Mining for Justice Read online

If that child pushed Yvonne Miller down the stairs, Chloe thought bleakly, I don’t want to know.

  Claudia stood in the door, watching her daughter race away. “Sorry ’bout that.”

  “She’s not in school today?”

  “No school due to teacher in-service. Holly’s happy roaming the site. Thank God Loren doesn’t mind.” Claudia straightened her shoulders. “Let’s go make some more progress on the collections storage inventory.”

  Chloe could feel the strain that morning as she and Claudia worked on the second floor of Trelawny House, identifying items that most desperately needed better storage conditions. Claudia went through the motions but seemed so preoccupied that Chloe finally put a hand on her friend’s arm to catch her attention. “Are you okay?”

  Claudia stared at the shawl she’d been examining. “Not really. I feel a bit … besieged.”

  “I suspect the investigation would have been closed if Yvonne’s damn journal hadn’t disappeared.” Chloe pounded one fist against her knee. “It’s probably long gone, but I sure wish it would turn up.” Preferably in the hands of the person who had, the police seemed to believe, given Yvonne Miller a fatal shove at the top of the Polperro House staircase.

  “I’m sorry your visit has gone so badly.” Claudia’s eyes brimmed with unshed tears. “But speaking selfishly, I don’t know how I would have gotten through the last few days without you.”

  “Don’t worry about it. That’s what friends are for.” Chloe didn’t point out the obvious: this was the last day of her residency at Pendarvis, and they’d accomplished far less than hoped.

  That could bite me in the butt, Chloe thought. She didn’t think Loren would make a bad report, but with everything going on he wasn’t likely to make a good report, either. He didn’t appear to be particularly interested in her contributions one way or the other.

  But that seemed inconsequential in the face of Claudia’s problems. When I’m gone she won’t have a friend, Chloe thought. She hated the idea of leaving Mineral Point with Claudia still under suspicion.

  At noon Claudia left to run some errands and Chloe made haste to the library. She was selfishly pleased to see that no other patrons were in the archives. “I’ve got something for you, Midge,” Chloe said without preamble. She described what she’d found on the bottom of Tamsin’s chair. “Does ‘T. George/Min. Point’ mean anything to you?”

  Midge checked the card catalog. “Nothing.”

  So much for finding business records.

  But Midge’s eyes—behind fuchsia readers today—narrowed thoughtfully. “Give me two minutes. If I’m not mistaken … ” She disappeared into the storage room and returned with a roll of microfilm. Once seated at the reader, she found what she was looking for in about thirty seconds. “Ha!” She got up and let Chloe take a look.

  The reader was focused on an advertisement for a furniture store owned by one Theophilus George, cabinetmaker. “Oh my.”

  “That’s 1866,” Midge said. “It will take some time to determine the exact period he was in business.”

  “I suspect that Claudia will be thrilled to do the digging.” Chloe glanced at the clock. “With the time I have left, I’d like to go back to the early newspapers. I’m still hoping I’ll find a reference to one of the Pascoes.”

  A couple of high school students wandered in, looking for help with a school project. Chloe went back to skimming the Miners’ Free Press. She tried not to get sidetracked today, focusing instead on finding “Pascoe” or “Cornish” within the columns of blurry type. She was so focused, in fact, that she passed over something intriguing, and had to scroll back.

  Information Wanted—A man by the name of Parnell Peavey left his home in Columbia, Missouri, in April, 1838, with the intention to return to the vicinity of Mineral Point, where he had successfully exploited a mine claim the summer before. He was seen at his customary boardinghouse in Mineral Point on April 19th. From that time to this his friends have not been able to discover any trace whereby they could form any conjecture to what end he has made. He was light in complexion, quick spoken, of steady habits, active and industrious. Any intelligence of his fate communicated by letter, directed to the address below, will be immediately handed to his disconsolate wife.

  Chloe leaned back in the chair. This was exactly the kind of notice she had naively hoped to find when she started this quest. Honestly, though, miners must have disappeared with some frequency—perhaps due to accident while traveling, perhaps due to foul play, perhaps due to abruptly setting out for some distant diggings in order to escape a debt.

