Pale Rider

  “None of which is unexpected. Be nice if the gold in each canyon would last forever, but it doesn’t work that way.” His tone altered slightly but significantly. “What about Carbon?”

  His son hesitated until the elder Lahood’s gaze began to narrow. “Well, we ran another raid through Carbon couple days back. Busted up everthing in sight and threw a real good scare into ’em. Didn’t we, McGill? Had those tin-pans running like chickens for their coops.”

  “Yep, sure did.” The foreman’s enthusiasm was muted. “Almost drove ’em out this time lock, stock, and barrel. You could see some of ’em startin’ to pack up by the time we hit the west ridge.”

  “Uh-huh.” Lahood acknowledged this information without turning his eyes from the road leading into town. When further elaboration was not forthcoming he repeated himself, rather more emphatically this time.

  “Uh-huh?”

  McGill looked helplessly over at the younger Lahood, who tried to find the right words. Somehow explaining things to his father was never as easy as berating the men.

  “Something happened that we didn’t anticipate. It seems this stranger wandered in. Sort of pulled them together, kind of.” He glanced quickly at the foreman. “That the way you see it, McGill?”

  “Yep. He sort of—pulled ’em together.”

  “Pulled them together? Sort of kind of?” Lahood looked at his foreman, then back to his son. “How—with a lariat? You boys are full of interesting information today, ain’t you? You just ain’t much on explanations.”

  Josh Lahood swallowed. “I don’t know how he did it, Papa. They just sort of seemed to get strength from him.”

  “This one stranger did that? I thought that Barret was the leader of the squatters.”

  “We took care of Barret. Would’ve had him buffaloed good and proper if this stranger hadn’t come along.” McGill’s explanation sounded lame even to himself.

  Lahood shook his head in disbelief. “Hell, I expect you boys didn’t explain to him just who we are and how we work things around here. I imagine that once you ‘explain’ things to him, he’ll decide to move on.”

  His son’s laugh was brittle. “Sure! Ain’t much for a preacher to do in these parts, after all. Ain’t many churchgoers in these camps.”

  Lahood reined up abruptly. His expression was dark. The relaxed, easy-going man who’d stepped off the train had suddenly changed into something far less pleasant.

  “Preacher!?” His voice dropped dangerously. “You cretins let a preacher into Carbon Canyon?”

  Josh looked helpless, and not a little confused by his father’s outburst. “Hell, we didn’t invite him, Papa. I don’t know that anybody invited him. He just showed up one day and sort of took up with Barret, is all. Wasn’t anything we could do about it. I don’t see what you’re so all-fired upset about. What’s so dangerous about a preacher?”

  You’re your mother’s son for sure, Lahood thought disgustedly. Can’t see beyond the tip of your nose.

  “When I left for Sacramento those tin-pans had all but given up. They were just about ready to call it quits in Carbon, and I thought I’d get back here all set for us to move in. Their spirit was nearly broken, and a man without spirit is whipped.

  “But a preacher, he could give ’em faith. Shit, one ounce of faith and they’ll be dug in deeper than ticks on a hound.” He considered the problem for a long moment, then flicked the reins. The Arabian obediently started forward again.

  Josh Lahood rode in silence next to his father for as long as he thought prudent before asking, “So what do we do about him, Papa?”

  Lahood, who’d been on the verge of exploding only moments ago, now seemed his old relaxed self once more. “I expect I’m going to have to talk to this fellow myself. You boys go throw a rope around that man and bring him to me.”

  Josh and McGill exchanged a glance. Just about anything else the elder Lahood could have suggested would have been more to their liking. Both had already suffered embarrassment at the stranger’s hands. Neither had any wish to repeat the experience. But there wasn’t a thing they could do. Coy Lahood had given them an order.

  Their silence saved them from themselves. To their great relief, the old man changed his mind. “No. On second thought, if we get too rough, we’ll make a martyr out of him. Don’t want to give them a martyr. A dead preacher can be more dangerous than a live one.”

