Jasper Mountain (12 page)

How did they manage? How did anyone live like this? Mouse. Digger. And Tom.

Tom. Damn it, Tom.

“Where is Tom Gallagher’s cubby?” Jack asked. Silence fell around him in the immediate area. The rest of the place still hummed with rough voices.

Stoop came up behind him. “Sorry. I’d help, but I’m mindin’ my own business.” He glared at Jack.

“Come on, Stoop. I’m looking for Tom.”

“He ain’t here.”

Jack sighed. “You know what I mean. Looking for clues. Anything. I’m trying to find him. I’d appreciate any help you might give me.”

“Not sure I got any help. I’ll give you some advice, Mr. Dandy Britches. You’re the one should mind his own business. This ain’t affairs for a spoilt rich kid.”

And there it was, laid bare. The reason Jack stayed on the outside, why the miners would never accept him. Then he cracked a smile. “Mr. Dandy Britches?”

Stoop shrugged. “Best I could think up quick-like.”

“Okay, I’ll give you some leeway. Next time, if you want me to be offended, you’ll have to do better.”

Under the beard, Jack thought he might have seen a small grin. Stoop nodded to the far end of the building. “Cubby’s down that-a-ways. Tom’s is the fourth from the east wall, three rows up. Thar’s a lock on it.”

“I don’t suppose you have a key?”

Stoop pulled a gun from somewhere in his baggy clothes and cocked it. “I reckon I do.”

He followed Stoop to the row of cubbies. “Plug your ears, boys,” the old man said. He shot off the lock and the explosion reverberated. Jack opened the cubby and looked in. Some coins, a Bible, a gun. A cross on a chain. Tom never missed services on Sunday.

He took the Bible, flipped through it, and a photograph of an older woman with three girls slipped out. Three gorgeous girls, despite the grim expressions. Tom didn’t exaggerate; his girls were downright beautiful. But pretty as they were, and getting a peek into Tom’s life through his possessions, Jack found nothing to help him.

Holding the Bible and cross and chain, he turned to leave and stopped short. A wall of men surrounded him. Stoop cocked his gun with a click. He leaned over and spit on the floor.

“I’ll return all of this when I find Tom. To him, hopefully. You have my word.”

Stoop squinted. “Jest what do you think your word’s worth ‘round here, Buchanan?”

Mouse chose that moment to break through the knot of gathered miners. Pipe hanging from his mouth, he stomped over and stood in front of Jack, spinning to face the other men. His face scrunched in defiance as he blew out a puff of smoke.

A voice sliced through the haze. “Coward. A man standin’ behind a kid.”

The anger Jack had fought to keep down all day reared up, red and hot. “I don’t hide behind anyone,” Jack said, scooting Mouse to the side. “Who said that? Come on up and say it to my face!”

He waited for someone to own up to the insult, and he clutched the Bible and cross.

A voice shot through from the back of the crowd. “I’d be careful, fellas. Mr. Dandy Britches beat the bejesus out of Jory this mornin', the way I heard it told.”

“Any one of you’d do the same. He pushed me. And stop calling me Mr. Dandy Britches.”

“Mr. Dandy Britches!” A chorus of voices reverberated through the huge hall.

Jack grimaced and nodded to Stoop. “Thanks.”

“Any time, Buchanan.”

Jack took a step forward. “I mean to leave this place.”

Stoop held his ground. “Well, that’s a simple enough thing. Put them items back and you kin go.”

Jack considered. He didn’t think anything here would help him in his search. Certainly nothing worth dying over. He held the Bible out, tossed it on an empty wood platform next to him. It landed with a thud. The chain slid from his hands and dropped on top of the holy book.

Stoop nodded and moved aside. Jack took a few steps forward, and true to Stoop’s word, men opened up a way to the door. He walked, each step deliberate, expecting someone to jump him, or for the crowd to close up and crush him. Neither happened. He reached the door. Mouse followed close behind him, a reminder of why he’d come in the first place. He wasn’t about to stop and tuck the kid into bed. The way he figured, he was lucky to get out of the Nugget Hotel in one piece.

