Paint the Wind Page 15

It was a very long while before the McAllisters had reason to remember the offer.

  Chapter 18

  Bandana's friend's cabin was perched so high on the side of Mosquito Peak, it looked like an eagle's aerie. "Not the kind of place you'd like to come home to drunk," Chance murmured to his brother, when he stared up at the tiny wooden structure seemingly carved into the sheer face of the rocks, so far above the trail, it was nearly invisible.

  The cabin was small but adequate; the back was attached to the mountain, the front made of rough-hewn board with a tiny window cut for light. A man didn't expect much of comfort in a prospector's life, Bandana told them; most sourdoughs lived and died in a canvas lean-to despite the Colorado winters. If you made the rough trek into Oro City, the town farther down the Gulch, and if you had fifty cents to spare, you might opt for a six-foot square of straw and floor at the local saloon, but what prospector worth his salt would have enough strength at the end of the day to ride to town? They already knew only the rich could stop at a boardinghouse where, for a dollar, you shared a bed with a stranger or two, and the beds were no great shakes.

  Hart watched the landscape change with some misgiving as they left Denver behind them. He admired the mountains soaring up as high as twelve thousand feet, dark green with pine and aspen, gray-brown with rock and boulder; but there was a merciless look to it, too, he thought, an unrelenting quality that somehow let you know right off that anything you'd get from the land would be paid for dear.

  Bandana decided early on that the cabin was too far from where he aimed them to be, but it was nearly September and winter would soon be upon them. He said they could stay until the spring thaw and use what time was left before the snows to learn their trade.

  Before holing up for the winter, he said they'd best make a trip to Oro City, which is what the gold boomers had named the liveliest spot in the Gulch in '60. For, once the blizzards hit, there'd be no further trips down the mountain for supplies.

  For a ghost town, Oro City was surprisingly full of life. The way folks talked of the gold being played out and the miners gone, the McAllisters had expected desolation. But in 1871 when they arrived there, Oro was just another western town of the kind left in the wake of other booms, or railroads, or wagon trails, all over the territory, which is to say there were plenty of people living there and plenty going on.

  The main street offered most of the necessaries of frontier life— a post office, a sheriff, a blacksmith, a livery stable, a general store. There were eight saloons, some with dance halls attached, and there was the Crown of Jewel's, a saloon and bawdy house where a man could seek the pleasures of gambling, whiskey, or women, as his needs demanded. There was a newspaper and a hotel of sorts, a clothing store and a slew of cribs, which were repositories of prostitutes on the lowest rung of degradation's ladder.

  Although the gold boom had busted, in the hills around town there was still a smattering of prospectors who seemed to think it would come again.

  The main thoroughfare was nearly two miles long, following pretty closely the string-bean geography of the Gulch. Construction along the street was simple log structures or rough storefront, some facades with nothing much to mention behind them. No streetlights illuminated the hard-packed dirt street that was deeply rutted by wagon wheels and horses' hooves, but coal lamps in every window provided light and comfort and made the place look festive and sparkly after dark.

  As there were more saloons, dance halls, and gambling dens than any other kind of business, and as they seldom closed their doors until dawn, there was the ebb and flow of life in Oro at any hour.

  Throughout the day, the streets were rutted by Concord stages, freight vans, prairie schooners, six-horse teams and shouting teamsters. The snap of drivers' whips, the squeak of wagon wheels, the shrill giggles of dance hall girls, the shouted curses of men pushing their vehicles and recalcitrant animals through the throng on the thoroughfare... all these sights and sounds may have made Chance's and Bandana's blood run swifter with the certainty of the riches they were expecting to wrest from the mountain, but Hart's blood was racing with a need to put it all down on paper. The tough, lean faces of the drivers, the raunchy looks the dance hall girls cast their way as they wandered by; the palpable excitement of a town that grows up around man's wants as well as his needs. In their first two hours in Oro, Hart had crowded his head with enough fodder to fill a hundred winter nights with sketches.

  "You ain't seen Oro if you ain't seen Jewel's place," Bandana told them once they'd left their supply list with the manager of the general store.

