Foxfire (48 page)

“Damned if I know. But he
won't
sound pleasant when he's really heard about Hugh.—I told him we'd be there tomorrow morning by ten o'clock.”

 

They came down into the canyon off the Lodestone road and entered the town at a quarter to ten the next morning. The Ford rattled through the quiet main street past the bridge to Mexican town and the false fronts and arcades before the post office and saloons and Miner's Union Hall. They passed the General Store, and Amanda saw Pearl Pottner's bulky, white-aproned figure just within the door. Amanda looked the other way, she had hoped never to see any of them again, or Lodestone. Then she heard a shout, and she glanced back. Pearl stood outside on the sidewalk, waving her fat arm in vigorous greeting and she was smiling.

“That's funny,” said Amanda, but Dart had not noticed. His jaw was tight and he stared straight ahead through the cracked windshield.

They passed the Company hospital. She could see people inside in the waiting room, and there were new white curtains at the upstairs windows. A man was painting the side of the house, a bright, fresh yellow. She stared uncomprehending at the hospital. Then they passed their own shack. It was unchanged, the front door still sagged, the kitchen stovepipe, though repeatedly fixed by Dart, lay on the gound as usual, blown off by some recent wind. All the misunderstanding and the suffering and rebellion she had felt in that cabin struck out at her as she saw it. I couldn't stand it again, she thought. I couldn't. But then she looked up at her husband's tense face, so dearly loved now, and she put her hand on his arm. He did not move his head, but he covered her hand with his. “It's a tough moment, Andy,” he said very low, “but we'll fight through it.”

They climbed the mine road past the cut-off to the ghost town and drew up in the parking place near the change house.

There were a lot of men hanging around the steps of the mine office. Dart noted them with astonishment. What were they doing there at that hour when the shift was in full swing? Strike? The hoist was running, anyway, the great greased cable spinning down from the sheave above, and he heard the roar of cascading ore from the skip to the bin. And what difference does it make to you what happens here anyway! he thought angrily.

“May I come too, Dart?” said Amanda, as he opened the car door. He was startled. It was true that women were discouraged at the mine, and that for a difficult interview like this it might be far better not to further annoy Tyson and Mablett. But she had become so much a part of him since their days in the lost valley that it had never occurred to him not to take her. “Yes, of course,” he said. “Come.”

They walked across the stones and dust towards the mine office, and the lounging men all stood up, forming lines up the steps and onto the porch. There was a commotion around the open door, and a nudging and whispering. Some large whitish object seemed to be passing from hand to hand.

“What the hell goes on?” said Dart, hesitating. The men were advancing in a solid phalanx down the steps. Suddenly a figure emerged in front and came marching towards them. It was Tom Rubrick, and his grizzled little monkey face was split with a grin from ear to ear. He held a white sign straight-armed out in front of him, and shoved it at Dart. The sign said “Welcome!!” in large block letters, and it was decorated with garlands of decalcomania roses.

Dart drew in his breath and stepped back, staring.

“It's for you, lad! It's for you!” cried Tom, waving the sign, and the men behind crowded forward, laughing.

The Dartlands stood rooted. A dull red flush crept up Dart's neck and face. He tried to speak, and emitted a muffled sound. He fumbled in his pocket, pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose. “Thanks,” he muttered. “Thanks.”

Tom clapped him on the back. “It's good to see ye, sir! And the little lady. The boys 're all tickled pink, everyone in town'll be glad!”

“I don't understand....” said Dart in a humble, groping voice.

“Well, ye will, lad—Mr. Tyson's waiting for ye—in there.” Tom propelled Dart through the grinning, sympathetic miners. Amanda followed close.

Mr. Tyson sat in the General Manager's office in his wheel chair. He was wrapped in a blanket and he looked as fragile as ever, but when he saw them approach he called out in a hearty voice, “Here, Dart! Come here. Hurry up, I want to shake your hand. Good Lord, we've tried every way we know to get in touch with you, but you vanished into thin air.” He pumped Dart's hand with surprising vigor, and then Amanda's. “My, but I'm glad to see you!”

“Well, thank you—” said Dart, moistening his lips, and swallowing. “But just exactly why?” Vivid in his memory was the scene the last time he'd stood in this office, with Tyson's and Mablett's suspicious, angry faces glaring at him.

