The Threshold Read online

  “What the shit?” the man behind Aletha said as more lights appeared above them. Cruel fingers released her hair.

  A string of lights appeared on the ceiling. And sounds—the background rumble of the mill in a mining town alive, a clanging of metal striking metal, men’s distant voices, the sneezy smells of raw timber and dusty hay. The iron door to the outside had dissolved and the gray-metal skeleton of the snowshed extended toward the mill. In the other direction the overhead lights stretched into the distance and disappeared. The cavernous tunnel had no end now. Duffer switched off his battery lantern and turned a complete circle, staring at the change in the scenery. The man with the rifle walked a short distance down the track.

  “Aletha?” Cree was sitting up holding his head and squinting at her. “Run. Get out of here!”

  The growls of clearing throats, snorts, hacking coughs, laughter, boots crunching gravel—a group of men, perhaps twenty or more—moved along the tunnel toward them. They carried small round pails with lids and long hammers and other tools Aletha didn’t know. They wore droopy water-stained hats, a few with unlit candles in metal holders still in the brims. The man with the rifle raised it. His face had lost its mechanical look.

  “Aletha,” Tracy said in a breathy voice, as if she’d been running, “I think for once you did something right.”

  “You did this?” Duffer turned to Aletha and then quickly back to the advancing men. Their faces were so dirty they looked as if they’d tried to disguise themselves with blackface. The ones in front slowed and stopped, and were jostled from behind. They spread out. The laughter and coughing quieted. Eyes rested on the guns aimed at them.

  “Hit’s the angel wot warned of the cave-in.”

  “Angels don’t bleed.”

  “Them women are wearing pants.”

  “What do we do, Duffer?”

  “We get out of here. Cover our exit.” Duffer was already backing down the tracks into the snowshed. He dropped the lantern. He turned and ran between stacks of lumber and baled hay to a side door. The other two followed, not bothering to keep their weapons trained on the miners, who were beginning to growl again, but not from phlegm this time.

  Cree lay back down, coughing and groaning. As Aletha started for him, he and the light closed up in the cat-eye oval and disappeared. Tracy stood in the niche between the iron door and the earthen wall.

  “Help me with Cree,” Aletha told her. “He’s right over here.”

  But the muddied miners and the sounds and the smells and the injured Cree Mackelwain were gone.

  28

  Mrs. Stollsteimer met Callie O’Connell at the kitchen door off the alley as the girl tried to sneak back into the hotel after her visit to the shaded side of Telluride. The housekeeper gave Callie the nastiest duties available and promised to end her employment the minute she could contact one of her parents. But John O’Connell arrived in the next week to talk her into reconsidering. He promised Callie would never do such a thing again. “She’s but a child, ma’am, here to learn under your fine teaching.” He explained that his ailing wife and invalid son would soon be returning from Denver and he’d been able to find only a room to house them. They needed Callie’s earnings as never before. He’d found himself a place at the Smuggler and a bed at its boardinghouse. He took Callie aside and gave her a wink. “It’ll not be long and we’ll all be together, darling. You’ll do it for your Ma’am and your brother?”

  “Why did you tell me Aunt Lilly was dead?”

  “Did I ever say she was? Or that she wasn’t? Your Ma’am will explain such things as a man can’t. Are you not just filled with longing to see them, Callie?”

  Her father hadn’t noticed that Callie was limping, but Aunt Lilly had and she’d measured Callie’s feet. One day a new pair of soft black boots arrived by way of a gentleman staying at the hotel. “I see that father of yours finally bought you some new shoes,” Mrs. Stollsteimer said when she noticed the boots. “They appear costly for someone in such a precarious financial state as he claims.”

  Callie allowed the housekeeper to think what she would and reveled in her new comfort. But her general unhappiness grew at the thought of having to live apart from her mother and Bram when they moved to Telluride. Word came at last that they were settled in a rooming house in Finntown and Mrs. Stollsteimer gave Callie permission to leave the hotel to visit them. Finntown was a section around the depot inhabited largely by working-class Finns. It lay on the south side of town but was separated from the bawdy section by an invisible curtain of respectability and in some places by a buffer of warehouses.

