And the Hills Opened Up

by Oppegaard, David

  “Find anything worth working?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I’d be surprised if you did. Dennison’s men have surveyed this whole valley and they can sniff out good ore like they planted it there themselves.”

  Owen grinned and looked around the bar stupidly. Elwood willed his younger brother to shut his mouth and leave it at that but, of course, he could not do so.

  “Damn it all,” Owen said, slapping the table. “Why didn’t anyone tell me that in the first place? I might as well pack up my kit tonight.”

  The young sheriff looked toward the saloon’s front door, unsmiling. A few of the whores had come out of their rooms up on the second floor and were leaning over the railing in a suggestive manner.

  “Well, gentlemen,” the sheriff said, “sometimes moving on doesn’t hurt none, either.”

  8

  Hank Chambers emerged from his feverish afternoon nap to find a man looming above his bed. The foreman raised his head, his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth and a terrible thirst stuffed in his throat. The visitor tilted his chin, watching Chambers with undisguised curiosity. The visitor’s face was deeply lined, wrinkled around the eyes and scorched acorn brown from a lifetime of working beneath the sun. He wore a broken old straw hat with a tattered brim.

  “Pa.”

  The visitor nodded. He removed his hat and fanned himself with it, as if he could actually feel the cabin’s trapped heat and had not been in the ground for over twenty long years. Chambers swung his leg over the bed’s edge, making to stand. His body trembled from the effort.

  “Goodness, Pa. I’ve missed you so much. Everybody has—”

  Noise from another part of the cabin. His wife, asking if he needed something. Chambers turned his head, as if he could see through the partition sheet and make out whatever lay beyond it.

  When he turned back, his visitor was gone.

  The foreman sighed and lay back in bed. His wife came into the room with a cup of water, frowning. “I thought you might have been calling for water,” she said, her eyebrows folding in on each other. “Was that it?”

  “I saw him, Bonnie.”

  “Who?”

  “Pa. I thought I saw my pa standing right here, clear as day. He was even wearing that beat-up straw hat he favored.”

  His wife leaned over the bed and felt Chambers’ forehead with the back of her hand. It felt cool and nice and he found himself reaching up from beneath the cotton sheet to cup one of her heavy breasts. It felt as good as ever in his palm, possessing a calming weight that returned him to the world of the living.

  Bonnie leaned into his groping, kissed his hot forehead, and pulled back to adjust her hair.

  “Mr. Chambers, please. You need your rest.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She handed him the cup of water, which made him sit up again and lean against the headboard.

  “Drink all of that.”

  Chambers did so, gladly.

  “I’ll fetch you another so you can drink that, too. And a fresh cloth for your forehead. You could cook eggs on it.”

  Chambers smiled and watched his wife go back through the partition’s doorway. That was a good woman, there. He’d done well for himself by marrying Bonnie and she seemed to feel the same about him. Any way you looked at it, it wasn’t every woman who’d pick up house every few years and haul out to another goddamn mining camp, where she was sure to deal with more dust and disorderly behavior.

  The foreman closed his eyes and had started to drift back to sleep when somebody hammered on the cabin’s door. He heard the front door creak as Bonnie answered and the sound of her voice, trying to hush the visitor. The visitor replied in a low but excited tone and whatever he said must have had a strong effect, because suddenly Bonnie was beside the bed, wringing her hands.

  “Randy Bale’s here, Hank. He says there’s been some kind of accident in the mine.”

  Chambers was on his feet and moving before he knew exactly what he was about. He found his clothes piled on the floor, still damp with his earlier sweat. He pulled on his shirt and drawers and trousers while Bonnie tisked.

  “Please, Hank. You’re too poorly. Can’t Andrew handle this? Isn’t this what a shift-boss is for?”

  “I’m the foreman. This is what I’m for.”

  Bonnie wrapped her arms around him, ready to throw him back down in bed herself. Chambers took a deep breath, trying to clear his thoughts, and felt his wife’s bosom press against his own.

