“No, wait! I have more. What about Emerson Bolger? He’s a shady type if I ever saw one. He has powerful relics, and I just know he’s up to something, Sheriff. I—”
“We’re not discussing this, Maggie.”
“But you have to at least listen—”
“I said leave!”
The ferocity of his tone stunned me into silence.
The sheriff let out a frustrated sigh. “Dammit, Maggie. I told you not to get involved in this. It’s dangerous and far too complicated for a young girl such as yourself. You leave this to the professionals. I’m sorry, but if I see you prodding into this matter again, I’ll have to cite you for interference with the law. And that means jail time if you can’t pay the hefty fine. Understand?”
I could barely breathe with the frustration in my chest. “Sheriff.”
“Good-bye, Miss Davis.”
Stung, I turned to the door. I passed a final glance over my shoulder at Yahn, knowing he wouldn’t look up. Then, without a word, I left the sheriff’s office.
I stumbled away from the angry mob and down the streets of Burning Mesa. Out of habit, I found myself at The Desert Rose. Maybe I wanted to smell the familiar tingle of whiskey and cigarettes, to hear Eddie’s music jingling on the old piano. I fully expected to get a tongue lashing from Mr. Connelly when I came through the swinging doors, but he wasn’t there. It struck me as strange—not that I was crying any tears about it.
A small crowd of men sat at the bar, talking with intense, nervous tones. Most of the girls were mulling around the saloon as well, wearing their robes and frightened looks. When I spotted Adelaide’s familiar face, the weight of my troubles rushed down on me all at once. My throat swelled. Tears burned in my eyes. Adelaide rushed over and linked her arm in mine.
“Land’s sake, Maggie. It feels like the world’s gone crazy.”
She pulled me aside to an empty corner of the saloon and sat me down at a table. I pressed a fist against the wood surface, breathing hard, wishing I could smash a hole through it.
Adelaide considered me for a moment, and then waved at Eddie. “A scotch,” she said, pointing at me.
“I don’t want it.”
“Want and need are two separate things.” She sat down beside me, setting her hand on mine. “I’m real sorry, Maggie,” she said. “Those razers have gotta be out there somewhere. Someone’s bound to find them sooner or later.”
“Maybe.” I shrugged. “But it will be too late for the Apaches.”
Eddie came back with three shot glasses and a bottle. “I thought we could all use one.”
“Amen to that.” Adelaide poured a drink, but it stayed untouched on the table in front of me. For a long moment, we were all silent.
Then Eddie spoke. “Adelaide here has told me what you’re trying to do. And I believe you.”
I met his warm gaze. “About the Apaches?”
He nodded. “Doesn’t seem right that they’re doing it. I think someone’s hiding something.”
“Darn right about that.”
“But who?” Adelaide said, pouring herself another shot. “And why?”
I had mulled this question over so many times. Why wasn’t it any clearer? The dark thought needled in me that the real culprits might be far away, impossible to find, impossible to track down. But I cast that idea away. I wasn’t about to give up—not yet. Not when there were solid suspects afoot.
“We need to look into Emerson Bolger,” I said, casting a glance around to make sure no listening ears were close. Adelaide and Eddie leaned in conspiratorially.
“He’s up to something,” I whispered. “I overheard him talking about Álvar last night. Nothing to directly incriminate him, mind you, but it made me mighty suspicious.”
Eddie tapped his lips. “He does want Mr. Castilla’s mining territory. Everyone knows that.”
“But why burn the other towns?” Adelaide asked.
“Maybe they were other competitors. Maybe that’s what he does when they don’t give him what he wants.”
Adelaide twisted her glass on the table in front of her. “Seems hard to believe they’d be so evil.”
I shook my head. “Men murder for relics all the time. Imagine what a powerful man like Bolger would do for an entire mining area.”
I set my hand on the table. “I’m going to the miner’s camp to ask around. Maybe they’ve heard something about Mr. Bolger or his methods.”
“The mining camp?” Adelaide snorted. “Are you crazy?”
“Why not?”
“You’ve never been there, have you?”
