Strong and Stubborn (17 page)

As Gent put it, “One of the best things about working as bucker is that it means keeping well clear of the fallers so you don't get hit by mistake. The team foreman, and for us it's Bear, doesn't tend to bother so much with buckers either. We're pretty much left on our own, so long as we get the job finished in good time.”

Come noon, Mike noticed a drawback to the bucker's isolated position. By the time he and Gent heard their team's echoing calls to come ‘n' grub, the other men were already cracking open the lunch pails. Thankfully, their team leader held out their fair share.

“Here now.” The massive redhead passed them a pail kept cool beneath shady underbrush. In spite of Gent's observation that buckers were left to their own devices, Bear Riordan didn't stint when it came to checking on the “sapling” throughout the morning. The giant gave Mike a nod of approval and added, “You've earned it.”

“Feels like your arms are going to fall off, don't it?” The youngest member of their crew looked like a stiff breeze could blow him over, so Mike figured that he was commiserating, not teasing.

All the same, Mike wasn't about to complain. No one liked a whiner. “What kind of workman would I be if my own arms detached?”

“That would, I believe, depend on if you can reattach them.” It was easy to recognize the short, stocky German with a fondness for suspenders. His ready grin rendered him instantly likeable.

“I wouldn't want to find out.” Mike brushed away the idea that he might have to. From the ache across his back, he'd be stiff as untreated oak when he tried to roll out of bed tomorrow morning.

“
Ja
, neither would I.” Even without the accent, the amiable man would have been recognizable. The unexpectedly thick soles of his boots made for an unforgettable clomping sound when the man walked, reminding everyone of his nickname with every step he took.

Easy to see how Volker Klumpf earned the nickname Clump. Just as it took no time at all to realize why the impressively burly Rory Riordan went by Bear. With Gent rounding out the crew, Mike began to suspect that loggers hid a fondness for creative nicknames.

“Ah!” Bear sounded absolutely delighted as he pulled something from one of the pails. “Slap me if they didn't make Scotch eggs!”

“This is from an egg?” Clump squinted at one of the large brown balls. “Looks more like fried chicken. What kind of egg is this?”

Trying not to be conspicuous about it, Mike surveyed one of the round objects presented as lunch. It didn't look like anything he'd ever eaten before, and he wondered whether that was a good thing. Mike downed half his canteen, waiting for Bear Riordan's summation.

“Mam used to make these,” the large man rhapsodized, emptying the contents of his pail onto a clean bandana. He then upended the pail and transferred the bandana atop it as a sort of makeshift table. He flicked out a blade and set to slicing one of his Scotch eggs. “First, she'd boil and peel the eggs. Then she'd wet her hands and mold seasoned ground pork sausage all ‘round each one.”

He split the thing neatly in two, revealing the boiled egg in the center. “From there, she dipped the sausage-covered egg in beaten egg, rolled it in bread crumbs, and fried it in hot oil.”

By then, Mike caught up with the foreman. He'd laid open one of his own eggs and had it halfway to his mouth before realizing he hadn't prayed. It took a fair bit of will to set down his lunch and give thanks, but at least he was sincere. From the inroads made in the food, it looked like Scotch eggs tasted as good as they sounded.

And better than they look
. Mike made short work of the first and reached for a second. Crispy fried sausage with a spicy kick, cooled down by the chewy egg, lent the portable meal an array of texture and taste. The butter-baked biscuits made a welcome addition. They gave the food it's due, making their way through the first two-thirds before slowing enough to allow for some conversation.

“I don't know much about logging,” Mike hedged, “but it was my understanding that the teams were much larger—say twenty-five men?”

“That's the way of it.” Bear sounded grave. “But Hope Falls doesn't have so many men at the moment. Besides, men disperse even when working in a team. It's not safe to set two teams of fallers working close, nor should the buckers stay nearby. The work's dangerous enough without trying to clump men together. If the foreman can see his whole crew, then one tree can crush them.”