  “I’ll be home before you know it,” Chambers whispered, squeezing his wife with both arms. “I’ll guzzle all the water you see fit.”

  Randy Bale was standing outside the cabin, his gaze fixed south of town. He was only sixteen or so, the kind of fleet-footed kid they’d have sent if something had gone wrong. Normally, Randy would be mucking the stables and tending to the mules not on shift.

  Chambers clapped the kid on the shoulder, making him jump.

  “Easy, boy. Easy.”

  They started walking toward the mine, speaking as they went. Chambers ignored the sun’s fierce heat and the fresh dizziness that threatened to overtake him. He focused on the hills in the distance and the small, vulnerable group of buildings at their base.

  “What happened?”

  “Three men dead, sir.”

  “Cave in?”

  “No. I mean, yes, sir, some rock fell in, but that wasn’t what killed them.”

  “Then what was it?”

  The boy glanced up at the foreman. “Something…something got at their throats.”

  Chambers pulled up. Sweat poured down in his brow in a mighty cascade of miserable salt water.

  “Their throats?”

  “Ripped’em clean out, sir. Blood all over.”

  Chambers set his hands on his hips. He felt like keeling over right there in the scrub grass.

  “Run back to my cabin, Randy, and tell Bonnie to give you my rifle. Go now and catch up with me.”

  The boy took off like a scared antelope, moving as if glad to vent his energy. The foreman watched him run for a moment, wondering if he should have sent the boy for the sheriff and more men instead. What kind of animal might find itself lost inside a mountain and decide to start killing? Bear? Mountain lion?

  Or did they have a murderer on their hands?

  Chambers was swaying on his feet by the time he approached the mine’s entrance, Randy Bale right on his heels. He stopped as the boy caught up and handed over his Winchester. Chambers levered the rifle open and checked the cartridge while Randy panted beside him.

  “Who was it killed?”

  “Hans Berg, Jake Keller, and Bear Tollackson.”

  The foreman clenched his teeth. All three good workers, good men, and whatever had taken down a giant like Tollackson must have been pretty formidable itself.

  “Nobody saw nothing, either. They was just down in the Brink Lode, swamping out the new rock. When Mr. Klieg went to check on them, he found their candle still burning but the men lying there, dead. He thought they were pulling his leg before he saw all the blood.”

  Chambers nodded and looked in on the dry house, which sat about ten yards outside the mine’s entrance. With its roughhewn benches and cubby holes, the dry house served as a changing room for the miners, who usually came up soaked to the bone after each shift—the temperature in the mine was pleasant enough, cool in the summer and warm in winter, but water would seep through the earth to drip upon your head and fill the gaps you’d just chiseled out.

  Chambers heard Randy Bale breathing hard behind him.

  “None of the men have come up?”

  “No, sir. Don’t look like it.”

  Chambers checked his pocket watch. Six-fifteen on a Saturday. The
dry house should have been packed with men coming off the week’s last shift.

  “They must reckon it takes an army to sort out three dead men. You wait here, Randy.”

  “Sir?”

  “Mind the entrance and tell any men coming out to wait for me in the dry house before they go into town. I want to talk to everybody before they take to drinking and whoring.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Chambers walked into the mine’s entrance. The temperature dropped mercifully as he left the daylight behind and headed down the tunnel, moving slowly to let his eyes adjust before stepping into the Main Room, which was really just a big, hollowed out room, scraped clean of any copper ore it might have once had. They kept a long supply bench in the Main Room where you could come back for dynamite, fuses, hammers, chisels, candles, and whatever else was lying around. An old man named Lionel usually minded the bench, keeping a lamp burning and logging who took what, but he wasn’t sitting in his usual chair this evening, complaining about his lame right leg to anybody who’d listen.

  “Lionel? You around here?”

