“He’s over at a friend’s house and …”
“Then what’s all this talk about a broken finger?”
Jamie Sue crossed her arms over her chest. “Are you calling me a liar?”
“It ain’t the worst name you Fortunes have been called. What are you going to do about my window?”
She clutched her hands tight. “Are you Mr. Moraine?” She could feel her heartbeat in her fingers.
“I sure am, and your boy purposely failed to catch a baseball and let it bust my kitchen window.”
Jamie Sue stiffened. “I seriously doubt if he did it on purpose, but we will certainly be glad to …”
“Are you calling me a liar?” Moraine hollered. “You don’t even know me.”
Jamie Sue saw the lady across the street peek out at them from behind white lace curtains. “I know my son. He very well might have missed a ball. He might have thrown it errantly. He might even have hit the ball through your window, but he certainly did not purposely cause damage to your house. I will call the hardware and have them send someone up to fix it.”
He stepped down off the porch and motioned for her to follow. “Come look at what he did!”
Jamie Sue stayed where she was. “I believe you, Mr. Moraine.”
“Oh? Are you too stuck-up and arrogant to come to an Irishman’s house?”
“Not at all. In fact, I trust your word completely. Does that sound stuck-up and arrogant?”
“But you won’t come to my house?”
“Mr. Moraine, I …”
“That’s what I figured.”
“Mr. Moraine, if you would pause long enough to quit being so defensive, you would understand that I would be delighted to come to your house, but I’m waiting for a freight wagon to deliver some goods and I …”
“I told my Meggie a Fortune would never darken our door!” He stalked out toward the sidewalk.
“Mr. Moraine, I have never in my life met anyone so closed-minded as you. I will get my hat and come to your house. I will pay for having your window repaired, and I will see to it that Little Frank does not play baseball at your house again,” she called out. “But I will not put up with slanderous accusations of my bigotry against the Irish. That is a vicious, hateful lie and I simply will not tolerate it from you or from anyone.”
“Don’t tell me the Fortunes don’t hate the Irish,” he shouted back. “I have proof!”
She could now see several neighbors in their yards watching the confrontation. “I will need to see the proof!”
“It’s at my house,” he insisted.
“I will get my hat!” Jamie Sue spun back through the open doorway.
CHAPTER SIX
The twelve-inch-by-twelve-inch rough-cut, creosote-stained beams could be seen poking above the granite boulders on the rim of Spruce Canyon well before Robert Fortune spied any buildings or people. The ever-present clouds began to stack up. The sky turned a mottled gray, but there was no smell of rain. The slow breeze drifted straight at them and slightly cooled their faces. The road smoothed, and the carriage hummed. Robert Fortune felt comfortable in his jacket, white shirt buttoned at the top.
His eyelids drooped even as his calloused hands fingered the one-inch-wide leather lead lines of the rented carriage. Lord, I’m not sure why I’m out here. It’s not train business … or family business… . It’s just been so long since I could take off and do whatever I choose. In the army there was procedure to follow, rules to obey, chains of command to follow. There’s something that feels extremely good about setting out with Sammy and taking in some new sights.
Robert glanced up at Oscar Puddin riding the lead horse. ’Course I hadn’t planned on gatherin’ up Oscar. Now, Lord, I’m not too sure why You create men like Puddin. Maybe they are meant just to test the rest of us. I don’t know what to do with him. I wish he’d just go away. But if I turn him loose, I swear, he’ll end up hurting himself or someone else or me. It’s a mystery, Lord. You have me stumped.
With the same shock as a camp cook beating on a pan before daylight, a gunshot splintered a ponderosa pine stump next to Oscar Puddin’s horse. Robert yanked back on the lead lines and jerked for his revolver.
Puddin’s horse reared.
His hat tumbled to the dirt.
Then Oscar cursed.
Samuel Fortune rode up and yanked on the frightened horse’s bridle.
“Untie me!” Puddin yelled. “I could have been killed.”
Neither Fortune brother drew a gun.
“This rope kept you in the saddle instead of fallin’ on your head in the rocks.” Sam Fortune stood in the stirrups and stared off toward the headworks of the mine shaft in the distance. “You see anyone, Bobby?”
