Never seen deader, p.13
Never Seen Deader, page 13
He hurried to catch up. The smaller man ahead of him in the dimly lit tunnel smelled of explosives. Still wearing gloves and with hat pulled down and bandana up, he looked ready to do some more blasting.
“There’s the rockfall. See how the boulders on top of the heap are balanced? Pry them loose, then get the hell out of the way.”
“Do you know Dave Wilcox? Is he here?”
“Of course I know Wilcox. Is he a friend of yours?” The miner peered at Knight through the gloom. “I haven’t seen you here before, and you sure as hell aren’t dressed like a rock monkey.”
“I’m a friend from Sierra Rojo. He said there were wounded and thought I could help.”
“Hell, a rattlesnake could do a better job of saving the injured men compared to Doc Murtagh. You’re not like him? No, I don’t smell whiskey on you.”
“How can you smell anything but the nitroglycerin?”
“Practice. I’ve blasted so much it’s beginning to smell like fancy French perfume to me. Maybe better, considering. Now get to prying the rocks loose. Start with that one. I’ll work on the other side.”
Knight shoved the pry bar between the rocks and put his back to it. Even with the leverage gained from the long iron rod, he couldn’t budge the rock. He looked over at the other miner. Already rocks matching the one he attacked had started tumbling down. A few seconds watching how the other man worked gave Knight the idea how to proceed more effectively. Before he knew it, his pile of rocks matched that of his companion.
He grunted, heaved, and bent the iron bar just a mite. A cascade of rock and dirt came pouring down over his feet. At the top of the rockfall came a rush of air. A faint light flickered on the far side.
“We’re through!” Knight scampered up the steep slope and poked his head through the opening to see who waited on the other side.
He recoiled. Inches away Dave Wilcox’s face tried the same trick, only on his side of the rock pile.
“You’re as ugly as ever, Sam, and I have never been happier to see anyone in all my born days. How much more digging do you have to do to get us out?”
“How many is there?” the blaster called from behind Knight. “Do we have to get more men or even use some nitro? I got some Giant Powder if nitro’s too dangerous.”
“I do declare, all you want to do is blow things up, boss.” Wilcox wiggled around.
“Boss?”
“That’s Hellfire Bonham, the owner of the Lucky Draw,” Wilcox said. “You get hit on the head, Sam? Who else would it be?”
“Things have been confusing. I can still barely hear after I was deafened by the first blast to get into the mine again.”
“You must have your head scrambled like breakfast eggs. Now get us out. There’s two more behind me, one of them’s in sorry shape.”
“Broken bones or something worse?”
“You’ll have to decide, Sam. All I want to do is see sunlight again, and you lollygagging’s not going to get me out of this death-trap mine.”
“That’s no way for my superintendent to talk, Wilcox. You take it back. The Lucky Draw isn’t a death trap, not by a hundred rows of apple trees. I don’t know what happened, but it’s no fault of the rock. That’s solid. Sturdy solid, it is.”
“Keep your apple trees, Hellfire. Get us out of here into sunlight.”
“I’ll pick ’em off your tree if you don’t help out.”
“Don’t make promises you’ll never keep, boss.”
Knight slid down the steep slope and poked at the roof with his pry bar. No new rocks tumbled down. It was sturdy enough to support a larger opening at the top of the plug in the tunnel. He began gingerly removing rock until Hellfire pushed him aside.
“Don’t mollycoddle that rock. Show it who’s boss. Like this.” A pickax rose and fell, sending sparks and stony debris flying. A dozen strokes tore away enough rock for Knight to crawl back, grab Wilcox under the arms, and pull him through the hole to slide headfirst to the mine floor.
“Damn me, Sam. Tear all the skin off my belly, why don’t you?”
A second man wormed through the opening and ended up beside Wilcox. He pointed a broken finger back up where he had been and said, ’Juan’s banged up bad. I don’t think it’s a good idea to move him till he’s patched up some.”
“I’ll go see.” Knight climbed the shifting slope and shoved himself halfway through the hole.
