The Last Man in Gehenna

He emerged upon the only road leading into or out of Gehenna as though birthed by Spring from the same mysterious womb that gives life to the bees, and the birds, and the blooms. Both he and the stallion he rode were dwarfed between the towering Twin Peaks which give the region it’s name. Henrietta was paused on the boardwalk in the act of prayer when his coming caught her attention, a prayer for relief from a God whom had lately provided her with very little.

This Heavenly morning should have been enough to lighten Henri’s heart, and perhaps it did somewhat, just as it seemed to lighten the footsteps of those around her. After all, what should a young woman require to feel happy? Did she need more than a warm sun shining above, more than a magpie to sing, more than May’s ephemeral magic to sparkle the very air? Apparently so, for Henrietta had those happy things and more surrounding her, yet her mood sat heavily upon her as man and beast waded into the muddy quagmire that was Gehenna’s Main Street. Henri was too exhausted to feel airy, too alone to be happy, and she still faced a full afternoon of drudgery ahead. Her curiosity, however, was piqued by the novelty of the approaching stranger, so she lingered on the boardwalk to watch him come. What two years ago had been a steady stream of prospector’s pouring into Gehenna had long since become a trickle, and lately barely a drip. This particular rider gave her the impression that the river of optimists had officially run dry, that barring some fortuitous event he might be the very last of them. After all, without the wide-eyed expectations of fortune what else was there to bring a man to this secluded place? She could not fathom what, but here one came, though that in itself was not what gave her pause. Rather, it was an intuitive feeling that she was watching something more than just a man approaching. She sensed that the steeldust stallion mucking it’s way into Gehenna’s town proper carried more than just a rider, that the large horse also ferried change upon it’s back. For that reason she was compelled to stop and watch, as change was exactly what she had been longing for these past weeks and months. Henrietta was sixteen years old now, going on seventeen. Men were noticing her. Equally as important, Henri was doing some noticing of her own, only the things noticed up until now held little appeal.

Gehenna was little more than a ghost town at three years old. Founded by a man who rode into the Twin Peaks region with a pick-ax, a mule, and little else. Bishop Levine was a wandering man, a former slave with a history of heartbreak behind him, a man who found something spiritual (if not comfort) in the highest and loneliest of places. The Twin Peaks region had been just such a place before Bishop struck gold. The gold had been a happy thing at first, but then people had come. People were the one thing Bishop Levine could not abide, so when the population swelled to eighteen Bishop loaded his mule, telling those he passed on the trail that, “By God, overpopulation might ruin the country, but it damned sure would not ruin him.” By the time the population had reached two hundred Bishop Levine was long gone to some other lonely place, no doubt, but the gold strike he left behind had proven only a pocket, and quickly petered out for those who had uncaringly chased him away. Now Gehenna was on the fast-track to becoming high and lonesome once more. Those who remained when the boom played out were either the hangers-on without the means to go, or those with dreams too foolish to die. Strangers in the Twin Peaks region became rare once again. After all, the steep trail into Gehenna was not something one would choose if there were better options. The trail held dangers at every turn, and there was no one to turn to for help should those dangers bare their fangs.

The thing which first struck Henri (she could not help thinking of herself in the shortened version of her name that her father had always used) as the distance closed between them was the horse, the steeldust stallion being much larger than the mountain-bred cowponies more commonly ridden in these parts. The pair were well matched though, with horse and rider both rag-tagged and dusty in their winter coats, though Spring was sprung even here in the higher-ups. Henri watched them funneled between the towering peaks on either side of the trail into Main Street. The simple act of entering town poked the pair awake as from a dream. The stallion’s head lifted once inside the town proper, shaking loose it’s weariness, while the rider woke more in the fashion of a desert plant reborn after a long drought, slaking the prospect of a forgotten humanity through frayed roots, inflating him up from the moribund.

The rider checked the great beast as it drew abreast of her, looking down from eyes shadowed and mysterious beneath the wide brim of his hat. She was surprised to find nothing but a boy under there, his youthfulness betrayed by a long and lanky frame, and by tawny whiskers still too fine to cover a curiously set jaw or tight lips, despite his overgrown size. The boy-rider did not speak, but sat there looking, staring at her as one would gaze at a silver dollar lying on the sidewalk, wanting it, but not trusting why it would be there? Man and horse waited there perfectly still but for a shoulder-twitch which freed the steeldust of a pesky fly. The boy stared shamelessly until Henrietta was forced to continue on her way, but she failed to realize the pursed set her lips took as she went. She did not feel her back stiffen, nor did she take awareness of the overly-dramatic click of her booted heels on the boardwalk, but the rider noticed those things. He noticed them with humor, and once she was far enough away to not see it, he allowed a smile. For just as she had intuitively felt that the steeldust carried a harbinger of change upon it’s back, the young rider also instinctively knew that this was the girl for him.

“What,” Henri supposed as she stomped away, “was there about her that made this stranger, this “boy”, think it acceptable to stop and ogle her on a public street?” (Though she failed to consider that she had been doing the same to him.) But then, how could she not have ogled him? Not only was he a boy riding into the cesspool of Gehenna alone, and from God knows where, but he was a mere boy who exuded the one thing she desired above all else, the carefree insolence of one completely independent. He also exuded at once the kitty-cat irresistibleness of a bobcat - along with the frightful fangs and claws of one, reminding her that to attempt to pet this boy might prove bloody, and painful. But a girl must be a girl, mustn’t she? And is it not a girl’s nature to pet?

It was a town born as any town is born, of a dream. But Gehenna was a failed dream. It’s mining boom having passed as quickly as it had come. Henrietta was the only waitress left here, in Gehenna’s only remaining eatery. More than that, she was the only woman in the town’s current population of twenty-seven. As such Henri was the town’s main attraction, so there was little chance of her avoiding anyone here, stranger or not. It was an inevitable circumstance that she and this new stranger must meet if he was to stay in town for any amount of time, but Henrietta had no idea it would happen so soon. She was barely into her apron when there came the tinkle of the bell, and the scrape of the wooden bench’s legs along the rough board floor under the dining room’s long, picnic-styled table. A quick glance through the kitchen‘s doorway showed him laying his hat on the empty bench beside him despite the early dinner hour. She sighed. The day’s rush was officially begun.

Henri did not go out right away. Instead, she considered her reflection in the window glass of the pantry, something she rarely did. She could not have explained why she did so now. The face looking back was not ugly, but neither was it beautiful, she thought. It was young, however, and that was enough for the men stuck here in Gehenna. She noted a sadness looking back, a loneliness in the eyes, perhaps a bit of desperation. The skin on the face was sun-darkened, the hair sun-lightened. It was a set face; it’s eyes set with determination, it’s mouth set from worry, it’s attitude set with practicality. It was a woman’s face that somehow hid the girl still alive behind it even as that girl slowly died. This was neither the time nor the place for a girl, so it was out of necessity that her face had taken on the bearing of a woman’s.

