Quicksilver (reissue)

by Toni Dwiggins

Walter said, “You see the rimrocks of slate and Shoo Fly schist exposed on each side of the valley, Gail?”

  She saw the bedrock. She couldn't have named the schist.

  “That indicates the course of the old channel through here,” he said. “The bedrock still holds up the elevated riverbed.”

  Gail's golden eyes swept the land.

  “But there's something you have to consider, Gail.”

  Her attention snapped back to him, to his straight back and measured pace.

  “What?' she said.

  “I might not be able to find what we're looking for.”

  She thought, he's bluffing. He studied the ore in his lab and that led him all the way here. She'd studied him for years and she knew he could find it. But he was suddenly bluffing her. She couldn't believe he'd be that stupid. She had no more patience for this Level-1 talk with him. It was too slippery. So she decided to use the last warning, the one she had been saving.

  She said, “If you can't find it, I'll go find Cassie. She's second-best but she's next in line.”

  ~ ~ ~

  They took the high spur that led down from the main ridge to the upper valley. They passed a flattened piece of rusting pipe and then a crumbling stone foundation where a shack had once stood. On the far side, beyond the little creek, the black mouth of a drift tunnel showed through the trees and the brush.

  Walter led the way to the base of the hillside that separated this upper valley from Robert Shelburne's valley down below.

  Walter was steady. No more talk of maybe not finding anything.

  They hiked for awhile and then he stopped and told her they needed to backtrack along the deer path.

  “What did you see?” she asked.

  “Just getting the lay of the land.” He stared at her. Not afraid. Those blue-lead eyes steady.

  She jerked the gun at him. Reminding him.

  They backtracked.

  Walter kept stopping to look up the hill. And then he'd shake his head and they'd go again.

  While he did his job and looked for the gold, she did her job and kept watch for Cassie.

  Neither one of them found what they were looking for.

  Walter turned them again and took a different path along the hillside. He kept looking at it like he knew what he was doing.

  And finally they came to a tangle of brush and Walter said, “Here.”

  “Where?”

  “It's not going to stand up and announce itself, Gail. If it did, it would have been found long ago. What we have to do, now, is look for the detritus. The rocks and cobbles that show somebody mined here once. Found something here once.”

  “Robert's rock?”

  “Henry's rock, actually. More to the point, Henry's and Robert's grandfather's rock.” Walter looked at her carefully. “How much of the story do you know?”

  She said, “I know what Robert said in his message to you. On the forum. About the ore. About the nugget. You tell me the rest of the story right now.”

  “The gist is that the Shelburne brothers' grandfather was a rogue. He didn't work the established mine over there.” Walter pointed across the valley to the tunnel. “Whatever he found, he found on his own.”

  Gail stared at the hillside. It looked no different to her than any of the other parts of the hillside they had been exploring. She wished that her golden eyes could see what Walter's blue-lead eyes saw. “You think the gold is in there?”

  “I know it is.”

  Her mouth watered. It was close enough to taste. Hard G for gold. Hard G for Gail's.

  “But you're going to have to fight through the vegetation,” Walter said. “On your hands and knees, so you don't miss anything.”

  She spun on him and snarled, “Do you think I'm crazy? You get on your hands and knees. You find that detritus. You find where the grandfather dug. You find me the gold.” She leveled the gun at him. “And I'll keep watch.”

  CHAPTER 44

  The woman was pointing her gun at Walter.

  Walter was on his knees, digging through a patch of low-lying bushes.

  I couldn't think.

  Could barely breathe, hiding behind the boulder, feeling dense as the rock.

  All I could think was that she had dropped something and ordered him to find it.

  And if he didn't find it she was going to shoot him.

  I gripped the seam of quartz that spined the top of the boulder, to hold myself in place.

  Don't go stampeding over there.

  If you go stampeding across the open ground from your hiding place here behind this brush-haired outcrop, she will hear you or sense you or see you and she will shoot Walter or you or the both of you, one and then the other, because her gun fires in microseconds and you move in geologic time.

