Payback at Morning Peak (27 page)

Once, before going out on her nightly haunt, his mother asked if he remembered an Uncle Arnie.

“Was that the old man who always smelled so bad?”

“Yeah, son, that’s the one. He were a right bastard.”

Wetherford felt he’d gone about as far up the mountain as he dared in the fading light. Earlier, an old-timer cooking his beans for the night attempted to regale him about an event that had happened recently in town.

“I heard you asking that no-good busybody on the next claim over about a friend of yours. What’s his name again?”

“Tauson, Billy Tauson.”

“Can’t rightly say if he was the one, but as you described him, kinda early gray hair, could’ve been him.”

“Yeah, just get on with it.”

“I was having my weekly allowance of beer when all a sudden hell’s fire breaks out. The screaming and shouting… well, the long and short of it were that some buckskin-clad cowboy got hisself seriously killed, dead. This dude what kilt him, the gray-haired vaquero, was hauled away by the sheriff. The sheriff arriving I didn’t actually see. I’d left during the gunplay and heard about the rest from prospectors.”

“Okay, old-timer. Thanks for the story, guess I’ll be drifting.”

The old man stoked his fire with a long stick. “The damnedest part about the whole rigamarole was this kid, heck fire, he couldn’t a been over eighteen. He pulled down on this gray-haired fellow like he was born to the gun. Just calm as you please. Way I heard it, the older gunner nearly dumped his drawers, he were so scared of this young slinger.”

Settling in for the night in his blanket roll, Wetherford was putting the pieces together. If the man the old miner had described was actually Billy Tauson, then he would certainly have to change his plans. The young buck, well, he could be the little nosy bastard from the farm. If he was in fact up here, Wetherford knew he would no doubt
be looking for him. The kid would have some gunmen with him, a couple paid hands who Pete knew would need sorting out.

Whenever he shifted his sleeping position, he was painfully reminded of his descent from the log bridge at the canyon on Morning Peak. He went over what he would do to the little shit.

He woke with the sunlight streaming through the trees. He tried to decide whether to continue up the steep trail looking for the elusive Billy Tauson or take the old-timer’s story as whole cloth and traipse back down the mountain.

He hoped the kid from that story was the young sod-buster from the farm. Pete could do him in before the kid and his hired guns bushwhacked him in the comfort of his bedroll.

The old miner was working at his sluice when Wetherford came riding into his camp. “Heading toward town, are you?” the miner called out.

Wetherford dismounted and walked toward the elderly man.

The old forty-niner remained steadfast, his free hand moving to his vest pocket, then down to a belt held high on his waist. His hand came to rest on a holster holding a gnarly six-shooter.

“No need for any gunplay, old-timer. Just fork over your sack of powder and I’ll be on my way.”

“I knew sure as shooting last evening when I was talking to you, you’d be back.” The old man took out his gun, his hand shaking with palsy. “You just have that look about you.”

“I’ll have your tote of yellow, pard. Don’t waste my time with a passel of conversation.” Pete made a toss-it-here gesture with his hand.

The old-timer stood thigh-deep in cold water. “I’ll have to fetch it from my pack.” He shivered, looking as if he wanted to steady his hand long enough to take a shot.

“I’ll put one right in your forehead, Gramps, afore you can squeeze the trigger. You brushed that vest pocket of yours before you drew down on me. Let’s have a look inside.”

The old fellow took a small leather pouch out of his vest pocket, along with a gold watch. After gazing down at the bag a moment, he tossed it across the short expanse of water to the ground in front of Pete.

“I’ll have that watch, too. Sling it over here easy-like.”

The prospector did so reluctantly, then tried to raise his shaking hand to level his gun, but Wetherford beat him, firing twice before the miner’s hand reached flush with Pete’s waist. He wavered, his arms spread, trying to steady himself. Knees wobbling, he slipped silently into the waiting stream.

Wetherford watched, delighting in the rose-colored patch of water starting to form on the surface of the creek. He retrieved his loot, went through the miner’s pack, then mounted and headed downhill to the next claim.

A hundred yards down the mountain, a man working his claim greeted him, saying he heard gunfire and wondered “what was up.”