“For now,” Clump joined in, “it doesn't matter whether the units are small. We're mostly clearing a path for the flume. Once that's up and running, work will really begin. Granger can gauge the labor and determine whether to keep smaller teams or change over.”

Mike rolled his neck and stretched, his muscles protesting the idea that this wasn't the “real” work. “Thanks for letting me know.”

“I say it depends on the donkeys.” Bobsley, the youngster, grew animated. “The more donkeys, the farther apart you can set up.”

“The farther apart you
have
to set up,” Bear corrected. “I doona trust the newfangled machinery. Steam engines are fine for ships and trains, but for hauling logs? Bah. One cable snaps, it cuts down two trees and three men before coming to a halt.”

“Sounds like a different sort of donkey than gets hitched to a wagon.” Despite Bear's obvious dislike of the machines, Mike couldn't help but be curious. “If Granger's bringing in steam engines to move the logs, why are we bothering to build a flume?”

“That's the trick of it. The Colorado River runs through these mountains—Lawson's building the mill atop a strong-running offshoot to power the wheel—but it winds. Donkeys could haul sectioned logs straight to the river, but they'd float right past the offshoot.” Bobsley filled in the gaps. “If the donkeys haul the logs to the right place upstream, a good flume can rush them straight to the mill.”

“Provided we have the manpower to set things up.” Gent made his first contribution to the conversation. “Given recent events, the ladies will have to make some changes to keep things progressing.”

“That's not for us to speculate on.” Bear quickly cut things short, leaving Mike completely in the dark. “Until things change or you decide to pack up and leave, we've an agreement to keep.”

As Mike followed Gent back to the Douglas fir they'd been breaking into thirty-two-foot segments, he tried to make sense of the cryptic conversation.
What did Gent mean, the ladies would have to make some changes? Why would any of the men suddenly pack up and leave?
And, perhaps most mysterious,
What kind of agreement?

W
e're going to have to offer wages to all the men.” Naomi broached the topic again once she, Lacey, and Granger were en route to the telegraph office. “Especially now that Cora's set on joining me.”

“You know how much I hate to say you're right.” Lacey sighed. “So I'm not going to say it. We're just going to have to figure out what makes a fair wage and how meals and lodging factor in.”

“I can help you there.” Granger reached the telegraph office first and held the door open for them. “Though it varies by outfit.”

“Any guidance would be helpful—” Naomi walked into Lacey, who came to an abrupt stop at the threshold. When she recovered, she saw why.

“What on earth happened here?” Lacey edged over to allow Naomi and Granger entrance. “This could be an entirely different office.”

Naomi knew what she meant. The haphazard stacks of paper, crumpled missives, and skewed stacks bore no resemblance to the office she'd seen as recently as last week. Draxley had kept the place so obsessively tidy even she'd wanted to mess it up a little.

“He must have panicked after the picnic.” Lacey shook her head.

“What picnic?” Granger obviously couldn't make the connection. He'd been all the way in Baltimore, taking Twyler to trial.

“We had a picnic a little while back in the same clearing where we served supper last night,” Naomi explained. “Draxley became very agitated when someone suggested we take a stroll around the mines.”

“Something triggered this.” Granger bent down and began retrieving fallen missives, plunking them atop the desk. “I remember every time I came to his office, he'd neaten his papers into perfect piles, made everything parallel. I'd put the pencil down sideways, just to see how long it took him to straighten it.”

“Not long.” It sounded as though Lacey spoke from experience. For a while, there was nothing but the sound of papers sliding and shuffling together as they made a collective sweep around the room.

“Little wonder our supplies never arrived.” Naomi smoothed out a badly crushed order spilled from the overturned wastebasket. “It looks as though he threw them away as soon as you left the room.”

“When's the last time you received an incoming telegram?” Flipping through a stack of paper filled with barely decipherable scratches, Granger looked troubled. He tapped a page. “There are several messages here in the hastily penciled translations of incoming telegrams. I'm not seeing any of the official ink copies.”

