Welcome To Hard Times Part 7

"Gwan back to your stable, deadhead," said Jessie, "this don't concern you."

Jenks leaned back with his elbows on the bar and he grinned that sly grin of his: "s.h.i.t . . . Y'mean he's cooin' wif thet li'l yaller flopgal?"

"Hush d.a.m.n you," Adah said. She looked at me: "It's no joke, Zar finds out and he'll kill him."

"He's really stuck on her?" I said.

"Lord!" said Jessie. "You've never seen the like. You'd think she was white. You'd think she had a papa owned a railroad!"

"Sat.u.r.day he didn't give n.o.body else a chance to touch her," Adah said. "Paid her the money and took her out by the well and held her hand."

"I saw it," Mae said nodding.

"G.o.damighty!" Jenks said.

"Then after a while she figures it's time to come back in, and so in he follows and gives her the money again and out they go again."127 "Well what do you know!" I had to laugh. "Zar thought he was fired from his job."

"No sir, he just up an' quit it! That boy's crazy, he's wild! There's no tellin' what he'll do why I never saw a person afflicted so."

Jenks said: "Knew a feller oncet were bedded to a Piute. She sure did have a scent."

"It don't seem right," Mae said biting on her fingernail.

"I don't know," I said.

"Now Blue," said Adah, "that little thing is be- sides herself. She was so scairt Sat.u.r.day she couldn't keep from shakin' all over."

"It scares her?"

"Why she's been cryin* ever since. He has her out there somewhere right now moonin' like a sick calf over her, poor thing she don't know what to do."

"Well if he's taken a fancy for her," I said, "there are worse things."

"Blue," said Adah, "there are fancies and1 fancies. She's just a child, she don't understand that kind of business, he got no sense treating her like that."

"When Zar finds out he'll kill 'em both," Mae said.

"Well Zar don't own the girl. Any of you could take a beau if you really wanted," I said.

"Maybe we could, maybe we couldn't," Jessie said. "But he bought her. Paid her Pa a hundred dollars."

"That c.h.i.n.k weren't even her Pa," Mae said to Jessie. "He said he was but he didn't look as he could sire a flea."128 "You won't let on will you Blue?"

"I'm dumb ladies."

"Poor child," said Adah, "there's no telling what'll happen. What is it possesses that boy I don't hope to guess."

I downed the drink and there were these three glum faces around me-weary Miss Adah with her fine mustache, long-jawed Jessie, Plump Mae, her cheeks going to fat v . . What Zar would do worried them, but I think they were more fright- ened by Bert himself. They were uneasy at such a feeling in someone, it was beyond them. For me it was a revelation that such a thing was happening here. It was like someone had come along to put up a flag. I made up my mind if Zar raised a ruckus like the ladies feared I would do what I could for the boy. I wanted to nurture something like that, keep it going.

The more I thought about Bert the better I liked him. You like to see desperation still in its pimples. I went to Isaac's tent and the Swede was there, and I told them about Bert. They had a good laugh. When I went back to the cabin Molly was sitting outside. We'd been having some afternoons of sweet rain, some evenings of slow-dying skies, and she'd taken to sitting on a stool in front of the cabin door and she'd watch the night come on. I sat down near her and I could just feel the smile when I told her there was a true lover come to town.

Then there was silence between us and I see no reason now not to put down what happened: I found myself aware of Molly in a way that was pleasure and pain at the same time. I felt her closeness. I kept thinking I was older than she was129 and you see it was a too familiar thought to have, I had no right to it. I was not Bert Albany, I wasn't free to respect my feelings, and so nothing was said, as the darkness came down. And when she went inside I sat still and waited until she would be asleep before I followed.

