Summer of Pearls (18 page)

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Authors: Mike Blakely

BOOK: Summer of Pearls
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“Be right with you,” Billy said.
“No hurry,” the guest replied, smiling. Then he saw her. The
woman from last night had grown even more provocative. To Colton, it seemed she flirted a great deal with the male diners as she leaned over their shoulders to fill their glasses with water. He was sure he saw her pressing herself against them. Now he had her figured. She wanted company tonight, and he was just the man.
 
 
Billy came through the kitchen door with a plate of steaming food for the new diner. “Here you are, sir. Enjoy it.” He smelled whiskey on the man's breath and remembered seeing him at Esau's place earlier. “Any luck pearling today?”
“Huh?” Colton said, tucking a napkin into the front of his shirt. “Oh! Hell, I didn't even get my feet wet. Maybe tomorrow.”
Billy could read drunkenness in a man's eyes the way he could grade the luster of a pearl. But, unlike Trevor Brigginshaw, Colton didn't seem to be a mean drunk. He would probably go to bed after supper without causing any trouble. “Carol Anne will bring you some water in a minute,” he said, heading back to the kitchen.
“How about something stronger?” Colton said, with his mouth full.
Billy stopped. “That'll be coffee,” he replied, and left the man to his meal.
 
 
“Hello, darlin',” Colton said when Carol Anne came with the water pitcher. He mistook her suspicion for a look of interest:
“Good evening, Mr … .”
“Call me Henry, darlin'. Henry Colton. You remember me. You signed me in last night. Room number five.”
“Oh, yes. Mr. Colton.” She poured the water calmly.
“Now, don't ‘mister' me. That's Henry to you, darlin'.” He grabbed her wrist as she finished filling his glass. “That's room number five.” He winked, now doubly drunk with desire on top of the whiskey. When he looked at her, he was sure he saw her wink back.
Carol Anne twisted her wrist from his grasp and turned for the kitchen. When she did, he reached for the roundest, softest part of her he could find and pinched it smartly between his thumb and forefinger.
The customers heard Carol Anne yelp, and looked up in time to see her empty her water pitcher in Colton's face.
“Goddamn, woman!” he said.
 
 
Billy was out of the kitchen in seconds and caught Carol Anne as she tried to rush by him. “What's going on?”
Her features were twisted in anger when she pointed. “He grabbed me!”
Billy marched to the table. “Get out!” he said to Colton.
“What? Are you gonna take the word of a water girl over a guest?”
“She's half-owner of this inn, mister, and I'm the other half. Get out before I throw you out.”
“But, my dinner.”
Billy yanked the wet napkin from Colton's collar, clenched a handful of his shirt, and lifted him to his wobbly legs. The chair fell over and slapped against the floor. The dishes rattled on the table as Colton kicked in surprise. One of the guests was quick enough to open the front door as Billy dragged the offender there and shoved him out.
 
