Dead Warrior (11 page)

“ ’Tis at that.” He was grinning now.

“I just got here last night, so I’m not up on all the local customs,” I went on, “but at every other camp I’ve ever been in ten o’clock was first drink time.”

“Not countin’ the one before breakfast,” he was careful to remind me.

“That’s just the one to clean the teeth with,” I corrected him on a point of order. “That’s the zero drink, not the first.”

“Ten o’clock’s about right here, though if you was a half hour early nobody wouldn’t say nothin’.” Hairy fingers closed around mine as he gave me that assurance. “I’m Short-fuse Rochelle.”

The Glory Hole was already crowded with other devotees
of first drink time. On another corner of Apache and Beaver Lodge Streets, however, a place which hadn’t been there the night before was preparing to open for business.

“You’re my first customers,” the landlord said, weighting down one end of the plank bar with a large chunk of rock. “These are on me, gents, and I’ll have one with you for luck.”

“What’re you callin’ the shebang?” Short-fuse asked, when we had all nodded and snapped the whiskey down.

“Well, I’ve been giving that a lot of thought.” The proprietor’s round, good-humored face wrinkled with more brain tremors while he was speaking. “My name’s Hamilton Gay — though I’m always called Ham — so I figured I’d maybe call it the Gay Palace. Of course, it don’t look like no palace now, but I’ve got to think of the future, you see. What do you fellows think about that for a handle?”

Western saloonkeepers habitually adopted names which were about as suitable as pink ribbons around a keg of black powder. Rustlers Roost and the bars at Shakespeare had been exceptions to the rule, to which I had by then become so accustomed that I no longer noticed the incongruities.

“It sounds all right,” I assented. “Make it three again.”

“ ’Tain’t got no feel of the camp,” Short-fuse objected. The long scar framing his eye was turned toward me, as he pointed kitty-corner across the street. “Glory Hole does, now. It fits Dead Warrior, because the whole damn place is a glory hole from butte to crick and back again. This town sits on enough gold to buy Africa and China with, if anybody wanted ’em, and you can’t spit on a rock without splatterin’ tobacco juice on maybe a hundred dollars. ‘Palace’ is all right for most camps, but you’d ought to have somethin’ special for a real jumpin’ Jesus of a bonanza like we got here.”

“You’re right,” Gay said, but agreement only filled him with gloom. “What name could I use, though? That fellow over there’s got the best name to give the idea of both a bonanza and a place to hang out; and anyhow I don’t want to sound like I’m just copying him. A man that’s going to build up as big a business as I aim to starts off wrong if he tries walking in the other guy’s tracks.”

All pondering, we slugged down the second round. “Perhaps something to go with the name of the camp would be the thing,” I suggested.

“I don’t like to give the idea this is a dead joint,” Gay asserted. “How’d a lively camp like this get a corpse’s name anyhow?”

“Well, I — ” It was on the tip of my tongue to mention that I had shot an Apache there. Just in time, however, I remembered that Potter had pre-empted that feat, and that I would only convict myself of claim jumping if I said otherwise.

“The story I got,” Short-fuse said, “is that old Seth Potter named it that, because while he was prospectin’ here he give some Injun a free ride to — say, what’s the matter with the Happy Huntin’ Ground?”

“It don’t tell what you’re hunting; it could just as well be gold or a drink,” Ham Gay discovered, when he had tried the name out. “That would go fine with the place, wouldn’t it?”

Some other customers arrived then, and he moved down the bar to make their acquaintance. “I ain’t yet got my sign up,” I heard him explaining a minute later, “but this joint is the Happy Hunting Ground.”

“That’s Dead Warrior all over,” one of the newcomers decided. “Drinks on deck here and gold out there, so’s to
make it certain that the drinks can be bought when wanted. Hell, boys, we got high, low, jack and the best God-damn game in the United States of Paradise.”

The loyalty given to the midmorning institution did not mean that the camp was in the hands of shiftlessness. By ten o’clock most of the citizens of Dead Warrior had already put in four or five hours of backbreaking work. After first drink time they drifted back to their tasks, my companion along with the rest.

“Whereat do you bed down?” he asked, as he was about to leave.

“Well, last night I slept in my stage, Short-fuse. I’m starting a line between here and Tucson.”

“That’s all right,” he conceded, “but you ought to get you a claim. There ain’t no use in foolin’ around with hundreds of dollars when there’s thousands just waitin’ for a man to come along and say, ‘Jump in my pocket.’”

“Oh, I’ve got a claim.” I was glad to be able to say that I, too, belonged to the gold peerage. “But there’s no placer stuff on it; it’s all hard rock, and I’m no miner myself. I’ve got to make some money so I can afford to develop it, not to mention keep eating.”

