Steve Burrick was twice Gabe's twenty-four years, but the recklessness of youth still perched like a rooster upon his flat, broad-nosed face. His heavy shoulders hunched to shorten the thick roots of his neck as he sat close to the wheel, pushing the station wagon far above the speed limit of the highway.
Gabe could see enthusiasm spurt across Steve's face, a wild, unheeding emotion that needed to be roped and tied. It made Gabe uneasy ... as if he rode with a guy who believed he'd straightened a rainbow to use as a short cut to success.
"Steve, I'm worried about this gold mining venture," Gabe said to the other man, whose eyes, slitted and overly bright with excitement, swept the road toward Pretty Forks and the front range of the Rockies beyond. "I don't care so much for myself, but I kind of hate putting my horse through a lot of hardships," Gabe persisted.
"First time you've had everything in hock, partner?" Steve asked knowingly. "Well, it isn't the end of the world! Notice how this wagon runs? Just as good as before I slapped the loan on it! Uses just as much gas, too! And you can bet your Duke will feel good and eat just as much, no matter who's forking out the feed!"
"That's just it, Steve-I don't know that anyone will be forking out Duke's feed. I was only able to pay Braken for two months."
Gabe twisted around in the seat to look back at the Braken ranch. His gaze jumped the expanse of fall-brown prairie to fasten on the dancing red blob of color in Braken's hilltop corral. The blur of red shifted erratically about the corral, obviously seeking escape. Gabe knew without hearing it that Duke was sending his challenging whistle over the prairie.
"Stop worrying, Gabe! Those mines are like slot machines-you keep pulling often enough and you're bound to hit the jackpot. The one we leased hasn't shelled out in a long time. It's sure to be ripe, Gabe-real ripe!"
"How long've you been pulling on the slots-I mean, how many winters have you been trying to strike it rich?"
Gabe took his eyes from the distant hilltop to fasten on Steve again.
"This winter makes three-lucky three!" Steve chuckled. ' 'Why, I've even been lucky at the Three Nickels in Minetown!"
Gabe started.
"The Three Nickels? You mean the brothel?"
"Yeah-you know, the place Big Sig Larsen bribes the law to stay away from."
"I've heard of it," Gabe admitted dryly. "But isn't he the guy we're leasing the Black Mountain Mine from?"
Steve nodded.
"You met him at the Three Nickels?"
"No, no! We had our pow-wow in his office uptown. The good luck I had at the Three Nickels was meeting Clara."
Gabe grinned wryly. He, too, knew a Three Nickels girl, but he wasn't telling Steve about her. He studied his partner. How could he've neighbored with this guy for over two years without knowing him better? Kicking the question around in earnest, Gabe remembered that he'd never actually seen very much of Steve until lately. True, their ranch holdings had a common river boundary, but the miles separating their buildings had kept casual visiting to a minimum. Not until about a month ago, when Steve'd come around to talk him into going mining with him this fall, had they really gotten acquainted. Now Gabe fell to wishing he'd known Steve better before hocking Duke and the spread to raise his share of the money for the mine lease.
"You've got this deal all cinched up, I reckon?" Gabe asked, studying Steve's face again.
"Sure, Gabe. That paper you signed with me-that cinched it. It'll be hard work in the mine, but with any luck we'll come back with pockets full of money to stock our spreads. Then maybe we'll even find us a couple gals and get married. Who knows?"
He ripped a playful thumb into Gabe's ribs.
"I sure would like to rope enough money to make my spread a real ranch-one where I could raise some good stock and take care of Duke," Gabe said, still dubious. "And maybe I'd like to throw my rope around the right girl, too."
"Well, then, it's easy to see that we need a bonanza, partner!" Steve said heartily. "And its name is the Black Mountain Gold Mine. We're going to get plenty if we make a strike. Don't forget that we aren't leasing on shares with the owner. The lease is paid up. Everything we get for the next six months is ours!"
"After running expenses," Gabe couldn't help adding. "And I hope those expenses don't start with our getting a ticket for speeding," he said pointedly, as they shot past the Pretty Forks city limits.
Pretty Forks was a rodeo town during July; otherwise, it was just a place to slow down for on the way up to Minetown in the mountains. The main street was the rodeo parade route. Gabe, having ridden Duke in the parade, viewed the street with nostalgia. The bunting, the flags and the sound of band music were missing, but Gabe's imagination easily peopled the streets with happy crowds.
As Steve stopped for a traffic light, Gabe saw that they were at the short street where the parade always broke up, and suddenly he was seeing again Lucy Loring.
Lucy'd been waiting here last July to take pictures and had stepped pertly out of the crowd, camera in hand.
"Would you mind getting off? I want a picture of the horse," were the first words he'd heard from her.
Gabe had glared, but he got off and stepped away the length of the reins from Duke. Damned if he'd let her think that he wanted her to take his picture! He had to admit that she was a looker in the stylishly tailored western pants and boots, with harmonizing shirt and tie. The pearl-gray Stetson she wore pushed back went real nice with her fine auburn hair, too.
She snapped the picture and came forward to pet Duke.
"Could I get on him?" she asked in an abruptly sweetened voice. "I'm Lucy Loring from Mine-town. I've ridden before."
Despite his suspicion that she was full of wiles and trickery and one of those females likely to ask too much too soon, he felt suddenly foolish, because the moment he touched her his antagonism was gone, replaced by a tingling, pleasurable emotion, for which he had no name.
He shot a swift, embarrassed look up at her face to see if she'd noticed. It wouldn't've surprised him to find her laughing. But the girl from Minetown was regarding him calmly, though her dark eyes were warm and sparkling. A quick impulse stirred in him. She was so-so wonderful looking, so poised and beautiful. He felt like running out into the street and shouting up a crowd.
His eyes followed her as she rode back and forth in the short side street. There was no question about her riding ability. Her touch on the reins was light, yet firm-just the way Duke liked it, and he was rewarding her by gliding and prancing smoothly up and down the street. There was no question, either, about the girl's soft shapeliness beneath her snug-fitting western clothes.
When she rode up to dismount, Gabe wasn't entirely surprised to hear himself blurting:
"Want to ride him in the parade tomorrow?"
She stepped down, gratitude in her face.
"Gee, mister-thanks a million!"
Her voice was soft and sincere now, and it went with the straight way she looked at him. But Gabe reddened when she called him "mister." It sounded as if she thought there was a lot of difference between her eighteen or nineteen years and his twenty-four.
"My name's Gabe Clarke," he said gruffly, offering his hand.
"I'm so glad to know you, Gabe." She nestled her small hand in his for an instant. "And I do wish I could ride Duke in the parade tomorrow, but I'm here with a friend who's driving back to Minetown tonight."
Gabe grinned stiffly to hide his chagrin, then turned abruptly to mount Duke.
"It would've been a picture-you on Duke in the parade," he said lamely a moment later, as he brought Duke around to face her.
"I wish you'd let me send you a print of the picture I took," she said gently.
"Tell you what-why not give me your address and I'll give you mine? I think we could have a lot of fun corresponding, Lucy Loring of Minetown."
He began to dig around the bottom of one of his saddlebags for a pencil, hoping she wasn't going to refuse.
Then she said:
"My address is 555 Creek Street, Minetown. And now I really must be going. It's been nice talking to you, Gabe."
"Likewise," Gabe replied, looking intently at her face as he handed her the slip of paper with his address scrawled upon it.
Afterward, he sat motionless on Duke until she disappeared in the crowd.
Later, back at the barn where he stabled Duke, he took out the address Lucy Loring had given him. Suddenly, he was staring at it, first with disbelief and then with a rushing sadness. Why, hell, 555 Creek Street was the address of the brothel known as the Three Nickels!
For days following his return to the ranch, he refused to let his thoughts go back to his meeting with Lucy. But after he received her first letter, he began writing to her. There was much make-believe in the letters she wrote him ... stuff like her living in a fine stone house and being so very, very respectable. Gabe laughed at her to himself, but it was the kind of laugh that hurt the one who was laughing. Even when he knew he was going through Minetown on the way up to the mine, he wasn't at all sure he would visit the Three Nickels to call Lucy Loring's bluff.
Nope, Gabe thought, shaking his head to clear it of the remembering, I should stay away from there. He threw an arm over Steve's shoulder and grinned at his homely, cocky partner.
"Want me to drive awhile, Steve?"
Steve shrugged.
"Would it make you more talkative?"
"I doubt it," Gabe laughed. Steve grunted and said:
"I'll take it on in. We're only a smoke out of Minetown, anyway. Eoll me one, will you?"
"Sure, partner," Gabe said, pulling the makings out of his shirt pocket. "How do you like it-fat or skinny?"
A grin split Steve's homely face.
"Right in between, partner, I like 'em right in between."
Minetown was ugly. Its small homes were crowded together in a narrow gulch that was crudely halved by a twisting, loud-mouthed creek, muddied with silt and slime from the gold ore processing mills upstream. The main street was roughly parallel to the creek, and narrow bridges were thrown from it to the other side of the creek about every other block.
Steve drove along the main street, pimpled by ancient cobblestones sticking up through a coating of asphalt. Gabe could tell the age of the place by the store fronts, some of which had been restored to their authentic, frontier appearance. Minetown was a famous old west gold camp and tourists came in droves to see it.
Steve turned off the main street and stopped in front of a shoddy drink shop called Bridge Tavern.
"Well, they've got the bridges here, but Mine-town isn't exactly my idea of Venice," Steve joked, getting out. "Let's have a drink."
Gabe made a face as he got a whiff of the breeze blowing from the creek.
"Cyanide," Steve explained. "They use it in the milling and gold recovery process."
"Partner, we going to have a smell like that around our mill?" Gabe queried, mock-anxious, as he followed Steve into the tavern.
Steve didn't answer until they were at the bar and he had some drinks ordered. Looking at his expansive grin, Gabe got the idea he was acting the part of a big-time mine operator, trying to impress somebody-maybe him-likely the busty barmaid.
"We got free-milling ore at the Black Mountain Gold Mine," he announced. "None of that smell outside. It's simple, clean and inexpensive to process."
"We can go for a lot of that last item," Gabe returned sarcastically.
Steve drank whiskey as he seemed to do everything else-in one hell of a hurry-and he downed three shots before he eyed Gabe sharply.
"You wouldn't be getting a little unhappy about our partnership, would you?" he challenged.
The barmaid was staying close, bending forward on the bar, sensing an argument. The front of her dress was so low Gabe could've picked himself about four handfuls of bare, large-nippled breast. He was feeling his whiskey now.
He gave Steve an apologetic grin, then said:
"Sorry, partner, from here on out just call me Gabby Gabe. I've been stabled alone too long."
Steve leaned close and winked.
"Maybe the barmaid can help out that way. She looks ready and willing, and I've got some business around town to keep me busy for awhile before we go up to the mine."
"A man doesn't have to go to the Three Nickels to have some fun in this town," the barmaid said a few short seconds after Steve left, moving down the bar to Gabe.
"The hell you say!" Gabe countered.
He didn't doubt that Steve might wind up at the Three Nickels for a lay. He had Steve's own word on it that he'd been there before. The barmaid was only guessing, though, and using it for a lead-in of her own.
"I figure my partner is going to scout around for a millwright to run our mill. Whatever else he does is his own damned business."
He reached across the bar and calmly hefted one of her large breasts. She stood stock still, like a fresh cow at milking time. He took his hand away only when he saw a sensuous glow coming up into her eyes.
"Nice enough ... if a man wanted to buy it by the pound," he grinned, then stood up and left the bar to go over to a phone booth in the corner.
As soon as the light came on in the booth, he saw the obscene drawing on the wall beneath the Three Nickels address and phone number. Also the few lines of bawdy rhyme:
"I paid a girl named Beulah-
"She taught me a bedroom hula ... "
There was an interval of juke-box music between the first and second female voices that answered at the Three Nickels. The second voice was Lucy's. It was soft, unsuspecting.
"Hello, Lucy," he said, keeping his voice neutral.
"Gabe!" she gasped. "Oh, it's good to hear your voice! It is you, isn't it, Gabe?"
Gabe winced. Excitement was singing in her like a prairie wind through sand grass.
"Yeah, it's Gabe, Lucy. Just passing through Minetown on the way up into the mountains...." He paused, swallowing at the hard knot in his throat. "Lucy, I won't be at the ranch for a long time, so I guess this ends the letter writing. Thought I'd let you know."
She didn't answer for so long he wondered if she'd left the phone.
"Lucy?...."
"Yes ... Gabe? ... "
"You see, Lucy, my neighbor Steve Burrick and I've leased a mine. We'll be up there for months."
"Gee, Gabe ... is that so? My dad lives up there near the mine-lease district. I wish ... "
Gabe heard a loud commotion somewhere in the background. The talk and laughter grew strong and raucous.
"It-it's impossible to talk over this phone right now, Gabe," Lucy said, her voice muffled with embarrassment.
Let her off the hook easy, Gabe told himself. Let her off easy and don't let on you can hear the beautiful stone house tumbling down.
"Connection sounds bad," he said gently, "but I guess I've about had my say. Goodbye, Lucy."
"But, Gabe...." and her protest was drowned by another uproar from the background.
Gabe wasn't even sure he caught her faltering goodbye, but by the time he'd hung up the receiver, he knew it wasn't going to be goodbye, anyway. Suddenly, what little determination he'd had not to see her was gone." He'd get Steve to stop over here in Minetown. They both needed special mining gear. Then he'd find some excuse to slip down to the Three Nickels.
CHAPTER TWO
Big Sig Larsen kicked the slippers beyond the reach of the girl emerging from the bath, so she rose on tiptoe to walk across the uncarpeted bedroom floor. He scowled as she came close, determined to conceal his desire, alive now in his big body at the sight of her. His eyes caught the twinkle of fresh, bright color on her toenails, and he let himself be reminded that she'd kept him waiting while she painted them.
She was taking on airs ... getting as presumptuous with him as a whorehouse favorite, he thought resentfully, and swiped her backside.
She went swinging away off balance as she tried to stay on tiptoes, and the twisting movements accentuated the supple body beneath the light robe she wore, the restless hips stirring up a sweet, sexy storm in him.
Recovering against the wall, she whirled back toward him with flaring eyes and trembling lips. He met her anger with a bullying grin. He guessed that she hated him ... was sure she always hoped he'd not come back But tonight her dislike was out in the open more quickly because he had pounded on her bathroom door. He poured two drinks from the bottle of whiskey on the night-stand, then watched with staisfaction as she finished off her drink in angry, unthinking haste. Her furious eyes swerved from his bare chest to the shirt he'd tossed carelessly upon the bed.
"Aren't we in a hurry?" she lashed out. "What were you getting ready to do-join me in the shower?"
"Well, now, I might've come in for a look," he drawled jeeringly, "but no mining man likes to work a wet heading."
Her lips curled, as she said:
"You trying to kid someone? The girls haven't named you the Bedroom Bull just because of your size."
He shrugged heavily, forcing unconcern. This wasn't the first time she'd needled him.
"Look what's talking!" he gibed. "What would Old Sadie think if she knew that one of her girls was being this way to a guest? She said she was glad to see me, and you'll be glad, too, Clara-baby!" he promised.
He laughed mockingly when she averted her face to look into the mirror.
He moved close and met her eyes in the glass. Chuckling, he wondered if she noticed that his sandy hair needed cutting and that there was a two-day beard on his jaw. She was likely very busy trying to belittle him in her mind ... to forget his wealth and influence. And he knew she was determined not to show awe for his bull-like size. But that was a laugh, because even though he'd been out of the mines for awhile-away from the physical labor that'd kept his muscles hard-he was still a hell of a lot more man than most.
He rubbed back the loose sleeve of her robe and closed his hand around her soft, slender arm, flexing his fingers slowly, working in the feel of warm, firm flesh. He reveled in watching pain crumple the rebellion on her face as he increased the pressure of his grip until angry red color washed through the skin above his burly fingers.
"Sig ... don't grip so!" she pleaded, her lashes spread in a dark fringe around pain-widened eyes.
"Aw, don't give me the hands-off treatment, Clara-baby!" he ordered, finding it difficult to stay flippant. ' 'Saturday was a hell of a long time coming and-" he broke off. A blurring thickness had laid hold of his tongue.
He sucked at his lips, finding them hot and dry, as though he'd been facing into a wind all day instead of being holed up in his mine office. Damn! It had never been his way to show so much interest in one girl. It crossed his mind that he should be giving the other Three Nickels girls more of a play.
He'd been coming to see Clara every Saturday and sometimes in the middle of the week. He might be risking something here, even though he admitted wryly that he wasn't sure what. Maybe a man lost some of his freedom when the same woman could draw him back again and again. And it would be hell to lose one's freedom to a whore!
He held his punishing grip on Clara's arm as he stood staring down at her, and, quickly, desire was pushing aside all thoughts. In the following instant he knew it was going to be as before. With this girl, he would be a man with one arm too many to let her go until morning.
"Tell Old Sadie to close the door!" she entreated. "They can see us."
"Let them," he rumbled. "We'll give them a show."
He turned her this way and that to tighten her flimsy robe across pretty thighs and buttocks. Ringlets of hair snuggled moistly against her neck. The skin-warmed odor of the perfumed soap she'd used in the bath clung about her and once, when the top of her robe opened, his eyes feasted on her breasts and belly.
Then, unexpectedly, her face turned up to him, her soft, sulky mouth curling with scorn.
Her eyes flashed, as she said:
"You fancy yourself such a whoremaster! Why don't you give the other girls a break? Beulah could probably keep you in bed for a week."
"Beulah!" He guffawed derisively. "Maybe most of the boys go for her type, but I don't want to lay with a female I feel like skinning out. Hell's fire, the storekeeper uptown was able to sell all his fur-lined sleeping bags after he named them 'Beulah Bags'!"
An unappreciative silence followed. Looking at Clara sharply, he saw that her attention was fixed on the half-open door. Old Sadie, the Three Nickels' madam, was enthroned on a rocking chair in the hall, keeping the Saturday night celebrants in the combination bar and parlor away from the trick rooms.
Many of the men at the bar could see into the bedroom, but Big Sig only grunted his amusement. He hadn't known that he was playing to a gallery, but the knowledge exhilarated him.
"Why worry about the door, Clara-baby? Old Sadie will give us a free bottle if we put on a good show."
Then he popped a hand under Clara's robe and reamed out her navel with his forefinger.
"As I was saying," he continued, "this Beulah woman is a real looker with her clothes on, but she's a regular she-bear in bed. She's got that black hair way up there," he chortled lustily and pinched Clara high on her fair, sleek stomach.
Clara cried out imploringly. She twisted and squirmed, pushing at his hand.
"Sig ... please-" she quavered.
He brought her around to him forcefully. Excitement was building up, pounding through his body at the thought of putting this girl on show to those outside the open door. He felt their attention-along with a new impulse to lead their lust with his.
"Off with the robe!" he ordered hoarsely, freeing Clara's arm. "I want to make sure you dried your badge."
He'd taken the bath towel from the dresser as he spoke. When Clara cringed away, fumblingly trying to close the top of her robe, he flipped her hands aside and pushed the robe down from her shoulders. Then he stood back as the blue, wide-sleeved garment slithered to the floor, piling around her ankles.
"Well, now, it sure looks like I've peeled myself something real fruity!" he exclaimed.
The men outside sent their rising excitement toward the room in profane exclamations of approval. Big Sig stood staring at Clara, fixed by a tingling awareness of her nude body as strong as though his hands were caressing it.
She'd flung up her arms to cover her breasts, but they eluded their barrier with the soft thrusting of their ripeness. Rising out of the blue folds of the robe on the floor, her graceful legs were sensuously alluring as she stood squeezing them together in a startled spasm that dimpled the yielding inner roundness of her thighs.
Big Sig snapped the end of the towel in the air.
"You're all right, Clara-baby," he said enthusiastically, then dabbed with the towel at the heart-shaped badge of hair under her belly.
He slipped the towel between her thighs, twisting it until its bulk was like a small log, spreading her buttocks. An instant later she dislodged the towel by backing swiftly away.
"Aw, Clara-baby-why not give a good show?" he grumbled.
"I'm going to close the door," she said shakily, and was nearly across the room before he caught her.
"And I said we'd put on a show," he retorted, still gruffly good-humored, until he felt the girl go slack in his arms.
Then he frowned down at the blank, forced compliance that had spread over her features. There was an expert professionalism in the position of her body as it lay against him with brazen asking. He was suddenly furious.
"Don't expect me to fall on the bed with you like a woman-hungry sheepherder," he growled, pinning her evasive eyes with a glare.
Then, suddenly, he was venting his anger in a hard, boisterous laugh. Afterwards he became patient and almost clumsily gentle with her. He knew how to trick her with whiskey and teasing-this ash-blonde, blue-eyed girl, whose fair skin had a sheen that made the dusky circles around her nipples stand out on her white breasts, tantalizing targets for a man's mouth.
He knew how to plant desire in her body even for him, how to make her forget to hate ... forget everything except that he was a man, with a man's power to gratify. But he'd learned that he could curb his impatience only if he made a game of it ... teasing her cruelly, watching her fight a passion that would make her arms curl finally about his neck as her tongue fought its way, root deep, into his mouth.
He rubbed the flat of his tongue across her lips, watching as they filled into a ripe, soft bow, despite her efforts to keep them thin and unresponsive. His hands cupped the underside of her buttocks. He moved their firm heaviness, reveling in the voluptuous, shifting roundness of them.
"No, Sig ... please!" she entreated, but her voice was blurry and he felt the jerky arching of her body against his.
He eased her to and fro with an undulant motion, stirring the sensuous coziness between their bodies, fitting and re-fitting his body to hers. Her arms locked behind his neck as she drew herself up to push her tongue repeatedly between his lips. He loosened his belt and shucked both his pants and shorts.
Her woman-like warmth against his nakedness was luxurious, urging him to a throbbing readiness. Slowly he slid his hands down the long soft cleft in the middle of her back and explored the dimples above her buttocks. Her breath quickened, sending him hot, ecstatic shocks, but the next instant he drew back, leaving her mewing with frustration.
She struggled again, inviting him to subdue her. Still he waited-tense, leering, sure-waited while her hands found his hips and groped caressingly downward over his flanks. Waited until she moaned beseechingly ... and until an answering groan broke involuntarily from his own lips. Fiercely, then, he took her up in his arms and carried her to the bed.
Old Sadie cast a warning look at the statuesque brunette who'd sidled around the rocker to a position nearer the bedroom door.
"Get away from there!" she commanded and pulled at the girl's arm, forcing her toward the rocker.
"That damned Big Sig had better shut up about me!" the girl hissed.
Old Sadie shook her head pityingly.
"When will you crazy girls learn that the Three Nickels cannot afford to displease Big Sig?"
"From the amount of time he spends here, he needs the Three Nickels worse than it needs him," the girl observed sarcastically, keeping her voice down.
Old Sadie's eyes were pieces of black ice water as she probed the girl's boldly beautiful features.
"Beulah, I think it bothers you that he doesn't spend some of that time with you," she said flatly, dislike pinching her harsh homeliness.
Angry color bloomed in the clear skin of Beulah's cheeks. Her large dark eyes flashed behind the lowered lashes.
Old Sadie smirked as she put a cigarette into, a beautifully jeweled holder. In the bedroom behind her the butt patting and heavy breathing was growing louder.
"I understand you're getting ready to help him rob the cradle," Beulah whispered bitingly. "Or should I say rob the house trailer?"
Old Sadie's thin lips tightened around the mouthpiece of her cigarette holder as Beulah spoke. She meant Lucy Loring, who lived in a trailer house behind the Three Nickels, and it gave her a start. But after a second she realized that Beulah was only guessing. Her smirk returned as she looked up at the girl.
