Those Coopers didn’t like it much, but my roans was standing rock still now that I’d quit nudging him with my spur, and at that range a man wasn’t likely to miss very often. And it’s a fact that nobody wants to die very much.
“If she’s Mallory’s wife, what’s she doing with you?”
“She was headed for Whipple,” I said, “and she turned sick, and the doc said she should go back to Ehrenberg. They asked me to take her there. Served with the general during the war,” I added. “He knows me well.”
“I never heard of no General Mallory,” George Cooper said.
“You never heard of General James Whit-field Mallory?” By now I believed in him my own self. “He was aide to General Grant! Same class at the Point with Phil Sheridan and Jeb Stuart. Fact is, they are talking of making him governor of the territory just to wipe out outlaws and such.”
“Begging the lady’s pardon, but he’s noted for being a mighty mean man – strict. And smart? He’s slicker than a black snake on a wet-clay sidehill. Last thing you want to do is get him riled.”
“Lady here was telling me if he is made territorial governor he plans to recruit a special police force from among the Apache. He figures if those Apaches hate white men they might as well turn it to use tracking down outlaws – and he doesn’t say anything about them bringing anybody back.”
“That’s not human!” George Cooper protested.
“That’s the general for you. He’s that kind.” Now that trusty Colt had stayed right there in my fist, and so I said, “Now, we’ll ride on.”
Motioning her on ahead, I rode after her, but believe me, I sat sidewise in my saddle with that Colt ready for a quick shot. The last I could see they were still asetting there, arguing.
Most talking I’d done since leaving Tennessee, and the most lying I’d done since who flung the chunk.
We fetched up to Hardyville about sundown on the second day, and the first person I saw when we rode up to the store was Bill Squires.
“Bill,” I said, “the Coopers were ahunting me. Only way they could have known I had that gold was if you told them. Somebody had to ride out to tell them, and somebody would want to be on hand to divvy up.
“Now,” I said, “if you want to call me a liar, I’ll take this lady inside and I’ll come right back. But you hear this: they didn’t get one speck of this gold, and neither are you.”
“I panned my share of that gold!” He was looking mighty bleak.
“So you did, but yours wasn’t enough; you had to try for all of it. A month or so back Jack Walker left camp and was drygulched. I plan to send your gold to his widow and family, and you can save your objections to that until I come out.”
So I went inside with Christine Mallory, and there were two or three fresh Army officers right off the boat waiting to go to Fort Whipple.
“My husband is not a general,” she said then, “and his name is Robert Mallory.”
“I know that, Mrs. Mallory. Your husband is Second Lieutenant Robert Mallory, and he’s greener than meadow grass. Month or so back he came out and ordered me to get my horse off the parade ground at Whipple. Mighty stiff-necked he was too.
“Ma’am, you haven’t got you a man there, you’ve got a boy, but a boy sound in wind and limb; and two or three years on the frontier will give you a man you can be proud of. But if you run off now the chances are he will resign his commission and run after you, and you’ll have a boy for a husband as long as you live.
“You stay with him, you hear? You ain’t much account, either, but give you seasoning and you will be. Fact is, if you’d been a woman back there on that trail I might have been less of the gentleman, but you haven’t grown up to a man yet.”
She had the prettiest blue eyes you ever saw, and she looked straight at me. She was mad, but she was honest, and behind those blue eyes she had a grain of sense.
“You may be right,” she admitted, “although I’d rather slap your face than agree. After what I have been through these past few days, that dirt floor would look very good indeed.”
“Ma’am, when my time comes to marry, I hope I find a woman as pretty as you – and with as much backbone.”
Leaving her talking to those officers, I went to the counter with my gold and checked it in with Hardy in the names of those to whom it was credited, to Jim Hodge, Willy Mander, Tom Padgett – and to Mrs. Jack Walker, whose address I supplied.
“And I’ve got a hundred dollars coming,” I said.
Hardy paid it to me, and I put it in my pocket. More money than I’d seen since the coon went up the tree.
Then I went outside like I’d promised, and Bill Squires surprised me. He was sure enough waiting.
He shot at me and missed. I shot at him and didn’t.
Louis L’Amour
The Courting of Griselda
The Sacketts – Short Story
from the collection – End of the Drive –
When it came to Griselda Popley, I was down to bedrock and showing no color. What I mean is, I wasn’t getting anyplace. The only thing I’d learned since leaving the Cumberland in Tennessee was how to work a gold placer claim, but I was doing no better with that than I was with Griselda.
Her pa, Frank Popley, had a claim just a whoop and a holler down canyon from me. He had put down a shaft on a flat bench at the bend of the creek and he was down a ways and making a fair clean-up.
He was scraping rock down there and panning out sixty to seventy dollars a day, and one time he found a crack where the gold had seeped through and filled in a space under a layer of rock, and he cleaned out six hundred dollars in four or five minutes.
It sure does beat all how prosperity makes a man critical of all who are less prosperous. Seems like some folks no sooner get two dollars they can rattle together than they start looking down their noses at folks who only have two bits.
We were right friendly while Popley was sinking his shaft, but as soon as he began bringing up gold he started giving me advice and talking me down to Griselda. From the way he cut up, you’d have thought it was some ability or knowledge of his that put that gold there. I never saw a man get superior so fast.
He was running me down and talking up that Arvie Wilt who had a claim nearby the Popley place, and Arvie was a man I didn’t cotton to.
He was two inches taller than my six feet and three, and where I pack one hundred and eighty pounds on that lean a frame, most of it in my chest, shoulders, and arms, Arvie weighed a good fifty pounds more and he swaggered it around as if almighty impressed with himself.
He was a big, easy-smiling man that folks took to right off, and it took them a while to learn he was a man with a streak of meanness in him that was nigh onto downright viciousness. Trouble was, a body never saw that mean streak unless he was in a bind, but when trouble came to him, the meanness came out.
But Arvie was panning out gold, and you’d be surprised how that increased his social standing there on Horse Collar Creek.
Night after night he was over to the Popleys’, putting his big feet under their table and being waited on by Griselda. Time to time I was there, too, but they talked gold and how much they weighed out each day while all I was weighing out was gravel.
He was panning a fine show of color and all I had was a .44 pistol gun, a Henry rifle, and my mining tools. And as we all know it’s the high card in a man’s hand to be holding money when he goes a-courting.
None of us Sacketts ever had much cash money. We were hardworking mountain folk who harvested a lean corn crop off a side-hill farm, and we boys earned what clothes weren’t made at home by trapping muskrats or coon. Sometimes we’d get us a bear, and otherwise we’d live on razorback hog meat or venison.
Never will forget the time a black bear treed old Orrin, that brother of mine, and us caught nine miles from home and none of us carrying iron.