And the Hills Opened Up (7 page)

11

Six o’clock came and went without the town’s miners filling the saloon as Owen had said they would.  Elwood Hayes was about to ask his younger brother about this when an orange-haired boy ran into the bar, hollered three men dead in the mine, with their throats torn, and then bolted out the front door again, leaving the saloon’s customers to gape at each other in surprise. 

“What in hell’s name?” Roach Clayton grumbled, the first at their table to speak.  “Next the whole town’s going to sink into the earth.”

“Yes, sir,” Clem Stubbs said.  “And those fools will laugh the whole while.”

The stagecoach guards, whom Stubbs was referring to, had returned to their table at the front of the saloon, none of them talking much as they resumed their drinking, the whores leaving them be after a few harsh words.  Every so often, one of the four guards would grow a little braver and glare toward the Hayes Gang.  They wanted more blood than Johnny Miller’s but didn’t know how to go about stepping first.  Hayes supposed that after riding for the bank so long, the guards were too used to living on the defensive and protecting the treasures of men greater and richer than themselves. 

But give them a poke and they’d stir like hornets.

“Wonder what killed those men,” Owen said, holding his tumbler up to the light.  “Mountain lion?  Could a mountain lion get into a mine like that?”

“A knife,” Stubbs said.  “A knife could get into a mine like that.  Probably some drunk Chough who owed too much money from gambling.”

Elwood took in the room, watching for anything strange.  The girls had all gone out to sit on porch and wait for the miners, leaving the barroom quiet.  The bartender, Caleb, was running a rag up and down the bar and chatting with a stout, older woman who must have been the saloon’s madam.  Two old men, both caked with dirt, sat at the far end of the bar, gesturing with their hands as they swapped tales.

A pretty blond emerged from a room on the second floor and leaned over the railing, looking down into the bar.  She seemed sad and sunk into herself, even for a whore. 

Stubbs followed Elwood’s gaze and whistled.  “My, would you look at that.  A blooming mountain flower.”

The girl turned her head toward the table full of stagecoach guards, her nose crinkling.  Suddenly Elwood could smell rank beer, pine sap, smoke, unwashed men, and the faint smell of horses, all at once.

“Not too long bloomed, either,” Roach added, reseating the looping wire of his spectacles upon his ears.  “A man could do worse around here than that.”

Beside him, Owen laughed in the dumb, awkward way he had when he was nervous. 

“That’s Ingrid, fellas.  You going to steal from Revis Cooke, you might as well steal her along with his gold.  She sees nobody else but him.  Up in her chambers, I mean.  Ugly bastard must have gold pouring out his pecker.”

“Ingrid,” Elwood said, trying out the name.  “Finnish?”

“Norwegian.  The other girls say she’s from Minnesota.”

The longer she stood at the second floor railing, the more you could feel the eyes of the other men in the room lift in her direction and remain there.

Ingrid.

Ingrid from Minnesota.

Elwood Hayes pushed back his chair and got to his feet.  He wavered a bit on his heels, drunker than expected.  He ran a hand through his hair, frowned at the hopeless snarls he found there, and cleared his throat.

“Boys, I’m gonna jaw with Miss Ingrid for a minute.”

“You think that’s a good idea?” Stubbs asked, smiling behind his fiery beard.  “Talking with a woman like that is bound to draw attention.”

“I know,” Elwood said, smiling back.

She pretended not to watch him climb the stairs and Elwood pretended he was fully sober while the whole bar followed his progress to the second floor.  He made to remove his hat, but recalled he’d already left it on the table below so as not to be encumbered by it.  So, instead of holding, he could only keep his hands at his sides, fully aware of them in a way that usually happened only when he was firing a gun. 

The whore had ponderous blue eyes and hair like corn silk.  When she glanced at Elwood, finally acknowledging his presence beside her, his legs weakened more than the whiskey he’d drunk would allow.

“Evening, Miss.”

“Evening.”