Outside, the two walked along in silence, heading for town. Jack wasn’t sure why he didn’t just turn and go home. His feet were leading him somewhere else.

Some coins, photos, a Bible, a cross.

He stopped. Mouse did, too.

A Bible. A cross. Tom never missed services.

“Come on, kid,” Jack said. “Let’s go to church.”

T
he church building stood like a white beacon in the sunlight. Perched at the very top of Jasper proper, it sat between the Nugget Hotel and the town. Jack suppressed a grin at whoever thought of placing the house of worship right where the miners passed to get into town and to the saloon.

The church huddled in a grouping of three whitewashed wood buildings. Mouse and Jack passed the orphanage first, next the chapel with its steeple stabbing up at the sky, and finally came to the parsonage tucked away on the far side. The door sat open, and Reverend Taryn McShane rose from his desk and came to meet them.

Jack and Taryn had become friends immediately when they met, both arriving in Jasper at the same time and both feeling completely out of place. The town found the good reverend to be as patient as he was pious, and he easily won over the Jasper congregation. The town adored their Reverend McShane, and Taryn was perfectly at home. And Jack? Still an outsider.

“I do hope the ground doesn’t open up and swallow you,” Taryn said, grinning.

“Yeah, I’ve missed a few services.” Jack held out his hand and they shook. “How the hell are you, Reverend?”

Taryn’s grin grew. “I am, as always, blessed. What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be about a mile underground by now?”

Jack shrugged, pushing thoughts of the morning aside. Time for that later. “I need your help.”

“With the shadow you’ve picked up?” Taryn asked, nodding to Mouse. Jack glanced back. The boy sat on a rock and puffed away on his pipe. “Really, Jack, you shouldn’t allow him to smoke.”

“The kid is not my responsibility,” Jack grumbled. “Are you sure?”

“Oh, for God’s sake, I just took him out riding. And anyway, if he belongs anywhere, your orphanage makes a far more suitable place than my cabin.”

Taryn’s eyes filled with guilt, and Jack regretted his words. Since Mouse worked and paid his way, he’d been swept into the world of adults. Taryn tried, when he arrived, to get Mouse to stay at the orphanage. The boy struggled, fought, and ran back to work at the mine. None of the officers were about to stop him. They needed the boy, because of his small size. Child or no. Taryn’s hands were full with the children who didn’t have the wherewithal to make their way in the world.

“Tare, I’m sorry. I’m just getting cranky. But I have no intention of becoming a nursemaid.”

“Doesn’t look like he needs one.”

“That’s where everyone’s wrong,” Jack said softly, and then focused on the reason he came. “I need to ask you a few questions. About Tom.”

At the miner’s name, the guilt in Taryn’s eyes intensified. “So he is missing. For certain?”

Jack nodded. “Without a trace.”

“It’s only been a few days. It’s not unusual for people to come and go, and—”

“Trust me, Taryn. Something’s happened to him. He isn’t the kind of man who comes and goes.” Taryn nodded. “True.”

“Do you know anything that might help me figure out what happened to him or where he is? Unlike some of your parishioners, he came to church religiously.” Jack stopped and cracked a smile. The reverend didn’t return it. Taryn’s look of guilt collapsed into serious thinking. Jack waited a few seconds. When the minister looked back at him, the plea for help etched on his face shouted louder than words. “Taryn, what is it?”

The reverend shook his head. “I don’t know. I … I keep hoping Tom will reappear. I’m not sure what to do.” He looked over Jack’s shoulder at Mouse, and then gestured for Jack to follow. The rectory office drew him in, promising mysteries, dark and cool. Small, shuttered windows held secrets inside. Taryn shut the door and faced Jack. “Tom gave me something for safekeeping. He told me not to turn it over to anyone, no matter what. I’ve been praying and praying for an answer.”

“I’ll make it easy. Give it to me.”

“Jack, he trusted it to me.”

“What is it?” When no answer came, Jack pushed. “At least you can tell me what it is.”

“Actually, I can’t. I don’t know. It’s sealed up in newspaper.”

