Sometimes when she lay back in her bedroll, as she did now, the fire dimmed and her father and Red sleeping, Irene thought how easy it would be to always live this way. She wondered sometimes why she should have such feelings, for she had been raised to lead a pampered life with all the comforts the daughter of wealthy parents was expected to have. Yet she felt as natural living out here in the wild as the animals…or the Indians. She could understand better now why they loved this land so much, why they did not want to give up the land or the kind of life they had led for centuries.
Everything seemed so much clearer up here. It was as though the mountain air made her senses more alert, made many things easier to understand. Her father had mentioned more than once that moving the Indians to the hotter, drier land to the southeast would kill them just as surely as putting a gun to their heads. Now she understood why, and she felt truly sorry for them and a little guilty for being one of the many who were settling on their land, covering it with offices and houses and shops, bringing in thousands of whites and forcing the Indians out. It was no wonder they tried to retaliate.
She pulled her blankets closer around her face against the chilly mountain air. She had enjoyed another night of storytelling, her belly pleasantly full of rabbit cooked over an open fire, her blood warm from hot coffee. She listened to the night sounds: an owl, then the lonesome wail of a wolf, soon answered by another.
Other than the occasional sounds of night roamers and the soft hum of a light wind moving through the pines, this was the quietest place she had ever been. Down in the city there was always noise—dogs barking, pigs squealing, horses whinnying, wagons rattling, people milling about. It seemed as though every week more people came to Denver, not just prospectors now, but refugees from a battered South who had lost homes and farms and loved ones because of the war. It was sad to see. Because she lived in the West, and especially up in the mountains, the Civil War seemed so far away, as though it wasn’t really happening to her own country. But then she remembered that her own father had come close to dying because of that war.
She was glad to be away from all that now, glad to see the life coming back into her father’s eyes. Yes, this was where men such as David Kirkland belonged. She wondered why on earth he had decided to marry her mother and settle down to have a family. Realizing how much he apparently loved his freedom, it seemed strange that he had given it all up to live a life totally contrary to what he had always known. Had he loved her mother that much? If he had, why didn’t she treat him better than she did? Would she be angry with him forever for those first couple of hard winters in the Sierras?
She sighed deeply, deciding she would probably never understand, afraid to ask her father personal questions. But she was tormented by his comment to her mother about living a lie. What lie? She couldn’t ask, because she didn’t want him to know she had heard.
Secrets. Maybe most people had secrets. After all, she had her own. She had secretly loved a Mexican man. The adventure of coming to the mountains had helped ease the hurt of it, but she knew it would never go away completely. Every time she closed her eyes she remembered that kiss, remembered the feel of Ramon’s soft lips gently searching her mouth so that she burned for him, felt totally at his mercy, unable to think, to resist.
She knew now it would not be difficult to give herself to such a man. She wondered if it had been that way for her parents once, but it embarrassed her to think about it. She knew what people did to get babies, but she could not picture her mother and father doing that. She had so many questions about love and sex and marriage, but there was no one to ask. Was it this way for all women? Did they all simply learn about such things on their wedding nights?
She watched the stars, thinking of Ramon again. With Ramon she would have feared nothing on her wedding night. A tear slipped down the side of her face. She rubbed at it. Was Ramon thinking of her tonight? She swallowed back a lump in her throat, deciding she must learn to stop thinking about him. She had probably been crazy to think there ever could have been anything between them. Ramon knew it. That was why he had left, it had to be. If only he had talked to her about it first, at least told her good-bye and that he would always love her the way she was sure she would always love him.
A wolf gave out another long howl that moved through the mountains as a spirit might. Its call reminded her of how lonesome she felt—crying out, but there was no one to listen. She closed her eyes, deciding she must learn to be stronger, like her parents. Both of them were very strong in their own ways.
She wished she were older. It seemed that adults were better able to accept things they could not change, able to handle heartaches and setbacks. She turned her thoughts to Chad and the way he had embraced her for a moment when they were alone, just before she left with her father. He had seemed sincerely sorry to see her go, sincerely worried that she would be all right. He had kissed her cheek, and when she looked into his eyes she saw a very handsome man who had saved her father’s life. Chad was everything a woman was supposed to want, and she told herself that as time passed and she got over Ramon, she would surely begin to feel the same passion and desire for Chad as she had felt for Ramon.
She closed her eyes, trying to concentrate on Chad, but always another face came to mind: dark eyes, dark hair, a man of gentle voice and gentle touch, a man she loved but could not have.
If ever a place could be called God’s country, Irene decided, this was it. They followed a constantly climbing pathway that zigzagged along the side of a mountain, heading toward Central City, where Kirk owned several mines. They were following a train of supply wagons belonging to the Pikes Peak Express Company, which was the primary freighting company for most of the mountain mining towns, as well as their connection to Denver and the rest of the world.