Elwood turned his gaze down to the saloon below and saw a dozen folks watching, like he and Ingrid were about to give them all a song and dance.  He felt an urge to wave to the room and say something smart but he let it pass.  Letting stupid urges pass you by was what separated a smart man from a fool like Johnny Miller.

“I’m spoken for, if that’s what you were about to ask.”

Elwood turned back to the young woman.

“Ma’am, my name is Elwood Hayes.”

He waited for a response, but Ingrid’s face remained blank.  Maybe news didn’t travel across the Colorado border anymore.

“I’ve been told that you’re in a partnership with Mr. Revis Cooke, accountant for the Dennison Mining Company?”

“That’s right.  Can’t say I enjoy it much, but I am.”

Elwood nodded and hooked his thumbs into his pants. 

“Well, how would you like to leave his employ, permanently?”

The young woman looked him up and down. 

“You don’t have that kind of money, Mr. Hayes.”

Elwood laughed and unhooked his thumbs.   “You’re right about that, Miss.  But, you see, my friends and I are about to change that.  We’re about to have a lot of money, in fact.”

Ingrid smoothed the pleats in her skirt.  She wore white lace gloves, like any fine lady in San Francisco.

“We’re robbing Cooke.  Those men down there have recently delivered a full month’s payroll to his address that we intend to acquire.”

“The miners need that money.  They don’t save a nickel around here.”

“That money’s insured by the bank.  Next month a new delivery, twice as big, will roll into town.  The miners will just have to live on credit until then, like most do anyway.”

Ingrid’s chest was starting to rise and fall with enhanced grandeur—she was excited by the idea, despite herself.  The way her nostrils flared.

“That house is more like a bank than you think, Mr. Hayes, and Cooke is as shrewd as an old mother hen.”

“Yes, Miss Blomvik, I agree with you there,” Elwood said,
nodding again.  “That is why I am speaking to you now.  If you can help us get inside that little fort, you’ll get a full share of whatever we collect.”

Ingrid laughed, a harsh, barking sound that surprised him.   

“A full share,” she said, turning to look Elwood square in the eye.  “And how can I trust a road agent’s word?  How do I know you won’t toss me aside as soon as you get your money?”

Elwood glanced up at the ceiling, wishing he’d brought his hat with him after all.  It would have helped him look more like a beggar if he were holding it now, wringing it with nervousness.  Worse, he could not think of single reason for this woman to trust him, nor any man in Wyoming—everybody was always after a beautiful woman for something or other.

“I can’t say I do know why you should trust me, Miss Blomvik.  I suppose that’ll be a gamble to consider on top of the larger.  But I do reckon nobody ever got out of a position like yours, or a town like this, without taking a considerable chance.”

The young woman tucked a strand of blond hair behind her ear and stared at him for another moment before turning back to the railing.  The older woman, the sizeable madam, was scowling up at them from her perch at the bar.

“I hate this damn town,” Ingrid said in a low voice.  “I’d just as well see it burned to the ground as put out a fallen candle.”

Elwood held his tongue, letting her figure it for herself.  Downstairs, one of the guards slammed his glass against the table, sending a loud crack through the room.  The other guards laughed at whatever had been said and a whore looked in through the front doorway, peaking hopefully at the men.

“All right, Mr. Hayes.  I’ll throw in with your gang.”

Elwood felt a world better as he descended the saloon stairs,
his mind clearing from the fog of spirits and the gloom brought on by Johnny Miller’s foolish actions.  The holdup had looked plenty doubtful a half-hour before, but with Revis Cooke’s girl in their corner they still had a chance at leaving Red Earth as wealthy men.  Perhaps their luck, which had been running ragged enough for the past few months, was about to change for the better.

Two of the stagecoach guards greeted Elwood at the bottom of the stairs, hands upon their hips, near enough to their holsters.  One had an overgrown mustache, like he thought he was Doc Holliday, and the other was ugly as sin, with a bald and lumpy head.  The other two guards were still back at their poker table, watching the scene with interest. 

