Colorado Dawn (16 page)

February 11, 1884

Karen stared at the letter, a total of a quarter of a page, and her heart wept. Not because he had written it himself, though that fact was poignant enough, but because of his words.

“Take all the time you need. I am fine.”

What had she expected? A stern, laying-down-of-the-law order to wrap things up here quickly and get herself home? What had she hoped for? Declarations of love and longing and a plea for her to return to him as soon as she could? The paper blurred.

She had gotten neither. He didn’t need her, and he didn’t want her back. He couldn’t have put it more plainly. Buckford and Mrs. Webber were seeing to all his needs, and she was to take her sweet time.

Her throat closed, and she put her head down on her arms on the kitchen table.

March 31, 1884

“She’ll arrive the day after tomorrow.” David tilted his abacus slowly forward and back, listening to the slide and click of the beads. Would she stay? For how long? Would she come seeking an annulment? Would she listen if he tried to apologize?

Buckford slid the letter across the desktop. “It will be very nice for the church in Martin City to have a new pastor so quickly.”

With a stab, David remembered that Buckford was a member of the church in Martin City. Uprooting and moving to Denver to get away from his family and the scene of his accident had caused turmoil in not only his life and Karen’s but Buckford’s as well.

The front bell shrilled, and a fist pounded on the door. Buckford’s hasty steps on the hardwood weren’t in time to open the door before it crashed wide. “Dave, where are you?”

“Sam? What are you doing here?” David pushed himself up from his chair and braced himself for Sam’s familiar crushing handshake and hearty backslap.

“I figured you’d stewed down here in Denver long enough. You’ve ignored all my letters.” Cloth moved and damp air swirled. “Thank you, Buckford. I needed that coat when I left home, but it looks like spring has come around here. Oh, and I left my bag and a box on the front stoop. Could you slide them inside for me?”

David resumed his seat. Sam sagged into the chair opposite, and David could feel his brother’s appraisal on his skin.

“We need to talk.” Sam’s boots scraped on the floor and the springs in his chair creaked.

“What about?” David tensed.

“Quite a few things, actually, but a couple items are vying for the top of the list. We need to talk about the mine, and after that, we need to talk about Karen.”

“I have no desire to talk about the mine, and Karen is none of your business.” The familiar shell of defensiveness, the walls he’d been working so hard to lower, flew up again, full strength. He took a grip on himself and battled down the old feelings.

The sigh Sam emitted seemed to come from his toes. “Dave, I don’t want to fight with you. I strongly disagree that Karen is none of my business since she’s my sister-in-law and I care about her. I’ll leave off talking about her for now, but we have to talk about the mine. I need help, and you’re the only one I trust. I can’t go to anyone else with this. Not yet.”

The earnest edge to Sam’s voice sent uneasiness skittering across David’s skin. He sat forward and put his elbows on his knees. “What’s wrong at the mine, and why can’t you talk about it to anyone else?”

“When Mother sent Buckford to you before Christmas, I gave him a box of papers and samples. Where is that?”

“I’m not sure. I think it’s in my office upstairs. My papers have been the last thing on my mind in recent months.”

“Well, you’d best stoke up that brain of yours for some hard slogging. I’ll ask Buckford to bring some sandwiches and coffee to the office. What I have to say is going to take awhile.”

D
avid took the chair behind the desk in his office upstairs and placed his hands on the carved, wooden arms.

Sam entered and something weighty hit the desktop. “Now, where’s that other box? Ah, here it is.” Papers rustled, and David recognized the clack and grit of rocks scraping against each other. “Let me move this inkwell and spread out some of these pages.” Thumps and bumps as Sam got things settled.

David couldn’t ignore the dueling excitement and fear in his middle. Excitement at delving, even in a small way, into his former occupation and fear that he wouldn’t be up to the task. What if Sam had come all this way, putting his faith in his older brother, and David let him down? David couldn’t help but feel he faced a test tonight, one he desperately wanted to pass.

“What are you looking for, and what help do you think I can give?”

Sam dragged a chair close. “First, you can tell me I’m not going crazy or missing something and jumping to the wrong conclusion. Then I want to compare some of the paperwork I sent with Buckford with what I brought today. Something isn’t right, and I have a feeling it hasn’t been right for longer than any of us would like to think.”

Buckford arrived with a tray, and the aroma of hot coffee filled the room. Matches scritched and glass tinked as he moved around the room lighting the wall sconces.

