King of Spades (25 page)

“Too bad.”

“Boil 'em out.”

“I've done that. They're back the next day.”

“Then shave yourself bald. Between your legs too.”

Troy Barb gave his rusty beard a tug. “Ain't got a razor.”

“Got any blue ointment?”

“Out here? Nary a dab.”

“I'll give you a week to get rid of them graybacks. Because, me, I hate lice so much I'm just liable to take a shot at 'em.” Ransom turned his back on the man and with his skinning knife began cutting his own name on the first of the Troy Barb five claim stakes.

Alter a moment Troy Barb called up. “Don't forget, Ransom, that the lice that bite the hardest are the ones that are out of sight.”

 

Both Ransom and Erden sat in gloom the next several days. They didn't speak.

The weather turned sultry. Grass jumped. Opening yellow- green buds veiled the quaking aspen. Tender green came out on the birch.

Late one afternoon a comber of cold air shoved across the land. It boosted up the warm air. Enormous thunderheads built up. The thunderheads teetered on gray granite peaks. The thunderheads and the Hills took on the look of massive building blocks delicately piled one on top of the other.

Ransom, sitting on a rock beneath a big pine, watched the deepening storm come toward them. Erden watched from the doorway of their cave.

Soon rain began to thresh through the pines at the head of the gulch.

“The thunderbirds gather, my husband,” Erden called. “Come into your lodge.”

The black bottoms of the clouds continued to lower toward them. Taut ropes of black mist rushed down the gulch. It darkened terribly around them.

“Husband, do not dare the gods.” Erden held her belly in the palms of her hands. “Come inside.”

“Shh.”

Almost on the sound of his shhing, a dazzling shaft of blue light stabbed into the top of the big pine. Equally dazzling was the blast of sound. There was a further click, and then a razoring stream of blue light raced up and down the red trunk of the big pine, going both ways at the same time, and a blow hurled Ransom from his rock, and pitched him a dozen feet down the slope, and tumbled him stunned to the grass.

Erden ran out a few steps; clapped hand to mouth and bethought herself; ran back to the safety of the cave. “Aii!” Again she ran out a few steps; clapped hand to mouth and bethought herself; ran back.

Ransom lay flat out. He knew just enough to know he was almost dead.

Erden stood shrilling in the cave entrance.

Rain wlapped all around them. It hit like a falls. And lightning hit again, across the gulch, dazzling, booming.

Erden fell silent.

Cold wet coursing through his beard roused Ransom. His eyes opened. Rain was falling into his nose and mouth. His chest gathered itself up for a mighty cough, and did cough, and he sat up.

Lightning cracked farther down the gulch.

He rolled over onto his knees. He found himself to be stiff, like a piece of very dry leather. He got to his feet. Rain came down in such heavy ropes it almost knocked him down. He put out a hand to a tree to hold himself up.

Lightning again knettered a dozen rods away. Instinctively he jerked back his hand.

He stood bent, taking in deep breaths as fast as he could. His head cleared a little. He turned. Then, numbly, he lurched into a wobbling run for the cave. And made it.

He more fell than slumped onto their sleeping robes. He lay puffing. His head buzzed like a hive full of angry bees.

When his head had cleared some, he called, “Erden?”

No answer.

“Swallow?”

No answer.

“That's funny.” He labored for breath. “Hope to God she didn't spook on me now.” He rolled his eyes around to find himself. “She does have a mortal fear of her gods.”

He lay puffing for a while.

“Well, guess we better see what the damages are.”

He sat up and began to feel himself all over. A side-bolt of lightning had struck him on the cheekbone, just under the eye, burning off a patch of beard as slick and clean as if shaved off. The stream of dazzling fluid had then passed through the length of him and had gone out at the ball of his foot. It had burst a hole through the sole of his boot as clean and as round as though made by a bullet. Wonderingly, shaking his head, he took off his boot and sock and found a blood blister the size of a coneflower.

Later he went out to examine the big pine. The main bolt of lightning had cut a deep groove in its red bark from the top of the pine down into its roots.

Darkness began to drift in.

