by Rae Carson
I suddenly see myself in their eyes, and I realize I stand out like a goldfinch among starlings. I’m wearing a fancy dress, for starters, with less than a quarter inch of mud on the hem. I’m the only girl in sight, and though I’ve worked hard my whole life, I don’t have the sunken wiry limbs of these men, or wind-weathered skin like a poorly tanned hide.
A burro clatters down the bank, pulling a cart full of crushed ore from the arrastra, which shakes everyone out of their stare and sets them to working again. A strange relief fills me as Wilhelm and I continue on. It’s not like I was in any danger. But something about the way they all gawked gave me the wriggles.
Downstream, the water begins to clear as it opens into a broad meadow that was probably once a field of waving golden grass but is now so grazed out it’s little more than a flat of mud. They’ll eventually mine this whole meadow, once they realize it’s a flood plain, where the mountains have been sending the bit of gold they cough up each year during the rains.
The back of my throat buzzes with it, and my limbs tremble a little. Very few nuggets here, but there’s plenty of fine dust, just waiting to be discovered. I close my eyes for a moment, savoring. It’s nice to feel something so familiar and true out here. With my eyes shut and the breeze on my face and the gold tingling my skin, I can almost imagine I’m back home in Georgia, that I’ll open my eyes and it will be Daddy standing next to me instead of the hulking beast of man who never speaks.
But Daddy’s not here with me now, nor Mama, nor any of my friends. I’m alone, with only one thing left to me, the thing no one can take away.
I’ve never needed my gold sense like I need it right now. We don’t have a plan to escape, and the one skill I can offer the group that Mary or Muskrat or Tom or Jefferson can’t do better is sense gold. If only I could figure out a way to make a plan from that.
I listen with it now, searching. Something lies off to the right. The tiniest nugget, barely the size of my pinky fingernail. It sings to me, clear as a bell, and something in me responds, reaches out to it.
The earth tilts.
My eyes fly open, and I’m suddenly breathless. Something happened just then, though I’m not sure what.
Wilhelm has halted—or maybe I was the one who stopped—and he glares down at me, a question in his eyes.
Did I lose time again? How long was I standing there? I nearly lost my balance, I think. Another moment and I would have tumbled to the ground. It felt like the earth tried to toss me away.
No, it’s like the gold feels my need and is trying to answer me. My magic is changing. Becoming more sensitive.
Or maybe I’m imagining things. Wishing, because nothing else is working.
I’ve never been a fanciful sort of girl, though, and if my daddy were here, I would tell him straight out what happened, and he would listen. Suddenly, more than anything, I want to see Jefferson. No, I need to see him, like I need water and air. I need his warm, sympathetic gaze, his softly smiling mouth, his sharp and interesting mind. Together we could figure this, for sure and certain.
Wilhelm tugs on my arm.
“Sorry,” I mumble. “My heel caught in the mud.”
I yank him forward. Wilhelm’s step hitches, but he catches himself quickly. I give him a sidelong glance; I didn’t yank that hard.
His scarred lips are pressed thin, his eyes cast determinedly forward, as a blush of pink spreads on his cheeks. Something pains him, and he’s embarrassed that I noticed.
We press on toward a large stockade made of logs sticking upright out of the ground and lashed together. It’s the sturdiest structure I’ve seen aside from my uncle’s cabin, and my heart quickens. Maybe Peony is there. Maybe I’ll finally see my horse.
The log fence is tall, taller even than Wilhelm. We reach a swinging gate, guarded by two sentries with bayoneted rifles. One of them is Jonas Waters, who was Dilley’s second-in-command on our journey to California. Jonas ignores me, but he nods to Wilhelm, and he reaches up to unlatch the gate and swing it wide. He smells strongly of rotgut, which is no surprise; Jonas always did love his moonshine.
But the stink of moonshine is nothing compared to the air from inside, which hits my nostrils, forcing me to step back. It’s like a stable that hasn’t been mucked in months, mixed with the scent of rancid vegetables.
I cover my nose with my hand, though it does little good. My belly quivers.
Wilhelm pulls me forward into the reeking stockade.
