The problem with the mine started the day Mike Mallone died. Mike died a slow death, innards crushed in a cave-in that was as mysterious as it was horrifying. As he lay on his cot, abdomen bloating in the late summer heat, he rambled.
Pete Yetter, known as “Young Pete” to the crew, shifted from foot to foot and tried not to breathe in the smell of decay that already surrounded Mike. Outside, he could see the others coming back from the mine. Most days they laughed and joked as they walked down the dry river bed. Today, everyone was silent except for the jingle of tool belts and the tromp of heavy boots on gravel. Shawn O’Connell peered suspiciously up at the dark pine trees that dotted the edge of the gulch and then crossed himself, once, twice, thrice. He caught Pete’s eye and scowled, but continued on without stopping at the dying man’s tent.
“I should’na come here,” Mike said, dragging Pete’s attention back inside. “Why won’t they listen? I know why. I know. They didn’t like it! They told me. Warned me. I didn’t listen, and now they’ve turned from me.”
“Now Mike, you just try to rest,” Old Pete said as he blotted Mike’s brow with a wet kerchief.
While Young Pete hovered at the tent flap, wringing his old canvas hat like a dishrag. Young Pete knew no doctoring, nor did he have much religion to share. He hadn’t brought a Bible to read. It seemed there was nothing to do but hover and pretend to pray.
Sunset was coming quickly these days, especially down in the cut where their claim was located. The sounds of dinner being started broke into the silence surrounding Mike’s suffering.
“Who? Who didn’t like it?” Young Pete asked suddenly.
Old Pete shook his head. “He can’t hear you, son. Leave a dying man be.”
Mike’s eyes snapped open and fixed on Young Pete. “The Tommyknockers!” he shouted more loudly than anyone in his state should have been able to, and then he breathed out his final, hoarse wheeze.
Old Pete dropped a handkerchief over the dead man’s face and hustled Young Pete from the tent.
“We can’t just leave him,” Young Pete protested.
“Time enough to bury him in the morning,” Old Pete said.
They joined the others for dinner, gathered round a plank table that Syd Marley, who was a carpenter when he wasn’t a miner, had hammered together from planks scavenged from an old barn they’d passed by on the way to the claim.
Halfway through the pork and beans and rice, Stu Campell, who fancied himself as the foreman of the crew because he had filed the claim papers on behalf of them all, inquired after the dead man’s health.
“Dead,” Old Pete replied, between bites of beans.
Young Pete snatched his hand back from the tin plate filled with cornbread as the shocked hush seized the company gathered at the table.
“Ya oughtn’t to have blurted it out like that, pop,” Young Pete said, the tips of his ears burning with shame.
“It’s all right, Pete.” Stu looked him in the eye, but his expression was kind. “There’s no easy way to tell a man’s friends of his passing.”
“I heard him hollering toward the end,” Tommy McBride said. “I thought I heard him say my name.”
“No,” Young Pete said, ignoring his pa’s elbow jamming him in his side, “He said Tommyknockers.”
“Ah, now you’ve done it,” Old Pete muttered in his ear. “Half this crew is made up of superstitious Mickey bastards. We’ll be down even more men coming daylight.”
“That can’t be!” Tommy McBride said. “Sure, there’s the Tommyknockers, but they wouldn’t come to this mine.”
“Well, why not?” asked Shawn O’Connelly. “My folks are from Tennessee There are Tommyknockers there. They don’t limit themselves to the Old Country.” He glanced over his shoulder in the direction of the mine.
“Because you idjit, the Tommyknockers only come to proper mines. We ain’t got a proper mine.” Tommy leaped to his feet, ready to argue the point.
“Seems proper enough to me,” Stu said. “I don’t hold with superstition,” he said, banging his tin cup on the table to bring the crew to attention. “I’m not a superstitious man at all. I say we honor Mike by finishing our work on the claim and taking home Mike’s share to his ma.”
