“I won’t allow liquor in the Yellowcat. That’s a fireable offense. No warning. If I find whiskey on you underground, I’ll treat you just like Vern Haslett and tell you it’s time to tramp,” Tom warned.
“No, sir, I don’t drink on the job.” They were all silent then, watching Dick, and in a minute, he said, “I believe I’d like that job if you was of a mind to offer it. But I’d have to give a week’s notice at the gold boat. It wouldn’t be right not to.”
“I expect those boys can operate the Yellowcat for a week without causing a cave-in,” Tom replied.
Hennie’s guests stayed long into the evening, Tom explaining the work to Dick, and Hennie and Nit talking about the baby. Snow had begun to fall by the time the young folks went home, lingering for a time at the door, for it was an evening none of them wanted to end. The couple held hands as they disappeared into the darkness. Tom stayed a minute more.
“Did Vern Haslett really high-grade?” Hennie asked.
“He’s been doing it for years. I always considered it a cost of doing business. But I got to thinking after our supper at the Grubstake last week that maybe I didn’t have to put up with it anymore.” Tom chuckled at that, and the two of them stood in the doorway a little longer, watching the snow come down, Hennie hoping maybe it would never stop and she’d be snowed in for the winter. With luck, the snow would keep on falling until summer, and Mae had promised Hennie she could live in Middle Swan in summer. But although a storm might take its time, the snow always did stop.
“That was a fine thing you just did. You’re a good man, Tom Earley,” Hennie said.
“Not always so good, but I try,” he replied.
“It would be nice if the baby came before Mr. Spindle starts at the Yellowcat, but that would mean this week,” Hennie said, as Tom reached for his jacket on the hook beside the door. He told her Nit ought to wait because he’d seen the doctor at the depot that morning, leaving for a few days in Denver.
“Nit says the tyke’s not due just yet, but I don’t know.”
“I helped deliver a baby once.”
Hennie gave him an astonished look.
“I can’t ever do that again,” he added quickly.
Hennie snorted. “ ‘Can’t’ is the awfulest word I ever heard. I never like to hear a person say ‘can’t.’ ”
“Well, if Mrs. Spindle depends on me, she might just as well give up on it.”
“That’s the problem. I guess you don’t know she lost a baby not so long before she came here. It was born dead. She’s scared, and I won’t rest easy until I know she’s had one that lives.”
Tom didn’t reply. He’d never been married, so he didn’t know how such a thing would eat at a girl, Hennie thought, then wondered if maybe he did. But she dropped the subject. It was one for women.
Tom leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.
“Tap ’er light, Tommy.”
“And yourself, Hennie.”
Now, as she sat and stared at the snow, Hennie wondered if it was that secret she hadn’t yet resolved that ate at her. She had to bring the thing to an ending before she left out, and she still didn’t know how to do it. Then it hit her that it was Nit Spindle and not the old secret or the storm or even thoughts about moving to Fort Madison that gave her the all-overs. She couldn’t shake the idea that the girl needed her. The old woman had notions, although she could be wrong about them, which made it seem sometimes that she was nothing more than a busybody. Perhaps this was just one of those wrong times, and calling on the girl would only upset the poor thing. Hennie didn’t want to go out, not into the damp and cold, when instead, she could stay warm and dry near the coal stove. The stove was an ugly thing, and it smelled, but she was glad for it.
There had been those first winters in Middle Swan, when she built the blaze in the fireplace as high as she dared, but still, she wore her coat and overshoes inside the cabin. Some days, Hennie had Mae play in the bed, under a dozen quilts, so the little girl wouldn’t freeze her fingers and toes. Jake said she and Mae could go below during the worst of the winter, find a little house in Denver, where it was warmer, but he was too precious to leave alone. Only later did she realize that the winters had been easier for him, being underground where the temperature was moderate. Women and children, living day and night in the freezing cold of the high mountains, had the worst of it. They were cold all the time.