He stood in the path and called Erden. He called her again and again. All he heard was echoes.

“She spooked, all right. The poor dear darling.”

He sat down on a rock. He still puffed. The buzzing in his head continued angry.

“Erden?”

Already he missed her terribly.

“She knew. That it's all going to hell up here. The poor poor dear.”

His punctured cheek and blistered foot hurt like the blazes.

It became very black out. An after-storm cloud deck hid the stars.

Finally he got to his feet and trudged back into their cave. His stomach felt like a walnut. He looked at their bed of robes on the floor, finally crept into it, going to bed without eating.

“Bet she don't come back in the morning either.”

The wind in the cave whooed gently. Little side eddies now and then drifted into the bedroom.

“Probably just as well. With all the damned miners coming in. She'd have gone wild with them stampeding up through the gulch here. Just crazy wild. Because now not even one of her avalanches will stop 'em.”

Rock masses cracked above him in the roof of the cave.

“Swallow.” Pause. “Swallow Blue.”

 

He awoke hungry. He couldn't remember falling asleep. He fried himself some venison, drank a little from the stream outside, made his bed as he remembered Erden doing. Then, checking his gun and bullets, he went looking for her.

He first made a cast around their cave entrance. He found nothing, not a single footprint, not even disturbed grass or brush.

He wondered if she could have gone out through the passage in back, behind the curtain in their cave. That ever-flowing current of air had to come from somewhere.

He took a pine knot from her supply, lit it, and stepped behind the curtain into a big raw hole. The raw passage narrowed into darkness ahead of him. He got down on hands and knees and carefully examined the dust on the floor. No tracks. There were too many rocks she could have stepped on. He pushed in. Sharp stones hurt his kneecaps through his buckskin trousers. The cave wind breathed over and around him. The passage narrowed. He scrunched ahead
until his shoulders caught on the sides. Here the wind pushed at him, making a strange gurgling noise.

Looking ahead with the wavering light of his pine knot, burning rosin almost choking him, he saw that in another dozen or so feet the passage narrowed to almost the size of a post hole. Not even a child could have crawled through it.

He backed out of the tunnel, threw the flaming pine knot in the hearth, brushed himself off.

“Beats me where she could've gone to.”

He next made a cast farther out from the cave entrance, taking in the wall on the other side of the gulch as well as the rim above the cave. Still no sign.

“Poor little Swallow.”

He next checked the horses in their hidden Eden, thinking she might have taken one of them. He found both horses cropping peacefully.

“Of course she wouldn't take one of my horses. It wouldn't be like her.”

He next checked his white-quartz claim. No sign of her there either. And his claim stakes were still in place.

“She really was in an awful rush to get away.”

By nightfall he was exhausted, haggard.

“It was too good to last. Especially after what I done.”

 

When he lay down on their robe bed again on the fourth night, it came to him where she'd probably gone.

She had often talked about the Big Horns. Her foster Indian parents had often spoken of them. They'd told of the Old Ones living there, up near the timberline, an old people who weren't related to any of the Indians around. The Old Ones were a dying people, they'd said, and many of their cave homes were already empty.

Yes. That's probably where Erden had gone to. The Big Horns. It would be quite a long ways for her to go alone on foot, across miles of barren alkali flats, but if Erden had
decided that that's where she would go, make herself a new home in one of the old abandoned caves, that's where she would go. And she'd make it all right. In fact, if it came to sheer survival, she'd be more apt to make it bare-handed, and pregnant, than he would with gun, and hard-bellied. Erden was as wild and as tough as the land itself.

The musky buffalo sleeping robe beneath him was still sweet with the aroma of wild ferns and sage. Her perfume.

He remembered their kissing in the snow. Lord. He remembered their bobolink nights. God. He remembered placing his hand on her belly and feeling their child threshing in it. Wakantanka.

He wept large single tears. “Swallow.” How the heart hurt. “Blue Swallow.”

 

Three days later, when he went down to make camp with his partner Troy Barb, he was astounded to find that five new log cabins had been built just below Troy Barb's claim. Troy Barb himself had built a crude lean-to onto his prospect hole.

