I was becoming desperate. My own family were too poor to appeal to and I was far too proud to want anyone in Oshkosh except Father Doe to guess at the truth of how my marriage had turned out. I turned more and more to Jake for comfort and every kind of sustenance.
Harvey began to spend his time in bars, not that he drank much, just a few beers. But hanging around and talking to the customers gave him ample opportunity to feel sorry for himself and to tell people his troubles. I hated him for his weakness—I always detested any kind of blubbering. Soon we were quarreling regularly.
Although he got a few odd jobs and sometimes earned enough money for food, it was never enough to pay our rent and we were forced to move about a lot in Blackhawk and Central. That year and the next were two of the most discouraging I ever spent. I was constantly blue and dejected in spirit and frightened for the future of my baby. To try to help out, I put on miner’s clothes and attempted to do some work starting to sink a shaft on the Troy Lode next to the English-Kansas that Harvey had bought from the Hinds brothers. I really was in no condition to do this work but I knew that many of the mines on Quartz Hill, very close by, were steady lucrative producers and our claim seemed the one hope.
“Hello, there!” I heard one day, called out from a teamster driving an ore wagon down from the Patch mines up above. “What do you think you’re doing? You’re Baby Doe, aren’t you?”
That’s how I met Lincoln Allebaugh, “Link” as he was always called. He was a slim, fine-boned fifteen year old boy who, despite his age and small frame, could drive an ore wagon because of his knack with horses and excellent driving hands. He sometimes had trouble setting the brake and, after we knew him better, he would get Harvey to go along and apply his stocky strength. Link had been born in Blackhawk and lived there all his life. He knew who I was from seeing me in Jake’s store and hearing Harvey call me by one of my family nicknames—Baby, which was also the one the miners in camp had spontaneously adopted.
“You’re too little to do heavy work like that,” Link said. “You better let me give you a lift home.”
I felt the truth of what he had said in my bones. Suddenly, I was very tired, a new feeling for me and not a sensation I liked. While Link loaded my pick and shovel in with the ore, I climbed up on the high front seat.