Jasper Mountain (3 page)

After a sea voyage that seemed to last a thousand years, Milena and Baba had landed in New York City. Forgotten children played in gutters and angry men roamed the streets. She found the crowded, violent endlessness of the city as monstrous as the ocean; still, she made the best of it. Watching her father go into the horrible factory, coming home every night with additional years of age etched into his face, had broken her heart. Yet she greeted him with a smile and a supper they shared, food enough for only one.

“You grow much too thin,
hoordo chiriklo,
” Baba told her one night. “We must plump you up and find you a husband.”

This, she did not want. Just as she did not want the nickname he’d begun using—tiny bird. He insisted she was, indeed, his
hoordo chiriklo,
one who brought joy and music into his drab existence. But Milena wanted to find a job, to work, to help her father. Baba refused to hear of it. He said he did not want her in the cruel grasp of the city. She wanted to answer back that she’d seen her family and friends murdered in their homes and fires lit to burn their memory to ashes, but she kept this reply within her. He did not need such a painful reminder.

Then her father heard a song of riches calling from the other side of this savage country. “In the West, gold tumbles down rivers and into the pockets of those brave enough to make the journey. And we are travelers.” He spoke with hope for the first time since the
MoortYak.

The two of them signed on to journey west with others. A party, the group called themselves, although Milena saw no dancing nor heard any laughing, not even when they stopped to camp at night. These people built bonfires to cook food and keep warm, yet they did not gather around the flames to make music, dance, or tell stories, like Romani would have done. She remembered her people traveling together in the old country, members of the same
kampania,
watching and caring for each other, making families for life. These American travelers stayed separate and looked out only for themselves.

The journey ended in this strange, foreign place. Now Baba’s grave. Stones dug into her knees, yet she held tightly to the rocks of her father’s final resting place. Tears slid down her cheeks. This barbaric country claimed those who were not strong enough, and Baba lay beneath stones, a sacrifice and testament to the harsh unforgiving nature of the land. Why should she think she would fare any better? Especially without him.

The party filed away, one by one, until she sat alone.

No. Not alone.

She glanced over her shoulder, and there he stood. The giant of a man whose wagon shadowed their own during the journey, sometimes far; too often, close. The man who’d been with Baba when he died. Claimed her father fell in the stream. Hit his head. Drowned.

To Milena the giant had no name; she thought of him as the Dim Swede. The blood of his ancestors was mixed, and as a result his Scandinavian appearance—light skin and hair—was muddied, with no color at all. He wore beige clothes and a brimmed brown hat. He was like a bedspread faded to a bland version of what it once was. Except for his eyes, a blue so bright it seemed a light burned behind them, reflecting everything and absorbing nothing.

He wore his need plainly. He wanted her.

He frightened her. The Dim Swede towered, the biggest man she’d ever seen. His hands were enormous. Before his scouting mission with her father he’d offered money, explaining he wanted to make Milena his wife. Baba disliked the Dim Swede, didn’t trust him, and even though he wanted a husband for his daughter, he turned the Swede down gently and with great politeness. He did not want to make an enemy of this man, he whispered to Milena.

Looking up into the Dim Swede’s cold, flat eyes, she knew her father had been right and perhaps his insight had cost him his life. The huge man smiled down on her with a hint of a smirk, holding his hat in his enormous hands. “My condolences, Laney.” His voice rumbled deep from his mountainous body. The sky behind him blistered into sweeps of orange and yellow. She turned back and cast her eyes down to the rocks. The sun hovered at the horizon and finally dropped.

And still, he stayed.

Bonfires sprang into existence and speckled the dark silhouette of land.

And still, he stayed.

The heavy dark of night blanketed the desert, and Milena watched the moon, almost full, travel across the sky. And still, he stayed.

Please, she prayed, make him leave. She closed her eyes, determined to keep on her knees, in this very spot, until she was alone. The heavy dark of night began to thin as morning approached.

She refused to turn to him. She would stay here forever if she must.

