Easy Pickings (2 page)

“I don't like it,” Bum said.

She didn't blame him. Especially after a slab of stone had murdered her man. But sometimes things needed doing.

“Follow me,” she said, setting Fourth on the stony ground. She pushed in, felt the damp close air, edged back, while the pair watched. Then she stopped. Kermit lay there, under that burden, his face as gray as the rock.

“Well?” she asked.

“I think you should leave him there,” said Jerusalem. “Seal it off.”

The two glanced at each other.

She sensed that these two would not bring her man out. She retreated from the darkness. The shaft was so low in places she herself could barely stand up in it.

“Not much of a mine anyway,” Jerusalem said.

“It is all I have,” she said.

“Never got you much,” he said. “Or maybe that's a bad guess.”

“I will take a pry bar in and lift one side. I will have you slide him out,” she said.

“That's too much for you, and dangerous. This shaft should be timbered,” he said.

She found the long pry bar, spaded at one end, and walked in. She could find no way to slide the bar past her man and lift up.

“You, Bum, you come lift the rock. I'll slide my man out from under.”

“I'd risk my neck going into there.”

“My man went in every day, all day, digging quartz.”

“And look at him now, ma'am.”

She felt a rush of anger. “Come with me and lift. I'll do the rest.”

But the pair shuffled uneasily, their minds hardening against the thing that needed doing.

They weren't experienced miners, not used to darkness and close quarters and rock everywhere. And they would not go where Kermit went every day. She sensed they had been in a few mines, and were afraid of this one.

She found some wooden blocks that Kermit used in his work, and hauled them in. They watched her from safe daylight. She took the pry bar in the fading light and gently worked it past the body of her man, and lifted. The brutal rock came grudgingly. When she could lift no more, she pushed a block under the bar, let it down, and rested. She did it again, pushing the block farther. Then she tugged gently at the shoulders of her man, and he scraped toward her. She pulled again, and then he was free, and she dragged him, a foot at a time, toward light.

While the two young men watched, cowards that they were.

 

Two

She stared down at the crushed gray flesh of the man she had held so tight in her arms, and felt drained. Something good and true had gone away.

The two men stared, and then glanced at the mine.

“Help me carry him down to the cabin,” she said.

“It's kind of a nice place you have here,” Jerusalem Jones allowed.

Neither of them moved.

“I will go get a winding sheet,” she said, and headed wearily down the rocky path. The two young men were useless. She took Fourth with her. He nestled on her hip and clung as she descended. She settled him in his crib, pulled a sheet off the bed, and carried it up the slope where the men stood.

She spread the sheet over the rocky ground, and then rolled Kermit into it, and then she wrapped him in it, taking one last look at his broken face.

“There,” she said, rising, waiting for the young men. “You can take him to the wagon.”

“I guess you're gonna sell the gold mine,” Jerusalem said.

So that was what this was about.

She spotted Rolf Wittgenstein laboring up the trail, and noted that he had changed his clothing. He wore a dark suit now, with a cravat.

“Ah, Mrs. McPhee, I see these young men have freed your husband. Very courageous of them. I came to offer help, if help be needed.”

“I did it.”

“Well, these two can help carry the deceased to Mr. Laidlow's wagon.”

“I would prefer that you and I do it, Mr. Wittgenstein.”

He stared, an eyebrow arching above his wire-rimmed glasses.

“It shall be our sad duty, then.”

Some blood had leaked onto the sheet, but the assayer didn't hesitate to pick up Kermit by his shoulders, while she clasped his feet. Together, and slowly, they made their way down the rocky path. Kermit seemed feather light, as if all his weight had been in the breath of life. The young men lingered at the mine head, and did not follow behind.

She caught a glimpse of them peering into the mine, and studying the works, including the sole ore car, the rails, a pile of crossties, a box of caps, and a coil of fuse, and especially stray pieces of white quartz that lay about. Jerusalem pocketed several of the glistening pieces.

Then they were out of sight. She and the assayer descended steadily, not speaking until they reached the black wagon and gently laid Kermit in it and arranged the sheet to cover the dead properly.

