The Threshold (44 page)

They were in a hollow niche Bram had dug out of the bank when the train passed. An engine, two cattle cars, and a caboose. Returning to Telluride. The side doors were open now. Bram looked down into the eyes of a young soldier, not the same one that watched him on the way here, but the confusion and discomfort were the same. If Bram had had a gun at that moment he’d have tried to kill the man, even knowing the hopeless stupidity of it.

The smoke from the stack hovered above them and they could smell it long after the sound of the engine faded. They started off again but they would not make it to Ridgway before night. The sun continued to withdraw its warmth.

“Remember that story you told us of the man carrying mail to Ophir in the old days? He was caught in a blizzard and built a snow cave on the pass.”

“Men was hardier back then, boy. And for every one like him, there’s scores that weren’t found till snow melt, and some not to this day.”

But Bram began scooping with his hands. By the time he’d hollowed out a deep enough cave he was warmed from the effort, but John’s teeth rattled and the world had grayed with coming night.

“You appear to have proved the doctors wrong. Have you not thought of going back to the stopes, son?” John asked when they lay inside, Bram curled around him to lend warmth. “Maybe takin’ up the hammer and drill after all now?”

But Bram couldn’t answer, could barely hear Pa over the thunder of fear in his ears. He could feel the air on his face that passed through the hole to the outside, could fill his lungs at will. Yet being closed up this way brought on the old nightmare with a vengeance, suffocating his reason even while he breathed. How could he ever face the stopes again with this cowardice grown upon him like a boil?

Callie and Ma’am were not shipped out of Telluride on cattle cars as Mildred would remember, but on a passenger coach with families of other strikers who couldn’t be discouraged from trying to return. Callie took of their meager belongings what she could stuff into her carpetbag. Mrs. Pakka, as irritated as she’d become with them, had protested on their behalf. “The poor woman’s half-demented and I don’t know if the girl can handle her. We don’t know where the boy is off to.”

“Word’s being sent to Ridgway for the men to expect the families to arrive there,” the sheriff answered. “And the O’Connell boy went on the train with his father.”

The passenger coach was packed with crying babies and white-faced ladies. The stove at one end stood empty of fuel or fire. The train sat at the depot for two hours as other cars were loaded. Callie found Ma’am a seat but had to sit on her carpetbag in the aisle. At least Bram was safe with Pa. They’d all be together again soon, away from here. Callie thought that the strange lady, Aletha, had been right. Callie should never have come to Telluride.

Elsie Biggs picked her way down the aisle carrying a little girl. Elsie’s coloring hadn’t improved. Callie wanted to stand and hug her old friend; instead she sat unmoving and Elsie knelt down in front of her. The little girl was sucking on the chain of a necklace way too long for her. She didn’t smell especially good. “What’s going to happen to us, Callie?”

“The sheriff says our pas will meet us in Ridgway. Did your mother have another baby?”

“No. I did.” Elsie nuzzled the little girl’s cheek. “My ma’s having a conniption fit up there.” She nodded toward the front of the car. “Little Margaret and me had to get away from her.”

“I didn’t know you had a husband,” Callie said. Elsie was still a girl with her hair down.

“I just have Margaret.” Elsie blushed nice color into her skin. Margaret smiled a sloppy smile, removed her necklace, and tried to put it around Callie’s neck. But it caught in Callie’s hair. “She found it on the floor in the depot where they made us wait this morning. Just quartz. Can’t think why anyone would want to make a necklace of it. Margaret will probably want it back in a few minutes. It’s a game she likes to play with people.”

Could someone have left Margaret on Elsie’s steps with a note as Bram had been left? Callie untangled the chain from her hair and let the necklace hang down her front to please the little girl. It looked almost like the one Aletha had worn when Callie had supper out at the Senate with the lady of the painting. Could Margaret have anything to do with Elsie’s going into a room when the gentleman was present? “Mrs. Stollsteimer dismissed me too. Because of Pa and the union, I guess. Opal Mae says they’ve hired a new girl and the hotel’s filled with soldiers, and Mr. Moyer, the president of the whole union, is a prisoner in a front room on second with his own toilet.”

