The third morning dawned bright and crisp, the sky a cloudless azure crown. Which was quite a contrast from the day before, when, late in the afternoon, storm clouds had rolled in from the mountains and dumped inches of rain on their heads in less than half an hour.
“Let’s hope there’s not another gully washer today,” Charley commented. “That last one soaked me to the”—he was going to say “skin” but at the last instant thought it might not be appropriate to say to a woman, so he changed it to—“hide.”
Enos Howard guffawed. “That drizzle was nothin’, pup. Why, I’ve seen storms that turned the heavens blacker than the bottom of a well, with thunder that shatters your eardrums and so many lightnin’ bolts they fry the air you breathe.”
“Do you ever tire of your tall tales?” Tony Fabrizio asked. It was his turn to lead their two pack horses, and he was securing the last of their packs.
“Do you ever tire of breathin’?” Enos responded and bobbed his chin. “Tie that rope tighter, you citi fied dandy, or the first rattlesnake we come across, those packs are liable to go flyin’ hell-bent for everywhere.”
Charley had hoped that once they were out on the prairie, Tony and Enos would stop bickering. But the pair got along about as well as a dog and a cat; they were forever scratching and snapping. “When will we get to see some buffalo?” he asked to divert their anger.
“Maybe never,” Enos said. “Time was, this plain was choked with ’em. You couldn’t take a step without steppin’ in buffalo shit. But that was before we started killin’ ’em off in droves.”
Melissa, already on her horse, twisted in her saddle. “Do you ever feel guilty, Enos, about being a buffalo hunter?”
“How many times must I tell you, gal? I was a buffalo runner.”
“What’s the difference?” Melissa posed the question Charley was set to ask. “You shot buffalo.”
“It makes a difference to those of us who have done it for a livin’.” Enos forked his own mount, and they moved out. “We worked in crews. I was always the runner, or the shooter, as you’d call it, and had two to three skinners under me who took care of the butcherin’. And I mean to say, they had a hard time keepin’ up. No one dropped buffs like me.”
“Except Buffalo Billy Cody,” Tony said.
Charley anticipated an outburst, but Howard surprised him.
“Yeah, well, soon that will be forgotten. Along with that shootin’ match I lost to Jesse Comstock. When men talk about me from now on, they’ll do it with respect.”
Melissa responded. “So that’s why you changed your mind. To redeem yourself.”
“You have no notion of what it’s like to be a laugh ingstock, Missy. Of havin’ men point at you and whisper behind your back. It’s enough to make a fella crawl into a bottle and never come out.”
“So you’re hoping if we collect the bounty on the Hoodoos, it will restore your reputation.”
Enos took a plug of tobacco from his possibles bag and bit off a chaw. He chomped awhile before saying, “Whoever corrals the Hoodoos will be famous. Not just a little bit famous like that idiot who discovered Long’s Peak by mistake, but a lot famous, like Carson and Hickok and men like that.”
Charley had listened to their exchange with great interest. He marveled at Melissa’s ability to see right through Howard and divine his intentions. She was smart, that girl, a lot smarter than he was. Which was fine by him. His grandpa liked to joke that a man should marry a woman who was twice as bright, and that way they would come out even. But now that he gave it more thought, he saw how it could work against him. After all, what would an intelligent girl like Melissa ever see in a country bumpkin like him?
Charley wasn’t fooling himself. He wasn’t the catch of the century. He was big and strong and as loyal as the year was long, but that was basically all he had going for him. He would never be a bank president. He would never be up to his armpits in money. The best anyone who married him could hope for was that he would keep food on the table and clothes on their backs.
Tony was speaking. “I misjudged you, Howard. I thought the only reason you came was the money.”
“That too,” Enos said with a grin. “But it’s the chance to wipe my slate clean that counts more.” He spat tobacco juice and wiped his chin with his sleeve. “Just so long as I fight shy of Denver from here on out.”
“I knew it!” Charley declared. “That five hundred dollars was ill-gotten gains.”
“How did you get the money, Enos?” Melissa asked.
Howard chuckled. “Before I was a buffalo runner, girl, I tried my hand at a lot of things. Trappin’. Scoutin’. Guidin’. Even prospectin’. One time, down Durango way, I found what I thought was the richest gold strike since Hector was a pup. Turned out to be pyrite, though. Fool’s gold, folks call it. I have several pokes of the stuff.”
Tony yanked on the lead rope to keep the pack animals moving. “Why hang on to worthless ore?”
“Because not everyone knows it’s worthless. A greener can’t tell fool’s gold from the real article. So now and then I would sell nuggets to pilgrims fresh off the stage from back East.” Enos’s right cheek bulged as if he had an apple in his mouth. “Last night I made the rounds of a few saloons until I found me a tipsy fella willin’ to part with enough money to buy my claim in a genuine gold mine.”
“Land sakes!” Melissa declared, but she didn’t sound especially scandalized. “You swindled him.”
“That I did, Missy. For the paltry sum of five hundred dollars, a certain gent from Boston is now the proud owner of the west slope of Long’s Peak.”
Enos, Melissa, and Tony laughed. But not Charley. Cheating people was not something he took lightly. His parents had taught him that the only way to get ahead in the world was by working hard and doing right. “Swindlin’ isn’t anything to laugh at.”
“That it’s not, pup!” Enos said. “Swindlin’ should be held in the respect which it deserves.”
“Respect?” Charley scoffed.
“Sure. Swindlin’ is what our country is based on. We swindled it away from the Injuns, didn’t we? And we’ve been swindlin’ one another ever since.”
“That’s the silliest thing you’ve said yet.”
“Is it? Then answer me this, boy. What do you call it when the government takes land to build a railroad whether the people who own the land like it or not? A swindle. What do you call it when a bank can charge twenty-four percent interest on a loan? A swindle. Or when a merchant gets cigars for two cents and sells them for ten cents? Another swindle. Or how about when a man buys land for a dollar an acre and sells it for twenty an acre, as all those speculators did in Denver?”
“A swindle,” Charley conceded when Enos waited for him to answer.
“Exactly. Swindlin’ is what Americans do best. So don’t look down your nose at me for takin’ advantage of that Yankee. If God didn’t want people swindled, He wouldn’t have made them so stupid.”
Tony nodded. “For once he and I agree, my friend. It is why I feel no shame over selling trough water to those who took it for granted it was something else.”
Enos cackled. “There’s more to like about you than I figured, Fabrizio. Any man who will swindle another is all right in my book.”
Charley was hard-pressed to decide which upset him more: that they thought it was all right to cheat people, or that Melissa was grinning as if all this talking of swindling were great fun.
“Say! Lookee there!” Enos had risen in the stirrups and was staring to the southeast. “Just what I need.”
Charley looked. Off in the distance were some antelope. They had been seeing more and more of the elusive animals the farther they went. Usually the antelope bounded off before they came close. These were about five hundred yards away and so far were content to stay and graze.