conversation.
“These salts of yours, Mr. Lyons,” he said bluntly, “are they any good?”
“Excellent. The finest on the market.”
“What sort of ills will they cure?”
“Nervous irritability, night sweats, blurring of eyesight, slow circulation of the blood, swollen veins, and weakness of the brain and body as a result of excesses or abuses of any kind.”
“Very impressive. How much do they sell for?”
“One dollar the box.”
“Perhaps I’ll purchase one when we arrive,” Coffin said. “I have been under a nervous strain lately.”
“Pressures of your profession, Mr. Coffin?”
“Not that so much as the fact that I am being harassed.”
“Harassed?”
“By the Chinese population in Silver. Some of them have broken into my house and the newspaper office and destroyed property in both places. God knows what other indignities they’ve perpetrated in my absence; I’ve been two days in Boise gathering political news. I asked friends to watch my house and the office, but…” He grimaced and shook his head.
“The Chinese are generally a peaceable race where white men are concerned,” Quincannon said. “Why have some of them taken after you?”
“Opium,” Coffin said.
“Sir?”
“Opium. I have editorialized against the filthy stuff and their open selling of it in no uncertain terms. Do you know what yen shee is, Mr. Lyons?”
Quincannon nodded. It was the scrapings of the opium pipe, gathered and saved and sold to addicts who could not afford pure opium; a quarter teaspoon of yenshee mixed with a small amount of water sustained the opium eater’s illusion of well-being until his next pipe.
“The worst of them, a merchant named Yum Wing, gives small quantities of it away free — a means to corrupt men and bring him more customers.”
“And that ploy has succeeded?”
“All too well. My compositor, Jason Elder, became an addict that way and has been all but useless at his job since.”
“Was Elder a good printer before his addiction?”
“Yes. One of the best I have ever worked with.”
Quincannon filed Jason Elder’s name away for future consideration.
Oliver Truax said, “There are too many Chinamen in Silver, that’s the problem.” Now that the stage had come off the ferry and was underway again, he had apparently decided to make himself heard. “The whole lot of them should be run out of town. And Yum Wing and the rest of the elders tarred and feathered first.”
“What a quaint idea,” Sabina Carpenter said mildly.
Her sarcasm was lost on the fat mine owner. He said, “We would all be better off in that event. And it might happen, too. Mark my words, it well might.”
“Vigilante action, Mr. Truax?” she asked.
“If necessary. Wendell McClew is an incompetent buffoon, everyone knows that — the worst town marshal Silver has ever had. He can’t control the Chinamen and he can’t do anything about the outlaws running loose in the hills, preying on innocent men and women. He can’t do anything worth a tinker’s dam.”
“You’re being a bit hard on him, Oliver,” Coffin said. “McClew isn’t as bad as all that.”
“I say he is. I say he should be removed from office and a better man installed in his place before the Chinamen run amok.”
“Are matters with the Chinese really that serious?” Quincannon asked.
“Hardly,” Sabina Carpenter said.
Truax looked at her as if she were a child. “You haven’t been in Silver very long, Miss Carpenter. You haven’t a proper understanding of the situation.”
“But of course you do.”
“Of course,” Truax said. It was obvious to Quincannon that he was the kind of man who believed in the absolute sanctity of his own viewpoint. It was also obvious to Quincannon that he was an arrogant, pompous, and bigoted troublemaker. “Get rid of the heathens, I say. God-fearing men and women are what we want in Silver City.”
“God-fearing white men and women,” Sabina Carpenter amended.
Truax nodded emphatically. “Just as you say, Miss Carpenter. Just as you say.”
They lapsed into silence as the stage rattled on through fertile farmland, the coach jouncing and swaying in its thoroughbraces. The movement and the amount of whiskey he had drunk in Nampa gave Quincannon a vicious headache, created more queasiness in his stomach; he sat with his eyes closed, enduring it.
Noon came as they crossed less settled flatland toward the rugged, looming shapes of the Owyhee Mountains. Just before they reached the low foothills that marked the beginning of the Owyhees, they encountered a section of road covered with ruts that ran parallel to each other the width of the coach. The other three passengers had been over this road before; they lowered the side-curtains over the windows as the stage began to crawl through the ruts. Each was full of potholes, some hidden by buildups of powdery dirt; one wheel or another sometimes dropped clear to the hub and caused the coach to jerk and bounce violently, the four of them to hang onto the straps with both hands. Even with the curtains down, the air was clogged with dust. Quincannon had to struggle to keep his sickness down inside him. His head felt as if hobnails were being driven into the inside of his skull.
When they cleared the rutted section the driver stopped and allowed his passengers to rest briefly and compose themselves. Quincannon took the opportunity to drain his flask. The whiskey steadied him again, but added to the pounding in his temples.
Early in the afternoon, well into the lower elevations of the Owyhees, they reached a way station that had been built at a point where two other roads joined the one they had been traveling. The main building was wood- frame, with a covered porch and a sign above it that read: Poison Creek Station Meals at All Hours. At the rear were a large barn and corral. In front was what Coffin referred to as “the big hill”: the road seemed to climb straight up until it disappeared around a curve on the towering mountainside.
“Eight miles from here to Sands Basin and Silver City,” Coffin said. “And uphill all the way.”
The others ate beans and biscuits inside the station; the sight of the food made Quincannon’s stomach jump, and he went back outside to the water pump and washed his face and neck. The rest of his supply of whiskey was in his warbag. He asked the driver, who had just finished putting oats into gunny-sack nose bags for the horses, to get the bag out of the boot for him. When his flask was refilled he had another drink, a small one this time, and judged himself ready to resume the trip.
The uphill trek was slow but not nearly so rough; the road had a natural gravel surface and was less rutted up here. They climbed past basalt bluffs, through stands of juniper and cottonwood and mountain pine, toward granite heights that were partially obscured by low-hanging clouds. Deep canyons fell away below them, some with willow-choked creeks bubbling along their bottoms. The smell of sage that had stayed with them all the way from Nampa was replaced by the spicy scent of juniper. And the air grew cooler as the sun westered and was lost behind the high rocks.
When they neared New York Summit, less than three miles from Silver City, Quincannon could hear dull pounding echoes that he identified even before Truax said, “Powder blasts in the mines. We’ll soon be able to hear the stamps as well. It won’t be long before our arrival.”
Quincannon nodded.
“You’ll like our city,” Truax assured him, as if he were a member of the Chamber of Commerce. He seemed to have forgotten that Quincannon, at least as far as he knew, was a mere patent medicine drummer. “It’s the fastest growing and most progressive in Idaho.”
For anyone who doesn’t happen to be Chinese, Quincannon thought. He said, “I hope to make many new acquaintances there, Mr. Truax. And to renew an old one.”
“Ah? You know someone in Silver, then?”