“You don’t need any cash around here if you got a claim,” he snorted. “The stores know you’re good for anythin’ you charge.”

He was right in that. Dead Warrior’s two supply centers would hand over whatever they had, or would take orders for anything they didn’t have, at the request of any known prospector. It would be untrue to say that all of the latter were prepossessing in appearance; but every dirty shirttail sticking out through a hole in the seat of the owner’s pants belonged to a fellow who bore himself like what Macaulay would call a
man of lordly race. There never was such a confident democracy since the Argonauts, also prospecting for gold, churned the Black Sea with their oars. Everybody was a distinctive personality whose attributes were common knowledge. Everybody stood on his own feet, and those feet were known to be planted on ledges seamed to fathomless depths with precious metal.

The small amount of claim jumping which now and again took place was due to inadvertence rather than to fraudulent intent. What was the sense of trying to steal filed claims when others just as good or better could be had for the asking? Mistakes were good-naturedly rectified, and nobody was too busy to help new fortune hunters out with advice or physical assistance.

To find a welcome a man had but to stroll to any of the campfires with which the area was starred, as soon as night brought chilliness to those arid uplands. Seth Potter’s camp remained the favorite gathering place, though. A special aura clung to him, as the explorer from whose discovery all were benefiting. A small portion of his glory was shared by me, as a matter of fact, owing to the old fellow’s chat about my mystic powers of divination. And at one assembly, at least, these were celebrated in song.

Among those who used to foregather at Seth’s camp to swap anecdotes that walked unabashed on both sides of truth there was one called Dink Flinders. Before coming West, for whatever reasons had made such a move desirable, Dink had cut some sort of figure in New York’s entertainment world. He had a facility for making jingles and would do so, when sufficiently primed, tailoring them to fit a popular tune of the day.

The song in question was one whose tune and refrain were
borrowed from “What Do You Know about Kate Sullivan?” Flinders first introduced it after a hearty session at the Glory Hole, accompanying the words with pantomime.

His dumb-show projection of myself in the acting of winding a bonanza convulsed us all. Flinders acknowledged our applause by cutting a pigeon wing before cakewalking over to where Potter sat.

This bardic recognition of his prowess delighted the old mountain man, who nearly rolled off his box when he saw himself shooting the Indian without even bothering to look around. After circling the fire in the manner of a man on skates, Dink next proceeded to deal with the actual discovery.

While Flinders was walking about on his hands, I had occasion to reflect that I alone knew where the Indian was actually buried. I was called back from the vision of how the Apache had looked when dirt had half covered his malevolent features by the final stanza of Dink’s composition.

DRIVING STAGE WAS OFTEN a miserably hot business by day and too cold for comfort when night fell on that regoin of gamut-running temperatures. Yet it had its compensations, among them being a financial one. While the profits were nothing compared to what I expected when my claim was transformed into a mine, I was prospering to a degree that astonished me.

Another rewarding aspect was one which Tom Cary had enjoyed at Three Deuces. I was courier between the outside world and the new settlement. Arrived there, I was the town crier, sought after as the authority on anything from the latest activities of Billy the Kid to what was going on in the field of international diplomacy.

I also had the inside track when it came to knowing about new arrivals, actual and prospective. Included were some with whom I had had previous dealings, for the growing fame of the Dead Warrior bonanza was making the place a natural port of call for half the restless wanderers and rapacious opportunity seekers of the West.

Among those encountered in transit was a man who approached me as I was checking some details at the Tucson end of my line, which now boasted a small adobe office.
“When I heard that your name was Carruthers,” this fellow said in the tones of trained oratory, “I was wondering if you could be the Good Samaritan of the road to Chuckwalla, Colorado, and I see that to be the case. Do you recall my identity, by any chance?”

I might not have recognized the Reverend Lansing Foster, if he had not declared the circumstances of our original meeting, but I had no trouble in identifying the girl who joined us a moment later. Possibly because I had been in the bachelor West that many months longer, Faith looked even prettier than she had before.

“I’m a little afraid to hear what you have to say,” she remarked. “Are you going to tell us that Dead Warrior has vanished from the map, too?”

“Dead Warrior isn’t on the map yet, but you can look it up next year, or ten years from now, and count on finding it.” Having sworn to that, I returned my gaze to her father. “Are you thinking of settling there?”

“That is precisely the subject on which I wished to secure advice. Being somewhat more accustomed to the West, I am warier than I was when I determined on Three Deuces as my goal. The glories of Dead Warrior are being bruited everywhere, but I would like firsthand information, and of a more reliable nature than that which I received from a certain newspaper editor.”

Dick Jackson had already arrived and was publishing a weekly called the Dead Warrior
War Whoop
, but I didn’t mention that. As our family had a tradition of deism, it was immaterial to me whether Foster established a Unitarian church or that of any other denomination in the shadow of Beaver Lodge Butte. But if he was planning to brighten the camp by bringing his sightly daughter there, I certainly wasn’t going to present obstacles.

