Past All Dishonor (7 page)

After the street meetings we’d go in the mines. Those that were in bonanza worked three shifts, and Paddy knew every drift and shaft, and how to get in and how to get out. Around jackbite time we’d slip into the Savage or the Sierra Nevada or the Kentuck, and the men would hear the guitar and slip in a dead entry or wherever we were, and we’d douse the lights and for twenty minutes I’d shoot it. They didn’t cut in on me then. Time meant too much and the steam was too near. It was coming our way, you could see that, so pretty soon we came down to brass tacks. We set a date for a meeting, a real one, with every miner in town expected to attend, on Sunday night, when they’d be free. We appointed captains and committees and wrote down names and really worked. And at the Dakota, from the way Trapp acted and Hale acted and Williams acted, you could see they were worried. One night, as I was coming out, the timekeeper said Williams wanted to see me. I went in there, and he looked me over close and asked me to sit down. “Duval, you’re one of the leading spirits in this union, is that right, my boy?”

“I don’t say I’m not.”

“You could be
the
leading spirit.”

“We got plenty of leading spirits.”

“Not like you. I attended your boardwalk meeting last night. You didn’t see me, but I was there. You seem to have a talent for gab, my boy.”

“If I have, you gave it to me. You and Hale.”

“How so?”

“By giving me plenty to gab about.”

“And quite a wit you have too. Now, let’s be frank, what are your complaints with this company? You seem to be a reasonable young fellow, intelligent, educated, well-born—what’s the real reason for this thing you’re doing?”

“The whole system’s wrong.”

“Nothing personal?”

“Like what?”

“Ah—Trapp, for instance.”

“He’s a dirty, cruel, son of a bitch.”

“If that difficulty were adjusted, would that take care of whatever you expect to deal with by means of a union?”

“It would help, but we’d still organize.” He studied me, and I expected him to lash out with something hot, and fire me, but he didn’t. He nodded and said he just wanted to get straightened out, and when I told Paddy, he was proud I had handed it back just as good as I got, and told the other Mexicans, and we had a little celebration, with vino, before we slipped in the mines for our night’s work.

Saturday before the big meeting, at lunch time, I called our gang together in the Dakota. It kind of choked me up a little, the way they looked to me to tell them the way it was to be done, and I looked them all in the eye before I began to talk. There were Lee and Cam, the two colored strikers, that were wizards at sinking a drill with six-pound hammers; Olesen, a big blond Swede, one of the strongest men I ever saw; Hook, a one-armed fellow that got his hand mashed off when he was a hand on a boat in the Erie Canal, and has a hook in its place; Gator, a fellow from Cairo, that claims he used to be an alligator man on a flatboat, and Ronnie, a sixteen-year-old boy. I made it quick, when I did begin to talk, and said the main thing was to get the men there, we’d do the rest after the meeting started. Paddy, he made a little speech too, then Ronnie got up and started to say something, some kid speech that didn’t mean much, but when Gator tried to shut him up everybody hollered to let him talk.

It was just about that time that something jumped out from behind the water barrel, and before we could even move, Trapp was in the middle of the entry, laying right and left with a tamping iron, and he’d got a couple of them on the head in the first couple of swipes. All the time he was swinging he was screaming: “Get out of here! Get back to work, you yellow-bellied rats! I know what you’re doing! I heard every word that was said!”

With that I reached him, and he began swinging at me. “And you, Duval, the ringleader! You think you’ll ever work again in this town? You needn’t even stop for your time! You’re fired without pay, and—”

“You’ll pay me or you’ll wish you had!”

“Out! Out of here! Or I’ll—”

He’d been swinging with the tamping iron, but I’d been too close to him for him to hit me solid. He jumped back now, drew the iron back like it was a rifle with a bayonet, and tightened up to drive it. I caught his chin with everything I had, and when he went down I jumped on him and banged his head up and down on the rail and smashed my fist down on his face, then got up and kicked him. But in a minute it made me sick and I stood there blowing. Then I looked around and I was the only one except Trapp in the entry. The candles were all there, where we had stuck them on the timber to give us plenty of light, but not one man. In a minute the picking started, away over in the crosscut, and lights began to flicker, and the sound of rock hitting mine cars. They had run out on me.

