by Peter Grant
“Yessir!” the scout agreed. He returned the arrow to the quiver, handed it to Walt and bent to grasp Elijah’s feet. Samson drew his belt knife and cut off the arrow shaft still protruding from his friend’s chest. He tossed it to one side, sheathed the knife, then took Elijah’s shoulders. Walt picked up Elijah’s rifle and Rose collected his hat, which had been dislodged from his head during his fall. The second scout went after Samson’s and Elijah’s horses, which were standing some distance away.
They formed a melancholy procession across the grass as they returned to the wagon.
―――――
After supper that night, Walt and Samson dug a grave for Elijah in the roughly-fenced plot that served as the cemetery for the small town of Kit Carson. They worked by lantern light, piling the earth to one side, making sure the hole was deep enough to keep out varmints and scavengers. On the other side of the graveyard, a squad of soldiers dug two graves for their dead comrades.
Samson was silent, morose. As they began digging, he asked, “Suh, will de people here make a fuss about buryin’ a black man in dere cemetery?”
“Not while I’m around!” Walt said flatly. “He died fighting for all of us, so as far as I’m concerned, he earned the right to share this graveyard. Besides, how will they know he was black? We got here after dark, and he was already wrapped in a blanket.”
“He only got de one name, suh. All de white people got two or t’ree.”
“Then we’ll put ‘Elijah Ames’ on his headboard. That should take care of it until we take him to Denver City. We’ll worry about what to put on his headstone there when the time comes.”
Samson smiled for the first time since his friend’s death, his white teeth glistening in the lantern light. “I t’ink he’d like dat, suh.”
They dug in companionable silence for a while, until Samson said softly, “I keep t’inkin’, suh… it be my fault ’Lijah’s dead.”
Walt straightened, frowning. “Why would you say that?”
“But, suh, if I hadden’ said nothin’ ’bout him in St. Louee, you’d nebbuh have hired him, an’ he’d still be safe workin’ on de Queen.”
“If you’re going to look at it like that, you may as well say it’s my fault, too, because I hired him, I taught him to shoot, I gave him his first guns, I taught him to ride and drive a wagon, I gave him a horse, and I helped him get work as a teamster. Thing is, it ain’t my fault. If you want to blame someone, blame the Cheyenne.”
Walt leaned his spade against the side of the grave and took Samson’s shoulders in his hands, shaking him gently. “Samson, understand this real clear. When our time comes, it comes. None of us know the day or the hour, just like the Good Book says. You, or me, or Rose, or Elijah for that matter, could have been killed by those outlaws in Missouri, or the Cheyenne raiders at Fort Ellsworth, or Hunting Wolf’s war party, or even the bloody flux back at Pond Creek if we’d eaten with the garrison. Whose fault would it have been if we’d died any of those times?”
“I… I dunno, suh.”
“You don’t know because no one knows. I sure don’t. Life happens, whether we like it or not. Death comes in many forms, and from many directions. All we can do is face it. Some run away from it, but none of us are like that. Elijah sure wasn’t. He died like a man.”
“He sure did, suh!”
“In the funeral service there’s a line that reads, ‘In the midst of life we are in death’. I heard that a whole lot during the war. It’s true. Elijah lived each day like a man, and he died like a man, fighting to the end. We’ll remember his courage, and we’ll tell our children about him so that his example will live on. If Miss Rose and I have a son someday, I’ll ask her to include Elijah as one of his names, in his memory.”
“Yassuh,” Samson said slowly. “She be a good lady. I reckon she will, too. I t’ink ’Lijah wouldn’ want me mopin’ an’ weepin’ an’ wailin’ ovah him like an ol’ woman.”
“No, I think he’d want you to go on with your life and make him proud by the way you live it. If what the preachers tell us is right, you’ll see him again one day, and I’m sure he’ll want to know all about it. Make sure you have good things to tell him.”
Samson was silent for a long moment. “T’ank you, suh,” he said at last. “I guess I needed to hear dat. I’ll be all right now.”