  “Didn’t you get any help from Sacramento, boss?” McGill inquired hesitantly, anxious to divert the conversation away from the subject of the Preacher.

  “Sacramento? Sacramento ain’t worth moose piss!” the elder Lahood snorted derisively. “Sometimes I think things were better when the Mexicans were running the territory.” He gazed thoughtfully down at his silvered saddle. “It’s easier to do business with people when they’re running scared. Them bastards in Sacramento are all pumped up with themselves. Every one of ’em thinks he’s going to be a United States senator one of these days, and you can’t talk sense to any of ’em.”

  “They didn’t sign the writ?” Josh looked surprised.

  “Nope. Not only that, but there’s talk of much worse.”

  His son frowned. “What are you talking about, Papa?”

  “It’s hard to believe, but some of those dumb politicians want to do away with hydraulic mining altogether. ‘Raping the land,’ they call it.”

  Josh’s eyes widened. “That’s just talk, ain’t it, Papa? They can’t do something like that.”

  “No telling what a bunch of politicians will do when you put ’em all together. They start listening to each other’s speeches. You weren’t in Sacramento with me, boy. Things are changing. It ain’t like the old days when I was getting started.

  “The farmers, them dumb dirt-scrabblers, are putting their own lobby together, and every month there’s a few more farmers and a few less miners. They’re worried about the silt from hydraulic tailings washing down into the valley and contaminating their land and crap like that.” He shook his head sadly. “They’ve a mind to ruin the whole business for those of us that made this country, and those damn fool politicians just might help ’em do it. If they get paid enough.

  “So far it’s a standoff, but it’s going to get worse for hydraulics in this state before it gets better. I’ve got too much invested in our setup to give it up and go back to straight shaft mining. We’ve got to move on Carbon and cut deep and cut fast, ’cause the way the smoke’s blowing, in another couple of years we may be out of business. That’s all we need anyway, is one more big strike, and I’m betting that Carbon’s going to be it. Then let ’em ban hydraulic mining if they want to. We’ll have enough in the bank to be able to afford to junk the equipment, raise the right kind of capital to float a really big company. We’ll buy up every claim in these hills and go set ourselves up proper like I’ve been wanting to in Frisco. Let somebody else get their hands dirty for a change. The Lahoods’ll just sit back and collect dividends.” He looked past his son, toward the mountains that towered behind them.

  “But we need to strike pay dirt in Carbon, and we need to do it fast.”

  Josh and McGill rode along silently, hanging on the elder Lahood’s every word.

  “Those tin-pans have got to go and go this week. We can’t afford to wait any longer. I want us set up in Carbon and cutting ground before the farmers’ bill is put on the governor’s desk, because the dumb bastard’s just liable to sign it. That means that preacher has to go, too. We’ll have to figure out a way to handle him.”

  “Maybe we could—” Josh began hopefully. His father cut him off.

  “Shut up, boy. If you could’ve taken care of him you would’ve done so already. So keep quiet and let your old man think.”

  The younger Lahood endured this criticism in silence. First, because not even blood relations talked back to Coy Lahood and second, because he knew the criticism was justified. He forced himself to say nothing during the remainder of the ride into town. After awhile he began to
relax.

  He was thinking of how his father was going to take care of that damn preacher man. Coy Lahood could be very inventive when the need arose. By the time they reached the outskirts of town, he was smiling.

  The oak bureau had been hauled all the way from Philadelphia, around the Cape via clipper, then overland into the Sierras via wagon.

  Now it reposed in the Wheeler cabin, where it constituted Sarah Wheeler’s prize possession. It was the finest piece of furniture in Carbon Canyon and would have drawn appreciative comments even in Sacramento. Sarah preferred not to point it out to visitors if she could avoid doing so, however. Doing so would have meant explaining its history, and that in turn would have meant explaining how she and her former husband had come to acquire it. She preferred not to mention that man’s name in her home.

  On reflection, the bureau had been of more use than had the man. It stayed where it belonged, did its job, was there when she needed it, and neither beat nor berated her. Better a wooden bureau than a wooden man, she finally decided.

