Six Ways from Sunday Read online

  “All right,” I said. “It’s a deal.”

  We shook on it. It made me feel funny, shaking on that.

  “Well, then. This is the time to plan,” Scruples said. “We’ve got eleven primary targets, and thirty-one secondary ones. We’d like to move fast on the primary ones. There’s a lot of good ore escaping us because we can’t get these miners out.”

  “I’m your man,” I said, swelling up. I liked being handed a big job.

  “The Hermit Mine. There are six partners plus two women up there. They’re well dug in on an ore seam and cleaning it out just as fast as they can. They’ve got themselves fortified, and working two shifts, and are probably pulling a thousand dollars a day out of it. Their claim’s flawed, and we bought it at auction.”

  “How much help will I get?” I asked.

  “We have only three effectives. One of our men’s wounded.”

  “They got any surprises for us, like Cork?”

  “We don’t know. They’re armed, mostly with shotguns.”

  “You tried to evict them before?”

  Scruples sighed. “We haven’t been fortunate in our selection of men,” he said.

  “I’ll get ’em out,” I said.

  Amanda, she grinned, and up and kissed me right in front of Scruples himself, and I got all rattled.

  “Dawn?” said Scruples.

  “I’ll go out there and scout,” I said. “You draw me a map.”

  He didn’t need to. He handed me a printed map of the Swamp Creek District, and drew an X on the Hermit Mine.

  “All right. I get ’em outa there and then what happens? You got a crew and a foreman that’s gonna mine?”

  “Oh, no, we’ll shut it down. Seal it up.”

  “Shut her down? How come?”

  “We know little about mining, my friend. We’re speculators. We’ll shut them all down. When we control the whole Swamp Creek District, we’ll sell it.”

  For a fortune, I thought. For more money than old Cotton ever thunk about.

  “All right. The Hermit Mine’s first. And then you’ll tackle Agnes Cork.”

  Chapter Five

  When I drifted out into the twilight, it was stepping into the real world. Inside that there Pullman Palace Car, things sure didn’t seem natural. Critter, he trotted up and bit me on the shoulder, just to let me know I’d ignored him too long and he wanted some hay.

  “I bite back,” I told him, but he just bared his teeth and sawed his head around.

  I peered around some, now that I was a hireling of the Transactions company. I sure didn’t know how I stepped into that, but I guess I did, and I’d have to clean my boot soles. This here railroad car was perched on a little hill on the edge of the big swamp, and there were two or three structures around it. I took one to be a bunkhouse. Another was a two-holer, and the third was a barn and stock pen. They were all hammered up from rough-sawn wood, with battens over the cracks, and looked like they’d blow away in a weak wind. But that was a mining camp for you.

  Carter Scruples and Amanda Trouville were not here to stay. Anyone could see that. But there weren’t no mining towns I ever heard of that intended to stick around, except maybe Butte, north of there a piece, which had so much copper under it that they’d never get it all out. There was even brick buildings going in up there, so some folks were planning on sticking around.

  I led Critter to the pen and loosed the cinch and pulled my saddle off. I found a hay fork and loaded up a manger. Then I pulled his bridle off and cut him loose. He farted and headed for the water trough, kicked away some jackass in there, and settled down to some serious drinking and munching.

  “That one should be shot,” said Lugar from off in the darkness somewhere.

  I ignored him for the moment, untied my war bag from behind the cantle of my saddle, and then hung the saddle on a wall peg.

  “That’s the bunkhouse?” I asked.

  Lugar grunted, so I headed that way, and stepped into a gamy hellhole. These here employees of the Transactions Corporation hadn’t soaked their flesh in a tub for a long time, and their duds was worse-smellin’ than my own. Home Sweet Home, I thought.

  “That bunk taken?”

  “They’re all taken,” Lugar said.

  I took it anyway, setting my war bag on it. Lugar and three more men stared at me. One had a left arm wrapped in a bloody rag.

  “I joined up,” I said.

  No one said nothing. It was the damndest welcome I ever got.

