“Bells?”
He picked up his reins to lead her and the mule team into the fenced area, then turned to lock the gate again, before he deigned to answer her. “A couple claim jumpers sneaked up on me and took a few potshots last year. They aren’t getting another chance to come in here without making some noise. It’s the one disadvantage of mining in such isolation. Something happens to me here, no one will know it.”
Disturbed to hear that dangerous men roamed this seemingly deserted wilderness, she pointed out, “The law in Butte knows you live in the area. Wouldn’t they search for you if after a few weeks you don’t return to town?”
“Why? Miners often move on or go home. No one looks for them.”
“But you’re a notable person, Mr. Callahan. Just about everyone I spoke to recognized your name and mentioned a different rumor about you. You’ve apparently been quite a subject of gossip in Butte.”
She was rather pleased to see him frown. His having the upper hand all the time was a difficult pill to swallow, so being able to nettle him with something, even as minor as this, evened the score a tiny bit for her.
Which was why she continued, “Aside from the fact that the good deputy knew you brought my father to town when he was injured—which, by the by, was surprisingly decent of you—I assume you mentioned to someone else that your mine is close to my father’s. Or did my father tell someone when he was in town?”
“Charley did,” he grumbled, stressing the name, “when I took him to Butte to file his claim. He was tickled pink that I allowed him to stay.”
“Allowed?”
“Don’t open that can of worms, lady,” he said.
“I insist you explain that remark. Do you somehow own this entire mountain?”
“You’re in no position to insist on anything. Or is the lady going to start yelling in public?”
“Your answer is going to make me yell?”
“Your tone suggests you’re about to show your true colors, which is no lady at all.”
Was it that obvious that she was exhausted and aching in every limb? They had traveled half the day, to go by the sun directly overhead. But the man was so bloody frustrating. He seemed willing to talk about anything—except the two mines. Because he thought she was an impostor. Yet one of the mines was hers now. But until he actually showed her where it was, she couldn’t do anything with it. So she couldn’t afford to alienate him in a shouting match or tell him how ridiculous he was being. Not yet.
He led them into the yard. The land leveled out inside the fence and was actually flat farther back by the cabin. They passed a large, dark hole in the cliff on the left that she assumed was Morgan’s mine. A large pile of wooden beams was stacked outside it. Closer to the cabin she saw an iron or steel door in the cliff. She guessed it secured another hole where he stored his supplies. Not far from the steel door stood a narrow structure about six feet tall with a brick dome and some sort of pulley apparatus next to it.
Before they reached the cabin, she asked, “Why on earth would you mine here, so far from town, so far from the other mines in Butte?”
“Because I wanted to mine in peace, and if I didn’t find ore right away, move on to another spot. I traveled through this mountain range for nearly a month last summer before I settled on this location.”
“But why so high up the mountain?”
“This isn’t high up at all. This range has an elevation of ten thousand feet. We’re still in the foothills here.”
She supposed they were, since he’d been able to get this far on horseback. Still curious, she asked, “And why exactly here? Did you know you would find ore here?”
“I ran across a retired army scout on the way here. He was of Crow descent, the Indians who used to live in this region. He said all the mountains in this territory are rich in ore. His people had always known that, they just had no use for shiny metals. He suggested this particular range instead of the ones by the overcrowded mining camps near Butte and Helena. He said I’d know why once I got here.”
“Does that mean gold was just lying around up here?” she asked.
“I found a little evidence of it in the creeks and streams around here, but I didn’t come this way to pan for gold.”
“Why not? Wouldn’t that be easier?”
“Sure, but not as profitable as a mine full of it would be. And right here, there was evidence of gold in the cliff face. I also liked this spot because it is reasonably flat and wide enough for a camp, the stream runs next to it, and there’s even a water hole in case the stream dries up by the end of summer. And the rock face is high enough to tunnel through without having to worry about cave-ins.”
As she looked around for the stream, she noticed all the flowers growing along the right side of the camp. She couldn’t see the water, but guessed the flowers were hiding it from view. The colorful blooms made the area he’d carved out rather pretty.
“Well, you obviously didn’t need to move on,” she commented as she glanced back at him.
“No, I definitely got lucky. There was a smattering of gold for a few feet in, then some silver. I kept digging, hoping for more gold, but five more feet in I crossed a damn mother lode of silver that hasn’t let up yet.”
She was impressed. If he’d been up here mining since last summer, he must be rich by now. You certainly couldn’t tell it by the way he dressed, or lived, for that matter. But his cabin wasn’t made of logs, despite there being so many trees up this way. Somehow he’d brought lumber up this hill, and even glass for a couple of windows. But the cabin looked small from out front, which made her wonder about sleeping arrangements. She hoped it had more than one room. Sharing one with him would be scandalous and ruin her reputation! All the more reason for her to quickly find her father’s mine and money and persuade Morgan to take her back to Butte.
