Blue barked, backed up quickly, and Dooley quickly lowered his lantern and shielded his eyes from the violent reflection.
His eyes burned. He blinked, sucked in another breath, and looked again.
The light from the lantern, and the holes in the ceiling, reflected off the wall Dooley stared at. A wall that might not have been completely papered with gleaming silver, but had to be pretty damn close to it.
Unbelievable.
“My goodness,” he told Blue. “We’re rich.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Two weeks later, Dooley Monahan rode into Leadville, Blue trotting alongside him, the pack mule sinking in the thick mud of spring—which had slowed Dooley down considerably. His heavy winter coat was rolled up and strapped behind the cantle with his saddlebags, for it was warm . . . well, warmer than he had felt in ages after a couple of months along Halfmoon Creek.
What made him grin was seeing all the miners, freshly duded up and freshly shaved, that he met heading into the mountains as he came to town. Most of them pointed at him, and plenty of them whispered, but Dooley did not mind. A few of them noticed how slowly the mule moved, but no one said anything to him other than a “Howdy” or a joking “You’re heading the wrong way, mister. This is when we start mining.”
Oh, Dooley would think and grin underneath his untrimmed beard, you’re right. I haven’t even started mining just yet.
The streets, a quagmire, remained packed, with wagons and horsemen going both ways, and the boardwalks were equally crowded. Leadville had always seemed a vibrant city that might have rivaled Harper’s Weekly woodcut impressions of New York City or Chicago or old Charleston as she had been before the Civil War. Now it might have even outmatched those images Dooley had imagined. It was a bustling, wild city, full of people—and only two men were hanging from a telegraph pole on the edge of town.
He passed the county clerk’s office, but saw a line out the door, so rode on, trying to think about where he should go first. One thing he knew for certain was that he needed a bath and a shave, and the way he smelled, that might take him all day before he ever felt clean. He looked for the late Chester Motz’s mud wagon, but didn’t see it, or any stagecoach, or even Butch Sweeney.
It just so happened that a man left the bank on the corner of Harrison and Third, mounting his horse, backing it out, and taking off toward one of the forks or tributaries of the Arkansas River, and since space in front of any building came at a premium, Dooley guided General Grant to it and dismounted. He managed to bring the mule to his horse’s side, and went to the packsaddle and brought out one sack.
He grunted and felt his boots sink deeper into the mud underneath the weight, but adjusted the sack over his shoulder and stepped onto the boardwalk. People gave him a mighty wide berth, allowing Dooley to move across the creaking planks of the boardwalk and to the entrance to the bank. A businessman in spectacles and a sack suit opened the door, gasped at the sight of Dooley, and almost fell back inside.
Dooley thanked him for holding the door open and stood like a dumb oaf watching the commotion of bees as men and women went to cashiers, and other folks sat in desks talking to men with frowns etched permanently across their faces and eyes glazed over with boredom. People leaving the bank swung a wide arc around Dooley. People coming into the bank did the same.
After the longest while, a timid soul wearing sleeve garters came up to Dooley and made himself try to grin. He didn’t completely succeed, but it was enough to let Dooley know that the boy tried to be civil.
“Can I . . . er . . . be of assistance?” the fellow asked.
Dooley nodded. It had been two weeks since he had actually spoken to a living human being, and the last person he had spoken to had been that old miner who was younger than Dooley. He said, “Yeah.” Then, louder: “Yes, sir. I want . . .”
He glanced around him and made sure no one was listening.
“Want to open an account. Make a deposit.”
“I see.” The clerk sounded and looked ever so skeptical. He looked around for help, found none, and realized what kindness and generosity and civility had netted him. So he moved back and pushed open a rickety little gate and motioned toward his desk.
“This way, sir.”
Once the fellow sat down, and Dooley laid his sack on the desktop and found himself sitting in an actual chair for the first time in ages, Dooley stared. He looked up at the ceiling, made of tin and full of all sorts of designs. He studied the chandelier that had to have come from St. Louis or maybe even down Mexico way. The roof fascinated him. He hadn’t seen one since ...
