Native Gold (31 page)

"Our mother will be so grateful," he managed before his brow crumpled yet again.

Mattie felt sorry for all the unkind things she’d thought about Mr. Harrison when he’d come to the door. He was certainly not unremarkable, and his eyes were far from unfeeling, moistened now by tears of honest grief. No, he was a gentleman, unlike the men with which she’d been acquainted of late. Henry Harrison wouldn’t beat a man senseless as the miners had, nor would he, like Sakote, abandon a woman who had shared her heart with him. He was...decent.

"I’m terribly sorry for your loss," she told him, laying a hand on his forearm. "If there’s anything I can do—“

"No. I’ve troubled you far too much already." He cast a glance around the room. "Just being here, amongst his things, has brought me peace."

Mattie felt a lump grow in her throat. How long had it been since she’d heard such a sentiment? It sounded like poetry. Here was a man she could talk to, a man who felt deeply, a man concerned with more than just gold dust, cheap whiskey, and high stakes poker.

"Would you," she said on a whim, "care to join me for supper? I haven’t anything fancy, but there’s sourdough rising, beans on the stove, and a tin of peaches on the shelf."

"Well, ma’am, I wouldn’t want to be any trouble."

"It’s no trouble at all," she decided, whirling away from him to stir the beans bubbling over the fire. After several days bemoaning the convoluted ethics and twisted logic of men, Mr. Harrison was beginning to restore her faith in the gender, and she wasn’t quite ready to let him go.

While she readied supper, she asked him casual questions about his background, where he’d grown up, what his family was like, what he did for a living. His answers were vague, and he seemed uneasy. He came from St. Louis, Missouri. His family was nice. He worked in shipping or transport or some such field. But he didn’t elaborate. He seemed far more interested in the contents of Doc Jim’s bag, opening each of the little vials to peer within.

"Did my brother leave...anything else of personal value?" he asked.

"Personal value?" She poked at the fire and added another log. "You mean a watch or a locket or the like?"

"Anything. Anything at all."

She scratched her nose. She wished she had an answer. It seemed to mean a lot to him. But Doc Jim had left very little behind.

"I don’t remember seeing anything like that, just his bag. He was," she paused, reluctant to talk of macabre things, "buried in a suit, but I don’t recall any jewelry. All he left in the cabin were his clothing, a pair of boots, and his mining tools."

Mr. Harrison smoothed his mustache with one hand. "Do you suppose I could take a look at those?" He nodded toward the miner’s kit.

"Certainly. Help yourself."

She liberally patted her hands with flour and took a hollowed-out tin down from the shelf, using it to cut the spongy sourdough into rounds.

When he finished perusing the tools, Mattie’s drawings caught his eye.

"These aren’t Jim’s, are they?"

"No. They’re mine."

"They’re very good."

"Thank you." She couldn’t help her flush of pride as he carefully examined each sketch.

"How do you find time to draw such pretty pictures, what with a claim to work?"

"Actually, I don’t work the claim much." She dusted off her hands and tucked the biscuits into the bottom of her Dutch oven. "Some of the miners pay me for the portraits I make of them. I’ve been able to get along fine on that."

"Well, surely James left you something to live on?"

She tucked her lip under her teeth. She didn’t wish to disillusion the young man about his brother, but it didn’t seem to her that James had set aside a single penny. "It’s my understanding that his claim ran dry a while back, and I suppose most of his doctoring was done for barter."

Henry nodded. "I see." He rubbed thoughtfully at his beard. "Barter, you say?"

Something flickered in his eyes then, alarming her—a spark of dark amusement, a wink of evil—but then it vanished, and he only stared at her with that baleful gaze.

She nodded, blushing under his unwavering scrutiny. "I, I suppose."

"You suppose?" He pursed his mouth and blew out a long sigh. His eyes flattened. "So he left you nothing."

