Incident at Twenty-Mile Read online

  "What we don't do is play our goddamned cards!"

  "Twenty-Mile is a community of has-beens and never-wases. Misfits all. Once in a blue moon, a prospector climbs up out of the ravines and stumbles across that meadow into town, craving some of Delanny's whiskey, or a little relief from one of the girls. But pretty soon he drifts back into the mountains in search of the big strike that'll put him on Easy Street."

  "Crazy old fools!" Coots grumbled.

  "Maybe they're not so crazy," Matthew said. "Maybe they're just looking for the sizzle."

  "Looking for what?" B. J. asked.

  "… the sizzle?"

  The men exchanged dubious glances.

  "Ah… what sizzle is that, Matthew?"

  Embarrassed, Matthew applied himself energetically to oiling the pincers he was working on.

  "Maybe you're right," B. J. conceded. "Maybe the prospectors are no crazier than those of us who've let ourselves get marooned in this butthole of the Western Hemisphere."

  "Why do you stay if you don't like it?" Matthew asked, remembering that he had asked Mr. Delanny the same thing.

  "Why do we stay, Coots?"

  "Beats my two pair. Maybe because we're just too old and worn out to move on."

  B. J. Stone nodded thoughtfully. "Yes, I guess that's it. And at least they leave us alone here. I'm not saying we're welcome. Hell, we're not even accepted. But we are left alone, and that's something."

  Matthew didn't understand this, and he was wondering how he might ask why they weren't accepted without seeming too nosy, when Coots suddenly cried out, "All right! All right, goddamnit! I played the queen of clubs! I played it! I played it! Now can we please get on with the goddamn game?!"

  "Ah! That's all I needed to know," B. J. said. "Because if you played the queen, then my jack, ten, eight are good. And that bleeds out your trump. Which makes my hearts good." He laid down his cards. "Looks like I win again."

  "That's it!" Coots slammed his cards onto the barrel. "I ain't never playing cards with you again! Never!"

  "I'm sorry you have to witness this peevish behavior," B. J. confided to Matthew. "It's an ugly sight: a grown man being such a bad sport."

  Matthew didn't let himself smile. He wasn't going to take sides.

  "I take it you and the Reverend had words about your setting up in the marshal's office?" B. J. went on in a calm, conversational voice he knew would irritate the silently fuming Coots. "He wanted to live there himself when he came to town, but Mr. Kane told him it was town property and he couldn't have it."

  "How did you know me and the preacher had words?"

  "There was tension and anger in the way you were standing, facing one another. From the way you sauntered off, it looked like you won. That may not have been smart, Matthew."

  "You're saying I should have let him win?"

  "No, no, but you should have let him think he'd won. You see, Hibbard's a coward, and cowards are dangerous because they strike from behind. There's an old Spanish proverb-"

  "Oh, shit," Coots groaned. "Here we go!"

  "— a proverb that says, 'Beware the man who knows but one book.' And that's especially true if that one book is 'sacred.' The man-of-one-book will slit your throat without a moment's hesitation or an ounce of remorse, confident that he's done it in the service of all that's good in this world and rewarded in the next."

  "Well?" Coots asked impatiently.

  "M-m-m?" B. J. asked, his face spread in innocent inquiry.

  "Are you going to deal or not?"

  The second game had no sooner begun then a pitiful bellowing brought the three of them out to the donkey meadow, where they were reluctant witnesses to a botched job of slaughtering the weekly beef. The Bjorkvist man and his son had failed to stun the animal properly with their sledgehammer before hanging it up on a tree branch by its hind legs to slit its throat. And now the cow dangled upside down without struggling, narcotized by panic. Oskar Bjorkvist took out his butchering knife and looked over toward Matthew as he tested the edge with his thumb. He bared his teeth as he drew the blade across the cow's throat. The beast died a messy, gurgling death.

  "Bjorkvist!" Coots snapped.

  The father shambled over to them, his sledgehammer in his fist, while his son began cutting up the beef and putting the joints onto the barrow they had pulled over with them. "Ya? Vat y'vant?"

  "Do that right, or don't do it at all," Coots said.

  "No old man tells me how-"

  But Coots pointed a forefinger at the middle of Bjorkvist's chest. "Don't you sass me! Just do like I say."

