Silver Nights With You (Love in the Sierras Book 1) (2 page)

“Good. We need to get this man to a place where I can tend this wound properly.”

David peered into the carriage to see the blood-soaked man, and he nodded. “Is anyone else hurt beside the man and the girl here?”

“I’m not hurt,” Lila corrected. “He only ripped my dress.”

He ran a finger over one of the slashes on her cheek, and she reached up, having forgotten they were there and that her face was full of blood.

“It’s nothing,” she assured with chagrin. “The gentleman there needs the help, and the two drivers were killed.”

“I will drive you and your party into Virginia City," he said. "And I'll inform the stage company of what's happened.”

“We would be much obliged, sir,” Argyle admitted.

“It’s no trouble at all, I assure you. I am most willing to safeguard a party of such…lush treasures.” He lifted Lila’s hand to his mouth and brushed his lips across her knuckles as he spoke. She sucked in a breath. “Please, call me David.”

“This is my daughter, Lila Cameron,” her father announced in a tone that revealed his dislike for the man’s open ogling. “And I am Dr. Argyle Cameron.”

“A doctor? We need doctors at the mines.” David pulled a handkerchief from his vest pocket. His horse had returned, and he used his canteen to wet the cloth before he gave it to Lila. “Here. It'll be easier to clean the blood off while it’s wet.”

She nodded her thanks, and wiped absently at her face as she watched David tie his horse to the back of the coach. He smiled once, a rakish grin that produced those fetching dimples, and climbed up into the driver’s seat.

She could hardly breathe as she resettled into her seat and set the fan to its erratic flutter again, but there was no mistaking the whirling sensations come to life in her belly or the quaking of her hands. The entire ordeal was wreaking havoc on her senses. The shots, the sights of dead men falling, the taking of a life, the unforgettable view of David’s heroics. Her heart could barely contain its pounding, and she didn’t know if it was the incident or the man that was making her insides tremble.

He had to duck to enter the bar. It wasn’t because of his great height, but because of the shifting foundation beneath the place. The structure was sturdy enough, built of brick, wood and mortar, but with all the mining creating pockets beneath the surface the building had sunk a foot into the ground. Great clouds of dust fell from him, evidence of another long day burrowing beneath the ground. Val was swiftly on his heels.

The wooden rafters overhead were papered with dozens of dollar bills, each pinned to the beam by a miner in the morning who knew his throat would be raw for a stiff drink in the evening. The mines were dark, lit only by the dim wash of a candle, the miners’ clothes worn and full of holes. It would be foolhardy to stuff their pockets with money and still expect it to be there at the end of the day. So, each man wrote his name on his money and left it under the watchful eyes of Sandy, the bartender.

Other miners piled into the narrow bar, each pulling his greenback from the beam overhead. Morgan and Val went to the end of the counter and plopped onto their stools.

“Howdy, Sandy,” Morgan greeted, and Val echoed.

“Heya, Kelly boys,” Sandy replied as he filled them each a glass. “How was the silver today? Think you’ll be back tomorrow?”

Morgan shot his whiskey into the back of his throat and held out his glass for a refill. Sandy always began their conversations this way. His interest in the mines was genuine, but purely intellectual. He hadn't been fortunate enough to get in on the mining business early on and so spent his days and evenings serving drinks. The top of his head was bald, the rest of it outlined in a thick patch of dark hair. Tiny, round spectacles sat on the pointed tip of his nose. He was one of the few people who could be deemed a local, and he’d been serving drinks to the Kelly boys for the past two years.

“I keep telling myself it’s got to run out soon, but I don’t see any sign of it,” Val answered. “The vein is as wide as it is deep.”

“Well, now that the whole damn world is piling in here to get their hands on it, it shouldn’t be too long before it’s all gone,” Morgan said as he grabbed the cheroot Sandy offered. He struck a match and pulled the smoke into his lungs. 

