How The West Was Won Part 8

"I'll be riding on in the morning," he said; "you've no need for me any longer." She stared helplessly into the fire, her appet.i.te gone. Finally she said, "But what will I pay you? I don't know ... we didn't settle on anything, on any amount, I mean."

"You owe me nothing. I've had my keep."

"You've earned more than that, much more. We could never have made it through without you ... for that matter, if it hadn't been for you when the Cheyennes attacked, we would all have been killed. You stopped that panic, you got them into a circle."

"Morgan wouldn't have let it start," he said, "and if it hadn't been for me it might never have started." He looked up. "I never told you of this before, but Morgan caught me gambling, and we had trouble. If it hadn't been for that, Morgan would have stopped that d.a.m.ned fool before he could go off half-c.o.c.ked." "You can't be sure of that."

He got up. "I can be sure that I distracted Morgan's attention at an important moment. I risked all your lives."

He looked around, wanting to say something more, but he could find no words.

Then he said again: "I'll go in the morning. You don't need me." Abruptly, he turned and walked away from the fire. Lilith started to speak, but did not go on ... she just stared after him, helplessly. "You goin' to let him get away?" Agatha asked.

"What can I do?"

"Women have known the answer to that since Eve bobbed that apple with Adam. If you don't know at your age, you ain't about to learn from me." "I love him."

Agatha shot her a quick glance. "Bad as that, is it? I'd say latch onto him then. That's a rarely good man, take it from me. You get to my age and you'll settle for almost any kind of a man, so long as he breathes and he's warm. They're a comfort, take it from me."

"I love him." Lilith repeated, as if astonished by the realization. "I really do."

"Don't tell me your troubles ... tell him."

The whole camp was bedded down, and most of them were asleep, before Cleve returned to the wagon. Lying awake, staring up at the wagon cover which was weirdly lit from the dying flames, Lilith listened to him unroll his bed and pull off his boots. She could hear every sound, and interpret it. At last he stretched out with a sigh, and after a minute she could hear his even, regular breathing.

Sleep would not come. Several times she turned over, seeking to find a more comfortable position, and then suddenly, she heard another sound. Somethinga"some large animala"was moving around outside the wagon. She heard a snort from Clove's gelding and she started to reach for the rifle that lay beside her in the wagon, then she drew her hand back quickly. The sounds continued, there was a subdued snuffling, and she could hear Cleve's horse struggling at his picket pin. "Cleve!" she whispered. "Cleve!" "I hear it," he said aloud, calmly.

He lay perfectly still, listening. For an instant after he spoke there had been absolute stillness, then the snuffling began again, and a bucket rattled as something turned it over. Suddenly the gelding started to rear and plunge, fighting the picket rope.

Grabbing his pistol, Cleve rolled out from under the wagon and started to rise to his feet, and at the same instant the animal, a huge bear, reared up, almost beside him. Angered by the plunging snorting horse, as well as by the man who suddenly appeared beside him, the bear gave an ugly growl. It was point-blank range when Cleve fired.

He shot once ... twice ... a third time. He fired as rapidly as he could squeeze off the shots.

Blinded by the flash of the gun, the bear lunged at him. It's paw missed a swipe that would have torn his head off, but it knocked him down with the lunge of its body.

Cleve rolled over, but managed to cling to his pistol, and the bear brought up with a thud against the side of the wagon, then turned, snarling and fighting, tearing at the wounds in its chest. The bear sprang over him without seeing him and Cleve fired the pistol upward into its belly, then he scrambled to his feet and backed up hurriedly as the bear struggled to rear up again. Bringing the pistol level, he squeezed the trigger again and the gun clicked, missing fire. All over the camp he heard cries and shouted questions. He stood flat-footed, amazed that the bear did not charge.

He had no extra cylinders with him. They were all in the pockets of his coat or in his saddle pockets. Carefully, he backed away another step, straining his eyes toward the spot near the front wheel where the bear had been. "Cleve? Cleve? Are you all right?" It was Lilith. He waited, slowly lowering the pistol, fearful of making a sound that might provoke another charge.

