But I Thought you were Gay!

But I thought you were Gay!

by Robert Lubrican

Bookapy Edition

Copyright 2023 Robert Lubrican

License Notes

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Table of Contents

Chapters: One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven

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Foreword

A disclaimer is appropriate before you begin reading this book. The title suggests that homosexuality is a component of the story. In a way, that is true, but there are no homosexual characters in the story. I know that's confusing, but all will become clear as you proceed. Another issue is that the story is set in 1871 in an expanding America. The issue is that, while there were, indeed, gay men during that time period (and any other period in history) there was no popular term in 1871 for this kind of relationship. American culture would not co-opt the word "gay" until the nineteen-twenties. It would be used in the thirties, too, but not popularized until the nineteen forties. So, there was no word I could use that someone in 1871 would use to label men who engaged in what we now call the gay lifestyle. That actually made it difficult to create the relationships between the characters. Writing the dialogue and thoughts of the characters without using the term "gay" was a challenge. On the other hand, this is not 1871, and everyone in the whole world knows what "gay" means in the context of the title of this book. Basically, I had to use modern terms, which didn't exist at the time this story was set in. And there were no other terms I could use, at least none I could find out about.

So, there you go. I felt like I needed to be up front about this. The book is about people not being up front, and the confusion that can cause, but I felt like I had to warn you, so to speak. All this will make a lot more sense after you've read the book.

Thanks for reading.

Bob

******

Chapter One

Madeline Fitzwater was a complicated woman. She didn't think of herself that way, and, for that matter, neither did the folks who knew her. She was twenty-three and widowed from a five year marriage to a cattle trader. He had walked into a stock pen to inspect a new herd that had been brought in when one of the longhorns merely tossed his neck because of a fly bite, or some other annoyance, and the man was gutted.

He left Madeline a big house, 640 acres of land, and a sizeable amount of money, which was good, because she was so devastated by the whole ordeal that she paid no attention to men (suitors) at all and it looked like she might wear black and mourn for the rest of her life. Wearing it and withdrawing from social activities for two years, as was the custom when a woman could afford to do so, was easy for her. That it became her habit afterwards was simply a matter of adapting to her new status, even though she didn't really want to.

There were many men who wished she'd take that black off – all the way off, in fact. She had a full figure that was only encased in a corset, and not formed by one. Her honey-blond tresses, when down, went to her waist, but most of the time they were done up in a bun, or whorls of some complicated thing only women understand, that is held in place with pins. She only wore her black hat and veil for a year, but by then the only clothing she had left was black, and she wasn't motivated to buy anything new. She had remained in black for four years, thus far.

She was comfortable, having a house to live in, and money to buy food, but at first that's all she did … just sleep, eat, and mourn.

While all this happened men came and tried to buy the land her husband had owned. It was a substantial amount of land and fixtures that had been used to hold large herds of cattle received from the drives made from Texas. Once a suitable size herd was accumulated, his men would drive the cattle east to Abilene, where they would be transferred to another company that would ship them by rail to hungry customers even further east. She did not sell the property . She did not want to think about all that. She did let some men cut hay on the land, but that was all.

It was a letter from her sister in far-off California that brought about the trip that would change her life forever. The sister begged for Madeline to come visit and enjoy the sunshine and good weather, away from the dusty, dirty west Kansas town where all her sorrow was centered.

What made Madeline decide to do it was a mixture of boredom and malaise. Her ship had been rudderless for so long that her imagination had dried up. Sorrow had been the framework of her existence, but she had no drive to cover that sorrow with something happier and make the framework into a home of some kind.

It would be a long and arduous journey, and dangerous, as well. It was 1871 and the territory between Dodge City and Denver was still in conflict with the indigenous natives who were being so thoroughly exterminated. Then there were the mountains to cross. The passes were said to be clear, but after that there would be miles and miles of … miles and miles … for the stagecoach to traverse before it got to the land of milk and honey, as her sister described it. Truth be known, there may have been a biological bent to her decision to make that arduous journey. She was twenty-three, in the prime of her childbearing years, and when she got married she had planned on having at least six children. At that point in her life she thought of herself as a brood mare and of Richard Fitzwater as her handsome, dashing stallion.

He was actually a gelding, though neither of them knew it. He'd been kicked by one of the cows that had made him rich and basically neutered him. His gun still worked. It just didn't have any ammunition to put out of his manly muzzle.