But that following Sat.u.r.day was the night it first appeared all our fortunes were changing. There was a big crowd of miners and they were feel- ing the season, their carryings-on was not just a bit of fun, it was liken to a shivaree. They brought mouth organs with them, one fellow came up with a banjo, there was a lot of dancing with the drink- ing and since the women were scarce among so many, the miners danced with each other, stomp- ing out squares so as to make the ground shake. And insisting in all that noise was talk of a new stamping mill going up not far to the east. The Chinagirl had no worries about Zar that night. Bert kept her in sight of his bar all the time but the Russian wouldn't have noticed if he had carried her around on his shoulders: Zar was blinded happy with the rumors, rushing around from one fellow to the next to hear every version. By midnight he'd decided the company was going to lay a road down the trail from the mines so as to cart the ore to the new mill- I didn't trust myself to believe him. But it is true that the town was to be blessed with luck; and some of it was even to rub off on me.

9.I thought if Zar's mind was a pony it would win the race. I wanted nothing to do with his happy expectations. But every time something else came up to justify them he would laugh at me, saying: "Wal, frand, am I crazy?" Until I had to go with the signs and tell him one day: "No, by G.o.d, Zar, you're saner than me."

Now you have to season the talk of a digger with a lot of salt. A digger's a man who'll look for pay dirt twenty years of days with just as much fervor and high hope the last day as the first. Why any time you're near one you can hear his song: "I'm savin' my money Jack, and as soon as I have me a grubstake, it's goodbye to the Company. I'm off to Montany and find me that vugg of pure gold! I know where it is, I know the spot Jack, it's jest a sittin' and a waitin" fer me . . ." And he buys Jack a drink on it; and they both believe it. I didn't want to put stock in any rumor come down from the camp.

But there was a stamping mill gone up, that was a fact. Alf told me it too: a town called Number Six 130.131 and it was maybe fifteen miles dead east. Angus Mcellhenny told me something else: the Company shipped on the toll roads leading west from the camp, so it didn't pay them to cart anything but high-grade ore. But if they cut a road down to us they could get to the new mill across the flats and pay no toll to anyone. And they could make their low grade pay off as well.

The way Angus spoke the idea made sense. And then one morning, early, a man rode down from the lodes and he had a string of mules trailing him. I'd never seen him before but I knew who he was, I'd heard him cursed too many times not to know him, Archie D. Brogan, the mine boss. He had pale- blue eyes in a face of fat, he was much too beefy for the miner's garb he wore. He sat around drink- ing and jittery until Alf Moffet drove in with the stage, and then we knew why Brogan had come: three men in black tailored suits and derby hats stepped out and he nearly fell all over himself giving them a proper welcome. They were small men and they stepped precisely in our dirt, but they were the directors from the East and their engineer; so we cheered as Brogan put them on the mules and took them, bouncing, up the trail to the lodes.

"I shall build a hotel!" Zar cried after them and he even hugged Isaac Maple in his joy.

A few days later the Company men came back down to meet a special coach. And while waiting they fanned themselves with their derbies. "I never seen men with such white hands," Adah said in a whisper, "why it's indecent!" They talked to no- body, only asking Zar, at one point, if he carried wine. Zar was anguished because he didn't, and132 when they rode off he shook his fist after them: "I shall build a hotel!" It was a vow this time and somehow it made the prospect surer.

Not long afterwards we had a visit from a man owned a public house along the toll road leading west from the camp, and he looked us over care- fully and measured out a lot for himself next to Swede's wagon; and without my saying a word he put a ten-dollar gold piece in my hand-to hold it-and he rode away saying he'd be back.

Well you see all this was a bloom in the heart, a springing of hope, and even when I tried to tell myself it was just like the afternoon sun-so cozy- ing on the face, like a warm hand, that a man could dream of anything and expect it-even when I pressed myself with doubts, the hope squeezed out like a nectar. And as I sat with Molly another evening under the sky, with a new moon making us shadows to each other, I talked so easy I almost didn't know myself; and she talked with me and it was as if we were two new people sprung from our old pains.

"Molly I swear I feel good times coming. The life here is working up. They'll have to cut a road to get those Concord freighters through here. And to do that they'll need lots of people, they'll have lots of jobs!"

"I hated those three. Stepping around like they was afraid to get their feetsies dirty."

"We don't have ever to see "em again, they just came out here to make up their minds-"

"Money for their flouncy city ladies-"

"Lord, what do we carel We're going on the map!"

"You really think?"133 "I know it. It's our turn."