“Your hands, pardner, reach to the blue, let’s have your tote.”

“What happened to ole Eden?”

“He took an early retirement from panning. Thought maybe he’d rest easy for a spell, visit the kids, play that prissy game of tennis, that sort of thing. Said you might want to join him if you cared to.”

The fellow got teary-eyed. “Did you kill him, mister?”

“What d’you think, stupid? I was having target practice and old Eden just stepped in front of the bullets? Empty your pockets, and be quick about it.”

He continued down the mountain that way. Of the five people he robbed, only one other tried his hand at gunplay. The man’s efforts were rewarded with the same result that the older prospector had experienced. Wetherford now had a smart cache, all in different leather bags, all brimming with yellow dust. He liked mining.

Wetherford waited in the trees above town until just before the closing hour of the assayer’s office. He tied his horse in a back street behind the office, then walked past the window several times, looking inside. A heavyset woman wearing men’s pants seemed to be the only customer. Pete stood off the porch out of view as the buxom gal came out counting her dollars, and once she disappeared up the street, Wetherford slid through the barred glass door. The man who ran the place had just started to turn the
OPEN
sign in the window to
CLOSED.

“We’re done for the day, pardner. Could you come back in the morning?”

Pete contrived a hurt tone to his voice. “Dangnation, I got no place to stay tonight without some cash.”

“Sorry, as I said, we’re closed. Got to go home, have
my supper, chase the wife around the stove, that sort of thing. I already locked up the safe.”

“Sir. If I gave you a sack of yellow on trust, could you maybe advance me a tenner out of your pocket ‘til morning? Could you manage that?”

“Highly unusual, but let me see your poke.” The man opened a spring-loaded latched gate to his barred cubicle and donned a green isinglass eyeshade.

Wetherford dug out one of the small leather bags and laid it on the glass counter.

Instead of opening the bag to examine the gold dust, the man turned it over in his hands several times. “You a friend of old Eden Jones?

Pete didn’t understand. “Why you ask?”

“‘Cause this bag belongs to Ole Man Jones.”

Wetherford tried to be dismissive. “Oh, hell, you’re right. The old guy asked me to do him the favor of cashing in his find, since I was coming into town anyway. I better give you mine just to keep things straight.” Pete retrieved another bag from his pocket. It seemed fairly new and common-looking. He casually tossed it toward the man. “How did you know that was ole Eden’s poke?”

“He’s one of the few old-timers who experienced the gold rush in California sometime in the forties. See that ink drawing on the buckskin?” He held the bag up to the light and pointed out a cartoon drawing of a money bag with a dollar sign in the middle, the number 49 below it. “That’s how I know it’s his. Did he give you a note saying it’s okay for you to have this and cash it in?”

Pete reached below the counter as if to retrieve a note and came up with his pistol. He laid the barrel of the piece
on the edge of the glass countertop. “It wasn’t so much what he gave me but what I gave him. Keep your hands right there above the cabinet top and slowly ease your bones over to the gate and open it real gentle-like.”

“What, are you crazy? You’re right in the center of town. You shoot me and the whole community will descend on you like flies on dung.” Nevertheless, the man raised his hands high.

“Ease your arms down so folks can’t see you from the street. Finish turning that
CLOSED
sign over. Lock the door and blow out that kerosene lamp. Hustle, now, quick.” Pete followed the movement with his gun. “Now open up that safe. Put the cash and what dust you’ve got in this saddlebag.” Pete tossed the bag he’d slung over his shoulder toward the man.

The safe was a large affair with two wide double doors. Pete moved behind the counter and jammed the gun into the man’s liver. “Make it quick, Mr. Assayer.”

The shopkeeper hurriedly loaded the saddlebag with money from a drawer and some fifteen small bags of gold dust.

“Now move back behind the safe, and be brisk on it.” It was a spot of bother, having to tie the man up instead of shooting him, but it was true, a gunshot in the middle of town would create havoc for him. Best to take the time and do it proper. “Take off that belt”—Pete glanced around the tight space—“and that dandy’s tie, give it here.”

