Past All Dishonor (9 page)

“I don’t like shirtsleeves.”

“Could it be a gun you’ve got there?”

“It might be.”

“I don’t like it.”

“They ganged on me once. They don’t do it twice.”

“One of the things that appealed to me about you, in addition to your education, was your size, and when you stretched Trapp on the rails, I was still more impressed with you. But a man with a gun impresses nobody. They’re talking about it, and you’ve lost ground. They feel like convicts.”

“They should have thought of that when they let me have it from behind. I felt like a sailor on the Shanghai water front. I’m wearing it awhile, if you don’t mind.”

“You’ll regret it.”

He wasn’t the only one feeling the rock, and watching every crack and splinter in it like a hawk. Paddy was, and so were the other two Mexican miners we had with us, that could almost tell silver by inhaling. We shot down a face, and one of them picked up a hunk of red rock and began turning it over under his candle. It was cinnabar, the stuff they get quicksilver out of, and it didn’t mean a thing, except we hadn’t found ore of any kind since we’d been down here, and mercury and silver often go together. We mucked and timbered, and on the next shot Paddy got in there quick with his crowbar. He came out with something, and nothing was said, because it was soft and black, with the blue cast on it, and we all knew what it was. He rammed his bar in, got a boulder to rocking, and all of a sudden prized it out, so we had to jump to keep it from mashing our feet. And then here came the ore, just pouring out like a coke pile, where he kept ramming his bar into it and working it around. One of the Mexicans was the first to yell it:
“Bonanza!”

Then the others were grinning and yelling and throwing their hats in the air, and even Paddy was showing his teeth, and Williams had that flinty smile on his face he didn’t often show. “All right, my lads, we’ll blow out for the day, and I’m recommending bonuses for all of you from Mr. Hale. It’s fine, rich blue stuff, and I’ve no doubt in my mind we’re in
bonanza
now, for quite a time.”

We started for the tub, and Williams motioned me in first. But I hadn’t forgotten whose idea it all was, and I stepped aside. “If it’s all the same to you, sir, I’d like Paddy to have the honor. It was his doing, and I can go up with these other two.”

“Padillo, get in.”

“Yes, Senor Williams.
Viva la bonanza!”

Williams pulled the signal wire, while the Mexicans screamed
bonanza
so I think they heard them on the moon, if anybody was up there, and the cable tightened, and the tub began to go up. Then it slammed down again. Both men hit their head on the side, and we jumped forward to help them out. Then Paddy began to yell, and we clawed hard, because something in his voice struck right into your belly. The cable was coming down, like some long strand of spaghetti, wrapping itself around both men, so every time we got them a little pulled over the edge, they were buried in cable again.

From above, in the shaft, there came a bumping, and then at last I understood this horrible thing Paddy was yelling at us. The pulley was coming down. I don’t know how long it takes a four-foot wheel to fall six hundred feet, but it’s an awful long time. And then nothing but the men’s heads was showing above the coils of cable. And then the wheel struck. And then all over me and the other two Mexicans were the remains of what once had been men.

“All right, Mr. Hale, before we lock up for the night, and while we’re still here in the office and nobody’s around, why don’t we get together on it, what we tell the grand jury tomorrow? So we don’t get it all cock-eyed.”

“Get together? The truth is all I know to tell.”

“Which is?”

“Rigging.”

“And whose fault was that?”

“Duval, why do you ask me that? I know, they all know, whose fault it was. I didn’t want to go into that shaft. But you said leave it to you. You said you’d rig it because you’d rigged boats. Now look.”

“The hoist engineer, he’s got his own ideas.”

“He couldn’t see. I could.”

“He don’t like it, that you didn’t holler.”

“Or that you didn’t.”

“I’ll deal with that little remark when I get around to it, but one thing at a time, as we’re in a little bit of a hurry, as it wouldn’t look so good if the two of us sat up here late, talking things over. The truth, you say, is all you know to tell, and that suits me too. Only one thing might keep me from it.”

“... What you mean, Duval?”

“Being made super.”

“Here? In this mine?”

“That’s it. The good old Dakota.”

