the Empty Land (1969) (2 page)

The driver was a portly man with a black mustache. The three men knew who he was, and they were glad to have him come. "You fellers ain't missin' much, are your he said, and he pointed toward the rough hillside with his whipstock. "I don't see any stakes there.'

"Help yourself, Buckwalter," Felton said.

The man swung his team expertly into position, backed up and got down. The wagon canted at an angle, but he lowered the tail-gate, and with surprising ease swung one of the barrels into position. He hung a tin cup on the spigot.

'Two-bits a throw," he suggested.

Dan Cohan started to get up, but Buckwalter lifted a hand. "I want business, but not that bad. I just remembered. Big Thompson is in that crowd. If you've got yourself a good claim you'd better stay sober.*

"Who is Big Thompson?" Felton asked.

"He never files a claim," Cohan said. "He just jumps one that is already proved, but you'd best not say that unless you've got a gun in your hand and somebody to cover your back."

"Doesn't anybody make a fight?"

`A few have tried it. None of them lasted very long." "Iss no vun so fast, den?"

"Matt Coburn is," Buckwalter replied, "and he's a good man. I'd feel better if he was here. This is going to be his kind of town."

"Ills is our town," Felton said stiffly. "We will have no gunfighters here."

"You're dreamin'." Cohan spoke roughly. "I know this kind of crowd. So does Buckwalter. There will be some good minim men, and there will be a lot of honest amateurs, but they'll be outnumbered by the rowdies, the gamblers, the killers, the sneak thieves, short-card artists, and cutthroats. There will be women in the crowd who have made every boom camp in the West, some of them tough enough to whip any two men in camp, and ready to do it."

"He's right," Buckwalter agreed. "I like your sentiments, son, but you can't pick an' choose.'

"We want a church and a school," Felton insisted. "We want a city council, and we want law and order." Buckwalter glanced at Cohan. 'Where's this boy been? He isn't dry behind the ears yet."

"He's a good man, Buck, and he will stand for what he believes."

"Then he'd better be good with a gun, too. Or else he'd better send for Coburn."

After a few minutes of silence, Buckwalter went on, "You will have one friend in the crowd who will stand hitched, Felton. Sturdevant Fife is coming up the trail with his printing press. He's a law-and-order man, and he runs his newspaper with a sawed-off shotgun on his desk."

Hundreds of belted men were coming up the trail, men booted, unshaved, and wild, coming up the highroad to hell. If they did not find their ticket in this town they would in the next.

Dusty and rough, they came in off the trail, riding horseback, driving wagons ... arriving by every kind of moving rig.

Within the hour Buckwalter had emptied his first barrel and sold it for thirty dollars to a gambler with a three-card monte game. Another man bought a lot, set up a tent, hung out his sign, and began selling miner's supplies.

"That's Jim Gage," Cohan said. "He never misses a boom town, he does a land-office business, then moves on. He's a good judge of booms, and when he sells out you know you're through. He will be a law-and-order man, too."

"How duss he know?" Zeller asked.

"Instinct, I guess. Anyway, when the roof falls in, he's always gone."

By nightfall three hundred men were camping or building along the slope. Of the twenty lots Zeller had staked out, twelve had been sold and two of them resold for bigger money.

It was just short of dark when four horsemen turned into the street and rode up to where Zeller and Felton sat. The man riding the lead horse was a huge bearded, burly man with small hard eyes.

Cohan stepped out, his Winchester in his hand, the muzzle holding on the big man's belt buckle. "You look-in' for somebody, Thompson?"

The big man stared hard, but the Irishman's eyes were steady. Thompson shifted his attention to Felton, who was also holding a rifle. Zeller, a little to one side, had removed a blanket from his shotgun." Just a place to camp." Thompson smiled affably. "I figured this was away from the noise and bustle."

It's staked and filed land, Thompson."

"All we want is a place to camp."

'There was a Swede in Placerville who let you camp on his claim, an' when morning came he was gone. You said he'd sold you the claim and pulled out. I was there, Thompson. I helped dig up the body."

"Tell that story, and I'll kill you."

"I've told it Now you start ridin' right now!"

He eared back the hammer and Thompson stared at him, then spat He turned slowly, taking his time, and went away down the slope, followed by the three other riders.

"He vill kill you if he can," Zeller said.

"We must have a town marshal," Felton said. "We can't have that sort of thing."

"You'll get no marshal. Not when they hear that Big Thompson and Peggoty Gorman are in town. They eat marshals for breakfast," Cohan said.

"They should be ordered out of town."

"Don't try it, Dick. I know you're game, but you're not that good and you're not that fast."

"And Coburn is?"

"If any man is."

"He'd be another Thompson, then."

"Not Matt Coburn," Buckwalter said. "I'd stake my life on him. In fact," he said wryly, "I already have. Several times."

Dick Felton watched the slope spring into life as lamps and lanterns were lighted, with here and there a campfire. One huge tent had Just gone up, one of the tents such as housed the gambling hells that were to be found at the end of track when the Union Pacific was building. Men were still driving stakes, and already there was the sound of a music box from the tent, and the clink of glasses.

"Well," Cohan said, 'you've got your town."

"Well need a council. What do you say to Buckwalter?"

"All right. And Gage, if he will come in."

"I want you too, Dan."

"Take Zeller. He's a more cautious man."

"No." Zeller's refusal was definite. "I know not deer mans. Undt I must vork."

"Who else?"

"Fife, if you can get him. He may prefer to stay out, but even if he does you may get a name or two from him."

"The town should have a name."

