Heiress (31 page)

She tried to angle her headlamp down, to see where he might be looking. Indeed, the metal seemed to have been shorn, or sawed into a crisp line over halfway through.

“After hauling men up and down so many times, it would have broken free.”

“Dropped them to their deaths.” She said it on a ghost of a voice. “Sabotage. Someone could have done this in the middle of the night, after the last shift of the day. These men were murdered.”

“Indeed. But by whom?”

“That’s a very good question, Hoyt.”

The voice seemed to echo through the chamber, slide over her skin. She turned to the glaring lamplight of a miner.

“Abel,” Daughtry said, without warmth. “What are you doing here?”

“You brought a woman into this mine?” Abel advanced on him, his eyes glittering. “You know that’s bad luck.”

“Esme needs to see this, and so do you.” Daughtry showed Abel the hoist cable then the dogs. Esme watched as Abel’s expression turned to fury.

“I was just down at the site of the last ladder fall,” he said, his voice lethal. “Or rather, the scene of the murder.”

“What?”

“The ladder between level 2900 and 3000 was all but cut through. It didn’t break, it was cut. We thought it was rotten until I took a good look. Two men fell eighty feet.”

She held his gaze, saw the grief in it. “Abel.”

He marched up to Daughtry, put his finger to his chest. For his part, Daughtry didn’t move. “You swear to me the Silverthread had nothing to do with this.”

Daughtry’s voice came out low, even. “I swear.”

I swear.
His words sank into her as they trekked through the drifts back to the Horn shaft. Abel walked behind them, his breathing hard, as if trying to sort through what truths he could believe.

She wanted to weep when they came out to the shaft room, saw the cage waiting for them. But as they walked toward it, suddenly it jerked, the gears at the crust of the earth grinding.

And then, even as Esme leaped for it—to do what? Grab a hold of the bottom and ride it to the top?—the cage lifted and disappeared into the shaft.

“Can you make it come back?” She didn’t even bother to disguise her panic.

Daughtry leaped at a box mounted at the side of the shaft. A rope hung down, and he pulled on it. A bell rang. Next to the box, a chart listed the bell signals. “It should ring on the surface, to Crandall in the hoist house. It’s the bell signal, and every level of the mine has its own signal.” He gave it eight rapid shots. “That’s our emergency signal.”

Esme stood there, tasting her heartbeat. Looking at Abel, back to Daughtry.

The men stared at the empty shaft.

Daughtry rang the bell again. And then, a third time.

They stood, headlamps flickering, waiting for rescue.

“Where is he? Where’s Crandall?”

“I don’t know, Esme. Shh.” Daughtry glanced at Abel, who shook his head.

“We’ve been abandoned,” Esme said, her pulse so thick in her head she thought she might collapse. She looked up the shaft again, felt the cool lick of fresh air snaking down from the surface.

“Who would do that?”

“The same person who would kill our miners,” Abel said. He looked at Daughtry. “Now what?”

She felt her knees start to wobble. Was that another blast? She put her hands against the wall. And then, as she watched, Daughtry’s carbide lamp flickered out. His face darkened in the shadows. She stifled a hiccough of fear, her breath leaking out in a whimper.

“Esme. It’s okay. We’ll get you out of here.”

“How?” Oh, she didn’t mean to sound so delicate, so needy, and her voice echoed off the walls, probably down every chamber. “What if my carbide runs out? We’ll die down here.”

Daughtry reached out and she didn’t care that Abel watched as she clung to him. “Shh.”

“We’re trapped!”

“We’re not trapped. All the shafts are connected by drifts. Abel, can you get us to the new Neck shaft?”

Esme stared at the dark maws. “Go through those tunnels again? What if my light goes off?”

“It’s either that, or we can climb up three thousand feet of ladder,” Daughtry said. “And Abel has a light.” He took her hand. “Abel, you’re the boss. Save us.”

Something flashed across Abel’s face, a flicker of surprise, perhaps. “Follow me.”

He took them down yet another tunnel, this one rougher, filled with boulders and the broken timbers of the ore car rails, earth dribbling through the cribs, some of the bracing timbers broken. She wiped her hand down her cheek, hating her tears.

Abel led them through passages as wide as a street, others that might turn a man sideways. Other passages led off the first, but Abel led the way without pausing.