  Chambers voice carried through the air and died out against the damp rock. He dug through the supplies piled on the bench, pulled out an oil wick lamp, and lit it on the main lamp. The amount of light in the Main Room doubled, revealing the white shine of condensation on the rocks overhead. A bat flitted across the room, dipped toward Chamber’s face, and rose again as he snapped his fingers, a movement as automatic to him as scratching his ass.

  The Dennison Mine was still young and growing, but it was already sizeable. Three tunnels were connected to the Main Room—left took you to the Emerald Lode, right took you to the White Lode, and straight ahead took you deep into the hillside toward the Brink Lode, which ran two levels below the main.

  Hank Chambers started down the gleaming metal rails of the Brink tunnel, wondering at the quiet and wishing he weren’t alone.

  9

  The stagecoach guards all smelled like beer and whiskey and they stumbled clumsily into the street, unsure of where to take their dead friend. Father Lynch followed the group at a distance, his thin lips pursed in distaste, and said a silent prayer that the men would not drop the coffin between them, the impact of which would surely split the cheap pine contraption Leg Jameson had the nerve to call a coffin. The killer had already been led away to the general store, where he’d be kept until the next morning. Soon enough, Johnny Miller would be rolling back through the hills toward a noose of his own and it would all mean nothing, absolutely nothing, and the Devil would be laughing mightily at the never ending stupidity of man.

  “We should ask Hollis where to keep him.”

  “We should just load him back into the wagon. Ain’t no money box inside it anymore.”

  “May draw flies, though.”

  “Chester always was a ripe one.”

  The men laughed and Father Lynch winced—what sort of name was Chester, anyhow? That sounded like the type of name that laid out of the path to damnation for a child before it could take its first step. Chester. The name of a born sinner.

  “All right,” one of the guards said. “Let’s go ask.”

  The four men staggered toward the Cooke House with their shared load. Father Lynch sighed and rubbed his temple—if there was a more unpleasant man in the world than Revis Cooke, who harbored the duel sins of greed and arrogance in staggering abundance, Father Lynch did not want to meet him. Mr. Cooke was enough unpleasantness for anyone to encounter in the skin of one man.

  The stagecoach guards dropped the coffin and conferred with each other in the way of nervous, half-intoxicated men. Finally, after some heated debate, one of their number was made to go up to the house and knock on the front door. The metal door was so stout the man’s fist barely made a noise against it, only a soft thud-thud-thud Father Lynch had to tilt his head to hear. Nothing happened for a moment, but as the man made to knock again the door’s peek-a-boo slot was thrown back and a pair of oil-black eyes appeared.

  “Yes?”

  “Sorry to bother you, sir, but is Hollis Wells in there with you?”

  The black eyes narrowed.

  “Yes, he is. We are tallying accounts. What do you want?”

  The guard, now much closer to sober, took off his hat and wrung it in his hands.

  “Well, sir, there’s been a difficulty. We were at the saloon across the road there and one of our men was shot and killed.”

  “I see. We wondered at the gunfire.”

  The guard nodded.

  “The killer was unprovoked and we’re going to take him to Rawlins in the morning for trial.”

  “That sounds in order. What do you need Mr. Wells for, at this very minute?”

  “Well, sir, we was wondering what to do with the body. With Chester’s body.”

  Cooke blinked again from behind his metal door. Father Lynch wondered what could make a man so given toward the indoors, so fearful of God’s bright firmament. Was it a love for money alone that could wreak such havoc upon a man? Or was there a greater twisting inside Cooke which required four walls to keep it at bay?

  “Go ahead and stow the remains in the wagon,” Cooke said. “I suppose he’ll keep well enough on wheels.” “No,” Father Lynch called out, stepping toward the house. “Bring the coffin to the church. Chester’s first night departed should be spent in the house of God. I’ll watch over the body.”

  The stagecoach guards startled at the priest’s voice, having forgotten his presence. Cooke snorted through the door.

