Cord 6, p.6
Cord 6, page 6
“Listen up,” Pell said. “Mining in these San Juans don’t have hardly anything in common with the California strike back in ’49 or the rush to the Dakotas a while back. By the way, I heard you got a look at that one first hand.”
And how, Cord wondered, had the dwarf heard about that incident? Cord had been forced into a gunfight he had not made and never wanted. It was senseless, and ultimately put him in the strange twisted position of having to kill a man out of respect, not rancor. “You like to show your secrets one at a time,” Cord said. He did not like to be reminded of that duel in the Black Hills.
“I’m a cocky little bastard,” Pell allowed cheerfully. He sloshed the dregs of his coffee into the fire and got out a two-inch stub of cigar. “Anyway, that Dakota Territory strike was placer mining, like the strike at Sutter’s millrace. When you got placer deposits, one man with a tin pan and a strong back can work a streamside claim by himself and maybe even find color. But in these mountains we are talking silver, buried deep in the earth’s bowels and demanding deep shafts and dynamite and gallows frames if a miner has got a mind to try to wrest it free. You can’t do that kind of digging on your own. You need gangs, partners or men working for wages, maybe six or eight men all told. Now then, pards,” Pell said, like a schoolmarm reviewing a lesson, “when you got companies of a half-dozen men and plenty of money for the grabbing, who comes into the country next?”
“Capitalists,” Cord said.
“You win the cigar, Mr. Cord.” Pell produced one from under his coveralls, looked at it, and put it back. “Turns out that when you get enough silver together it gives off a powerful odor, and they could scent it all the way back to Denver and beyond.
“By the end of that first summer,” Pell went on, “folks in the district were sorting themselves into two kinds. The independents owned and ran their own mines, one claim or a half-dozen of them throwing in together. The ones whose hand had come up busted had to go to work for the big mining company that was taking over.”
“The moneyman is named Raines,” Pell said. “He’s got plenty, and he brought a couple bushels down here and started buying out the independents. Some of them sold, figuring they could hit another strike, went broke trying, and ended up working their old claims for Raines at four dollars a day. ’Course there’s nothing wrong with that—nothing against the law anyway.”
“Not so far.”
Pell glanced at Cord shrewdly. “You’re getting a notion of where this is meandering, Cord, but don’t put me ahead of my story. By the end of that first summer, Raines’s was the biggest mining outfit in New Jerusalem.”
The cigar stub was down to a half-inch, and to draw the last smoke, Pell puckered his lips like a politician kissing a baby. “Don’t get the idea Raines came trotting down to these parts himself. He couldn’t make it in person, so he sent down his money. Haw haw.”
But then Pell looked more serious. “Raines dispatched a hired gun named Culley and a couple of likely bully-boys—mine guards is what they called themselves. Well, that was all right too, folk figured. Raines was handling a lot of rich ore, and it stood to reason he’d want to protect it. Culley and his boys hung around the saloons and looked killer-mean, so any skunk with mine-robbing ideas would drop them in favor of another drink.”
Pell had already figured out that there were ways to riches in this district aside from busting rock with your own hands. He stayed in New Jerusalem when the diggers came out of the mountains for the winter, playing cards and going easy on the beer. “Them diggers don’t gamble any better than they think, which is nothing to be proud of,” Pell said. “Come spring I had a real stake. I decided to become a capitalist myself, like Raines. Figured him and me could be great pals, drinking brandy and smoking cigars together at the Rich Man’s Club.”
Cord heard an uncharacteristic taint of bitterness in Pell’s tone. Pell would never be a familiar of such men, no matter how much money he scrambled together. It had nothing to do with his stature; the same applied to him or Chi. The three of them might as well go to Hong Kong and try to pass for Chinamen.
Pell went on. He had not spent all of his time in the saloon. He had been up into the mining country, where he asked questions and listened to the answers, enough to learn some seat-of-the-pants geology. When the weather broke that spring, he went back looking for property. He found it on a broad ledge around ten thousand five hundred feet, halfway up a mountain and about four crow-fly miles west of the town. There were three adjacent claims, two shafts already sunk, one decent vein struck and producing, and a good chance that deeper on, the vein branched and thickened.
