Tainted Gold

by Lynn Michaels

  “You,” she cried, whirling around and flinging a pointed index finger at him, “should have told me, Tucker!”

  “You’re right, I should have.” He stopped a foot shy of the bank. “And looking at your face right now, I wish to God I’d taken my chances and done just that.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “If I had, would you have looked at me twice?”

  “Not even once.”

  “Then I rest my case.”

  “That’s not a case,” Quillen countered, tears seeping into her voice. “It’s a cop-out. I trusted you, I believed you, and you betrayed me—”

  “How did I betray you?” he demanded, taking the last few steps in one giant stride as he hauled himself up on the bank. “What the hell is this, Quillen? You don’t trust me anymore, you don’t love me anymore just because Desmond Cassil is my uncle?” He rose to his feet and water sluiced off the slick, green rubber waders covering his legs. “That’s pretty damn flimsy.”

  “It is not—”

  “Yes, it is,” he cut her off coldly, “as flimsy as your not-so-subtle suggestion that I’m in league with him to wrest this land away from you.”

  “Why shouldn’t I believe that? All you’ve done is lie to me!”

  “Did you give me a choice? Hell, no, you didn’t. There’s no gray with you, Quillen, only black and white. If I’m not for you, I’m against you.”

  He didn’t raise his voice but she knew he was furious. Blue ice glittered in his eyes and the striped suspenders holding up his waders snapped angrily against his upper arms as he jerked them off his shoulders.

  “I am on your side. I just can’t believe that Uncle Des, as ruthless and grasping as he is, would resort to mayhem to get his hands on this land. He is my uncle—he always has been and he always will be. I have very little affection for him, Quillen. I don’t like the way he operates, and I’d like to slug him for what he’s doing to us, but that’s his method—divide and conquer—and if you’d stop with your how could you-do-this-to-me outrage and look beyond the end of your own nose, you’d see that and try to help me figure out what he’s up to.”

  “Figure it out yourself,” she told him, and added, with a bitter glare over her shoulder as she wheeled away from him, “Dr. Ferris.”

  He didn’t answer, but Quillen could feel him watching her as she stalked toward the Blazer, flung the door open, and climbed into the seat. She started the engine, gripped the wheel, and jammed the gearshift into reverse. The Blazer cut a squealing, dusty about-face and shot down the road. Glancing in the rearview mirror, through the gravel smoke swirling behind the truck, she saw Tucker throw his hat on the ground, punt it into the creek with a sideways, soccer-style kick, and then wrap his hands around one of the lowest branches of the cottonwood tree. He half-stood, half-hung there, his head lowered.

  Tears swelled in her eyes, the road swam, and Quillen’s right foot slackened on the accelerator. She hadn’t really given him a choice—no more of a choice than he’d given her, she thought as she pushed the pedal to the floor again and wiped the back of her left hand across her eyes.

  This isn’t his choice, it’s yours, her little voice pointed out harshly, and you can make another one right now. You can stop punishing yourself and him for things that happened twenty years ago, things that have no more to do with what’s going on here now than do the phases of the moon.

  Quillen stepped hard on the brake, the rear wheels locked, and the truck fishtailed. It came to a stop broadside in the road midway through the long curve, less than a mile from the creek. Gravel dust filtered through the open passenger window, and she sneezed and coughed as she batted it out of her face and listened to her little voice.

  Just for the sake of argument here, let’s say he’s Al Capone’s nephew instead. Would that automatically make him a gangster, too? He’s guilty of only two things—not telling you himself about his relationship to Cassil, and panning the creek. He seemed more than willing to explain the latter, but you hardly gave him the chance. Think about what he said, particularly in regard to Cassil—just think about it for a minute.

  Quillen did, for longer than a minute. She thought about it until the dust had settled into a fine, milky film across the dash, until her fingers ached from gripping the wheel and her right leg cramped from depressing the brake.

  She let go of the wheel then. Sighing and flexing her fingers, she nudged the gearshift into park, looked up, and caught a glimpse of the stone cemetery wall in the rearview mirror. She stared at it, remembered Saturday night, and asked herself, as Tucker had suggested, if she really thought this was what her father had wanted for her. The answer was no, and her eyes brimmed slowly with tears as she put the truck in reverse and turned it toward the creek.

