And the Hills Opened Up

And the Hills Opened Up

Also by David Oppegaard

The Suicide Collectors

Wormwood, Nevada

The Ragged Mountains

And the Hills Opened Up

David Oppegaard

Burnt Bridge  ||  New Orleans  ||  San Francisco

And the Hills Opened Up
is a work of fiction.  Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.  Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincedental.

Copyright © 2014 David Oppegaard.  All rights reserved.

www.burntbridge.net

Cover and book design by Mark Rapacz

library of congress cataloging-in-publication data

ISBN-13: 978-0-9886727-1-0

ISBN-10: 0988672715

For Alan Oppegaard and Tom Norman,
two of the good guys

part one

Red Earth, Wyoming

1890

1

Covered in sweat and half-delirious, Hank Chambers poked his head into the main adit and shouted for his men to clear the goddamn mine.  After a lengthy, ponderous moment, two lollygaggers popped out of the darkness, rushed past the foreman, and sprinted down the hillside, hurdling clumps of sagebrush as they loped along.

The foreman scowled and shook his head at such boyish behavior.  A lean, sinewy man of forty-three, Chambers had been running a fever for two days, his skin hot to the touch and his mind prone to strange wanderings.  He took it slow as he descended the rocky hillside toward the crowd of miners gathered below, digging in his heels to keep his weight back.  He saw no need to break his neck before God and man.

“What do you think, Mr. Chambers?”

“I need to make a fresh count, Andrew.”

“Yes, sir.  You just give the word.”

Chambers considered his crew.  Filthy in appearance, the entire water-sodden lot was squinting beneath the hot July sun like a bunch of moles that’d never seen the sky before.  His first headcount reckoned seventy-eight, his second count eighty.  They had seventy-nine men on the books and he was certain the whole crop was here today.  The men loved a good blasting, to hear the dynamite shake the hills.  They liked to whoop and holler and forget there wasn’t much else to do in Red Earth except drink strong spirits and copulate with the same dozen whores. 

The foreman counted a third time and came up with seventy-nine.  He should have been in bed, sweating the fever out and awaiting lucidity, but he wasn’t getting paid by the Dennison Mining Company to lie abed.  He was getting paid to extract as much copper ore from this stubborn old mountain as fast as he could do it.  Every hour in a mining operation was precious, every second was money spent, and Chambers had a bottom line that Mr. Dennison expected him to meet.

The crowd of men below shifted on their feet and coughed into their hands—they wondered what he was waiting for.  Chambers considered asking Andrew to make a headcount himself, to see if their numbers matched up, but when the foreman looked at his shift boss, a thin young man with a somber, expectant look, he decided to sit with the third figure.  Sometimes you just had to play the part, even if you weren’t feeling it.

“All right, Andrew.  Tell them to light it up.”

The shift boss smiled and called into the mine, where a miner named Tol Gregerson was waiting for the signal to light the fuse.  Gregerson hollered back from inside the mine and Chambers started down the hillside, taking it slow, while Andrew skipped ahead of him like a pup.  The miners quieted as the foreman neared, watching him sweat, but he ignored their prying and turned to face the mine’s opening. 

Somebody coughed and spat on the ground. 

A crow flew across the sky and settled on a tree.

Old Tol Gregerson emerged from the mine’s entrance, moving fast and kicking up dust.  He lost his footing halfway down and skidded the rest on his backside.  The hillside shuddered, sending dirt and rocks tumbling down.  A great puff of black smoke rolled out of the mine’s entrance and drifted into the sky, causing the men to whoop in approbation.  Chambers peered into the dark cloud as it continued to climb—the smoke seemed darker and more abundant than you’d expect, reminding him of an oilfield fire he’d seen once near Carbon City. 

Andrew slapped his hat against his thigh.  Chambers wiped the sweat out of his eyes, recalling himself.

“That was a good one, boss.  Felt the whole damn valley shift.”

Chambers rubbed his warm cheek.  “Gregerson used the normal amount of sticks, didn’t he?”

Andrew frowned and looked back at Gregerson.  The old man was shaking hands with the other miners like he’d done something special.  Somebody brought out a flask and passed it around.

“I think so, boss.  I could ask him and make certain.”

Chambers waved the idea away with his hand.  “Don’t bother.  Gregerson knows his business.”

