Dead Iron: The Age of Steam

by Devon Monk

  The rail depended on the smith to keep them in nails and bolts and repairs of the matics. All the farmers, ranchers, and millers in the area kept the blacksmith and his apprentices plenty busy. She couldn’t imagine what would bring all that work to a day’s halt.

  She was sure Mrs. Horace Small would be happy to pass on that information and every other scrap of gossip if she asked. Mrs. Small didn’t like Mae much, but she was more than happy to buy and sell the fine lace Mae tatted, and had never turned away a single sturdy wool blanket Mae wove.

  Mae had been saving up the bit of money she made from cloth and lace for years, adding it to any extra Jeb brought in. They weren’t rich, and she had never supposed they would be. But they had money set aside.

  She eased down off her mule and tied her to the hitching post below the porch. A rise of men’s voices, laughter mostly, rolled through the air along with the clank of the piano from the saloon down the street. Plenty of people hoping for better days. And it seemed some of them were more than happy to celebrate early.

  Mae walked up the front steps and then along the whitewashed railing to the open shop door. She didn’t like entering the mercantile. Not because it was always dark, filled from floorboard to rafter with things folk needed to live a civilized life, some items like the dishes from China or the fine glass lamps shipped all the way from the old country. There was something about the clutter of the place, of so many things from so many lands all crowded together, that made her restless and wanting for the simplicity and quiet of her home.

  Mae walked into the shop, the cooler air scented with the straw and dust of newly delivered goods. Mrs. Horace Small must be out for the day. Rose Small stood behind the counter in the dim-lit room, minding the till.

  She looked over and a smile lit her up.

  “Afternoon, Mrs. Lindson,” Rose said.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Small.” Mae walked across the room. “I hope all is well with you.”

  Rose nodded, though a cloud passed over her eyes. “I’m good as glim. And yourself? Come into town with a few blankets before the weather turns?”

  Mae shook her head. She should have thought of that. Should have brought in the blankets she’d finished over the long summer nights. But ever since she had felt Jeb’s death, she’d been thinking of no other thing than revenge.

  She wasn’t even sure if she had eaten this morning.

  “No blankets today.”

  “Lace, then? Mrs. Haverty was discussing her daughter’s wedding dress and hoping we’d have a lace collar on hand. The shipments from back East didn’t make it this far out. I reckon someone in Carson City must have a hankering for fine lace.”

  “No, no lace.” Mae stopped at the counter where the coffee grinder sat next to candy in glass jars. She tugged off her leather gloves, one finger at a time. “I’ve come to withdraw from my safetydeposit box. I don’t suppose your father is in?”

  “He’s gone to meet with some of the out-of-towners who came in early today. Investors and businessmen looking to set up business now that the rail’s going to tie us to the oceans on both sides. We’ll have all the news from the world at our fingertips and plenty of new people passing through. Might even get a telegraph office. Looks like Hallelujah’s going to put itself on the map.”

  “Looks like it is,” Mae said. “But about your folks. Is your mother round?”

  “She’s just down the road a ways. At church seeing about the wedding. These things take time and plenty of effort from all the able women.” Rose looked down at the counter, and pulled a cloth from her pocket to rub at the wood. “Seeing as how it’s the banker’s daughter and the timberman’s son, it will be a wedding of some importance.”

  “All weddings are important,” Mae said. “Even for the most humble groom and bride.”

  “I reckon that’s true.”

  Rose went back to wiping down the counter, though Mae thought there wasn’t a spot of dirt left to rub. The thimble she wore on the top of her ring finger winked nickel gray in the wan light coming in from the shop’s two windows.

  Mae took a moment to really look at Rose. She was no longer the young girl she’d found running a kite in her fields back when she and Jeb had built their home seven years ago. Rose must be eighteen or so by now. And unmarried.

  No wonder she wasn’t lending a hand at the wedding preparations. The womenfolk had probably deemed her unfit for such things.

  “You’ll be a wife someday,” Mae said gently. “There’s still plenty of time for that.”

