Auraria: A Novel (2 page)

“Lucky for me that you’re so … single-minded,” said Shadburn.

Holtzclaw scanned the columns of the books. What else could draw his attentions—what magnificent charms must a lady have, if she could pull his attention away from a masterpiece of business such as this? A profitable deal has an elegance and grace all its own, and while women and song might stir the heart—Holtzclaw was not an automaton; he felt all the usual, appropriate impulses—there was nothing so splendid as a finely executed business deal.

This was the natural path of life: first success, then happiness.

“It’s a wonder, Shadburn. A handsome profit, and all solved at the last minute. All these years, and I still can’t quite guess your methods.”

“You flatter me,” said Shadburn.

“It’s the opposite of flattery. It’s income minus expenses. And then the magistrate came through with the rights-of-way just in time. It’s impossible, how you manage such things.”

“It isn’t perfect. Franklin still wants to keep those ridiculous furnaces and plow around them. If I’d bought that land for myself, the first thing I’d do is knock them down. What does a modern plantation need with old iron smelters?”

“Maybe he wants to try smelting some iron,” said Holtzclaw.

“He’ll end up with slag and waste. He should stick to his talents. Cotton. Corn. Peanuts. Turn the crops into money and then buy iron from a man who knows what he’s doing. That would be a better use of his land. I hate to see him waste it.”

“He did pay us.”

“Paid us, did he?” Shadburn wriggled in his clothes. Holtzclaw didn’t remember them being so ill-fitting. “Well, yes, that’s worth something.”

“Did you come to talk about Franklin?” said Holtzclaw. “Are we buying some other properties for him?”

“No. Franklin’s small potatoes,” said Shadburn, working his thumb into the cleft of his hard chin. “I have information on a far more useful project. A hundred lots, a hundred owners. The whole town.”

Holtzclaw began to emit two contrary expressions of astonishment—a rising grunt and a low whistle. They collided somewhere near his lips and tripped over each other. “Who’s the client? Piedmont Mills? Amalgamated Bitumen? Cotton speculators? Coke miners?”

“I am,” said Shadburn. “Or rather, the town itself. Auraria and its valley.”

“Auraria? Which Latinism are they aspiring to?”

“‘Aurum,’ as in gold,” said Shadburn. “There’s a little left in the creeks, but these days, gold is more a hope than an industry. A few companies tried to sink tunnels into the mountain but ended up sinking their investors instead. Most of the townsfolk left for California in the ’40s. The remainder are reluctant farmers, always looking under their plowshares for nuggets. Sometimes, someone still finds one, and it’s enough to keep the creaky wheel turning for another few years.”

“And you think there’s promise in these abandoned mines and this ghost town? Is this a recent discovery?”

“No, it’s one I’ve known about for quite some time, but a disturbing rumor at the gentlemen’s club tells me that some others have just learned of it. Thus, the time has come for us to act, lest our advantage be discovered. We can take the railroad as far as Dahlonega. We’ll set up an office there, and you’ll go on to Auraria by stagecoach.”

“You’re not going?”

“I have a thousand other tasks in Dahlonega that must come first.”

A hundred owners was a far larger project than Holtzclaw had undertaken before. Even the most complicated transactions, for railroad rights-of-way or consolidated logging tracts, required him and Shadburn to acquire only twenty or so parcels of land. A nervous itch crept up Holtzclaw’s throat and began to scrabble at his molars. Holtzclaw swallowed it back, careful not to betray himself to his employer. He should appreciate the situation differently, take it as the utmost compliment. Shadburn thought his lieutenant worthy of this great task and felt that he was competent to see this situation through to a profitable conclusion.

“I shall prepare at once,” said Holtzclaw. “My necessary effects are already half packed.” They were always half packed. Shadburn handed him a burlap potato sack. Inside, among roots and clumps of earth, were hundreds of gleaming gold coins. Holtzclaw withdrew a handful, noting the decorations that marked them as products of a peculiar mint.

“You’ll have plenty of ordinary money too,” said Shadburn. “But this gold is our special weapon, which must be treated with as much care as dynamite. It’s what the people are chasing, and it will move them when federal notes fail. What are federal notes but promises and paperwork?”

