SIX

 

 

Boise, Idaho

August 16, 1913

 

Harold Gilet stood against the back wall of the hot courtroom and watched Clarence Darrow stride back and forth in front of the jury of twelve men, all dressed in suits, all looking very uncomfortable in the heat. Hundreds of reporters and spectators jammed the room, their notepads held at ready, some scratching down what Darrow was saying, others using the pads as fans.

The huge open windows of the courthouse let in the street noise and once in a while a breath of breeze, but not near enough to suit Harold. He used today’s newspaper to fan himself, but even that didn’t seem to help. The heat and the smell of packed human flesh was overwhelming.

But he couldn’t leave. He had to stay to get his suspicions confirmed one way or another. The Governor had been killed because of a gold mine outside of Moscow, not because of the union problems in the silver mines farther north.

But as yet, in all the days of the trial, not one word of the old gold mine had been spoken. It was as if no one knew about it.

Senator Borah, the Boy Orator as they called him in Washington D.C., sat peacefully at a table in front of the judge with Idaho State’s Attorney General. Harold could tell that the Senator was listening intently to every word Darrow said. Darrow was considered the hottest young attorney in the nation. When he had offered to defend John Stevens for free in the bombing death of the Governor, the Attorney General had called Washington and asked if Senator Borah would come home and help in the prosecution for the state.

Of course the case had brought the press. Besides having a Governor assassinated, the future of the unions in the silver mines of Northern Idaho rode on this trial. And the future of a lot of mining unions all over the country.

If Stevens could be proven to have union connections and the Governor was killed on the orders of the unions as everyone suspected, the mine’s owners would win. The unions would be dead. But if Stevens was just a lone wolf, taking his hatred of the mines, and what they had done to him and his family, out on the Governor, then that would not hurt the unions. And the fighting would continue.

But Harold Gilet was sure the Governor’s death was because of another mine completely. A lost gold mine outside of the northern town of Moscow. He had overheard the wildest conversation possible two days before the Governor was killed.

He had been up in Idaho City, courting Mary, his soon to be wife. Her dad had a small placer claim there and had built Mary and her mother a cabin just above the creek. Harold had camped down and across the creek in a small grove of pine trees. Somewhere in the early morning hours he woke to the sound of a horse just beyond the grove. His fire had died down to nothing more than embers and through the trees he could see the faint flickering of a light.

With gun in one hand, he crept from his bedroll and moved silently toward the light. Beside the creek trail a man stood, holding the reins of a horse with one hand and a small lantern with the other. He seemed to be staring off down the trail in the direction of Idaho City.

So Harold settled in and waited. In this part of the country, unless you wanted to be shot, you never sneaked up on another man. Too many claim jumpers still working the mountains.

In a very short time another rider approached and dismounted. He was wearing the clothes of a gentleman even at this time of the night. Harold could even see the chain of the man’s pocket watch hanging from his vest. He was obviously from Idaho City or Boise.

“You got the caps?” the gentleman asked the other, who was dressed like a dirt miner and wore a rain slicker, even though it wasn’t raining. Harold now wished he had gotten closer because he couldn’t see either of their faces in the flickering lantern light.

The miner patted the horse’s saddle bags. “All set. I’ll pick up the dynamite down on the river.”

“Good,” the gentleman said. “Make sure you make it look right. Then get back north to Moscow.”

“Don’t you worry. The union will take the fall. You sure about this?”

Harold could see the gentleman nod. “Absolutely. We can’t let word of the gold mine get out. Outside of Moscow he’s the only one who knows about it. It was a mistake to tell him about it. With him gone and the mine on the back side of that mountain, no one is going to find it. Better that it stays lost.”

Without a handshake or another word both men mounted up and rode off in different directions. Harold went back to be wondering what that had been all about. The next day Mary agreed to be his wife and two days later he heard about the Governor being killed by a bomb.

He and Mary were married in Idaho City and then moved down to Boise When the trial started, Harold crowded into the courtroom every day with the reporters. He had thought about going to the Attorney General with what he had heard, but he couldn’t identify the men and the more he thought about it the more none of what he had heard made sense. He decided to wait and see if anything about a lost gold mine came up in the trial. If it did he would then tell what he had heard.

But not one word was ever said about a lost gold mine outside of Moscow. Stevens was convicted, without a connection made between him and the unions. Over the next year Harold couldn’t seem to shake the idea of there being a lost gold mine outside of Moscow. A mine that had gotten the Governor of the state killed.

So with the help of Mary’s father, the following summer they moved to Moscow with the idea that Harold would get an engineering degree. That summer Harold helped with the wheat harvest around Moscow and that fall he started school at the new land grant university there.

On weekends, without telling anyone, he explored the back side of Moscow Mountain.