  Bjorkvist's fist tightened on the neck of his sledgehammer. Coots was unarmed, and his wiry sixty-year-old body was slight by comparison to the Swede's broad frame. Bjorkvist looked into Coots's Cherokee eyes and recalled the stories about this man's past as a gunfighter. To save face, he sniffed and flipped up a hand dismissively, then he returned to his son, whom he slapped on the back of the head for being so goddamned stupid! Making a mess of slaughtering the beef, like dat! Can't you do nottin'?

  Matthew followed Coots and B. J. back to the livery stable, anger and disgust sour in his stomach.

  EVERY SATURDAY, TWENTY-MILE PERFORMED the rituals of preparing itself for the arrival of the miners. Jeff Calder and Mr. Delanny would take their breakfast at the usual time, but the girls would sleep late in preparation for a long night's work that would extend well into the next morning. It was eleven o'clock before they descended, puffy-eyed, loose-robed, tangle-haired, and spiky-tempered. While Jeff Calder stumped around behind the bar, making sure everything would be swift to hand when the thirsty horde came crashing in, the girls grimly downed what Frenchy had come to call their "4-Bs," beans, bacon, biscuits, and black coffee, responding to Matthew's buoyant greetings with only grunts or nods or, in the case of Chinky, a quick, fugitive smile.

  One Saturday, while he was clearing the tables, Matthew saw Frenchy get a bottle of whiskey from the bar to bring up to her room. She intercepted his glance and explained with a shopworn laugh, "Just something to oil up my tired old ass." He nodded and smiled thinly, and for the first time in weeks he noticed the jagged, pouting scar that drew the corner of her eye down toward the corner of her mouth. But he supposed her clients wouldn't remember her face any more than she'd remember theirs.

  The late breakfasts put him so far behind schedule that he had to rush through the dish-washing to get to the Kanes' in time for dinner, which was a heavier meal than usual because, as Ruth Lillian explained, she and her father would only be having cold corned beef and canned tomatoes for supper, and they would eat separately, during lulls in the trade, because one of them had to be in the shop at all times. Matthew would have to fend for himself.

  In all the town's bustle of preparation there was nothing for him to do-evidence that he was still an outsider. So he returned to the marshal's office to take a nap because his sleep had been harried by recurring nightmares for several nights running, nightmares in which images wove bizarre yet dreadfully logical patterns, like Reverend Hibbard's red-rimmed eyes laced with angry veins when he reached out for Ruth Lillian, so Matthew pulled the trigger and Pa's old shotgun kicked him hard in the shoulder as it roared like a bony old cow snorting wetly through its frothy blood, but you don't sell the meat, you sell the sizzle, so Coots swore he'd never ever play cards with B. J. again, while Oskar Bjorkvist smiled and dragged the knife across the cow's throat, and the skin split open like the slit in a ripe watermelon running ahead of the knife, so of course Pa's old shotgun roared out again, and this time it was answered by the roar of another gun, and another, then three or four firing at the same time- Matthew sat up, gasping for air, his heart thudding in his chest! There was gunfire out in the street, the newly arrived miners shooting pistols into the air as they whooped their way from the train down to Bjorkvist's boardinghouse.

  He put his head under the blankets and watched his door through a peek-hole, until he fell into a troubled sleep populated by slimy things, and
ropy things, and Pa's old shotgun, and cows with slits throats, and…

