the Empty Land (1969) (5 page)

"However," he added before Felton could speak, I wouldn't worry too much about them. When they try to collect their shakedown money they'll run into trouble. They may know some western towns, but they don't know Nathan Bly, Buckwalter, or Newton Clyde."

"What do you mean by that?"

Coburn smiled. "You watch what happens. Those Sutton boys are mean, rotten clear through, and dangerous ... just the kind that Nathan Bly eats for breakfast."

Dick Felton rode back to Confusion in the cool of an evening that soon changed to night, with the stars out. He did not ride up the main trail into the town, but chose a back trail that brought him over the crest onto his own claims. Dan Cohan challenged him as he came up the slope.

"It's me Dan. Everything all right?"

"There's been hell to pay down in town. The Suttons killed Lopez ... you know, the one who started that saloon at the end of the street Lopez came out into the street after Sutton, and the two boys were waiting with their rifles. He never had a chance."

"And then what?"

"They figured they had the town buffaloed. Joe and Sam Sutton went into Bly's place to collect. Bly laughed at them and they went for their guns. Both of them are dead."

'What about Hick Sutton?'

"Peggoty Gorman and Kid Curtis got the drop on him. They took his guns away and then Big Thompson gave him a beating. The worst thing I ever saw. Finally they pinned his star to the seat of his pants and ran him out of town, whipping him with their ropes and quirts.* Dick Felton sat down abruptly. He had been wrong, and the others had been right He had been too stubborn to admit even to himself that things could go so badly. He had grown up in an ordered community where most of the citizens had respect for law and order. There were stories about the old days, of course, when things had been otherwise, but nothing like this. Here the forces of violence were completely in command.

He had thought of this as his town. He bad led the others here, following the old trapper's story, and together they had discovered gold, but from that time on nothing had gone as it should. Moreover, their two victories would only give the outlaw elements greater confidence.

He was perfectly prepared to defend his claim, as were Zeller and Cohan. The three men working for them were armed and prepared to fight; but to defend the claim was one thing, to defend the town was another.

Newton Clyde came up the hill. Wells Fargo had as yet no office in the town, so he had nothing to defend. Buckwalter, Gage, and the others were afraid to leave their businesses for fear of what might happen. There was no unity there were only scattered islands of defense.

"Coburn's our man," Clyde said positively. "I know of nobody else I'd trust Gage and Buckwalter think the same."

"Why him? Why only Coburn "Felton, with all due respect, you wouldn't last an hour down on that street Neither would
l.

It takes a special kind of man to go down there, with a special kind of mind and a very special kind of conditioning. Above all, he's got to know what he's up against "These mining towns aren't like the Kansas cow towns. The men they are up against here aren't like the Texans, who in most cases want to meet you face to face. Some of these men are that way, but most of them are back-shooters, dry-gulchers, murderers. They're thoroughly vicious. They aren't just rough men driving cattle across the plains to sell; these men come here to kill, to murder.

"There's good men down in that town, and there are some of the best miners in the world. They are honest men, but each one of them is alone. Right now rd guess there are two to three thousand men in this camp, and at least half of them are the worst lot in the world. I saw three down there who used to run with the Sydney Ducks on the Barbary Coast; they were convicts sent out to Australia who escaped and came to this country. There's two more who I know did time in Yuma prison, and there are Wanted posters out on a dozen more." "Coburn is on his way to California," Felton said. "I don't think he'd take the job."

"You've talked to him?"

"Uh-huh today over at Laurie Shannon's. I imagine he's still there."

"We'd better get him, then. There's nobody else who can handle that bunch. Look, staying up here on the hill you can only hear it I live with it `There was a knifing last night, and later two men were cheated at cards, and when they complained they were ordered out at gun point A big winner at the Nugget was knocked on the head and robbed before he got to the end of the street You'll hear about it before night; I heard it a few minutes ago.

"About twenty roughnecks raided the sluice boxes at the Joy Boy. It's back up the wash about half a mile and they've got a good placer operation there. This bunch pushed in, held Peterson and his son under a gun, cleaned up the sluices, and took all they could find in the cabin, even his guns, ammunition, and food. They rode off whooping."

"I don't believe in running a town with a gun," Felton said, "There's got to be another way."

"You think of it, then,' Clyde said, "but make out your last will and testament before you try it. Believe me, Thompson isn't the worst of them down there. There's a dozen that are as bad, and half a dozen that are worse.' "How about this Calvin Bell I've heard of?"

"He's good with a gun maybe as good as Matt, although I have my doubts. But he's cruel, dangerous. His gun is for hire, and he'd work for a bad outfit as quick as for a good one. Matt wouldn't"

"Would Bell sell out?"

"No. He's not that kind. Once he's sold, he stays sold." "Well, how about him?"

"It would take him a week to get here. Another thing he hates Matt Coburn. And anyway, you don't want that kind of man." a week that outfit could destroy all we've built," Cohan said. 'Listen to them."

Shouts and yells came from down the street, punctuated by occasional gunshots. It was odd, Felton thought, how after a while you could distinguish between the shots fired by some casual drunk celebrating and the shots that meant business.

The mind had a peculiar way of discriminating between sounds. He had watched the old trapper when the wind was in the trees making all manner of rustling the squeaking of branches, the stirring among the leaves; and then the old man would pick out of it all the sound of a deer moving, or a man or a bear or whatever. Felton's own mind had developed some of this instinct by the time he had arrived here.

"It's Coburn then," he said. "Get him if you can I've no objections."

After some talk it was decided that Felton would go after him, accompanied by Newton Clyde. "It won't be easy," Felton said. "He sounded positive and he may already have gone on west."

Did he really believe that? Or was the wish father to the thought?

