Silver Nights With You (Love in the Sierras Book 1) Read Free Page B

place. The structure was sturdy enough, built of brick, wood and mortar, but with all the mining creating pockets beneath the surface the building had sunk a foot into the ground. Great clouds of dust fell from him, evidence of another long day burrowing beneath the ground. Val was swiftly on his heels.
    The wooden rafters overhead were papered with dozens of dollar bills, each pinned to the beam by a miner in the morning who knew his throat would be raw for a stiff drink in the evening. The mines were dark, lit only by the dim wash of a candle, the miners’ clothes worn and full of holes. It would be foolhardy to stuff their pockets with money and still expect it to be there at the end of the day. So, each man wrote his name on his money and left it under the watchful eyes of Sandy, the bartender.
    Other miners piled into the narrow bar, each pulling his greenback from the beam overhead. Morgan and Val went to the end of the counter and plopped onto their stools.
    “Howdy, Sandy,” Morgan greeted, and Val echoed.
    “Heya, Kelly boys,” Sandy replied as he filled them each a glass. “How was the silver today? Think you’ll be back tomorrow?”
    Morgan shot his whiskey into the back of his throat and held out his glass for a refill. Sandy always began their conversations this way. His interest in the mines was genuine, but purely intellectual. He hadn't been fortunate enough to get in on the mining business early on and so spent his days and evenings serving drinks. The top of his head was bald, the rest of it outlined in a thick patch of dark hair. Tiny, round spectacles sat on the pointed tip of his nose. He was one of the few people who could be deemed a local, and he’d been serving drinks to the Kelly boys for the past two years.
    “I keep telling myself it’s got to run out soon, but I don’t see any sign of it,” Val answered. “The vein is as wide as it is deep.”
    “Well, now that the whole damn world is piling in here to get their hands on it, it shouldn’t be too long before it’s all gone,” Morgan said as he grabbed the cheroot Sandy offered. He struck a match and pulled the smoke into his lungs. 
    “Can you blame them?” Sandy asked as he poured himself a shot. “When you boys chased the gold up this far with old Virginny, we thought that was something, but I ain’t never seen the ground run with liquid silver like that.”
    Morgan blew out a breath in a whistle. “Virginny sure got the last laugh, though, didn’t he? All the years he’s spent up here just pulling enough metal to keep him drunk and he stakes his claim on the biggest silver lode ever discovered." He shook his head. "I just hope he stays sober enough to keep a hold of it with all of the vultures beginning to circle.”
    “Well, at least he got a town named after him if nothing else,” Sandy mused. “I expect the poor old goat to sell out before his time. Those vultures can be pretty persistent.”
    “Let ‘em come,” Val shrugged as he took a drink. “I’ve got my claim and that’s all I care about.”
    “Don’t be so quick to say ‘let ‘em come,’ brother,” Morgan cut in, expelling a smoky breath. “First it’s the prospectors and miners, then the bankers and lawyers, and then the criminals."
    “I thought the bankers and lawyers were the criminals,” Val said with a chuckle.
    Morgan sighed. “If you think you can avoid all of them just because you’ve got your claim…well…then I’ll drink what you’re drinking.”
    “I know that. Hell, I’ve already got Hearst practically beating down my door every other day trying to get me to sell to him.”
    “Maybe we should,” Morgan said, prompting wide-eyed stares from both Val and Sandy. “You ought to hear some of the figures that are floating around out there. Fitzsimmons sold his mine for five hundred dollars a foot, and Clancy walked away from his for fifteen thousand.”
    “Are you crazy?” Val asked. “For every hundred pounds of ore we