Jasper Mountain Copper Mine
Territory of Colorado

C
ome on, Jack. Ain’t hardly no time for a trip to Fool’s Paradise!” Digger’s carefree voice ripped Jack from his gaze looking east. Dawn spilled pastel mists for miles over the flatland leading to the Front Range. Fingers of gold, pink, and lavender extended up Jasper Mountain, illuminating the town. A beautiful morning.

He’d been imagining himself and Willow thundering across the wide-open range. In actuality, his mud-crusted boots trudged along Gooseneck Road, leading him straight up the side of Jasper Mountain.

Digger sighed. “Jack! We’s gonna be late if you don’t get your sorry ass movin'!”

“Now, Dig,” Tom Gallagher admonished in his good-natured Irish lilt, followed by a look to the sky and back again, “let Jackie be. He’s smilin’ and far away from here, which is a bit of a miracle in itself.”

Jack hurried to catch up with his friends, the gravel road crunching beneath their boots.

“I got no hankerin’ for Jory to plant his boot up my ass again,” Digger replied.

“Spendin’ a fair amount of time dwellin’ on asses this mornin', lad.”

“Can’t help it.” Digger shrugged and grinned. “I’m surrounded by ‘em.” He took off his hat, tossed it into the air, and wove around to get it to land on his head. It struck his shoulder and flipped into the dirt. He scooped it up, ran his hand through a mess of blond hair forever in need of a good haircut, and plopped the hat back on his head.

Jack blessed the good fortune that had brought him such friends, especially considering the circumstances under which their friendship had grown. The Jasper Mining Company. Hell on earth.

The headframe, a tower spearing up from the top of Jasper Mountain, marked the collar of the mine shaft. The structure looked for all the world like a gallows. Up there men didn’t hang by the neck to meet their destiny; they were lowered to serve out a never-ending sentence deep within the mountain.

Victor claimed he had brought Jack to Jasper for help with the growing miner unrest. Trouble was, Jack suspected his position was supposed to be a way for Victor to find out what was going on with his workers. Trouble compounded, as trouble was in the habit of doing, because Jack agreed with the men and hated the mine more every day he worked it. Most of the miners couldn’t leave, didn’t possess the money or the way out of Jasper. Travel across the desert going one way, or over mountains going the other, most likely meant death.

The lure of gold held many here. Despite logic, men hoped to find a new, untapped vein of gold to make them rich beyond imagination. Rumors spread of a treasure in the mountain; the biggest gold strike of all hadn’t yet been found.

In reality, Jasper meant backbreaking work and meager pay.

“Nothin’ like lookin’ forward to the day’s work,” Jack mumbled.

“Another day sunk in the muck of morosity, Jackie?” Tom asked.

Jack shrugged. Tom was obviously doing his best to cheer him up. With Tom’s long nose, light mop of curls, and gentle disposition, he reminded Jack of a sheep. They’d lost the entire Tumbling Creek herd, five hundred head of sheep, in the fire. He sighed. There he was, thinking of the ranch again. Even eight months in Jasper’s mine hadn’t cured him of returning to that day, wishing he’d done everything differently.

Digger snorted. “I can’t wait to git down in that mine. Best part of the whole damned day. Who needs sun and air? We got rock and mud.”

Tom grinned. “And don’t you be forgettin’ all the copper and silver. And gold, boy-o. Never forget the gold.”

“Yeah, I sure love to work my body to bleedin’ so Victor Creely can line more gold in his pockets.” Digger squinted and nodded to Jack. “No disrespect intended.”

Jack wished he resented the president of Jasper Mining Company the way the other men did. He wanted to feel more a part of the brotherhood of miners; instead, he always peered in from the outside. He owed Victor everything. At the very least, after what Mr. Creely had done for his family, he owed the man his loyalty.

“You two ever think of dyin’ down there?” Jack asked.

“Naw.” Digger shook his head. “That’d be the easy way out. ‘Sides, what would Death want with me? She’s seen me work. I ain’t worth the trouble.”

