She threaded into the deep forest, when all she could see was the open sky, found her carpetbag just where she had left it, and hurried through the forest, her gaze uncanny, hastening down to Long Gulch, because she knew if she tarried, it would be sealed off and she might be trapped.
She exulted. She had begun to fight back, and this was a first step.
Twenty-four
Tipperary Leary brought her some papers. The Helena Herald said it loudest:
MADWOMAN ESCAPES
FROM WARM SPRINGS
But the story was helpful. It described her as short, stout, and dark-haired. That offended her until she realized it was wrong on two counts: she had chestnut hair and had lost weight. Even better, it said she spoke with an Irish burr, and left behind a note threatening suicide. Officials were walking the Clark Fork River in search of a body.
“Suicide, Tip?”
“Our man Mack did a little more than he told you about,” Tip said. “He left a note in the toolshed where you changed into pants. It said you despaired of life. They think you simply walked away.”
March could scarcely believe her good fortune.
“Not to say they haven’t looked here,” Tip said. “Constable Roach. That cabal doesn’t like the thought of you loose.”
“Well, they must know. After I set the charge.”
“They’re not sure. They found a man’s straw hat nearby. But they think it might be you.”
“How far along are they?”
“They’ll have it cleared in a few days. It’s a narrow shaft, and only two men at a time can muck out that pile of rock. They’ve laid off half a dozen until they can reopen.”
“Did it seal the shaft?”
“No, they could crawl over the top of the heap into the mine, that’s what Jerusalem Jones said, vowing to catch and hang whoever did it. He’s bragging that they’ll have it up and running again in record time, and they’ll find the pig who fired that charge.”
“It’s a good thing he stops in for a drink, Tip.”
“I pour him one on the house now and then.”
“Tip, why do you do this for me, you and your friends?”
He hesitated. “We have our reasons.”
“Not we—you.”
“Ladies deserve respect,” he said, in a way that foreclosed further questions.
Tip had been faithful to his word. Each day, some fresh food appeared on the table of the washerwoman’s cottage. That had sustained her for several days. Once she got into the handsome pink dress and silk-flower hat, and ventured into town, unchallenged, and mostly unobserved. New faces were routine in a bustling town.
Still, it was a risky thing, and she dreaded an encounter with Constable Roach, pink dress or not. But she was alone, and she felt a need to reconnect, to be among people, and not be hiding, or venturing out in disguise.
The weather was turning. Some fall rains had swept through, and people were burning cordwood in their stoves again. One morning there was a veil of white on the peaks. It vanished later, but it was a sign of what would soon come to Marysville.
That night she slipped into her men’s britches and blue shirt, and added a drab sweater that once had been Kermit’s, and slipped into a cold wind, made her way up Long Gulch in darkness, and cut into the forest at about the right place. She was numb from the raw wind, but kept on until she could view the mine. It was dark. She circled down to the lower flat, with its tarpaper barracks, and peeked in through a grimy window. It was empty. On a mean night, they had all gone to town. But there was no lamp lit in the dormitory. She wasn’t sure it had been vacated, and there was only one way to find out, so she opened the door noisily, yelled in a low voice, and aroused no one. She spotted a kerosene lamp, which was perfect. She unscrewed the wick, poured the kerosene onto the wood floor and walls nearest the stove, lit it, and backed away as flames licked up the walls closest to the potbellied stove. Then she headed into the night, an invisible wraith in dark colors, and made it back to Marysville even as the sky behind her was, for a little while, aglow with orange light.
That would slow them down some more. The nights were getting cold. They needed shelter now.
She padded back to Marysville, knowing that the barracks fire would trigger another, fiercer manhunt, and no building would go unexamined. The Roach crowd wouldn’t for an instant believe it was accidental. The washerwoman cottage would not shelter her for long. And now the weather in that mountain locale could turn any day.
