The Daredevil Snared

by Stephanie Laurens

  Fervent murmurs of agreement came from all around.

  “So,” Fanshawe said, “what’s it to be? The oil?”

  Everyone, including all the children who were huddled in groups on the logs around the pit, was listening, waiting. The acknowledged leaders of the men—Dixon, Hillsythe, Caleb, Lascelle, Fanshawe, and Hopkins—all exchanged inquiring looks.

  Then Caleb shifted on his log and looked at Katherine. “It might be preferable to open our campaign with a hiccup that isn’t in the mine itself.” He arched his brows at her, then shifted his gaze to Harriet, seated beyond her. “What about the problems with the women’s tools?” He glanced around the circle. “Bad cleaning tools will leave the rocks too encrusted for easy transport—more or less blocking getting them to the ship.” Caleb looked at Hillsythe. “And having Dubois focus on the cleaning shed and a blockage in production of the final raw diamonds means he won’t be focusing on the output of the mine itself, which means we can appear to keep working, but manage how much we do and hold back as much of the ore as we can to replenish the stockpile we’ve run down.”

  “Another buffer against the future.” Hillsythe nodded. “That will, at least, give us a few days up our sleeve.”

  When the diamonds eventually ran out.

  Caleb looked around the circle, brows raised, inviting further discussion, but apparently everyone agreed. “Right, then,” he said. “As we’ve touched on many times, the problems have to look realistic and not staged—nothing to make Dubois suspicious.”

  Katherine and Harriet exchanged a glance, then Katherine addressed the circle. “We think we can be ready by the middle of the morning tomorrow.” She glanced at Caleb. “Will that be soon enough?”

  He met her gaze. “I believe I speak for us all in saying: Take your time. It has to look good—good enough to fool Dubois.”

  Later, much later, when he was escorting her back to the women’s hut through the darkness, she tightened her fingers on his and murmured, “I just hope this works and that nothing goes wrong.”

  He gripped her fingers back, then raised her hand and kissed her knuckles. “Courage, my love. I have confidence in you.”

  * * *

  The following morning, Katherine collected Harriet’s hammer—now with its head so loose it spun on the handle—and Mary’s and Ellen’s chisels, which now had edges that were brittle, cracked, and chipped; the women had worked with the two erstwhile blacksmith’s apprentices to make the damage look authentic, as just wear and tear. Tools in hand, she drew a breath, mentally girded her loins, and left the cleaning shed; summoning a bothered frown, she strode swiftly—purposefully—to the barracks.

  With Caleb’s words of encouragement from the night before repeating like a mantra in her mind, she climbed the porch steps and headed for Dubois’s office.

  He was sitting behind his desk. He looked up when she knocked on the door frame, then beckoned her in. “What is it?”

  Clinging to her façade of feminine aggravation—as if beset by some unforeseen irritation—she walked to the desk and plunked the tools down before him. “These.” She waved at them in exasperation. “We’ve used them for as long as we can, but they’re now close to useless.” Looking up, she met his gaze. “You cannot expect us to clean the stones with these. We asked Dixon for replacements, but he said there aren’t any in the supply hut.”

  She folded her arms and all but glared at Dubois. “So what do you want us to do?”

  Dubois looked down at the tools, and a faint frown appeared on his rarely expressive face. He reached for the hammer.

  She drew in a breath and stated, “We can carry on with the tools we have, but obviously not at the same pace. Of course, the other tools are also showing signs of wear, but they’re not as bad—yet.”

  Dubois studied the loose hammerhead, then looked at the chisels. “It would have been useful to know this earlier.”

  Katherine suspected he was speaking to himself, but nevertheless, she frowned as if perplexed. “Earlier when? No one’s asked us about the tools. If they had, we would have said.”

  His gaze still on the worn tools, Dubois muttered something under his breath. Then he set down the hammer and pushed back his chair. “Show me.”

