Gold (8 page)

Danny, forgotten, glanced at the open door. If
he wanted to run, this was his chance. But he
would not run. He would not run now if the
whole world stood ranged against him.

The men returned from dragging the Indian
into the street and clustered around the two men. Waiting. Expectant. Duke stared down at Danny.

“
I don’t want to fight no baby,” he said.

He came toward Danny with his right hand
extended. When he stopped a few feet away,
Danny hawked up and spat in his open palm.

Duke stared in disbelief at the spittle, then
roared and charged head down. Danny danced
aside just in time, chopping at the back of Duke’s
neck with his fist, so that his bull-like charge
ended in the arms of two of the spectators. While
Danny clenched and unclenched his stinging
hand, Duke turned, assumed the classic pugilist’s
stance and plodded towards him. Danny studied
the burly man. Big, too big for him to lick. Yet
Duke’s belly lapped over his belt. And the man
was unsteady from the drink.

As Duke brought his right arm back for
another roundhouse clout, Danny jabbed his fist
into his stomach and leaped away. Duke’s mouth
opened and closed but he made no sound. His
arm still cocked, he stalked Danny around the
circle of men. Once again, Danny jabbed his fist
into his stomach, then, as Duke came on, darted
away.

He might have continued his jabbing tactics
had not his back struck the bar as he danced backwards. Go right or left? Duke swung before
he could move either way. The blow caught
Danny above the ear and seemed to explode in
his head. The floor whirled up at him. His head
thudded on a spittoon.

Dazed, Danny looked up to see Duke coining
at him with a chair raised high. He scrambled
back and away, beneath a table, and the chair
splintered on its top. He grasped a table leg, pulled
himself to the far side and came to his feet with
the table between them.

Duke roared and hurled himself full-length
across the table, his hands grasping for Danny’s
throat. Danny flung himself backwards. Duke
rolled awkwardly from the table, regained his
feet and came on, bear-like. Danny, sweat burn
ing his eyes and his ears still ringing from the head
blow, jabbed at the big man’s stomach, once,
twice, three times. Duke grunted with each blow,
yet came on.

Danny jabbed again. Anticipating the blow this time, Duke caught his wrist and yanked him for
ward, twisting his arm. Danny howled in pain.
Duke flung him to the floor, cocked a boot aimed at his head. Desperately, Danny squirmed away,
then kicked upward with both feet.

His lunging
thrust caught Duke in the groin. The big man’s
foot shot forward, missed. Hands clutching his
groin, he sank to his knees, a position from which
he stared glassily, unable to move for the pain
and nausea overcoming him.

“
Enough is enough,” the bartender said. He
came around the bar carrying a black truncheon.
“Take him away,” he said to Duke’s friends, “He’s
fouling my floor.” As two men did this, the bar
tender turned more quietly to Danny. “It’s best
you be on your way.” Then he told Michael, “If
you were to ask my advice, I’d say take the lad
and be gone from this town for the next month or
two.”

Michael nodded.

Danny and his father strode out to the muddy
street. Around them the night was dark and chill,
the fog high overhead. They paused in front of the
saloon, savoring the clean night air while they got
their bearings.

“
This way,” Michael said, pointing to the
greater darkness of the hills behind the town.
They set off arm in arm.

“
The best brawl I’ve seen in all my days,”
Michael finally admitted, “that is, of those I’ve not
been in on meself. You did yourself proud.”

Now
’s the time, Danny thought. Now’s the
time to ask him why he left me and Burke when
we were kids, not to come back for so many years.
I didn’t have the heart in St. Louis what with him
in trouble and all. But now—now I’ve the right
to ask.
Before the words could form on his tongue his
father sighed, then cleared his throat and began
to sing, his voice slow and sad, clear and full:

“The summer’s gone and all the roses falling
It’s you, it’s you must go and I must bide.”

The only warning was a footstep behind them. Danny began to
turn when a blow caught him on
the back of the head and he pitched forward to
his knees. He heard scuffling, oaths, started to rise
and was struck down again. Before his senses
clouded completely he heard his father’s bellow:

“
Ye sons o’ bitches ...”

Then no more.

When Danny opened his eyes the night was
quiet with the fog all around him. He pushed him
self to his feet, and shook his head to clear it.
wincing with the pain. As he stood unsteadily, he
heard singing from afar.

He groped this way and that in the fog.

“Pa,” he called. “Pa, where are you?”

He stumbled over something and knelt. His fin
gers found his father’s cold damp face. Even
before Danny staggered back to the saloon and
returned with a lamp, he knew his father was
dead.

CHAPTER SIX

Kingman Sutton, bored by the drone of Wilkes
Yancey’s voice, fingered the fire opal he wore on
his right hand. He glanced from Dr. Robinson’s
impassive face to the crackling log fire to the
mirror above the mantel. Reflected in the mirror
was Mary Yancey. Almost like a portrait, King mused. It was as if Wilkes had hung a portrait of
his young wife where the gilt-edged mirror had
always been.

