An Eye for Gold

by Sarah Andrews

  Sally straightened up, thinking. Something about finding the print of a street shoe up here seemed more than a little odd to her. She stopped, hesitating. Had some horse’s ass gotten his vehicle stuck and then abandoned it? Hell, it was thirty miles to the nearest phone booth to call AAA. What had this moron been thinking?

  Sally started moving again, but now followed the tracks more slowly, looking for more footprints. Yes, here was another. Funny that the footprints appeared only intermittently, as if the hiker had been stepping mostly on stones, trying to leave as few tracks as possible. Here there was another skid, and even a handprint, as if he had been hurrying along, but stumbling. In a hurry. At least the jackass had had the sense to wear gloves—here was an impression of the seams—otherwise he’d have torn his hands up for sure.

  As she came around the shoulder of the mountain, Sally saw that the tire tracks led straight toward some old mine workings. But she saw no vehicle. Where had it gone?

  She headed toward the workings, hurrying now. She saw the remains of an old head frame off to one side, and the twisted remnants of some much newer fencing around an excavation, bent down at the front. As she neared the adit, she could see that it was not a simple exploratory scraping, as so many of them were. Nor was it the mouth of a tunnel, which would have traveled horizontally into the mountain, but a shaft, which went straight down. The mouth of the shaft had been surrounded by fencing, as was required by law to protect passersby such as herself from falling in, but something or someone had crashed through it.

  Sally stepped to the hole in the fencing, saw that the tire tracks did indeed travel right over the brink and into the hole. She stepped closer, carefully positioning herself against the bent remnants of the old head frame. She peered deeper into the hole. At the bottom of the shaft, perhaps twenty feet down, she could see the faint gleam of chrome. She knew immediately that it was the reflective strip on the back bumper of a four-wheel-drive vehicle.

  How lazy, she thought disparagingly, figuring the owner had gone through this game to avoid paying a dump fee. But then she rethought her deduction. It looks like a fairly new vehicle, a pretty nice one

  Sally reached into her fanny pack and extracted a small signal mirror which she always carried in case she became stranded. She tipped it this way and that, working out the’ angle of the sun and of the shaft, lining things up so that she could get some light down the hole. By the insignia, she could see that it was a late-model Ford Explorer.

  Sally’s roaming splinter of light picked up the driver’s side door. The window was open, and something appeared to be hanging out of it.

  It was a human arm.

  Sally straightened up, angry and horrified. “Son of a bitch,” she said aloud, swearing for the first time since her days in the navy. “Guess I’m going to be making more than one call.”

  VIRGIL DAVIS FELT his hand rising towards Laurel Dietz’s hair before he had even consciously considered the act It shone like the precious wire gold he could see on the prize mineral samples the men had brought out of the mine, and seemed twice as rare. Another inch, and his fingers would touch it

  She spun around in her swivel chair. As always, her blue eyes were large and bright and marvelously free of contempt. Their purity amazed him so. “What’s up, Virgil?” she asked

  “Just wondering what you were doing,” he answered, shyly hiding his hand behind his back. He leaned over her to stare into the computer screen which had so strongly held her attention while he approached. He saw lines and columns of numbers. They meant nothing to him. Then he turned to the desktop next to the computer. There he saw one panel of a tightly folded map. “Where’s that?” he asked, noticing the sample locations peppered over the contour intervals. Then he saw letters: K-A-M . . . “Oh, is that one of MacCallum’s maps of the Kammas?”

  For once, Laurel’s eyes expressed alarm.

  “Sorry,” he said, silently cursing himself for upsetting her. “Didn’t mean to—”

  “That’s okay, Virgil,” she said, reflexively lifting one delicate hand to the bandana that circled her neck. “Maybe it’s time to show this to you, anyway.”

  She unfolded the paper.

  Virgil’s pulse quickened. It was indeed a map of the Kamma Mountains. He could see that the map had started as one of the maps out of the ill-fated Phase I permitting application, but someone had added to it working off to the north where Phase II lay! “Laurel,” he cried, “you’re marvelous! I’ve been looking all over for MacCallum’s map!”

