The first man kicked the wooden stool so hard that it skidded across the cookhouse floor and struck the iron stove. The second swept a tray of freshly baked bread from the counter, sending rolls tumbling into the sawdust. By the time the third miner began shouting, nearly fifty hungry men were laughing, stamping their boots, and demanding supper from the enormous woman standing alone behind the griddle.
Loretta had been cooking for fourteen hours.
Her slate-blue cotton blouse was damp with perspiration, her thin ivory apron was covered in flour and grease, and the muscles in her arms trembled from lifting heavy pans. At thirty-five years old and weighing approximately 330 kilograms, she was far larger than anyone else in the mining camp of Red Dog. Her immense body made long hours of standing difficult, but she had learned to arrange her kitchen so that most of the important tools remained within reach.
There was no one to help her that evening.
The kitchen boy had gone home with a fever. The woman who occasionally washed dishes had left two days earlier after the mine company delayed her wages. And the owner of the camp had just ordered an additional fifty suppers without warning.
Loretta turned another enormous beef steak with her iron tongs.
The meat hissed against the hot griddle.
A miner slapped the counter.
"Move faster, woman! Fifty hungry men are waiting!"
Loretta didn't look up.
"I've got six steaks ready and another twelve cooking. Shouting won't make the iron hotter."
Several miners laughed.
The foreman didn't.
Bram Kincaid was forty-six, a thick-necked man with a red face, a heavy mustache, and a reputation for settling disagreements with intimidation. He wore a dark waistcoat over a stained work shirt, with a brass watch chain hanging across his stomach. His boots were polished more carefully than those of the men who worked underground, and his hands rarely carried the same dirt.
He leaned across the counter.
"You think you're clever?"
Loretta turned the steak.
"I think supper takes time."
The foreman's face reddened.
Behind him, several miners began jeering.
Loretta lowered her eyes.
She had heard worse.
Since coming to Red Dog, she had learned that hungry men were capable of extraordinary cruelty when they believed the woman feeding them had nowhere else to go.
Some called her the mountain.
Others made jokes about how many sacks of flour were needed to feed her.