“Ain’t you learned nothing, kid?” Mr. Hicks boomed. “In the West a man’s past belongs to him and to him alone. Men have been shot for less. Count yourself lucky you’re just a scrawny kid. Otherwise you might be sporting a bullet in your chest.”
Why did they have to insist on calling her a scrawny kid, as if the adjective was chained to the noun? Annabel scowled but found nothing to say in her defense.
“Don’t worry, kid,” Mr. Hicks went on, his tone easing. “Clay will come ’round. He is just worried because the lode of quartz is petering out. But I’m the boss around here, and my word is the law. If I say Clay will show you the mine today, then he’ll do just that.”
Mr. Hicks got to his feet and took down the storm lantern hanging from the ceiling. He opened the stove, picked up a piece of kindling from the woodpile and held it to the fire until it caught. Using the burning stick, he lit the lantern.
“Never waste a match, kid,” he said as he handed the lantern to her. “If you run out at the wrong time it might mean the difference between survival and freezing to death.” He gestured down the path. “Push past the dead tree, and the entrance is right in front of you. There’s only one tunnel. After a few paces it turns left and goes on for about ten yards. You can’t get lost.”
Annabel took the lantern. “Thank you, sir. And thank you for sticking up for me. I’ll make sure you won’t regret letting me stay.”
Mr. Hicks nodded. He lowered his voice. “I’m counting on that, kid. When you look around the mine, pay close attention to the fissure on the right about halfway down. It connects to a cave beyond. But don’t let on to Clay that I asked.”
Why? Annabel wanted to know, but the old man’s warning not to ask too many questions made her hold her tongue. She lifted the lantern high in front of her, as if to practice illuminating her way, and set off toward the mine entrance.
There had been an element of truth in Clay’s warnings, Annabel discovered, for the air in the mine was dank, and after the sharp twist to the left very little daylight reached the tunnel. When she ran one hand along the rough rock wall, she could feel the slippery texture, a sign of high humidity. She picked her steps carefully, shining the light at her feet, to avoid tripping as well as a precaution, just in case Clay’s threat of poisonous snakes was based on fact.
Even in the widest places the tunnel was no more than five feet wide, and sometimes so low she suspected the men might have to duck. After a few yards the last glimmer of daylight faded, and she had to rely on the lantern alone. She longed to turn up the wick, but was afraid to try, for she might turn the knob the wrong way and end up extinguishing the flame.
The steady clinking of a pickaxe warned her before she pushed through a narrow gap and saw the sphere of lamplight ahead. Judging by the position, the lantern was perched on a rock ledge at knee height.
Annabel found herself hurrying to reach the safety of another human being in the gloomy darkness. The swinging of the pickaxe ceased, and Clay turned to watch her approach. The faint light did not allow Annabel to see his expression, but the way he held his body rigid spoke of frustration, perhaps even anger.
“Did I not tell you not to come?” There was dismay in his tone.
Her heartbeat quickened. “Mr. Hicks sent me.” She held her lantern high to shine the light on Clay’s features, but he averted his face.
“Mr. Hicks suggested I look around,” Annabel repeated her defense.
Clay swept one arm in the air. “Look around, then. The scenery ain’t exactly varied.”
Annabel wrinkled her nose. “What is that smell? Like burnt matches?”
“Bats. They must live in the cave behind the crack in the wall. They don’t come out this way. There must be another exit somewhere.”
She took a step closer to him. “Show me what there is to see.”
Clay exhaled an audible sigh. He lifted his lantern high with one hand and took her elbow with the other, intending to guide her forward, but Annabel refused to budge. “You first,” she told him. “Snakes, remember?”
The silence went on for a long moment. Annabel could guess Clay’s dilemma. Either admit to exaggerating, or leave her to stumble after him. He chose to confess.
“There’s no snakes that I know of. But there could be.”
“And some of them might even be poisonous,” Annabel replied.