“He was a good and hardworking man, your husband,” he said, as if to fill a need to say something uplifting.

“They wouldn't go in and get him. They're Laidlow nephews supposedly helping out. But they wouldn't do it, and now they're hanging about up there. It's not hard to see what they are thinking. I mean the mine, here for the taking.”

“It would be easy to do,” he said. “That's it, I suppose. You will want to get help.”

“They will learn that March is a mean month where we come from.”

“I suppose I could drive this wagon down to Marysville,” he said.

“I would like you to stay for the moment. I don't wish to be left alone with those two.”

“Yes, that's a good point. They are obvious, aren't they?”

“The federal patent's in the cabin. We proved it up.”

“It would be well not to tell them anything at all.”

“I wasn't planning to.”

Fourth stirred in his crib and whimpered. The child had been quiet through all this turmoil, but now he was sensing that his small world was falling away.

“Tea, Mr. Wittgenstein?”

“That would take a lot of doing,” he said, eyeing her cold stove. “If you will forgive me, madam, this mine needs protecting. Your husband was barely lost to you before the vultures began to circle. And it's only beginning. They will find ways to drive you off. They will try to scare you, bully you, deceive you, get you to sell for little or nothing. Or even worse.”

She smiled wanly. “So I've heard. Propose marriage. Find ways to steal the mine. Abduct this child. These things are churning in me, and we haven't even gotten my husband buried.”

“They will come to me, wanting to know about the ore,” he said. There was a question in it.

“It's no secret. Kermit delighted in telling the world. The farther in he goes, the better it gets, and there is no lateral limit discovered so far. That little shaft pierces a lode that runs to either side, but no one knows how much.”

Wittgenstein rubbed his bald head. “For the time being, madam, if anyone inquires about the values in the ore, I will decline to answer. If you should sell the mine, you would want me to supply figures to your buyer.”

March felt a wave of weariness. “Please drive him down the road. I don't think they'll bother me.”

“I would not think of leaving you, in such circumstances, Mrs. McPhee. I shall bide my time here at the wagon.”

She nodded, thinking she ought to make him some tea. But instead, she slipped inside and collapsed in a Morris chair that had been Kermit's pride. She sensed his presence there, in that chair, and it comforted her. The things that gold did to people had not surprised her.

Shortly, the young men swung into the yard, having explored the works to their hearts' content. She heard the assayer talking to them. Then one of them, Jerusalem Jones, barged into her cabin without knocking.

“We'll keep an eye on it for you,” he said.

“That will not be necessary.”

“There's people wanting this mine, and we'll be keeping an eye out for you.”

“The mine, Mr. Jones, is no one's business but my own.”

He grinned. “You've gotta keep people out of it.”

Wearily she watched them clamber into the wagon, beside her dead man, while the assayer slapped lines over the rump of the dray, and they rattled away, and then the widow and son of Kermit McPhee were engulfed in quietness, and twilight crept along the slopes.

“I will be going now, Mrs. McPhee. Unless there is need.”

“Thank you for coming, Mr. Wittgenstein. I want to be alone now.”

She watched him walk down the grade, a little way behind the youths and their wagon.

She felt numb. She had dwelled in an isolated cabin, had no friends in town, and her life had been bounded by husband and son. There would be no friends collecting here to comfort her and see to her needs. The cabin was a comfort now, and so was the privacy.

She lay still, too weary even to brew some tea. Soon she would need to feed Fourth and herself, too, if she felt hungry. She hadn't the faintest idea where her life would lead now. Marriage? She'd had her fill of it. And soon the pressure would begin. There were men itching to marry a young widow with a working gold mine. She had no desire for them, no wish to accommodate them. Kermit the Third was enough.

The cabin didn't seem empty; Kermit's presence lingered there. He had actually devoted time to civilizing the place, building their tables and chairs, putting up shelves, getting up a fine outhouse that was not icy in winter. The cabin was not a hard place to be, even though it was a long walk from company, a half hour from groceries and meat markets and dry goods stores and saloons and blacksmiths. Sometimes in the winter they had been cut off, and only then was she uneasy and aching to be reconnected.

