She stepped out into the rain and walked. Could the story be true? Why had she not sensed evil at the mine? Sadness, yes—a haunting lostness—but not such evil as she had just heard. What of Rose? Giving her baby away to protect—
Steel gripped her arm, a fierce face, teeth bared, hair hanging wet across his shoulders. She screamed but no sound came, sheer terror holding her mute as Quillan Shepard, Wolf’s son, yanked her close.
“Perhaps you’d like the rest of the story.” He spoke through clenched teeth, narrow and straight. “How my own mother gave me away and the Shepards took me in, illegitimate spawn of reprobate parents. How their natural-born children died not two weeks later of the cholera, but somehow the cursed baby lived. How that poisoned the mother against me, and how she believed I was the devil incarnate, no less than the cause of her sweet children’s deaths. Mr. Shepard’s rod might purge me of my sins, but it never changed the fact that I lived when the others didn’t.”
His fingers clawed into her arms, his eyes black with wrath. “She loved to tell me the story you just heard, lest I somehow forget I wasn’t really theirs. Mr. Shepard tried sometimes to show me kindness in a stern, well-meaning way. He did his Christian duty. But you see, they just couldn’t change my parentage.”
Quillan’s rage seemed to deflate. Carina heard it seep out of his lungs in a low, sighing breath. He let her go and turned away. “So now you know.”
Carina felt a stab of conscience, a dirtiness inside her like the whole of Crystal infecting her heart. Rain ran down inside her collar where the jacket had fallen loose when he released her, soaking her neck beside the braid. She had wanted this, wanted to see him hurt and shamed. But her victory was bitter.
“I’m sorry.” The words came of themselves from a place inside her not tainted.
He looked at her sideways, a strand of brown hair clinging to his cheekbone, drops of rain falling from his mustache. “Would it have mattered if I’d carried your things?”
She stared at him, confused.
“Would you have been so bent on this if I hadn’t sent your wagon over?”
Carina closed her eyes, shrinking inside. She had not thought what it would do to him to have the story told. His name was not mentioned, but those who knew … All it would take was the connection to be made, father to son. She looked again, seeing the wreckage of her deed. He was a man, not a monster.
What could she do? What could she give in return for what she’d damaged? “Mr. Beck suspects you.”
His gaze merely held her.
She spread her hands. “Of the murder, of all the violence, I suppose.” His eyes were flat, lifeless. “And you, Miss DiGratia? Is that what you think?”
“I don’t know what to think.” She raised a splayed hand. “I don’t know violence, murder, greed.” She waved both arms. “I don’t understand this place, these people.” She wiped the rain from her eyes. “I should not have come.”
“Why did you?” He had the right to ask, the right to know.
“To hurt someone.”
His eyes narrowed, not comprehending the details, but not doubting the truth of it.
Looking down, she pressed her palm to her forehead, fingers curled. “I thought I mattered to him. I was mistaken.” Her hand dropped.
Quillan looked away, searched the street slowly with his eyes. They stood alone in the rain, stripped of pretense, yet strangers. After a moment, he blew out a slow breath, and she thought he would speak, but he simply stepped off the walk and strode away.
The air grew cold in his wake. Pulling the canvas jacket close, Carina hurried for the livery.
Alan Tavish snored in the chair inside the doorway with a look of pain even in his sleep. The rain must torment his swollen joints. She didn’t wake him, saddling Dom herself. She heard Mr. Tavish stir, but she passed by like a shadow. Leading the mule out, she swept Crystal with her eyes.
Piles of stone next to the Exchange showed where the new opera house was being built. Across from it a haberdashery had opened its doors in the weeks she’d lived there. Crystal was growing, thriving, coming into its own. She thought of the miners gathered around her, good men, sincere. Yet at its heart, Crystal was rotten. Where did the poison come from? Mounting, she urged Dom up the street, up the gulch. It was inevitable. The mine drew her even now, even knowing.
“Carina!” Mr. Beck called from his office, but she ignored him, heeling Dom past with an urgency he sensed and responded to. She headed for Placer, the tale of Wolf and Rose spinning in her head. She had asked about Wolf, but it was Rose her thoughts clung to. Who was the woman, and what had brought her to this place?