“First you rig the hoist so badly you kill two men, then you think I’ll make you super? You must be crazy.”

“I’m not so crazy.”

“Then what are you getting at?”

“The stock.”

“... What stock?”

“Of this mine. Of the Dakota. That you bought today. On the Stock Exchange. That you ran down and bid in before you ever made one move to get those bodies to the top or even find out what happened down there, though you say you saw the pulley gear go right down the shaft, and you must have known there were men under it.”

“Is it against the law to buy stock?”

“No, it’s legal.”

“And how do you know about it?”

“I figured something like that might have happened, and went down there checking on it. It was no trouble to find out. The whole exchange was handing it to you, how you’d grabbed up the stock before news of the
bonanza
got out. It jumped eight points today, didn’t it? Just before closing, when those bodies were being brought up, and the Mexicans told what they knew?”

“... What else do you know, Duval?”

“About the axe.”

“The—?”

“That you chopped at the cable with.”

“The report says nothing about a chopped cable.”

“That’s right, you didn’t chop any cable. You only chopped
at
it! Nobody was there, the hoist engineer couldn’t see, because he was in the main hoisting works building, and then came this yell up the shaft. And then you thought fast, didn’t you? They were hollering
bonanza,
and there was that axe still lying there, the one I used to trim up the gin pole. And you let fly with it, didn’t you? Except that instead of chopping the cable you made a mislick and knocked the cable off the pulley. And when Ed shot the steam, it tore the pulley right off the axle and sent it and the cable and the tackle right down the shaft, didn’t it?”

“I don’t know anything about any axe.”

“You think it just turned to steam on the way down? You think I didn’t know what it meant when I saw it buried in Williams’s head? You think I did it just because I liked blood when I put my arms around him and pulled it out and hid it so those Mexicans didn’t see it? Come on, you son of a bitch, talk business or the grand jury’s going to get that axe and the stock deal and everything else it’ll take to send you to the gallows, and it won’t be a gallows with pulley wheels under it, but one over a trap, with you in it, at the end of a rope.”

“Now, Duval, don’t talk like that—”

“I said super.”

“Yes of course, Duval. You know, you’re a young fellow, but we’ve had an eye on you ever since you came in this mine. I meant to make you super all along—”

“Write your notice.”

“... Sure thing. Absolutely.”

“And that remark. About—”

“Is retracted.”

“Then that’s fine.”

“Los enanitos

Se enojaron,

Porque a las enanas

Les pellizcaron”

I could hear him, out there in the night, and tears ran down my cheeks, for him and all the little people he loved so well, and for myself too, and how far I’d go, even to a blackmail game on his grave, to get something I ought to be ashamed even to want.

T
HEY RAKED ME OVER
the fire in the grand jury room till my face had blisters that felt like they’d last the rest of my life, because if there was no axe it was the rigging, and that meant me. But there was nothing I could be indicted for, like something willful, and I had my $600 a month, and that helped with the blisters. It was all over town, and if the men had despised me before, they hated me now. But I kept my gun on me always, and began weeding my mine. I mean, six or eight at a time, every Saturday night, I fired the men I had been miners with, and took on new ones, mostly men that had arrived a few days before and didn’t know me from Adam. Hale paid no attention, because we were making plenty of changes, moving from the big shaft in four compartments to the little one where the strike was. I used special cages I had made, with three decks for cars, so we wouldn’t have to slow down to enlarge the shaft, and specially so we wouldn’t be enlarging it on bank money, but on our own, after we made some from the strike.

Then came the day when I was rid of all the miners that were sore at me, except Olesen, the big Swede, and Gator, the fellow that claimed he was a flat boat man, and would jump up and crack his heels and say his grandpappy was an alligator, and let on he was tough. It was Saturday, and they were to get it that night, and I could tell they knew it. How they found out I don’t know, but in a mine the timekeeper has a wife or a girl or something, and everybody knows what goes on practically before it happens. I could tell, from the way they were just pretending to work, there on the loading platform, rolling on cars, that they’d been told. And then all of a sudden, while I was leaning against a square set, waiting for the next car to come down, it was like some bee had stung me, only a lot worse.