The light from his guttering candle provided all the light on that side of the cave-in. He moved to kneel beside the man on the rocky floor and probed as gently as possible.
The man still cried out. “You’re killin’ me. I got a leg pinned under a rock that won’t move. Wilcox couldn’t budge it.”
Knight shifted position so his candle flickered closer to the man’s legs. He shook his head, then regretted it when the light flickered and the flame almost went out.
“What’s it look like, Knight?” Hellfire Bonham peered through the hole, holding a larger candle. “You need more light? I can have somebody fetch a carbide lamp.”
“It’s going to be just fine, even if it doesn’t feel like it right now,” Knight said to calm the miner trapped under the rock. He tapped a couple times with his pry bar, then inched it forward, caught the edge of the rock, and used another as a fulcrum. “Pull free when you can.”
“There, there! I’m out from under it. And my leg’s all banged up, but I can move it.”
“Not even a broken bone. Just nasty cuts and bruises. Here.” Knight helped the miner stand.
“I can walk. I limp, but there’s feeling in my foot and it’s not too painful.”
“Get out of here.” Knight looked around and felt as if the walls closed in around him. He had heard of people who panicked when caught in caves or other tight places, but he had never appreciated the gut-grabbing terror. The longer he stood, the more he felt as if someone had choked all the breath from his lungs.
He closed his eyes, then followed the miner through the hole into the main tunnel to find himself alone. For a minute, he stood and took in as much of the stale, dusty air as he could. His lungs strained, and his feet refused to move. Then he heard Dave Wilcox’s voice coming from far down the mineshaft. Pretending this was the Piped Piper luring him out, Knight let the sound lead him away from the collapsed shaft and into bright sunlight.
The autumn warmth erased his fears and returned him to the world around him. If he never went into a mine again, it would be three days too soon.
“Where’d Wilcox go?” he asked a nearby miner.
The man looked up, then pointed downhill toward the makeshift field hospital.
“Thanks.” Knight slipped and slid down the hill past the tailings to the canvas-roofed hospital. Somebody had propped the canvas up again. Knight paused and glared at Doc Murtagh. The man had finally passed out and snored loudly on one of the pallets that had been used for a man who had truly needed it.
“Don’t worry your head none, Sam,” Wilcox said. “Murtagh didn’t kill anybody whilst you were rescuing me. I rolled him onto the blanket when I got here. Sonny was feeling good enough to get back to trying to save the rest still in the mine. Good man, Sonny Trilby.”
“You need to rest. You’ve been through hell in the mine.”
“Damn me if I don’t want to take your advice, but I’m not being paid to lounge around. I need to get back to see if there are any more patients I can bring for your tender, loving care.” Wilcox stared hard at him. “You’re more ’n a gambler, aren’t you, Sam?”
“I’m dog tired, that’s what I am. But I ought to make one more round to see if there’s anything else I can do for the men.”
“You’re a good man, Samuel Knight.” Wilcox slapped him on the back and limped away.
Knight checked the two nearest men, then looked across the makeshift tent. He blinked, thinking his exhaustion was causing his eyes to play tricks on him.
A woman with short-cropped blond hair knelt beside a miner who had been severely injured. She rested her hand on the man’s cheek and stroked gently. In a mining camp, a touch like that from a woman as good looking would bring a man back from the dead. Knight had to laugh when he heard what she told the man.
“You’ll get your lazy ass out of that bed in a day or two, mark my words. If you don’t, I’ll take a blacksnake whip to you.” She stroked his cheek again, then tweaked his nose. “And don’t you forget it.”
She saw Knight watching her, abandoned her examination of the other patients, and went to him. Knight didn’t know who she was but had the feeling they had met before. When she got within arm’s length, he took a deep whiff and knew where that encounter had taken place. “Nitroglycerin.”
“The damned stench is impossible to get out of my hair. I changed clothes, but I need a decent bath to clean off the smell. Thanks for doing what you did for my men.”
He stared at her, realization dawning on him.
