The Vanquished (4 page)

“Sure. You had to pay ten dollars for a pair of fried eggs. It's my feeling the gold will peter out soon. A good many of the camps have already died, and I expect this town will turn ghost too, one day. Sure, Norval—the fun's gone out of these hills. I've made and lost half a dozen fortunes in this place. All gone now.”

“Mexico has rich enough lodes,” Douglas said mildly. “Rich enough for everybody. That will be your wages down there—a mining claim in return for your gun. Are you game?”

Jim Woods's shoulders lifted and dropped. “I've let grass grow between my toes long enough, I guess. Maybe I could build me a little cantina down there. Sure, I'll come along.”

“Good enough,” Douglas said. “You want a drink, Charley?”

Charley lifted his head. “What?”

“Want a drink?”

“Why,” Charley said, “I guess I will. Thanks.” It was good to be treated without the kind of humoring deference that most men paid to youths. He saw the closeness of a smile behind Douglas's even glance; he accepted a drink from the bartender and sipped from it. Across the room a frock-coated professor was pounding the spinet, and on the sawdust square a number of miners danced in grim fury with the girls. The girls were powder-pink of cheek and had brittle, calculated laughter. When Charley looked at Douglas again, the smile had gone from those yellow eyes and Douglas said, “How about it, Charley?”

“I ain't decided yet.”

“We may be moving out soon.”

“I'll let you know.”

Douglas nodded. “What about your folks, boy?”

“Never mind them.”

“Where are they?”

Charley shrugged. He turned around and leaned back on his elbow and watched the dancers—clumsy stamping men and girls whose smiles turned to grimaces when their faces were averted. Charley said, “The old man had a place over on the south fork of the American River, last I heard.”

“You don't see much of your father, is that it?”

“He's not my father.”

“No?”

“Stepfather. He's a Creole my old lady picked up in New Orleans.”

“That where you come from, boy?”

Charley looked up at him. “That's right. What are all the questions for?”

Douglas tilted his hat forward over his brow. His smile removed certain rough edges from his face. He said in a soft drawl, “I just like to know what kind of a man stands in back of me, Charley. No offense.”

“I haven't said I'd be in back of you, yet.”

“All right.” Douglas opened his flat-shelfing jaw wide to yawn, arching his back and blinking with comfortable satisfaction. “The land and the mines are free for the taking. We'll colonize the place, that's all. But I've seen Apaches and I know what they can do. Jim, you make damn sure you can handle a gun.”

Woods looked straight at him. “Yeah,” he said huskily.

Charley said to Douglas, “Tell me something.”

“What's that?”

“Why are you in this thing?”

Douglas considered it. Above the high bones of his cheeks, his powerful eyes were two symmetrical slits. Charley saw the fighting streak along his mouth. Back in the saloon there was a quick clashing of voices, overridden by the twang of the spinet. “Well,” Douglas said presently, “you've got to function. I mean, a man's a functioning being. If you don't function, you're not a man any more. Nothing means anything until you step out and act. You've got to act, and you've got to believe that your action means something—you've got to believe there's a point to it.”

“What's the point of it?”

“Yourself,” Douglas said. “Myself.”

“I don't follow you,” Charley told him.

“Look at it this way. Down in Mexico, all that land, all those minerals—that land is there to be used. It's there for you and me to make something of it.”

“Why me and you?”

“Charley,” Douglas said, and paused, looking down at his hands as though carefully composing his words. “Maybe you're not old enough to understand this yet.”

“Try me.”

“Don't you ever feel impatient about something, when you want to be in motion, you want to get something accomplished?”

“I guess so. But I'm still way behind you.”

“Maybe you have to be,” Douglas murmured. “You're still young, you're still threshing around, looking for solid ground. You'll find it, sometime. You've got the bones of a man. But remember one thing—the greatest failure of all is failure for the want of trying.”

“What?”

“Keep hold on the truth. You're the master of your world, Charley, as long as you live by and for your own life. There's a lot of time in the day. Cover it at a steady pace, boy, and use it like a tool. Don't lose it—don't squeeze yourself flat. When you see a chance, take it.”

“Like Mexico?”

“That's it,” Douglas breathed. “A chance like this one. If it's not too late. Maybe I've wasted too much of my damned life already. I've drifted around from camp to camp and army to army. I've fought Indians and panned gold, dug furrows and hauled freight. A lot of time goes by and you learn how to do this and that, and how to handle men. But all the time, Charley, the answer's right there—in yourself—if you look for it. Traipsing over the hills is a waste of time. Figure yourself out right now, boy. Don't wait twenty years.”

Charley couldn't tell if it was the whisky talking, or a wash of bitter memories, or in fact the zealous conviction that it seemed to be. Douglas was hard to figure out. Most of the time he seemed supremely sure of himself, almost to the point of arrogance. Charley didn't know. He had never troubled to ask himself what he was doing or why he was doing it, or what would come of it; until now, he had never concerned himself with the possibility that his life might have a meaning.

“I'll think on it,” he told Douglas, and went from the bar.

To Charley, Crabb looked about thirty-five. He was not a particularly tall man. He talked with a clinging drawl; Charley had learned the man came from Nashville. Just now, Crabb stood on a platform of knotty planks surrounded by banners of the Whig party and the American party and a painted wooden sign with his own long name spelled out, H
ENRY
A
LEXANDER
C
RABB
. Jim Woods read these words aloud to Charley. Up on the platform Crabb stroked his bushy goatee, threw his shoulders back and launched into his speech.

Charley had heard several politicians speak, most of them office-seekers passing through town campaigning. Crabb's speech started off a good deal like all the others. He used a full stock of the old familiar vague words that were meant to give people a comfortable feeling of well-being and warmth. He talked about destiny, justice, protection, patriotism, sacrifice—words that meant everything and anything, words that meant perhaps one thing to the politician speaking them and altogether a different thing to the people listening to him.

