by David Haynes
*
Mercer had found a set of unused floodlights in the container. He rigged most of them up around the plant but managed to lead one of the smaller ones into the cut. It didn’t reach all the way in but it was better than a candle and shed more light than just the headlights on Draper’s rock truck.
“Don’t keep us awake!” Puckett shouted to them as he and the others walked back to their trucks for the night.
It was ten-thirty and the night had only just crept over the landscape. The hours of darkness were already starting to stretch out. Within a few weeks the day-night split would change again, to a more even spread. A month after that and darkness would be in control. The days would be a lighter shade of the night but when the sky was full of snow, it all seemed the same. Draper hoped to be long gone by the time that happened. Although the way things were going, he might have to take a gamble on the weather and stay longer than he wanted.
“You all set, Mike?”
Vinson nodded and smiled.
They walked to the plant together. It had been a dry day for a change, and warm. The sun had baked the soggy trees and undergrowth, and the scent of cooking pine needles was strong. Even the birds seemed happy with the turn in the weather and the sparrows’ ‘teedeloo’ jingle seemed to be everywhere.
Working at night was pleasant now but Draper had worked enough night shifts to know that at 3am, in the rain and cold, things tended to feel a lot different. As keen as Vinson had been to offer his services, he hoped the guy was prepared for how grim it would eventually get.
He hadn’t fit in, that was the simplest way to look at it. He had an attitude about him that appeared strained and awkward, as if he were putting on a front. That made people uncomfortable. It made Draper wary. But his work was good. He kept the plant running like no one else could, not even Mercer, and that made him invaluable. Would Draper hire him again though? Probably not. He couldn’t quite get a handle on him and he didn’t like that at all.
They crossed over the creek and stopped next to the plant. “You want to haul the dirt, or stay on the plant?”
Draper was aware that Vinson had spent most of his time tipping dirt into the plant. He’d done that most days and so far hadn’t run into any problems. The crew all took their positions at the start of the day without asking. They all liked the routine of knowing what they were doing and what was expected of them. Draper worked wherever he was needed, wherever Mercer sent him after the planning was finished anyway. Nevertheless, he thought Vinson might enjoy a change.
The brief look of – what was it, panic, fear? – on Vinson’s face told him that the man didn’t relish the idea of doing something different.
“The plant,” he blurted out. And then as if sensing Draper’s shock, he added with a smile, “She’s my baby. I can’t leave her.” He laughed but it was forced.
“Just thought you might want a change. I’ll babysit if you want to drive the truck for a while?”
Vinson held his hands up. “No, no. I’m happy here and nobody knows how to wipe her ass like I do.” He laughed again. It was more genuine than the first but not by a lot.
“Okay, if you’re sure.” Draper swatted at a swarm of flies hovering between them. The air swam in the beat of their wings and distorted Vinson’s expression, making an ugly mask of his face. No matter how much insect repellent they used, the bugs took chunks out of them anyway. It took some getting used to. Vinson had a particularly nasty-looking lump on the side of his neck. It looked angry and ready to explode.
“I’ll get started then.” Vinson walked to the bulldozer and climbed into the cab. The engine fired up first time. As all the vehicles did now.
Draper climbed into one of the excavators and drove it to the far end of Resurrection Cut. In another hour the darkness would be absolute and Mercer’s floodlights would make only small fissures through the fathomless black night. By the time he reached his destination, Vinson was barely visible inside his bulldozer. He could hear the plant clattering and banging though. He could hear the bedrock smashing into the bars, trying to break the giant plant apart. He hoped his plan of digging deeper would pay off and not just end up wrecking the plant.
Draper pushed the excavator’s bucket into the earth, felt it grind across the bedrock without grabbing anything. It was going to be a long night. Vinson’s reaction to the suggestion that he might like a change had been strange. It was almost as if he’d been electrocuted – the shock made his eyes bulge. Maybe he just wasn’t quite as confident at working with the excavator and truck. He was a mechanic after all and didn’t have the same experience as Puckett, Flynn, Mercer or even Meg. And yet he’d seemed proficient on all the vehicles, certainly good enough for Black Pine Creek.
Draper looked around. In the west, the last of the sun’s halo vanished below the mountains, giving the pyramidal silhouettes a pale gray hue. It was beautiful, impossible to take for granted.
Up here at the far end of the cut it was quite a distance to the camp, quite a distance if something decided to come out of the forest. Maybe that was why Vinson didn’t want to dig? He didn’t like the thought of being up here on his own. Draper felt the weight of the Beretta in his side. He hated it but he knew wearing it was the right thing to do, however unlikely it was that a bear or a wolf would come anywhere near the noisy excavator.
Other than the bone he’d found and Puckett’s target practice in the woods, there hadn’t been any further problems. It was likely that whatever it was that took the miner out of the container had fled now. Gone to where it was less likely to end up with one of Puckett’s bullets in its head.
He pushed the excavator’s bucket down again and watched the gray rock yield under the pressure. Chunks, lumps and blades of rock leaped into the air, clattering into each other.
