City of Gold

by Will Hobbs

  Outside, Molly said she needed to spell her mother at the bakery. Tomorrow, though, was one of the days her mother had help. “Do you have plans?” Molly asked.

  “I need to talk with the marshal, but there’s no chance of that tomorrow with all that’s going on.”

  “We could take a ride up to Blue Lake. The horses need the exercise, and I’d really like to show it to you. What do you think?”

  “I’d love to, but will your parents—”

  “Mother will be all for it. After church, they had a spat over what Father said to you. She reminded him it was she who invited you to church, and then she quoted the verse from the New Testament: ‘I was a stranger . . .’”

  Molly paused, wondering if I might finish it.

  “‘. . . and you did not take me in,’” I added.

  “That’s the one! Mother said she believed you were a person of upright character.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. What if your father needs the other horse?”

  “He’s scared of horses.”

  “Still, he wouldn’t like the idea.”

  “True, but he doesn’t have much say.”

  All of this was somewhat astonishing, but so was Molly. I’d never met anyone like her.

  16

  Blue Lake

  IN THE MORNING Molly was out in front of the boarding house at 8:00 a.m. sharp. I adjusted the stirrups on her mother’s sorrel and we were off. As we rode side by side through the streets of Telluride and east toward Pandora, I asked if she’d learned anything new about the disaster. “All but twenty-four men are accounted for,” Molly said. “There’s very little smoke left, so the recovery begins this morning. They’re hoping some of them might still be alive somehow, but it seems unlikely. Mother said it was a good time for us to take this ride and get away for the time being.”

  I wondered if her father knew, but I didn’t ask.

  As we clopped abreast of the cemetery, I was pondering the dead silence from Pandora’s thunderous stamp mills. Molly saw me thinking and said, “The mills are all closed today to honor the dead. The mines, too—the Tomboy and the Sheridan, the Nellie and the Liberty Bell, and the Flora-Japan. Even the mines over at Ophir and Alta. None of the men are working today. Come to think of it, the same goes for the mules.”

  I appreciated her thinking of Hercules.

  From the head of the valley, we followed a trail that climbed toward the brink of Bridal Veil Falls. “Three hundred and sixty-five feet!” Molly declared. “Tallest waterfall in the state!” Closer yet, we rode through a rainbow in the mist.

  From the top of the falls, we had a fine view across to the tramways and the electric transmission lines climbing steeply from Pandora up to the mines. The tramways were shut down, all their buckets standing still. The snowy peaks encircling Telluride, almost close enough to touch, looked dazzling in the crystalline air. “Enjoy it while the mills are closed,” Molly said. “No smoke, no haze—what a day!”

  The trail followed Bridal Veil Creek higher and higher, in and out of the trees. My guide on her blue roan led the way. We climbed higher yet, above the tree line and onto the tundra. The trail swung up and around a waterfall. After that climb I was in suspense, thinking I would spy the lake any second. Molly rested the horses on the false summits, not saying a word, just beaming. The breeze was cool but the autumn sun had some warmth to it.

  When Blue Lake appeared at last in its stony bowl, its hue was a brilliant aquamarine. Still as glass, its surface mirrored the vaulting peaks that surrounded the depths in a horseshoe. I was mesmerized.

  A smile was playing on Molly’s lips. “Not an eyesore, eh, Owen?”

  “More like the eye of heaven!”

  “It’s a beauty, and the closest to home. The San Juans have more than a hundred high lakes, every one a jewel. I’ve made it to seven so far, the other six on foot. One so high I had to climb hand over hand.”

  “Sign me up,” I said.

  Her mother had packed a picnic lunch complete with a tablecloth, which we anchored with stones on a patch of grass where the creek spilled from the lake. French bread and cheese, a sausage and a pear for each of us, and apple juice. Molly asked after my father and I told her we lost him to TB. She wanted to know if he was kind. “In every way,” I said.

  “That’s how it should be,” she murmured wistfully. Abruptly, her tone changed. “Owen, I’m sorry for Father’s rude behavior. Mother won’t abide that sort of talk at home, and now he’s calling people names in church. His editorials and gossip columns are, well—”

  “I read some of it. Mob justice and lynching—was he serious?”

