The Diamond of the Rockies [03] The Tender Vine (12 page)

The first tug yanked her off her feet. The men must be pulling together. She was hoisted into the musty cloud of bats, but not one touched her.
Grazie, Signore!
She pushed through the hole in the ceiling, which was the floor of Wolf ’s shaft, used her legs against the wooden ties that formed the walls, and then she was up. But the tunnel was as dark as the cave. Where was the daylight?

Quillan caught her waist and helped her from the harness. She felt him shaking. Quillan shaking!
Dio!
“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“We’re buried.” His voice was grim.

“What do you mean?”

“The avalanche has covered the mine.” Quillan relit her candle. “Chunks of snow and ice like boulders and tons of powder.”

She tried to picture it. The closest she could come was to imagine the flash flood that had torn away half the city of Crystal.

Quillan smashed his fist into his palm. “I should have known with the warming today.”

“How could you? Could you know the flood was coming, too?”

He pressed his palm to his forehead and stared at the tunnel’s mouth. “My team.”

And now she knew why he trembled. Jack and Jock.
Oh, Signore
. She gripped his arm. “Maybe they ran. You left them free. Maybe they heard it and ran.”

Quillan didn’t answer, and she looked at Father Antoine. His grim face belied her. But couldn’t they have? She thought of Dom, her own mule lost in the flood, carried away by a force beyond him. How Quillan loved his horses. She ached for him. “What do we do?”

Her question seemed to settle Quillan. Give him a task, let him work. He held his candle up and searched about. “Carina, in your trips here, did you ever see a shovel?”

She shook her head. The little alcove where Quillan had found candles held nothing but some rotted sacking. Her gaze fell on the litter. “What about the poles? Could you poke through with them?” She pointed.

Quillan blew his breath sharply. “We should be so lucky.” He set his candle on the floor and pulled the litter from the wall. “With so little light showing through, there must be more than six feet of snow piled out there. But . . .” He started untying the corner of the litter.

Father Antoine handed her his candle and joined Quillan. “How can I help?”

Quillan handed him the other end. They worked at it together. Carina held both candles to give them light. Once they had the poles free, Quillan plowed through the snow that had settled inside. He thrust the pole into the center of the opening. When he drew it out a cascade of powder erased the hole. He tried again, higher, but the same thing happened.

Carina stood the candles on the floor, then tugged the blankets out from under the falling snow and shook them out. Father Antoine and Quillan tried again and again to poke through the snow mass. She folded the blankets and laid them atop the wooly mat and canvas tarp. She tugged Quillan’s pack loose and set it beside the other things. There was also the empty sacking in which he’d brought the horses’ fodder. She tucked it along the wall where it would be less obvious.

Quillan banged his pole on the floor. “It’s no use. Until the snow packs, we’re rearranging powder.”

If it was only powder, maybe the horses were all right. How much damage could powder do? Then she imagined the depth and mass of it. Their six-foot poles made no difference at all. What if it were twelve or twenty feet deep? No horse could survive that.

Quillan laid his pole against the wall. “We’ll have to wait until it melts and freezes. Then it’ll clump when we dig.”

She nodded. “How long will that take?”

“If it’s clear outside and the sun works on it deeply enough, maybe a day, maybe two.”

“Two days!
Madonna mia!
” The walls closed in. Two days in the dark? Had they candles enough? Had they food? Water?

Quillan walked over, pulled out his pack. “I had Mae pack us some lunch. Not much for several meals, but better than nothing.”

Carina sank down onto the mat. Just now she didn’t feel hungry, she felt trapped.
Oh, Signore, there must be some way
. “Tomorrow, or the next day, then you can dig through?”

“With a pole? Maybe.” Quillan unwrapped the paper from a slab of stewed beef between two thick slices of brown bread. “If we divide this three ways . . .”

Why was he insisting on food? Wasn’t there something else to be doing?

“Cut it two ways,” Father Antoine said. “I’m used to going without.”

Quillan glanced up. “You’ll need strength to help me dig.”

But the priest only waved his hand. “God will give me strength.”

“Oh, sì!” Carina jolted. “We must pray!”

