It sure was getting bad around there, and I was getting itchy. That slamming never stopped as them big stamps came down on that rock. But I had to see how it might be shut down by Scruples, or anyone else for that matter.

  “If you was to shut this down, how’d you do it?” I asked Celia.

  I was thinkin’ of how to take over the office and all, but Celia, she’s a lot smarter than I’ll ever be.

  “Don’t let them get any firewood,” she said.

  “Holy cats, Celia,” I replied.

  That old mill could be shut down cold if it didn’t have no fuel for its boiler. If a body wanted to shut her cold, he’d scare off the woodcutters. There wasn’t enough backup wood for more than three, four days piled up in there, so that mill was working pretty close to the bone.

  “You got her,” I said.

  “Got what?”

  “The way to do it,” I said.

  But she’d seen some big guy with muscles like a bull standing there without his shirt, and she wasn’t listening to me at all. I didn’t like that none. Them miners and mill men made me look like a midget.

  “Gotta get outa here,” I said, steering Celia away.

  She came right along. I headed for the wood yard, where a bunch of them wood choppers was waiting in their wagons to unload and get paid. Maybe half a dozen wagons, with two-horse teams, big draft animals, was waiting to get unloaded. Most of them wagons had two men on board.

  So we angled over there, and I went right up to the first. “You sell that wood to the mill?” I asked. “What do you get for it?”

  “Him and me each clear about two dollars a day, but it’s getting harder now,” the driver said.

  “Longer drive?” I asked.

  “Yep, more’n an hour each way now. That mill eats about two square miles of wood a year, and that makes the hauling worse every trip.”

  “You work in pairs?”

  “Mostly. He’s a Bohunk off the boat and can’t talk English yet, but we get along fine. And he’s good with an ax.”

  “You knock down live trees and dry them?”

  “We knock them down but they don’t get dried much. That mill wants all it can get, so it’s burning a lot of green wood.”

  “How many wood cutters are there?” I asked.

  “Oh, hell, how should I know. Hell of a bunch if you ask me. Just think a little. This whole mining district, it’d shut down fast if we quit ’em. Maybe they should pay us more, eh?”

  “You get paid on delivery?”

  “You bet. We get cash or we don’t unload.”

  “How many days of wood does the mill have backed up?”

  “Oh, sometimes they run out. Take a rainy spell or a lot of snow, and that old mill, she just shuts down because there’s no way we can feed them boilers.”

  “Looks like enough here for a few days,” I said.

  “Sure, late summer like this. It’s easy to haul. Roads ain’t a quagmire. Sun dries the wood fast.”

  “You men live in town?”

  “Nah, we make camps and live in them. Maybe in the winter we come in. Lots of times in the winter the mill ain’t running, and the ore just gets stockpiled until we can bring in wood. There’s no coal around here, so wood’s all they got.”

  “That’s what I wanted to know,” I said. “You fellers are mighty important.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  The four o’clock whistle blew, sending a mournful howl over Swamp Creek, and scarin’ up a few crows. That meant the show was about to begin. And if I was gonna bust into the railroad car, I’d better get packing.

  “Celia, I got some business now,” I said.

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “I mean, real bad, dangerous business.”

  She just grinned and started hiking along through all them slag piles around the mill. It sure was an ugly place, all that black waste full of chemicals I didn’t even want to know about. I didn’t see nothing livin’ in there, so I figured it wasn’t a place for living folks like Celia and me, so I hurried through. The only good of all that stuff was that it hid our progress. I had to get up to the road headin’ up the valley and then up to the Pullman Palace Car. It sure was lonely out there; most everyone was in town this here afternoon.