So Madeline's biological clock was ticking along, urging her to fulfill her destiny as a mother. She was bored. Maybe California could be a re-birth for her.

To be honest, it must be clearly stated, though that Madeline Fitzwater had no intention to re-enter the world of sexually active women in America. Those thoughts were still firmly packed in a dark place in the back of her mind. After she got married she'd had what, in a hundred and fifty years or so, would be called a "hot box." She got horny for her stallion easily and often and she loved it as he tried to breed her. Even when time after time he failed to make her belly swell, she never lost faith that, someday, her belly would swell and she'd become both a wife and mother. Then he died and she crammed all that kind of joy and hope into a place where it couldn't torment her or let her think about that, or miss it, or crave it, as she had before.

She only packed one trunk. Her needs were few. The trip was estimated to take around a month. The roads were expected to be dry on the west side of the Rockies at this time of year. The horses would be able to make good time without becoming drained. She took two books from her late husband's collection. He had obtained both books written by the man known as Mark Twain. One was The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Sketches and the other was The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrims' Progress. She planned to read the latter first, as she thought it might contain information about the travels she was commencing on.

And so it was that on July the 18^th, in the year of our Lord 1871, Madeline Fitzwater let herself be helped aboard a stagecoach owned by the Holladay Overland Mail & Express Company, and began the adventure that would change her life, forever.

******

The social conventions and taboos concerning stagecoach travel weren't really all that different from what would be in force if one met at some gathering place in a town, barring saloons. Saloons were places where men often abandoned rigidly polite discourse and drank to excess. In a stage coach, passengers were expected to behave more like they were attending an ice cream social, or town picnic. Early travel required that men wear suits and ladies proper dresses, with proper undergarments, such that would disguise a woman's curves, rather than enhance them. Good hygiene was expected, so as not to offend the noses of other passengers. Belching and farting were obviously forbidden. By 1871, however, things had relaxed a little. The cost of passage had come down enough that a class of people who, previously, couldn't afford to travel by coach now found it within their means. This meant the dress code necessarily had to be relaxed. The voluminous hoop skirts of the past took up too much room and were beginning to go out of favor in any case.

The evolution of the social system in America differed, also, from the more rigid social conventions in Europe. A woman did not, for example, have to be formally introduced to a man before she could speak with him. Women, particularly women on the frontier, had to be as hardy and capable as men, for the most part. The process of finding a mate was still turbulent and somewhat complicated, though. The father of a young woman often exercised paternal control over her activities to ensure she was not "soiled" before marriage. From the perspective of some of the young women, apparently being "soiled" after marriage was just fine, but of course they didn't say that out loud. Still, a woman wasn't looked down on for approaching and speaking with a man if she had some business to discuss with him. Pleasant exchanges of greetings and innocuous conversations were fine, too. Flirting among adults was permitted, presuming neither adult was married, and presuming the flirting was done discreetly.

As small a percentage as the Puritans were of the droves who eventually flocked to the new world, their influence on American society as a whole was outsized. The early communities they had established in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island had enabled them to exert their influence on all of New England. It was ironic that they had fled England to be able to have religious freedom and, once they were in control of the society, they tried to enforce their religious beliefs and practices on others, while they opposed other religious denominations. It could have been argued (and quite possibly was) that many people expanded south and west to get away from the Puritan town fathers and repressive mores of those in political control. None the less, as relaxed as mores had become, in America, when it came to interaction on a social level, Puritanical beliefs were still in vogue.

These were some of the conditions that affected Madeline's life when she closed up the grand house her husband had built for her and boarded the coach to set off on what would become her adventure.

The leg from Dodge to Denver was, more or less, unremarkable. They saw Indians, but none caused any difficulties. She shared the coach with a businessman who sold various products that incorporated baleen in their manufacture. He talked at length of how whale bone was the best material to make corsets, Hoopskirts, umbrella ribs, whips, and industrial brushes used to clean various kinds of machinery. An architect sat, smoked, and slept, barely saying twenty words during the trip. Once the salesman finally ran out of things to praise concerning the death and dismemberment of whales, Madeline turned her attention to a woman named Madge and her eight-year-old daughter, who were going to join Madge's husband in Denver. To pass the time they shared tidbits of each other lives. There wasn't much else to do but talk. It turned out that the motion of the coach was much too violent for her to be able to read the books she'd brought.

It was the leg that crossed the mountains on the way to Salt Lake City that was where things went wrong … or right, depending on one's perspective. The reader's opinion should probably be delayed until the rest of Madeline's story is revealed.

