At the Mountain's Edge

by Genevieve Graham

  GRAND OPENING CELEBRATION!

  COME VISIT FRANK, THE GREATEST

  NEW TOWN IN CANADA!

  FREE TOURS, FREE FOOD!

  FANTASTIC BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES!

  CHEAP TRAIN TICKETS ONE DAY ONLY!

  “I know it’s a couple of years old,” Thompson explained. “But when I heard you were transferred here to Frank, it caught my eye. Don’t know why I kept it at the time, but I’m glad I did.”

  Ben looked up. “I don’t understand.”

  Liza held out her arm, indicating the mountain of boxes and bags behind her on the platform. “I’m opening a shop here. I wrote to Henry Frank, the founder of this town, and he set aside a perfect space for me. It even has a room on the second floor where I can live.”

  “Fourth Street. Between Dominion and Manitoba,” Thompson informed him.

  “That’s . . . that’s a great location,” Ben said slowly. “But Liza—”

  A rush of emotions filled her. “You don’t want me here,” she whispered.

  “I’m just having trouble—”

  “I shouldn’t have come,” she said, stumbling back. What a fool she was! How could she ever have thought he might want her after what he’d said back in Dawson? After so many years without a word?

  Then his callused hands were cupping her face as gently as if she were a baby bird. “Liza,” he said quietly. “Have you come here to be with me?”

  Oh, those eyes! The way he looked at her, the way his steady blue gaze held her safely in place. A tear trickled down the side of her nose as she nodded, then she relaxed into his hands, relishing his warm strength. He drew closer, his face so close to hers she could feel his breath. When he kissed her, the rest of the world disappeared, and though his lips were salty with their shared tears, she had never tasted anything sweeter.

  “God, Liza. I thought I’d never . . .”

  He was staring so intensely into her eyes that she saw the moment when he gave up fighting, when he surrendered his heart and soul and finally believed.

  “Liza, I swear to you, I will never leave you again.”

  Ben

  FORTY-TWO

  Ben’s thoughts kept returning to Liza as he rode into Frank at the end of the day. The whole place seemed different to him now that she was there. It was more than just a town now: it was a home. Even the workers camping in tents on the east end seemed happier, though he supposed that could have been his imagination, or it might have been just their gratitude for the blankets he’d passed out the night before—the usually mild temperature had dropped unexpectedly.

  In the two short months that Liza had been in Frank, she had been a whirlwind, and Ben could only stand back and watch with admiration. From what he could see, she was even more efficient than she had been when he’d left Dawson. Despite that city’s downward spiral, she’d managed her inventory and her savings perfectly, allowing her to start her new store off on the right foot. He wished her family, especially her father, could see her accomplishments.

  Together they had repainted the inside of the store a brilliant white, and then he’d carried in glass-covered display cases and stock while she’d fluttered around the space, assembling everything just so.

  “I have one last heavy thing I need help with,” she said, pointing to the last crate.

  He grabbed a crowbar to open the box, then he heaved out a beautifully detailed gold-plated cash register.

  “It was a gift from Belinda,” she told him, touching it fondly. “She said it was so I’d never forget the gold of the Klondike. As if I ever could.”

  To prove it, Liza had added one special feature to her stock: a bucket full of gold nuggets. “For anyone who didn’t make it up there,” she explained. “Everyone wants Klondike gold!”

  “Have you thought about what you’ll call this place?” he asked.

  She smiled. “Of course. The Klondike Gold General Store.”

  “Frank’s a lot different from Dawson,” Ben told her the night before she opened. “There’s not as much greed, and there’s not as much danger. You can trust these folks.” He wrapped his arms around her, and she pressed her head against his chest. “Besides, it’s my job to look after you, make sure you’re safe.”

  “I’m glad of that,” she said. “I’m counting on you.”

  Now her store was established and popular, and the cheery bell over her door was always ringing. As Ben rode past, heading towards the outpost, he saw she had closed for the day, but he saw a light on on the second floor. She was probably going over her accounts after a busy day. Since opening, her shop had become the most popular store in town.