"I am living better now than Avery ever gave me, I'll say it Blue."

"Molly I mean to make good for the three of us."

"You always fancied Flo over me."

"You were so forbidding-"

"I can't forget him. I see him in my sleep."

"If I can be alright in your eyes I'll be alright in my own."

"I keep hearing his voice: Til be back,' he says. It's what he said to me."

"Well then, if that's so, I doubt it but if it's so, if he does come back then we'll be ready for him. We'll all be ready."

She was quiet for a minute. "We've both suf- fered," she said. And I was holding her hand in my hands. It was enough to start me keeping the books again.

No, maybe I'm not telling it right. When I dipped my pen in the ink it was not just for celebration, it was something that had to be done. Zar and Isaac both came to me to claim frontage on the street once they saw Jonce Early's ten-dollar gold piece. What other way was there to fix people's rights? I don't think I was such a fool as to be blinded by my feelings. We had bunks to sleep on and another room with a door, and they were good nights as we lay in one bunk, hugging like the two poor married creatures we were-she had the shyness of a bride, she was so becoming, I never knew such joy. But wasn't this time of our conjunction the time of Jimmy's dismay? And the sight of her smiles at me, like the closed door at night, a greater134 reason for his hate? She might waver and relent but it only fixed him more. He stayed out all the day long, I didn't see him from one meal to the next. He wouldn't talk to me and when I'd catch sight of him outside as I'd be going about my business he'd slip away fast like he hadn't heard me call. How good could it have been for two of us when there were three?

The pages are full of dealings, I see the entries, all through the year the street grew up and you can see how right here on the lines. I wrote each per- son's name and what he owned. I put down how Molly had all rights to me as wife and Jimmy as son. I wrote out the claims. Jonce Early came back to build a public house where he'd staked out. A smith named Roebuck figured there would be plenty of horses by and by and digging tools to fix, and so he set up his forge. Another man-I can't read his name, I never did hear him called- rode in with a wagon of coal he would sell in sacks when the winter came. More names with each pa.s.s- ing month, I remember I marveled at it; hearing of our prospects, these people were coming to settle, it was common enough sense, but I always had the feeling somebody had certified Hard Times as a place in the world and that's why it was happen- ing.

Here it shows how my commissions rose on the Express business. Here is the marriage notice of Bert and the little girl-he could write, but all she did was put a mark down. Now that tells a lot, the minute I began to keep the records I was the natural party to every complaint, legal or other-135 wise. I used to feel I was a horsebreaker and each day one of a remuda I had to cut down to size. For several Sat.u.r.days running Miss Adah, Mae and Jessie kept Bert happy by shunting only the drunk- est and least able customers to the Chinese girl- so that all she had to do was lead them to a room, take their money and leave them sleeping there. Bert had a good length of wood near his hand while he tended the bar and he was ready to jump out and use it if he thought his sweetheart was having trouble. The ladies didn't want that; and they suffered too whenever any of Bert's digging friends made a joke of him for quitting his job at the lodes. "Like to be around the stuff, Bert?" some- one would call out-and the strain just got to be too much for the ladies. They came to me as a delegation and elected me to break the news to Zar. "You can gentle him to it, Blue," Miss Adah said, "it won't be as bad as if he finds out for him- self."

So I did one day, while everyone else stayed out of sight. Well first I had to talk Zar out of killing Bert. And then out of firing him-that I did by convincing him Isaac Maple would hire the boy in his place. When I had him calmed down I said: "Look here Zar, what's some little old Chinagirl matter when in just a few months you'll have the finest saloon in these parts. A businessman like you can't bother with such things."

"Not a saloon, frand. An hotel. Two stories. Gla.s.s windows. A mirror. A polished wood bar."

"Well there you are, that's big time Zar, and big times are coming."

"You are right."136 "Sure I'm right-h.e.l.l you'll be able to import a dozen Chinese if you want, this town grows up and you'll have more girls than you can choose."

"We will be a city!"

"Sure!"

"Alright Blue: you tell the boy I will not kill him."

"That's the decent thing, Zar."

"He loff s her, he can have her."