“It’s awful dangerous, Miss Maggie,” Eddie agreed. “No place for a nice girl like you. Besides, I’ve heard there’s some strange stuff goin’ on over there.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Not sure, to be honest. But I hear things. All I know is the miners from Burning Mesa have been on edge for months.”
I pondered this for a moment. “All the more reason I need to check it out.”
Eddie shook his head. “I don’t know…”
I gave an imploring look to Adelaide, and she sighed. “Well, if you got your mind made up, I guess I have to go with you.”
“Thanks. I’ll owe you one.”
Eddie ran a hand through his hair, and then shrugged. “I still say don’t go, but if you have to, talk to a man named Gibbs. He’s the most decent of any of the miners I’ve met.”
“Thanks, Eddie.”
“Thank me when you’re back here safe.”
I smiled a little. “We’ll be careful.”
The next morning, I slipped away from the Hacienda once more. It took some fancy maneuvers to get Adelaide out of The Desert Rose, but she pulled it off, as she always did. Since I’d come in a carriage, we decided stealth required us to go on foot to the mining camp.
The sun beat down with extra vengeance, and a thin cloud of red dust hung on the air. Adelaide and I stuck to the covered walkways outside the buildings on Main Street. As we approached the Cooper Hotel, I saw him.
Landon.
He was coming out of the front doors, setting his cowboy hat over his tousled blond hair. I froze in my tracks, but it was too late. He looked up and spotted me at once.
“Hiya, Landon,” Adelaide said brightly. “What are you up to?”
“Nothing much.” He shifted awkwardly, tossing me a glance. “I have some business in town.”
I couldn’t tell if he was still mad at me. I didn’t know if I was mad at him. I avoided his gaze, wishing I could be anywhere else. Adelaide seemed to notice the tension but tried to continue as if she hadn’t. “Me and Maggie are just headed—”
“Out,” I said quickly. “Out of town. We’ll see you around, Landon.”
I grabbed Adelaide’s arm and started to pull her away. Landon’s voice came, soft and pained. “Maggie.”
Was it pride that stuck my feet in the ground, refusing to turn around? Either way, I didn’t face him. “We’ve gotta go,” I said.
I pulled Adelaide down the walkway. I could feel Landon standing there, staring as we moved on, and the awareness shot me in the back like an arrow.
When we were far enough away, Adelaide gave me a look. “You mind telling me what that was about? I thought you were sweet on Landon.”
“I am.” My head was pounding. I wanted to tell Adelaide about our argument at the party the other night, but the words hung in the air, unspoken. I lowered my gaze away from her, scraping a line in the dust with my toe.
“Is it Connelly?” Adelaide asked, touching my arm. “Tryin’ to keep you away from Landon the way he tries to keep me away from Bobby?”
“He did say something like that, but—”
“The bastard,” Adelaide said, her voice tight with anger. “I swear, one of these days, I’m gonna give that man what he’s got comin’ to him.”
I’d never seen such darkness in her eyes. “Don’t you go doing anything crazy,” I said. “He’s mad enough at you
as it is.”
Adelaide sighed. “Don’t worry; I won’t do anything. That’s the problem.”
I touched her hand, but I knew I was in no position to pass out advice.
We passed out of the main area of Burning Mesa and into the open desert, drawing closer to the red-rock at the base of the Alkali Mountains. A column of thick black smoke rose up from a cluster of sagebrush and desert trees—the miners’ camp. Adelaide held my hand as we drew closer.
“You stick right by me, you hear? Trust me when I say that these types ain’t no gentlemen.”
“Don’t worry,” I said, pulling out one of my siren relic vials. “I came prepared.”
Adelaide stared at the vial and then at me. “Where’d you get that?”
“Moon John.”
I uncorked the tube and sniffed cautiously. There wasn’t any strong scent. Maybe a hint of sweetness.
“Here goes nothing.” I drew in a quick breath and tipped the liquid down my throat.
It burned like ice and warmth all at once. Like pleasure and pain. For a single moment, the sensation was almost unbearable, but then it subsided with an involuntary shudder, leaving me with only the calm residue of water magic.