  The stream and both banks as far as Quillen could see were deserted. She left the Blazer parked near the Jeep and walked toward the cottonwood. Tucker’s bow and quiver had disappeared with him. A faint breeze stirred the broad, dusty leaves overhead, and a shiver crawled up her back as she looked down at the pan, half-tipped on the ground.

  Squelching the memory of his remark about taking potshots at the person who’d smashed his seismometer, Quillen squatted beside the pan and idly stirred one finger through the silt in the bottom. Even in the shade, glittery yellow flecks showed in the muddy, pebbly sludge. Big deal, she thought, frowning as she stood up and tucked her hands in the back pockets of her jeans. Gold dust is as common in Colorado as wheat seeds in Kansas.

  Now she had another choice. She could wait for Tucker or she could leave. If she left, she’d probably never screw up courage enough to come back, yet the idea of moping on the bank with her heart in her hand didn’t appeal to her, either. When he returned (and because his Jeep was here she knew he would), she didn’t want to look so obviously apologetic. She glanced at the pan again, sighed, and sat down to take off her socks and loafers. The water would be cold—it always was—but at least she’d have something to do, and it was an opportunity to investigate the gold claims for herself.

  With her jeans rolled up to her knees and the pan in her hand, Quillen rose and picked her way across the rocky ground to the creek. Lowering herself onto the muddy, slippery bank, she gritted her teeth and eased her bare feet into the icy water. A shiver of reaction made her shudder. While she gave her body a moment to adjust to the change in temperature, she gazed at the cliff on the opposite bank.

  It was a raw, fresh wound. The branches and leaves on the fallen trees were still alive, and the cascade of earth and small rocks that spilled almost to the edge of the creek looked like just-sifted flour that had yet to settle. This had happened recently, very recently, and Quillen thought again of the tremor on Sunday night as she inched herself off the bank into the water.

  The current-smoothed pebbles on the bottom were slick, and she moved gingerly toward the middle of the stream. Her feet and ankles were already numb with cold, and the refraction of the sunlight off the pure, clear surface of the water nearly blinded her. For a few minutes, bent from the waist with her left forearm braced on her thigh and the pan in her hand, Quillen examined the few larger, sharper-edged rocks she found on the bottom, their angled, jagged edges a sure sign that they hadn’t lain here long. One or two looked as if they might contain ore among their quartz veins, though it would be hard to tell for sure until they were cleaned. In any event, she judged the amounts as insignificant and tossed them back. Except for the dust glittering beneath the surface, the creek was barren; and as heavily as it had been panned recently she wasn’t surprised. What did surprise her, and what she couldn’t figure out as she dredged up a panful of silt, was why Tucker had even bothered.

  “You’re wasting your time,” he said curtly.

  Startled, Quillen straightened a little too quickly and slipped as she raised her head and saw Tucker standing on the cliff side of the creek. He started toward her but stopped as she righted herself and shielded her eyes with her left hand against the glare of the sun.


  Half-dry and droopy-brimmed, his hat sat back on his head. His mouth was a thin, hard line, and his features looked as if they’d been chiseled out of granite. His bow and quiver were slung over his right shoulder.

  “I see that,” she answered, just as curtly. “So why were you wasting your time?”

  “I had my reasons,” he replied coolly. “Now don’t you think you should get out of there before you give yourself pneumonia?”

  The tone of his voice implied that he couldn’t care less whether she did or didn’t, and his pointed emphasis on the past tense verb stabbed sharply at Quillen’s rapidly beating heart. Oh, God, she’d blown it. She knew she had, but bristled to hide the pain the thought sent racing through her mind.

  “Why don’t you mind your own business? You’re a geologist, not a doctor.”

  “Who better to take care of a woman who’s got rocks in her head?” He frowned as he leaned down, braced one hand on the bank, and levered himself into the creek.

