I’m awake just before noon. The sun is beating down, making it like a steam bath inside the canvas, and my clothes are clamped to my skin with sweat. Even the tarp is sweating.
I toss about a bit. I even try blocking the light by covering my face with a flannel, but that only gets me hotter, and I’m struck by a terrific fear that I might suffocate if I fall asleep like that. Finally I get up, light the fire and make coffee. I then do some laundering of my own before heading into town for more supplies.
I pick up a bit of bacon at Pat Burns’ Meat Market before heading over to the bakery. I’ve just left the shop when I spot Rose May ahead of me with her arm around the waist of a younger girl. I’m looking from the back, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve seen her before. I walk quicker. I’m no more than fifteen feet away when the wind catches the hem of her skirt, revealing the moccasins on her feet.
“Maddie!”
She turns. But instead of acknowledging me, she faces forward again.
“Maddie, don’t you remember me?” I cut in front of the two of them. “It’s Charlie.” Maddie drops her head so that I can no longer see her eyes. They are hidden beneath the brim of her bonnet. I wonder if she’s avoiding me because of Willie Many Horses and what he does. Perhaps I should tell her that I know as well as anyone that even the most honest fellow may feel forced to do something he normally wouldn’t do to save his hide. But there’s no point in going into all that until I know for sure why she’s avoiding me.
Rose May stops walking. She faces me, cocking an eyebrow in an inquisitive way. “Charlie, how is it that you know Maddie?”
“I stayed with her family in their camp, back near Pincher Creek.”
“Well, I don’t know where that family is now, but she’s coming to live with me. Look at her—the poor girl is starving to death. I found her on the street this morning nearly collapsed, she’s so exhausted and in need of food. She’s agreed to help mind our establishment, to do the chores and run errands for my girls in exchange for food and a roof over her head.”
I look at Maddie more closely. Rose May is right. Maddie looks thin as a cat, squashed the way she is against Rose May’s fleshy self. Her face is much thinner than I recall, and the pitiful clothes she wears make her look like she’s been fed through a mangle. I wonder what happened to her buckskin dress with all its fancy quilling.
Rose May smiles and pinches Maddie’s wasted cheek. “If we can get her fattened up, we might even get the fellows interested. I expect Maddie here will be a fair charmer with a little added weight. What do you think, Charlie?”
It takes me a second to take in her meaning, but when I do, I look at her in horror. I don’t answer, but grab Maddie and wrench her free of Rose May’s arm. I pull her with me, stumbling at my heels—my only thought being to get her as far away from Rose May as I can. Rose May screeches and hollers behind us, throwing her chubby fists in the air. I glance back. She’s making a lot of noise, but she isn’t following. I duck around to the back door of the Imperial Hotel, where I lead Maddie into the empty laundering room. We are both pulling hard to get air into our lungs when I finally speak.
“You’re not going with her,” I say. I’m afraid of Maddie running off, so I continue to hold tight to her arm. “What are you doing here? Where’s the rest of your family?”
Maddie folds forward a little before she starts to cry. Her legs seem to give up entirely. “Charlie, let go, you’re hurting me. I’m not going to run. I have no place to run to.”
I let go of her wrist, but I catch her in my arms as she slowly crumples to the floor. I let her go on and cry for a while—it might help lighten her troubles if she does. Finally she dabs at her eyes with the ragged ends of her cloak. “Father’s in jail because he wouldn’t let them put Henry and me in school. Even after they found us, he tried to prevent it.”
“Is that where you’ve been? Is that why you’re dressed this way?”
She nods. “It’s where I’m running away from. I left a week ago, after they sent Henry home. They sent him back to the reserve because he’s come down with tuberculosis. He’s sicker than I’ve ever seen him. They said there was nothing more they could do. The baby’s near ready to die, and Mother’s sick too. I want to be with them, but she won’t let me because I’m well. She won’t have me come down with it too. Besides, she’s too worn and tired to put up with any more trouble from the school. I’m not her responsibility anymore, she told me. Only the school can tell me what to do. They had to sign to it. It’s a terrible place, Charlie.” Maddie begins to cry again.
