Sary's Gold

by Sharon Shipley

  She laid that aside and slowly crawled to Jules, not seeing his stark white monogrammed handkerchief fallen against a patch of snow. She studied his fallen-angel face.

  A chorus of ululating coyotes jerked her out of her fugue, and she quickly shuttled ammo, tobacco, whiskey, and guns, all except the blue-black Colt, back to camp. Then she slapped Ev’ret’s horse on the rump, yelling, “Hiiiiiyah! Go free!”

  Wistfully, she watched it canter off. “Go free…”

  It was then Sary noticed the white blotch of the elegant handkerchief, plucking it up and tucking it absently into her waistband. Her mind reluctantly on the two bodies, she turned, unwilling, to Ev’ret and Jules. Yes, still there.

  “Have to do this. I must.”

  Without thought, Sary grabbed Ev’ret’s boots, hauling him by inches and jerks away from the creek, then came back for Jules and dragged him beneath the arms to a spot above camp, where the soil was loose and pebbly, and hacked out a wide shallow grave. Stooping, she rolled the two bodies in before she could ponder the situation further.

  Ev’ret’s body fell at a slant, half on Jules. She tugged, arranging both of them face up, drawing stiffening limbs to a gesture of repose before flinching a look heavenward. “Guess it looks right.”

  Sary tucked Jules's watch into his hands and the Colt into his waistcoat and shoved the letter and tintype in Ev’ret’s shirt. Sary heaped their faces with leaves. Then, with motions flagging, she scraped thin earth and rock over the bodies and strewed the slight mounds with more brush, needles and dead leaves.

  Straining, Sary lastly rocked two larger stones over the site.

  From a distance, it looked like any other wilderness spot. “There. Have to do, for now. Seb will never know. He will never have anything over me, to shame me for… Sary dropped by the fire, head in her hands.

  ****

  The sun slanted low. Dusk. Sary jumped up to again check the path her brother last took.

  “Seb?”

  Her voice seemed swallowed by dark.

  Sary boiled acorn coffee. Still no Seb.

  Chapter 13

  Sary wakened. Why this unease? It came back to her with a rush. Still night. Only embers left. Coffee boiled dry. She heard a steady lap-lap and stared into the incurious dead eyes of a bobcat lapping blood. She shouted, chasing it with a fire-stick with all her anxiety behind it.

  Returning, her eyes darted to Seb’s empty bedroll.

  Sary screamed, “Seb? Sebastian!”

  ****

  As Sary pelted the trail with a bobbing lantern, shadows made the black conifers dance and jerk in all directions. She sensed unseen eyes, followed by claws, and teeth. It didn’t seem this long this morning—yesterday morning. Had she taken the wrong turn?

  She tumbled, hitching from lack of breath, but the sketchy path opened onto a clearing with heaps of silvered timber and rusting ghosts of machines surrounding a black hole in a wooden square. Tall arched sentinels, as for an ancient temple, backed up to a slope of mountain. This would be where he would come.

  There was a sign, too, high overhead, but she couldn’t make it out as she picked her way to the square of warped wood, surrounded by a platform that creaked and groaned when she walked on it, all made important by the pitched scaffolding skreeing in the wind, with the sign over it. She still couldn’t read it—the moon scudded behind clouds, playing games with her sight. She knelt, bracing herself over the evil void.

  “Seb!” He can’t be down there, surely! Oh, please don’t be.

  Sary squinted, scanning the dark, her lantern flickering. She lifted it high for a complete turn.

  “Seb? Where are you? Dammit!”

  Surrounding ranks of fir swallow her voice. “Sebastian Swinford? You come out here!”

  She listened. Not a whisper. No Seb strolling with a sportive grin through the trees.

  She strained her eyes back down the abyss and once more at the waiting night, the secretive whispering pine with its unexplored crackles and rustling brush. Finally, in the growing dawn, she spied the blotch of faded red.

  Seb’s bandanna, the one he wore about his neck, grubby and pink, snagged on a ladder dwindling down.

  ****

  The lantern banged, tinny, echoing, as it struck wood rungs bolted to a wall. Holding it below her, hanging on, Sary could see only a foot down the rocky black throat that hungrily gulped all her light.

