Ghost Mine

by Hunter Shea

  I felt a little tingle at the base of my neck. That was the tingle that told me whatever small problem was on Teddy’s mind was a mite bigger than he was letting on. And to be honest, I was a tad intrigued. Maybe he was right. I’d spent my entire life wandering across the West, first on cattle drives with my father who was a cook on the Shawnee Trail, then doing some rustling of my own, mostly on the Chisholm Trail, running cattle from Texas to Kansas. Life had always been a battle, whether I was fighting the elements, cattle, shady men in shady saloons, Apaches, Spaniards, you name it. Got so it was in your blood, all this fighting.

  “What kind of small problem we talking about? Indians? I thought most of them were settled by now.”

  “I wish it was Indians. Better the devil you know.”

  “I’m kind of relieved at that. We fought with some good Indians back in Cuba. Don’t know if I’d have the same feelings toward them on the open range.”

  Teddy nodded. “No, the situation in Wyoming is unique and I wish I could be the one to go out there, but the country needs me here. You ever hear of a town named Hecla?”

  “Doesn’t ring any bells,” I said. I looked over at Scott who shrugged his shoulders. “Back about twenty years ago, itwas a mining outpost, west of Cheyenne, out by Laramie.

  “Prospectors found great stores of copper and other minerals. The place was bustling, ready to establish itself as the premier source for copper in the entire state. There was even talk of making it a stop on the Union Pacific line. It didn’t happen of course. Hecla didn’t stay around long enough for the honor. The copper vein petered out.”

  “Happens all the time with mining towns,” I said. I watched the last orange rays of the sun melt over the treetops outside the study window.

  “You’re right, it does. But not when miners strike gold.” That got my attention.

  “You mean to tell me the miners left even though they knew there was gold to be had?

  “That doesn’t make sense. You sure that’s not just some tall tale?”

  Teddy gripped my shoulder and offered some more whiskey. “I can assure you, gold was discovered in Hecla. For a period of time, it was all people in the area could talk about. I first heard about it during a hunting trip to the Sierra Madres about seven years ago. The locals I met spoke about a gold mine that was there for the taking…if anyone was bold enough to do so.”

  “So why did everyone pick up and leave? Were they afraid of getting rich?”

  “That’s the problem. No one knows why. Anyone who has stepped foot in Hecla has disappeared.”

  In my experience, there was one sure, logical explanation behind this whole Hecla story. I pinched the corner of my upper lip between my teeth and asked, “You sure there aren’t any Indians left out of the rez that take offense to white men pillaging their land? In my experience, when folks are run off and others disappear, there’s usually an angry and motivated tribe of reds somewhere in the mix.”

  Teddy grew serious and stared off, his mind somewhere beyond the room. It wasn’t often that I saw him pull inside himself like that. I plopped into one of the leather chairs scattered around the room. The mounted head of a brown bear, his black gums curled over sharp teeth, loomed over me.

  He said, “I sent a small squad of troops to investigate several months ago, just after my inauguration. The country needs gold, and if private companies weren’t going to bring it out, I didn’t see why we couldn’t. They reported that even the Indians wouldn’t go near Hecla. Nearby townspeople refused to talk to them. And then the squad, too, disappeared.” Now, my first instinct was that the boys in that squad chased off the Indians, dug up some gold and took off out West to retire under a new name. Loyalty was hard to come by, especially if there was big-time money involved. I was going to tell Teddy just that but something made me keep my trap shut.

  “You want me to locate your missing soldiers?” I said instead.

  Teddy stomped over to one of the bookshelves and pulled one out. He said, “That’s not your primary mission, but by all means, I would like to find out where they’ve gone. I need you to go to Hecla to find out what the blue hell is going on there and what we can do to get that gold from the mines. I don’t know many men who’ve been to the places you’ve been and come out with their scalps intact. You may not know Wyoming, but you know the land. I can’t think of anyone I’d trust more to find the truth.”

