Savage Territory

Chapter Two

That was it. Scruples and his blond beauty rode away in a shiny black carriage. High up that slope, there were bodies sprawled in the rocks.

That didn’t seem fittin’ for some country boy like me. Maybe they weren’t dead. Maybe they could be helped. But I had me a problem. The minute I stepped out of the pines and onto that rocky slope, that big old Sharps would bark.

“Critter,” I says to my nag. “I’ve got me a job to do, and it scares the britches half off me.”

Critter clacked his teeth and yawned. So much for admiration. I thought maybe Critter would salute.

I dug into my kit lookin’ for a white flag. If I was going to step out of them trees, I’d need to be waving some white. But I didn’t have no white. Just some old cotton underdrawers that started out white, but now was a sort of yeller gray. Well, yeller gray would have to do, so I tied the legs of them drawers to a handy stick, crept up the edge of the grove, and waved the thing around a bit.

I didn’t see no action up there, or hear some damned bullet sail by me, so real cautious, I crept out on the rock, takin’ my time and waving my yeller-gray drawers around and makin’ a lot of noise so’s not to surprise that mining bastard up there.

But all I got was a mess of silence.

Well, I thought, it’s now or never. Just as a precaution I undid my gunbelt, and hung it over my shoulder as a further peace offerin’, though I didn’t say nothing about the two-shot derringer in my boot. I did a slow climb over talus toward the lowest of them gunmen, and found him sprawled in the rock, plumb dead. He’d been punctured here and there. So I clambered up that rough gray rock to the next, and found he’d expired, too, and was missing an arm. It wasn’t no pretty sight to look at.

The next one was over on the flank, and was one of them two that was creepin’ in on the miner. I was gettin’ out of sight of the mine head when a voice filtered down to me.

“Stay in sight,” the owner of that voice said. I took it for plumb good advice.

“Just checkin’,” I said.

“He’s dead, and so’s t’other, on your left.”

“You mind if I come up and palaver a little?”

“You ain’t one of them. I saw you ride in.”

“That’s right, I ain’t. But I thought to take care of the wounded and maybe plant the dead, long as the rest of them hightailed out of here.”

“No tricks. I got a few more of these little Dupont bombs.”

I had yet to see this fellow. Somehow, he was hidden in the shadows of the ore car, and probably as forted up as a man can get.

I made my way up the talus slope, and finally reached a small flat in front of the shaft, where all the mining stuff lay around and about. The miner, he appeared from somewhere in all that tangle of iron, and that old Sharps was staring at my navel.

“Howdy,” I says.

He didn’t reply, but grinned toothlessly. He was an old boy, wearing more dirt on him than cloth, and peering at me from bright blueberry eyes.

I got mad. “That’s the second time today I’ve stared into a barrel, and I don’t like it. First time, I was looking at an entire pepperbox, and that sight ain’t for the fainthearted.”

“Sharps is empty anyway,” he said, setting it down. “When it comes to fights, I prefer some Dupont.” He said it DOOpont, and even a dummy like me got the idea he was talkin’ dynamite.

He had a row of those bombs there just inside the shaft, and he fetched one to show me his work. “Two sticks of Dupont Hercules, this copper cap in there, with six inches of Bickford fuse crimped in the end, plus a mess of tenpenny nails to do a little damage, all wired nice. Now this here fuse burns thirty seconds to the foot, so these are ten-second fuses. That’s so no one picks one up and throws it back at me. Pretty smart, eh?”

Tell you the truth, I was plain itchy standing there next to that thing. I know short guns, and I’m not bad with a long gun, but this thing he was waving around was big enough to kill Paul Bunyon.

“Maybe you oughta set her back in there a piece,” I said.

Those blueberry eyes glimmered and glowed, and he whipped a lucifer across some rock, lit the fuse until she sparked orange, and then tossed her off to the right. He dove into the overturned ore car, and so did I, just in time. That sucker lifted the ground from under me, and shot tenpenny nails everywhere. I was right grateful Critter was nowhere near.