“What to do, Jake?” she asked her husband’s photograph, which sat in a silver frame on the mantel. The two of them had had their pictures taken one afternoon on a trip outside some fifty years before. In the picture, Jake looked as handsome as a barber in a fine coat and bowler hat that the photographer supplied so that Jake wouldn’t be captured for eternity in his old jacket and cap. For her sitting, Hennie wore her own cape, which swirled around her like a tent, and a silly bonnet that the photographer insisted she put on. Then someone painted the bonnet’s flowers and ribbons blue and touched her cheeks with so much red that she thought she looked like a hooker.
Hennie picked up the picture of Jake and stared at it. In the photograph, her husband didn’t look the way she pictured him now. Nor did she think of him as he was at the time of his death. In Hennie’s mind, Jake continued to age, so that now, he was still a few years older than she was, gray-haired, a little stooped, but every bit as handsome as the first day she saw him, as fine looking as Tom Earley was now.
“I guess you’d be telling me to see about the girl,” Hennie said, returning the photograph to the mantel. She bowed her head for a minute, sending up a prayer for Nit’s safety, hoping the Lord would inform her she could stay put. But He didn’t. Instead, He seemed to tell her to put on her wraps and go out into the storm, for after all, she’d asked Him to let her be of service to the girl.
It wouldn’t do to let Nit know that Hennie was worried about her. So the old woman would tell the girl she couldn’t stand to be cooped up in the storm like a harbonated bear. And she’d take Nit the last bit of scripture cake from supper, pretend she’d come on a visit. They would eat the cake with their coffee, for the girl would surely offer to make a pot, especially on such a blustery day. Hennie put on her rubber shoes and her old coat and tied a scarf around her head. She looked around the cozy house again, and with a sigh, she opened the door and went out into the cold.
The wind had come up, sliding down from the high peaks, gathering force, until it reached Middle Swan as an angry gale, shaking the ice on the trees, for a fog the night before had frozen on the limbs. Bits of ice stung Hennie’s cheeks. It was a mean storm for so early in the year. Here and there, the wind caught up dried aspen leaves and hurled them at the old woman. Despite the ice and the force of the wind, however, Hennie’s steps were sure. She had walked through snow in this place for most of her life. Still, she was glad for the stout stick that Dick had given her, and she carefully poled her way along the trail until she reached the Tappan place and knocked at the door with the knob of the stick.
The girl was slow to answer, and when Hennie finally heard a stirring, she wished she hadn’t come, for she feared that Nit had been napping. “You nosy old fool, you should have stayed home and made fudge,” she muttered to herself.
But Nit was glad to see her. “Just you come in. I don’t like to be alone in this fallen weather,” she said, opening the door only enough to allow Hennie to enter, for the girl didn’t want to let in the cold.
Nit was wrapped in a quilt and had been sitting in her little blue rocker, pasting pictures in a magazine. The magazine lay open on the floor; a pile of clippings, and a dish containing flour-and-water paste, sat beside the magazine.
“I been putting in pictures of movie stars. Look here. That’s a nice one of Ginger Rogers. My, I’d like to dance like that, but Dick would sooner fall in the dredge pond than learn to dance. And here’s Hedy Lamarr. And Marion Street, too; she’s a starlet,” Nit said. “I tried to quilt, but my fingers are so froze my stitches look like they were quilted with an icicle. I
got to catch up with my quilts, ’cause I put an old one aside for the birthing and tore up another to wrap the canning jars so’s they wouldn’t freeze. I covered the potatoes with a piece of quilt, too.”
“If you’ve got anything left of that old quilt, you can make you a dog bed, too, if you had a dog. Quilts just keep getting used till there’s no more left of them.”
“Quilts are like lives. They’re made up of a lot of little pieces,” Nit said.
“There’s a difference. You can take out the pieces in a quilt. There’s not anything you can do to change what you’ve done in life.” Hennie thought a minute, wishing that weren’t so. Then she became sensible that Nit hadn’t answered and looked at the girl sharply. Nit’s face was pale, and she shivered under the quilt. The girl sighed and sat down, and Hennie said, “I can’t stand to be alone on a day like this, so I thought I’d come and sit a spell, if you’re up to it. There’s cake.”
