“And if any of you show up here again, watch your back,” she said.
At that point, a boy wandered out of the shack. He looked to be nine or ten, and was lugging a revolver, which he brandished.
“Luke, don’t shoot that thing,” she said.
“I’m protecting you, Ma,” he said, and swung that barrel toward me. I was sure getting the sweats.
“I’m just here to talk, kid,” I said.
“You’re stealing the gold mine.”
He swung that barrel around at me, and I bailed off of Critter, who began to buck.
“Luke!”
The kid pulled the trigger, and the revolver barked. The recoil threw the kid’s arms up and unbalanced him. I didn’t know where that bullet went, but I cowered behind Critter. This sure was a new one for me.
“Luke, hand me that!”
The boy docilely handed the old revolver to his ma, who slid it into her paw and kept it aimed my direction, just on general principles.
“Now git back to your lessons,” she said.
The stinkin’ little fart was grinning, but he meandered back into the rough-sawn wood shack.
“Too bad he missed you,” she said.
I came out from behind Critter. The cuss knew what I’d done, and bit me.
“That horse should be shot,” she said. She eyed me, like she was going to start a lecture, and then that’s what she did.
“You’re working for crooks and maybe you’re one, too. They’re in cahoots with the mining clerk, Johnny Brashear, and they scheme up ways to beat people out of their own mines. Mostly, it’s a sealed auction, not even announced to the public, and next thing a person knows, he’s lost his mine and he’s a trespasser. That crook Brashear gets a cut, and your bosses take the rest. I don’t know whey they bother with legal paper. All they need’s a few owlhoots like you and they’d take over.”
“I rightly don’t know either, ma’am.”
“What’re they paying youse to drive away owners, eh?”
“Fancy wages, but I haven’t seen none yet.”
“You never will. They’ll welsh on you.”
The thought had occurred to me, but I wasn’t gonna admit it, not to her anyway. That kid and his revolver still riled me some.
“I got to feed the shift coming up to daylight, so you get out of here. Tell them two, Scruples and the whore, no dice. And tell them, if they start trouble here, it’ll end at their railroad car.”
I nodded.
“You were lucky all you got was some broken ribs and loose teeth,” she added.
An ore car erupted from the black mine mouth, followed by three grimy men. No sooner did they spot me and Critter but they was liftin’ shotguns parked around there somewheres and coming at me like I was a bull’s-eye.
“Scruples sent him,” she said.
They were a grimy lot, but they gathered around me studyin’ my face and seeing how it looked purple and blue and green.
One, a big brute, simply smiled. They all raised their twelve-gauge shotguns until three bores, they was pointing at me, and I about kissed the world good-bye.
“You got the message,” said the big one.
I sure did. Critter, he was muttering and snapping his teeth, but I tugged on the rein to quiet him down.
“The company, it’s got more men coming in, and they ain’t friendly,” I said.
“Neither are we,” one of them replied.
They waved me off, so I turned Critter down the road, feeling my back itch.
I sure would have a few words of Carter Scruples and Amanda, too.
Chapter Eight
They was waitin’ for me when I got back to the Pullman Palace Car, and I got let in before I even had Critter took care of.
“Well?” Scruples asked.
“Oh, they got the message, all right, and she says they’ll take the fight here if you mess with them.”
“She?”
“Woman who runs the office and feeds ’em.”
“But you delivered the warning, right?”
“Yep.”
“You have anything else to tell us?”
“Nope,” I said. I decided not to talk about that little brat that pretty near blowed my head off.
“Then we’re covered. They’ve been warned they’re trespassing. They’ve been given time to pull out.”
He sounded like he wanted to make it all legal.
Amanda, she was sittin’ there looking so pretty I could hardly stand it, but she wasn’t sayin’ much. I was wondering if maybe she’d invite me in for the night, but she was just busy with her knitting needles makin’ a pink sweater. I hardly ever seen a woman knit before, and I couldn’t see how she was making them stitches. I looked at her sort of hopeful, but she just smiled all blond peaches and cream like.
But then she set aside her needles and stared at me. “Did they say whether they’d be leaving?”
“Well, not exactly. She said they’d come after you if you messed with them.”
“That’s all?”
I didn’t know whether to get into the rest. “She said you’re, aw, you know.”
“I don’t know, Mr. Cotton.”
“Crooks.” I felt my ears redden.
“I imagine we are,” she said. I plain stared.
“Confidence man, confidence woman,” Scruples said. “The old shell game. This is the biggest one we’ve tried.”
They had me there. “What’s a confidence?” I asked. Another one of them big words I never learnt up to grade eight.
“Swindlers,” Scruples said.
“I don’t know that one neither.”
He smiled. “You’re the perfect employee,” he said.
I got all puffed up with that. No one in my whole life ever called me
