Quicksilver (reissue) Page 12

  I took a moment to admire the perfection.

  To savor the find.

  It wasn't a dog-and-pony-show back in the lab. It was doing geology.

  And that led here.

  My congratulatory moment passed and I fingered a specimen, a flared Maltese cross that suggested obsession, crusade.

  If I were Henry I would take a hammer and chisel and pop that talisman out.

  But I wasn’t Henry and I decided not to take the time or invest the effort to hack off a sample. If he’d explored this canyon, surely he found the outcrop. And if he had, I cursed him. He could have steered me here to begin with. But I got it. I knew why he’d sent me into the tunnel. If he’d found the hornfels, he’d have filled in the rest of the story.

  By now, so could I.

  This hornfels was formed a long time ago when magma had punched into an ancient river channel. Subsequently—still a long time ago—during a period of uplift, that intersection got exposed and eroded. And the auriferous gravels mixed with broken-off chips of hornfels, and in the due course of time and travel downstream, the stuff got re-cemented by river sand and clay. And chunks of that conglomerate got scattered hither, thither, and yon.

  And that was the source of the chunk of ore Robert Shelburne brought to our lab.

  I pictured Henry standing here, telling himself the story. Yesterday? Day before? And then in a fever hunting around for that magical junction, that giant riffle in the old blue lead, that collector of gold.

  Reburied, over the course of the years. Volcanic eruption, landslide, who knew?

  Perhaps buried right here in this slim canyon, or in the hillside before me, or somewhere in the tunneled hillside behind me.

  Perhaps right beneath our feet.

  Right Henry? How’s it feel? To be so near, and yet so far. You can’t just haul a water cannon up here and hose away the mountain.

  So you look to the likely. To the drift tunnels.

  You can’t go in there yourself. Your brother disappoints. So you send me in, in hopes that the junction has been breached, in there. Tough luck Henry. It wasn’t. Although it’s quite likely to be around here somewhere.

  I shrugged.

  Not my problem.

  I turned to go.

  There was a downhill path on the tunnel side of the sluiceway, an access route I guessed, reinforced with occasional rock steps. I crossed the ditch back to the tunnel side and took the miners’ route down, stopping once to look for and find a piece of chiastolite-studded hornfels float.

  And then, as I neared the intersection of Sluiceway Canyon and Enchantment Valley, all thoughts of cross-studded rocks and ancient gold went by the wayside.

  I saw smoke.

  CHAPTER 31

  Gail saw her chance.

  She watched Cassie come out of the tunnel and poke around the mining area and then cross the narrow canyon to look at the big boulder and then go down the canyon and disappear into the little valley.

  Gail tried to stay calm and businesslike but her heart started beating harder.

  This was the place, wasn't it?

  Tracking Robert and Cassie and Walter was going to pay off, wasn't it?

  Gail had started the morning waking in her tent confused and hurting, but then she'd thrown off the bad feelings and started tracking. It had been almost too easy. At first she was following their bootprints and then—all of a sudden—she caught up with them. They'd come to the wall of rock that hid the entrance to the valley and they'd looked and looked at the rock, and all the while Gail was practically on their heels. They never noticed. She almost could have jumped them.

  Of course she didn't.

  She'd waited for them to move on, to go through the little opening in the rock wall. She'd been counting the minutes, trying to decide when it was safe to follow, when all of a sudden there were the gunshots.

  She had jumped.

  She had cursed.

  She thought it was Henry on the other side of the rock wall firing her Weatherby. What else should she have thought?

  By the time she steadied herself and slipped through the opening in the wall and found a safe viewpoint, Cassie and Walter were down in the valley with Henry and Robert. Henry was holding a gun.

  And that's when Gail saw that she was right about Henry being the shooter, but wrong about her Weatherby.

  His gun was a pistol. She just bet she had felt that pistol—that's what he'd used to strike her.

  What had he done with her Weatherby?