Not knowing what else to do, I pull her head against my shoulder.
“They took away our clothes and gave us these awful things to wear. They feed us barely enough to keep us standing on our feet. They burned all the boys’ medicine bags. They put them in the stove and set them on fire.
They cut their hair off too. They thrash us if we speak anything but English. They’re trying to thrash all the Indian out of us. They say our families and our way of life is shameful and heathenly, and it’s their duty to make us civilized.”
I don’t know what to say. Then I remember my bread and cheese. Maddie tries to be ladylike about accepting it, but she’s so hungry, she tears into it with little insistence from me.
“How’d you wind up in Frank?”
She answers between mouthfuls. “I hid in a wagon. I knew it was leaving the school, going into Pincher Creek for supplies. All night I waited, crouched in the box beneath the tarp. Just before we reached town, I jumped off. I hid in a farmer’s hayloft until I ran out of the food I’d snuck from the school pantry. I was just about fainting from hunger, so this morning I climbed in his hay wagon after he’d hitched it up. This is where it stopped.” Maddie trembles as she draws in a long breath. “Charlie, I don’t know where to go or what to do. I can’t go back to that place. I can’t go home or I’ll get sick, like so many others.”
“No, you can’t,” I agree.
Maddie is all plugged up with tears and having trouble swallowing. I fill a glass of water from the pump and hand it to her. I’m not sure what to do either. I can’t take her back to my camp in the valley, not with all those fellows and no women around. I think of Violet Love. “Maddie, can you wait here for me? Just for ten minutes. Don’t worry, I don’t expect anyone will come in. I work here and we do the laundry at night. Hide in that storage room. It’s got a window and you’ll be safe. I’m going to talk to someone who might be able to help us.”
Maddie nods. She quickly finishes her drink. I see that she’s comfortable enough in the storage closet with a stack of clean towels to sit on. I then make her promise again that she’ll wait for me, and I go off to find Violet Love. I don’t know who else I can trust.
Violet lives in one of the miners’ cottages at the end of Dominion Avenue, behind the boarding house. She’d pointed it out to me one morning, although even if she hadn’t, I don’t know that I’d need directions. I can hear her voice through an open window as I come down the street. I know her temper is just about stretched to snapping, what with her sick children and her lack of sleep. I turn into her yard, where I step over a broken china doll and knock on the front door. Violet is surprised to see me, of course.
“Charlie, well, I don’t ever see you in daylight. Come on in and have a dish of porridge with us.” She motions me through the door with a big wooden spoon.
But I stand where I am, not wanting to intrude, especially after spotting the tots behind her. Their small hands wipe at runny noses, and they madly scratch at their skin. Two older ones sitting at a table clamour for the porridge she’s been stirring on the stove.
“I appreciate you asking, but no, thank you. I really don’t want to take much of your time.” I then quickly explain my visit. When I finish, I wait for Violet to tell me what’s on her mind. I haven’t asked her for anything specific. I’ve told her that I most importantly want her advice. But I do tell her I can’t let Maddie end up in Rose May’s sporting house. I don’t know how she’s going to react to Maddie being an Indian. You think you know someone, but you can never really be sure how a person is made until you’re faced with something like this.
I know I’ve been a good judge of her when she slaps her hands on her hip.
“Well, what did you go leave her sitting in a closet for?” She pierces the air with the wooden spoon. “Go get her, you donkey’s duff. Maybe now I can get a bit of rest while she minds my brood. If she doesn’t mind plain cooking and sharing sleeping quarters with the little ones, I can gladly feed her until she’s found a place to go.”
I jump from the stoop and take off down the street to rescue Maddie from the closet where I’d left her holed up.
It’s early evening when I return from getting Maddie settled. Mr. Bruce Stewart’s booming voice echoes throughout the camp. He’s hollering if anyone has seen Douglas—not asking anyone in particular as he paces around the tents. I look up from where I’m poking at my fire when he nears James and me.
