The Whippoorwill Trilogy - Sharon Sala Page 0,259

twice more before morning. When daylight finally came, it was gray and gloomy, and a mirror to the unseen terrors that they’d escaped.

Their campsite was gone—buried beneath a good six feet of roiling water. God only knew how their box of gold might have fared. And there was another horror that they had yet to face. When the water went down, more than likely, their claims would be worthless. Whatever pockets of gold that Cherry Creek had been hiding were long gone, buried in silt and mud, miles and miles downstream.

The Whitesides could take comfort that they were still alive, but little else. It would be several hours before they ventured out long enough to realize that they were not the only miners to suffer the same crushing blow. Every man, woman, and boy that had laid claim along Cherry Creek had been wiped out.

Faced with the devastation of their losses, they still had to deal with the rain that continued to fall.

Lawyer

It had been raining off and on for days, and even when the rain would cease, the sun refused to shine. Cherry Creek was still out of its banks, and every building south of Main Street had been evacuated.

Dr. Warren and his wife had been forced to leave their home and set up a makeshift office inside a tent north of the livery stable, with a second one that he and Mildred were using as a place to sleep. But their forced evacuation had, once again, left Alice Mellin homeless. Her broken ribs were healing, and Dr. Warren had told her to come back in a week and he’d remove the stitches from her other cuts. He didn’t know about Alice’s predicament when she’d walked away, and she was too ashamed to tell him.

The grave that had been dug for her baby was full of mud and water and the coffin with little Mary’s body was up in the loft of the livery stable, waiting for the flood to subside before she could be buried.

Unknown to the owner of the livery stable, Alice had spent the night up in the loft, sleeping next to the little box that held her baby’s body. She was feverish, and hungry, and about as desperate as a woman could be.

She’d tried to go back to her room in the hotel, only to find out that her meager belongings had been confiscated for money owed on their bill. With George in jail and no place to live, Alice was afraid. She had tried to find work, but the hotel already had a cook, and there were only two other places in Denver City that served food. One was run by a China man, who did his own cooking, and the other was the saloon where, on occasion, the bartender could be talked into serving some bread and meat. None of it was fancy, and none of it required the hands of an extra employee.

She’d thought about taking in laundry, and didn’t mind scrubbing and mending. But that required money and a place to live, which once again, she was sadly lacking. There was only one other thing that she knew how to do that might earn her some money, but she was going to have to heal up some first. She thought about how she’d turned up her nose at the woman in the hotel who’d had a room across the hall. She’d been selling herself to men for money. Alice was beginning to understand why. And, she wasn’t the only person suffering from being displaced.

The flood had caught a lot of people besides the Whitesides unprepared. Some of the people searching for their own bit of gilded heaven had gone the same route as Letty and Eulis, by tunneling into the surrounding peaks of the Rocky Mountains. They were unaffected by the Cherry Creek flood or the recurring downpours. But a good portion of the prospectors, men, women, and even some with children, had been panning, which meant they’d been residing in tents on their claims near the creek. Now they were all afoot, without shelter to be had, and the small bags of dust and nuggets they had with them were being swiftly depleted.

Despite Doctor Warren’s temporary location, he was doing a booming business. People had sores and foot rot from walking around in wet shoes all day, and children were coming down with coughing spells that turned into pneumonia.

Denver City had been a place of chaos since the first gold