by Will Hobbs
“Ma, we’re home!” Till hollered as we drew close. “We’re home!”
Ma came out on the porch with a lamp, and when she saw us with Hercules and Peaches in hand, she cried for joy, loud enough that Queenie nickered from the barn. “Thank God, Ma,” I said. “The Trimble fire . . . where were you when it broke out?”
“In my cottage, late in the evening. I saw the flames from my window. We got everybody out in time.”
The three of us gushed some more, nothing that was making much sense. I broke off to take care of Hercules and Peaches. I could see how ready they were for the barn and a long drink and fresh hay.
Minutes later, on my way into the house, I heard Till saying, “Owen beaned an outlaw with this rock!”
“Beaned an outlaw?”
“A bad outlaw, the one that stole Hercules and Peaches.”
“Beaned him, what does that mean?”
“Hit him in the head!”
“Hmm,” Ma said, looking my way as I hung up my mackinaw. “Let’s talk about that later. I’ve been worried about my boys, and I’m so relieved you’re back.”
Till was so tuckered out, his head nearly hit the table while we were having bread and jam with milk, and apples and cheese. The kid stumbled to his couch and was asleep in seconds, my purple rock in hand. I hadn’t known he retrieved it back at the Roost. If he wanted to keep it, that was okay by me. Its luster as a geological specimen was gone.
Ma and I kept the lamp burning awhile. As I gave her a short history of my time away, Ma’s eyebrows rose on a number of occasions. I had some explaining to do. I was somewhat in the doghouse.
28
Fine as a Frog Hair
ANXIOUS TO REUNITE with his squirrel gun, Till bolted from the breakfast table. Ma seized the occasion to let me know that shortly after I left, she took out a loan for $3,000 so we could stay above water. It was due in three years, with our land and improvements as collateral, including the house, the barn, the well, even the privy. I was taken aback but didn’t say so. This was going to take time to digest, and I had a very bad feeling about it. How likely was it we could make enough to pay it back?
I set that worry aside in favor of freeing our animals from their stalls and turning them loose to the pasture. Inside the barn I had some work to do. The night before, I hadn’t unpacked the panniers I took off Hercules. I went to pulling bedrolls, rain slickers, and such out of the canvas bags. Lifting the first bag, apparently empty, I realized it wasn’t. There was something heavy at the bottom.
I got the surprise of my life. Reaching in, I pulled out a shiny bar of gold bullion.
My impulse was to shout to high heaven for Till to come see, but I stifled it. I couldn’t believe what I was holding in my hand. Solid gold! I had an idea what a standard ingot of bullion looked like. This one was half as thick, not that I was complaining.
The thing was so heavy, it took both hands to hold it very long. I turned it over, looking for an imprint, something like PROPERTY OF THE TOMBOY MINE.
The bar was smooth as a baby’s bottom—not a word, number, or mark of any kind.
Wait a minute, I thought, and went to pulling our stuff from the second pannier. Lo and behold, here was another shiny gold bar, an identical twin.
In a flash I weighed one of them on our scales. Fourteen pounds exactly. I set them on a stool, sat down on a bale of hay, and had myself a good think. After I left town with the marshal, the Tomboy rented Hercules out. He’d been making the daily trip from town up to the mine loaded down with supplies, sixteen mules to a packer, and making the trip back to town on his own.
Gold bullion from the Tomboy, hidden at the bottom of his panniers? What was that about?
Something Merlin had said came to mind. The Tomboy not only had its own mill onsite, they had recently added a retort. In small amounts, they would soon be refining their gold concentrates into bullion. Were these the first ingots they cast, without identifying words or numbers?
The questions kept coming. Why hide the ingots on one of the mules meandering by themselves back to town? Why not transport the bullion with armed men?
Robbers and bloodshed, that’s what they were afraid of. Safer to sneak the gold into town. Given the size and shape of the bars, the panniers on their bullion mule would appear to be empty. Who would ever imagine a scheme like that? Even if somebody were to guess the secret, they would have to search many dozens of mules plodding the length of that six-mile trail.
