Silver Dreams

by Thomason, Cynthia

  Even considering their perilous situation, Elizabeth couldn't help noticing an underlying bitter tone in Max's voice. He almost sounded like he was angry with her. She decided she'd ask him about it once all this was over with, but right now she was just thankful he was playing along.

  "She's drunk all right," he continued. "She has been since we left Manhattan. That flask of hers is always full of whiskey."

  Elizabeth grinned stupidly and put the flask to her mouth again. Then she hugged it to her chest. "I changed my mind,” she said. “I don’t want to give one drop of this to Max. It’s the best I ever had, and if you're gonna throw me over this mountain, at least I'm gonna feel like I'm flying when I go down."

  Nick roared with laughter. "Look at her, Paulie. She sure is drunk as a skunk. I got to have me a taste of whatever’s in that flask."

  "No!" Elizabeth shouted, clutching the bottle even more tightly. "You stay away. You can't have any. It's mine."

  "Like hell, girl." Nickie grabbed the flask out of her hand and raised it to his lips. He drank like a man denied water for a week, and when he was finished, he tossed the empty container to the ground. "Hooey, she's right. That's some good whiskey."

  Paulie’s scowl said he was losing patience with his partner. "You've had your fun, Nick. Now get over here and finish the job. Nick...Nickie?"

  Nick couldn't answer. The croaking sounds coming from his mouth were definitely not words. His face had turned a deep crimson. His eyes bulged grotesquely. His big lips quivered in time to the jerky motions of his arms and legs. He put his hand around his throat and squeezed. And then he dropped.

  His boot heels dug into the dirt. He clawed the ground with his fingernails. When his tongue lolled out of his mouth, drool ran into the sand. For the last few seconds that he lived, Nick was an agonizing caricature of a marionette's puppet, his limbs dancing to unseen strings.

  Elizabeth had never seen a man die before, but she knew she'd never forget it. Even knowing this one deserved it, her stomach did a cartwheel, and a new wave of dizziness nearly brought her to her knees.

  Luckily, Max hadn't waited for Nickie to die before launching his attack on the shocked Paulie. He rammed his head into the bigger man's abdomen. Paulie's breath whooshed out in a rush, and he doubled over in pain. With a resounding crack, Max brought his knee up to meet the thug’s face, and Paulie shot up like a jack-in-the-box.

  Elizabeth thought that blow would bring the man down, but she was wrong. The expression in Paulie's eyes was one of venomous intent - kill or be killed.

  Suddenly Max and Paulie were a tangle of flying arms and twisting legs. Elizabeth grabbed the nearest thing she could fight with, the last empty ore bucket, and ran for the melee. Just as she was about to bring her weapon down on Paulie's head, Max's face appeared on top. She dropped the bucket only to realize that just as quickly it was the other way around.

  Dirt and rocks spun out from under their bodies, and clouds of dust rose in the air, but from what she could tell, no serious injuries were inflicted on either man. They were simply too close together for one of them to pummel the other into submission. Elizabeth was beginning to think that the one who simply outlasted the other would emerge victor.

  That might have happened if they'd been on level ground. They might have rolled and grunted until one man gave up, but what they seemed to have forgotten was the mountain ledge. Heedless of direction, they spun toward the craggy edge. "Max!" Elizabeth screamed. "Watch out! You're going to go over!"

  His head popped up. He stared at her for one terrifying second. "Oh, shit!" he hollered.

  He dug his heels into the loose dirt at the edge. Pieces of rock flew into the nothingness of space, leaving Max's foot dangling in the air one thousand feet above the canyon floor. Dragging Paulie, he inched backward until his boot bit into another segment of solid ground. That too gave way, sending a large chunk of mountain careening down the chasm.

  "Do something, Max!" Elizabeth cried. "Oh, my God!" He was still attached to Paulie when she reached for the collar of his shirt. The material, matted with grime and sweat, slipped through her fingers. He was going over!

  She stumbled backwards, sank to her knees and covered her eyes. An ear-piercing scream rent the air, but it wasn't Max's. She'd never heard Max scream, but in her heart she knew if he did, it wouldn't sound like that, and the knowledge gave her the courage to look up.

  One of his legs was still dangling over the edge of the cliff, but he held firmly to a jutting rock and painstakingly managed to swing the leg up to solid ground. He lay flat in the dirt, coughing and panting before raising his head to look at Elizabeth. His shirt was torn and spotted with blood. His hands were shaking and his face was caked with dirt. But his eyes, his wondrous, beautiful blue eyes, peeking out from the matted hair on his forehead, were full of pride. "We did it," he said. "We beat them."

  He stood up slowly and came toward her, and the dam of Elizabeth's emotions burst. She didn't know her brother's fate. She didn't know if Ramona was alive. But as she wiped away the moisture from her eyes and the grit from her face, she laughed hysterically. Her tears were mostly for Max, and they were tears of joy.

  He halted a few feet from her and gazed into her eyes for a long moment. "Are you all right?" he asked.

