The Gold Miner's Wife: A Young Woman's Story of Romance, Passion and Murder (6 page)

             
“Good morning Mr. Brophy,” said Mrs. Sheppard brightly.

             
“Good morning ladies,” he replied.

             
“You are a bit too early for breakfast, but may I offer you some coffee?” asked Mrs. Sheppard.

             
“No, thank you,” Brophy answered brusquely.  “Would you be so kind as to point me in the direction of the nearest trolley?” he asked with a thick Irish brogue.

             
“Of course,” said Catori.  “We are on Grant Street.  There is a trolley one block east on 17
th
Street.  You shouldn’t have to wait very long.”

             
“Excellent.  Good day, ladies,” was all he said before letting himself out the back door. They both wondered what possible business a stranger to a new city could possibly have at such an hour.  He almost behaved like someone who had just gotten his marching orders.

Six Days Later

              Below the Five Nuggets Mine and the other mines in the area, the busy town of Pine Creek clung to the mountainside, offering everything from banks to brothels, from saloons to boarding houses.  Madam Delilah’s establishment was at the edge of the town, a whitewashed two story, wood frame house with lace curtains in all the windows.  Colorful pots with well-tended geraniums decorated the front porch.  The eaves around the perimeter of the porch were trimmed with graceful scalloped edges.  Madam Delilah was a shrewd businesswoman, she paid attention to the important details that set her establishment apart.  A porcelain oil lamp with a painted floral design graced the front window.  The hardwood floors were covered with attractive carpets.  The walls were decorated with paintings of flowers.  Her red light ladies were stylishly dressed and well groomed.  There were other brothels in town, but hers looked to be high class, feminine, inviting. 

She employed eight young women – all down on their luck, with no place to go when their families threw them out or abandoned them.  Illiterate, poor and from broken families, these women had limited options available to them.  Madam Delilah knew what lured them to this occupation, the thin thread of hope of being noticed by a miner who prospered.  They were all laboring under the false belief that someone would rescue them from a wretched and hopeless existence.  These fallen women and purveyors of pleasure risked disease, injury and sometimes death, gambling that prostitution might be a path to marriage.  John
Brophy was taking his pleasure this evening with one of Madam Delilah’s doves.  Her name was Mary Dempsey, but to her customers she was Jade.  She was young, had a pleasant looking face and was full-breasted, the way Brophy liked them.

             
It had been a productive six days for Brophy.  The train let him off at Pine Creek.  He had no sooner walked up the dirt road to the mining camp, when one of the managers of the Five Nuggets Mine interviewed the strapping young Irishman and put him to work almost immediately.  Brophy was outfitted with an oil wick lamp, buckskin gloves, felt hat and pick ax and very soon was putting his back into the hard labor of moving ore.  He was also given a brass check with a number on it.  This was hung on a board at the mine entrance.  If disaster struck, managers counted checks to identify missing miners. 

             
Brophy soon became familiar with the layout of the camp and the inner workings of the mine.  The passages would twist and turn, with jagged rocks lining the tunnel walls.  One depended only on an oil wick lamp or miner’s candlestick to light the way.  Miners would bend the end of a spike to hold the candle.  The spike was then jabbed into wooden support beams or crevices in the stone walls.

             
Brophy was cordial to the other miners, he followed directions, he put in a full day’s work, he watched and learned.  He was careful to observe the number of men who worked there and their comings and goings.  By the third day, a Mr. Flynn, another Irishman, showed him how to use the spiral drill bit which one cranked using a u-shaped handle.  Brophy made a mental note of remembering where the blasting caps were stored.  His time at the Five Nuggets Mine was going according to plan and would soon be ending.

             
Jade was hot and wet when he thrust into her.  He soon flipped her on top of him and held her thighs as she rode him.  Jade leaned over him, her long hair tickling his shoulders, her generous breasts caressing his face.  He sucked at her nipples as he slammed into her, each upward thrust more intense than the last.  He exploded inside her, flooding her with his warm seed.  He was still inside her, stiff as a pike, she could feel him pulse, when there was an unexpected knocking at the door.  A man’s voice called out his name.  “Brophy,” the person said.

