It irritated Gabe French, and he said, “They’d not do it if he was alive. Cleve van Valen could raise millions when nobody else could lay hands on a copper penny … just on his name.”
“I’ve heard that,” the man said skeptically. “But I don’t believe it.”
Gabe felt his anger mounting. Age had brought a quick impatience to Gabe French.
Heretofore he had been tolerant of fools; he was so no longer. “A man must pay his debts,” the man continued stiffly. “van Valen always lived beyond his income.”
“There was more’n a few years,” Gabe replied testily, “when nobody could have lived beyond his income. Time was when one mine paid him upwards of eighty thousand a month. Eighty thousand. Never made that kind of money myself.” “I don’t imagine you did.” The stranger glanced contemptuously at Gabe’s shabby clothing.
Gabe French tried to stifle his irritation and failed. A man had few pleasures when he grew old, and Gabe allowed himself his irritation at petty things. He had never been known to fret at disaster, but in these later years he found pleasure in grumbling.
He looked at the man coldly. “Not to say,” he said deliberately, “that I couldn’t buy and sell many a man who owns a mansion on this hill. As for Cleve van Valen, there was never a better friend than him, or a more loyal one. Came a time—that was years back—glanders got into my horses and I had two freight contracts going, and all my stock dead or dying almost overnight. “Somebody told Cleve, and he came over Donner Pass driving a hundred head of horses for me—and that in the late fall with snow falling. He made it through with the pass closing up behind him. Saved my bacon. “There was another time when the two of us got ambushed by Modocs up near Klamath Lake. Our horses were killed and I had a bullet in me; and Cleve, he stood them off throughout the day, and in the night got away, carrying me on his back.”
The man looked startled. “Then you—Why, you must be Gabe French!” “That’s right,” Gabe said quietly, and glancing up the street, then down, he stepped off the curb and walked across.
Cleve was dead, but Lilith was alive, and by the Lord Harry, if she needed money he knew where she could get it. The trouble was that Lilith was a mighty proud woman, mighty proud.
Half a dozen rigs were standing in the street and in the short driveway leading up to the house. Gabe walked past them and went inside, pushing through a small knot of men talking by the door.
A crowd was gathered in the hall, and on the stairway stood the auctioneer. “Two thousand dollars? Is that the last bid? Ladies and gentlemen, this trophy is solid gold and fully inscribed.” He indicated letters on the side of the gold figure. “ ‘Mr. Cleve van Valen. President of the San Francisco-Kansas City Railroad.’ It is a treasure he held dear to his heart.” Gabe glanced around, his eyes searching for Lilith. When he saw her he was startled and momentarily dismayed. Somehow, he had never thought of Lilith as being old, yet come to think of it, she must be all of sixty now. She sat in a chair overlooking the hall, clad in a lovely silk gown, her hair faultlessly done. Next to her was a man Gabe recognized as her attorney. “Do I hear three thousand for this priceless possession?” She was just near enough for him to hear her say, “Priceless, my foot! We used it as a doorstop.”
The auctioneer spoke again. “Why, the gold here alone is worth three thousand—“ “Twenty-five hundred!”
“Sold!”
Gabe edged to the back of the crowd. He was only a short distance from Lilith, but to reach her he had to find his way around through a small hall. He came up behind her quietly.
“A sad day, Lilith,” her attorney was saying.
“Sad? We made and spent fortunes. What’s sad about that? If Cleve had lived long enough we would have made and spent another.”
A clerk edged up behind her. “I beg your pardon, Mrs. van Valen.”
“What?”
“The chair. It’s been sold.”
“Take it.” She got to her feet quickly, gracefully. “Quit apologizing and take it. Or should I say”—she smiled sweetly—“ Take it and be damned’?” The clerk grinned. “Sorry, ma’am.”
“Get out of here,” she said testily, but accompanying the words with a smile. “If there had been any other way to pay off the debts, Lilith,” the attorney said, “we would have found it.”
“It doesn’t matter. I have two things you can’t take, my memories and my ranch in Arizona.”
“I don’t want to dash your hopes, but I am afraid that property is nearly worthless.”
“It’s there, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but most of the cattle have been sold off or stolen.” “I’ll get cattle. If necessary,”—she smiled—“I might even rustle a few head myself. Cleve always told me most of the big ranches were built with a running iron and a fast horse.”
“You will need someone to work it, someone to manage it for you.”
“I have just the man.”
“Who?” the attorney asked doubtfully.
“My nephew. He’s a marshal down there somewhere.”
“But at your age,” he protested, “in that rough country!”
“Rough? My pa and ma—they were killed going down the Ohio just looking for land.
I guess I’ve got some Prescott blood in me after all.”
Gabe Fernch moved up quietly. “Lil?”
“Gabe!” The genuine feeling in her voice brought tears to his eyes, which he hastily excused by faking a sneeze, a very poor imitation. “Gabe French! I might have known you would come. Let’s go to the kitchen and have some coffee.”
She turned on the lawyer. “You haven’t sold my coffee pot, have you?” He flushed. “Lilith … it was part of the set. We sold the silver, you know. A very good price, I might say.”
“Oh, bother your silver! I mean the old black one.” The attorney looked relieved. “Oh, of course! No, that’s still there. I am afraid we haven’t had an offer for it yet.”
“What he means,” Lilith said to Gabe, “is that nobody would want it. That’s the pot Cleve and I made coffee in all the way across the plains, and many a time after that. In fact, your wife—Agatha—it was ours together.” “Made good coffee,” Gabe said. “I never drank better.” Together they went down to the kitchen, and put the pot on the fire. Then Lilith sat down and looked across the table at Gabe.
“I was sorry about Agatha, and sorry we couldn’t come to the funeral. Cleve always hated funerals, and I am almost as bad. Always liked to remember folks as they were, and as I didn’t see Agatha buried, she’s very much around … You were lucky, Gabe. You got a great woman.”
“Don’t I know it? I fancied her all the while, there on the wagon train, but never thought she noticed me.”
He looked down at his big, square-knuckled hands. “I heard you talking up there, about the Arizona ranch. Lil, if there’s anything you want … no matter how much, you just tell me. You know there wasn’t a time Cleve wouldn’t have bailed me out of trouble, and he did, many a time.”
“And vice versa.” Lilith put her hand over his. “Gabe, there’s nothing I need. I will have enough when this is over to get to Arizona, and Zeb Rawlings is going to come down and manage the property for me. But thanks just the same.”
“If I was a few years younger—“
“Forget it. Zeb can do all anybody can do. He’s a marshal down there now, and he was in the Army. Civil War and Indian wars.”
“I heard about him.” He glanced at her thoughtfully. “Wasn’t he the one who killed Floyd Gant?”
“Yes—and a good job, too.”
“I knew Gant. He gave us trouble on the freight lines a few times in Nevada. His brother Charlie was worse. Whatever became of Charlie?” “I don’t know. I didn’t know Floyd had a brother.” For a while they sat silent. In the kitchen they were far from the voices above, for the kitchen was on a lower floor that opened upon another street. Just a few steps down the hill from that door and you was in Chinatown. “They were good times, Gabe,” Lilith said suddenly, “the best times. Nobody said much about it at the time, but we all had the feeling we were doing something great, that we were building something.”
“I know. I was talking to a writing feller, man from Boston. He was asking me about crossing the plains and he commented on how many folks—just ordinary folks—had kept journals or diaries or something of the kind. They all seemed to have the notion they were living through something that might never happen again. He was looking around, trying to find those diaries before they were lost.”