  “It’s awful—don’t read it! Read the Examiner. They’re sympathetic to the miners, while he calls them anarchists, socialists, and revolutionaries. He especially despises their union.”

  “But why?”

  “Mother believes it comes from his own insecurity. She says it’s the way of the world. The poor and the wretched are despised for their poverty and wretchedness. She cringes when he toadies up to the rich and powerful, in print or in person. I’ve heard her try to reason with him. Of course the miners need to speak with one voice.”

  “That’s what my uncle always said.”

  “How else will they ever improve their lot? They’re under the lion’s paw! Now look what’s happened at the Smuggler-Union, as if they don’t have it bad enough.”

  “Has your father always been like this?”

  “Mother suspects as much. They rushed into marriage—never, ever do that, she tells me. We came here seven years ago from Chicago, on the strength of her inheritance. Her parents were both gone; her father had owned a very successful factory.”

  “You mean to say, your father married for money?”

  “Love and money, I suppose. They bought the bakery and the newspaper with her money. I was too young to notice but Mother says it didn’t take long before he was writing with a poison pen. He’s been getting worse and worse. It’s like a disease!”

  It was shocking to hear a daughter speak this way of her father, but I had met him. We spoke of many things after that. I was about to turn sixteen and Molly already had. Both of us were facing trouble and had so much on our minds. She said I looked like a duck out of water in church and wondered about that. Molly had heard from her mother that I was a Quaker, and was curious about me knowing the Bible but not going to church. I explained that we have the meeting house instead. Anyone might bring up a religious question. Usually there’s a lot of discussion, sometimes very little. On occasion the meeting is silent and thoughtful from beginning to end, with each of us looking to our Inward Light for understanding and answers. Molly was intrigued, and wondered if there were a lot of Quakers in Kansas.

  “In eastern Kansas, quite a few,” I said. “The good soil brought them, but there was more to it than that. My mother’s grandparents migrated from Pennsylvania to Kansas Territory to help the Shawnee people become farmers, and Pa’s came from Iowa to add voters who favored the territory becoming a free state. There were other people coming to Kansas who wanted it to be a slave state.”

  “All I knew was, the Quakers wanted to abolish slavery and were opposed to all wars.”

  “Except one,” I said. “When it came to the Civil War, they were of two minds, since the Union soldiers were fighting to put an end to slavery. Some Quakers fought. Ma’s father gave his life in the ‘Gettysburg of the West,’ the Battle of Westport in ’64. Pa’s father was a pacifist and stayed home. Even so, the war came to him. He was gunned down in his cornfield by one of Quantrill’s Raiders.”

  We went on to compare favorite books—Wuthering Heights and Huckleberry Finn—and I got to talking about Behold the Dinosaur. How a teacher and minister in Morrison, Colorado, by the name of Arthur Lakes had discovered Stegosaurus, Apatosaurus, and Diplodocus.

  “Not to mention Allosaurus!” Molly exclaimed. “The gigantic predator with teeth like steak knives!”

  “You know about Arthur
Lakes?”

  “He was here last month! There was so much interest, they had to move his appearance from the library to the Miners Hall.”

  These days, Molly explained, Lakes was a professor at Colorado’s School of Mines and the editor of Mines and Minerals. “You should’ve been here!”

  “I would’ve asked him why there aren’t any fossils in these mountains. I’ve been looking.”

  “Somebody did ask. The San Juans are young and volcanic, he said, and burst through the older sedimentary layers from the time of the dinosaurs. For a good long while, these mountains were unspeakably violent. Where Silverton sits in that huge bowl, an enormous volcano blew itself to bits!”

  The wind had come up, the horses were restless, and the day was getting on. “The lake’s going to freeze over before long,” Molly mused. “I guess it’s time we go, before it does.”

  Our hours together had gone all too quickly. As we rode down Bridal Veil Creek, it felt like my time in Telluride was running out. I was already missing Molly. I doubted I would ever meet the match of her, so spirited and intelligent.

