His frown deepens.
“All right, all right, if you say so. I won’t make a fuss.”
Something flits across his face, like a bullet whizzing by and gone. Like something hurt his feelings.
I open my mouth to josh him about his sensitive soul, but an awful thought occurs to me: Maybe he’s not just quiet and stoic. Maybe he can’t talk. If that’s the case, then my funning him isn’t fun at all. It’s pure meanness.
We reach the cabin. The camp is lively now, with men going about their business. The arrastra grumbles and crunches as mules pull it round and round. One of the Chinese men has a small smithy going, mending pickaxes. I spot Mary sitting in the lap of one of the Missouri men, who is pausing for a smoke.
Wilhelm and I stand awkwardly a moment, him waiting for me to go inside, and me waiting for I’m not sure what.
Finally I say, “I have some leftover biscuits. You want some?”
His face freezes. Then a tiny grin tugs at those full lips, and he nods once.
“Wait here.” I dash inside, retrieve two biscuits from the stash in my chest, and hurry back to Wilhelm. “Here you go.”
He takes them from me gently, then tips his hat to me and turns to stand sentry outside the cabin.
Minutes later, a boom cracks the air. I fling open the door. A cloud of dust and ash billows from the mine entrance, bringing the scent of gunpowder. Abel and few others stand outside, whooping and hollering and slapping their hats against their legs like they just saw Fourth of July fireworks.
They won’t find that vein of gold. I sent them off in the wrong direction. If my uncle asks, I’ll tell him it was a short vein, hardly worth pursing, and that they probably blew it to bits. They’ll find a little gold, sure, just enough to give credence to my lie. But not enough to make my uncle rich.
I’m not sure it was the right thing to do. I’m not sure about anything.
Chapter Fifteen
I need to find my guns.
I don’t know where Hiram went or when he’ll be back, but I can’t miss this chance. My uncle’s bedroom has an actual door. If my guns are in the cabin, they’ll be in his bedroom.
Even though no one else is home, I step quietly as I make my way toward the one room of the cabin I haven’t been inside. My heart is as skittery as a water bug as I place my hand to the door and push it open. There’s no knob; it just swings wide, squealing out a warning that I’m sure can be heard all the way to San Francisco.
The room is bigger than my own by several paces in either direction. It contains a bed big enough for two, a shelf full of books, and a beautiful cherrywood dresser beneath a wide window. The room faces north and is snugged up against the tree line, so in spite of the window, the air is murky and cool. Everything smells of tobacco and candle wax.
I check under the bed, behind the hanging clothes—nothing. I’m tiptoeing toward the dresser to open the drawers when something catches my eye. It’s a framed photograph, sitting beside a half-melted candle. It’s blurry, as though it’s been handled too many times. I peer closer, something niggling at my brain.
A young woman looks back at me. She’s been posed primly, with her hands crossed in her lap, her chin high. She’s young, maybe eighteen, with a perfect complexion and a trim figure and a firm set about her pretty mouth.
She looks like me. Except she’s a lot handsomer, truth be told, with that dainty chin and skin that’s never seen the sun.
I think it might be my mother.
Mama had lines around her eyes and gray at her temples, a waist thick from two pregnancies, and a perpetually sunburned nose from forgetting to wear her bonnet. Her hands were strong, not delicate, her mouth more stubborn than composed.
But those eyes. That almost-but-not-quite smile.
I ought to recognize my own mama right away. The fact that I’m not sure gives me a funny feeling. Maybe I’m already forgetting what she looked like, her not even dead a year. Or maybe life in Georgia with my daddy changed her so much it almost made her unrecognizable.
I study her dress, looking for something familiar. It’s finer than anything I remember Mama wearing, but she did come from old Boston money, and her life was very different when she was a girl.
Hanging from her neck is a medallion of some kind. The picture is too old and blurry for me to know for sure, but I’d almost swear she’s wearing the same locket I wear now, the one that came all the way across the continent with me, containing a lock of my baby brother’s hair. . . .
I’ve stood here too long lollygagging. I need to finish up and get out of here before Hiram returns.
Trying to ignore the photograph, I slide open the drawers. I ruffle the underclothes and linens inside, looking for my five-shooter or my ammunition, but there’s nothing. Not a single thing I can use for a weapon. Quietly I slide the drawers closed.
I peer behind the dresser, lift Hiram’s mattress, test each floorboard with my toes to see if I can lift it.
Still nothing.
Boot steps sound on the cabin steps.
No time to check and see if I’ve left anything in disarray. I flee from the bedroom, shut the door behind me, and drop into Hiram’s rocking chair just as he pushes through the front door.
“Good afternoon, Leah,” he says, all formal-like. He stares at the locket around my neck, as if it means something special to him. I cover it with my hand.
“Afternoon.” I say it clear and easy, like my heart isn’t stampeding in my chest and I have plenty of breath to spare.
“Abel says they blew a hole in the Joyner tunnel on your recommendation.”
I shrug. “They won’t find much. That vein didn’t penetrate far.”
His eyes narrow, but if he has suspicions, he doesn’t give voice to them.
If I wasn’t afraid for my life and the lives of my friends—shoot, every single person in this camp—I’d ask him straight out why he has a picture of my mama in his bedroom. Of all the keepsakes to cross an ocean with, why that one? Why does he have it placed where he can look at it every single day?
But I am afraid, and I’m supposed to be pretending to be cooperative, so I say, “Abel said you went to a place called Rough and Ready to fetch some gunpowder yesterday.”
Hiram takes off his riding gloves and slaps them against his thigh to shake off the dust. “I did. Negotiated a fair deal. From now on, Dilley will be able to make the trip on my behalf.”