Gunnar's mine
Roland Cheek
- Columbia Falls, Mont. Skyline Pub. c2003
- 275 p. 22 cm.
- Valediction for revenge series 4th .
Heading north, over 10,200-foot Lizard Head Pass, past the struggling Colorado mining camps of Ophir and Telluride, following the rushing tumble of mountainside freshets down from alpine tundra to the quiet murmuring of the San Miguel River, almost to a decaying Uncompahgre gold camp called Placerville, a traveler encountered a mud-and-wattle waystop where a pilgrim could find plain, but filling vittles for his own belly, as well as hay and oats for his horse. Just upriver a stone’s throw from Walter’s waystop, and across the murmuring San Miguel, there was a little Swede who filed a mineral claim based on a modicum of yellow flakes that winked back at him from the bottom of his gold pan. That winking yellow took the little Swede’s breath away. But it was because of that same winking yellow that a ruthless eastern mining company also wished to take Gunnar Einarssen’s breath away. That was more-or-less the same time Jethro Spring rode across Lizard Head Pass, looking to escape the murderous feud known throughout history as New Mexico’s Lincoln County War. After years of constant vigilance, murderous gunfights, and friends cut down before his very eyes, the man sought only peace and contentment; two damned good reasons why he passed the boisterous mining camps for a place of quiet; like that found at Walter’s waystop, and in the little Swede who owned Gunnar’s Mine