Michael joined her in the next line with a gentle smile on his handsome face, his eyes locked on hers. “That saved a wretch like me.”
Hannah’s voice joined her parents’, a lone wolf’s howl echoing in the distance.
CHAPTER FOUR
The prairies rolled past, slowly, the terrain stretching out in every direction. Hannah felt small in their carriage, lonely even with her family and every meager possession they owned piled on or strapped onto that carriage.
The cold of winter was quick on their heels, but moving southwest was some help, and every day of autumn was another day to forestall winter, another day of hope.
Hannah clung to that hope, to whatever hope she could manage, and to the past. To escape the dreariness of the plains, the endless foothills, the grey skies and heavy rains, Hannah went back home. But she bypassed the familiar confines of her family home, and even the sad and fanciful boundaries of old man Roth’s bedroom, spinning tales from what eventually became his deathbed.
Hannah went instead into the mountain, where she hadn’t managed to go before, when nature and her mother’s protective instincts pulled her back from the edge of disaster. Her imagination brought her into the dark tunnels as she crouched down, water dripping, echoing and dank as she held a whale oil lamp up to light the way.
The mountain rumbled around her, just enough to give her a fright, but Hannah courageously soldiered on, deeper into the mountain. In her fantasy, the sounds of other laborers leaked into her ear, voices too numerous to count, but too faint to ignore. Other sounds rose to the fore, pick axes and shovels digging into the dirt, clacking against the rock.
Hannah swallowed hard and pushed deeper in, the flickering flame struggling to gather enough oxygen to stay alight. Hannah knew if she lost that light, she’d never find her way out of the mine.
Then the ground beneath her gave way, and she plummeted through that mud and into nothingness, arms and legs reaching out to find no securing, no hold anywhere.
Freefall.
Hannah imagined her stomach rising up as she toppled into that darkness, body bracing before she finally struck bottom, a shallow pool that splashed up around her to absorb the deadly momentum of her fall.
Hannah caught her breath and pushed her head up out of the water. The oil lamp was shattered, floating in the water near her as she looked up in amazement. Light poured in from a distant opening, which not only promised a safe passage home, but it also illuminated the sides and ceiling of the cavernous chamber.
The walls sparkled, shimmered with streaks of silver, veins so thick they looked like rivers when seen from a mountaintop. They ran through the entire mountain, across every misshapen wall.
Hannah stood up, the water up to her waist as she sloshed across the flooded chamber floor and up the shallower banks to one wall. Reaching out, her fingers pressed into the black coal of the wall and the shimmering, silver veins running through it. At closer inspection, Hannah could see the reflective facets of the uncut, natural diamonds embedded in the earth all around her. She almost felt as if she could pull out a chunk the size of her hand, using only her hand.
But there was no need.
She had found the treasure, and her family would have no reason to leave Marion County or have any single thing to worry about from that time forward.
“Hannah? Hannah!”
Hannah’s fantasy was shattered as her mother’s voice called her attention back to the plains, the carriage, the blistering winds, the thickening rains. Hannah looked at her mother, whose eyes were fixed on her with silent worry. Having captured the girl’s attention, her mother felt satisfied enough to turn and face forward with her husband at the helm of the stagecoach.
She’s right, Hannah told herself, she must know what I’m thinking, and she’s right that I shouldn’t. We’ll never get back to Marion County. We may never even make it to California, but the idea of making it all the way home? No. Even if Mr. Roth’s story of the diamond mine is true, and the fact that the man who pushed that writ through had the same name as the slave master in Mr. Roth’s story does make me think twice, what difference does it really make? It’s probably not true, but if it is, it won’t be for me to find it. I won’t be the one, I’ll be somewhere far away, if I’m still alive at all.
It’s just not my fate, just like it wasn’t Mr. Roth’s, probably not anybody’s.
But what is my fate? If we do survive, what’s going to happen in California? Even if we make it there, will we find gold? Will I ever be a mommy myself? What kind of men are out West? Terrible men, I hear, mean and cruel and uncivilized, nothing like my daddy, nothing like the folks back in Marion County.
