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 gold—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 brass-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, Cleve—I can always sing. I think I’ll make my start right back there … ‘Next time,’ I promised them. Well, this is our way back—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, French—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. Jackass 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 rich—at least temporarily. They called it Jackass Hill from the braying of the jackasses in the pack trains as they passed 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 brassy 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 pass by, then recognized him. “Oh, hello, Mr. Morgan. Sorry I can’t invite you into the wagon. We’re cramped for space.” “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 poorhouse—at least I am beginning to suspect so—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 wanted—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, except—a little—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, Roger—not ever.”
“How can you say that?” He was incredulous. “You just said—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.”