“How much cash do you wish to deposit with us, Mr. . . . ummmmmm . . .”
“Monahan,” Dooley said. “Dooley Monahan.” He spelled both names and watched the clerk write the letters in a cheery cursive.
“Very good, sir,” the clerk said, lowered his pencil, and stared across the desk. “How much currency?”
Dooley shook his head. “No currency. It’s . . . umm . . .” Again he looked over his shoulder, then leaned forward and whispered, “Silver.”
“Silver.” The clerk did not sound as though he believed him.
So Dooley reached into the sack and pulled out a chunk of ore.
* * *
“Where on earth did you find this?” The president of the bank, Tim Lake, twisted his mustache and refilled the snifter Dooley held with French brandy. They had moved away from the clerk’s little desk to the private office of Mr. Lake. Dooley had a cigar in his mouth, two more in a greasy pocket, and a snifter of brandy in his hand. The clerk and an assayer called in from a business two blocks down were busy working on the samples Dooley had brought in in his sack.
“A ways from here,” Dooley said.
“A ways,” the bank president repeated.
“A ways.” Dooley brought the glass to his lips but just brushed them against the liquor. It had been so long since he had taken a snoot, he wasn’t sure he wanted to do this yet . . . not on an empty stomach.
“A ways.” Mr. Lake frowned.
After a while, the clerk and the assayer came over, and the assayer, who had his sleeves rolled up and appeared to be sweating, rubbed his bald head and looked at Dooley.
“You have staked your claim, haven’t you, sir?”
Dooley did not answer. “Listen,” he said, and set the cigar in the ashtray, the liquor on the desktop, and cleared his throat. “All I want is some cash money to get myself cleaned up. And enough to pay back Buffalo Bill Cody what he grubstaked me.”
“Colonel Cody grubstaked you?” President Lake asked.
“That’s why I want to pay him back,” Dooley said, speaking to the president as if he were an idiot. “Now, I appreciate the brandy and the cigars and the loan of your chair, but I’m itching as all get-out, and I can tell by how that little jasper of a clerk you have keeps holding his nose and wiping his eyes with his silk handkerchief that I don’t smell too good anymore. I’d like to rectify that. But if you can’t help me, just tell me and I’ll find me another bank in this here town.”
That was probably more words than he had spoken since he had ridden down Halfmoon Creek.
“We will be delighted to handle your account, Mr. Monahan,” President Lake said, and he looked at the assayer. “Am I correct?”
“I’d think so,” the clerk said.
“Is it good ore?” Dooley asked.
The man stared at him, rubbed the slick top of his bald head again, and looked over at President Lake.
“It’s good,” he said, and looked at his notes. “It’s gray silver, Mr. Lake, with ruby silver, and gray copper on quartz.”
“And?” Now the banker was starting to sweat.
“Well, by my estimation, if the rest of his claim is like what he has brought in, this would assay in silver per ton of two thousand pounds to be . . .” He checked his figures, swallowed, and looked at Dooley as he answered.
“Six thousand two hundred thirteen dollars and eighty-nine cent
s.”
Denver prices didn’t trouble Dooley that much anymore.
But something troubled him. “I don’t think I brought in a ton,” he said.
“Not in that sack,” the assayer said.
“How much is that worth? What I brought in?”
It was the clerk who answered. “From the weight, I’d say three hundred ninety-five dollars and sixty-one, no, I mean sixty-two cents.”
Dooley frowned. “Buffalo Bill give me a sizable more money than that.”
“Well.”
But Dooley was already standing, walking out of the president’s private office, and moving across the lobby to the front door. All three men chased after him, calling him Mr. Monahan, but Dooley left the bank, let a nice old lady in a bonnet pass, and moved to the side of the hitching rail. The banker, the assayer, and the clerk slid to a stop. Dooley pulled another sack and swung it over his shoulder and stepped back onto the boardwalk. He nodded at the three men.
“Could y’all bring in those three other bags for me? I’ll leave this one on your desk and come back to fetch the last one.”