  One porker had just cleaned his Smith & Wesson, and was dry-firing it, letting the barrel edge my way as he clicked off a few. If that there seven-inch barrel wandered an inch more in my direction, there was gonna be a bunkhouse brawl about thirty seconds after I arrived, and Porky was going to get the worst of it.

  But he eased his piece away, smiled at me, and holstered it.

  “I guess I’ll answer to Cotton,” I said, hating it. I couldn’t think of no good name for myself.

  I waited some, but no one volunteered a name.

  “Some feller called me Cottonmouth once,” I said. “Them two in the parlor car, they hired me to get some jobs done.”

  “You the new straw boss?” asked a skinny gent, scarce beyond his boyhood pimples.

  “I don’t know. I’m just hired to get her done, and done quick.”

  “What’s your pay?” asked the one with the bloody arm.

  “Top wages,” I replied. No sense in bein’ modest.

  I hadn’t got a name out of the lot, except for Lugar. So I started on him. “You got a handle?”

  “You’ve already heard it.”

  “You allergic to talkin’ with a new man?”

  “They come and go,” he said.

  I didn’t recognize any of these. I’m handy with a sixgun, which is why I got myself hired, and I sorta keep track. But none of these looked familiar. If they were any good with their pieces, I’d probably know them. The only one that looked like he might be pretty good was Old Bloody Arm.

  “You got a name?” I asked him.

  “Garfield,” he said.

  That was a mighty peculiar choice, seein’ as how Garfield expired three months after taking office.

  “And you?” I asked Skinny.

  “Arthur,” he said.

  “And you?” I asked Porky.

  “Cleveland,” he said.

  “Well, all right. Call me Washington,” I said. “I’m the Father of the Country.”

  They smiled some, but their teeth was so gray, I had a time makin’ it out in the middle of that gloom. There was a little fire going in the potbelly, and it threw a little light from the cracks around the door.

  The whole lot was amateurs. These weren’t gunslicks with reputations. They were just toughs, or thought they were. Most likely, they were too dumb to make it in the crime business. They got to wear revolvers and shoot at miners for forty a month and found. Given the looks of this bunch, it was a wonder they could name a few presidents. But it was a wonder that I could, too. Just goes to show the value of outhouse readin’. I always read the newspaper before puttin’ her to other use.

  I looked over their rigs. There wasn’t a fancy cut-down and oiled-up holster in the lot, just workaday leather for carrying iron, worn high on the hip. But Cleveland had him a black wool suitcoat hanging on a peg behind his bunk, and I suspicioned he had a hideout in a breast pocket and would be a handy backshooter. So this wasn’t no gunslick bunch, just some thugs makin’ some bucks by shooting miners. Scruples was hiring cheap—unless they got the same deal from Amanda I got…but the thought was so repulsive I couldn’t hardly stand it. She had to draw the line somewhere.

  “You from around here?” I asked, real general, because people are mighty touchy about personal questions like that. But I thought to make a little talk, just to get an idear about this bunch of misfits.

  No one said nothing, so I did. “Me, I’ve been driftin’ around Wyoming and Montana, lookin’ for work. Guess I found it,” I said. “They want me to take on the Hermit Mine, and gave me this here map. You fellers in on this?”

  Truth to tell, I didn’t know if I was in charge or not. Scruples, he never made me boss. He just said, go do it. No one said nothing. This was a real mouthy bunch.

  “They’s six men and two women helpin’ out over there and they got shotguns.”

  Lugar yawned. “We know all that, Cottonmouth. We were digging out buckshot for a week.”

  “You tried it?”

  “I told you, we were doing surgery on ourselves.”

  “What time of day did you move in?”

  “Afternoon.”

  “I’m going in at night.”

  Lugar bared some yellow-stained teeth. “Good luck,” he said.

  That was right friendly of him.

  “And I’m going to look it over right about now,” I said.

  No one volunteered to go with me, but I hadn’t expected them to. I’d do better just sliding around in the dark.

  I took a long look at the maps, hoping I could make sense of the land when I got out into the night, and then stuffed the maps in my shirt.

  “See you,” I said, and slipped out the door.

