Astray (10 page)

Injun stared at him.

I had a boy, but he’s gone rushing off downriver at the first word of some discovery.

Thank you, said Injun, remembering his manners like some old relic of life before the Yukon. Thank you kindly, but my partner—

McQuesten nodded like he understood.

On the way back down the street, Injun thought of how it might be. If Goat had had enough of mining, if Injun took a job in town—then they wouldn’t be mates like they’d been. There’d be no reason for their cabin, their games, their joint life. He made up his mind: he’d talk Goat into heading back out to their claim and laying into that dirt-heap again. Maybe there really was more gold at the bottom. Maybe they should give it another year.

The saloon was buzzing. Goat shoved a glass of whiskey to his mate’s lips. There’s been a prime strike on Rabbit Creek!

Where’s Rabbit Creek?

Off the Klondike.

The Klondike was the next big tributary of the Yukon east of Fortymile. That must be where McQuesten’s last boy had gone. Injun felt oddly tired.

A fellow came in here with a shotgun cartridge full, Goat gabbled, poured it on the scale, old-timers never seen anything like it for color and grain. I tell you, boy, it’s going to be a stampede! Let’s go before every inch is staked. Half this crowd’s slipped away already, he said, draining his glass.

Injun snorted, but already he was imagining their hands yellow-green with gold dust, their raw new shack on the bank of the Klondike.

Goat was looking past him, waving at someone in the crowd. Oh, hey, I met up with Gundsson again, he’s on for going thirds.

Injun turned, narrowed his eyes at the big-jawed man
walking over. He recognized the Swede who’d turned up at the cabin that time. His throat tightened up. What do we need another mate for?

Goat laughed. Split the work and help tote the treasure sacks, that’s what.

Could Goat really be that dumb and blind? Had he no notion of what they’d be losing? I don’t like him, said Injun.

You ain’t even talked to him yet. Come on, don’t frown, sounds like there’s gold enough for everyone up on the Klondike!

The Swede was beside them, grinning with yellow teeth. Injun thought of him sleeping in their cabin, like some huge stinking bear, and wanted to punch him. Instead he folded his arms. Gold men are so fickle, he remarked, soon as they hear of any half-discovery, they’ll desert their old dig.

Goat tugged his mate’s shoulder hard enough to pop it out. Look, you cussed half-breed, he said, can’t your one eye spot the chance of your life?

Injun shrugged.

I tell you, I’ve talked to a man who saw the nuggets on the scale. He says he heard the first shovelful from Rabbit Creek yielded eight hundred dollars!

This place has more liars than hell, said Injun.

What’s the matter with you? Goat was red in the face. The river’s choked already. Fortymile will be a dead camp by the morning. Come on, Gundsson can get us on a boat poling upstream tonight.

Injun refused to look at the Swede. I’m taking a job, he said, his voice thick with gravel. In McQuesten’s store.

Goat’s eyes were huge and pale.

Folk’ll always need supplies, he added. Even if some of these fools find a few ounces on the Klondike, they’ll be back here to record their stakes, won’t they?

Mate, said Goat—putting his face close enough to Injun’s to heat him with his spiritous breath, close enough to kiss him—our fortune’s up there. He was pointing east.

I doubt that, said Injun, hoarse.

But I’m telling you—

Finders ain’t keepers anyhow. Men who strike lucky, they never manage to keep it, do they? Just drink or gamble or lose it all one way or another.

Goat straightened up, still half smiling. Well damn your lily liver.

Best of luck to you and your countryman, so, said Injun, going to drain his glass, but it was dry already. He told Goat to take what he liked from the cabin before he went. He nodded to both Swedes and managed to get outside in the warm street before his face fell in on itself.

And with the certainty of a man who was still young, Injun said never, he said never, never again.

Snowblind

Klondike
(1958), Pierre Berton’s classic history of the last—and most frantic—international gold rush, inspired this story of two fictional partners in Fortymile as the news of the Klondike discovery hit in August 1896.

WICKENBURG, ARIZONA

1873

THE LONG WAY HOME

O
ne hot afternoon, a man walks into a bar. Well, not strictly speaking a man, but the stained buckskins, the fringed and beaded jacket, the stink of cigarillo, the small face leathered and squinting under the wide hat—what would you call it?

“How’s business, Mollie?” asks the barkeep, filling a glass.