  Still she descended, testing the ladder one careful foot at a time. Toeing each unseen tread, she mis-stepped into air and the lantern’s wire handles slipped in her fingers. She almost dropped it and lost her grasp of the ladder in the bargain, waiting while an updraft billowed her skirts and pantaloons with a cold breath.

  The level of kerosene sloshed. Flame stuttered. Sary watched it, tense until it flared again. Must save fuel, though. Blowing it out, Sary bent her head over the rungs murmuring, “Help me, Heavenly Father, as I descend this pit, which surely must be close to Hell.” She felt foolish, and dramatic, all the same. She called again. “Seb? Are you down there?”

  One foot after the other, down, down. She peered into blackness pressing her face. Why she kept going, she couldn’t answer. Her toes often wavered in nothingness before they grabbed thin rungs. How much farther? She made a sound, and it bounced off the rock. Her heart stilled. Are the rungs whole? Will the ladder loosen from its anchors? She gave a careful shake. The ladder rippled. Oh, why hadn’t she thought this out, gone down in full light?

  She cricked her neck back.

  A dim light square marked the surface impossibly far above her. As long as she could still see that…

  She peered below her. Black velvet swallowed her toes. The air grew thicker. Still she placed one foot after another, each step reluctant, as if she yearned to ascend instead, and waited for unseen things to rush up to her with the updraft of her skirts.

  “Seb?” Her voice was weak, hollow, scaring her. “Seb!” She croaked louder. “Sebastian! God damn it to Hell!”

  Again Sary strained to see anything in the mine’s deeps. “Oh, Brother, please answer.”

  Can’t go on. I can’t. What am I doing? Seb can’t be down here.

  She began to doubt her sanity and laid her cheek against the back of her hand, swiping tears on her shoulder, and once more felt for rungs.

  Keep going. Keep going. There. Toe touching wood. The rung’s whole. Her world now was comprised of splintery wood, knuckles scraping unseen rock, clammy wind sailing up skirts, her face brushed by sly cold fingers as she imagined bats and unseen things. She yearned to swat, but held on instead. Feet slipping—another step down—how far to bottom? How will I ever have the strength to get back up this ladder?

  She screamed, her screams sailing up the shaft, as a rung cleaved in two and her foot plunged. Her knee banged the wall. Dangling, she glimpsed something below by a thin shaft of moon, between swaying skirts and the toes of her boots. A scrap of rusty machinery, a wheel…

  Abruptly, her foot thunked on earth, and Sary splashed to ebony bottom and relit her lantern. Instantly the wick guttered. Shakily fumbling precious matches, she struck another—a thin light flared orange—and she opened her eyes a lash at a time, afraid of what she would see, circling much as Seb had done. She was at a cavernous junction, a sort of gathering point where crooked, rusting tracks converged. All about lay broken picks, barrows with wheels askew, dashed lanterns, and smashed headlamps, with black cavities like snake holes boring into the earth. The rails led off in all directions. She jumped as the match burnt her fingers, resisted the urge to shake it out, and touched the wick with it instead. She circled, holding the lantern high, studying the tunnel mouths.

  Edging to one, with one eye on the shaft, Sary tentatively called, “Sebastian?”

  Must be insane. Seb isn’t down here!

  Yet something compelled her to step further into the airy ink brushing her face, coughing in dust filtering to meet her, and she realized it was that faint powder drifting from the tunnel
that made her choose this one.

  Inching the rough walls, her fingers skittered into a void. She waved them in the dark—they brushed nothing. A bend. She must round a bend now. She looked back, no longer making out the junction. Holding the light close, she made out an arrow pointing back the way she came scratched on the rock. “Seb.”

  She picked up her pace, stumbling blind.

  Then, by the lantern glow, Sary spotted a hand—Seb’s arm in the faded green-plaid flannel he wore, day in and day out, poked from wood and dirt clogging the passage almost to the ceiling. Her darn on the cuff. It could be no other.

  Sary threw herself at it, gouging, clawing the heap. Rubble sifted, with creaks and groans, to cover her hair, replacing the litter almost as swiftly as she heaved. Sary tugged at Seb’s unyielding arm, ignoring the glittering garnet pool seeping from beneath the dirt.

