Hart glanced sharply at Chance, to see if he was being teased.
"What the hell kind of a thing is that to say to a man?" he chided, embarrassed by the compliment.
"Okay, then." Chance grinned again. "I take it back."
Hart cuffed Chance, as he had when they were boys, nearly knocking him over. Both men undid their blankets and got into bed; Bandana had stayed in town an extra day and they were alone in the cabin. Neither said another word, but each one played the conversation over again in his head and wondered what his brother had really been trying to say.
Bandana began the boys' education about prospecting as soon as their gear was stored in the cabin. Chance and Hart would placer-mine the streambed down the trail from the cabin, he said, and gradually work their way back up from the foothills as the weather got colder, eventually landing in the cabin and staying there, till the spring thaw.
"The name placer comes from a Spanish word that means contented or satisfied," Bandana told the boys as they sat around the fire, nights, and soaked up the knowledge he'd spent a lifetime amassing. "That's what you're gonna feel when we strike it rich, you see.
"Long about a million years ago, the earth spewed out pure gold from its fiery depths, and drove it up real violent, along with the rock that created these here mountains. And there it lies, boys, seductive as a scarlet woman, tucked away in tons of worthless rock.
"The richest placers reside in the foothills of mountain ranges, because Mother Nature has pounded those rocky lodes with her winds and weather 'til erosion has crumbled the gangue that holds the gold, first into chunks, then into gravel and sand. After the gold gets set free, by a million years or so of pounding, it's carried by storms to mountain streams and there it lies waitin' for the prospector's pan." He sat back satisfied that he had their full attention. "Any wild mountain stream you find, boys, may have deposited its precious cargo into gravel bars or potholes, ridges or bedrock, where it waits for the man ingenious enough to figger out where to look, hardworkin' enough to wrest it from its rocky repose, and closemouthed enough to keep the news from his neighbors."
Hart and Chance listened, enrapt by the tale. Hart sketched the old prospector in the glow of the fire, and tried to capture in his drawings the eerie thread of hope Bandana was weaving.
"You look for spots where the rivers widen and their currents slow down, and then you set to work, boys. You squat down into that icy stream with the prime tool of your trade in your mitt—a tin gold-pan. Then you shovel sand into that fifteen-inch pie plate for all you're worth. You dunk it in the water and spin it with a slow, flipping motion of the wrist to encourage the sand and silt out over the rim, and then you fan out the drag on the bottom of your pan and, if you're real lucky, little specks of gold, called color, will reward your industry." Bandana took a swallow of coffee and whiskey from his tin cup and continued.
"Fifty or so panfuls is a day's work. If you get ten cents' worth of gold per pan, you can keep your belly full of beans. If your pan yields a nugget, you know you're on the right road. Of course, you could die of old age waiting for that to happen.
"Gold's real stubborn and keeps its own secrets, but by God, when you hold a bit of it in your hand you know you got a tiger by the tail! It's so beautiful and rich-looking it seems too perfect to have sprung from the grubby sand and silt around it.
"And no matter which angle you view it from, gold looks the same. It never wrinkles like pyrites, never rusts nor tarnishes, even after centuries lyin' underwater. Beautiful and incorruptible it is, boys. Unlike the men who grub for it, I might add."
Hart swung the hammer in the morning sun; sweat poured in rivulets down his back and soaked his trousers despite the chill of the day.
The stranger watched silently for a time; Hart saw him out of the corner of his eye but paid him no mind. Chance was somewhere on the other side of the claim with Bandana, but the stranger didn't look dangerous, merely odd. He was stocky as an icebox, although of only average height. His hands were large and callused and he wore the most peculiar getup Hart had yet seen on the goldfields; a bush hat with brim pinned up on one side, a pair of khaki short pants that no one over the age of seven would be caught dead in, a naked chest with a kangaroo-hide vest half covering it.
After a while the man sauntered over. "What yer doin', mate?"
Hart looked up, wiped the sweat from his face, annoyed by the stranger's merry tone.