  Oh, that fresh air was just fine with me. I thought it’d take an hour or so just to get the stink outa my duds.

  The Hermit was a mile out of town and up a grade, and I chose to walk it. I didn’t want no trouble for Critter. That crew didn’t give me any confidence, and I was thinkin’ I’d mostly want to do these jobs alone. The dangerous one was the skinny one, Arthur, not Fatso. Lugar was mouthy, but looked pretty careful to me when push came to shove. I got to wonderin’ how Scruples picked up that lot. He sure was scraping the bottom of the barrel. Him and Amanda didn’t know much about mining towns. The
y couldn’t have hired worse men. That told me something about Scruples. He was probably new to this game.

  I like to think I know my way around at night, but the truth of it was that I got powerful lost trying to find the Hermit. There wasn’t no moon to help me, and the few lamps in town were long snuffed out, and it’s hard to pace a mile with nothing but stars to guide you, and I got so turned around I scarcely knew where I was. But then the old moon began to shine behind some ridge off to the east, and pretty soon it yellowed over the top of a ridge, and I got some idear of where I was. I’d gone too far, so I backtracked a bit, and turned up a gulch I thought was likely, and began hiking up a two-rut road that looked used enough.

  I wanted to see a bunch of things, like where they bunked and whether someone was guardin’ at night. I was thinkin’ it’d be best to jump a mine like that around midnight and move in so fast that no one’s awake and grabbing for iron. Pretty soon, I saw the works ahead, a regular head frame poking into the sky, and some log buildings, and a heap of tailings, and some ore cars, so I was getting the layout in mind.

  That’s when them dogs got me. Next I knew there was five, six of them snarling dogs comin’ after me, some barking and the rest snapping at me bad. It was like I was gonna be dinner for a pack of wolves. One leapt at my throat, snapping teeth at me. I knocked him off, but he whirled around again and he was jumpin’ even as the others were biting my legs and snapping at my arms. I sure was in a fix. Two, three others just stood back and barked, wakin’ up anyone around there. I was too busy knockin’ dogs off to know what to do, but somehow I got my revolver out and began knocking dogs with the barrel, slashing this way and that, sending ’em howling. But now I was bitten bad, and hot blood rolled down my legs, and a dog or two had got a sleeve and wouldn’t get loose, so I was losin’ and maybe about to get eaten.

  I saw that one leaper comin’ at my throat, so I shot him. He yelped and fell in a heap, and I whirled around and shot another comin’ at my neck, and he whined and shuddered and went limp, and then ever’thing happened so fast I couldn’t make no sense of it. But next I knew, two big arms came around me from behind and caught me in a steel grip like I was fish in an eagle beak. I bucked and jackknifed, and all I did was make them arms go tighter. They pinned my arms to my side, and my gun went flyin’ somewhere.

  Then another one of them miners comes around in front of me.

  “Kill my dogs, do ya?” he said. He slugged my chin and then slammed my gut and then hammered my pinned-down arms until I was half crazy, and then knocked my head again, and there wasn’t nothing I could do, not with some two-hundred-pound miner behind me pinnin’ me and turnin’ me into a target.

  “Dat’s what you get for killing dog,” one said, and punched my nose. I felt blood runnin’ down my lips.

  “Dis here’s a lesson,” he said. “Next time I kill you.”

  Whoever pinned my arms tossed me down and the pair started kicking me. I felt some pain in my rib, and knew one boot had stove me in. Them dogs circled around, but didn’t dive on me.

  “Dis here gun’s mine, and so’s the belt,” one said, yanking my gunbelt off me. “Dat’s for da dog you kilt.”

  I lay there on my back, all busted up, with a couple of loose teeth, blood dripping from a few holes in me, and so sick I thought I’d faint.

  “Tell Scruples dis mine ain’t his,” the miner said. “Next time, we go get him and do dis to him personal.”

  They stared down at me. I stared up at the moon. I’d hardly gotten a look at the pair, but they were both bigger than me, and twice as strong.

  I saw one of them pick up the dead dog and pull it close in his arms, and croon to it.