Walt gave him his hand. Samson took it and gripped it strongly. They stood there for a moment together, united in their sorrow.
It was ten o’clock before they got back to the wagon. Rose had hot coffee waiting for them.
“We’ll bury Elijah at dawn,” Walt told her as they drank.
“But the soldiers are burying their dead by lantern-light tonight. Will we have time in the morning before the wagons pull out?”
“They’ll start while we’re doing that, but it takes at least an hour to get all the wagons moving. We’ll be finished in time to join the last of them. We can move up the train from there.”
“Be you gwine t’ read from de Bible for him, Miz Rose?” Samson asked.
“I’ll planning to.”
“T’ank you. He’d like dat.”
The scouts came around the circle of wagons well before dawn to wake everybody and give them time to harness their teams. Walt walked over to Matt Harkness and explained what they were about to do. “We’ll tag onto the end of the train, then move up the line,” he concluded.
“All right. Sorry about your man.”
Walt felt like shouting at Harkness that no one would have died if he’d kept the train together, but he bit his tongue. The man was doing the best he could. He’d made a mistake yesterday, and Elijah had paid the price for it: but during the war, Walt had seen mistakes kill hundreds of men on both sides, and never seen anyone held accountable for it. That was life.
They drove the ambulance to the cemetery in the half-light of dawn. The scouts joined them, uninvited but welcome, and helped Samson lower Elijah’s blanket-wrapped body into his grave. They stood beside it in respectful silence.
As soon as it was light enough, Rose read the Twenty-Third Psalm from her bible. When she’d finished, Samson handed her his Bible, the only book he owned, finger indicating a passage. “I cain’t read as nice as you, Miz Rose. Would you read dis for him too, please?”
“Yes, of course.” She cleared her throat, and read the account of the prophet Elijah being taken up into heaven. There was a catch in her voice as she read Elisha’s request to be given a double portion of Elijah’s spirit. When she’d finished, she closed the Bible and returned it to Samson. They all stood in silence for a moment.
At last Samson said, “Elijah had a kind heart. I hope he gibs me some of his spirit, too, if de good Lawd allow dat. Mr. Walt, do you t’ink it’d be all right for me to take his guns, an’ use dem instead o’ mine, in his mem’ry?”
“I think he’d like that,” Walt said quietly, and Rose nodded. “We have no way to trace his heirs, if there are any, so I guess all he brought with him is yours now. I reckon he’d want it that way.”
Walt and Samson shoveled the dirt back into the grave, then Walt planted a wooden board at its head. On it he’d painted simply, ‘Elijah Ames. He was a good man,’ and underneath it, the date of his death.
They left Elijah to his eternal rest in the bright sunrise, and turned their horses’ heads toward Denver City and the Rocky Mountains.
Matt Grolier read the letter of introduction Samson presented to him, and nodded slowly. “Tom Jones says good things about you, and I know he’s choosy about who he recommends. Trouble is, Denver City’s a tough place to do business right now.” He glanced at Walt and Rose as they stood beside Samson in his freight company’s office. “How much do you know about what’s been going on out here?”
“Only what we heard in Leavenworth City before we left there,” Walt told him.
“They probably glossed over the low points. Lemme tell you all a few things. During the Civil War the miners dug out most of the shallow o
re round here. They tried to go deeper, but their old-style mills couldn’t separate all the gold from the different types of rock down there. That meant a lot of mines closed an’ a lot of miners drifted away. Businesses set up to supply them suffered. Mine did, too.
“Next came the big fire of 1863. Most of the center of town was burned to ashes. They reckon it did a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of damage, not just to buildings but also to the goods stored in ’em.” He nodded solemnly at their shocked expressions. “That put a lot of people out of business, and everyone they employed out of work. Some folks lost everything. After the fire they passed laws sayin’ that all new buildings downtown have to be built of brick or stone, to make ’em more fireproof. Thing is, with the double blow of the mines in trouble and losin’ so much in the fire, lots of folks couldn’t afford to rebuild—not even in wood. That’s why you still see so many gaps in downtown blocks.”
