In the Shadow of the Mountains

by Rosanne Bittner

  “I don’t feel completely right about this, Kirk.”

  Kirk released his hand and took the cigar from his mouth. “What sense is there in being rich if you can’t share it with your friends?” he answered. “Just think of it as doing something for me, instead of the other way around. It always bothers me a little to be rolling around in this money without sharing it with people who need help.”

  Red did not doubt that Beatrice Kirkland did not share her husband’s outlook on friends and money. “Well, you have your lawyers draw up the right papers and all—”

  “To hell with that,” Kirk answered, sticking the cigar back between his teeth. “Your word is good enough. Let’s get going. Those wagons ought to be over that steep climb by now. We’ve got to make Central City by nightfall.”

  Red sighed, putting his hat back on. Irene was almost sure she saw tears in his eyes. She looked away so that she would not embarrass the man, and she rode up beside her father. “Mother won’t like what you did,” she said quietly.

  Kirk laughed, almost bitterly. “I do a lot of things your mother doesn’t like.” He looked over at her, realizing that on this trip he would not be able to visit the whores because of Irene. It didn’t really matter. He was proud and happy to have his daughter with him. “You remember what happened here, Irene. There’s nothing wrong with having money, and I expect the way things are growing, you and your brother and sister will be even wealthier than we are now, if you handle things right. Just don’t be stingy with it, Irene. If you can’t use it to help somebody who needs it, there’s no sense having it at all.”

  “I’ll remember,” she told him.

  He gave her a smile that told her how much he loved her. “I expect I didn’t have to tell you that,” he answered. “You’re a good woman, Irene, and I’m real proud to have you with me.”

  “I’m proud to be with you,” she answered.

  He gave her a wink. “Let’s get to Central City,” he said then. “If we’re going to be giving money away, we have to be making money, right? With those new gold discoveries in Idaho and Montana, we can’t let investors and the like forget we’ve got plenty of gold right here. We’ve got to keep the mines operating and do what we can to find new veins. Follow me, child, and I’ll show you the source of most of the Kirkland money.”

  Irene smiled, heading around the frighteningly steep curve, wondering if there really was an end to this pathway to the clouds.

  Never had Irene had such an adventure. For the rest of her life she would remember the wild and raucous mining towns of Colorado’s endless mountains. Before the trip was over, she had seen Boulder, Canon City, Black Hawk, Nevada City, Idaho Springs, Georgetown, and Empire City. The biggest city she had seen besides Denver itself was Central City, which Kirk told her was always in competition with Denver but was too high in the mountains to hope to grow as fast. “Too many transportation problems,” Kirk told her.

  Problems or not, Central City was a bustling town with nearly as many buildings and people as Denver. Some of the richest gold mines were there, and Irene discovered the Kirklands owned several of the businesses in Central City in addition to the Elly May and Johnny Boy mines.

  Every town they visited was a conglomeration of shacks and cabins, tents and stores, with nearly every other sign reading Saloon. They were not much different from those in Denver, except that they were smaller and even less refined. The streets were filled with speculators, surveyors, gamblers, whores, thieves, merchants, and prospectors. Kirk kept her close, and seldom did she see a church or a man of the cloth, and in most cases, very few women, except for the painted ones who hung around every boardwalk. A few called out to her father. It embarrassed Irene, but she asked no questions.

  “You spend much time in these mining towns, everybody begins to know your name,” Kirk tried to explain once, “even those fancy women. Don’t be getting ideas, Irene. Everybody knows who I am, that’s all.”

  “I wasn’t thinking anything, Father,” she lied. Somewhere deep inside she suspected it was more than that. The thought hurt, yet she could not totally blame her father. She knew how the man was treated at home, suspected her parents’ bedroom life was not what she guessed it should be between a man and his wife.

  Her mind whirled with questions and confusion. She wanted to understand these things. What did it take to please a man, or did it even matter? She thought of Ramon again. She knew in her heart a man like Ramon would never visit painted women once he was married, but then he surely had a way of bringing out great love and passion in a woman. Her father was wonderful, too. In her mind he was so easy to love. Why was her mother so cold toward him? Maybe if she treated him differently, he wouldn’t be so familiar with these painted women. What happened to married people that caused them to go their separate ways?