  Head to the ground, Sary placed the lantern close and peered into an earth pocket made of beams, spying an ear and thatch of dusty hair. “Oh, Seb! You damnable fool!” She laughed giddily and, grabbing a broken pick, maniacally hacked away at the mound. Throwing off the last bit of debris, she reached his face and on hands and knees brushed away dirt so Seb could breathe.

  Odd.

  Something hard and rusting poked through the earth still partly covering his face. Gently brushing more dirt, she uncovered the beam spike nailing Seb to the ground.

  Her heart stilled at the gruesome, improbable sight. “Oh, Sebastian, what have you done? What have you…”

  Frantically, she clawed, uncovering his face amid a shower of earth.

  “…done?” she whispered.

  ****

  She wriggled the spike from his shoulder above his heart, palming the dreadful wound as if healing or hiding it, unaware earth still showered her head as she patted him and smoothed his hair, unaware she crooned an old lullaby…

  “Sleep, my child, and peace attend thee,

  all through the night.

  Guardian angels God will send thee,

  all through…the…the…”

  She broke down. “Through the night,” was all she could manage further.

  ****

  Behind her, a bronze swath gleamed on the wall of the mine face, reflecting the lantern light.

  Sary looked up in wonder.

  In the lamplight’s flicker, her hands glowed, awash with yellow light. She turned and crawled to a jagged ribbon of a wide, glittering gold vein running through the dull rock face, tracing her raw fingers over the gleaming swath; barely daring to breath for fear it would take its rich light with it…

  “Seb! Oh, Seb-as-tian. You did it!”

  The lantern sputtered. Gold faded to black.

  Sary shakily whispered in the false night, “Don’t worry, Seb. You’ll be all right. I won’t leave you in…in the dark…”

  Chapter 14

  “Ned! Consarn you, fool mule! Here, Neddie! Ned! Come here!” she cried. Ned whickered, trotting amiably enough up to Sary. “Thank God, for once…” Sary didn’t finish, too bone-weary to think. Barely standing, she knotted the rope to its hame and dropped back down the shaft with the other end secured about her waist, much as Seb had done, before she could think on it.

  At bottom, she kept lighting matches, groping Seb’s tunnel. The lantern was just ahead. She couldn’t stand to be in the dark any longer, watching the slender Lucifer char to her fingertips. Black pressed her face as though it were another being, with weight and chill breath, just as she caught a glimpse of plaid. She lit the lantern, holding her breath. It sputtered as she groped for Seb’s cold wrist…his shirt…and by feel, whispering reassurance, quickly knotted the rope under his arms. “Shhh, shhhh…got you now, Brother.”

  Sary hated to leave him at the mouth of the tunnel, where the sun still gilded the shaft. She watched her hands race up rungs, following the rope to blessed light. What’s this? The ladder shuddered, then swayed sickeningly out into the void, taking her with it, as if she would never stop arching back. Reaching the end of the arc, inch by inch Sary swung it back, until she smacked the rock face, knocking her breath out.

  Pressing her body and the ladder to the shaft, Sary finally breached the top. Gratefully she patted Ned’s velvet nose. “Sweet Neddy,” she urged. “Now, pull!”

  Ned planted his feet and heehawed.

  “Ned!” She yanked the mule’s hame. “Come!” She grabbed a few acorns.

  At last, Ned lurched out of the trees, trotting after Sary.

  She watched the rope stretch taut, zing and twang, scraping splintered wood as she led Neddie away from the mine and poor Seb was bumped and dragged the whole way up the shaft until Sary hobbled the mule and she hauled Seb, as gently as she was able, over the lip.

  ****

  At camp, Seb thudded to the ground from Ned’s back before she could untie him. A thunk followed. Sary sank beside him and crawled to the nugget, then stared over at her brother’s broken body. “Were you going to tell me, Seb?”

  Later, Sary slept where she fell, tightly gripping the jagged lump of gold.

  Chapter 15

  Sary laid the last stone, scratching a faint cross. She bent her head and haltingly began, “Lord, here lies Sebastian Hercules Swinford. A fancy name for a—a good man.”

  Sary stumbled on. “No one could live up to that name, Lord.” She looked up. “But he tried.” Her gaze veered to the other graves and away.