She folded her hands at chin level, head tipped back. “Signore! You have promised where two or more are gathered, you are there, too.” That thought brought comfort. “Help us now. Help us know what to do. Help us do it.” She hoped no one but God heard her rising panic.

Father Antoine said, “Lord God, you ordained that we should have dominion of the earth. Give us courage and wisdom.”

Father Antoine had heard. Why else pray for courage? She must not show her fear. It would only add to their burden.

Quillan had bowed his head, but he stayed silent so long Carina thought he would say nothing. Then he did. “Help my poor beasts. Amen.”

Quillan unsheathed the knife that hung at his belt and sliced the sandwich in two. She wasn’t hungry, but Carina took her half. It mattered to Quillan. Maybe he believed they would be out soon. Maybe he needed to act as though they would.

She bit into the crumbly bread and stiff meat. It brought Mae so vividly to mind. Would she worry? Would she send help? Did she know where the mine was? She’d lived in upper Placerville once. Surely she’d remember. But could anyone get through the snow?

Carina chewed reflectively. They must make the most of what food they had. And water? Snow, she supposed. But Quillan drew a canteen from the pack. He offered it, and she drank. Father Antoine, also. Then Quillan drank deeply. He’d worked up a thirst, no doubt. It would be hardest for those who worked. She would do what she could, but what would that be?

When she finished eating, she lay down on the woolly mat, pillowing her cheek with her arm. Quillan covered her with a blanket and sat down at her head. His palm rested there, warm and comforting. He no longer shook. He was in control. He would do what he could.

Father Antoine also sat against the wall. “At least we have air. Many’s the miner caught below ground without air. I wouldn’t want to go that way. Unless it were God’s will.”

Quillan looked at him. “Feels a bit tight, though.”

Carina looked at her husband, a man so accustomed to the road he preferred it to house and hearth. Well, here was a test. Like her climbing up to the mine time after time when she first discovered it to conquer her fear of heights. How would being closed in work on Quillan’s mind? It wasn’t doing too well with hers.

His fingers sank into her hair, cupping the back of her skull. “Ever played crambo?”

She raised her head. “What?”

Father Antoine smiled. “A rhyming game. But we haven’t any paper.”

Quillan shrugged. “We’ll do it without. You ask the question, Father; Carina, give a noun.”

Father Antoine cocked his head, then said, “Do you wear pomade?”

Carina sat up straighter. “Any noun at all?”

Quillan smiled. “Whatever comes to mind.”

“Toad.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Now I’ll make four lines of rhyme that answer the question using your . . . interesting noun.”

“You said anything.”

“Mm-hmm.” He sat for a few moments. “If with something sweet and smelly, I should coat my hair with a jelly, when I took me down the road, dust would coat me like a toad.”

Carina clapped her hands and laughed. “That’s why you never wore your hair like Mr. Beck.”

“That, Carina, is not the only reason.”

She sat up fully, locked her arms around her knees, and leaned the small of her back to the wall. “Now Father takes a turn. I’ll name the question.”

They sat and played until her stomach told her dinnertime had come. She said nothing, though, and when neither man mentioned food, she guessed they would need it more tomorrow.
Per piacere, Signore, let us
get out tomorrow
.

Quillan got up and extinguished all but one of the candles. “Need to save what we have.” They talked in the near dark, Father Antoine telling about Placerville and other camps in the early days of his wandering. Carina grew weary and lay down again on the mat.

Father Antoine sat wrapped in a blanket, arms crossed above his knees, head resting on his arms. It looked as though he’d folded up, but she didn’t think he was asleep. His lips moved silently, and his closed eyelids shifted. In a while Quillan lay down on the mine floor beside her, his back to hers. The three blankets Quillan had brought gave them one apiece, but the cold grew steadily.

“We could light the timbers and melt our way out.” Carina said drowsily, expecting no answer.

But Quillan said, “It might come to that.” Then he pressed his back closer.

She drifted into sleep thinking this was the third time she’d slept in a mine. Once in the shaft where she’d fallen during the flood, once after the vigilantes hung Berkley Beck and all the roughs, and now under a massive blanket of snow.
Signore, is there something I should
know?

N
INE

Walls of stone, iron bands, rope around my mind.