  Fear.

  Panic.

  I wanted to throw up.

  Order of the day, it seemed.

  I took in a long breath and let out a long breath and fought my headlong self to get a grip.

  The grip of the gun was wrapped in the woman's big hand but the barrel and the slide were visible in the light of the sun and the color was two-tone, black body with a silver slide where the finish had worn off.

  Quicksilver's gun.

  There was a woman pointing Henry Shelburne's gun at Walter.

  I had a thousand questions.

  First—what in the hell should I do?

  Only one answer to that question: Don't stampede.

  And then the next question, the gut-twisting question, did she shoot Robert Shelburne?

  This woman?

  Who are you?

  How did you get Henry's gun, okay I know how you got it, I know where it was left, it was lying on top of the mercury pool like a gift, and your target Robert Shelburne presented himself just outside the grotto, like a gift.

  Why did you shoot him?

  Did Robert hurt you first? Is that why your head is bandaged?

  Who are you?

  The bandage was wrapped around her head like a bandana and brown hair spiked out underneath, shoulder-length, some kind of punk 'do all raggedy and randomly streaked blond. Dirt streaked her gold T-shirt and brown pants. She wore brown boots. A big brown backpack lay on the ground nearby.

  Her hair shielded her face because she was looking down at Walter, watching him search for whatever was there. Looking down, pointing the gun down at Walter.

  I hadn't a hope in hell of dashing over and successfully tackling her.

  Who are you?

  Big brown backpack.

  Glimpses of brown through the trees, on the clifftops, on the hike in.

  I'd thought that was Henry—Henry with the brown pack and the brown tent and the brown parka. Maybe it was Henry sometimes and this woman sometimes. I'd had no idea there was somebody else out there to keep track of. I'd glimpsed brown and thought bear or deer or Henry. And now here was another one.

  Does every shithead with a gun in this place wear goddamn freaking brown?

  Breathe in. Breathe out.

  What do you know?

  Whatever Brown Woman wants with Walter, it made her follow us, brought her to Enchantment Valley, brought her to the grotto and the gun. And then she killed Robert. And then she marched Walter away at gunpoint.

  Why?

  The answer was so clear and right and simple that I couldn't believe I even asked the question.

  What did Robert Shelburne want with Walter—and with me by extension because I was there? Track the ore sample that held the gold. What did Henry Shelburne want with Walter—and with me by extension because Walter put me forward? Go into the tunnel and find the gold.

  And why had Brown Woman and Walter come here? Because Walter knew there was a fracture spring in the hillside, because he figured he knew where a dike intercepted an ancient channel and formed a riffle that lodged gold. I didn't know how she knew that Walter knew that—maybe she'd overheard us—but that was the only reason I could unearth for this abhorrent scene before me. />
  Brown Woman wanted Walter to find the gold.

  That's what he's doing on his knees in the brush. Looking for float.

  My fingers stung. I looked. Blood under my right pointer, licking out to stain the rock.

  I relaxed my death grip on the sharp-edged quartz.

  Breathe in. Breathe out.

  You need a plan.

  ~ ~ ~

  I walked slowly—no stampeding—but I walked heavy-footed scattering rocks. With my hands in the air.

  Nobody could have missed me.

  She didn't miss me.

  Oh yeah, she noticed.

  Her head snapped up and swiveled. She looked my way. She took two steps backward, two well-thought steps to position herself so that she could point the gun at me and yet swing it in a flash back to Walter.

  Walter noticed me, too.

  He reared back on his heels and stared at me and slowly shook his head.

  I nodded, in reply. Too late, partner. We're in this together.

  I slowed my walk, seeking the woman's eyes, trying to leverage an understanding. I was too far away to see the expression in her eyes, but she nodded.

  Keep coming.

  I kept coming, my hands spearing the air.

  And then I got close enough to see the details of her face—round, small nose, wide mouth, it was almost a little girl face but her skin was brown and leathery. And then I got close enough to see her brown eyes, shining like river stones. If she was in pain from the wound on her head, it didn't show in those eyes.

