The Rose Legacy (26 page)

Quillan felt the anger inside like a living thing. Who were they to lay out his past like a rag to be trampled? Who was she to ask it? He wrenched himself away, out into the rain that poured over his hat and down the hair hanging at his back. It ran over him, washing off the dust of travel, not making him clean, never making him clean. But he held his face to the rain, eyes closed, and let it run over him.

Carina sat in stunned silence. It was worse, far worse than she had imagined.
“My father was a savage, my mother a harlot.”
They weren’t just words. They were true.

“You don’t want to be out on the mountain after dark. Folks hear him still, howlin’ that lonely song.” Johnson shook his head. “We never knew what made him do it.”

She drew a shaky breath, forcing her voice to come. “You were right. That was not a story I should hear.” She felt fouled. Why had Mr. Beck insisted? Did he know what she would hear?

Their apologies washed over her.

“I’m sorry, ma’am.”

“Have another root beer.”

“Here, ma’am. Let me serve you one.”

She shook her head. “No, grazie.” She was dazed, uncertain now what she was doing. What purpose did it serve to learn the dark secrets of a man’s past? What did it mean for Quillan? Was he like his father, an animal able to tear a man’s throat? Had he killed William Evans?

She stood up, and all around her the men rose like a flood, clamoring to their feet and whisking the hats again from their heads.

“Join us anytime, Miss DiGratia.”

“Anything you need, just let us know.”

“Sure appreciate your comin’ in like this.”

She passed through them, scarcely hearing, not seeing more than a flood of faces. As she reached the door, she heard the questions begin and the suppositions. What did this story mean in light of William Evans? Was there a new monster among them? An old monster returned?

She stepped out into the rain and walked. Could the story be true? Why had she not sensed evil at the mine? Sadness, yes—a haunting lostness—but not such evil as she had just heard. What of Rose? Giving her baby away to protect—

Steel gripped her arm, a fierce face, teeth bared, hair hanging wet across his shoulders. She screamed but no sound came, sheer terror holding her mute as Quillan Shepard, Wolf’s son, yanked her close.

“Perhaps you’d like the rest of the story.” He spoke through clenched teeth, narrow and straight. “How my own mother gave me away and the Shepards took me in, illegitimate spawn of reprobate parents. How their natural-born children died not two weeks later of the cholera, but somehow the cursed baby lived. How that poisoned the mother against me, and how she believed I was the devil incarnate, no less than the cause of her sweet children’s deaths. Mr. Shepard’s rod might purge me of my sins, but it never changed the fact that I lived when the others didn’t.”

His fingers clawed into her arms, his eyes black with wrath. “She loved to tell me the story you just heard, lest I somehow forget I wasn’t really theirs. Mr. Shepard tried sometimes to show me kindness in a stern, well-meaning way. He did his Christian duty. But you see, they just couldn’t change my parentage.”

Quillan’s rage seemed to deflate. Carina heard it seep out of his lungs in a low, sighing breath. He let her go and turned away. “So now you know.”

Carina felt a stab of conscience, a dirtiness inside her like the whole of Crystal infecting her heart. Rain ran down inside her collar where the jacket had fallen loose when he released her, soaking her neck beside the braid. She had wanted this, wanted to see him hurt and shamed. But her victory was bitter.

“I’m sorry.” The words came of themselves from a place inside her not tainted.

He looked at her sideways, a strand of brown hair clinging to his cheekbone, drops of rain falling from his mustache. “Would it have mattered if I’d carried your things?”

She stared at him, confused.

“Would you have been so bent on this if I hadn’t sent your wagon over?”

Carina closed her eyes, shrinking inside. She had not thought what it would do to him to have the story told. His name was not mentioned, but those who knew … All it would take was the connection to be made, father to son. She looked again, seeing the wreckage of her deed. He was a man, not a monster.

What could she do? What could she give in return for what she’d damaged? “Mr. Beck suspects you.”

His gaze merely held her.

