The Threshold (17 page)

A special railroad car with two nurses arrived to wait on a siding down at the Loop to take the worst of the basket cases into Denver, where hospitals had the latest in lifesaving equipment. The ground was working on level four and the stiffs had to spile as they went, using up precious time the men at the end of the drift could ill afford. And the contrary weather turned warm, causing snow to melt away from the beaten paths until they stood up like bridges from the surrounding snow. Melting snow poured down the mountain and into old surface openings and cracks where the ground had worked, leaving mud slick everywhere to further hamper rescuers.

“Fair number of union men up here,” John O’Connell said one night over the food his wife insisted he eat before he took another turn at the drilling. “They say this wouldn’t happen if the stiffs was to be organized. If we was organized we could force the management to slow down the work so the timbering was done solid behind a man before he goes spittin’ fuses hundreds of feet down.”

“The earth caves in on union men too,” Luella said. “And just today the management here, Mr. Traub, told me the company would help with expenses since Bram’s not insured.”

“Funeral or hospital?” John said with a bitter sound that could have been a laugh. Both Callie’s parents were so white and drawn that the bones in their faces stuck out and their eyes and cheeks sank inward. Under the electric light bulb they looked a generation older than they had before the cave-in. “Callie darlin’”—Pa drew her onto his lap—“don’t you be listening to us now. We’re just tired, your Ma’am and me. He’ll be all right, our Bram.”

And then word came. The survivors had stopped signaling. Callie and Luella had been kneeling by Bram’s cot, praying silently to Jesus to save Bram. Callie had pointed out to him that since he already had Aunt Lilly and baby Henry, he didn’t need Bram too. But since Callie had only one brother, she did. Ma’am must have seen the stubbornness in her eyes because she said, “Little girls do not lay down the law to the Lord, Callie. I think you’d best start over.”

When Pa and Uncle Henry came to tell them the bad news, Luella rose from her knees and leaned against a wall, hugging herself, staring dry-eyed at nothing. John took Callie on his lap again, hiding his face behind her back where she could feel wetness through her dress. She wished Bram had listened to the man who’d come with the lady to the hole in the cookhouse. She’d decided now she was not about to ask Jesus for anything again.

The next morning, Mr. McCall came by. “We’ve hit water, John. Having to pump. But we’re about through to them. You want to be there? I’d understand if you didn’t.”

Pa put on his coat and left without a word. Luella set down her Bible with a sigh. “Come, Callie, we might just as well go on up and wait for the news.”

The door to the snowshed stood open and men were carrying the baskets off toward the adit. It was warm and sunny and the slush leaked through Callie’s arctic boots as she leaned against Ma’am. It seemed as if all the starch had gone out of Callie’s bones. A quiet crowd gathered with them. There was just the usual coughing and an occasional sniff. Every now and then someone would pat Callie on the head. The doctor from Telluride and Mr. Traub entered the snowshed all togged out in boots and slickers with carbide lamps on their hats.

Sometime later a mule began to bray in the adit as if he was being beaten with a hot poker. He made such a racket it was a while before Callie realized there was a great shouting going on as well. The people around her began shifting from one foot to the other in dread and expectation and a need for any kind of end to this ordeal. Uncle Henry came running out of the snowshed door and refused to speak until he’d found Luella and Callie. “He’s alive. Just barely, but Bram’s alive.”

Luella swayed and nearly knocked Callie off her feet. Uncle Henry turned to talk to those crowded around them. “Nine are still alive. But they’re in bad shape. Doc says he’s sending all nine on the train to Denver and going with them. Talse, Sullivan, Shorty, Bram O’Connell, and five of the bohunks.”

Callie wasn’t allowed to see Bram when they brought him up. She just saw the edges of the body basket hanging over the tram bucket on its way to the hospital train down at the Loop. Luella rode standing in the next one.

In Telluride Mildred Heisinger had heard of Alta’s tragedy. The newspaper listed the names of the survivors and Brambaugh O’Connell was the only one she recognized. She felt a certain ambivalence. Mildred had troubles of her own.