“Can you blame them?” Sandy asked as he poured himself a shot. “When you boys chased the gold up this far with old Virginny, we thought that was something, but I ain’t never seen the ground run with liquid silver like that.”

Morgan blew out a breath in a whistle. “Virginny sure got the last laugh, though, didn’t he? All the years he’s spent up here just pulling enough metal to keep him drunk and he stakes his claim on the biggest silver lode ever discovered." He shook his head. "I just hope he stays sober enough to keep a hold of it with all of the vultures beginning to circle.”

“Well, at least he got a town named after him if nothing else,” Sandy mused. “I expect the poor old goat to sell out before his time. Those
vultures
can be pretty persistent.”

“Let ‘em come,” Val shrugged as he took a drink. “I’ve got my claim and that’s all I care about.”

“Don’t be so quick to say ‘let ‘em come,’ brother,” Morgan cut in, expelling a smoky breath. “First it’s the prospectors and miners, then the bankers and lawyers, and then the criminals."

“I thought the bankers and lawyers
were
the criminals,” Val said with a chuckle.

Morgan sighed. “If you think you can avoid all of them just because you’ve got your claim…well…then I’ll drink what you’re drinking.”

“I know that. Hell, I’ve already got Hearst practically beating down my door every other day trying to get me to sell to him.”

“Maybe we should,” Morgan said, prompting wide-eyed stares from both Val and Sandy. “You ought to hear some of the figures that are floating around out there. Fitzsimmons sold his mine for five hundred dollars a foot, and Clancy walked away from his for fifteen thousand.”

“Are you crazy?” Val asked. “For every hundred pounds of ore we take out, we get three hundred fifty dollars of silver. You can’t beat that even in the Humboldt. When the silver stops pouring out of the walls, then maybe I’ll think about selling.”

“I’m telling you, Val. Things are heating up around here and I got a bad feeling about it. We’ve already made enough to live comfortably for quite some time. Why push it? Why not just sell out now and walk away while we can?”

“
While we can?
Why the hell do you always have to be so doom and gloom? This is the easiest money we’ve ever made and you want to walk away from it?” He shook his head. “And you’re always on
me
for making life harder than it needs to be.”

“The
easiest
money we’ve ever made?"

“I don’t mean the work is easy,” Val said impatiently. “But we’ve made more in two years underground than we probably would have our entire lives doing something else…like raising cattle.”

“So, when is it going to be enough, Val? How rich do you have to be before you’re satisfied?”

Val slammed an open palm onto the countertop and leaned forward to look passed a silent Sandy at his brother.

“Okay, what’s going on?” he demanded. “You’ve been laboring away right beside me without complaint this entire time. For you to be talking like this, something must be going on. So, spill it.”

“All right, I will,” Morgan bit back, plucking the cigar from his mouth. “The president is sending an army into Utah. He thinks the Mormons have overstepped their authority. Brigham Young doesn’t want his forces spread out as far as here so he’s called all of his saints back to Salt Lake to defend it.”

Sandy looked stunned. “Is the governor going, too? The judge?”

Morgan nodded. “The Mormons don’t want the burden of overseeing us anymore, and the last I heard the Californians don’t want us either.”

“So, what happens now?” Val asked. “Are we talking about a petition for statehood here?”

“There’s talk of it,” Morgan assented with a nod. “I’m sure the amount of silver underground will speed up the process, too, since the United States aren’t so united anymore. You mark my words, once that war kicks off we’ll be a state faster than a bullet flies and tons of our silver will be shipping east to fill Union canons.”

“But that’s the kind of progress we need,” Sandy said. “We’re talking railroads and unions and law and order. All good stuff. Maybe it’s best that the Mormons high-tail it back to Salt Lake and leave us gentiles to make our own profit and laws.”

“Yeah, well, nearly all of the Washoe and Carson Valleys are expected to be cleared out by week’s end,” Morgan said, and Val’s eyes snapped in his direction. “Prime property is going fast and cheap, and I aim to take advantage.”

