Time of the Wolves

by Marcia Muller

“But this is only rumor.”

  “Rumor has a way of attaching itself to the proper object. When you see Andrew Trevelyan, you will understand what I mean.”

  I had that dubious privilege three days later, after returning to the assay office after spending a morning at the Knob supervising the unloading of steel drums of cyanide from I.G. Farben and milling equipment from the Krupp Works. Dora had arrived, bringing me a surprise meal of bread and cheese and hard-cooked eggs, and, after we had finished, she suddenly drew me to the window fronting on Main Street. Motioning to a man striding along the opposite sidewalk, she said: “Andrew Trevelyan.”

  He was brutish-looking and, while old, showed no signs of weakness. Well over six feet, he towered above the people he passed, his barrel chest thrust out, big fists pumping the air as if to punish it. His hair was a wild grayish-white tangle, his thick-featured face coarsely textured and wrinkled. His clothing—flannel shirt, leather vest, denim trousers—looked none too clean even at a distance, and his heavy boots were caked in mud. Both women and men gave him wide berth as he strode along, casting what I assumed were evil looks at all he encountered.

  “I now understand what you meant by rumor attaching itself to the proper object,” I said to Dora.

  “And why I told you to have caution.”

  “I wish the men were here so we could point him out to them.”

  “He will point himself out to them before very long, I assure you.”

  The next week passed quietly and productively. We collected our samples from the tailings and waste dumps, and adjusted our cyanide solutions to achieve maximum recovery of the gold. Dora had asked me if I were not discomforted by working with such a deadly poison, and I had explained that in its diluted state it was quite benign. Gold, and silver, too, had an affinity for cyanide and would attach itself to it; later we would run the resultant solution through zinc shavings, which would precipitate the precious metal. The Forrest-MacArthur process was a simple one, and rendered safe because cyanide was neither unstable nor corrosive, or explosive.

  In the quiet of the former assay office Lionel Eliot and I performed our tests and recorded our results, while the others supervised the setting up of the mill at the Knob and hiring of miners to extract the low-grade ore that remained in the earth. During those hours we spent together, Lionel and I seldom spoke, but it was not an uncomfortable silence. In fact, after a day spent conducting tests, I emerged as refreshed as if it had been devoted not to work but to sleep. And that was fortunate because, as Dora had predicted, young Noah had taken to me with the energetic zeal of a seven-year-old, constantly entreating me to join in his games and read him stories. Dora was disconcerted and cautioned him to leave me be, but Noah had found a willing playmate in “Auntie Elizabeth”. It had been four years since I felt such simple joy, and now I began to delight in the rhythm of my days.

  That rhythm was broken at the beginning of our third week in Seven Wells. It was late afternoon, and, feeling a stiffness in my back, I had risen from my chair and gone to the window overlooking Main Street. A figure on the far sidewalk drew my attention: Andrew Trevelyan leaning against the wall of the abandoned building behind him, his large arms folded across his chest, a peaked cap pulled low on his brow. Distance and shadow could not disguise the malice on his coarse-featured face as he stared at me. Quickly I stepped back from the window and said: “Mister Eliot?”

  Lionel Eliot looked up from the logbook in which he was recording the results of a test we had completed earlier on a sample of low-grade ore. Before he could speak, I motioned for him to join me. When he saw Trevelyan, his breath escaped in a hiss.

  “Do you think we have something to fear from him?” I asked.

  He hesitated, then shook his head. “No. I’ve been talking with people about Trevelyan . . . the shopkeepers, the men who sit in front of the general store. To a man, they fear Trevelyan, but they say he seldom engages in confrontation unless provoked. Still. . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “I would rather you did not walk back to your lodgings alone today. If I may, I’ll escort you.

  “I would be pleased.” Very much, in fact. During the hours we had spent in one another’s presence, I had come to like and respect Lionel Eliot. Although he was a quiet and non-assuming man, I sensed a deep and rich vein of strength ran through his core.

