Foxfire

by Anya Seton

  “But, Dart, supposing there is gold up there, gold so rich you can pick it off the walls?”

  “Well, suppose there is.” He lifted the kettle and poured the rest of the hot water over the dishes. “Gold is where you find it, as people have been saying since the Stone Age went out.”

  “You could find it,” she said, very low and distinct. “You know this country, you remember what Tanosay told you, and you could follow that map.”

  He put down the dishrag and stared at her. “My dear girl, you’re not serious!”

  She nodded, leaning against the sink, and looking up at him with eyes darkening as he burst out laughing.

  “Andy, really!” he said, controlling his mirth under her angry gaze. “Don’t you think I have anything better to do than go scrambling around hundreds of square miles of the toughest wilderness in this state looking for pie in the sky? Aside from the fact that I haven’t the least desire to.”

  “You’d rather piddle along in this little two-cent mine, earning barely enough to keep us from starving?” Her words thudded like small stones in the suddenly stilled kitchen. A tightness came into her throat as she saw the change in his face, but she went on in a kind of desperation. “You’re looking for gold in this mine here, I can’t see what’s so different.”

  His eyes as they stared unswerving back into hers had turned to gray ice, but in a moment he spoke in a controlled voice. “No. I guess you don’t see. This mine is a co-operative job, the entire town of Lodestone is dependent on it. It’s here and real, a proven enterprise. It’s my job in which, though you seem to have difficulty understanding why, I have great interest. And I like to finish things I start.”

  She moistened her lips which were trembling, but she persisted in a voice as controlled as his, “Yes, that’s all very—very noble. But you could try to look for it. I know there’s always people, prospectors hunting around for lucky strikes, but once in a while they make one. You can’t deny that. You could try to find this Pueblo Encantado, Dart.”

  “No,” he said. He turned sharply from her, went and closed the back door, then he walked into the front room. She heard him taking off his shoes, the bang as each one hit the floor. She stared through blinding mist at the greasy pile of halfcleaned dishes. Her breath clotted in her throat. She ran to the bedroom door.

  “Why not!” she whispered through her teeth. “Indian superstition? Indians don’t care about money, do theyl And they don’t care about being decently comfortable. Or is it Indian ghosts you’re afraid of, up in that canyon—is that it, Dart?”

  He raised his head until his eyes rested on her chin. His gaze traveled from her chin, over her mouth and up until it met her frightened tear-blinded response.

  “I didn’t mean that, Dart—” she whispered. “Don’t look at me like that. It’s just I don’t understand—I—oh, everything’s so hard....”

  She sank down on the bed and covered her face with her hands.

  Dart sat rigid beside her on the bed. After a moment he spoke in a quiet incisive voice. “Do you want to go home, Amanda? Shall we call it quits?”

  The shock of his words hit her in the stomach like an actual blow. She gasped, jerking her head up. “No, darling. No!” she cried. “I love you. I didn’t mean what I said.”

  “What you said isn’t important. But you obviously aren’t happy. And I’m not going to change, Andy. There’s no use hoping for it.”

  “I know—” she whispered. “I don’t want you to, really. I’ll be all right. I will be happy. I am when you’re with me.” She flung her arms around his neck, pulling him tight to her, until he lifted her over onto his lap, and kissed her beseeching mouth, wet and salt with the tears which ran down her face.

  “Ah—you don’t want me to go home, Dart—” she cried in triumph as his kisses grew harder against her mouth. “You do love me.”

  He rumpled her soft hair and kissed her eyelids, yielding, as she did, to the sharpened passion of danger passed by.

  They slept that night, close in each other’s arms, and Amanda waked several times to a voluptuous contentment, as she listened to his deep steady breathing. But when she dreamed, it was of the Pueblo Encantado, she saw herself and Dart running through a glade of pine trees towards a solid golden wall, yellow as butter in the sunlight. “It’s all for us!” she cried to him joyously, “Thank God now we can buy the Spanish Castle ourselves!”