“What did you want with that whore upstairs?”

Hayes grinned and coughed into his hand.

“What do you think I wanted?”

“She’s spoken for.”

Hayes glanced back over his shoulder, but Miss Blomvik had retired to her room.  He turned back to the men, still grinning.  The backs of his hands had begun to tingle. 

“You know, she told me the same thing, now that you mention it.”

“So why’d you hang around her then, buzzing at her like a fat old horsefly?”

“I felt like buzzing, I suppose.”

The ugly bald man lunged forward and grabbed Hayes by the lapels of his jacket, lifting him an inch off the floor.

“We’ve been talking, and we think it’s time for you to leave town.  You and those other three.  After what your man did to Chester, you’re lucky we don’t lay you all in the earth right here.”

“You smell like horseshit,” Hayes said.  “You been rolling around the alley with the other curs?”

The bald man made to strike him with an open hand, half-releasing him, and Hayes took the opportunity to reach behind his back and pull his pistol.  Before the guard could land his strike, Hayes had already cocked the pistol, brought it round, and shot him in the kneecap.  The guard screamed, dropped onto the blown knee, and screamed some more.  Hayes struck the guard across his bald head with the butt of his gun and dropped him to the floor.

“Yes, sir.  That should settle you a while.”

You could hear a deep intake of air as everyone registered the dropped man—then things started moving fast.  The guard with the mustache stepped backward and fumbled for his gun.  Chairs scraped as men reached for their own guns, if they had any.  The bartender slowly sat down behind the bar, holding his hands above his head.  The saloon’s madam came around the bar and ducked under it, too, her movements swift and certain.  A few porch whores poked their heads in through the front door, saw the guns being drawn, and retreated hastily. 

Hayes widened his stance and aimed for the mustachioed man’s gun, hoping to shoot it out of his hand, but the guard’s movements were so wild he ended up shooting him in the forearm, which had the same effect, anyhow, disarming the guard as he howled in pain.  Hayes ducked low and scooped the mustachioed man’s pistol off the ground as the two other stagecoach guards began firing from across the room, filling the air with lead. 

Chunks of stairway detonated as the guards lit into it, sending up a cloud of splinters.  Elwood ran at a crouch toward the back of the room, where Roach, Clem, and Owen had taken up firing positions.  He made it behind an empty table and threw his shoulder into it, lifting the table off its base and sending it crashing sideways.  He checked the stolen pistol to make sure it was loaded and cocked and was about to come up firing when a man flew over the table, thumping into Elwood’s chest like a sledgehammer, knocking him to the ground and causing him to drop both guns.

It was the mustachioed man, back for another round, and this time he’d drawn a knife.  Elwood brought his foot up and kicked him in the chest, trying to pry some distance between them.  The guard snarled and swiped the blade at him, moving fast despite the gunshot wound to his forearm.  “Come on, now,” Elwood shouted above the racket of gunfire, “there’s no need for cutting.”  The guard ignored him and lunged, swiping the knife across Elwood’s chest.  Elwood scrambled back against the overturned tabletop, kicking furiously, and found his gun on the floor.  The guard lunged again and Elwood shot him between the eyes.  The guard’s head snapped back and he fell to the ground.  Elwood sighed and shook his pistol in the air, which was almost too hot to hold.

“I warned you off, Doc.  You can’t say otherwise.”

12

When his ma called him to stop playing with his straw dolls and come inside, seven-year-old Billy Atkins expected to see his pa sitting at the table and the smell of cooking to fill their cabin.  Instead, his pa was not home and his ma was still working at the stove, wiping the sweat from her forehead and watching over the potatoes as they boiled.  They ate a lot of potatoes, all year long.  Billy liked his with salt.

“Billy, I need you to go hunt up your pa.  He hasn’t come home for dinner yet and I have to mind the stove.  It isn’t like him to dawdle.”