Up here, Irene thought, it seemed there was no “rest of the world.” She could see how easy it might be for a man to come up here and almost forget everything and everyone he left behind, and she still worried sometimes that Kirk might come up here and never return. Perhaps that was why her mother was so intent on making sure the family holdings remained intact, in case she was ever left alone again to care for her children. But Irene had come to know her father better on this trip, had come to realize he was more wonderful even than she had already thought. She wondered why her mother could not seem to see that. The whole family could have been so much happier if Bea would learn to be more like Kirk, to enjoy her life.
“Hold back a little, Irene,” Kirk told her then, pulling up his horse. “Let that last wagon get through there first.”
She watched, her heart tight with apprehension, as the last of the long line of freight wagons passed over one of the narrowest sections of the road, if it could be called a road. It was really nothing more than a pathway hacked out of the side of a mountain, parts of it natural, most of it man-made. This particular section had a gouge that cut into the outer edge of the road, creating a narrower path, barely wide enough for the wagons.
“Had a rock slide in here last year,” Kirk explained. “One big boulder landed there, breaking away the road. I hired some men to come back down here and cut into the mountain more to widen it in the other direction, but I guess they haven’t made it yet. I’ll have to check into it.”
Irene breathed a sigh of relief when the last wagon made it through. She looked down into a canyon that seemed a thousand feet deep. A river raged at the bottom, its torrent echoing in a rumble up through the canyon to those above. Irene realized that if a wagon went over here, nothing and no one would survive. They had already passed an area where the remnants of another wagon could be spotted on a rocky shelf several hundred feet below.
This was wild, dangerous country, but the most beautiful country Irene had ever seen. Brilliant, billowing waterfalls cascaded over rocks worn smooth from the water’s beating. The misty spray from the raging waters often created rainbows when the sun shone on them just right. The air was filled with the smell of sweet pine, a
nd silvery aspen leaves waved and glittered in the wind. She had seen bear, elk, deer, moose, and even a mountain lion, as well as an abundance of smaller animals. She had seen eagles soar, and her heart had soared with them. How she longed to live as they did, high in rocky peaks, free and wild, in total control.
Nature answered to no one. Nature did as it pleased. Animals roamed at will, and rocks came tumbling from precarious perches. She found it incredible that some of the overhanging rocks remained stationary. They looked ready to let loose at any moment, and sometimes they did. Rocks were everywhere, from immense boulders to tiny stones. Here and there a scraggly pine seemed to grow right out of rock.
Wildflowers amid an array of red, gray, pink, and white rocks turned mountainsides into a kaleidoscope of color. Surrounding mountains rose in purple and gray granite walls to snow-capped peaks that sparkled against a deep blue sky. The land was a shower of colors, a grand collection of sights and sounds unlike anything she had ever seen. For once she could quietly enjoy these mountains, take time to really see and listen and touch.
Irene was not afraid of the dangerous pathways. After all, she was with Kirk, and he had moved among these mountains nearly all his life. He knew what to watch for, sensed when a rock above them might give way, could smell danger. He sniffed out wild game to kill for their suppers, knew what swollen streams to stay away from, knew caves where a person could hole up when weather was bad.
“I love it up here, Father,” she spoke up as he took hold of Sierra’s bridle and led her past the narrow cutaway over which the last wagon had just passed.
“I knew you would,” he answered, glancing at Red. Both men knew why Irene Kirkland loved the mountains, loved nature and felt at home up here. Part of her should be living free and wild, as did the Indian brother she would never know. The same old agony tore through Kirk’s gut again. He felt like a traitor to his own daughter, wondered if he was doing her a disservice but afraid it was far too late to hit her with the truth now. At her tender age it could be devastating.
“I hope I get to come back again,” she was saying.
“Well, your mother has a lot of things planned for you over the next couple of years,” Kirk answered. “But maybe we can work something out. You need to see and understand all this, Irene, but you also need to be learning the business end of it, like John is doing, and someday Elly. And your mother wants you to be educated in the proper social etiquette, and all that. I don’t much care about those things, but your mother does, and you’re sure enough the most beautiful, gracious young lady in all of Denver, I’ll grant that.”
She blushed a little, embarrassed because of Red’s presence. She liked Red McKinley and his sing-song Irish accent. He was entertaining, humorous, good-natured; she liked him most of all because he was her father’s good friend.
“Someday they’ll bring the railroad to Denver, Kirk,” the man was saying, “and the next thing you know they’ll find a way to bring trains into these mountains and do away with those freight wagons.”
“You and your railroads,” Kirk answered, shaking his head. “You told me that years ago, and I still don’t see anybody laying tracks into Denver. As far as the mountains, that’s impossible. They’ll never lay track into country like this.”
“Ah, nothing is impossible, my friend. You should know that by now. And they’re already laying track across Kansas. You mark my words, David Kirkland. Buy up some land anywhere that you think a railroad might come through, and you won’t go wrong. It will be right valuable when they bring the trains through.”
Kirk just laughed. “I’ll think about that.”
