Patience

by Lori Copeland

  God didn’t care.

  If God had any love or compassion for Jay Longer, he wouldn’t have taken Brice and Nelly.

  That was the truth, and you couldn’t get around it.

  He’d learned to hide the pain and push away the memories, but this boy Wilson had brought it all back. Jay realized now that he’d made a habit of avoiding young boys, afraid of letting himself get too close. Afraid to revive old hurts.

  He’d tried to reason with his wife, pleaded with her to let him take her to the doctor when the fever overtook her and the boy, but she didn’t believe in medicine. Had some foolish notion that trusting in doctors showed a lack of faith in God.

  Nelly came from a religious family, probably the most religious people he’d ever known. Lived by a set list of rules. Sometimes he’d wondered whose rules—theirs or God’s? Mostly he couldn’t find their rules in his Bible, and he’d searched. But they believed in them and lived by them.

  Nelly had gone to an old herb woman who’d mixed up some kind of potion for her to drink. According to Nelly, it was all right to take the potion because herbs were natural medicine. He couldn’t see it himself. Sure, herbs could be powerful medicine sometimes, but so could store-bought medicine. Seemed to him if God could use an old herb-doctoring woman, he could use a regular doctor. But Nelly had followed her beliefs and she’d taken her potion and she died. And Brice had died with her.

  Nelly had been real stubborn. Just like Patience Smith. And now Patience had this fool notion of working the mine. No one could do a thing with her. Get a notion in her head and you couldn’t budge it, and dreaming of gold was a powerful notion.

  Since he’d been in Colorado, Jay had seen more stupidity than he could shake a stick at. Some of it his. Yeah, he’d followed the gold dream, but not anymore. When it came to mines, he was a jinx. Still, it was amazing how some people responded to the mention of gold.

  The boy looked downright scared. Couldn’t blame him. The Mule Head should scare anyone in their right mind.

  But the two would be all right overnight. The dugout was dry, and he’d made sure they had plenty of wood before he left. Come morning, Patience would start the process of hiring a crew, and she’d find out what she was up against. She wouldn’t stick around long after that.

  Jay would bide his time. Let her learn the hard way. He could force her to go back to Denver City with him, sling her across his horse and haul her back, but she had a temper. He’d seen plenty of flashes of it. Twenty-eight miles would seem like a hundred-mile ride with a spitfire like that. He remembered a piece of Scripture from the book of Proverbs: “It is better to dwell in a corner of the housetop, than with a brawling woman in a wide house.” Solomon had, what—about six or seven hundred wives? Jay bet the old king knew a lot about brawling women.

  He was on the right track. Let Miss Patience Smith see what she was up against, and she’d beg him to take her back to Denver City.

  He tried to think of more pleasant things as he walked, but he couldn’t get Patience’s face out of his mind. Odd, since he hadn’t thought about a woman since Nelly’s death. Not for any length of time. Seemed like he couldn’t get interested in a female after Nelly; he’d just drawn into a shell and stayed there. Nelly had been so sweet and so pretty, so eager to please him in everything except where her beliefs were concerned. And in the end, her beliefs had killed her.

  They’d married young, sort of growing up together. Life had been good then. When Brice was born, Jay had held the two of them in his arms, his heart filled to bursting with love.

  Maybe they’d have died anyway, even if he’d gotten them to a doctor. No way of knowing. If only Nelly had loved him enough to listen, to forget the rules for once, to trust him enough to seek medical help.

  He suddenly lost his footing, stumbling.

  Quickly righting himself, he concentrated on the trail. Watch it, Jay; you can’t fall and break your neck… .

  Who’d care? he thought, laughing outright now.

  Sure, Jenny would be upset, but she’d get over it. His kid sister didn’t know where he was, let alone worry about him. Hadn’t kept track of him for years. She was in Phoenix being a dutiful wife to her husband, good old reliable Joe. Together they had respectfully produced three strapping heirs in less than four years. Pop was probably real proud of them.

  “And he’d consider me a flat-out disgrace,” he acknowledged.

