“How come they were trying to kill you?” I asked.
Agnes, he pulled some tobacco lying loose in his pocket and stuffed it under his tongue. “Just for the fun of it,” he said.
“They own this mine? That’s what Scruples said.”
Joseph St. Agnes Cork, he just cackled. “That wouldn’t a got anything if they killed me,” he said. “Gold pinched out some whiles ago, and now she’s nothing but a hole in the cliff.”
“No gold?”
“Pocket mine. Gold along here is in pockets. Clean out a pocket and there’s nothing left.”
I was getting testy. “So you fought ’em for nothing?”
“Oh, I didn’t say that, boy. You got a thing or two to learn about mining. I loved that fight. Now I can sell this here hole for mebbe ten thousand simoleons. Now I got what I needed, and they handed it to me. A man fights off ten, twelve claim-jumpers, why, that hole of his must be worth a lot of moolah.”
“You mean you’re going to defraud the buyer?”
He grinned, and those blueberry eyes sparked bright. “Oh, I’ll salt her a little, and we’ll see. A man digs a hole for better part of a year, he ought to get paid for it, right? I’m just angling for some pay, and that Scruples bunch handed it to me on a platter. Until they showed up, I was plumb discouraged.”
I didn’t like this none. Cork was a crook.
He started cackling again, and I had a mind to get out of there. Critter and I thought to help someone outnumbered ten to one or so, and now four gents lay in their graves and a bunch more were full of nail holes.
“Cotton, you stick around here and I’ll teach you some about getting gold out. You want some johnnycakes? I’m of a mind to eat.”
I had nothing better to do, so I nodded. “I’m going to fetch my horse Critter, water him, and bring him up here. He likes griddle cakes and he’d be plain unhappy with me if he got a whiff of johnnycakes and he couldn’t sink his buck teeth into a couple.”
“Does he haul ore cars? I’ll put him to work.”
“No, Critter ain’t never had harness touch him.”
Agnes Cork was makin’ me huffy again. I wouldn’t let no miner lay hands on Critter. Trouble is, Cork was a miner, and they ain’t half the man any cowboy is. I worked down the talus slope, plunged into the dark forest, found the nag chewing on bark, and brought him back up there to the mine, where he laid his ears back and snapped a time or two at Agnes, and then tried to kick him, too.
“Horse is just like me,” Agnes said, and laughed that mean laugh again.
The miner set to work mixing some cornmeal and water while I scrounged up some firewood. There sure wasn’t none anywhere near.
But in time, along about sundown, we got Critter and ourselves fed.
“You got to git now,” Agnes said. “I don’t allow no one around here disturbing my sleep and slitting my throat. Anyone stirs around here, he gets a knife up to the hilt.”
“We’ll vamoose,” I says, eyeing his little shanty, which was the most disgusting-looking dump I ever laid eyes on. If I set foot in there I’d catch leprosy for sure. “But afore I go, you mind telling me about these claim-jumpers? They offered me forty and found, and I’m just thinking about it. Sure beats starving.”
“Oh, Scruples. And his lady friend. They got that Palace Car in town.”
Well, that explained something. Sitting up a slope from Swamp Creek was a regular Pullman Palace Car someone dragged overland, probably using fifty oxen and some braced-up wagons. It was right fancy, purple lacquer with gilded letters on the side, and when I got a peek or two at her, I could see wine-colored velvet drapes in there, and heaven knows what, my being too dumb about all that to know a flush toilet from a two-holer.
“What about all that paper? He told me he’s got a legal right.”
Agnes cackled. “You got a few things to learn, boy. Scruples, he’s in cahoots with the mining district recorder, Johnny Brashear, and pays the old souse to find fault in a claim.” He eyed me, sizing me up for a ten-year-old. “Mining districts get born pretty casual, long before the government moves in and surveys a place and makes it legal. Miners themselves set up districts, adopt some rules about the size of a claim, stuff like that, and this gets put in a ledger, and usually the government gets around to recognizing this stuff years later. But bribe a clerk or two, and you pretty much turn it all cattywumpus.”
“Your claim’s valid?”
“Bet your ass, sonny boy.”
I didn’t cotton to being called sonny boy, but it was better than being called Cotton, so I just glared at him a bit.
“So them in that Palace Car, they’re not up and up?”
Agnes Cork, he began wheezing so hard I thought he’d choke.
“How come no one’s fighting ’em?”
“It’s that woman,” Agnes said.
I couldn’t make sense of that, but it sure did make me curious about her. She was just about the first woman I’d seen in a long time that made my britches go tight. I didn’t know they made women like that. She was some better than Sarah Bernhardt. I seen a picture of her once, and thought there sure is some world out there I ain’t never seen.
“Boy, you go back to pushing cows around until you’re growed up enough to walk into a mining camp. Now, it’s getting dark, and I kill anything wandering around my mine in the dark, and I don’t ask questions neither.”
I think that was a message aimed my way, so I loaded up Critter and climbed aboard, wanting enough light so he could pick his way down that slope without busting a leg. Leastwise, I got out of there without getting shot, and Critter didn’t bust nothing.
And I wandered toward Swamp Creek wondering whether to hire on. If all sides was as crooked as it sounded, it wouldn’t matter none which one paid me wages.
Chapter Three
I was scrapin’ the bottom of my purse in that mining town, and I was wonderin’ where my next chow would be coming from. This wasn’t no cow town where I could hook up with most any cow outfit, move into a bunkhouse, and fill my belly. No, this here Swamp Creek high in the mountains was different.
It rose up mighty fast, first canvas buildings, then log, and now some sawn wood was showing up here and there and the place was looking like it might stick around a while. There was false-front stores doing a trade. They was a saloon ever’ few yards, a few whorehouses with them red lanterns rocking in the breeze, a few flophouses where a miner could lie on a bedbug pallet for two bits a night, and a few little whitewashed cottages where folks lived pretty decent.
Now there’s plenty of work available in a mining town, and sometimes for two or three dollars a day, too, king’s wages, but the stuff you got to do is plain disgusting. If it’s hard-rock mines, like in the Swamp Creek district, you’ve got to go down in some black hole for ten hours, choke on fumes, hope the whole thing doesn’t cave in, and spend the whole time hammering and shoveling. The noise is so bad that you’re half deaf time you get out of that hole and breathe some real air and see some night sky.
Most of them miners, they’re big and tough. Even the little ones are big and tough. They come from all over the world, places I can’t even pronounce, and half of them got names I never heard of. Soon as the shift ends, they head for their favorite saloon and toss down boilermakers, or some such. Like most cowboys, I learned the hard way to treat ’em good. Now most cowboys, me included, we think we’re pretty tough. Sometimes we work hard, like brandin’ time. But truth is, mostly we’re just getting carried around on our nags and hardly use our muscles.