The next nights she dressed in dark clothing and probed the sprawling Drumlummon works, which clung to a hillside and covered many acres. Even as the night shift toiled, and ore cars were shunted from the mine to the mill, she examined every structure hoping to find a safe haven if she needed one. But she found nothing. There were sheds but they leaked air and were filled with kegs and crates.
“Arson!” screamed the headline of the Marysville weekly. “Madwoman on the Loose.”
The paper said that Constable Roach was doing a door-to-door hunt for a woman believed to have escaped a Territorial asylum.
It was only a matter of time before they found her. What chance did she have?
Tipperary showed up one frosty dawn, knocking gently. She peeked out, and opened to him. He slipped in, carrying something.
“Cold in here,” he said.
“I can no longer keep a fire.”
He nodded.
“If I could get to Helena, find work—chambermaid, something … I’ve got to start somewhere else. Tip, I’m not making headway here.”
“Well, look at this first, if you will.”
He laid a gray-and-red clothbound ledger book on the table. The light was so low she could barely see what was written on its pages.
“This little book, it’s your ticket. It’s the Laidlow Group’s accounting. It lists who’s in on it, who’s got a full share, who’s got a half share—the younger ones have halves. It lists the whole blooming lot: Judge Roach in Helena, the constable here, the miserable doctor in Helena, his brother in the funeral home here. There’s a page for Jerusalem Jones, a sister’s son, who has half a share. He’s the one who told me. He sat in my place, soaking up gin, and began telling me about this here ledger, and how it was kept at the funeral parlor, and how it showed the monthly accounting, and the payouts, not only from your mine, but all sorts of other properties and real estate they’ve gotten by rook and crook. Here it is, black-and-white, or blue-and-white, anyway, neat columns, sums piled up nice and even.”
“And how did you get this?”
“Now there’s a mystery, Mrs. McPhee. Some say it walked out the door and into my lap, like a yapping dog.”
“Do they know it’s missing?”
“So far, misplaced. In fact Jerusalem said so. They don’t see it as a problem. Just a ledger that fell into the couch cushions or something.”
“I wouldn’t know what to do with it. And it’s stolen.”
Tipperary sighed. “It says here, Judge Roach, selfsame gent who shipped you to Warm Springs, got a payment from the McPhee. And Jerrold Laidlow, sort of an MD if you stretch his diploma a bit, the selfsame who found you mad as a hatter, he got his payment from the McPhee. And Laidlow himself, him who piled up your debt burying your man, and used it to steal a mine from you, he got his monthly dividend from your mine, after his cousin the judge euchred you out of the mine. I’d say, March McPhee, you’ve got the goods right here.”
“Maybe I do. But what good will it do?”
“You might talk to a good, ethical, upstanding, honest, bold attorney, shaped a little like your friend Hermes Apollo, a man of forthright and honest greed.”
“And other appetites,” she added.
She wanted to like all this, but she couldn’t. “This should be returned,” she said.
“Oh, it will. It’s just been borrowed—and copied.”
“I’ll talk to Hermes Apollo. You know, Tip, he’s an oddly honest man. He puts his worst foot forward, and it’s his
way of being ethical. He’s saying, here I am at my least noble.”
“I’d need a few drinks down me before I could do that.”
She smiled.
“This’ll be found in the funeral home, lying on the floor, where it had been overlooked. But we’ll have a fine copy, thanks to Mike Boyle, an accountant up to the mine. It sure is an interesting little ledger, eh?”
She clasped his hands. “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” she said.
Midday, she donned her handsome pink dress and flower-bedecked hat, and sallied out, hoping not to run across Constable Roach. It was a fine autumnal day, with a fresh breeze driving away the smoke from the mill boilers. She spotted the blue uniform on the other side of the street, but he took no notice of her. The pink dress had served its purpose, at least for the moment.
She found the attorney in his ornate Second Street chambers. He peered up, surprised, slowly registering her garb.
“Fancy that,” he said. “The madwoman herself. What have you done?”
It took a while, but she laid it out for him, while his eyebrows caterpillared up and down and his fingers harmonized on the polished table.
