The Agent's Mail-Order Bride

by Heidi Vanlandingham

  “Is there a reason why you’re standing here staring into a dark tunnel?”

  Tate glanced over at Thad who stood beside him then turned his gaze back to the ominous opening. For some strange reason, he was almost loath to go inside.

  “Just watched an interesting conversation between Welder and Black. Black was questioning why we weren’t here.”

  Thad chuckled. “And knowing you, you just had to open your mouth, didn’t you?”

  “Yep. I don’t like that man.”

  His friend frowned. “Which one? Welder or Black?”

  “‘Right now? Both.” Tate walked over and traded his hat for a miner’s cap. He lit the small candle and gingerly moved his fingers along the front of the hat’s leather to find the metal brackets that would hold the candle in place.

  “I also don’t like carrying fire on my head. Maybe I can talk Sutton into investing in a few lamps instead?”

  “I doubt it,” Thad said, his own fingers fumbling to get the candle in place. “Man seems very attached to his money...know what I mean?”

  “Yeah, I do. Did you find the sheriff?”

  “Yeah. Sheriff’s name is Johnston. Told me he’d be up this way after a bit to cart the man back to town for burial. Didn’t seem too surprised when he heard about it though.”

  Tate slowly walked deeper into the mine, his boots dragging as the heavy scent of earth filled his nostrils.

  “What little we’ve learned about Sutton and the control he has over this town, I’d be surprised if the sheriff wasn’t in cahoots with him. I don’t know about you, but there’s something nagging at me, telling me we shouldn’t be here. Screaming at me, actually,” he said as they walked along the dark, dust-filled tunnel. “Do you feel it?”

  The dim yellow light from Thad’s candle moved up and down, the fluctuation playing with Tate’s eyes.

  “I know exactly what you’re talking about. This place is downright spooky. I would never have made a good miner.” Thad said.

  “I wasn’t talking about the spooky tunnel, but I wouldn’t have made a good miner either. Come to think of it, I’m not exactly sure what I’d be good at.”

  Thad grunted. “Seriously? You’re fantastic at what you do now. Tate, you make people want to be better than they are...and you are a great leader. Don’t well yourself short.”

  Tate cleared his throat, not sure what to say. That was the first time anyone had given him such an honest and humbling compliment.

  “I have a lot to do to make up for my past actions. More than I like to think about.”

  “You aren’t alone in that, you know. You move from job to job with the world on your shoulders, and it isn’t necessary. We were young and stupid...gullible even—.”

  “Desperate is more like it,” Tate interrupted.

  “True. We were hungry kids with no home or help. We did what we could to survive, so don’t belittle that. We survived...I survived because of you.”

  Tate tried to swallow past the growing lump in his throat as Thad’s declaration stirred an unsettling emotion that churned in his gut. He cleared his throat.

  “Thanks for that, although you would have been fine whether I was there or not.”

  Thad scoffed. “No, I wouldn’t have. You forget the person who always got us in trouble was Welder. The only good thing he did was push us together. Living under the stairwell in back of the bank... Well, a couple more nights under there, and I probably wouldn’t have survived.” His low chuckle filled the narrowing tunnel.

  “Do you remember what happened next?”

  “How could I forget? We robbed the grocers. What a great way to start a better life.”

  A dim light flickered in the blackness in front of them and steadily grew larger until a man’s pale face came into view. Dirt was embedded in the creases of skin around his eyes and mouth, but the man had an honest, if not annoyed, expression on his face.

  “You the new boss man we were told to expect?” his deep voice grumbled, reminding Tate of boulders tumbling down a hill.

  “I am,” he answered.

  “Well, you’d better follow me then. Not unusual for people to get lost down here their first time in...second and third times too, if I’m bein’ truthful. One miner roamed around in here for a full day before he found his way back out. Never returned either—too spooked.”

  Tate and Thad followed the miner down a confusing maze of tunnels. Finally, from somewhere up ahead, several voices rose in anger. Two more turns, and a small group of men came into view.

