Jasper Mountain (4 page)

The platform descended and life disappeared, replaced by a dropping sensation followed by rushing black. The weight of tons of rock and earth bore down, closing in on him.

This must be what it’s like when you’re dead.

When Jack first came to Jasper Mine, he didn’t mind sinking down in the mountain. Cradled in dark, the rich smell of dirt surrounding him, clinging to the air like clods to a shovel. Just like a grave. No less than what he deserved. He reminded himself he worked in the mine for his family. The boys. Buck. The ranch. Remembering helped him face the moment when the waiting earth swallowed him into a netherworld of dark heat and torturous work that pushed a man to the edge of his soul.

When Victor Creely laid out his plan for Jack, he briefly touched upon the need for Jack to spend time with the miners, wearing their boots, working with their tools, digging in their world. Getting to understand them and win their trust. Victor presented Jack’s role to him as a liaison, a bridge between the miners and officers.

Jack had been in Jasper long enough to see that the miners languished in a pit, and the men needed much more than a bridge to nowhere to ease their complaints. He didn’t blame them one bit. Pay was pitiful. The work, dangerous. Simply put, working in Jasper Mine was a living hell.

On the other hand, he owed an enormous debt to Victor. The man had swooped in and saved his ranch and the families. They were rebuilding, thanks to Victor Creely’s money.

Victor assured Jack he’d only have to work down in the mine for a relatively small amount of time. Jack had worked in the mountain for about eight months now. Despite how much Jack hated working underground, he was in the right place. He belonged down here. He deserved every minute of Jasper Mine.

The platform jolted to a halt, the miners’ bodies so packed together they held each other from falling. They stepped into their world of dark and rock, hanging their lunch pails on high nails to keep the rats from getting their food. Passing a flame, they lit the candles on their hats, or hardboils, as the miners called them. Dipped repeatedly in boiling glue, layer after layer, the hats dried rigid enough to protect a head against anything, even a rock. An ingenious process, Jack thought. One of many devised to keep the earth from exacting retribution on man for his invasion.

“See you boy-os up top.” Tom waved and walked into the north end of the tunnel, whistling as he went. Happy, despite being underground. He had a family and love to return to someday. A thing so precious, yet Jack knew, so fragile.

Tom shrunk until he became no more than a flickering light, and then black swallowed that, too, as if Tom had never existed.

Digger sighed. “Come on, Jack. We got to get this rock blowed up by sundown.”

Jack lifted a huge sledgehammer to his shoulder, hunched over like a troll, and scuttled to catch up with Digger. The two men stopped when they came to the end of the tunnel and faced the rock wall they would soon destroy. Good enough for the damn thing. Jack actually enjoyed blowing away bits of the place. He liked to see another chunk of this world crumble away and disintegrate.

“A man just doesn’t belong under the ground, Dig. Leastways, not till he’s dead.”

Digger’s face took on a serious expression. “What in blue blazes has got you thinkin’ so much about death? Jesus, Jack, you need a drink worse than me this mornin'. You’re in a awful poorly mood.”

Jack shrugged the huge hammer from his shoulder and onto the ground, thinking about the night before. He’d finally opened his book, begun reading again. He’d missed it so much. He needed the chance to get away, go somewhere else, even to the dark places Poe took him. “I guess I’d better stop reading Edgar Allan Poe before I go to bed. Messin’ with my good and kindly nature.”

Digger’s seriousness melted into confusion.

“He’s an author. A writer,” Jack explained. “He writes stories about ghosts and death and such.”

“Ha!” Digger said. “I knew there was a good reason I never learnt to read. Who needs such a thing? Edgar Allan Pope. Jesus.” He held a drill bit to the wall.

Silently saying a prayer his aim would hold true, Jack lifted the hammer. A shock ground down his neck and back, nothing to compare to the bolts about to reverberate through him once he started swinging the damn thing and it hit. He went home every day, his body rracked with a thousand blows, as if he’d wandered into a violent crowd and been beaten and trampled.

And that, he figured, was good enough for him.

The Dim Swede had a name after all. Rolf.

Three days after her father’s death, and here she was, sitting beside the man. She’d been determined to stay at Baba’s gravesite, but in the morning when the party left, Rolf lifted her and carried her back to the camp, tossing her into his wagon like she was a sack of feed. He claimed her then, for his own. When she protested, the men of the party informed her it was Rolf’s right, the law of the land. The women of the party told her she was lucky to have so strong and able a man take her into his care.

She tried to run. Rolf came after her, tied her down inside the wagon while they traveled, then to its wheel for the night, explaining she’d die out in the middle of nowhere. She realized the uselessness of protest and calmed, planning her escape. They would not be in the middle of nowhere forever.

The next day she traveled obediently by his side during daylight and watched while he made camp at sunset. After he built a fire, he sat beside Milena and ran his hand up her back, clenching her neck with his huge fist. He sighed deep with contentment. She kept the shudder running through her trapped inside, and looked to the distant lights floating in the sky. What were they, she wondered as she watched the cluster of lights hovering in the air. Were they faeries or mountain spirits?

“Tonight’s our night, Laney,” Rolf said, chuckling. She did not like the sound of his announcement. “Sorry you forced me to keep you tied up to the wheel last night. You’ve come to your senses now, I guess.”

“What are they, the lights?” she asked.

“Jasper Mountain. There’s a town up there. Minin’ town.” Hope raced through her. Had they arrived, finally? California? “This is the Land of Gold?”