"I’m sure he didn’t mean to—“

"My gold-mining doctor brother left you nothing?" This time the sardonic edge to his voice sent a frisson of misgiving along her spine. He whispered, "You expect me to believe that?"

Mattie opened her mouth to speak, but could form no reply.

His abrupt bark of laughter cracked the air like thunder out of season.

She recoiled in surprise.

"You expect me to believe that!" He cackled as if she’d just told him the most uproarious joke. "He left you nothing!" he crowed. Then he suddenly sobered and slammed his fist on the table, startling the breath from her.

Mattie was completely unprepared for his sudden flare of temper, uncertain toward whom it was directed. She dropped the Dutch oven with a bang onto the woodstove.

"Nothing at all!" he snapped. "No coin? No note? Not even a store of gold?" The man was fast growing livid, his face purpling, the veins in his neck protruding like tree roots.

Shock froze Mattie to the spot.

His voice dripped with sarcastic venom. "How could he do that? How could that son of a bitch leave his wife-to-be with nothing?"

Mattie blinked. She was moving her mouth, but no sound came out.

"I’ll tell you how!" His mask of ire evolved into a terrifying leer. "He didn’t!" He paced back and forth in the small space, his boots making ominous thumps on the floor. "You’re hiding something from me, Missy," he said, wagging a finger at her. "You’re not telling me everything. I know full well what kind of riches my brother pulled out of the ground up here. Now are you gonna try to tell me he left nothing,
nothing
behind?"

The bitter taste of fear crawled onto Mattie’s tongue, and she cast a nervous glance at the rifle on the wall. He followed her gaze.

"Oh, it won’t come to that," he assured her, every trace of guilelessness completely eradicated from his face. "Because you’re gonna tell me where it’s hidden, aren’t you?"

Mattie swallowed hard. The man was clearly insane. She could see that now. And as dangerous as a mad bull. How could she have thought him a gentleman? How could she have trusted him so readily?

"
Aren’t
you?" he snarled, pulling a pistol from inside his coat and training it on her.

The gun was made of polished gold, and for a split second she thought it was a toy. But then he cocked it, and her heart vaulted into her throat. "But I don’t...there isn’t..." Would anyone hear her if she screamed? Lord, she didn’t dare try, not with that gun pointed at her.

"Don’t waste your breath, little Missy. Now I haven’t got all day. I want that stash, and I want it now."

Mattie tried mentally cataloguing all the nearby objects that might be used as weapons. A spoon. A pencil. Her biscuit cutter. Tins on the shelf. It seemed hopeless. Perhaps she’d try reasoning with him once more.

"Mr. Harrison, believe me," she said, her voice quavering, "he left nothing behind that I know of. Now if you would kindly put down your g—"

With a growl of rage, he swept his arm across the table, spilling the tin of wilted wildflowers across the floor.

Mattie’s heart banged like a sledgehammer against her ribs, and her mouth went dry. She had to do something,
do
something!

"Answer me, Missy." He advanced, and she backed away till her hip struck the shelf behind her. "I don’t have to kill you outright, you know," he warned. "I could just cripple you a little."

Holding her breath, Mattie sunk her hand surreptitiously into the flour sack. He took a step forward. She bit her lip. The barrel of the gun looked enormous. He grinned and took another step. Then in one brash movement, she tossed a fistful of flour into his eyes and dove out of harm’s way.

Henry howled in rage and clawed at his face, momentarily blinded. But he didn’t drop the gun. And there wasn’t time to get her rifle.

Casting desperately about, she lunged for the woodstove. She hauled the bubbling pot from the fire and flung its contents toward him, gasping as the hot cast iron seared her bare hands. He jerked in pain as scalding beans splattered his face and oozed down his suit. It only delayed him an instant, but it was long enough for Mattie to snatch a pencil from the floor and lurch forward beneath the weaving pistol.

She didn’t aim. She just plunged the pencil forward, wincing as it sank into yielding flesh.

His scream was hideous. She shuddered. Had she killed him?