  One Saturday evening after the slopes of the distant wooded foothills had begun to tint with autumn, Matthew stood in the doorway of the marshal's office watching the tangled mob of hooting, laughing miners pass by, all bent on quenching the week's fatigue, danger, and boredom with great draughts of fun and hell-raising. He smiled on the invading horde with comradely affection. They were like the cowboys who come ripping into cattle towns in Anthony Bradford Chumms's books: a little wild sometimes, but good-hearted deep down. If a gambler cheated one of them, or if a professional gun tried to tempt a youngster into a face-off just to add another notch to his gun butt, then the Ringo Kid would intervene, speaking to the bully in his soft but strangely ominous voice, all the while smiling- except for his eyes-and the bad'un would back off, saying he wasn't up to anything and what's wrong? Can't anybody take a joke? On impulse, Matthew stepped out into the human flow and let it carry him up to the Bjorkvists'. There was a contagious energy in the crowd and a diffuse fellow-feeling, even in the shoving and lighthearted tussling in the ragged line that developed at the Bjorkvists' door, everyone eager to get at those "steaks" and peaches. But Mrs. Bjorkvist stood at the entrance, allowing each to pass only after he had handed over his silver dollar. When Matthew worked his way up to her, he tipped his hat and said, "Evenin', ma'am. I thought I might eat with you this evening. 'Course I don't need a bed, nor breakfast tomorrow, so what'll it cost for just supper?" Mrs. Bjorkvist told him that the price was one dollar for bed and board. And if he didn't want to use his bed or eat his breakfast, that was his concern. Matthew might have tried to argue that this was a little hard on a fellow townsman, but the man behind him was pressing against his back, and several people farther back in the line were complaining about the slowdown, so with a sense of injustice, he paid his dollar and took his place at a table that soon filled up elbow to elbow with loud-voiced miners sawing away at slabs of rare, stringy meat, downing astonishing quantities of boiled cabbage, and quickly emptying each high-piled plate of biscuits that Kersti Bjorkvist dropped off at their table as she rushed to and from the kitchen. Her mother didn't give her a hand until the last of the miners had paid his dollar and she had stepped out and looked down the street to make sure there wasn't another dollar lingering out there. In the belief that table service was beneath menfolk, the Bjorkvist father and son took their dinner in the kitchen, but one or the other would occasionally come to the doorway to look over the crowd, just to make sure everything was going all right.

  Matthew made the acquaintance of the miner to his right, a man in his late forties with creased, kindly eyes, when they both reached for the last biscuit, then both pulled back to let the other have it, then both reached again. The man laughed and broke it, giving half to Matthew. "That ought to hold us until the next batch comes along. Say, I don't think I've seen you around. My name's Doc."

  "I'm called the Ringo Kid."

  "Pleased to meet you, Ringo. You just sign on?"

  "No, I'm not with the mine. I live here in Twenty-Mile."

  "You don't say."

  "Yeah, I'm the… Well, you'd find me at the marshal's office up the street."

  "You don't say! Shoot, I didn't know Twenty-Mile even had a marshal."

  "Oh, I'm not exactly the marshal. I just sort of…" He made a vague gesture.

  "You just sort of look after things, is that it?"

  "There you go."

  "Hey, ain't you going to eat your steak?"

  "… ah, ho. No, I don't think so. You want it?"

  "Do people in hell want ice water! Pass her over here! What's wrong with you, Ringo? Feeling bad?"

  "No, no. I seem to have lost my taste for meat lately." In fact, ever since he'd seen the cow butchered by the Bjorkvists.

  "Lost your taste for meat! Whoa, that sounds serious!"

  A harassed Kersti Bjorkvist reached their table with the big two-handed kettle from which she was slopping coffee into the men's tin cups. After filling Matthew's mug, she leaned over him to fill two cups on the other side of the table, pressing her sweat-damp body against his back.

  "Hey, how about some biscuits here, girl!" Doc said.

  "Just hold your water! I ain't got but two hands and two legs!"

  "There's something else you got two of," a wrinkled old miner across the table put in. "And they're mighty fine ones, too!" His pals hooted with laughter, because this fellow was the mine's self-appointed comedian. "Say, why don't you just bring them things over here so I can give them a little squeeze, see if they're up to snuff!"

  "That'll be the day!" Kersti said, and with a toss of her thick blond hair she passed on to the next table, where she collected more of the suggestive remarks that were the only attention she ever got from men. It was true, Matthew noticed, that her breasts were big. But then, so were her ankles and her hips and her neck and her arms and her waist. But her hair was nice, you had to give her that. Not delicate and fine like Ruth Lillian's, but it was lush and golden, and it- "Say, you're looking pretty hard at that girl, Ringo," Doc said. "And you said you didn't have any taste for meat! Get out of here!"

  Matthew laughed to cover his blush. "I guess you'll be going down to the hotel after you've ate," Doc said. "Which one's your favorite? I tried them all, and I guess for me it's a toss-up between Queeny and Chinky. Frenchy's a good old gal, but that scar of hers puts the heebie-jeebies up me. Maybe I don't drink enough first, eh?"

  "Yeah, maybe that's it," Matthew said, immediately feeling disloyal to Frenchy, who had become his favorite of the girls.

  "So, which one you got your mouth set for?" Doc pursued.

  "Oh, I don't know. Maybe I'll just get on back to the office. There's work needs being done."