On this leg Madeline's compatriots were a Cowboy who introduced himself as Bob, a seventeen-year-old young man who called himself Rex, who seemed to be traveling with Bob, and three other travelers whose descriptions aren't of any real value in this story, with one possible exception, which will be discussed in due course. Madeline might have still been inhibited, sexually, by the memory of her dead husband, but she wasn't a hermit by any stretch of the imagination. She was a vivacious, curious woman who thoroughly enjoyed meeting people and talking about pretty much any subject that might arise. Her philosophy was that in a conversation where she knew something that might be of use to another person, she was happy to share that. If she didn't know anything about a subject then she was the one who had something to learn that might make her life better in some way. Her willingness to listen to the baleen salesman is an example of that.

And so, on this portion of her journey she thought she might learn something about the men who had herded all those cattle to Kansas for her late husband to broker to hungry America. She had not, of course, been introduced to such rough men in her normal, married life.

Bob and Rex, as it happened, had worked together for the last three years, handling cattle on a ranch with the unlikely name of The Eagle's Nest Ranch. Bob had read in a newspaper about the mines in Idaho that were producing gold, silver, and other ores men would pay good money for. The concept of sleeping in a house every night and having home-cooked meals, instead of camping under the stars (and in the rain), appealed to Bob. When he discussed it with the other cowboys on the ranch, Rex got the bug to seek his fortune in Idaho, too. The horses they normally rode belonged to the ranch, and it was cheaper to pay to ride the stage than it was to buy the horse and ride it there. Besides, a horse wouldn't be needed for a miner … would it?

Basically these two men, both young (Bob was only twenty-two) had stars in their eyes and the freedom to pursue pie in the sky. There happened to be a mining engineer riding in the coach with them from Denver to Salt Lake City, who could have educated them, but he didn't feel it was worth his time. He had tried to educate miners for two decades and most rarely listened to him. Those were the ones who died in cave-ins or from asphyxiation due to lack of ventilation. These two would either survive or die and it didn't matter to him anymore. If they died, there would be a stream of more like them. If they survived, then they deserved whatever gain they could wrest from the earth.

Bob and Rex sat together on the forward side of the coach. Another man sat with them, leaning against the side of the coach and dozing, much of the time. Madeline sat opposite the two cowboys, with two other passengers to her left, facing forward. The one on the other side of the coach was the "elderly" mining engineer. Thus she could lean forward to converse with Bob, mostly, and Rex, occasionally, concerning what it was like to live the life of a cattle wrangler.

It is important, at this point, to point out where things began to go amiss for Madeline. She had led a relatively sheltered life and all of it in or near town. Like almost anyone who did not live on a ranch, she truly had no concept of how that kind of life could meld friendships between men that were bone deep, close and even somewhat mysterious. There was a bond between men who lived together, fought Indians together, kept a herd together while thunder and lightning would otherwise stampede them, and just spent days and weeks in extremely close contact with each other. In this case, Bob had saved Rex's life one time when he got knocked off his horse while fording a river on a cattle drive. Rex could not swim and had not Bob left his own horse to grab Rex and drag him to shore, he surely would have drowned. That favor had been returned when Rex had shot an Indian who was about to split Bob's skull with a tomahawk. Madeline was ignorant of such things, but she wasn't stupid. She noticed the two men were extremely at ease with each other, often leaning on each other, and something came into her mind that she had heard her late husband say to a customer one time. She only heard a snippet of it, but, basically, her husband had laughed and said it didn't matter if the cowboys corn-holed each other on cattle drives, because it didn't affect the quality of the beef. She had asked him, later, what "corn-hole" meant. Instead of just telling her, he demonstrated and she was sore for two days. She was culturally sensitive about it for much longer.

It was this memory, and the closeness she perceived between these two men, that caused her to misinterpret that bond. Basically, she came to suspect that Bob might be corn-holing this poor, young, innocent boy, leaving him sore like she had been sore. Her ignorance of such things (which wasn't unusual at all in those times) overcame her rational ability to interpret "the signs" of such a relationship. It was the equivalent of, in modern times, to hear someone use a stereotypical tone and speaking manner and say, "He sounds gay, so he must be gay." Still, there wasn't anything she could do about that and both men were pleasant to talk with, so talk with them at length she did.

