“You’re not fooling?”
Cody roared with laughter, disturbing the other ladies and gentlemen who were eating their dinner, not breakfast, but no waiter came over to shush Buffalo Bill, and most of the gents merely smiled or patted the hands of their companions in petticoats.
“Fooling! Hah. You make me laugh, sir, you make me laugh.” Cody retrieved a silver-plated flask from the inside pocket of his frock coat, unscrewed the lid, and sweetened his coffee. He held the container toward Dooley, who, while tempted, shook his head politely. The flask soon disappeared, and Cody leaned forward after taking two or three swallows.
“You saved my life, sir, and Buffalo Bill Cody is a man who always pays his debts in full.”
“I didn’t do anything, really,” Dooley protested.
“There’s a dead grizzly over at the Silver Queen Taxidermy Shop that is being stuffed as we speak that says otherwise, Dooley. If the bear could talk, I mean, after you place a shot—one shot—perfectly before I became a snack for a silvertip.”
Dooley wiped his mouth with his napkin, stared at the big slice of bacon staring at him, and looked again at Buffalo Bill.
Indeed, the frontiersman was serious.
“Well . . .” Dooley just couldn’t digest all this.
“Sir, this is not charity. I am not giving you money to go out and find your fortune in silver in these hills. There are barons aplenty who likely have all the valuable ore locked up with their claims. A grubstake is like a partner. If—and this, you must know, is a mighty big if—you find pay dirt, then you pay me back with an interest of twelve percent. That might strike you as high, but, well, this is Leadville.”
Thank the Lord we’re not in Denver, Dooley thought.
“How much money are we talking about?” Dooley asked.
Cody grinned again, set the cup of coffee and rye on the table, and reached inside another pocket. Once he pulled out his wallet, he opened it and fished out several greenbacks and yellowbacks. He started counting out bills, bills that from where Dooley sat had a couple of zeros on the end. Dooley listened as the scout and showman counted. His eyes widened as the stack piled up.
Dooley wet his lips. He thought: And Cody was robbed of a couple hundred bucks just two days back.
Absently, he picked up the piece of bacon and stuck it in his mouth. He chewed, and stared, and washed down the bacon with the last of his coffee. Finally, as Buffalo Bill stopped counting and closed his wallet—which Dooley could tell still had plenty of currency in it—Dooley looked across the table and saw the frontiersman grinning from ear to ear.
“What do you say, pardner?” Cody asked.
Dooley said, “Uhhhh.”
Disturbing the diners again with a roaring, table-rattling belly laugh, Buffalo Bill stuck out his hand. “You’re a man of my style, Dooley. I’m proud to grubstake you and know you’ll do us both proud.”
What else could Dooley do? He shook hands with Cody and finished his breakfast.
* * *
He hurried back to the hotel, hoping to find Butch Sweeney, keeping his right hand in his pocket so none of the bills would come flying out. A million thoughts raced through his mind.
Has Butch ever done any mining? Of course he has. Maybe. I mean, what else would he be doing in Leadville, Colorado? This certainly isn’t cattle country. Maybe Butch learned a lot about mining up in Alaska. Did he actually mine in Alaska? Well, it doesn’t matter. But will he want to be my partner? . . . What exactly does a miner need? Shovel? Pan? Beans and coffee for certain . . . Man, I sure wish Horatio and Chester had not gotten killed. I could use some help in this mining venture . . . Maybe Buffalo Bill would know something. No. Don’t be silly. Buffalo Bill’s just up here visiting before going back to fighting Indians on the Plains, and guiding rich dignitaries from foreign countries on wild hunts in the West, and starring as himself while treading the boards across the United States back East. I’ll need to file a claim. I’ll need to find a place that has not been claimed. Wait a minute. I won a deed in a poker game from Horatio Whitman. A deed. A deed has to be filed. A claim has to be recorded or it’s up for any takers. That I know for certain. I read it in the Police Gazette. Now where . . . ?
He stopped on the boardwalk and stared across the street.
COUNTY CLERK
That seemed like a likely place to start. Dooley let three heavy freight wagons trudge on past before he crossed the muddy street, wiped his boots, and opened the door.
