“Cotton.”
“That’s half a handle.”
“Agnes, I can’t bear to give you the rear half of my handle. Just can’t, so you’ve got to take me as I am.”
“Well, invent a name. I just need some pants to go with the shirt.”
“Invent a name?” Truth to tell, I’d never thought of inventing a name. But it wasn’t a bad idea.
“Sonny, I’ll invent one for you. You mind that?”
“Sure I mind. I’ll invent my own name, Agnes.”
It sure was strange, calling that mining bastard Agnes. I decided to change the subject.
“No one’s coming around to plant those four, so it’s up to me.”
Agnes nodded quietly. “You have a good heart, Cotton.”
“Maybe you can help me. It’s all rock around here.”
Agnes nodded. “Glory hole about fifty yards that way. Miner named Walrus Wank hit a pocket there, but it petered out after a few feet. Still, nice little eight-or ten-foot hole in the wall.”
When we reached the first body, Agnes pulled his pockets out and collected a few coins. The man’s revolvers were nowhere in sight, and probably got blown into the next county. “They owe me,” he said. “I’m charging them for the powder I blew. Must of spent forty dollars defending my mine, and they’ll pay. Any more, I’ll give it to you to take to Swamp Creek.”
“Fair enough,” I said.
We carried the dead gunslick over to the glory hole and laid him flat in there, after chasing a rattler out. The man sure was perforated. I think about five tenpenny nails had done for him. It was grim work, and I didn’t like it none, and besides that, it plumb wore me out. But it didn’t bother Agnes none, and after a while we got all four of the gunmen laid out in that little burrow hole, and Agnes had collected thirty-seven dollars and one revolver with a bent barrel.
“That evens it up,” he said.
“We gonna pile up some rock here?” I asked.
“Naw,” he said. He hiked back to his mine, told me to get well back, and brought one of his DuPont specials, but this one with no tenpenny nails dressing it up and a longer fuse. He lit the thing with a lucifer, tossed it into the mouth, and walked swiftly toward his own mine, arriving exactly when it blew, and after the dust cleared, and my ears quit howling, and I could stand up again, I looked over at that glory hole and there was nothing there except a mess of rock. It was plumb amazing.
Agnes, he just he-he-heed his way back to his own place. He sure had a laugh that made me wonder whether I’d get outa there alive.
I sure didn’t know nothing about mining, and I thought I’d better find out.
“How come they were trying to kill you?” I asked.
Agnes, he pulled some tobacco lying loose in his pocket and stuffed it under his tongue. “Just for the fun of it,” he said.
“They own this mine? That’s what Scruples said.”
Joseph St. Agnes Cork, he just cackled. “That wouldn’t a got anything if they killed me,” he said. “Gold pinched out some whiles ago, and now she’s nothing but a hole in the cliff.”
“No gold?”
“Pocket mine. Gold along here is in pockets. Clean out a pocket and there’s nothing left.”
I was getting testy. “So you fought ’em for nothing?”
“Oh, I didn’t say that, boy. You got a thing or two to learn about mining. I loved that fight. Now I can sell this here hole for mebbe ten thousand simoleons. Now I got what I needed, and they handed it to me. A man fights off ten, twelve claim-jumpers, why, that hole of his must be worth a lot of moolah.”
“You mean you’re going to defraud the buyer?”
He grinned, and those blueberry eyes sparked bright. “Oh, I’ll salt her a little, and we’ll see. A man digs a hole for better part of a year, he ought to get paid for it, right? I’m just angling for some pay, and that Scruples bunch handed it to me on a platter. Until they showed up, I was plumb discouraged.”
I didn’t like this none. Cork was a crook.
He started cackling again, and I had a mind to get out of there. Critter and I thought to help someone outnumbered ten to one or so, and now four gents lay in their graves and a bunch more were full of nail holes.
“Cotton, you stick around here and I’ll teach you some about getting gold out. You want some johnnycakes? I’m of a mind to eat.”
I had nothing better to do, so I nodded. “I’m going to fetch my horse Critter, water him, and bring him up here. He likes griddle cakes and he’d be plain unhappy with me if he got a whiff of johnnycakes and he couldn’t sink his buck teeth into a couple.”
“Does he haul ore cars? I’ll put him to work.”
“No, Critter ain’t never had harness touch him.”
Agnes Cork was makin’ me huffy again. I wouldn’t let no miner lay hands on Critter. Trouble is, Cork was a miner, and they ain’t half the man any cowboy is. I worked down the talus slope, plunged into the dark forest, found the nag chewing on bark, and brought him back up there to the mine, where he laid his ears back and snapped a time or two at Agnes, and then tried to kick him, too.
“Horse is just like me,” Agnes said, and laughed that mean laugh again.
The miner set to work mixing some cornmeal and water while I scrounged up some firewood. There sure wasn’t none anywhere near.
But in time, along about sundown, we got Critter and ourselves fed.
“You got to git now,” Agnes said. “I don’t allow no one around here disturbing my sleep and slitting my throat. Anyone stirs around here, he gets a knife up to the hilt.”
“We’ll vamoose,” I says, eyeing his little shanty, which was the most disgusting-looking dump I ever laid eyes on. If I set foot in there I’d catch leprosy for sure. “But afore I go, you mind telling me about these claim-jumpers? They offered me forty and found, and I’m just thinking about it. Sure beats starving.”
“Oh, Scruples. And his lady friend. They got that Palace Car in town.”
Well, that explained something. Sitting up a slope from Swamp Creek was a regular Pullman Palace Car someone dragged overland, probably using fifty oxen and some braced-up wagons. It was right fancy, purple lacquer with gilded letters on the side, and when I got a peek or two at her, I could see wine-colored velvet drapes in there, and heaven knows what, my being too dumb about all that to know a flush toilet from a two-holer.
“What about all that paper? He told me he’s got a legal right.”
Agnes cackled. “You got a few things to learn, boy. Scruples,