 
“Goddamn!” Colton said as he lifted himself from the dirt. It had happened again. How many places had he been thrown out of now? Always drunk.
He looked up and saw the light of the open inn door wavering above him. He saw something coming. His suitcase and the rest of his belongings landed on top of him, knocking him back down. Reflexes slow. Damned whiskey. And this his last chance.
Where would he go now? He stood and staggered a few steps before he got his balance. Back to the pearl camps. Nowhere else to go. He stuffed his suitcase with his things, unable to keep his balance. He suddenly felt a great deal drunker than he had before.
Finally getting his belongings together, he began weaving toward the pearling camps in the dark. Halfway there, his stomach began to boil. He stumbled into the bushes to vomit.
He tried to stand again, but his stomach hurt. He felt better on the ground. Fumbling with his suitcase, he pulled out a pair of pants to use as a pillow. He squirmed under the pinpricks of thirsty mosquitoes. His head was aching now. He felt a chill, pulled another article of clothing over him.
Maybe he should check his pocket for the coin purse. To hell with it. Who really gave a shit, anyway?
This was a familiar misery. Too familiar. His only consolation was knowing that sleep would soon come—the insensible sleep of a drunk. He would go to sleep curled up on the pine needles like a stray dog. Yes, he would sleep. Just as soon as he got through puking again.
AFTER SEVERAL DAYS, HENRY COLTON HAD CAPTAIN BRIGGINSHAW
pretty well patterned. The pearl-buyer arrived at the Goose Prairie camps about dinnertime every day and rowed out a couple of hours later for other mussel beds around the lake. Colton knew all he needed to know about the Australian now to put his plan into effect.
He was standing chest-deep in water, as he had done every morning for the past four days. He didn't think it would look good if he found his pearl too easily. But four days would have to suffice. Colton was not accustomed to bathing daily.
The morning after he got thrown out of the Treat Inn, he had sobered up and cleaned up, waited for Billy to take the wagon to the camps, then gone to see Carol Anne in the store. He carried his hat in his hand and kept his eyes on the floor.
“I was drunk and out of line,” he said.
“Is that supposed to be an apology?” she asked, wishing Billy were there with her.
“The best I can manage,” he admitted.
“All right, you're sorry. Now, get out before Billy finds you here.”
He went to find Billy then. Henry Colton was a hard man to shame. He thought Billy might rough him up, but he could take a beating as well as any man. He went through the same routine. Hat in hand, eyes on the ground. “Drunk and out of line.”
“That's no excuse.”
“It won't happen again.”
“Just stay away from our inn. You won't be welcomed there.”
“If you say so.”
He got drunk with Trevor Brigginshaw two nights later at Esau's place, and told the story of what had happened at the Treat Inn. Laughed about it, in fact. He found out then that the Australian was a mean drunk who didn't like strangers grabbing the lady friends of his old mate, Billy Treat. The fight didn't last long. Colton got in a few punches before the leather satchel laid him out.
When he came to, he thought it was remarkable that the pearl-buyer would not set his satchel aside even in a fistfight. It was going to be harder to get a look in there than he had at first thought. The beating had been worth it, though. He had learned quite a lot about Captain Brigginshaw.
Colton was not a man to hold a grudge. Even after the licking Trefor gave him, he became a friend and drinking partner of the pearl-buyer. For every wild tale the Australian told of the high seas, Colton had a match from the western territories. He had been everywhere. New Mexico, Montana, Oregon. Mining, cowboying, drifting, and gambling, he claimed.
He and Trevor both understood the debilitating pleasures of saloon life. Funny how many friendships he had started with fistfights over the years. Of course, the friendships never lasted long. He had to keep drifting in his line of work. He liked Trevor Brigginshaw; he truly did. After the fight and a few nights of drinking together, they got along well. But their friendship wouldn't last.
Now, wading in the murky waters of Goose Prairie Cove, Colton was planning the exact moment the friendship would end. The water he waded in did not feel the least bit cool. The long summer had warmed the shallows. Besides being warm, it was unusually muddy. For
nearly three months, hundreds of pearl-hunters had been churning up the mud with their toes in search of mussels. When he came out of the water every day for lunch and drinks, Colton found layers of silt in his pockets, and his fingertips looked as wrinkled as prunes. He had enjoyed as much hunting as he could stand. It was time to find his pearl.
Giff Newton rowed the captain into the cove right on schedule. Colton reached into his right-hand pocket and found the little coin purse he had brought from Chicago. Carefully, he removed it from his pocket and opened it just wide enough to get his fingers in. He probed cautiously so as not to swish out the contents. In the bottom of the purse, the same thumb-and-forefinger grip that had pinched Carol Anne so smartly now delicately grasped the pearl he had been given in Chicago—a fine, round, freshwater gem of twenty-five grains. He let the purse sink and placed the pearl carefully in his left palm, closing his fist around it.
