“She ain’t got much spunk in’er,” the other said. “Think she’ll be able to work?”
“Woman’s work she can do,” the one behind her said, leaning forward with a little chuckle. “Don’t you worry, darlin’, I’ll do all the heavy lifting.”
The bear’s roar silenced them all, loud and low and rolling in the animal’s fleshy throat. Hannah turned to see it, a large black bear, shaggy and almost impossibly big. Its white fangs protruded from pink gums, lips curling up as it shook its head. The three stopped and Hannah sensed their fear.
But what she could sense even more was the complete lack of her own. Something in Hannah told her not to fear, that the bear was not there for her or perhaps that the bear was there only for her; for her protection, for her rescue. Hannah knew in her heart that this was no freak turn of luck, a chaotic crossing of paths. Whether it was the protective hand of God or the angels, her mother’s eternal protection or her father’s seething frustration and need for revenge, Hannah couldn’t be sure. But she didn’t need to know. All she needed to do was believe.
And run like hell.
Hannah pulled herself out of the man’s stunned grip, one arm slipping free but the other holding tight. With a flush of renewed strength, Hannah pulled her leg back and threw a hard kick into the side of the man’s knee. With a tight-lipped grunt, the man bent to the side and released Hannah’s other arm.
Every impulse in her body and mind screamed the same thing.
Hannah tore away from the pack of men behind her and the great force of natural retribution they had to face, and she did it without looking back. Even the pounding of her own heart, loud in her ears, could drown out the sound of the bear’s battle cries and the men’s shouts of terror, screams becoming high-pitched wails of desperation and unearthly agony.
Hannah kept running, farther down the hill, eyes burning as she returned to run past the smoking ruins of her life, her father’s lifeless body.
She stopped suddenly against another big form, hard and unmoving despite the frenzy of her charge. Yet another set of arms were quickly wrapped around her, and Hannah’s instinct clenched her fists and pulled them back to pummel her new attacker, or die trying.
“Take it easy, Hannah, easy!” Hannah’s mind scrambled to recognize the voice, her blurred vision looking up at the familiar, friendly face of Vernon Flannery. Hannah felt the new terror ebb in her, but the power of everything she’d survived rose up like a mountain behind her and then, crumbling with a terrible quake, came crashing down on top of her, bringing the long, still, dark silence.
“S’all right,” she thought she heard Flannery say as she fell into that bottomless pit of sleep beyond sleep. “Yer all right now, s’all gonna be all right.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Cutthroat, Illinois 1848
A line of people waited in front of the restaurant in the front of Flannery’s hotel and was beginning to collect around the corner. Coaches and horses trolled past them on the muddy thoroughfare, pedestrians slipping in the muck.
Reverend Oliver Bean and his wife Ethel walked down the wooden sidewalk which the community had collectively funded and assembled, keeping some of the thickening crowds out of the mire.
“Come to services at First Baptist Church of Cutthroat,” the reverend said to the drunks and miners and other stragglers who walked past, disinterested. “All are forgiven in the house of the Lord.”
Ethel handed out slips of paper with the address of the new church, which Hannah and Flannery had helped organize. It was a modest structure, little more than four walls, a floor, a ceiling, and a door. But the reverend had been impressed with Hannah’s commitment to helping to fund and then build the church, and his grim demeanor seemed to soften just a bit, at least toward her.
“All are welcome,” Ethel Bean said to the pedestrians they passed. The reverend turned to look at her with a scolding glare, but she simply ignored him and went about handing out their fliers.
The restaurant was packed. The crackle of laughter and murmur of smaller, more private conversations filled the restaurant, the clatter of metal utensils against metal plates a constant scratching hovering just above the din.
Hannah carried a tray above her head, one hand reaching up to keep her five plates of food hot and fresh until she could make it across the room. And despite the crowd, she moved with speed and grace and stealth enough to make it between the patrons and diners. Many of them even shuffled their chair out of her way when they saw her coming, and did what they could to let her pass on the way back.
