Mercury's Rise (Silver Rush 04) Read online

  Mercury’s Rise

  A Silver Rush Mystery

  Ann Parker

  www.AnnParker.com

  Poisoned Pen Press

  Copyright © 2011 by Ann Parker

  First Edition 2011

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2011926975

  ISBN: 9781590589618 Hardcover

  ISBN: 9781590589632 Trade Paperback

  ISBN: 9781615953295 epub

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  The historical characters and events portrayed in this book are inventions of the author or used fictitiously.

  Poisoned Pen Press

  6962 E. First Ave., Ste. 103

  Scottsdale, AZ 85251

  www.poisonedpenpress.com

  [email protected]

  Contents

  Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  Map

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Author’s Note

  More from this Author

  Contact Us

  Dedication

  Dedicated to sisters, and especially to

  Alison

  With love and hugs, stretching over the miles and over the years.

  Acknowledgments

  First, I’d like to thank the usual suspects: My family—near and far—for their unending support and encouragement, and especially Bill, Ian, and Devyn (who have to live with all this!).

  Then, there are friends, writers, critique partners who patiently stood by me as I thrashed through this next Silver Rush epic. Special thanks to Camille Minichino and Dick Rufer for providing a “hide out” for focused writing; Dani Greer, who, at the eleventh hour, put the virtual knife in my hand, said, “You must kill your darlings,” and pointed me toward some egregious examples (less purple prose herein as a result); and other critique partners/early readers/proofers who read pieces or the whole: Colleen Casey, Janet Finsilver, Staci McLaughlin, Carole Price, Penny Warner, Mike Cooper, Margaret Dumas, Claire Johnson, Rena Leith, Jane Staehle, Gordon Yano, and the “nagsisters.” I owe much to various e-groups who made it possible for me to write “apace” and who share my passion for history and accuracy, including Book-in-a-Week (where writers write together…one page at a time) and Women Writing the West. A special acknowledgment goes to my webmistress Kate Reed for wonderful design and customer service, and to Michael Greer, for the wonderful map of Manitou and environs.

  Special kudos to the experts, hither and yon, who gave of their time and knowledge (sometimes on very short notice, and always with grace and courtesy). Experts in Colorado and Manitou Springs and times Victorian: Doris McCraw, Berry Jo Cardona, Deborah Harrison, Dianne Hartshorn, Chelsy Murphy (Colorado Springs Convention & Visitors Bureau, who set up an awesome info-packed area tour for me), Bret Tennis (Garden of the Gods), and Donald McGilchrist (The Navigators). Experts in Civil War, medical, and gun “stuff”: Steven and Amy Crane, and George McCluny. Special thanks to researcher Jeanne Munn Bracken, and Profs Michael Grossberg (Indiana University) and Hendrik Hartog (Princeton University) for information on divorce issues/philosophy/laws in the 1800s, and others who provided resources/advice over the years on this “sticky issue,” including Christie Wright and Ruth Rymer. If I’ve gone astray with my facts, these wonderful people are not to blame; rather, it’s my own darn fault (or, in some cases, intention).

  Where would we be without libraries and historical societies and museums? In the wilderness, that’s where, learning as we go, without easy access to areas and the past beyond our own experience and memories. My gratitude goes out to all, particularly to Lake County Public Library (esp. Janet Fox and Nancy McCain), Pikes Peak Public Library District/Penrose Library (esp. Dennis Daily), Manitou Springs Public Library, Livermore Public Library, and Denver Public Library. The historical societies/museums that helped me fashion this, the latest story in my Silver Rush “saga”: Colorado Historical Society, the Pioneer Museum in Colorado Springs, the Manitou Springs Heritage Center, and the Old Colorado City Historical Society. A heartfelt plea to readers: Support your libraries and historical organizations! They carry the light from the past to the future and cannot keep the flame alive without our help.

  A proper curtsey and bow to The Cliff House in Manitou Springs for its elegant hospitality and for being the inspiration for my fictional the Mountain Springs House, and to Glen Eyrie and its gracious staff for access to their research library and a lovely overnight stay in General Palmer’s “castle.”

  To those whose names and/or characteristics I employed with enthusiasm, thanks for giving me permission to “borrow you” for my nefarious fictional purposes—Robert Calder; Sharon Crowson; the Pace/Cummings clan (kids: if you don’t like what I did, blame your mom, she gave permission!); and the one and only Dr. Aurelius Prochazka.

  Finally, hats off to those at Poisoned Pen Press: extraordinary editor Barbara Peters, publisher Rob Rosenwald, associate publisher (crack the whip!) Jessica Tribble, and Marilyn, Nan, Annette, Elizabeth. Thank you for bringing Inez and her tales to the wider world.

  Epigraph

  “Learning is like mercury, one of the most powerful

  and excellent things in the world in skillful hands;

  in unskillful, the most mischievous.”

