Clay gritted his teeth. He’d been right. She possessed the stubbornness of a mule and a mind sharper than the blade of his knife. He drained his coffee and got to his feet. “What are we waiting for?” he said. “Let’s get on with it.”
The girl regarded him, a notch between her dainty brows. “No.”
Relief flooded Clay. He sank back to his seat. It had all been talk. She wasn’t really going to do it. It had just been boasting, childish make-believe.
Mr. Hicks spoke sharply. “You change your mind, kid?”
The girl lifted her chin, haughty as a queen. “Of course not. However, what is the purpose of my excursion into the cave?” When Mr. Hicks failed to offer a prompt reply, she supplied one herself. “To look for gold, of course. But how can I look for gold if I lack the expertise to identify a seam of gold-bearing quartz?”
She spread her hands, waited an instant, then went on, “Today, I shall study the mine. I shall learn what I am looking for, so that I’ll not make a wasted trip into that bottomless pit full of snakes and scorpions and noxious fumes.”
* * *
Annabel lay awake in the darkness, listening to Clay’s even breathing. She could hear him, even though he’d moved farther away, putting a distance between them. It occurred to her that nothing troubled his back. It had simply been an excuse to hand over his bedroll, an act of chivalry after he discovered she was a girl.
And now she was defying his orders to stay out of the cave. A kernel of fear niggled in her belly. Had she taken on too much? Had she been foolish to volunteer for the task?
All her life, she’d been the youngest, a follower where her big sisters took the lead. Working as a shoeshine boy and living in the mining camp had offered an opportunity to be independent, to prove her worth.
And now she had a chance of a partnership with two experienced miners. However, without gold there would be no mine, no partnership. If she crawled into the cave, if she located the seam of gold, she would secure the future of the mine and take a big step toward establishing her place in the world.
It might be a dangerous thing to do, but success never came cheap. Moreover, Mr. Hicks and Clay would be there, supporting her with their expertise, and she would use her analytical brain to minimize the risks.
Already, she’d spent an hour in the dark, dank mine, studying the thin vein of gold-bearing ore. She’d learned that gold, mixed with quartz, had once upon a time burst from the molten depths of the earth and solidified into a stripe within the granite. The purer the gold, the brighter the color of the vein.
An owl hooted in the darkness. Something crashed in the woods. Annabel froze, strained her ears. The horse and mule, brought into the safety of the overhang for the night, did not stir. Slowly, she released the air trapped in her lungs.
Wriggling against the hard earth floor, careful not to make a sound that might awaken Clay, she inched closer to him. Surely, he couldn’t deny her the comfort of his protection if he remained unaware he was providing it.
With a flare of guilt, Annabel accepted her foolish teasing might have caused a rift between them. She’d let Clay’s handsome looks and his rugged masculinity go to her head like a potent wine. Too inexperienced to control the emotions he stirred up in her, she had plunged headlong into testing her feminine allure.
Now that he knew she was a girl, she had to put a stop to it. Anything else would be courting danger. They were alone, away from civilization, and it might be all too easy to give in to the attraction she felt between them. If that happened she might end up ruining her future.
Calmer now, Annabel burrowed into the blankets. Tomorrow, she’d do it. She’d apologize to Clay for taunting him, trying to flirt with him and pestering him with questions about his past. If she promised to stop behaving like a smitten schoolgirl they might find a way to be friends again.
* * *
Clay didn’t know much about women, but when the girl ambled toward him, trying to look as innocent as a newborn, he knew she was about to make some bold request. He lowered the big hammer he’d been using to smash a piece of ore and turned to watch her approach.
Beneath the brim of her bowler hat, her skin was glowing with the beginnings of a suntan. Her body was slender, her posture erect, the big amber eyes fringed with long lashes. She was a pretty one, this. Annabel. He avoided thinking of her by her name, to reduce the risk it might accidentally slip out in front of Mr. Hicks.
“Could I take a moment of your time?” she asked.
“Take all you wish.” Clay reached for the canteen by his feet, uncapped it and drank in greedy gulps. The heat of the day was building up. He’d been about to peel off his shirt, but he decided to wait and hear what the girl had to say.
“I owe you an apology.” She peered up at him. “I’ve teased you, and I’ve pried into your affairs. I’m sorry if my behavior has given you a reason to resent me.” She lowered her gaze, poked at the dirt with the toe of her clumsy boot.
A flare of sympathy rose in Clay. Just walking about with those heavy weights on her feet must tax her strength. And she must be used to a comfortable life, yet she made no complaints about the conditions in the mining camp.
“I know you want to send me away,” the girl went on. “But I would very much like to stay. I’d like to try to crawl into that cave and find gold for Mr. Hicks. But I...” She took a deep breath, the way Clay had noticed was her habit. Beneath the sharp inhale, he heard something that sounded dangerously close to a sob.
“I don’t think I can do it,” the girl said, looking at him with a plea in those big amber eyes. “Not unless I have your support and friendship while I’m doing it.”
“It’s okay, kid,” Clay said softly.