“I don’t want them to hurt Margaret,” Elsie said when yet another distraught family was shoved aboard. “She’s so little and can’t help herself. My pa says Margaret’s an abomination.”

She just smells like one, Callie thought, but she said, “She’s very pretty. She must take a great deal of cleaning up after.”

“Callie, you haven’t introduced me to your friend,” Luella said in a perfectly normal voice and startled them. “That is impolite and I’ve taught you better.”

“Yes, Ma’am. This is Elsie Biggs and her little Margaret.” Callie peered up anxiously at her mother. “And this is my mother, Mrs. O’Connell.”

Luella trembled as would someone very elderly and her face was fever red but she smiled at Elsie and complimented Margaret. When Elsie returned to her own mother and brothers and sister, Luella asked, “Callie, where is my Bible?”

“I didn’t have room for it. But Mrs. Pakka promised to send our things as soon as we’re settled.”

Ma’am squeezed Callie’s arm with surprising strength. “You must run back and fetch it, quickly, before the train starts away.”

“They won’t let anyone off the coach. I saw a lady try to leave and a soldier pushed her back inside.”

“They won’t
allow
anyone off the coach,” Luella corrected and her flush paled to chalk as the whistle blew and the rattling cars began to roll. “All my medicine is in the Bible, between the pages. Without it I shall die.”

“Maybe we can buy some in Ridgway.”

Luella reached around for Callie’s other arm, drew her up against the arm of the seat and off the carpetbag. “You meant to leave it behind. You and Mrs. Pakka planned it this way.”

“No, Ma’am, please.” All the ladies and infants had stopped wailing to stare at them. “You mustn’t behave this way.”

Luella released Callie and leaned back in her seat, wrung her hands, muttering words no one could understand. Callie wanted to cry but instead she rubbed her sore arms and prayed Pa and Bram would be at the depot in Ridgway to meet them. The railway spur that serviced Telluride and Pandora met the main line at Vance Junction. The main line led to the Ophir Loop and eventually Durango and the smelter for the ore shipments in one direction and to Placerville, the Dallas Divide, and Ridgway in the other. At Ridgway this narrow-gauge Rio Grande Southern met the standard-gauge tracks and the rest of the nation. Callie’s train stopped now at the junction to allow the tracks to clear ahead. The guard at the front of the car allowed several small children with their mothers off to take care of bodily functions and he went with them. The guard at the back of the car didn’t seem to notice Luella rise, step past Callie, and follow.

Callie had been caught by surprise too, but she hurried down the crowded aisle after Luella, who seemed to be floating at an unbelievable speed. Callie heard the guard order her to stop but couldn’t believe he’d shoot her in the back. She had to get her mother to Ridgway where the rest of the family could help care for her.

As she jumped off the coach steps to the cinders below, Callie couldn’t see the women and children led away by the first guard and she couldn’t see Ma’am. But she knew her mother would wet herself before she’d stop going back for her medicine. Callie raced down the tracks toward Telluride with the guard still shouting behind her. If he came after her he could help her with Ma’am. If he shot Callie she wouldn’t have to worry about this family problem that had grown faster than she had.

51

Word of the train carrying strikers’ families reached Ridgway too late. Most of the fathers and husbands who made it off the Dallas Divide were secreted among various crates, barrels, and supplies loaded on the train bound for Telluride. And this time they were armed. The two trains passed each other at Placerville with the incoming one pulled off on a siding.

Vincent St. John and the others had similarly passed up Bram’s snow cave in the night, and when John O’Connell and Bram reached Ridgway the next day, word of the outrage on the divide had spread to angry union men throughout the San Juans and many were filtering into Ridgway. While some joined search parties for those still lost on the divide, others milled around town demanding action. A few, those with families left behind and those hotheaded enough to find and bear weapons against General Sherman Bell and his troops, had formed a disorganized but quiet band bent on revenge. While St. John met with other union leaders to draft protests to the state and federal governments, this quiet band managed to hop a train and be gone with their leaders unaware. And the only sure plan they had was to jump off the train as it slowed for Vance Junction and to take cover, stay hidden until the soldiers had searched and gone on about their business, and then regroup on the road to march together into town. There was even talk of marching on the hotel and saving the union president, Mr. Moyer.