“I gave you authentic information about Three Deuces,” I reminded the minister, “and I think you can place reliance on whatever I tell you now. Can’t we go some place where Miss Foster would be more comfortable?”

“First, what is the population of the community?” he asked, when we were seated on the veranda of their hotel.

“That’s hard to say, because we’re growing so fast. There were about a thousand when I left there two days ago, although by no means all gathered in what you would recognize as a town. The tendency has been to live on mining claims, which in turn are scattered over a considerable area.”

“Are there any women there?” Faith wanted to know.

“There are a few.” I didn’t look at her as intently as I usually did, when her questioning granted me the opportunity. The age of innocence had passed for Dead Warrior, and a handful of rugged harridans were doing very well. “No doubt,” I said, after clearing my throat, “there will be a great many others, as soon as the mines become productive.”

“I don’t understand why there has been so long a delay,” the minister said.

“The ore-crushing mills aren’t yet completed.” Glad to leave the dubious ground of Dead Warrior’s social life, I gave him my full attention. “It would be far too expensive to carry unprocessed ore the seventy miles to Tucson, say. The Dead Warrior Mining Company is building a stamping mill, though the Sometimes — that’s the creek which sometimes flows by the town, and sometimes isn’t moist enough — can’t be relied upon for water power. They’ve built a dam six or seven miles away, just below where the Sometimes joins a larger and wetter stream.”

“And you really think they have gold in quantities there?”

As on the occasion of our first encounter, I was made to know that the Fosters were at least as interested in financial
details as they were in more spiritual matters. “Eastern capital has been invested on a large scale,” I declared. “The Pan-Western, a large mine-developing company with headquarters in San Francisco, has started the exploitation of its holdings. Other corporations are now showing interest. Unless a great many mineral experts and shrewd businessmen are being fooled, Dead Warrior is such a depository of treasure as America has seen only once or twice before, if ever.”

I spoke from conviction, and they knew I did. “But all you do in Cibola is drive a stage,” Faith observed, when father and daughter had exchanged glances. “Or are you still a judge?”

“Only of beauty and impudence, of which some people have more than their share,” I answered.

“He means he has mining property and is feeling very smug about his prospects,” she told her parent. “Are we going there, Father?”

He gave her the smile of a man who is not to be stampeded. “I must say Mr. Carruthers makes a report to take notice of, though I will want to talk to a Tucson banker or so, to get a more detached point of view.”

As Tucson capital was backing half of Dead Warrior’s commercial enterprises and grubstaking many of its prospectors, I had no fear of what the bankers would tell him. “If you don’t have your own transportation, the Carruthers line will be glad to serve you. I only make the trip once a week myself, but you will find the drivers of the other two stages competent and obliging.”

“If we do go, it won’t be immediately,” Foster said. “There is a church in New Mexico from which I must first sever my connections, and in any case I’ll have to think it over.”

His lack of decision was not to my liking, and something of my disappointment must have been manifest. Faith took
no apparent notice, however, until I had to leave, in order to take my place on the driver’s seat.

“Don’t worry,” she whispered, as she accompanied me to the head of the porch steps, “Father has already seen the bankers.”

“The dev — the deuce he has,” I caught myself. “What did they tell him?”

Keeping her hand on my arm, she stepped away, the better to watch my expression. “Well, when Father came back to the hotel, he told me that they seemed very godly men.”

Her eyes were alive with amusement, and I couldn’t help smiling in sympathy, even if I couldn’t keep pace with her thoughts. “And what did he mean by that?”

“They plainly gave him such a good report that he feared they were trying to take him in. That’s why he was so glad to get your information.”

It was such a rare treat to be sharing mirth with a charming young woman that I didn’t mind the fact that she seemed to be enjoying some joke at my expense. “And how could you gather all that from your father’s remark about godliness?” I inquired.

“Oh, we can tell those who aren’t church people when we meet them; and there’s an old New England saying that it’s well to deal with the godly in most things, but — ”

She let her hand slip off my arm, but I caught it. “But what?” I demanded.

“ — in money matters the Devil is safer, because Heaven didn’t endow him with very much sense.” Having finished the proverb, she snatched her hand away and used it to wave at me. “I’ll see you in Dead Warrior, Mosby.”

The next encounter of any significance likewise took place in Tucson. Involved this time was a man I had never seen before.

My schedule was such that I spent two or three nights of every ten in what was still the territorial capital, although the seat of government was in the process of being moved back to its original stamping ground at Prescott. Strolling toward one of the restaurants I patronized, I was witness to a mid-street meeting.