Not appearing to listen, the girl charged on. “Please give me another chance. I promise I won’t try to flirt with you again, or engage in any feminine wiles, or ask questions about your past. It will be strictly a business partnership.”
Clay wanted to laugh. Were women always so contrary? Before, she’d tried to break his shield of privacy with the same determination she’d used to swing the big hammer when she crushed the lumps of ore. Now she was proposing to put up a wall between them.
And yet, Clay knew keeping a distance was the right thing to do. He’d seen orphan boys, desperate for human closeness, become tangled up with a woman who took all they had and gave nothing in return, except perhaps a heap of trouble. He wouldn’t let it happen to him. Although he could tell there was no guile in Annabel, it made sense to stand back, keep away from temptation rather than risk giving in to masculine needs that might lead him down a path of no return.
“Aren’t you forgetting something from your list of sins?” he asked.
The big amber eyes stared up at him. “What else have I done?”
“If Mr. Hicks discovers you’re a girl, he’ll blame me. I brought you here.”
“Of course.” The girl snapped into attention like a well-trained soldier. “From now on, I’ll make sure to behave with utter discretion. He’ll never find out.”
“I’m counting on that,” Clay said and meant it, too. If the old man discovered Annabel was a girl, she’d have to go. He would have to send her off to face the dangers of the world alone, or he would have to go with her and say goodbye to Mr. Hicks. Although not exactly a father figure, the gruff old man was the closest to a parent Clay had known since the age of six, and he did not wish to face that choice.
“All right,” he said to Annabel. “From now on, you’ll stop pestering me and behave like a sensible young man should behave with his business partners.”
The shine of gratitude on her face, the eager hope in her eyes, made something tug in Clay’s chest. When she opened her mouth and burst into a flurry of thanks, he held up a hand to silence her. “That includes not prattling like a girl.”
* * *<
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Clay finished tying the knot around the girl’s waist and tugged at the rope. “How does that feel?”
She tested the rope, wriggled against it. “Make it tighter.”
Clay adjusted the knot. The big leather coat the girl wore to protect her skin against abrasions from the rock bunched tight around her, making her look small and fragile.
Four lamps illuminated the mine tunnel, three coal oil lanterns with a glass globe and an old whale oil lamp with an open flame. The whale oil smelled foul as it burned and gave out smoke, but they wanted as much light as possible.
It was midafternoon, but the darkness in the mine was timeless. The three of them had spent the early part of the morning in the tunnel, crowding close to each other as they studied the seam of gold, figuring out where it might continue.
At noontime, the girl had refused food, wanting her stomach empty. To finish her preparations, she had taken a slim piece of timber and burned marks on it with a hot nail, to measure inches. For greater lengths, she had tied knots at intervals into a long piece of rawhide string.
“Ready?” Clay asked, holding up a lantern.
“Almost.” The girl stood still in front of him, her face pale as she looked up at him. Then she took a quick step toward him, flung her arms about him and pressed her face to his chest, the impact nearly knocking the bowler hat from her head.
Stunned, the lantern in one hand, Clay lifted his other hand to anchor the girl against him, but she was gone before he had a chance to complete the motion. For a second longer, he could feel the imprint of her warmth against him.
“I’ll take the feet,” Mr. Hicks said. “You take the head.”
Clay put the lantern down. He wrapped his arms around the girl, but the contact was purposeful and efficient now, lacking the emotional charge of the fleeting embrace of a moment ago. Why had she done it? For courage? Or a farewell in case something went wrong and she didn’t make it back from the cave?
Mr. Hicks bent his burly frame to grab the girl’s feet, and together they lifted her high. One hand curled around her shoulder, steadying her, the other hand beneath her breastbone, supporting her weight, Clay balanced her in the air.
The passage through the fissure was perhaps six feet long. The girl extended her arms, like a diver, and they eased her through the widest part of the gap, carefully holding her high, so she wouldn’t become wedged in the gap that narrowed beneath her.
“Back!” she cried out. “Pull me back.”
Carefully, the men eased the girl backward and settled her on her feet. She drew swift breaths and spoke in nervous bursts. “Can’t do it like that. The passage is too long. You can’t reach far enough to hold me up. You’ll have to let go of me, and I’ll fall into the crack and get stuck.”
She turned to face the fissure and gestured. “We’ll have to fill the lower part of the gap with earth. Or we might be able to wedge a piece of timber into the gap, and I can slide along it.”
They considered the problem, chose the timber beam as the best solution. Clay studied the shape of the gap to determine the size of tree they’d need, and then they trooped out into the open. The girl waited, basking in the sunshine, while the men scoured the forest.
They chose an aspen with a kink in the trunk where it grew past a boulder. After they’d stripped away the branches, Clay took a moment to whittle down the knots and peel away the roughest sections of the bark. To finish off, he ran his palm along the surface to ensure it had no splinters.
By the time they were done, the sun was sinking in the sky. The girl was sitting by the arrastre pit, arms wrapped around her knees, head bent, like she’d been when Clay went back for her at the water tower.
“Do you want to rest and try again tomorrow?” he asked.