“Agnes Cork here. What’s your handle?” he said.

I could hardly hear a word, and waited for my eardrums to quit dancing.

“What did you say it was?”

“Agnes Cork, my boy.”

“Now wait just a minute here. You ain’t no Agnes.”

He nodded. “Joseph St. Agnes Cork,” he said. “They was trying to line up a few saints when I was born. Now what’s your handle?”

“Cotton.”

“That’s half a handle.”

“Agnes, I can’t bear to give you the rear half of my handle. Just can’t, so you’ve got to take me as I am.”

“Well, invent a name. I just need some pants to go with the shirt.”

“Invent a name?” Truth to tell, I’d never thought of inventing a name. But it wasn’t a bad idea.

“Sonny, I’ll invent one for you. You mind that?”

“Sure I mind. I’ll invent my own name, Agnes.”

It sure was strange, calling that mining bastard Agnes. I decided to change the subject.

“No one’s coming around to plant those four, so it’s up to me.”

Agnes nodded quietly. “You have a good heart, Cotton.”

“Maybe you can help me. It’s all rock around here.”

Agnes nodded. “Glory hole about fifty yards that way. Miner named Walrus Wank hit a pocket there, but it petered out after a few feet. Still, nice little eight-or ten-foot hole in the wall.”

When we reached the first body, Agnes pulled his pockets out and collected a few coins. The man’s revolvers were nowhere in sight, and probably got blown into the next county. “They owe me,” he said. “I’m charging them for the powder I blew. Must of spent forty dollars defending my mine, and they’ll pay. Any more, I’ll give it to you to take to Swamp Creek.”

“Fair enough,” I said.

We carried the dead gunslick over to the glory hole and laid him flat in there, after chasing a rattler out. He sure was perforated. I think about five tenpenny nails had done for him. It was grim work, and I didn’t like it none, and besides that it plumb wore me out. But it didn’t bother Agnes none, and after a while, we got all four of the gunmen laid out in that little burrow hole, and Agnes had collected thirty-seven dollars and one revolver with a bent barrel.

“That evens it up,” he said.

“We gonna pile up some rock here?” I asked.

“Naw,” he said. He hiked back to his mine, told me to get well back, and brought one of his Dupont specials, but this one with no tenpenny nails dressing it up and a longer fuse. He lit the thing with a lucifer, tossed it into the mouth, and walked swiftly toward his own mine, arriving exactly when it blew, and after the dust cleared, and my ears quit howling, and I could stand up again, I looked over at that glory hole and there was nothing there except a mess of rock. It was plumb amazing.

Agnes, he just he-he-heed his way back to his own place. He sure had a laugh that made me wonder whether I’d get outa there alive.

I sure didn’t know nothing about mining, and I thought I’d better find out.

“How come they were trying to kill you?” I asked.

Agnes, he pulled some tobacco lying loose in his pocket and stuffed it under his tongue. “Just for the fun of it,” he said.

“They own this mine? That’s what Scruples said.”

Joseph St. Agnes Cork, he just cackled. “That wouldn’t a got anything if they killed me,” he said. “Gold pinched out some whiles ago, and now she’s nothing but a hole in the cliff.”

“No gold?”

“Pocket mine. Gold along here is in pockets. Clean out a pocket and there’s nothing left.”

I was getting testy. “So you fought ’em for nothing?”

“Oh, I didn’t say that, boy. You got a thing or two to learn about mining. I loved that fight. Now I can sell this here hole for mebbe ten thousand simoleons. Now I got what I needed, and they handed it to me. A man fights off ten, twelve claim-jumpers, why, that hole of his must be worth a lot of moolah.”

“You mean you’re going to defraud the buyer?”

He grinned, and those blueberry eyes sparked bright. “Oh, I’ll salt her a little, and we’ll see. A man digs a hole for better part of a year, he ought to get paid for it, right? I’m just angling for some pay, and that Scruples bunch handed it to me on a platter. Until they showed up, I was plumb discouraged.”