“Oh, I’ll make the coffee.” The girl made no move to stand up.
“You sit, Mrs. Spindle. I’ll fix it myself,” Hennie said, wishing again that she hadn’t bothered the girl. But they had to go through the motions of visiting. It would be poor manners on both their parts not to do so.
“You think it will storm all day?” the girl asked.
“Likely,” Hennie replied. Likely today and tomorrow and all week, she thought, busying herself filling the kettle with water and setting it into the eye of the stove over the firebox. She measured coffee into the pot, and took down heavy old cups, instead of Nit’s prized china with the roses on it. Hennie’s hands were so stiff with cold that she feared she might drop the good cups. When she was finished, she turned to the girl, who had wrapped the quilt tightly about herself. “I could help you to your bed, where you’d be warm. You could have your coffee and cake in the bed. Now isn’t that a cozy thought?” When Nit didn’t reply, Hennie asked, “Dearie, are you all right?”
Nit looked at Hennie for a long time before she replied. “I don’t know, Mrs. Comfort. I was awake all night, with the baby turning over and around. Now, I feel kind of mulish.”
“You think the baby’s coming?” Hennie asked, alarmed.
“My water’s not broke.” Nit added, “You can’t have a baby if your water’s not broke.”
Hennie turned back to the stove, where the water had begun to boil. “Where’s you the chamomile you dried? I’ll fix you tea instead. It’ll sit better on your stomach than coffee.”
Nit’s thin arm made its way out from under the quilt, and she pointed at a pickle jar on top of the pie safe. Except for her belly, the girl was as skinny yet as a plucked porcupine. Hennie unscrewed the lid and told the girl what nice flowers she’d picked and dried, that they would make a good tea. She chose three or four of the largest ones and put them into Nit’s cup and poured in the hot water, filling the coffeepot at the same time, for Hennie reckoned she’d be there for a while. If the baby was coming, then Nit would need her, and if it wasn’t, the girl still would want someone to give her comfort.
“I brought my piecing,” Hennie said, after she’d taken the girl her cup and set her own on the table. She realized she was still wearing her coat, and removed it and sat down, although the house was cold. The Tappan place was always cold, much too cold for a baby, Hennie thought. “Look you. It’s a burro. I saw the pattern in a magazine—they said it was for a donkey, but that’s the same thing as a burro—and I thought it would be real nice for a baby up here in the gold country. You used to see those burros every day. See them or hear them. My, they were rackety.” Hennie was glad she had her quilt pieces with her, for stitching would keep her from fidgeting. “You want I should get your quilting for you, Mrs. Spindle?”
The girl shook her head. “I guess there’s something wrong with me when I don’t want to do my piecing, isn’t there? Maybe I’m just idlesome.”
“It’s the cold. It stiffens your hands,” Hennie said. “Sometimes when I quilt with cold fingers, I have to take out the stitches later on.”
The two sat quietly awhile, Hennie planning in her head what she’d do if the girl went into labor. She’d have to find Doc, or she could run to the Pinto place, which wasn’t far away, and ask Monalisa to go. Then Hennie remembered Tom saying he’d seen the doctor at the depot and that the man would be away for several days. Hennie closed her eyes and asked the Almighty to let that baby wait until Doc returned. She wondered if the girl was a praying sort. They’d never talked about religion, and because Hennie hadn’t gone to church in such a long time, she didn’t know if the Spindles attended regularly. The girl understood the church was something Hennie didn’t care to talk about.
As the girl picked up her cup, her hand slipped, and she sloshed tea on the quilt that was wrapped around her. “Now look what I’ve done, and it will stain.” Her voice broke, for she was near tears.
