Quicksilver (reissue) Page 11

  There was a micro-moment in which Walter and I considered our options, glancing at the path back to the notch, trying to do the geometry of angles of fire, and then Robert yelled at us, “He’s coming up.”

  I nodded and Walter yelled, “Henry we’ll come down once you say you won’t shoot.”

  “I won’t,” Henry called, “once you come down.”

  Walter pushed up to his knees and I followed suit, thinking I sure hope we’re all clear on the timing of coming down and not shooting but once we were standing and I had a line of sight down into the valley my fears eased, slightly.

  Henry stood watching, his gun barrel pointed ground-ward. He gripped the weapon with both hands and I guessed that was to counteract the tremors or maybe it was a sharp-shooting style but it looked for all the world like he’d had to wrestle the gun out of firing position.

  Henry had shed his parka. He wore a brown long-sleeve shirt tucked into his jeans. He wore a belt holster.

  Robert stood a few yards behind Henry. He was making no move to tackle his brother.

  Walter and I came down off the knob to join the Shelburne brothers.

  CHAPTER 28

  It wasn’t an Old West six-shooter in Henry’s hand. It was a modern-day Glock, carried by cops everywhere or at least at the crime scenes I’d worked. Henry’s Glock was matte black except for the slide, the metal there silvered where the finish had worn off, which left me thinking Henry Shelburne handled this gun a lot. Or maybe Henry ‘Quicksilver’ Shelburne had sanded the finish down to silver on purpose.

  He still gripped the gun with both hands. He pointed it somewhere in the neighborhood of our six legs.

  Robert, Walter, and I stood side-by-side in a lineup in front of the tunnel.

  Henry spoke to Walter. “I am hiring you.”

  Walter said, gently, “We prefer not to work at gunpoint.”

  “It’s just in case.”

  “In case of what, son?”

  “Just in case. Just in case.”

  Walter said, more gently, “All right.”

  Henry raised his hands, and the Glock. His hands shook. The gun oscillated. “A geologist needs to go in.”

  “Cassie will go,” Walter said promptly.

  “Does she know...”

  “Yes,” Walter said, “she knows everything there is to know about the auriferous channels. I taught her.”

  I got it. Walter was going to stay outside with crazy Henry while I went on the treasure hunt. He thought he was protecting me. He always has. When I was a kid assisting in his lab and he took me to my first crime scene, he bought me a whistle in case we got separated. All these years later and now we’re doing the tricky dance of who is protecting whom. Vigilance is in his DNA. It’s tattooed on his soul.

  There’s a man with a gun. And Walter is stepping up.

  I stole a glance at Robert. He stood rigid, watching his brother. Not overtly afraid but then I’d not seen Robert Shelburne show fear. I did not know how he would exhibit fear.

  I refocused on Henry. He looked a little lost, as if he’d come out of hiding too soon. His face was more weathered than the teenager in the photo but the Sherpa wool cap now cupping his head made him look young again. Still, he did not have teenage Henry’s cool-guy squint. His eyes were reddened, blinking. Lack of sleep, trying to get a wet fire going, crying, who knew? His nose was pinkish, sunburned, peeling. I guessed the weather had been clear and sunny before we joined the hunt, although I wondered why an experienced outdoorsman like Henry Shelburne had not used sunscreen. His peeling nose—like the preposterous earflaps—made him look like a kid. I ignored that.

  Robert Shelburne’s kid brother. Not mine.

  Henry let go of the gun with his right hand and lifted it, gesturing at the tunnel.

  I stared at his hand. The palm was pink, peeling, and I got a sick understanding that we weren’t talking sunburn here. Jesus Henry, what have you been into?

  Robert suddenly lunged.

  Quick as a snake strike, Henry had both hands on the Glock, had the gun aimed at his brother’s head.

  Robert raised his own hands. “Chill Bro.”

  I said quickly,“I’m going in.”

  Henry pulled his arms into his chest, bracing his elbows, steadying his aim. “Thank you.”

  Cautiously, I answered, “You’re welcome.”

