ROBBINS Harold - The Carpetbaggers

"Now, mebbe, you'll get used to it," Charlie said. "After all, you own fifty per cent of this spread. Time you settled down and got to work on it."

"I don't know," Nevada said. "I kinda got me the travelin' itch. I figger I been in one place long enough."

"Where you goin' to travel?" Charlie asked. "There ain't no place left. The country's all used up with roads going to every place. You're thirty years late."

Nevada nodded silently. Charlie was right but the strange thing was he didn't feel thirty years late. He felt the same as he always did. Right for now.

"I put the woman in your cabin," Charlie said. "Martha and I been waitin' supper for you."

Nevada got back into the car. "Then I better go an' get her. We'll be back as soon as I git washed up."

Charlie nodded and went back inside as the car started off. At the door, he turned and looked after it as it wound its way up the small hill toward the back of the ranch. He shook his head and went inside.

Martha was waiting for him. "How is he?" she asked anxiously.

"I don't know," he answered, shaking his head again. "He seems kinda mixed up an' lost to me. I just don't know."

The cabin was dark when Nevada went in. He reached for the oil lamp beside the door and put it on a table. He struck a match and held it to the wick. The wick sputtered a moment then burst into flame. He put the chimney back on and replaced the lamp on the shelf.

Rina's voice came from behind him. "Why didn't you turn on the electricity, Nevada?"

"I like lamp light," he said simply. "Electric light ain't natural. It's wearin' on the eyes."

She was sitting in a chair facing the door, her face pale and luminous. She was wearing a heavy sweater that came down over the faded blue jeans covering her legs.

"You cold?" he asked. "I’ll start a fire."

She shook her head. "I'm not cold."

He stood there silent for a moment, then spoke. "I’ll bring in my things an' wash up. Charlie and Martha waited supper for us."

"I’ll help you bring them in."

They came out into the night. The stars were deep in the black velvet and the sound of music and laughter came faintly to them from down the hill.

She looked down toward the casino. "I'm glad I'm not one of them."

He handed her a suitcase. "You never could be. You ain't the type."

"I thought of divorcing him," she said. "But something inside me kept me from it even though I knew it was wrong from the beginning."

"A deal's a deal," he said shortly as he turned back into the cabin, his arms full.

"I guess that's it."

They made two more trips silently and then she sat down on the edge of the bed as he stripped off his shirt and turned to the washbasin in the corner of the small bedroom.

The muscles rippled under his startlingly white skin. The hair covering his chest was like a soft black down as it fell toward his flat, hard stomach. He covered his face and neck with soap and then splashed water over it. He reached for a towel blindly.

She gave it to him and he rubbed vigorously. He put down the towel and reached for a clean shirt. He slipped into it and began to button it.

"Wait a minute," she said suddenly. "Let me do that for you."

Her fingers were quick and light. He felt their touch against his skin like a whisper of air. She looked up into his face, her eyes wondering. "How old are you, Nevada? Your skin is like a young boy's."

He smiled suddenly.

"How old?" she persisted.

"I was born in eighty-two, according to my reckoning," he said. "My mother was a Kiowa and they didn't keep such good track of birthdays. That makes me forty-three." He finished tucking the shirt into his trousers.

"You don't look more than thirty."

He laughed, pleased despite himself. "Let's go and git some grub."

She took his arm. "Let's," she said. "Suddenly, I'm starving."

It was after midnight when they got back to the cabin. He opened the door and let her enter before him. He crossed to the fireplace and set a match to the kindling. She came up behind him and he looked up.

"You go on to bed," he said.

Silently she walked into the bedroom and he fanned the kindling. The wood caught and leaped into flame. He put a few logs over it and got up and crossed the room to a cupboard. He took down a bottle of bourbon and a glass and sat down in front of the fire.

He poured a drink and looked at the whisky in the glass. The fire behind it gave it a glowing heat. He drank the whisky slowly.

When he had finished, he put the empty glass down and began to strip off his boots. He left them beside the chair and walked over to the couch and stretched out. He had just lighted a cigarette when her voice came from the bedroom door.

"Nevada?"

He sat up and turned toward her. "Yeah?"

"Did Jonas say anything about me?"

"No."

"He gave me a hundred thousand dollars for the stock and the house."

"I know," he replied.

She hesitated a moment, then came farther into the room. "I don't need all that money. If you need any- "

He laughed soundlessly. "I'm O.K. Thanks, anyway."

"Sure?"

He chuckled again, wondering what she would say if she knew about the six-thousand-acre ranch he had in Texas, about the half interest in the Wild-West show. He, too, had learned a great deal from the old man. Money was only good when it was working for you.

"Sure," he said. He got to his feet and walked toward her. "Now go to bed, Rina. You're out on your feet."

He followed her into the bedroom and took a blanket from the closet as she got into bed. She caught his hands as he walked by the bed. "Talk to me while I fall asleep."

He sat down on the side of the bed. "What about?" he asked.

She still held onto his hand. "About yourself. Where you were born, where you came from – anything."

He smiled into the dark. "Ain't very much to tell," he said. "As far as I know, I was born in West Texas. My father was a buffalo-hunter named John Smith and my mother was a Kiowa princess named- "

"Don't tell me," she interrupted sleepily. "I know her name. Pocahontas."

He laughed softly. "Somebody told you," he said in mock reproach. "Pocahontas. That was her name."

"Nobody told me," she whispered faintly. "I read it someplace."

Her hand slipped slowly from his and he looked down. Her eyes were closed and she was fast asleep.

Quietly he got up and straightened the blanket around her, then turned and walked into the other room. He spread a blanket on the couch and undressed quickly. He stretched out and wrapped the blanket around him.

John Smith and Pocahontas. He wondered how many times he had mockingly told that story. But the truth was stranger still. And probably, no one would believe it.

It was so long ago that there were times he didn't believe it himself any more. His name wasn't Nevada Smith then, it was Max Sand.

And he was wanted for armed robbery and murder in three different states.

IT WAS IN MAY OF 1882 THAT Samuel Sand came into the small cabin that he called home and sat down heavily on a box that served him for a chair. Silently his squaw woman heated some coffee and placed it before him. She moved heavily, being swollen with child.

He sat there for a long time, his coffee growing cold before him. Occasionally, he would look out the door toward the prairie, with its faint remnant patches of snow still hidden in the corners of rises.

The squaw began to cook the evening meal. Beans and salt buffalo meat. It was still early in the day to cook the meal, because the sun had not yet reached the noon, but she felt vaguely disturbed and had to do something. Now and then, she would glance at Sam out of the corners of her eyes but he was lost in a troubled world that women were not allowed to enter. So she kept stirring the beans and meat in the pot and waited for his mood and the day to pass.