When Henrietta’s father died he did so chasing a dream, leaving her nothing, and nowhere. He had been a dreamer, her father. He had purchased the clothes of a miner, and the tools. He had set out to become one with neither the necessary work ethic, nor the required knowledge of geology, mineralogy, or terrain. Not only had the fortune not come quickly, as was promised by the advertisement in the Memphis Gazette, it had not come at all. Reality had wounded her father, disappointment had broken him, but it was the land itself that killed him. It was a harsh, brutal, unforgiving land he had brought his daughter into. He and his dreams had succumbed to that land, but his daughter would not. Henrietta would survive.

Henri was fourteen and alone when Frenchy DuBois, a man with no family, but with a loner’s tender heart, offered her the job in a restaurant he had won some weeks previously in a poker game. Frenchy quickly learned that running a restaurant was not easy. It was so much work, in fact, that he believed that must be the reason why the previous owner had thrown it in the pot. The job’s offer was a climacteric moment for Henrietta, what with no other prospects, so she quickly immersed herself in the role, and she was a girl not afraid of work. Disgusted at the kitchen, she had immediately set to work cleaning, scrubbing, throwing out everything rancid to include Frenchy Dubois, a man better suited to a beaver trap or a card game than to an eatery. Frenchy could hunt, fish, and butcher all right, but he had no business in a kitchen. Hired as a waitress, Henri quickly took over the cooking duties, and the cleaning, leaving Frenchy extra time to hunt, trap, and to ride to Denver for supplies. On some rare occasions he even made it back without gambling her needed supplies away.

Henrietta proved a capable restaurateur. She made it work because she had to. That she was a young woman was clearly an advantage, and was nearly enough in itself to guarantee success in a place where there were, literally, no other women. She was also aware enough to realize that she was not hard to look at, but she was not satisfied with that. It was her design to make enough here to set herself up elsewhere; San Francisco maybe, or St. Louis. So she mail-ordered seeds that first winter and was ready come spring with a small vegetable garden which she’d had to turn herself. Frenchy found a Dutch oven in an abandoned miner’s shack, so Henri took up baking, learning fast as she went. Frenchy hunted and trapped, doing what he did best, butchering his catches for her. There was no menu. Instead, Henri cooked and served what was available, but men tired of their own cooking quickly learned that the food would be good at “Frenchy’s” no matter what it was, and there would be plenty of it. Word spread amongst the miners, trappers, and cowboys in the surrounding areas until business was booming in Gehenna’s cafeteria, even if it’s mines were not.

But for all of her success Henrietta was in despair. It was too much for a girl alone, cooking for thirty men and then cleaning up after; raising the vegetables, ordering the supplies, fighting off uninvited hands and proposals, chopping the wood for the fire while Frenchy galavanted over the surrounding hills. While proud of the business she had built, she was exhausted. Not only was she physically tired, but she was sad, discouraged, and alone. Her savings were growing, but slowly. At this rate it would take her two years to save enough to leave here. She could not keep up this pace for two more years, even if the few remaining miners hung around that long. It was too much. The end of the tunnel was dark, and Henrietta needed a light.

Henri pulled herself away from her sad reflection to walk into the dining room, smoothing her apron as she went. The boy sat slouched over the table, as needful of sleep as food. “It is early,“ she offered, “it will be a minute, but I can bring a piece of cake and some coffee until I have something hot ready.” The youngster nodded agreeably. The cake was baked the previous evening and was thickly layered with a sweet-frost. The boy’s eyes widened as he forked a hunk into his mouth. To a youngster unused to sweet treats the cake was good as good gets.

He looked at the girl he’d seen on the street again, this time admiring more than her pretty shape. She would be close to his age, maybe a year older… maybe two. She was pretty like a fawn is pretty; dainty, but aloof. She made her coffee strong and hot, a man’s coffee. A man’s coffee was what the boy was accustomed to, so he gulped it down with the cake, right down to the crumbs and dregs. When plate and cup were empty the girl was gone from the dining room, but he heard the chunk of an awkwardly swung ax through the kitchen doorway. He wandered out that way to investigate, but before doing so he picked up his empty dishes, carrying them to the kitchen with him. Through the opened back door he watched as she swung her ax with greater determination than force.

It alarmed her when he appeared in the doorway, the fear making evident her aloneness here, but he only tipped his hat with one hand and reached for the ax with the other. His initial swing easily split the log she had been engaged in battle with. The following swings expertly quartered the halves.

”You don’t have to do that,” she almost yelled the words between his blows. “I do it everyday!”

He showed no outward sign of hearing her, or caring.

Thunk!

”Do you think I am incapable?”

Thunk!

”You’ll still have to pay for your supper.”

Thunk!

That last sentence had blurted out from nowhere. She kicked herself for having said it, knowing it sounded mean. Never once had a paying customer offered to help her. She had not known how to react, but the way she did was obviously the wrong way, frustrating her even more. Most of the miners simply complained about having to wait before shorting her on their bill for it. Never before had one pitched in to help while he waited. Unsure of what else to do in the strange situation, and not wanting to apologize, Henri hastily collected the smaller, scattered pieces of wood that would do as kindling and went inside to lay a fire in the cook-stove, noting as she did so the clean dishes drying on a towel beside the water bucket. A glance into the dining room showed what she suspected. The boy had cleaned his own dishes! Her father had never even cleaned his own dishes. She could not remember ever having seen a man clean his own dishes. She hurried the fire, blowing it to life, and rushed back outside. The pile of firewood was already split and neatly stacked. He was at the well now, drawing a bucket. She watched as he walked past her, his body in a heavy lean, the bucket’s weight raising his empty arm outward for balance. Three trips it usually took her to make a full bucket, and twenty minutes. She wanted to cry with gratitude. “Who are you?” She asked.

Without turning to face her he offered, “name’s Dart, Mam." He followed it by way of explanation, "Short for D’Artagnan.” She thought it cute that his ears grew a little red as he said it. “Ma read the book right before I was born and liked the name.” It was not exactly the answer Henri was fishing for, but she was happy to know what to call him, anyways.

D'Artagnan? A strange name for a strange boy. He returned to his seat in the dining room, laying his hat down on the bench as before.