  No sooner did we skirt the last of them piles of slag than I spotted that ebony carriage headin’ toward town. I pushed back and so did Celia, and we watched Carter Scruples and Amanda Trouville trot by. Last time I seen them driving that rig, they was on hand when Aggie Cork’s mine was being jumped. They was right there in the woods, keepin’ an eye on the whole show. And here they were, driving into town. They’d get there right about when the day shift was done comin’ out of that black hole, and the night shift would be going into that place where the sun never shone. I guess they was fixin’ to see the biggest prize of all fall into their paws. Get the Big Mother, and it’d be over most likely. Them two would have just about every mine and glory hole in the Swamp Creek District.

  We waited until they was past, and I steered us toward the railroad car on the hill, wondering who was still around there guardin’ the place. I figured, since we was a man and woman, we’d get farther walkin’ right in. They wouldn’t pay no attention to a couple like us.

  So we hiked up that grade toward the Pullman and the barn and bunkhouse and pens and all, and no one jumped out of the woodwork. We finally got up to the yard and I halloed around, and no one come runnin’. They was all down in town, fixing to take over the Big Mother and celebrate. Old Scruples, he was getting mighty close to where he wanted to be, controlling every mine in the district. He and Amanda might soon be rich, maybe even getting half a million out of it all. A man can live like a king on a lot less.

  Well, we halloed around and no one answered, so I poked my head in the bunkhouse and no one was there, and I checked the barn, too, and it was plain empty except for some nice-lookin’ horses staring at me like old friends. I felt like feedin’ them some of that good alfalfa there, but I didn’t. Instead, I steered Celia toward the Palace Car, climbed up them little steps falling away from that rear observation platform, and next thing I knew, we were walkin’ right in. It sure was pleasant in there, and silent as could be.

  “I want you to keep a sharp lookout. Not just on that drive coming up here but in all directions, like someone comin’ down from them foothills to check on us.”

  “Do your stuff,” she said.

  She sure was a firecracker, all right. Armand Argo had had himself a pistol.

  It felt kinda funny walking in there like some burglars, but I remembered that old Scruples had not only wandered onto property he didn’t have no right to, he’d caused a few of them owners to be killed. If that’s how him and Amanda wanted it, then their Palace Car was fair game.

  Celia, she’d bounce from window to window checkin’ things, and then explore the car. When she got to Amanda’s boudoir, she opened the door and then started to giggle.

  “No wonder she tells Carter what to do,” she said, eyeing that oil painting of her.

  “How can anyone compete with that?”

  I didn’t want to look in there. I didn’t want memories. I made my way to the office and walked right in. It wasn’t big; nothing in that train car was big. But sure enough, there was that safe with the dial on it. That thing was lacquered black and had some little pink cupids messing around it. But it wasn’t no fairies that was inside of there. I tried to budge it, but it wouldn’t budge. I don’t think Scruples would have left the place unguarded if he thought that safe could be gotten out. I yanked at the door, and it was shut tight, and studied on it. The safe was bolted down, but them bolts had rounded tops that no wrench could loosen. I tried giving that door another yank, and moving the dial a notch or two, but it was tight.

  I was getting a little worried. “You keepin’ an eye out?” I asked.

  I got sort of a muffled response from her, so I slid out and looked through all them windows myself. It was quiet out there, sunny and silent. From here you could barely hear the stamp mill, but I knew that when the windows were open, them ten stamps could be heard thumping away here and even farther up the valley. I didn’t see no one. I headed outside and looked under the car where that safe would be bolted down, but there was a double bottom to the car and no bolts visible under there. It was just the usual stuff there, steam lines, compressors, and all. I never did know much about railroads. The car sat on its regular trucks, the wheels on that mining rail they laid there. The tracks didn’t go nowhere and were just to hold up the car.

  I heard tell they dragged the car all the way from Butte, going where no railroad car ever went, but they had the car on a special flatbed carriage with wagon wheels, which made it much easier.

  I gave up any hope that I could nip them papers from the safe then and there. It would take a blacksmith a month to chew into that safe. But maybe there was some other way, like getting Scruples to open up while I was waving a revolver in his direction. Fat chance, I thought. If Scruples was smart, he would laugh at me. He was the only one knew the combination, and a dead Scruples wouldn’t help me none.