Other than the gray rock cliff face, it was quite green up here, and the air was cooler even with the sun shining down on them. There were even a few shade trees inside the fence, which continued on the right all the way beyond his cabin. If he hadn’t mentioned claim jumpers, she would have thought the purpose of the fence was to provide a corral for his animals.
They hadn’t passed her father’s mine on the way up here, or perhaps they had while she’d been blindfolded. But it could as likely be in another gorge nearby. And the sooner she found out if her father had stored his money there, the sooner she could go home.
So she asked Morgan, “Will you take me to my father’s mine now?”
“No.”
“But—”
“Lady—”
“Stop calling me that,” she cut in. “The way you say it, it sounds like a bloody insult. If you won’t call me Miss Mitchell, then you have my permission to use my given name, Violet.”
“Why?” he countered. “We aren’t friends, you aren’t who you claim to be, and I might have to resort to unusual measures to find out what you’re really up to.”
Her eyes flared briefly then narrowed on him. “You’ll do nothing of the sort, and we both know it. You’ve fed me. You’ve even let me sleep against your chest, which I apologize for, but you still allowed it. You wouldn’t resort to torture no matter who you think I am, so do not make pointless threats.”
He turned to her, his light-blue eyes roaming over her for a moment before a lazy smile formed. “Who said anything about torture?”
He took a step toward her, his arms extended. She’d gone too far! He was going to disprove everything she’d just said in a horribly physical manner!
Chapter Twelve
CONSIDERING WHAT WAS RAMPAGING through her mind, Violet gasped and slid down the other side of Morgan’s horse to escape him, then groaned as pain shot up her legs from such an abrupt landing. She would have fallen to the ground if she wasn’t still grasping the pommel of his saddle.
But he came around the horse and pried her hands loose from the pommel. “Why’d you dismount like that? You in some kind of hurry?”
“No, I—”
She stopped when he swept her into his arms and started walking toward the cabin. She realized he probably only intended to help her up to his porch, since it was about two feet off the ground and the one step that led to it had been built for his long legs, not a woman’s. And there was no hand railing to help her manage the steep climb. Her legs probably would balk if she tried to do it herself.
Still, she was utterly flustered by what she’d thought he was about to do and snapped, “I don’t want to hear any more threats from you, real or not. I’m at the end of my tether, tired, and hungry, and I need a bloody bath!”
He sniffed. Twice! “Yes, you do.”
She gasped at that insult and immediately returned it: “So do you!”
“Are you suggesting we bathe together?”
That infuriated her even more. “I meant nothing of the kind.”
She noticed the twinkle in his eyes. Was he trying not to laugh? The beast! Yet as he finally set her down on the porch, he said, “You’ll get your bath as soon as I unload the mules.”
He left her on the porch and started doing just that. The door to the house was closed, and without his permission, she wasn’t going to open it. She sat on one of the two rough chairs on the porch, hoping her brocade skirt wouldn’t get splinters from it. She wondered why there were two of them when he’d implied no one else ever came up here, but she supposed her father must have visited him from time to time. It was difficult to picture her debonair father, who socialized at Philadelphia’s finest homes and gentlemen’s clubs, sitting on the porch of this cabin in the middle of nowhere. She found it hard to believe she was there herself.
The day was still so hot, which made her appreciate the shade on the porch as she watched Morgan. He was leaving everything he took off the mules right there on the ground, his goal apparently to unburden them and set them loose before he put anything away. The unencumbered mules gravitated to the stream, which meandered inside and outside the fence.
He was close enough to talk to her. After his flat refusal to show her her father’s mine, she decided to ask him about his cabin, and then steer the conversation to the topic she was most interested in. Aunt Elizabeth had told her she was an adroit conversationalist.
“Why did you build this cabin several feet off the ground?”
“I got up here last summer, long after the spring thaw. So I didn’t know if the runoff from the icecaps would come pouring down here this spring.”
She thought he might be grinning, but it was so hard to tell with that bushy mustache of his, so she merely asked, “Did it?”
“No, not this year at least, but water did erode this gorge at some point in the history of this range. And the stream did flood this spring about four feet on this side, more on the other side. But last year I didn’t know how bad it would be and pictured my cabin being washed down the hill, so I decided to take the precaution of elevating it when I got tired of sleeping in a tent.”
“It must have taken you months to build.”
“No, just a few days.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Not with friends helping.”
She would have said that was also impossible, his having any friends, but it would have been quite an insult; she wanted to disarm him with harmless talk before she mentioned Charles’s mine again, so she asked, “Friends from Butte?”
“No, I sent for some friends I grew up with in Nashart, men I knew I could trust not to reveal the location of my mine. I ordered all the lumber, pipes, flues, bricks, and everything else needed and stored it in town before I asked them to ride over. By then I would have been followed if I’d been seen leaving town with building materials, but they weren’t.”
“By then?”
“Most of the miners in town work for a few big mine owners. And they’re a greedy bunch. But most of their mines started pulling more copper than silver or gold, so they concentrate on copper now—all except for your friend Sullivan. His silver hasn’t run out yet.”