  “How large is this mine?” Thad asked as they drew nearer to the arguing miners.

  “We need to walk through the older shafts to get to the newer ones as well as the air shafts we’re working on now, so maybe one mile of tunnels?”

  The miner stopped. “Just so’s you know, my name’s Bernie Mitchell.” He waved toward the miners with a dirty hand.

  “This here’s why I went lookin’ for you. That big feller there was down here this morning and put my men in harm’s way.”

  Tate stared at Welder who was still arguing with the men and couldn’t help but wonder what he was trying to instigate and why? The same feeling of disaster swirling inside his gut earlier returned. He sighed, slightly shaking his head, but his gaze never left Welder’s blank face.

  “What did he do?”

  “Wouldn’t listen to my men, that’s what,” Bernie said. “We’ve been asking Sutton for more timber so we could construct the square-set timbers like the riggin’ at Comstock. Not that the ore is bunched up like it is there. The ground here is rocky and digging out the silver causes too many cave-ins. Too many decent, hard-working men have been injured or killed down here. It’s dangerous and the deeper we go, it gets more so! Damn idiot tried to light a stick of dynamite in an area where the walls are too weak for digging. He would’ve brought the entire side of the mountain down on top of us!”

  Tate wasn’t surprised. Welder, not to mention Sutton, would place riches over lives. He knew too many men just like them.

  He leaned closer to Thad. “We’ve got to get to the bottom of this soon before someone else dies, especially on our watch.”

  Thad only shook his head then walked over to the group of men.

  “Hold on a minute,” Thad interrupted the miner standing next to him. He placed one hand on the man’s chest and the other on Welder’s.

  “Pull back the tempers a minute and let us figure out how to fix this.” Thad waited until everyone calmed down a bit and the grumbling died down then dropped his hands.

  “My name is Thad Carlile and the man standing behind you is your new boss, Tate. I’m sure if we just talk it out, we can resolve whatever the issue is.” He stared hard at Welder.

  “That damn idiot tried to kill us, that’s what the issue is!” One of the miners yelled then nodded at the others, who repeated the motion and rallied the previous anger.

  Tate walked up and stopped next to Welder.

  “Can’t seem to stop causing trouble, can you, Don? Was it on purpose?” No matter how hard he tried, Tate couldn’t keep the anger out of his voice.

  “For now, why don’t you go back to town and wait for us there.”

  Don sneered. “Kicking me out so soon? Or, are you trying to get me out of the picture and take the spoils for yourself?”

  Tate glared at the man who, two months ago, he would have called his best friend. But the person standing in front of him now wasn’t the boy he’d grown up with. The person looking out for him and Thad like an older brother, even though he was only one year older that Tate and two years older than Thad, had been gone for years, but neither he nor Thad were willing to give up on Don. Not yet.

  “Go back to Alta and get yourself a drink—maybe two—and think about what you just said to me. We’ll meet up tonight and discuss whatever your problem is...like men, not children.”

  Turning his back on Welder, Tate faced the men.

  “As Thad said, my name is Tate, or I’ll
answer to Boss. I’m the new foreman of this mine.”

  From the corner of his eye, he caught Welder’s thick form slink around the corner and into the tunnel. He let out a quick breath of relief, thankful Don hadn’t caused any more problems. He turned to the closest miner.

  “Now, tell me your names and we’ll go from there.”

  Thirty minutes later, as he followed Bernie back down the tunnel to where the men were working, Tate already pegged two of the men as possible troublemakers. All the others seemed like hard workers who simply wanted to be paid for a good day’s work. Not that Sutton was paying them the going rate, but he’d try to help them with that as well.

  The light from Bernie’s candle bounced on the rock walls and low ceiling. From the echoing footsteps behind him, Tate knew Thad followed.

  “This tunnel here’s where that man, Welder, started arguing—”

  An explosion slammed them back from the narrow tunnel opening they’d almost reached. Everything around them went dark, the blast blowing out their candles. Tate lay there a moment, trying to find his bearings when he heard a moan somewhere close by. He tried to sit up but couldn’t move his arm. He coughed as the dust and sediment fell on top of them, but the feeling of being pinned to the earth brought out a fear inside of him he couldn’t control. All he wanted was to get outside where the heavy earth wasn’t suffocating him.