Several armed men came running. "What's happened? What was it?" they called. Cleve tossed fuel on the fire and some of the evergreen branches blazed up. The bear lay where it had fallen against the front wheel of the wagon, and the men approached it gingerly, their weapons ready.

Lilith and Agatha emerged from their wagon. Lilith ran to him, her eyes wide and frightened. "Cleve? Are you all right? Are you sure?" Gabe French caught hold of the bear by the paw and pulled it away from the wagon wheel. It lay there, an inert ma.s.s. Three slugs had torn into the bear's chest, slightly left of center, and the three points of entry could have been covered by a man's hand.

One of the men glanced at the holes, then up at Cleve. "Man, that's shootin'!" It was the fourth and last shot that had saved his life, for it had gone into the bear's stomach and had broken his spine. Despite the killing shots in the chest, the bear might finally have killed him had it not been for that He had been lucky ... very lucky indeed.

Obviously, the bear had not been looking for trouble, but had merely been rummaging among the buckets and gear around the wagon, drawn by the smell of food. The flash of Clove's gun had blinded it, and probably it had been as eager to get away as he would have been. It was that paralyzing final shot that had kept him from a bad maulinga"or worse.

He heard sc.r.a.ps of talk ... "nerve" and "tackled a bear, hand-to-hand" and "shootin' like that ... in the dark, too." But he knew he had been no hero. He had been frightened, and he had done what had to be done. Had he attempted escape, the bear might easily have turned on him. When he found the bear that close he had no alternative but to shoot.

But the story was one that would be told and retold wherever any of these men gathered.

Lilith caught his arm. "Cleve? Oh, Cleve, you can't leave now! What if that bear had come and you had not been here? What would we have done?" He looked down at her, his hands on her arms, and something inside him made unspoken answer: Why, you'd probably have taken that rifle of yours, drilled him dead-center, and then gone back to sleep. He said it to himself, but to her he said, "Yes, I'd better stay. I can't leave you alone." The truth of the matter was, he decided, that he didn't want to go, anyway. He wanted to stay here, where Lilith was. After all, he had been gambling for years, and where had it gotten him? No use cashing in his chips when he was this close to seeing what the pot held.

He would stay on to the end. After all, a girl like this, with a gold claim?

What kind of a fool had he been to think of leaving?

Chapter 11.

Rabbit's Foot Gulch, known to all and sundry as "the Rabbit" or simply "Rabbit," was a ragged gash where the mountain seemed to have been split apart by some gigantic earth-shudder. Cleft deep into the mountain, its sides rose sheer from the creek in the bottom to the rim more than a thousand feet above. Along the rapid, shallow creek where the canyon widened out were a few rock houses, split-log shacks, or mere dugouts where the gold-seekers huddled when not employed in panning, working their cradles, or cleaning sluice boxes. Here and there some miner had diverted a portion of the stream to wash off the sand and gravel shoveled into the sluice box and leave the gold behind, caught in the riffles in the bottom of the sluice box. The trail, if such it could be called, wound precariously around the huts, along the creek edge, up on the high bank, and back down to the bottom of the stream itself.

Cleve van Valen, with Lilith beside him, rode a cautious way among the laboring men. Several times one or the other was hailed by some former acquaintance, and at their appearance work ceased for the time. Women were few at any time, and such women as Lilith were scarce at all times. Men stopped their work to stare, shielding their eyes against the sun.

It was mid-morning. Most of the miners worked with shirt sleeves rolled up, exposing their red woolen undershirts. Most of them wore clumsy, flat-heeled boots, though here and there a man wore moccasins or riding boots, or worked in bare feet. To a man, they were bearded, unshaved, mostly unbathed, and armed. Those who did not wear a gun while working had one lying close at hand. They were a rough, tough, good-natured crowd of individualists, each one as independent as his physical strength or his gun could make him. Until a few days or weeks before, none of them had been known to any of the others, and a few weeks from now each would be off on some other creek, following the chance of gold.