  She was supremely focused.

  She was big, tall, broad-shouldered. Strong-looking.

  Brown Woman scared the daylights out of me.

  She said, “Cassie.”

  My name resonated. She had a deep, resonant voice. I wondered how she knew my name. Overheard us at some point, I guessed.

  I said, “And you would be?”

  She said, “Abigail.”

  Walter said, pointedly, “She likes to be called Gail.”

  She smiled at that, an inward-turning smile, and I wondered why that pleased her.

  We three fell silent—a tableau—woman with gun held on the crouching man and the woman with her hands in the air. I tested the boundaries. Slowly, I crooked my arms and brought my hands down to head level, and when Gail-not-Abigail didn't object or shoot, I lowered my arms all the way. My shoulders ached. I hadn't noticed before. Too busy posturing as the captive. Suddenly I noticed that I had to squint—the sun had blazed through the fog, at last—but I did not risk raising a hand to shade my eyes. Take it slowly. One move at a time.

  Walter seemed to hold his breath.

  Me too.

  I focused on Gail. I considered asking how she got hurt—try sympathy—but that could lead to the question of violence. That could backfire.

  Instead, I went with the plan I'd whipped up. “You're wasting your time here, Gail.”

  Walter placed his hands flat on the ground, leverage, should he be required to get up.

  Her face clouded, and then she motioned with her gun hand to Walter and then to the bushes where he had been searching, and then she turned the gun on me.

  Walter quickly said, “I can use her help.”

  He's buying time, I got it, but it was not going to work.

  Not here.

  I said to Gail, “I can show you where the gold is.”

  “Here,” she said.

  “No.”

  “Then where?”

  “It's in the tunnel. In the valley down below.”

  Walter opened his mouth to speak, and then shut it.

  Her eyes slitted. “No it isn't. I looked.”

  I panicked.

  She said, “You're level two.”

  I did not know what that meant, what to say to that.

  Walter said, “Gail, you told me you looked, but you're not a geologist. She is.”

  Good, great, you're getting on board Walter and let's just hope she's not the skilled amateur that Henry Shelburne is, because he sure in hell spent enough time out here in this country learning what to look for, and would know bullshit when he heard it. Surely we can hope that she's not good enough to find the gold on her own. That must be so, or Walter wouldn't be here, alive. But the question now became, is she good enough to have seen what I saw in the tunnel down there in Enchantment Valley—and understand that it was a bust?

  Just how good is she?

  And what in the hell was a level two? Considering the venom she wrapped around those words I judged that this was not a good thing.

  She was not proving as predictable as I'd thought.

  I really hadn't thought this through, I had a half-baked plan to get us all on the move, back down to the valley and the tunnel that I figured had become my stomping grounds, where I figured Walter and I would have the home-field advantage. Two against one. Okay, one with a gun. But better odds down there than here with Walter and me on our hands and knees digging in the dirt.

  Everything hinged on the answer to the question. Just how good is she?

  I gambled and said, “Did you go all the way?”

  Her face clouded, again.

  “You wouldn't,” I said, “unless you knew there was a fault block offset. A buried side adit,” I added, throwing out the mining term as if I was a fellow enthusiast. “The lead got richer in that direction.”

  Her eyes brightened, almost seemed to enflame, almost changing color the way some people's eyes do when emotions run high, or maybe it was just the sun reflecting off the silver of the gun, lighting up her face, highlighting flecks of gold in her irises.

  She was nodding.

  She wasn't good enough.

  I rushed ahead, spinning the bullshit, telling the tale of a twice-buried blue lead marked by a fault block that only a trained geologist was going to take notice of, and I offered her a deal, we'd all go back down and I'd show her the way to the gold and in return she would allow us to walk away, and I knew she would never keep such a deal but if I got her down to the tunnel, then Walter and I might find the time and the place and the chance to remake the deal.

