“I started a time or two. Cleve never kept one. But he believed what you’re saying. I heard him say so.”
She looked over at Gabe again. “I was never sorry, Gabe. I never regretted marrying Cleve. We had a good life together.”
Gabe nodded without replying. He listened to the sound of the fire, and then when Lilith poured their coffee he crossed one leg carefully over the other. Certainly, he thought, nobody had ever enjoyed their money more. “We made it big on the Mother Lode,” Lilith said, “and when that was gone Cleve went off to Nevada and got in on the ground floor at the Comstock. “I think we followed every boom there was, sometimes horseback, sometimes in a rig. I’ll never forget that mine near Hamilton. Cleve took three million dollars’ worth of silver out of a hole in the ground seventy by forty, by fifteen feet deep, and then a man came along and offered him another three million for the mine, and Cleve laughed at him.” “I recall.”
“There wasn’t three pounds of silver left in the hole. Cleve had it all. He was offered three million dollars for a hole in the ground big enough for a cellar.” Gabe shifted his position on the chair. These days if he sat too long in one position his back started bothering him.
“If I’d known about this,” he said, “I’d have come sooner. You could have kept the house.”
“I don’t want it, Gabe. I must be practical. It’s too big for me alone, and when it comes to that, I’d rattle around in it like a stone in a barrel. No, I’d rather be out there in Arizona trying to do something with that ranch. A woman in my position hasn’t any business just sitting around. It won’t do … and I wouldn’t like it, anyway. I’ve been busy all my life, and I’m too old to change now. Besides”—she smiled at him—“I’ve never been in Arizona.” He finished his coffee and got up. “When you’re ready, I’ll take you to the station. And if ever you need me, just send word. Old Gabe will always be standing by.”
He held out his hand to her. “It’s a long time since I carried Cleve across that muddy street in St. Louis so he could win a bet.” She took his hand, then leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the cheek.
“Thanks, Gabe. You’re a real friend.”
He hurried outside, afraid he would let her see his eyes watering. He was a sentimental old fool.
He glanced at the group around the other door. “Go ahead,” he said aloud, “you aren’t buying anything. She still has all she’s ever needed.” Lilith refilled her cup. It was quiet in the kitchen, with the cook and the maid no longer around, and in many ways it was the most pleasant room in the big house. The fire felt good, for the night had been cool and dampness lingered. From her reticule she took the photograph of Cleve that Huffman had made in Miles City, Montana, only four, or was it five, years ago. He had been a handsome man, no question about that. “I wish Eve could have known you, Cleve,” she said to herself, “and Linus.”
How far, how far she had come, and how much, how much she had left behind!
Part 5—THE OUTLAWS
Some of those who went West stayed restless. Not for them the towns, the stores, the plough, the round-up. They had lived foot-loose and they would go on living that way until rope or lead put them under the sod. Lean-jawed men with snakes’ eyes and rough humor, they plundered where they could, had their brief day until the Law came to the West and put them down forever…
Chapter 19
Jethro Stuart was too old in the mountains to ignore the feeling he now had, yet on the several occasions when he had drawn up in the thick timber to study his back trail, he had seen nobody.
But he was sure he was followed. He was followed by somebody who took great pains to keep from being seen, and it worried him. Jethro Stuart was sixty-six years old in this spring of 1883, and forty-eight of those years he had spent in the western mountains. The place toward which he was now heading he had last seen while traveling with Osborne Russell in 1838 or thereabouts.
They had left the Rocky Mountain Fur Company to become free trappers, and following up the Stinkingwater they had found the valley. They had been followed that time, too. Only then it was by Blackfeet, and the tribe had been pacified long since. So far as Jethro knew, there wasn’t a warlike Indian in the entire country, let alone in these remote mountains near the head of the Yellowstone.
It had been a week ago today that he had seen his last human being. Unexpectedly he had come upon a Texas cabin built in a small valley. There had been corrals, a shed built of poles, and some two dozen very fine horses grazing in the meadow. He had swapped for one of those horses and was riding it now. He had come up to the place in the late afternoon and the man had waited in the door of the cabin, a rifle across his arm, until Jethro had stopped in the ranch yard.
“All right if I come up? I’m peaceful.”
“If you ain’t,” the man replied coolly, “I’ve got the means to make you thataway. But come on up.”
“Last time I was through here my party was the only bunch of white men closer than Fort Hall.”
“Mountain men?”
“Was. I rode with Wyeth and them.”
“Get down. Company’s mighty scarce hereabouts, an’ when you find it, it generally ain’t of the best.”
Jethro got down and stripped the saddle from his mount A tall boy come from the log cabin, rifle in the hollow of his arm. Obviously, he had been covered by more than one gun. Well, that was as it should be. It was good to know the old breed were still around. Be a sad day when a man didn’t stand ready to receive company, good or bad.
“It’s a far piece to be ridin’ alone,” the man commented. “And you’re pointed into some mighty rough country.”
“More than forty year in the mountains, an’ more’n half that time alone. I lost my wife.”
“Children?”
“Daughter … she married. Living down Arizona way, but it’s been a time since I seen her.”
“My wife passed on two year ago.” The man looked at Jethro, a challenge in his eyes. “She was an Indian. A Shoshone.”
“Good folks,” Jethro replied calmly, and then to put the squaw man at his ease, he added, “I lived with the Nez Perce one time.” There were four at table aside from himself—the man, two boys, and a girl. She was the youngest, and maybe fourteen. The boys were tall for their years, slim but with good shoulders. All of them were excited by his coming and were filled with questions.
The food was good, he had to allow that. Tipped back in his chair, he told them about the railroad that had been built through to the California lands. They had heard of it, but had never seen it.
“I’ve seen steam cars,” the father said. “I’m a New York man, myself. Upper New York state. Migrated west with my family but we all went different ways, seemed like. Never did get together again.”
He was a strong, powerfully built man with a strong jaw and steady eyes. The place was mighty nice, Jethro decided, mighty nice. No rawhide outfit, but kept up, and neat. There were good stacks of hay out yonder, and a field that had been planted to corn and garden truck.
Never one to miss anything he could see with his eyes, Jethro had seen nothing slipshod here. There was a dugout with a heavy door that was likely a place to store furs, and there was a grizzly hide nailed up on the barn that was the biggest he’d ever seen.
“There’s bigger,” the man said. “There’s one old silver-tip grizzly up in these mountains I’m just a-honin’ to get in my sights; but he’s smart, too durned smart, and ‘less a man is careful, he’ll get himself bear-killed. That bear will hunt a man who starts trailin’ him.”
“Heard of that,” Jethro agreed.
“Follered him one time, then gave up and started back. Something made me look back, and from where I stood I could see where my trail would have led. And there, all hunkered down beside that trail and a-waitin’ for me was that old silver-tip. If I’d gone twenty yards further that grizzly would have tackled me head-on.”
Jethro tamped the tobacco in his pipe, and noticed the look in his host’s eyes.