Silence fell in the rickety shanty of Dooney's tavern as O'Brien prepared for the duel.  He himself saw no point in such drama--if you didn't agree with a fellow, best to settle it quick with your fists--but at the grand age of twenty-nine he was older than most of the lads, and they'd turned to him as referee.  He ought to be flattered, he guessed.  All the miners in Avery had crowded the tavern to watch.  O'Brien ignored them, spoke quietly with the seconds to be sure they had done as he'd told them, and kept an eye on the nervous principals.
    They were miners, too:  Denning, a Georgian, and Peters, from New Jersey.  Best of friends, they had been, until news of the great conflict to the east had at last found its way into Colorado.  "Hurrah for the North" and "Hurrah for the South" had been the first volleys.  Others had joined the dispute, till the clear mountain air rang with bullets and violent words.  Now these two fine young lads, grave determination in their eyes, faced each other across a rough table to settle on behalf of the infant town of Avery the question of Who Was Right.
    The other tables, all three, were pushed back to the walls, with the crates and the stumps that were seats.  Men stood atop them the better to see, blocking the light of the greasy candles set where the wallboards met at odd angles and adding their looming shadows to the already ghoulish atmosphere.  The doctor--an infamous grumbler--arrived at long last.  O'Brien greeted him with a nod and stepped forward.
    "Shaunessy, Morris," he said, summoning two men with heavy six-shooters to stand by the table, "if either man fires before I count three, you're to shoot him down."  He took out a handkerchief--provided by Mr. Dooney himself--and gave a corner of it to each combatant to hold in his left hand.  In the right each held a Colt Navy pistol carefully prepared by the seconds.  The distance between the men, marked by table and handkerchief, was no more than four feet.  It seemed a short distance indeed, but O'Brien had gotten the seconds to agree to it.
    "Make ready," he said, and the men brought up their pistols, leveling them nearly breast to breast.  O'Brien felt an odd pride in them as their eyes met and held, for each must have sensed his own death in the cold tunnel aimed at his heart.
    "One," O'Brien said, as every man in the room held his breath.  "Two.  Three."
    The guns roared together, a great flash, and the duelists fell shrouded in smoke.  The tavern exploded with noise.  Men jumped down from their perches, whooping and cursing.  O'Brien pulled the table aside while the doctor on his knees sought the pulse of the victims.
    "He's alive," the doctor cried, his hand on Peters's wrist.  He moved to Denning.  "They're both alive!"
    The miners exclaimed at the miracle.  O'Brien, leaning against the table, smiled as the doctor tore open the Georgian's shirt to search for his wound.  He found none, no mark on either man save for a red spot on his chest.  The duelists got to their feet, looked at each other in wonder, then turned their eyes to O'Brien.
    "There, now," he said, folding his long arms.  "It's settled the way it began, with nothing but a lot of hot air."
    The spectators burst into laughter, and the faces of the late contenders dawned with the understanding that they'd been betrayed.  The New Jerseyan grabbed his second by the collar.  "P-powder," said the man between gasps of laughter.  "Red said t'use powder only!"
    "Ah, leave him alone, Peters," O'Brien said.  "Didn't you agree to fight by my rules?"
    "O'Brien, you bastard," Denning said, but a grin of relief broke across his face.
    "I'd be a bastard indeed if I let you make Mary a widow over such nonsense,"O'Brien said.
    Denning laughed, blushing, and shook hands with Peters.  Both men claimed they'd been knocked down by the force of the powder rather than by fear.  The company, having had their fill of conflict for the moment, heartily agreed and as one turned to Dooney demanding liquor.
    O'Brien helped the mortified doctor to his feet, saying "Don't be embarrassed.  You'll still have your fee."
    The doctor glowered as he picked up his coat and bag.  "My gun has bullets in it," he said, heading for the door.
    O'Brien dismissed him with a shrug and made his way up to the wooden plank where the taverner served the drinks.  Behind it, hidden by a curtain made of flour sacks, was the hole--someone's old false start of a mine--where Dooney concocted his liquors.
    "Clever work, Red," Dooney said, pouring home-made whiskey into a glass.  "This one's on me."
    "Sweet Jesus bless you, Dooney," O'Brien said.  He picked up the glass and, accepting congratulations and back-slappings, retired to a stump in a corner of the tavern.
    He was tired.  The duel had been only a moment's escape from the hard truths of life.  He sat with his back to the wall and nursed his liquor with the careful avarice of one trapped in toil and poverty.  Another long day in the mine had brought nothing; the vein that had promised an end to his struggles had faded like a will-o-the-wisp of a summer's dawn.  It was almost as hopeless as Ireland.
    New York had been better.  There'd been money enough for his efforts, though the work had been low.  But a dockhand, a bricklayer, teamster, or carrier--none of them could hope to rise in the world as he wished to do.  New York thought the Irish scarcely better than Negroes.  The way O'Brien saw it, if he must work like a slave it might as well be all for his own benefit, so when the siren call of gold had reached the city from Colorado, he had answered.  Gold had promised an end forever to poverty.  Gold had charmed him to come west and sink all he had into a claim in the high, blue-white mountains.
    And now here he was, starving at the feet of those beautiful mountains.  Gold he had found, but in dribs and drabs rather than floods, and what he had mined the first summer had been drained away by a long, harsh winter.  Now, in May, snow still lay on the ground in dirty heaps and the air in his mine was bitter cold.  With the last of his savings spent on candles and shot, a shadow of despair had begun to creep over him.
