Foxfire (34 page)

Hugh glanced around. They had reached Bosses' Row; there were lights in the Mablett and Rubrick houses, and down the street two drunken miners were lurching towards them and singing.

“Not here,” he said. “Down in the canyon a bit, where no one can hear.”

“I don't give a damn whether anyone hears or not,” said Dart. “If what you have to say concerns the lost mine, I'm fed to the teeth with everything about it. It's an obsession with Amanda, and if you want to join her mania that's your business. Go on off and hunt for it, and welcome!”

Hugh mastered an impulse to hit that contemptuous face which had not once turned in his direction, but he said quietly, “You know very well I couldn't find it alone, or I certainly would accept your kindly invitation.—Dart, you say Andy has an obsession, but so have you. Are you afraid of the place, that you won't even discuss it?”

Dart made a derisive sound in his throat. “Probably,” he said. “Doubtless my regrettable Indian strain lays me open to superstition not shared by the whites.”

Again Hugh controlled his temper. “Never mind about me,” he said, as persuasively as he could, “but you're not fair to Andy. Don't hold it against her that she showed me those notes. Try to see her side a little.”

Dart heard the slightly false ring in this. He had been angered by Amanda's disloyalty, by the conspiracy behind his back, the buzzing and whispering over a sacred concept handed down by Tanosay. And he had been disgusted at the clutching greed he felt in both of them—gold fever, a disease as mutilating as leprosy. But now his sense of justice spoke in answer to Hugh's words, no matter how venal their motive. And he felt a twinge of pity.

“I don't need your pleas, Hugh, to keep me from being brutal to Andy. And you can keep those copies she made. Brood about Pueblo Encantado all you want to, if it makes you happy. But don't ever mention it to me again.”

He turned on his heel and walked away in the opposite direction back up the mine road. Hugh stood still watching him. That isn't the end of it, my fine arrogant friend! he thought. I'll let you cool off a bit, and then I'll tackle you again. Hugh was now more convinced than ever that Dart knew many details about the location of the mine. And there'd be a way of getting them out of him somehow. Every man had his Achilles heel.... Through Amanda, probably ... she's handled it all wrong so far, but I can show her. And as he thought this the beast leaped out of hiding and seized upon Hugh again. Through its red eyes he saw the gleaming of gold, and beneath the wall of gold he saw Viola flattened, crushed and sobbing for mercy. A sudden exhilaration tingled through his body. I'll
make
Dart, he thought. I can do it, I'll find a way.

But it was through neither Hugh nor Amanda that their desire was fulfilled and Dart's attitude was changed. It came through evil greater than theirs, through the workings of an ancient racial wrong in which Dart had had no part, but for which he suffered nevertheless.

For the next few days Amanda and Dart lived in a state of abeyance with each other. They were very polite and spoke of trivial things. They saw nothing of Hugh, nor did they mention him.

On Sunday the heat wave had broken, and the weather was golden-crisp and clear. Dart, seeing that the mine was running smoothly, took a day off and suggested to Amanda that they might go somewhere for a picnic. Amanda was pleased, and repaid this consideration by asking if he would like to picnic in the ghost town and call on Mrs. Cunningham.

“Yes, I would,” said Dart thoughtfully. “I haven't seen her in a long time.”

So they ate their lunch on the mountainside, chatted about Mrs. Lawrence's last letter (Jean had not written since Amanda's abrupt leave from El Castillo), about an old gray desert tortoise which waddled by them as they ate, about the possibility of rain that night at last, since thunderheads were forming behind the northern mountains.

“But,” said Dart, “no one but a fool or a foreigner ever predicts weather in Arizona.”

Amanda smiled, willing enough to join him in fending off the interior tension. They even talked a little about the baby, avoiding all sore spots of its arrival and accommodation later. It would be a boy she was convinced, and they agreed on its name. Jonathan David, for both fathers. He would have light eyes, gray or blue. “In fact he has to,” said Amanda laughing, “since we both have—according to Mendelian Law, isn't it?”

And underneath this inconsequential talk there ran the dark river of conflict, a river reflecting in murky flashes the underside of the two-fold shield of love and hate.