“Hannah,” Adrienne said from the helm, “get in the bundles, keep your head down.”
Hannah was shod with a pulse of urgent energy, fear and wonder in a single shiver. There’s danger, there has to be. But … from what, way out here on the plains? Savages, must be savages!
Hannah couldn’t resist peering through the front window of the carriage. But it wasn’t savages, or any wild animal, but another carriage, much like their own. Hannah was thrilled to see others like them, perhaps friendly or bearing some news of what they were facing beyond the Rockies.
Adrienne hissed, “I said stay down, child!”
Hannah’s instincts pulled her back, ducking behind the canvas satchels and bedrolls around her. Why should I be hiding from other travelers, she wondered. What could be dangerous about them? Has just being out West changed them, turned them into criminals? Or are they simply as likely to murder us and steal or wares and our horse … maybe worse?
Hannah crouched down even further, her heart beating faster as the carriage slowed and finally stopped.
Hannah closed her eyes, as if it might help her to remain hidden.
“Greetings,” Michael said, and Hannah could hear the deliberate strength in his voice, not ready to show any weakness.
“And to you,” another man said, muffled, from the distance of his own helm. “It’s out West you’re headin’?”
“It is. What news do you have?”
“Nothing you’ll want to hear. Savages everywhere, though few are warlike in these parts. Can’t say the same for some of the whites. Those that don’t freeze in the streams or go gold crazy wind up blind from the whiskey and die gut slit by some whore.”
“Husband,” the man’s wife said to him, her voice muffled but still much like her own mother’s.
Adrienne said, “The winter’s behind us, it won’t be any more forgiving than these men. Perhaps you’d like to travel with us. Together, with greater numbers, we could —”
“We go back,” the man said, his voice an angry snap. “You should go back too, while you still can!”
Hannah held her breath as that moment of silent consideration dragged on. Hannah had never imagined that her father might change his mind, that she might actually wind up back in Marion County, that her fate might actually be to find that diamond mine after all. Blood rushed faster in her veins, hairs standing up on the back of her neck.
“We’re going on,” Michael said, and Hannah’s blood slowed once again, barely crawling onward, trudging through her body. “God go with you and your family, sir.”
“And yours,” the man said, the two horses huffing as each obeyed their master’s command, dragging the carriages past one another, each in an opposite direction, each toward their ultimate destiny.
*
Two days later, the air was cold and crisp and there was enough let up in the rain for Hannah to help her mother wash their clothes in a nearby stream and even hang them to dry between poplar branches.
Hannah couldn’t help but flash back to the countless times the two had done the same chore in the backyard of their family home.
Home.
Adrienne glanced at her between turns to the laundry basket. “What is it, Hannah?”
Hannah wasn’t sure what to say, how much or how little. “It’s just kind of str
ange, I guess. I mean, we’re hanging the cleaning like we would back home, but … but we’re not back home. And we won’t ever be back home again, will we?”
Adrienne sighed and went back to her work, a whippoorwill fluttering out of the branches overhead. “If you mean Marion County, honey, I guess I gotta say no, we probably won’t ever be back there. But that doesn’t mean we won’t ever be home, just not home there.”
Hannah tried to get her head, and her heart, around the idea. “Then … home where?”
Adrienne had to smile as she knelt next to Hannah and looked her square in the eyes, gently brushing away a lock of her brown hair. “Home anywhere, Hannah. It doesn’t really matter where we wind up, honey, or what we wind up doing. As long as we’re together when we get there, as long as we stay together once we arrive, as long as we’re a family, we’ll be home.” Adrienne looked around the stream, the trees, the cloudy sky. “Right here, this is our home.”
Hannah looked around, too. “But … it can’t be if Daddy isn't here.”
