Roz Fox - Mom's The Word

Gramps had said disparaging things about Joe. So had several of the old-timers in town. Now Hayley wished she’d listened. But no one, especially not Gramps, understood how lonely she’d been for most of her life. Ben O’Dell had been a tough old codger who liked his solitude. He often took off for weeks on end, prospecting. When he was home, he was preoccupied with the Silver Cloud mine.

Mining was virtually all Hayley knew, too. And mining was tough. There hadn’t been money for college at the time she graduated from high school. While her contemporaries moved on, Hayley had been stuck in Tombstone. Was it any wonder that at twenty-five, she’d latched on to Joe like a drowning woman with a life preserver? It was painful now to admit she’d been hood-winked—that she’d been stupidly trusting despite all the warnings.

Not a chance she’d make that mistake again. No, siree! Hayley Ryan was through with men. Anyway, she had bigger worries now. A thousand dollars wouldn’t pay two months’ rent, let alone keep up with utilities and buy food.

She needed a long-term plan. She needed a job. But…doing what? Hayley drew stars on the back of her electric bill. Shoot, she didn’t have a lot of skills, and Tombstone wasn’t exactly a job mecca. Sometimes months went by without an opening being listed in the paper. If she knew anyone in Tucson or Phoenix, she could go there, where unskilled jobs were more plentiful. Thing was, she didn’t even have transportation. Joe had traded in his car and Ben’s sedan on a flashy convertible—or so she’d heard. The pencil lead broke as she bore down on the last star.

“Lord,” she muttered, propping her chin in one palm, “if you’re going to show me a path, now would be as good a time as any to do it.” Idly she sorted a stack of bills while gazing blankly around at the meager accumulation of a lifetime. Dinnertime came, but she had no appetite. Although now she had to think about someone besides herself. The first item in Dr. Gerrard’s prenatal care booklet said to eat nutritious meals.

Hayley finally settled on a salad with some grated cheese for protein. She was in the middle of halfheartedly tearing apart limp lettuce when someone knocked timidly on her door.

For a moment her stomach pitched. Had Joe repented? As quickly, Hayley knew she’d never take him back even if he crawled in on hands and knees.

It wasn’t him she saw, anyway, as she peeped through the window beside the door. It was Virgil Coleman, one of her grandfather’s retired mining buddies.

“Virgil, hi,” she greeted the crusty gentleman who stood on the porch, crumpling a battered hat between his gnarled hands.

“Hate to bother you, little lady, you being in mourning and all.” The old fellow carefully picked his way through condolences, as men his age were prone to do. Clearing his throat, he added, “My oldest boy, Hank, is coming tomorrow to move me up to his place in Flagstaff. We’re putting my property up for sale. I wondered if you’d mind moving Ben’s old pickup and camp trailer out of my shed? The Realtor said I gotta clean the place up.”

“Pickup and camp trailer? I thought all of Gramps’s equipment went to the consortium that bought the mine.”

“Ben never used this stuff at the Silver Cloud. It’s his prospecting outfit. In fact, the whole kit and caboodle was once your dad’s. So I guess you know it’s old. Truck still runs okay, though.”

“I’d forgotten those things.” Hayley could barely contain her excitement. “The unit is self-contained, right?”

When Virgil scratched the fringe of hair that ringed his bald pate, Hayley elaborated. “I mean, the trailer has a kitchen, bedroom and bathroom, doesn’t it?”

“About the size of a postage stamp, but yep. Once Big Ben stepped inside, he filled the place. I reckon it served his purpose, though. A man huntin’ ore travels light. He made do with it when he worked his claim down Ruby way.”

“Wait—are you saying Gramps had a mine other than the Silver Cloud?”

“Not a mine, but a claim site.”

Hayley was floored by the news. And thrilled. And suddenly hopeful. “A duly registered claim?” she asked, her heart beginning to flutter excitedly.

Virgil stammered a bit. “’Spect so. Don’t rightly know. If Ben worked it, I knowed he’d have filed right and proper.”

“A name, Virgil.” She grabbed the old man’s scrawny wrist. “If you know what he called his claim, I can find the location in the recorder’s office.”

Shaking his head, the old man backed out the door. “Wish I could help you more, missy. Ben was real secretive about that claim. So can I tell Hank you’ll pick up the truck and trailer tomorrow or the next day?”

“Yes. You bet. Virgil, you just made my day.” Hayley flung her arms around his wasted shoulders and gave him a resounding kiss on his leathery cheek. Typical of an old miner, Virgil blushed and hurriedly stammered out a goodbye.

Hayley spent only a moment hugging herself in glee and dancing around the room. Then she went to the one place she thought her grandfather might have kept a record of the claim. The same antique strongbox where he’d stored the deed that Joe had stolen. But even if Joe had found placer or lode claims for the Ruby site, she’d still have the pickup and trailer.

As she took down the box with hands that shook, Hayley recalled reading a magazine in Dr. Gerrard’s office about campers who parked their RVs for free out on the desert near Quartzsite. If nothing else, it’d be a place she could live rent free until the baby arrived. A place where she could stretch the money Joe had left her.

It’d be too much to hope for—to think she might actually have claim rights to a parcel of land.

