Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 25, No. 7, July, 1980

The Whisper of Gold by Edward Wellen

He desperately needed the one shell he had left...

Tom Chaudis weighed his one loaded shell in his hand. Weighing it, he weighed also his choices, his chances. With a sigh more like a groan he shoved the shell into the shotgun.

By the light of the lantern hanging from a timber he gazed around at the false glints in the mine face. He had put a river of sweat into this hole, the whisper of gold leading him on. But what gold there was had plain pinched up and played out after the first burst of richness. And almost all that gold he had long since spent celebrating in town, believing — and leading everyone to believe — the gold had no end. The way he saw it, he had no out now but the load in his shotgun.

He knew that — so why was he putting it off?

As he slowly raised the shotgun he thought he heard the hurry of his heart. He stilled himself to listen harder and heard the hurry of hooves. Now that was a crazy sound to be coming from the ground outside with all its cracks and chuck holes. He lowered the shotgun and rounded the tunnel bend to the mouth of the mine and the blaze of day.

He gaped at the mad ride — and at the mad rider, a woman streaming yellow hair. Then he saw that the woman had lost hold of the reins and was hanging onto the saddlehorn. Something — a rattler, maybe — had spooked the mare into running wild, white-eyeballed.

As Tom watched, the mare plunged into a hole, dropped to her knees, and flung the rider from the saddle. The woman landed forked end up, then folded and lay still. Tucking his shotgun under his arm, Tom ran to her.

He knelt beside the woman and looked for broken bones. Coming quickly out of her daze, she stopped his fumbling. “I’m all right. See to my mare.”

Tom wasn’t so sure the woman was all right, but he moved to the mare, ran his hand along her left foreleg, and found the break. He turned to the woman and shook his head.

The young woman, her bright hair tangled, had shoved herself upright. She stood swaying slightly — wobbly, but on her own two feet — smudges and all, a pretty woman. High-grade, but kind of ornery to be out this way all by her lonesome. Wilful, used to getting her way — which would stay respectable, though off the beaten track. Right now, with grief for the mare twisting her face, she seemed not so sure of herself. And not so sure she liked her present company. The way she eyed him sidelong, he must pan out mean, look like a man searching for a dog to kick.

He rubbed his face, throwing himself back to the last time he had shaved. That had been in town, and the woman he had been with had hardly assayed out to the purity of this kind of woman. This kind of woman he had always dreamed of but never aspired to. Now that she was suddenly real and at hand he felt strange, as though in a dream. Standing there with her yellow hair stirring gently in the hot slow breath of noon, she seemed like a whisper of gold come to life to lead him on.

Maybe things could work out so that...

Hell with it. He had no time for such thoughts. What he had was to get shut of her so he could do what he set out to do when she came along. He tried to think how he might speed her on her way. He had lost his own burro to a rattier or he would have given it to her for the ride home.

The mare’s humble nickering gave him a guilty start, but he made no move to put the mare away. Averting her gaze from the mare and frowning in surprise and impatience at Tom’s inaction, the woman gestured toward his shotgun.

“Aren’t you going to—?”

Automatically he raised the shotgun to his shoulder, took aim, and actually had his finger on the pull. Then he lowered the shotgun without firing. Stonily, feeling a fool, he stood that way.

The woman stared, then raised her voice, more in wonder than in outrage. “What are you waiting for?”

Then her face changed and he could almost see her think he lacked the nerve. She reached out toward the shotgun.

“If you want, I—”

He felt even more a fool — a shameful fool. “It isn’t that. I’m sorry, ma’am, but I need the shell. I’ll put her away though.”

He leaned the shotgun against a boulder, took up a length of weathered two-by-four, and, stretching himself into savagery, brought the wood down hard. With a sick sound the wood connected. He heard the woman’s breath. The blow stung his palms, but the mare only lay stunned. He threw the timber aside, drew his sheath knife, and sawed her throat, all too aware of the woman watching in horror with the edge of an eye, and only just jumped away from the bloody gush. He stabbed the gritty soil to cleanse the blade before sheathing the knife, then picked up his shotgun before facing the woman.

Her cheeks flamed through trail powder and he could see her think, Butcher!

He gestured an apology. “I have just the one shell, and I’m saving it.”

“I see,” she said, clearly not seeing. Still, she seemed inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. She looked away from the mare and brought a surface smile into being. “I don’t want to saddle you with my troubles, but I have to think about getting back.” She waited. When he came up with silence her smile slipped away and she went on. “I guess I’ll just dust myself off and head on home.”

He wanted to say yes and no — to keep her here and get rid of her. He found himself saying, “No. Wait here a spell, till an hour past noon. The banker’s coming from town to look over my claim.”

Her smile came back. She found a smooth rock, dusted it and herself off, and sat. “You’re Tom Chaudis, aren’t you? I heard about you and your mine. In fact, someone pointed you out to me in town.”