  He dropped the faded brown book onto my lap. I picked it up and turned it over. The raised gold lettering on the spine read, Konungs Skuggsjá: King’s Mirror.

  “Reading material for your train ride,” Teddy said. “I’ve already spoken to your sergeant and advised him that you would be in the service of your country for the foreseeable future. I could tell that he wasn’t too pleased but knew enough not to voice it to me. You’ll take the Union Pacific to Laramie, which is the last town east of Hecla. I’ll make sure you have horses and all the provisions you’ll need waiting for you.”

  My mind was spinning, and it wasn’t from the whiskey. In the span of several minutes I’d been drafted and thrown into a mystery that could be hazardous to my health.

  It sounded good to me.

  I knocked back the rest of my drink and nodded. “Can I take Teta with me?”

  For the first time since all this talk of Hecla started, Teddy smiled. “I had a feeling you’d say that, so I made plans for him as well. You might want to tell him tonight before he reports for duty tomorrow.”

  “When do we leave?”

  “The day after tomorrow. I figured you’d need a day to put everything in order.”

  I smiled. “More like five minutes. That’ll give me and Teta a chance to have one last night on the town.”

  Teddy motioned to Scott, who pulled a fat envelope out of his vest pocket and handed it to me.

  “Your night on the town and all expenses for the trip are on me. If you need more, there are instructions on how to reach me in Washington inside the envelope.”

  I stuffed it into my shirt, where no one could easily get at it during my ride back to the city.

  We shook hands on the deal. “Guess I’ll go find Teta now,” I said.

  “If I know him, that should be an adventure,” Scott said. I laughed in agreement. “Wire me when you get to Laramie,” Teddy said.

  As I walked out of the study, he added, “You’re welcome, by the way.”

  I tipped my hat and made my way into the night. A soft breeze came over me, heavy with the smell of jasmine.

  Chapter Four

  I was on my fourth bar along Madison when I heard someone shout, “So help me God, Noel, if you let that spic win I’ll kick your arse clear across the Hudson!”

  A crowd had formed at the back of the bar and even though I couldn’t see who was at the center of the soon-to-be melee, I knew I’d found Teta.

  The men chanted, “Three, two, one, go!”

  A violent concussion of shouts, cheers and curses practically shook the walls of the bar. The wood smelled like stale beer, vomit and varnish. Someone was playing a fiddle like the devil was on his ass and the sound of glasses slamming onto the bar top could just be heard over the din.

  Leave it to Teta to rile the Irish. I motioned to the bartender to pour me some bourbon and settled on the vacant end of the bar. I’d wait for him to finish what he started.

  Half the gin- and beer-soaked men whooped and raised their arms in victory. I watched paper money exchange hands as they parted, the winners dropping their winnings on the bar and ordering enough booze to make walking home a high adventure.

  The face of the man I presumed to be Noel came into view. He stared hard at someone to his right. It was a look that said things were about to get uglier than a dead coon’s ass.

  A fat man with wild, white hair stepped away from the bar and I could finally see Teta, his brown skin in stark contrast to th
e pale complexions of the several dozen men around him. His scraggly black mustache was peppered with peanut skins. Four large and empty mugs had been turned upside down in front of him. Traces of white foam slid down the glass onto the bar.

  Teta saw me and raised his chin, smiling. His lack of concern about the storm brewing beside him was like that of an innocent kid, happy that he’d won a game of marbles. He knew what was coming. I was tempted to let him go it alone. The man was small and lean but strong as an ox and, when prodded, vicious as a bobcat.

  A messy pile of bills lay between Teta and the simmering Irishman. I saw Teta’s eyes flick toward his winnings. So did the Irishman. The big man slapped a fat hand on top of the bills, sending a few onto the tacky floor.

  “You even think of touching that, you cheating spic, and I’ll fook you up so bad, your own madre won’t recognize ya.”

  Teta reached over and pinched his thumb and forefinger atop the man’s hand, slowly lifting it off the money. The Irishman was too stunned to react. It would wear off quickly.