He ate everything she set before him, while she guiltily piled it on; beaver-tail steak, chicory flavored grits, turnip greens, all mixed together and washed down with another scalding cup of coffee. The dining room filled as he finished. She brought him another piece of the sweet cake and he wolfed that down as well. Busy now, Henrietta returned to his spot at the table to find him sound asleep, his chin resting on his chest, only the packed in miners on either side of the bench keeping him from tipping over sideways. She remembered the weariness she had noticed as he rode into town earlier in the day, and rightly so. Gehenna was a long ride from anywhere. She left him alone to rest.

When next she looked D’Artagnon was gone. Where she had no idea? Or if he would ever return. In between times the room had crowded with men; bearded, dirty, loud, foul-mouthed men. Men with no ambition other than foolish, get-rich-quick dreams and schemes, men satisfied to loaf about a ghost town, rattling it’s bones and moaning with displeasure at circumstance. The malaise which had temporarily lifted from her returned. A room which a short time before had taken on a colorful hue circled quickly back to dullness. She had a name for the boy, but she still had no idea who he was?

By eight o’clock the cafe' hunched dark and empty while The Emporium across the way roared. Henrietta sat alone in the same spot on the same bench where the boy had eaten and then slept earlier. She was tired enough to sleep in the spot as well, but sleep was not an option for her. She was looking around at the dirty tables, and into the dirty kitchen. Tears welled up, but crying would clean nothing, so she lifted herself up and grabbed a dish cloth, ignoring the tightness in her gut.

Later, alone in her dead father’s cabin she finally laid down, but sleep would not come. Instead, she was remembering the easy way the boy swung the ax, and the resounding “thunk” of it biting into the wood. She recalled his narrow waist, his broad shoulders, and the way he had towered over her as he took the ax away from her. Long she laid sleepless, thinking of those things, until her eyes suddenly flared wide, surprised by the sun shining through the morning window.

She spent a little extra time on her hair, somehow expecting him to be there waiting when she arrived at the cafe. Or perhaps “hoped” was a better word? “D'Artagnan! What a funny name!" When she arrived at the cafe’ to find he was not there it was all Henri could do to unlock the door and walk inside. She couldn’t fathom why she thought he might be here? He had said nothing to imply it. But she had the idea in her head that he liked her, even though there was no basis for that assumption. He had been kind, was all. Generous. She had read too much into his helping her. He had seen a girl alone and been polite, was all. Likely he was twenty miles away from Gehenna by now, having never given her another thought, and was still riding away. Henri sat down hard on the edge of the dining room’s bench, her elbows on her knees, her head in her hands, an unexplainable heaviness upon her at thought of the coming day. When the feeling finally passed she made her way to the kitchen to don her apron. It was then, through the fly-specked window, that she saw him in her vegetable garden, bent at the waist, hoe in hand. Her heart gave a great leap at the sight of him there. The reaction immediately made her aware that he must stay, that she must convince him to... but how? There was only one way she knew to do that, so she laid some fatwood in the cook-stove and stirred last night's coals to life. Soon the happy smell of fresh-made biscuits poured out from the little kitchen where it quickly found the young gardener. He paused in his work for just a moment, leaning on the hoe's handle while the smells of baking bread and frying bacon rolled his stomach over. She came out then, cautiously approaching the garden. "Good morning, D'Artagnan." Somehow, when she said the name aloud it did not seem so silly.

"'Mornin', Mam."

"Not mam. Henrietta."

"Yes, Mam."

"Breakfast is almost ready. Please come in."

"I didn't think y'all opened until lunch."

"We don't."

Understanding, he nodded. "Allow me to wash up, and I'll be along."

She turned to walk back towards the door. He remained where he was, leaned against the hoe’s handle, enjoying the delectable odor of baking bread on the morning breeze and the swish of her skirt as she went, his mouth watering with anticipation.

She was quickly efficient in the kitchen, always much busier than she seemed to be. Coffee brewed, biscuits baked, bacon fried, gravy simmered, and all the while she chopped at the vegetables that would go with the venison she would be serving to the miner’s later on in the afternoon. The screen door screeched behind her. Without turning she said, "Go on in and sit. I'll bring it in." She broke the biscuits onto a plate, covering both the biscuits and the bacon liberally with white-flour gravy, just the way her Pa used to like it. She set the plate before him and took the bench opposite. He ate slowly and silently, savoring every bite. She looked on proudly, seeing the enjoyment on his face. When he had sopped the last of the gravy up with a biscuit she gathered her courage, because she wanted him to know. "I didn't know if you'd be back. I hoped you would."

He set the coffee cup on the table before speaking and looked up into her eyes, his so softly brown and genuine that it gave her a weak feeling inside that she'd never felt before. "I reckon I'll be plumb hard to get rid of, Mam."

Unable to hold his gaze she dropped her own eyes down to her hands, which were now tightly clasped together on the tabletop so that he wouldn’t see them shaking. So tightly were they clasped, she noted, that her knuckles were white from it. "It's Henrietta," she said again.

"Yes, Mam."

All day he stayed and worked, and the next. He donned an apron, brought in the dirty dishes from the dining room and washed them, scrubbed the tables and floors, fetched wood and water, brought needed things from the dairy, repaired broken utensils, and hinges, and handles, and otherwise made himself useful. It was only three days and she was already wondering how she'd ever done it without him, and how she ever could again. At night, lying in bed, she felt the ball of tension inside her slackening, so that sleep came quickly and easily. But what she liked best was to watch him eat. He seemed to enjoy her cooking so much, and was so appreciative after, almost as though no one had ever cooked for him before. The look on his face as he ate made her feel useful, and proud of what she was able to do. And the more she stared into that face as it relished her cooking, the more agreeable and handsome it became, while the more he did to help her, the harder he worked, the less youthful he seemed. "D'Artagnon," Henri thought to herself as she watched him eat. "It’s not such a silly name." She had never read the book. Perhaps she should.

Alone at last, in the comfortable blackness of the cabin, not nearly so tired as usual, her thoughts, as they seemed to be more and more lately, were on him when a mystery popped into her mind. When the thought materialized she was amazed that she had not thought of it before. "Where was he now? At night? Where did he go to sleep?"

It came as a shock when he said it. For two weeks now he had been at the cafe, showing up every day since that first time she’d seen him riding up Main Street. She had already come to count on him being there. In fact, she looked forward to finding him there in the morning, working the garden, or sharpening the ax. And the way he‘d said it, as though she was his employer, which of course she wasn’t. “I won’t be able to come around tomorrow, Mam, or maybe a few days after.” It had struck her as a blow. Her first thought was to ask why, but that was not right. Who was she to tell him what he could or could not do? He owed her nothing. If anything, it was she who owed him. And yet, she didn’t want him to go. Thankfully she had been kneeding dough, stretching out the yeast, her back to him, so he could not see her face turn ashen.