* * *
“Lode claim, naturally,” the clerk said. He was a nice-enough gent, bald headed with thick spectacles and a skinny tie and suspenders. He wore sleeve garters to keep his sleeves bunched up on his upper arms, and hung his coat and hat on hooks on the wall behind his desk.
“How’s that?” Dooley asked.
“Placer claims give you rights to what you can find on the surface,” the man said. “If you were panning for gold, that’s all you’d need. But we’re silver country, so I think you mean lode claim. That grants you rights to what you dig out. Unless you want to pan for gold. I’m not saying you won’t find gold here. It’s just we’ve found silver here. Tons of it. Millions of dollars’ worth.”
“Well . . .”
You would think that a clerk who handled filing silver-mining claims in a town like Leadville would get his fill of talking, but not this guy.
“Once you stake your claim—you stake it by setting up a monument at least three inches in diameter and six inches out of the ground. This has to be in the northeastern corner of your land.”
“But . . .”
“And then you have no more than twenty acres. Once you’ve staked your claim, you have thirty days to file your claim with me. Now . . .”
Dooley took advantage of the man’s pause to sing out: “I’m wondering about a claim filed by a man named Horatio Whitman.”
The man’s eyes widened.
“Did I say something wrong?”
“No. You’re just the third man who has asked about a claim filed by that old geezer.”
Dooley straightened. He sucked in a deep breath, held it a moment, and exhaled. “Do you know the other two men?”
“Not personally. One said he was a newspaper man from Cheyenne. The other was Buffalo Bill Cody. He came in just yesterday.”
“Buffalo Bill?”
“Yes. You have heard of him, no doubt.”
“No doubt.” Dooley pulled his hand out of the pocket that held all of that money.
His mind did some calculating.
So Cody came here yesterday. Wanting to find the location of Horatio’s mine. And when he couldn’t . . . he decided to grubstake me. Or maybe he did find it and decided to grubstake me to keep me in those big-arse mountains till summer.
“But as I told the honorable colonel and the newspaper scribe and as I am telling you, Horatio Whitman never filed a legal claim.”
“Nothing?” Dooley asked.
“Nada. Zilch. Cero. The old goose egg. Oh, son, don’t look so disappointed. Many miners don’t file claims. Some just don’t understand the law. Some might be breaking the law. I did not know the late Mr. Whitman personally, merely saw him from time to time when he was guarding the stagecoach, or drunk, or trying to sell game he killed. That said, I don’t think he was dishonest. If he found silver, or gold, or lead, or copper, or, by grab, walnuts, he thought he had an honest claim. But it would not have held up in a court of law.”
“And if he had a deed?” Dooley asked.
“A deed and a claim are not the same thing, sir. Mr. Cody, when he inquired about the claim, he said he had never seen this mysterious deed the late Mr. Whitman was purported to have on his person.”
“And the inkslinger from Cheyenne?” Dooley asked.
“He made no mention of it one way or the other. Merely said he had heard that the late Mr. Whitman claimed to have a deed to a mining claim off Halfmoon Creek.”
Dooley stepped closer and put his shaking hands on the counter.<
br />
“When did he come in?” Dooley asked. He felt his heart pounding against his chest.
“Day before yesterday.”
Dooley tried to picture the man. He shot out a piecemeal description: “Black pants, green mackinaw, tan hat, yellow kerchief?”
The clerk shook his head as he laughed. “No. He was dressed like a gentleman reporter.”
“Oh.”
“But I had my suspicions,” the clerk said, and Dooley’s heart raced again. “You see, for a reporter—and in a town like Leadville, I have been interviewed by reporters from Denver and national magazines doing feature articles on our lovely, booming town, but this man did not take one single note. Most reporters write down everything I say, but he wrote nothing. He said he had an ironclad memory. But once I told him that Mr. Whitman had filed no legal claim, he lost interest.”
“Did he favor his left wrist?”
“Sir, I cannot remember. Many people come here every day. Even reporters. If he was one.”
