Blood of Mystery by Mark Anthony Page A

they went. Some women trudged by in elaborate, heavy dresses, while others wore the drab pinafores of laundry-women and workingmen’s wives. A flock of children in shabby shoes followed a prim schoolmarm, and young men wearing caps ran past carrying stacks of freshly printed newspapers. The street itself was a circus of horses, mule-drawn wagons, and more coaches. On rainy days it was probably a quagmire; today it was a dust bowl, and a fine layer of grit covered everything and everyone.
    The buildings that lined the street were every bit as diverse and industrious-looking as the people. Some were brick or stone, but most were slapped together from wood planks, each wearing its false front like a miner who had donned an opera coat. Travis saw banks, restaurants, barbershops, grocers, tack stores, booksellers, and clothiers. And every third storefront looked to be some sort of saloon or drinking house. Silver flowed freely from the mines, and the wealth was everywhere.
    Only it wouldn’t last. By 1883, the mines were already starting to play out. And Travis had heard stories of the crash of 1893, when President Cleveland finally revoked the Bland-Allison Act, which had created an artificial market for silver. Overnight, the price of silver fell to a fraction of what it had been, and just about every mine went bust. Vast fortunes were lost in a day. Henry Tabor, who had been the richest man in Colorado, would spend the last year of his life grateful just to be postmaster of Denver. His wife, the fabled Baby Doe, would die years later, a solitary madwoman. They would find her body frozen so hard to the floor of her shack in Leadville they would have to wait until the spring thaw to take it away.
    “So where do we go for lodging?” Lirith said, eyeing the buildings on either side of the street.
    Travis was pretty sure they couldn’t afford the Silver Palace Hotel. “I’m not sure. Let’s just walk down Elk Street and see if anything looks—” He swallowed the word
cheap
. “—affordable.”
    They moved onto the boardwalk, jostling their way past workingmen, miners’ wives, and clerks running errands. They passed several establishments that bore signs in the window, offering rooms for rent. However, the prices shocked Travis. Some wanted as much as five dollars a day. At that rate, their remaining twenty wouldn’t last long. They kept moving.
    Travis supposed it was nine in the morning, but as far as he could tell all of the saloons were open. Most of them had swinging doors, just like in Western movies, but a wooden screen or panel just beyond kept anyone from seeing inside. All the same, the sound of laughter and the rattling of dice spilled out, along with the occasional man who squinted bleary eyes— obviously astonished to see the sun was well risen—before stumbling away down the boardwalk.
    Soon Travis caught sight of a familiar sign hanging over the boardwalk. The sign looked almost the same as the last time he had repainted it, its lettering so familiar he could read it without the usual effort: THE MINE SHAFT. The saloon. His saloon—at least one day. What would it be like to walk through those doors?
    Hard laughter interrupted his thoughts. Three men leaned against the boardwalk railing just ahead. They looked to be in their twenties and were dressed in white shirts and dark three-piece suits with silver watch fobs dangling from their vest pockets. Black Stetsons crowned their heads, and black boots shod their feet. One of the men was clean-shaven, one had a downy red beard, and the other a neatly waxed mustache.
    The clean-shaven one spat tobacco juice, then made a lewd gesture and pointed a finger. As he did, the front of his jacket parted so that Travis could see the gun holstered at his hip— some kind of revolver. However, it wasn’t the gun that made Travis’s blood go cold.
    The man was pointing straight at Lirith.
    Travis felt the witch go rigid beside him. She must have seen. The three men