Power in the Blood (45 page)

“Houses, all up and down the sides, little houses all squeezed together and smoking.”

Zoe tried to picture the scene described by Omie. The effort was similar to passing folds of black silk across a brilliant mirror, obscuring its light.

“How sad for our little valley in the clouds.”

“Yes, Mama.”

On the first of January, Chadbourne declared himself at the end of his rope. “We’re wasting our time. We should try somewhere else. All we have is a worthless hole in the ground.”

“Our original choice was made using the full extent of our knowledge,” Leo reminded him. “We didn’t fool ourselves into thinking it would come easily. We knew we’d have to dig hard and deep, didn’t we? Or have you forgotten? Let ignorant numskulls hope for a strike in twenty-four hours, we know how to mine professionally: that was what we told ourselves.”

“And look where it’s landed us! Jackasses with no more brains than a turnip are finding nuggets right in the middle of town!”

“They are,” agreed Sell Yost. “Look at that fellow just yesterday.” A miner had pulled a chunk of gold the size of a fist from his claim, and been paraded around the streets on the shoulders of men less resentful than Chadbourne. Leo was unable to defend the Engineers’ original plan with anything like enthusiasm, not when similar thoughts had been in his own mind.

“Well, then,” he said, “what are you proposing?”

“I’ve already said: we should start again somewhere else.”

“Where, in particular?”

“Just about anywhere but here.”

“Throw a stone, and where it falls, dig your hole?”

“If it works for know-nothings, it should work for us. Sell thinks so too, don’t you, Sell?”

Yost nodded. “In fact, Leo, we were talking with a fellow on his own who wants to go into partnership with us. He’s got a claim he can’t work since his partner got frostbite in his hands and went down to Leadville. He’ll bring us in cheap, just so he can keep digging. You can be in on it if you want.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I’m committed to this claim. I believe in it.”

Chadbourne and Yost looked at each other, then at Leo.

“The fact is,” said Chadbourne, “Sell and I are going in, with or without you. We want you to buy us out, if you won’t ditch the claim altogether.”

“I accept,” Leo said. “How much for your share?”

“We need fifty dollars each to buy into the other fellow’s claim,” said Yost, “and we’ll need to be taking our fair share of tools. You could keep the mule, he already has two good ones.”

“I don’t have a hundred dollars. All I can offer is a signed IOU.”

“Make it out to our new partner,” said Chadbourne. “He knows you’ll make good on it someday.”

Zoe stepped forward. “There is no need.” She counted out fifty-seven dollars in bills and coin, and included several tiny nuggets given to her as payment for her domestic duties by miners. “I have not had time to have these appraised,” she said, “but if you judge them to be worth the balance, take them.”

The erstwhile Engineers accepted Zoe’s offering, and vacated cabin and claim within the hour. Leo sat by the stove, staring into its burning embers. He had thanked Zoe, his voice made gentle by defeat, and she had not attempted further conversation with him while she prepared the evening meal. It was Leo who finally ended the silence.

“And now,” he said, “there’s one thing I must do for you, in return for what you have done for me.”

“What is it?”

“We should be married. With just us two and Omie here, tongues will wag.”

“That isn’t necessary, Leo. Why should tongues wag, when everyone has been told we’re brother and sister?”

“Zoe, Zoe … no one has believed that since the day you filed your claim in the name of Dugan. Couldn’t you see what would happen the moment you did that? Has no one questioned you? They have me, and my late partners.”

“No one has said a word. Oh, my, was I as foolish as that? I didn’t think, simply signed my name as usual.… No wonder every man whose cabin I swept was so interested in me. They all saw me as a fallen woman, I expect.”

“No one thinks you’re anything of the kind. Whatever his other faults, the common miner knows respectability when he comes across it. I daresay they’ve all been curious, nothing more. You haven’t answered my question.”

“Why do you wish to marry me?”

“For the reason stated.”

“That, and nothing more?”

“And because you happen to be a fine woman. I have the greatest respect for you. I’d be a good husband, I swear. Maybe not a rich one,” he added, laughing.

“You would not prefer that I was less … different?”