  The noisy towns were a stark contrast to the peaceful mountains that surrounded them. The mines were even noisier. Kirk took her to the Elly May, where she visited the mining shaft house. A steam-driven hoist rumbled as the cable it supported raised and lowered cages carrying men to incredible depths and brought both men and ore back to the surface. Irene begged to be allowed to go down into one of the mines, but Kirk would not hear of it.

  “If something happened to you down there, your mother would take a shotgun to me. Maybe when you’re older.”

  The shaft house seemed quiet compared to the processing mill, where huge steam-driven crushers broke the rough ore into smaller pieces, which in turn were mixed with water and smashed under half-ton stamps. Irene had to plug her ears against the noise. The mixture of water and crushed ore was sifted through screens and dropped onto wide belts called vanners, which oscillated the mixture, winnowing out lead and leaving only gold and even some silver. This, Kirk explained, was dumped into amalgamating pans and cooked with mercury and other chemicals for at least eight hours, then transferred to settling tanks.

  For the first time Irene understood the complexities of mining. She had envisioned men shoveling gold out of the mountains’ depths but had given no thought to the complicated process of gleaning pure gold from the ore that was mined.

  “It’s placer mining that gives you the pure stuff,” Kirk explained. “Nature does the filtering and processing for you. But a man can spend his life sifting dirt from a streambed and never make enough to live on. Once you find gold in a stream, it’s the richer vein where it’s coming from that you want to look for. And the real key then is to have enough money to process it yourself. That’s where your mother helped back in the beginning in California. It was the money she earned taking in wash that helped us to be able to mine out our own gold.”

  “Shouldn’t Mother come up here and see all this?” Irene asked.

  Kirk shook his head. “I’ve tried to get her to come, but she wants nothing to do with this end of it, especially nothing to do with coming into the mountains. She leaves all of it to me, says as long as the mines are producing, that’s all she cares about. And she’s smart enough to know these mines aren’t going to hold out forever. You remember that. It’s wise to invest in other things that will tide you over when the mines play out.”

  Kirk was literally yelling the words in order to be heard above the machinery. He led Irene outside, and she thought how sad it was that her mother refused to share this part of her father’s life.

  It seemed everywhere they went, everyone knew and liked David Kirkland. It felt strange to Irene to realize most of the men she met worked for her father, which meant someday they would work for her. “Remember to keep the men who work for you happy, Irene,” Kirk told her. “These are hard men who won’t be put upon. I expect good labor, and they expect to get treated right in return. I listen to complaints, hire the best cooks, and I try not to make them work too many hours at a time. It can get to a man being down under the earth most of the day.”

  Red took in the vast Kirkland empire in awe, overwhelmed at what Kirk had amassed but sure it was mostly due to his wife. This was not
Kirk. He wondered if Irene realized how much the man must love her, for all of this came from the day Gray Bird Woman had placed a baby girl in Kirk’s arms.

  “We’ll head south now,” Kirk was telling her. “You up to a couple more weeks of this?”

  “I could stay up here forever,” she answered.

  Kirk grinned, mounting his horse. “Well, before I take you back, you ought to see the mine named after you. It’s down near Pikes Peak. I’ll show you Colorado City, but it’s a pretty wild place, so you stick by me and Red, like always.”

  Kirk had not missed the looks Irene got from men. His heart swelled with pride at her beauty, and he was constantly alert for her welfare, putting her up in the best hotels when they were in mining towns, taking turns with Red keeping guard when they were camped away from towns. He realized that most who knew him would never think of harming his daughter, but in such wild places there were plenty of men with no respect for anyone’s honor. He knew that in one sense Bea had been right to hide the girl’s true heritage. For some men her Indian blood would only mean she was beneath respect.

  “Next year I’ll bring John up here,” he said aloud.