  Chloe had only tried to solve the mystery in the first place because of Tamsin’s distressed pleas. Trying to connect poor Mr. Peavey’s unknown fate to the skeleton found in Chy Looan was a fool’s mission. Trying to find evidence that Andrew Pascoe had killed someone and buried the body in his root cellar was equally so. Evelyn’s theory about vagrants during the Great Depression, when the cottage was empty, was the most likely explanation.

  Chloe printed the Peavey notice anyway. But she’d trade a dozen notices of missing persons for one honest insight into Mary Pascoe’s life.

  Twenty-Five

  september 1837

  “How can I help you, Miss Pascoe?” the storekeeper asked. “You need more flour?”

  Mary pushed her shoulders back. “Not today. I’ve come to buy your teapot there on the shelf. And the serving platter, and two cups and saucers.” She pointed. The man had a full set of white ironstone china available, but she wanted pieces from a more expensive set with blue decorations.

  “I see!” His eyebrows went up. “Well, you’ve made a fine choice. Fine indeed.”

  “I thank you for hiring me to sew for you.” That had made the difference. The money Mary made with her baking business went into regular household expenses. She’d paid a carpenter to build a corner hutch for Chy Looan. She’d purchased shoes for the children, and picked out cotton cloth to make them new clothes. Last Christmas she’d spent an exorbitant amount to buy Ruan a pocket watch.

  Now it was time to buy herself the gift she’d wanted since the day Mrs. Bunney came to Wheal Blackstone so many years ago. Mary watched with pleasure as the storekeeper packed the china into her market basket, nestled in straw. Once outside, she resisted the impulse to swing the basket like a happy child.

  In the two years since the Pascoes arrived, the village had grown tremendously. There were general stores and dry goods stores and grocery stores. There were three public houses, a brewery, a courthouse and jail, and a bank. A Temperance Society had formed, and an Odd Fellows lodge. On Independence Day everyone had turned out for speeches, foot races and horse races, and a picnic.

  Now, instead of going straight home, she walked farther up the main business street. The morning smelled of woodsmoke and ox dung and the sulphur ghosting from the smelters. Carpenters banged mallets at building sites. Drovers shouted at their animals. Boisterous laughter came from a tavern. A wagon creaked by, jouncing among the ruts.

  Ringing faintly among the noise was the metallic clang of hammer on anvil. Mary found Ruan making a gad at his forge. She stood in the shadows, watching as he shaped the iron, studied it, pounded it again. Evidently satisfied, he plunged it with a fierce hiss into a tub of water to cool. Then he reached for the bellows handle and fanned the flames.

  “Good morning,” Mary greeted him, stepping closer.

  “Mary!” He grinned at the surprise. Sweat glowed on his face and stained his limp cotton shirt. Mary leaned in for a quick kiss. She breathed in the irony forge smell imbedded in his clothes, saw the black rings around his fingernails, and knew without doubt that this was the man she wanted to marry.

  Her brothers already treated him like kin, but on Sunday afternoons Ruan and Mary usually walked out together, slowly getting to know each other’s dreams and fears; discovering the disappointments and opportunities that
had shaped them. Mary had found the words on one windy day to tell Ruan about her two dead sisters, and the guilt she carried for her poor choices. “I hope one day you put that burden down,” he’d said, but that was all.

  Now she said, “I came to invite you to tea.”

  His eyebrows rose. “When?”

  “When can you get away?”

  “I don’t know.” He ran one hand over his face, leaving a black smear on one cheek. “Orders are backed up.”

  Mary felt a twinge of disappointment but reminded herself that this was all good news. “The sooner we can marry,” she said lightly.

  “Yes indeed.” Ruan’s eyes glowed with pleasure. “I’ve made the arrangements with the stonemason. He’s got three houses to build ahead of ours, but he believes he can do it before the snow flies.” Ruan had decided that lodging even above the shop wasn’t suitable.

  “You don’t have to build a house for me,” Mary said gently. “With Andrew gone, we’ve plenty of room at Chy Looan. Jory thinks it would be fine if you moved in.”

