A Claim of Her Own (18 page)
Mattie had no intention of listening to another sermon as she rounded the back corner of the hotel building and headed toward the street. But then she heard Gallagher’s voice asking, “Do any of you here in Deadwood think you have
enough
?” She stopped short of the street, out of sight of the Sunday crowd gathered to hear the preacher. She relaxed against the rough board walls of the hotel exterior and listened.
The preacher repeated his question. “Do any of you here in Deadwood think you have
enough
?”
“Enough what?” someone said.
“Enough of anything.”
“Well,” the same voice replied, “I’ve already had about enough of you.”
People laughed.
Gallagher began to read. “ ‘He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase.’ ” He paused. Mattie could imagine him staring over the gathered crowd as he said, “One of the wealthiest men in history learned that when a man’s goal is earthly treasure, he never has enough. That man left his wisdom for us in his writings in the Bible in hopes that future generations would learn that seeking wealth is just so much striving after wind. But Solomon wasn’t the only one to say that. The disciple Matthew was even more blunt about the topic of earthly possessions. He said that we should not be concerned with laying up treasures on earth. He said we should be looking to eternity.”
“I don’t know where I’m gonna spend next Friday night,” someone hollered. “I got no time to be worryin’ over eternity.”
“No one has to
worry
over it,” Gallagher replied. “ ‘These things,’ John says, ‘have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may
know
that ye have eternal life.’ ”
The words rankled at first. How could anyone be so cocksure of something as mysterious as life after death? And yet, as she peeked around the corner of the building, Mattie saw no hint of arrogance in the preacher. She thought back to his rescuing the whore from the street . . . his kneeling in the filth beside Brady Sloan. If he was scamming Deadwood, it was a strange sort of scam. Especially in light of what Aunt Lou had just said about Gallagher giving all his money away. What made a man willing to do something like that?
As for his comment about people never having enough, maybe that was true of some folks, but she wasn’t like that. She’d never been a greedy person. She’d know when she had enough. In fact, if her claim kept paying out,
enough
wasn’t far in the future.
When it began to rain in the night. Mattie woke with a start, but as the gentle shower pattered against her claim tent, she snuggled back beneath her blankets, comforted by the murmuring of a gentle wind, dreaming of spring flowers and warm breezes. When morning came and it was still raining, she used the few sticks of wood inside the tent to build a fire in the little stove and make coffee. Once the coffee was ready, she tied the tent flap back as far as possible to let in the daylight while she cooked flapjacks on the tiny stove.
She had just closed the supply box and perched atop it to eat when the wind came up and rain began to fall in earnest. Closing the tent flap, Mattie lit a lamp and wondered what she would do all day. If only she had a book. In Abilene she’d spent countless pleasant hours reading. But there were no books up here on the claim. Maybe she should slip and slide her way into town again and make another attempt to talk to Sloan. No, it was probably best to stay put. Tom wouldn’t have enough customers in this weather to need her help, and Sloan wasn’t going anywhere. She could wait for dryer weather. After holding her plate and fork outside the tent flap long enough for the rain to rinse them off, she set them down. Returning to the cot in the corner, she lay back down and dozed.
When the rain didn’t let up, Mattie donned Dillon’s rubber slicker and, rolling up the sleeves, pulled on her boots and hat and headed outside. The creek was running deep and fast. On the claim below hers, the McKays were mucking about, cursing the rain for filling the holes they’d dug. After a few minutes, the three of them threw their shovels down in disgust and prepared to head down the gulch and into town. Finn hollered an invitation for Mattie to join them. A day in one saloon or another seemed to be the McKays’ antidote for every trouble. Wondering if they had ever mined for a complete week, Mattie hollered back, “Thanks, but no.”
Not long after the McKays left, she realized it was almost impossible to do any panning wearing the oversized slicker. She finally gave up and, stomping back to her tent, huddled inside drinking coffee. Early in the afternoon the rain began to let up. Freddie slid down the gulch from higher up with a deer carcass slung over his shoulder. Hanging it from a tree growing near the rock wall of the gulch, he dressed it, burying the entrails and cutting away a generous portion of meat for Mattie before showing her how to rig a tarp over her campfire so she could cook.
“Now you know why I made you stack some wood inside,” he said as he built a fire with her dry wood and set the deer meat to cooking.
Mattie nodded at the stew pot. “I’ll be able to eat for a week off that. Thank you.”
After Freddie had slung what was left of the deer over his shoulder and made his way down toward town, Mattie kept busy tending her fire. She tried digging a test hole to see what it would be like “digging to bedrock,” but everything she dug silted back in immediately. By what she imagined was about suppertime, she had given up on getting anything accomplished. After dishing up a small portion of venison stew for her supper, she slapped the lid back on the pot and settled it down in the coals to let it simmer through the night.