  "Bandana McBain!" Jewel shouted over the noise of the cowboys and teamsters and gamblers and miners who crowded the bar at the Crown of Jewel's. "By God, you're a sight for sore eyes!" She threw her arms around the small man and nearly engulfed him with her capacious bosom.

  Jewel was Bandana's height but seemed taller because of the wild array of carrot-colored curls that ringed her head like a rusty halo. She had wonderful eyes, but she wasn't exactly beautiful— her jaw was too strong and her lips too wide for that—but her body, about which the clinging satin dress left few questions, was astonishing. Flawless white skin with a smattering of freckles, brilliant green eyes, and breasts so large and bouncy no man could look at them without wanting to touch. If her face was less than perfect, it wasn't on record that anybody ever cared after seeing her body.

  McBain wrapped his arms around Jewel and twirled her around the floor before letting go.

  "You wily old rattlesnake!" she shouted through whoops of laughter. "I see you still know how to show a girl a good time!"

  "I should say I do, darlin'. I try to keep my hand in here and there, just so's I don't lose the touch."

  "And not only your hand, I'll wager," she responded gleefully as Bandana looked admiringly around the saloon.

  "I see you're prosperin', Jewel, even if the boom fizzled," he said.

  "Three things a man's got to do come hell or high water, Bandana. Got to drink, got to gamble, got to fornicate. My kind of business tends to be the last to succumb to a change in the economy." Jewel stood facing him, hands on hips, wide grin on her red-painted lips, her formidable breasts pushed up and out by her corset until they seemed to dominate the room.

  "You point them damn titties of yours at me like that, honey, and I cain't be expected to talk economics, now can I?" Bandana drawled, with a significant nod in their direction.

  "You always were a silver-tongued son of a bitch," Jewel responded with a snort of laughter. "You'd probably just die in the attempt." She was of indeterminate age, somewhere between thirty and eternity.

  Bandana raised his glass of whiskey in salute.

  "I could think of no happier place to breathe my last," he answered gallantly, and Jewel winked to the bartender conspiratorially as she put her arm through Bandana's and moved off into the crowd like a ship in full sail. Jewel's red-orange hair made it easy to spot her even in the smoky dimness of the crowded saloon. She headed toward the gaming tables.

  "How long since we seen each other, Bandana?"

  "Winter of sixty-six."

  She nodded. "Just about the time the boomers had all cleared out and I thought the end was near. But there were rumors the railroad would be headed this way, and there were men comin' through here real steady, drovers and such. So I played a hunch and stuck it out. I couldn't of sold the place at that point anyway, and I had a lot invested. So I stayed."

  "Smart move, it seems."

  "So it does. The miners are startin' to drift back in. Don't know why exactly, but they're feelin' their way back to the Gulch. Meanwhile, I got more business than I know what to do with."

  She stopped at a faro table.

  "The dealer's name is Preacher Bill 'cause he always wears a black suit. Some say he's a defrocked priest, but I ain't so sure." She said it softly so as not to disturb the players.

  Faro required a large board with thirteen squares representing the respective values of the cards. The
dealer's "case," a small folding box about four inches high, held the deck face up; across the top of the box was a thirteen-string abacus.

  "Looks like big business, Jewel," Bandana said approvingly. "What's your bank?"

  "We need to keep five thousand or so around most nights, but the limit's twenty-five dollars a card."

  "Does the game ever get braced?" he asked, and she smiled with equanimity.

  "Last dealer I had brought in a trick box that dealt two cards stuck together, but somebody figured it out and plugged him. Made a real mess on the green felt."

  They moved on. "Where there's gamblin' there'll always be some guy trying to put one over on you, McBain. That's just the way men are made, darlin'. You know that."

  They both knew the astonishing array of devices invented by the fertile minds of crooked gamblers. Loaded dice and marked cards were only the beginning. "Bags" could be fastened beneath the table from which cards could surreptitiously be drawn. A "hold-out" vest would shoot a needed ace into a gambler's hand by means of a rubber spring.