  Loose rocks gave way beneath his heavy boot as he edged the steep incline. If he fell and broke every bone in his body, there’d only be one man who’d care.

  That, of course, would be Mooney Backus, the man who held his gambling debts.

  How much did he owe Mooney now? Twenty-five hundred dollars. A small fortune—one he didn’t have. Sheriff’s pay didn’t cover his former insanity, the years following Nelly’s death.

  Years ago—when he’d believed in a caring God—he’d have been worried about owing a man money and then suddenly finding himself unable to meet his debt. Yes sir, there’d been a time when he’d have stayed up nights trying to figure out how to repay the money.

  And gambling would have been the last thing on his mind. But when God stepped out of Jay’s life—the day God took Nelly and Brice—Jay’s responsible thoughts ceased.

  Back then he’d been honorable. Honorable and full of himself.

  But no use crying over spilled milk. He had no one but himself to blame for his problems; he could easily have become a town doctor. Pa was a physician, and by the time Jay turned sixteen, he’d helped deliver half the babies in the territory and even helped Pa when he cut out bullets and sewed up men’s faces. If doctoring hadn’t suited him, he could have married Mary Porter. Mary’s pa wasn’t exactly a pauper. The old man would have given him fifty acres of prime farmland—no, more like two hundred and fifty—in order to spare his daughter the agony of spinsterhood. But that wasn’t what he’d done.

  No sirree, not Jay Longer. Not the brash twenty-year-old who had life all figured out. He’d married his true love, pretty Nelly Briscoe, whose family lived on a neighboring farm, and like so many other misguided fools, the two had started out for Colorado to claim their fortune. He’d sunk every last penny he had in a gold mine that had produced nothing.

  Absolutely nothing.

  Not particularly bright of him, but when a man had gold fever, he wasn’t thinking straight.

  From the day James Wilson Marshall discovered the first gold nugget in a ditch that channeled water from river to sawmill, gold had enriched and ruined men’s lives. That afternoon of January 4, 1848, forty-five miles east of Sutter’s Fort in Sacramento Valley, changed the course of history.

  And put a fair-size dent in Jay’s life.

  But that was neither here nor there. Pop had given up on Jay’s ever taking over his doctor practice; Mary had been spared spinsterhood when she married the depot clerk, Pete Wiler; and any day now, Jay would be dead.

  Mooney Backus wasn’t long on patience. He’d been after Jay to pay off his debt for over two years now. Jay was running out of excuses and was tired of avoiding Backus’s thugs, Red and Luther.

  He laughed, wondering what the good folks of Denver City would say when they found out their sheriff was a wanted man. Not by the law but by something more deadly.

  Four days ago, Backus had delivered an ultimatum by wire. Jay had exactly two weeks to come up with five hundred dollars. Which had a lot to do with why he wasn’t in a hurry to get back to Denver City. If Mooney wanted him, he’d find him, but no sense making it easy for him.

  Jay caught himself again as his boot slid in the loose dirt, the rocks spilling down the precipitous incline. The trail started to blur. Shaking his head, he tried to focus on the path. Cold seeped through his senses, and the moon barely shed enough light to walk by. He’d stayed at the mine longer than he should have, stacking wood and making sure the girl and kid were settled. There was a hundred-foot drop on either side of him. One slip, and he’d save Mooney the trouble of co
ming after him.

  Concentrating now, he slowed his pace. The wind whipped his frayed coat. His hand came up to hold his battered hat in place. A lone coyote howled at the moon. He rather liked this disguise, might even keep it to throw Backus’s men off his trail.

  One moment he was walking, and the next he felt himself hurtling down the mountainside. Panic-stricken, he tried to catch himself, but he was too far gone. He tumbled end over end, arms and legs flailing wildly.

  Bile came up in his throat and he choked, hitting the ground hard. Sliding, he snatched for a handhold, his life flashing before him. Miraculously, one of his hands snagged something and latched on.

  Silence closed around him. He lay, afraid to move a muscle, panting, praying that whatever he held on to would continue to support his weight.

  A coyote yelped, its cries fading into emptiness.