  —Alexander Pope

  Map

  Chapter One

  August 1880

  Inez Stannert had nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.

  Since she couldn’t escape the purgatory that was the confined and crowded stagecoach, Inez tried to let the droning voice of the man seated across from her wash over like the water in a mountain stream. But Edward Pace, Boston businessman and investor questing after yet more wealth in the West, went on and on. His monologue was interrupted only by the occasional screech from one of his three children—pushed beyond endurance by the heat, the cramped quarters, the dust—or punctuated by the muff
led shout of “G-long!” or “H-up!” from the coach driver on the seat above them.

  Mr. Pace’s voice accompanied the rhythmic cadence of horses’ hooves as they pounded mile after mile of red dirt roads. Yesterday, the coach had stopped only for short rest breaks and a non-restful scant handful of hours sleep at a “hotel” in Fairplay. Today, the hapless passengers continued their journey, crammed together shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh, as the coach steadily lengthened the distance from their starting point in Leadville and drew ever closer to their destination of Manitou.

  The coach was now edging toward Florrisant, and the final descent out of the high peaks of the Rocky Mountains to the lesser lands at the edge of the mountain range.

  The end of the trip could not come soon enough.

  Inez clenched her hands, fingernails biting through thin leather gloves. The backs of the gloves were covered with the fine dust that swirled throughout the interior of the stagecoach. A rusty tinge painted every surface and every passenger—Inez, her friend and traveling companion Susan Carothers, the Pace paterfamilias, his wife, their three children, and the unintroduced nanny. Inez fervently wished the dust would simply choke Mr. Pace into silence. But Lady Luck was betting against her, and the businessman appeared impervious to the dust’s strangling effects.

  Behind Inez’s traveling veil—which had proved almost useless in keeping the airborne dirt at bay—sweat trickled from her hairline, down temples and cheeks to drip off her chin.

  The clattering stage rocked forward, back, forward, back: a metronome in motion, a mother’s nudge to a cradle.

  There was a sudden, violent pitch forward, a sharp jerk back, a whistle from the driver above, and the snap of a whip. Inez, crammed on the leather seat between her friend Susan and the nanny, clutched Susan’s arm to keep from falling forward into Mr. Pace’s lap. As the stage lurched from rut to rock, a hard jolt shuddered through the thinly padded leather seats. Pain raced up Inez’s back, tracing the corset laces, and set her teeth rattling. She bit the inside of her mouth to keep from uttering an oath that, most likely, would have stopped the businessman dead in his oratorical tracks.

  The two older Pace children—a girl of about five and a boy of perhaps three—yelped. Mrs. Pace turned to them with a “shush,” her brown-gold hair a muted flash beneath her own dust-coated veil. The youngest child, a baby planted in the nanny’s lap, uttered not a peep. A strand of drool made a rusty wet streak across one chubby cheek.

  Crowded by Susan and a stray hatbox on one side, and by the ample proportions of the nanny on the other side, Inez felt her temper rise from a simmer to a boil. She prayed more fervently than she had in a long time that the next stage stop was near. If I must endure many more hours of this, I fear I’ll do something fatal to my reputation.

  Undeterred by the howls of his progeny or the ruts of the road, Pace leaned toward Inez, his knees jostling her own, nearly spitting at the net covering her face. “The air is so vile in Leadville, it is a wonder that the entire population is not sickened to the point of disease.”

  Behind her veil, Inez’s upper lip curled as Pace continued to vilify the town they’d left yesterday. She glanced at Mrs. Pace. Sitting at her husband’s side, the woman appeared immune to her husband’s vitriolic speechmaking and instead whispered urgently to the boy and girl beside her, who alternately squirmed and jabbed at each other. After one particularly hard poke to the ribs from his sister, the little boy lashed out with a grimy laced-up boot, leaving a dusty streak on the nanny’s long skirts.

  “Enough!” the nanny snapped. The boy froze, sullenness stamped on features a miniature of his father’s.

  The sister smirked.

  Inez reflected that, given the history of the past hour, the two would be back pinching and jabbing each other within a space of minutes.

  And there had been some very, very long hours since leaving Leadville the previous morning.

  Inez had stepped up into the coach sent to bring them from Leadville to Manitou’s Mountain Springs House if not with a high heart, at least with a hopeful one. It was a journey she had long been anticipating: In two days, she would rejoin William, her not-quite-two-year-old son whom she had not seen in a year. The sweat beneath her travel clothes damped the locket stuck to her skin, the locket holding a photograph of William at eight months.

  Inez shifted on the seat. Her hip bumped the nanny, who managed one evil glance before turning to the baby in her clutches. “There’s a little dumpling,” she cooed, rocking him with her knees in time to the coach’s sway. The infant’s head lolled on her lap.

  As far as Inez could tell, the “little dumpling” was out cold, no doubt thanks to the liberal dosing he’d received of Ayer’s Cherry Pectoral. Inez had sneaked a peek at the label as the nanny had struggled to uncork the bottle while baby Pace was engaged in one particularly intense infantile fit. The tonic had effectively rendered mute his non-stop screaming, crying, and coughing.

