The Vanquished by Brian Garfield Page B

sight—Indians, breech-clouted, leaping; Mexicans in battle dress; Bill Randolph in a soiled white apron. He pulled the trigger. The hammer was down; nothing happened; but in his imagination he felt the hard kick against his palm and saw the drift of clouded powder-smoke and the pitching of his stricken enemy. His eyes grew wide in the musty dimness of the hold. He holstered the gun and buttoned the flap over it, and went up the ladder with his shoulders straight and his eyes level and half-shuttered, in imitation of Norval Douglas.
    The Sea Bird swayed gently, paddlewheels thrumming the water. Smoke columned behind them like a trailing flag. The colors of the ocean were gray and green and brown-blue, with now and then a fleck of white toward the distant coastline. That shore was a ragged uplift of rocks and sharp-sloping timber, gnarled flatheaded cypresses and oak.
    There was a man on deck at the rail. He offered Charley a cigar, then lit his own pipe and introduced himself: “My name is John Edmonson.” He spoke in carefully modulated tones, precisely pronounced; he seemed to be an educated man from far away. His cheeks were stubbled with gray, his lean face deeply lined. He had a long straight nose and mild eyes that made him appear gentle and thoughtful; there were two horse-pistols in his waistband. He appeared old. He said, “Have you ever stopped to wonder about the sea? I wonder what might be hidden underneath that surface. A good many mysteries, I suspect.”
    â€œSharks,” Charley said. “And stingrays.”
    â€œI should have thought,” Edmonson murmured, “that a youth like yourself would have plenty of time yet to turn into a cynic.”
    â€œInto what?”
    â€œA cynic,” the older man said, “is a man who believes the worst of everything—and by the same token, believes in nothing.”
    Charley thought that was a fairly accurate description of himself. He saw nothing wrong with it; life came to him that way, in hues of black and gray. He spoke with customary bluntness: “You seem a little tame for this war party.”
    â€œPerhaps I am. Perhaps a few tame old men are needed among us.”
    â€œIt’s bound to be a hard trip.”
    â€œMy bones aren’t so old yet that I can’t ride horseback,” Edmonson said with a friendly smile. His voice was a gentle husky buzz. Under the rim of his flat-crowned California hat his hair stuck out in unruly licks of pebbled gray. He was tall, not bent. The sea traveled past without changing. “I feel the need for lunch,” Edmonson said. “Join me?”
    â€œAll right.”
    Over the meal, the old man talked mildly of remembered things. He was a New Englander, and his nostalgic conversation evoked in Charley’s mind fanciful pictures of places he had never seen. Edmonson’s family, once wealthy enough to educate him, had seen the coin turn; his father, he said, had gone bankrupt and died soon after. Edmonson revealed that he had studied for the law, but ill health in the form of lung consumption had driven him West. His body had healed. The need to earn a living had kept him at the carpenter’s trade; thus the calluses on his palms. He had never owned the talent for accumulating money. Approaching age had turned his thoughts toward a home, and Crabb had promised that—land on which to settle. He said, “I believe the prospects of danger are not nearly so great as some of us would believe. And where men will build homes, they will have need of a carpenter. I’ve found it a satisfying livelihood.”
    â€œIs that all you want out of it?” Charley asked.
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œI don’t know,” Charley said. “It just seems to me there ought to be something more than just making a living with your hands.”
    â€œIt’s more than sufficient to keep a man content. To demand more out of life is to delude yourself. In