“Not a soul.”
“My word,” Chambers mumbled, “that’s the second time within an hour someone’s shot at us. I thought this story was merely a hyperbole!”
A high-pitched voice hollered from the rocks. “This is private property! Go away!”
Still standing in the stirrups, Sam turned back to look at the carriage and shrugged.
“There’s a woman out here?” Robert quizzed.
Sam sat down and studied the rocks. “Either that or a boy about eleven,” he muttered.
The voice sounded determined, but tired. “Go away, or I’ll shoot all of you, startin’ with the fat one on the brown horse.”
Puddin tugged at the leather straps that bound his wrists to the A-fork saddle. “Is she talkin’ about me?” he gasped.
Robert stood up and raised his hands. “Ma’am … we’re from Deadwood,” he hollered. “With us is Mr. Byron Chambers, a chartered accountant from Toronto who’s under the employ of the Bank of Ottawa. He has been sent to review the books of the Broken Boulder Mine. Do you happen to know where we can find it?”
“Who are the rest of you?” she shouted.
“I’m Robert Fortune. I work for the Elkhorn, Fremont, and Missouri Valley Railroad.” He licked his chapped lips, then pushed his hat back. “Today, I’m just a driver for Mr. Chambers, but if there’s enough business, perhaps the Elkhorn will run a narrow gauge out here.”
“How about them other two?” Robert thought the voice was starting to relax a little.
Samuel tipped his gray, wide-brimmed felt hat toward the unseen woman. “I’m Sam Fortune, president of the Deadwood Telephone Exchange. I had a written request from a Mr. S. P. Raxton to give an estimate on running a telephone line to …”
“That’s Miss S. P. Raxton!” the woman shouted.
“Yes, ma’am.” Sam pulled off his hat and ran his fingers through his nearly gray hair. “Since I reckon you want the phone line all the way to the mine site, may we continue?”
“Who’s the fatty?” This time the demand came with a lilt in the voice.
“I ain’t fat!” Puddin shouted. “That there is muscles.”
“In your head?” she replied, with a definite giggle.
“Yes, ma’am,” Robert concurred. “Where ordinary people just have brains, Oscar has muscles!”
“That’s right!” Puddin added.
“Why is he tied to the saddle?” she called.
“He’s a recently retired train robber and highwayman. We have him tied to the saddle because we’re trying to decide whether to toss him in jail or just hang him,” Robert replied.
“They’s joshin’ you, ma’am!” Puddin called out. “I ain’t stole one red cent from nobody.”
Chambers pulled out a white handkerchief and wiped his face. “May we proceed, Miss Raxton? I really need to see your ledgers!”
“You want to see my what?” she hollered.
“Your accounts.”
“Tie up your horses. Leave your guns in the wagon and walk this direction,” came the command.
To the east, the rolling dark green pines blanketed the mountains. To the west, the sheer granite cliffs of Spruce Canyon dropped off the canyon floor, though it could not be seen yet. In between … giant granite outcroppin
gs the size of houses and barns made the crude road seem like a maze.
Robert Fortune and Byron Chambers led the way. Chambers carried a thick brown leather valise. Sam Fortune walked a few steps behind with Oscar Puddin, who hung his head low and muttered to himself as they hiked.
They had just rounded the first big boulder when a woman in a floppy, wide-brimmed felt hat stepped out in front of them. She held a Springfield trapdoor rifle. Bullet belts criss-crossed her thin chest.
The men stopped in a nearly straight line in front of her. “How come you got a bayonet pulled out on that musket?” Puddin asked.
Her thin lips barely moved. Each word skipped across the air like a slick rock on smooth water. “You git close enough and you’ll find out!” she replied.
Oscar rubbed his wide, round nose. “Shoot, even a skunk cain’t get that close.”
She thrust forward, the bayonet just inches from Puddin’s belly. “What did you mean by that?”
“Oscar just mumbles a lot, Miss Raxton,” Robert explained. “Don’t pay him any mind.”
