Claim: A Novel of Colorado (The Homeward Trilogy)

by Bergren, Lisa T.

  “And after that,” Sabine said, “I’ll head to town to purchase some clothes.”

  “Want me to go with you?” Nic asked.

  She shook her head and then looked up at him. “It would be good for me to be alone. Consider what just happened. And where I might go next.”

  He tried to hide his frown. There was nothing spoken between them. No reason for him to protest the idea of her going anywhere without him, insist upon his protection. Hadn’t he been thinking the same thing this morning? That if they sold the land, they’d be free to go anywhere they pleased? But there was something different about hearing her say it.

  He turned away before she could make out his expression, discern what he was thinking. Everett was looking out the door again, waiting on them.

  “Pancakes,” Nic said, rubbing his hands and pretending to be more lighthearted than he suddenly felt. “I think I might eat ten myself. How many will you eat?”

  “Twenty,” the boy said, grinning. It felt good to see the child smile again. But his smile didn’t last long as he looked past Nic to Sabine, who was still standing outside. “She comin’?”

  “She’ll be along,” Nic said, gently shutting the door. “She just needs a bit of time to herself. She’s not used to sharing a place with two men.”

  o

  She was exiting the mercantile, crossing the street, when he rode up and blocked her way.

  Rinaldi.

  She stood still, waiting, hoping some of the passersby on the boardwalk would sense her hesitation and see if she was all right. But they all moved on, either unaware or uninterested in getting involved.

  Rinaldi circled her, still on his horse. “Came down for some new boots, I see.”

  “Boots and other things,” she said. She shifted the packages in her arms. The gold dust had been just enough to cover all she needed.

  She moved to the right, but he edged his horse around, dismounted, and grabbed her elbow. “Come with me,” he ordered, pretending to smile and tipping his hat toward two young women who passed by and gazed their way. He pulled her toward the alley beside the Merc and then blocked her way.

  “You have no right—”

  “You couldn’t just agree to the offer they gave you, huh?”

  She clamped her lips shut. He towered over her, but Sabine refused to back away. It’d give him too much pleasure, she knew. It had been the same with her husband. “It was a good offer,” he said.

  “Not good enough.”

  He took a breath. Then, “You cut down my partner.”

  She stared up at him, incredulous that he would own up to it. “You burned down my house and tried to kill me.”

  “It wasn’t yours. It was your husband’s.”

  “It was mine.”

  “Come with me, Sabine,” he said in a monotone. “Take the offer.”

  “That deal has come and gone.”

  “I happen to know the offer might still be on the table. If you sign, so will St. Clair.”

  She looked down, to her right, then back into his cold gray eyes. “I don’t take offers from men who would burn down my house with me in it. Something about that makes me not trust you.”

  Rinaldi scoffed and looked up the mountain, in the direction of the Gulch. “Does your partner agree with that?” He said the word partner as if it were something unsavory, unclean.

  She followed his gaze, thinking of Nic, working inside the mine today, of Everett, wearily filling yet another pail of soil to carry to the pile outside. How dare this louse disparage either of them. How dare he insinuate …

  She drew in a long, slow breath through her nostrils. “My partner respects my opinion. And my opinion is this …” She reached out and poked the despicable man’s chest. “You and your bosses are the worst kind of predators. Had you come to us with an honest offer, had you not dealt such an underhanded blow, we might’ve taken the deal. But now? No.” She shook her head, ignoring his startled expression. She pressed on. “No. Never. The Dolly Mae Company can find another valley in which to roost. They will not have ours.”

  He backed up a step and looked down at her, his eyes wide. Then his expression hardened. “You don’t want to do this, Sabine.”

  “I do.”

  “It won’t bode well for you. I’m giving you fair warning. I’ve heard tell that you might be entertaining other investors.”

  “And if we are?”

  He cocked his head. “I wouldn’t be sleeping too soundly tonight.”

  “Get out of my way,” she said. “I’m leaving.”