"Tell me, have you heard the one the men have going about getting lost in Beulah Woods?"
Beulah tossed her head derisively. The gleam in her eyes was malicious, and Old Sadie felt the contempt in them as they lingered first on her flat bosom and then along the lean, angular length of her form.
"Old Sadie!" Beulah drawled insultingly. "But not too old to want a man. And not too proud to settle for a tipsy boy! Now, you tell me, which of the young ones at the bar is going to get the room next to yours tonight?"
Old Sadie handled the long, jeweled cigarette holder gracefully in the hope that it somehow distinguished her, despite her unkempt fingernails and bony knuckles. She swept it through the air in a gentle arc if she approved of something, or chopped with it if she disapproved. If unconcerned, she put it to her mouth as she did now and pulled unsmilingly on the cigarette, for she was unmoved by Beulah's last bit of guessing. A darkened bedroom held its secrets well. And a youth stabbed at his bliss blindly. She waved languidly at Beulah with the cigarette holder.
"Get back to the bar!" she ordered. "But first, go change into something else."
She chopped the holder at the red lounging pants that fit the girl through the crotch like a second skin.
"Red tights," she continued in a withering voice, "and, on you, a very unnecessary bit of advertising."
The girl didn't move immediately. Old Sadie saw her take a long look into the bedroom first-saw the start of her body, the quick widening of eyes.
After she left, Old Sadie sat quietly, letting the noise behind her feed her own curiosity. Then she hitched the rocker to steal a look into the bedroom without craning.
Big Sig's bare torso loomed huge and white under the ceiling light. A shock of coarse sandy hair grew thickly from the base of his burly neck and splayed its harsh growth across the back of his shoulders, adding to the thrusting animalism of the man.
His brutishness didn't seem right for the petite, slender woman in his arms. Her slim, softly rounded thighs, for instance, were no larger than his biceps. But Old Sadie didn't find this really incongruous.
Nor did those watching, she thought, remembering their intentness and the way they'd moistened their lips as Big Sig set out to subdue the woman some minutes ago.
And now as Clara clasped Big Sig's girth, Old Sadie saw him peel Clara away and put her back to the bed. Then he began setting his measure so surely and straightaway that it brought immediately a fluting sob of surrender.
A shuffling sound at the bar brought Old Sadie out of the rocker in alarm. She slammed the bedroom door closed and whirled around to look down the hall to the bar. She was further angered when she saw that the disturbance was near the entrance, where Beulah had just admitted a stranger.
For the time being, Old Sadie chose to ignore the long-legged, straight-standing young stranger Beulah had admitted. Like the crowd at the bar, she'd given him a quick appraising look and tabbed him a stranger to the town and, therefore, harmless.
She prepared to give herself completely to taking the skin off Beulah for admitting him without consulting her. Her authority had been breached and she meant to set that right.
She brushed down the girl's attempt to draw her aside and speak privately to her. The anger that spewed from her glittering eyes was so threatening that the girl faced about and fled down the hall to get away from the bar and parlor.
Old Sadie passed her to jerk open one of the bedroom doors.
"In here!" she hissed, giving the girl a shove.
Inside, she faced up close to the girl and waved her empty cigarette holder under her nose.
"What do you mean by going against my orders?" she shrilled, more infuriated because she saw that Beulah had regained her cold, haughty composure.
But the next moment Old Sadie clamped down on her anger. She knew she could push this one just so far, before she would retreat into some kind of a shell, not to be reached by ranting. So, Old Sadie turned cunning. She had one weapon that was effective, even with this one!
"Beulah, I'm of a mind to turn you out of the Three Nickels," she said coldly, savoring the satisfaction of seeing the girl's face turn pale.
"Listen, Sadie, I let him in because he asked for Lucy," Beulah said placatingly. "He said Lucy would know him!"
Old Sadie stared her surprise.
"Maybe I'm moving that Lucy girl along too slow," she muttered thoughtfully, speaking more to herself than to Beulah.
Then she looked sharply at Beulah and said:
"I'll send the young stranger in, and, if you know what's good for you, you'll keep him so occupied he can't think straight. Then get him out of here in the morning without telling him anything about Lucy. You understand? Tell him nothing!"
Old Sadie's thoughts were troubled as she left the bedroom. She didn't like a strange young man coming here looking for Lucy. Why would Lucy give out this address to anyone who might come calling on her? Big Sig wouldn't like any of this, if he found out!
CHAPTER THREE
By daylight, the Three Nickels was an ugly, one-story frame building with a flat roof. Un-painted board fences were askew from the weight of slithering piles of used lumber and miscellaneous steel beams in the junkyards that flanked the building. Across Creek Street there were no houses because, where building lots would've been, a seventy-foot sandstone cliff jutted its raw, red wall into the road, narrowing it to a one-way.
Behind the Three Nickels a foot bridge spanned the fifteen-foot channel of Mill Creek to a blind back lot. There was no access to the lot for a vehicle, except over a torturous, abandoned railroad grade.
But that was the way Lucy's house trailer had been brought in-slowly and carefully over the rough, grass-grown grade.
Lucy was working part-time in the office of the town laundry. When Old Sadie sought her out to offer her free trailer parking on the lot behind the Three Nickels, Lucy hesitated at first.
For herself, she hadn't been squeamish about living close to the Three Nickels, sure that Mill Creek and the length of the blind lot offered a fair margin of safety. She realized, however, that the arrangement, if it was made, would have to be a secret from her dad. She was fully aware that he would never allow it, even though Old Sadie had formerly owned the respectable apartment house, where the three of them had lived back in the days when her mother was still alive.
Other drawbacks presented themselves, such as having to make special arrangements for water, gas, and electricity. And there would be no mailing address other than the 555 Creek Street number of the Three Nickels.
Something else, too-something more tangible. What had caused Old Sadie to seek her out and make the offer? Was it because she had once been a friend of the family? Or did Old Sadie's conscience make itself heard occasionally and bring her to make a gesture of warmth toward her fellow creatures? Lucy's doubts were at last resolved, and she accepted Old Sadie's offer of an inexpensive though undesirable place to park her trailer, which would make it possible for her to finish business school.
She limited her relations with the occupants of the Three Nickels as much as possible, discouraging visits from the "girls." And her wishes had been respected. For this reason, she was the more surprised one morning to have Clara, favorite of Big Sig Larsen, knocking on her trailer door.
Through hearsay, Lucy actually knew more about Big Sig than she did about Clara, his favorite girl. It seemed, according to Three Nickels gossip, that years of cheating the men who leased mines from him had made Big Sig rich, arrogant and hated. Unmarried, though approaching middle age, he was a regular at the Three Nickels, fooling some with all the girls, but singling out the girl named Clara as his favorite.
Looking at this girl as she stood at the door of her trailer, Lucy thought her small figure a strangely fragile foil for Big Sig's rampant passion.
Clara pushed sideways past Lucy and into the trailer, unmindful that her flimsy negligee had come open as she moved. She took a seat on the day bed in the living room end of the trailer and made Lucy gasp a little when she drew a half pint of whiskey and a package of cigarettes out of her handbag.
Lucy was on the verge of speaking sharply, when she saw the girl's face in the strong mid-morning light. There were nocturnal shadows around the trapped, nervous brightness of Clara's eyes.
She sat with slim legs crossed, continually flexing her arch and toes in a way that snapped her slipper against the heel of her foot.
Lucy could guess there'd been an all-night party. She brought a glass and an ash tray and smiled as she placed them beside Clara on the arm of the divan.
"This is the first time you've been in my trailer, Clara," she said, hoping to get some inkling of the reason for the visit.
Luckily, of all the girls, Clara was the one she least minded having in the trailer. Had it been Beulah, she would've been furious.
"I'm sorry I haven't anything except water to go with that," Lucy said, watching Clara's hand wobble as she poured a drink into the glass.
She wished the girl would say something.
Clara did look up then, her face suddenly crumpled and weak.
"You got a little coffee left from your breakfast, Lucy? I think I could go for a coffee royal this morning."
Lucy put some leftover coffee into the glass, pouring it slowly on top of the liquor. The girl had relaxed a little, but Lucy realized that, despite her seeming impudence, she'd keyed herself up to come here. Right now she seemed vulnerable. With her light blonde hair, blue eyes and delicate features, she was as different from Beulah as day from night.
Beulah flaunted a bold, brunette type of femininity, her dark eyes often turbid from unquenched sensual fires. Showing off her sleek arms and well-formed legs was a compulsive ritual with her. Her choice of dresses ran exclusively to low necklines that gave a good view of her superb breasts. Her black hair, exceptionally thick and lustrous, was always well-groomed.
Lucy's intense dislike, and even fear, of the girl had begun one afternoon when Beulah accosted her in the yard, back of the Three Nickels.
"I've got an all-night date coming in, honey," Beulah had whispered, with intimacy that Lucy had given her no right to assume. "Why don't you slip up to my window after dark? I'll leave the light on and you'll see something that'll add to your education!"
Lucy recalled the cold paralysis that gripped her as she stared at Beulah. She remembered how she'd allowed Beulah's dark eyes to beat down her own. She remembered the sudden rush of anger that'd caused her to spring at Beulah and push her to the ground.
Now, Clara was talking to her in a soft and halting voice, and Lucy followed it gratefully back from her troubled remembering.
"I don't want to get anything wrong, Lucy-that's why I'm slow to speak out on what I've come to you for," Clara apologized. "You see, what I have to tell you is for a friend-someone I'd like to help openly if I had the right. I-I guess I want to help him more than I've ever wanted anything."
Lucy sat down suddenly, full of wonder at Clara's earnestness ... her pathetic fervor.
" 'Big Sig has been partying at the Three Nickels more than usual lately," Clara went on, clearly loathing the preface to her story, but determined to have it straight. "He's been drunk and boastful for days. You know, Old Sadie's a fool to let that guy into the place. All he does is threaten to use his influence and get the Three Nickels padlocked. And he'll do it, too. Just let Old Sadie fail to come up with something to please the king and see what happens!
"But for once, his bragging served some good last night when he told about leasing his Black Mountain Gold Mine to a couple of ranchers. I suppose you know about this mine?"
"I know of it, but not much about it actually, I'm afraid," Lucy confessed, more bewildered than ever.
"Well, according to Big Sig, the Black Mountain is the worst lease he has to let, and the dirty bastard wished it off onto a friend of mine and his young partner."
"Your friend's name-is it Steve Burrick?" Lucy gasped.
Clara stared.
"Why you can't know Steve! How-"
"I know his young partner," Lucy interrupted sharply. "I also know they're up here to work a lease, but somehow I never thought of them getting hoaxed by Big Sig."
"They're hoaxed, all right," Clara went on. "They've signed a lease on the Black Mountain Gold Mine for six months-paid up in full. But they'll be lucky to work it four months. They'll have to make an awfully rich strike quick to come out on the deal. And if they do make a rich strike, they'd better keep it quiet or Big Sig'll find some way to keep them from mining it out. Now do you see what Steve and your friend are up against?"
Lucy nodded her head in some confusion. Her dad's cabin was just a few miles below the Black Mountain Mine, and now that Clara mentioned it, she remembered that the mine had never been operated in the winter.
"I'm ashamed to admit it, Clara, but I don't know why they can't work the mine for six months if their lease runs that long."
"Don't be ashamed, Lucy. I wouldn't know either if Big Sig hadn't been so generous with the details. Here's the way Big Sig sees it, the dirty cheat! September is almost gone. The lease goes into effect the first of October, then the boys have October, November, December, and possibly most of January. By then the snow pack is so deep at the altitude of Black Mountain that its steep slopes are dangerous snow-slide areas. The boys couldn't operate the mill, built where it is, right up on the side of the mountain. And if they can't operate the mill it won't do them any good to mine the ore."
Lucy was on her feet, scared and angry.
"Then they have to break the lease now," she said. "We mustn't let Big Sig take them for a couple of suckers."
"I thought maybe you could get word to them some way."
"But you know where Steve Burrick is as well as L Why didn't you call the mine-why waste time coming to me?" Lucy said impatiently.
Clara didn't answer immediately, and Lucy felt an embarrassing silence build up between them. She stared at the girl's suddenly averted face. She put a hand on Clara's arm.
"What is it?" she asked softly.
Clara blinked at the tears filling her eyes.
"I'd have to explain where and how I got the information, wouldn't I?" she questioned unsteadily. "Steve knows well enough what I am without having it thrown in his face. And ... and I care for Steve in a way a woman like me has no right to care for a man. I couldn't tell him about being with a brute like Big Sig. I just couldn't!"
Lucy slid from the couch to kneel in front of the sobbing girl.
"I just didn't think," she murmured. "I'm so sorry for not understanding. What you've done is wonderful, Clara."
Clara's crying eased and she pulled Lucy tightly into her arms.
"You're an awfully good kid, Lucy ... too good to be living so near a place like the Three Nickels. A girl isn't always bad when she gets started in a house-I mean, being bad isn't always what puts girls into prostitution. Sometimes a girl gets into a jam with a guy who skips out on her. That's not bad, but she's disgraced and maybe needs money, quick. She may fall into a place like the Three Nickels, suffering what she must to keep out of sight."
"I don't believe any of these things made a prostitute out of a girl like Beulah," Lucy said scornfully.
"Honey, Beulah isn't a prostitute," Clara said, tightening her arms when Lucy shrugged. " I mean she's never been a prostitute from necessity. She lives at the Three Nickels because she wants to. Maybe it's more honest, because she'd be the same Beulah in a parked car or in some cheap hotel room, only the man might not be quite aware of it.
"But with me ... well, I was vulnerable because the money counted ... and because I let myself be tricked. And you, Lucy, you're nearer the edge than you think, and it worries me. Something could happen to drag you over. If it did happen, do you think anyone would believe you hadn't wanted it, living voluntarily as you are right next to it ... talking to all of us, coming into the Three Nickels, letting Old Sadie do things for you?"
Slowly Lucy became conscious of the way her fingers were digging into Clara's arm. But she wasn't thinking about what Clara was saying now. Her thoughts were busy with ways and means of warning Gabe about Big Sig's treachery. Already she was making plans for a trip up into the mountains.
CHAPTER FOUR
Gabe didn't know exactly when Beulah had slipped the knockout drops into his drink, but he knew she must've done just that. He did recall the feel of her long legs clamped about him, and he could still see the red suck marks she'd made on his skin.
Remembering the way he'd felt in the dawn-early morning, as he staggered away from the Three Nickels, made him put new words to the old saying: "He who runs away from too much love lives to love another day." And he hoped on that other day coming up the girl would be Lucy, for he'd certainly been balked on his first attempt to see her.
Gabe grinned ruefully and rolled down the window of the station wagon, the better to watch for a turn-off to the mine. Steve had his hands full, gunning the engine for the steep grades and making the hairpin turns.
Finally Gabe spotted a large shed just off the road, with lettering over the shed door that read:
BLACK MOUNTAIN GOLD MINE
Steve turned off onto a dirt road. He'd told Gabe that the Black Mountain Gold Mine was high above sea level. Now Gabe could see that the mine's mill was anchored in the smooth rock about halfway up the precipitous side of Black Mountain. It was so close to timberline that the only timber was a quarter of a mile to the West, and that was growing in the bottom of a deep gulch that slashed back into the mountain. The mouth of this gulch dribbled a small stream snakily downward, staining the black rock with iron deposits, until it reached the county grade at the base of the mountain, where a culvert carried it beneath the road.
Steve had told Gabe about this stream ... how it was spring-fed and steady, unless the flow was diverted into a flume higher up the gulch. The flume carried water to the mill supply tank.
Gabe looked for the mine tunnel, which Steve said was driven into the mountain just above the mill to allow the rock to run down an inclined chute directly into the grizzly crusher that broke the big stuff and then passed the ore on to the mill. He finally ceased looking for the mouth of the tunnel, realizing it must be cut off from view by the roof of the mill building.
Steve turned the station wagon onto a short ramp leading into the shed. Once inside, Steve cut the motor quickly, then stopped in the act of pulling the ignition key and turned to Gabe.
"Well, we're on the lease, but a hell of a lot of good it'll do us," he grumbled.
Gabe looked questioningly at him.
"We forgot to get the power turned on up here. Everything's done with electricity; we even cook with it. There's a phone, too. Anyone can tell we're from the sticks-forgetting things like that."
He got out and began to unload, piling the supplies along the wall of the shed. Gabe helped until the bulk of the stuff was out, then wandered outside.
He saw an odd-looking vehicle standing beside a wooden loading platform. Going closer, he saw that it was the running gears from an ore car and that it was standing on mine tracks which ran sharply upward to the mill. The downhill end of the vehicle's wooden bed had been built up to compensate for the sharp incline and to make a level platform, probably to haul personnel and supplies up to the mine.
Some wit had nailed a wide board on the side of the vehicle, the crude lettering on the board had christened it:
THE GOAT
Gabe was just turning away to rejoin Steve when he heard a shout and looked up to see a man coming down the tracks from the mill. He was negotiating the steep slope very slowly, setting his feet on the track ties with almost the same caution he'd've used on a ladder.
Steve came out of the shed, and together they watched the man approach.
"Wonder what he's doing around here?" Steve muttered. Then suddenly he was staring. "Hell, he's only got one arm!"
The man coming toward them was a squat, portly man, probably just past middle age, and, as Steve had noted, he did have an artificial arm-from the elbow down, Gabe guessed.
The stranger was smiling pleasantly and wasted no time making the reason for his presence known.
"I heard that the Black Mountain Mine'd been leased, so I came up looking for a job. In fact, I've been coming up for the last three days. I live down the canyon about three miles."
Gabe looked at Steve and supposed each was wondering the same thing in a different way: how much good around a mine and mill was a man with an artificial arm?
"I figured, if the power came on I'd run the Goat for you fellows," the stranger said. "That's some climb if you aren't used to the altitude up here," he added.
Gabe got the idea he wanted the job very much and was making a strong pitch to get it. Steve turned to him and asked: "What do you think, Gabe?"
Gabe shrugged noncommittally. Steve was the partner with the mining experience. The decision was up to him. Gabe figured that if he'd been doing the deciding, though, a lot would depend on the stranger's savvy around a mine and mill.
Seemingly able to read their minds, the stranger said:
"I'm a millwright-know the work from 'A' to 'Z'! Used to work for the Golden Reward."
He was leaning back against the Goat as he spoke, and now he pulled out a pipe, filled and tamped it, using his artificial arm adroitly, demonstrating his proficiency with it.
He looked straight at Steve, when he had his pipe going, then said:
"There's a phone down at my place. You're welcome to use it to call the power and phone companies and save yourself a trip back to Mine-town ... and I mean you're welcome whether you hire me or not."
Steve grinned and held out his hand.
"You'll do," he said. "My name's Steve Burrick, and this's my partner Gabe Clarke."
The portly stranger smiled and nodded toward Gabe as he clasped his good right hand into Steve's.
"My name's Dan Loring," he said pleasantly, "and I'm mighty glad to be working for you boys."
Inadvertently, Dan Loring lost little time clearing up a question that'd come into Gabe's mind the moment he heard his name. Before they'd been working an hour, transferring supplies from the base of the mountain to the mine, Loring revealed a father's pride by mentioning that he was only temporarily a bachelor down at his cabin because his daughter Lucy was in Minetown attending business school.
Gabe mulled the old man's seeming ignorance of his daughter's activities in Minetown.
"You two correspond much?" he queried, thinking Loring could hardly have failed to notice her address.
Loring shook his head and smiled.
"No use writing," he said. "She visits me every week. Brings me supplies."
That night over a meal hastily prepared in the combination cook house and bunk house, Gabe continued to study Loring.
Looking at him as critically and objectively as possible, Gabe was unable to see a father who'd knowingly allow his daughter to become a Three Nickels girl. Loring's apparent ignorance of his daughter's occupation only stained Lucy more deeply.
Gabe vowed that Loring would never find out about his daughter from him. He wished he could as easily and honestly make a vow to forget Lucy Loring ... to wipe out of his mind the tingling memory of their meeting at the rodeo ... his swift joyful awareness of her as he helped her up onto Duke's back. If he could put this and all her well-remembered words and gestures down as mere, empty pretense, then perhaps his restless dreams would be free of her beauty and his growing resentment would die before it turned into hate-hate that would make him want to hurt her if chance ever brought them together again.
CHAPTER FIVE
Several days after her talk with Clara, the morning began brightly for Lucy because she was going to see Gabe again. It was a warm, sunshiny, early-fall day-late summer, really, being only the first of September. As soon as she could, Lucy had quit her job in the laundry and had set ahead her regular trip to see her dad, in order to warn Gabe and his partner.
She already had the supplies her dad needed. As usual tobacco and cigarette papers headed the list, but whiskey was close to the top.
He'd probably come out to the car, when she drove into the yard, and make his usual limp joke:
"Balls of fire! Ten sacks of flour and not a drop of whiskey in the house!"
Lucy was halfway across the foot bridge, on her way to the street in front of the Three Nickels where she kept her old sedan parked, when she remembered that the wild fruit should be getting ripe in the mountain gulches.
She turned and went back to the trailer for a pail and some sandwiches and coffee. She hummed happily as she changed into a two-piece shorts and skirt outfit. She liked to remove the skirt for mountain climbing.
Recrossing the bridge, her footsteps made several loose boards click noisily. She always removed these boards from the bridge the nights a party was going at the Three Nickels. It made her feel better to know that any guy wandering around would drop into Mill Creek Gully before reaching her trailer. But now the loose boards, the bridge over the raucous creek, and the shabby back yard of the Three Nickels were threatening to taint the brightness of the morning, and she was eager to be away.
The sky was high-mountain blue where it showed through the open places between the spruce and aspen boughs overhanging the road that led past her dad's cabin. Increasing altitude was working its thinning magic on the air, letting the sunshine through in glistening globes.
Lucy soaked in the sunny brightness. She was exhilarated by the thought of seeing Gabe again. She was thankful for this first opportunity to help him, though she wished her help could be more positive, but she kept her spirits up by telling herself everything would work out.
As she drove, her mood shot dizzily upward, transcending all the more simple enjoyments, to reach the exquisite, poignant longing of first love. When she thought about Gabe, her feelings went out to him, as strong as a blow ... so strong that she wondered he didn't feel it and answer in kind. She felt that he would-that he must come to love her some day! She'd squeezed dry all the meanings in his letters, but there'd been no hint of love in them.
She never tired of reminiscing over her first meeting with Gabe at the Pretty Forks Rodeo. She remembered the way the sun had slanted down past the brim of his battered Stetson to the prominent parts of his roughly handsome face-the strongly bridged nose, high cheekbones and the squared away thrust of jaw. She remembered wondering at the intense blueness of his eyes ... the way they contrasted with the deep tan of his skin and the dark straight line of his eyebrows. His thick brown hair was long and boyishly unkempt on his neck.
Lucy mused delightedly upon the reserve of face and manner that made Gabe appear older than twenty-four. But his quiet reserve was belied by the glint in his eyes and the muscular whip-stride of long, lean legs. These outward things she'd noted, adding them to an intuitive sense of an excitement within him ... an excitement that she felt was hitched closely to powerful yearnings and loneliness.
He'd been wearing a sweaty shirt that clung to the broad, flat blades of his shoulders, dusty Levis and worn boots-and these things, too, had cut him out, isolated him from the dude get-ups of the town crowd and tagged him as a working cowboy just in from a ranch on the great rangeland.
But Gabe hadn't been alone when she met him. There'd been Dude, his beautiful quarter horse stallion, his sleek sorrel hide shining with a silken, curried sheen. The sun glinted off the richly ornamented saddle and bridle as he arched his neck and pranced around.