Adrienne chuckled. “He’s not far off, hunting our supper. But it’s like all this land, all of it, it’s our home. This is our backyard, where we’re doing our chores, just like we always did. And out there, where your daddy’s hunting, those are the mountains nearby our old house, where he used to hunt with his friends, where you decided to go wandering from time to time.”
Hannah felt badly about it and said nothing, wanting to leave the subject of the diamond mine and anything related to it behind her, knowing she had little choice.
Instead, Hannah just shrugged. “If we’re home, why don’t we just stay here?”
Adrienne glanced around. “If the whole country’s our home, why not find a better spot? Wouldn’t you like to find somewhere a little warmer, with some other people to live with, friends and … and schools and things, like we had back in Marion County?” Hannah nodded. “Well,” her mother went on, “those things aren’t so far off. We just have to keep going, just a bit farther. And along the way, we have to keep living just as we are, just as we always have. That means doing our chores, hunting, cooking and cleaning. It just … it won’t be in the same spot every night, not for a little while yet. Understand?”
Hannah nodded, but in truth she was only beginning to understand. And Adrienne seemed to recognize that.
*
The next two days passed as the previous two weeks had, lonely hours of quiet despair, Hannah taking imagined trips back to Indiana and beyond, to New York City, even to London as she envisioned the travels and adventures that would unfold over the course of her life.
Rain drizzled around the carriage, Goldie pulling the weight of their lives on her back hour-after-hour, getting just as lean and taut as Michael, Adrienne, or even Hannah herself. Her arms and legs felt thin, fragile, and she could feel the ribs begin to push out from behind the skin of her torso.
Goldie screamed and the carriage jostled, not only ceasing to roll forward but turning sharply, then shaking from side-to-side with the horse’s sudden confusion and terror and the carriage’s immobility. Adrienne had been in the carriage with Hannah, and she was quick to look out the side windows of the carriage.
“Dear God,” was all she could say before the first rifle shot, blasting from the nearby helm of the Alexander carriage.
“Mommy —?”
“Stay down, child, behind the bundles, deep as you can bury yourself!”
“But —”
“Hurry, Hannah!”
The daughter of a carriage man, Hannah knew right away that the front wheel of the carriage had been crippled, which had generated the sharp turn and the carriage’s hobbled gate. But something had broken it and frightened the horse and inspired the rifle shot.
His battle cry cut through the gusty breeze, long and high-pitched, echoing over the foothills as the thumps of his pony hooves got louder.
It’s a savage, an Indian, Hannah knew, and he’s circling the carriage! But didn’t that traveler say most weren’t warlike in this area?
Most, Hannah had to remind herself, with no more time to think about anything at all.
Michael shot again and Hannah lowered herself further among the bundles. With a horrific thump, an arrow punched through the side of the carriage, the deadly head pointed and sticking into the cab’s interior.
Adrienne grabbed the second rifle and loaded it, rasping, “Stay down, honey, there’s only one, looks like a rogue.”
Hannah reminded herself of the bear back in Marion County, the incident on the bridge, all the winters of fewer meals and greater chores. Her mother had faced them all, and seemed fairly well invincible.
She can handle some rogue savage, Hannah told herself. But … what about Daddy?
Bang! Bang! Thsspt! Gunpowder was already thick in the mist around and inside the cabin, a second arrow penetrating the carriage from the other side. Adrienne was at one side window, rifle out and aiming, anticipating his circling one more time.
Blam! The rifle shot was loud inside the carriage, Hannah pressing her hands hard against her ears and sinking down even lower, her back pressed against the hard floor of the carriage. Click, click, bam!
Hannah’s world was dark, crowded with danger, chaos, a cocoon of their goods and her terror wrapped around her, feeble insulation from the death that swirled around the carriage.
Thypt! Crash! Adrienne fell back into the center of the carriage, the rifle falling out of her hands and nearly striking Hannah’s head.
Bam! Bam!
The carriage stopped shaking, Goldie still growling and whinnying in front of the carriage, steadying as her terror, and the danger, passed.
Hannah poked her head out of the mountains of bundles and bags around her, heart stopping cold in her chest.