  "Knew a dude out of Dodge," intoned Bandana, "who was known for spilling dark brandy in the neighborhood of his opponents' cards and reading their reflection in the shiny drops. Come to a bad end, as I recall."

  Jewel laughed appreciatively; she and McBain went back a long, long way together.

  "No nutshell played here, I see," Bandana noted.

  "That's a sucker's game," she replied disdainfully.

  "They're all sucker's games, Jewel honey," Bandana said, and Jewel rewarded him with a laugh.

  "Got some chuck-a-luck for you, though," she volunteered, pointing to one of the most popular dice games, across the floor from where they stood. The smoke in the room was so thick, it was difficult to distinguish specifics at a distance.

  "So, tell me, what brings you back to the Gulch, old friend?"

  "Got me an idea and a claim to go with it. Got two new friends you might like to meet. Young 'uns, but they got sand."

  Jewel's fancy eyebrows shot up.

  "Always happy to hear of new men in town," she said amicably. "Good-lookin'?"

  "See for yourself, they're bellied up to the bar down t'other end." He pointed to where Chance and Hart stood in conversation with two prospectors, their height and breadth making them easy to spot among the host of smaller men.

  "That's a sizable amount of man-flesh, Bandana," Jewel appraised approvingly. "The dark-haired one's handsome as all hell. I ain't personally taken with redheaded men, but the other one's not too bad neither, from where I stand—he's got a real virile look to him."

  McBain chuckled. "Oh, they're virile, all right, honey. I'm sure they'll raise a little hell with your ladies of the evening, soon as they get the opportunity. Right now, they're my partners."

  "Oh, shit, Bandana!" Jewel said with fervor. "I thought you'd had your fill of partners after the last two times. Don't you never learn nothin'?"

  He shook his head. "Hell, honey, what's the good of bein' alive if you don't take a few chances? Besides, I like these two, Jewel. You will, too. Come on." He hooked her arm in his own and pointed her toward the end of the bar.

  "Ain't they a mite young to be partners, Bandana?" she asked.

  "I never worry about a fault a man's sure to overcome," he replied. Jewel smirked and shook her head eloquently; if McBain said they were good men, his word was more than enough for her.

  "Hart! Chance!" Bandana shouted over the din around them. "I'd like you to meet up with Miz Jewel Mack, the most bodacious, perspicacious, and all-round damn fine woman west of the Divide."

  "By God, you're a big one!" Jewel said, appraising Hart's six-foot-six-inch frame and holding out her hand to him in a handshake as firm as a man's. "If you're built proportional all over you could get to be real popular with my girls right quick."

  Hart looked embarrassed, but Chance chuckled with delight and slapped his brother on the back before reaching for Jewel's hand and raising it gallantly to his lips.

  "It's not size, ma'am," Chance said as he touched her, "but style that counts in this life."

  "Mebbe so, honey," Jewel replied, "but you cain't make butter with no toothpick." Which occasioned McBain nearly to choke on his whiskey.

  "Welcome to the Crown of Jewel's, boys, any friend of this ornery little critter here is a friend of Jewel Mack. Let me buy you a drink to welcome you to the Gulch."

  Rufus, the Negro who tended bar, didn't wait for a further invitation, but set up four glasses. He was nearly as big as Hart, broad and powerful. Like many former slaves, he'd come west looking for freedom after the war and found as much anti-Negro feeling west of the Mississippi as east of it. Jewel had helped him out of a near scrape with the law and given him a job; in return he'd appointed himself her bodyguard. His watchful eyes and ubiquitous ears didn't miss much that went on in Jewel's vicinity. He kept a 12-gauge shotgun under the bar to ensure her continued good health.

  "What do you think of my place, boys?" Jewel asked.

  "Needs a nude," McBain answered before anyone could squeeze a word in. "A big, buxom, fat-ass nude right up there to soothe the sore eyes of the lonely men who come to share your hospitality. Damned if it don't!"

  "I could paint one for you, ma'am," Hart offered, surprised at himself for speaking up. "If one of your girls would pose for it."

