Diamonds in the Rough

by Emmy Waterford

  He pulled Hannah closer, the two of them huddled over her body, baptized in their tears, freshly reborn to life eternal.

  *

  They buried her without a word, beneath a big oak tree at the crest of a slope overlooking a grassy plain. Michael didn’t say a thing while he filled in the hole, and Hannah couldn’t speak either. Both simply stood by that hole as it slowly became a pile, the wooden marker poking up at an angle. It wouldn’t survive for long, but Hannah knew that was all the more appropriate, considering the shortness of the life it marked.

  Before turning away, Michael knelt by his daughter and closed his eyes to pray. Hannah did the same.

  Dear Lord:

  I don’t know why You had to send that savage to kill my mother. I know why my daddy had to kill the man, and I’m sorry, but … I only wish he’d killed him sooner. I know he feels the same thing, that he’ll go on feeling that way for the rest of his life. But since You can’t bring my mommy back to me, or his wife back to him, can You please just find a way to help him live with himself, with what Your plan must have been? It’s not easy to understand, I don’t understand it at all. But You must! You know all, it’s Your plan for heaven’s sake! So please don’t let Your will to be that my daddy has to suffer for what happened. Please, I beg You. I know I … I know I’ve asked things of You before, and You saw fit to do other things, but … but maybe, Lord, just maybe … maybe I’m right this time, maybe You could do things my way, just once?

  If not, I understand, but … it sure would be nice.

  Amen.

  But walking away from her mother’s grave, knowing the rest of her life stood between her and ever seeing her mother again, it wasn’t easy for Hannah to be confident that the Lord would see things her way.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Even Goldie didn’t seem to want to go any farther. But Adrienne Alexander herself had told them what to do, and neither Hannah nor Michael wanted to countermand her dying request. Perhaps she knew something in those last moments, Hannah couldn’t help but wonder, but she stopped herself before melancholy could come upon her again. It was her new and ever-present travel companion, and it took all the strength of her will to avoid being smothered to death by it.

  And seeing that little cluster of buildings over that low slope gave Hannah a jolt of new hope. They stood in the distance like tiny square mushrooms, putrid and out of place. But they were as likely to be life-sustaining and nutritious as to be poisonous and deadly. The only way to know would be to get closer, reach out and touch.

  The rains were getting heavier, the wind stronger and colder, hail rocks starting to pelt the carriage, Goldie constantly shaking her head and whinnying in growing frustration.

  The sign in front of the biggest building read Flannery’s Cutthroat Saloon & Hotel. Hannah didn’t want to join her father going into the place, based not only on the name but also the drunken man staggering out and collapsing in the street just a few feet from the carriage. She didn't want to stay out there alone either.

  The place wreaked of tobacco smoke and the pungent aroma of lingering liquor, corn mashed into a noxious, intoxicating brew. The walls were sheets of bare board nailed to pine beams, the hardwood floors stained with a variety of dark and ominous shades. A small fire burned in a metal stove in one corner, a stag’s head mounted from a wooden plank on a wall nearby.

  Michael held Hannah tightly to his side as he crossed the dark room, only a few men sitting in the corner, mumbling to themselves.

  A heartily built man stood behind the bar, watching Hannah and her father approach with a wary eye. One hand wiped the bar, the other reached down underneath it. Hannah had to wonder, what’s he holding under there? A bludgeon? A gun? He can’t kill every customer who comes in the door … can he?

  Is that all everybody ever does, kill and hurt each other?

  “What’s yer pleasure,” the man asked as Hannah and her father finally made it to the bar.

  “Got beer?”

  The big man nodded, gave Hannah a little glance, and turned for a wooden keg behind him. “Just one?”

  Michael dropped a coin on the bar. “S’all I can afford.” The man looked at the coin, picked it up, then tossed it back onto the bar and took the beer out of Michael’s hand. “What the —?”

  “That’s no good here,” the man said. “You pay in gold or in like exchange.”