  “Well, this isn’t it,” she said. “I made it. I know the new project is way behind schedule, so in my free time, I’ve been out recompiling Don’s locations. And adding his assay results.”

  “But how did you find them?” Virgil said, astonished. “I dug all through his papers!”

  “Oh, I know. Even Kyle didn’t know where MacCallum kept his map, and without that, his assays meant nothing,” she said, smoothly diverting his attention back to the map. She tipped her head to one side and looked at him from under her eyelashes, the picture of innocence. “I knew you’d be worried, because the project would be falling behind, so I’ve been reconstructing things.” She ran a finger up the middle of the Kamma Mountains, right through the old shafts that had been the Brown Palace Mine in the ghost town of Rosebud. “And you can see he’s got a nice vein mapped right through here. He’s smart. He went after the halo of accessory minerals, just like he did when he found the veins we’re mining here at the Gloriana.”

  Virgil snatched up the map and began to roar with delight. “Laurel, you’re an angel! You’ve done it! Now I can go for Phase Two permits and get Kyle drilling! Oh, God, Laurel, you’ve saved my bacon!” Then he looked guiltily at her. “I’ll of course give you full credit. I tell you, this project has been the limit, with first that Indian making us move the mill, and then Pat Gilmore screaming about the mice, and then, hell, even Rodriguez disappearing when he promised those Phase One permits.”

  “Oh,” said Laurel. “Yes.” She blinked at him.

  Virgil blushed with embarrassment. “Sorry. But you understand, don’t you?”

  “Oh, yes, Virgil.” She blinked again.

  “Well,” Virgil said, his spirits again rising, “I’ll get that Christie bastard—” He stopped himself again, his face growing dark with consternation. “Laurel, he does nothing around here. Nothing.”

  Laurel smiled primly.

  “The day after MacCallum . . . went away, I told Christie to cough up a map, and you know what he said? He said to pull it out of . . . but I can’t repeat that in front of you.”

  Laurel reached out one delicate, shell-pink hand and placed it on Virgil’s. “I understand,” she said. “You work so hard. No one could have gotten this project up and running as fast or as well as you did. Everybody with half a brain knows that. And you’ve had so little help.”

  Virgil had to stop and reign himself in from an almost overwhelming urge to bend down to her, take her angelic head in his coarse, rough hands and pull it to his heart. But that would be unspeakable. Instead, he gave her what he hoped was a winning smile, and said, “I’m going straight to my office and call Chittenden and tell him what you’ve accomplished!”

  Virgil turned and hurried off, but allowed himself one longing backward look.

  Laurel was still sitting in her swivel chair, her waifish figure resting on its upholstery with all the gravity of a feather. He wasn’t certain, but there seemed to be an increased pinkness on her perfect throat.

  29

  KYLE CHRISTIE LED THE WAY TO THE MINE. ONCE again, I turned onto the road on which Pat Gilmore had crashed, but I followed Kyle to the north instead of going south to the crash site. After five or six miles, we turned east again onto a road that led up the slopes of the Eugene Mountains. As we ascended the slope, I looked south and could see black fingers of burned earth left by the range fire reaching across the valley floor.

  The entrance road to the mine was the best-kept dirt r
oad I had been on so far in Nevada, and we approached a gleamingly modern mining complex. Sheet metal buildings rose bleak against the dry landscape, and crisp new chain-link fencing rose like castle walls around it. The layout had the air of a military depot; no frills, but clean and solid. It had clearly been designed and built by someone who knew his business.

  After signing several forms at the security station declaring that I held Granville Resources harmless for any injuries I might sustain while on site, I passed through a metal detector and met the man who had laid out the complex. Virgil Davis was a thick-set guy in his sixties with the gruff, harried look of a man who had no patience for bullshit but met it daily. “Who’s your friend, Christie?” he barked at Kyle.

  Kyle put his hands on his hips and tried to look unfazed, but managed only to look petulant. I stuck out my hand. “I’m Em Hansen. I’m a geologist. I’m just visiting the area, and Kyle was kind enough to invite me up to see your wonderful facilities. I generally work in oil and gas, so it’s a real treat to see a mining operation,” I said.