”All right,” was all she could manage in reply.

”I’ve some things I need to do.”

She could not keep the sharpness from her voice, for that is what disappointment does to a woman. It sharpens her up. “I am not your employer. You needn’t explain.”

”You kind of are, Mam. You wouldn’t be feeding me if I wasn’t helping out around, would you?”

She had not thought of it that way. In her mind he was coming around every day to see her, not for her cooking. So there was that! “You owe me nothing.” She was kneading much more forcefully now, but he was too inexperienced with women to know what that meant. “Go do whatever it is you want to do!“

”Yes, Mam.” He started out, his boots echoing in the sudden silence. She heard the knob turn, and seconds later the latch catch.

Henri ran to the door, but she didn’t open it. She could not let him see how desperate her need was. Instead, she whispered the words in her heart quietly to herself. “But you will come back? Won’t you?”

His camp was not much. Dart had shoveled out the soil around a fallen aspen, and then fashioned a lean-to over the hole using branches and boughs, weaving them tight. The camp was higher up the mountain than town was, past the other abandoned mining claims with their rotting sluice boxes. The nights were cold this high up, even in the summer, but the fallen aspen acted as a reflector for his fire, and he had his oil cloth and blanket. The sun was settling itself in behind the twin peaks, pulling the temperature down with it as it dropped under. Dart fed the fire one last time before stretching the oil cloth out across the sandy soil. The mountain was silent but for the gurgle of the stream past his camp. A few short months ago this stream had been lined with hunched over miners thigh deep in the freezing water, pans in hand. The stream had actually been the failing of those placer miners, limiting their vision to the water, but Dart had other ideas. Directly above his camp was a rocky cliff face waiting to be scaled. It was in his mind that up there was the real gold, that what the miner’s had found in the stream had washed down over centuries from higher up. He laid down on the oil cloth and pulled the blanket up under his chin. His toes wiggled inside his socks. It felt good to have his boots off. Very good.

Before coming to Gehenna, Dart had watched a miner die, a lunger. D’Artagnan had been beside the man through it all. It was Dart alone who nursed the old man through the rough Santa Fe winter. The boy had listened when the old miner told him of a strike in Bolivia where gold had been found on a rocky mountainside slope beneath a melting glacier, the melt-off from the ice having washed the smaller, lighter flecks of gold downward into the rushing streams below. That Bolivian rush had been petering out when some adventurous spirit climbed up the rocky slope and found the gold’s real source while the placer miners panned pocket change from the creeks down below. That old miner who told Dart about Bolivia had been on his way to Gehenna, to this strike, when the consumption killed him. The old man felt that the similarities in the geography between the two locations, Gehenna and Bolivia, were too many to be coincidental. But the miner had been a sick man, and travel was hard in 1886. The old man never made it to Gehenna, but before dying he had shared his knowledge about the two similar strikes with the youngster who befriended him, and who nursed him through his sickness. “The gold is there,” he’d told the boy. “Mark my words! They just haven’t gone high enough to find it!” D’Artagnan listened to that old man’s story and believed. “It is too late for me, but you are young,“ he’d said to Dart. “You can do it! When I am gone, take my gear. I want you to have it. The steel-dust is a fine horse, and will handle the trip. Tell no one, but go there. Climb higher than anyone else has. It is up there, I know it is! A fortune awaits the one brave enough to go higher, and a future! Don’t miss out on them as I have!”

“I will,” a starry-eyed Dart had promised the old man. “I will.”

And tomorrow he would. “Tomorrow,” Dart thought. “He would go higher. Tomorrow he would climb that cliff-face. Tomorrow he would keep his promise to a friend.”

D’Artagnan’s last thought before sleep took him was of Henri alone in the restaurant, too desperate to quit. The thought tightened his guts, but it was strictly for her sake that he had already put this off for two weeks. He could wait no longer. He must give the mountain a try before winter came, and winter would come early at this high altitude.

Morning broke misty on the mountain, and cold, but the promise of blue skies peeped at Dart through a fiery red veil. Close by his lean-to a moose stood four-legged in the cold stream, the fog swirling and blowing through it’s heavy nostrils, impatient at having his breakfast interrupted by a mere boy. Well, if the moose stood there long enough, it would see! Dart pulled the stallion’s picket pin, not wanting the horse trapped should something happen to him. After a quick meal of a cold biscuit and hot coffee he rolled up his jeans, gathered his supplies, and waded through the icy water, making sure to give the moose plenty of space. Once across, he fashioned a sling for his shovel and pick that would allow his hands to be free. Lastly, his feet finally dry, he tugged into his boots, shouldered the tools, and began to climb.

The slope’s bottom was littered with debris, the cast-off rocks and logs of centuries. He tested each stepping stone gingerly, feeling for stability before giving them weight. The shovel and pick rattled loosely on his back. The moose watched him curiously while the steel-dust happily cropped grass on the edge of camp. A rock rolled beneath his foot, but he was ready with a free hand and caught himself from falling. He aimed for a small copse of cedar clinging to the hillside just beyond the fallen rubble. Once there he paused to rest, his chest pumping wildly for air. He was through the fallen rubble now, but the climbing would be steeper from here on up. Camp was far below him, the moose gone, the steel-dust as tiny and gray as a mouse.

It was hand over foot climbing now, a constant search for hand-grips, and toe-holds. With no cause to hurry Dart worked his way along the mountain’s face, seeking out the easiest routes, aware that any accident, no matter how small, could prove deadly. He stopped once to look down. He could no longer see the camp, nor the steel-dust, but far away across the valley he saw a smoke that must have been Gehenna, and was probably coming from Henrietta at the restaurant, hard at work. Energized, he continued upward. The higher he got, the looser was the granite, until it finally started breaking off in his hands, and crumbling underfoot. He had to take extra care now, but even still there was a slip which banged his shin sharply enough that he felt the blood sticking to his jeans.

Dart was discouraged. The mountain was immense. It had sounded so easy while listening to the old man, but if there was gold up here, he could spend a lifetime trying to find it, if he ever found it at all. A natural shelf in the rock wall appeared, and he angled over toward it. Using it for a seat, he pressed his back hard against the cliff’s face while his feet dangled out into nothing. Far below him the same thin trail of smoke lifted skyward. Nearer, but still well below him, an eagle circled on the morning breeze. Beside his hand a piece of quartz jutted out from the granite, rotten enough that it crumbled free when he gave it a yank. Laced throughout the quartz shone the dull yellow gleam of pyrite, fool’s gold. Dart looked again at the faraway trail of smoke. Maybe the pyrite was a sign? Perhaps he was a fool? Maybe the old miner had been only half right? Suppose a fortune and a future did lie in wait up on this mountain, but what if they weren’t in the form of gold? Would easy riches really make his life better? It had not made Bishop Levine’s life better, had it?

