Chapter 1

Madeline Fitzwater was a complicated woman. She didn’t think of herself that way, and, for that matter, neither did the folks who knew her, but under the surface her nature was unconventional and innovative. Or had been until her husband had died. She was twenty-three, and widowed from a five year marriage to a cattle trader. He had walked into a stock pen to inspect a new herd that had been brought in when one of the longhorns merely tossed his neck because of a fly bite, or some other annoyance, and the man was gutted.

He left Madeline a big house, 640 acres of land, and a sizeable amount of money, which was good, because she was so devastated by the whole ordeal that she paid no attention to men (suitors) at all and it looked like she might wear black and mourn for the rest of her life. Wearing it and withdrawing from social activities for two years, as was the custom when a woman could afford to do so, was easy for her. That it became her habit afterwards was simply a matter of adapting to her new status, even though she didn’t really want to.

There were many men who wished she’d take that black off – all the way off, in fact. She had a full figure that was only encased in a corset, and not formed by one. Her raven-colored tresses, when down, went to her waist, but most of the time they were done up in a bun, or whorls of some complicated thing only women understand, that is held in place with pins. She only wore her black hat and veil for a year, but by then the only clothing she had left was black, and she wasn’t motivated to buy anything new. She had remained in black for four years, thus far.

She was comfortable, having a house to live in, and money to buy food, but at first that’s all she did ... just sleep, eat, and mourn.

While all this happened men came and tried to buy the land her husband had owned. It was a substantial amount of land and fixtures that had been used to hold large herds of cattle received from the drives made from Texas. Once a suitable size herd was accumulated, his men would drive the cattle east to Abilene, where they would be transferred to another company that would ship them by rail to hungry customers even further east. She did not sell the property. She did not want to think about all that. She did let some men cut hay on the land, but that was all.

It was a letter from her sister in far-off California that brought about the trip that would change her life forever. The sister begged for Madeline to come visit and enjoy the sunshine and good weather, away from the dusty, dirty west Kansas town where all her sorrow was centered.

What made Madeline decide to do it was a mixture of boredom and malaise. Her ship had been rudderless for so long that her imagination had dried up. Sorrow had been the framework of her existence, but she had no drive to cover that sorrow with something happier and make the framework into a home of some kind.

It would be a long and arduous journey, and dangerous, as well. It was 1871 and the territory between Dodge City and Denver was still in conflict with the indigenous natives who were being so thoroughly exterminated. Then there were the mountains to cross. The passes were said to be clear, but after that there would be miles and miles of ... miles and miles ... for the stagecoach to traverse before it got to the land of milk and honey, as her sister described it. Truth be known, there may have been a biological bent to her decision to make that arduous journey. She was twenty-three, in the prime of her childbearing years, and when she got married she had planned on having at least six children. At that point in her life she thought of herself as a brood mare and of Richard Fitzwater as her handsome, dashing stallion.

He was actually a gelding, though neither of them knew it. He’d been kicked by one of the cows that had made him rich and basically neutered him. His long gun still worked. It just didn’t have any ammunition to put out of his manly muzzle.

So Madeline’s biological clock was ticking along, urging her to fulfill her destiny as a mother. She was bored. Maybe California could be a re-birth for her.

To be honest, it must be clearly stated, though that Madeline Fitzwater had no intention to re-enter the world of sexually active women in America. Those thoughts were still firmly packed in a dark place in the back of her mind. After she got married she’d had what, in a hundred and fifty years or so, would be called a “hot box.” She got horny for her stallion easily and often and she loved it as he tried to breed her. Even when time after time he failed to make her belly swell, she never lost faith that, someday, her wasitline would blossom and she’d become both a wife and mother. Then he died and she crammed all that kind of joy and hope into a place where it couldn’t torment her or let her think about that, or miss it, or crave it, as she had before.

She only packed one trunk. Her needs were few. The trip was estimated to take around a month. The roads were expected to be dry on the west side of the Rockies at this time of year. The horses would be able to make good time without becoming drained. She took two books from her late husband’s collection. He had obtained both books written by the man known as Mark Twain. One was The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Sketches and the other was The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrims’ Progress. She planned to read the latter first, as she thought it might contain information about the travels she was commencing on.

And so it was that on July the 18^th, in the year of our Lord 1871, Madeline Fitzwater let herself be helped aboard a stagecoach owned by the Holladay Overland Mail & Express Company, and began the adventure that would change her life, forever.

The social conventions and taboos concerning stagecoach travel weren’t really all that different from what would be in force if one met at some gathering place in a town, barring saloons. Saloons were places where men often abandoned rigidly polite discourse and drank to excess. In a stage coach, passengers were expected to behave more like they were attending an ice cream social, or town picnic. Early travel required that men wear suits and ladies proper dresses, with proper undergarments, such that would disguise a woman’s curves, rather than enhance them. Good hygiene was expected, so as not to offend the noses of other passengers. Belching and farting were obviously forbidden. By 1871, however, things had relaxed a little. The cost of passage had come down enough that a class of people who, previously, couldn’t afford to travel by coach now found it within their means. This meant the dress code necessarily had to be relaxed. The voluminous hoop skirts of the past took up too much room and were beginning to go out of favor in any case.

