slowly behind Brodie.
“Have you thought what you’re going to do when school ends?” Eli asked. “Ben will be going back East to Harvard in a couple of weeks. How about you? The state has a very good college down in Los Angeles. Then maybe take on law school.”
“I ain’t… I’m not smart enough.”
“You do yourself an injustice, Thomas.”
“I make C’s, sometimes a B or an A but mostly C’s.”
“There’s smart and there’s smart. Ben is smart about business. Someday he’ll run mine, he’ll be responsible for this valley. For what happens to it. But he needs somebody who is smart in other ways. Ben is naive about things. He trusts everybody. He needs someone-one person-he can trust without question, a partner who will take care of things Ben doesn’t see.”
“You mean like somebody who can take care of a guy like Guilfoyle when he smarts off?”
“I mean somebody who understands why people like Guilfoyle are the way they are. Someone who understands that and will handle that part of the business. The kind of smart Ben will never be.”
Brodie twisted his apple into two pieces, and held one half behind him. The horse gently took it from his hand and ate it.
“I…” Brodie started to say and then stopped.
“You what?”
“I don’t wanna be a roughneck all my life.”
“I don’t imply you should. What I am saying is that it takes a man of unique talents to handle the roughnecks. My son doesn’t have that kind of talent.”
“And I do because that’s where I came from. That it, sir?”
“You grew up in that life. Now you’ve seen the other side of the coin. I’ll be glad to stand for your schooling.”
“I don’t wanna go back to it, Mr. Eli. You spoilt me that way.”
“ Spoiled. I spoiled you that way.”
“Spoiled.”
“You’ve already risen above that, Thomas. But railroading is a harsh business. It not only requires shrewd business sense, it requires a man who can think ahead of trouble and handle it.”
“And that’s me?”
“I see that kind of strength in you, yes.”
They reached the end of the meadow and walked to the corner of the high fence that marked the edge of the cliff. To the south, past two neighboring houses and O’Dell’s mansion, they could see the glow of Eureka.
“I had a vision the first time I saw this valley,” Eli said softly, almost to himself. “And I still see it. I see a pretty village at the bottom of the valley. I see decent homes for workers. I see this valley, the way it is now, lasting forever. A place for good people to live and flourish. I see Ben and Isabel Hoffman marrying, they’ve been sweet on each other since they were children and she’s a nice Jewish girl. I see them raising a family here, surrounded by its beauty. And I see you watching his back, keeping the law. But it won’t happen as long as O’Dell owns half the valley, and Riker and his ilk run Eureka.”
“Buck Tallman keeps the law, sir.”
“Buck is an honorable man, but he’s in his fifties. He tolerates gambling and womanizing and hard drink and brawling. He keeps it controlled, but he was a town-tamer, Thomas. He is from another time. My vision of the valley will never become a reality as long as men like Buck let men like Riker have their way. And my vision won’t happen if O’Dell has his way. He will chop down the trees, turn all of this into power plants and paper mills and shanties for the workers. It will become a slum like Milltown.”
Brodie was uncomfortable talking about the subject. It was not something Eli had ever shared with either of the boys. But his curiosity was rampant.
“Couldn’t you just, uh, buy him out?”
“Been tried, Thomas. This has been going on for two years. O’Dell owns the part of the valley that includes Eureka. He’s a rowdy himself and a spoiler. Our problems could never be worked out. The game was O’Dell’s idea- although I must admit it is the only solution.”
Brodie hesitated for a moment and then said cautiously, “What if it doesn’t turn out the way, uh…”
“It?” When Brodie hesitated again, unsure if he had overstepped his bounds, Eli said, “Ah. You’re referring to the game.”
Brodie nodded. “Everybody knows about it, sir. The whole town’s talking.”
“And what are they saying?”
Brodie turned to Cyclone, held the other half of the apple in the flat of his hand, and the horse took it. “That O’Dell’s a gambler and you ain… aren’t.”
“So they think O’Dell will win?”
“Well, that’s what they’re saying. Riker’s giving five-to-one odds favoring Mr. O’Dell.”
“You familiar with poker?”
“When I lived down there, I used to play a little penny ante with the other kids.”
Eli looked at the youth for a moment, then reached in his pocket, took out some bills, and handed Brodie ten dollars.
“Bet this on me to win. You’ll win fifty dollars after you pay me back the ten.”
Brodie took the bill and stared at it for a moment or two. Ten dollars was a lot of money to Brodie.
“I never knew you to play poker,” he said, folding it carefully and putting it in his pocket.
Eli puffed on his cigar and said, “You know who Andrew Carnegie is?”
“I know he’s real rich.”
“He’s a steel man, Thomas. Made his fortune manufacturing steel. When I was a young man back in Pittsburgh, he took a liking to me and he moved me up in the business. He and some of his rich friends had a poker club. Played once a week. A tough game. Fairly large stakes. One day he invited me to play and I told him I couldn’t afford it.”
Brodie laughed. “What’d he say to that?” he asked.
“He said, ‘You can afford it if you win.’ He sat me down and in one afternoon taught me some of the secrets of poker. Then he gave me two hundred dollars and told me to come to the game that night. I won seven hundred dollars. And became a member of the poker club.”
“What were the secrets?” Brodie asked eagerly.
Eli looked out at the shimmering reflection of the moon on the ocean.
“The most important one,” he answered, “is the art of the bluff.”
Brodie watched Eli walk back to the house, saw the back door open and close. He leaned on the paddock fence for a long time, thinking about everything Eli had said.
Now, suddenly, he had to make some hard decisions.
And then there was the other problem.
He went in the barn and came back with another apple. He broke it in half, gave one to the horse and took a bite out of the other one to chase the dryness from his mouth. He got a bridle and a blanket, slid the blanket over Cyclone’s back, and put the bit in the horse’s mouth. Slinging the reins over the horse’s back, he jumped on and quietly rode out of the paddock and down through the woods to a pathway near the cliff’s edge. Brodie rode south, toward the lights of Eureka. The O’Dell mansion was lit up like a church, its lamps flickering through the trees.
He turned the horse back into the woods and stopped, slid quietly off his back, tethered him to a tree, and gave him the rest of the apple.
“Be quiet, now,” he whispered, then ran his hand down along Cyclone’s mane and slid the blanket off his back before sneaking into the woods. He walked a hundred or so feet to a greenhouse and slipped inside. It was dark. He walked down the aisle of flowers and plants to the rear of the glass shed and stopped, looking back at the big house a hundred yards or so away. A light glowed in the corner room. A signal.
“You’re late,” a soft voice said from the darkness.
It startled him.
“I… we, Mr. Eli and me… we had a talk,” he stammered, and before he could say anything else, she moved quietly from the darkness, gliding to him and putting her arms around his waist.