“Have you seen my Douglas? I haven’t seen hide nor hair of him since I left this morning. No supper waiting or heated water ready for his father to have a wash. The boy gets a crack on the head and he’s no good for anything. I told him his holiday was over. Tomorrow he’s going back to work. If you see him, tell him his father’s looking for him. You might also warn him to watch out for his hide. Idleness doesn’t run in this family.”
“Yes, sir,” James answers from where he’s frying his supper. He moves his coffee pot to the grate.
I nod so that Mr. Stewart will know that I’ve heard what he said. As soon as he moves on, James waves me over to his camp. When I get there, he motions me into his tent. “Charlie, come in here,” he says in an odd way.
I follow him in.
“Someone was in here. They helped themselves to a few of my things.”
I glance around at the small stove he’s installed to heat the place, his bedroll, and the wooden crates where he stores his food. He also owns a small rough-built table.
“How can you tell? I can’t see that it looks disturbed.”
“I know it doesn’t. I didn’t realize it myself until I started looking. But I left my hatchet over there by the stove, and my storage crates have been rummaged through. It’s mostly food that’s missing, and nothing’s been vandalized. Oh, and I had a couple of books on the shelf there, by my head. They’re gone, but whoever it was left my pocket watch. It was sitting next to the books, right out in the open. It’s not worth much, but it was given to me at one of my foster homes. Now why would he take food and books and leave what little was valuable?”
I shrug. “I guess he wasn’t taking just for the sake of having. He only took what he thought he needed to survive.”
James looks at me.
“Douglas hated mining. He never wanted to do it; you were right about him. Anyway, I think we ought to give him time to put some distance between him and his dad.”
“But if he doesn’t show up tomorrow, his position will be gone. What if he changes his mind?”
“I don’t think he will. He was awfully determined.”
“Charlie.” James pauses before touching his forehead. It’s something I’ve seen him do in the past, most usually when an idea is forming. But a moment later he says, “Never mind.”
I am splitting kindling when he wanders over to my camp a half hour later. “I’ve been thinking; you’ve got another day off, why don’t you take Douglas’s place? It will buy him at least one more day. You may be right; he may be gone for good, but just in case.”
I’m quite certain Douglas won’t be back and it will serve no purpose. But for my own sake, it would give me a chance to try out work in the mine.
James is able to convince Mr. Stewart of his plan. He doesn’t tell him we know Douglas ran off—just that it might help hold his job. The next morning I head up Dominion alongside the other miners. Douglas’s identification tag is tucked in my pocket. Once I’ve collected my Wolf lamp, I hang the tag on the miners’ checkboard in the lamphouse. James explains how the lamp man checks the board at the end of a shift. If there are any tags left hanging, he knows a fellow is still in the mine and could be in trouble.
We enter the mine through the lamphouse—I follow James into the pitch by way of a crude flight of stairs. The main gangway is shored up with timbers at the angle the coal seams run, and I feel like I’m trying to keep my footing in the hold of a listing ship. Water drips around us and the smell of sulfur drifts from a nearby spring. The clink and thud of picks loosening coal is drowned out by the noise from an approaching train of cars. The clatter becomes deafening—there are seven of them in all, hauled by a single draft horse. It’s nearing the main portal and moving at a mighty good clip. Down the line, the spragger stands ready to brake it. As we start down the tunnel, I don’t take my eyes from James’s lamp ahead of me—that and the sound of his voice seem the only things to be real.
With everything propped up by timbers, it seems we are walking through a dark forest of gnarled trees. But there are no earthly sounds of the wind or birds or animals, only the mechanical noises of men working the seams and moving buckets—dumping coal into carts. We walk a long way, miles it seems, into the belly of the mountain.
I’m working on the dusting team with James and three other men. Our team foreman is a man by the name of Mr. Amos Barr. Our job is to sprinkle calcium flour over the dug-out areas to keep the coal dust down and the invisible gases like methane from building up. We haul the large bags of calcium along with us in a metal cart to the mined-out rooms where pillars of coal have been left to support the roof.
