I looked over their rigs. There wasn’t a fancy cut-down and oiled-up holster in the lot, just workaday leather for carrying iron, worn high on the hip. But Cleveland had him a black wool suitcoat hanging on a peg behind his bunk, and I suspicioned he had a hideout in a breast pocket and would be a handy backshooter. So this wasn’t no gunslick bunch, just some thugs makin’ some bucks by shooting miners. Scruples was hiring cheap—unless they got the same deal from Amanda I got…but the thought was so repulsive I couldn’t hardly stand it. She had to draw the line somewhere.
“You from around here?” I asked, real general, because people are mighty touchy about personal questions like that. But I thought to make a little talk, just to get an idear about this bunch of misfits.
No one said nothing, so I did. “Me, I’ve been driftin’ around Wyoming and Montana, lookin’ for work. Guess I found it,” I said. “They want me to take on the Hermit Mine, and gave me this here map. You fellers in on this?”
Truth to tell, I didn’t know if I was in charge or not. Scruples, he never made me boss. He just said, go do it. No one said nothing. This was a real mouthy bunch.
“They’s six men and two women helpin’ out over there and they got shotguns.”
Lugar yawned. “We know all that, Cottonmouth. We were digging out buckshot for a week.”
“You tried it?”
“I told you, we were doing surgery on ourselves.”
“What time of day did you move in?”
“Afternoon.”
“I’m going in at night.”
Lugar bared some yellow-stained teeth. “Good luck,” he said.
That was right friendly of him.
“And I’m going to look it over right about now,” I said.
No one volunteered to go with me, but I hadn’t expected them to. I’d do better just sliding around in the dark.
I took a long look at the maps, hoping I could make sense of the land when I got out into the night, and then stuffed the maps in my shirt.
“See you,” I said, and slipped out the door.
Oh, that fresh air was just fine with me. I thought it’d take an hour or so just to get the stink outa my duds.
The Hermit was a mile out of town and up a grade, and I chose to walk it. I didn’t want no trouble for Critter. That crew didn’t give me any confidence, and I was thinkin’ I’d mostly want to do these jobs alone. The dangerous one was the skinny one, Arthur, not Fatso. Lugar was mouthy, but looked pretty careful to me when push came to shove. I got to wonderin’ how Scruples picked up that lot. He sure was scraping the bottom of the barrel. Him and Amanda didn’t know much about mining towns. They couldn’t have hired worse men. That told me something about Scruples. He was probably new to this game.
I like to think I know my way around at night, but the truth of it was that I got powerful lost trying to find the Hermit. There wasn’t no moon to help me, and the few lamps in town were long snuffed out, and it’s hard to pace a mile with nothing but stars to guide you, and I got so turned around I scarcely knew where I was. But then the old moon began to shine behind some ridge off to the east, and pretty soon it yellowed over the top of a ridge, and I got some idear of where I was. I’d gone too far, so I backtracked a bit, and turned up a gulch I thought was likely, and began hiking up a two-rut road that looked used enough.
I wanted to see a bunch of things, like where they bunked and whether someone was guardin’ at night. I was thinkin’ it’d be best to jump a mine like that around midnight and move in so fast that no one’s awake and grabbing for iron. Pretty soon, I saw the works ahead, a regular head frame poking into the sky, and some log buildings, and a heap of tailings, and some ore cars, so I was getting the layout in mind.
That’s when them dogs got me. Next I knew there was five, six of them snarling dogs comin’ after me, some barking and the rest snapping at me bad. It was like I was gonna be dinner for a pack of wolves. One leapt at my throat, snapping teeth at me. I knocked him off, but he whirled around again and he was jumpin’ even as the others were biting my legs and snapping at my arms. I sure was in a fix. Two, three others just stood back and barked, wakin’ up anyone around there. I was too busy knockin’ dogs off to know what to do, but somehow I got my revolver out and began knocking dogs with the barrel, slashing this way and that, sending ’em howling. But now I was bitten bad, and hot blood rolled down my legs, and a dog or two had got a sleeve and wouldn’t get loose, so I was losin’ and maybe about to get eaten.
I saw that one leaper comin’ at my throat, so I shot him. He yelped and fell in a heap, and I whirled around and shot another comin’ at my neck, and he whined and shuddered and went limp, and then ever’thing happened so fast I couldn’t make no sense of it. But next I knew, two big arms came around me from behind and caught me in a steel grip like I was fish in an eagle beak. I bucked and jackknifed, and all I did was make them arms go tighter. They pinned my arms to my side, and my gun went flyin’ somewhere.
Then another one of them miners comes around in front of me.
“Kill my dogs, do ya?” he said. He slugged my chin and then slammed my gut and then hammered my pinned-down arms until I was half crazy, and then knocked my head again, and there wasn’t nothing I could do, not with some two-hundred-pound miner behind me pinnin’ me and turnin’ me into a target.
“Dat’s what you get for killing dog,” one said, and punched my nose. I felt blood runnin’ down my lips.
“Dis here’s a lesson,” he said. “Next time I kill you.”
Whoever pinned my arms tossed me down and the pair started kicking me. I felt some pain in my rib, and knew one boot had stove me in. Them dogs circled around, but didn’t dive on me.
“Dis here gun’s mine, and so’s the belt,” one said, yanking my gunbelt off me. “Dat’s for da dog you kilt.”
I lay there on my back, all busted up, with a couple of loose teeth, blood dripping from a few holes in me, and so sick I thought I’d faint.
“Tell Scruples dis mine ain’t his,” the miner said. “Next time, we go get him and do dis to him personal.”
They stared down at me. I stared up at the moon. I’d hardly gotten a look at the pair, but they were both bigger than me, and twice as strong.
I saw one of them pick up the dead dog and pull it close in his arms, and croon to it.
“You was the best one,” he said. “You done good. You gonna get buried right.”
Then, suddenlike, there was only silence. Them miners and their live dogs left. I didn’t know how I’d get back to town, and up to the bunkhouse, but I had to before something else finished what the dogs and miners had started.
I wasn’t fit to stand up for another half hour, and when I finally got up, I wished I hadn’t because I hurt more places than I knew I had. I was too sore to get mad. I’d get even with those bastards some day, but not now. In the space of a few minutes I’d learned how to hate ever’ miner that ever lived.
I took one step at a time, feeling the ground come up through my stockin’s, and that’s how I walked back to Swamp Creek, one foot at a time. I decided I didn’t like this job a whole lot.
Chapter Six
I think I got back to that bunkhouse around dawn, but I don’t rightly remember. I mostly just piled into a bunk and was lost to the world. But I did hear some yakkin’ about me from the rest. I was too far gone to know or care.
Next I knew, old Scruples hisself was standing over my bunk staring down at me like I was some piece