In 1892 Irene bore her last child by Ramon. Complications left it impossible for her to bear any more children, something that grieved her but relieved Ramon, who worried that giving birth in her forties was much too dangerous. They could enjoy their love now without the constant fear of losing another child, or losing Irene. The little boy she delivered, who they named Ernesto was healthy; and once Irene got over the depression that followed the child’s birth, Ramon convinced her that her condition was God’s way of telling them enough was enough. Counting their own children as well as those they had brought to the marriage, the adopted boy Ben and Yellow Eagle’s son, Sam, their children now numbered ten.
Irene was recovered and healthy again when yet another tragedy struck in 1893, and K-E, Denver and Colorado, indeed, the whole country, was put to the test by a stock market crash and a severe depression. The collapse of a major British banking house caused thousands of British investors to sell their American securities, which put a drain on America’s gold reserve, as well as hitting Denver hard, since the area banked heavily on British investments. The stock market collapsed, and to make matters worse for Colorado, the government voted to go to the gold standard, undercutting Colorado’s now-primary staple—silver. Besides the U.S. Treasury’s halt to buying silver, India, a great consumer of the metal, stopped making silver coins.
Silver mines closed overnight. As in ’73, many businessmen committed suicide. Silver barons, like H. A. W. Tabor, crashed into ruin, losing everything, and unemployed miners flooded into Denver. Kirk, Irene, and Ramon were forced to meet with K-E representatives to determine just which businesses could stay afloat and which could not. Ramon’s contracting business came to a temporary standstill, and only sound investments and substantial savings would help them get through yet more hard times.
Several of K-E’s important holdings in Colorado Springs were lost, due mostly to John’s careless handling and poor bookkeeping. When the panic of ’93 hit, they discovered some of the southern holdings were much deeper in debt than anyone had realized. Irene blamed herself, for not keeping a closer eye on John. She had thought he was doing better. After all, he was forty-five years old. He had been running things at Colorado Springs, albeit with help, for over twenty-three years now. But not long after the crash of the stock market, they received a telegram from K-E Colorado Springs, telling of the losses, as well as informing them that John had stopped coming to work all together. It was decided that in spite of how busy the family was with the financial crisis, someone had better go and talk to John. Irene insisted it should be she, since she was usually the only one John would listen to.
“I have a terrible feeling about this,” she told Ramon when she boarded the train at Union Station.
He squeezed her hands. “Just remember that we have all tried to help John over the years, especially you. His problems come from the inside, Irene, not anything we have done. It’s the drinking.” He kissed her tenderly. “I love you. Everything is going to be all right.”
Her eyes teared. “Everything is such a mess, Ramon. What if we lose it all?”
“Irene, we are not going to lose it all. Remember what your father told you…and even your mother before she died. Do not let K-E take over your life. Whether the company thrives or crumbles, it does not matter. We still have each other, the children, our love. That is all we ever need. Always remember that.”
His words stuck in her mind as the Denver and Rio Grande rumbled its way south, past fields of sugar beets, one part of K-E that had remained stable. She looked across the plains, trying to remember how many years ago she had ridden out there with Hank, rounding up cattle…twenty-three years! Had Hank really been dead that long? She still could not think of that time in her life without remembering the horror of life with Chad, and she pushed it all away. Ramon was right. They had each other. That was all that mattered.
The train came into the station at Colorado Springs, and Irene rented a buggy to John’s apartment in the Kirkland Hotel. He was not there. The desk clerk caught sight of her as she came from his room and called out to her. She thought he looked rather pale and shaken as she came closer. “You’re looking for your brother, Mrs. Vallejo?” the man asked.
“Yes. Do you know where he is?”
The man sighed, his eyes looking misty. “I’m sorry, ma’am. Some men from K-E came looking for him yesterday, too. He’d been gone for four or five days. One of them came back in here just this morning to tell me they found John. He’s at the hospital. I’m afraid…they don’t expect him to live. I expect by now they’ve wired K-E up in Denver. You must have just missed the news on your way down.”
