The Rose Legacy (27 page)

Quillan let go and searched the rushing water for D.C. He was there, among those fighting their way to the edge, climbing the sides of the gulch. He saw horses and Alan Tavish clinging to one of his own blacks, Jock. Jock would carry the old ostler to safety, but where was Jack? He couldn’t worry about that now.

He took a new hold of Cain and worked them both toward the shore. The water was a living force in deadly combat with him, sapping his strength, numbing his mind. Again and again it almost tore Cain from his grip, but each time he gained a new hold and struck again for the shore, reaching it at last and slogging down in the mud.

Chest heaving, he felt his head where the tree had struck him, sticky with fresh blood now that the water no longer doused the cut. His arms shook and his legs were numb. His throat was clogged with mud. But he lived.

A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee …

Why the words came, he couldn’t say. Panting, Quillan rose up to one elbow to search the water, still rushing by, taking with it the disintegration of the city. He saw men caught in the flow, boards and trees and horses.
Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked….

Cain groaned. Twisting around, Quillan saw D.C. scrambling toward them, the dog dragging free of the water and limping alongside.

There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling
. Frowning, Quillan stared up the valley, where his tent had stood with the others, all of them lost now beneath the running water. And not just his tent, but everything—everything he’d worked for and saved. But he was alive.

He could see buildings beyond the flood, those far enough from the creek, those built of brick or stone that had held and protected others beside them. The water must have built up by the falls where the gulch narrowed. Breaking loose, it had spread out some before reaching Crystal, though still rushing with a deadly force unimpeded by the debris it collected.

Half of Central Street had vanished in the torrent pouring by with terrible strength, the buildings crumpled like paper, wrenched apart and carried away, leaving only the brick bank and hotel and those buildings shielded by them. The livery was gone, and that would be a blow to Alan. But even that seemed small compared to their lives.

Quillan rubbed the muck from his eyelids, stretched his leg, and winced. Cain’s palsied hand gripped his shoulder, and Quillan met the old man’s eyes. Neither spoke. Neither had to.

T
WENTY

What is a lie but a shade of the truth?

—Rose

R
OSE, ROSE, DON’T LEAVE
me here
. Carina staggered behind a woman who moved away, deaf to her cries.
Show me the way out!
If she could just reach her, Rose would lead her out of the darkness. She ran her hands over damp, stony walls that closed in on either side. A chill ran up and down her spine.
Rose!
Rose turned, and Carina strained to see her face, but it vanished in the dark. And then she was falling….

Carina woke, but in the darkness she couldn’t tell if her eyes were truly open or if she still dreamed. The pain in her shoulder was real; the cold, dank air more keen than she could imagine. She tried to move, kicking a stone with her foot. Pulse throbbing, she listened to it strike the walls, down, down below her before it plunked into water and the echoes died away.

Reaching tremulous fingers, she found an edge. She was on a stone shelf, with the shaft yawning beneath, but how far? Her head spun.
No
,

no, no
. She must not allow even a moment’s dizziness or she would fall again. She willed it away, feeling about with her left hand to gauge the size and shape of her refuge. It was narrow, scarcely wider than her body lying parallel to the wall.

Shifted slightly by her searching, her right shoulder shot fire down her arm and across her collarbone. She gasped with the pain. The joint was not right. Her arm would not move. She tried to sit up and screamed with the pain in her damaged shoulder.

How far down was she? There was no way to tell, but by the movement of the air she guessed not so far. She could hear sounds from outside, water rushing … the flood! No. It wasn’t forceful enough for that. Water certainly, but probably running down the mountain, maybe the falls. It was strange how things were magnified, a dripping somewhere, a creaking timber. She dropped her face to her hand, trying to think.

Was it night? Or was she just so far from daylight it didn’t matter? She felt the timbers that formed the wall. They were laid flush into the side of the shaft, inset one above the other. Even without her damaged shoulder, she couldn’t climb it. It was useless to try with one arm.

She laid her head down, aware now of other aches—her neck and back, her left shin and elbow. A dull throb started in her head. But she was not so battered she would die of it. Death would be slower, more agonizing. Hunger and thirst. Maybe shock. She closed her eyes.
Per piacere, Signore
.