  What nonsense, she thought when she awoke, though the dream was one of exaltation and triumph, what did I want with a Spanish Castle? It was not until much later that she remembered Tim’s letter, and his reference to El Castillo, “Castle in Spain on the Desert.” Nor did this interpretation please her much. She had no wish to think of Tim.

  She had awakened with a contrite heart and many good resolutions. She would say with King Henry, “My crown is in my heart, not in my head; not decked with diamonds and Indian stones, nor to be seen; My crown is called content.”

  She found, however, that neither good resolutions nor the certainty of Dart’s disapproval could prevent her from thinking a great deal about the Pueblo Encantado, though this she mentioned to nobody. Dart did not return the basket to the trunk at Mrs. Cunningham’s for several days, and she had ample time to copy Professor Dartland’s notes, and make a tracing of the incomprehensible map. Neither Dart nor Amanda mentioned the basket again; it stood in the corner of their closet until one day he quietly removed it without comment. Nor when he saw Calise that afternoon, did he mention the basket incident to her, having put Amanda’s crackbrained scheme down to some childish or perhaps female emotionalism, best ignored. She seemed happier and was certainly more efficient around the home, and he thankfully forgot the disagreeable subject.

  Amanda soothed a feeling of guilt for the secrecy of her continuing interest by telling herself that, like Professor Dartland, she was simply pursuing an intellectual hobby which hurt nobody. Two days after the night of her clash with Dart, she walked down to the town’s only filling station and extracted from the attendant a road map of Arizona.

  She took it home and pored over it, locating with the help of Professor Dartland’s clues the Mazatzal range of mountains, and the Four Peaks to the south of them. The Mazatzals on the map included a square marked “Wilderness area” which seemed to lie in just about the geographic center of the state. Not so far from here as the crow flies, she thought—not over a hundred miles. Her immediate optimism was somewhat quenched by the discovery that it was nearly twice as far as that by road to the point she judged nearest the area, and after that there were, of course, no roads at all. Still burros could get anywhere, and some trail work was inevitable. The more she studied the map the simpler the problem appeared. Surely it wouldn’t take any time at all to explore the yellow-tinted blank spot on the map marked Mazatzal Wilderness area. If Dart would only listen to reason.

  She sighed, reminding herself that her researches were only an intellectual hobby, at present anyhow. She folded the map and hid it with the copied notes in one of the satin pockets of her fitted dressing case.

  By March, Amanda, and the rest of the country, had perforce more pressing things to think about—Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inauguration, and the Bank Holiday, though neither of these events affected Lodestone as they did less isolated spots. Morning static on the two radios made it impossible to hear the new President’s inaugural address, and thus diluted the sense of immediate crisis. The Phoenix papers did not arrive via Roy Kellickman until two days later. He also bore news of the Bank Holiday.

  The Bank Holiday, though startling and heatedly discussed in the saloons and post office, was of no tremendous significance to the town. There was no branch bank in Lodestone, nor need of one. The miners and their families cashed pay checks with the local merchants to whom they were always in debt, and therefore seldom recovered much cash. Tessie Rubrick did a thriving money-order business. In desperate cases where personal loans could not be negotiated there was always “The Chinaman,” a sleaz
y Oriental of unknown origin who lived on the edge of Mexican town, ran a species of sub-rosa pawnshop and charged ten per cent interest.

  The mine itself was fortunate in that it did its banking in Hayden with the Valley. National Bank which reopened promptly on March 16.

  Two other factors resultant upon Roosevelt’s inauguration affected Lodestone more closely and produced a mild and longabsent feeling of optimism. The first was the legal return of beer, and consequent certainty that total repeal was not far off. The second was a slight rise in gold prices and hope that Roosevelt would decree a substantial rise soon. Dart shared in the decrease of tension at the mine. They were still pulling nine-dollar ore from the Plymouth vein, and the rise in gold gave them a tiny leeway. Mr. Tyson’s health seemed improved; he had not yet gone underground but he now appeared at the mine office almost daily, and his presence vastly improved the morale amongst the staff. Mablett was subdued, refrained from overt bullying, and let Dart alone to do his job. Tiger Burton kept out of the way. He seemed to be running his shift well enough, he wrote his reports in a sharp legible hand, and made verbal ones chiefly to Mablett. Dart thought nothing of this, he was simply thankful that for the moment there was no trouble with any of the shift bosses or the men. The mine, throughout its sensitive structure, enjoyed the infiltration of heightened morale. As the mine so the town, and above ground the subtle sense of relaxation and hope for better things at last was greatly heightened by the first harbingers of brilliant spring.

