Days of '49/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII
1
Late in the afternoon of a day in the latter part of August, Hales approached the camp of Fan Fare Bar.
A bar was usually the wide flat sandbank that formed in the bend of a river. The gold from ravines, arroyos, gullies, and wherever else water washed across the auriferous quartz, had been brought down by winter rains and river current for un. numbered years, centuries, and lodging in this sand shifted to bedrock.
It was Sunday. Hales pressed his horse on at a rapid walk and frequent trot. He wanted to reach the camp before dark.
For one thing he expected that here a letter from Judge Deering would be waiting for him. For another, he had it in mind to mold some bullets.
In San Francisco he had bought a few boxes of cartridges that fitted his gun, a 44. These cartridges contained bullet and powder, each wrapped in combustible paper envelope so that the cylinder could be loaded very readily; and the cartridges were put up in sealed wooden boxes, containing just one charge for each revolver.
He had acquired his marksmanship in the only way that marksmanship can ever be acquired, and he kept it by the same practise.
Hales had reason for thinking frequently of Don José. The young Spanish Californian and his brother, Don Esteban, and their horsemen—particularly one Don Gil Diego—had become notorious. A price was on their heads and they were hunted; if not everywhere, at least everywhere a sharp lookout was kept for them. They were greatly talked of, angrily. The miners would not take much time from gold digging to go bandit hunting, though Col. Nevinson had got handbills printed and sent these reward notices through all the camps.
With characteristic rashness, Nevinson had offered $5,000, dead or alive, for either of the de Solas, just as though he were an officer of the State.
There were no officers of the State, there was no State; and the Army was only very nominally in charge of the territory. Delegates were preparing to assemble in Monterey on Sept. 3rd, '49, to organize a State government and adopt a constitution.
The miners approved of Nevinson's handbills. When a horse was stolen, a miner robbed or murdered, if no one was caught the de Solas were blamed.
In many camps all greasers had been driven out.
Toward evening Hales looked down from the crest of a ridge into the camp of Fan Fare that was sprawled in the small flat valley below. This had been a wooded valley, but the miners, busily as beavers, had cut away most of the near-by timber, throwing it into cabins and wing dams. This was a prosperous camp, a large one, old, too, as age went in those days. A camp that had existed for six months was regarded as one of considerable antiquity. Fan Fare had a dozen saloons or more, and two hotels, both built of canvas and rough sawed lumber which had been brought in at enormous cost.
From afar Hales could see that something important was going on. A crowd of miners gathered in the town, and there was little movement among them. The crowd was silent, and massed near a large twisted pine which for some reason had been left standing at the center of the camp, probably because the keeper of the near-by hotel realized the advantage of its shade as a loafing and meeting place, so conveniently situated with regard to his bar.
Hales descended the steep trail and, passing many cradles and contrivances called "long toms," a sort of sluice box which had recently begun to appear, came to the ford and splashed across.
Near the edge of the camp he met a miner who, with a heavy pack on his shoulders, was evidently hurrying off to his far cabin to be ready for work on the morrow.
"What's up?" asked Hales.
The miner eyed him carefully, suspiciously, noting his odd dress, the sombrero, the nearly Spanish cut of jacket and trousers.
"Oh, they're just hangin'of a couple o' greasers!"
"What for?"
"What the hell you s'pose for? Ain't fit to live. He's one o' them de Solers. Pertends he can't savvy English, damn fool. Lot o' good it's goin' to do him—him or the woman."
"Woman? They're not going to hang a woman, are they?"
"I reckon they will if they feel like it," said the miner, dropping his pack and stretching his shoulders. "Who're you?"
"Hales. Dick Hales."
"You look somethin' like a greaser yourself."
"Then look more carefully," said Hales. "How do you know this fellow's one of the de Solas? And who is the woman?"
"Stranger, this here is Fan Fare, an' my claim's 'bout five mile to hell-an'-gone. I ain't got much time for to talk, an' Fan Fare can take care of itself. They caught these two up the river an' brung 'em down. Tom Simpson he reckernized the feller as one of some greasers what robbed him a while back. They was ridin' hosses with that there de Soler brand, an' they can't give no suitable explanation o' theirselves."
"You mean they can't talk English."
"They won't talk it, an' they pertend not to savvy when they boys talk Spanish to 'em."
