Page 16 of The Prospector's Only Prospect
“The kids call them bear berries. Leyohna lets them eat them.” Virgil couldn’t be bothered with fiddly work like picking berries, but he took one from the branch she’d brought to remind himself what they tasted like. Palatable enough, he supposed. Pulpy and mildly sweet with a faint flavor of almond in the seeds.
Marigold fetched the bowl she’d used to eat her portion of last night’s stew and continued picking while Virgil made the coffee and oatmeal. When he called out that it was ready, she brought her bowl of berries, and they each threw a handful into their porridge.
Next thing, he’d be putting molasses and milk into it, like the children, but he had to admit it made a nice change from plain.
After she rinsed the dishes, she went back to picking while he nudged the oxen to pull the wagon across the rocky bed of the stream and up a steep incline. When he looked back, she was already catching up to him.
She set her filled bowl behind the buckboard and braced it with her bag so it wouldn’t spill as they got underway again.
“Did you find any gold in the stream?” she asked.
“Nah. Never.”
“You said yesterday that you sent your wife gold dust from California. Did you strike it rich there? Is that how you come to have your own company here?”
He bristled at the mention of Clara, mostly because he felt like such a fool for leaving her and going to California at all.
“No one strikes it rich,” he said flatly. “That’s a lie to sell newspapers and pickaxes. Owen—you’ll meet him, he’s one of my partners.” He pointed up the track. “He swallowed that tale whole. All he thinks about is making a fortune, so he was determined to go. We were friends since childhood and were in the army together. Since I had mouths to feed, I agreed to go with him.”
Virgil had told Clara he was only keeping an eye out for Owen, but the fanciful dreams of riches had sunk under his skin. He’d talked himself into believing he would come back triumphant and show her their marriage hadn’t been a mistake. He would prove to himself and his likely dead father that he had made something of himself.
“The dust I sent Clara was a pittance, but it was all I had to show for our first season. We damned near starved to death that winter. Come spring, we got on with a mining company, but wages were already dropping. Eventually, we heard whispers of gold in these mountains, so we made our way here.”
“You gambled on coming all this way because of a whisper?”
“That’s what mining is. Gambling.” It had taken him three decades to understand that nearly everything in life was. “The first men into California won the biggest pots because they got a jump on the best claims, then hired the men who came later. We were the ones who did the real work while they opened the shops that fed and clothed us.”
“Is that what you want to do?” She blinked at him as though seeing past the scruffy beard and shaggy hair and dusty clothes to the man with ambition and determination.
Twinges of inadequacy arose in him. Old doubts and echoes of accusations that he would never amount to anything.
“I don’t want to be the man who could have done those things and watched someone else do itagain,” he said gruffly. “I started out thinking those men I worked for had something I didn’t, but they weren’t any smarter than me. God knows they didn’t have the skill or muscle to do the work themselves.”
“But you do, so you started your own company.”
“We did.” With only four horses between them and whatever tools and supplies they could scrape together. Not a morning had gone by when they hadn’t all woken and looked at each other, wondering if they’d lost their collective minds.
“All my wages were going home to Clara, so I reckoned I’d be halfway back to her if I came this far, but if therewasgold here, I didn’t want a repeat of what had happened in California.Iwould be the one hiring the boys with the stars in their eyes.”
“And you did find gold. You must have been dancing in the—well, I guess there was no street.” Her ale-colored eyes were bright with amusement, her smile expectant. She was enjoying his story. Everyone loved a happy ending.
“A bust would have been kinder,” he said flatly. “We found gold, and all I could think was how much work there was to be done. We knew the rush was only a matter of time. At least supplies are closer now.” He jerked his head back toward Denver.
“How did you settle on calling it the Venturous Mining Company?”
“‘Misery Loves’ didn’t win the popular vote.”
“Ha.” Her smile broadened. She was cute with her one crooked tooth and small overbite. “My uncle says that’s the engine of democracy.”
“That misery loves company?”
“That people will rally to a common adversity and collectively try to resolve it.”
“He’s not wrong.” He made himself drag his eyes off her and look to where they were going. “They’ll also drag you into poor solutions. That’s why I hand-picked our partners.” And pissed off several opportunists who had thought they ought to be included. “I didn’t want to be voted into actions by men I don’t trust.” Virgil had been in that situation too often in the army and the steamboats and the California goldfields.
“How many men make up your company?”
“We started as six. Tom joined us on the trail, so now we’re seven. He’s Ute, but he has relationships with the Arapahoe and helps us keep things friendly with them.”