  She had studied him, trying to figure him out. Why did he hold the others at gunpoint? Well, that was easy—he was fighting his brother for the gold, using the geologists. But what was he going to do next? He was looking sick. She didn't like sick people. Sick people were Level 5, untouchable. That confused things, because Henry should have been Level 2 at this point, along with Robert and Walter and Cassie. But Henry was also a 5. That was wrong. He couldn't be both.

  It wasn't until Henry made Cassie go into the tunnel that Gail regained her businesslike calm.

  And then she knew what to do.

  She'd ghosted along the flank of the valley and found her way to a ridge that gave her a view like a postcard, showing her where everything was, and then she'd found her way to the narrow canyon where the tunnel had a second exit, the place with all the mining junk. She had taken up position above that place, watching to see if Cassie was going to find her way through the tunnel and come out here.

  And she did.

  Gail was right.

  It was almost too easy.

  And now as she watched Cassie disappear into the valley, she wondered what Cassie had found in the tunnel, what she was going to report to the others. Gail couldn't see the others but she knew they had to be there in the valley waiting for Cassie.

  Henry waiting with the pistol.

  It didn't matter.

  All that mattered right now was getting into the tunnel.

  Gail saw her chance and took it.

  ~ ~ ~

  Her senses were claw-sharp as she padded up the tunnel.

  The overhead bulbs were lit. Her golden eyes saw everything.

  Her heart rate was steady.

  She was all business.

  It was possible that one of others would decide to come into the tunnel, from the valley entrance, and so she cat-footed. She moved unseen and unheard and unexpected and if she came upon anybody she would be coming with her hunting knife ready. She was not going to allow anybody to take her unaware.

  Her head still ached where Henry had struck her.

  Her pride still ached. Losing her rifle.

  Her vision suddenly went red. She was in danger of losing her center.

  She started to run but that was stupid, way too easy to trip on one of the rail tracks and fall, and so she stopped her running and did twenty squats. And then twenty more until her thighs burned.

  When she saw clearly again, she moved on.

  She padded up the tunnel and when she came to the reddish gravel layer, she nodded. She'd seen this before, in other drift mines. On other hunts. They had never taken her to what she needed. So right now she talked to herself about expectations. She told herself, don't savor the taste of the gold until it is on your tongue.

  She followed the oxidized gravel layer up the tunnel and around a bend.

  On alert. Listening for other footsteps. Listening for Henry or Robert in here hunting. Level-2 threats.

  It was silent as any mine heart.

  She always found silence in the heart of a mine. She liked to sleep in the tunnels. She liked to hear nothing but her own heartbeat. She liked to feel the hard rock that, somewhere, hid the gold. Hard rock. Hard G for Gail. Hard G for gold.

  The light cast from overhead caught on a gash in the cemented gravel.

  Somebody had cut out a piece of the rock, down to the blue.

  A fresh cut. Cassie's cut.

  She examined the opened face and found only blue.

  She looked
around the floor of the tunnel and did not see the mined-out rock and so she decided that Cassie had taken it to show the others. Cassie would have to tell them that she found no gold. That she didn't find the source of the ore that Robert had brought to the lab. That she failed.

  What would Robert and Henry and Walter say? Go back in and look again?

  That's what she would say.

  She listened hard for voices, for footsteps.

  Only silence.

  She took off her pack and got her hammer and chisel and went to work, along the blue lead. There was no telling if she'd find the color.

  She told herself to be all business.

  But she could not help it. She began to burn.

  She dug her chisel around Cassie's cut, widening it, deepening it. Cassie was not a hunter, Cassie couldn't find it, Cassie had made one small cut and then given up. Not Gail. Gail dug into the gravel. She slammed her hammer against the chisel, again and again, she felt the vibrations in her hands and arms and it was like a live thing had entered her body, turned her blood molten gold. She moved away from Cassie's cut and started her own excavation, hammering her chisel, digging, clawing into the blue.

  Where was the gold?

  Where was the gold?

  She didn't know how it happened but she had dropped her hammer and chisel and was now pounding the blue face with her bare hands.

  She burned.