Nothing about Dart’s life had come easy, beginning with the lack of a last name. Fifteen years old, he had been doing a man’s work the last four years. Finding a pocket of gold would be nice, he reckoned, but what would have to be given up to get it, and to keep it?

Fool’s gold. Pretty enough, but useless. Not like Henrietta. Henrietta shone for real; pretty, and useful. D’Atagnon gazed upward to the mountain’s top, still so far away, and then looked back down. He had climbed high, probably too high. It was unlikely that gold would sit this high. He couldn’t possibly make it to town tonight, but tomorrow was soon enough. If he started now he could at least make it back to camp before dark. He would start now. As he edged himself off of his rock wall more rotten quartz crumbled under his hand, and he fell.

For ten feet or so he slid down a gravel and sand embankment, and then he went over a lip, dropping him twenty more feet in a straight down free fall. He struck on his back, the weight of his body splintering the shovel handle beneath him, while the handle also splintered a rib inside him. A long time he laid there not caring to move, feeling the rib throb inside, afraid to know how badly he was injured. When he did finally lift his head he was shot through with pain, so much so that he quickly laid back until the shooting pains subsided, but he had to move, didn’t he? To stay up here on the cliff-face through the night, injured, without a fire, a blanket, or even a coat was out of the question. He would likely die from exposure. Gathering his strength, he rolled over to find that he was lying on another rock shelf, this one hanging out over an enormous cliff face that dropped far away into nothing-ness. The view downward left him dizzy, so he turned his face away from the depths only to find in the other direction a crack in the rock wall. Inside the crack a seam of quartz ran it’s length. Embedded throughout the quartz was gold… not pyrite, not Fool’s Gold this time, but honest to God gold. Forgetting his pain D’Artagnan pulled himself up to a sitting position so that he might take a good look around. The rock shelf he lay on was at least twenty feet long. At the far end it wrapped around a boulder and could continue on for who knew how far? The shelf was four feet wide in it’s narrower places, widening out to six feet in others, wide enough that some cedar had taken root on it, and some lesser shrubs. But there was room to work, so he picked up the pick and hefted it’s weight before trying it on the quartz, giving it a firm, but controlled tap. The quartz fell away easily, as if it had been waiting for him to come along for the gold, and wanting him to have it. Dart picked the largest piece up from the shelf floor where it had fallen. The old miner had been right! The chunk of quartz he held was literally laced with gold!

It took only the matter of minutes to chip more quartz chunks away from the crack in the rock. With his pockets full, and his imagination, Dart began searching for a way down the rock’s face.

The sun was disappearing behind the western peak when Dart made his way into camp. Over the course of the day the steeldust had wandered across the meadow. Exhausted, Dart took the time to bring the horse in closer to the fire, and to picket him where he could continue to safely graze. Returning to the fire, Dart removed his saddlebags of their contents so that he could shove the gold-laced nuggets, two of them nearly as large as a fist, down into their bottoms. He covered them back over with his extra gear. This done, he finally relaxed, although his ribs made comfort impossible. He removed his shirt to take a look, but could see nothing that might indicate a broken rib, although the shooting pains told him otherwise. Giving up, he carefully settled himself down into his soft, sand cushioned bed. Long he laid awake watching the shadows dance about the lean-to. “How many men,” he wondered, “throughout time had laid as he was now, watching the flames dance?” He thought then of the treasure he’d found, and wondered how he could get it off of the mountain? Beside him the fire sizzled and popped. Further away the stream gurgled over the rocks, and somewhere a lonesome coyote yipped. Dart’s lids grew continually heavier until he drifted off to sleep.

The morning brought new dilemmas. The mountain’s face had been daunting enough when he‘d felt fine the previous morning, but with the way his side and chest felt today a climb was out of the question. And how would he get the gold down if he did make the climb? He could use the saddlebags, but they would be extremely heavy if full of gold, and he would need his hands to climb besides, so how would he carry them. He needed a satchel for his back, with straps to put his arms through. Perhaps he could cut some crude steps into the mountainside, to make the climb easier. He would need to ride to Denver to stake his claim. Once staked, he would need gear, and he would need men to help him get the gold out; gear and men that he could not afford until he had already mined out and brought down a sizable stake. There was no way around climbing. He recalled the terror he’d felt as he slid over the rim yesterday. By rights he should be dead, but had found gold instead. How long could he expect that kind of luck to last? Dart stood at the base of the cliff looking up. The truth was, he did not look forward to going back up, but there was little choice, was there?

He remembered the fool’s gold then, and the feeling that he was a fool to be traipsing over the mountainside when there was a girl like Henrietta waiting for him to return to her. True, she hadn’t exactly said she was waiting for him, there had been no words at all which might make him believe she was waiting for him, but a man knows these things, doesn’t he? Feelings don’t always need words. True, they were young, but they were also alone, and they made a good team, each with differing strengths, but both with lots of them.

Dart decided then that he would go back to Gehenna. He would talk to Henri about the gold, and the restaurant… maybe even about a future together, depending upon how the conversation went.

The gold he’d found would have to be assayed. Assaying would bring it’s own risks. He could have it assayed in Denver when he went to file his claim. He might even ride to Silver City, but word would still get out. It always does, where gold is involved. Gehenna would have a second boom. Dart would have to hire guards, as claim jumpers were a real thing. They would come for his gold, there were always those who tried, some with brute force, others with more devious ways; the lawyers, bankers, and politicians. It would not be easy to keep what he’d found. Dart needed someone to talk to, someone he trusted. There was only one person who came to mind. Henrietta’s knowledge of gold might be limited, but her intelligence and common sense were not.

Yes. He would go back to Gehenna.

It was the evening rush at the cafe when Dart rode into town. He led the steeldust around to the back of the restaurant, feeling eyes upon his saddlebag where none existed. It is a paranoid feeling that the carrying of gold gives to a man. His ribs paining him, Dart used great care to lift the saddle and carry it over to the hitch-post, where he tossed it atop the rail with a horrific effort. He leaned there against the saddle letting the waves of pain pass, hopeful that he was unobserved. When he could finally do so, he pulled a couple handfuls of bunch grass and used it to rub the big horse down with before easing in through the backdoor.