When the Tomboy chose Hercules for the task, they hadn’t given a thought to me. Nobody in or around Telluride had seen me in ten or more days. They thought I gave up and went home.
All of a sudden I heard footsteps and nearly jumped out of my skin. Not to worry, it was Ma. When she saw what was on that stool, her eyebrows arched up like inchworms.
I had a lot to explain, and Ma listened with rapt attention. Every now and again we heard the crack from Till’s .22. The shots sounded far off, way down by the river. That was a good thing. We had some serious thinking to do.
Ma wanted to know who owned the Tomboy Mine. Was it a company with stockholders?
I shook my head. “Merlin told me about it. The Tomboy’s a private corporation owned by the Rothschild family in Europe. They bought the mine a few years back. That’s why the Tomboy has no end of capital for improvements and expansion.”
“Everybody’s heard of the Rothschilds,” Ma said. “They have the largest fortune in the world.”
“Hmm . . .” I said.
“Food for thought,” Ma agreed. She was keeping her voice down. “Let’s weigh one and figure out what they’re worth.”
“I just had one on the scale—fourteen pounds exactly.” I sprang for a pencil and a scrap of cardboard. “Gold is around twenty dollars an ounce.”
“Sixteen ounces to a pound,” Ma said helpfully. My mother was surprising me no end. I was afraid this would tie her in knots.
“Each one is worth about four thousand five hundred dollars,” I reported.
“Hmm . . . We could pay off our loan. We’d be free and clear again.”
Ma’s mind was racing even faster than mine. She had me wrap the gold bars in a piece of burlap and bury them on the side of the barn that couldn’t be seen from the road. We were going to bide our time. Every day, we would pick up the Durango Herald and check for news from Telluride, looking for anything about a suspect taking a mule, anything about missing bullion. “One more thing,” Ma said. “Let’s keep this between us until the time’s right. I can’t imagine trying to think this through with Till.”
“Me neither.”
We waited a few days with nothing in the Herald and no knocks on the door. On the surface everything was quiet and peaceful, but Ma and I were on tenterhooks. “The Tomboy Mine must’ve known for a good while now that you took Hercules and left on the train,” Ma said. “I’m wondering if they might have their own reasons for keeping it quiet and letting it go.”
”I’ve already thought of one. They might not want to let it be known that they succeeded in making bullion.”
“On top of that,” Ma added with a chuckle, “they don’t want to be caught looking like boneheads trying to be clever.”
I figured we were of the same mind, but a couple days later, with Till off fishing, Ma up and said, “Owen, I’ve been thinking and praying. I don’t know if we can keep the gold. I mean, if we should keep it. Is it righteous?”
The wind went right out of my sails. “Oh, Ma,” I wailed. “What will we make in our first three years selling vegetables and strawberries? What are the chances we even break even? When that loan comes due, we’ll be sunk.”
“That’s why I took the job, even if it was hopeless. What should we do?”
“Ma, we’re under the lion’s paw.”
“Don’t I know it.”
“Think of it this way. They owe us for the use of our mule! This is what it cost them to get the core of their new compressor up the mountain. It was a lot cheaper than
building a road!”
“That’s a good argument, but still . . .”
Pleading, practically begging, I gave it one more try. “After all we’ve been through, don’t we deserve a lucky break?”
A tear escaped my mother’s eye as she shook her head to that. “It’s a complicated moral question, Owen.”
“Fine as a frog hair split three ways.”
“Where’d you come up with that?”
“From Till, of course. It’s from one of his ‘Blood and Thunders.’”
29
Wise as Solomon
A WEEK HAD gone by with nothing in the newspaper and no knocks on the door. During that time Ma heard all about our travels. It was Till who mostly filled her in on our journey with the marshal, with me trying to stay out of earshot. I happened to overhear when Till was going on about Butch and Sundance, how they’d never been caught for a robbery. Ma brought him up short and said, “Tell me what you thought of them. What were they really like?”
Till had to mull that one over. “Both got sad eyes,” he said finally. I was impressed.
