Song of the Spirits (66 page)

“I’m so relieved to know you’re alive,” she said quietly. “I thought you…”

“A lucky accident, my dear Charlene, for which you should thank God thoroughly at the appointed time,” Berta Leroy commented. “But we have other things that need doing at the moment. In your profession, you should know how to make beds.”

Berta shooed Charlene and the two others into the office. Dr. Leroy smiled almost apologetically at Matt. “My wife prefers working with the girls from the Lucky Horse to the respectable ladies. They simply know the male anatomy better. Her words, not mine.”

Matt couldn’t help but grin.

“How bad is it, Matt?” Madame Clarisse asked before following the doctor and his energetic wife into the office. “Is it true that Timothy Lambert has gone missing?”

Matt nodded. “Tim Lambert undertook the first rescue attempt. But then there was another explosion. We don’t know whether it got him and his helper, but there hasn’t been any sign that they’re alive yet. We’re just getting the rescue operation under way now. Wish us luck, Madame Clarisse.” He looked around. “Where is Lainie, anyway? Does she know?”

Madame Clarisse shook her head. “We sent her to inform the pastor as soon as we heard about the accident. With her horse and
my wagon. We didn’t know about Mr. Lambert at the time, but she should be here any moment. I’ll tell her gently.”

Matt wondered how you could tell someone news like that gently. Several of the wives of the men in the mine had assembled in the yard outside the mine entrance. One of them, the petite Cerrin Patterson, became the first patient in the Leroys’ hospital. Her labor began as soon as she received the news about the accident. As the irony of fate would have it, the first thing to emerge from this place of death would be a newborn.

Nellie Lambert arrived to help, but she seemed more in need of a doctor than likely to make herself useful to one. She was sobbing hysterically, and Matt sent her over to her husband. The least Marvin Lambert could do was look after his own wife.

Then, finally, there was information from the mine.

“Mr. Gawain, we’ve gone through the air shafts,” one of the miners reported. “The ones serving tunnels one through seven are untouched. Two collapsed in the areas of tunnel eight and nine, and one is still intact. And the new one is also in working order… But you should probably take a look at that one yourself. One of the boys who checked on it thought he heard knocking sounds.”

Elaine directed Madame Clarisse’s carriage toward the mine, while the pastor followed with his own. Four respectable ladies from the women’s association rode with them, as well as two prostitutes. Their presence had required the pastor to deploy his best diplomatic skills. On the one hand, the ladies saw their eternal souls being endangered by sharing a ride with Madame Clarisse’s girls; on the other hand, Madame Clarisse’s carriage was much more comfortable than the pastor’s box wagon. In the end, they had opted to huddle together, groaning, on the loading bed of the pastor’s wagon and left the transport of the piles of quickly donated foodstuffs to Elaine and the girls. Mrs. Carey, the baker’s wife, had contributed basketfuls of bread and pastries. The rescue workers had to be fed after all, and no one that day would be
dividing the time into shifts and going home to eat in between. The victims’ dependents, if there were any, would need looking after—at which point Madame Clarisse and Paddy Holloway’s donations might come in handy. They had both contributed several bottles of whiskey.

As Elaine goaded Banshee on, she thanked heaven for the newly paved road between Greymouth and the mine. She was anxious about the men she knew. Naturally, her thoughts circled around Timothy Lambert above all. Since he was not a miner, she could be almost certain that he had been sitting in the office when the mine exploded. But she would not feel truly relieved until she saw him with her own eyes standing aboveground. Indeed, she even imagined herself running into his arms, though she pushed the daydream away at once. She did not plan to let herself fall in love again. Not with Timothy or with anyone else. It was too dangerous. It was out of the question.

The mining complex was a hive of activity. The wives and daughters of the buried men had gathered in a corner. They were staring in silence and horror at the mine entrance, where a rescue party was just preparing to go down. Some of the assembled slid rosaries through their fingers, while others held tight to each other. Some wore expressions of resignation, others of desperate hope.

The pastor attended to them straightaway, while plucky Mrs. Carey assigned her women to make tea.

“Find out where we can set up a soup kitchen,” she directed one of her assistants, intentionally ignoring Madame Clarisse’s girls, who were unloading Elaine’s vehicle. Elaine could not concentrate on anything herself. She was looking around for Timothy, and she found Fellow tied to the stand in front of the office building. That meant Timothy had to be there. Inside, no doubt—or was he planning to go down with the rescue company?

Elaine turned to the men tying on leather aprons, putting on helmets, and familiarizing themselves with the newfangled miner lamps from the Biller Mine while they waited for the hoisting cage.

“I’m looking for Tim Lambert,” she explained, blushing. If the men ever told him that she’d asked after him, he would tease her mercilessly.

One miner shook his head seriously. “All we know, Miss Keefer, is that he went down there with Joe Patterson after the first explosions.”

Elaine suddenly felt an icy-cold sensation that began at her core and quickly spread, threatening to freeze her to the spot. Timothy was down there in the mine.

The world seemed to be spinning. She reached for an iron railing to support herself and watched in a daze as the hoisting cage rattled into motion. Unexpectedly, it was not empty. The men were bringing up the first corpses.

“They were lying right at the entrance… Gas,” explained the assistant foreman, who had come up with the men carrying the bodies. “Three more are coming on the next lift. We still have to dig the others out.”

