King of Spades (30 page)

He climbed past a pine split by lightning and tor The little boy apart by tomadic winds.

He heard the voice of a little boy in his head. The little-boy words seemed to float off before him like soap bubbles. He stopped and held his head to one side to observe them the better.

“Murderer.” Pause. “You better skip the country.”

He wiped sweat from his brow. He puffed.

His hand reached down for it before he was aware of what it was. What at first appeared to be a fallen willow leaf turned out to be an arrowhead. It was a beauty. Worked by a master arrowsmith. The point was more smoky glass than flint. Erden would have appreciated it. He rubbed it between thumb and forefinger until it shone. He lingered over it even as he dropped it in his pocket.

He reached a swayback between the two main humps of the peak. He paused to catch his breath. Ahead of him to the north, prairies unrolled below for miles all the way to the Belle Fourche River. Behind him the other way, prairies unrolled out all the way to Elk Creek.

The hump to the west was the highest and presently he headed for it. He leaned forward from the hips to climb the better, nose almost touching the steeping path. It was like climbing the bony spine of an enormous razorback wild hog. One wrong step either way and down he would roll.

It took him two hours to reach the summit.

He turned to take it all in. The instant view in the stark falling sunlight was so vast in all directions he forgot he was breathless. He was too high to sweat. To the east, many sleeps away, the Cheyenne River seemed to shimmer off into confluence with the Missouri. To the west, twenty miles off, the Hills resembled a herd of monster buffalo bulls kneeled in sleep.

He recognized the place as the Indian holy ground he'd been looking for. Bits of painted leather, even tattered and decorated buckskin, lay pegged to the ground in bizarre geometric design. Stones had also been placed in the crotches of pines, in some instances so long ago that lips of
red bark had almost swallowed them up. The silence was still heavy with old vigils, old prayers, old visions.

“Murderer.” Pause. “Better skip the country.”

Just before the sun sank a last time, he found three pines so placed in a row and close together that with the help of some flat rock and forest duff he made himself a level spot on which to roll out his suggans. The spine of the summit itself came to too sharp a point to sleep on.

Not a solitary smidgen of a sign of Erden anywhere. He heard the faint dee-dee of the chickadee far below. He heard the soft sooling of the wind in the pines nearby. He heard the thumping of his own heart.

“Erden?”

Nothing.

“Swallow? Blue Swallow?”

Not even an echo.

There was no place to sit. He chewed a little on a strip of jerky; found he wasn't hungry. He sipped some water from his canteen.

Night came on swiftly. Darkness bloomed out of the east like thunderhead rain ahead of its own shadow. As the brown shadow came on, the horizon below rose to meet it.

He rode standing high on the point.

At last, when even Bear Butte went under, he turned and stooped and slid into his suggans.

He lay stretched flat on his back. The aromatic duff beneath was soft enough to make even a good bed for an invalid. He ran his hands up and down the shiny slick buckskin over his thighs. He stared up at the brittle stars above.

He recalled the story of Abraham and Isaac, of how Abraham was about to offer up Isaac at a burnt offering, when Jehovah Himself intervened and provided Abraham with a ram caught in a thicket for his sacrifice.

He longed with a great aching longing that Erden might somehow come and wake him from sleep. Like that first
time. It was almost a year ago since they'd met. By now, if Erden were still alive, she would have borne them their baby. A boy, he hoped. To start the new line off with. It would be older than the one that Katherine would bear him. And it would be the one. If he could ever find it.

He undulated once, as if to offer himself up. Then, riding backwards willy-nilly, toes up, he drifted off, sleep coming over him as silently as night itself.

He dreamed of Mother again. Dad was gone. When he told Mother that he was lonesome and when he asked her if he could sleep in Dad's place, Mom said, “Come over then, if that's what you want.” He'd just barely got in beside his mother, between different sheets, when all of a sudden Dad thundered him back into his own bed. And he awoke.

“Murderer!” Pause. “Better skip the country!” There was always that pause between the two dark cries.

 

He returned home the next evening.

