As they drew close, one caught his eye: tall, and blonde and familiar. Jermone only saw him for a second before the others crowded around. Their harsh breath rattled, and they hardly seemed like gods or devils.
THE BOY BEHIND THE GATE
Pine tree tops creaked overhead, but the air didn’t move in the granite-strewn gully as Ron hiked up the steep gulch. He consulted his compass, then rechecked the map. Another hundred yards above him should be The Golden Ingot #9, and if the rusted mining equipment he’d been climbing over and around for the last ten minutes were any indication, the map was right. He scanned the ground, his eyes aching from sun and dust. The backpack, heavy with a powerful flashlight, rope and bolt cutters thumped against his kidneys. Was anything out of the ordinary? Was there any sign? A patch of cloth? A child’s shoe? Could Levi have walked this far? Ron imagined the eight-year-old being towed up the mountain, hand- in-hand with the stranger who’d taken him. Would Levi have been crying, aware in his little boy way of the danger he was in?
Ron closed his eyes. He wanted to imagine Levi scared. He hoped he was scared to death because the alternative… Maybe he’d been wrapped in a blanket or a plastic sheet slung over the man’s shoulder. They knew who the man was, Jared Sims, but Levi wouldn’t have known. Ron shivered and continued climbing.
A jumble of cable, thick as his wrist and so rusted that wherever the metal crossed itself it had corroded into one piece, blocked his path. Ron scrambled partly up the gully’s slope around it. Piles of yellow and white mine tailings humped up above him, and soon he topped out to the relative flatness of the claim. The old map he’d photocopied in Central City had shown him where the mine was; it wasn’t marked on the USGS maps. Most of the abandoned mines and shafts had been filled in. Too much chance of some tourist wandering around old mining property, snapping pictures of busted down mills and what was left of miners’ cabins, and then stepping on some rotten boards covering a shaft a hundred feet deep. So over the last twenty years, the state and park service had been closing the properties. Still, the Gilpin County mining district had been huge, and thousands of claims had been made. There were hundreds of openings even now for someone to find if he knew where to look. Perfect, mysterious holes blasted into the mountain, timeless monuments to long-dead miners’ hopes. Perfect places to hide a little boy you didn’t want found. Here, at the Golden Ingot #9, except for the rust, it could be 1880 again. He half expected to surprise a dozen miners waiting for their turn in the bucket and the long ride down the shaft.
Ron kept his eyes down. Little chance that there’d be a footprint in the yellow gravel, but it didn’t hurt. Maybe Levi would have dropped something for him to find. It seemed years ago, but it was only last winter that Ron had read him The Lord of the Rings. The hobbit, Pippin, had broken from the orcs and dropped a sign that he was still alive, a beautiful beech-tree leaf brooch. Levi had said, in his little man’s voice, “That was very clever of him, Daddy, wasn’t it?” Ron remembered Levi’s head resting on his arm while he read. He could almost feel the weight of his little boy leaning against him until they got to the end of the chapter. “Read some more, Daddy. Read some more,” he’d said sleepily.
A pile of boards laying almost flat looked hopeful. Ron lifted the end of one. It creaked as it rose slowly, pulling a dozen nails from the rotted plank beside it. Dust slapped into the air after Ron moved it aside and dropped it. The next one showed a shaft’s edge. A minute later, he’d cleared most of the boards. The pile looked like it hadn’t stirred since Grover Cleveland held office, but since he was here, he was going to check.
The afternoon sun showed only six feet of shaft wall, while the rest was black. Was the bottom only a dozen feet away, or was this one of those deep, deep holes reaching hundreds of yards down?
As always, as he had scores of times since the police gave up looking ten days before, he crouched at the shaft’s edge, cupped his hands around his mouth and called into the darkness, “Levi! Levi! Are you there, son?”
Wind stirred sand behind him, blowing a little over the edge where it glittered in the sunlight, then disappeared. Only the breeze’s sibilant hiss answered him.
Images flitted in Charles’ mind as he stayed motionless in his bed, listening to the boy’s even breathing on the floor beside him. It was the small hours of the morning, when time came unanchored, and memories piled willy nilly atop one another. Charles could see them alclass="underline" his wife dying, the Laughlins, the McGarity’s, the bloody hands in the mine. The fireplace coals had long since died, and the moon’s thin line outside the window cast almost no light through the muslin drape. He’d light a candle if he dared, but if he did, the boy’s eyes might be open; he might look at him through the flickering light and know that he knew.
He couldn’t sleep. No, not that. Charles would dream, and in his dreams he’d see the Laughlin children burning up, their red skin baking from within. “Scarlet fever,” the nurse from Idaho Springs had said. “Poor things.”
Charles had stood at the Laughlin’s door that morning, a basket of bread and clean sheets hanging from one hand, blinking at the darkness in the room. Only the sun behind him provided light. They’d covered the one window, and the cabin smelled close and moist and sweaty sick. The nurse sat by three-year-old Lisa to his left. Against the back wall lay Evelyn with her mother sitting beside her. The baby’s crib rested in the opposite corner. William Laughlin sat at the rough-hewn table in the room’s middle, resting his forehead in his hand.
The boy crept around Charles, even though he’d told him to stay with the mule. His arm wrapped around the back of Charles’ leg, and he leaned into the room. Charles put his hand down to push him back, but he didn’t. He didn’t like touching his son, the stranger who lived with him every day. Lisa panted under the blankets, blonde hair plastered to the side of her face. Four-year-old Evelyn turned to the wall, her chest still for a moment before she drew her next wheezing breath. Her mom, a hint of the scarlet flush across her own cheeks visible in the sunlight, pressed a wet cloth to Evelyn’s forehead.
“The little one?” Charles said.
William Laughlin shook his head without moving his hand. “She went during the night.” He coughed. It sounded wet and pathetic.
“I brung some things,” Charles said. He stepped deeper into the room, and the atmosphere pushed back. Outside, the sun shone bright and men filled the valley, moving surely from mine to mill, loading ore wagons or carrying supplies. Blasting echoed off cliff walls above, and Clear Creek murmured like watery wind. But here, the air felt dead with fever.
William draped a hand over the basket’s edge. “You’re a right Christian, Charles.”
“You going to your shift?” Charles moved back. The heat in the room oppressed, and he didn’t want to breathe so close to the sick girls.
“I’ll be along.”
Charles retreated to the porch. The boy leaned over Lisa, his legs bright in the sun pouring through the door, while his upper torso faded in the room’s shadows. He drew a finger across the little girl’s forehead, through her fevered sweat. He stood, facing his father, his finger up as if he’d erased chalk off a blackboard. For a moment he looked at Charles as if surprised to see him still waiting for him, then he put his finger in his mouth.