  “Furthermore, the mines in Leadville are played out.” Pace settled back against the coach seat, pulling out a limp linen handkerchief from his wilted travel suit and mopping his pale, dust-streaked face. “The management of such is lackadaisical and not prepared to handle the workers with the firmness required. Witness the strike of May. Poorly handled, all around.”

  Unable to stand it any longer, Inez said loud enough to drown him out, “Pardon, Mr. Pace, I am curious as to what brought you to Leadville to begin with, if all it held for you is a dark and bleak vision more suited to Hades’ world than our own?”

  Pace stopped talking. She was pleased to see that her words, or perhaps it was her tone, had done what the road’s ruts and rocks could not.

  For a blissful moment, his mouth hung slack and without sound. His dark mustache, no longer so impeccably groomed, was streaked with damp and dust. He looked as astounded as if the leather side curtains had suddenly given voice.

  Susan’s black-gloved hand crept over to cover Inez’s balled fist, a mute warning to watch her tongue.

  Pace removed his Homburg and swiped at his streaming forehead.

  Inez noted with a nasty curl of satisfaction that although his mustache was carefully blacked, his hair was iron-grey. That, and the lines on his face, placed him on the far side of fifty, at a guess. She risked a sidelong glance at the veil-shrouded missus beside him. Inez had judged the wife and mother at about five-and-twenty, no more. Inez’s brow contracted in sympathy. There could only be money behind this union. His or hers, she wondered.

  Inez had seen Mrs. Pace without her veil a few times now, the longest stretch of time being the previous evening at the Fairplay hotel, where they had stopped for the night.

  Having vowed to not imbibe on the trip, Inez had found the Fairplay evening, apart from the respite of the coach ride, less than stellar. The food was wretched, and the company for the most part dull. Excusing herself early, Inez had repaired to the room she was sharing with Susan for the night to do a more thorough wash than the hurried splash of hands and face she had managed before supper.

  Inez was brushing her hair when Susan had knocked and entered an hour or so later. Inez set her silver-backed hairbrush on the simple desk that served as a dressing table and said, “I am sorry I suggested taking the stage to Manitou, Susan. If we had gone by train, as I originally planned, you would not have to endure this miserable trip.”

  “Oh, no, Inez, I’m enjoying it. Well, mostly. The dust is quite something, isn’t it?” Susan took a clothes brush and vigorously attacked her travel cloak, hanging on a wall peg. “Some of the scenery is wonderful. I’m making notes for later. Too, I’m thinking, there’s a spot east of Leadville that is perfect for capturing the city with a stereoscopic camera. I could sell stereoviews like Mrs. Galbreaith’s views of Manitou.”

  She stopped brushing and pulled a stereoview card out of her coat pocket, examining the twin stereoscopic image on the front. “I’m so honored that Mrs. Galbreaith offered to share her photographic techniques
and that I can stay in her boarding house for the duration.” She flipped the card over. “It is quite clever of her to list the different springs in Manitou on the back, along with their mineral compositions. I shall have to think of something similar to say about Leadville. ‘Manitou Springs—Saratoga of the West’ sounds so romantic. Maybe I could offer up ‘Leadville—Silver Sensation of the Rockies.’ Or ‘Leadville—Cloud City of the West.’”

  Inez sighed. “I just wish things had worked out as I had planned. I had thought we would have the coach to ourselves and be able to stop whenever you wanted. I had not counted on the Paces appearing, seemingly out of nowhere, and demanding passage to the Mountain Springs House as well. Now, there is no stopping to gaze at the scenery, and I am sorry for that.”

  “It is all right, Inez. We still have the train ride back to Leadville, at the end of the trip. This way, we get to see more of the country. I truly appreciate you underwriting this trip and supporting my efforts to expand my business. ”

  “You have a rare talent. I cannot imagine a better way to invest my money than in helping you with your enterprise. Others may grubstake prospectors and pray for a silver bonanza. I prefer putting my money into a surer operation.” She smiled briefly at Susan. “I have seen you as you weathered good and bad times. You are careful with your profits and minimize your losses. Your business sense is sound.”

  Susan blushed in the light of the oil lamp. “Thank you. That is high praise from one of the most successful businesswomen in Leadville.”

  A sudden jolt brought Inez back to the confines of the stagecoach.

  Mr. Pace was saying, “Well. Since you ask, Mrs. Stannert, my business in Leadville involved an exploration of possible investment opportunities. My wife’s father has much to do with metals and thought I should investigate.”

  In a gesture that mimicked Susan’s, Mrs. Pace placed a gloved hand over his. His fingers, clamped tightly atop his bony kneecap, visibly relaxed beneath her touch. Behind her veil, Inez raised her eyebrows, intrigued.