One husky miner recognized Lilith. "Hey, Lil! Sing us a song!" She waved, remembering the man from St. Louis, where he had been especially wary of the law. "We're in a hurry, boys! Next time!" "Come on, Lil!" the bearded, hairy-chested man from St Louis yelled cheerfully.

"Tune up! Sing us a song!"

She laughed at them. "What shall I sing for him, boys? *What Was Your Name in the States?' " All within hearing roared with laughter, and the bearded one made believe as if to duck a blow.

Cleve turned in the saddle. "If your claim peters out, you've still got a following. You might make more singing."

The faint trail they followed turned up through the pines and away from the creek, which here filled the bottom of a canyon so narrow the sun could only strike the water at midday.

It was not much further. Cleve led the way, but he sat half turned in the saddle so as not to present his back completely to Lilith. "I'll go to San Francisco," she said, "and I'll buy a home on n.o.b Hill, and I'll have my own carriage and driver. I'll have all the linen and silver and cut gla.s.s I've ever dreamed of, and I'll never sing for a crowd of men again." After a minute or two she added, "I'll have a concert grand, and when I wish to sing I will sing for myself ... or my friends." "And will you sing for me, Lilith?"

"Yes, I'll sing for you whenever you like, and I'll wear fine clothes and give dinners for the people I like, and perhaps I'll go to New York, even to Paris or Vienna. Have you been to Vienna, Cleve?"

"To Vienna, to Innsbruck, Bayreuth, Weimar, Monte Carlo ... you will like them, Lil."

The trail took a long bend, and far ahead of them they could see the widening of the canyon where lay the mining claim. They could ride abreast now, and they rode without talking. So much lay ahead of them, and soon there would be so much they could leave behind.

The trail dipped down, and they saw the scar of rubble where waste rock had been dumped from the mine tunnel.

Below, a rocker stood idle upon the bank of the creek, and a small stream poured into the creek from the sluice box. Against the mountain, under a few ragged trees, stood a flimsy lean-to; a bearded man sat on a stump near the door, smoking a pipe. A few feet away a squaw was grinding corn in a metate. As they drew near, neither of the two looked around or changed their position. The man, immobile as the rocks themselves, was staring at the sunlight on the waters of the creek.

Cleve and Lilith drew up. She glanced quickly at the dark opening in the face of the mountain, then looked around her with sharp disappointment. Suddenly, she knew not where from, came a chilling fear.

"We're hunting for a Mr. Huggins," Cleve said.

"You found him."

"This is Lilith Prescott."

"So I figured. They tol' me she was a looker." He gestured with a careless hand, the nails black with grime. "It's all here, just like ol' Brooks staked it out. He must've had twenty men workin' on it at one time."

"Where are they now?" Lilith asked. "Who's digging the gold?"

"You talk about golda"you never did see such gold as this here claim produced. Just a pocket, though ... cleared about forty-two hundred before she played out."

The fear was reality now. Cleve glanced quickly at Lilith. Her mouth was tight against the shock, and the realization of what it would mean to Cleve. "Mr. Brooks, he spent about three hundred before his heart give out, an' I put up a nice piece for a bra.s.s-handled casket ... they come mighty dear, away out in the hills, like this. The rest an' there's mighty little of it, I figure you owe me for settin' on the claim." He squinted his eyes at them. "That's only fair, ain't it?"

Cleve turned his horse. "Do you want to take his word for it or shall I take a look? I believe him."

The bearded man moved at last. He got up from his chair. "You're welcome to look, but there's mighty little to see. Me an' the woman, we're takin' out. I mean there's nothin' here for a body, an' we favor the far-off timber. I'm a man likes to hunt."

Without a word, Lilith pointed her mount back down the trail. After a few minutes she said quietly, "It's like you said, Clevea"I can always sing. I think I'll make my start right back there ... *Next time,' I promised them. Well, this is our way backa"back to reality."