Adrienne lay on her back, a bedroll behind her, a shovel knocked out of the way, errant in a carriage corner. An arrow was planted deep in her chest, rising and falling in quick, panted breaths.
“Mommy!”
Hannah clamored over the bundles to reach Adrienne, her mother reaching up to take her hand. Against every instinct to throw herself into her mother’s arms, Hannah knew that she could not. That horrid arrow stood up like a great hand to push Hannah back. Even the slightest touch could be agony for her mother, and might even do more damage.
Adrienne coughed, specks of blood jumping up from her lips to settle on her chin. She turned away and wiped her face, knowing she’d failed to shield her daughter from that terrible sight.
Michael crawled in through the carriage side door. His mouth dropped open when he took in the sight of his wife, blood instantly draining from his whitened face.
“Adrienne!”
“It’s okay, Michael, don’t … don’t … ” But she couldn’t finish her sentence. There wasn’t any point in it, even Hannah knew that. Michael fell to his knees at her side, taking one of her trembling hands in his, the resolute terror in his expression impossible to hide. He looked her over, eyes finding the arrow planted deep in her chest, the growing black stain of blood, red only around the edges as it spread across her eggshell peasant blouse.
“My wife … I … ”
“No, no, no,” Adrienne said, “shshshshsh … ” There was no need to ask, no need to explain. Both knew what they were facing. Adrienne added, “The child … ” and Hannah knew she was only trying to protect her yet again, to hide her from the horrors of the world outside.
But Hannah also knew that what her father had said was also right.
Maybe she should be afraid.
And she was, terror welling up and spilling over, pushing her tears out in hot rivers, breath caught up in her lungs, body shaking with the pressure, close to tearing itself apart. Muscles stretched to withhold the soul-crushing misery.
Hannah clutched her mother’s hand and Adrienne squeezed tight, holding Michael’s hand with her other. Hannah felt her mother’s strength, pouring out of her own body and into Hannah’s, as if she were giving up every last b
it of herself for her husband and daughter. She’d already given all, her time, her effort, her love.
Her life.
And now she was giving the rest.
“No, Mommy, no,” Hannah wheezed out, “you can’t! You can’t die, you … just … can’t!”
Michael looked on, helpless and horrified, no words to comfort his daughter or himself.
Adrienne’s fading breath helped her push out, “Don’t be sad, my dearest ones.” She pulled Hannah’s hand and Michael’s hand both to her chest, her fading heartbeat reaching up to them, a last and fleeting touch, the three of them united as a family in the flesh for one more sweet moment. “Right here,” Adrienne struggled to say, voice heavy with her grainy last breaths, “this is our home.”
Hannah’s tears were too much to endure, and they poured down her face like never before. Her entire body ached with sorrow, mouth twisting in a frown that threatened to tear her face right off of her skull.
Hannah couldn’t move, and she couldn’t imagine ever moving from that spot, ever leaving her mother’s side, simply sitting there and waiting for death to reunite them and for the elements and the animals to carry them both away to the seat of God’s throne.
But, as always, Adrienne seemed to be reading her daughter’s thoughts, seeing through her sorrow to the truth which hid beneath it. “You have to keep going,” she said with a weary smile, to Hannah and to Michael, even to herself, “just a bit farther, keep living just as you.”
“No,” Hannah shouted, her voice heavy, “no, never!”
“I won’t be far off … we’ll still be together, but … it won’t be in the same spot every night …”
Hannah’s hands quivered around Adrienne’s hand as her fragile fingers slowly released their grip.
Adrienne added, “… Not for a little while yet.” Her lifeless hand opened entirely, empty of anything but Hannah’s hand, and her love, tears falling over both of them in stinging little droplets.
Michael began crying, very quietly at first, a thin wheeze in the back of his throat. He leaned over and touched his forehead to his late wife’s, his sobs coming stronger and faster, chest heaving with them.
Diamonds in the Rough Page 4
