Silver Nights With You (Love in the Sierras Book 1) (18 page)

He smiled gratefully. “I could go for some of Ellie's cooking.”

“Of course!” she took another step back and bumped up against the wash stand. The tilted mirror above it swiveled forward, knocking her gently on the head. She held a hand to the spot as she laughed with embarrassment and shuffled to the door, avoiding his eyes. “I’ll…uh…be right back.”

She hurried out the door, right past a smirking Val. Three hours later, she leaned against the wall just outside of the kitchen snatching up the coolness of the breeze. Val and Morgan emerged from the house on their way to the stables. They were dressed in crisp, clean clothes of black trousers and matching cutaway coats, white shirts and black vests. Their hats had been brushed clean. Morgan moved with a grimace in each step.

He smiled at her as he went past, but stopped after making it down only two steps. She watched as he turned and walked back to her. His arm went around the small of her back as he pulled her up against him and kissed her deeply. She leaned into him, into his kiss and his body, alive and well despite her worst fears. He pulled away and looked into her eyes.

"I love you," he said, but gave her no chance to respond as he turned and followed in Val's wake.

Giddiness and joy surged through her, and she smiled as she watched him walk away.

Morgan felt her eyes on him and stopped to look over his shoulder. Her hair was down, the top half of it folded back and pinned. Soft wisps framed her oval face. He studied her so long that she smiled meekly and looked at the ground. When her eyes rose again, he lifted a hand in a departing wave. She gestured back just as Val emerged from the stables with their horses.

Morgan took the reins and lifted a leg into the stirrup. His back muscles flexed and fresh scabs near his neck pulled apart. He sucked in a breath and gripped the saddle horn to keep from falling. Val was by his side in an instant.

“Are you sure you’re well enough to go, Morgan?”

“Yes,” he grunted. “Just give me a moment to catch my breath.” When the moment passed he pulled himself up into the saddle, feeling the damp heat of blood pushing against the back of his shirt.

"Maybe we oughtta hire a coach, Morgan. I don't want to push your recovery."

"Let's just take it slow. I promise if I need to dismount, I will. Trust me, brother. I don't want to damage myself either. I've got a good reason for living."

He looked across at Lila, her blue skirt splotched with blood stains and dirt. The white blouse she wore billowed around the arms and neck, proving that it was borrowed from some larger-framed body, most likely Ellie’s. A shadow of a memory leapt into his mind of how she’d looked when he descended the scaffolding. Her maroon skirt was in shreds, her own blouse torn for bandages. Two new outfits had been ruined in the space of three weeks by the wild life of the west.

In spite of the deep ache across his back, a smiled tugged at his mouth at the idea of her becoming his wife. He thought of the perfect engagement gift as he nudged his horse into a walk and rode toward Virginia City. They made one stop before reaching St. Mary's. Its spire gleamed golden with the sun's last rays streaking out across the town. David was waiting for them outside the building, slumped against the wall, and Morgan knew a deep contempt for the way he'd abandoned Lila after the opera. Widows wept openly at the lost lives of their loved ones while they filed into the church, and Morgan knew that this was not the place or time to address his issues with David. He dismounted and nodded in greeting instead.

With so many men packed into one small space and matters of money stirring up heated roundabout discussions, Morgan wondered that the church walls did not crumble from the amount of unholy breath and air. Every link in the human chain was represented in that building. There were men richer than God seated comfortably. Scientists and engineers babbled long, indiscernible words amongst themselves. Miners chatted casually. Bankers and investors bellowed with purple faces.

Morgan, who was seated between Val and David, leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. It felt good to stretch his back.

“Who’s running this show?” he asked David, who was slouched against the back of a pew, his vacant eyes drooping and shining like polished panes of glass. Morgan leaned down for a closer inspection of the man’s sallow skin and shook his head with disgust. “Have you just come from an opium den?”

“What of it?” he dismissed with a lazy shrug. “There’s been nothing else to do in this town for the past four days.”

Morgan looked away and clamped his mouth shut. Whenever David went off on one of his binges, staggering from gambling halls to whorehouses to opium dens, he was utterly useless and impossible for Morgan to stomach. He thought of Lila and what she would think if she knew what David had been up to while everyone else was recovering from the effects of the cave in. He was sure she wouldn't find him such the perfect gentleman anymore. The noise from clashing voices aggravated him further, and he frowned at Val.