I didn’t like this none. Cork was a crook.

He started cackling again, and I had a mind to get out of there. Critter and I thought to help someone outnumbered ten to one or so, and now four gents lay in their graves and a bunch more were full of nail holes.

“Cotton, you stick around here and I’ll teach you some about getting gold out. You want some johnnycakes? I’m of a mind to eat.”

I had nothing better to do, so I nodded. “I’m going to fetch Critter, water him, and bring him up here. He likes griddle cakes and he’d be plain unhappy with me if he got a whiff of johnnycakes and he couldn’t sink his buck teeth into a couple.”

“Does he haul ore cars? I’ll put him to work.”

“No, Critter ain’t never had harness touch him.”

Agnes Cork was makin’ me huffy again. I wouldn’t let no miner lay hands on Critter. Trouble is, Cork was a miner, and they ain’t half the man any cowboy is. I worked down the talus slope, plunged into the dark forest, found the nag chewing on bark, and brought him back up there to the mine, where he laid his ears back and snapped a time or two at Agnes, and then tried to kick him, too.

“Horse is just like me,” Agnes said, and laughed that mean laugh again.

The miner set to work mixing some cornmeal and water while I scrounged up some firewood. There sure wasn’t none anywhere near.

But in time, along about sundown, we got Critter and ourselves fed.

“You got to git now,” Agnes said. “I don’t allow no one around here disturbing my sleep and slitting my throat. Anyone stirs around here, he gets a knife up to the hilt.”

“We’ll vamoose,” I says, eyeing his little shanty, which was the most disgusting looking dump I ever laid eyes on. If I set foot in there, I’d catch leprosy for sure. “But afore I go, you mind telling me about these claim-jumpers? They offered me forty and found, and I’m just thinking about it. Sure beats starving.”

“Oh, Scruples. And his lady friend. They got that palace car in town.”

Well, that explained something. Sitting up a slope from Swamp Creek was a regular Pullman Palace Car someone dragged overland, probably using fifty oxen and some braced up wagons. It was right fancy, purple lacquer with gilded letters on the side, and when I got a peek or two at her, I could see wine-colored velvet drapes in there, and heaven knows what, my being too dumb about all that to know a flush toilet from a two-holer.

“What about all that paper? He told me he’s got a legal right.”

Agnes cackled. “You got a few things to learn, boy. Scruples, he’s in cahoots with the mining district recorder, Johnny Brashear, and pays the old souse to find fault in a claim.” He eyed me, sizing me up for a ten-year-old. “Mining districts get born pretty casual, long before the government moves in and surveys a place and makes it legal. Miners themselves set up districts, adopt some rules about the size of a claim, stuff like that, and this gets put in a ledger and usually the government gets around to recognizing this stuff years later. But bribe a clerk or two, and you pretty much turn it all cattywumpus.”

“Your claim’s valid?”

“Bet your ass, sonnyboy.”

I didn’t cotton to being called sonnyboy, but it was better than being called Cotton, so I just glared at him a bit.

“So them in that palace car, they’re not up and up?”

Agnes Cork, he began wheezing so hard I thought he’d choke.

“How come no one’s fighting ’em?”

“It’s that woman,” Agnes said.

I couldn’t make sense of that, but it sure did make me curious about her. She was just about the first woman I’d seen in a long time that made my britches go tight. I didn’t know they made women like that. She was some better than Sarah Bernhardt. I seen a picture of her once, and thought there sure is some world out there I ain’t never seen.

“Boy, you go back to pushing cows around until you’re growed up enough to walk into a mining camp. Now, it’s getting dark, and I kill anything wandering around my mine in the dark, and I don’t ask questions neither.”

I think that was a message aimed my way, so I loaded up Critter and climbed aboard, wanting enough light so he could pick his way down that slope without busting a leg. Leastwise, I got out of there without getting shot, and Critter didn’t bust nothing.

And I wandered toward Swamp Creek wondering whether to hire on. If all sides was as crooked as it sounded, it wouldn’t matter none which one paid me wages.