“Different? How? You are as I would have you—yourself, and that’s enough. Is there something lacking in me that makes you hesitate? I believe Omie is fond of me in her way, and she’ll need a father, just as you need a husband, and I a wife. No, you don’t love me, but you will, and I’ll love you also, because there’s no reason why we should not, given time. Pardon my bluntness, Zoe, but all three being in need of each other, why not accept what fate has so clearly ordained? I’m not a romantic man. This isn’t a romantic proposal, but it’s a realistic one.” He stood and reached for his jacket. “I intend walking for an hour or so. I’d appreciate an answer when I return.”

He was gone before Zoe could think what to say. Omie was watching her from the hammock she had taken as her own since the death of Lewis.

“Well?” said Zoe. “I suppose you have already seen whether or not we wed.”

Omie shook her head. “I didn’t see anything, Mama. Should I try?”

“Does that work, trying?”

“It happens mostly when I don’t try.”

“Then why waste time? Do you like Leo? Would you have him for a father?”

“He’s very lonely, Mama, but tries not to show it. He wants you to say yes. You could ask him to dig up the gold elk with you if he was your husband.”

“Is that reason enough?”

“I don’t know, Mama, and Mama, what about Papa?”

The disappearance of Bryce Aspinall from their living room in Pueblo had hurt and infuriated Zoe so much she had seen fit to consider the man dead, to all intents and purposes. But mention of him by Omie was the feeblest of excuses for not confronting this offer of a new life, with a new husband. Why should a dead man, even if he still lived, cause her further pain? Bryce’s betrayal of herself and Omie would not keep Zoe from another chance for happiness.

When Leo came through the door for his dinner, it was served to him by his wife-to-be.

It was March before the deer lick thawed sufficiently for Zoe to think of resuming work there. Leo had found a new partner to help him with his claim, but the partnership dissolved when nothing of worth came from the shaft. Now Zoe and Leo had each other and Omie and little else besides. They owed a substantial sum of money to several merchants, and had to live with the galling knowledge that Chadbourne and Yost and their partner had made a modest strike, sold out to a large commercial mining enterprise and left for lower elevations with a handsome profit. Representatives of the Rocky Mountain Mining Corporation had arrived in Glory Hole with the thaw, and begun buying up all claims that had revealed the presence of color without actually disgorging riches. Leo wished openly that his claim could be among the chosen ones; he would willingly have sold out for a song. His mood of late had become disagreeably morose, and Zoe did not ask for his help in reopening her own distant workings.

When several days of fine weather robbed Leo of any excuse for not working his claim, he enlisted the aid of Zoe, who had proved herself a steady worker after Leo’s latest partner quit (Zoe provided the cash that enabled Leo to buy back his share), and they labored together for more than an hour, Leo down in the shaft, Zoe unloading the buckets the mule drew to the surface. Omie assisted her in wheeling each load to the cradle for sluicing, and lent her eyes to the task while Zoe rocked the contraption back and forth as water played over the riffle slats. It was Omie, therefore, who first saw the gold.

“Mama! Stop! There’s some in there! It shines, Mama!”

Zoe sent her to fetch Leo while she plucked three nuggets the size of walnuts from the cradle. By the time Leo and Omie returned, she had washed out four more, including one as large as a peach. Leo stared, his jaw slack, then he scooped up his wife by the waist and waltzed her around the cradle while Omie clapped her hands and laughed.

The Rocky Mountain Mining Corporation paid Leo ninety thousand dollars for his claim, and when the deal had been made, and the ink allowed to dry on the bill of sale, Zoe took her husband aside and suggested a stroll up the side of the valley so they might overlook Glory Hole in its entirety before leaving for the warmer world of California, this being Leo’s stated intention. She led him up to the deer lick, and bade him jump down into the hole she had made there. Leo did so, laughing at her unusual request.

“Dig,” Zoe told him.

“I’m done with digging,” he told her.

“No you’re not. Dig with the toe of your boot.”

He did, and soon thereafter was on hands and knees, unable to accept the riches crammed into so confined a space. The nuggets went down and down, a tightly packed funnel of yellow that actually began to widen, the deeper he dug.