  He sloshed through the water toward her. Quillen, her bare feet sliding on the treacherous bottom, did her best to evade him—but it was useless. His boots gave him better footing, and in four long strides he’d cut off her line of retreat. As his hands closed on her upper arms, she raised the pan to bean him with it, then shrieked indignantly as he lifted her and dumped her over his left shoulder.

  “Put me down!” she cried, trying to wiggle free of the arm he fastened securely around her waist.

  He didn’t, just tightened his grip on her and carried her toward the bank. There he put her down, and Quillen whirled away from him, her wet, numb feet slipping on the muddy ground as she stalked toward the cottonwood and her socks and shoes. Behind her, she heard water slosh as he hauled himself out of the creek. Her face vermilion with embarrassment, she snatched up her socks and loafers and wheeled toward him, her voice seething with fury.

  “How dare you! Who do you think—” Quillen froze, her voice and her anger shriveling as a shiver of alarm prickled the back of her neck.

  Tucker wasn’t looking at her. His eyes were fixed on the top of the cliff and never left it as he hastily unlooped his bow from his shoulder and plucked an arrow out of his quiver.

  “Get out of here,” he ordered harshly. “Now—run!”

  She didn’t, of course, and despite the warning chill lacing down her spine, stepped out from under the low-hanging branches of the cottonwood. Raising the loafer in her left hand over her eyes, Quillen squinted and looked at the cliff top. She couldn’t see a thing except the scarlet and gold and deep green sway of tree— No, wait a minute—

  “Go!” Tucker bellowed, wheeling toward her on one heel as he strung the arrow.

  Quillen went then at a dead run, launched by the thunderous tone of his voice, the gleam of the killing arrowhead in the sun, and the flash of luminescent orange she’d glimpsed amid the wind-stirred tree limbs above. Behind her, she heard a faint whoosh of air as the arrow flew, and then the rapid thud of Tucker’s pounding footsteps. He caught up with her, grabbed her right arm—and then the world exploded.

  The force of the blast sent her flying. She felt her body twist in midair, then she hit the shuddering ground hard on her left shoulder and the breath slammed out of her lungs. Quillen never heard the blast or the ear-splitting crack that the massive trunk of the cottonwood must have made when it sheered down the middle. She felt the jolt beneath her when the two halves hit the ground, in the same instant that something heavy and warm flung itself on top of her. Dazed and deafened and choking in a thick cloud of dust, she gasped and heaved to draw a breath through the dust clogging her nose and mouth.

  Chunks of earth thudded around her; she felt rather than heard them land, and she shivered, gagging and rigid with terror. A deafening roar gushed inside her ears, nausea gripped her stomach, and she instinctively covered her head with her left arm. Her right was pinned under—Tucker’s body, she realized, and she lay beneath him, quaking convulsively until it stopped raining dirt.

  Slowly and shakily, Tucker pushed himself off her, and Quillen rolled gingerly onto her back. Her muscles, bones, and insides squirmed, and for an awful moment, until her head stopped spinning, she thought she was going to throw up. She didn’t, and once her stomach settled, she forced herself up on her right elbow. She opened her eyes, shut them as grit and dirt stung beneath her lids, and wiped her fingertips on her jeans before raising them to her face and brushing them over her eyes. Blinking then, she stared, ashen and trembling, at the devastation.

  All that remained of the cottonwood was twenty feet of shattered trunk. The crown had broken and fallen, half in the creek, the other on top of Tucker’s now-smashed Jeep. Parked slightly behind it, the Blazer, except for a few small branches on the hood and roof, was unscathed. The cliff had been obliterated. In its place was a still-moving slope of earth and rock littered with rolling, broken trees. Most of the debris spilled into the creek. As Quillen took the hand Tucker offered her and pulled herself to her feet on wobbly legs, she saw that the water had already begun to back up behind the dam of rock and timber clogging the channel. A heavy pall of reddish brown dirt and dust hung in the air and drifted like shapeless wraiths on the light wind.

  They’d run farther than she’d thought, a good sixty to seventy yards from the creek. Terror is a terrific propellant, she thought, groggily shaking her head as she weaved in an unsteady half-circle and looked at Tucker.