  And so now it became my show. I assumed I didn’t need a gas detector, or Robert would not have emerged from the tunnel alive. I started for the tunnel. Henry stopped me. Told me to leave behind my pack. Told me to take only my tools. Told me to bring him a sample. I rummaged in my pack and got the field kit and belted it around my waist. I rummaged in the pack again and pulled out the headlamp.

  Robert spoke. “You won't need that. My little brother is pretty handy. Got the old generator working—some miner, sometime, gave this place an upgrade and strung lights in the tunnel.”

  I glanced inside. Yeah, there was a glow, several yards into the tunnel. Good. I liked lights. In fact, I had a flashlight in my field kit.

  I started once more for the tunnel.

  As I passed into the mouth I heard Henry call to me, “Go all the way.”

  CHAPTER 29

  All the way where?

  The tunnel was lighted, as Robert promised, bulbs strung along the rock ceiling overhead, but the lights didn't answer my question.

  As far ahead as I could see, the tunnel ran straight.

  Perhaps somewhere farther ahead there were side branches, offshoots, whatever it was they were called in a mine, a term Walter would know. But Walter was outside facing a Glock and counting on me to return with something shiny and pretty to satisfy Henry. A nice nugget. Sure thing.

  All I need do was go all the way, wherever that way led me.

  I studied the rock as I passed. Bedrock walls, bedrock ceiling, bedrock floor, a sturdy incursion into the mountainside, a strong tunnel that needed no timbering, a tunnel with drill holes in the ceiling to ventilate, the only sort of tunnel I felt remotely comfortable traversing. When my eyes had fully adjusted and my nerves settled, I identified the bedrock as metamorphic slate.

  As I moved I noticed that I was breathing more rapidly, my leg muscles were working a little harder, and I realized that the tunnel was angling upward. I assumed the tunnel-builders had done that on purpose so that any water that seeped in through the rock would drain out.

  Good idea.

  My body settled into a rhythm, releasing my mind to dwell on the question at hand.

  How did Henry know where all the way led? He didn’t like enclosed spaces. Presumably, not even lighted spaces. Otherwise, why send Robert and then me in here?

  And how would he know how far I went?

  And, further, what did he expect me to find?

  Quite clearly this tunnel was working its way into the hillside toward the buried river channel whose upper gravel reaches I had glimpsed on the ridgetop. Clever, those miners. If you can’t hose out a mountain to get to the gold, tunnel your way. One way or another they’d found the way. One way or another those ancient Eocene river channels had condemned this countryside to an extreme makeover.

  And that bugged me, because it should have bugged Henry.

  Presumably he wasn’t looking for hosed-out mine pits or well-tunneled hills. Presumably he was looking for a site lost since his grandfather’s time, a site that nobody but nobody had since seen. Was he not disappointed to find that Enchantment Valley had already been mined? Walter sure was. And Henry, I thought, should have been beyond disappointed. Should have been devastated.

  Another failure for Quicksilver.

  So why was he so anxious to have me go into this well-tunneled hill? If there was something legend-worthy in here, it would already have been found.

  Poor Henry.

  Henry with his peeling pink palms gripping the black and silver Glock.

  My sympathy evaporated.

  Several hundred feet into the tunnel, the walls abruptly
changed.

  The bedrock was now overlain by gravel. It was mostly quartz and slate, cemented in clay and sand. I ran my fingers along the rough face.

  I had entered the lost river channel.

  There were pebbles and cobbles and even a few boulders—the well-rounded rocks of milky quartz that were legend in and of themselves, the defining characteristic of the blue lead, carried by long-ago rivers, carried to this place. Here right now.

  I lost my bearings.

  For a moment I forgot that I’d been sent in here. For a moment it seemed I’d chosen to come.

  The tunnel drifted into a bend.

  I halted and stared at the wall. Gravel sitting upon bedrock. Gravel the basal layer of the ancient channel. The basal layer being the deep blue lead.

  Only, it wasn’t blue.

  It was reddish, the iron pyrite in the clay oxidized.