  Here and there along the canyon, clumps of ocatillos, waving like a cluster of thorny wands above the desert rocks, now turned a warmer green, and their tips burst into tiny scarlet flames; the paloverde trees, already green in stem and bark, frothed into golden flowerets, lacy gilt in the ever more ardent sunlight. The lavender covenas threw out clusters of mauve stars on the rocky slopes above Lodestone Canyon. The cacti, the bisnagas, the chollas and the giant saguaros all felt the stirring of the new magic deep beneath their armatures of pulp and thorns, and they shot upwards to their crests the first tender buds, which would later bloom into startling multicolored beauty. Bird song increased, the cooing cry of the doves, the gurgle of the desert warbler, the busy twittering of the little cactus wrens darting in and out of their nests in the chollas—and from the distant hills the coyotes howled their mating songs to the moon.

  Nobody was totally unaffected by the blessed recurrence of spring and the human population celebrated the ancient mystery in its own ways. In Mexican town the doors remained open all day, the brown babies tumbled in the dust outside the adobes, the smell of chili and tortillas lingered longer in the piñon-scented air, and each evening guitars twanged accompaniment to nasal voices singing “La Golondrina” or “Cuatro Milpas.”

  On Lodestone’s Creek Street, the miners walked with lighter feet towards the saloons which thrived openly, emboldened by the expectation that there would soon be no need for concealment. Big Ruby’s girls on Back Lane did a livelier business than they had for months, they put new frilly curtains on their windows and one day they cajoled an admirer into driving them into Globe where they descended on a beauty parlor for permanents, and spent happy hours in the five-and-dime store, selecting new cosmetics and ornaments for the enhancement of their charms.

  The school children became yet more unruly, Miss Arden and the whey-faced little teacher from Iowa exerted very inadequate counter force to the call of spring outside, and the new teacher cared little. Already the unacknowledged hopes which had sent her to an isolated mining camp were being realized. She had had four proposals, from a mechanic, a driller, an electrician, and a clerk in the mine office. Her heart vibrated with delicious indecision.

  In the General Store, Pearl Pottner felt the call of spring. She turned a blind eye to Bobby’s depredations in the cookie barrel, she extended credit a day longer than usual to those who begged hardest, and in a moment of truly vernal madness she sent to Phoenix for three boxes of California strawberries, which Lydia Mablett eventually bought. Lydia was planning another collation. These affairs usually took place monthly, but had been delayed now since the January fiasco, because of the extreme difficulty of deciding whether to ask the Dartlands or not. She had now decided to do so. The Empress of Lodestone could afford to be merciful.

  At the Company hospital Hugh Slater reacted to the coming of spring and decrease of tension at the mine....Professionally, since he had fewer patients, often none—and personally since the season made him uneasy. And an incident one night gave him a far stronger emotion. He had dropped in to see the Dartlands after supper, and was riffling through some new magazines Amanda’s mother had sent, when a face leaped out at him from the glossy pages of Vanity Fair. He caught his breath so sharply Amanda stared at him, and he turned it into a coughing spell. He pretended no interest in the magazine and waited until both Dartlands were in the kitchen, then he tore out two pages and hid them in his pocket. He knew that Amanda had not looked at Vanity Fair yet, and she would think there was some mistake in the printing.

  At home again he locked himself in his office, and stared at the photograph. It was of an extremely beautiful woman, her tender wistful mouth smiling a little, her heart-shaped face and tranquil brow just touched by a new assurance and maturity. “Viola Vinton who is starring in the ‘Russian Empress,’ one of Broadway’s most successful plays.”