“What makes you think he wasn’t? Other than the fact he did not take any notes?”
“I did not doubt him at the time, but you must understand, sir, that I had not learned of the late Mr. Whitman’s untimely death. When that news swept through town yesterday, I thought back. Then Buffalo Bill Cody came by. And now you. You were the hero that saved Cody’s life, aren’t you?”
Dooley shrugged.
“Yes, Mr. Cody mentioned you, said you were a man to ride the river with.” He shook his head. “But he did not say which river. Are you a riverman?”
Dooley shook his head. “It’s just a saying, is all.”
“Well, I do not understand all this Western lingo.”
Dooley felt a little better about Buffalo Bill. He wasn’t trying to cheat him, he decided, if he mentioned him while asking about Horatio Whitman’s claim that had never been filed.
“Oh, Whitman came in here once and almost filed the claim,” the clerk said. “He pointed to this disgustingly horrendous map he had and said he was filing it here. I looked, laughed, and said, ‘Oof Halfmoon Creek? You mean Off Halfmoon Creek.’ And I corrected it on his map and then asked, ‘But how far off Halfmoon Creek and what direction and did you stake the claim properly?’ And Whitman, he ripped the paper from my hands. Gave me a wicked paper cut on my finger. Here. Right there. Hurt like Hades. And do you know what that old man said? He said he would file no claim with an idiot like me and that I might regret my actions one day.”
Dooley blinked. He had tried to stop listening after the paper cut and had only half listened before that.
“Is there anything else I can do for you?”
Dooley started to shake his head, but then he thought of something.
“Could you show me what hasn’t been claimed along Halfmoon Creek?”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The clerk handled a few other claims and questions about claims while Dooley studied the map. Halfmoon Creek went a long ways, divided into separate creeks, and had several claims nearby. Dooley saw the initials and numbers marking the spots that had been filed, legally, as proper claims in the county.
After a while, Dooley decided that he had been hoodwinked by an old reprobate who found some silver somewhere and filled out a bogus deed. Flimsy paper. Shoot, now that Dooley had spent a couple of hours in the county clerk’s office and seen actual claim forms filled out and registered, he knew what they looked like—and they certainly did not look like that piece of trash old Whitman had signed over to him.
Then again, Dooley thought, the old man had plenty of money that he could not have been earning riding shotgun on the late Chester Motz’s mud wagon. He had been mining somewhere, and the late Chester Motz had said that he mined when he wasn’t working.
But where?
“Sir?”
Dooley looked up at the clerk, who had put on his coat and put on his hat and held a key in his hand. Dooley glanced out the window, only to see the curtains had been drawn. The regulator clock on the top of the cabinet behind the counter began to chime.
“Closing time, eh?” Dooley gave the man a warm grin, which the clerk did not return.
“I appreciate your help and your time and your wisdom,” Dooley told him as he gathered his own hat and coat and stepped out the door with nothing to show for better than two hours spent in the clerk’s office but eyes aching from poring over various maps and plots and lines and all sorts of things written in tiny, tiny print. At least the clerk’s office had been warm, though.
Outside, it was snowing again.
* * *
He returned to the livery to check on General Grant and make sure Blue got something to eat. Now that Dooley had a pocket full of money, he bought some jerky and a ham bone, which he gave to Blue in the stall. He ought to buy Butch Sweeney some chow, he thought, which reminded him that he needed to see if Butch wanted to partner with him in a mining venture grubstaked by Buffalo Bill Cody.
Then he headed for his hotel, thinking something about justice. Sure, he did not have a claim to a mine, but nor did the man who had stolen it from Dooley. Only Dooley was a bit ahead as he had been grubstaked by Buffalo Bill Cody. He wondered what Butch Sweeney would tell him when Dooley proposed that they go into the mining business together. Or at least go into the looking-for-an-actual-mine-that-might-be-worth-something business together.
He entered the hotel, removed his hat, and walked to the clerk, who recognized him and fetched his key.
“Is Mr. Sweeney in?” Dooley asked.