There were a number of rest stops along the way, usually ten or fifteen miles apart. At an average pace of three or four miles per hour, completing a leg usually took between three and four hours. At these stations, passengers could stretch their legs, get something to eat, or use sanitary facilities. Horses were either rested or changed out, depending on the type of station it was and the terrain to be covered on the next leg. Some even had blacksmiths in residence, to take care of the horses' footwear or make repairs to the coach, if needed. Meals were simple, usually consisting of beans, bacon, and coffee.

On the western side of the mountains, one such stop was what, a century later, would have been called a "tourist trap."

The "attraction," as it was called by the station manager's wife, was a played-out silver mine, with the grand name of "Periwinkle Silver Mine" carved into a slab of wood which hung over the opening to the mine. The attraction was that travelers could "search for silver and chip it out of the walls or floor" if they wanted to. It was about a hundred and twenty feet deep and anyone over about five and a half feet tall had to stoop to explore the narrow corridor of the mine. For the princely sum of a nickel, one could "be a silver miner" for an hour; tools provided at no additional cost! It was a popular attraction for people who had never been in the mountains before.

The mining engineer only went five or six feet into the adit before declaring, roughly, that it was unstable and should not be entered. He turned around and left. Had he been less taciturn on the trip, and engaged in friendly discourse with the others, his opinion might have carried more weight. Bob and Rex were eager to see a real mine and Madeline went with them. It is unfair to say she thought she was needed as a chaperone, but something in the back of her mind whispered that she should not leave them alone, lest their "perversion" overcome propriety and cause them to do something they shouldn't, in the dark recesses of the tunnel.

The shaft wasn't wide enough for two people to walk side by side comfortably, so Madeline followed the other two. They were some forty feet into the mine, following abandoned ore cart rails, when the disaster struck. Earthquakes in the Rockies are rare. The mountains themselves, though, are the result of the collision of the North American and Pacific tectonic plates and slippage, particularly on the west coast of the country, is common. Even small quakes in that area can send shocks eastward that can affect the rock in the mountains. It is akin to what happens if a bell is struck by a hammer. The bell vibrates, and if touched to something else, tries to make that vibrate, too. In this case, a relatively mild earthquake in California caused a slight shiver on the west side of the Rockies and a loose rock fell from the ceiling of The Periwinkle Mine. As can happen with a house of cards, removing a single card can collapse the whole structure. In this case, twenty feet of ceiling came crashing down, sealing the mine completely. Luckily for everyone except Madeline, Bob, and Rex, they were outside the mine when the cave-in occurred. Unhappily for Madeline, Bob, and Rex, they were inside the mine. The only silver lining (no pun intended) to that cloud was that the collapse occurred some ten feet behind them, and none of them were injured. There would be another silver lining later, which will also be revealed in due course.

******

The immediate effect on the trio inside the mine, when the collapse occurred, consisted primarily of abject terror for thirty seconds or so, followed by a somewhat astonishing realization that they were alive and relatively unscathed. The initial thunder and vibration they experienced made them stagger but none fell down. What would have been absolute darkness was prevented because each still held a kerosene lantern.

"Is everybody all right?" asked Bob, when the rumbling ceased. The lanterns provided a diffuse light, through a cloud of dust that permeated their environment.

"Yes," Madeline responded, as Rex said the same thing.

"We seem to have a problem," said Bob.

Neither of his compatriots responded. Both were, more or less, paralyzed at that point.

It was another five or so minutes before they actually began to take stock of their plight. The men still retained the "mining tools" they had been issued. Madeline had her purse with her, which contained her travel funds, some face powder, and a few personal items. Bob went to the pile of rock that now trapped them and surveyed it, holding his lantern high.

"We're not getting through this," he proclaimed.

"Can't we move the rocks?" asked Madeline, joining him and also holding her lantern up.

"Some of these rocks weigh more than all of us combined," he said, his attitude desultory. "It would take us weeks to dig out, assuming we could even move some of this. And even if we could, there is danger of further collapse."

"Then what are we to do?" moaned Madeline. "We can't just stay here!"

"What is the alternative?" said Bob. "The only thing we can do is wait for them to dig us out."

"That could take days!" Madeline said. "We have no food or water. We'll die of starvation before they get to us!"

"Maybe not," said Rex, from further down the tunnel.