The owners, two Dutchmen from Allentown, Pennsylvania, and a consumptive Englishman, were asking seventy-five thousand dollars. It was a fair price, but Pell only had half. So soon as the spring thaw came in and Red Mountain Pass opened, he rode down into Durango looking for capital.
“Instead I find two hombres,” Pell said. “Eastern fellers, names of Edwin P. Miller and William Cross. They come to the San Juan country to make their lifetime fortunes, like me, and they got seed money. In fact, they got maybe thirty thousand dollars.”
Pell poured the last of the coffee, a half-cup each. “Truth to tell, there was a kind of smell to them. Turned out it came from their money. But I don’t ask questions, you know that. Cross is a nice enough hombre, and Miller is a skulker, but what the hell? They got money.”
“And you had a plan, muchacho,” Chi suggested.
“What do you take me for, lady?”
“No dope,” Chi said.
Pell grinned and shook his head. “Miller and Cross came north with me to look over the mine. Truth to tell, I got the feeling that both of them were looking for a spot with lots of wilderness and no law at all, if you know what I mean.” He looked at each of his listeners, knowing they did. “To make a short story terse, the three of us ended up partners and mining entrepreneurs. We hired a few men and began working the claim.”
“You?” Chi said with mock disbelief. “Working?”
“Well, not for long, I figured,” Pell said. “Once it started paying, all we’d have to do was sit near the front window in some New Jerusalem barroom and watch the wagonloads of our ore pass through bound for the railroad. Would have worked, too, but then there was trouble.”
“Sooner or later,” Cord said, “there always is.”
Pell looked past Cord and screwed up his face as if he did not like what he was seeing. Raines put his profits in buying more claims, Pell continued. The Denver big shot wanted to own the country, and if a man did not sell at Raines’s price, things began to happen. First an empty shaft might be dynamited in the dark. Then a pack animal might be found with its throat slit. That was enough to convince most to sign the bill of sale. To help sway the more stubborn ones, there were mining accidents, and men died. More miners sold out to Raines and left the country or worked for his wages.
The hard man Culley and his gang of thugs were no longer only hanging around and looking tough. They began riding the high country. Culley told miners to their faces: Sell out or expect deadly trouble. As the threats escalated, the prices Raines offered fell.
“For a couple weeks they left our claim alone,” Pell said. “Then one afternoon Culley and his gun-punks ride in. There’s another man with him, name of Krugar. We’d heard the stories. This Krugar was supposed to be a one-time Pinkerton man who had to light out for the West after he killed two furnacemen during a strike-break mix-up in Gary, Indiana. Strange-looking hombre, always wearing dark city suits and plenty uneasy horseback, grabbing at the saddle horn with both hands and protecting them with soft pigskin gloves.” Pell looked at Cord. “His face is like chalk. He’s the palest man I ever saw.” The dwarf’s tone was completely serious; he was not easily impressed, but this Krugar had done the job.
“Culley told us to sell out,” Pell said. “I told him to fuck off. This Krugar doesn’t say a damned word. Culley puffs and steams and finally rides off.”
“But that’s not the end of it,” Cord said.
Pell shook his head. “They came back a few mornings later when me and Ed Miller were cutting timber above camp. Cross and the two men working for our wages were inside the lower shaft when they came over the ridge, Culley and four hooligans and Krugar in his high collar, sitting uneasy on a dog-gentle mare. One of Culley’s boys produced four sticks of giant powder, bundled together and fused.
“It was a long downhill shot,” Pell said. “Miller missed, fired, and missed again. Culley’s boy lit the dynamite and rode up to the mine entrance, and I winged him, a lucky shot. He came loose from his horse and fell there, with the powder sputtering in his hand.
“The rest of them backed off in a hurry,” Pell said. “The dynamite went off, and the only part left of that gunman was a foot we found in the sagebrush. Caved in the mouth of that mine, and Cross and them two working stiffs still inside, buried alive.”
