In an America that might have been, two war orphans from a divided nation, one in the north and one in the south, meet across a vast battlefield, striking out to forge a future together in the west. It's 1892, the fourth and bloodiest year of the Ci...
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It took another half an hour before a soldier in blue ducked in the doorway and held them all at gunpoint. When Van Cise found out what they had done, he had them let go and promised to visit them later.
They returned home and fell down on their beds -- dirt grime and all -- and slept until the next day. That afternoon found them hobbling around like cripples. Deke's head had a great huge knot and he took one of Grace's pain pills just so he could eat breakfast.
Dr. Balderson came by with Zeb and they looked at their wounds. Grace was doing fine. She and Mrs. Balderson had ridden out the battle in the attic. The doctor hadn't done any fighting at all. Instead he and Zeb had taken care of the wounded as best they could. Their house had patients sitting on the porch and in every room. The Union soldiers had not lost a single man.
When Van Cise dropped in, he said he would try to get them a reward for the capture of Blonger, who was languishing in the jail, now staffed by Union soldiers. There was certainly money enough in his safe and they deserved a share. When Blonger finally did hang, the hangman let him down easy so the official count was 23 kicks, won by three of Blonger's ex-dance hall women.
The newspaper, when it reopened, changed its name from "The Rocky Mountain News" to the "Colorado Times," and its first headline read "The First Meeting of Our State Legislature." They were going to meet in one week. Barely time for folks to get there, but Van Cise wanted it done while he still had the troops nearby. He had to clean house.
When a reporter came by the old brown house to take down their story, they turned him away. Unfortunately, the story leaked out anyway and pretty soon people were coming by to discuss business, offering to help them mine, and to set up stock holding companies for them. It got so bad that they packed up and left.
They had collected, over the course of their adventures, quite a number of state--owned horses. Governor Van Cise did his best to make sure they got to keep them, however they didn't precisely get exactly their horses back. They got the same number back, all good ones too, so it was probably for the best that Charity and Kay had never gotten around to naming theirs. Ned had his own herd.
Hounded by reporters, entrepreneurs, and other scallywags, they rode up into the hills, Zeb with them, this time well provisioned and rested. They rode up streams, made side trails, rode single file, took travelled trails, and doubled back until the multitude that followed them were thoroughly lost, and then they headed up Coal Creek Canyon. When they came to the spot on the map, all they found was a rock fall. But they dug, pushed and cleared away the loose rock, until three days later they caught sight of a hard wall of pink, which was quickly covered over again as new debris fell down.
Kay had thought a lot about the future over the preceding days and right then and there she asked her friends if they wanted to be partners and with none of them being fools, they all agreed. So she got her mine and her friends together. To be sure, and we should be clear about this, every one of those kids could pull his or her weight. Kay was no fool. Logs were cut and buried sticking up at the corners of their stake and when they got back, Joe as the new head of the local USGS office made sure that the claim was solid, legal, and properly filed in Washington.
They hired that foreman and his family at the Forest Queen when he was put out of work with Blonger's fall. He stayed with them until the end and retired happy. Eventually Joe and Charity married and had four kids that lived.
And that's it. You know the rest. Read the dime novels.
Kay's aunt published her story from her letters that Kay had sent her, in the newspapers and made a killing, and then later Joe, always an aspiring writer, published that series of dime novels about their later adventures that were popular sellers.
They worked that mine for 23 years. Almost none of the pink got crushed. Andrew Carnegie had his wife's bathroom trimmed in the stuff and a big piece still stands in the Smithsonian. And when it and the ore were gone, and their five kids had grown, Deke and Kay finally took that trip on a train to see the big cities back east.
