THE MINER’S DAUGHTER
Alice Duncan
Book #3 in the “Dream Maker” series
The Miner’s Daughter
Copyright © 2001 by Alice Duncan
All rights reserved.
Published 2001 by Kensington Books
A Ballad Book
Smashwords edition December 31, 2010
Visit: http://aliceduncan.net
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Chapter One
Mojave Wells, California
1910
With one hand pressing his sore stomach and the other tugging on a lock of hair, Martin Tafft stared at the girl who stood before him He couldn’t believe his ears. “But-but—” He swallowed, a sense of unreality creeping over him “But I thought it was abandoned.”
The girl snorted. An interesting specimen, she. Tall and willowy—sort of rangy, actually—she had her dark brown hair pulled back and stuffed under a disreputable old hat that looked as if it had once—say, twenty or thirty years ago—belonged to a cowboy and then been kicked around for another ten or twelve years before she inherited it. She had fine, regular features and huge brown eyes that might have been lovely had she been in a serene mood. At the moment, her eyes crackled fire.
The most unusual thing about her was that she had chosen to present herself to the world this morning in pair of men’s trousers. The trousers were old, stained, and patched, and they were topped with an oversized khaki shirt that looked as if it, too, had been around the world several times before it had landed on her
Martin, a natty man who, although not vain, tried to observe the prevailing fashion, couldn’t conceive of a lady wearing such an outrageous costume. From this circumstance, he deduced Miss Marigold Pottersby to be no lady.
“Obviously, you were wrong,” she said, contempt dripping from the words.
“My God.” Reginald Harrowgate, who had honed his facial expressions to perfection in the few years he’d been acting in the moving pictures, sneered. “I can’t believe this is happening, Martin.”
“I can’t, either.”
“You said the matter was concluded and we could begin filming in two weeks.” Harrowgate spoke as if he thought Martin had deliberately lied to him for some fell purpose.
“I thought it was.”
The pain in his stomach led Martin to fear he was getting an ulcer. He understood people could develop ulcers from having to deal with too much stress. He definitely dealt with too much stress. If Harrowgate would just go away and leave him to deal with this female, the tension might be reduced considerably. But the blasted ham seemed determined to stick, darn it.
Attempting to ignore his audience, Martin tried again. “Listen, Miss Pottersby, can’t we at least rent the mine for a few weeks?”
“No.”
Martin’s stomach gave a hard spasm. This was terrible. Awful. How could he have made such a mistake? He’d gone over this detestable desert with a fine-tooth comb, spending a week and a half in blazing heat, dirt, and overall suffering, and he’d been positive this mine had been abandoned eons earlier. It looked like it “But—”
“No. You’re trespassing. Please go away.”
“But . . .”
The girl turned and whistled through her teeth. The noise shot through the air like an arrow and stabbed Martin’s ears.
Great. Now his head could throb along with his stomach. He had no idea why she’d done such a thing, unless it was to make herself even more detestable than she already was. Maybe she was calling on a band of wild Indians to stake him and Harrowgate to the floor of this god-awful desert so the red ants could sting them to death. Maybe she was—
“Good God!” Martin stared wide-eyed at the phenomenon that had popped out of the old mine shaft at her whistle and was now lumbering toward them at an alarming clip.
Reginald wheeled around, shrieked, “Help!” and started running in the opposite direction. He worked up admirable speed, considering the weather.
The girl put one fist on her hip and grinned.
Martin didn’t dare move. He’d never seen such a thing in his life. Terror gripped him by the throat and held him tongue-tied for a second. Finally, after swallowing painfully, he asked in a small voice, “Um, is that a dog?”
The creature, black as pitch, gleaming like polished onyx in the vicious sun, and with a head the size of a crate, barreled past him—thank God—and the girl and, with a wagging tail and what looked like a good deal of joy, pursued Harrowgate. The actor peered over his shoulder once, shrieked again, and kept running.
It was no use. The dog, if dog it was, overtook Harrowgate with ease. Martin had to hide his eyes when it leaped at Reginald’s back and he went sprawling.
The girl whistled again. With seeming reluctance, the animal ceased washing Harrowgate’s face with a tongue the size of Kentucky and trotted back to her. There he turned, sat at her side, panted, and looked up at her as if he expected to be lauded for his performance. Martin would have taken a solemn oath the thing had a grin on its gigantic face.
The girl laid a hand on his neck. “Good boy, Tiny.” She grinned at Martin. “To answer your question, yes, this is a dog.”
Martin drew in about an acre of scalding desert air. “I’ve, ah, never seen one quite like it before.”
“I’m sure.”
They both heard Harrowgate sputtering and cursing a few yards off. Miss Pottersby said, “Better take care of your friend. I don’t think he likes the weather here in Mojave Wells.”
Martin scarcely heard her. His attention sat squarely on the monster dog sitting beside her. “Um, what kind of dog is it?”
“Great Dane.”
“Oh.” Great Dane. Like Hamlet. Only bigger. Much, much bigger. Whatever would Shakespeare have done with a dog the size of a brontosaurus?