  His hat was gone, so was his bow, and he was filthy (as Quillen imagined she was). His face, hands, clothes, and hair were caked with dirt. His chest heaving and a grimace contorting his features, he bent forward, leaned one hand on his knee and pressed his flattened left palm to his rib cage.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, her voice sounding tinny and small and very far away inside her head.

  He nodded and straightened, his expression easing as he staggered away from her, searching the rock and dirt clod-strewn ground for his bow. She followed unsteadily, looking for her loafers. She found them both but only one of her socks, draped over Tucker’s hat. As she bent over to retrieve them, she lost her balance and fell hard on her knees, crying out and rocking back on her tailbone as a sharp stone bit into her shin.

  A strong arm with a faint, telltale hint of tremor in the sun-browned muscles looped around her just above her breasts, pulled her to her feet, and then slid around her shoulders. Leaning as heavily on her as she did on him, Tucker towed her toward the Blazer. Quillen wiggled the keys out of her back pocket and gave them to him. He opened the door and gave her a weak, halfhearted push on the fanny to help her drag herself up into the passenger seat.

  More than anything, she wanted to crawl into the back of the truck and collapse, but she sat valiantly upright in the seat. Her teeth were clenched against the grind and ache starting in her limbs and the prickly throb pulsing in her shin and her bare, muddied feet as she watched Tucker limp around the nose of the truck with one hand on the fenders. He opened the left side door, gripped the steering wheel, and vaulted himself heavily into the seat. His breathing was still labored and he winced slightly as he leaned forward, started the engine, and moved the gearshift into reverse.

  The truck backed out of the shade and Quillen noticed a hairline crack near the middle of the windshield as a bolt of sunlight fell across the hood. She was so grateful to be alive, so stunned and shaken at the thought of what could have happened if Tucker hadn’t lugged her out of the creek, if he hadn’t seen the glimpse of orange in the trees before she had, that she couldn’t have cared less if the whole windshield had broken.

  While the truck bounced down the gravel road, Quillen thought about that flash of iridescent color she’d seen in the trees. It had looked like the same shade of orange used in hunting jackets—or the vest construction workers sometimes wore. She wasn’t sure what purpose they served, but she’d seen them, many times, worn by Cassil employees.

  At the mouth of the canyon road, Tucker turned the Blazer left and headed towa
rd the festival grounds. Quillen didn’t ask where they were going; she knew, and wiggled her feet into her dirt-caked loafers. Assuming that his ears had to be ringing as loudly as hers were, Quillen leaned toward Tucker and spoke into his ear.

  “There’s a key to the lock on the front gates on my key ring.”

  He nodded, and when he stopped the truck in front of the stockade and switched off the engine, he winced again as he tugged the keys out of the ignition and opened his door.

  Flattening his palm against his rib cage again, he limped toward the gates. Quillen realized then that he was not all right and hurried after him. Once he’d unlocked the fat-hasped padlock and tugged the logging chain out of the rings that held the gates shut, she pushed the right-hand portal open.

  Now that the initial shock and trauma of the blast had passed (except for the ringing in her ears), it dawned on Quillen that Tucker hadn’t spoken one word to her since they’d scraped themselves off the ground. She hoped it was just because he was hurt and in pain, yet the grim frown on his pale face and his heavy, ragged breathing as they clambered back into the truck suggested more than cracked or broken ribs. Still, she made a mental note to insist that the Cassil Springs Hospital emergency room be their next stop.

  All the main trails leading through the grounds were wide enough to accommodate the Blazer, and fewer than three minutes later Tucker parked it near the footbridge at the bottom of the Gypsy Camp. This time he caught his breath sharply as he switched off the engine, kicked his door open, and bailed out.

  “Tucker, wait!” she called as she followed him across the seat and under the wheel. “You’ve got no business—”

  Either he didn’t hear her or chose to ignore her, and Quillen could do nothing but hurry after him into the trees along the same path she’d taken to the cliff. He had much better sense than she’d had, and started out on the north bank, moving slowly and carefully past fractures splitting the leafy ground—cracks that hadn’t been here earlier. Frequently he stopped to nudge a boot toe at a fissure or to squat, clutching his side and gritting his teeth, to examine one more closely.