Thrilling Thirteen

by Ponzo, Gary

  “Then we’ll want a larger-scale map.” Walter moved to the map cabinet. “Meanwhile, help yourself to more coffee, Mr. Shelburne. We have donuts, as well.”

  The coffee ceremony was history, I saw. Donuts now. Walter had just welcomed Robert Shelburne onto the team.

  Shelburne threw me a wink and said to Walter, “You have any glazed?”

  ~ ~ ~

  Walter and I spent the remainder of the day on more sophisticated analysis, while Robert Shelburne went out for a long lunch and last-minute errands. Normally we would have spent more time on the labwork but Henry Shelburne set our timetable.

  Find Henry before he finds the source. Hunt for the source to find Henry.

  Out there in the wild. Missing. Looking like the Henry in the photo because I could not conjure up an alternative. Squint-eyed, on some mission, suicidal or not. In need of finding, or not.

  Either way, we’d signed on to find him.

  5

  The following day we left at dawn, taking Shelburne’s pricey Land Rover.

  We had to cross the spine of the Sierra Nevada range, traveling from the austere eastern side to the lush western flank, deep into gold country, deep into the heart of the Mother Lode.

  Walter, in the back seat, was re-reading Waldemar Lindgren’s Tertiary Gravels of the Sierra Nevada of California. I’d never read it but I knew it was a classic. An original copy would fetch a price in the hundreds. This morning I’d asked what Walter was downloading to his tablet. He’d said, “The bible of the deep blue lead.”

  That took me aback. I’d thought he used his tablet strictly for online research or sharing docs with colleagues on the other side of the world. But books? He read his books on paper—biographies, poetry, and mysteries, from the current crop all the way back to Sherlock because, he liked to point out, Sherlock Holmes was the first forensic geologist. As for technical books, he owned a worn paperback of Lindgren that would have served him perfectly well in the field. Instead, he was reading the freaking bible of the deep blue lead in pixels?

  I’d said, “Since when did you start reading your books in pixels?”

  “Since I looked in the mirror and saw an old man.”

  “You’re not old,” I’d said firmly. “You’re just an ink-and-paper man.”

  “Old dog can’t learn new tricks?”

  And now, as I rode shotgun in Shelburne’s Rover, I could not help glancing into the side-view mirror, spying on Walter in the back seat. Hair grayer than when I’d last paid attention?

  Funny thing: Walter had looked old to me when I first met him. I was eleven and he was in his forties. To a kid, that was old. Over the following years as I worked in the lab—part-time after school and full-time in the summers—the only aging I paid attention to was my own, particularly when I crashed into my teens. Then, during my college years, I would come home for the summers and grace the lab with my learning, spouting textbook tidbits like they were tweets. During that stretch I didn’t notice either of us aging. I was too busy proving myself. By the time I’d completed grad school and took my book-learning back into the field what I finally noticed was the authenticity of Walter’s skills.

  Old? He’d perhaps grown a bit vain, fretting over his thinning hair and creasing face.

  I turned from the mirror and firmly directed my attention to the scenery.

  Right now, the road we traveled was unknown to me. In fact, the Mother Lode was mostly unknown to me. Not my country. It was pretty enough, and I never met mountains I didn’t love, but I was a stranger here.

  The road worsened. Ungraded, now.

  In the back seat, Walter was stone silent, still deep in Lindgren.

  I turned to look at him.

  Head bowed over his tablet. Finger swiping the touch screen, onto the next page.

  Swipe.

  Swipe.

  On the hunt. Nothing old about that old dog.

  I returned my attention to my own tablet. I’d downloaded Lindgren as well, taking my cue from my mentor.

  ~ ~ ~

  Shelburne parked the Land Rover on a nearly hidden fire road, jarring Walter out of Lindgren.

  Walter shut his tablet and looked around. “Where are we?”

  “At the start of our hike,” Shelburne said.

  Walter said, “Pass me the road map,” and after receiving and perusing it he said, “Two miles up the road we’ll find a proper trailhead.”

  “This is the way we always came. My dad blazed this trail with his ego.”

  I said, “That’s some whacked-out reason to take it.”