She felt her anxieties melt away as Clay stood beside her, his hand curled around her elbow, strong and steady. Despite his resentment, she could feel protectiveness in his manner, and an odd sense of reverence, as if he worried about her safety more than he did of his own.
“Show me where the bats are,” she told him.
“Over this way.” Carefully, he guided her along.
As Clay gave her a tour of the mine, explaining how they had carved the tunnel following a natural fault in the rock, it dawned on Annabel that he held a deep interest in geology and mining. She’d never seen him animated like that before. From the terms he used, she surmised he must have read books on the topic. She longed to bombard him with more questions about his past, but she resisted the temptation, not wishing to spoil the moment of easy companionship.
The fissure was a jagged vertical crack halfway along the tunnel, just as Mr. Hicks had described. Twenty inches wide at the most, it spanned floor to ceiling. When Annabel eased her hand into the cleft, she could feel a cool draft against her fingers. Clay had to be right about another entrance on the opposite side. The current of air carried a strong smell of phosphorus and ammonia.
“Seen enough?” Clay said.
“Yes...but I’d like to ask you something.”
Clay groaned out loud. Undeterred, Annabel continued. “I’ve already told you that I was on my way to the Arizona Territory when I got off the train.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Clay cut in. “Why was that gent in fancy duds chasing after you? Did you steal something from him?”
“No!” Annabel burst out. “He...he just thought I was someone else. It was foolish of me to run off like that, but I didn’t want to borrow trouble. He seemed very insistent, and I didn’t know what this other person might have meant to him.”
She fell silent. Clay didn’t comment. His green eyes glittered in the lamplight, sharp and unfathomable, as if he might have been able to figure out more from her words than she had actually said.
“I told you,” Annabel went on, “I have two sisters. I was on my way to join them, in a place called Gold Crossing, Arizona Territory.” She looked up at Clay, a plea in her eyes. “They’ll worry about me. Is there any way you could take me to Hillsboro, so I could send a telegram to them, let them know that I’m safe? Or perhaps, if I write a letter, we could find someone to mail it, for example a miner on a nearby mining claim who has business in Hillsboro?”
“Those pretty sisters of yours,” Clay said slowly, “what were their names again?”
Eager to talk about her beloved sisters, Annabel did not take the time to consider what might have prompted the inquiry and replied without hesitation. “The eldest is Charlotte. She is twenty-four. The middle sister is called Miranda. She is twenty-two.”
As soon as she’d said middle sister, Annabel realized her mistake. She held her breath. It was a tiny, tiny slip. It would be a miracle if Clay homed in on the implication.
He spoke very softly. “And the youngest,” he said. “What might her name be? Not Andrew, I’ll wager. What is it? Ann? Anita? Annette?”
He knew. Annabel swallowed. At first, her nerves spiked, but then her quick mind shifted through the facts, and her unease changed to elation. Of course! He must have figured it out earlier. He wanted to send her away, not to be rid of her but to protect her, because a mining camp was not a safe place for a young woman.
“It’s Annabel,” she told him. “My name is Annabel.
” Then, in the spirit of honesty she added to her confession. “And I am eighteen.”
She shifted her weight from foot to foot, waiting for Clay to react. When he said nothing, she peered anxiously up at him. “How did you find out?”
Those green eyes met hers. Annabel could feel Clay hesitate, could sense the sudden escalation of tension in him. When he spoke, his voice was low. “I saw you with your hair unbound.”
“Saw me with my hair...?” Slowly, the revelation settled in her mind. There was only one occasion since she arrived at the mining camp when she had released her coiled hair—to wash it by the creek, when she’d also unbound her breasts.
“You watched me bathe?” It was as much an accusation as a question.
Clay replied with a silent nod. No excuses, no apology, even though he had spied upon her during the most private of moments. A fiery blush flared to Annabel’s cheeks at the realization he’d seen her half-naked—had seen her the way no man except her husband should see a lady.
“How...how could you?” she stammered, aghast yet at the same time with a rush of heat that made her feel acutely aware of her body.
