Abigail felt herself coming undone as the images of the dying townsfolk accumulated.
A skull resting in the lap of another skeleton.
On a pair of femurs, the leather binding of a pageless King James Bible.
Between kneecaps, a clear corked bottle still holding an inch of century-old whiskey.
Skeletons sitting up grasping shotguns and rifles and revolvers, the wood stocks badly rotted or gone altogether, others clasping bricks of gold with their browned finger bones.
A handful clinging to the remains of their children.
And under a rusted-out shadowgee, a skeleton with long black hair tweaked both her horror and curiosity at once. On the wide plates of its browned pelvis lay minute femurs and tibias and ribs, a skull the size of an apple, phalanges no thicker than matches, and when she realized these constituted the bones of a mother and its fetus, Abigail broke down.
Lawrence walked over and sat with her. “I know,” he whispered. “It’s a lot to take in.”
“Guys?” June said. “Would you mind turning your headlamps off? I’ve got Emmett’s camera with me, and . . .” She was crying again. “He’d want me to shoot this for him.”
They switched off their headlamps, Abigail hating the darkness, not even the faintest presence of light to adapt to in this pure, unfiltered black. She gave June one minute, listening to the click of the camera echo through the chamber and the distant drip of water. She finally said, “Sorry, but I’m turning my headlamp back on. I’m too freaked-out to just sit here in the dark.” She found breathing easier with her headlamp on. “You must be beside yourself, huh, Lawrence?”
“This is beyond anything I ever dreamed of finding. The gold and the entire town, in the same place, at the same time.”
“It’s gonna be amazing material. This’ll turn out great articles for both of us.”
“I don’t know about you, but I plan to write a book.” Lawrence stood up, offered Abigail his hand, but she didn’t take it, just sat there staring at a coal-oil lantern capsized between two femurs. “Abby? You all right?”
“I don’t know how to process it all. Everything we’ve been through tonight.”
Lawrence hollered through the chamber, “Quinn! Come in here! Have you seen this? We found Abandon! They’re all in here!” Lawrence tapped his headlamp. “Damn, my light’s dying. Walk with me back to the entrance, Abby.”
They crossed the uneven rock, working their way among the skeletons.
“There he is,” Lawrence said, pointing to the bulb of light thirty feet ahead. “Hey, professor, you really need to come in here, see all the bones.”
When Abigail’s headlamp struck Quinn, he was zipping his backpack.
He glanced up at them, said, “I hope it’s enough, Lawrence.”
“What? The gold? Of course, eighteen million is plenty for every—”
“I’m not talking about the gold.” Quinn shouldered the sagging backpack. “I mean knowing what happened to the town. You spent a good part of your life trying to solve that mystery, and I want you to know I sincerely hope it’s a good consolation.”
“For what?”
Quinn stepped into the passage. The door to the mine slammed shut in a thunderous concussion of metal on metal, and its echo seemed to last forever. Then came a sound Abigail had already heard once before—the squeak of that rusted bolt sliding home inside the iron door, then the crossbar dropping into the brackets, then that giant padlock locking back.
1893
FIFTY-EIGHT
G
loria and Rosalyn sat against the rock wall, holding each other and listening to the burgeoning chaos near the iron door, where twenty armed men had gathered after hearing gunshots in the passage. But that had been some time ago. The men were growing antsy.
Someone said, “Time we rain hell on some red niggers.”
“Preacher said to wait until—”
“And what if that fire escape’s already lost his hair? Considered that? Sounded like quite a powder-burnin contest out there.”
“Mason, get up here and bring the key with ye! We done waitin!”
Gloria watched the unassuming smith push his way through the cluster of miners, heading to the iron door.
“What’d you say?”
She couldn’t see Stetler, who was surrounded by the mob of taller men, but his voice rose above the bedlam, far deeper and louder than his size seemed to accord.
“Said we need the key to this door. I do believe that’s the only way to open it from inside.”
“You see a keyhole there, Will?”
“What are you talkin about?”
“Preacher asked for the key, and I give it to him. What’s it matter anyway? This door only opens from the outside.”
“The fuck you do that for?”
“He asked for it!”
“Jesus. He gets himself kilt, how we gonna get out?”
Stetler ran his fingernails over the rippled surface of his bald head, which glistened with rivulets of sweat.
A miner said, “We better find some bang juice and powder. Blow that hunk a iron off its hinges.”
One of the Godsend’s dynos said, “Y’all not see this door when we come in? It’s a inch thick. Amount a powder it’d take to blow it open, be a long chance this whole damn mine didn’t come down on us.”
Gloria turned to Rosalyn, whispered, “I can’t listen to them anymore. Will you stroke my hair if I put my head in your lap? Like you was doin before?”
“Of course, honey. Come here.”
FIFTY-NINE
H
arriet McCabe lay in the middle row of pews, hiding. There had been gunshots a short time ago, but it was quiet now save for the wind. She thought about her mama. Her friend Bethany. Her new doll, Samantha, which she’d had to leave behind at the shack. She was thirsty, hungry, but more than anything, cold and scared.
The sun had gone to bed, and the wind made a long low sound as it pushed against the boarded-up windows, the tiny church swaying and creaking like the hold of a ship, icy air filtering up through the space between the planks.
She shivered under her mama’s gray woolen cloak. Just across the aisle stood a stove in a gap between the pews, a stack of logs next to it, and she’d just decided to light a fire, when the chapel doors flung open. Harriet gasped, brought her hand to her mouth. The doors slammed shut, the plank boards groaning beneath the weight of approaching footsteps.
She rolled under the pew, watched a pair of arctics pass two feet from her head. Toward the front of the church, something thumped on the floor, and Harriet scrambled quietly to her feet, peered over the top of the bench. She saw someone in the shadow of the nave. The man was on his knees, facing the barrier separating the front pews from the stage, his arms lifted, hands open to the simple wooden cross mounted on the wall behind the pulpit.
When he spoke, she startled, his voice loud enough to fill the sanctuary, though faltering and brittle as sandstone.
“It is finished, Lord God. Your good and faithful servant kneels before You to say that Your will . . . has been done.”
He suddenly fell over, his stomach flat against the floorboards.
Harriet thought he’d died, until he wept, softly at first, then outright sobbing, pounding the planks with his fists. Harriet had seen her daddy cry once before, but not like this. She’d never seen anyone in such soul-splitting anguish.
“Why?” The word exploded—guttural, ragged, raw. He screamed it three times, so loudly that Harriet thought it might shatter the glass of those tall south-facing windows. He got back onto his knees, and when he spoke again, Harriet had to strain to hear the words.