Closing her tent flap, she huddled in her tent rereading the letters she’d written to Dillon—he’d saved them all—and reliving the past, which was a terrible way to spend a rainy evening. She began to hum to herself. Finally, she gave the melody words and launched into one of the songs she and Dillon used to sing together. That night, she cried herself to sleep.
Labour not to be rich . . . for riches certainly make themselves
wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven.
Proverbs 23:4–5
S
wede’s yellow braids trailed down her back and felt like two sodden ropes, flapping against her slicker as she grabbed a shovel out of her wagon and slowly, methodically, began to scrape at the ring of mud so thick it was threatening to clog up the wheel mechanism. She’d seen axles break at times like this, and she could not have that. She stood up straight and took a deep breath, thinking how her back hurt, how her shoulders burned from the constant battle to keep the wagons moving, how it was still so far to Deadwood.
Eva whimpered softly. Swede had tried to rig a tarp to keep the baby dry, but the wind was not cooperating and Eva’s good spirits had been washed away by the incessant rain. Even the pup had been affected by the weather. Today he was hunkered down in the wagon box next to Eva.
Gloom hung over the long line of freighters thicker than the clouds in the skies above them. Making time on the trail was often the difference between a successful season and a dismal one, and they were going to land in Deadwood at least a week behind schedule. It was already June 6, and if winter came early, the last run of the season next fall might encounter snow.
Taking another swipe at the mud caked on the wheel, Swede pulled away another layer of gumbo. The world needed rain, but it would be so much better if the rain could have waited another week. Once she was back in Deadwood she would be so busy setting up her new store she wouldn’t care if it rained every day.
Yes, Swede thought, it would be good to get home, even if Deadwood was to be only a temporary home for her family. She took another stab at a clod of mud, scolding herself aloud. “Stop thinking about selling vat you have not even seen and verk on getting yourself unstuck from dis rain-soaked mud-caked miserable-excuse-for-a-territory called Dakota.”
Hearing Eva giggle, Swede looked up to see Red Tallent headed her way, shovel in hand.
“You have your own troubles,” Swede said. “You don’t have to bother vit mine.”
“I’m not botherin’,” Red said, and attacked the mud on the wheel opposite the one Swede was trying to clear. “I’m belly-achin’.” At Swede’s look of surprise, Tallent explained, “Mr. James Saddler has apparently decided he’s had enough of our company. He rode out this morning with not so much as a fare-thee-well.”
“Why does dat concern you?”
“Well, it don’t, really,” Tallent said. “I guess I shoulda known by the way he was dressed he wasn’t the type to pick up a shovel and help dig us all out. But I’m missin’ a sack of jerky and a bag of oats. And that’s just not neighborly.”
Swede shook her head. She worked at the wheel for a while. Finally, she said, “I never liked dat man.” She looked off to the north, wondering what bad business James Saddler might have in the Black Hills. If James Saddler was really his name.
Rain, rain, and more rain transformed the Deadwood Gulch landscape into a morass of mud that clung to Mattie’s boots so that after walking only a few yards she felt like she was dragging a ten-pound weight around each foot. And there was no just shaking it off. Oh no. It had to be
scraped
off. Hugh McKay warned her that if she didn’t get it off before it dried, she’d have boots “set in hardened mortar.”
By Thursday, when the rain still hadn’t let up, Mattie decided to try to talk to Brady Sloan again. Knowing the mud would essentially ruin her only skirt, she didn’t bother to change out of her Matt the Miner clothing, but slipped and slid down into town dressed like a man. The streets were clogged with slicker-clad men sloshing their way into this saloon or that. It was almost cheering to hear the music emanating from the Green Front as Clyde Fellows pounded the keys of the only piano in town. Mattie went straight to Doc Reeves’s, but Sloan wasn’t there.
“I don’t think he’s in Deadwood anymore,” the doctor said. “The last thing I heard him say was that he was too weak to resist the temptations of this place and he needed to get away from it.”
Mattie’s next stop was the tiny office where Ellis Gates was huddled smoking and trying the age-old ninety-proof way to keep warm. He wasn’t drunk, but neither was he helpful. “Don’t know a thing,” he said, all the while eyeing the pocket where Mattie had secreted her Colt.
“Didn’t you tell me he had a partner?” Mattie asked, and slipped her hand in the pocket Gates was watching just in case it would convince him to tell her anything.
“I told you,” Gates said. “I don’t know a thing. Haven’t heard from or seen either of those boys since you shot Sloan.”
“What was the partner’s name?”
“Will Browning. And as I said, I haven’t heard from or seen him.” Gates belched.
“I thought a miner had to represent work on his claim to keep it.”
“That’s right,” he said with a nod. “At least a day of pick and shovel every week—or so.”
“But I haven’t seen anyone up there, and I’ve been on my claim every day since about the eighth of May,” Mattie protested. “Today is June eighth. Seems to me that claim above me has been abandoned.” And did that mean she could get her hands on a second claim? Maybe Sloan’s tomfoolery would work to her advantage.