"Aren't there any Spaniards in camp?"
"In Fan Fare! Not live ones, there ain't. The boys run 'em out. They was in with the de Solers. All greasers is in with them de Solers. Col. Nev'son he's got the right idee."
"Nevinson? Is he here?"
"Not now he ain't. He was here some days ago. So you ain't no greaser, hunh? You shore look it. Well, I gotta git up an' git."
The miner threw the pack over his shoulders, bent under its weight and plodded on.
Hales rode closer, dismounted, pushed into the crowd.
2
The meeting was being held in the open. No building in camp would have admitted the crowd.
Darkness was coming, and men were preparing to build a bonfire under the great twisted pine, the lower branches of bonfire under been cut away.
Hales squeezed his way into the the front front line line and spoke inquiringly to a man by his side.
The man answered earnestly:
"We're givin' 'em a fair trial before we hang 'em."
"But that woman?" asked Hales, looking across to where a young woman, much disheveled and huddled in an attitude of exhausted weeping, sat on a box near a small Spanish Californian who stood and glanced about him incuriously, from time to time rolling a cigaret.
"Her?" said the miner, regarding Hales with a suspicious scrutiny. "We ain't real sure, but we think she's that Mex girl that used to be in a saloon to Sonora, 'r one of 'em. They used to find out what miners was doin' well an' had a pile o' dust. Then them de Soler fellers 'd come to his cabin, quiet-like, some night an' rob him. Tom Simpson there, he was robbed that way. She ought 'o be hung!"
Tom Simpson was now, officially, telling the story that he had told to one group and another many times since these prisoners were brought into camp.
Simpson, with broad, floppy hat pushed back, his big grimy hands absently pulling at his beard, at his belt, going in and out of his pockets, talked toward a row of men that sat on a plank resting across kegs. There were twelve of them.
Another man, big of body, sat on a barrel with a stick thick as his own arm in his hand, and at times when the voices of the crowd grew too loud he would strike the barrel and shout:
"Shut up, you fellows."
This was Clay Freeman, who was usually chosen as judge in criminal affairs. He was a large man, aggressive, not quarrelsome, and the miners believed in him.
"Louder! Louder, Tom! We can't hear ye!" voices from the crowd called.
Simpson gave a startled sort of glance toward the crowd, and with apparent effort lifted his voice through a sentence or two; then his tone rapidly sagged lower, falling again into a half awkward conversational mumble vaguely addressed to ward the twelve men who were squeezed together on the plank across the kegs..
"We can't hear nothin'!" a man shouted.
"You don't need to hear!" Freeman shouted back, banging the barrel. "The gents o' this court can hear. You fellows just watch an 'see that all 's fair an' square. Go on, Tom."
"We can't see nothin' either much! It's gittin' dark!"
"George," said Freeman to one of the jury. "Stick a match to that firewood there. Go on, Tom. You was sayin'?"
"—this girl, Mex-girl, she was purty an' took such a shine to me that I stayed there most o' the night drinkin' with 'er. This girl"
"You mean this here one?" asked a juryman, indicating the child-like figure that looked at no one and seemed to hear nothing.
"No, it weren't her I was drinkin' with. But there was three 'r four other Mex-girls, jus' come in that day. She may a-been one o' them. I ain't sayin', y 'understand, bein' as I'm tellin ' the truth, s' 'elp me God. This one—they called her Niter"—obviously he meant "Nita"—"she was coaxy, an' you fellers all know how a woman can make a man make a fool o' hisself"
Some of the jurymen nodded gravely; some in the front line of the crowd muttered a sympathetic "You bet!" Clay Freeman took a bowie knife from his belt and whittled meditatively on his stick. He was one man of whom no camp-woman had ever made a fool, and the miners respected him in that he never went near the lewd girls that came from time to time into Fan Fare.
The fire crackled and threw up wavering tentacles of flame as if half-reaching for the high boughs overhead. The glare of it began to cast a brazen light into the bearded faces of those near by; and as the fire burned higher and higher, those nearest pushed back to be away from its heat.
On the outer edge of the crowd there was a continuous trampling of heavy boots and mumble of voices among the men who were too far off to hear what Simpson was saying. Now and then from afar came a vague shout, and once a man called clearly:
"Hick'ry, y' come an' git me when they bring the rope! I'm pinin' o' thirst."