    "Evening, Red.  That was a mighty fine trick."
    O'Brien looked up at a fur-trimmed buckskin coat and the grinning, tanned face above it.   "Joseph Hall, if it isn't the Devil," he said.  "And here I was thinking you'd gone back to Mobile."
    "Not a step past St. Louis," Hall replied.  "Buy you a drink?"
    "Now I'm sure you're not the Devil," O'Brien answered, matching his grin.  "You're a bloody saint, that's what you are."
    Hall laughed, upended a crate for a table, and tossed down his saddlebag on it.  "Stay there, I've got something to show you."
    O'Brien watched him saunter through the crowd to the bar.  On a fine day the previous summer he had nearly shot Hall in the woods, mistaking him for a deer.  The command of foul language Hall had shown on that occasion was enough to earn even the roughest Irishman's respect, and thereafter they'd killed many a buck and not a few bottles of whiskey together.  Then in autumn Hall had decided to become a trade merchant, and disappeared eastward with a crew of ruffians and a wagon train loaded with buffalo hides.  O'Brien had not thought he'd see him again.
    Returning from the bar with two glasses, Hall handed one to O'Brien and pulled a stump up to the table.  He set down his own glass, pulled a newspaper from his coat, and spread it out on the crate.  O'Brien ignored it, his attention reserved for the whiskey, which by its golden color was the genuine spirit, and not the drug-based concoction the taverner usually served.  Hall must have fetched it back from Missouri for Dooney.  O'Brien sipped, and savored the mellow fire on his tongue.
    "Have a look at this," Hall said, pointing to the newspaper.  O'Brien glanced at the meaningless print, anger flaring, and raised flat eyes to stare at Hall.
    "Oh," Hall said.  "Sorry, I forgot."
    O'Brien filled his mouth with whiskey and let it burn all down his throat.  Easy for Hall to forget what he'd taken for granted all his life.  Never mind, never mind.
    "It's about President Lincoln," said Hall.  "He's called for seventy-five thousand volunteers.  I think we ought to sign up."
    "Soldiering's worse than mining," O'Brien said.
    "Three squares a day and a new Enfield rifle?"
    "It's no better than slavery."
    "Well, you're wrong there," Hall said, "but I'll make allowances for your lack of firsthand knowledge.  What matters, Red me lad, is that a soldier can rise from the ranks."
    "In a blue moon," O'Brien said.  "My father was a soldier, and he died a private after twenty years."
    Hall sat back and gazed at him.  O'Brien ignored him and took another slow, savoring sip of whiskey.
    "I am disappointed in you, Red," Hall said.  "I thought you had a sense of adventure."
    "Adventure, is it?"  O'Brien set his glass on the table and held it to the uneven surface with one hand.  "Am I to leave my mine for the first bloody claim jumper who wants it?  Am I to walk five hundred miles to Leavenworth, with Indians trying to shoot me and scalp me, and all for the honor of being killed in somebody else's argument?"
    "It's not just somebody's argument, it's a rebellion!" Hall said.  "Red, this country's going to war, do you know what that means?"
    "Means a lot of poor beggars'll get poorer."
    "It means some men are bound for glory!  Men who can lead others, who can run a good fight and win it, they'll rise like the blazing sun.  Doesn't matter where they started, do you see?"
    O'Brien looked hard at him, trying to decide if he mocked.  Hall liked his jokes, and he knew of O'Brien's dreams.
    "You could be one of them, Red," Hall said.  "You could be a colonel, a general even.  Then all those fine gentlemen would be bowing to you."
    "Generals don't rise from the ranks," O'Brien said, "and how am I fit to become one?  I don't know about armies, or tactics--"
    "You can learn those things." Hall's eyes were aglow.  "And they're not as important as courage.  That's what counts in a war, and you've got it, my boy!"
    O'Brien heard the echo of a siren's call.  He wanted to believe Hall, believe he could rise in this way, above the past, above the contempt of his betters, far above ever having to grub in the dirt for a living.  He saw a ghost of himself, mounted on a mighty war-horse, metal glinting on his shoulders and in his hand, the roar of the battle in his ears.
    "'Tis a pretty dream," O'Brien said slowly, "but that's all it is.  I'm not throwing away what I have to go chase it."
    Hall was silent, staring at O'Brien with eyes gone cold all of a sudden.  Then he reached for his whiskey and downed it in one pull.
    "Suit yourself," he said, setting down the glass with a graceful flick of his wrist.  O'Brien could almost see the lace cuff, the cavalier's sword, the plumed hat that would so suit Hall's brow.   It was at such moments that he felt the great difference between them.  Hall was a gentleman by virtue of life-long training, and O'Brien admired and envied him for it.
    Hall got up, took his saddlebag, and walked away without another word.  It was like him, the sudden withdrawal.  He'd be back, perhaps, cheerful as ever, but heaven knew when.  O'Brien looked down at the newspaper Hall had left behind, touched it with his fingertips.  Had he been too suspicious?  Had good fortune been offered, and he passed it by?  The tavern door banged and O'Brien frowned at the words beneath his hand, resenting them as he resented all good things that he'd hoped for and never received.

Next stop:  the Santa Fé Trail

Copyright © 1998 by P.G. Nagle. All rights reserved.