Rolf smiled like she was a child who danced well and amused him. “Nope. Copper mine, some silver, too. Most of the gold loads been tapped out for a while, but folks think there’s still treasure somewhere up there. We’ll go through the town on our way over the mountains. That’s where we’ll get new supplies before the pass and you and I kin get hitched. I’ll make an honest woman out of you right up there, in Jasper.”

Milena’s heart quickened. Finally, escape was possible. A town.

“Come on, Laney. Let’s git inside.” He practically dragged her into his tent.

“No, Rolf. This is not possible.” Milena scrambled to the rear of his tent and raised her hand, desperate to stop the advances of the charging beast. The dark lust in his face sharpened to anger. She continued. “It is my time,” she lied. “I am
marime.
You must not touch me.”

His anger softened to confusion. “Stop all your foreign babblin'.” He grabbed her arm. “You’re so purty. I know we should wait, but I jest cain’t. My intentions is honorable, Laney. We’ll be married in a few days anyways.”

How could she make him understand? “I bleed.” Her face flushed with her lie and the shame of that which should never be mentioned, but this was the only idea she had to stop him. He dropped his hand from her arm and anger returned to his face. His eyes narrowed.

“Who hurt you? George? When I weren’t lookin'?”

“No, no,” she answered. “It is my, my …” She searched for words she did not possess. “I do not know your word for this. To my people I am
marime.
You must not touch me.” Still, no understanding on his face. “It is my time with the phase of the moon.” He still appeared confused. “Rolf, this comes when there is no child. My cycle.”

“Oh! Woman difficulties,” he said, realization lighting his bland face. “Why didn’t you jest say so?” He grabbed her, pulled her to him, and flopped down. Wrapped in his arms, she had no choice but to fall over with him. For one horrified moment, she thought he would take her anyway. He nuzzled her neck and wedged in close to her. She did not understand his barbaric ways. A Romani man would not touch a woman when she was
marime,
not even come near. This man, he always touched, always grabbed, as if brute force could hold her to him.

His body settled in along her back, and he threw a leg over her. He was a human vise, clamping her to him. He kissed her behind her ear, and she shuddered.

“You cold, Laney?” He pulled his blanket over them and tucked her into him. “I’d like to warm you up, good and proper. This’ll have to do for now.” His voice dropped, quieter with each word.

Milena listened to the even sound of his slumber and held to her vision of Jasper Mountain. Her only hope. Her salvation.

Veins of copper shot though rock and glittered in the lamplight. Soon, this wall would be blown to bits, courtesy of Jack Buchanan and his marvelous gunpowder tricks. He brushed powder from the front of his coveralls. Wouldn’t do to be part of the light show.

After he and Digger spent their shift drilling small, tube-sized holes, Digger went up top with the rest of the team and Jack worked alone, packing the holes with gunpowder and wicks. Jory had led the men up and out to safety, and Jack figured the night-shift workers waited up top for the explosion to happen. Here, underground, the night never ended, and he had no idea what time it might be. Truth to tell, he really didn’t care. He just needed to get this blast done before morning.

Now the final step. Jack trimmed the first wick. Then the second. He trimmed the next fuse.

Coward.

He considered cutting the final fuse a bit short, and he wondered if he’d beat the explosion out of the tunnel. Maybe he could. Maybe not.

“Ahhh, Christ Almighty, another day down in this mine and I won’t be any fun at all. I got to stop feeling so damned sorry for myself,” he said to the rock wall. “Look at you. You don’t pity yourself at all, do you? And I’m about to blow you into tarnation. Damn it!” he said, realizing he needed to recheck the charges. He’d lost count of the lengths. “Jesus, look at me. Distracting myself by talkin’ to a wall.”

He concentrated on trimming the remaining fuses to the perfect lengths. A breeze tickled the back of Jack’s neck. He whirled around and fell on his butt, but he recovered quickly, looking into the dark. No one was there.

He knew he was alone, yet he sensed someone watching. Jory had been coherent enough through the reek of whiskey to order all the men back to the surface before Jack started the final moments of the job. So, who else could possibly be down here?

“Jo?” he called out his sister’s name and grimaced. “Now, what the hell made me say such a thing?” He was spooking himself was all. He returned his attention to the wall and fuses. Damn, this blast was going to be good. Victor Creely and his New York investors would get a payload from this one, he was sure.

As always, he did one final check. Once he was up top, he would listen and track the explosions as they shook the mountain. Even though it was the shift boss’s job, Jory couldn’t count sober, let alone during his current and most constant state. It wasn’t unusual for miners to lose their lives, digging for ore with an unignited tube hiding in the rubble.

“No one’ll die from my work,” Jack vowed to the wall before him. Enough shadows already lurked deep inside. Enough people were dead because of him.

A hand grabbed his shoulder.

He jumped and banged his head on the cave ceiling.

“Sorry, Jack. I knew I’d scare you.” Digger’s voice, sheepish, broke through the dark.

“I’m not scared,” he barked. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Digger should know better than to disturb a man during the final check. His place was waiting up top with the rest of Jack’s group.

“Good thing you’re so persnickety about checking this stuff before you light it. We got to hold the blast.” Dread bubbled up. “Why?”

“Tom Gallagher’s missing. He ain’t up top; he ain’t nowheres.” Jack and Digger’s candles blinked out.