Air that thins, darkness deep, reasoning confined.

Fear, fear, fear.

—Quillan

Q
UILLAN LAY STIFFLY ALERT
. Carina’s breath sounded like a soft breeze, Father Antoine’s a leather bellows. But he couldn’t get anywhere near sleep. He kept picturing Jack and Jock on the circular shelf outside the mine with a mountain of snow rushing down on them like a train. He prayed their demise had been swift—a broken neck, a blow to the head. But he guessed they’d been pummeled down the slope, then suffocated where they stopped, the powder more deadly than the icy boulders that carried it.

He pressed his hand to his eyes. How could he have known? Could he have? The day had been so clear and promising. He’d thought they’d spend an hour or two in the cave, then go back out to lunch by the horses and be home again before the sun set. Nature never considered his plans.

His team had survived the flood, both Jack and Jock swimming to safety. Was that only months ago? He pressed closer to Carina. He had thought he’d lost her then. It was the first time he realized how much she mattered.

His plan to escape was a good one—to wait until he could delve the snow. And he’d tried to make the waiting as easy as he could. He’d sensed Carina’s fear, and the word games had helped. Yes, his plan was sound. But what if the snow didn’t pack? What if it was too deep to get through with nothing but poles? How long could they stretch one lunch? Would someone come? Alex Makepeace? Possibly. He forced his eyes to close. It did no good to ponder it now.

Could they burn the timbers and melt the snow? They’d likely bring the tunnel down on their heads. Was there another way? Quillan couldn’t think. Had the horses seen it coming? Had they run? Why hadn’t he put them inside? They’d have been safe inside. There was just room for them all in the short tunnel before the shaft. He groaned. If he’d only brought them inside.

His thoughts circled again. They were driving him crazy. Crazy like Leona Shepard? His foster mother spent her days trapped in a mind that had lost touch with reality. His mother, too. Would his do the same? How long could he stay in here before he cracked?

Quillan rubbed his neck and searched the space around him. Something was different. Was it morning? The darkness was not so complete. If he moved his hand in front of his face, he could almost see it shift. Or did he imagine it? He raised up on one elbow. No. There was an almost imperceptible lightening.

Now if the day dawned clear and the sun could penetrate . . . He folded his blanket over Carina and felt for the candle he had used last night. He shuffled on his knees to his pack and took the box of matches from the outer pocket. He struck a flame and lit the candle. Neither Carina nor the priest woke up.

Quillan stood and studied the wall of snow by the dim light of the candle. Trying to melt the snow would be futile. And if they didn’t get out soon, they might need to burn the timbers to keep from freezing. What if they pulled the snow inward and pushed it down the shaft? How much would they have to move? And what if it rushed in and covered them?

He turned back and surveyed his father’s mine. Wolf had hewn and timbered these walls. Why? What would he want with a mine? Was it greed, as Leona Shepard claimed, or was he trying to find himself, as Rose suspected? Either way, it had ended tragically, both his parents dying in the flames that left only the burned-out foundation outside.

Outside. Would they ever get out? Quillan paced to the edge of the shaft and back to the wall of snow, to the edge and back again, then stopped as Father Antoine stood up. He looked old. He’d be as old as Wolf would have been or older. Fifty? Sixty? Older?

The priest joined him. “Is it morning?”

Quillan nodded. “I think so.”

Father Antoine carefully tugged each sleeve of his coat at the wrist, then pulled it closed at the neck. His breath formed a cloud. “We need to consider a certain matter of hygiene.”

Quillan glanced at Carina, who had not yet stirred. Now that the priest mentioned it, his own bladder needed attention. “Any ideas?”

Father Antoine shrugged. “We’ve no container, so a space will have to do. Your wife will need privacy. We could hang a blanket.”

The thought was infuriating, that a basic human function would soon make their space unbearable. Trapped and contaminated, like animals. He felt the nerves fuzz up his back and shook his head. “I’m getting us out of here.”

Quillan grabbed a pole and thrust it deeply into the snow outside the opening. Powder still, and something hard. A chunk of ice. But ice wouldn’t pack either. He thrust again and again, harder and harder. Powder flew. He almost lost the pole, pawed frantically at its end and yanked it back.