  Her mother was waiting for her on the landing of a staircase attached to the side of a house with pretty wood banisters around its front porch and a gleaming picket fence. Callie hid her face in Luella’s clothing. Her mother had never carried much extra flesh but now it seemed all that lay beneath the dress was bones. Finally Luella held Callie away and knelt in front of her. “Has it been so very bad for you?” There was a blackness to the skin around her eyes. “You’ve grown so since last I saw you.”

  The room held two cots with a blanket hung between on a wire. It had a wardrobe, Ma’am’s trunk, a small table with two straight-backed chairs, an oval braided rug, and obviously no room for Callie. Bram’s liquid eyes looked huge in his skull-face and were about all that reminded her of him. A knitted cap covered his head. His hands hung massive at the end of stick arms. He was still very tall but seemed to have shrunk because of a rounded stoop. He lowered his eyes and turned away from her, folded himself onto a chair with odd jerky movements. Callie put her arms all the way around his shoulders, a thing she never could have done before, and clung to him without speaking as she had to her mother. When she didn’t release him he finally relaxed, laid his head against the side of hers.

  Luella didn’t notice the new boots until Callie’s second visit. Callie was sitting on the edge of Bram’s cot while he rested, telling him about the funny people who stayed at the New Sheridan Hotel and Miss Heisinger’s grand clothes, when Luella returned from helping Mrs. Pakka in the kitchen. A portion of their room and board was deducted for this service and Luella garnered extra scraps for Bram. But most often he refused them. “Callie, those are lovely new shoes but why would your father buy such dear ones when we’re in these straits?”

  “Aunt Lilly gave them to me. And money to send Bram’s letter too.”

  “But she’s dead, Callie.” Bram’s voice had deepened, seemed too powerful for his new body.

  “She’s not, Bram. She’s just Floradora now and she lives right here in Tell—”

  “She is dead.” Ma’am stood over them, arms folded and face ashy-colored.

  “But I talked to her and she—”

  “She is dead to us. And as good as dead to herself. You are never to speak to her again or to mention her name. And, Callie, you are never to go near that side of town again. Do you understand?”

  Callie did not understand and on her next visit when she’d coaxed her brother out for a walk in the sun, he wasn’t much help. “She’s done something evil,” he said sadly. “I’m not to speak of her to you.” He scratched at the knit cap. Bram had caught a fever during his illness and wore the cap because he’d lost his hair. “Don’t go that way. People will see me.”

  Her brother shuffled his feet now like old Mr. Macintosh. Ma’am had brought books home from the wonderful stone schoolhouse for him but soon he would have to join the other students in the classrooms and face the cruel stares his appearance elicited. When Pa had first seen him he’d gone out into the hallway and wept. Aspen flamed yellow and orange on the ridges that were too high or too far to have been cut away and the air was crisp and afloat with spicy, drying smells. But Bram just watched his boots crunch cinders along the railroad tracks.

  “At least you don’t have to clean things,” Callie said, searching for something to cheer him. “And you have so many books.” She tried to keep the envy out of her voice. “Aunt Lilly, I mean Fl
oradora, lives over there.” He still didn’t look up. “She paints her face now.” Callie tried a few skips and left him behind. It was like having a whole new brother to get used to. She slowed and let his misery overwhelm her.

  Mildred Heisinger was not as pleased with the second group of young ladies she escorted to Telluride. She’d lost the sense of pride that accompanied her return the first time. Lawyer Barada was so insistent on numbers, Mildred had accepted all who had applied. There were thirteen, of every shape and size, and not one of them could be termed brilliant. Mildred stood on the station platform now waiting for the lawyer, who, his agent said when he came to collect her new charges, had found a house for her and wished to show it to her himself. He would be along shortly.

  “You!” a hate-filled voice said behind her, and Mildred whirled to find Charlene Rassmussen in mild disarray. Charlene was one of her finds on the Kansas City trip. Her hair straggled down beneath her hat as if she’d lost her combs. Her travel suit needed sponging and her enthusiasm had turned to outrage.

  “Charlene … are you not enjoying your new employment here?”

