“You wanted to see me?” “I want to offer you a job. At the Three Sevens.” “I heard the cow business was in a bad way around here.” Lowering her voice, she said, “Mr. Shevlin, we need men like you, and whatever else you are, you’re cattle.” He felt irritation mounting within him. “All right, you tell me. What kind of a man am I?” “You’ve used a gun, and we need guns.” He felt a vast impatience. “Lady, with all due respect, you’re talking nonsense.” He jerked his head to indicate the Sun Strike and the steady pound of its compressor. “Do you think guns will stop that? As long as there’s ore in the ground, they’ll be there.” “That’s not true. If Ray Hollister had been leading us, he would have run Ben Stowe out of the country!” Shevlin looked at her ironically. “You really believe that? As a fighting man, Ray Hollister couldn’t come up to Ben Stowe’s boot-tops.” Her anger flared. “If you believe that, there’s no job for you at Three Sevens!” “Sorry… but I already have a job. As a miner.” Abruptly, she got to her feet. “Jess Winkler said you were one of them, but I just couldn’t believe it. You’re just a thief, a common thief!” She walked out, heels clicking, and he followed to join Burt Parry outside.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said.
Parry glanced at him. “The lady was in a hurry,” he commented.
“When I told her I had a mining job, she called me a thief.” “If you worked for anybody but me,” Parry said wryly, “that might be true.” He looked straight at Shevlin. “What would you say if I told you some of the ore from the Sun Strike assayed as high as twenty thousand dollars a ton?” “I’d tell you there was a gent down in Chile found a nugget that weighed four hundred pounds.
What I mean is, it could happen once.” “My friend,” Parry said seriously, “some of the richest ore I’ve ever seen came out of that mine, and not just a little bit.” High-grade… every miner knew what that meant. Ore so rich a man could carry a month’s wages out in his pockets, and two months’ wages in a canteen or a lunchbox.
He had known of mines where the foreman was paid by miners for the privilege of working. Change rooms could only curb high-grading; they couldn’t stop it.
“And nobody talks?” Shevlin asked.
“They’re all in it. I’m not, but I don’t have much to say, and I don’t try to leave town.
Sometimes I wonder if I could leave. Maybe I’m alive only because I haven’t tried.” “You’re taking a chance even telling me. How do you know I’m not their spy?” “You couldn’t be. You’re in trouble, Shevlin.” “I am?” “Don’t expect reason from any of them, Mike. They’re in too deep, and all of them are running scared. I was advised not to hire you.” “Why me?” “There was a man named Hollister–and there’s the fact that you arrived just at this time. They are deathly afraid of Hollister, Mike, and if they locate him, he’s a dead man.” “You know a lot.” “I wish I knew less. I have a friend or two, and they tell me things.” Parry looked at Mike’s gun. “Are you any good with that?” “I get along.” Parry started toward the livery stable and Mike walked along with him. He could feel eyes on them, eyes watching them down the street. Suddenly he realized that he could have done nothing worse than go to work for Burt Parry, the one man who was an outsider.
No matter. He was in up to his ears, anyway, and he had a hunch that if he got out he would get out shooting. For the first time in years he was suddenly conscious of the gun at his hip.
CHAPTER 4
In his office above the bank, Ben Stowe tipped back in his big leather chair and stared thoughtfully out the window toward the trees along the creek. He had come far since the morning fourteen years ago when Jack Moorman fired him off the Turkeytrack.
He had never forgotten that day. Old Jack had been seated in his hide chair with a shotgun across his knees when he told Ben Stowe he was a cow thief, and probably a murderer as well, and also told him what would happen if he was ever found on Turkeytrack range again.
Ben Stowe, big, powerful, and tough, had stood there and taken it, but even now he flushed at the memory, grudgingly admitting to himself that he had been afraid. In all his life he had feared no man but Jack Moorman. Dead now for several years, Jack Moorman still had the power to destroy him.
Until the discovery of gold on Rafter, Ben Stowe had been merely another rustler. Not that anybody else in the Rafter country had dared accuse him, but it was generally known.
The gold discovery had been his big chance, and he jumped to take it. From the first he had understood the possibilities… some of them. The idea of seizing the mine itself he owed to Ray Hollister.
Hollister had recognized the power that lay in control of the mines, and he grabbed for it. But in this he overestimated himself and underestimated others.
He had looked upon Ben Stowe as a down-at-heel hired man, and he forgot to consider that the fires of ambition might burn just as strongly in another as in himself. And suddenly Ray was out and Ben was in control.
The end was near. The offers had been made, not only for the Sun Strike, but for the Glory Hole as well, offers large enough to interest them as an escape from a constant drain, yet not large enough to cause them to wonder.
Ben Stowe stared at the trees and thought of the years ahead. Once the mine was in the possession of himself and his partner, he would cut all his ties with the old life, and cut them with a ruthless hand. The mine would make millions; business in the town would be worked back to normal, not so suddenly as to cause trouble, but with a deft hand. People would soon forget what Ben Stowe had done, or remember it, as the West often did, as the harmless escapades of another time.
The door from the outer office opened and Ben Stowe felt a swift surge of anger. He was beginning not to like it when someone presumed enough to come bursting into his office. But this was Gib Gentry.
Suddenly he saw Gentry with new eyes.
Gentry and he were old friends, but in the future that Stowe planned, where would Gentry fit? And with sudden, chill awareness he knew he would not fit at all.
Gentry dropped into a chair and put his boots on Ben’s desk, and Ben Stowe again felt that swift anger. Gib was too damned familiar.
But even as he thought that, he was surprised at himself.
Why the sudden fury? He had always been a man who kept his temper on a leash. It was that coldness and control that had brought him to where he was… why the sudden anger now?
Gentry bit the end from a cigar. “Hell, Ben, you should’ve been down the street. Who the hell do you think I ran into?” “Mike Shevlin?” “Now how the hell did you know that?” Ben Stowe was pleased with himself. It was a little thing, a simple thing, but long ago he had realized the importance of knowing what was going on around the country, and had taken pains to see that he learned of new arrivals, or of any occurrence that was out of the ordinary. He had several sources of information, one of which was the marshal.
As a member of the town council, he had directed the marshal in his duties. All he had learned now was that a stranger, a very salty customer, had been up on Boot Hill looking at Eli’s grave, but when he put that together with a few other items he could make a fairly safe guess.
Gentry pushed his hat back on his head.
“Damn it, Ben! Seemed like old times, havin’ Mike around. He looks good, too.” Ben Stowe shuffled some papers on his desk and wished Gentry would go. Gib had always been a bit of a damned fool. Always ready to pick up a fast dollar, but carrying a wide streak of sentiment. After all, he and Shevlin had never been all that thick.
“Look, Gib, you be careful what you say.
There was a meeting at the old mill last night… and then another man rode up through the rain.
My man thought it was either Hollister or somebody following him. Whoever it was put a bullet in my man.” “You can forget that. Mike never had a damn’ bit of use for Ray, and vice versa. Ray’s small change, and Mike always knew it.” “I never cottoned to him, anyway,” Ben said irritably. “I know he was a friend of yours, but what does it look like, him riding in just at this time? You know how tight everything is. If we have trouble now it could blow the lid off–or tighten it up so hard it might be years before we could make it pay off.” “Hollister’s just a sorehead. He can’t hurt us.” Ben Stowe gave him an impatient look.