Glorious (12 page)

“Mayor Rogers is a fine man who should be more cognizant of his own best interests.” Duke carefully stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray on the table beside his chair. “Well, Mr. McLendon, I'm glad we had this talk. Enjoy your brief stay in Glorious, and let us know at the Culloden if we can be of service.” He tipped his hat, and moments later McLendon saw him on horseback, trotting out of town in the direction of Culloden Ranch.

•   •   •

T
HE
O
WAYSIS WAS
even more crowded than the night before. Bob Pugh waved for McLendon to join him standing at the bar because all of the tables were taken.

“I just had a talk with a fellow named Lemmy Duke,” McLendon said. “It was less a conversation than an interrogation.”

“Lemmy's a curious man,” Pugh said. “I've known him for some time, and he's always full of questions. Turn your attention to more important things. I believe you'll sample the stronger libations tonight. You earned the upgrade with so much hard work this afternoon on my behalf. George, my friend McLendon and I require servings of your finest.” Crazy George poured whiskey into two shot glasses. Pugh handed one to McLendon, who recoiled at the sharp odor.

“It stinks like turpentine,” he complained.

“You're not imbibing the smell,” Pugh said. “Drink your whiskey.”

McLendon gingerly touched the rim of the shot glass to his lips.

“No, don't delicate-sip it like a woman,” Pugh said. “Toss it down.” He raised his own glass and guzzled the contents. “
Aaah.
Do it like that. Get yourself the full effect.”

“I'm not sure I want the full effect,” McLendon said dubiously, but he noticed that Crazy George and Mary Somebody and many of the others clustered around the bar were watching, so he gulped down the shot of red-eye with the immediate resulting sensation of having swallowed liquid fire. He felt it sear his throat and then burn its way down into his entrails. He coughed convulsively while everyone laughed.

“It takes some getting used to,” Pugh assured him, slapping McLendon on the back and signaling Crazy George for another round. “After the first five or six your gullet gets numbed up.”

“I believe that five or six would kill me,” McLendon gasped.

“Oh, hardly. Now settle down and let's drink.”

McLendon found himself enjoying a convivial evening. Some of the prospectors talked of adventures in the Pinal Mountains and other parts of the territories, fine colorful tales of grizzly bears and flash floods and Indians and, always, the huge strikes of gold or silver that they just missed making—it was always the other fellow working nearby who had the luck. Each of them was positive that this time he'd be the fortunate one.

“I like these people,” McLendon confided to Pugh.

“Most of them are good 'uns, though of course any crowd includes its share of miscreants,” Pugh said.

Prospectors made up most of the bar crowd. Mayor Rogers sat at a table with Major Mulkins—“It's rare the Major emerges from his
hotel,” Pugh told McLendon. “He always fears he'll miss greeting a potential guest”—and three of the Culloden Ranch vaqueros drank at another table. They were the only patrons wearing holstered guns.

“Why are they armed and no one else apparently is?” McLendon asked Pugh.

“I expect that they finished their assigned patrols and wanted drinks before returning to the ranch,” Pugh said. “The rest of us have no use for guns in town, though we certainly take them when we venture beyond it. Charlie Rogers and the sheriff are talking about a no-guns policy where all weapons have to be checked when anyone rides in. That would be sensible policy and I hope that it's imposed. Liquor and guns are a particularly bad combination.”

Within minutes Pugh's words proved prophetic. A prospector who'd had too much stumbled into the vaqueros' tables, spilling their drinks in their laps. One of the vaqueros jumped up and shoved the prospector, who lurched into another table. The men seated there stood and shouted at the vaquero, whose two companions rose and shouted back. Behind the bar, Crazy George peered nearsightedly in the direction of the disturbance and inched his hand down to the metal pipe in his boot. Bob Pugh leaned forward and murmured, “George, guns are to hand and that pipe won't suffice. Stay still and I'll run for the sheriff.”

As Pugh hurried from the bar, a half-dozen prospectors and the three vaqueros continued to scream at each other. Someone shouted, “Take it outside!” and they did, spilling out into the inky night. Most of the Owaysis crowd followed. McLendon found himself swept up in the rush. Once outside, he sensed as much as saw that the prospectors and vaqueros were in the center of a spectator ring. As McLendon's eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw that one of the prospectors waved a wide-bladed knife. A vaquero taunted him, making clucking
noises and keeping his hand on the butt of his pistol. The other two Mexicans talked to their friend, apparently urging him to forget the gun. He pulled away, snarling at them in Spanish, and one of the vaqueros pushed through the crowd and ran to where three horses were tethered between the saloon and the Elite Hotel. He mounted and raced off.