Rex had been investigating their surroundings, for lack of anything else to do. It was instinct to search for a way out, even if such behavior might look useless. In his case, however, his instinct had paid off, in a fashion. He had noticed a circle of light on the uneven floor and found a hole in the ceiling drilled to provide ventilation. The sun was at the perfect position in the sky for its rays to flood the hole with light and display it on the floor. It wasn't big enough to crawl out through, but he could see daylight, which meant they could talk to someone at the other end of the tube. That assumed, of course, that there would be someone at the other end of the tube, but if they could get someone's attention, then communication with the outside world could be established. So, too, could food and water be lowered to them, until they could be rescued.

"Look here," he said to the others.

They came, and crowded together to stare upwards at the light that represented the freedom currently denied them. To be able to see at the same time, they had to press closely together.

None noticed it at that moment, but their willingness to touch each other, pressed together like that, was a harbinger of things to come.

******

Their initial shock, followed by the hope that the small hole leading to the outside gave them, eventually subsided into despondency. There was no action they could take to better their circumstances, no direction they could work in that suggested salvation. Bob was the first one to stop looking up through the vent. He surveyed their surroundings like Rex had, looking for some way out. He went twenty or thirty feet deeper in the mine but it was obvious there was no second tunnel. When he got back to the others only Madeline was still peering through the vent. Rex was sitting, now, with his back against one wall, his lantern on the floor beside him. Bob looked at that lantern. The dust had already settled and the light seemed stronger, now.

"We need to conserve the fuel in the lanterns," he said. "We should extinguish all but one."

"How will we start them again?" asked Madeline.

"I have matches with my smoking materials," he replied. He patted the pocket of his shirt.

Madeline promptly rolled the wick adjusting knob and her lantern went out. She stood in the narrow beam of light beneath the vent. Rex extinguished his lantern, too.

"I can still see," she said.

"If you stand under the hole, and only until the sun goes down," Bob pointed out .

"Oh yes … that," she sighed. "Shall we yell through the hole?"

"It goes up and looks to be fifteen or twenty feet long," said Bob. "That means it's ten or fifteen feet up and twice that far away from anyone at the opening, trying to discern how bad the cave-in is. I doubt they could hear us. They may have already given up on us as crushed, for that matter. They have no idea how much of the ceiling collapsed."

"You mean they'll just leave us here, entombed?" gasped the woman.

"Who is there to dig us out?" said Bob. "The station manager? The hostler? The station manager's wife?"

"There's the driver and shotgun," said Rex.

"This mine is of no concern to them," said Bob. "They have a job to do and that is get the stage to Salt Lake City."

"Less three of its paying passengers," said Madeline. "They are responsible for our safety!"

"Were we in the coach, then yes," said Bob. "If we wander away or are delayed in some fashion, they feel justified in leaving us behind, I imagine."

"They think we're dead," said Rex, dejectedly. "That's what I'd think."

"Then we must alert them that we're not!" said Madeline.

"How?" asked the teenager.

Bob, who now had the only lit lantern, walked the short distance to the hole. The mine shaft was perhaps four feet wide at that point so Madeline moved back to let him peer up. He handed her the lantern and removed a match from his pocket. He lit it and held it up to the opening. The flame flickered and, when he let it go out, the smoke was pulled up into the hole.

"Smoke," he said. "We need to build a fire in the vent and they'll see the smoke."

"Build a fire with what?" asked Rex, who stood up.

"There are some timbers holding the roof up, here and there," said Bob. "Not nearly enough, as is obvious, but they're there. We have picks of a sort. We can use them to chip off pieces of wood to burn."

The "picks" he referred to were rock hammers, which were metal heads that were flat on one end and pointed on the other. The handle that went into the head was about eighteen inches long. The pointed end, according to the station master's wife, could be used to chip out any silver deposits they found.

"I'll go with you," said Rex. "Bring the light so I can find my hammer."

Bob detoured to pick up his own tool and then lit the area where Rex had dropped his. Together they moved down the shaft, leaving Madeline at the hole.

"If you see anything or hear anything through that hole, yell into it with everything you've got," said Bob.

"I will," she said. "Please be careful. It's bad enough as it is. I don't think I could bear it if something happened to you two."

They moved off and she was left with only the thoughts in her own mind.

******

We think of being alone in many ways. Sometimes being alone is comforting, because it means we're not exposed to something in life that is annoying or scary. On the other hand, being alone can be tedious and boring. Much of that depends on the individual's mindset and imagination. A person who has a vivid imagination can be physically alone and yet seem to be surrounded with people at the same time. At the other end of the spectrum is the person who can be at a party, surrounded by people, and be mentally alone.