Billy smiled and stretched his arms above his head.  He wasn’t allowed to go downtown by himself too often.

“You think you can find your daddy’s office?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Don’t talk to any miners.  And don’t take any money or candy from them, especially if they’re acting funny.”

“I won’t.”

“Go on then, little rabbit.”

Billy Atkins didn’t need to be told twice.  He darted out of the cabin and sprinted  down the road, passing the dozen other cabins sprinkled on the north side of Red Earth.  He ran as fast as his legs would carry him, enjoying how everything blurred to the side of his vision and it felt a little like he was flying.  He hoped Emma Parson was looking out her cabin window across the road.  He wanted her to see how fast he could run and feel jealous about how he got to go downtown by himself.  Emma was nine-years-old and thought she knew everything in the whole world just because she’d been born in Cincinnati, Ohio, which she said was a proper city.

But Billy’s pa was sheriff.  His pa was sheriff and he carried a gun on his belt, a big pearl handled revolver, and he could draw it so fast the gun went blurry.  Men and women called his pa Sheriff Atkins and nodded politely when he passed.  Why Emma Parson thought being born in Cincinnati was better than your pa being a lawman Billy Atkins had no idea, except she was a girl, and girls seemed to have all manner of queer ideas.  Like how sometimes they’d be wrestling in the grass and Emma’s eyes would suddenly go all soft and cloudy, like a storm was passing through them, and she’d plant a big fat kiss on his cheek and giggle and say they were married now forever and ever and Billy would say that was the worst thing he’d ever heard in his whole life.

Near downtown, Billy slowed his running to a walk.  He didn’t want to get to the general store too soon—he had too much to look at, like all the pretty ladies sitting on the Runoff Saloon’s big front porch.  The ladies always waved when he passed by, smiling real friendly-like, and he waved back as long as his ma wasn’t watching.  She didn’t like the ladies, she said, because they were steeped in sin and wickedness—which they might have been, if wickedness included powder, perfume, and curly hair.

Tonight, though, the ladies weren’t the most interesting thing.  A group of men were standing outside the hotel, excited and talking loud.  Billy expected to see his father but he wasn’t among the hotel men, who kept looking down the street and pointing at hills in the distance.  Billy couldn’t see anything worth the fuss—just the same old mountains.  He considered stopping to ask what they were all pointing at but then remembered his mother, standing red-faced over the stove and telling him not to talk to the miners.  He couldn’t tell if these men were miners or not, but if they were, it’d get back to Pa sooner or later and Ma would tan his hide for sure.

So Billy kept walking straight past, keeping his eyes on the dirt road and his hands in his pockets.  Nobody called out to waylay him and soon he was climbing the steps to the general store, picking up speed again as he opened the screen door and let it bang behind him, loud as a gunshot. 

“Pa!”

Billy squinted his eyes and looked around.  The shop was dim, even though it was still light outside.  Henry wasn’t sitting in his chair behind the shop counter, where he always sat, and there weren’t any customers, either.  Just a stranger sitting at the sheriff’s desk in the front corner of the room, all hunched over with his eyes closed.

“Who are you?”

Metal rattled as the stranger looked up.  He had dark circles around his eyes and his lower lip was cracked and bleeding. 

“I’m a dead man.  Who are you?”

Billy took a step back and looked at the door. 

“You looking for your pa?”

Billy nodded, looking from the door to the stranger and back again.

“He the sheriff?”

Billy nodded again.  “Sherriff Atkins,” he said, finding his tongue.  “He’s late for dinner and Ma sent me to fetch him.”

The stranger closed his eyes.

“I could use some dinner myself, though I don’t suppose I’ll see any tonight.”

Billy stepped forward, wondering why the stranger was sitting so funny.  When he came around the desk, he saw chains attached to the man’s wrists and ankles.  The chains had been looped through a giant iron ring in the floor.  Billy had always wondered what the ring was for, popping out of the wood like that. 

The stranger leaned forward and opened his eyes.