“We all felt her story must be some tragic.” Had Rose gone to Placerville to find peace? Impossible. “She meant to do her part, same as the rest.” Carina trembled. What could make a woman choose that? And then to go with Wolf without a fight, to take his hand and go …
She tried to picture Wolf but could only see Quillan, teeth bared, gray eyes burning with fury and bitter rage. And then the despair that had quenched him. But it wasn’t the woman he described that held her thoughts. It was the one who had given him up. Rose. What hold did she have on Carina’s thoughts? A hold strong enough to bring her to the mine named for her.
The way was steep and slippery. Dom struggled. After one treacherous stumble, Carina dismounted and led him, but it was slow, difficult footing. Lightning seared the sky, the rain coming harder. The crack of thunder made her jump. She was pazza to be out in this.
She headed for thicker trees to shelter in as she climbed. Dom balked, hanging his head stubbornly. Bene. He need not come. She twisted the reins around a branch and left him, then climbed alone. He gave a plaintive bray, but she went on, determined to reach the Rose Legacy.
Perchè? What did it matter? She should go back, take Dom, and ride home. Home? This was not home, could never be home. She was without her people, without those she knew and understood. She was like Rose—alone and in the hands of some force bigger than herself.
Her foot slipped. Lightning flashed again, and it seemed the very ground rumbled beneath her. Her feet slipped again, and she realized the ground did shake. She felt it in her hands when she caught herself. What was it? She had felt tremors in Sonoma, but this was different.
Looking up the gulch where it narrowed, she saw something her mind could make no sense of. A trick of the rain perhaps, but no—it was a wall of water where no water should be. And it was rushing down the gulch. Dom!
She heard him scream as the water crashed over the place she had left him and kept coming, rising at a terrible speed, trees falling, crashing with a roar until she realized she, too, could be swept away. She staggered up as the water climbed, dragging herself up toward the mine, gaping now above her.
With bloody fingers and aching legs, she fought the weight of her soaked skirts and scrambled to the cleared land before the mine. The black mouth opened, and she rushed inside even as the water struck the mountain, flying up into the sky with a roar of white foam and tree trunks.
She staggered backward from the horror outside, groping the walls on either side. Then suddenly the ground was gone and she fell.
Quillan felt heavy, as though the very muscles under his skin had taken on a weight not of flesh but of lead. He needed distance and solitude. Why had he come to Crystal in the first place? He couldn’t remember, couldn’t think of one good reason he’d dragged himself back to this gulch to make a living.
Of course, he’d only been an infant when he left Placer. It was hardly a homecoming to set up freighting in Crystal. Only he knew, somewhere in the back of his mind, that up the mountain lay the mine. He’d looked on it only once when he first came. The Rose Legacy. His legacy.
He’d known there were old-timers in Crystal who remembered the tale. Even some, like Mae and Alan and Cain, who knew he was that baby, grown. But some aberrant need had brought him here, kept him here, as though by proving himself he could remove the stain of his father. Wo
lf.
He swallowed the bitter taste in his mouth. There were other towns, places he could go. Leadville, Fairplay, Denver. Even Colorado Springs, the little London. He had choices. Crystal meant nothing to him.
Some of the people maybe. Cain and D.C., Mae, Mrs. Barton, and Alan Tavish. And others, though not many. Not enough to keep him here. Why was he risking his neck to discover who was behind the roughs? What did it matter to him?
Berkley Beck suspected him of the murder? Well, that made it mutual. And Miss DiGratia was the pawn they each used against the other. Had Beck sent her off to pry into his past? Had he planted suspicions he knew she’d pursue? Why? So the men would start to wonder, to whisper, to find in their superstitious memories fuel with which to burn him?
Quillan reached his tent and ducked inside. Crouching near his cache under the floor, he pulled the canvas aside and considered taking it all. He could clear out of there and not look back. It wasn’t his affair what happened to Crystal, and he wasn’t responsible for fixing it. Cain was right. It was eating him, his need to set things right in the community his father had violated.