  Katherine inwardly sniffed at the brusque order, but swung on her heel and led the way to the cleaning shed. As she entered, she cast a swift glance down the room; four of the other women were working diligently using those tools still fit for the task, while Harriet sat and watched. Katherine caught Harriet’s eye, then stepped aside and let Dubois stride past.

  He immediately went to the table. He stopped beside Annie, closest to the door, and demandingly held out his hand. When she gave him her tools, he examined both closely. Eventually, he dumped Annie’s tools on the table and moved on to examine Gemma’s. Gradually, he circled the table. His expression increasingly hard and forbidding, he grunted several times, but remained unnervingly silent.

  After he’d scrutinized each tool, he walked back to where Katherine waited by the door, her hands clasped before her. He met her gaze, then turned and looked back at the women, who were now all watching him. He grunted. “I will get you more tools. Meanwhile, do the best you can with what you have.”

  With that, he strode out of the door.

  Katherine exchanged a look of burgeoning hope with the other women, then moved to shut the door.

  Before she did, they all heard Dubois bellow, “Arsene!”

  Katherine and the other women grinned.

  * * *

  They had to wait until the afternoon to verify their success.

  The women had reported on Dubois’s reaction over the short break the captives were allowed at midday. Later, while fetching more nails from the supply hut, Caleb noticed several of the mercenaries who had previously accompanied Arsene to the settlement sitting on the barracks’ porch and checking their weapons, traveling packs ready at their feet; after delivering the nails into the mine, Caleb opted to take a short break and go for a walk.

  He went first to the cleaning shed to suggest Katherine join him.

  They were now an accepted sight ambling together about the camp. This time, they took advantage of a temporary absence of guards in that particular section of the compound and ambled to a halt by the east side of the barracks, near Dubois’s window and out of sight of anyone inside the hut or in the tower.

  Leaning back against the rough planking, through it, they heard Arsene say, “Perhaps they damaged the tools themselves.”

  “I don’t think so.” Dubois’s accents were clipped, his tone impatient. “We’ve had no difficulties with the women to date, and I examined the tools myself—the damage is variable in type and also in degree. If they’d done it themselves, deliberately, the damage would have been more uniform.”

  Caleb and Katherine exchanged a smug look. They’d worked hard to ensure the damage was sufficiently variable to appear innocent.

  Dubois continued, “More, the good Miss Fortescue did not suggest they halt their work, but rather she came to point out that, due to the failing tools, they would be unable to work at full pace. As we’ve all seen the large amount of diamonds that will be coming out of the second tunnel, she was right to call attention to what will, ultimately, cause a bottleneck and restrict our deliveries of raw diamonds to the ship.” Dubois paused, then went on, “If you think it through, in this, she behaved as I would wish her to. She and the women might have continued working, increasingly slowly, until the tools gave out altogether, thus more gravely impacting our ability to send diamonds to the backers.”

  Arsene grunted, apparently in grudging agreement. “We’ve had a few pickaxes and shovels break. I suppose it’s only reasonable the women’s tools, which are constantly in use, might also become damaged.”

  “Indeed. So I suggest we don’t borrow trou
ble and doubt the women in this. Instead”—Dubois’s tone turned calculating—“let’s see if we can bend your trip to the settlement to our advantage.” He paused, then said, “Make sure you get double the number of tools the women need. And call Dixon in.”

  Caleb and Katherine exchanged another glance, then they pushed away from the wall—Arsene or whoever went to fetch Dixon might see them—and wandered over to where the older girls were busily sorting through the piles of ore.

  From the corners of their eyes, Caleb and Katherine watched the guard who, seconds later, crossed to the mine, presumably to fetch Dixon. While they waited for the guard and Dixon to emerge, Katherine crouched and chatted to the girls.

  Caleb stood beside them; his hands in his pockets, he pretended to listen while his mind ranged over the visit Dubois had paid to the mine the day before. Neither Dubois nor his lieutenants entered the mine often. Once or twice a day, one of the guards would randomly wander in unannounced and stroll through the tunnels, but their interest was transparently perfunctory; evidently, Dubois and his crew had long ago decided that the only thing they cared about was what came out of the mine, and they didn’t need to concern themselves with what went on inside.