"Fine."

"For three hundred dollars he can have her."

Zar was a match for me, no question. When I took the news out to Bert and the others I looked at some long faces. But Molly came up with an idea: she said: "If Bert takes the girl, and brings in someone in her stead, maybe the Russian would make a trade."

So I tried that and I guess Zar didn't think there was a chance in h.e.l.l, he agreed readily. We sat there and it was like talking to some foreign king making a royal marriage for his daughter. If Bert got him another woman he wanted only one hun- dred dollars-which is what he'd paid for the Chinagirl-and he'd let the young fellow pay him in labor. That was all I could get out of him. He Btuck to those terms for the best part of a week. Till finally Bert borrowed our mule and ,rig and rode off .and was gone two days, and Lord! if he didn't come back with a sad grey-haired woman, full of sags, and deliver her up with a flourish. That was Mrs. Clement and I never found out where Bert got her. You just didn't look to find such en- terprise in a boy like that, and part of it was the way he never told anyone how he did it.

The Russian hadn't expected Bert to come up137 with anyone but it was to his credit he stuck to the terms. He might even have delighted in the boy's wherewithal. But then the trouble was Mae and Jessie. They didn't take to the new woman at all, they sniffed at her and found her wanting. When Zar offered her the same arrangement he had with them they went into a rage. It was an insult to them, there was a big fuss,and they made up their minds then and there to quit Zar and leave the town.

That was a noisy morning in my cabin, Jessie and Mae coming in and tearfully ordering me to write out tickets for the next stage. Miss Adah was with them, wringing her hands, and Zar shout- ing and ranting; and things were all inside out now as the girls were put out with Bert for disrupting things and Zar was standing up for him. But when Mae and Jessie demanded their share of the profits which Zar had been holding in trust for them, the Russian stopped the game: their money, along with his own, he had invested in the wood for the new "hotel." It was all gone, receipted by Alf, he told the furious women, and smiling he invited them to carry off their share of the lumber when it came on the freight wagons.

That took the heart out of them; and nothing more was said or done once the whole problem had reached its natural limits. By the time the lumber came, and Zar was hiring a few miners who knew how to carpenter, the women were actually looking forward to the luxury of those second-story rooms -although they never did warm up to old Mrs. Clement.

And by autumn, when the wedding was made, everyone-Zar, Mae, Jessie as well as the rest of138 us in the town-were happy for the two young people. And the only shadows were on the faces of Bert and his Chinagirl, both comhed and clean but awful scared, and looking sorry about the whole thing.

I was the one did the marrying. I don't regret it, I think it was proper enough, it sort of fell on me to finished the business I had become party to. We stood out in front of Zar's old place. There was a scatter of people looking on including a few folks I barely knew. Over the heads, across the street, was Zar's new saloon, two stories as it was planned, with three rooms with gla.s.s windows on the second floor and a false front another story high; next to it, with an alley in between, was Isaac Maple's wood store which Swede had raised almost by himself. From where I stood the scar of the old street was blocked from my sight. None of the newcomers knew that I was no real Mayor, or that the words I spoke to wed the boy and girl were those few true phrases told to me by Miss Adah-who seemed ashamed even to recall them -plus what I could summon up in my mind from the ordained minister who married me more than twenty years before. Miss Adah had a Bible too, and had offered it to me until Mae pointed out the Chinagirl wasn't hardly a Christian and so it would not be fitting.

Afterwards Zar gave out drinks on the house. His bar and his mirror weren't arrived yet and he pa.s.sed the liquor out from behind his plank, we all drank up, one of the new men showed a violin, and although it was afternoon we danced around on that new pine floor till it was tolerably sancti- fied. Swede brought his Helga in to dance, I139 danced with Molly, I did alright for an old man, that rigid back was soft in my hands and there was a flush of pleasure on Molly's face as we stomped around, arms around, till we could dance no more.