Suddenly her remembering was a sweet, full cup and she returned to the present, possessed by a vagrant and tantalizing belief that she knew how it would be with Gabe's love-making some wonderful day. Out of the thrilling well of her woman knowing came a knowledge that turned her weak and limp. When Gabe took her, it would be strangely like rape with consent.
She visualized Gabe's face in profile. It was there in the jut of his features, most of all, in the strike of his brow, where the dreamer, the man, and the potential lover came together. He'd be gentle and sweet at first, then surging and strong.
She relaxed behind the wheel, one elbow out the open window, as the old sedan climbed valiantly up the steep grade toward the higher mountains still ahead. She invited the warm, piney air against her, invited it to move her thin blouse over small, firm breasts. She reveled in the knowledge that she was almost very beautiful. Her heavy auburn hair, beautiful of itself, framed the arch of her eyebrows and the dark expressiveness of her eyes. She knew her face was too thin for the size of her eyes and the fullness of her lips. Yet this was dramatic and more fascinating than perfection.
She'd made her letters to Gabe as beautiful as she could; she hadn't wanted to describe the grubby, deep-channeled creek by the trailer or the lurid, red sandstone cliffs. She didn't even care to tell him about the trailer, though it wasn't so bad as trailers go. She certainly hadn't wanted to tell him about the unsightly Three Nickels or the junkyards around it.
So, in her imagination, she finished building a fine stone house that her dad had started years ago, next to his cabin in the mountains. He hadn't worked on it for a long time-maybe he never would now that he'd lost his arm.
Lucy was already living in the house of her letters, and as she told Gabe about its comfort and beauty, the rooms became very real, the fire roared in the fireplace. From a detailed description of the interior, she would, in some letters, move outside and tell him of the rock garden in front. Of the spring-fed little stream. Of the upsweep of the pine and spruce-covered mountain slopes rising sharply from the wide, flat canyon bottom.
There were some things she couldn't tell him. She couldn't tell him that it was he who lived in this fine house with her. She couldn't tell him that he often held her in his arms as they sat in front of the fireplace.
She couldn't tell him that she wanted him to say:
"I love you."
CHAPTER SIX
Gabe sensed Steve's growing agitation those first days on the mountain. Steve's desire to get into the mine and start driving toward the hoped-for bonanza was strong and sharp in his eyes whenever he looked at the black mouth of the mine tunnel. He seethed with impatience at having to remain on top until Loring proved he was the millwright he claimed to be.
He divided his time restlessly between the mill and the tool shed, where Gabe was sorting drill bits. He looked over the mining equipment a dozen times and then fell to making up so many primers they were soon hanging all over the place. Watching him crimp the cartridge-shaped dynamite caps onto the ends of the fuse with his teeth made Gabe jumpy.
Finally Gabe said:
"You damned well know that you could blow your head off doing that!"
Steve shrugged, making no effort to conceal his irritation.
"What's the difference? I'm going to flip my lid before long anyway if Loring doesn't get the mill rolling. Maybe I should get someone else. What the hell ... a guy with only one arm?"
Gabe looked up sharply from the bin of drill bits.
"For Pete's sake, Steve-give the guy a chance!
He's experienced. He'll have things humming soon."
As it turned out, Gabe was right. Loring threw the master switch, setting the machinery in motion, just four days after their arrival at the mine. Considering that it'd been idle for some time, Gabe figured Loring had done an admirable job.
And Steve's surly impatience disappeared like a morning fog as the three of them stood in the bowels of the mill with the hum and pound of the machinery filling the air all around. He clapped Loring on the back heartily and then swung about and mounted the steps that led upward to the exit. Gabe followed, and soon they were donning helmets at the mouth of the tunnel, preparatory to entering the mine.
Gabe knew from the moment he lost sight of daylight as they walked back into the tunnel that he'd never become an underground man. He might stick it out, working in the dingy, flickering yellow light cast by his carbide mine lamp, but he'd never like it. He hated the damp, musty smell of the old rotting timber. The smallness of the twisting tunnel made it difficult to work in-he was always cracking his elbows against the jagged rock walls.
The bold technique of boring into the heart of a mountain did not exhilarate him ... not when he had cause to wonder what was holding up the back of the tunnel. Observing places along the tunnel, where timbers the size of telephone poles were being slowly crushed to a pulp, he figured nothing was holding up the back very effectively.
But Steve seemed to exult in every minute spent underground. He worked with a kind of gusto, repairing the compressed air and water pipes through the tunnel to the face, where they would start drilling.
"I'll make a miner out of you, partner," he told Gabe, and Gabe pretended an enthusiasm he was far from feeling.
He noticed that everything was hurry, hurry, with Steve underground, just as it had been on the top. He held his temper, though, letting Steve's reckless methods go unchallenged until the day they drilled and loaded their first round in the tunnel.
"I'm cutting the fuse short," Steve told Gabe, who was standing by, intently watching the operation. "We can't wait around all day for these holes to go."
Gabe wasn't aware that Steve was cutting the fuse too short to give them time to get out of range of concussion and flying rock fragments. He had some vague notion that Steve cut the fuse at each dynamite-filled hole a different length to time the firing of the holes in a desired rotation, but that was the extent of his knowledge.
The concussion of the first hole knocked Gabe down as they ran from the face. He felt the sting of flying rock particles against his back He heard larger pieces cracking viciously against the tunnel walls. The concussion from the rest of the holes kept him pinned to the floor of the tunnel.
The darkness was complete, the concussion having snuffed out his light-and Steve's, too, as far as he could judge. When he got to his knees, finally, in the silent blackness, his concern was for Steve. Just because he hadn't stopped one of those larger rock missiles was no reason Steve had been as lucky.
"Steve!" he called hoarsely, and then listened.
The familiar sound of a mine lamp flint scratched the silence harshly, and then a yellow taper of light bloomed close by. Gabe grunted with relief.
"You all right, Steve?" he queried anxiously, then heard Steve's answering laugh, which seemed to slap contemptuously at his concern.
Gabe got his own lamp lit and went angrily toward Steve, then said:
"You and your damned short fuse methods! I thought I was teamed up with an adult for a partner. You're acting like a smart-aleck kid!"
Steve moved away, toward the face of the tunnel.
"We've got to hurry, partner. It means money in the bank." He stopped and held the flame of his lamp to the wall of the tunnel until it made a smoky blotch. "We'll pull a round out of this side. That will give us a handy place to duck into when we blast."
Their activity became a desperate routine of drilling, blasting and mucking. Steve set a minimum footage of five feet per day in the tunnel and to hell with stopping to timber up the tunnel as they went forward.
That worried Gabe most of all. He didn't know much about mining, but common sense told him the rock overhead should be steadied with timbering as they went forward. Then, too, in order to maintain the footage Steve had set, they were forced to go into the tunnel right after blasting and start mucking out before the poisonous powder gas had time to clear away.
Working in the gas-filled tunnel caused blinding headaches, and Gabe soon began looking forward to the days it was Steve's turn to muck out the round. On those days he worked outside, repairing the water flume above the mill.
One morning as he was busy along the flume, he heard Loring start the Goat. Looking down, he saw Lucy riding in the vehicle as it came up the incline track toward the mill. A kind of ringing gladness went through him at the sight of her, followed by a quick surge of resentment.
Why had she come? he wondered.
He watched the two embrace, and that seemed to answer his question. She was Loring's daughter and she had the right to come up here to see him.
After they'd embraced, Lucy and her dad engaged in a short, earnest conversation. As they ceased talking and turned to walk around the mill, Loring looked up and waved.
Then, after a moment, he was yelling:
"Get Steve and come down to the office!"
Gabe waved back and turned to do Loring's bidding. He was puzzled by the urgency in Loring's usually easy-going voice. But as he walked toward the mouth of the tunnel, his steps lagged. He found that he was filled with an agonizing mixture of longing and reluctance at the thought of meeting Lucy again.
After telling her dad only enough of Clara's story to alert him to Big Sig's treachery, mentioning Clara as just a friend, Lucy had looked up and seen Gabe. She, too, had waved, but he'd been turning away and didn't notice.
Then she and her dad walked to a small hut that had the words "Mine Office" scrawled on the door. The office was located about halfway between the mill and a square, low-roofed building which must be the men's living quarters because a clothesline full of work clothes stretched across the small front veranda.
As they stepped into the office, Lucy noticed it housed a phone and a few pieces of rough, homemade office furniture. Vibration from the mill carried through the floor, bringing home to her the reality of the effort and sacrifice Gabe and Steve were putting forth to make this mine productive. They were staking everything they had," and the gloomy nature of her news made her suddenly weak with misgiving.
When she heard footsteps outside, she hastily retreated to a shadowed corner of the office and sat down on an empty box.
Gabe and Steve were glowering at each other when they entered the office. Lucy saw that they had been arguing about something. Gabe's face was hard and unsmiling. He gave her a brief, curt nod and that was all.
Lucy shrank back against the wall, hurt and bewildered. She watched Gabe choose a rickety chair close to a dirty little window that looked down the side of Black Mountain to the valley below. He lit a cigarette and stared out the window moodily.
Steve glanced sharply in Lucy's direction, and she wondered if her dad was going to forget the introductions. But she saw her dad turn suddenly and step toward her, his face beaming.
His hand fell fondly on her shoulder, as he turned toward Gabe and Steve to say:
"Boys, this is my daughter Lucy. If we had to have bad news, I guess we might as well have it brought to us by a pretty messenger."
Gabe and Steve both nodded, then Lucy saw Gabe glaring at her dad.
"What bad news?" he growled.
"Well, it's getting around Minetown that Big Sig Larsen has pulled another fast one. Lucy heard it from one of her friends."
Now it was Steve's turn to glare.
"What you trying to tell us, man? Out with it," he said.
Lucy's eyes wavered anxiously between Gabe and Steve as her dad began breaking the news. He dwelt longest on the fact that, though the lease had been paid up for six months, the time the mine could be worked was actually four months because snow would make the last two months a time when it would be risking death beneath an avalanche to work the mine.
Steve started pacing the floor as her dad finished.
"So Big Sig has rooked us on the lease," he admitted tensely. "Maybe I should've known this was snow-slide country up here, but I didn't."
He paused and looked at Gabe, and Lucy knew he'd been talking to him alone. Steve obviously couldn't bring himself to plead for understanding, but he meant to make up for as much as he could by not being discouraged.
"All right," he went on stubbornly, "if we can't run this mine for six months, we'll run her as long as we can and we'll do it on the double!"
Lucy had been watching Gabe's face as Steve spoke. It had remained flinty and unmoved. Anger, bitterness, and a kind of withdrawn thought-fulness were all mixed up in his eyes.
She had the odd feeling that if she'd gone to him, stood right at his side, he wouldn't've been aware of her. Her heart ached as she watched him get to his feet and leave the office without a word.
Gabe had been out of the office for more than a minute before she found the courage to follow him. And then she was too late as she ran toward the mouth of the tunnel. She caught a glimpse of him disappearing into the mine.
"Oh, Gabe," she whispered, and then started as a hand fell on her shoulder, restraining her from following him into the mine.
She looked around to see Steve standing close behind her.
"I'm afraid following him in there wouldn't do much good," Steve told her gently.
Lucy saw a question standing in Steve's eyes.
"I-I know Gabe," she explained haltingly. "We met last summer at the Pretty Forks rodeo."
A quick, friendly smile curled Steve's lips.
"Imagine a guy running away from a girl-and a darned pretty one, to boot." Steve shook his head. "I'm going to have a talk with that boy. You look like just what the doctor ordered to cheer him up, but you need a better place than a dark old mine for that job."
"I'm afraid the news I brought didn't cheer either of you," Lucy murmured, giving Steve a wan smile. "Perhaps I should leave," she said helplessly. "It seems I've done enough damage for one day."
Steve grinned crookedly.
"We had to hear the bad news sometime. The sooner the better, I'd say. But I hate to see you leave like this. Isn't there something you could do as an excuse to stick around awhile? I'm going into the mine and get Gabe out. I'll put him to work on the flume. Say-" Steve paused, his eyes lighting up with an idea, "-how about all this wild fruit up here? Ever pick any? I saw some good bushes along the flume."
Lucy's heart jumped.
"It so happens that I came prepared," she informed Steve brightly. "Pail, lunch, and everything. "
CHAPTER SEVEN
Gabe glowered at the clothes-or lack of them-Lucy had chosen to wear as she looked for wild fruit. She had on a two-piece outfit-skirt and matching shorts. The shorts were bathing suit short. She kept the skirt on as they made their way around the steep, slippery rock of the mountainside to the head of the gulch. But the skirt swung open as she walked,' and Gabe couldn't keep his eyes off her legs.
They hadn't gone far along the flume before he flung down his carpenter tools on the pretext that he'd found a place that needed mending.
"You go on," he told her. "I think the fruit Steve saw is on both sides of the gulch, just up a little farther."
She hesitated.
"I've got sandwiches, cake, and some hot coffee along," she said, swinging one of the two pails she was carrying. "Won't you have a bite with me later?"
"I don't know where I'll be," Gabe said evasively. "I might be way up the gulch from here."
"I'll find you," Lucy promised, and started away into the brush.
Gabe lowered his head and began hammering noisily on the flume. She'd been standing right beside him as he knelt on the ground, with the prettiness of her legs pressing into him, and he hadn't been able to keep his eyes on his work.
He laughed at himself harshly, admitting that when a girl had legs as pretty as Lucy's, it was right they should be seen. But let her show them to someone else! he thought impatiently, all of which proved what he'd been trying to tell himself right along.
He did not really like her, and it would have been much better if she hadn't come up here.
He worked rapidly along the flume, tightening nails, putting fresh caulking where cracks had opened. Soon he found himself at the head of the flume, close to the spring. He scooped out the hollow where the water bubbled out of the ground, clearing it of silt, floating twigs and dead leaves.
Finished with this, he drew back and crawled up through a narrow depression, dark with overgrowth, to get away from the soggy ground around the spring. He felt like stretching out where it was dry and having a smoke.
But the way became tunnel-like, and he had to go on several yards before it widened. Then he saw that he was at the entrance to what had probably started out as a prospect tunnel and later been widened and squared into a small room, with solid rock forming the roof and three walls. The fourth wall had likely been made of logs which had rotted away.
He kicked at a pile of pack-rat debris in one corner, and his toe hit something metallic. With a little more prodding, he turned up a tiny, cast-iron stove. It was deeply rust-pitted, but intact, even to having the lid in place.
Idly, he lifted the lid and discovered a charred roll of old newspapers inside. It appeared that someone had meant to start a fire.
The papers were yellow and brittle with age, but he got them unrolled. He whistled involuntarily when he read the date: 1868!
Looking around the rough perimeter of the room again, he wondered what Lucy's imagination could do with it, for even he could visualize a couple of bearded early-day prospectors living here.
Had they gone away rich, or had they stayed in this region? Perhaps their descendants lived in Minetown today, he thought, as he went outside to continue his climb to higher ground.
Lucy found him just as he finished his smoke. He told her about his "find" as she laid out sandwiches and took the Thermos of coffee from the extra bucket she'd brought. He saw that the other bucket was almost full of bright red choke-cherries.
The lunch was good, and afterwards Gabe was content to smoke again, listening, while Lucy said:
"I'll bet the librarian in Minetown would be glad to get that old newspaper."
The soft cadence of her voice lingered around him, and Gabe was content to just lie, with the sun in his face, his eyes closed, half drowsing. He thought of her as she'd been when he'd last looked-with her skirt off, the sun on her bare thighs.
He could keep his mind on other things fairly well if he didn't look at her. He could even turn his mind to what Steve had been telling him about mining, how important it was to drill the cutters, breast, and back holes at the right angle. How many sticks of dynamite to tamp into each hole, with the lower holes getting the most because they were the lifters. And how he must always be sure to weight the muck sheets down around the edges so that the concussion wouldn't flip them over before the round was pulled back upon them. If only Steve practiced all the things he preached!
Yes, he had plenty to occupy his mind-plenty of stuff to pile up between himself and an awareness of Lucy. But she didn't intend to let him forget her. He wasn't surprised when he heard her get up and come toward him.
Still, he pretended he didn't know she was astraddle him, leaning over, tickling his face with a blade of grass. He thought she might be hurt by his lack of response to her playing and go away.
But she didn't. He opened his eyes and looked up into hers, which were teasing, mischievous.
"I haven't seen you smile since that day at the rodeo," she said, and now her eyes carried a soft rebuke.
"Did I smile then?" he muttered.
"Oh, yes! And as I remember, it was a very nice smile. Perhaps what I was wearing that day caused you to. Maybe you approved more of the western-style clothes I had on."
Gabe eyed her somberly, watching a smile of mock dismay move her lips.
"Do you like what I'm wearing now?" she murmured.
And then more softly, her eyes glowing with intimate trusting, she added:
"I wonder if I'm safe way out here alone with you?"
"Lucy! Lucy!" Gabe heard his voice come out, hoarse and unnatural.
His arms hit out toward her, pulling her down to him roughly.
She twisted and moaned at the kisses he thrust downward over her face and small, taut breasts. He felt her stiffen, and for a moment gathered himself to override her resistance. Then he pushed her away and got angrily to his feet.
"Now maybe you'll quit your damned fooling around!" he muttered.
He saw her skirt a few feet away, grabbed it up and flung it at her.
"Put that on and let's get going!" he commanded, then added cruelly:
"I haven't got the price on me today!" There was a dragging slowness to her movements as a stormy darkness overspread her face. She seemed near tears. Yet she put on the skirt as he'd ordered and gathered her things together.
Gabe clung to his anger, lest pity slip in, as he watched her-her head down, her thick auburn hair, gone wild from her twisting in his arms, swept forward around her face like a veil.
The slow reluctance with which she prepared to leave the picnic site disappeared as she came to him and dropped the fruit pail to the ground. She tossed her head to fling the hair from her face.
He saw the fury in her dark eyes too late to be prepared for the stinging slap she put on his cheek.
"So you think I'm a prostitute," she cried bitterly, shaking as though he'd given her a whipping. "I get my mail at the Three Nickels address because there's no mail delivery to my trailer on the lot in back, and you immediately conclude that I'm one of the 'girls'! Well, Mr. Clarke, you're welcome to think what you wish of me, but don't you dare hurt my dad with any of your vile suspicions!"
Gabe stood like a fool, his mouth hanging open as he watched her take up the pail and hurry angrily down the trail toward the mine.
The feeling of joy and certainty he finally felt from absorbing the full meaning of her words came slowly at first. Then it spread through him wildly, leaving him incoherent. When he did find his voice, Lucy had disappeared.
"Lucy! Lucy, wait! I love you! I love you!" he shouted, running down the trail.
But he'd waited too long. By the time he reached the mill, old Dan was already hoisting the Goat back up the incline, after having lowered Lucy to the foot of the mountain.
CHAPTER EIGHT
For a time after she fled the scene of her quarrel with Gabe, Lucy hated him-hated him with all the strength of her pride and shame. Even his phone call the next day to the school had failed to heal her wound. She was cool to his apology over the phone; later the remembrance of his shaken tones and the sincerity of his words eased her heartache and cleared the way to forgiving him, but she couldn't make an opportunity to see him.
During the following weeks, she gradually began looking forward to Thanksgiving, hoping the weather would permit her to have the men down to her dad's cabin for dinner. But there was no break in the bad winter weather until a few days before Christmas. Then Lucy set her heart on a Christmas party.
It had stopped snowing long enough for the road crews to open the road as far as her dad's cabin, and she believed the men could get down to the cabin on foot.
Her preparations began with a call to her dad. She held the phone while he checked with Gabe and Steve. She felt her heart lift with joy when they promised to come. In a burst of Christmas spirit, she even asked Clara to the party.
It was in the back of her mind that Steve Bur-rick might like having her there, and if there was to be another chance for Clara, it was going to be through her love for Steve.
Lucy was elated a few days later when Clara moved away from the Three Nickels and got a room on the other side of town. She had the promise of a waitress job in a small lunch room in the same vicinity.
Lucy wondered if the party invitation had somehow helped Clara break away. She vowed to befriend the girl in every way she could.
She took Clara shopping with her for new decorations; and they tentatively chose the food they'd take up to the cabin. Her heart was set on a turkey and all the trimmings. They went through the stores like a couple of kids on a lark, buying cartons of cigarettes and several pairs of socks for each of the men.
Lucy began to sleep poorly and dream too much as she awaited Christmas. All the preparations for the party were complete, except buying the food, which they'd do at the last moment, because neither of them had a place to keep large quantities. Now there was nothing to do except wait, and she grew overwrought trying to will the time to pass more quickly lest this opportunity to be near Gabe again be denied her. She scanned the newspapers with an inward quaking.
Then one afternoon the headlines were black with tragedy. A snow slide had raced down upon a car on a mountain pass and had killed the occupants of the car. She slept not at all the night after reading that, and in the gray dawn she got out of bed, trembling with the impelling need to know all was well at the mine.
She slid her feet into fleece-lined overshoes, put a heavy topper on over her nightie and went out of the trailer.
The back porch door of the Three Nickels was locked, but she knew how to slip her hand through a break in the screening and unlock it. There was little chance of anyone being up in the Three Nickels at this early hour. Old Sadie always loaded herself with sleeping pills, and the girls, with or without guests, slept late, usually.
Lucy crept into the house and along the hallway, which always reminded her of a hotel corridor because of the numbered doors-three on each side-that opened off it. The doors were heavy and locked from the inside.
She was careful to note that they were closed as she made her way toward the wall phone near the front door. The only light in the hall filtered down, gray and dismal, through a small, dingy skylight window.
Lucy placed her out-of-town call the moment she reached the phone. Then, because the house was oppressive with heat, she let her heavy topper slip to the floor and stood waiting in her short nightie.
She couldn't really believe it was Gabe, instead of Steve or her dad, who answered the phone. For a dizzy, whirling space she was breathless after his "hello."
Finally the throbbing quieted enough in her throat for her to speak coherently.
"Oh, Gabe," she cried, "there was such bad news in the paper! There was a snow slide that killed some people. Are you, Dad, and Steve all right? Are you safe?"
Gabe gave a short, derisive laugh that twisted her heart. It sounded so defeated and cold and angry.
"Safe!" he echoed sarcastically. "How safe are you-calling from that Three Nickels hellhole? You're calling from there, aren't you?"
"Yes, I am, Gabe," Lucy admitted. "But everything's as quiet as a tomb in here. And I just had to know-"
Lucy's tongue stalled, suddenly thick with contrition. She should've begun this conversation differently ... with something cheerful-something to take Gabe's mind off the slide danger for awhile. Or perhaps it would've been better not to have called at all. Now Gabe would worry about her using the Three Nickels phone.
"I don't know what's holding the snow pack up there," Gabe said. "We've got the mill running full force, and the way it shakes this section of the mountainside is really something. I don't think it's worth the risk to stay on, but neither your dad nor I can convince Steve of that. All he thinks about is to hurry up; blast out the ore; cut the fuse short!"
Some of Lucy's sympathy began to seep away. She hated to hear him railing at Steve. She hated to hear him sounding like a quitter.
"Steve isn't responsible for the early snows this year, Gabe," she remonstrated gently. "He's only trying to make the best of a bad deal."
Gabe snorted, then said:
"I'm not blaming the guy for getting us into this mess-just for not getting us out of it. If the stakes were big, it might be different; but we aren't doing much better than wages. I can't see going into a long, deep-freeze sleep under a snow slide for that."
Lucy realized dismally that she wasn't helping Gabe's state of mind one bit.
"Gee, Gabe, I don't know the answer," she admitted sadly. "I want only the best for you and the others."
If she said much more she was going to cry.
