Denver (3 page)

“Sorry, Miss O’Malley. I ain’t very good at dancing,” Leonard Wilson said, blushing deeply, his freckled face turning crimson.

“That’s all right, Mr. Wilson,” she answered politely, smiling encouragement at him, grateful that he had asked her to dance. “I’m not so good either,” she added softly.

Stumbling his way through the dance until the end,
he escorted her to a bench along the wall and thanked her politely.

“Thank you,” she answered. “I enjoyed it.”

“I don’t see how you could have, I stepped on your toes so many times,” he said, shuffling his feet and pushing a stray lock of brown hair off his forehead.

“I did enjoy it,” she answered with sincerity.

“Would you like some punch, Miss O’Malley?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“You sit right here. I’ll bring you some.”

He left and she was alone, aware she had danced only once the whole evening. Yet she knew that at sixteen she was younger and plainer than most, with her simple gingham dress and her red hair in a braid wrapped around her head. The fact that she had a slight limp seemed to make some men hesitate to ask her to dance. She looked at the other girls. Her friend, sixteen-year-old Bessie, whose golden curls shone, wore a fancy blue faille dress, an achievement of hours of sewing by both Bessie and her mother. Louisa Shumacher danced past. She was the belle who had men lined up to dance with her, her blue eyes sparkling, her black curls caught up behind her head and fastened with a sprig of holly. Only seventeen, Louisa had been educated back east until this year. She had a figure and enough charm to attract any man she wanted. Mary watched her dance past. Her coral grosgrain dress with a cluster of silk roses at the neck was the fanciest dress in the room.

The dance finished and Mary stood up, leaning forward to see what was keeping Leonard. He was in a line congregated at the punch table, probably too shy to move ahead.

Music commenced and she glanced around to see Dewar Logan heading toward her, a gleam in his black eyes. His bulky shoulders strained his rough woolen coat, and he towered over her.

“Evening, Miss O’Malley,” he said, the fumes of strong whiskey assailing her, and she was surprised he was going to ask her to dance.

“Getting lonesome?”

“I’m fine,” she said quietly.

“Guess you miss Eustice.”

“Yes, I do,” she admitted, surprised Dewar would pay her any attention. He was darkly handsome, and usually danced with the older girls.

He stepped closer, taking hold of her wrist. “I can show a lonesome little gal like you a good time. Come outside for a buggy ride.”

She stiffened, insulted by his invitation and the lusty gleam in his eye. Stepping back, she shook her head. “No, thank you, Mr. Wilson is bringing punch,” she said stiffly.

Dewar glanced toward the punch table, where Leonard was still behind a crowd. “He won’t be back for another three dances. C’mon, sugar. I know you’re lonesome. You been sitting here all alone the whole evening.”

“No, thank you,” she said, moving back another step.

“Come on!”

“No!” she snapped, her patience wearing thin. He wavered, and she realized he was drunk. His dark eyes narrowed.

“You cold mick,” he said in a loud voice, “you can sit here alone until that freak Eustice comes back!”

Mortified, she burned with embarrassment. People stopped and turned to stare, and Mary knew they would think she had refused to dance with him.

“Little wonder men don’t ask you to dance!” he added loudly.

Her cheeks flamed, and she turned to flee as Bessie came up. “Dewar Logan, you leave Mary alone!”

“Bessie, never mind!” Mary said.

“C’mon, Bessie, you’re a sport. You’ll dance with me,” Dewar said, sweeping Bessie onto the dance floor, laughing as her brow furrowed and she glared at him.

Mary gazed into curious and amused eyes, and humiliation engulfed her. The room seemed hot, the walls closing in. She locked her fingers together nervously, wanting to escape the curious stares. As soon
as attention shifted from her, she searched for Michael and Brian, her younger brothers. Finding them in the hall with the other boys, she pulled them with her.

“We have to go home right now.”

Protests arose, but she hurried them to the door, taking their coats down off hooks.

“Please, Mary.” A pair of eyes as green as her own gazed beseechingly at her as Brian tugged on her arm. “Michael was going to arm-wrestle Sam Hopkins.”

“We have to go now.” She raced outside into the cold night. Humiliated by Dewar’s outburst, she rushed down the street, the boys in tow. At the boardinghouse she sent her brothers upstairs to bed, scurrying down the darkened hall to her room at the back of the first floor. Behind a closed door she cried, vowing silently she wouldn’t go to a dance again until Silas came back to town. No matter how lonesome she got, she wouldn’t give Dewar or anyone else a chance to humiliate her again.

