The Hickory Staff e-1 Page 3

  Helmat stared at her in the flickering candlelight, excited at the thought of taking her all over again. ‘You have perhaps the most perfectly formed backside of any woman walking the known lands,’ he said softly. ‘Do you know that? It’s perfect. And trust me, I know; I’ve examined plenty of backsides in my time.’

  Anis said nothing, but turned and slowly approached Helmat’s bed. In one hand she carried the wine bottle. ‘Oh, that’s better,’ Helmat said, laughing, ‘bring the whole bottle. It cuts down on all those unnecessary trips back and forth. We don’t want the sheets getting cold, do we?’

  Anis didn’t return his smile. It was only then that Helmat noticed the small wound forming on her hand.

  ‘Rutting whores! What is that?’ he asked, sitting up and reaching for the bedside candle. ‘Come here and let me see – it looks like it might be infected.’ Suddenly concerned, he sobered somewhat and repeated, ‘Come here. Let me look at that for you.’

  Moving with unexpected speed, Anis shattered the bottle against the headboard and drove a broken shard of thick Ronan glass deep into Helmat’s neck. Blood spurted from the wound as her cousin choked out a guttural plea for mercy. His eyes bulging in terror, Helmat reached for her. In his last moments he ran his fingers over those perfect breasts he had been lusting after all evening. Wine mixed with blood: a sanguine vintage that soaked the bedding as Anis Ferlasa of Praga, naked and spattered in red, stared for a moment at the twitching corpse of her fallen cousin and lover before collapsing to the floor herself.

  EMPIRE GULCH, COLORADO

  September 1870

  Henry Milken, the mine foreman, carried four broken shovels as lightly as an armload of firewood and tossed them into the wagon. A cramped muscle in his back ached momentarily, and his right knee reminded him it was still before dawn on the western slope of Horseshoe Mountain. Milken could see the sun’s earliest rays cresting the rocky ridge above Weston Pass and illuminating the mountain’s peak with a golden edge. The darkness spilling westward below made the valley look like an artist’s unfinished painting. It was his favourite time of day, and he rarely missed an opportunity to watch as the dawn’s distant glow heralded the new morning in Empire Gulch.

  Milken looked at the flue vents that jutted like silent sentries above the whitewashed plank workroom adjacent to the men’s barracks. They had been active in the past several weeks, exhaling great clouds of acrid black smoke. Nothing billowed from them this morning, but Milken could still detect the faint, dank aroma of burning quicksilver. He breathed in the fresh, cold air.

  Henry Milken missed sluice-mining. It might not yield all the precious metals and stones he and his men were able to glean from a rich vein deep in the mountain, but the work was cleaner. Water danced through the sluice boxes, dropping irregular bits of gold or silver into small mercury reservoirs: at least there a miner could walk about upright, enjoy a smoke from time to time and feel the sun on his shoulders. He grinned as he remembered working in the valley; he’d been young then. Streams crisscrossed the valley floor like an intricate Roman highway system; Milken had once built himself a sluice box nearly three hundred yards long.

  These days Milken was certainly richer, but sometimes he felt as though he went from the stifling closeness of the lode shaft to the foul stench of the refinery stoves without drawing one clean breath.

  But now it was Sunday morning. Milken, Lester McGovern and William Higgins had stayed behind when the other mine workers rode into Oro City for their Saturday night off. Whiskey and whores were Saturday night staples, but Milken knew he would see his entire crew this morning at Pastor Merrill’s church service. Horace Tabor, who owned the Silver Shadow Mine, expected every one of his employees to be in church on Sunday mornings. Milken grinned to himself at the thought of his men grumbling as they dragged themselves from warm beds and the warm arms of the whores to make it to Mr Tabor’s barn by 7.30 – there was no church building in Oro City yet, the barn served Pastor Merrill well for the time being. He arrived a few minutes early each week to construct a quick altar out of two hay bales and a length of old lumber. It did not look like much, but the pastor didn’t appear to mind.