He shook off the spell of the dog, and made one last stab at convincing this obstinate girl that it would be to her advantage to rent her mine to the Peerless Studio for a few weeks. “Listen, Miss Pottersby, please take some time to reconsider your decision. The motion pictures pay well, and ah, I understand the mine has been in your family for years now, and nobody’s struck anything but dirt so far.”
It was the wrong thing to have said. Martin knew it as soon as he saw the expression of fury cross Miss Pottersby’s face. He glanced at Tiny with misgiving, hoping she wouldn’t set the black beast on him next.
“Get off my land now, Mister, and take that simpering fiddlestick with you.”
Martin blinked, confused, until he realized the fiddlestick was Harrowgate. “But—”
“Dagnabbit, go!” She pointed a slender brown finger in a direction Martin assumed would take him off her property.
He hesitated for one more minute, glanced at the dog, and shrugged. “Very well, but I’ll come again. Please take time to think about it, Miss Pottersby. We can offer you a substantial rental for two or three weeks’ work. It would be to your—”
“Go away now!”
Her voice seemed to nudge her protector, because the dog stood and frowned at Martin. Hackles bristled along its shiny black back, which came up to Miss Pottersby’s waist. Its head almost reached her shoulders. Since Martin had seen it attack Harrowgate with his own eyes, he knew it was ta
ller than a grown man when it stood on its hind legs. Probably weighed more, too. He gave up.
“All right. I’ll have to talk to our investors about this, Miss Pottersby.” He was also going to look up the records on this stupid mine to see if there wasn’t some loophole he could use to his advantage. He didn’t understand why the blasted girl was being so obstinate. Heck, if she allowed Peerless to rent the ugly mine, maybe she could buy herself a dress or something.
He could feel the dog eyeing him as he walked away. Its scrutiny made his shoulder blades itch.
Anthony Ewing, son of Maurice Ewing, one of the richest men in New York, sighed. He felt kind of sorry for Martin, whom he knew worked too hard, but he couldn’t allow personal feelings to interfere with business. His father had taught him as much in the cradle.
“Listen, Martin,” Tony said, “I know she’s a tough nut, but you’ve got to persuade her. Everything’s set to start, and you can’t change locations now. It would cost another fortune, and my father would be furious.”
Poor Martin looked as if he might pull that hank of hair right out of his head if he kept yanking on it. “I’m trying, Tony. Trust me.”
“She has a rabid dog that she turns on people when they annoy her,” Reginald Harrowgate grumbled. He was at present soaking his scratched right hand in a pot of hot water and Epsom salts. Tony didn’t bother to respond to the comment, having learned after five minutes in Harrowgate’s company that the man was an effete fusspot.
“Maybe I should talk to her,” Tony mused. He didn’t want to do it. He neither admired nor approved of moving pictures. Although he believed women had a place in the world, he didn’t think it was in running mines. Frankly, he couldn’t conceive of such a thing.
Tony’s opinion, about motion pictures at least, wasn’t shared by his father or by Martin. The elder Ewing had sunk a whole lot of money into this latest Peerless production, and Tony’d been treated to several of Martin’s impassioned lectures on the subject of the growing “flicker” business.
Martin considered motion pictures as something akin to the salvation of mankind. If everyone who worked in them was as good hearted, broad minded, scrupulous, and honest as Martin, the pictures might be. But the people weren’t, and Tony knew it. Most folks were out for a buck, and they didn’t care how they got it. If one needed an example of this, one needed look no farther than Tony’s own father.
“Let me check out the records on the mine first, Tony,” Martin advised. “If we approach her again, it had better be with more ammunition than we have now.”
Tony nodded and mopped his sweaty brow with a once-pristine handkerchief. “Good idea.”
Harrowgate muttered, “Why don’t you try a loaded gun?”
Although Tony knew the actor was joking, he wasn’t amused. “I’m sure that would thrill her.”
Harrowgate humphed.
Martin ceased tugging at his hair and commenced fiddling with a pen lying on the table in front of him. “Listen, Tony, I’m really sorry about this. I checked out all the mines in San Bernardino County, and I would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that the Marigold Mine was abandoned. I’m sure it should be. It doesn’t look like any profitable silver mine I’ve ever seen.” He lifted his, head and grinned. “Not that I’ve ever seen any silver mines before this.”
Tony grinned back. He really liked Martin, whom he’d known since his college days. “It’s all right, Martin. Frankly, I’m astonished that you can do half of what you do. It’s not surprising that a mistake slips by once in a while.”
Martin shook his head and sighed. “It shouldn’t have happened. Mistake, heck. I’m the one who’s slipping.”
“Nonsense. You just have too much to do. My God, you do everything for Peerless. You do all the casting, hiring, firing, write most of the scripts, direct some of the pictures, maintain equipment, keep up with innovations, and deal with the actors.” He cast a scornful glance at Harrowgate, who was too busy worrying about his scratched hand to notice. “Add finding suitable locations to shoot the pictures in, and your plate is filled to overflowing. I couldn’t do it.”
“Well . . .” Martin did look frazzled.
Tony wished he could help, but he didn’t know a single thing about the pictures except that he’d been sent out to make sure the money his father had invested in this one came to no harm.