The woody scent of Douglas firs spiced the fresh mountain air as Dan moved in the sunlight up Rabbit Creek. After six weeks in California with little success, Silas had heard a rumor of big gold discoveries in Montana Territory and they had ridden north. Now it was early fall, and the quaking aspen leaves were a golden color, shimmering in the sunlight. Dan worked in the icy water, patiently searching, deciding that if they didn’t have success soon, he would pull up and go back to Last Chance Gulch.

A bird’s whistle sounded, the clear melodic cry mingling with the whispery rustle of wind through the leaves and the gurgling splash of water. The silence was suddenly broken by a yell, and Dan’s head snapped up to listen.

“Dan! Dan!”

Dan dropped his pan and started running, his hand going to the revolver on his hip, although they hadn’t seen another person since they had made camp.

Silas ran toward him, stopping to jump up and down with eagerness, his hat tossed aside, white hair falling over his forehead. “Dan, I’ve got a scad! Look!” Silas thrust out the flat pan with drops of water clinging to it while chunks of metal sparkled in the sunlight. “Bite on ’em.”

Dan did, rubbing his hand over the metal, looking at it glisten in the sunlight, and both of them began to whoop. “C’mon. I’ll show you where.”

Dan ran behind him, and soon both of them were
working swiftly, yelling when the gold specks would appear, Dan’s pulse jumping when he found a nugget as big as the end of his thumb.

“Holy Mother,” Silas breathed as he turned the nugget. “We’ve hit a big one.”

“When do we stake our claim?”

Silas’ eyes narrowed. “We’re working this first. We haven’t seen another man, and we’ve got supplies. This is our secret.”

Dan slapped Silas on the back with such a resounding whack the nugget bounced out of the pan. Instantly they searched until they retrieved it, then went back to work in earnest.

“We could have snow anytime now,” Silas said. “We better take time to build a cabin.”

“I’ll start on the cabin,” Dan offered.

They commenced a race against the weather, building a sluice of six boxes twelve feet long, each box having a fall of four inches, which made a trough to wash placer gold.

Silas talked while they sawed lumber. “We shovel soil into the sluice; the creek will provide a steady stream of water. Each of these boxes will have cleats or riffles, and the nuggets and specks will be caught against them.”

“And my hands won’t freeze off,” Dan remarked dryly. “Why didn’t we do this sooner?”

“We didn’t know it would be worthwhile until we found something.”

Dan thought about the nuggets and specks they had collected so far. Their find was growing with wondrous speed, and he now knew why Silas had gold fever. It made his pulse race to think about the money he was scooping out of the stream.

“What are you grinning about, compadre?” Silas asked.

“You know damned well.”

“We’re going home rich men. I want to give Mary the world.”

“Do you ever forget Mary? Never mind! I know the answer.”

“If we find a vein, we can name it the Mary Katherine Mine.”

“I have to see this woman,” Dan said as he leaned down to pick up a log, rolling it out of the way, while his muscles bulged with effort.

They found enough large nuggets to indicate a vein, but they continued working the area where they were as long as it yielded a good return. Snows came and they rode back to town, spending time in the saloon, both of them claiming to be trappers. Silas even bought traps in the general store so they could keep their discovery a secret.

In the spring, as soon as the weather permitted, they went back to work, moving upstream, taking pannings at every possible outcropping. When Silas found a blowup, the protruding end of an underground vein of cloudy quartz, his excitement was as great as it had been with his first discovery.

“We better stake our claim now. We’ll dig a shaft here and pray we hit.”

On their next trip to town, they registered their claim, paying two dollars. Dan watched the recorder’s scrawl as he penned: “Personally appeared before me Dan Castle and Silas Eustice and recorded the undivided right, interest, and title to Claim Number Twenty-eight above Rabbit Creek of three hundred feet for mining purposes. Recorded this twenty-ninth day of March, 1868.”

Silas and Dan signed the claim and received their miners’ certificates. When they stepped out into the sunlight, they paused to gaze at each other.

“The whole town will know now,” Dan said.

“I heard of another strike south of here three days ago. There was a rush south, so a lot of men are gone.”

“I’m going to the bank and the saloon.”

“Your usual routine,” Silas said with a chuckle. “I’ll get supplies and head home.”