  Carboy, he was full of book learning, but he sure didn’t know nothing about the real world. I’d probably have to tell him that it’d take half the infantry in the territory to get that safe open and get Scruples thrown behind bars. And by then, he’d have his Pullman car back on the rails and off somewheres else.

  “Let’s go. This was a bad idea,” I said.

  I was also getting nervous that maybe them thugs would drift back up to the place. We stepped out into the sun and quietness, and I sure didn’t see hide nor hair of anyone, and I thought maybe we’d better steer clear of Swamp Creek, with all them thugs in town and me with a bull’s-eye sort of hanging from my chest. I steered Celia back toward the stamp mill, that being the best place I could think of to hide out. A man could sure be invisible out in them slag heaps where no one ever went.

  “I’m gonna wait out in the slag, but maybe you should go on in and stick close to your rooms,” I said.

  She eyed me. “Where’ll you be?”

  “I got to get over to Carboy, and if he is still alive, I’ll tell him I done no good.”

  “I’m glad you’re not quitting.”

  “I never said I would! I just can’t do this Carboy’s way. I gotta figure out my own way.”

  She reached out and took me in her arms and kissed me good, right in the middle of them slag heaps, and kissed me again, and I thought that was mighty widderly of her, so I kissed back a few times, and was just thinkin’ them slag piles were a real private place when she busted loose and laughed and took off, the wind whipping her skirts, and that was the last I saw of her.

  There I was, out in the middle of the slag, nowhere to go, unable to do the job that I’d been asked to do. I didn’t feel so good. Swamp Creek belonged to Scruples. If he took over the Big Mother Mine, he’d probably be celebrating at one of them watering holes, along with most of his hooligans. I thought maybe I’d detour around town. I didn’t mind meeting up with one or two or three of them toughs, but the odds weren’t good that I’d live to tell about running into four or five.

  Them stamps was thundering so loud I couldn’t hear much, and that noise was making me itchy. I didn’t know how them mill men stood it. I’m a cowboy at heart, and all I want from life is the peace of the big open country, with a few clouds chasing the sun. But I was hiding near the stamps, and hadn’t any idea what was happening in Swamp Creek because them thumping stamps blotted everything out.

  I was just about to get out of there when I saw that lacquered black carriage and them trotters come prancing along the road, so I peered over the slag to get a good view. That outfit was coming straight toward the stamp mill, and pretty soon I could see it had three people in it. There was Scruples and Amanda, but I couldn’t make out the other one. But they came straight on, though the trotters didn’t like the noise of them stamps and kept sawin’ their heads and acting unhappy, but then the carriage pulled up at the mill office, and I got a good view at last. That third person was Cletus Carboy. I couldn’t hardly figure that one out, but that’s who it was for sure, him the enemy of the whole Transactions crowd. Scruples got out of that carriage and put down a carriage weight and hooked the lines to it, and then helped Amanda down. She stood dusting her skirts while Carboy climbed out, and them three went into the office. I couldn’t hardly believe it.

  It didn’t take long for them to come out again, along with the mill manager, some gent named Wally Wilde, who was supposed to be related to that fruity poet over in England, but Wally was all man. So I just kept right on watching from the slag, keeping low so none of them could see me, and pretty quick Wilde takes Scruples and Amanda out to the mill men and they jabber a little, though the noise is so bad no one seems to hear nothing, and then Wilde takes them over to the woodpile and all of them talk to them woodcutters who’re lined up to unload the cordwood for the boiler. And then they’re done. Carter Scruples loads Amanda back into the carriage, and Carboy gets in, and the three of them start for Swamp Creek, and them trotters are mighty glad to get out of there and dance right along.

  Pretty quick they’re gone, and Wilde is back in his office, and I’m itching to learn what’s happening. My best bet is to slide over to them woodcutters and have a palaver. So I get over there to the woodpiles, where the woodcutters in the wagons are waiting their turn to get credited for the wood and unload. I sort of selected a couple of them down the line some, who weren’t busy.