Who would think to look? And even if they looked, who would come so far as to look here in the Rose Legacy? Then an awful thought stopped her breath. Was there even someone to look? What if the flood had struck Crystal? What was there to stop it rushing down the gulch, taking the town by surprise?

She trembled. She must try to get out. In spite of the pain, she pulled herself to her knees but shook so hard she couldn’t stand. The throbbing grew insistent like the roar of the flood in her ears. She was too weak from the fall. She must wait. Alone. In the darkness. She pressed her palm against the timbers in terror. “Signore, per piacere.”

Like a child she begged the God who either gave or punished. A capricious God who sometimes deigned to answer and sometimes not, a God she needed, yet feared. In the darkness, she was stripped of all but the fear. “Please, God. Per piacere. I’ll do anything if you take me out of here.”

Forgive
.

She startled, staring into the blackness, certain the voice had been real. But there was no one, nothing. Forgive? Flavio? Divina? Divina.
Divine
. Belonging to God. Even God preferred Divina. Carina slumped against the wall. The pain grew unbearable in her shoulder, and she cradled her arm and moaned. But the echoes coming up from below so frightened her, she bit her lip against the sound of her own voice and reached for the crucifix at her throat. Her fingers found empty flesh.

The dog’s soft tongue slowly lapped his ear, and Cain raised a shaky hand to pat its head. He couldn’t speak, and a sharp, throbbing pain immobilized his other arm. It was gashed almost to the bone and blood ran freely from the wound. But for some reason best known to God himself, he’d been spared by the flood.
Oh give thanks to the Lord for He is good: for his mercy endureth forever …

He met Quillan’s eyes, raw with emotion in the wake of his struggle. Cain wasn’t surprised when Sam scooched along on his belly and employed his tongue on Quillan’s hand. That hand had held on tenaciously, not letting an old man slip away. Caked with mud and bleeding, that hand was God’s own mercy enfleshed.

“Are you all right, Daddy?” D.C. dropped to his knees beside him.

Cain could only nod. He hadn’t the breath for words, and the pain was growing sharper. The blood had started to congeal, but the gash needed sewing. D.C. took the scarf from his neck and tied it tightly around the wound. That brought some small relief. Cain tried to rise but failed.

D.C. caught his shoulders and sat him up. “Thank God Quillan saw the flood.”

Thank God indeed
. Cain surveyed Quillan still lying in the mud. When push came to shove, that young man did the right thing every time. He could have saved himself and climbed to safety, but he’d risked warning others. Yesirree, God had His eye on Quillan.

Cain looked up the gulch. He’d seen a lot of things during his years on the mountain, even seen floods, but none like this one. None that took buildings and made matchsticks of them, roaring down the gulch like a monster devouring everything in its path, changing the landscape until he hardly knew it. The water must have been clogged somewhere high, building and holding until its force could not be contained.

Lives had been lost, he knew. It was impossible they hadn’t in a cataclysm of nature such as this. But some had been spared on account of Quillan. Cain’s heart swelled. He loved that man like a son, same as he loved D.C., God bless him.

He gathered his strength as Quillan and D.C. helped him to his feet, or rather his foot. The peg was somewheres down the mountain. He hooked his arm around Quillan’s neck. But then, what need had he of a wooden leg when he had a friend like Quillan?

Quillan felt mauled, battered, and torn up as he helped Cain stand. The rain had stopped or mostly so, and people crawled from their holes, congregating at Central, or what used to be Central Street, now just a scattering of buildings beside a flowing mire of debris.

One side of the city had fared okay; the other side was simply gone. The sight shook him. How easily the work of their hands had been swept away. A house built on sand. What had the foundation been? Greed?

All around them small vignettes played out, people surveying the aftermath with looks of disbelief and disorientation. He supposed he and D.C. looked much the same. Cain just looked gray.

They sloshed through the mud toward Central and found Mae perched on a stool, an island amid the slag. Somehow her perch didn’t look any queerer than the rest of it. He started by her, too weary to speak. His boots sucked in and out of the mud, each step an effort.

Mae gathered herself. “Have you seen Carina?”

Quillan turned. “She’s not with you?” He shifted Cain’s weight.

Mae shook her head. “Berkley Beck claims he saw her riding up the gulch before the flood.”