  Andrew Trevelyan was across the street the next day, and the next. Lionel Eliot escorted me both to and from our office, and one of the other men was always with me when my presence was required at the Knob. The mill was nearly ready to operate, and initial tests of the equipment were being made.

  On the afternoon of the third day of Trevelyan’s presence, Uncle Hort returned from the Knob earlier than usual for the purpose of having a talk with Trevelyan. Lionel Eliot and I watched as he crossed the street and approached the big Cornishman. After a few moments of discussion, Uncle Hort turned and came back to the office.

  “Mister Trevelyan,” he said, “claims he has taken a fancy to that particular spot because the sun shines upon it in a manner that pleases him.”

  “The sun!” I exclaimed. “That side of the street is mainly in shade.”

  Uncle Hort nodded. “He also claims that he bears us no ill will. ‘If I’d gotten myself an education like you people, I’d be more than a dirt-poor miner,’ he told me. ‘You people were smart to look to the future.’ ”

  “Was he sincere?” I asked.

  He snorted. “Sincere? Lizzie, you may be a grown-up lady with an engineer’s degree, but sometimes I question your good sense.”

  I felt the blood rush to my face and could find no suitable response.

  Lionel Eliot, however, surprised me. “On the contrary, Hort,” he said, “I think Miss Lazarus has excellent instincts. There may be more to this Cornishman than any of us realizes.”

  Uncle Hort erupted with laughter. “If you discover his good side, you must be certain to inform me of it. And what is this ‘Miss Lazarus’ nonsense? Formality isn’t necessary among us. She’s Lizzie to John, Tod, and me, and should be Lizzie to you as well.” With that embarrassing pronouncement, he moved to the back of the room where he began pawing through the test logs.

  Lionel Eliot smiled sympathetically at me. “Do you like to be called Lizzie?”

  “Not really. It makes me sound twelve years old.”

  “Then may I call you Elizabeth?”

  “You may. But what shall I call you?”

  “Not Ly, as the others do. It makes me sound untruthful. I prefer Lionel. It means lion-like.”

  “Lionel,” I said. The name suited him perfectly.

  Three days later, days in which Andrew Trevelyan kept his vigil in the sunless patch on the opposite side of Main Street, Lionel and I entered the office in the morning to find the others already assembled. Uncle Hort and John Estes looked grave. Tod Schuyler seemed subdued, and he had a dark, knotted bruise on his high cheek bone. His eyes were reddened, his complexion pale. Too much whiskey the night before, I supposed.

  Before I could ask what the trouble was, Uncle Hort said: “There has been a confrontation with the Cornishman, Lizzie. I will spare you the more sordid details”—this with a meaningful glance at Tod Schuyler—“but I feel that from now on a man should stay under the roof with you and Missus Collins. On our way to the Knob, we will stop there and ask if John may rent a room from her.”

  “This confrontation. . . .”

  “Ly will tell you about it. We must go now.”

  I watched as they filed out, noting that Tod walked stiffly, cradling one arm to his ribs. “Lionel,” I said, “exactly what are these ‘sordid details’?”

  He smiled. “Hort said that would be the first thing you would ask. And, unlike him, I feel you are woman enough to hear them. Yesterday evening Tod was drinking in the hotel saloon with a woman whose reputation is not above reproach. The kind of woman who. . . .”

  “I know what kind of woman frequents saloons, Lionel.”
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br />   “Of course. Her name is Addie Lawton, and she is a good deal older than Tod. Her husband deserted her a number of years ago, and since then she’s made her living by. . . .” Lionel looked so discomforted that I had to smile.

  “I am not easily shocked,” I told him. “And I am aware of what goes on when a woman is left penniless and a man like Tod is far from home. Please continue with your story.”

  As the hours went by, Lionel said, the whiskey flowed. Tod and his companion became loudly intoxicated, so they scarcely noticed when Andrew Trevelyan strode into the saloon. The Cornishman went directly to their table and pulled Tod from his chair, shouting that no sissified mining engineer from Denver was going to steal his woman. As he began to drag Tod toward the door, Addie Lawton followed, urging Tod to stand up to Trevelyan. But Tod went limp in Trevelyan’s grasp, and, when they reached the street, the Cornishman hit him on the face. After he fell to the ground, Trevelyan kicked him several times in the ribs.”