Clay shrugged, but it was an uneasy gesture. “I went down to the creek to check up on a scrawny kid, but I ended up seeing a girl.” His eyes narrowed at her. “Nothing good ever comes from lies.”
“I...” Annabel clamped her mouth shut. She’d been about to say she was sorry, but what would she be apologizing for? For being female? For teasing him from the safety of her disguise? She brushed aside her confused feelings and focused on the practical aspects of the situation. “Will you tell Mr. Hicks?”
“I don’t know,” Clay replied with a sigh. “He’ll be mad as hell if he finds out. Women are bad luck in mines. Do you realize what you’ve done by insisting that you wish to see the mine? If he discovers you’re a girl, everything that goes wrong with the mine will be your fault because you’ve jinxed the place.”
He shone the lantern light on her face. “If the seam of gold peters out, as it looks it might do, he’ll blame you. Are you prepared for that?”
“He seems a kind man.”
“Kind?” Clay gave a bitter bark of laughter. “Maybe he can seem like a cuddly teddy bear when it suits his mood. But make no mistake, if you cross him, he’ll be like a grizzly bear disturbed out of hibernation.”
Annabel’s mouth went dry, but she rallied. “So, it’s best not to tell him?”
“Best not to tell him,” Clay agreed in a somber tone. “But he’ll be blind and deaf not to figure it out himself. When you belt out those sea shanties, you forget to lower the pitch of your voice. And your skin looks too soft, now that you don’t have boot black smeared on your face. And you preen in front of the mirror in a way only a girl would do. And you prattle like a woman, asking too many questions.”
“I’m sorry I probed about your past.”
“And I’m sorry that I...” Clay made a rough sound. “Never mind,” he added in a low mutter. He took her arm. “Let’s get you out of here before you have a chance to jinx the mine and ruin what little might remain of our luck.”
* * *
For the rest of the afternoon, Annabel helped Mr. Hicks with the rocker box. “So, kid, what did you think about our little hole in the mountainside?” he asked. “Do you think it is rich with gold?”
Subdued at the prospect of a superstition about women and mines, Annabel replied without her usual enthusiasm. “I have no way of knowing if it is a promising mine or not. It is the only one I have ever seen.”
Later, after they had finished supper and Mr. Hicks was puffing out fragrant clouds of smoke with his pipe, he raised the topic again. “Kid, when you were in the mine, did you pay attention to the fissure in the rock?”
Annabel was squatting on her heels, washing the tin plates in a bucket of water. She glanced back at Clay over her shoulder. All through supper, she’d been aware of him watching her across the table.
She should be scandalized at the idea that he’d spied on her as she knelt down by the stream to wash her hair, her breasts unbound. But instead she found herself wondering if he’d liked what he saw and wished for another glimpse.
“I made a point of inspecting the crack in the mine wall,” she replied to Mr. Hicks. “Cool air comes through. There must be another exit somewhere.”
Mr. Hicks spoke with the stem of his pipe clamped between his teeth. “You reckon you might be able to crawl through the hole into the cave, kid?”
Annabel cast her mind back to what she had seen. A vertical gap, jagged and broken, a bit like a streak of lightning in the sky. Maybe twenty inches across at the widest point, tapering to only a few inches at the bottom.
“I could not do it on my own,” Annabel said. “I might do it if you lifted me up and held me horizontal and fed me through the widest part of the opening, like pushing a piece of thread through the eye of a needle.”
“No,” Clay said bluntly. “It’s a crazy notion.”
Mr. Hicks took his pipe out of his mouth. His expression did not change, and yet an aura of controlled violence suddenly shimmered about him. A shiver ran over Annabel as she recalled Clay’s warnings about the mine owner’s fiery temper.
“It could save us,” Mr. Hicks said. “The seam of gold is petering out. I have an inkling it might continue on the other side of the fissure, but I have no wish to spend a month hacking a passage through only to discover I was mistaken. If the kid can get into the cave, we’ll know what’s on the other side.”