“How do you know where you’re going?” she finally asked, because speaking seemed better than listening to their breathing or their feet scrubbing on dirt.

“I grew up down here. I know every nook and cranny of this mine,” Abel said.

Her light flickered out, then, and it took every ounce of strength for her not to cry aloud.

They finally emerged into another open chamber.

The gate over the entry to the shaft was closed.

Abel walked over to the bell box, pulled on it, a series of short, then long signals. The sound was returned. From the top, she heard the clanking of the lift cage.

“Welcome to the Neck,” Abel said, a smile edging up his grimy face.

Daughtry extended a hand. “You saved us, Abel. Thank you.”

Abel stared at the offering a long time, and just when Esme thought he might turn away, he took it.

She nearly leaped into the cage when it settled on the ground. Daughtry followed, then Abel closed the gate, then the door behind them, then reached through the window and pulled the bell signal.

The cage started slowly, bouncing as they rose.

As the darkness settled around her, she found herself in the pocket of Daughtry’s chest, her ear pressed to his jacket. His heartbeat seemed even more thunderous than hers.

“Were you afraid?”

He looked down at her, his eyes white against his now dirty skin. “Terrified.”

She laughed, more of an avalanche of emotion than humor. “I never want to do that again.”

His face sobered. “And yet these miners do it every day.”

She looked over at Abel. He was considering her, his eyes white in the darkness, his expression grim.

“We have to find out who’s sabotaging the mine and stop them.”

The cage slowed as it reached the top, finally lurching to a stop. Abel opened the doorway, then the cage.

Even from behind Daughtry, Esme heard the rabble, felt the tension as they piled out. A hoist man met them, his gaze going from Abel, then to Daughtry.

“What’s the matter?” Daughtry said. Behind him, she heard shouting, saw what seemed like a mob outside the entrance.

“Crandall Norman’s dead—and we caught the murderer. It’s the man from Butte Mining. They’re gonna lynch him.”

Daughtry glanced at the mob then at Abel. They shared a moment, something they’d lost, perhaps, years ago, and had only found again under the crannies of the earth.

Daughtry turned to her. “Please. Go home. I promise to tell you everything that happens.” He looked at her, with those dark eyes, the ones that had told her to trust him, the ones that believed in her.

She nodded.

* * * * *

She waited, stopped the presses, pacing in her office. The moon had already risen, the light pale upon the floor.

“What if he doesn’t come? Why didn’t you stay? You know it would have been a front-page story.” Ruby sat on the edge of her desk, having spent the last hour typing Esme’s article into the linotype machine, reformatting the entire front page.

Hudson waited to run it through the press.

They’d left room for the update from Daughtry. So, the paper would go out late. She’d finally scoop Ellis Carter.

But more, she wanted to know who’d been sabotaging the mine. Who had killed Crandall, and so many other men.

“He asked me to go home,” she said, not sure why she’d obeyed him. But something on Daughtry’s face had convinced her that he would tell her the truth.

He just didn’t want her to watch it.

For the first time in a long while, years, maybe, she wanted to trust a man, to let him protect her.

Ruby was staring at her. “You have feelings for Daughtry Hoyt.”

Esme had bathed, slicked the mine’s breath from her skin, but she couldn’t dislodge the way Daughtry had made her feel. The firm grip of his hand over hers, sweetness in his gaze when he’d called her beautiful under the glow of a carbide lamp.

I would like to go to dinner with the most beautiful woman in Montana.

She should have said yes.

Clearly, it showed in her expression. “I…maybe I do.” The confession of it uncoiled something inside her. A grief, or maybe a fear.

She could fall in love again. Be happy.

But Ruby didn’t smile. “Are you sure, Esme? He’s not one of us. He’s a rich man’s son.”

Esme shook her head. “But he is us, Ruby. You should have seen him down there. He asked Abel for help, even though I think he might have known his way back. And he understands the miners, the mine. And you should have seen his face when he found out that Crandall had been murdered.”

Ruby folded her arms across her chest. “I just hope he doesn’t break your heart.”

A step sounded outside on the boardwalk, and Esme met him at the door, her hand on the latch when he entered.

Daughtry appeared wrung out, burdened, as he walked into the room.