“Sure does,” Andrew said.  “I swear I felt the earth itself shake out.”

Chambers nodded, his exhaustion returning as the cloud of smoke broke apart and the sky returned to blue.  Nothing man did lingered too long around here—the mountains had a way of outlasting everything without seeming to make an effort.  Man was just an ant in Wyoming, scrambling to bring his heavy crumbs back to the hill.

Andrew set his hat on his head and plucked at the brim. 

“How long do you think we should wait?”

“Give her twenty minutes to let the dust clear and the hill stay put,” Chambers said, pulling out his pocket watch.  “Then go in and make sure everything’s stable before you send the men back down.  Clearing the rubble should keep ’em busy rest of the day.”

“Yes, sir.”

Chamber put his watch away and squinted at the hillside.  “I’m headed back for the afternoon.  Send for me if there are difficulties.”

The shift boss nodded, solemn as a judge as he contemplated the duties lying ahead of him.  “I think that’s a good idea, Mr. Chambers.  Some rest will do you a world of good.”

“I didn’t ask you what you thought, Andrew.”

“No, sir.  You did not.”

Chambers turned away from the shift boss and began walking down the hillside.  He felt a heaviness resting on his shoulders, like the hills themselves were pushing down on him.  He did not like being sick with a summer fever and he did not like the memory of that black smoke, billowing out of the mine while the men applauded.

The foreman covered the half-mile into camp, moving slow but sure in his feverish ambulation.  Red Earth, founded two years prior in 1888, was only big enough to support the operations and will of the Dennison Mining Company.  Connected to civilization by a weekly stagecoach and one treacherous mountain road, the company town lay seventy miles southeast of Rawlins and was surrounded by mountains on all sides.  Winter came early and left late, sometimes bogging the camp down in ten feet of snow and nearly killing off anything with a pulse.  The locals, who numbered roughly one hundred and sixty souls, joked that you didn’t so much live in Red Earth as survive the bastard, and some days it didn’t feel like much of a joke at all. 

Comprised mostly of shacks and cabins, the largest buildings in town were the Runoff Saloon, the Copper Hotel, and the Cooke House.  They also had a small church, a general store, a livery, and two bunkhouses for the bachelor miners, with most of the residential shacks and cabins clumped together on the north side of town.  Chambers touched his cap several times as he entered the outskirts of town, acknowledging the usual assortment of gentlemen loafers who hung about smoking cigars and passing the time of day.  Most were old miners, ushered into retirement either by injury, drink, or general decrepitude.  He didn’t know how they got by but come summertime they always hung around town, swapping lies and speculating where their next fortune lay.

As Chambers passed the general store Milo Atkins rushed out and joined him in the street.  The sheriff didn’t have his own office, just a desk at the front of the general store where he could sit and watch traffic go by.  If he needed to lock up a drunk for the night, Atkins chained him to an iron ring set into the store’s wooden floor, an uncomfortable indignity that kept most men from visiting a second time.

“Howdy, Sheriff,” Chambers said, touching his hat.  “You’re moving mighty fast for such a hot day.”

“I didn’t want to miss you, Mr. Chambers.”

Chambers nodded, waiting for the sheriff to explain himself.  The sheriff was a young man of twenty-five who’d gotten the job of town sheriff because he was handy with a gun and willing to work cheap.  The Dennison Mining Company paid his salary and never once had Atkins complained about how small it was.  He probably thought the experience would help when he moved on to a bigger town, such as Saratoga or Rock Springs.  Atkins had a lanky frame, dark hair, brown eyes, and bushy eyebrows.  Chambers supposed he had Italian blood, or some Cherokee to him. 

“I heard the explosion down at the mine,” Atkins said, looking over Chambers’ shoulder.  “You blasting today?”

“Yup,” Chambers said, “that was us.  Thought it was time to bust open that Brink Lode some more.”

Atkins frowned, shoving his eyebrows together.

“I wish you’d let me know in advance.”

“Oh?”

“I like to know what’s happening in my town.  Maybe I could help you clear the area beforehand.”

Chambers blinked, sweat trickling down from his hat band and into his eyes.  Was it the fever or had the sheriff called Red Earth his town?  As if Mr. Dennison, on a rich man’s whim, couldn’t have the whole place torn down in a week’s time?  Hell, even that weasel Cooke, living in that stone mansion of his, outranked them both. 