  Rose looked back up at Mae, and for a flash, there was hope in her eyes. Then she set her mouth and all Mae could see in her expression was clear resolve. “You’re more than kind to say so.” She put the cloth back in her pocket, ending the conversation.

  “Now, about your business today,” she said, digging up one of her sunlight smiles. “Can I help you in any way? Maybe go fetch my mother or father for you?”

  “Oh, that won’t be necessary. If you have the keys to the safe boxes, we won’t need to trouble your parents.”

  “I know just where they’re kept.” Rose opened a drawer behind her and pulled out a set of master keys. She turned a glance over her shoulder. “I haven’t seen Mr. Lindson in a long while. He working the rail?”

  “No. He’s dead.”

  Rose stopped, still as a deer under the eyes of a wolf. And the sorrow that crossed her face was heart-deep, bringing tears at the bottoms of her eyes. “I am so sorry,” she whispered. She didn’t say any more, didn’t ask how he’d died, didn’t ask if she was planning a burial, a funeral, a service with black lace.

  Mae nodded, and Rose got herself busy with the locked drawer that held the keys to the safety boxes.

  “Did you hear the Gregors’ boy, little Elbert, has gone missing?” Rose asked softly, as if there was more than rumor resting on her words.

  “I hadn’t heard.” Mae tried to remember how old the Gregors’ boy was now. Maybe three? Four? She was glad for something different to think upon, even if it was bad news. “Did he wander off?”

  Rose walked out from behind the counter, things in her apron pockets clacking quietly. “No one knows. He disappeared in the night. Right through the closed window and the locked door.” She paused between one step and the next. “Is that something you’d have a way of knowing about?”

  Mae looked down at her shoes. She’d never told Rose she was a witch, but Rose had a way of knowing about people almost like she could hear the truth of them without them even speaking. It hadn’t been said, but Rose knew Mae was conversant with herb and magic. And unlike any of the other folk in town, who were suspicious of her, Rose had been her first and her only friend in Hallelujah.

  “I don’t know that I can be of help,” Mae said. “Even if there were something I could do, there isn’t much in me but grief.” She paused, then added, “And that . . . clouds things. I don’t suppose that will change for a long while.”

  Rose’s hand gently cupped Mae’s shoulder and Mae realized Rose was an inch or so taller than her. Her hand was warm and strong. Her fingers squeezed just a little. “There isn’t anything more natural you should be doing but grieving, Mrs. Lindson. It takes a heart long days to heal.”

  Mae looked into her eyes. Rose had seen pain in her life, but Mae knew she’d never lost everything in the world worth breathing for. “The pain of loving someone never heals.”

  Rose pulled her hand away, flinching like she expected a switch to her back. Mrs. Small had obviously never learned to curb her temper before using the switch.

  “I don’t mean to overstep—,” Rose said.

  “And you haven’t.” Mae forced a smile. “I do appreciate your concern.”

  Rose nodded, and started off toward the back of the room. “If you’d wait out here, Mrs. Lindson,” she began.

  “Mae,” she said. “I’d think by now you’d be calling me by my given name. As a good friend ought.”

  Rose tossed a smile over her shoulder
and Mae marveled at the joy in it. There was something alive and glowing to her. She was the kind of woman folk should be drawn to, men should be drawn to. A strong charisma. But she’d learned to hide that light under a bushel. Mae figured she rarely showed anyone her true self. No wonder she wasn’t married.

  “If you’d wait a tick . . . Mae,” she said, “I’ll bring out your box.”

  Rose slipped through the doors at the corner of the shop. The mercantile wasn’t a bank, but they had safe vaults made of cast iron. So heavy, it was said, each plate had needed a barge of its own and a full team of oxen to drag it to town. The Smalls had hired up the blacksmith to weld together the plates and set clever locks, so that anything within that vault needed a combination of keys to retrieve.

  Fireproof, bulletproof, and heavy enough it was thief proof. People of town deposited money at Haverty’s bank, but other valuables, jewels, rings, notes of property, and such, were often as not given to the Smalls for safekeeping.