“Eventually they’ll take those out too,” James tells me, “and this room will be left to collapse.”
We are quickly covered in the white powder. The men I work with are like ghosts moving about the black mine.
The powder burns my eyes and nose and scorches my lungs. The strangeness of where I am forces me to stay alert. Still, by mid-morning I’ve cracked my head more than once and grazed my shoulder, tearing my shirt.
I am working with my head down when I hear a sudden close clatter and James cries, “Charlie!” from across the space. At the same time, Amos grabs hold of my collar and wrenches me back. A breath of wind, and a resounding crash shakes the rock next to me. I turn. If not for Amos plucking me out of the way, I would have been crushed against the wall by the runaway dusting cart. It got away from one of the men. Amos takes a minute to lecture me —not the fellow responsible. “If you want to be sitting down to dinner tonight, lad, you’ve got to have eyes in the back of your head. You need ears sharp as a hawk’s and a nose like a bloodhound’s. And even those things will only give you an advantage. Many fellows have had them all and still wound up dead.”
I answer him with a solemn nod.
Following Amos’s directions, we work outward toward the main portal. I’m hauling another sack of dust from the cart when a crack like thunder shakes the mine. I think I’ve missed a step. I step backward into air and fall hard to the floor. While I am struggling to get up, Amos has already started toward the sound.
“It’s a normal thing,” James tells me. “The floors move when pressure is released in the chambers below.”
James is trying to sound calm, but I detect there isn’t a lot of conviction in his voice. Especially when the timber posts around us creak, and one or two begin to bow. Chunks of rock hurtle into the main tunnel. Men are now hollering, and the flood of lights in the gangway tells us it might be more serious than James thought. I follow him into the tunnel, where we are met by plumes of black smoke.
The head foreman quickly determines a nearby raise—a tunnel to the surface—has collapsed. He does a quick headcount. Niko and another miner by the name of Mikel are not among us. The miners immediately start digging into the collapsed vein.
Only so many can work in the confined space, so James and I pitch in by hauling away the coal and rubble they excavate. I heft bucket after bucket of rock into one of the large tubs. The men around me are breathing hard, sweating—rivulets of coal dust run from their brows, but no one complains. No one discusses the two men unaccounted for and the possibility they are lying broken beneath the collapsed rock. It strikes me that another collapse might be building or that this one could unleash some other disaster. If anyone else has the same thought, it doesn’t distract them from their work.
While we work, the head foreman communicates to those outside by way of a system of bells strung through the mine.
“They broke through!” he suddenly shouts. “Our boys are on the surface.”
As the news makes its way down the tunnel, the miners drop their picks and wipe their brows. They cough and spit to clear their lungs, recover their breath and discuss the collapse. After consulting with the other supervisors, the foreman determines the collapse was the result of a bump and tells us to return to our work. All around me, fellows start toward their stations. I am shaking—I don’t know how I can go back to work. Others chat about what’s happened or whatever else is on their minds. But I’m watching Niko, who has now returned and stopped to talk with the knot of men still clearing the collapsed vein—laughing—his white teeth shining through the soot.
“Come on, let’s get moving,” Amos tells me.
“The Indians wouldn’t camp in the valley,” James says as we return to where we’d been working. “Where we have our tents pitched, or where old Frank is sitting, either. They wouldn’t camp anywhere near the foot of Turtle Mountain. They still won’t. They say that it moves.”
“How can a mountain move?”
He shrugs. “Johnson, one of the Indians who works for Mr. Graham, says the story comes down from his ancestors. The Indians used to mine chert, a stone they used to fashion their tools. I guess the old-timers were scared off by the way the mountain shuddered when they were inside it, the way it just did. They called Turtle Mountain the mountain that walks.”
James breaks open another bag of calcium dust. The sounds of picks and carts clattering down the track have already resumed. “You know, Charlie, between you and me, I’m glad this is only for a couple of months. I’d much rather spend my time worrying about whether there’s going to be enough rain to grow anything than if I’ll be alive at the end of the day.”