The Threshold (33 page)

“You didn’t happen to mention freezing to death, your ladyship,” a floozy from Los Angeles whined. “Plenty of money and pretty clothes, says you. And beauteous surroundings.” She looked around at the windows packed with snow. The couple with the croupy baby sitting behind Mildred moved farther away.

The baby ignored its anxious mother and began a congested wailing. Mildred retreated inside herself and away from the miserable company. Her inner eye watched herself sit at the end of her dining table nearest the stove while Letty served hot soup and baked chicken with peas. She didn’t mind being alone at the long table, she felt safe and blessed. And since it was her house, she could even read while she ate. Mildred stood naked, dipping one foot in the steamy bathtub brought out to the cook stove in the kitchen, while Letty held her robe up behind to keep the drafts from her back, when cold drafts swept into the railroad car. The conductor and Mr. Bulkeley Wells swept in after them. The conductor looked red and pinched. Mr. Wells looked exuberant.

“I’ve ventured up to the front. The rotary train will be all night plowing its way up here,” he said happily. “Here, you hens, allow that mother and infant to the fire.” He had the floozies scattered and the lady and baby to the stove in seconds. Mildred’s charges had the grace to look awed. “Why, my dear Miss Heisinger, is that you?” He bore down on Mildred. “How uncomfortable you look.” And before she could protest, he’d drawn her from her seat and pulled her toward the front of the car. “We must do something for you.”

“Did you see that? Her ladyship can blush.”

Mildred was out of the car, across the connecting platform, darkened by snow walls, and being propelled down the aisle of the next car, still trying to shake free of Letty and the hot bath. “Mr. Wells, please!”

“The service on this railroad is abominable.” He hurried her across another set of connecting platforms and into the unbelievable warmth of a private car. “But I’m always exhilarated by a good battle with the elements, aren’t you?” He slipped her coat from her shoulders even as she resisted, and unpinned her hat from behind, lifting it off before she had the wits to grab it.

Wallpaper, couches, hanging lamps. Almost stuffy with rugs and cushions. Snow at the windows dimmed the light. He lit an oil lamp and tinkered with the heating stove. Mildred felt like a rabbit in a trap listening to the approach of the hunter. “Mr. Wells, you must realize how unseemly it is for me to be here,” she said, and reached for her coat hanging on antlers fastened to the wall, but he blocked her by bringing a covered pot to the stove top.

“Unseemly?” He raised both eyebrows and the enormous eyes appeared to grow. “How can you even think of propriety at a time like this?” He blocked her way again, as if he didn’t notice her attempts to reach her coat, and drew plates and dinnerware, a linen cloth and napkins, from a side cupboard. “Do you realize that at this very moment men are risking their lives atop these cars merely to keep the stovepipes from blocking with snow? Do you realize we may all freeze to death before rescue arrives? This is truly a time of crisis.” He lifted bread and cheese and a bottle of wine from a hamper. Mildred refused to look at them. She knew the danger for her lay inside this car, not without. She also knew it had been long cold hours since she’d eaten. He lifted the lid of the pot on the coal stove, stirred the smell of cooked lamb and onions into the air. “Please do sit down and be comfortable, Miss Heisinger,” he said as if he’d just noticed her rigidity. “The stew will take a moment longer to heat through. May I call you Mildred?”

When she neither answered nor seated herself, he paused in the process of removing the cork from the wine bottle and studied her. He still managed to block her escape and he did so in a manner she could not be certain was intentional. The coach was crowded with furniture, boxes, and luggage. They stood not so very far apart. Other than the draft in the stovepipe and the hiss of the lamp, the stillness was uncanny. The howl of wind and storm outside either had abated or was stifled by a blanket of snow. Mildred couldn’t seem to look away from him. She was strongly aware of the ruin this man must leave in his wake as he dashed about his rich, eventful life. She had no wish to be numbered among the ruined, but she didn’t know how to fight him. Like Lawyer Barada, he could assume the privileges of his class while working on her penchant for good manners to outsmart her. Mildred sensed that if he but touched her she was lost.

“I believe that you are afraid of me,” he said softly, trying to sound surprised, but his eyes gave away his amusement. “Now, how can that be? You’re a sophisticated, well-traveled lady and I merely offer you dinner to help pass the storm.” He pulled out a chair at the table. “Beginning with my very own jellied consommé, followed by the tempting ambrosia heating on the stove and the other poor provisions you see before you. And I promise to deliver you safely afterward to your cold and crowded coach completely uncompromised.”