The street in question was muddy, following one of the region’s infrequent rains. There was passageway between a couple of tawny puddles, but only for one pedestrian at a time. As I walked toward the corner which gave access to one end of this causeway, I saw four men. Two of these were carrying on a long-range conversation with a wearer of two guns on the opposite side of the street. The fourth man, also on my side of the thoroughfare, walked around the pair and started picking his way in and out among the soft and watery spots which would have ruined the gloss on his black boots.

His light gray suit was well tailored and the entire figure he cut was so at variance with the loose-hung frontier that I could not help wondering how he would react if he slipped and fell amidst the unlovely sludge through which he was mincing. The same profane thought must have occurred to the hulking two-gun man. Of a sudden he started to make the crossing himself.

There was a point where a pair who showed consideration for one another could edge by with no damage done to the gear of either. The big frontiersman reached it first, but he did not pause there. Deliberately striding forward, he gave the smaller man the choice between taking to the muck and retreating all the way back to the sidewalk.

Half sympathetic toward the dandy and half amused at a type of humor so characteristic of the West, I stopped to see what would happen. I saw. The fellow in gray kept on walking, as though conscious of no difficulties, until he was within
two strides of the other. Then, after first lunging forward with his left leg, he swung the right one. In response to the vicious kick which caught him under the kneecap, the big chap gasped and flexed his injured limb. While thus off balance, he received a shove. An instant later he and his two guns all had their butts in a deep puddle.

He voiced retaliatory threats in the terms expected of a robust savage, and I for one did not question his will to carry them out. What happened, though, was that he took a few pursuing steps and halted.

For the slender man in gray had turned to stand looking back over the muddy thoroughfare. Of the raging, bedraggled monster in the middle of it he took not the slightest heed. Instead he put a short, slim cigar in his mouth and lighted a match with a deft snap of his left thumb.

There was something so sinister about the dandy’s complete assurance that it got home to me, who had nothing to do with the case. The burly frontiersman reacted by reaching for one of his guns. It would have fired, for its holster had protected it from mud during its brief immersion, and it takes more than moisture to keep a revolver from operating. He did not draw it because his antagonist, still holding the lighted match, now gazed thoughtfully in his direction. At that juncture the big fellow remembered his injured knee. Growling to himself, he spun around and hobbled toward his two waiting cronies.

There was nothing to prove that the man with the cigar was himself armed. He on his part completed the incident by lighting his smoke, flicking the match into the mud from which he had emerged in unsullied triumph, and turning to leave.

Crossing the street in his wake, I saw that he was stopped by a fellow who emerged from the apothecary shop on the
corner. “I had a good view from the window,” he commented. “That was cute, Colonel. Real cute.”

The newcomer was one of the leading professional gamblers of Tucson, a lanky magician by the name of Bill Overton. Identifying me as a man who sometimes contributed to his support, he extended his hand.

“Howdy, Mr. Carruthers. It’s a nice evening for faro, if you’re going to be in town. If not, just leave your wallet with the bartender, and I’ll pick it up when I go on trick.”

Having clapped me on the shoulder, he strolled in the direction whence I had come. About to proceed toward my dinner, I found myself confronted by the man the gambler had first addressed.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said with a slight but deferential inclination of his head, “but I heard Overton address you as Carruthers. Might you be Mr. Mosby Carruthers?”

The speech was Southern, although the accent had been flattened under the influence of the West. The face was that of a brooding ascetic, incongruously wearing a dashing combination of goatee and waxed mustache. I was sure I had never met the man before, but there was something familiar about him.

“Yes, sir; I was so christened,” I replied, thinking how few people now used my given name.

“Then, sir, I am beholden to you for certain services rendered to a charming mutual acquaintance of ours in or about a place called Midas Touch.”

My pulse acknowledged this reference to Dolly Tandy, however circuitous. “Let us say,” I told him, unconsciously adopting something of his formality, “that although I did serve her to the best of my ability, it was in the capacity of a private in the line. It was her wit that took command.”

“She is not one to be daunted by emergencies.” He smiled
for the first time in answer to my disclaimer, and his eyelids, which had been languidly half closed, rose to give me a shock. If the rest of his face was disciplined and still, the eyes were glaringly intense. “Permit me to present myself,” he went on. “The name is Colonel Clarence Edwin Peters.”

I tried not to gawk. Inevitably I had formed a mental image of a man mentioned so frequently in Western camp talk. The real Droop-eye Peters — so nicknamed because his faculty of seeing without letting his eyes be seen made him doubly formidable as a gambler — resembled the one of my imagination about as closely as I do the Apollo Belvedere.

“I have heard of you, naturally,” was the best I could manage.

“I am not unknown.” He dismissed the obvious with a deprecatory flourish of his cigar. “I made an excursion to Midas Touch myself, but our bird had flown, broken wing and all.”