Hannah returned their kindness with courtesy, smiling and being friendly with as many of the patrons who earned it. But she hadn’t lived to be eighteen years old by being careless. Her lessons, her memories, had taught her better than that, and Flannery had taken the care and the time to teach her the rest. And as Cutthroat had blossomed, so had the opportunities for carelessness and its terrible ramifications.
Hannah’s keen senses were alert to everything around her, and there was a lot to be aware of. Unlike the bigger towns were rumored to be doing in the west, Cutthroat had no law, no true governance. And one of the most popular and beneficial laws of the west was said to be the volunteer of any guns brought into town. They’d be kept and held until the owner left town, and plenty of lives were said to be preserved by that simple policy.
But in that hotel restaurant around her, there were as many as fifty loaded pistols or rifles or even more. It was like living in a powder keg. The slightest spark of temper or even error could cause a massacre that would take lives in an instant and others over the course of terrible weeks of suffering and infection. Tempers always ran high, even in the good times. One man’s boon was another man’s bust, and a fight was never far from breaking out, no matter where in the camp Hannah might have found herself. But at the restaurant, even more so. Hannah’s best logic was to feed them well, as a man on a full belly would be sluggish and placated and less ready to fight, much less kill.
And at least in that hotel restaurant, anywhere in the hotel, Hannah felt secure, protected. Not only could she protect herself, but Flannery was still a powerful man in the camp, and his affection for her was that of an adoptive father. He would do no less, and even more, than her natural-born father Michael Alexander would have done, and his acts in protection of her virtue were already legendary around the camp.
“I heard he ripped the antlers off’n the walls and swiped it at him, tore his head clean off!” The young man, Barney Bellamy, was filthy with mountain dirt and old sweat, his denim caked with a long-standing combination of the two, leaned into two others who looked and smelled much the same.
But one of the two others, tall redhead Jasper, shook his head. “That ain’t so,” he said, raising a glass of beer and draining it. “Don’t matter anyway, ‘cause’n St. Michael of Cutthroat is long dead ’n we all know it.”
“It ain’t him you gotta worry about.”
The young man clacked his dry glass against the wooden tabletop. “Flannery? That fat old fool don’t scare me.”
“Not Flannery,” the third brother, chubby Don Bellamy said, “her.” Hannah wasn’t far off, her trained ear picking up on their conversation, her deft collection of some nearby finished plates giving her reason to linger. “I hear’d she’s a witch, that she can assume the form of a bear or a cougar, any animal she wants, an eagle … ”
“Now that’s the most ridiculous thing I ever hear’d! A witch!” Jasper glanced at Hannah, she could see him out of the corner of her eye. And she knew at once that she was just within his reach. “Let’s see kind of witch we got here.”
Jasper leaned toward her, hand grabbing the apron strings tied behind Hannah’s back.
He pulled her back, off her feet, and onto his lap. Jasper wrapped his arms around her waist to hold her down. “Hello there, little lady.” He looked back at his brothers. “See, boys? She ain’t nothin’ to be a-feared of!”
Hannah reached around and grab
bed his left hand. Bending Jasper’s thumb back, she stood up quickly and craned his arm along with her. He groaned in pain, back arching, pelvis reaching up as his arm formed an unnatural angle behind him, his twisted hand in Hannah’s. The slightest bit of increased pressure at the base of his thumb elevated his groan into a clenched scream.
The other Bellamy boys there, Don was terrified and Barney amused, as their friend squirmed under Hannah’s grip. The other patrons looked on in the spreading silence. Flannery stood behind the bar, watching with a keen eye and a proud smile, one hand ready to pull the rifle from behind the bar.
But Hannah didn’t need it. Another push and her attacker’s arm was ready to snap.
“Stop, stop, Jesus Lord stop!”
Hannah stared him down, his hand, his arm, his future as a functioning miner, in her hand. With a little jerk that made his whole body flinch, Hannah let go. Jasper bent forward in pitiful relief, withdrawing his left arm and cradling it with his right.
