Like a River Glorious Page 17

  “Miss Westfall?”

  “Er . . . let me think a moment.”

  Abel looks at me expectantly. Wilhelm is behind me, but even though I can’t see him, his eyes on my back are like a weight bearing down.

  “Shine the lantern on the wall there,” I order, indicating the solid rock. Abel complies, and the light shifts away from me to the dead end ahead. Under cover of darkness, I close my eyes and reach out with my gold sense.

  I find the vein right away, a bright, warm river of gold that heads off slightly to the right. If they tunneled forward, they’d miss it entirely.

  My shoulder hits the wall, startling me. I moved toward the vein without realizing it, like a moth to a flame. I place my fingertips to the rough, hard dirt, letting the nearby gold vibrate my skin. It spells warmth and comfort to me. Life and hope.

  It’s better than peach pie. Better than autumn mornings by the box stove. I push deeper, letting my senses expand like roots in fertile soil. The buzzing intensifies until it fills me up.

  I smile.

  A slight tremor rocks the earth. Dirt and pebbles rain down on my head.

  “What was that?” Abel says. “Did you feel that?”

  I blink, coming back fully to the present. I thought it was just the gold buzzing, speaking to me like it always does, but this time Abel felt it, too.

  “Maybe get some more beams in here,” I say quickly. “This tunnel doesn’t feel sound.” And maybe that’s the truth, given the twisting roots just above our heads. But maybe it was me. It was almost like the gold talked back.

  Abel is frowning, the lantern light making deep hollows of his eyes. “Maybe you’re right.” He whips the lantern around and shines it in my face. “So, what do you think? Veer off? Move forward?”

  It’s so strange to me that he can’t feel that vein sweeping off to the right. It’s like the sun on your face, the wind in your hair. I make a swift and possibly bad decision.

  “Definitely forward,” I tell him. “Get that gunpowder in here and keep that tunnel growing. You’re headed in the right direction.”

  He grins. “I knew it!”

  “Need me for anything else?”

  “Not just now.” He waves me off absentmindedly, already contemplating the wall before him.

  Wilhelm and I return to the surface, and as much as I love the feel and scent and weight of gold around me, I can’t say I’m sad to leave that dark, dank hole behind.

  “What now?” I ask.

  He gestures toward the cabin.

  “Again? All day?” I hate being cooped up, doing nothing. I’ve never spent an idle day in my life, and it makes me fit to burst.

  He just frowns.

  “Well, don’t talk so fast. I can hardly understand you.”

  His frown deepens.

  “All right, all right, if you say so. I won’t make a fuss.”

  Something flits across his face, like a bullet whizzing by and gone. Like something hurt his feelings.

  I open my mouth to josh him about his sensitive soul, but an awful thought occurs to me: Maybe he’s not just quiet and stoic. Maybe he can’t talk. If that’s the case, then my funning him isn’t fun at all. It’s pure meanness.

  We reach the cabin. The camp is lively now, with men going about their business. The arrastra grumbles and crunches as mules pull it round and round. One of the Chinese men has a small smithy going, mending pickaxes. I spot Mary sitting in the lap of one of the Missouri men, who is pausing for a smoke.

  Wilhelm and I stand awkwardly a moment, him waiting for me to go inside, and me waiting for I’m not sure what.

  Finally I say, “I have some leftover biscuits. You want some?”

  His face freezes. Then a tiny grin tugs at those full lips, and he nods once.

  “Wait here.” I dash inside, retrieve two biscuits from the stash in my chest, and hurry back to Wilhelm. “Here you go.”

  He takes them from me gently, then tips his hat to me and turns to stand sentry outside the cabin.

  Minutes later, a boom cracks the air. I fling open the door. A cloud of dust and ash billows from the mine entrance, bringing the scent of gunpowder. Abel and few others stand outside, whooping and hollering and slapping their hats against their legs like they just saw Fourth of July fireworks.

  They won’t find that vein of gold. I sent them off in the wrong direction. If my uncle asks, I’ll tell him it was a short vein, hardly worth pursing, and that they probably blew it to bits. They’ll find a little gold, sure, just enough to give credence to my lie. But not enough to make my uncle rich.

