but also because it kept alive the memory of Skye McGregor, the woman he would have married had she not been murdered back in Scotland.
“Where are you, Duff?” Elmer asked.
“Beg your pardon?”
“You been gazin’ out over the land here for the last five minutes without sayin’ a word. You been lookin’ at the land, but I’ll just bet you ain’t a-seein’ it. Your mind is some’ers else, I’m a-thinkin’.”
“You’re partly right and partly wrong,” Duff said, his Scottish brogue causing the “r’s” to roll on his tongue. “I was for seeing my land, for I find the view to my liking and soothing to my soul. But ’tis right you are that my mind was back in Scotland.”
“You were thinking of your woman?” Elmer asked.
“Aye, the lass was much on my mind. ’Tis a shame I’ve all this, and no one to share it with me.”
“You’re a young man, Duff. You’ll not be single all your life I’m bettin’.” Elmer chuckled. “What about the young woman who runs that dress shop in Chugwater?”
“Ye would be talking about Meghan Parker, I expect,” Duff said.
“Who else would I be talkin’ about? Of course I’m talking about Meghan Parker. She’s all sass and spirit, with a face as brown as all outdoors, and yeller hair as bright as the sun. She’s as pretty as a newborn colt and as trustin’ as a loyal hound dog. Why, she could capture your heart in a minute if you would but give her the chance.”
Duff laughed. “Elmer, ’tis a bit of the poet you have in that ancient soul of yours.”
“I wasn’t always a poor castaway creature of the desert,” Elmer said.
Elmer was Duff’s only ranch hand. When Duff came to take possession of his land last year, he’d heard stories of a ghost in the old, abandoned and played-out mine that was on his property. When he examined his mine, he found the ghost who had kept others frightened away, and he also found that the mine was anything but played out. The ghost was Elmer, who was “protecting” his stake in the mine. At the time, Elmer was more wild than civilized; he had been living on bugs and rabbits when he could catch them, and such wild plants as could be eaten.
By rights and deed, the mine belonged to Duff, but he wound up taking Elmer in as his partner in the operation of the mine, and that move was immediately vindicated when shortly thereafter, Elmer saved Duff’s life. The two men became friends then, and over the last year, Duff had seen occasional glimpses into Elmer’s mysterious past.
Although Elmer had never told him the full story of his life, and seldom released more than a bit of information at a time, Duff was gradually learning about him.
He knew that Elmer had been to China as a crewman on a clipper ship.
Elmer had lived for two years with the Indians, married to an Indian woman who died while giving birth to their son. Elmer didn’t know where his son, who would be ten, was now. He had left him with his wife’s sister, and had not seen him since the day he was born.
And once Elmer even let it slip that he had ridden the outlaw trail with Jesse and Frank James.
Because of the goldmine, Elmer had money now, more money than he had ever had in his life. He could leave Wyoming and go to San Francisco to live out the rest of his life in ease and comfort, but he had no desire to do so.
“I got a roof over my head, a good friend, and all the terbaccy I can chew,” Elmer said. “Why would I be a- wantin’ to go anywhere else?”
Elmer stood up, stretched, and walked out to the fence line to relieve himself. Just before he did though, he jumped back in alarm.
“Damn!” he shouted.
“What is it?” Duff called from his swing. “What is wrong?”
“There’s a rattlesnake here!”
Duff got up from the swing and walked to the front of the porch. “Where is it?” he asked.
“Right over there!” Elmer said, pointing toward the gate in the fence. “Iffen I had been goin’ through the gate, I woulda got bit.”
“I see him,” Duff said.
Duff pulled his pistol and aimed it.
“You ain’t goin’ to try’n shoot it from way back there, are you?” Elmer asked.
For his answer, Duff pulled the trigger. The gun flashed and boomed, and kicked up in Duff’s hand. Sixty feet away, with an explosive mist of blood, the snake’s head was blasted from its body. The headless body of the snake stretched out on the ground and continued to jerk and twist.
“Sum’ bitch!” Elmer said. “I been to war, sailed the seas, and seen me a goat ropin’, but I ain’t never seen shootin’ like that.”
Elmer reached down and picked up the carcass, and then laying it on the top rung of the fence, pulled out his knife and began skinning it.
“What are you doing?” Duff asked.
“I’m goin’ to make us a couple of snakeskin hatbands, and we’re goin’ to have us some fried rattlesnake for supper,” Elmer said.
After supper that evening, consisting of batter-fried rattlesnake, fried potatoes and sliced onion, Duff pushed his plate away, then rubbed his stomach with a satisfied sigh.
“I never thought I would eat rattlesnake, but that was good.”