Quillan looked up the gulch where the water had roiled and rushed. Only slowly did her words dawn on him. “Where can I take Cain?”

“They’re setting up infirmaries at the hotel and my place.” Mae’s voice softened. “Take him to my bed. The old coot looks half drowned.”

Quillan turned away without response, starting up the way that used to be Drake, Cain half hopping between D.C. and him. Like a seed germinating, concern for Carina DiGratia grew inside him. Soon it was a weed, twisting his stomach.

When they reached Mae’s, Quillan laid Cain in the bed as gently as he could. The arm would need stitching, though how Cain had cut it, Quillan wasn’t sure. But he couldn’t wait now for the doctor. He glanced at D.C.

“You’ll stay with him? Have Dr. Felden see to his arm?”

D.C. nodded. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Quillan gripped Cain’s hand briefly, then went out. No telling how long it would be before Dr. Felden made his way to Cain. Many others would be brought in. Many in worse condition. Many beyond any doctor’s help. He’d intended to join the search himself for injured and dead down the gulch.

But it appeared his first direction was up. Why had Miss DiGratia ridden up the gulch in the storm? Though his strength was sapped, there was no time to rest. She could be injured … or dead.

If she were dead, there was no hurry. So why did he force his legs to move, even with the left one shooting pain at every step? He’d pulled or torn something on the side of the knee, though the joint was whole. He sighed, passing the knot of men Berkley Beck was organizing.

He wanted no part of anything Beck had a hand in. He kept on until he found Tavish with Jock. They’d made it to the near side of the flood, and Jock’s strength must have pulled them out. Tavish held tight to the gelding, as though letting go even now might mean death.

Quillan reached a gentle hand to his shoulder. “I need to take him, my friend.”

Tavish nodded, letting his arms slide away. “You’ll be finding the lass?”

Quillan drew his brows down. “What lass?”

“Miss DiGratia. She came for Dom just before the flood.” The old man’s eyes were softened with worry.

“How much before?”

Tavish rubbed his chin with the side of his hand. “Time enough to reach Placer.”

“You think that’s where she went?”

He shrugged. “It’s where she always goes.”

Quillan led Jock. He wore only a halter bridle, but it would have to do. Reaching solid ground, he mounted bareback, turned him up the gulch, and started off. If Miss DiGratia was in Placer when the flood hit … He frowned, not certain why it mattered. She’d been nothing but trouble for him, especially today.

But then, he’d been trouble for her, too, starting with their ill-fated meeting on the wagon road. He shook the hair back from his face. He’d lost his hat along with everything else. Not everything. He patted Jock’s neck. Maybe Jack had swum free as well.

He hoped all four horses had survived. He didn’t expect to find the wagon whole, but maybe. Somewhere down the gulch things would wash ashore, tangled up and waiting to be retrieved. Things … and bodies.

He dropped his chin, acknowledging the thought he hadn’t wanted to face. He didn’t want to be the one to find Miss DiGratia, didn’t want to see her broken and still, she whose life seemed to pulse in her, strong and tenacious. Even if that tenacity made him crazy sometimes.

What was she doing up the gulch? Didn’t she know the danger of a storm like this, how the water could build so fast in the narrow canyons? No, of course she didn’t know. How could she? He felt a shiver of dread.

If he hadn’t scared and upset her … He shook his head, too tired to think about it.

Jock climbed the gulch strewn with rubble and oozing mud. The creek ran high, twice as high as normal, bursting its banks, but nothing like the churning madness it had been just hours ago. Looking up, he blinked, unsure his mind wasn’t playing tricks. His eyes searched the gulch from side to side. Placer was gone.

Jock stopped, sensing his confusion. Quillan stared. It was washed away, every building gone as though they’d never been there. No mining works, no town, no hotel, no cabins—nothing. The flood must have been a wall of water through here. His throat tightened painfully. There was no way she could have withstood that. Unless …

He turned and looked up the mountain. Was it to Placer she went, or somewhere else? He felt a grim hardening inside. Why? Why would she go there? What could the Rose Legacy mean to her? He turned Jock, purposeful now in his movements. The horse responded accordingly, huffing heavily with the digging of his hooves into the steep, slippery slope.