Six Ways from Sunday, page 6
“You’re working for crooks and maybe you’re one, too. They’re in cahoots with the mining clerk, Johnny Brashear, and they scheme up ways to beat people out of their own mines. Mostly, it’s a sealed auction, not even announced to the public, and next thing a person knows, he’s lost his mine and he’s a trespasser. That crook Brashear gets a cut, and your bosses take the rest. I don’t know whey they bother with legal paper. All they need’s a few owlhoots like you and they’d take over.”
“I rightly don’t know either, ma’am.”
“What’re they paying youse to drive away owners, eh?”
“Fancy wages, but I haven’t seen none yet.”
“You never will. They’ll welsh on you.”
The thought had occurred to me, but I wasn’t gonna admit it, not to her anyway. That kid and his revolver still riled me some.
“I got to feed the shift coming up to daylight, so you get out of here. Tell them two, Scruples and the whore, no dice. And tell them, if they start trouble here, it’ll end at their railroad car.”
I nodded.
“You were lucky all you got was some broken ribs and loose teeth,” she added.
An ore car erupted from the black mine mouth, followed by three grimy men. No sooner did they spot me and Critter but they was liftin’ shotguns parked around there somewheres and coming at me like I was a bull’s-eye.
“Scruples sent him,” she said.
They were a grimy lot, but they gathered around me studyin’ my face and seeing how it looked purple and blue and green.
One, a big brute, simply smiled. They all raised their twelve-gauge shotguns until three bores, they was pointing at me, and I about kissed the world good-bye.
“You got the message,” said the big one.
I sure did. Critter, he was muttering and snapping his teeth, but I tugged on the rein to quiet him down.
“The company, it’s got more men coming in, and they ain’t friendly,” I said.
“Neither are we,” one of them replied.
They waved me off, so I turned Critter down the road, feeling my back itch.
I sure would have a few words of Carter Scruples and Amanda, too.
Chapter Eight
They was waitin’ for me when I got back to the Pullman Palace Car, and I got let in before I even had Critter took care of.
“Well?” Scruples asked.
“Oh, they got the message, all right, and she says they’ll take the fight here if you mess with them.”
“She?”
“Woman who runs the office and feeds ’em.”
“But you delivered the warning, right?”
“Yep.”
“You have anything else to tell us?”
“Nope,” I said. I decided not to talk about that little brat that pretty near blowed my head off.
“Then we’re covered. They’ve been warned they’re trespassing. They’ve been given time to pull out.”
He sounded like he wanted to make it all legal.
Amanda, she was sittin’ there looking so pretty I could hardly stand it, but she wasn’t sayin’ much. I was wondering if maybe she’d invite me in for the night, but she was just busy with her knitting needles makin’ a pink sweater. I hardly ever seen a woman knit before, and I couldn’t see how she was making them stitches. I looked at her sort of hopeful, but she just smiled all blond peaches and cream like.
But then she set aside her needles and stared at me. “Did they say whether they’d be leaving?”
“Well, not exactly. She said they’d come after you if you messed with them.”
“That’s all?”
I didn’t know whether to get into the rest. “She said you’re, aw, you know.”
“I don’t know, Mr. Cotton.”
“Crooks.” I felt my ears redden.
“I imagine we are,” she said. I plain stared.
“Confidence man, confidence woman,” Scruples said. “The old shell game. This is the biggest one we’ve tried.”
They had me there. “What’s a confidence?” I asked. Another one of them big words I never learnt up to grade eight.
“Swindlers,” Scruples said.
“I don’t know that one neither.”
He smiled. “You’re the perfect employee,” he said.
I got all puffed up with that. No one in my whole life ever called me perfect before. I decided it was time to get myself armed.
“In that case, how’s about that gun?” I asked.
“Oh, the gun. I’ve several in my office. Some of those gents who braced Cork had spares, you know. Come along, and we’ll put you in business.”
