plastic box.’
‘It’s not plastic. It’s fibreglass.’
‘They’re burying my baby in a blue plastic box.’ The tears started again. ‘You should have taken that railroad job, Billy. Leastways long enough to get Jamie Lee decently buried. I mean, he was near enough your own son. You’re the only daddy he knew.’
‘I would have, Dix. You know how much I always wanted to do right by Jamie Lee. But I’m no good at that kind of work. I need to be my own boss. Got too much cowboy in me. Can’t you understand how great this guide business is going to be? Won’t be nobody to worry about except me and the horses, and I love horses, man. Me and the horses and all those city dudes, waiting to get their pockets picked. I’ll make you enough money to roll in. I promise.’
‘That’s what you said the other times too, Billy. Fact is, we need money now, not some far-off time that might never come. You should have took the railroad job.’
An injured silence followed. At last Billy sat up and reached for his boots. He pulled them on. Then he hunched forward enough to peer out of the small, gable-end window.
Dixie sighed. The knitted duck was still sitting in her lap, so she lifted it up and pressed it to her cheek. ‘Know what? I almost got killed tonight,’ she said softly.
Billy didn’t reply.
‘Did you hear me?’ she asked, turning. ‘And you know who almost done it? Spencer Scott. Him and two other guys from up the canyon. They were drunk as skunks. Weaving all over the place in their pick-up. I got up on the steps of the United Methodist Church just in the nick of time. Came this close to hitting me.’ Dixie measured out the distance with her hands.
‘I wish the canyon folk would all just go the fuck back to California,’ Billy replied. ‘I get so fed up with them around here. They think owning the land is the same as belonging here.’
‘Spencer Scott’s really handsome, Billy. Handsomer even than in the movies. He gave me his handkerchief.’
‘I hope you told him you got hurt.’
‘I didn’t get hurt. I mean, thank the good Lord Jesus for those steps in front of the United Methodist Church, because that’s what saved me. All that happened was that the truck knocked that brick pillar skew-hawed that’s at the bottom of the steps.’
‘Why didn’t you tell Spencer Scott how hurt you were?’
‘Because, like I just said, Billy, the pick-up didn’t touch me. I was scared so bad, I practically wet myself, but that’s all.’
‘Should have said you were hurt anyway. Then we could have sued him. Maybe we can still do it. For, like, “mental distress”. Folks get millions for that.’
‘Don’t be stupid, Billy.’
‘Didn’t you say they were drunk? So they were in the wrong, not you. And being drunk, they won’t remember straight. Think of it. That’s a really good idea. We could nail them. Dix.’
‘But it wouldn’t be right, Billy. I’m just fine.’
He shook his head wearily. ‘Yeah, well, what ain’t right, Dix, is that he’s got more money than he can count and for what? For being a grown-up man playing make believe. Here’s all us hard-working folk, just scraping by, and he gets millions for pretending to be what we got no choice about being and don’t get paid for. There’s no fairness in that at all. So it was you being stupid, Dixie, not me. You should have told him you was hurt. Then you could have got your white coffin and I could have got my horses. In fact, the way I see it, we’d be doing the right thing. Because he could easily kill somebody, driving drunk like that. Slap a big old lawsuit on him and even Spencer Scott would think twice the next time he wants to get behind the wheel.’
‘He kissed me,’ Dixie said softly as she set the knitted duck into the box with the rest of Jamie Lee’s things. ‘Spencer Scott kissed my hand.’
‘Yeah, well, it would have been far better if he’d kissed your bank account.’
Chapter Two
The town of Abundance had had its heyday just as Montana approached statehood. The rich silver lode, first struck in 1876, was showing its worth by the 1880s. All three of the big mines – the Eldorado, the Inverurie and the Kipper Twee – were producing steadily and the Lion Mountain mine was just getting underway. Nearly 25,000 people lived in Abundance in those days. There were six banks, five hotels and 22 saloons. The Majestic Theatre on Main Street attracted shows all the way from Chicago, and the Masonic Hall was an architectural showpiece, its high false front and dramatic second-storey balcony characterizing the extravagance of the times.
Then in 1892 the world silver market collapsed. The Inverurie, the oldest mine, the one upon which Abundance had been founded, faltered first. The Panic of 1893 followed, and legend had it that within twenty-four hours of the Kipper Twee’s closure, 1,500 people had packed up and walked out of their houses, right out of their lives in Abundance and left forever. By 1898, only the Lion Mountain mine was still in operation and that was more for the gold and lead mingled in its lode than for silver. The population of Abundance dropped below 10,000. By 1905, even the Lion Mountain gave way and Abundance came to the brink of death.
Unlike the nearby towns of Cache Creek and Beulerville, Abundance survived. A branch line of the railroad, originally built to carry ore, proved a life-saving link with the outer world. Sawmills sprang up to process timber from the vast mountain forests, and there was enough low-lying land in the river valley to make ranching viable. Abundance clung to life by filling the boxcars with lumber and cattle once the ore was gone.
By the time Dixie was born, the population in Abundance had fallen below the 3,000 mark. Remnants of the glory days were still everywhere. The derelict Masonic Hall dominated Main Street. Empty false-fronted buildings with elegantly carved façades stood cheek-by-jowl with the plate-glass windows of the 1960s drugstore and the unassuming modernity of the Texaco station. Whole back streets were nothing more than rows of vacant, crumbling houses, their ornate gingerbread tracing broken, their doors and windows gone. ‘Ghost houses’, Dixie and her friends had called them, and used them as a quirky, otherworldly playground.
Then one year the Masonic Hall caught fire and burned down. Two years later what was left of the derelict Majestic Theatre was demolished to make way for a drive-in bank. One by one, the old buildings disappeared, leaving gaps along Main Street like lost teeth in an eight-year-old’s smile.
The town kept on fading. The hardware store closed. Then the dime store. Then Jack’s Redi-Mart. There were Walmarts to shop at now, and even though it took a ninety-minute drive to get to one, people liked them. They were so big and full of things that it felt wondrous going through the doors, and you could make a nice day of it, having your lunch at McDonald’s, which was another experience denied Abundance. Truth was, nothing was abundant in Abundance anymore. That’s what everyone liked to say. Nothing abundant about it, except for the view.
A view they did have. Cupped into an east-facing basin, Abundance was surrounded by startlingly enormous mountains which rose straight up out of the flat river valley with such abruptness that tourists often brought their cars to a dead stop right in the middle of Simpson’s Bridge when they got their first full view of them.
For the people living there, however, the mountains were much more than just something pretty to look at. In offering up the gold and silver from their rocky depths, they had created