“You promise? And what is it you expect in return?”

“The promise of a gentleman. And your lovely presence at my lonely table is more than enough compensation on such a bleak evening.”

Mildred sat. But still she didn’t trust Mr. Bulkeley Wells. The consomme was better than any she’d tasted on her travels. She took her first sip of alcohol, although she’d vowed not to touch the wine. The fragrant stew was warming but a trifle salty and he offered no water. She had also vowed not to relax, but she did. They discussed the novels of Mr. Dickens, Mr. Macaulay’s histories, the poetry of Mrs. Browning. Mr. Wells told of his journeys abroad. It was difficult not to enjoy the evening.

“And so,” he said finally and catching her completely off guard, “how’s business? I understand you’re helping to solve the problem of the shortage of working girls in Telluride.”

Mildred felt an alarming tingling under her hair and along the backs of her hands. She didn’t know if it was because of what he’d just said or because she’d drunk more of the wine than she’d intended during their stimulating conversation. He’d actually opened another bottle, she realized now. She started to rise, felt a tad dizzy, and sat again. “Really, Mr. Wells, your rudeness is scarcely gentlemanly.”

“Mildred, Mildred, why this pretense of modesty and outrage? You are a businesswoman and I am a businessman. I’m in Telluride often enough, God knows, to be fully appraised of the nature of your business. Barada has seen to it that everyone in damn near the whole valley knows. Why this act of innocent primness?”

Mildred made it to her feet this time but held to the edge of the table.

“You parade around with the starch of a grand lady, demand lavish respect and careful manners from everyone, and yet you go about the country enticing innocent girls to—”

“No!” Mildred was dabbing her eyes with a linen napkin before she realized she was crying. “Don’t you—”

“Let us be truthful for once.” He rose and blocked her exit again. “You are, quite simply, a procuress and everyone knows it.” He held her wrists when she tried to push him out of her way.

“You promised”—her sobbing was uncontrolled and shameless now—“as a gentleman.”

“And I’ll honor that promise if you still wish it in a moment. But first …” Mr. Bulkeley Wells kissed a tear off Mildred Heisinger’s cheek. “There, there, now, there’s nothing so terribly wrong with what you do if it’s looked at in a certain light.” He kissed the other cheek. Mildred felt a frightening heat envelop her body. “I should think there must be a need or you wouldn’t have been hired.”

Even with all she’d been through, the stoic Mildred had wept like this only twice before in her life. Once when her mother died and once after Brambaugh O’Connell had carried her through the mining camp of Alta. Bulkeley Wells raised her head by holding to her chin and forced her to look into his eyes.

“No … you promised.”

Then he pulled her toward him and kissed her mouth and Mildred was lost.

PART THREE

War

38

The rotary train rescued Mildred from the Dallas Divide but the winter did not improve. Bulkeley Wells admitted to feeling like a “cad” when he discovered the pristine procuress was a virgin. He would always wonder if she hadn’t tricked him somehow. Mildred retreated to her haven on Pacific Avenue, thankful that the snow would keep her from traveling for a while. Wells had a long-haired kitten delivered to her door in apology. Mildred named it Cad. He was the first in a long line of cats to share her haven.

“He wasn’t even armed,” Duffer complained when Sheriff Rutan came to investigate Lenny’s murder.

“The more fool he. Now, I wonder what’s become of your other friend, McCree Mackelwain. He wasn’t armed either. We find his body when the snow melts, and you’re the first man I’m coming after.”

Bram O’Connell was growing a new head of hair. Itchy, soft, silky, lighter, with just a touch of its former sandiness, as if his terrible illness had leached it of its color. The doctors in Denver had predicted he’d go through life bald or with a sparse fuzz at best.

February went out like a lion with a four-day snowstorm, wind-driven and so heavy the San Juans seemed shrouded in a deep twilight even at noon. On March 1, the slide next to the Liberty Bell Mine, above and to the east of town, overran its trough and scattered boardinghouse and tram cars and men down the slope like matchsticks. Rescuers from town raced to dig out the buried, and the slide ran again, taking some of the rescue party and the injured. As stunned survivors straggled back to town, another slide swept part of them off the trail. The dead totaled nineteen and the hospitals filled again.

