Crimson Palace (10 page)

"But you don’t, do you? You still want to see him, to see if he still makes you feel the same way."

"I guess you’re right." Shinonn’s voice lost its defensive tone. "I must be the biggest fool alive. I have reasons for wanting to see him dead, but I just can’t hate him. I never have been able to."

"There’s only one way to settle your mind, baby girl. You go out and you find that man. And when you find him, if you need a friend’s shoulder to cry on, you come on back to old Sofie, you hear now?"

Chapter 7

Alex and Sofie were barely awake when they came out to bid Shinonn farewell, though the sun stood high in the sky. While her friends slept, she had been busy packing her tools, clothing and provisions.

Now, her horses packed and ready to go, all that was left was to say her final farewells and be on her way.

"You be sure and let us hear when you strike it rich," Alex grinned as he shook Shinonn’s hand firmly.

"You’ll hear about it all right. I’ll be hollering so loud, everyone from Oregon to Mexico will hear me."

"Here’s a little going away present, honey. I hear gold attracts gold; maybe this twenty dollar gold piece will bring you luck."

Tears stung Shinonn’s eyes as she accepted Sofie’s gift.

"I’ll never forget you two."

"You better not! Here, you put the coin in this little silk bag I made for you. Wear it around your neck for luck. Tuck it inside your shirt so you won’t lose it."

"I’ll think of you every time I touch it, Sofie. And if gold does attract gold, I’ll be rich as a skunk in no time, all thanks to you."

"Now you be careful, honey. And don’t let your guard down. If those miners ever find out your little secret, you’ll be in more trouble than the law allows. They might not take kindly to being made fools of, so you be careful."

"Sofie knows what she’s talking about. Men can be rough with a woman who’s all alone, especially out here with women so scarce. I’d hate to think of how they might treat you if they ever found out who you really are."

"I’ll be careful, I promise. And when the time comes to stop being Tim O’Brien, well, I’ll get out of these mountains and go someplace where I can be Shinonn Flannery in safety. I’m sure that day will come along, but until then, I promise to keep my guard up.

"Now you two go on back and get some breakfast; you look awful! And I can’t stand around here talking all day. I’ve got to find that Mother Lode!"

***

Actually, Shinonn spent as much time in the following weeks searching for her brother as she did looking for gold.

At every town she came to, every spot along the river where men gathered to dig for gold, she found herself peering intently at each tall, heavily muscled, dark-haired young man she saw. She went from saloon to saloon looking for him, describing him to everyone she met.

Knowing Patrick, she figured she would be more apt to find him in a saloon than working a claim. From her own experience she knew that placer mining was back breaking work. Patrick Flannery had never had a leaning toward manual labor.

She told herself that she only went into the saloons to look for her brother, but she found her eyes uncontrollably drawn to the gaming tables. She wouldn’t admit, even to herself, that she was far more interested in seeing Lincoln Bradley’s mysterious, steel gray eyes, and to hear his softly rasping voice of than she was in finding her brother. She saw hundreds of men during her wanderings, but not once did any of them catch at her heart the way Lincoln Bradley had so many years before.

Finally, after weeks of traipsing from camp to camp, realizing her search for both Patrick and her mysterious gambler was useless, she gave up the search and staked out a claim near the small camp of kicking Mule. It was a fairly new camp, with plenty of unclaimed land still available. She found a spot along the river that was secluded, yet close enough to the tiny mining town so that she could replenish her provisions with relative ease.

Her first priority was to build a shanty to protect herself from the elements. She had been fortunate that the winter had been mild so far, but she knew the weather could change in less than a heart beat in these mountains.

Using scraps of wood, and just about anything else she could get her hands on, she managed to build a one room house. It was little more than a shed but provided her with a place for a bed, a makeshift stove, and a couple of wooden boxes which served as cupboards, chair and table. Although it was just barely habitable, it was her own and she was happy with it. No longer exposed to the elements, she felt as if she were living in luxury.