  Blushing, Virgil Davis ignored my hand. His brusqueness softened. “Glad to meet you,” he grumbled. “You safety trained?”

  “Yes, sir. like I say, I’ve worked on drill rigs, and for many years. I have perfect respect for heavy machinery.”

  “Well, let’s get you a refresher anyway. We’re not OSHA here, we’re MSHA, Mine Safety and Health Administration.” He turned back to Kyle, his demeanor once again turning dark with annoyance. He grabbed him by the arm, and hauled him down the hall a distance no doubt designed to intimidate him and exclude me from the conversation. Still, I had no trouble understanding what he said. “Get her down the hall to the safety officer and get her the fifteen-minute refresher. You aren’t taking her underground. You lack the skills, and I don’t have any tour guides sitting around just waiting for you to run your girlfriends down there.”

  “Fine. I’ll just show her the surface workings,” Kyle said sulkily.

  “You can show her the mill if it’s okay with John, but get her trained. I don’t like anyone on this site who doesn’t know the drills.” Having said this, he turned and stormed down the narrow hallway, turned a corner, and disappeared from sight.

  Kyle grinned sheepishly. “Guess he likes you.”

  I almost said, Guess he doesn’t like you, but thought better of it.

  Kyle motioned for me to follow him to the safety officer’s room. As we stepped down the hallway, he leaned closer and lowered his voice. ‘For him, this is actually a good mood. Something must be up. He usually ignores me entirely. Of course, he’s still pissed at me for getting on his case a few days ago. My partner, MacCallum, like I said, he’s gone, see? And die afternoon before he turned up missing, I overheard die two of them arguing. Big show down. Virgil was telling MacCallum he was dragging his feet about the new project. He threatened to turn MacCallum in to Chittenden if he didn’t cough up a map, and MacCallum’s telling him where he can find it, if you know what I mean. MacCallum called him a son of a bitch and left So I went up to Virgil and gave him what for, right? And he tells me to piss up a rope. Then he demands that I give him a map, but I wouldn’t do that No way.” He made a horizontal slicing motion with one hand to show me how firm he had been about this.

  I nodded. The nod meant “You’re a hopeless putz,” but I let Kyle think it meant “I admire your fidelity.” Kyle was beginning to get on my nerves. I had known more than a few like him in the oil business. I had come to see that there were three levels at which a person could ply the trade of geology. First one could, through hard work and study, learn to describe the geology—be it an ore sample, or a drilling log, whatever—with competence. Second, one could, through experience and with reasonable intelligence, learn to make interpretations based on the observations described. This, I equated to the journeyman level of function as a geologist and I was sure that Kyle filled this bill when he stood over a drilling rig. But thirdly, and this was not common, one could—if one really “got” it—make predictions, some almost uncanny, based on those observations and interpretations. This third category was what I thought of as the master level, where the practitioner breathed in the geology and became one with it. This was MacCallum, the man Kyle believed could really “see” the gold. But there was also a fourth—accidental—category of practicioner, populated by those who just got lucky. And a fifth category: the huckster.

  Kyle’s no wizard, and he knows it, I decided. He’s just marking time, waiting for MacCallum to return from his mystical wanderings. That and the disappearance of Donald Paul MacCallum would explain why he had been sitting by the road goofing off when I first met him. I smiled to myself. Another word for goofing off was gold-bricking.

  The refresher course was largely a homily about not touching anything unless told I could do so, except for the bit about the use of a self-rescuer. A self-rescuer, it turned out, is a hand-sized chemical factory that all miners are required to carry on their persons whenever they go underground, a piece of equipment considered every bit as essential as their boots, their hard hats and the headlights mounted on them, and the battery packs that are clipped to their heavy webbed belts. In case of emergency, the self-rescuer can generate oxygen through a reaction between chemicals contained inside it. This reaction creates heat, a lot of it. The safety officer told me, “If told to do so, put this mouthpiece in your mouth and bite down, like a snorkel bit. It will grow hot. It will Mister your lips and burn your throat. Do not take it out until and unless you are told to do so.”