  “And,” he said, “it’s faster.”

  Walter folded the map and returned it to Shelburne. “Your call.”

  We geared up and Robert Shelburne took the lead.

  And so we embarked upon Shelburne’s father’s rogue route, unmarked on the map, sign-less at the head, steep at the get-go, infested by brush, scented by that odd vegetative smell. Fifteen minutes into our climb we came upon the silver bandana littering the ground. Flagging our trail. Thirty minutes into our climb we got hit by falling talus.

  What the hell, Henry?

  In hurried consultation—Shelburne up above on the bedrock ladder, me three switchbacks below, Walter still down on the traverse—Shelburne urged us to hurry, swore that if it was Henry up on the ledge then we had the chance to catch up to him, assured us that the rocks had been an accident.

  We might have debated the issue but Shelburne quickly pushed onward, upward, and it was a shorter pitch to the top than to turn around and traverse back across the rock field.

  I picked up my pace.

  Walter picked up his.

  Shelburne shouted his brother’s name twice and when there was no reply he saved his breath.

  Nothing more fell from the ledge above and in the course of my climb I began again to entertain the theory of the squirrel or the bear.

  I soon caught up with Shelburne, hiking so close I had the leisure to examine his red backpack. I distracted myself with the question of his pack. It was an Arcteryx Altra, latest model, one I admired and would not afford. Made sense, I supposed, that Shelburne had a state-of-the-art pack because the backpack he would have used as a kid being dragged along by his father would not fit him now, as a grown man. I also took note that the floating-top lid of the Arcteryx was stained and one side water-bottle pocket had a small rip. Perhaps he’d rented it.

  His boots were Asolos, top of the line. Creased at the toe break, slightly worn around the edges of the vibram soles. Broken in.

  I wondered where he’d done his hiking.

  In another five minutes we topped the climb, which leveled onto the narrow ledge.

  Nobody was there waiting.

  It was a false ridge, because the bedrock climbed another couple hundred feet to the true ridge, sky-silhouetted above. A couple of yards westerly, beneath the slaty cliff, a rotten patch spilled talus onto our ledge and fanned out to the rim.

  We stood rooted.

  Looking. Listening. All of us winded. Catching our breath.

  Walter finally said, “I would like to sit.”

  “If it was Henry he’d have gone that way.” Shelburne pointed easterly, to the far end of the bedrock intrusion, where the ledge disappeared into the woods. “I’ll have a look.” He set off.

  Walter and I shucked our packs and sank to the rock. It was chilly. We retrieved our parkas. We grabbed our water bottles and drank. The water was sweet cold eastern Sierra water, bottles filled back at the lab. Cold water down my gullet. I was now doubly chilled. The rock beneath my butt was stone cold. Not enough sun to warm the phyllite. Even its golden sheen was dulled in this gray light. I shivered. I drew up my knees, hugging them.

  Walter got out the trail mix. I freed one hand, opened my palm, and he filled it. I nibbled like a squirrel.

  The breeze that had been coming and going now came stronger, more consistent.

  I sniffed for the odd odor but smelled nothing other than salty peanuts
and sweet dried pineapple.

  And then Shelburne returned, shucked his pack, and sank to the rock beside me. He shook his head.

  I said, “So you think it was him? Or not?”

  “He’s gone now.”

  Shelburne hadn’t qualified that with an if, if it was Henry. I said, “Maybe we should get moving.”

  “We won’t catch him now. He’ll be hiking fast. No pack—he’s likely made camp somewhere. He’s got the edge. We’ll need to keep tracking him.”

  Walter nodded. “I’m content to rest here another moment.”

  I studied my partner. Face still slightly flushed, even in the growing chill. Hair mussed and, yeah, graying. He still wore his sunglasses. His eyebrows—gray flecked with brown like feldspar in granite—bushed above the rims of his shades. He caught my scrutiny and lifted his brows.

  I said, “Yeah, feels good to sit.” The rock was warming beneath my butt. Sit here much longer, though, and I’d start asking questions.