“I can’t do much with stolen evidence,” he said.
“The ledger’s gone back to the funeral home.”
“I can’t do much with stolen information. They will ask where it came from, and any court would throw it out.” But he gazed into space a while. “But there are always ways. A civil suit. A subpoena of the ledger, necessary evidence. We’ll demand it. We’ll threaten dire things if we don’t see it and admit it as evidence. It would be in another district court, of course. Judge Roach’s a defendant. The dockets are crowded so it’ll take a year. I’ll seek an injunction that would stop the mining until ownership is settled. We’re in for the long haul. So, I do this, and what happens to you? You’re a fugitive, are you not?”
“I thought you’d prove that Dr. Laidlow’s a quack.”
“That might not bail you out. Once a madwoman, always a madwoman. And what if I lose the case? You’re bucking the most powerful cabal in the Territory.”
She had no answer to that.
Then he seemed to light up. That was the thing about Hermes Apollo. You could watch energy flow in and out of him. He would inflate, his eyes would brighten, or he would deflate like a tired hot-air balloon. Just now he was expanding.
“How are you going to pay me? I am a very expensive lawyer,” he said. “I really don’t like to work on a contingency fee—payment contingent on success. No, that’s a fool’s game.”
“With profits from the mine once I get it back. I’ll pay you well and fast.”
He sighed. “Your word is splendid, Mrs. McPhee, but all the best intentions in the world can’t keep things from going awry. There’s many a slip twixt the cup and the lip, as the saying goes. Now, here’s how we’ll do it. If I win, I shall possess half the McPhee Mine, plus one percent so I have control. If I lose—well, you shall marry me, like it or not.”
“What?”
“If we lose, madam, they will promptly send you back to Warm Springs, since the court will have confirmed that you are a madwoman. But if you should marry me promptly, then I have custody, you see. The madwoman’s in her husband’s custody.”
“Custody, custody?”
“Of the madwoman. A husband has that power. It wouldn’t be so bad, dear lady. Endure my goatish behavior, endure my occasional naughtiness, for which the god Apollo is famous, and you will live your life in perfect liberty the other ninety-eight percent of your time. You’ll be a prominent woman in Marysville society.”
She took a deep breath. “Is this a proposition or a proposal?”
“It’s an escape, madam, from the clutches of the law, the bloodhounds scenting your trail and coming down upon you.”
She stared, dizzily. “I don’t seem to have any other choice,” she said.
Twenty-five
The constable was there, half a block away, pretending not to notice. Behind her was the step into the law offices. She was tempted to go back in, but that would give the game away. Instead, she decided on boldness. She walked slowly along Second, eyeing stores and windows. And at a cross street, she turned and was able to see Constable Roach, ambling along himself, staying a careful distance back, sometimes twirling his nightstick.
He was following. She didn’t know what to do.
She tried another turn, another stretch of browsing. He meandered along behind.
Her path took her in the direction of the Drumlummon works, mine and mill, so that’s the way she drifted. But the closer she came to the ramshackle structures and thundering mill, the more absurd was her direction. The roaring mill, belching smoke and fumes, throwing soot, leaving mucky pools of arsenic-laden waste, was not the place for a woman in a fine pink dress with a flowered hat to go.
She turned instead toward the mine, scarcely knowing what she would do there. But at least there was a supervisory structure, as rudely built as the rest. Everything at a mine was as temporary as could be managed. Mines all died. A sign, black paint on a white board, announced the Drumlummon. No gilt and plush here. The main shaft with its headframe and hoist lay ahead. At one side of it was a sorting yard. Waste rock was sent to the tailing heap; ore was sent to a trestle that carried it to the mill. But there was that other rude building, known as the dry room, where sweat-soaked miners coming off shift changed into dry clothing so they could walk to cabins or rooming houses comfortably. A changing room was crucial to the miners’ health, especially in the depths of winter, where sweat-soaked clothing brought on pneumonia, and other lung diseases.