“That’s poppycock,” said Holtzclaw. “Notes spend just as well as gold.”

“Some highlanders feel otherwise.”

Holtzclaw shut the bag but found no way to tie it closed. “What are you going to do with this land, once we’ve bought it?”

“Why, improve it!”

“How?”

“Go and see, Holtzclaw.”

#

Thus Holtzclaw found himself walking alone through the mists of the Lost Creek Valley. He was sure that he’d done right to leave the stagecoach—there’d be one less local oaf stalking his movements. Financial gossip is the fastest news, and he would only have a short time to buy the most essential properties before prices jumped.

Holtzclaw followed the road that X.T. had called the Saddlehorn. Rhododendrons encroached on the path, the crowns meeting overhead.

The path to the Smith homestead cut off from the main road, tumbling into the darkness of a valley grove. Mud and loose stones compounded the precariousness of the slope. Holtzclaw placed his weight on a rock covered with slick moss, and his shoes lost their grip. He fell in a hump into a leaf-filled hole.

“Blasted fool rocks! Blasted fool hills!”

“Can’t blame the rocks if they’re trod upon by a fool,” said a voice from downhill. Rounding a bend in the path was a mule. Behind the mule was a canvas-covered cart, and behind the cart, a man.

The mule put its face in front of Holtzclaw’s and yawned. An aroma of oats and turnips washed over him, and a moist pink tongue played between the beast’s enormous teeth. Then, licking its lips, the mule backed away.

“Help you?” said the mule’s master.

“I’m looking for the lands of Mr. Smith,” said Holtzclaw, struggling to his feet and brushing off leaves and dust.

“Well, then, you’ve arrived. You’re covered in them right now,” said the man. “Well, not exactly. They belong to his widow, Octavia. And Smith’s not even the most recently deceased. She’s had another husband since then, and he died too. Call her the widow Smith Patterson. And I don’t even know how long that will hold.”

“Are you a relation of the lady, or an employee?” asked Holtzclaw.

“Some of both, I guess, or on my way from one to the other.” The man blushed, turning his leathery skin burgundy. “The widow Smith Patterson wouldn’t like some stranger stalking around here. I think I’d best take you on down to the house.”

“That would be kind of you. But weren’t you on your way to sell your turnips?”

“Turnips keep. Guests don’t.”

Again the mule flashed its teeth, but this time Holtzclaw dodged its breath. At the man’s invitation, Holtzclaw climbed on top of the canvas-covered wagonload. The ride was even less comfortable than X.T.’s carriage. He felt like he was sitting on a mixture of rocks and mashed potatoes. The cart tipped and rocked on the steep path, threatening to spill both passenger and turnips, and Holtzclaw grabbed for the sides of the cart. But the wheels were better suited to the land than Holtzclaw’s shoes, and the journey was short.

The path widened into fields of corn, with pole beans growing between the stalks. A dogtrot cabin stood inside a neat, swept yard. A row of cows lined up against a straight-rail fence, and a woman was framed by one of the cabin’s doorways.

“Strange load you got there, Clyde. You find him growing in the fields, or are they paying for turnips in city folk now?”

“Someone I picked up on the road, Ms. Octavia. Said he wanted to see you.”

“How pleasant,” said the widow Smith Patterson. She could have been forty or four hundred years old; Holtzclaw did not know how the air and sun worked on the skin of mountain-folk. She wore a straw hat and simple clothing—a long checkered dress, turned-up sleeves, and a high collar.

“You have a name?” she said.

“James Holtzclaw, of Milledgeville. I have a business transaction to discuss with you, on behalf of the Standard Company.” Shadburn had wisely given his company a vague name. Other developers picked clumsy names pleasing to investors, like the Red Top Mountain Hotel and Recreation Development Company or the Oconee Ridge Timbering and Sawmill Authority. Besides being too revealing, they prolonged already lengthy business conversations.

“The Standard Company? Not a big company, is it?” said the widow Smith Patterson.

“A small but industrious operation, like yours,” said Holtzclaw. He smiled.

“A big company would have sent a herd of men, not just one muddy fellow with a satchel.”

