happening out there during the attack when you shot Higgins.”
“You talked to Kahtenny?” I asked Toclani.
“He, too.” He indicated Lewiston. “We ride together to Apache camp.”
I looked at Lewiston. “You taken a long chance, man.”
“It was simple justice. I knew that the people who would surely know what
happened were the Apaches. I did not know they would talk, but Toclani came with
me, and Kahtenny had much to say of you, Sackett. He said you were a brave man,
a strong man, and a warrior.”
“Did he get his squaw back?”
“Yes, and he thanks you.” Lewiston looked at me. “He may come in. All because of
that, he may come in.”
“I hope he does,” I said. “He’s a good Indian.”
And so it was over. Nobody wanted me back in jail any longer, but I figured to
stay around until the sheriff came back so as there’d be no argument. Around
town folks stopped to speak to me on the street, and several thanked me for
bringing the youngsters back.
But I saw nothing of Laura … had she left town? Or was she still there,
waiting, planning?
My mind kept turning to Dorset Although it was in my thoughts, I’d no right to
go a-courting, for I’d no money and no prospects worth counting on. Mr.
Rockfellow, who had a herd he wanted pushed over into the Sulphur Springs
Valley, hired me and some other hands, but it was a short job, and left me with
nothing more than eating money.
The sheriff came back to town, and after hearing what had happened he gave me a
clean bill on the charges against me, so I figured to saddle up and show some
dust, only I hadn’t enough cash to lay in supplies to take me anywhere.
Then at the Shoo-Fly I heard that Pete Kitchen had located himself a mining
claim down in the Pajaritos, so I rode down. When he found out I was a hand with
a pick and shovel, as well as with a cutting horse and a rope, he hired me for
the job.
When he was laying out the grub for me to take along he put in a couple of
hundred rounds of .44’s. “With your kind of luck, and that being Injun country,
you’re liable to need them.”
Well, I almost backed out. I’d had my fill of Apache fighting, and wanted
nothing so much as a spell of setting and contemplating.
The Pajaritos are not much when it comes to mountains. They are named for an odd
birdlike formation on the butte. I rode down there, leading a jack mule, and I
found the mining claim.
There was a wash where run-off water had cut down among the rocks and laid bare
some ore. It wasn’t of much account, but gave promise of growing richer as it
went deeper.
On the back side of a knoll, partly screened by brush and boulders, I made me a
camp. On some rough grass nearby I picketed my stock. Then I sat down to
contemplate what lay before me.
Now, I’m no mining man, but you don’t prospect around, work in mines, or even
loaf around mining towns without picking up some of the lingo as well as a
scraping of information.
This whole place was faulted. Movements of the earth in bygone times had tilted
and fractured the crust until you had a good idea of what lay under you as well
as in front of you. The gold, what there was of it, occurred in quartz veins. It
looked to me like what they call a cretaceous bed that had rested on diorite,
but some of the dikes that intruded offered a chance of some likely ore.
My job was to cut into that, do enough work to establish a right to the claim
for Kitchen, and maybe explore enough so as he’d have an idea what lay below.
Doing the work I was going to do wasn’t going to help much, but I wanted to do
the best job for him I could. I never did figure a man hired to do a job should
just do it the easiest way. I figure a man should do the best he knows how. So I
taken up my pick and went to work on that bank.
While I had a little blasting powder and some fuse, I had no notion of using it.
Blasting makes an awful lot of noise, enough to bring every Apache in the
country around, and I hoped to do my work quietlike, by main strength and
awkwardness, and then pack up and light a shuck for Kitchen’s ranch.
After working a couple of hours I sat down to take some rest, and began to
notice the bees. Some had gone past while I was working, and now I noticed more
of them. I left my pick and shovel and, taking up my Winchester, which I kept
ready to hand, I went off up the mountain. Just over the shoulder of it I picked
up tracks of a desert fox, just enough to indicate direction.
Between occasional tracks and the bees, I located a rock tank, nigh full of
water. Two streams of run-off water coming down off the butte had worn places in
the rocks. With a branch from an ocotillo, a dead branch I found nearby, I tried
to measure the depth of water in the tank. I touched no bottom, but it was
anyway more than six feet deep … water enough for my stock and me. It was half
hidden under an overhang, and the water was icy cold and clean.
Next morning, after a quick breakfast, I got at my work again. Here and there I
found a good piece of ore which I put aside. Now I was doing the same thing most
prospectors do. I was putting aside the best pieces, an easy way to lead others
to invest, and to lead yourself into believing you’ve got more than you have.
Using water from the tank, I washed out a couple of pans from the dry wash below
the claim and picked up a few small colors, nothing worth getting excited about.
Unless that vein widened out below where I’d been digging, it was going to cost
Pete more to get the gold than it was worth.
By nightfall the cut I’d made was beginning to look like something. I’d sacked
up three sacks of samples and had crushed a few of them and panned out the
fragments, getting a little color.
The next two days I worked from can-see to can’t-see, and had enough done to
count this as a working claim. One more day for good measure, and I would saddle
up for Tucson.
This spell had given me some time to think, and it showed me there was no sense
in saddle-tramping around, riding the grub line or picking up a day of work
hither and yon. It was time I settled in for a lifetime at some kind of job, or
on a place of my own.
It meant hard work, and lots of it. Living a life is much like climbing
mountains — the summits are always further off than you think, but when a man
has a goal, he always feels he’s working toward something.
The next morning, when I’d been working an hour by sun, I hit the pocket.
It was a crumbling ledge of decomposed quartz, seemingly unrelated to what was
on either side, and the piece that I found was no bigger than an upright piano,
but it seemed to be only the top of a larger ledge. Anyway, in the next three
hours I broke up enough of that quartz to get out maybe two thousand dollars’
worth of gold.
Pete Kitchen was going to be almighty pleased. I dumped one of my other sacks
back in the hole and filled the sack with the rich stuff. I was just loading the
last of it and was too busy to be rightly paying mind to anything else when I
hear a voice saying, “Looks like this trip is going to pay off mighty handsome.”
Laura Sackett was there, and three men were with her — Arch Hadden, Johnny
Wheeler, sometime gunman for a smuggling outfit, and one of the gents who had
been with Hadden in the fight at Dead Man’s Tank. They had come down here for
only one reason, and that was to kill me, and they wanted to tell me about it.
There was no call for conversation, not having to stall like before, so I just
peeled back my forty-five and wasted no time.
I turned and saw and drew and fired, all kind of in one breath. My first shot
took Johnny Wheeler, whose hand was lingering around the butt of his six-gun as
if he was minded to use it.