* * *
When Dooley left the office, the clerk—the one who had started it all with an act of kindness, or business, or guilt—opened the door for Dooley. He whispered, “Sir, if I were you, if you have not already filed on your claim, you should do so immediately.” He pointed. “That’s the county clerk’s office. That’s where . . .”
“Y’all got a new clerk?” Dooley asked. “To replace Cheater Norris?”
“Yes.”
“Fine, fine. Do you know if Miss Julia . . . I mean . . . Missus Julia . . . Miller . . . Is she in town?”
“I . . . I don’t . . . Miller?”
“And did Butch Sweeney start up old Chester Motz’s stage line to Denver and those other cities?”
“Um . . . yes. Yes. The stage should be coming in sometime today, I think.”
“Fine. Fine. And is Buffalo Bill Cody still in town?”
“Yes. But I think the Ledger reported that he was leaving when Mr. Sweeney takes off again for Denver.”
“Good, good.” Dooley pulled up his money belt and held out his hand. He shook with the clerk and gathered the reins to General Grant and the lead rope to the mule.
The clerk watched him swing into the saddle, then slowly, numbly, he returned to the bank, closing the door behind him.
After two months, would Miss . . . Mrs. Julia Miller still be living in that hotel? And would Butch Sweeney have a place of his own, or be sleeping in the wagon yard or livery stable? The clerk said that Buffalo Bill was staying at the Tabor, but Dooley did not think the gentlemen in the lobby would let a man who looked like Dooley did just now inside without a ruckus. No matter how many double eagles he had in his money belt to tip those rascals.
First, he thought, he ought to find that bath. Get his hair shorn and the beard and dirt removed from his face. He remembered that clothing emporium he had passed when he had first ridden into Leadville what seemed like a million years ago. He could buy clothes there. But first he needed that bath. No. No. He thought about when he had first made that claim. Two weeks. So he had about two more weeks to file, legally, his claim. Yet he did not want to wait. Silver had a way of bringing out the worst in people, especially silver that graded out as much as Dooley’s had.
He rode back down to Front Street and found the county clerk. The door was no longer packed with people, and the hitching rail was practically empty. Dooley swung out of his saddle, brought the pack mule in, told Blue to stay, and fetched his map out of the saddlebag on his right-hand side.
Once he pushed through the door, he saw the clerk shoving some maps back into a sliding cabinet. Cheater Norris’s replacement turned around and grimaced at the sight of Dooley.
But it was Dooley who felt as if he had just been kicked in his belly.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“What do you want, old man?” George Miller demanded.
An eternity passed.
“Well.” Miller was not happy at all. “I haven’t got all day.”
Another figure, a pockmarked boy with a pale face, slowly rose from beneath the counter, holding more bundles of paper that needed filing. The boy made a face at Dooley and cringed when Miller cut loose with another blast of profanity directed at Dooley.
Only it wasn’t aimed at Dooley, at least, not Dooley Monahan.
It slowly dawned on Dooley that the murdering, woman-stealing, stagecoach-robbing claim-jumper did not recognize Dooley. He thought he was just some flea-bitten, miserable miner who needed a bath and a shave. Dooley started doing some mental figuring.
“Well,” Miller barked. “I haven’t got all day. God, you stink.”
“Want to file a claim,” Dooley said, and waited for recognition to cross the new county clerk’s face. It didn’t happen. Instead, he shook his head, slid some maps back into place, and told the kid who still held those papers, “See to this, Homer. I’ll be in the back.”
Dooley watched Miller move toward the rear office, his broad back making a mighty inviting target for a .45 caliber chunk of lead Dooley could fire. But that was just a dream, a fleeting thought. A fun joke. Dooley was not a back-shooter. Besides, would Julia Cooperman—no, that’s Julia Miller—wear black and mourn the loss, small that it was, of her husband?
With the boy depositing his papers and fetching a pencil and a ledger, Dooley walked over and leaned against the counter.