The first week after she left Alta she’d reveled in the warmth and privacy of a room on the sunny side of the New Sheridan Hotel, hot baths, and gourmet food. She’d read and visited the shops and tried to recover from her humiliation. The second week she placed an advertisement in the newspaper offering herself as governess or tutor, hoping to find a position in a comfortable home. There was much wealth in Telluride and many of the rich had young children. The advertisement garnered two interviews but her lack of references ended both sessions on a cool and final note. And the town was not so large that word didn’t spread quickly. She was even told that there was no opening for one of such meager credentials at the public school.

There were few other positions open to women except housewife, prostitute, and dressmaker. Mildred had been gently raised, but in the poverty of a homestead in Nebraska. Her parents, born to culture and wealth, had moved west when fortunes declined, determined to renew those fortunes on the dream of a fading frontier.

Mildred’s mother had lost her dream and her life in a sod hut while giving birth to a stillborn. Mildred’s consumptive father moved her, the books, and the piano to Denver in hopes of regaining his health and wealth in the pure air of a gold-laden Colorado paradise. Instead he married a widow with some money and thereby managed to send his daughter to a normal school which trained teachers. Before he died, he did manage to instill in Mildred a hankering for the good life, something she knew of mostly by hearsay.

The widow had children of her own and little sympathy for her good-looking stepdaughter. Mildred studied magazines for fashion. She’d learned much of decorum and language from her parents, but she’d come to find her looks and tastes to be more of a curse than a blessing.

She sat now with her feet against the radiator in a third-floor room on the cold, shady side of the New Sheridan Hotel, its one window overlooking the alley. Her money was nearly gone. She couldn’t believe how quickly it had melted away. She’d managed to sell some of her clothes, but could find no buyer for her books. Reduced to one meal a day and washing in cold water from a basin, she’d soon be carrying slops in a boardinghouse. Or worse.

Mildred stood to pace the tiny room to warm herself. What was it in her that called out such cruelties in others? She’d never harmed a soul. In neither of her posts had Mildred been openly accused of anything, so she’d been unable to defend herself against the charges, whatever they were. With her two trunks, mostly empty now, the room allowed her only a few paces in any direction and she grew dizzy moving with her thoughts. She stopped at the window to peer down into the alley. A stray cat, as gray as the weather and swaying from hunger or disease, lurched through mud and snow to a trash bin outside the kitchen. Mildred couldn’t bear to watch, see if it found food or collapsed trying to get into the bin.

When Bram O’Connell had carried her through that horrid mining camp, no one had mentioned it to her afterward. But he had been taken out of school and that mysterious shutter other women wore behind their eyes had closed them away from her.

There was a rapping on the door and Mildred paused before opening it for so long the rapping came again. It was Mrs. Stollsteimer, the housekeeper, a large-boned frump of a woman who wore nothing but deepest black offset by startling white aprons and white lace dust caps. She too had that shutter of the sisterhood behind her eyes that excluded Mildred Heisinger. “A gentleman in the lobby to see you.” She used the same tone she did to terrorize the poor children who worked for her. “He asks your company at luncheon in the dining room in half an hour.”

“Certainly not. How dare you assume I—”

“It’s Lawyer Barada, Miss Heisinger.” Mrs. Stollsteimer’s expression indicated that fact surprised her too.

“Oh … well … yes. Of course. Please inform Mr. Barada I shall be happy to meet him for luncheon.” Lawyer Barada was a leading citizen of Telluride. He had represented the Smuggler-Union Mining Company against the labor unions, and the Tomboy Mining Company as well.

Mildred Heisinger smiled at her image in the mirror and ignored the hungry cramping in her stomach as she prepared a careful toilet. Lawyer Barada and his widowed daughter lived in one of the finest houses in town, and the daughter had two small children just the age to need a governess.

19

During his night vigil in Alta, Cree Mackelwain noticed a few differences from his previous visit. History stayed in its place this time. Alta’s ghosts did not awaken. And there was no horny woman to soften the night chill.

When the three men emerged from the mine tunnel at dawn they didn’t appear to be carrying anything extra. Cree had been inside it several times. The lower levels were flooded and the main tunnel blocked by rubble after a mile or so. It seemed a logical place for Dutch to have hidden the cache but Cree had found no trace of it. He watched them from behind a tree on the hill above the tunnel entrance and wondered again exactly who they might be. They weren’t being particularly careful. Two were short and rather stocky, one was tall. All three looked to be something over forty. One was balding. There was little distinctive or memorable about them.