“Surely they could have sold their lots, and got some money back that way?” Walt asked.
Grolier shook his head. “With the mines in trouble an’ the number of people leaving town, there weren’t that many buyers. Things got even worse after bad floods in ’64. They damaged more buildings, an’ drove more people out of business. Last year all the grazing around town got ate up by a plague of grasshoppers. We had to buy hay from a long ways off and haul it here. The extra cost near on broke us. To cap it all, Injuns have been causin’ trouble for wagon trains for years. It makes it much more expensive to bring in goods an’ supplies. They cost me half a dozen wagons an’ their teams just last year, and others have lost more.
“A lot of folks just gave up. They quit and left. I reckon we’ve lost at least a quarter of those who lived in Denver City before the war. Others hung on, hopin’ for better times—I’m one of ’em—but they’ve been a long time comin’. Lots of folks are running out of money. Right now, cash is king. If you’ve got it, there are real bargains to be had in land an’ buildings—sometimes twenty-five cents on the dollar, sometimes as low as ten for properties that got flooded. Heck, I’ve seen, with my own two eyes, the deeds to downtown lots that once fetched thousands of dollars, changing hands as bets worth a few hundred greenbacks in a poker game!” He looked as if he wanted to spit in disgust.
“Still, I don’t want to sound too gloomy. Things are likely to get better in the next year or two. There are new mills being built to separate the gold out of the deeper ores. That’ll make the mines profitable again. Now that the war’s over, the army’s bringin’ in more troops to put an end to Injun raids. As miners come back, so will the businesses that supply them. That’s why I’m holding on. I reckon things are going to improve, but that ain’t happened yet. Times are still tough.”
“Do you have faith in Denver City’s future?” Rose asked.
“Yeah, I do. Even if the mines are slow to come back, they say we’re sure to become the Territorial Capital next year. That’ll bring in a lot of business. Where there’s politicians, there’s money.” He winked, and they all laughed. He turned to Samson. “I’d like to hire you, I surely would. If you come to me in the spring of next year, I’ll likely have a job for you. Right now, though, I don’t. I’ve had to lay off more than half my teamsters as it is. Sorry.”
“I unnerstan’, suh,” Samson said with a sigh. “If I’m here nex’ year an’ need a job, I’ll stop by.”
As they left the office, Walt said, “Samson, don’t worry. You’ve got a job with us until at least next spring. Next year you can decide whether you want to go back on the wagons, or do something else.”
“Dat’s good news, suh. T’ank you. What we gwine t’ be doin’?”
“I’ll tell you more tomorrow. You can take the rest of today and tonight off, and look around the town—maybe find that hot bath and chicken dinner you were hankering after.” Samson smiled broadly. “Of course, one thing you’ll be doing soon is going back to Kit Carson with a coffin, to collect Elijah’s body and bring it here. We’ll bury him in Denver City.”
“Another thing,” Rose added. “You can read and write a little, but not do figures, right?”
“Yes’m.”
“This fall and winter, I’ll teach you more about reading, writing and arithmetic. That’ll help you in anything you do in future.”
“T’ank you, Miz Rose! Dat’ll be a real blessin’.” He hesitated. “Be you gwine t’ teach school here?”
“Probably, yes.”
“Ma’am, would you t’ink about mebbe teachin’ more folks like me to read, write an’ figure, an’ mebbe speak better, too? Dere be udder black folks here—we saw dem dis mornin’.” Walt and Rose nodded. They’d driven in ahead of the wagon train as it approached the city. Samson went on, “I reckon a lot of dem will have been slaves, like me. We didden’ get taught much back den. Dere might be enough people wantin’ t’ learn that you could make as much money teachin’ us as you would at a school for chilluns.”
“I hadn’t considered it, but you’re right, of course.” She began to smile. “Let me think about it. If we can find a suitable place to use for a classroom, it might be possible. I’m sure I can order Ray’s Arithmetic series, McGuffey’s readers, Fowler’s grammar, and books like that for everyone, even though they’ll take time to get here by wagon train.”