I followed him down that long corridor to one of them rooms, and it proved to be an office, all right. A little oak desk and a black typing machine in there, and gray account books and red law books and stuff. But hanging from a coatrack were three gunbelts. Scruples motioned toward them, so I went for a look. The one Colt Frontier was so beat up I didn’t much like it. Another was an ancient Dragoon, a ton to wear and lift and shoot. The third was a shiny Colt Baby Dragoon, a capand-ball thirty-one-caliber model with an octagonal barrel. It felt fairly tight, and the hammer came down square on the nipple. I didn’t want the thing; I wanted brass cartridges, not powder and caps and balls and wads, a gun that wouldn’t fire every time it rained, and a gun needing a lot more care than I wanted to give it.
“These don’t do me much good,” I said.
Scruples shrugged. It was plain he was putting his chips on Glan, not me, and it didn’t matter what I thought.
But then Amanda showed up in the doorway.
“Try that belt with the smaller Colt,” she said. “I think you’d look very good in it, big boy.”
“Oh, hell,” I said, and I tried it on. It shore wasn’t anything I wanted to wear, but there she was makin’ moon eyes at me, and I just sighed and nodded. The well-oiled belt fit, and the holster hung about right.
“Twelve dollars against your pay,” Scruples said. “But you get some extras.”
He handed me a red can of DuPont powder, a box of caps, a box of .31-caliber balls, and a pasteboard box of patches.
“How ’bout if I just borrow her for a few days until I can get me a real gun?”
“No, Mr. Cotton, this is it.”
“You look just wonderful, sweetheart,” Amanda said.
Oh, hell, what’s the use of fighting anything? I just swallered a little and smiled. At least I had a shooting iron strapped on me.
That’s how it ended. They eased me out the rear door onto the platform, and I hopped down them steel steps to the ground. They’d put that old Palace Car on a bit of track cobbled together from mine rails and mine timbers, which is how they got her leveled up. But it sure was a strange way to live, like they was ready to roll away in a moment.
I put Critter in the pen and hayed him. There was a couple of new nags in there, one of them a looker, with good blood showin’. The other was even uglier than Critter, and looked just as mean, too. Horses say something about their owners, so I looked ’em over real careful. The good-lookin’ chestnut one was brushed, and the mane was roached and he didn’t have a scratch. I thought maybe it was a Morgan, but I don’t know nags that good. The other, it was a big walkin’ wreck, and showed scars on the flanks where the owner’s rowels had dug into flesh. Its mouth was sore-looking, from someone yanking the bit around. It looked mean, and I steered clear, not wantin’ to catch a horse hoof right where I was savin’ up delights for Amanda.
I tossed my saddle on a peg and headed for the bunkhouse, wonderin’ what the company had brung in.
It didn’t take me long to find out. They was two new ones in there, in addition to Glan and the three presidents, as I called them. This new pair was big and little, and I saw at once how it was with them. The big one, he’d taken my bunk under the window, and was sittin’ there just waiting for me.
I liked my bunk under the window, because it gave me some fresh air, which was in mighty short supply around there. But now this big galoot was sitting there grinning at me. I knew the type. He was a street fighter, a brawler, who never learnt a dirty trick he didn’t like. This was an eye-gouger, nut-pounder, ear-biter, toad-stabber, hair-yanker, knee-buster, and toe-stomper. And he showed it, too. His nose had been flattened more times than it could remember, and now it was a big wad of pulp. He had more cuts and scars on him than an army sergeant. He didn’t have one front tooth, up or down. They’d all been knocked out.
“I guess that’s my bunk,” I said, knowing what was coming.
“I guess it was, laddie,” he replied, his voice an odd whistle without those teeth.
“I guess first come, first pick,” I said.
“You can pull me off of it, me boy,” he said, sort of smirky. “I’m game.”
He sat there cracking his thick knuckles. His fingers were about the size of my wrist.
Truth to tell, I wasn’t in no mood to make a contest of it. My ribs were still bound up, and my face still looked like an old T-bone steak.
“Game’s been postponed,” I said. That would let him know a thing or two. This wasn’t over.
“Youse is a thmart laddie.”
“Busted ribs,” I replied. “I’m Cotton.”