  He slowly stepped aside but leaned down and grabbed her arm again, speaking lowly into her ear. “You realize this isn’t the end of it. You can hide behind St. Clair, but not forever.”

  “Let me go,” she ground out through her teeth.

  He casually let her go and then moved to his horse and swung up into his saddle. “I’m coming to see you tomorrow, Sabine.”

  “You step foot on my land or Nic’s, know that I’ll have a rifle in hand. And you’ll get far worse than your friend got.”

  He let a slow smile spread across his face. “You always did have spirit. You go on back to St. Clair, now. Tell him the offer still stands. Chances are, those other investors won’t offer you half of what the Dolly Mae can give you.”

  “Chances are, we’ll trust anyone more than you and your bosses.”

  He was no longer smiling. “Tell him, Sabine. Tell him it’s best to take our offer.”

  But no answer came to her on the wind through the trees.

  She turned away and strode down the street to her horse, hurriedly securing her packages to the saddle. Why was she so stubborn? Even after the fire. Why not take what she knew they could get and move on? Why hold on, hoping these new investors would pay out decently, risking not only her life, but also Nic’s and Everett’s?

  She glanced up the Gulch, picturing the yawning mouth of the mine. She hated every minute she was in that hole. She hated the grit and grime, the darkness, the punishing toil that left her arms and shoulders and back aching, begging her not to repeat the punishment the next day. The only bright spot was being there with Nic and Ev.

  But still, she resisted. It wasn’t right, giving in to the men of the Dolly Mae. It was too much like her years with her husband, giving in to abuse, thinking it was all she could expect out of life.

  There was something better ahead.

  Wasn’t there?

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The sheriff had sent word that he’d need a few more days than he thought. He was waiting on an investor from Denver to arrive in town. Nic, Sabine, and Everett redoubled their efforts to expose as much of the vein as possible, but the day before, the vein had abruptly come to an end. And to make matters worse, water had begun to seep into the twelve-foot-deep shaft.

  “I don’t know what to do about that,” Nic had said, staring down into the hole as he climbed out, the bottoms of his trousers soaked and muddy. “That’s going to take a pump of some sort.”

  “So we’ll get a pump,” Sabine said.

  “Sabine,” he said, trying to control his agitation. “We’re obviously hitting a water table. This is so far beyond my level of expertise, it’s ridiculous. What if it’s an underground lake? A mining company might be able to handle it. But you, me, Everett?” He let out a humorless laugh and threw up his hands. “We’re done.”

  “No,” she said. “We cannot be done. The sheriff’s bringing those men here in two days. We need to do more than sit around and wait. We need to find the vein again.”

  “I’d wager the surveyors of the Dolly Mae had a pretty good idea the initial vein petered out about there,” he said, gesturing toward the shaft. “You can be certain they knew about the water too. They took enough samples and did enough testing to have a good idea of what lays between us and China.”

  “So they knew. I don’t see how that helps us.”

  “It doesn’t.”

  “Then what do you suggest we
do?”

  “We could put in a well. Have some fresh artesian springwater,” he said, exasperated.

  She glared at him. She knew he was tired. But so was she. And this was important. Their future. “What if these new investors don’t want to do that much testing? What if they’re not as prepared to gamble on what lies beneath this water table?” She dug into the soil around a big boulder and brought up a pail of soggy dirt. It felt three times as heavy, wet.

  Everett ignored their argument and cast down a bucket beside her. Sabine filled it with more mud, then Everett hauled it upward on its rope.

  “This is like bailing water from a leaking boat. It’s ridiculous,” Nic said, gesturing toward the boy.

  Sabine ignored him, yanked the pick from the wall beside her, and then felt it connect, just beyond the edge of a large rock. She pried it downward.

  Nic sighed and began to climb down. “Hold on. Let me do that.”

  Still angry, she pulled on the rock, using her wet boot as leverage against the wall.

  Panting, she gave up, but she frowned at the hole she’d left in the wall. It was spurting water.

  Nic stared down at her, still several feet from the bottom. “Sabine, give me your hand,” he said firmly.