  Her mouth went sour, went bitter, there was the coppery taste of failure on her tongue. A copper necklace pretending to gold, in her mouth, on her tongue, leaking poison into her blood.

  She pounded the rock.

  Her heart was exploding.

  She needed to stop but the poison wouldn't let her. Made her swing her arms and slam her hands, made her burn burn burn.

  She needed to get it out.

  That copper poison.

  She ripped off her shirt.

  She drew her knife from its sheath and the matches from her pocket and she struck a flame and purified the tip of the blade and then the knife knew what to do, how to probe, how to find the place on the back of her left arm where the poison was boiling. The knife pierced her scarred skin. It felt cold. She gasped. And then she felt the hot blood painting her arm. She held her arm down so that the poisoned blood could run faster.

  As the blood ran down her arm and through her fingers, her wild heartbeat began to slow.

  Her head cleared. She knew what she had to do next. Pressure bandage. Stop the bleeding now, before it weakened her. What she wanted—what she always wanted when she chelated herself to remove the toxic metal—was to keep on bleeding until the coppery poison was gone. But that would kill her. So she had to stop.

  She stopped. She got her first aid kit and wrapped the cut in a pressure bandage. She put her shirt back on. The bulky bandage was uncomfortable under the sleeve, but it was cold in here and she needed the warmth of her shirt.

  She shivered. She was cold now. The burn all gone.

  She could no longer taste the bitter coppery poison.

  She sank to the floor of the tunnel and let herself rest. She trailed her fingers through the blood on the hard rock. Her blood. It felt slick and cold.

  ~ ~ ~

  It took another twenty minutes before Gail Hawkins felt ready to go back on the hunt.

  CHAPTER 32

  When I reached the bottom of the sluiceway, the land leveled out.

  I was back in Enchantment Valley.

  Several yards beyond was the campfire ring. Sitting around the campfire were the three men I’d left at the main tunnel entrance. Robert and Walter sat side by side on a log on one side of the ring. Henry sat on a low boulder on the other side. My pack sat on the ground beside him. Around his waist he wore a belt bag, which pouched next to the holster. His Glock hand rested on the belt bag.

  The little fire struggled.

  As he watched me approach, Henry picked up a ferny spray of dried mountain misery and tossed it onto the embers and the fire leapt to life and Henry explained in his fragile soulless voice, “The odor repels insects.”

  Holy hell it was some kind of bizarre camp-out.

  Henry nodded at an unoccupied boulder and I came over and took a seat. So chilled that I hunched toward the fire and held out my hands.

  My eyes caught Walter’s eyes and I read caution there.

  Henry watched me intently, the way a kid who’s built a campfire in the woods waits for Mom’s approval. Mom nodded, cautious. Good work, Henry. Now let’s go home and by the way you’re grounded for life.

  Henry spoke. “You look cold.”

  I nodded.

  Henry tossed my pack over. I dug out my parka and put it on.

  Henry said, “What did you find?”

  I cast about. Where to begin?

  He said, “You came all the way.”

  “How did you...?”

  Walter cut in. “We heard you.”

  Oh yeah. Back up at the bunker. Knocking at the door. Shouting hello.

  “What did you find?” Henry repeated.

  I swallowed. Whatever I said in answer was going to have consequence.

  “What did you find?” he said again, Henry the fixated kid who keeps on asking asking asking...

  Be very careful, lady. You’ve got to give him something.

  As I hesitated I noticed Robert’s keen attention. Nearly as keen as his brother, it seemed, to learn if I’d found something worthy in the tunnel.

  What could I say? The gravel was not blooming gold. The miners had stopped, given up, run out of money to cover the costs. All I’d found in there was the ancient bearer of treasure—the deep blue lead. Henry awaited my answer. I thought, it’s deeply risky to bullshit this life-long seeker of legends. Very slowly, very carefully, I unbelted my field kit and opened it. I withdrew the chunk of cemented gravel that I’d hacked free.

  I held it up so that all three men could see it.

