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It was nothing more than a hope for profit that had driven a man like Elkins to don rank furs and swarm old Mithrim Fort by night.
Elkins did not even know, on reflection, if Mithrim was very old. What was a legacy of brick and mortar in a land of stone and rough-hewn wood, anyway? The Indians moved their camps like ghosts in the night. The Government depended on cramped cabins and shuddering shanties to house their soldiers and laborers. Even San Francisco, north and a little west, was full of growing pains.
No, Elkins was as new here as the promise of gold. He had no other desire or standard by which to live.
Because most of the men who had run with him up the guarded hill were dead, he also had few friends. Nor much chance of making new ones, neither. Not with a price on their heads.
Ain’t so much a price as a warning, said one of his companions. A Mountain man. Goor, his name was.
There were seven of them that had fled over the bridge, cursing and bleeding and feverish with rage-turned-terror. What the hell else lived in you when you fought? The seven cast off their furs, concealed their guns, washed their faces in cold, unfriendly creek-water.
It was not quite dawn.
Lucky to find water, said another of the men Elkins scarcely knew. In this cursed, half-desert place.
Elkins scrubbed blood from the creases of his palms.
After that they talked little. They kept on through the end of the first night into the first morning, when the sun came up like a pale eye to watch them running like a pack of cowardly coyotes, stopping only to eat and drink and tend as best they could to their wounds. Elkins had had good luck. His only hurt was an itching gash stitched up along his right forearm.
The yellow-haired bitch had been the one to cut him. A girl no more than fifteen. He wished he had killed her, for the insult alone, but she had been too quick.
Thoughts such as these cropped up and festered in his head, worse than the wound. With them came questions. Why had he done it? Why had he gone on such a mad mission?
For gold, of course. But there was little enough of that in his pockets now, or in the saddlebags of his horse. If their camp had not been scattered, they would have plenty of horses with them, for they had attacked Mithrim on foot, and returned with but a sliver of their numbers.
By noon on the first day (they went slowly, and there was much winding about), they regained the camp. Spirits lifted a bit; neither thieves nor Indians nor wild things had descended in the night. The two guards swelled their numbers to nine. Nine men, with nothing to go back to, but several dozen steeds tied to the trees of the glade with which to go on.
Damn fools we were, to leave only two guards, said one man, and was struck for it.
The guards said that they had had to fend off a wolf; they had done that without dying. Where was the rest of the company?
In a burning heap on Mithrim’s grounds, no doubt, thought Elkins. He was miserable and stiff in his torn coat. He had been a shipping clerk in Massachusetts, in the old days. He was a long way from home and deep in debt.
(Why had he done it?)
Around him, men who knew more agreed in hushed voices that they would not return to the Mountain. Only death awaited them there.
And not a good death, said Goor.
Elkins had not come from the Mountain. He’d been a man in a tavern, too sluggish with disappointment over his last attempt at panning to try again soon.
Then he heard whispers.
Then he saw money changing hands, saw the bad hides bundled up, heard the hushed glee of the lushy seller. What should a man make of that? Of the ground shifting under his feet?
Opportunity. Whispers. Money shining under lamplight as only it could: ridges, faces, silver and gold despite its greed-grimed filth.
You simply didn’t come west to be a good man.
The camp broke up. It was noon. The sun was high, but spirits fell low again. Some of the men were shivering, feverish from bleeding. It was a slow journey out of the hilly brush. They tramped along, leading the horses by their bridles until nightfall. Only when the second day dawned, on the edge of the foothills that had been the cause of their confusion, did they agree to chart the course to San Francisco, where they might sell the horses without being detected by the Mountain’s many eyes.
There was a little trouble, too, about the plan to sell the horses. Despite the daylight, the other men were afraid. Elkins still thought himself rather lucky, but also thirsty—he wanted liquor, and quick. He listened impatiently to their talk.
We can’t keep these here horses with us all the way ‘cross this godforsaken waste. That was said when they stood at the border of a wide, dry plain. Dust danced in the wind like snow. It would be difficult to hide there. They ain’t all ours.
So you want to walk ‘em God knows how many miles back to the French devil? You want him to tear out your teeth and feed ‘em to you for your trouble?