             
Jade climbed off him.  She stepped behind the screen to the chipped wash basin and refreshed herself.  Brophy answered the knock.  A well-dressed man stood there.  He had brown curly hair and a thin mustache and spoke with an English accent.

             
“Is it done?” he asked cryptically.

             
“Yes,” was Brophy’s brief reply.  “Tomorrow.”

             
“Excellent.  I am to Denver,” said the stranger, “and will await the news.”

             
He handed Brophy a wad of bills, then turned and left.  Jade observed from behind the screen as Brophy put the money in his coat pocket.  It was a great deal of money.  He returned to the bed and Jade joined him.  Maybe she could earn a little extra tonight. 

             
“My cock is still in need of your attention,” he said.

             
“I must do a better job for you then,” said Jade.

             
He relaxed against the pillows and spread his legs, his thick erection jutting upward.  She kneeled on the bed between his thighs, bent her head over his engorged penis and set to work with renewed optimism.

             
Later, he lay on the bed, spent, sated and blissfully relaxed.  His mind wandered as he recalled the events of the past week.  He had done his job, he thought with smug satisfaction.  It was only a matter of time.  He turned to the woman, Jade, and fondled her breasts.  He would have her again before the night was through. 

             
“That man who was here before,” she said innocently, “was he from the mine?”

             
Brophy’s reaction was swift and brutal.  He came over her, pinning her legs between his muscled thighs, his penis hard against her belly.  He could not have this stupid woman blabbing about what she had seen.

             
“What man?” he bellowed, giving her face a hard slap.  She cringed and cried out, covered her face with her arms and hands.  He lifted her arms over her head and held them there with one strong hand.  “What man?” he repeated, slapping her hard again. 

             
The blows to her face were forceful, there would be bruising, swelling, maybe a broken tooth, or worse.  She tasted blood in her mouth.  She was terrified and didn’t want any more.  “No man, I saw no man,” Jade pleaded desperately, writhing to get him off her.  “Let me go, please,” she begged.  “I’m sorry.  I saw no man.”  He let her up and she fled the room like the devil was at her heels.

             
It was the next afternoon when Madam Delilah drove her buggy through Pine Creek at a furious pace, then straight up the hill to the office of the Five Nuggets Mine, her horse kicking the loose gravel and creating dust clouds along the way.  Her appearance in the camp drew everyone’s immediate attention.  If some of the men did not already know who she was, her crimson gown conveyed the clear message.   Delilah glided up the wooden steps, her back ramrod straight, and opened the office door without knocking.  Jack looked up from the account ledger and knew he was in for trouble.  The fiery sparks darting from her blue eyes could have ignited the papers on his desk at ten paces.

             
“What kind of jackals, no, let me begin again, what sort of human hyenas do you employ at your mine, Mr. Simmons?” she asked with an intensity that put him on his guard.  Among his men there might be a few who were guilty of some misdemeanors, but this sounded serious.

             
“Calm down Delilah,” he said, offering her a chair.  “Please sit down and tell me what this is about.”

             
“I’ll tell you what it’s about.  One of your men took his fists to one of my girls last night.  She was so frightened we spent most of today trying to get answers from her.  Her face is bruised, her lower lip is horribly split and the bruises around her eyes have swollen the lids shut.  I will not stand for it.  As Colorado is still a Territory, I will involve the Federal Marshal if I have to.”

             
Jack looked stunned and he was also bewildered.  On one point he knew she was bluffing, the Federal Marshal would never involve himself with something as trivial as an allegation of brutality from a mere prostitute.  Still, Delilah’s claim was so unexpected it took him a moment to regain his power of speech. “How do you know it was one of my men?” he asked.