  She reached for him, but at that moment the boulder gave way, and a massive burst of water pushed against her. She went down into the mud at the bottom, getting a mouthful of dirty water in the face, but the boulder, thankfully, moved in the other direction, and narrowly missed her foot. Sabine came up and tried to scramble to her feet. She couldn’t get any decent footing, slipping again and again.

  The shaft rapidly filled with water, rising to her chest in thirty seconds. But then it was sinking. Sabine tried to make sense of it. She could see the water coming in. Where was it exiting? She felt behind her, noticed for the first time a sucking sensation.

  Oh no. “Nic …”

  But as she said his name, another hole in the shaft suddenly appeared, caving in on itself, spilling water outward. She struggled to find her footing and balance between what was raining down upon her and what was pulling behind her. The whole thing was becoming an underground river. “Nic!”

  He grabbed her hand, but it was muddy and wet and immediately slipped from his grasp.

  “Sabine!” Everett yelled from above.

  She reached out, but there was nothing to grab. All was slick and slimy. She grasped for the nearest timber on her side of the shaft. “Nic!” she screamed, now fearful as the new hole gaped wider, a growing chasm pulling her toward it.

  “I’ll be there in a second!” he called. “Ev, throw me a rope! Tie it to a timber up there, good and tight!”

  But she couldn’t hold on, no matter how hard she tried. One foot slid and she went down to one knee again, chest-deep in water. There the current took her, like a sail in the wind, backward to the hole. She wanted to scream, but her face was awash in cold water. She reached out, grasping, touching nothing but dirt clods that gave way in her hands like putty. The current was strong, so strong, it tugged her toward the hole, now just inches away.

  “Sabine,” Nic shouted, hovering above her then, a rope around his waist, reaching out with one hand. “Grab my hand. Grab it now.”

  She pushed with all her strength, and their fingers met, but the current was too much to resist. She plunged back into the water and her body turned. She fell headfirst down a shallow waterfall and through a tunnel beyond.

  Sabine nosed upward through the dark waters, hoping, praying there would be a space for her to breathe. She reached up, feeling her way, searching, before she dared to surface, but there was nothing, just a long tunnel, full to the top. The water was pulling at her, fast. How far? Would she ever surface? Or would she die in this underground river?

  Her lungs began to burn and she knew that her moments left were few, but then the current slowed. Cautiously, she reached up again, and felt air meet her hand. She rose and gasped, paddling in the water, and felt, rather than saw, the chasm of space. The echo of bubbling water reverberated around her. She gulped air. Her new boots, full of water, pulled her down. Forcing herself to remain calm, she paddled forward, hoping to reach the edge, or at least shallows, where she could rest.

  There. Sharp, crystallized rock met her fingertips and she winced. But she was glad for the pain, glad for something solid, tangible, known.

  Even if she was in utter darkness.

  “Hello!” she called out through chattering teeth. Not that she hoped to hear anything back. Just to find out what she could hear.

  Her voice reverberated through the cavern. It was bigger than she thought.

  Right. The tunnel is to my right, she told herself as she turned, not wanting to get disoriented in the pitch dark. She pulled her body out of the water on the shallow ledge and curled her legs into her chest. It’s on my right. The way out is to my right.

  But she could hear the surge of water pouring in, the rush and power of it. She’d felt it, driving her onward, through what? A ten-, twenty-foot tunnel? Or was it longer?

  Her teeth chattered and her body trembled.

  Never, in all her life, had she felt more alone.

  o

  “Sabine!” Nic screamed, reaching down and through the water, vainly hoping she would be right there, reaching back. But there was nothing, nothing but cold, sucking water, rushing faster and faster through one side and out the other. Both holes yawned wider like the mouths of two monsters.

  Everett screamed her name from above. Nic glanced up. The child’s face was a mask of horror.

  Nic racked his brain, trying to find a solution. He took a firm hold on the crossbeam and ducked low, to try to see the tunnel that had opened up, where Sabine had disappeared. Stop the water. You have to stop the water.