Cohan chuckled. "By the look of it now, I can think of only one name Confusion. Anyway, that's what they call these mountains."

"Confusion it is. But you'll see. It will be a different town in a few days."

Cohan glanced at Felton, but said nothing. There was no use trying to explain to a man from the East, even one as knowing and generally capable as Dick Felton. Even after you had seen a boom town you could not believe it. You had to live through a few of them, as he had.

Dawn broke to the sound of picks on the slope, and of hammers and saws in the town. Several wagons had brought dismantled buildings, which were now being raised into position, nailed together, and opened for business. The saloons, gambling houses, supply stores, and assayers were among the first.

With the money from the sale of lots, Felton hired three men to work with Zeller on their claims. Cohan and Felton took turns standing guard.

When Felton finished his shift as guard he went down the slope to talk to Sturdevant Fife. Pausing in the doorway to watch the street, he heard a sudden burst of gunfire.

A man, reeling and bloody, fell backwards from the door of the big gambling tent. He toppled into the dust, gun in hand, and struggled to rise. From the tent stepped a man in his shirt sleeves, a slender, handsome man with a cold, cruel face. Before the wounded man could rise, the gambler took careful aim and shot him through the head.

Felton started forward, but a hand from the tent caught his arm. It was Fife. "I know what you're think-in', boy, but don't say it He'll kill you.'

'That was murder!'

"Keep your voice down, son. The dead man was armed, so they would never call it murder. You've got to remember when you pack a gun, you're fair game. That's Nathan Bly."

"Nathan Bly? Here?*

"Why not? He smells gold, boy. He's a gambler, and a good one. That dead feller probably thought he caught him cheatin'. Well, he never caught him. I ain't sayin Bly wouldn't deal a few off the bottom if it suited him, but he's too good to get caught at it'

Felton followed Fife into the tent He glanced at the type set up on the table:

. . . MEN KILLED ON THE FIRST DAY leavin the number open. The day ain't over yet" "Fife, I want a city council of responsible men," Felton said. "Will you join us?'

"It ain't fitten, son. I want to stand clear to call names and tell you when you're wrong. But if you're right, I will say that too."

He studied the type through his steel-rimmed glasses, then looked at Felton over them. 'There's a mighty lot about grammar that I don't know, and a lot of book learnin' I'll never have, but I know what I figure to be honest, and I'll say it "I found this here press in a cabin with the owner dyin' of a gunshot He give it to me for buryin him decent, with the promise that I tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothin' but the truth. That's what I've done." "I like that," Felton replied. And any time you think I am wrong, you say it"

For a few minutes there was silence. Somebody in the street was dragging the body of the dead man out of the way.

"We must have law here," Felton said Can you recommend anybody?"

"Can't help you, boy. I might want to call him names, or tell him he's done a wrong thing."

"I've heard about a man named Coburn."

"No."

Felton was surprised. "No?"

"Matt Coburn is a fine man, and maybe the best hand with a gun I ever did see, and I've seen a-plenty. He has nerve, but most of all he has judgment?"

"Why not, then?"

"Matt's been like a son to me, and I don't like what this can do to him. You can't run a town like this without killin', an' I don't wish for Matt Coburn to kill anybody else."

On the fourth day Felton took a team and a borrowed plow and ripped up the street Then with a drag borrowed from the same source, he graded the street as best he could, considering the rocks and the steepness of the hill.

"You'll get no thanks for that," Cohan said to him. "All they want is to get rich and get out."

Sturdevant Fife wrote an editorial about the grading, and demanded that all citizens try to keep the street free of bottles.

By the night of the fifth day there had been seven shootings, two of them fatal, and one man killed by a knife. Wilson, who had sold half of his claim to Big Thompson, disappeared.

"Cot tired of it," Thompson said solemnly. 'He's gone back to Washoe."

Every night there were fist fights, and shooting at all hours, and one tent set afire by a poor loser in a poker game. Outside of town there was a hold up, and the stage the first one that came into Confusion was also held up and robbed.

And then Matt Coburn rode into town.

Chapter
3

He rode up the street in the freshness of morning before the sun was up, and he did not stop in the lower street, but rode on to the crest of the ridge, where he turned in his saddle to study the layout of the town and the country around.

Dick Felton was taking samples from that part of the Discovery claim that lay beyond the ridge, which was actually a second claim, known as Discovery II. He heard the horse, and looked around to see the rider outlined against the morning sky.

He was a tall young man, as tall as Felton himself, but heavier in the chest and shoulders. He wore a battered black hat, and a black coat over a faded red shirt. Felton could see the holster on his hip and what looked like the bulk of another six-shooter tucked behind his waistband.

"Any luck?" the rider asked.

"This is the Discovery claim, or part of it," Felton replied shortly. Ifs a good one."

"You're Felton, then?"

"Yes." For some reason Felton was irritated. "What can I do for your "Tm just passing by." He indicated the town. "I like to look at new towns, to wonder how long they will last."

"This one will."

"Maybe. Silver and gold are unreliable they come and they go. It takes more than a mine to make a town." "What it takes," Felton replied, "we've got."

The stranger laughed, and Felton started to speak angrily, then swallowed his irritation and picked up his samples and pick.

The rider had started to move off, but he drew up and indicated the mountain with the glacier. "I like that. I think that's where I'll go."

Felton looked toward the mountain. He had often looked upon it during the past few days. "That's where the trapper was going who first found gold here," he commented. "He wasn't even sure it was gold."

"What he found over there would be better. Is there anyone there?"

"I doubt it. I heard there was some woman had a cattle outfit at the foot of the hills, but that's unlikely. This is Ute country.'