"—I tol' Niter I had more'n two hundred ounces buried in my cabin, me an' pard"
There was a low grumbling in the crowd at such folly.
"—but we didn't have that much. I was jus' talking big, like a fool feller does to a woman. We had only 'bout a hundred. She said in that funny way greaser girls talk, 'I bet you it's under your bed.' I said, 'Not on yore life.' She coaxed me to tell 'er where, an' like a fool I tol' er!"
Vague, low and uncomplimentary comment ran across the bearded lips of the crowd.
"—'bout four nights, maybe five, later, long 'bout midnight I reckon, me an' my pard we was awoke by somebody puttin' a gun 'gainst our heads. 'Ah, señors, eet iz a pittee to break such faith in the good God as your innocent sleep shows you to have!' says a feller"—Simpson had tried with inflexible nasal accent to imitate the soft, slightly broken speech of the one who came to rob him—"an' he lights a candle. They is four o' them, an' this here little feller he was one. I know him. I'd know him in hell, which is full o' greasers!"
Simpson gestured wrathfully at the small Spaniard who smiled, as if doubtfully acknowledging a compliment. The crowd, as if at a signal, trembled with a surging movement, inching nearer, staring fixedly at the small brown vaquero who stood full in the firelight.
"The leader o' this here gang," Simpson continued, "was a big feller with earrings on him. He didn't have no gun. He had a big knife, an', damn him! he was cheerful as if we ort 've been glad to see him.
"Our cabin it was up on the side of a hill, off quite a ways from anybody. This was 'bout six weeks to two months ago, just 'fore the big strike over to Horseneck Hill.
"The leader o' this here gang he didn't look perzackly like a greaser but he was one all right. He tried to be real funny. He said all sorts o' things an' mad as I was I jus' had to snort—the way he talked.
"You fellers all know I monkey with a fiddle a little, an' he spied that there fiddle. An', fellers, he could play a fiddle. He said maybe me an' my pard 'd like to dance. We said no, we didn't think as we would. But this little feller here—this here feller—he poked a gun at me an' another un poked a gun at my pard, an' the big feller fiddled an' we danced all right, me an' pard. We hopped 'round there on one foot then t'other for 'bout an hour I guess, only maybe it was about ten minutes.
"Then that big feller, he didn't have no beard, but a lot of hair an' earrings—he said as how ever'body knows you have to pay the fiddler when you dance, an' we'd better pay. We cussed a while an' then pointed to some yeast cans on a shelf an' they took 'em. 'Bout thirty ounces, I reckon. Then that feller"—Simpson leveled an indignant arm at the small vaquero—"he went right to the big rock by our fireplace, turned it over an' took out the pouch. Then they took our guns an' went off.
"My pard, he said, 'How in hell did they know where that gold was?'
"I said, 'I don't know!'
"He said, 'Think! You must a-tol' somebody, 'cause I ain't.'
"An' then I 'member about Niter. The nex' mornin' I was into Sonora firs' thing, but she was gone. That feller"—again the leveled arm went accusingly toward the little vaquero—"not only stole my gold, but he made me lose my pard, cause pard he said he wouldn't stay with a feller that was such a fool as I'd been.
"I'd know that feller anywhere. He was one of 'em!"
A voice shouted piercingly: "Then let's hang him!"
"Hang 'im!" went up wrathfully.
Clay Freeman smote the barrel. His voice boomed:
"Shut up! This here's a reg'lar court, an' we'll hang 'im, but we ain't goin' to be told to do it by nobody that's not on the jury!"
He was in earnest. He meant what he said. The justice of what he said was affirmed by sudden silence.
"But about this here woman?" said Clay Freeman to Simpson.
"What of her?"
"I ain't real sure," answered Simpson, obviously trying to be honest, but at the same time feeling too aggrieved at women to want a guilty one to escape.
"Look at 'er again, clost," said a juryman.
"Hold your head up, gal," said Freeman, getting from his barrel, approaching her.
At his touch she looked up, startled, terrified. Her eyes glanced in terror about the circle of big men, roughly garbed, bearded, now silent, grimly motionless in the firelight, all staring at her.
She broke out in Spanish, frantically pleading. Hales alone understood what she said:
"Please, good señors, do not hurt me! I have done nothing! Oh, Holy Virgin, I pray! It is terrible, señor, to be here! I but traveled with Benito to the man I love! Help me, dear good God, for I am afraid! Oh-Oh-Oh! Why, señor,why do you look so at me!"
