Silver Dreams (33 page)

Her face brightened. "It's water!"

“I think so, too.” They headed toward the sound, passing piles of boulders, remnants of previous blasting. After a few minutes, Max stopped, put his finger to his lips. "The water's over there," he said, indicating a large boulder blocking their path.

They climbed over and dropped down into the largest space they’d encountered so far. Max held the lantern at eye level to get the best view of their new surroundings. The lamp beam didn't even reach the opposite side of the cavern, but after a few cautious steps, Max determined the space was room-sized and just high enough to stand in.

If he hadn't seen a hazy, white mist rising to the ceiling, he might have accidentally fallen into the dark pool of water that occupied about one third of the area. Taking Betsy's hand, he led her very close to the edge. She plunged her hands into the water.

"How is it?" Max asked.

She flicked wet fingers at him, spraying his face with icy droplets. "Cold. Do you think it's safe to drink?"

Using his hand as a ladle, Max brought a few tablespoons of water to his mouth. He sampled some with the tip of his tongue, and finding nothing unusual or acrid-tasting, he slurped down a good measure. "It's great. Some iron taste, but overall, it's fine."

"I've always heard that mountain streams provide the best drinking water, but how do you suppose it got here?  I mean it's
inside
the mountain."

Max had been wondering that himself and examined their surroundings until he found a thin shaft of light. "Look up there," he said. “It’s an air passage. The Faradays must have blasted it to insure they’d have fresh oxygen in here."

He ran his fingertips along a damp, slippery surface of rock below the light shaft. "The Faradays got lucky. Not only did they ventilate this part of the mine, they found a water source as well."

A steady trickle of pure mountain run-off meandered through the narrow shoot and landed in the pool at his feet. Max figured that when the snow melted at the top of the mountain each spring, the little pool was rejuvenated with a fresh supply of water, which then stayed cool and fresh because of frigid temperatures in the mine. During most of the year the pool was a nearly constant level, a perfect balance of evaporation and renewal.

When he'd finished analyzing the workings of this latest find, Max realized that Betsy had been chattering about something for quite some time. He turned his full attention to her and discovered that she had taken off her coat, rolled up her sleeves and plunged her arms in the water.

“What are you doing, Betsy?” he asked. “Aren’t you freezing?”

She looked up at him and grinned. “Well, yes, but this is the next best thing to a bath." She splashed water on her face.

He knelt beside her. "That’s not doing the trick, Bets.” With his finger, he scrubbed at a speck of dirt on her cheek. “You should take off your clothes and jump in. The water will only seem cold for a minute or two."

"Now you’re being silly,” she said.

“Maybe. But I was thinking of ways I could contribute in making you warm again.”

She laughed, the sound like crystal chimes in a soft breeze. Max had to remind himself of his pledge to return Betsy to New York the same unsullied girl who’d left there.

“You know, Cassidy, your plan sounds like a good one. I’m going in.”

Holy Mother of God!
Standing and picking up the lantern, he said, “You’re doing no such thing. Now dry off and let’s get back to business.”

“I knew you couldn’t take a dare,” she said, with a flirtatious wink.

“And I knew you were only bluffing.” In case he was wrong, however, he took her arm and lifted her to her feet. Before handing her the coat, he gave into the urge to taste her just once. He kissed her lips, her cool, slightly shivering, wonderful lips. He drew back, groaned. “Put this on,” he said, “before you catch your death and become even more of a burden to me.”

She smiled at him, taking away the chill in the air. But, thank the heavens, she did as he said. He forced his mind to return to the cavern wall. He walked slowly, studying each variation in rock layers. Each striation produced a new color and texture, from deepest gray to vibrant rust, from glass smooth to sandpaper rough. "’Tis a fascinating world in here," he said absently.

“I never suspected you for a fancier of geology, Max...”

"Holy Mother of God!" This time he said the words out loud and had to fight to draw his next breath.

"What's wrong?"

His eyes widened until he thought they might burst from their sockets. He raised the lantern several inches and still it was there, like a bolt from the blue. No. Like a bolt of purple or lavender, or whatever the hell color Dooley said to look for. It pulsed with life and energy and brilliance, and rippled along the wall like a gilded stream.

They'd found it. And the Faradays with their illogical blasting and dripping and trickling had led him right to it.

Max fairly raced along the wall, and with every step, the gorgeous color stayed with him, arching and dipping in shimmering splendor. He waved his hand motioning for Betsy. "Come over here, Bets. Hurry!"

There was an odd quaking in her voice, one of fear, not wonder. "Is it a tommyknocker, Max? Tell me it's not a tommyknocker."