Jack contemplated Digger. “So you think Death’s a woman?”

Digger flashed his grin. “I sure hope so. A right purty one, too. Better be if she expects to git her arms around me.”

Tom shook his head. “I can’t afford to dance with Mistress Death, Jackie. Not with my girls in need of a proper dowry.”

Jack shrugged. “No dowry’s necessary in America. This is the new world, Tom; you aren’t in Ireland anymore. Besides, you claim your daughters are beautiful. Beautiful women don’t need money to get a husband.”

Tom snorted and kicked at a pebble, and when he looked back up, Jack thought he saw a glimmer of moisture in Tom’s eyes. “Beauties they are, Jackie, beauties all. The Gallagher girls. Lovely enough to bring a man to tears. Take after my Maggie. Oh boys, the dregs of men who come to call! I wouldn’t offer my goats to them.” He nodded. “Money’s what I need to give me girls a decent future. Once I have enough, they can decide who is best suited to them.” He paused and looked out over the Front Range. “The only thing worse than bein’ a man with no money is a woman with no money. That, Jackie, is the most horrible fate of all.”

“I’ll take one-a them purty daughters off your hands!” Digger offered.

“And there’s exactly what I mean.” Tom gestured to Digger.

“Dregs.”

Digger frowned.

“But you’re welcome to one of me goats, Dig. Any time.”

Tom bolted up the road with Digger chasing close behind. Jack smiled to himself and continued his walk, glancing up at the headframe. His smile faded. The gallows waited.

Too soon they took their place in the cluster of miners waiting under the headframe for their turn on the platform.

“There she was, big as you please,” came a mutter from behind. Jack didn’t bother to turn around. He knew Jory’s voice well enough.

Jack glanced over to Tom, who returned an irritated smirk.

Jory continued. “The Angel of Darkness. She passed us by, and her breath blew across my privates, cold as winter.” Jory slurred in his thick Cornish accent and stumbled into Jack’s back. “I do pardon myself; I should know better than to bump Creely’s pup.”

The man was a drunk. And an idiot. And Jack’s boss. Jack ignored the insult. A fight with Jory would do no good, much as he’d like to pound some sober back into the man.

“Gobshite,” Tom said under his breath. “He’s the type what gives the Cornish a bad name.” His voice rose. “Hey, quit shovin', boy-os!”

Jory’s push had almost caused Jack to stumble over Mouse, the youngest miner in their crew. The boy, with his round face and huge eyes, might look like a dirty, sad little elf, but he wore adult clothes, work boots, and often smoked a pipe. He imitated a grown man’s walk, so he swaggered. A kid like him should be playing pranks and pestering schoolgirls, not smoking a pipe and waiting in line to be lowered into the earth. Mouse was deaf and therefore immune to Jory’s constant babbling about ghosts wandering in the mine, but the other men wore fear on their faces along with dirt and were resigned to both.

Jack thought it silly, to be afraid of ghosts. There were real enough problems to face. Sometimes, deep under the layers of the mine, a lantern blinked out. Every so often, several of the candles surrendered their struggle against the dark and flickered out, one, two, three. All in a row.

One. Two. Three.

The miners believed Death roamed the tunnels and searched for a man to take when the others weren’t looking. The candles snuffed out when the Angel of Darkness brushed past. Most miners employed at the Jasper Mining Company were men carrying a mantle of superstition passed down through generations, from the old countries.

Jack didn’t believe in the fantasy of such foolishness. He knew death intimately, and it wasn’t some beautiful and mysterious ghost moving about in stealth, taking life in a gentle moment. No, death was fast and harsh. Cruel. And hot.

He took his place on the platform. Miners loaded on and wood trembled under their weight. They anticipated the drop into the earth, the only sound heard, the hollow shush of men shuffling. No one made eye contact. Even Tom and Digger kept quiet.

Men with no heart, no soul. No life. And Jack was slipping into their world. One of the walking dead.