  From time to time she wondered where he was, what he was doing. Looking for gold, no doubt, in places where a wife and a daughter would be more of an encumbrance than a help. Handsome he’d been, handsome and smooth-talking and so wise in the ways of the world. Or so he’d seemed to young Sarah. Now that she’d had a chance to experience a bit more of life she knew better. She’d mistaken vanity for confidence, lies for knowledge, and sex for love.

  Not that he’d been an evil man. Just sorry, and she too young to know any better. When he’d deserted her and Megan, the hurt had been too much to bear. It was still there but healed over now, like an old break covered by new bone.

  Megan was hard at work in her own room, unaware of her mother’s thoughts. She was trying to pull the straps tighter against her back, the better to raise and emphasize her adolescent bosom. She turned sideways to eye herself in the beveled oval mirror, examining her half-naked form critically. It was a good figure, no doubt of that, and time would likely enhance and refine it even more. But it would’ve been better if she’d had someone else there to tie the corset straps for her. She didn’t dare ask her mother.

  What she really needed was one of those new dresses Mrs. Williams had been talking about. Mrs. Williams had been in Sacramento as recently as two months ago, to tend to her elderly sister, and had returned to Carbon Canyon full of tales of the latest in politics and fashion. The gowns she claimed to have seen sounded fit for a queen to Megan. Cut low in front, with lots of velvet and feathers, that was what she needed.

  But all she had was the one Sunday dress, and that would have to do.

  Idly she called out to the front room. “Were Grandpa and Grandma happy when you got married, Ma?”

  Her mother’s voice floated back to her from the kitchen. “I’m afraid they didn’t have a thimbleful of choice in the matter.”

  Megan hardly heard the reply. She was frowning at her reflection. No matter how she altered the position of her bodice or tugged on the straps which raised the stays, she was unable to produce the desired end result with the equipment at hand.

  “That’s no answer. Were they surprised?”

  A distant sigh. “Your grandpa took the measles and your grandma got drunk. I suppose you could say it surprised them some.”

  Moving to the quilt-covered bed behind her, Megan picked up the neatly laid-out gingham pinafore lying atop the covers and slipped it on over her shirtwaist. She had to do a little jig to make it slide down. No question about it, she was still growing, and the pinafore was starting to pinch in certain critical places.

  “Was it ’cause they didn’t think you were old enough?”

  “Your grandma was only fifteen when she was married,” Sarah replied. “No, I think what riled them was who I married. I could’ve been forty and they wouldn’t have approved. Turns out they were both right. Too late for me to apologize now that they’re both gone. I was too smart and too pig-headed to listen to the advice of a couple of old folks.”

  Megan adjusted the pinafore to its unsatisfactory best, then picked up her hairbrush and began working on her waist-length hair.

  “Do you think you’ll be happy married to Hull?”

  “Who says we’re getting married? Girl, you’ve been growing up when I wasn’t looking.”

  Megan smiled at her reflection. “Hull’s nice enough, isn’t he?”

  Her mother’s response was deliberately flat. “Yes, he’s nice.”

  “He likes me, and I know he likes you. Don’t you like him?”

  “Hull’s all right. Yes, I like him, but people don’t get married just because they like one another.”

  A dreamy cast came over Megan’s face as she swayed approvingly before the mirror. “Do preachers get married?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  That comment brought forth a broad smile from both the reflection in the mirror and its owner. A few final sharp strokes through her tresses and Megan returned the brush to its resting place atop the bureau. She all but skipped into the next room.

  “Is my hem long enough?”

  Sarah turned to her daughter, and Megan saw that she wasn’t the only woman in the house who had been hard at work on her appearance. Her mother’s long hair had been piled up into an elegant knot atop her head, where it was secured in place by tortoiseshell pins.

  “Why yes. And you look lovely.” Rising, she planted a kiss on her daughter’s forehead. “You’re the prettiest daughter I could ever have. That anyone could ever have.”