  Ben had no idea how good life could feel until now. If Liza believed in him enough to come to Frank for him, then he was ready and determined to earn her love this time, not fight it. Life was too short to avoid happiness just because he feared what might happen, he thought as he settled into his cot for the night. He blew out the lamp, then grinned to himself. Tomorrow he would show her just how ready he was.

  Hours later, Keitl’s bark broke through his sleep and he bolted upright, staring into the darkness, his heart beating a mile a minute. Keitl never sounded the alarm like that.

  “What is it, girl?” he asked, already getting dressed. He thought about waking Leard, then recalled that his partner had stayed at Blairmore that night, visiting friends. Ben was on his own. “Okay, Keitl. Let’s go see.”

  He staggered back as dozens of deafening cracks split the night air and the whole building shook as a violent, crashing roar thundered outside. What had happened? When Ben yanked open the door, the noise stopped and a swirling dust storm engulfed him. He squinted as best he could, but the air was so thick with dust it was impossible to see anything other than the static electricity in the air, flashing like small bolts of lightning.

  He grabbed a lantern, a plan coming together in his mind as he moved. He had to assume there’d been an explosion at the mine. All that earth—it had to be that. He would organize a party of the off-shift miners to get up there and dig the others out. They’d have to work quickly, but those men would know what they were doing better than he would. How long did oxygen last in a blocked mine? he wondered. Thompson would know.

  Thompson. Ben’s stomach rolled at the thought of his friend. Thompson was on the graveyard shift all April. Was he still alive? Was anyone in the mine still alive?

  Ben pulled out his binoculars to try to see through the curtain of dust cloaking the town. When shapes began to emerge, dread filled him. The streets and houses directly below the outpost were fine, but beyond those were nothing but rocks stretching out forever. Rocks the size of houses. Rocks . . . that had replaced houses. This was more than an explosion in the mine, he realized. An enormous rock slide had consumed the town. How far had it gone? How many people had been in its path?

  Oh God. Liza.

  He had to get down there.

  “Come on, Keitl.”

  They raced down the slope, Ben’s chest burning as dust filled his lungs. As they ran along Fourth Street, Ben was heartened to see how many buildings were still standing. Incredibly, the bunkhouse, with maybe a hundred men in it, showed no sign of damage. All over town, people began to pour into the street, stopping him with questions, but he had no answers.

  Please, God. Let her be all right, he prayed as he got closer to the disaster.

  But when he reached Dominion Avenue, his heart stopped cold. Where buildings had once stood there now loomed a mountain of uneven, sharp-edged boulders. The rock slide had completely swept away the miners’ cottages, as well as some of the family homes he’d walked past just this afternoon, the livery stable . . . and Liza’s store.

  “Liza!” he yelled into the dust, and Keitl joined in, barking. “Liza! Can you hear me?”

  He tried to picture where the shop should have been standing, but the slide appeared to have carried everything about thirty feet to the northeast. Keitl hopped from boulder to boulder, focused on the area where the
miners’ cabins had been, nose to the ground, but Ben doubted she could smell anything through the rubble. Lanterns emerged, bobbing through the darkness like disembodied orange balls as rescuers ran from town, and twenty feet away Ben saw Sam Ennis on his hands and knees on what appeared to be the peak of a roof.

  “Help! It’s my wife! She’s here!”

  Reluctantly, Ben put off his search for Liza and went to him.

  “I’ve almost got you, Lucy!” Sam cried. He turned to Ben, pointing with his chin. “It’s that beam. It’s pinning her. Can we haul it off?”

  Together they heaved the timber to the side and began throwing rocks out of the way, then they dug through the underlying stew of cold, wet mud anchoring Sam’s wife there. When they finally reached her, she could barely hold her head up, but she did hand a small, screaming bundle to her husband.

  “Gladys!” Sam cried, folding back the blanket to examine his mud-smeared baby. “She’s fine,” he told Lucy through his tears. After kissing the baby’s cheek, he handed her to someone so he could get back to work on freeing his wife.