Gabe's voice was gender when he spoke again, after a pause:
"Forget I growled. You're really a sweetheart for calling. And, Lucy, I hope I've made you realize how sorry I am for what I said and the way I acted up at the flume that day."
Lucy heard his words echoing sweetly around her after he had hung up the phone. They hadn't been an endearment, exactly. They hadn't been nearly what she longed to hear him say, but it had been enough to bring a glad blur into her eyes.
The click of the phone, as Lucy replaced the receiver, joined a slight shuffling noise behind her. She twisted around and went rigid with stark shock at the sight of the nude man coming toward her from the hall.
Her fixed stare brought pain against the back of her eyes. She knew the first cold sweep of conscious terror as she blinked, trying to make out the man's features, trying to put a name to him, that she might call out and turn him away. But the dim light in the hallway made his nude build a monstrous anonymity.
Then suddenly she knew with a hundredfold increase of terror that she was the reason for his approach. She bent woodenly to grope for her coat.
When she straightened, he was towering beside her, and she was looking into the squinting, bleary, lustful eyes of Big Sig, the Three Nickels' Bedroom Bull.
"My goddamn girl passed out," he complained bitterly. "I say it's about time Old Sadie got some new pussies around here!"
He pulled Lucy against him roughly, and the scream that rose in her throat was muffled by a big, hairy forearm, as he picked her up and carried her into one of the bedrooms.
"Stop hollering!" he muttered. "I'll pay you ... even if I have already paid that one on the bed for nothing."
With that promise to shut her up, he gave her a shove toward the bed on the far side of the room.
The smell of whiskey was terrible near the bed, and before she turned away, Lucy saw a nude girl stretched there, breathing thickly. Lucy cast a quick look at Big Sig's back as he stood at the dresser, pouring a drink into a water tumbler from a quart bottle of whiskey.
The door was still open and she flew with unthinking panic into the hall. Then her fear was like a drug, rendering her body leaden and weak. Her progress down the hall was pitifully slow, each step a separate effort of will. And with each step her fear grew greater, for at any moment she expected Big Sig's arms to close around her from behind.
Then she saw him, leaning against the door-jamb of the bedroom. His mouth was working soundlessly as he swung his head from side to side, staring up and down the hall. Even as she watched, he started toward her, his naked bulk appearing gray and huge in the gloom.
Lucy's senses reeled for an instant as she again willed herself to move toward the rear door. Big Sig's heavy breathing became loud in the hall behind her. A scream gathered painfully in her throat, yet she couldn't unclench her jaws to let it escape.
She was vaguely aware that consciousness was slipping away when her hands touched the doorknob. She pulled the door open with a sudden burst of frenzied strength.
The cold, clean air swept around her like a strong sustaining arm that helped her to the bridge and across it to the loose boards, which she jerked out to leave a gaping hole between her and the Three Nickels. Then she rushed desperately over the several remaining yards to the trailer.
The click of the lock inside the trailer door was still in her ears as she sank to the floor. She pulled in deep breaths, and gradually the painful fear abated. Bit by bit, she relaxed, until finally she half sat, half lay on the floor, almost dreamily watching the rise and fall of her breasts.
There were no unusual sounds outside the trailer ... only the soft caress of the light morning wind coming up the canyon from the lowlands. She was no longer terrified. There was the comfort of the target pistol in her dresser drawer and the sure knowledge that she could use it. But she hoped there'd be no need.
Slowly, she rose to her feet and looked out the tiny window at the top of the door. It was fully daylight now, and she could distinctly see the back door of the Three Nickels.
The door was still open and, looking at it, she somehow doubted Big Sig had come through it. She believed the cold air had sobered him and made him think twice. Now that she realized the danger of entering the Three Nickels, she knew she had to have a phone put in the trailer.
CHAPTER NINE
Lucy crossed the big room and sat down on the arm of the long oak and leather bench. There was a bright, colorful blaze in the fireplace directly in front of her, and the flames were jumping up and down, making hearty, hospitable sounds as they licked against the rock chimney. Her dad, Clara, and Steve, each with a cocktail in hand, were bantering gaily as they put the finishing fussiness on the Christmas tree. A number of delectable odors were coming from the kitchen.
The Christmas party was ready to go; but still there was no sign of Gabe. He'd sent her dad and Steve on ahead, staying at the mine himself to put everything in last minute order.
She continued to wait, pushing nervously at her glistening auburn hair. Her body felt hot and tense beneath the blue knit dress she was wearing-her full, soft lips hard, held against a threatened upheaval of emotion that might bring tears.
Gabe ought to be here soon, she reasoned.
How she longed for sight of him!
There was a noise at the door. Footsteps scraped on the porch. It was Gabe! She flew to the door, tore it open, and the next moment was feeling the strong bit of his taut arms against her back, feeling his lips on hers in a fleeting, hungry kiss.
"Gabe!" she almost whimpered his name.
Then a sudden shyness sneaked between them. But she clung to him, drawing on the squareness of his jaw and the steady blue of his eyes. And she felt some better.
"Gabe-" she got her voice working unsteadily, "-Gabe, we were waiting for you to light the tree."
He was looking beyond her ... examining the pretty, tinsel-laden tree with mock judiciousness.
How thin he looks! she thought with a twinge of sadness. How thin and hard and tired!
"Yep," he drawled finally, "it's a passably good job of decorating."
He nodded cheerfully at the group around the tree.
"Hear! Hear!" Lucy cried and whirled around smilingly. "Dad, get Gabe a drink. And, Clara, I'd like you to meet Gabe. Now let's trot out the turkey."
Lucy felt very domestic as she looked around the table to see that everyone had a full plate. She was experiencing the strictly feminine thrill of feeding hungry men with a good meal. Everything had turned out just right. The cranberries had jelled, and the pumpkin pie smelled delicious.
Conversation fell to a minimum as the men fed their faces, and now and then Lucy would catch Clara's attention and wink. Clara always smiled, but Lucy noticed how quickly her eyes went back to Steve and how a soft radiance would spread over her face.
One by one the men leaned back, accepted a final cup of coffee and lit a cigarette. Soon she and Clara had the table cleared and she gave her dad the sign to put on the false white beard and hand out the presents.
Guardedly, she watched Gabe open his. She did not know why it had become so terribly important that he like the gift. She knew only that everything inside her had stopped as the socks and razor blades shook loose from the wrapping paper and lay on the table, looking ugly and unworthy.
Gabe touched them with his lean, work-hardened hands, and she felt a surge of angry disgust with herself. If she'd wanted to be so-so practical, she should've bought him some gloves. Or maybe a new shovel.
Gabe was fingering the socks now, and he looked up at her with a glint of embarrassed amusement. Lucy met his eyes, uncertain whether he was laughing at himself or her.
She was on the verge of jumping up and running into the kitchen, when he said:
"One of the things that made me late for the party was a clean-sock hunt. The ones I found are minus a heel and toe. Dear hostess, do you mind if I retire to the bunk house and put on a new pair?"
Everyone laughed, even Lucy, who had to take a surreptitious dab at a couple of tears of relief as she silently thanked Gabe for making the remark.
Lucy pointed out a room to Gabe.
"The bunk house is right in there, where you men are going to sleep tonight, mister," she said, her gaiety restored.
Clara and Steve insisted on doing the dishes, and Lucy readily relinquished the chore to them. Her dad was napping after his meal, and she had Gabe to herself in the living room.
She turned the radio on low and then sat down beside him on the couch.
"I haven't heard them drop any yet," she said, nodding toward the kitchen.
"Steve just isn't his usual reckless self at the moment," Gabe said and grinned. "Must be loggy after that wonderful meal, Miss Loring."
Lucy glanced down, flushing with pleasure at his compliment and the way his eyes were going over her. She was glad she'd taken special care for tonight-glad that she had the nearly new dress to wear.
She looked up and her eyes tenderly brushed his face.
"Gabe, how is it going up at the mine ... real-ly?"
Gabe's eyes went bleak. He seemed on the verge of brushing her question away with a sardonic retort. Then he hesitated and lit a cigarette.
Finally he said:
"You likely know more about mountain snow pack and snow slides than I do. Why not walk up toward the mine with me in the morning? Then you can judge for yourself."
"I'd like that," Lucy said quietly.
She sighed as she leaned back on the couch, her shoulder touching Gabe's arm. A strange peacefulness flowed through her, and she was content just to sit silently, listening to the soft radio music as the moments ticked swiftly into minutes.
Gabe stirred suddenly, then commented jokingly:
"I haven't heard any noise out of the kitchen for some time."
As though on cue, Steve and Clara chose that moment to walk into the room from the kitchen. Steve was walking slightly ahead of Clara, holding her hand and pulling her along. His face was flushed with happiness and there was a high, wild glint of recklessness in his eyes.
"This gal and I are engaged, folks," he blurted. "We'd wed tonight if there was a preacher handy, wouldn't we?"
He pulled at Clara's hand and she floated up beside him, nodding her pretty head like an excited bird. Lucy noticed the way she clung to Steve's hand-like the world would end if she let go.
Lucy recovered from the surprise announcement first. She ran to Clara and Steve and kissed them both. Then her dad awoke, came forward with his congratulations.
Gabe was last. He threw a brotherly arm around Clara's shoulders and gave her a hug. Then, with a sober look, he turned to Steve.
"Aren't you forgetting something, partner?" he queried. "We haven't struck it rich yet."
Steve snorted, then said:
"Gabe boy, wake up! A man has struck it rich when his girl says 'yes'. Besides, there's never a time in a man's life that it doesn't help to have someone to work for."
Gabe relented and smiled then as he put out his hand toward Steve. The two men shook hands, but Lucy noticed a troubled look come back into Gabe's eyes the moment he turned away. She noticed, too, that he was looking more tired by the moment.
He may take some gold out of Black Mountain, but he'll leave too much of his youth in exchange, she thought dismally.
More than a little saddened, she looked around the room. Her eyes lingered on the gay little tree ... on the dwindling glow in the fireplace. It had been a wonderful party, but now it was over.
There was a soft catch in her throat, as she said:
"Well, folks, I think it's time we all said Merry Christmas and went to bed."
Walking along the snowy, rutted road toward the mine with Gabe the next morning, Lucy could tell that his cheerfulness was mostly for her benefit, and she set herself the task of keeping his thoughts away from the mine, at least until they parted. In this she realized that her motives were entirely selfish, for she wanted every precious moment to belong to them, until they had to part.
" Nor would she waste any of their time together studying the snow pack. She knew there was no way to assess the immensity of the white depth above the mine or to foretell the hour the white monster would hurtle down. All anyone could know was that the danger was great and undoubtedly growing.
She saw Gabe looking at her with concern.
"I'm walking too fast for you," he said, self-accusingly.
"A little," she admitted, glad that it was he who was offering the excuse to slow down.
Already the shed just below the mine was in sight, and nothing had happened to re-awaken the feeling of closeness between them that she'd felt for a few heavenly moments last night.
Then suddenly she saw a flat, sun-warmed rock from which the snow had melted. It was only a few yards from the road.
She pointed it out to Gabe and said:
"Let's go over there and smoke a cigarette while we rest."
"Sure-let's," Gabe agreed, and Lucy's heart soared at the surge of eagerness in his voice.
They both had trouble lighting their cigarettes. Lucy was wildly nervous because of his nearness. She could only guess that Gabe was feeling a like nervousness.
"I'm going to make love to you," Gabe said suddenly, his eyes bold and openly admiring as they rested on her face. "Do you mind?"
Lucy blushed.
"Why, Mr. Clarke-this is so sudden!"
He leaned forward and encircled her with the vibrant strength of his arms. She could feel his heart pounding against her breasts. Then his head came down and his hard, hungry lips found hers for a thrilling second.
Her curved, red lips were full and throbbing with the sweet sting of his fierce kiss when he held her away, keeping his arms about her, almost cradling her in them as he looked down into the flushed beauty of her face.
She felt the hot flood of color in her cheeks, knew there was a telltale longing in her eyes and was overcome by embarrassment at her quick response to his love-making. She'd made that mistake once before, and the ugly things he'd thought and said came rushing back. She stiffened against the pressure of his arms.
He studied her face for a second, his eyes going bleak and anxious. Then the warm circle of his arms went suddenly slack.
"You haven't really forgiven me. You're only playing," he said, his voice devoid of all its former warmth.
She twisted free of his arms, angry with him and herself.
Why had she let her thoughts go back? Were the terrible things he'd said to her that day always to return when he made love to her?
She stood up, dragging a stiff, white smile across her lips.
"After all, if a girl wants to marry-"
She stopped, horrified at the empty flippant sound of her words.
He laughed raggedly and there was a reckless fire in his eyes as they bored down into hers.
"I know," he said. "A girl has to be discreet. She has to be all the things I accused you of not being. Go ahead-rub it in! I was a thousand kinds of a fool that day."
Lucy uttered a quavering cry, but there was a note of relief in it. The rock had steadied under her shaking knees. Suddenly she knew it was good that this thing had come out into the open. But what comfort was there for them now ... in this moment of parting?
In another second, Gabe would be gone. Even now he was stepping back. Tears were filling her eyes, and she clutched out blindly to hold him.
"Oh, Gabe!" she wailed softly. "I-I think it's like Steve said; you men do need something to work for."
She kissed him once tenderly, longingly-pledg-all her love to him. Then she drew away quickly to turn and run down the road toward the cabin. At a place in the road that afforded the last view of the mine, she stopped and looked back.
By some miracle of lovers' luck, Gabe had also paused and he waved to her. She waved back, and as she did, her lips lovingly formed his name over and over.
CHAPTER TEN
Steve could plunge into a job around the mine and forget everything else. The mine and the underground work did not have the same pull for Gabe. Therefore, Steve felt it was up to him to furnish about two thirds of the enthusiasm needed to keep things moving. He couldn't honestly say that Gabe shirked; but he was more like a hired man than a partner. His heart wasn't in it.
Gabe was given to long, moody silences, and as their days of working alone together piled up, Steve became certain that Gabe was silently blaming him for having talked up the venture, for having insisted they use all the cash to keep the mine going, instead of sending some to Braken for the keep of his horse.
Steve did feel badly about Gabe's horse, even more so because he knew Gabe's love for the animal. But Steve didn't let himself get bogged down in regrets, his or Gabe's. Instead, he lost himself in the work, stepping up the pace in the mine, pushing the tunnel ahead without stopping to timber up-taking a chance that the weak places in the roof, where cracks opened around huge rock slabs, would hold.
His headlong gamble seemed to have been rewarded the day he fought his way back into the mine through dense layers of powder smoke to find the rich seam of ore that had been exposed in the face of the tunnel.
Elation numbed the stabbing sharpness of a powder-gas headache and helped him ignore the queer way his heart fluttered as it forced toxic-loaded blood through his body.
He was riding high-very, very high-when he plunked the rich ore sample down in front of Gabe at the mouth of the tunnel.
"There she is, partner-just like I said!" Steve gloated, as Gabe lifted the sample, turning it in his hand as the ore glinted in the sunlight.
"The vein-how wide is it?" Gabe queried sharply.
"How the hell can I tell until I get the round mucked out?" Steve retorted.
"Let's both muck her out," Gabe suggested, his voice ringing with excitement.
Steve vetoed Gabe's suggestion with a shake of his head.
"This is my day in the mine," he said emphatically.
He was still savoring his triumph as he began pushing an empty ore car into the mine to start mucking out the first round of real pay dirt. He ignored the way the gas dulled his senses as he pushed the car on into the murky, stinking blackness of the tunnel. He even laughed when loosened rocks from the roof of the tunnel hailed down, rattling as they struck the bottom of the car.
Suddenly a huge slab mashed the sides of the car, and a great weight pulled him forward. He fell, belly down, his face scraping the raw ore car. The tunnel was a black void, and from habit, his hand went up to find the lamp on his helmet and re-light it. But his head was bare ... the helmet had been knocked off by his fall!
He spread his arms, moving them over the pile of rubble on the track. Dust clogged his nose. Rocks, small stuff by the sound of it, still spattered around him, but he realized with a burst of cold fear that the cave-in might not be over. It might start again and fill the tunnel-and filling it, bury him. He knew that he must try to feel his way out of the mine without a light.
He didn't panic on his first attempt to get up; he thought his legs had gone to sleep. He tried again, but he couldn't move. He couldn't get his legs under him because they were pinned by a rock, from the knees down.
He panicked like an animal in a trap-twisting, turning, clawing, and finally jackknifing his body to claw at the huge slab of rock he felt weighting his lower legs and feet. Then he heard a sharp grinding of rock on rock, and a hoarse scream of agony rose in his throat as the slab crushed down upon his legs.
His movements became frenzied now, but they only pushed the numbness out of his feet and legs. Great stabs of pain, searing waves of it, leapt up into his thighs and groin.
"It feels like it's folding my guts!" he yelled, filling the tunnel with the sounds of his agony.
He repeated the words, yelling them again and again, trying to vent some of the pain, grasping desperately at the distraction of his own voice.
He lifted himself on his elbows and stared wildly down the black bore of the tunnel, in the direction of safety and relief.
"Gabe!" he yelled. "Gabe! Gabe!"
He felt sure Gabe would come soon, whether he heard or not.
"He'll start to worry when I don't come out with another car of ore," he told himself hopefully, not wanting to admit that Gabe might not be near the mouth of the tunnel-that his accident might go unnoticed until the grizzly bin emptied itself of ore and the mill stamps started to roar with emptiness.
That could take a half-hour! Steve found his breath coming hard. He swallowed to clear his throat. He fought against despair, listening tensely as the spit and rattle of the cave-in tapered off.
Gradually the fear left him and he was alone in the blackness ... alone with the agony in his body and the wild sound of his own voice filling the tunnel. Soon he was putting everything that came into his mind into talk, and the talk grew louder as the pain increased.
"Clara, let's go to the park," he blurted, then feared he was going out of his mind with pain, until he remembered that those were the words he'd used the day she'd slipped away from the Three Nickels and they'd met uptown by pre-arrangement.
"That ribbon on your hat ... it's blue, Clara, blue like the color of your eyes," he panted, striving with terrible concentration to keep his mind on his words and hers.
She came close, stood with her face tilted sauci-ly up to the inspection of his gaze.
"Tell me I'm pretty ... tell me!" she teased.
Steve groaned and rolled his head as a burst of red-flecked pain came between him and his vision of Clara under the trees in the Minetown Municipal Park. He reached out with his arms and caught her close before she faded.
"You're pretty, gal, pretty and true blue," he cried.
"I wish that were so," she said miserably. "And I wish we'd met as a man and woman should. Steve, you paid for me that night!"
"But never collected-at least not in the usual Three Nickels way," he reminded her. "We had something a hell of a lot better going for us. I say it was the best damned man-and-woman-meeting there ever was, and I don't care if it did take place in the Three Nickels. It was the best, Clara-the best, do you hear?"
He was screaming now, but she didn't answer. She was gone. Only the echoing sound of his voice remained, coming off the tunnel walls, dinning crazily into his ears with a slowly diminishing force that followed him down into nothingness.
Gabe's face seemed a mile away at first, but came close swiftly-as though someone were adjusting the focus of a telescope-and Steve saw that he was out in the daylight, looking upward at Gabe.
"I don't feel a thing now," he mumbled, wondering at the thickness of his tongue. "Guess my legs weren't hurt so bad, after all."
Anxiously, he scanned Gabe's grave face for agreement.
"I'm afraid you're going to feel something soon, Steve," Gabe said with gentle gruffness. "That's why we got you down here into the station wagon while you were still out. I only hope we can get you to town before all the shock wears off."
As he watched Gabe talk, Steve knew it was bad.
"What is it, Gabe?"
"Your leg, partner-the left one."
"Why not shoot me-like you would a horse," Steve joked wryly and saw Gabe grimace.
Why the hell did I have to say that? Steve asked himself, knowing he'd reminded Gabe of his horse Duke, on purpose.
Suddenly he knew the ugly answer: Riding Gabe had become a habit-a vent for his own frustration.
"We don't shoot horses any more, either, partner," Gabe said. "We splint them up."
He pulled back out of sight, and Steve heard him getting into the driver's seat.
From where he lay in the rear of the station wagon, Steve could see the back of Gabe's neck.
Partner! he'd called him.
It was the first time in many days that Gabe had addressed him so, and there had been a steady, earnest gentleness in his eyes that Steve had never seen there before.
Steve grunted. The pain was starting to get through now, outlining the mashed section of his leg with digging fingers that reached sickeningly up into his groin. He saw Gabe glance around and he managed a stiff grin, but Gabe seemed to know.
"Pain starting to get through?"
Steve jerked his head in harsh assent. He held onto the strength of Gabe's strong features until rising waves of dizziness forced him to close his eyes. Then he set his jaw to meet the hellish agony rising up from his leg.
It's up to you, Gabe, he thought. All up to you! But I'll be damned if I'll blame you much if you chuck the mine and me, too.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Lucy was quite cheerful as she parked her car in front of the counter lunch room where Clara was working. A catchy hit tune she'd been hearing on the radio played around in her head, and she began humming it as she waited for Clara to come out.
Minutes passed, but still no Clara. The tune slipped away, taking Lucy's gaiety with it. Before much longer, she'd be worrying again. Clara was supposed to get off work at three-thirty. It was now almost four.
Lucy got out of the car and went into the lunch room. As she looked around the dingy interior, her spirits dropped. She almost regretted having promised to take Clara along up to the cabin.
She was chiding herself the next instant as she quietly took a stool at the counter to wait.
"No, thanks," she told a waitress, who approached with a menu. "I'm waiting for Clara."
The waitress made a little move of disparagement, then said:
"That one! She dropped everything right in the middle of the noon rush to go to the hospital, when she got word that a friend named Steve had been brought in with a bad leg. You'd've thought the guy was dying the way she carried on. She'll lose her job, running out that way, or I don't know the boss."
Lucy was on her feet before the girl had ceased talking. She felt numb, but her thoughts were clear and swift as she got into her car and drove toward Minetown's one hospital, remembering well the accident that cost her dad his arm.
The hospital was a kind of cooperatively run institution where each company doctor for one of the mines in the vicinity had a separate ward for his patients. An outsider like Steve, who didn't work for any large company, would be put into a private room.
As Lucy followed a nurse down the corridor on the second floor, she saw Clara come out of one of the private rooms. She was plainly struggling with a storm of emotions. Uncertainty, pity, and fear were all mixed up in her eyes as she ran to Lucy.
"It's Steve, Lucy. Some big rocks in the mine fell on his legs. God, how he suffered! It was awful before they gave him something to kill the pain."
Clara's voice was muffled, almost incoherent, as she pressed her face against Lucy's breast. Lucy tightened her arms, willing her sympathy into the girl.
Then she saw the nurse motioning toward a small waiting room off the corridor. Gently, she got Clara turned around and into the waiting room, where she led her to a chair. Clara gratefully accepted the handkerchief Lucy offered, and, after drying her eyes, she seemed calmer.
"Lucy, Steve's leg is badly hurt. The doctor says he'll be off it for a long, long time."
Lucy kneaded Clara's hand. This was a pattern she knew painfully well-this maiming and killing of men who worked in the mines.
"Who brought Steve in?" she blurted, unable to stand another second of not knowing if anyone else had been in the accident.
She heard Clara draw a sharp breath, and it seemed an agonizing age before Clara said contritely:
"How thoughtless of me! Of course, you must be worried about Gabe and your dad. It was Gabe who brought Steve in. Neither he nor your dad were in the accident."
She paused and gave Lucy a wan smile, then continued:"
"I thought you told me your boy friend was the careful, cautious type. He must've driven like the devil to get down here from the mine in half an hour."
Lucy sighed raggedly.
"S-some way to start the New Year," she said shakily, cupping Clara's tear-wet face in her hands and looking into the girl's misty blue eyes.