Mary, regally tall and imperially aloof, her
black hair in a chignon, her fitted bodice emphasizing her breasts, her mauve skirt sweeping the
floor, looked every inch a Southern lady. In
reality she was an Ohioan, Georgian only by way
of her marriage to Wilkes the year before.

Mary
’s hand moved and King realized he had
been fancifying. Mary stood just outside the door
to Wilkes’ study. In the mirror, her hand came up
across her breasts to her throat. She watched
King, unaware that he in turn was watching her.

Mary
’s lips parted slightly. As they had parted
the day before when, under the great live oak at the common corner of the Yancey and Sutton
plantations, he had kissed her.

While Wilkes droned on, King recalled the
tryst and what it had meant to him.

Her lips had responded before she drew back, bringing her hands up between them to hold him away.
“King Sutton,” she said, “you’re taking advantage of a woman alone in a strange land.”

He
’d pulled her to him, ignoring her fluttering
hands, his lips nipping at her neck, her ear, her
lips. She relaxed, her body soft against his, her lips
yielding to his kisses. Then she twisted free.

He advanced on her.
“I’ve had enough of your
teasing ways,” he said.

“
And you, Senator Sutton, with a sick wife at
home.”

He whirled and walked to his horse, unlooped
the reins from a branch and swung into the saddle.
She ran after him.

“
Oh, King, King,” she cried, holding to his
booted leg. “I spoke without thinking. I know
what it must be like for you. The horror you must
suffer day after day.” She pressed her cheek
against his leg.

Still angry, he stared down at her lustrous black
hair. Though outraged by her reference to Betsy,
at the same time he seemed to stand outside him
self observing the two of them beneath the oak,
this beautiful girl clinging to the dashing older
man with the flowing grey-streaked hair. And, as he watched, he’d planned the next move of his
campaign.

It was time for one of
“Sutton’s Fancies.” That’s
what they called them at the Georgia state capitol at Milledgeville. Not lies, certainly not lies, not
even prevarications. No, “fancies.” They were part and parcel of politics and, especially when they
worked, were admired and quoted repeatedly by
all.

“
You’ll only have a fortnight more to tempt and
then deny me,” he told her. Mary Yancey raised
her green-gold eyes. How had a bore like Wilkes
captured this prize on his visit to his Cincinnati
kin? King could have understood her marrying
any of the other four Yancey brothers, for they
possessed a certain mad charm. But Wilkes?
Wilkes was the runt of the litter.

“
Only a fortnight? Why do you say that, King?”

“
I’ve booked my passage on the Eastern Star.
We sail from Charleston on the twenty-ninth,
bound for California.”

“
California?” Her tone made the Territory
seem as distant as Timbuktu. Considering the long
voyage around South America, he thought, it was
in fact much farther.

“
I intend to seek gold to replenish the Sutton
fortunes,” he went on. That had a certain flair, he
told himself. He’d discovered Mary liked the dra
matic exaggeration, the romantic gesture.

“
Oh, King, who will I have to talk to if you
leave? The women scorn me for being a Yankee
and the men, except for you, treat me as though
I’d been carved from stone and mounted on a
pedestal.”

“
The women envy you; the men are afraid of
you.”

“
With you in California, I’ll have no one.”

“
Have you forgotten Wilkes?”

“
Oh Wilkes. He’s gone so often with his politicking to Charleston and Savannah and Milledge
ville. And when he’s home he’s either balancing the accounts or writing his poetry.”

The poetry, he
’d forgotten that. Perhaps Wilkes
had won her with a song. “A man for all seasons,”
he said.

From Mary
’s hints—and King, twice her age,
needed only a few—he thought he could imagine
Wilkes’ lovemaking. King smiled. He’d often com
pared the preliminaries in bedding a woman to a
duel, with the man and woman facing one an
other as antagonists. If lovemaking were a duel,
he could picture Wilkes standing with his pistol
pointed skyward. Long before the signal to fire
was given, Wilkes’ pistol would have discharged
with a mighty pop.

“
Why are you smiling?” Mary asked.

“
Thinking of all the gold I’ll find in California.
Mountains of gold are waiting, they say, and
rivers of gold where all you have to do is pick the
nuggets from the water.”

“
California is so far from Athens.”

“
True, and the voyage around the Cape is
fraught with danger. Danger from storms, from
disease. Still we may put into port in Brazil or
Chile where the
senoritas
are said to be lovely creatures.”

“
Don’t tease me, King. You might never come
back.”

“
I’ll be gone two years at least.”

“
Two years! That’s half a lifetime.”

“
You’ll have forgotten me by then.”