"Can't you talk English?" demanded Freeman, frowning in a sort of helplessness. Then, commandingly, of Benito: "What's she sayin'?"
"No sabe señor," said Benito, looking steadily and shrugging his shoulders.
"You'll blastedly well savvy before we're done with you! Didn't you hear what Mr. Simpson said? You robbed him?"
"No sabe, señor," said Benito imperturbably.
Hales stepped from the crowd, crossed the small space brilliantly lighted by the tossing tentacles of fire, and said to Freeman:
"If you like, I'll act as interpreter."
A hum of doubtful comment stirred through the crowd. Hales wore a sombrero. "Greaser!" floated up from many mouths.
Clay Freeman looked him up and down; then:
"Who are you?"
"Hales. Dick Hales."
"Who's he?"
"Of the Venegos Rancho. Many years in California. At present on his way toward Sacramento to take service with Army scouts and help emigrants through the mountains."
"Um," said Freeman, tipping forward his wide-brimmed hat and scratching the back of his head as he again looked at Hales from boots to sombrero:
"Spanish, ain't you?"
"No."
"The hell he ain't! Jes' look at that hat!" cried a voice from the crowd, and a few other voices took up the doubt. Some one shouted, "Don't let him fool you, Clay!"
Freeman beat his barrel vigorously; then:
"Who's runnin' this court! Who's runnin' it? You fellows shut up!"
There was power in the man's voice, command in his bearing. He gave the barrel's side another thump, and slowly looked all about him.
"If you care to you may glance through these," said Hales, drawing from his inside jacket pocket an oblong pouch.
Freeman took the pouch, regarded it doubtfully, looked at Hales, then fumbled for a paper within.
The girl, who had been staring in a sort of incredulous daze, suddenly pitched herself at Hales, grasping his body, sinking about his feet, staring at him crying:
"Oh, señor, good señor! Save me! I am Lucita Carrillo! These men, terrible men—I have done nothing but seek my José! Señor, you will save me! Oh, the great good God has heard me!"
"Who is this man?" Benito asked quickly, sharply.
"Señor Hales, who stayed at my father's rancho and met Don José!"
"Ah," said Benito and peered steadily at Hales. "The good God has heard you, señorita. I know of him."
Rapidly voices rose:
"What's she sayin'?"
"It's a trick, Clay! He knows 'er!"
"He's greaser hisself!"
"Hang him, too!"
"Don't let him fool you, Clay!"
The burly Freeman glared about him, turning this way and that; then when silence fell on the crowd, Freeman beat his barrel with slow deliberate blows and shouted:
"Silence! If any fellow thinks he can run this court better 'n it's being run, just let him step out here an' say so. Ain't that right, boys?"
Freeman turned toward the jury, and to a man the jury nodded gravely; some of them looked with studied challenge at the crowd, some bent forward and spit tobacco juice. And there was silence. Freeman had been a butcher in a central New York town before he joined the gold rush; and having been an honest man all his life, he knew but little of courts and procedure, but he did know that a court which put up with interruptions from onlookers was not much of a court.
When he was sure that there would be silence for some time, he fumbled with the documents in Hales' pouch, and held one of them to the light while he read. He read slowly, spelling out some of the words to himself, and his lips moved in a low mumbling. Then he refolded the document, placed it with the others, unread, and handed the pouch to Hales.
He lifted his voice purposely:
"That one's enough. This court ain't got time for readin' much. If you've been a captain in the Texas Rangers, I reckon you're all right.
"Boys, that there I just read is a letter from the Army. This here is Cap'n Richard Hales of the Texas Rangers. That there paper says he's been a scout an' a good one, an' he speaks Spanish like a greaser. Glad to meet you." Freeman put out like a his hand, then—"Now if you if you'll just tell us what this girl's got to say for herself. Don't make much difference what the other fellow says because"
"This girl," said Hales, "is only a child. I know of her family. I stopped at their rancho when I came from the south to San Francisco. She says that the man she loves is somewhere in this part of the country. She has been trying to find him."
"Then what's she doin' with this fellow? Ask him if he didn't rob Tom, here?"
Hales asked: Benito answered:
"If I say yes, or if I say no, it will be the same, señor. So I say no."
