Read Online Auraria: A Novel by Tim Westover - Free Book Online

day after day with never an end in sight, thinking if you could save a penny here or a penny there you could get out, but you never do.”
    Eleanor’s eyes fixed on his husband. Her mouth was hard set. A red flush spread to her pale cheeks.
    “We’re gonna move,” said Edgar. “We’ll go to California or maybe Alaska, where they still have gold. Strike it rich. We won’t be saving pennies anymore. Buy a mountain of sugar, buy a ton of coffee. Move in to the city and have twenty butlers. They still have butlers in the city? Somebody told me about it once, but that was a long time ago. A maid too, and some golden slippers. They don’t have to be real gold, because that would be heavy. Just gold colored. And expensive.”
    Edgar stood up, scooping the money into his pocket. “If you’ll excuse me, Mr. Holtzclaw, I’ve got to get ready. We have to load the wagon. Hitch up the children. Shake off all these old ghosts.”
    Holtzclaw went to the door, and Eleanor followed beside him. He tipped his hat to her, but she did not return any courtesy. She looked at him with sadness welling in her eyes.
    “I am sorry for any trouble I have caused you, ma’am,” he said, with as much tenderness as his profession would allow.
    Eleanor took the small broom that hung upside down and swept his dust from her house.
     
    Chapter Four
     
    Holtzclaw’s success compensated the eerie feeling that he brought with him out of the Strickland house. Eleanor was not a ghost, even if her children seemed not to see her, even if she said nothing, even if her luminous skin had its own light. Holtzclaw resolved not to think on it any more. It mattered little to him what Edgar Strickland did with the money that Holtzclaw had paid him; the strained relations between Edgar and Eleanor, ghost or not, were unimportant to his mission. Holtzclaw’s interest in the matter should have ended when Edgar signed over the deed.
    The next property, which Holtzclaw feared would come with its own mystery, was at the head of the valley, upstream, at the foot of Sinking Mountain. Today’s road proved much less bewildering than yesterday’s. After a half hour’s walk, Holtzclaw arrived at a property owned by Shadrach Bogan.
    On Holtzclaw’s map, Shadburn had written “Vast empty swath of useless cleared land leading to empty mine tunnels,” but this was incorrect. The land was covered in close-packed pine trees, thick scrub, and patches of laurel and mountain hemlock.
    Holtzclaw found the property’s owner sitting in front of a crack in the mountainside. He was carving a new handle for a pickaxe from a tree branch. The knife he was using was far too large for the job, and yet Bogan whittled and whistled.
    “Help you?” said Bogan.
    “I am hoping we can help each other,” said Holtzclaw. “You are in possession of a piece of land, and I may be interested in purchasing it.” The direct method, Holtzclaw had found, was universally appropriate when facing parties that held large knives. They did not care for verbal tricks.
    “What do you need it for?” said Bogan.
    “I am a dealer in scrap metal.”
    “Well, there’s a ton of it down there under Sinking Mountain,” said Bogan. “Mostly gets in my way. Want to go take a look?” He gestured with his head toward the crack in the mountain. The passage was not braced up against collapse. Loose boulders were stacked to each side. “It used to have another way in, over on the widow’s side of the mountain, but I had to blast my own way in. Imagine, blast into my own mountain, ’cause I didn’t buy a front door! Look what I got instead.”
    Bogan got up and scurried over a line of boulders. On the other side, there was a lake.
    It was the last thing that Holtzclaw expected to see; he did not think lakes could emerge from hiding so suddenly. It ambushed him with its beauty.
    The lake was filled at one end by a waterfall and drained at the other end through jagged rocks. Stone, blasted into a crater,