Roger Morgan heard the sound of music before he reached the tent theatre. The first thing he saw upon entering was a long bar, behind which four bartenders worked desperately to fill the orders of men who crowded three and four deep at the bar. There were Spanish-Californians in wide-bottomed trousers and buckskin jackets, there were Chinese, Chilenos, Irish, Germans, Frencha"every race and every nationality could be found in the crowd.

He stepped to one side of the door and looked around. Several games were going, and at the far end of the tent there was a stage, empty now. Several musicians sat in chairs bunched at one side of the stage, drinking beer. Jacka.s.s Hill was booming. One pocket of quartz was producing from a hundred to three hundred dollars a day; and another miner in just six weeks had taken ten thousand dollars out of a plot one hundred feet square. Dozens of prospect holes along the mountain had paid enough to make their owners richa"at least temporarily. They called it Jacka.s.s Hill from the braying of the jacka.s.ses in the pack trains as they pa.s.sed up the hill on their way to the mines. It was a wild, free-spending crowd. Not everybody in that crowd had struck it rich, but everybody had caught the fever, so they all acted like it, and as long as it lasted they spent money like it.

Morgan worked his way through the crowd, scanning the tables for a familiar face, and the face he half expected to see was the one he hoped not to see. Suddenly, to the sound of an accordion and a fiddle, Lilith appeared on the stage singing "What Was Your Name in the States?" Roger Morgan found an empty chair and dropped into it, watching her as she sang. The games had slowed, and here and there men had even ceased to drink. One and all, they watched her. There was about her none of the bra.s.sy boldness of the usual tent-theatre and gold-country performers. She looked fresh, young, and lovely. She was like a girl from home, yet with that extra something that stirred the blood of every man in the huge tent. As she went on from song to song, moving gracefully about the stage, her eyes moved from man to man throughout the crowd, making each one feel that she sang to him alone. Finally Morgan could stand it no longer. He got up and left the tent, circling around toward the familiar prairie schooner which now served as a dressing room and living quarters. He was still waiting there when she left the tent. "Miss Prescott?"

She started to pa.s.s by, then recognized him. "Oh, h.e.l.lo, Mr. Morgan. Sorry I can't invite you into the wagon. We're cramped for s.p.a.ce." "This ain't no life for a woman like you. I heard your mine was played out and your fancy friend had left you. Where's he now?" "Cleve? I heard he was in Hangtown."

"You really mean that no-good went off and left you?" "He left me, yes, but I don't agree that he's no good. Cleve is Cleve, that's all."

Morgan dug a boot toe into the earth. "You're a perplexin' woman, Miss Prescott. When a skunk needs killin' ... if you'd left me alone I'd have run that gambler clean off the wagon train. Might have saved a lot of trouble." "He pulled his weight, Mr. Morgan. Even you admitted that. As for running Cleve off ... he doesn't run easily, Mr. Morgan. There are some Cheyennes who could tell you that."

"I ain't denyin' he can shoot, but he went off an' left you. What kind of a man is that?"

"All my life, Mr. Morgan, I have wanted a rich husband. Can I blame him for wanting a rich wife? We both may have been born for the poorhousea"at least I am beginning to suspect soa"but we're not the kind to like it." She turned toward the wagon. "I must change."

He stepped around in front of her. "Do you believe all this? Tell me the truth?" "Cleve and I couldn't live on love for five minutes. There's the truth for you, Mr. Morgan."

"Then you've answered the question I've been askin' for two thousand miles. So you just look here. I've got the biggest ranch you ever saw ... you can't ride across it in a day. That land will mean money, sooner or later. You say you want a rich husband. All right, you're lookin' at him." Lilith looked at him, but she was not seeing him, for what she saw was herself as she had once been, a wet, bedraggled girl standing on an Ohio riverbank. This was not what that girl had wanteda"not this tent theatre, not what Morgan had to offer, either. She did not know exactly what it was that girl had wanted so badly, but she knew it was not this.