Sometime between that heady evening she re- lented and that day we danced-there must have been a moment when we reached what perfection was left to our lives. "We've both suffered," she said, but words don't turn as the earth turns, they only have their season. When was the moment, I don't know when, with all my remembrances I can't find it; maybe it was during our dance, or it was some morning as a breeze of air shook the sun's light; maybe it was one of those nights of hugging when we reached our ripeness and the earth turned past it; maybe we were asleep. Really how life gets on is a secret, you only know your memory, and it makes its own time. The real time leads you along and you never know when it hap- pens, the best that can be is come and gone.

What my mind sees now is the winter, Novem- ber. The cabin is double-boarded, snug against the wind. Just inside, by the front door, is my desk, Swede's table which I've bought from him. The*e are shelves on the walls filled with pro- visions, pegs hung with extra boughten clothes for all of us, a commode with an ironstone jug and washbowl. Mr. Hayden Gillis sits at my desk look- ing a long tune at my books, a man all the way from the office of the Governor of the Territory.

"What have you charged for your lots Mr. Mayor," he says shortly, turning around to face me.140 "Well nothing to speak of. I put down witness stakes whenever someone claims a section he in- tends to build on. And he signs the ledger and I sign, that's all."

"You are not the promoter of this townsite?"

"No..."

"Would you believe it?" Molly says wiping her hands on her ap.r.o.n. "Anyone who wants, gets."

He looks from her to me-a short man with a large head, hair falling back to his shoulders, small features down near his chin. "Your records are thorough. But I see no mention of your election as Mayor."

"Well no sir, I just come by the t.i.tle. You see it got around how I was keeping a write on things. And then when we found there's going to be a road through us why people began to claim this piece and that along the street, and I kept things straight for them so there would be no fights. Mr. Zar, that's the Russian, and Mr. Maple the storekeep, they've been building for when the crowd comes to lay the road. Zar owns the big place down the street and the public house opposite. Isaac has the store and he's the one put up those sheet-iron cribs to rent. They are the big owners right now."

"But for this place and the windmill not a foot of streetfront do we own," Molly says angrily, "my husband likes to see other people make the money."

"Alright Molly."

"Somebody is going to drill another well, it's bound to happen although Blue doesn't see how. Then where will we be? I'll tell you Mr. Gillis, this is more than an honest man standing before you,141 you can trust his records for they show against him!"

"Well," the man says as he stands, "I think I've seen enough." He pulls at his hammer-claw coat, takes his stovepipe from my desk. "If you will come with me, sir," he says to me, and to Molly he nods.

Outside, although it is cold and the sky heavy, Zar and Isaac are waiting with their hats in their hands. We all four walk up to Zar's new place, not a word being said as the man strides in the lead, badly bowed in the legs and rocking with each step. Jimmy darts in from nowhere and begins to walk behind him in imitation until I take a swipe at him and he's gone again.

Isaac whispers to me: "Blue, if ye get the chance ask does he know Ezra Maple. He's a travelin' man, could be he's met my brother along the way." I would like to ask it for Isaac, along with a few questions in my own mind, but the official is not a man who allows himself to be put upon. While the others wait at the bar we go upstairs to the room he's taken (hastily given up by Jessie the day before) and he sits down at a table by the window and works with a sheaf of papers and ink stamps for a bit, muttering to himself as if I wasn't even standing there.

"Every time someone puts a little capital into this Territory I'm called in by the Governor and sent on my way. It doesn't matter I suffer from the rheumatism, nor that I'm past the age of riding a horse's back. If a man files a claim that yields, there's a town. If he finds some gra.s.s, there's a town. Does he dig a well? Another town. Does he142 stop somewhere to ease his bladder, there's a town. Over this land a thousand times each year towns spring up and it appears I have to charter them all. But to what purpose? The claim pinches out, the gra.s.s dies, the well dries up, and everyone will ride off to form up again somewhere else for me to travel. Nothing fixes in this d.a.m.ned country, people blow around at the whiff of the wind. You can't bring the law to a bunch of rocks, you can't settle the coyotes, you can't make a society out of sand. I sometimes think we're worse than the Indians . . . What is the name of this place, Hard Times? You are a well-meaning man Mr. Blue, I come across your likes occasionally. I noticed Blackstone on your desk, and Chitty's Pleadings. Well you can read the law as much as you like but it will be no weapon for the spring when the town swells with people coming to work your road. You need a peace officer but I don't even see you wear- ing a gun. I look out of this window and I see cabins, loghouse, cribs, tent, shanty, but I don't see a jail. You'd better build a jail. You'd better find a shootist and build a jail."