  Yesterday, however, their curiosity no doubt piqued by Dixon’s report on the second deposit as revealed via the second tunnel, Cripps, then Arsene, and finally Dubois had come to see the sight with their own eyes.

  Playing his role of excited engineer to the hilt, Dixon had proudly shown off the diamonds. The other men had paused in their labors and stood back against the opposite wall of the tunnel. The temptation to use his pickaxe on Dubois had gripped Caleb—and he suspected most of the men there—but the presence of several guards with muskets, and the certainty of more outside with the children in full view and, no doubt, orders to shoot should there be any sign of riot, effectively quashed the impulse.

  But then while watching Dubois, Caleb had noticed sweat pop out on the man’s forehead. He’d looked more closely—and had seen the slow clenching and unclenching of Dubois’s fists, and his increasing pallor.

  Caleb had glanced at Phillipe, just as Phillipe—having noted the same signs—had glanced in dawning wonder at him.

  They’d both looked down the tunnel at Hillsythe; he, too, had been looking at Dubois, a faint frown forming on his face. Hillsythe had felt their gazes; he’d shifted his own to meet them and had nodded almost imperceptibly.

  They’d all gone back to observing Dubois.

  Later, they’d conferred, and all had agreed it was very likely Dubois suffered from a fear of enclosed spaces or some similar condition, enough to make him panic over being in the mine. His lieutenants might also be affected, which would account for all three rarely entering the mine.

  What use such knowledge might be, no one could guess, but it was a weakness—especially in Dubois, who had thus far demonstrated very little by way of vulnerability.

  Caleb heard the tramp of boots and glanced across to see Dixon accompanying the guard to the barracks.

  Katherine rose. With her gaze, she followed the pair; once they’d passed out of sight around the front of the barracks, she caught Caleb’s eye. “There’s still no guard on this side of the compound—shall we eavesdrop again?”

  They did, and heard Dubois order Dixon to give Arsene a list of anything and everything he could think of—nails, timbers, tools—that might be required to mine out the diamonds in the second tunnel. “As Arsene is going to have to return to the settlement and contact our mining supplier to get more tools for the women, as those are relatively small and light, I want to ensure the trip is worthwhile.” Dubois’s tone grew colder and harsher—more menacing. “And I do not want your operation to run into any further shortage of tools or other mining supplies.”

  Caleb and Katherine listened as Dixon, with apparent enthusiasm, threw himself into ordering more of everything.

  Dubois must have waved Dixon and Arsene away; Dixon’s excited chatter and Arsene’s responding grunts slowly faded.

  Caleb tightened his grip on Katherine’s hand. “Once around the barracks, then back to the cleaning shed.”

  Dixon and Arsene had halted on the porch, with Dixon still very much playing his role. Neither man muted his voice as Caleb and Katherine strolled past.

  They continued their circuit of the barracks. Caleb saw Katherine into the cleaning shed, then returned to the mine. He reached the entrance as Dixon strode up. Together, they walked into the mine’s shadows.

  The other leaders and several other men were waiting in a group outside the second tunnel’s entrance. “Well?” Hillsythe asked.

  “It all went off as smooth as silk.” Dixon tipped his head back toward the barracks, then he turned, and they all watched as Arsene collected his men and they left the porch. After swinging their packs to their backs and hefting their muskets, the mercenaries headed for the gates.

  His hands on his hips, Caleb watched Arsene and his men stride out into the jungle. “Katherine and I eavesdropped. Dubois swallowed whole the idea that the tools had broken through normal wear and tear. He dismissed Arsene’s quibbles.”

  Fanshawe nodded after the departing men. “So how long will they take—how long will the ladies be able to go slow?”

  “Given the list I gave Arsene,” Dixon said, “I imagine they’ll take their usual five days.”

  “Good.” Hillsythe glanced around at all the men. “So we should do as planned and appear to work at our usual pace, but divert as much of the ore as we can to our stockpile.”

  All the men nodded.

