Fool's Gold (19 page)

Rudy's throat squeezed up so fast he had to try twice before any sound came out. “The mine?” he said at last.

“Yeah. Pritchard's Hole. I was just talking to Styler a few minutes ago and I'm supposed to meet him there around twelve. He's been working on the entrance—you know, prying off some of the boarding—while I was away. He thinks we could actually get inside today.”

“Inside the mine?” Rudy managed to say, fighting to keep his voice at a normal pitch and to control what felt like a series of small explosions that seemed to be happening somewhere inside his skull. It didn't seem possible. Tyler hadn't mentioned the mine even once while Barney was gone. But then he wouldn't, of course, to Rudy. Not if he felt Rudy might rat on him if he didn't have to rat on Barney at the same time—which was probably exactly how he felt.

“Yeah.” Barney's voice suddenly sounded odd, higher pitched and with a sharp, excited ring to it. “We're planning to start today. Can you come? You can still be in on it, if you want to be. How about it?”

Rudy took a deep shaky breath, and with a huge effort shut off the explosions and began to think. “Well, I don't know. I can't stay very long because of the baby-sitting. But I do want to…” He paused for a minute, his mind racing. “When did you say Tyler's going to be there?”

“He said around twelve.”

“Could you get there sooner? Like in about half an hour?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“Okay,” Rudy said. “I'll meet you there. At the mine at ten thirty.”

Five minutes later Rudy was on his bicycle heading up Lone Pine toward the edge of town where the old Cemetery Road led toward the northeast and Pritchard's Hole. He rode at top speed past all the weatherbeaten old houses that straggled out along Cemetery Road, some of them windowless and empty, and then on into the open countryside. While he raced along his mind was going even faster, going over and over the things he'd been planning to say to Barney. Over what he would need to say in order to make Barney realize that going down into an abandoned mine, not to mention jumping off water towers and swinging across deep canyons, were not things that he really needed, or even wanted to do. It wasn't going to be easy.

It was an extrahot dry day and even before he'd turned off Lone Pine onto Cemetery he was sweating like crazy and there was a fierce catch in his side. He didn't slow down, however, until he'd passed the huge rotting headframe of the old Olympia Mine and reached the really steep part of the road. At last, breathless and gasping, he passed the crest and began to coast down to where another road angled off to the left. More of a trail really, rutted and overgrown by weeds—it was the old wagon track to Pritchard's Hole.

Pushing his bicycle, Rudy made his way through a small grove of trees and out onto a flat open field that ended where the steep rocky foothills began, rising up sharply toward the mountains beyond. The field was scattered with broken bits of debris, the wheel-less remains of an old ore cart, piles of rotting wooden planks, and odds and ends of rusting pipe and rail. And beyond that, set into the cliff face, thick wooden pillars framed the entrance to Pritchard's Hole.

Rudy had been there before—once just exploring the area with Barney and Sty, and another time on a kind of neighborhood picnic. He remembered how the heavy weathered planks completely covered the entrance, held in place by huge rusty spikes. But now two of the splintery old planks were missing and in their place was a narrow strip of deep, empty darkness.

Rudy turned his back on the mine and looked around at the scarred and littered field. He walked over to the ore cart and checked it out and then poked around in a pile of broken pipes and tools. There was still no sign of Barney. But as he started toward a thick log that offered a fairly comfortable sitting place, he became aware of the sound of an approaching bicycle. A moment later Barney burst out of the grove and skidded to a stop only a few feet away.

They went through the usual “Hey, Barn” and “Rudy-dudey” more or less in unison and then Rudy gestured toward the other end of the log and added, “Be my guest.” Barney propped his bike against the ore cart, took off a bulging backpack and dropped it on the ground, and sat down straddling the log.

His thick blondish hair was hanging down into his eyes as usual, and his slow, crooked grin was just getting underway when Rudy said, “Look, Barney. I've got to talk to you about something very important and there isn't much time. It's about… it's about this gold-mining deal.”

Barney's smile faded. “Yeah, what about it?”

