“She has a favorite place. Help me find it, please.”
“Why would she go there in weather like this?” Leo asked as they prepared to leave.
“When she wants to, she goes,” snapped Zoe.
Lewis was obliged to abandon his place in the search party before long, breath whistling noisily through his lungs. The others pressed on, led by Zoe, who cast about for the telltale footprints that would confirm her hopes. She found them a third of the way up the slope, a meandering trough dragged through the deep snow by Omie, without a doubt. It angled up the valley wall in the general direction Zoe recalled.
The trees were heavily weighted with whiteness, and new snowfall began sifting from the sky as they climbed, a powder so light it appeared to hang in the air like mist before coating the eyelashes or beards of the searchers with tiny spicules of ice. Halfway to the sloping meadow, the air suddenly was filled with denser flakes, chunks that dropped with deceptive slowness onto a snowpack at least a foot higher than at the lower elevation. Zoe, throat rasping, sides awash with sweat despite the cold, forced herself to an even faster pace. Leo was fifty feet behind her, Chadbourne and Sell Yost even further back, lost to sight among the trees and swirling snow. Now Zoe’s breath was bursting from her in harsh sobbings. If Omie should die, there would be nothing left to live for, no part of herself in all the world she could be close to.
The meadow, when reached at last, was occupied only by a small herd of deer, noses down to the salty earth exposed by their hooves. Their heads were raised as one when Zoe blundered from the trees, and they turned tail to bound from her unwanted presence with the silent grace of birds in flight. There was no sign of Omie.
“No …,” said Zoe. “No …”
She sank to her knees, staring at the scuffed area of the deer lick at the center of the clearing. She could not think what she might do next, what other place to rush toward in expectation of finding her daughter. She was utterly spent, numb with exhaustion, but the panic within her spun on like some uncontrollable gyroscope.
Leo caught up with Zoe and stood over her, breath whistling past his lips. Zoe waited to see if he might suggest what they could possibly do now, and was unprepared for the words he spoke. “There she is.…”
Zoe lifted her head. Omie stood at the meadow’s upper edge, a few feet back among the trees, as if wishing to remain unseen. “Omie!” Zoe called, her voice an unlovely screech. She got to her feet, ignoring Leo’s offer of assistance, and ran across the clearing to the small figure partially hidden by snow-laden boughs of fir. Dropping again beside her, Zoe threw both arms around Omie and hugged her close. “He melted away,” Omie said, as if this was explanation enough for her being there.
“Don’t you ever go away by yourself again! Don’t you ever, do you hear me!”
“I had to see him be melted.”
“On a day like this you could have died from the cold. How could you be so foolish!”
“I had to.…” Omie sniffed, the corners of her mouth turning down in the usual preamble to tears.
“Had to come here for what? What melted?”
“The elk,” offered Omie, “you know, that I told you about that time.”
“That’s no excuse for doing anything so foolish. Everyone has been out looking for you and getting bone cold in the looking, I might add.”
Omie guiltily lowered her eyes as Leo approached. “Safe and sound, young lady?” he asked. Omie nodded briefly, avoiding his face. Chadbourne and Yost had finally reached the lower end of the meadow. Zoe could hear their voices, sounding very far off despite their nearness; she supposed it was the thickly falling snow that made them sound that way. An educated man like Leo could probably explain it to her. She wondered why her thoughts were becoming vague, disoriented, and realized she was about to faint. Zoe resisted the impulse with all her will, knowing she would be ashamed to succumb to any kind of weakness in front of the men. They must never be allowed to believe she was, as they would have expressed it, only a woman. She took several deep breaths, then stood, blood pounding in her head.
“Home,” she said, for want of anything better.
Omie began meekly to retrace her path down the slope toward the other men, who had paused there, seeing that the child was already found. “All’s well that ends well,” observed Leo.
“No, it is not,” countered Zoe. “All is not well. We have very few supplies left, and Lewis grows sicker by the day, or haven’t you noticed?”
