Jenna Kernan

by Gold Rush Groom

  Lily’s heart stopped as she waited. Another hour passed before the earth released the man. Durham’s partner, Brian, just two yards back of him, was carried out on a plank. Dirt clung to his clothing. Someone had covered his face with a red handkerchief. But the bruising on his hands and the unnatural concavity of his chest deformed the corpse. Lily held her breath at the horror while the procession passed before her.

  Durham howled like a frightened child as his friend was laid on the cold ground. Lily knelt beside him and prayed for the Lord to save the man she loved.

  She sat back on her heels as the realization settled over her like a shroud. She loved Jack and she might never get the chance to tell him. What if she had lost him for good?

  Grief, black as poison, welled within her. Inside, she screamed out her pain and horror. Outwardly, she could not even lift her hand to wipe her face.

  Durham had recovered himself somewhat and swept an arm about her.

  She turned to him. “Jack’s gone, isn’t he?”

  He blinked at her, his eyes red-rimmed and watery.

  “He was shouting and pushing us. Last I saw him he was headed deeper to the second team.”

  Lily pressed her hands to her face and sobbed.

  The miner continued. “But that means he was well back and closest to the section they braced. He might have made it under the timbers before all hell broke loose.”

  Lily lifted her head. Jack would have placed himself behind the others as he ushered them out and that act of heroism might just have saved him from the falling rock. They needed to get to him quickly.

  She clasped Durham’s forearm. “How long would the air last?”

  The weary miner pushed his dirty fingers beneath the crown of his hat and scratched his head. “I don’t rightly know.”

  Dark came early now and the icy snowfall added to the misery. The men in the bucket brigade stood, cold and wet, passing the gravel from one to the next as twilight closed in and lanterns were set every few feet along the line.

  It was full dark when they dragged out the mangled body of Calvin Toddy. Hope flagged as the men acknowledged that the chances of saving anyone was dropping with the temperature. Anderson’s men stayed, but some of the volunteers abandoned the line. Men who had come to the aid of the victims were not going to waste precious days and hours digging dead men from the earth, not when the breath of winter was already on them and the smallest streams showing thin coatings of ice at night.

  The pace slowed as a skeleton crew continued grimly through the night, sure that their rescue mission had changed to one of recovery.

  Lily stood in grim silence as a pall settled over them all. The black shroud of grief threatened to take her again. Even if the men had survived the collapse, she recognized now that they wouldn’t reach them in time.

  That meant she had seen Jack for the last time, heard the final utterance from his lips and received her last kiss.

  What had she said to him on the street yesterday? She could not recall, but realized that she should have followed her heart and thrown herself into his arms, instead of cloaking herself in her foolish dignity. Now it was too late.

  Chapter Twenty

  Lily’s ears rang as she stumbled along the path that led back toward Dawson. Someone clasped her elbow, supporting her, keeping her moving.

  “No!” She dropped to her knees in the dirt.

  Jack was back there. Alive or dead, he was there and she would stay until he was found.

  Against the blackness that threatened to consume her, she fixed on the pinprick of light. Jack had been last in line to leave. He might be under a small section of the tunnel that had been braced…waiting in the darkness. At this second, he might still live.

  Lily found her feet and retraced her steps.

  She found Anderson sitting at the mine entrance, directing men to send the dirt from the bucket brigade through the Long Tom to extract any gold.

  Lily fumed. He had the manpower to search for gold but not to dig out his men. It took a moment to realize that the men on the line were no longer passing the buckets from hand to hand, but carrying them several yards each.

  “Where are all the others?”

  Anderson shifted the cigar to the opposite side of his mouth. “Gone, like you should be.”

  “But they may be alive.”

  Anderson said nothing to this. Instead he brushed off the snow that clung to his coat and shifted the soggy cigar from one side of his mouth to the other.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Lily. Men aren’t going to leave their own diggings to muck about after men that’s clearly passed. Winter’s coming. They got to get the gold out while the water’s flowing.”

  Lily felt the darkness creeping stealthily forward, threatening to take her to that place where she could not fight again. She pushed against it. Jack needed her.

  “We could hire more men.”

  “What about if you do the singing and I do the mining?”

  It was all she could do not to point out his shortcomings to date.

  “What if I paid for a team of miners to dig?”

  He blew a frustrated breath past the cigar which had long ago gone out. “I’m already digging. Tunnel’s only wide enough for one man. And I’ll have them run twenty-four hours.”

  “I could tunnel alongside you or…” Lily paused as the idea sprang at her all at once. Could it work? “How deep is the tunnel?”

  “Hit bedrock at eighteen feet and been tunneling along it for some time.”

  “Why don’t we tunnel straight down from the top?”

  Anderson sat back and thought. “It’s less earth, but the chances of hitting the steam engine right dead on, well it’s twenty to one.”

  “What are their chances if you go in the main tunnel?”

  He’d run out of excuses and so just stared at her a moment.

  “It’s a waste of time and money,” he said at last.

  “But what if it’s my time and my money?” she countered.

  “The dirt you dig is mine.”