“What a mess,” he said. “This is pointless.”

He was prepared to leave, but as he stood his eyes fell once again to a pair of widows clothed in black, comforting one another. The throbbing pain in his back reminded him just how close he and Val had come to death. He could still leave, though. The rich men would hire the smart men to work out the best solution to keep the wealth flowing. But would it be the best solution to protect the workers down in the holes? Morgan knew his mining days were done, but Val was ready to climb back down into the earth. Was he comfortable leaving the fate of his brother in the hands of this chaotic group of graspers?

Heaving a sigh, he pinched his lips together and whistled, a loud and piercing sound, causing silence to finally fall over the group. Hundreds of eyes fell on him.

“Gentlemen,” he began loudly. “Everyone speaking at once is not going to accomplish anything. There are many concerns to address, but the most important is how to protect the lives of the miners. Protecting our pocketbooks is secondary. Too many men have already died. Let’s keep it in perspective here.”

“Easy for you to say,” came an anonymous voice. “You don’t have bankers kicking in your door for loan repayments.”

“Banking is a business, not a charity,” an angry banker hissed across the space. Morgan held his hands up to silence the men but more voices joined in the argument, and the space erupted once again. He rolled his eyes and whistled again. Silence fell.

“We all have much to gain by reopening the mines. How can we do that? That’s what we should be discussing here.”

“If the operation is unsustainable I’ll take a huge hit,” shouted an investor.

“Nothing is unsustainable if you have the right balance of intellect and ingenuity,” inserted a thick German accent.

“The collapse of the mines was catastrophic,” a frantic man shouted. “It will take weeks to remove the rubble and reinforce the shafts to continue extractions. Every day we don’t pull silver from the earth is money out of my pocket. Maybe we should cut our losses now and walk away. Who knows if there is even enough silver to cover the repair costs?”

“I’m in too deep to walk away,” cried another man. “I’d rather keep digging and find out.”

“But how do we keep the ceiling from collapsing?” shouted a miner. “I’m not setting foot in those tunnels until a better way of reinforcement is devised. Four dollars a day ain’t enough for that amount of risk.”

“And what about the water?” another miner questioned. “Those mines are flooded right now.”

“Okay,” Morgan shouted before the meeting went out of control again. “So, we need to design a way to reinforce the mine shafts and find a way to remove the water. My guess is there will only be more the farther down we go.”

“You’re talking drainage pipes and hydraulic pumps,” voiced a scientist. “You’re talking huge dollar signs, my friend. Is it worth it?”

“All I can tell you is that my brother and I have been digging for two years and we still don’t know the width or the depth of the silver vein, and we’re only at two hundred feet.” Even as Morgan spoke, he witnessed the deep-set eyes of the rich mine owners darken greedily and he instantly regretted his words. “If every owner agrees to pitch in for a percentage of the costs proportionate to his claim, we ought to be able to cover the costs.”

A flurry of protests filled the air. Even Val scrunched up his face at Morgan.

“It is all of our problem, is it not?” Morgan shouted over the noise.

“Yeah, but I’m barely pulling enough out to send over the mountains to my wife and kids,” shouted one man. “Those guys over there could spare a few more dollars than I can.” He gestured angrily to the huddled millionaires who were busy whispering to one another with smug smiles.

One of the aristocrats stood up and tapped his thick, wooden cane on the ground to call the attention his way. His attire was shiny and black, like his unblemished top hat. His beard was neatly trimmed and his belly happily rounded. The length of his nose sent its tip curving slightly over his upper lip but he was calm and unruffled, his voice a deep and confident rumble.

“I will buy any private mine for the sum of five hundred dollars,” he offered. “Then you will not bear the burden of paying for it to be workable. You may stay on and continue to mine at the agreed upon wage of four dollars per day.”

Morgan snorted under his breath, but was astonished to see the number of faces actually considering the offer. He and Val had made twenty times that amount in two years. The fact that claimants were considering a sell for such a low figure showed their lack of confidence in the mines’ sustainability and the supply of silver. The amount they had extracted was unprecedented already, and everyone had begun to wonder just when it would run out. Val stood up beside him and gestured pleadingly to his fellow miners.