What Morgan offered was security, a shelter away from the wind. But when had she asked shelter of any man? Had she not always, no matter how hard the times, stood on her own two feet? Nowhere in the world was there anyone to whom she was beholden, excepta"a littlea"to Linus Rawlings.

Linus, she told herself, had understood. Even as he gave up his own free life for her sister Eve, so he had provided the means for Lilith to be free. Better than she or any of them, Linus must have known what she was facing, for in another way and another time he had faced the same himself. Freedom, Linus had known, is never bought cheaply. Linus had understood her, even as he would have understood Cleve.

"There ain't a blessed thing you'd have to do *cept mind the kids. An' we can leave right now ... whenever you're ready."

She smiled at him suddenly, for she had made her decision. Or had it been made long before? One never knew what it was that went to making a decision. "Not now, Rogera"not ever."

"How can you say that?" He was incredulous. "You just saida"Don't you believe your own words?"

"It would take too long to explain. I am sorry, truly I am." Roger Morgan turned abruptly, angrily, and strode away. She watched him go, a little sad, but without regrets.

"Well!" Agatha appeared in the opening of the wagon. "I heard it! Why do you get the chance to make all the mistakes? Why can't I make a fool of myself for once?"

"Of course I'm a fool, but I know what I want, and I won't settle for less." "We both should have left the train at Salt Lake. With the Mormons, you may have to share your man but at least you've got one." Agatha paused. "What are you going to do now?"

Lilith laughed suddenly. "What am I going to do? Why, I am going to do what my sister did. When she found her man she had sense enough to go after him, and she let nothing stand in her way. Well, I'm going after mine, and if he won't come to me of his own free will, I'll have to find a way to make him." Agatha put her hands on her hips. "Now you're makin' sense for the first time since we met! I declare, I never could see you lettin' that Cleve van Valen slip through your fingers, right when you had him, and all." "He just wanted my money."

"You know better than that. He may have thought so, and you may have believed it, but I never saw a man look at a bank-roll the way he looked at you. Why, old as I was, I was embarra.s.sed to see it!"

"I hope he wanted something more than that!"

"You do, do you? Take it from me, honey, if they want you that way, be glad of it. You can always feed them into quietness afterwards. "No man stands. .h.i.tched of his own free will. You have to bait your trap, and when they nibble at the bait, why, you just make them happy, make them comfortable, and you can tie them tighter than with chains. An' believe me, the ones you can't keep that way ain't worth keepin'. "Make a man easy in his home life, and he won't stray, not if you have a mind to his needs. He may think about kickin' over the traces, but let him feel he can go when he likesa"if you're as smart as I think you are, he'll never want to go." The paddle-wheel steamer Sacramento Queen was a little smaller than the Mississippi river boats he had known, but the pa.s.sengers were much the same. On the whole, though, they dressed somewhat more roughly and were somewhat more ostentatious in handling their money, of which they all seemed to have a good deal.

On the Mississippi you could tell a gentleman by the way he dressed ... there was no such easy cla.s.sification on the Sacramento. Here the best-dressed men were almost invariably the gamblers. The exceptions were a few businessmen from San Francisco or an occasional traveler from the East or from Europe. The miners, ranchmen, or farmers usually dressed in a somewhat dressed-up version of the clothes they wore every day.

Cleve van Valen glanced at his cards. Before him was a comfortable-sized stack of gold coins, in his hand a pair of aces and a pair of deuces. His luck had rarely been good, yet he managed to be successful in a small way without it, relying on his knowledge of cards, of men, of percentages, and on his memory. His memory for cards played, as well as for how each man played the various hands, was remarkable. Months after a game had been played he could relate the exact sequence of hands; and he could estimate from past performances how each man was apt to play the various hands.

