The Braxtons of Miracle Springs (8 page)

It was probably a week later when I got up a little before Christopher one morning. I came out of the bunkhouse and saw Pa standing alone behind the house.

I went slowly in that direction. He was standing, staring out at the grass that grew between the house and the edge of the woods. I walked up and slipped my hand through his arm and stood at his side.

Neither of us said anything for another minute or two. I knew Pa would tell me what he was thinking when he was ready.

“See them mole mounds there, Corrie?” he said at length.

I nodded, looked out where three or four fresh piles of black dirt sat in the middle of the grass.

“I been fighting them moles ever since we came out here, trying to keep their holes from making a horse stumble and break his leg. Just when you think they've disappeared for good, up pops a new, fresh bunch of mounds.”

“Are those new ones, Pa?” I asked.

“Yep. New this morning. I ain't seen evidence of moles right out there in six months or so. Then all of a sudden there they are again.”

He sighed.

“It's just like that rascal Harris,” Pa went on. “Him turning back up's just like a mole mound popping up from out of nowhere just when you think your problems are behind you.”

“A little worse than a mole, Pa,” I said. “He sounds to me like a bad man.”

“He's an ornery varmint—I reckon you're right there. But the moles reminded me of him anyhow. Standing here looking at them mounds puts me in a mind of how our lives are sometimes. You can put on a front for folks and make them think you're a nice enough feller. But down deep where no one sees, I reckon we all got our dark passageways and tunnels where our own black critters crawl about and live—just like our property here's got moles running around it down outta sight. Just because we don't see them for months at a time, they're there all right. They got their burrows and tunnels all over out there.”

He swept his hand out across the yard in the direction of the woods.

“That's just like us. We got our hidden places no one sees . . . till, all of a sudden, something like this deal with Harris comes along and up pops a black, ugly pile of dirt from inside for all the world to see.”

I couldn't help smiling.

“Sounds like some of the articles I used to write, Pa,” I said.

“Well, maybe you helped me to learn to see a mite deeper into things, Corrie Belle,” Pa replied. “I reckon your writing did me good that way, whatever it did for anybody else.”

“I didn't know that, Pa,” I said.

“I read ever' word you ever wrote, Corrie.”

“I knew that. But I'm your daughter. You had to read it.”

“I read it 'cause I wanted to, 'cause it was good writing. I'm telling you the truth—it helped me, too. I figured if my Corrie could see things the way you did, well then I oughta see if I couldn't try to see things like that, too.”

“You don't know how pleased that makes me, Pa,” I said. “That makes everything I wrote worth it ten times over.”

“It's the truth. I was mighty proud of you. Still am.”

“Thank you, Pa,” I said softly. I was about to cry! What a wonderful thing for a father to say to his daughter.

“And since Zack came back from his winter with Hawk, why, he won't stop talking about hidden things and how they tie into our lives. Anyhow,” Pa went on, “what I'm seeing right now is that sometimes we're none too pretty to look at, which is how I been feeling this last week—full of dark things out of the past, with black dirt popping up out of me all over the place.”

Again he sighed. We stood there quietly for some time.
What an openhearted man he'd allowed himself to become
, I thought to myself.

“Well,” he said after a while with a determined sigh, “I reckon I'm finally ready to do it.”

“Do what, Pa?”

“Pray that prayer Christopher told us about,” he replied. “Come on, let's go inside. Everybody's probably there by now. This is something we all gotta be part of together.”

Pa and I turned and walked back toward the house. The others were all just gathering for breakfast. Pa said he'd like to talk to everyone. We went into the big room, sat down, and waited.

“I been thinking hard about what Christopher told us the other day,” Pa began after a few minutes, “about how to pray for things.”

He drew in a long breath.

“I reckon I'm ready to do it,” he went on. “I mean, I think God's telling me to do it. He's been asking me the same thing he asked Christopher—if I was willing to be the person he might want to use to answer my own prayer. Seemed a mite cockeyed a thing to me at first—praying for somebody who's out to put a bullet in your head, then telling God that instead of hiding from the feller you'll let him answer the prayer through you! How could he even do such a thing? I been trying to make sense out of it for a week, but I can't.

“Then it came to me how all God's ways of doing things are a mite cockeyed from man's way of looking at them. Anyhow, it ain't so much a matter of whether I can
make sense
of it, but just whether or not I'm willing to
do
it.

