Free Foxfire by Anya Seton Page A
Authors: Anya Seton
pathetic old prospector and his whoring little dog, I assure you, itâs just plain gold. He walked on glumly, staring down at the rough road until he reached the original Lodestone, the ghost town abandoned when the Boston company bought the old mine fifteen years ago and had optimistically founded a new town site with more room for expansion, and nearer the Gila River from which much of the water must be pumped.
The ghost town presented the appearance of romantic desolation peculiar to all ruins. There were piles of rubble, a few backless façades, two or three crumbling skeletons of large houses, and an enormous painted wooden sign flanked by giant saguaros fallen against a flight of wooden steps which led into midair. The sign said âOpera Houseâ in dim red and gold letters, and a small lizard lay basking on the letter âH.â In the vanished opera house behind this sign, Lotta Crabtree and Adelina Patti had performed, and here Mrs. Minnie Maddern Fiske had played to one of the most enthusiastic audiences of her entire career, for during its brief glory in the eighties and nineties, Lodestone had rivaled Tombstone and even Leadville as a boom town.
Hugh was not interested in the ghost town, crumbling under the silent sun, and he skirted all the rock and adobe foundations where rattlers loved to lurk, but he paused by a large mesquite to look up a trail between fallen timbers, a trail which had, over thirty years ago, been a broad avenue flanked by stunted ever-ailing palm trees. A hundred yards up the mountainside on a platform hewed out of the rock behind, there stood the Cunningham mansion.
Nobody had ever viewed this mansion without a shock of disbelief, thus fulfilling the desire of Red Bill Cunningham when he built it in 1888 for his bride. Red Billâs exploits had always aroused disbelief. Bill Cunningham had been a flaming red giant of an Irishman, and he had brawled and roistered his way as a boomer, or tramp miner, through most of the western mining camps until the day when the luck which never deserted him had made him lose his way in the Dripping Spring Mountains of Arizonaâs Gila County. This was in 1882 when he was forty, and he had just spent a few weeks working as a mucker in the Old Dominion Mine at Globe. Globe, however, had begun to quieten from its first wild boom days and Red Bill, powered by a recurrent urge to move on, was attracted by reports of Tombstone which was still enjoying a turbulence which appealed to him.
One morning at dawn he set out on horseback, south over Pioneer Pass, and far too drunk to be worried by the threat of wandering Apaches. In fact, he saw no hostiles, but by nightfall he was drunker yet and had lost the trail some miles back. He cursed, took a final swig, tumbled off the horse and fell asleep where he lay between a stunted mesquite and a large Bisnaga cactus.
The pitiless September sun finally awoke him at noon the next day. He sat up and groaned and looked for the horse, and also the water canteen which was tied to the saddle. The horse was not in sight and Red Bill staggered to his feet and tried to produce a whistle with his thickened tongue and cracked lips. He saw that he was in very rough mountain country. The pinkish diorite rocks huddled thickly around him, above loomed the glaring white of limestone cliffs. He was standing on a slope in a broad gully near the top of a dull reddish mountain. No use investigating the bottom of the gully, itâd be dry. There'd been no rain for weeks. He tried to whistle again, and the sound was like a mouseâs squeak against the thunderous silence. He sat down on a rock and the sun blazed down on his fiery hair. Holy Mother, he thought, this is a tight one. No horse, no water, and he couldnât even get direction from the sun straight overhead. He licked his lips and pulled out his rosary, mumbling the familiar words. After a minute he shifted the wooden beads to one hand and fumbled in
The ghost town presented the appearance of romantic desolation peculiar to all ruins. There were piles of rubble, a few backless façades, two or three crumbling skeletons of large houses, and an enormous painted wooden sign flanked by giant saguaros fallen against a flight of wooden steps which led into midair. The sign said âOpera Houseâ in dim red and gold letters, and a small lizard lay basking on the letter âH.â In the vanished opera house behind this sign, Lotta Crabtree and Adelina Patti had performed, and here Mrs. Minnie Maddern Fiske had played to one of the most enthusiastic audiences of her entire career, for during its brief glory in the eighties and nineties, Lodestone had rivaled Tombstone and even Leadville as a boom town.
Hugh was not interested in the ghost town, crumbling under the silent sun, and he skirted all the rock and adobe foundations where rattlers loved to lurk, but he paused by a large mesquite to look up a trail between fallen timbers, a trail which had, over thirty years ago, been a broad avenue flanked by stunted ever-ailing palm trees. A hundred yards up the mountainside on a platform hewed out of the rock behind, there stood the Cunningham mansion.
Nobody had ever viewed this mansion without a shock of disbelief, thus fulfilling the desire of Red Bill Cunningham when he built it in 1888 for his bride. Red Billâs exploits had always aroused disbelief. Bill Cunningham had been a flaming red giant of an Irishman, and he had brawled and roistered his way as a boomer, or tramp miner, through most of the western mining camps until the day when the luck which never deserted him had made him lose his way in the Dripping Spring Mountains of Arizonaâs Gila County. This was in 1882 when he was forty, and he had just spent a few weeks working as a mucker in the Old Dominion Mine at Globe. Globe, however, had begun to quieten from its first wild boom days and Red Bill, powered by a recurrent urge to move on, was attracted by reports of Tombstone which was still enjoying a turbulence which appealed to him.
One morning at dawn he set out on horseback, south over Pioneer Pass, and far too drunk to be worried by the threat of wandering Apaches. In fact, he saw no hostiles, but by nightfall he was drunker yet and had lost the trail some miles back. He cursed, took a final swig, tumbled off the horse and fell asleep where he lay between a stunted mesquite and a large Bisnaga cactus.
The pitiless September sun finally awoke him at noon the next day. He sat up and groaned and looked for the horse, and also the water canteen which was tied to the saddle. The horse was not in sight and Red Bill staggered to his feet and tried to produce a whistle with his thickened tongue and cracked lips. He saw that he was in very rough mountain country. The pinkish diorite rocks huddled thickly around him, above loomed the glaring white of limestone cliffs. He was standing on a slope in a broad gully near the top of a dull reddish mountain. No use investigating the bottom of the gully, itâd be dry. There'd been no rain for weeks. He tried to whistle again, and the sound was like a mouseâs squeak against the thunderous silence. He sat down on a rock and the sun blazed down on his fiery hair. Holy Mother, he thought, this is a tight one. No horse, no water, and he couldnât even get direction from the sun straight overhead. He licked his lips and pulled out his rosary, mumbling the familiar words. After a minute he shifted the wooden beads to one hand and fumbled in