The Silver Shadow Mine shut down after supper on Saturday as usual, and within fifteen minutes the men had washed, loaded up in one of the wagons and disappeared down the gulch. Milken, McGovern and Higgins remained behind, ostensibly to pack up and transport certain pieces of equipment that needed repair. In reality, the three men were to act as escort for a large deposit of silver going to Horace Tabor’s bank in Oro City. Milken calculated the day’s deposits would exceed $17,000, a sum unmatched for a week’s work in the mining industry to date. Tabor owned a mine that regularly produced $50,000 a month, but this would establish an all-time record for a week’s haul.
Milken had sent word to Harvey Smithson, the bank president, that he would be bringing the silver for assay and deposit at seven o’clock this morning. Tabor owned or managed a number of mines in the Arkansas River Valley and on the eastern slope of the Mosquito Mountain Range; he was well aware that such a large deposit always ran the risk of ambush – bandits, raiders, or even a gang of desperate miners. Milken trusted most of his men, but such a cache of silver coming down the gulch unguarded might motivate even his truest employees to turn.
So none of the men ever knew when Milken was making a deposit at the bank. Sometimes he would leave in the middle of the night, or during lunch break – he never went at the same time or on the same day of the week.
Most of the miners had a small stash of gold or silver hidden away to supplement their salary. Milken overlooked these minor transgressions; by turning a blind eye when they squirrelled a little away now and then, he had never been forced to address a major theft in his five years as foreman of Silver Shadow. He knocked on the wagon superstitiously.
Eight bags of silver were placed carefully under the driver’s seat. Milken would drive, with Lester McGovern in the back, his rifle loaded and ready. William Higgins was to ride alongside the wagon on one of Tabor’s horses. McGovern and Higgins earned extra each month to accompany the deposit runs. Higgins was deadly with a handgun – few men actually owned one, and even fewer could use firearms accurately. Lester McGovern was along for protection: at nearly seven feet tall, he was the largest – and strongest – man Milken had ever met. He weighed over three hundred and fifty pounds, very little of which was excess fat. The barrel-chested giant had been hardened by his years of mining – Lester McGovern was the region’s best mucker, hauling dirt and rocks from the veins so the men could get to the precious metals below. Of all the tasks, mucking was the worst by a furlong; it was a hard, dirty job, but McGovern handled it with ease.
Milken was never worried that McGovern would shoot anyone with the rifle he carried; he feared for the man McGovern struck with the rifle in close combat, for that man would surely be killed instantly.
Sunlight spilled further over the upper ridge of Horseshoe Mountain as the last of the boxes were tied down. The distant peaks across the valley were illuminated in dim pink and muted orange though the valley floor remained dark still. Then Milken saw the rider, a lone horseman approaching up the trail. Squinting in an attempt to improve his vision, Milken thought he could see dark blue trousers. Shit. Another soldier wandering west to seek his fortune in the mines: another beginner who didn’t stand a chance working at this altitude or under these conditions, another loner who’d probably lost his family or his mind fighting Americans for America. Winter was fast approaching; he didn’t need this. Milken silently cursed the hiring executives at the home office in town. If he had a dollar for every grey-leg and blue-leg beginner they had sent him to train since the end of that cursed war, he wouldn’t still be working for Tabor.
‘Lester, Billy, get out here.’ Milken spat his last mouthful of coffee into the dirt beneath the wagon. ‘We got a new digger comin’ up the trail. It looks like we’ll have comp’ny on our way down.’ Higgins emerged from the entrance to the Silver Shadow barracks carrying a pack and a three-quarter-bit axe with a crack in the handle. He loaded both into the wagon.
‘Four banjos broken this week?’ Higgins asked, examining the shovels Milken had stored in the wagon bed.
‘Yup, the damned things can’t keep up with McGovern,’ Milken replied, laughing.
Looking down the side of Horseshoe Mountain, Higgins motioned towards the lone horseman. ‘How do you know he’s a greenie?’
‘It’s a quarter to six on a Sunday morning and he’s ridin’ up the gulch. He’s gotta be a greenie. No digger we know would be doin’ that.’
‘Don’t you pick up most of ’em down in town?’ Higgins asked.
‘Most of the time I find them stinkin’ drunk at the saloon. Half of them don’t have a pot to piss in, and they know the weeks up here are long, so they blow whatever’s left of the scrip they got on ’em before makin’ the trip up this hill.’ Henry Milken had not taken his eyes off the horseman climbing the trail into the miners’ camp.
‘Look at that; he’s got his own horse,’ Higgins observed.
‘Yup, and blue pants, another Union boy.’
‘He must be from one of them rich Boston families to be all the way out here on his own horse.’ Few of the miners owned horses; many couldn’t ride and those who could more often used the horses stabled in Oro City for use in and around Tabor’s mining operations. William Higgins rode well, but he had not owned a horse since he began mining ten years earlier. When he borrowed a mount, Higgins wore his spurs, spurs he stole when he was honourably discharged from the US Cavalry. He was proud of his part in the bloody campaigns aiming to make the territory safe for pioneers and homesteaders. Wearing his spurs, even for the few hours it took to ride down the gulch and back, helped him remember his glory days.
‘He probably come out on the train and bought it in Denver, Idaho Springs, or someplace,’ Milken said, almost to himself, and then to Higgins added, ‘Well, get McGovern. We gotta move on down there quick this morning. Church in less than two hours, and we still gotta see Mr Smithson.’
Higgins re-entered the mine barracks, calling out, ‘Lester, c’mon now, git that giant self of yours out here. We gotta get movin’ right quick.’
McGovern’s deep bass sounded like an out-of-tune cello: ‘I’m comin’.’
The rider came slowly towards the barracks. He looked directly at Henry Milken, but said nothing as the foreman approached, his hand extended.
‘Good mornin’. I’m sorry to say you made the trip all the way up here for nothin’. We gotta be in town in two hours. Did they not tell you that Mr Tabor wants us all in church every Sunday?’
The horseman offered no reply, nor did he shake Milken’s hand.
Milken tried again. ‘I’m Henry Milken. I’m the foreman here at the Silver Shadow. There’s a bit of coffee left; it tastes like old socks, but you’re welcome to a swig before we head out.’ He paused a moment and then, growing irritated, asked, ‘What’s your name, son?’
Still without a word, the stranger grabbed Milken’s outstretched arm and pulled it forward roughly; with his free hand, the horseman delivered a blow that split the foreman’s skull and killed him instantly. His body hung limp in the stranger’s grasp, twitching, until the horseman threw it carelessly to one side. It lay still in the heavy mountain mud.