by Tim Westover
Chapter Thirty-Two
In the early morning hours of what was to be the sixth day of rain, Holtzclaw kept vigil from the dark veranda of the Queen of the Mountains. Next to him was a bottle of rare and ancient claret. His ears, so used to the rhythmic patterns of the droplets falling on the roof and earth, immediately noticed when the noise of the rain changed. The tempo slowed, and droplets fell in uneven accents and syncopations. And then, there was no rain.
Lamplights awoke within the hotel. From inside came muffled cheers.
Still, all around him was the sound of water. Creeks and rills ran high. Springs gushed up from beneath the golf course and bath pavilions. Burst pipes churned forth streams of mineral waters. Droplets shook loose from leaves when breezes rolled off the mountaintops.
Shadburn emerged from the hotel with his fishing rod and reel slung over his shoulder, like a soldier’s gun on parade. He held up a small silver pail. Writhing pink worms peeked over the rim; one, boosted by the teeming mass of life beneath it, escaped over the edge. Holtzclaw watched it squirm between the boards of the veranda to a wet, happy freedom.
“Oh, Holtzclaw, still awake, eh?” he said. “You should get some sleep, now the weather’s settled down. Or do you want to come fishing? They’ll be biting better than ever. They’re always hungry after the rains end.”
Holtzclaw politely declined. He stayed on the veranda of the Queen of the Mountains, alone in the early morning stillness, to watch the sunrise. When the sun broke above the top of Sinking Mountain, there was a green flash—so brief and subtle that had Holtzclaw not been staring at the mountain, he would have missed it. The stars slipped from their places in the dawn light, quivering and falling as if they were fat with dew.
His rumination was interrupted by two explosions. Twin rockets shot up from the dam, overpowering the morning twilight. Their trails glowed an angry red—they were distress signals, launched from the Maiden of the Lake.
Holtzclaw flew to the dam. He slid on mud slides and tumbled over fallen limbs, but he picked himself up, time and again, and finally reached the scene of the disaster. The Maiden of the Lake was lodged against the entrance to the spillway. The powerful current, still coursing down from the mountainsides and into the lake, held the boat in its precarious place, where it blocked the flow of water into the spillway. The flume that led from the top of the dam was dry.
A wave crashed into the Maiden of the Lake, rocking the one and a half funnels. Holtzclaw heard splintering wood and twisting metal. The current was trying to force the pleasure boat down the flume, while at the same time, the rising lake pool threatened to topple the boat over the face of the dam. The lake, already high, seemed to be rising before his eyes.
Lizzie Rathbun stood on the rear deck, watching out for someone. Holtzclaw ran onto the top of the dam, his feet squelching in the soft earth. He approached the boat through the dry flume and clambered aboard. Ms. Rathbun met him.
“The boat slipped its mooring and drifted here,” said Ms. Rathbun. “And we have no engine to free ourselves.” Holtzclaw admired her calm, but he did not share it.
“This is not an accident, is it?” said Holtzclaw. “The ropes were too thick to break. It’s sabotage. Do you know who’s responsible? The moon maidens? The railroad twins?”
Ms. Rathbun rolled her eyes. “I haven’t any idea, Holtzclaw. Really, I don’t.”
“Then there’s only one solution,” said Holtzclaw. “Scuttle the ship. We have to clear the spillway if the dam and lake are to survive. If the water starts coming over the top of the dam, there’s nothing we can do to stop it. The dam will burst.”
“I knew that you’d choose loyalty to your employer’s business over your own.”
“Either we sacrifice the boat, or both are lost,” he said. It was not loyalty, but logic. “First, we’ll get you off the ship. Then, I’ll go back up to the hotel. I hope there’s a piece or two of dynamite left. I’ll put a charge below the waterline, on the opposite side from the spillway. We’ll hope that it’s powerful enough to open a gap in the hull that will let the boat sink in time, but not so powerful that it will damage the flume any further.”
“Oh, there’s no need to go back up to the hotel,” said Ms. Rathbun. “There are explosives here. If you need them, take them. But I can’t condone it. I must register my protestations, at least formally.”
“Can’t you see the danger? The boat is a loss in any case now. If the flume isn’t cleared, then the boat will be destroyed when the dam bursts—it will be dashed to pieces on the canyon walls as the lake goes roaring down the Terrible Cascade.”
“Still, I protest,” said Ms. Rathbun. Yet she led him back to her suite, at the head of the grand staircase. Two deeply crimson love-apples were the only remaining decoration—all the other furniture had been removed. Ms. Rathbun opened a wooden crate to reveal several sticks of dynamite, a length of fuse cord, a blasting cap, and even a flint for sparking.