Bram was opposed to the whole thing. His father limped as if one leg were shorter than the other, and should not be jumping off any train. There were bound to be patrols on the road. And even if they made it to town, their anger was no match for the superior numbers that could organize to meet them.

But Bram was on the train headed for Telluride, wedged between crates of eggs and boxes of canned fruit, because John O’Connell was there, because he worried for his sister and ailing mother, and because he had an unreasoning urge to draw blood. These were men he’d be proud to work beside. He wanted to believe their assurances that because they were moving so quickly they would take the town by surprise. Yet a voice as fey as a tommyknocker’s patter told him this was suicide.

Callie heard the train departing without her but kept after the figure still moving with that strange floating glide. The tracks were clear but the snow banked high on either side and the ties were either wet or icy. Running made her slide on the ties or slip in the mush between them. So she hopped from one tie to the next, her toes bruising and her ankles turning. Snow and sky soaked up her shouts to her mother. Callie couldn’t figure how someone so weak and sick could move with such speed. If the skirts of Luella’s coat hadn’t whipped about with her steps, Callie would have thought Ma’am on wheels instead of human feet. The figure ahead grew smaller, darker, the bright snowy world grew pink.

This as all unfair. She was too young to control her mother. She’d been too young to be sent out to clean things at the hotel too. Bram should not have gone back into the mine. He’d been warned of the cave-in. Pa should not have had dealings with the union. And Ma’am should be taking care of her child instead of the other way around.

Callie’s body pleaded to stop and rest, but guilt drove her on. She’d avoided spending all the time she might have with her mother, had not really listened when Luella talked, had been impatient with her illness. Callie’s two petticoats, long dress, and coat fought young leg muscles that could have carried her faster if unhampered. She slipped on ice and came down on her backside, jolting her spine, sending pain the length of it to compound the thumping stamp mill in her head. Cold slush slid up her skirts, weighed them down when she managed to get hopping again.

By the time she reached the depot, Ma’am was nowhere in sight. But one of the guards who’d forced them onto the train was mounting a horse and he took off toward the town. Callie followed, thinking he was chasing Luella, but lost him in the massing of troops on Colorado Avenue. She turned and ran back to the boardinghouse. “I haven’t seen her. I told you to keep an eye on her.” Mrs. Pakka squinted her disapproval. “Knew you weren’t to be trusted.”

Callie left Mrs. Pakka’s kitchen, which was filled with the yeast-and-cinnamon smells of baking, her stomach muttering but her head high. She stood uncertainly in the middle of a deserted street in Finntown. Over the distant murmur of men and horses up on Colorado Avenue came the clear peal of the school bell across the valley and the squawk of crows startled by it.

Should she run to enlist Aunt Lilly’s aid or just begin knocking on doors to find someone who’d seen her mother? In her confused state, Ma’am could be anywhere. Callie started back toward the depot and saw an old man leading a burro out from between the snow banks that bordered Townsend Avenue. “Thin woman? Without her hat?” he asked when Callie questioned him.

“That’s her … I mean she. Please, where did you see her?”

He pointed back the way he’d come and then called after her. “Needs locking up, that one.”

There seemed to be not another soul out except for the soldiers up in the business district. And they were uncannily quiet for so many. A horse-drawn plow had banked the snow high to either side of the west end of Colorado Avenue and home owners had shoveled passageways to the street. The houses here were tall, narrow, stately. Their ornate trim peeked over the snow mounds in bright colors to relieve the unending white of winter.

“Run for your home, child,” a lady called from her doorway as Callie hurried from one tunnel to the next. “There’s going to be trouble.”

“I have no home to go to and I’m looking for my mother.” Callie leaned exhausted against the towering snow to the side of the lady’s path. “She’s thin and has no hat. Have you seen her?” The lady ran down off her porch, slipping on ice patches on the steps, grabbed Callie’s hand, and pulled her inside. The house was dark after the sun and snow outdoors. Callie could see only the lady’s shape and the light from a doorway at the end of a long hall. “There’s no one else to look after her and she’s not well.”