  “You mind telling me what that was all about?” I asked a feller in a gray slouch hat.

  “You mean them new owners?”

  “Well, that’s what I want to find out.”

  “Transactions has got the mill, they said. They was telling us it’s business as usual, only now it’s a different company that’s running the mill. That was the former owner, feller named Carboy, and the new owners, the two that camp up there in the railroad car. The new owners, they say just to keep on going, hit’s all the same to them, same pay, same deal, only new company.”

  “Carboy sold?”

  “I reckon so. He didn’t look very happy about it. Fact is, he was angry-looking.”

  “Did they say anything else? Like who’s the owner of the Big Mother Mine?”

  “Sure did. Mr. Scruples said it was his now. They got the whole son-of-a-bitching mining district all to their lonesome selves.”

  “And Cletus Carboy was going right along?”

  “Looked that way to me, friend. You got any objections to it?”

  “I guess maybe I do,” I said.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  I slipped over to Carboy’s fancy estate after dark, glad for the cover of night. I sure didn’t know what was going on, and I needed to know. So I plain walked up and knocked. Cletus Carboy himself answered.

  “I was expecting you. Come in, Cotton.”

  That feller was always knowing where I would be before I knew it, and it sure made me itchy. But I followed him in there, and pretty quick they brought some of that tea to me, and I thought I’d manage to swallow some of that dishwater, but it didn’t taste half bad.

  “It’s oolong,” he said.

  “Well, not too long for me.”

  He sort of snorted at that, but I’m used to it.

  “I’d better tell you I don’t have no way to get that safe open,” I began.

  “You tried?”

  “Spun that dial and looked for ways to pry her loose.”

  Carboy smiled. “They didn’t guard the place?”

  “Didn’t need to. It’d take a few sticks of DuPont to pry her out of there. Now you tell me your side of this.”

  “Defeat, Cotton. Utter defeat. Scruples outmaneuvered me and achieved a bloodless coup. They actually moved in about noon, before I had men posted. The four o’clock takeover was a ruse. He now controls the mine and the mill. And everything else in the mining district. And without firing a shot.”

  “Every blamed thing?”

  “Everything,” Carboy said sadly. He lit his dead pipe and sucked until he could get some smoke going. “It turned out that Carter Scruples has his own snitches, including my head groundsman, Gerd Thimblestiff. They knew my plans, knew my intent to trap them in the shaft of the Big Mother, and knew how I intended to defend myself here in the event that their thugs planned to invade, and worked out a way to get around my guards. They put a man on the roof. Gerd was well paid, and of course no longer works for me.”

  “They taken the mill, too?”

  “Oh, yes, Cotton. I signed a deed with a forty-five-caliber bullet aimed at me. I’m not the hero of fiction. When I had a forty-five-caliber revolver pointing at my ear, with a bullet forty-five-hundredths of an inch waiting to pierce one side of my brain and exit the other, and listened to instructions to write a bill of sale, I proceeded quite cheerfully. I weighed the possibility of refusing, and decided not to be the dead hero. So it was all done under duress, and might technically be invalid, but that won’t stop Scruples. He got what he wanted.”

  “You quitting?”

  “Oh, no, not at all, Cotton. I survived, you see, and to survive is to hope, and to hope is to plan. I lived to fight another day.” He eyed me levelly. “By the way, thanks to Thimblestiff, they know you’re here and never left Swamp Creek. They know your nag’s in the barn. But Scruples doesn’t care. He told me he didn’t care about that riffraff, meaning you. He’s got what he wants.”

  “That’s another of them big words I never heard of,” I said.

  “Riffraff? Trash. Rabble. Rubbish.”

  That got me mad. “Trash, am I. I’ll show that Scruples what trash is,” I said. I was plumb heated up. No one ever called me riffraff in my life, and I was getting steamed up real good.