  “Constable Turner!” another woman cried from her window. “We can’t get out! There are rocks blocking the door!”

  “Has anyone seen my children?” a man called desperately. “I haven’t found my three children. Please help me!”

  “I need help over here!”

  It was too much. Too many voices crying out, too many shapes wandering aimlessly in the thick fog of dust. Too many people counting on Ben to solve it all. His mind returned briefly to Sheep Camp, where another mountain had smothered dozens of people, and he fought back a bout of nausea.

  Pay attention. Think. These people need a leader. Medicine against the madness.

  He climbed onto one of the boulders, pulled the scarf off his mouth, and yelled, “May I have everyone’s attention, please?”

  At his call, they turned, streaming eyes staring up from dust-coated faces.

  “For all of you asking, I have no idea how this rock slide happened—”

  Someone called out an idea, but Ben held up his hand.

  “—and it doesn’t matter right now. We have to prioritize, not stand around thinking. First, we need to set up a field hospital of sorts so we can get the most seriously injured some help.” His thoughts were coming together more quickly now. Where could he put the victims? Clearly the two doctors’ houses couldn’t handle this many casualties. “We’ll use the sanatorium for the injured. Can someone look after that? Find Dr. Malcolmson?”

  A group at the back conferred and agreed, then headed off.

  “We’ll need to set up a temporary morgue.” He hoped it wouldn’t have to be too large, but they’d have to be prepared. One of the women was staring intently at him, seeming to understand, so he spoke directly to her. “The schoolhouse. We’ll use the schoolhouse for that. Can you locate Father John? If he’s all right, he can advise on how to set that up.”

  She turned and pulled another woman with her, and they ran off to do what he’d ordered.

  “The construction camp’s gone,” someone reported, “and both ranches.”

  The extent of the damage was worse than he’d thought. Up until now, he’d been focusing on the downtown area, but there was so much more. He turned and his heart dropped. The air had finally cleared enough that Ben could make out Turtle Mountain’s profile—or what was left of it. The entire northeast face had broken off as if the mountain had simply shed unwanted weight, sending millions of tonnes of limestone thundering onto the town, crushing it.

  There was no sign of the mine, and any possible routes to reach the miners trapped inside had been destroyed: the bridge to the mine had been knocked out, and boulders now dammed Gold Creek and the Oldman River, swelling both rivers into lakes on either side.

  Scanning the faces around him, Ben spotted the mining engineer, who was already poring over a map. “Can you find the entrance?” Ben asked, leaning in.

  The engineer nodded. “Yeah. Or close to it. But from the entrance to where they are, well, that’ll be anywhere between sixty and three hundred feet thick. We’ll never get through that. Not before they run out of oxygen.”

  “We have to try. We all have friends in there. Let me know when you have it figured out.” He turned back towards the other men. “We have to get across the river and be ready to dig. I need you to build a raft, and when we find the entrance we’ll string up a rope. We’ll ferry back and forth with as many men and tools as we have. Once that’s done, we’ll dig out the men.”

  “That’s impossible!” someone yelled.

  “That’s our only chance,” he replied.

  As the men turned to their work, Ben faced the bewildered townspeople again, and he took a deep breath for all their sakes. “Do what you can and let’s pray the mountain’s done.”

  As people scattered to find their loved ones, Ben returned to his search for Liza. God, please let her be all right. He stumbled across the rocky landscape, yelling her name until his voice cracked and failed, and still he called. He pictured her lying somewhere underneath him, crushed and broken, and he lost track of time, digging until his hands bled.

  “God, Liza,” he whispered, wishing his thoughts could reach her. “Give me some kind of clue, and I swear I will find you.”

  Keitl barked ten feet away from him, then started digging as hard as she could.

  Ben stumbled towards her, squinting at a shiny piece of metal winking through the rock—Liza’s cash register. A surge of energy flowed through him, and he began throwing rocks and timber aside, calling to her again and again. He was down about three feet when his fingers brushed some soft fabric, and he almost wept with relief. He put out a hand, stopping Keitl’s powerful claws, then he used his own fingers to clear the rest of the rock. Had he gotten to her in time?