Ahead are a few crooked lean-tos, mixed in with some small buildings that seem to be made of mud. There are no horses anywhere, which makes me glad. I don’t know what I’d do if I saw Peony being housed in this awful place.
To the right is a trough, filled with muddy rainwater and a few bobbing lumps—potatoes, maybe? At the other end, across the expanse of mud and slop, is a roofed tower. A man stands looking down at us, rifle at the ready.
“Where are the animals?” I say to Wilhelm. “There’s no feed here. The lean-tos would only house the smallest burros, and the . . .”
Something catches my eye beside one of the lean-tos. A bit of paleness against the dark mud. I peer closer.
It’s flesh colored and scaly, like a molting snake. I step toward it, and tiny flies lift from the ground as my boots squish through the mud. Something is wrong; my belly knows it.
Another step, and suddenly I recognize what I’m looking at. It’s a leg, sticking out from behind the lean-to, the foot burrowed in mud.
Why would someone lie down in this muck?
I’m lifting my skirts and running forward, my limbs understanding what my mind is struggling to accept, and sure enough, I round the corner of the lean-to and there’s the body, lying on its side, naked and muddy and scaly. It’s a young man, though his limp black hair is half fallen out, leaving ragged patches of scalp. A cloud of flies lifts from his face, exposing a pale, open mouth and a filmed-over eye, sunken way too far beneath a delicate brow.
I whirl and make it two strides before all my flapjacks come rushing up my throat and pour out onto the fetid mud. I choke and cough, my eyes tearing from the acid in my throat.
Someone thrusts a kerchief in front of my face. No, it’s the napkin, Wilhelm’s napkin, the one that contained the flapjacks I gave him.
I grab it and wipe my mouth, spitting once or twice to clear it. “Thank you,” I manage. Then I wince at my words because it seems like the deepest, nastiest wrong to thank an awful man for a napkin when an innocent person lies dead beside us, probably poisoned and starved to death.
Jonas Waters has followed us inside. He’s as bearded and sun blasted as any of my uncle’s men, and he has nothing but frowns for me.
“Why haven’t you removed that body?” I demand. “Why haven’t you seen to his burial?”
Jonas shrugs. “It’ll keep.”
I gape at him.
“Tonight, when they get back from the mines, we’ll let ’em tidy up a bit.”
I glance around the stockade, seeing it with new eyes. So this is where the Indians live. I didn’t think I had any more breakfast to give up, but suddenly I’m not so sure. It’s more like a giant pigpen. A pigpen for humans.
Along the far wall are a few huddled lumps. I didn’t notice them before because they’re covered in mud, possibly on purpose for warmth and protection, because not one has a stitch of clothing. One is a very old woman. Another is a younger woman nursing a baby. A few children crouch beside her.
“No one should live like this,” I say.
“We give ’em food,” Jonas says with another shrug. “Safety. It’s more than they’d get on their own.”
I peer at his bushy face. He can’t be serious. The Indians we saw near Glory seemed perfectly healthy and safe, much better off than the ones here. “What will they do with the body?” I ask.
“There’s a pit outside. Every two or three days, we let ’em dump their trash there.”
I open my mouth to protest, but nothing comes out. It’s too awful fo
r words.
This is what Muskrat wanted me to see. This is the kind of man my uncle is.
One of the tiny children shifts listlessly, and a cloud of bugs lifts away, swirls a bit, and settles back down on his muddy skin.
Suddenly my feet are pounding through the mud toward the entrance and I’m banging, banging, banging on the huge swinging doors and yelling at the sentry to let me out and finally he does and I half run, half fall out of the stockade into cleaner air.
Chapter Seventeen
I bend over, my hands on my knees, and suck in breaths, trying not to vomit again. My skirt is filthy now, at least six inches deep in mud. Which terrifies me. What will my uncle do when he sees that I’ve ruined the hem of the dress he so painstakingly created to remind him of my mama?
A tiny whimper bleeds from my lips. I’m a horrible person. More horrible than Frank Dilley. Because after seeing that awful pigpen for people, I’m still terrified for myself.