The evolution of the social system in America differed, also, from the more rigid social conventions in Europe. A woman did not, for example, have to be formally introduced to a man before she could speak with him. Women, particularly women on the frontier, had to be as hardy and capable as men, for the most part. The process of finding a mate was still turbulent and somewhat complicated, though. The father of a young woman often exercised paternal control over her activities to ensure she was not “soiled” before marriage. From the perspective of some of the young women, apparently being “soiled” after marriage was just fine, but of course they didn’t say that out loud. Still, a woman wasn’t looked down on for approaching and speaking with a man if she had some business to discuss with him. Pleasant exchanges of greetings and innocuous conversations were fine, too. Flirting among adults was permitted, presuming neither adult was married, and presuming the flirting was done discreetly.

As small a percentage as the Puritans were of the droves who eventually flocked to the new world, their influence on American society as a whole was outsized. The early communities they had established in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island had enabled them to exert their influence on all of New England. It was ironic that they had fled England to be able to have religious freedom and, once they were in control of the society, they tried to enforce their religious beliefs and practices on others, while they opposed other religious denominations. It could have been argued (and quite possibly was) that many people expanded south and west to get away from the Puritan town fathers and repressive mores of those in political control. None the less, as relaxed as mores had become, in America, when it came to interaction on a social level, Puritanical beliefs were still in vogue.

These were some of the conditions that affected Madeline’s life when she closed up the grand house her husband had built for her and boarded the coach to set off on what would become her adventure.

The leg from Dodge to Denver was, more or less, unremarkable. They saw Indians, but none caused any difficulties. She shared the coach with a businessman who sold various products that incorporated baleen in their manufacture. He talked at length of how whale bone was the best material to make corsets, Hoopskirts, umbrella ribs, whips, and industrial brushes used to clean various kinds of machinery. An architect sat, smoked, and slept, barely saying twenty words during the trip. Once the salesman finally ran out of things to praise concerning the death and dismemberment of whales, Madeline turned her attention to a woman named Madge and her eight-year-old daughter, who were going to join Madge’s husband in Denver. To pass the time they shared tidbits of each other lives. There wasn’t much else to do but talk. It turned out that the motion of the coach was much too violent for her to be able to read the books she’d brought.

It was the leg that crossed the mountains on the way to Salt Lake City that was where things went wrong ... or right, depending on one’s perspective. The reader’s opinion should probably be delayed until the rest of Madeline’s story is revealed.

On this leg Madeline’s compatriots were a Cowboy who introduced himself as Bob, a seventeen-year-old young man who called himself Rex, who seemed to be traveling with Bob, and three other travelers whose descriptions aren’t of any real value in this story, with one possible exception, which will be discussed in due course. Madeline might have still been inhibited, sexually, by the memory of her dead husband, but she wasn’t a hermit by any stretch of the imagination. She was a vivacious, curious woman who thoroughly enjoyed meeting people and talking about pretty much any subject that might arise. Her philosophy was that in a conversation where she knew something that might be of use to another person, she was happy to share that. If she didn’t know anything about a subject then she was the one who had something to learn that might make her life better in some way. Her willingness to listen to the baleen salesman is an example of that.

And so, on this portion of her journey she thought she might learn something about the men who had herded all those cattle to Kansas for her late husband to broker to hungry America. She had not, of course, been introduced to such rough men in her normal, married life.

Bob and Rex, as it happened, had worked together for the last two years, handling cattle on a ranch with the unlikely name of The Eagle’s Nest Ranch. Bob had read in a newspaper about the mines in Idaho that were producing gold, silver, and other ores men would pay good money for. The concept of sleeping in a house every night and having home-cooked meals, instead of camping under the stars (and in the rain), appealed to Bob. When he discussed it with the other cowboys on the ranch, Rex got the bug to seek his fortune in Idaho, too. The horses they normally rode belonged to the ranch, and it was cheaper to pay to ride the stage than it was to buy the horse and ride it there. Besides, a horse wouldn’t be needed for a miner ... would it?

Basically these two men, both young (Bob was only twenty-two) had stars in their eyes and the freedom to pursue pie in the sky. There happened to be a mining engineer riding in the coach with them from Denver to Salt Lake City, who could have educated them, but he didn’t feel it was worth his time. He had tried to educate miners for two decades and most rarely listened to him. Those were the ones who died in cave-ins or from asphyxiation due to lack of ventilation. These two would either survive or die and it didn’t matter to him anymore. If they died, there would be a stream of more like them. If they survived, then they deserved whatever gain they could wrest from the earth.

Bob and Rex sat together on the forward side of the coach. Another man sat with them, leaning against the side of the coach and dozing, much of the time. Madeline sat opposite the two cowboys, with two other passengers to her left, facing forward. The one on the other side of the coach was the “elderly” mining engineer. Thus she could lean forward to converse with Bob, mostly, and Rex, occasionally, concerning what it was like to live the life of a cattle wrangler.