“I have, and Lewis has agreed that if we make no significant progress by Christmas, he’ll return to California until he has recovered.”
“That will be too late.”
“Do you have medical learning, Zoe?”
“You know I don’t, but anyone can see how Lewis fails a little more each day. There isn’t enough air in these mountains to fill his poor lungs.”
“If his condition persists, I’ll insist he leaves for a lower elevation at the end of the month. Does that satisfy you?”
“My satisfaction is not at stake. Your cousin must go immediately.”
“Surely that is his decision to make.”
“Please, Leo, tell him today. Make him leave before he dies here.”
The night before, snuggled against her mother in their hammock, Omie had whispered of the Christmas to come, and described in detail how the El Dorado Engineers would sit around the fireplace with gloom on their faces. Zoe and Omie would be there also, but Lewis would not. Asked if Lewis was merely gone from the cabin, Omie whispered back, “Gone from the world, Mama, and he’s a nice man. It should be Mr. Chadbourne that dies.”
“Hush. No one here deserves to die. Say nothing of Christmas to anyone.”
Zoe asked herself now if Leo was capable of accepting what it was that lived in Omie, the omniscient presence without identity or personality that used her eyes, her voice, in ways beyond comprehension. If Omie saw, by whatever means, that Lewis would be dead by Christmas, then it would be so, unless Leo could be persuaded before then to insist that his cousin depart for the warmth of California.
Omie was joined by Sell Yost and Chadbourne as she passed them by, and all three entered the trees together. Zoe hung back, obliging Leo to do the same. “I have something to tell you,” she said.
When she was done, Zoe waited for the mild scorn she expected from him, but Leo was genuinely intrigued by her story of things unseen and little understood.
“I’ve always felt there was something … different about Omie, and now I see why, but I must ask you not to mention this to the others. I’m a man of science myself, but the spirit world has fascinated me from time to time. My partners, though, follow the material school of thought. Logic, pure and simple, that’s the way. Lewis will be faced with a choice he’s already aware of—he goes home, or he dies. Leave this to me.”
“That was my intention in telling you.”
“And I thank you for it.”
The sky was already darkening as the cabin was reached. Entering ahead of the rest, Omie saw Lewis resting in his hammock. She had been told that he had turned back soon after joining in the search for her, because of his poor lungs. Approaching him, Omie prepared an apology for the trouble she had caused, knowing this was what Zoe would expect of her. Lewis appeared to be asleep, eyes closed, his lips slightly parted, but no breath came from those lips, and they were an unusual shade of blue. Omie told herself this was because he had allowed the stove to burn low while he slept, but the motionless chest beneath its blanket told her otherwise. She had killed him by running up to the golden elk’s secret place without telling anyone first, killed him just as surely as if she had chopped off his head. Omie felt awful. Punishment of some terrible and inescapable nature must follow such naughtiness. She was responsible, and she would have to pay. She fought back tears as the grownups clumped with their heavy boots through the doorway to witness the full extent of her crime.
It required all of Zoe’s patience and forbearance that night to conv
ince Omie she had not caused Lewis to die, just as she was not the reason little Patrick had died and her stepfather had run away from them. “You see these things, but that doesn’t mean you make them happen,” Zoe explained several times over, and eventually was able to steer Omie toward guiltlessness.
Long after the men were asleep, Lewis’s body having been taken outside, where the cold would preserve it better than any undertaker’s skills prior to burial in the morning, Omie explained for Zoe her expedition up to the deer lick.
“He told me to go where he was, the gold elk, so I did, because … he told me, and when I got there he was standing like he does, looking at the sky, but then he melted, Mama, like a piece of ice, just melted away into the ground.”
“How disappointing for you, after you went all that way.”
“Yes, but I could see him still, under the ground, still all shiny bright even if he wasn’t an elk anymore, just lumpy and golden way down under my feet, and there was more down there too.”