“Arnold,” he replied.
“That’s all?”
“Arnold is all thish man wants for a name.”
“That’s better than two of ’em,” I said, wanting to be reasonable. I’d want this brute on my side in a fight.
I looked the other one over, and damned if he wasn’t pretty near a dwarf. He wasn’t no dwarf, but he didn’t get much ahead of four feet. He was plumb delicate, but eyeing me with brown eyes that was neutral. He was decidin’ whether I’d do or not. He’d taken a bunk over near Glan, and the pair of them looked to be the real gunslicks in the outfit. That little feller had him a gunbelt of black leather with two little guns hung from it. They was little short-barreled items, maybe thirty-two caliber. You had to be pretty close to do any damage with a rig like that, but maybe that’s how this little feller liked it.
“We all have pseudonyms around here,” he said.
There was another of them words I’d never heard of. “Soodo what?” I asked.
“Noms de guerre,” he replied.
I sure didn’t know what he was yakkin’ about. “Cotton here,” I said.
“Front or rear,” he asked.
I wasn’t about to admit to nothin’. “Take your pick,” I said.
The little guy smiled. Nice even white teeth. He owned that fine horse out there.
“Call me The Apocalypse,” he said.
“Mind if I just call you Pock?”
“Of course I mind.”
This was getting plumb difficult. “That a nice Morgan horse you got out there?”
“How did you know it is my horse?”
“It sure don’t belong to him,” I said, jerking a thumb at Arnold.
“You’re smart,” The Apocalypse said.
I was damned if I would call him that, but I’d settle it later. It looked like old Scruples had a full house here now. I eyed the rest while I got myself settled in the bunk across the aisle. Not that I wanted that stinkin’ bunk, but I needed to heal up before makin’ an issue out of it. And it’d pay to watch Arnold in action before I settled his hash. They usually had some weakness or other.
It was some crew in there, thugs like them presidents; an all-around tough son of a bitch like Lugar, a brawler like Arnold, a sniper like Glan, and an in-close man like whatever the hell he called himself. And me, just a country boy good with guns, at least if I had any. They was all lookin’ at that old Baby Dragoon cap-and-ball revolver, and maybe smilin’ some. I was small potatoes, far as they was concerned. I didn’t mind. No one was payin’ me no never mind.
It looked to me like Scruples had himself a bunch of trespass enforcers that could deal with most any outfit, ’cept maybe the two big ones, the Big Mother Mine and Fat Tuesday. It sure stank in that bunkhouse, and I hoped to get ’er over with quick.
Long about after we licked up some sowbelly and beans for our supper, Lugar gave us our marchin’ orders. Scruples, he was still goin’ after the Hermit Mine; they must be blowing some good gold ore outta there because it was tops on Scruples’ list. Lugar, he never told us he was the straw boss, but he’s the one come to tell us what we’d be doing in the morning.
“We’re going to drive them trespassers out for good,” he said. “Live or in coffins, don’t matter any.”
The deal was that we’d go there at dawn, shoot any dogs, and move in close enough so Glan could put his marksmanship to work, and then simply shoot anyone in sight until they called it quits.
Scruples was gonna have the Hermit Mine all to himself and Amanda before sundown.
“Any questions?” Lugar asked.
“You gonna give them a chance to pull out?” I asked.
“They had their chance.”
“What if they raise their hands and quit?”
“They had their chance.”
That didn’t sit well with me, but it didn’t bother the rest none.
We’d leave at dawn and the sun would come up blood red.
Chapter Nine
We left for the Hermit Mine around dawn, while dew was still glistening on the grass. We passed quietly through Swamp Creek, still mostly asleep except for a drunk sitting on the boardwalk in front of the Opal Saloon. The clop of our horse hooves echoed hollowly from the rough-sawn board-and-batten buildings lining the sole street. Scarcely anyone noticed the passage of some of the strangest-lookin’ hombres in the territory.