Madeline had spent the last four years alone, basically. She did interact with others in town, but only rarely and never socially or recreationally. She went places and saw people with whom she conversed, but only as long as was needed to complete her business. At home she was the very definition of alone. Humans aren't meant to be alone like that. People are social creatures, biologically. If a prisoner is locked up alone for an extended period of time it can drive him insane. Madeline, though, was one of those people who can dissociate from the world and park the mind in an also empty place. On the Asian continent there are many who practice this kind of separation from the world. Meditation is the pinnacle of "alone-ness" and can be very rewarding.

Madeline, of course, had never heard of "meditation" as a pursuit. She had never read the Bhagavad Gita. She had never heard of Buddha or Hinduism. Her mind had just been capable of escaping the pain of loss by going to a place where it just didn't exist. She didn't even realize she was doing something apart from regular life. She would meditate until something drew her back to "the world" and she would assuage her hunger, or deal with her bladder or bowels. She would then perform what chores needed doing and go on with life.

The point is that Madeline was used to being alone and she had been quite comfortable in that state.

Until now.

Now, when her companions disappeared into the dark she felt the terror her ancient ancestors had felt as they huddled near a small fire and listened to the sounds of wolves all around them.

There was no fire and there was daylight through the vent, but now, Madeline was afraid.

It seemed an interminable time before she heard them returning and the rush of something that made her heart race caused her to groan, though she didn't hear it or notice she did it. She saw the lantern first, and then the body of Rex, who was holding it. Her heart stuttered when she didn't see Bob, but then his face appeared for a few seconds as the lantern was held to one side and she sighed with relief.

"We're back," said Rex, needlessly. "Did you see anything?"

"No," she said.

"We found some wood," said Rex. "There was an old crushed up crate."

"Now, how to pack it into the hole so it will stay there," said Bob.

It was as he was trying to do that that the noise came. It surprised them all in the quiet of their tomb. It was a faint, tinny sound and it was difficult to say where it was coming from.

Rex moved around in the confined area and then got to his hands and knees.

"The rails!" he yipped. "They're pounding on the rails!"

Madeline didn't have to be told. She stooped, picked up one of the hammers the men had returned with and dropped, and went to Rex. It was dark and, at first, she thought to hand the tool to the boy. But her hand landed on a rail so she tried to hit the metal beside her hand. It made an anemic sounding "tink" and she felt Rex's hands find hers. His hands cupped her fist and then took the handle from her. Under these circumstances his touch, which would have been considered offensively intimate in the stagecoach, felt only reassuring to Madeline as she surrendered the hammer.

She moved back and heard the sharp dulled ring of the hammer as Rex pounded lustily on the rail. Then there was a thunk, instead of a ring, and Rex muttered, "Missed" before Bob arrived with the lit lantern and illuminated Rex's target. The boy banged hard another ten or twelve times and then paused. All three strained to hear an answer. When it came, faint and tinny, and they realized communication of a sort had been established, the emotional release was almost sexual.

In the confines of the narrow tunnel, there was a group hug with a deep psychological component in it, as the three felt hope for the first time.

Then Bob pulled back.

"I need to get that fire going so they'll hopefully see the smoke and find the hole," he said.

The challenge was keeping the wood in the hole as it burned. The vent did not go straight up, but the angle wasn't sharp enough to help, much. Lighting it would be easy, but even if it was jammed tightly in the hole, as soon as the parts touching the stone burned, then the whole thing would just fall out. It was Madeline who came up with an idea, and she had the baleen salesman to thank for it.

"I have whale bone in my corset," she said. "Maybe we could use it to keep the wood there long enough to make smoke."

"Your corset," said Bob.

"The whalebone is very stiff and perhaps it won't burn," she said.

"I guess it's worth a try," said Bob "We need to hurry, though, while they're all excited that we answered on the rail."

In any other circumstances Madeline would have been embarrassed to remove her outer clothing and then her corset, leaving herself clothed only in her chemise and underpants. In this case, however, the hope of salvation was much stronger than the convention to be properly clothed in the presence of two men. It was also dark, which probably helped.

Had there been more light, the men would have been treated to a beautiful woman wearing a thin, linen garment that did little to hide her shape. At this moment, the emotion she was feeling resulted in the stiffening of her nipples. There was no sexual component to it at all, but every bit of erectile tissue in her body was simply suffused with blood as her heart pounded. Her clitoris reacted, too, but she paid no attention to either reaction. She simply got undressed as quickly as she could and handed her corset to Bob.

