Chapter 27

Luckily, Harvey was alone in the store, so Tom had his immediate attention. First, Tom warned him that the trailer would be coming through and asked if his truckloads of tools and equipment had caused any problems.

“Far from it,” Harvey grinned. “Your brothers have both been great about letting me know if a truck is coming in, and I’ve been able to get fresh fruit and vegetables brought in for almost nothing. The whole community thinks it’s just great because we’re getting supplies a whole lot easier than usual, and everyone seems healthier than normal for this time of year. Not only that, but your trucks are something interesting to watch. In fact, a lot of the folks are wondering just how big this mine of yours is going to be.”

“That’s good news and bad too,” Tom nodded, but frowned. “You can tell anyone that asks that a lot of the things being moved in now will probably be moved right back out at a later date. I’m just lazy, so I use men and machines to do a lot of the rough work I want done. So far, I’ve only proved up on one small claim, and although I have a big lease, it could be a dud area. The guy who had the lease before me said he spent quite a bit of time there, but only found a trace of colour in one of the streams, and I followed that same stream to find my claim. So you can tell them that up until now I’ve invested well over ten times as much money in the place as I’ve taken out in gold. If it wasn’t so dang pretty up there, I’d have probably given up by now, but I like waking up and seeing relatively untouched forests and wildlife everywhere.”

“Oh, that won’t be what these folks around here want to hear,” Harvey sighed. “I think more than one of them was dreaming about asking if you were considering the idea of bringing in a few experienced prospectors. I know the couple who lost their house last week were hoping to meet you and ask about that.”

“Hmm, I was talking to old Hank about them, and that wasn’t what he was saying. In fact, he made it sound like they were talking about staying here and rebuilding. Anyway, talking about them, how would you like to put together a care package for that couple, just a few hundred bucks worth of essentials that they’ll need? I’ll gladly pay for it. I imagine they’re short of decent clothes, coats, boots, and things of that sort since I heard they lost pretty well everything they had in the fire. Pack it all in a box and seal it up like it was shipped in, and I’ll add a note for you to paste on the outside, but I won’t sign my name to it, since I want it to be anonymous. Maybe you could have the truck driver that’s coming through this afternoon drop it off to them,” Tom pulled out his personal checkbook and wrote a check for five hundred dollars. “I figure you’ll have a lot better idea of what they need and how to get it to them than I will, though, so I’ll leave the selection and delivery up to you.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, could I have a slip of paper, please?”

“Tom, before you go ahead on that, I have an alternate suggestion,” Harvey offered. “What would you think of the idea of Meg and Al looking after your fuel and freight transfer here for now? In any community, there always seem to be a few people whose ethics aren’t so high that they won’t give in to temptation and try to ‘borrow’ things that belong to others, and we do have one or two folk like that around here. You said you’ve got a trailer coming in here today, so we could set that up on the little lease where you have your fuel and supplies. I’m sure they’d prefer that to having to start building a cabin in the winter, and next spring, you could easily move the trailer to your claim, and they could build a cabin or whatever else they want to do. They’re reliable people, and both of them are hard workers that I’d recommend to anyone. That idea does three things: it gives them a place to live and jobs they can handle for now, but it also helps your operation.”

“You know that’s a helluva good idea,” Tom smiled. “Use this cheque to start a fund for them anyway. I’ll go talk to them to see if they’re interested in a job, then if they go for it, I’ll call JJ to let him know what I’m doing and I’ll have my people set things up here.”

The two men chatted for a few minutes then, discussing just how to set up an account that the couple could use to buy supplies and necessities, but it wasn’t long before Tom was heading back outside.

Hattie’s cabin was crowded when Tom got there. Alvin and Arnie had brought everyone who was heading for the lease in to meet their parents so there were a dozen people in the small house. That didn’t prevent Hattie from greeting Tom with a huge hug and then dragging him over to meet Meg Wilson and Al Zebrynski.