The clerk titled his jaw toward the attached dining room, and Dooley thanked him and headed toward the smell of beef and bread. He almost ran over a woman who was coming out of the dining room.
Dooley did a stutter step, moved to his side, put out his arms, but the woman did the same thing, and they kind of did a dance in a circle, then she broke out laughing. Dooley did the same.
“Dooley,” the woman said.
Dooley stopped laughing. His mouth fell open. He just stared.
“Don’t you recognize me, Dooley?” the woman asked.
Dooley did. Well, not really. After all, a few years had passed, and Julia had just been a kid way back in Arizona Territory and San Francisco, California.
“Julia,” he said. “I mean . . . Miss Julia. Or . . .” He got so tongue-tied he did not know what to do.
Julia smiled. “I was just going to ask the clerk to send you into the dining room when you came back. Come on.” She took his elbow and guided him past the counter and weaved between patrons and waiters and waitresses, around tables, and chairs, and came to a table in a corner near a fireplace. For a hotel that wasn’t fancy, this dining room seemed better than most. Well, it wasn’t Morgan’s Fine Dining in San Francisco, but it wasn’t a chuckwagon, either.
Butch Sweeney rose from his seat. So did another fellow in a plaid sack suit. Dooley stared at the other, who held out his hand, smiled, and said, “Hello, Dooley. It has been a long, long time.”
Dooley’s hand reached out. They shook. Recognition came slowly, but it came, and Dooley nodded.
“George.”
George Miller sat down. So did Butch Sweeney. Dooley remembered his manners and pulled out the chair for Miss Julia, who settled into it and allowed Dooley to push her closer to the table. Dooley found his chair opposite Julia.
His stomach did all sorts of flopping.
“Where you been?” Butch Sweeney asked. “Ain’t seen hide or hair of you all day.”
“Oh . . .” The weight of Buffalo Bill Cody’s many dollars felt like lead in his pocket. “Around. Seeing the town.”
“All day?” Sweeney shook his head. “You sure you just didn’t go off drinking with Buffalo Bill?”
Dooley shook his head. “I haven’t had anything but coffee. And haven’t had that in a long time.”
“Well,” George Miller said, “let’s see if we can’t rectify that situation.” He held up his hand and waved at a waiter. The burly man with the blond mustache
and slicked-back hair came over, nodded when George Miller asked for champagne, and hurried away.
“We have some catching up to do,” George Miller said.
Stories? Dooley wondered. Or drinking?
* * *
Mostly stories. Dooley never could get used to all those bubbles and how that sparkling French wine tasted.
Alaska had been a bust. Any pay dirt that had been found had long been hauled out of the earth, as far as George Miller and Butch Sweeney had been concerned. Oh, people in that frozen country said they would find gold one of these years, or maybe up in the Klondike in the Canadian territories, but it wasn’t for them.
They had stayed two years.
“It took us that long to earn enough money to pay for our way back to Seattle,” Julia explained.
“Oh.” Dooley thought: Seattle. That’s in Washington. Maybe Oregon. Two states I don’t recollect ever setting foot in. Maybe one of these days . . .
Dooley had to repeat his story about what had happened to him, about amnesia but that he eventually recalled everything he had forgotten. For Miss Julia’s sake, he did not say how he had regained his memory while killing a no-good owlhoot who happened to be kin to some other no-good owlhoots he had sent to Boot Hill.
At length, George Miller excused himself, but it was George Miller who paid for the meal, even though Dooley tried to pull out one of the big notes Buffalo Bill had grubstaked him. Then Butch Sweeney said he needed to go, and he smiled across the table at Julia and shook Dooley’s hand and headed through the main doors before Dooley could even proposition him about becoming a miner somewhere down Halfmoon Creek.
“What are you thinking, Dooley?”
He looked up and could not stop staring into Julia’s eyes.
“Uhhh.”
She smiled, but the smile faded quickly and it looked as though tears formed in her eyes.
“I never should have boarded that boat, Dooley. Butch didn’t want to. We made him, George and me. No, I made him. I figured you’d just suffered from another case of wanderlust. Or maybe you just didn’t want to be saddled with a bunch of kids.”
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