Henrietta fought back the urge to run to him when she saw him, which of course she could not do. She wanted to throw her arms around him, to cling tightly to him, but she could not do that either, so she choked those feelings down. Instead she gave him a thin smile, ladeled stew onto a plate, and carried it back out to the dining room without a word, being unwilling to trust the emotions that would surely tell in her voice. Dart found a corner for the saddlebags, covered them up with some burlap bags, and started cleaning an enormous pile of dishes.

When next she entered the kitchen she’d had time to think, to gather herself… to get angry. “You don’t have to do that,” she fired at him, her voice icy.

So they were all the way back to the start, were they? “I want to help.”

”If you wanted to help you wouldn’t have gone.”

”I had to go.”

”Did you?”

The anger was palpable, but Dart had no idea where it was coming from. He’d returned with no expectations, and certainly not with the expectation of this. He did not reply to her question, sensing that there was no answer which would suffice.

“Why don‘t you just go back to wherever it was that was so important?”

So he did the one thing he shouldn’t have done, the one thing that could make his position here even more tenuous… he did what she asked him to do. He left. With no experience, Dart couldn’t know that he wasn’t supposed to do what she said, that she really needed him now more than ever, that she needed an outlet for her angst, and that he was supposed to be it. It wasn’t until he was out the door that it even occurred to her that she’d told him to go, but she did notice his wince when he stopped to pick up the saddlebags. Her pride would not let her follow him out, though she desperately wanted to. There wasn’t time anyway. There was a dining room full of hungry miners, and she had just fired her only help! Could he really be that stupid that he would go just because she told him to?

The evening had been a hard one on Henri. She had run the emotional gamut; worry, anger, forgiveness, defeat, resolve, and around again. She locked the front door. Turning, she saw him sitting the steeldust in the shadows, waiting. Anger took it’s turn again, but was given no time to vent.

“We need to talk,” he said. “I need to talk to you.”

Forgiveness took over then, and curiosity. “All right. Come on.” He followed quietly, the stallion’s hoof-falls soft in the muddy road, and masked by The Emporium’s ruckus. They passed three dark, abandoned shacks before pausing at the door of hers. Inwardly, she agonized over a propriety that was nonexistent in this town full of miners. Still, her good reputation was important to her. “Wait here. Let me start a light.”

She went in, lighting the gas lamp. Examining the room in the glow of it, she hastily straightened some things that didn’t need straightening. He was standing at the door when she opened it, and he stepped inside without her invitation. Other than her father, which was decidedly different, she had never been this alone with a man, alone together that is. She felt extremely vulnerable with him inside her abode. He seemed taller inside the one room shack. She noticed that her bed was visible, and was embarrassed when she saw him looking through the curtain at it. “You shouldn’t be here. What is it that you need to talk to me about?” She asked him, rushing straight to the point.

Without speaking he reached his hand deep into his pocket before thrusting whatever it had found there out for her inspection. He placed it in her outthrust palm, it’s weight producing a decided shock within her. It felt like a chunk of dirt, or clay, roughly the size of a corn cob, and was abrasive in texture. She held it up to the light to discover that it gleamed brilliantly in the oil lamp’s soft glow. Gold, she knew instinctively. Dart had found gold!

“There is more.” He was smiling now, excited to share his discovery.

Her heart was beating wildly, even faster than before, when she had believed he was here for her. Looking at the nugget made it hard to gather her thoughts. “How much more?”

He left the room, and re-entered carrying his saddlebags. From one of them he dumped onto the table three more chunks, each of them only slightly smaller than the one in her hand. The glimmering nuggets were piled up on the tabletop like smoldering ashes in a frozen fire as the gold reflected the light through the darkness, while the quartz refracted it. It was the most beautiful thing Henri had ever seen. Stunned, her heart was pulsing now with a slow, measured beat, hardly pumping enough air to keep her erect. “Why, you are rich, Dart!”

”I was sort of hoping it was we who were rich, Henrietta. You and I, together.”

They pulled out opposite chairs from the table, then. There was a long silence after they sat, both of them gazing at the pile of nuggets lying on the table and gauging the possibilities the gold afforded them. With reluctance she pulled her eyes from the pile to look at D’Artagnon. His face looked gaunt in the shadowed light. There was contentment there, but there was something else there too, something that drew his skin tight with tension. He looked up to catch her gaze. “What do you want, Henrietta? I can give it to you.”

“I want out of this place. What is it you want, D’Artagnan?” She asked in return.

“I want you.”

Sleep came hard that night. While it was true that Henrietta was a woman, it was also true that she was a very young one. Her body had become that of a woman before her mind was ready, although she was learning the ways of the world quickly since her father had left her alone, but she also realized how her father had sheltered her in their travels. Henri had never kissed a boy. She had never even had a girlfriend to talk to about kissing a boy. The thought of it fluttered her insides, and flushed her cheeks with hot blood. She wasn’t even exactly sure what a husband did with a wife, or vice-versa? Well, she kind of knew in a dream-like, intuitive way, but there was so much she didn’t know, and it was the not knowing that terrified her.

Twenty-one days later D’Artagnon returned to Gehenna upon the same lonely road that had carried him into town the past Spring, only this time he rode in under the fog of rain. It dripped from his hat-brim and soaked his new jeans to the skin despite the rain-slicker he wore. Still, he rode in with excitement. The gold had assayed as high-grade, exactly as he thought it would. His claim was filed. He only need now to lay stakes and “prove-up” the claim. The thing that left him worried was the mountain itself. He’d had plenty of riding time to give it thought these past weeks, but Dart still had no firm plan for retrieving the gold from the mountainside. The climb up would provide risk no matter how he looked at it, and the amounts of ore he could bring down would be limited by necessity, as the weight of the gold itself would make climbing down even more hazardous.

Nevertheless, he was home now. Home? Dart looked out at the shabbily unpainted, sawboard town, a collection of buildings as gray and cold as the rain itself, what with it’s abandoned businesses and it’s hastily constructed miner’s shacks. Yet Dart looked out at them with an eagerness which resembled fondness. Though the sight to some might prove dismal, he knew that from this day forward wherever “she” was would forever feel like home to him.