  She started to close the space he'd left between them, but something about his demeanor stopped her. His voice was distant, cold. While his concern seemed genuine, it didn't touch her soul. He could have been asking after the well being of a perfect stranger. He passed his arm over his eyes to wipe the sweat away, and when she looked into them again, she saw only emptiness.

  "Yes, I'm okay," she answered.

  "Thank God.” He released a deep sigh. “That was a good plan you came up with," he said. "You probably saved both our lives."

  She didn't know how to react. She wanted to throw her arms around him and bury her face against his tattered collar. She wanted to feel his arms around her, but they hung at his sides as lifeless as the veil over his eyes. It seemed as though the light had gone out of Max.

  "It was all I could think of," she said. "I’m glad it worked. But you were so brave. You kept them occupied and you picked up on what I was doing. You could have been killed, Max. When I think how close you came to..."

  "Well I wasn’t. We're both alive to tell our tales, different as they may be."

  He brushed past her, opened the cap of a canteen and splashed cool, clear water on his face before dumping the rest of the contents over his head. Watching his back, Elizabeth shivered as if she had suffered the dousing.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  It was as though Max hardly knew her. Elizabeth turned away from him, unable to bear this callous indifference. Why was he shunning her now when she needed him most? She was sore, hurt and so miserably alone. For all she knew, the brother who had deceived her might be dead, and the man who had won her heart had just handed it back to her with the insensitivity of a stranger.

  She wished she could take back the horrible, hurtful words she had said. She had blamed Max for the predicament they were in, and that wasn't fair. Max was right. She wouldn't have accepted the truth about Ross if he'd told her before, just as she hadn’t when he told her a few minutes ago. She had turned her misdirected anger on Max and now she wouldn’t blame him if he truly hated her.

  What if he never forgave her? What if her stubbornness and sharp tongue had lost her the one thing in her life that was worth keeping forever? She had no one to blame but herself. If only she could convince him that if he had gone over that cliff, the best part of her would have died with him.

  She felt his hand on her shoulder and heard his voice close to her ear. "You're shaking, Betsy. Are you sure you're not hurt?"

  She nearly collapsed with the gratitude of having him close again. Maybe he still cared. She turned her face toward his, hoping to see the old Max again, but when their gazes met, he dropped his hand. The impassiveness was still in his cool blue eyes. "No, I'm not hu
rt," she said.

  He inclined his head toward the mine. "We've got to go in, you know."

  She nodded. "Do you think they're alive?"

  "I don't know. I think they might be. I just can't believe Dooley would shoot anyone. But there's only one way to find out, if you're up to it."

  Within minutes they reached what used to be the opening to the cavern. Now it was a wall of rocks and boulders. "Damn Dooley," Max swore. He couldn't imagine how long it would take Betsy and him to dig through the rubble, if they somehow found the stamina to take on the task. And even worse, he didn't know what they'd find on the other side.

  Betsy had been through so much, he hated to think of her facing the gruesome scene they could discover. She blamed him for everything that had happened, and he still felt the sting of her words. Even if he could turn back the clock, he didn’t know if he’d handle the situation any differently. He’d hurt her, and for that he felt like a heel. But at least he'd try his damnedest to get her brother out of that hell hole. At least he could do that. He owed her that.

  "It looks pretty hopeless," she said.

  Hopeless is right, he thought. As hopeless as the son of a drunken Irishman thinking he could win the heart of a girl like Betsy Sheridan. Max was a good reporter, but that's all he would ever be. All he ever wanted to be. An aristocrat? Never. He wasn’t such a fool as to believe he could play a role he wasn’t born to. And for that reason, he was better off letting Betsy go now before he couldn’t let her go at all.

  "It might not be as bad as it seems," he said. "Hand me the pick." While she reached behind her for the tool, he grabbed the nearest boulder and worked it loose from the pile. When he reached for the next one, he heard a dull, clinking sound from the other side.

  "Betsy, listen."

  She pressed her ear to the rocks, and a smile slowly spread across her face. "Someone is signaling us,” she said. “They’re alive.”

  “At least one person is,” he said. He cupped his hands around his mouth and hollered, "Hello in there! Everybody all right?"

  A faint voice answered from beyond the rock wall. "Get us out of here."

  "It's Ramona!" Betsy shouted. "Ramona! What about Ross?"

  "He's alive, but Dooley shot.him Hurry up."

  Max took the pick from Betsy and attacked the wall furiously. When he stopped to catch his breath, he heard footsteps behind him. He whirled around to see Dooley retreating to the cavern entrance. Max reached him in three long strides and grabbed his shirt. "Oh, no you don't," he snarled. "You’ve got some explaining to do."

  Dooley's face blanched to the color of the gypsum along the walls. "I...I was just looking for, for..."

  Max held his hand a few inches over his own head. "For two hoodlums about this tall?"

  "N...no," Dooley stuttered. "Ross. I’m looking for Ross. He said he'd be here, and I promised to help him." He cocked his head and shifted his weight from one foot to the other as if he were listening for Ross’s voice. Max didn’t buy it.