"Digging a tunnel, obviously."
"And what might you be lookin' for, mate? In that tunnel, I mean." The voice was Australian and thick with amusement.
Hart set down the pick and squinted up at him from the trench.
"Gold. What else would I be looking for?"
"Well, mate. You're not like to find it in that kind of hole." The broad vowels of the bush flattened the words.
"And what business is it of yours?" Hart was too tired to talk to a fool.
"None in this world," the man replied with a grin. "But I hate to watch a man bullock himself into a stupor for no reason. It's a fair treat, mind you, to watch a man your size slag away, as you are. But I hate to see a good man waste honest labor." He grinned again and stuck out a filthy hand.
"The name's Castlemaine. Jonathan Castlemaine, but my friends call me Caz. And around here, sand is what you should be washing through your sieve, mate, forget the hole."
Chagrined, Hart climbed out of the ditch. Bandana had said that friendship or hatred sprang up like toadstools on the gold-fields; loneliness could make friends of strangers and animosity could be born of nothing more than a bad night's sleep.
"You're a big one, sure enough," Caz said, squinting up at Hart, the sunlight behind him. Hart laughed good-naturedly.
"Thanks for the tip. I'm new at this, as you've obviously guessed. I could have spent the day in that hole, if you hadn't troubled to keep me from it."
"No bother at all, mate. I heard a rumor there was men workin' the rock over here. You're not alone?"
"My brother, Chance, and our partner, McBain, are around here somewhere. My name's Hart McAllister. They'll be back by suppertime. If you'd care to share our stew, we'd be glad of the company."
Caz arrived with a bottle of whiskey just after sundown. The night had turned mountain-cold and all four men were grateful for the warmth. The only concession the Aussie had made to the dropping temperature was to button up his vest, but he was still bare underneath.
"Where'd you get them scars on your wrists, son?" Bandana asked when the supper had been cleared away.
"Same place as the ones on my ankles and back," Caz replied amiably. "A pesthole called Port Arthur in Van Diemen's Land." He pushed aside his vest and the sickly-white stripes on his back gleamed in the fireglow.
"Nasty place it was, too. Got sent there for stealing food and a bit of whiskey from the bloody bastards who run Australia.
"Stuck me in irons and plopped me in this great stone fortress at the ass end of the continent. Across an isthmus it was, a spit of land attached by a string to the mainland. Trouble is the string's so narrow the guards can see across it, and their dogs can tear a man to shreds if he tries to escape." His voice had lost some of its banter. "Some men figured it was worth the risk."
Chance sat back in the chair, stretched out his long legs, and took a sip of whiskey from the tin cup.
"How'd you get out?"
"That's the rough end of a pineapple, mate. Five years them bastards tried to kill me off. Beatings, starvation, cold.... and that only the half of it. They was torturers, too, and good at it.... Then, of course, there was solitary... I spent two years in a black hole trying to stay sane. Men had gone blind from the darkness in less time than I spent there... that's when I made my plan to escape or die. Either one was better than what I had, and I figured if I went blind, I'd never get out. So I pretended to be dead. When the guard came to check on me, I throttled him. Best day's work I ever done." Caz's grim expression was mirrored by his listeners.
"I kept
to the water by night, made my way up the coast, ducking guards and dogs on patrol. They were so confident that the great whites would get anybody stupid enough to swim that they left this one stretch of water unguarded." He paused.
"Great whites?" Chance asked.
"Sharks, mate. Big as sperm whales, they was.... So I swam across by night."
"What about the sharks?" Hart broke in.
"Killed one with a stolen knife. Left the pack in a feedin' frenzy, gobblin' up their mate. Took a nip out of me, too, mind you." Caz pulled up his trouser to display a long-healed wound of mammoth size.
"Jesus, Caz, how the hell did you survive a bite like that?"
Chance voiced everyone's question.
"Too ornery to die, mates... and too pissed off at them blokes who'd done me dirty. I drug meself to shore, crawled into the woods, and set about the business of survivin'. Didn't make a bad job of it, all things considered. The aboriginals live on grubs and roots, I did the same."