  I watched Shelburne retrieve his water bottle from the side pocket of his backpack. He chose the narrow-mouth bottle. The other bottle, in the torn pocket, was a wide-mouth, more suited for carrying extra water. At least, that’s the way we did it, although I carried two spare bottles in my pack pockets and the quick-grab drinking bottle clipped to my belt with a carabiner. Then again, I’m something of a gear-head.

  So was Shelburne.

  I watched him drink from his sleek silver bottle emblazoned with the word titanium; major cool factor; no price tag attached but none needed; if you had to ask, you would not want to pay it.

  Shelburne was a gear-head with expensive tastes. Still, you had to know what you needed in the field before you laid out good money. And if you were going to lay out good money, you’d want to get plentiful use of your gear.

  I watched him replace his titanium bottle in the pocket of his Arcteryx pack. I said, “Been up here recently?”

  “Here? Not since I was a kid.”

  “But you still do some backpacking?”

  He saw me looking at his grown-up pack. “My job takes me afield now and then. I’ve had to site-scout a location or two in this general neighborhood. Investment opportunities.”

  “Gold?” Walter asked.

  “Sadly, no.”

  “What if Henry finds the source of that rock? And there is gold.”

  “My interest lies in saving Henry.”

  And Henry’s interest? I studied the talus spilling across the ledge. It told me nothing. Talus won’t hold a footprint. There was no way to tell what, or who, had kicked those rock fragments over the edge.

  Easy to do, though.

  I said, “So if it was him up here, what was that about?”

  “Make sure I’m coming.”

  “Not just you,” I said. “Us. He expects you but you show up with hiking buddies. What does he think about that?”

  “If he thinks it through he’ll understand that I had to get some help. He left me half the rock. He knows geology is not in my skill set. So I suppose he’d figure it out.”

  “And rain rocks down upon us.”

  Shelburne rose. He walked over to the talus pile and picked up a nasty-edged rock fragment. He angled his wrist and flung it, like you’d skip a rock. It sailed out from the ridge, a good distance, and then arced down. He said, “No, I don’t think Henry was throwing rocks at us. Wrong angle.” He found another spot, standing now within the talus field. He stood rigid and then suddenly he jerked, like he’d been stung by wasp. His foot jerked out, dislodging a small pile of rotten rock. The stuff skittered, some of it skittering over the edge. It did not arc.

  He turned to us. “Henry occasionally has mini-seizures. In consequence, you understand.”

  I understood.

  It was entirely possible.

  I’ve done it myself, dislodging loose rock, sending it over the edge of a trail.

  “We good?” Shelburne asked.

  Walter and I exchanged a look. A nod.

  Good enough.

  6

  We busied ourselves closing up packs, shouldering them, fastening hip belts.

  Shelburne set off in the lead.

  We fell in.

  We followed our ledge to the far end of the bedrock and then plunged into ponderosa pines and oaks and red-limbed madrone. A boy could play hide and seek in those woods. I wondered if Henry Shelburne had ever played such innocent games.

  As we hiked, Robert Shelburne surveyed the woods, shouting his brother’s name once or twice, but there was nobody playing hide and seek.

  Our wooded trail climbed gently, in a wide arc, eventually giving out onto the true ridge, a broad forested crest.

  Here, we intersected a marked trail, the Ridge Trail. We’d studied and inked the map of this territory back in the lab.

  Out in the field, I got my bearings.

  This was the divide between the canyons of the Middle and the South Yuba Rivers, muscular waterways flowing east-west, coming down from the High Sierra. The rivers were transected by north-south metamorphic belts shot through, here and there, with igneous dikes.

  Shelburne said, “We used to call this the Trail of Trial and Error.”

  We were in the twenty-square-mile neighborhood that the Shelburne family had marked, by trial and error, one generation after the other.

  We were following the path of a huge Tertiary channel cut by the ancestral Yuba River.

  The deep blue lead.

  Now deeply buried, for the most part.

  I tried to see it through Henry’s eyes, the amateur geologist, the squint-eyed teenager in the tricked-up Old West Photo, and before that the kid fed legends with his breakfast cereal.

  So how did Dad Shelburne tell the tale?

  I gave it a shot.

