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Chapter One
Two hours after the sun had set on a May day in the early sixties, the Walla Walla stagecoach reached the Snake River. Shadows were creeping out of the willows that grew on the banks of the stream, and as though fearful of them, the driver popped the long lash of his whip over the ears of the leaders to urge them on toward the journey's end. The coach, rocking on its leather thorough-brace, chucked and joggled over the rutty road and tossed the passengers about uncomfortably.
"Most there now, lady," said a voice in the growing dusk of the coach.
"I am so very thankful." It was a young woman who answered softly above the rattle of the wheels. "Not that the journey has been at all unpleasant. Indeed, everybody has been so considerate of my welfare I feel as though I have been a nuisance," she added, as if in apology for her presence in so rough a country.
"A good woman--a lady--is never in nobody's way," said the man.
The flush which spread over her face was hidden in the dusk, and the man continued, "We can tell 'em. They're so different from the others; and they're scarce enough here, God knows. Beggin' your pardon ... there's Lewiston!" The coach had rounded a sharp turn and was crossing the river when more than two thousand lighted tents burst into view.
In the soft night air of spring, and under the sky of lowered clouds that threatened showers of rain, they resembled strings of giant Japanese lanterns hung by magic in the land of dreams. They winked and flickered in groups while, a little apart from the conventional multitude, like bawds in a ballroom, larger, brighter tents glowed in the darkness, extending their welcome to the tired passengers in the coach, as did the more fraternal strings that reached merrily to the outermost parts of the town.
"Oh, how enchanting, Henry," whispered the young woman to the young man beside her.
"Yes, it's pretty enough," he answered indifferently. Then, as though he had felt her shrink at his lack of enthusiasm, he added, "I'm glad we're here. I'm tired."
She pressed his hand secretly. "I, too, am tired, Henry," she whispered appealingly. And then, startled by the welcoming shouts and shots as the stage swung in between the long rows of lighted tents, she clutched his arm. "Ah, here we are," she said. She winced at the sharp cracks of the driver's whip and the reports of six-shooters which announced the arrival of the coach in the main street. Up the street it dashed amid cheering citizens, seemingly all men, dressed in slouch hats and red or blue flannel shirts, and with trousers tucked into heavy boots.
Flimsy dance halls where dancers whirled to loud music, their shadowy forms showing plainly through the cotton walls, flashed by the passengers in the coach, and now and then a log building standing darkly among its neighbors with an air of greater substantiality. Men called their greetings to the driver. Bits of conversation, cut short by the speed of the coach, flung themselves at the passengers under its canvas cover. "Look at him!" cried a man astride a boney horse as the stage swung up and stopped at the Palace Hotel. "Gimme a hundred! Ain't a blemish on him. Gimme a hundred!" he went on, literally carried away by the crowd, for the street was packed with men and, like an ant hill, seemed to move with life.
"Good night, lady; good night, sir," said the other passengers as the young couple alighted from the coach before it should whirl away to the express office just beyond. The young woman bowed pleasantly and, mindful of their kindness and respect, waved her hand. Then, holding her palm upward, she laughed lightly, but as if with determination. "Why, Henry, it's sprinkling. Do they have electrical storms here, I wonder?"
He did not reply but, stooping, gathered up their two carpetbags and turned to the doorway, where the bowing clerk stood ready to take them from his hands. "I'll show you to your room, sir" he said. "Supper's all ready. You'll want to wash up. But it's nearly closing time," he added, his pudgy, perfumed form shuffling down the hallway over the flimsy, creaking floor to a door which he threw open. There, setting the bags just inside as though glad to be relieved of their weight, he struck a match and lighted a candle on the bureau, lingering to admire his black hair plastered low on his forehead and shining with oil. "Number nine sir," he said. "I'll hold places for you in the dining room." And he turned a moment at the door and bowed.
"We shall require but a moment," said the young woman, beginning to remove the veil which she wore pinned over a modish bonnet.
Then, while the clerk's footsteps creaked back along the hallway and she folded the veil, her eyes scanned the bare, unpapered walls and the single window. "It's very close in here, Henry," she sighed, removing her bonnet.
He strode to the window and threw up the sash, propping it with a stick that was on the sill for the purpose. "Get ready for supper," he said coldly.
After perhaps ten minutes, they entered the dining room, a long, narrow hall with bare log walls, windowed only on one side, and with but two doors, one opening into the office, the other into the kitchen. Its ceiling was very low, not over seven feet, and was, in reality, merely the rough board floor of rooms above that was supported by round, peeled logs crosswise of the dining hall. The rooms above were occupied. The tread of heavy cowhide boots on the boards so near the young woman's head was disconcerting, but only for a moment. After a half-startled upward glance, she smiled amusedly and her hand sought the young man's arm. A Chinaman was serving a dozen men scattered at the several tables in the light of tallow candles, and as the new guests entered every eye in the room turned toward them. They were a striking pair. The same young man who had been at the door as the stage drove in studied them intently, as if trying to place them.
The woman, alone, would have appeared to be considerably above the average height of women, but with her escort did not seem to be overly tall. She was dressed in a traveling dress of stone-colored merino ornamented with blue silk and black velvet, with a wide-sweeping skirt and a close-fitting bodice, and she moved with perfect grace across the room. As she smiled acknowledgement of his courtesy in seating her, her large blue eyes swept the room, and although the glance appeared casual, it somehow left every man with the uncomfortable feeling that he had been appraised.
Her escort was nearly six feet tall, fair, and as straight as an Indian. He was slender, even delicate, moving with a swift grace that so often characterizes people born to place and influence. He had a firm mouth that was finely cut and a chin that was strong and suggestive of daring. His slender shapely hands, white and almost as soft as those of a woman, were quick and sure in their movements, as though nature had fashioned them for some peculiar deftness.