“Sit down, you two, and I'll tell you,” said the old man. They obeyed, wondering. Tom Rubrick chuckled delightedly to himself, and could not forbear giving Dart's shoulder a pat as he passed towards the door. He shut it behind him.

“I was a doddering old fool, I guess,” said Tyson, leaning forward, “and I ask you to forgive me, Dart. All the same, I never was quite easy in my mind, no matter what Mablett said. I didn't think I could be
that
wrong in my early judgment about you. I've always been a fair picker of men.”

“Yes, sir,” said Dart slowly. The sudden readjustment of all his expectations dumbfounded him. He frowned, trying to understand. “It was Mablett, then, I take it—who engineered the mine accident?”

“Mablett?” repeated the General Manager in astonishment, and then he smiled. “Oh, I see. Certainly Mablett hated you and is a pigheaded ass sometimes, but he's not a criminal. No, it wasn't Mablett, it was Tiger Burton, and Mablett knew nothing about it.”

“Ah...” said Dart on a long breath. He pulled out a cigarette and lit it automatically, thinking. Not really so surprising, there had been that forgotten scene down at the 1000 station, that nonsense about Apaches, and yet...“But I don't see how—the guy was sick that day, in bed in the bunkhouse. He looked sick, too, and how could he ... what did he do...?”

Tyson laughed. “So damnably simple that none of us fancy engineers thought of it. He wasn't sick, at least not his body, but he was a fine actor. When you were underground he just hid in the old tailings dump, cut the signal wires outside the shaft, did a neat piece of timing, spliced them up again, and scuttled back to bed in the bunkhouse thinking he'd blown you and, quite incidentally, the two drillers into smithereens. He was terribly disappointed that he hadn't.”

“You mean he confessed?” asked Dart in amazement. “When I left he'd got my job. I can't imagine him with pangs of conscience.”

“No,” said Tyson, leaning back in his chair. “He didn't confess. That is, not spontaneously. When he knew he was discovered he went into fits of screaming hysterics and disclosed his whole plot. He is right now, as a matter of fact, in the State Asylum in Phoenix.”

“So,” said Dart after a moment, “it
was
simple. I suppose I should have suspected him, but he was so insignificant, mealy-mouthed—How in the world did you find out if he didn't confess?”

Tyson straightened up, he cocked his head and his tired old eyes brightened with enthusiasm. “Mrs. Cunningham!” he said smiling.

Both Amanda and Dart cried
“WHAT!”
in one voice, staring at the old man, who enjoyed his sensation.

“Yes,” he said, nodding solemnly. “She did it for you, my boy. She was magnificent, like an avenging angel. I never was so startled in my life. She went down into town about a week after you left, she commandeered somebody's car and dragged that crib girl up to my home—what's her name...?”

“Big Ruby,” whispered Amanda.

“That's right. Big Ruby, who was terrified. She knew about Burton all right, and she surely didn't want to talk, either, but Mrs. Cunningham made her.”

“Mrs. Cunningham came
here?”
said Dart. And this seemed to him more astonishing than anything he had heard yet. Calise with her pale silver hair and her transparent, mystical face, overawing a frightened prostitute, dragging her to the mine, confronting Tyson—“She never leaves her home, never sees people.”

“Well, she certainly did this time. She talked to Mablett, and she talked to some of the men. And it was she herself who handled Burton, or we'd never have got the proof. A lot of the men still think she's crazy—you know that old story—but she's not. She has power, spiritual power, and she used it like—like a Joan of Arc. I've never seen anything like it, she even galvanized
me.
I swear she sent a sort of thrill through the whole mine—of good will, and optimism.”

Tyson paused remembering again the awe which Mrs. Cunningham had inspired in all of them. Even Mablett had been reduced to red-faced gulping silence.

“We must go to her at once—” said Amanda brokenly. “Thank her.”

“Yes, you must. Nobody's seen her since that day, and I wouldn't dream of invading her privacy. But she loves you two.” He stopped and he looked at Dart, a mischievous and kindly gleam in his eyes. “You'll be mine superintendent now, my boy,” he said. “You can jam through that cross-cut in the old Shamrock you were always nagging me about.”