His face burned and he felt glad for the growth of beard. He wondered how and where he had been when she had seen him. He hoped it hadn’t been in the company of a dance-hall girl and a bottle.

Suddenly he had a terrible thought, a joyously unworthy thought. Could it be he had touched a chord of jealousy and desire in this high-grade girl? Then he had an even more terrible thought, a bitterly malicious thought. Could it be this whisper-of-gold girl was herself subject to the pull of riches?

Sure funny that she had chosen to ride out this desolate way, reach this particular claim. Was she after all within reach, within grasp, buy-able?

The shotgun came back into his awareness. He didn’t have much time. The sun had begun to lose its high.

His mind fevered, trying to figure what color he could give his going back into the mine and what judgment she would make when she heard the shot.

He gathered himself to make the move, then froze.

The woman, mistaking his stiffness and trying to keep the one-sided conversation going, gave a self-conscious little laugh. “But I haven’t minded my manners. I’m Margie Lawrence—”

“Don’t move.”

But he had spoken his harsh whisper too late. Margie, awaking to the realization that he was staring past her, was already rising to turn and see what had caught his eye.

She saw the rattler.

The diamondback, set in an S to strike, was close enough for Tom to see the deep pit between eye and nostril on each side of the questing head. Margie’s start drew the rattler’s stare.

A rattler usually struck one-third its length away, but it could strike its full length away. Margie stood two feet from this six-footer.

Tom drew some hope from the rattler’s silence, though he knew truth often gave the lie to the myth of a sportsmanlike shake of the rattle. The silence gave Tom mulish strength to do nothing, though Margie’s eyes begged him to blast the diamondback with his precious shell.

Why couldn’t Margie have come an hour earlier or an hour later? Why now? Why here? Why him?

Margie swayed. The snake would see any sudden movement as a threat. To fall in a faint would be fatal. Damn the woman!

In controlled fury Tom raised the shotgun, took snap aim, and fired.

The shot tore into the rattler and retwisted it flat and still. The shot bespattered the diamond pattern with golden glints. It brought Margie back to life.

Her gaze fixed on the gold-flecked remains. Her eyes narrowed, then widened. Tom, empty of feeling, watched her face change to mask her understanding.

“Thanks,” she whispered hoarsely.

He answered with a curt nod.

She would know now why he had been so unwilling to spend the shot, even in need. He had loaded the shell with the last of his gold, meaning to salt the mine, hoping to dazzle the banker into believing the mine was a bonanza.

It was with near-relief that Tom welcomed the sight of the banker’s buggy sedately trailing dust. Quickly he used the shotgun barrel to lift-toss the mortal coil into the brush. He glanced at Margie. Her face was blank.

While they waited in heavy silence, the buggy grew out of distance, bringing the banker and his son, the son at the reins. Seeing them, the son gave a touch of the whip for a dashing pull-up. He looped the reins around the buggy whip in its socket and leaped out. “Margie! What in tarnation are you doing way out here?” His gaze, coldly accusing, whipped across Tom’s face. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, William.”

“What happened?” He offered her a fresh handkerchief and a water flask.

She took them with gratitude and dabbed her face partway clean. “Lady Fancy spooked, ran away with me, and broke her leg.”

The banker and his son followed her gesture toward the corpse of the mare, then quickly away. “That would account for the shot we heard,” the banker said.

Margie cocked her head to one side and threw a glance Tom’s way. “Yes, it would.” Her eyes darted toward the brush where the dead snake lay and she drew a shuddering breath. “Would you take me back to town?”

The banker said, “Surely.” He eyed the mine opening and swiftly veiled his gold-hungry look. “Just allow us a few minutes to do our business here, my dear, and we’ll be on our way.” He turned to Tom.

Tom cut him off before he started. “Sorry you had to ride out here for nothing. When I sent word in, I was sure I’d found a lode, but I guess I was wrong. Ain’t no mine worth selling or buying. Ain’t nothing here for nobody.”

The son handed Margie into the buggy. “Lucky we went on a wild-goose chase in this case.”

The father looked sour, but said nothing.

Margie looked at Tom and, after a flicker of some feeling Tom could lay no name to, nodded farewell. And then it was as if Tom had never been.

The son took up the reins, gave a touch of the whip, and said something to Margie. Her laugh drifted back, streaming with her yellow hair.

Tom stood watching them ride away till they pinched up and played out.

He rubbed his beard thoughtfully, then hunted the dead rattler in the brush, taking care — he didn’t want to run across the rattler’s mate or kin. He found the riddled skin and used the shotgun barrel to pick it up. It hung limp, but as it twisted slightly with breeze-given false life, it glinted.

That glint was worth saving. He would build a fire and reduce the snake to ashes. Reducing the snake to ashes and panning the ashes — that seemed the best way to reclaim the gold he had meant to salt the mine with.

Later he would make up his mind whether to blow the gold on dance-hall girls and redeye or to buy stagecoach passage back to the family farm.

Either way, it looked like it was his hard lot to be honest, in spite of himself.