Gradually Clara's trembling subsided.
"Steve'll be all right; the doctors told me that," Clara said, drawing back and using her handkerchief. "It was the pain twisting Steve's face that broke me down."
Lucy nodded, and just for a second she exchanged places with Clara, seeing what Clara had seen, only it was Gabe they'd brought in. She leaned forward and clasped Clara close in her arms once again.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Dust stirred uneasily in the bar of winter sunlight slanting across the tunnel's black mouth. A rumble of deep, earth-rooted sound reached Gabe's ears from the darkness.
He hunkered down, listening as the tunnel cave-in that had caught Steve continued to close a little tighter the rich seam of ore beyond it. Angered at their rotten luck, Gabe jabbed and pounded at the rich ore samples on the ground near the tunnel entrance. Steve had brought them out, saying that they were "bloody rich." Then he'd gone back into the mine to get his leg smashed.
Bloody rich was right! Gabe winced as he remembered finding Steve's unconscious body on the mine tracks, his leg brutally pinned beneath a great slab of rock.
If it hadn't been for one thing, he'd be blaming himself for Steve's accident right now, for he'd been aware of Steve's high excitement over the strike. It had hit him, too, but not enough to let him forget the danger in the mine.
No ... he would've followed Steve into the tunnel if Loring hadn't come up from the mill, asking for help with the air compressor that furnished a precious measure of fresh air to help clear the gas out of the tunnel when they were mucking. He'd gone down to the mill with Loring to get the compressor running, because it seemed most important that Steve should have air in the mine.
Ordinarily, it took two men only a few minutes to get the compressor going, but that day it'd taken much longer, probably because they'd been trying to rush the job. And then, when he'd gone past the grizzly crusher on the way back to the mouth of the tunnel, he'd experienced a moment of panic, for the low level of the ore in the crusher was a sure sign that Steve hadn't been out of the mine.
His agitation had been so great he'd scarcely been able to get his mine lamp going. Every move was clumsy and slow. The way into the blackness of the tunnel had seemed endless, with the air becoming charged with the rock dust from the cave-in and increasing his fear for Steve until he was plunging forward, yelling into the murk. Then his light fell on Steve's body.
Gabe remembered leaping forward to heave uselessly at the rock on Steve's legs. The nearest tools-a bar was what he had to have-were near the end of the tunnel, so he'd hurried back to get what he needed. He had no clear recollection of how he was able to get the huge slab up enough to free Steve's legs-Loring had shaken his head later at the wonder of it. He had only known that Steve must be gotten out of the mine, and this he had done, prying the rock up to free Steve's legs and then carrying him out of the mine on his shoulders.
Gabe dropped the chunk of rich ore he'd been holding and passed a hand over his tense face. God, how Steve had suffered when he came to on the way to Minetown! But all of that suffering could yet go for nothing, and all the work and the money, too. And their dreams, their hopes-they could go, too, unless he stopped stalling. He knew what had to be done. The tunnel had to be mucked out, the rock fall timbered up, and that bloody-rich ore mined and put through the mill.
It wasn't going to be easy or safe, and there were an endless number of shifts of work coming up. With Steve gone, there would be no breaks-no taking turns working outside in the fresh air to throw off the powder gas.
Gabe's jaw bulged as he picked up a battered carbide mine lamp from the top of an empty powder box. There were some carbide and water beside it, and he filled up. He was using a needle reamer to clean the lamp's burner when he saw Loring coming up from the mill, his shoulder pushing an ore car.
When he had the empty car up even with Gabe's position at the mouth of the tunnel, Gabe could see that he was carrying Steve's carbide lamp. Gabe stepped onto the tracks, forcing Loring to halt the car.
"I'll be having a look-see in there alone, today, Loring," he said.
Loring stiffened stubbornly.
"Two lights beat one in that kind of ground."
Gabe laid a long pinch bar in the car as he stepped around behind it, shouldering Loring aside gently but firmly.
"Thanks for offering," he said gruffly, "but your job is down at the mill. We aren't paying you enough for working up here in snow-slide country, as it is. I'm sure not going to let you go into the mine."
As he moved forward cautiously into the tunnel, Gabe barred down huge slabs of rocks off the roof. The treachery of the tunnel became more apparent as two-and three-ton slabs fell with only a light nudge of his bar.
When he had gone about two hundred feet, he came up against a muck pile that almost filled the tunnel. Here, Steve had caught the mountain on his leg!
The skin tightened across Gabe's shoulders as he swung his light over the muck pile. The air was still filled with rock dust from the fall he'd heard a short time ago.
His light picked out two shovels and a bar leaning against the wall-the tools he'd used to free Steve. Putting Steve's agony out of his mind, he got to the job of mucking out the pile of waste rock. When he'd removed enough to make room for a set of timber, he went outside and down to the tool shed in the mill for a timber saw.
While he was in the shed, a big white cat that'd wandered in from somewhere to make the mine buildings his home, began to rub against his leg, purring a hungry song. He'd been feeding the cat regularly, but he'd missed a couple of days. He picked up the gaunt animal and walked down a flight of wooden steps to the noisy main floor of the mill.
Spotting Loring at the task of checking some pulley bearings, he went to him, bending down to make himself heard.
"Loring," he said, "Whitey's been pretty hard on the canned milk. You got a few cans down at your cabin?"
Loring raised his eyes mockingly, obviously still smarting a little because Gabe had refused to let him go into the mine.
"Ah, the milk of human kindness," he chanted.
Then, more soberly, he continued: "Isn't worrying about your horse enough? Must you fill in your blues some more with the cat?" Gabe straightened angrily.
"Listen, Loring, I only asked if you had some canned milk at your cabin-not for your concern about my worries!"
Loring's face softened suddenly.
"Forget it, Gabe; I'll go down to the cabin for the milk. But don't think I'm not on to you-You're trying to get me off the mountain again."
Gabe smiled a little. This wasn't the first time he'd thought of some excuse to get Loring off the mountain. The hour a man spent away from the mine might be his luckiest, considering the way the snow-slide danger was increasing up-slope.
"It's a man's duty to take care of a dumb friend," he told Loring. Then he added jokingly, "I mean the cat, of course."
A little later, his thoughts turned to Duke. He hadn't been able to keep up Duke's feed payments at the Braken ranch. Braken's last dunning letter had threatened to turn Duke out into the badlands. Braken had fenced that area, enclosing many square miles to make cheap summer pasture for his hardiest stock. Gabe was tortured by the knowledge that the pampered Duke could never survive the winter on that bleak, mostly ungrassed area. In the winter, it wouldn't sustain a jackrabbit. And how the wind howled across that barren waste, scooping up the snow and hurling it through the air in blinding blizzards!
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Clara and Steve were married in Steve's room at the hospital. Lucy's dad made it to the wedding, but Gabe stayed on Black Mountain to "keep things going," as he put it.
"Steve had only reached the ore vein the day he was hurt. The vein's broadened out into a rich pocket of ore now," Lucy's dad confided to her. "Gabe figures the best wedding present he can give Clara and Steve is to stay right up there on Black Mountain and get out as much of that high grade as he can. But for the time being, with conditions as they are at the mine, he thinks the less said about the strike the better. That way Steve and Clara will never know their true loss if things go wrong."
Lucy found her dad adamant in his refusal to tell her about the worsening conditions on Black Mountain. Instead, he switched the subject and told her something that lifted her spirits, because suddenly for the first time, she saw a way to do something for Gabe-something besides merely hoping and praying for him.
It seemed that most of Gabe's gloom and moodiness was due to his worrying about paying for Duke's keep at the Braken ranch. Gabe was certain that if he were turned out into the badlands it would be the end of Duke, because even range-hardened animals often succumbed to the blizzards that swept through the barren country.
Lucy knew that Gabe might be haunted by a remembered period in his youth, when he hadn't been able to save another well-loved animal from being winter-killed.
Her dad told her other things about Gabe, such as his affection for Whitey, the big house-cat that prowled the mine buildings.
"Gabe's a strange one-" her dad said, "-so dreamy yet methodical. There's no hurrying him, but he never gives up, either. He thinks ahead and gets things done right."
Lucy drank in her dad's praise of Gabe eagerly with one part of her mind, while the other was busily laying plans to help Gabe. She swiftly decided to go back to her part-time job in the laundry office. It would pay Duke's keep at the Mine-town Riding Stables.
Of course, she'd have to make a trip out to the Braken ranch without delay and arrange to have Duke brought in. These things she'd do in secret.
That night Lucy stretched out on the divan with Gabe's letters. She often re-read them when she was feeling especially lonely, and tonight her spirits were drooping very low. She didn't want to hear the lisp of wind-driven snowflakes against the north window of the trailer; the deep endless snows of this winter depressed her.
More and more she'd taken to staying in the trailer, reading and listening to the radio. She'd grown to dread the weather forecasts. The gloomy predictions of snow and blizzard conditions were endless-as endless and bitter as the prairie winters Gabe'd described in his letters to her. Parts of Gabe's letters haunted her with their loneliness.
His parents had died when he was nine, and he'd gone to live on his Uncle John's sheep ranch. Of this period of his boyhood, he'd written:
I remember riding home from grade school and twisting around in the saddle to watch the snow-covered flat widening between me and the tiny schoolhouse until it was one with the distance, and loneliness rushed in to cut me off from the talk and laughter of school-day chums. I always faced forward in the saddle then and rode fast over the lonely prairie, determined to get used to the loneliness in one quick plunge.
The pony's hooves beat a hollow, testing tattoo on the wind-packed, crusted snow. Often the crust gave way, letting his legs sink through. Then he'd break gait and start bucking and leaping to keep his feet.
I usually rode past the big bunch on the way home. The big bunch, with its busy milling around, that set the many bells in the herd to ringing-this was the most exciting sight and sound on the winter prairie. The sheep could be seen for two miles or more along the high ridges, where they found the snow blown off the short prairie grass.
As a rule, Uncle John tried to winter about four thousand head. And then he'd worry about having too many, especially if the winter was worse than usual. Tough winters, as I came to know, made sheep ranching every bit the chance thing Uncle John was always warning it was. The sheep had to be handled skillfully. There was never enough hay and grain. What there was , had to be rationed out sparingly, and only to the best ewes because they'd have the lambs in the spring. Uncle's discipline put an invisible padlock on the grainary during the long winter months.
Lucy sorted through the letters until she found the one in which Gabe told about adopting a huge male sheep for a pet. He'd written:
I saw this big ram at the drag end of the bunch and recognized him as the one I'd seen win a glorious battle just before the mating season in the fall. But now in the middle of the winter the very size of him, that had helped him win battles, was against him because he needed so much feed to sustain his strength. He was lame and gaunt.
That night after supper I slipped out and filled my pockets full of grain and took it to the ram. As I stood watching him eat the grain, noting the way he moved his head, wearing the massive weight of his horns with a kind of weary dignity, I knew that he'd not make it through the winter without extra feed. I vowed to steal grain for him as often as I could. I guess my motives for wanting to keep the ram alive were a little selfish, for I wanted to feel again the excitement I'd had in the fall, when I'd watched him preparing for battle. First, there'd been the preliminary shaking of his majestic head. Then his confident, stiff-legged backing away from an opponent to get the forty or fifty feet he needed for a run. I'll always thrill at how the two rams went for each other head-on, their hooves digging for the speed they were capable of in short spurts. I think my ram achieved his victories in the wondrous split second of timing just before he crashed into his opponent. In that instant he was a living missile, and the crack of massive horns could be heard for a mile!
Most poignant was Gabe's telling of losing the ram:
One night the ram didn't come in with the herd. I sat in the living room and pretended to be busy with my homework, listening to the wind whining through the woven wire fence around the yard and striking the sides of the house. Soon the wind had the snow in the air, driving it against the windows.
In the days following the storm, I rode many roundabout miles to and from school hunting for the ram, though I realized he'd likely frozen to death. Then I gave up, knowing only by the merest chance might I stumble upon him in the deeply drifted snow. It was not until spring, when the snow began to melt, that I happened upon his body, shrouded in the sparse thicket where he'd tried to find shelter from the blizzard wind.
Lucy sighed and put away the letters. Her mood lifted a little as she prepared for bed. Tomorrow she must get up early to see to it that the fate which had befallen Gabe's ram didn't overtake another of his beloved animals.
The Braken ranch was fifteen miles beyond Pretty Forks, and by the time Lucy turned her tired old car in at the ranch gate, she was glad it was no further. She was surprised by the size and magnificence of the ranch, with its large house, numerous corrals and outbuildings, all well kept and neatly painted. This, she supposed, was something like Gabe dreamed of having one day.
She stopped in the middle of the two-acre yard and alighted from her car. Suddenly a tall, unkempt man of middle age appeared.
"Hello!" Lucy exclaimed, startled, sidling away from him to edge toward the house.
"Braken ain't home," the man said laconically. "He and the missus went visitin' for a spell."
"When will they be back?" Lucy asked, noticing the man's shifty eyes.
He hadn't really looked at her, yet. His glances just dabbed here and there, making her nervous.
"I hope it won't be too long," Lucy went on. "You see, I came to arrange to have Gabe Clarke's horse taken by trailer to Minetown."
The man shrugged.
"They'll be back," he said vaguely. "As for the horse-he's out there."
He jabbed a thumb toward the largest barn and smirked suddenly in a way that made the gesture obscene.
Lucy turned toward the barn, glad to leave the man standing in the middle of the yard. When she reached the barn, she went in, looking in the stalls for Duke. But the barn was empty. Then she heard something at the back of the barn, outside. She put her hands on top of the closed lower section of the barn door and looked out into a corral.
Duke was standing close to a slender, chestnut mare, nuzzling her flank. As he turned hjs side toward her, Lucy found herself staring at the taut organ of a stud on the verge of mating. At first, she was embarrassed for Duke and a little angry with him for shocking her. But she quickly dismissed that as absurd. No one could blame him.
There was someone she could blame, however. That man! He'd known what she'd see. He was probably watching her, right now! Lucy began quivering with anger. She'd like to catch him spying and spit in his shifty eyes.
She heard a car drive into the yard before she was out of the barn. Hoping it was the Brakens, she hurried and soon was able to see the car parked beside hers, and a couple walking toward the house.
She hoped it wouldn't take too long to make arrangements, because she suddenly had used up most of the courage and determination she'd gathered for this secret effort to help Gabe. The man she took to be Braken came forward to meet her.
"Howdy, ma'am," he said tentatively.
"Mr. Braken?" Lucy queried.
"That's right. What can I do for you?"
"I came down from Minetown, hoping I could hire you to move Gabe Clarke's horse to the Minetown Riding Stables. Will you do it, Mr. Braken?"
Braken nodded.
"Glad to, ma'am. I wasn't looking forward to turning Gabe's horse out to winter pasture, but we have to buy most of our feed in town and that runs into a lot of money!"
"Yep! I'll load the horse in a trailer and have him at the Minetown Riding Stables about noon tomorrow. We can settle up then."
Lucy murmured her thanks hurriedly as she turned toward her car. Reaction to the experience in the barn was picking at her taut nerves. She somehow coupled it in her mind with the way Beulah had slyly suggested she look into a window at the back of the Three Nickels.
"You'll see what a man likes to get from a woman," Beulah had said.
Then, as now, Lucy's feeling was one of being tricked and embarrassed-and of being laughed at.
Once on the road back to Minetown, her head went up proudly and her mood brightened. After all, she'd accomplished what she'd set out to do. But it must be kept a secret. Something much deeper than gratitude must cause Gabe to tell her of his love. She prayed silently that he'd soon come safely down from treacherous Black Mountain ... come safely into her yearning arms.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Lucy was having trouble starting her old car. Continuous cold weather without much driving was taking its toll of the battery. In the middle of berating all mechanical and electrical things, Lucy suddenly blessed them. Her car needed driving. It needed driving enough for her to skip school; she'd drive up into the mountains. She might get as far as the cabin. The road might even be open beyond-to Black Mountain!
When the motor finally coughed and caught, she took it to be a propitious omen and sat tensely in the seat, nursing the cold engine with delicate care. So intent was she that she didn't see Old Sadie slip out of the Three Nickels. Not until she was at the side of the car did Lucy see her. She felt some misgivings as Old Sadie laid a proprietary hand on the door handle. She smiled stiffly.
Today, for some reason that might have to do with this woman's being friends with Big Sig, she saw the pseudo-motherliness Old Sadie always assumed with her as a calculated, ingratiating piece of acting. What the Three Nickels girls had hinted about Old Sadie having plans for her came to mind, and her body stiffened, alert to danger.
Now Sadie had climbed into the front seat, and was addressing Lucy, her elegant cigarette holder chopping the air in front of Lucy's eyes.
"Tell me, child-do you know where Clara's living now?" she asked.
Old Sadie's voice was a wheezy sound, flat and without inflection, as though her vocal cords were paralyzed, as indeed it was said they were-by excessive drinking.
Lucy sat back limply, giving no answer for a moment. She wanted time to throw up a barrier between Old Sadie and Clara. Old Sadie had no place in Clara's sweet, new life.
"I thought Clara had your blessings when she left," she said.
Clara had told her that Old Sadie hadn't objected in the least to her leaving.
"I like to look after my girls," Old Sadie retorted with a buttering of sly hypocrisy. "Maybe she can use some help. It's tough on a girl away from a house sometimes."
Lucy didn't miss the nasty way she kept saying "girl" and it made her angry.
"Clara isn't one of your 'girls' any more, Sadie, and the best way you can help her is by leaving her alone!"
"Pah!" Old Sadie's lips twisted. "My girls never stay away if I want them back," she boasted.
Lucy suddenly felt like laughing. Old Sadie could not know that Clara was happily married now. She couldn't realize how futile her nasty mouthings were.
"It wouldn't do you any good to see Clara," she told her flatly.
"I think it might," Old Sadie argued. "And I know it would do Clara five hundred dollars worth of good! That's what I'll give her to come back just for a few days."
Lucy shook her head unbelievingly.
"Five hundred dollars! Sadie-who do you think you're kidding? You never thought Clara was that good in the Three Nickels!"
Old Sadie squeezed Lucy's arm amiably and her eyes had an appraising look in their black depths.
"I've always said you were smart. The way you've sized this up proves it. I never thought Clara could hold a candle to Beulah, but Big Sig wants her back. He's threatened to see that I'm closed up if I don't get Clara back."
"Then it wouldn't be for just a few days?" Lucy noted coldly.
"Of course not, honey. But it won't be any problem getting her to stay once she's back."
"Really?" Lucy laughed then, right in Old Sadie's face. "You're fooling yourself, Sadie. Clara is out of the Three Nickels for good! She's married and very happy."
A peculiar vindictiveness spread over Old Sadie's sallow features. It was as if the word happy had tripped a trapdoor somewhere inside her and flushed out a mess of evil.
"We'll see," she muttered.
Lucy frowned. She reached across and opened the door on Sadie's side of the car.
"Please, Sadie-I'm in a hurry," she said impatiently.
Sadie glared, but she got out. Having gained the sidewalk, she turned and peered slyly into the car at Lucy.
"How would you like to try for the five hundred dollars, honey?"
Lucy winced and stiffened as though Old Sadie'd struck her. She hit the steering wheel so hard it knocked the breath out of her for an instant as she scrambled to get out of the car and catch Old Sadie, who turned to scurry toward the Three Nickels. But she saw quickly that Old Sadie was beyond reach. Her startled look was gone, replaced by a kind of sullen brooding as she turned at the open door of the Three Nickels, looking back at Lucy-seemingly waiting for her.
Lucy started forward and then stopped as warning fingers of fear went up and down her spine. Some of the terror she'd felt during her encounter with Big Sig came back. Slowly she turned and walked toward the car, the taunting sound of Old Sadie's laugh and the slamming of a door accompanying her.
The boughs of the pine and spruce along the road were heavy with their white loads of snow. Many landmarks along the way-landmarks dear and familiar to Lucy-were covered completely or distorted into humped caricatures by the deep snow.
A man, standing close to a curve in the road and waving a flag, was Lucy's first warning of the snow plow just ahead. Even as she braked the car, her gaze went anxiously beyond the plow to see if the road was open.
It was not!
She slumped tiredly behind the wheel, frustration killing off the last of her good spirits. Still five miles from the cabin, she'd have to turn around.
"You'll have to turn around, miss," the flagman called, echoing her frustration.
Lucy smiled bitterly at his nonchalance. She wondered if he enjoyed seeing people balked.
"Where ya trying to get to?" he queried.
"About five miles farther up-to my dad's cabin."
He studied for a minute.
"Maybe tomorrow-sometime in the afternoon, likely. If it doesn't start snowing and blowing again between now and then."
As Lucy started back toward town, she just remembered that tomorrow the payment was due for Duke's keep. And after she made that, there'd be no money for gasoline to make another trip up here.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Physically ill much of the time from going into the mine too soon after blasting-before the powder gas had time to settle-Gabe drove himself mercilessly. Despondency dogged him in the black gloom of the mine as he sweated out each heavy shift of work ... drilling, blasting, mucking.
One evening, after drilling a round of holes, he stood at the face of the tunnel, loading. Placing the powder and primers in the holes had long since become routine. Not that he was careless. He had far too much respect for the power of dynamite for that; but the tasks no longer absorbed his full attention-no longer prevented a continual awareness of the dreary blackness of the mine beyond the yellow bubble of light provided by his mine lamp.
Revulsion for the smell of powder gas and damp, mouldy air hammered at his guts. Suddenly he knew that he had to get away for a few hours or he'd chuck the whole thing. All the mine stood for-marriage to Lucy, saving Duke, having a ranch and helping Steve-the significance of these goals was dimmed. He was very tired of obligations. He wanted only a few hours ... a night to himself. And that was all it could be because he had little cash-enough for a few drinks and a meal in town.
Perhaps it was pride, but he didn't want to go to Lucy or Steve. It would be too much like stopping in the middle of a race to ask for encouragement. What he felt most was a longing to get completely away from the familiar-away to lose himself among strangers.
When he hit the fresh air at the mouth of the tunnel, Gabe sucked in a long, grateful breath and headed for the mill, walking with the first real zest he'd felt in days. He pulled the master switch at the top of the stairs leading down into the bowels of the mill. The roaring machinery slowed toward a shuddering stop.
Gabe listened intently, expecting he knew not what to fell the ensuing quiet. In a flash of wild perversity, he willed the great snow mass above the mill to loose its fury and come hurtling down. He laughed at himself when nothing happened.
A reckless mood possessed him. He yelled down into the mill, calling Loring's name. He had to take Loring off the mountain with him-the one familiar face he couldn't walk away from. Loring wouldn't be around long, after they got to the Bridge Tavern, anyway-at least, not in a way to make his presence felt. He made a bet with himself that Loring would be passing-out drunk within an hour after the first shot of whiskey.
They'd been in a booth, drinking, for less than an hour when Loring's attention began to waver from the discussion about the people sitting at the bar. Gabe liked to watch people, guess their occupations and status in life, and for awhile Loring had joined in earnestly. But now he was settling back in the corner of the booth, his eyes staring, a contented smile on his mouth.
Gabe drew Loring's attention to a lone woman at the bar who kept throwing glances at their booth.
"Stop looking at her," Loring advised. "If you don't, she'll be over here telling us the story of her life."
Gabe grinned, somewhat amused by the diversion. The woman seemed curious about them. And who could blame her? He and Loring were roughly dressed even for a mining town. They'd gone several days without shaving.
"I don't think she's really trying to flirt," Gabe said. "I'm not sure she even sees us with all this brush on our faces!"
"Don't bet on it," Loring retorted, then laughed. "On the other hand, do bet on it with me," he urged, pulling a half-dollar out of his pocket and laying it on the table. "That says she'll be over here long before we leave."