  I’m not sure it was the right thing to do. I’m not sure about anything.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I need to find my guns.

  I don’t know where Hiram went or when he’ll be back, but I can’t miss this chance. My uncle’s bedroom has an actual door. If my guns are in the cabin, they’ll be in his bedroom.

  Even though no one else is home, I step quietly as I make my way toward the one room of the cabin I haven’t been inside. My heart is as skittery as a water bug as I place my hand to the door and push it open. There’s no knob; it just swings wide, squealing out a warning that I’m sure can be heard all the way to San Francisco.

  The room is bigger than my own by several paces in either direction. It contains a bed big enough for two, a shelf full of books, and a beautiful cherrywood dresser beneath a wide window. The room faces north and is snugged up against the tree line, so in spite of the window, the air is murky and cool. Everything smells of tobacco and candle wax.

  I check under the bed, behind the hanging clothes—nothing. I’m tiptoeing toward the dresser to open the drawers when something catches my eye. It’s a framed photograph, sitting beside a half-melted candle. It’s blurry, as though it’s been handled too many times. I peer closer, something niggling at my brain.

  A young woman looks back at me. She’s been posed primly, with her hands crossed in her lap, her chin high. She’s young, maybe eighteen, with a perfect complexion and a trim figure and a firm set about her pretty mouth.

  She looks like me. Except she’s a lot handsomer, truth be told, with that dainty chin and skin that’s never seen the sun.

  I think it might be my mother.

  Mama had lines around her eyes and gray at her temples, a waist thick from two pregnancies, and a perpetually sunburned nose from forgetting to wear her bonnet. Her hands were strong, not delicate, her mouth more stubborn than composed.

  But those eyes. That almost-but-not-quite smile.

  I ought to recognize my own mama right away. The fact that I’m not sure gives me a funny feeling. Maybe I’m already forgetting what she looked like, her not even dead a year. Or maybe life in Georgia with my daddy changed her so much it almost made her unrecognizable.

  I study her dress, looking for something familiar. It’s finer than anything I remember Mama wearing, but she did come from old Boston money, and her life was very different when she was a girl.

  Hanging from her neck is a medallion of some kind. The picture is too old and blurry for me to know for sure, but I’d almost swear she’s wearing the same locket I wear now, the one that came all the way across the continent with me, containing a lock of my baby brother’s hair. . . .

  I’ve stood here too long lollygagging. I need to finish up and get out of here before Hiram returns.

  Trying to ignore the photograph, I slide open the drawers. I ruffle the underclothes and linens inside, looking for my five-shooter or my ammunition, but there’s nothing. Not a single thing I can use for a weapon. Quietly I slide the drawers closed.

  I peer behind the dresser, lift Hiram’s mattress, test each floorboard with my toes to see if I can lift it.

  Still nothing.

  Boot steps sound on the cabin steps.

  No time to check and see if I’ve left anything in disarray. I flee from the bedroom, shut the door behind me, and drop into Hiram’s rocking chair just as he pushes through the front door.
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  “Good afternoon, Leah,” he says, all formal-like. He stares at the locket around my neck, as if it means something special to him. I cover it with my hand.

  “Afternoon.” I say it clear and easy, like my heart isn’t stampeding in my chest and I have plenty of breath to spare.

  “Abel says they blew a hole in the Joyner tunnel on your recommendation.”

  I shrug. “They won’t find much. That vein didn’t penetrate far.”

  His eyes narrow, but if he has suspicions, he doesn’t give voice to them.

  If I wasn’t afraid for my life and the lives of my friends—shoot, every single person in this camp—I’d ask him straight out why he has a picture of my mama in his bedroom. Of all the keepsakes to cross an ocean with, why that one? Why does he have it placed where he can look at it every single day?

  But I am afraid, and I’m supposed to be pretending to be cooperative, so I say, “Abel said you went to a place called Rough and Ready to fetch some gunpowder yesterday.”

  Hiram takes off his riding gloves and slaps them against his thigh to shake off the dust. “I did. Negotiated a fair deal. From now on, Dilley will be able to make the trip on my behalf.”

  “So we’ll get even more?”

  He removes his hat and hangs it on a peg beside the door. “Why so interested?”