  “That’s fine with me, Father. Now leave us alone.”

  The peek-a-boo bar slammed home. The guards looked in directionless befuddlement at the priest, a look he’d grown to know all too well. He raised his hand and lo, they followed.

  Father Lynch had them set the coffin down at the rear of the church, in the standing room behind the pews. The men stepped back from the coffin, hats in hand, and stared balefully at the floor. The spirits on their breath had turned hot and sour and their clothes still smelled of the road, like horses and juniper and sweat. Inside the church, they did not seem like good or bad men. Just four mortal souls, making their path through the world as best they could.

  “Thank you, gentleman. You can go back to the saloon. Your friend should be fine here for the night.”

  The dejected guards mumbled their thanks and went out the door. Father Lynch made a sign of the cross over the coffin and said the Lord’s Prayer, as much to comfort himself as the dead man. He’d presided over hundreds of funerals during his career and spent countless nights sitting up with the dead, both with family members and alone. Many folks were made uneasy by the dead, frightened by the mirror held up to their own eventual future, but Lynch was not. He’d watched a great many men, women, and children die over the past forty years. He’d seen the light fade from their eyes and how their chests rose slowly, fell slowly, then ceased to move altogether. He’d bathed the dead and dressed them in their Sunday finest. Combed their hair. Rolled their eyes shut. He’d felt them stiffen beneath his touch, their bodies seized by the clenched fist of rigor mortis. And, as they were lowered into their final resting place, Lynch had done his best to speak a few words of comfort above their mortal bodies as their souls traveled toward the Lord, who alone could sit in judgment upon them.

  Truly, Father Lynch didn’t mind the company of the dead in his little church, which was always so empty during the long nights. He retrieved the bottle of gin from the back room, took a pull, and brought a chair back out with him to the sanctuary, where he sat with the coffin before him.

  Outside, the descending sun broke through the clouds and brightened the room. Father Lynch imagined he was sitting among the clouds, bathed in the sun’s white light as he drifted above the world. How beautiful it would be to look down upon creation from such a
height. The death of this one man would seem even less than it did now, nearly insignificant in comparison to the world’s mountains, lakes, deserts, forests, and frothing oceans.

  And the wind blowing across it all, like God’s very breath.

  At six o’clock Father Lynch finished his drink, put on his hat, and headed out the door. Lynch didn’t feel like cooking and Chester didn’t seem to mind if he stepped out.

  Across the way, the girls had come back outside the Runoff Saloon, waiting for the Saturday night rush. Tonight the miners would drink and carouse and lay with whores. Tomorrow, twenty or so would filter into his church, bleary-eyed and penitent, fully expecting the approaching week to be exactly the same as the previous. The pattern of a mining camp was simple enough, based as it was on a great amount of work followed by a brief, stormy period of revelry, the entire town exhaling with the beginning of each shift and inhaling once again as the miners returned, eager to spend their salaries and hold women so much softer than the rock they spent their days hacking loose.

  Father Lynch squinted as he walked slowly down the street, hoping to find Ingrid Blomvik among the girls placed along the Runoff Saloon’s front porch. She’d seemed so sad at her confession earlier that afternoon, so full of mourning for her dead husband. He’d wanted to console and bed her at the same time, to combine his heat with her own and pray for God’s forgiveness after. But the sad girl from Minnesota was not out among the other doves, which did seem to coo to each other as they fiddled with their elaborate garments.

  The priest stopped in front of the Copper Hotel, went up the porch steps, and stepped inside. He found it cooler here than in the church, with the comforting murmur of men speaking to each other in a variety of tongues. The hotel’s dining room, which also served as its lobby, was large enough to accommodate forty souls, with a rectangular second floor balcony rising above it from which the tenants could watch the action below. Father Lynch bought a plate and sat down at a small table in a corner of the room, content to let the numerous conversations wash over him as he prayed and began to eat.