Elaine stared into the contorted faces of the dead men being carried out of the lift. She recognized the first two—and then saw Joe Patterson.

“Didn’t you say that Joe… had been with Tim Lambert?” Elaine asked, stammering, though she knew exactly what the miner had said.

The assistant foreman nodded. “Yes, Miss Keefer. Damn it, and his wife is having a baby any minute. Matt made a point of keeping him out of the mine today. And now this.” He ran his hand helplessly over the face of his young comrade, who was covered in dust.

“But don’t lose hope, miss!” said one of the rescue workers as he stepped back into the hoisting cage. “Someone heard knocking sounds in an air shaft. Or thinks he did. So there just might be survivors… Miss, you look as white as a sheet… Someone take this girl away. She’s much too close to the mine for my comfort anyway. Women in the mines bring bad luck.”

While the cage rattled back into the depths, someone gently led Elaine away. The question of how much bad luck she could still bring to this mine cycled through her head repeatedly.

Madame Clarisse received her in the hospital, where there was still not much to do.

Berta Leroy and Charlene were caring for Cerrin Patterson, who was in the middle of giving birth. Charlene evidently knew more than just men’s bodies.

“Helped my mum out with runts nine through twelve when I was a little girl. No one else came to help us,” she explained coolly.

So far, Dr. Leroy had handled only the occasional fainting spell of a few family members of those trapped in the mine. He cast a quick glance at Elaine, prescribed a glass of whiskey for her, and motioned to the women and children in front of the mine.

“The people out there are trying to be as patient as they can. There’s nothing to do but wait.”

As the identities of the first dead were made known, the frozen silence gave way to crying and lamentation. Mrs. Carey directed her women to let the families help wash and lay out the dead. The pastor said prayers and tried to offer them comfort. Not many of the people in front of the mine continued to hold out hope. The wives of the older miners, who had followed their husbands there from England, could evaluate the situation realistically: if the gas had reached as far as the hoisting shaft, there was hardly any chance that the men deeper in the mine had made it. A few young girls, however, latched onto the news about the knocking sounds.

Elaine, too, remained desperately hopeful. Perhaps someone was still alive. But how many? And how many men had gone down that morning? No one knew.

“Someone must have written it down somewhere,” Elaine said. “The men are paid by the hour, aren’t they?” After a lengthy search, which, if nothing else, kept her busy for a while, she located an office assistant. The man directed her to Timothy’s father.

“Mr. Lambert noted down the numbers today. At the time, he was upset that there were so few. You can ask him, if he’s still lucid enough, that is. I was just talking to him myself. Someone from the
mine’s management absolutely has to speak to the women. But Mr. Lambert’s utterly disoriented at the moment.”

Marvin Lambert was not merely disoriented; he was drunk. He stared into space and muttered incomprehensibly while his wife Nellie sobbed beside him, repeatedly calling Timothy’s name out. No one could get through to the Lamberts; at least Elaine had no luck. She planned to send Mrs. Carey to speak with them, or the pastor, but first she needed to find the list of miners. She found a notebook on Marvin Lambert’s desk.

20th December 1896

This was it. An orderly list of the workers who had shown up for work that morning followed. Ninety-two in all. And Timothy.

Elaine took the book with her—earning a bit of praise when she informed Caleb Biller about it. The young Biller seemed out of place amid all the mayhem. Unlike most of the other men, who were endlessly descending into the mine, he was clean and well dressed. And just like the day of the race, he gave the impression that he would rather have been elsewhere. Nevertheless, he appeared to be informed about the most crucial matters and seemed good at coordinating tasks.

“That is an invaluable help, Miss Keefer,” he said politely, taking the record of roll call. “The men will at least know how long to keep looking before they have found them all. However, it is hardly likely that all ninety-two of them entered the mine. Some of them were surely working at the hoisting cage or loading the freight wagons. I shall try to ascertain how many.”

Elaine glanced at the mine entrance. More bodies were just being brought up.

“Can it be that there are still survivors, Mr. Biller?” she asked quietly.

Caleb shrugged. “Probably not. But one can never be sure. Sometimes there are cavities in the rock, air bubbles, even during gas explosions. However, things do not look good.”

A short while later, it had been determined that sixty-six men had entered the mine that morning, not including Joe and Timothy, who had gone down later. They had already found twenty dead, most of them in the vicinity of tunnels one through seven, which had not collapsed. They were now digging near tunnels eight and nine. The hours ticked by slowly.

Afterward, Elaine could not have said how the day passed. She helped make tea and sandwiches, but she was hardly aware she was doing so. At one point, the pastor asked her to drive into town to retrieve more provisions. Though the families of the victims could not bring themselves to eat anything, the miners were devouring untold quantities of food. Roughly a hundred men were now working in the mine, working in shifts to avoid stepping on each other’s toes. Several sections of the tunnel had collapsed completely, and the quantity of rocks and dirt was massive. Dead bodies were continually being brought to the surface.

As Elaine bridled Banshee, she once more came upon Fellow, saddled and still waiting. It seemed no one had the heart to take him away. The rescue workers probably thought that was another bad omen. Elaine, too, struggled with the ludicrous hope that Timothy might appear at any moment and swing up on his horse, as long as Fellow was waiting. But then she gave herself a kick, removed the gelding’s saddle, and led him into the mine’s stables.