  “Yes, you should,” Irene answered, but her mind was not on John. Her heart raced with the realization they were headed south—toward Pikes Peak. Hacienda del Sur lay somewhere in that area. Just to be in the same vicinity would bring back the heartache.

  More and more, in her own heart she realized perhaps it could not have worked after all. She had been awakened to the tremendous responsibilities that would one day be put on her shoulders, and in spite of the hurt, she realized that not burdening her parents with news of her love for Ramon was probably the right thing to do.

  She saw the bigger picture now, knew what was expected of her; and she realized that wealth brought certain expectations, certain rules and responsibilities that she and John and Elly were expected to take upon themselves. She did not really care that much for riches, but neither did she have the heart to disappoint her parents by turning away from all they had worked to build—for their children—and she realized almost grimly that perhaps it would not be possible to live her life totally as she wished. Apparently Ramon had already realized that.

  She wanted to cry. She did not want to leave these mountains and go back to the pressures of life back home. She glanced at her father. Yes, she understood more and more why he came to these mountains. He had the freedom to run away from things that hurt him, from leading a life he probably hated. Was that how it would be for her, too?

  She headed Sierra back down the steep, winding road that had brought them here, feeling driven by wheels of fate that she could not control.

  It was warmer and drier in the Pikes Peak area, but as always, much cooler in the higher elevations where the Irene Louise mine was located. Irene could not get over the uncanny feeling that this was where she belonged, that she had actually walked this land before.

  From the mine site she could look across a sea of swelling mountain peaks, with the Sangre de Cristo mountain range stretched out far to the southwest. When one was in these mountains, it was difficult to believe there could be an end to them. From every mining town she had seen nothing but endless peaks spread out in all directions, and she wondered how on earth her father had lived in these mountains without getting lost or killed.

  Her heart swelled with awe at the majesty and beauty of Colorado. California and the Sierras had also been beautiful, but her constant feeling of belonging here made this land seem more beautiful to her; and she vowed to find a way to come into the mountains more often. She felt a certain peace and comfort here she found nowhere else. She knew she would go back a stronger person, now able to bear the painful loss of Ramon.

  They moved out of the mountains into a sprawling, scrub-covered valley east of Pikes Peak. Irene wondered just where Hacienda del Sur was located but was afraid to ask.

  “Your mother has talked about investing in more land this way,” Kirk told Irene. “But a lot of people don’t think it will ever be worth much, and I don’t like the idea of displacing the Mexicans who are settled in through here. ‘Course, considering your mother’s nose for good investments, she’s probably right about this area being valuable someday. We’ll visit the potato farm. She’s figuring on expanding that.”

  They rode on, and Irene felt like a tiny speck in the middle of such an immense land. She realized how much this land fit her father, for just like David Kirkland, everything about Colorado was big. A herd of deer skitted across the sage- and rock-covered land ahead of them. They rode east of the Rockies which lay in one long, dark, endless range to the west. When Irene looked at them, it was difficult to realize she had actually been in those mountains, in places so high she thought she should have been able to see God.

  When leaving Pikes Peak to come into the grassland, they had moved through some of the most beautiful country she had ever seen, a feast of color and red-rock formations for the eyes to behold, contrasted with deep green, pine-covered foothills that led into the wide-open spaces of eastern Colorado. It actually hurt to have to leave any of it. Although the land was just as beautiful around Denver, she hated the thought of going back in that noisy, dirty town with its dusty streets and too many people. Most of all, she hated returning to everyday life, to making decisions she didn’t want to make, to being the woman she was expected to be now.

  Kirk slowed his horse as he saw a herd of cattle approaching from the north, several men whistling and shouting to keep the animals together. As they came closer, one of them nodded to Kirk and Red, calling out “Hello there!”

  Irene stared in fascination. She had never seen anyone quite like him. He wore high leather boots and some kind of leather protection over the front of his pant legs. She had no idea what they were, but she suspected their purpose was to protect the man’s pants from the scrubby brush scattered everywhere in this particular part of Colorado. He was tall and well built, his skin tanned dark from long exposure to the sun, and his features were honed hard and lean. He sported a wide, brilliant smile, as he put his hand out to Kirk. His handsome face and thick, dark hair were framed by a wide-brimmed hat.