Rex held the lantern as Bob extracted his pocket knife from his pants pocket. He peered at the unfamiliar garment and made it flex to find the stiff inserts in the lacy cloth. He did realize he was responding, on a biological level, to holding something so intimate, and which had just cradled Madeline's body. Like any other man, he had recognized her beauty as soon as he saw it. He had enjoyed a very quick fantasy in which they were much better acquainted and she was in one of the rooms over the saloon, where a man could buy some time with one of the dancers who performed every hour, on the hour, as the piano player pounded out a lively tune.

Now that fantasy was revived, until he shoved it aside to pay attention to the task at hand. He didn't even realize his cock was stiff in his pants.

Madeline's slim finger pointed and she tried to help. Rex had also reacted to seeing such an intimate feminine garment. He had only been with a prostitute once, after his first cattle drive. The older men had pressured him to do it when they found out he was a virgin. It had been very quick and very confusing to the boy, who was only fifteen at the time. There had been pleasure, to be sure, but his mind had been whirling and he hadn't had time to really get everything out of it that could be gotten. The girl had risen up right after he was finished. She had cleaned between her legs quickly and efficiently, gotten dressed, and left the room with a chipper (and practiced), "That was fun. We must do it again some day."

Now he stared at what had been wrapped around the beautiful blond woman's body and then looked at her. Her body was illuminated by the lantern and he saw the dents that her nipples were making. An erection bloomed in his pants, as well.

Bob had to destroy the garment to get enough baleen out of it to wedge things firmly into the hole. It took three matches to get the fire going, but then the draft took and the flames happily caught. The wood was very dry and burned quickly enough that Bob cast about for something to make more smoke. The corset was already destroyed, so he cut strips of lacy material and used a shard of wood to poke it up into the fire. Some baleen had to be removed to do this, but it was wedged back in place once the material was in. Bob blew on his fingers once he was finished.

The hole was now blocked and only then did they realize how much light came through it as the lantern seemed to be just a small spot of light in the darkness. Then the hammering began again on the distant rail and Bob took a turn with the hammer to reply that they were still alive.

Within only ten minutes the remains of the little fire was falling out of the vent and onto the rock floor, where it smoked and glowed before Bob and Rex stomped it out. There was some minor coughing but the vent worked well and pulled the foul air up and out as intended. Another ten minutes went by and they were losing hope that enough smoke had been generated, or that no one had seen the smoke, when the light from the vent was suddenly cut off.

"Helloooo," came an eerie voice.

"Yes!" screamed Madeline from under the hole. "We're here!"

The next fifteen minutes passed as information was exchanged. The cave-in was so substantial that it would take at least a week to clear. The stagecoach driver would go on to Salt Lake City, where the alarm would generate help that could arrive by horseback in two days' time. The job could be done faster with the correct heavy equipment, but it would take a month for such to arrive.

In the meantime, the station master promised to supply them with water and victuals, lowered through the vent tube. There was nothing more he could do for them than that. And that would keep them alive until the blockage could be cleared. The taciturn mining engineer had volunteered to stay and supervise the clearing of the blockage until others could arrive.

Basically, they'd stay alive, but they would be trapped together for at least a week.

******

The first order of business was to figure out a way to pass things through the vent. The angle of the vent was perhaps twenty or thirty degrees off vertical. The first packet that those outside tried to lower got caught by friction on the side of the tube and sat there. Eventually, through trial and error, it was determined that if a rope could be gotten through the entire length of the tube, then something fastened to it above could be pulled down from below. The rope was gotten through the passage by the expedient of fastening one end to a trimmed Aspen sapling, which was then shoved down into the hole.

After that, a wire inserted through the hemp was used to fasten a small leather bag to the rope. The needed items could be put in the bag and transferred. Food and water came first, in the form of hard tack and beef jerky, and a small, battered canteen that some miner had used back in the day. Then candles were sent, as no method of transferring fuel for the lamps could be thought of. Three hours after verbal communication had been established, the detainees had sustenance and light. On the outside the sun was going down and those outside were either working on clearing the blockage, or going to bed. Some semblance of normalcy needed to be maintained as a stage coach station. In the days that followed, passengers on the stage, instead of being offered the adventure of mining for silver, were asked to help move some rocks. The trio in the mine, of course, knew nothing of this.