“Well, the thing is, I can't do it.”

He hadn't meant to start that way. He'd intended to begin by talking about why some people feel compelled to do dangerous things, not because they really want to but in order to prove something or just to get someone's attention. But sitting there, staring Barney in the face, he suddenly knew that what he'd planned to say wouldn't go over very well. What he'd been ignoring was how much Barney hated any kind of poking around in his personal feelings. And the only other approach that Rudy could come up with in a hurry was to tell why he, himself, couldn't possibly be involved. Admitting to Barney that he had something as weird as claustrophobia wasn't easy, but on the other hand if Barn was really feeling sorry for him he might not be so quick to get mad at him for what he was going to say next.

“You can't?” Barney looked puzzled.

“That's right. Well, the thing is, I got caught in a cave-in once and it almost killed me, and now I really lose it if I go in any kind of dark, closed-in place.” Even saying just that much made Rudy's heartbeat pick up the pace a little.

“Cave-in?” Barney looked puzzled. “You never told me about any cave-in before.”

“Yeah, I know. I'd forgotten about it. It's called repression, which means your mind just kind of wipes out something that's too painful to remember. And besides, I was unconscious right afterward and when I came to I just didn't remember. Except in dreams. I've kind of remembered it in dreams ever since.”

He went on then, telling the whole story of the cave-in and the part Murph had played and how Murph had been the one to finally tell him about it.

It still wasn't easy talking about it. As soon as he began his shoulders started to quiver, and he could feel a gathering tightness in his head and chest. But he went on talking and finally he couldn't help being pleased at how well he was doing. Although his voice got wobbly and his heart was pounding a bit, he didn't come nearly as unglued as he had before.

The whole time he was talking Barney listened very carefully, now and then shaking his head and saying, “wow,” and “yeah,” and “unreal.”

Rudy wound up by saying, “So anyway, that's why I can't help out with the gold mining. I mean, I couldn't do it if I knew for absolute certain that old Rooney knew what he was talking about and we were going to find a million dollars' worth of gold nuggets. Which, by the way, I don't believe for a minute.”

Barney nodded slowly. Then he grinned and said, “Hey, it's okay. I mean, this gold-mining thing isn't going to take the whole summer. There's a lot of other stuff we can do.” He got up, grabbed his backpack, and started taking things out of it, a small sharp pointed pick and a coil of rope and then a miner's helmet with a flashlight taped on top of it. He put the helmet down on the ground and started rearranging the other stuff in the pack.

“Wait a minute,” Rudy said. “That's not all I wanted to talk about.”

“Yeah?” Barney sat back down on the log with the rope in his hands, and as Rudy went on talking he started untying the knot that held it in a coil. “Shoot,” he said.

Rudy took a slow breath and began. “It's about why
you
want to do this gold-mining stuff. I mean, you know as well as I do that the chances of your finding any gold down there are pretty much in the fat-chance range. And you also know that breaking into abandoned mines is against the law, not to mention being about as safe as skateboarding on the freeway. I mean, I'm talking world-class, terminally dangerous, Barn.”

Barney had been frowning, but now suddenly he started to smile. Not his normal easygoing grin, but a tense, tight-lipped grimace, and Rudy knew immediately that he'd taken the wrong tack. He should have known that telling Barney that something was too dangerous was like waving a red flag in front of a bull. There was something in Barney that
wanted
danger the way a junkie wants a fix.

“Wait a minute,” Rudy said. “There's something else I want to say. I just want to ask you
why
you want to do it? I know why Styler wants to do it. Partly to get rid of me because he could see I wasn't going to do it. But also because he really and truly thinks he's going to get rich, and he is completely and totally hung up on money. But it's not that way with you. I know that. I know you better than that.”

“So.” Barney's eyes had narrowed, but the tense excited look still was there. “What else do you think you know about me?”

Rudy took a deep breath. “Well, I think you've been trying to prove something.”

“Prove something?”