She stepped back and straightened her shoulders. Robert noticed she was about Jamie Sue’s height. Her hair was light brown, perhaps blonde. But it hung down her back in a loose, dirty pigtail. Her face was filthy, as was her dress. Everything about her, including her hat, was coated with reddish-brown-colored dirt and mud. Her sleeves were pushed up to her elbows, her arms and hands caked with the same reddish-brown dried mud. Her dress was tattered at the hem and hung over thick brown boots caked with the same mud.
She motioned for them to keep walking toward the headworks. She followed, keeping the rifle and bayonet pointed at them. “How come the Bank of Ottawa wants to see my accounts?” she said, glaring at Chambers.
Byron Chambers stopped to glance back and leaped forward when he saw the bayonet approach his backside. “Because we haven’t heard from you in months!” he blurted out.
“We been busy diggin’ gold. Ain’t that what we’re supposed to do?” she declared in a tone of a mother scolding her children.
Chambers marched forward, his chin and square jaw set rigid. “We need to know where the funds have been spent.”
“They been spent on this mine. What did you think we were doin’, throwin’ a dance?” Raxton barked.
“If you’re the only woman, I reckon that would be a mighty lonely affair,” Puddin retorted.
“What did you say?” she snapped.
Robert lagged back between Oscar Puddin and the bayonet. “You do have records of your operation, don’t you?”
“We’ve got ever’ penny accounted for, if that’s your beef. Now, go on, and keep your hands up.”
Byron Chambers opened his valise as he marched along, fumbling with papers.
Raxton pounced forward, spearing the valise with her bayonet.
“My word!” Chambers cried out. “What are you doing?”
Raxton yanked the bayonet out of the leather and pointed the .45-70 at Chambers. “Don’t you be reachin’ in there for a sneak gun!” she growled.
“It’s full of papers and documents! I say, you ruined a perfectly good satchel.” Chambers pulled out a thick packet of papers. “See here … the original loan was to a Mr. Apex MacClaren of Winnipeg. I really need to see Mr. MacClaren.”
Raxton studied the chartered accountant from top hat to boots. “So, you want to see Mac?”
“I believe that’s obvious, Miss Raxton,” Chambers declared.
“Why didn’t you say so back there? I could have saved you all a hike. He ain’t here at the mine. He’s got himself a plot of ground in Miles City.”
Byron Chambers turned around to face the woman with the musket and bayonet. “Miles City, Montana?”
“I don’t know of any others,” she drawled, her tight, thin lips now drawn in a slight grin.
Chambers looked down on the sheaf of papers in his hand. “Isn’t he still superintendent of the mine?”
“Nope. You might say he abdicated.”
“My word,” Chambers fumed. “I don’t have anything in my records of his retirement. Why didn’t he notify us?”
Raxton motioned for the men to keep hiking. “I reckon that’s because he’s dead.”
“Dead?” Chambers stopped walking but quickly continued when the bayonet point brushed across the rear of his already torn trousers. “I thought you said he was in Miles City.”
“He is. He’s buried in a cemetery plot there.”
“I say,” Chambers puffed, “this is getting quite confusing.”
They rounded some boulders and reached the base of the twelve-inch by twelve-inch beams that stretched forty feet in the air at the headworks. A massive iron pulley hung from a cross beam at the top of the headworks. Beneath it stretched a heavy steel cable holding an iron bucket about the size of an outhouse. The other end of the cable was wrapped around the spool on a steam-powered, idle donkey engine that barely rumbled its firebox. Yawning below the bucket was a dark mine shaft about ten feet in diameter.
Up against the rocks behind the headworks was a small cabin. The back half was carved out of a cave. On the front porch of the cabin, another woman with a long dress held a double-barreled shotgun. Although her hair was partially pinned to the back of her head, she was covered with the same reddish-brown dirt as Miss Raxton.
“My word, two women?” Chambers spouted. “What is this?”
“What do they want?” the lady on the porch shouted as they approached. “Why didn’t you shoot them out at the road?”