  She nodded her acceptance of his terms.

  “I’ll get you the wood to set the fires and thaw the ground, and, hell…” He rubbed his neck. “I’ll need to hire new miners anyhow. Might as well do it sooner as later. You’ll have a crew soon as I can raise one.”

  “Thank you.”

  He removed his cigar and fixed her with a steady stare. “Snow was a lucky man.”

  Jack closed his eyes and prayed that the other steam engine had not been crushed in the tunnel collapse, for they’d need it if there was any hope of moving all the earth between them and the outside. Then he prayed for the souls of the men he’d tried to send to safety, only to see them fall.

  When he opened his eyes he noticed the lantern flame flickering. He knew the lantern ate their oxygen, but he could not bring himself to snuff it. Somehow to sit in icy darkness was too much to bear. The effort of digging or using the steam engine would burn up too much air. None of the men had a watch and time did funny things when there was no daylight. Had it been twenty-four hours or two days? He listened for the sound of digging, praying that help would come.

  He needed to see her again, needed to tell Lily that he’d been a fool. How could he ever have thought of his partner as anything less than what she was—the object of his desire, the reason to go on living and the equal partner he did not deserve? He didn’t need to return to New York, and it pained him that he had set himself such a vengeful ambition. The one person whose opinion really mattered and the only one who believed he could succeed was Lily.

  If he lived, he’d tell her what a fool he was. He’d beg her forgiveness and pray she would take him back.

  Lily looked out over the chaos of the rescue. The first steam engine had been recovered. But they had found no survivors. In twenty-four hours she had the wood hauled up the mountain to the digging site and erected tents for the workers to rest when they were not digging.

  She had set up a kitc
hen on-site, brought in food and men to prepare it. But they had made only twelve feet in the first twenty-four hours. Now at the thirty-sixth hour they were down eighteen feet and had hit neither tunnel nor bedrock.

  What if they missed the men by a few yards?

  Anderson’s first team continued to dig slowly through the collapsed tunnel, finding no more dead, although five men remained missing.

  The shift ended and the workers, tired and dirty, lined up to be fed.

  That afternoon the Mounties arrived to begin an investigation of the collapse. They interviewed Lily and several of the miners, while Lily chaffed at the delay.

  The new foreman, Doug Donaldson, a thin man with a knobby nose and a knot on his forehead, came to her at the kitchen tent. The snow had changed to rain, hampering their efforts to burn the earth enough to melt the ever-present ice.

  “Are the fires going out again?” she asked wearily. Her bones ached now from the tension. “I told you to build them under the cover of the roof of the shelter and just transfer them.”

  “Coals won’t do no good. We’ve done struck bedrock.”

  Lily’s stomach flipped. Had they missed the tunnel or was there was no tunnel to strike?

  She rushed to the hole that more resembled a well than a mine shaft. Had they dug too far forward or too far back, a little right or a foot left? She didn’t know.

  From down below the clang of steel on rock reverberated through the soles of her boots.

  Lily tried to think which way the tunnel had been. No, that wasn’t right. She meant which way the tunnel was.

  The tunnel lay on bedrock and the men were not above or below that. That left a full circle of choices to try. She had often thought, when creeping down an alley in San Francisco or a dark hallway in the tenements, that distances seemed longer in the blackness. With that slim knowledge base, she made her decision. The clanging ceased and from down below came the shout of one of the men.

  “It’s solid, Miss Lily,” the digger cried. “Now what?”

  “Dig back toward the tunnel entrance.” She pointed, trying to force a calm confidence into her voice. “That way. We’ve just missed it.”

  A moment later she heard the sound of a pick striking frozen ground.

  Lily thought of her mother and the last act of love she had performed for her, preparing her body for burial, and she wondered how much longer she could pretend that she had some meaningful reason to continue, that there was a shred of hope.

  Jack straightened. His chest rose and fell with rapid, increasingly useless breaths. The lantern flickered dangerously and he knew they were reaching the end. He couldn’t tell if the light was dimming or if it was his vision.

  “What was that?” croaked Henderson.

  “A vibration. Did you feel it?” said McKinsky.

  “I don’t feel nothing.”

  The men sat still and silent in the darkness. Seconds ticked with the rapid beating of his starving heart. Then it came again.

  “There!” cried Henderson.

  “I felt it,” whispered McKinsky.

  “Coming from that way,” said Jack, inching toward the front of the tunnel. “Grab your picks. Hit the bedrock so they know we’re here.”

  Just as the men snatched up their tools, the lantern sputtered and snuffed out.

  Lily sat at the opening of the hole, watching the bucket of dirt slowly rising from the earth on the pulley system the men had rigged. They might just as well be digging with a pair of tweezers for all the earth they moved. It was too far down to start a fire. By the time they set it and let it die out the shift would pass, so she had ordered them to use their picks.

  Down below her in the hole the men stood to wipe their foreheads, stilling for the time it took to draw the damp handkerchief across their faces, and she resented the delay.

  “Damn, I’ve a powerful thirst,” said one. “Think she’d lower down some water?”