“Your pa ain’t here, son.”

“Where is he?” 

“You let me out of these string beans and I’ll tell you.”

Billy crossed his arms. 

“No, sir.  I cannot do that.  You’re a criminal.  You’re wearing those chains because you did something bad.”

The stranger laughed and started coughing.

“Hell, son.  If everybody who did something bad in this world wore chains, nobody would be walking free at all.”

Billy bit his lip and squinted, trying to figure what the stranger was getting at.  His gray eyes reminded Billy of a wolf he’d seen the winter before, sniffing around their cabin in daylight, pacing back and forth.  You could see the wolf’s ribs poking through where fat should have been and Ma hadn’t allowed Billy outside until Pa got home that evening.

“If you won’t tell me, I’ll just go find Mr. Leg and ask him.”

“The old man left, too.  He was mighty interested in seeing things for himself.”

“Seeing what things?”

The stranger smiled, showing a row of crooked teeth.

“The other dead men.”

The coins and bills were adding up properly but Revis Cooke took his time about it, feeling no urge to rush the accounting.  Also, Cooke was enjoying the National Bank man’s growing discomfort as the evening passed and his men whooped it up across the street.  A man who couldn’t deprive himself without squirming like a child in church was not much of a man at all. 

“Seems like it’s all here, Mr. Cooke.”

“Perhaps, Mr. Wells.  We’ll see how it tallies up in the end.”

The silver dollar certificates felt crisp and solid beneath Cooke’s fingertips, each one adding to the payroll total as he stacked them on the large desk before him.  Cooke’s visitor, a man named Hollis Wells, was sitting in a stiff wooden chair across from him, his arms crossed over the front of his faded gray cavalry coat.  He wore a black derby cap, which he wore tipped slightly forward, and a well-trimmed blond beard that was not uncomely.  Wells appeared to be a good soldier, a trustworthy soul.  Canny enough to deal with bankers, yet steely enough to command ruffians. 

“Would you mind if I went across the street a moment to check on my men?  They’ve already gotten in enough trouble for one night and I’d like to head off any more before it happens.”

Cooke grinned and licked his thumb.

“Hired guns can cause more trouble than they’re worth.  A mercenary army is a powder keg waiting to blow.”

“I don’t know about mercenaries.  They’re good men, just a little short tempered after a long ride.  That mountain trail from Rawlins is no easy thing, even in summer.”

Cooke nodded.

“I remember it well—”

Gunshots erupted outside, a series of dry pops that could be heard through the house’s thick limestone walls.  Hollis Wells leapt to his feet like he’d been stung.

“Goddamn it, I told them.”

Wells went to the front door and tried the door.  The knob didn’t even turn.

“It’s locked.”

“Of course it is.  We have over a thousand dollars on the table, Mr. Wells.  The company’s valuables must be secured.”

Wells threw back the door’s view slot and looked outside.  More gunshots, of various calibers, rang out from across the street.  Cooke wrote down his latest tabulation and pushed his chair back, frowning.  Between the miners and the transients, Red Earth was growing more unpleasant by the day.

The National Bank man turned round, his forehead pinched. 

“Please unlock the door, Mr. Cooke.  I need to go over there.”

Cooke sighed and rolled up his shirtsleeves. 

“I’m afraid I cannot fulfill your request, Mr. Wells.  Company policy states that in the event of gunfire, or any disturbance of note, that I am not allow passage through this building.  Passage in or out, I’m afraid.”

Wells licked his lips.  More gunfire cracked outside.

“Are you joking, sir?  I can see clearly that nobody is within fifty feet of this building.”

“No, Mr. Wells, I do not make jests about company policy.  We’ll have to wait out the gunfire indoors and hope your men emerge in due time.  They can handle themselves, can they not?”

Mr. Wells drew himself up to his full height, which nearly matched Cooke’s.  His jaw shifted imperceptibly, the teeth grinding within.  Cooke stared calmly back into his fidgeting eyes, wondering if the lookout was going to rush him, like a mad bull.

