The Vanquished (2 page)

Woods came in through the back door and put on a friendly look. The yellow-eyed man said, “Hello, Jim.”

“Why,” Woods said, “hello there, Norval. I didn't expect to see you this soon.”

Thereupon the two men settled into a conversation. Uncomfortable, Charley advanced to the bar. Woods looked around and said, “Morning again, Charley.”

Charley said, “You haven't got a sandwich left over from last night, have you?”

“I reckon,” Woods said. “Stay put a minute, Norval. Charley, this is Norval Douglas. Norval, Charley Evans.” He went back.

Norval Douglas put out a hand toward Charley. His handshake was quick and strong. He tipped his hat back and a shock of hair dropped across his forehead, black and straight. At the temples it was shot with gray. It was a country of bearded men but Douglas was shaved smooth along the high cheeks and the shelf of the long jaw. Two deep lines ran from beside his nostrils to the corners of the mouth; otherwise his face appeared young.

Abruptly he said, “How old are you, boy?”

“Going on sixteen.”

“I guess some men are born old,” Douglas observed. “You show more years than that.”

Woods came back in with a tray of sandwiches. The bread had turned hard, edges curled up, and the salt pork was bitter, but Charley ate with hunger. Woods said to Douglas, “Charley just quit his job.”

“That so?” said Douglas. “Made any plans?”

“Thought maybe I'd hook up with a freight outfit going East.”

The yellow eyes bobbed around from Charley to the rainy street, and back to Charley. Douglas's long fingers scraped his jaw. With thumb and forefinger he flicked dryness from the corners of his mouth. Woods set a mug of beer before him and Douglas picked it up, and said, “Any particular reason for going East?”

“I've got tired of it here.”

“This town's as good as any,” Douglas suggested.

“All right,” Charley said. Woods was drifting back along the bar, doing some kind of work there. “What of it?” Charley said.

He observed the constant traveling of Douglas's wary glance. The yellow eyes came around and for a long interval his glance clashed with Charley's, and Charley began to feel a pale red anger: he met those yellow orbs precisely midway and answered them with a challenge of his own. Douglas produced a briar pipe, packed it from a yellowed leather tobacco pouch, and used a flint-and-steel mechanism to light it, all the while maintaining the grip of his eyes on Charley's.

“What the hell?” Charley said.

“You'll do all right,” was the answer. Douglas's expression, like a natural law, seemed to leave nothing open to question. He nodded and considered the glowing bowl of his pipe. Charley noticed the big six-shot horse pistol that sat at hand in Douglas's waistband. “I'll do all right for what?”

“How long have you been looking out for yourself?”

“Long enough, I guess.” He saw the gentle upturn of Douglas's lips and added, “A few years. Odd jobs, mostly.”

“No folks, Charley?”

“I ran away.”

“And stayed away,” Douglas said. “That takes a little courage. What are your plans?”

“I just told you.”

“I don't mean just that,” Douglas said. The pipe had gone out; he ignited it again. A thin column of yellow-gray smoke lifted from the bowl and even as far up as the high ceiling Charley could see the smoke fan out and crawl along under the boards, seeking escape. A man and a woman, arm in arm, went by outside, the man holding a parasol over the woman's head. Norval Douglas said, “What do you expect to make out of yourself?”

Charley thought about it. “I don't know.”

“You intend to drift along?”

“Isn't that what you're doing?”

“Now,” Douglas murmured with a quizzical little smile, “what makes you guess that?”

“You look like you've been around some,” Charley told him.

“For a fact,” the yellow-eyed man replied, “I have.”

“What for?”

Douglas seemed to know that the tables had turned on him, but he showed no reluctance to answer Charley's question. “There's some satisfaction in traveling over the world when you know you don't have to become part of any place. You see things, you learn things—but you're not touched by them unless you want to be. You see?”

“Maybe,” Charley said, not altogether sure. “But when you get all through, what have you got?”

“The most precious thing of all,” Douglas said quietly. “You've got yourself—you know what you are.”

“All right,” Charley said. “What are you?”

“A man. All by myself.”

“That's fine,” Charley said drily. “Must be kind of lonely.”

