Mining for Justice Page 27

  Mary felt sick. And enraged. “I’ll take that chance.”

  “Me too.” Jory spoke from the shadows.

  Andrew crouched in front of Ida, who stood near the bed. With a stricken expression she’d watched Mary clean Ezekiel’s wounds, once softly patting his hand when he whimpered in pain. “Ida,” Andrew said quietly, “a very mean man hurt Ezekiel. We want to keep him safe and let him heal. That means you can’t tell anyone that Ezekiel is here. Can you keep it a secret?”

  Ida nodded. She looked frightened, but resolute.

  “Will?” Andrew asked.

  “I won’t tell.” His voice was low but firm.

  Andrew straightened. “Maybe we can keep this a secret while Ezekiel heals. But what then?”

  “We give him a home.” Mary didn’t see any other choice.

  Jory folded his arms. “Maybe we can do that. Maybe we can find a safer place for him, somewhere else. But we can’t let him go back to Peavey.”

  Mary opened her mouth but swallowed her words. For now, they were agreed. But she didn’t want Ezekiel to go anywhere else.

  She looked at the boy. She had never been so close to a Negro before, never touched black skin. But what did it matter, when a child needed comfort? How could anyone do anything but wipe away tears and blood? Keeping him safe was all that mattered.

  “We’re agreed, then.” Andrew nodded. “I do think we better take him upstairs.”

  Mary grimaced. “I hate to move him.”

  “For his own safety,” Andrew said, “he needs to be out of sight.”

  Mary was washing dishes the next afternoon when Jory walked into Chy Looan and closed the door behind him. Her heart tightened with dread. “What’s wrong?” He should have been at the mine.

  “You need to know what’s happening.”

  She dried her hands on her apron. “Tell me.”

  Jory reported that when Peavey arrived at his mine that morning, he’d been enraged to find no sign of Ezekiel. “He stormed all through the diggings, looking for the boy.”

  Mary smiled a small, mean smile. “Well, he didn’t find him.”

  “No,” Jory said grimly, “but even in the dark, somebody evidently saw Andrew carrying him down the hill. Peavey’s already been to Andrew’s house. Frightened his wife half to death. She let him search the place, which was probably for the best, and then came to find us. But I doubt this is over.”

  Mary sat down heavily. She’d been so focused on Ezekiel’s care that she’d let herself believe that there wouldn’t be trouble.

  “I’m going to stay home with you this afternoon,” Jory said.

  “You can’t do that! The mine … ”

  “The mine can wait. Andrew and Will are working.” He sat down at the table. “How’s Ezekiel?”

  “I think he’s dazed by his turn of fortune.” She blew out a long breath. “But he’s clearly still frightened. I’ve tried to reassure him, but I don’t know how much he really understands. Most of the time he sleeps.”

  Jory reached for the latest copy of the Miners’ Free Press. Mary finished washing up. Although bread was baking in the spider, she decided she wouldn’t make her rounds. It was best she stay clear of the diggings today.

  She was chopping potatoes and swede for pasties when a fist pounded on the door.

  Jory jumped to his feet. “Go upstairs.”

  Mary didn’t want to go upstairs. She stood still.

  Her brother opened the door, but only as wide as needed. “Yes, Mr. Peavey?”

  “Do you have that boy in there?” The furious voice was high, nasal, inflected with the drawl Mary had heard from other Southern men. She took a step closer.

  “Our boy Will is at our mine—”

  “My boy!” Peavey screeched. “That boy is my property.”

  “I have no idea where he is.”

  That was the first lie Mary had ever heard Jory tell. She couldn’t have been prouder.

  “Then you won’t mind if I take a look around.” Peavey edged closer, stepping into Mary’s view. He was a slight man with an aggrieved, pinched face. Dark hair shot with gray hung in strings to his shoulder. He didn’t look like a miner. His clothes—a dark suit and red vest—were not crusted with dirt. His hands were clean, uncalloused.

  “I do mind.” Jory blocked Peavey’s way. “Go. Now.”