The child was restless. She bestirred herself, built a small fire, jacked some water from the shallow well, and started it heating. She would cook some porridge for the boy and herself later, and get some tea going.

The men would be down to Marysville by now, and she knew that the assayer would insist that they go first to Laidlow's place and carry Kermit McPhee in. She didn't know how she would pay for all that. The mine hadn't made them rich. But she would somehow. Mr. Wittgenstein would see to her needs. He was a strange man; pale, bald, and not an outdoor sort of male, and yet scrupulous in his dealings. Today she saw him quite stern, his hard gaze compelling those renegade young men to do what was right and needful, even if they were busy scheming.

After waiting for the porridge to cool, she fed Fourth, cleaned him, and slipped him into his cradle. The poor baby would never know his father. She eyed him gently as she pulled her hand-crocheted coverlet over him and blew out the lamp.

Death, then. She sagged into a chair, scarcely knowing what would come next. A stiff breeze rattled the shutters that guarded the sole window. She felt too alone. Had she known people in Marysville, there would be friends here, a quiet vigil beside a young widow. Mining towns saw many vigils, not only for men lost in the bowels of the earth, but men lost in the cruel milling machinery that crushed and refined and smelted ore, eating up cordwood and an occasional mortal as well. Mining was a cruel business. The earth exacted its toll of lives and property.

This was one of few times she had spent a night alone, with Kermit gone, and it amplified every sound that the night brought on the breeze. She swore she heard footsteps, but cast the idea aside. She was overwrought. Still, the grate of boot on gravel continued. It was as if several men were passing the darkened cottage in the night, heading for the mine for whatever reason.

But there were no voices. And no other night sounds. And for a while all she sensed was the deep silence of her cabin. Its thick logs had once seemed stout, but somehow just now they seemed frail, as if some terrible force could turn her refuge into matchsticks.

She could not say why she sensed something was wrong. Nor could she say why she wrapped a shawl about her against the chill, and stepped into the night, and slowly, cautiously made her way up the rocky trail to the mine, starting at every slight sound. She dreaded leaving Fourth alone in his crib, dreaded the foolishness that was propelling her upward toward the mine, only a few hours after the terrible accident that had killed Kermit.

She scolded herself. What sort of foolishness would drive her, and what did she expect to see? She climbed slowly, the familiar trail a comfort to her. She had passed up and down a thousand times, and knew every pebble. She arrived at the rocky ledge where the mine pierced into the bowels of the mountain, and knew at once that something wasn't right, but in the stygian gloom she could make out nothing. She heard, rather than saw, that mortals were there, and they were busy, and muttering things among themselves.

She thought to stop them, but knew better, and knew that her safety depended on the darkness enveloping her. She stepped off the trail, straining to grasp what was happening, knowing only from the soft growl of human voices that something was occurring there.

She heard the hard sound of running, boots clattering on gravel, and several of these night visitors raced by, some of them only twenty or thirty feet from where she stood beside a jagged rock that had split from the bedrock beside the road.

A dull thump slammed her, along with a muted flash and then the sound of clattering rock. A wave of cordite smoke smote her. It didn't last. A breeze whipped the air clean, and the debris settled into silence. She stood, paralyzed, uncertain what had happened. No one remained, as far as she could tell, but she didn't dare move. So she stood, her nerves screaming, her muscles taut, and finally when she could endure it no more she edged upward, seeing no one, her eyes upon a slope revealed only by bright stars, somehow changed.

She stumbled over shattered rock, and realized that the whole ledge above the portal of the mine lay under debris, and she would need to poke and probe her way up to the mine head, which she did with care and fear.

The mine had disappeared. Rather, the shaft lay under a mountain of rubble, sealed from the world. She could see no ore car. She thought she might see rails dimly reflecting the night, but she saw no rails. She saw no powder magazine, no cordwood, nothing but an anonymous slope where once a small mine shaft had pierced horizontally into the mountain. Kermit's gold mine had ceased to exist. For the moment, anyway.