He grinned.
Bandana pushed back the chair he'd been sitting in and stretched himself.
"I'd say you're either the best goddamned liar I ever heard, or you've got guts, boy. Seems a mite excessive to get them scars all over yer body just to tell a tall tale, so I'd vote for believin' you."
Caz grinned. "I can see you're a fine judge of character, mate. This much I'll say for meself... I'm a good man to have at your back in a fight, if you're a friend of mine. It's pretty lonely up here on this mountain, so I'm glad to bid you welcome, and I'm grateful for the meal. If I can do you a good turn, I'll do it and expect the same from you. How's that for statin' my terms up front?"
They shook hands all around and parted. The boys and McBain would have ample reason later to count the day lucky when Jonathan Castlemaine sauntered into their life.
The weather turned colder and they laid in a wood supply for winter. Bandana said he'd tell them in the spring how to look for silver, too.
"Don't worry if you don't set eyes on me for a goodly while," Bandana said amiably as they made their winter preparation. "If I'm off from here when the blizzards hit, I'll just hole up with a grizzly and hibernate 'til April." They thought it more likely he'd hibernate in town with the buxom blonde he seemed to find uncommonly attractive at Jewel's, but the boys were always most content with each other's company.
The McAllisters watched their mentor ride off with Bessie, on an ice-cold day in mid-September. He was singing at the top of his lungs, the sound echoing all up and down the mountain. He had the kind of been-there-and-back voice both men and women thought winsome, and he'd whip out his banjo at a moment's notice to entertain whoever would listen or himself alone, if no one else cared.
It was early October when Chance and Hart made their last trip into Oro for supplies; they were on their way back up the trail when the snow started. Bandana had warned them that Colorado snowstorms were different from anything they'd experienced before, but they hadn't really heeded the warning, for snow in Kansas had been no casual picnic, and they suffered from the hubris of youth.
"The first flakes are benevolent enough, pretty in fact," Bandana had said before he left. "They sort of dust the white pines and sprinkle the ridges like a layer of confectioner's sugar. Then the winds take over and before you know it the snow's so thick the trail is gone and the footing's so treacherous your horse could make a single misstep that would crash you down a thousand-foot gorge that you cain't even see. One minute there's a trail and the next there's snow so deep your horse is wadin', not walkin'. You cain't read sign, and landmarks disappear. You cain't breathe nor hear nor see worth a damn, and if you're not near home or shelter, chances are your bones will be added to those of the thousands before you who never made it through. More than one man has died within hailin' distance of his own cabin." The boys had listened to what he said, but they hadn't really understood.
It was this first blizzard that changed their lives forever.
PART III: THE SNOWBLIND HEART
Fancy, Hart, and Chance Together
"A bachelor is a feller who failed to embrace his opportunities."
Bandana McBain
Chapter 20
The snow bit painfully into Hart's face, lacerating his cheeks and forcing him to squint against the frigid assault. His hat was pulled low on his forehead and the collar of his sheepskin coat was turned up protectively, but the swirling, biting whiteness was no longer pretty.
"God damn!" he muttered several times under the wind; they should have set out sooner. Bandana would have skinned them alive if he knew they'd waited until the last moment to lay in supplies. And then, heaping one stupidity on another, Chance had insisted on gambling well into the night, so they'd gotten a later start this morning than need be.
Hart could barely distinguish his brother's shape ahead of him on the trail; the white obscurity danced madly between them, playing tricks with vision.
Chance's long, lean body was hunched forward, driving into the snow. Suddenly he raised his left arm in signal and shouted something to his brother, but the words were drowned by the relentless wind.
Chance halted and Hart was startled to see him slide to the ground. What in God's name could make a man dismount in this weather? he asked himself as he pushed his horse abreast of his brother's and grabbed up the reins from where Chance had dropped them.