  The Silver Shadow Mine shut down after supper on Saturday as usual, and within fifteen minutes the men had washed, loaded up in one of the wagons and disappeared down the gulch. Milken, McGovern and Higgins remained behind, ostensibly to pack up and transport certain pieces of equipment that needed repair. In reality, the three men were to act as escort for a large deposit of silver going to Horace Tabor’s bank in Oro City. Milken calculated the day’s deposits would exceed $17,000, a sum unmatched for a week’s work in the mining industry to date. Tabor owned a mine that regularly produced $50,000 a month, but this would establish an all-time record for a week’s haul.

  Milken had sent word to Harvey Smithson, the bank president, that he would be bringing the silver for assay and deposit at seven o’clock this morning. Tabor owned or managed a number of mines in the Arkansas River Valley and on the eastern slope of the Mosquito Mountain Range; he was well aware that such a large deposit always ran the risk of ambush – bandits, raiders, or even a gang of desperate miners. Milken trusted most of his men, but such a cache of silver coming down the gulch unguarded might motivate even his truest employees to turn.

  So none of the men ever knew when Milken was making a deposit at the bank. Sometimes he would leave in the middle of the night, or during lunch break – he never went at the same time or on the same day of the week.

  Most of the miners had a small stash of gold or silver hidden away to supplement their salary. Milken overlooked these minor transgressions; by turning a blind eye when they squirrelled a little away now and then, he had never been forced to address a major theft in his five years as foreman of Silver Shadow. He knocked on the wagon superstitiously.

  Eight bags of silver were placed carefully under the driver’s seat. Milken would drive, with Lester McGovern in the back, his rifle loaded and ready. William Higgins was to ride alongside the wagon on one of Tabor’s horses. McGovern and Higgins earned extra each month to accompany the deposit runs. Higgins was deadly with a handgun – few men actually owned one, and even fewer could use firearms accurately. Lester McGovern was along for protection: at nearly seven feet tall, he was the largest – and strongest – man Milken had ever met. He weighed over three hundred and fifty pounds, very little of which was excess fat. The barrel-chested giant had been hardened by his years of mining – Lester McGovern was the region’s best mucker, hauling dirt and rocks from the veins so the men could get to the precious metals below. Of all the tasks, mucking was the worst by a furlong; it was a hard, dirty job, but McGovern handled it with ease.

  Milken was never worried that McGovern would shoot anyone with the rifle he carried; he feared for the man McGovern struck with the rifle in close combat, for that man would surely be killed instantly.

  Sunlight spilled further over the upper ridge of Horseshoe Mountain as the last of the boxes were tied down. The distant peaks across the valley were illuminated in dim pink and muted orange though the valley floor remained dark still. Then Milken saw the rider, a lone horseman approaching up the trail. Squinting in an attempt to improve his vision, Milken thought he could see dark blue trousers. Shit. Another soldier wandering west to seek his fortune in the mines: another beginner who didn’t stand a chance working at this altitude or under these conditions, another loner who’d probably lost his family or his mind fighting Americans for America. Winter was fast approaching; he didn’t need this. Milken silently cursed the hiring executives at the home office in town. If he had a dollar for every grey-leg and blue-leg beginner they had sent him to train since the end of that cursed war, he wouldn’t still be working for Tabor.

  ‘Lester, Billy, get out here.’ Milken spat his last mouthful of coffee into the dirt beneath the wagon. ‘We got a new digger comin’ up the trail. It looks like we’ll have comp’ny on our way down.’ Higgins emerged from the entrance to th
e Silver Shadow barracks carrying a pack and a three-quarter-bit axe with a crack in the handle. He loaded both into the wagon.

  ‘Four banjos broken this week?’ Higgins asked, examining the shovels Milken had stored in the wagon bed.

  ‘Yup, the damned things can’t keep up with McGovern,’ Milken replied, laughing.

  Looking down the side of Horseshoe Mountain, Higgins motioned towards the lone horseman. ‘How do you know he’s a greenie?’

  ‘It’s a quarter to six on a Sunday morning and he’s ridin’ up the gulch. He’s gotta be a greenie. No digger we know would be doin’ that.’

  ‘Don’t you pick up most of ’em down in town?’ Higgins asked.

  ‘Most of the time I find them stinkin’ drunk at the saloon. Half of them don’t have a pot to piss in, and they know the weeks up here are long, so they blow whatever’s left of the scrip they got on ’em before makin’ the trip up this hill.’ Henry Milken had not taken his eyes off the horseman climbing the trail into the miners’ camp.