“It’s only prudent,” said Ms. Rathbun, in response to Holtzclaw’s questioning expression.
They went to the lowest deck, and Ms. Rathbun pointed to certain welded seam. “Now, if I were you, I’d put the dynamite right here. It’s a weak spot, I’m sure. While you get prepared, I will work up some tears and warm up my screams. And you must haul me off the boat by my hair. I will wail and cry and scream and plead, but you will be deaf to all my distresses.”
“Why is all this necessary?”
“Because, Holtzclaw, of the insurance claims. For natural disaster, floods, acts of weather, the policies pay very little. Several pay nothing.” Ms. Rathbun’s voice welled up with tears; her voice cracked, then she decided it was the wrong timbre. “But if you, dear Holtzclaw, sink it for your own reasons: out of malice, or jealousy, or spurned romance—and these are very plausible motives, Holtzclaw—well, that is an actionable injury, with a guilty party to pursue, and I am entitled to much greater compensation from the insurance claims.”
“Don’t you mean, ‘we are entitled?’” said Holtzclaw. “This is my ship, too. If I set the charge, then there’s no recourse. It’s destruction of my own property.”
“There’s not a paper with your name on it,” said Ms. Rathbun. “On all the receipts for furniture and fixtures and paintings, for the work that was done here—there’s only Elizabeth Rathbun. You were worried about your employer’s reaction, so you kept your name out of it. Not that Shadburn cared in the least.”
Holtzclaw stifled a small chuckle, but he could not stop a smile from escaping. “It’s too complicated by half,” he said. It was not the Charleston Chomp, the Cincinnati Slip-off, the Asheville Attitude, or the Fitzgerald Flip. Her trick did not deserve its own name. “If crime was in the cards, you could have just clubbed me over the head and taken my gold months ago.”
“I would rather wait for the money to come to me.”
Holtzclaw considered refusing to play his part; he could leave Ms. Rathbun on the boat, retreat up the hill, and watch the lake build up behind the clogged spillway. But she had trapped him—for the lake to survive, the boat had to be destroyed.
Holtzclaw set the charge in the place Ms. Rathbun had indicated and spooled out the blasting cord. He did not pull Ms. Rathbun by the hair—she decided that would be too far out of character for Holtzclaw, but she did summon convincing tears.
Chattering gawkers crowded the shores of the lake; they cheered and hollered as Holtzclaw and Ms. Rathbun emerged from the twisted, straining boat. They witnessed Holtzclaw striking the spark as Ms. Rathbun implored him to stop. Then Ms. Rathbun stuck her fingers in her ears.
The shock of the explosion made Holtzclaw stumble. He turned back toward the sawdust and spray. The spillway was choked with debris; the flume was a smoking wreck. Its iron supports gave way; rivets and pylons and buttresses tore from the cliff wall with sharp sounds, like choleric voices of birds. The battered and weary dam sagged several more feet, carved out by the stresses of the explosion. It was a mortal blow.
“Well, there was a good deal more than one charge on the boat,” said Ms. Rathbun into Holtzclaw’s ear. He could barely hear her over the ringing of the explosion. “I cleaned out your storehouse at the gala. I couldn’t chance that some number-twiddler—some Holtzclaw—would try to deny my claims. How can the bills of sale be refuted if the furniture and coats of paint and fine silks in all the guest rooms have been washed across a thousand lowland acres?”
Then she fled, forcing tears, along the crumbling summit of the dam and into the waiting arms of mud-stained society women.
If the dam had been whole and strong, then even fifty sticks of dynamite would not have been enough to ruin it. Men and women cannot make mountains, but a dam is as near as they can come; it is geological and immense, an artificial wonder. But Holtzclaw’s dam had been poorly built, frequently assaulted, eroded from without and within. Rich tourists had dug from the top, and wild wonder fish had nibbled from the bottom. Lake Trahlyta was high, and its waters were eager to continue to the sea.
Holtzclaw stood transfixed as water poured over the blasted depression and down the far face of the dam. The spectators on the lakeshore wailed and cheered and drank and sang. Abigail and Shadburn flailed their arms at Holtzclaw. He saw them, but he didn’t move.
Princess Trahlyta stood on top of the blade of water. “You knew the lake couldn’t stay, James,” she said. “It started to fail from the day the floodgates were closed. It lasted only as long as I meant it to last. I have opened the mountains, and I will let the water out.”
Holtzclaw ran, and Princess Trahlyta became a great wave. A torrent crashed over the dam, splitting the earthworks through the middle. All the force of the lake was released at once. The Terrible Cascade quenched its thirst; its waterfalls drank again from the waters of the valley. Shimmering ghosts of vengeful fish flowed out toward the sea.