“Are you going to assault me, Mr. Wells?  Do you cognate as poorly as your trigger-happy men?”

Wells pushed back the brim of his cap. 

“I just need to get through that door, sir.”

“I understand that.  But the only thing that’s capable of getting through that door, as long as I’m alive and have a say in the matter, is a spirit.  Are you a spirit, Mr. Wells?”

Wells looked back at the door.  More gunfire erupted.

“No, sir.  I am not.”

Cooke smiled and returned to his seat at the table, rubbing his hands as he looked over the stacked bills and coins.  “Wonderful.  Let’s settle our accounts while the drunkards across the street settle theirs.  Neither should take too much longer.”

Wells remained standing, unhappy and indecisive.  Cooke did not mind, as long as the lookout did not interrupt him further.  The Dennison company payroll was not going to sort itself.

On the far north end of town Bonnie Chambers also heard the gunfire, but she took it for practice shooting.  She was distracted by the prolonged absence of her husband and the three dead miners he was attending to.  Her mind, long adjusted to the slow pace of frontier towns, did not automatically provide room for two major calamities at once, especially when one involved her husband, who was still feverish and should have been lying in bed at that moment.

Yes, many things seemed to be happening nearly at once:

First, Randy Bale had shown up with the news and Hank had run off to the mine. Then the boy had returned asking for Hank’s rifle and she’d scrambled to load it before he’d run off a second time.

Second, she’d waited for perhaps twenty minutes, agitated and bursting with the news, before she’d given in and gone next door to gossip with Susan Logan, her one and best friend in town.  Susan’s redheaded boy, who’d been lying in the corner feigning sleep, had popped up all of a sudden and run off toward downtown, shouting about the three dead miners to anybody with ears to listen.

Third, about five minutes after that, Sherriff Atkins had ridden out of town with a handful of men at his heels, themselves headed toward the mine.  She spotted Leg and Henry Jameson among the riders and wondered who was minding the general store, if anyone, and if she would have done better to keep the news to herself until Hank came back with a full report.  Sheriff Atkins was a young man, still wet behind the ears, and he was liable to fall off his horse in his rush to be a hero and break his neck.

It was all rolling downhill now.  If Hank was angry with her for her loose tongue, she’d hurry to dab his forehead and tell him not to tax himself, not with his fever, and get him back in bed before he could work up much steam.  They’d been together a long time, through good and bad, and she could handle him in about any kind of humor he cared to feel.  They’d married at a small brick church in Springfield, Missouri, with both families in attendance.  That had been in 1872, when she was still eighteen and Hank recently turned twenty-six, a tan and dashing young man edging into the prime of life.  He’d already done well out West as a prospector, with some money to his name and more work waiting for him in Colorado, and their families had been on friendly terms for years and years.  He said he could remember seeing Bonnie once as a little girl, running loose with other children at some festivity or other, but she did not recall seeing him at all, not until he came to call one afternoon at the bidding of her father, his tan and calloused hands gently holding yellow honeysuckle flowers like a man in a fancy magazine.  He’d asked if she’d like to take a walk and, after careful reflection, Bonnie had said yes, as long as she didn’t have to carry those flowers all over town.

The years had flown from there, leading them both from one town to another, from one mining operation to the next.  They’d loved each other well enough, once the initial strangeness of marriage was swept away.  They’d also conceived three children and buried them all, none lasting longer than a year.  Bonnie still had small, hard spots in her heart she’d reserved for loving each child, little hard spots that felt like old scar tissue in her mind whenever she slowed down long enough to recall what it’d felt like to hold the poor babes in her arms.  Their deaths had been hard to take, certainly, but Hank had stayed at her side at each burial, solid as the rocks he worked with, and the more desperate and lonely she’d felt as the years went by the more she’d loved him, warts and all, until she could not imagine living in a world where they did not wake side by side.