Irene felt her heart tighten. John. In spite of all his faults and weakness, he had remained a loving brother. “What happened?” she asked.
“Well, ma’am, it seems he went on quite a binge in Old Colorado City. You, uh, you know how he drinks. The men I talked to think it was the depression that set him off…losing so much of K-E. He blamed himself. I guess he got to drinking and couldn’t quit. Reports from Old Colorado City are that he was gambling, running with the…well, the loose women…and getting into fights. He was found in an alley…stabbed. It’s not likely they’ll ever find out who did it. They took what was left of his money, even took his clothes.”
Irene closed her eyes, horrible grief welling up inside her. John! What a hideous way for his life to end! So unhappy. He had always been so unhappy. “Thank you,” she said quietly, walking on shaking legs back outside and ordering the driver to take her to the hospital. How she got through the next few hours, she was not sure. She only wished she had Ramon with her.
At the hospital she discovered the rumored diagnosis was true. John was not expected to live much longer. She went into his room, wanting to cry out at his sick, grayish-yellow coloring. The doctor told her someone had stabbed him with a good-size knife, cutting deep into his bowels and kidneys. There was no hope.
Drawing on that strange, deep strength that always seemed to come forward to help her through a crisis, she approached the bed, leaning over her brother and touching his brow. “John?”
He opened bloodshot eyes and managed a half grin. “Hey, sis.” It was all he managed to get out.
“I’m right here, John. I love you.” She gently took hold of his hand, and he managed to squeeze hers, letting her know he was aware of her presence. For several minutes nothing was said. He was dying, and they both knew it. He only needed to know she was there. Memories stabbed at Irene’s heart, memories of her and John and Ramon talking and laughing at the old mansion when she first met Ramon; of John talking with her after she married Chad, telling her he would never tell anyone she still loved Ramon; of the day he had come into her room and held her after Hank had been killed. John had always understood, always looked out for her.
“Mother…she’d sure…rail me for…this,” he suddenly spoke up in a raspy voice. “But…she wouldn’t…realize this is…because of her.”
“John, Mother loved you. She couldn’t have stopped you in your later years if you wanted to do something else with your life. It’s the whiskey that did this to you, not Mother.”
“She’s…the reason I drank…then I couldn’t stop. Sorry I disappointed you…Irene…Glad…at least…you are happy…now.” He grimaced then, clasping her hand so tightly that it hurt. “My God…the pain,” he groaned then, a tear slipping out of his eye. The words tore at Irene’s heart.
“I’m right here, John.”
He breathed in deep groans for a moment before answering. “You’re…always here for me. You’re the best one, Irene. I’m glad K-E…is in your hands…Ramon’s…Hope Mother…knows Red…got his share, too. Elly…she got what she deserved…nothing. I wish it all could have been different. I should have…defied Mother. I…should have been…a carpenter.” He started crying. “That’s…all I…wanted to do.”
“John, you still can. If you can just pull through this, Ramon will help you any way he can. You know that.
We’ll all help you stop drinking and you can do whatever you want with your life.”
He grimaced again, squeezing her hand as though desperate. “My God…I see her,” he groaned. He suddenly smiled, and his eyes opened. An amazing, peaceful look came upon his face. “Mama,” he whispered.
The breath wheezed out of him then, and Irene sensed there was suddenly no life in his hand. She leaned forward and closed his eyes. “Good-bye, John, my good, sweet brother,” she said softly. She lay her head on his shoulder and wept.
Kirk was inconsolable. His only other living son was dead now, and he felt partially responsible, blaming himself for never being able to get close to John. It was a bleak time for Irene, with the depression taking its toll on the business and John’s death taxing her emotional stamina. Through it all there was Ramon. Always there was Ramon.
John was buried beside his mother, in the same graveyard where the first baby Irene lost was buried, where Ramon’s first two wives and his little son were buried, where Mary O’Day was buried, after dying in the Denver fire back in ’63…and where Susan Stanner rested in peace. The newspaper had been polite about how John died, not mentioning he had been on a drunken binge, but most people suspected.