She takes her whiskey in two long, wet gulps. “Wouldn’t know. I’ve been in the hills for a fortnight.”

A red-haired man laughs, and remarks, to no one in particular, “It’s a female.”

He must be new to Wickenburg. “Prospecting?” suggests the barkeep.

She purses her dry lips.

He chuckles.

She considers the faces that line the bar. “Which one of these saddle bums goes by Jensen?”

“Here’s what’s left of him.” With one finger the barkeep indicates the man sleeping half off his stool: a puddle of greasy hair, a hat tipped sideways on the wet wood.

Mollie blows out her breath and pours herself another.

“What d’you want with my aul pal Jensen?” demands the redhead.

“Four days since he rode into town for supplies,” she tells him, “left his wife in an empty camp. I’m taking him back.”

“Can’t a man spend his poke in peace?”

She walks over to Jensen. Her hands slide into his pockets, down his legs. He grunts.

“C’mere, wee lassie,” croons the Irishman, “don’t be wasting that on a sleeping man.” He shuffles up close behind her. “And what have
you
got in your pocket?”

“A Peacemaker,” says Mollie under her breath before he can touch her. Finding Jensen’s little bag, she straightens up, and drops it on the bar.

The barkeep’s scowl deepens as he sets it on the scales. “That won’t half cover his tab.”

“Guess I’ll have to take up a collection, then.” She lifts the drunk’s hat and holds it out in front of the Irishman.

“Here’s all I’ve got for you,” he says, and spits in it.

He must not have believed her about the pistol, so she moves her coat and shows him a glimpse of its thick barrel. “In that case, should I shoot your jewels off right this minute, or would you rather help me with your
aul pal
here?”

The Irishman steps back, paler under his burn. “What kind of help?”

“Check his cayuse’s well watered.”

While he’s outside, she goes round with the hat, laying on the charm. “Come on, men, a bit of actual? I’ve spent all mine on provisions for the Jensens,” she assures them. “Let’s
clear the bum’s tab and I undertake to get him home by tomorrow, what do you say?”

There’s protest and eye rolling and jokes about lady bountifuls, but they pay up. The Irishman comes back in and produces half a dollar.

“Stay for a round of faro, why don’t you, Mollie,” suggests a farmer.

She grins, hovering by the table, then shakes her head.

She takes the unconscious Jensen by his collar and yanks him onto the floor. He’s coming to by the time she’s dragged him to the door—twisting against the light of the lamps, starting to babble—so she gets the Irishman to grab his feet. They haul him like wet washing; another two men help heave him into the saddle of his hungry-looking horse.

She rides up alongside and plants the groggy man’s hat on his head. “Name’s Mollie Monroe,” she tells him. “Going to ride behind me without a ruckus?”

Apparently not. She ducks away from his fist; her pony shies. “Better lash his hands to the pommel,” she tells the Irishman. “And pass me his rifle.” She ties it behind her saddle, on top of the sacks of beans and meal. She coils his horse’s rope around her wrist and murmurs “Gitty up” to her own.

All through town Jensen curses. Damns the dust, the lingering heat of the August day, but most of all damns this half-size freak in britches, this vigilante morphodite who’s got him roped like some felon when last he heard this was the free state of Arizona. He pukes and spatters his leg.

It’s going to be a long ride. Mollie passes the bright windows
of her own saloon. Looks like George’s got his hands full this Saturday night. Shame she hasn’t time to stop in for a quick one, but it would only start a quarrel, likely.

The lush banks of the Hassayampa drop out of sight behind them. Scattered saguaros stick up like fists against the orange evening as she heads toward Black Mountain, a road some call cursed, since a stagecoach full of passengers got themselves massacred a few winters past.

Behind her, Jensen’s retching drily. She walks her pony back, reins in at arm’s length, and hands over the water bag.

His eyes are red-rimmed as he drinks. “Cut me loose,” he says, half-baring his teeth, “or I swear, I won’t leave enough of you to snore.”

Mollie keeps her grin on. “Do I look scairt?”

“Crazy as popcorn on a stove, that’s what you look.”

“Don’t push me, Jensen. I’d rather deliver you in one piece.” She clicks her tongue to start her pony moving again.

“Deliver me to who?” The question comes hoarsely.

She’s sorely tempted not to answer; to let Jensen spend a few minutes—even hours—recollecting his enemies. Instead, she says over her shoulder, “Your wife.”