  “My madre’s dead.”

  He swept the money off the wet bar and into his shirt pocket. Picking up a black bowler hat from the floor – the left side had been dented in – Teta tipped it to the burly Irishman and walked toward me. A few men, those who had bet and won on him, slapped his back as he passed.

  “Having fun?” I asked when he sidled up to me. “Sí,” he replied with a sly grin.

  “Don’t expect Noel and the boys to take kindly to your walking off with their money, whether you won it fair and square or not.”

  He made the sign of the cross and pointed to his heart. “I never cheat. I just drink fast.” I watched Noel gather a few of his compadres around him. They cast furtive glances our way. I knew from experience they were talking themselves into taking action. They were probably wondering where I fit into things and who would take out whom. “You do understand you’re an officer of the law,” I said.

  “So are you.”

  The Irishmen, five of them now and one bigger than the other, had formed a tight formation and were steadily making their way down the bar.

  “I take it you don’t want to make them aware of said fact,” I said.

  “Not if you don’t.”

  “This is your fight, Teta. I only came to talk. We have big plans, you and I.”

  “How big?”

  “Big enough to get us out of this city.”

  A hush settled over the bar. The man with the fiddle stopped and put his instrument in its case for safekeeping. All eyes were on the band of men dead set to make Teta regret invading their turf. Not surprisingly, he was the only one who didn’t seem to care.

  “When?” he asked.

  “Day after tomorrow.”

  “No more police?” A glimmer of hope lit up his face.

  I shook my head just as Noel tapped him on the shoulder with a finger as fat and round as the handle of a bullwhip.

  Teta turned his head, smiled wide and said, “Yes, yes, yes, I know you want to talk to the complaint department. But you’re being rude. I’m in the middle of a conversation with my friend here.”

  I got up from my seat and took one step back from Teta, my gaze trained on the men at his back.

  Noel narrowed his eyes. Thick beads of sweat ran down the tight crevice of his brow and along the sides of his nose.

  “I don’t give a fiddler’s fart what yer doin’. When I—”

  With a blur of concentrated fury, Teta lifted the barstool and hoisted it over his shoulder, mashing the guy’s face and clipping a black-bearded grizzly of a man to his left. Both went down before they could draw a breath of surprise.

  He kicked the man to the right on the top of his kneecap. I heard a pop and a crack as the bone fell to pieces. The man lay on the floor, wailing in pain and clutching the area where he used to have a fully functioning knee.

  That left two. I took a sip of my bourbon, rotgut in the truest sense and nothing like what I had been enjoying earlier at Teddy’s estate. I nearly dropped it when Teta grabbed a man with a bald head and nasty scar that bisected his face, slamming him facedown on the edge of the bar. He slid the unconscious body in my direction.

  “Hey!” I said, stepping aside and holding my drink up high like a matador with his sword.

  “Sorry,” Teta said with an upward shrug of his shoulders.

  The remaining man, much younger than the other four but with a chest that could double for an anvil, stood opening and closing his fists. His head swiveled from side to side as he took in the condition of his fallen mates.

  Teta leaned his back against the bar and said, “I’ll give you to the count of five to walk out of here on your own.” There was no menace in his voice, no trace of an accent to mark him as a foreigner. He’d gone to great pains to not sound like a drifter from the Dominican Republic. It was the voice of a man offering a choice, and in that choice, some sound advice.

  “One.”

  The kid flexed his arms, took a deep breath. “Two.”

  He wiped the sweat from his brow with his forearm. “Three.”

  I watched him shift his feet and bend his knees. It was a fighter’s stance. “Don’t do it, kid,” I offered.

  He looked my way and spit on the floor, missing my boots by an inch. I raised my glass to him.

  “Here’s to your future kids who’ll be a little…off.”

  Teta said, “Oh fuck it, five!”

  When Teta raised his fist, the kid made to block the punch with his left and counter with his right. His eyes were so fixated on Teta’s upper body that he never saw the kick knifing to his balls. A geyser of vomit whooshed out of him and he fell to his knees on legs made of watery grits. His breath hitched in his chest as he struggled for air.

