wobbly at the knees.
Scruples, he handed me a white envelope, and I took it. He cocked an eyebrow, like it was something he didn’t want said out loud, and I nodded.
“Back in a couple of hours,” I said.
When I stepped out, there was Critter all saddled.
“Someone should kill this horse,” Lugar said.
Critter, he nipped his hat and waved it. Lugar knocked a fist into Critter’s jaw, and snapped the hat to his head. I wasn’t in no condition to knock a fist into Lugar’s jaw, but he saw it in my eyes, and grinned.
I get on with some trouble, because it started my ribs howlin’ at me again, but pretty soon I was steering my old nag down that hill and up the road, which ran up the valley, to get to the Hermit Mine. I wasn’t feeling very good about it, but if I wanted to draw my pay I’d just have to keep on going.
I thought Scruples was right. Come in there by daylight with no weapon and they’d palaver. But that didn’t make me feel any better. I still wore more colors on my face than anyone else in Swamp Creek, and it made a lot of fellers in town point and smile. There is them that enjoyed my misery.
Actually, it felt good to be on Critter, ridin’ up a sunny valley in clean air. I guess that stink in the bunkhouse was gettin’ to me. Not even Glan could get rid of it, and he tried. He was the best-washed man-killer I ever met. It was like he was scrubbin’ sin out of him day and night, but at least he smelled good.
I passed lots of two-rut roads heading off toward mines, and a big road that went up to the Fat Tuesday Mine, which employed a bunch of men and was raking in a bonanza. Some gambler from New Orleans named Argo got ahold of it in a poker game, and quit his gamblin’ to run it. He had two shifts runnin’ and word was he was thinkin’ of adding another shift, so it would be pulling up rich ore all day every day. I wondered how them miners felt about it. They got three dollars a day, a lot of money, but they spent most ever’ day down in that pit.
“Critter,” I says, “I ain’t ever going to be a miner.”
He farted, which is his usual way of agreeing with me. There come a place I thought would take me to the Hermit Mine, but it was hard for me to remember. There was snow up high on the mountains, and a lot of pines up there, and gray rock, but it didn’t look the same by daylight as it did that night. It sure was pretty.
But I turned anyway, thinkin’ this was the road, all right. I half expected to get jumped or shot at, and I sort of hunkered low in my saddle, trying to avoid the worst. But we just trotted along, up a long grade, and then a steeper slope, and then out on a hanging flat. I could see the Hermit Mine ahead, and no one stopped me, and that didn’t make no sense. But I sure felt eyes on me, or maybe a spyglass or two, watching me come along. It was just another sleepy afternoon around there.
I was movin’ closer than I got that night, but no one was waving a rifle at me, so I just kept on. There were a few buildings there, rough board affairs, but one with windows looked like a place to bunk. They sure weren’t spending money on comfort. There was a shaft bored into the slope, and some rails goin’ in. There were a couple of storage sheds, and what looked like a powder bunker off a way, notched into the stony slope. And still no one gave me a holler.
I finally reined up Critter at a hitch rail and got down. I was lookin’ around when a woman stepped out the door of a little shanty. She wore a blue bonnet, and looked kinda wiry.
“Yes?”
“I’m looking for the manager.”
“He’s in the pit.”
“Someone in charge up here?”
“Yes, I am.”
I looked her over. She looked like an in-charge woman all right. I wondered if she was in charge of her husband, too. I didn’t never see a woman in charge of anything ’cept a whorehouse before.
“Well, I’m supposed to deliver you this here envelope and wait for an answer.”
She eyed me closely, her steely gaze taking in my purple and blue and green face, and she smiled slightly. “You’re the one,” she said.
“They didn’t improve my ribs none.”
She was sort of enjoying that, but she took the letter and opened it and slowly digested the message.
“Tell those bastards in the railroad car to go to hell,” she said.
“I’ll do that, ma’am.”
“And if you show up here again, we’ll bust the rest of your ribs.”
“They tell me you’re trespassin’, ma’am. This here is theirs, according to the papers they got.”
“Sonny boy, you’re working for crooks,” she said.
That riled me some. Not the working for crooks part, but getting called sonny boy by this female armadillo.
“And if any of you show up here again, watch your back,” she said.
At that point, a boy wandered out of the shack. He looked to be nine or ten, and was lugging a revolver, which he brandished.
“Luke, don’t shoot that thing,” she said.
“I’m protecting you, Ma,” he said, and swung that barrel toward me. I was sure getting the sweats.
“I’m just here to talk, kid,” I said.
“You’re stealing the gold mine.”
He swung that barrel around at me, and I bailed off of Critter, who began to buck.
“Luke!”
The kid pulled the trigger, and the revolver barked. The recoil threw the kid’s arms up and unbalanced him. I didn’t know where that bullet went, but I cowered behind Critter. This sure was a new one for me.
“Luke, hand me that!”
The boy docilely handed the old revolver to his ma, who slid it into her paw and kept it aimed my direction, just on general principles.
“Now git back to your lessons,” she said.
The stinkin’ little fart was grinning, but he meandered back into the rough-sawn wood shack.
“Too bad he missed you,” she said.
I came out from behind Critter. The cuss knew what I’d done, and bit me.
“That horse should be shot,” she said. She eyed me, like she was going to start a lecture, and then that’s what she did.
“You’re working for crooks and maybe you’re one, too. They’re in cahoots with the mining clerk, Johnny Brashear, and they scheme up ways to beat people out of their own mines. Mostly, it’s a sealed auction, not even announced to the public, and next thing a person knows, he’s lost his mine and he’s a trespasser. That crook Brashear gets a cut, and your bosses take the rest. I don’t know whey they bother with legal paper. All they need’s a few owlhoots like you and they’d take over.”
“I rightly don’t know either, ma’am.”
“What’re they paying youse to drive away owners, eh?”
“Fancy wages, but I haven’t seen none yet.”
“You never will. They’ll welsh on you.”
The thought had occurred to me, but I wasn’t gonna admit it, not to her anyway. That kid and his revolver still riled me some.
“I got to feed the shift coming up to daylight, so you get out of here. Tell them two, Scruples and the whore, no dice. And tell them, if they start trouble here, it’ll end at their railroad car.”
I nodded.
“You were lucky all you got was some broken ribs and loose teeth,” she added.
An