Peony. I need my horse. Or Jefferson, but he’s working in the mines right now. So Peony it is.
I stand up straight and take a deep breath as the stockade doors swing shut behind me. I hear the latch slide home as I face Wilhelm and say, “Thank you for bringing me here. Next, I’d like to see where we keep all our stock.”
Once again, Wilhelm offers me his arm, and this time I take it without hesitation. He leads me beyond the stockade, past a large pit I choose not to look at, toward a large stand of cottonwoods hugging a steep slope. With a start, I realize exactly where we are. Up that slope beyond the cottonwoods is my uncle’s cabin, and we’ve circled around behind it.
If I ever tried to escape through those trees, this is where I’d end up. I remember thinking the cottonwoods and steep slope might indicate water, and sure enough, a few steps later we come across the creek again, which has curved back into the meadow before disappearing into a tree line of scrub oak and stunted pines.
That creek might be our way out. It leads into California’s big valley, for sure and certain.
We follow the creek a ways. The earth here is a little less churned up, with clumps of stubborn grass poking up here and there. Deer visit this creek to drink at night; I see pebbly scat and forked hoofprints at regular intervals.
The land slopes sharply downward, and there it is. A large, muddy corral stretching across both creek banks. It’s guarded by several rough-looking men, and inside are a few mules, a handful of burros, and even some horses.
“Peony?” I call out, wrenching my arm away from Wilhelm. I lift my skirts and dash forward. “Peony!”
“Whoa, there, little lady, just where are you going?” someone says, but I don’t care because there she is, standing tall and proud, ears pricked forward at the sound of my voice.
I climb over the low fence, and my skirt or petticoats catch on something, but I rip right through, and for a split second I think, My uncle is going to kill me, but then it doesn’t matter because Peony has closed the distance between us. I throw my arms around her neck, my fingers snagging in her bright blond mane. She whuffles into my hair, and then she’s head butting my ear and snorting and swishing her tail like she’s being attacked by flies.
She’s madder than a hornet and glad to see me all at once, and I don’t blame her one bit.
“I’m so sorry, girl,” I tell her. “It wasn’t my choice for them to take you away.”
“Hey, that’s Topper’s horse!” someone says as a hand grabs my elbow with the hardness and strength of a farrier’s tongs.
Peony is my horse, and she always will be, and somehow, we’re going to get away from this awful place together. But I know better than to say so aloud.
“She was my horse before she belonged to Topper,” I say to the man on watch. “Just wanted to check on her. Make sure Topper was treating her right.”
The man adjusts his holster. He carries a Colt, like everyone else, and it was half drawn before he realized I meant no harm. “Abel Topper treats that pretty palomino like she’s the Queen of England,” he says. “Comes by regular to give her treats and brush her down. Tried to get her housed in the stable with the rest of our finer stock, but Mr. Westfall wouldn’t have it.”
My shoulders slump a little with relief. I miss Peony something fierce, but maybe I don’t need to worry about her. I know why my uncle refused to stable her, though. The stable is too close to the cabin. It would be easy for me to sneak out and ride off into the night. In fact, now that I look around, I recognize Sorry and Apollo, too. My uncle must have moved them here for the same reason.
I stroke Peony’s neck and murmur at her until she calms. Then I run my hands down her legs, testing for soundness, pick up her hooves and scoop out the mud with a forefinger so I can check the frogs of her feet.
“Her front shoes are getting worn,” I point out.
The man with the Colt gives me a strange look. “Never seen a wee gal so taken with a horse,” he says. “You’re willing to get muddied up for her and everything.”
“Not a lot of wee gals in these parts for comparison,” I point out.
“That’s God’s truth,” he says with a despairing sigh.
“You’ll mention the worn shoes to Topper?” I say.
“I’ll mention it.”
“Say you noticed all by yourself,” I tell him. “Please. He won’t listen if knew it came from a wee gal.”
He chews on this a moment, but then he says, “All right.”
I linger over Peony as long as they’ll let me, but all too soon Wilhelm tugs on my arm. “Good-bye, sweet girl. I’ll try to visit again soon.”