Chapter
5

The town of Confusion basked in the warm sun. There were the unceasing sounds of hammer and saw. Confusion was building. A placer miner down the wash reported values of thirty to thirty-five cents to the pan. Two experienced miners from Virginia City reported a showing of silver on the crest of a ridge a quarter of a mile back up the canyon.

In the saloons there was talk of ore, of great discoveries. Every prospector is by nature an optimist, any hole in the ground is a potential bonanza. Over at Hamilton a man had taken $3,000,000 from a hole seventy feet wide and at no point more than twenty-eight feet deep. Two men had thrown up a rock house for shelter from the cold winds and found its walls contained $75,000 worth of ore. Out in California a report told of a nugget of solid gold weighing over one hundred pounds. Nothing was impossible nor even improbable.

Every stage that came into Confusion brought prospectors, some to search the hills for gold or silver, some to mine it from the pockets of the miners. They came with picks and shovels, or they came with marked cards or guns.

Every few steps there was a saloon, and in every saloon there was a wheel or card tables, or both. There were men who had made every boom camp from Virginia City, Nevada, to Virginia City, Montana. They had worked over the green felt tables from the Mother Lode country of California to Cherry Creek in Colorado. They knew the names of all the town "chiefs," those gunmen who ruled the towns for a while and then went down before faster guns, or luckier ones. "Farmer" Peel, John Bull, Eldorado Johnny, Sam Brown, Tom Lahey, Blue Dick, and Morgan Courtney the names were different from those known to the Kansas trail towns, but the endings of the men were the same.

By the fifteenth day in the life of Confusion, there had been seven killings, nine robberies, and two stage holdups. Nobody bothered to count the number of drunks rolled, or the minor fights with fists, knives, or guns that did not end in death.

The Discovery claim was proving rich. They had found gold, and they were also finding silver, as had happened on the Comstock and in the San Juan country.

"I'll ship your gold," Newton Clyde told them, "if Matt Coburn rides shotgun."

But nobody had ridden over to the Rafter LS to see if Matt was still in the country. Neither Felton nor his partners dared leave the claim, with so much gold on hand. One of them sat over it every minute, shotgun in hand, with another loaded rifle nearby. It was commonly talked around that in the short time the claim had been worked it had produced thirty thousand in gold. If that was truth or only rumor nobody would say.

Down below them in the town, along the street of saloons, gambling tents mingled with a scattering of stores, a blacksmith shop, a gunsmith, and two wide-open dance halls, as well as businesses and dwellings of all sorts.

Wagons and riders still streamed into the town. Holdups and murders along the road into town were frequent or so it was reported. Nobody even rode out to verify most of the stories.

Matt Coburn was scouting the eastern slopes of the Fortification Range. For days he had done little but prowl through the canyons of the Snake, Fortification, and Wilson Creek ranges. They were rugged mountains, pine-clad and beautiful. Two nights he camped out in the lonely cabins, keeping a wary eye for Utes. Finally, he turned his horse back toward the Rafter LS.

Laurie Shannon was watering flowers when he rode into the yard. She straightened, shading her eyes against the sun.

"Well I was wondering what had happened to you." "Scouting," he said. "I like the country."

"Come inside. There's coffee on, and we've some fresh doughnuts.'

He seated himself at the kitchen table with its
red and
-white checked cloth and watched her as she poured coffee and set out a plate of doughnuts. He crossed his legs and hung his hat over his knee, his eyes taking in the china and the polished copper. It was a warm, pleasant room.

"I've known cowhands to ride sixty or seventy miles because they heard somebody was making doughnuts," he said. "We used to call them bear-sign."

They talked aimlessly of grass, cattle, and the mountains, while the shadows crept down the mountainside and filled the hollow. Laurie got up to light the coal-oil lamp. "I've got to clean the chimney," she commented, "and trim that wick."

When she sat down again she said, "They're having trouble in Confusion. It's a rough, tough crowd."

"Pioche was the worst. They buried seventy-five men before there was one that died of natural causes. All these boom towns go through a period of violence, but when the bad element is moved out they settle down. Only some of them never survive the change."

"It's a pity."

"I know that crowd," Coburn mused, "or their type. That's part of the business of running such towns to know those who are really bad from the ones who
are merely
blowing off steam, or the kids itching for a reputation but who right down at the bottom don't want to take a chance on getting killed to earn it." He was silent for a few minutes. "I want no more of that. I want to go to ranching."

"You mean all my arguments haven't been wasted?" He smiled. "What else could a drifter think of? Some drifters do it just for the drifting, others lust wander around looking for a place to light I guess that fits me." "And you've chosen this place?"

He looked at her. "You chose it for me."

There was a little color in her face. "I'd like to have you close by. I worry, sometimes, about Indians."

"I was meaning to mention that. You shouldn't keep so much food in sight. Do you have a cellar?"

"No."

"Get somebody busy. It might be good for Dorset," he suggested, "if he'll stand for it Anyway, dig a cellar and store your food in it Indians will eat all there is in sight they'll stuff themselves. It doesn't do any harm to feed them, but ifs best to have only a little food out in sight, and make them think that's all you have."

They heard the riders coming, and Matt Coburn hitched his chair back into deeper shadow. A moment later there was a tap at the door and Joss Ringgold spoke. "Ma'am? It's some folks from Confusion. They're huntin' Coburn . an' they're friendly."

Another voice said, "It's Dick Felton, Miss Shannon. And Newton Clyde, of Wells Fargo."

She opened the door. "Come in, gentlemen. You know Matt Coburn, I think"

Felton nodded, and Clyde stepped forward, holding out his hand. "How are you, Matt? It's been a long time." When they were seated, Matt looked across the table at Clyde. "What is it, Newt? I know you didn't ride all this way just for fun."