Read Online Easy Pickings by Richard S. Wheeler - Free Book Online Page B

the roof of the shaft, with its jagged, broken rock that should be supported with timbering. Maybe she could poke it, hit it, make it fall ahead of her if it was going to drop. She started the acetylene lamp going, and stepped in. The initial dozen feet were solid enough, but the next twenty were plainly fragmented strata, and this worried her.
    She tapped it, and a few small pieces dropped, startling her. She tapped again, sometimes hard, but nothing happened. That gave her a little courage, and she dared to go another few feet and do it all again. But she failed to unloose anything ahead of her, and gradually she worked along the shaft, even as daylight faded behind her, until there it was, the face, the thick milky seam laced with wire and nodule gold. Her heart hammered, and she decided to be quick about it. She worked feverishly, prying pieces of the rotted quartz loose and dropping them into her burlap sack. It was hard going, and sometimes she jammed a pry bar in and moved nothing.
    And then, somehow, she had as much quartz as she could drag out, and she tugged it along on the rough surface, step by step, foot by foot, until sunlight blinded her and alpine breezes began to cleanse her face and cool her body. She never was so glad to see sunlight. She studied the flat, the copses of pine, the tumbling slope, the silent ore car, and saw no one. She slid over to the gully and hid her tools.
    She didn’t know what to do with her heavy bag of quartz. Kermit had rented a mule now and then and hauled his quartz to the Drumlummon mill, which crushed it and removed the tiny bits of gold through an amalgamation process she was hazy about. But she knew it used mercury to pluck the gold from the crushed rock. She would need to get that heavy load to town, where Mr. Wittgenstein would help her. There in that quartz was gold to sustain her, but as long as it was locked in, it would get her nothing.
    She knew a little about these things. Kermit had always talked about them, wanting her to know about their mine. But she only half-listened; operating a mine was scarcely on her mind. But now she wished she had listened more. She dragged the sack of quartz down to the burnt-out cabin and hid it nearby. The great heap of ash wrought a sadness in her, along with a flood of memories of Kermit, of meals gotten from a cranky woodstove, of tender moments and winter moments when they were snowed in and Kermit couldn’t even climb the path to his mine.
    Now she was wearing his pants.
    She wished she had a dog. She needed one to alert her to anyone coming up her trail. Wilderness is quiet, and people and animals pass through it in utter silence. She was about to head for her refuge, the protected ledge, when she did spot a man laboring up the trail. The blue suit was familiar to her, along with the wiry frame. It was not someone she welcomed.
    She collected the shotgun and waited. She was tempted to vanish; there was still time to plunge into the forest and escape. But she elected to stay and see this through, whatever it was.
    When he reached the burnt-out cabin, she stepped into view, which startled him.
    He examined her closely, noting the flannel shirt and britches, and also the old shotgun.
    â€œYou fired that thing,” he said. “Pretty near killed a man, in-law relative of mine.”
    â€œHe was trespassing and wouldn’t go. And he was also stealing my ore and wouldn’t stop.”
    â€œYou shot him.”
    â€œThrough the legs.”
    â€œYou’ve crippled him.”
    â€œI was defending myself.”
    â€œYou maybe took his livelihood away from him. That’s a hard thing.”
    â€œHe was taking my livelihood and property from me. He was stealing. And he refused to leave. He and the others, who were in my mine.”
    â€œDon’t make no difference. I’m taking you in.”
    â€œThis is not your jurisdiction. You said so yourself.”
    â€œI go where I need to go to get