  “I have a right!” Peavey shoved against Jory, clearly planning to force his way into the cottage. Jory was shorter, but he was a miner—powerful and strong. He moved so fast that Mary scarcely saw the blow. One moment Peavey was trying to muscle his way inside; the next, he was falling backwards down the front step.

  He leapt immediately to his feet, slapping dust from his trousers. He pulled a kerchief from his vest pocket and dabbed gingerly at his nose, which was bleeding. His eyes narrowed as he stared at the blood staining his kerchief. Slowly he looked up at Jory, who’d stepped outside, and Mary, who stood in the doorway.

  “I’ll find that boy,” Peavey spat. “I’ll make him sorry he didn’t stay where I left him. And I’ll be sure that whoever helped him lives to regret it too.”

  When someone else knocked on the door a short while later, Mary pressed her lips into a tight line to keep from crying out. Jory lifted a hand in her direction: Wait. I’ll get it. He walked to the door and cracked it open—then swung it wide.

  Ruan stepped inside. “What’s this? Why the closed door on such a fine afternoon?”

  “Oh, Ruan.” Mary went to him and let her cheek rest against his shoulder. Safe.

  His voice softened. “Here, now. What’s happened?”

  She drew back and, with occasional commentary from Jory, told her fiancé about hearing a child crying on Mena Dhu, and what had happened since.

  “That’s a cruel trick, leaving him in the mine.” Ruan looked disgusted. “But—what are you going to do with him?”

  “Keep him, I hope,” Mary said. “Raise him in a kind home.”

  Ruan was silent. Mary watched him glance at the ceiling, as if imagining the child sleeping fretfully in the loft. Then he spoke to Jory: “You’ll stay while I take Mary for a walk?”

  “Of course.”

  Mary grabbed her shawl from its peg and they left the cottage. For a long time neither spoke. They walked up Shake Rag, lifting hands in greeting to women hanging laundry in their tiny yards, children racing about, a miner who’d suffered a broken leg and now spent most daylight hours on his front step where he could see the diggings.

  Ruan’s silence made Mary uneasy. She was bone-weary after watching over Ezekiel all night, running up and down the steep stairs over and over. Parnell Peavey had frightened her, and she was even more frightened of what he might do next.

  Finally Ruan felt moved to speak. “Mary. You know you can’t keep that boy.”

  She frowned. “The first thing is to help him heal.”

  “But … where Peavey comes from, he’s entitled to own human property. You’re breaking the law.”

  “It’s a law worth breaking!”

  “Keep your voice down,” Ruan muttered. He nodded pleasantly at a woman walking down the lane with a market basket. “Mary, you have a charitable heart. It’s one of the things I loved about you, right from the beginning. You are kind and good. But surely you can see that this is a bad idea.”

  “No, I don’t see.” She pulled her hand from the crook of his elbow and walked on with arms crossed over her chest. “I’ll never give Ezekiel back to the man who abused him so. Slavery is an evil that should be abolished—”

  “Yes, it should. But like it or not, slavery is generally tolerated in the Wisconsin Territory.”

  She walked faster.

  “Mary!” Ruan’s low voice held a note of something hard. “How can you speak of raising this boy? Is that a decision for you to make alone?”

/>   “Well, I—”

  “I was happy when you took Ida. When you took Will from his uncle, I helped you. But this? No. You may not take this boy in.”

  “I already have.”

  “What will people think?”

  Mary stopped and whirled to face him. “I don’t know how it’s all going to work out. But I do know I will never return that child to slavery.”

  “You won’t have to. The sheriff will find out and seize the boy.”

  “I’ll hide him.” Tears stung her eyes. Ruan wasn’t being fair. She hadn’t had time to figure everything out. “My brothers will protect him.”

  Ruan’s mouth tightened. “Be sensible! You came here with a dream of doing well. To rise. And you’re doing so! We are doing so. Do you want to undo all of your hard work?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Every friend you’ve made will shun you.”

  “I don’t care!”

  Ruan walked away, turned again and came back. “Mary, think about what you are saying. You are my intended. I will happily welcome Ida and Will into our home. But that is all.”

  “If you would come meet Ezekiel, see how badly—”

  “No.”