  I fumbled open my field kit and grabbed the hammer and chisel and went to work on the cemented gravel, gouging my way through to the virgin blue.

  And then I had to stop and stare.

  It was blue as the wings of a jay.

  Something like a fever took hold of me. Right here in front of my nose was the deep blue lead. I’d listened to Walter and Robert Shelburne rhapsodize about it, I’d read up on it myself, I’d contemplated the geology of it, but right now what made my pulse pound was the sheer reality of it, and I had to admit that I felt a thrill. If I had to name the feeling perhaps I’d call it romance.

  Walter should see this.

  And then I regained my senses. Legend-worthy to Walter, yes, but to Henry Shelburne? I recalled what Robert had told us, back at the lab, back when he was spinning the legend of the deep blue lead. He’d said Henry was hunting not only gold but something more fundamental. And since Henry had been hunting his entire adult life, could he not have encountered the blue somewhere, sometime? Hacked into some forgotten gravel outcrop? Maybe. As long as it wasn’t buried in a mining tunnel. In any case, this patch of the blue lead was not the patch he sought.

  To be certain, I took my flashlight and hand lens and had a twenty-power highlighted look. Nope, no visible gold. There was no visible treasure here. Perhaps there was microscopic gold somewhere within this seam but surely what was economically recoverable had already been recovered. There was certainly no diorite dike, no cross-studded hornfels sheath, no intrusion acting as a giant riffle, entrapping a secret pocket of gold.

  The bedrock here was unviolated.

  Nevertheless, I picked up the chunk of gravel ore I’d gouged out and put it in my field kit along with my tools. Better to return with something than nothing at all.

  And perhaps there was something worth seeing around the tunnel bend.

  Go all the way.

  I wondered, again, if Henry knew where all the way led.

  The tunnel was bending like a U, and there now appeared on the bedrock floor the broken remains of iron tracks. I understood. The miners had not hauled the gravel out in backpacks. They’d used rail cars.

  The tunnel now straightened into the second leg of the U. The tracks continued as far as I could see.

  I continued, as well, following that deep blue lead.

  Even oxidized, even rusty reddish brown, it held my attention.

  Within a few dozen yards, the gravel receded. Within a couple dozen more yards, the walls were pure bedrock. And then up ahead I saw the faint glow of daylight.

  Another exit.

  Now what?

  I thought it over. I found that I knew two things.

  First, Henry had been camped in Enchantment Valley, perhaps for a couple of days. Henry would have had time to crawl all over this place and would have found this second tunnel mouth. Which meant he already knew what was out there.

  Second, what was out there could not be what he sought. What he sought must be in here, or so he must believe. Otherwise—again—why send his brother into the tunnel searching? Why send me? At gunpoint, no less.

  I took in a deep tunnel breath. It tasted like stone.

  Okay. I knew one more thing.

  Third, I knew that Henry Shelburne was not going to shoot Walter, while they waited. There was no possible need. Walter was not hot-headed enough to go for the gun. Walter was Henry’s insurance, guaranteeing my cooperation.

  I exhaled, in a hiss.

  I had not yet gone all the way.

  It could not be more than a couple dozen yards to the exit.

  CHAPTER 30

  I stepped out of the tunnel into silvery light. While I’d been underground the sun had begun to burn through the fog. The sky was now a thin pearl shell, ready to crack. Waiting for the pearly light to penetrate my skin, aching for warmth, aching for the parka that was in the pack Henry had not allowed me to bring, I took in the lay of the land.

  The tunnel opened onto another slim canyon, thickly vegetated. I stood on one side of the canyon. Opposite me, the wall rose to a high ridge. This canyon’s slim floor angled downhill in a steep incline and put me in mind of an unrolling carpet.

  Other than the works of nature, this place was all business.