“T’ank you, Miz Rose.”
―――――
That night, sitting around the fire drinking coffee, Rose said, “So what do you have in mind for us, darling?”
Walt settled himself more comfortably. “D’you remember the book we read last winter about the 1849 gold rush in California?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Did you notice who made money out there?”
She frowned. “Only a few of the miners were successful. Most went broke.”
“That’s true, but it’s not what I meant. Most of those who became rich were merchants selling supplies to the miners. F’r instance, a gun selling for twenty dollars in Tennessee sold for six or seven times that in the gold fields. The same went for spades, axes, clothes—just about everything.”
Her face lit up. “Oh! I see what you mean. Is it like that here too?”
“It probably was, until things went wrong over the past few years. When they start going right again, I reckon that’s still where the money will be. I want us to be part of that.”
“But, darling, we don’t have enough money to set up a miners’ supply store.”
“That’s not what I have in mind. Besides, there’s big money behind those stores. Their owners will likely do their best to crush small fry like us if we tried to muscle in on their market. I won’t risk that. Thing is, those same owners will hire workers, and they’ll need somewhere to live. Remember what Mr. Grolier said this morning about bargains to be had in property?”
“Yes.”
“What if we use about half our money—say, three thousand dollars—to invest in bargains like that? If he’s right about cash being tight, we’ll be in a very strong position. I’m thinking of buying as many houses as we can afford. One will be for us to live in, the others to rent out, or sell when times get better. We might also look for some big places to use as boarding houses, renting them by the room. I also want to buy or build a livery stable. People will always need somewhere to keep or rent horses, ’specially as new folks arrive in town. The four horses from our wagon team and our two spares will be our rental stock. That’ll save us hundreds of dollars that we’d otherwise have to spend to buy them here. We can store this ambulance and stable its team and my horse there, too.”
Rose nodded thoughtfully. “We’ll have to make sure to buy in good parts of town, where people will want to live or do business.”
“Yes, and on higher ground, too, in case floods happen again. It’ll be more expensive to buy in such places, but if prices are real low right now that’ll balance out. We’ll spend another thousand or so fixing up and painting the houses. Samson and I will do the work, which will save a lot of money. We’l
l also buy furniture for ourselves, the houses we plan to rent out, and for the boarding houses. With so many folks having left town, there’s got to be a lot of used furniture going cheap right now, because there’ll be few buyers. You can help us choose good-quality stuff.
“As business picks up again, we’ll rent out the houses, and possibly sell them once prices have improved enough to give us a worthwhile profit. If we get too busy, we can hire people to help us run the boarding houses. If Samson wants, I’ll teach him to manage the livery stable, then let him hire his own help from among his people.”
“Oh, yes! I think he’ll do very well at that. He may not be properly schooled yet, but I’ll take care of that this winter; and he’s got a head on his shoulders. He thinks.”
“Yeah, and we know we can trust him. That’s worth gold, right there.” Walt stretched. “If we’re willing to be patient and work hard for three or four years, I reckon we can earn several times more than we brought with us. That’ll give us the freedom to choose whatever we decide to do next. Who knows? We might even take a vacation for a year, to travel and see more of the country. The railroad will be clear across the continent by then, after all.”
Rose smiled eagerly. “That would be wonderful!”
“Yes, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Remember what Samson said? We’ll look for a building where you can set up your own school, to teach adults how to read, write and figure. If need be, we can build it next to the livery stable, on ground we own, with an apartment above it. Samson can live there, to look after the school as well as the stable. What’s more, we’ll only have to spend four to five thousand dollars to do everything we’ve just talked about. We’ll still have all the rest of the money we brought from Kansas—at least a thousand dollars—plus the three hundred we got at Pond Creek for our wagon. That’ll be enough to live on for up to two years if we’re frugal, even if we earn nothing else—although I’m sure we will—and also pay Samson’s wages for the next year.”