Of course she'd think that. Of course he was scaring her. He was acting like a raving lunatic. Max Cassidy, the one who didn't believe, the skeptic, the cynic. "It's the silver, honey...it's here."  He swept around a curve in the wall. "It's here, too...it's everywhere!"

Elizabeth hadn't felt her knees go weak from pure excitement since the last Christmas she believed in Santa Claus. And right now, seeing the sparkling amethyst brilliance of Dooley's silver was every bit as spine-tingling as when she first touched the silken curls of the hand painted porcelain doll under her Christmas tree. And just as she had that morning, she whispered into her clasped hands, "All you have to do is believe."

There, before her eyes, on the mountain wall, was the glorious testament to this miraculous moment. And the man she was falling in love with had just called her "honey," as naturally as if they'd decided to grow old together. That made the miracle complete.

His arm encircled her waist and he spoke with hushed reverence, "It's truly something, isn't it, Betsy?"

Experiencing an urge to pinch herself to prove that truly something was truly real, she reached out and touched a particularly splendid part of the mountain wall. It felt as it looked...brilliant. Warm, glowing, tingling. Parts of it were sharp, jolting the nerves in her fingers like a current of electricity. Like a miniature lightning bolt to her senses. "How did it get here, Max?" she asked, needing to say something.

"I've read that hundreds of years ago streams of water ran through the mountains, cooling the granite, and when they dried up, they left fissures, or cracks in the surface. Over many years the spaces filled with ore, and, for the people lucky enough to find it, gold or silver ore like what we see here."

She nodded, pretending interest in his geologically sound answer. Some day she'd think about it more carefully, give her mind up to scientific explanations, but not now. Now it was enough to just look at it.

She thought about how she would describe their find for the
Courier News
. She’d give the vein feminine properties. This part of the mountain was like a beautiful woman dressed in all her splendor, dancing a seductive path along the cavern wall.

"I guess we should tell the others," Max said.

"I guess we should."

"They'd tell us wouldn't they?"

"Absolutely. Probably.” Elizabeth smiled. “Maybe.”

Max drew a small pistol out of his pocket. "It's Ramona's," he said. "Dooley and Ross already had one, and I didn’t, so she gave me hers."  He left the cavern long enough to fire the gun.

Once the others arrived, the rest of the afternoon passed in a blur of excitement and jubilation. When he saw the vein, Dooley sent the rest of the party back to camp for the burros and supplies. By the time they returned with picks, shovels, dynamite and buckets, he had managed to pry sizable chunks of the ore from the mountain wall with just his hunting knife.

The men strapped buckets of ore deposits to the burros and led them to the campsite. They returned countless times with empty containers to be filled again.Once they knew the way, the trip from the cavern to the mine entrance could be made in less than thirty minutes.

Later, when darkness settled over their camp, Elizabeth languished by the fireside. What a day this has been, she thought. Being with Max, finding the silver, and now giving herself up to the euphoria of possibly being rich in her own right. Would there ever be such a perfect day again? True, the future was still uncertain. Their silver hadn’t been analyzed. There was that little problem with the crude detective, Francis Hildebrand. He might want some sort of revenge for her tiny transgression back in Central City.

And there was the matter of her father. He might not be too pleased with her means of escaping the Pinkerton man, especially considering he was probably still boiling about this whole escapade to Colorado. She couldn't even guess how angry he was going to be when she finally returned home. Ross's success aside, she'd still outright defied him. And how would Winston feel about her involvement with a reporter for the
True Detective Gazette
?

Elizabeth knew Max now as well as she’d ever known anyone, but when she’d first met him, she’d had her doubts about his integrity. She’d learned that Max had to have time to get under your skin and into your good graces. At first he just sort of stayed on top like an irritating rash. So how would Winston Sheridan take it when he found out his daughter was head over heels in love with Max Cassidy? How would he feel if he knew she’d lost her virginity to him? She'd just have to trust in her father’s ability to forgive, because she intended to do just that before they ever left the state of Colorado.

Her head on a blanket against a boulder, Elizabeth closed her eyes and listened to the clink, clink of hammers that had become like a song in her heart. All evening the men had chipped away at the ore they'd collected in the mine, separating the silver rich pieces from the other minerals.

She was about to join them to do her share when her brother spoke up. "Good job, Cassidy," he said. "Look at this piece you just hammered out." There was a pause before Ross added, "Too bad you're only in this for the story. You're a damn fine excavator."

The hammering stopped. Oh, no, Ross, Elizabeth thought. Don't choose now to pick a fight. Just when we're all celebrating and getting along so well.

Max responded with a calm she hadn’t expected. "Ross, you're absolutely right. As a reporter, I don't need a hammer at all. I only need my pen. So you pound away and I'll write."