Days of '49/Chapter 14

The big spree that had started in Fred's House had, by the following afternoon, dwindled into the sloppy drunkenness of a half-dozen miners who sang and stamped and dozed, drank and gambled, and quarreled maunderingly. They would not go back to work until they were "strapped," and as long as there was a glimmer of dust in their pouches they would remain blear-eyed and woozy.

Nearly all the miners had scattered up and down the river, returning to their claims, either sleeping off the bad whisky or without sleep again grubbing and shoveling gravel into cradles and sluice boxes.

Yank remained alive; just that and nothing more.

The camp had rather a heavy heart, was not proud of itself, felt that it had not treated Yank just right in celebrating when it did, hadn't been square with Yank.

"Yes," Clay Freeman had said, "we could hear the goings-on clear down there to Gubbins' cabin.

"If Yank had been killed by the boulder, the miners would have buried him respectfully, and have forgotten him at once; but living, he could not be forgotten, and to have a leg cut off was worse, in a way, than death.

Moreover the camp felt the depression that comes over decent men after they have been on a debauch, and Yank's leg gave them an increased sense of guiltiness. Those that felt the most self-reproach most strongly put the blame on Fred's House rather than on themselves.

The young and haggard Dr. Perle had lapsed into depression, and did not believe that Yank would live. He told Hales so.

Maria Gubbins told Hales that Yank would live. Moreover, she had already built her plans into the future, talked of them with Joe; it wasn't necessary to talk them over with Peter Gubbins—time enough when Pete was told what had been decided. Joe was to go on mining; the Gubbinses would take Yank with them when they went farming; and when Joe had a stake he would come and buy a farm beside them for him and Yank. When Maria Gubbins made up her mind she had her say; even the Gubbins' oxen had learned that of her.

Hales found that Lucita, who was hardly more than a child herself, had been accepted as an equal by the Gubbins children, by even the dog; and they all understood one another very well without a common speech.

Lucita admitted that she wanted to return home, but said she would not; she was afraid of her parents' anger, fearful of Señor Guerrero's warty nose, which might become that of her own husband. She wanted to find José, and be with him, stay with him—whatever else became of her she did not care.

Hales regarded her with grave puzzlement. The children of Spanish-Californians were seldom disobedient; a son of fifty years, with his own large family, would be humble in the presence of his father.

He inquired among miners and storekeepers, but none of them knew anything of the Spanish families in that part of the country, except that there were some—somewhere. The camp butcher suggested that Hales wait and talk with the vaqueros who drove in beef; they were due in two or three days.

About the middle of the afternoon Hales was sitting in a chair of the nearly deserted Empire barroom. The bartender lounged over a table, spelling out the news from an ancient newspaper. A miner played solitaire at another table. A bottle of whisky and tin cup were before him. He solemnly bet with himself on the outcome of his game, and when he lost would not take a drink.

Hales gazed reflectively through the door at the high hills and thought of anything that drifted into his mind.

He heard the thumping scrape of heavy feet and looked up casually as a man not very clean of dress, his clothes being spotted with grease and kettle black, and who was obviously not a miner, paused in the doorway.

"Er you Mr. Hales?—Wal, then thar's a letter f'r y' over to Fred's. "

The fellow, who was cook at Fred's House, turned to go.

"Why didn't you bring it?"

"There's charge o' three dollars agin it. An' the boss he said 'o tell ye if y' wanted it to come an ' git it. That's all I know."

The fellow turned and with shambling gait started back to Fred's House.

"I think he lied," said Hales to the bartender who had glanced up from his paper. "But I'll go over and find out why."

"Well," answered the bartender, "if you're goin' 'o traipse around lookin' up the why of all the lies that's tol' in this here worl', you'll soon wear yore legs down to nubbins."