"Tell him we're goin' to hang him, " said Freeman. Then, across his shoulder, toward the jury: "Ain't that right, boys?"
The jury gave off straggling answers, low-voiced, with emphasis:
"Sure are."
"You bet."
"That's right."
Benito shrugged his shoulder.
"Tell him," said Freeman, "we're goin' to send him straight to hell, so he'd better confess."
Benito replied:
"No, señor. They can kill me. They can not send me as they say. The good God, He will do with me as He thinks best. The gringos, do they not rob us? Do they not kill us? No, señor. A man dies because he can not live always. Today—it is as well as tomorrow when you are dead."
He shrugged his shoulders and lighted a cigaret.
This answer, translated literally, was not pleasing; the reproach made some who heard it a little indignant; the indifference to punishment somehow seemed to cheat the punishment.
"What's she doin' with him Cap'n? Find out about that," said Freeman.
Benito explained with a brevity that was not usual when he spoke, but the shadow of Death had perhaps impressed him more than he showed in other ways:
"Señor, Don José gave to me a letter and said, 'To Lucita, Benito. To Lucita, and bring me an answer.'
"I lay on the hillside till I found one to carry my letter to the beautiful señorita. I waited for the answer. She came out of darkness. She said, 'Benito, Don José writes me and says good-by; that he loves none and will ever love none but me; but while he has life he will fight with gringos, and when he is dead he will pray God to hate them; so I must forget him, my José! But, Benito, I love him. If I stay, I shall die. Benito, take me or here, now, I kill myself.'
"I took her on my horse until I reached our rancho. I got a horse there for her. All of every day I begged that she would go back; but her answer was: 'On, Benito! On!' When I came to where Don José said I would find him, he was not there. I do not know where he has gone, but the señorita said, 'On, Benito! On!' We went on to where I thought he might be. Today these men seized us."
Hales asked:
"Is this true, señorita?"
"It is true, señor."
Hales had hardly begun putting her story into English before, out of listening silence, a voice boomed:
"De Soler's woman! Hang 'er, too!"
Voices broke out—saloons were near, many men had been drinking
"Hang 'er!"—"Whip 'er!"—"Hang 'er!"—"De Soler's woman!"—"Hang 'er!"
"She's one o' them like cheated Tom!"
Other voices rose angrily:
"No!"
"Hang a woman!"
"You're crazy!"
"A woman!"
The crowd began to stir, to shove, to surge. Men shouted loudly at men who stood at their elbows. The way Tom Simpson had been cozened by a de Sola woman stung many of them to reckless wrath, and these men made the most noise. There was the mingled cry of "Rope!" and "Whip!" and the oaths of men who said that such a thing should not be.
"How about it?" said Hales into Freeman's ear. "Are you with me? No man lays a hand on her!"
Freeman struck his barrel and shouted, but the crowd did not hear. It was surging. Men were pushing and being pushed. Arms waved aloft, oaths burst.
Lucita, on the ground, clung to Hales' knees and stared in terror.
Benito sidled closer to them, but he showed no fear, though his eyes glanced sharply this way and that, looking for a chance to dodge out of the uproar.
Some one threw dried boughs upon the fire, and instantly it leaped high, throwing its glare into the faces of the crowd, sending flickers of light into the heavy shadows that closed in as the flames fell only to toss themselves up again writhingly.
Men in the crowd had become wildly angry. Some were infuriated by the idea that being a woman could save a woman from justice. In any crowd, drunken men make the most noise. The mob passion swayed some who were not drunk. Other men pushed at them, pulled, shouted pleas that were not heard. The crowd trembled with the surge of struggle. A man broke through, crying:
"I'll get 'er!"
Hales' revolver came from its holster in a level aim at the fellow's head.
"Back!" said Hales, and the man sagged backward, step by step.
"Up here, jury!" Freeman bellowed. "Up here an' defend your prisoners! That's what a jury's for, an', by God, this court's goin' to run itself somehow!"
The twelve good men and true, peers of the land, came off their bench and bunched resolutely about Lucita, encircling Benito, facing the crowd, and their hands fumbled at the handles of their revolvers. They knew no more of courts than Freeman knew; but they knew what they thought was right, and they stood in their tracks, ready to do whatever they thought needful to be done.