  “And,” Dixon concluded, “as we discussed, I’ll approach Dubois this evening and point out that there’s really no sense in having us men working longer hours while the women can’t process the ore, at least not as fast as we’re sending it out. I’ll suggest we adjust our output to keep pace with the women.”

  “Will he agree, do you think?” Phillipe straightened from his slouch against the tunnel wall. “I wouldn’t, were I him.”

  Dixon grimaced. “It’s worth asking. It won’t affect the overall output leaving the compound, and to date, that’s been Dubois’s overriding concern.”

  “One possibly relevant point,” Caleb said. “We heard Dubois tell Arsene to bring back extra hammers and chisels for the women. Is there any chance that, once Arsene gets back, Dubois will order the older girls into the cleaning shed, too—or even order the women to work longer hours, as he’s done with the men?”

  Hillsythe, Dixon, Fanshawe, and Hopkins all shook their heads.

  “He tried some of the older girls once—it wasn’t a success,” Fanshawe said.

  “You can’t smash diamonds,” Dixon said, “but it’s all too possible to unnecessarily shatter them along internal fracture lines. What the women do is clean the raw stones of nondiamond aggregates. Dubois is under strict orders to send out the raw stones unfractured, in as large a size as possible, so the fracturing can be left to the diamond cutters. That way, they get the most out of each raw diamond.”

  “When the women are tired, their concentration slips, and so do their chisels, and the fractures mount,” Hillsythe said. “So Dubois can’t overwork the women, and on top of that, they need to work under natural light. Lamplight’s not good enough for what they do.”

  Dixon nodded. “And the girls aren’t as careful as the women, not as adept at sensing where the fault lines are and avoiding them, so it doesn’t pay to have them take up cleaning.”

  Both Caleb and Phillipe nodded their understanding.

  “So for the moment,” Caleb said, hefting his pickaxe, “we continue working steadily, hold back as much ore as we can, and hope Dubois agrees to allow us to slow down.”

  * * *

  Unfortunately, in this instance, Dubois proved intractably resistant to Dixon’s persuasions.

 
As Phillipe had foreseen, Dubois was now set on getting all the diamonds out of the mine as rapidly as possible. He insisted that the men continue mining at maximum pace, either breaking rock, shoveling it, or shoring up the next stretch of the second tunnel—with every man working from breakfast until midnight.

  Caleb encouraged Dixon to make the best of the situation he could. Consequently, the four older boys who’d worked alongside the men in the mine were sent to clear out the last of the diamonds from the farther reaches of the first pipe. The youngest children continued to gather the ore from under the men’s feet, scrabbling and scrambling over the tunnel’s rough floor, grabbing all the shattered rocks. They then lugged their laden baskets to where several men helped them rapidly sort and remove some of the diamonds for their stockpile, then continued out to the ore pile.

  At the pile, the older girls sorted—joined by those women who no longer had tools with which to work.

  By the end of the first day, it was evident to all that Dubois’s intention was to run the mining side of the operation to completion—to depletion of the mine—as fast as he could, and if the present lack of cleaning tools meant that resulted in a huge pile of sorted but as yet uncleaned rocks, so be it.

  The gathering about the fire pit that evening was decidedly glum.

  “So,” Hillsythe said, summing up for everyone, “we’ve created a bottleneck which will soon result in a massive pile of rough diamonds to be cleaned prior to shipping, but Dubois hasn’t allowed us to ease back on the actual mining, yet that’s what we urgently need to do.” He glanced around the faces. “We need to slow down the mining itself.”

  Poking at the dust between his feet with a branch, Dixon grimaced. “I tried pointing out that it was safer to keep the diamonds in the rock, and that having a huge pile of rough diamonds just lying there was surely tempting Fate. Dubois just stared at me and said he had faith in his men—that they would put paid to any marauders.” Dixon sighed and looked up, letting his gaze sweep over the faces before coming to rest on the other leaders. “So that’s the outcome—or rather lack of it—from our latest gambit, and I would strongly advise against us trying anything else, at least for a few days.”