“Thank you, Sherriff, but you don’t have to worry on that score.  My men and I have been blasting for over two years and we haven’t lost a soul yet.”

“Sure, but I was thinking—”

“If we need a drunk hogtied, Atkins, we’ll be sure to call you,” Chambers said, starting down the street again.  “I’m sure you have a fine touch with a rope.”

The sheriff offered no reply, but Chambers could feel his unhappy stare following him as he walked away.  He didn’t care.  He just wanted to be home now, stripped naked and beneath a blanket.  His legs felt weak and light at the same time, his mouth dry.  He passed the two boarding houses for the company miners, a scattering of roughhewn shacks that had gone up in a week, and came to his own cabin. 

His wife came out into the yard as he approached, shading her eyes against the sun.  Younger than himself by seven years, Bonnie Chambers was pleasant enough on the eyes, even with her dark hair drawn back in a school teacher’s bun.  She had French blood, though she didn’t like to admit it.  When she blushed, her cheeks turned a pretty thistle pink.

“You look like you’re about to swoon, Hank Chambers.”

“Yes, ma’am, swooning might be a possibility.”

Bonnie shook her head. 

“I knew I shouldn’t have let you get out of bed this morning.  I’m sure the boys could have lit that fuse without you.”

Chambers shrugged and kissed his wife on the cheek, too weary to argue.  Bonnie frowned and felt his forehead with the back of her hand.

“Good lord, Hank.  You’re burning worse than ever.”

“That so?”

Bonnie grabbed his elbow and led him inside their cabin, as if he were an old timer with bad legs. 

“Get those clothes off and hop into bed right now, Mr. Chambers.  I’m not about to become a widow because you’re too stubborn to rest.  I’ll bring you water and heat some soup.”

“Fine by me, darling.”

Chambers shook off his wife’s grasp and passed through the cabin.  It was cooler inside, out of the sun’s glare, and the cabin smelled like pine sap.  Bonnie had strung up a white sheet to separate their bed from the rest of the cabin, though Chambers didn’t know how much good it did—it was hard to pretend you were alone when you could hear everything going on past the sheet.  Chambers stood in this half-room, staring at nothing while he took off his clothes.  The ground seemed to rise and fall, bending beneath his feet.  Bonnie drew back the sheet and handed him a tin cup.

“There’s your first.  Plenty more to come.”

Chambers took the cup and drank, naked except for his socks.  Bonnie watched him down the water, her lips pressed with worry. 

“Don’t look so put out,” he said, handing her the emptied cup.  “It’s only a summer fever.”

“I know that.  You think I don’t know that?”

Bonnie drummed her nails on the tin cup.  Chambers parted the covers and slid into the bed.  The sheets felt cool on his bare skin. 

“I slept poorly last night,” Bonnie said.  “I dreamt it snowed in the middle of summer.  It snowed and snowed until the whole town was buried in white.  We couldn’t dig our way out, it was that bad.  Nobody could move and it seemed like there wasn’t a town here at all.”

Chambers licked his lips, ready for more water.

“Then what?  The snow melt and wash everything out?”

“Nothing.  We just stayed snowed in and quiet.  Then I woke up and it was morning.”

Chambers turned onto his side, deciding to forget about the water. 

“Hank, how much longer do you think we’ll stay here?”

“I don’t know.  Till the copper runs out, I suppose.”

“And how long do you think that’ll be?”

Chambers yawned, picturing the mine with its web of tunnels, all sloping down.  They’d dug deep already, but there was still a fair amount of good ore left in that hill.

“Might yield five more years or so, I reckon.”

Bonnie sighed and he knew what she was thinking—five more years away from civilization.  Away from fancy restaurants, dramatic plays, and respectable dress shops.

“We’re making good money here,” Chambers said.  “Five years of this kind of money and we’ll be doing fair.”

“Fair enough that we can move to Cheyenne and you can ease back?”

“Sure,” Chambers said, drifting toward sleep.  His wife left the partitioned room quietly, staring at the empty cup in her hands.  She pictured a deep well, the kind you couldn’t climb out of once you’d fallen in.