“Yellowbelly Mexican's running from the fight,” an onlooker told McLendon.

The prospector with the knife and the vaquero with his hand on his gun circled each other, barking threats. There was sudden rustling off to the right, and Sheriff Joe Saint slipped through the crowd. Saint stepped between the two men, holding up his hands and saying, “Stand down, stand down.” He seemed to McLendon like a slightly built child attempting to break up a brawl between much older, tougher boys. “We'll go and talk,” Saint said. “Whatever's happened, there's no need for this.” There was a slight but discernible tremor in the sheriff's voice. He was, McLendon realized, afraid.

The angry vaquero knew it too. “Go back to your jail, Sheriff. This man called me a greaser. I will not be insulted.”

“You
are
a fucking greaser,” the prospector sneered, waving his knife. “Go ahead, pull that gun. I'll slice your nuts before you can shoot.”

“We protect your white asses and you call us greasers. Show me how you can fight.”

“Don't make me arrest you both,” Saint said, pleading rather than warning. “Do the smart thing, walk away.”

McLendon sensed that the prospector was ready to comply. He'd done plenty of posturing and the sheriff's presence gave him a plausible excuse not to fight. Without risking his life needlessly, he could return to the Owaysis and his friends would praise his courage. But
the vaquero was different: he considered himself unforgivably insulted and intended to shoot. He smiled and said, “Remove yourself, Sheriff,” and Saint took a reflexive step back. It was about to begin.

McLendon couldn't have explained why he did it. The vaquero was going to kill the prospector, but it was none of his business. He hated being stuck in Glorious and was counting the hours until he escaped on the Florence stage. But Bob Pugh had been cordial to him, and so had Major Mulkins, and Crazy George and Mary Somebody and Mayor Rogers were all right too. If the vaquero shot the prospector, it would cause trouble for his new acquaintances. So McLendon shouldered his way inside the human circle and stepped beside the Mexican.

“You want some too?” the vaquero asked, and McLendon shook his head.

“I want to ask about that gun of yours,” he said. “Double-action, is it?”

“What? Are you
loco
?”

“No,” McLendon said, keeping his voice relaxed and friendly. “It's just that somebody was telling me about single-action versus double-action and I didn't really understand. Now, yours is double-action, right?” Bewildered, the vaquero nodded. McLendon kept looking at him, trying to hold the Mexican's full attention. From the corner of his eye he saw Sheriff Saint talking quietly to the prospector, moving him discreetly away. “I've got a Navy Colt, but before I shoot I have to cock it. But you don't have to do that with yours? Can I look at it?”

“Get away from me,
hombre
,” the vaquero said, and pushed McLendon aside, but by then Saint had the prospector out of sight and the crowd began to drift back inside the Owaysis. McLendon stepped back in front of the Mexican and smiled.

“Let me buy you a drink,” he suggested. “I want to learn about double-action.”

“What the fuck?” the vaquero growled. “Get away, I'm going to kill that man.”

“I don't think so,” McLendon said. “The sheriff's taken him off and everyone's going back to the bar. It's all over. You might as well have a drink.”

He led the thwarted shooter and the second vaquero back into the saloon, and soon they were seated at a table. Encouraged by McLendon, after only a few minutes of conversation both men displayed their pistols and earnestly explained to him why the guns' mechanisms didn't require cocking before firing. Bob Pugh and Mayor Rogers watched from beside the bar, shaking their heads in wonder. Juan Luis, the vaquero who almost fought the prospector, had just suggested he give McLendon some shooting lessons when another Mexican arrived. His lithe body had no angles at all, and he appeared to glide rather than walk. There was an air of authority about him. Everyone else in the Owaysis stopped talking and watched as he approached the table where the vaqueros and McLendon sat. The vaqueros jumped to their feet and stood at near-military attention as he sharply questioned them in Spanish. They stuttered replies in the same language. The man jerked his head toward the door and the vaqueros scrambled out. A moment later hoofbeats pounded toward the west. He'd clearly ordered them back to Culloden Ranch.

The man said to the mayor, “Señor Rogers, my
jefe
and I sincerely apologize for tonight's disturbance. Our men have instructions never to engage in unpleasantness in town, no matter what the provocation.” Turning to McLendon, he said, “I am Angel Misterio, foreman for Señor MacPherson. What is your name?”

“Cash McLendon.”

“Then allow me to express my thanks, Señor McLendon. I am informed that you prevented matters from reaching the point of actual
violence, and you did this by asking Juan Luis about his
pistola
. Why did you attempt that subject?”