  The rail tracks exited the tunnel at the high end of the canyon. The tracks fed into the skeleton of a building that held the rusted guts of some sort of machinery. Walter would know the name, would know the mechanism, but I hazarded a guess that the cemented gravel had gotten crushed in there. Running downhill was a long ditch littered with boulders and cobbles and pebbles—a sluiceway, artery of the gold country. I could see its bones surviving here and there, stretches of wood planking forming the walls and huge riffle blocks crisscrossing along the bottom, stepping downhill in the gut of the sluice box. At the head of the sluice, just uphill from me, sagged a rusting metal tank. Quite clearly it was a water tank, to store the water, water probably captured from the small creek that ran downhill along the sluiceway. Water to hose the crushed gravel down the sluice. To free the gold. I had certainly gotten the hang of sluicing.

  It appeared that this slim canyon might feed into Enchantment Valley, which, if I had my bearings straight, was downhill from here.

  I ventured farther outside to see what I could see.

  Actually, to hear what I could hear because I now took note of the low humming sound. It came from a building of sorts, more a bunker nestled into the side of the hill, just left of the tunnel exit. I stepped over for a look. The door was ajar. The sound was louder. I peeked inside and the sound was louder still in there, along with the oily smell of machinery. Of course—the generator that handy Henry had got started. I assumed there was some cabling or something that went through some drill hole or something into the tunnel to light the overhead bulbs. There was one overhead bulb lit in the generator room itself, but I assumed it was the light coming in from outside that first gave Henry the comfort to start the generator, without being hamstrung by his claustrophobia. I was grateful. No need to explore further.

  I now noticed another bunker, just uphill, to the right of the tunnel exit.

  I moved up there for a look. The door was rust-patched iron, secured by a heavy iron latch with a heavy iron padlock.

  The latch hung open, the padlock unhooked.

  How far was I supposed to proceed? All the way in there?

  I went to the door and knocked, calling out hello, feeling monumentally foolish.

  No answer. No surprise.

  There was nothing for it but to have a quick look inside. I grasped the iron handle and pulled the door open. Daylight streamed in but nevertheless it took a moment for my eyes to adjust, to penetrate the gloom inside. No need to step in. From the doorway I could ID this room as a storage space. It was cluttered with equipment, stuff jammed in so tight that I could not tell the armature of one from the leg of another. Some stuff was quickly recognizable: shovels, a wheelbarrow, buckets. Other stuff Walter could name. All of it was in a state of rust and disrepair, dense with history. A maze of a pathway wound through the room.

  And then my attention shi
fted to the shelves carved into the bedrock walls. Half a dozen mercury flasks sat on one thick shelf.

  I felt a sudden relief.

  Only half a dozen. I had expected more. I had expected a shitload.

  That is, if this was where Henry had obtained the flask he took to the river, where his father died.

  So was this the place? The door latch was open, the padlock unlocked. He didn’t like enclosed spaces but I'd already established that he'd entered the generator room and here, with the outside light streaming in, surely he could have brought himself the few steps necessary to take one of those bottles off the shelf.

  And then rent a horse or lash it to a backpack and transport it. And then open the flask and dump it.

  Jesus Henry.

  I envisioned his peeling nose, peeling palms, pink skin, some sort of rash. Contact dermatitis? Hyper-sensitive, surely, from a lifetime of messing around with mercury, dancing with the vapors.

  I backed out of the doorway and shoved the damn door shut.

  Henry Shelburne’s mania was not my problem.

  His Glock was my problem.

  I turned my back on the bunker, spinning around to return to the others and give Henry what I’d found, a chunk of the deep blue freaking lead, and pray that satisfied him.

  Rather than retrace my journey through the tunnel I decided to go downhill and take what I judged a shortcut.

  As I moved, something at the base of the opposite hillside caught my eye. It was a bald spot in the vegetation where black rock cropped out. In this pearly light I thought I detected a wink of mica and quartz. My heart jumped. This was it, right? This was the door to fat city.

  I charged across the little canyon, using the wooden riffle blocks in the ditch where the creek ran as steppingstones, and put my hand lens on the outcrop. It took no time at all to identify the rock as flinty hornfels. It took a little more time to locate the squared crystal faces speckling the rock. In some faces the carbon inclusions were muddied, unfinished. In some faces the carbon formed crosses so distinct it looked like they’d been drawn with a pencil.