Chicken Hill was a well-populated extension of the larger Carbonate Hill, where several of Leadville’s important mines were located. Primarily the domain of Swedes and Irishmen, Chicken Hill had been named for its first resident, William “Chicken Bill” Lovell, who had gained his nickname by trying to herd a flock of chickens across Mosquito Pass. The chickens froze to death on the mountain, but Chicken Bill delivered them down and sold them frozen to Leadville’s winter-bound miners, most of whom hadn’t tasted chicken in months. The unusual feat only added to a colorful reputation he had started developing when he supposedly salted his Crysolite Mine over on Fryer Hill and sold it to the prominent H.A.W. Tabor. Tabor managed to turn the joke around by finding in it a high-yielding ore vein Bill had not known about.
Chicken Hill, like a homely woman, looked best in darkness. Cabins stood at all angles about the hill, and for every towering evergreen there were ten stumps, which created a hazard to Kenton and Gunnison as they wound their way through the farrago, wondering which cabin housed the O’Donovan family. Kenton ran into a stump hidden in the shadow of a cabin and swore. Immediately a shutter flew open and a long rifle barrel protruded out at them, held by a bearded miner whose features were shadowed against the interior light of his cabin. They froze.
“And what do we be doing poking round out there?” said a very Swedish voice.
Kenton said, “Easy, my friend—I’m trying to find a particular residence to make a call.”
“In the middle of the night? What kind of call would this be?”
“The circumstances are unusual,” Kenton said.
“Yah, that I’d say they are,” the man rejoined. There came a draining silence during which, Gunnison suspected, the man was considering whether to continue talking or just shoot the trespassers down and avoid the delay in getting back to bed. To Gunnison’s relief, he kept talking. “Who yah be lookin’ for?”
“The O’Donovan family,” Kenton replied.
“Then why you botherin’ us Swedes? The Irish live yonder.” He waved with the rifle barrel.
“Which house?”
“That with the light still burnin’,” the man said. “If you do them harm, my friends, all of Chicken Hill will be callin’ in your debt.”
“We mean them no harm,” Kenton said. “Thank you, my friend. May I pay you for your guidance?”
“Indeed you may, thank you, sir.” The rifle went, and an upturned hand came out in its place.
Kenton fished out a bill and handed it over. Then he and Gunnison turned and walked toward the O’Donovan house. The sound of the Swede’s closing window drew a sigh of relief from Gunnison.
“I don’t relish another gunpoint encounter like that,” Kenton said as they rounded the front of the O’Donovan cabin. No sooner had he said it than the front door flew open and a woman with an older, feminine version of Lundy’s face and the wildest eyes Gunnison had ever beheld leveled a rifle at Kenton’s nose.
“One twitch and you’ll join the saints,” she said.
Kenton and Gunnison lifted their hands toward the black sky.
“Ma’am, please be careful with that weapon,” Kenton said. “We’ve come looking for Lundy O’Donovan.”
At that, the woman gave a horrid screech and raised the rifle higher. “What do you want with him?” she demanded, almost in tears. “I’ll see no harm done my boy!”
“We don’t want to harm him—we want to find him, protect him if need be,” Kenton said. “We are concerned about him, afraid he’s in trouble.”
“Trouble?” The rifle lowered an inch or two. “What do you mean by that?”
“My name is Brady Kenton. I’m associated with Gunnison’s Illustrated American. This is my partner, Alex Gunnison. We gave Lundy some help yesterday when some other boys were trying to take money from him, and he wanted to repay us by showing us something he thought we would want to include in the newspaper. He led Alex to an abandoned mine outside of town and…it’s a complicated story, Mrs. O’Donovan. It would be much easier to tell without a rifle under our noses.”
She looked both intrigued and cautious, but after a moment she bit her lip and lowered the rifle. “Lundy spoke of meeting you, and said you paid him money for something or another,” she said. “Come in, then. If you know aught about my Lundy, I’m wanting to hear it.”
“He’s not here, then?” Gunnison asked.
“Indeed he’s not, and that’s why I’m in the state I am.”
With the rifle lowered, Mrs. O’Donovan looked about half a foot shorter than before and sad rather than maniacal. She stood aside to let the men enter the little shack, which consisted of three rooms: the main room into which they had just come, of which one corner was a kitchen, and two bedrooms, one off the side, the other off the rear.
“I’ve seen your name and picture in the Illustrated American, Mr. Kenton,” she said wearily. “My husband, God rest him, liked you quite a lot.”
“I’m gratified, then,” Kenton said. “I’m sorry Mr. O’Donovan is gone.”
“Aye, it’s been hard it has. We’ve lost our first home to the lot jumpers and had to sell our little mine for lack of means to work it, but we get on with me taking in washing. But please, tell me about Lundy.”
Gunnison took over the story, giving every detail, and what she heard clearly worried her. Tears began streaming down her face. “So it was a dead man he found!” she said. “Lundy told me he had found something important but wouldn’t say aught of what it was. The boy likes his secrets too much. Oh, I wish he would come home so I could know he is well.”
For Kenton’s part, he was beginning to fear Lundy never would return, that whoever he had scuffled with at the mine, whether Briggs Garrett or someone else, had killed him. But the fact remained that Gunnison had not been killed and even had been dealt with mercifully at some difficulty. That alone gave hope that maybe Lundy also had been spared.
But there was a difference between Gunnison’s circumstances and Lundy’s that tempered the hope. Gunnison had seen no faces, heard no names. He had been unconscious when he was hauled up out of the shaft. Lundy, on the other hand, had probably seen who attacked him, maybe knew him, and that made him a threat that Gunnison was not. Kenton said nothing of this to Mrs. O’Donovan, seeing no value in worrying her more than she already was.
“Is there any place Lundy goes often other than here—a hiding place maybe?” he asked.
“Perhaps a thousand, for all I know. I’m so busy with my washing and the care of Old Papa that I mostly let Lundy run on his own.”
“Old Papa, you say…would Lundy have told his grandfather things he might not have told you?”
“Aye, I believe he tells him all he knows, but it makes no difference. Old Papa is not right.”
“Beg pardon?”
She tapped her head; the implication of mental disorder or injury was clear. “I can’t tell you even to this day if he knows who I am. But I love him dear; Old Papa and Lundy and Mother Church are all I live for, now that my Jock is dead and buried. God has taken much, but left much as well in Old Papa and my fine lad.” Then her face crumpled as she fought to hold back a sob, and Gunnison knew she had just realized again that her lad was not home.
“I wish I hadn’t gone with him to the mine, Mrs. O’Donovan,” Gunnison said, fighting back emotion. The stress of the long night was beginning to break him down. “Then none of this would have happened.”
“’Tis not your fault,” she said, wiping a tear on the back of her hand. “Lundy always finds trouble, with or without help.”
At that moment, a dog snarled and barked at the back of the house; then there was a commotion, another bark, and the fearful yell of a man as something banged against the rear wall.