  Kirk shook the man’s hand. “Hank Loring’s the name,” the man told him. He glanced at Irene, and she was stunned by soft green eyes that awakened womanly instincts deep inside her with almost as much force as Ramon’s brown ones had. She instinctively sensed he was impressed with what he saw, but he quickly looked away again. “I don’t think I’ve seen you folks around here,” he told Kirk. “I bring some of my cattle out this way to graze on government land, and some of them stray a little too far.”

  “I’m David Kirkland,” Kirk answered. “This here is my friend Red McKinley and my daughter Irene. I own a mine named after her up around Pikes Peak—brought Irene here to see it. We’re headed out to take a look at a potato farm we own a little farther north.”

  Loring pushed back his hat. “So, you’re that Kirkland!” He shook his head. “Well, I’ll be damned. I know where the potato farm is. I’ve heard all about the Kirklands. I expect I’m talking to the richest man in Colorado.”

  Kirk laughed. “I don’t know about that. Your ranch near the potato farm?”

  “A few miles this way of it, more in the foothills.” Irene watched him as he talked, instantly liking this Hank Loring, whose friendliness was unmistakably genuine. She thought for a moment what a solid, honest man he seemed to be, much like her father. “We’ve filed legal claim to the land,” he was saying, “seeing as how there’s all this talk about the Homestead Act and all. I don’t want to get run over by newcomers. The cattle industry is growing, you know. I figure it’s going to move into a real boom once the war is over, especially when they bring in the railroad.”

  Kirk glanced at Red, who laughed and said, “What did I tell you?”

  “Well, you’re probably right,” Kirk answered Loring, looking back at the man. “Nice to meet you. If my wife has her way, you’ll proba
bly find yourself surrounded by Kirkland land some day.”

  “Long as you leave me enough,” the man answered.

  “Father,” Irene spoke up, unable to control her curiosity. “Remember Ramon Vallejo? Isn’t his grandfather’s hacienda somewhere around here? John might ask me if we saw it.”

  “Oh, Hacienda del Sur is a little south of Pikes Peak, nestled in the foothills there,” Loring answered. “Beautiful area. I know the grandfather, Miguel Vallejo. A fine man. Fact is, my wife and I attended quite a fiesta there a few weeks ago. Ramon got married. Beautiful girl. They made quite a handsome couple.”

  Irene struggled to keep a smile on her face, but the remark had hit her so unexpectedly that she felt faint. Ramon, married! She had suspected it, but to hear it so bluntly, to know for certain…

  “How nice for him,” she answered. “He…he did some work for us at a new house we’re having built in Denver.”

  “Oh, Ramon has a great talent, doesn’t he? I think he said something about returning to Denver to start his own business.” He looked ahead where his men were herding the cattle farther south. “I’d better catch up. Nice meeting all of you,” he said, nodding to Kirk then. “You folks ever settle this way, let me know if you need anything. My ranch is the Lazy L. Most folks around here know where it is and know me.”

  The man moved his eyes to Irene again, and for a moment she felt he knew her agony, somehow sensed her unhappiness, although he surely couldn’t know why. Their eyes held for a moment. Irene had no idea that Hank Loring thought her the most beautiful woman he had ever set eyes on, in spite of the fact that he was married and loved his wife very much.

  “Thank you,” Irene told him.

  He looked back at Kirk and Red, giving them a wave and riding off.

  “That there is an example of a new breed of man that’s taking over,” Kirk told Irene, oblivious to the heartbreak she was suffering over Ramon. “First we had the mountain men and the scouts. Now it’s the cowboy. I wouldn’t put it past your mother to look into cattle ranching, once she suspects there’s money in it.” He turned his horse. “Let’s get going, Irene. We’ve got to find the farm and get you back home. We’ve already been gone a week longer than planned. Your mother is probably having fits by now.”