She spread her hands. “Of the murder, of all the violence, I suppose.” His eyes were flat, lifeless. “And you, Miss DiGratia? Is that what you think?”

“I don’t know what to think.” She raised a splayed hand. “I don’t know violence, murder, greed.” She waved both arms. “I don’t understand this place, these people.” She wiped the rain from her eyes. “I should not have come.”

“Why did you?” He had the right to ask, the right to know.

“To hurt someone.”

His eyes narrowed, not comprehending the details, but not doubting the truth of it.

Looking down, she pressed her palm to her forehead, fingers curled. “I thought I mattered to him. I was mistaken.” Her hand dropped.

Quillan looked away, searched the street slowly with his eyes. They stood alone in the rain, stripped of pretense, yet strangers. After a moment, he blew out a slow breath, and she thought he would speak, but he simply stepped off the walk and strode away.

The air grew cold in his wake. Pulling the canvas jacket close, Carina hurried for the livery.

Alan Tavish snored in the chair inside the doorway with a look of pain even in his sleep. The rain must torment his swollen joints. She didn’t wake him, saddling Dom herself. She heard Mr. Tavish stir, but she passed by like a shadow. Leading the mule out, she swept Crystal with her eyes.

Piles of stone next to the Exchange showed where the new opera house was being built. Across from it a haberdashery had opened its doors in the weeks she’d lived there. Crystal was growing, thriving, coming into its own. She thought of the miners gathered around her, good men, sincere. Yet at its heart, Crystal was rotten. Where did the poison come from? Mounting, she urged Dom up the street, up the gulch. It was inevitable. The mine drew her even now, even knowing.

“Carina!” Mr. Beck called from his office, but she ignored him, heeling Dom past with an urgency he sensed and responded to. She headed for Placer, the tale of Wolf and Rose spinning in her head. She had asked about Wolf, but it was Rose her thoughts clung to. Who was the woman, and what had brought her to this place?

“We all felt her story must be some tragic.”
Had Rose gone to Placerville to find peace? Impossible.
“She meant to do her part, same as the rest.”
Carina trembled. What could make a woman choose that? And then to go with Wolf without a fight, to take his hand and go …

She tried to picture Wolf but could only see Quillan, teeth bared, gray eyes burning with fury and bitter rage. And then the despair that had quenched him. But it wasn’t the woman he described that held her thoughts. It was the one who had given him up. Rose. What hold did she have on Carina’s thoughts? A hold strong enough to bring her to the mine named for her.

The way was steep and slippery. Dom struggled. After one treacherous stumble, Carina dismounted and led him, but it was slow, difficult footing. Lightning seared the sky, the rain coming harder. The crack of thunder made her jump. She was pazza to be out in this.

She headed for thicker trees to shelter in as she climbed. Dom balked, hanging his head stubbornly.
Bene
. He need not come. She twisted the reins around a branch and left him, then climbed alone. He gave a plaintive bray, but she went on, determined to reach the Rose Legacy.

Perchè? What did it matter? She should go back, take Dom, and ride home. Home? This was not home, could never be home. She was without her people, without those she knew and understood. She was like Rose—alone and in the hands of some force bigger than herself.

Her foot slipped. Lightning flashed again, and it seemed the very ground rumbled beneath her. Her feet slipped again, and she realized the ground did shake. She felt it in her hands when she caught herself. What was it? She had felt tremors in Sonoma, but this was different.

Looking up the gulch where it narrowed, she saw something her mind could make no sense of. A trick of the rain perhaps, but no—it was a wall of water where no water should be. And it was rushing down the gulch. Dom!

She heard him scream as the water crashed over the place she had left him and kept coming, rising at a terrible speed, trees falling, crashing with a roar until she realized she, too, could be swept away. She staggered up as the water climbed, dragging herself up toward the mine, gaping now above her.

With bloody fingers and aching legs, she fought the weight of her soaked skirts and scrambled to the cleared land before the mine. The black mouth opened, and she rushed inside even as the water struck the mountain, flying up into the sky with a roar of white foam and tree trunks.

