Josephine hadn’t heard from J.M. Bridges in a full week, an uncharacteristic lapse for him. She knew he had been informed of the community vote, so she imagined he was licking his wounds, probably nursing a complaint against her that she hadn’t warned him in advance. So she decided to walk to the mine and talk it through with him. If he loved her as much as he claimed to, he could accept her reasoning.
But Bridges was not at the mine, nor was Mason. In the headquarters building, Dr. Kessler, the geologist, propped his feet on the stove while he read a book. Outside, crews of men went about their tasks, although from their pace it was easy to tell that the bosses were absent. “Gone to Ironton,” Kessler said. “The big boss man is coming through, and they’ve all been in a great frenzy.”
“You don’t look too frenzied.”
Kessler shrugged and stood up, marking his place with a scrap of paper. “I’m done here,” he said. He walked to the window. “Time to go back to civilization.”
“I’m surprised. I thought this place was rolling along.”
“It is. But it can roll along without me now. I’ve mapped all the ore-bearing strata from here north, and now that you folks aren’t selling, there’s no point in my staying. If I leave soon, I’ll be back in Chicago in time to resume teaching in the spring.”
“They’ll be sorry to see you go.”
“I doubt that,” he said, and she heard an edge of bitterness in his voice. “I think I make them uncomfortable, someone more interested in knowledge than money. I’d be happy to let that silver stay in the ground.”
“For someone not interested in money, I’d guess you’re taking a fair amount home.”
“Touché. And enough samples to fuel five years’ worth of scholarship.” He gestured to a stack of wooden crates against the side of the building. “I’ve done well here. That granite is Precambrian. Remarkable specimens.”
Absentmindedly, he fingered his thin gray hair. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this—”
“But?”
“But that vein of silver probably runs through your land. If you people ever change your minds about selling, take that into account.”
“How can that be? One of our citizens has been hunting all over the mountain for months.”
“I’ve seen his diggings. He’s up too high. If you have a vein, it’s lower down, around the level where your fields slope upward, I’d guess. You’d have to do a few test digs and look for metalliferous deposits.”
The gulf between them felt unfathomably wide. “But we need those fields.”
“Not if you hit a big vein. Then you can live like barons and build yourselves an opera house.”
The absurdity made her laugh. “Do you go to the opera when you’re in Chicago, Dr. Kessler?”
“When one comes to town and I can afford a ticket.”
“And what is it like?”
His eyes lit up. “Ah, magnificent! Chicago is mad for Wagner. Have you heard Wagner?”
“I can’t say I have,” Josephine said with a blush. “Who is he?”
“One of the greats,” Kessler said with a sigh. “Quite radical, though. They say riots break out at his performances sometimes.”
Josephine felt sad at her lack of sophistication, so provincial that even an eccentric geologist had more culture than she did. Sometimes she felt as though life was not a road, with twists and turns but an eventual destination, but rather more like a fish trap, a set of ever-narrower gates that pulled her onward until she reached a place where she could no longer turn around or even back up. She’d seen it hundreds of times, even the fiercest of gamefish grown still and unresisting in a trap, waiting passively for the fisherman to pluck it out to its doom. “Enjoy your opera, then. I’m glad your time here has been worthwhile.”
“Thank you. It’s time for me to go. My work’s run out, and—you know.”
“Know what?” Josephine said. “I’m afraid I don’t.”
Kessler’s eyes darted. “I shouldn’t speak of things I don’t know. But that man who died here—”
“Pierce?”
“Yes. Very troubling. Pierce was a big talker, something of a rabble-rouser to be sure, but he certainly didn’t deserve—”
“You’re saying he was killed?”
He raised his hands as if in surrender. “I can’t say anything for sure. Correlation does not equal causation. But the sequence of events makes one wonder. A man comes to work, he starts talking around, he holds quiet meetings out in the woods with the other workers, and the next thing you know he’s pulled from the river. Even if it’s not as bad as it looks, it’s bad enough. And now this business with you people and the County Court.”
“The County Court? Whatever do you mean?”
Kessler’s face grew bright red. “I have talked out of turn. I assumed you were here to lodge a complaint with Mr. Mason, or Mr. Bridges.”
“About what? Dr. Kessler, you mystify me.”
He threw on his hat and coat and dashed for the door. “I have no place to speak here. I am just an employee, one who overhears things but makes no decisions. Go to the courthouse.” And then he was gone.
She wandered out of the building, uncertain what to do next and reeling from his words. The courthouse? What had happened at the courthouse? She thought about returning to Daybreak and gathering a group, but decided against it. She was already halfway there, and whatever this dark news of Kessler’s was, it sounded like something that needed immediate discovery.
The muddy road made walking difficult, so Josephine was grateful when a doctor on his way home from a late-night call overtook her and offered a ride in his gig. She listened politely to his tales of breech births and galloping fevers as they bounced into Fredericktown.
By the time she reached the courthouse, she had decided on the direct approach. Diplomacy and discretion had never been her strong points anyway. She walked into the county clerk’s office and waited while he roused himself from his desk, where he appeared to have been napping.
“I’m here from Daybreak,” she said. “I’ve come to get the specifics on the county’s decision.”
She waited, silent, while the clerk rubbed his beard and feigned uncertainty. “Oh,” he said at last, after she had stood in stony silence for half a minute. “That must be the property tax revision.”
“So let’s hear about it,” she said.
“Here, missy,” said the clerk, pulling out a bound journal from under the counter. “I’ll let you read the minutes. Don’t want to mix things up by telling from memory.” He plucked at the ribbon marking the last entry in the minutes and opened the journal to that page. “I must excuse myself. There’s a meeting I’m late for. Glad you came in or I would have slept through it!” He darted for the back door.
Alone in the office, Josephine pored through the minutes, trying to restrain her dread. The language was obscure and legalistic, but finally she found what she was looking for.
A motion and a second to revise the property tax rates for real and personal property held in common by state-chartered organizations. That would be Daybreak, and only Daybreak, as far as she knew. That from the date of passage of this ordinance, such property would not be taxed at the simple rate, but at such a rate per each registered member of such organizations. Motion passed unanimously.
She read the words several times to make sure she understood. So each of them would be taxed for the total value of the community, or to think of it another way, the community would be taxed at a rate multiplied by the number of members. How many did they have now—eighty? Near ninety? Her eyes blurred.
The Western District judge lived on the other side of Blue Mountain, and the Eastern District judge off somewhere near Marquand. But the presiding judge lived here, in a fine old house on the road to Mine la Motte, and soon Josephine was pounding on his door. No sound came from within, but she suspected he was hiding upstairs, unless that weasel of a clerk had run to warn him.
“How much did they pay you?” she shouted. “How much? How much?” She slumped against the door. “What have you done to our Daybreak?”