Table Of ContentThe Carpetbaggers
By: Harold Robbins
ISBN: 1903402670
Publisher: Blake Publishing - 2002-05-31
Paperback | New Ed Edition
For PAUL GITLIN as a small appreciation of his friendship and guidance across
the years
PREFACE
... And behind the Northern Armies came another army of men. They came by the
hundreds, yet each traveled alone. They came on foot, by mule, on horseback, on creaking
wagons or riding in handsome chaises. They were of all shapes and sizes and descended
from many nationalities. They wore dark suits, usually covered with the gray dust of
travel, and dark, broad-brimmed hats to shield their white faces from the hot, unfamiliar
sun. And on their back, or across their saddle, or on top of their wagon was the inevitable
faded multicolored bag made of worn and ragged remnants of carpet into which they had
crammed all their worldly possessions. It was from these bags that they got their name.
The Carpetbaggers.
… And they strode the dusty roads and streets of the exhausted Southlands, their mouths
tightening greedily, their eyes everywhere, searching, calculating, appraising the values
that were left behind in the holocaust of war.
… Yet not all of them were bad, just as not all men are bad. Some of them even learned
to love the land they came to plunder and stayed and became respected citizens.
JONAS — 1925
Book One
1
THE SUN WAS BEGINNING TO FALL FROM THE SKY INTO the white Nevada
desert as Reno came up beneath me. I banked the Waco slowly and headed due east. I
could hear the wind pinging the biplane's struts and I grinned to myself. The old man
would really hit the roof when he saw this plane. But he wouldn't have anything to
complain about. It didn't cost him anything. I won it in a crap game.
I moved the stick forward and came down slowly to fifteen hundred feet. I was over
Route 32 now and the desert on either side of the road was a rushing blur of sand. I put her
nose on the horizon and looked over the side. There it was, about eight miles in front of
me. Like a squat, ugly toad in the desert. The factory.
CORD EXPLOSIVES
I eased the stick forward again and by the time I shot past, I was only about a hundred
feet over it. I went into an Immelmann and looked back.
They were at the windows already. The dark Mexican and Indian girls in their brightly
colored dresses and the men in their faded blue work clothes. I could almost see the whites
of their frightened eyes looking after me. I grinned again. Their life was dull enough. Let
them have a real thrill.
I pulled out at the top of the Immelmann and went on to twenty-five hundred feet. Then I
hit the stick and dove right for the tar-pitched roof.
The roar from the big Pratt & Whitney engine crescendoed and deafened my ears and the
wind tore at my eyes and face. I narrowed my lids and drew my lips back across my teeth.
I could feel the blood racing in my veins, my heart pounding and the juices of life starting
up in my gut.
Power, power, power! Up here where the world was like a toy beneath me. Where I held
the stick like my cock in my hands and there was no one, not even my father, to say me
no!
The black roof of the plant lay on the white sand like a girl on the white sheets of a bed,
the dark pubic patch of her whispering its invitation into the dimness of the night. My
breath caught in my throat. Mother. I didn't want to turn away. I wanted to go home.
Ping! One of the thin wire struts snapped clean. I blinked my eyes and licked my lips.
The salty taste of the tears touched my tongue. I could see the faint gray pebbles in the
black tar of the roof now. I eased back on the stick and began to come out of the dive. At
eight hundred feet, I leveled off and went into a wide turn that would take me to the field
behind the factory. I headed into the wind and made a perfect three-point landing.
Suddenly I was tired. It had been a long flight up from Los Angeles.
Nevada Smith was walking across the field toward me as the plane rolled to a stop. I cut
the switches and the engine died, coughing the last drop of fuel out of its carburetor lungs.
I looked out at him.
Nevada never changed. From the time I was five years old and I first saw him walking
up to the front porch, he hadn't changed. The tight, rolling, bowlegged walk, as if he'd
never got used to being off a horse, the tiny white weather crinkles in the leathery skin at
the corner of his eyes. That was sixteen years ago. It was 1909.
I was playing around the corner of the porch and my father was reading the weekly Reno
paper on the big rocker near the front door. It was about eight o'clock in the morning and
the sun was already high in the sky. I heard the clip-clop of a horse and came around to the
front to see.
A man was getting off his horse. He moved with a deceptively slow grace. He threw the
reins over the hitching post and walked toward the house. At the foot of the steps, he
stopped and looked up.
My father put the paper down and got to his feet. He was a big man. Six two. Beefy.
Ruddy face that burned to a crisp in the sun. He looked down.
Nevada squinted up at him. "Jonas Cord?"
My father nodded. "Yes."
The man pushed his broad-brimmed cowboy hat back on his head, revealing the crow-
black hair. "I hear tell you might be looking for a hand."