He had rarely found it necessary to aid the percentages. The average gambler was not a professional, and flattered himself that he understood cards. Moreover, the average gambler could be led to back his belief with money. Very few understood their chances of filling any particular hand. As every gambler knows, there are runs of luck that have nothing to do with percentages or even logic, and these Cleve was careful to steer clear of when they happened to others. They rarely happened to him.

Faint music came from the main salon, and unconsciously he began to hum with the sound. The song was "A Home in the Meadow." The opening bars were played, and then a girl began to sing the words and Cleve stiffened in his chair. He strained his ears to be sure of the voice, and there was no mistaking it. He sat a little straighter. The cards seemed to have blurred a little. Another card was dealt him and almost unconsciously he added it to his hand. It was the third acea"he had a full house.

He looked at his cards, then swept the table with a quick glance. Suddenly he realized he was himself riding a streak of lucka"and if a man was smart, he rode that streak hard.

Of the others at the table, there was not one whose measure he had not taken. Properly handled, there was three or four hundred dollars in that full house, and it was his for the taking.

The words of the song came to him more clearly, a song and a voice heard many times before over the open fires out upon the plains. It was Lilith, of course. Of late he had even been hearing her voice in his sleep.

A wise gambler rode his winning streaks, but which way should he ride this one?

The man in the gray vest said, "Check." The man next to him said, "I'll listen." And it was Cleve's turn to open. He looked again at his cards, then folded them neatly and placed them face down on the table. He got to his feet abruptly. "What's the matter with you?" the gray vest asked. "Gentlemen, my regrets. I am checking out." Abruptly, he swept the stacks of gold coins into his hands and filled his pockets, then he started to turn away. "Now, see here!" the gray vest began. "Ia"" With his left hand Cleve turned over the hand he had laid down, turned them over in his palm, but kept the face of the cards concealed. "Gentlemen, I am quitting, but if any of you think you have a better hand than minea"the one I am laying downa"I will be glad to bet card for card that mine are better: I am laying down a hand that would have cost you gentlemen five hundred dollars, but if you doubt mea"" "No," the gray vest said, "we don't doubt you, but you've won a good bit of our money."

"So I have, and this hand would win more of it. But come on ... card for card." With the hand he held he was sure to win three bets and lose two, and with those odds he was prepared to gamble all day.

The man in the gray vest shrugged. "You can quit if you want toa"I am not going to walk into a game when you are so willing to bet. Besides,"a"and he smileda""only one ace has showed. With three still out, there is a chance you might have one or two of them."

Cleve grinned at him. Turning his hand outward he spread the five cards open before them. "See for yourself, gentlemen. And with that, good day!" The main salon was more than two-thirds filled with men and women seated at tables. Some were eating, others merely drinking. At one table, Agatha sat alone. Lilith, gowned beautifully, stood in the center of the stage, ending her song.

Cleve van Valen paused, taking a cheroot from his breast pocket Carefully, he clipped the end and lighted up. If anything, Lilith was more beautiful than when he had last seen her.

Deliberately, he stepped through the doorway and started down the length of the salon toward her. She could see him coming, and when she completed her song she turned swiftly to leave.

Lilith had seen him the instant he stepped through the door, and her knees went weak. Her heart pounding, she started off-stage, but Cleve stepped up on the stage and confronted her. "Lily, I've got to talk to you." She was unable to reply. Somehow she seemed to have lost the faculty of speech.

Her lips were dry, and when she tried to swallow she could not. He knew that everyone was watching but he did not care. "Lily, a few minutes ago when I heard your voice I threw away a winning hand and with it a streak of luck such as I haven't had in a long tunea"something I did not believe I would do for any girl in the world. I threw in my hand because I hoped my winning streak would extend to you."

He took both her hands in his. "Lil ... how would you like to hook up with a no-good gambler?"

Suddenly everything within her seemed to well up and burst in a warm, wonderful flood. The next thing she knew her arms were around him and she was ignoring the outburst of applause from the audience.

"Then we're on our way! Twelve hundred dollars I've gota"right here."