“Let’s just nip through the notch and see what we can see. And then we can figure out what to do next.”
A sketchy plan. But I did not have a better one.
I followed Walter through the notch.
14
Skinny Canyon opened into a small valley that extended several dozen yards before narrowing at the far end and canyoning upward again. It was a lush valley, thatched with brush and trees, bisected by a creek — our own Skinny Creek — and caged by high walls.
What first caught my attention was a clearing at the far end of the valley. It boasted a rock ring holding timber tented over a brushy pile of kindling. The brush was brown, dried, but nevertheless I identified the crinkled ferny leaves as mountain misery. What else smelled like that?
My nose stung.
The timber smoked. The fire had almost gone out. Despite all logic, I ached to draw near. Add some of that dried kindling, help the fire along. Warm my feet.
Walter whispered, “See anybody?”
No. The fog was capricious, clearing the rock walls but lingering in the trees. I whispered, “I think that’s a tent back there in the trees.”
We waited, watching.
After a time Walter whispered, “Fat city, phooey.”
I turned to him.
He pointed. “It’s hard to see, what with the fog and the bend in the southern rock wall, but there’s a tunnel opening.”
I turned. Peered. Saw it.
“This place,” he said, “has already been mined.”
“So,” I said, “what about abandoned mercury flasks?”
“It’s not out of the question.”
Just great. I expelled a breath and refocused on the tunnel. “Perhaps they’re in the tunnel.”
“Henry hates enclosed spaces,” Walter replied.
“Maybe Robert’s in the tunnel. Maybe that’s why Henry brought him here.”
We waited, watching for Shelburne brothers.
Still, while waiting, I looked over this valley with a treasure-hunter’s eye. I could not deny that this place was as good a candidate as we had yet seen. The diorite thumb was webbed, on this side of the notch, to a full diorite hand that slapped against the southern wall, a wall shot through with spotted slate. There was no visible outcrop of hornfels but it surely had to present a face to the elements to erode off pieces of float. It was perhaps camouflaged in the brush, in the trees.
Equally to the point, these solid rock walls would hold an elevated ancient river channel intact for millenia. Indeed, I thought I could make out a high spur of gravel intersecting the rimrock of the southern wall.
Buried in that hillside, perhaps, was a stretch of the deep blue lead.
I wouldn’t mind seeing that. Had I caught the itch, from Walter? I whispered, “What’d you put in the Chili Mac last night?”
“What?”
“Never mind.” I refocused. “Shall we take a closer look?”
He nodded. We inched forward and achieved a small knob of bald bedrock and got a new angle on Notch Valley, as I decided to name it.
Walter nudged my arm.
I nodded. I saw Henry, in the trees. Not certain how I’d missed him before. Perhaps, three yards back, our field of view had been obscured. More likely it was due to the excellent nature of his camouflage.
Brown cap, brown parka, jeans faded to the color of volcanic breccia. Sitting cross-legged, right hand clutching his thigh. His left hand was not visible.
He was still as stone.
As were we, abruptly fossilized in place.
I thought he hadn’t seen us, which was why I jumped when he called my name.
“Cassie.” His fragile voice carried well enough across the little valley.
Walter whispered, “Answer him.”
I called back, “Henry.”
Like we were friends. He hadn’t called either of us by name, back at Shoo Fly Tunnel. And now he did. Using my first name, at that. Of course he knew our names — Walter had introduced us back at the tunnel — but the use of a name is a familiar thing. Like extending your hand for a shake. And I had now replied in kind. I watched. He did not extend his hand and I guessed that he couldn’t without releasing the tremors, but he could have nodded, cementing the Cassie-Henry relationship. He did nothing. He sat rigid as the trunk of the tree at his back. The harder I stared, the more he seemed to blend in, like a deer in the woods. I knew this game. Hide and seek. I’d played this game with my Henry and the trick was to look but not see, let the quarry reveal himself when he was ready.
And then he replied. “I said don’t follow.” Voice now gone shrill.
I had no idea how to pretend to make friends with this wounded soul.
Walter called, “We’ll leave, Henry, once we’ve had the chance to talk to your brother. Where is he? In the tunnel?”
Henry shifted. His left arm moved. Like he was reaching for something.
“Back up,” Walter hissed, flinging an arm across my chest, and as I stumbled my way backward I swore I saw that something in Henry’s hand, flashing silver.
We backed down off the knob and dropped to our knees.
I waited for the sound of a gunshot.
All I heard was the sound of blood pounding in my ears.
Walter whispered, “We can dash back to the notch but I’m not sure how long we’ll be within his field of view. Crawl, perhaps.”
I whispered, “I’m not crawling.”
Walter’s eyebrows lifted.
Well maybe.
And well we might have but for a new voice sounding down there in Notch Valley.
“Hey Bro,” Robert Shelburne’s voice rang clearly. “No go.”
I relaxed an inch. Robert was now on the scene. Must have been in the tunnel. He sounded fine, cheerful even.
Henry was speaking now, in reply to his brother, voice softened again. A murmur on the breeze.
“I’m on board with you,” Robert said, “but I don’t know what I’m looking at in the tunnel. I’m not qualified. What I do is, I hire qualified people. In fact, I hired two of them. I know you want to go it alone, just me and you, the family thing, but we’re failing here. Let’s get smart. Use our tools. We can go back and get them.”
Henry spoke. Voice loud enough to carry now. “They’re here.”
Silence, and then Robert’s cheerful voice. “No shit?”
“Up there.”
“Then invite them down.”
“I will.”
Robert went silent.
Walter and I looked at one another. There was something off about Henry’s I will, something that silenced Robert and caused Walter to shake his head, something that put me on high alert.
“Whoa,” Robert suddenly said.
There came a sound, the sharp sound of cracking ice, a sound I once heard skiing across a frozen lake, a sound that froze me now in place until another, closer sound caused me and Walter to wrap our arms over our heads.
Something struck the bedrock beside my leg.
I twisted and looked. It was a shard chipped off the bedrock knob.
“Come down here,” Henry yelled and there was nothing fragile about it.
He didn’t give us enough time to respond. He fired his gun again, the ice cracked again, and the bedrock knob chipped on the other side, on Walter’s side this time.
My heart slammed. I whispered, “Were those good shots or bad shots?”
“Good shots,” Walter said.
Henry fired a third time and this time he chipped the center of the knob and I wanted to yell stop shooting up the geology but I was shaking too hard to get the words out.
There was a micro-moment in which Walter and I considered our options, glancing at the path back to the notch, trying to do the geometry of angles of fire, and then Robert yelled at us, “He’s coming up.”