  "Hey, that's right! You're here the whole week through! With all three to pick from! Some men's got all the luck."

  "Ain't that the truth?"

  A squabble broke out at the table over in the corner, and suddenly two men were on their feet, facing off. For a second, Matthew wondered if the marshal should step in and calm things down. He pushed back his chair to rise. Well… maybe not. After all, they're just a couple of young'uns letting off steam. And indeed, the marshal's instinct proved correct, because the peaches arrived just then, and the young men immediately set their differences aside to devote their energy to the serious business of slurping down peaches and syrup.

  Following Doc's example, Matthew broke three biscuits into his plate before the arrival of the peaches, which Kersti ladled out with plenty of syrup that soaked into the biscuits to make what Doc described as "top-grade, high-assay eatin' food." And he didn't miss his chance to tease Matthew about how Kersti had pressed her hip against his shoulder while she was serving the dessert, or how she'd given him more peaches than anybody else.

  "I do believe that girl's coming on heat for you, Ringo. Better watch yourself! Them big Swede gals have got needs that stretch from here to Wednesday! They can drain the juices out of a man and leave nothing behind but a dry husk!"

  "Oh Lord!" cried the wrinkled old comedian across the table, affecting the trembling voice of a revivalist preacher in full salvation ecstasy. "Lord, let me be the one to suffer that draining! Let me become that dry old husk! I ask it in His name!" And everyone hooted, though a couple of the younger boys looked nervous, as though they expected the ceiling to come down.

  Before long, the men started pushing themselves up from the table with satisfied grunts and complimentary belches. They drifted out into the street, some going across to Kane's Mercantile to make their weekly purchases, others up to the Traveller's Welcome to begin serious drinking and whoring.

  But Doc sat back in his chair and drew a short-stemmed pipe and a tobacco pouch from his pocket. "No need to rush. Those gals won't be wore smooth before we get to them." He snapped a lucifer with his thumbnail and sucked the flame down into his pipe. "A body's got to learn to take life easy. After all, we all end up in the boneyard, and the
re ain't no prizes for getting there first. You want to borrow some tobacco?"

  "No, I… I quit."

  "You don't say! How come?"

  "Well, smoking dims a man's vision. And in my profession…"

  "Where'd you hear that smoking dims a man's vision?"

  "I read it in a book by Mr. Anthony Bradford Chumms. You ever read him?"

  "Can't say I have, Ringo. Writes about smoking, eh?"

  "Yes, well… and other things. Like how a real man ought to act. And what's right, and what ain't. And how to get respect from people."

  "All I ever read is operation manuals."

  "About mining?"

  "Sort of. I ain't a miner, really. I'm in charge of the crushing and dressing works."

  "In charge? Well, now." And here Matthew had been eating and joking and smoking with a man who was in charge of something. And it was gratifying the way Doc called him Ringo, having accepted their introductory exchange of names without question.

  Doc went on to say how the crushing and dressing were done at the mine because transporting bulk ore down to Destiny would be too expensive. The dressed ore was nearly twenty percent silver. But while the quality of the ore was high enough, the quantity was steadily diminishing. "The works still make a profit, but not much. I reckon if those Boston bankers had known the ore was going to run skinny so soon, they'd never of laid out so much for the railroad line and the machinery. Just between you and me, I'd bet anything that if they ever find themselves facing a big investment to keep things going, that'll be the end of the Surprise Lode."

  "What'd happen to the folks in Twenty-Mile?" Matthew wondered.

  "Oh, I suppose most of them would move on. The girls, anyway. There's always a market for cheap poontang. The younger miners would probably drift up towards the Klondike, though I doubt any of them have saved enough money to put a kit together. As for us old-timers? Well, we got to face the fact that the boom days are all through booming. Prospectors, frontiersmen, pioneers, homesteaders — they belong to what you call your vanishing race. It's all merchants and bankers and brokers and salesmen now, and this country's become- Shoot, I don't know what it's become. Used to be that if you were poor or ambitious or just itchy-footed, you could always push on West. But there ain't no West anymore. We've used it all up. Maybe that's why we grabbed off Hawaii and the Philippines. I don't know what's become of this country, but it sure as hell ain't as much fun as it was back when I first paid my nickel and got on the ride." He stood up. "And speaking of cheap rides, you're certain-sure you don't want to go up to the hotel for a quick hunk of poontang?"