  “And then?” I asked when Lionel paused.

  “Then Addie Lawton called Tod a coward and left with Trevelyan.”

  I did not care for Tod Schuyler, but I regretted that he had been humiliated in such a fashion. Men like Lionel or John or Uncle Hort could tolerate such insult, but it must have dealt a crushing blow to Tod.

  As if he knew what I was thinking, Lionel said: “Yes. I’m afraid that Schuyler may have difficulty showing his face on the streets after this incident. Hort has offered to allow him to return home.”

  “But he’s essential to the team.”

  “No one is that essential.”

  Tod Schuyler remained in Seven Wells, but as a changed man. He no longer frequented the saloon, and spent many hours brooding in his room. Gone was his jocular and overly familiar manner. He performed his work silently, his mouth set in grim lines. Often he absented himself from town and the mill for hours, riding about the countryside. And he did not join in at the gatherings that occurred several times a week at Dora’s house, now that John was boarding there. Dora and Noah had taken to John much as they had to me. When he asked if he might invite Lionel and Uncle Hort to supper one night, Dora readily agreed. Other suppers followed.

  Andrew Trevelyan had withdrawn from our lives as well, and it was a relief not to find him staring from across the street every time I looked out the office window. The townspeople said that, since the night he beat Tod, he had stayed close to his cabin on Drinkwater Creek, and the woman, Addie Lawton, stayed with him.

  As autumn turned to winter and Thanksgiving approached, my days resumed their pleasant rhythm. Operations had begun at the mill, and Uncle Hort began to speak of returning to Denver for Christmas. John and Lionel said they would prefer to remain in Seven Wells. As for myself, I welcomed the opportunity to spend my first California Christmas in Dora Collins’s cozy home, with the people who I was beginning to regard as family.

  Then, the day before Thanksgiving, all the windows in our office were smashed. No one had seen or would admit to having seen the culprit, who had struck sometime after Uncle Hort had left there at six in the evening. We had the windows boarded over, and got on with our work as best we could, but all of us, even the usually unshakeable John Estes, were nervous and irritable. Tod Schuyler became even more withdrawn, and Lionel said that he had taken to drinking alone in his room. The incident cast a shadow over the Thanksgiving feast Dora and I prepared, and shortly after that Uncle Hort cancelled his plans to spend Christmas with his grown children in Denver.

  Finally, the next Monday, John Estes was shot.

  It happened in the morning at the Knob. A shot rang out in a thick copse of trees along the creek, and a bullet struck him in the shoulder, its force knocking him back into a waste dump. No one saw the shooter, although later Tod Schuyler discovered some broken branches that showed where he must have stood. Quickly two workers loaded John into a wagon and brought him to Dora’s house, unconscious and bleeding profusely. Uncle Hort arrived behind them on horseback and spoke grimly of transporting him to a doctor.

  Dora said: “The nearest doctor is thirty miles away, over bad roads. A journey of that sort could kill him. Bring him inside.”

  “Bring him inside to die?” Uncle Hort exclaimed.

  Her eyes flashed both annoyance and amusement. “I can doctor him as well as anyone. In the mining camps, we women quickly learn such skills.”

  A chastened Uncle Hort motioned for the workers to carry John inside.

  Dora asked my assistance, and we went upstairs to John’s room. The wound, she found, was not as serious as the profuse bleeding had led her to believe, and the bullet had not lodged there. While she cleaned and bandaged it, we heard Lionel arrive, and then Uncle Hort’s voice rose from the parlor, loud and strident.

  “We know the identity of our shooter, Ly. It is that Cornishman. A coward, hiding in the trees with his rifle! Tomorrow morning I am riding to Talbot’s Mills to inform the deputy sheriff there about these incidents.”

  Lionel said something in a low voice.

  “You’re right that we have no concrete proof of his involvement, but circumstances support it,” Uncle Hort replied. “The man killed his own brother. . . .”