The miners working claims at Kicking Mule were on the whole an industrious bunch. It was too small a camp to attract much of the usual hanger’s-on who gravitated to the more prosperous diggings; the tin horn gamblers, the slick confidence men and the usual assortment of sporting girls. True, there was a small saloon and gambling hall, but if a prospector was in search of feminine companionship he would have to travel on down the road to Whiskey Town to find it. And if he was in the mind for a game of cards, he would more than likely find other miners to play with rather than a professional gambler.

***

"Hey there! How’s it going, partner?"

Shinonn looked up to see a miner strolling up-stream toward her.

"Found the Mother Lode yet?"

"Not so’s you’d notice. You might say, ‘I’ve seen the elephant’, but it’s a mighty small critter," she replied ruefully, referring to the miner’s expression of seeing the elephant when gold is first discovered.

"Don’t give up yet, boy. There’s gold along this stream, it just don’t jump out and find you. You got to give it plenty of sweat first."

"I’ve got the sweat, now I just need a little luck."

"When you get tired of your own company, come on down to what we laughingly refer to as town around here and join us in a game or two of cards. Most of us are too tired to be very frisky most nights, but we usually get together for a game or two on Sundays."

"Thanks for the offer. I may just take you up on it," she replied, reaching down for her shovel as she prepared to get back to work.

"By the way, my name is Tom...Tom Salverton. Me and my brother Ed have the claim just down river."

"Nice to meet you, Tom. Tim O’Brian’s the name." She shifted her shovel into her left hand so she could shake Tom’s proffered hand. She shook it firmly, glad that the hard work of the last several months had covered her hands with hard calluses.

She had always longed for the soft feminine hands of the pampered housewives she had envied so long ago. How quickly her disguise would have been discovered had her dreams of a softer life been realized!

"Thanks for coming by. I’m not much of a card player, but it sure does get lonely up here sometimes.

Maybe I’ll be seeing you in town come Sunday."

After Tom Salverton left, Shinonn returned to the back breaking work of shoveling gravel into her cradle. Wisdom told her she should avoid becoming too involved with the other miners, but Tom’s invitation brought to the surface a deadening loneliness she had been fighting for weeks. Did she dare take the risk of exposing herself to curious eyes? Her mind whirled with the possibilities, both pleasant and unpleasant as her body continued working.

She spent over an hour pouring shovel-full after shovel-full of gravel into the crudely built device. After several shovels full were emptied into the cradle, she grabbed its handle with both hands and rocked it as hard as she could while water from the fast moving stream ran across the dirt. When all of the loose gravel was washed out of the cradle, she carefully removed several good sized nuggets that lay on the bottom. Then she took her flat miner’s pan and began to pan out the gravel that lay along the riffles, on the bottom of the cradle. After again sloshing the water and gravel thoroughly, she carefully removed the tiny gold nuggets which lay on the bottom of the pan. She dropped them into a leather pouch she kept tied to her waist. Then she began to gently swirl the last bit of black grit, looking for even the tiniest flake of shining metal.

Most prospectors were satisfied to save only the nuggets and throw the smaller flakes back into the river. Not Shinonn. Although it was not nearly as exciting to find the tiny pieces of gold lying in the bottom of the pan, after time the minuscule flakes added up and the price for gold was in weight, not form. Checking the Mason jar in which she stored the tiny flakes, she was amazed to see how quickly the level of gold had risen.

At the end of each day she placed most of the gold flakes in her Mason jar, reserving a small amount which she put in a second jar. She took the gold nuggets and did likewise, putting most of them in one jar, a smaller amount in a second.

When she finished dividing the gold, she carefully hid the jars with the smaller amounts beneath a loose board of the cabin’s floor, figuring that the hiding spot would almost certainly be found by anyone who came into the cabin intent on stealing gold. She then placed the bulk of the gold in a hole which she had dug beneath the floor of the cabin, under her mattress. Although she hadn’t heard of anyone in Kicking Mule having his poke stolen, she knew only too well that any gold camp was ripe pickings to the dishonest. She only hoped that the smaller jars of gold would satisfy any thieves, should they come to her cabin.