He rode straight-away to the cafe. She came out running, her hems held high away from the mud, her unbridled joy a salve to his aching muscles. “Imagine it!“ He thought. “A girl like her missing the likes of him?” Offered a stirrup she leapt up. She leaned into his wet slicker and threw her arms around him, her mouth finding and kissing his cheeks over and over again. Laughing, Dart reached behind him for the saddlebag, his hand searching blindly inside it for the ring he’d had fashioned from the first gold nugget he had chopped away from the cliff-side, the very nugget he had first held out to her in her cabin. He held it out to her again, only it was refined this time, and molded round in symbolism of the forever that he wanted to spend with her. He didn’t ask her the question, and she didn’t answer, questions and answers being unnecessary. Instead, she wallowed in her first kiss as he grasped her cheeks in his hands, intent on showing her how much he’d missed her while he was gone, yet struggling to hold her still in her excited state. His lips pressed to hers and his tongue found her lips, something unexpected by her, yet also warmly palpitating. She had never been kissed by a boy, and certainly not like this. His tongue slid between her parted lips, feeling it’s way where it would, softly testing her. She felt herself falling, helpless, and might have dropped but for the strength of his arm wrapped around her waist, suspending her in time and space as they tasted one another and the sweetness that is youth. His arm pulled her closer. She let it, submitting to it, the summer raindrops melting boy and girl together in the city street and washing her reservations away. She felt the hunger in him for her, and wondered if she was as obvious in her desire to be swallowed? His tongue felt of her lips once more as it departed, purposefully tasting before his mouth pulled from hers, leaving her a like fish suspended on a line, gasping for something lost, like she had been pulled rudely from a warm, watery dream that she would never willingly wake from.

Her eyes opened to his smile. The rain pattered upon her face and drug strands of hair down over her eyes. He released her to the ground, where she trembled upon unsteady legs. An unfamiliar weight coaxed her eyes down to the band glimmering as brightly upon her finger as she felt herself to be. Gehena held no ministries. There were no preachers. There was hardly even a God here. Nevertheless, Henrietta knew she was as married as she ever could be to D’Artagnan, that there would never be another for her. And after the kiss she no longer worried about what was to come, about what she did not know. When the time came she would give herself to him completely, and she would work hard at figuring out anything she did not know. She had a feeling he would not mind her practices.

It was with reluctance that he brought Henrietta along, but she would not be left behind, not after being alone the past three weeks, so she closed up shop for a day. She followed Dart up the steep trail, past the abandoned mining camps with their rotting sluice boxes all the way to the trail’s end and farther. She was exhausted when he finally stopped in a small clearing near the rock-littered base of a rugged mountainside. She rewarded the horse that had worked hard all morning by allowing it to crop freely at the lush mountain grass.

“Here we are.” Dart’s tone was meek, almost shameful.

She could see why. This was where he’d been staying? He dismounted, and she followed suit, leaving her hand upon the saddle to steady her weary legs. She’d had no idea it would be this far. She could not fathom what time he would have to leave here in the mornings to make it to the cafeteria before her. They had been riding for hours! And there was nothing here. Absolutely nothing at all, save the small, grassy meadow and the steady gurgle of the creek. He unsaddled the steeldust first, and then her gelding before wiping them both down with handfuls of bunchgrass while she found a log to sit on from which she could marvel at D’Artagnan’s stamina. He seemed so young! How did he keep going as he did? Did he never tire?

Weary, but also worn out with sitting, Henrietta forced herself up. Dart was working about the camp, so she wandered over to the creekside. She could find no evidence of gold in the water, no metallic sparkle, or glimmer. “Where did you find it?” She hollered to be heard above the rushing water, her curiousity unhideable.

”Not there.” He pointed at the mountainside rising up beyond the creek. “There.”

Curious, she sloshed her boots through the shallow water, making her way over to the jumbled mass of rock littering the cliff’s base. She could see nothing there, either. No holes where he’d dug, nothing at all to indicate a mine. “Where,” she called. “Show me!”

Dart laughed. He splashed through the creek, and made his way to her. “Not down here,” he said. “Although there might be some cast off lying around down here. Up there!” Her eyes followed his pointing finger upward. The rock wall was massive, leaving her dizzy as her neck craned back. “It’s about half-ways up,” he offered by way of explanation.

He must be teasing her. She laughed nervously while searching his face for the truth, but it was unreadable. “Please tell me you aren’t serious.”

His eyes held no hint of jest. “I am serious.” He smiled proudly. “Don’t you see? That’s why it was never found before!”

She backed away, so that she might better see. The mountain’s face appeared to be straight up to her. Yes, there were cracks and fissures in the rock’s face, and the occasional juniper to grasp, but half way up? That was impossible! “D’Artagnan?” She asked.

“Yes.”

“You will die doing this.”

“Nah!” But she heard little confidence in his bravado. “Not if I am careful.” But he was remembering his fall. He was remembering the fear as he slid over the edge, dropping into he knew not how deep of a void.

”I don’t want you to do it. Not for me. I don’t care about the the gold.”

”But Henri, the gold could mean San Francisco for you, or even New York?”

”I don’t care. I don’t want you to go up there.”

”What are we going to do, then?”

She turned back toward the camp, obviously disturbed. “I don’t know, but we’ll think of something!”

The sun was high in the sky, but the fire felt good. Just being under the shadow of the trees left a body chilled at this altitude. There was no coffee pot, but Dart was unused to such luxuries. He merely boiled down a scoop of grounds right in his tin cup, let it cool a bit, and drank it down unfiltered, the tiny grounds circling around the top as he swirled the cup to stir it. Henri passed on the coffee, but she walked over to his spot by the fire and sat down beside him. Now, she had decided in her mind, was the time… but how did one begin a seduction? She did not know how, but she knew D’Artagnan, or believed she did, and he would not begin it. It would have to be her. She knew he liked her. She flushed. It seemed impossible, but he talked as though he loved her, so how could asking him to show her how much he loved her be that difficult? But still she hesitated. There was a part of her that was eager, and another part that was afraid to trespass on this sacred and unfamiliar ground. Once stepped out on this road there would be no coming back, but then neither was it a lonely road. The path to womanhood, she thought, unlike the fast and lonely track to manhood, was meant to be walked along together, with those a woman loves forever tugging at her skirts.

Henri was in love with D’Artagnan. She knew it. She felt it through and through. Looking at him now she could see the unlikeliness of it. She was young, but girls out here in the west, and even many back east, had married at her age. He was even younger than she was, but serious, he was always so serious. Even now, at rest by the fire, his hands were busy mending the split leather thong of his bridle, plaiting the leather with nimble, knowing fingers that seemed almost afraid to rest. Yet he put her at ease. When he wasn’t near her, she was anxious until he was back. She admitted to herself that the kiss they shared in the street had lit a white-hot fire within her that ached for quenching. She reached over, placing her hand atop his, stopping his fingers from their work. Curious, he looked at her for explanation.

There was only one way Henrietta knew to keep him off of that cliff-side. “I couldn’t stand it if something happened to you, Dart. I don’t care about San Francisco anymore. I would rather be here in Gehenna with you.”