Val sank back down onto his stool while Sandy’s eyebrows shot up like arrows above excited eyes.

“You’re gonna buy you some property?” Sandy asked.

“I’m hoping to,” Morgan nodded.

“But why? Why not wait until next week when they’re all abandoned and then take your pick?”

“If there are any left next week, it will be the bottom of the barrel and I want the cream,” Morgan answered. “Besides, I want to own it out right. I don’t want some rancher turning up in a year or two claiming I jumped his property. I want a deed, signed and recorded, and mine.”

Sandy nodded at this wisdom. Val averted his brown eyes and stared ahead with a slight frown. Morgan waited for him to respond, but he remained still and silent, only a subtle muscle twitching in his jowls. Morgan sighed. This was the one thing he had talked about for years, and he hoped to see at least a little excitement from his brother.

“Well, Val, what do you think? This affects you as much as me. What do you think about going with me into the ranching business? It’s obvious you want to stick around these parts for a while, and we’re not likely to find an opportunity like this again." Morgan's eyes lit up as he grinned. "You ought to see the piece I want, Val. It’s got the perfect blend of forest and grazing meadow and there’s a river running right through it and a…”

“I guess that means you won’t be working
your
half of the mine anymore then?” Val interrupted dryly, still diverting his gaze.

Morgan frowned. “That’s right. I’ll have my own place to look after. If you’re not going to join me and you plan on keeping the mine, I’ll give you my half of the claim. I don’t want any royalties if I’m not working it.”

Val shot the rest of his whiskey. “You can’t give me your half, Morgan. We lose three hundred feet if you do that. Per code if you abandon your half then I lose it, too. It needs to go to another man, not me.” 

Morgan hadn’t considered the legal fallout of walking away from the mine, as he'd assumed that Val would sell and go down into the valley with him. He was still determined to go his own route, though, alone if needs be. If that meant Val lost out on three hundred feet of silver ore then so be it, but there was still time to sort it through.

“We have the rest of the month to make a decision. If you’re still determined to mine then you pick any partner you want, and I’ll give him my half of the claim.”

Val's eyes focused on the counter for a long moment before he reached across the bar and snatched the bottle from Sandy's hand to refill his whiskey glass. “Well, I wish you all the best, brother,” he said tightly before raising his glass for a toast. “To Morgan, the cattleman.”

   The words sounded genuine, and both Sandy and Morgan drank to them, but Morgan knew Valentine was unhappy. Self-righteous anger flared inside him, but he swallowed the rest of his whiskey and let it go. He couldn’t control Val’s feelings. Perhaps, in time, he would understand. He stood and clamped the cigar between his teeth.

“Sandy, a good evening to you.”

Val stood, too, and they left the bar, walking silently across the dusty road to the boarding house they lived in. The proprietress, Ellie Copper, very rarely kept lodgers as long as a year, but the generous amount of money supplied by the Kelly brothers was enough to persuade her. They had discussed getting a place of their own often enough, and the hills were cluttered with miner’s shacks and huts, but at the end of the day they liked having their meals cooked for them and their linens cleaned. Those two things were worth more than privacy.

Ellie enforced strict rules, one being that any miner entering her house remove his boots and shirt and dunk his head in the water barrel first. Morgan never minded this. It was as much of a daily bath as he needed. Tossing his boots aside, he waited as Val submerged himself in the barrel to his waist. He puffed on his cigar wondering if the new-sprung tension between them would ease on its own.

Just as Val was shaking his hair free of the water, the stage coach wheels rattled up the road. The brothers watched its approach and exchanged a curious glance.

“Why is Gardner driving the Overland stage?” Morgan asked. “And why is it coming into Gold Hill?"

When David spotted the brothers he eased the mules toward them and stopped the coach. Ellie was already making her way down the front steps.

“What, did you rob the Carson coach, Gardner?” Morgan teased.

David’s laugh was humorless and his smile tight as he jumped down from the driver’s seat. “I came across four bandits shooting it up not long ago.”