“The lazy, scheming reprobate!” Lacey huffed. “You'd think he could have at least done his job properly before trying to kill us!”

Naomi giggled before she could even think to stop the sound. And once she started, she couldn't stop. By the time she caught her breath, the other two were chuckling. “Only you, Lacey,” she gasped, “could work up such indignation over a murderer's filing skills.”

“
Lack
of filing skills,” Lacey justified. “In all fairness, I would have granted him much more leeway about the state of his office if he hadn't done all of those other nasty, terrible things.”

“I think we can all agree that Draxley exceeded his allotment of terrible deeds.” Naomi managed to keep a straight face this time.

They got back to work, creating various piles of paperwork. As the sorting continued, it quickly became evident that Draxley had been negligent long before the picnic. He'd just hidden it better.

While the stack of penciled translations grew high, there were precious few official ink telegrams. Several outgoing messages were found balled up beside the wastebasket, making it doubtful that Draxley ever sent them. Even worse was the expanding pile—it became too large for a simple stack—of undistributed post office mail.

“He abandoned his post long before that picnic.” By the time they'd gotten everything sorted, Granger was downright irate. “I'll start resending the messages and orders we found in the trash.”

“You know Morse code?” Lacey's brows rose, and Naomi shared her surprise.

“Yep. I've set up several logging outfits. Finding a telegraph operator isn't as easy as you'd think, so if I needed to get messages out I had to learn. It was easier than learning how to wait on someone else.” He grinned at their chuckles.

“Why don't you give me the pencil copies?” Naomi offered. “I can probably make out the messages. It can't be any worse than trying to decipher Braden's letters.” She smiled at the memory.

“I'll organize the post then.” Lacey lowered herself to the ground with an ease that reminded Naomi to order a Pivot Corset.

For the next hour the tapping and mechanical clicks of the telegraph were the only sounds in the room. Finally, Granger pushed away from the desk and stretched. “That's the last of them.”

“I'm just about finished here, too.” Naomi blinked and rubbed her eyes.

“I hope you didn't tire your eyes already.” Lacey wore a satisfied grin as she pushed a large pile—by far the majority of the post—across the floor. “By the looks of them, these belong to you.”

For a moment, Naomi couldn't imagine who might have sent her so many letters. It wasn't until she plucked one from the pile that she realized what had happened. Across the envelope, the smudged lines were addressed, appallingly enough,
“To My Future Bride(s).”

“Oh!” She dropped it as though its author might emerge from the envelope then used her foot to push the pile back toward her cousin. “Stop looking so pleased, Lacey. Those do not belong to me.”

“I doubt Dunstan wrote this.” Lacey plucked the offending letter from the pile and waved it in the air. “So it's not mine.”

By then Granger had ambled over to see what was going on. With a shrug, he plunged his hand into the heap and brought up another letter. “This one's to ‘The Three Fair Maidens of Hope Falls.' ”

Naomi couldn't even blame him for snickering when he reached the “Fair Maidens” bit. The whole thing was absolutely ridiculous.

“The sad thing is this was the kind of response we'd hoped for—oh, don't look so quizzical, Granger. I don't mean the overblown forms of address. I mean that we'd anticipated going through letters and selecting a few men to come visit Hope Falls in person.”

“Our welcome committee disabused us of that notion.” Lacey was obviously remembering the day they'd arrived in Hope Falls, believing that the men gathered around the train were recent hires. “I don't know why we never thought to check the post—we should have realized there might be some men who replied as requested.”

“I know why.” Naomi set aside several other obvious ad responses. “We haven't had time to think beyond the basics.”
And even then we haven't managed to handle things very well
.

Naomi flipped through a few more. “We should burn them.”

“No!” Lacey grabbed them back and cradled the replies to her chest, looking for all the world like a mother protecting her child. “How could you even suggest letting all of these go to waste?”

“Yeah.” Granger flipped another find toward Naomi. “Think of all the fun you'll have opening these. Hours of entertainment.”