It was two hours before Irene and Ramon could convince Kirk to leave the grave. Kirk was seventy-two years old now, still a strong, imposing man for his age, but suddenly seeming to age considerably after the economic collapse and John’s death.
“Bea and I…we had it all once, didn’t we,” he groaned. “Look at what it got us. I have two dead sons, and a wayward daughter I’ll probably never see again.” He turned to Irene, tears staining his face. “But then there’s you. When I think of you, Irene, I know everything is going to be all right.”
He sniffed and wiped at his eyes.
“You’d better come home and rest, Kirk,” Ramon told the man. “You come to our house. You shouldn’t go back to that hotel suite alone.”
Kirk shook his head. “No. I’m not going back to either place. I’ve made up my mind.” He looked at Irene again, seeing the fear in her eyes. “I’m going to be all right, Irene. I’m going back to the mountains, deep into the Rockies, beyond the mining towns, beyond civilization.”
“Father—”
He put a finger to her lips. “It’s something I need to do, Irene. You should understand that better than anyone. I’m going back to my mountains, and I’m going to live the way I used to live, before all this.” He waved his arm in the direction of downtown Denver. “I want to remember what it was like before men like me allowed this to happen…what it was like when it was just the Indians, and trappers like myself. I’m going to the mountains, and nobody is going to stop me.”
“Father, you aren’t the young man who once roamed around out there. You know how cold it gets up there, how thin the oxygen is, how dangerous that country can be.”
“I damn well do know, and I remember how to take care of myself.” His eyes teared anew. “Irene, I don’t want to die down here in a city. It’s true I helped build it, but only because I wanted to stay here, wanted to please your mother. It’s done now, and K-E is in good hands. I’ve done all I can do for this town. It’s somebody else’s turn now, and I’m tired. All I ever wanted was to be in those mountains, and I’ve been afraid I’d never get the chance to go back. Now I’m going to do it. Please understand. If I do die up there, I’ll die a hell of a lot happier than if I die here.”
“Let him go, Irene,” Ramon told her. “You know that he is right.”
Irene broke into tears, embracing her father. “Take me with you,” she sobbed. “You never took me back to the mountains like you promised, Father.”
His arms came around her, and he smiled sadly as he patted her shoulder. “No, I never did, did I? But I think you will find your own way in those mountains one day. You’ll go, Irene, and when you do, you’ll know that I am with you.” He noticed an eagle fly overhead then, and he pulled away, pointed to it. “Look up there, Irene.”
All the children who were lined up beside Ramon, some of them crying, looked up at the bird their grandfather had pointed out.
“It’s an eagle—a good sign. The sign of the eagle means everything is going to be all right. It’s good luck, especially to an Indian, and most all of you children have Indian blood.”
Irene met his eyes. “Once you go, you won’t be back, will you,” she said quietly, more a statement than a question. “I’ll never see you again.”
Kirk touched her face. “Maybe not, but I’ll always be with you, Irene. Every time the mountains cast their shadow across Denver, I’ll be watching over things. You can’t bury a man’s spirit, Irene, only his body. His spirit lives on, in the things he loved, and in his children and grandchildren.”
He pulled her close, and the eagle let out an almost piercing call, as though to beckon those to whom the land truly belonged. Sam looked up at the magnificent bird, thinking about his grandfather’s words. Yes, perhaps spirits did live on. Perhaps the spirit of his father, Yellow Eagle, lived in that beautiful bird that floated above him. He was seventeen now. Soon he would get his college degree and he would go and teach his people. It was surely true, then, about the circle of life. He would go back to his own, and his grandfather would go back to the mountains from which he had come.
Chapter Forty-one
All the children were present for Ernesto’s first birthday August 30, 1893. Irene hired a photographer to take a family portrait. She sat near the fireplace of Ramon’s beautiful Spanish-style home, which they both had shared in Denver for sixteen years now, sixteen of the happiest years of Irene’s life, in spite of the problems with K-E, with Elly, in spite of John’s death, and her mother’s. She knew now she could bear anything life handed to her, because she had Ramon…and the children.