Tom was surprised that both Meg and Al were quite young, not much older than he was. Meg was a short, muscular woman with mousey blonde hair and a preoccupied look on her face. Meanwhile, Al Zebrynski was nearly as tall as Tom, but much thinner, with a darker complexion and jet-black hair. At the moment, he looked determined, almost as if he had a permanent scowl on his face. The first thing Tom did after being introduced to the new couple was to offer them the job of looking after the fuel and supplies that would pass through town. Then he brought up the idea of them using the Atco trailer that was coming in that day and was surprised at their reaction. They liked the idea of having a job, but next spring they wanted to either build a cabin on the lakeside lease if the job became permanent, or else rebuild the cabin on their claim and work that.

“Eventually, both of us would like to have an opportunity like Alvin and Arnie do, though, working on your claim when you need help and exploring your lease when work is slack,” Meg piped up. “We can easily sell our claim here in Misery Flats.”

“So, like most prospectors, you want to go where the grass is greener, do you?” Tom grinned at her.

“Not so much that as the fact that we are working long hours to make very little money on our claim, and it’s a placer claim, not hard-rock mining, which is what we want to do. Zeb is a hard-rock miner like you, not a placer miner like me,” she answered instantly. “We’ve been working our claim to build up a stake, but now that we have one, we need to build a new cabin and completely restock, which will wipe out our stake. It would make sense to move on now. If we could, then we could build that new cabin in a place where we might remain for years. I can’t see that happening here, because this whole area has been prospected for years, and no one has found the mother lode. Zeb thinks the colour we’re finding is from glacial deposits, dropped here during the ice age when the mountains were scoured by glaciers.”

“Zeb?” Tom asked.

“Better Zeb than Al!” ‘Al’ snapped. “If I am to be called a short name, it should be part of my real name, not a stupid joke that was made just because I have many letters in my real name. Truly, I am Vladimir Ludwig Zebrynski, but Zeb or Vlad will do.”

“Okay, I can live with that,” Tom said seriously, then grinned and winked. “Well, if I call you Zeb, not Al, at least I won’t get you confused with Alvin.”

That drew a smile of sorts, but then Tom had to tell them about some of his plans for the next year and the fact that he didn’t want to have a stampede of prospectors intruding on his lease. As well as that, his plans included the fact that he would probably need someone to work in the Misery Flats area for most of the summer and perhaps into the fall.

“I can’t have more people moving to the lease right now, since we don’t have housing for them, but we’re going to be moving a lot of supplies through here in the next few months,” Tom explained. “What I need right now is a couple of people who can keep an eye on the things moving through town and going to the lease. It won’t be a hard job or anything, just keeping an eye on the loads coming through here in trucks and containers, then helping to shift the supplies into the copters so they can be flown to the lease. Heck, there are loads of materials and fuel here now and I don’t have anyone who can keep an eye on it so nothing gets stolen. I know that winter in this area is tough and while I wouldn’t want to accuse anyone of being a thief, I also know that the temptation to ‘borrow’ various things is going to be there. For instance, the jet fuel in the tanker truck could be burned in an oil stove and while the tanker is theft-resistant, it’s not theft-proof, so I need a pair of security people. If you two want the job, it’s yours, because it helps me out and it helps you out. We’ll have to wait until next summer before we can see what happens about you moving to the lease, because a lot of things could change between now and then.”

Needless to say, Meg and Zeb jumped at the chance. Then it was a matter of arranging the details such as wages, supplies, and so on. First off, Tom shanghaied the Atco trailer that was coming in that day for Meg and Zeb to use and arranged to have it set up near the trailers and containers which were parked on the outskirts of town. Next, he sent the Chinook off to the lease and told them to bring back the bobcat that was there with the front-end scoop and the loading forks. Right then, they needed it in Misery Flats so they could clear a space to set up the Atco trailer, and Zeb could use it to clear the snow from the loading site during any future storms. When Arnie started to complain about needing the bobcat at the mine, Tom pointed out that they had another bobcat in Bear Creek which could be moved out to the lease on the Chinook’s next trip. Finally, he took his new security workers down to Harvey’s store and bought them winter gear, then set up an account at the store so they could buy supplies and essentials as well.

As a result, inside of an hour of landing at Misery Flats, Jim, Tom, Sandy, and Ann were climbing back into the smaller chopper and leaving town.