He glanced down at the hand squeezing his. It was rough and reddened with work, yet was still soft atop his, as a woman’s hands should be. It caused him physical pain that those hands had to work so hard, and were already aged from it. There was a longing inside him to help her, to support her, to make her life easier, but he was not thinking of that in the moment, for sensing the purpose behind her lingering hand had created another, more urgent longing within him. She also sensed the change. She rose then, leaving him. His eyes followed her as she went to his lean-to, pulling the pallet it contained out into the open air. She spread it out in the cedar-dappled sunlight by the fireside. She knelt to smooth it over the sand. From her knees, with her back turned to him, she began to unbutton her top. “I have truly misread the moment if you are just going to sit there.”

Dart leapt from his log seat as if it were hot.

When next she noticed the sun had disappeared behind the western peaks. A serenely blue tint was shadowing the whole valley, though night was still a while away. She did not want to move, so she did not. D’Artagnon was not asleep either. His restless fingers, as with the leather strings earlier, worked over her under the blanket, tickling and touching, seeking out places that interested them to pause. She did not know what she should have expected to feel afterward, but it was not this. She had expected shame? Guilt? But what she felt was something she had never felt… bliss. The blanket was not sufficient to warm her, but that was ok. She liked feeling the heat radiating from D’Artagnon, and the cold made her feel alive. Funny, but she rarely thought of him as “Dart” anymore. It was always D’Artagnon now, and there was nothing comical about the name. His fingers were tiring of their games. He was pulled in tightly against her, his hand resting upon the fleshy part of her belly, that large, strong hand which never seemed to rest. There came a soft sound then. He slept! She marveled at that for a moment as the sky darkened above her. The mountain peaks formed an upward tunnel that allowed her to see the stars before the sun was set, a most extraordinary sight. Since that first moment he had ridden into Gehenna every little thing seemed to have become extraordinary. Her own hand found the one lying atop her belly and gripped onto it. When she did so his chin and lips to nudged deeper into her naked shoulder. “They were married now!” It was an incredulous thought, but it was consummated, preacher or no. A child would be coming, if not from this time, then from the next. She smiled… for there would be other times, of that she was sure! She had a thought to wake him, to begin it all again right now… but to lie here with him, beside him, feeling his skin and it’s heat was also nice, wasn’t it? It was not the heated, throbbing passion that lovemaking had been, but it was the sweetfrost on the cake. She smiled at the analogy. There was still enough boy in him to like the sweet frost, wasn’t there? And she wouldn’t have him any other way. No, she would let him sleep, even if she could not.

A child? When two people did what they had just done it must be thought of, mustn’t it? It just seemed ridiculous. She was hardly past childhood herself! Hardly any time at all had passed since she’d thought of herself as one. But she was doing womanly things now, the things that make one a woman… and now she was also doing those things that make a child. And poor D’Artagnan! He was even younger than she, yet he did not shy from his commitment to her, rather he welcomed it. He was young, yes, but D’Artagnan behaved more like a man than any other in Gehenna. Like herself, it was D’Artagnan’s actions that made him manly. It was not his age, or his size, or the peach fuzz on his face. D’Artagnan did those things one expects a man to do, and he did them well. She thought of him sleeping in this campsite all alone. Was he not frightened? Darkness had finally fallen, allowing the night it’s life. Sounds found the campsite from out the dark… strange sounds, some recognizable, some not; a faraway wolf, a closer-by owl, a chorus of crickets, there was life all around them, large and small. Even as she had this thought a limb cracked from some heavy weight. She wiggled herself in closer to him, happy that he was there. She wondered from where it was that his courage came? Scarcely fifteen years old he had ridden miles alone to get to Gehenna. Once here he had gained her trust where all the others had failed. Her life was suddenly easier, and better with him here. Funny, he had ridden between those mountains, up that little Main Street, and right into her life, almost immediately becoming the central focus in it... and she had witnessed it all, somehow knowing that his arrival was important for her. And all else had become less important since him. Even where she lived. Gehenna was not so dreadful with him in it. He offered her hope and a hand, just when despair was settling in, when the work had become too much and life too hard. It was amazing to think of, but for the first time since her father left her she was… it was almost scary to think it. Happy? Yes, she was happy! And with that thought in mind she fell into sleep in the night, her man beside her.

She was awakened by a gentle touch. The fire was on, and coffee, though it was not yet light. He disappeared into the darkness while she put creek water on the fire, warming it to clean herself. When he returned it was with their horses in tow, saddled and ready. Silently they broke camp, each doing their parts, feeling no need to speak. Daylight found them on a dark trail soon gray, then pink, then golden. They surprised a miner on the trail, and shortly there-after another, and then they broke from the forest and into a Gehenna such as they could not believe. Men with mules and packhorses were lined up at the hitching rails as if awaiting the word to start. It did not take long for either Dart or Henri to realize that word was out about D’Artagnan’s find. More men and more mules were winding their ways up the trail between the peaks even as Henri and Dart rode in themselves. Gehenna was in the throes of a second life!

The idea came to her then, in the midst of the excitement. "We can sell it," she said.

"Sell what?"

"We can sell the claim. We'll get what we can for it; show them the gold you have."

"It will take more. I will have to go back up."

"No. Don't you see? They have come all this way on a mere chance... they will go further. They have come here without even seeing the gold you found, just on rumor alone. Let one of them risk the climb. Two things I learned from my father about dreamers; they will risk all, and they have to eat. We will buy out Frenchy with the gold you already have. Frenchy doesn't like being saddled with the restaurant anyways, it won't take much to buy him out. The cafeteria is doing very well without all of these new-comers, but Frenchy only gambles away the earnings. We could use the profits from the restaurant to have mining supplies packed in. We could open a store in the vacant building beside the cafeteria. If they need food, they will also need clothing, mining equipment, and hardware. Why ride all the way to Santa Fe if they can be had here?" She was thinking as she spoke. Soon he was thinking too, and seeing the logic in it.

And so they did.

It was a sad, sad day when, many years later, the Matriarch of Gehenna headed down the trail between the twin peaks, away for greener pastures. Gehenna had served them well, and they it, despite never a day spent mining. The rough board buildings passed from sight, as did a lone grave on a high knoll, which she did not... could not look at. The tears shed were for the town, but more so for the good days, and the good man gone. But Santa Fe awaited, and a gentler society where her son might study law, and her girl become a lady.

It was more than the town could take when they left, every town needing those who come to build it as much as those who build need a town. The school boarded up first, and then the church. As if knowing it was over the mines played out next, and finally The Emporium. With no place left to loaf the remaining would-be men pulled stakes for Silver City, or Leadville, leaving a ghost town dead in their wake, with only the skeleton buildings and pack rats remaining, but for that hill high above where the restless bones of the last man in Gehenna lay quiet, listening to the wind whispering the aspen in his dreams.