"Can we count you in on a poker game tomorrow?" Tom Salverton called to her the next Saturday evening just as dusk began to settle in. "We could use some new blood in the game."

"I might come by to watch for awhile. It would sure be good to hear someone else’s voice beside my own."

"Yeah, I know what you mean. When me and Ed first started prospectin’, we didn’t want to stop to eat, we were so full of gold fever. We worked seven days a week, from sun up to sun down. But after a while you begin to realize that the gold you don’t dig out today will still be there tomorrow. Six days a week is plenty of work; a body needs a rest."

"I’ve just about come to that conclusion myself. I need to clean up around the place and wash some clothes, then I’ll probably wander into town and see what’s going on. I might see you and Ed later."

***

As she picked her way along the stream toward Kicking Mule the next day, Shinonn saw that she wasn’t the only miner doing her washing that day. All along the shore of the river she encountered shirts, trousers, long-johns and socks spread out on rocks and draped across bushes to dry in the mid-day sun.

Although it was late in the year, and the air was crisply cool, the sun shone brightly. It was a good day to wash and a good day to rest.

Sounds of revelry rode the currents of the thin mountain air, reaching out to Shinonn as she approached the small mining town. From one tent she heard a harmonica, soft and soulful. From another came the voices of miners in deep discussion about the price of gold. She passed several men who were discussing stories they had heard about a strike further up stream.

"I heard tale that they’re taking a full cup of gold out in one hour’s digging up at Critter’s Creek."

"Yeah, I head that one too. Only, when I heart it, they was talking about this camp right here. So far, I ain’t found but a couple of cups of gold all told and I been working my claim for two weeks."

"Old man Adams, has the claim just up from mine, he found a nugget the size of your fist. He ain’t found much else, but that sure was one purty nugget."

"One purty nugget ain’t enough for me. I figure I’ll go take a look at that new strike. I been itching to try my luck up at Critter’s Creek anyway. That creek looks the sort of place where a feller can find gold.

Everything about it is just right for gold."

"Ain’t you learned nothing yet? Gold ain’t where it’s supposed to be; gold is where, ... well, it’s where it’s at!"

Shinonn passed the gossiping miners and continued onto the saloon. Since she didn’t drink liquor, she’d not previously had a reason to enter the building. Like so many of the structures in the gold country, it was a temporary affair made of canvas and the stray plank of wood.

She found her neighbors Tom and Ed inside and about two dozen other miners. A couple of card games were going on while in a corner a grizzled old miner sawed away on a fiddle. The tune the old man played was unrecognizable but lively. Shinonn found her foot tapping to the rhythm of the music,

"Draw up a stool and sit in on the game," Ed called to Shinonn across the room. "Hey, barkeep, let’s get this boy a beer."

"No thanks, Ed. Like I said, I don’t play much cards. But I would like to watch if no one minds. Maybe I could learn how if I watch long enough."

She turned to the barkeeper and changed the order to a sarsaparilla. "I never did have a taste for beer or whiskey," she explained. Just the thought of whiskey reminded her of all the misery her family had suffered because of hard liquor, but she wasn’t about to elaborate on her past life with anyone at Kicking Mule.

Taking her bottle of sarsaparilla with her, she pulled up a stool and began watching the play. Because of her father’s disastrous history with cards, she had always studiously avoided any contact with them. But today, for some unexplainable reason, she found herself fascinated by the game. Hours passed unnoticed as she watched the players.

At first none of it made sense to her, but gradually she began to understand the basic rules of the game.

As time passed she began to learn the relative value of each hand. She watched the players, how they handled their cards, moved restlessly in their seats, their eyes shifting from their cards to check the expressions on the other players’ faces.

Her attention was drawn again and again to one particular player. She had noticed the man before when she had come into town to buy supplies. Something about him, not just his appearance but more his attitude, repelled her. She sensed a streak of dishonesty in him. The other men in the saloon appeared to accept him completely, but Shinonn felt herself drawing sway from his proffered friendship. Never showing her feelings, (she had learned long ago keep her thoughts to herself), she vowed to keep a watchful eye on the man.