  Chapter 9

  Cat stretched, her hands pressing into her aching back. She spent the entire morning cleaning the house, evidently something Rose Marie had never done much of. Her thoughts turned to Tate. They had been married almost a week. It still seemed surreal. She was Mrs. Tate, which wasn’t technically correct by the day’s standards, but she didn’t know Tate’s first name. It didn’t bother her too much, but she couldn’t help but wonder why neither he nor Thad ever voiced it. Why was it such a secret? She grinned and dumped the bread dough onto the flour-covered countertop. Was it a horrid name?

  This situation certainly wasn’t what she or her father envisioned before leaving Virginia. From what little she knew of her husband, though, Tate seemed to be a good man, so she could be thankful for, at least, that much.

  Waking up alone this morning had been bittersweet. Not alone really, but she hadn’t let Tate know that. The daunting memory of his heavy stare on her as she lay in bed returned. She prayed that the loud thudding of her heart wouldn’t give her away, but he left without saying a word, like he had every morning.

  She finished kneading the bread dough when she heard a distant boom, which shook the glass panes in the windows. Glancing out the window, she listened for a moment, but when she didn’t hear anything else, turned back to her task. She shaped the dough into a ball and put it in a chipped ceramic bowl. After covering it with a damp dishtowel, she placed it on the warm stove to rise.

  Staring at the empty room, she wondered what to do next when a sudden loud banging on the door made her jump. With her fist pressed over her pounding heart, she hurried to the door and twisted the knob open. Ayana stood on the small porch, her pretty face pinched with worry.

  “Ayana? What’s wrong?” Cat stepped back to let her in, but Ayana shook her head.

  “There’s been an explosion at one of the mines. Get your coat—and gloves. The snow has let up for now, but it’ll begin again.”

  Cat stared at her a moment, her brows drawing together in a frown.

  “Why...what could we do to help? Won’t the other miners...the town doctor...be there?”

  Ayana wrapped her cold hands around Cat’s.

  “I realize you and Tate only just met, but I saw the way you looked at him, Catriona. Your eyes sparkle when you talk about him, and I’ve never seen you smile as much as you have since he came to town.”

  “Ayana, please...” Dread filled Cat like a fist, squeezing her heart.

  “Tate was in the mine when it exploded. There are a lot of people up on the mountain digging them out, but they will need help too. The last cave-in happened about a month ago. Ten miners were trapped, and it took the entire town working together, shoveling, cooking meals, and hauling water to recover them. Unfortunately, most of them died.”

  Cat couldn’t breathe, and the only thing she could focus on was the pressure of Ayana’s hands covering hers as she tried to make sense of her friend’s words.

  “I don’t understand...” Cat’s voice trailed off. “I pretended to be asleep this morning when he left.”

  She raised her tear-filled eyes and met Ayana’s worried gaze. “I never told him goodbye. I was scared. We haven’t...I’m afraid I haven’t been a very good wife. Stupid, I know, but...oh, I have no idea what I’m saying or how I’m feeling. I like him more every day, even though he didn’t want to marry me.

  “In truth, I really am a mail-order bride.” Cat let out a shaky sigh. “Just not in the conventional sense. I came to Alta to be married and nothing seemed to go right from the very beginning. When I’m with him, the world becomes right again. Is that crazy?”

  Ayana smiled. “No, it is not. Our hearts know how we feel so much faster than our brains. I love you like my sister, so I will talk to you like one. Fear is crippling and terrible. It will tie you into knots until you forget that all you need to do is open your heart and trust things will work out. You must have faith, Catriona. Have faith that Tate is alive. Have faith that he will fall in love with you as you are with him.”