From what Cree had been able to translate during the confusion of the investigation into his partner’s death and the subsequent trial by the newspapers, Dutch was one of several local lone entrepreneurs in a disorganized business that organized crime decided to organize. Others were eliminated by similarly nasty methods. There was to be no mistaking those deaths as accidental. Cree should have had an inkling of how deeply Dutch had become involved when he discovered apparently senseless break-ins both at the office and at Dutch’s apartment that went unreported. Dutch simply explained nothing had been taken. But the investigation uncovered the fact that sharks as well as organized crime were working the area.

A shark was a type of thief who lived off small-time drug dealers. These dealers had to hide quantities of drugs and cash somewhere and for obvious reasons did not report thefts to the police. So Dutch had taken to hiding loot in increasingly remote and unlikely places. He had, according to the letter left in Cree’s car, taken possession of some “merchandise” while in Telluride and had hidden it in Alta when he suspected sharks had discovered his condo. He wrote that the stash was very large, suggested Cree waste no time finding it because “the stuff don’t keep forever,” and there was a sizable amount of money with it. Cree couldn’t know if the men now driving off in the Bronco were sharks, representatives of organized crime, or organized law enforcement. Any of the three spelled trouble for him.

When he could no longer hear the Bronco, he made his way down to the vast yaw in the mountainside. Dutch’s instructions had been purposely unclear. He’d indulged in a sort of amateur riddle to throw off anyone who might steal the folder. In the process it had thrown Cree off too. Dutch had conveniently marked the spot with a white flag. “Some tourist probably took it home for a souvenir.”

If his partner had included a map instead of a riddle, Cree would have found the treasure by now and been gone. Cree took a last look at the hole and wondered again if the boy, Bram, had heeded his warning or if his bones lay crushed and rotted beneath tons of rock deep in the earth. Hunger drove Cree down the mountainside to Aletha’s car.

In Telluride he treated himself to a hearty breakfast at Sophio’s over a copy of the Telluride
Times
. Tracy met him at the Pick and Gad. She was straightening the condo up in payment for a few nights’ lodging. Renata Winslow had called Aletha to wait tables at the New Sheridan Hotel. Before Cree could crawl off to bed Tracy went into a drawn-out tale of how she and Aletha had spent part of last night on Telluride’s line in the days when it was thriving. “We got to do something about her, you know?” Tracy fixed him with a glance of significance and nodded sagely, “What she does is dangerous—for her, for people around her, and probably for people who’ve been dead for decades. I mean, even on
Star Trek
they try not to mess up other people’s time.”

Cree agreed but fell into bed, too tired to know what to do about Aletha Kingman. He woke to find Tracy gone and Charles sleeping against his legs. He made it to the New Sheridan in time for a late lunch. For Telluride, it was a hot day and most of the tourists were in shorts. Between the hotel and the corner was a wide concrete patio with tables. He ordered and waited to catch Aletha’s eye as she busied herself at other tables. She looked tired, some of the bounce gone. When she bent her head to add up a check her hair fell over it and she tucked it back behind her ear impatiently. Worry lines etched her forehead. When she was old they would be permanent.

“Your car’s back home safe and undented,” he said when she could get over to him. “Tracy tells me you two went gadding in time last night. Don’t you think you’re playing with fire?”

“Speaking of which, legal people report break-ins. Those who don’t have something to hide from the law. And they tend to be very secretive about their personal lives.”

“When do you get off work?”

“Three-thirty. But I’m going up to the museum. I hear it’s supposed to close soon.” The museum operated on a small grant and opened only in the summer months when it didn’t have to be heated.

“That’s the woman who was with Callie at the Senate,” Aletha told Cree, and pointed to the nude in the painting on the second floor.

“According to a legend, that’s Audrey.” He reached out to touch the surface. “Wonder if this is the original or a copy.” He stepped back to inspect Audrey’s exposed curves. “I don’t know if there’s any truth in it but the story goes she was one of the girls on the line and she let this artist paint her because he couldn’t get man’s work with his lily-white uncallused hands. The painting hung behind the bar in various saloons and the artist and Audrey got married and lived happily ever after on the sunny side of town.”