“More elk?”
“All his friends and neighbors and family,” said Omie. “He showed me them all.”
“That was nice of him; now you try and sleep.”
Omie shifted her weight against her mother’s breast in a way that brought them both deep comfort in their physical closeness, and began promptly to snore. Listening to her daughter’s nasal stutterings, Zoe counted herself among the lucky of the earth. It was difficult to experience any pangs of sadness over the death of Lewis, when her mind was still flooded with the relief of finding Omie alive and safe. She supposed that what she felt was selfish, but she had done her best to pass on Omie’s fateful prognosis for the man, and could not apportion blame to anything less abstract than the workings of fate. It had happened sooner than expected, and most likely could not have been averted even if Leo had been allowed time to remove his cousin from harm’s way. She consciously absolved herself of any wrongdoing, as she had done for Omie, and felt her body softening, preparing itself for sleep, and when that sleep came, Zoe dreamed of golden herds prancing beneath her, buried by mountains, yet lively and joyous. It was a pleasant fantasy, and, as dreams do, it left her head in the same stealthy manner by which it had arrived.
Lewis Brannan’s funeral was held the following day, on a morning so fair it was difficult to recall where the masses of snow, fast reducing the pathways of Glory Hole to mud, had come from. Miners attending the service were torn between two possible means of celebrating the return of sunshine—a thunderous wake for the dead man, utilizing all available supplies of hard liquor; or a return to the work that the blizzard had delayed. Compromise was the route chosen by wiser heads, and whiskey was consumed campwide for several hours before the drink ran out and the drinkers turned to their chilly holes in the ground, and proceeded to dig out the snowfall still frozen in their lower reaches.
Several heads were hit by buckets lowered too hastily or without warning, and a number of toes came near to mutilation by pickax as the day wore on and the whiskey wore off, but it was generally agreed that a good funeral and its aftermath was what everyone had needed to get their spirits up after being confined for three days indoors.
At the Engineers’ cabin, condolences for their loss were not sufficient to cancel knowledge of a potentially greater loss—their confidence in the location of their claim. Thus far, the earth extracted and washed had produced not the faintest indication of gold-bearing ores. It was useless to remind themselves of their professional expertise, since this had clearly failed them. Dunces galore were finding gold further along the stream, simply because they had filed claim on the nearest hundred-foot stretch of land the law allowed them. There was no system of calculation and deduction to their method, no carefully considered choices made; they simply filed and dug and, more often than not, found what they sought. The death of Lewis was, in a sense, symbolic of his companions’ dismal prospects for success. If direct application of scientific knowledge and practical experience did not produce the expected results, then the Engineers’ faith in themselves and their techniques had been a pipe dream. It was a humbling moment.
Omie kept to herself in the days that followed, and although Zoe knew her daughter was not burdened by guilt over what had occurred, it disturbed her that Omie seemed content with her own company for so much of the time. Attempting to draw her out, Zoe asked, “Is the golden elk still under the ground?”
“Of course,” said Omie, “until someone digs him up and makes him into an elk again.”
She turned her back on Zoe and resumed her silent contemplation of a corner of the cabin. Omie would have been puzzled by her mother’s next act, consisting of a sudden drop onto one of the crude stools beside the fireplace, and the placing of both hands on her thin cheeks. Zoe held herself in this fashion for a moment, then composed herself to ask, “Are you quite sure he is under the deer lick?”
“Yes.”
“I see,” said Zoe, and took herself off to the claim, where she called down to Leo, digging in its depths, that she must speak with him. The mule-powered whim raised him to the surface in a trice, and he shivered as the cold air touched his flesh. “Hot as Hades down there,” he said, smiling awkwardly. Zoe avoided staring as he covered his torso with a flannel shirt and heavy jacket. Sell Yost stripped and was lowered down into the shaft to work with Chadbourne. Leo began spading earth and gravel into a wheelbarrow for transportation to the rocker cradle at the water’s edge.