Gabe got two quarters out of his pocket-the last of his change-and put it beside Loring's money.
"Well, if she does come, she'll find us poor prospects for free drinks," he said, grinning.
After a short silence he looked across the booth at Loring. He saw that the old man's head was nodding and his eyelids were beginning to droop. The drinks and warm meal were relaxing him.
Gabe looked toward the bar again and saw the woman they'd been talking about get up and walk toward the rest rooms at the back of the tavern. As the light struck her face, he noted that it was old from dissipation instead of years. He hoped that she'd not come to the booth, but a few minutes later he felt a hand on his shoulder and he looked up to see her standing beside him, an un-lighted cigarette between her lips. She removed the cigarette slowly, giving him plenty of time to see that it was unlighted.
"Light?" she queried softly.
"Sure," Gabe replied.
He dug into the pocket of his leather jacket for a book of matches.
As Gabe lit the woman's cigarette, he shoved the money on the table toward Loring and jogged the old man's arm to awaken him.
Loring grinned as he took in the woman's presence. He seemed about to say something as he picked up the money, but a jangle of voices at the bar distracted him.
Gabe himself went tense, because the men at the bar were greeting a man just entering the tavern, calling him Mr. Larsen. Mr. Larsen!
Gabe watched the newcomer swagger across the room to the bar. His size and bearing would've gained attention anywhere. Here, where he was known-and feared-this attention was magnified; much of it was fawning.
Positive as he was that this was Big Sig, Gabe had to make doubly sure that he was going to brawl with the right man. For he knew that he'd never leave or allow the big bastard at the bar to leave until they had it out with their fists.
Gabe caught Loring's eye.
"That Big Sig?" he asked harshly.
Loring nodded, seeming to read Gabe's mind, and every vestige of drowsiness fled his face. Gabe saw him start to protest, then change his mind. A fierce gleam came into his eyes.
"How good are you with your fists, Gabe?"
"Good enough, I reckon," Gabe said tersely.
He motioned the woman away when she tried to get his attention by returning his matches.
"I've heard that he fights dirty," Loring warned, as they got up from the booth and walked toward the bar.' , "That figures," Gabe said and shunted Loring down to the empty end of the bar.
Big Sig was just reaching for his drink when Gabe shoved the shot glass away from his hand. Big Sig turned and squinted at Gabe's face.
"A little trouble?" Big Sig drawled.
"Some-" Gabe retorted, "-up at the Black Mountain Mine, where my partner was damned near killed! And down at the Three Nickels, where you just might have ideas about putting your dirty hands on my girl!"
"Your girl?" Big Sig echoed, puzzled. "At the Three Nickels?"
"Lucy Loring!"
"Ah!" Big Sig's face twisted into a grimly smiling mask. He turned to the bartender. "Pete, switch on the lights down in the rumpus room. This man wants a fight!"
Big Sig led the way downstairs to the basement. Gabe and Loring followed. Behind them trooped the barroom patrons. Gabe got the feeling that there was nothing unusual in these proceedings, for either Big Sig or most of the crowd. This feeling became a certainty when he saw the brightly lighted basement with its cleared space in the middle and the old cases and kegs ranged around as seats.
Big Sig strode across the open space and began removing his shirt. Gabe stripped off his leather jacket, then his shirt, and handed both to Loring.
Meanwhile, the crowd had ranged themselves in seats on Big Sig's side of the floor. Gabe could hear them laying bets as they eyed him and Big Sig measuringly. All the odds favored Big Sig.
As they advanced to the center of the crude ring, Gabe saw that Big Sig would prefer to wrestle and gouge. The big man was standing flat-footed, crouched, and his arms were outstretched with open hands, ready to catch, grapple and roughhouse.
Instinctively Gabe went in straight, his fists clenched, guard up, flicking his fist into Big Sig's face, trying to get him to lunge. When Big Sig did come in with a bull-like rush, Gabe dug a hard right to the belly.
As Gabe's fist sank into Big Sig's midriff, the pattern of the fight was set as far as Gabe was concerned. For now he knew that the big man was soft in the belly. He'd take punishment and keep coming in, trying to get his crushing power around Gabe's body.
All the power of Big Sig's huge body went into his lunges, and while Gabe was fast enough on his feet to elude the great, clutching arms, he knew that if Big Sig ever closed with him, his lesser weight and slighter build would be at a great advantage. So he continued to stab and cut up Big Sig's supporters. But Gabe knew that it was the less showy blows to Big Sig's guts that would finally whittle his opponent down-if that was to be.
It became a contest between Gabe's speed and the durability of Big Sig's guts. Gabe's fist had gotten home to Big Sig's belly repeatedly in the first furious minutes of the fight. But the big man never flinched, never brought his arms in close to his own body to protect it. Always his arms were outspread, waiting for one misstep that would bring Gabe into his clutching reach.
Gabe began to know moments of doubt as the fight continued and his best blows seemed to have no effect. He began to take more desperate chances-gliding in to land his blows more frequently. He turned Big Sig's face into a grinning bloody mask. Then the sole of his shoe hit a wet spot on the floor, probably a spot of Big Sig's blood, and the huge man had his arms around him like a living vise.
Gabe heard his own breath driven from his lungs in one long painful gush as Big Sig's powerful arms closed just below his chest. He was unable to draw another good breath and the effect of Big Sig's hold around his body was almost as lethal as a strangle hold on his throat.
Gabe writhed fiercely, gritting back an outcry as pain exploded on his spine where Big Sig's knuckles were cutting in. He gathered the muscles in his shoulders for a supreme effort and heard Big Sig make a guttural sound of derision.
Black dots floated in front of Gabe's eyes as he strained. Gradually he felt Big Sig's sweaty arms give a little.
Gabe brought his right arm down, forcing a space between his body and Big Sig's. Then he bowed his back to get more clearance, and brought his fist up into Big Sig's belly with all the strength he could gather.
He felt the big man sag, and they almost went down together. Then Gabe slid free of Big Sig's arms and began to put more blows to his opponent's face and belly. Big Sig was rocky now, and his arms were hanging at his sides.
Gabe went inside and sent his fist deep into the unprotected guts of his enemy. Big Sig grunted with agony and his face went ghastly gray. He sank to his knees clasping his belly, rolled to the floor and lay doubled up on his side, groaning.
The silence was rent by a single jubilant shout from Loring. Gabe felt the old man hug him and kiss his cheek.
Then he was slipping Gabe's arms into the sleeves of his shirt and urging him toward the steps, as he said:
"Let's get out of here, Gabe-before this bunch realizes their boy has been licked!"
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Lucy stared at Clara's mirrored reflection across the tiny light housekeeping room. She could scarcely believe, as she looked at the girl's tear-reddened eyes and trembling mouth, that this was the radiant bride of a short time ago, Where was her courage?
Of course, the hospital was being nasty about Steve's unpaid hospital bill. And the thought of bringing him to this shabby room today must be upsetting to her, but Lucy felt that these things alone didn't account for the all-gone look she saw deep in Clara's eyes.
Clara was insecure and afraid!
She was afraid of facing the world alone. She was doubly afraid of facing it with a crippled man. And without money.
Lucy began unwrapping the packages she had brought.
"I thought we could have a little party when we get Steve home," she said, taking the white and pink frosted angel food cake out of its bakery box and putting it on a plate in the middle of the small kitchenette table.
She cast a quick glance at Clara's unanswering back.
Clara was slumped at a battered dressing table in one corner, staring at her hands. Looking closely at Clara's face in the mirror, Lucy could see that she was nearly in tears again.
She went on unwrapping other things-paper doilies, two colorful vases from the dime store and, lastly, a fine leather album that she'd bought at a better store. To her way of thinking, an album was a kind of family cornerstone, right next to the Bible.
She fingered the smooth leather lovingly, tracing the lettering she'd had engraved upon it:
THE STEPHEN BURRICK FAMILY
The gift had seemed right when she'd purchased it. She studied Clara's back, then slipped the album into an unlocked suitcase standing in an open clothes closet. Perhaps Clara would use the album some day.
Afterward, Lucy moved restlessly about the room. She went over the preparations for the party aloud, trying to get Clara to show some interest.
She looked at the clock. It was four-thirty now, and they were to go for Steve at five-thirty. If there was anything else they needed to please Steve, there was still time to get it.
"We've got an hour before going for Steve, Clara. Can you think of anything else we need?"
Clara fumbled in her purse and brought out a five-dollar bill and handed it to Lucy.
"Get bourbon," she ordered.
Her look was bitter and sarcastic, when Lucy blurted:
"Whiskey? Not for Steve ... just out of the hospital!"
"No, not for Steve. For me. Get it, will you? While I change."
Only one place in town would sell Lucy whiskey without an argument about her age, and that was the general store where she bought supplies for her dad.
It was while walking the three blocks to the store that she became aware of Old Sadie's car behind her, moving slowly in the light traffic. The car was quite close now, and a quick backward glance told Lucy that Beulah was driving with Old Sadie beside her.
Lucy turned a corner quickly and gained half a block on the car. She stepped into a store entrance, determined to know if Old Sadie was following her. If she was, there could be only one reason for it-to find out where Clara was living. This thought sent her scurrying out of the store entrance and up the street.
Lucy walked a half block beyond the general store before she checked her racing thoughts and remembered her errand. She looked sharply up and down the street as she retraced her steps. Old Sadie's car had disappeared.
She breathed easier. A few days ago she'd laughed at the idea of Old Sadie getting Clara back to the Three Nickels. But recalling the scared look that'd lurked deep in Clara's eyes, she didn't laugh now.
The best thing would be to get Clara out of town, keep her in a place where she'd be safe from Old Sadie. Lucy began thinking about her dad's empty cabin.
As they left the hospital with Steve, Lucy was glad that he absorbed all Clara's attention. Otherwise Clara might've noticed that they were going in the wrong direction to get back to her place. As it was, they were well beyond the city limits before she noticed anything wrong.
Even then she was satisfied with Lucy's blithe explanation:
"Oh, I'm just driving around-thought Steve might enjoy it after being cooped up in the hospital."
"Right you are, Lucy," Steve agreed. "Keep right on this road and I'll go up and have Gabe run these damned crutches through the grizzly crusher!"
Steve's spirits were rising by the minute. He was leaning playfully against Clara, drinking in the sights along the road.
"Is this really the road to the mine?" Clara asked suddenly.
Lucy nodded.
"And to my dad's cabin," she said, biting her lip, because she'd almost added, "-where you're going to stay for the next few weeks."
She wondered what Clara would say if she knew that while she'd been in the hospital getting Steve ready, her shabby walk-up kitchenette apartment had been stripped and bundled, her clothes packed and all of the belongings-along with a white and pink cake-packed in the old car's luggage compartment.
By the time Clara became really alarmed about getting so far from town, Lucy was ready. She'd switched on her lights and was noting with satisfaction how high and solid the plow-cut snow banks were on both sides of the road-and how narrow the road was between the banks. No one could turn around here.
"I'm afraid we're in a mess," she told Clara and Steve. "I can't turn around-the road is too narrow."
"Oh, fine!" Clara said, her voice -edged and harsh.
Lucy knew she hadn't touched the bourbon before leaving the apartment, but that she probably wanted a drink now.
"Well, what will we do?" Clara demanded after a long, uneasy silence, during which the old car purred along, moving them nearer to where Lucy wanted to go.
"Take it easy, honey," Steve told her, good-naturedly. "It isn't Lucy's fault they didn't plow the road a little wider. I guess the road crew wanted to get the road open as quickly as they could."
"There is a place where I know we can turn around," Lucy announced carefully. "But it's quite a long way."
Clara was sulking now.
It was Steve who said:
"We're not suffering; do whatever you think best, Lucy."
"But, Lucy, we've got to get back! We-we can't risk getting stuck out here with Steve," Clara cried sharply.
"Cut it out, Clara," Steve told her firmly. "That kind of talk won't do any good. It'll just rattle Lucy."
Lucy was far from rattled. But she was puzzled. There'd been a note of alarm in Clara's voice which was all out of proportion to the situation.
She cast a quick glance back over her shoulder to see if Steve was all right. He was, but Clara was not.
Lucy thought instantly of Old Sadie and realized Clara might've met and talked to her. There'd been time!
Even as she was weighing this possibility, Clara was talking again, and her jumpy tone-even more than what she said-convinced Lucy that her suspicions might be true.
"I met a woman in the hospital when I was getting Steve. She offered me a job in her home for good pay. I'm to meet her tonight."
"Oh!" Lucy murmured dismally.
"That's funny," Steve grunted. "I didn't see anyone talking to you."
"It was before I came into your room-while I was out in the corridor," Clara explained hurriedly.
Lucy saw several holes in Clara's explanation, but right now, she had her hands full with the car-turning it into the approach road and then running off the road and getting stuck, right beside the cabin.
"Darn!" she exclaimed, as the hind wheels began to spin and the treads buzzed in the deep snow.
She got out of the car, flashlight in hand, and slammed the door. Twice around the car, and she was joined by Clara, floundering like a bird in the deep snow.
"Luckily the car is practically against the porch," Lucy pointed out. "We won't have any trouble getting Steve into the cabin. Let's do that before he gets cold."
Lucy chattered continuously all the while they were getting a fire going in the cabin and settling Steve comfortably. Then she picked up a large flashlight.
The time'd come to unload the luggage compartment-to get Clara alone. She patted Steve's shoulder.
"Can you do without us gals for a little while?" she asked, noting that, except for being a little tired-looking, he seemed very cheerful.
"Sure," he agreed. "Forget I'm here. Fact is, I wouldn't mind camping in this cabin for a spell."
"Come and help me, will you, Clara?" she asked, leading the way to the door.
Outside, she went immediately to the back of the car and opened the luggage compartment. She held the flashlight up so that Clara couldn't mistake what was within.
She heard Clara gasp.
"My God, what have you done? What is the meaning of bringing all my stuff out here?" Lucy faced her soberly.
"I just couldn't see why you and Steve should pay rent on that dismal apartment during your honeymoon, when the cabin out here's much more pleasant and roomy."
Clara gave an angry little wail. She stepped close, and Lucy saw that her blue eyes were abnormally large and full of storm.
"You had no right to interfere! I don't want your charity. I don't need it! I've got a chance to make some money back in town, and you want to isolate me out here. Old Sadie warned me you might try something."
"Old Sadie!" Lucy repeated.
Clara was on the porch now. She turned at the door and said:
"I know you can get that car out onto the road again. I'm going to get Steve ready. You're taking us back to town!"
"Wait!" Lucy cried, anxious to stop Clara before she went back into the cabin.
She caught Clara's arm and pulled her away from the door, as she said tensely:
"Clara, you're going to be well fixed-you and Steve. Gabe's sure the ore at the mine is very rich-much richer than Steve believed!"
"That does it!" Clara cried. "I've known all along that you think the money Steve may get from the mine means all that much to me, and he'll think so, too, eventually! Then where'll I be? Me with all my mouthing to him about wanting security! Oh, Lucy, don't you see that I'm afraid he'll accuse me of using him to get out of the gutter?"
Lucy gripped her arms sternly.
"I see that he's given you his name! It'll kill him if you crawl back into the gutter with it."
Lucy felt Clara wince, and for a moment she thought the girl was going to strike out at her.
Then Clara spoke, her voice firm and resolved:
"I'll stay here, Lucy. I'll stay here ... and I'll make him a good wife."
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
When the snow mass above the mine made its first move, it came as a small slide off to the West of the mill. It wasn't small in the true sense of the word, Gabe realized, but only by comparison with what was left to come down. As he scanned the great snow pack above the mine, all he could see as a result of the slide was a narrow rift in the snow, forming a kind of gulch.
He put on an old pair of snowshoes he'd found hanging in the bunk house to scout close to the edge of the slide. From there he could see that a tremendous avalanche had gone plunging down the mountainside.
As he re-crossed the great depth of snow directly above the mine, he knew the poised white death wasn't going to wait for him to get the rich ore out. The precious time lost timbering the mine tunnel was the thing that was going to lose him the game.
If he could only think of a way to buy some time!
He stopped to study the raw breach gouged out of the snow pack by the avalanche.
How do you bargain with the elemental? he wondered.
And he knew the answer was that you never did. Not if you hesitated. There was a chance only if you acted-acted swiftly and put your life on the counter.
His gaze raked the terrain, the slope of the ground, always going back to the gap left by the small slide. A plan had begun to take form in his mind, and it had its beginnings at the edge of the gap.
Could a charge of dynamite be planted deep in the snow there to start a slide that would lead the whole snow mass down the same route, still missing the mine? he asked himself.
Gabe believed that it might, and he knew, too, that he had to try it or get off the mountain, leaving the rich ore in the mine for Big Sig to come and get at his leisure in the spring.
Gabe started in slowly on Loring as they ate their evening meal. He'd used up all the excuses he could think of to get Loring off the mountain. And tomorrow he wanted him off again and for the last time, probably. But the old man was getting sore as a boil about this drawn-out solicitude.
"I saw you up on the snow pack looking at the hole left by the slide," he said, eyeing Gabe suspiciously. "You think some more's going to let go-that's why you suddenly want all the gold moved down off the mountain, isn't it? Well, I'll tell you something; you've been getting me off this mountain so often that there ain't hardly any gold to take down! So I guess there isn't much point in making a trip. Besides, I gotta stay here and see that you don't do anything foolish."
Gabe shook his head.
"Now you're talking foolish," he said harshly, suddenly impatient with subterfuge. "You'll take what gold there is. The main thing ... be off the mountain in the morning!"
Seeing the old man eyeing him sharply, he added:
"And, Loring, not a word to Steve or anyone down there about the slide."
After Gabe had lowered Loring down the mountain on the Goat the next morning, he went to work immediately gathering the things he believed he'd need to set off a blast on the snow pack. He figured the burning time of the fuse against the distance he'd have to go after he lit it and cut a length generously long to allow for an error in his judgment.
Then he chose three of the sticks used to tamp powder into the holes in the mine and fastened them together to make one long prod. He could make a hole straight down through the snow into which to drop the dynamite.
One of his problems was the dynamite, itself. He obviously couldn't tamp the sticks of dynamite and the primer in the snow. This he solved finally by putting the whole thing together in a hollow cardboard cylinder that had once been the core of a large map hanging in the office.
The surface of the snow was alight with a hard, shifty sparkle as he angled up, across the side of the mountain. The frigid snow crystals made a dry, rasping sound against his snowshoes.
Hitching the load of equipment around to ease it on his shoulders, he squinted up at the sun, judging it to be about eleven o'clock high. With luck he should have the blast set off by noon.
He approached the edge of the snow pit cautiously. Loring hadn't been fooling when he'd said it might be dangerous. Just his weight in the wrong spot might be the one hundred and eighty-five pounds too much.
He chose a spot several yards from the edge of the pit as the place to plant his charge, figuring the dynamite would need as much solid snow around it as possible to keep it from holing out and wasting its power.
Gabe winced as the blast went off not more than five seconds after he reached the ore car tracks near the grizzly crusher. And he'd been the one to talk about Steve cutting the fuse too short!
Almost at once his gaze was drawn to a huge cloud that looked like fog as it rose over the slide pit to the West. A tremendous hissing sound filled the air-like a cataract of falling sand. He was ready to swear he saw a definite shifting movement of the great snow mass toward the West.
He clenched his hands as a thrill of triumphant anticipation went through him. After weeks of being at the mercy of the white monster, it seemed at this moment he'd mastered it. A savage, exultant satisfaction shook him.
But seconds later he was standing tensely in dead silence. Gone was the high, sibilant hissing sound to the West. Another sound rent the air-a sullen, foreboding sound that smothered all his hopes.
Looking directly up the mountain, Gabe saw that a great crack had opened all across the upper side of the snow pack. Since he no longer heard the rushing sound to the West, he guessed that the gap had filled and couldn't carry the onslaught of snow. The movement of the snow mass was now straight down-toward the mine.
Gabe started instinctively toward the only possible shelter-the mouth of the tunnel. Goaded by the deadly danger, which was in the very feel and smell of the air squeezed out ahead of the avalanche, he was covering the distance in frantic leaps when he heard a shrill sound-thin and faint and scarcely cutting through the roar of the oncoming avalanche, yet clearly a human call.
He whirled in mid-stride to see Loring standing several yards away, gazing up the mountain with awe-struck eyes.
Gabe cursed hoarsely as he sprung back from the safety of the tunnel, covered the distance to him, and gathered Loring into his arms. When he turned, a strong, cold wind slapped at him, and he saw the avalanche, risen into a furiously churning, impenetrable wall, racing downward and seeming already to overhang the tunnel mouth. Lowering his head, he clasped the old man more firmly and lunged blindly forward.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
On an evening not many days after she'd taken Clara and Steve up to the cabin, Lucy noticed a police car in front of the Three Nickels. Apparently Big Sig had wasted no time carrying out his threat to throw Old Sadie and her girls to the law.
But she also realized that her trailer would hardly escape notice. She moved about her trailer restlessly, trying to watch the back door of the Three Nickels while she prepared supper.
Twenty minutes later, as she was sitting down to eat, an officer knocked at the door. When she opened it, his eyes met hers in cold appraisal.
Lucy returned his unblinking stare, but inwardly she was quaking.
He stood with his feet wide apart, looking up at her in the doorway of the trailer.
Suddenly he jerked a thumb back toward the Three Nickels and asked gruffly:
"You ever been mixed up with those women in there?"
Lucy shook her head.
He was a frightening-looking man. Wide and short and powerful, he wore a black leather jacket and a shiny badge that tabbed him the Chief of Police. Fortunately he seemed inclined to accept her denial.
"No-I guess not," he muttered, more to himself than to her. "They told me you're Dan Loring's daughter and that you're going to business school. That right?"
Lucy found her voice with a rush, noting now that he wasn't unfriendly.
"Yes," she said.
"Hasn't it been kinda risky-living back here so close to that?" he asked, as he hooked his thumb at the Three Nickels again.
Lucy flushed.
"I didn't have much choice if I wanted to finish school. Besides, I've been careful-" she broke off, embarrassed by his stare.
No doubt it was his business to be inquiring, but she found herself hoping he'd be brief. The best evidence she could think of to support her innocence was the loose boards in the bridge.
Swiftly she told him about taking them out and was relieved to see that here, at last, was something he would accept; also, he appeared to be amused.
A grin bloomed suddenly on his heavy face.
"Well, I'm booting Old Sadie and her girls out of town; they've got until tomorrow."
With this, he turned away and re-crossed the bridge to disappear through the rear door of the Three Nickels.
Many thoughts swirled through Lucy's mind as she watched the Three Nickels. Unable to see the street, she could only wonder if the officer was still inside questioning Old Sadie.
Was Old Sadie cursing and denouncing me? she asked herself.
If so, it was with reason, and Lucy didn't mind in the least. Actually it raised her spirits to think she had in some measure caused the end of the notorious Three Nickels, for it had cast a shadow over many lives-including that of her friend Clara.
Clara would need time to grow strong, morally. Also, she'd need friends in the months to come.
It would probably be good for Clara on Steve's ranch, Lucy thought. Steve himself was going to require help for a long time, until he regained the use of his leg. Clara'd be absorbed and steadied by helping him.
All the next day Lucy went through the motions of her usual routine. After her evening meal, she went to the library, but once settled with a reference book, she couldn't keep her mind on the pages.
No matter what she tried to do now, her thoughts always veered back to Gabe and her dad at the mine. On a sudden impulse she went into a phone booth near the librarian's desk.
During the long wait for her number to go through, she heard a little flurry of confusion in the telephone office.
Then the operator's brisk voice said coolly:
"Sorry! The Black Mountain Mine phone's dead. There's been a snow slide. The repair crews have been unable to get through. It may be a few-"
Lucy didn't hear the rest. She had just enough strength to replace the phone receiver automatically.