But the word had gone out somehow, because down the entry a light showed, and by its wobble I knew it was the super. He came and looked at Trapp, then for a minute at me, and then he called the men. His voice sounded like the crack of a muleteer’s whip. “Who did that?”

“... I did.”

I didn’t answer him till he asked it two or three times and they had a chance to say something if they were going to. “Just you?”

“That’s right.”

“You didn’t have any help?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“And what for?”

“You want to find that out suppose you begin cussing me out and treating me worse than a dog the way he did.”

“You mean that?”

“You heard me.”

“All right. Take charge.”

“... What?”

“I said, take charge and begin loading ore. Men, Duval’s foreman from now on. Get this man washed up, put him on a car, and send him to the shaft, where I’ll have him taken up in the cage. Well, Duval?”

“Yes sir. I’ll do my best.”

They sluiced off Trapp, and rolled him to the shaft on a car and came back, and started for the face of the rock. Then Ronnie came back to me. “Are you taking that job, Roger?”

“Mr. Duval.”

“And how about the union?”

“I’m holding a company job, now.”

“You two-faced son of a bitch.”

“Ronnie, you’re fired. Get out, and quick.”

Paddy tried to tell them it was something any man ought to feel free to do, take a company job if they offered it to him. But they hated me for it, and they didn’t hate me any more than I hated myself. Because Paddy could talk all he pleased, but if I didn’t owe the men, I owed my country, or what I called my country, to stick with something that might help it win. But when I heard the word
foreman,
my head began to pound with the thought of the thousand dollars it would give me, and what I meant to do with it.

T
HEY HELD THEIR MEETING
, and instead of me for president they elected a fellow named Ferguson, and then they held some more meetings, and rumors began going around about what they were going to do, but they didn’t call any strike because it turned out they didn’t have to. The territory was to be a state soon, with an election for everything with a salary attached to it, and the politicians were so hot for votes they began putting the squeeze on the owners to treat the miners right. So everywhere you heard talk about blowers and fire buckets and even a tunnel from the mouth of Six-Mile Canyon to drive under the mountain and drain the hot water into the canyon mouth. But in my mine the men had nothing to say, and while they did like I told them, they didn’t look at me, they didn’t say good morning and they didn’t say good night. And then some things happened. One day a mine car came rolling down an entry and almost mashed me against the rib. Another day a timber crashed down from the top ledge of a stope and missed me about three inches. Another day I went flat on my face from a shot, but nobody had warned me it was lit.

And then one night I ran into her. It was the Sunday night after I drew my first time as foreman, $120 for two weeks at ten dollars a day. I had just finished dinner at the International, roast beef, potatoes and gravy, stewed peaches and coffee, and I had poured myself a second cup when she came in with Brewer. I had heard about what he was buying her, the pony cart, rings, clothes, and hats, but I wasn’t quite prepared for what she looked like in all that stuff. The dress was crimson silk, with a big floppy lace hat, and yellow flowers pinned to one shoulder. Her face was all painted up, and she had lace gloves on with the fingers cut off so they stuck through bare, and on every finger were at least six rings with diamonds. She looked exactly like what she was. Brewer took her to a big table in the middle, and then here came Biloxi all dressed up too, and Renny in evening clothes with a white tie, and Haines dressed even fancier than Renny. I drank my coffee and paid my bill, and I didn’t hurry that I know of, but just the same, when I was done I left.

I got down to C Street, and could feel my face burning, and turned into a place and took a seat and ordered a glass of beer and watched them gamble. About six of them were near me, playing roulette and losing their shirt, three or four men and a couple of girls, and all of a sudden I thought about her system and the money in my pocket and stepped over and laid down a silver dollar. I laid it on the first twelve and lost. I followed it with the same bet on the same twelve and won. I was a buck ahead. I let it lay and won again. I was three bucks ahead and I laid one on number one, one on the first four, and one on the first twelve. The ball dropped in three, and I was ten bucks more to the good. I kept it up, and soon as the croupier took an interest and the others began to follow my lead, I quit. Because with them all over the board he’d have a hard time staking me out, because if he didn’t have to pay me he’d have to pay them. But with all of them aboard the same numbers, his play was so easy he wouldn’t have been human if he didn’t make it.