  Mary stared at the man she loved. She’d thought, after two years, that she’d known him. And that he’d known her. It was hard to breathe. She pressed one hand against her chest. Her heart had broken when she’d first seen how badly Ezekiel had been hurt. Now the broken pieces were shattering to bits, as if struck by a hammer. “I thought … ”

  Ruan tried one more time. “Mary. He’s naught but a slave boy.”

  His words came as another blow, filling her with more sharp edges. “No, Ruan. Ezekiel’s naught but a child.”

  A muscle in Ruan’s jaw twitched. The eyes that so often crinkled with laughter seemed hooded.

  He turned and walked away. This time he didn’t come back.

  Thirty-One

  “I still can’t believe everything that’s happened.” Adam rubbed a hand over his face. “In fact, I still don’t even understand it.”

  Adam had arrived in Mineral Point the day before and found Shake Rag Street crowded with police cars and other rescue vehicles. By the time the police were finished with Chloe, and she finally got back to Tamsin’s apartment, she’d been too exhausted to do more than provide Adam and Tamsin a quick summary of her day, call Roel­ke, and go to bed.

  The three of them were now ensconced in a booth at the Red Rooster Café, ready for breakfast. The Saturday newspaper was on the table. Much of the front page was devoted to Pendarvis. Chloe picked it up and frowned at the headline: Drugs Found In Abandoned Mine On Dark Hill; Shot Fired In Historic Pendarvis House.

  “The shot was fired at Pendarvis House, not in it,” she observed, and put the paper down.

  Adam eyed her. “Roel­ke must be apoplectic.”

  “Actually, that’s a bit of an understatement,” Chloe admitted.

  A young waitress appeared at Chloe’s shoulder with insulated pot in hand. “Coffee?”

  Adam and Tamsin nodded. “Definitely,” Chloe said, and turned her white mug over to receive the aromatic offering. She’d been too shaken up to eat much the evening before. She was still shaken, actually, but she was also hungry. She ordered scrambled eggs with hash browns, toast, and a tall OJ.

  When the waitress had departed Adam said, “Let me make sure I’ve got this straight. What happened in the abandoned mine yesterday was not related to what happened in Pendarvis House yesterday?”

  “I don’t think so.” Chloe reached for the pitcher of cream. “Here’s what I know. Rita, a young interpreter at Pendarvis, has been dating a guy who is evidently a drug dealer. Somehow he or Rita discovered the hidden entrance to a mineshaft on Dark Hill that hadn’t been sealed, and he decided it would be the perfect warehouse for his stash. I went in because I thought a child, maybe Holly, might have gotten into trouble down there.”

  “But there was no child?”

  “Nope.” Chloe concentrated on stirring cream into her coffee. She still didn’t know what to make of the cries that had lured her into the mine, but she didn’t want to talk about it. “I did find a stash of what I think is cocaine, and some pot, and a notebook where the dealer kept track of customers.”

  “And then the dealer found you.” Adam’s frown was accusatory.

  “I didn’t know there were drugs in the mine!” Chloe protested. “And I didn’t know he’d seen me go into the mine.” Although the crowded café hummed with conversation, she lowered her voice. “Actually, I wonder if Rita saw me start up Dark Hill from Pendarvis, and called him. When the dealer showed up I managed to get past him, and was heading for the ladder, when the mine caved in. He got trapped on the other side.”

  “Too bad he didn’t get trapped underneath,” Tamsin muttered.

  “Grandma!” Adam looked shocked. Tamsin looked unrepentant.

  Chloe began creasing her napkin. “It took the responders a while to get him out. They’d heard my story by then, of course, and took him into custody.”

  “What about Rita?” Adam asked.

  “I don’t actually know if Rita was involved.” Chloe still hoped that the young woman was guilty of nothing worse than falling for a jerk. “It seems hard to believe. And yet … ” She sighed. “No harder to believe than Evelyn Bainbridge shooting at me.”

  Tamsin leaned back against the red upholstery. “Evelyn is on the board of the Mineral Point Historical Society. She’s active in the church. She’s got deep roots in this town.”

