West Of Dodge (Ss) (1996) (16 page)

"He was a good old man," Bob said. "I liked him."

Long after Bob was asleep, Kirby lay awake, remembering. This place had been left to her by her great-uncle Tom. It had been written into his will before his grandchildren had him declared incompetent and took over the handling of his affairs.

They had taken his house in town, the orchard he planted with his own hands, the ranch, and the mine. It was the silver they really wanted, and Blake, his eldest grandson, believed it came from the long-unworked Kirby Silver Mine on the edge of town.

There was never any argument about the adobe. Nobody wanted a house in such a lonely place. Yet when she came for her first visit she found they had been there, too, spading up the yard and blasting rock in the hill, feverishly searching for the silver lode. For the source of the fabulous planchas de plata he had sold to the bank in Topa.

Blake Bidwell had been coldly furious after the funeral. 'The old fool! He should have been declared incompetent years ago!"

"He was always soft in the head," Archie Moulton said sourly, "but I never dreamed he'd die without telling us."

"And not even to tell Kirby!" Esther was aghast. Esther was always aghast. "And she did so much for him!"

Kirby Ann had sat very still, her coffee growing cold. Not a thought for the poor old man who had died in that narrow windowless room that smelled of disinfectant, died still dreaming of the hills he loved so well.

He had given them all so much. Blake his first car. Archie and Esther a restaurant business. Jake a start in the bank.

And that was to say nothing of the other, intangible things he had tried to give them. His love of wild things, of trees, flowers, of the lonely desert and the enchanted hills. Of them all, she alone shared his love for these. He had, because of this, wanted her to have the adobe.

He never tired talking of the desert. Only at the end had his thoughts turned more and more to mining. Again and again he told her how to stake a claim, build the cairn, post the notices, and register it.

"A staked claim is property, Kirby Ann," he said, winking at her. "Lucky I didn't have one or they'd have taken that, too.

"Now don't you forget what I've told you. Like me, you love the desert. Someday you may find something . . . someday when you need it worse than now."

Had there been a hint in that? There would never be a time when they would need it worse than this very day. The money Bob would get from the government would help only for a while. It would be months and months before he could work. She searched her memory but could find nothing in the old conversations but the nostalgic wanderings of an old man nearing death.

He had loved the desert, and he knew the lines of ancient beaches where seas and lakes had been. He knew where lay the best beds of agate, jasper, or garnet. He had followed the old, mysterious trails of prehistoric Indians marked by forgotten piles of desert-varnished stones. He had known the plants of the desert, the cacti, the flowers, the herbs and grasses.

She remembered the town's excitement when he first brought in the ore, the sheets and balls of almost pure silver. When men failed to track him, and when his own grandchildren failed to probe his secret, they began to believe he had uncovered a rich vein in the long abandoned Kirby Silver Mine . . . and he let them think so. Not long after, the twins, Blake and Jake, working with Esther and Esther's husband, Archie Moulton, began the move to have him declared incompetent.

They took over the mine and they spent thousands on engineers who probed and estimated and explored to no purpose. And the old man would have no more to do with them.

When she had received the deed to the house, there had been a note inside that she was to keep. Remembering it, Kirby Ann got it out of her overnight bag to show to Bob in the morning.

You been good to me, Kirby Ann, patient with a tired old man. Marry Bob and spend your June honeymoon here--never sell it or give it away. Enjoy the flowers, and remember what I taught you about them. They ask only care, and they give so much in beauty, and in riches beyond dream.

Sitting before the kitchen window, they ate their first breakfast in the adobe. " 'Mighty purty sight,' Great-uncle Tom used to say," she told Bob. " 'Come June the purtiest I ever did see.'"

"If we only had the money to fix it up," Bob agreed. "I'll work around, but I'll have to take it slow at first."

Bob lifted his coffee cup, nodding toward the far hill. "Honey, what's the yellow over there across the valley?"

Kirby Ann looked. "If s buckwheat. It blooms in late June. . . .

"Bob," Kirby Ann said, her eyes narrowing, "we were never here in Junel We postponed our wedding, and our honeymoon was in September."

He chuckled. "I know that. I didn't have any money in June, and not much more in September."

She got to her feet. "Bob, get the jeep. We're going over there."

Twenty minutes later they stood in the patch of buckwheat, golden and beautiful in the morning sun. It was all about them, and at their feet, thicker than elsewhere, it cloaked and disguised an old mine working. Bob held in his hand a chunk of ore, seamed with silver.

"When I was only a child he told me," she said. "If s an old prospector's saying: 'Look where the buckwheat grows--it has affinity for silver.' "

*

West of Dry Creek
.

On a late afternoon of a bitterly cold day he returned to the hotel and to his room. There was a narrow bed, a straw mattress, an old bureau, a white bowl and pitcher, and on the floor a small section of rag rug. The only other article of furniture was a drinking glass.

Beaure, short for Beauregard, took off his boots with their run-down heels and stretched out on the bed with a sigh. He was dog-tired and lonely, with nothing to do but wait for the storm to blow itself out. Then he would ride a freight out of town to somewhere and hunt himself a job.

Two days ago he had been laid off by the Seventy-Seven. After a summer of hard work he had but sixty-three dollars coming to him, and nobody was taking on hands in cold weather. It was head south or starve.

Beaure Hatch was twenty-two, an orphan since fourteen, and most of the time during those eight years he had been punching cows. Brute hard work and nothing to show for it but his saddle, bridle, an old Colt, and a .44-40 Winchester. Riding company stock all the time, he did not even own a horse.

The Spencer House was the town's second-best hotel. It occupied a place midway between the Metropole, a place of frontier luxury, and the hay mow of the livery barn, where a man could sleep if he stabled his horse there.