  Molly’s mother had been right about us needing to get away for a spell. Reaching Bridal Veil Falls, we caught sight of a dreadful scene across the way. Teams of men were carrying the dead, wrapped in sheets and roped to stretchers, down a tremendously steep trail to Pandora. As we drew close they were loading the bodies onto freight wagons. At the sight, our high-flying youthful spirits came crashing down. The coroner was having them sent to an empty warehouse in Telluride.

  17

  Not Much for Paperwork

  THURSDAY MORNING FOUND me filling out a report at the marshal’s office. “No, you can’t speak with the marshal,” a lout of a deputy told me. He was a different lout from the one who shooed me out Tuesday.

  I went to work on the document but was having my doubts about the town coppers. In hopes of catching the marshal coming or going, I kept one eye on the door with his name on it. I intended to jump up and have my say. To my surprise, here he came—through the front door—and I seized my chance. I rose to my feet so fast, his right hand went to his holster and he nearly drew his weapon. “What’s the matter with you?” he snarled, his voice raspy as sandpaper.

  I came to the point and said it forthright. “My plow mules got stolen.”

  I’d startled him, and Jim Clark was still angry. “You’re a pine-blank idiot, kid. You nearly plowed your last furrow.”

  “I’m sorry, Marshal. I was hoping to get your attention.”

  With his boot heels striking the wood floor, he came at me and clamped his heavy hand between my neck and shoulder. I looked up and met the marshal’s steely brown eyes. His face was as hard as a block of quarried limestone. For an older man he had amazing strength. His grip tightened like a vise, about to break my collarbone. “You got my attention,” said the lawman, and let go. Same here, I thought.

  Clark doffed his Stetson. The marshal’s full head of brown hair was graying at the temples, and his silver mustache was stiff as a push broom. He hadn’t shaved in some time; his whiskers showed more salt than pepper. “What’s that?” he said, indicating the papers I had in hand.

  “The report I just wrote.”

  The marshal took the papers with my drawings and all, and with a jerk of his head led me to his office. Inside, he closed the door, hung his hat on the rack, and dropped my report in the trash. “I’m not much for paperwork,” he drawled, possibly with a hint at humor. I sat where he pointed, the chair facing his large oak desk. When the brawny man took a seat in his desk chair and leaned back, its springs complained for lack of oil. “Keep it brief and entertaining,” he said.

  I thought, Till could handle the entertainment better than me. I said, “When you saw me on the street the other day—”

  The skeptical rise of Clark’s eyebrows stopped me short. I couldn’t believe he was pretending he didn’t remember me.

  “I’m the one who got the big mule moving, right out here on Colorado Avenue. He’s mine. His name is—”

  “Back up,” the marshal scowled. “Start with your name.”

  “Owen Hollowell.”

  “Where you from?”

  “Hermosa.”

  “Outside of Durango.”

  “Correct.”

  “Born there?”

  “Born in Kansas.”

  “Kan-sas,” he drawled. “Western, middle, or eastern?”

  What’s this about? I thought. Hadn’t he said “Make it brief”?

  “Eastern,” I replied. Trying to help things along, I told how we brought our mules with us in July, only to have them stolen in the wee hours of Tuesday, the twenty-fifth of September.

  “Go on,” Clark said, mildly interested, keeping an eye on the door. I was getting maybe a third of the marshal’s attention. A couple of times he glanced at a large photo on his desk among some other clutter. The photo was of some men dressed up fancy. Something about them seemed to amuse him. I had no idea what was funny. From where I sat they were upside down.

  When I got to the part about the thief pulling his gun on me, the marshal said, “Now, that’s entertaining, Owen Hollowell. Judging from all that scribblin’ in yonder wastebasket I reckon you’re a writer. Is your tale fiction?”

  “No, sir, it’s the unvarnished truth.”

  The marshal stroked his chin stubble. “In the dead of night?”

  “The moon was full.”

  “And you didn’t have a weapon.”

  “That’s correct.”