McLendon studied Misterio. The man was dressed in a dark shirt and trousers, with a gun belt on his hips and a long knife in a sheath. A thin scar ran from his right eyebrow across his cheekbone to his earlobe, and he exuded a sense of absolute self-assurance. Like Killer Boots in St. Louis, Misterio would murder without hesitation, but with quick strikes rather than bludgeoning.

“All men like to talk about what they love, and your vaqueros love their guns,” McLendon said. “It seemed an obvious strategy.”

“Obvious to you,
amigo
.” Misterio looked around the saloon. “Gentlemen, my employer wishes to buy everyone here a drink. Again, we regret the unpleasantness and assure you that it will not be repeated.” He dropped a fistful of coins on the bar and added to Crazy George, “Señor MacPherson especially wants to pay for all Señor McLendon's drinks for the rest of the evening.” He bowed gracefully to McLendon, then to Mayor Rogers, and left the saloon.

Everyone surged toward the bar, hollering for Crazy George to fill their glasses. Bob Pugh stopped them with outstretched arms and said, “Boys, let the hero go first.” Then he said to McLendon, “I advise drinking long and a lot. The whiskey always tastes better when a rich man's buying.”

M
cLendon dragged himself out of bed late on Thursday morning. His last vague memory of the previous night was Bob Pugh helping him back to the Elite Hotel. Now he was paying for his night of overindulgence with a colossal hangover. He dressed, fumbling with various buttons, tried to shave, gave up, and stumbled into the hotel lobby, where Major Mulkins was, as usual, rubbing a fresh shine onto his prized windows.

“Do you want breakfast, Mr. McLendon?” Mulkins asked. “It being somewhat past eleven o'clock, there's no more oatmeal, but I could fry you up some bacon.”

The thought of greasy bacon made McLendon's stomach lurch. “I believe I'll pass on breakfast.”

Mulkins laughed. “That's not surprising, given your state last night. Bob and I had a time getting you to bed.”

“I don't precisely recall,” McLendon said. “I apologize for any inconvenience.”

“Guests at this hotel never inconvenience me,” Mulkins said. 
“Besides, it was a special pleasure to be of some assistance to you after your actions in that scuffle. You demonstrated impressive coolness.”

“You saw what happened?”

“I was inside at the time, but was soon told all about it. The word spread. You have the gratitude of everyone here in Glorious.”

McLendon shook his aching head, hoping to clear it. He stepped outside and felt himself engulfed in heat. It was worse than any he'd experienced. For a moment he wondered why, and then realized that the high winds of previous days in Glorious had died down almost completely. Without the wind, searing as it was, the heat seemed to wrap around his body like a suffocating blanket. Oily, whiskey-scented sweat burst from all his pores. He thought he might faint. Then he heard someone call his name. Charlie Rogers, standing in front of the farrier's shop, beckoned McLendon over.

“I thank you again for last night,” said the mayor. “We want a reputation as a safe town, a civilized place. The sort of incident you prevented is exactly what we want to avoid.”

“Glad to help,” McLendon muttered, blinking hard against the sun's glare, and from the sweat dripping down his forehead into his eyes.

Mayor Rogers grinned. “Perhaps you aren't real pert this morning? When I left the Owaysis near midnight you were still well into the merriment. Why don't you step inside my house over here? Rose will get us up some coffee. You may feel better with some inside you.”

“I wouldn't want to impose,” McLendon said. “Mrs. Rogers may be offended by my obvious condition.”

“Not at all. My Rosie understands that we all sometimes take a glass too many.”

The adobe dwelling was small and blessedly dark inside. Rose
Rogers had the oilcloth curtains drawn against the glare. She put a coffeepot on to boil over a fire in a small woodstove and bustled about, fetching tin plates and pewter cups and placing them on a small handmade table. McLendon and Mayor Rogers sat on chairs. Rose, after she'd poured the coffee and put slices of bread and a jar of jelly within easy reach, perched on a wooden chest sturdy enough to support her.

“Will you take some sweetener in your coffee, Mr. McLendon?” she asked. “We have a pitcher of lovely sorghum.”

McLendon looked doubtfully at the thick concoction on offer. “Thank you. I believe I'll take mine black.”

“Just as you please,” said Rose. She poured almost half of the small pitcher's gluey contents into her own cup. Her husband added a little to his coffee.

“I hope you didn't take last night as typical here in Glorious,” Rogers said. “This is a very peaceable place. I especially hope that when you return to Florence next week you won't think the dispute worth mentioning.”