  Ruan stared down at the anvil, but Mary suspected he was not considering the offer so much as finding the words to disagree. They’d had the conversation before. When Andrew had wed his sweetheart the past spring, her father surprised the couple with the wedding gift of a small home of their own. Instead of the new bride moving into Chy Looan, as they’d all expected, Andrew had moved out.

  “I was content enough to throw my lot in with your family’s when we were new-come to Wisconsin,” Ruan said finally. “But this is different, Mary. When we wed, I will become a husband and father. I want to provide for my own.”

  “I understand.” And loved him for it.

  He nodded toward her basket. “You’ve been shopping?”

  She brushed aside some of the straw and displayed her purchases.

  “Fancy,” he observed.

  “I want to serve tea to guests. And to the children. I want … ” She tried to find the words. She wanted Ida and Will to know they had worth.

  “I know.” Ruan stole another kiss, grinned, and reached for the bellows handle again.

  “Come when you can,” she told him. “Ida and Will have been asking for you.”

  She walked back to Chy Looan. Ida was at school and Will working with Jory at the mine, so the cottage was quiet. Mary gingerly unwrapped her new china pieces and put them in the center of the mantel. A candle, and the foot warmer Ruan had made, were on the left. She reached for her old cobbing hammer, thinking it no longer had a place on display, then hesitated. In the end she let it be.

  Then she stepped back and proudly surveyed the room. The cottage was becoming what it had not been when they moved in a year earlier—a home. Her brothers’ laughter had echoed from the stone walls. Ruan’s boots had dried by the fire. Black smoke stains smudged the hearth. The room smelled of wool and baking bread. And now, her china gleamed blue and white on the mantel.

  Mary built a fire and hung a kettle of water over the flames. When Ida came home from school, they had tea.

  Mary got a late start with the day’s baking, and twilight was falling gray over the hills before she was ready to pack baskets and head out on her rounds.

  “I can help,” Ida said. She said that every day.

  “Of course you can.” Mary handed her a basket filled with slices of still-warm wheat bread. She looped another basket over her arm and picked up a tin lantern.

  The two crossed the creek and began climbing the hill, zigzagging from camps to mine sites, stopping wherever there were men about. Soon the baskets were almost empty.

  “Let’s take this last bit to our mine,” Mary told Ida. “Jory and Andrew will likely work longer.” Daylight didn’t matter to men working underground.

  After digging all the lead from their first mine, Mary’s brothers had recently sunk a shaft on a new site a bit farther away. In June they’d hit a promising drift and were now digging horizontally into the hill. Andrew wanted to do well for his new wife. As for Jory, well, as long as he had a roof overhead and food on the table, tobacco for his pipe and money for a mug of beer on Saturday afternoons, he was content.

  Mary and Ida turned toward the new mine. Campfires flickered on the hill. The smell of frying potatoes popped from iron skillets. A few newcomer Cornish were singing “Camborne Hill.”

  “My father used to sing that song,” Mary said—then paused, tipping her head. “Did you hear that?”

  “What?” Ida tipped her head too.

  “I thought I heard … it sounded like someone crying.”

  A hot wind gusted over the hill. For a long moment Mary didn’t hear the sound. Then it came again. It sounded very much like a sobbing child.

  Mary felt a tightness beneath her ribs. She took Ida’s hand. “Come along.”

  They walked briskly toward the sound. It came and faded, but gradually grew louder. Mary finally stopped at a mine site that had been abandoned for the day. Piles of rubble surrounded the shaft, which had been dug just downhill of a limestone wall. An ore bucket dangled from a windlass over the hole. There was no ladder in the shaft and no one in sight, but a shuddering wail rose from the depths.

  Mary leaned over the hole but saw nothing in the inky blackness. “Hello?” she called. “Are you down the shaft?”

  The wail broke off sharply. Then, “I’m sorry! I’ll do better!” It sounded like a boy’s voice, shuddery with tears.

  Mary pressed a hand over her mouth. Dear God. Someone had left a child at the bottom of the mine.

  “I’ll do better!”