My time in Telluride was mostly what Ma and I talked about. I told her about Uncle Jacob’s friend, Merlin Custard. I spoke of the Smuggler-Union and the crushing defeat the miners were dealt by Colorado’s high court. “In Uncle Jacob’s letters,” I said, “he never let on how bad the miners were up against it.”
“Pa was sick, that’s why,” said Ma.
I gave her a detailed account of the fire and the calamity that ensued in the depths of the mine. I told her about Vincent St. John’s impassioned speech at the Miners Hall, and how he asked the men to build a hospital, poor as they were.
I saved the hardest part for last. I told her that Merlin and the other men at the boarding house were convinced that Uncle Jacob had been murdered by the powers that be. Ma took that awful hard.
The day after that, with Till gone to the store for flour and eggs, Ma up and said, “Owen, how many mules would you say are at work in and around Telluride?”
“Hundreds, for sure.”
“That’s what I pictured. I’ve been doing a lot of reflection. Now tell me, what are the chances it was our Hercules carrying the bullion?”
“Mighty slim. That’s what I meant by lucky break.”
“Was it luck?” Ma said with a mysterious smile. “I don’t think so.”
“What was it, then?”
“Owen, I dreamed of your father last night. I was telling him all about it. He said don’t you see, it was the hand of Providence!”
“Thank you, Pa,” I whispered.
“That’s only part of the picture, Owen.”
“How does the rest go?”
“I’ve been reflecting on justice in light of all that you told me about the miners. I recalled how often the subject of justice came up at the meeting house. One of those times we were discussing the word righteousness, in ‘Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness.’ We got to wondering why the word justice wasn’t used instead.”
“Come to think of it, why not?”
“It could’ve been, it just wasn’t. We learned that it had to do with a word that could have been translated into English either way. A Greek word, I think it was. In our case, I’m thinking, the heart of the matter has more to do with justice than righteousness.”
Ma looked me in the eye. I held my breath.
“One bar would be enough to keep us afloat. We would give the other one to the miners to help them build their hospital. That would give me peace. That’s what Jacob would want: justice for them and justice for us. It’s up to you, Owen. Only half of that gold for us, but we need to be of one mind.”
“Ma,” I said, “you’re as wise as Solomon.”
Ma wanted to wait out the rest of October before telling Till and getting in contact with Vincent St. John. We talked about taking the train to Telluride and presenting one of the ingots in person, but Ma came up with a better plan. After we figured out how to bank the gold, she would write St. John a letter and invite him to come visit in Hermosa. When he came, she would give him a check.
On the heels of our conversation, I grabbed some apples and went to see Hercules and Peaches in the pasture. I suppose it was my scientific bent, but as I fed them the apples, I was revisiting a nagging question. How was it that the Tomboy chose Hercules to carry the bullion down from the mine? Maybe the answer lies neither with luck nor Providence, I was thinking, and suddenly I had a theory. Somebody in Telluride, most likely at the stables, must have been on the lookout for a certain mule that would be easy to spot. His instructions—from Fred Tatters, most likely—were simple and went like this: The gold will be in the panniers of that great big mule that carried the seven-hundred-pound load.
We were anxiously counting the days as October was coming to a close without us hearing from the law. On the last day of the month, Ma spied the postman leaving something in our mailbox out on the road. As Till ran to fetch it, I thought she might faint.
On his way back, Till was holding up a single piece of mail. “Who’s it for?” Ma called.
“Mary Hollowell!” he shouted. Ma and I exchanged anxious glances. Turns out it was from me, that letter from Hite City.
Ma wrote her letter to Vincent St. John that night. In the morning she swallowed hard and let Till in on the secret. Naturally he wanted to see the gold that very minute, and was beside himself when we dug up the bars. By the time the three of us boarded the train to go to the First National Bank in Durango, Till had gotten over his injured feelings. Chalked it up to the injustice of his age and birth order, I suppose.
Cool as can be, Ma asked to see the president of the bank. We were ushered in to three chairs in front of his desk. Till knew he wasn’t to say a word. I had our wicker picnic basket by my feet. Ma started in by saying she had decided to use an additional resource to pay back the loan she had recently taken out. “Happy to hear it,” the banker said stuffily.