“Yeah. Not just with this mine thing either. With other things like when we made that swing over the gulch, and dove off the water tower, and lots of stuff like that. I think you were trying to prove something then too. To yourself and perhaps even more to—to your parents.”

“Like what?” Barney's voice was low and flat.

“Like, that you're just as brave and daring and glamorous as they are.”

“So, you think I'm jealous of my parents, is that it?”

“No. Not jealous. It's more like… well, maybe you think… I mean sort of subconsciously… that if you do something really dangerous and prove how brave you are, they'll start… well, paying more attention to you.” Rudy found himself talking faster and faster as Barney's face got harder and tighter. “That's what Natasha says that Belle thought about you. She thought you were just trying to get your parents to care about you. And she said the reason you used to go to sleep in the daytime all the time was because you were so worried about your folks being gone so much that you couldn't sleep at night and—”

Barney stood up suddenly and threw the coiled rope. He threw it more or less down at the ground, but also at Rudy's legs. Rudy had never seen him look so angry.

“So that's what you and your mom have been saying about me, huh? And who else have you been talking to about me? Half of Pyramid Hill? And what else have you been telling them? I suppose you've been telling them all about the mine and the gold and what Ty and I are planning to do.”

Rudy stood up, too, very slowly. In a quiet voice he said, “You know I wouldn't do that, Barney. You know that. I haven't told anyone—”

“Look,” Barney broke in. “I've got stuff to do. I'm going to go into that mine in a few minutes and I have to get ready. So you better get out of here. Go on, get out. Now.”

Rudy got on his bike and left. All the way home he kept thinking the same thing over and over.
You blew it, Drummond. You really blew it this time.

I
T WAS ONLY
about three hours after Rudy rode off and left Barney alone at Pritchard's Hole, that someone banged on the back door of the Drummond house while another doll game was in progress at the kitchen table.

The game had been going on for quite a while without anything interesting happening and Rudy had more or less tuned out, using only half his mind to make the Rudy troll doll answer questions with noes and yesses. The other half was busy worrying about Barney. He'd just finished telling himself for the hundredth time that Barney would get over being mad at him and there was no use thinking about what might happen in the mine because there was nothing he could do about it, when someone ran up the back steps and pounded on the door so hard it rattled the hinges.

Rudy quickly dropped the troll doll and got up from the table—not being particularly anxious to be seen playing dolls. But when Margot rushed to the door and threw it open he forgot to worry about whether he'd been seen. It was Tyler Lewis.

Ty's face was bright red and dripping with sweat and he was gasping for breath. He looked like he'd been running—or riding his bike—at top speed in the hot sun. But there was more to it than that. Ty was definitely excited about something—or angry—or
frightened.
“Barney?” Rudy asked. “Is something wrong with Barney?”

Ty looked around Rudy at Moira and Margot, and then stepped backward, motioning for Rudy to follow. It wasn't until Rudy closed the door behind him that Tyler said, “No, Barney's all right. He—he just wants to talk to you. He sent me to get you. He said to tell you it's very important.”

“Where is he?” Rudy asked.

“At the mine,” Ty said. “He's out by the mine.”

Rudy was puzzled—and suspicious. “If Barney wants to talk to me why doesn't he come tell me so himself?”

Tyler shrugged impatiently. “I don't know. He's doing something real important and—”

But then something occurred to Rudy. “Did he tell you about… well, about what happened this morning?”

Ty's eyes narrowed. “Maybe,” he said. “What happened to who?”

“To Barney and me. About the… well, the fight we had.”

“Oh, that.” Ty nodded. “Yeah, he told me. That's probably what he wants to see you about. Something about the fight. Maybe he wants to say he's sorry.”

See,
Rudy told himself.
I told you he wouldn't stay mad very long.
To Ty he said, “Okay. I'll come. If I can get someone to take care of my sisters.”

Inside the kitchen he went to the phone and called Eleanora.

“Hi, Eleanora,” he said, talking loudly to be heard over the uproar of playing kids. “This is Rudy. Hey, look. Something real important has come up and I'm going to have to go take care of it. Could I send the girls back for the afternoon?”