A dazed Telluride gathered itself to bury en masse for the second time in a little over four months. The slides continued to run. Almost daily, tons of loosened snow thundered to the valley floor, carrying rocks and trees and death, rattling windows, knocking dishes from their shelves, making miners fear the trails and huddle in the saloons. Their talk was now that the management at the Liberty Bell had caused the trees to be cut from the hillside for timbering in the mine, thus widening the trough. And the buildings were built too close to the trough. And Eastern money didn’t mind how many died as long as their investments prospered.

“First they complain the tunnels are not well enough timbered,” Arthur Collins wrote to Bulkeley Wells in Denver. “Then they complain of the cutting. Whatever the disaster, management and owners are to blame. Meantime I’m hard pressed to keep the blighters at work and appeased. I preferred the scabs.”

Stringtown flooded as usual with the spring melt, but more bodies were discovered this time, due largely to Lennard Pheeney’s attempts to support himself, Duffer and Maynard. Duffer and Maynard had managed to live through the horrible winter without a weapon by rolling bummers, as the easy prey were called here. Duffer still felt uncomfortable without a gun but agreed they were under enough suspicion already.

It was well into summer before the last of the snow was gone, and the mud that followed seemed almost as deep. But the mountain flowers overwhelmed the denuded hillsides in bright apology and the sunshine cleared the air of discord and the miasma of death. The union sponsored picnics and baseball competitions. The wealthier ladies rode horseback through the town and down the valley or up the mountain roads. Peace and sanity reigned, on the surface.

Callie O’Connell was twelve now and able to enjoy some of that summer because she was allowed to visit her family and because she grew ever more stealthy in arranging to sneak out a bit. She’d even discovered that the rear door to a boot shop fronting on Colorado Avenue backed onto the alley that ran past the Senate and the outbuildings of the cribs behind it. If she was careful she could cross the alley and scamper between those buildings to her Aunt Lilly’s back door with no one to see her. Aunt Lilly, or Floradora, made some arrangement with the bootmaker and he never seemed to notice Callie wandering toward the rear of his shop where she had no business to be.

The fall was warm and dry and promised to continue summer’s goodwill, but on Labor Day the union invited Big Hill Haywood from Denver to speak at the picnic. He told those assembled that the “gold barons” did not find the gold, prospectors did that. They did not mine the gold, miners did that. Nor did they mill it. Millworkers did that. Yet these gold barons ended up owning all the gold.

In October the Businessmen’s Association asked William Jennings Bryan, the perennial presidential candidate, to speak on “The Evils of Socialism.” He spoke from a raised platform on the sidewalk in front of the New Sheridan Hotel. Bunting draped the platform and the civic leaders sat on folding chairs to either side of Mr. Bryan. Nonunion miners and citizens opposed to unionism on principle mingled to cheer his warnings and drown out the prounion hecklers. The crowd was far larger than that which had gathered to hear Mr. Haywood. Callie, setting up tables in the dining room for the celebration to follow, heard the cheering but none of the speech. She wouldn’t have understood it anyway, or that others were again deciding her fate.

The peace lasted through the pleasant fall and in November Arthur Collins, manager of the Smuggler-Union, deemed it safe to rehire some of the scabs the union had forced out of his mine. They were mostly American-born, of Northern European stock, hard workers, and they shared his philosophical leanings concerning capitalism. He advertised his intentions and listed their names in the area newspapers, hoping to attract them back.

When Clyde Duffer and Maynard Bellamy visited the Silver Bell the day the Telluride
Examiner
published Mr. Collins’s advertisement, they were down to beer money and barely enough to cover another week at Mrs. Pakka’s boardinghouse. They sorely missed the devious talents of Lenny Pheeney. The Silver Bell was packed with men and grumbling.

“Who’s this Collins?” Duffer asked when they found a spot at the bar.

“He ought to be shot.”

“He’s a slaver, wot he is. I seen you around, you should know who he is.”

“Uh, I been sick a lot, not out hearing things,” Duffer said. He really didn’t care about the much-reviled Collins but the mood of this place made him uneasy. The plate for snacks on the bar was empty. Duffer was beginning to give up hope he’d ever get home. If he did he’d be in deep shit trying to explain his absence to his employers. And then old Maynard, who’d never had an idea in his life, drained his beer, wiped off his mouth, and leaned across Duffer to the man on the other side.