She looked up, gave him a faint smile and shook her head. “I’m not tired. I’m just concentrating. Something a friend taught me recently—if I imagine myself through a task ahead and see myself succeed in it, success will come.”
After pausing to top up the coal oil lanterns and relight them, they went back into the dank darkness of the mine. Mr. Hicks helped Clay lift the length of timber in place, and they wiggled it about to ensure a snug fit, the kink in the aspen trunk curving around a bump in the rock wall.
“We’ll lift you up and you can try it out,” Clay said to the girl.
Mr. Hicks squatted to light the whale oil lamp on the ground. While he was busy with the task, Clay had Annabel make a final inspection of the toolkit she had gathered into an oilcloth pouch and strapped around her waist, in case they would be unable to pass anything to her through the gap.
One by one, she showed him the contents. Matches. Candles. Pencil and paper. Her measuring stick and the ball of rawhide string with knots in it. Clay watched her in the lamplight. She seemed so small, so fragile, yet determined as she checked off each item, muttering to herself and frowning in concentration.
She looked up. “I’m ready.”
Clay tied the rope around her waist. For an instant, he stepped back, hoping for another one of those lightning hugs, but Annabel lifted her arms in her diver’s pose. Clay took her shoulders. Mr. Hicks took her feet, and together they lifted her up and eased her into the gap.
“It’s good.” Annabel’s voice grew muffled as they inched her forward. “The beam is not wide enough to crawl on, but it will stop me from falling into the crevice and provide support when I make my way back from the cave.”
She wriggled along. Her hips vanished out of sight. Her feet kicked in tiny jerks, the way a swimmer’s feet might do. Clay fed through the rope tied around her waist, to keep it slack. Finally, her heavy boots disappeared into the fissure. The rope snapped taut and they heard a thud and an alarmed cry.
Then there was only silence.
Chapter Ten
As Annabel pushed through the gap, she advanced into almost complete darkness. There was nothing to guide her but the acrid odors ahead and the faint coolness of the draft on her face.
She’d not appreciated the difficulty of emerging out of a narrow hole, like the neck of a bottle, with nothing to hold on to, no means of knowing how far below the ground was, how hard the landing. Once her head and shoulders were clear of the passage, she reached down to explore the cliff wall below with the flat of her hands. The surface was vertical, smooth and damp and slippery.
Bracing her palms against the stone wall, wriggling with her hips, kicking with her feet, Annabel inched forward along the narrow beam of timber, emerging into the cave. When gravity took over, she popped out of the hole and tumbled down in a wild somersault.
The impact of the landing knocked her breathless. The drop had been no more than six feet, but the ground was solid rock. Her bones jarred. However, the worst of it was the sense of disorientation. It took her a moment to home in on the streak of light through the gap and get her bearings.
She scrambled to her feet, lined her face with the opening, her only connection to the outside world. She’d been too stunned to realize that Clay’s frantic voice was calling out to her. “Kid, are you all right? Kid? Kid?”
“I’m okay.” She took a deep breath. “But I would have never agreed to this if I’d understood how terrifying the landing is.” Not pausing to wait for a response, she added, “Pass me a lantern, and be quick about it.”
The light in the gap intensified, and then a lantern hanging on a metal hook attached to the end of a wooden pole came through. Annabel rose on tiptoe to lift the lantern from the hook and turned around, holding the light high.
She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting to see, but if it had been sparkling stalagmites or a glittering emerald pond, she was in for a disappointment. The cave was roughly twelve feet wide and twice as long, made of gray rock that glistened damp in the glow of the lantern. At the opposite end, a black shadow indicated
another fissure that connected deeper into the bowels of the mountain.
“Take the lamp!” Clay was calling out from the mine tunnel.
Annabel turned around, deposited the first lantern on the floor of the cave and reached up to take another one from the hook at the end of the pole.
“I’ll pass you the third lantern,” Clay called out. “We’ll make do with the whale oil lamp.”
“No,” Annabel called back. “If I have an accident, you might need the lantern to rescue me. I’ll manage with two.”
Tugging at the rope tied around her waist, she began to explore the cave. Advancing a few steps at a time, she set down one lantern and returned for the other, always making sure there was enough light by her feet, even when she held one of the lanterns high to illuminate the walls.
Moving clockwise, she searched the rock face in a systematic pattern, left to right, ceiling to floor. Nothing but plain gray granite. The fissure at the far end was barely wide enough for her to poke her arm inside. She couldn’t see through to the other side, but the draft of fresh air felt stronger here, indicating the presence of another exit.
Some kind of thick white substance that reeked of ammonia covered the rear wall. Bat droppings, Annabel guessed, but when she looked up into the ceiling she could see no bats, and the droppings seemed old, suggesting the bats had abandoned the cave a long time ago.
Clinging to a fading hope, Annabel took longer to inspect the final two walls. The surface was more broken in texture, and paler in color. Holding the light close to the rock, she examined every crevice, pausing to study every variation in color.
Nothing. No sign of gold. Her spirits sank. Just to make sure, she went back to the left wall, where she had started, and inspected it with the same thoroughness she had used to search the other walls.
Nothing.
From Runaway to Pregnant Bride Page 9