  Michael shrugged as the man backed away, beer in hand. But he stopped, turned, and put the beer down in front of Michael. “What the hell, you look like you could use it.”

  “Thank you,” Michael said, raising the glass and taking a long, savory drink.

  “Name’s Flannery, Vernon Flannery, s’my place.”

  Michael lowered the glass and wiped his lips. “Michael Alexander, my daughter Hannah.”

  Flannery looked them over, putting things together for himself. Flannery’s thin red beard hung long and graying over his barrel chest. “Widowed?”

  “Three days now,” Michael said.

  Flannery winced. “S’rough, sorry.” He pulled a shot glass from behind the bar and then a whiskey bottle. He filled the glass and pushed it in front of Michael. “On the house.” Hannah’s father looked at the shot, then back at Flannery, who nodded. Michael took the shot. “Welcome to Cutthroat.”

  Hannah clung tighter to Michael’s side, attracting Flannery’s attention, and a kindly smile. “S’all right, darlin’. We just wanna keep out the bad element, that’s all. Yer both welcome here.”

  “No, we’re heading west,” Michael said. “Much obliged, brother.”

  “Well, I’d be much obliged if you’ll take my advice. You don’t wanna be out there until winter comes and goes, won’t either of you make it as far as the Mississippi River.”

  Hannah’s blood ran with a chill, her mouth going dry.

  Michael said, “You’re kind to take an interest, but … where can we stay?”

  Flannery shrugged and poured himself a shot. “Got no work here. What’s yer trade?”

  “Carriages, but I’m open to other things.”

  “Carriages still come through here, no reason you couldn’t be of some good use. Can’t get any building done ’til after the snows anyway. You travelin’ by carriage, I’m guessin’.” Michael nodded and Flannery sighed. “Jameson runs the livery, shelter your pony. Maybe you can park the carriage behind it, least the building’ll help block the winds. They’ll cut right through ya. Post in front tonight, or whoever your pony’s at, we’ll set you up come the mornin’.”

  Michael gave it some thought, then nodded and turned to Hannah. “What do you think, little’n?”

  Hannah didn’t have to think about it for long, her nod answering for her. Michael turned to Flannery, raised his glass, and said, “Here’s to winter in Cutthroat.”

  *

  The winter came every bit as hard as Flannery had warned. The snow blew sideways across the plains, battering the few little structures at the heart of camp. The wind howled in several pitches at once, low and high, a hell-born choir of fallen angels screaming. Goldie only survived because she was sheltered in the livery, and the livery itself did play a large part in helping Michael and Hannah survive as well. But that shelter came at a price, and between paying Jameson and feeding themselves, it wasn’t long until the Alexanders’ provisions were gone.

  Few enough people were traveling in that murderous weather. Chances to repair a carriage were few and far between and not nearly enough for a man to sustain himself and his child, much less a horse or the building expenses of putting up a new workshop, ordering up the necessary equipment which had been too heavy to bring along and had to be left back in Marion County; an anvil, the coal oven.

  But Michael kept reassuring her that spring would bring travelers. “I know carriages,” he often said as she was fading off to sleep at night. “They’re not built for this kind of terrain. After getting over that Wabash Bridge? They’ll need plenty of repair, plenty, and they’ll play plenty
for it … or trade, which is much the same. You mark my words, we’ll be just fine, Hannah, just fine.”

  But as the spring came around, the travelers didn’t follow quite as expected. They came, but in dribbles, and often didn’t need any repairs to their gear. And a few even stayed, most on horseback with no needs for carriage repair at all. “But their bridles will break,” Michael said in his warm, deliberately optimistic tone, “you mark my words.”

  But it would take a lot more than a few broken bridles to keep the Alexanders going, and both of them knew it.

  Hannah and Michael were lingering around the hotel, hoping to find some traveler in need of his services. But on that particular day, the only visitor to Cutthroat came in on a pair of pack mules. He rode one and towed the other by rope, kicking his mount with increasing frustration.