Once he had the tie and the belt, he instructed the man to lie on the floor on his side. Wetherford wrapped the leather belt securely around the man’s crossed ankles. Next he bound his hands behind his back with the tie, looping
a loose end through the belt. He looked quickly around the back room of the store and found an oily cleaning rag, which he stuffed unceremoniously into the assayer’s mouth, but not before the man spit out his thoughts.

“May the wrath of the devil rise up out of the depths and smite you a paralyzing blow, you no-good, lazy rapscallion.”

Huh. That’s a new one. Better give this jackass a swift kick in the gut, just in case “rapscallion” means something heavier than it sounds.
So he did.

It was near to dark, the setting sun casting the trees with a soft feathery glow.

Wetherford had taken the assayer’s horse. With a short hank of rope, he tied it to his own mare’s saddle horn. With two horses he could trade off, making better time—the trailing horse resting, not burdened with Pete’s two hundred pounds.

It had been a productive day. By this time Pete could assume the trembling souls who had recently contributed to his larder of riches would have united and traipsed down the mountain to tell their sad story to the sheriff. Wouldn’t it be funny, he thought, if the group ran into Mr. Assayer as he hobbled down the street, ankles and hands still tied, making strange muffled sounds through the cloth stuffed in his mouth? Pete laughed at the image.

With the demise of old-timer Eden Jones and the other miner who had decided to be brave but been too slow when it came to gunplay, Pete decided to hightail it back toward New Mexico and folks he knew. He was
running low on friends, what with the passing of Ty Blake and brother Al, not to mention the lately departed Big Ed Thompson.

Wherever Billy Tauson was, he would just have to wait to be gifted with Pete Wetherford’s presence.

He had plenty of money, a warm feeling about the men he’d killed, and best of all, no ties. No one and nothing to latch onto him, and a free conscience. He felt good as he headed south, humming along at an easy gallop.
“Duh dum de dum da dum. That sav’d a wretch like me!/I once was lost, but now am found, I Was blind, but now I see.”

In the distance, a rumble from a far-off thunderhead. But Wetherford didn’t hear it. He was too busy celebrating his amazing grace.

The gunfire came from close by. It seemed to come down the mountain, and Jubal first sloughed it off as drunken celebrations. He stoked his fire and wrapped his bedroll over his shoulders. Frisk stirred, not reacting well to the echoing shots.

He’d chosen his spot on the mountain well, much higher than most of the miners. Since he didn’t have a legitimate claim, he decided he’d best distance himself from the pack. It also helped not to hear the endless questions. “What you doing, son? Are your parents up here with you?” Or, “You look too young to be prospecting, you should be in school.”
They’re probably right about school,
he admitted.

Jubal knew as soon as this hunt was over he would need to further his education. Maybe something back east, possibly in the area of Boston, where a certain erudite young lady of his acquaintance would be residing. That, he thought, would be something to look forward to.

He planned on dragging the sluice he had built out of the woods and start panning. Then he would scout the various creeks and streams in the area for a couple of days, looking for Wetherford. He thought alternating the routine would keep him fresh.

The morning light found Jubal once again feeding his sluice. He selected this site for the quartz deposits scattered around the immediate vicinity. Their presence, as an old-timer suggested, was evidence of gold in the area.

Around midmorning, as he emptied his gold-finding apparatus for the fifth time, he asked himself if it was really worth the bother.

He didn’t mind the work. In fact he liked it; lathering up a sweat reminded him of home. But there was always the nagging feeling he wasn’t doing enough in his pursuit of Pete Wetherford. He fought for a while with his sense of discipline, going back and forth between wanting to pack in the silly panning for gold and the terrible need to find Pete. He was determined to tough out the schedule he had set for himself—two days of panning to make a living, two days of looking for Pete, then back to panning.

As he worked in the middle of the stream, he kept going over the possibilities, playing a game of throwing out the large worthless rocks caught up in the riffles of his sluice. He said to himself if he discarded ten rocks the size of a marble without spying a small sparkle of gold, he would, as penance, five times lift the log that sat on the shore.

Once, he tallied thirty required lifts of his log and waded to the bank, but instead of doing the prescribed lifts
he’d promised himself, he sat on the log and flipped the last stone into the air.