There on the ledge above the Animas, as they watched the October sun come up to slowly warm the clear bright morning, the dwarf finished his tale. “We were outnumbered,” he said. “We needed guns and folks who could use them. Miller stayed in New Jerusalem, and I went down to Durango. That’s where I heard about you, Cord. My old pal in trouble not far away and all the gun I’d ever need.”
“You left out a thing or two,” Cord said. “The ambush on the La Plata, that Carson and his chinless partner.”
“Culley’s men,” Pell said. “I knew they tailed me down to Durango, but I thought I shook them there.”
“And that sheriff, and his puerco deputy...” Chi said.
“They’re on Raines’s payroll too.”
“This Raines is some big man,” Chi said. “Maybe too big for us to bring down.”
Cord drained the last of his coffee. “There’s a fortune in silver in those mountains, likely.” He spoke slowly, thinking aloud, piecing out an idea of what they might be up against. “ You can take your time looking for it if you own the whole district along with the law. You put spies in the towns—that kind of man comes cheap. Pretty soon you run the show, and not a thing anyone can do to stop you, short of bringing in a private army.”
“We can do it, Cord,” Pell whispered. “You and me and the lady here, maybe a couple of others. We can go in and hold my mine. The snows’ll be coming in any day now. After that, Culley’ll be stopped cold as us for six months. Over the winter we can regroup, figure something out—go to Denver and get the governor to call out the militia or hire our own mean-ass army, whatever.” The words came tumbling out.
“You got to do something. Cord.” Pell’s thick lips pulled back in a tight mirthless smile. “Somebody shot at you.”
“What do you want?” But Cord was beginning to see how this trail was going to run.
“Go up there with me and guard the mine until the first snows. I’ve got five grand left from my stake. It’s yours up front—and a one-third share in the mine when it’s over.”
Cord looked at Chi. There was a time when already they would have been committed beyond extrication, when men shooting at you required a hard and immediate satisfaction. But years passed, and peace took on attractions.
On the other hand was Pell, who was their friend and once their savior. “¿Que piensas?” Cord asked Chi.
She shrugged. “I would like to visit his mine,” she said thoughtfully. “I want to see if the little man can own so much.” She flipped the dregs of her cold coffee into the fire. “King of the Dwarfs,” she said.
Pell grinned. “King of Colorado,” he said. That fixed it, near as Cord could see. Chi was siding with Pell in his troubles, and that made it two votes of three no matter what he thought.
Pell cocked his squashed head toward Cord. “And over here,” he said, “we got the King of Utah.”
Chapter Eight
The noon sun cast tiny shadows behind them when Cord, Chi, and Pell turned left off the main road up the Animas onto a narrow wagontrace. From the look of the splintered stumps along-side, this road had been cut within the last few years. It followed a dry gulch forested with spruce and pine, and the resiny scent of the trees faintly flavored the air.
Around the first corner past the cutoff was a crude log gate; from its far end a sea grass rope passed over tripod-mounted pulley to a little sod hut dug out of the gully’s cutbank. Cord reined up and said, “What the hell...”
“Pay your toll,” Pell said. “The feller who built this road put a lot of sweat and money into the job. You want to travel on his road, you got to pay.” A gnarled-up bird-faced jasper, probably a one-time miner too stove-up to dig anymore, gimped out of the soddy and glared at them.
“How much?” Cord said over his shoulder.
“Four bucks. Each rider.”
“Paying money to cross the country,” Cord grumbled. “What kind of business is that?” But he dug out some bills and rode forward to hold them out to the old jasper.
The man ignored him and tipped his hat to the dwarf. “Yes sir, Mr. Pell,” the jasper wheezed. “Top of the morning.” Cord, left holding the bills, looked back at Pell.
“God bless,” the dwarf said. “Cord, it is good citizens like you, the sort who pay when they are told, that us capitalist robber barons depend on. Haw haw. Keep your money—I own this road.”
The old jasper pulled the rope and the gate rose. “Designed that myself,” Pell said. “Mechanical genius.”
“Señor Dwarf,” Chi said. “There are so many things you forget to tell us.”