“Tommyknockers live far underground. All we got is a seam of coal in the cut. Them critters don’t come so close to the surface. Not in the Old Countries, not in Tennessee, not here,” Tommy McBride declared.
“The man is dead. It’s time we held his wake,” Syd Marley said. He put a firm hand on Tommy’s shoulder, forcing him to sit once more. With the other hand, Sid set out a bottle of whiskey among the dinner dishes. “I’ve been saving that for a special occasion. Guess it don’t get more special than this.”
Young Pete woke to a pounding that seemed more in his head than outside it, though after he lifted an eyelid, he could see from his position still slumped over the dinner table that the racket was Syd Marley finishing up a coffin made of one of the camp benches and a canvas tarp.
“That looks real special, Syd,” Stu said as he supervised with a cup of coffee in one hand. “We could have just wrapped him up, but this is real nice. I’ll just go see if the others have finished the grave hole yet.”
Young Pete, still regretting the whiskey, closed his eyes with a groan.
“Pete. Pete. Peter Collins,” Stu stuck a mug of steaming coffee in front of him. “Wake up. I got a job for you.”
“Ah, no. I don’t wanna carry no bodies, even if I did like Mike the best of all of you!”
“No, no. Not that. We already got him in the ground. Fred Eck said some words over him. It was real nice, I promise. Fred’s grandpa was a preacher, you know.”
Pete sat up and took a cautious sip of the coffee. It was fresh, hot, and even had sugar in it. Whatever job Stu had in mind must be a doozey if Stu had talked Syd out of some of his precious sugar.
“So what is it you want me to do?”
“Well, it’s like this. We need someone to go up to the reservation and talk to the Injuns,” Stu said. “Your dad said you’ve done some trading up there. You know some people.”
“You want me to talk to the Injuns? Why?”
“All the boys were talking last night after you passed out, and they think Tommy is on to something. Maybe it’s not the tommy-whatevers, but maybe we’ve stumbled onto an old Injun graveyard. You go up to the reservation and find out.” Stu smiled at him and nodded. “You can do that, can’t you? Get one of their chiefs or medicine men or something to come check it out for us.”
“I’ll need something to trade,” Pete said.
“A bottle of whiskey,” Stu suggested.
“No, something good.”
“You didn’t like Syd’s whiskey? He made it himself,” Stu said with a laugh.
“Mike’s horse?”
“Isn’t much of a horse,” Stu said. “But sure, why not? Mike isn’t going to be needing it anymore.”
Before noon, Pete found himself bundled up in his dad’s best canvas duster with Stu’s six-gun holstered at his side and saddlebags stuffed with enough provisions to make the trip to the reservation twice or more. The men pooled their supply and handed over a full bag of tobacco. Sid tucked a bottle of his whiskey in the saddlebags as well, overruling Pete’s muttered protestations with a comment about having never met an Injun who didn’t like his whiskey.
“I wish I could go with you,” Old Pete whined, “But we can’t afford too many hands away from the claim. We gotta get the rest of this coal dug before the snows come.”
“I know Pa, I know. You be careful here.” Pete shook his hand and got up on his horse, a painted pony he’d got from the reservation some years before. Old Pete handed him the lead rope to Mike’s sorrel, and then it was time to head out.
At first he thought it would be a fine thing to travel alone. After dusk, he stopped and made a campfire from dead sage and buffalo chips. Around him, the prairie seemed to stretch forever under a blanket of limitless stars. And then, as he chewed some leftover cornbread, he heard the gibbering. The cornbread sat hard in his stomach as understanding grew. Whatever haunted the mine now haunted him.
Four days later, he stood exhausted before Chief Washakie and a group of his men, trying to explain the situation to them.
“Tell us again, what are these things?” one of the Indians asked. “You whites brought them with you?”
“I don’t know,” Pete said, resisting the urge to snuffle. “They said maybe it wasn’t the Tommyknockers, because those live way underground. Maybe it’s something local?”