  In the pearly light the rock face looked blue-gray, like the face of an ice crevasse. For a flash I thought I saw Walter respond, thought I glimpsed the Dogtown boy who fell in love with painted nuggets and grew up to thrill to the geology of the deep blue lead. But Walter just jerked a shoulder in the direction of Henry and the gun, and gave me a look. Focus, dear.

  Henry sure was focusing. He was staring at the rock in my hand with a disciple’s concentration. His face twitched, like a fly had buzzed him. Shoo fly. His hands began to shake. The gun bobbed on his knees. He said, “Please give it to me.”

  I could not reach him. I’d have to stand and take three steps to hand the rock to him. I thought that over.

  “Please bring it to me, Cathy.”

  “It’s Cassie,” I said. Like that mattered.

  “Cassie Cassie Cassie Cassie.” He nodded to himself. “Cassie.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Robert and Walter on alert. Waiting for something? Waiting for me. I set my field kit on the ground and leaned forward and tossed the rock to Henry. It landed behind him.

  He did not turn to look. His hands steadied on the gun. “Only a child falls for that trick.”

  “It wasn’t a ...”

  “I’m not your brother Henry.”

  I twitched. Hard. Like I’d been punched.

  “My brother told me about your brother who died. We have the same name. It’s only a name, Cathy.”

  “Cassie,” I said, automatically.

  “I have trouble with names,” he said.

  So the fuck did I.

  Still having trouble with Henrys. It was more than a name that linked the two Henrys, it was the fragility of a boy with hemophilia and a man with mercury poisoning, and it was guilt, Robert’s guilt about his brother and my guilt about my brother, and isn’t that a kicker that guilt trumps logic every time?

  Oh boy, get a grip Cathy.

  I watched Henry’s hands on the Glock. Shaking again. One twitch and his finger trips the trigger and then he shoots his brother. Or Walter. Or me. Accidentally, on purp
ose, doesn’t matter, shot is shot.

  He said, “How did your brother...”

  “Accident,” I snapped.

  He said, “What more did you find?”

  Short attention span, Henry? My mind raced. I gave him the only thing I had. I jerked a thumb, pointing uphill. “I found an outcrop of chiastolite hornfels.”

  “Is that all?”

  Well that answered that. He’d already seen it. And it wasn’t enough. Okay then, I’d make it enough. “Somewhere around here, Henry, you’ve got hornfels intersecting an auriferous channel. Maybe near the existing tunnel, maybe a deeper or parallel channel. Maybe somewhere out here.”

  Henry listened.

  Walter jumped in. “That’s right, Henry. The channels were laid down in different ages. You can have later channels intersecting earlier channels, channels occupying different positions laterally as well as in elevation—all in the same general area. You understand the geology, son?”

  Henry shifted his fevered gaze to Walter. “Not like you do.”

  “Nevertheless, you’ve had a couple of days to look around.”

  Henry said, “A couple of weeks.”

  ~ ~ ~

  A couple of weeks?

  Walter and I exchanged a look. Had we misremembered Robert’s story, back at the lab? I could have sworn Robert had told us that his father died a month ago, and then a week later he and Henry got together to go through their father’s things. Which was when Henry opened his letter and they’d found the ore specimen under the floorboard in the attic. And then—two-plus weeks after that—Henry had gone off hunting, leaving the so-called suicide note.

  Robert had not said what Henry was doing in those two-plus weeks in between finding the rock and setting out to find the source.

  Shit.

  Robert gaped at his brother. Surprised as we were.

  Henry stared back.

  “Hey Bro,” Robert said, finding his voice. “What the hell?”

  “What the hell,” Henry echoed.

  “You want me to put two and two together?” Robert looked at the sky, looked at the ground, taking the time to do the math, struggling to catch up. And then he faced his brother. “Well shit, Henry, looks like that equals four. You went looking for the source right after you found the rock. Right? And you thought you found the source. You found this place. You spent a couple of weeks at it. And then two days ago you went home and left me a note and half the rock and then you took off again. You left me clues and expected me to follow.”