Hales stopped in the doorway of Fred's House and glanced about the barroom. But four men were there. One lay as if dead drunk in a corner. One, a young fellow, with something of the rat in his face and the dude in his dress, was behind the bar. Near the bar, at a table, Black Perry and the other young gambler played cards. Hales saw that they did not look up.

He felt warily that he was being invited into a trap. The intentness of these men with their cards was not quite natural. But as with many men where danger is suspected, Hales hesitated to draw back. If he drew back he would never know whether or not there had been danger, and so would always remember his discretion with something like shame. Besides, at no time would he have backed away from three such men as these, two blackleg gamblers and a heavy-browed saloonkeeper.

From the bunkroom Hales could hear through the flimsy partition drunken voices in good-natured wrangling, and now and then the call of women:

"Just a minute, boys, and we'll be with you" "Stay right there, boys" "Wait right there" "Don't go away."

Hales stepped inside, paused, looked steadily at Black Perry, still in shirt sleeves, in the same white collarless shirt. No doubt he had slept in it, would continue to sleep in it for many nights. His bare forearms were covered with black hairs, like bristles. His black brows nearly met above his nose, a thick bulging nose. Hales looked at the back of the gambler who played with Black Perry. The fellow wore a narrow-brimmed top-hat, a "stovepipe." It was rather shabby of texture, but impressive as to fashion. He had on a high collar, not clean but high. His coat was black and fitted snuggly. His clothes, his coat as his manner and skill at cards, were meant to ape the high-caste, rigidly emotionless, fastidious gamblers of San Francisco.

The second gambler, behind the bar, leaned on his elbows watching the game. The table was close by. He was very young, clean-shaven, but the youthful face had on it the print of the devil's hand. There was about the mouth that frozen half-sneer with which young ruffians seem to contemplate a stupid world that sets such value on honesty when a little craft, edged with boldness, can take from honest men everything they own. His brown eyes had in them that blank, impudent furtiveness, common to weaklings in the ways of evilness. He was bareheaded. His hair was parted, brushed up carefully. He had rings on his fingers.

"Is there a letter here for me?" asked Hales.

The bartender looked up, raised his head a little, then took his elbows from the bar. Black Perry and the gambler appeared deaf, uninterested, absorbed in their game. With a glance toward them, the fellow that was acting as bartender turned to the shelf behind him, picked up a letter, dropped it on the bar indifferently, saying:

"Three dollars."

Then he leaned again on the bar, watching the game.

Hales, with a quick and unobtrusive movement, loosened the gun in his holster, then walked to where the letter lay, face down. He turned it over. It was addressed to

He regarded this spelling doubtfully, at the same time reaching for his pouch.

"This," he said, "is not quite my name."

"Reckon it's for you anyhow," said the bartender.

"How do you 'reckon' it's for me? When did it come?"

"Been here all the time," said the bartender, taking a quick step backward.

There was the faintest scrape of a chair. Hales turned, hand to gun. Black Perry had stood up determinedly, and with a seeming effort at noiselessness. There was a faint expression of surprise under his dark brows, and his hands moved quickly together, in front of him. They were ostentatiously empty. He sidled to the bar, leaned an elbow on it, kept his hands before him, but demanded quarrelsomely:

"Now what you bellyachin' about?"

"This letter"

Hales paused. He sensed danger. There was something wrong. He did not glance toward the misspelled letter. He looked steadily into Black Perry's eyes and saw them shift uncontrollably toward the bartender, then toward where the other gambler sat.

Hales knew better than to look around.

Instantly Black Perry was saying, wrathfully:

"What about the letter? It's yourn, ain't it? You was hollerin' for a letter las' night. Well, what in hell's the matter with you?"

The fellow painstakingly kept his empty hands in view, yet he was forcing a quarrel, holding Hales' attention.

Hales, sensitively alert, saw what was up. One glance aside, in any direction, and he would have a knife into him; and if he did not glance aside he would have the knife into him, and if he did not glance aside he would have the knife, or bullet, from behind.