“How the blazes do you know my wife?” he demands, bends to puke again but there’s nothing in it.

She reins in, lets him catch up. “I was riding by a mine shaft this morning, your boy was down it, his mama was screaming for him to climb out. Fine pair you’ve got, and another one coming any day, looks like; she can hardly get around. They’ll be a big help with the prospecting in another few years, that’s if any of them last that long.”

“What do you know about prospecting?” he asks with venom.

She rides on. “Oh, me and George Monroe have staked claims all over these hills. Once I sold a bonanza for twenty-five hundred dollar, blew it all in a week!”

“I’ve heard of Monroe,” concedes Jensen. “But I never heard tell he was married.”

She sets her teeth. Hasn’t she a right to the name after all these years? “Mrs. Jensen seems a nice piece of Mexican calico,” she throws over her shoulder.

“Is she paying you?” Jensen wants to know.

“Ha! With what?”

He doesn’t speak again.

She turns off the road onto a dry wash, heading south into the foothills. The night is crisp now, stars pricking a black sky. She glances back, and Jensen’s dropped his head on his bound hands. She’s suddenly beat.

The man’s no help to her; slumps against the furrowed trunk of a cottonwood as she stokes the fire with what dried dung she can find. “Never thought we’d run out of bison shit,” she remarks, “but now they’ve got those excursion trains, shoot from the windows, you ever hear of such a thing?”

No response. Not even when Mollie serves up her famous stew. (She’s cooked for fifty at a time, and never heard any complaints.) She undoes the knot that holds Jensen’s wrists together, but keeps her pistol handy. The plate shudders in his hands. A cool northern breeze angles off the mountains, which are only starless patches on the sky. Jensen suddenly
lurches to his feet and goes behind a saguaro. Got the trots, Mollie reckons; that’s the end of many a spree. When he comes back, he crouches and breaks off a corner from the nearest outcropping, peers at it; one of those prospector’s habits.

Mollie binds his hands again, adds a rope around his ankle, and throws him a blanket before she settles down on her bedroll with the horses’ ropes under her. The pistol digs into her hip as she drops into sleep.

In the gray dawn, the end of Jensen’s rope lies blackened in the ashes. “Well, that’s just daisy,” Mollie mutters, through a yawn. She’s mildly impressed, though he didn’t manage to sneak his horse away from her, or his rifle.

She follows his tracks back toward Wickenburg, catching up with him in a quarter of an hour. From a distance, he looks like some mad preacher, stalking along with joined hands.

Mollie reins in beside him. He’s got a healthier color than yesterday, at least. He stops, panting slightly.

“Care to ride?” she asks, indicating his horse.

“Care to go fuck yourself?”

Men often think to scandalize her, which is funny. As if, under the buckskins, there’s still some fragile lady, trembling at each dirty word.

“You’re a cross-grained son of a bitch, aren’t you?” she remarks, putting Jensen on a long rope. “Don’t seem to care how hungry that family of yours gets. Course, all alone in that godforsaken camp since Tuesday, they could have been scalped by now.”

His eyes glitter. “No Apaches left south of Prescott.”

“Yeah, sure, except for the odd renegade in the hills. Or of course any white desperadoes who might see Mrs. J’s fire, they’d be sure to treat her like gentlemen.”

She lets him mull that over. Clicks to her horse, moving off at a walk so Jensen has to stumble along behind. If this takes three days, he’ll just have to tell his wife they went the long way.

He jerks, drags his feet, curses.

At one point he trips and can’t seem to get to his feet again. For a minute she lets the horse pull him along in the dust—but he won’t be much good to Mrs. J. all shredded, so Mollie calls a halt. “Get on your cayuse, or we’re gonna be baking out here all week.”

It could go either way.

But Jensen climbs up into the saddle, and on they ride. Southwest, keeping Twin Peaks on the right and Vulture Peak on the left.

“Old Vulture’s given up over thirty million dollars in gold,” Mollie remarks.

“Not to me, she hasn’t.”

Mollie’s watching the horizon for dust storms. Below them the Sonoran desert stretches away, already shimmering. Jensen’s botched escape has cost them an hour, so they have to ride hard in the heat of the afternoon to have any chance of reaching the camp by nightfall. A little scrub oak and piñon juniper for shade, but every crick they pass is dry; Mollie doles out the water bag sparingly. It’s too hot to talk; she rubs her gritty eyes and urges her pony on.