  “Don’t have proper acquaintance of these two, but I guess you do.”

  She thought to say more, and failed. “Take him, Lord. I reckon you’ll do what you will with the others.”

  Folding her hands, Sary dropped her head, this time more from exhaustion. She must finish this properly.

  “The Lord is my Shepherd,” she began. “I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, he leadeth me beside the still waters, he restoreth my soul. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear no evil, for Thou…”

  She faltered and patted the grave.

  “Fare thee well, Brother. Give my love to Jonathan.”

  Chapter 16

  She must eat in the meantime—survive—somehow. She dared not show the nugget. It might as well be another rock. She would keep it, but she surmised well what would happen. Oh, she could ride her poor horse to Big Bear, sell the mule, or—she glanced at Ned—set him free to frolic with the wild mules the failed miners and panners had let loose. What then? Hope for the fine folks of Big Bear to warm their hearts? Be a Handi girl?

  Never Julian!

  She dared the notion to creep in…of cloying connubial contact in Julian’s bed, or worse—the horny rasping grasp of those veined, knotted, loose-fleshed hands roaming in the dark, clasping her to him on bitter nights, the yellowed knotted fingers somehow longer than they should be, as if his hands and wrists had too many joints. Living out her days with a spitting, hacking scarecrow whose breath wafted corruption until her very flesh stunk of it…

  She wryly studied her dress and hands and dirty feet. Best not think too highly of her own self. She allowed other notions to slither out for examination—Wash plates thick with bacon and congealed ham fat in cold greasy water at the drab boarding house? Scrub a panner’s grimy clothes in water so black one could make indigo? Marry a rancher?

  Why not? Better a helpmeet as a rancher’s wife, scratching soil, than starving… All the while, she knew, bitterly, the long arm of Julian Delacorte would make certain no rancher or tinker-tailor, down to the grizzliest panner, ever came near her. She could teach. She’d had some learning before Jonathan, clear to grade eight. Yet she intuited the town would never allow their children to come to her.

  What else is true? I have no wherewithal.

  No money, no provisions, her precious quilts shrouding the dead, the ax dull, and winter stalking like the white ghost of a starving bear.

  Memory of the Derringer’s explosion came unbidden, along with that of slick fingers fumbling with the tiny, oh-so-let
hal hammer of the elegant toy, the hot sensation drenching her clothes to the skin, clothes now washed pale and dried with an overall stain not unlike tea.

  She laughed bitterly. Would the world suppose her clothes stained of innocent, civilized tea? Her head was addle-pated from shock and fatigue—and most of all hunger.

  Where innocence fled, a plan entered in. The weight and heat of the nugget burned.

  Sary leapt up and thrust her precious dress in the fire, poking at it with a stick until the fire burnt low and only ashes remained. A vague idea formed of what she was destined to do, but she scarcely wanted to examine those terrifying thoughts.

  Dregs of supplies and the few items saved from Jules’s and Ev’ret’s saddlebags surrounded Sary. She studied her raw hands and cracked, dirty nails, smoothed her mud-caked petticoat, then lifted her face and gazed with yearning to the far hills.

  Her stomach rumbled. Sary absently dragged out the whiskey jug, uncorked it, and sniffed. Making a face, she wiped the rim. Her tentative sip was followed by a shudder. “Uuuuhgghhhh! Oh! Foul!” She breathed deep and sipped more. Underlying the bitter was a wild sweetness. It fired her belly better than any copper warming pan, and she studied the jug affectionately. “So that’s what all the hooraw’s about. Well, forevermore!” Suddenly stars never looked lovelier, and she imagined a southerly breeze played across her face.

  Sary rapidly dug out the flimsy papers and tobacco sack, clumsily rolled a cigarette, gingerly puffed. Tears tracked Sary’s dirty cheeks as she dragged in harsh smoke; picking tobacco off her tongue, she puffed till the paper flared. She immediately wanted to roll another and was alarmed at her sudden need. Save the rest, till hunger bites again.

  Sary swayed up, steadied, and looked past Big Bear Mountain, all the way to…the gilded hills of Rome, or the wet acid greens of Cornwall…or Provence’s empurpled fields waving lavender perfume in place of corn, or wheat…