“It is, until you learn that you don't need anything from anybody.” Douglas glanced back at his horse and sucked quietly on the pipe for a moment, and said, “How would you like to go to Mexico?”

“What for?”

“To stake a claim. Build a home and make plenty of money.”

“Sure,” Charley said. There was a slight caustic edge on his voice.

Douglas showed a brief smile. On his face, a touch of restlessness, a touch of isolation. Tough, he appeared, but at the same time mild. There was evidence of quiet humor in his eyes. “Think about it,” he said. “There will be plenty of profit in it for you—if you're willing to do a little fighting.”

“Against who?”

“Indians. Mexicans, maybe. Probably not, though. There will be a good many of us.” He turned to leave. “I'll be here if you decide to come along with us.” Saying nothing more, Douglas put his yellow eyes once more on Charley, and went out.

Charley watched him go, slicker flapping in the rain, until the lean figure disappeared into the gray gloom.

Woods came forward again and put his elbows on the bar, and said, “Fine fellow, that one.”

“You know him well?” Charley asked.

“Hard to say,” Woods said cautiously. “Sometimes I doubt I know anybody very well. People are hard to make out, sometimes. That's something you'll learn when you get a bit older, I reckon.”

“I already learned it,” Charley said, and left the saloon.

Over the mountains he could see slanted shadowy streaks of falling rain. On the veranda of the Overland depot a fat drummer sat with his sample case in his lap and a bulging suitcase by his feet. An ore wagon drawn by eight teams of oxen wended a slow track down the street; the bullwhacker's livid calls echoed down the street. Two intersections up the street, near the Triple Ace, Charley turned off into a narrow alley. The air was still damp and cool but the sun now shot its rays down between buildings and the clouds were beginning to break up, receding southward, and he came to a little white frame house with pink-lavender curtains showing in the windows. Beyond this point were the scattered tents of the back of the town, littered in a patternless disorder. Charley turned up the stone-bordered walk of the little white house, passed between two precious strips of lawn, and knocked.

When the woman opened the door, Charley said, “Hello, Gail.”

“Well, hi,” she said. Her eyes were a pale agate in color, a little sharp, perhaps brittle. Her body was full-molded against the calico dress and she smiled a bittersweet smile, stepping aside to let him enter. He went inside, standing uncertainly with his carpetbag until she said to him, “So you're leaving us?”

“I guess so.”

“Good. Good for you. If I had the guts and the money I'd go with you. I'm sick of this town—I'm weary of fools.”

She went on; she always dropped into these periods of feeling sorry for herself. He stopped listening after a while. On the round table was a mahogany music box with a cameo scene of a snow-blanketed farm implanted in its upraised lid. He saw a dark feather duster standing in the corner and, beside it, a woven carpet beater. It was a homey kind of room. He could relax in it, and that was a rare luxury for him.

From his chair he could see into the kitchen—the coffee mill with its drawer half open, the round-bellied stove. On the table beside him there was a mustache cup. Her voice came back into his awareness: “Sometimes I think I hate everybody.”

“I know how that feels,” Charley agreed.

“That's a crying shame. You're too young to be that way.”

“So are you. So's everybody, I guess. How old are you?”

“I don't know,” she said. “Maybe twenty-five. When do you figure to leave town?”

“Soon as I can.”

“Well,” she said abstractedly, “remember me, will you, Charley?”

“I guess I will. Maybe I'll write you a letter.”

“I didn't know you could write. I can't write.”

“I'll get somebody to write it for me.”

“You do that, Charley.”

“I will,” he said, knowing he never would. The whole hour was lame and very sad. He stood up and took his carpetbag to the door. “Well, don't let anybody push you around, Gail. Listen—thanks for everything, hey?”

“Women like to play mothers,” she answered. “Maybe it's the only chance I'll ever have. You don't have to thank me.”

“Thanks anyway,” he insisted.

“Charley.”

“What?”

“Do you need anything? Money or food or anything?”

It brought him up. “Why'd you say that?”

She turned half away and put her hands on the lid of the music box. “I don't know, maybe I like you too,” she said.

“Why? What for?”

“You're a good-looking fellow.”

“Yeah. Well, thanks.”