Hannah looked at the other two, ready for some reaction. Barney just raised his hands, palms flat up, an amused smile on his face, a slow shake of his head. The other, chubby Don, watched with eyes wide, mouth small. Hannah made a frightening face, snarling like a cougar and clacking her jaws, and the patron jerked back in his chair.
Hannah turned before letting a smile creep onto her face as she headed back to the bar.
“That’s my girl,” Flannery said as she passed him with a tray of empty plates.
“Hey,” another patron said as he staggered up to the bar. “Where are the whores? Didn’t this used to be a saloon?”
“Strictly food and drink here, pal,” Flannery said. “You can find women and games of chance down at the Lucky Strike, across the thoroughfare and around the corner.”
“Around the corner,” the man repeated, “what’s become of this place? Used to be a man could come in and —”
“But it ain’t that way no more,” Flannery said, a threatening tone in his voice, eyes locked on the patrons to tell him he didn’t expect to explain anything further. In most cases, he just didn’t need to. Everybody in Cutthroat knew what changes Flannery made when he brought in the orphaned Alexander girl, and what changes she made, too. Together they expanded the hotel, made the restaurant a thriving success, and helped Cutthroat thrive as much as Cutthroat did the same for them.
“Excuse me,” yet another male patron said, this one a new face in camp. “I’m looking for a Miss Hannah Alexander?”
Flannery was quick to answer. “What’s your business, mister?”
The man handed Flannery a business card befitting his appearance. His gray cotton suit was well tailored to his lean frame and sophisticated baring, long sideburns reaching down over his cheeks.
“Seth Jenkins,” he said, “Barns Mining Company.”
Hannah stepped up and took a look at the card for herself. “Barns? Wilber Albert Barns?”
“One and the same. You’ll recall he withdrew from the area to let us see to the working of his mines.”
“Yes, of course,” Hannah said. “What a sweet man, W.A. I’m glad he’s struck it so rich.”
“He’s done well,” Seth said. “I don't think anybody would doubt that. But his success isn't what brings me, Miss Alexander. It is … Miss, isn’t it?”
But before Hannah could answer, Flannery said, “State your business, Mr. … Jenkins. Is it mining or courtship?”
“Mining, strictly.” He turned to address Hannah more directly. “We understand you own the land just to the east of the Barns’ claim.”
“That’s right,” Hannah said. “We hardly raised a decent pinch.”
Seth chuckled. “I’m not surprised. Tell you the truth, Mr. Barns didn’t bring much gold out of his claim either.”
Hannah and Flannery shared a glance, their curiosity piqued. Flannery asked for them both: “Then how'd he strike it so rich?”
Hannah added, “I saw the gold myself, the day we met. He paid my father with a pinch of it, and it was real.” She turned to Flannery. “Right?”
“Sure was,” Flannery said, eyes sinking to shrewd slits as he glared at Seth. “You better start making better sense, mister.”
“There was a thin vein of gold there, yes. But Mr. Barns found most of it, and the vein doesn’t stretch into your land at all, I’m sorry to say.”
“Then what brings you?” The last of Flannery’s patience and friendliness was fast draining away.
“Copper, Mr. —?” But Flannery didn’t even respond to introduce himself. Seth cleared his throat and returned his attention to Hannah. “Mister Barns struck it very rich indeed, but in copper. This area is rich with it, his claim … and our surveys indicate your land, too.”
Hannah turned her head as to better hear this new and exciting information. It was almost too exciting. “What are you saying, that my property, my claim —?”
“It’s a very rich claim, Miss Alexander, very rich.”
Flannery asked, “Copper?”
“Copper,” Seth repeated. “For telegraph wires, mostly, imports rising in prices and tariffs as they are. But there are a thousand and one uses, or a thousand times more than that. But that really oughtn’t be your concern.”
Hannah asked, “And what ought to be our concern?”
Seth considered, then smiled. “Why, whether to work the claim yourself, or just sell it outright.”
*
In the privacy of their study, after the bulk of the diners had gone, Flannery leaned back in creaky wooden chair and lit his pipe, the tobacco smell woody and thick. “You’d ask me?”