  I smiled bleakly. The array of required safety equipment suggested three things about going underground: something heavy might fall on me, it might get very dark, and, if these two things happened, I might find it hard to breathe. I began to feel less disappointed that Virgil Davis had said I couldn’t go there.

  After the refresher, Kyle rustled up John Steinhoff, the metallurgist who ran the mill. John was another big man, and he had bushy black eyebrows. He was just getting a cup of coffee from the kitchen facility when we found him. “Sure,” he said. “We’re about to pour a doré. You two can tag along, and I’ll show you the system. Put on your hard hats.”

  “The system” turned out to fill two big metal buildings several stories tall. Flying conveyor belts on steel superstructures, metal staircases, railings, and catwalks ranged everywhere, and the air vibrated with the thunder of the workings of the machinery.

  John pointed first to a big metal grating over the dumping portal. A thirty-ton ore truck from the mine was just backing toward it “That’s the grizzly. Anything too big to fall through the grating goes over there in the yard for further crushing. Below the grizzly, the ore goes through a bunch of screens. Anything over three-eighths of an inch goes into a secondary crusher like a big mortar and pestle, called a cone crusher.”

  John led us up along catwalks and out onto a soaring one that jutted upwards from the outside of the first building. It followed a conveyor up into the air toward a dumping chute that led toward the second building. The ground sloped down and away. I was sixty or seventy feet in the air with nothing under me but a steel grid and a pair of railings, and the air thrummed with sound around me. I made myself think about something else, and I was glad when we returned to the building. We followed staircases back down to the downhill side into the second building, and followed the moving belts of one through to an inside room. There, a rig that looked like a giant Rube Goldberg device led through a set of hoppers and into a ten-foot-long steel cylinder that lay rotating in a huge cradle.

  “Ball mill,” John hollered over the din. “It has a rubber liner, that’s why it’s so quiet.”

  If that was quiet, I didn’t think my ears could handle noisy.

  John pointed to the hoppers. “Trash catcher,” he said, regarding the first one. “A lot of shredded plastic comes out of the mine. All the blasting materials and such come packaged in it.” He pointed to the second one. “This one’s a gravity dropout. It catches any
gold that makes it through this far as nuggets. We don’t get much at this mine. We’re dealing with two-hundred-mesh stuff tops. Microscopic, most of it. Beyond here, you’ve got rock flour. During the process, it gets mixed with water.” He took us outside the building toward a series of enormous tanks. “This first one is a settling tank. We decant some of the water, so the solids are fifty-fifty with the remaining water. Then we adjust the pH, and on to the big tanks.”

  John led Kyle and me back inside and around a series of catwalks to raise us two stories higher, then out through a door onto a catwalk that led out over a battery of gigantic tanks. Each was thirty feet tall and about twenty feet in diameter. We moved out directly over them, following walkways forged of the steel mesh. I looked down into a thick, roiling, gray liquid, like the boiling mud pots at Yellowstone National Park. “What’s in those tanks?” I shouted, beginning to go hoarse.

  “Cyanide,” John roared back. “Like I said, we adjust the pH with lime, then add cyanide and shoot air through it. There are big blades under there that keep the solution stirred up so the solids don’t settle. Then—”

  Not wanting to think about the blades, I asked “How much cyanide do you use?”

  “We consume about a pound of cyanide per ton of ore,” John answered, casually leaning on a railing. “You have to be careful with it All kinds of regulations here in the States. The settling pond below the null is lined with plastic to keep it from leaking into the groundwater, and it has netting over it to keep the birds out”

  I found myself gripping both railings rather tightly. “Exactly what does the cyanide do?” I asked.

  “It leaches the gold. Cyanization is a process developed in 1898. Before that all you had was gravity separation and smelting; you know, like your prospector with his gold pan, only on a larger scale. We’d run the ore through a mill to break it up, then run it over a shaking table. An improvement was made when we learned to put mercury into the transverse riffles in die table to amalgamate the gold particles, but then you had to retort off the mercury, and that could be messy.”