“And so builds the legend of Lucky Dunn,” Ann commented with a chuckle as soon as everyone was wearing their headphones. “He flies into town, and inside of an hour, he rescues two people down on their luck and sets himself up to save money while doing it.”

“Oh, for cripes sake, Ann, give it a break!” Sandy barked. “I could see you trying to think of a way to help them out of that mess, and so was I. Tom just beat us to it.”

“Yep, I was about to offer them the same job, but in my case, I wouldn’t have been able to do it until spring when we’ve had a chance to look over the Lonesome Lake site more closely,” Jim said quickly. “Anyway, where to, Tom? Do you still want to fly to your lease now?”

“Yeah, I do. Let’s head for the pass east of town, and I’ll get you to take it slow as we fly over that section. I’m not sure if it’s possible, but I’d like to check to see if a single-lane road could be built through that pass without going to major expense. It would save us a lot of money if we could bring in most of our supplies by road, because flying them in is darn expensive.”

“Well, what about Frank’s idea of bringing supplies by boat from Bowman’s Bluff?” Sandy asked.

“That’s another idea I want to look at, but we’d have to find some way to have a road climb the cliff at the bottom end of the lease,” Tom glanced back at her and smiled. “We’d have to run up one of the valleys that comes in on this side of the lease, and the road will probably have to be blasted out of the rock just to manage the grade, so I’m not sure that’s even possible. Then I imagine we’ll need to build a bridge or two as well, because we’ll probably have to cross a small river. I have an idea that a road from Misery Flats will be a lot easier, but there might be a good reason to have them both.”

“Well, where do you want to go from here?” Jim asked as he slowed when they swung over the pass east of Misery Flats.

Tom was able to direct Jim’s flight path for perhaps a mile or two, then he just shook his head. Even though they were flying at a slow speed, he soon found he was confused by the snow cover and the fact that he was trying to remember a trail he hadn’t hiked for a year. Not only that, but his perspective was wrong since he was high in the air, so once more he called off the attempt.

“This just won’t work, Jim. There’s just too much snow on the ground. I can’t make out the trail from this height, so let’s just cruise along well above the valley, and I’ll keep an eye out for major grade changes. I might have to hire Johnny Bowman to look it over on foot, but I won’t do that until after the spring melt.”

“Is he a surveyor?”

“Yeah, he and his dad both are. Johnny and his wife have been doing some fur trapping up on my lease this winter, and they’re looking after the cabin for me at the same time. I’ll have a chat with him about the road project later today,” Tom nodded. “For now, though, I think we can just fly along this valley toward the Mirror. Then I can take a look at the lower end of the gorge as well. I know the left side of the valley is passable, but it might require a lot of work to make a roadway in a few places. Right now, it’s the bottom half of the valley on our right-hand side that I’m questioning, because that will give me an idea of whether it’s worth having Johnny do a survey to see if a road can be run in there. If it can be used, we can get down to the lake, and we can haul in part of our supplies by using that boat Frank bought.”

“I thought you were supporting the store at Misery Flats?” Jim frowned slightly.

“Oh, I am, but let’s face it, I think Misery Flats has a fairly bleak future. Our assistance will help for a while, but unless there’s a small strike close by in the near future, I’m afraid there just won’t be enough customers in the area for Harvey to be able to afford keeping his store open. In fact, he told me he was looking at closing up this summer if things didn’t improve,” Tom was frowning now. “Actually, there isn’t a lot I can do for him either, except help to reduce his shipping costs. As long as our shipments are coming through there by truck or later on, after we’re using the airstrip, we can help him a bit, but we aren’t really his customer base. Misery Flats is really just a stopping point for us, and I’m not in the business of supporting others with no gain for our bottom line. Charity is fine, but business charity of that sort sucks rocks and costs money.”

“Well, JJ was already talking about finding someone to act as the agent for White Out at Misery Flats and even having some people acting as ground agents in other areas. Part of that was because of a discussion about forest fires and emergency rescues, but it was also mentioned as an idea of drumming up business. Misery Flats was brought up because we’re thinking of having fuel and supplies stored there, so the agent would be there primarily to deter any attempted thefts, besides helping with transfer problems. You’ve already handled that by hiring Meg and Zeb, though.”