Stryker broke out the bottle and passed it around. They were all mighty friendly here and Boag suspected every bit of it.
Stryker explained about the gold bullion in the express-company office on the Johnson-Yaeger pier in Hardyville. “It’s been all winter since the last riverboat made it up the river that far. They got a lot of gold waiting.”
“How much is a lot?” Boag said.
Pickett’s men had drifted through all the camps above Hardyville in the hills. When they’d put all the bits and pieces together it began to look as if the camps had delivered a lot of tonnage of raw ore to the smelter in Hardyville and when you discounted exaggerations and rumors it still looked to add up to pretty near a ton and a half of bullion.
Wilstach said, “What’s a ton and a half worth?”
“Say three hundred thousand dollars official price. A mite more down in Mexico.” Stryker lofted the half-consumed bottle. “Buy a good deal of tequila for a share of that kind of money, boys.”
Boag said, “All right, now you get to tell us what a share amounts to.”
“Well you boys are kind of latecomers. Some of these men been riding with Mr. Pickett ten years or more.”
“John B.,” Boag said, “I don’t believe I heard the man answer my question, did you?”
“It’ll be good,” Ben Stryker said. “Real good for hired-hand wages. It’s just one job of work for you two boys and then you take your shares and split up. Be a few days’ work in it for you, that’s all. We’ll be pickin’ up a few more men along the line too. Mr. Pickett totes it up we’ll need around thirty men to handle Hardyville and that riverboat crew.”
“John B., did the man answer the question yet?”
“If he did it must’ve been in some other language, Boag.”
Boag knew why Stryker was taking his time. He was sizing them both up and trying to guess how little they’d be willing to take.
Boag said, “I’ll save you the trouble doing sums in your head, Mr. Stryker. John B. and me will take ten thousand between us.”
“Mr. Pickett was thinking more along the lines of five thousand.”
“Apiece,” Boag said.
“Together,” Stryker corrected.
“Thirty men, three hundred thousand dollars, that’s ten thousand dollars a man. We’ll take half that. Seems fair.”
“No,” Stryker said. “It don’t seem fair.” He got up and left them alone with the half bottle of tequila.
Wilstach looked around the camp. Nobody was in earshot. Boag contemplated the bottle but refused it when Wilstach offered it.
Wilstach said, “I ain’t eager, Boag.”
“Why? Don’t you think they can get away with it?”
“Sure they can. But that don’t make it right.”
“Five thousand rights a lot of wrongs, John B.”
“Apiece?”
“Together, the man said.”
“Then you’re inclined to take it.”
“I guess I am,” Boag said. “What else we got to look forward to?”
“We do this, we maybe could get jerked to Jesus, Boag. You ever seen a man hanged? Flop like a fish on a hook. Man I don’t aim to end up right now in Boot Hill with dirt in my face.”
“You rather herd sheep, John B.?”
“I would if I knew how.”
“Now there’s the point,” Boag murmured. “What do we know how to do, except soldiering, when push comes to shove?”
Wilstach gave it thought. Finally he said, “Maybe you’re right.”
When Stryker came back and saw the bottle was empty he said, “You’re in, then.”
“Aeah,” Wilstach said.
“Twenty-five hundred apiece.”
“Right,” Boag said.
“I’m kind of glad you agreed to join up,” Stryker said. “Otherwise we’d of had to kill you. Couldn’t have you two tracking around loose knowing what you know.”
Boag said, “That gives a man a nice warm feeling, Mr. Stryker.”
The Johnson-Yaeger express company had an office on the pier, at the shore end of the dock. Tickets for passage were sold here, and shipments added to bills of lading. The warehouse for shipments was on an adjacent pier but the gold was held in the first building, probably because it was easier to guard: the building was small, it was exposed on all four sides, and it had only two doors, front and east side: There were windows here and there but they were barred with heavy cast-iron grilles bolted through to the inside of the timber studs. The front door gave access to the ticket window inside; behind the ticket counter was another wall with a door in it that led through to the back room where the gold was kept. That interior door had two armed sentries on it and the outside side door had two more. But there was more of a problem than that. The armed sentries weren’t all that formidable by themselves. The town was.
Hardyville was a town of armed citizens all of whom were aware of the gold in the Johnson-Yaeger office, some of whom owned shares in it, and a few of whom might be willing to die to protect it. No one could say how many would fight, but the gold belonged to the town as a whole so if you wanted the gold you had to be prepared to fight the whole town.
Johnson-Yaeger had built its express office on the pier deliberately, not only because it was the nearest place to the riverboat landing but also because it was surrounded on three sides by the bulk of Hardyville. From the office it was a seven-block gamut in any direction before you reached the outskirts. So you either had to run that gamut or swim, or use a boat. The only boats in Hardyville were the skiffs used by Californians to cross the river, and none was nearly big enough to carry a ton and a half of gold bullion. In fact all of them together couldn’t carry it.
The way Mr. Pickett had it worked out, the time when Hardyville felt safest was the time when the riverboat came and collected the gold and took it away. At that point the gold was no longer Hardyville’s responsibility.
But that was also the time when the gold was easiest to take.
Boag tied his mule to a rail in front of the Bella Union saloon. He left the heliograph on the saddle because he didn’t expect to need it again. He had a two-pound revolver under the skirt of his campaign jacket, rammed in his belt just aside from his spine. He walked the two blocks from the Bella Union to the Johnson-Yaeger pier, not hurrying, drawing a few incurious glances from pedestrians. Traffic was light on the street but what there was of it was converging slowly toward the riverboat pier because the rumor had gone around that the boat was due in this afternoon.
There was a knot of people around the waterfront when he got there. He posted himself in some shade across the street from the Johnson-Yaeger wharf and watched the fast brown river lash itself against the pilings. The sun was west of zenith and made painful reflections on the water.
He spotted Gutierrez and Stryker in the crowd, milling aimlessly, pretending they didn’t know one another. Gradually during the next half hour a dozen of Mr. Pickett’s rawhiders came along singly and by twos and melted into the throng awaiting the Uncle Sam. Empty freight wagons began to appear, drawing up at dockside ready to unload the flat-bottom hundred-foot vessel when she berthed.
He saw John B. Wilstach come down the street on his jackass and tie up in front of the assay office. A little while later the crowd’s mutter began to grow into a roar and he saw Mr. Jed Pickett walk in sight around the corner of the Inter Ocean Hotel, and that was the sign that the riverboat had been sighted from the roof of the hotel.
Wilstach was over near the express office and when he caught Boag’s eye he flashed his grin, filled with its rowdy flavorings. Boag pretended he didn’t see Wilstach. None of them was supposed to know any of the others.