“So I figure if my praying's gonna do much good, I gotta be willing. But I'd really like the rest of you to pray with me. It's a fearsome thing when a man like Harris is involved. I'm sure Zack'd say the same thing. Harris is a bad apple. This is a new thing for me, and I ain't sure I'd be able to pray it by myself.”

“It would be our honor to pray with you, Drum,” said Christopher, rising and walking to Pa's side. He laid a hand on Pa's shoulder, his own father-in-law, and closed his eyes. Almeda was immediately at Pa's other side, and the rest of us gathered around him, too.

“Well, Lord,”
Pa prayed,
“here I am
coming before you again. I want to pray for Harris
like I did last week. But this time, Lord, I
just want to tell you that I'm ready for you to use me to answer that prayer, that is,
if there's some way you can use me, or if you want to. I can't think of anything
I could do that'd help you in any way.
What could I do that you couldn't do better yourself—especially since the man wants to see me dead?
But if there's something you can and want to do, then, like I say, I'm willing to be
the tool you use.”

He sighed deeply, and I knew the words I'd just heard had not been uttered without a cost to Pa deep inside him. I knew he'd struggled for a week over this, facing the extent of his own willingness. I could not help but be reminded of Jesus' prayer in the garden. I knew this was Pa's own way of saying to the Lord, “Not my will, but yours, be done.”

“I
can't say that there ain't a part of me that's scared to pray it,”
Pa went on, still talking to God.
“I know it may be
that it'll cost me my life, 'cause sometimes that's what it takes to get through to some men.
But if you want me to give my life for another man, I don't reckon it's more than
you did yourself. You gave your life for me and
all the rest of us, including Jesse Harris. My life'
s yours anyway now, to do with what you want.
I don't reckon my faith's worth much if I'm not willing to follow you and do what
you did.

“So I pray you'd do your
best for Jesse. Like I said before, I pray that
you'll be God to him, and however you want to use me to do that is all right by
me.”

Whispered amens sounded from two or three of us.

Almeda was crying softly. So was I. We both loved Pa so much. But we also knew what Pa's prayer could mean. Sometimes God
did
use people's
lives
.

Everyone admired Pa for what he'd done. But my heart was heavy, too. I couldn't help being afraid.

“The Lord will honor your obedience, Drum,” said Christopher softly. “You are an example to us all.”

Christopher and Pa, Tad and Zack were still working the mine every day. They'd bored and picked and dynamited their way halfway through the mountain, but so far they had only found small amounts of gold.

Alkali Jones was around most days, too, and usually ate lunch with us and sometimes supper, but it seemed to me he was getting too weak to do too much of the actual work.

Alkali had
always
looked old to me. But it had been more than fifteen years since I'd first laid eyes on him, and I didn't know any other word to describe him now than
ancient
. I hesitate to use the word
feeble
to describe a man we all loved so dearly. But he did walk more slowly than before, and every once in a while I was afraid his tired old knees were going to give out altogether.

Ever since the men had found the lode of quartz the previous October, their hopes had run high. But through the winter, and then with the wedding and our two trips away, enthusiasm gradually slowed. The hard work and aching muscles just weren't getting them anywhere, and it wasn't hard to see that discouragement was setting in.

Finally one day at supper Pa said what they had probably all been thinking to themselves.

“I think it's time we shut down the mine,” he said matter-of-factly before stabbing a hunk of potato with his fork and popping it into his mouth.

The room was silent a moment as Pa chewed away, paying no attention to everyone's surprise.

A few heads turned this way and that, then gradually every eye settled on Pa.

“What are you all staring at me for?” he said after swallowing the bite.

“You can't be serious, Drummond?” said Almeda.

“Course I'm serious. We ain't finding nothing.”

“But . . . but I hear you all talking every day about all the gold there still is to find and how well you're doing.”

“It's all talk, Almeda. We're just trying to keep each other working, that's all. But we haven't found a thing in months. And today that big wide run of quartz we thought was going to lead us to gold shrunk down to less than an inch wide. We been following it into the mountain since October and it's been getting smaller ever since. I reckon it's time to face the fact that it's leading nowhere—our mine's finally played out.”

Again it was quiet, the only sound the clink of forks against the plates.

“Pa's right, Almeda,” said Zack at length. “I didn't want to say anything. I'm willing to work as long as Pa is. But we haven't set eyes on any nugget as big as a fingernail since last summer.”

Tad nodded. I looked at Christopher.