After a deep breath, Hayley began unloading the strongbox. She found her birth certificate and her parents’ certificate of marriage, along with old family photos. She paused to look at one of her mom before reverently laying it aside. Taped to the back of her grandmother’s photo was her worn gold wedding band. Old-timers in town said that Hayley, except for her lighter hair color, resembled her grandmother, a full-blooded Apache.

Hayley lightly traced the woman’s high cheekbones and straight black hair. She saw a resemblance both to herself and her mother. It was easy to see why Grandpa had never given his heart to another woman, even though he’d taken numerous females to his bed. There was a strength and beauty about her grandmother that made her very different from softer ladies Ben squired around town.

Hayley neared the bottom of the box and her hopes of finding a claim dimmed. Suddenly, stuck to the lining, there it was. A claim form, yellowed with age, stapled to a hand-drawn map. Hayley could tell by the dates stamped on the form that Ben had refiled on the same site for ten years. To retain rights to any claim, a miner had to do a minimum of a hundred dollars’ worth of work on it every calendar year. The recording calendar ran from July 1 to June 30.

Yikes! She had a week left to ready an outfit and refile on the property.

A week! Yet it felt like a beautiful, wonderful, stupendous reprieve. Hayley hugged the papers to her breast and skipped across the threadbare living-room carpet. She had no idea what Gramps thought he’d find near the old ghost town of Ruby. But certainly something worth going there for year after year.

Gold? Arizona had a rich history of gold deposits. Ben had fascinating stories to tell about placer-gold and flour-gold strikes. He’d taken Hayley prospecting in her younger days. Those trips had been idyllic. Out of her memories, Hayley suddenly formed a vision of cottonwoods shading a lazy stream. It was a vision she couldn’t shake throughout a sleepless night or as she walked over to Virgil’s the next day to claim her truck and camp trailer. Once again life held purpose. Purpose and dreams.

By the end of the following week, she’d paid her bills and said her goodbyes to the people who mattered. Only a very few people knew she’d bought stores for a lengthy outing. Cradling her still-flat stomach, she smiled. “Hang in there, wee one. Your mama’s going to find gold. You’ll never have to worry about where your next meal’s coming from—and you’ll never have to rely on a man to take care of you.”

Monday morning she left Tombstone behind and aimed the old pickup toward the county seat to renew Ben’s claim.

When she got to the courthouse in Nogales, she filed for a divorce from Joe Ryan and posted her filing fee on the claim. Her dreams didn’t stretch so far that she dared believe she’d ever become a millionaire, though she did allow herself to hope that Ben’s secret claim would produce enough ore to provide her child with the kind of life she’d always wanted herself. Including a house. A permanent home in some friendly city that no one could ever take away.

After leaving the courthouse, she began the trek to Ruby. Twice she had doubts—although she never considered turning back. Once when she lost sight of the jutting red rock known as Montana Peak, which she’d been using as her compass since leaving the highway, and a second time when she passed the ghost town of Ruby. One-hundred-degree heat sizzled off the dented hood of the pickup. The remnants of dilapidated buildings depressed her. They stood as grim reminders that this scorched earth had beaten stronger men and women than Hayley Andrews Ryan ever thought of being.

She touched her stomach, where the flutter she felt was fear, not the movement of her child. What insanity had possessed her to come to this desolate land alone? Pregnant and alone.

Then, when the vegetation became greener and Hayley spotted a frolicking white-faced cow and calf, she reminded herself how alone she’d been in Tombstone. “There’s just you and me, kid,” she murmured, patting her stomach again.

The trailer bumped when she hit a rocky dip. Hayley bounced on the seat and settled back with a giggle. “I hope you like roller coasters, kiddo. The track from here on is a real washboard.”

According to the map, she was near the claim. While she’d hoped for an oasis of deer grass and cottonwoods, what lay ahead was an occasional mesquite, ironwood and rock. Sheer cliffs of reddish rock. Turning left around a promontory, Hayley saw a cascade of water falling between the two sentinel rocks drawn on the map. The falling water formed a natural spring. But it didn’t feed the Santa Cruz River as she’d hoped.

A crushing disappointment descended as Hayley stopped her rig in the clearing also indicated on the crude map. So her grandfather hadn’t been panning for gold. What riches had enticed him to come to this desolate place year after year—and to keep it such a secret?

She pulled the trailer beneath the shade of a huge mesquite. Maybe this wasn’t the place, she thought as she climbed down from the cab.

But a hand-carved wooden sign carefully wedged in a stack of rocks said Blue Cameo Mine. Tears sprang to her eyes and it suddenly seemed absolutely right that she be here. A cameo carved in blue was the only memento she had of her mother. Another legacy stolen by Joe Ryan. Losing the cameo had hurt worse than his selling the Silver Cloud.

Ben O’Dell had carved his name in the sign. That was how prospectors staked a claim. Hayley could expect to find a similar mound at each of the claim’s four corners. Twenty acres in all was the limit one person could work.

Night was sneaking up on her. The sun had slipped behind the Sierrita Mountains. Tomorrow would be plenty of time to take stock of the land Hayley planned to call home for at least the next six months. What she needed to do in the remaining daylight was unhitch the pickup and level the trailer. With luck, she’d have time to gather a bit of wood and build a campfire. The trailer’s utilities ran on butane, but she wanted to save that for when inclement weather drove her inside. She hadn’t passed a convenience store or gas station, in the past thirty miles. Twenty of those miles had been unpaved road. Yes, she’d do well to save her store-bought resources and live off the land for as long as possible.