He hunkered back on his haunches, the muscles in his thighs taut. He was not one for hasty decisions. If he packed up in the rain, he’d have to unpack it all and let it dry out. Better to wait until the sun did the job, then pull stakes and move on. He closed up the flooring. Jabbing his fingers into his hair, he went back out into the rain. A flash, then thunder rumbled.
The rain fell harder. He would check on his horses and find something to eat. Mrs. Barton would have something cooked up at the hotel. Another flash—this time a straight bolt that hit ground—brought his head up. Thunder cracked, then rumbled and continued, seeming to grow louder and not diminish.
He frowned, feeling the ground tremble. What on earth … High up the gulch he saw it, churning, foaming, rushing toward them like doom. Every nerve inside jolted, and his muscles responded. “Hey! Flood! Flood!”
He ran for the livery, wrenching open the door. “Flood, Tavish!” He shook the old man, then ran on. Most of the city was holed up in the saloons and gambling houses. He hollered as he ran past, banging the doors open, then running on. Others ran with him now, hollering as they bolted for higher ground.
A sudden thought froze Quillan’s feet. Cain. He changed direction and sprinted for the tents. Already the roar of the flood filled his ears. “Cain! D.C.!” He reached their tent and flung open the flap. Cain slept, one-legged on the cot.
D.C. jumped to his feet, the dog jumping with him. “What is it?”
“Flood!” Quillan rushed in, shook Cain awake, then grabbed him up beneath the arms. The water hit them as they cleared the tent, Quillan’s arms tight around Cain’s chest. They were tossed like rubble, dragged under and spun, but he held tight, fighting with his legs, kicking them to the surface.
White foam, thick with debris, pushed them along. A body slapped against him, stripped naked and lifeless, then spun and churned by. Shuddering, he kept Cain afloat and searched for D.C. He opened his mouth to holler, gulped the torrent and gagged, then searched only with his eyes whenever they came up again. An uprooted pine trunk swung around and thunked the side of his head. He grabbed it, pushing Cain upward, and the man took hold, gasping and choking.
Quillan let go and searched the rushing water for D.C. He was there, among those fighting their way to the edge, climbing the sides of the gulch. He saw horses and Alan Tavish clinging to one of his own blacks, Jock. Jock would carry the old ostler to safety, but where was Jack? He couldn’t worry about that now.
He took a new hold of Cain and worked them both toward the shore. The water was a living force in deadly combat with him, sapping his strength, numbing his mind. Again and again it almost tore Cain from his grip, but each time he gained a new hold and struck again for the shore, reaching it at last and slogging down in the mud.
Chest heaving, he felt his head where the tree had struck him, sticky with fresh blood now that the water no longer doused the cut. His arms shook and his legs were numb. His throat was clogged with mud. But he lived.
A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee …
Why the words came, he couldn’t say. Panting, Quillan rose up to one elbow to search the water, still rushing by, taking with it the disintegration of the city. He saw men caught in the flow, boards and trees and horses. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked….
Cain groaned. Twisting around, Quillan saw D.C. scrambling toward them, the dog dragging free of the water and limping alongside.
There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. Frowning, Quillan stared up the valley, where his tent had stood with the others, all of them lost now beneath the running water. And not just his tent, but everything—everything he’d worked for and saved. But he was alive.
He could see buildings beyond the flood, those far enough from the creek, those built of brick or stone that had held and protected others beside them. The water must have built up by the falls where the gulch narrowed. Breaking loose, it had spread out some before reaching Crystal, though still rushing with a deadly force unimpeded by the debris it collected.
Half of Central Street had vanished in the torrent pouring by with terrible strength, the buildings crumpled like paper, wrenched apart and carried away, leaving only the brick bank and hotel and those buildings shielded by them. The livery was gone, and that would be a blow to Alan. But even that seemed small compared to their lives.
Quillan rubbed the muck from his eyelids, stretched his leg, and winced. Cain’s palsied hand gripped his shoulder, and Quillan met the old man’s eyes. Neither spoke. Neither had to.