And the odd thing, Charley thought, was that both the politician and the crowd were wrong, dead wrong.

The words issued sanctimoniously from the lips of the politician, who had probably never explored their real meanings, and the words fell on the crowd like water to cleanse their souls, to apologize, to make repentance for them, to reassure them that
they
were not to be held responsible for whatever evils they had caused by refusing to trouble themselves to reason. And then the words would be flushed away, as Charley had swept away mud and debris from the floor of the Triple Ace—day after day he would clean the floor, and day after day men like politicians would leave new deposits of filth.

The speech troubled Charley, and while Crabb spoke with massive gestures and glistening teeth and sharp-shining eyes, Charley began to consider more carefully the proposition of Douglas, the yellow-eyed adventurer. He did not wish to be led into trouble by a velvet-tongued politician. He knew that in Texas, the Mexicans had allowed
Norteamericanos
to colonize—and a war had resulted. Charley had listened to a great many men in his short term of life, and from what he had learned he knew enough to distrust the kind of piety that Crabb just now was preaching. It was far easier to trust a man like Norval Douglas, who was tough but direct.

Then, with a barely perceptible transition that Charley almost failed to catch, Crabb was talking to the crowd in wholly different terms. Charley's attention now fixed itself more closely on the man and he listened with more care.

Crabb stood with feet braced a little way apart, a blocky figure in a brown broadcloth suit. His heavy arms rode up and down, injecting hot impatience into his talk; and his deepset dark eyes were bright.

“My friend Ignacio Pesquiera, gentlemen, is now seeking to overthrow the forces of Governor Gandara. The fate of the province of Sonora depends on the outcome of this struggle. I can assure all of you who choose to follow me that Señor Pesquiera's gratitude will be richly bestowed on all those who give him assistance in gaining the governor's palace.”

“Listen to him,” Jim Woods said drily into Charley's ear. “Richly bestowed, he says. From what I hear, that's a hell of an understatement.”

“Mexico,” Crabb went on in a deep, round tone, “is in a state of political upheaval today, and the man who holds a governorship is a powerful man indeed. There need be no question in your minds that Señor Pesquiera can well afford to repay those to whom he is indebted, just as soon as he takes control of the province.”

“If he takes control,” Woods murmured dourly, and someone beside him said, “Shut up.”

Crabb was continuing. “I have with me, if you want to examine them, agreements from Pesquiera himself, whereby every man in my party will be granted both mining concessions and extensive land tracts in northern Sonora, near the boundary of the Gadsden Purchase. I'm sure you are all aware that the gold deposits of northern Mexico are second to none in the world—not even those of our beloved California.”

“Beloved, is it?” Charley muttered. He had to move aside to see past the head of a tall man. The sun struck the earth and crowd and the smell of unwashed bodies was strong when the breeze lulled. Crabb paused to sip from a glass. His eyes went along the crowd and Charley tried to make out the meaning of the man's set expression—was it contempt or only earnestness? Crabb said:

“A few years ago, Sonora was one of the richest provinces of all Mexico. Today vast
ranchos
stand deserted, mines lie idle but rich, unclaimed cattle roam the plains by thousands, and all this great land stands ready for us to take it. All we have to do, my friends, is be prepared to stand fast against the Apaches. It is the Apaches who have laid Sonora waste, and it is the Apaches from whom we must reclaim it. This is the task Pesquiera wishes of us—and, gentlemen, it is a task for which he is willing to pay.”

Crabb's pause was obviously meaningful. The day was warm for January; the sun was made of brass. Crabb swept the crowd with his chin-firm glance and said in a lower tone, “Think about it, gentlemen. My men are among you, ready to take down your names. We will be happy to have all of you—there is more than enough for all, where we go.”

Back in the crowd, some fool began to applaud, and the hand-clapping took hold and pounded in undulating waves of sound against Charley's ears until Crabb stepped down from the platform amid that steady roar. The gold camps were playing out; Crabb had found a willing audience for his promises of wealth and booty. The applause dimmed quickly until there was only one man smacking his palms together, and that too stopped quickly, as if the unseen man had noticed his own foolishness. Somewhere nearby in the crowd a coarse voice said, “They got pretty women in Mexico. I always was partial to that brown meat.” The man laughed shortly. “Gold lyin' all over the ground, boys. Oil your guns, hey?”

Charley turned away with his head bowed in thought. He was suspicious of it all; something about it did not ring true; he did not know exactly what it was.

The crowd slowly shattered into small groups, each one a nub of excited conversation. Men drifted away in all directions. The recent storm had left the streets hard-packed and rammed firm, and there was little dust. Jim Woods, grizzled and hard-muscled, was going downstreet with a small group, all of them talking impetuously, gesticulating and laughing heartily. Crabb had disappeared, along with the frock-coated men who had shared the platform with him. A large figure filled the doorway of the Triple Ace—Bill Randolph, the bartender. Charley's throat tightened and he turned, going down the walk toward Jim Woods's place.

At a corner table, Norval Douglas sat behind a large ballot box and a number of sheets of paper and quill pens. Douglas was busy recruiting; a queue formed quickly enough and grew until it extended almost to the door. Douglas was studying the face of each volunteer and every now and then he would shake his head and say a few curt words, and the applicant would curse him or go slack-jawed or simply shrug and turn away. Charley went to the bar, where Woods waited with a half-amused expression on his seamed-leather face and a beer mug in his fist, and Charley regarded the anxious line of volunteers with troubled uncertainty. He said to Woods, “What does Crabb get out of this? I don't figure him for the kind to settle for a gold mine or a ranch he'd have to work.”