Calise, when she opened the door of her mansion to them in response to Dart's knock, felt this at once. Her quiveringly sensitive perceptions received the full shock of the hidden turbulence, and she recoiled from the young couple on her doorstep. She was herself but just emerging from the re-enactment of her own tragedy. After months of freedom the frightful visitation had come upon her again. Again and with a sharpened horror her shrinking soul had been forced through the obscene, the grotesque motions of past adultery and murder. Her prayers were of no avail, the serenity and glimpses of the eternal light which she had thought to constitute at last the perfect armor, had all dissolved again under the hideous impact. She was not, then, yet forgiven. Repentance was not enough. There was still something more required. It must be that more prayer and fasting was required—more searching, more meditation, and for these the only possible atmosphere was one of untouched solitude.

“I cannot ask you in,” she said to Dart, her silvery voice hurried and distraught. “I'm sorry, but I cannot see you both.” And in her own mind she added the words, I cannot help you. For she saw them in need of help. Around them both she saw dark forces swirling, near Dart she saw through lurid mist an evil face, and danger; against the shimmering mountainside she saw a picture form, an image like the head frame over the mine. She heard the whir of machinery and she felt impelled to warn, but she rejected the impulse, refusing to listen, or believe. For these people would not heed, their violences and tragedies they brought on themselves, as everyone did, and they had no right to burden her with their exigence.

Amanda had been staring with concealed astonishment. Today she saw nothing of the special luminous quality she had felt before in Mrs. Cunningham. She saw nothing but a nervous old woman in black, who was acting eccentric.

“I'm so sorry we bothered you,” said Amanda soothingly. “We just had a picnic up here and we thought we'd drop in. But we'll come some other time.”

Calise scarcely heard her. “Forgive me,” she said to Dart. “I must be alone. It's the only way I can regain my strength.” She thrust her long pale hands out as though she would push the two people away from her. “I'll pray for you,” she added. And she shut the door.

Amanda laughed a trifle uncomfortably. “Well, that's that. Nice to be prayed for anyway. Do we need it?”

“I daresay,” said Dart. He was suffering from dismay. Calise had never shut him off like that before. He partially understood that it must have to do with her strange tragedy, but this repudiation was different in quality. She had fended them off as though they were dangerous or unclean. He had thought her above all pettiness. He had, in fact, considered Calise a fountainhead of strength and wisdom, despite her peculiarities. Her love of solitude and of the mountains had evoked deep sympathetic response in him. But today the sympathy had been shattered.

True to his instinctive antidote for uncomfortable thoughts, he now himself longed to go off alone into the mountains; and when they got home from their fruitless call at four o'clock he asked Amanda if she would mind being left.

“Oh, Dart, you're
not
going back to that damn mine! Not on this one day off! I thought you were going to amuse me for once.”

“No,” he said slowly, “not to the mine, I was thinking of a hike cross-country maybe towards the Gila. But what would
you
like to do, Andy?”

She checked a sharp answer, for what was there to do? They might play a little cribbage, they might do a cross-word puzzle, but of their real thoughts they could not talk. And she loathed tramping over these deserts even if her condition had not made it unwise. “Oh, go ahead,” she said, trying to smile. “I know you get outdoors so little, always stuck underground. I can always write to Mother, I suppose.”

Dart escaped into the beauty of an Arizona sunset, into the glory of an enormous sky that rippled into violet and crimson as it touched the gilded summits of the Tortillas, and reflected itself like a ribbon of satin on the winding Gila far below. He forgot all forebodings and disappointments in the rattle of the woodpeckers, the dusk music of the canyon towhees and the whistle of the cardinals from the mesquite.

But for Amanda there was no music, no sound in the shack but the scratch of her fountain pen, and the beating of her own rebellious and discouraged heart.

 

By Tuesday of the next week, Tiger Burton had perfected his plan. He was on the swing shift this week, according to the conventional rotation between the two main shift bosses. Old Olaf the Swede remained always on the graveyard.

