Chapter 6 - The Men Who Came Back for Seconds
Sunday evening should have been quiet.
Instead, Copper Jack held a dance.
Mining towns celebrated whenever weather, wages, and mortality briefly allowed it.
A fiddler set up inside Dawson’s Hall.
Lanterns hung from beams.
Women from surrounding ranches arrived in wagons.
Men scrubbed their faces, polished boots nobody had believed capable of shining, and discovered shirts that still possessed collars.
Dorothy intended to spend the evening preparing Monday breakfast.
Bellamy disagreed.
“You’re going.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ve worked nineteen straight days.”
“I took Sunday afternoon.”
“You spent it testing biscuits.”
“That was recreation.”
Bellamy stared at her.
“You are depressing.”
Dorothy threw a towel at him.
Caleb appeared twenty minutes later wearing a dark jacket.
Dorothy eyed him.
“You involved?”
“No idea what you mean.”
“Bellamy suddenly cares about my social life.”
“Miracles happen.”
“Usually to other people.”
Caleb cleared his throat.
“You could come for an hour.”
Dorothy looked down at her flour-dusted dress.
“Dressed like this?”
“You have another dress.”
“How do you know?”
“You arrived with two.”
She narrowed her eyes.
“Observant.”
“Occupational requirement.”
“That makes no sense.”
“No.”
He grinned.
An hour later Dorothy entered Dawson’s Hall wearing her dark blue dress.
Conversation shifted.
Not stopped.
Shifted.
Dorothy knew that sound too.
People did not expect a 270-pound cook they had mocked to enter a dance looking comfortable in her own body.
She had once spent years trying to disappear inside rooms.
Dark dresses.
Corners.
Aprons worn even when she was not cooking.
She had finally understood that shrinking herself had never made cruel people kinder.
So she stopped.
Owen Pritchard approached first.
“Miss Vance.”
“Owen.”
He extended his hand.
“My wife says if I don’t dance with the woman keeping me alive on stew, I’m ungrateful.”
“Your wife is wise.”
“She usually says that too.”
Dorothy danced.
Then with Samuel.
Then Miguel Ortega.
Then, unexpectedly, Bellamy.
“You dance?” Dorothy asked.
“I’m a merchant. We adapt.”
“You step on my foot, I increase my wages.”
“Extortion.”
“Market forces.”
Caleb finally approached.
He said nothing.
Just held out his hand.
Dorothy looked at it.
“Your standards collapsed.”
“Mountain influence.”
She accepted.
Caleb was a better dancer than she expected.
“Where’d you learn?”
“My mother.”
“She still living?”
“Colorado.”
“Write her?”
“Sometimes.”
“Means no.”
“Means sometimes.”
Dorothy smiled.
The fiddler slowed.
Caleb’s hand rested carefully against her back.
“You know,” he said, “Tom lost his bet.”
“What bet?”
“How long you’d stay.”
“Did you bet?”
“No.”
“Why?”
He looked at her.
“I figured you’d either leave the first day or own half the town by Christmas.”
Dorothy laughed.
“Those were the choices?”
“Seemed reasonable.”
Across the room, Tom Rusk raised his glass.
“Mud Pie!”
Dorothy rolled her eyes.
But his tone had changed.
It was no longer cruel.
Almost affectionate.
Tom approached.
“My turn.”
Caleb released Dorothy.
“Don’t injure her.”
Tom looked offended.
“I’m graceful.”
“You walk like a falling fence.”
Tom ignored him.
During the next dance, Tom became serious.
“My brother’s on your breakfast crew tomorrow.”
“Benjamin?”
“Yeah.”
“Section Four?”
Tom nodded.
“He’s nervous.”
“So are you.”
Tom looked away.
“He’s twenty-two.”
“Younger brothers have inconvenient ages.”
Tom smiled faintly.
“Could you pack him some of those brick biscuits?”
“Pocket biscuits.”
“Whatever.”
“For lunch?”
“Just extra.”
Dorothy studied him.
“You think something’s going to happen.”
“No.”
“Tom.”
His jaw tightened.
“Ben heard Vale arguing with Crowley. Something about water inside an old shaft.”
“Water?”
“Old prospect tunnel runs near Section Four. Been sealed for years.”
Dorothy’s skin prickled.
“What happens if it leaks?”
“Depends how much.”
“Worst case?”
Tom swallowed.
“Softens rock. Shifts supports.”
“Collapse?”
He did not answer.
Dorothy stepped away.
“Tell Caleb.”
“He knows.”
“Tell the workers.”
“They know pieces.”
“Then why are they going?”
Tom looked around the hall.
“You want to know the ugliest thing about being poor?”
Dorothy waited.
“Knowing something’s dangerous doesn’t mean you get to say no.”
The music continued.
People laughed.
Somebody dropped a glass.
For a moment Dorothy saw the entire room differently.
These men did not dance because they believed tomorrow safe.
They danced because they did not.
She left before the final song.
Back in the kitchen, Dorothy packed twenty-eight sets of pocket biscuits.
She did not know why she chose twenty-eight.
There were more men scheduled for Section Four.
She counted anyway.
Six biscuits each.
Wrapped tightly in clean cloth.
Small enough for a narrow pipe.
Bellamy found her at midnight.
“You’re working.”
“Yes.”
“I specifically ordered you not to.”
“You are discovering the limits of authority.”
“What’s all this?”
“Lunch.”
“For whom?”
“Mine crew.”
“Did they order it?”
“No.”
“Then who pays?”
“I do.”
Bellamy stared.
“You are giving away food?”
“Apparently.”
He touched one bundle.
“From the creek flour?”
“From the clean interior portions I salvaged.”
Bellamy looked at the row.
“You still trust it?”
“I’ve been eating it for three weeks.”
“That explains several things.”
Dorothy looked at him.
Bellamy raised both hands.
“Kidding.”
It may have been the first joke he had made that was not at someone else’s expense.
At 4:30 Monday morning, miners arrived.
Dorothy handed Benjamin Rusk a bundle.
He blinked.
“I didn’t order this.”
“Your brother did.”
“Tom paid?”
“No.”
Benjamin smiled.
“Sounds more like Tom.”
She handed one to Owen.
One to Samuel.
One to Caleb.
Caleb frowned.
“You feeding the whole shift?”
“Seems so.”
“Why?”
Dorothy looked toward the mountain.
“Humor me.”
He slipped the bundle into his coat.
“Always.”
At 5:18, twenty-eight men assigned to the lower Section Four crew entered Copper Jack Mine.
Others worked elsewhere.
At 6:40, Dorothy served the last breakfast customer.
At 7:03, a coffee cup trembled on the counter.
At 7:04, every horse in Ortega’s livery began screaming.
Dorothy stepped outside.
Birds flew from the mountain.
At 7:05, a sound like distant thunder rolled beneath Copper Jack.
Men turned.
The earth jumped.
A cloud of brown dust erupted from the mine entrance.
Then came a second concussion.
Wood splintered somewhere underground.
The mine whistle screamed.
Once.
Twice.
Then continuously.
Tom Rusk ran into the road.
“BEN!”
Dorothy dropped the towel in her hands.
Caleb was underground.
Owen.
Samuel.
Benjamin.
Twenty-eight men.
And somewhere inside Dorothy’s kitchen sat a bent four-inch ventilation pipe beside a biscuit cutter.
The entire town began running toward the mountain.
May you like
Dorothy ran with them.
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