There was Lugar, skinny and tall and sprung like a rat trap, leadin’ the parade. They’d made him the straw boss. He had Garfield, Arthur, and Cleveland behind him, three good-for-nothing thugs with real names I’d never know, all of ’em off of some waterfront somewhere back East. They wasn’t good for much, but now they all had shotguns, which were handy for crowd control. They didn’t know the front of a horse from the tail, and flopped around in them saddles like the Eastern dudes they were.
I was in the middle there, still pretty useless, with that little pocket Colt hangin’ from a borrowed gunbelt. I’d healed up but hadn’t gotten any speed back, so I was mostly along for the ride. Then there was Rudolph Costello Glan, elegant and clean-shaven and cool, the best man with a long gun anywhere. He was carrying a long-barreled Sharps in a sheath, and could hit a bull’s-eye at a thousand feet. His target would be dead before he heard the shot.
Then there was Arnold, the street thug, floppin’ around on that abused nag, looking for something, anything, to pulverize. He was wearin’ a derby and a brown tweed suit. He’d be a good man in a brawl, but this time he was given a special mission: them dogs at the Hermit Mine. And trailing along was that little feller who called himself The Apocalypse, dressed up in black ready-mades from a clothing store. Danged if I knew what that was about, but those were mean little baby guns hangin’ from his waist. He reminded me of one of them small-pecker men always trying to make up for it.
We rode on through town and out past the two big mines, Fat Tuesday and Big Mother, and we could hear them shovin’ ore cars around up there, and then we heard the rattle of a car dumping tailings over the cliff edge. That’s where most of the gold in the district was coming from.
We sure were some bunch, clopping along that dirt road that sunny morning. Me, I almost didn’t feel a part of it. We was supposedly goin’ to evict some trespassers, but half of these fellers was just itching to kill someone, especially someone big and defenseless who wasn’t gonna fight back none. Maybe it wouldn’t happen. Maybe they’d all be gone, or maybe we’d just see to it they loaded up and left.
But I didn’t really believe that. This here morning would see some blood spilled. Them miners was too dumb to git out while they could. Me, I wanted only one thing out of it, my night with Amanda, and then I’d see whether to stick with Transactions or not. The thought of her made me itchy all over again. Tonight should do it. We’d get rid of the trespassers, and I’d be a part of it, and that was my pay, signed and sealed. That nude painting of her come to mind, and I could hardly concentrate. Old Critter, he knew it and snarled at me.
It sure was strange, only one complete name in the bunch. Glan, he didn’t mind using all three of his, and didn’t mind lettin’ the whole world know how he was called. The rest of us, we hardly owned to any name. Lugar, I’d never heard no more of that name. He was just Lugar. And them three thugs, I wondered if they even had names. They just invented one whenever it came in handy. Maybe they growed up in some whorehouse where the brats never got a last name. And Arnold. Another one-namer, like me. I wasn’t gonna tell no one my last name was Pickens and I’d been named Cotton Pickens, which made my teeth ache. And then there was The Apocalypse, another made-up name. If I’d read up the Good Book, I might figure it out, but in my mind he was the little fart with a name like death.
We got into the open country out of town, and it was coming up a mighty fine day. The sun spilled over the mountains and golden light tumbled into the valley, drying up the dew on the grass. It was just a dandy morning, a good day to be alive. We passed the roads going up to three little mines, Lilly Langtry, the Lola Montez, and the Florence. I knew what them fellers had in mind when they named their diggin’s after women they dreamed of. Them three was on the list Scruples and Amanda was wantin’, so I supposed we’d be heading up them two-rut roads someday soon. But the Hermit was a bigger prize, with six miners running it, and that’s what we’d take over this fine summer morning.
We got to the turnoff, and Lugar turned us toward the Hermit, so we quieted down some, and was more alert. Critter, he liked it. He kicked any horse come near him, and Arnold, he says that Critter should be shot.
“I agree,” I said. “Along with anyone that shoots him.”
Arnold just grunted.
We got maybe a half mile up that road when the dogs found us and come barkin’ down, the same three as gave me away that night. They was a bunch of mean mutts, snapping teeth at us and tellin’ the world we was comin’.