For a space she sagged weakly in the booth, the hard beating of her heart loud in the confined silence. The suffocating closeness of the air in the booth moved her finally out of the booth.
. She'd walked some distance toward her parked car before her thoughts began to form coherently. And then a wave of anguish cut through her, and frightened tears started from her eyes.
The old car was only a blur as she took the car keys from her purse. Just as she put the door key in the lock, she changed her mind and whirled around and started back to the library.
If she hurried she might be able to call again from there before the nine-fifteen closing time. Her intention was to call the cabin this time.
The line might not be down that far-only beyond, to the mine. Clara and Steve might know something of what'd happened at the mine.
She waited tensely after giving the number to the operator, feeling sure that if the line to the cabin was down, the operator would've known and immediately told her.
She willed herself to hear the little clickings that came over the wire as friendly sounds. She didn't dare let go of hope that Gabe and her dad had somehow escaped.
The voice that finally answered was Clara's, and Lucy broke in with a painful rush:
"Oh, Clara! Have you heard anything from the mine?"
The wait before Clara answered seemed eternal, as Lucy bit her quivering underlip and tried to steady the receiver against her ear.
Finally she heard Clara give a gasp.
"Lucy!" she shrilled.
Then Lucy heard her calling to Steve:
"Steve! Steve! It's Lucy!"
There was a shuffling, then Steve's voice:
"Lucy, I've been trying to reach you! There's big news up here ... big news!""
"W-were you trying to get me to tell me about the slide? Steve ... are Gabe and Dad-"
"They're all right, Lucy," Steve cut in quickly. "They're just fine! You see, Gabe triggered the slide himself with dynamite. He and your dad were safe in the tunnel when the worst of the slide came roaring down. Gabe figured that if the mill didn't go, it would be possible to stay and get the richest part of the ore pocket out and milled. The plan worked, because, even with the roof of the mill ruined, they could still work the machinery. I figure the mine's yielded at least forty thousand dollars! Isn't that wonderful, Lucy?"
Steve's voice was jubilant.
Lucy blinked and swallowed, then said:
"It-it's wonderful, Steve! And Gabe and Dad-are they there, then?"
"No ... no! They should've reached Minetown some time ago. Where are you phoning from? If you haven't been to your trailer for an hour or so, that's where Gabe may be."
At that moment as Lucy glanced around the library, apprehensive lest she get locked in the building, she saw her dad talking to the librarian.
She told Steve this and hastily bade him goodbye.
"I had a hunch I might find you here," Loring said, as they left the library together. She glanced quickly at her dad. "Where's Gabe? He's all right, isn't he?" she insisted sharply. Loring laughed.
"We had a few drinks together, but he was getting kinda wild. Then there was some busty barmaid at the Bridge Tavern-he tried to slip Whitey down the front of her dress."
"Whitey?" Lucy echoed.
"Yeah, that cat Gabe found up at the mine. Wouldn't leave him up there to starve, so he carries him with him. But don't get any wrong ideas about Gabe. He's a fine boy-just not used to strong drink."
Lucy was smiling suddenly as she remembered that Steve'd said Gabe would likely go to her trailer.
She began walking swiftly toward her car and soon left her dad behind. She knew, as he dropped back, that he'd duck into a bar.
Lucy slipped past the front door of the Three Nickels carefully when she heard the juke box playing. Curious, because she'd thought the place empty, she went back to try the door and found it unlocked.
Opening it a crack, she saw Gabe sitting with his back partly to her, holding the white cat on his lap. The shade of the floor lamp was cocked to throw the light against the opposite wall, leaving part of the room in semi-darkness.
Lucy opened the door slowly and went in.
Gabe's attention was fixed firmly on Beulah, who was doing a suggestive, voluptuous dance in the lighted space near the wall. She'd cast most of her clothing aside, and the direct light glossed the lush, rich curves and the roundness of her body.
Lucy stood tensely silent, her senses overrun with sick, helpless fury. Strangely, she found herself not at all surprised that Beulah hadn't left. Probably a train or bus schedule had kept her here until the deadline for her leaving.
Then suddenly the anticipation of telling Gabe that Duke was alive and healthy was fading away-fogged over by hurt and rebellion. He must know that she'd been longing to have him to herself ... to feel his arms close about her!
Why did he have this-this slut distraction? she asked herself.
Tears blurred her eyes as she turned and ran blindly out into the street, letting the door slam behind her. She heard Gabe shouting, calling to her as she drove away from the Three Nickels.
Afterward, she operated the car automatically, and out of habit took the road to the cabin.
She stopped the car in the yard and got out, numbly. The cabin door was unlocked, so she went straight to her room, where she fell across the bed, spent.
Gradually the thudding of her heartbeats slowed. She relaxed a little, glad that Clara and Steve hadn't awakened. The burning hurt in her breast was easing somewhat.
She even smiled wanly in the darkness, because there'd been something in Gabe's voice when he called out to her as she drove away from the Three Nickels. She knew that now, being calmer. Gradually she forced herself into a fitful, troubled sleep.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Gabe'd tried to overtake Lucy the night she ran from the Three Nickels. Believing she'd flee to her trailer, he lost time finding his way through the small opening between the house and the board fence and stumbling across the back yard and foot bridge, only to find that she wasn't there.
When he reached the street .again, he was minutes late. He saw the tail lights of her old car disappearing toward the uptown district. Even then, he might've considered immediately pursuing her if his station wagon hadn't been headed the wrong way on the narrow street.
And then he saw Beulah in the front seat. She seemed aware that he'd sobered considerably.
"Would it be too much trouble to drop me at the bus depot?" she asked pleasantly.
Gabe looked hastily up and down the street.
Lucy's car was out of sight now.
He looked at the voluptuous girl. Her suitcases were piled in back, he noticed. He noticed, too, the feline grace of the girl as she sat awaiting his pleasure, and it reminded him of something-he was still carrying the cat he'd brought down from the mine. Now he dropped the beautiful white animal into the girl's lap.
"You two should get along," he said, sliding behind the wheel. "Where's the bus station?"
"Get turned around and headed uptown," she advised, slipping down into the seat with a loud sigh. "It's four bars and one tavern from here, but-"
Gabe glanced quickly at her, seeking the reason for her peculiar pause. He saw that she'd discarded her false front of seemliness and had let her thin dress hike up, baring her thighs.
"You may drop me at the first bar if you don't feel like going all the way," she said, after he'd jerked his gaze back to the road.
Gabe couldn't help wincing at the twist she'd given her words. He mulled her meaning and shook his head.
"You talk like a gal who had all night. I thought your move was being clocked by the law."
Beulah yawned elaborately and slid down some more on the seat. Her dress pulled tight over the soft contour of her stomach, as the pure white cat rearranged itself on her lap.
"I hope he isn't shedding," she mused. "White hairs are so conspicuous-especially against black."
Thick, lustrous black hair, Gabe could've added.
Instead, he repeated:
"I thought your move was being clocked by the law."
"It is," she admitted. "But Minetown isn't very large, and there are two fairly nice motels just outside the city limits-"
She broke off, waiting. When he said nothing, she went on:
"Anyway, you'll be stopping at the bars to hunt for old Loring," she guessed shrewdly. "Won't be any harm in our having a few drinks together as we go along, will there?"
Gabe shrugged as he pulled up to the curb in front of a bar. Four bars and a tavern meant five drinks. He figured he could stand that.
He got out, and when he reached the sidewalk, she was waiting for him, cuddling the cat much as she might have done a poodle.
The bar was small, and Gabe scanned it with one glance as he put down his empty shot glass. He made a face over the whiskey.
"Loring wouldn't come here," he said positively.
The second and third bars were much the same-small and unpopular. But the fourth boasted a dance floor, and the juke box was never silent. The large room was dimly lit, and Gabe couldn't be sure Loring wasn't in one of the booths that ringed the dance floor.
When Beulah suggested they dance, pointing out he could look into the booths as they circled the floor, he assented.
He forgot to scan the booths the first time around. Beulah wasn't letting the cat she held against his chest interfere with the action lower down. She teased him boldly and, he had to admit, honestly. She was what she was, without apology.
Her eyes were wide, swamped with gusty rushes of passion, and the promising heat of her body flowed to him in ancient summons.
He stopped dancing suddenly and stepped back, taking the cat with him.
"This is the end of the line," he told her, but not nearly so insolently, not nearly so cuttingly as he'd planned.
Let it go, he told himself, and swung away abruptly, giving her no opportunity to protest.
If she mistook the pity in his eyes for regret-let her. For she'd rendered him a great favor. Dancing with her'd given him the reason for the puzzling change in himself. There'd never be another casual woman for him now. Perhaps never again.
He had to have Lucy!
He found Loring at the Bridge Tavern, and when he had him out in the car, he asked him for the phone number of the cabin.
"We don't want to bother them up there tonight," Loring argued. "If Lucy's there, that fills the place up. Wait until morning, boy. We'll get a room here in town for tonight."
Gabe demanded and got the phone number. Then he drove to a drug store. Lucy'd had more than enough time to get up to the cabin, and he wanted to know if she was all right ... if she'd arrived safely.
The room in the Minetown Hotel had a window that faced to the East. Gabe was out of bed as the first fringe of dawn slid upward to silhouette the row of mountain peaks above the smudged mass of lower elevations along Mill Creek Canyon.
The buildings of Minetown, huddled in the bottom of the canyon, were still concealed in deep shadows, with the street lights casting tiny, meaningless blobs of brilliance here and there in the deadness of the early hour.
Gabe'd spent a restless night. He wondered if Lucy's sleep'd been troubled, too. He cursed the drinks he'd taken with Loring to "celebrate striking it rich," as the old man put it. One or two would've been all right; but he'd overindulged and now he was paying-paying because he could not get his mind off Lucy's angry retreat from the Three Nickels.
He couldn't forget the hurt, muffled sound of her voice as she ran away. And there was a bitter-sweet hungering for her inside him that made everything else meaningless.
Gabe groaned, wondering if Lucy were awake. He turned away from the window to jog Loring out of his untroubled slumber.
Whitey, whom they'd sneaked into the room, jumped off the bed disgustedly as the last of his sleeping partners began to heave and snort.
Loring got himself propped up, blinked at the glaring light overhead, and then looked toward the still-dark window.
"And I thought you'd be a man of leisure after you struck it rich," he said, looking at Gabe reproachfully.
Gabe grinned. He admired the old man's sly humor. He'd often felt that Loring's laughs had a purpose-that he'd often used his wits to keep things loosened up around the mine. Still, he was irked with Loring occasionally. As now, when he was impatient to go to Lucy, Loring dawdled in bed.
"Come on, Dan," he urged. "We've got some traveling to do."
"Yeah, I know; you're trying to get me out of town," Loring complained.
Nevertheless, he got out of bed and began putting on his clothes.
CHAPTER TWENTY
When Lucy awoke, the brilliance of the sun on snow streamed through a window into her room. For a space, she lay gazing around at the familiar things on the wall, loath to let her mind go back to last night. Her restless gaze stopped on a framed picture of her mother, and she forced herself to think about her.
There'd been one short, happy summer for her mother here in this cabin. She'd seemed to shed her somberness as soon as they left Minetown, and Lucy guessed that her mother'd hated the dirty little mining city.
But the tragedy of mining invaded her retreat. Dad had lost an arm. After that, gloom had settled over the cabin, and her mother, never strong, hadn't been able to stand the additional shock of seeing Dad start drinking heavily.
Lucy's gaze roved away from the picture of her mother and rested on an assortment of luggage near the head of the bed. The luggage was strange to her eyes, but she guessed that it was Gabe's and that he'd left it there when he came down from the mine. She saw a gray book on top of a scuffed leather suitcase. It looked detached from the miscellany of other things, and she fell to wondering if it really belonged to Gabe.
She reached out for the book and propped herself up on a pillow to examine it.
From its shape she judged it to be some sort of ledger or account book, and from the soiled appearance of the binding, she could see that it'd been much handled under stressful conditions. Gabe'd probably carried it everywhere, perhaps even opening it to make an entry while in the mine, for there was the odor of carbide about it as though a mine lamp'd been placed too near.
After looking at the entry on the first page, she knew this last was true. Apparently, from the day he'd taken charge of the mine after Steve's accident, Gabe'd kept an account of the progress in the tunnel, the richness of the ore, and the conditions on the mountain, generally. No doubt he'd kept this book against the day of accounting with his partner.
And Lucy saw in it, too, an affectionate thoughtfulness for Steve. Through this account his crippled partner would be able to share vicariously in the last part of the struggle to bring the gold out of the mine.
But the book was more than a progress report on the mine-it was also a report on the testing of a man. At the bottom of each page, Lucy began finding little jottings-just a line or two at first, then whole paragraphs, which, when put together made up a diary-like account of those bitter days on Black Mountain, when Gabe and her dad faced death every hour of more than two weeks.
"Oh, Gabe!" Lucy gasped, momentarily awed and remorse-stricken.
This was the kind of testing that tempered or destroyed. Fiercely she gripped the gray, battered record of it. All at once she was remembering Gabe's voice, hearing it again as he'd called out to her last night.
It was mid-morning when she emerged from her room. Clara had breakfast ready for her in the kitchen. Steve was having a cup of coffee and a smoke.
Lucy knew from their expressions that they'd been talking about her. They tried to conceal their concern, but it was as plain and sweet and wholesome as the brown syrup Clara'd warmed for her pancakes.
And all seemed well between Clara and Steve. Erase the temporary concern for her from their faces, and she knew their happiness would be evident.
Lucy was glad for Clara and Steve, but she couldn't garner any hope for Gabe and herself from their happiness. The picture of Gabe watching Beulah do a strip-tease was still too vivid.
She'd been forcing herself to eat some breakfast, but now she pushed her plate aside and looked at Clara and Steve inquiringly.
"Aren't you. two going to ask me why I drove up here in the middle of the night?" she asked.
These two were her friends. If they didn't already know she'd made a fool of herself over Gabe, she'd tell them.
Steve was hesitating, fumbling for something to say, but Clara seemed to know that Lucy wanted and needed their confidence. She sat down at the table facing her.
"We know you practically ran away last night.
Gabe phoned us before dawn! He said he'd call again."
Lucy caught her breath sharply. Gabe had phoned! And before dawn! Her mind raced to do some swift calculations.
It'd been very late when she'd run from the Three Nickels. This could mean that Gabe had followed her out-that he hadn't returned for the grand finale of Beulah's act.
Lucy sat stone-still, her heart thudding against her ribs.
But I mustn't think Gabe's phone call meant too much, she cautioned herself. After all, it'd been Beulah who'd had his attention; I'd only interrupted.
Now she looked up at Clara and related what'd happened at the Three Nickels. As soon as she'd finished, Steve laughed loudly.
"She's known far and wide as Hula Beulah!" he chortled.
Clara was beside him, shutting him up by putting her hand over his mouth.
"Don't pay any attention to him," she told Lucy.
Lucy shook her head. She was both amused and bitter.
"Let him talk," she said."
When Clara removed her hand from Steve's mouth, she studied his embarrassed face.
"Honestly, Steve, do you think Beulah got the prize last night-the prize being Gabe, of course?"
Steve flushed and grinned sheepishly as his eyes sought the floor. Men had their peculiar loyalties and pride.
But so did women ... and her own pride would never let her seek out Gabe again when he'd seemed to prefer another.
Lucy wandered restlessly around the cabin for awhile after breakfast, then decided suddenly to go for a hike, and started up the road toward Black Mountain-just wanting to be away from the cabin.
She'd departed hurriedly, and the glare of the snow soon reminded her that she should've worn colored glasses. When she left the road and started up the face of the mountain toward the mine, the glittering expanses of snow became much worse. Yet she climbed upward, ignoring the painful, abrasive feeling beneath her eyelids.
She knew now that in the back of her mind there'd been a destination all along. Something was pulling her to the mine. She believed Gabe would seem close to her, there.
Halfway up the mountainside, she turned and faced back in the direction where the valley should have been, but now, abruptly, and very strangely, was not. She tilted her head, thinking she must look down to see it. There was nothing-nothing but a gray blur.
She was snow blind!
Her first reaction was one of frustration. Now she must wait until someone came. She hated the idea of waiting for a rescuer to take her hand, and the possibility of the rescuer being Gabe knifed her pride.
Standing tensely straight and staring blindly, she waited until the confusion within her wore itself out. Then she began to creep slowly down the mountain.
There's no reason why I can't reach the road, she thought. All I have to do is continue downward.
She could see nothing at all now. And as long as that was true, she began wishing for a complete blackness, which she knew would be more endurable than the gray, painful, half light that was torturing her eyes.
Clumsily she proceeded down the mountainside, feeling ahead with one foot, then the other. The only thing she could be sure of was that she was descending.
She had paused to rest and bury her face in her arms to shut out the light, when she heard Clara's voice calling to her.
Before they were halfway back to the cabin, Lucy turned to Clara, who was driving the old car.
"My eyes are all right now that Pm away from the glare. Thanks for coming up after me."
Clara gave a small, self-depreciating shrug.
"I came looking for you because Gabe phoned-wanting to speak to you."
Lucy gripped Clara's arm urgently.
"I can't speak to him!" she said, panicky.
Clara looked sharply at her.
"As bad as that, huh? What are you going to do this evening? He and your dad are coming up here."
Lucy felt numb inside, and when Clara stopped the car in the yard, she didn't move. Clara said gently:
"I think you need a little more time, and there is a way to get it. Steve suggested it this morning, but I thought asking you to go down and fix up his ranch shack so we could let your dad have his cabin back would be too much. Besides, that's my job ... when I can get to it. Right now Steve is quite a care and needs someone with him most of the time."
"Of course," Lucy cried, "and I'll be glad to do this for you and Steve, but I thought you were quite comfortable right here."
"Oh, we are, Lucy. And we're very grateful, but Steve's getting restless ... thinks he could stand his recuperation better out at his own place. And your dad will be coming here to live again, now that he's through at the mine." Lucy nodded.
"I'll do it!" she announced, suddenly glad of an excuse to leave immediately-to be away when Gabe came this evening.
Then she thought of something else. She'd been counting heavily on Duke to help her win Gabe, but that'd been when everything was straight and simple between them. Now she knew she couldn't use Duke to influence Gabe in her favor. She cringed to think that he might pretend to care out of gratitude.
It was possible that he might've found out that Duke was in Minetown. Such a discovery might've prompted his second phone call.
She turned to Clara and asked:
"About Gabe's horse-did he mention him?"
"Why, no!" Clara answered quickly. "But the horse is dead; Gabe knows that!" Clara exclaimed, looking wonderingly at Lucy.
Lucy smiled faintly as she shook her head.
"Tell Gabe that his horse is at the Minetown Riding Stables," she said softly, feeling a sweet mixture of emotions as she pictured Gabe's joy when he learned that Duke was safe.
The station wagon had just begun its long, second-gear grind up into the mountains toward Loring's cabin when Loring pulled a bottle out of a paper sack.
"Have I properly thanked you for saving my life?" he asked solemnly. Gabe frowned.
"Put that whiskey away!" he ordered, impatient because of having been delayed in Minetown most of the day, while a mechanic worked on the car.
Besides, Loring's proper thanks always included a hearty round of drinks, and Gabe felt that he owed his late afternoon snack a little head start.
"Haven't you any respect for your stomach?" Gabe continued.
"Sure," Loring retorted, grinning. "For example, I never did like to drink in a moving vehicle. But then I don't believe this one'll be moving much longer!"
The motor was shuddering as Loring spoke, and Gabe pulled out the choke to help the fluttering carburetor get more fuel as the pitch of the road increased. He was able to keep the motor running, but the long climb began causing the temperature gauge to slide over into the red, and Gabe pulled off to the side of the road and stopped.
He got out and lifted the hood. It was easy to locate the leak in the hose connection, but he had no way to fix it. He checked the level of the water in the radiator and found that it was low.
"Too bad it isn't water that you have in your bottle," he told Loring. "That would do us more good right now than a barrel of whiskey!"
"Speak for yourself, Gabe," Loring said, grinning as he lifted the bottle to stare at its amber contents. "I ought to take a snort," he murmured. "It might give me an idea."
Gabe slammed down the hood and walked around to get back into the car. He saw that Loring was having a drink, and he waited a few seconds before starting the motor.
"Ought to be a big idea," he commented cynically, watching the whiskey disappear as Loring drank.
Loring's eyes were glistening when he finally lowered the bottle. He looked at Gabe solemnly.
"Thanks for saving my life that day up on the mountain," he said, offering Gabe the whiskey. Gabe glared impatiently.
"What about the idea you were going to get?" he queried.
Loring sat straight up.
"Oh, that! Why, hell, Gabe, get this vehicle moving. There's a spring about two miles up the road!"
They missed Lucy at the cabin by several hours and, stung with disappointment, Gabe got right back into the station wagon for the return trip to Minetown. His intention was to get the car repaired and set out after Lucy.
He was turning the car around when he saw Clara hurrying toward him from the cabin. He braked the car impatiently and rolled down the window as she approached.
Her face was tense as she leaned into the car.
"Gabe, I don't think you should go after Lucy," she said bluntly. "I believe your chances will be better if you wait."
Gabe stared at the earnest, blue-eyed girl. He was speechless for a second as he tried to puzzle her out. He'd noticed her lack of comment in the cabin when he'd told Loring and Steve of his decision to follow Lucy.
"Why?" he asked, matching her bluntness with his own.
Clara's eyes met his steadily, almost pleadingly.
"Gabe," she said, "I was with Lucy just before she left. She's very angry and upset. You couldn't've picked a more disturbing belly dancer to be caught watching-as far as Lucy's concerned, anyway. She has a special dislike for Beulah."
Gabe lit a cigarette and began impatiently pulling on it, wanting to be on his way, yet held to hearing Clara out by a fear of doing something that would worsen Lucy's feelings toward him.
Clara touched his arm.
"She needs time to sort out her emotions, Gabe. If you pursue her, force her to listen to you, she may withdraw even more."
"I've got a right to go out there to see if my horse Duke is still alive, haven't I? No matter how angry Lucy is, she couldn't blame me for doing that, could she?"
Clara shook her head.
"That won't do, Gabe," she said gently.
"Why the hell not?" Gabe blurted heatedly.
"Because your horse is in the Minetown Riding Stables. Lucy had him brought in several weeks ago."
"Lucy had-" he broke off.
Duke was safe, he thought. Oh, Lucy, Lucy! How you shame me, girl!
He looked up, meeting Clara's eyes.
"I might wait for Lucy at her trailer. Wonder how long she'll be gone?"
"Not long; she'll come right back when she finds out that Steve and I tricked her."
"Tricked her? You tricked Lucy? For God's sake, why?"
"Gabe, please forgive us! We thought it was a way of bringing you and Lucy together." Gabe winced.
"How'd you do it?" he asked grimly. "Trick her, I mean?"
"I was awful enough to suggest that she go out to Steve's place and tidy up the house for us. Then Steve directed her to your place instead of his.
We thought you could follow and that the two of you'd make up."
"But you don't think that'll work now?"
Clara moaned.
"I knew almost from the moment she left that we'd made a terrible mistake! What Lucy needs is time to calm down-a few hours alone to think things through. She told me as much herself."
Clara touched Gabe's arm, and a faint smile came to her lips, as she added:
"Didn't Steve say this car couldn't go much farther without major repairs? Maybe that's an omen-a sign that you should wait for her."
Gabe laughed bitterly.
"So you and Steve tricked her! And I've done worse! All together, we've done our best to make her hate us. Why, hell, I wouldn't blame Lucy if she never wanted to see any of us again."
Gabe put the car in gear.