  “You said to familiarize myself with the workings of the mine. I’m familiarizing.”

  “When you were in there this morning, what did you feel?”

  I know what he wants me to say. “Gold. Lots of it. The Drink is going to yield better. We might think about starting a branching tunnel down there.” Nothing about that was a lie. But I might not give him the exact best direction on where to dig.

  His smile is soft, and I daresay a little bit proud. “Good to know.”

  He fixes himself a plate from the leftovers on the woodstove, then indicates with his chin that I should move. “My chair,” he says. “Up and out.”

  “Yes, sir.” I move quickly to comply.

  I’ll have to search the rest of the cabin later, next time he leaves. But he doesn’t leave. He sits down at his writing desk and spends the next several hours attending to correspondence. I grab Godey’s Lady’s Book from my nightstand and pretend to be absorbed by a story about a plain, unmarried woman with a heart of gold who organizes the ladies in her church to help the poor orphans of Boston.

  Mary comes to make a supper of chicken and dumplings. Afterward, Hiram reads by lantern light, while I help Mary clean up. Finally he addresses me.

  “Good night, sweet pea,” he says. “Sleep well. See you in the morning.” A dismissal, since he’s making no move to leave the table himself.

  “Good night,” I mutter, and I retire to my bedroom.

  I lie on the bed, trying to mark time. It’s anxious work. I’ve no pocket watch, so I’ll have to take my best guess about this midnight business. I try to use the moonlight as a guide, but watching it change—or not change fast enough—makes me worry even more.

  What if Hiram stays up all night? What if Wilhelm is still out there, keeping watch? What if I misjudge the time?

  When the moonlight through the tiny window has moved halfway across the floor, I gamble that the time is about right, and I rise from the bed. I consider leaving my boots off; it’s easier to step silently in stockings. But if anyone saw my filthy, torn stockings, it would be a dead giveaway, so I pull on my boots and lace them up.

  I grab the slop bucket from the corner of my room. If I’m caught, I’ll just say the smell was bothering me and I’m taking it to the outhouse. It’s a weak excuse, but it’s the best I can come up with. At the last second, I remember the biscuits stashed in my chest. I grab as many as I can carry in one hand, squishing them badly. My hands will appear strangely lumpy if someone looks too close.

  The light from Hiram’s lantern winked out long ago, but I listen at the curtain for the sounds of his stirring—shifting his seat or rocking in his chair or even just breathing. Nothing.

  Slowly I push the curtain aside. The main room seems empty.

  There’s hardly enough light to see by as I creep toward the front door. I imagine bumping into something or knocking over a chair. I don’t dare light a lantern and flash my presence for all to see. The moonlight will have to suit.

  I reach the door, and again I pause to listen, ear to the wood. Still nothing. This is it. If Wilhelm is outside, I’ve no chance at all of meeting Jefferson. If he isn’t, someone else could just as easily be nearby, watching. I wouldn’t put it past my uncle to make sure the cabin is watched at all times.

  The door swings open with a slight squeak, and I freeze. Nothing moves outside. I slip out the door and shut it, wincing when the slop bucket hits the frame.

  The camp is silent except for the wind in the grass and the rapid, trilling whistle of nighthawks in the nearby trees. The hard-packed ground is bluish in the moonlight, reminding me for a moment of the Georgia mountains, the way the trees and especially the fog seemed blue on moonlit nights.

  Behind the stable, Jefferson said. All I have to do is creep past the barracks building where Frank Dilley and all the Missouri men are sleeping. You could set your pocket watch by Frank’s habit of assigning a guard. So maybe I ought to take the long way around and avoid the barracks altogether. But that would mean going behind the cabin and sneaking beneath Hiram’s bedroom window.

  The barracks is ahead and slightly to the right. I stare at it a moment, weighing my options. A light winks on in one of the windows, making my decision for me.

  I head in the opposite direction and skirt my uncle’s cabin, which puts me within view of the Chinese tents. No one seems to be stirring, but I keep to the cabin’s shadow as much as possible. The ground beneath my feet begins to crunch as I near the corner—detritus from the wall of cottonwoods in the back.