  “You was the best one,” he said. “You done good. You gonna get buried right.”

  Then, suddenlike, there was only silence. Them miners and their live dogs left. I didn’t know how I’d get back to town, and up to the bunkhouse, but I had to before something else finished what the dogs and miners had started.

  I wasn’t fit to stand up for another half hour, and when I finally got up, I wished I hadn’t because I hurt more places than I knew I had. I was too sore to get mad. I’d get even with those bastards some day, but not now. In the space of a few minutes I’d learned how to hate ever’ miner that ever lived.

  I took one step at a time, feeling the ground come up through my stockin’s, and that’s how I walked back to Swamp Creek, one foot at a time. I decided I didn’t like this job a whole lot.

  Chapter Six

  I think I got back to that bunkhouse around dawn, but I don’t rightly remember. I mostly just piled into a bunk and was lost to the world. But I did hear some yakkin’ about me from the rest. I was too far gone to know or care.

  Next I knew, old Scruples hisself was standing over my bunk staring down at me like I was some piece of bone some mutt dug up. I stared back up at him, hurting too much to say anything. Besides, there wasn’t nothing to say. He could read the whole story just lookin’ at blood and bruises and tears in my shirt and pants.

  “You failed,” he said.

  That wasn’t an encouragin’ word. My teeth was too loose to talk back, so I just stared back.

  “We thought you’d have what it takes,” he said. “But obviously, you don’t. We’ll have to resort to other means.”

  I wondered what that was all about, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to close my eyes and hope all that pain, comin’ at me from every unknown part of my body, would go away. The worst was in the ribs. I know one or two was stove in because of that kick from that miner. That hobnailed boot busted my chest.

  “I’m taking you off top-dog wages,” he said.

  I thought we had a deal, but I couldn’t put that in words, so I just stared back up at him. If he had the right to change a deal whenever he felt like it, so did I. But it would be a while before I could do something.

  “What happened to your gunbelt?” he asked.

  I mumbled something through busted teeth and swollen lips.

  He smiled suddenly. “They have it.” He chuckled. “They took it from you. Not only did you get pounded by some skinny miner, but he took your guns.”

  I gargled down some bile and lay there, staring at the bastard. Then I remembered what they said, and made my mouth work some. “They said you’re next if you come after them,” I muttered. “Told me to tell you.”

  Oddly, this had its effect. Scruples didn’t laugh. He probably was thinkin’ what would happen to that smooth face of his if they came after him, and maybe all the rest of him, too.

  “That tells me all I need to know,” he said. “Since you’re of no use to us for a few weeks, you’ll be on suspended wages.”

  Only then did I glance around the bunkhouse, but none of them others were in with us, so they weren’t hearing this.

  “We’ll charge you for your room and board and horse feed when you’re back on salary,” he said. “You have our permission to stay here.”

  That was some transaction, all right.

  “Broken rib,” I muttered.

  “There’s no doctor in Swamp Creek. So live with it.”

  Then he was gone, out the door, into the sunlight, and there was nothing but the stink of the bunkhouse there for me. I wanted to get my rib bound up, some tight wrap around me just to keep things from movin’ around in there. I supposed I was lucky it didn’t poke into my lung.

  That pain, it just kept comin’ at me, and I just had to take it. I settled back on the bunk, wondering which stink was the worst, mine or the bunkhouse’s. It was a toss-up. I lay there wondering how I’d get some guns and a gunbelt. I’d probably have to borrow money for that, too, from Scruples, and he’d have me in slavery for a year.

  But then the door creaked open, and there was Amanda, wrinklin’ her nose.

  It was cool out, but she left the door open some to air the place.

  “Carter says you need some help,” she said.

  “Broken rib. Can’t hardly breathe sometimes.”

  “You want it bound?”

  I nodded.

  There wasn’t no sheets in there, so she went off to the Palace Car to get one, and I thought maybe Transactions, Incorporated, wasn’t so bad.

  She had a sheet and scissors when she returned, and soon was cutting away my shirt and undershirt, because I sure couldn’t manage it.