Elkins knew they meant Mairon, the hunter, who had given them their orders, but whom he had never seen. He had heard enough tales to make his hair stand on end. The man was, so it was said, kinder to the beasts he hunted and skinned than to men who crossed him. He was known to take scalps, to take fingers and hands and entrails.
And he had yellow eyes.
So: they led the horses over the plain. It was slow work to herd the disgruntled beasts; you couldn’t ride swiftly. The men cursed. Some were sagging in the saddle. They weren’t friendly with each other, save out of a sort of desperate desire not to die here, or anywhere.
Elkins wondered if he should feel shamed, for surviving Mithrim. Then he shrugged the shame away. Too nippy out, too harsh the blowing wind, to think of honor. At least it wasn’t a cold, northern sort of winter. A prairie winter.
Elkins had heard different sorts of stories, about what men did to each other when they had no hope at all.
Elkins had his liquor four days after the fighting was behind them. He had once killed a man in a tavern like the one they now sat in—an ugly tussle over a game of cards gone awry—but otherwise, he had not drawn such blood until Mithrim. At Mithrim, he had killed every man he could.
They had sold the horses in this shanty-town, despite their plan to wait until a better market in the city. There were enough likely thieves hanging about that money in hand seemed better than beasts crowded at the ill-lit posts.
Elkins did not partake in the grumbling. He wet his throat and chased away the memory of gasping death, of hot blood.
At length he became aware of a stranger’s glance. He glowered at the man, feeling himself quite equal to more violence, if it came to that, but the stranger only smiled in return and rose, bringing his own tankard with him.
Elkins’ company—if they could be so called—were crowded around two tables. They fell silent at the stranger’s approach.
“Good evening, gents,” said he, clear and flat like a well-bred Easterner. He was fine-dressed: brocade on his waistcoat (Elkins hadn’t seen a waistcoat in some time), gold buttons on his suede coat. His leather boots shone even under the greasy lamplight.
“You’re too late for horses,” said Goor.
The stranger laughed. Bright eyes gleamed under his broad hat, which he had not removed indoors. That was not uncommon, in the west, but it still concealed him too well for Elkins’ taste.
At least he wasn’t French.
“I am not here for your horses,” he said. “I am here for you.”
Elkins reached for his gun. The shifting on the bench beside him suggested the rest were doing the same.
“Tut, tut,” said the stranger, waving a hand. “You misunderstand me. My name is Glaurung. I have property to the north…valuable property. I am looking to hire men to oversee it.”
No guns were drawn, but still, the mood had not shifted to a companionable one.
“May I sit down?” asked Glaurung. “I will pay for every drink here, and another after that, if you but hear me out.”
They made room for him.
His manner changed. He leaned forward, his hat tipping back, and his face—a sharp, fine-boned one—seemed suddenly drawn and urgent. “There’s a great deal of trouble stirring in these parts,” he said. “I am an observant man, and I have seen enough of you lot tonight to take a very practical interest in you.” He paused, rapping his knuckles lightly but deliberately upon the table. “Why do nine men bring so many horses with them? And why are they eager to sell them and their empty saddles?” Hearing a grumble beginning, he went on. “I do not need to know exactly why,” he said. “What I am chiefly interested in—well, as I said. I want men. Fighting men, clever men. Men who survive. You strike me that way, gentlemen. You strike me as men who have come a long way and are not yet decided where you shall go next.”
“Same might be said of horse-thieves,” said Goor.
“Oh, indeed it might,” said Glaurung, with a quick, rattling laugh. “I am fond of a good horse-thief, too, under proper circumstances. But I am fonder of men come recently from a fight, men who value their lives, if they will but keep thieves from what is mine. I want men whose first loyalty is to who pays them best.”
“Will you pay us best?” Elkins asked.
Glaurung looked at him, and the urgent look left him. A slow smile dragged its way over his fine features as a needle would sketch a thin line through wax. “I will always pay you best,” he said. “And if I do not, you may leave me.”
A little silence fell. Elkins had heard enough for his taste, but the rest seemed not so sure.
“We’re not looking for a master,” said one of the men. Another Mountain man.
“I care not for such titles,” sneered Glaurung. “I care only whether you have enough horses left for a ride two days’ north.”
They did.