  “C’mon, c’mon, yer danged stupid id’jit!” He was gray and lean, bent forward, but didn’t lack for zeal, not one bit. He finally got off the mule, still holding the hemp rope he used for reins, and pulled both animals along toward the livery. “Never knowd such a stubborn, legless pair of ornery, good-fer-nothing lay about do-nothings in all my life!”

  He stopped and turned to Michael, standing with Hannah, his attention captured by the man’s appearance. “You wanna make a pinch, feller?”

  “A pinch of what?”

  The man looked around, then stomped one foot on the ground. “Why gold, y’danged fool! I ain’t away that long, am I?”

  Michael looked at Hannah, and she clung to him even tighter. “No, I … I’ll work for my pay.”

  “Don’t we all? Name’s Barns, Wallace Albert. Folks used t’call me W.A.”

  Michael gave that some thought. “Used to?”

  “When I was still among you.”

  Hannah stepped back, a nervous curl in her stomach. What does he mean? Is he a … a ghost?

  But W.A. just laughed and shook his head, only a few teeth still in his head. “Been up the mountain so long, I forget how kids can be.”

  “What about this gold,” Michael said, more a demand than a question.

  W.A. said, “Take these dang mules to the livery, tell Jameson … it’s still Jameson, ain’t it?” Michael nodded. “Tell Jameson I’ll settle up, that he ain’t go through none of my satchels, I ain’t fool enough fer that.”

  “I, um, I know Jameson,” Michael said, “he’s a good man.”

  “He’s a rank thief, a road agent at the end of the road. You do what I tells ya, come back here.”

  Michael’s brows showed his skeptical confusion. “And you’ll pay me in gold?”

  W.A. looked at Michael, long and slow and mean, then broke out laughing. “Don’t believe me, that’s good. Y’got a brain in yer head, I like that.” W.A. looked around as he leaned closer to Michael and pulled a leather sack from his vest pocket. He held the sack up and opened it, looking around while Michael peered into the sack. “Ten minutes,” W.A. said.

  “We’ll be back in five.”

  *

  “What do you think we should do?”

  Hannah was overwhelmed in so many ways. She’d never been asked to give her opinion about any big decision in the family before, but she knew the family was considerably smaller than it had been. And Hannah had survived the winter and she knew her father was proud of her. She thought of herself as afraid, retreating into her fantasies, but he’d told her time and again how proud he was of how brave she was. And now she knew he’d meant it, that he’d come to respect her in a way he hadn’t before.

  But that was more responsibility that Hannah was ready to handle, and she knew that too.

  “We can press on,” Michael said, with virtually nothing left but Goldie and the carriage. Who knows what we’ll find out there that we won’t find right here.”

  “No,” Hannah was quick to say, her voice low and determined, “not California, Daddy, no.”

  “I agree,” Michael said, “we’ve traveled far enough. It’s too dangerous, there’s too much to lose.” Michael looked around at the shoddy wooden structures of Cutthroat, the foothills beyond, wildflower pollen heavy in the air, accenting the woody smells of the livery. “Now that the winter has come and gone, we could go back. Maybe … maybe we should never have come out here at all.”

  Hannah heard the sadness in her father’s voice, the bitterness at himself, the blame he was too ready to assume. “No, Daddy,” Hannah said, more to defend him from himself than to offer any real advice on their shared future. “You were right. Things back there … they took our property, we … we don’t have any place back there anymore, I don’t think.”

  A weary smile stretched across Michael’s face. “No, I … I don’t think so either, Hannah.” With a heavy sigh, he went on. “Then we stay.” Hannah nodded. “But do we stay here in town, try to set up a workshop or some other trade, or do we follow Barns into the hills, find some of that gold he’s bringing down. If he can, there’s little reason we can’t!”

  Hannah felt the excitement rising in his voice. It was, at least in some small part, her own excitement, too. Ever since hearing the stories of the diamond mine back in Marion County, Hannah couldn’t get the notions of riches and adventure out of her head. But she’d cautioned herself so many times against it, and she knew firsthand how dangerous and even deadly such temptations could be.