“I don’t think about the road,” Pell said airily. “Takes two men to keep it graded all summer. I don’t make any money.”
“You built the road out of pure public spirit,” Cord said.
“Not me,” Pell said. “This road was built by a gambler who thought an ace-high spade flush was a good hand.”
“It is.”
“Not this time,” Pell said.
They covered ten trail miles past Pell’s tollgate, mostly switchback climbing up toward the tree line. The sunlight was thin and glary and especially intense. The trail rose to a saddleback, and New Jerusalem was spread below them in a narrow flat no more than a couple of hundred yards across. One end of the bowl was open, and a creek followed through the break and then fell almost vertically from the edge of the little cirque basin. Steep rocky slopes rose on the other sides.
All the trees had been logged for mine timbering and firewood within weeks after the town appeared, leaving barren talus slides cut by outcroppings of quartz and granite. Here and there abandoned mine shafts were topped by rusting gallows frames and flanked by piles of gray tailings. These claims had played out the first season, according to Pell; the rich pickings, including his property, turned out to be over the ridge. But this was the only town site in miles with year-round running water, so New Jerusalem had hung on as the center of commerce and society in this mining district.
The miners must have platted the town early on, because there was a rough sort of order to its layout that approximated nine square city blocks. The widest street, the one in the middle, was devoted to New Jerusalem’s main enterprise, which was serving the miners’ pleasure: a dozen saloons, half as many cafes, a couple of rambling hotels with wings running this way and that. A wash line strung across the flat roof of one two-story building was hung with ladies’ undergarments like an advertisement.
The assay office was on the street to the west, along with a print shop whose shingle identified it as the office of the weekly newspaper, a lawyer’s chambers, a doctor’s surgery, two mercantiles, and an undertaker’s parlor doubling as a cabinetry. At the near end of the street to the east there was a Masonic temple and a church, but the far end was Chinatown, with a joss house, its own saloon, and ramshackle huts with remnants of tiny sere kitchen gardens by them, and barnyard animals tethered against the barking of scrawny mongrel dogs.
They rode down to streets that would surely go hip-deep in red mud soon as the snow melted and stay that way until the rains stopped in June. Cord smelled garbage rotting in alleyways and a whiff of human excrement from too many ill-tended outhouses. Idled miners stood on the boardwalk along the main street, some of them greeting Pell by name as he rode past.
“What the hell...” Cord muttered, mostly to himself, but then he realized what was itching at him. Nothing was happening. Here was a town full of young men bound for adventure and wealth, and they were standing around looking propped up, like suits of clothes without anyone inside.
“Drinks,” Pell said. “What we need is drinks.” He dismounted in front of a place called the Ophir House and led them inside. It probably passed for the finest saloon in town. There were a couple of dozen tables, a gambling alcove, a small stage with a spinet grand, and a few rooms and a crib upstairs. The well-stocked backbar was decorated with carved wood trim, crystal mirrors, and bad art. Beyond a tight window at one end was a kitchen whose yellow-painted walls were stained with smoke. A poster was nailed to the wall next to the stairs leading to the rooms:
RULES OF THE HOUSE
Warmth provided by horse blanket, liquor, Christian zeal.
No more than five to a bed.
No horses above the first floor.
Frontier humor, Cord thought, a reminder of gayer times.
“Round for the boys, Mert,” Pell told the bartender. The bartender had one cauliflowered ear. “Make it good whiskey.” Pell led Cord and Chi to a table, a corner as always so they could each have a wall to their back.
The bartender brought their drinks first. “I heard you was dead,” he said, but he didn’t look at Pell.
“Who killed me?”
The bartender shook his head. “Word gets around.” Pell put a five-dollar bill on the table. “Seen my partners?”
“They’re over at the Golconda.”
“Take a dollar tip,” Pell said. “Have someone fetch them back here.”
“Bring me another drink before you do anything,” Cord said. Chi and Pell and the bartender all looked his way. This place was starting to itch at him, this sterile town of idled men, and not knowing what was going on and what it meant to him and why exactly he was here. “I’m moving toward bad humor, and whiskey might help.”