  Hugh read the accompanying text, slowly. “An interview with Viola Vinton.... From her suite at the St. Regis ... the exquisite star ... room banked with white orchids—glowing mysterious type of loveliness—many admirers—but never yet married—she says she believes in love though—but dedicated to her art. Always wears a single priceless pearl ring, no matter what other jewels—says it brings her luck. Laughingly admits she came from simple background in Baltimore—many successful screen roles to her credit ... often compared since this new stage success to Duse...

  Hugh stopped reading. He stared for a long time at the photograph and the wide soft eyes looked up at him as they had once looked up in his arms. He locked the photograph in his desk drawer.

  Then he entered upon a three-day binge, beat Maria unmercifully, and emerged with a sense of self-loathing and a black depression. Maria in no way resented the beating, which she found far more comprehensible than the savage verbal assaults, especially as she was convinced that the Doc’s violence this time sprang from jealousy.

  There was a traveling salesman for mine supplies putting up at Mrs. Zuckowski’s Hotel, and Maria found opportunity for dalliance. A swell car the guy had, too, and he was a free spender. Him and her had passed an agreeable evening together at “The Laundry” drinking tequila and dancing. Doc had seen her there, too, so you couldn’t hardly blame him for getting mad. In fact, Maria examined her bruises with considerable satisfaction. They were a good sign. Get a guy edgy and jealous enough and anything might happen. Even marriage. Mrs. Doc Slater, that’d be one in the eye for that Dartland tart, too. She couldn’t swish by the Doc’s wife with her nose in the air like she smelled a stink. There was another good sign, too. The old picture of that movie actress was gone from amongst the pile of Doc’s shirts. She’d seen the charred edge of it in the stove where he must have burned it up. So he wasn’t mooning over her anymore.

  Thus in her way, Maria shared in the springtime felicity.

  Nor was Amanda impervious to the general lift of spirits. In the middle of March she awoke to one of those days when all goes easily and well. She had Dart’s lunch box packed in plenty of time and included his favorite egg-salad sandwiches. They kissed each other good-bye with warmth and gaiety, laughing about their invitation to Lydia Mablett’s next collation. This time they would avoid all controversy, fortify themselves first with a couple of stiff drinks cadged from Hugh, and treat the ordeal with objective amusement. “Free meal, too,” said Amanda giggling, “that’ll help.”

  She stood on the step in the warm sunshine and waved goodbye to Dart, watching the Lizzie chug patiently away up the mine road. Sh
e attacked with vim all the unpleasant chores, which she did not usually perform without rebellion: the trip across the yard to the outhouse and the pouring of disinfectant down the earth closet, the transportation of the garbage to a galvanized iron can under the mesquite tree behind the outhouse, where it would await weekly disposal by Dart, who burned what he could and carried the rest to the town dump a mile down the canyon. She made the bed, swept the house, washed the dishes, cleaned the kerosene lamps, and prepared potatoes, carrots, and prunes for tonight’s supper. There would be kidneys too; fortunately they both liked them and they were cheap. For tomorrow night, Amanda thought with satisfaction, Tessie had promised to give her a Cornish pasty, and some saffron buns to try, so with the help of the Mablett party Friday they could just squeak by until pay night without buying anything.

  Tessie was sweet, she had made many friendly gestures and it bothered Amanda that she could not repay in kind. But Tessie was comparatively well off; Tom Rubrick’s pay as shift boss was little below Dart’s and then, besides, Tessie had the post office and the little store.

  The thought of the post office momentarily dimmed Amanda’s zest, for there had been no letters from home in two weeks. Tessie, as always, had been comforting. “It’ll be naught but some delay along the way, or likely one of those planes down, if ’twas anything grave they’d telly-graph.” Which was true, of course, and no use fretting until Roy’s next trip in from Hayden tomorrow.

  The house clean and garnished, Amanda found her energy still unslaked, and she debated several ways of passing the time, though the possibilities were strictly limited. She decided to call on Hugh, whom she had not seen for several days, and then take a walk up the canyon, maybe go see Mrs. Cunningham, though here she felt a reluctance. The Cunningham mansion had for her become inextricably associated with the discovery she had made there, the memory of her excitement and exaltation; painful now since she had forbidden herself to think of it, and all frustrated emotions become painful and rather shameful in retrospect.