“I don't know what I can add,” he said. I'm such a newcomer to all this, I didn't know whether this was normal or not. But in all honesty I haven't really seen much gold.”

Again it was quiet. Even though Pa and Zack and Tad had all been thinking the same thing, just to talk about shutting down the mine was such a major change to contemplate. Almeda and Becky and I were astonished, because it took us so by surprise. That mine had, in a sense, been the center of our lives for fifteen years, even longer for Pa and Uncle Nick. I could hardly imagine what impact it would have on all of us for the mine
not
to be operating.

“What . . . what would you
do
, Drummond?” asked Almeda.

“I don't know. I reckon there's plenty of things I could keep busy with.”

“Politics again?”

“I doubt it. But you never know. It's these young fellers here I'm thinking mostly about. We can't all just keep working up there forever without finding anything. Our bank account's thinning out, Almeda—you know that as well as I do. Before long we might have to think about selling off some of the land if there isn't a change of some kind. Christopher here's got his own life and family to think about. Zack'll likely be thinking along those lines here soon enough. And Tad . . . I don't know—it just don't seem fair to keep them working away here for me when maybe it's high time they was getting on with their own plans.”

“We're not worried about ourselves, Pa,” interjected Zack. “As long as there's any more gold at all and as long as you say, we're behind you.”

“Thanks, son. But all that's not to mention,” Pa went on, turning back toward Almeda, “that I made these fellers all a bargain, and so I figure I owe them all some return on their investment of time and work, though it ain't as much as we figured a year ago. If Corrie's man here had known it was going to turn out like this, he might not have agreed to my proposal. I've held him up with whatever he plans to do with himself as it is. Maybe it ain't fair of me to hold him up any longer.”

He glanced over at Christopher with an expression that looked like he felt he'd let Christopher down.

“You don't owe me a cent, Drum,” said Christopher. “You made it clear enough when we began this partnership that we might not find anything. It was a risk we all took. Besides, I feel I've been more than amply paid with room and board all this time.”

This time the silence around the table lasted more than five minutes. Pretty soon everyone was through eating.

I felt a lump rising in my throat. It was all so sad! I had the feeling I might one day look back on this evening as the beginning of the breakup of the Hollister homestead. The talk sounded like the partnership they'd all made last year was coming to an end.

Oh, but I loved it here with everyone together! I didn't want us to all start going our separate ways. Yet what else would it lead to if they shut down the mine?

Pa was right; we were all grown-up adults. We couldn't stay this way forever, with us all living in one big family.

Pretty soon Tad would get a job somewhere, maybe move away from Miracle Springs.

Zack would probably go back to the horse business with Little Wolf and his father, and probably be marrying Laughing Waters before long. Then
he'd
be gone too.

And what about Christopher and me? What would
we
do?

My heart began to sink within me with all these thoughts and fears and uncertainties.

My reflections were cut short by the last thing I expected to hear at a sad time like this—laughter.

“Hee, hee, hee,” sounded the cackle of Alkali Jones' high-pitched voice. “You're all talkin' like a parcel o' lily-livered old geese. Ain't
no
more gold gonna be found round hereabouts without a dang sight more work 'n when we first came. Hee, hee, hee. What ye expect, Drum, fer the blame stuff t' appear down at yer feet like it did when I first sloshed through this here Miracle creek? I ever tell ye about the size o' the first nugget I took outta here? Why the blame thing was as big as—”

“Yep you have, Alkali—a time or two,” interrupted Pa, with a wink in Tad's direction.

“Hee, hee, hee . . . couldn't recollect if ye knew about that or not. But if ye can remember that fer back, surely ye ain't fergot that when we found that blame quartz last year, there was
two
lines of it leadin' into the dang hill.”

Nobody said anything for a minute, and a few more glances went back and forth around the table.

“Yeah,” said Pa slowly. “But that other wasn't no bigger than my little finger.”

“Hee, hee, hee—an' I told ye
that
was the one ye oughta foller.”

“The other was six inches wide, Alkali—more quartz than I'd ever seen compacted in one vein like that.”

“The look o' things don't always tell ye all there is t' know, Drum. I tell ye—ye went the wrong direction. Hee, hee, hee.”

“Well, I'll think about what you say, Alkali,” said Pa. “Maybe we'll poke around tomorrow and see if we can find that little finger-vein you're talking about.”

I could tell by the tone of his voice that Pa wasn't convinced in the slightest and that nothing Mr. Jones said had changed his mind.