Martin murmured, “Maybe you’re right. I love the work, but I’ve been at it for several years solid now. I’m a little tired.” He pressed his lips together. “But that’s no excuse for this catastrophe. Where in God’s name can we get another mine? And the Marigold is so perfect.”
“Give yourself a break,” Tony advised. “I’ll visit the courthouse with you, and we can look up the records together.” He unbuttoned the top few buttons on his shirt. “Damn, it’s hot here. Thank God for electric fans.”
“You said it.”
Although he didn’t want to leave the fan-cooled room of the Mojave Inn and walk out into the blistering desert air, Tony knew where his duty lay, and he intended to do it. He was damned well going to do it in shirtsleeves, though. This weather was enough to drive a man out of his mind.
Mari Pottersby sat at the one table in her cabin and idly stroked Tiny’s gigantic head as she went through a stack of unpaid bills for the umpteenth time. She couldn’t pay them. Her heart felt heavy
“Shoot, Tiny, it’s going to kill me to lose Dad’s dream. Maybe I ought to rent the Marigold to those stupid picture people. It would help to pay a few of these.” She flipped a couple of the bills. She felt like such a failure.
“Dad was sure there was silver in there, Tiny.” A tear crept past the rigid guard she endeavored to keep on her too-emotional nature and slid down her cheek. She wiped it away angrily. She considered her tendency to be soft-hearted a tremendous handicap to her ambitions. Rich people could afford to be mushy. She couldn’t.
Tiny wagged his tail, bumping a chair and sending it toppling over with a crash. He jumped, gave what, for him, was a yip of alarm, but which sounded like thunder, and laid his head in Mari’s lap with .a whimper.
“Don’t be scared, Tiny. It’ll all be okay.” She sighed heavily and wished she believed it.
A knock came at the door. Mari frowned. Tiny leaped to his feet, almost tipping the table over, bounded to the door, and commenced emitting a series of cavernous barks. Mari heard a man’s voice say, “Good God,” and would have smiled if she hadn’t been so down in the dumps. It was probably those blasted Peerless people again.
She felt a little guilty about having treated that nice Martin Tafft so uncivilly, but his assumption about her mine had offended her. After he’d left, she’d taken a critical look at it, however, and realized he’d had some justification for the conclusion he’d reached. The place was shabby and ugly, and it appeared every ounce as unprofitable as it was.
The entrance into the mine itself looked like nothing more than a hole in the side of a: smallish hill. It had been built by her father in the late 1880s. The Marigold Mine had been his baby. His dream. His silver-edged hope for wealth and security.
He’d never achieved either. Mari’s mother, a longsuffering woman who hadn’t lasted long after Mari’s birth, had agreed to name their daughter after the mine, but Mari imagined her heart wasn’t in it. She’d been worn down by the hardships she’d agreed to endure in this hellhole of a desert for love of Mari’s father. Mari guessed she had inherited her father’s grit. Or maybe she’d just learned to adapt since she’d never known anything else. Mari didn’t mind the desert at all.
She’d sure not benefitted in any other way from her father’s obsession with the Marigold Mine. He’d never once struck anything worth mentioning, and he’d refused to sell out to the borax barons when the borax craze hit the Mojave. He was out for silver, and he wasn’t flexible enough to alter his dream to suit reality. Mari had found his attitude frustrating, especially when the two of them had been forced to exist on nothing but beans and salt pork fo
r months at a time.
And now she was being as pigheaded as her father. Feeling even more gloomy than usual, she held Tiny’s collar and opened the door of the rough-hewn, one-room cabin in which she’d lived for every one of her nineteen years.
Her mouth fell open. Tiny lunged forward, and she managed to keep a grip on his collar, but she did it automatically. Her brain had suffered too great a shock allow her to think.
She’d expected Mr. Tafft again. Maybe another guy from the pictures.
She hadn’t expected Adonis to show up at her door, sweating and looking cross. She jumped when she heard Martin’s voice, since she hadn’t noticed him standing beside the god.
“Miss Pottersby, please allow me to introduce you Mr. Anthony Ewing. Mr. Ewing is one of the primary investors in Lucky Strike.”
“How do you do,” the god said. He sounded as if he didn’t really want to know and had only said the words by rote. His brow was furrowed, his tanned face dripped perspiration, and he was obviously uncomfortable. “It’s my father who’s the investor, Miss Pottersby. I’m only his agent here on the West Coast. He’s in New York.”
She swallowed and managed to say, “Oh.”
Martin smiled kindly “May we come in, Miss Pottersby? It’s blazing hot out here.”
She stepped back, suddenly realizing she’d been gaping. “Sure,” she said. “It’s hot in here, too.”
Martin’s smile didn’t waver. Mr. Ewing looked even grouchier at her words. Both men entered the bantam cabin. Fortunately, Mari had acquired chairs over the years, mostly from kindhearted neighbors who’d felt sorry for her. She didn’t like people feeling sorry for her, but she’d accepted the chairs since she needed them. Also, she possessed a sociable nature, and people sometimes dropped by, so the chairs came in handy.
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