Pete stood patiently while the chief and his men discussed various frightening sounding creatures, though much of the conversation was lost to him when they switched from English to Shoshone. Finally, the man who Pete knew as the local medicine man turned to him.
“We can not help you. You must go to Ugly Betsy’s daughter.”
“Not Ugly Betsy!” one of the men exclaimed.
“Ugly Betsy’s daughter,” The medicine man said, looking back at the complainer.
“Ugly Betsy’s a white woman! What would she know?” asked another.
“Not Ugly Betsy. Ugly Betsy’s daughter!” The medicine man repeated.
“Who’s Ugly Betsy?” Pete asked. This time, he couldn’t suppress the snuffle.
“Now, don’t cry, boy,” Chief Washakie said. “Ugly Betsy was what you people call a Mail Order Bride. Some man down at Laramie ordered her, but when she got here, she was so ugly, that man didn’t want her. She ended up with us. Hard to tell what white folks think passes for handsome. She was a hard worker and had four sons and a daughter. Fine woman. She’s passed on now. Her daughter can help you.”
“Ugly Betsy’s mother-in-law taught her granddaughter all she knew,” the medicine man said. “She lives up on Owl Creek.”
“Can you at least get them off my tail?” Pete asked.
“I will pray for you,” the medicine man said, “but only Ugly Betsy’s daughter can save you now.”
It took Pete the rest of the week to hunt down Ugly Betsy’s daughter’s house. Settlements were few and far between. He slept little and rode hard, always tailed by the gibbering and chewing monsters or spirits or whatever had been disturbed by the mine. They circled his campfires and followed his trail. They spooked the horses and woke him every time he dozed. He tried every trick his own granny ever taught him. He threw handfuls of salt around his bedroll each night and crossed every stream three times. Still, they pursued, becoming ever stronger with each passing day.
By the time he rode up to the neat little ranch house, Mike’s sorrel still in tow, he was all on edge. How ugly would Ugly Betsy’s daughter be? Would she really agree to ride with a strange man all the way to Lusk to do whatever it was that her type of woman did to get rid of evil spirits? Was she a witch? What was her name? After he hitched up the horses, he knocked on the door and tried to calm his racing thoughts.
A tiny woman in a black mourning dress opened the door wide. “Who are you?” she asked as she shouldered up her shotgun. “And why are you on my porch?” Despite the shotgun, her voice was pleasant, and so was her face. She looked entirely Indian to Pete, and not at all ugly.
“Sorry ma’am. Maybe I have the wrong house?” He put his empty hands carefully in front of him. “I’m looking for Ugly Betsy’s daughter. “Some folks at Meeteetse sent me out this way.”
“And why would you be looking for Ugly Betsy’s daughter?” she asked. Neither her face nor her hold on the shotgun changed.
With a gulp, he explained dead Mike the haunted mine as best he could. When he reached the end, she nodded and lowered the gun.
“Well, I suppose you had better come in and have something to eat,” she said.
“Oh! Okay, sure,” Pete stammered. “I’m Pete. Pete Yetter.”
“Nice to meet you, Pete Yetter.” She gestured for him to walk in and closed the door after him.
He cleared his throat and shuffled his feet.
“What?”
“I don’t know your name, ma’am.”
“Do I need a name other than Ugly Betsy’s daughter?” She flashed him a mocking grin.
“I’m sure your mother gave you one,” Pete said. “Please don’t make fun.”
The smile faded from her face and she sighed. “I apologize. You’ve been through a lot, and I’ve no reason to be rude. It’s just that most people around here never bother to call me anything other than Ugly Betsy’s daughter. My name is Clorinda. Clorinda Wagon.”
“I’m pleased to meet you, Mrs. Wagon.”
“I never married,” she said with a hint of her former smile. “You can call me Clorinda if you please.”
With that, she disappeared into the kitchen while he went back out to pump water for the horses and wash the dust from his hands and face.
Continue to Part Two Here: https://www.tlryder.com/?p=4925