  “All we have to do is work the claim for a time, make some improvement on the land, build just a little shack to live in, at first, I mean, then the claim would be ours, rightfully and legally.”

  Hannah didn’t want to disagree, to squelch her father’s returned ambitions and renewed hopes. But she still heard herself say, “But … what if there isn’t?”

  “Then we’ll still have the land,” Michael was quick to answer. “I don’t know, honey, I … there’s risk, there’s doubt. Or we could sit here on a dying business while people come in on horseback, more and more, pulling fortunes out of the ground. You know what the Bible says: ‘Behold, I am creating something new. Do you not perceive it?’ Well, honey, maybe this is the Lord creating something new for us, and it’s up to us to perceive it.”

  Hannah recalled the sentiment, but in words that were much more intimate. “You said that yourself, Daddy. You have to hear the call … ”

  They finished the phrase together. “And then to heed it.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  W.A. showed Hannah and Michael what they needed to know. They traded Goldie and much of her gear for the trays and boots and other equipment they’d need, not to mention a few axes and enough rope and pulleys to start work on a modest house.

  Hannah learned to work the streams, pulling the water in and swirling it around, letting the excess fall away and leaving a pan of silt and mud and just the occasional bit of flake. It was enough to keep them going, but not enough to keep them alive.

  Michael and Hannah made several trips to Cutthroat, for what supplies they could get, Michael to get what outside work was available from time to time. But the bulk of the entire year went by with Michael working the house while Hannah worked the stream. Wolves watched them with keen eyes, always looking for an opportune moment to strike. But the carriage proved enough sanctuary for the two of them at night until the little house itself was ready to live in.

  W.A. himself had given up on the streams of his own claim and had begun digging into the mountain. He often stopped by the Alexanders’ claim to encourage them, help with the house, give them tips that would prove life-saving. He showed them how to concoct a mix of mud, straw and manure, which would seal up the spaces between the logs of the walls and dry hard, leaving no unpleasant scent at all.

  Putting up the roof was by far the most difficult. Hannah left the stream to join the effort, against her father’s wishes. But even at just shy of twelve years old, Hannah was getting stronger with her labors in the stream, and she was proving herself more capable and more worthy with every passing day.

  But Michael was careful to keep her away when any of t
he big slats which were hoisted up, carried by rope and pulley until Hannah, perched on the top of the frame, to pull it into place and nail it down tight. She worked with her father and their friend, feeling better about herself and about their chances every day. The stream was even contributing a bit of flake every now and then, enough encouragement, if not enough nourishment.

  By the time of the big snowfall that winter, the house was finished, there was dried chopped wood to burn, some smoked venison left over, fish in the stream and plenty of beets and potatoes.

  The next spring was a relief, their first as regular citizens of Cutthroat, growing as fast as Hannah was. The main thoroughfare of the camp was growing longer and more rowdy, a second saloon, a telegraph and postal office, and a gun dealer occupied the new permanent buildings, and they were increasingly hemmed in by businesses in tents creating second and third business blocks reaching west and south. Hardware, prostitution, liquor, furs, frocks, all manner of goods and services could be found.

  They could scarcely be avoided.

  Flannery’s hotel and saloon were doing good business, his front room increasingly crowded and smoke-filled. The lone stag’s head was joined by a second, and a twelve-point antler spread mounted by its bare skull cap. Men and women skulked around the saloon, several gambling in three new tables on one side of the expanded room. But Flannery always had a friendly smile for Michael and Hannah, referring Michael for any paying work that might come along, sharing news of other states and territories as events continued to move faster and faster in every corner of the Americas.

  “The great Republic of Texas,” Michael repeated as Flannery nodded. “I don’t know. We just went through all that misery getting this country up and running. I don’t see much point to having a new one.”

  “They fought hard for it,” Flannery said. “Lord knows they paid the price.”

  “We all did. But it’s our country, one nation under God … one nation.”