When a man had time to kill in Carson Crossing he did it at the Metropole, but to hang out there a man was expected to buy drinks or gamble, and a few such days would leave Beaure broke and facing a tough winter. He crumpled the pillow under his head and pulled the extra blanket over him. It was cold even in the room.

It was late afternoon when he went to sleep with the wind moaning under the eaves, and when he awakened it was dark. Out-of-door sounds told him it was early evening, and his stomach told him it was suppertime, yet he hesitated to leave the warmth of the bed for the chill of the room.

For several minutes he had been conscious of a low mumble of voices from beyond the thin wall, and then the sound broke into understandable words and he found himself listening.

"It ain't so far to Dry Creek," a man was saying, "otherwise I wouldn't suggest it in weather like this. We'll be in a rig and bundled warm."

"Couldn't we wait until the weather changes?" It was a girl's voice. "I don't understand why we should hurry."

Irritation was obvious in the man's reply. "This hotel ain't no place for a decent girl, and you'll be more comfortable out at the Dry Creek place. Big house out there, mighty well furnished."

Beaure Hatch sat up in bed and began to build a smoke. It was twenty miles to Dry Creek through a howling blizzard . . . and when that man said there was a comfortable house on Dry Creek he was telling a bald-faced lie.

Beaure had punched cows along Dry Creek and in its vicinity all summer long, and in thirty miles there were two buildings. One was the Seventy-Seven line shack where he had bunked with two other hands, and the other was the old Pollock place.

The Pollock ranch had been deserted for six or seven years, the windows boarded up. A man could see inside, all right, and it was still furnished, left the way it had been when old man Pollock went east to die. Everything was covered with dust, and it would be icy cold inside that big old place.

The well was working--he had stopped to water his horse not three days ago--but there was no fuel around, and no neighbors within fifteen miles.

It was no place to take a girl in midwinter after telling her what he just had . . . unless, and the thought jolted him, she was not expected to return.

"But why should we go now?" she was protesting, "and why don't you want to talk to anyone? When I sell the place people will certainly know it."

"I explained all that!" The man's voice was rough with anger. "There's folks want that range, and it's best to get it settled before they can start a court action to prevent it. ff you get tied up in a lawsuit it may be years before the estate is settled. And you say you need the money."

"I should think so. It is all I have, and no relatives."

'Then get ready. I'll be back in half an hour."

The door closed and after a long silence he could hear the girl moving around, probably getting dressed for the drive.

Beaure finished his cigarette and rubbed it out. It was not his business, but anybody driving to the old Pollock place on a night like this was a fool. It was nigh to zero now, with the wind blowing and snow in the air. A man with a good team and a cutter could make it all right . . . but for what reason?

Beaure got to his feet and combed his hair. He was a lean, broad-shouldered young man with a rider's narrow body. He pulled on his shabby boots and shrugged into his sheepskin. Picking up his hat, he also made up his mind.

He hesitated at her door, then knocked. There was a sudden silence. "Is that you, Cousin Hugh?"

"No, ma'am, this here is Beauregard Hatch, ma'am, an' I'd like a word with you."

The door opened and revealed a slender young girl with large gray eyes in a heart-shaped face. Her dark auburn hair was lovely in the reflected lamplight.

"Ma'am, I'm in the next room to you, and I couldn't help hearing talk about the old Pollock place. Ma'am, don't you go out there, especially in weather like this. There ain't been nobody on the ranch in years, and she's dusty as all get-out. Nor is there any fuel got up. Why, ma'am, you couldn't heat that ol' house up in a week."

She smiled as she might smile at a child. "You must be mistaken. Cousin Hugh says it is just as it was left, and of course, there is the housekeeper and the hands. Thank you very much, but we will have everything we need."

"Ma'am," he persisted, "that surely ain't true. Why, I stopped by there only a few days ago, and peeked in through the boarded-up windows. There's dust over everything, and pack rats have been in there. It ain't none of my business, ma'am, but was I you, I'd sure enough ask around a mite, or wait until the weather breaks. Don't you go out there."

Her smile vanished and she seemed to be waiting impatiently for him to finish what he was saying. "I am sure you mean well, Mr. Hatch, but you must be mistaken. If that is all, I have things to do."

She closed the door in his face and he stood there, feeling like a fool.

Gloomily, he walked down the hall, then down the steps into the lobby. The fire on the hearth did nothing to take the chill from the room. What the Spencer needed was one of those potbellied stoves like at the Metropole, one with fancy nickel all over it. Sure made a place look up-- and warmer, too.

It was bitter cold in the street and the snow crunched under his boots. Frost nipped at his cheeks and he ducked his face behind the sheepskin collar. When he glimpsed Abram Tebbets's sign, he knew what he was going to do.

Abram was tilted back in his swivel chair reading Thu-cydides. He glanced at Beauregard over his steel-rimmed spectacles, and lowered his feet to the floor. "Don't tell me, young man, that you've run afoul of the law?"

"No, sir." Beaure turned his hat in his hand. "I reck-, oned I might get some information from you. I been savin' a mite and figured I might buy myself a place, sometime."

"Laudable." Abram Tebbets picked a pipe from a dusty tray and began to stoke it carefully with a threatening mixture. "Ambition is a good thing in a young man."

"Figured you might know something about the old Pollock place."

Abram Tebbets continued to load his pipe without replying. Twice he glanced at Beaure over his glasses, and when he leaned back in his chair there was a subtle difference in his manner. Beaure, who could read sign like an Apache, noticed it. He had known Tebbets for more than a year, and it had been the lawyer who started him reading.

"Settin' your sights mighty high, Beaure. That Pollock place could be sold right off, just anytime, for twenty thou- sand dollars. The Seventy-Seven would like to own it, and so would a lot of others."