             
“He identified himself as a Mr. Brophy from the Five Nuggets Mine,” she answered icily.  “He was burly, stocky and sounded Irish.”  Jack was having no luck dredging up the unfamiliar name.  The mine managers frequently hired new men and oftentimes they did not last long.

             
“I am sorry, who,” he asked?

             
It was moments like this when Delilah hated the helplessness of being a woman.  She had run into a brick wall and his name was Jack Simmons.  “You know, Mr. Simmons,” she said to him as the bile rose in her throat, “I may have been born at night, but it wasn’t last night.  Don’t sit there and try to tell me you’ve never heard of this person.  You’re protecting him and I want justice.”

             
“I assure you, I am not,” he insisted.  “Let me call in one of the mine managers and see if we can’t sort this out.”  But Madam Delilah’s troubles would have to wait until another day.  Jack pushed back his chair, stood and was heading for the door when a very loud explosion rattled the windows.

*****

              You have never seen dark until you have seen dark inside a mine.  Like the pitch-black bottom of a murky well, it is a darkness as thick and oppressive as death.  Thomas Sprague held his oil lamp aloft, the lamp emitting a moving pool of light that delineated the darkness beyond and behind.  His breath fogged out in front of him and he narrowed his eyes to peer into the darkness ahead.  The lamp cast only a small pool of light in the immense chamber.  He was here to inspect the progress on the new vein.  In an incredibly short time his Five Nuggets Mine was processing thirty tons of ore per day. 

             
Thomas and his partner, Jack Simmons, employed about forty men.  They were strong, hardy-looking fellows with plenty of muscle and snap.  But at this altitude, workers would frequently come and go.  Some averaged only a week or two before the altitude got them down.  It was a rough existence, dangerous, isolated,  and in an area known for nine months of harsh winter followed by three months of cold weather.  Gold ores from the mine averaged from fifty to one hundred and twenty-five dollars per ton. 

             
Thomas Sprague and Jack Simmons had made remarkable progress in only three years’ time, starting from the discovery of the first placer (surface) gold in the area along Russell Gulch in 1873.  They had established a very good dirt road leading up from nearby Pine Creek, as well as a bunkhouse, a store house, a few cabins and a washhouse.  Other profitable placer strikes in the area added to the boom and soon the town of Pine Creek could boast twenty three saloons, three banks, a telegraph shack and a newspaper.  A single church existed for a time, but it seemed as out of place as a cow on a front porch.  Pine Creek had gained a rather rough reputation for itself.  Thomas Sprague and Jack Simmons both carried Colt single action 440 caliber revolvers.  They were excellent weapons.  The Colt carried a big charge of powder and would shoot like a rifle if held straight.

             
Extracting the gold ore had not been without its share of headaches.  Loose stone, underground water and decomposed granite were persistent problems.  Costly twelve by twelve beams of California redwood timber were brought in to shore up the whole shaky proposition.  They intended to work the mine until the tremendous snow packs of winter would make passage impossible.  On this day, while Jack was working on invoices in the nearby mining office, Thomas was to make certain that the beams were solidly in place in the new chamber.  Thomas had also spent the morning in the office.  Tomorrow he would return home to Denver, some 35 miles east, where Colorado statehood festivities were in full swing.  Susannah needed his help with the crush of guests they were hosting.  Edward Mansfield was one of those guests.  He had returned to Denver yesterday afternoon, having been given the tour of the mine as he had been promised. 

             
His mouth was gritty with dirt, it had been a long afternoon.  Thomas lowered the lantern, robbing the chamber of its halo of light.  A steady pounding could be heard nearby.  A more superstitious person might have thought Tommy Knockers were up to their devious tricks.  But Thomas knew his foreman had the men laying another charge.   He took a step up, supported by some loose rubble, teetering for balance as he tested a beam.  There was a white flash and then a deafening crack split the air.  He dove sideways and rocks crashed all around him, while someone else, shrouded in darkness, melted safely back into the shadows.