The men of the crowd shouted hot words into one another's faces, waved fists, shoved, struggled, roared in menace.
The great primeval hills lay darkly against the starlit sky, and now and then the hills with wondering echo, repeating the word as if in astonishment, caught up some man's fierce shout. The pines of the high crest stood like serried sentinels, aloof, motionlessly watchful of the noisy men in the little valley far below, that trampled about in anger and talked with wild words; and the hurrying river, with the chant of the wilderness in its rapids, flowed on with tumbling eagerness, fleeing to its great mother, the sea; hurrying through ripples and around bends as if to escape from these bearded creatures that dug into it with picks and shovels, plundering its treasure—treasure gathered grain by grain through the centuries.
"There's too much talk now!" Freeman bellowed. "Throw him out!"
The man who had grabbed at Lucita was jerked back into the crowd, pushed, shunted, shoved, knocked roughly from one to another until he was thrust from the outer circle and into darkness.
"Now," cried Freeman, leaping to his barrel, brandishing his stick, "this here court will continue to run itself without lawyers!"
A clatter of cheers went up.
"We'll take a vote!" Freeman shouted.
More cheers.
"Them that is for lettin' this here court an' jury do its duty, stand over here. Them that wants her hung, get over there!"
It was nothing new to have the camp vote by falling into groups; and Freeman, who had the gift of strategy, indicated the positions in such a way that those who would defend the woman were gathered near to her. Men came rapidly out of the crowd, and from the far edges of the crowd where they had stood in silence. There was no doubt as to the sentiment of the great majority.
"Why, even here's Tom Simpson hisself," shouted Freeman, pointing with his club, "who's got more reason than you fellows for wantin' justice done, an ' he's votin' the girl ain't guilty!"
Simpson straightened up in a kind of proud surprise. He had simply stood in his tracks from the time the crowd grew stormy, without any thought that he was casting his vote. Reproaches from the very small minority that stood in darkness were thrown at him; but Simpson shook his head and shouted back:
"I said all along it wasn't her!"
"Then why," yelled an aggrieved voice, "didn't you talk up loud so we could hear?"
"There wouldn't a-been no vote if we could a-heard you!"
"We don't want no innercent woman hung even if she ort a-be!"
"What about the man—do we hang him?"
There was a pause. A sudden voicelessness fell upon them. From the top of his barrel Freeman looked about. For a moment the very rush of the river could be heard, and the great silence of the wilderness that is like a vague and nearly noiseless sound seemed pressing upon the camp of Fan Fare Bar as men, that but a moment before had been noisy with anger, stood with hushed breath.
Deep-voiced and slowly, Freeman spoke:
"The court finds him guilty an' he'll be hung now, right away. Bring a rope."
There was no cheering, only a murmuring babble, the stir and press of men shifting about to get where they could see.
"Come," said Hales, putting an arm about Lucita, "we must go from here."
Trustingly she pressed against him and looked with fright at the men who were grim, nearly silent, waiting for something, she knew not what.
"Come, Benito," she said quickly. "Come with Señor Hales from these terrible men."
Benito took off his hat, bowed, spoke softly:
"I remain, señorita. It is nothing but a little death. Light a candle for me and say a prayer if Benito seems worth so much to you."
Hales took her away. The crowd parted with staring silence. She was crying again, not understanding why those men would hurt Benito, not understanding why Señor Hales could not save him, too.
3
A rope was thrown across a limb of the twisted pine; a noose was made; the barrel was moved, and Benito, with hands tied and the noose about his neck, was helped to the top of the barrel. They thought that his dark face looked strained, even pale, in the firelight.
The rope was drawn snug.
"He ought to confess, now!" said some one.
"Now tell the truth, 'cause we're goin' to hang you anyhow," said Freeman, standing before him peering up. "Did you rob Mr. Simpson?"
"No sabe, señor," said Benito, shaking his head and trying to smile.
What need to know this barbarous tongue of the wild gringos when it was his own, as the good padres had told him in his childhood, that was spoken in heaven!
And so he died.