TWENTY
What is a lie but a shade of the truth?
—Rose
ROSE, ROSE, DON’T LEAVE me here. Carina staggered behind a woman who moved away, deaf to her cries. Show me the way out! If she could just reach her, Rose would lead her out of the darkness. She ran her hands over damp, stony walls that closed in on either side. A chill ran up and down her spine. Rose! Rose turned, and Carina strained to see her face, but it vanished in the dark. And then she was falling….
Carina woke, but in the darkness she couldn’t tell if her eyes were truly open or if she still dreamed. The pain in her shoulder was real; the cold, dank air more keen than she could imagine. She tried to move, kicking a stone with her foot. Pulse throbbing, she listened to it strike the walls, down, down below her before it plunked into water and the echoes died away.
Reaching tremulous fingers, she found an edge. She was on a stone shelf, with the shaft yawning beneath, but how far? Her head spun. No,
no, no. She must not allow even a moment’s dizziness or she would fall again. She willed it away, feeling about with her left hand to gauge the size and shape of her refuge. It was narrow, scarcely wider than her body lying parallel to the wall.
Shifted slightly by her searching, her right shoulder shot fire down her arm and across her collarbone. She gasped with the pain. The joint was not right. Her arm would not move. She tried to sit up and screamed with the pain in her damaged shoulder.
How far down was she? There was no way to tell, but by the movement of the air she guessed not so far. She could hear sounds from outside, water rushing … the flood! No. It wasn’t forceful enough for that. Water certainly, but probably running down the mountain, maybe the falls. It was strange how things were magnified, a dripping somewhere, a creaking timber. She dropped her face to her hand, trying to think.
Was it night? Or was she just so far from daylight it didn’t matter? She felt the timbers that formed the wall. They were laid flush into the side of the shaft, inset one above the other. Even without her damaged shoulder, she couldn’t climb it. It was useless to try with one arm.
She laid her head down, aware now of other aches—her neck and back, her left shin and elbow. A dull throb started in her head. But she was
not so battered she would die of it. Death would be slower, more agonizing. Hunger and thirst. Maybe shock. She closed her eyes. Per piacere, Signore.
Who would think to look? And even if they looked, who would come so far as to look here in the Rose Legacy? Then an awful thought stopped her breath. Was there even someone to look? What if the flood had struck Crystal? What was there to stop it rushing down the gulch, taking the town by surprise?
She trembled. She must try to get out. In spite of the pain, she pulled herself to her knees but shook so hard she couldn’t stand. The throbbing grew insistent like the roar of the flood in her ears. She was too weak from the fall. She must wait. Alone. In the darkness. She pressed her palm against the timbers in terror. “Signore, per piacere.”
Like a child she begged the God who either gave or punished. A capricious God who sometimes deigned to answer and sometimes not, a God she needed, yet feared. In the darkness, she was stripped of all but the fear. “Please, God. Per piacere. I’ll do anything if you take me out of here.”
Forgive.
She startled, staring into the blackness, certain the voice had been real. But there was no one, nothing. Forgive? Flavio? Divina? Divina. Divine. Belonging to God. Even God preferred Divina. Carina slumped against the wall. The pain grew unbearable in her shoulder, and she cradled her arm and moaned. But the echoes coming up from below so frightened her, she bit her lip against the sound of her own voice and reached for the crucifix at her throat. Her fingers found empty flesh.
The dog’s soft tongue slowly lapped his ear, and Cain raised a shaky hand to pat its head. He couldn’t speak, and a sharp, throbbing pain immobilized his other arm. It was gashed almost to the bone and blood ran freely from the wound. But for some reason best known to God himself, he’d been spared by the flood. Oh give thanks to the Lord for He is good: for his mercy endureth forever …
He met Quillan’s eyes, raw with emotion in the wake of his struggle. Cain wasn’t surprised when Sam scooched along on his belly and employed his tongue on Quillan’s hand. That hand had held on tenaciously, not letting an old man slip away. Caked with mud and bleeding, that hand was God’s own mercy enfleshed.
The Rose Legacy Page 25