It might have been the cool air, but Jack’s skin tightened and tiny bumps raised on his arms. “Taryn, you have to show it to me. It might have something to do with Tom’s disappearance.”

“That would be a horrible breach of confidence.”

“Don’t you think the situation warrants it?” Taryn still appeared undecided, so Jack tried a different approach. “Reverend, you say you prayed for an answer. Well, I came to you and asked. Don’t you think that’s something, a sign or whatever?”

“You think you are sent from God to help me with this?”

“I do think things happen for a reason.” Again, getting fired and his fight with Jory crept into his mind. “My day brought me to your doorstep. Any other day I’d be down in the mine, but I’m aboveground, asking you to help me with Tom. A lightning bolt hit me at the Nugget Hotel when I held his cross and Bible. I think that’s as close to Divine Intervention as I’m ever gonna get.”

Taryn’s face held his perplexed expression.

Jack put his hand on his friend’s arm. “Tare, you can trust me.”

He watched the decision emerge in the reverend’s expression. Taryn walked over to one end of his heavy oak desk. “Help me.” Jack went to the other end and they scooted the desk forward a few feet, revealing a break in the floorboards.

“Why, Reverend McShane!”

Taryn knelt with a letter opener in his hands. “Yes, apparently the last minister kept his poker winnings and libations hidden in this spot.” He slid the opener between floorboards and lifted. “I stumbled across the hiding place quite by accident.”

“No wonder they rode the poor guy out on a rail,” Jack said in a teasing voice.

“The town tarred and feathered him first, from what I hear,” Taryn said. “And he died from it.”

Jack stopped smiling. “Mobs can be a dangerous animal.”

Taryn extracted a package from the dark hidey-hole and stood, clutching the bundle, looking anything but sure.

“Why don’t you open it and we’ll look at it together? I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether or not to give it to me or hide it back away.”

Taryn leveled his gaze at Jack. “But then you’ll know what it is.”

“You’ve known me since we came to this miserable town. You come to my house every week for dinner. Tare, you can trust me. I’ll do what’s right. You have my word.”

“I’m putting a lot of faith in you.”

“I won’t let you down.”

Nodding, Taryn handed the package to Jack.

Jack glanced from the boy sleeping in his bed to the sheaf of paper on his table, the pages still trying to curl in and hold secrets. He walked to his window to look up at the Creely Mansion. And to think. A speck scuttled down the mountain. Turtle. Jack wondered if the operations manager headed his way, to do some managing of him.

Turning back to the table, Jack unrolled the papers once again. And wondered for the hundredth time what to do. He knew, yet deliberation seemed prudent. What he held in his hands would begin something. And it meant the end of Tumbling Creek Ranch, if he hadn’t ended it already this morning. No turning back if he acted on this.

A petition. Shorter shift hours. More safety parameters. Better pay for the more dangerous jobs. A list of things that should be a man’s God-given right, things the miners should never have to ask for, all words printed out in neat, careful letters. Tom, in addition to being a decent, honest man, was one of the few miners who knew how to read and write. The penmanship definitely belonged to him.

Most of the miners signed an
X
following their formal names. Obediah Bailey’s
X
slashed across his printed name. Digger.

Now his panicked look this morning made sense. Hurtful sense. His best friends didn’t trust him enough to tell him about the existence of this piece of paper.

Demands screamed across the page from workers. Instead of calming miners and making things easier for Victor and his officers, Jack would bring a petition to the mine president on the men’s behalf. If he had the nerve to do it.

He glanced back out of the window. Barger scuttled ever closer. The operations manager who’d never been below and had no idea about conditions beneath the surface.

The entire mining operation trudged on, day after day, completely unfair. There was no real decision for him to make. Just the right thing to do. Everything he owed Creely settled around his conscience, and it wasn’t just the money weighing on Jack. After Victor saved his family, their home, didn’t he at least owe the man some loyalty?

Oh, what the hell? He held the fate of the petition in his hands. The way Jack figured, he was out of a job anyway. The ranch was as good as gone. Yep, what the hell, indeed?