Clay held up a hand in protest. “It is too dangerous. The kid could get hurt. He could get stuck in the passage. He could have an accident while he is alone in the cave and we can’t get through to help him.”
He was speaking with caution, as if evaluating each word. Annabel suspected it was because he had to watch his tongue, to make sure he didn’t slip up and say “her” instead of “him,” accidentally revealing her secret.
“It’s a risk worth taking,” Mr. Hicks insisted.
“No.” Clay’s tone was implacable.
“I’d like to try it,” Annabel cut in. “But I can’t promise it will be possible.”
Clay twisted in his seat to face her squarely. “Are you crazy?” His green eyes blazed at her in warning. “The cave might have no floor. There could be a sheer drop when you tumble through the gap. There could be a nest of rattlers. Spiders, scorpions. The air could be filled with noxious fumes.”
Annabel suppressed a surge of fear. She straightened from the water pail and dried her hands with an old flour sack while addressing her words to Mr. Hicks. “What is our financial position? If there is no more gold, what does it mean?”
Mr. Hicks inhaled through his pipe, leaned back in his seat and glanced over at Clay, as if challenging him not to interfere. “If there is no more gold, we must abandon the claim and find a new one. It will be difficult, with the winter coming on. It’s already September. We’ll struggle to locate a new claim and build a shelter before the cold weather sets in.”
Annabel directed her attention to Clay. “Do you agree?”
Clay shifted his shoulders. “It is a fair assessment. But if there’s no gold beyond the fissure, we’ll have to move on anyway. You’ll have risked your life for nothing.”
“But there could be gold?” Annabel pressed.
Clay gave a reluctant nod. “It is a possibility.”
Annabel shuttled her gaze between the two men. When she spoke, it occurred to her that her future in the mining camp must have been weighing on her mind, for the words seemed to flow out without a conscious thought. “I will attempt to crawl through the fissure, but at a price,” she told them. “I do not know what the arrangement is between the two of you, and I don’t care.”
Her mind crystal clear, determination reflected in the rigid set of her spine, Annabel
put forward her demand. “If I get into the cave, and there is gold, I want a partnership. Any gold we extract will be divided into four equal parts.”
She turned to the old man. “Mr. Hicks, I assume you have funded the horse and mule and the equipment, and for that you should get an extra share. The rest must be divided equally between the three of us, one share each.”
Mr. Hicks stroked his beard. “You drive a hard bargain, kid.”
“Partnership?” Clay frowned. “What’s the point? In a month you’ll be gone, on your way to join your sisters in Gold Crossing.”
Annabel turned to the stove to shield herself from his glare. “I have decided to stay a bit longer,” she said, striving for a casual tone. “When I get to Gold Crossing, I will need some occupation. I’d like to try gold mining. Working the claim with you will serve as an apprenticeship.”
Chapter Nine
“Working the claim with you will serve as an apprenticeship.”
Clay seethed in silence, unable to come up with a reasonable objection without revealing the truth. Of all the scrawny girl kids in the world, he had to end up with this one! Her mind was sharper than the knife he carried in his boot, and her stubbornness matched that of the mule.
All night, Clay lay awake, imagining the calamities that might befall the girl if she attempted to reach the cave. In the morning, as if by common consent, they all got up early and sat around the breakfast table. Defying the angry scowls of Mr. Hicks, Clay made another effort to dissuade the girl from the attempt.
“You could plunge into a bottomless pit on the other side.”
“You can tie a rope around my waist to stop me from falling. And you can use the same rope to haul me back out again, should I become stuck in the fissure.”
“What about snakes? The cave could be a pit of rattlers.”
“We’ll push an empty tin can tied to a rope through the gap first and bang it about inside the cave, to scare off any snakes.”
“Scorpions?”
“Damp places don’t attract scorpions.” Anticipating his next argument, the girl went on demolishing his objections. “And the draft of fresh air from the cave proves the absence of toxic fumes.”
From Runaway to Pregnant Bride Page 8