"Somebody's out there!" Chance shouted, his voice barely audible over the blizzard. He moved laboriously toward a raised ridge at the roadside; something weird protruded from the drift; it looked like a banjo's neck. Adrenaline pumped Hart's senses to instant alert; anybody under that much snow was either dead or in grave danger of dying.
Chance fought the packed powder as Hart struggled to quiet the spooked horses and pack mule. He bent over the folded form, brushing the snow to right and left.
"Christ Almighty, bro!" he shouted. "It's a girl!" With real difficulty, Chance pulled her free of the freezing white blanket, as Hart edged closer for a clearer view.
Fancy's legs were drawn up tight as a newborn's, her frozen garments were wrapped around her like sculpted swaddling. There was an expression of fierce determination or maybe anger on her face, like that of an avenging angel on a tomb.
Chance leaned in close, hoping to catch the tremor of breath from her nostrils. She was cold as marble, yet he felt the barest hint of warmth escape her and knew she was alive. Chance struggled to keep his own balance as he lifted her body, then plowed his way toward Hart and the horses.
"She's alive!" he shouted triumphantly against the wind, and hoisted her awkwardly into his brother's arms. Hart cradled the frozen girl against his chest, wonderingly. She felt tiny and vulnerable, but even through the thick folds of his sheepskin he could sense that she wasn't dead. Remounting, Chance grabbed the reins of both horses and led the way back up the mountain.
"What in the hell is a girl like this doing out here on foot in a blizzard?" Hart asked as he laid their guest gingerly on the bed in the corner of the cabin, and shrugged himself out of his frozen garments.
"Boil some water, bro," Chance replied authoritatively; he was already beginning to peel away the clothes that were frozen to her skin. Hart remembered that when his mama had nursed anyone, she boiled water, so he scooped snow from outside the door to melt in the iron cookpot. From the corner of his eye he could see the tenderness with which his brother handled the girl, as if she were a doe or a newborn. Chance always had a gentling way with women that Hart really admired. By comparison he himself always felt clumsy and big-footed.
"Got to get these soaking clothes off her, bro, or she's done for," Chance said anxiously, and both men began to undo the fastenings of the girl's dress with difficulty.
"Surprising how hard it is for a man to undress a gal when she's not helping him any," Hart murmured, and Chance just grinned at his brother.
The skin of her face and arms were tanned by the sun, but once she was naked the whiteness of her body was apparent.
"Like the mountain laurel," Hart said quietly, and Chance looked at his brother questioningly.
"I thought she was dark-complected," Hart said quickly, embarrassed that he'd spoken the weird thought aloud, "but her skin's like the laurel flower, snow white, with a tinge of pink beneath."
"Looks more like the blue of frostbite to me," Chance answered, but he, too, had been startled by her uncommon beauty.
She was a tiny thing, almost doll-size next to the two men, yet there was no doubting she was a woman, not a child. She had breasts that were blemishless as alabaster and full for so small a body. Chance and Hart looked at each other over Fancy's naked form, and each could see by the sheepish look in the other's eye he'd had the same urge to touch the quiet perfection. Hart covered her up hastily with the blanket to quell the temptation, and Chance smiled a little at his brother's gesture, understanding it.
"It would take a saint not to be tempted, bro," he said.
"And a real scoundrel to do anything about it," Hart replied shortly.
She appeared to be sixteen or seventeen years old, well past the age when most women married, but she looked so sweet and vulnerable that her innocence seemed all the more in need of protection.
Chance chafed her hands and feet while Hart tried to trickle hot liquid between her lips, but without success. He found himself studying the girl's face intently; an artist can't help but be drawn to a form that moves him, but something in Fancy's still face touched him more than any he had ever seen. It was nearly heart-shaped, with eyes big as a fawn's and lashes that lay upon her cheeks like silken fringe. Her eyebrows were straight across and none too thin; they winged up suddenly at the very end, giving her an elfin look. Her lips, now blue from cold, were sensual and pouty; like her breasts, they seemed fuller than they needed to be, as if nature had been overgenerous.