“What is it you need to talk with me about?”
“Gold.”
“My ears are pricked.”
“First, do you believe that Omie foretold what would happen to Lewis?”
“She may have. On the other hand, she may not. There’s no evidence to prove it, either way.”
“Then perhaps I shouldn’t go on.”
“No, please, tell me what it is you’re thinking of.”
Zoe hesitated, then said, “Omie has seen gold.”
Leo dropped the wheelbarrow handles and turned to her.
“She has? Why didn’t you say so before now? Where?”
“She has not seen it with her eyes.…”
His face fell. “Oh,” he said, and resumed wheeling the barrow.
“She has seen it with her inner eye, directly under the deer lick.”
“What deer lick?”
“The place she went to when we thought her lost. Deer go there to lick salt from the ground.”
“What of it? I think little Omie may be a poet in the making, but a prospector? No.”
He ran the load up a plank incline and dumped it directly into the cradle’s commodious hopper, then brought the barrow down again and opened the sluice from the hand-built water tank a short distance up the slope. Water gushed over the new earth, and Leo began rocking the cradle back and forth, back and forth, as he watched for gleamings among the riffle slats. He concentrated on the job, Zoe saw, in order not to look at her.
“You said, just a short time ago, that you are fascinated by the world of spirits, those things that baffle us.”
“I did, and I was truthful, but Zoe, how can you expect me to believe that Omie can detect gold deep underground? Gold is metal, with weight and properties. Gold is real, not the product of dreams. Gold is found by effort and intelligence, and yes, sometimes by plain luck, but never by dreams. There is no gold where Omie led us. The rock strata are not suitable. Please, forget this.”
“You won’t investigate?”
“I will not. You might approach John and Sell with this nonsense, but they’re harder-headed men than myself.”
“So you don’t believe me.”
“I can’t. We made ourselves objects of ridicule by digging where no one else would, and finding nothing for our pains. Now you want us to abandon this claim and go mountain climbing? We’d be laughed at.”
“And so? Let them laugh. There is gold where Omie says; I’m certain of it.”
“But I am not. File your own claim if you believe so much in
Omie’s visions. I’m sorry, but I can’t begin to consider this notion seriously.”
“Very well,” Zoe said, and turned from him.
On her way back to the cabin, she fought against resenting Leo for his reluctance. It was no fault of his that he could not accept what she told him. But she did truly believe it herself, and not to act according to her belief would have been foolish. She would do as Leo had suggested, although his words had been flippant.
Omie was still staring at nothing. Zoe took her purse, marched to the claim registration office and asked how she might stake out a particular section of the mountainside above town.
“You mean next to where those fellers you’re with have got theirs?” asked the registrar.
“No, somewhere else. Up high.”
“High?”
“I would say halfway up the side of the valley, on the eastern slope.”
“Way up there? What for, ma’am, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“For mining, what else?”
“Mining.”
“Yes.”
“Ma’am, that area hasn’t even been surveyed. I’d have to send someone up there special, just to get the claim recorded right.”
“And could that be arranged for today? I want to start mining as soon as possible.”
“Ma’am, are you absolutely sure about this?”
“Absolutely.”
“Ten dollars,” said the registrar, “and ma’am, I’m going to have to charge you an extra ten for the inconvenience.”
“Of course.”
Zoe laid her money down.
She announced her claim at dinner that night, and was met with expressions of amazement. Leo said nothing as Yost and Chadbourne asked for an explanation.
“I simply feel there is gold to be had up there,” said Zoe, her manner perfectly self-contained.
“Just … out of the blue?” Yost inquired, smiling as one would when questioning a simpleton.
“So to speak.”
“Woman, you’re cracked,” was Chadbourne’s response.
“Perhaps. May I borrow a pick and shovel from you, gentlemen? I’m afraid I spent almost all I have on registering my claim.”
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