  Mr. Haverty wouldn’t deposit money from a black man, but Jeb had done the odd job for Rose’s father, Mr. Small. In return, Mr. Small tolerated keeping their money, so long as Mae gave them a blanket or length of lacework every season in payment for the safe box.

  Rose once told Mae that Mrs. Small sent the blankets and lace down to her sister in Sacramento, where they fetched a high price from city folk.

  Mae walked through the store, not much seeing the items for sale. Outside, the noise was starting to pick up as the men who worked LeFel’s rail came into town for a midday meal, drink, or gamble.

  “I think I have it all here.” Rose pushed open the door, the box propped under her arm and hard against her hip. “One box?”

  “That’s right.”

  Rose carried the box to the countertop and set it down. “I forgot to ask if you have the key. My father keeps the box keys in another location I’m not privy to.”

  Mae withdrew the key from her pocket. “I have it here.” She walked over to the counter, then set the key in the lock and gave it a turn. The internal gears snicked, and the lock sprang open.

  The light in the shop grew darker as one of the railmen shadowed the door, stomping his boots of dust before removing his hat and stepping into the store.

  “Afternoon, sir,” Rose said, moving out away from the counter. “Can I help you find something?”

  “You the owner?”

  “No, sir. Owner’s daughter, so I know my way around the shop. Maybe you’re looking for the doctor, though?”

  Mae glanced over at the man. He was rawboned, tall, looked like he drank far more than he ate. His left hand was wrapped with a dirty cloth, stained with blood. Like all the railmen, he carried a gun at his hip.

  “If I was looking for a doctor, I’d of found one,” he said. “You got any of the fireproof gloves for sell? Those damn matics boil the meat off a man.”

  Rose gave him a smile that would sweeten honey, but still had a bit of sting to it.

  “We sure do. Right back there on the shelf to the right, below the washboards. Cowhide suede with wool felt inside. Come in special from Chicago just last month.”

  He headed down that way, and Mae was very aware that Rose did not turn her back on him, but instead put her hand in the pocket of her apron. Mae wasn’t certain what she carried in those pockets, but from the set of Rose’s jaw, she’d guess it wasn’t a Bible.

  Mae opened the lid of the box and picked up the canvas bag. She pulled at the cords and glanced inside. This purse held more silver than copper, and no gold. She hesitated. It was enough to buy a horse, or a small matic to sort or thresh the crops, or plow the field. Maybe enough to set her right for the long winter ahead. She’d been saving it in hopes she and Jeb would one day need to put a room on the house for a child, or to send that child to a good school down in California, or back East.

  No hope of that now. That tomorrow was gone. All the good this money would do now was buy her a man’s death. She tucked the purse into her other pocket and closed the lid on the empty box.

  Rose came back around the counter, dusting again, her gaze never leaving the rail worker for long.

  Mae glanced over at the man. He slid looks their way, nervous, as if waiting for something. He did not seem to harbor intentions of the neighborly sort.

  That was the downfall of having the rail push through. Too many men and women who followed the great landway were desperate folk who had supped on hard luck too much of their life. Robberies, shootings, and more followed in the wake of the rail.

  Hallelujah might be putting itself on the map, but that mark would be made in blood, as well as iron.

  Mae locked the box and took back her key. “Thank you, Miss Small.”

  Rose nodded and put the box at her feet behind the counter, out of the man’s sight.

  “Is that all for you today?” Rose asked.

  “I’ve a mind to wander the store a bit until your father arrives,” Mae said. “I have a pertinent question for him. He’ll be back any moment now, isn’t that right?”

  Rose shot her a look of thanks for the lie. “Why, I suppose he will. Said it wouldn’t take him but a shake to finish his business with the sheriff. Said Sheriff Wilke might even come back to check the new rifles we got in yesterday.”

  At that, the man in the back stopped dawdling and came up to the counter to pay. Mae stepped aside and found herself interested in a collection of fragile glass globes with thin copper wires threading them set in a straw-filled bucket not far away. The man paid, took his gloves without a word, and left just as the tiny bird on the windowsill chirped the hour.