He drew in a breath and shouted “Pearl!” His voice cracked when he said it. He waved at the big Australian and saw the rowboat angle toward him.
“Henry!” The big man's voice came booming across the top of the water. “I have no time for bloody pranks!”
Colton held the fist above the water. “Prank, hell, Trev!” He put on his biggest grin. “You ain't gonna believe what I found.”
The surrounding pearl-hunters stopped to watch the boat approach Colton in the water. Henry hooked the gunnel of the rowboat in the bend of his left elbow and slowly, carefully opened his hand. Brigginshaw stroked his beard, pushed his panama back on his forehead. His huge fingers delicately grasped the pearl and lifted it from Colton's lake-softened palm.
“This is what the fuss is all about, Henry? This?” His eyelids sagged disinterestedly. “Fifty dollars.”
“Ha! Don't bullshit me, Trev. I didn't go into the pearling business half-cocked. I've talked to every successful hunter in camp, and read all the
Steam Whistle
articles from three weeks back, even before I came here. I know what a pearl is worth, and I won't take less than five hundred for that beauty!” He could feel the nearby pearl-hunters straining to hear.
Trevor rolled his eyes and looked at his oarsman. “Another overnight expert, Giff.”
Giff played along, pursing his lips and shaking his head.
“With all due respect to my friend, John Crowell, his newspaper accounts are based on exaggerated hearsay. All pearl sales are confidential. I can offer no more than a hundred and fifty dollars for this slug.”
“You're gettin' there,” Henry said. “Pretty big jump, Trev, fifty to a hundred and fifty, but you've got a sight more jumpin' to do. That slug, as you call it, will go thirty-five grains, and I can't possibly take less than four-fifty.”
The Australian's rich laughter skipped across the water. “What do you know about grading pearls, Henry?”
“When I was in the beef business, I could judge ‘em on the hoof. When I was mining, I could assay a ton of ore with my eyes closed. Now I'm in pearls, and I know what's what with 'em. Get your scales out, Trev. I'll bet you four hundred fifty dollars that pearl weighs thirty-five grains.”
The big man chuckled as he removed the pieces of his scale and put them together. He placed the pearl in the pan, and added weights to the tune of twenty-five grains.
“Bloody Hell!” Trevor said. “I had judged it at no more than fifteen grains. Its lack of luster makes it look smaller, Henry, but if it's twenty-five grains, I'll go as high as two hundred and fifty.”
“Lack of luster, my ass, Trevor! That's the best pearl you've seen on Caddo Lake yet. Don't try hoodwinking Henry Colton!”
The captain smirked at Giff. The oarsman shook his head and looked at the sky.
“Three hundred,” Trevor said.
“Four hundred.”
“Three twenty-five, and that's the absolute ceiling.”
“Three seventy-five.”
Trevor looked at his oarsman. “What do you think, Giff?”
Giff shrugged. “Meet him in the middle, Captain.”
Henry cupped his hand and splashed the oarsman. “Oh, hell, boy, you don't even know where the middle is!” he shouted.
The surrounding pearlers did not so much as ripple the surface. They were statues in the water, not looking, but listening to the negotiations and wishing they had ears like swamp rabbits.
“What Giff lacks in education, Henry, he makes up for with good common sense. His principle is a sound one, don't you think? If you won't take three-fifty, you might as well throw that pearl back to Goose Prairie Cove. I won't pay more, and I'm the only buyer on the lake. You could peddle it in New York, but your traveling expenses would consume everything over three hundred and fifty, if you could get more than that, and I doubt you could. Three-fifty, take it or leave it, mate.”
Henry grinned. “Three-fifty and you buy the drinks tonight,” he said.
“Bloody mercy, Henry! You drive a hard bargain. Done! Esau's saloon tonight at dark.” He shook the grinning pearl-hunter's hand, pulled a velvet case from the satchel, and inserted the gem. “Now, what will it be? Gold, silver, or government notes?”
“Gold's the heaviest. I guess I ought to take some of that off your hands so's the next man to get hit with that money bag won't hurt so bad when he wakes up.”
Trevor rocked the rowboat with his laughter. He counted out the gold coins, put them in Colton's hand, and reached for the ledger book. Opening the book, he held it above Colton's line of sight and flipped to the appropriate page. He reached into his coat pocket for his pencil and began writing in a careful, deliberate hand.
“What are you writing down in there, Trev?” Colton asked.
“White sphere …” he said slowly, speaking the words as the-pencil spelled them. “Twenty … five … grains. Three … hundred … fifty … dollars. Henry … Colton.”
“You sure you know how to spell three hundred fifty?” Colton said. “Ask Giff if you don't.”
“I spell it ‘three, five, zero,' you bleeding idiot.” Brigginshaw laughed, slammed the book shut, and inserted it in the leather satchel. “To the camps, Giff. We've wasted enough time with Mr. Colton.”
“Now, don't ‘mister' me, Trev! I'll see you tonight at Esau's.”

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