But I had $45 of his money, and I drifted on to the next place. I won $300 there and next door, and across the street, and began to realize I was riding a run of luck, as well as playing one hell of a system. And I had this excited feeling it wasn’t going to let me down. I won and lost here and there, and my winnings kept rising, and then pretty soon I upped the ante and left ten dollars on number one, with ten dollars on the first four and another ten dollars on the first twelve, as usual. And the ball dropped in number one. I cashed $450 in gold, and went back in the washroom to count up. With what I’d been paid and what I’d won, I had $1,085.

Back in the hotel, Renny was at the piano, and Haines was facing the people, getting ready to sing. Renny was tall and thin and dark, with an olive tint to his skin and kinky black hair. He was around thirty, and Creole French. Haines was an Irishman, kind of stocky, with a round, good-looking face, China-blue eyes, and sorrel gold hair. When I got in there, he was making a little speech, saying he didn’t often get a chance to sing for such a distinguished audience in Virginia City, but so long as he was here he was going to sing some arias he had used in a tour he made with an opera company in Italy or France or Germany or wherever the hell it was they took the show out. So that got a big hand, especially from some women over in one corner that seemed to be from out of town. So that was the first I heard of Italian opera, which he sang in Italian and Renny played without notes or anything. I found out afterward that opera was what he and Renny lived for, only of course they never bothered with music like that on a big Saturday night at Biloxi’s.

I didn’t break in on the singing at all. I just took a seat in the bar and listened to the music, and kept an eye on things so nobody walked out or anything before I got around to what I was there for. Then after five or six selections, when Haines had got a big hand and he and Renny had sat down to the table again, I went in and walked over and clicked my heels in front of Morina. “Good evening, Miss Crockett.”

“... Roger, what do you want?”

“An engagement, whenever you’re free.”

“What do you mean, engagement?”

“Business.”

“I told you once, no.”

“That’s not what you told me. It’s what you would have told me if you didn’t love money more than you love anything else on earth. What you told me was, for one thousand dollars business would be done. All right, I’ve got the one thousand dollars, and I want to make a date.”

Her eyes flickered, and while it soaked in I spoke to the others. None of the men said anything. Brewer lit a cigar and looked at me under the heavy black eyebrows that he had. Renny had eyes like a snake, and kept them on me without winking or showing expression of any kind. Haines kept looking at Brewer, wondering why he didn’t do something, and not knowing what Brewer must have known, which was what happened to Trapp when he did something. But Biloxi put out her hand, and smiled, and pulled me down for a little kiss. “My little
Annapolitain
is back, ’allo Rogay! Come, let me ask something. Why you no let my Rina alone, ha?”

“Just want her, that’s all.”

“But I ’ave ozzer girl. Prettier girl.”

“That’s impossible.”

“You come down, I show you. Li’l girl, ’alf Irish, ’alf
Chinois,
oh, oh, oh! Such ’air, such skin, such eyes! Is fourteen, jost right for my
petit Annapolitain!”

“She sounds good, but first—”

“Roger.”

“Yes, Morina.”

“I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

“I’ll be waiting for you, over there in the bar.”

I went back to the bar, and next time Haines got up to sing, she came in there. “Roger, this has to end. You have no right to follow me around the way you do, and—”

“Follow
you?
”

“I can’t stir out of the house that you’re not there, watching me, counting how much money I bet, how much I win, how much I lose, what I have on, who I’m with—”

“Can I help it if I happen to be there?”

“It don’t just happen.”

“Have it your way.”

“Roger, you asked me something just now. I don’t want anything of the kind. I’d hate it. But if it makes you happy, if you’re willing to have that and leave, you can go on down to the house and I’ll be with you directly.”

“What do you mean, leave?”

“Get out of Virginia City, go back where you came from, do what you’re supposed to do, the wonderful things you told me about, the first night we were together, forget me and this place and everything else you’re not in any way fit for.”