  This would be the perfect time to figure out how far the stand of trees extends and if it leads to a creek or a dry wash as I suspect, but it’s just too dark. I round the corner and creep along the rear wall. The land slopes down toward the trees a little, and a blanket of fallen leaves makes my path slippery. I’m glad I chose to don the boots.

  At Hiram’s window I duck down, still hugging the wall. I move forward in a half crouch, made all the more awkward by the slop bucket I’m carrying. If I bang it with my knee on accident, it will wake him for sure.

  An owl calls out, soft and clear, and I’m caught for a moment in memory: hiding beneath fallen leaves on a cold night just like this while three brothers robbed me blind. I’ve come so far, but in some ways, I haven’t gone any distance. I’m still hiding from bad men. I’m still trying to figure how to make my own way, my own fortune.

  I pass Hiram’s window and pause, listening, but I hear nothing. The cabin is sound, sounder than any other structure I’ve seen since coming to California, so it’s possible he’s staring out the window this very second, and I’d never know. No way to go but forward. I grit my teeth and move on.

  It’s with no small amount of relief that I clear the cabin. Just a hundred feet of open space until I can hide in the stable’s shadow. I ponder the cottonwoods a moment. Maybe I should head down the slope and work my way parallel through the trees. But I can’t risk it in the dark. A twisted ankle would be the least of my worries; a snapped twig in the night can be as startling and loud as a gunshot.

  I glance around. No Wilhelm that I can see, and the barracks doesn’t have a window facing this direction. I stride out into the open.

  I’m a third of the way to the stable, then halfway, then—

  “Lee!” comes a familiar whisper, and I can’t control my fool legs, which stretch out and cover the rest of the distance in a flat-out run.

  Sorry nickers when I reach her stall, but I don’t have a chance to answer her greeting before a hand darts out, snags my elbow, and drags me behind the giant lean-to.

  Arms wrap around my shoulders, and I’m pulled tight into a warm chest. “Lee,”
Jefferson whispers into my ear. I wrap my arms around his waist and squeeze right back. My fistful of biscuits presses crumbs into his shirt.

  Someone clears his throat, and I spring away from Jefferson, startled to find that we are not alone.

  It’s Tom, grinning fit to burst. Beside him is someone else—Muskrat, the one who spoke to me outside the mine. Still another shadow materializes out of the darkness, and I gasp. It’s Mary.

  I have no idea what’s going on, but that doesn’t stop me from launching at Tom and giving him the hug of his life. He chuckles, patting my back. “Good to see you, too, Lee,” he whispers.

  “Are you okay?” I say. “They been beating on you like they have Jeff? If Wilhelm is still forcing laudanum into you, I’ll—”

  “I’m fine, Lee. I promise. Tired and sore and hungry, but I’m fine.”

  He doesn’t sound fine. Even whispering, his voice is weak, his words a little slurred.

  I turn to Jefferson. “All right, tell me. What’s going on? Why are we all here?”

  Mary is the one who says, “Rebellion, Miss Westfall. Escape. For all of us.”

  I stare at Mary, my mind racing. “Your English is perfect,” I accuse.

  “My Spanish is better,” she retorts.

  “Then why . . .”

  “Men are stupid,” she says with an offhand shrug. “I get more gold when I pretend I can’t speak English well. And more information.”

  More gold for what? Cooking and cleaning for everyone?

  “Mary has been our best spy,” Muskrat says. “Until you.”

  Realization hits like a blow to the chest. Mary is a woman of ill repute. The camp’s prostitute.

  “I should have made introductions,” Jefferson says. “Lee, this is Muskrat of the Maidu tribe. Muskrat, this is my oldest friend, Leah.”

  “We’ve met,” I say. “Sort of.”

  Now that a gunshot isn’t ringing in my head and my belly isn’t rolling from nausea, I’m able to notice how painfully thin Muskrat seems. He wears a beaded necklace, a leather breechcloth, and muddy moccasins. Dark dots on his chest are too regular and perfect to be freckles; they must be tattoos, like the dots I saw the night of the fire on one man’s chest. In fact, he reminds me of that man a great deal. He’s the same height, with the same sharp eyes and maybe even the same exact necklace. But that other man was strong and healthy.