Out of the sunlight, off his feet, and drinking coffee, McLendon did feel a little better. “I'll take your word that the incident is isolated, but I'm still troubled by one aspect. Surely the main responsibility of your town sheriff is to handle such events. Based on one brief conversation with Sheriff Saint, I found him to be intelligent, but clearly he's not skilled at the martial requirements of the job. Why make him the town sheriff? Surely there's someone . . .
harder
.”

Rogers went to the woodstove and refilled his cup. “The role of a sheriff in a mining town, which we hope soon to be, is a prominent one. Such towns flourish or fail based more on reputation than anything else. The men who come, who work hard and risk so much with the Apaches, want to have fun at night. By fun I mostly mean
drinking. And when they do, some quarreling is bound to result, and now and then it turns ugly. Usually if a prospector gets too much in his cups and acts mean, several of us get him subdued and drag him to the jail, where he sleeps it off in a cell. I admit that Sheriff Saint's not much of a hand in those situations, though, by God, the man tries. Joe's a good sort. He used to be a schoolteacher back east, he came out this way for whatever reason—of course, we don't ask—and happened to stop over soon after we set up the town. He liked us and we liked him, so we suggested he stay and be our sheriff.”

“Why him?”

“Lots of towns hire badge-flashing mercenaries, testy sorts who come in and get paid to scare people. Hickok in Kansas, the ones like him. As a result, those places get notorious for daily shootouts in the streets. You can maybe get away with that if you're a buffalo or a cattle town, where little civilized is required, but here we're thinking higher-class, hoping to attract respectable businessmen who'll invest and stay. They won't want to settle in Glorious, let alone bring their families, if they think there're bullets flying all over. So we do our best to keep things calm and quiet, handling the flare-ups as best we can. Once the town's booming, then taxes are imposed to pay for the nice streets and real plank sidewalks and so forth. The sheriff levies and collects those. Joe's honest and smart. He'll keep good books and he's got the social graces to impress the businessmen. That's the kind of sheriff we want.”

“You planned all this out?”

Rogers spread jelly on a slice of bread. “Some of it. Bob Pugh and the Major and I have bummed around considerably, we've seen lots of places and gotten the same impressions. But there's always luck involved too. This beautiful spot, well, we had no idea it was here until we stumbled on it. Even then it wouldn't have worked, what with the
Apaches all around, if it weren't for Mr. MacPherson. He was here before we were—him and a few others who'd dared to set up ranches. With Queen Creek providing sufficient water, there's good grazing land on the flat. The beef shortage in this territory's terrible.”

McLendon took a second cup of coffee. The throbbing in his head was slightly less intense. “I hear about MacPherson all the time. Where are the other ranchers?”

“Oh, he bought them out. Now he's got a considerable spread. We don't see much of him in town—he keeps to himself—but he's generous enough to hire vaqueros to keep the Apaches at bay. Without them, well, the Indians might be too much.”

“The depot manager in Florence told me the Apaches got a prospector near here a couple of weeks ago.”

“That was Tom Gaumer,” Rogers said. “His demise is no reflection on Mr. MacPherson's men. Good as they are, they've got a lot of ground to patrol and can't be everywhere.”

“If last night is any indication, they're a source of concern as well as protection.”

“We have to accept that. Angel Misterio mostly keeps them under control. I admit that last night there was almost a serious fracas, and it would have been terrible. We've been here now well over a year, prospectors drifting in and out, many drinking hard at night, and there's not been a single shooting in town. We've lost two men to snakebite and Gaumer to the Apaches, but none to gunplay. It's a record we're anxious to preserve.”

McLendon drained the last of his coffee. He set down the cup and said, “Well, I hope you do. Thank you for your hospitality, Mrs. Rogers.”

“Come anytime,” Rose replied, and reached for the jelly jar.

The heat outside was still oppressive, and glare from the sun
almost directly overhead in a cloudless sky made it worse. McLendon tilted his hat for maximum eye shade. As he tugged at the brim, he heard footsteps, and then Gabrielle saying in a mock-playful voice he recalled too well, “So here is the hero. Why, you look unwell.”

“Are you enjoying my suffering?”

“Not at all. After facing down a gun-wielding vaquero, who could blame you for indulging at the Owaysis afterward?”

McLendon tried to gauge whether she meant to be friendly or taunting. “I didn't face him down. I talked to him.”

“Yes, you've always had talent for talk. Will you talk to me for a moment? I'm on my way to the Chinese camp by the river. Perhaps you could come along.”