  “I think that’s the point,” Chloe said gently. “You helped me understand that, Tamsin. When you saw Andrew Pascoe’s name on the property owners list, you decided it would be better to stop searching than to discover something disturbing about your ancestor.”

  “Well, it’s just that … I thought … ” Tamsin picked up a spoon and began rubbing at an invisible spot of tarnish with a napkin.

  “When I talked to Evelyn about the skeleton,” Chloe added, “the only possibility she would entertain is that two hoboes passing through in the early 1930s, when Chy Looan was empty, had brawled.”

  Tamsin looked up from the spoon. “It could have happened that way.”

  “Yes,” Chloe conceded. “But Evelyn’s extremely proud of her ancestors, especially one Parnell Peavey, who was a contemporary of territorial governor Henry Dodge. Those early white leaders are still revered as heroic pioneers, but many were hard, sometimes brutal men. Peavey and Dodge both owned slaves. Both fought to drive Native Americans from the area. Evelyn had shared some of her family records, and also filed the Pendarvis research material Dr. Miller used. Evelyn figured out that Dr. Miller was writing a book that did not depict these white men as heroes.”

  They were brooding over that when the waitress appeared with their food. Chloe started with her hash browns. Comfort food.

  After a moment Tamsin said, “Well, maybe I didn’t want to hear that Andrew Pascoe was suspected of killing someone. But even if it was true, I never would have done anything to stop someone from publishing that information.”

  “I suspect Evelyn got concerned when she realized that she might have inadvertently provided family material for what was going to be a hatchet job on the Lead Region’s early white leaders,” Chloe said.

  “But to kill the poor girl!” Tamsin moaned.

  “Evelyn probably entered the house on the upper level and caught Miller at the head of the stairs.” Chloe had spent a lot of time imagining the possibilities. “Evelyn admitted that they argued, and that she’d pulled a gun to scare Dr. Miller, so perhaps she fell. Or perhaps they got into a tussle over the journal or the file about Evelyn’s family. Maybe Evelyn tried to talk Miller out of writing her book.”

  Tamsin shuddered. “I can’t bear to think about it.”

  Adam gestured with a pie
ce of bacon. “Either way, Evelyn made a horrible decision when she left Polperro House and pretended nothing had happened, instead of calling for help. She must have been guilty of something if she just left Miller lying at the bottom of the stairs.”

  “Evelyn’s window for confronting Miller was short,” Chloe said. “If only someone had walked into the house in time to calm things down … ” She’d been thinking about that a lot.

  “Where was Loren?” Adam asked.

  “Loren and Gerald were on Dark Hill, digging a badger hole.” Chloe dabbed butter on her toast. “And Evelyn might have seen Claudia taking off. However Miller ended up falling, Evelyn was quick-witted enough to grab the green journal before leaving Polperro House. I’m guessing she panicked, and felt compelled to hide the journal fast. She used to volunteer in the gift shop, and so knew about the boarded-over fish pond.”

  “It’s astonishing that no one saw her,” Adam observed.

  “At that hour, the shop is generally deserted,” Chloe told him. “When I arrived, Evelyn was alone in the office. She was agitated, but when I asked if she was okay, she said she was frustrated because of people calling about the threat to close Pendarvis. The day before we had just as many calls, and Evelyn was calm and cool.” She twisted her mouth with regret, wishing she’d paid more attention.

  Adam leaned forward, elbows on the table. “But why did Evelyn come after you?”

  “Evelyn came into the gift shop right after I found the journal. Maybe she glanced in the window and actually saw me find it.” Chloe tucked one leg up on the bench. “At that point she might have figured she was in too deep, and she couldn’t let me pass the journal on to—”

  “Why—hello!” Claudia stopped beside the booth. “I see we all needed sustenance this morning.” Holly waved energetically at Chloe from her mother’s side. Claudia was in jeans. Holly wore period clothes.

  “Want to join us?” Adam asked.

  Chloe, sitting across from Adam and Tamsin, scooted all the way to the wall. “Slide in.” Holly wriggled onto the bench beside her and carefully smoothed her skirt. “You look extra beautiful this morning,” Chloe added, thinking, Holly is okay. She really is okay.