“Maybe I like to see something clean once in a while. You're still clean, Charley. Stay that way, will you?”

“Sure,” he said.

“Good luck.”

He nodded. “So long.” He made a vague signal and went out. A cool wind had sprung up, it brushed his face in the alley. He heard the music box tinkling its tune and when he looked back he saw Gail in the open door with a sad smile on her face. Her shoulders stirred faintly; she pulled the sleeves of her dress up. The air had a bite in it. He went out of the alley's mouth, back into the street, and stood undecidedly watching the town. A scatter of horses stood around at the rails, hipshot and half asleep, now and then blinking or kicking or swishing away flies with their tails. The light mudwagon mail coach from the Sacramento run rocked around a last bend of the coach road into the head of the street, came forward bucking and scratching up mud, and pitched to a stop at the depot. The drummer on the porch picked up his sample case and carpetbag and walked to the coach, and waited. Front-lifted buildings with a beaten look lined the thoroughfare, and an enormous man walked across the street into the Triple Ace. The sky was fairy blue. Clouds were a mass southward; it was still raining down there, but several miles away. Puddles in the street flickered. A group of horsemen, Mexican
vaqueros
, breasted the foot of the street and drummed forward, arriving in a swirl before the drygoods store, dismounting there. Charley went stiffly down the street, again tightening apprehensively when he went by the Triple Ace, and felt his mind going around in aimless circles.

The word
SALOON
was painted across the face of Jim Woods's place in a crescent shape. When he stopped before the open-top doorway of the room, a stale weight of tobacco smoke and men's bored droning voices rolled out past him. With several unconnected thoughts idling through his mind, he tarried briefly where he was, then turned with a half-brisk snap of his young-wide shoulders and pushed into the place.

He found Norval Douglas sitting behind a table, with a solitaire game laid out half-finished in front of him, and a mug half full of beer idle by his forearm. Douglas's yellow eyes lifted and acknowledged Charley's presence, and Douglas said, “You want the job?”

“I don't know.”

CHAPTER 2

Henry Crabb's eyes were deep and dark and brooding, set back in hollow sockets. His beard was dark brown and he had a habit of stroking it with his left hand when he was in thought. He sat in the deep-red overstuffing of the chair and looked across the plush parlor through the bay window, out across Market Street at the hazed-over waters of San Francisco Bay. Wind rustled the branches of a maple tree outside the window; it was mild for a winter's day. Across the room, seated stiffly in a cane-bottom chair, was the Spaniard, Hilario Gabilondo. Gabilondo was awaiting Crabb's reply, and held his neck rigid while he tried unsuccessfully to contain his impatience. Farther back in the poor light, Filomena sat quietly with her hands folded, and, looking once at his wife there on the divan, Crabb softened his expression just a little. She smiled wistfully. Beside her, her brother Sus watched from under heavy brows. Sus sat with one lanky leg thrown irreverently over the arm of his chair; when he noticed Crabb's glance on him, his teeth flashed out of his dark face in a friendly, easy-going smile.

Crabb returned his glance to the window and considered the mists over the waterfront. He could barely make out the island. His eyes settled on that faint blue-gray outline; his hand tugged at his beard. He was thinking not so much of Pesquiera's offer, to which Gabilondo, having delivered it, now expected a reply; Crabb was thinking more of little faraway things, like the croaking of bullfrogs in the dark bayous and the smell of honeysuckle on a porch in Nashville. But Nashville, and the Baton Rouge bayous were half a continent and many years away, and just now he should not be drifting toward those things, and so he dragged his mind away from these little pleasantries and hauled in the anchor of his attention, allowing it to drag back to the mustached, sun-brown face of Hilario Gabilondo.

“Señor,” Crabb began, and in the corner of his eye caught his wife's slight quizzical smile—Crabb spoke very little Spanish, and she liked to chide him for it—“Señor, let me understand you properly, in simpler terms than I find in this flowery document.” The document was in Spanish, and he was not confident of his reading of it. Gabilondo smiled courteously and leaned forward a little in the cane-bottom chair. He seemed perched on the edge of it in a subservient yet mocking manner. Crabb dipped his head and looked inquiringly at the Spaniard from under his heavy, lowered eyebrows.