  It’d been one hell of a shot.

  “Gentlemen, it’s been a pleasure,” Teta said. He walked over the kid, who had curled into a fetal position.

  I put a few extra bills on the bar. “For the cleanup.”

  The night air felt cool and welcome, compared to the stifling atmosphere in the bar.

  Teta and I walked side by side down Madison toward lower Manhattan. “You still got that piece of lead in your boot?” I asked.

  Teta laughed. “I never go to bars without it.”

  “If he’s lucky, he’ll have cross-eyed kids of his own one day.”

  “Yes, but maybe he’ll teach them to stay out of bar fights that aren’t their own.” Teta the philosopher.

  “So tell me more about this big thing. Where are we going and why?”

  We had over twenty blocks ahead of us until we got to our flats in adjoining buildings. I wouldn’t be sorry to put them behind us. It didn’t seem right, living in such close quarters with so many folks. Getting a moment’s peace was as strange and alien there as a cow running for mayor. And the smells. It was no wonder I’d lost a good deal of weight over the past couple of years. My gripes were too many to name.

  “While you were out carousing like a common wino, I was meeting with the president.”

  I told him everything Teddy had relayed to me. Teta was wary, but anxious to leave city life behind. He was born in a shack on a farm and raised more by the animals and elements than his parents. His stint in New York was against his nature. But no matter how many times I told him to skedaddle, he stayed by my side like a tick or a bedbug. Blood brothers, he called us. I was never sure if he meant it in the traditional sense or if he was referring to the prodigious amount of blood we’d shed together.

  We parted company in front of his tenement, agreeing to meet around noon the next day.

  And for the first time in a long while, I slept like a baby.

  Chapter Five

  I was up early the next day. I splashed some tepid water on my face and dumped the rest out the window. My suitcase, a battered old
thing that needed four leather straps to keep it in one piece, as well as to prevent my belongings from spilling out, was under my bed where I had stowed it two years earlier.

  It felt good to put on my denims, boots, button-down shirt and leather vest. I’d been wearing a police uniform so long I’d forgotten how much I missed my old one. I looked in the mirror and winced.

  When did I get old? My father’s face stared back at me, though my lined face was a mite paler and my mustache a little thicker, with more flecks of gray. At least my hair was still thick and chestnut brown, like my mother’s had been. I ran my fingers along the stubble on my jaw and chin and decided to skip shaving.

  I gathered my cop gear and put it all in a paper bag. I pulled my bronze-colored Stetson from a nail I had driven into the wall and secured it on my head. It felt a little tight. I’d break it back in just right.

  The Polish family next door was awake as well. Mr. and Mrs. Rakoczi were shouting at one another and their kids had to scream even louder just to be heard. They were normally my alarm clock, but my eagerness to be on my way beat them to the punch. I hammered my fist on the wall for old times’ sake and they quieted down a bit.

  Teta waited outside holding a similar brown bag. A black sombrero lay against his back.

  “Where’d you find that old thing?”

  “Where I put it,” he said.

  “Where’d you put the nice Stetson I got you when we were camped in Santiago?”

  “I lost it on a bet. I like my sombrero better. It gives me luck.”

  From the way he told it, he’d been hired to capture or kill a Mexican bandit who had held a two-bit town in terror for several months. I couldn’t remember the town, but it was somewhere in the western end of Texas. Working alone, Teta strolled down Main Street, telling everyone he met to let the thief know he was there to put him in a box. He’d be waiting for him in the saloon.

  It all sounded like something out of a pulp novel, but with Teta you never know.

  Sure enough, the Mexican storms into the saloon with a gun in each hand, firing away like he had all the bullets in the world. Luckily, the saloon was relatively empty, so no one got hurt too bad. The Mexican figured the best way to handle Teta was to shoot him in the back. No need for talking. No standoff in the streets. In real life, you had to take your opportunities when they presented themselves.