“I’ll be there in a day or two.”

“That’s one reason no one thinks we’re panning.
You’re never in a hurry to get out of town, and you don’t gamble with gold dust.”

Dan grinned and strode off, his long legs stretching out as he went up Bridge Street in a town of hastily built wooden buddings that had been thrown up by miners.

Late that night, in Montana Nola’s sporting house, as Dan sat near a glowing potbellied stove, a man joined him in a game of faro. Within minutes Dan was aware he was being watched closely, and some deep instinct made him wary, his interest shifting from the game to the man. He lost, pocketed his earlier winnings, and left, sauntering across the saloon, ignoring women dressed in silk, their perfume assailing him. He stepped outside, yanking on his coat, trying to keep his steps slow and casual, moving so he could watch the door of the saloon.

Out of the corner of his eye he caught the movement of a dark shadow filling the lighted doorway.

“Hold it, mister,” a deep voice said.

Dan leapt for the side of the building as a gunshot blasted the air behind him. He ran toward the back of the saloon between buildings, stretching out his legs as he fled.

Behind a bawdy house was a long line of cribs, pale in the moonlight. They were narrow structures, with a boardwalk running the length of each row. The dirt between the rows was muddy from the recent snow. Knowing the man was right behind him, Dan darted into the back door of the bordello and opened the door to the first room he found.

In the yellow glow of a kerosene lamp, two startled people looked at him. In an iron bed, a woman was astride a man, covers rumpled around them. The man started swearing. The woman, black hair tumbling over her bare shoulders, gazed at Dan with wide brown eyes.

“Hide me, please,” Dan asked. “I’m dead if you don’t.”

“Get the hell out of here, mister!” the burly naked
man snapped, his black mustache adding to his glowering menace.

“Please!”

“Get under the covers,” the woman ordered, and threw back the blankets on the far side of the bed.

While Dan ran to do as she said, a woman in a room across the hall screamed as a door banged open.

“Dulcie, what the hell! I don’t want no man in bed with me!”

“Shh, Treen. Give the man a chance.”

His swearing and fuming stopped when she placed her lips over his. Assailed by pungent smells of love-making and a sweaty body, Dan slipped beneath the covers. He had one glimpse of two naked bodies, hers pale against the man’s, her knee drawn up to his waist as she straddled him.

The door was yanked open and Dan felt her move, her leg brushing his arm.

“Get the hell out!” the man shouted. The woman gave a weak scream and the door slammed.

There was a wild scramble that knocked Dan to the floor. “You get in a damned bed with me again and you’re a dead man, you hear?” the man snapped, stepping out to yank on his pants, swearing steadily.

“Thanks, mister. Here’s my winnings from tonight.” Dan tossed a bag across the bed and it clinked as the man caught it in his big hand.

“Aw, hell, keep your money.” he growled, dropping the bag on the bed and pulling on his shirt. “But don’t ever breathe a word you’ve been in bed with me, mister, or you’re buzzard meat! ’Bye, Dulcie.” He yanked on his boots and snatched up his coat to stomp outside. The minute the door slammed behind him, Dan turned to look at the woman. She sat up in bed, sheet drawn to her chin, black hair tumbling over her shoulders, her eyes wide. Dan guessed her age at twenty-six, somewhat older than his eighteen.

“Thanks,” he said, smiling.

Gazing at him with speculation, she smiled in return. “Sure. Hate to see anyone killed around here. What did you do?”

Dan shrugged. “Some man is after me over an old argument. You keep my winnings.”

She smiled and reached for the bag. “Thank you, honey,” she drawled, giving him an appraisal. “You might as well get your money’s worth. Besides, it won’t be safe to go out yet.”

“That’s true,” Dan said, thinking he would have preferred the offer if he hadn’t found her in another man’s arms.

As if she guessed his hesitation, she wiggled toward the edge of the bed. “I think I’ll wash first, and we’ll discuss what we want to do.”

She smiled at him again before she stepped out of bed, without any coyness, moving around the room as if she were fully clothed. He drew a sharp breath as he watched her, unable to pull his gaze away. She was slightly heavier than he preferred, but her flesh was smooth and taut, her breasts jiggling with each step, her legs long, her bottom ample and enticing. His mouth went dry and his hesitation vanished. She wrapped a long robe around her, smiled at him, and disappeared into the hall.