4
All the hotels of the mining camps were conducted on what is known as the American plan: the meals were included in the price of a bed. These beds were nearly always bunks along the sides of a big room; a year or so later the big hotels had two or three eight by ten bedrooms; but in '49 nearly all of the hotels had merely tiers of bunks, into which the miners threw themselves fully dressed. At times the proprietor, possibly with a view to the care of his blankets, posted the notice:
GENTLEMEN ARE REQUESTED NOT TO GO TO BED IN THEIR BOOTS
Hales inquired from men in the darkness as he passed by them which was the largest hotel and how to find it. He was told by some that the largest hotel was the Empire; by others, Fred's House; and Fred's House being the nearest he went to it.
Not a light was burning there. Everybody from bartender to cook appeared to have gone to the hanging. Hales went in through the wide doorway, which was without a door and would not have one until the winter rains came. The room was darker than the night, for roof and walls shut out the stars. Lucita clung to him as if fearful that something in the dark would seize her.
He struck a match, and holding it above his head caught the flickering glimpse of a rough bar that ran clear through the shadows, as if endless, and behind the bar were shelves on which was a motley array of bottles, canned goods, blankets. Hotels were also grocery stores. There were rough tables and rough chairs.
A low hoarse voice edged with pain, spoke out of the darkness:
"Candle there at the end of bar, pard. Lantern too some'eres."
Hales, striking another match and half groping, with Lucita holding to his arm as she followed with anxious peering toward where the voice had spoken, found the candle and lighted it. The small flame burned with a mild spluttering as if in petulance at having so much darkness to overcome.
He pulled a chair from a table, saying, "Sit here, Lucita." She sat down, but instantly jumped up and held to him as he went across to where a big young miner sat in a chair with one leg stiffly before him on a plank that reached to another chair. A blanket was folded over the leg.
"You've been hurt," said Hales, by way of saying something.
"Yes. You bet," said the miner, one of many known throughout the camps as "Yank." A sense of suffering emanated from him. His face was bearded. His eyes sunken, feverish with pain. "I got a leg smashed. Rock she shore fell on it. Doctors here say I can't live 'less it's cut off. Say I'll shore die quicker if it is cut off. So what's a feller to do? An' she shore hurts. Hurts bad. Me an' my pard we built a cabin, to winter in but I was brought down here to the hotel so I could be took care of better. Guess I ain't got long to live. Ain't that the little Mex-girl? An' air you a greaser?"
This man too looked like one of the sons of Titans, young, bearded, powerful, crippled. The flickering shadows played about his eye sockets, into which pain seemed to have burrowed. There was the moist glint of suffering on his forehead, but no wince or whine in his voice. He looked steadily at Lucita.
"Purty little thing, ain't she? Some o' the boys they was drunk, I reckon, 'cause nobody in Fan Fare'd hurt a woman. No. Not in this here camp."
"Have you any women here, good women?" asked Hales.
"Oh, you bet. Fan Fare's got two women in 'er. There's Mrs. Gubbins. She's a real woman. Come 'crost the plains with Gubbins. Drove the oxen when he was flat on his back, sick. Got two chilern. The other woman she's just a lady an' does washin' for the miners—cusses worse 'n any man in camp. I don't like to hear a lady cuss. It don't seem fittin', does it? But she's a real lady anyhow. You bet! But Mrs. Gubbins she's our kind of woman. She took powerful good care o' me when I was first hurt. Ever'day most she comes up here to see me now. There's nothin' like a good woman to make a feller feel a damn fool for bein' one.
"There's two dude gamblers went off to bring in some ladies to Fan Fare. They was due back here today. They're goin' to put 'em here at Fred's House. There used to be two ladies here, but Clay Freeman an' the boys asked 'em to light out after one night they took Hick'ry's pouch. Hick'ry he 'lowed that he give 'em the pouch, 'cause he don't want no ladies to git into trouble over him. But the ladies they was awful anxious to give it back to him an' git. So they did. Them gamblers said this was too big a camp not to have some real ladies, so they went off to git 'em. When they come Mrs. Gubbins she won't be comin' up here so much to see me. She's a prayerful woman, Mrs. Gubbins is.
"I reckon me havin' my leg hurt so I can't dance an' carry on makes me feel different 'bout things than I useter. The boys they carry me out o' my bunk ever' mornin' an' tote me back ever' night, so I jes' set here an' look on a lot. Me bein' a dyin' man like, I think things I never thought a-fore, the which bein' mostly what a fool I allus been. I dug as much dust as the rest, but like the rest I spent 'er too. Here comes the boys now. The hangin' 's over."