  “I admit, I feel something for him, but I am definitely not ready to say I love him. We just met for goodness sake. Besides, he’s secretive and keeps his emotions closed off. I never know where I stand with him. The only person he seems to trust is Thad. We haven’t even talked to each other. He’ll come home, eat or do whatever he’s there for, then gives me an excuse and leaves. He’s keeping something from me, but no matter how many times I ask, I never receive an answer.”

  “He has his reasons and, if this emotion between you continues to grow, I am quite positive he will tell you his secrets. For now, though, we need to go help.”

  Ayana helped Cat shrug into the heavy coat Tate bought her the day after their wedding. He couldn’t believe she had so few clothes, much less how ill-prepared she was for the frigid mountain winter. They hurried through town, following the growing stream of people heading up to the mine ahead of them.

  When they arrived on the terrible scene, Cat was amazed at how many people were already there. A long line of men trailed from inside the mine’s entrance to where she stood. When she caught sight of the rock-filled buckets being passed from man to man, she realized what they were doing.

  Ayana dragged her over to a small group of women boiling water and tearing quilts into strips for bandages. Two girls, whom she recognized from the saloon, had another fire a few feet away with the largest kettle she’d ever seen mounted over it.

  “What are they doing?” Cat asked with a quick head nod toward the two saloon girls.

  “It could take hours digging the men out, and the men will need to keep their strength up, so Dahlia and Josephine are making stew.”

  Cat gathered up the makeshift bandages and piled them in a basket sitting beside an elderly woman and gave her a hesitant smile. The woman’s gnarled hands lay in her lap. Her tanned face had wrinkles around her eyes and mouth, but Cat clearly saw the woman had once been quite attractive. Her white hair rested against the nape of her neck, twisted into a tight bun, and she had a thick blanket wrapped around her shoulders.

  “Seen you around town. Mostly at the church?” The woman asked in a clipped, no-nonsense tone.

  Cat shrugged. “I do go to the church every afternoon. I’m sorry, but I don’t remember seeing you there.”

  The woman rolled her eyes and shook her head.

  “Oh, I won’t go in that church. Not with that fire and brimstone preacher they’ve got. World has enough problems. We don’t need preachers telling us more are coming.”

  Cat liked her sassy attitude. She pointed to the rock near the woman’s chair.
/>   “May I?”

  “Do what you want, I’m not going to stop you. We’re likely to be here the rest of the day, of not most of the night too. Name’s Matilda Owens.”

  “I’m Catriona...Tate. Cat to my friends. I don’t understand why they’re trying to dig the men out. Isn’t there another way out? I would think a second exit would be the first thing they would dig—for this very reason.”

  “Cat, huh? Strange nickname, but I like it. Now, back to your question. The miners do dig another way to get in and out of the mines. See those seven men at the back of the line? They’re the miners who made it out that second entrance. Seems the three or four men who got themselves caught in the tunnel were headed out this way when the cave-in happened.”

  Cat frowned, watching the methodical way the buckets passed from man to man. The last miner would dump the contents onto a growing pile of debris then toss it to one of the waiting boys who would run it back inside the mine to be filled again.

  “Ayana said it was an explosion.”

  “Coulda been, but the results are still the same. The ceiling caved in, blocking the tunnel. If they’re lucky, they weren’t caught underneath like my man was.”

  “I’m so sorry. Your husband was a miner?”

  “Jerry was a foreman. We never married. Stubborn ol’ coot had the wanderlust, so I just followed him from one mine to the next while he searched for his riches. Life was hard, but at night, curled up beside him, I never lacked for anything.”

  Cat glanced away when Matilda’s hand snuck up to wipe away a tear.

  “So, young miss, why are you up here?”

  Cat swallowed and let out a shaky breath. The longer it took to rescue the men, the more worried she became. Right now, all she wanted was to see Tate’s handsome face and make sure he hadn’t been hurt too badly.

  “I was married four days ago. My husband’s one of the trapped miners.”

  “Oh my, then I’ll just have to pray a bit harder so your man doesn’t end up like mine.”

  Cat hesitated, afraid to ask, but the question burned inside her brain.