“Well?” Adelaide asked, analyzing me. “Did it work?”
“Only one way to find out.”
The camp consisted of four rows of tents that looked like they used to be white. A fire smoldered in the center, with a cast-iron pot hanging over the heat, the smell of bad chili bubbling out of it. Most of the miners were gone up to the mountains, but a few stragglers—wounded or sick—lay about in their tents, whittling at wood blocks or smoking hand-rolled cigarettes. Every one of them watched us as we entered the camp.
“We’re looking for Gibbs,” I said to the nearest miner, who was shuffling a worn deck of cards over and over.
The miner scratched his head and pointed to the left with his foot. “He’s over there in that last tent. Says he got a bum leg from a shaft cart bumpin’ him. I think he’s a ruddy liar. Man’s been dodging work three days in five lately.”
As we approached the end tent, I expected to see a crusty, rough-looking codger like all the others in that camp, but instead, a smooth-faced man in his forties with slicked blond hair and a lazy eye sat on a stool at the entrance to his tent, leaning back against the tent pole. He was tuning a worn violin, plucking the strings and turning the black pegs a bit.
When he saw us coming, a smile spread over his face. “Afternoon, ladies,” he said, his voice thick with a strange accent.
“You Gibbs?” I asked.
The man smiled. “I am Nikolai Giboroskov. These men think my name hard to say, so they call me Gibbs.”
He said Gibbs long and funny, like Geebs.
I smiled. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Gibbs.”
“So, what can Gibbs do for two lovely ladies?”
“We got some questions for you,” Adelaide said, her arms crossed.
Gibbs blinked. “But of course.”
“What do you know about Emerson Bolger?” I asked.
A blank look crossed Gibb’s face. “Bolger? I never hear of him.”
He sounded utterly genuine. I exchanged a look with Adelaide.
“You ain’t heard anything about how he wants to buy out your territory?” she asked. “Maybe you’ve seen some men around? Had some threats?”
Gibbs shook his head. “I am sorry. Nothing out of usual has happened.”
I frowned, remembering Eddie’s words. “Well, that can’t be true. We heard there’s been some strange things going on around here.”
The smile tightened on Gibbs’s face. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Adelaide narrowed her eyes. “We hear that you all are acting like you have something to hide.”
Gibbs paled. “I know nothing.”
“But—”
“Sorry. I know nothing.” He stood. His hands shook as he set his violin back in its case and closed the lid. “I must go now.”
“Hold on a minute,” I said. “We didn’t come all this way to get shut down like this.”
“I’m sorry,” Gibbs said again. “You girls leave now. Do not come back to camp.”
“We only want to ask you a few questions.”
“No. No, you must leave.” He pushed the violin case into his tent, kicked his boots through the opening. “You go. I—I know nothing.”
I jumped in his way before he could duck into the tent himself. His lazy eye looked even wilder in his distress. “I know nothing!”
I refused to budge. “I think you do.”
Chapter Twenty-six
Gibbs looked about as pale as a whitewashed wall. He wouldn’t meet my gaze. His hands trembled. “I will not talk.”
“You will,” I said firmly, focusing all of my energy on the siren elixir that coursed through my veins. “Maybe you don’t realize who you’re dealing with. I am the personal relic expert for Álvar Castilla, and you will do as I say.”
Gibbs swallowed hard. “Please. I have done nothing wrong.”
“You’d better start talking,” Adelaide said, narrowing her eyes.
“I work hard. I must send money to wife and child in home country.”
“You don’t have to be afraid,” I said, softening my tone. “It’s not you we’re after. We need information about this camp. About what’s been going on.”
I picked up Gibbs’s stool and motioned for him to sit, which he did, shakily.
“Please,” I said gently. “Your words are safe with us. But it’s very important that we know.”
He leaned against his thighs and rubbed his face hard. A sheen of sweat glistened on his temples. He didn’t want to talk, but he had to. The magic left him no choice.