“He’s not my friend. And besides, why would Shawn Sullivan or anyone go to so much trouble to find out where your mine is located? From what I’ve heard, there’s lots of gold and silver in these hills and mountains.”
“Sure there is, but Sullivan doesn’t want anyone else selling silver. He was getting high prices for his when he was the last supplier in this area. He didn’t like it when those prices dropped and his buyers told him to find another market if he wasn’t satisfied with what they were paying him. He couldn’t figure out where all the other silver was coming from and sent spies all around the area to find out. And came up with nothing. Then one of his men got curious about me. No one had paid me any mind before those prices dropped. They thought I came in, sold a few hides, then left again.”
His tone remained calm but had turned a little derogatory when he’d mentioned Shawn Sullivan. Now she understood a bit better why he might be suspicious of her and jump to the wrong conclusion that she was colluding with his worst enemy. But she wanted to know more.
“How did Mr. Sullivan find out you were the mysterious silver miner?”
“Because he was still demanding answers from his men, and they broke into my crates at the station before they were loaded on the train. Sullivan approached me after that and offered a fair price for my mine. He wasn’t expecting me to tell him to go to hell. After that, he had his men follow me when I left town. It was beyond annoying. Took me twice as long to get back here since I had to throw them off the scent. The second time his men followed me, I jumped them and left them hog-tied in the middle of the road with Go to hell notes pinned to their chests.”
Quite an aggressive response, Violet thought; but wanting him to think she was on his side, she remarked mildly, “I don’t imagine that went over too well.”
“No, the townsfolk didn’t like me after that—well, they never did, but they started giving me a wide berth. And Sheriff Gibson gave me a scolding the next time I went to town. He wasn’t serious about it. He’s had to investigate countless complaints from small mine owners about threats, beatings, even some killings after they refused to sell their operations to rich owners like Sullivan.”
He had to be exaggerating or was simply mistaken. But she didn’t want to antagonize him by defending Shawn Sullivan, which might reinforce his suspicions that she was working for his enemy, so she only said, “Well, you certainly made your feelings clear to Mr. Sullivan.”
“He doesn’t take no for an answer. I even changed markets and made a deal directly with a pair of silversmith brothers in New York. And I started leaving Butte by different routes after that, but Sullivan still tracked me down each time I came to town and made a higher offer for my mine. So I stopped going so often, even started sneaking into town in the dead of night, and I stopped picking up the notes he leaves for me at the hotel. He still wants my mine, but that’s not all. He wants to know where both mines are, mine and Charley’s. He’d be happy with either one to start, because he knows he’ll wind up with both in the end.”
Sullivan wanted her father’s mine, too? That would solve everything! As soon as she located it, she could sell it to him for a lot of money, then return to London and slip back into the social whirl and win Lord Elliott before some other debutante did. Thrilled to have such a perfect solution to her problems, she had to cover her mouth so Morgan wouldn’t see that she was smiling. But would a sale provide enough money for her and her brothers? Or might it be more profitable for them to hire men to work the mine? She wouldn’t know until she actually saw it, but at least she had two good options now.
Done with his task, Morgan slapped the rump of the last mule, then started shoving crates and baskets onto the porch under the railing.
“But you already knew all that about Shawn Sullivan, didn’t you?” He paused after setting a crate on the porch and looked up at her.
She sighed in irritation. “I barely said two words to the man the night I met him. His daughter,
Katie, invited me to join them for dinner. He was there to meet his future son-in-law for the first time, not me.”
“Sure.”
His skepticism lit the flame. It might be ingrained in her to keep unpleasant emotions under wraps and put on a good face for all occasions, but she’d never been tested like this! She was tired, hungry, dirty, and totally exasperated with this man.
With a smoldering glare, she pointed out, “You snatched me out of a perfectly comfortable hotel room, accused me of being a liar, made me ride a horse in the hot sun for a day and a half, tried to feed me snake meat! And you made me sleep on the bloody ground! The least you can do now is take me to my father’s mine!”
“You’re not going to like your stay here if you keep asking for something that’s not going to happen.”
His tone was quite sharp, but she was beyond caring or caution. She leapt to her feet, her hands gripping the porch railing. “You aren’t going to like my stay here if you don’t answer me! It’s my bloody mine you are refusing to tell me about. It belongs to me and my brothers now. I demand you take me to it right this instant!”
“Make-believe daughters don’t get to demand anything.”
Another evasion? One too many! In a fury, she reached into the basket at her feet and threw a handful of the contents at him, then screamed in frustration when she saw it was just carrots.
She ran into the house to find something heavier to hit him with, shouting back, “You’ve stolen our mine! Claim-jumped it, or whatever you call it out here. That’s why you want to hide it from me!”
He followed her inside, growling, “You’re out of your mind!”
“You’re right and it’s your bloody fault!”
She grabbed cans off a shelf and started throwing them at him. She didn’t pause to see if any hit him before reaching for more. But when strong arms clamped tightly around her middle and her feet left the floor, she burst into tears at being thwarted.
“So much for the lady story,” he said as he put her down on a bed.