Katherine was seething white. Her occasional odd grimace had become a fixed sneer. In taut silence she set out the supper for him: potatoes and gravy, beef, onions, dried- apple pie, coffee.

He was hungry and so ate up.

She gathered up the dishes and carried them out to the kitchen and washed them alone.

He went out to the front room and sat down in his easy chair and looked out through the bay window and mused on his miseries.

A large fern hung drooped from an iron stand in front of the south window. A September breeze pushed in cool through the open door. The mountain stream trickled steadily over its old stones.

Katherine swept up the kitchen; and then went after him. She began sweetly enough. “Another cup of coffee? There's more in the pot.”

“Thanks. I've had a sufficiency.”

She stood behind him. “I was uptown today.”

“Mmm.”

“Everybody was asking where you were.”

“Mmm”

She came around the chair to stand in front of him. She tried to catch his eye. “Ransom, I want to ask you something.”

“Fire away.”

“Ransom, you aren't some kind of road agent, are you?” “What?”

“Tied up with that nest of outlaws near Harney's Peak? A lookout for them?”

“Good God!” He was thoroughly astounded that she should think that of him.

“Well, people have begun to wonder uptown a little. And somebody has been tipping off Curly Griffin about when the treasure coach is to run.”

“Are you off your rocker, woman? Me a road agent? When I don't even drink or smoke?”

“But you do love poker. And you have shot down men.”

“You don't think much of me, do you?”

“Ransom, listen to me. I've made up my mind about something. I want us to get out of here. Right now. Today. Before it's too late.” She began to pace back and forth in front of him. Her long green dress flourished about her legs. Shadows moved in her gold hair as light fell on it from different angles. Torment wrinkled up her face, gave her face a very haggard look. “Oh, Ransom, I don't know, but I've got such a terrible funny feeling about all this.”

“When is the baby due again?”

The question startled her. “Oh. Oh, that. Well, I haven't sat down and figured it out yet. Down to the last day, that is. I've been too busy worrying over you.” She picked at the belt of her green dress. “Anyway, if this keeps up, I'll probably lose it from all the strain.”

“You don't have to worry about me.”

“But I have been worrying, you know.”

He hardened. “Lady, I like the Hills. I'm going to stick it out here.”

She rubbed her hands together until they squeaked. “Ransom, don't you love me any more?”

“Oh, for godsakes, woman.”

“Don't you love me any more?”

He stared out of the green bay window. Mists of darkness were dropping down on Deadwood outside.

Then with a wonderful effort, somehow, Katherine managed to put on a sweet face, with an appealing touch of winsome petulance in it. “Aren't you ever going to wash my feet again?”

Oh God.

“Don't you really love me any more, Ransom?”

What could one say to a woman who was to bear one's child?

“Ransom?”

“Oh, shut up. If you want to leave, go ahead. But I'm going to tough it through here.”

She made a strangled sound. Then suddenly with a pounce she stuck her face into his. “You son of a bitch!” Hate pulled up her mouth and eyes into a tight net of wriggling wrinkles. “You bastard!” Her single brown eye glittered bluish. Scent of puccoons wafted out of her bosom. “Mr. Earl Ransom, I spit on you.” She spat. “Oh, how I wish I hadn't listened to all your sweet talk back then. Giving up my Stinging Lizard for you!” She began to yell at him, hoarse with passion. “I'd give anything to have that back again, right now, Hermie included!”

“That whorehouse full of hogs.”

“Don't you dare to say anything bad about my girls! At least they were true blue. Besides being kind and tenderhearted.”

“A place for cowboys to shoot off their mouths. And guns.”

“Look who's talking.”

“True blue? Kind and tenderhearted? Hell. What about that story I heard back in Denver last year, where, after their hog ranch'd burned down, whores were seen panning the ashes for gold fillings.”

“Oh. Oh.” She flounced off to the water closet. “Oh. I'll fix you for that, Mr. Ransom. After all I gave up for you.”

He wished he had a drink.

Noises came from the water closet, as well as Katherine's voice. “Oh, God, what an empty house this has become!”