  She glanced at Ida, who was watching with worried eyes. “Ida, do you know how to find our mine from here? It’s just over that rise.” She pointed.

  Ida nodded solemnly. “I know.”

  “Take the lantern and go fetch Andrew and Jory and Will. If no one is on the surface, try hollering down the shaft. Bring them back here.”

  Ida hurried away.

  “Help is coming,” Mary called down the shaft. No answer.

  She was pacing with agitation by the time Ida returned with her brothers and Will. Mary ran to meet them. “There’s a child left in the mine. I don’t know if he’s hurt, but he’s certainly frightened.”

  Andrew and Jory exchanged a hard glance. “Peavey,” Jory mutt-ered.

  “Who’s Peavey?”

  “Parnell Peavey owns this plot,” Andrew said. “Just got started a week or so ago. We stopped by to say hello.” He hesitated.

  “And?” Mary demanded. She had no patience for this.

  “Peavey’s a sucker, originally from Missouri.” Andrew looked around, as if expecting the man to materialize from the shadows. “He’s well-known among the old-timers. He first came to the lead region years ago, and fought in the Indian wars. Did some mining near Dodgeville.”

  “He calls himself a miner,” Jory said derisively, “but he’s never hefted a shovel or pick. He’s got slaves to do it for him.”

  “Slaves?” Mary echoed, although she understood. Slavery was officially prohibited in the territory, but no one seemed to care when slave owners brought their black men to labor in the diggings.

  “He treats them rough,” Andrew said grimly. “Jory and I stay clear of this place.”

  “Their camp can’t be too far away,” Jory said. “Although Peavey likely leaves a boss in charge, and boards in town.”

  “We need to get that child out of the mine,” Mary said. “He hasn’t made a sound for a while, and that frightens me. After that, we’ll decide what to do.”

  Andrew studied the windlass. “That’s a heavy ore bucket. Will, I think it best if we send you down. Are you willing?”

  Will nodded and patted his shirt pocket, lumpy with candles. He was a sturdy boy now. Mary had made him attend the winter term of school, but all he really wanted to do was help Andrew and Jory. He was stil
l quiet, but steady and capable.

  Mary’s brothers gripped the heavy windlass handle and braced their feet. At Andrew’s nod, Will climbed into the bucket. He left one leg free to keep the bucket from banging mercilessly against the walls. Andrew and Jory turned the crank, and the bucket slowly disappeared from sight.

  It seemed to take an eternity before Will yelled, “I’m down!”

  “Did you find anyone?” Mary called. What if the terrified child had fled deeper into the mine? She hugged her arms across her chest, tense with anxiety.

  “There’s a boy down here. He’s hurt.”

  Mary closed her eyes.

  “Can you get him in the bucket?” Andrew hollered.

  Will’s voice floated from below. “I think so.” Another long pause. “Ready!”

  Andrew and Jory resumed their stance and wound the crank on the creaking windlass. Finally Will’s head and shoulders appeared, then the whole bucket. Jory spread his feet and leaned back. “I got it.”

  Will leapt from the bucket, leaving a brown-skinned boy—maybe eight or nine years old—huddled alone. Mary lifted the lantern and stifled a horrified cry. The back of the boy’s shirt had been sliced to ribbons. The tatters were crusted dark with blood.

  Andrew reached for the boy. “Let me help you.”

  The boy cringed. “I’ll do better tomorrow! Please tell Massa Peavey I won’t be so lazy no more!”

  “Oh, child,” Mary whispered. Her heart felt heavy as a lead ingot. “We just want to help you. What’s your name?”

  “Ezekiel.” It came out a whisper. Tears tracked through the dust on his cheeks. His hair was clipped close to his head. His feet were bare, and his patched trousers were tied around his skinny waist with cord.

  “There, now,” Andrew said softly, as if gentling a nervous horse. He reached into the bucket and eased the trembling boy into his arms. Ezekiel cried in pain. Andrew settled the child on his hip, avoiding pressure against his back.

  Jory locked the windlass in place, then stepped away. “A pox on the man who’d flog a poor lad so,” he muttered. “Did Peavey do that to you?”