  Of course. He turned and made his way to the boulder, nearly losing his own footing. Then he took a deep breath, went underwater, and tried to lift the stone.

  At first it didn’t budge at all; it was extraordinarily heavy. Please, Lord, he found himself praying. Help me move it. Help me save Sabine. For Everett’s sake, if not my own. For hers.

  The rock shifted out of its shallow pit. He came up out of the water, gasping for breath, trying to avoid the stream of water as he maneuvered the rock back into place, back into the wall from which it had come. Water cascaded in around it, the hole now much wider than the boulder. “I need some rocks, Everett! About this size,” he said, showing the boy what he needed. “Toss ’em down to me, one at a time.”

  “What about Sabine? We have to go after her!”

  “That’s what I’m trying to do.” He glanced up at the boy. “If she’s alive, she’s someplace where she can breathe, through there,” he said, throwing his thumb over his shoulder. “Our only chance is to lessen the flow for me to go after her and pull her out.”

  “What if she can’t breathe?” the boy asked, his voice so tremulous, so full of sorrow it almost made Nic want to weep.

  “If she can’t breathe, Ev, she’s already gone.” He clamped his lips together. “So come on. Toss me those rocks. Quickly.”

  The boy disappeared for a moment, undoubtedly over to the rock pile, and tossed the rocks down to him. Nic caught one and then another and another, each time placing them slightly behind the edge of the boulder, building up a temporary wall. Anything to slow the flow of water. In a few minutes, they had most of it sealed off.

  Nic shook his head. “I’m not sure how long that will hold. I need some timber, nails, a sledge hammer.”

  The boy disappeared. In a moment, he handed down a plank. Nic positioned it against the far wall and against the boulder, making him trust that the rock might actually stay in place. He took the next three planks and fashioned a barrier against the rest of the wall, leaving a two-foot gap behind. “Ev, now start dumping dirt back there. Right here.” He gestured toward the gap. “If you can get about twenty pails full down here, we’ll cut off a lot of this flow. You’ll be making a dam.”

/>   As the boy set to putting dirt back into the shaft, Nic turned to the other tunnel. It was easier to see now, since the water was lower. “Sabine!” he called. He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Sabine!”

  He heard no answer, only the continual flow of water, like a stream that had overflowed its banks. “Throw me down another rope, Ev,” he called up. In a moment, the rope landed in the water beside him and he plucked it out before it could get sucked away. Swiftly, he tied one end of the rope to the one that Everett had tied above. “Sure that rope’s secure?” he called.

  “Yessir.”

  Nic pulled off his boots and emptied them of water, eyeing the wall of stone. It was spurting out in a few new areas, and Everett’s mud seemed to be doing nothing to stem the flow, just washing away. He had to hurry. He threw one boot to the top, then the other, not wanting them to weigh him down. Next, he checked the hitch knot at his waist to make sure it wouldn’t give way, then the other that connected with the second rope. It brought back his days on the Mirabella, tying knot after knot.

  “Okay, boy, this is how it’s going to go. I’m going down there,” he said, gesturing toward the new tunnel, “and I’ll go as far as this rope will let me. If I can’t come up for air at the end, I’ll haul myself back. You make sure it doesn’t come undone, all right?”

  The boy nodded.

  “Ev, if something happens and I’m not back in ten minutes, you run for the sheriff, all right? He’ll see to you.”

  “You come back,” the boy said, his expression one of blind panic. “You come back!”

  “I’ll do my best, Ev. Say a prayer for me while I’m gone.” With that, he edged into the tunnel, feeling his way with his stocking feet. Below, the stream grew stronger, pulling at him. He frowned, then took several deep breaths, and let the water carry his body along a tunnel. Several times he reached upward, feeling for air, a space for air, but found nothing. The only good thing, he supposed, was the rush of water. All this water had to be going somewhere, spilling into something.

  He was about to give up, thinking that the rope would pull tight, thinking he couldn’t wait much longer to breathe, let alone fight his way up current, when he popped to the surface. He gasped for air and tried to make sense of the echo of his own sputtering in a wide chasm.