  Using his free hand, Jay slowly felt around, determining that he was on the edge of a mine shaft or maybe a deep precipice. His scraped and bleeding fingers explored the uneven ground. Sweat beaded his forehead. He touched the small outcropping of rock he was lying on.

  He was afraid to risk even the slight movement needed to yell. Besides, no one would hear him. Not here on this remote mountainside.

  Flat on his back, he watched a cloud drift across the moon, temporarily obscuring it. Snowflakes started to swirl. A cold wind buffeted the hillside.

  Jay lay motionless, his eyes fixed on the sky. Nothing he did lately worked out.

  “P, I am thankful for food, but I don’t like turnips,” Wilson reminded Patience the next morning. “Especially not for breakfast!”

  No longer than they’d been together, Wilson had decided he liked P. Liked the way she smiled—and she was kind. She didn’t yell or cry or act like a baby even though he knew she was scared.

  Animals prowled the mine site, growling with hunger. Once last night, Wilson had heard something big lumbering around outside—a bear, he suspected. A big, out-of-sorts grizzly. It sniffed around for a long time. Patience heard it—he knew she heard it—but she pretended to be asleep, although he could see the blanket quivering over her slim frame.

  He didn’t blame her. The boards the old prospector had nailed over the mine entrance and the heavy door over the dugout kept out most four-legged intruders, but a grizzly would be hard to stop.

  “Turnips are good for you—and we can be thankful that the old prospector laid up plenty of store for the long winter.”

  This morning she’d discovered the small root cellar adjacent to the mine, stocked full of potatoes, turnips, beans, butter, and salt pork—“enough to see a small army through the hard months,” she’d exclaimed. You’d have thought she’d hit the mother lode the way she carried on. She got more excited when she discovered the old cow. Even tried her hand at milking and did as well, or maybe better, than the old prospector had done. It looked like she was settling in for a long spell. Probably he shouldn’t have suggested working the mine. She had the fever now, and it would be hard to discourage her.

  Sighing, Wilson quietly set to work eating.

  Patience let her mind pleasantly drift, and she contemplated all the things they could do now that she owned a gold mine! Wilson needed shoes, and she needed a new dress—maybe even two! And oh, what she could do for Mary. She could rent—no, buy—larger quarters for the millinery, and for Harper she could buy Mrs. Katskey’s café so the grandma could devote all her time to raising her young grandson. Harper would have income for the rest of her life.

  Then she would buy a big house—big enough for Mary and Harper and Lily and her and Wilson to live in comfortably. Oh, it would be so grand—they would be a family, a real family, with Thanksgiving dinners and plum pudding and lots of oranges and peppermint-stick candy at Christmastime.

  The mine’s proceeds would mean that an exceptionally bright young boy could attend college and have all the things his parents would have wanted for him. The orphanage had supplied life’s necessities for her, as long as she was young, but the headmistress made it clear that once Patience reached adulthood, she was expected to provide for herself. Well, she had tried her hand at becoming a mail-order bride. That had fizzled, but God had given her another chance.

  Wilson reached for his glass of milk. “Will we live here in the dugout?”

  “We’ll have to—I’ll have to oversee the mine.” She’d managed to stake a claim to the Mule Head before news of the prospector’s death reached other materialistic would-be miners. Maybe they could build a cabin. She didn’t fancy living underground like some burrowing animal.

  Wilson peered back at her through his bottle-thick spectacles. “Mining is hard work, P—”

  She didn’t mind the shortened name, but she’d reminded him that she shouldn’t be so lenient since she was his elder. Nodding, she took a bite of potato. “We’ll hire strong men to do the work. At least eight or ten.”

  The boy sighed. “The old prospector said that wasn’t possible. All the men in this area have jobs, and besides, they’re afraid to come near Mule Head.”

  “Nonsense. You’re talking about the ghost again, aren’t you?”

  “How do you know it’s nonsense? Just because you’ve never seen a ghost doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”

  She stared at him. “I asked you once before. Have you ever seen the ghost?”

  He squirmed, turning red in the face. “I’m not saying what I’ve seen, but I do believe it might be a mistake to be overly confident. Whether you believe in ghosts or not, the men do. They won’t want to disturb a ‘haint,’ as they call it, and they might not want to work for a woman.”

