B. J. watched the party of five cross his donkey meadow, each bent beneath a pair of sacks tied together behind the neck. He shook his head and gathered up a few possessions-just some clothes and his treasured Lucilius-then he went down to help the Kanes prepare for their descent. As it turned out, they didn't leave until the next morning.
Throughout the day and night that the Mercantile had been besieged by panicked buyers, Mr. Kane had repeatedly brushed off his daughter's pleas not to exert himself. "Matthew and me can do everything, Pa!" Now they were the last people left in Twenty-Mile, and he was bringing a small pasteboard box of memorabilia down the stairs for B. J. to put into one of the slim blanket rolls that were to be their only burdens on the descent. B. J. reached up to receive the box, but Mr. Kane grasped both his hands, letting the box drop. He sat heavily on the bottom step and looked up, bewildered. "I think… oh, Mr. Stone, I think…" And he died, holding the hands of the man who, if things had worked out differently, might have been a friend.
Later, when she was going through the box of memorabilia, Ruth Lillian discovered a lock of fine reddish baby hair… hers…, the fine German scissors that her grandfather had brought from the old country, and a yellowed photograph of her grandparents and their young son… her father… standing proudly before a sign announcing: The American High-Class Finishing Materials Company (Reliable Service at Competitive Prices).
Although she had been preparing herself for her father's death for years, she still had difficulty swallowing back her silent tears.
Using the same barrow that had carried Coots, they brought Mr. Kane to the burying ground. Matthew could only manage a shallow grave in the stiffening earth, and the best B. J. could do for a marker was to drive in a fence post onto which he had nailed a board with the scratched-on words: "David Kane… A good man."
At the last minute, Matthew returned to the marshal's office to roll up his possessions. He took only his Hudson Bay blanket, his broken-backed dictionary, a scarf and pair of gloves Ruth Lillian had laid aside for him before the miners emptied the Mercantile of stock, and the canvas bag containing his treasures: the little blue glass bottle that had been buried so mysteriously, the marble with a real American flag suspended in the middle, and the rock with gold flakes that someone had said was only fool's gold, but who knows? His other treasure, the ball-pointed marshal's badge, he always wore pinned to his jacket.
The three of them paused for a moment by the fence to look through the sifting snow to where Coots and Mr. Kane lay side by side. Then they started across the donkey meadow.
THIS IS THE PLACE to confess my debt to the Destiny Tribune, and particularly to its reporter-of-all-desks, C. R. Harriman. (I have no idea what the initials stood for.) Writing in the succulent, sesquipedalian journalese of the era, young Harriman chronicled the arrival of the refugees from Twenty-Mile; and it was he who, some thirty years later, wrote the account of his own last days in Destiny that I shall soon have cause to mention.
Combing through the yellowedged, friable pages of the Tribune in the Historical Society's archives, I learned of Reverend Hibbard's arrival in Destiny three days after Coots's lynching, and five days before the first miners came stumbling in. He was found wandering in the street, muddy, bruised, completely worn-out. It was through C. R. Harriman's interview with Hibbard that Destiny found out what had become of those three insane escapees from the state prison who had dropped out of sight after killing that retired schoolteacher in Tie Siding and doing those terrible things to that poor woman who happened to come visiting. Hibbard described their reign of terror in Twenty-Mile, and he told of the death of Mr. Delanny, owner of the hotel, and the lynching of a mixed-blood named Coots. The Reverend explained that after doing everything in his power to prevent the lynching but- alas-failing, he had volunteered to make the dangerous descent to alert Destiny of the dreadful events in Twenty-Mile. The reporter congratulated Reverend Hibbard for his courage and suggested that the mayor might want to demonstrate the community's gratitude in some more-material way, but the next morning Hibbard was not to be found, having withdrawn his savings from the Destiny Bank and Trust and taken the morning train west.
I was going through the Destiny Tribune's account of Hibbard's arrival, when it suddenly struck me: Why did it take three days for Hibbard to get down to Destiny? Descending the thirty or so miles of serpentine railroad line-even a very cautious descent-shouldn't have taken more than one full day. After all, the snow hadn't started yet; and two months earlier Matthew had climbed up in a little over twelve hours.
Then I realized that Hibbard couldn't have come down the tracks. The rock slide precipitated by the storm had already cut the line. What must have happened was this: after snatching up a few valuables from his depot, he must have started down the track in the storm, but when he came to the break in the line, he was obliged to return to Twenty-Mile, probably with the intention of slipping around the edge of town, crossing the donkey meadow, and working his way down the steep old access trail to Destiny, the same trail that was later used by the miners and townsfolk. If my calculations are roughly correct, he would have been hiding somewhere (perhaps in one of the abandoned buildings) when B. J., Matthew, and Frenchy were burying Coots.
I find it distasteful to think of Reverend Hibbard peering out from his hiding place, watching the burial of Coots.
It was from C. R. Harriman's interview with a"… redoubtable old soldier who, despite the loss of a leg in the service of his country, led the dangerous trek down to Destiny, guiding four others to safety," that I gleaned details of the ore-bearers' descent. But many particulars were vague because (as Harriman obliquely put it) "the fatigues of the colorful old soldier's journey did not prevent him from accepting bibulous congratulations proffered by gentlemen at the local oases."
In a column headed "Dramatic Incident at Twenty-Mile," this soldier, who gave his name as Sergeant-Major Jefferson M. Calder, described the shoot-out between Matthew and the escaped madmen from the state prison. He told how the young boy had faced down the desperados, using tactics he'd learned from the old soldier himself. But the strain of this confrontation had"… pretty much gutted the kid. Made him go sort of simple. Shoot, he even started thinking he was the town marshal!"
My debt to C. R. Harriman does not end with his interviews in the Tribune. A few years ago a colleague sent me a book he thought might interest me. When I unwrapped the package, the name C. R. Harriman on the cover immediately ignited my curiosity. It was a privately published account of his early years in Wyoming, concentrating on what the title called: The End of Destiny. Three hundred numbered exemplars of the book were printed in 1928, and I suppose that copy No. 132, which sits on my desk at this moment, is the only one extant, though I should be delighted to hear otherwise from a reader.
After a lively anecdotal description of the birth and growth of Destiny, Harriman's book focuses on the six weeks between the arrival of the frozen, bone-weary miners who had threaded their way down the snow-clogged trail from Twenty-Mile, and the economic panic that led to Destiny's collapse.
As soon as the miners had rested up, they were out roving the streets, creating a hectic holiday atmosphere. After drawing their wages from the mine's agent in town, they applied themselves diligently to joy-seeking, sure that their respite would be short, and that they would be back slaving in the mine as soon as the Boston owners repaired the collapsed rail line.
Information concerning the broken line was indeed telegraphed back to Boston, and days of silence ensued while the company weighed the considerable investment necessary to repair the track against the return they could expect from the mine. Then instructions came to the company office: After detaching the Surprise Lode from its mother company so as to avoid further liability, the Boston owners declared it bankrupt, leaving the miners without jobs, and leaving Destiny's dozen or so small service enterprises with unpaid accounts. The town was staggered by the news, for this was before the legalized scam of "chapter 11" bankruptcy, back when avoiding one's debts was considered dishonorable, and men driven to bankruptcy were expected to-and often did-commit suicide. Having assured the angry townsfolk that the Boston owners were entirely sensible of their responsibilities, the company agent quietly locked the door of his office and took the 2 A. M. eastbound to avoid the unpleasant distinction of being tarred and feathered.