  Once upon a time, Henry, a great river came from a distant land, carrying a peculiar quartz that it ripped from bedrock veins along its journey, veins gorged with gold—and here, I figured, Henry can’t contain himself and interrupts to say nuggets? And Dad Shelburne says shut up kid and listen—at least that’s the way my dad would have told it, if my Henry had interrupted. And Henry shuts up and Dad continues. The long-ago quartz-carrying river was so strong and mighty that it carved a deep channel and laid down its load. And then volcanoes erupted—boom boom boom—sound effects, Henry, keep your attention on what comes next—and the lava buried the ancient river. Oh no, Henry says, the river is gone, all that gold gone. Dad snorts. Be a little man, kid, the gold’s not gone. Listen up: a new age comes and the land rises up like a trapdoor opening and lifts the old river channel up high. And Henry lifts his chin and looks up. No no, Dad says, you can’t see it yet, not until new rivers are born. Here’s where it cuts to the chase: the new rivers cut deep new canyons in the lost land, down through the lava deposits, and they slice open parts of the old river channel and lay bare the auriferous gravels. How about that, kid? Auriferous means gold-bearing, a little prospecting lesson for you, wouldn’t hurt you to start learning this stuff if you want in on the family legend. Now finish your damn cereal before the school bus comes.

  That’s the way I imagined Henry learned it.

  Who says there’s no romance in my soul?

  The story of the ancient rivers played out up and down the Mother Lode, producing many gold-bearing channels, but this channel of the ancient Yuba was the biggest, the richest, the most legendary.

  Once upon a time.

  I’d been doing quite a bit of reading.

  Now, all that remained visible of this ancient channel and its tributaries were interrupted fragments that cropped out here and there, most of them already found and laid bare by the miners. Still, the blue lead was said to crop out in all kinds of unthought-of places, on the ridge tops or the gouged flanks that ran down to the river bottoms.

  Back in the lab at the map table Robert Shelburne had shown us the tributary his grandfather explored, the Shelburne family’s own deep blue lead.

  We’d drawn bullseyes on
the map, targets along the Shelburne blue lead where the geology indicated a possible contact zone between the slate and the diorite. It was a coin toss where to begin on the route because there were targets at either end and in between. It was a coin toss where Henry, this time, would have begun.

  The Trail of Trial and Error, certainly, for us.

  Out here, in the field, we were following the Shelburne offshoot that intersected the main channel and then went its own way.

  Once upon a time, Henry my little crusader, your grandfather found a gold-specked chunk of ore with black carbon crosses in its heart.

  Somewhere along this route.

  We traveled more slowly now, eyeing the geology.

  The chill breeze accompanied us, bringing the ozone odor of impending rain.

  The ground underfoot was hard andesite breccia, the cemented remains of the lava flows that had buried the ancient rivers. We found a hard spine of oxide-stained quartz blading out of the ground, sign of an ancient channel buried somewhere nearby.

  We picked up pieces of diorite float, rock fragments that had weathered off their parent and traveled by water or wind or gravity.

  We followed the float to a place where a stream had cut back and exposed layers of weathered slate. We found a hornfels zone but the hornfels was innocent of Maltese crosses.

  We looked for signs of Henry.

  Listening.

  The breeze fingered through the pines and oaks that cloaked the trail, ruffling, whispering. Nothing more.

  We marked off the target on our map and continued the hunt.

  The trail dipped down a little gully, an eroded funnel of decomposed rock. Down at the bottom, vegetation overtook us. Thickets of sugar and digger pine, tangles of manzanita and toyon and other bushes I could not identify.

  And, again, there was that odd scent.

  There was a rustling sound.

  I nearly called out Henry’s name. A ground squirrel appeared, and disappeared. I was glad to have held my tongue. I didn’t even try to silence the voice in my head. Come out come out wherever you are. I’d played hide and seek with my Henry, usually bored out of my mind because I considered myself too old for such games, and because Henry was too young to hide well. And because my mom and dad and my older brother and I all told Henry at least once a day to be careful, and so I always mixed worry in with the boredom. Usually, I’d pretend not to be able to find him. I’d finally yell, come out come out wherever you are. And you’d think he’d won the lottery.