  "You don't say so!" Jewel responded with unfeigned enthusiasm. "Damned if I wouldn't love a nude hung right up there in front of God and everybody. Might even pose for it myself."

  "I think a naked painting of you over the bar wouldn't do much soothing, ma'am," Chance interjected. "In fact, it just might incite those lonely men McBain is talking about to riot."

  "Well, ain't you the smoothie?" Jewel replied with a raised brow. "Been hangin' around with Bandana all right, I can see that quick enough.

  "I like your friends, Bandana, darlin'," she offered as she turned to go about her business, for Rufus had given her a sign from behind the bar that she was needed at the faro table. "Bring 'em back here to talk to me when life ain't so full of piss 'n' vinegar."

  Chapter 19

  "By God, Chance, that memory of yours is something to behold." Hart sat with his back to the hearth and chuckled at the prodigious feat his brother had performed, calling out in perfect sequence every card each man had played in the poker game the night before.

  Chance's answering smile was slow and easy; it was a fluke of nature that he had almost total recall. The books Hart had loved so as a child, he himself had easily committed to memory, although the content had had far less meaning for him than for his bookish brother. The poetry Hart hungered for, Chance could carelessly spew forth by the yard to entertain Hart by the camp-fire.

  "You know, Chance, when you get right down to it, you've been given uncommon gifts by the Almighty," Hart said. "It's real hard sometimes not to be envious."

  There was no rancor whatsoever in Hart's honest voice; Chance looked up and caught Hart's eye with his own.

  "Don't you remember what Mama told you, bro, when we were real small? 'Son, you haven't got your brother's looks or your brother's memory, but God didn't forget you. Why, you've got more sense in your little finger than he has in his whole body. Chance is likely to risk it all on one throw of the dice, but you'll always figure the odds.' " Chance smiled as he finished the remembered soliloquy, word for word.

  Hart leaned forward, stunned by the accuracy of his brother's mimicry. "How in the hell did you ever hear her say that, Chance? You know Mama never would have said a word against you, except I was so down in the mouth because everything came so easy to you."

  Chance laughed amiably.

  "I know that, brother. I wasn't put out by it, best I can remember. Most likely, I just thought she was right, as usual."

  How like Chance, his brother thought—never once had Hart seen him envious of anyone.

  "Just so you know, bro," Chance said more seriously. "I do have to work at the cards... concentrate on counting down and
all. It's concentration and memory combined that makes a gambler—that and an honest game, if you can find one. Even though I can brace a game if I need to, my skills work best with the rules, not against them. Poker, blackjack, you know how I work it... most men have a lazy shuffle. Because I remember which way the cards went into the deck before the shuffle, I've got a handle on which way they'll be dealt out, and my trick memory gives me a real edge on most men."

  Hart nodded. He'd seen his brother figure out the contents of each man's hand in enough games to know his method worked just fine.

  "But I'll tell you something, bro, even after you've whittled down the odds with the skills and the concentration, Lady Luck still has to smile on you, just a little." Chance grinned and poured a cup of coffee from the tin pot, then handed it to Hart.

  "The way I look at it, gambling is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Gambling gets us grub when we're low on cash, it can get us a stake for any action we latch on to. And because of my special 'gifts,' as you call them, I'm not really taking risks like most men do... I'm generally playing with the odds in my favor."

  Hart took a sip of the steaming coffee and chuckled begrudgingly; he knew what his brother said was true. Chance's memory took much of the gamble out of gambling.

  "As long as your judgment stays sharp, I guess there's no real harm in it, Chance. You've got to admit, though, you do seem to have a special relationship with Lady Luck."

  "Well, of course I do, bro—I've got a gift with all the ladies."

  "You great horse's ass. You're going to have to get a new size hat if your head grows any bigger."

  Hart stood up and stretched; although Chance was big, Hart was considerably bigger.

  "I've been having a fair amount of success with the ladies myself lately, Chance," Hart said, amused as usual by his brother's antics. "I can't decide if it's my size that attracts them, or just my good nature."

  Chance looked steadily at Hart for a moment before replying. "It's more than that they see in you, bro. They see that you're good."