Then he turns and goes to his Gladstone travel- ing bag, unlocks it, burrows under some things and comes up with a labeled bottle of whiskey and two small gla.s.ses. He rubs the gla.s.ses with the flap of his coat, and then glancing up at me with that small face in that big head he hands me a gla.s.s and pours: "The jail can wait, but now let's drink to the end of your tenure."

Well everything he's said I stow in my mind, only thinking now what his visit means: it will be a long year of expectations but by the spring they will come true.143 I don't remember tasting whiskey as good as that. A few minutes later I walked down the stairs while the anxious faces looked up at me from the bar: Zar, Isaac, Swede, Bert Albany-none of them would do. Before anyone could say anything I went out and up the street to the stable and found Jenks sleeping just inside the door. I shook him awake and dragged him back to Hayden Gillia. And at the top of the stairs, while everyone below looked on amazed, and while Jenks himself stood wide awake now with his mouth open the man stuck a tin star on his jacket and swore him in as a Deputy Sheriff, salary twenty-five dollars a year payable the following year.

"You ever kill your man?" Mr. Gillis asked Jenks.

Jenks turned red: "Yessir, reckon ..."

"Good. You're running this town now. See to it these folks make up a pot for a jailhouse. Get the records from Mr. Blue here and keep them neat. First time you get a serious outlaw, undead, write a letter to the capital and we'll put a circuit judge on to you. Here's paper. Town charter. Census list forms. Pet.i.tion for statehood you can get peo- ple to sign when there's nothing else to keep you busy."

Then the man was clumping downstairs with his bag in his hand and his stovepipe hat and out the doors he went without a nod to anyone. Isaac Maple called up to me: "Blue?" But I shrugged and he ran out after. Everyone else crowded around me at the bar. What did it come to, this man's visit? What was happening? I smiled because there could be no doubt. "Rest your mind Zar," I said244 to the Russian, "all the money you're in for will come back at you double."

Jenks, in the meantime, was standing on the stairs with that sheaf of papers in his hand, glanc- ing down at the badge on his coat and then toward the doors and back again at his chest. He was well confounded. But then he began to appreciate what had happened and as he came down each step his wolfy smile got wider and wider.

"Wall," Zar shouted, "we are OK and without worry now Janks is Sheriff I"

Everyone laughed. Jenks came up to the bar and said to Bert who was tending: "Somethin1 fer ever- man heah!" and he waved his hand grandly. In the drinking that followed Jenks laid his papers on the bar. They must have fallen off in the fun, I found them later on the floor, bootmarks all over them. I gathered them up and tucked them inside. my vest.

Jenks's being a lawman didn't change things much. People still came to me with what was on their minds; and I still kept the ledgers. I was ready to give them to him any time he asked. But maybe a month after Hayden Gillis had been through, the Sheriff came to me saying as he'd allow me to do the paperwork for him considering how busy he/ was on the street keeping an eye on matters:-and how, besides, I knew how to write. And from then, as before, he had no part in any- thing that was on my desk, except to come in once - or twice each day to look over my shoulder if I was sitting there, to nod sagely, but more likely only to get a free meal from Molly. So far as I145 know n.o.body in the town paid Jenks much atten- tion except to make a joke of him now and then; but Molly and Jimmy treated him with respect and deference and it made him feel more the man he was supposed to be. He paced the street regular, wearing a gun in an open holster from his belt, and his star carefully displayed. And sometimes Jimmy followed a few steps after him and it got so you could tell where Jenks was by spotting Jimmy at some door along the street.

By the new year the street ran from my cabin, which was its southernmost end, in a crescent that found itself once more at John Bear's shack at the foot of the trail leading up to the lodes. It was a full year, and half again another, since the day I put spade to earth for a dugout.

Molly said: "All these fools have come like buz- zards after the smell of meat."