“Don’t take it!” he urged. “You’ll be sorry if you do. I’m telling you it will take years to extract the amount of silver that is down there.”

The aristocrat’s eyes narrowed at the lone dissenter and he straightened to stand a bit taller. “Very well. I will raise my offer to a thousand. Think on it. No danger. No obligation to even stay. You can walk away with the money today, right this instant. Or you can stay, keep the money and still earn an extra thousand a year working the same mine.”

Miners’ eyes flitted nervously from one to another, each man looking for a leader to make the call. Val pressed on again.

“Don’t go running scared. Can’t you see what he’s trying to do? If there weren’t hundreds of thousands of dollars of silver in the ground, do you think he would be so eager to part with his cash to pay you off?”

“But I can’t afford to make repairs to my mine,” one man defended. “I got no capital, nothing extra to pay for timber or drainage pipes and I already owe the bank for the start-up costs.”

“Then, I’ll help you out,” Val offered.

“You can’t help all of us,” another man soothed. “There are too many of us in the same boat. We didn’t hit on the thick part of the vein like you. We got no choice, Val.”

Morgan could see the defeat in their eyes. They knew they were walking away from a fortune for the sake of getting through tomorrow. His frustration at their shortsightedness matched Val’s but they were all men of circumstances different from Morgan and Val. Most of those men had wives and families, loans and mortgages, obligations that the Kelly boys didn’t have to force their hands. While Morgan could understand their reasoning for walking away, Val couldn’t, and his anger continued to quietly mount.

“Now,” the aristocrat carried on smugly. “How do we see about keeping these boys safe underground?”

Val turned and strode angrily out of the church. David stood and leveled a glare at the aristocrat before following. A thick German voice spoke, though Morgan couldn't see the man.

“Timber tresses strategically placed ought to be sufficient,” he said, and Morgan huffed with a roll of his eyes.

“Don’t you think we’ve tried that?” he shot back at the voice. “That’s what we had in place before the cave-ins. If it were that simple we wouldn’t be crammed into this church. Traditional support structures will not work in this underground. The soil around the ore is loose and the rock is weak. It shifts, and there are too many shafts.”

“Perhaps they were not rigged properly,” the German returned.

“I know how to rig a mine. Just because we burrow beneath the ground and come out dirty doesn’t mean we’re ignorant and uneducated. I know what I’m talking about and believe me when I say I have never seen anything like this before.”

“So, we must devise something that has never been done before, then.”

“That is my point,” he said with irritation.

“Calm down,
Hurensohn!
”

Morgan’s head snapped in the direction of the voice but there were too many faces obscuring it. He was not amused, and he felt his face tighten with anger at the insult slung at him in a language he knew very well. His fists balled, and his eyes scanned the faces.

“I am not a violent man,” he said dangerously. “But say one more word against my mother and it’ll be the last word you ever speak.”

Every man watched as the crowd began to part and a short, bearded man emerged with a wide, cheeky grin and a familiar glint in his eye. Morgan’s anger melted at the site of his old friend. The German laughed loud and boisterously when Morgan recognized him. They met in the middle of the church with a hearty hug and Morgan grunted painfully as his friend slapped him on the back. He pulled away and buried his pain behind his smile.

“Philip, you old sonofabitch!” Morgan exclaimed.

“No, that is my line!” They laughed again.

“What are you doing here?”

“Your rich friends hired me to fix the mess of your mines,” he said.

“They’re not my friends,” Morgan corrected with a brisk shake of his head.

“So, I gathered.”

“At least they know the best when they see him. I have no doubt you’ll be able to come up with something.”

“I think I need to pick your brain a little first. You seem to know a lot about the situation.”

“Believe me when I say I've seen it up close. You are welcome to any information that I have. Where are you staying?”

“At the moment? Nowhere. The collapse has brought everyone to town and I cannot find a room any place.”

“Then you’ll come with me,” Morgan said happily. “We’ll figure something out.”

A moment of silence fell between them, and the two old friends noticed for the first time that they were still being watched. They took an awkward step away from one another and turned thin smiles onto the crowd. Morgan put his hat on his head and adjusted it into a comfortable fit and nodded.