Quicksilver

14

Skinny Canyon opened into a small valley that extended several dozen yards before narrowing at the far end and canyoning upward again. It was a lush valley, thatched with brush and trees, bisected by a creek — our own Skinny Creek — and caged by high walls.

What first caught my attention was a clearing at the far end of the valley. It boasted a rock ring holding timber tented over a brushy pile of kindling. The brush was brown, dried, but nevertheless I identified the crinkled ferny leaves as mountain misery. What else smelled like that?

My nose stung.

The timber smoked. The fire had almost gone out. Despite all logic, I ached to draw near. Add some of that dried kindling, help the fire along. Warm my feet.

Walter whispered, “See anybody?”

No. The fog was capricious, clearing the rock walls but lingering in the trees. I whispered, “I think that’s a tent back there in the trees.”

We waited, watching.

After a time Walter whispered, “Fat city, phooey.”

I turned to him.

He pointed. “It’s hard to see, what with the fog and the bend in the southern rock wall, but there’s a tunnel opening.”

I turned. Peered. Saw it.

“This place,” he said, “has already been mined.”

“So,” I said, “what about abandoned mercury flasks?”

“It’s not out of the question.”

Just great. I expelled a breath and refocused on the tunnel. “Perhaps they’re in the tunnel.”

“Henry hates enclosed spaces,” Walter replied.

“Maybe Robert’s in the tunnel. Maybe that’s why Henry brought him here.”

We waited, watching for Shelburne brothers.

Still, while waiting, I looked over this valley with a treasure-hunter’s eye. I could not deny that this place was as good a candidate as we had yet seen. The diorite thumb was webbed, on this side of the notch, to a full diorite hand that slapped against the southern wall, a wall shot through with spotted slate. There was no visible outcrop of hornfels but it surely had to present a face to the elements to erode off pieces of float. It was perhaps camouflaged in the brush, in the trees.

Equally to the point, these solid rock walls would hold an elevated ancient river channel intact for millenia. Indeed, I thought I could make out a high spur of gravel intersecting the rimrock of the southern wall.

Buried in that hillside, perhaps, was a stretch of the deep blue lead.

I wouldn’t mind seeing that. Had I caught the itch, from Walter? I whispered, “What’d you put in the Chili Mac last night?”

“What?”

“Never mind.” I refocused. “Shall we take a closer look?”

He nodded. We inched forward and achieved a small knob of bald bedrock and got a new angle on Notch Valley, as I decided to name it.

Walter nudged my arm.

I nodded. I saw Henry, in the trees. Not certain how I’d missed him before. Perhaps, three yards back, our field of view had been obscured. More likely it was due to the excellent nature of his camouflage.

Brown cap, brown parka, jeans faded to the color of volcanic breccia. Sitting cross-legged, right hand clutching his thigh. His left hand was not visible.

He was still as stone.

As were we, abruptly fossilized in place.

I thought he hadn’t seen us, which was why I jumped when he called my name.

“Cassie.” His fragile voice carried well enough across the little valley.

Walter whispered, “Answer him.”

I called back, “Henry.”

Like we were friends. He hadn’t called either of us by name, back at Shoo Fly Tunnel. And now he did. Using my first name, at that. Of course he knew our names — Walter had introduced us back at the tunnel — but the use of a name is a familiar thing. Like extending your hand for a shake. And I had now replied in kind. I watched. He did not extend his hand and I guessed that he couldn’t without releasing the tremors, but he could have nodded, cementing the Cassie-Henry relationship. He did nothing. He sat rigid as the trunk of the tree at his back. The harder I stared, the more he seemed to blend in, like a deer in the woods. I knew this game. Hide and seek. I’d played this game with my Henry and the trick was to look but not see, let the quarry reveal himself when he was ready.

And then he replied. “I said don’t follow.” Voice now gone shrill.

I had no idea how to pretend to make friends with this wounded soul.

Walter called, “We’ll leave, Henry, once we’ve had the chance to talk to your brother. Where is he? In the tunnel?”

Henry shifted. His left arm moved. Like he was reaching for something.

“Back up,” Walter hissed, flinging an arm across my chest, and as I stumbled my way backward I swore I saw that something in Henry’s hand, flashing silver.

We backed down off the knob and dropped to our knees.

I waited for the sound of a gunshot.

All I heard was the sound of blood pounding in my ears.

Walter whispered, “We can dash back to the notch but I’m not sure how long we’ll be within his field of view. Crawl, perhaps.”

I whispered, “I’m not crawling.”

Walter’s eyebrows lifted.

Well maybe.

And well we might have but for a new voice sounding down there in Notch Valley.

“Hey Bro,” Robert Shelburne’s voice rang clearly. “No go.”

I relaxed an inch. Robert was now on the scene. Must have been in the tunnel. He sounded fine, cheerful even.

Henry was speaking now, in reply to his brother, voice softened again. A murmur on the breeze.

“I’m on board with you,” Robert said, “but I don’t know what I’m looking at in the tunnel. I’m not qualified. What I do is, I hire qualified people. In fact, I hired two of them. I know you want to go it alone, just me and you, the family thing, but we’re failing here. Let’s get smart. Use our tools. We can go back and get them.”

Henry spoke. Voice loud enough to carry now. “They’re here.”

Silence, and then Robert’s cheerful voice. “No shit?”

“Up there.”