It is important, at this point, to point out where things began to go amiss for Madeline. She had led a relatively sheltered life and all of it in or near town. Like almost anyone who did not live on a ranch, she truly had no concept of how that kind of life could meld friendships between men that were bone deep, close and even somewhat mysterious. There was a bond between men who lived together, fought Indians together, kept a herd together while thunder and lightning would otherwise stampede them, and just spent days and weeks in extremely close contact with each other. In this case, Bob had saved Rex’s life one time when he got knocked off his horse while fording a river on a cattle drive. Rex could not swim and had not Bob left his own horse to grab Rex and drag him to shore, he surely would have drowned. That favor had been returned when Rex had shot an Indian who was about to split Bob’s skull with a tomahawk. Madeline was ignorant of such things, but she wasn’t stupid. She noticed the two men were extremely at ease with each other, often leaning on each other, and something came into her mind that she had heard her late husband say to a customer one time. She only heard a snippet of it, but, basically, her husband had laughed and said it didn’t matter if the cowboys corn-holed each other on cattle drives, because it didn’t affect the quality of the beef. She had asked him, later, what “corn-hole” meant. Instead of just telling her, he demonstrated and she was sore for two days. She was culturally sensitive about it for much longer.

It was this memory, and the closeness she perceived between these two men, that caused her to misinterpret that bond. Basically, she came to suspect that Bob might be corn-holing this poor, young, innocent boy, leaving him sore like she had been sore. Her ignorance of such things (which wasn’t unusual at all in those times) overcame her rational ability to interpret “the signs” of such a relationship. It was the equivalent of, in modern times, to hear someone use a stereotypical tone and speaking manner and say, “He sounds gay, so he must be gay.” Still, there wasn’t anything she could do about that and both men were pleasant to talk with, so talk with them at length she did.

There were a number of rest stops along the way, usually ten or fifteen miles apart. At an average pace of three or four miles per hour, completing a leg usually took between three and four hours. At these stations, passengers could stretch their legs, get something to eat, or use sanitary facilities. Horses were either rested or changed out, depending on the type of station it was and the terrain to be covered on the next leg. Some even had blacksmiths in residence, to take care of the horses’ footwear or make repairs to the coach, if needed. Meals were simple, usually consisting of beans, bacon, and coffee.

On the western side of the mountains, one such stop was what, a century later, would have been called a “tourist trap.”

The “attraction,” as it was called by the station manager’s wife, was a played-out silver mine, with the grand name of “Periwinkle Silver Mine” carved into a slab of wood which hung over the opening to the mine. The attraction was that travelers could “search for silver and chip it out of the walls or floor” if they wanted to. It was about a hundred and twenty feet deep and anyone over about five and a half feet tall had to stoop to explore the narrow corridor of the mine. For the princely sum of a nickel, one could “be a silver miner” for an hour; tools provided at no additional cost! It was a popular attraction for people who had never been in the mountains before.

The mining engineer only went five or six feet into the adit before declaring, roughly, that it was unstable and should not be entered. He turned around and left. Had he been less taciturn on the trip, and engaged in friendly discourse with the others, his opinion might have carried more weight. Bob and Rex were eager to see a real mine and Madeline went with them. It is unfair to say she thought she was needed as a chaperone, but something in the back of her mind whispered that she should not leave them alone, lest their “perversion” overcome propriety and cause them to do something they shouldn’t, in the dark recesses of the tunnel.

The shaft wasn’t wide enough for two people to walk side by side comfortably, so Madeline followed the other two. They were some forty feet into the mine, following abandoned ore cart rails, when the disaster struck.

Earthquakes in the Rockies are rare. The mountains themselves, though, are the result of the collision of the North American and Pacific tectonic plates and slippage, particularly on the west coast of the country, is common. Even small quakes in that area can send shocks eastward that can affect the rock in the mountains. It is akin to what happens if a bell is struck by a hammer. The bell vibrates, and if touched to something else, tries to make that vibrate, too. In this case, a relatively mild earthquake in California caused a slight shiver on the west side of the Rockies and a loose rock fell from the ceiling of The Periwinkle Mine. As can happen with a house of cards, removing a single card can collapse the whole structure. In this case, twenty feet of ceiling came crashing down, sealing the mine completely. Luckily for everyone except Madeline, Bob, and Rex, they were outside the mine when the cave-in occurred. Unhappily for Madeline, Bob, and Rex, they were inside the mine. The only silver lining (no pun intended) to that cloud was that the collapse occurred some ten feet behind them, and none of them were injured. There would be another silver lining later, which will also be revealed in due course.

The immediate effect on the trio inside the mine, when the collapse occurred, consisted primarily of abject terror for thirty seconds or so, followed by a somewhat astonishing realization that they were alive and relatively unscathed. The initial thunder and vibration they experienced made them stagger but none fell down. What would have been absolute darkness was prevented because each still held a kerosene lantern.

“Is everybody all right?” asked Bob, when the rumbling ceased. The lanterns provided a diffuse light, through a cloud of dust that permeated their environment.

“Yes,” Madeline responded, as Rex said the same thing.

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