He longed for Erden.

Finished in the water closet, Katherine slammed the lid to with a loud bang.

The slamming set him off. A rush of savage rage hemorrhaged all through him. He came up out of the easy chair swearing like a madman. He couldn't hold it back. He swore a streak for a solid minute.

Then, grinding his teeth, and clapping on gun and belt, he in turn slammed out of the house.

“God damn her to hell forever.”

 

Ransom went straight to No. 10, got himself a corner stool at the bar, ordered a bottle of American whiskey.

The red whiskey went down as hot as liniment. He had to swallow twice to tolerate it. Once he even rose a little on his stool to get it down.

The long bar was ringed tight with hardneck stiffs. All wore guns. All drank hard liquor. All wore broad-brimmed miner's hats. In some instances gangs of friends were lined up four deep behind their anchor man at the bar.

Talk was kindly, sometimes hilarious.

“Hey, Toby, where did our old pard Farncomb go? Hain't seen him around lately.”

“He went to New York to cut a swell.”

“Well, good for him. He can afford it.”

“Sure wish somebody would take hold of my property and develop it like they did his.”

“Yeh, but is yours any good?”

“What? Listen, when they finally get my property built up into a company, they'll have to use four lead pencils a day to keep up with the business. Why.”

“Bence, another round all around.”

The fresh whiskey fumes blended well with sawdust scent.

“Lafe had a pet hand of jacks full on red sevens and still lost the pot. It had to be a crooked game.”

“Somebody ought to show that son of a bitch that the muzzle to a mad forty-five is the entrance to the tunnel of hell itself.”

“I'll thank you for the salt, Bence.”

“Salt?”

“I always dust my beer with a little salt.”

“Coming up.”

“Well, me, I'm thankful that out here this is still a country where a man can switch his tail in peace.”

One of the men along the bar had a duskier face than usual. In the gaslight Ransom made out he was a Southerner with some Negro blood in him. He looked a little like a smoked Swede.

Ransom poured himself a second glass. He sipped slowly.

But the drinking and the jolly talk didn't help much. That sudden jolt of rage was still racing through him.

He thought: “Maybe I ought to get out of here before I get into trouble again.”

He concentrated on the merry faces around him. But look and listen as he might, he couldn't help but see in the faces lives as sad as his own.

After a while, as he swung around on his stool, his eyes happened to fall on a group of men sitting immediately behind him at a big round table. Some of them Ransom
recognized: Sumner Todd, a judge, Clifford Maule, a lawyer, Carleton Ames, editor of the new Deadwood
Pioneer,
John Clemens, another lawyer, and several members of a mining combine just in from California.

Looking them over, it struck Ransom as unusual that for middle-aged men there wasn't a gray hair in the bunch. Even baldheaded Maule had completely black brows and a heavy black beard. All were in the prime of life. Ransom had never been East, to New York or Philadelphia, but he imagined that this was the way the Eastern bigwigs looked as they sat around drinking at their clubs.

Newspaperman Ames was talking, one eye on the California investors. “One thing about it. Extinguishment of the Indian title to the Black Hills is bound to make us all rich.”

Maule drank up with a noisy swallow. “Ha.” Maule's bald head had the hue of a peeled egg. “At the same time that it'll fill our lovely valley with every crazy kind of prospector in the world.” Maule had a wide mouth that was always in motion, writhing, smiling, pouting. He also had the habit of punctuating everything he said with a stubborn roll of his head. “No form of lunacy can equal the damned-fool craziness of the damned-fool prospector.”

Ames shook his head. His blond hair slid out of place a little. “Oh, I wouldn't say that, Clifford. Just take a look around here tonight. Taking them all in all, this is a pretty good class of people. They may wear their hair a little long maybe. A few could use a shave. Clothes are a little roughneck, yes. Those big leather boots and big hats might be a little out of place in a city like Chicago. But otherwise, why, look at 'em. A bunch of real virile characters. Proud. Fearless. And what dignity, what patience, in their faces. No complaints. If things aren't any better today, it's because they can't be any better. No blame on anyone.”