She glanced quickly behind her. The constable meandered along, ostensibly studying clouds, or whatever constables do.
She took her chance. It was not shift-changing time. She would not be likely to surprise some half-dressed men in there. There were, actually, two doors, though she didn’t know why. She waited, aware that the constable was waiting, and then for a moment he was obscured by the corner of a trestle, and she plunged in.
She was surprised to see how rough it was. Whitewashed raw wood, benches, pegs to hang clothing, a few small windows for light. And miners’ clothing, lots of it, hanging from pegs, there for the moment when it was needed. A potbellied stove was present for winter days, but was cold now.
But what to wear? Whose? And what would someone think to find his duds missing? And what would she do about her hair? Her dress, her hat? The inside of the cold potbellied stove would have to do. She rushed to a window, to see who or what was approaching. She didn’t even see the constable, which worried her.
She flapped one set of britches after another, finally found some small ones, along with a small blue chambray shirt. And good luck, a dust cap. She hurried out of her dress, maddened by the small buttons, and got out of her chemise, and got the britches up, and got the shirt over her and buttoned, and was feeling some relief when the door opened, someone big and male looked around, scarcely noticing the small figure now in pants, and then the door closed. She pulled the dust cap over her hair and pushed the red strands upward under it as best she could.
She rolled up the dress, saddened that she could never wear it again, stuffed it into the potbellied stove, along with the hat with the silk flowers, and edged toward the door. But first she paused at a grimy window. She quickly decided to head for the headframe and lift. Below, Constable Roach was puzzling the disappearance of the woman in pink.
She walked straight into the lift, which she shared with an empty ore car, and then she was dropping sickeningly, down into blackness, and finally to a halt some vast distance into the bowels of the earth.
The gate swung open, a rough man with a lamp shining from his hat yanked the ore car out, looked her over, and spat.
“You didn’t bring the steels,” he said. “Go back and get them.”
She had been mistaken for a nipper, a boy who ran errands, brought supplies, such as new drilling steels. The gate
slammed, the lift lowered, another ore car, full this time, was shoved in, and then she was catapulted upward, at a speed that dizzied her. After much rattling, she popped into daylight, and after a moment stepped out. She was glad to see blue sky.
She fled, but not without a stare or two from the surface men.
She saw no sign of Constable Roach, but that didn’t dissolve her caution. She started down the grade, thought to retrieve her dress and hat from the stove, at least if she could carry it all with the pink hidden. She pushed into the dry room, found her things, rolled the dress into a ball she could cover with her white chemise, studied the hat, realized she would be fine if she could ditch its silk flowers, but she had trouble with it, and stuffed it into the stove. Then she fled the mine, sorry that she had stolen someone’s shirt and pants. She didn’t know what else she could do. Maybe she could return these, once she got into Kermit’s britches. Yes, she’d do that. There must be mixups all the time in the dry room.
Constable Roach was nowhere in sight.
Only now did she realize she had been trembling. She had descended to the bottom of the mine. And that she never wanted to do again. It was like the portals of hell. She thought of those muckers who collected after each shift at Tip’s saloon, and knew they were brave men.
She edged across open fields, reaching the washerwoman cabin in roundabout fashion, and was glad of its quiet welcome. For one more hour, one more day, it would grant her a safe corner of the world.
She changed out of the shirt and pants she had borrowed, garbing herself in Kermit’s clothing, and then waited for dark. As usual, there was food quietly awaiting her, summer squash, split and baked and buttered. She thanked Tip, her shepherd. There had been a shift change at four, and now the second shift was hard at work. Someone went home in sweat-drenched clothing, and she was sorry. If things went well, the man would find his missing dry clothes in the morning.
Well into the eve, with darkness settled gently over Marysville, she ghosted her way through chill air to the Drumlummon, replaced the clothing on the same peg, and ghosted away. She had returned what was owed. That was important to her.
Easy Pickings Page 16