Troy Barb had wild moon eyes for him. “Where the hell you been all this time, hey?” Troy Barb hopped about. “I ain't slept night nor day since you left, guarding our claims.” He had gun in hand. He was in a fume of a rage. “Hey?”

Ransom ground his teeth together. “I got hit by lightning.”

“It's enough to make a man holler like a bay steer, so mad I am.” Pause. “You what?”

Ransom pointed to the burn on his cheekbone, then showed Troy Barb the sole of his boot.

“I'll be goddamned. That's different.”

“I've only just now come to.”

Troy Barb stared at Ransom's singed cheek. “That's a helluva note. You all right?”

“I've been off my feed a little. But I'm on the gain now.”

“Well, all right for you.”

Ransom waved a hand upstream. “Look. Why don't we go snucks on both our holdings here at the beaver dam? Even- steven.”

“You mean it?” Troy Barb cast a greedy look at Ransom's holding above the dam. “Partners?”

“Sure. I won't be able to hold it alone either.”

Troy Barb stared at Ransom a stunned moment; then began to leap about for joy. “Oh boy! Oh man! Oh glory be! Now my wife can be a lady and my children can get an education!”

Ransom grudged him a tight smile.

Troy Barb's shout of happiness brought the five new miners out of their cabins. They stood in dirty pants and ripped shirts, staring, wondering what all the commotion was about.

Ransom shook his head at what he saw behind and above the new cabins. The prospectors had denuded the surrounding hills for logs, for both their buildings and their firewood. Erden would weep to see it.

“See here,” the miner nearest them growled, “what're you shaking your head for? We're in here every bit as legal as you are.”

“I suppose you are.”

“We can all bust a bull's-eye too, you know.”

“I take it you're the he-coon of this new bunch?”

“Sure am.”

“Shut off your worry machine. You're here now and there ain't much anybody can do about it.”

Troy Barb put in, “We don't plan to bother you none so long as you don't bother us none.”

Ransom stepped closer. “Look, it's all going to be good pickin's here.” Ransom liked the miner's hard-nosed stance. “Maybe we can work out something.”

Troy Barb stepped closer too. “That's what I say. Why don't we all set up like we was a town already? Make us a few rules?”

The hard-nosed miner tipped back his black hat. A darteyed scowl worked in his black beard. “Yeh, now that we've all panned gold here, I suppose all our hearts are big.” He gave Ransom a close look as he lit his pipe. “You say your name is Earl Ransom?”

“Right.”

“And you say your name is Troy Barb?”

“Right.”

“Good enough. Me, I don't mind giving myself a name either. These days my handle is Bill Smith.”

Ransom had to laugh.

The other four miners broke down then too, and smiled.

Soon all were friends. They stepped up and formed a casual ring around a raw pine stump. Smiling a little self-consciously, they all shook hands. After a bit all but Ransom were blowing tobacco smoke three ways.

Ransom put up a foot on the raw stump. “I take it then we all know we're all still living legally out of bounds here. That the law don't reach this far.”

Bill Smith put up a foot too. “That don't make a particle of difference to me. Don't we come from law-abiding homes? All of us? So any rules we make are bound to be good.”

Troy Barb said, “If we set it up right, fair and square, and elect us a mayor and a constable and a justice of the peace, why, when the regular U.S. guv'ment comes in, they'll take us as they find us. What else can they do?”

“Right.”

Troy Barb went on. “Well, then, first off, like I said before, I say we name her Deadwood.”

Bill Smith caught his nose between thumb and forefinger and gave it a good pull. “Deadwood?”

“Got anything again' it?”

“No.” Pause. “Deadwood. Well.”

“Well?”

“Kind of a funny name. Like it might be the end of the line or something.”

“So what? I like it.”

“Deadwood. Well, it'll do for the time being.”

Deadwood it was then.

 

Later in the day, Ransom went to get his horses. It didn't surprise him too much to find that a fresh landslide had buried the entrance to Erden's cave, or that his gear lay neatly piled on the rock under the lightning tree.