“Your claim was empty. Its gold came from this place,” said Zoe, “and I make no apology for having done what I did. Any man who has worked as hard as you for so long deserves to reap a reward of some kind, even from the great and greedy Rocky Mountain Mining Corporation. Now then, husband, are you truly done with digging?”

Literally up to his ankles in gold, co-owner by marriage of a claim that clearly would yield millions, Leo could only shake his head and admit his wife was his superior in every way.

23

Newspapers reaching Fort Mobley were distributed among those troopers who could read, before being cut into squares for use in the latrine. The news would be old by then, since the papers had to come by supply wagon from Albuquerque, a journey of ten days or more, and then the officers monopolized them for at least another week before releasing them to the lower ranks.

Drew found early on that he was the company’s most capable reader, and his services were in demand when newspapers were distributed among the barracks. He would read them from the first page to the last, before an audience starved of information concerning the outside world. He found his listeners curiously uninterested in such items as the assassination of James Garfield, twentieth president of the United States; they preferred more entertaining fare, the report from Socorro, for example, that a woman had killed her husband with an ax one night, then run through the town howling like a wolf. Her explanation for the murder rested on the premise that she was not herself on account of the full moon, and so was not responsible for what she did to her spouse, whom she had loved dearly. The sheriff was informed by neighbors, however, that the couple often quarreled over the husband’s excessive drinking and infidelities, and no one had ever heard the accused baying or otherwise acting peculiar at the time of the full moon, so it was generally held that the murderess was simply trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the law. The correspondent opined that the blatant lying and poor acting ability of the woman would prove prejudicial to her case when it came to court.

“She done it deliberate,” said Osgood, who was considered by some to be the wisest man in the barracks. “She said it just to get put in the monkey house instead of getting stretched like she deserves.” There were murmurings of agreement from several of the bunks, but it was difficult to tell from which, the only lighted lamp being above the newspaper reader, John Bones. Osgood continued: “A smarter woman now, she would’ve never said that about the moon. She would’ve said something about how she seen him come in through the window real late, and figured he was an Injun, so she took the ax to him. Maybe no one would’ve believed her, but they sure would’ve respected her brains a lot more, and maybe let her off on account of it. She never thunk it through like she should’ve, so now she’ll get stretched for sure, even if she’s a woman.”

“That’s right,” said Fannin, Osgood’s best friend and second shadow. It was said of Fannin that if Osgood ever stopped walking too suddenly, Fannin’s nose would be jammed permanently up Osgood’s ass, not that either party would have found this position unnatural or inconvenient. “That’s what she should’ve done, told about the Injun, not the moon.”

Drew found it sad that the level of learning at Fort Mobley was so low he had been elevated to a position of considerable status solely because he could read without a pause and explain the many complex terms that baffled his listeners. He quickly became aware that he had unwittingly supplanted Osgood as the company’s most learned and erudite individual, and regretted that this should have happened, since Osgood’s expression made it clear he considered Drew his enemy. It had only come about because Osgood, during one of his readings, had stumbled over the pronunciation of the word “intimidate,” and Drew, without even looking over his shoulder, had deduced from the article’s context what the awkward word was, and his speaking of it aloud had stunned everyone. Soon after, his star had risen higher when he assisted one of the men in the writing of a letter to his sweetheart. The writer knew his girl would never believe the flowery sentences had sprung from himself, but he sent it anyway, because it was a damn fine poetical piece of art.

“Too late now,” continued Fannin. “She should’ve had Ossie for her lawyer to tell her what to do, but that won’t happen, so she’ll drop for sure.”

Osgood nodded in acknowledgment of the truth in Fannin’s words, but he was aware that there was less than the usual level of enthusiasm in the room for his pronouncements, despite Fannin’s efforts on his behalf. More and more, lately, the men wanted to hear what Bones thought of the items he read to them, and Osgood was experiencing the pangs of rejection. Until the arrival of Bones, his had been the voice that relayed and interpreted the news, often with a fair amount of improvisation, since Osgood’s grasp of spelling and vocabulary was limited.