  ‘Look at that; he’s got his own horse,’ Higgins observed.

  ‘Yup, and blue pants, another Union boy.’

  ‘He must be from one of them rich Boston families to be all the way out here on his own horse.’ Few of the miners owned horses; many couldn’t ride and those who could more often used the horses stabled in Oro City for use in and around Tabor’s mining operations. William Higgins rode well, but he had not owned a horse since he began mining ten years earlier. When he borrowed a mount, Higgins wore his spurs, spurs he stole when he was honourably discharged from the US Cavalry. He was proud of his part in the bloody campaigns aiming to make the territory safe for pioneers and homesteaders. Wearing his spurs, even for the few hours it took to ride down the gulch and back, helped him remember his glory days.

  ‘He probably come out on the train and bought it in Denver, Idaho Springs, or someplace,’ Milken said, almost to himself, and then to Higgins added, ‘Well, get McGovern. We gotta move on down there quick this morning. Church in less than two hours, and we still gotta see Mr Smithson.’

  Higgins re-entered the mine barracks, calling out, ‘Lester, c’mon now, git that giant self of yours out here. We gotta get movin’ right quick.’

  McGovern’s deep bass sounded like an out-of-tune cello: ‘I’m comin’.’

  The rider came slowly towards the barracks. He looked directly at Henry Milken, but said nothing as the foreman approached, his hand extended.

  ‘Good mornin’. I’m sorry to say you made the trip all the way up here for nothin’. We gotta be in town in two hours. Did they not tell you that Mr Tabor wants us all in church every Sunday?’

  The horseman offered no reply, nor did he shake Milken’s hand.

  Milken tried again. ‘I’m Henry Milken. I’m the foreman here at the Silver Shadow. There’s a bit of coffee left; it tastes like old socks, but you’re welcome to a swig before we head out.’ He paused a moment and then, growing irritated, asked, ‘What’s your name, son?’

  Still without a word, the stranger grabbed Milken’s outstretched arm and pulled it forward roughly; with his free hand, the horseman delivered a blow that split the foreman’s skull and killed him instantly. His body hung limp in the stranger’s grasp, twitching, until the horseman threw it carelessly to one side. It lay still in the heavy mountain mud.

  Three shots rang out in rapid succession and bullet wounds opened in the horseman’s neck and chest. Without flinching, the stranger dismounted and strode slowly to the wagon, where he removed the axe Higgins had stowed moments before. Higgins fired again, this time hitting the stranger in the face and temple. The bullets tore through the horseman’s skull, blowing a large piece of his cheekbone and a section of the back of his head away. Oddly, the injuries bled very little.

  The stranger came on, unhindered; stunned, Higgins dropped his pistol, knelt down in the mud near the wagon and waited for the horseman to strike him dead with the axe. He felt himself lose control of his bowels and found it odd that he didn’t care. He tried desperately to remember the things that had been most important to him – his mother, his wife, the daughter back in St Louis – but he could not organise his thoughts coherently.

  Higgins knew he had only a few seconds to live. He made a final plea to God, and waited for the end – but the expected blow didn’t come. When Higgins risked a glance up, he saw Lester McGovern’s massive arms wrapped around the stranger from behind. McGovern held the man in the air and squeezed the breath from his lungs. The axe, forgotten, lay at their feet.

  ‘Kill him, McGovern! Crush the bastard,’ Higgins yelled, feeling hope for a moment, but the huge man’s strength did not seem to be affecting the silent stranger. The horseman gripped McGovern’s right forearm and began to squeeze. The burly miner screamed and Higgins heard both bones in McGovern’s forearm snap.

  Desperate to live, McGovern held on with one arm, but the horseman was not slowed. Having freed himself from the giant’s powerful grip, the stranger methodically placed his hands on either side of McGovern’s head, anchored a foot against the big man’s chest and began pulling. Higgins watched in horror, unable to move, as McGovern struggled to scream. One arm hung limp, but he clawed at the horseman’s face with the other, pushing one of his huge fingers into the bullet wound in the killer’s temple. It had no palpable effect: the stranger was unstoppable.