  As she listened, she grew antsy. She held the gun steady in her right hand but she started to flex her left hand. Open and shut, open and shut. And then she bent her left forearm, doing a bicep curl, again and again, and I could actually discern a strange bulging of the bicep under the shirt. Was she pumping up, preparing for some sort of action?

  She stopped the flexing and moved her left hand to the sheathed knife on her belt.

  Oh shit.

  Her eyes blazed.

  I read intensity in those eyes and I dearly hoped it wasn't blood lust.

  Her fingers wrapped around the knife hilt.

  Walter was slowly and carefully getting to his feet.

  My heart pumped adrenaline with such force that I felt sick.

  I watched her hand on the knife. Our best hope was that she would go for the knife and abandon the gun, because that would give Walter and me a chance to tackle her. Get cut in the process but that's better than shot. Still, the sight of that wicked blade sliding up from the sheath made me go weak with fear.

  She didn't withdraw the knife all the way.

  Just enough to unsheathe the heel, which jutted out proud from the hilt.

  She drew her index finger across the exposed blade, gently, as if she were testing the bite of the edge.

  She pressed too hard. Blood oozed.

  All right bitch your blade is sharp and I really don't want to tangle with it, not the knife and not the gun, but right now the knife fueled my fears and so I blurted, “Use that knife on the pay gravel I found and you'll draw gold.”

  She stared at me.

  Her eyes still blazed.

  This time I thought I read something different there, something that I dearly hoped was greed.

  And then she smiled.

  She let go of the knife and pressed her thumb against her bleeding finger.

  She licked her lips.


  ~ ~ ~

  We went single-file, first me and then Walter and then Gail with the gun, following the ridge that would lead to the spur trail down to Sluiceway Canyon.

  I spun the scenario awaiting us, ahead in the tunnel.

  A dozen ways to spin it.

  Too many ending in gunshots.

  I heard Walter behind me softly say, “En echelon.”

  Say what? En echelon meant parallel stepped fractures in a rock and I was thinking it must be some wild-ass plan he was cooking up for the tunnel, and then I heard Gail behind him say “what? what?” and then there came the sounds of boots kicking pebbles, boots coming to a fast halt on a steep path, and another meaning of en echelon came to me, some kind of military flanking maneuver Walter learned way back in the National Guard, Walter telling me with a joke about double meanings, and the meaning that had to count right now was get ready to flank me.

  As I turned I heard a shriek from Gail.

  It was almost an animal sound.

  And as I moved up to flank Walter and saw Gail staring up at the ridge across the canyon, her animal sounds resolved into words, words that made no sense. My weatherby.

  What? What?

  Reflexively I looked for an answer where she was looking, up on the ridge across the canyon. I tipped my head back and looked. And froze.

  There was a man with a rifle, aiming down at us.

  A shadow of a man backlit by the sun, a rifle silhouetted.

  Gail shrieked “not again” and raised the Glock.

  Walter lunged for her gun hand.

  I had no time to shriek, to beg the gods to keep her gun hand pointing up at the ridge. I was already coming around Walter, all en echelon, and then trying to come around Gail but her big brown backpack was like an outcrop, crowding the trail, giving me no room, and I had to navigate while trying to keep an eye on her gun hand and the rifle hand of the man on the ridge, expecting a shot from one or the other or both.

  And then the shots came.

  Gail firing.

  She aimed at the ridge.

  And then Walter got hold of her wrist, trying to yank down her hand, but she was big and strong and fighting and her hand with the Glock would not be forced all the way down.

  It was not out of the question that she was going to wrench free of Walter and turn the gun on him. I couldn't get close enough to help him with her gun hand, and I couldn't get around her to flank on the left side, to get access that way, I couldn't get around the monumental backpack, and then the knowledge came to me—thousands of steps on uneven ground wearing my own monumental pack, the feel of it snugging there, joined at the spine, at one moment a part of me and the next, with the wrong step and the misplaced boot, the pack becomes its own entity, takes possession of my balance. I knew that feeling in my bones. Felt it. Acted. Put my hands on the only thing within reach, giving her big nylon outcrop a yank.