worrisome of all.  Maybe it was the fine words and business man’s clothes, maybe it was something else.

“The coach is coming in this evening, Miss Ingrid.”

“The coach?  But it’s not Wednesday.”

“The coach from San Francisco.  The bank coach.”

Ingrid drew the sheet up to her waist, though she wasn’t cold.  She could still see his hand beneath the sheet, lumped like a coiled snake in the grass.  Hopefully he had nothing more on his mind for today.

“It comes only once a month, you know,” Mr. Cooke said, glancing at her from the corner of his eye.  “The coach travels with five guards in addition to the driver himself.  Shotguns, they call them.  In two years, they haven’t missed a delivery yet.  They are men you can set your clock by.”

Ingrid smiled and set her head on Mr. Cooke’s shoulder, though that brought her closer to his slick scalp.

“Like you, Mr. Cooke.  I could set a clock by you as well.”

“Perhaps you could,” he said, drawing his hand back and shifting onto his side, so he could face her.  “Being a payroll accountant is a vital job, Miss Ingrid.  Each month, I need to count the delivery and dole it out to the appropriate recipients.  You’d marvel to see it, all that money laid out on my desk in high stacks.  More money than you’ve ever seen in your life.”

Ingrid closed her eyes, imagining that money stacked on her own dresser.  Enough money to buy a person free of this town, free of all these mountains and the winters that seemed to begin as soon as they’d ended.  With a pile of money like that you could take the train back East.  You could go back to Minnesota and show everybody how you’d become something after all.

“I know I’m no whiskey guzzling hard-rocker,” Cooke said, squeezing her left breast as if feeling a tomato for soft spots.  “But if anybody tried me around here, they’d find enough trouble to last them.”

Ingrid nodded.  They all talked big like that, afterward.

5

The four outlaws heard the heavy-laden coach descending.  They left the winding mountain road, dismounting from their horses and leading them into a short ravine.  The horses pawed at the ground as they entered a dense grove of pines, uncertain of the footing and why they were being led into a valley with no visible exit.  The outlaws murmured reassuringly to the horses as they brought them round, so that the entire group, now hidden, faced the road.  The gang was led by a slim, brown-eyed man named Elwood Hayes.  They’d come up from Colorado the day before.    

They listened as the coach rumbled closer, its noisy passage echoing off the surrounding hillside, knocking scree loose and moving faster than sanity would seem to allow on such a twisting path.

“Goddamn, they’re making a racket.”

“Hush, Roach.”

“What for?  They won’t hear nothing above all that.  Might as well be riding through a thunderstorm.”

Roach Clayton was right—they did not seem to care about how much noise they made or who heard it.  That meant a heavy guard, Elwood decided.  An escort of either cocky young roosters, too certain their guns made them safe, or grizzled veterans, too hardened by time and experience to care much what happened to them now.  Either way, they’d put up one hell of a fight if fallen upon.  

All right, then.  They’d do this Owen’s way, even if it meant him getting a swelled and prideful head.

You could hear the clopping of hooves separate from the rattling wheels.  Clem Stubbs lifted his rifle and pointed toward the road with it.  Clem was stout and broad-shouldered, with an enormous red beard not unlike the burning bush once revealed to Moses.  What few teeth Clem still had in his jaw were yellow and worn, the last stubborn survivors of his mighty love of sweets.

“What you think, El?  Should we give ‘em lead and set on them from behind?”

Hayes shook his head.

“No.  We’ll wait till they make the delivery and wander off to the saloon.  They won’t be as eager to come running to the aid of the Dennison man after spending a few hours drinking and whoring.”

Roach Clayton dropped to one knee as if to pray.  He was a short, wiry man with round spectacles that gleamed at odd moments, catching you off guard.  He looked more fit to minding a hardware store than trail living, but he could outride any man and was startlingly handy with a camp knife. 

“You think we can break the Dennison man?  He’ll be guarding that money chest with his life.  Those company men are like that.”

“I’ll break him,” Johnny Miller said.  “Just get me in that room with him.”

Elwood glanced at the young man.  Miller had joined up with them in Denver the month before, a rat-faced youngster who said he wanted to make some easy money and hurt somebody, and not necessarily in that order. 

Roach said something else Elwood couldn’t hear.  The stagecoach was visible now, accompanied by two guards on horseback in front and two in back.  A lookout rode beside the driver, his rifle laid out across his lap.  The lookout’s eyes swept from one side of the road to the other, never quite resting on one spot as the coach jostled along.  He looked grizzled enough and so did the other guards, none of whom appeared younger than thirty.

