talked-about man. That one holdup didn’t pan out for them became I dropped off
the stage and shot the gun out of one of the outlaw’s hands—it was an accident,
as my foot slipped on a rock and spoiled my aim—and put two holes in the other
one.
We took them back into town, and the shot one lived. He lived but he didn’t
learn … six months later they caught him stealing a horse and hung him to the
frame over the nearest ranch gate.
At South Pass City we holed up to wait out a storm and I read in a newspaper how
Orrin was running for the state legislature, and well spoken of. Orrin was young
but it was a time for young men, and he was as old as Alexander Hamilton in
1776, and older than William Pitt when he was chancellor in England. As old as
Napoleon when he completed his Italian campaign.
I’d come across a book by Jomini on Napoleon, and another by Vegetius on the
tactics of the Roman legions. Most of the time I read penny dreadfuls as they
were all a body could find, except once in a while those paper-bound classics
given away by the Bull Durham company for coupons they enclosed. A man could
find those all over the west, and many a cowhand had read all three hundred and
sixty of them.
We camped along mountain streams, we fished, we hunted, we survived. Here and
yonder we had a brush with Indians. One time we outran a bunch of Blackfeet,
another time had a set-to with some Sioux. I got a nicked ear out of that one
and Cap lost a horse, so we came into Laramie astride Montana horse, the both of
us riding him.
Spring was coming and we rode north with the changing weather and staked a claim
on a creek in Idaho, but nothing contented me any more. We had made our living,
but little more than that. We’d taken a bunch of furs and sold out well, and I’d
made a payment to Don Luis and sent some money home.
There was a two-by-four town near where we staked our claim. I mean, there was
no town but a cluster of shacks and a saloon called the Rose-Marie. A big man
with a square red face, sandy-red hair and small blue eyes ran the place. He
laid his thick hands on the bar and you saw the scars of old fist fights there,
and those little eyes studied you cruel … like he was figuring how much you’d
be worth to him.
“What’ll you have, gents? Something to cut the dust?”
“Out of that bottle in the cabinet,” I said, as I’d seen him take a drink out of
it himself. “We’ll have a shot of that bourbon.”
“I can recommend the barrel whiskey.”
“I bet you can. Give it to us from the bottle.”
“My own whiskey. I don’t usually sell it.”
There were two men sitting at a back table and they were sizing us up. One thing
I’d noticed about those men. They got their service without paying. I had a
hunch they worked for the firm, and if they did, what did they do?
“My name is Brady,” the red-haired man said, “Martin Brady.”
“Good,” I said, “a man should have a name.” We put our money on the bar and
turned to go. “You keep that bottle handy. We tried that river whiskey before.”
After three days we had only a spot or two of color. Straightening up from my
pick I said, “Cap, the way I hear it we should have a burro, and when the burro
strays, we follow him, and when we find that burro he’s pawing pay dirt right
out of the ground, or you pick up a chunk to chunk at the burro and it turns out
to be pure-dee gold.”
“Don’t you believe all you hear.” He pushed his hat back. “I been lookin’ the
ground over. Over there,” he indicated what looked like an old stream bed, “that
crick flowed for centuries. If there’s gold in the crick there’s more of it
under that bench there.”
Up on the bench we cut timber and built a flume to carry water and a sluice box.
Placer mining isn’t just a matter of scooping up sand and washing it out in a
pan. The amount of gold a man can get that way is mighty little, and most places
he can do as well punching cows or riding shotgun on a stage.
The thing to do is locate some color and then choose a likely spot like this
bench and sink a shaft down to bedrock, panning out that gravel that comes off
the bedrock, working down to get all the cracks and to peel off any loose slabs
and work the gravel gathered beneath them. Gold is heavy, and over the years it
works deeper and deeper through loose earth or gravel until it reaches bedrock
and can go no further.
When we started to get down beyond six feet we commenced getting some good
color, and we worked all the ground we removed from there on down. Of a night
I’d often sit up late reading whatever came to hand, and gradually I was
learning a good bit about a lot of things.
On the next claim there was a man named Clark who loaned me several books. Most
of the reading a man could get was pretty good stuff … nobody wanted to carry
anything else that far.
Clark came to our fire one night. “Cap, you make the best sourdough bread I ever
ate. I’m going to miss it.”
“You taking out?”
“She’s deep enough, Cap, I’m leaving tomorrow. I’m going back to the States, to
my wife and family. I worked in a store for six, seven years and always wanted
one of my own.”
“You be careful,” Cap said.
Clark glanced around, then lowered his voice. “Have you heard those yarns, too?
About the killings?”
“They found Wilton’s body last week,” I said, “he’d been buried in a shallow
grave but the coyotes dug him out.”
“I knew him.” Clark accepted another plate of beans and beef and then he said,
“I believe those stories. Wilton was carrying a heavy poke, and he wasn’t a man
to talk it around.”
He forked up some more beans, then paused. “Sackett, you’ve been talked up as a
man who’s good with a gun.”
“It’s exaggerated.”
“If you’ll ride out with me I’ll pay you a hundred dollars each.”
“That’s good money, but what about our claim?”
“This means everything to me, boys. I talked to Dickey and Wells, and they’re
reliable men who will watch your claim.”
Cap lit up his pipe and I poured coffee for all of us. Clark just wasn’t
a-woofin’. Most of the miners who gambled their money away at the Rose-Marie in
town had no trouble leaving. It was only those who tried to leave with their
money. At least three were sitting a-top some fat pokes of gold wondering how to
get out alive and still keep what they’d worked for.
“Clark,” I said, “Cap and me, we need the money. We’d help even if you couldn’t
afford to pay.”
“Believe me, it’s worth it.”
So I got up off the ground. “Cap, I’ll just go in and have a little talk with
Martin Brady.”
Clark got up. “You’re crazy!”
“Why, I wouldn’t want him to think us deceitful, Clark, so I’ll just go tell him
we’re riding out tomorrow. I’ll also tell him what will happen if anybody
bothers us.”
There were thirty or forty men in the Rose-Marie when I came in. Brady came to
me, drying his big hands on his apron. “We’re fresh out of bourbon,” he said,
“you’ll have to take bar whiskey.”
“I just came to tell you Jim Clark is riding out of the country tomorrow and
he’s taking all that gold he didn’t spend in here.”
You could have heard a pin drop. When I spoke those words I said them out loud
so everybody could hear. Brady’s cigar rolled between his teeth and he got white
around the eyes, but I had an eye on the two loafers at the end of the bar.
“Why tell me?” He didn’t know what was coming but he knew he wouldn’t like it.
“Somebody might think Clark was going alone,” I said “and they might try to kill
him the way Wilton and Jacks and Thompson were killed, but I figured it would be
deceitful of me to ride along with Clark and let somebody get killed trying to
get his gold. You see, Clark is going to make it.”
“I hope he does,” Brady rolled that cigar again, those cold little eyes telling
me they hated me. “He’s a good man.”
He started to walk away but I wasn’t through with him.