  “Again, there’s no proof.”

  “Nevertheless, I am determined to talk with the sheriff without further delay.”

  While Lionel and I walked to our office the next morning, he informed me that Uncle Hort had left for Talbot’s Mills at first light. After we were seated at our desks, he grew silent, and, although he made a show of paging through his logbooks and notes, I sensed he was troubled. By noon, when I decided to return to Dora’s house to see how John was mending, he still hadn’t spoken and paid me little attention as I gathered my things and went out the door.

  I found Dora in the kitchen making a soup stock. John was resting comfortably, she told me. “He is all for getting out of bed and going after the Cornishman himself,” she added. “I fear that John will not be an easy patient.”

  I noted her use of John’s first name; up to now she had referred to him as Mr. Estes. “How long will he be bedridden?” I asked.

  “As long as I can persuade him to remain there. Perhaps a day.”

  “I’ve never known him to be troublesome.”

  She smiled mysteriously. “Men are always troublesome when they seek to impress. . . .”

  A knock came at the kitchen door, and a woman’s voice called out Dora’s name. There was a frantic quality to it that made my friend raise her eyebrows in alarm. Quickly she set aside her wooden spoon, and went to see who was there.

  It was Millicent Wilson, a neighbor whose son Tommy frequently played with Noah. Her eyes were round and frightened, her face pale. She grasped Dora’s arm, exclaiming: “You must come!”

  Dora reached for her cloak where it hung on a peg inside the door. “What is it?”

  “My Tommy and your Noah. They’re very ill.”

  I followed the two women outside as Dora asked: “How ill? In what way?”

  “They’re dizzy and breathing with difficulty. Noah’s limbs are twitching.”

  Now Dora paled. “When did these symptoms start?”

  “They were playing near the well in the park across from the general store when I did my marketing. Tommy says they both drank of it and immediately became sick. This was perhaps fifteen minutes ago.”

  Dora hurried toward Millicent’s small white house. “I’ll need warm soapy water to begin. And afterward, salt water, also warm. Wood ashes from your stove and vinegar will also help.”

  Recognizing the course of treatment she planned to follow, I asked in a low voice: “Poison?”

  She nodded grimly. “I’ll force them to regurgitate the stomach contents, and then neutralize what remains. In the meantime, I need you to go to the general store and ask them to close off the well.”

  “Of course.” But before it was closed, I would take a sample of the water.

  “Cyanide,” I said, looking up from the la
boratory table at Lionel. “We are fortunate that the well water diluted it so much. Otherwise, we would have had two dead boys.”

  His face was deeply troubled. “We should also take samples at the other public wells and close them until we can make an analysis.”

  “And then we should inventory our supplies of cyanide at the mill.”

  The six other public wells in town were tainted, and an entire drum of cyanide was missing from our stores. While Lionel rode about warning the owners of private wells about possible contamination, I looked in on Noah and Tommy and found that Dora’s doctoring had been successful. Thanks to her quick assessment of their symptoms, their discomfort had been shortened.

  By the time I returned to our office, a crowd was gathering—an angry crowd demanding we take our poison and return to Denver. I urged them to remain calm, assured them the trouble was well in hand, but they only became louder and more enraged, so I locked the office door and withdrew to the rear, wishing for a steadying presence. But Uncle Hort was in Talbot’s Mills by now; John was in his invalid’s bed at Dora’s house; Tod was at the mill; and Lionel was probably taking samples at the private wells. The job of defending the office and reputation of Denver Precious Metals had fallen to me, and I felt a poor champion at best.

  After perhaps an hour, the noise outside, which had fallen off to a murmur, again rose to a din. Above the townspeople’s voices I heard that of Tod Schuyler. I went to the front of the office and pressed my ear to the still boarded window, trying to hear what he was saying.

  “Yes, it was our cyanide!” he shouted. “But if you want to place the blame, look to the Cornishman, Andrew Trevelyan. He’s held a grudge against Denver Precious Metals since we arrived here, and I caught him skulking around the shed where the cyanide drums are stored on the night one of them disappeared.”