A thoughtful person might have observed that his clear gray eyes were not only inscrutable but steely cold, and the attractive woman by his side strove with her charm to soften them. But if she had ever possessed the power to set those eyes aglow with passion it was now hopelessly lost, for while searching and seeing all with comprehension, they never changed their expression of heedless indifference--never offered her a morsel of devotion, though he attended her with studied courtesy. His voice, in addressing her, was not unpleasant, but pitched in a low monotone that in a long continued conversation might prove tiresome. One would not, at least at first, have associated the man with his voice. Moreover, his hair was out of keeping with his otherwise neat person and correct appearance. It was badly dishevelled and fell over his forehead in a rumpled pile. Still, he was handsome, and in spite of the fact that he was evidently but a boy in years, there was that about him which commanded attention and held it.
As soon as these late guests were served, the Chinaman closed and bolted the door. As one by one the patrons left their places at the tables, he followed to let them out and to prevent others from coming in.
Alone, even the desultory conversation that had been maintained in the presence of others ended, and the handsome pair finished their meal in silence. At last they also rose, the shuffling Chinaman accompanying them to the door and saying "Goo'-bye" as he closed it behind them.
"I'm likely to be out late," said the young man when they were back in their room, and picking up his black slouch hat from the bed, he crossed to the window and closed it against the damp west wind that stirred the crumpled curtain.
She shifted the candlestick on the bureau. "The fresh air smells good," she said, guarding her voice against a tone of disappointment. "Of course, I shan't mind your going out if you need to go, Henry. If I feel lonesome, I shall sleep."
He offered her no explanation. Deftly brushing back the tumbled lock of hair from his forehead, he put on his hat, pulling the wide brim down well over his eyes. Striding back along the hallway to the office, with a nod to the clerk, he went out of doors.
"Who is that fellow, Billy?" a miner asked of the hotel clerk.
"I don't know," the clerk replied. "He came in on the coach. His name's Plummer. That's all I know."
"Salt Lake City, hey?" muttered the other, peering at the register. "Further east, further cast, I bet."
Chapter Two
Leaving the hotel, Henry Plummer turned down the main street of Lewiston, which, despite the pitchy darkness and gently falling rain, was crowded with roughly garbed miners and prospectors from the hills. Here, indeed, was a new country, a new mining country; and as a wolf's blood is quickened at sight of his quarry so Henry Plummer's stirred with the thought. But there was no hint of his mind's work in his eyes under the dark hat brim, as his tall figure clad in fashionable clothes--dark frock coat, fancy brocaded vest, and gray trousers over well-polished boots--picked its way with quick, springy steps to the far end of the street. There he turned and, crossing over, came more than halfway back on the other side, his eyes measuring each lighted tent wherein there was gaming until he reached the Combination Gambling House, at the door of which he turned in.
The Combination was the most pretentious of all gambling houses in Lewiston, its sturdy log walls reaching fifteen feet from a floor of fifty by seventy feet. There was no ceiling, and, under the pole rafters set thick beneath a steep-pitched shake roof, the smoke from scores of cigars and pipes hung like a gray cloud throughout the year. On the right of the front door, leaving but a narrow passageway between it and the building's end, was a long bar, behind which three and at times six bartenders waited on the patrons who stood before it or sat at the many card tables in the room. Three faro layouts, always attracting crowds of players, occupied spaces near the wall on the opposite side from the bar, the chairs of their dealers and lookouts touching the hewed logs. The remaining floor space was plentifully furnished with fixed round tables and accompanying hickory chairs arranged so that a passageway reached from up near the front to the back of the room.
The place was always well patronized. Tonight, perhaps because of the rain, every chair was occupied, every table full. Men stood four and even six deep about the faro layouts, watching the deals and the luck of the men at play. Now and then an onlooker, who with neck craned from the outermost row had been anxiously following the turn of the cards, would cry, "Hold the deal!" and, elbowing his way to the layout, glance quickly at the cases there to reassure himself, then make a bet. "All down?" the dealer would ask disinterestedly, and again the deal would go on.
Now there was no disorder, no conversation, save an occasional short comment on the run of the cards. The games held every man tense, anxious, expectant; and many were perspiring, though the room was not warm. The dealers seldom spoke, but quickly and surely paid bets or deftly swept chips, money or gold dust to themselves as winnings. They were marvels of speed and efficiency. Even though layouts were strewn with bets great and small, some cards played to win, others to lose, and still others to win and lose, they made no mistakes, gave no man cause for complaint. Seated a little above them, the lookouts, with faces like graven images, never took their eyes from the game. Witnesses they were, and not a play escaped their studied notice, no bet but what they knew, though their countenances remained as expressionless and vacant as those of the Sphinx of old Egypt, and as hard--like the fates themselves who watch men's lives with seemingly cold indifference. Good and bad luck as evidenced in the games before them provoked neither smile nor frown; though they firmly believed in both goddesses, worshiping one and fearing the other with a wholeheartedness that would have shamed the superstitious Indian.
Stopping at the bar, Henry Plummer bought cigars and, lighting one, stood for a moment watching the scene with deep satisfaction. The constant clicking of chips and the hum and babble of voices about the card tables were music to him. When at last a man arose from a chair at a table well back in the room, he at once began to move towards the vacant seat, slipping through the crowd of watchers with the ease of one well accustomed to such places and their patrons. Slowly, and as opportunity offered a way through the jam, he approached the table at which four men were playing poker and from a vantage point near the vacant chair began to watch the game, intently and in silence.
Excerpted from Henry Plummer by FRANK BIRD LINDERMAN. Copyright © 2000 by University of Nebraska Press. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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