My father never said yes or no to anything. "What can you do?" he asked.
The man's smile remained expressionless. He glanced slowly across the front of the
house and out on the desert. He looked back at my father. "I could ride herd but you ain't
got no cattle. I can mend fence, but you ain't got none of them, either."
My father was silent for a moment. "You any good with that?" he asked.
For the first time, I noticed the gun on the man's thigh. He wore it real low and tied
down. The handle was black and worn and the hammer and metal shone dully with oil.
"I'm alive," he answered.
"What's your name?"
"Nevada."
"Nevada what?"
The answer came without hesitation. "Smith. Nevada Smith."
My father was silent again. This time the man didn't wait for him to speak.
He gestured toward me. "That your young'un?"
My father nodded.
"Where's his mammy?"
My father looked at him, then picked me up. I fit real good in the crook of his arm. His
voice was emotionless. "She died a few months back."
The man stared up at us. "That's what I heard."
My father stared back at him for a moment. I could feel the muscles in his arm tighten
under my behind. Then before I could catch my breath, I was flying through the air over
the porch rail.
The man caught me with one arm and rolled me in close to him as he went down on one
knee to absorb the impact. The breath whooshed out of me and before I could begin to cry,
my father spoke again.
A faint smile crossed his lips. "Teach him how to ride," he said. He picked up his paper
and went into the house without a backward glance.
Still holding me with one hand, the man called Nevada began to rise again. I looked
down. The gun in his other hand was like a live black snake, pointed at my father. While I
was looking, the gun disappeared back in the holster. I looked up into Nevada's face.
His face broke into a warm, gentle smile. He set me down on the ground carefully.
"Well, Junior," he said. "You heard your pappy. Come on."
I looked up at the house but my father had already gone inside. I didn't know it then but
that was the last time my father ever held me in his arms. From that time on, it was almost
as if I were Nevada's boy.
I had one foot over the side of the cockpit by the time Nevada came up. He squinted up
at me. "You been pretty busy."
I dropped to the ground beside him and looked down at him. Somehow I never could get
used to that. Me being six two like my father and Nevada still the same five nine. "Pretty
busy," I admitted.
Nevada stretched and looked into the rear cockpit. "Neat," he said. "How d'ja get it?"
I smiled. "I won it in a crap game."
He looked at me questioningly.
"Don't worry," I added quickly. "I let him win five hundred dollars afterward."
He nodded, satisfied. That, too, was one of the things Nevada taught me. Never walk
away from the table after you win a man's horse without letting him win back at least one
stake for tomorrow. It didn't diminish your winnings by much and at least the sucker
walked away feeling he'd won something.
I reached into the rear cockpit and pulled out some chocks. I tossed one to Nevada and
walked around and set mine under a wheel. Nevada did the same on the other side.
"Your pappy ain't gonna like it. You messed up production for the day."
I straightened up. "I don't guess it will matter much." I walked around the prop toward
him. "How'd he hear about it so soon?"
Nevada's lips broke into the familiar mirthless smile. "You took the girl to the hospital.
They sent for her folks. She told them before she died."
"How much do they want?"
"Twenty thousand."
"You can buy 'em for five."
He didn't answer. Instead, he looked down at my feet. "Get your shoes on and come on,"
he said. "Your father's waiting."
He started back across the field and I looked down at my feet. The warm earth felt good
against my naked toes. I wriggled them in the sand for a moment, then went back to the
cockpit and pulled out a pair of Mexican huarachos. I slipped into them and started out
across the field after Nevada.
I hate shoes. They don't let you breathe.
2
I KEPT RAISING SMALL CLOUDS OF SAND WITH THE huarachos as I walked
toward the factory. The faint clinical smell of the sulphur they used in making gunpowder
came to my nose. It was the same kind of smell that was in the hospital the night I took her
there. It wasn't at all the kind of smell there was the night we made the baby.
It was cool and clean that night. And there was the smell of the ocean and the surf that
came in through the open windows of the small cottage I kept out at Malibu. But in the
room there was nothing but the exciting scent of the girl and her wanting.
We had gone into the bedroom and stripped with the fierce urgency in our vitals. She
was quicker than I and now she was on the bed, looking up at me as I opened the dresser
drawer and took out a package of rubbers.
Her voice was a whisper in the night. "Don't, Joney. Not this time."
I looked at her. The bright Pacific moon threw its light in the window. Only her face was
in shadows. Somehow, what she said brought the fever up.
The bitch must have sensed it. She reached for me and kissed me. "I hate those damn
things, Joney. I want to feel you inside me."
I hesitated a moment. She pulled me down on top of her. Her voice whispered in my ear.
"Nothing will happen, Joney. I’ll be careful."
