Bert came walking down the trail in the middle of one week, his shoulders were hunched and he sighed like he was carrying the world with him. He was the same pimply boy who always posted his letters with me. He stood in front of Zar’s place, smoothing the ground with his boot and finally he made up his mind to go in. “Don’t you know this is working day?” Zar said to him.
The young fellow didn’t answer and he looked ashamed. He sat around in the saloon all day, sighing and nursing whiskeys, and he didn’t speak to anyone. Zar struggled to understand what the boy’s trouble was and he finally decided Bert had lost his job. “Poor boysik, he will not say bot I know he must have lost favor with the mine boss.”
Now how was that so? Bert was not more than twenty. As well as I could remember he always got drunk when he came to town — not because he seemed to enjoy it but because it put him in company with the rest of the diggers. That’s the way a young fellow does, doing twice as much of anything to make sure he keeps up with the rest. The mine boss wouldn’t let go someone like Bert. But Zar said, “Ah, I can afford him a few dollars, I will take him on as helper,” so I kept my views to myself.
When the Russian offered him the job Bert’s mouth dropped open. Then his face lit up and he laughed. Course he’d take it! A couple of days after this I spoke to him: “Well,” I said, “now you don’t have to travel but a few steps to post your letters.”
“Hell, Mr. Blue,” he said, “I given up writin’ letters. Never got no letters back.” He was cheerful saying this, he didn’t seem to mind. And each morning there was a new sound to hear, Bert whistling as he went about his chores.
On a Thursday evening I stepped into Zar’s place for a drink. Jenks was there, sitting at a table with Mae and Jessie. I could hear where Zar was — his snores were coming out of the side room like running cattle. Miss Adah served me from behind the bar. “Where’s the new man?” I said to her.
She looked over at the two girls and they looked back. Mae got up and went to the door to the side room and closed it carefully.
“Now listen Blue, please,” Adah said to me in a low tone, “you got to promise to keep this under your hat.”
Jessie and Mae came up on either side of me and I found myself hard put to raise the cup.
“What’s going on ladies?”
“That Bert is sparkin’ our little girl,” Adah said.
“Whut’s thet?” Jenks had followed. “The Chink?”
“Jenks I sweah,” Mae turned on him with a harsh whisper, “an you say one word I’ll have yo’ scalp!”
“Gwan back to your stable, deadhead,” said Jessie, “this don’t concern you.”
Jenks leaned back with his elbows on the bar and he grinned that sly grin of his: “Shit … Y’mean he’s cooin’ wif thet li’l yaller flopgal?”
“Hush damn you,” Adah said. She looked at me: “It’s no joke, Zar finds out and he’ll kill him.”
“He’s really stuck on her?” I said.
“Lord!” said Jessie. “You’ve never seen the like. You’d think she was white. You’d think she had a papa owned a railroad!”
“Saturday he didn’t give nobody else a chance to touch her,” Adah said. “Paid her the money and took her out by the well and held her hand.”
“I saw it,” Mae said nodding.
“Godamighty!” Jenks said.
“Then after a while she figures it’s time to come back in, and so in he follows and gives her the money again and out they go again.”
“Well what do you know!” I had to laugh. “Zar thought he was fired from his job.”
“No sir, he just up an’ quit it! That boy’s crazy, he’s wild! There’s no tellin’ what he’ll do why I never saw a person afflicted so.”
Jenks said: “Knew a feller oncet were bedded to a Piute. She sure did have a scent.”
“It don’t seem right,” Mae said biting on her fingernail.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Now Blue,” said Adah, “that little thing is besides herself. She was so scairt Saturday she couldn’t keep from shakin’ all over.”
“It scares her?”
“Why she’s been cryin’ ever since. He has her out there somewhere right now moonin’ like a sick calf over her, poor thing she don’t know what to do.”
“Well if he’s taken a fancy for her,” I said, “there are worse things.”
“Blue,” said Adah, “there are fancies and fancies. She’s just a child, she don’t understand that kind of business, he got no sense treating her like that.”
“When Zar finds out he’ll kill ’em both,” Mae said.
“Well Zar don’t own the girl. Any of you could take a beau if you really wanted,” I said.
“Maybe we could, maybe we couldn’t,” Jessie said. “But he bought her. Paid her Pa a hundred dollars.”
“That Chink weren’t even her Pa,” Mae said to Jessie. “He said he was but he didn’t look as he could sire a flea.”
“You won’t let on will you Blue?”
“I’m dumb ladies.”
“Poor child,” said Adah, “there’s no telling what’ll happen. What is it possesses that boy I don’t hope to guess.”
I downed the drink and there were these three glum faces around me — weary Miss Adah with her fine mustache, long-jawed Jessie, plump Mae, her cheeks going to fat … What Zar would do worried them, but I think they were more frightened by Bert himself. They were uneasy at such a feeling in someone, it was beyond them. For me it was a revelation that such a thing was happening here. It was like someone had come along to put up a flag. I made up my mind if Zar raised a ruckus like the ladies feared I would do what I could for the boy. I wanted to nurture something like that, keep it going.
The more I thought about Bert the better I liked him. You like to see desperation still in its pimples. I went to Isaac’s tent and the Swede was there, and I told them about Bert. They had a good laugh. When I went back to the cabin Molly was sitting outside. We’d been having some afternoons of sweet rain, some evenings of slow-dying skies, and she’d taken to sitting on a stool in front of the cabin door and she’d watch the night come on. I sat down near her and I could just feel the smile when I told her there was a true lover come to town.
Then there was silence between us and I see no reason now not to put down what happened: I found myself aware of Molly in a way that was pleasure and pain at the same time. I felt her closeness. I kept thinking I was older than she was and you see it was a too familiar thought to have, I had no right to it. I was not Bert Albany, I wasn’t free to respect my feelings, and so nothing was said as the darkness came down. And when she went inside I sat still and waited until she would be asleep before I followed.
But that following Saturday was the night it first appeared all our fortunes were changing. There was a big crowd of miners and they were feeling the season, their carryings-on was not just a bit of fun, it was liken to a shivaree. They brought mouth organs with them, one fellow came up with a banjo, there was a lot of dancing with the drinking and since the women were scarce among so many, the miners danced with each other, stomping out squares so as to make the ground shake. And insisting in all that noise was talk of a new stamping mill going up not far to the east. The Chinagirl had no worries about Zar that night. Bert kept her in sight of his bar all the time but the Russian wouldn’t have noticed if he had carried her around on his shoulders: Zar was blinded happy with the rumors, rushing around from one fellow to the next to hear every version. By midnight he’d decided the Company was going to lay a road down the trail from the mines so as to cart the ore to the new mill—