  He broke into a skeptical smile. “You’ve got sand, I’ll give you that much.”

  “I was desperate. We’re plumb ruined if I don’t get them back.”

  Finally he heard me out. I fished my drawings out of his wastebasket and showed the marshal our omega brand and how it had been changed into a bar over a hat. I told him I’d explained the same thing to Fred Tatters and showed him the fresh burns, that Tatters could see full well that the Tomboy had bought a stolen mule. “More than likely,” I added, “Tatters already knew their bill of sale was phony.”

  To all of that, the marshal didn’t say a thing. He studied my drawings with his mouth turned down at the corners, which didn’t bode well. Then he got out a book of Colorado livestock brands, spent a couple minutes turning pages, and closed it. “There ain’t a brand in here with your omega or a bar over a hat. The Tomboy’s got possession, and there’s a lot to possession being nine-tenths of the law. You’ll have to wait until the 1901 book comes out in December. We’ll find out if the Bar Hat is a new and legal outfit. No way to say the Tomboy’s title to the mule isn’t good until then.”

  I tried to object, going on about both mules, but he wasn’t having it. “As for the gray mule—your notion that I have a deputy stake out the saddle shop—I haven’t got a complaint from Angelo. I suggest you keep your eye out for this alleged rustler you think you saw going into the Sheridan. If he’s mounted on your mule, let me know. The district attorney pursues cases that will stick. Short of that I suggest you go home and let me take care of things proper. I don’t cotton to rustling.”

  Still, I wasn’t going to give up. “He might have Peaches hidden out of town somewhere. Do you suppose I might talk with the county sheriff, and see if he might—”

  “Go right ahead,” said the marshal. “He’s up Disappointment Creek out of Slick Rock, looking into a murder.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “The far west end of the county.”

  “How far is that?”

  “Eighty-ninety miles.”

  Out on the street, I felt like I was twisted into a knot. There must have been a way I could’ve said it better and got Clark on my side. Till might’ve won him over. All I could do now was try to catch the thief with Peaches. Sunday at the latest, I thought. The louse will have her in hand when he comes to Angelo’s for the saddle. He’ll saddle her on the spot to make sure everything fits just right.

  I went to the soda fountain and tried to
settle down with a strawberry soda. They had the daily and weekly newspapers side by side, and I knew which one deserved my nickel. SMUGGLER DISASTER was the headline on the special edition of the San Miguel Examiner. There was much in the account that was new to me. From the top of the shaft high on the mountain, two men volunteered to ride the cage down to the seventh level in hopes of rescuing the men from the ninth. The two were supposed to ring when they got there but the ring never came. When the cage was brought up, one man was dead and the other wasn’t long for this world.

  Billy Hutchinson, the foreman of the crew from the Tomboy that raced over to help, was the one who discovered the fatal smoke flowing into the Bullion Tunnel. As quickly as possible, he oversaw the explosion to seal the portal.

  Vincent St. John, the young president of the Miners Union, was credited with numerous acts of heroism. After braving the smoke and the flames to attach a hose to a water line, St. John climbed over a ridge and entered the mine by an abandoned entrance in hopes of saving men trapped inside. He made it two hundred feet through the smoke before being turned back. Once recovery efforts began, he worked tirelessly to bring out the bodies of the dead and stretcher them down to Pandora.

  In the EVENTS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS section, I saw that the miners were honoring the fallen at 8:00 p.m. that evening in their union hall. The day following—Friday—there would be a community procession to Lone Tree Cemetery followed by the funerals. The procession was to begin at 9:00 a.m. in front of the courthouse.

  I picked up the Daily Journal, curious to see if Molly’s father made any mention of St. John and his heroism. Here, I thought, was a chance for him to redeem himself, especially in the eyes of his daughter. There wasn’t a single mention.

  18

  Cries of Pride and Grief

  WITH EMOTIONS RUNNING so high, Merlin told me, the Miners Hall would be packed that evening. When I said I was hoping to go, Merlin didn’t hesitate. “Jacob would want you there. What’s one more sardine in the can?”