“Think hard, my friend. I see Denver already has a foundry; and another factory making shot and shell, as well as a candle factory, and a soap factory. And there you are with all those warehouses full of fine goods from the west coast. Just think. If the railroad came to Denver, you could end up shipping your fancy things from China and such places by land all the way to places like Chicago and St. Louis. You wouldn’t have to depend on ships to take them all the way around Cape Horn, or pay those high freighting costs by wagon, with no guarantee your goods will get there. The railroad is fast and safe.”
Kirk frowned. “By God, you have a point there, Red.”
“You see? I predict there will be a railroad coming all the way across the country some day—coast to coast. Think what that would do for your business, and for Denver.”
Kirk glanced back at the man. “Red, I never thought you had a head for business. When did you start thinking about all this?”
“Why, I’ve thought about it for years.”
Kirk turned around to keep his eyes on the steep road ahead, slowing his horse again and telling Irene to stop for a minute. “That one section around the next curve is a real steep climb,” he explained. “Wait till the wagons get through. There’s always a danger one will break loose. If we stay around the bend here, it won’t come plowing into us and send us into eternity.”
Irene smiled, holding up her horse and drinking in the scenery below. She could see the winding road and its hairpin turns below her, feeling a chill at being able to look down and see where they had just been. The road formed a ribbonlike curl, making its way ever upward.
Kirk took a thin cigar from his coat pocket and lit it. “Red, you’re a forward-thinking man. If you want to set up a business in Denver, I’ll gladly back you. I’d like you to stay around. What do you say?”
“I told you once I didn’t come here for a loan. Hell, Kirk, I didn’t even know you were in Denver when I first got here.”
“Doesn’t matter. Fact remains, you seem ready to settle in some, and I like having you around. I don’t want you working for me. You can do better than that. And don’t tell me you haven’t thought about this. That’s why you’re telling me all these wonderful stories about how the railroad is going to come through and Denver is going to grow. What’s on your mind?”
Red grinned, looking a little embarrassed. “Well, actually I was thinking about starting up a lumber mill. I worked for a while for a logging company in Oregon, got to know how a lumber mill operates. With all the building that’s going on in Denver, how can I go wrong? I could lumber out pine from the foothills, and I could ship in raw hardwood from Oregon, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, places like that. It’s cheaper if you just order in the logs and do the milling and cutting locally. That way, people who are in a hurry to build this or that don’t have to wait for an order of finished wood from back East. Half the time a shipment comes in cut all wrong anyway. I could cut lumber to their specifications right there in Denver and get it to them right away.”
Kirk shook his head. “I’m impressed, Red. It amazes me that you had all this in mind.”
“Hell, I just never cared before. I’ve reached the point now where I have to care.”
Kirk took a puff on the cigar. “Well, I agree about the lumber mill. I don’t see how you could go wrong myself.”
Red removed his hat, running a hand through his thinning red hair. “It will take some cash, Kirk. I’ll need steam-powered cutting saws, carpenter tools, a building to work in, hired help—”
Kirk waved him off. “How much, Red?”
Red rubbed at his chin. “You figuring on me borrowing through your bank? I’m not sure your wife would approve of that. I’ve got no collateral, Kirk.”
“No bank loan. You’d have to pay a high interest rate. I’ll make you a personal loan, at only two percent interest. And I’ll give you time to get into operation before you have to pay anything back. And don’t worry about my wife. I’ll take care of that end of it.”
Irene wondered how the man was going to do that. She knew her mother well enough to know she would be furious with Kirk for this. She almost felt sorry for her father, knowing how Bea would react. She loved the man for he understood some things were more important than money; she knew her mother had no such philosophy. She remembered when she was very small, back in California, when Bea wo
rked such long hours she hardly ever got to see her. She remembered Bea bringing in more gold to hide under the floorboard. She handled that gold almost as if it were sacred.
“I’d need a good ten thousand dollars just to get started,” Red was telling Kirk.
“I’ll make it fifteen,” Kirk answered. “I have a separate account Bea keeps open to be used to invest in new mines and such. I’ll take it out of that.”
Red shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t want to make trouble between you and your wife. You ought to talk to her about it first.”
“Not when it comes to my personal friends. Besides, it’s left up to me to decide what to do with that money. My wife handles the bookwork, but only because I’m up here most of the time. I still have the last word. Fact is, I thought about the logging business back in California, but I knew I didn’t want to stay there, so I never got involved. Since we’ve been here, we’ve had our hands in so many other pots there hasn’t been time to think about a lumber mill. I’ll just call it an investment.” He maneuvered his horse back to Red and put out his hand. “A deal?”
Red’s eyes showed his gratefulness. He took Kirk’s hand. “Only if you agree to take a percentage of the profits over and above my payments to you, until the debt is paid back in full.”
“Forget it. It’s all the same thing,” Kirk answered, squeezing the man’s hand. “Just pay it back as fast as you can without jeopardizing the business.”
In the Shadow of the Mountains Page 21