  Megan fidgeted under the praise while simultaneously casting an envious eye on her mother’s elaborate coiffure and wondering if she could somehow manage to duplicate it. It wasn’t that it made Sarah’s hair any more attractive as much as it contributed to her more, well, more mature appearance, something that concerned Megan very much just now.

  Hull had resurrected his Long Tom, but instead of setting it back up at the far end of his claim where it had stood originally, he’d moved it downstream. Now it stood in the lee of the pulverized boulder whose disintegration Josh Lahood’s henchman had inadvertently begun.

  It was strange having help. He’d worked alone for so many years he hardly knew how to handle not having to do everything himself. Of course, he was within easy shouting range of his fellow miners, but men like Conway and Miller hadn’t come to the mountains to idle away their days in casual conversation. Time enough for that after sundown, when it grew too cold and dark to work.

  And even then there were those in whom the gold fever ran so hot that they remained to work their claims by the light of candle and lamp.

  This much the Preacher shared in common with the other sourdoughs; he preferred work to talk. Hard work at that. Hull had to argue with the tall man before he’d let the miner take his turn at the much more strenuous job of shoveling gravel into the upper end of the sluice. Any fool could walk the Long Tom’s length, searching the wooden boxes for signs of color. And when he’d protest that the Preacher was taking too long a turn with the gravel, his friend would reply that he still had five more minutes of “sermonizing with the shovel” before he’d allow Hull to take over.

  He would argue, and then give in. After two years of working alone, Hull’s shoulder muscles were more than a little grateful for the respite.

  He was enjoying one of those breaks at the moment, busying himself with inspecting the flow of sand over the bottom of the sluice. Rocks, and more rocks, the dull gray beneath the clear water interrupted only by an occasional flash of quartz or pyrite.

  Something caught his eye, masked but not obscured by the swirling water that raced the length of the sluice. The water could not obscure it. It was bright, much too bright. Much brighter than any pyrite had a right to be. He gaped at it, wiped dirt from his face, and looked again to make sure he hadn’t imagined it.

  Letting out a joyous whoop, he plunged his right hand into the frigid current and closed his fist over the object. It felt different from the s
urrounding gravel even beneath the water.

  The Preacher dumped another load of gravel into the upper end of the Long Tom and paused to grin back at his friend. “You break your hand there, Barret?”

  The miner had removed his fist from the water. Now he opened it to stare at what he’d retrieved. His fingers were turning pink from the cold, but he didn’t feel the chill.

  He turned the object over in his fingers, a rapt expression on his face. It did not display the familiar octagonal crystalline bulges or the surface striations common to pyrite. It was smooth and battered where the water had tumbled it across the creek bottom. And it was brighter in hue than pyrite, with a telltale reddish tinge.

  “It’s a nugget,” he was finally able to gasp. “The biggest damn nugget I’ve ever seen! Look here.” He let out another whoop of pure delight as he hurried to display his find.

  The Preacher looked approvingly at the handful even as he echoed Hull’s first thoughts. “You’re sure it ain’t fool’s gold, now.”

  Hull was grinning from ear to ear. “Preacher, I’ve thrown away enough pyrite to plate the U.S. Capitol. Look at it. Ain’t she beautiful, all smooth and polished by the water?” He rubbed one part of his find to remove the caked-on silt. His voice was hushed, reverent. “I never thought to see the like, ’cept in the papers. Always felt sure it was given to other men to make a strike like this, not Hull Barret. But you know something? Even while I was thinking that I never gave up hope.” His fingers tightened around the nugget.

  “I knew there was gold in this creek, and not just dust. Spider knew it, and I knew it.”

  “Well, don’t keep it to yourself, Barret. Good news tastes best when it’s shared.”

  “Yeah, right.” He started climbing the slope, heading for the Wheeler cabin. “Hey Sarah, Megan! Have a look at this!”

  Spider Conway looked up from his panning, then disgustedly tossed the contents aside as he watched Hull Barret half clamber, half run up the hillside. He directed a thin stream of tobacco juice into the mud that swirled around his ancient boots.