She thrust out her hand and her blue eyes fixed boldly on his. “I’m Helene Bonham. But everybody calls me Hellfire. I’m the owner of the Lucky Draw.” Her hand almost crushed his in a handshake meant to tell him exactly who was boss.
CHAPTER 14
“I don’t think he killed nobody.”
“Came close.”
“But he didn’t. I watched him real close.”
“You just wanted a nip of his booze.”
The two miners stretched out and propped up on their elbows were arguing about Murtagh. The doctor snored peacefully at the edge of the hospital tent.
“Nuthin’ wrong with that. A man that far in his cups ought to know good whiskey when he sees it. All the work in the mine’s made me powerful thirsty.”
“You know Hellfire don’t let anybody drink while they’re workin’.”
“A good thing ’cuz you’d be soused all the time.”
Sam Knight had to smile at the byplay. These were the last two miners left in his field hospital. The others had been moved to the shacks and tents provided for their usual habitation. The men arguing over Doc Murtagh had been the most severely injured, and he wanted to keep an eye on them for another day or two.
He tried not to be too apparent as he looked from the men to Hellfire Bonham. The woman sat on a stool just outside the canvas roof, arguing with Dave Wilcox. The way the sun caught her hair turned it to a silver purer than the metal she scratched from the mountain. The elegant lines of her face belied her language. She might have been a fine lady waiting to go to the president’s cotillion if it hadn’t been for the scratches and cuts on her face from rooting around in the mine, and the burn marks on her fingers. Two others working for her had experience as blasting engineers, but she preferred to do the actual demolition work herself.
From what Wilcox said, she was quite a chemist, mixing up the nitroglycerin herself in a shack set off a quarter mile from the mine. If anything happened, she’d blow herself to kingdom come, but the Lucky Draw wouldn’t be in any danger.
He admired her spunk. She didn’t have others doing a job she could do, no matter how dangerous it was. Her no-nonsense manner, the way she dared convention working alongside her men, the bravery she showed in handling the tricky explosive all appealed to him. And she wasn’t bad-looking, not by a mile or two.
She turned from Wilcox and stared at Knight as if she had felt him looking at her. Her bright blue eyes sparkled. She had slept enough to get rid of the bloodshot. When she looked at him, it was like her gaze went right through to his very soul.
That made him a little uncomfortable, but it also made him think she understood him and what he had been through without having to hear one word of his history. Hellfire Bonham accepted him as he was and didn’t much care what he had gone through reaching the mouth of the Lucky Draw mine.
“Sam, come on over.” Wilcox waved for him to join them.
Knight found himself wishing that Wilcox would find some chore to tend to so he could be alone with Helene, just for a few minutes. “The men are healing nicely. I’d keep them out of the mine and away from doing any heavy work for another week, but there’s no reason you can’t give them lighter duty.”
“You sound like a military man,” Hellfire said. “Were you an officer?”
Wilcox said, “He doesn’t talk much about his past, boss.”
Her eyes bored even deeper into Knight’s soul. She finally nodded. “I can live with that.”
“No reason for you to live with it or not,” Knight said, “because that’s the way it is. When those two are up and about, I’m heading back to Sierra Rojo. There are scores of miners waiting to sit at my table and lose their hard-won pay to me.”
“A gambler.” She shook her head and pushed a strand of her bobbed hair out of her eyes with an unconscious, brusque gesture. “I saw how you patched up my men. You’re ten times the doctor that old sot is.”
“Wait, Sam, don’t argue. Just take it as a compliment.” Wilcox looked anxious about something, as if Knight might pack up and leave on the spot.
“I’ve been on the trail long enough to know how to take care of injuries.”
“You used that silver thread to tie off an artery,” Hellfire said. “That’s surgical work. Wait, no, I apologize. If you don’t want to fess up to being a doctor, I’m not going to call you a liar.”
“That’s mighty kind of you.” Knight wasn’t sure if he was pleased or irritated. Hellfire Bonham was nobody’s fool. She had seen enough of the world to know a doctor when one came into her camp and tended men ten times better than the man who called himself a doctor.
“How much do you make gambling?”
“I never bothered to count the money. Enough to live on.”