“I didn’t want to waste that many bullets,” Raxton replied. “Besides, the one in the top hat and torn trousers is a chartered accountant from the Bank of Ottawa, in Toronto, who has come to review our ledgers.”
The woman raised the shotgun to her shoulder. “Our ledges?” With a little more daylight creeping under the porch roof, Robert could see smudged face, blue eyes, white teeth, and a woman even thinner than the other.
“No, our ledgers, our accounts,” Raxton shouted, then turned to the men. “My sister has been setting off explosives so long it’s ruined her hearing.”
“Are they married?” the one on the porch hollered.
“I ain’t talked long enough to find out,” S. Raxton replied. Robert spied another small shack back in the boulders. “Are you two ladies running this operation by yourselves?”
“We have a crew,” S. Raxton reported as her sister approached the men.
Sam looped his thumbs in his belt. “Where?”
“Down in the shaft.”
“We take shifts working two at a time,” the other woman declared. “It’s hard rock down there. When they get a bucket full, they ring the bell, and we stoke up the engine and haul it up.”
“So, you have a crew of two?” Robert asked.
“Two other women?” Puddin blurted out. He was the only one who still had his hands raised.
“No,” S. Raxton scowled. “You sit down on them rocks where we can keep an eye on you. If you try anything, I’ll plug you and we’ll just toss you down that shaft.”
All the men, except Oscar Puddin, sat down. “I ain’t goin’ to be bossed around by no dirty-faced women,” he declared.
“We aren’t going to toss them down the shaft,” the other second woman declared. “Last time we did, it stunk up the place for weeks!”
Oscar Puddin immediately flopped down next to Robert Fortune.
S. Raxton managed a faint smile. “Now, let us explain the situation. This is my sister, Augusta, and I’m Sandra Raxton. The two men in the shaft are Tio and Poco.”
“Them sounds like Mexican names,” Puddin blurted out.
Augusta Raxton folded dirty arms across her dirty dress. “Maybe that’s the reason they don’t speak English,” she jibed.
“I say, this is highly irregular,” Chambers said.
Sandra Raxton kept her gun steady on the men. “To have two women running a mining operation?”
“Well, it’s … it’s not at all what I
expected,” Chambers protested.
Robert Fortune leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “Just exactly how did you two women get into the mining business?”
Augusta Raxton lowered her shotgun and strolled along in front of the men. A strong sweat-and-dirt odor preceded and followed her. “We won it in a horse race.”
“What?” Chambers used his white handkerchief to rub the dust and dirt out of his eyes.
“From what we learnt from Tio and Poco, Mac had a crew of a dozen Chilean miners up here for almost a year,” S. Raxton explained.
“What in tarnation is Chileans?” Puddin railed.
Sam Fortune brushed down his mustache with his fingertips. “That’s men from Chile. That’s in South America.”
“No foolin’,” Puddin replied. “I’m from Mississippi, myself. Decatur, Mississippi.”
“Go ahead, Miss Raxton,” Robert insisted.
“We’re both Miss Raxton,” Sandra Raxton added.
Robert studied the eyes of both women. “What would you like us to call you?”
“Rich!” Augusta Raxton hooted.
“I’m called Miss Sandra, and my sister is Miss Augusta.”
Robert sat up straight and glanced back at the black open mine shaft that hunched behind him. “How did you come about this claim?”
Sam Fortune also surveyed the layout of the mining camp. “Did the Chileans get homesick and leave?”
“Yep,” Miss Sandra reported. “Mac wouldn’t let them leave the mine site until they struck the good ore. He was afraid of others moving in. So one day they just up and ran off.”
“But Poco and Tio stayed?” Sam questioned.
“They were the Mexican cooks,” Miss Sandra explained.
Miss Augusta stood alongside her sister. “So Mac went up to Miles City to find a crew.”
“Why didn’t he go into Deadwood, Lead, or Central City?” Robert asked. “There are always miners looking for work.”
“He didn’t want to give away the position of the mine,” Miss Sandra explained. “We want this mine proved before everyone starts rushing out here.”
“You can’t hide gold,” Puddin blurted out. “Besides, we all know you’re here now.”
Friends and Enemies Page 15