Draper groaned and closed his eyes. If it continued like this, the teeth on the bucket wouldn’t last very long. They had spares but not many. Once they ran out, it would mean a long drive or beg one from the closest mine.
Should he keep going and risk losing the plant and the excavators? There really wasn’t a choice, was there? He had to, at least for a week or two, just to try and break even. He pushed the lever down and raked it across the rock. The next load came up easier. He hoped it was a sign of things to come.
*
Vinson worked quickly. He processed the remaining dirt through the plant and started on the bedrock Draper was hauling to him. He could already see the stuff was rich. Far better than anything they had mined before. The nuggets were incredible. Two or three times larger than any he had in the jar in the camper. He had to keep emptying his trap or he would lose some of it. At least more than he was willing to lose. He could already feel the weight in his pockets and occasionally he could hear the golden nuggets bumping into each other. It was a sweeter sound than the birds that sang and sang and sang all night long. If he had a gun and he could shoot, he might like to fire a couple of shotgun bursts into the trees to shut them up.
The rocks were a problem though. The sheer size and weight of them crashing through the process was putting the plant under a considerable amount of pressure. He didn’t have much in common with anyone on the claim, in fact he was starting to dislike a couple of them, but they all shared one thing. That was the desire to dig up as much gold as they could in the time they had left.
He looked toward where Draper was digging. The arm of the excavator rose and then fell in the half-light. Out from under the direct beam of the floodlights, everything took on an eerie shape. What should have been silhouette in shadow was now partially lit, giving just a glimpse, a clue about what it was. About what might be hiding behind it. He tried not to look too hard lest he start seeing the shadows crawling toward him.
He turned off the plant. Immediately there was a call on the radio.
“Everything all right down there, Mike?” Draper asked him.
He pressed the call button. “Hunky dory. Couple of rocks stuck in the bars. I want to cle
ar them away before they cause a problem later.”
“Want me to come down and help?”
Like hell, he thought. “I’ve got it covered. Ten-minute job at the most. Keep digging, this stuff looks good.”
“It does?”
“Better than the dirt anyway.” Vinson knew he would have to let a few more of the precious nuggets go down into the sluice box just to keep them on the cut. The Resurrection Cut had the potential not only to resolve all of his debts but if it continued, he was starting to think he might like to have a little mining operation of his own.
“Great!” Draper shouted down the radio. “I’ll leave you to it, just keep her running.”
“Will do,” he said back.
Draper was deluded if he thought Vinson would allow anyone to touch the plant except him. This was his baby. This was a way back to something close to his old life, not theirs.
He pushed his hand into the gap where his trap was. Icy water cascaded down on his head from the plant but he didn’t mind. Being cold and wet was a small price to pay for such treasures. He pulled two small nuggets out at once and turned them over in his bright red, freezing hands. A few weeks ago, he would have thought them an incredible sight – true treasures. He stuffed them into his pocket. Now, they were a little disappointing. Too small for his liking.
He shoved his fist back inside. There had to be more. His practiced fingers shuffled through the dirt, sand and gravel until they touched something large, something huge. This was it. He gripped it between his fingers but it had to be at least five times the size of anything else he’d found. And the weight! The weight was incredible. He pulled his hand back but the gap was too small for him to bring both his fist and the nugget through. He gave his hand a good hard yank but all it did was crush his knuckles. He grunted with pain and dropped the nugget back into the trap.
It wasn’t going to come out without a fight. He bent down and peered into the gap. The floodlights illuminated the frame of the plant but couldn’t reach inside his little secret. He supposed that was a good thing.
There was a flashlight in his toolbox and a long-handled monkey wrench he could use to pull the nugget out. He stepped off the gantry, checking Draper’s excavator was still at work, and hauled the heavy, ancient toolbox back up the steps.
The beam of the flashlight sparkled off a number of smaller nuggets and flakes held inside his trap, but he wasn’t interested in them. He had plenty of time to remove them later. It was the monster nugget he wanted. If he was right in his estimations it would have to be worth thousands of dollars, tens of thousands maybe. The beam centered on the nugget, taking his breath away.
He hissed through his teeth, pushing the wrench through the gap. He was used to operating tools in such confined spaces and closing the wrench around the nugget was child’s play. In a few seconds, he had the nugget firmly clamped in place and he carefully withdrew the wrench.
He gasped again when he dropped the gold into his palm.
“Incredible,” he whispered, transfixed by the way its irregular surface reacted with the floodlights. The color was so deep, in so many layers, and the way it felt in his hand was like nothing he had experienced before. It was magical. It was...
“What you got there, Mike?”
Vinson jumped and grunted. Draper was walking toward the plant, toward him. How long had he been staring at the nugget? Draper’s excavator was parked up. How had he missed the sound of the vehicle approaching?
He looked from the man back to the nugget. He didn’t know what to do.
“You got a nugget there?”
Draper was at the bottom of the steps now.
Options ran through his mind. Murderous ones. His grip on the wrench tightened and he stared back without speaking.
