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"Monte Cristo sandwich and Roquefort on your salad. Yes, sir," the young waitress repeated, bending over the table so that her short skirt rode up to reveal a pair of white panties. "And you, sir?"
"I'll take the same." Do
Young peered over the top of his glasses as the waitress hurried to the kitchen. "If only someone would give me that for Christmas," he said, smiling.
Young was a ski
"Mr. Do
"So I noticed when I had to duck through the five-ton door."
"You should come here for di
"I'll bear that in mind on my next visit."
"Well, sir." Young looked at him steadily. "What's on your mind?"
"I have a few questions."
Young's eyebrows raised above his glasses. "Oh my, now you have tickled my curiosity. You're not with the FBI are you? Over the phone you simply said you were with the federal government."
"No, I'm not with the FBI. And I'm not on the payroll of Internal Revenue, either. My department is welfare. It's my job to track down the authenticity of pension claims."
"Then how can I help you?"
"My particular project at the moment is the investigation of a seventy-six-year-old mining accident that took the lives of nine men. One of the victim's descendants has filed for a pension. I'm here to check the validity of the claim. Your name, Mr. Young, was recommended to me by the State Historical Society, which glowingly described you as a walking encyclopedia on Western mining history."
"A bit of an exaggeration," Young said, "but I'm flattered, nonetheless."
The drinks arrived and they sipped them for a minute. Do
"Tell me, Mr. Do
"It seems the widow didn't receive all she was entitled to," Do
"I see," Young said. He stared across the table speculatively and then began idly tapping his spoon against a plate. "Which of the men who were lost in the Little Angel disaster are you interested in?"
"My compliments," Do
"It's nothing, really. A seventy-six-year-old mining accident. Nine men missing. It could only be the Little Angel disaster."
"The man's name was Brewster."
Young stared at him an extra moment, then stopped the plate-tapping and banged his spoon against the table top. "Joshua Hays Brewster," he murmured the name. "Born to William Buck Brewster and Hettie Masters in Sidney, Nebraska, on April 4 . . . or was it April 5, 1878."
Do
"Oh, I know that and much more." Young smiled. "Mining engineers, or the Lace-Boot Brigade, as they were once known, are a rather cliquish group. It's one of the few professions where sons follow fathers and also marry sisters or daughters of other mining engineers."
"Are you about to say that you were related to Joshua Hays Brewster?"
"My uncle." Young gri
The ice parted and Do
"You look like you could stand another drink, Mr. Do
"Liars never prosper," Do
"Can you enlighten me?"
"I would prefer not to."
"You are from the government?" Young asked.
Do
"Then, may I ask why you're investigating my long-dead uncle?"
"I would prefer not to," Do
"What do you wish to know?"
"Whatever you can tell me about Joshua Hays Brewster and the Little Angel accident."
The drinks came along with the salad. Do
"My uncle was typical of the men who developed the mines in the early nineteen hundreds; white, eager, and middle class, and except for his small size-he stood only five feet two-he could easily have passed for what the novelists of the day vividly depicted as a gentlemanly, two-fisted, devil-may-care, adventurous mining engineer, complete with shining boots, jodhpurs, and a Smokey-the-Bear ranger hat."
"You make him sound like a hero from an old Saturday matinee serial."
"A fictional hero could never have measured up," Young said. "The field is highly specialized today, of course, but an engineer of the old school had to be as tough as the rock he mined, and he had to be versatile-mechanic, electrician, surveyor, metallurgist, geologist, lawyer, arbitrator between pe
Do
"After my uncle graduated from the School of Mines," Young continued, "he followed his profession in the Klondike, Australia, and Russia before returning to the Rockies in 1908 to manage the Sour Rock and Buffalo, a pair of mines at Leadville owned by a group of French financiers in Paris who never laid eyes on Colorado."
"The French owned mining claims in the States?"
"Yes. Their capital flowed heavily throughout the West. Gold and silver, cattle, sheep, real estate; you name it, they had a finger in it."
"What possessed Brewster to reopen the Little Angel?"
"That's a strange story in itself," Young said. "The mine was worthless. The Alabama Burrow, three hundred yards away, coughed up two million dollars in silver before the water in the lower levels began ru