She let her emotions lead and wrapped her arms around him, not caring about the sweat embedded in his shirt, the greasy dirt on his face, his hands. He curled his arms around her, and for a second, leaned down and seemed to draw in the smell of her.

“They didn’t lynch him,” he said. “But they wanted to.” He put her away from him, met her eyes. “He was the rabble-rouser at the union meeting the other night. Apparently, he’s been on site for the past five weeks.”

“He’s our saboteur.”

“Yes. He shot Crandall at the Horn. But Crandall managed to sound the distress whistle before he died. He identified his killer to the miners just coming off shift from the Neck shaft. They caught up with him, and we got a confession. The Butte Miners Union has been committing the sabotage. But he said they were paid to do it…by Ellis Carter.”

“But why?”

“So I’d be forced to sell to Anaconda. And the Silverthread miners would have to join the union. It means more dues, more power for Butte.”

“They killed people so they’d have striking power?” Ruby’s voice had a dangerous, lethal tone.

“I knew Ellis was behind this,” Daughtry said. He sat down, ran his filthy hands through his hair. “But we only have the word of the BMU. We can’t prove it.”

“We have to expose Ellis Carter and his crimes,” Esme said quietly.

“How?” Daughtry said, his eyes tired. She’d never seen him so shaken, so defeated. “He is above the law. He’ll deny it and just send more saboteurs, and it won’t matter if we catch them. He owns the Butte sheriff. He even bought his own senate seat.”

“He doesn’t own President Roosevelt.” Esme crouched before him, reached up, and wiped dirt from his chin. “Clean up, Daughtry, because you’re taking me to dinner.”

“Welcome to the ‘Richest Hill on Earth.’ ” Esme stood back to allow the porter to open the door to her suite.

“It’s so grand,” Ruby said, her eyes wide. “I always knew Daughtry was wealthy, I just never knew how much.”

Esme hadn’t the heart to tell her that this room could fit twice into her room back in New York. But then again, she could fit her current bedroom three times into this top-floor suite of the McDermott Hotel in Butte.

Esme entered the room behind Ruby. “Yes, grand, if you concentrate on the red brocade wallpaper, the velvet drapes, the sitting room, the white marble hearth.” Indeed, she had transported yet again back to her youth, with the golden chandelier dripping with the hues of twilight, the smell of roses on the round table by the window. “But don’t look out the window.”

Even from here she saw the steel headframes rising behind the hotel, the dark smoke of the smelters hovering like a hand over the city, turning it dusky. The city smelled of rotten eggs and even breathing the air seemed poisonous.

Behind her, yet another porter ferried in her trunks with tonight’s accoutrements. The first contained one of the grand dresses Daughtry had bequeathed her. The other held her undergarments, her clothes for tomorrow’s ride home, and her dog collar she’d taken from the safe at the
Times
. She’d kept a weather eye on it as they’d traveled from Silver City to Butte, not sure why she’d brought it.

Certainly she wouldn’t need it tonight. But some errant urge inside her compelled her to bring it, to fit herself back into the mold, if not the name, of Esme Price.

“I don’t care. It’s glorious.” Ruby flung open the double doors to the bedroom, tossed herself onto the large, silk-covered bed with fluted pillars rising to the frescoed ceiling. “I could live here.”

Esme caught her smile. “Then I guess I won’t have to worry about you getting into trouble tonight while I’m at dinner.”

“I’ll be waiting with anxious breath for you to tell me everything the president says.” Ruby came over to the trunk, opened it, and gasped. “This dress is breathtaking.” Over a flowing, royal-blue satin skirt lay an embroidered crepe overskirt, all of which tucked into a white gauzy top, low cut and gathered at the apex of the waist with a blue floret.

Esme watched her draw it out slowly, stuffed as it was for travel. Dawn knew how to pack a dress, and this one had survived the twenty-six-mile journey without damage. Ruby caught it up and carried it to the wardrobe, hanging it inside. It would have looked more spectacular on a dress form, but still it caught the light, the silver and gold threads shimmering.

“I’ve never seen such a beautiful dress. Or slippers!” Ruby had returned to the trunk to pull out the crinoline then opened the other trunk to discover the white satin high-heeled shoes. She set them beside the trunk and dug back in. “And what’s this—a corset?”