“Of course, Vernon. You’re like … like a second father to me.”
Flannery couldn’t disguise the sentiment in his glistening eyes. “And you’re the daughter I never had.”
“Well then, who else would I ask? What should we do?”
Flannery scratched his head, brow furrowed. “Little as we know of mining, much less of copper, we could easily be rooked by this slickster or any number of other so-called mining companies.”
“But he is with W.A., at least we know him.”
“We don’t know what W.A.’s been up to, what kind of man his wealth has made of him or much of what kind of man he was before. It’s little enough to trust, much less hang our hat on.”
Hannah’s imagination circled the puzzle. “But we could just as easily wind up short selling ourselves to some investor, walk away with a fraction of what we could have.”
Flannery had to nod, unable to disagree. “Whatever profit we get, it’ll be more than we had yesterday.”
“But less than we deserve. No, Vernon, this is … this is my daddy’s dream coming true, a chance for him to rest at peace, finally, truly at peace.”
A sad silence passed. “Hannah,” Flannery finally said, “I didn’t know yer daddy well, surely not as well as you. And what I did know I surely did like just fine. So I can’t see things with your eyes, exactly, or feel things with your heart, but … but yer daddy’s dead, Hannah. He’s with the Lord now, with yer poor mamma, and mine —”
“I know it, Vernon, I … I know, but … ” Hannah couldn’t say more, and Vernon already knew the way she felt; confused, heartbreak lingering. They both knew it was likely to follow her the rest of her life, that she needed some way not only to free their spirits, but her own as well.
“S’all right, Hannah, I … I see what yer sayin’.” After a moment of protracted consideration, Flannery went on. “Maybe if we keep a real sharp eye on ‘em —”
“There’s no eye in Cutthroat sharper’n yours, Vernon.”
“Not as far as yer concerned.” Another moment to consider led Flannery to say, “I don’t know much of it.”
“You know people,” Hannah said, “and you’ve taught me well, better than I could have hoped. I know my parents would be grateful —”
“Grateful to me, proud of you.” They shared a smile. “Okay, let’s do it!”
CHAPTER NINE
/> Cutthroat, Illinois 1850
“My friends, we’ve been through much together.” Vernon Flannery’s voice rang out from a long, metal cone fixed to a handle on a base in front of him. “Good times and bad, seasons both cruel and kind. We’ve lost and we’ve gained and we’ve lost again. But we stuck together through those times, here for each other when we had nobody else, when nobody else would have us.”
The crowd laughed and some hooted and clapped. Standing just a few feet to his right, Hannah couldn’t help but smile, knowing that Flannery’s remarks were as personal as they were public.
Flannery stood in a fine tuxedo and silk top hat, dominating the platform built in front of the new First Baptist Church of Cutthroat, the first one to go up after Hannah’s lucky strike. The ramshackle building they’d put up years before was long-since firewood, and in its place stood a brick-and-stone church with a clean, whitewashed steeple, fine oak bannisters and railings within.
He went on. “And now, at long last, and in no small part due to our new place as an official boon town, we gather to enjoy our greatest moment, to celebrate our official charter as a City of the great State of Illinois in these United States of America!”
The massive crowd threw up a thunderous cheer, hats flying up, fists waving and cranking. A bullwhip or two cracked on either end of St. Michael’s Boulevard, formerly known simply as the main thoroughfare, but nowhere near the bulk of the crowd around the intersection of Adrienne Alexander Avenue. The popular new road, home to the new tailor shop, cobbler, a second saloon, and two public bath houses, was already being called the triple A by the locals.
“And so we all must proffer our thanks, and our gratitude, not only to our honorable state government and its many decent and worthy servants … ” The crowd barely clapped until Flannery added, “And our new city’s absent patriarch, Wilbur Albert Barns … ” The crowd offered up even-less-courteous applause for the man most of them had only heard about, some failing to be convinced that he was ever natural born at all and not simply a mythic concoction for the town’s lore.
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