McLendon remembered the prospector ambushed by the Apaches. “Should I first fetch my gun? It's back in my room at the hotel.”

“There's no need,” Gabrielle said. “The camp is close, perhaps a quarter mile over that small rise. We'll be fine.”

They walked past the Owaysis and toward the livery, moving as briskly as the heat allowed. McLendon wondered if Gabrielle might be warming toward him. He considered trying to take her arm, but noticed that an empty wicker basket hung from her elbow between them. Bob Pugh was in front of the livery, untangling several halters. He waved and called out, “Hot day for a stroll.” Gabrielle waved back. The boxy jail was opposite the livery. Sheriff Saint was outside, too, leaning against a wall and, McLendon thought, glaring in his direction. “Hello, Sheriff,” he said. In contrast to Pugh's effusive greeting, Saint responded with a curt nod.

“I suppose he's sensitive about last night,” McLendon said to Gabrielle.

She shot a hard look of her own in Saint's direction. “Yes, I suppose.” Then she smiled—to McLendon, it seemed a little forced—and
called, “Sheriff, I'm sure I'll see you later.” Saint nodded again and went inside.

At the top of the rise, McLendon looked ahead and saw Queen Creek winding in a sharp curve toward the mountains. The sheer cliff towered nearby.

“Some call that cliff Apache Leap,” Gabrielle said. “As the story is told, Army cavalry trapped a band of Apaches up there on the precipice, and the Indians chose to jump to their deaths rather than be taken captive. It's a fable, of course. I doubt that the entire United States Army could corner a single Apache. They're too skilled at eluding pursuers. Apache Leap is a foolish myth, but one that people believe because it suggests that the Indians can be beaten. Why are you smiling?”

“We're having a conversation like we used to.”

Gabrielle drew slightly away. “Don't misinterpret. I haven't in any way changed my mind about your selfish offer. But there is a matter to discuss, something of importance to me if not to you. Let me do a bit of business here and then we'll get to it. Isn't this camp an interesting place?”

McLendon agreed that it was. A half-dozen huts were grouped a short distance from the river. In contrast to the adobe buildings of Glorious, these were constructed of narrow logs chinked with clay. Their window openings were protected with swinging shutters rather than oilcloth, and several had small covered porches. Plants growing in small pots lined each porch, and beyond them, closer to the water, were gardens being tended by Chinese using hoes. In the slender shade of some small cottonwoods growing near the bank of Queen Creek, women sat cleaning carrots and cabbages, rinsing each vegetable in the creek water before piling them on a blanket. One of them
looked up and called, “Gabrielle!” It was the same young woman McLendon had met in the laundry.

“Have you been formally introduced?” Gabrielle asked. “If not, Sydney Chau, this is Cash McLendon, briefly visiting from St. Louis and soon to be on his way to California.”

The young Chinese gave McLendon's hand a firm shake. “Were your clothes cleaned properly? Mother prides herself on good service.”

“They were very clean, though I've already sweated through some again. I'll bring them back to your mother tomorrow.” McLendon struggled to think of something else to say. His hangover hadn't completely dissipated. “May I ask about your name?”

“Sydney, with a
y
. Mother wanted me to have an American name and chose one without regard to spelling or appropriate gender.”

“Sydney's parents came to this country from China and eventually worked on the railroad,” Gabrielle explained. “She was born near Sacramento, and she's my closest friend here in Glorious.”

“How did your family fetch up in Arizona Territory?” McLendon asked Sydney.

“When the rails from the West and East joined in Utah two years ago, the Chinese lost their jobs building them,” Sydney said. “We went off in all directions. I think those of us here in camp are about the first in this territory, but as towns spring up, more will be coming. We do the work that white people won't, like laundry, and we grow the vegetables they want but are too busy to plant and tend themselves. For that, most people in Glorious tolerate Chinese, so long as we don't otherwise impose ourselves.”

“Much the same as Italians in St. Louis,” Gabrielle said, and McLendon flinched. “Anyway, Sydney is an especially valuable member
of the community. She serves as our unofficial physician, tending to various injuries. Many of the prospectors call her Doc Chau.”

Sydney laughed when McLendon asked where she'd studied medicine. “Not in any American school. My mother taught me about herbs and poultices; railroad doctors refused to treat Chinese workers, so we had to learn how to heal ourselves. And a lot of it is just common sense. Most prospectors can't remember to wash dirt from a cut or open sore.” She turned to Gabrielle and asked, “Are you here for vegetables? We picked some fine cabbages today.”