  Patience glared at Wilson. “It was your idea to claim the mine. Why are you trying to discourage me now?”

  “I’ve had time to think, and I do believe we might be taking on more than we can handle.”

  She sighed in exasperation. “So I should let someone else have the mine? Do you really think I’m going to do that? Stop coming up with reasons why this won’t work. We’ve claimed this mine, and we’re going to work it, and we’re going to be rich. I already know what I’m going to do with the money.”

  This wasn’t just about her. It was a chance to do something for others. Jay Longer couldn’t see that, but he was a rigid, arrogant … ole goat. God would help her help Mary, Harper, and Lily. After all, he’d brought her here.

  Wilson sighed. “I’ve never thought it wise to spend money you haven’t received yet. We have a long way to go before we see any monetary compensation.”

  Patience sent him a reprimanding glance. “Wilson, where did you learn those big words?” He was eight going on forty. She didn’t know where all that wisdom came from, but at times he seemed the adult, not her.

  Wilson shrugged. “I have a flair for English.”

  Grinning, she reached over and tousled his flamboyant thatch of carrot-colored hair. In many ways he could be Jay Longer’s son, not only in looks but in stubborn persistence. “With all that money we’ll even be able to buy you some new glasses.”

  “That would be nice. The old prospector didn’t have money to be throwing around. He said I was lucky to have any.” He stabbed a turnip with his fork and stared at it. “Can I have a dog now? The old prospector strictly forbade pets. He said they ate too much and barked and left stuff in the yard he was always stepping in.”

  “Sure, but no more than one—too many mouths to feed.”

  Taking a bite of bread, he frowned. “I wouldn’t be counting my nuggets yet if I were you.”

  Her brows lifted. “And why not? We own our own gold mine.”

  “Well, I don’t know,” he contended patiently. “I’m only eight, but I sense we’re in over our heads here. I realize you don’t want to hear about that, but who will do the work? I’m telling you, the old prospector couldn’t find anyone to help him.”

  “But I can get help. Once I set my head to something, I usually achieve the end result. At the orphanage, if anyone wanted anything done, th
ey’d come to me.”

  Wilson’s eyes returned to his plate. “You can be so naive, dear friend.”

  They continued eating breakfast, letting the subject drop momentarily. Finally Patience looked up again. “Are you really suggesting that we desert the mine? that I go back to Denver City?”

  “How old are you?”

  “It isn’t proper to ask a lady’s age.”

  “I’m sorry. How much do you weigh?”

  She’d sooner tell her age. “Wilson!”

  “What funds have you set aside for your welfare?”

  “Well, none …” Her words wavered when she saw him shaking his head. “I lived in an orphanage before coming to Denver City, where I was supposed … to be … a mail-order bride.” She paused, worrying her teeth on her lower lip.

  “Homeless and broke.” When she was about to argue, Wilson continued. “I’m homeless and broke too, and I’m only eight years old. It’s nothing to be ashamed of—just a small nuisance.”

  She slid to the front of her chair. “Don’t you see? Our situations make it even more imperative that we work the mine. We don’t have any other choice. I can take you back to Denver City with me, but to what? I don’t have a home—Mary, Lily, Harper, and I are living with Pastor Siddons and his wife, and the house is fairly bursting at the seams. Listen, Wilson—” her eyes pleaded for understanding—“maybe the Lord will shine on us, and we’ll unearth a vein of silver. That’s even better than gold, isn’t it?”

  “Silver would be better, but a good gold vein is capable of producing a handsome profit,” Wilson mused.

  Patience leaned in closer. “Then let’s do it. Let’s ask the Lord to bless our efforts, and let’s do it.”

  “Most assuredly.” He slid a piece of turnip into his mouth, momentarily gagging. He continued. “There are still a few small problems.”

  “What?”

  “You don’t know how to mine, I’m too little, and Gamey’s ghost won’t let anyone in the mine.”

  Smiling, Patience continued eating. “There is no ghost, and there’s enough gold here to make our wildest dreams come true.”