“I’ll pay you fifty dollars a month to do nothing but fix broken bones and put iodine on cuts.”
“I can make that much in a single hand of seven-card stud.”
“I’ll make it a hundred a month.”
Knight blinked. “Why so much?”
“There’s fierce competition for miners on Red Mountain. There’s got to be a couple dozen mines, but the real fight’s between the Lucky Draw and the Blue-Eyed Bitch. Jefferson Avery will hire away the best, just to keep me from putting them to work in my mine. I’ve got to keep the men I have, and letting a doctor keep them in good shape goes a long way toward keeping them happy.”
“Yeah, Sam. If the men are happy, they won’t quit and go to work for Avery.” Wilcox looked at Hellfire out of the corner of his eye as if expecting her to contradict him.
“It works both ways. Promise of a doctor at the Lucky Draw might lure his best men away, as if he has any.” Hellfire snorted in contempt at such an idea.
“I’m not a doctor.”
“Who the hell cares? Word’s already out that you know what you’re doing. That fellow you tied up with the silver thread’s boasting how he’s got precious metal in his blood now. It doesn’t matter what you say, it’s what everyone believes that counts.”
“Well, Miss Bonham—”
“Hellfire. Call me Hellfire. Or Helene.” She graced him with a bold smile.
Knight saw how Wilcox reacted. He guessed Hellfire Bonham didn’t let just anyone call her by her given name. Somehow, that tipped him toward accepting her offer to work at the Lucky Draw.
“He’s mighty quick with that revolver, too, Hellfire. I saw him throw down on a gunslick and he cleared leather before the other fellow was half out of the holster.”
“A man of many talents, eh? I’m glad you’re taking my job offer.”
“I never said I would.”
“Reading men comes easy enough for me. You’re doing more than thinking it over. You’re fixing to say yes.”
“And he’s a damned fine marksman, too,” continued Wilcox, oblivious to the undercurrent between Knight and Hellfire. “He saved my bacon out on the trail going into Ralston. We were down to a few rounds each, and he never missed. Not a one of them Apaches trying to lift our scalps dodged lead slung by Sam Knight.”
Knight wanted to point out that the fight hadn’t gone that way at all. Either Wilcox’s memory was faulty or he embellished the story to get Hellfire to hire him. Wilcox had missed the silent agreement that had already passed between them.
“You need a contract all signed and proper, or will a handshake do? Seventy-five dollars a month.” Hellfire thrust out her hand.
“You said a hundred.” Knight forced himself to remain motionless. He felt that the slightest move would be vindication for her. She drove a hard bargain. He had to match her.
“Did I? The sun must be giving me heatstroke.” Hellfire fanned her face mockingly with her other hand and made as if she were going to faint.
“It’s autumn, and the sun’s not that hot.”
“You can’t be too careful about sunstroke, not out here in the desert, not this far up the mountainside where the air’s thinner than a whore’s promise.” Hellfire waited for him to grasp her hand.
He did. He shook. And said, “A hundred a month and the mine owner gets a checkup for sunstroke.”
She clung to his hand just a moment longer than necessary to seal the deal. Knight didn’t mind, even if her hand showed scars and chemical burns.
Her laugh was musical. Dave Wilcox looked from his boss to Sam and back, not following half of what had been said—and what had gone unsaid between them.
“Now what are you doing sitting around on your asses? Get to work. The Lucky Draw will be puking out silver by the ton again by the end of the month. Go on, get.”
“Come on, Sam. When the boss gives an order, she means it.”
Knight hesitated a moment. This was unfamiliar territory for him to explore. He had never worked for anyone else before, anyone who wasn’t wearing a uniform. And he certainly had never thought the moment would come when he worked for a woman. He touched the brim of his hat and hurried after Wilcox. He thought he heard Hellfire say something, but it was too low for him to understand.
He glanced back over his shoulder, but she had already dropped back to talk with one of his patients— one of her miners. Hellfire Bonham was unlike any woman he had ever come across before. She was a breath of fresh air blowing across a stale world.