The next hurdle to be jumped was what to do about their biological needs once their bodies had processed the food and water they now had. With candles, moving deeper into the mine was no issue, so a toilet, of sorts, was established around a bend in the shaft, some thirty feet further in. There was nothing to sit on, but the men were used to that. They had routinely leaned against a tree to evacuate their bowels while out on the range. If there was no tree around, removing one leg of the pants allowed one to just squat. In other, more normal circumstances, explaining this process to Madeline would have been unthinkable, but these were not normal circumstances. In any case, girls have been squatting like that for hundreds of thousands of years, so the concept wasn't strange to her.

The voice at the vent had distracted her from getting dressed again and being in dishabille with the two men did not feel embarrassing to her. Part of that was because it was dark. Part, it must be said, resulted from the belief, in the back of her mind, that these men might prefer the company of other men to women.

Basically, the state of affairs they found themselves in had already altered the usual social conventions they would have observed. Their shared travails had already brought them closer together than otherwise would have happened.

None of them anticipated how close they would eventually become.

Chapter Two

Once they had eaten, drunk, and used the "facilities" there was nothing to do. Each had a candle, held in place on top of their lanterns by dripped wax, which the end of the candle was stuck in.

The light coming through the vent had deteriorated, meaning it was evening and the night would follow. Their thoughts turned to how they would pass the night.

"Should someone keep watch at the hole?" asked Rex.

"Why? Nobody's going to wander up to the hole to talk to us in the middle of the night," said Bob. "They said they'd make contact again in the morning, when they drop us more food."

"Where will we sleep?" asked Rex.

This question stirred up something in Madeline's mind that led her further down the garden path of mistakenly presuming these two had an affinity for buggery. The memory of her own husband forcing his erection into her bottom was vivid, which is probably why she thought about this at all.

"I shall sleep between you two!" she blurted.

Her outburst was not thought out. It was just an instinct of some kind, based on her attempts to save these men from their own perversions. That she felt safe doing such a thing at all was because she surmised neither man would lust after her, and that by taking this action she would protect them from their own twisted desires.

It helped that no one would ever know about it.

The reaction of the men was as one might expect it. Neither had thought to suggest that the woman sleep even near to him. She was a lady, after all, a widow who was obviously still in mourning, as she wore black on this trip. Once the "plan" was suggested, though, both men were eager to accept it. Some instinct, though, warned them not to be too effusive in their acceptance.

"It would be warmer that way," Bob mused. "It could get chilly in here at night."

"Yes," Rex agreed. "I've had to huddle with others to keep warm before." In actuality, what he was referring to was when he was ten or so years old and he lived in a sod house with his parents and two siblings. It wasn't unusual at all for the whole family to sleep together in the winter, like a pile of puppies keeping warm.

He didn't "unpack" that, though, and all his comment did was add fuel to the fire in Madeline's heart that the life of the cowboy had nudged these men's moral compass off of true north. He was obviously referring to sporting with other men on cattle drives, on cold nights. Her resolve to push them back toward the straight and narrow firmed. She didn't think about how this might be accomplished. She simply resolved to do it.

It was not time to go to bed, however, and no one was sleepy. Adrenaline had washed their blood veins clear of lassitude and they were wide awake.

Thus began passing the time by slowly revealing tidbits of their past lives and their present beliefs and values. Over the next week these three would come to know each other better than any other humans on the face of the planet.

Madeline went first, when Bob asked her how and when her husband had died. When she answered him he was astonished.

"It was that far back and you're still in mourning togs?"

Had there been more light the two men might have seen her blush.

"I guess I just got used to wearing black," she said. "I actually feel guilty because his image, in my mind, is beginning to fade."

"I had a friend who was struck by lightning back home, sitting on his horse," said Rex. "Kilt him and his horse, both. He was like a brother to me and it's like that. I cain't hardly remember what he looked like, now."

"It's distressing," said Madeline.

"Can I ask you a personal question?" asked Bob.

"You already did," she responded. "You asked me something personal about my husband."

"Guess I did, at that," he said. "I didn't think of that as personal. I suppose, in light of that, pretty much anything I ask you would be personal."

"It's fine," she said. "Under the circumstances, we may as well lay aside normal civil graces. We're going to be stuck here for a week. It would be tedious in the extreme to try be properly polite."

"It's nice of you to see things that way," said Bob. "Us men have a hard time keeping social niceties in mind under any circumstances."

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