She didn’t want to look. But her eyes were drawn inexorably toward him.

The pencil protruded obscenely from his belly, buried at most a few inches. There was no blood, not yet. And though he wailed in agony, the injury could not have been more than superficial. As she feared, in the next instant he yanked the instrument free with a yelp, pressing a fistful of shirt against the wound to stop the impending flow.

And then the shiny golden butt of his raised gun dove toward her, slamming into her temple.

She must have lay unconscious for a few minutes, long enough for him to rip linen from the bed to bind his wound, but not long enough for his temper to cool.

He yanked her up to her knees and pressed the barrel of his pistol against her forehead.

"I should just shoot you!" he raged, and for one terrifying moment, she glimpsed the madness in his eyes and felt the tremor of his indecision.

When he at last lowered the gun, it was only to slap her across the face. Hard enough to make her eyes water.

"Are you gonna tell me where that stash is, or do I have to beat the Holy Jesus out of you?"

"I don’t" she gasped, “know.”

He backhanded her, and his ring scratched painfully across her cheek. "Oh, I think you do."

Her heart fluttered like a panicked dove flapping its wings against a cage. "Believe me…if I had it..."

He held nothing back this time, plowing his fist full force into her chin and knocking her backwards onto the floor. Stars exploded across her vision, bright white, then dimming, dimming...

His boot jabbed hard between her ribs, turning her vision red, and she moaned, only half-conscious.

"Now let’s try again," he said with mock patience, jerking her up by the arm.

Tears flowed down her cheeks, but she couldn’t think or form the answer he wanted, even when he shook her hard enough to rattle her bones.

"All right!" he yelled, shoving her back down to the floor. "You want to play rough?" With the toe of his boot, he levered open the door of the woodstove. Inside was a split log, untouched by fire on one end, aflame on the other. He snatched it from the stove. "Everything you own is in this cabin, isn’t it? All your worldly goods?"

She cringed from the heat, too stunned to answer.

"You tell me where it’s hidden, or I’ll burn up everything, starting with these pictures here."

"No!" That woke her up. Whatever he did to her, however hard he beat her, it couldn’t possibly hurt her more than...

He grinned, edging the burning brand close to a drawing of the steamship.

"No!" Her drawings were her memories, her friends, her journey, her life. She had nothing else. She had to prevent him, but she didn’t know the magic words to make him stop.

He let the paper catch fire, and it was as if she were back in her uncle’s house again, watching her beautiful masterpiece melt into oblision.

"No!" she screamed, clawing at his arm. But he pulled away, and, one by one, he lit the pages. The edges of her sketches smoked and curled. Monkeys and quail and pines and deer alike flared, then turned to ash and drifted in gray flakes to the floor. She tried to tear them from the wall herself before he could reach them, but he knocked her across the cabin with the back of his arm, swinging the lit brand perilously close to her hair.

A cough tore at her throat. The pitch of the wall planks had caught fire and was smoking now, thickening fast.

"Where’s the gold?" he growled. "I’ll burn this whole house if I have to! Melted gold’s as good as any!"

He sneered and ignited the mattress. Flames leaped up from the ticking at once. In a flash of daring, Mattie managed to pull one drawing out from under the pillow, crumpling it into the pocket of her apron. Then she scrambled out of the way, inhaling a noxious lungful of smoke, and crept toward the door.

He lost his patience then and, throwing down the brand and his gun, snatched handfuls of her bodice and wrenched her to her feet.

"Where the hell is the stash!" he cried, shaking her so violently she feared her head might rock from her neck.

In a last defiant gesture, she spat in his face, and he lost the rein on his control. By the fourth punch, she could no longer feel pain. She couldn’t breathe in the smothering haze.

She vaguely sensed him dragging her out the front door and felt the sweet cool rush of fresh air as they emerged.

Behind her, the cabin crackled and hissed. Paper and wood and cloth and tin flared and melted in turn, and a gray cloud slowly curdled the twilight sky.