Draper whistled as his eyes focused on the nugget. He took the steps quickly and stood beside Vinson on the gantry.
“That’s a beauty!” He offered his hand to take it away.
Take it away. This was his. This was Michael Vinson’s future right here. He lifted the wrench upward a fraction.
“Let’s see.” Draper wasn’t watching his hand. It would be easy. He could be gone before any of the others woke up; before Mercer found his buddy slumped against the plant with his brains bashed in.
Easy.
He smiled at Draper and put the nugget into his hand. The absence of its weight in his own palm made him want to scream.
Instead he said, “Gotta be worth something.”
Draper turned it between his fingers. “Must be three ounces here. Three and a half grand maybe. Not seen too many bigger than this.” He lifted his head and looked at Vinson. “Where was it? In the sluice box?”
Vinson swallowed. “On here, on the gantry. Must’ve fallen over the edge on the last load.”
Draper nodded. “Finally got to some good ground then. How’s the plant holding up to it?”
Vinson felt sick. There was enough gold there to pay off half his debt with Regan and buy back into the backroom poker games.
“Okay. No problems at all.” Even after just a few hours of processing bedrock, the plant was creaking a bit here and there. It wouldn’t make it to the end of the season just processing rocks of this size, shape and weight. But now he’d seen what could be found, what his little secret could catch, he needed them to believe the plant was unbreakable.
“Good man.” Draper patted him on the shoulder. “I’ll take this and put it in the safe. We’ll add to the next clean-up.” He stuffed the nugget into his jeans pocket.
Vinson didn’t speak. He couldn’t because what came out of his mouth would have been a scream.
Draper turned away from him and started down the metal steps. “Broke a tooth off the bucket. I’ll fix it now so it’s ready for the morning, then I’m turning in. How about you?”
Vinson checked his watch. It was just after three. “Another hour or so,” he was able to say. His voice sounded tense.
Draper waved at him and then started the engine.
The rumble drowned out the terrible roar Vinson let loose into the night. His face was a mask of rage.
17
Draper parked the excavator at the back of the saloon, not far from the container. It was still an hour away from sunrise, and away from the floodlights it was pitch black. He could leave the engine running and use the excavator’s lights to illuminate the container’s interior but that would risk incurring the wrath of Puckett, not to mention Mercer, if he woke them.
He climbed down with his flashlight fixed on the container’s white door. He didn’t exactly relish going in there but the spares were stacked up inside. If he left it for someone to do in the morning, his name would be mud. Not to mention the loss of useful digging time.
The key was still in the padlock, which made locking it pointless but it kept Mercer happy. He pulled the door, wincing as it creaked and groaned and finally slid to a stop. Vinson finding a nugget of that size had to be a good sign. It wasn’t a world record or anything but it was a decent enough size. It might even cover the fuel bill for a day or two. That reminded him. He would have to take a drive into Chicken tomorrow and make arrangements for another fuel delivery. With any luck it would be the last of the season. With any luck his funds would stretch that far.
He shone the flashlight into the container. Nobody much liked having to come inside and a full inventory remained on the outstanding tasks list. As soon as someone got started on it, something else always got in the way. He suspected it was planned that way so they wouldn’t have to do it.
The teeth were in the opposite corner to where the body had been found. He worked his way around the shelves, moving the flashlight’s beam in an arc in front of him. There was a tendency for miners to find what they wanted, pull it out and leave a mess behind them. That included leaving heavy objects in the middle of the floor where they were easily tripped over.
He found the shelf and started sliding a brand new bucket tooth out. Removing an old brok
en one and installing a new one was something he’d done countless times over the years. He didn’t think he’d ever done it in the middle of the night though.
As he pulled it clear he disturbed a jug of oil, knocking it off the shelf. It spilled its thick black contents all down the front of his jeans. He hissed a curse and kicked the empty jug across the floor. It clattered into something in the darkness.
He pulled the tooth again and once clear, it dropped off the shelf and tugged his arm downward. It wasn’t especially heavy but after a twenty-hour day, he was starting to feel his age. He walked back past the shelves toward the door.
The he stopped and listened. The generator hummed and clicked but it wasn’t an invasive sound. He had barely noticed it until just now. And the only reason he noticed it was another noise inside the container. One he didn’t recognize. For a moment, he wondered whether it was actually coming from inside his own head.
But it wasn’t. It was coming from over on the other side of the container, where the generator was. Where the miner had blown most of his head off. It was a thin sound, whiny and tinny, like something was being stretched. Then there was a rumbling. Almost like someone clearing their throat ready to make an after-dinner speech.
“Hello?” he called out, knowing immediately it was a ridiculous thing to do. It was just the generator making the noises it made at this time of night. Usually nobody was around to hear it.
He directed the beam toward the generator but it was obscured by what was on the shelving. He shook his head and walked toward the open door. As he reached it, a guttural rumbling came from behind him – from the generator’s corner. His first thought was that the generator was starting to fail and his heart sank.