Hayes rubbed his jaw, wondering how exactly they’d finagle all this.  You had to take all the specifics into account when you were robbing a man or things could turn on you in a hurry.   

The stagecoach and its escort disappeared around a bend in the mountain road, leaving a cloud of dust to slowly settle back on the stony ground.  They brought the horses out of the ravine and remounted.  Elwood brushed the dirt and pine needles from his pants, mindful of the need for respectable appearance as they approached town.  Even in a tiny spider hole like this you didn’t want to alarm anyone unduly, not before the silver was in your pocket and the wind at your back.

Clem Stubbs rode up beside Hayes—the road was too narrow for more than two riders to get along comfortably.  It was a miracle a stagecoach could fit on such a poor stretch, regardless of its speed.

“You satisfied with your handsomeness, Elwood?”

“I am.”

“A man should be tidy, if he’s going to rob a tidy sum.”

Hayes smiled, letting his horse pick his way down the slanting road.  “I like that, Clem.  You figure that yourself?”

“Yes, sir.  Right now, in my very own Christian mind.”

“Mercy,” Elwood said, shaking his head.  “What wonders hath God wrought in His creation.”

The road leveled out some.  Elwood kicked his horse to a trot and the other men trailing him followed suit.  Down below, you could make out a cloud of dust rising above the trees as the stagecoach rushed onward, heading toward a small town laid out on the valley floor.  The town, naught but a few dozen buildings, seemed to be hunched away from the mountains surrounding it, like a nervous wagon train making camp for the night. 

Red Earth, his brother had called it.  Red Earth, Wyoming.

And such a beauty of a day.

Elwood slowed his horse as they rode down the last steep length of mountain road and reached the valley floor.  Felt good to be on flat ground again, to ride without worrying about pitching forward, but Elwood Hayes resisted the urge to let his horse out.  They weren’t going to act the cowboy, whooping and raising hell as they pounded into town.  No, that sort of tomfoolery got a group of men noticed. 

They passed the copper mine, which was nothing much to see besides a few buildings and a dark hole in the hillside.  Elwood noted the unsettling fact that there seemed to be only one torturous road in and out of camp.  If a group of like-minded men, angry and well-armed, managed to cut them off before they’d started upward…well, that could lead to a bloody encounter for all involved.

About a half-mile past the mine’s entrance, they came to the first buildings on the outskirts of town.  They stabled their horses at the livery barn and left the stable two at a time, with Roach and Johnny going first, headed straight for the saloon downtown, while Hayes and Clem held back a minute before crossing the street. 

“That’s sharp, splitting us up like that,” Clem said, scratching his beard.  “Four men stick out more than two.”

“That’s why I’m in charge, Stubbs.  You let me do the hard figuring.”

A few old timers were sitting on the porch outside the town’s general store.  Elwood touched the brim of his hat and one nodded back.       

“You reckon your brother’s working in the mine these days, Elwood?”

“No, it don’t seem likely.  He’s worried by dark and crowded places.  That’s why he only prospects, and does poorly at that.  He thinks silver and gold can still be found around these hills, popping out of the ground like prairie dogs.”

They crossed the street and came to a handful of shacks that smelled about the same as the livery stables.  A man sat cross-legged in a doorway, cradling a jug in his lap.  His blond beard was gnarled and unkempt and his hair looked like it might not have seen a barber’s shears in a year or more.  Elwood kicked the man’s leg and he jerked awake, his eyes red and bleary.

“Hey, hoss.  No call for kicking.”

Stubbs and Elwood laughed.

“Lord Almighty,” Elwood said.  “Don’t you look poorly, you little skunk.”

The drunk shaded his eyes.

“El, is that you?”

“Sure is, you drunken fool.”

“Well, I’ll be.”

Owen Hayes set aside the jug and stood up, leaning against the boarding house’s doorway for support.  He smiled, showing his tobacco-stained teeth, and staggered forward to embrace his older brother.  Elwood tolerated the contact a moment before pushing his brother away.

“I can hardly believe it.  You came, Ellie.  You got my letter and you came.”

“I did.  It wasn’t a pile of nonsense, was it, Owen?  I’ve got three men with me and none of us is going to be too happy with you if you was spinning tales.”  

“I wasn’t spinning tales,” Owen said, looking at Stubbs.  “I might be a drunk, El, and a poor excuse for a prospector, but I’m no liar.  Payday is tomorrow.  That Dennison man will be sitting on that cashbox tonight like a goose in a fairy tale, waiting for its fat gold egg to hatch.”

Hayes glanced at Stubbs.

“We saw the stagecoach on the way in.  Had a sizable escort.”