Tiger's plan seemed to him virtually foolproof, and for the success of its details he had drawn upon a shrewd knowledge of psychology. First that of Bill Riley, the anxious, apprehensive young hoistman who drank a quart of coffee every night to keep himself alert. For him Tiger had procured an ounce of chloral hydrate. It was not his intention to knock Bill out completely, that would have been suspicious, just render him hazy enough so that he would not interfere.

And for Dart's unconscious co-operation, Tiger relied on the young foreman's well-known conscientiousness. The development work just started on the new 1000-foot level provided the ideal means.

At 5.30
P.M.
Tiger, having spent some time looking over the setting and seeing that all was satisfactory, returned to the surface and waited by the collar until Dart came on top, his day's work presumably finished.

Dart stepped out of the cage to see the shift boss sitting huddled on a pile of timber near the hoist house. Tiger staggered to his feet when he saw Dart, and stumbled towards him. “I got an awful belly-ache, Mr. Dartland,” he gasped, “kind of a colic. I can't finish the shift.”

“Why, that's too bad,” said Dart. “You better go to the bunkhouse and lie down. Shall I get the doctor up here?” “Oh, no sir,” said Tiger quickly. “I don't need him, I've had these belly-aches before. I just got to take a good dose and wait till they stop. I had my appendix out, it's not that—only thing is I'd ought to be down below to spit the fuses on the thousand tonight. Old Craddock and Pedro don't do so good alone.” He waited, his arms clasped around his middle, his eyes downcast to Dart's rubber boots.

“Oh, don't worry about that,” said Dart, precisely as Tiger had known he would. “I'll come back after supper, and stay underground with the men.”

“That's fine, sir,” Tiger whispered. Suddenly sweat sprang out on his forehead, and glistened on his pallid cheeks. Dart attributed this to illness and thought nothing of it. He watched Tiger's dragging departure towards the bunkhouse long enough to be sure the man would make it all right, then went up to the parking space and his own car.

Amanda was in a happier mood that night. She had received a long affectionate letter from her mother, enclosing ten dollars as a little gift, part of which Amanda had immediately spent on a roasting chicken, a can of sweet potatoes, a jar of jelly, and a store cake for their dinner; all delicacies usually beyond their budget. She had also bought some bottles of legal beer to add to the feast. She had further cause for rejoicing in that she had this day felt life at last. Now well into her fifth month but ignorant of the exact course of pregnancy, she had been uncertain about the flutterings she had felt during the last week. But this morning there had been an unmistakable movement, a gentle tapping as though the tiny entity within her were trying to communicate. And this to Amanda had been a revelation. The baby was real, it was there, and the surge of tender excitement awakened Amanda to her motherhood.

There were no words with which to communicate the joy of this private miracle to Dart, but it released her love for him, and weakened all the carking little tensions and conflicts which had been stifling it.

She even forebore to complain when she discovered that he must go back to the mine that night, although she had asked the Rubricks in for beer and to play cards, and this unprecedented little party would represent more gaiety than she had had in a long time.

“All right, dear,” she said, smiling at Dart, “I understand that you have to go back. I guess we can play something threehanded.... See how good I'm getting?” she said kissing the top of his stubborn black hair as she walked past, “the perfect miner's wife!”

Dart laughed and caught her around the waist.

“Don't squeeze Jonathan!” she cried. “Oh, Dart, it's going to be such fun, having the baby!”

His spirits, too, were higher than they had been in a long time. Amanda's gaiety was infectious. The dinner had been good, and above all he was grateful for the reasonableness she was showing. He had no hint of omen or portent tonight, the uneasiness he had felt last week had entirely gone.

He waited long enough to greet the Rubricks and explain. Tom and Tessie arrived all spruced up in their Sunday best. This little party was unusual for them too—except for Mrs. Mablett's all-inclusive collations, Tessie and Tom were not generally invited to staff houses.

Tom grumbled a bit. “Ye work too 'ard, Mr. Dartland, any'ow, and why would that measly Tiger 'ave to be ailing tonight...?” but he could not help but agree to the wisdom of Dart's return. The work on the new level was important, and must go ahead on schedule. And as they were still blasting so near the shaft down there, there was added responsibility for proper timing of the fuses and co-ordination with the hoist. Boss or foreman should be present.