“All started one year ago. Boss say we have to work double shifts. We have to work nights. We have to work days off. No time to relax. Boss keep pushing us, and we start to run out of places to dig. So boss say go deeper into mountain. And we do. We dig and dig. We find many, many relic. But we still have to dig.
“But then we hit one layer, and the relics stop. Only stone. Boss mad. He say, keep digging. Like he looking for something but not finding it. He work us day and night. Many men sick and injured. But we keep going. Until…”
Gibbs fell quiet. His gaze was far away, in some dark hole in the mountain. Fear flickered in his eyes like candlelight.
“Until what?” Adelaide asked. “What happened?”
With a shaky hand, Gibbs pulled a little brown glass bottle from his inner vest pocket. He uncorked it and took a quick swig. His body wriggled as the hot liquor rippled through him. “One day, the stone starts coming up dark as night sky. And then we find it.”
“What?” I asked softly.
“A relic. A full skeleton. Bigger than dragon. Bigger than behemoth.”
“What was it?”
Gibbs shook his head slowly, rubbing his arms as if he were cold. “I do not know. But something about it made me feel cold and dark and angry inside.”
Adelaide and I exchanged a significant glance.
“We call in Chinese excavators to extract bones,” Gibbs went on. “But they refuse to touch them. Boss spitting mad, but they won’t. So boss say we have to do it. No one wants to. We all vote and agree to leave relic alone and bury tunnel. Then Boss says he fire us all and not pay us our wages for that year, which we had been soon to receive. So we have no other choice. We carve out relic and bring it up to surface.”
He shook his head. “We send it to refinery. I do not see it again.”
Something in the way his good eye shifted made me sense a lie.
“Or maybe you did,” I said. “My gut tells me you aren’t giving us the full story.”
Gibbs stared at me, horrified.
I went on, his fear emboldening me. “Maybe a few men in this camp held onto it. Maybe you did?”
He shook his head, eyes wide,.
“Maybe some of you miners thought you’d use it to clean out your comp
etition,” I pressed. “Since the miner boss was working you so hard to find more relics, maybe the easiest solution was to kill off the other mining camps and take their territories!”
“No!” Gibbs cried. “No! Nothing like that.”
“You’re lying!”
“No!” He fell to his knees. Tears sprang from his eyes. “You are right that I kept some. You are right about that. But I did not hurt anyone with it. I swear to you!”
Adelaide and I looked at each other again, but she seemed equally unsure.
“Please,” Gibbs begged. “Please not tell boss I keep a piece. He will not pay me. I must have money to send back to wife and son. Please!”
“Take it easy,” Adelaide said. “We’re not tellin’ anyone. We’re just trying to understand what you’re talking about.”
I knelt down beside him and put my hand on his shoulder to try and calm him. “Who else kept a piece of the relic?”
Gibbs winced. “Only me.”
“No one else took any? You sure of this?”
He nodded. “I do not know why I did. I was in charge of seeing that all of relic went into carts and up the shaft. This was my job. And as I check last cart, I…I take small piece.”
“What did you do with it?” I asked.
“Nothing. Once I get it back to camp, I become very afraid of it. It fills me with that same cold feeling. I do not want this. I fear it. So I bury it.”
His eyes trail to a gnarled, dead tree on the horizon.
“Did you bury it there?” I asked.
Gibbs nodded shakily. “I do not want it close, but I want no one else to find it, to have it. So I bury where I can keep eye on it.”
The tree, all bent and sinister looking, made an eerie black outline in the white sunshine. A cold shiver trilled through me. “Will you show us?”
He shook his head. “No. No. It must stay in earth forever.”
Adelaide set her hand on his arm. “Please. It’s very important that we see.”
“Very well.” He sighed, and with a strained limp, he led us to the shadow of the tree.
He worked slowly, his breath growing more and more labored with every inch he excavated. My heart beat harder as well, though I tried not to show it. I watched the silver shovel cut deeper and deeper into the red dirt. Finally, the edge clanked against something, and a shudder seemed to pass through Gibbs’s body. But then, slowly, he bent. With his hands he cut along the edges of a small cylinder. Shaking, he pulled it up from the earth.
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