Black Perry's gaze wavered for an instant to something, some one behind Hales; and at that moment, too, Black Perry started to curse, cursed angrily, with hands still empty.

Instinctively Hales knew the trap was being sprung on him, and how; he did not hesitate, but drew his gun, and with one continuous movement threw it up, and upside down, muzzle pointing backward across his shoulder. Then jerking his head around for scarcely more than half of a backward glance at what he aimed, he shot; and, instantly, he faced about and shot again, point-blank into the body of Black Perry. The next moment Hales' gun was leveled at the head of the bartender, but the fellow had both hands in the air and his mouth open.

"Don't shoot! Ow, don't shoot!" he begged.

"The reason I don't shoot," said Hales, "is not because your hands are up, but because I want one of you alive to tell the miners just what you tried to do—and why? Why did you?"

The noise of the gun brought the miners stumbling drunkenly, with eyes bulging, from the bunkroom. They gaped, blinking, and sagged into awkward attitudes, for the moment motionless, while their blurred senses groped and fumbled to understand.

A woman, dressed in red, with a flaring Spanish comb in her tousled head, came to the bunkroom doorway. Her puffed eyes widened with a look of frightened amazement as she caught sight of Hales, standing with gun drawn and two dead men at his feet. She screamed—"Ow, they didn't get him!" and jumped back out of sight.

The drunken men stared with owlish sobriety. Even the fellow who had been asleep on the floor, in the corner, kicked and scrambled with a kind of dazed leisureliness until he got to his feet, then came forward with a toppling sort of walk, stood in weaving unsteadiness, blinked, with nodding motion of head, and muttered:

"Ol' Black Perry, uh? Biled shirt all mussed now, shore. Um-m-m Gam'ler Jim, too, eh? An' me 'sleep. Miss ever'thing! Never goin' sleep 'gain. Nope."

These miners were full of whisky and had been joyfully foolish; but they had hard heads, and listening intently they understood at least a part of what the bartender said, with his hands still in the air, his eyes wavering from the muzzle of the gun to Hales' face, on which there was no glimmer of mercy. He spoke with a confused whining rush of words:

"—knew Fred wouldn't stand for it, but when Fred went down there to ask about Yank—all Perry's doin's—he wrote the letter—meant to get you in the back while you was openin' it—or have Jim shoot you—they meant to get you anyhow they could—they figured you bein' friendly with the de Solas they could make it right with the miners—tellin' how you an' that de Sola shot fellers in the Magnolia that time—the girls were to keep them miners there in the bunk room so nobody'd see nothin' an' Black Perry could tell his own story, how he liked—I warned 'em, Mister Hales—I warned 'em you 'd get 'em. Hones' I did—don't shoot me—please—oh—I"

It was well toward the end of the afternoon; the sun was already looking between the tips of the tall sentinel pines of the westward hills; but word was sent up and down the river, calling the miners to gather and pass judgment. They were tired, weary with work; some had heads that still ached; many had to come from distant claims; but, excited, and with short tempers, they came.

They gathered under the twisted pine. They pressed together, and stood nearly motionless. Their voices were low, and little was said. Another bonfire was lighted. Clay Freeman was chosen judge, twelve men were selected and sat on a plank supported by kegs.

Hales stood before them and told of the cook who came, saying there was a letter at Fred's house, of how he went for the letter, and of what followed.

The cook, anxiously avowing his own innocence, told that Black Perry had sent him.

The miners, who had been drunk and were now nearly sober, told what they knew.

The young gambler repeated his story, babbling hopefully of how he had warned 'em.

Then the miners hanged him.

They appointed the jury as delegation to wait on Fred, though Fred stood there in the crowd, and tell him to get rid of those two women before sun-up, and never to bring any more into Fan Fare.

The miners then broke up into groups, went here and there quietly, had a few drinks, talked about Yank; and in the darkness returned to their claims, to their tents and cabins up and down the river.

Such, at times, was the summary justice of '49.