  He touched her skin—it was cold. “No, no, no,” he muttered, moving faster. At last he revealed her neck, then the thick cord of her braid. In the next instant, he saw her sleeping face covered in dust.

  “Liza!” he said gently. “Liza! Wake up!”

  She didn’t move. Heart racing, he held his palm in front of her nose, crying out when he felt the soft promise of her breath tickle his skin. After that he couldn’t dig fast enough. She had a wound on the back of her head—something had struck her there, knocked her unconscious—but other than that she seemed all right. Trying not to jar her, he slid the scarf off his neck, then softly wiped her face with the clean side.

  Her eyes fluttered open. “Ben?”

  “Hello, beautiful.”

  She frowned lightly, confused. “You’re dirty.”

  He laughed through his tears. “You’re alive.”

  “What happened?” she asked, blinking at her surroundings.

  “The mountain collapsed,” he explained. “I need to get you somewhere safe,” he said, lifting her in his arms. He would take her to the Mountie outpost.

  “Don’t leave me!”

  “Never. But Liza, the men are trapped inside the mine. I need to get them out before it’s too late.”

  Liza

  FORTY-THREE

  Liza clung to Ben’s neck as he carried her over the rock field, stunned by the devastation around her. So much more had been destroyed than what she could see, Ben told her, including her shop. As they passed where it had stood, she buried her face in his shirt, overwhelmed by the thought of rebuilding.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “I’ll have to start all over again.”

  He kissed her brow. “We will, Liza. I’ll be right beside you every step of the way.”

  When they reached the Mountie outpost, he set her carefully down, tucking a blanket over her nightgown, then kissed her once more before turning back towards the mountain.

  “Please be safe,” she whispered to his receding back.

  Woozy with pain, she fell onto his cot, her cheek on the comfort of his pillow, and slept for a few hours. When she awoke, she couldn’t sit still. The
waiting was too much. Restless, she moved into the Miners Hotel and helped provide water, food, and encouragement to the searchers and those they had found. Conversations were hushed, tears were shed, and consoling embraces held everyone up. She heard the same dazed exclamations over and over again, and other people’s memories filled in what Liza did not know. Like the heroic story of Sid Choquette, the train brakeman who had climbed through the dark over a mile of shifting, jagged boulders the size of a railcar, in time to flag down and stop the passenger train on its way in from Lethbridge.

  Sometime near dusk, Liza spotted Ben through the hotel’s grimy window, though it took a moment for her to recognize him. His face and hands were black with coal, dirt, and dust, and his shoulders sagged. She’d never seen him look so defeated. Keitl plodded beside him, filthy and tired.

  “Are you all right?” Liza asked. “Any news?”

  He led her to the window, away from other ears.

  “I couldn’t do it, Liza,” he said softly, and anguish broke his voice. He paused, gathering strength. “It’s like that day at Sheep Camp. I did all I could—everyone did—but the mountain was against us. Even with the whole town digging, we couldn’t get there. We couldn’t even break through. And now, well, it’s been too long.” He pushed his fingertips hard against his forehead and closed his eyes. “If they were still alive, they will have run out of air by now.”

  Thompson’s rare but heartfelt smile, his black eye patch rising with the motion, came to Liza and grief swept through her, but she had to be strong for Ben.

  She touched his cheek. “There was nothing more you could do. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Thompson would have known they were running out of air. He and the others would have been digging for all they were worth, but there would have come a point when they stopped, and I—”

  He faltered, and she pulled him against her, felt his sobs against her chest even as tears streamed down her own face. “Their deaths are not your fault.” This was a staggering loss to them both, and to the rest of the town, but she needed him to believe what she was saying, to forgive himself, just as she had after the deaths of her brother, her parents, and George. She tightened her hold on him. “We will get through this,” she said. “I swear we will. The town will get back on its feet, and we will be all right. We can do it.”