  William Higgins watched the tear begin on the left side of Lester McGovern’s neck. The big man’s breathing came in short, sickening bursts; he couldn’t say a word. The horseman continued to pull and in a fluid motion ripped McGovern’s head from his shoulders and tossed it into the back of the wagon. McGovern’s enormous body fell forward in a shower of blood and lay still.

  The man reached down to retrieve the axe and walked slowly to where William Higgins still knelt in fear. Blood dripped from the killer’s hands. Higgins vomited, cried and begged for his life. Again, the expected blow never came.

  ‘You’ve ruined this,’ the horseman said as he probed the bullet wounds in his chest and face with a crimson finger. Higgins coughed twice, tried to catch his breath, and remembered the final bullet in his pistol. With his last measure of reason, Higgins reached for the gun and raised it to his own temple, but he was not quick enough, or strong enough in his resolve. That moment’s hesitation as he tried one last time to picture his daughter’s face cost him a painless escape. The horseman grabbed Higgins’s wrist and forced his shot wide of the mark. His gun was empty, but William Higgins was still alive.

  He felt a burning sensation; a perfectly round wound opened on the back of his hand. Then Higgins screamed.

  Gabriel O’Reilly opened the front door of the Bank of Idaho Springs just before 7.00 a.m. He lit the oil lamps and stoked the boxy cast-iron stove in the corner, smiling to himself when he saw a few hot coals left over from the evening before. He enjoyed mornings when he did not have to re-light the stove: it gave him a few extra minutes to brew coffee. It also meant the bank had not grown too cold overnight. In early October, days in the canyon remained warm, but the temperature often fell below freezing at night.

  This morning his thigh ached: snow would be coming over the pass in the next day or two. His thigh was the best weather forecaster he knew, better than any almanac. O’Reilly had taken a Confederate rifle slug in the thigh at Bull Run; the Rebs called it Manassas. It had been a clean shot, and he’d got to a field hospital in Centerville before it got infected. Many of his fellow soldiers had not been so lucky. He knew he would never have made it to the western frontier if he’d lost his leg; now all he suffered were a slight limp and a mild ache with changes in temperature. He’d been luckier than most.

  Bull Run had been early in the war, 1861, and at the age of twenty-two his tenure as a soldier was over. He could have gone back to the fighting, but a chance meeting with Lawrence Chapman during his convalescence had changed his future. Chapman, a wealthy businessman from Virginia, told him about a gold strike in Colorado; when O’Reilly h
ad asked if he planned to open a mining company, Chapman had laughed and told him, ‘No, son, a bank. I don’t own any clothes suitable for mining.’

  O’Reilly had worked in his hometown mercantile before enlisting in the army. Chapman offered him a job on the spot if he were willing to pack up and move west right away.

  ‘Time is wasting, my boy,’ Chapman told him. ‘All that gold is just lying around waiting for someone to provide a safe place to deposit or perhaps even invest a nugget or two.’

  ‘I appreciate the offer, Mr Chapman,’ O’Reilly said, ‘but I’ve another stretch to do for the army.’

  ‘You just rest here young man, and I’ll take care of that,’ Chapman said.

  Two days later, Gabriel O’Reilly had an honourable discharge from the Army of Northeastern Virginia.

  Before the war, O’Reilly had thought men who avoided conflict were cowards. After half a day at Bull Run he had seen enough killing to last a lifetime, and he had taken a bullet himself. That had been enough to convince him that getting out as soon as possible was not the bravest, but perhaps the wisest decision he could make. Six months later found him in Idaho Springs, Colorado, building a company and maintaining expense ledgers for Mr Chapman. Although there had been rumblings of both Union and Confederate support here in the mountains, and many men had travelled back east to enlist, for O’Reilly, the war was a distant memory.

  That was nine years ago; now the Virginian owned a saloon, a local hotel, a mercantile exchange carrying goods shipped in each week from Denver, and the Bank of Idaho Springs. Two weeks earlier, he had named O’Reilly bank manager and handed over daily operations to him.

  Chapman himself now spent much of his time in Denver, where a number of wealthy mining widows helped to keep the bachelor’s social schedule full. He had shaken O’Reilly’s hand, congratulated him on his years of hard work, and presented him with a gold belt buckle with BIS embossed in raised letters.