“Precisely.” He persisted with a smile.

“Well, what’s your offer?” The widow stood on the porch, two feet above Holtzclaw, and looked down her long nose at him.

“May I come inside?” asked Holtzclaw. “Perhaps you’d prefer to conduct business in more accommodating and private circumstances.” Haggling from the stoop was not advantageous. He had to look up at his adversary.

“Anything you want to say, you can say in front of the mule. And Clyde.”

“I must say that you have a very beautiful farm here.” Holtzclaw tried his best, but his words came out with too much flattery and not enough superiority.

“It’s a lot of work,” said the widow Smith Patterson. “It took a lot of work to put it together, and it takes even more to keep it going every day.”

“Now that you’ve built this all into a very respectable enterprise, don’t you think you deserve a reward?”

“Such as?”

Holtzclaw found it difficult to condescend to a woman standing several feet above him. “Such as a life of leisure. The freedom to not run your life by the cycle of crops and weather. A little money for city luxuries. With the lifetime of hard work that you have already spent, you could buy another of peace.”

“I hadn’t planned on retiring,” said the widow Smith Patterson. But the way she shook off a sudden spasm, Holtzclaw knew that she had the aches of a farmer’s life.

He thought she would have been glad to get off the land, away from the shovel and hoe. “You can’t mean to work this farm into your old age.”

“Even past it. I’ll be buried right under the cornfields. Still have a hand in raising the crops. Push up the stalks from below.”

“Are your husbands buried there too?”

“I buried my husbands down in the graveyard, where I don’t have to look at them but twice a month. Everything that you see here, I made it. Before me, there was nothing. Weeds. Rocks. Springs. I turned it into corn, sorghum, sweet potatoes, fat cows, big smoked turkeys. Now where are you trying to get, Holtzclaw, with your beat-around-the-bush words? You better get there quickly. I have hams to cure that are bigger than you.”

Holtzclaw scratched at a small bug behind his right ear. He felt incompetent, and it was not a feeling that he relished.

“What I meant, ma’am, by my introductions, was that I wanted to buy your land. The Standard Company wants to buy your land. I’m prepared to offer you a fair value, which you can put toward your comfort. If you are parsimonious, it may last you to the end of your life, and you needn’t work another day. Leave the cornfields just as they are. Here, I have ready money. Think what it can buy.”

Sensing he was losing control of the conversation, Holtzclaw employed a favorite gambit, one that Shadburn had taught him early. He withdrew a wrapped bundle of bills from his traveling satchel. The sight of money was meant to create a visceral feeling of happiness in the landowner. If the owner would hold the bills, so much the better. The smell and feel of the crisp notes were more persuasive than the sight.

“Money’s a bad guest,” said the widow Smith Patterson, keeping her arms crossed. “It doesn’t stay long enough, and it makes an awful mess as it leaves.”

Whoever invented this silly proverb was trying to sell more almanacs. “I can assure you that, for your forty acres, this is an excellent price,” said Holtzclaw. “We can make considerations for your timber, crops, livestock, and improvements as well.”

“It’s a mess more than forty acres. That’s what Samuel Smith, my first husband, got in the land lottery. Land’s changed hands since then. We just haven’t been up to Dahlonega to file it.” The widow Smith Patterson considered for a moment. “The lottery land is just the first forty. Then Bertold over the hill died and his son didn’t want the land; he was out in California trying to make it. So I bought it. The piece in between belonged to the twins, and they moved to North Carolina. Bought that too, so eighty more. That left old Butterbean surrounded; he couldn’t get his cart to market without rolling over my land, and I didn’t much care for old Butterbean, so I didn’t make it easy for him. Well, he moved off without telling anyone—just vanished one day, and I bought up his farm for a song from his son, who wanted to drink more than dig. My second husband, Odum Patterson, came with forty acres of his own; it was a happy chance that his land was right next to mine. Poor Odum, though, he didn’t live long. Sickly man. His estate had enough in it to buy the James place. Then just a few months ago, Clyde and I started courting; he still lives out on his place, but we’re working his farm like it’s part of mine, and if there’s any selling, I’ll be the one to speak of it.”