“That’s it, all right.  That’s the National Bank coach.  Comes once a month to Mr. Cooke’s house.”

“What’s Cooke like?” Stubbs asked.  “You met him before?”

“No, not myself,” Owen said, wiping the sweat off his brow.  “But I seen him plenty around town and heard folks talk.  Thinks he’s smarter than everybody and tougher, too.  About what you’d think a big company man to be like in a place like this, I suppose.”

Elwood scratched beneath his hat.  He’d sweated through the brim and his throat felt dry enough to close up permanently.

“Let’s get ourselves a drink.  I’m thinking Roach and Johnny have already started without us.”

Owen’s face broke into another one of those tobacco juice grins.

“I could use a sip myself, brother.”

“Kid,” Stubbs said, roping him against his chest with one broad arm, “I think you better stick to coffee from here on out.”

Owen’s vexed eyes went to Elwood, who kept his expression flat. 

“Robbing the Dennison Mining Company is no drinking game.”  Elwood reached into his coat and pulled out a .38 revolver.  “You remember how to shoot?”

Owen took the revolver and pointed it across the street, looking down its sight with one eye closed.

“Been awhile, but I can recall.” 

“That’s good.  Now tuck it away until you need it.”

“This a Remington, ain’t it?”

“Don’t matter what it is.  Shoots bullets well enough.  Just don’t shoot yourself or any of us.”

“Thank you, brother.  I will strive to remember that.”

Elwood Hayes, like the other men in his gang, wore his pistol in a holster strapped to the small of his back.  He believed it did no good to show your gun to the world, reckoned that it only made you a bigger target, both to the law and to hot-tempered drunkards.  Also, he liked the look bank tellers and rich folk got in their eyes when you pulled your gun on them like a magic trick.  Folks always underestimated a man with empty hands and that alone could give you an opening, if you knew where to look for it.  The other men had taken awhile to see the wisdom of this, but Elwood had made it a rule if they wanted to ride with him, a known man in Colorado with three successful holdups already under his belt.  Folks said you lost time reaching back for your revolver, which was true, but if you got used to drawing that way it was only a moment and you could overcome that and more through surprise.

Elwood allowed his younger brother to take the lead and show them to the Runoff Saloon, figuring the town without acting too obvious about it.  He picked out the accountant’s house straight off, seeing as it was the only building in Red Earth that looked permanent, two-stories tall with stone walls, a proper chimney, and small, narrow windows only a cat could pass through. 

“I can feel them,” Stubbs grumbled beside Hayes.  “I can feel their eyes at this very moment, feeling me out.”

Elwood opened his mouth, about to ask who exactly Stubbs thought was watching them, but then he saw the girls gathered on the front porch of the saloon, fanning themselves as they sat in the shade, their bare arms glowing.  Elwood closed his mouth and swallowed, abruptly aware of the sweat rising along the brim of his hat and the smell of horse upon his skin. 

Stubbs crossed himself. 

“May the Good Lord preserve me from temptation and deliver me…”

Clem Stubbs was married, somehow, and always started up like this when they ran into women.  The prayers must not have been as feverish or pure as the Good Lord wanted, however, since Stubbs usually gave into temptation around his third drink.

Owen glanced back at them and grinned.

“Don’t worry about the doves, gentlemen.  They do like to flutter around this particular area.”

Elwood nodded to the ladies as they climbed the porch steps and passed through, his hand on Stubbs’ shoulder to help him along.  The ladies flicked their fans like peacock tails, giggling (as he knew they would) while their perfume lifted sweetly off their powdered skin and into the summer air.  Elwood and Clem Stubbs stopped just inside the saloon as Owen continued on, allowing their eyes to adjust to the dimness.  On Elwood’s left were several round tables, all of them empty except one near the saloon’s front windows, where three of the stagecoach guards sat playing cards.  On Elwood’s right was a stairway to the saloon’s second floor and behind that a hallway that led to several rooms.  The saloon smelled like spilt beer, stale cigar smoke, and the burning kerosene lamps that hung about on pegs. 

Roach Clayton and Johnny Miller were sitting by themselves at a rectangular bar in the middle of the room.  Elwood headed in their direction, looking sideways at the other tables.  The bartender, a young man with a tangle of dark hair over his eyes, came up as Elwood sat down on a stool beside Roach and set his feet on the brass foot rail.

“What’ll you have?”

“Beer.”

“Caleb here is my good pal,” Owen said, sitting on Elwood’s right side, with Clem a third stool down.  “Good old Caleb, the greatest bartender Wyoming’s ever known.”