The miners, with something like the sound of storm in the hum of voices and tramp of feet, came with a rush toward Fred's House. In the same way they were going into other saloons. Anybody with a shack of cloth or lumber, a gallon of whisky and a few tin cups, might have a saloon; with a table and a few stools this might also be a gambling house.
Fred's House was a one-story structure, built entirely of rough lumber.
Hung through the rafters and draped all about the large barroom was red calico. Its brilliant color gave the bleak barrenness of rough lumber a flush of warmth.
The men came with trampling rush and babble into the barroom, calling for drinks before they reached the bar. Fred, a fellow with a large mustache and the professional air of good fellowship of the tavernkeeper hopped and shouted behind the bar. Fred was noisily agreeable and talked much. His partner was one Black Perry, a sullen and evil-eyed man.
Men lighted candles and the lantern. There was a tumultuous bawling for drinks, and supper. The men now remembered that they had forgotten to eat.
A miner bearing a glass of whisky came over to the crippled Yank, asking:
"How air ye, pard?"
"Fine, Joe. Ever'thing go off all right?"
"Y-e-es," said Joe doubtfully, looking at Hales and the girl. "Here, git outside o' this, pard."
"Here's how!" said Yank, and drank.
"Mr. Gubbins isn't here, is he?" asked Hales.
"Him?" said Joe, with no friendliness. "Not more'n likely he ain't. His missus don't 'low him to do much celebratin'."
"She's a good woman," said Yank.
"Was Gubbins a friend o' yourn?" asked Joe.
"No," said Hales. "But I thought perhaps Mrs. Gubbins might take care of this girl tonight."
"We don't like greasers none too well in Fan Fare," said Joe, doggedly.
"Now, Joe, that there ain't no way for to talk!"
"I'll talk whatever way you say, pard. But I got to feel like I can't help," said Joe, looking humbly at his partner. Then to Hales with an almost savage tone: "You see him? His leg's all busted an' he's got to die, so the doctors say. I don't know what good doctors is if they can't fix up a man like him! I was down in a hole"
"Shut up, you Joe!"
"Shet up yoreself, pard! I was down in a hole an' a big boulder she jarred loose jes' above an' started for the hole. Pard here he jumped right in front o' that there rock. He didn't stop 'er. Goda'mighty hisself 'd had to push some to stop 'er. She went right over him, but he shore turned her out o' the way so she didn't come down in the hole. I'd been smashed like a cricket y' step on. That's what he done for me, an' I can't do nothin' for him. I'm for hangin' all doctors. They're spry enough when you've got a bellyache an' charge an ounce or two for a little smear o' somethin' out of a bottle—but when a man like him 's hurt, they can't do nothin'!"
There was silence between the partners, or pardners as it was more sacredly known in the mines. Yank looked down into his emptied glass of whisky, and Joe stared with the solemn ache of helplessness at the man who suffered, waited for death, and did not complain.
Men were drinking and stamping about at the bar. There was the intermittent thud, thud, thud, thud of heavy pouches being dropped on the bar, from which the unctuous Fred and the thievish Black Perry took liberal pinches.
"We're goin' to have some girls by tomorrow, boys," said Fred, with a large, jovial air. "We'll have to have a dance to celebrate. Fan Fare's too big a camp not to have the infloonce of purty ladies. Them gentlemen allowed they'd be back by tonight, shore."
Fred beamed with something of a satyrish leer on his full face, and cast hopeful glances at the men. Some said, "'Ray f'r the ladies!" and some said nothing.
One or two monte games were started, and a few men, with a bottle of whisky on the table and tin cups at their elbows, were beginning to play poker.
Many men from a distance stared at Lucita, looked hard at Hales, spoke conjecturally in low voices.
"How 'bout supper?" bawled a lusty voice.
Such a noisy chorus went up, demanding supper, that Fred, with gestures that he meant as a playful pretense of alarm, hurried off to see if the cook was properly busy.
"Tell me, " said Hales, "how will I find Gubbins' cabin?"
Joe looked at him, then at Yank, again at Hales.
"I don't reckon as how you will find it, 'less you know where to look."
"Take 'im down there yoreself, Joe. An' tell Mrs. Gubbins thank'er for that rice soup she sent up this mornin'."
Joe looked doubtful. He glanced without favor at Hales, frowned at Lucita; then with resolution:
"All right. Come on."