“I’ll be making a deposit,” Ma continued.
“Splendid, splendid.”
Ma gave me a nod. I hefted our picnic basket onto his desk and lifted the cloth covering the contents. At the sight of our gold the banker said, “My, my.” We held our breath as he inspected every surface without saying what he was looking for. Then he said gravely, “We’ll get this asset of yours taken care of, Mrs. Hollowell. We pride ourselves on our discretion.”
Before we got back on the train, Ma posted her letter to the president of Telluride’s Miners Union, in which she invited Vincent St. John to visit and requested he bring Merlin Custard along if possible. Mid-November we met them at the Hermosa depot and walked them to our door. Neither knew there was more to it than a social call. Uncle Jacob had often talked about his farm, and seeing us at home in that beautiful setting made their eyes brim. When Ma presented the young leader with her check made out to the Telluride Miners Union Hospital Fund, St. John was moved and delighted. “With a gift like this,” Vincent said, “we might be able to start construction in the spring.”
“We’re happy to hear it,” Ma said.
We put them back on the train without a peep about gold bullion. If our family was to survive, the three of us must keep the secret.
30
Before We Pass on
A WEEK AFTER Merlin and Vincent came to visit, we read about the marshal in the Durango Herald. Having recently returned from chasing a horse thief as far as Hite City on the Colorado River, it said, Jim Clark was assassinated on the streets of Telluride. All these years later I have to wonder if he would’ve done us in. I like to think he wouldn’t have. He was gunned down shortly after midnight at the corner of Colorado and Spruce as he was walking his nightly patrol. No suspect, no clues, only a mention that the marshal was known to have many enemies. The marshal was buried in Telluride’s Lone Tree Cemetery. Under JAMES CLARK, his stone says CSA, for the Confederate States of America.
Had we kept that second ingot, we could’ve added rooms to t
he house and breathed easy. As it was, we would have to keep living close to the bone. Over the next three years I gave the farm my all, trying to make it a paying proposition. Exactly one year after the fire, the new hotel and restaurant at Trimble Hot Springs had their grand opening, and Ma went back to work. She was a natural with people and loved the activity. She made the back and forth by buggy or sleigh.
As for Till, Hermosa’s one-room school was a ten-minute walk from home and nothing like the chicken coop he expected. He took quite a shine to the young schoolteacher, even dropped his lingo like a hot potato for her sake. Miss Roberta introduced him to Robert Louis Stevenson and Jules Verne. Said he had “a remarkable ear for language.”
Evenings those three years, I was reading and studying for the University of Colorado’s entrance exams. Ma backed me all the way, but I got the idea from Molly. She entered the year before me. The university was far away in Boulder, north of Denver.
By the time I went off to college, we had five acres of vegetables and berries under cultivation. Our apple orchard of a hundred trees was coming along nicely. All three of us were keen on keeping the place. Ma gained some income by renting out the produce field and the orchard to a neighboring farmer. That left Hercules and Peaches with more than twenty acres of pasture to call their own. A couple of times a day they would get a notion and take off at a gallop. They liked to race the train and won hands down every time.
Molly and I came down from Boulder for Till’s eighth-grade graduation. From Durango we went on to Telluride to see her mother. Molly’s father had died the previous year, of a stroke. Her mother sold the newspaper and kept the bakery. Marie was a woman of means and loved to travel. She came twice a year to visit in Boulder.
Till went to work for a cattle rancher in the Animas Valley. He could soon throw a loop with the best of them and was wrestling steers to the ground at the age of fifteen. By eighteen the local ranch work was too tame for him. Along with a friend he’d cowboyed with in the valley, Till lit out for southeast Utah. His buddy had learned of an outfit from Texas that walked away from an enormous herd of longhorns, just abandoned them to the wilds of Cedar Mesa. Their numbers had tripled. If you had enough guts to roust them out of the canyon bottoms—Grand Gulch and Arch Canyon and all the rest—they were yours.