I looked, and a candlestick was through my hand, pinning it to the timber.

A candlestick is like a clay pipe made out of iron, with the stem part a sharp point that they stick in wood or in dirt wherever they want a light, the bowl a cup that holds the butt of the candle, and the nub a curlicue that comes around and under, so they can hook a finger in it and yank it out as easy as they stuck it in. I reached for the curlicue with my good hand, but I didn’t catch it. Because a six-pound striking hammer swung past my head, and the breeze put out the candle in my hat, and the jolt put out the candle on the stick. And then there I was in the dark, with that candlestick driven so deep in the wood I couldn’t get it out no matter how I pulled with my free hand, and the hot wax spilling down and mixing with the blood, and still I couldn’t get loose. “Get his gun!”

“His gun, hell, get his guts!”

They kicked me and beat me and did their best to get my gun, but I used my teeth and it stayed under my arm, even if I couldn’t get it out to use it. Maybe I hollered. Anyway there was plenty of noise, and pretty soon there were lights up the entry, where other miners were on their way, running. But before they got there Gator jumped on the cage, pulled Oleson aboard, and gave the signal. He and the boy were up to the top by the time they prized me loose.

They got me to the top at last, and took me to a doctor on Taylor Street. It wasn’t bleeding much, but it was all mashed and raw, and hurt like holy hell. The doctor was named Rausch, and if he was a regular doctor or a horse doctor I don’t know, but the way he treated me it felt like he thought I was a horse. He poured a liniment over it that he made from mixing whisky and witch hazel in a bottle, like it was a salad dressing, and then he bandaged it up with rags he tore up from women’s petticoats he had in one drawer of his desk. When he got done I was so weak I could hardly stagger, and he got sore when I asked him to call a cab, but I hadn’t taken the gun off and when I begun fingering it with my left hand he went outside, and pretty soon a cab was there.

Next day I went to work, but by noon I felt so queer I had to come up and sit down in the office. Hale kept watching me, and pretty soon said I ought to go home. He didn’t send me, he took me, in his own carriage, and didn’t leave until I was in bed, and another doctor had come, a young fellow that at least acted like I was human. It wasn’t like Hale at all, but I figured out why he was so kind. I was out of my head a little, and he was afraid I’d talk.

How long I lay there I don’t know, but Mrs. Finn would come, and the doctor, and every time he washed my hand and bandaged it, it made me sicker to look at it, because it was swelled up the size of a ham and about the same color. And then one afternoon they were all in there, Hale and Mrs. Finn and the doctor, and the Chinese cook bringing hot water, and a look on their faces that said they were up to something. The doctor opened his case and got out a bottle of whisky and some tools. He poured me a tumbler full and told me to drink it. I put down a swallow or two, and gagged on it. “What the hell is it for? Ain’t I sick enough already with out a bellyful of this stuff?”

“You’ll need it.”

“What for?”

“For what I’ve got to do to you.”

“And what’s that?”

“... Take off your arm.”

“Oh no you’re not.”

“Duval, you’ve got blood-poisoning. I’ve done everything I know to prevent it, and nothing I’ve done has helped. There’s only one thing left, and that’s an amputation. The alternative is, if we don’t resort to that, and resort to it now, while there’s still time, or we hope there’s still time, in three more days you’ll be dead. Now let’s not deceive ourselves. Removal of an arm is a major operation, and one hell of a painful one. You’ve got one little thing in your favor, on that score. You’ve had practically nothing in your stomach since day before yesterday, and I think this liquor is going to put you out pretty completely. I’m not going to start till you’ve had a lot, but it’s going to be bad. You may as well be prepared.”

“I won’t let you.”

“I tell you, you’re going to die.”

“Then all right.”

But next thing I knew he was washing my arm, and Hale was shoving the whisky bottle against my teeth, and Mrs. Finn was standing by, with a basin. I knocked the bottle away with my chest and kicked the basin out of Mrs. Finn’s hands. The doctor began to cuss at me. “Goddam it, we’re trying to save your life, and the least you can do is act like you had sense.”

“Nobody asked you to save it.”

“Well, we’re going to.”