  "What ha...happened around here anyways?" Dooley asked.

  Max pulled a gun out of the waistband of Dooley's pants and set it on a rock out of reach. "As if you didn't know," he said. "And Dooley, you're going to help Ross all right. You're going to help plenty."

  "You awful, despicable man!" Betsy said, stepping between the two of them. "If my brother dies, you're a murderer." Dooley backed into the mine wall, but that didn't stop Betsy. She kept inching closer. Finally he put his hands up in surrender.

  "How could you do such a horrible thing?" she demanded.

  "What do you mean 'if my brother dies'?" Dooley squawked. "He ain't dead? Well, that's good, ain't it? I didn't mean to kill him.” He squinted one eye and looked first at Betsy and then Max. "But there are some mean characters around here. They threatened me. You got to watch out for them."

  "We've met," Max said. "And since I figure you saw one of them laid at our camp, I’m sure you’ll agree that the day hasn't gone too well for those boys." He strode over to Dooley and poked his finger in the old man's chest. "And it's not looking too good for you either."

  Dooley swallowed hard. "I can explain everything."

  "And you'll get your chance, but right now we've got one man to bury and two people to dig out. Why don't you grab a tool and start hacking away at these boulders."

  "I can do that," he said, edging away from Max. “But I got to go to camp for a minute.” He must have read the expression on Max’s face correctly because he immediately added, “I ain’t running off. I’m going to get something that will help us out here. You can even go with me.”

  Max considered and finally said, “Go on, but hurry up. We haven’t got a lot of time before the situation gets a whole lot worse inside that cave.”

  Dooley ran off, and Betsy and Max went back to work. When he returned minutes later, he proudly announced, “I took care of the dead one,” he said. “So now you don’t have to worry about him.”

  “You buried him already?” Max asked.

  “Not exactly. He was a heck of a lot easier to roll than he would have been to bury."

  Betsy stared in shock. "You mean you..."

  Dooley nodded, spread his legs and looked down between his feet. "Adios Amigo."

  Max smiled. “Hardly the Christian thing to do, old man,” he said.

  Dooley shook his head. "He wasn’t exactly a Christian.”

  Noticing the pick in Dooley’s hand, Max said. “Start digging. We’ve got to save the living right now.”

  “No need to dig,” Dooley responded. "God give us brains for a reason." He pulled a single stick of dynamite from his pocket. "I figure one little stick ain't gonna hurt anybody, and it might just blow a hole in them rocks big enough to get girlie and the little fella out."

  “That’s not going to work,” Max said. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “Naw. It’ll work. Tell them two to back out of way.”

  Max thought a moment more and then gave in. Dooley’s solution was the best one they had right now. Even with three people digging, they might not reach Ramona and Ross by dark. "Ramona!" he called. "Stand back and cover your ears. We're coming in."

  A half hour later, Ross lay on a pallet outside his tent. The bleeding in his shoulder had stopped, but the bullet was still lodged just under the skin below his clavicle. He was fully awake and had downed some of Ramona's whiskey.

  "It's got to come out, Ross," Max said. "I can do it but it’s going to hurt."

  "You don’t have to sound so cheerful about it, Cassidy," Ross said. "Go ahead. I'll do whatever it takes to recover. All I can think about is living long enough to put a bullet in that jackass as payback."

  Dooley looked up from a concoction of leaves and mud he was mixing. "You'll feel different once this stuff takes the poison out," he said. "Maybe you'll just be satisfied to take a good poke at me."

  Elizabeth expected Ross to holler back, but he didn't. He held his shoulder and actually smiled. "You promise that horrid mess will work?”

  “Always has.”

  “And you promise not to duck?"

  "You'll get one clean shot."

  Ross sighed. "Okay then. Cassidy, is that knife sterile?"

  "As much as I can make it."

  "And you're sure you watched real close when your father took that slug out of one of his friends."

  "I was a twelve-year-old kid," Max said confidently. "What could have been more fascinating than barroom surgery?"

  "And the man lived?"

  "As far as I know, he's still a regular at the Tarreytown Pub."

  "Ramona, aren't I supposed to have a bullet or a twig or something to bite?"

  She sat beside Ross and held his hand. "I think we've had enough bullets. Here, put my poncho sleeve in your mouth. I don't think it'll explode."

  He did as she told him and closed his eyes. "Okay, Max, do it."

  It was over in less than five minutes. Ross' face dripped with sweat, and the sleeve of Ramona's poncho wa
s soaked through, but Ross never once cried out. He had, indeed, taken it like a man.

  A sober party of explorers packed their gear and ore samples on the burros the next morning and prepared to descend Devil's Fork Mountain. They'd cheated death, and the close brush with eternity had changed them all. An air of thoughtful sobriety hung over the Fair Day Five, leaving each member lost in his own world.

  Yet underneath it all, the silver still glimmered. It was tarnished from greed and fear and, for Elizabeth, the hopelessness of lost love, but it shone faint and constant nevertheless. They still had the silver, and they'd even decided on the fairest way to divide the profits.