“Then invite them down.”

“I will.”

Robert went silent.

Walter and I looked at one another. There was something off about Henry’s I will, something that silenced Robert and caused Walter to shake his head, something that put me on high alert.

“Whoa,” Robert suddenly said.

There came a sound, the sharp sound of cracking ice, a sound I once heard skiing across a frozen lake, a sound that froze me now in place until another, closer sound caused me and Walter to wrap our arms over our heads.

Something struck the bedrock beside my leg.

I twisted and looked. It was a shard chipped off the bedrock knob.

“Come down here,” Henry yelled and there was nothing fragile about it.

He didn’t give us enough time to respond. He fired his gun again, the ice cracked again, and the bedrock knob chipped on the other side, on Walter’s side this time.

My heart slammed. I whispered, “Were those good shots or bad shots?”

“Good shots,” Walter said.

Henry fired a third time and this time he chipped the center of the knob and I wanted to yell stop shooting up the geology but I was shaking too hard to get the words out.

There was a micro-moment in which Walter and I considered our options, glancing at the path back to the notch, trying to do the geometry of angles of fire, and then Robert yelled at us, “He’s coming up.”

I nodded and Walter yelled, “Henry we’ll come down once you say you won’t shoot.”

“I won’t,” Henry called, “once you come down.”

Walter pushed up to his knees and I followed suit, thinking I sure hope we’re all clear on the timing of coming down and not shooting but once we were standing and I had a line of sight down into the valley my fears eased, slightly.

Henry stood watching, his gun barrel pointed groundward. He gripped the weapon with both hands and I guessed that was to counteract the tremors or maybe it was a sharp-shooting style but it looked for all the world like he’d had to wrestle the gun out of firing position.

Henry had shed his parka. He wore a brown long-sleeve shirt tucked into his jeans. He wore a belt holster.

Robert stood a few yards behind Henry. He was making no move to tackle his brother.

Walter and I came down off the knob to join the Shelburne brothers.

It wasn’t an Old West six-shooter in Henry’s hand. It was a modern-day Glock, carried by cops everywhere or at least at the crime scenes I’d worked. Henry’s Glock was matte black except for the slide, the metal there silvered where the finish had worn off, which left me thinking Henry Shelburne handles this gun a lot. Or maybe Henry ‘Quicksilver’ Shelburne had sanded the finish down to silver on purpose.

He still gripped the gun with both hands. He pointed it somewhere in the neighborhood of our six legs.

Robert, Walter, and I stood side-by-side in a lineup in front of the tunnel.

Henry spoke to Walter. “I am hiring you.”

Walter said, gently, “We prefer not to work at gunpoint.”

“It’s just in case.”

“In case of what, son?”

“Just in case. Just in case.”

Walter said, more gently, “All right.”

Henry raised his hands, and the Glock. His hands shook. The gun oscillated. “A geologist needs to go in.”

“Cassie will go,” Walter said promptly.

I got it. Henry didn’t know that Walter was the expert on the auriferous channels, Henry just knew we’d been hired to get his brother here. And given that we’d followed the float and found our way, I guessed Henry got that right. By now, either one of us would do. And Walter delegated me. I got it. He’ll stay outside with crazy Henry while I get to go on the treasure hunt. He thought he was protecting me. He always has. When I was a kid assisting in his lab and he took me to my first crime scene, he bought me a whistle in case we got separated. All these years later and now we’re doing the tricky dance of who is protecting whom. Vigilance is in his DNA. It’s tattooed on his soul.

There’s a man with a gun. And Walter is stepping up.

I stole a glance at Robert. He stood rigid, watching his brother. Not overtly afraid but then I’d not seen Robert Shelburne show fear. I did not know how he would exhibit fear.

I refocused on Henry. He looked a little lost, as if he’d come out of hiding too soon. His face was more weathered than the teenager in the photo but the Sherpa wool cap now cupping his head made him look young again. Still, he did not have teenage Henry’s cool squint. His eyes were reddened, blinking. Lack of sleep, trying to get a wet fire going, crying, who knew? His nose was pinkish, sunburned, peeling. I guessed the weather had been clear and sunny before we joined the hunt, although I wondered why an experienced outdoorsman like Henry Shelburne had not used sunscreen. His peeling nose — like the preposterous earflaps — made him look like a kid. I ignored that.

Robert Shelburne’s kid brother. Not mine.

Henry let go of the gun with his right hand and lifted it, gesturing at the tunnel.

I stared at his hand. The palm was pink, peeling, and I got a sick understanding that we weren’t talking sunburn here. Jesus Henry, what have you been into?

Robert suddenly lunged.

Quick as a snake strike, Henry had both hands on the Glock, had the gun aimed at his brother’s head.

Robert raised his own hands. “Chill Bro.”

I said quickly,“I’m going in.”

Henry pulled his arms into his chest, bracing his elbows, steadying his aim. “Thank you.”

Cautiously, I answered, “You’re welcome.”

And so now it became my show. I assumed I didn’t need a gas detector, or Robert would not have emerged from the tunnel alive. I started for the tunnel. Henry stopped me. Told me to leave behind my pack. Told me to take only my tools. Told me to bring him a sample. I rummaged in my pack and got the field kit and headlamp, fitted the headband, and started once more for the tunnel.

As I passed into the mouth I heard Henry call to me, “Go all the way.”