  Charlene became white at the lips, widened her eyes in a maniacal manner. “I am more fortunate than the others, you bitch. I have a benefactor. Mr. Whipple has wired me fare home and offers marriage in spite of you.”

  “Mr. Whipple … but isn’t he the neighbor with the bad skin, teeth, and breath and little hair? The one you fled here to escape? What has happened that would cause you to return to someone whom you loathed so?”

  Charlene Rassmussen spit directly into Mildred’s face. “Audrey’s vowed to kill you. And I hope she does.”

  Mildred wiped her cheek, unable to believe this carefully chosen young woman capable of such repulsive behavior. “Is Audrey unhappy with her employment also?”

  Charlene gave out a choking sound and turned on her heel, leaving Mildred with that familiar snaky coldness in her middle. Deep inside, where she couldn’t inspect it carefully, there had been a suspicion that something was not quite right about all this. It was too easy, too perfect, paid far too well. She’d tried to convince herself that common shopkeepers could afford her extravagant salary and expenses to obtain clerks and bookkeepers. That they were sufficiently selfless to be concerned about the supply of marriageable females in the camp. She greeted Lawyer Barada coolly when he drove up in a smart little buggy with a black horse.

  “You were right, my dear, it was extremely simple,” he said with enthusiasm as though he didn’t notice her stiffness. “There was but one house for sale in all the town.” The feeling in her middle compressed to a sick hardness as he turned the buggy the wrong way on Pacific Avenue. “I took the liberty of investing your current salary and commissions as a beginning payment. The demand for this property would have made it unavailable by the time of your return.” He pulled the buggy over and stopped the horse on a corner. “Well, what do you think of it?”

  The house was newly painted, had lovely ornate trim at the eaves, and a charming little cupola. It had a carriage house and stables behind it, all sparkling white, and a black wrought-iron fence. It was not large or imposing but roomy enough. From the outside it would have been a home she might easily have chosen herself. Had it been in another section of town. Had it not been overshadowed by the two-story perversion of human greed next to it called the Big Swede. A saloon downstairs, and she dared not think what it was upstairs. Men lounging in the doorway were already staring at her.

  “You must be joking,” she said finally to the lawyer beside her.

  “On the contrary, Miss Heisinger, it’s a fine property and fills all your requirements. It even comes with a few of the essential furnishings left behind by the previous owner, and I’ve taken the liberty of hiring a girl for you.”

  “You take far too many liberties, sir.”

  “But someone must look after it while you travel about, and see to your comforts when you return home weary. She comes for practically nothing and I have it on good authority she’s an excellent cook.”

  “I insist you drive me to the New Sheridan Hotel at once.”

  He raised snowy brows and shrugged. “As you wish.” He had the nerve to maintain a light one-sided banter as they drove up the street, as if everything were normal. “You have much to learn of the world of work, my dear Miss Heisinger, but then, you are young,” he said kindly as she stepped from the buggy unaided. “Your little home awaits you should you change your mind. Your most recent earnings including the commissions are already invested in it, remember.”

  Mildred needed time to collect herself, to decide what to do. Now she was hungry and tired and there were no beds available at the New Sheridan Hotel. Nor at the Victoria. Nor at the New Colombia. And the looks she received at each of these places raised her suspicions. There were no vacancies in the few boardinghouses on the north side of town that accepted ladies. She even went out to the Italian Catholic section to the east. Late afternoon was turning into chilly evening as she raised her chin and hurried back up the street. She stopped a woman with wrapped parcels. “There’s boardinghouses down in Finntown that take in ladies, I believe.”

  “Mrs. Pakka and Mrs. Riconola rent rooms,” a man on the street in Finntown told her, and pointed out both houses. No sidewalks here, and Mildred’s skirts gathered dust as she stepped around animal droppings. Mrs. Riconola’s rooms were filled. A lanky scarecrow of a man sat on the steps of Mrs. Pakka’s house.