  “Would you want the man digging you out to stop for water? No rest until the shift is done.”

  “What’s that?” said the first.

  “What’s what?”

  “That shaking in my feet.”

  They stilled, both worrying that the twenty feet of frozen earth might somehow break loose and bury them as well.

  “Feel it?”

  “Yeah, like someone tapping,” whispered the other, and then let out a shout. “Miss Lily! There’s somebody banging on the bedrock!”

  Her head and shoulders appeared over the opening, placing her in silhouette, like an angel coming from heaven above.

  “Which direction?” she shouted, excitement ringing in her voice.

  The men put their ears to the frozen ground and listened. They shared a knowing look and one nodded.

  “This way,” said one.

  “Then dig, boys! Dig like it was you trapped in that pit,” she called.

  The picks rang against the soil, chipping the frozen earth as if it were baked clay. A niche appeared and then a foothold and then a divot. The earth would not yield easily, but the men were strong and determined.

  “Stop, stop!” shouted one. “Listen.”

  They did, but heard nothing in response.

  “The tapping’s stopped,” they shouted in unison.

  Lily lay on her belly, peering down.

  “Then dig faster!”

  They scrambled to do her bidding. The picks whistled and clanged and then came a hollow sound a moment before they punched a hole.

  They thrust the lantern into the gap and peered inside.

  One got his head and shoulders into the tunnel.

  “They’re not moving,” he called. “I think they’re dead!”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The words pierced Lily’s heart like shards of broken glass. But Lily did not let her heart break, not yet. Not until she’d seen Jack herself. Instead she did what she always did when her back was to the wall—she fought. She shouted from her place at ground level, her voice now authoritative and shrill as any commanding officer.

  “Don’t think! Drag them out. Hurry!”

  The miner reached a tentative hand forward and clasped the arm of the nearest man. He gave a groan.

  “Alive! This one’s alive.”

  Lily turned from the hole. “Get a rope and some men to haul these miners up.”

  The first body was yanked from the shaft dirty and still. She could not tell who the miner might be. She paced at ground level like a caged animal, waiting, praying as the man was hauled up.

  He crested the rim.

  “Dan Slater,” cried one of the miners. He knelt beside the inert form. “Breathing.”

  They carried him to the tarp and laid him on a blanket, wetting his face with water on a rag. His eyes fluttered open.

  “Am I dead, then?” he whispered.

  Lily stroked his cheek. “Alive, Mr. Slater, as I pray are your fellows. How many still down there?”

  She knew eight were unaccounted for and she held her breath for his answer.

  “Four.”

  She tried not to let that crush her hopes.

  “Their names?”

  “Henderson, McKinsky, and the damned engineer who made that hell machine.”

  Lily left him in the care of the tailor, Amos Luritz, who had followed her to the mine and had refused to leave with the rest of them. She hurried back to the hole where another man was lifted, limp as a rag doll. This was Henderson, the operator of the engine, and he did not revive so quickly. In fact, he did not rouse at all, but his breathing was regular so Lily returned to her place. The next man crawled out on his own: McKinsky, his shoulders so broad he could barely fit through the opening. It took four men to haul him to the lip of the crater where he kicked and clawed his way back to the surface. When she looked back down she saw another still figure with the two diggers.

  “Cummings,” called one and motioned for the rope.

  Where was Jack?

  And then she saw him, crawling weakly f
rom his prison.

  “Snow,” called the miner.

  “Jack!” she cried, lying on her belly in the mud to be closer to him, reaching both hands down into the pit.

  He lifted his dirty face and held a hand up as a visor as if the dim light from the cloudy day was too bright for him to see.

  “Lily?”

  They looped the rope beneath his arms.

  “What are you doing here?”

  One of the diggers slapped him on the shoulder. “She’ll be real glad to see you.”

  Jack’s feet left the ground and he dangled between heaven and hell, ascending like an angel to the pearly gates. Lily was here. He blinked against the bright light that nearly blinded him after so much blackness. The last he remembered was the hammering and then…then he could not breathe and then, nothing.

  He looked at Lily’s sweet, stern face, staring at him as a mother would at a wayward child, happy at his return and angry that he’d ever left. He raised a hand in recognition at his fierce little partner.

  How brilliant to dig straight down. They never would have reached them in time otherwise.

  From below came the call. “That’s all. Beyond this pocket, the tunnel’s collapsed.”

  “Haul them up,” Lily said to the men working the pulley system. “Take my hand, Jack,” Lily said.

  She grasped hold and would not let go, even as the men dragged him back to the surface. His legs gave way, but they pulled him back from the chasm. The sweet fresh air filled his lungs and snow melted on his cheek. What a miracle!

  She fell to her knees beside him and he looked up into the face that he had longed to see.

  He grinned at her. “Howdy, partner,” he said.

  “Oh, Jack!” Lily cried, and threw herself at him, clasping her two small arms around him and squeezing so tight that she pressed the very air from his lungs. “I thought I’d lost you forever. I thought…”

  Was she crying? He drew back, holding her face between his hands.

  “Lily, I’m all right now.”