“No such a thing,” Hennie said soothingly. “I’ll get you to your bed, and after that, I’ll just scrub out that spill before it sets up.” She took the cup from Nit and held the girl’s arm as Nit walked heavily across the room. Hennie turned down the covers and fluffed the pillows, before she helped the girl into the bed. Then when Nit was tucked in, Hennie dipped a cloth into the water bucket and scrubbed out the tea stain. She spread the quilt on a chair beside the cookstove to dry, rubbing her hand over the wet spot to smooth it out. “Good as new,” she said over her shoulder.
Nit didn’t reply, and Hennie returned to the bed. “You sure you’re all right, Mrs. Spindle?”
“Just bone-tired of being pregnant,” the girl said. “I feel like I’m the little feller’s house.” She patted her belly.
And a house full of worry, Hennie thought. She dragged the blue rocking chair to the bed and sat down, wondering what she could do to take the girl’s mind off her condition.
“Are you thinking you might tell me a story to pass the time?” the girl asked. “I’d like that awful well.”
Maybe a tale would calm Nit, the old woman thought, and Hennie, of course, had plenty of them yet to be passed on. “What do you want me to tell about?”
The girl thought a minute. “Gold mining. If Dick’s going to be a gold miner, I want to know about mining. Do you have any stories about mining?”
“Aplenty of them. Just wait until I get my piecing,” Hennie said, going to the table and picking up the squares and triangles for a burro, then taking her seat in the rocker beside the bed. “There’s different kinds of mining,” she began, when she was settled again and had set one square of cheddar yellow against another. Her hands were too cold and stiff yet to put a needle to the pieces.
There was placer mining, the first mining that was done on the Swan, placering, or plater mining, as the leather bellies called it. That was as good a way as any of describing it, because the prospector used a big gold pan the size of a platter to swirl the water around. The motion let the specks of gold settle to the bottom, where they could be gathered up. There was so much free gold in those first days that a miner just picked it out of the stream. Panning was good when a man worked by himself. If he had a partner or two, he shoveled the dirt from the river into a sluice box, ran water through it, and let the gold catch on the riffles. Those were little wooden ridges put crosswise in the box, with a piece of old carpet under them to catch the gold dust.
On the hillside just past where the dredge operated, hydraulic mining had taken place. Workers had turned big hoses on the mountainsides and washed everything away. The bare hillside they left behind were every bit as ugly as the rock piles that followed the dredges.
And then there was dredging.
But the best kind of mining was lode mining, following a gold vein as it twisted and turned underground. Lode mining took talent and was the way God intended for men to mine gold. That was what Hennie thought, and that was the way Monte Poor mined his strike.
There wasn’t much to set Monte Poor apart from the other prospectors. They were all the same breed of dog. Monte Poor dress
ed like his name, in old pants and plow shoes, a coat that was more holes than it was coat, a battered hat, and he toted a sack of victuals and an outfit of pick and shovel, gold pan and whatnot. In the old days, a person could look out the window and see a dozen of those boys, dressed in off-casts, plodding down the street after their burros, every one of them thinking he was going to strike it rich. They would find enough gold to go on a high lonesome every now and again and to last them through the winter.
The boys used the gold dust till there was no more left. Then they caught burros and struck out again in the spring, going way up yonder, coming back only long enough to try to talk old man Pinto into grubstaking them. Sometimes the leather bellies were never seen again, and if folks thought about them, which wasn’t likely, they didn’t know if the prospectors taken themselves to another camp or had gone over the range, so to speak.
Monte Poor must have prowled the hills for twenty years, when he went rushing down the mountain to the assay office.
“You found something, Monte?” one of the boys sitting on the bench in front of the Pinto store asked and snickered. By then Monte had grown queer from being by hisself so much. He’d got unfriendly, too, and didn’t trust anyone. It was a common failing among prospectors.
Monte gave the man a steely-eyed look and muttered, “Kill your own snakes.”
“Yep, he’s found a fortune. Old Monte’s going to be the ablest man on the Tenmile,” a loafer laughed.
Prayers for Sale Page 23