David sipped his coffee while Sam rummaged through the boxes again.

“Buckford, why don’t you stay?” Sam asked. “You know a lot more than you ever let on, and you’ve been in the mines. You might see something I missed. What’s that contraption?”

Bumpy wood touched David’s hand. “I thought you could use this, sir.”

David closed his fingers on his abacus. “Thank you, Buckford. Sam’s right. Stay and listen. Sam, stop fidgeting with that stuff and cut through the chaff.”

Sam sighed and stilled. “All right. At first, I thought the trouble at the mine started with the cave-in, but looking back on things, I can see indications that something was going on even before then.”

David’s chin came up. “What?”

“Well, think about it, Dave. Remember that axle on the ore wagon that broke? The team had to be shot, broken legs on both. Then there was all the trouble at the company store. First, somebody makes a big error on ordering and supplies run short. Then, the day after the new inventory comes in, the store is robbed and ransacked. We thought these were just coincidences, but what if they weren’t?”

“That’s reaching a bit, Sam. There were a few petty thefts in town around the time the store was robbed, and wagon axles have been known to break before.”

“True, but what about the four braces of mules that were stolen? Then we get a bad batch of blasting caps. And in September, I spent nearly the whole month working on one pump or another. Parts that shouldn’t have failed did. Fluids ‘accidentally’ drained away. Debris ‘somehow’ got into the motor. I couldn’t keep more than two pumps going at a time, and we were running in circles to keep the mine dry. Then there was the cave-in.”

“That was my fault.” David’s shoulders slumped, and he rubbed his temple.

Sam gripped David’s shoulder. “I know you think that, but why? You’ve never come up with a definitive reason why the supports should have failed and neither has anyone else. I think we need to comb through all the paperwork again—the plans, the surveys, and the ore samples—and figure this out.”

“How can I? I can’t see.” David straightened and gripped the arms of his chair. The familiar helplessness rolled over him.

“I’ll help you. I think the answer is here, but I can’t find it on my own. Last week, the mine office was ransacked twice. I think whoever it was that did it was looking for the papers that have been in your house the past few months. Nothing else was missing. Marcus and I checked.”

David frowned. “Why didn’t you have Marcus look these things over? He’s the better engineer. If he’d been in charge of the mine, the cave-in wouldn’t have happened.”

Sam rose and paced the area in front of the desk. “Dave, I’ll match my time on a rock drill or pickax against any man in the mine. I can about sharpen a pencil with a stick of dynamite, but I can’t decipher these charts and papers by myself. I need you. Not Marcus, not Father, you. I’ll read aloud anything you want me to. I’ll help you do the figures, but I know, if you’ll just work with me, you’ll be able to see what I can’t.” David snorted at his word choice, but Sam went right on. “You’ll come at this from your logical, intense, black-and-white view of the world, and you’ll put the pieces together.”

David swiveled his chair, listening to the creak of leather and the doubts in his head. He wanted to pray, to ask for guidance, but he was afraid. Afraid God wouldn’t hear him. Even more afraid the answer would be no. He swallowed, clenching and unclenching his hands.

“Well, Dave? How about it?”

“I don’t know how much help I’ll be, but I’ll give it a go.”

Sam pounced on the box, as if he wanted to get started before David changed his mind. “Let me read to you a list of things that have gone on at the mine over the last ten months or so. Where’d I put my notebook?”

“Is this it, sir?”

“Thanks, Buckford.” Pages scraped and shuffled. “Here it is. Any one of these alone wouldn’t draw too much attention, but when you list them, it becomes more than a coincidence.”

Sam read and David tried to organize the items into a mental list, visualizing them in his head the way Rex had taught him:

1.  Axle broken on new wagon. Team put down. Reason for failure unknown
.

2.  Ordering mistake leaves company store short on inventory
.

3.  Store robbed and ransacked. Four teams of mules stolen
.

4.  Shipment of faulty blasting caps. Work halted for two days till replacements are found
.

5.  Pumps falter. Time lost repairing and replacing parts. Reason for failure unknown
.

6.  Square sets fail, mine collapses. Eight dead, five wounded. Reason for failure unknown
.

7.  Transport bucket winch system fails, bucket falls to bottom of mine. One man injured, leg amputated. Winch and motor in good repair. Reason for failure unknown
.