For the second time in the hour Dart flushed a dull brick-red, and his voice betrayed him. “But what about Mablett?” he said, trying to clear his throat.

“Oh, Mablett's being transferred—to Colorado. Company's got a little mine there they want opened up, now the price of gold's jumped again. It
did,
you know, while you were gone. The Lord bless and preserve F.D.R.—Mablett and the estimable Lydia are pleased as punch about it—seems she has a niece in Denver.”

Amanda looked at her husband and her heart filled with unselfish joy. His face was aglow and his eyes gazed out of the window towards the great head frame over the shaft with an expression of dawning excitement. And then his face darkened, his nostrils indented sharply—he turned back to Tyson.

“Everything's been so swell—” he said, “I'd forgotten why we came back—what I have to tell you——”

Oh, no, she thought, darling, don't. Don't spoil it all now just when you're so happy. She looked at the floor ashamed of her cowardice.

“Mr. Tyson, Hugh Slater went with us to the mountains. The doctor.”

“Yes, I know,” said Tyson impatiently. “He told me, left us in the lurch here. As a matter of fact I got a very good man from Globe to substitute. He's got a nice young wife, too, girl about your age,” he said to Amanda. “I think you'd like her.”

“You don't understand, sir,” said Dart. “Slater's never coming back. He's dead.”

There was silence in the mine office. The wall clock ticked ponderously a dozen times. Then Tyson spoke.

“Accident?”

“He was shot.”

The old man examined the young man's stern face across from him, he noted Amanda's involuntary movement, heard her quivering breath.

“Did you shoot him, Dart?”

Dart raised his head and looked back steadily into the wise, searching eyes. “No—He-” Dart stopped.

Tyson clasped his hands and turned a little, gazing out of the window towards the mine shaft, as Dart had done. “I guess you better tell me the whole thing,” he said quietly.

“Yes,” said Dart. “That's why I came back to Lodestone.” Amanda saw the grim lines deepen around his mouth. She held her breath and her heart pounded.

Dart told the story of their journey to the enchanted pueblo with scrupulous exactness. He told of the tragedy in the cave, using factual words devoid of emotion, and the old man listened intently, his face as grave and expressionless as Dart's voice.

When Dart finished there was another long silence, then Tyson spoke. “So the Apache shot Hugh Slater and thereby saved your life. Slater would have shot you again.”

Dart bowed his head. “I suppose so.”

“Do you think the Apache, your cousin, should be prosecuted, Dart?” asked the old man gently. “Do you think the sacred canyon should be again invaded; by those in search of legal proof, by journalists, by curiosity and treasure seekers? Would you lead them there again?”

“Oh no!” whispered Amanda. “That's horrible——”

“Hush,” said Dart. He raised his head and looked steadily at Tyson. “I'll do what's right, and I'll tell the truth.”

The old man smiled. “I know, Dart—and you have. You've reported the doctor's death to me. I'm a deputy sheriff, and I believe you. The responsibility is now all mine. From now on you can keep your mouth shut.”

Dart frowned. He started to speak, and the old man stopped him with an upraised hand. “Listen, Dart,” he said, “I've lived a long time, my boy, and I've seen a lot of things that won't fit the textbooks. Some things are better not talked about, they can't be without starting a lot of new harm, a lot more harm than is called for. I think this doctor's death is one of those things.”

There was quiet. The dingy mine office gathered itself into a waiting pool, and muffled through the windows they could hear the hum of the compressors and hoist engines.

As Dart did not speak, Tyson went on sternly, ‘These are orders, Dart, and I'm your boss. I'm taking the entire responsibility, and you've discharged your duty in full. You children have been through a lot, and mostly my fault. I'm not going to let you head into unnecessary trouble again.
Un-necessary/'
he repeated, and turning at a sound from Amanda, he saw a blaze of joy in the girl's eyes.

“Listen to him, Dart—” she whispered. “Please——”

Dart looked at her and then at Tyson. “But don't you know someone who should be notified—about Hugh?” he asked slowly, and as Tyson shook his head, Amanda, watching her husband, saw the grimness leave his face, saw his tense body relax.