"I'll wait in Minetown," he continued, as Clara stepped back.
He saw Clara's lips form the words "good luck" as he pulled away, but Gabe had a feeling that he'd be needing to need more than mere luck to win Lucy back.
A chinook wind had cleared the lowlands of snow, and as the highway veered out on the round humps of the mountain foothills, Lucy could look east for countless miles across the brown and gray prairie. Like an old-fashioned poultice, the distance pulled at the hidden knots of worry and unease within her, soothing and lightening her spirits.
She switched on the radio and dialed some music. Then the combination of distance, the quiet road, and the music made her dreamy. Her thoughts touched lovingly on the Christmas party.
She could see the cheerful little tree, could hear again the gaiety of Clara, Steve, and her dad as they decorated it. She saw herself waiting by the fireplace for Gabe and feeling quite chic in her nearly new dress. And his embrace had been heavenly ... to which had been added their moments alone together, later.
Her walk the next morning with Gabe to the foot of Black Mountain stood apart from the party in her mind. Probably because the party'd gone smoothly, while on the walk her emotions had dipped and soared tumultuously. The kiss she'd given Gabe had meant everything to her, and she'd sought to make it mean as much to him. The promise of all she had to give had been on her lips that day as she pressed them quiveringly against Gabe's mouth.
Had he known? Had he really cared? Did he love her as deeply and forever as she loved him?
She clenched the steering wheel, and her foot went down hard on the accelerator. One thing was certain: She would do no more begging. And, despite the warmth of her own love, she knew that a proud, stubborn part of her had put Gabe on probation.
After crossing the last ditch of the Pretty Forks irrigation project, Steve's road directions shunted Lucy off the highway onto a dirt road that ran down the center of a barbed wire lane.
The lane itself stretched to the horizon with so little change in appearance that, except for the bumps, Lucy could well have believed her car was on a treadmill, making much ado about going somewhere, but really standing still.
"Don't look for too much in the way of a house," Steve had warned her. "It's just a little shack."
Her neck was aching from looking and driving at the same time before she finally did see something that looked like a roof. There was no gate in the lane fence, but she noticed that the tracks of vehicles had been going through somehow. She got out to investigate and saw that there was a let-down in the fence. The wires on several of the posts were hooked up on nails, and all she had to do was unhook the wires and weight them down with the rocks she found spotted there for that purpose.
She drove over the let-down and followed the tracks, which angled up the hill and slightly around it in the general direction of the building, or whatever it was she'd seen on the hill. Then she was on the slant of the hill opposite the road, and she saw that it wasn't Steve's place at all, but was a sheep camp.
She stopped her car on the edge of a big brown patch of ground, covered with round pellets of sheep manure, and looked at the canvas-covered sheep wagon some fifty yards away. The only movement was the occasional roll of the manure pellets being pushed about by the wind.
Lucy debated going up t' the sheep wagon. She would've liked to ask somi a. how far she was from Steve's place, but remembering her experience with the hired man Braken ranch, she hesitated.
As she waited, unsure, she heard the sound of creaking leather, and looked back of the car to see a man riding out of a draw toward her.
The man was old, bent and bearded. He dismounted slowly from his horse, came to the car and placed his brown, weathered hands on the door.
Lucy thought she'd never seen eyes so calm and kindly. But they were also full of a deep knowing that seemed somehow to rebuke the greenness of her youth.
She felt suddenly ruffled and defensive. When she spoke, her voice wasn't as civil as it should have been.
"Could you tell me how far I am from Steve Burrick's place?" she asked. The old man nodded.
"My sheep graze right up to the Burrick and Clarke fence. If you were going to Clarke's place, it would be easy to direct you because it can be seen from the road."
"But I thought it was Steve Burrick's place that could be seen from the road!" Lucy protested, puzzled.
"No-it's Gabe Clarke's place you can see from the road. It's about a mile from here. The turn-off to Steve Burrick's place is about five miles beyond the Clarke turn-off."
Lucy gazed at the old herder steadily for a moment. She couldn't doubt what he said and, not doubting it, she had to admit that Steve had misdirected her.
Steve, and probably Clara, too, had tricked her into going to Gabe's place. She was suddenly certain they planned that Gabe should join her there.
The old herder had turned away and was removing a dead lamb tied to the back of the saddle. The lamb's body was pitifully scrawny. It couldn't've been more than two hours old when it had died.
"I bring them in and bury them so the coyotes don't get ideas," the old herder explained.
"What killed it?" Lucy asked pityingly.
"It just died, miss-it's a winter lamb."
"But do all winter lambs die?"
Lucy felt herself caught now by the grim fascination of elemental nature.
"Mostly," the old herder admitted, "especially when they're born of the very young ewes-the ones not yet ready in udder or heart. Even when they live, winter lambs on the range make poor, runty stock."
The old herder's words echoed in Lucy's head all the way back to the let-down in the fence. After she had the car across the fence and standing at right angles to the road, she just sat confused and undecided, aware that for the past several minutes she'd thought of little else than the old herder's words:
"-Not yet ready in udder or heart," he had. said.
"Not yet ready in breasts or heart," was the way she applied the words to herself.
But how silly could one get? she wondered. Girls my age were getting married every day!
Lucy knew that there would be no mercy in her, today. Nor would she allow Gabe to soften her reserve with an embrace. She'd stand coldly apart, examining all his faults with an unforgiving heart.
She drew a long, shuddery breath. She was sitting straight and tense behind the wheel of the motionless car.
She felt an urgent need to do something active. But she didn't want to go back to Minetown yet. Not in her state of mind.
So there's only one thing to do, she told herself, and that was to clean Gabe's house.
Lucy found everything surprisingly neat in his house. Her spirits lifted, and she went about her tasks almost blithely, making quick work of the dust that'd gathered here and there.
She cleaned out all the rough, homemade cupboards, rinsing and drying every dish she could find. Then she tackled the grimy windows, which were the only things about the house that showed long neglect.
The sun was low by the time she was through. She sat down wearily and consumed the sandwiches she'd brought along. Then, after giving the house a final inspection and finding everything to her liking, she went outside into the dusk.
She knew it would be late-perhaps after midnight-by the time she arrived back in Minetown. Still she dawdled, walking around the house to see if she'd closed all the windows.
To the West, the Rockies were a ragged purple cut-out against the dull red sky. Above her a few widely scattered stars were beginning to show. The real beauty of the oncoming night was over the rolling prairie to the East. The dusk had dimmed the gray glare that overspread the ground so harshly during the day, and now every hill and swale was a soft pattern of alternate light and dark that caught and led the senses outward toward some mystic goal.
But tonight she was sick with doubt. With the day gone, much of the blithe spirit that'd sustained her had gone, too.
Tears blurred her eyes, and a strangling tightness gripped her throat as she turned the car in the direction of Minetown.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
A chilly feeling aroused Gabe to an awareness of the cold, empty darkness of the Three Nickels. He felt around blindly for some covers. The bareness of the mattress he was on brought him fully awake, remembering how his vain search for blankets earlier in the evening had ended in the conclusion that Old Sadie and the girls had stripped the place of all the quilts and blankets.
Gabe pulled the collar of his coat closer about his throat, glad that Loring had stayed up at the cabin. Loring, Steve, Clara ... and Whitey would be snug and comfortable there.
The mattress became stone-cold beneath him. His lips rasped together dryly, and he guessed the drinks might have had something to do with that. His teeth began to chatter a little, and he got up on one elbow.
That was when the pain pierced him, starting in his throat and sticking down into his chest like a length of hot pipe. A fit of painful coughing shook him, and his lungs were on fire as he lay back on the bed.
What a hell of a time this would be to get sick, he thought. Just when things were supposed to be straightening out.
He upbraided himself for taking too many drinks to celebrate Lucy's saving Duke. And then taking some more to console himself while waiting her return. It was getting so he didn't need Loring's urging to put away more than a fair share of what he had.
And he wondered if Lucy'd come back inside her trailer at the present moment.
This possibility got him to his feet, despite the pain in his chest.
He fumbled his way in the darkness, took the wrong turn in the hallway, and ended up at the front of the house instead of the back. He peered out into the darkness, straining his eyes as he tried unsuccessfully to see the outline of the red sandstone cliff.
Suddenly, without seeing, he was aware of the depth and narrowness of Mill Creek Canyon. Its sides seemed to be pressing in upon him.
He longed for the feel of open land ... the wind against his face, and the grand wide look of the flat, sun-drenched prairie, stretching away to the far, far horizon, until the distance had a force that pulled at a man's guts. Even though the prairie was a place often sharp-sided with loneliness, it was an unshadowed land, and a man's wounds never festered.
He swallowed, and the acrid taste of powder gas was in his mouth. The murky darkness of the Black Mountain Mine swirled around him. The feel of greasy sticks of dynamite was plain against his palms.
Load the holes, cut the fuse, light, and run, damn you, run! Run down the tunnel! Get as much distance between you and the blasting as possible. Stiffen your back as the concussion comes whooshing after you. Count the number of blasts.
A fit of coughing hit Gabe as he turned away from the window; he stumbled and reeled as he made his way along the hall. Once outside the rear door of the building, he used the dimly visible trailer for a guide.
Then his hands were on the trailer door, feeling the closed padlock, and he knew drearily that Lucy wasn't there.
The pain in his chest had worsened when he turned back toward the Three Nickels, and he knew he had to get out of the cold air and into a warm room, pronto!
It was as he bent to retrieve a book of matches that the first wave of nauseous blackness blotted out his senses. When it had passed, he was scared.
He managed to get a match going to look at his watch. He saw that it was almost midnight.
"Ought to get to a doctor," he muttered, but when he tried to push himself to his feet, the blackness closed in on him again, and he had just enough clear-headedness left to grope his way to the phone.
Hoping that it was still connected, he lifted the receiver and asked to be connected with a cab company. After placing his request for a cab, he went outside and leaned weakly against a telephone pole to wait.
It seemed an endless time before the cab arrived. He stayed with the telephone pole until the driver got out to take his arm.
"I've picked up several drunks from this spot," the driver muttered, after they were in the taxi and Gabe had asked to be taken to the hospital, "but you're the first one to want a doctor!"
They all joshed Gabe about how luridly he babbled during the two days and nights of his bout with pneumonia. All except Lucy.
Strangely quiet at first, she gradually began to talk more as the days passed and he grew stronger. But it wasn't about personal things that she spoke.
It was about about the stone house of her letters. It seemed it had once had a set of blueprints made Lucy brought these in often and spread them out on his bed. She talked endlessly of the details and, though Gabe was puzzled at first, he finally got the message.
Gabe put in many troubled hours trying to plan a way to tell her that a big, new house on the ranch wasn't possible ... not right away. Perhaps not for years.
But the more he thought about it, the worse the problem became. He remembered her letters to him ... how she'd dwelt on the stone house that didn't exist. Now she firmly believed her dreams had every chance of becoming fact!
Anything that presented an opportunity to kiss Lucy seemed like a good idea to Gabe. Even if the kiss was a public one, more or less, with Steve and Clara standing beside his hospital bed. Besides, there hadn't been very many private kisses lately.
Lucy's shapely little head had always been too full of plans for the new ranch house when she came to visit him. She was beginning to make him feel like a lonely and clumsy addition to her important plans. Worse, she seemed to've withdrawn-to be holding herself aloof for some maddening, unknown reason.
One day, after Clara and Steve had left the room, his gaze turned to Lucy, standing with her back to him, looking out the room's one window.
"Lucy," he called out gently.
When she neared the bed, he drew a deep breath, and then he reached out and pulled her close.
"Kiss me, Lucy," he said hoarsely, trying to crush his hard mouth against the soft redness of hers.
She gave a sharp gasp, and her hand darted out to deliver a stinging slap to his cheek. Then she twisted free of his clasp and backed away, glaring furiously.
He returned her look with a smile, that this sudden angry reaction was what was needed to pull down the barriers between them.
"Hi ya, sweetheart," he said, raising his hand in playful greeting as he waited for her to relent and smile back.
Finally her lips began to soften, and his own smile broadened ... then froze. She wasn't going to smile! Her lips were quivering, and abruptly she turned and fled from the room.
Deeply chagrined, Gabe lay back tensely on the bed. Through the troubled whirl of his thoughts, he was sure of only one thing: it was going to be hell waiting until tomorrow, when he'd be released from the hospital.
Gabe was halfway out of bed when the nurse came in. He looked at her homely, disapproving face and crawled meekly back under the sheet.
"Are we mixed up on the dates, Mr. Clarke?" she asked primly. "I believe the doctor said you were to be with us until tomorrow."
Gabe grinned sheepishly.
"I feel well enough to leave," he muttered.
"Possibly, but I'd try to forget about leaving right away. Tomorrow is the day. Besides, you have another visitor waiting to see you," she told him.
"Dan Loring?"
Gabe sat up eagerly.
"Yes, I believe that was the name he gave. Shall I send him in?"
"Yes, ma'am, please do that! And I can prop myself up now, ma'am," he told her, as she came to assist in getting a pillow behind his back.
His anticipation ran high as he waited for the nurse to show Loring in. Loring had volunteered to get Duke out to the ranch, and Gabe had charged him with coming in to make a report on that undertaking.
There'd been details to be looked after, such as taking out some baled hay and a few sacks of grain. Also, the fences were to be checked and the trough pumped full of water.
Loring's eyes twinkled cheerfully as he came in and took a chair beside the bed. Gabe was starting to ask several eager questions all at once when Loring raised his hand to forestall him.
Then he patted a bulge in his pocket and looked at Gabe meaningfully, as he asked: "How about one for the road, Gabe?" Gabe glared.
"The road? Hell, I'm not going anywhere-not today, anyway!"
"But you'll be going somewhere tomorrow," Loring said and laughed. "Nothing like getting a good start."
Gabe shook his head and rebuked Loring with a look of mocking sadness.
"You're hopeless, Dan! And if you don't report, pronto, I'll call in the nurse."
Gabe made a move to press the buzzer and Loring anxiously caught his arm.
"Don't do that, Gabe, please!" Loring yelped. "That old gal got a whiff of my breath, and I nearly didn't get in here."
"All right, then-give with the details of your trip out to the ranch," Gabe ordered. "How did it go with Duke?"
"Keep your nightshirt on, Gabe! I'll tell you all about it, but first I ought to have a little drink to settle my nerves. How about it?"
Gabe nodded despairingly.
"Go ahead. I can see that your throat is getting so dry you can hardly speak," Gabe told him.
Loring got out the bottle of whiskey and took a short drink. Gabe guessed that he was clowning-trying to cheer him up. And he was succeeding.
Gabe stretched and lit a cigarette.
Loring poked him in the ribs, then said: "Hey, Gabe, I'm ready. I thought you wanted to hear about Duke."
"If you're ready-shoot!"
"Well, I hired a guy with a pickup and a horse trailer. I bought some baled hay and a sack of grain, like you told me. We made the trip out there, all right, but I had a little trouble getting the pickup feller to drive around the pasture fence through all that sagebrush and cactus. He thought I ought to walk around it if I wanted to see that all the wire was up.
"And after that we had to drain some water out of the radiator to prime that no-good pump you got out there. Then the trough leaked and I had to fix that. The manger wouldn't hold near all the baled hay, so we had to lug it up into the mow.
"After we were all set, I turned that stud of yours loose, and he wouldn't look at the hay or grain. He just lit out for the nearest hill and kept prancing and whistling and looking around. Now what in hell do you suppose he was looking for?"
Gabe eyed the grinning Loring and laughed, then asked:
"You through?"
"I reckon," Loring retorted. "But what was that horse looking for?"
Gabe burst out laughing again.
He could see Duke up on the hill behind the ranch. He'd seen him there countless times, with his neck arched, his tail high, the great sleek barrel of his body taut as he nosed the wind and whistled piercingly.
"You know damned well what he was looking for!" he told Loring.
Loring's grin widened.
"Yeah ... yeah, I know!" He shook his head and his eyes were glistening. "What a horse he is, Gabe! Really beautiful!"
Gabe longed for the feel of the powerful animal beneath him.
"Dan, Lucy's driving me out to the ranch tomorrow," he said abruptly.
Loring nodded.
"I know."
"Dan, I'm thinking of asking Lucy to marry me."
Gabe watched Loring's head come up, felt the serious strike of his gaze as their eyes met.
"I'll welcome you for a son, Gabe. I think you know that."
Loring put out his hand and Gabe clasped it.
"Thanks, Dan. I know we'll make it together-the three of us. And if my luck runs good tomorrow, that's the way it will be."
Loring seemed to read the trouble behind Gabe's look, and he leaned forward.
"Has something gone wrong between you two?"
"I'm not sure," Gabe said, frowning. "Sometimes I feel that it's nothing and then ... I'm not sure."
Loring got up to leave. He looked down at Gabe, studying him quizzically.
"You been in here on your back too long! Things will come right once you're up on your feet again."
Gabe grinned.
"I hope so, Dan."
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
He found Lucy waiting in her car the next day when he walked out of the hospital.
"Hello," he said tentatively.
His eyes went to her face, framed by masses of vivid auburn hair. Her lips were full and sulky, and he knew she was still angry. He frowned as he got into the seat behind the wheel.
He headed the car out of Minetown on the Pretty Forks road. This was the way they'd planned it during his convalescence-that he would go straight to his ranch. But there'd been joy and anticipation in the planning. There was none now.
"I didn't mean to startle you with the kiss yesterday, Lucy," he said stiffly.
He felt her slender curved figure move sharply. Her eyes rose bitterly to his face.
"It was very melodramatic. Typical man-in-a-hospital-demanding-sympathy sort of thing. I understand. It was your way of reminding me of what you went through."
Gabe flushed.
"I went through something, all right," he said grimly, "but reminding you of it wasn't the idea. Getting a kiss was all I had in mind."
"All?" Lucy echoed. "Don't be silly!"
Gabe kept his voice gentle.
"Of course, not all," he said. "But the kissing comes first."
"With you, I've sometimes wondered!" Lucy retorted bitterly. "But do we have to talk about it?"
"No, I guess not," Gabe said. "We don't have to talk about anything except your plans for a big, new house at the ranch. That's all I've heard you talk about in the hospital."
She didn't reply, and her silence, together with her reaction to his kiss in the hospital, again stirred the fear of losing her. She'd said that she loved him, and that should've been the end of it.
But it wasn't; there was a condition to their love's fulfillment. She hadn't put a name to it-there was no need. It was the house. She expected him to make a grand gesture-to build her a big new house at the ranch.
If he did that, there'd be no money left to stock the ranch. The stock came first on a ranch. The stock made a ranch, made it pay. Why did she refuse to see that?
He glanced sideways at her face. The troubled, thoughtful look in her eyes angered him. It made him feel that he was being weighed-weighed against a new house and some furniture.
He fought down the desire to stop the car and shake her until the brightness of her hair quivered into a flame and somehow spread its warmth over all the slender rounded beauty of her.
"Lucy, just how much do your plans mean to you?" he asked tensely.
She didn't answer, but her eyes wavered away from the desperate earnestness of his.
"Do they mean so much that you can't go on loving me if you have to give them up?" he went on relentlessly.
Her scarlet lips trembled.
"Lasting love has to have a good start."
"Yes!" he burst out. "But a lot depends on what you consider is important for a start. I'm afraid that if the new house and furniture is crossed out of your plans, there won't be much meaning left in our future for you."
"You're being very stupid, Gabe," she snapped. "Probably because you're still angry about that kiss at the hospital." Her shoulders drooped despondently. "It takes two to make a kiss. That one just happened to be your idea!"
He smiled sardonically at the note of hurt bitterness in her voice. He looked sternly, his eyes bleak and determined.
"I've tried to make you see that we have to plan carefully ... to make some sacrifices to get our start even after the luck we had with the mine. Won't you try to see that, Lucy?"
Her silence left him little room for hope. He bit back angry words and settled into a sullen silence.
Then, as though sensing that he was pulling away, she snuggled close.
"Gabe, you're so ... so dear. Promise you'll always love me!"
He glanced down into her lovely eyes and frowned, unable to understand the pleading in them as anything except an attempt to wheedle him into doing everything she wished.
"Do you really love me?" he countered.
Her slim fingers gripped his arm convulsively.
"Yes, always and forever, Gabe. No matter what happens."
His hands tightened on the wheel.
"New house or no new house?"
She winced away.
"Please don't use that tone, Gabe."
Trembling, she settled back against him.
"Yesterday, I found exactly the kind of curtains I want," she continued enthusiastically. "Things are getting close when you get to choosing the curtains, aren't they, Gabe?"
Gabe pulled the car off the road. Lucy got out and began running up a little hill.
"Wait!" he commanded, striding after her.
He caught her near the top of the hill and gathered her into his arms, crushing all the curved preciousness of her close because he knew there was a chance he'd never hold her again. He pressed her eyes shut with ardent kisses so that he wouldn't see the strange expression darkening them. Afterward, he strode down the hill to the car, with her still in his arms.
Talk now seemed an empty thing, and the rest of the distance to his ranch passed without a word between them. Once in the ranch yard, he got out and pulled his suitcases from the back seat of the car. His heart was pumping wildly as a few quick strides took him to the door of his little house.
Would Lucy follow or would she drive away? The question thundered in his head as he jerked the door open and went in.
Lucy sat in the car, trying to swallow the terrible aching tightness that had clutched her throat at the sight of the sudden sweep of pain whitening Gabe's face and cutting deep, haggard lines around his mouth. When he disappeared into the house, his suffering hung behind him, pulling her to him, one faltering step after another. At the open door she stopped, uttering a little moan.
"Oh, Gabe ... Gabe!" Her voice rose in a sob. "I-I didn't want to hurt you!"
She went on and on, almost incoherently, telling him that he didn't need to build her a big, new house. Not if he truly loved her.
Gabe stood quietly as she spoke, but now he came and swept her into his arms and carried her to a wide bunk built along one wall of the house. He laid her there gently and then he was alongside her, kissing her face.
She gloried in the strength of his arms and the tender passion of his lips, all doubts washed away by the liquid longing that ran in her blood. Then he was on one elbow, leaning over her, talking, his eyes lovingly warm and earnest, making more sense than his words. His apology for the rough kiss at the hospital ... his thanks for saving Duke.
But how sweet he was when he said:
"It isn't just that you saved Duke, Lucy; it's more, far more. Your knowing what it meant to me and doing something about it is what counts. I've a feeling you'll always be in there swinging with me when the going gets tough. Say you'll marry me, Lucy! Please say it even without the promise of a new house right away."
Lucy stretched luxuriously, basking in the passion in Gabe's eyes and the warmth of his body next to hers. His lips caressed the hollow at the base of her slender neck. Slivers of wild, warm feeling raced along her nerves as his ardent mouth kissed its way upward over the sensitive skin of her throat. And then his lips were again pressed hard against hers for a long moment before he ceased kissing her to draw back and regard her, tenderly.
"Well?...."
She smiled up at him. For the first time in months she felt sure of herself, sure of his love. Suddenly she pushed hard against him until she felt her breasts spread on his chest.
"Just try to get away from me!" she murmured playfully.
He added his strength to hers until they were pressed together, breathlessly close. His heart was beating in powerful rhythm, and she lay virgin-numb beneath his caresses, letting her thighs go limp and yielding against his hardness. A rising melange of feeling gathered deep within her, soft and undulating at first, then climbing and sharp, turning her kisses, hungry and seeking, on his mouth.
All her misgivings about being young and unready faded. She chided herself dreamily for having ever doubted the Tightness of mating with Gabe, or her own readiness for it.
She sighed and stretched the length of her body against him, her softness forever wedded to the feel of his hard muscle. Rapture brought her body upward with shuddering exultance. Time lost its measure as the moments became a pattern to weave them together.