  Outside, the water clock tower whistled out the noon bell, a melodious, lonely chord.

  “I’m obliged to you,” Rose said. “Never know what those sorts of men have in their mind. Mr. LeFel works them like demons. Come in wild-eyed and mean, near often as not.” She made it sound matter-of-fact, but Mae could see the slight tremble in her hand as she brushed her hair back from her face. Rose might be too old to marry conventionally, but she was very pretty. Too often a man took that kind of beauty to be his right to spoil.

  “You keep a gun in your pocket?” Mae asked.

  Rose gave her a level gaze. “A proper woman wouldn’t,” she said. “But don’t suppose I’m so proper as some.”

  Mae nodded. “That’s well and wise of you.”

  Rose’s smile was sunshine and summer breezes again. “Such talk! If my mother heard me, I’d be left scrubbing floors for the remainder of my God-given years. Is there anything else you’ll be needing today? I cooked up a rhubarb pie this morning. I’d be happy to bring it out to your place this evening, and maybe sit for a bit of tea?”

  “No,” Mae said, “don’t bother yourself.”

  Rose looked disappointed. Mae realized she wasn’t asking to give the pie out of pity, but out of a need for friendship.

  “I’m just not in the conversing mood, Rose. I’ll come by again soon. To bring those blankets I’ve finished. And the lace, of course. When again is Mrs. Haverty’s daughter being wed?”

  “Not for three weeks, if a minute,” Rose said. “Though they’re going on about it as if Becky and John are going to burst out into vows any minute now.” She’d picked up a small spindle from the shelf and she was rolling it between her hands, the wood clicking against the thimble on her finger.

  Rose never held still, her fingers always flying from one thing to another as if all the world were something that needed touching, changing.

  “I’ll bring the lace before then. Will you tell Mrs. Haverty that for me, if you see her?”

  “I’d be more than happy to.”

  Mae started for the door.

  “I don’t suppose you’re looking for the Madder brothers?” Rose asked.

  Mae turned in her tracks and gave Rose a long look. She still held the spindle, but was no longer rolling it between her palms.

  “Why would you think such a thing?” Mae asked, deeply curious. Rose might be wins
omely clever, but she didn’t seem to have a knack for reading thoughts. Mae was certain she hadn’t mentioned the brothers to her.

  Rose shrugged but didn’t look away from the spindle and string.

  “Just a guess is all. If my husband had gone to his death suddenly, I suppose I’d be looking for a gun, in the least. Maybe other contraptions in the most. The Madders have a way with contraptions that’s better than the best in the old states, I’ve heard whispered.”

  She shrugged again and looked up at Mae. “It’s known they devise, though no one talks about it in the cold light of day. Only by candlelight when they think there aren’t ears around to hear.”

  “Do you know where the brothers are?” Mae asked.

  “They haven’t come into town today. I’d guess they’re up at the mine. You aren’t going out there alone, are you?”

  “I won’t be unarmed,” Mae said. “I’m not near proper as some either.”

  Rose nodded. “That’s well and wise of you.”

  The door opened again. This time a handful of women just come back from church sashayed in. They chattered like scrub jays before spotting Mae. One look at the golden-haired weaver and their perky demeanor snuffed right out, taking on the high-chin stilted manners of a trial, instead of an afternoon’s chance meeting.

  “Mrs. Lindson,” said Mrs. Dunken dismissively. The baker’s wife had a face that looked like it’d been pressed out of dough. Her eyes were deep set and nut brown, her nose a knot, and her cheeks round. She’d piled her hair up so high, it threatened to push her blue taffeta spoon bonnet right off her head, roses, lace, feathers, apples, and all. Mrs. Dunken had her nose in everyone’s business, though she didn’t lift a finger to keep her children—some of them, like her Henry, older even than Rose—out of making such trouble that the sheriff had a nightly seat reserved at their supper table. “Have you finally brought a scrap of lace today?”