The Courting Of Griselda by Louis L’Amour
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 cleanup.
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 sidehill 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.
You ever tackle a grown bear with a club? Me and Tyrel, we done it. We chunked
at him with rocks and sticks, but he paid them no mind. He was bound and
determined to have Orrin, and there was Orrin up high in the small branches of
that tree like a possum huntin’ persimmons.
Chunking did no good, so Tyrel and me cut us each a club and we had at that
bear. He was big and he was mean, but while one of us closed in on him before,
the other lambasted him from behind. Time to time we’d stop lambasting that bear
to advise Orrin.
Finally that old bear got disgusted and walked off and Orrin came down out of
that tree and we went on to the dance at Skunk Hollow School. Orrin did his
fiddling that night from a sitting stool because the bear had most of his pants.
Right now I felt like he must have felt then. Every day that Griselda girl went
a-walking past my claim paying me no mind but switching her skirts until I was
fair sweating on my neck.
Her pa was a hard man. One time I went over there for supper like I had when I’d
been welcome, back when neither of us had anything. He would stand up there in
his new boots, consulting a new gold watch every minute or two, and talking high
and mighty about the virtues of hard work and the application of brains. And all
the time that Arvie Wilt was a-setting over there making big eyes at Griselda.
If anything, Arvie had more gold than Popley did and he was mighty welcome at
table, but for me the atmosphere was frosting over a mite, and the only reason I
dug in and held on was that I’d scraped my pot empty of beans and for two days
I’d eaten nothing but those skimpy little wild onions.
Now when it came right down to it, Popley knew I’d worked hard as either of
them, but I was showing no color and he wanted a son-in-law who was prosperous,
so needing to find fault, he taken issue with me on fighting.
We boys from the high-up hills aren’t much on bowing and scraping, but along
about fighting time, you’ll find us around. Back in the Cumberland I grew up to
knuckle-and-skull fighting, and what I hadn’t learned there I picked up working
west on a keelboat.
Pa, he taught us boys to be honest, to give respect to womenfolk, to avoid
trouble when we could, but to stand our ground when it came to a matter of
principle, and a time or two I’d stood my ground.
That old six-shooter of mine was a caution. It looked old enough to have worn
out three men, but it shot true and worked smooth. My hands are almighty big but
I could fetch that pistol faster than you could blink. Not that I made an issue
of it because Pa taught us to live peaceable.
Only there was that time down to Elk Creek when a stranger slicked an ace off
the bottom, and I taken issue with him. He had at me with a fourteen-inch blade
and my toothpick was home stuck in a tree where I’d left it after skinning out a
deer, so I fetched him a clout alongside the skull and took the blade from him.
A friend of his hit me from behind with a chair, which I took as unfriendly, and
then he fetched out his pistol, so I came up a-shooting.
Seemed like I’d won myself a name as a bad man to trouble, and it saved me some
hardship. Folks spoke polite and men seeking disagreement took the other side of
the road, only it gave Popley something he could lay a hand to, and he began
making slighting remarks about men who got into brawls and cutting scrapes.
Words didn’t come easy to me and by the time I’d thought of the right answer I
was home in bed, but when Popley talked I felt like I was disgracing Griselda by
coming a-courting. So I went back to my claim shanty and looked into the bean
pot again, but it was still empty, and I went a-hunting wild onions.
Nobody could ever say any of us Sacketts fought shy of work, so I dug away at my
claim until I was satisfied there was nothing there but barren gravel. Climbing
out of that shaft I sat down and looked at my hole card.
There was nothing left but to load up my gear on that spavined mule I had and
leave the country. I was out of grub, out of cash money, and out of luck. Only
leaving the country meant leaving Griselda, and worst of all, it meant leaving
her to Arvie Wilt.
Time or two I’ve heard folks say there’s always better fish in the sea, but not
many girls showed me attention. Many a time I sat lonely along the wall, feared
to ask a girl to dance because I knew she’d turn me down, and no girl had paid
me mind for a long time until Griselda showed up.
She was little, she was pert, and she had quick blue eyes and an uptilted nose
and freckles where you didn’t mind them. She’d grown into a woman and was