She staggered backward from the horror outside, groping the walls on either side. Then suddenly the ground was gone and she fell.

Quillan felt heavy, as though the very muscles under his skin had taken on a weight not of flesh but of lead. He needed distance and solitude. Why had he come to Crystal in the first place? He couldn’t remember, couldn’t think of one good reason he’d dragged himself back to this gulch to make a living.

Of course, he’d only been an infant when he left Placer. It was hardly a homecoming to set up freighting in Crystal. Only he knew, somewhere in the back of his mind, that up the mountain lay the mine. He’d looked on it only once when he first came. The Rose Legacy. His legacy.

He’d known there were old-timers in Crystal who remembered the tale. Even some, like Mae and Alan and Cain, who knew he was that baby, grown. But some aberrant need had brought him here, kept him here, as though by proving himself he could remove the stain of his father. Wolf.

He swallowed the bitter taste in his mouth. There were other towns, places he could go. Leadville, Fairplay, Denver. Even Colorado Springs, the little London. He had choices. Crystal meant nothing to him.

Some of the people maybe. Cain and D.C., Mae, Mrs. Barton, and Alan Tavish. And others, though not many. Not enough to keep him here. Why was he risking his neck to discover who was behind the roughs? What did it matter to him?

Berkley Beck suspected him of the murder? Well, that made it mutual. And Miss DiGratia was the pawn they each used against the other. Had Beck sent her off to pry into his past? Had he planted suspicions he knew she’d pursue? Why? So the men would start to wonder, to whisper, to find in their superstitious memories fuel with which to burn him?

Quillan reached his tent and ducked inside. Crouching near his cache under the floor, he pulled the canvas aside and considered taking it all. He could clear out of there and not look back. It wasn’t his affair what happened to Crystal, and he wasn’t responsible for fixing it. Cain was right. It was eating him, his need to set things right in the community his father had violated.

He hunkered back on his haunches, the muscles in his thighs taut. He was not one for hasty decisions. If he packed up in the rain, he’d have to unpack it all and let it dry out. Better to wait until the sun did the job, then pull stakes and move on. He closed up the flooring. Jabbing his fingers into his hair, he went back out into the rain. A flash, then thunder rumbled.

The rain fell harder. He would check on his horses and find something to eat. Mrs. Barton would have something cooked up at the hotel. Another flash—this time a straight bolt that hit ground—brought his head up. Thunder cracked, then rumbled and continued, seeming to grow louder and not diminish.

He frowned, feeling the ground tremble. What on earth … High up the gulch he saw it, churning, foaming, rushing toward them like doom. Every nerve inside jolted, and his muscles responded. “Hey! Flood! Flood!”

He ran for the livery, wrenching open the door. “Flood, Tavish!” He shook the old man, then ran on. Most of the city was holed up in the saloons and gambling houses. He hollered as he ran past, banging the doors open, then running on. Others ran with him now, hollering as they bolted for higher ground.

A sudden thought froze Quillan’s feet. Cain. He changed direction and sprinted for the tents. Already the roar of the flood filled his ears. “Cain! D.C.!” He reached their tent and flung open the flap. Cain slept, one-legged on the cot.

D.C. jumped to his feet, the dog jumping with him. “What is it?”

“Flood!” Quillan rushed in, shook Cain awake, then grabbed him up beneath the arms. The water hit them as they cleared the tent, Quillan’s arms tight around Cain’s chest. They were tossed like rubble, dragged under and spun, but he held tight, fighting with his legs, kicking them to the surface.

White foam, thick with debris, pushed them along. A body slapped against him, stripped naked and lifeless, then spun and churned by. Shuddering, he kept Cain afloat and searched for D.C. He opened his mouth to holler, gulped the torrent and gagged, then searched only with his eyes whenever they came up again. An uprooted pine trunk swung around and thunked the side of his head. He grabbed it, pushing Cain upward, and the man took hold, gasping and choking.