This time I don’t have to climb over the fence. Wilhelm and the guard lift a post so I can step over easily, then we head back toward the camp.
My mind churns over everything I just learned. The Indians are kept in the worst squalor I’ve ever seen, and I have to confront my uncle about it. I have to. Otherwise they won’t live long enough for Muskrat to help them escape.
Making plans, escaping, all of it will be near impossible if Hiram keeps me tied up at night. Either I need to convince him to trust me again—and quickly—or I need to find a knife to smuggle into my bedroom.
Wouldn’t hurt to figure out what he did with my guns, too. Or maybe I can steal one. It seems everyone is carrying a Colt these days. I’m not well practiced with a Colt, but I’ve shot Jefferson’s a few times. It’s its own beast, but maybe it’s familiar enough that I could be dangerous at close range.
And once I do escape, Peony will be right here, down the slope from my uncle’s cabin and through the trees, waiting for me. She might even be freshly shod.
How well guarded is this corral? I glance back over my shoulder as Wilhelm and I walk away. I see the man who promised to tell Abel Topper about Peony’s shoes, along with three others, all evenly spread. Each one carries at least one gun. Two carry both a revolver and a rifle.
I have to assume the place will be equally well guarded at night.
Someone saw me leave the cabin when I snuck out to meet Jefferson. Which means that even when Wilhelm is not outside standing sentry, the cabin is watched. It’s probably watched by a lot of people. My uncle may be a no-good son of a hairy goat, but he’s not stupid.
So that’s why Mary and Muskrat are trying to come up with a distraction for the thanksgiving celebration. Something so huge that no one will be watching the cabin or the stockade or the corral.
You should see, Muskrat said.
I’ve seen just as much as a body can take today, but somehow, I have to do more. I need to find out where Jefferson and Tom sleep at night and learn exactly how they managed to sneak off. I need to start saving food for a journey; maybe Mary can help with this. And we need to figure out some sort of distraction.
A long, loud distraction. If the Indians I saw in the mine and in the stockade are any indication, none of them are fit for making a run for it. So we’ll need mounts. Lots of mounts. And maybe something to slow down pursuers.
I stumble i
n my tracks as the thought hits, but Wilhelm’s iron grip keeps me from falling.
Escaping won’t be enough.
My uncle will try again. He’ll either hunt us all down and round us up, or he’ll just find more people to work his mine. I swore to end him after Dilley burned Glory to the ground, but bluster won’t get the job done. We have to destroy him for real, and soon.
I’m back inside the cabin, having a bit of much-needed dinner. After vomiting up all my breakfast, I’m hungry as a bear. Fortunately Mary left some buttermilk biscuits on the table, along with a jar of apple butter, and I eat three biscuits in quick succession, thinking about anything except what I saw in the stockade.
When my belly is full, I want nothing more than to curl up on my bed, quilt over my head, but I know it for a foolishness at once. As if a quilt could keep the world out or make my mind stop churning.
So I wipe my mouth with a napkin and sit up straight on my stool and think harder than I’ve ever thought.
To destroy my uncle, I probably have to kill him.
The thought has crossed my mind before. About him, Frank Dilley, Abel Topper. But that was just impulse. This is cold calculation.
It would be murder, plain and simple. I’ve killed plenty of living creatures, sure, and every single one would have preferred to go on living, thank you very much. But I’ve never killed a man. And I’ve never killed something just because it was hateful and dangerous.
My daddy did, once. Not a man, but a bear. It was prowling the hills around Dahlonega, breaking into cabins and making a horrible mess of things. It had developed a taste for salted pork, apparently, but one day it burst into a cabin and suddenly developed a taste for old Benjamin Dalton, too. The bear had to die. It was a menace. So my daddy shot him.
I’m not sure whether killing my uncle is the same as putting down that bear, or not. Hiram is a menace, for sure and certain. What would my daddy say if he knew what I was thinking now? That his own daughter was contemplating coldblooded murder?
He’d probably be shocked and appalled. No daughter of mine is a murderer. You’re a smart girl. You can figure this. Find another solution.