The kid’s eyes watered at the stink coming off Dooley’s clothes and Dooley’s body. He couldn’t blame the boy. Dooley could smell, too.
“Ummm.” The boy looked up. “Do you know the location of the claim you wish to file?”
Dooley nodded, and the kid turned the ledger around. Dooley studied the map, flipped the page over to where the map continued, and found Halfmoon Creek, which he traced with his dirty finger until he found the spot. The boy nodded.
The boy jotted down something on his pad and asked, “Have you marked it?”
“Yes,” Dooley said.
“Well, good. Nobody else has filed for this, either. So it’s available. Lode or placer?”
“Lode,” Dooley answered quickly.
The boy smiled. “I figured. But I got to ask.”
Dooley grinned at the kid. He was all right. When Dooley was that age, he couldn’t be particular about what outfits he signed on to, either.
As they finished with the paperwork, George Miller came out and stared over the boy’s shoulder. Dooley hunched down lower so that Miller could see only the filthy hat and his long, greasy hair.
Miller put a finger on the map, looked up, did some mental thinking, and finally laughed. “Isn’t that the cave old man Finkle worked?”
“It’s not registered, Mr. Miller,” the kid said.
“Course not. That old coot didn’t know anything about mining. Worthless hole in the ground was all it was.” He laughed. “I wish you luck, mister.” Still chuckling, he walked back to his office.
The kid handed Dooley a pen, which he dipped in the inkwell and signed his name, then printed it on the line above. The boy tore out a receipt and handed that to him while he waited for his signature to dry. “This gives you twenty acres . . .” Dooley only half listened as the boy explained the particulars of what he could mine.
“I wish you luck,” the boy said. He didn’t offer to shake Dooley’s hand, but Dooley understood. If he happened to be on the other side of the counter, he might not have wanted to shake hands with a greasy, buggy, filthy hombre who happened to be sitting on a fortune in silver that only he and the boys down at the bank knew about.
At least he was legal. He studied the registration of his claim, paid the filing fee, and headed toward the door.
“I wish you luck . . .” George Miller had returned from the rear office. “That hole in the ground at least will keep the rain off you, Mr. . . .” Dooley turned around to watch the miserable reprobate look down and read the signature and the name pr
inted in the registration book.
Dooley grinned as George Miller’s face paled. The new county clerk looked up, and the cigarette topped from his lips, bounced on the counter, fell to the floor as he stared across the cramped little office.
“Dooley?” Miller sounded skeptical.
“George.”
Miller sucked in a deep breath, recognizing at last Dooley’s voice.
The clerk tried to smile while the boy did some sort of dance to snub out the cigarette on the floor behind the counter. Miller moved around, swung through the gate, and tried to paint a happy picture on his face. He almost even held out his hand, but stopped, either not wanting to touch a man who might have bugs crawling all over him,
Dooley would bet even money on the something else, because George Miller gave the Colt .45 on Dooley’s right hip a quick glance. And George Miller’s arm came back, so he could make a pull for the hideaway gun in the shoulder holster if Dooley decided to start the ball.
“Well, Dooley, we wondered what had happened to you, Julia and I.” He spoke so syrupy; Dooley figured he could have been accidentally tapped by a maple fellow in Vermont. “You’d been gone for two months, and I was just telling Julia that maybe we should get up a search party. Of course, I didn’t tell Julia that I thought we’d be searching for your body . . .”
Dooley thought, If you were leading the party, George, you’d make damn sure what you brought back was my body.
“. . . but it’s so great to see you, Dooley.” He found a cigar in his jacket pocket and slowed his movements when Dooley moved his right hand to the butt of the revolver. Pretending not to notice Dooley’s actions, Miller handed the cigar to Dooley, but Dooley did not take it or reject it. He just stared, and kept the right hand where it was.
George Miller could play that game of pretending not to notice things, too. He ignored Dooley’s hand and ignored Dooley’s ignoring the cigar, which he put into his own mouth, and said, “That mine. Well . . . that hole in the earth . . . is worthless, Dooley. Don’t you know that?”
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