She held little Ernesto on her lap, and Ramon, now turned fifty, stood behind her, still handsome and virile, the touch of gray at his temples only making him look more distinguished. Irene, forty- seven, had a fuller, but still lovely, well-rounded figure. Her hair was showing only slight touches of silver-gray, and there were a few tiny lines about her eyes. But what age tried to take away from her, elegance, kindness, and sophistication made up for. She was a woman who needed to love and be loved, and Ramon and the family they had raised together fulfilled all the needs that had been denied her in her early years.
The children took their various places, according to size and age: David, twenty-two; Sharron, eighteen; Alejandro, nearly eighteen; Samuel, seventeen, his hair still shoulder-length; Eduardo, fifteen; Elena, twelve; Anna, eight; Miguel, five; one-year-old Ernesto on Irene’s lap; and the adopted son, Ben, now sixteen, sitting to Irene’s left.
Irene was proud of her ten children, her heart longing for the three she had lost. David was teaching now, and Alejandro was working with his father at Vallejo Construction. Samuel was preparing for college and would leave them to teach on a reservation when his schooling was finished. Sharron was a rare beauty, a well-schooled, elegant, exotically beautiful young woman who lately had developed an attraction to Alejandro that was more than sisterly. The two of them had completely different sets of parents, so Ramon and Irene had no objection to the sudden new love Ramon’s son and Irene’s daughter had found. They both well knew how deep and abiding young love could be, and they were not about to make the mistake with their children that had kept them apart when they were young.
Irene refused to compel any of the children to become active with K-E. She had long ago determined that if none of them wanted anything to do with the company, then it would simply be sold off at her death. Her own mother’s driving determination to devote everything to K-E, and her insistence that her children do the same, had destroyed John and Elly, and had nearly destroyed Irene. David showed some interest, as did Ben and Eduardo, and both worked part-time for the company; but Irene made sure it was solely of their own free will. She wondered sometimes, always smiling at the thought, what her mother would th
ink if she knew that someday K-E might belong to a man fathered by Hank Loring, one fathered by Ramon Vallejo, and another having absolutely no blood relation to either Ramon or Irene, a man who had once been a poor, orphaned street urchin who could only dream of such riches.
The photographer snapped the photograph, the flash powder exploding and making some of the children scream and laugh. Ernesto started crying, and Irene held him close and patted his bottom. Someone knocked at the door, and Rose answered it, ushering Red McKinley into the huge dining room, where all the children had taken their places around the table to eat birthday cake.
“Red!” Ramon hurried over to shake the man’s hand. “What brings you here? Come in and have some cake. We are celebrating Ernesto’s first birthday.”
Red moved his eyes to Irene. “Your wife sent for me,” he told Ramon.
Irene set Ernesto in a high chair and moved to embrace Red, whose hair and mustache now showed more gray than red. He was seventy years old now, but still amazingly solid and agile for his age. Irene guessed it was due to the rugged, active life he once led, the same kind of life that had kept her father stronger than his age should allow.
“I didn’t think you’d be able to make it so quickly,” Irene told him, stepping back. “It’s so good to see you, Red. You don’t come visit nearly enough.”
“Well, I stay pretty busy with all the different businesses, you know. No retirement for me. Men like me have to keep going or die.” He looked from Irene to Ramon and back to Irene. “So, what is it you wanted?” he asked.
Irene looked at Ramon, a worried look in her eyes. “I’m afraid even Ramon doesn’t know about this,” she answered. “I was going to tell him tonight.”
“Tell me what?” Ramon asked. He knew that one thing Irene had learned from her mother was a fierce independence. He saw a look in her eyes that told him she had decided to do something of which he might not approve. “What are you cooking up now, Mrs. Vallejo?”
In the Shadow of the Mountains Page 73