  “In the kitchen, straight through to the back,” he said, and dipped his face into the collar of his coat. Mildred was halfway down the hall when she recognized the hollowed eyes. Brambaugh O’Connell. She had to stop and clutch a door molding to let that face sink beneath her own worries. And in the kitchen she confronted his mother. Mrs. O’Connell had always looked worn for her age but now she looked nearly as eroded as her son. “Miss Heisinger?” She wiped her hands, large and reddish, on her apron. “I’ve worried for your welfare since the unfortunate turn of affairs at Alta. It’s good to see you looking so well.”

  “Heisinger?” Mrs. Pakka brought a bowl of steaming soup to a sideboard. The kitchen smelled of yeast and boiled meat and other good things. The warmth was heavenly. “There’s no room here for your kind, woman.” Her eyes had that shutter behind them Mildred had hoped never to see again.

  “But, Mrs. Pakka,” Mrs. O’Connell said, “she’s a—”

  “She’s the lowest among the crawling things on God’s green earth. Luring innocents to their destruction.” The landlady picked up a wooden chair, her expression every bit as outraged as Charlene Rassmussen’s. “She’s a procuress, Mrs. O’Connell.”

  “Oh, surely not. You must be mistaken.”

  But Mildred watched the shutter close over Mrs. O’Connell’s open and concerned expression, mere doubt shuttering Mildred out for all eternity. She backed away as the chair legs poked at her, prodding her through the back door as if she were a dangerous animal let into the house by mistake.

  29

  Cree Mackelwain hurt. Two stubby miners tried to help him out of the snowshed and ended up dragging him. They smelled of sulfur and brimstone and dirt mucked up from the devil’s playground. “Where are the women who were with me?”

  “Got closed up in a hole in the air some ways. Those three men are running scared down Boomerang Road. Bunch of stiffs hard on their tails.”

  It would have been a relief to be deposited in the chair in the miniature office if the bending of his body hadn’t felt so dangerous. There was a miniature desk and a metal safe on wheels with golden curlicues painted on it. Cree tried to stretch out his legs but the mustachioed men gathered around him made it impossible.

  “Timothy Traub,” a man with clean skin said. He wore a suit coat, vest, and a bow tie that had tails on it. “Manager here. Don’t suppose you could tell me what it is you was doing in the adit?” Cree watched Timothy Traub separate into two identical men.

  “Cuts his hair like a foreigner, Mr. Traub.”

>   “You an American? Were you born in this country? Union men do this to you? You insured?”

  Cree blacked out. He surfaced to hear someone say, “Careful now. Easy. Long son of a bitch, ain’t he?” He could feel himself handled, the movement of air past his face. He sank back into the black that eased his pain. The next time he was aware of himself, he was lying on something brick-hard. He moved his hands outward and decided it was not very wide.

  “Here we are, awake at last. What say we open those eyes and have a look at the world, hah?” A tight wrapping around his chest kept him from filling his lungs deeply.

  “Aw, leave him be, Nurse Swengel, poor man must be paining after such a beating as was give to him,” said a voice farther away with a soft roll.

  “Time he was awake and eating if he intends to heal, Mr. Pangrazia. And the sheriff would like to know his name.”

  “McCree Ronald Mackelwain,” Cree said, and opened his eyes against his better judgment. “What year is this?”

  “Well, now, you haven’t slept that long.” Nurse Swengel was small and wide and her clothes rustled. “It’s still nineteen-aught-one.” She put a hand on his forehead and against his cheek, tilted her head back to look at him through the little squares of her eyeglasses. Then she tilted it forward so she could study him over the tops of them. Her bodice and sleeves puffed with starch. When she lifted him to drink from a thick glass, his middle refused to bend at the waist and chills, sweats, and nausea attacked him all at once. She lowered him carefully.

  “You’re one strong lady for your size,” he told her through gritted teeth.

  “That I am, Mr. Mackelwain.” She reddened, smiled. Her teeth were a mess. “Just you remember that when it comes time to take your medicine.” She arranged a series of hard little pillows under his back so he could be raised without bending above the hips and introduced his ward-mates. Three lay ominously still and flat. One lay on his side snoring softly. One moaned and gurgled and wheezed. Mr. Pangrazia sat on the edge of his bed. He was minus a leg. Every bed in the ward was filled. Nurse Swengel disappeared to find Cree some soup.